Mar 17th, 2012, 9:02 am
I wanted to say this... (aside from many of the points made above)

1st - in the early days of radio... people had their doubts.... but it became a way for musicians and record labels to get people interested in their songs and eventually sell them a record or every record the band ever made...then a tape...then a CD... then an mp3 of all that content.......there was also "piracy" in the days of radio as well.... people would record a tape of their favorite songs from the radio that the DJs were "sharing" and the radio stations were making massive amounts of money via advertising off the backs of "these hard working bands and record labels".... yet even with people making their own tapes from the radio.... BILLIONS of tapes were sold... even when napster was at its peak... BILLIONS of CDs were still sold.... so the original content producers were still making a living doing something they love and everyone down the line was getting a cut of it as well...

2nd - overall and in general... authors and publishers (bands/record labels/script writers/movie producers etc)... are going to make MORE money with their books being shared than they would without their books being shared... either via the radio/library/internet/word of mouth/book swap etc......especially the authors who produce REALLY GOOD CONTENT....it will go viral...worldwide..... I think some authors (esp older than 40 or 50ish in age) have limited thinking... they are thinking too small.... this is a GLOBAL economy and a GLOBAL world now.... times have changed... dont fight the changes.. embrace them and roll with them...you can still grow a wide fan base and profit very much if you do roll with the changes in the right way..... or you can become jaded, bitter and upset and will get run over....

3rd - people love the portability of ebooks... but NOTHING is like having a real book in your hands... and having an ebook stored on a ereade/tablet is very "cool"... but having a REAL book on your coffee table.... thats even cooler..... now multiply that x 10 if you have a complete series of an author on a book shelf.... people love to collect, you see....

4th - I firmly believe that many pirated books/movies and so on....go unread and unwatched.... even an mp3 that is pirated often times will be listened too only a handful of times... is this true in every case.. NO... its not... but there is a very large % of pirated stuff... I would estimate say 40-65%... that is pirated stuff that the downloader is either never going to use/read/watch.... or WOULD NEVER BUY IT IN THE 1ST PLACE had it not been shared online.... so is it truly a "lost sale" to the original content provider/author/band.... NO.... a sale that was never going to be a sale in the 1st place...is still the same...a no sale/no profit situation.... BUT... of the % that pirated/shared content it is viewed/read/etc.... that has a large potential to become a sale, when the person likes the content they buy it......and even an increase in future sales.... due to them becoming a fan/collector of that author/band etc... so they can display it on their coffee table or shelf... tell a friend about it... or buy it as a birthday gift for someone they know... and or buy tickets to a concert of that band... or go to see the author at his book signing and buy a book there... and so on... you get the idea.....there are many ways to make a buck....

5th - think of big authors/bands and so on... people who outsell you by MILLIONS of books.... they are still making MILLIONS of dollars.... just look at the income these people make... even though their content is shared online thousands of % more than the lowly 1st book of some unknown novelist.... or some band just starting out.... so we know there is still HUGE profits to be made out there...bc the people whos stuff is getting shared the most are still buying mansions and sports cars... and their wives are still getting half of a a very large pie in the divorce... (LOL)

lastly.....I just wanted to also point to another big roll with the times guy who just made MORE MONEY rolling with the times than being against the grain.... case in point... Louie CK... smart and creative.... if only everyone could think outside the box and think bigger/global...

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Louis-C- ... 28358.html

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/14/2635 ... on-theatre

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/1 ... 52506.html

and I would venture to guess that his TV show has more viewers now, his live shows will get more tickets sold and his future ventures will also sell very well...
Mar 17th, 2012, 9:02 am
Mar 17th, 2012, 8:41 pm
I am a freeloader.

I have read thousands upon thousands of books and comics by downloading their pirate versions.

I could never afford to buy all of them. Certainly, I could have bought a fraction of them and refrained from reading anything illegally. But then I would have restricted my own culture. My cultural horizons are wider because I perused all those books and comics illegally.

I believe my cultural development is more important than your money, authors and publishers. If you believe money is more important, this is my advice to you: stop writing and start trading at the stock market.
Mar 17th, 2012, 8:41 pm
Mar 18th, 2012, 8:39 pm
Dear Mr Shepherd,

I saw your article in the Guardian, and was moved to respond. However I wanted to engage in a lengthy discussion, which is better served on this forum than the comments section of the paper. It's possible I may say some things which seem inflammatory; please believe me when I say that is not my intention. I am not a writer by profession, and the internet is very unforgiving in terms of the tone of the written word. I am not trying to offend you in any way.

I should also say that this is the second response I wrote to you. In my first response I went into depth about why I think piracy is so prevalent, the motives behind it and what can be done to combat it. But just before I clicked "submit" I realised something. After much reflection, I came to see that the question you pose is highly disingenuous. After all at some point in your life you will have taped a TV programme on a VCR, made a mixtape off the radio, copied a CD for a friend or photocopied parts of a book from a library. (I don't know anyone in the UK who hasn't done at least one of these things, and I doubt anyone will believe you if you say you haven't). These things are all illegal in the UK and what's more, morally and ethically questionable.

So asking members of this website why they engage in piracy, in order to gain some "understanding" is hypocritical. You know fully why people do it, because you have done it yourself. The only difference is that on this occasion you are the "victim", and understandably you don't like it.

Now please be aware I am not trying to justify piracy here. I am not using the argument that two wrongs make a right, because they most certainly don't. I am merely pointing out that I don't believe your question is sincere. If you want to know why piracy is prevalent then just ask yourself why you did it.

My next thought is that this is a well crafted publicity stunt. I read a lot of books, as does my wife. I read the Guardian religiously. Yet I had never heard of you until yesterday. It prompted me to google you, read the reviews of your book and then want to buy your book. But now I can't shake off the thought that in fact I've been manipulated. You gained a buyer for a few moments, but then lost him. I'd be interested in your response.

What's more you got a Guardian article out the forum, for which no doubt you have been paid. The forum commentators who responded to you in good faith haven't received anything, and you appear to have selectively used their quotes for your own agenda. A follow up article will no doubt appear in the Guardian, which you will be paid for, and once again you get some free publicity for your book (I would be grateful if you don't quote me in that article). Again, a little disingenuous perhaps?

I am aware that I am beginning to sound a little paranoid. That's not my intention. When I started this I wanted to give an honest answer to what I thought was an honest question.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer some of my questions? I would like to know why digital versions of books cost as much as the physical versions? The only sensible reason I can come up with is that if the cost of digital versions truly reflected the productions costs (plus, say 100% mark-up) then no one in their right minds would buy the costlier print versions. This would be a bad thing, as that would mean the death of physical books. But beyond that I'm stumped. I'm truly baffled how publishers think they can charge the same for an e-book as a print book. They must think we're mugs.

And clearly we are. Because a lot of people will pay those prices. You only have to look at how much money is being made by the music and film industries, where piracy is much more prevalent, to see that many people accept being ripped off. But a lot won't. And they get labelled as "pirates".

One example of how your publisher is ripping off Joe Public is the fact that should I buy a paper copy of your book, if I decide I want to read it on a Kindle or ipad I need to pay again for it (£6.99 on amazon). Whereas the last physical textbook I bought included on-line access to the full text, with additional information and updates. Guess which publisher I will buy from again?

I would also refer you to schemes where the public has been allowed to pay what they think something is worth. Radiohead's In Rainbows, and the pc game Championship Manager were both released as pay what you want (I think Champ Manager had a minimum of £2.50). I paid a fiver each time. To date I have not listened to or played either, and probably never will. I believe both made stacks of money, but as a journalist you're in a better position to investigate that. For the record I am once again not trying to justify piracy. But I am trying to make the point that people are generally happy to pay what they think something is worth.

I could go on and on, but I'm boring even myself now. I wish you luck with your book, and I will keep an eye out for it in charity shops. (That's not a slur, I refuse to pay more than £3 for any books that haven't been signed by the author. And given the thousands of classics I still have to read there's no way I'm paying full price for a new author-most of the books I own are "pre-loved").

To re-iterate, none of what I say is meant to be offensive in any way. If you are genuine and wish to continue the conversation then I would be happy to respond.

regards


PS. I might be being paranoid again, so forgive me, but did you really imply that your book being pirated could lead to the death of all culture? I know authors have to have an element of narcissism but come on? :)
Mar 18th, 2012, 8:39 pm
Mar 19th, 2012, 2:44 pm
Dear Mr Shepherd,

I understand that from the point of view of an author of pirated goods, the whole issue of illegal downloading is distressing and morally wrong. I am not trying to say that an author should not be paid for his work. However, for all the talk about global markets, global village, etc., many books, films, TV shows, and others, are not available in many geographical regions. Let's focus on the ebooks here, since this is what your original inquiry have been about.

I bought an ebook Reader because it is convenient; I do not need to carry loads of books to the University, everything is in one place, and I wouldn't be able to find any more place on my shelves for new physical copies of books anyway. When an ebook I want to read is in Polish bookstores, I buy it - even though they are still expensive - because yes, I do believe that authors are entitled to be paid for their work, and discouraging them from writing is the last thing I would want to do. But the case where what I'm looking for is actually available in Poland is extremely rare; so I tried Internet bookstores from other countries, Barnes&Nobles, Amazon, an many others. And I found out I couldn't buy books there as well. If it turns out that all the items I wish to read are unavailable to me because of where I live, even when I have honest intentions of paying for the product, why should it bother me that the piracy is considered wrong by the same companies which denied me a legal opportunity of purchasing their product?
Of course it could be said that I should be patient and wait for when the book is released in my own country. But I have been perusing local bookstores for quite a few years, and I like to think I know the type the distributors are likely to invest in by looking on what's available on the shelves and I have serious doubts that what I am interested in will ever make an appearance in my own country; why should they have the power to decide what I can read?

What bothers me immensely is that I can buy a physical copy in the Internet bookstores like B&N or Amazon and have it delivered, but the same bookstore claims that the digital version of the same book is unavailable in my geographical location. I can afford to buy an ebook; I cannot afford to buy a book and pay additionally twice of its price to have it delivered. I am sorry that you think we are robbing you, but unless this issue of availability changes, piracy remains the only way for many of us.

Regards,
Y.
Mar 19th, 2012, 2:44 pm

We are all without fault batshit crazy.
Mar 29th, 2012, 8:58 am
My two cents

I never buy anything that has DRM protection because as a previous poster stated, If the company that owns the DRM protected books goes under then you lose access to all the books you own and you have wasted an awful lot of money.

I don't really like ebooks but since I live in a non English speaking country I am sometimes forced to read them.

ebooks are way too expensive. Charging the same price for an ebook as a paperback does not encourage me to buy an ebook. After all its just a tiny word file that I can only read on an electronic device sold by one massive company. There are zero production costs. If Amazon goes under or they discontinue the Kindle then I have no more books. Why would I buy into that?

I love real books and I still buy them all the time.
Mar 29th, 2012, 8:58 am
Apr 2nd, 2012, 12:50 pm
Mr shepherd,
I own over 3000 books which i have purchased from bookstores and roughly 2000-3000 ones bought
from thrift stores junkyard sales and likewise. I stopped buying books some 4 years or so because i had all the books, of the authors i liked so i looked at the reviews and bought the promising ones of
the new writers after paying around £7 to £10 for the books and i couldnt even read the books beyond a few pages of them. Now after wasting so much of money decided to buy books of only the authors i knew n liked. I have only
begun to buy unknown authors after i read them here find them worthy of collecting. There are authors like david ignatius , nick boyd, greg iles to name a few which i discoverd here who now have all their available books on my shelf with the others on my priority buy list. Now would they have gained a customer if i dint find them here, Of course not! But now i cant wait to have my hands on their new books. I still pay the outrageous amount for their books but now i am a contended n loyal lifetime customer. Now u tell me if they gained or lost money from having their books here.
Apr 2nd, 2012, 12:50 pm
Apr 10th, 2012, 3:28 pm
I know how much it would suck to feel that you are not getting your due, especially since you probably worked so hard to start and finish a book.
But would you rather that your book be printed and not distributed electronically, whether paid or for free (in file sharing sites), and you remain in obscurity?

I have my own library at home and I have my e-reader.

I download a book because of the following reasons:

Some books are available in my country. I live in a Third World country and books are very expensive. We have import tariffs for books, which jacks up the price in bookstores. Sometimes, if I import books, I'd get taxed when I pick it up in some smelly, government office.

If I'm just mildly interested in a book, I would prefer to read it right away so I'll download it. If I don't get to download it, I simply forget all about it. If I'm really into the author/series/book, I wouldn't even think about downloading a free book. Why? Because as soon as it hits the shelves, I'm right there getting an actual copy.

For example, a certain thriller author's work is widely distributed across several sites but I have actual copies of about 20 of his books. However, I do have some of his books in epub format. Why? Because that particular series is so hard to find in my country. But I still buy his books every so often. I still search for actual copies of his work.

E-book sharing never dissuaded me from buying an actual book. I think the problem now is that people are more discerning about their purchases. They want to get a taste of the book or the author before actually spending for a copy.

Sometimes, we get electronic copies of the work of a certain author. For example, in this trilogy, shall we say, we have the first two books electronically. When the third book came out, we bought an actual copy. I don't think we would have bought the book if we didn't get to read the first two and became satisfied that it's worth buying.

That's just my two cents. I hope you won't feel so bad anymore.

Have a nice day!
Apr 10th, 2012, 3:28 pm

Life is short, hit the thanks button!
Please don't post my links outside this forum.

Have a nice day! :)
Apr 12th, 2012, 4:54 pm
And he wonders why people complain about the price of ebooks:

The U.S. government filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc., and five major publishers on Wednesday, claiming they have colluded in the price-rigging of e-books. The agreement among the companies allegedly occurred in 2012, before Apple launched the iPad. It was aimed to limit Amazon’s ability to discount ebooks. To achieve this, the conspirators switched the price-setting from the sellers to the publishers.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/6812/apple-founder-steve-jobs-leader-of-ebook-price-fixing-cartel

The publishers know the end is nigh, but they will not go without getting the last drop of blood from the reading public. QED.
Apr 12th, 2012, 4:54 pm
Apr 13th, 2012, 8:40 pm
Again, I realize that I am coming in late, but I have to say that I find this conversation quite fascinating! Many good points have been brought up and I agree with just about everything that has been stated.

I have certain views on 'pirating' as it is called. Music, for instance, is a big one that I have long contended with various friends and family over. Explain to me why I should pay for an entire CD/album download that has only 1 song released thus far that I like? I can go and sample it at a site and then, if I like, I will be more than glad to go and actually purchase the whole thing in its entirety for download.

I find that I do this with movies as well. I want to see it; I do not wish to pay almost $55USD for my husband and I to go to the theater. Therefore, I will download a 'screener' so to speak, watch it and if we like it, we buy it when it comes out on DVD. We have done this numerous times: The Eagle, Legion, Knocked Up, Transformers 3 just to name a few. We even watched a screener of Hunger Games and then went and paid to watch it in the theater!

I feel the same way about books. Case in point, Matthew Reilly's Jack West series; my sister loaned me the paperback for the first book. I read it, loved it! I downloaded the other two, loved them so I went and purchased all three of them.

Are there some that are not like me? More than likely the vast majority are nothing like me. But remember, if I hear you mentioned, I will look you up. Incidentally, reading this discussion, I looked you up. See what free public marketing can accomplish?
Apr 13th, 2012, 8:40 pm
Apr 18th, 2012, 5:49 am
Mr. Shepherd,

sometimes I'm getting tired of all these arguments about piracy, because quite frankly, it is a luxury afforded by people that are spoilt for choice.

We forget that in far the largest part of this planet the option to decide whether or not to use pirated intellectual property does not exist. It simply comes down to a question of have or have not. I live in Jamaica, which is far from the worst I've seen in my life, and I could not buy your book if I wanted to, despite the fact that we're an english speaking country. And if it were available, hardly anyone could afford to use a quarter of a weekly labourer's wage to buy a paperback. Credit cards can be accessed only by seriously wealthy people, which pretty much rules out on-line purchases, even if Amazon were to service the area, which it isn't. In other words, we're not your market; not even potentially. Maybe I'm being simplistic, but no market no sale; no lost sale - no loss or damage.

The main problems seems to me that the digital world has managed to cover this planet pretty comprehensively, while the publishing industry has stagnated in some 19th century business model. And in this sense the genie really cannot be put back into the bottle. For the last thirty years you've been telling people all over the so-called third world about what they are missing out on, and now that many of them agree and are trying to partake - in the only way they really can - you turn around and say:"Sorry, chaps! We didn't really mean you lot."

A few days ago some major publishing corporations got taken to task for price-rigging, which is just another word for cheating consumers. One of the companies cited, Hachette, has been a leading voice in the fight against piracy. How ideologically convenient it all is. It seems OK to be a thief as long as the money ends up in the right pockets. I'm actually surprised you as an author do not feel victimised by the business practices of these companies. Surely the first order of business for an author is to connect with his readers. I doubt that incidents like the above do much to promote that.

In fact, the more I learn about this, the more I become convinced that they are really only concerned with one thing: control. Control of markets, authors and intellectual property. To that end they make the rules. And now we are here, breaking those rules, with the help of a bit of technology. So they call us Pirates. It cannot be a coincidence that many young authors choose to market themselves outside of traditional structures. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they share my feelings about the parasitic abuse of power common in the publishing industry.

Personally I believe that piracy will only end if the publishing industry is totally revamped. You cannot deny a large part of humanity their share of the intellectual heritage of mankind because of some agreement these companies made years ago about copyright conventions and territorial boundaries. We need a new order, a new formula. You need a new system. If we had digital books that cost 1 dollar, but sell easily worldwide, by the millions, everybody would be better off: consumers, authors and even, I suspect, the publishing businesses themselves. After all; even piracy isn't free. It works with equipment, electricity and internet access that have to be paid for, often enough at a personal sacrifice. EBooks easily could be competitive if they were published under different rules and with less greed. It is one of the reasons Amazon is such a success, and explains the ongoing conflict between publishers and on-line booksellers.

As it is now, aside from Northern America, Europe and to a degree maybe Australia, you have no markets. Everywhere else is a literary wasteland, with a few rare exceptions here and there. And if somebody is pirating your book, that is most likely where it will end up, on a cell phone, in some godforsaken out-of-the-way place without access to public libraries, bookshops or anything else; except a tenuous connection to the WWW. Most of these good folks weren't customers to begin with, so as far as I am concerned you didn't loose a sale; you gained a reader, and who knows ....

I could expand the discussion by going into arguments about the relationship of availability of relevant books and literacy, the importance it has for a common knowledge base, and how much we all depend on that if we are serious about turning around the degradation of the world we live in ... but let me just say one thing: You are an author because all your life you enjoyed easy access to books, the most basic route to a reading habit, functional literacy and self-education. If trying to help people gain access to those same tools makes me a pirate, so be it. I think of this as a revolution, quiet and without bloodshed, finally giving the disinherited of this world a measure of access and choice instead of a bible. A youngster in China being able to read a western dystopian novel or paranormal fiction, a girl in Burundi reading romance with some relevance to her life written by african-american authors instead of some old tattered Mills & Boon; I don't really care. What matters is the habit, because that will lead to other things .. and perhaps even a future. A pretty good reason to be a pirate, wouldn't you agree? Put that in your newspaper and charge them for it. Most likely it is also owned by one of the publishing giants that strive for monopolies of opinion making instruments and intellectual property.

HJ
Apr 18th, 2012, 5:49 am

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E N J O Y !
Apr 24th, 2012, 7:16 pm
I have over 800 books, (whether in hard copy, paperback or trade copies), in my personal library at home. Unfortunately, my eyes aren't what they used to be, and I switched to electronic books. At first I had a Palm Pilot. I can't tell you how many books I bought for that thing!! As per usual, the damn thing died, and my daughter bought me my first Nook. I tried to download the hundreds of books from my Palm to my Nook, and ran right smack into the DRM fiasco. We don't own the books we're buying! So I had to start all over again; Barnes and Noble and the other booksellers must have had my customer name up on the wall with six gold stars after all of the money I spent...re-buying the books I not only had in hard copy from them, but also all the electronic versions.

I hope that explains some of us. We can lend out our hard copy books, and it's no problem. But the ebooks we buy aren't even ours to begin with. let alone lend! CJ Cherryh has a DRM-free site for her books. Even though I already have the hard covers of all of hers, I patiently await every electronic book she puts on her site. I generally re-read everything I have, as long as the author is good.

Maybe that will help...I have bought not once or twice, but THREE times for the authors in my collection. How can they complain about that?
Apr 24th, 2012, 7:16 pm
Apr 25th, 2012, 3:01 am
There is a very good public speech by author Gary Doctorow on the subject available on YouTube. I tried to load it here, but no luck. Either I'm doing something wrong or I cannot be done.

Whatever, this is the item in question:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-jbe4gBbLw

Nearly 40 minutes of intelligent dissection of the whole copyright / privacy argument and some interesting alternate proposals. Worth watching.
Apr 25th, 2012, 3:01 am

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E N J O Y !
Apr 25th, 2012, 7:15 am
I don't think this discussion serves a purpose anymore. Mr Shepherd hasn't been back here since 21 March. Unless he didn't bother to log in of course!
Apr 25th, 2012, 7:15 am

If a link is dead and you don't get a reply from me, please refer it to a Mod. Apologies for the inconvenience.
May 18th, 2012, 11:23 am
well I guess I should say a little here as am a big ebook reader...


Firstly before the advent of real ebooks and masses of them (have been reading ebooks since 1990s on my psions) I would nip in to a library to borrow a book to read and if I liked it I would then buy it... And as a result 4000+ later I am still buying books which my beloved partner is wanting a bigger house for!!!! Now I know the next comment will not go down well with some but I see ebooks here on mobilism as I do a public library as to be honest what is the real difference. A library buys a copy of a book and shares with 1000s of people and may be 10s of 1000s if in city such as london! And that book may even be read by the same person(should they not buy the book then?) multiple times as well. So thats where the similarities lay as the only real differnece again is we if we wish keep the ebook.. Now Like I said I have 4000+ Books and alot have been bought as a result of "freeloading" ebooks of sites such as mobilism, and at least 80% of the authors I now read I would have never read if it not for this site...My reading range has become so diverse that I feel some much better for it and if you like happier too... Now I don't always agree with owning illegal content but I like most others prefer the try before you buy and when in a lot of cases the only difference in cost of a hard copy and digital copy is a few pence then sorry I will not buy when it's free and as a result I now have read many books freely which in turn has resulted in me buying a hardcopy too..SO this in turn has resulted in further sales to the authors too.. Now again there are books I have lent to colleagues and friends too because I recommended it and inturn they have bought their own copies and in alot of case's have passed on a DIGITAL copy for them to read too..


I guess there are many points of argument here in this topic, and the main one is is it right?????
THE ANSWER IS NO!

Why do we do it?
For me it's the freedom to try something to see if I like it and if I do then buy a real copy to enjoy and relax with.

Is it right to lone and book,cd,film to someone??
No not really as if the argument is used as mr shepard has then EVERYONE should buy a copy regardless of the intent as there is a loss in revenue otherwise .And this would have to include Libraries too..

How can illegal content be stopped?
It cannot be done as there will ALWAYS be people who want everything for free. But things could be made cheaper...
Why is digital still nearly as exspensive as hardcopies? There's no printing,product or delivery costs.... And digital copies can be still exspensive even when a book,cd,film has been out 10 years!!!!

May be if the cost's reduced so would the illegal downloads... IE if a book I saw digital was say £2 I may buy it but when its £8 nope never unless I new I liked it..


Well I guess I have waffled enough...My final comment is....

IF YOU LIKE IT THEN BUY IT!!!!!!


regards
Lohtse

PS excellent debate!!!!!
May 18th, 2012, 11:23 am

Proudowner 106 PDA's Psion, Palm, Symbo, WinMo & Android.12GPS's!
Jun 2nd, 2012, 4:24 pm
Just a general rant in line with the thread.

Personally, the reason I pirate ebooks is because I love to read, but I can't afford to keep buying books. Our wages are worth a third of the US dollar. Minimum wage is $200 where I live. Imagine a generation that's grown up reading english books at school or borrowed them from more well-to-do friends who actually have the cash to splurge on books that cost $10-20 each. Suddenly when they're out of high school they're still addicted to reading but no longer have the means to get them since outside of certain school libraries, the public libraries suck ass or don't exist at all.

Imagine being a college student taking on tens of thousands in loans just to finance an education or a high-school graduate who goes directly into the work force. They still want to read but can no longer afford or get access to books due to their limited monetary resources. Add the fact that mainstream English book here are sold at the US/UK market prices. It's doable but we'd only be able to buy at best one or two books a month. A dozen or two a year. And yet since the advent of ebooks, we've suddenly been given access to thousands of "pirated" ebooks.

It might be a moral dilemma but again, please understand that we're avid readers. We're the customers who have been faithfully buying books all this while even though we're now pirating ebooks on the side to satisfy our reading needs that can't be sated with a mere 1-2 legal purchases a month, which is all we can afford. I read on average 150 pages a day. Most novels last only last me at best 2-3 days. So there's a huge time gap in between...

I'm not saying I wouldn't pay for the ebooks I've been pirating. I'm just saying, it's stupid to think I'm going to pay full (paperback) price for a bunch of text on a screen DRMed to a specific format. In short, you're making me pay full (physical edition) price for a bunch of text, that's only licensed to me and could be taken away at ANY TIME. Fuck that. I'm not going to pay for something that I won't be able to claim ownership to. Bring it down to a reasonable electronic price and maybe I'll consider it.

I've been buying really awesome indie ebooks from authors like John Corwin (Sweet Blood of Mine) that's free of DRM and is available in all formats for download. The best thing aside from the awesome story and writing (I can't believe this guy is indie), is the price: $2.99. That's what I'm talking about.
Jun 2nd, 2012, 4:24 pm

If the download links are gone, just PM me for a reup. DO NOT BUMP MY THREAD. It only makes the links die faster.