Good news! Nuclear Smuggling has six times less economic impact than Book Piracy!

[thistlechaser]

While it was probably a bad decision to look at this site at work, I clicked before I thought about that. http://www.havocscope.com/ was linked to me as a resource for writers. Need to know how much cocaine costs by the gram? How much a kidney sells for? How much it costs to hire an assassin? That site will hook you up! (With the information, that is.)

Economic impact numbers:
Book Piracy is a $600 million issue.
Nuclear Smuggling is only $100 million!

Software Piracy is only $63 million (how is it so much less than book piracy?). Music and movie piracy are both only single digits millions.

Book piracy:
In Russia, 92% of ebooks are pirated. In the US, it's 12%.

I don't dare click the links for drug/sex ones while at work, but the more work safe information is really interesting!

Comments

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Fascinating, especially the Russia numbers, though I'm not surprised. With free legal streaming services for music and TV more accessible than before, books are still going through the growing pains phase of publishers trying to figure out the sweet spot on pricing. People don't want to pay the price for a digital book as they do for a physical one.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

People don't want to pay the price for a digital book as they do for a physical one.

Let alone paying the price of a published physical book for a self-published ebook...

I'm willing to pay for my books, really I am, but the self-publishing industry has done so much to kill that willingness. How much money I've spent on things with no editing, horrible writing, and a ton of faked 5 star reviews?

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

And you KNOW you're buying self published books, where as I'm sure many less-savvy digital book buyers might just see a low price and buy it, not realizing that it hasn't been edited and tweaked the way "real" books are.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep. People who are self-publishing are now hiding it as best they can, which makes it even more tricky.

[hamsterwoman]

Very interesting!

Not terribly surprised by the Russia book piracy numbers. Several of the Russian authors whose series I follow have basically stopped writing (books) because there's just no money in publishing, even for a very successful author, with such a piracy rate. One of them has blogged about how he's working as a movie/TV writer instead, because at least he can actually get paid for that.

I was thinking that movies and software piracy has probably become less of a thing because the DRMs have gotten more sophisticated there, while with a book, well, you always have an option of scanning in and OCR-ing a physical book, if all else fails. But orangerful makes a really good point that for music and movies there are easy and cheap/free ways to get them digitally without piracy, which doesn't really exist for books yet to the same degree (like, our library's e-borrowing system is very clunky for the end user, and from what I understand, costly for the library). And I know there's Kindle Unlimited now, but it seems pretty costly compared to, like, Netflix, when you factor in what you're actually "buying".

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's why more and more Russian authors are getting their books translated and "published" (self-published) here? The majority of the litRPG genre is translated Russian books. I had wondered what was pushing them all here, but lower piracy/higher ability to make money makes sense...

Our library's ebook lending is seriously clunky as well. I tried it once, but it just didn't seem worth it. When you compare all this to going to a single site that has literally thousands and thousands of pirated ebooks free for download...

I try to compromise. I download a book for free, then if I like it, either buy a copy or buy other books by the author. I've just been burned too badly and too often on crap self published books at full, traditional (physical!) book prices. I feel bad about doing it, but I feel worse buying poorly self-published books full of faked five star Amazon reviews.

[hamsterwoman]

I wonder if that's why more and more Russian authors are getting their books translated and "published" (self-published) here?

Ooh, could be! I hadn't thought of it from that perspective, but it would make sense.

I also kind of try to compromise. I don't go looking for pirated copies myself, but, well, if friends happen to share one of a book they've enjoyed, I don't turn it down. And it has definitely led me to buy/preorder subsequent books in the series, or buy copies (oftentimes multiple copies) as gifts for people in those cases where I really like the book. I'm happy to take a chance on a recommended eBook book that's $2-3, but once it starts getting in the $7-10 range, for a bunch of electrons that can be taken away or overwritten at Amazon's whim, I'm a lot more leery, you know?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I keep backups offline of all my ebooks, so I'm less worried about Amazon coming and taking them all away. It's completely less organized than it should be, which I really should do something about soon... But agreed though, $7-10 is way, way more than an ebook should cost, especially if you're taking a chance on an author you don't know. Perhaps an exception for big name authors, but even someone like King... Looking up one of his new(er?) books as an example. Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (The Bill Hodges Trilogy). It's $10 for the physical copy, $9 for ebook. That's just so wrong...

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

As long as the site doesn't look at what you investigate and start sending ads for that, it sounds very interesting!
I just don't want an ad popping up saying "experienced assassins available in your town!"

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Or "experienced prostitutes available in your town!" or "experienced drug dealers available in your town!" ...

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Oooh nifty!

And I agree with your comments above about books and book piracy. Honestly I never really bought books anyway, just got them from the library. But I have actually bought books where I've pirated the first in a series, or gotten it for free through a promotion. So there is the same argument as with music, that getting a taste to people makes them more likely to spend money on more.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I did used to buy a lot of books, but money is tighter now, and the whole self publishing thing... I like this way of doing it a lot better. I can better reward the good writers and quality books, and not put my money into the pocket of someone who didn't even use a spellchecker.