Slashdot Mirror
Sharing Doesn't Hurt
Freeptop writes "Here's a fun followup to an old slashdot article: Eric Flint just posted another Prime Palaver article on the Baen Free Library. In this article of his, he talks about the effects of posting his books for free on the library. Specifically, he uses his own royalty statements to show that sales for his books have gone up whenever he has made them available for free. As usual, Mr. Flint writes a well thought out article demonstrating the pointlessness of encrypting e-books, and this time, he has proof to back up his assumptions."
You provide your customers with a free, easy (and legal) way of previewing your products, and they feel compelled to buy them. Who would have thought?
Why? In most cases, simply because they don't really know anything about the writer and aren't willing to spend $7 to $28 just to experiment. So, they keep buying those authors they are familiar with.
But wait- that means that authors would have to start... writing better... what about... how come....? Pffft, all this "library" does is promote healthy competition and publicize good works by unknown authors, which effectively ruins the monopoly held by the big names in the business. So actually, this library with its free postings does lower sales... of works that aren't as good.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I have been a subsriber at Baen for almost two years now. It's great to get books before they are published, cheaper than for paper, and I always have something to read (with my PDA).
They need more press, I can't think of any other publisher that has done as much to promote unencrypted and even free ebooks.
That unlike most consumer goods, like VCRs or portable radios, is that when you don't like them within 30 days you bring them back to the store and get a refund (most of the time). Sure, there's sometimes conditions, like you have to keep the box, but that's reasonable.
Why is this not true for books/cds/software, because they assume that you copied them. This is what needs to change. If I hear a song on the radio that I like, go and buy the CD and the whole rest of the CD sucks, then I should be able to bring it back to the store and get a refund.
Free Mac Mini
Astralwerks figured this out a long time ago . Matador seems to have figured it out a little more recently.
.. hm.. i don't remember how long exactly, but it's at *least* five or six years now... even if the number reached for that estimate was totally baseless, it would be really fun if the number started showing up in news articles about "mp3 is ruining record companies profits!" or "software piracy, which is no more prevalent than it was in 1983, is ruining software companies profits!" or whatever, as a little side note "Astralwerks records estimates that their yearly profits are x percent higher as a result of the fact they give some amount approaching half of everything they publish away for free.."
I really wish there were some sorts of vague estimates on the level of record sales that can be attributed directly to the "here are some URLs where you can download full realaudio tracks and/or music videos from albums we just released" mailing list that Astralwerks has been running for
..there is a CRUCIAL difference between what this author did, the Smashing Pumpkins asked for on "Machina 2: The Machines of the Gods" (their last album which was released as 50 acetates to good friends and one Chicago radio station which MP#'d it and let it roll), the way the Grateful Dead dealt with bootlegs (trade 'em, don't sell 'em I think was the gist of it) and what a lot of file-traders do with Metallica, Boobie Spears, et al.
This guy owned the copyright to his works and chose to share. I like that. Now, the labels and/or the artists (depending on who owns the copyright) chose NOT to share.
Now, I've never used any such services, mainly because, quite frankly, most US music sucks thanks to the fact we have only five real record labels, and I prefer my criminality to be more significant, like d/l'ing DeCSS or otherwise defeating copyright controls.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
The ideas are free... but the median can be charged for. That's basically what they do now. Why else would hardcover books sell at the price they charge for them? It makes sense -- I'd be more inclined to buy a book if I knew it was good.
Don't underestimate the social value of having a nice library.
I imagine it'll be something about how it doesn't matter what happens for BOOKS, and how they plan to keep trying to shut down all the file sharing programs anyway. Afterall, ACTUAL profit is less important than the CONCEPT that you're giving away your product (intellectual property, you know) to whoever wants it.
/.ers) gets it?
How many times will this have to be proven before somebody (other then
No sig for you.
He, the content producer, has chosen to share his copyrighted material.
I mean, the sample size is pretty small - one book. It's promising to see this happening, but I hesitate to jump to the end result of "it works". Then again, that's books and the hot topic of discussion isn't about books.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
I guess my point is that this probably doesn't apply to music.
Series.
Most books I (and others I've spoken with) really enjoy tend to be parts of a series of novels. Trilogies, etc.
If you really want to avoid obscurity, make your first book as free as possible, sell it on the cheap, give the text away freely on the internet in every conceivable format, etc. Then sell the rest of the books via traditional sales methods.
Get 'em addicted, then jack up the cost. Hey, it works. Ask your local drug dealer. (What, you don't think books are addictive??!?)
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
Was "Because the music you industry slimeballs publish sucks ass" one of the survey options?
Just asking...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Think of all those textbooks you bought (or will buy) in college. How many of those would have you have laid out money for if you could have gotten them for free? I'll bet your answer wasn't "All of them".
This may work for a fraction of books that are written, but it won't work for all of them. And anyone who bases policy on ONE datapoint deserves the lynching they'll get when they're proved wrong.
My basic point is that this guy is getting free advertising by releasing the book for free, which is resulting in some more sales than he would have gotten if nobody had ever heard of him...But the situation is much different when you're talking about an established very well-known author..And the same goes for music. MP3s given away for free by small bands may increase their market..But does anyone hear Britney Spears for the first time on MP3 and think wow, that's great..lets go buy the album? Of course not..And the the RIAA/other publish associations know this, and will quickly discount this guy's story.
The only issue I have with this is that the vast majority of us have grown up buying books and CDs, so even when there are free digital versions available we still like the old physical copy. I'm not sure whether this will be true of future generations who will have grown up with digital versions and may not like the physical copy better. If that's the case, ten or twenty years from now all the arguments about file-trading being good for sales may no longer be true.
Bite the hand.
The fact that his sales have gone up when he makes his ebooks available for free should not be taken as a green light to pirate ebooks (or anything else.)
The copyright holders have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and it is not for consumers to decide the distribution method for them.
We should instead try to educate people. If there is a business model that allows one to give a product away and still make a descent living I'm sure that a lot of us would be interested.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I read "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber (also in the free library). I was immediately hooked, and ended up buying the rest of the series. That's 7 books purchased, when I got one for free.
I think Weber did pretty well by me, and now I keep an eye out for other books of his. This is an author I had never even heard of, before I ran across the Baen Free Library.
I'm slowly working through the rest of the free library. I haven't seen anything else that really grabbed yet, but no doubt I will end up spending some more cold, hard, cash.
I'll purchase the electronic versions where available, because they are cheaper and in a non-proprietary format. I have a Rocket e-book reader, but never purchased books for that because I didn't want to be locked into a single reader device.
Rock on Baen!
Most people prefer the deadtree version, so they might download the e-book and see if they like it, but ultimately I think they buy the paper version to actually read it. This is different from CD's and DVD's since those you can enjoy listening and watching right after you download them. I know a lot of people buy the CD's they have downloaded if they like them, but I am also sure that there are many more who do not.
As an aside, I also think that most "unprofitable" artists, at least in music, actually are profitable - but only to the label and producer. The bookkeeping for production, distribution and advertisement inside of a major label is such that different parts of the label make profit on an album but these profits are listed as expenses incurred and thus while they make the record company a net profit, the amount after these "expenses" can be negative in the labels' balance sheet shown to the artist, leaving the artist literally penniless (sometimes owing 5 or 6 figure sums to the company) for the work they've done.
It is about profit. If the publishing industy (music, film, book) thought for a second that they could squeeze more profit from opening up their content (or not contolling it so much) they would be all over it like a wet blanket. Until it can be proven with hard evidence that they can, they will continue to try to contol the content any way they can.
my $0.02
He had a table for one of his books, but also gave details on two others in the text. It would be interesting to see what effect on sales the other authors who have free books available there experienced, but Flint couldn't exactly reveal that without vilating their privacy now could he.
He also pointed out the dollar value of his royalties from Baen's Webscriptions program (a few thousand bucks). He also revealed the royalties his better known co-author received from another publishing house (36 grand for the dead trees and 28 Dollars in royalties for the electronic version)
As to the topic, I do believe the article was specifically about Baen and books.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I was looking over most of the books, and it seems that they are lacking some basic things that you find on the cover and first few pages of books.
Summaries. I could not figure out what kind of books most were without skimming the prolog. I'm tired of epic fantasy, and I don't care for space opera. It was more difficult for me to find books that I was interested in than it should have been.
Other books by author. It would be nice if these were listed also, as they provide context for the books. I'd rather not start reading book two in a series and try to fill in the random details that I missed in book one. I also don't remember every book I've read by author, so it helps to have the context of other titles there.
Reading entire novels on your computer screen will never be as comfortable as curling up on the couch or bed.
People start reading Eric Flints books online, get tired of the computer screen, like the book and purchase it.
Then they comfortably read the book via the aforementioned places.
This won't work successfully for all medium like music as has already been demonstated.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Bootlegs are illegal by nature, something being distributed that should not be. The Dead did not condone bootlegs. They let people tape their concerts, and distribute and trade those recordings free of charge.
a ding/
(no hyperlinks for the goat-weary)
GD's taping policy: http://www.dead.net/hotline_info/NEW_DOCUMENTS/tr
A great source of related information: htttp://www.etree.org/legal.html
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Of course, everyone in this world is such a scrooge they'll download a book and then sit in front of a bloody computer screen for hours on end reading it.
Perhaps it is questionable what value a 'hard copy' of an MP3 has but the difference here is that books have a very solid hard copy value; print it yourself and you get a wad of paper several inches thick that cost you a bomb to print, so after you've convinced yourself that the story's interesting you can buy a book. Seems simple enough to me.
The author of that article doesn't seem to have any concept of how statistics actually work. He has an extremely small observational study on which he bases his conclusion that "being in the free library helps book sales". I think the free books online is a good idea. But this article doesn't help convince me. The author should take a stats course if he intends to publish articles like that.
Read the short stories on this site. There's going to be one for each element when he's done.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Reading the article is still too hard for you I see
Nor can this be explained, as the sharp rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me, is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach-and Dave has been a very well known SF author for twenty years.
Unlike a normal retailer, you know that they specialise in a specific genre (science fiction/fantasy). Hence the success rate of actually finding something (if you fit this segment) is actually quite high.
... some hint of the size (can be an ALTTEXT), and perhaps links to discussion forum (think if they come across a blockbuster like Nuromancer). As a personal plug, I would suggest people read Earth Web, there's some ideas on creating a market for ideas, putting monetary thresholds on accepting unknown email (they pay you to read it!), and blackmarketing in information. While the ideas are not particularly new, the way they are considered in a social setting does give some clues as to whether they would be accepted or not.
So what is their business? I would guess it is to specialise in a category and make their brand (trademark) imply a certain level of quality and endorsement. I know that when I go scanning along the book spines along store shelves, if I spot their symbol, I recognise what it means and take the time to read the jacket and guage the likelihood I would enjoy the rest of it.
People forget that one of the reason to read is to enjoy/explore/engage. Curl up in bed on a cold night with a favorite. Look for new ideas or a new prespective on life. Give a book to a friend to argue the issues. When the DRM or purchasing hassles get in the way of this, it merely increases the barriers to actually using their service.
I would suggest some improvements for their eBooks
LL
Books are simply different than music. Most Slashdot readers would love to have their music in MP3 (or OGG or whatever) format, but would NOT want to have all of their books in e-book format. Why? E-books are harder on the eyes to read, and this is a huge point. Your ears on the other hand can not tell the difference between the type of media music is recorded on (as long as the MP3 is a reasonable quality recording). So there is no value added by owning a CD over an MP3 copy, as there is with owning a paper book over an e-book.
So while I think his story is nice, it does not translate to a good reason to make music freely available online to increase sales.
Mark
just like music, this only holds true for works which would normally sell below a certain threshold.
the market rules for an unknown indie rock band are not the same as for metallica - the indie rock band will earn sales by exposure, metallica will lose them through pirating.
same mechanism, different results.
Indie rock lives! b-side!
Because, you see, for some reason reading a book in the same room with our SO counts as "quality time together"; but reading the same book online counts as "he's obsessed with that damn computer."
Point well taken. There certainly is a difference between an artist offering up his/her works and having them forcibly taken.
However, this article points to the stupidity of the publishing industry (and by extension, the MPAA/RIAA)rather than the illegality of services like Napster.
File-sharing could be a boon to these guys if they would just pull their heads out of their asses. Rather than hurting sales, file sharing has been demonstrated to help it (small sample, but it's certainly far more evidence than the MPAA or RIAA can provide). Instead, they push for anti-copying legislation (CBDTPA).
It's just so pathetically ironic: in their attempts to stop piracy, they push more people into seeking illegal alternatives (who wants to pay $30 for a crippled CD when the good tracks are available online for free; no encryption is uncrackable).
And the very thing that they're fighting is the one thing that could save them. As I see it, the internet will leave them in the dust if they don't stop fighting it. Non-mainstream, quality artists will begin bypassing the MPAA/RIAA for internet alternatives. Then things will change.
Aw, hell, who am I kidding? A CBDTPA type-bill will pass, and free will equal illegal.
Extreme optimism and extreme pessimism in the same post? I better get my head checked, I may have schizophrenia,
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.
he sucks :-) I say that as someone that bought "The Philosophical Strangler" in e-book form just last week, and didn't make it past the first few chapters. It read like he had once heard about Pratchet, in passing, and was baseing his writing style on that. Really weak jokes, stuff that is supposed to be funny (Look! A guy kills people, and has intelligent conversations at the same time! har har), and a horrible "first-person" telling (Then, I walked past the place where John was concieved, but I'm thirsty, so I won't tell you about the rest of it.). It was exceedingly lame...
Anyways, this is slightly OT, as TPS is not available for free (or I would have previewed and saved myself $4) but I don't begrudge the money, as this is a sweet idea, and I am hoping it takes off. Whew, speaking of bad writing, checkout *that* run-on...
Who cares if my post is true or not? Its at +5 as I post this followup. All your karma are belong to me!
Another unfounded statement from the readers at Slashdot!
Eric Flint's sales only went up because he was getting free publicity just because he was doing this.
Or maybe you didn't miss the point after all. That's right! You give stuff away as free publicity. If what you write is good, people will buy it.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
pointlessness of encrypting e-books
It's simple, really. They encrypt e-books so that they will be able to use the DMCA on anyone that dares reverse the encryption, regardless of whether or not the reversal was for piracy or not. Can you say "Dmitry Sklyarov"?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Is there a similarity between these findings and normal (off-line, brick-and-mortar, whatever) libraries? I know they have a lag (I think here in Belgium they have to wait six weeks before they can buy the book), but is there a similar effect?
Personally, when I've read a book at a library, and I like it, I'm not going to run to a book shop and buy it. Why should I? After all, I've read it already. I prefer to proceed to other books which I haven't read already, since there are more of them.
Jan Fabry
Saying that this experience proves that ebooks don't work is adding insult to injury.
Do you believe in death after life?
Think about it. If his books were availible for free and people still bought the physical thing, then it must be because the physical thing is their preferred medium. I don't think that this will continue to be the case in the future, once ebook readers get more like print. If his readers had just wanted to give him money then they probably would have bypassed the publisher and sent in the money.
I hate to say it, but Flint lost billions of dollars by posting that book for free. Sure he made some money, but he would have made _so_ much more had he not posted the book in the Baen Library!
Wasn't this the RIAA's argument when the figures showed that CD sales were actually up during the time Napster was operating?
It seems that "old media" (ie: books publishers) is recognizing this fact a lot faster than newer media (ie: movie and music publishers). I recently finished my first book for New Riders (see www.brendonwilson.com/projects/jxta), and they not only allowed me to post the draft chapters when I asked, but even suggested posting the final version!
This has apparently been accepted by New Riders lately for a few books. My acquisition editor, Stephanie Wall, has done this for about a dozen books, including the Zope book. According to her, New Riders has also come to the same conclusion: offering free online versions of books doesn't hurt the publisher's physical book sales. After all, if someone is crazy enough to read the entire thing off a monitor or print it off, it's doubtful they would have bought the book anyway.
O'Reilly has also taken to doing something similar with its Open Books Project.
Of course, the question is how long this phenomenon will last once we have display technology that allows us to take these electronic books with us in a form indistinguishable from a normal paper book...
I love books a lot. I have more books than I have shelfspace for. They are crammed into every bit of spare space in three different rooms. My wife and daughter are just as bad. Actually, my wife is worse than me because she will buy the same book in two different languages.
Putting a book online will not prevent me from buying a real paper version of the book. It might get me interested in it enough to buy it.
As for Stephen King's experiment. He went about it the wrong way. Replacing a book with an electronic copy just isn't going to work. I can't lay in bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon and read an ebook. I can't bring it along when I'm going somewhere where I know there will be a wait (e.g. doctor's office) or when I go in that little room with so much privacy.
Sometimes I go through my shelves without anything in mind and run across a book I haven't read in years. It's like bumping into an old friend. You just don't get the same feeling browsing through a directory listing.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Someone better tell this guy from Georgia Tech.
As a counter-point, I'd bring up Stephen King's experiment, where he allowed free download of his book and asked for a tiny donation in return. Very few of the people who downloaded the book paid for it and the project was scrapped.
Alright, let's look at the comparison:
Baen: Here, have these books for free. They're lesser known authors but we think that you'll enjoy them. Or if you want new titles, we have a pretty cheap subscription deal.
King: I'm going to try this e-book thing. Since my time is too valuable to just give the work away for free, I'm asking that you (after downloading the book) send me a tiny donation. You know, just a way of saying, "Thanks".
Sure, huge similarities there. One offers hassle-free books (or a $15/month subscription deal for "front list", new books) where what you get is either outright free or the traditional pay upfront, versus "oh if you like this inconvenience yourself to send me a buck". I'm sure that's similar enough that consumer preferences, such as wanting simplicity in the sale process won't distort your figures.
Think about it-- wasn't shareware a flash in the pan marketing method? As long as people could only easily trade files on SneakerNet, shareware piracy didn't get too bad. Nowadays though, the modern Internet makes it easy to distribute warez (what with P2P and easy to setup hhtp/ftp servers). And that's a fact every media format faces. Right now, most of them are arguing for stronger control. On the other hand, I'm quite glad to see Baen (literally) take the wind from the sails of those who argue that "piracy causes lost sales".
Do you like Japanese imports?
Bruce Eckel I think is a great example of this.
The book that I'm most familiar with (Thinking in C++, 2nd ed.)
is available at a bunch of mirrors around the world,
and is one of the best books I've read for a transition
from C (or other languages) to C++.
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
Does this mean slashdot is going to abandon subscriptions, and start giving away its content for free?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I tend to call this the DOOM model, since id used it for Wolfenstein/DOOM/Quake 1. Give away the first episode free, charge for the complete game (or in book terms series).
;)
Id is a company with annual revenues of over 1 million dollars per employee, so they must be doing something right.
i'm guessing that most of the people to view this book online are somewhat aware of the current copyright issues. As such they leap to prove that this can help booksales. But if this ever becomes widespread would people still feel obligated to buy the book? I think not.
Photos.
That's sorta what Robert Jordan did with "the eye of the world", half the first book was given away.
O'Reilly can't really say if it's a statistically sigificant advantage, but the opposite hypothesis, that it might hurt sales, sure ain't true!
--dave (the 2nd author) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
This is the only one that he gave information on
If you look at the library itself (www.baen.com/library) you'll see lots of authors have agreed to this, including Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle, David Weber (The Honor Harrington books are one of Baen's main lines), David Drake. Also as part of their free samples I've seen sections from Spider Robinson and a few other people where they give you the first 6 or so chapters of the book
Also, Stephen King's case used encryption, which is commented on in the article as being a flat-out bad idea. Never make it hard for the public to use your product if you can help it.
The Baen Library is an excellent experiment - it involves giving away free books, and also a $10/month subscription service where you preview rough drafts and new books up to 3 months before they are published.
It's not just one guy putting his books online and giving them away because he can't get published, it's an attempt to work with the public, rather then assume we are all criminals
wow. you're my hero.
karma whoring is so sad. you know karma's not real, don't you? it's just something the slashdot idiots made up so you'll have something to strive for in your pathetic little life.
i pity you. get help.
Trying to draw parallels between free music and text publishing in relationship to weather they help or hurt sales is an apples to oranges situation.
On the surface, distributing pirated books should be a heck of a lot easier then music. The file size is small (espically in unformated plain text). There is a slightly more difficult situation of getting the printed page to electronic format, but a bored pirate with some OCR software and several hours to kill should be able to do it with little problem.
So, why is'nt anyone trading pirated books? Part of this has to do with a declining love of the medium found in the Internet generation. But I suspect more is found in the computers inability to translate media into an enjoyable format.
When I download a song I like, it's very easy to take the music, pump it to my stereo or burn it onto a CD, making the recording indistingusable from a purchased copy. A text file enjoys no such luxery. Lying on my couch reading off the screen of a laptop is just not as good as holding a book in my hand.
So, when somebody goes online and sees a free book they enjoy, the next logical step is to purchase the thing, because having an actual book format copy is better. There is little value added, other then album art/liner notes, and the knowledge you've done the right thing, by going out and purchasing music.
That having been said, I still think unrestricted free trade of music is a good thing, and helps the artists in the long run. I just don't see this article as being a credible argument for that.
The Internet is generally stupid
Everyone's going on about how this can't be compared because:
1) Books are in diminished form on a computer display
2) Weber's not terribly popular
3) This study is a small sample
So how about brick-and-mortar libraries? They've been around for centuries and don't seem to be harming sales. True, you don't get to Keep the book, but you can read pretty much any book you want whenever you want (with some slight delay) by any author (popular or not) via inter-library loans. And, really, how often do you re-read a fiction novel? Once every few years, if ever again?
I think I've spent more money over the years on books by authors whom I'd sampled at a library than I have on unknowns. I've even been known to go buy a book I read from a library if I liked it well enough.
Maybe that doesn't translate directly to music, since you generally want to keep a song once you've got it rather than having a 2 week loan, but the only difference between this and a public library is that you trade the convenience of a dead-tree book for the convenience of staying home rather than going all the way to the library building. Libraries have yet to kill book sales, and I don't think I've ever heard an author complain about libraries having their book, so this whole thing is a foregone conclusion.
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
"he has proof to back up his assumptions."
Proof by example is not a proof.
This weekend, I was fiddling around on mp3.com, and I discovered something odd: I like celtic folk songs. Don't ask me why, I remember hearing them before without it making much of an impression, and it's a little out of character for an aging headbanger.
Today, I bought 2 CD's of celtic music on CD. I ripped them to MP3 so I could actually hear them (I don't own a CD player, and my SB X-Gamer with Cambridge Soundworks speakers sounds better than any stereo I ever owned). I'm listening to them right now.
These are the first CD's I've purchased in 6 years, and the first music CD's I've purchased in 10. Somewhere out there, a musician is making a few bucks they otherwise wouldn't, because I listened (legally) to MP3's from MP3.com. Of course, celtic folk musicians don't generally get contracts with major record labels, which is exactly the problem as far as the RIAA is concerned. Without the need for radio stations to tell me what music is worth hearing before I put down my cash, who needs the RIAA?
--Dave Rickey
On the one hand, his most convincing point is that "certainly giving books away hasn't hurt my sales any, even if it hasn't helped them." But he can't actually say that, can he? Maybe the increase in sales he noticed late in term is a result of exactly what he suggests elsewhere in his essay -- the fact that he's gained more publicity as a writer since the book first came out. In that case, isn't it entirely possible that his sales would have gone up even more if he hadn't given away free copies to a portion of his potential readers?
"But wait," you argue, "the reason he gained publicity is because he was giving the books away." But again, that's not going to be true for everyone, is it? Once every single author in existence is giving away books for free, we'll be at exactly the point we're at now, where the only people who get publicity are the ones who pay for it -- in terms of advertising, book tours, public speaking gigs, what-have-you.
This guy likes giving away books? Fine. He says it hasn't hurt him any. Fine. But his evidence isn't all that empirical. All he can really say is that even though he's giving books away, he's been satisfied with the sales he's gotten.
What's more, he could say the same if he was sending out promo copies of the dead tree version. This doesn't really say much at all about the glorious future of Internet-delivered media, from where I sit. It's just a cute experiment that one guy did. I'd like to see it reproduced by someone else -- maybe a few someones -- before really take any of it seriously.
Breakfast served all day!
For a minute there, I thought you were going to share an anecdote about the "Free Wife" site you'd set up...
Breakfast served all day!
The "Introducing the Baen Free Library" article explains precicely what the most vocal Slashdot readers have been saying all along.
Go on, Americans, put your money where your mouth is, and make them a success! That is, if you like their books.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I have a CD changer, and I really enjoy have 100+ CDs at my disposal. However, needing to sit down every 2 weeks and enter the data from the new CDs in is kinda annoying. It is slow and tedious.
I've been considering setting up my computer to easily make a copy of the CDs while using CDDB to fill in CD Text on the copies. Then I could put the original in the album for car trips, and the copy in the CD Jukebox, complete with CD text.
If I were to copy CDs from other people, I would save all the money. For the copy in the car, I like having the real CD. I can flip through pages quickly and pick a CD, something I can't do with the burned copies as nicely. So I can buy CDs and make a copy for either the jukebox or the car, or I can buy 2 copies and have an inferior copy.
I won't do MP3->CD Audio conversion, because they sound awful on a real system. However, I have a mid-range audio solution, if I had a boom box or only my computer to listen on, I probably wouldn't care... What do you think is more common among teenagers/college students, the target market for pop music?
Alex
By far the main enemy any author faces, except a handful of ones who are famous to the public at large, is simply obscurity. Even well-known SF authors are only read by a small percentage of the potential SF audience.
And there's the rub: "most authors" might benefit from having (some of) their texts available for free because their main problem is obscurity, and it'll increase exposure.
However, the publishing industry isn't concerned with the average obscure author. It's built around literary "stars" like grisham and king, who are not only widely known already, but have massive publicity machines to pump up each new book. In these cases, putting texts online for free wouldn't really increase exposure, and would more likely result in a torrent of people rushing in to get the book for free, and actually reduce sales. And, unlike Flint, I would argue that this is a legit concern; music sales have gone down as gnutella has become more popular, and while causality is not guaranteed in this case, neither is it in Flint's. It is a bit of a preemptive worry on the part of publishers, but that doesn't make it a groundless concern.
Hence, encryption and other access controls. Whether it helps or hurts the small-time author is really beside the point from the perspective of people pushing it. It's unfortunate, but true. And I doubt they have the lobbying clout to turn the publishing industry around on this.
Is infinitely better than the opposition, which bases their policy on exactly ZERO.
How many students do you really think can handle the eyestrain of an electronic copy for long?
With the exception of reference books which I use too often to repeatedly take out of the library, the only reason I every buy a book is so that I can lend it out to my friends.
Sure they could wait for the book at the library, but I like having a collection of books I can both recommend to my friends and *give* to them.
If Hillary Rosen heard that she'd cough up Jack Valenti's left kidney, but I sure would buy less books if I couldn't share them.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I posit that most folks aren't buying the IP of the books - after all, that's free. They're buying the paper it's printed on. Paper is still *way* better than a screen, and will be for another decade or two.
On the other hand, music and videos don't have the same sort of media problems. It sounds just as good off the net as it does off the CD. Why bother paying?
"Larry Flint is right."
er I meant Eric
I read his Rats Bats and Vats and liked it. Then I read Mother of Demons and liked it. Next time I see a book of his in the store I'm much more likely to buy it. Simple.
I ran across the Free Library from a link in a /. comment, and read one of David Webers' books for the first time. I thereby discovered the Honor Harrington series of books of which I got to read the first title for free. I immediately put my friend onto the series who bought the first and subsequent volumes in dead-tree form. I myself discovered webscriptions.net where Baen sells electronic versions of their current and some back title list. I picked up the rest of the Honor series and have taken to reading most of my Baen series through webscriptions (heck, 10$ for 4-5 books, if I only ever read the one I bought that book bundle for, I break even, which has never been the case. If I read all 4-5 books (which is usually the case) I get them for 2-3$/book! A heck of a deal. Also ebooks work for me, I can load them on my palm when I'm working and don't have to carry a paperback with me to a client site, something that distracts from the professional air of a consultant working in 'managment' jobs).
So Baen has definately made money off the 2-3 books they gave me for free.
Incidentally, the author gets more money per book off of books I buy in e-format then they would if I went to the bookstore and bought a copy, and I can download them again if I lose my ecopy, and I save trees.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Avery
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Technology has made possible a revolution in the distribution of media. But, the companies that control the rights to popular media are behind the times...They are too slow to change and innovate to meet consumer demand, and they are too powerful to have any incentive to try!
The proliferation of distributed file sharing has evolved out of a need for a more convenient way to retrieve media that is now digital by nature, and a means to do so.
Consumers DEMAND this convenience, because thats what they spend money on PC's and internet for, and because they've seen how smart and efficient it can be! (Napster, etc)
If the market can't meet the demand, then consumers will require some added value. Why should consumers sympathize with the publishers when they know how inefficient the current distribution method is?
I know this is sort of off-topic, but the point is that this guy understands the added value aspect of buying his book on dead trees through a professional publisher. (After he gets the free publicity...)
NO NO NO, it is a coincidence that those books sold more copies. probably because they were better books. they would have sold even more copies if he didn't release them for free!! can't you people see that!! people shouldn't share!! they need to buy their own!! this just boggles the mind!!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
If it works to increase the sale for things as over priced as the normal college textbook...
Does anyone know what the actual textbook(s) is he's referring to? AFAIK, my site The Assayer is the biggest catalog on the web of books that have been intentionally made free-as-in-something by their authors, and I don't have any of the examples he's referring to. I'd be grateful if anyone could reply here about what they are, so I can add them in.
What he's saying matches up perfectly with my own experience with self-publishing free books. My own books are free-as-in-copyleft, and are also for sale in dead tree format. I've done very little traditional promotion, and yet my books have been fairly successful, considering that it's not easy for a self-published author to break into the textbook market. As the author of the article points out, it's pretty hard to know for sure whether certain sales results are the result of any particular action, such as making books available for free in digital form. But one good indication is that the small amount of non-web promotion that I did (sending out free evaluation copies on CD) was nearly all in California, whereas none of the teachers who have adopted my books are in California.
Find free books.
Though I never got into the Napster thing others I worked with did and they put together some CD's that I really liked as they contained alot of old songs that I liked.
Listening to these CDs at work, where they would play them, brought to mind these old songs and even the idea of going out and buying the artist CDs.
But then all the crap started up and I said the hell with it, never buying any of the CDs that the napster stuff brought to mind.
Now it's a matter of out sight (ear) out of mind. To bad for the music business... uh errr...greed business...
Wener Bros. is cracking down on Matrix fan sites now....
All this reminds me of the story of the dog who lost the steak in his mouth when he saw his reflection and his greed tried to get the steak from his own reflection and lost what he had...
I'm not at all supprised about the findings of this author, cept for finding some "creator" realizing all this.
My middle school English class read "The Hobbit"... obviously we didn't (directly) buy the books, they were loaned to us from the school.
I liked it so much that I ended up buying a copy, along with the LOTR trilogy about a month later.
It's all about good writing.
If my school had said "fork over 8 dollars before you can read this book" I wouldn't have ever even considered reading the book(s).
-.-- -.-- --..
One fish / Two fish / Red fish / Blue fish
ShyaOS - Think Differently!
Wait--was there a point in the original story about file sharing or something? Who cares...
I've fallen sucker to this marketing technique over and over again.
Just a few years ago, I had never heard of trance. Tag's Trance came on the scene, got me hooked with shoutcast streams of incredible music, and now I've got a shelf of Sasha, Digweed, Oakenfold, etc. that I've spent over two thousand bucks on.
Yet according to the RIAA, nobody who has a broadband connection and can pull streams buys music anymore. They're dying to kill off shoutcast broadcasters with absurd new requirements.
Incidentally, no broadcaster in my major metro or any nearby in this part of the country plays trance. I guess the RIAA would rather trance artists die of obscurity than admit they're wrong?
*scoove*
Shhh. Books are too expensive as it is. I'm sure they'd keep the first book at the same price as now, and jack the prices up for following titles...
And yes, I *am* cheap.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Modern technology makes it possible for independent artists to create, record, and distribute new music without record contracts. RIAA and friends realize this and it scares them. Their business model is obsolete and dying.
In his last apartment, the computer was in the living room. When the wife was on the couch reading a book, if he sat and watched TV, it was 'quality time'. If he sat and read, it was 'quality time'. If he sat and picked his nose... well you get the idea.
:)
The minute he went on the computer (generally doing things like reading and coding, things most people would consider at least a bit more useful and rewarding than the idiot box), she freaked.
I find this sort of antipathy towards computers is all too prevalent in our society. Then again, it's what keeps us in high demand, I suppose...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Maybe I am a strange computer user (only 15 years on the Internet), but I like book! I mean, I love it!
Books are your friend. I recently purchased over $400 in books to study for the CISSP. Yes, I could easily get this information from the web. It's a pain though to be able to crack open this kind of information while in a park.
There was a recent /. article which I can't find that talks about how Air Traffic Controllers use slips of paper to order their flights.
The fact of the matter is that human beings are tactile and visual. Replacing a book is practically impossible. There is amazing use in the Internet and being able to search for data, but, in a way, it's more like normal non-linear thought. Books/Articles/Magazines have very structured thought and also allow you to use your fingers, and other mechanisms, to organize the way you read/think. I will buy books until I die. Even if I had a direct cybernetic plugin I would not use it the majority of the time!
Linux is UNIX.
Why would people buy a novel when they can download it?
Because nobody wants to read a whole novel off a computer screen.
Saying that this argument says anything about the recording industry is just silly. If mp3's could only be played off of the computer, and never transferred to CD's, then people would be more inclined to buy the music.
If my journal entry is not relevant, please mod me down. But whatever you do, don't mod me up as I will consider it Karma forced upon me against my will. In some other universe, that may even be considered Karma rape by some deranged ethicician :). Sharing is only good when it's consentual.
I don't think this is entirely true. The primary inhibitor to people paying for eBooks is laziness, not greed. I read all of the Chronicles of Amber on my palmpilot (pirated them, yes). Then I sent $20 to the author (Roger Zelazny)'s estate. I figure most authors don't clear $2 a book on paperback sales, so this was a fair amount.
It took me about 10 seconds to write the check, and 2 weeks to figure out to whom I could usefully send it. I'm still not sure that I sent it to the right place, only that I haven't heard back.
If I could have downloaded a legitimate copy online, then paid online, I would have been much happier with the process. Heck, I would've paid an extra $4 or $5 just to not have wasted the time tracking down an address.
--- php: perl hates people
I'd have to put a bookshelf in my pocket to hold all the stuff I've got on my Sony Clié 415's 64 meg memory stick. :)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
When the music industry realizes that people are buying media, not music, we'll all be better off. To make it more attractive, we would probably see better quality album inserts and other items that make buying the CD worth the money.
Therefore, I argue that (music at least) DOES have this sort of media 'problem' - CD liners and other gimmiks included with the album can be *way* better than an ID3 tag or a web site.
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
How about a more practical approach to electronic books? Audio. Audio technologies are quite good and, as shown by the popularity of Napster and Napster-like entities and by the abundance of jukebox software, quite common. Most libraries and many book stores already have audio recordings of books on cassette tape or occasionally on audio CD. These are good for long commutes and road trips. Now that nearly everyone has Ogg/MP3 players, how about books in Ogg?
The bugs in the methodology can be worked out by reading public books. Nice voices can be had by hiring people from the local theater, radio staion or opera more cheaply than the big names like James Earl Jones or (the late) Sam Kinnison.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This reminds me of a story I've read about
Isaac Asimov. He said the bounds books
and the paperback versions would appeal
to different audiences, and it wouldn't hurt
to release them at the same time.
It was hard to convince his publisher, but
he finally got his will. And was proven right.
...he's addressing the encryption of books vs. giving them away, in regard to e-book piracy. I think all the people who try to draw conclusions from this in regard to the music industry are missing the point just a bit. They're very different industries, in very complicated ways.
The thing that's worth cheering for is the boost it gives to 1) giving away stuff free, and 2) avoiding encryption. The encryption of e-books is one of the major hot-button issues on Slashdot today, after all.
And another note: the folks at Alexandria Digital Literature have always offered their e-books/e-stories in plain and unencrypted format, and so far they've never had any problems with people pirating those texts.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
At least in trade books there is an 800 pound Gorilla called Ingram. Ingram doesn't work with small time publishers. They set up subsidiaries for those trifiling concerns with less than a few million in sales.
If you're a publsiher with at least five titles and a proven sales record, a marketing department --web based marketing doesn't count-- and say a staff of three or four writers, you have earned the right to be rejected by one of those subsidiaries.
To the point though: if you are just a writer attempting to publish your own work, they don't even want you to apply to the subsidiaries --these are busy people trying to make a living after all. In the case of independent writers trying to self publish, Ingram strongly encourages authors to distribute electronically first. That's already the corporate policy and has been for several years.
So, the resistance to e-texts isn't coming from the corporate mega distributors, it's coming from the small time writers and specialty publishers.
On alt.books.pratchett last night, Terry Pratchett (who can hardly be described as a little know author) said that most Pratchett collections started with "stolen" books - which, in context, he meant borrowed and not returned. Try-before-you-buy, admittedly still in dead tree form, has worked very well for him. But fiction may be a bit of a special case. Off screen is a rotten way of reading for extended periods, particularly fiction. Reading fiction is a "sat back" activity, like watching TV. Surfing the net, gaming, emailing, programming and most other forms of computer activity are "sat forward" activities. So it is not surprising that downloaded fiction is less satisfying that purchased fiction. But downloaded music can be fully as good as purchased music - so there isn't the same "trial is only half as good" effect.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
" not for some notion that authors have some property right, or some right to make a profit but from the expectation that the PUBLIC DOMAIN will be enriched".
E ng elberg.doc
In europe the situation is different, there is no fair use clause.The link below is an anlysis of copyright vrs freespeech in europe , it makes a good if not scary read.
http://www.ivir.nl/publications/hugenholtz/PBH-
_________________________________________________
On a lark, I was browsing the Baen free library. I picked out one of the more interesting-looking titles and installed it on my PalmPilot. (tip to Baen librarians - a back cover synopsis helps to sell a book... think about adding some.) After wrangling with the PC install software for Mobipocket, extracting the PRC files, and installing them on my Pilot 5000, I started reading.
Half a day later (with a minor bit of eyestrain) I'm now searching out the sequels to the book (Mutineer's Moon.) I'd never read David Weber's stuff before, because it seemed to be dry military stuff from the cover and the descriptions, although I wanted to take a look at Lt. Leary Commanding (which was one of the reasons I downloaded Mutineer's Moon.) I was pleasantly surprised to find a much more classical pulp science-fiction feel (galactic empires, etc.)
Chalk up another bit of anecdotal evidence that more exposure is good. Next time I'm a bookstore, I'm more likely to take a look at David Weber's stuff, and that much more likely to walk out with a mass market paperback. Prior to today, the chances of that were totally nil.
Baen is the only publisher I know of that is experimenting with new web-based business models. Baen's reprints of older SF authors that it is currently producing under Eric Flint's editorial guidance reflect a recent discovery that word of mouth works very well on the web and on usenet and produces spectacular sell-through. (I'm currently looking for an MSc student to explore this for me in more detail.)
Never heard of the dude. Did come across the Baen Free Library once and didn't see anything on there worth the downloading... It's just a gimmick.
When it comes to pirated books on the internet, here's Neil Gaiman on the theme. Read from Monday April 8th to Wednesday April 10th.
And yes, he's already had the hatemail from 'information wants to be free' freeloaders who like nothing more than to deny people of their income.
"Information wants to be paid"
Christ, I spend a year of my life reading all 20 Patrick O'Brien books back to back. I wish there were more. :(
Extreme optimism and extreme pessimism in the same post? I better get my head checked, I may have schizophrenia...
Yeah, you do need to get your head checked and dump that negativity at the door. With a defeatist attitude such as yours we'll soon be living in a dictator state instead of a (basically) free USA. If we all just shrugged and said "fuck it, why fight - it'll pass anyway" we would soon have NO rights, not to mention that we, the people, would never have helped to block the CBDTPA this time.
Call me old-fashioned and even a bit naive but if WE don't keep our head in the game and inform those of us less technically inclined or threat/politically aware about these bills then yes, it will pass. If we do inform the public, the chances are good these types of bills will be stopped. An informed public is an empowered public.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
It's called a printer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
One stipulation that Baen has put on authors putting work in the Free Library is that they can only put the first couple books in a series on line. they KNOW that SF readers get hooked on a world and will get all subsequent books if the author keeps the quality high - and then go back and get hard copy of the first books they read...Baen has build lots of brand loyalty for themselves from me.
Dear Sir:
I found a link to the Baen Free Library through Slashdot. I appreciate your efforts to offer some books free, but I disagree with some of your analysis.
I felt prompted to write to you when I read your statement, "piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable." I disagree with your statement for two reasons; my model of human nature and my observation of pirating activity.
1) Humans naturally take what they desire, without consideration for repaying the source. If the general public were free to pick an apple off a tree, would they naturally attempt to compensate the tree? No; compensation is so unnatural that some people make a career out of compensating apple trees! People eventually learn that by offering compensation, they are more likely to get what they desire, and they learn that if no one compensates a supply, the supply eventually dwindles, and may cease to exist. However, that is a learned behavior.
2) I have several friends (and the number is increasing) who pirate movies. I know of more than one person who downloads a half-dozen movies every night. They spend a lot of money buying CD blanks, and CD labels, and computer equipment. Every so often, they also buy a movie (whether they happen to have pirated that particular title or not). The weird thing (to me) is that they don't watch any of the movies they pirate. They appear to regard it as a kind of currency, which they hoard. One man takes pleasure in being able to offer these movies to anyone who wants to see them; as it happens, he is slightly lacking in the social skills and activities of his age group. Indeed, the exchange of pirated movies is serving an important social bonding function. They don't care what the price is of the movies; they don't even check what the price is of the movies. They simply go through the list of movies on the file-share and download the titles with interesting names.
I'm sure there are many motivations for pirating, but they all boil down to the inherent self-centered nature of humans. Compensating a source is a learned behavior. If people buy goods that are also offered free of charge, their doing so is most likely the result of training (the only other alternative that I would allow is that they are mentally disturbed).
There is an important branch at this point. The Baen Free Library is not actually offering a product free that is identical to the product they are selling. There is a material difference between an e-copy and a paper copy. I find an e-copy to be most useful for performing searches and quotes, but a paper copy is much more gratifying, easier to read and more easily quantifiable. Quality sells, and not just the quality of the story.
BTW, I am aware that in a free market system, the seller tends to sell at whatever price the market will bear. There are calculations that optimize price for sales volume or for income. Business don't usually simply charge for the cost of the materials used in production, nor even for mere normal living expenses. Most businesses in the United States attempt to increase their material value, which comes at the expense of the customer. There are many, many ways that a business may pursue increasing its value. As I see it, the severe restrictions being pursued against piracy by businesses are for the purpose of assuring shareholders that there are no unaccountable material losses. Some businesses would rather lose revenue stream than offer a free sample, particularly a free sample that they did not authorize. Also, businesses are operated by people, and the same forces that lead to piracy from consumers are at work in businessmen. Many businesses would use free labor and sell expensive goods if they could make that work. Again, training is necessary to offset inherent human greed. In the interest of maintaining markets, laws and legal enforcement are needed when training is insufficient.
Sincerely,
Richard Alexander
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Read the rest of his thoughts. He doesn't believe in unauthorized copying or sharing, and believes that the "information wants to be free" crowd are "ignorant juvenile delinquents (who don't, as a rule, even have the excuse of being juveniles)." Not that I'm totally in favor of abandoning copyright, but demonizing people with that belief should disqualify him from being a Slashdot idol.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
I'm a pretty regular book buyer, and had recently gotten on a sci-fi/fantasy kick (fueled mostly by revisiting my youth via alt.binaries.e-book.) Tired of e-book copies of books my mom still has stored away, I went out and bought some of the other books I found online that looked interesting. I read just the introduction of "The Color of Magic" before I bought the first two installments of Prachett's Discworld series. I thought about also getting a Harlan Ellison book.
But then I saw how much of an ass he was. Sure, posting his work online without permission is wrong, but his overreaction is worse. His statements are arrogant and ignorant. Online posting is more like borrowing from a library than stealing a book sale. Online posting provides a valuable archival function (think Project Gutenberg.) The morons who stock up all of his works are like the warez kiddiez who have the entire Adobe suite, but don't know how to use any of it. Assholes do not get my money. I don't care if his writing is proven to cure cancer, this jerk (who might have gotten my money if I liked something I sampled online) will never see a dime from me. Nor will I read any of works, in print, online, electronically, or otherwise.
Harlan Ellison's fight against sharing generates the same response from me as Metallica's, complete and total rejection. I give my money, attention, and affection to artists, not money grubbing whores.
-sk
If I could listen to tracks before buying them, and better yet buy only those tracks I liked it would beat the hell out of the current system of buying a whole cd based on maybe hearing one track and getting $20 worth of crapola. A lot of 1 hit wonders force you to buy a whole cd of their greatest misses just to get the one decent song (assuming you can't find it on a compilation) so I pass because I can't justify buying a whole cd for one song. On the other hand I've had a few downloaded tracks from Radiohead and Rage ATM and since they were consistantly good I bought a bunch of their cds.
Any industry that forces you to buy sight unseen alientates consumers. The book industry at least has a system where you can peruse a book in the store before justifying buying it. The music industry, at best, plays a handful of tracks over and over on the radio and a couple of cds at listening stations. Sorry suits but at $20+ a cd I'm not about to impulse buy.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I didnt pay for those because:
1.- I read the first installment and didnt like it. It felt like King put sub-standard work online for this "test".
2.- Stephen King makes way more money that I do, he doesnt need donations. If he were a struggling young writer, perhaps I would've felt compelled to send a dollar or two. Again, as some other poster noted, the street performer system wouldnt work for Broadway stars.
No sig for the moment.
the reason is simple, reading text on any electronic device that's available today sucks.
A freely downloadable version will either a) suck to read on a screen or b) cost more to print out than to buy at a book store. It's a perfect teaser. The only way the music industry can come up with a sufficiently comparable teaser is to make it cheaper to buy the stinkin' cd than to burn it yourself.
There's a reason that people go by Dead-Tree versions of manuals, it's because their eyes already hurt from staring at the screen.
NOW, yes. But music sales were increasing up to the exact point where Napster was shut down as a useful service. Then it began falling.
You should stop being a tit by impulse-buying.