How to Stop a Book Pirate
Last month, Redwood City-based content monitoring company Attributor released a report saying that online book piracy costs publishers $2.75-3 billion a year, or 10 percent of total U.S. books sales. On average, it said, nearly 10,000 copies of every book published (their emphasis) is downloaded for free.
The Millions, a blog about books, the arts, and culture, tracked down one of them nasty old pirates and asked why in goodness gracious are they engaging in such nefarious behavior?
The short answer? The book industry just isn't getting its act together to get electronic book lovers what they want in the way they want.
"By some measures, he's the publishing industry's ideal customer," says The Millions, "an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends."
Says the unnamed pirate, the e-book industry isn't moving fast enough. They need to "have their ear to the ground and [be] willing to think in new directions and take chances instead of putting their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and railing against their customers, as the music industry is doing," he says. "The world is changing and business models have to change with it."
What would publishers have to do to make downloading pirated books less appealing than buying e-copies?
"I guess if every book was available in electronic format with no DRM for reasonable prices ($10 max for new/bestseller/omnibus, scaling downwards for popularity and value) it just wouldn't be worth the time, effort, and risk to find, download, convert and load the book when the same thing could be accomplished with a single click on your Kindle."
Posted via web from ebook
