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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Heard" data-source="post: 1537014" data-attributes="member: 7280">If I pick up a book in a store, flip all the way through it, sit down with it and read it in depth, and then put it back on the shelf - did I just steal something? What if I wait till the library gets the book, and then only read it from the library? Listen to a song solely on the radio? Wait for the movie to come onto cable? There's a lot of ways consumers engage in activities that basically amount to 'owning' the essentials of an IP product without paying for it, even if it's as simple as borrowing the book from a friend or watching your friend's movie at his house. Saying that the vast majority of 'pirates' are somehow consuming your product without payment waves a finger at other 'consumers' without really coming up to plate and confronting the fact that this isn't really a new behavior. The only new thing here is the saturation and ease possible. For pdf publishers I have sympathy, because they're basically in a similar boat with shareware creators and have a strong reliance on consumer good will and guilt without a distinctly different 'tangible' to peddle on a shelf. On the other hand, I've quite a few friends who've done well with shareware over the years so I think a big element of a successful PDF line might be in following the shareware principles of constant updates, support, and praying that someone with more money than you will like you enough to distribute your product in some fashion. I think I've already seen a few 'value pack' bundles for some pdfs, I think that sort of branding is right on target. Dead tree books though, unless you're sponging off your corporate printing capabilities it's usually more expensive and drastically poorer quality to print something of any length anyways. Then, to get a similar product you have to bind it and hardcover a lot of them...it's just not worth it. I've seen one or two notebooks meticulously printed and plastic-sleeved as "easier to lug around than 20 books" sorts of things 10 years ago, but I don't know anyone who's gone to the trouble of the sort of mass 'piracy' that goes on with music. Books are still intrinsically different and superior to their digital counterparts to the average consumer. The RPG market has more to fear from a low cost, easy to use and operate handheld Ebook reader than anything else; if such a thing ever really caught on I think we could start comparing apples with apples re: music. Till then I think the vast majority of people downloading pdfs illegally are probably 'browsers' for lack of a better term and good for your publishing in the long run because they lead to awareness of the products. If someone likes to think of them as 'stealing from their children's dinner" then so be it, but it's just as likely that they might be "stealing from their children's dinner so that they'll pay for their college tuition" later on. It doesn't matter how you get people aware of your product in the long run, even the Rolling Stones probably did shows for free or at least far below the cost of a ticket now.On the other hand, if people come across as abusive to their customers (even 'browsers') then they really HAVE lost sales. Maybe that's because we've all be spoiled by radio, MTV, cable television, libraries, and BooksAMillions where we can 'get something for nothing' but like it or not it's out there.</blockquote>

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