The ethics of "free" e-books

[SerHaHa]

Your post, generally, implied that (paraphrasing) "it's going to happen and we can't stop it why worry".

No, it didn't. Again, I ask you to cut and paste anything I said that proves otherwise.

Having written many books myself, I'm quite aware of the costs involved in writing and publishing them. Trying to gouge customers by charging rates comparable to physical books and other materials for digital content is where the real theft has been occurring. Publishers, writers, creators, etc, all saw the internet as a new way to reach more customers at far less costs, and decided to try and make a lot more money with it. That's the bottom line regarding the economics of the issue IMO.

While p2p sharing may not be a direct backlash against that, although the argument is there, it certainly is continuing to contribute to the practice NOW. I agree, and as I've also stated now three times, a reduction in prices to more realistic, fair, and motivational figures is hands down the best way to fight piracy. No question about it.

I do not condone or practice p2p myself, but again, I believe I understand the factors involved which causes many others to do so. Both the legal and moral arguments for and against are irrelevant to me, as it just comes down to profitability at the end of the day, if content creators and those associated with them are to continue existing in a manner where they can make a good living, while providing their customers with a realistic and fair pricing scheme.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

SerHaHa,

I think it'll be impossible to ever enforce some sort of legal "ban" on torrenting epubs, regardless of how any of us feel. There will always be some new way to mask your IP addy, hide what you're doing, and so on.

This implies there is nothing to be done about torrenting that there will always be people who torrent. I agree with your further point that pricing may help reduce torrenting.

[Joe Abercrombie]

Interesting that this thread was started in 2008 - for me it feels like piracy is actually less of a worry than it was back then. Ebooks have become much more widely used by a much greater variety of people and the legitimate routes of supply have become (generally) a lot slicker and more reasonable.

I still think more or less what I've always thought, which is that since there's no way to really stop people pirating, efforts to somehow clamp down are pointless, the ethical arguments just go in circles, and much the best practical approach is to make your legitimate means of distribution as slick and reasonable as you can. Then most people will be willing to pay. And, indeed, I think that is becoming more and more true.

Having said that, I think the basic price point for ebooks that some people are asking for here is just unrealistically low. There may have been a time when e-books were a niche item that you could reasonably say were spun off from the main (physical) edition at negligible cost, but for some books now the e-book market is 50% or more of their total revenue. It's a bit ridiculous at that point to say that they cost nothing to produce, as the great majority of publishing processes (writing, editing, commissioning, marketing, production, design, artwork, managed relationships with retailers, etc. etc.) apply just as much to the production of e-books as physical ones, and still in general need to be done somehow to produce a quality, successful product. Printing and distribution have never really been the main costs of publishing a physical book.

One could say that very successful books don't cost much to produce after a certain point, and virtually nothing in e-form, but then those few successes go towards funding the vast majority of books that make very little or no profit. The risk of endlessly driving down the margins is that you end up with an extremely risk averse and unadventurous publishing industry who can afford to publish only sure things. For me, therefore, the right price point for an e-book is a bit less than whatever physical edition is currently being sold. That is, in general, pretty much where it is for most things now, at least in the UK.

For me breadth of availability and rights issues are more of a problem than pricing per se. That someone might want to pay in, say, Dubai, but is prevented from doing so, is really annoying for them and me. Or books in Australia, for instance, are just way too expensive in any format.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mr. Abercrombie,

Having said that, I think the basic price point for ebooks that some people are asking for here is just unrealistically low. There may have been a time when e-books were a niche item that you could reasonably say were spun off from the main (physical) edition at negligible cost, but for some books now the e-book market is 50% or more of their total revenue. It's a bit ridiculous at that point to say that they cost nothing to produce, as the great majority of publishing processes (writing, editing, commissioning, marketing, production, design, artwork, managed relationships with retailers, etc. etc.) apply just as much to the production of e-books as physical ones, and still in general need to be done somehow to produce a quality, successful product. Printing and distribution have never really been the main costs of publishing a physical book.

Thank you. I've been trying to make that point for pages and pages.

[Joe Abercrombie]

This may be getting too far from the ethics and too much into the business, but it may be worth pointing out that pricing in any industry has only the loosest of relationships with costs, as any manufacturer of bottled water or luxury watches will tell you. Pricing is about what people can be made to pay. About maximising the profit of your business as a whole. So a new Steven King book might actually be most profitable at quite a high price point. Not so much a debut author. Not so much a mid list or back list title. The thing e-books do give you is a lot of flexibility in pricing, indeed the fight between amazon and hachette was about the publisher retaining that flexibility to set their own prices.

There are a lot of very complex considerations here. If you lower your e-book price, for example, do you undermine your own hardcover market and risk destroying your core business? There seems to be this (to me) slightly strange perception that publishers are idiots and know nothing about their own business. Might it be possible that they actually know a bit more about pricing their own product than people who basically know nothing about publishing at all...? Just sayin.

[Darth Richard II]

Mr. Abercrombie,

Thank you. I've been trying to make that point for pages and pages.

You did make that point, which I agree with 100 percent. People just don't want to listen.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

One question Mr. Abercrombie. I made this statement awhile back and want to know how you would feel about it. If I go out and purchase your hardcover of The Heroes, do you think it would be unfair, for me to receive a digital copy for say, $5? Or , something around there? I can't set here and justify pirating eBooks, if I'm not forking out the money for the physical book. But, honestly I don't want to have to pay for the same content twice, because I like to use both platforms. Now, I mainly use Amazon for all my purchases, not everyone does though. And, this has been brought up a lot as to why some people pirate an eBook. They simply are not going to pay for the same content twice. Thanks

Eta: might be a bad example considering its only $7.11 on Amazon. But, if it was a new release, would that be fair?

[Lady Winter Rose]

You did make that point, which I agree with 100 percent. People just don't want to listen.

I think pro-piracy members made a point and that you two don't want to listen.

OK, seriously. When somebody says "People don't want to listen", usually that somebody refuses to listen and he/she is projecting their own failure to comprehend arguments to somebody else. Basically, something like hypocritical behavior.

SSE only arguments is: author don't get money per EVERY copy. I say, DOESN'T MATTER!

I just try to say if Internet is demolish and forbidden for all people, people will IGNORE any kind of copy available. But I believe piracy works like promotion, once you like it enough, you'll buy it.

[Darth Richard II]

Um, I'm talking about prices of ebooks, and how people think that 99 percent of the physical copy price is the physical part, when it's not. You...I don;t know what the hell you are talking about anymore.

[Lady Winter Rose]

Sorry, I misunderstand.

[sologdin]

gah. not 'piracy' yo. pirates are hostis humani generis; copyright infringers by contrast are apparently almost everyone.

[Darth Richard II]

Yarrrr?

[Joe Abercrombie]

One question Mr. Abercrombie. I made this statement awhile back and want to know how you would feel about it. If I go out and purchase your hardcover of The Heroes, do you think it would be unfair, for me to receive a digital copy for say, $5? Or , something around there? I can't set here and justify pirating eBooks, if I'm not forking out the money for the physical book. But, honestly I don't want to have to pay for the same content twice, because I like to use both platforms. Now, I mainly use Amazon for all my purchases, not everyone does though. And, this has been brought up a lot as to why some people pirate an eBook. They simply are not going to pay for the same content twice. Thanks

Eta: might be a bad example considering its only $7.11 on Amazon. But, if it was a new release, would that be fair?

Hmmm. I would hesitate to ask the question 'would it be unfair?' in this context since I don't think it means much. For me the more important question is the functional one of: 'what arrangement maximises profit?' since, in the end, it's this question that is likely to dictate the behaviour of the market. There's a lot of support in this thread for the notion of bundling the e-book with the physical in one way or another, but if there are a substantial number of people who are willing to pay full price for both (and I'm sure there are, especially for established authors), why would you as a publisher or writer choose to discount one? You might judge the reduction in illegal downloading and increase in legitimate downloads isn't worth the loss of revenue from those already paying for both.

My guess is that the vast majority of people illegally downloading aren't asking themselves a set of complex moral questions about what's fair or unfair, to the extent they think about it at all they'll probably always come up with some justification or other. Books are very cheap already, after all, in terms of entertainment for the money, but we've got someone arguing with a straight face higher up that anything over 2 bucks for an ebook is unreasonable. So I don't think tweaking your price down a couple of bucks is really going to make a huge difference to the level of illegal downloading, but it will massively reduce your profitability and possibly destroy your margin altogether.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Fair enough, thank you.

[SerHaHa]

Books are very cheap already? Define cheap?

You realize that GRRM's latest book cost 32$ the first week it was released recently via digital download? An amount of data my 260gbit connex can download in about 10 seconds, while the hard copy hard cover was only 3 dollars more? If you don't see something wrong with that picture...

It's not just tweaking prices "a couple of bucks", what's needed is a serious restructuring to what the actual value should be for digital copies. It's just a bunch of ones and zeros rearranged to look like whatever, existing as magnetic and electronic data on a small drive system inside a device you use. The cost of producing this is ridiculously low compared to hard cover books, mass paperbacks, or BluRay discs.

If action is not taken in this regard, piracy well carry on, or get worse, as prices continue to increase for digital content - google Ari Emanuals lectures on youtube, all the power players in the industry are trying to increase the costs of "digital premium content" - their words - exponentially, to offset their perceived losses due to online piracy. All my argument is, is that the opposite direction should be taken, as has been shown in test areas already, when ISPs and other groups try to enforce copyright laws, users who get threatening letters end up just googling "virtual private network", and spend an extra 5$ a month and start hiding from prying eyes. And eventually when they find a way to shut those down (if they ever try), something new will come along. You can't beat the p2p/piracy types, they have the initiative and the advantage, and trying to come at this problem from a legal and enforcement angle will yield the precise same results as the war on drugs has had using a similar strategy - massive failure.

I'm not advocating a change in price structure for actual physical copies of books and other media - the prices have been around for a long time, and that market is pretty well established and fair IMO. It's just that a digital version of something like a book should NOT cost nearly the same as that book, it should be a fraction of the cost, for many reasons, not the least of which is the cost of producing it.

[Darth Richard II]

The cost of producing this is ridiculously low compared to hard cover books, mass paperbacks, or BluRay discs.

Except its not, which is what people have been trying to point out for 23 pages,

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DRII,

One thing that may make sense is all hardbacks allowing digital copies when purchased or a discounted digital copy when purchased to discourage piracy.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Nay matey, it be copyright infringement, aaarrrrgggh!

[still bill]

I haven't read the replys yet. Having said that, yes I totally have, ( not these ones) but ye, I always buy it later same with shows

[Darth Richard II]

DRII,

One thing that may make sense is all hardbacks allowing digital copies when purchased or a discounted digital copy when purchased to discourage piracy.

Well yes, that would make sense, but I don't see much of that in this thread lately.