Once again a blog on this topic, because this is an issue that many are increasingly concerned about: piracy. Now that e-books (worldwide) occupy an increasing share of the total book sales, the urgency to put the piracy issue on the table grows. Logical. But do come with the right arguments then.

Richard Mollet, the chief executive of The Publishers Association said in an interview that the book world is now in a happier place than the music industry was at that time (a few years after the introduction of digital music files). A very dangerous statement if you ask me. Yes, the world looks very different now, but that can also work to your disadvantage. Not only do we (the book world) know one or two things about digital (although you could question yourself whether anyone is really doing something with that knowledge), the consumer knows this as well. And probably more. And where the music industry was struggling with just a handful of emerging services such as Napster and Kazaa, right now there are innumerable large illegal distribution networks. And everyone knows how to find them and put them into use. Just place one file in it, and it goes like crazy all over the world. Would you call this a happier place for our books?

According to Mollet, the reasons people download illegally are: because they believe it should be free, simply because they can or because they are underage. The latter I really don’t believe. The first two will be the reason for some people, but I really think that this is a minority. I believe there are other reasons why people pirate e-books, instead of purchasing the legitimate editions. To my opinion, the main three are (if you do not meet those): title selection (as complete as possible), pricing (a good price, relative to the other flavours (editions) the product is available in) and convenience (don’t bully the consumer and make the purchase as simple as possible). If you meet those preconditions, then the legal alternatives will work out. If you don’t, or not optimal, they will barely make any chance.

Academic and textbooks are one of the biggest victims of piracy. Logical. These books cost a fortune, you use them for a very short time (if they are even used at all) and probably only partially. When I was a student, I bought my textbooks halfway through the semester (when I knew that I really needed them), or I copied the relevant pages. Why? Because 90 euro’s for using only a couple of chapters is a very large sum of money for a student. And it still is. And with the digital alternatives (e-books) existing at this time, there are digital versions of these actions (piracy) as well. It is clear that the price is in the way of the sales and that this is the reason of the success in piracy for these titles. But as obvious as this example might be, this also counts for every other e-book out there. The price should be right (not only relative to the other flavours, but in general as well).

In the Netherlands (but I think this applies to a lot of other countries as well) we especially have to deal with the other two preconditions, in a negative way. The title selection in digital books is still woefully low, if you compare it to paper books. People who want to read digitally only (and yes, this number is growing significantly), but cannot find the title they want in that form, look for it elsewhere. And it will (perhaps) surprise you how many books are digitized, but aren’t legally for sale (Harry Potter anyone?). And convenience is a precondition that we in the Netherlands can also learn a thing or two about. Because of the lack of closed ecosystems like the Kindle, Nook or iBooks (although iBooks just started over here, but their title selection is ever smaller), it is not possible for us to purchase an e-book in just one click. And if you had the gritty determination to buy one, you than still need to unlock the DRM on it by going through some very user-unfriendly actions to be able to read it at all. The best solution would be to get rid of the DRM completely, use techniques like watermarks (also known as social DRM) of make use of closed e-book ecosystems (in which it doesn’t matter that much if the files are protected or not).

Even more interesting though, and coming back to the concerns mentioned above, is that we increasingly hear about study results that prove losses in sales because of piracy cannot be demonstrated and that removing DRM does not lead to more piracy. Probably even quite the opposite. Isn’t that an interesting perspective? That means that all the money (well, at least most of it) and effort spend on protecting our content is thrown away. And that it is all about having the right mindset (think about the consumer, not protecting your content).