nice post,

Agreed, Debbie! We can't learn how to move with wisdom through the digital publishing options we're currently navigating, without listening to people like Marian Schembari who were (a) raised on digital media and (b) willing to tell us what they really think. Great couple of posts by Laurie Halse Anderson on book piracy, with an equally interesting debate in the comment thread, can be found here: http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/281573.html

I was the first to comment on this article when it came out on Digital Book World. This woman is absolutely right, and it's no wonder the Old Guard is birthing a cow over the entire thing. Look at your average contract, be it publishing, music -- any one of these fields -- where the artist gets 5%, the agent takes 10-20% of that, 10% goes to actual production and operating costs. That leaves a whopping 85% for what -- the publisher or the record company? No wonder artists like Prince and the Beatles are looking for direct to the public arrangements and foregoing the traditional structure. Between the artist and the company, the company is simply a machine -- a machine that most of the time rejects the artist -- and the Internet is simply a collection of machines. To the artists and the public, one machine is just as good as another.

Furthermore -- look, I won't entertain a naivete that doesn't exist here: if I can't download it, it doesn't exist. That's true. I have a wife and child to support, and the prices they're asking for entertainment is ridiculous, considering most of it simply goes to the machine. I would ask the public not to buy Metallica's passionate pleas that you quit downloading because Lars Ulrich now has to buy a Gulfstream IV instead of a Gulstream V (poor guy). The artists are still making fantastic money there. This is all the machine trying to control the human equation.

Anyway -- babbling -- but thank you for supporting a tremendous article full of all the right points. There is no being a New York Liberal egghead about it: the machine cannot control the human element, it can only adapt to its wants and hope for the profit. That's business. Thank you again.

I find that the people that are so outraged by piracy are usually the ones that wouldn't have a clue about where they could find pirated files. More than something that amuses me, it shows that instead of branding laws, they should first learn a bit about who the pirates are, and why and how they are getting their content.

I work at a publishing house and I pirate files as well. Never downloaded an ebook because I don't own an ereader, but I download music, and movies, and tv series... and audiobooks. And the reason why I do so isn't because I want the authors or the publishers to starve (as I said, I work in publishing, I know about its low profits), or because I think digital files don't have a cost or anything like this. The reason why I pirate files is because there isn't a legit way I could get them.

The thing is, I don't live in the United States, so a lot of what you release will never get to my country. That would've been fine before the internet, but not now. Now I can get online and talk with people that like the same things as I do from around the world. And through these forums, or fan websites, or even by reading the NYT bestseller list, I'll learn about a lot of things and think "hey, I'd like to read/watch/listen to that". And so you say "yes, but you can import them". And indeed I can! But that would cost me an extra 10 dollars for a shipping method that takes 2 months to deliver that precious thing I was so eager to get! Plus taxes if it's a cd or dvd!

10 dollars might not be much to you, but it is for me. Especially because I import at least 2 books a month (5 dollars fee + 5 dollars per book = 15 dollars). Every time I hit the "place order" button, I think "I could buy another book just for the amount I'm paying for shipping!" And yes, I'd buy many more books if I could, if it weren't for the shipping price and for those 2 months I have to wait. I already expend as much as I can, and I buy more books that I can read! I’m not a pirate because I don’t wanna give you any money, I’m a pirate because I already gave you all I got!

But that’s not the only problem.

I started listening to audiobooks because I figured it was a legit way that I could get my books without the 2-month-wait. I made my Audible subscription and guess what? There they were again: many books that will never get to my country, will never be translated, with warnings about how I couldn’t buy them because they weren’t authorized to sell it to my country!

And I’m sure that it has something to do with the publication contract, and countries for which you have publication rights. I know that you’re only following the rules, but what I’m saying is THOSE RULES MAKES NO SENSE! It makes no sense to have those geographic boundaries in the internet! And every time you do so, I’m sorry, but I’ll download the file somewhere else.

Audiobooks aren’t the only examples for this. The Daily Show used to have on its website a page where you could watch every complete episode, and in exchange you had to watch a few ads. In my country we only get the “Global Edition” of Daily Show, a 20-minute abridged version each week. So I and many other friends of mine used to watch the episodes everyday on the website (and in an episode where they were in Iraq a passerby clearly shouts “Daily Show! I watch it on the internet!”). Then someday, for some unknown reason, they decided that the videos would only be available to US residents. The reaction from everyone I asked was the same: download the torrent version. To this day I don’t understand the logic behind driving so many fans to piracy. (And by the way, I became a fan of David Sedaris and bought his books after seeing his interview for When You Are Engulfed in Flames at The Daily Show)

I (and I’m sure many other pirates) understand that the problems we have that eventually make piracy more attractive to us (price, shipping time, country restriction) aren’t always things you can solve. But then again, you are crazy if you think piracy is something that can be solved! Piracy is something you can only deal with!

Piracy tells you what your (potential) customers want. There’s a very interesting discussion in Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture about how today’s kids only watch cartoons made in or influenced by Japan. How this trend started? Because of so-called-pirates! College students and other people that already knew and liked animes and mangas started translating them on the internet, and spreading it to their friends. At some point the industry realized that that’s what the public wanted and it became a major profit point for them! Would they’ve brought anime/manga to your country if it weren’t for this? Highly unlikely.

I understand piracy is wrong, but how about you start admitting there are a lot of things that have to change in publishing too? Do you have any idea the slap in the face it is every time you sign a millionaire deal for a book that still doesn’t exist by someone that has nothing to tell? It’s a little hard to find compassion for the “we won’t be able to sign new authors” argument after that. My reaction is always “I hope it doesn’t come to this”, but also “how about cutting some 10,000 dollars from that last millionaire deal you made?”

To finish this way-too-long comment, I’ll say this: if some day a publisher decided to sue me (especially if they start using the ridiculous math the music industry applies), that wouldn’t make me want to give them money in any other occasion! And the only “lesson” it’d teach me is that you’re way more stuck in the past than I thought!

Fantastic point! I agree that piracy can show you what potential customers want. And it's not just kindly pirates like you that are negatively affected by keeping things only downloadable from the US. I've spoken to some authors who have written novellas available only as ebooks. But because of standard contract stipulations (I wasn't privy to the details), her own ebooks were not available to her for download nor to any of her friends and readers in her home of Australia. This is why it is absolutely essential--for authors, for publishers and for customers--that ebook deals (and from what you've said, audio and print deals, too) include World English rights.

Thanks so much for this great comment. "Piracy tells you what your (potential) customers want." Fabulous.

Thank YOU for coming ahead.
(and pastry student? i'm so jealous!)

Kim, I love how you put this. "Waving our arms about in outrage when consumers don't behave the way we want them to is a waste of time."

Digital piracy is reality, just as Marian and Kassia stated. It does no good to wish it away. Instead, we should focus on ways to include the costs of piracy in our P&Ls and use the pirates' passion for books to our advantage by coming up with products or experiences that they'd be willing to pay for.

It's safe to say the discussion will land somewhere between Marian and MacMillan. Between free and MSRP. You could argue that Marian's expectation is just as unrealistic and extreme as the publishers who are trying to manipulate the market, but somewhere in between, everyone will have to reflect and decide on the value of their literary purchases based on a ton of very personal factors.

Our job is to provide a suite of choices that meet the market's broad needs and have those choices waiting for them in the places where they do business. Sometimes it'll be a low cost, digital option, sometimes it'll be a "premium" purchase and sometimes the consumer will get away with a freebie. As long as everybody in the supply chain is approriately compensated from the beginning by a model that takes all these possibilities into consideration, who the hell cares about every single transaction?

One thing will never change. You get what you pay for.

I read Marian's piece and compared it with Brian Napack's Digital Book World presentation. Marian expressed a reality, while Napack -- and I understand his position -- offered us a vision that put building a viable marketplace *after* litigation. His final point was to engage in public discussion, and it sounds like Marian did just that. It also sounds like the people who needed to hear her message the most weren't listening.

Which is a shame.

I agree that it's great to hear such an honest opinion, but I'm surprised that this particular opinion is being treated as new or shocking. It's been a dominant one regarding the music industry for *years*. Consumers (and it's hardly the case that the vocal ones were only teens or young adults -- also, teens don't use Twitter so much, isn't the mean age of users over 30?) have been arguing for years that the salvation of the music business won't be in forcing their ways onto a consumer base that thinks differently, but will rather be in adapting to the way those consumers want things to be. People will pay for music and for books - it's the business model that's failing them.

Waving our arms about in outrage when consumers don't behave the way we want them to is a waste of time that could otherwise be spent trying out new ways to make those same consumers happy to part with their money.

I just read the post as well, and I have to thank you, Debbie, for putting my thoughts in the perfect perspective: that is a ballsy post on Marian's part!

You and she are drawing attention to something that desperately needs to be discussed: there is a new reality in the way people are acquiring media, and all of the task forces in the world aren't going to stop it. Marian certainly doesn't represent an army of one, and she, unlike many of her peers, is choosing to interact with publishers instead of simply writing them off.

I wholeheartedly agree with Marian's point that creating a viable consumer marketplace for ebooks is the best direction publishers can head. In her words: "This is a much needed plan of attack that hopefully won’t have youth running for the torrent hills..."

The thing that's so frustrating to me is that the people who are going to pirate this stuff are STILL going to do it no matter what, so let's stop fighting tooth and nail against it and hurting ourselves in the process. Instead let's just write great books that people WANT to pay for.

Well put Jamie! Napack's plan is like abstinence only education. Making condoms inaccessible doesn't mean people are going to stop having sex. They're just going to do it secretly and unsafely. It's the same with pirates: just because we make it hard for them doesn't mean they'll stop. They'll just find a way around it - a way that might be the less safe, less desirable route.

I find it interesting that many claim the digital transition is being driven by "the born digital generation", but when one of them actually expresses their own point of view, and does so intelligently and without spectacle, some would rather discount it instead of engaging and trying to learn more about where she's coming from.

The publishing industry clearly has a lot more problems than piracy to worry about.

Disclosure: I edited Marian's piece, and employ her as a freelancer at the DBW site.

I agree Debbie, irregardless of anyone's views on the topic, Marian's view is important for us to hear. And discuss rationally.

Someone at Digital Book World (I wish I could remember the specifics) remarked that publishers are not perceived in the same negative light as Music Companies are/were. Piracy certainly will affect the bottom line however a strategy that alienates our readers the way the RIAA alienated its listeners is both penny unwise and pound foolish.

Brian O'Leary (@brianoleary) makes some excellent points about this in his report "Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales" (O'Reilly), and other scholars of piracy and digital distribution agree. If there is DRM, someone will crack it, whether it's because they can't afford the content otherwise or because they're bored. If there's something to consume that costs money, there will be a black market (or even a "grey market") for it somewhere. And ultimately, even music piracy has been shown as less detrimental to record companies than they'd like us to believe. I love--and ascribe to--the argument that e-books will face less piracy if publishers are seen as inherently good somehow (or at least not evil against which we can retaliate through piracy). Publishers MUST protect their content (some semblance of DRM that doesn't drive everyone bananas) and MUST continue selling it (so they can stay in business), but they cannot focus on being so tightfisted that they shun a large (and frankly, growing) part of their audience who can't afford the latest and greatest tech. We CAN afford to be reasonable about the piracy we fight and the piracy we ignore, and we CAN'T afford to ostracize Gen Y by becoming evil overlords of the content they crave.

I agree that it's important for us to hear the Gen Y point of view, and that Marian is a bold spokesperson for that point of view. But I worry that she is throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater here. Yes, we shouldn't go overboard policing piracy. But we need to remain profitable as a business, or there won't be any books for Marian to pirate...or even read in her local library.