The latest storm in a teacup is rocking the Interwebz sea. An article in New York Times profiled Kindle sales, which are on the rise, and mentioned a certain Ms. Elgin, who shared her Kindle account with a friend. Not realizing that Kindle’s TOS permits a single account to be accessed by up to 6 different Kindle devices, several authors reacted very negatively to the article, accusing Ms. Elgin of piracy. Some readers took offense. The issue snowballed again, as it typically does, together with melodramatic declarations from both sides.
You know, if everyone would calm the hell down and attempt to impersonate rational polite adults, most of these storms would never happen.
E-piracy
There is a definite line for me between sharing and e-piracy. I know it’s murky legally, so this is just my opinion.
If you share an ebook with a friend or two, I don’t view it as piracy. Your friend may buy my book in the future.
If you post an ebook on a website, you’re permitting people to reproduce it on a mass scale. That is stealing on a large scale. The problem is that by posting the book, you’re making new copies of it and you didn’t pay me for the right to do it.
This is where it gets funky – if you share an ebook with a friend, technically you’re still making a copy, but you’re making only one or maybe two vs hundreds of downloads e-piracy sites generate.
The kindle 6 device thing makes total sense to me. Let’s say I have a Kindle and my husband has a Kindle and my kids each have one. Why would I pay four times for the same book, since all of us will read it anyway? If this was a paperback, we’d just pass it around.
I no longer chase e-pirates. I’m convince dthat people who pirate would not buy the books anyway. Most of them won’t even read the books. A lot of these guys want the books not as much for their content but because they’re getting them free. Some of them are file collectors. They download so many books, they can’t possibly read all of them. Now, some of them do read the books – I got fanmail from an e-pirate the other day – but I think most don’t. Back when I was actively shutting things down, I’d see people upload enormous libraries, hundreds of titles, every other week.
E-piracy is a problem. It’s wrong. I refuse to get bent out of shape about it. I just can’t muster any froth.
Ebook Industry Issues
I see absolutely no reason why I should pay $8.99 per ebook, when I can go to Walmart and get the same book for $5.99. Sometimes people charge $30 per ebook, matching the price of the hardback, which is silly.
People also add all sorts of DRM to ebooks, which is just ridiculous. Look at the game industry – there is nothing more frustrating than shelling out $40 for a game, popping CD into drive and watching it spin and spin and spin, because copyright software refuses to let you in. It found CDRW drive and the factory installed software that came with it and now it thinks you’re going to copy the disk. Argh. Drives me crazy. Why should I spent an hour of my time trying to get access to the product I legitimately purchased?
What we need is no DRM and one format. It will happen eventually. I can tell you from looking at my royalty statement that so far Kindle is outselling every other format by a factor of at least 4. But I’m wondering if the new tablets are going to kill it, and then we’ll be back to the variety of file extensions.
I think we could probably lure back the small percentage of e-pirates who do download the books because they like them by resolving the format and price issues, but the majority of pirates will continue to pirate. You can get $.99 songs for the Ipod. (Which, by the way, altered music industry. Hardly anyone buys albums anymore, and earnings now have to come from touring.) Yet people still pirate these same songs, even though there is a legitimate and easy way to purchase them. There are thieves in this world.
However, I also used to have a donate button on the website under Free Fiction. I had to pull it down. I was getting donations of $50 and $75, mostly from foreign readers, and I didn’t feel comfortable taking that much money for what was free content. Which just goes to show that people can be very generous when they enjoy something you write.
E-publishing Experiment
Much is made of people who release e-content on Kindle and so on and earn some money from it. Cards on the table: my sales from Samhain so far netted me about $600. That’s a single short story of about $15K, priced at $2.99, or $1.99 on Kindle. Two bucks of which I think I get a little less than a dollar. I did as an experiment, not for the money. My advances for short stories and novellas to be printed in various anthologies average $5,000.
For me, from the financial perspective, so far, releasing content in e-form is not as economically sound as selling it to print publications.
I would be willing to attempt an experiment of releasing let’s say the first half of a story and then charging for the second half or releasing on Kindle and seeing how much I would get. But chances are that if I sold the same story to print, my advance would in thousands, while my e-earnings would probably be in hundreds.
If there is a winning model for releasing content on the web, I’d love to know what it is.
I don’t do ebooks, being a dinosaur, but I also think 6 shares seems reasonable. After all, I share my favorite books – the 1st book of a series, anyway – with others and they then go out and buy their own copies of the Magic series
=A
I read a lot of e-books (print ones too!). Actually my whole family does, and we share amongst all of us, until the “late” family members can buy their own copies. So far, Baen Books seems to have the most popular and prolific e-book distribution of any of the publishers I regularly buy from. We all have bought several e-books from their website over the last few years.
I gotta say though…I will probably still buy both versions of your books (I’m waiting until payday to get Kindle versions of the ones I already have in print). I enjoy having printed copy as a keepsake, and the Kindle version to take with me wherever I go.
But there are some authors I’ll stick to buying in just Kindle format.
My overflowing book shelves have been relieved that I got a kindle. However, I will still go out and buy a hardcover of books that are good enough for me to deem them worthy to add to my bookshelf. I don’t know if everyone does that, but I can say I’ve bought kindle books I’d never have picked up at a store. That is the same for digital music. I buy one or two songs, and if I like them, I purchase more from that artist. Pandora gives me a taste of artists, and often times, I’ll go searching out other stuff by them. I’d never have picked them up otherwise. And I recommend them to my brother, friends, etc. Oftentimes, they also go out and purchase the artist as well. So my long rant is basically that artists and authors are making money off of me that they wouldn’t have been due to digital content. (And sometimes double if I buy the Hardback or the album)
Well the Kindle seems to be currently a ripoff here in the UK but I love to share books and recommendations with friends especially if it helps to addict them to the same books that I am addicted to. And usually they do buy and follow the authors I reccomend and follow and vise versa. I iz good bookpusher!
But like B-ster I am turning to ebooks more the real rant I have is Geo restrictions and DRM although at the moment its the former that is really frustrating.
By the way I hope you and family get better soon with the eveeel colds.
Hugs
I think there is an inherit issue with the e-book industry that’s directly related to it being involved with the internet. Those of us who use the internet and digital content as our major source of media are used to getting it for cheap or free. If Book A costs $10 online and Book B costs $1 for an e-version, guess which one is more likely to be bought and read? We like free stuff. But we aren’t above supporting or donating to things we really love.
I’m a member of the online community which is a totally free service, but I still donate whatever I can whenever I can. I want them to keep the site up and I know that costs money. I like supporting the things I love and so do a lot of other people. One year they raised over $50,000 from donations alone. (Enough to buy a HUGE server and carbon offsets!)
The problem with the e-book industry is that people don’t know how the publishing industry works, let alone how the e-book industry works. If I knew that you only got $1 of the proceeds from the e-book and $3 from the print book, I might be more likely to buy the print version.
So that wasn’t really an answer was it?
I am leery of a technology that might not be backward compatible in a few years though I don’t honestly believe the e-book manufacturers would be so stupid as to orphan a bunch of their customers. I keep buying paper books though I have read a few on my iPhone. I suspect I will ventually switch over, but to a bigger reader (probably the Sony).
I had my three Time Rover e-books pirated. Which is silly since my publisher put them on the ‘Net for FREE. The pirate(s) stripped out the advertising that suggested readers could actually support the author by buying a genuine dead-tree copy. I go Medieval on people like this since the books specificially state they are not to be copied and distributed. I realize I’m probably not making much of a dent, but it soothes my pissed off Welsh soul in a myriad of ways.
I’ve tried an e-book reader and I just can’t do it. I can’t hop aboard the metaphorical train to the future of books. I guess that makes me a dinosaur too. I do think the accessing of multiple accounts make sense. I’ve given your book to my mom to read (thus picking up another fan) and I don’t see the problem when I do so. I also buy a LOT of books each year. I like supporting authors especially because books are fairly priced. Charging more for an e-book than a dead tree book is moronic in my opinion.And a surefire way to insure that people keep stealing for the sake of stealing.
99 cents is reasonable for a song. So is two dollars. $18-20 for an album I’m not sure I’ll like the majority of is ludicrous. The music industry did this to itself. So a lot of people have no problem stealing music, which is sad, b/c the musicians (like authors) don’t have any say in what they charge.
I think you should put up that donation button again, because if someone wanted to pay for the free stuff and encourage you to produce more, why not let them? They may even be using it simply to show their appreciation for your work or as a general absolve-me tool.
As far as e-book experiments go, I think Lawrence Watt-Evans published a book on his website, by putting up a new chapter once the donations for the previous chapter had raised $600. The experiment went well, and he was able to finish the book. I don’t know if he announced each chapter any where other than his web site and rasfw.
J A Konrath has published an interesting article on his Kindle self-publishing experiment.
I am a huge web comic fan. And one of my favorite artist does that, he gets a small “comic” and posts the results depending on the money he gets (i.e, 500 bucks for the character not to die, 800 for him to actually fix the problem but barely, 1000 for him to pass with flying colors).
Last time he got like 5k in a single comic, I believe that people needs to evolve to accommodate themselves to the new technologies and explore the possibilities
I don’t like e books. I won;t be getting a Kindle or what not. It’s really hard for me to read it in that format.
As for the E-piracy thing. I don’t deal with books but I do deal with picture and description theft. If you ask, I will generally let you borrow some things out of my listings. But to just take my pics & text and portray as your own cheeses me off to no end.
Everyday I find at least one person who has copied my listing or stolen a pic or 2. And the funny part is they don’t even edit the watermark.
I understand what a lot of people are saying about their likes/dislikes for e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle. Personally, I am a huge Kindle fan. I tend to move around (both here in the US and overseas) and was sad to see many great books not make the cut. I never have to get rid of a book again. The Kindle even provides, in the case that I reach my 150 book limit, a free Archiving server to store them all!
Many people felt that CDs or mp3s didn’t give the same feel to music as an old school vinyl record and I happen to agree, but you can’t deny the advantages in portability and cost savings. I currently purchase almost all of my books through Kindle without even having to get on my computer or (heaven forbid!) drive to the book store…
There’s a 150 book limit on the Kindle? O.O
I like the loan feature I’m seeing on the Nook.
No, the Kindle holds up to 1,500 books.
Yup sorry forgot a zero….an important one at that!
Please don’t shoot me.
I’m half pirate. Let me explain. I tend to treat the internet as a library. I buy books I like but not everything I read.
The reason is this: I live in Belgium, read a lot (in English) and like UF/PR. Our libraries don’t carry those genres. The only ones that I’ve been able to find are the early Anita Blake’s. That’s it. I tend to read 2 to 3 books a week. I’m still a student with limited funds. If I have to buy every book I read I’m broke. When I started reading UF/PR I didn’t know about e-paricy for books yet. I bought books by the descripton and the first chapter. Most of those I don’t regret buying (bought Black Jewels trilogy on the prologue and it’s still my favorite book) but there are others I wouldn’t have bought if I had read them first.
Now I read e-books and then buy paperbacks in bulk. It reduces transport costs. (Ordering to europe isn’t cheap.) Some authors go directly on the list to buy. Ilona, Patricia Briggs, Nalini Singh and Anne Bishop are some of those.
I wouldn’t pirate at all if I could get my books at the local library. I still prefer reading paper, but if e-books get reasonably cheap on the internet I might buy those just to get them immediatly and not have a guilty conscience.
Just wanted to get it out once
Don’t worry – there will be no jumping if I can help it. And since it’s my blog, I can.
Exactly my point, living in a country where the books are hard to get is a headache. I found “Iron Kissed” from Patricia Briggs last week in one library store and I was jumping up and down like crazy yup, got lots of staring). Getting a paper back is hard and for me ordering them is just paying 5 or 6 times its original price
You might want to check out http://www.thebookdepository.co.uk which has FREE INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING!!!. For someone who lives in Australia that is very cool. They recently updated and now they ship free to about 70 countries.
As a student, I relied on libraries and secondhand shops, I never thought I’d buy as many books new as I do now. I know that my foreign sales don’t help authors get on bestseller lists, but the royalties still get to them, and that’s what counts.
If I go back to having no money, I might start reading pirated books out of desperation, but I know that I’d go back to buying as soon as I could, and I wouldn’t feel quite so bad.
oh, and I do have a Sony reader. Reading on the computer just drives me nuts
I don’t have the possibility to buy the books in paper, there are simply not sold here. I buy them in ebook format and the prices are usually ridiculous. I could not pay 20 bucks for a book i have never even heard before. I usually download it from somewhere, start reading it and if i like it i buy it. Sorry.. 20 bucks is practically my day salary in my country, just WAY to much money to spend on a book, however if i like it i go buy it immediately. That is how i found Kate, and now i own all the books and pre-order them as soon as they are ready to, I even get friends to buy them telling them how good they are. I believe that must writers don’t realize how many readers they get this way, specially places where the physical books are impossible to get and people cant go buying any electronic book with the hundreds new “writers” that show up every day selling stuff on the internet.
I don’t believe you should feel bad about donations, I would love to be able to donate and thank you that way for your incredible work. I don’t think the donation was directly for the free content, but to support the writer to keep it up
Wow, terrible grammar and spelling… sorry, seems like i need some coffee
I bought my first kindle about 16 months ago, fell in love and haven’t looked back. I am prejudiced against dead-tree books now. It has to be REAL important to me to read a paper book (there has only been one). E-readers have rekindled (ha!) my love of reading. I am reading more and reading faster and spending way more on books with kindle than I ever had before, so all the authors are benefitting from it.
When I was in dead tree books, I was a hardcover fanatic; dislike paperbacks. So the cost of kindle books at 9.99 is actually cheaper for me. No book I have wanted has been more than 9.99. Some books are priced higher when first issued or in pre-order but if you are patient and just wait a a few weeks the price comes down. The vast majority of the books I read have been less than 9.99 – usually around $7 – and I have scored a number of books offered by amazon for free on the kindle. I download samples first and read them; if the sample is promising I buy. I discovered Kate on Kindle.
I don’t pirate. I make a decent salary and am not otherwise wasteful with money. Books are valuable to me and I am pay for value received.
Also there is no 150 book limit to the kindle. Do not know where that came from. I don’t know how big the memory is on my kindle 2, but I have over 100 books on it right now and memory is nowhere near full. You can delete the books you buy after you’ve read them. Amazon keeps a backup on their servers so you can re-download them later if wanted. If you trust issues you can also back the books up to your computer.
I don’t like what I see of the new Barnes and Noble Nook (the iPhone like touch screen is ick! to me) but I am very happy they entered the game. Competition will be good for us. I think it will start us on the road to doing away with the DRM so I can purchase things form BN e-store on my kindle and vice versa.
Bottom line: my kindle is possibly the finest invention ever to me. I would never read a book on a computer/laptop/tablet or iPhone. The key to me is the e-ink screen making it read like a book. I stare at a computer screen ALL DAY at work. The e-readers that use e-ink are nothing like a computer to me. It is not for everyone but I am thrilled it was invented and am looking forward to how the e-book industry changes.
I also love my Kindle.
I’m a librarian who just spent the past 4 years in a country with no library and no book stores. Every time we went home for the summer we had to buy a new suitcase to spread out the weight of my books.
The Kindle has made traveling soooo much easier for us and I don’t have to buy books to last me a year every summer. And I’ll be able to buy Magic Bleeds as soon as it comes out!
Thank you for this entry – It was a very interesting read. I haunt my giant and beautiful local library, but it was enjoyable to read your take on the e-book craze.
I would agree with everything Glimmrmoon said up there. I adore my kindle…. and if it weren’t for my kindle I don’t know if I would be reading again. I was reading maybe 1 book a year before the kindle, I easily read 1 every 2-3 days now and have over 500 in my kindle library on my computer.
I have a Kindle 1, so I don’t have a storage space limit (it takes an SD card) but even if I did, you can backup your books on your computer so there is no limit to how many books you can read on it. Actually I only keep about 10-15 books on it at a time and tend to remove them (and store them on the comptuer) after I finish them.
I agree that the sample feature on amazon has allowed me to buy new authors I otherwise would not have taken the chance on.
As for sharing books, I like the idea of there being a sharing function like the one on the nook. The downfall with the nook is you can only share each book once and only for 14 days. Most people (not us crazy bookaholics) take longer than that to read a book. Further why offer the option to share but then tell someone how many times they can share it? Sharing does get more readers! Before my kindle I was reading the Sookie Stackhouse series in paperback. I read them, then I lent the first book to a friend who read it and then went out and bought her own copies of the entire series. She then lent my copy to a friend again and the cycle continued. That first copy I lent out has easily traveled to 5 or 6 people who then bought their own books.
I tend to think that most people will not abuse the system, but instead use it to encourage more readers. After all we all enjoy having to talk about the books we love with! Like Ilona said, there will always be theifs out there – drm/sharing restrictions/etc won’t change that. If it did, there wouldn’t be so much pirating currently.
I, like Tiffany D, was not an avid reader before getting my kindle. I would read maybe 3 or 4 books a YEAR and would spend a month or so getting through each one slowly. But once I got the kindle I found I am reading a book a week and am constantly reading. That is an unexpected effect of the kindle and I can’t explain it but others have said they read more and read faster with kindles as well.
I bought my kindle because I was moving across country and did not want to lug a bunch of books. I donated all the books I had (that were available on kindle, which was almost all) to a local library before I moved and have only a small shelf of paper books now.
I think it is partly because it is so easy to carry with you? I know I always have it with me so if I get stuck in line at the school waiting for kids, or find myself with 30 minutes to kill after errands and before pick up time… I find a park and read. Also, it makes it easier to get books… I don’t have to drag 2 kids to the book store with me!
Additionally for me, I didn’t buy a lot of books because I don’t have much storage space …. and buying books and then reselling seemed like a pain. Libraries never have the books I am looking for until well after it’s released. The kindle is just more convenient and available 24hours a day
Have to agree with both Glimmrmoon and Tiffany – the Kindle has probably been the reason why I am a far more voracious reader than before. (And, frankly, I wouldn’t have found Ilona’s books without the Kindle. The first Kate book was suggested to me on Amazon based on other things I’d read..)
I travel for work (a lot) and can’t begin to tell you how much better it is to bring the “loaded up” Kindle with everything I want to read (I travel international)–instead of having my carry on book, and my suitcase full of “next reads”.
And, it goes with me in my purse. Everywhere. Waiting at Urgent Care with the kid, riding the bus to work – it’s no longer a hassle but a treat to get a couple more moments to read.
The only negative I see is how little time I spend quilting now..In my limited leisure time I spend far too much time snuggled up with my Kindle. Used to be I’d get done with a book and while I was waiting to go back to the library or book store I’d quilt. No more gaps between books means having to work at setting the Kindle down to sew.
I am an avid reader. Always been. Can read a new book everyday. Can forget about sleeping or eating while I am doing it. Discover this genre earlier this year, starting buying books from Amazon 4 or 5 books per week. It got to a point there was no place in any of our libraries to fit another book. My hubby decided to give me a kindle instead. He is a tech guy and was probably hoping I didn’t like it. I love my kindle. It has gone everywhere with me. Easy to carry. The only complaint I have is that some books are still not available there and that if I ever meet Ilona ..where will she sign my book???
My UK Kindle arrived this week and I love lots about it. Not the restricted book list but thats a whine for another place . My first book to celebrate ‘Must Love Hellhounds’ I bought it for Andrea and Raphael alone, and loved it. Thanks.
I love my kindle. I believe strongly in buying my books. I have had too mnay series I love end because of low sales.
Everybody uses kindle? does anybody here has anything different? I think Ill try to get one hearing how much you love it!
I wish I could use the kindle, since it seems to be one of the more stable e-book markets on the net, but alas I live in Canada where it is not supported yet.
While I would like to convert totally to the e- format I am unwilling to until the formats become more stable, or the kindle gets here. Though the ability to get books the day they come out and not having to worry about how many copies the company got is something I’m looking forward to.
Tho all though I have the book order in paperback, if it doesn’t arrive by the release date I do get a little ansy wanting to read it, and may go to try to find it online.
Another thing that has slightly bothered me is when you buy a CD, it is almost a given you can put it on your computer and then on to whatever music player you choose. With books(unless someone can correct me), even if you buy the hard copy, you don’t have access to the e copy, even if you were to buy it from a internet site like amazon.
I know this might sound selfish to authors like you Ilona and Gordon….sorry, just been thinking about this for a few days
You know, I totally wouldn’t mind if they made like a special edition with ebbok bundled in. I think that would be cool.
I must admit that I download pirated ebooks from the net. Mostly I download authors that I have never before read and if it turns out I love the book, I go out and buy it. I cannot shell out money for a book that at the end of the day turns out to suck big time and the libraries in my country doesn’t stock urban fantasy. I downloaded magic strikes from the net , loved it and now I order the books from amazon or buy it from ebay. Piracy may be wrong but it also gives me access to books that would never be available in my local bookshop. Sorry for the english its not my first language
I am not a huge fan of the E readers. But like Janna (post 24) I would really like the choice of, if I do finally break down and buy one, buying the book and getting an e copy at the same time. It might actually ease me into the world of books on little machines. Kind of like how some blu-ray discs have the bluray and the digital copy so it can be put on an MP3 player.
One thing though. If that were the only way I could get the next book in the Magic series, I’d start saving my money now so I would have a new one by the time it comes out!