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Author Encourages Users to Pirate His Book
mariushm writes "Peter Cooper, the author of Beginning Ruby, breaks down how he gets paid for the book, including the advance and royalties, giving a nice clean explanation of how authors get paid for their books. He also describes the negotiations over the second edition of the book, in which he begged his publisher, Apress, to offer the ebook version for free, believing (strongly) that it would promote sales of the paper book. He even notes that the original version's ebook barely had noteworthy sales, so it seemed reasonable to offer up the ebook for free to drive more attention. No dice. Even though Apress has done that with other similar titles, it wouldn't agree. As he retains the copyright for the actual text, he encourages people to buy the book and create an online version of it without covers, contents table and indexes, promising not to enforce his copyright over the new work."
I have dealt quite a bit with copyright law when creating FairSoftware's virtual company license. I'm afraid the author is incorrect when he says that he retains copyright, therefore he can authorize people to download his book for free. He most likely granted the publisher an exclusive license. The whole point of the word exclusive is to say that although you are the author, you can't give the text to anyone else anymore, once you signed the book deal.
That being said, this is a great blog post for everyone who ever wondered how tech book deals work. He is making about $2 per sale of a $40 book! So there's a great debate about whether to go with an editor which will take a much lower cut, but will also not be so good at promoting the book. At least someone is making money from publishing content related to open source technology :-)
There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but I’m NOT A LAWYER, and I can’t guarantee what Apress would do about it – so you’d be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, don’t pirate it?
So he's covered his own ass and recognized that Apress will most likely not see things his way. Now, to do what the summary suggests is confusing to me. I don't know his contract with Apress but I must question why, if he is so upset with Apress, he isn't just releasing an HTML version of his work online. Surely he must have the source documents he wrote to write the book, correct? Then why doesn't he simply make his own HTML plain text version and host it.
The answer is painfully simple. He's reached an agreement with Apress for digital distribution rights making them the only possible channel for distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a default contract for them. Regardless, downloading the Apress version on RapidShare is copyright violation with Apress, regardless of what the author says. There's no question of that.
If I've misjudged Peter Cooper's character, I truly am sorry but he is either willfully or through ignorance putting you at risk with these suggestions. Do not follow through.
My work here is dung.
Guess who's next book isn't going to be published by a real publisher... LOL.. If he thinks he gets too few money per book he can always publish his next book himself, I guess he just forgets all the other costs after he gets his share.. ofcourse there is a huge profit margin for the publisher, but lets not forget that it's not easy to do the publishing yourself, it takes a lot of effort and money to publish a book.. And ofcourse as I said if he doesn't agree then publish it yourself.. AND, he thinks he owns the copyright of the text, but I bet he didn't read the contract which mostly mean he owns the copyright, but he can't publish it for free without permission from the publisher.. Read your contracts BEFORE you sign anything... but hee I guess he was just happy someone wanted to publish his book.. but then again, who wants to read his book anyway ;P
I hope he enjoyed the advances and royalties 'cause he won't be getting another book deal. Doofus
...on the post is pretty interesting. Here's an excerpt:
He goes on to discuss the hassle of shipping, returns, credit card processing, storing the books, etc. All true, all good stuff.
For what it's worth, going through a small local publisher with my JavaCC book has worked out pretty well. We did a much smaller print run - 350 books - so the storage wasn't as much of a hassle. Definitely a niche market, though.
The Army reading list
So is he providing the origional manuscript? Is there even a copy of it before it was sent off to the publisher? You forgot to mention that the publisher edits the book as well.
...why doesn't he offer a download himself? That way everybody who downloads it at least comes to his web site and there is no "what if he turns around on his promise not to enforce copyright" doubt in the air.
Publishers that offer higher rates of royalties tend to do either less promotion or only take on authors who they know have a good record of producing popular books. You'd expect Stephen King for instance to be able to negotiate a better deal than John Smith on his debut novel.
From the article: ;-) So, er, don’t do it!
Apress couldn’t do anything about it because everything would be my copyright. Now, I cannot allow you to do this, but I would not pursue you or enforce my copyrights if you did
In the United States, failing to enforce your copyrights negates them. You must protect and enforce them or you lose them.
What the author should have said was that he expressly authorizes the electronic distribution of his work to anyone.
Why does this link go to some Cancer site, and not take me to the Article... And if they expect me to sign up, then can someone please post the REAL URL? I really want to read this article.
"All the traffic to the site is going to somewhere you can donate to a good cause and earn some actual karma."
Uh, yeah... and so now those of us who read the nonsense comments and thought "I'd like to see for myself what he really said" can't actually get to your original blog post.
Well played, genius boy.
Can't speak for anyone else, of course, but as for me... when someone hides his original words I'm not inclined to trust his claim that they were misrepresented.
So, you are unhappy with Slashdot's summary and the resulting comments, but instead of emailing the "editors", or writing a post like this one, correcting the inaccuracies as you perceive them, you redirected your site to the American Cancer Society, sending them hits from people who have no intention of going there, thereby costing them wasted bandwidth, and risking slashdotting their servers? Do you think that your pique, or your new-father status justifies that? Maybe your lack of sleep explains it, but it is all in very poor taste, and reflects very poor judgment.
Your "solution" is to redirect all slashdot readers elsewhere? Then you're being portrayed accurately here.