Using The Same Advanced Projective Mathematics…

Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher’s Weekly that “publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy” comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

I have to admit I totally blew off that Publishers Weekly article (If one calls repeating poorly explained bullet points an article.) when I saw the numbers they were using had absolutely no factual clues about how they came up with their formula and showed nothing even remotely as professional or as believable as some of the RIAA “Downloaded Music” reports I have been seeing for years.

Cory Doctorow is far more factual and able to provide a much more coherent view of all this than some four page report with bullet points instead of data based on a highly visible set of false assumptions. As shown in the article I am linking to here.

How many of those people would have actually bought the ebook? How many people actually read those pirated ebooks they downloaded? How many of them went on to buy ebooks/books in print from that author after reading that one pirated ebook? How many people making those downloads had bought the paperback from a bookstore and wanted a digital copy? How many of those downloads were by people who had bought those ebooks on a Kindle and then got a touch screen Sony for Christmas? How many of those ebooks were pirated by students unable to afford those over priced text books?

Hell, how many of those ebooks were actually ebooks available on the market and not homemade PDF scans of books simply not available in ebook format from any publisher or store?

There is nothing in that report that explains a damn thing. It’s just made up numbers for brainless people to quote while explaining nothing more than it’s a number they read in Publishers Weekly.

That’s the problem with the alarmist speak of the vigilante. Facts take a back seat and realities of the current problems of the publishers to meet the ebook customers needs are ignored wholesale. I look at the ninety-nine cent non-DRM downloads I buy from Apple all the time and smile and realize that every day is a new day for the techno-weenies fearful of new things who do not listen to common sense.

What ever happened to Lars Ulrich?

Tags: Common Sense