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Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money. Author Paulo 'Pirate' Coelho leapt out of obscurity and onto the best-seller list by giving away his books on the Net. The best-selling author of 'The Alchemist' will even help you pirate his books via his blog. His publishers were not pleased, but then his books went from selling 1,000 copies to 100,000 and then over a million. He gives special credit to pirate translators who are making his work accessible to a wider audience and convincing more people to read his book."
Welcome our new pirate author overlords.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with S2, nor am I a fan of their game, just their business model.
Over and over and over again; We've stated that we believe that it doesn't matter if we can get it for free or not. What matters is that we like it. And in the cases of books, movies and music, if we love it, we will want to buy a copy to place on our shelves!
I have yet to meet anyone with enormous digital collections of copyrighted works that didn't also have enormous physical collections of copyrighted works.
This is yet another clear illustration of what really drives the consumer and forgetting about lawyers trying to justify their existence, let the MARKETERS take notice that this is most likely to be a very successful business model for the future.
Putting aside the precise legal details of his situation, anyone who succeeds at making a living off freely-distributed content is worth more than an army of w4r3z kiddie morons howling about how they get to break the law because "Yuor busines model is obsolete!"
Baen Free Library has had much the same experience. Give it away free, sales go up.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
consider this. When you read a book its natural for you to sit with it, printed, preferably in some handy format where you turn pages. It makes sense to let people try before they buy. Personally I sit in my La-Z-Boy with a pot of tea, its nice comfy and let me really enter the world(s) of the book.
Music however got digitized. People don't own high end equipment any longer because the sound will still suck, we are used to music being digital and convenient. A lot of people have gotten used to the idea of music being something massively stored in a box on the network. When you got the music in digital format pirated you don't get any additional value by buying the CD.
RIAA/MPAA still need to get their act together and treat their costumers with respect. (He talks about getting to know your audience)
On a side note, I'm definitely grabbing a copy of the book (as in printed kind from a store) to check it out.
I'm going to be interviewing Phil & Kaja Foglio live this weekend about this very issue: why they decided to stop selling individual print issues of their Girl Genius comic book and turn it into a free webcomic to sell more trade paperbacks and hardcover collections. Call in with questions of your own.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
He's not the first author to notice that "giving away" (quotes intended) your books via the Internet leads to increased sales. This might be called an extension of what Baen discovered several years ago. Let people read your books "for free," don't stick restrictions on them, and quite a number of them will end up purchasing those books and others by the author.
I think he's one of the first to really show that encouraging "piracy" actually leads to increased book sales. Obviously, you have to be a good writer in the first place - if your stuff sucks, it doesn't matter whether you give it away or not - but if you are, it'll encourage people to read what you're writing, and buy your books. Somehow, I think that this will get lost on the "suits" at the major publishers, though.
the same is true of games, but that wont stop the slashdot crowd from
a) saying the games companies are stupid not to copy this model and
b) somehow using this to justify pirating games.
There is no and never will be (in the foreseeable future) a substitute for printed paper books.
This is why people will continue to buy books and how publishers should be making money in this new economy.
It's spelled authaaaaaar.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Such a strategy is effective by design. This is the problem with businessmen. They think they are so clever with everything they do from abusing imaginary property and patents to cutting costs in quality, but they're actually making less money than a smarter person (who can be ungreedy, or just as greedy) would. Every time a businessman smiles after cutting some cost or forcing someone to pay more does because he's too stupid to realize what he has lost.
Tag effectivebydesign
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Musicians have had to do this for quite some time. They start off making their music, putting up a free MySpace or other page and letting people listen to their music for free. Then, when there's a following, they may start making money off of it. How is this guy really any different, aside from a different medium?
Also, being that he's got a publisher, I wouldn't be surprised if his actions were actionable in a legal sense on their part. In this case it seems to have worked out for the best for all parties involved, but if not, he could be a hurting man.
After all, Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" sold well.
I am officially gone from
Why not just have an online library that allows people to download whatever book they wanted onto their kindle, e-reader, i-phone for nothing. There is a "limited" number of books released to this online library and books are automatically "returned" within 5 days. If you want a book you can markup, or add to your personal library you are then given an option to purchase the physical representation (or a digital representation) and have it shipped to you.
Books and knowledge are meant to be freely accessible.
So giving away product increases sales? If the sale price is zero how do you make money? Yes we sold over a million copies of our new book for $0 dollars. After subtracting the cost of printing we earned -$6 million dollars. It reminds me of the SNL skit First CitiWide Change Bank. All we do is make change. How do we make money doing this? Volume.
Why oh why oh why do people persist in running web servers on non standard ports?
Why is his blog on port 8090?
Have they never heard of software virtual hosts?
The success of this tactic shouldn't come as a surprise. Without popularity/attention, financial success is impossible. What follows is that authors/artists must first do what ever to gain attention. After they have got the attention of the masses, then it shouldn't be too difficult to find ways to make money. While mere attention does not implicate income, it is a requirement for income.
Brad
one copy = one lost sale
I don't know where this logic comes from...
This is what I've been saying for a long time to the people I work with. I work for a medium-sized community college, and one of my jobs is creating media for our online classes, videos, podcasts, narrated powerpoints, etc. We have so many instructors that are worried about protecting their "intellectual property," as if it was academic gold. I tell them make you stuff open, share it with the public. Who cares if somebody at some other college uses our stuff? That only makes us look better. The one guy we have here that is actually doing what I'm saying has TONS of chemistry videos on Google Video, and as a result receives feedback from all over the world, and has been asked to speak at a few conferences because of it.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
But lets be honest here. Books are fundamentally different to music or movies or software. For the vast majority of readers, a physical book is the preferred medium, and you can't pirate these.
Does this mean that it doesn't work like this for purely digital works? No, but it isn't evidence that it does either.
This sig all sigs devours
"It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money." Actually, it sounds like the Underpants Gnomes. Step 1, Collect Underpants. Step 2, ?. Step 3, Profit.
Ron Lanner has been threatening to re-publish his "Trees of The Great Basin" digitally. I would much prefer it in solid form. I dread having to buy a new ink cartridge just for that. I am the same with music. Sell me the "real thing".
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I've known for quite a while that piracy would be a great marketing tool. I actually wrote about the Creative Commons being a marketing tool on the popular writing e-zine "Writing World": Increase Your Market with a Creative Commons License
Interesting fact with that article, shortly after writing it Moira Allen decided to post all of her hundreds of articles under the Creative Commons as well. The real revolutionary thing about the Creative Commons and piracy is the viral marketing side of it. Companies have known for a long time that giving away free samples is awesome marketing, they just tend to cost considerably but with digital media this can be negated to almost nothing.
Sure some people don't buy your stuff, but in a lot of cases they wouldn't buy it anyway. You can also make up for a lower quality product by pirating it. For one thing it's off limits, for another it's free, and lastly it's obviously liked by other people otherwise it wouldn't be pirated. All these factors combine to make piracy and Open Licenses very powerful marketing tools that most companies are just missing out on.
I've actually covered the benefits of Philanthropic Marketing on my blog. This includes Open Source, Open Licensing, and just plain helping out in the community to foster a stronger community and help it thrive. A lot of the FOSS crowd seems to be a bit socialistic in their viewpoints and try to convert people that way. I prefer to cater to their greed and self-interest which we all have and which FOSS and sharing in general are compatible with.
If anyone's interested in learning more or getting help with a philanthropic marketing campaign drop me a line at the email address mentioned on my blog.
It is well known that libraries that freely loan books caused the book publishing business to collapse. .... Wait, that's not right.
We need a better theoretical model of intellectual property. Somehow the generally accepted ideas have been shown again and again to be wildly wrong. It is really stupid that most people don't seem to notice that they have to change their thinking.
from wikipedia:
When a company does this it's a Promotion. So why is this pirating when an individual does it?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Baen also sells ebooks - DRM free, multiple formats, and relatively inexpensive. http://www.webscription.net/
Also, they publish, with some of their books, the Baen CD - a CD containing all of the Free Library, the book you just bought, and a whole bunch of others, typically by that individual author. And the license is great - you can do anything you want with the cd - copy, give away - EXCEPT sell it. http://oberon.zlynx.org/ has all of them, with links to other distribution sites, all PERFECTLY LEGAL.
Jim Baen passed away last year (God rest his soul), but the people who continue to run the shop show no signs of lessening their commitment to these distribution channels. Science Fiction and Fantasy may not be your cup of tea, but what they are doing is great.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Can you cite a source for this claim and not just 1 anecdote?
I'm getting irritated by the pervasive use of the tag "suddenbreakoutofcommonsense" on anything involving giving stuff away for free. It's not common sense, many times this tag is used; it's counterintuitive and probably incorrect (that sales go up in your claim for instance).
This is actually one of the reasons that some artists are scared of this business model. In the traditional author / publisher / reader model, an author only has to impress the publisher (who shoulders the risk of failure). In this new model, if you suck, you suck, and you will know it. No other entity will screen you financially from failure.
It's a bit scary, but it's great for the consumer!
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
It's like ask what does the box think of you, instead of you thinking in/outside the box.
I remember the old days of windows 3.1 and 3.11 for workgroups. Back then MS used to "encourage" people to put copies people had from work on their home machines that were running DOS and xtree, etc. It was so easy to get a free copy of windows from a friend on a disk that had absolutely no protection from "bootlegging". Actually, most people didn't even think of it like it is thought of today. So what happened? Everyone started using it. MS won the OS war over the likes of OS/2 etc. Now your grandma uses an MS OS on her cell phone. (alright not quite, but you get my drift here). If you make something that people like you'll be successful. Most people don't want to risk their money to find out if something is worth their time. In the case of a good book, you don't need to try before you buy. You're going to listen to a friend. In the case of music, most people, once out of college when working will want to pay for music. iTunes does this almost good. I know a lot of people who hit up bit torrent just because iTunes and the likes use DRM, and they've been burned on a purchase at some level or another. Some albums you don't want to spend the time and money to go to a best buy to see if you like it, and once you dl it, you don't bother to go out and buy it. I think that if they set up their business model to cater to the lazy, they'll be going in the right direction. For example, get rid of DRM on iTunes. Allow a try before buy - trial of full use, etc. It would be like when your friend let you borrow a CD back in '89 and you loved it, had to give it back, so you had to buy it.
I'm getting irritated by the pervasive use of the tag "suddenbreakoutofcommonsense" on anything involving giving stuff away for free. It's not common sense, many times this tag is used; it's counterintuitive and probably incorrect
"Quite frankly, the whole point of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."
-- Linus Torvalds
(source: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I just downloaded Veronika decides to die, and you just get a pdf with the first chapter of the book, just as Coelho himself puts on his website. It's not the complete book. If all pdf's are like this, this article is a blatant lie.
Everything works some of the time. This is not an obscure author, but an extremely famous one. Radiohead is an extremely famous band. I bet if we really surveyed how often giving away content helps sales, we'd see that it helps some people, and not others. If we could even compare to a control, which is unlikely.
The usual model for giving away content works like this:
1) I can't compete with the bigger brands in my area, so I'll give away what I have for free.
2) The quality of my work will establish me, and fame (eg user base) will lead to big things.
It worked for PHP, but you can't say it worked for PostgreSQL, which was based on something that was famous already. Ditto for Radiohead and Coelho. They're not a good model for most of us.
One day at work a number of years ago, someone suggested I read The Alchemist. A couple weeks later, I was sitting in my livingroom and looked over at a pile of my roommate's things and right there in the pile was The Alchemist and another of Paulo Coelho's books. I read them both. I suppose you could say I "pirated" them, but if you knew my roommate at the time you'd be more inclined to say that I rescued them.
You can't pirate books? Well, at least you don't do it at home and it requires a more organized industry than to pirate digital media.
However, I think the difference lies in the amount of publicity generated by pirated books and other pirate mediums: when somebody posts a pirated movie or disk, the publicity generated is close to 0. I think that only those who are actively looking for that movie or disk will find it and download it.
On the other side, pirate books are publicity by themselves: if one particular book or author is very popular among pirates, then you start to wonder if it might be worth reading it. With only this, I think there is an increase in the probabilities of you buying that particular book the next time you glance it at a library.
Another difference between movies, books and music is the fidelity. Even if I liked a movie by a particular director or actor, it is not said that I will rush to see their next movie. The same happens with music: I loved Metallica, but I won't buy any of their recent or future disks. With book authors I think there is more fidelity: if you liked one book, then you are more likely of at least trying to read the next book. This creates a very solid fan base that no singer can have: even 20 years later, new people will start reading those books, they will enjoy them, and they will buy entire sets of books and generate lots of revenues. Just think of "VERY" popular and prolific authors like Agatha Christie, Jules Verne, Gabriel García Marquez or Pablo Coelho itself.
Um, the Baen Free Library is not an anecdote.
My purchase of DC Comics series, Crime Bible: Five Lessons in Blood, after reading a "pirated" digital copy I had downloaded (not five minutes after I finished reading, I called my comics supplier and had them put the issue in my subscription folder and add the series to my subscription list) -- that is an anecdote. A true one, but an anecdote.
Sales records of multiple titles by multiple authors over the course of several years (admittedly from a single publisher) is HARD DATA, not an anecdote.
Even to this day, I think many companies have been struggling with how to effectivly incorporate the Internet into their business model. This guy jumped out of obscurity by doing it. This is clearly a win for those people who support fewer and fewer copyright restrictions, but I wonder if he'll do the same with his next book. This is a common trend in music, musicians love the Internet when they're not popular, but look at it as public enemy number 1 when they are. It opens your talent up to a wider spectrum of people, but if you're a musician or author that already has that following, then what?
Giving away some copies to create interest/hype is an ancient tactic. Sounds like this was a fairly clever astroturfing campaign. People have a bit of a herd mentality when it comes to deciding what is popular. If they perceive that something is in demand, they want to find out what the fuss is about. They will often declare it interesting or desirable more because others say it is rather than judging objectively on merit. (exhibit A: Paris Hilton) Arguably the most powerful advertising message there is is "everyone else is doing it". Sounds silly (because it is) but it works VERY well.
One way to think about it is that this instance of astroturfing was a way to create activation energy" necessary to get the "popularity reaction" going. If there is no word of mouth because no one has a copy of the book (or other media) it will probably just sit on shelves and never sell. This fellow was clever enough to create a little artificial demand that turned into the real thing. Just a well done example of a cleverly run public relations campaign. Done right it is very effective and much cheaper than advertising.
another EASY example of this is MUSIC... Look recently into the newer Rap albums by Kanye West and 50cent... Kanye's album was all over the internet weeks before the album was out... and he ended up outselling 50cent easily... and that was after 50's "if he outsells me, i'll retire" comments... Same with movies... when LOTR came out on the internet TONS of people downloaded it AND then went to the theater to go see it... probably more than would have gone if it wasnt leaked on the net... -SC
I tried convincing my Ex to do just this. I was amazed that her attitude was that she did not want anybody stealing her work. But when I pointed out that it might make you a well known name, she STILL did not want to do it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Paulo Coelho obscure?
Yet another proof that slashdot editors really don't control anything that gets posted here
Paulo Coelho has sold around 100 million books on 150 countries and has been translated to more than 66 languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho. Somehow the bozo submiting stories will credit all of that to torrent publicity? Check out (in the portuguese wikipedia) http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho the number of international prises he got way before torrents were in any way popular. Please just read the list of prises he got BEFORE 2000.
Yeah, obscure all the way. Indeed.
BTW, what's the name of that obscure comedy writer that released a book on the internet, and after he got famous, decided not to do that again? Oh, yeah that would be (otherwise unknown) Scott Adams http://www.themillionsblog.com/2007/11/giving-it-away-for-free.html ... Another usurper of the torrent comunity no doubt!
"Can't stop the signal...."
Highly appropriate, don't you think?
Not to repeat what others above me have already stated but I want to add another angle on this subject.
Recently I just bought OReilly's Learning Python 3d. Well it is fine that I have it and can take it with me
when I travel, but the thing is I want it also on my computer. So I downloaded yesterday the *illegal* version(pdf).
Numerous times has happened of course the exact opposite, e.g. first downloading the illegal version and then actually buying it.
This applies to Music, etc...
On a side note check out the django online book. Be aware that although it is
available on-line the printed version was at first sold out.
So yeah... it works
If this guy used the accepted *IAA accounting methods he would realize that he is actually seeing a loss.
Formula:
(CS * B$) - (CG * B$) = Amount of loss
Where:
CS = Copies sold
CG = Copies Given Away
B$ = Book Price
This assumes more copies are given away than sold (a safe bet).
I've been saying it for years here and on a variety of sites and print publications: anything that can be copied easily should be given away from the start: recorded music, e-books, stock photography, whatever.
I've also been doing it for years: I've declined to copyright anything I've written, designed, or produced digitally, for about 10 years. In that time, I've made "pots of money" because of it. Why? It's a marketing tool. Give it away, have people use it or reference it, and build your reputation to sell your labors for future projects.
I can't believe others don't do it. I helped a few local bands reach national prominence (magazines, MTV2, etc) by giving away their recorded music in exchange for building a fan-base who would buy their not-so-easily-copied dookie at shows. It works.
I've maintained blogs that have driven people to my subscription-only print newsletter, which I then tell people to give away when they're done reading it. Guess what? That, too, has brought more subscribers.
The future is not about piracy, it's about marketability. You should NEVER hope to make money on something you've already done, but on what you can do. When people see your ability, they'll be more captive in hiring you for a future need. That's where you make your money. If you're an author, give away that e-book: people hate reading things electronically still, and will probably decide to just buy that $10 printed novel or how-to book. Books are cheap to produce now, even one-offs. My print-on-demand supplier has been offering me paperbacks for under $4 printed, so I can sell it for $11 and make a reasonable profit. What's the problem with understanding that?
I'm still shocked at how many content-creators and artists don't want to give away their old works to build future profits. They're too protective of their intellectual property, and unwilling to accept that we're all whores for profit but usually unwilling to actually work hard to earn that profit. I can't begin to count how many "artists" work their rears off to try to become that one hit wonder rather than embracing the idea that working for your entire life is a better end-goal. It's a risk versus reward belief that I stumbled across when I was much younger: why risk putting everything into the hope that you'll be the lucky one out of a million to hit it big on a single item?
I disagree. I would say, "You need to have a good story to tell". Good writing, on the other hand, is a matter of having a good editing process. As far as I can tell, editing a novel can be as much of a community effort as developing an Open Source computer program, where there is a central architect and several supporting developers.
Why do I think this? I have written a novel and published a version of it last summer. I have received several critiques from people who I would have otherwise never had heard of. I welcome comments and criticism from anybody who is willing to take a chance on a story that is "a work in progress". If the C&C is constructive, then you can bet that you'll get a mention in the acknowledgments paragraph at the beginning of the story to recognize your help.
So, no. I would freely admit that I am not the best writer in the world, but I think I have a good enough story that with some time I can publish a novel that will be enjoyable and attractive to a wide range of read
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
What's all this talk about the book being an unconquerable medium? Have you not seen Amazon's Kindle? It is an absolute masterpiece of... hahahahahaha! Golly, I almost made it through the whole speech with a straight face...
People do realize that the financial company ING makes people read buy and read this book, right?
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
this is O.T. but it took a while navigating their site, to find the system requirements and supported OS, seems like a cool game though, Im glad I kept XP on the HTPC (dual boot with ubuntu)
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
WTF is wrong with slashdot folks? This is obviously not Coelho's blog. Besides, as it was pointed out above, this guy was famous around the world much, much before this phony blog was created, in June 2007.
Can't you guys see the difference between a world wide famous writer, and some kid blogging from his parents yard?
Will this still be viable with new technology? So far, online versions of books have increased sales of hardcopies because the form factor of online books have been so lousy. What happens when you get options that are even better than the Kindle and the Sony Reader? (Just as light, bigger, and not encumbered by DRM?) Perhaps things like novels will get duplicated and no one will pay for them. Only subscription models will exist then.
If I read the first 50 or so pages of a book in electronic form and liked it, I would go buy a paperback to finish reading. Reading novels on computer screens sucks. Fairly obvious idea when you think about it, this guy just has the guts to try it and damn the publisher's opinion.
Linux client is just delayed; they released Savage 1 on linux. That game, by the way, is free to play. http://www.s2games.com/savage/downloads.php
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
This makes a lot of sense to me, after reading this, I had a look at all of the books I have purchased and realized they fall into 1 of 2 categories:
Books I didn't read before buying them (All of these are books Uni text-books)
Books I read before buying them (This is everything else in my collection)
I think this comes down to, I don't like to take a risk with the vast amount of absolute crap that is out there, and prefer to know that I like a book before I buy it. Then when I buy it, I feel really good for having bought it and supporting the author.
And it looks great on my shelf!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I don't mind having to pay for copyrighted works, but then the copyright holders should also have a DUTY to actually provide me with a copy. Case in point: The board game "Gunslinger" by then-publisher Avalon Hill. The company is owned by Hasbro now, but if I walk into a game store I cannot find a copy - all those made have sold out. So where can I pay and get the work in question? Only second-hand, the market that some copyright work providers appear to loathe.
"Out of print" should NOT be an option. Either the law should mandate copies be made to satisfy demand, OR the copyright should be revoked if they refused, and enter the public domain where works of art are supposed to go eventually anyway, so that others can make the copies needed.
[Left as a comment on the blog]
I've had much the same experience with electronic distribution,
except in a much smaller scale. I was the co-author of the first
edition of O'Reilly's "Using Samba", which was published under a
free documntation license, and a copy was included in every
download of the Samba program.
Using Samba was O'Reilly's best seller of the period, and jumped
by all the other Samba books of the day.
It seems that people were printing small sections, making
notes in the margin, and then buying the professionally
printed book to have it in a portable format,
but not to have to carry around huge inconvenient lumps of paper.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
This Autor is very well known here in Argentina for his "self-help books". He writes tons of books,and he doesn't even write them. Why?, well, because he is known to copy from other books and use that in his own work. Some years ago a female spanish autor realized that Coelho was copying from her work (whole chapters) and started legal measures against Paulo.
By the way To pirate is to assault ships in the sea, not copying something.
I become gradually more sick every time I see this word being misused.
Or were people illegally SELLING copies of this author's book? Oh they were? Right, THAT'S piracy.
Who cares if somebody at some other college uses our stuff and claims they created it in the first place? That only makes them look better. Depending on what "stuff" you mean, it totally fails to make "us" look better, and indeed I may very much care. Sure, we can (naively, perhaps) rely on the honor system, just like we do with GPL code or creative commons style licenses (or any other non-DRM material, for that matter). But ultimately we face the same "tragedy of the commons" challenges as the **AA, only without the massive heartless (and sometimes brainless) legal team. I'm perfectly fine if people "steal" my stuff in general, but unlike music (which is inherently inseparably from the artists who play the songs) my materials are fully separable from my own identity. Once attribution is removed (or altered) any benefit to me necessarily goes to zero. Pirated music at least has the chance to benefit the artists; the same holds for a movie exposing its actors, directors, and so forth to new audiences. Do we really believe somebody will bother to track down the "anonymous" (or mis-attributed) author of some lecture materials, just to enroll in that professor's current institution of higher learning?
It's important to also note that incentive for faculty at most places tends to focus on getting your name out, not by being a good instructor, but by your research. This is most often measured by citations (meaning the number [yes, quantity counts at least as much as quality] of times other faculty list your stuff in their references). Sure, if you release your research into the wild that's usually great. But releasing lessons, lectures, books, and other course material is a much different story. Sadly, there's typically little--if any--benefit to be gained from even creating good quality material in the first place, regardless of whether it becomes popular or not even on campus. Couple that with the potential that you'll be ripped off and gain zero credit at all, and you don't really have much reason to bother, unless you already happen to have it nicely packaged and ready to distribute anyway.
So, sure, if we're talking about lectures that are recorded in decent quality multimedia anyway, then absolutely distribute them on Google Video or wherever; there's really no down side to that. But I think you might be underestimating the time that goes into generating really good course materials, and the ease with which others can (and most likely will) strip them of attribution. That is without, of course, resorting to DRM or the like, which would defeat the whole point.
And yes, I do realize that creation costs are fixed (and sunk) and distribution costs are negligible; again, if your lectures were recorded anyway in a distributable medium, please distribute them freely. But bear in mind that academia in general is a for-profit business, replete with organizational and individual competitors. Reputation and goodwill are intangibles that can benefit from free samples, so to speak, but you'll certainly find resistance beyond a certain point to giving away the crown jewels. After all, consider the secret formula for coca-cola, for instance, is an example of so-called "intellectual property" that will likely remain a trade secret forever.
Don't get me wrong, there are also plenty of philanthropic reasons to expose course materials far and wide, but please consider that the dynamics of the situation may be far more complex than you suggest; I just wouldn't write it off as a trivial matter as you seem to imply. In many cases, it's not that they just don't "get it" but rather they are acting in a perfectly rational reaction to an arguably very broken reward system for faculty.
Yeah sure...
Giving away cars always increases sales overall
You people here on suckdot are a bucnh of frigin morons and actually believe this bullshit
He maybe you could work for free so even more job offers pour in accoridng to this logic
All that proves is that obscurity is relative. I'd never heard of this guy before the story, and it's pretty obvious that kdawson and a number of other people here hadn't either.
But now, due to this, there are a bunch of people who know who he is. People who might pirate one of his books off of his blog (especially those pirate translated versions).
Congratulations on your well-earned success, Paul. I am delighted that, in the sometimes scary new world of digital media, you have received your well-earned compensation for your artistic endeavor without resorting to market-damaging tactics. Hoorah!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Coelho is not that obscure... stores in Portugal and Brazil are so filled with his books it makes me sick.
Try Eric Flint's series of analytical articles on the relationship between copyright, DRM and the book market in his column in Jim Baen's Universe magazine on line ( http://www.baens-universe.com/ ) while the general magazine requires a subscription to read more than half the story, Eric's columns are free-and-open.
You might start here: http://baens-universe.com/authors/Eric_Flint -- start at the bottom and work up. By the time you're done you'll have a pretty complete education on the relationship of copyright, DRM and the book marketplace WITH NUMBERS.
Have a good time. Come back when you're done.
He definitely isn't the first to do this. The Publisher Baen has been doing it for years.
http://www.baen.com/library/
Just read the comments by Eric Flint and see that the authors who have books in the Library have seen a significant increase in sales. Sure, most of the books are older, and just the first one or two books in the series, but if other readers are anything like I am, then if you read the first book in a series and like it. You will definitely consider buying the second on wards.
Now the fact that he used in mainly to get notices is new, but free books really aren't
I've authored the book Zero to Superhero, and the work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative" licence. It essentially allows those who buy a copy of the e-book to give it away for free to anyone (with attribution, without changes) but in a non-commercial context (it can't be re-sold).
I believe this is fair and adds value for the reader. Besides, those who purchase the Zero to Superhero e-book aren't hurting me (financially or otherwise) by sharing it with family and friends - they are extending my potential readership who may be interested in my future works.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
This doesn't work.
The problem is that there are too many producers. If a few start giving things away for free, then those have differentiated themselves and tapped an enormous market. If everyone gives things away for free, then we're right back where we came from--marketing will once again be everything, but there will be no budget for it. Bodies like the RIAA will still need to pump certain artists and ignore others, and then profit by sales.
Maybe, just maybe, our ability to sample more material for free before deciding what to buy will help. But I don't expect this to be a widespread phenomenon.
Baaaaaaaaaah.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
What about World of Warcraft? You can get a free 10-day trial online which allows you to download the game and updates for free. How many people decided to get the 10 day trial and ended up getting hooked only to purchase a cd-key/game-card as soon as the trial was over? Or, in my case, before the trial was over because I couldn't trade with users or use the Auction House.
This strategy definately works if applied correctly and to a product worth promoting. "Free" stuff is pasted all over the internet and television. What about the "free" vacations you can win by listening to the radio and calling their "toll-free" number? When people hear/see free, they get interested because there isn't any original commitment to the product or services, so they don't feel like it's just another marketing scheme they've bit into.
I hate to say that paulo coelho is the best selling brazilian writer. But to say that someone who sold more than 150 MILLION books is an obscure author... Well, take a look at how many red hot chili peppers sold of stadium arcadium worldwide...
The point of a broadcast is to be heard, not merely to send EM waves into the stratosphere for fun. There's NO USE for sending EM waves that doesn't require at least one bit of information, not even RADAR.
Many people using it at the same time to transmit information (hint: the whole POINT of a license) interfere with each other. Read up on Shannon's law sometime or information theory, because a channel can only contain so much information. The rivalrousness is inherent, it's not something tacked on by the FCC so they can sell licenses.
Anyhow, you're barking up the wrong tree to begin with. The "all properties are rights, all rights are property" mantra is irrelevant. It's whether or not their RIVALROUS that matters. But you know that and disagree, right?
But you still have the reason for the rights backwards. It is because two people can't wear my pair of glasses that I may exclude anyone else from wearing mine, not the inverse. In other words, you have your theory of property backwards.
The notion of a right was created to address the inherent harm, the right wasn't created to CAUSE some harm to the property holder!
But that's where imaginary property gets it wrong. People imagine it to be property, so they try to attach rights that don't make sense to it and create "harm" that isn't inherent. Then they get frustrated when that doesn't work. This is because it can't work without central control of everyone's computer and a police state.
In other words, the two situations are completely different. The harm is inherent, not created, for the EM spectrum due to physics, while it's quite the opposite for imaginary property. I'd call that an important distinction, but it's clearly not one you've accounted for.
I could also argue the public good, but that's a simple consequence of one being inherent harm and the other not being anything of the sort. And no, you can't construct "inherent" harm from copying. You still have your copy! You may not be able to make lots of money, but that's hardly the point of most copyrighted works, it's only the point for a minority of commercial ones. Oh, right, you didn't realize that either, huh? This post is copyrighted, as are all the others. Thousands of works every day, and nobody getting a dime.
Unless they're paying you for this? Nobody's paying me for this, that's for sure.
But everyone only thinks of big commercial enterprises, as if they're the only copyrighted works in existence. I mean, if you're not making money, you're nobody, right? Who cares about most of the world?
See also this post by the guy who made Gmail on what it means to own a right.
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Next you attack the twisting of language. Fair enough. I'll be honest, it's not something I like. But what's the alternative? There's no such thing as "untwisting" language. Sure, you can pedantically correct everyone who ever uses it slightly wrong for the rest of your existence, but hell, what has that ever accomplished? Do people use the words "its" and "it's" correctly now? No? Well, then it doesn't work, does it?
But twisting language sure does, doesn't it? We have "piracy" (from salty brigands to commercial book copiers and finally to 8-year-olds downloading Britney Spears), we have "hacking" (from clever computer users to electronic criminals) and many more. Once I realized that there was no practical difference between twisting and untwisting language, I decided I might as well twist it in my favor.
So now you know why I don't believe in imaginary property.
Does this mean that it doesn't work like this for purely digital works? No, but it isn't evidence that it does either.
This is the evidence you're looking for.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
qwerty
I can remember when I was learning Java (around 2000 iirc) that one book proved invaluable in learning the language - and it was (and still is) free! It has been released in the forth edition now so I believe it is quite successful. Thing is the author got his and his book's name out by sharing it with the online community. Not only that, but he got direct feedback from the community on anything from source code bugs to overall structure. It's the perfect way to improve the quality of a book - listen to your readers and see where most people would like an improvement, then simply improve it (given, of course, that most of your readers aren't complete morons ;). In fact, this model proved so successful he went on and wrote two other good books "Thinking in C++" and "Thinking in patterns" in much the same way.
It kind of has some similarity with an open source project with the author in control and deservedly so reaping all the monetary profits. The community on the other hand profits from a very useful book, that you can buy in order to take advantage of the "paper-format" as opposed to a PDF displayed on your monitor, or simply to support the author (yes, not everyone is entirely egoistic in this world). And those poor students who can't afford spending to much money get a great product absolutely for free. And perhaps a couple of years down the road a few of them will write a book just like that about the next programming language that comes around or start some kind of other open collaborative project that benefits the community..
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
After working with computers for over 20 years and being online for over 10 years, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to make money as a programmer online is to be involved with with 'software as a service'. Otherwise you may as well give your programs and/or source code away for free or don't bother to program at all. Thanks to sites like (original) Naptster and The Pirate Bay, digitally encoded products are effectively worth $0 -- 'no one' is willing to pay for downloadable content unless it is worth FAR more to them than what price is being asked for it (such as serial codes for very expensive retail software). Apparently, the attitude is that 'I *paid* to get online, that's all I'm willing to pay'.
That's why online businesses that are attached to the internet infrastructure or the physical economy are able to make a buck online -- everyone else trying to make a buck online apart from the 'software as a service' business model are effectively wasting their time....
Give it up, the gold rush days of the internet are OVER....
The internet nowadays is nothing but entertainment or a source of information for 'the little guy' -- for everyone else it is either a moneyspinner or a moneypit.
Paulo Coelho isn't an underdog author at all. He's actually the best selling Brazilian author of all time. He's sold more than 100 million copies of his books in multiple different countries.
This isn't a guerrilla marketing thing or anything like that. He doesn't need more marketing at all.
I hope people see this as a proof of concept showing that online sharing doesn't actually hurt sales - even for the big ones - it actually improves sales. Most people who wouldn't buy his book still won't buy it but hey, they can talk to friends who might buy it. At worse, he was able to spread his ideas and his art which might pay off as a personal achievement.
To be honest, I think his books suck. But, if this is really true, kudos to him.
The Brazilian film "Trope de Elite" made huge success this year in Brazil. The film "leaked out" to the internet months before it was at the cinema. Since the film was so good, people who downloaded it from the internet are actually contacting the film producers to "pay" for it. The film producers appreciated that and suggested that this noble souls to transfer the money equivalent to a cinema ticket for an anti-cancer institution. The link is portuguese: http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Cinema/0,,MUL252921-7086,00-PRODUTORES+DE+TROPA+CRIAM+CONTA+PARA+RECEBER+DOACOES+DO+PUBLICO.html
You *can* download books - on the net, using p2p, copy the file from your friend. It is not hard for an average person or author to do this once the book has been scanned/ocr'd.
:)
In addition, you can now get a new version of these. Previously the copy was in rtf, doc or PDF and would be 'sort of okay' to read via computer monitor. Now they have versions that are suitable to print on A4. Download file, print, bind and viola - book (albeit) in A4.
What you now have to ask yourself is: will a lot of people do this?
On this topic, I note that in Australia paperbacks are now over $20 for many titles. From the Wikipedia article on paperback books:
Paperback editions of books are issued when a company decides to release a book in a low cost format.
Before I found out that the paperback was designed to be the 'cheap' version of books I was horrified at the rising costs of paperbacks. I bought hundreds (literally) of paperbacks for between AU$5 and $14. When the price rose over $15 I just stopped buying. A few years later I found the price to be just under $20 and pretty much rarely bought anything.
The interesting part here is that before when I was buying $10 books I hardly had the money.. and now that I *do* have money I can't easily justify over $20. I'll go out of my way for a Simon Green that's got a 20% store discount mind you
I believe that they are working themselves into their own economical mess. I've spoken with the book store staff, publishers, librarians and anyone else who I've come across with an interest in this. They all say the same thing 'it's costing too much to produce and sell paperbacks, less people are buying them'. I've been very blunt with store managers, to the point of saying I would buy 5 to 10 books on the spot, right then, if they were $10 to $15. Oh well.
I've heard about machines that can print a book on demand. Pity they will never bring it here, I've love to go the 'buy 10 and save' option on one of those.
Most people are honest, and will buy stuff it it's realistically priced for what it does. Coelho has found millions of new readers who love his ideas, and so will go on to buy his books for themselves and for friends. Good marketing. It's when people's ideas are stale and their sales start to decline that they get paranoid about pirating.