Author Encourages Users to Pirate His Book 237
mariushm writes "Peter Cooper, the author of Beginning Ruby, breaks down how he gets paid for the book, including the advance and royalties, giving a nice clean explanation of how authors get paid for their books. He also describes the negotiations over the second edition of the book, in which he begged his publisher, Apress, to offer the ebook version for free, believing (strongly) that it would promote sales of the paper book. He even notes that the original version's ebook barely had noteworthy sales, so it seemed reasonable to offer up the ebook for free to drive more attention. No dice. Even though Apress has done that with other similar titles, it wouldn't agree. As he retains the copyright for the actual text, he encourages people to buy the book and create an online version of it without covers, contents table and indexes, promising not to enforce his copyright over the new work."
"Steal this book" (Score:2, Informative)
"Steal this book"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book
Re:I don't think so... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't think so... (Score:1, Informative)
99% of the time, it wouldn't be the author suing anyway. It would be the copyright holder, which is usually the publishing house. Beware to anyone thinking that this author's statement would keep them from avoiding litigation from the copyright owner....
Re:I don't think so... (Score:5, Informative)
He most likely granted the publisher an exclusive license.
On one hand, the author himself, who was there for the signing of the contract, states he did not give them an exclusive license on the text, but states he didn't create the covers, toc, or index thus can't give permission to copy that.
On the other hand, someone on slashdot states what the author _most likely_ did, in their overly well informed opinion.
Well that settles it!
Actually I sorta like that idea.
Personally, I think he most likely never even spoke to a book publisher, and not only wants his book to be free, but will pay us to read it! I'm sure that is the case.
*Goes off to download an ebook and wait for my check in the mail*
Re:Ugh. (Score:2, Informative)
He's encouraging people to steal from him not the publisher.
He owns the text, the publisher owns the bits they added, cover, index, etc. Apparently he made a deal with them where he retained ownership of the text, and they got an exclusive license.
Maybe he's breaking that deal (eg maybe in court this "promise to not sue" would be viewed as a license or implicit permission), or maybe he's abusing them for not requiring him sign over his ownership.
Re:Promise he won't sue? (Score:3, Informative)
The word we're looking for here is "estoppel" [wikipedia.org]. He has now publicly stated that he won't sue. If he tries to renege and sue he could be estopped from doing so.
Re:Ugh. (Score:3, Informative)
The book belongs to the publisher, not to him; that's why he had to ask them for permission, to which they said "no".
I cannot imagine why you believe this. No publisher works this way.
Re:Tim O'Reilly's comment... (Score:4, Informative)
He may not have, but Eric Flint has.
http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
Exerpt:
Re:I don't think so... (Score:4, Informative)
These guys can't do math at all: http://www.pragprog.com/write-for-us [pragprog.com]
50%? Oh noes! They'll go bankrupt by the end of the year!
Re:Failure to enforce your copyright negates it (Score:1, Informative)
No, you're thinking of patents. Copyright doesn't go "poof" if it isn't enforced.
Re:I don't think so... (Score:4, Informative)
This is straight from the author's blog:
My contract also states that I have exclusively allowed Apress to publish and reproduce my content
So I'd say there is a pretty good chance that the contract contains an exclusivity clause. This wasn't pure /. speculation.
Probably breaking his contract... (Score:4, Informative)
I've worked for several publishers over the years, and even in cases where the author keeps the copyright, the publishers is usually granted the enforcement rights, and other portions of the rights. For instance, one would not expect an author to be forced to defend his copyright in court.
I looked at a contract that was executed several years ago:
Check the italicized portion:
1.0:called the work, hereby grants and assigns to the Publisher the exclusive world publishing rights of the work including the sole rights to translations, selections, expansions, abridgments, as well as all electronic production and reproduction thereof, and the Publisher agrees and has the exclusive rights to publish or reproduce the work during the continuance of the copyright ...
9.0: That the Author agrees not to publish--or permit to be published without the written consent of the Publisher--any other book on the same subject written or edited by the Author that will injure the market made for this book, nor to publish or cause to be published any other edition of this book revised, corrected, abridged or otherwise without the written consent of the Publisher.
In the case of every publisher I have ever worked with (and from dealing with hundreds of authors), this has literally NEVER been an issue -- the author requests rights back from the publisher, and he or she gets them 99% of the time. Literally, I don't think I've ever heard of a case of a publisher not following the author's wishes (and I've dealt with a number of authors who were switching publishers with a revised/second/third/fourth/etc edition of their book).
Speaking as a someone with experience in the small academic publishing world, publishers take big risks with signing authors and issuing advances. If the books never materialize, there's actually very little most publishers can do. ie, you have to eat the 10k or whatever, as any law suit would be expensive and uncertain. Thus the extreme legalese.
A few points from the article:
The retail price (RRP) of Beginning Ruby is $40 (give or take a penny) but my publisher, Apress, makes a varying amount per book – I don’t know why.
Very simple -- publishers sell books at widely ranging discounts, from a low of about 20% to a single bookstore, to maybe 40% to wholesalers, to maybe 60% to amazon. Yeah, so for that $40 list price on Amazon, Amazon probably only had to pay < $20! (Yeah, publishing really isn't as highly marked up by the publishers as it might seem!!)
(About an advance> The only advantage to you is that if your book bombs and doesn’t even sell enough copies to pay back the advance, you (usually) don’t have to give the publisher back a penny.
I've never heard of authors having to pay their advances back if their books bomb or don't materialize. I'm sure it happens with bigger publishers and bigger advances, but most of the time the publisher can't do much.
On the royalty statements above, you should see references to “Licensed Rights.” My first editor told me that these are payments you receive for foreign versions of your book, for inclusion on systems like O’Reilly Safari, and “similar.” I’ve asked a couple of times now but I’ve never found out what these amounts are specifically for and I’m not aware of any translated editions of Beginning Ruby.
Often times these fees are for translations or rights to use small segments. For instance if a professor wants to use one chapter but not the whole book, that might be a small licensing fee. Or if somebody wanted to translate the book into Macedonian, we might charge them $500, which is split 50/50 between the publisher and the author.
Now, I wasn’t particularly
Re:I don't think so... (Score:5, Informative)
On one hand, the author himself, who was there for the signing of the contract, states he did not give them an exclusive license on the text, but states he didn't create the covers, toc, or index thus can't give permission to copy that.
That's not what the author stated. He actually wrote:
My contract also states that I have exclusively allowed Apress to publish and reproduce my content.
He then went on about how he "suspects" that you can make a PDF without the cover, TOC and index without infringing any of the publisher's rights.
Tim O'Reilly, who (I'd guess) is very experienced with these kinds of contracts, wrote this in the comments of his post:
I’d be very careful with your assumptions here. “Owning the copyright” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. I haven’t seen the language in the APress contract, but I suspect it says something to the effect that you grant them the exclusive right to publish, distribute, and sell (etc.) the book for the duration of the copyright. If this is so, the ONLY thing that you get from still owning the copyright is the ability to reacquire the rights in the event APress goes out of business.
So while we can't know without seeing the author's contract, it's reasonable to assume that what alain94040 wrote above is closer to the truth than what the author "suspects".
Re:Torrent? (Score:0, Informative)
http://rapidshare.com/files/262916057/Apress.Beginning.Ruby.From.Novice.to.Professional.2nd.Edition.Jul.2009.eBook-BBL.rar
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
A bad summary makes bad responses (Score:5, Informative)
I wrote the piece linked here and the summary on Slashdot is laughably wrong. All the cool Hacker News and Reddit people who read the story.. you're awesome and you really added to the discussion and didn't come out with nonsense saying I'm actively encouraging people to break the law (which, if whoever wrote the summary could comprehend English, is not what I said - I raised a potential method of circumvention as a thought experiment.. "I suspect" does not mean "I think you must").
So if Slashdotters want to be the first to spout nonsense and misquotes on the same day my first kid was born (I'm just getting a few hours sleep after being up a gazillion hours ;-)) then congratulations - some of you succeeded admirably. All the traffic to the site is going to somewhere you can donate to a good cause and earn some actual karma.
Re:Why is the link incorrect? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A bad summary makes bad responses (Score:5, Informative)
To quote your good self : "My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: Im good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I cant actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, its around on plenty of free e-book sites and on RapidShare. There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but Im NOT A LAWYER, and I cant guarantee what Apress would do about it so youd be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, dont pirate it? The only condition, of course, if you do is that if you like the book and you think a print copy would be swell to own, please buy one even if its just for someone you know who wants to learn to program!"
Redirecting your page is like closing the barn door once the horse has bolted unfortunately.
Oh, and congrats on your first child
Re:I don't think so... (Score:3, Informative)
Despite their apparent ability to "do math," you can't read. That's 50% of the profit from the book. So take the price the book is sold to retailers (not the one on the back of the book) and subtract the printing costs for a low-volume technical [text]book and you don't end up with much. That said yes, 50% of the profit is better than a competitor at 10%, however that is a far cry from 40% of the total retail price of the book.