Get the SCHOOLS to help reduce book piracy—but use a carrot rather than a stick
Peter Wayner—author of a smart survey of the e-book scene, mentioning our Paul Biba—is out with another good read.
A Book Author Wonders How to Reduce Piracy is the new headline in the New York Times.
Pete is vexed that students are pirating his tech-related books—for example, Disappearing Cryptography—and I sympathize. Here’s my advice: Go after the schools, from K-12 through the post-graduate level, but use the carrot, not the stick.
I agree with Pete that justifications for piracy are off-target. Screen tech keeps improving, for example, so pirated e-books will be less and less viable as a means of advertising p-books. This is fine now in many situations, but it’s hardly a sustainable approach for the long term. And what to do if you don’t want to write a series—and if you doubt that your particular readers will want as high a level of interactivity as the readers of SF books might? You lack the same range of extras to sell beyond the basic text. It’s the main show, with nothing directly related to follow, especially if your next books may be on different topics! Reader loyalty to authors extends only so far.
Does this mean you should be a copyright hawk? No. In the case of textbooks and others used by schools at all levels, I would not recommend an RIAAish approach of turning these educators into copyright cops. But there is a better option. Why not push for federal legislation that in one way or another would encourage schools to build textbooks into the cost of tuition? Perhaps they would get more federal aid.
Unwittingly Pete himself may have made an argument for such an strategy. In his blog he wrote:
Student complain that textbooks cost too much and I certainly agree. Books easily cost more than $100 and some cost more than $200. While this sounds outrageous compared to a best seller, it’s hard to make much money in this business even at that price. Very few books sell even 1000 copies and very few textbooks sell 100,000 copies.
The irony is that $100 is also much cheaper than a university course. Tuition can easily run $3,000 to $5,000 and a good text book usually comes with more material. While a text book doesn’t come with office hours and TAs, it doesn’t require transcribing a professor’s hen scratching on the board. That makes it a great deal at $200.
Is it time, then, for reasonable payments for books to be part of tuition fees, with adjustment for students in various disciplines? I’m not the first to suggest bundling textbook costs in with tuition—if nothing else, I know that TeleRead contributor Jon Noring was doing so before I did—but it is one approach worth pursuing. The bundled books could come if need be with social DRM to help distinguish them from genuinely “free” content.
Another piracy-reducer
Yet another way to help reduce piracy would be a well-stocked national digital library collection—in other words, a TeleRead approach, which could also encompass hardware-related assistance as well professional development for educators and librarians to help them integrate the new resources.
The Authors Guild and the rest of the copyright lobby seem to enjoy more influence in D.C. than the rest of America does. Here’s a chance to use it in a constructive way that would also save the interest of society in general.
Related: Paul Biba’s A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy—NY Times article today.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Two things (the same ideas I always seem to post on stories like these):
1.) Go digital. Make the digital versions significantly cheaper than the paper ones. Pirates are going to scan titles anyway. Go digital, reduce printing overhead, and hopefully sell books at more affordable price. (I also say this because I’m actively working on putting my whole library on my tablet laptop so I don’t have to worry about the $100+ to ship my books every time I go from one school/season to another.)
2.) Print on demand. If people want printed textbooks, print them when necessary. Unsold books are unsold books, and jacking up the price to account for unsold copies/meager demand is both economically and environmentally nonsensical. Textbooks aren’t exactly collector’s items at this point.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
What “if you doubt that your particular readers will want as high a level of interactivity as the readers of SF books might? You lack the same range of extras to sell beyond the basic text.”?
Then you’ll go broke in the future. Interactivity and “online extras” are the future of all forms of entertainment and information dissemination. Your “particular readers” are getting older and dying, the next generation won’t be like your current readers, they’ll expect everything online and electronically available, just like all their other media.
The days of “just being a writer” are as numbered as the days of music hall entertainers were when the phonograph and radio were invented, as many film actors were when talkies came in. You may not like it, you may not be able to make the transition, but the technology will ensure that’s what the future holds.
In short you’ll either evolve or go extinct, as usual.
May 16th, 2009 at 4:02 am
But, David, who says all younger people want interactivity? Or heavy degrees of it?
There is a difference between exchanging emails with the author and constantly monitoring a Twitter stream. Give the reader a choice.
For years, I myself have been pestering the IDPF to adopt standards for shared annotations. But I’ll not think that every reader wants to use the technology to the fullest and even pay extra for it.
As for “just being a writer,” that remains to be seen–we don’t know how the tech will shake out. I just happen to have been asked that question during an interview, and my answer was, “Hey, I’m many things.” That said, “writer” is my favorite “thing.” Like programming, writing demands time and discipline, and I’d hate the day to come when the true pros went extinct.
What’s more, keep in mind that true interactivity takes time—stealing it from book writing.
“…they’ll expect everything online and electronically available, just like all their other media.”
LOL, I’ve been pushing the idea of e-books for years. Why the devil wouldn’t I want my works online. But again, there’s a difference between basic availability and Twitter streams.
Thanks,
David