Authors Without A Yacht (AWaY) discussion

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2010/05/j...

I have to give Joe credit. His experiment to see how many copies of his compilation of his collected works will be pirated with his permission looks really interesting.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05...

It is high time this sort of experiment was conducted.

So far, it has not been picked up on Astatalk.
http://astatalk.com/keyword/JA%20Konrath

I'm all with Marilynn here. I think Joe does an incredible disservice to authors around the world with his "experiment." It reeks of many things but not exactly of common sense or business smarts.

Guido,

Giving free reads as a means to build an audience is fine, but giving away the same book you are selling has down sides. Granted, Baen has made a name for giving away the first ebook in a series, but they make out on that, because their PRIMARY market is paper books. The paper still sells, because readers that want to purchase the rest of the series in paper will also buy the free first book ebook in paper (after reading it for free) to have a full set on the shelves. Doctorow, Konrath, and several others I've seen take this line about piracy not hurting them sell a LOT of print books.

In fact, in a discussion of Doctorow, someone mentioned pirating one of his ebooks to GET an ebook copy of a print book she already owned by him, so she could carry it with her on business trips and still have the paper copy safe at home. Of all the reasons out there to pirate, that's probably the least offensive to me, and if that's what Doctorow primarily deals with for piracy (with 6000+ sales per month, it might be for him), I can understand why he's so relaxed about it. He's not worried about selling 60 books in a month...or 6, as some new authors are.

But what about the people whose primary market is NOT print? What about the authors whose primary market is ebook? What about the authors that have the bulk of their works available only in ebook with no print counterpart? Fail two...beyond the fact that many authors do not have the established audience these guys do...is the fact that many authors do not have a print product to "fall back on" for sales.

I've done a week-long or three-day-long type of first ebook in series free scenario and had sales spike on the rest of the series, as well...in ebook. But that's not piracy. That's me reaching out to legitimate purchasers on a legitimate distribution channel with a gift of a free read.

I will note that Konrath's experiment fails test three right there... Chances are, he's going to reach legitimate purchasers with the way he's set this up...not the pirates...or at least not the pirates right away. How do you reach the pirates? Do what I did with some of my free reads. Post them on the pirate sites (I do, with notation that the FREE READS ONLY may be passed along, hand to hand). Like Doctorow and Konrath, I see the point of free reads going viral. Unlike them, I am loading free reads to pirate sites after I remove illegal posts.

If he does reach pirates, two things will happen to further skew his results. One is that he cannot physically track the downloads that will occur on the real pirate sites. The second is that the bulk of those pirated copies will not occur in his one month window. Something like this has long-term results he isn't taking into account.

The thing that bothers me about his experiment...beyond the ones I've stated above? He's selling the same book in ebook concurrently with the experiment. Now, I don't know about you, but my contract with Amazon and other distribution channels says I won't undercut the price elsewhere...INCLUDING giving it away for free for an extended period of time. Unless he magically has some different contract, how is he doing this legally?

Brenna

Blogs about J A Konrath's "Steal This Book" promotion.

http://www.williamaicher.com/2010/06/...

This is the point I’ve been trying to make (and my core argument in Starving the Artist): a creator absolutely should have the right to determine the price and distribution of his or her creation. If someone wants to give away their work, that’s up to them.

Other blogs which comment on piracy and ebook promotion, which just happen to mention their opinions of this week's on dit.

http://farmanor.blogspot.com/2010/06/...


http://naomi-jay.livejournal.com/2505...

This was an articulate, thought-provoking post that I highly recommend. Here's a tiny snip.

But that's all kind of minor stuff compared to my main niggle: the idea that piracy isn't a problem, or at least that, if it is a problem, we should all just shut up and ignore it because it's going to happen anyway. Either that, or jump on the boat and hoist our flags alongside the pirates. No. Sorry. I'm not okay with that.