Salocin

I don't think you would be so hard on them if perhaps they had posted a constructive comment or so on your review, or did they? Well, that's only my opinion.

Anything which seems free is extremely tempting, so many people choose not to make the effort. What you are suggesting goes against the 'wisdom tactics' of the many people out there. :)

Unfortunately, there are problems. These days a book has a shelf life in a normal store of, what, maybe a year? Then it's in used stores for a while, and then in 5 to 10 years, if not reprinted, it's nearly gone. Ordering over the internet is not the be all and end all; first off, it requires a credit card most of the time. Also, if the book is purchased used, the author makes no money from it. So, what's your problem? If they spend $5 and get it used, the author gets nothing. If they spend nothing and download it, the author still gets nothing. Are you arguing that we're all somehow obligated to support amazon? What ever for? Are you saying authors should get royalty on the cost of the used book? Maybe you're right, but that's not how it's set up. What about libraries? You can get it free there, too. Should we pay the author every time we lend a book at a library? The RIAA would like us to think so, but publishers tend to be more logical about this sort of thing.

Not at all, books have benefited from the fact - so far - that they are not easy to copy onto electronic media. Also from the fact that most people prefer to have the physical book in their hands when they read it, and finally the fact that modern paperbacks are quick to decay, whereas hardbacks have sufficient margin that even if shared, they have made the author and publishing company a pretty penny.

Based on my logs, the 3 books that people are looking for are : The Algebraist, 11 Minutes and Deception Point. 2 of these are very recent, and the third is so recent it hasn't been published in the US yet. People aren't looking to download ancient texts or out-of-print books, they're looking for recent books, that aren't available second hand yet, and each search had the word "free" in it, which is sort of telling, don't you think?

The way the system works at present is that new copies of books can only be supplied by the publisher. This ensures that for each book that is printed, they get margin. Never mind libraries and the like: firstly, many books only find their ways into libraries after they've been around for some time, so as to allow publishers to collect revenues before it goes into free circulation, and even when they do, they'll have limited numbers of copies of it, and second, very few people use libraries for fiction anyway. Second hand books are also in reasonably short supply because most people can't be bothered to sell a book if they're only going to get $2 for it.

If you allow people to "print their own books" by redistributing for free the work of another, then you're taking a huge chunk of revenue away from the publishing company and the author regardless of arguments relating to libraries and the like.

A little side-note: It's illegal. Not that anyone cares about that these days, if they don't agree with a law, they tend to assume it doesn't apply to them.

Maybe so. But It still seems the publishers (Baen mostly) are reacting in a much more progressive way than the MPAA/RIAA. See www.webscriptions.net.

I would agree with that, although I think they face less of a threat.

I can understand how an individual might want copies of 500 different albums, prefer to not have to pay for it, and therefore resort to filesharing. I can see how that would seriously worry the RIAA (or the MPAA, for similar reasons).

When it comes to literature, it takes days to get through a book, and it's not nearly as easy to consume via a screen as it is when it's printed, certainly most people will prefer to hold it in their hands, in print. So there are some structura;l advantages to being in the literature publishing business when it comes to piracy. Unless of course they're printing the book out and selling it at a fraction of the price, as happened to Gabriel Marquez's latest book.