Roy Osherove, author of The Art of Unit Testing, was naturally angry when he discovered pirated copies of his book on RapidShare and some people even had the guts to openly share links to those illegal versions of the book on Twitter.
It took him about three years to write the book which now sells for $40 and Roy makes about $2 for every print copy sold on Amazon. The download version of the same book costs around $25 though royalty earned from the sale of these PDF copies is even less.
Since there’s little you can do to prevent people from downloading your PDF books, Roy is trying a unique experiment – he has put some Rapidshare links on his blog from where people can download the full PDF version of his book without spending a penny. The idea is that this may convince some readers into buying either the printed or digital version of the book once they have read the pirated copy.
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow is known for giving away PDF copies of all his novels for free (under a Creative Commons License) and this in turn helps in increasing the sale of his printed books.
David Pogue, who has authored several popular computer books, however has a different viewpoint. His publishers, O’Reilly Media, do not offer electronic versions of his books only to contain piracy.
Twice in my career, ‘blind’ people e-mailed me, requesting a PDF of one of my books. Both times, I sent one over–and both times, it was all over the piracy sites within 48 hours, free for anyone to download. I’ve got a mortgage and three kids to put through college, and it broke my heart! Unfortunately, the bad apples have once again spoiled it for everyone else.
So will Roy’s experiment work? A quick poll on his blog suggests that 39% of the readers will either buy or have already bought a legal version after reading the pirated copy but 20% say they will just keep the pirated version and not buy a legal copy even if they like the book. Don’t think that’s good news for tech authors.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/book-author-offers-pirated-ebook/9911/
Reader Comments
still only 20% people are saying that they won’t buy legal version, that’s a good number.
Written by shailesh Agrawal on 09.23.09
When something is really good and people really like it doesn’t matter how manny pirate copies can be over there, people feels motivated to buy original version. It worked for Paulo Coelho… link lol
Written by Pattty on 09.23.09
Amit,
The biggest problem is that publishers dont give enough ways online to users to preview books well enough. Amazon gives few pages along with the contents page. Thats hardly enough. So piracy get encouraged. I think that adequate “preview” versions online — e.g. full access for 2 hours — similar experience as a book store would reduce piracy?
The second problem is if you happen to have a hard copy and then misplace it or leave it at a relatives place while travelling you have no way to get aceess to it except by paying full Courier charges. How fair is that?
Third ebooks suck bigtime. I have bought ebooks and they are a massive pain in the neck. Its like paying 25$ instead of 30$ for quick access and then the moment you change computers going through hoops to get access again or not being able to print the damn thing on your own cost — paper and printer. This whole Industry needs to rethink customer centricity.
I do feel very sorry for the authors who lose out in the process.
Ujwal
Written by ujwal tickoo on 09.23.09
I expect fewer will buy than state they intend to buy, but still a lot of authors like this way of marketing.
As for David Pogue’s situation, i imagine with computer books people are less likely to want the printed version as they would be using the book while doing stuff on the computer – and things like searchability will be more relevant than in novels.
Written by mand on 09.23.09
The writer knows and so he is acknowledging the fact that in this age of digitalization of content he just cannot hide his work from the appearing on the WWW, but at the same time he must be genuinely upset to see his work of 3 yrs getting distributed for nothing. I think the only solution is at the same time one publishes a book he himself needs to publish his work for the whole world to see on the www and try to make money through Ads published on the site. Still people will buy the book for keeps and also can reference it on the www if they want
Written by Bedanta on 09.23.09
Since the birth of p2p, I’ve bought more music than I ever did before (and I’m old enough to remember when there weren’t microwave ovens, let alone computers.) And especially with technical books, they are so expensive that I won’t buy them unless I have time to look them over very thoroughly and see that I’ll be able to use them over and over again for a long time. When I find such a useful tool, I do prefer to buy a hard copy because a pdf doesn’t help much when you’ve borked your OS…
Written by CS on 09.24.09
I believe any creator will benefit in the long-term by establishing personal relations with his/her fans/readers/customers. When you ‘re connected to and appreciate a creator, you’ll feel moraly obliged and happy to pay for his works. Giving away your (quality) work for free definitely builds up credibility and appreciation.
So, if this writer has this in mind, I believe eventually he will be rewarded.
Written by Stylianos Mystakidis on 09.24.09
Bedanta: ‘I do prefer to buy a hard copy because a pdf doesn’t help much when you’ve borked your OS…’ – That’s a point! ;0)
Written by mand on 09.24.09