Here's a little commentary on the dynamics of e-piracy. An editor whom I generally respect at WCP posted a couple of blog entries in a row about how e-piracy hurts writers who only e-publish their works. I do sympathize with people who lose revenue over such issues, yet her argument is so over the top that it really holds no water, and in fact makes her argument a joke.
The example she cited was 100 people buy the e-book legally, then email it to 100 others, and those 10,000 each mail it to another 100, etc. I'm sorry, but there is no exponential expansion at work in e-piracy. She knows it, as do the other editors there. It's patently absurd. No statistical frequency distribution based on real-ife observations will bear our her basic assumption--possion, binomial, or otherwise. I commented as much, as a person who makes a living doing math. I think the editor knows it, because she didn't refute my comments other than to say twenty people claimed to have read one copy legally sold. Hardly an exponential expansion, even if they have read it, which I doubt.
But her editorial director tried to shred my logic with emotional claims, and back it up with a little math. The latter's argument ran along the lines of: say one person passes it along to 10 others, then one of them passes it along to 10 others, etc. She got really whiny about it. Lady's got a stick up her butt. Stick-butt lady was trying to take the tactic: forget about the numbers, bitch--it's the concept here.
Sorry, but that won't wash, either. Even that scenario is unrealistic. Statistically speaking, the average reader won't pass it along at all, and the one who does won't pass it along to 10 others either--perhaps one or two.
Thus even if one legal copy initially becomes 10, then 10 become 12, and eventually 13. If the initial copy becomes three, then it peters out even faster. Stick-butt lady's numbers don't add up any better than the editor's who made the complaint.
Don't try to tell me that all copies sold are automatically e-pirated, then back down and say some are, but it's all about lost revenue, if you can't back up the lost revenue claims with time-series facts about those theoretical lost revenues. Until you can, you might as well count sheep as dollars.
I don't buy the bit about 20 people claiming to have read the one copy she sold, either. Claimed readership isn't readership. Go ask them some questions about content, and see if they can answer the questions correctly. I'll bet they can't.
None of this is to denigrate the author's skill, nor to imply that e-piracy doesn't hurt authors who are just trying to make a buck. Yet, if e-piracy really was as rampant as originally implied by the exponential expansion example cited, my advice would be to go to print with it. Some publishing house is bound to pick it up, at least for a paperback, if that many pirated copies can be documented. Obviously, that means the audience is there.
The example she cited was 100 people buy the e-book legally, then email it to 100 others, and those 10,000 each mail it to another 100, etc. I'm sorry, but there is no exponential expansion at work in e-piracy. She knows it, as do the other editors there. It's patently absurd. No statistical frequency distribution based on real-ife observations will bear our her basic assumption--possion, binomial, or otherwise. I commented as much, as a person who makes a living doing math. I think the editor knows it, because she didn't refute my comments other than to say twenty people claimed to have read one copy legally sold. Hardly an exponential expansion, even if they have read it, which I doubt.
But her editorial director tried to shred my logic with emotional claims, and back it up with a little math. The latter's argument ran along the lines of: say one person passes it along to 10 others, then one of them passes it along to 10 others, etc. She got really whiny about it. Lady's got a stick up her butt. Stick-butt lady was trying to take the tactic: forget about the numbers, bitch--it's the concept here.
Sorry, but that won't wash, either. Even that scenario is unrealistic. Statistically speaking, the average reader won't pass it along at all, and the one who does won't pass it along to 10 others either--perhaps one or two.
Thus even if one legal copy initially becomes 10, then 10 become 12, and eventually 13. If the initial copy becomes three, then it peters out even faster. Stick-butt lady's numbers don't add up any better than the editor's who made the complaint.
Don't try to tell me that all copies sold are automatically e-pirated, then back down and say some are, but it's all about lost revenue, if you can't back up the lost revenue claims with time-series facts about those theoretical lost revenues. Until you can, you might as well count sheep as dollars.
I don't buy the bit about 20 people claiming to have read the one copy she sold, either. Claimed readership isn't readership. Go ask them some questions about content, and see if they can answer the questions correctly. I'll bet they can't.
None of this is to denigrate the author's skill, nor to imply that e-piracy doesn't hurt authors who are just trying to make a buck. Yet, if e-piracy really was as rampant as originally implied by the exponential expansion example cited, my advice would be to go to print with it. Some publishing house is bound to pick it up, at least for a paperback, if that many pirated copies can be documented. Obviously, that means the audience is there.
posted by Admin at 8:18 PM
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