I think that would be "some individual who worked at their Chinese printers", doubt it was official policy.That's why Specialty Press stopped publishing their own books for a number of years. Their Chinese printers were allegedly putting their manuscripts on line for free.
I'm not sure that 'knowledge as a service' would be a good thing
but it's probably a matter of time until (say) Specialty Press hits on the idea of £7.99/month to access their entire catalogue through a secure web service.
I thought the music business's plan was to moan that people are not buying their latest song on gramophones or some such to make sure they get royalties?They've already been dealing with this issue very aggressively for decades now.
Surely there must be enough secret project nerds to pack Wembley?Sadly, Tony Buttler selling $200 tickets to see him at a large concert venue might not be a good model.
Or £7.99/month with a restriction to download twenty pages a month (for slow readers).That wouldn't be "£7.99/month," it'd be "£7.99 to download all our stuff all at once and then unsubscribe."
Not for free: providing an ongoing service, rather than a buy-once-then-use-forever commodity. Think 'software as a service'. Ten years ago, you bought software once, with a licence that allowed you to keep using it effectively forever. Today, it's provided for a low, low monthly payment. And if you stop making the payment, your software stops working.So... tutors and colleges and universities and teachers should all work for free?
If they did it, it'd be DRMed up the wazoo. Definitely no printing or sharing files, maybe even no reading offline. Probably some kind of 'walled garden' so that whatever winds up getting downloaded can't be used by anything else. Think Netflix - the concern for them isn't someone downloading the entire catalogue in one go then unsubscribing. The system architecture doesn't allow it. The concern is someone buying a subscription then sharing it with fifty to a thousand of their closest friends.That wouldn't be "£7.99/month," it'd be "£7.99 to download all our stuff all at once and then unsubscribe."
Some of the e-books I have bought come with the restriction they can only be read on one device - tablet, e-reader, laptop. When that device dies, you lose your e-books. This encourages de-DRMing :-/
Other way is the takedown notifications. The publishers contribute to a service that searches for PDF versions of their publications and issues takedown notices (or copyright complaints). Not sure of the legal status of that though, pretty sure that youtube will take down videos with music playing in the background that's subject to copyright.
That's why Specialty Press stopped publishing their own books for a number of years. Their Chinese printers were allegedly putting their manuscripts on line for free.
I'll quote an author of my acquaintance - if the book isn't worth doing for the advance alone, don't do it.
Not for free: providing an ongoing service, rather than a buy-once-then-use-forever commodity. Think 'software as a service'. Ten years ago, you bought software once, with a licence that allowed you to keep using it effectively forever. Today, it's provided for a low, low monthly payment. And if you stop making the payment, your software stops working.So... tutors and colleges and universities and teachers should all work for free?
If they did it, it'd be DRMed up the wazoo. Definitely no printing or sharing files, maybe even no reading offline. Probably some kind of 'walled garden' so that whatever winds up getting downloaded can't be used by anything else. Think Netflix - the concern for them isn't someone downloading the entire catalogue in one go then unsubscribing. The system architecture doesn't allow it. The concern is someone buying a subscription then sharing it with fifty to a thousand of their closest friends.That wouldn't be "£7.99/month," it'd be "£7.99 to download all our stuff all at once and then unsubscribe."
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's an obvious one. Conceptually, it isn't even that alien: it's just a form of private library, run by a publishing company. Software, music, and video are all moving to the service model; I'd be surprised if some traditional print publisher doesn't try it at some point. It solves some problems for the publishers, and introduces others, but that's capitalism for you - if you don't innovate, you stagnate and die.
I'll quote an author of my acquaintance - if the book isn't worth doing for the advance alone, don't do it.
And I'll add to that that most advances aren't enough to live one - often mid four figures to low five figures. It's fairly exceptional that an author will pull a six figure deal, and even that will usually be for multiple books and more likely in some genres than others - YA pays better than adult SFF, for instance. I'm not sure where advances for non-fiction tend to lie.
Why hasn't [well-known book piracy website] been taken down for a decade or more ? the losses to aerospace publishers must be enormous.
I don't know about anyone else but, as a Trekkie, I thought I would be right up the the digital age. Turns out, not so much.
When I read a physical book, I get a connection to the author and it is very hands on in a literary sense. The smell of new books beats the sterility of a pdf which is had to read a lot of time due to poor formatting for the media.
That folk on this forum take the lot of authors seriously is a given but knowledge, like many things, seems to have lost much of it's value to those with leanings towards embracing the light fingered approach to life. If I or other forum members cannot afford to buy a book, we wait a while until we can.
I value paying for books because I get the feeling that I am enabling more knowledge to come my way later. In that vein, I see the potential for a book club where members pay a certain amount for the opportunity to do just that and get the books at a discount later. There are wine clubs that do this. Of course, this could just be the pain meds talking and it's all hyperbole.
The other problem was created in 2007 when the U.S. Postal Service dropped Surface Mail from its international shipping options. Surface Mail allowed us to send several pounds of books to Australia for little money. The change meant that the new cost of shipping could equal the cost of the books being sent.
I have a friend in Poland, he asked me if I`d send him a signed copy of my book, I said "ok".The other problem was created in 2007 when the U.S. Postal Service dropped Surface Mail from its international shipping options. Surface Mail allowed us to send several pounds of books to Australia for little money. The change meant that the new cost of shipping could equal the cost of the books being sent.
Preach it. When I recently sold signed copies of my SR-71 book, the cost of shipping something the size and weight of a decent *magazine* to Europe was twenty four freakin' dollars.
I don't know about anyone else but, as a Trekkie, I thought I would be right up the the digital age. Turns out, not so much.
When I read a physical book, I get a connection to the author and it is very hands on in a literary sense. The smell of new books beats the sterility of a pdf which is had to read a lot of time due to poor formatting for the media.
That folk on this forum take the lot of authors seriously is a given but knowledge, like many things, seems to have lost much of it's value to those with leanings towards embracing the light fingered approach to life. If I or other forum members cannot afford to buy a book, we wait a while until we can.
I value paying for books because I get the feeling that I am enabling more knowledge to come my way later. In that vein, I see the potential for a book club where members pay a certain amount for the opportunity to do just that and get the books at a discount later. There are wine clubs that do this. Of course, this could just be the pain meds talking and it's all hyperbole.
People don't get the obvious "everything is digital bits now." In the past, reading a physical book or magazine or newspaper were discrete tasks. And a very important thing: no losses if the digital bits disappear. I am sick of screens. The computer screen, the TV screen and the book reader screen. Paper will exist as something tangible. Digital bits could disappear tomorrow and all of those """""digital""""" books, magazines and newspapers go with them. Think about it. The power goes out and where is your library? It's gone. You have nothing to read.
On the business side, I know for a fact that people prefer physical books. After Amazon spent years without making money so that they could convince people that they **deserved** a discount on books, we fed the beast and Jeff Bezos is now worth over 250 billion dollars. He had a strategy and it worked - for his benefit. Today, the book trade press is telling me that people prefer physical printed books. The other problem was created in 2007 when the U.S. Postal Service dropped Surface Mail from its international shipping options. Surface Mail allowed us to send several pounds of books to Australia for little money. The change meant that the new cost of shipping could equal the cost of the books being sent. We lost 95% of our foreign customers overnight. BUT, this was a huge boon to those who provided PDFs that required no shipping charge.
I read fiction books happily on my Kindle but for aviation books i prefer printed copies where possible.
They told me themselves when I asked them years ago why they had stopped publishing new books.That's why Specialty Press stopped publishing their own books for a number of years. Their Chinese printers were allegedly putting their manuscripts on line for free.
Do you have a source for this? My company does not print in China and I've been personally involved in sending takedown notices.
They told me themselves when I asked them years ago why they had stopped publishing new books.That's why Specialty Press stopped publishing their own books for a number of years. Their Chinese printers were allegedly putting their manuscripts on line for free.
Do you have a source for this? My company does not print in China and I've been personally involved in sending takedown notices.