Comments on: BEA 2009: The Truth About Book Piracy

By: warsystems » The Truth About Book Piracy

warsystems » The Truth About Book Piracy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:15:19 +0000

[...] BEA 2009: The Truth About Book Piracy : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits According to O’Leary’s subsequent report, “Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales,” book piracy wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as some had suggested. While O’Leary’s report had only O’Reilly and Random House as participants, it appeared that some of the publishers’ fears about piracy were unsubstantiated. Only eight frontlist titles published by O’Reilly in 2008 could be located as torrent files. When these books did become available as torrents, the torrents were uploaded to the Internet far later than expected: some 20 weeks after publication date on average. Furthermore, for the titles available as torrents, on average, sales were 6.5% higher for these books during the four weeks after they were uploaded. Comment this post [...]

By: Brian O'Leary

Brian O'Leary — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:32:12 +0000

Thanks to Ed and Eric for both the interview and the work required to bring it to a wider audience. The tools may be democratized, but they aren’t always easy

Jane’s question is a good one. As the interview covers, the Tor example is taken from John Hilton’s work, which was conducted using publicly available information. One of the reasons we have tried to partner with publishers, rather than analyze results using BookScan or other data, is the access it provides to things that might otherwise affect results (like thin sell-in).

This isn’t a criticism of John’s approach; connecting with him is high on my list. His analytical approach parallels the one we have taken, and I am hoping there is a chance to coordinate or at least compare work.

By: Jane

Jane — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:24:50 +0000

I wondered whether the Tor books were even readily available in stores (they aren’t available in ebook format) so that the promotional release drummed up interest but no sales for lack of easy access to the product.

Almost all the Random House titles were all well stocked.