"Book Publishers lamentation "
when somebody asked the question whether it was legal to download books from a website called Z library one of the answers was from a publisher.
"We don’t know what the effect of book piracy on sales actually is, because we can’t compare our book sales to a parallel world where there isn’t any. But we have to assume that there is some number of pirate downloads that substitutes for a sale. I don’t think it’s a ratio of 1:1 - I think that many of the individual downloads ended up with people who would not otherwise have bought the book. But I think that at the least, 1 in every 20 people who downloaded the book would have bought a legit copy if they hadn’t been able to find a pirate edition for free.
Publishing is a low-profit-margin business. Authors, unless they’re literally superstars, make a terrible living. Most of them have a day job. A 5% hole in your balance sheet can be the difference between a book contract and going back to that day job. (Or indeed between ‘everyone gets a £500 bonus’ and ‘voluntary redundancies.)
This was the same kind of argument which used to be made about music and is made even now but the advent of Apple iPod and app store iTunes was a better business plan the same thing should be implemented in the book publishing world.
If I can byA used hardcover book for five dollars in secondhand market I should be able to download the same book after certain number of years of publication for less than that.
And I think the tears shed by the publishers are more like crocodile tears regarding the authors who are most of the time shortchanged by the publishers unless they are very famous.
Probably Google could come up with a subscription where you could read any and every book which is on their Google books site provided to pay a subscription and Google could pay royalties based on traffic to that particular book.
If someone prizes a book for $2000 a copy just because the subject is esoteric and only a few people will need to buy the book I think this is absurd I would like to see more usage of digital publication so that the actual authors are able to get some money for their sweat.
Asking for hundred and five dollars for a single article from a journal publisher who is not going to pay a single cent to the author is not correct in my opinion.
when somebody asked the question whether it was legal to download books from a website called Z library one of the answers was from a publisher.
"We don’t know what the effect of book piracy on sales actually is, because we can’t compare our book sales to a parallel world where there isn’t any. But we have to assume that there is some number of pirate downloads that substitutes for a sale. I don’t think it’s a ratio of 1:1 - I think that many of the individual downloads ended up with people who would not otherwise have bought the book. But I think that at the least, 1 in every 20 people who downloaded the book would have bought a legit copy if they hadn’t been able to find a pirate edition for free.
Publishing is a low-profit-margin business. Authors, unless they’re literally superstars, make a terrible living. Most of them have a day job. A 5% hole in your balance sheet can be the difference between a book contract and going back to that day job. (Or indeed between ‘everyone gets a £500 bonus’ and ‘voluntary redundancies.)
This was the same kind of argument which used to be made about music and is made even now but the advent of Apple iPod and app store iTunes was a better business plan the same thing should be implemented in the book publishing world.
If I can byA used hardcover book for five dollars in secondhand market I should be able to download the same book after certain number of years of publication for less than that.
And I think the tears shed by the publishers are more like crocodile tears regarding the authors who are most of the time shortchanged by the publishers unless they are very famous.
Probably Google could come up with a subscription where you could read any and every book which is on their Google books site provided to pay a subscription and Google could pay royalties based on traffic to that particular book.
If someone prizes a book for $2000 a copy just because the subject is esoteric and only a few people will need to buy the book I think this is absurd I would like to see more usage of digital publication so that the actual authors are able to get some money for their sweat.
Asking for hundred and five dollars for a single article from a journal publisher who is not going to pay a single cent to the author is not correct in my opinion.
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