Copyright, pirating, e-lending... the discussion continues.

[mckitterick]

When my novel, Transcendence,came out a little over a year ago and was immediately pirated, I went through a little crisis. I ended up fighting the pirates by giving it away, myself, because I figured if people were going to take it for free, they could at least get it from my website and thereby get to know me a bit more than they could via some

Comments

books borrowed from friends or the library

[queenmomcat]

I'm going to jump in and say that no, I don't think that borrowing the book from friends or a library in any way equates with a pirated copy. In the first two circumstances, the book was acquired through legitimate means with the author's knowledge (albeit indirectly through the publisher). Aside from the fact that pirating a book is gypping the author out of whatever royalties zie might get, acquiring books through legitimate channels allows the author and zir publisher to track how many books were ultimately acquired...and therefore how potentially marketable would future books by this author be?

Admittedly, the number of times library books circulate may not feed back to the publisher, but it does allow the libraries to decide what to buy. Dunno how you'd figure that out for "loaning to friends" though. Sorry.

Re: books borrowed from friends or the library

[mckitterick]

...and of course there are used bookstores.

I don't know - it's all uncharted territory here.

Re: books borrowed from friends or the library

[carmy_w]

I don't know about loaned from friends, but I'd bet that libraries have records of how often their books are checked out....
Now, getting ACCESS to those records, and getting the numbers back to the publishers, may be a whole 'nother thing.

Have you ever read the introduction to the Baen Free Library by Eric Flint (I suspect this is a REALLY stupid question)?

If not, here:
http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp

[bammba_m]

Not so long ago Jonathan Coulton posted his thoughts on music and piracy (different medium, but exact same piracy issues). Basically, he said that people steal what they can't easily get through legal channels. So if you plaster your stuff up on every webpage, store, event, whatever, people will see it easily available and get a legal copy. If you make it difficult to get, people will resort to less legal options. And I agree with him completely

[mckitterick]

I think you're spot-on about human nature - that unless we're talking criminals (and there's no controlling what criminals do), people want to acquire things legally.

If they like the things they got for free (lent to them, borrowed from the library, viewed or listened to online, or so forth), they'll want to make sure the producer gets something from that. It might be donations to the creator, watching ads, buying "real" copies later, or so forth, but I believe human nature includes fairness.

Have I made 3500+ sales or gotten 3500+ donations? Of course not. I bet that most of those who downloaded my book probably haven't even read it yet. However, I know that my novel has found many more readers this way than it would have by simple word-of-mouth advertising.

Yes, you stayed right on topic, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[paulwoodlin]

Agricultural production in America is already so efficent that it needs government support or it would have gone out of business ages ago. Now the Internet makes the distribution of information so efficent that it is harder to make a profit. Next all we need are robot factories and cheaper energy and we'll all be living on the dole.

[sf_reader]

I can't think of anyone whose books I have purchased after first having someone lend them to me, or borrowing from the library. The books I have borrowed form the library are all by people whose books I have purchased before.