Let's run an experiment and see if piracy is harmful to sales.I'm currently selling my ebook JACK DANIELS STORIES for $2.99 on Kindle and Barnes and Noble. Here's the description:
JA Konrath, known for the Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thrillers set in Chicago, offers this collection of short stories and novellas from the Jack Daniels universe.
Join Jack Daniels, her partner Herb Benedict, private eye Harry McGlade, and part-time criminal Phineas Troutt, in this omnibus of 15 stories.
On the Rocks - Suicide or murder? Lt. Jack Daniels solves a locked room mystery.
Whelp Wanted - P.I. Harry McGlade becomes a dognapper in order to stop a dognapper, or something like that.
Street Music - Phineas Troutt hunts a prostitute through the dangerous streets of Chicago. Are his intentions pure?
The One That Got Away - The Gingerbread Man (the villain from WHISKEY SOUR) hunts one final victim.
With a Twist - It looked like the man fell from a great height, but the body is in his living room. Jack Daniels solves another impossible crime.
Epitaph - Phin Troutt takes on a Chicago street gang with vengeance on his mind.
Taken to the Cleaners - Harry McGlade tries to solve a difficult mystery, but mostly just goofs off.
Body Shots - Jack Daniels faces her most challenging case yet; a school shooting. But does she know more about the perp than she realizes?
Suffer - Phineas Troutt has taken some questionable jobs, but will he murder a man's wife?
School Daze - P.I. Harry McGlade investigates a private school, but he's not entirely sure why.
Overproof - While shopping on the Gold Coast, Jack Daniels notices traffic has come to a stand-still. When she realizes what the problem is, she's confronted with her own mortality, and the possible deaths of hundreds.
Bereavement - How badly does Phineas Troutt need a fix? What is he willing to do?
Pot Shot - Detective Herb Benedict just wants a home cooked meal. But his plans get interrupted by a very determined sniper.
Last Request - Phineas Troutt picks up a hitchhiker, with deadly results.
The Necro File - Harry McGlade investigates some bizarre murders in this hilarious, gore-filled mini-epic. (Author's note: This is easily the funniest thing I've ever written, but it's also very offensive. Let the reader beware...)
That's about 65,000 words of Jack Daniels and friends. Some of these are laugh out loud funny. Some require you to solve the mystery. Some are thrilling. Some are scary. All of them have been previously published in various magazines and anthologies.
------------------------
Currently, on May 30 at 7:00pm, this ebook is ranked at #2009 on Amazon. It sold about 315 copies in the month of May.
It is ranked at #44,480 on Barnes & Noble.
So let's try an experiment. Here are some ways for you to obtain a copy of this ebook.
Click HERE to download a free zip file of JACK DANIELS STORIES. It contains versions in html, pdf, doc, epub, and prc (for Kindle). So no matter what ereader or computer or smart phone you own, you should be able to read it or convert it. That's the tracker link. If it isn't working, here's the direct link: http://www.jakonrath.com/Jack.zip
Or, if you own a Kindle, you can click HERE to go to the Kindle store and buy it for $2.99.
Or, if you own a Nook, you can click HERE and go to Barnes and Noble and buy it for $2.99.
If you download the free version, and feel the overwhelming need to donate $1.99 (or any amount) to me, you can click HERE and go to Paypal to donate. Paypal is free to join, safe, and easy to use.
I'll keep track of my free downloads, Kindle numbers, Paypal donations, and my rankings on Amazon and B&N for the next 30 days, then post the results.
Also, I encourage pirates to post this everywhere. Go ahead and proliferate the internet with JACK DANIELS STORIES. You can explain that I'm encouraging it, or you can just take it and not say a word. I'd appreciate it if you post in the comments section where you're uploaded it, which you can do anonymously. Or you don't have to.
If anyone sees this ebook on file sharing sites, I also ask that you please post a link to it in the comments. The more places I can see this being shared, the better I can compare ebooks sold to ebooks shared.
Will giving the ebook away for free hurt sales? Will it help sales? Will I gain readers? Will people donate money? Will people who take the free ebook buy my other ebooks?
What do you think will happen?
Should be interesting. Now some Q & A.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: I've said repeatedly that there is no proof piracy hurts sales. So I'm manning up and putting my money where my mouth is.
Q: How long will you run this experiment?
A: I'm going to keep track of it for a month. But the links will be live forever. I fully expect the ebook to appear on file sharing sites forever as well.
Q: Do you have any predictions?
A: I have no idea what will happen. It depends on how many people see this post and act on it. But I really don't expect my sales to drop off.
Q: If you're so pro-piracy, why don't you give away all of your ebooks?
A: My stance has always been that I don't believe piracy is harmful to the artist, and that it can't be stopped, so don't worry about it. Does that make me pro-piracy? Or does it make me realistic?
Q: You didn't answer the question.
A: The majority of my ebooks are currently free on my website, www.JAKonrath.com. If you want them for free, there they are.
Q: Why did you use this particular ebook for your experiment?
A: I think it's a good cross-section of my work, and will appeal to the widest range of people. It also has modest sales, which should be easier to track.
Q: I clicked on the free download. Now what am I supposed to do with it?
A: Save it to your computer, then open it using Winzip. You can download Winzip HERE. It's free for the first 45 days.
Q: What if the ebook is downloaded for free 10,000 times and no one pays for it?
A: That would be awesome. I hope those people who download it take the time to read a few stories. As a wise man once said, writers should fear obscurity, not piracy.
Q: What if your sales drop off to nothing?
A: Want to bet they don't? :)
Q: Can I give away this ebook on my blog and website?
A: The goal here is to share it by any and all means possible. Link to it, copy it, upload it, make torrents, put it on Usenet, stick it in file lockers, etc. Whatever you'd like.
Q: You're encouraging people to steal, condoning piracy, and turning your back on your fellow authors. You're the devil.
A: I get that a lot. No one is forcing you to read my blog. If you don't like what I'm doing, change the channel.
Addendum:
Lots of disagreement in the comments. That's good. Disagreement is the pathway to discussion and understanding, as long as everyone keeps an open mind.
Some points I'm seeing repeated:
1. This experiment doesn't count. Because I'm giving permission, this isn't "stealing."
JA sez: For the nth time, I don't care what the legal or moral definition of file-sharing is. I want to see if free books, widely distributed, cannibalize book sales. That's the test.
2. The final stats will be inconclusive.
JA sez: I agree. The whole reason it is impossible to prove piracy is harmful is that there is no direct association or causality between people getting free books and books for sale. There are too many other factors at play. That said, if my sales don't drop off, that's a promising indicator that free books don't effect sales.
3. If a person takes the free ebook, you've lost a sale.
JA sez: Actually, the opposite is true. If a free option is available right next to a paid option, and people take the freebie, that PROVES they wouldn't have bought the one for sale because they took the freebie.
4. You pay a cover artist but don't expect to get paid yourself?
JA sez: I hope to get paid. I'm doing everything within my power to give readers good, inexpensive ebooks. But I also know that some people will get copies for free. I see no reason to fight this. It isn't going to stop, and I don't believe it hurts sales.
5. Why not just make everything free?
JA sez: There's a big difference between giving away everything for free and tolerating media file-sharing. If you don't see that difference, I doubt I'll be able to convince you.
6. What about the future where everything is free?
JA sez: Everything will be free in the future, eh? How about using that crystal ball to get the lottery numbers for next week.
7. You're getting publicity for this. That will fuel sales. Pirates may just buy your book just to prove that file-sharing doesn't hurt.
JA sez: So now I have to figure out who is buying my ebooks and what their intent is? Now I can't use publicity to fuel sales, as I've been doing in the past?
Bottom line: there are versions that are free, and versions that are for sale. Will the free versions slow down the sales trajectory I've been on with this ebook (selling about 10 copies per day)? To my knowledge, this ebook has not been pirated before, so I'm taking a book with proven sales and adding the free factor to it. Why don't we all take a deep breath and actually wait and see what happens?
I believe the majority of piracy exists because copyright holders are unable or unwilling to meet specific consumer demand, such as availability, price, and convenience.
To see the tracked free downloads so far, click HERE.
347 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 347 of 347evilphilip:
Here are a couple of other real life examples.
Spore: A game with such draconic copy protection that it became one of the most pirated games ever. Some people who actually bought it ended up returning it because they couldn't get it to run properly. Some people kept their legal copy, but just put it on the shelf and played a downloaded copy instead.
Link:
http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913/
Valve: One of the biggest companies in the business, say they're not worried about piracy. They've changed their business model and are seeing increased sales as a result.
Links:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090219/1124433835.shtml
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/21/valve-we-dont-really-worry-about-piracy/
Competing with free is simple. It's not always easy, but it's simple. You don't need to be cheaper, you just need to be better.
Rowena:
It's always been difficult to make a living by being a creator of content. And that will probably never change. But I believe it's easier now than it's ever been.
One of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft, died a poor man. I'm willing to bet that if he had written his horror stories today, and utilized the new technology available as Joe does, he'd have been a millionaire.
To stay on top, you need to work. Maybe one book is just not enough to make a decent living.
The harsh reality is that you do not have any sort of god given right to be supported for the rest of your life just because you write a book, or paint one painting, or write one song.
File sharing of your work is a measure of how popular you are. If people don't want your work for free, how do expect to make a living selling it?
Getting more readers can only be a good thing for an author, even if not all of those readers pay for the books they're reading.
Stitch,
Of course one book is not enough to make a living. Five books isn't either!
Perhaps you missed the point I was trying to make about the situation for debut authors.
I was not suggesting that anyone has a god-given right to be supported for the rest of their lives because they got one book published!
Pirates don't have a "god-given" right to destroy other people's chance at a livelihood, either. There is a saying in the publishing industry "Don't break someone else's rice bowl."
At least one pirate shared at least one novel before she even READ it herself.
How can it be about how good an author is, when pirates share books they haven't read?
If one particular pirate had read one of the books before sharing it, she would have realized that her real name and IP number was embedded in the file... and she wouldn't have had to ask all her pirate friends on Astatalk to delete their copies of the version that had been all over the internet for 24 hours.
Rowena,
I simly don't believe that file sharing is destroying anyone's chance at a livelihood. I do believe, however, that our right to share information with others must weigh heavier than anyone's right to control the flow of that information.
How can it be about how good an author is, when pirates share books they haven't read?
Well, I believe that if you are good at what you do, you will make money. The trick is to offer products and services that other people are willing to pay for. Like I said in an earlier comment: Competing with free is not always easy, but it's simple. You just need to offer what the customers want.
And how is it bad for an author if someone shares a book without reading it?
To give you money, I have to know you exist. I've discovered several new authors and artists by finding free content online, both by consent and by "illegal" means.
Before I found "illegal" copies of their songs on YouTube, I'd never heard of some of my new favorite bands.
Before I knew they existed, they had made exactly $0.00 in sales from me. After I had discovered them, I became a fan by listening to their music without paying for it. The sum is still zero dollars, so they haven't made any more money, but they certainly haven't lost any money, either. Now, I have actually bought some of my favorite songs on iTunes, thereby giving the artists some of my money.
I found Cory Doctorow, and read some of his work, and I couldn't shut up about him for several weeks. I told all my friends about how I'd found this author and I enjoyed his work. I still haven't given him a single dollar, but I've helped spread awareness of him and his work, and one of my friends did buy one of his books. And it's very possible I'll be giving him some money in the future, as well.
I'd say that the chance of me giving you money if I don't know you or your work exists, is pretty much zero. When I do know you exist, and I do know of your work, we've gone from a 0 to a 1. I mean, 2 is 100% more than 1, but how do you measure the difference between 0 and 1? Infinity times a million?
People sharing your work with others can only mean a net gain for you in the long run. I'm absolutely certain of this.
Just blogged about this (took me a while to find the right way to say what I wanted!)
http://michael-schultz.net/blog/
Probably not going to make a lot of friends :P
(Dang unsophisticated free Google Blogger -- I can't tell if this got posted or not, so please excuse duplication as I try again ...)
.
I cannot "steal" this book as you suggest ... because copying is not stealing. We have two different words because they have two different meanings.
.
But I will "copy" your book file so I can see what reading a book on a computer screen is all about. Note that I would not have copied your book file if it were not free; for me, it's just a test read.
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I do much research, and Google Books is my favorite platform. Often I need a reference, and when I cite to the source, that's free advertisement for the source.
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Otherwise I read paper, and I buy used or use the library (read:"file-sharing" the old fashioned, pre-Internet way!)
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Piracy is the wrong word for copying outside of copyright permission. Piracy is stealing such that the original is gone, something physical has change hands, and the owner no longer has it. Conversely, copying makes more for everyone, and the original is still intact.
.
Thanks for the tease, and good luck finding an audience for your art work.
It is a common tactic of pirates to try to humiliate and insult any author who stands up to them.
See, Stitch's insistence on using "you" in his remarks in response to mine?
Perhaps it is overly officious of me to speak up on behalf of the authors whose plight outrages me.
I certainly have no intention of identifying them, and one will not find most of them on the boards.
Why? Because pirates terrify them. Pirates can be extremely nasty, verbally and in more practical ways which I will not discuss.
Look at discussions on YouTube where pirates curse and call for authors who complain to be burned alive in their homes.
The authors you hurt won't answer you back. For one thing, they are frantically trying to follow your advice (write faster, write more, don't complain).
For another, almost no one is going to admit to being hurt. Success breeds success. Very few readers want to read a book by an author who isn't going to be around, who isn't selling, or who cannot get a contract.
For yet another, some of them are now writing under other names because their former pen name doesn't sell, so they certainly don't want to link the damaged name with their new one.
Maybe some of them are not writing, period. They're doing overtime at their day jobs.
One or two died in poverty.
I suggest to you that those authors who do try to give the lie to the idea that file "sharing" is a victimless crime are either successful... or shit kickers.
Being pirated is not the only way to be noticed. Your argument there is self-serving. There are probably a myriad ways that an author can find an audience.
There are a couple of other points to consider. Most authors are hard-working, responsible, honest people who have contracts to honor.
Implicitly or explicitly giving away copies of books that they have not purchased from their publishers --books that their publishers have paid them for the exclusive rights to sell-- may be a breach of that contract.
(I know... the Kindle contract is non-exclusive. One merely is honor bound not to sell elsewhere for less.)
Rowena Cherry
EPIC Award 2010 "Friend of ePublishing"
Totally off-topic, but THIS IS what Blogging is REALLY ABOUT ::: You have over 200 comments and counting! That's what I (and most bloggers) would like to accomplish at least once a week with a great post!)
By comparison, I write a blog that is "read by no one"!!!!
I really enjoy your posts! (And unlike most others, will not abuse your comments as a chance to "self-promote" my own stuff.
"Why? Because pirates terrify them. Pirates can be extremely nasty, verbally and in more practical ways which I will not discuss.
Look at discussions on YouTube where pirates curse and call for authors who complain to be burned alive in their homes."
That is such a SMALL percentage of pirates. Yes, they're vocal, but they are also THE WORST example.
That's like judging all writers by pointing out the few that are jerks to their fans!
Of COURSE those people are deplorable. No one is going to argue that. If someone, anyone, goes online and says someone should die in a fire, we should all rise as one and tell them to shut up and go away. You cannot judge a whole section of people based on a small segment of @$$holes.
The people buying it from Amazon might not even be aware of this website or the fact that JA Konrath is a groundbreaking self-publishing guru.
If that's the case, how then does piracy hurt sales? :)
Example of a pirate on Astatalk who probably would not make a legal purchase.
titleofbookredacted by authorsnameredacted
31 Oct 2009, 16:34 !
please help,I need this book and others by the same author,
This pirate knows the author's name and the title of the book she wants.
She also is asking for the rest of the works by this author.
Obviously, the pirate does not want or need the book enough to pay for it, but this thread and others like it do tend to counter the obscurity argument.
Sure, there are people who take stuff for free with no intention of ever paying. But who cares? If you kick them off the internet, are they suddenly going to start buying books? If you shut down every single torrent site, will they start buying books?
No. They'll never buy books. Forget about them.
Focus on finding your fans, and offering them something valuable that they want. They'll pay.
@evilphilip ..says >>
"If a consumer buys only one song from an album with 12 songs that is an 11 song loss in sales. Then, out of the $.99 that Apple charges for that one song you can bet Apple is keeping 50% of that sale.
This is why the music industry is suffering and suffering hard."
SOLUTION >> Angel Philip ~ maybe the music industry now needs its own "The Konrath Effect" by experimenting with releasing "quality" singles over a period of time, ( like Authors write over a period of time ) rather than piggybacking not soo great tracks to make an album ~ this will perhaps produce better selection of singles and more $0.99 downloads from Apple ~ like the ebook trend on kindle and smashwords have proven thus far!
Wow this is simple ~ and I am not even in the music biz! ~ ( if a Music Producer is reading > feel free to "steal my idea" :) At times ..we just have to change the way we always have looked at things ~ good luck Joe BTW with your Books and thanks for yr gr8 blog ~ Ed
Musicians are suffering due to the dual edged sword of music piracy and the ability of iTunes to allow consumers to pick only the one good song from an album that they want and ignore the rest.
This is a great thing! If the music business model was to shaft the consumer by forcing him or her to buy 15 songs for $15 when only one song was any good, then the musicians were the pirates and were overpaid for years.
To be upset that consumers can choose the one song they want shows a lot of contempt for the customer.
When the console game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released it was released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and for computers.
During the first 30 days it sold 200,000 copies on the PC. During the first 30 days it was pirated an estimated 4.5 Million times
Why don't you get your facts right.
A very cursory Google search shows this game SOLD 4.7 million copies in 30 days, setting world records, and earning well over $300 million.
Think before you post.
Then, out of the $.99 that Apple charges for that one song you can bet Apple is keeping 50% of that sale.
If this is true, that means the artist keeps 50% which is fantastic.
CD sales generate less than one dollar for the artist.
Sounds like Apple Itunes is doing for musicians what Amazon is doing for authors -- putting control and money with the content creator.
@Rowena
Your comment earlier about authors who only have one book can be applied just as well to public libraries. If you only have one book, and I check it out and read it there, then you've lost a sale as well, haven't you?
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has had pretty good sales, actually:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/14/business/la-fi-warfare-game14-2010jan14
Also, the opening sales for the game were 4.7 million, or $300 million as Anonymous said, but it wasn't for the first 30 days -- it was for the opening day. That's right. It made that in its first days, breaking sales records.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10396593-52.html
Sorry if these facts are inconvenient for people.
However, it is true that sales for the PC version were far worse than the console versions:
http://gamer.blorge.com/2009/12/15/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-sales-on-pc-disappointing/
There was a boycott on the PC version, but who knows how much affect that had (likely little). Before the release there was a lot of outrage that the PC version lacked dedicated servers, and a price hike for the UK version.
But anyway, it is true that the PC version sold worse than the console version.
@MD1500
My beef is with those who pirate and don't buy. Or don't even tell people who do buy. Or don't write a review even. I mean dude, if you consume something and enjoy it... take action. Pay money, write a review, do something to help, don't just be a leech.
I feel like someone who is just a leech with no intent to buy or review or anything else doesn't respect artists and as a writer, that type of thing makes me feel a little violated and used.
Perhaps one of the ways to "fight piracy" would be for people to encourage supporting the artist in SOME way. Financially would be preferable since we can't eat praise. But at the VERY least someone should be reviewing, and spreading the word in a NON-pirate-related way.
We all know most consider it socially acceptable to pirate. If that same group of people also felt it was socially UNacceptable to mooch off an artist without giving anything back, then we might be talking about a workable solution.
Interesting debates in the comments section.
Just to update, in the past three days I've gotten over $70 in donations. That's comparable to the royalty I'd get selling 100 copies of Jack Daniels stories.
I've also sold 58 copies of Jack Daniels Stories on Kindle. Normally, I would have sold about 25 in this same time period.
That's almost a 700% increase in sales, including the donations.
@Joe
Part of me wonders if more people aren't giving you donations to support this idea that most pirates are fluffy bunnies who go on to support the artist.
The fact is that most people think they are a good person. And people will go pretty far in order to prop up their own view of themselves to avoid cognitive dissonance.
They can donate to you and then feel like a "good person." And maybe they are. Maybe they would have pirated and donated anyway. But maybe it's skewed a little bit.
The question isn't what do people do while everybody's watching and they have a point to prove about their ethics... but what do people do when no one is watching?
Unfortunately, there is no way to measure something that the second you start measuring, the behavior changes. (Or potentially changes.)
Joe,
I think your test has a lot of validity. It shows that people are willing to pay even if they can get the book for free. That's the point. Even with all this coverage, if people absolutely did not want to pay they wouldn't.
I wonder if the writers who believe they are being hurt by pirates are actually being hurt by bad writing. If a pirate has a look and think the book stinks, he or she won't bother buying or contributing (and rightly so).
I find that many writers have an inflated sense of talent when in fact their books are not worth the $2.99 they are virtually printed on, and that reflects in sales, piracy or not.
Joe,
I'm not really interested in reading your stuff... HOWEVER ... I strongly support what you are doing. SO... If there is somebody who does all three 1) Downloads your book, intending to read it and NOT pay 2) Reads it and enjoys it and 3) Decides they actually would like to donate the $1.99 to you but honestly cannot afford it, then I will donate $1.99 to you in there name. I will do this for the first 5 people who do all three and then post a tweet that mentions me (@tinjaw - so I can notice/see it) and links to your blog post here and asks politely.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the most comments ever on a Newbie's Guide post. Congrats.
Doesn't The Konrath Effect sound like some kind of techno-thriller, though? It would at least make a good title for a promo video.
Let's play nice.
John,
Libraries aren't the same...
Your comment earlier about authors who only have one book can be applied just as well to public libraries. If you only have one book, and I check it out and read it there, then you've lost a sale as well, haven't you?
1. Libraries at least purchase the first book. Sale made, not lost.
2. If the first book is popular, libraries purchase second and third copies to loan out simultaneously.
3. Libraries replace library books when the original version becomes tatty.
4. Libraries only loan each copy to one patron at a time.
5. Libraries tend to run book clubs and readers groups. You cannot do that with only one copy.
Unless you are talking ebook lending, and I know nothing about that, and am rather uneasy about that.
Library sales add-up to a decent meal out in terms of royalties.
They are - in reality - exactly like a pirate site.
I don't visit file-sharing sites. I do, however, visit music blogs that post about music they've discovered. Download links are only active for a week or so, under Fair Use laws. Almost all of the new artists whose music I've purchased in the last several years, I discovered through those blogs, or free downloads on bands' own websites.
Musicians get discovered, and they get paid, because I was able to download one of their songs and try them out. It's a win-win. Authors do the same thing when they offer free downloads on their sites, or free excerpts from longer works.
What you're doing here, Joe, is really about piracy-as-publicity, it seems to me. Which underscores your fundamental argument that this can't really hurt you.
As for this leading to an attitude that content should be free and no one should ever have to pay for anything ... I'm not convinced. North American culture expects to pay for most things most of the time, and does so quite happily. I don't see this somehow undoing that.
File-sharing is a way to sample content. Will some people avoid paying because they get some sort of thrill out of it? Sure. Such people we have always had with us, one way or another. I see no evidence, thus far, that file-sharing is increasing the number of people who actually hold that attitude.
Of course I'd be happier if no one ever read my work without paying for it. I'd be happier if my fairy godmother granted me world peace and unlimited wealth, too.
Anonymous,
With the greatest respect for your point of view, I continue to disagree with you.
Consent makes all the difference in the world.
Libraries are legal. If an author or publisher sells a book to a library, they know (or ought to know) that that book is going to be loaned to library patrons for no further remuneration until the book falls apart.
E-book pirates might think of themselves as unofficial librarians, but they don't purchase an e-book with that understanding upfront. They buy, if they buy, under false colors, and whether they notice it or not, they sign a contract agreeing to what their rights are and are not.
There is a need for used paperback book stores and for libraries for all the reasons that Joe and his friends have stated.
Reading is good. People who do not wish to purchase, or who wish to sample an author's writing, or who can't afford to purchase everything they wish to read do have a legal resource, and that is as it should be.
Rowena,
It is a common tactic of pirates to try to humiliate and insult any author who stands up to them.
See, Stitch's insistence on using "you" in his remarks in response to mine?
Why do you feel the need to attack my character instead of adressing my points?
How am I humiliating and insulting you by using the word "you"?
Is this a language barrier thing? (English is not my first language.)
The authors you hurt won't answer you back. For one thing, they are frantically trying to follow your advice (write faster, write more, don't complain).
The authors you say I'm hurting.
I suggest to you that those authors who do try to give the lie to the idea that file "sharing" is a victimless crime are either successful... or shit kickers.
Then I suggest to you that those authors who are blaming file sharing for their slow sales need to have a think about if they are really losing sales to file sharing, or if they are just not giving the customers what they want. It's easy to blame file sharing, yet there is no objective proof, whatsoever, that file sharing is hurting sales.
Latest News on Mashable.com
Cisco’s research: Online video will surpass peer-to-peer traffic (which includes file sharing services like BitTorrent and a bulk of content piracy) for the first time this year.
P2P has been the largest portion of consumer online traffic for some time now, and it will continue growing — just not anywhere near as quickly as online video.
Begs the question ~ Should Authors focus on Book Trailers instead of P2P? ... Just Asking ;)
Thnx
P.S. ~ link to blog >>
http://mashable.com/2010/06/02/online-video-traffic-2014
@Cara I want my fairy godmother to grant me the power of teleportation.
I haven't been able to read thorugh all of the comment, so forgive me if this has been addressed:
Those who are obsessed with the wrongness of piracy seem to be missing the point of the experiment.
"If you give it away, it's not piracy!"
Well, Duh. That's the point. What's being tested here is not the moral fiber of the pirates, but what is best practice for authors to deal with it.
The question is whether you should obsess and waste time trying to change other people, or if, perhaps, you should invite them in and share and encourage them.
At that point, it doesn't matter whether you call it piracy. The question is whether it works.
OK, I've blogged about it. I had to conflate with the Hayley Williams "whoopsie" thing over the weekend, but hey, at least there's pictures, right?
"Sorry, but anybody with a rudimentary knowledge of copyright law knows that downloading a song from, say, Limewire, constitutes an infringement." - Jude
Anybody with a rudimentary knowledge of copyright law knows that downloading a work does not automatically constitute infringement. Please do not skew copyright law just to suit your argument against this experiment.
If you are not a lawyer, please to not presume that you can educate us on this matter of law. If you are a lawyer, the please remember that it is improper to give legal advice as a comment on a blog.
C. Pinheiro, EA ABA -- Yeah, but there are small artists who depend on the CD sale or digital download. Bands that can fill stadiums and sell merchandise don't care about (or make much)on sales or care about billboard, but that's only a handful of artists that can command a million per gig.
Joe -- Using Kiss as an example is poor. Gene has put that logo on everything from condoms to coffins! And for the record the first 5 years they didn't make money because they kept putting it back into the show; which was expensive to reproduce nightly. And yes I know people stoles records back then, but they needed every bit of income just to survive.
But you are right. You can't fight piracy, and you can't drive yourself nuts worrying over it either. But I wouldn't enable it either.
Valve: One of the biggest companies in the business, say they're not worried about piracy. They've changed their business model and are seeing increased sales as a result.
Valve is not worried about Piracy because they have implemented one of the most draconian DRM scemes possible disguised as a "platform" to buy software. They call it Steam. It requires you to connect to their servers to get their products and acts as the DRM that validates that your copy of the game is legitimate.
Also, the opening sales for the game were 4.7 million, or $300 million as Anonymous said, but it wasn't for the first 30 days -- it was for the opening day. That's right. It made that in its first days, breaking sales records.
*Sigh* My facts were 100% correct. I was discussing ONLY the PC version of the game which sold 200,000 copies during the first month and had over 4.5 million copies downloaded in the first month.
The CONSOLE versions of that game sold 4.7 million copies during the first week or so.
I understand that not everyone here is an expert in video games and can be easily confused by the fact that the number of copies sold on console systems during the first week was similar to the number of copies torrented on the PC.
You have to look at it from the point of view of the company. They sold 4.7 million copies of the game and had an additional 4.5 million copies of the game stolen out from under them.
This is why you should be concerned about Piracy as an author -- because if you aren't selling millions of units and you are trying to live off one hundred units sold it kills you inside to know that an additional hundred units were stolen from you by people who got to use the product without paying you.
That is one reason why Amazon loves their Kindle -- the Kindle comes with the DRM built in.
The people buying it from Amazon might not even be aware of this website or the fact that JA Konrath is a groundbreaking self-publishing guru.
If that's the case, how then does piracy hurt sales? :)
You are comparing a bushel of apples to a bag of oranges. The people pirating your books on Demonoid may know who you are and the people purchasing your books on Amazon may each know who you are, but you can't conclude that if people download a book for free from your website at the same time as the book is available for purchasing on Amazon.com that somehow piracy didn't impact your sales.
As I said before, as a marketing gimmick giving away your book on your blog and throwing up a big article saying "Steal this book" is great PR, but you can't learn anything about piracy from that kind of experiement.
What you would need to do if you wanted to track piracy is put a book up on Amazon.com for sale that you know people are going to be waiting for. (Like the Jack Daniels book you announced under the Amazon.com Encore imprint.) At some point shortly after you put the book up for sale at retail then you yourself would need to start leaking a non-DRM versin of the book to book piracy sites and the normal round of torrent sites.
At that point you could start tracking the number of downloads from your pirate torrrents (the torrents you yourself were seeding) vs. the number of copies that you were selling.
That would give you a fairly accurate idea of how many copies of your book are being stolen vs how many are being sold.
You can't just throw up a blog post saying "Steal this book." and say that it has anything to do with piracy. Your own posts above where you point out that people have donated to you and searched it out on Amazon.com to buy it through legitimate means prove that this was a great marketing scheme, but not much else.
I love the idea, but it doesn't say jack or squat about eBook piracy.
evilphilip:
"At some point shortly after you put the book up for sale at retail then you yourself would need to start leaking a non-DRM versin of the book to book piracy sites and the normal round of torrent sites."
That has been done. Probably most people who pirate it know nothing about this thing. Not that it matters at all.
"At that point you could start tracking the number of downloads from your pirate torrrents (the torrents you yourself were seeding) vs. the number of copies that you were selling.
That would give you a fairly accurate idea of how many copies of your book are being stolen vs how many are being sold."
There is no point tracking the number of all pirate copies. The point is, that he knows how well he sells usually without piracy. Now we'll see how much he'll sell with it.
It has nothing to do with sales vs. pirated books or how many reads the book without paying.
If there is no piracy and he sells 10 books per day and nobody reads without payment, it's good. If there is piracy and he sells 20 books per day, and 10000 others read his book per day without paying, it's a lot better, as his income goes up and someone actually reads his books. Hard to say someone is stealing if his income is going up, right?
I'd say that you are just mad that someone is getting the free lunch. You don't care whether or not the author makes less or more money, you just don't like it because of your "there is no free lunch" mentality.
I'd say that you are just mad that someone is getting the free lunch. You don't care whether or not the author makes less or more money, you just don't like it because of your "there is no free lunch" mentality.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that I'm mad about anything. I think Joe is a marketing genius and a self publishing pioneer who is inspiring writers to take control of their careers.
I don't agree that this particular blog post/event teaches him (or anyone else) anything about piracy.
It isn't piracy if you are giving it away even if you are also selling it -- Joe has been doing that for a long time.
As a hardcore gamer (and someone whose video game news page gets over 15,000 unique readers per day) I have seen the damage that piracy can do to an industry and the way that it forces content developers to cage themselves into restrictive corners that punish the legitimate purchaser and reward the pirate.
Like Joe, I don't think you can (or should) do anything about eBook piracy other than take it seriously and offer up a great product at a price that people cannot resist.
evilphilip:
Then, I'm sorry I misjudged you.
But anyway. Piracy means free ebooks. Giving ebooks for free means free ebooks.
That's why this should have the same as piracy. Also, because people don't necessarily know they are allowed to get it for free, it's the same as piracy. Permission has nothing to do with it, except that Joe should prolly get a bit less money when he gives permission.
This thing is about if Joe will get less money because there are free versions available too. Be it with permission or not, it should be about the same, especially when he states he still would really like to be paid.
So my points on previous comment still stands.
evilphilip: In all this madness I just checked out your blog. really good job!!
Thank you, evilphilip, for stating the obvious.
As a marketing ploy, this is brilliant and I'm deeply impressed with your canny knack for promotion. As a legitimate experiment on piracy, it's silly. No offense, but counting donations as if they were sales, then rolling that into your total and using it to justify the position that piracy is a non-issue is like ... well, it's like finding a quarter and congratulating yourself for running very fast. Along the same lines, you can't even legitimately use sales as a barometer since you'd have to disqualify anyone who knew about this experiment or read about it. The only way to truly test this hypothesis is to figure out a way to have a control test, then conduct a blinded experiment where consumers knew nothing.
@LurkerMonkey
Exactly. Brother Joe has proven himself to be an expert marketing guru. Why not set up a system where he gets more sales of his anthology under the guise of "let's discuss piracy!"? I wonder how this book was selling BEFORE this blog post.
And I'm sure Amazon is grateful for every extra dime he earns for them. Because, when it comes down to it, he's working for Amazon now.
Really provocative post. And I enjoyed your WSJ comments today as well. I cited both on my blog post today: http://natasha.edcentric.org/2010/06/03/self-publishing-e-book-huh/
I will be interested in following this experiment.
Thanks for the food for thought, which I always find on your blog.
*Sigh* My facts were 100% correct. I was discussing ONLY the PC version of the game which sold 200,000 copies during the first month and had over 4.5 million copies downloaded in the first month.
I call total BS. If true, this would be the most accurate tracking of piracy in the history of digital.
There is no way of knowing that 4.5 million copies were stolen in 30 days. No possible way.
Right. This is far from a blind study. It invokes what physicists call the "observer effect"
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/observer.htm
"The ideal observer is one who causes no unnecessary perturbations to the system being observed. An observation made by such an observer is called an objective observation."
A real observer always causes an unnecessary perturbation of some kind. Joe's announcement of the test and his offer to let pirates make a donation is a rather large perturbation, to say the least.
A better test would be to quietly seed the pirate sites and measure the effect. But that doesn't gain you a marketing advantage.
Hats off to Joe, a very clever marketer.
Back in my younger days, it was important for people to understand when I was right.
Now I'm just okay with being right, even if no one understands it.
Publicity is certainly skewing the sales and donations of this experiment, favorably. But that should die down, and over the period of a month and over six months, I should get a clearer picture if free ebooks hurt sales.
And, believe it or not, I'm more surprised than anyone by the publicity. This wasn't a PR stunt, and I certainly didn't expect a 700% uptick in profits. I just wanted to know, if thousands of people are downloading the ebook for free (and they are) if it effected my sales (and it hasn't so far.)
People keep saying that giving it away isn't the same as stealing. That's pretty nearsighted, and misses the whole point of me doing this.
The fact is, this experiment has several controls.
1. I have the sales track record of this ebook prior to telling people to pirate it.
2. I have other ebooks being pirated, and I haven't told people to pirate those.
3. I have a few ebooks that, to my knowledge, haven't been pirated yet.
So I'll be able to actually analyze some data, look at sales trends, and draw some rough conclusions about free copies, and if they cannibalize sales.
It DOES NOT matter if the author gives permission or not. Pirates are going to file share with or without permission. I just happened to jump start it with this blog to see what would happen.
What happened is: this ebook is making 7 times the money it was before.
But Joe ... c'mon. Really? Seven times the money? You're still counting donations! It's just not credible. If you're going to insist this nonscientific, uncontrolled, heavily promoted experiment in which people might buy the book simply to stick a thumb in my eye is credible, at least back out donations from your figures. At the very least.
at least back out donations from your figures.
I will. All I really care about is Kindle sales and ranking. But the donations thing tickles me.
Brother Joe - of COURSE it's a PR stunt!
Good grief, at least be honest about your intentions - you did this not as an experiment about piracy or any such silliness, but to push your anthology on Amazon. Using such buzzwords as "piracy" works to draw even more attention to your blog and thus generate more sales.
If you're going to pimp your Amazon books, fine - but at least be honest about it. This has about as much credibility as a high-school kid using Wikipedia to write their research paper on.
As stated above, you could have done a blind experiment that would have at least generated some legitimate data. But, hey, you're selling books and that's all that counts - right?
Brother Joe - of COURSE it's a PR stunt!
I don't shy away from PR or publicity, but that wasn't my intent here.
I already have done "blind" studies. My ebooks are being pirated, yet my sales continue to rise. So this is my attempt to see what happens when a book really has a lot of free downloads--and we're up over 1000 at this point.
It's cool that this is getting a lot of attention, but I've made a little over a hundred bucks so far since starting this, which is very small potatoes.
This is about sales, and if they drop of when people are getting the ebook for free. Too many authors worry needlessly about this, IMO.
What I've learned so far is that many folks prefer to cling to their bias about file sharing, rather than actually consider it isn't harmful. I haven't seen any say, "Well, you've changed my mind." And yet, if at the end of this, my sales have dropped off, I'll be the first to change my mind.
If you'd rather call this a stunt than learn from me, feel free. But it makes me wonder why you'd hang out at my blog.
Feel free to go through my 500+ blog posts and count how many are PR stunts, and how many are written with the intent to teach what I've learned.
Joe, thanks for doing this.
It obviously is NOT a publicity stunt (asking people to take a book for free on a blog is by no means a publicity stunt for goodness sakes).
I, for one, think it is very legitimate to test piracy vs. sales.
Seems some people expect you to publish a peer-reviewed scientific study for cryin' out loud.
Sure, this isn't a scientifically valid experiment, but what else do we have? Scott Turow's monotone droning about some vague threat to multimillionaire authors, or bizarre rounded-off figures given by the publishing industry? Steve Jobs?
You'll never be able to measure the direct impact of something that is beyond tracking. You may as well argue faith.
Joe is forward-thinking and may in fact be accelerating the actual Ground Zero date of when nobody wants to pay any sum for ebooks. But guess what? He will still be ahead of the curve, because he'll be going to Ford Motor Company and Jack Daniels Distillery and saying, "Hey, my books got 37 billion downloads. What's it worth to you to reach those people?"
Some people are acting like Joe has just invented piracy and should walk the plank. Or that he's responsible for the morality of geeks. Almost every author I know has given stuff away, except most of us just can't give it away fast enough.
Scott Nicholson
Drummer Boy
Hey Joe, my editor Cindy Sherwood sent me this link-- it's a great article about self-publshing and they quote you again about your deal with Amazon Encore:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704912004575253132121412028.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories
evilphilip: In all this madness I just checked out your blog. really good job!!
Thanks. We have been around since 1998, which means we pre-date the word Blog. Heh.
Our marketing trick for the month is that we are giving away an Intel i7-875K CPU, a motherboard and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM.
If anyone needs a new PC I urge them to check it out as we only have about 200 entries into the giveaway contest which makes your chance in winning 1 in 200.
I like those odds.
I was discussing this thread with my editors last night and we all agreed that since eBooks are in their infancy that eBook piracy isn't a mainstream thing --> the parallels I was trying to draw with the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 aren't something Joe (or any other authors) should be worrying about right now because most people probably don't even know how to copy a pirate eBook to their Kindle, nook, iPad or ASUS Eee tablet (I love that last one).
I bring up these issues because I think that it is something all authors will need to be keeping in the back of their mind as we move away from print and into the digital frontier where all books are eBooks.
Joe thinks that any publicity is good publicity and a lot of other authors feel the same way, including Bizarro author Carlton Mellick IIII.
I do land more on the conservative side. I don't think you should embrace piracy 100% as a marketing tool.
The answer seems to be Joe's answer -- offer your products at a price people are willing to pay. But, what about the authors being published by the big mainstream publishers who don't have the option to price their book at $2.99? I think those people do suffer losses in sales and revenue from piracy.
but bringing the price down to "what people are willing to pay" means, well, nothing.
it's easy to justify $.99 for a short story. But for a 95,000 page novel? Really?
My novel sells for $4.40 on Amazon/B&N, etc. Maybe $5.50 in other places. I get a good hunk of that. And now Joe wants me to whore my books out for $0.99 because it's "what the public wants"?
you can't suck and blow - you can't claim that you cut a deal with Amazon to "feed your family" and then tell everyone else to undercut each other to the point of making pennies for months of hard work.
And now Joe wants me to whore my books out for $0.99 because it's "what the public wants"?
Apparently you don't read my blog.
My own numbers show that a price under $3 has far greater profits than those at $5 or more. Far, far greater.
The value of a book isn't its price. it's how much money the book earns.
"My own numbers show that a price under $3 has far greater profits than those at $5 or more. Far, far greater."
Except, of course, that out of your "profit" you have to pay for the cover artist, an editor and for the cost of going to print, if you dare go that far.
Go talk to some of the small press that do both epub and print and tell them to cut their prices by two, three dollars each. Your belittling of the publishing industry is sad, considering how the cover artists, the editors and the many people who work in the industry are the ones who gave you the help when you needed it.
that's the point Joe, the whoring out he's talking about means you are talking about only you, what you want, how you see it, what you want to do, how you see your own work. He's saying others aren't you, and that you seem to want others to follow your way of seeing yourself. But their situations are different as are their viewpoints.
A leader who gives opportunity to many without requirements, is different than one person who says 'this is the only way it is and should be.'
That's all he's saying about youre saying what works for you ought be followed without thought by others.
Your book giveaway is for you and you alone. Fine. But that isnt a bounty to other authors. Your stats are yours. Your sweet deals with big pubs and with amazon are also yours.
Just yours alone.
You can keep on with that giving away your book is an experiment, but its not. It's pr for you. The evidence is in the manipulated outcome.
I see you dont count the big uptick in novel sales called 'the beach bump' at this time of year. Across the board, esp mystery, thriller, sf, fantasy, romance sales go up for the summer reading season.
There's more, but as we both see, we disagree.
Your belittling of the publishing industry is sad
and
But that isn't a bounty to other authors. Just yours alone.
You guys really should read my blog. You couldn't be more wrong if you knew the facts and purposely tried to be wronger.
Hey Joe, I'm a geek so I copied and pasted the comments-- it's 35,000 words.
Crazy-- that's a book-length manuscript of people arguing back and forth about you.
And to all those people that are saying it's a "publicity stunt"-- does it really matter?
Seriously, we're all in this to make money, right? I don't know about you, but I'm happy publishing and making money.
And I don't understand how a .99 cent book is somehow "whore-ish" while a $4.00 book is NOT. That doesn't even make sence! Who cares what the price is-- it's supply and demand-- if sales go up, and your profits go up, then lower the price. That's it.
Anonymous,
It is also pretty sad when said small presses with high prices sell about as many copies of a title in its lifetime as Konrath does in a month, too. Not to mention can't manage book excerpts, or ebooks at all.
You suggesting that a 'summer reading increase' is going to double the number of books sold then?
If you are in it to make money, and $3 makes you twice as much money as $5 (or whatever the amount may be) and you DON'T do it, then it is you the publisher taking away money from editors et. al.
If you aren't in it for the money, but only for the prestige or art of making fancy blocks of paper then it doesn't make any sense to complain you aren't making any, if not focused on it.
Dear Mr Konrath,
We love your stories, and we hate that MS Word look (it's so 1995), so we typeset your free ebook to make it more readable.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/hz2jmj1iimt/jackdanielsstories.zip
Feel free to put this on your site for other people to enjoy.
Cheers,
The Fans
@TheFans. That looks terrific! You did a wonderful job! Thanks so much! And thanks for permission include it in the download. :) I'll do it right now.
Also thanks to Jonathan E. Quist, who reformatted the epub version to include bookmarks and better formatting. That's also now in the download.
So if you want a better epub or pdf, download it again to find the new versions.
Totally not your point to this but...
I am a reviewer, and stumbled upon this, so, since you encouraged the downloading, I did, and will read and review, and hopefully direct sales your way, just like any other free review copy. So, thanks, for unknowingly giving me a review copy of your book. But I do not obtain books illegally, only from authors or publishers who give them to me to review, or I actually will just buy them to review myself (quite a concept apparently).
If you know anyone in need of reviews, direct them to me!
http://tiffanysbookshelf.blogspot.com
Happy writing!
Very interesting idea. I've posted it on my blog, http://hisnibs.blogspot.com/ as well as my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/HisNibs1, which is were I initially discovered it.
I appreciate everything Joe does to help out writers and to challenge the old school thinking of publishers. Posted the links at www.revelrymagazine.com.
Anyone submitting fiction to our magazine that mentions the Jack Daniels e-book will get to the top of the slush pile for the next 30 days. Good Luck.
Astatalk? I'd never heard of it but it looks interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
I just downloaded the short stories book and donated $1.99 Joe. Thanks.
Most excellent, dude. Keep leading the way, okay?
Norm
http://fangplace.blogspot.com
Taking the free copy because I'm cheap and also I don't have a Kindle or Nook.
I've heard rumblings from ebook publishers about inserting advertisements into the free emedia (like html and pdf versions that are easier to distribute.)
As an author, I hate the idea. But as a reader...I'm pretty used to ignoring ads on the internet.
Anyway, very curious as to your results. My own Smaswords experiment of "pay what you want" resulted in getting about as much as I would've charged in the first place, so I feel pretty good about this sort of business model. Just never had the opportunity to do play on this grand of a scale.
Piracy only hurts sales if you are already a big name author. What really hurts sales is anonymity. What you are doing with giving away your e-books is creating publicity...and publicity is what drives sales. Best of luck to you and I hope your experiment is very successful.
A Y.A. Sci-Fi writer named Cory Doctorow came to speak at our school recently, and I took my creative writing class to see him. He spoke of doing very much what Joe is doing here, and then some. He has put creative content licensing on his books, and instead of reserving all rights, he only reserves some. The long and short is, people can do whatever they want to change, rewrite, or completely alter his books and put them up elsewhere with their name added to show what they did, as long as they don't profit from it. He claims he's seen videos made out of scenes from his books, comic strips and manga versions, rewrites he actually considered pretty good, etc.
He also claims his numbers have soared since he started doing this, because the biggest detriment to his career as a writer isn't piracy, it's obscurity (sounds familiar).
I think for a vastly known writer like a King or a Connelly or someone like that, yes, piracy hurts them to an extent. For a midlister that many people have never heard of, it probably helps in a roundabout way. But there has to be a medium of recognition first. I seriously doubt that I, as an unpublished writer, could throw my book up on smashwords or some other site for free, and also self-publish, and see the kind of money you are Joe. But it might get my name out there, just not well enough to do me any real long-term good. But you have at least enough recognition that this experiment, I firmly believe, is going to help you.
I see a lot of the people against this experiment are authors, and many (not all, props to those of you with the stones to state your name) are posting anonymously. I find irony in that, as I'd bet lots of people would love your work as well, but would have no damn clue who you were even if you DID post your name.
But hey, I'm just a book-buyer who has downloaded some of Konrath's stuff for free, and now likes it enough I want to support his career by paying for it. Oh, and I keep paperbacks in my classroom and have seen other kids buy new books from authors they found by reading stuff in my room (which they can take if they want, btw). So what the fuck could I possibly know?
That's a very cheap ebook :D
But I guess without good pr it's hard to sell for more.
Piracy is and isn't in a sense wrong. Most people usually just download something crap to see if it would be cool, and then go buy the DVD or whatever they downloaded for real as to support the author, artist, maker, whatever!
Joe, sorry if I missed something in the comments. After reading the argument between you and Jude caught up in semantics, I refuse to read the 10 million comments for this post.
All I want to say is this: I hope your ebook sales actually RISE because of this experiment. That would be awesome :)
I am a little worried, though, because of the whole RadioHead experiment with their latest album In Rainbows (they asked people to pay what they felt was fair, and they got next to nothing).
Can't wait to read the results.
Thanks. Looking foward to reading your book downloaded direct from your site on my new e-reader, and looking forward to results of this.
Making the Leap Joe:
http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/2010/06/permanence-to-be-re-released-on-amazon.html?spref=fb
I am a little worried, though, because of the whole RadioHead experiment with their latest album In Rainbows (they asked people to pay what they felt was fair, and they got next to nothing).
I couldn't find any stats on how much Radiohead made so I can't judge if it was a failure or not. Also how much it influenced others to buy other albums of Radioheads. Not a fan so ... Part of their problem was that it was limited. If the offer was still up who knows what may have happened.
Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor has done a similar thing, I believe successfully. Again no stats. Probably learning from Radiohead.
They released a free preview, then a deluxe limited version, a deluxe version still available and a cheap CD or download option.
By doing it over a longer term, we can have a better look at things. Really, when it comes to digital media you cannot unrelease something and the effects will be ongoing, until the internet collapses.
The Radiohead experiment was a little complicated because of the release schedule, but they seemed pleased. Here is the URL for an article from Wired.com where Thom York and David Byrne talk about the results of the release among other things: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke?currentPage=all
I just stole your book and read the first story. I liked it! Even before I read it I had decided to buy you a book or pay you another way, just from reading your posts (donated 10$).
I've pirated software, music and books. You are right Joe, most of it lies in DVD or hard disk never to be used. Some of it was read, listened to, played or used once, and served only as a guarantee that I was not willing to buy those products.
I never play the CD I buy, I just play the mp3 I download on my computer or mp3 player, I just keep buying them to support the bands I love (also attend EVERY show in my city). With books and software it's kind of different... I can remember buying World of Goo (because it was independent, good and DRM free) and some technical programming books (yes, I'm a developer, shame on me) but not much more.
I believe all of the writers posting here would definitely benefit from having a "Donate link" and remembering your readers to support you.
Good luck Joe, I'll keep you under my radar.
Jenn:
"I am a little worried, though, because of the whole RadioHead experiment with their latest album In Rainbows (they asked people to pay what they felt was fair, and they got next to nothing)."
http://web.archive.org/web/20080208234628/http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003660154
http://www.stephenbailey.com/music/110907-radiohead-in-rainbows/
Yeaaah, over a million $ in a month? That's totally a failure. And the fact that after that test, the cd was a number 1 in various charts and it seems to have been the most successful cd. That means, they made heaps of money with it, even after the test when anyone could have downloaded it.
Please tell me again that it failed, I need more laughing.
In the "your mileage may vary department, what's your take on this, Joe?
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/shelftalker/?p=1183&utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=9bfd1ca194-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email
I´ve pirated your book for some days but I haven't readed it yet, and I think I will never do it in the next few weeks...
Bob Fleck:
If you read the comments, it looks like it sells pretty well when it's cheaper. It just looks like the price and the product aren't matching.
I know several books that sell pretty well even when it's readable for free. Like, Jokapiraatinoikeus, a book made by two Finnish Pirate Party guys about piracy. It was number 1 on list, and it was free on pdf and flashreaderthingy. I'm pretty sure it's not just the "free" download that's harming there.
Bob, it could be the freebies or it could be the Meyer machine is winding down--I've read several bloggers give a sigh and realize they have been reviewing the books almost out of obligation. Spinning off minor characters in novella form sounds like squeezing out the last drops from the ketchup bottle. So I wouldn't take this as a sign of anything by itself except the fact these bookstores aren't selling this specific book (bookstores are declining anyway, they keep saying).
However, I do know youngsters instantly take to ereaders. It's almost natural for them. They are not bogged down by nostalgia. I asked my daughter how many of her books she'd tade for an ereader and she said, "All of them."
Amazon is selling the hardcover for $7.54 and its number one in books right now. The Kindle edition is $9.99 and it is number 5 in the Kindle store.
My guess is that the publisher over priced a short book (novella)with a charity hook.
Then of course in my case the bookstore would have to pay me to read a book by Meyer.
So, that's another book selling heaps even with free download and not too much overpriced. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Well, considering the response you've received regarding the experiment... it seems to be working! You are not only promoting your books, but are generating hits on your blog and website as well. Visibility is 90% of the game!
Who cares what some authors say, who cares what traditional publishers think or say... Damn the torpedoes!
Good luck sir, I appreciate your moxie, and hope that your experiment succeeds to your highest expectations. I will be doing the same thing shortly, as soon as my editor finishes, so be on the look out for my first novel; 'A frail New World' a technological thriller.
Thanks for all your sage advice, it is, and has been inspiring and extremely helpful.
Morgan Jaimes
@ojm you said:
"But anyway. Piracy means free ebooks. Giving ebooks for free means free ebooks."
With all due respect, it's not the same thing at all. Do you think a man sleeping with a slutty woman and a man raping a woman are the same thing?
Not to use a huge emotionally charged issue to make my point cause it sounds like I'm bringing in the "Hitler" argument.
But there is a HUGE difference in taking something someone freely gave you be it sex or ebooks, and violating them through stealing... be it sex or ebooks.
One says "I don't respect you at all and I don't care if I hurt you or if you feel violated by my actions. The only thing that matters is ME and you shouldn't complain about it."
It's not the free/pay issue. It's the fact that so many human beings seem to think it's A-okay to STEAL and take things away from other people that they weren't given permission for. (And no matter what anyone says when something is meant to be for sale and someone takes it without paying for it, that is STEALING.)
The fact that this conversation goes around and around while people find creative justification around it, makes me do this: 0.o
Sure, if people pirate me and my sales go up, that's great. But there is no real justification for it since I freely give the first novella in my series away and my other novellas are 99 cents. You can also ask me through my contact form for a free review copy.
99 cents is less than you pay for a king-sized candy bar and less than you tip your waitress. I have nothing but contempt for the kind of person who in that situation would STILL steal from me.
That's regardless of how well I am or am not selling in the overall scheme of things.
A friend sent me an email link to your site - I had never heard of you before, sorry.
I downloaded your free offering and so far have only read the first story, On the Rocks, but think that if the others are at least as good then $1.99 is a great deal. I purchased the Kindle version from Amazon just now. I don't even have a Kindle, so I had to download their Kindle for PC app, but I've been meaning to do that for a while now, so thanks for the push!
This is typical of my ebook reading experience. Pirate it, like it, buy it. Or pirate it, don't like it, delete it. Before I learned how to pirate I had almost completely stopped buying ebooks because I had been burned by wasting money on dreck. Books with rave reviews on Amazon or other sites that in hindsight were probably from family or friends. I have increased my ebook purchases at least 10-fold since I starting pirating to read first. In fact, I'm straining my budget! But I believe in paying for what I keep, so it was an easy decision to pay you. Most of my online pirate friends do the same - we call ourselves "buy"rates :)
I will be watching your experiment closely to see how it plays out, and passing on my recommendation of your work to friends.
Evilphilip said:
"Piracy does hurt sales and it does take money away from the content creators."
Bullshit. *corporations* take money away from content creators.
Someone close to me bought an iPad. He was really happy that he could read comics on it, and not have to keep buying all the floppy issues and storing them. If he really wanted the hardcopy, he could buy the trade.
So, he buys his iPad, and downloads the Marvel app. There's not much available, but he buys just about everything that is. Then, he ran out of content. Guiltily, he started to search the torrent sites and downloaded some stuff. If it had been available, he would have bought it. But it's not, so he got it for free, with a side order of guilt.
Up until last week, he went on the Marvel app every week to buy whatever was new. That was last week, and this week, he no longer uses the app. He now torrents Marvel comics exclusively. Why? Because it has come to light that Marvel DOES NOT PAY ITS ARTISTS OR WRITERS FOR ESALES. His opinion is now "f*ck Marvel". This is a die-hard comic-loving fellow we're talking about, with substantial disposable income. And he's elected to steal rather than support a company who does not support its artists.
Another, more personal proof of the opposite:
I'm a Prince fan. Major fan. Prince Geeks like me understand that the 12" version of Thieves in the Temple is far superior to the album version. As 12" implies, it was only ever available on vinyl. This is only one example of the hundreds of great Prince songs that were never played on the radio. They were only available in a limited fashion, and most were never available on CD.
Warner Bros. was Prince's record label, and they HATE him now. They will not release any of the old b-sides or non-album works EVER. I know people who work at WB, and they have it from the higher-ups to never release those songs digitally, as a CD compilation, on iTunes, nothing.
Tracking down all that vinyl is a daunting proposition - few collectors will part with their copies, and then you have to convert vinyl to high-quality mp3. That costs thousands of dollars in equipment, let alone up to hundreds of dollars per record.
WB could make a lot of money by releasing that stuff on iTunes, but they have sworn not to. I can think of 80-100 songs that I would like legal versions of, but they won't do it.
What is my option? Torrent. If they don't want my money, then fine. They won't get it.
Another example: J.K. Rowling. LOVE her. LOVE Harry Potter. I bought copies of the books, but I'm a nerd. Carrying Harry around requires one inconveniently large piece of luggage. I want to legally buy copies for my Kindle, but her publisher won't let me. I have no choice but to hand-scan, or else pirate them. I feel bad about it, because I want to pay her for her work, but they're not letting me. In order to travel with Harry on my Kindle, I have to break the law. Since I have bought the books (repeatedly), I am ethically in the clear, but the publisher's version of the MPAA would definitely try to charge me about $60 million.
Not good.
I'm leaving another set of comments here: it's just anecdotal evidence, but it should be considered in thinking of whether piracy hurts sales.
I was naughty once, and found a copy of the first Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse story just after True Blood debuted. I know, I was very bad.
I didn't even find it on a torrent site, but a link on some random blog somewhere.
I read it. I liked it. I bought the first 7 paperbacks and the hardback for #8. The hardback for #9 has come out, and I got that, too. But here's the kicker: several pals mentioned about that time on Facebook that they wanted something fun to read. I suggested these. So, 4 other women bought 8 (and now 9) books each. Two of them suggested the books to their mothers also, which was another full set of books. SO, my ONE download generated 63 book sales for Charlaine Harris.
Sometimes, piracy pays off.
Not that it's *quite* the same, but several other free-from-the-publisher ebooks have made me buy more of the series. For instance, the Naomi Novik series about Temeraire the dragon - I bought the next 5 of them, and the 6th is out soon. I can think of 7 or 8 more series where I read the first book and have gone on to purchase the rest of the series - hundreds of dollars of purchases, by the way.
I've also had free ebooks that were obviously not proofread, to the point where there were 10 or 12 errors PER PAGE from the scanner. I don't buy ebooks from that publisher, because why would I pay for such annoying, low-quality work? There were 5 more books in that series, and another 20 or so by that author, but I won't buy them because of the quality issue.
Freebies are kind of like library books and books from used bookstores - the author doesn't get paid for every read, but there are other benefits. Like when I downsized all my hard copy books last year, and told the person who bought Joe's first two books to go to his website to read more, and that she'd love them.
As for used bookstores, I liken them pretty close to stealing from the author. Sure, it's *legal*, but it's kind of unethical. It only works if you go on to buy from the authors later. I love Anne McCaffrey, but I don't think she got a penny from me for the first 10 years I read her (some 30 books), because I was broke and shopped at a used bookstore. I'm trying to remedy that now.
As for pirates, I'm marrying one, but his job description says "Senior City Librarian". He buys one copy of a book and distributes it to thousands of the wealthy who could afford to buy the book on their own, but choose not to. Also, some people donate their books to the library, so he frequently pulls copies of the bestseller du jour out of the donations pile to put into circulation without buying extra copies. AND whatever's left gets sold through the library book sales, to the tune of over $80k a year.
I dunno, but that sounds like piracy to me. Maybe authors should stop doing readings and signings at these pirate centers. ;)
I have two books published by a small press and am happy with my sales so far. I don't know if I'm being pirated or not because I haven't gone looking to find out. I couldn't stop it in the long run and fall into the "nothing is worse than obscurity" crowd, so if people are sharing it, oh well. It doesn't keep me up at night, unlike RAPE, Zoe, which most certainly would. One cannot get away from the violation of rape, but you *choose* to feel violated by piracy. That's a huge difference.
@ Jenna - I have many similar stories. You're far from the only one who understands that piracy is about more than getting something for nothing.
@Cheryl Kaye Tardif
Since you offer a challenge to pirates on your blog, but do not allow for anonymous comments, I'm hoping to reach you here.
You want pirates to sample your work and then prove, with a receipt, that we really do follow up our free reading with a purchase. Because clearly, you don't think any of us do.
My problem? I use pirating to decide if an ebook is *worth* buying, just like I use the library for DTBs. What if I hate your book? What if I can't get past chapter one and delete it right off my hard drive? If I buy it to meet the requirements of your challenge, will you then give me my money back as a dissatisfied customer if I ask?
I purchase lots of ebooks that I originally obtained by file sharing. But only if they are good. Your challenge demands that I buy no matter what, and that defeats the whole purpose of pirating. If I was going to buy it, good or bad, I'd just buy it to begin with. The point is to screen out stuff I don't like, and reading your sample would let me do that, but if I don't like it I'm not going to turn around and buy it from you just to take one for team-pirate.
Your foregone conclusion that anyone who samples your work but doesn't then buy your work would therefore do the exact same for every author they pirate is way off. I might just not buy yours because I don't care for it.
Put in an anonymous poll for folks who sample and don't buy that lets us give our reason: We didn't like it enough to buy it, or we liked it but not enough to pay what you're asking for it, or we liked it but just don't want to pay *any* amount for it. You can't lump us all into one category - at least, not honestly.
Anon,
Nobody chooses their feelings. Feelings are involuntary emotion. You can choose your behaviors, but you can't choose how you feel about something. If you feel sad or violated or happy or whatever. That's just what you feel.
And the mentality of taking something from someone no matter how they feel about it and disregarding their rights is the same mentality whether it's on a scale that only leaves a tiny twinge of guilt for most people like piracy, or things we find absolutely abhorrent like rape. It's the SAME mentality, different scale. I wasn't saying piracy is like rape on the same emotional level. I'm saying it's the same mentality that says: "I'm taking what I want from you, and I don't care how you feel about it."
Though culture also plays a role. If we lived in a society that saw sex as completely "not a big deal" you might have rapists saying things like: "Well, I didn't physically damage her" and "She can still have sex with other people, so it's not like I took a tangible thing that can't now be given indefinitely to other people."
Just saying.
I've also said though that I don't get that cheesed off about people who pirate AND buy. Though I think the "discovery through piracy" argument is wearing a little thin since you can download the Kindle App for your PC and Kindle gives a very generous sample based on the overall size of the book. The bigger the book, the bigger the sample. If you can't tell in a chapter or two whether you like a book, there is a serious problem. There is a time to stop sampling and start buying.
I also understand situations where people pirate cause something has been DRM-d to death and they can't use it on their own other devices. Or where what they want isn't available for sale anywhere for some reason.
Or... if an ebook is $14.95... that doesn't make it right, but dude, at least I UNDERSTAND that piracy. I don't understand the people who would rather steal than pay 99 cents for something. At all. It's just so douchey.
Rape is a crime of violence, Zoe. It is meant to hurt.
At worst, pirates are apathetic. They aren't out to hurt artists. They choose to pirate media for a variety of reasons, but I believe the main ones are cost and convenience.
The analogy doesn't hold. Consent really doesn't matter with piracy, because the artist isn't an issue.
Jack Daniels Stories is being pirated like crazy. I'm guessing well over 2000 ebooks have been downloaded, at least half of them off of pirate sites.
It doesn't matter one bit that I allowed it, because these same pirate sites also have my other ebooks, which I didn't give permission to download.
An ebook download is an ebook download, whether the artist condones it or not. But that isn't the argument.
The argument is: free downloads don't hurt sales.
And they don't. Ten days into the experiment, I've sold 189 ebooks. Prior to the experiment, I was selling 10 per day.
Let's assume the publicity accounted for the uptick in sales. But eventually that will even itself out, and I predict I'll go right back to--you guessed it--10 sales a day, even though anyone who wants the book can get it for free.
You seem to be taking piracy personally. Rape, certainly, is personal.
But piracy is about as impersonal as it gets. The pirate mentality is NOT "let's screw the artists."
If anything, many pirates support art. As this experiment is proving.
Equating piracy to rape is offensive. A physical assault where a man is forcibly assaulting a screaming woman is not the same as someone downloading a book on the internet illegally.
Sorry I had to be so blunt about it, but you have to understand how utterly ridiculous an analogy like that really is. A sexual assault is a horrific crime. Piracy is the theft of intellectual property.
Seriously-- why even go there?
I'm waiting for Godwin's law to kick in. It's getting pretty close.
@Joe,
I do take piracy personally. How can I not take someone disrespecting me so much they can't deign to give me 99 cents for work I busted my ass to create, personally? So yes, in those circumstances I do feel somewhat violated.
Again, I'm not saying rape and piracy are the same thing, or the same type of crime, or the same "level" of violation, or anything like that. I'm saying it's the same mentality. "I'm going to take from you, I don't care how you feel about it."
You say piracy is impersonal. That's the point. Do pirates care about the artist they're taking from? Do they give a crap about whether or not them taking instead of paying hurts the artist? Do they care if the artist can continue doing what they're doing? No. They don't care. They don't even THINK about the artist. They just take. All they care about is what THEY want. (Again, pirates who "buy" and don't just "take" aren't a concern.)
It's about basic human decency toward other people and not just thinking about yourself all the time. Getting off the rape analogy since apparently it causes too many problems for anyone to see what I'm saying. Stealing a digital file isn't the same as stealing a car, but it's the same selfish mentality that doesn't care about who you hurt to get what you want.
I agree that RIGHT NOW it doesn't hurt sales for many artists. But I can't say it doesn't hurt sales for anyone because it would be impossible for me to know that. It may not ever hurt sales, but we won't know for sure whether or not it does until ebooks become the primary delivery method.
At that point we'll know. And if it turns out that it DOES hurt sales in the long run, by that point... then all this "enabling" of it would have been very stupid.
I'm not going to leave my house unlocked so people can "freely take" stuff from my house instead of "stealing it from me." That doesn't make me the "winner".
I don't think we should enable piracy by saying it doesn't hurt us. And if someone steals from me when I offer my work SO inexpensively and so many avenues to try me legitimately for free (upcoming podcast, free first novella, free review copies to anyone willing to write a review who emails me)... it may or may not hurt my sales. I'm doing really well in the Kindle store right now with all of my ebooks in the top 200 in overall sales rank. But... I still have nothing but contempt for someone who would begrudge me 99 cents so they can steal from me.
If they live in another country and don't realize I'm on Smashwords and they can get it, okay. But dude, when you Google me, why on earth wouldn't you just go to my site and blog where ALL this information is readily available?
And this all disgruntles me so much because I recently caught someone on one of those torrent message boards asking someone to please help them and send them my books. (Google Alerts told me) Um... hello, ask ME. I'm not an ogre. If you can't pay or can't easily get it or something, just email me. But taking is just disrespectful. And I can't get past it. I'm sorry.
This is why I try to ignore piracy for the most part because it just makes me SO freaking angry. Clearly I'm a more emotional person than you and take things more personally, but I can't help it. I worked too hard to create that stuff for people to just be passing it around illegally without caring.
And crap... I think I just posted as "z" my finger slipped and it wouldn't let me type in my whole name/link.
@ C. Pinheiro
The horrific rape analogy Zoe Winters used is just the worst of many irrational ideas some authors resort to in their frenzy over file sharing. I'll add it to my list of things that immediately make me stop listening to an author's arguments on this subject, right up there with "every download is a lost sale", "pirates never buy what they've downloaded", "it's the same as stealing someone's car" and "A study by Attributor found..."
@Anon,
You clearly haven't been reading anything I've written here. Or else you just latched onto an emotionally-charged analogy so you could have something to complain about. I've stated MANY times that I know many pirates ALSO buy. I know many pirates also promote books they pirated in NON-pirate related ways. Hell, probably some leave reviews on Amazon, and that helps me too even if they didn't pay.
Those pirates I have no issue with.
My issue is with the mentality that says I do not care what you want or how you feel, I'm just taking this from you cause I want it. SAME mentality as my previous "horrific analogy".
I find it amusing that supposedly I'm so overwrought I can't get past my emotionalism when people can't even look at an analogy without freaking out about how horrific it is. Yes, rape is horrific. No, piracy isn't as horrific as rape. But I consider a world in which piracy becomes so rampant because of people's selfish sense of entitlement, that writers can't make money... pretty horrific.
Rape is awful, but so is starving.
I don't think most artists are in danger of that "now" but I don't know what the landscape will be in 10 years when everything is digital and people's sense of entitlement for "free entertainment" and "let someone else" pay grows to the point where I'm dependent on the mercy of the readers to stay afloat, rather than the basic human decency most people should have hard-wired into them to begin with.
Injustice in ALL forms pisses me off, be it racism, rape, or just not giving a crap whether someone's hard work is compensated enough for them to keep doing it.
Most of the time I just ignore piracy because it makes me so angry the more I think about it. I don't focus my efforts on sending cease and desist letters because it's pointless and a further waste of my time. I mostly try to focus my attention and efforts on the readers who actually give a crap about me. The rest, I ignore. But... I got into this discussion and got riled up.
But I've said before, the day piracy reaches critical mass to the point I can't make enough money doing this, I'm out.
How can I not take someone disrespecting me so much they can't deign to give me 99 cents for work I busted my ass to create, personally?
I believe you misunderstand intent.
Pirates don't steal because they want to disrespect you. You aren't even a factor. Piracy is not a malicious or willful attempt to screw the author.
I do not care what you want or how you feel, I'm just taking this from you cause I want it.
A pirate doesn't take anything from you by downloading. The artist isn't a factor at all.
If we were to look at this as a criminal matter, you can't prove a pirate's intent is to harm the artist. Their intent is to get media for free. The harming of the artist may or may not be a by-product of that. To equate "file-sharing" with "willful intent to harm the artist" isn't correct, either legally or logically.
You worry about ten years from now, but piracy is as old as the world wide web, which is over 20 years old. And yet, artists are still making money.
Taking piracy personally, and believing (without proof) that it is hurting the artist, are the reasons I'm conducting this experiment--to prove both positions are boundless and incorrect.
So stop worrying about it. :)
"boundless" should be "groundless."
LOL Joe.
It's not like I think pirates sit around going: "Man, how can I hurt that Zoe Winters? I know! I'll steal all her writing without paying for it. Then I win. muahahahaha!"
I don't think that. What bothers me is the fact that they aren't thinking about me one way or the other. They're reading my stuff, but they don't seem to care whether or not I get paid.
I know piracy in some form has always been around. But my concern is that the more lax people are about the issue, and the LESS people "think about the artists," the more they're just going to take stuff. So your point about it being impersonal is exactly what I think of as the problem.
Not that piracy is some kind of "personal attack" on me. The analogy wasn't meant to be taken to that extreme. Just the "I don't care about how you feel about this" mentality.
I know it may be a little alarmist to worry about 10 years from now. But I have an anxiety disorder, and I can't work for other people in the typical work environment. Writing is about the only thing I can do. I'm supported by my husband but I'm starting to do well enough that there is real potential for the first time in my life to make a REAL livelihood from writing. Seeing that potential makes me want to hold onto it more.
The idea that that could all be taken away from me by selfish people who don't even "think" about how it might hurt me is very upsetting. It's hard for me to not get emotional or upset about this.
Seeing the potential here for me to FINALLY make money and FINALLY not be someone so dependent on other people for my survival means enough to me that the threat of it being taken away by a mentality that makes piracy something people do "without thinking" isn't something I can just "brush off".
For someone else in another situation with other life options, it might not be a big deal.
Like I say, right now, piracy isn't hurting me. I'm selling like crazy on Amazon and I see a lot of possible potential here. But because of that I can't help but worry about it getting to the point where it might hurt me in the future, and it could all be taken away. This is why I try not to even think about this topic and focus on the positive.
Because I know an author "whining about piracy" alienates readers. But at the same time, if readers think we don't care whether we get paid or not... that creates a problem as well.
And while on some level I appreciate this test you're doing because I do feel people are too alarmist about it "right now", I feel like you're putting this idea out there like you don't care if you get paid or not.
I know that's not true since YOUR livelihood comes from writing. But... people often don't grasp nuance. If they did, we could all say our one point, everybody would get it exactly as we meant it, and the discussion would stop. Instead, half of these discussions are always people saying: "No, I didn't say that, I said this."
I agree with Zoe. I think it is inevitable (in a Matrix sort of way) that writers will not be able to make money in the future due to piracy.
As a result, I ask that all writers step away from the keyboard, stop uploading to Kindle and take up knitting.
I will sacrifice myself and carry on. With any luck, I'll be only one left writing :)
@Zoe, Nathan Hangen says in his e-book, Claiming Your Destiney, he believes that things will swing back to the creators and they will be paid in spades.
The assertation that the culture of free is going to take over is merely speculation. Movie companies and music companies thought as much. In reality, their heydays of making money hand over fist were over.
The people who are against piracy and free are looking at things from a "the slices are getting smaller" persepctive.
Joe and the people for piracy are seeing things as "the pie is getting bigger and we can all have a slice."
As Joe as blogged previously, each time a new format of anything has come out, there has been panic.
VCRs were going to ruin the movie industry. I bet movie sales are at an all-time high despite piracy. If the movie industry isn't making money it's becuase of their out of control spending.
MP3's have been the ruin of music companies because they fought against the new wave.
As content creators we are going to support each other more. More and more people are creating content. We have more energy and excess time and resources (mainly money), and we now have a way to reach mass audiences.
If you are worried about piracy, support your fellow independent creators. Buy their content and COMMENT on it. That's how we are going to fight against free, but supporting each other.
Also create a community.
The idea that that could all be taken away from me by selfish people who don't even "think" about how it might hurt me is very upsetting.
If pirates truly don't care what the artist thinks, how will appealing to pirates as an artist change their minds?
That's like yelling a person who is hard of hearing. It's a waste of time, and won't work.
@ Zoe
I never said *all* the anti-piracy arguments that turn me off were used by you, specifically, just by some authors in general. In fact, you are much more level-headed and less hysterical in your attitude than most, which is why I was so bothered at the extreme turn you took with the rape issue. We will clearly never see eye to eye on that bit, so I'll drop it. I admire that you price your works so reasonably (heck, I think you should ask at least triple what you are now) and hope that you are able to find success despite the troubles that you are encountering with piracy.
@C. Pinheiro,
I missed your comment. No one has the inalienable right not to be offended. My intent wasn't to offend just to say how a mentality exists on different levels across a continuum. I never EQUATED piracy with rape. I said, that the same mentality exists on a much smaller scale. Both things make a person feel violated just on different levels. That's not the same as saying piracy is in any way "equal" to rape. And I really don't know where you get that from what I said.
I also don't think it's fair to act like an analogy is off the table simply because it's a sensitive topic. If you don't like my argument, fine. But I'm not sure "getting offended" makes it not a valid point. But clearly it's WAY too emotionally charged an analogy for anyone to hear what I'm actually saying instead of what they want me to be saying so they can be offended by it.
@Anon who mentioned the Matrix, LOLOLOL
@asrai, I hope you're right. Though I do find it a little disconcerting the number of people who write who don't read. They have plenty of time to write and want to be read, but no time to read anything themselves supposedly. If we had a culture where everybody is a content creator and therefore wants to support each other, that would be great. But I'm not sure that will happen. Still, I like the way you look at things and hope you're right. That people actually are that good/decent.
@Joe I'm not appealing to pirates. I'm merely hoping that more people don't get more and more lax over the issue. I'm just interested in the people who actually buy content, continuing to buy content, instead of stopping buying content cause piracy gets easier and easier and they have authors going: “here, take my stuff for free”.
Also, a lot of pirates have said they also buy. And they also tell others about the work. Well, I would hope that these pirates would be vocal about that inside the “pirating community” itself, to reinforce this idea that if you like something and want to see more of it, you need to be willing to pay to support further production of it. Books don't get published by magic fairies. It takes money and time.
@the other anon, Fair enough. It was clearly too emotionally charged of an analogy because it completely obscured what I was trying to say. I was just trying to get across that many artists do feel violated by piracy. Obviously not to the extent of rape, but it's like a teeny tiny little percentage of that feeling. And it was the first thing I thought of that people universally agree is a violation to people.
When someone takes something from you cause they don't care how it makes you feel. But it wasn't something that could be safely said in blog comments without people taking it wrong, or getting offended, or whatever.
Joe doesn't feel in any way personally violated by piracy and that's good for him. But I know I'm not the only author who does. I've spoken with plenty who feel pretty hurt/pissed off by the whole issue as well as scared that a day will come when they have to give up doing what they love because everybody wanted it for free.
And to be clear, I don't feel I'm encountering troubles with piracy right “now”. I'm selling great. I just can't help but worry that down the road it will become a bigger problem. And it irks the hell out of me when someone “does” pirate me under the circumstances of what I offer. I charge so low because they are novellas and I'm trying to build a strong following. The full-length novels are going to be $2.99.
@ C. Pinheiro,
Rereading my last comment to you it sounds snarkier than I meant. I am sorry you found it so offensive.
Still, I really don't understand getting offended by an analogy especially when I re-clarified many times what I was trying to say.
Hm, wondering how the new Amazon rankings are going to shake this all out, so to speak?
Your "The List" is now #256 "Paid" on Amazon.
My "Babysitting the Baumgartners" is now #279 "Paid" on Amazon.
Want to see which goes to the top 100 first? :)
But I wonder, now that your books have moved up in the rankings, so to speak, will it make a difference in this experiment? Throw things off-kilter?
I have had similar success to you, actually, in the past year on Kindle. I will make $100,000 this year from my writing, most likely.
I don't like pirates on principle... but I'm watching this experiment with open eyes and open ears - I really do want to know if it will help or hurt (or be neutral...) and I'd like it to be a "fair" experiment (as anecdotal and already-flawed as it is, of course...)
Hm, maybe I should conduct my own pirate experiment? :)
-Selena
Selena:
Please do. It's going to help us all if the truth comes out anyway. Not that one or two studies are gonna get it.
Joe, I hate to keep adding to this enormous thread, (I've read ever single post by the way) but I'm going to be really curious to see how all your other books are affected by this. I wonder if this book, even if the sales drop, will act like a "sacrificial lamb" and inadvertently promote your other titles.
The problem is that it's difficult to figure out if one book is promoting others-- if you notice a huge sales spike in your other books, it can be attributed to a number of things, but I would love to hear from others if they downloaded this book and went on to purchase your other titles because they enjoyed this experimental download.
I'm having a fun argument here with Tardif. Come and add to it, but don't spam please.
http://cherylktardif.blogspot.com/2010/06/konrath-says-steal-this-book-tardif.html
Well, seems like it's not such a fun argument anymore. Wonder what happened...
The Pirate Queen retires:
http://selenakitt.com/blog/index.php/2010/06/12/pirate-queen-retires/
I just dropped by to see what technical advice you had for self publishing and I got caught up in this.
The underlying problem is copyright.
The reason this is such a hot button issue is that corporations want to control IP forever and stop public domain) keep changing the laws.
Corporations should not be dictating laws (like the DMCA) to government without the citizens being heard as well.
Especially since there are no reputable "piracy" stats. Look at Michael Geist: U.S. Government Study: Counterfeiting and Piracy Data Unreliable
So although you aren't conducting a proper scientific experiment, your numbers have just as much credibility (if not more) than any thrown around by DMCA pushers.
Also: the music biz is hurting, not by piracy but by Independent Musicians. According to This Magazine Bands don't have to sign into indentured servitude-- and give them their copyright-- with record companies anymore-- 30% of the Canadian record biz is Independent.
Which is why the RIAA, MPAA etc. are leading up to shutting down p2p/torrents etc.... cheap distribution is their enemy, because it allows the Indie creators -- their competitors -- to thrive. That goes for writers & self publishers too.
So, why has the Kindle price gone up to $2.99?
Weird stuff going on at Amazon lately. I know they're testing their new DTP Kindle upload system and they recently confirmed with me that their real-time DTP sales reporting is off.
So, why has the Kindle price gone up to $2.99?
In order to make the 70% royalty, ebooks must be priced at least $2.99.
That means, instead of 70 cents per book sold, I'll be earning $2.04 per book sold.
That means I'll be making enough money to write more books instead of doing all the self-promo crap I was previously notorious for.
I believe my books are worth $2.99. That's less than the price of a DVD rental, or a coffee at Starbucks, or a magazine, or pretty much anything else you could get 8 hours worth of entertainment from.
Since going up to $2.99, I've seen a very small drop in sales, which has been offset by a rise in profits. Those profits will double come July 1.
And so far, piracy isn't hurting my sales any more than the price increase is hurting my sales.
same anon - I don't have an issue with your book being $2.99, I think that is still a bargain. I was just curious about the price increase because your blog piece still says "I'm currently selling my ebook JACK DANIELS STORIES for $1.99 on Kindle" when, clearly, you are not. Just wondered why you raised it, and your explanation took care of my question. Thank you.
For the last few days, my sidebar has said $2.99. I'll change it on the blog post...
"In order to make the 70% royalty, ebooks must be priced at least $2.99."
@Joe: This applies to "publisher listed" price, right? So if you price your book at $2.99 and Amazon discounts it to $0.99, you're still getting 70% royalty on $2.99, correct?
No, Selena. You'll get 70% of the price Amazon lists it that. They price it that way to match competitors. If you have a discounted Amazon item, that means it sells elsewhere for less. If you want to get 70% of your list, you have to make sure your ebooks are priced the same everywhere.
You mention the use of WinZip as an .zip extractor, I recommened 7-zip instead, it's open source and free forever!
Posted on my Facebook :)
Great idea!
Like to know if the pirate project boosted sales?
I was recommended the Jack Daniels series by Mark of BookMarks in Mount Prospect when I was in the States last time and have enjoyed them very much. I recommend them to customers looking for a new crime author but other than the ones I have brought back or ordered in they don't seem to be readily available in Australia
Posted to my Facebook.
BTW, I downloaded the free version for my Kindle. My thought process is this:
Times are tough so I don't really have any extra money right now. However, I expect I might donate a little via paypal later if I like it. Furthermore, this is the first taste of your writing that I get to sample (again, every dollar counts in this economy) but if I like it, I'll want more and you'll get more sales and another fan.
How many books do you have on Kindle now?
BTW, getting a copy of an actual book in Word Doc format alone is worth the download.
I like this experiment. I downloaded the free zip of the stories, and then bought four other titles by Joe.
The Agency 6 publishers' behaviour is pushing people into piracy. If you're not "allowed" to buy the ebook you want (e.g. territorial restrictions), you are going to be pretty keen to find it elsewhere, especially if it's the next title by a favourite author or of a favourite series. This is a sore point for me, because I am disabled and can only read ebooks. I don't have the option of buying a paper copy (which I _am_ allowed to buy, oddly enough).
Just taking in my personal experience, before geographic limitations were imposed by the Agency 6, I bought over 2000 ebooks in two years from Fictionwise. Since the geolims were imposed, I have bought only a handful of titles. That's a lot of money lost to publishers and authors, just from one person alone.
And no, I haven't pirated titles to make up for the books I'm not "allowed" to buy. I've started reading blogs instead, and looking for author websites where I can buy directly from the author. ;)
responding to the comment by Steve Lewis, I'd like to agree with his statement about Baen Books. Another author, David Weber, has also done something like this. His sales have increased also.
I personally have obtained a book from one of his series in a not completely legal fashion. That got me hooked on his series, and him as an author in general. I didn't get anything really from the blurbs and excerpts from his books, it took me a few chapters to get into the book, but once I did, I became a complete fan.
Since I had and still have a conscience, I bought his books in dead tree (read print) format, and also went ahead and bought the electronic versions that I had 'pirated'. I sent an electronic copy of my receipt to Mr. Weber, and to the publisher, Jim Baen.
Not that I was required to by any means, since I already had the goods, but they were so well created, that I felt that I had an obligation to support both the author and the publisher.
Most of us out here, we do care about the other guy. Sometimes we do get carried away, but in the long run, we do pay for what we would normally buy anyway, no matter how we obtain the 'first' copy.
So, I believe this experiment should be a success regardless of how it may be interpreted, as giving away something for 'free' and getting paid for it, or allowing it to be 'stolen' and still getting paid for it.
As regards to your book for this experiment, I haven't downloaded the book yet, but from the 'publicity' which has been generated so far, I believe I will go and buy this one. I don't normally read this genre of books, my favority is sci-fi/fantasy, but it has intrigued me enough to support this effort, even if i hated the book. Doubtful that will be the case though :-)
Thanks for sticking your neck out and trying to make life easier instead of more rule bound and complicated.
In response to what "author Scott Nicholson said...
Sure, this isn't a scientifically valid experiment, but what else do we have? Scott Turow's monotone droning about some vague threat to multimillionaire authors, or bizarre rounded-off figures given by the publishing industry? Steve Jobs?
You'll never be able to measure the direct impact of something that is beyond tracking. You may as well argue faith.
Joe is forward-thinking and may in fact be accelerating the actual Ground Zero date of when nobody wants to pay any sum for ebooks. But guess what? He will still be ahead of the curve, because he'll be going to Ford Motor Company and Jack Daniels Distillery and saying, "Hey, my books got 37 billion downloads. What's it worth to you to reach those people?""
I never even thought about the above statement and what it could do to the electronic book format, or the print version for that matter.
Wonder what would happen if, let's say, every 15-25 pages, a full page ad for some such widget or gadget was included in the book. The author wouldn't have to worry about royalties for any pirated or non pirated versions of the book. Just have to worry about keeping track of its distribution to allow for payment of advertising revenue. It would be possible for pirated versions to have their advertising removed, but honestly, who would bother to remove the advertising from their 'free' copy?
That would eventually be a win-win for everyone, and have a pay for advertising free version too. Who knows, that just might be the future.
Let me say as one who never intended to read your works nor had ever heard your name that I appreciate your actions immensely.
You have not lost a sale.
You have gained a reader.
Mr. Konrath has such a valid Point. I have discovered author Blake Crouch. After reading Serial. I went and paid for Serial Uncut. It was only 3 bucks.
Then started buying his other stuff. At 3 bucks for most his stuff cant go wrong.
Pirates make money by stealing. They get paid for people downloading the stuff. As a fan of reading, I would much rather see the author get the Money.
3 bucks is nothing. I will gladly pay that. I will tell others about my find.
After Reading Mr Konrath's free release, Seeing most his stuff is pretty cheep, Im off to amazon and got the credit card out. Time to buy some more books!!
There have been of recent a fun conversation on just this subject on the ebook general discussion at http://bolt.cd/board/forum.php
You may find some fun thoughts. Hope you can join us.
I think I have a unique experience in terms of piracy of literature related to real-life profits. Unfortunately, I have not and likely will not ever read Mr. Konrath's work as it isn't my cup of tea though I agree with the fundamentals of his argument.
This story actually relates to a "do-it-yourself" sort of book. I'm a martial artist who just happens to download a lot of books pertinent to the subject. In this specific case, I downloaded a book about a martial art so I could study the history and fundamentals of the art. The book was downloaded entirely free but would have cost me around thirty bucks in the local bookstore.
I read the book, enjoyed it, even played around with some of the stuff in it. Then I found out that the man who wrote it actually taught in my area. I've been attending his classes now for about three years, at fifty bucks a month.
Thus, my teacher has made something to the tune of $1800 off of me, minus the thirty bucks I didn't pay for that book. The moral of the story is (I suppose) that even though I didn't buy his initial book, I ended up paying him far more than the book itself would have cost in the long run. It's a bit different than a pirate enjoying a book from an author and choosing to pay for additional books but the fundamental idea is the same.
As an aside, I would like to note that the only industry that has thus far been able to actually prove a detriment to profits is the software industry who still make massive amounts of money in spite of pirates.
I am an avid book reader. I admit that after working in a bookstore I also became a book snob. I like my hard covers and my first additions displayed on my shelf. It is comforting to sit on the couch and turn their pages and read through a favorite chapter. I have had more than a few moves in the last few years, and alas most of these books are stuffed away in boxes and trust me it is a serious crusade to figure out where one is when Im in the mood to read it. Did I mention I also reread my favorite novels. When I like a specific offer I also go to great lengths and sometimes expense to have my works signed. Thus my collection is growing inspite of popular pirating. I have to agree with what some people say though I cant speak for everyone. I like being able to download a free copy of an author that I wouldnt have particularly looked at previously. I love having my nook present me with picks for me as if I have a profile that might match me with a good read that may not be viral as of yet like Hunger Games or Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. Not all stories are lucky enough to be made into movies and therefore create a lemming run on a specific book. In my opinion I think it would be a good marketing ploy to allow free access to the first book in a series and charge for the remaining novels. I just have to know what happens next, the suspense is hard to take.
I love my nook as a back up that I can take on trips without carrying a book bag thats 300lbs. Alot of books on my nook I downloaded free because I have a hardcopy already and I hate to pay more than what I did for a paper book for a digital copy just for the sake of carrying it around with me. I also frequently loan my books out at work or school. Normally they come back a little worse for wear, and I hate loaning out my hardcovers and first editions for this reason. The digital copies passed around on a thumb drive eleviates the angry look on my face when a loved novel is returned with a newly creased binding or dog eared pages. A few books have gone to a bitter end due to being left on a hot dashboard so that the binding glue melted and the pages all fell loose. I dont mind buying the book once, but I love having a digital copy I can carry around without having to worry about getting the pages wet or dirty or torn. Thank you technology. As to the piracy hurting the music industry, I never bought as many cds as when I was in school networking mp3s with class mates. Alot of people like hardcopies inspite of the free copies available. If you are concerned about people picking and choosing all the good songs off an album, then dont put bad songs on an album as filler. People will still buy quality. There are always the few who arent going to pay for anything and are going to abuse the situation, but then there is also always going to be the shoplifter that stuffs the new releases in his jacket and walks out without paying. Not to say its right to steal. I just dont know that everyone should be condemned for downloading a pdf file just yet.
I followed you from MOBILISM and I find what you have to say about this subject fascinating. Truly.
3. There is ZERO reliable evidence that file-sharing hurts sales. A shared file does not equal a lost sale, any more than someone reading a library book is a lost sale.
This has long been a point of mine as well. Unlike (many probably), if I find a book either on one of the share sites or in the library, and I actually LIKE it, then I will definitely go to B&N or Amazon and purchase it!
But you can't get your panties all twisted up because someone 'shares' your work. Truthfully, as you state and I believe, then you should be getting pissy with libraries, hospitals, hotels and many other places. What they do is no different; they just have an 'official' title to them is all.
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