14 ms·

Author here. One of my books was pirated and wide spread some time ago within the community I'm in. My income dropped almost immediately, I am loosing $Xk worth

• mod 4y ago
  I don't have an answer to your question, but how do you feel about traditional libraries sharing your work for free?
  • cavalierfrix 4y ago
    In your library example, the author is still paid by the library system for their work.
    • josephcsible 4y ago
      In both this and a traditional library, one person buys the book and then a bunch of people read it for free. What are you saying is the difference between those scenarios?
      • suriyaG 4y ago
        It is not possible for a single physical book to be read by hundreds of thousands of people, concurrently. an ebook enables this. I think a more apt example is, if the library started printing the books and giving it out themselves.
        • ryoshu 4y ago
          Most libraries have ebooks these days.
          • ok_dad 4y ago
            They’re limited to a certain number of loans before the library has to buy another license, or a per-checkout fee. Physical books have about a 50 to 100 checkout lifetime and ebook licensing is similar.
            • MichaelCollins 4y ago
              Not the library I go to for ebooks.
            • matwood 4y ago
              There are quite a few different purchasing and lending models libraries use today. Outside of the big 4/5 publishers, many publishers will sell ebooks to libraries using a sim use model (pay 1 subscription fee and checkout as many times as possible over the period), and some will even let the library buy in that model perpetually.
    • aftbit 4y ago
      Not once per person who reads the book though, only once per library, or more accurately, once per concurrent check out.
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        How many libraries are there? Libraries might be the biggest customer demographic of some books.
      • 6figurelenins 4y ago
        On an annually recurring license. So the taxpayer doesn't just buy hundreds of books no one asked for and will never read, he buys them ten times over.
        • MichaelCollins 4y ago
          In what country do libraries work like that? Not in America. In America, libraries do not pay annual licensing fees for books. A book is purchased or otherwise acquired, and then lent out as many times as the library pleases. When the book wears out, the library may rebind it and continue lending it. This is covered by first sale doctrine. After the library owns that book it is theirs and neither the author nor the publisher is entitled to anything when the book is lent.
          • Turing_Machine 4y ago
            > In what country do libraries work like that? I believe most former Commonwealth countries work like that. Here's the info for Canada: https://publiclendingright.ca/ https://publiclendingright.ca/ It's not a huge amount... minimum $50/book/year, maximum $4,500/book per year, but I suppose it's significant if you have, say, 20 books, each bringing in the maximum. It's a flat rate, though, not a per use charge.
            • MichaelCollins 4y ago
              Damn, I'm glad the American library system isn't held to such asinine rules. I can buy a second hand book from a shop that pays nothing to publishers, donate it to a library for free, and the library is now allowed to lend that book as many times as they please, never having paid anybody a single cent for that right.
  • cinntaile 4y ago
    They pay some sort of royalty no?
  • RomanPushkin 4y ago
    I'm fine if you want to share my book with your friend or with a group of friends. However, library !== the entire world. Moreover, libraries buy book(s) so they can share more copies if there is a demand. Without authors getting paid for their work there won't be any books at all, except books from those authors who are willing to write them for free of charge. But I assume you don't like online libraries with free books online for some reason.
    • tshaddox 4y ago
      > Without authors getting paid for their work there won't be any books at all, except books from those authors who are willing to write them for free of charge. You mean except for authors who are willing to write them without charging each reader for a copy.
    • mod 4y ago
      In many places in the US, anyone can get a card to a library. So, if everyone had that knowledge, it actually would mean the entire world. In the county I have my card with, they give a card number over the internet without any kind of address validation, so anyone willing to lie about their address can get a card there. I'm sure that's true for countless counties.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    How do libraries get their books? When was the last time that you checked out a book at your local library?
    • mym1990 4y ago
      NPR did a good and brief piece on digital lending economics which also talks about how those economics are different from physical lending. Libraries license materials, and the license for a physical book will typically last as long as that book can be circulated(basically until it falls apart). I've started going to the library more often(and using Libby for e-reading), they might not have the exact book I want, but there is always something I am interested in there. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118289764/the-surprising-economics-of-digital-lending https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118289764/the-surprising-eco...
      • MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > Libraries license materials, and the license for a physical book will typically last as long as that book can be circulated(basically until it falls apart). Libraries buy books, which are then covered by first sale doctrine. When a library book falls apart, the library may rebind it and continue lending it.
    • mod 4y ago
      I have not checked out a physical book in several years, but I use my library card to rent digital media (primarily audiobooks) all the time.
• cm_silva 4y ago
  Can you tell us what book it is?
  • RomanPushkin 4y ago
    Not comfortable sharing for PTSD reasons. However, if you're interested, some people reached out back to me with apologies. For example (auto-translated to English): === Good day. Roman, my name is Alexander. Once a book was stolen from you and posted on the net. People then divided into two camps, some sympathized, some did not, for various reasons. I belonged to the second category. I wasn’t happy, but at the same time I didn’t sympathize. I considered that price too high, and then for some reason it seemed to me that the book itself was not for the sake of being useful, but solely for the sake of profit. Although, even then I believed that work should be paid. Then I released a few comments, I don’t remember exactly the content, perhaps boorish, I don’t think so. You then blocked me in the Telegram and chat, said, for the lack of empathy on my part or something like that. I think you misunderstood me, and perhaps I expressed my thought incorrectly. After that, I left a couple of caustic comments on the forum. I somehow forgot about that situation, but then I came across your videos on YouTube and remembered. Thoughtful. Damn, I myself got into similar situations, which made me so hooked on that price list ... In general, I was wrong and I apologize if I somehow offended you. Of course, you have the right to ask as much as you like for your work, and the buyer has the right to agree to the conditions or refuse. Sorry friend. I wish peace. ===
    • gayn1gga 4y ago
    • cm_silva 4y ago
      Thank you. I am an advocate of "information should be free", but... creators have to eat. I don't have an answer for this.
      • Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
        how about going to work?
• number6 4y ago
  Your book is free on leanpub. Was this done after it got pirated?
  • RomanPushkin 4y ago
    Well, it's only one of my books.
    • number6 4y ago
      I googled your name and this is the only book that I could find, so maybe this could also be a reason for low sales.
    • corobo 4y ago
      Little bit of devils advocate little bit of Sunday boredom. Im actively trying to find another book you've written and am having trouble. Are you sure it's not a marketing issue?
      • RomanPushkin 4y ago
        Fun little story goes here, I used pseudonym when I first registered my Facebook account ~10 years ago or so. I later tried to change the handle to my real name, but Facebook didn't let me do that - moderators though my last name isn't real. So I ended up using a couple of names because of that. Plus, I bet your googling doesn't work quite right, until you translate these names correctly. I'm happy you found one, but there are 2 more to go. I'll give you a hint though: * The one you're looking for is about computer security (that's why pseudonym worked fine) * The book cover was done by the same artist I almost revealed my second identity, but if you ever find the second name, please don't post it here.
  • culi 4y ago
    The author also posted the source code to HN twice (both times getting very little attention) and stated it was CC. Not sure what to make of it
• throw0101c 4y ago
  > The question is - why should you have a right to spread _my work_ for free? I spent almost 2 years on writing the book. I hope you have a good answer. My answer to this is that authors (and other creatives) should have a right to recoup the costs (including time) of their efforts, but currently the time period for doing so is ridiculously (too) long. We're talking decades: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright... In the US, the original copyright term was 14 years, and if the author was alive after the end of that there was another (optional?) 14 year extension: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law_of_th... Later, the initial period was set to 28 years, with an optional 14 year extension. IMHO, if one couldn't make a go of one's work after 2+ decades, then other people really should be allowed to have a kick at the can.
  • mtmail 4y ago
    Those are good arguments against the length of the copyright, but not copyright itself. I assume the author got their book pirated in short time (shorter than 14 years) after release.
    • yencabulator 4y ago
      If copyright didn't always extend to cover all of Mickey Mouse's existence, would piracy be as popular?
      • Planktonne 4y ago
        I don't think most piracy is early Mickey Mouse cartoons; if the argument for piracy based on copyright length was sincere, I'd expect to see almost exclusively older works pirated, but that's not what's most popular on the torrents.
        • yencabulator 4y ago
          Oh for sure the setting has evolved plenty from the early days, but that inherent conflict of resource guarding vs access is what drives a lot piracy. Other angles on the same continuum: - You cannot pay a reasonable amount to a single provider and expect to watch the television shows your friends talk about. - You cannot go back and re-watch your favorite television show on a streaming service where you originally watched it, as their catalog dropped it last year.
• gayn1gga 4y ago
• prezjordan 4y ago
  I think there's a distinction between vocational materials (your book is one I should absolutely have to pay for - which is why many places of work have an education budget) and literature. I don't quite know what, though.
• gizmo 4y ago
  The flipside: why should people everywhere in the world be asked to give up a large portion of their discretionary income to get access to educational materials that can be reproduced at zero marginal cost? What is the loss to society as a whole when we make pointless time sinks like Netflix and social media free but college textbooks unaffordable to many? The internet allows us to give everybody on the planet access to world-class educational materials at practically no cost. This is so obviously a good thing for society as a whole that we should strive to see this future materialize. Yes, some authors will lose income, but society as a whole gains greatly when we fight artificial scarcity. For what it's worth, I think authors should get compensated by some other means, especially when they write great books. But artificial scarcity isn't the answer, it never is. (The current model is also unfair to authors because book sales follow a power-law curve where a handful of authors take practically all the winnings)
  • novaRom 4y ago
    There are many more examples of good things for society as a whole vs rights of minorities/individuals. But somehow it doesn't work as intended and the end result is poorer less developed society, tyranny, war, etc.
  • Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
    Reproduced at marginal cost, yes. Produced, not so much, and that's the main issue.
    • mtrovo 4y ago
      Isn't that the case for movies as well? I can see the production cost of a fantasy genre book being high with every new book but textbooks not that much. Maximum you're asking some TAs to review your book and paying them with a thank you note on the first few pages of the book. And to put more perspective into this conversation right now Disney+ subscription costs $79 per year, O'Reilly subscription is $499.
• brazed_blotch 4y ago
  You are relying on unenforceable government incentives (copyright law) to create an income for yourself. Find a way of commercialising the information in your head that makes it technologically difficult to propagate without yourself being paid. Books aren't the answer if you want $$$.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
    Copyright law is actually enforceable though. At least enforceable enough to keep book piracy more inconvenient than Kindle for most people of any means.
• senko 4y ago
  > I am loosing $Xk worth of sales every month. How do you know how much you're losing? From [0]: > The average U.S. book is now selling less than 200 copies per year and less than 1,000 copies over its lifetime. It's easy to attribute low sales to piracy, when in fact people do not buy books, period. 0: https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publishing https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...
  • asutekku 4y ago
    It’s pretty easy to attribute the drop if the sales dropped at the same as the pirated version was released
    • akaij 4y ago
      Ah, yes. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
      • asutekku 4y ago
        Yes, there might be other variables affecting it too, but a blanket statement of "Piracy doesn't reduce sales" when it's primarily studied in the higher volume form of video game sales which are often pirated immediately after release and thus the effect is not clearly visible is not a good argument either.
        • emkoemko 4y ago
          those people would not have bought the game period... so its not a loss
        • akaij 4y ago
          I feel blanket statements are generally not a good fit for serious discussions. We have to keep asking the questions that will guide us closer to better data. I can't imagine the only good studies being on games. I'm sure similar studies for other forms of entertainment/art exist too. Games are also harder to pirate, and has its own problems that are virtually non-existent for books. And if we were to go down that route, we can further divide the affected people into publishers, authors, book stores etc. and only then can we figure out how the moral compass of each of us is really adjusted :) Big movie studios/publishers making billions of dollars? Hard to feel sorry for them. Indie authors/studios? I definitely have a soft spot for them.
• rhn_mk1 4y ago
  I think this is the wrong question to ask. To me, the answer is rather obvious: because knowledge and culture costs nothing to spread and benefits everyone. The actual issue is about getting paid for work. I would ask another question to address that instead: why does getting paid for author's work require limiting access to it?
• thomastjeffery 4y ago
  The entire framework we have for paying authors is through distribution cost. Now we have zero distribution cost! The entire business model you are relying on for income has been completely broken for 30 years. You aren't losing sales. You are missing them. They aren't being taken away from you, they are passing you by. The result may be the same for you personally, but it's still a critical difference. You - and every other author - need a new framework to attract income. I have no idea what that would look like, or even if such a thing could exist. I do know, however, that pretending the old system can still work in the digital age isn't fixing anything for anyone.
  • lixtra 4y ago
    The gp doesn’t have a problem. He will make money by something else then writing the book. His readers are at loss. Their book won’t come into existence.
    • thomastjeffery 4y ago
      Being unmotivated to write is still a problem even if it's not a financial one.
      • tsol 4y ago
        It's only a problem is he's unmotivated and he wants to write. If he just decides not to write then, it's pretty simple for him to move not. Not so for the readers who pirated his first book, found it expanded their minds and now are hungry for more by the same author.
      • kgwgk 4y ago
        Being unmotivated to work is still a problem even if it's not a financial one. Getting paid remains an efficient motivator though.
      • Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
        Not being able to pay the rent is a major issue preventing people to do stuff like writing a new book.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• the_arun 4y ago
  If we had Spotify for eBooks, would that solve problem for everyone?
  • callmeal 4y ago
    >If we had Spotify for eBooks, would that solve problem for everyone? Something like Kindle Unlimited but not limited to just Amazon? Count me in!
    • randomcatuser 4y ago
      Weeksie, did it?? What're musicians' problems now?
  • weeksie 4y ago
    Just like Spotify solved it good and hard for musicians?
  • r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
    You mean a service that pays authors every time someone checks out their book? I'm sure there's a term for that. Begins with an L. Lib something?
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > pays authors every time someone checks out their book? That's not how libraries work. Libraries pay for a book once (assuming it wasn't donated to them.)
      • r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
        No, you're wrong. At least in the UK since 1979 [1] Other countries have similar schemes. [1] https://www2.societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/public-lending-right-plr/ https://www2.societyofauthors.org/where-we-stand/public-lend...
        • 4y ago
• bheadmaster 4y ago
  > I am loosing $Xk worth of sales every month You're not "losing" anything, you just have expectations that aren't compatible with reality. > The question is - why should you have a right to spread _my work_ for free? Why shouldn't I? Is it somehow my responsibility to keep the food on your table? > I spent almost 2 years on writing the book. Just because you spent time doing something doesn't give you the right to deny everyone else their right of sharing information. Writing books isn't profitable anymore? Don't write books for living, do something else. That how the rest of us lowly peasants get by when we invest our time into something that flops.
  • cercatrova 4y ago
    Gotta agree, I never understand the hard work argument regarding worth. Just because someone works hard doesn't mean it's a profitable endeavor. I worked hard at startups that failed, it doesn't mean the startup has to be worth anything.
    • therealdrag0 4y ago
      The book market shows people DO buy books, just like OP said. Clearly their book was worth something. Just because people will take it for free instead doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have paid for it.
      • effie 4y ago
        Also, just because people will take it for free doesn’t mean they would have paid for it.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Gotta agree, I never understand the hard work argument regarding worth The labor theory of value is obviously complete bunk, but it sticks around anyway because it's a central tenet of Marxism.
      • gjm11 4y ago
• akaij 4y ago
  I'm curious, how can you know how much you're losing because of piracy?
• Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  You are really losing a huge personal branding opportunity. Alternatively: people now trust you, there is some way to monetize that for sure such as organizing events, conventions etc. Make them pay a bit more than you would to recoup the cost of piracy. In the end it's the strategy used by the GOAT. Bill Gates knew he couldn't fight piracy and also it just charged Fortune500 companies a tad more so they'd essentially subsidize pirates all over the world. Ranging from PirateBay to CD sellers in Subsaharan Africa
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• arepublicadoceu 4y ago
  I often have this strange dream of a world without monetary incentive to produce art/books/knowledge. Only hobbyists and people that have something to say independent of monetary value would produce music, books, blog posts, etc. In this dream I always find weird, interesting thing that challenge or move me in directions that I could not foresee. But then I wake up and see 10 ways I could make more money or the best 4K display that will make me a 10x programmer and life is back to businesses.
  • ChadNauseam 4y ago
    I don’t understand why people seem to think that having a monetary incentive to do something taints it somehow. Rewarding good behavior is half of justice. If someone writes books that many people really like, they’re doing a good deed and in my view should be rewarded. Another thing you might find in your dreams is a world where people can live a comfortable life without working. I’d like that world, and I’m sure a lot of good art, music, blog posts, etc. would come from it. But I don’t see why you’d actively want people who produce those things to not be rewarded for it.
    • amrocha 4y ago
      If you agree that allowing more people to have access to certain information is a net good, and that a adding financial barrier to access reduces the amount of people that can access it, then you agree that making information contingent on payment is strictly negative. The problem is that under our current "make money or die" societal model, if you optimized for net good you'd end up starving on the streets.
    • 8note 4y ago
      Good art tends to sell for little to the artist, only becoming valuable once some rich person decides they want to sell it as expensive. The good artist does it as "the starving artist" Similarly, it's big corporations like Spotify that benefit from music copyrights. Musicians make their money by selling your tickets
• latchkey 4y ago
  The porn industry became easily pirated. They pivoted to live shows and pay per minute (micro-currency tokenized payments), which can't be pirated and is easy to pay for (buy blocks of tokens). Now, the recorded shows are effectively advertising for the live shows.
  • RainaRelanah 4y ago
    This was the case for a while, but OnlyFans kinda debunks that, no? It has been the biggest source of income for modern creators, and they generally don't do live streams (outside of like Twitch). Piracy is a very common problem for them.
    • latchkey 4y ago
      I'd think that selling recorded content and having a lot of piracy proves my point perfectly. It is a model that doesn't work any more.
      • RainaRelanah 4y ago
        It is still the most profitable and popular form of distribution though. You do have to fight the DMCA battles, but when it's your income you're gonna do that. That doesn't prove your point. Disclosure: I am anti-copyright and am dating someone whose primary income is OF. I'm hyperactive in pirate communities but still fight for my partner's content. Information deserves to be free, but creators should still be paid for their work. Adult content barely f*king qualifies as "information".
• massinstall 4y ago
  Exactly this, thanks for highlighting this here! I find it astoundingly upsetting that the people who run this pirated library ask for donations at the bottom of the linked page (of course in Bitcoin), citing they can only keep the library online if they’re getting paid for it… what arrogance! Like they cannot see that they’re inserting themselves in between the readers and the authors, whom they effectively try to steal the money from. Authors of course can also only continue to write books if they’re getting paid for it. It’s truly parasitic behavior. I’m sorry this happened to you and I share your pain. :(
  • falcor84 4y ago
    >Authors of course can also only continue to write books if they’re getting paid for it. This is patently false, with the simplest counterexample being that most authors write their first book without a first getting a publishing deal.
• NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  >I am loosing $Xk worth of sales every month. I'm sorry but, you can't claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place. The RIAA's members tried the same propaganda and it didn't work then either. I've published a few short stories and made $27.00. Like 99.999% of authors cannot live off of writing. It's like acting. If you include all the actors the average yearly salary is like $2,000. Some fields are just like that, and I'm not convinced that there's anyway to change that for either career. Nor am I convinced it should be. With programming I'm not paid for the work I've done, I'm paid for the work I continue doing. Why is writing supposed to be any different? Because publishers like it that way? They pay the author once, and get paid for 120 years? And honestly as an author my biggest issue isn't that I'm not making much money, it's that almost no one is reading my work. I didn't do it for the money. And if I could charge less than $1 on amazon, I would.
  • TeeMassive 4y ago
    "I'm sorry but, you can't claim something as a loss if you never had it in the first place." That's a silly and obtuse take. By this logic you can never lose a job or source of income.
    • synu 4y ago
      What would it mean to lose a job or source of income you never had? I’m not sure I’m following but curious what you mean.
      • lkbm 4y ago
        This is obviously not the situation under discussion. The book wasn't released before he earned any money on it. He clearly states "My income dropped almost immediately", which makes it clean that he was earning money from it, and that a specific event—the piracy—coincided with a drop of "$Xk worth of sales" per month. The analogy being drawn is to losing a job and consequently losing the income you would have earned from it. You've switched from "you never had that income" to "you never had that job".
• 300bps 4y ago
  Well first a shameless plug for what appears to be your book based on a quick Google search: https://leanpub.com/u/romanpushkin https://leanpub.com/u/romanpushkin I wasn't able to find your book in any pirated source. Do you think you're losing at least 50 sales per month from piracy since you sell the book for a suggested price of $20 each?
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  The only book you ever published is https://leanpub.com/rubyisforfun/ https://leanpub.com/rubyisforfun/ which, according to the website, has 460 readers, despite being available for free. Not only are you not losing thousands dollars worth of sales a month right now, you also never were, even when it wasn't available for free.
  • RomanPushkin 4y ago
    I would probably reply to your statements (that you believe are true), but first you have to learn how to be nice :) Plus, not only your communication is broken, but also your ability to make your way to final and correct conclusions. But don't worry, it's a common thing today, you're definitely not unique here
• stereolambda 4y ago
  I would try by saying every author is a compiler (as in, a collector of sources). They use someone else's ideas, either as building blocks or as a subject. The rules for when and how the people down the chain should be compensated are arbitrary. For a long time it wasn't a problem anyone cared about in societies (the pre-copyright era), then we got sort of a "verbatim" standard, but we're seeing more and more how silly it always was with better tools of automatic rephrasing. Publishing books in the current model is like planting flowers in a public space, with seeds you've just taken from a bunch of other people's houses, and then requiring people who walk there or look at the flowers to pay you. I mean, we should be encouraging caring about the commons in some way. But the creators or copyright holders for cultural creations don't inherently have the power to dictate the schemes they like.
  • shellami 4y ago
    Given the choice, many people would rather get something for free rather than pay for it. Rather than simply admitting that there is something at least a little immoral about benefiting from someone else's work without paying for that work, they come up with elaborate rationalizations. There's a sort of virtue in embracing the intellectual honesty of saying that you took that work because you wanted it and had the means. Call it the Genghis Kahn justification. Even if the work is completely derivative, someone still put significant effort into compiling and organizing it. And their immorality of taking the work of others doesn't obviously justify the immorality of taking theirs.
    • stereolambda 4y ago
      The point is, it wasn't immoral of them to "take the work of others" to begin with. This is how culture works: mythology, classic stories like the Arthurian cycle, fables, lots of classic literature etc. came to be by just taking the stories and characters people liked and doing whatever the next artist wanted. (Today's equivalents are all owned by Disney, for example.) This is also how science and philosophy functioned for ages. The worldview holding the modern copyright system to be the moral reality is the elaborate rationalization, ingrained into people by the interested parties. You can research the history of copyright law if you want. This is a separate issue from caring about compensating and nurturing the artists, which is often what people who are mindful about this stuff do. Just not necessarily inside the "traditional" framework.
• breck 4y ago
  > The question is - why should you have a right to spread _my work_ for free? I spent almost 2 years on writing the book. I hope you have a good answer. Oh interesting question. I could probably answer but need some information first. What % of revenue went to you and what % went to the people who printed the book, chopped the trees, made the pulp, delivered the books across the world, etc? My guess is probably 10-50% to you, and the rest to the others. Am I close? That's probably fair. Now, what % of your proceeds did you send to the creators of the letter "A", the letter "B", et cetera? Or did you use a different alphabet that you yourself created? Was the book written in American English? If so, what % of your revenue are you sending to the widows and orphans of American soldiers killed in the wars who died protecting our freedom, language, and values? Once I get those data points I can probably answer your question.
• pdntspa 4y ago
  Knowledge and information want to be free, know that by trying to control its spread -- such as by trying to profit from it -- you are fighting that principle. And it is a fight that you will lose.
  • layer8 4y ago
    By the same token, you should have no privacy, because knowledge and information (about you) wants to be free, and you will lose that fight. I don’t think that’s a sensible argument.
    • absolutelynobo 4y ago
      In the long run, nobody has any real privacy.
• Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Probably you shouldn't write a book in this age if you are motivated by making a profit from book sales. Or you need to find a different business model other than revenue from sales. If you have an audience of a few thousand people, especially in a narrow professional field, you can monetize it. Book will help you to establish your authority. Then, you can use this authority to make profit. Sell courses, lections, offer consulting services, etc.
• faeriechangling 4y ago
  Talking about recent works, released in the past few years getting pirated specifically: First is the unfairness of the system. Disney and other publishers have lobbied to push copyright up to the ridiculous life + 70 years using their political power. Publishers collectively have a totally ridiculous entitlement to governments being compelled to spend public money on enforcing their monopolies. So if you're say living in poorsville, you have no realistic opportunity to wait for your book to be published for free, because any work that is copyrighted during somebodies lifetime will be copyrighted until they're dead. Sure there's libraries but if your book is obscure enough it may not be available in one. The second reason I'll give is accessibility. If your book isn't offered in a free electronic format from a library, and somebody is blind, and they can't afford the kindle, they're out of luck. The publishing industry has no problem being exclusionary towards disabled groups so long as it enables a better profit model, pirates on the other hand are totally inclusive and scan everything making everything OCRable. So besides accessibility/fairness arguments, I'll also bring up that paying for books is a really shitty way to support authors. I paid $250 for physical books this week. Am I a hero to authors? Not at all. Maybe $200 of that went to the estate of some authors and most went to the publishers. $50 of it went to authors maybe closer to scraping by, for whom piracy can mean not putting food on the table, it means having to give up authorship. However of that $50 maybe $5 went to such authors. So I paid $250 and gave $5 to authors who really needed it. Does this prove I give a shit about authors? I think it proves that I don't, if somebody cares about authors they'll pirate the ebook and directly donate $250 to them. Finally there's the issue of how books are secured. Frankly the legal methods for acquiring books are frequently broken and bad. DRM that auto-deletes books from people's devices is an abomination. Waitlists for ebooks are the stupidest thing I have ever seen in my life. A huge reason people use zlibrary is their local library has broken software and it's like 8 steps to download something. Most of the money is in Amazon, so that's what gets funding to make the ebook/audiobook experience as seamless as possible for the wealthy of the world. My proposal to fix all these issues would be for public libraries to require public ID authentication to download books, for copyrights to essentially ignore copyright, and then based on which books are being downloaded to compensate authors out of a public fund. This would not come with any enforcement efforts to shut down pirate sites (due to censorship/privacy concerns and concerns with the library's software being broken, not everybody has to use the library just a good number of people do), the libraries would essentially act as a voting system to direct monies to different authors which you could also use as an e-book distribution mechanism. This makes the availability of books for the wealthy contingent on them financing books for the poor, the disabled, and compensating authors. Until such a day happens, if somebody pirate $100 of a books and donate $30 to some random author I think they're a better person that somebody who buys legally. We're in times where lawlessness enables the most ethical option available, so you know, maybe the law is screwed up.
• LegitShady 4y ago
  I find it unlikely that people who pay for technical books were ever going to be your customers. There could be other explanations - maybe once people could flip through your book without paying for it they realized there wasn't any value there for them? Maybe you had sales for a while and then they dropped off like sales do. I don't think people have the right to spread work that isn't theirs, but i also don't think you can assume the book will always make the same amount of money, or that book pirates were ever your customers.
• trasz 4y ago
  Can you tell how much would you normally make on a book, ie what’s the expected amount of money for those two years? I wonder if it could be made back by eg Patreon instead of traditional copyrights?
• JamesLeonis 4y ago
  If I check out your book from the library, do you consider that theft?
• password1 4y ago
  Are you actually losing $Xk worth of sales every month due to piracy though? I remember this author with a wildly influential book inside a small online community. He too claimed that due to piracy he suffered great economical loss. He posted a detailed account of this on his blog and i delved on it a bit and I came to the conclusion he was delusional. For sure piracy dented his revenue, that was without the shadow of a doubt. But the major reason that he lost revenue was due to the fact that a book, as with many products, has a lifecycle and he wasn't considering that as a factor at all. His book was considered "the bible" of that subject, but it was also starting to become old and the community was becoming more established. At that point there were tutorials, youtube videos, other resources talking about the same thing, explaining concepts of that book and so on. So while, in the beginning a user strictly needed to buy the book to have access to those niche information, now info were more readily accessible (even the reddit wiki had basically the same stuff in it). So buying the book was more of a choice ONLY if the user wanted to dive deeper into the subject. All the rest of potential users that a few years back would have bought the book due to the "monopoly of information", now weren't interested in it anymore. Even more established community users only recommended the book as an advanced thing for people that wanted to go to the next step. That's quite an evolution for a product that is guaranteed to lower sales. Besides this, the community was still relatively niche and this means that doesn't have a huge influx of new users. This means that over time people won't buy his book because the only people interested in it already have it. The product lifecycle was clear from the data and kinda textbook behavior, with the product having surpassed it's mature phase and been declining. On top of this, for sure piracy further made things worse. The point is that the author was convinced that piracy was the only reason revenue was dropping. He was convinced that his book (being influential et all in the community) would give him constant revenue potentially forever. That was delusional and so was his analysis. Are you entirely sure that piracy is the only thing to blame? Maybe that's just one factor in a more complex situation and writing another book is specifically what you need to do. The previous one was successful, you have a brand and an audience to leverage. That's valuable and, maybe you just need to develop a new product because the old one is, well, getting old.
• joak 4y ago
  There is a fundamental contradiction: - first as an author, want to be read, the more people read your books the better. - second as a human, you need an income. Imagine a charity (it could be government taxes as well) paying you proportionally to how much your books are read and providing the books for free to the readers. What's wrong with that? You will have more readers and you'll get paid for writing books (according to their popularity). Do you really want to sell your books? (and get less readers) Or do you want instead to have as many readers as possible and get paid for that?
• monista 4y ago
  You're rather inaccurate though. Not sure if you're talking about "Ruby for fun", but anyway: - you wrote it for your own son; - you're distributing it now on CC BY 4. So, no, we're not at risk of losing good books from good authors, there are more incentives than just money.
• vouaobrasil 4y ago
  I don't have a good answer for you but I believe that we are transitioning to a new form of society where content creation is very hard to make money from. However, as a society we are richer than ever because of this new technology so I propose the following: * People should receive grants to create things. The grants should come from the value we create as a society with new technology * The money should be taken from those who benefit from the internet traffic, i.e. large tech companies. Money should be taken from Google and Apple and given to content creators. That is because without content, Google and Apple would not exist * We can already say that ads do this a little, but it's not enough. And ads are annoying and unsustainable and they also encourage slimy practises such as extreme SEO optimization * Therefore, I propose a heavy tax on the largest tech companies, especially CEO salaries. That money should go to a government trust and content creators will get an income whenever they produce something people like * For example, it could be made available for free but yet the author will be compensated. How much and how to measure its worth still needs to be figured out.
  • concordDance 4y ago
    What's wrong with the patron system (e.g. patreon)? It'll produce more than enough stuff to keep you reading and watching from now until death.
• hbgl 4y ago
  Used to be that people had to find innovative ways to adopt their business models to new technology. But not authors. They can just say "show me how I would earn money" and that justifies IP rights. It is your job as an entrepreneur to find a working business model. To answer the question: Because just spreading information does not violate anyone's rights.
• concordDance 4y ago
  Ownership as a concept does not make sense to apply to non-physical things. The vast majority of the writing I consume is free or donation supported and I personally donate around £1500 a year to a range of authors after having read and found their writings useful. This is a far superior model to paying in advance, you get access to far more writing and the authors get paid.
• effie 4y ago
  Internet will copy whatever is valued. You had wrong expectations. Moral indignation is not going to help you. If you can't make a living writing and selling books, let go and think of a different thing to do.
• no_time 4y ago
  Not doubting your story, but your name is not turning up in any libgen results. http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Roman+Pushkin&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=author http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Roman+Pushkin&open=0&res=25&...