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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."
Well I suppose the questions are whether there's a legal distinction between licensing the right to copy the book and refusing to sue for infringement, and whether in his exclusive license he retains the right to refuse to sue.
It sounds like he's not distributing the book himself and not technically licensing anyone else to do so, but claiming that insofar as he has the right to sue someone or not-sue them for infringement, he won't sue. It's a minor distinction, but IANAL and I have no idea whether there's anything to that distinction.