29/03/07

Steal These Books? I’m not bothered…

Freakonomics and The Long Tail were two books which successfully used the web to market the ideas behind them, and ultimately the products. How did they do this? Well, of course the books and authors themselves were of a very high standard, and had the support of accomplished and professional PR companies. But also, the blogged their books.

From the moment of commissioning (and of naming and /or announcing their catchy titles) the authors blogged about the ideas in the book. And blogging about them made other blogs link to them, which by default positioned the authors as the authorities on the subjects, and created a virtuous circle of media attention, search engine rankings, and better thinking.

It’s not rocket science but for a book with a great premise – which either of these has – there is a risk of the idea getting away from the author. A book’s long (18 month) gestation period, when an author usually goes away into confinement, is a perfect environment for someone else to rip off your ideas and publish a spoiler before you. What these authors did was to block that idea, but also use the blog to grow interest in the book (through a great combination of content that is and isn’t in the bokos themselves), enter into dialogue with potential readers (a rudimentary form of market research) and also practise out ideas, or hunt for better information in the process.

Genius. But so simple, and if you can write two themes at the same time – more than achieveable.

As both books move from hardback to paperback the authors remain engaged. And as a result, the still-active blogs for both sites, retain a large readership and are still posted to.

Recently, the Freakonomics blog asked a great question: Why don’t people care enough about literature to steal it? In the light of piracy in music and film, it’s a fair question. Although it’s not entirely watertight – as the post makes clear, Freakonomics is widely available in ripper off versions in India – but what I found great was the level of debate about books, piracy and copyright that existed in the comments. How often do you get even anecdotal data about this kind of stuff? Bookmark it.

In the same vein, Chris ‘Long Tail’ Anderson asked another question about music priacy. eBooks want to be free:

I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m actually delighted to see that my book has been pirated and is available on Bittorrent.

Read it. And the comments. It also leads on to the much-heralded Corey Doctorow these that giving away digital editions of books drives physical copies. Well, Doctorow also recently articulated something obvious about ebook devices: You DO Like reading off a computer screen:

“I don’t like reading off a computer screen” — it’s a cliché of the e-book world. It means “I don’t read novels off of computer screens” (or phones, or PDAs, or dedicated e-book readers), and often as not the person who says it is someone who, in fact, spends every hour that Cthulhu sends reading off a computer screen. It’s like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate…

Finally, Charlie, an Edinburgh-based Sci-Fi author explains, very articulately and convincingly, Why the Commercial eBook market is broken. He discusses many points – including the fact that many books *are* pirated and available on BitTorrent, but he also re-iterates and links to evidence that suggests that this doesn’t damage physical sales.

He also discusses the flawed economic model of the eBook market and refutes the idea that a cheap device would kill of physical books. Again, read it, and the comments, in full.

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Future of the book, Publishing, Web.

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