The most interesting aspect is Paulo Coelho's claim that ".. the physical sales of my books are growing since my readers post them in P2P sites". This is in agreement with what web applications used all along---lure users with a freemium model---and a certain portion of them will eventually buy the product.
I think one of the effects we can observe here is cognitive dissonance. If people pirate a book or a movie or an album they like but did not pay for it they will have to cope with cognitive dissonance. A lot of people with then buy the book they downloaded to 'make up for it' and/or will as Neil suggested buy the future books of the newly discovered author.
The web is a great place to discover new things and it seems that Paul Coelho and Neil Gaiman really see the upside of having their works out there on the web for free and embrace it.
Anecdote: I pirated his Sandman series back when I couldn't afford them + was in a country where they were not available for sale in the first place. When things changed I bought the entire 11 volumes + several of his books in physical format. Sent from my phone.
I am pretty sure what I am talking about is cognitive dissonance theory as developed by Leon Festinger.
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by a conflict of two cognitions. In this case 1) "I like this book" and 2) "I did not pay for that book even though I should have".
Now there are a few ways to resolve with that dissonance. A way to do that is to change one of your cognitions, you could 1) tell yourself that the book wasn't good at all and therefore not worth paying for, or 2) pay for the book because you liked it - either way you eliminated the controversy.
That only works if you believe you should have paid for it. An increasing number of people believe they are entitled to free copies because that's what they've been getting all their lives.
No it's a desire to both pay the artist and own the original. This is exactly why after I hear new music I love I buy the cd/mp3's and often if I really love it track down the vinyl version as well. It's more rooted in a collectors mentality of needing to own the real mc-coy.
I dunno, it was neither for me (see my previous comment). Its just a different medium. Kinda like how people pirate mp3s or movies but still buy the vinyls / go to the movie theatre. Its just a different experience IMHO and you get a different value from each.
We're going to see more and more of this as time goes on. Artists are waking up to the fact that the RIAA/MPAA are preventing them from interacting with their audiences directly. You're making a very bold statement that speaks straight to your fans when you align yourself with TPB (and also send a very direct message to the MPAA/RIAA). Good for him.
From Paulo Coelho's blog:
(http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/01/20/welcome-to-pirate-my-b...)
"...Nowadays, I run a ‘Pirate Coelho’ website, giving links to any books of mine that are available on P2P sites.
And my sales continue to grow — nearly 140 million copies world wide..."
Chapeau and a great lesson how to do things:
One other way: We should stop accepting the labeling of sites with termini that create negative soundings with the Vogons of the Entertainment industry and instead play their game against them by using terminology that they are more familiar with. That will also make some of them actually read critical material.
In this case how about "agile communications on literature" or "active user engagement with the content" or maybe "community building beyond consumption" (Sorry for the high levels of nonsense but the best way to beat an overly strong enemy is using their weaknesses and their weapons against them.)
To give one example, there's Brad Sucks http://www.bradsucks.net/about/ , who has always distributed his music online for free. Over ten years, he's built a following and been able to switch from having a day job to being mostly a full-time musician.
Right now, it may well work out better for creators who are not as famous as Coelho and C.K.
Exposure is always the biggest problem when starting out, and even when talking about someone like Coehlo, he is certainly going to be read by people who would otherwise never even have heard of him... Which must almost certainly translate into increased sales.
Paulo Coelho is really amazing! He thinks differently. I agree with his ideas that if P2P sharing is the way of introducing artist's work and a good idea doesn't need protection. Of course, if the people know that your book or your music is very good, then for sure, they will buy the hardcopy or the cd because they want to own a product which was written or produced by well-known writer or musician.
The truth is many pirates download the work and never actually pay for it, clearly feeling no real appreciation for the author. Maybe I'm a cynic, but the problem has never been those of us who will, discovering an artist we love, buy all their albums. The problem is with those who download for nothing but selfish consumption.
(Which is why DRM is insane: it only affects those of us who actually buy the product, while those who (inevitably) pirate it have far more pleasant an experience.)
Pirates download things for free without feeling guilty or paying anywhere in the near future, but also they could become fans, promote the work and effectively grow the number of paying people.
But those that only download for consumption, wouldn't necessarily buy those works. Also when speaking about music, some people will end up going to concerts - and good bands are earning more from concerts than from CD sales.
If the creator wants to distribute it for free that's fine, but one cannot argue that when it comes to something like data it's okay to choose how much you want to pay because "you wouldn't buy it for more than that." You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I don't think this problem is worth the pain of DRM, but it is a problem nonetheless.
I think the disagreement is over how much of a problem it is. It's not like piracy is a new problem.
It's just that:
1. The Internet has made distribution trivial.
2. The price-point is now 'free' instead of 'cheaper than the original, but still costs money.'
3. Storage is now trivial. It's easy to pirate a 1000 PDFs of actual books. It's less trivial to deal with 1000 actual books, even if they are free.
In general though, when people are arguing that the pirates wouldn't have paid for the product at any price, they are attempting to dispel the myth that 1 pirate download = 1 lost sale. It's this calculation that is used time and again to 'prove' how much of an issue piracy actually is.
The problem with this line of thought is that you've got no way of filtering those that never pay for content from those that do pay for content that they like.
For this reason, authors that support anti-piracy measures will shoot themselves in the foot, as they'll punish not only legitimate customers (since it is inevitable with DRM) but also those that are semi-legitimate (i.e. those that pay after trying something out), while those that never pay for content will always find ways of being freeloaders.
Authors should take a look at what iTunes and Amazon are doing. Amazon provides a great service - you can read their books on your PC, on a Kindle or on your phone. And you can also read several chapters before buying. And buying is such a simple process - you just click a buy link and that's it.
Purchasing is so easy on Amazon and iTunes, plus the content is high-quality and exactly the right format, that I've began buying books and music - and this is a former freeloader speaking.
> The problem with this line of thought is that you've got no way of filtering those that never pay for content from those that do pay for content that they like.
Exactly. A common theme in the discussions on piracy and the like is that all the load is on the shoulders of the companies/content producers and there's even a late comment by a GiantBomb writer that they have to compete with 'free' which I find ridiculous.
I'd prefer if the consumers, or rather, would-be consumers, would filter themselves instead of the selfish consumerism most seem to live by.
It's great that there's so many people abandoning their pirating habits (This includes myself). I stopped not when it became easy like with Steam and whatnot but when (I know this will sound trite or whatever to some) I began to value myself and what I consumed more so and began creating more.
Exactly, the people that invest a lot in music or films are in general people that understand the value of having a physical object which is a piece of art. I personally think vinyls are the best medium for music in terms of quality and longevity. MP3's are useful but they suck! Same with movies,who would want to collect screeners?
I think this is a short-lived strategy that translates poorly to other types of content.
It works for Coelho because reading long-form content sucks on the devices available to most users today, so people are forced to buy a paper book if they want a good experience. In other words, the free digital copy serves as a kind of crippled demo of the real thing -- like trial versions of software.
However, in 5-10 years, tablets and ebook readers will become more popular and many more people will be able to read those free digital copies on devices which provide a reading experience that rivals that of printed books. (This is already possible on iPads and Kindles, but these devices are not widespread yet.) We'll see how many people want to buy Mr Coelho's printed books when they are able to get almost the same experience for free on TPB.
With a free digital alternative, the only people who buy something from Coelho will be those who do it out of sheer gratitude. If you are a Paulo Coelho, you can survive on that. Extremely popular writers will do fine regardless of piracy -- kind of like Facebook is doing fine despite the lack of a serious business model due to the sheer number of users. For less popular authors, the "free digital giveaway" strategy won't work. Coelho doesn't see that, maybe because he is assuming that every writer can become a Coelho if only they give their stuff away for free.
As a case in point, we already know Coelho's strategy (give away digital version, charge for physical version) does not work for short-form content. Just look at the newspapers. They're doing the exact same thing: giving away their stuff for free online and asking people to subscribe to the physical version for a fee. Not many takers, unfortunately, as the free online version is "good enough".
Needless to say, I don't see this approach working for movies, music and software, either. In these cases, physical versions just don't offer enough value over digital versions for most people.
E-books will grow a lot, but I don't see paper books becoming the vinyls/cds of reading. I think paper books will still have clear benefits in 5-10 or even 20 years.
* You can take notes and make drawings in the margins.
* The notes will be saved in a format that reads that will be readable for a very longs time.
* A book lasts a lot of years. Put it in a shelf, it might very well be readable in 150 years.
* It's soothing, it's linear, it doesn't have a thousand purposes. The interwebs isn't a click away.
* You can leave them at a friends place or at the subway after reading. E-book readers today does not promote sharing and I can only suspect future readers will be even worse. Although we can hack them and make copies, most people wont bother. DRM is here to stay.
* It doesn't need batteries. I know e-paper uses little power and things will evolve. But e-books still require energy.
* You can drop them to the floor without breaking them.
Translating for others that do know how to read the last flower of Latium.
> Posso comentar em português nesse texto? Just asking :D
Can I comment this in portuguese in this text? Just asking :D
> Muito boa a iniciativa do Paulo. Ainda não li nenhum livro dele, mas como é o preferido de Will Smith, lerei em breve.
Very good initiative from Paulo. I have not read any of his books yet, but he is a favorite of Will Smith, I will do so soon.
Rather literal but does the job...
My response for you.
I did read a book from him after my then girlfriend recommend it, I really hated it, I do not like the style of his writing and the esoteric thematic of the book, it was also one of the earliest novels that he published and so it had grammatically poor Portuguese.
The point is that piracy has happened throughout human history. The recent attempts to act like it's possibly to eliminate piracy are lacking in common sense (or are just down-right intentionally deceptive).
It's content creators like this that demonstrate the correct way to deal with the situation regardless of your views on the morality of piracy. While the MPAA/RIAA spend all of their resources attempting to conquer gravity, they could have spent their resources to mold their business into one that incorporates gravity into its strategy.
