E-book piracy

[DianaIlinca]

To answer the initial question,
the only way to "deal" with ebook piracy is to stop publishing through ebooks...which I doubt will be happening any time soon. *le sigh*

 

[Vertigo]

Not quite as simple as that since most of the pirated ebooks out there are not actually pirated from ebooks. They are mostly printed books that have been scanned through OCR software. This is essentially the same way that many older books have been released as ebooks and in both cases the quality of the scanning and OCR can leave a lot to be desired.

I'm sure that as time goes on most of the those scanned books will be replaced by pirated copies of the legitimate ebooks but at present I believe most are still scans of the original printed books.

 

[Boneman]

Maybe have some incredible illustrations every chapter that are so complex, the downloading takes way too long and the pirates lose interest...

 

[Anne Lyle]

Not quite as simple as that since most of the pirated ebooks out there are not actually pirated from ebooks. They are mostly printed books that have been scanned through OCR software. This is essentially the same way that many older books have been released as ebooks and in both cases the quality of the scanning and OCR can leave a lot to be desired.

I'm sure that as time goes on most of the those scanned books will be replaced by pirated copies of the legitimate ebooks but at present I believe most are still scans of the original printed books.

OTOH, as has been said earlier, people often go for scanned-and-pirated ebooks because there is no legal ebook edition. Not that that's any excuse, but it's a way in which not publishing in ebook form can actually encourage piracy - and bad-quality pirated copies at that!

 

[Vertigo]

Good point Anne and very true I suspect.

And Boneman I like your idea except that it would hit normal legitimate ebook buyers as well!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Maybe have some incredible illustrations every chapter that are so complex, the downloading takes way too long and the pirates lose interest...

this imo is a better idea than it seems at first, the same concept works in music; if you give the buyer something that can't be pirated, it's win-win. At the moment I'm really liking the idea of selling CDs that are in hand-made card cases, hand-inked too. Less plastic, also...

 

[Interference]

The equivalent might be hand-written books, each one unique and employing thousands of people to produce, which would benefit the economy, I suspect, in some way.