[HN Gopher] The Business of Books: The high-stakes world of pira...
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       The Business of Books: The high-stakes world of pirate publishing
        
       Author : samclemens
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2021-01-26 18:06 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
        
       | newbie578 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | raspyberr wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | Heck even on Amazon it is kind of a gamble whether you get a
         | pirated book or not when ordering one.
        
         | BoysenberryPi wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
           | 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.
        
           | xhkkffbf wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | Alekhine wrote:
         | 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.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-29 23:01 UTC)