The Business of Books: The high-stakes world of pirate publishing

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/business-books

by samclemens • 5 years ago

34 11 5 years ago

raspyberr• 5 years ago

This isn't to do with the article but I really think book piracy cannot be managed. The uploaded epubs are so tiny that there's absolutely no hosting issue. There's no DRM/watermarking for scanning a physical book into digital. I don't think anything can be done. Luckily many people prefer to read/own physical books anyway.

madsbuch• 5 years ago

Heck even on Amazon it is kind of a gamble whether you get a pirated book or not when ordering one.

BoysenberryPi• 5 years ago

Book publishers just have an archaic business model. I happily pay for Safari Books Online which gives me access to all O'Reilly published books and I imagine I'd be willing to do the same if other services offered something similar for non-technical books. Instead of looking towards how the video industry handled piracy, book publishers just seem stuck in their ways.

xhkkffbf• 5 years ago

Have you heard of Kindle Unlimited? Amazon's been running this for years. They even pay the authors based upon how many pages are read. It's a very granular model.

Audible runs a similar service for audio books.

Mediterraneo102• 5 years ago

It is worth noting that publishers have been trying to adjust to the new economic realities, but this means they have to slash quality typesetting and even basic editing and proofreading. The result is that many books today are frustratingly sloppy compared to a few years ago, even from publishing houses that were once august and revered.

Alekhine• 5 years ago

I think, on the whole, widely available books is better for society than publisher's and even author's profits. Of course I believe an author should receive compensation, but laws designed to get them that compensation shouldn't get in the way of public knowledge.

CryptoGhost• 5 years ago

Piracy (as we know it today) is only really an issue because of lack of political will. Pirates find refuge in jurisdictions where there is little effort shown against them. There is no reason why this has to the case. Countries who have interest in maintaining IP rights could sanction countries who don't put in the effort to oust pirate activities if they really wanted to.

newbie578• 5 years ago

Wow this was an utterly useless article? What is the point of the article excluding a historical anecdote? Even more why was it shared on HN? I was hoping for an article with the title to tackle the issue of pirating today, not 19th century France and some insignificant novel.

The Business of Books: The high-stakes world of pirate publishing

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