20 October 2010

Adrian Hon on Book Piracy

Feeling like something akin to a pirate myself, I'm just going to link you to Adrian Hon's Telegraph blog post on digital piracy of books. My greatest surprise is that it took me a week to discover this post. Some thoughts about the issue have been going through my head, but they had (and have) yet to take final form. Read Adrian Hon (and his readers), and let's all go on thinking about this together.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I read Adrian Hon's article. What's with people being so goddamned cheap they can't spend $2.99 for a book? They'll spend more than that for a friggin cup of coffee! TIME TO EXAMINE YOUR PRIORITIES, PIRATES!

As always, love your blog.

akemi said...

I think publishers should provide a free pdf of the book.

I also don't think that publishers can get away with charging the same for an ebook version than a physical version. Charging $1.99 or $2.99 is much different than $7.99 - and charging that $7.99 is much more likely to upset someone and make them look for a free copy.

I think big publishing houses are swollen with unnecessary expenses and the publishing industry will experience a paring down. Smaller, leaner houses will pop up that will focus on viral marketing as opposed to spending millions, and will also be able to offer authors a much better deal.

While I adore 'real' books, I detest the amount of paper used and feel good about digital in terms of its beneficial effect on the environment (rainforest and all that.)

Regarding the whole piracy thing, I'll tell you that sometimes I feel okay with it and sometimes I don't. Therefore a discussion should definitely occur, and ultimately, everything will be decided by the market, since the web is the only real free market out there.