Slashdot Mirror
Are We About To Enter The Age of Book Piracy?
theodp writes "The speed with which the 4MB e-mail hoax purporting to be the new cookbook from the Naked Chef streaked across the Internet suggests to Slate that a new, disquieting era for the publishing world may be in sight. Indeed, the latest Harry Potter tale made the rounds on the Web just hours after the book went on sale, its 870 pages apparently scanned in and distributed by rabid fans. The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded. Just because publishing people can't conceive of book piracy doesn't mean it can't happen."
It's been my observation that sites that distribute pirated books have far, far too many to read -- and many of the books there are obviously scanned through OCR, with no attempt made at legibility. And yet they're still offered.
For most book pirates (and pirates in general, really), it's not about getting books to read for free -- it's all about having the book. To these pirates, if you don't have a bigger collection than everyone else, you're nothin'.
I get all my books from #bw (hi guys!). sure, it's sort of illegal, but you could similarly get it for free from the library, and if I really like the book I buy it anyway.
IMO, more interesting than the fact that book "piracy" happens is the fact that with todays "electronic entertainment systems" people are actually willing to read a book instead of playing repetative action games.
First off, I agree that it is Piracy and is wrong. But the effects may not be what you would first expect. Baen books has an experiment with their Free Library, www.baen.com/library where they are giving away some of their books and watching the results on sales.
They are finding that sales actually go up on the author's other books! Having freely available books gives readers an introduction to authors they may have never picked up before, they tend to buy other books written by the same author. According to Baen the life-cycle of your typical book really isn't that long.
This isn't to justify book piracy, but just as we have seen in the Music industry we may be dealing with a bit of exaggeration on the part of the publishers (and on the part of some authors who seem to have gone a bit rabid on the subject).
Brian
Remember Lexington Green!
I don't really know how long it took Jim Dale to get 23+ hours of Harry Potter laid down on tape, but it must have been months of work. I have no objection to seeing him get paid for that (and since the CDs are available for under $50, only a few bucks per CD, it seems quite reasonable compared to music.)
Other recorded books are, of course, much more expensive. Overall I've found that Order of the Phoenix could have been priced much higher than they did based on demand, in any format. I assume this is an economic decision rather than a friendly one, but I know that it enabled married friends of mine to purchase two copies rather than one so neither had to wait.
Now, that's just to point out that this is more than just a "golden voice"; it's a major effort by an actor with rare talent. If you want to put together an Internet project to read books aloud, I think that would be noble and interesting. For out-of-print books, you might check out AudioBooksForFree. Just don't be too disappointed when your efforts don't sound nearly as good as the professional ones, and take more work than you expect.
For copyrighted works, well, the publishers wouldn't be happy if you're competing with their efforts, especially if they have their own recordings. But I'd press you to think about the value of new books versus old; if you'd rather record a new, copyrighted book than an old one, maybe you'll see why that book has value to the one who paid to publish it.
Disclaimer (too late): I am an actor and do recorded readings (and am unbelievably jealous of a voice like Jim Dale's).