Entries tagged with “bittorrent” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Author Paulo Coelho Illustrates the Upside of Openness
Mac Slocum
August 7, 2008
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Budding authors may not be able to duplicate the success of Paulo Coelho, but Coelho's willingness to experiment across mediums is certainly worth studying. From Jeff Jarvis' Guardian column:
Coelho is the thoroughly modern author. But he still believes in print. For him, this isn't a matter of print v digital. It's a question of what comes when you add digital to print. What does it bring him? "It gives me a lot of joy," he said, "because writing is something you do alone." He recalled the night in 2006 when he read that he had become the second best-selling author in the world. He was bursting. "My God, my wife is sleeping. How can I share this news with anybody?" Now he can shout it from the mountaintop of his blog.
Coelho's embrace of digital outlets is liberal, even by Web standards. In addition to his blogging and social media efforts, Coelho set up a site that aggregates P2P links to free (pirated) versions of his books. He briefly discusses his P2P moves in a New Statesman column:
... I knew from previous experience that the free-sharing of my book over the internet would increase its visibility, so I didn't hesitate to post it on peer-to-peer websites and on my blog.
The more I've ventured into the virtual world, the more I have realised that the internet has a logic of its own and its credo is: share everything freely.
News Roundup: Web Focus Yields Revenue for Tech Publisher, Out-of-Print Books Return Via POD, UK's First E-Reader, TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Judgment
Mac Slocum
May 9, 2008
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Tech Publisher Finds Path to Web Revenue
Tech/trade publisher International Data Group (I.D.G.) rolled one of its largest magazines, InfoWorld, into a Web-only publication in April 2007. A profile of the company in the New York Times reveals encouraging first-year results from InfoWorld's digital transition:
There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.
Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success
PersonaNonData talks about the recent story in the New York Times on IDG's transition to digital publishing:
Since their [IDG's] market is technology they have some advantage over other types of magazines; however, their navigation of this transition is instructive and predictive of the manner in which publishers will ultimately become successful.
... In IDG's case they have remained faithful to the mission of providing content their core market wants, aggressively managing the performance of their titles and shutting down those that don't perform and they have combined staff into cohesive and focused groups. Companies that make this transition early and successfully will establish difficult to surmount positions relative to their competitors ...
Faber Brings Out-of-Print Titles Back Through POD
Faber & Faber is launching Faber Finds, a print-on-demand (POD) imprint specializing in out-of-print titles. From The Guardian:
The new titles, which will retail at about £9, and be printed with automatically generated cover designs, will not be stocked in large quantities by booksellers, but will be available to order through most major booksellers and the majority of internet-based book retailers ... The publisher aims to publish up to 20 new titles every month, after the launch list of 100 books to be made available this June. Faber is the first mainstream non-academic publisher to invest heavily in the POD model, and actively to source material previously published elsewhere for a POD imprint.
Iliad Book Edition E-Reader Coming to UK
Just in time for our discussion on the ideal e-book reader comes a new product that will be the first e-reader sold in the United Kingdom.
Trading Wi-Fi for increased storage and an overall price drop, the iLiad Book Edition is a successor to the iLiad 2. Both use the same iRex e-ink technology and feature a tablet-based touch screen. There is no bundled online service or book store, but both iLiads have support for open formats such as PDF. 50 public domain books are preloaded. (Continue reading)
TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Copyright Judgment
Defunct BitTorrent index TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million in damages for copyright infringement. From News.com:
The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement -- for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000.
TorrentSpy shut down its site in March. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney in the copyright suit, tells News.com the company declared bankruptcy last week, a fact he says will be lost amidst the judgment's large dollar figure. (Continue reading)
TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Copyright Judgment
Mac Slocum
May 8, 2008
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Defunct BitTorrent index TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million in damages for copyright infringement. From News.com:
The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement -- for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000.
TorrentSpy shut down its site in March. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney in the copyright suit, tells News.com the company declared bankruptcy last week, a fact he says will be lost amidst the judgment's large dollar figure:
"What is really going on here is a Hollywood public-relations stunt," Rothken said. "The reason for the size of the judgment was so a bunch of news organizations would write that 'a $100 million judgment was issued against a bunch of pirates' when, in fact, it was declared against a company with no appreciable assets that has already declared bankruptcy."
TorrentSpy plans to appeal the decision.
The judge overseeing the case ruled against TorrentSpy in December after allegations of evidence destruction surfaced. From a Dec. 2007 report:
TorrentSpy operators intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators, the court found. They had earlier been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.
These actions may have obscured the underlying legal issues in the TorrentSpy case, specifically TorrentSpy's assertion that it was a search index, not a file host. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) analyzed this angle in 2006:
... that's the important question raised by the TorrentSpy lawsuit: what's the difference between a "good" index and a "bad" index, and is that a distinction that copyright law can effectively make? In 1998, when Congress passed the DMCA's "safe harbor" provisions, it seemed to be saying that indexes should be shielded from copyright claims, so long as they implemented a "notice-and-takedown" procedure. The TorrentSpy suit (as well as the MP3Board.com lawsuit) suggests that the entertainment industry wants to renegotiate that bargain in court. The result could have important implications not just for torrent indexes, but for all online index and search services.
Responsibly Assuaging Author Concerns about File Sharing and "Piracy"
Andrew Savikas
April 28, 2008
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Eric Freeman, co-author of O'Reilly's Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and Head First Design Patterns, recently asked via email about a rise in activity for Head First books on a popular file-sharing site. His query sparked an interesting thread on the Radar back-channel that I thought worth sharing here.
The original question (sent to Tim O'Reilly, who passed it along to the Radar list):
Tim
Any thoughts on the rise of Head First titles (mostly HFDP and HTML) on Pirate Bay? I'm trying to just take it as a sign there is strong interest in the books still ;)
Hope all is well,
Eric
First to respond was Nat Torkington, who nicely summarizes the "Piracy is Progressive Taxation" argument (emphasis added):
Fantastic! There's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and unless you see sales dipping off then I don't think there's anything you *should* do about it. The HF books work really well as books, so at best the torrents act as advertisements for the superior print product (not often you can say that with a straight face). At worst most of your downloads are going to people who wouldn't have bought the book at cover price and who will, if they enjoy it, rave about it to others.
So long as the royalty checks are strong, take BitTorrent as a sign of success rather than a problem. A wise dog doesn't let his fleas bother him.
Nikolaj Nyholm followed up referencing Make Magazine's experience:
I agree with Nat. Tim, this is your own "my problem isn’t piracy, it's obscurity." PT [Phil Torrone] has made the argument that he tracks Make popularity based on number of seeders on Pirate Bay (correct me if i'm wrong, PT). However, I'm starting to see O'Reilly books in Poland, printed in China, but with a different cover. While it's a market that you probably wouldn't reach with their current buying power, it's something I'd look into nonetheless. I'll pick up a couple of books next time I'm there and bring them next time I'm stateside.
... and then Make's own Phil Torrone weighed in (again, emphasis added):
Yup - seeing your books / magazines on Pirate Bay is always a good thing - You're current, you're interesting, if you're lucky your content transforms in to advertising for other things - for Make, the magazines become a campaign for our kits and events.
Authors are rightfully concerned to see their work pop up on peer-to-peer file sharing sites (though on occasion they're the ones who put them there), but the answer should not be to reflexively seek to stop it (you can't anyway).
BitTorrent as a Book Publicity Tool
Mac Slocum
March 21, 2008
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Free copies of The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod are available for download through the popular BitTorrent tracker, The Pirate Bay. Finding book downloads on BitTorrent isn't unusual, but this situation differs because the books were posted by the author and publisher.
Leander Kahney, author of both books, explains the move on his blog:
We came up with the idea after reading about the amazing success to bestselling author Paulo Coelho, who seeds his own books to file-sharing networks and then promotes them on his blog. Coelho claims great success with “pirating” his own books, saying it has had a slow but dramatic effect on sales.
Bill Pollock of No Starch Press, publisher of both Cult books, is taking a waiting-and-watching approach to the free dowloads:
I’ve been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away. But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the visibility of our titles, we’ll sell more books.
The definitive connection between downloads and sales is hard to pin down, but O'Reilly's 2007 case study concluded that free digital copies do not harm book sales.
(Via TorrentFreak)
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