Oh For Goodness Sake

[andrewducker]

So, I'm rereading the Baroque Cycle, and decided that ebooks would be easier than carrying around half a tree.

Having a Sony PRS 505 (I know, it's like living in the dark ages), I go googling for "Quicksilver stephenson epub". Guess how many of the top 10 hits _aren't_ on pirate sites?

Further checking seems to show that there's no ebook version available in the UK at all - it's not even available on Amazon UK for the Kindle (well, there's a version that seems to be a German translation).

There was a headline on the front cover of The Metro (UK free newspaper) a few days ago, talking about how electronic book piracy was rife. Would anyone care to guess why?

Comments

[flick]

Suggest Ask Mike!

[andrewducker]

Any particular Mike?

If there's a knowledgeable one handy then do point him at the entry :->

[flick]

The one generically attached to me!

I meant in a "when you see him at weekend" way, but probably you won't? I don't really know about these things, but my phone claims to have a copy, which means he must have found one somewhere.

But he's in bed. Sorry.

[andrewducker]

We're not going to make it to Eastercon (Three years since I have!) - next year we should have more time/money, but Julie's in the final few months of her PhD and it's just not feasible.

I hope the two of you have fun at it though!

(And it's fine, I suspect he'll see this in the morning)

[flick]

{I'll give him a poke, he doesn't stalk people so efficiently on DW as on LJ!)

[andrewducker]

It's on LJ as well - I crosspost everything, and get far more comments on LJ than I do on DW.

Shame, really. I'd rather be on DW, but the majority of readers are still over there.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Stephenson famously wrote the Baroque Cycle using an ink pen for verisimilitude (alternatively, for the lulz) - what makes you think that you should be allowed to read it on anything so anachronistic as an ebook reader?

[andrewducker]

What makes you think he can stop me? :->

[andrewducker]

Interesting - you've spurred me to look further, and it looks like it's not available on Kindle in the US either. It is available in ebook form over there though. I wonder what on earth is going on!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It does seem as if the print industry is intent on repeating the exact same mistakes the music industry made.

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

And, just like with the music industry, some writers are trying to give away free electronic versions to drum up business and as an experiment. Cory Doctorov for example (www.craphound.com) gave away legal electronic copies of his novels such as "Craphound" and "Little Brother".

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

he also gave away a variety of Makers, including an iPhone app. Didn't hurt the book sales one bit.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

There are many hundreds of unpublished writers offering their wares for free or cheap on Amazon now too.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

That's particularly mad for a writer like Stephenson who writes such gigantic doorstop novels - I've still not finished part 3 of the Baroque Cycle even though I bought it years ago because it's so huge and unweildy (and have only read Anathem twice even though it's one of my all time favourite novels for the same reason).

(In psychic CAPTCHA news, the Captcha code on this post starts with TeX (properly typeset in the Knuth-approved manner))

[andrewducker]

Oooh, you get Captchas? I didn't know that! But we're mutual friends, you shouldn't be hit by security, surely?

And yes, it's barking. I know a few people that read both the Baroque Cycle and Anathem in ebook format for exactly that reason.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I wasn't logged in at the time.
And yeah - I've actually torrented all of Stephenson's novels, even though I've bought them all in dead-tree, just for convenience.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

It's available on the Kindle in the United States: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.

[andrewducker]

When I go to that page I get "pricing not available"

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It's probably unavailable in the UK in ebook form because the ebook rights are territorially encumbered and the British publisher -- in the dark ages, circa 2007-2009 -- didn't bother doing an ebook release at all even though they'd bought the rights.

(I bought them as a US ebook from fictionwise.com *after* buying 'em in hardcover because I didn't want to break my wrists reading them and fictionwise hadn't then implemented territorial rights locking.)

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Weird we just had a similar discussion - we were looking for gormenghast

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Guess how many of the top 10 hits _aren't_ on pirate sites?

My guess is 0. Do I win?

[andrewducker]

Sorry - one of them was Wikipedia. Close though!

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I torrented Crypt + Baroque cycle, started on Crypt and couldn't bring myself to carry on. Bought the book the next day.

I haven't started on Quicksilver yet, because I know it will eat my life. I have the HND and Beltane to get through first :D

[andrewducker]

It was re-reading Cryptonomicon recently that had me starting on Quicksilver last week :->

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

While I agree that publishers/authors are making the same mistake that was made with music, TV and film - there's one advantage that books have in this regard.

If there is no ebook version at all of a book (as opposed to the absolute moronic idiocy of having one available in some regions but not others because that just encourages piracy like staggered regional film/game/tv release dates) then you can't exactly just rip a physical book to an electronic format easily. Well, I assume not, anyway.

It doesn't matter how special you think the United States is over other countries or how much your advertisers pay you to release there first. If you release your whatever in the US and everywhere else has to wait a day, a week, a month, a year to get the music, film or game... you are living in the past and quite literally encouraging people to pirate your product.

Some piracy is unavoidable, but some you can actually try to avoid, except companies are still trapped in the past where piracy didn't affect them.