DriveThruRPG Exclusivity
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Corwin-Rathe
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This has become a very heated subject in the last few years from the music industry to anyone that publishes creative material for public sale.
One author on a major SF & Fantasy (www.baen.com) publishers web site states this the best I've seen on this subject. It's a view frankly which ought to be more common. Because, reguardless of your security, those who are going to pirate will do it. I'll quote the piece as follows, it makes for some interesting reading:
Introducing the Baen Free Library
by Eric Flint
Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )
Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.
The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.
There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Alles in ordnung!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:
1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors — how about you, Eric? — were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And — hey, whaddaya know? — over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode and checking out Mother of Demons, they either had or intended to buy the book. In one or two cases, this was a "gesture of solidarity. "But in most instances, it was because people preferred to read something they liked in a print version and weren't worried about the small cost — once they saw, through sampling it online, that it was a novel they enjoyed. (Mother of Demons is a $5.99 paperback, available in most bookstores. Yes, that a plug. )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then, after thinking the whole issue through a bit more, I realized that by posting Mother of Demons I was just making a gesture. Gestures are fine, but policies are better.
So, the next day, I discussed the matter with Jim again and it turned out he felt exactly the same way. So I proposed turning the Mother of Demons tour-de-force into an ongoing project. Immediately, David Drake was brought into the discussion and the three of us refined the idea and modified it here and there. And then Dave Weber heard about it, and Dave Freer, and. . . voila.
The Baen Free Library was born.
This will be a place where any author can, at their own personal discretion, put up online for free any book published by Baen that they so desire. There is absolutely no "pressure" involved. The choice is entirely up to the authors, and that is true on all levels:
— participate, or not, as they choose;
— put up whatever book they choose;
— for as long as they choose.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only "restrictions" we'll be placing is simply that we will encourage authors to put up the first novel or novels in an ongoing popular series, where possible. And we will ask authors who are interested not to volunteer more than, at most, five or six novels or collections at any one time.
The reason for the first provision is obvious — to generate more public interest in an ongoing series. I'll have more to say about that in a moment. The reason for the second provision is that one of the things we hope the Baen Free Library will do is make it easier for a broader audience to become familiar with less well known authors. Burying the one or two novels which a new or midlist author might have under a mountain of Big Name backlist titles would work against that. And there's no reason to do so, anyway, because anyone can get a pretty good idea of whether they like a given author after reading a few of his or her books.
Jim has asked me to co-ordinate the project and I have agreed. After a humorous exchange on my appropriate title — I tried to hold out for. . . never mind — we settled on "Eric Flint, First Librarian. "That will allow me to give the periodic "newsletter and remarks" which I will toss into the hopper the splendid title of "Prime Palaver," a pun which is just too good to pass up. (I'd apologize to the ghost of Isaac Asimov, except I think he'd get a chuckle out of it. )
Earlier, I mentioned "two reasons" we were doing this, and stated that the first was what you might call a demonstration of principle. What's the second?
Common sense, applied to the practical reality of commercial publishing. Or, if you prefer, the care and feeding of authors and publishers. Or, if you insist on a single word, profit.
I will make no bones about it (and Jim, were he writing this, would be gleefully sucking out the marrow). We expect this Baen Free Library to make us money by selling books.
How? As I said above, for the same reason that any kind of book distribution which provides free copies to people has always, throughout the history of publishing, eventually rebounded to the benefit of the author.
Take, for instance, the phenomenon of people lending books to their friends — a phenomenon which absolutely dwarfs, by several orders of magnitude, online piracy of copyrighted books.
What's happened here? Has the author "lost a sale?"
Well. . . yeah, in the short run — assuming, of course, that said person would have bought the book if he couldn't borrow it. Sure. Instead of buying a copy of the author's book, the Wretched Scoundrel Borrower (with the Lender as his Accomplice) has "cheated" the author. Read his work for free! Without paying for it!
The same thing happens when someone checks a book out of a public library — a "transaction" which, again, dwarfs by several orders of magnitude all forms of online piracy. The author only collects royalties once, when the library purchases a copy. Thereafter. . .
Robbed again! And again, and again!
Yet. . . yet. . .
I don't know any author, other than a few who are — to speak bluntly — cretins, who hears about people lending his or her books to their friends, or checking them out of a library, with anything other than pleasure. Because they understand full well that, in the long run, what maintains and (especially) expands a writer's audience base is that mysterious magic we call: word of mouth.
Word of mouth, unlike paid advertising, comes free to the author — and it's ten times more effective than any kind of paid advertising, because it's the one form of promotion which people usually trust.
That being so, an author can hardly complain — since the author paid nothing for it either. And it is that word of mouth, percolating through the reading public down a million little channels, which is what really puts the food on an author's table. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Think about it. How many people lend a book to a friend with the words: "You ought a read this! It's really terrible!"
How many people who read a book they like which they obtained from a public library never mention it to anyone? As a rule, in my experience, people who frequently borrow books from libraries are bibliophiles. And bibliophiles, in my experience, usually can't refrain from talking about books they like.
And, just as important — perhaps most important of all — free books are the way an audience is built in the first place. How many people who are low on cash and for that reason depend on libraries or personal loans later rise on the economic ladder and then buy books by the very authors they came to love when they were borrowing books?
Practically every reader, that's who. Most readers of science fiction and fantasy develop that interest as teenagers, mainly from libraries. That was certainly true of me. As a teenager, I couldn't afford to buy the dozen or so Robert Heinlein novels I read in libraries. Nor could I afford the six-volume Lensmen series by "Doc" Smith. Nor could I afford any of the authors I became familiar with in those days: Arthur Clarke, James H. Schmitz, you name it.
Did they "lose sales?" In the long run, not hardly. Because in the decades which followed, I bought all of their books — and usually, in fact, bought them over and over again to replace old copies which had gotten too worn and frayed. I just bought another copy of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, in fact, because the one I had was getting too long in the tooth. I think that's the third copy of that novel I've purchased, over the course of my life. I'm not sure. Might be the fourth. I first read that book when I was fourteen years old — forty years ago, now — checked out from my high school library.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In short, rather than worrying about online piracy — much less tying ourselves and society into knots trying to shackle everything — it just makes more sense, from a commercial as well as principled point of view — to "steal from the stealers. "
Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience.
For me to worry about piracy would be like a singer in a piano bar worrying that someone might be taping the performance in order to produce a pirate recording. Just like they did to Maria Callas!
Sheesh. Best thing that could happen to me. . .
That assumes, of course, that the writer in question is producing good books. "Good," at least, in the opinion of enough readers. That is not always true, of course. But, frankly, a mediocre writer really doesn't have to worry about piracy anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What about the future? people ask. Even if reading off a screen is not today as competitive as reading paper, what about the future when it will be? By which time advances in technology might make piracy so easy and ubiquitous that the income of authors really gets jeopardized?
My answer is:
Who knows?
I'm not worried about it, however, basically for two reasons.
The first is a simple truth which Jim Baen is fond of pointing out: most people would rather be honest than dishonest.
He's absolutely right about that. One of the things about the online debate over e-piracy that particularly galled me was the blithe assumption by some of my opponents that the human race is a pack of slavering would-be thieves held (barely) in check by the fear of prison sentences.
Oh, hogwash.
Sure, sure — if presented with a real "Devil's bargain," most people will at least be tempted. Eternal life. . . a million dollars found lying in the woods. . .
Heh. Many fine stories have been written on the subject!But how many people, in the real world, are going to be tempted to steal a few bucks?
Some, yes — precious few of whom, I suspect, read much of anything. But the truth is that most people are no more tempted to steal a few dollars than they are to spend their lunch hour panhandling for money on the streets. Partly because they don't need to, but mostly because it's beneath their dignity and self-respect.
The only time that mass scale petty thievery becomes a problem is when the perception spreads, among broad layers of the population, that a given product is priced artificially high due to monopolistic practices and/or draconian legislation designed to protect those practices. But so long as the "gap" between the price of a legal product and a stolen one remains both small and, in the eyes of most people, a legitimate cost rather than gouging, 99% of them will prefer the legal product.
Jim Baen is quite confident that, as technology changes the way books are produced and sold, he can figure out ways to keep that "gap" reasonable — and thus make money for himself and his authors in the process, by using the new technology rather than screaming about it. Certainly Baen's Webscriptions, where you can buy a month's offerings "bundled" at a price per title of around two bucks has demonstrated his sincerity in this.
(But he's just a publisher, of course, so what does he know?On the other hand. . . I'm generally inclined to have confidence in someone who is prepared to put his money where his mouth is. Instead of demanding that the taxpayers' money be put into building more prisons. )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason I'm not worried about the future is because of another simple truth. One which is even simpler, in fact — and yet seems to get constantly overlooked in the ruckus over online piracy and what (if anything) to do about it. To wit:
Nobody has yet come up with any technology — nor is it on the horizon — which could possibly replace authors as the producers of fiction. Nor has anyone suggested that there is any likelihood of the market for that product drying up.
The only issue, therefore, is simply the means by which authors get paid for their work.
That's a different kettle of fish entirely from a "threat" to the livelihood of authors. Some writers out there, imitating Chicken Little, seem to think they are on the verge of suffering the fate of buggy whip makers. But that analogy is ridiculous. Buggy whip makers went out of business because someone else invented something which eliminated the demand for buggy whips — not because Henry Ford figured out a way to steal the payroll of the buggy whip factory.
Is anyone eliminating the demand for fiction?Nope.
Has anyone invented a gadget which can write fiction?Nope.
All that is happening, as the technological conditions under which commercial fiction writing takes place continue to change, is that everyone is wrestling with the impact that might have on the way in which writers get paid. That's it. So why all the panic? Especially, why the hysterical calls for draconian regulation of new technology — which, leaving aside the damage to society itself, is far more likely to hurt writers than to help them?
The future can't be foretold. But, whatever happens, so long as writers are essential to the process of producing fiction — along with editors, publishers, proofreaders (if you think a computer can proofread, you're nuts) and all the other people whose work is needed for it — they will get paid. Because they have, as a class if not as individuals, a monopoly on the product. Far easier to figure out new ways of generating income — as we hope to do with the Baen Free Library — than to tie ourselves and society as a whole into knots. Which are likely to be Gordian Knots, to boot.
Okay. I will climb down from the soapbox. Herewith, the Baen Free Library. Enjoy yourselves!
Eric Flint
First Librarian
October 11, 2000
PS. One final note. Users of the Library are welcome — encouraged, in fact — to send in their comments and questions, on any subject which is relevant to the Library and its contents. Write to me at: Librarian@baen. com
At periodic intervals (don't ask me how often, 'cause I don't know yet) these will be e-published in the Library under "Prime Palaver. "Along with my answers and my own remarks. Um. Also, probably, along with my own shameless promotional pitches. . .
(Oh, stop grousing. You know how to fast forward through commercials, don't you? If you don't, it's past time you learned. )
One author on a major SF & Fantasy (www.baen.com) publishers web site states this the best I've seen on this subject. It's a view frankly which ought to be more common. Because, reguardless of your security, those who are going to pirate will do it. I'll quote the piece as follows, it makes for some interesting reading:
Introducing the Baen Free Library
by Eric Flint
Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )
Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.
The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.
There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Alles in ordnung!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:
1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors — how about you, Eric? — were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And — hey, whaddaya know? — over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode and checking out Mother of Demons, they either had or intended to buy the book. In one or two cases, this was a "gesture of solidarity. "But in most instances, it was because people preferred to read something they liked in a print version and weren't worried about the small cost — once they saw, through sampling it online, that it was a novel they enjoyed. (Mother of Demons is a $5.99 paperback, available in most bookstores. Yes, that a plug. )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then, after thinking the whole issue through a bit more, I realized that by posting Mother of Demons I was just making a gesture. Gestures are fine, but policies are better.
So, the next day, I discussed the matter with Jim again and it turned out he felt exactly the same way. So I proposed turning the Mother of Demons tour-de-force into an ongoing project. Immediately, David Drake was brought into the discussion and the three of us refined the idea and modified it here and there. And then Dave Weber heard about it, and Dave Freer, and. . . voila.
The Baen Free Library was born.
This will be a place where any author can, at their own personal discretion, put up online for free any book published by Baen that they so desire. There is absolutely no "pressure" involved. The choice is entirely up to the authors, and that is true on all levels:
— participate, or not, as they choose;
— put up whatever book they choose;
— for as long as they choose.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only "restrictions" we'll be placing is simply that we will encourage authors to put up the first novel or novels in an ongoing popular series, where possible. And we will ask authors who are interested not to volunteer more than, at most, five or six novels or collections at any one time.
The reason for the first provision is obvious — to generate more public interest in an ongoing series. I'll have more to say about that in a moment. The reason for the second provision is that one of the things we hope the Baen Free Library will do is make it easier for a broader audience to become familiar with less well known authors. Burying the one or two novels which a new or midlist author might have under a mountain of Big Name backlist titles would work against that. And there's no reason to do so, anyway, because anyone can get a pretty good idea of whether they like a given author after reading a few of his or her books.
Jim has asked me to co-ordinate the project and I have agreed. After a humorous exchange on my appropriate title — I tried to hold out for. . . never mind — we settled on "Eric Flint, First Librarian. "That will allow me to give the periodic "newsletter and remarks" which I will toss into the hopper the splendid title of "Prime Palaver," a pun which is just too good to pass up. (I'd apologize to the ghost of Isaac Asimov, except I think he'd get a chuckle out of it. )
Earlier, I mentioned "two reasons" we were doing this, and stated that the first was what you might call a demonstration of principle. What's the second?
Common sense, applied to the practical reality of commercial publishing. Or, if you prefer, the care and feeding of authors and publishers. Or, if you insist on a single word, profit.
I will make no bones about it (and Jim, were he writing this, would be gleefully sucking out the marrow). We expect this Baen Free Library to make us money by selling books.
How? As I said above, for the same reason that any kind of book distribution which provides free copies to people has always, throughout the history of publishing, eventually rebounded to the benefit of the author.
Take, for instance, the phenomenon of people lending books to their friends — a phenomenon which absolutely dwarfs, by several orders of magnitude, online piracy of copyrighted books.
What's happened here? Has the author "lost a sale?"
Well. . . yeah, in the short run — assuming, of course, that said person would have bought the book if he couldn't borrow it. Sure. Instead of buying a copy of the author's book, the Wretched Scoundrel Borrower (with the Lender as his Accomplice) has "cheated" the author. Read his work for free! Without paying for it!
The same thing happens when someone checks a book out of a public library — a "transaction" which, again, dwarfs by several orders of magnitude all forms of online piracy. The author only collects royalties once, when the library purchases a copy. Thereafter. . .
Robbed again! And again, and again!
Yet. . . yet. . .
I don't know any author, other than a few who are — to speak bluntly — cretins, who hears about people lending his or her books to their friends, or checking them out of a library, with anything other than pleasure. Because they understand full well that, in the long run, what maintains and (especially) expands a writer's audience base is that mysterious magic we call: word of mouth.
Word of mouth, unlike paid advertising, comes free to the author — and it's ten times more effective than any kind of paid advertising, because it's the one form of promotion which people usually trust.
That being so, an author can hardly complain — since the author paid nothing for it either. And it is that word of mouth, percolating through the reading public down a million little channels, which is what really puts the food on an author's table. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Think about it. How many people lend a book to a friend with the words: "You ought a read this! It's really terrible!"
How many people who read a book they like which they obtained from a public library never mention it to anyone? As a rule, in my experience, people who frequently borrow books from libraries are bibliophiles. And bibliophiles, in my experience, usually can't refrain from talking about books they like.
And, just as important — perhaps most important of all — free books are the way an audience is built in the first place. How many people who are low on cash and for that reason depend on libraries or personal loans later rise on the economic ladder and then buy books by the very authors they came to love when they were borrowing books?
Practically every reader, that's who. Most readers of science fiction and fantasy develop that interest as teenagers, mainly from libraries. That was certainly true of me. As a teenager, I couldn't afford to buy the dozen or so Robert Heinlein novels I read in libraries. Nor could I afford the six-volume Lensmen series by "Doc" Smith. Nor could I afford any of the authors I became familiar with in those days: Arthur Clarke, James H. Schmitz, you name it.
Did they "lose sales?" In the long run, not hardly. Because in the decades which followed, I bought all of their books — and usually, in fact, bought them over and over again to replace old copies which had gotten too worn and frayed. I just bought another copy of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, in fact, because the one I had was getting too long in the tooth. I think that's the third copy of that novel I've purchased, over the course of my life. I'm not sure. Might be the fourth. I first read that book when I was fourteen years old — forty years ago, now — checked out from my high school library.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In short, rather than worrying about online piracy — much less tying ourselves and society into knots trying to shackle everything — it just makes more sense, from a commercial as well as principled point of view — to "steal from the stealers. "
Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience.
For me to worry about piracy would be like a singer in a piano bar worrying that someone might be taping the performance in order to produce a pirate recording. Just like they did to Maria Callas!
Sheesh. Best thing that could happen to me. . .
That assumes, of course, that the writer in question is producing good books. "Good," at least, in the opinion of enough readers. That is not always true, of course. But, frankly, a mediocre writer really doesn't have to worry about piracy anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What about the future? people ask. Even if reading off a screen is not today as competitive as reading paper, what about the future when it will be? By which time advances in technology might make piracy so easy and ubiquitous that the income of authors really gets jeopardized?
My answer is:
Who knows?
I'm not worried about it, however, basically for two reasons.
The first is a simple truth which Jim Baen is fond of pointing out: most people would rather be honest than dishonest.
He's absolutely right about that. One of the things about the online debate over e-piracy that particularly galled me was the blithe assumption by some of my opponents that the human race is a pack of slavering would-be thieves held (barely) in check by the fear of prison sentences.
Oh, hogwash.
Sure, sure — if presented with a real "Devil's bargain," most people will at least be tempted. Eternal life. . . a million dollars found lying in the woods. . .
Heh. Many fine stories have been written on the subject!But how many people, in the real world, are going to be tempted to steal a few bucks?
Some, yes — precious few of whom, I suspect, read much of anything. But the truth is that most people are no more tempted to steal a few dollars than they are to spend their lunch hour panhandling for money on the streets. Partly because they don't need to, but mostly because it's beneath their dignity and self-respect.
The only time that mass scale petty thievery becomes a problem is when the perception spreads, among broad layers of the population, that a given product is priced artificially high due to monopolistic practices and/or draconian legislation designed to protect those practices. But so long as the "gap" between the price of a legal product and a stolen one remains both small and, in the eyes of most people, a legitimate cost rather than gouging, 99% of them will prefer the legal product.
Jim Baen is quite confident that, as technology changes the way books are produced and sold, he can figure out ways to keep that "gap" reasonable — and thus make money for himself and his authors in the process, by using the new technology rather than screaming about it. Certainly Baen's Webscriptions, where you can buy a month's offerings "bundled" at a price per title of around two bucks has demonstrated his sincerity in this.
(But he's just a publisher, of course, so what does he know?On the other hand. . . I'm generally inclined to have confidence in someone who is prepared to put his money where his mouth is. Instead of demanding that the taxpayers' money be put into building more prisons. )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason I'm not worried about the future is because of another simple truth. One which is even simpler, in fact — and yet seems to get constantly overlooked in the ruckus over online piracy and what (if anything) to do about it. To wit:
Nobody has yet come up with any technology — nor is it on the horizon — which could possibly replace authors as the producers of fiction. Nor has anyone suggested that there is any likelihood of the market for that product drying up.
The only issue, therefore, is simply the means by which authors get paid for their work.
That's a different kettle of fish entirely from a "threat" to the livelihood of authors. Some writers out there, imitating Chicken Little, seem to think they are on the verge of suffering the fate of buggy whip makers. But that analogy is ridiculous. Buggy whip makers went out of business because someone else invented something which eliminated the demand for buggy whips — not because Henry Ford figured out a way to steal the payroll of the buggy whip factory.
Is anyone eliminating the demand for fiction?Nope.
Has anyone invented a gadget which can write fiction?Nope.
All that is happening, as the technological conditions under which commercial fiction writing takes place continue to change, is that everyone is wrestling with the impact that might have on the way in which writers get paid. That's it. So why all the panic? Especially, why the hysterical calls for draconian regulation of new technology — which, leaving aside the damage to society itself, is far more likely to hurt writers than to help them?
The future can't be foretold. But, whatever happens, so long as writers are essential to the process of producing fiction — along with editors, publishers, proofreaders (if you think a computer can proofread, you're nuts) and all the other people whose work is needed for it — they will get paid. Because they have, as a class if not as individuals, a monopoly on the product. Far easier to figure out new ways of generating income — as we hope to do with the Baen Free Library — than to tie ourselves and society as a whole into knots. Which are likely to be Gordian Knots, to boot.
Okay. I will climb down from the soapbox. Herewith, the Baen Free Library. Enjoy yourselves!
Eric Flint
First Librarian
October 11, 2000
PS. One final note. Users of the Library are welcome — encouraged, in fact — to send in their comments and questions, on any subject which is relevant to the Library and its contents. Write to me at: Librarian@baen. com
At periodic intervals (don't ask me how often, 'cause I don't know yet) these will be e-published in the Library under "Prime Palaver. "Along with my answers and my own remarks. Um. Also, probably, along with my own shameless promotional pitches. . .
(Oh, stop grousing. You know how to fast forward through commercials, don't you? If you don't, it's past time you learned. )
BryonD
Hero
Dinkeldog said:
How does that contradict my point?
Orcus stated that he did not believe it was as easy to climb over this fence as was being claimed. I pointed out that it truly is.
Saying that it doesn't matter does not speak to whether or not the statement is true.
That aside, your point gets back to one of the double standards being tossed around. Some DRM defenders say that DRM does not treat honest users as criminals. But then others turn around at say that the DRM is only there to target the honest users. It either does a poor job of treating honest people like criminals or it is a complete and absolute failure at targeting actual criminals. It is a very bad deal on both sides of the coin. So when one one failure is pointed out, diverting attention to the other does not make a very good defense.
Is there any relevence to the declining anologies? I mean, we are all the way down to it just being a "fence" now. And this is STILL weaker than a fence. In order for DRM to be a fence it would need to be true that EVERY fence in the world had the exact same lock that could be opened with the exact same key. And there are an unlimited supply of keys lying around for anyone to take.
Bloodstone Press
Explorer
Clark said:
I just want to voice my diagreement with this idea.
First, its not just RPG companies that are thinking like this, many traditional print publishers who are toying with e-books are also thinking this way.... or might I more accurately say they are making similar public statements.
However, that's not how things work. For example, I publish through RPGnow. I am a "Gold" vendor, which means I pay them 25% of all my sales for their service. Beyond that, everything I make is profit.
I have no printer costs, no warehousing to worry about, no damaged and returned goods to account for. Yeah, I have artist and editing costs as well, so at the end of the day its not really a full 75%, but it is still a lot more than what it would be if I sold my books in print.
I don't know what the profit margins are in the print industry but I know they are nowhere near 75%.
It seems to me that if I had a choice to make $2 off a sale of a printed book or $7 off the sale of the PDF version, I'd go for the PDF. Furthermore, I can make that $7 by selling the PDF at half of what the cost of the print version would be.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the argument that print publishers sell PDFs at prices that are equal to, or only slightly less than, the print costs so they don't cannibalize their print sales. I think they have other motives.
As for the part about upsetting distributors, it’s easy for me to say this since I don't do business with them, but I'm going to say it anyway.
To hell with them. This is capitalism. A better mousetrap has arrived on the scene and they need to either deal with it or find a new area of employment. If they are going to pitch a bitch about you pricing your books at half-off in PDF format, let them. What's the worst they'll do? Stop carrying your books entirely? That's only an even worse situation for them. If they did that across the board, they quickly wouldn't have any product to carry at all. And, I'm sure you could still find distributors who would carry your printed books, just maybe not the big names you're working with now.
As I said at the top, all sorts of publishers (Del Ray, Random House etc) are saying things like that. And I just don't agree.
You can cut your prices by 50% and increase your profit margins by 300% if you distribute through PDF format. If the 50% off causes people to choose the PDF version over the printed version, that's only good news (and more money) for you.
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Bloodstone Press
Explorer
then why use it at all?
I also disagree with "any fence in the world wouldn't take that long to penetrate."
It is possible to build security systems that are nearly impossible to penetrate. However, DRM isn't one of them.
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Bloodstone, security systems that are extremely difficult to penetrate are also difficult for the appropriate people to access.
BryonD, I don't know where you're from. Here, the few neighbors that have fences don't have locks on them. They have gates that are easily accessed. But there's a statement with the fence that the owner wants you to respect their privacy.
I would say though, that your claim isn't exactly true, and that if I gave a copy of the DRM to my parents (my standard for the average computer-naive person), that they would never figure out how to crack it. It would probably take me about 5-10 minutes, as my skills are degrading a bit, and honestly I never much cared about that stuff, anyway.
Clark, I'd make one other suggestion: if you could find a way for people that picked up the hard copy to get a copy of the pdf that would probably be the most useful thing for me and my groups. Several members of my group travel for work (a lot), and the ability to have books on their laptop that they're taking with anyway rather than needing to carry around dead trees in their luggage has been huge. Also, with that copy on the computer, we don't have to worry about everyone independently deciding to use someone else's copy of a book. That's been the best thing about Malhavoc's stuff for us. The combination of print and e-copy is much stronger than either on its own. (How's that for hijacking a discussion on piracy?
)
And I take it since no one has challenged my statements on the Adobe registration that we're agreed on my interpretation?
BryonD, I don't know where you're from. Here, the few neighbors that have fences don't have locks on them. They have gates that are easily accessed. But there's a statement with the fence that the owner wants you to respect their privacy.
I would say though, that your claim isn't exactly true, and that if I gave a copy of the DRM to my parents (my standard for the average computer-naive person), that they would never figure out how to crack it. It would probably take me about 5-10 minutes, as my skills are degrading a bit, and honestly I never much cared about that stuff, anyway.
Clark, I'd make one other suggestion: if you could find a way for people that picked up the hard copy to get a copy of the pdf that would probably be the most useful thing for me and my groups. Several members of my group travel for work (a lot), and the ability to have books on their laptop that they're taking with anyway rather than needing to carry around dead trees in their luggage has been huge. Also, with that copy on the computer, we don't have to worry about everyone independently deciding to use someone else's copy of a book. That's been the best thing about Malhavoc's stuff for us. The combination of print and e-copy is much stronger than either on its own. (How's that for hijacking a discussion on piracy?
)And I take it since no one has challenged my statements on the Adobe registration that we're agreed on my interpretation?
PJ-Mason said:Honest people need to be keep honest? Ouch. Why even go into a business where security is an issue if they are ALL out to get you?!
Sure. And the best security types I know are constantly aware of their surroundings. That's something simple the Masters at Arms in the Navy taught me when I was doing security training with them. That and don't put anything on your car that identifies you as being in the military or having been in the military or really announcing any group affiliation. It makes you a much less likely target for any number of things--plus if the bad guys ever do invade, the first ones they're coming for is the people that they know were military (since we're more likely to be able to provide effective resistance). Might as well make them at least do their homework.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Dinkeldog said:
Yes, but the average computer naive person isn't buying PDFs.
The people who buy PDFs are, in my experience, extremely computer literate, to the point of being immersed in technology all day long. Hence, the need for a portable electronic format, one that can move from machine to machine, desktop to laptop to office to PDA, etc.
Mom and pop would probably rather have a book.
That's what I don't understand about the "extremely vocal minority" comments. It seems to deny the fact that this minority IS your market.
Though I understand from Clark's comments elsewhere that he isn't looking at this from a marketing perspective, and that he only wants to provide the books to that handful of folks who can't get them overseas and so forth-- which is a nice gesture to be sure-- personally, if the money were not an issue for me, I wouldn't bother to release PDF at all, given the fact that DRM isn't secure.
I have, in fact, had folks from Europe or South America email me several times, asking for an electronic version of my products, and the answer is always, "Sorry, no." I like to be a nice guy, too, but not at the cost of relinquishing control of my digital files.
Wulf
BryonD
Hero
Dinkeldog said:
I only referenced the fence because it was your anology. I don't agree that the extent that you have dragged out that anology lines up at all with the claims made by the proponents of DRM. If you are going to take it that far then I'll just state that a fence is a completely flawed analogy and my statement above applies to DRM even if it does not apply to fences.
If all this is supposed to be is a "statement", then it there is no way it is worth the encroachment on reasonable use expectations that it produces. As I said before, adding a "do not share this file" page to the front would be a statement that the owner wants their rights respected and would do zero harm to the honest users.
Again, are you now clearly stating that the point of DRM is to target honest users and is not expected to have any impact on criminals? Because the defenders of DRM have expressed dismay that anyone would think this is targeting honest customers. Are they wrong?
Would your parents EVER buy a pdf product? How are people who are would never be involved in any way relevant? And if they would use this type of thing, then I assure you that you are wrong. Beating the DRM is really no more complicated than installing the Acrobat Reader.
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