Ebook Piracy "is collosal threat"
But award-winning crime writer David Hewson believes the number is the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
He said: ‘It’s colossal. It’s really got big over the last year, I guess because so many people are buying ereaders. Everything I have ever had published is out there now.’
He added: ‘We all saw the damage this did to the music industry. It isn’t a bunch of Robin Hood geeks – it is very organised. You can call it file sharing or piracy or whatever, but they are thieves.’
Oh, really:-
I see we are expected to pay almost the hardback price for Fallen Angel, when the comparative publishing and distribution costs must be minuscule.
Clarkson's latest and greatest is an even bigger rip-off.
So, it seems, the publishing industry is making the same mistake as the music industry. Rather than offering eBooks at reasonable prices, they assume, incorrectly, that people equate a purely electronic version with a paper version and think they can charge the same (or more) for it.
The problem is that people see this as pure profiteering and, hence, see nothing morally wrong with downloading a dodgy (free) copy.
The trouble, then, is that once someone has decided they don't want to pay the rip-off price for one book, then looked around and discovered they don't have to, they are much more likely to get dodgy versions of other, more reasonably priced, eBooks.
Like the music industry, the publishers are failing to understand the digital marketplace. Lets hope they wise-up before its too late.
