One more day on e-books and the like, and then I’ll get back to my usual posting subjects.
Watching everything with Amazon and Macmillan got me thinking pretty deeply about piracy. Why? Because I think the new e-book model started by Apple will lead to more piracy. Which is too bad. As I have said before, I like e-books. I want them to be more available, and anything that leads to more piracy will make publishers and authors even more wary, while completely missing the point that they are a big part of the problem.
Lessons learned from the music industry only partially apply to books and, I think, movies. And the reason is replay (or re-read value). Music is listened to over and over. There are songs I really like that I could listen to every day and not get tired of them.
I can only read a book or watch a movie so many times. And this is why book and movie piracy is not the same as music.
Publishers and the movie industry look on piracy as lost revenue. But is it really?
I have been reading a lot of comments on blog posts in the last few days, and many of them follow the same theme. “If e-books cost too much, I won’t buy them. Instead I’ll get the books from the library or wait for them to hit the used book bin.”
So raising the price of e-books won’t automatically lead people to buy the hardcover. Delaying the release of an e-book won’t automatically cause a consumer to buy the hardcover. I’ve read many a commentator say they buy more books now that they are freely available as e-books. I’ve certainly done that. My bookshelves are stuffed. If not for e-books, I would have been using the library more. Or buying used and trading them in.
And those who don’t have a moral problem with it will pirate the books. But the point is that they will pirate books they would not have bought anyway, were it not for the fact that the e-version is not available, delayed, or too expensive. Books they would have bought if the e-version were available.
Music is different. There aren’t as many ways to rent or borrow songs. If we want them, we have to own them, either through piracy or purchase. Now that music is legally available, downloadable by track, music piracy has lessened.
Movies, I think, are similar to books. I used to buy DVDs very casually. Now with Netflix, I rent them instead. If the movie industry is concerned with lost revenue, they need to look at Netflix before piracy. Now that I have an iPhone, I actually buy more movies and TV shows than I used to because I want them to watch on my phone.
Which leads, I think, to what the media and publishing industry needs to look at. Adding more rules or DRM won’t stop piracy. Most pirated books are scanned and OCR’d paper copies. DRM doesn’t stop them. Movie piracy, I understand, is primarily because of theft of master disks. DRM doesn’t stop that.
Piracy is a crime of opportunity to fill a need. Fill that need in another way, and most people will stop. Yes, there are people who never want to pay money for anything. Rules and DRM won’t stop them. They are the ones figuring out how to break the rules and crack the DRM.
But the rest of us who just want our content the way we want it, in the formats we want it, will pay for it. If it’s available. If it’s convenient. And if it’s priced fairly.
Media and Publishing industry execs, stop treating honest people like criminals. Listen to what we want. Listen to what we need. We’ll buy from you if you treat us like partners, not like stupid children or criminals.
It all comes back to trust.
Thank you for indulging my two-day rant.
