I mentioned last week that I was depressed after an eye opening experience about how rampant ebook piracy is. Still depressed.
I've had several conversations about that in the last few days. The most remarkable thing to me is that this ebook piracy proves there is actually a huge market demand for ebooks. The problem is, it seems like the pricing model to meet this demand is free or close to free. Here's an example, with no names to protect the innocent and guilty:
1 ebook trading piracy site (they probably trade lots of other types of pirated files there too) had about 30 Wiley/Wrox titles (that I've found so far), including almost everything our team has published in the last 4 months. They get a copy of an ebook from a site where we sell it, crack the DRM, and repost it. In many cases, the pirated ebook is available before the print book is distributed to all the bookstores who have ordered it.
As an example, let's look at some data relating to one of those ebooks of a modest selling tech title. The printed book published about 3 months ago. We've shipped about 8500 copies worldwide. We have sold 2 (two) copies of the ebook. On this one pirate site, the ebook has been downloaded more than 10,000 times already. 1 site! How many dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of trading sites have this book? Is it on bittorrent? It's easy for me to bet that even if I stumbled onto the single biggest trading site (unlikely) this book still easily has been illegally swapped 100,000 times or more. Compared to 8500 copies shipped. 2 ebooks sold.
So, there's clearly a huge market for this content in eform. What would some percentage of the 100,000+ people who've stolen it pay for it? It's a $29.99 book (just over $20 on the usual discount at Amazon). Would 100? 1000? 10000? people buy the ebook if we could sell it for $5?
What will be the publishing industry's equivalent of $0.99 per song iTunes (or MSN Music, Or Musicmatch, whatever service you buy your songs from) pricing? iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real, etc didn't add new features to music to get people to buy the songs (in fact, they subtracted features like permanence, reliability, portability) they just found the right pricing model. Do we have to sell individual chapters (like songs tracks from a complete CD)? Author's would scream about this, but would their complaints be any more justified than the musicians who didn't want their songs sold individually but only as the whole CD that they envisioned as a complete work?
As an author and as a consumer, I think the idea of selling/buying by the chapter is pretty cool (O'Reilly is doing this (to a degree) with SafariU, and Knuth is (sort of) doing it with the fascicles of his Art of Computer programming).
Posted by: Pat Eyler | May 25, 2005 at 01:18 PM
Jim, Perhaps it would work with smaller sized (100 page, say) ebooks, priced at $5. With something like that, maybe people who pay and buy would abide by a stipulation that they not post the ebook online. I guess you can't stop sharing it, but with a low-cost item, perhaps they'd be less tempted. I'd love to see something like this- - smaller ebooks at low prices- - emerge.
Posted by: Naba Barkakati | May 25, 2005 at 04:07 PM
Jim, out of those 10,000 illegal downloads, we'll never know the answer to two things: First, how many of these people are really using the e-book? Second, how many of them would have bought it if it was available at an "attractive price", whatever that might mean. I tend to think a lot of this activity is just the result of freeloaders gathering up anything/everything they can, figuring that some day they might actually have a use for it.
I also tend to think that e-books in their current format aren't ever going to be that big a draw. As I've mentioned on my blog, we've got to completely rethink how we develop a book for electronic delivery. It can't simply be an electronic reproduction of the printed work. That solution doesn't take advantage of the e-format.
I also think subscription programs are likely to be more popular than outright purchase programs. Maybe it's just my personal preference, but that's why Yahoo! Music's $4.99/month (introductory price) for unlimited downloads is far more appealing to me than the iTunes $.99/song model. I'd rather rent this stuff than own it. Mind if I use this "rent vs. own" debate as a post on my blog?...
Posted by: Joe Wikert | May 25, 2005 at 10:03 PM
Joe: By all means, please start the rent vs own debate on your blog. Personally, I'm an owner. I buy my songs from MSN Music. I may spend a little more (but not much - 10 songs a month is pushing my limit) but I can burn them to CD which you have to pay extra for in the Yahoo rental system. I use the CDs in my car. My MP3 player is a 256Mb flash model I use for running, I have no need for unlimited rentals to fill a massive jukebox like that puppy you've got. Generally speaking, I'm pro own (no rent) anywhere I can make a reasonable choice between buying outright and subscribing. Books might be a different beast for me though because "without books, I cannot live" (Thomas Jefferson). In effect, I already pay about $190 a year in total taxes for my family of 3 ($75 a year in local library taxes plus about $115 in state and county taxes allocated to libraries based on our local library's $6m a year budget) to rent from a limited selection of books (from the library), a good ebook rental model might work well for me at the right price with a big enough selection. Plus, it keeps me out of trouble with my wife if I don't buy more books to be packed into every closet and corner of our house.
Posted by: Jim Minatel | May 26, 2005 at 01:41 AM
we are very happy to break the silence and happy to announce that E-books are now in Demand with public . thanks
Posted by: Smith | May 03, 2006 at 02:09 AM
Smith: Deleted the URL info from your comment. Looks pretty much like a google click-mill site to me.
But rather than just delete your comment as the spam that it is, I'll respect it enough to reply that "free" doesn't necessarily equate to market demand. Sure, I'm familiar with the work of Project Gutenberg. Great project and concept. Does that mean there's a market demand for this? Not one that anyone can make a living on.
Posted by: Jim Minatel | May 03, 2006 at 10:40 PM
I've a different opinion here. I agree that pirated ebooks are becoming a mess but I think its actually acts as accelerator towards the print copy edition. Usually in India worx reprints are really very cheap. You can compare an experience of holding a book against reading it (with pain) on pc or laptop. Actually ebooks makes firm decisions to buy print copies, because thats how we learn.
Posted by: Kunal Deo | August 08, 2007 at 06:23 AM