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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."
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.
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.
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."
Is it really "piracy" if the author is the one doing the distribution? Not that I know if he's the one holding the copyright, but even so?
I'm just really tired of the lumping together of all kinds of filesharing under the heading "piracy".
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Brad
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.
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.
Shiver me timbers! Yarr, it oin't piracy unless thar's blood spilled, matey. We pirates don't infrinege copyright, we rape pillage and plunder and drink gallons of rum.
Stupid copyright infringers don't even steal, they're in trouble for giving shit away. We REAL pirates don't give nothin' away, we cut yer throat and keep it ourselves. Now get your arsse on that plank, yer gettin' keel hauled.
While I got you here, I'm feedin' ya some Spam since thar ain't no real meat today. Now tell me before I run ya through, should I find a publisher for The Paxil Diaries?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
from wikipedia:
Although it doesn't have to do with books or piracy, Ian Rogers has an interesting speech about "effective by design." His mantra is similar- those who embrace the scalability of the web instead of try to create scarcity will be the ones that profit.
I feel it isn't ground breaking, but his little thing on physics really put into words what I've been feeling for a long time. Worth a read.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
So giving away product increases sales? If the sale price is zero how do you make money?
Because you're overlooking an important point. You're talking about the "product" existing in two different formats. One, the electronic version, is being given away. The other, the "dead tree" version, is being sold. The production costs of the first are minimal compared to the second. There is also a real difference in the user experience and quality between the two. Giving away the first product leads to interest in it, and increases the likelihood of someone purchasing the second product.
Publishers already "give away" their product. Go to any library, and you can check out a book "for free." This can lead to interest in a given author, and make the people who read the "free" book look for, and purchase, other books by that author. This is well-known, and has been for years. The only difference is that it is now being extended to electronic media. In effect, the "free" stuff is a loss-leader. You're not making your money off the free stuff, but to increase the sales of the stuff you are making money from.
Thank you dear pirate, sir, both for the nice spam and the very graphic description of the differences between piracy, copyright infringement and filesharing. Oh, and definately find a publisher.
Now please would you let me off this plank?
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
How about libraries? How do these fit in with your theory of "if you want it, you need to pay for it"? And what is the difference, if any, between loaning a book from a library and downloading it off the Internet?
As an aside, my local library now has e-books as well as audiobooks and music available over the Internet for anyone with a library card.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
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!
Now please would you let me off this plank?
Sure thing, matey
*splash*
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest