I’ve been doing a bit of research into ebook piracy, and I have concluded that any author who is worried about their book being pirated should worry about something they can actually do something about. Almost every published ebook seems to be pirated on multiple sites right now. Spending time trying to track down all those illegal download avenues will just waste an author’s time. An author might have success having their book taken down from one website, just as it pops up for free on another website.

Warning on Google+

My initial research into this topic was prompted by a post I saw on Google+. The post had a link to a website and said something along the lines, “My ebook is illegally posted here for free, check if yours is”. I have not published any ebooks, but I was curious, so I went to the site and searched for books from a few local authors who have yet to become big names. In all cases, the search provided links to free copies of their books.

I thought I would do the right thing and message the authors in case they were unaware. Which I started to do, but then thought maybe I should add a link to the pages concerning their books. When I went back to the site, their books no longer came up in a search, so maybe the initial post on Google+ had resulted in so many takedown notices that the site had removed. Or maybe Amazon threatened them.

General ebooks

I did not copy down the site’s name, but since then, my research has come across similar sites such as general.ebooks. Once again, I found many of those yet to become household name authors’ books for free on them, including a book written by a friend that I helped edit. General ebooks are clever in the way they are presented because they have links to paying and legal downloads of the books, but then, down the bottom, they have a big GET BOOK icon, which links to one of at least three illegal download sites. The General ebook page for each book even has a big red Report Copyright Violation tag on the page in an attempt to make General ebooks look like a legitimate site.

One of the sites linked to General ebooks is download-genuis.com. There, I found three files for one author’s books. I did not download them because I was unsure of their safety. Another of the sites that general.ebooks linked to was www.fat-game.com. Before accessing the ebook, registration is required. It says registration is free but a credit card number is needed to ensure the user is from an acceptable country. I did not register because if a company is involved in illegal downloads who knows what use my credit card details might be put to.

Authors like Molly Greene have had success getting General ebooks to remove their copyrighted work. But how many other sites link to sites like fat-games? Probably hundreds, maybe thousands, and how many sites contain the actual illegal downloads? Again probably hundreds. There are enough such sites for companies like MUSO to be operating. They are hired by publishing companies to track down copyright violating websites.

Peer-to-peer

And then there is pirating from peer-to-peer networks. Rightscorp is a big anti-piracy company in the US and it estimates 500 million ebooks were distributed by peer-to-peer networks in 2013. In an attempt to fight back publishers are now watermarking their ebooks to track illegal downloads.

At the moment the publishing industry says it is not concerned with ebook piracy. Companies like HarperCollins and Hachette says that piracy doesn’t hamper sales to any discernible degree, so maybe individual authors should not worry either, at least for the moment.

The most popular ebook prices in the top 100 were 99c (14), $1.99 (15), $2.99 (13), $3.99 (14), and $4.99 (11), with six at both $6.99 and $9.99.

Compared with recent surveys, the number of ebooks on the list at 99c continued to fall.

The number of ebooks at $1.99 dropped after a rise in August. 

The number of ebooks selling at the guru-nominated price of $2.99 rebounded to about average levels after reaching its lowest number in August. 

The number of ebooks on the list priced at $2.99 or less rebounded to a near record high. It appears that consumers are once more after cheaper ebooks. 

Ebooks at $3.99 seemed to have bottomed out, with eight being the new norm. 

After a spike in August, the number of ebooks on the list at $4.99 has returned to near average.

The trend continues for 2014 of less ebooks priced $7 or more making the top 100 bestseller list. 

Overall, it appears that the price of ebooks making the bestseller list is going down, mainly due to a rise in those at $2.99. 

On August 22, at approximately 3pm Australian time, the graph above shows the prices of the top 100 Kindle ebooks. The best selling prices were obviously 0.99 cents, $1.99 and $4.99 with about half as many priced at $2.99 and $3.99.

The number of ebooks priced at 99cents decreased to 16, continuing a downward trend that began at the end of 2013.

The number of ebooks in the top 100 at $1.99 continues to increase, reaching its highest number in all the surveys. 

Only seven were $2.99. After making a comeback over recent surveys, the number priced at $2.99 has dropped to its lowest on record. The gurus who say $2.99 is the price to sell self-published ebooks won’t be happy.





It seems the very cheap ebook might be on the wain after peaking in the previous survey.



 

The number of ebooks priced at $3.99 appears to have bottomed out at eight.

The number priced at $4.99 is very much on the rise. Fifteen of the $4.99 ebooks were in the top 50. 

The rise in the number of ebooks in the top 100 priced $7 or more, combined with the fall in the number of ebooks priced $2.99 or less, suggests consumers are willing to pay more for their ebooks. But this might be an aberration. On its face value, my survey data would appear to contradict The Age article’s suggestion that ebook prices are decreaing.   

Critters.com have been running a survey on what a fair price for an ebook is. The average price respondents have suggested is US$7.78 for a new release and $4.60 for a back list book. Seeing as though most of the people who join critters would one day hope to be published authors, a lot of them obviously don’t want to make any money out of it. Or perhaps they think the whole of the $7.78 will end up in their pockets.

I put down US$20 for a new release and $15 for back list ebooks. So that’s about $22 and $17 Australian, which sounds fair when there are no printing, transporting and storage costs. There should be less retail costs, but let’s wait until Amazon and Apple have established their monopoly and see how much their retail costs rise too, while they squeeze the publishers and authors.

If a reader purchases an ebook for $7.78, there would be less of a compulsion to read it, a bit like all the books I have collected from garage sales. If I spend $35 on a book, I always get around to reading it. Reading the cheaper books depends partly on whether they are written by a favoured author, so cheap ebooks might be bad news for new or lesser known authors, they might get bought, but not read.

If an ebook is not read, there could be great disappointment when, on the basis of its high sales, the publishers bring out a paper version which then fails to sell, partly due to lack of word of mouth sales and partly due to it being much more expensive. It could also lead to great disappointment for an author when their better written next ebook, with the not so engaging title, fails to sell. So publishers will probably wait for a new author to have a number of good selling ebooks before they risk putting them out on paper.

If a lot of ebooks are being bought but not read, sales of ebooks would come down to the title, blurb and advertising, and not their content. A bit like all the delicious looking food that is bought and thrown out uneaten in the western world.

Graham.