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No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy Is Not a Given
adamengst writes "David Pogue recently wrote a widely read blog post in which he explains that piracy is the reason he doesn't make his books available in PDF format. But in this article, TidBITS publisher Adam Engst disagrees strongly with Pogue's opinion, using sales numbers from the Take Control series of ebooks (150,000+ copies sold since 2004 with virtually no copying) as proof that making electronic versions not only doesn't necessarily lead to piracy, it may be the best way of preventing illicit sharing."
By "illicit sharing" does he mean my local library, where someone may have donated a copy?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
A run-of-the-mill e-book maybe, but *ahem* downloaded textbooks are a godsend. Try getting one of those for a "reasonable price" when they change editions every 2 weeks and the professors are chummy with their textbook author/professor buddies!
And those who won't pay for it won't pay for it. So those people will never be your customers whether you stop them from getting the product or not.
I think the point is that if there is rampant piracy, then there is demand that is not fulfilled by current distribution methods. Some of those pirates will *never* pay for it, no matter what. So they will always pirate it and you can't really stop them. But excluding that lot, then you have a population that *would* pay for it if it was in a form, or at a price point, they desired.
So find that form and/or price point and expand your market. Sure, that certain group will still pirate it, but who cares? They're going to do it no matter what, and it's not lost sales because they were never going to pay in the first place.
man, I feel like mold.