Friggin book piracy ! Book authors perspective welcome

[Steve Luke]

Paul Anilprem wrote:Essentially, the questions are: 1. Can a typical author paired with a good publisher bring out a good quality book?
and 2. Can a very good author (paired with self hired good editor) bring out a good quality book?

I think, no and yes, respectively

If you look who are disagreeing with you, they mostly seem like authors (see the title author under their name? they get that for having published books) and not publishers. Whereas I don't have any experience the fact that they do lends their opinion a bit of weight. Perhaps rather than ignoring it you should consider your premise that publishers add nothing to the situation could be flawed.

Secondly, you really think that a typical author paired with a good publisher can not possibly bring out a good quality book?

Paul Anilprem wrote:and for this reason, I think a publisher does not really add much value for the consumer and for the author because 1. it doesn't guarantee a qood quality book 2. consumer pays more 3 authors don't make much money.

And when neither the content producer nor content consumer gets a fair return for their effort/money, it can be said that the middleman is potential dinosaur

Consider what happens with a publisher. The typical author gets some money, the publisher pays the editor and marketing costs. Even if the book does not sell, the author makes a small amount, or at least doesn't come out in debt.

Consider what happens without the publisher. The typical author hires an editor and must pay him. Noone knows about his book because there is no marketing. The book doesn't sell. The author has now lost money. Even if the author is good, and the editor is good, and the book comes out very high quality there is a good chance that noone every knows about the book because of the lack of marketing. The lower cost to self-publishing is severely overcome with significantly less earnings when you have near-zero sales.

You might say that that is okay. Only the best authors will survive. The problem with that is writing a book is not something you get right the first time. And without the experience of a publisher guiding you, the chance that an author produces a good book is lower. How many authors will be able to self-publish through trial and error until they get a book that actually is found and sells, all the time losing money because s/he has to hire editors each attempt? Most will fail early. The authors suffer and there is fewer quality books being generated so the consumers lose (they can not keep up with current technology because there are fewer authors and they can't afford to write on specialized subjects.)

What publishers provide is:
1) lower cost of entry into authorship by taking on the costs of editors, marketing, and other production costs
2) experience on what works, what doesn't. Less trial and error means better chance of success
3) uniformed structure. As a consumer you sort of know how the different books in a series like 'Think ...' or '... in Action' will be laid out and so will be able to pick the format that works best with you then keep with it as you cover more topics.
4) central source for content you can trust. As a consumer you learn which publishers make books that you find good. You can then take a look at those publishers first when looking to buy.

[Paul Anilprem]

Steve Luke wrote:

Paul Anilprem wrote:Essentially, the questions are: 1. Can a typical author paired with a good publisher bring out a good quality book?
and 2. Can a very good author (paired with self hired good editor) bring out a good quality book?

I think, no and yes, respectively

If you look who are disagreeing with you, they mostly seem like authors (see the title author under their name? they get that for having published books) and not publishers. Whereas I don't have any experience the fact that they do lends their opinion a bit of weight. Perhaps rather than ignoring it you should consider your premise that publishers add nothing to the situation could be flawed.

You are right. I will just shut up

[Steve Luke]

Paul Anilprem wrote:
You are right. I will just shut up

Sorry, that might have come out wrong. I didn't mean your opinion didn't count as much or that you should shut up. I just meant that the authors seem to think it was important, so it is worth mind-experimenting about what the publisher does for them.

[Bear Bibeault]

I really do think that no one who hasn't gone through the process of writing a book can really grasp everything that goes into it. I was warned up front. I thought I was prepared. I was wrong.

Right now, the copy editor (whom I fondly refer to as "The Grammar Nazi") and I (there are many types of editor) are combing through Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja word after painstaking word (CodeRanch promo for this book coming up in a few weeks!). Nothing escapes the magnifying glass -- I just had to totally revamp a number of figures this evening to make "The Grammar Nazi" happy.

[Lexington Smith]

Andrew Monkhouse wrote:

A publish on demand system. Multiple companies do this today, including Amazon (Create Space)

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on book stores can be read to imply that both having a source for getting multiple different books and publish on demand were the standard model in 300 B.C.

Thats what I meant. What was i thinking Of course, amazon would have already thought about something like this !

[dennis deems]

There are compelling arguments that wringing one's hands about piracy is self-defeating.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121020/23242420777/humble-ebook-bundle-breaks-1-million-all-authors-should-be-best-sellers.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121024/20333720816/exploring-earnings-humble-bundle-author.shtml

[Martin Vajsar]

Dennis Deems wrote:There are compelling arguments that wringing one's hands about piracy is self-defeating.

Really interesting.

However, if there were thousands of these bundles on sale, I'm not sure each and every of them would fetch the million bucks. And there are millions of books to be sold.

[Tushar Bhaware]

There are many reasons for book piracy.I am not author but here is my view :
1. some are lazy enough to go to book store and buy a book.
(and they don't trust ebay.com .)
2. some use ebook as an excuse to be on PC so they can play games or listen songs and switch to book when mom enters in the room.
(buying ebook is not fad in many countries,they will buy paperbook instead of ebook even it cost more.If ebook can give them excuse,they will stick with it.)
3. It's easily available.
(although it hurt eyes,you can buy nice pair of spectacle from the money you saved on the book)
4. They love to make notes and read from it.
(So why bother buying a book,after all they will be reading from their own notes once they finished.)
5. They are waiting for latest version of book,till then they will read from pirated book.

(as bert bates is here, i take a shot and will point out to him,Many people are waiting for their next edition of Head first servlet and jsp.)

6.Some people like to read from cheap quality paper.
(It's personnel choice,no one can do anything about it.)
7. Mainly, It may be cheap in countries like america and england where it cost around 15-20$ but in some developing countries cost translates into big amount.
(Blame Economics and foreign policies whatever ...)

Although none of the above reasons are justificable, I would love to point out-

A true book lover will always buy book,more precise paperbook.
I know book piracy is high in India as well,but there are many people in India still buy and prefer paperbook.