ROBUST discussion

The start of the end of piracy or just a drop in the ocean?

There will always be pirates. But if books move toward lower and lower prices, it won't be worth their while and people who claim price is a reason to steal may figure it's too little out of pocket to risk breaking the law.

I don't understand people who decide to steal others' work. I've heard theories that the folks downloading the stolen books don't necessarily read them (it's sort of like the freebie lists -- people grab the books, but stockpile them, unaware of what they contain.

Other theories posit that it's actually good for sales when pirates offer scanned books for free. Maybe it works like the giveaways on Amazon. Creates some buzz about a title. It's all over my head.

I can see the price argument as an outsider to the US market. However, the price of books here are so much more instore than if you purchase digitally off of a US or Uk site, even with the extra fees like Whispernet. Even Smashwords is as cheap as Amazon. A $10 book from Amazon equates to around $18 in my currency. Some countries do not have a good foreign exchange rate.

Why pay for something if you can just Google it with the word free in the search wording? Besides sites like Megaupload, there are hundreds if not thousands of torrent sites everywhere.

Besides Megaupload, there's 4shared.com, mobibookz (that used Megaupload),.....

Another thing I was wondering while reading the news sites this morning was what about a country like China? My husband has been to Shenzhen about 5 times now in the last two years. Each time, most every store he has walked into is selling forged brand items. He bought some Wii games the first time. All of them are probably knockoffs. He is a keen golfer, the Callaway and other brand golf clubs and clothing is available for a 10th of the price there than what he'd pay here. Yet China remains a favoured trading partner of almost any country in the world. Piracy is a way of life there yet no one outside China cares to slap their hands.

I suppose you could look at piracy as a form of commerce as it would generate interest in someone's work. I would imagine that half the people downloading your work illegally will still do so on any new works and the other half would purchase because they want to.

Well, here's a link to a story of mine that's free today and will be for five days. Go pirate it legally:
http://www.amazon.com/Maria-a-short-s...

Patricia, how long is it? The sample is incredibly short. (It's not showing as free yet in my neck of the woods.)

LOL i reread what I wrote - Why pay for something if you can just Google it with the word free in the search wording?

I should have prefaced it with this is another excuse people use to pirate. Its out there anyway so why not do it?

And thank you for the legal free download ;)

Got it. Thanks, Patricia.

It's very, very, very, very short. Not as long as that last sentence. I think it's just under 3,000 words. I haven't seen it on any freebie lists, though.

Thanks, Patricia. I only asked because I have a fantasy short story that I've thought of putting up, but it's only 3000 words and I thought it might be too short. You've had no complaints?

Two Shorts is two short stories under 1300 words together. Before Amazon price-matched it to FREE in the US only, it was 99c, but no complaints were heard. There was/is a prominent warning in the description about the length, though, so there can be no question of "passing off" a handful of pages as "a book", a complaint sometimes heard on the fora.

I think there is a market for very short fiction to be read on people's commutes, on the toilet, in waiting rooms.

Katie, no complaints but the download #s are low. When I went to bed last night/early this a.m., there'd been only 100 downloads and that was when it'd been up for almost 24 hours.

Andre, I am putting "a short story" in the titles and on the cover.

Re. piracy, I read on Aaron Polson 's blog the other day that someone has copied his book, word for word, given it a new title and barely amended cover art, and loaded it onto Amazon themselves...

It was only spotted because the pirate put it free via KDP (?) and a friend of Aaron's saw it climbing the best-seller lists.

So be careful out there...

Piracy is the Thieves Seal of Approval!

Wow, that truly is awful James. Did the person upload it as their own work?

Piracy unfortunately is a fact of life for anything and anyone these days, especially online. There are just far too many sites to be monitored effectively. Cutting off the head of Megaupload and destroying it's capacity to perpetuate the piracy of books, music and movies simply allows other sites and users to take over the hole left.

I don't think there is a good way of combating online piracy. All the legislation in the world isn't going to stop it, sadly.

Would the onus be on the author to keep tabs on his work or would it be up to readers, users and surfers of the internet to stop it?

You can't stop it. I've tried with my pirated work. Impossible.