Jul
24
Posted on 07-24-2007 at 01:35pm
Will The Internet Change Distribution?
Filed Under (Books, Internet) by Big Orange Michael on 07-24-2007

Scholastic was pretty upset last week when copies of the final Harry Potter novel leaked on-line and immediately showed up on a multitude of file-sharing sites. Scholastic and author J.K. Rowling wanted to keep the secrets of the final book secret until 12:01 a.m. on Saturday and not have the ending ruined for the multitude of Harry Potter fans out there.

Evo Terra, who is well-known in some Net circles for his work with PodioBooks as well as his embracing and riding the wave of new technology, had some interesting thoughts on this situation and the future of publishing.

The latest and lastest Harry Potter book is out, and the intrawebs have been buzzing about bootleg copies circulating around the net. Two things seem to be cited the most as the negative of that:

  1. Less [sic] copies will be sold, since readers can get it free online
  2. Early-readers were posting spoilers from the book

Let’s deal with these in reverse, shall we? Spoilers happen every time any piece of highly-anticipated media is released early. Advanced copies are a normal part of the distribution process. Spoilers are easy to avoid — don’t read anything or listen to things that are likely to spoil. It’s not 100% fool-proof (I’m guilty of one of the larger ones, but it was also funny), but it should keep almost everyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled away from the offending content.

Terra goes on to say:

Strange as it may sound, there are folks who aren’t reading the HP series. I’m one of them and I know countless others. I’m on the Cory Doctorow side of the fence on this issue. I know that putting something like HP out as a free digital download — by the publisher or by enterprising readers — will actually increase the overall sale of the hard copy by allowing folks who didn’t care to give it a shot. Yeah, it’s heretical. Yeah, it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But I remain convinced that the group of folks who want to read it free were not going to buy the book anyhow. And more importantly, exposure to folks who weren’t planning on buying the book can actually cause some of those to make the purchase — assuming the material is good. And I’ll bet you that last group will back up and grab the previous six books as well.

Let the fruit fly. ‘Tis a brave new world when content wants to be freed.

Read the entire article here.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Furl
  • RawSugar
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • SphereIt
    Read More   

Comments

W on 24 July, 2007 at 2:47 pm #

It’s an interesting debate. Baen Books has had a free library on their site for a long time. They maintain that releasing some free stuff online produces better store sales as well. One of their major authors, Eric Flint, is a huge proponent of free releases electronicly.

Generally I think it helps to give people a taste of the book. Most people aren’t going to read a 700 page novel online. Bad for the eyes.


Rick Maynard on 24 July, 2007 at 2:51 pm #

It will, but only to a degree.

I did a check of the torrent sites the night before the HP was released. I found at least ten distinct versions of it, and the number of downloads was up in the thousands.

However, the book came out the next day and by yesterday, sold 72.1 million copies worldwide.

There’s a lesson about internet distribution to be learned from this— But it’s not the one people will actually take away from it.

The real lesson is that people will still pay and pay dearly for content that they know has a reasonable chance of delivering entertainment value.

The typical CD has two good songs on it and 45 minutes of filler. Had the HP book delivered two good chapters and a load of crap inbetween, the numbers might have looked more like CD sales numbers.

They didn’t. And despite the fact that by the time I even looked, someone had scanned every page and made them available in PDF format with a file so heavily seeded that it could have been downloaded in thirty seconds, 72.1 million copies were sold.


Katherine Coble on 24 July, 2007 at 2:59 pm #

Let me put it this way.

I read the last 8 pages from one of the sites online.

It didn’t discourage me from getting the book AT ALL; if anything it made me more eager.