Teleread has posted several viewpoints in the past few weeks on the subject of piracy. Clearly, this is a hot-button issue for many people, with passionate opinions on the side of both authors and readers. But what many of these dialogues seem to overlook (and where they tend to get bogged down in circular discussion) is this: it’s not just one problem. There are actually two separate piracy ‘issues’ and if you lump them all in together and pretend they are the same thing, you don’t actually address the issues that drive either group away from paying customerhood.
The first group of pirates is what I call the rogue pirate. This is the group who was probably never going to buy the book anyway. They download from the darknet because they fancy themselves the alt-techie fiddlers, or they are sticking it to the man, or because information wants to be free, or because they have a massive, manly Hulksmash of a harddrive and they are going to fill it, damn it. They will routinely download torrents of 10,000 books just to up their library count and say they have this many, and out of the books they download, they’ll maybe read a tiny handful. These are not lost sales, this group. They were not going to buy it anyway. It doesn’t mean they are right to do it; but it does mean that if you truly want to stop these people, you face an uphill battle. These are the digital equivalent of the teenagers who swipe candy bars from the corner market, or the guys who hoard office supplies from their workplace. You won’t stop them. The ‘loss’ you allege to experience from them is simply the cost of doing business in a world where you can’t control the actions of every fellow citizen.
The second group of ‘pirate’ is what I call the convertible pirate. This is a true potential customer who would have bought from you but for some reason: the book is not available in their preferred store or in their preferred format; the book is geographically restricted to them; they bought it once for a different device and don’t want to pay again; the book is over-priced (for example, costing more than the paper version); the book is badly formatted or otherwise unreadable on their device; the book has a DRM scheme which does not work for them and so on. These people are generally just fine with paying for digital media if you make it easy, safe and convenient. They don’t know where the darknet is. They don’t really want to know. They are happy to buy it the ‘proper’ way, just like they have bought their Netflix memberships and the over one billion songs the iTunes music store has sold so far. And they would have bought Book X from you, if only there was not whatever barrier there was that stopped them.
The danger in lumping both these groups together under the umbrella of ‘piracy is BAD!’ is that the convertible pirate can actually be won back: if you fix whatever obstacle stood in their way on THIS purchase, you’ll have them back for the next one. Speaking personally, every darknet book I have ever seen has been abysmally formatted and taken ages to download because you have to use a torrent client. It is just too much work. I’d rather pay a fair price and get it legitimately. And this is generally true of the type of customer I am talking about here. They would RATHER buy it from you, if only you didn’t stop them because of some ridiculous publishing world reason that they neither understand nor care about. Yes, some people WILL download for free just because they can. But THOSE people are not these people; they are the rogue pirates, and they are over there in their separate box for a second, because what we are talking about over here is a completely separate issue.
Now, does understanding this mean the rogue pirate ceases to be a problem? No. But he’s not the SAME problem. And if you have two problems instead of one, what you have to do is prioritize. In one corner, a group of people who probably aren’t your customers anyway and who likely won’t be persuaded to change their ways. In another corner, a group of people who will happily be your customer again if only you solve a few issues for them and actually allow them to purchase your goods. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on that group first? Doesn’t it make more sense to devote your resources into setting up the infrastructure to win these happy-to-pay customers back, rather than throwing them at the tilting windmill that won’t actually affect your bottom line?
Of course, if you do solve the problem of the convertible pirate, and you still have resources left over, by all means start tilting at the windmills if you want to. But please, solve the solvable problem first.
This is the point I’ve been trying to make for months, only to be told by some other commentators that I’m indulging in “circular reasoning” or don’t understand the issue.
If I knew where the darknet was and how to safely access it, I’d probably become one of those convertable pirates who would send an anonymous $5 to the authors I downloaded, because I *do* want to support authors. I just don’t want to pay more than paperback prices for crippled, badly formatted ebooks. As it is, I simply do without books I’d otherwise be perfectly willing to buy.
why do the commentators/writers i read on this subject keep talking about the speed (or lack of) of downloading using torrents. either they need a new computer or a new network. torrent downloads are not … that … slow. and the torrent sites are becoming more user-friendly so you don’t have to be the techie genius you used to be. this is what helps push the convertible pirate into the 3rd group – the “i used to want to be good but you made it too easy to be bad” group. best intentions and all that. if you’ve ever been to piratebay (shhhhhh) and read the boards, you can see the dialogues between seeders and leeechers and how seeders use these comments to make improvements. listening to their customer. what a concept. the more user-friendly the “darknet” makes their sites, the more piracy will increase.
Your argument would be a lot more convincing, Joanna, if you didn’t make your second group sound so noble. Sure, some have already bought the book for their now-defunct Palm and pirate to replace it. But what about those who just don’t want to pay? What about those who use the whole DRM argument as a moral excuse not to pay? I’m sure there are saintly pirates but I’m also sure there are plenty of pirates who can afford to pay, would be willing to pay if they thought someone was watching, but who don’t pay because they don’t have to. Those pushing against piracy, in my opinion, simply want to remind readers that we’re not all faceless corporations. We’re struggling writers, small publishers, people trying to do the right thing with low prices and quality reads, but who still face piracy and the loss of sales from people who don’t think of themselves as criminals but who find it easy to pirate “just this one book.”
Rob Preece
Publisher
Recently, I’ve been trying to remind authors that they don’t need to “stop pirates;” they need to sell books, and stopping pirates, no matter how laudable a goal, doesn’t make that happen.
Convincing people to buy is not a matter of threatening them with ever-bigger penalties for trying to avoid baffling and clunky DRM or ridiculous over-pricing–or trying to get digital copies of books not for sale in their country, or books that are out of print.
If the rogue pirate wouldn’t have bought the books anyway, and doesn’t read most of the downloaded books, then what’s the problem? The seller doesn’t have any loss, unlike the candy bar seller.
The same would apply to the ‘convertible prirates’ if the ebook is not available to them because of geographical restrictions, I think.
And regarding legality, in my country it is not illegal to download ebooks, even when it is illegal to offer them. I personally don’t do it despite it being legal, as I prefer to support the authors. But in some cases I had to go through hoops to persuade sellers to sell ebooks to me because of those geographical restrictions and I have been tempted at times just to download them from a pirate site because of this. Moreover googling for a site where I can buy a book often is quite frustrating because most of the search results refer to this kind of sites and not to bona fide sellers. Why can’t they make their sites being found by google?
Rob, the people who just don’t want to pay are in category 1 and hence are a different problem (which requires a different solution) then the true, convertible customer I talk about. That is the whole POINT of this article. I can’t think of a clearer way to say it. There is a group of ‘pirate’ who does not have to be. That is a separate (and more solvable) problem than any of the other types of ‘pirates’ who are downloading ebook torrents. You say ‘what about them?’ I say ‘they are there, and they are a problem, but you need to solve this other problem first.’ I really can’t think of any clearer way to make my point than that.
elfwreck wrote:
“Recently, I’ve been trying to remind authors that they don’t need to “stop pirates;” they need to sell books … and stopping pirates, no matter how laudable a goal, doesn’t make that happen.”
This is the message that open minded authors need to receive instead of the bilge that many publishers are serving them.
“In another corner, a group of people who will happily be your customer again if only you solve a few issues for them and actually allow them to purchase your goods. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on that group first?”
I agree. Because they might start out pirating “just this one book” as Rob says, but after they’ve done it for one reason how long will it take before they do it for every reason, or eventually just because they can? I don’t know how many who would prefer to pay can be convinced to pay again after they’ve gotten used to free, but I doubt it’s a big number. The longer publishers take to figure that out, the more paying customers they lose to the dark side forever.
It’s my current belief that publishers ranting about “piracy” is a smokescreen to allow them to avoid finding a business model for ebooks that actually works. And they push authors into thinking about piracy as “theft” instead of “customers we failed to reach in time.”
Some of them, of course, aren’t potential customers at all. Which makes spending resources chasing them problematic; if they’re stopped, the publisher still isn’t making money, and the author’s still not getting royalties. I’m amazed at how much effort (and vitriol) publishers and authors will put toward online activity that isn’t costing them sales (because that guy who wants the 10,000 ebook collection of all sci-fi ever? Isn’t going to be buying them even if he’s stopped), compared to how little they put toward finding new customers, figuring out why they’re not buying, and fixing whatever’s stopping them.
My problem with the article is that it gets the definitions all wrong. You are not talking about pirates in this article. You are talking about downloader’s or people who possess counterfeit good, not pirates.
As an example, say there is a guy that is counterfeiting Prada bags and selling them. When the police investigate that guy is charged with trafficking in counterfeit goods or piracy, his customers are not.
In that example you are describing people who are or intend to be customers of pirates, not the pirates themselves. Their motivations are different. You don’t discuss actual pirates. Which tend to fall into two categories, people who run a free service, and people who sell illegal digital goods.
People run a free service (piratebay, torrentz, mininova, youtube, scribd, etc) tend to know that they have infringing material on their service, but they don’t know which works are infringing nor do they care. You can try to have material taken down. It might work, however they tend to not be located in the US which makes enforcement problematic. The customers of these sites do fall into the two categories mentioned in the article.
People who sell illegal digital goods are tricking customers into paying them for something they don’t own, which is a crime. If you discover one I suggest you sue them and report them to the feds.
((I’ll talk about the content of the article in another comment))
“My problem with the article is that it gets the definitions all wrong. You are not talking about pirates in this article. You are talking about downloader’s or people who possess counterfeit good, not pirates.”
I agree. It would be good if people would use the right terminology. Then we would all know what we are discussing.
Please god .. let this be the last article on this for a while …………..
If you search/replace pirates with customers of pirates I agree with just about everything in your article. 🙂
However I would word a couple things more strongly. I’d call “convertible pirates” something different. I would call them “neglected customers”. These are people who want to pay you money. They do. But for whatever reason the you have chosen not to take their money.
Either you think that it isn’t enough money, or you are confused by the format options, or you don’t like the format that they prefer, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you realize, that customer wants to pay you, you have chosen to ignore them. Whining about it won’t change that core fact, nor will it ever make you decide to accept that person’s money.
Since when is downloading content you’re not legally entitled to not piracy? Since when are people who do this not pirates? You’re trying to enforce a definition of the word that’s not commonly accepted. Charging for pirated content or counterfeit goods is fraud, not simple piracy.
Since when is downloading content you’re not legally entitled to not piracy?
On the technical-definitions side, downloading may not be illegal. It’s specifically not illegal in some countries; in others, it’s blurry whether making a single copy (downloading) for personal use and not financial gain, is infringement or falls within the bounds of fair use or similar allowances. It may not be reasonable to call it “piracy,” since it’s not a crime in many places. Others claim it’s not “piracy” because nothing is being *taken away* from anyone; the traditional definition of piracy is not “I make so many of something and share it so widely that nobody can make money off it anymore.”
Uploading unauthorized copies is a different matter; all the lawsuits & the handful of convictions have been for uploading or creating access to copies, not for downloading.
Pedantry aside: we all know what’s being referred to by the term “digital piracy.” Bringing up the technical legalities is sometimes useful, because there are people trying to imply that the common term means that it’s all automatically illegal, and that’s very much in doubt. But we are aware of what’s being discussed, even if we sometimes debate the correct terminology for it.
I don’t think arguing technical legalities is useful at all – if anything it just clouds the issue, which in this case is how to quantify lost sales due to piracy, and how to avoid them.
the easiest way to avoid anything but the hardest of hardcore pirates is to make books available well formatted (no or few errors) at a reasonable price. I don’t see what’s so hard about that.
Bringing up the technical legalities helps establish boundaries for the discussion, and can prevent alienation of some readers. Calling all unauthorized downloads “piracy” is inaccurate and often insulting.
Authors and publishers are free to use the term for convenience, but trying to get money out of people they’ve insulted is harder than trying to get money out of people they’re treating politely. If they *do* manage to stop unauthorized downloads by means of threats and viciousness, at best they convince those readers to go elsewhere for their entertainment. In the meantime, the download-and-upload crowd may take the term “pirate” as a badge of achievement, perceiving themselves as rebels against oppressive bureaucracies.
A lot of the arguments against “piracy” fall apart when they’re forced to use accurate terms to describe what they want to stop. The word conflates several types of activities, not all of which are illegal, and even among those, not all would result in any sales if stopped.
If language is not important then the whole publishing business is in trouble.
Language is important for anyone interested in discussing and analysing the issues properly, rather than just indiscriminately pontificating.
becca: a fair price. Sounds reasonable to me. The problem is that the people whining about “fair” prices are basically admitting that they are willfully ignorant as to the costs of print book and ebook distribution. They then attribute their ignorance to “publisher greed.” It’s hard to take those people seriously.
“I don’t think arguing technical legalities is useful at all – if anything it just clouds the issue, which in this case is how to quantify lost sales due to piracy, and how to avoid them.”
This is exactly the problem with sloppy definitions.
If you are referring to actual piracy, i.e. I take a copy of the authors work, sell it, and don’t give any of the money to the author. Then yes I would say that is a lost sale. It’s also a criminal act and the pirate should be charged, pay a fine or go to jail.
If you are talking about a reader downloading a book off a torrent site because the author either does not offer ebooks for sale, or sales them in a format the reader cannot use or is too expensive, then I would disagree. In that case, the author did not loose a sale, the author chose not to have a sale. Which of course is their right.
See the answers are different based on your definition, so are the solutions.
@anon
Which is more expensive to produce?
Episode of House, MD in HD $2.99 on Amazon.
I love you more:A Novel, by Lisa Gardner $12.99 on Amazon
The problem is that the people whining about “fair” prices are basically admitting that they are willfully ignorant as to the costs of print book and ebook distribution.
Baen’s managed to make a profit with $6, non-DRM’d ebooks for 10 years.
Konrath’s making his mortgage payments on $3 ebooks.
Those may be isolated, not representative, examples. But we’ve yet to see any price breakdowns from any of the Big 6 publishers that acknowledge that those models work at all; they keep trying to convince the public that publishers and authors will go broke on $10 ebooks.
Additionally, I’m also not sure why people don’t think there already exists independent publisher organizations that work together to market and sell books (The IBPA has been a really good organization for years.) Guess what? It’s hard to sell books!
I also don’t know why people assume that “independent publishers” would all agree that books should be cheaper than they are currently and will offer them to people at the price they consider “fair” (which, of course, will soon become “too expensive” as according to most on this site publishers don’t offer any added value and can do no right). Independent publishers are only selling you cheaper books because that’s the only way that they can compete! If they weren’t cheaper, you wouldn’t even consider them!
So you’ve chosen 1 genre publisher and 1 already famous self publisher. What % of the market do you think that is?
Baen and Konrath should be commended for what they’ve done, but just because they have “figured it out” does not mean that model will work for all publishers. Additionally, it’s hard to say how much money either of them may have “left on the table” by charging less. Those who continue to assume that those models will work will continue to look foolish. Again, that’s not to say the model WON’T work, but please don’t point to 2 examples and pretend like you’ve proven anything.
anon, I see that Baen has been invoked – man, I’ll bet that the Big Publishers hate Baen.
I don’t require that all my books be $0.99 or even $2.99 – but I can’t see that an ebook of uncertain quality should cost almost as much as a paper copy, especially if it’s a backlist book being marketed as if it was a new work. int
(and as for comparitive prices, I don’t see how an ebook can cost $12 or more, when I can get an audio version of the same book, with the performance value of the recording added to the content, for $10 or so at audible, and have them continue to make a profit selling audio books.)
anon, how many examples do you need?
Anon, the point isn’t “these two examples.” There are others. The point is, the Big Six publishers insisted that $10 ebooks would destroy them, that they could not risk the public “getting used to” ebooks costing only $10, and that’s why they instituted agency pricing. And that they need DRM to protect their interests.
Several companies have managed not to go bankrupt by offering ebooks under $10, many without DRM. Why can it work for those companies, and not for Macmillan? That question is a crucial part of sorting out what “reasonable prices” for ebooks are.
“Independent publishers are only selling you cheaper books because that’s the only way that they can compete! If they weren’t cheaper, you wouldn’t even consider them!”
That is, to be honest, one of the funniest quotes of the year so far.
“Several companies have managed not to go bankrupt by offering ebooks under $10, many without DRM. Why can it work for those companies, and not for Macmillan?”
I’ve concluded that the Agency 6 don’t want it to work. I firmly believe they want their ebooks to be a luxury item, and if you can’t afford a $15-20 ebook then they’ll be happy to sell you the pbook instead. I was willing to give John Sargent the benefit of the doubt when he said agency pricing would mean lowered ebook prices once the paperbacks came out, but that hasn’t happened. So I no longer trust any agency publisher to have the interest of the average reader in mind. They only care about the readers with enough disposable income that price doesn’t matter. I’m not one of those readers, and I know the A6 couldn’t care less that I haven’t purchased from them since they each took up agency, but I feel better knowing that they no longer get any of my money.
I kind of think the bigger problem is the complete lack of real “scientific” data. Most the figures are derived using completely bogus asumptions and a lot of the results are so far out of any real proportions that it cannot be anything but partisan propaganda.
There have always been a significant number unpaying readers, it used to be a completely legit and mainstream part of the way books were used. This aspect tends not to be a part of any of the factsets used to analyze the inparct of digital piracy.
And the lines tend to get real blurry when you try to categorize readers into different categories, studies have indicated that heavy torrent users actually spend more on buying copyrighted work then general public
Copyright law is and always have been a rather complex area, without half the absolute the copyright holders often attempt to claim. It’s always been seen by the public as a balancing act between different interests.
> In that case, the author did not loose a sale, the author chose not to have a sale. Which of course is their right.
They chose not to have a sale right _now_, and lost potential future sales to piracy as a result, which is a problem. Someone who pirates a book now because it’s unavailable legit isn’t exactly likely to bother paying for a legit version when/if it comes out later, unless they really like the book and feel some kind of responsibility towards the author. It’s in a very real sense a lost sale.
As for “piracy” – you can call it “copyright infringement” if you like, which does cover downloading content without permission to do so in violation of copyright law. The rest of us just call it “piracy”, plain and simple :P.
(PS. This word debate is about as useful as the hacker vs cracker one – it’s very clear from the article what is meant and arguing semantics is rather pointless)
“Oh, but how can I offer a format for everyone, why do I have to bend over backward to accomodate someone who wants XYZ Obscure Format, waaaaah”
Maybe if people didn’t insist on larding up their ebooks with a pile of formatting junk then they wouldn’t *have* this problem. I’m producing ebook files just fine using Notepad and a print-out listing basic HTML codes and UTF characters.
There’s more than just the two types pirate. We must not forget the fan pirate.You know the ones. They scans and shares out of print books. They are the ones that share books which the publishers and authors have long since forgotten about. They give the publishers a kick and show there is a demand for the older books, after all publishing didn’t start in 2001.
In regard to the convertible pirate when the ebook cost twice the price of the paperback do you really blame them. Example Jean Auels new book costs £10.99 for the ebook and £5.49 for the paperback on amazon. And with drm you still don’t actually own the book you paid twice the price for.
@Frode Aleksandersen
“They chose not to have a sale right _now_, and lost potential future sales to piracy as a result, which is a problem.”
I agree, authors shouldn’t do that.
” The rest of us just call it “piracy”, plain and simple”
Again, I agree, which is why authors have been so successful in dealing with “piracy”. When you lump all of these issues together, they are so easy to understand, aren’t they?
@anon
Yes, when you have a product that is less popular, you need to charge more per unit to make the same amount of money as popular product. That doesn’t mean people will pay for it.
Pricing is going to be a big problem when 5 x Blockbuster movie rentals = 2 x novels = 1 x Season of Hit TV Show = 1/2 x video game. Especially if novel lengths continue to shrink. From the example above, look at how many hours of enjoyment the customer would get 10 hours (plus another 5 for special features) = 10-15 hours (if you read slow, assuming novels are over 300 pages) = 22 hours = 15+ hours. My point is, authors are fighting for entertainment dollars/hours, pricing yourself at 9 to 15 dollars for a novel is stupid. Spending your time worrying about piracy, rather than writing, is silly.
> Again, I agree, which is why authors have been so successful in dealing with “piracy”. When you lump all of these issues together, they are so easy to understand, aren’t they?
They are all piracy, and that’s the accepted catch-all term for it. Unfortunately there’s no accepted common terms for the different types and motivation involved. Saying they’re *not* piracy as was implied earlier though is downright wrong and counterproductive.
I think I understand why the publishers and authors go out against piracy in general though – they can’t really say “this type of piracy is bad”, since that implies that other types of piracy is okay. Part of the piracy problem is people’s attitudes and knowledge – some piracy happens simply due to ignorance. If they can change attitudes by educating their customers, that can potentially lead to less loss of sales. In addition they also need to address the other concerns mentioned in the article such as price, DRM, region etc.
When you lump all of these issues together, they are so easy to understand, aren’t they?
And the solutions just spring up out of nowhere! Keeping them all collected under a single label has kept the problem small and simple, and so easily controlled!
That’s why the ethics of “piracy” is such a small issue that it’s only ever mentioned on obscure techno-blogs. It’s so obviously immoral, and everyone knows where the legal boundaries are, and authors/publishers want those awful “pirates” arrested; they don’t want their business.
Oh, wait. For a minute, I’d mixed up copyright infringement with drug dealing. I get confused; they’ve both caused so many deaths.
“Saying they’re *not* piracy as was implied earlier though is downright wrong and counterproductive.”
Some of them aren’t. Which is kinda the problem. It’s all the music industry’s fault. They over reached on the message and screwed everyone. The railed against Napster, then supported Napster. They said downloading is “piracy”, then got behind iTunes, Amazon, Napster, etc. The public at large doesn’t know the difference between Napster and Napster (kinda confusing ain’t it?). Most of them just look for the easiest way to get something. If they can’t find it through which ever method they prefer they go to piratebay or whatever.
If you want to have a discussion about how to prevent the loss of sales for authors, you need talk about a specific activity and the reasons behind it, because the solutions are different. If you want to talk about “piracy” understand that it will mostly fall on deaf ears.
As an example last time I went to a movie there was an anti-piracy advert. The audience boo’ed and laughed.
The problem is that the people whining about “fair” prices are basically admitting that they are willfully ignorant as to the costs of print book and ebook distribution.
With all due respect, that’s not the consumer’s problem. If the publishers can’t find a way to deliver a book at a price their market is willing to pay, that’s their problem. If I own a business that sells a product, and I price that product at higher than my market will pay, I’ll lose business. Maybe I can do things to lower my costs so that I can charge a lower price and still make money. Maybe I can’t. But that’s my problem, and not my customers’ problem.
Apart from that, the honest reality is this: DRM is not stopping the pirates, because the “rogue pirate” group will find ways to get its content if e-books are unavailable or restricted. Scanned copies of Harry Potter books were on the Darknet within hours of their release. DRM isn’t going to stop these people. DRM is making it difficult for the people Joanna calls the “convertible pirates” and is just succeeding in throwing another obstacle in their path.
Alienating people who WANT to be your customers in order to NOT achieve the goal of stopping the people who DON’T WANT to be your customers? How is that not sheer folly?
I like your distinction between the two types of pirates, although I have to wonder if the “willing” customers are really the easier (or rather, more profitable) group to convert.
Making money off the “I want to steal this” group is not just possible- it’s pretty easy- this is an inherently lazy group of people, with poor self control. Usually, you just let them trick themselves into slowly becoming the regular, paying customers they never intended to be.
Let’s put it this way- I used to “pirate” dvds by renting them and copying them- I didn’t have any interest in watching them, I just like the idea of “free”. I started off borrowing from friends/ kazaa but this was difficult, and took to long. So I got a subscription to netflix- to make things go a little faster, a little easier. I could copy about a dozen movies a month this way- then I’ll just cancel when my collection is “complete”. But I never canceled, in fact, I got tired of DVDs and stopped copying altogether. Ten years later- I’m still paying netflix every month- and I haven’t watched a movie in years. I don’t even know what I’m paying. The perfect customer.
To make money off the “convertibles”, on the other hand, sounds really hard. They have too many opinions- differing opinions- about what they want. I won’t buy unless you match this price, use this format, let me use this this way, be accessible in this place. Sheesh. If your a publisher- just take my $15 a month and forget these whiners.
This site has ads from Google’s adwords/adsense. Just below the copyright article was a Google ad for an outfit offering DRM removal/circumvention software, so that crooks can more conveniently steal everything from eBooks to music and movies. Kind of ironic, eh?
The other Google ads just below the article were for vanity publishing services, which now sail under the false flag of “self-publishing services.”
Hmmm. Irony, indeed, that an article about piracy indirectly helps enable piracy.
Some of the colleagues above blame the victims of theft, claiming that it is somehow caused by the victim publishers’ failure to find some (unnamed) business model that would somehow (no ideas offered) circumvent the widespread theft of the product.
To those who yammer about the (unnamed) business model I would suggest that they either state it in specifics, or shut the heck up. For that matter, if such a model exists, why don’t the yammerers themselves set up such an (unnamed) business model and get rich?
The yammerers are like shoplifters saying, “It’s the store’s fault; the store should find a new business method that isn’t harmed by theft.”
To those who yammer about the (unnamed) business model I would suggest that they either state it in specifics, or shut the heck up. For that matter, if such a model exists, why don’t the yammerers themselves set up such an (unnamed) business model and get rich?
Baen has a business model that works. So do Konrath, Locke and Hocking. Konrath’s string of guest posts indicates that they’re not alone.
Doctorow’s got an effective business model, too: screw charging for ebooks, use ’em as promos. It won’t work for everyone, but it works for him, and could work for other authors who also sell nonfiction articles.
As far as “use it themselves to get rich”… well, the core of that model is write good books, and not everyone can do that. Not everyone who can, wants to spend their days writing; some people really would rather work in an office where someone else sets the schedule and the tasks. It’s not a gimmick model; it’s a real business model, with “quality product” at the center of it. Understanding how it works doesn’t make a person able to produce books, any more than understanding how an auto shop can manage its finances gives the ability to fix cars.