InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "A teddy bear."

AngiePen (angiepen) wrote,
@ 2009-07-27 05:58:00

Pirate Humor, and a Challenge
The funny first. I was checking hits on my blog and I saw that someone was querying Google for "chasing fire by angela benedetti torrent" recently. Yay, someone else looking to steal one of my stories.

Except I've never published a story called "Chasing Fire." :) Nor even written one. And when I checked, it doesn't seem there's anyone else named "Angela Benedetti" who's written a story by that name either. (Although there are a couple others of us; one's a meteorologist who publishes a lot of scholarly papers, and the other is a lady who works with children in Bogotá. So far as I know, neither one writes fiction.)

So it looks like this is one confused pirate. :D Not that I'm complaining or anything -- confused pirates are the best kind. Hey, dude? If you can find a torrent copy of a story by me called "Chasing Fire," go for it, with my blessing. [wave]

Moving on to the subject of slightly more competent pirates, someone finally did find a copy of "Learning to Love Yourself" and got it up on a torrent site back around the end of June. I sent a takedown note and, credit where it's due, the site took it down. It was up for however many days, though, and a bunch of people got free copies.

It's been argued at many times and in many places that piracy of this sort actually benefits the creative producer. That people who'd never have tried my work if they'd had to pay for it right off will instead download a pirated copy, and some significant number will like it and, being essentially good people, will then go and buy a legitimate copy. They might even buy more of my work, once they've tried my fiction and become fans. I'm pretty sure this isn't the case with the person who made the original request for a free copy of "Learning," judging by his/her comments in the request thread, but supposedly most of the people who use these sites are not actually selfish, entitled thieves, contrary to all appearances.

All right, fine -- let's test that.

Since the pirate copy was made available in late June, that's too late for any Pirate Bonus Sales to show up in my upcoming royalty statement, but about three months from now I'll be getting another one, covering sales in July through September. Surely that length of time is enough for most people to read a short story (about 3300 words), decide to buy a copy, and scrape together $1.29.

If my third quarter royalty statement shows a significant spike in purchases of "Learning to Love Yourself" -- not necessarily a huge flood of sales, but a clearly noticeable increase over prior sales trends -- then fine, I'll assume that there is some significant number of ethical people who prefer to try before they buy, but who do buy, and that the net result of the torrent upload was a gain for me. "Learning" hasn't been reviewed recently or anything like that, so there's no obvious other source of sales stimulus right now; I'm willing to credit it to torrent people, if it occurs.

[Caveat: if "Learning" is reviewed within the next couple of months, or if irony strikes and this challenge is publicized all over the web, that would clearly taint the experiment with multiple sources of attention for the story, and it'll be impossible to sort out what caused any given number of sales. If the situation remains as it is now, though, then I'll assume extra sales are to people who downloaded the torrent copy.]

So there you go. To BUGCHICKLV and associates: if you've read a stolen copy of my story, this is your chance to prove to the world (or at least to me) that you're not just a bunch of thieves. If I see that spike in the sales numbers, then I'll admit that all the pirate apologists who make the "But letting people read for free results in more sales!" argument are right, and I'll shut up about the issue. I'll let my publisher go after pirates and torrent copies if they want, but I'll personally leave it alone. Fair enough?

I think it's more than fair, myself.

So, let's see what happens. I'll check back in on this subject when my third quarter royalty statement comes in, in late October or early November, and then we'll find out whether piracy is actually "to the writer's benefit" in the long run, or whether that claim is just a bunch of thieves whining and making excuses.

Angie

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yonmei
2009-07-27 01:08 pm UTC (link)

Well, FWIW, this has been in effect an advertising post: I had no idea you had stories up for sale anywhere. *rueful grin*

And yes, I am a person who likes to "try before I buy" - I buy a lot more fanzines at cons where I can stand at the dealers table riffling through them.

Every single one of the musicians I like, I got to like them via free stuff first (TV, radio, youtube) and only then invested money in buying them. If Johnny Cash's heirs had spent their time taking down unlawful copies of his songs from Youtube so that I couldn't listen to them for free and conclude I wanted more, I'd likely not have the collection of Cash CDs I do now have.

It's true, once I get to like a writer, I'm willing to buy their works sight unseen, just on the basis that I liked what they wrote before and I'm willing to take a chance on liking them some more. But, sure as God made little green apples, I am not likely to take a risk on an unknown writer whose works I can't try before I buy.

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angiepen
2009-07-27 01:46 pm UTC (link)

Most electronically published writers I know put up at least a few free stories on their web site so people can at least check out their style. I'll take some responsibility there for having only free sequels to some of my published stories on my own web site; I've been meaning to write something stand-alone for that purpose for a while now, and I should do that in the near future, to be fair to folks who want to check me out. So mea culpa for that.

This is definitely a complicated topic, but as someone who's only published electronically, I'm pretty vulnerable here. It's one thing for people who are published primarily in hardcopy (usually with the big New York publishers -- writers whose books are available at the big chain bookstores and WalMart and wherever else) to talk about what great publicity it is to give away electronic copies of their stuff for free -- Cory Doctorow is the primary spokesguy for this POV, but I've seen other largish-name writers speak positively about the effect uploading free e-books of their older work has on their current sales. And that's fine when the main avenue of sales for a book is hardcopy. The vast majority of the audience these days still prefers paper books -- I do myself, actually -- and if they've got a free (whether given away by the author or publisher, or stolen via a torrent site or a complaisant friend or whatever) electronic copy which they read and like, there's then some significant motivation to shell out a few bucks for a hardcopy.

With an e-book, though, once you've got a copy, you've got a copy. There you go -- everything you'll ever get is already right there on your hard drive. There's much less incentive to go out and spend money to get a duplicate of what you already have, and there honestly aren't that many people who have the moral fiber to regularly spend money in a way which doesn't benefit them at all, just to Do The Right Thing. It's not even like a torrented copy of a movie or something, where you might spend the money so you have an actual DVD in a jewelcase to put on the rack with the rest of your collection. Once you've got a copy of an e-book, paying for another identical copy is pure goodness-of-your-heart.

And music, especially with an artist of the renown of Johnny Cash, isn't really a good comparison. Because there are legitimate means to try music for free. There's radio, as you mentioned, plus MTV and VH1, and listening stations at music stores. It's easy to check out a major artist before spending any money on their music, and the artists get royalties on all those outlets. It's the same with major writers -- you can find their books in libraries and used bookstores, and I personally have no patience for writers who complain about either. (Yes, I've seen a few writers griping about libraries [eyeroll] and quite a lot complaining about used bookstores.) If you're popular enough to be in a library, you're already making money, and every library copy is a sale in and of itself. Likewise, copies in used bookstores have already been sold and paid for, and royalties distributed to the writer.

Writers who are only e-pubbed, though, tend to be pretty small names, as I am myself. Even within the context of my publisher, I'm not any kind of major player. I don't have a horde of fans buying my books and reccing them to everyone who'll stand still for it. I get a decent trickle of reviews, and so far all of them have been good (knock on silicon wafer) but I still don't make huge numbers of sales. So even ten or twenty stolen copies represents a pretty significant number of sales for me, in any given quarter. There are writers for whom twenty copies is a small enough amount to get lost in the rounding errors on their royalty calculations [wry smile] but I'm not one of them.

[Continued on Next Rock...]

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angiepen
2009-07-27 01:46 pm UTC (link)

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

Some people argue that the folks who download pirated copies can't afford to buy legit copies, they're poor or students or whatever. Well, I'm too poor to afford a Ferrari, but that doesn't justify my stealing one. Even if it did, though, reading comment threads on the torrent sites makes it pretty clear that these aren't just a bunch of poor, underprivileged people who crave reading matter. For example, BUGCHICKLV, who posted the original request for my story on a pirate-chat site, had a hard time finding a copy, and later in the thread posted, essentially, "If one doesn't turn up soon I might actually have to go buy a copy, haha!" He/she made it pretty clear in that conversation that he/she can afford to buy e-books, but chooses to do so only when pirated copies aren't available. Lovely. Needless to say, this person's attitude pissed me off pretty royally.

But fine, one clear jerkwad aside, I'm willing to test the notion that free distribution might help me more than it hurts. Is it true that having free copies out there will help spread my fame [cough] and result in more paying readers? I don't know. I'm dubious, but I'm willing to try it. (Especially since some pirate made sure I have to try it whether I want to or not.) We'll see what happens with my third quarter royalty statement.

Angie

PS -- here's a list of my published stories plus associated freebies and this is my pro-writing LJ. I try not to do too much promo under this name, figuring people who are interested will be following me under my pen name, but I should probably post reminders occasionally. :)

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yonmei
2009-07-27 03:27 pm UTC (link)

Speaking frankly (no surer way to ruin a friendship, I know) I had never heard of you except as Angiepen, and I've never read anything you wrote except for your Keptverse story. Which was fairly obviously no novice's attempt, but I didn't know you did any fiction writing professionally. Until now.

And while I would certainly be interested in checking out your pro-writing, I have no idea (sight unseen - I haven't yet set out to see if I can find your website or if I'm willing to take a risk on any of the stories) if I'd want to buy any of your stories, especially as:

I'll take some responsibility there for having only free sequels to some of my published stories on my own web site; I've been meaning to write something stand-alone for that purpose for a while now, and I should do that in the near future, to be fair to folks who want to check me out. So mea culpa for that.

...there you go.

If I stumbled across your website randomly, I wouldn't read the sequels, because they're sequels: and I wouldn't sight-unseen buy a new story, because I'd have no idea if you could write or not.

And... (this is material for a whole post of its own) many writers suffer a sea-change from fan to pro writing. (The well-known author of Aubrey/Maturin slash and Royal Navy dragon pro-fic, writes delightfully about dragons - but never wrote anything professionally published as painful and tender as "Duende" or her "Five Things Turned Upside Down".)

I think that piracy does, in the end, drive an artist's sales up. But I fully admit that "in the end" could be a long way off. I don't think it's likely to show up in next quarter's sales: it's more likely to have an impact five or ten years down the line.

I admit I'm biased: I've rarely written anything that was for sale under my copyright. (I've been paid for what I write, but the copyright has belonged to someone else: and I've published a lot of stuff, but under circumstances where it could not be for sale.) My first reaction to a musician complaining that people were always coming up to him and saying "A friend of mine copied your CD for me and I listen to it all the time - I love your music!" was rather "Wow - you have so many fans who want to tell you how much they love your stuff and you complain about them?" rather than "That sucks - how dare they not pay up!!!" And yet, I do appreciate that he's got to sell a certain number of his CDs to pay for the costs of producing them - he can't afford to regard them as a form of advertising his gigs.

My issues are rather with the people who read my stories on a regular basis yet can't be arsed to so much as leave a comment saying "hey, I read this and liked it"... but then, I too am a reader of stories where I don't find time as often as I should to comment.

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angiepen
2009-07-27 03:52 pm UTC (link)

No problem -- a lot more people know me as AngiePen than under my publishing pseud. :)

My first reaction to a musician complaining that people were always coming up to him and saying "A friend of mine copied your CD for me and I listen to it all the time - I love your music!" was rather "Wow - you have so many fans who want to tell you how much they love your stuff and you complain about them?" rather than "That sucks - how dare they not pay up!!!" And yet, I do appreciate that he's got to sell a certain number of his CDs to pay for the costs of producing them - he can't afford to regard them as a form of advertising his gigs.

And yes, that's exactly the problem. The love is awesome, and the main reason I still write and post fanfic, even if not as often as I used to, is that I do love the feedback. One great review is cool but forty great comments are better, you know? But you can't eat the love, and it doesn't pay any bills. And in a way it's even more insulting for someone to say, "OMG I love all your stories so much!!!" with lots of squeeing, but then realize that this person has never paid one cent for any of it. Wow, great way to show the love, dude, by ripping me off and then having the stones to tell me about it. "I stole all your work! Isn't that cool?!?!" Umm, no, it's really not. I'd actually rather someone say, "Yeah, I read a friend's copy of one of your stories and it didn't do anything for me." I absolutely get that not everyone likes everything; I don't expect that every person in the world is going to love my work, and if someone tries one and doesn't care for it, and doesn't read any others, then I understand that. But if they've read one and loved it, then at that point IMO they're past the "free trial" stage. They know they like my work and past that any pirate downloads are thievery, plain and simple, no excuses. Comments are great but they don't pay the mortgage. They don't even pay for my bandwidth. :/

There are also opportunities for getting legitimate freebies, for people who follow my pro-persona journal or my blogs. I give away copies whenever something new comes out, as part of the new-release promotion. I'll have a contest or a raffle or whatever. I just had a story come out in a short anthology on the 15th; the three of us whose stories were in the book did joint promo over two days and gave away three copies. So it's not as though there aren't any legal avenues for getting that free trial. Most e-published writers I know do this, for the very reason that we know people can't try our books in the library or get them at used bookstores.

You're right, though, that I need to get something stand-alone up on my web site. I frankly doubt any of the dedicated pirates would care, but I'm sure it'd help the more honest people decide whether or not they want to try a purchase.

Angie

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yonmei
2009-07-27 03:05 pm UTC (link)

It's easy to check out a major artist before spending any money on their music, and the artists get royalties on all those outlets

Johnny Cash's heirs get no royalties whatsoever off Youtube. Which is where I "tried before I bought".

True, I might have listened to Cash on Youtube and concluded I didn't like him enough as a musician/singer to buy his music. I mentioned radio/TV because some of the stuff I like, that's where I heard it first, but that's because I am a thoroughly boring and conservative person who still likes singers and musicians I liked when I was 19. These days, if someone rec'd someone, I'd go see if I could find them on Youtube or Dailymotion or some other free site - to try-before-I-buy.

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angiepen
2009-07-27 03:23 pm UTC (link)

Sure, YouTube doesn't pay anyone royalties, but most of the people on there (from what I can tell) are either big names anyway (like Johnny Cash, whose heirs have plenty of other income sources) or small hopefulls who don't have any other outlet and are just hoping to be noticed and picked up by a paying market.

I'm not much into new music either, so I know where you're coming from there. [nod]

Back on topic, I'll grant that there are a mix of different kinds of people who go looking for free downloads. There are some people like you who want to try before buying, but will buy once they know they like a writer or singer or whichever. And then there are the people who just want to steal free stuff, who post requests saying, "Oh, Jane Writer is one of my very favorites! Anyone have a copy of her latest novel to share?!?!" with every intention of ripping Jane off, despite the fact that they already know they love her work. What I'm trying to figure out is whether there are enough of the former -- and enough of that kind of people who actually downloaded my story -- that I can feel comfortable leaving the pirates alone. If there's a good chunk of people who eventually bought a legit copy, then cool. And I'm not even going to try to require that it be a majority of the number of downloads or anything like that; any significant increase in sales will work for me. If there's only a scant few sales, though, or none at all (although I'm assuming that one of the pirates finally broke down and bought a copy, but that'll be part of my upcoming royalty from second quarter) then screw 'em.

If they're ripping me off and letting the rip-off stand, then I owe them no consideration whatsoever. If they're downloading free copies and then any significant number are turning those into purchases, then cool -- I'll welcome them as customers and stop chasing the pirates. It's up to them.

Angie

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	yonmei 2009-07-27 03:40 pm UTC (link)
	I think - speaking as someone who occasionally does marketing work - the trick is not to find out if the people who just want to rip off free stuff will turn into customers: the trick is to make people want to pay. I don't know how that's going to work, for what it's worth: I just think that Charlie Stross probably has a point. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

angiepen
2009-07-27 04:17 pm UTC (link)

And I just noticed my first comment wasn't attached to yours. :P I'm glad you noticed anyway.

About Charlie Stross's comments, right, I've heard that set of arguments before. The problem is that he's primarily speaking of electronic versions of paper books. Big New York Publisher releases a hardcover edition of Cool SF Book, then also releases an electronic version of the same book. The issues there are very different, the market is very different, and you can't make comparisons across that border. I absolutely agree with him that charging hardcover prices for an e-book is fucking ludicrous, and I won't pay it. Heck, I won't even pay paperback prices for an e-book. My publisher charges $5.95 for most novels, and $6.95 for the occasional really long one. That's pretty much my limit. I'd make an exception if an e-book came out with a lot of photos or original illustrations or something, but for a basic novel or anthology? No freaking way. The publishers who charge those ridiculous prices are just begging to be pirated, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Sympathy for the writers? Sure. They have no say in how the publisher chooses to market the book or how much to charge for it; the writers are victims too.

Most of the e-books my publisher releases are available only electronically, though. And there are plenty of other publishers which operate the same way. It's easy for Mr. Stross to say, "Oh, just ignore the e-book piracy -- e-books are only a tiny fraction of your sales anyway," when all of his own publications are on paper, whether in actual dead-tree books or in hardcopy magazines, for the latter of which he gets a flat fee no matter how many or few copies are sold. It's easy for Cory Doctorow to say, "Giving away e-books is great advertising! Your hardcopy sales will soar!" when all his books are released in both electronic and paper versions. He gives the electronic versions away himself.

I don't have that option. The e-books are it, period. And even though Stross is right that e-books are only a tiny fraction of the industry right now, it's still the fraction I'm playing in. There are plenty of books -- the vast majority of the GLBT romantic or erotic romance fiction commercially published, in fact, because there are still only like half a dozen slots per year for romantic GLBT fiction on the paper-book New York Press side of the business -- which are only available in e-book form. None of us can afford to "just ignore" the e-book pirates.

Unless, of course, they prove that some noticeable number of them are just taking a longer route to purchasing. And we're back to waiting, to seeing what my third quarter royalty statement looks like.

Angie

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yonmei
2009-07-27 05:23 pm UTC (link)

And I just noticed my first comment wasn't attached to yours. :P I'm glad you noticed anyway.

Thanks! I only just noticed (scrolling back) that you did provide a link to your pro stuff. Sorry.

I think that the e-publishing industry is - right now - too new to know how it's going to develop. Thus far you have the whole range of writers and publishers, from those of us who publish for free to you who publish online only to the paper publishers who sell ebooks as a sideline. Eventually it will sort itself out. Or the end of the world will come. One or the other.

For centuries since printing with movable type was invented, after all, the writer got a flat fee from the printer if s/he was lucky, and after that nothing - the concept of the writer getting a royalty per book sold came a lot later, and a large chunk American publishing industry was based, and not so very long ago, the plain fact that British writers couldn't very easily sue American publishers for ripping them off, when US law then entitled American publishers to take anything they wanted from anywhere else in the world and reprint it for free.

Kipling's gift for invective was considerable, and when he wrote about the American publishers who were stealing his work, he had a mouth full of bile and fire:

"I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast
"If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?
"Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
"We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
"I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
"Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
"There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
"And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
"He would not fly the Rovers' flag — the bloody or the black,
"But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.
"He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew — he swore it was only a loan;
"But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
"He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
"He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;
"He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
"He has taken my grinning heathen gods — and what should he want o' these?
"My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
"He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
"I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
"But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
"Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
"I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
"I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
"And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
"I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
"I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
"I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
"And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
"I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard in the mesh,
"And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
"I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
"Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!
"He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
"For he carries the taint of a musky ship — the reek of the slaver's dhow!"

(Rhyme of the Three Captains, 1890)

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angiepen
2009-07-27 05:33 pm UTC (link)

We're definitely flailing, yes, trying to figure out how to make this work. And the publishers and distributors who insiste on slapping ever-more-onerous DRM onto the files aren't helping matters any. I'm sure something will eventually settle out of this, something that works reasonably well for everyone; I just wish it'd happen already.

the writer got a flat fee

That's still true for short stories today, in magazines and anthologies. E-presses are the odd ones out for publishing shorter stories as stand-alones, and paying royalties. And seriously, if I got $.05/word (the SFWA minimum for Pro Rates right now) for my stories at the time I contracted them, I'd worry a lot less about what the pirates stole; that'd be my publisher's problem, not mine. Heck, if I got paid the full amount up front, I'd probably have a very different view of the pirates; I could afford to ignore the ripping-off part and look only at the expansion of my audience. That's not how things are right now, though, so I keep getting annoyed. [wry smile]

And I remember reading about that era in American publishing. [nod] Even after there were technically copyrights protecting various works, all you had to do for some while was release your own "impression" of a famous work, and you were legally covered. An out-and-out parody is one thing, but a thinly veiled copy is just tacky. I'm glad we're past that period.

Angie

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seanlily
2009-07-27 11:22 pm UTC (link)

I had a nice long comment but the computer ate it. So, shorter version goes something like this:

I'm loving ebooks more and more for the convenience of reading while eating and lying in bed and just easier to carry. I've never bought hardcovers but will pay paperback prices for ebooks, though I think that's starting to get steep, but at this point in time I can afford it. Your point about authors who publish in hard copy and electronic is a good one, they can afford free copies.

I'm the type who if given a free copy and enjoy the author, will not buy the same book again, because I hardly ever reread and don't always keep books, but I will buy others by the author. I'm also willing to give an unknown author a try if the blurb sounds interesting, I don't need to have a free sample first, though that's not the case with music.

I think publishing needs to figure out that ebooks are here to stay and figure out fair pricing for authors and better marketing for those who only publish electronically. Free samples, even a few pages would probably help most people and they'd be more willing to pay. Pirates who steal just for stealing should be punished in some way because authors need to pay bills too.

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angiepen
2009-07-27 11:30 pm UTC (link)

I'll admit I have another issue with the size of samples given. My publisher strongly prefers that we offer only one or two hundred words, or maybe three or four hundred for a novel. My view is that we could give away half the darned story for free, and if it's a good story the reader will still want to buy the rest, right? Well, buy the whole thing, but you know what I mean. :)

When I set up my pages on the GLBT Bookshelf, I put up much longer samples, and from the beginning rather than from the interior. If anyone doesn't like it then can tell me to change it. But seriously, for a novel, there's no reason IMO we couldn't give away what's essentially an agent's package -- summary and three chapters. Less of a summary than you'd give your agent, of course, but still, why not give away three chapters? If the book is good then the readers will still want to buy it (and will probably want to buy it more after reading three chapters than after reading three hundred words) and if it isn't good then how much you're giving away in promotion is the least of your worries. Nobody's asking me, though, so I can only act for myself.

But yes, fair pricing on e-books has yet to shake out. Most of the small presses are doing fine with that, but the big New York presses are so terrified of piracy ruining their hardcopy sales (which is ridiculous) that they're pricing their e-books way out of the market, then pointing to the awful sales figures and saying, "See? No one wants e-books."

[facepalm]

Angie

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seanlily
2009-07-28 12:33 am UTC (link)

I don't think they have to worry yet about their hardcopy sales, though maybe sooner if they keep raising the prices.

And I just remembered there's and email service that sends you the first chapter of a book, so I don't see what the problem would be, and more people would probably buy it if they could read a little first to see if it's to their liking. How many people sit in a bookstore and read an entire book, let alone a little bit and still not buy, so I don't really see the difference.

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angiepen
2009-07-28 12:36 am UTC (link)

I don't see a problem either, but I'm a minority opinion there.

And hardcopy sales really aren't an issue. [nod] The publishers are terrified that a bazillion people will pirate an e-book (which they might well) and therefore won't buy the hardcopy (which is false). Most people still greatly prefer hardcopies to e-books; there's a perceived value added which makes it worth it to pay money (even if only used book prices, but used books have always been available) to have a hardcopy. The e-book market hasn't even scratched the hardcopy market and I don't imagine it'll start doing so for at least a good generation or so, quite possibly more.

Angie

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