My original title for this post was: Ebooks – Free or not be… free. OK, I’ve been reading a bit too much Shakespeare lately.
This post was instigated by an innocent comment from a friend who recently acquired a Kobo. Surprised at the price of ebooks, her husband told her not to worry: he could find any book she wanted and download it for free.
Free! I cried. But how will the author get paid? You see, we’re not talking about ebooks whose authors have made them available on Kindle or Smashwords for free, as part of a publicity or marketing campaign. We’re talking about brand new, bestselling titles being offered by certain websites – illegally – for free download.
Of course, this is nothing new. It’s been happening in the music and gaming industries for years. This does not make it OK. When I was drafting this post, I found all sorts of facts and figures about how ebook piracy takes money directly from author’s pockets, and perpetrates the myth that producing a book is ‘just writing’. Everybody can write, you learn it at school, so it’s not a big deal. Right?
Wrong. And it’s not just about writing, it’s about an author being paid for the time – often a year or more – it’s taken to write the book, and the production: editing, proofreading, typesetting, promotion and publicity. Yes, you can take out the cost of printing, storage and distribution, but these are not the only overheads incurred by someone, somewhere. If you download a book for free – without the originator’s consent – you are, in effect, stealing it.
However, there are two other viewpoints that need to be mentioned here, in the interests of a balanced argument. One, found on an ebook forum, is the valid claim that many of the people downloading an ebook for free would not read it otherwise – i.e. they would never pay for this item, so they are not really taking money out of the author/publisher’s pocket. While this doesn’t make it OK, it’s probably true to a certain extent. The other point, made by my brother-in-law, is that for new technology to ever get off the ground there needs to be some ‘free’ content out there to encourage people to be early adopters. In other words, people would, initially at least, only buy an ereader if there was a readily-available supply of free ebooks for them to try.
I couldn’t help but see the logic in this, but then there is a lot of free content legitimately available, on Kindle for instance, and not all of it is unreadable nonsense. And the majority of paid-for ebooks cost 99 pence or less. Anyway, I doubt my humble little blog will do much to stop ebook piracy – but I do hope to reach the odd person and make them think before downloading.
Oh, and just one other thing. Bestsellers where the ebook version is priced the same as the hardback? Now that is taking the p***!
Related articles
- Tor rips up the rulebook on digital rights management (guardian.co.uk)
- The Cost of Selling eBooks Too Cheaply (reginajeffers.wordpress.com)
Joanne Phillips 
April 28, 2012 at 2:09 pm
But there is plenty of free stuff available, if you want to just chase that. All classic (non-copyright) literature, of course, plus all the promotions – enough to keep anyone happy. But I agree with you, it’s infuriating when the price of the e-book is as expensive (or even more expensive) than the hardback – something to do with VAT, I believe.
April 29, 2012 at 7:50 am
Hi honey 🙂
I’ve nominated you for The Sunshine Award!
Please don’t feel obligated to take part, but if you would like to, the details are here…..
http://the-view-outside.com/2012/04/29/two-more-awards/
Xx
May 2, 2012 at 9:55 am
Thanks Vikki,
I love awards! Going to get the logo now and then follow your example – keeping it short 🙂
x
April 29, 2012 at 7:49 pm
I agree with the first comment, there are plenty of free ebooks out there, so stealing ones which aren’t free is really unfair. As for the idea that books are ‘just writing’… well, writing (amongst other things) is the organisation of words… and isn’t that the same in many professions? Lawyers and solicitors use words to settle cases and no one would ever steal from them!
Great post, Joanne.
April 29, 2012 at 9:52 pm
Brilliant post, I think you make some really balanced points here!
April 29, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Reblogged this on Cult of Racewood and commented:
Recently I came across this post by Joanne Phillips. And while I largely agree with her post; I think there’s something to be said for the fact that people even WANT to steal an authors books. Generally speaking someone isn’t going to pirate something they don’t want to read; otherwise what would be the point? I would like to believe that someone pirating a novel isn’t doing it to directly hurt the author. Ebooks can be just as expensive as their print counterparts (sometimes even more so) which has made it difficult (even for me) to justify that kind of cost. I have to really want to read a book to buy it, otherwise I download the sample from the iBookstore and wait till the price finally drops.
(PS: As much as I adore J.K.Rowling, the fact that her latest novel is $19.99 for ebook, doesn’t sit well with me).
May 1, 2012 at 4:15 am
Reblogged this on Nicolette Jinks and commented:
I second everything Joann says here. Pirating ebooks is a stinky thing to do. But it’s a fact of life in the computer age, and in truth it only takes even a novice a few minutes to figure out how to do it. I still say that if you can’t stand the thought of your book being pirated, don’t do an ebook. Stay paperback. Otherwise it’s like moving to the boonies and hating the country. Just don’t do it.
With that cheery thought, read on!!