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April 19, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
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Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
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April 19, 2002
Give
It Away, Now
Free the Books!
By Eric Flint
The Free
Library was set up about a year and half ago, with the
co-operation of Baen Books. Leaving aside the various political
and philosophical issues, which I've addressed elsewhere, the
premise behind the Library had a practical component as well.
In brief, that in relative terms an author will gain, not lose,
by having titles in the Library.
What I mean by "relative" is
simply this: overall, an author is far more likely to increase
sales than to lose them. Or, to put it more accurately, exposure
in the Library will generate more sales than it will lose.
As a practical proposition, the theory
behind the Free Library is that, certainly in the long run, it
benefits an author to have a certain number of free or cheap
titles of theirs readily available to the public. By far the
main enemy any author faces, except a handful of ones who are
famous to the public at large, is simply obscurity. Even well-known
SF authors are only read by a small percentage of the potential
SF audience. Most readers, even ones who have heard of the author,
simply pass them up.
Why? In most cases, simply because they
don't really know anything about the writer and aren't willing
to spend $7 to $28 just to experiment. So, they keep buying those
authors they are familiar with.
What the Free Library provides--as do
traditional libraries, or simply the old familiar phenomenon
of friends lending each other books--is a way for people to investigate
a new author for free, before they plunk down any money.
That was the premise behind the Free
Library, when I first set it up. At the time, since I had no
experience to go by, I was basing that on common sense as well
as Jim Baen's experienced judgement as a longtime publisher.
Now, with a year and a half's experience
with the Library actually established and running, I feel confident
that our original assessment has been demonstrated in practice.
The Library's track record shows clearly that the traditional
"encryption/enforcement" policy which has been followed
thus far by most of the publishing industry is just plain stupid,
as well as unconscionable from the viewpoint of infringing on
personal liberties.
And the stupidity seems bottomless. I
just discovered, for instance, that one of the main e-book reader
manufacturers (Gemstar) has now decided, in its new software,
to make it impossible for its customers to read any unencrypted
material--even material from something like Project Gutenberg.
Gemstar customers will now only be able to read software purchased
from Gemstar itself. So, once again, an industry which has been
a failure from the outset because of its obsession with encryption
is simply deepening its commitment to that obsession.
* *
*
Let me ask a simple question. Does anyone
have any real evidence that having material available for free
online--whether legitimately or through piracy--has actually
caused any financial harm to any author?
The entire argument for encryption rests
precisely upon this PRESUMPTION. A presumption which has never
once been documented or demonstrated--and which, to the contrary,
has been cast into question any number of times.
I am about to cast it into question again.
Here are a number of facts which you should consider:
1) The first title to go up into the
Library was my own novel, Mother of Demons. That was my first
published novel, which came out in print in September of 1997.
At the time it went into the Free Library, in the fall of 2000,
that novel had sold 9,694 copies, with a sell-through of 54%.
("Sell-through" refers to the
percentage of copies shipped which are actually sold, as opposed
to being returned to the publisher.)
As of today, according to Baen Books--a
year and a half after being available for free online to anyone
who wants it, no restrictions and no questions asked -- Mother
of Demons has sold about 18,500 copies and now has a sell-through
of 65%.
I would like someone to explain to me
how almost doubling the sales and improving the sell-through
by 11% has caused me, as an author, any harm?
To be sure, most of that improvement
is not due to the Library. It's simply due, I'm quite sure, to
the fact that I've become a better known author in the meantime.
Still, it is impossible to argue that the Library has hurt me
any. To the contrary, I think there is every reason to believe
that the added exposure the Library has given me helped the sales
of that book -- as well as all of my other books.
And the exposure is considerable, by
the way. The fact that being in the Library does not seem to
have hurt sales of Mother of Demons in the least -- to put it
mildly! -- is not due to the Library's obscurity. Quite the opposite,
in fact. There were more than 130,000 visits to the Free Library
in the last quarter of 2001 -- almost 1,500 a day.
To date, my best-selling title has been
my novel 1632. That book came out in hardcover in February 2000,
and was reissued in paperback in February 2001. I put it in the
Free Library at the same time as it came out in paperback format.
Today, more than a year later, the paperback
edition of 1632 has a net sales of about 34,000 copies and has
a sell-through of 88%. If being available for free in the Library
has hurt me any, with that book, I'd be puzzled to see how.
Let's look in closer detail at the progress
of another title in the Library, this time using a novel I co-authored
with David Drake: An Oblique Approach, the first volume in the
Belisarius series. I think these figures demonstrate the impact
of the Library more clearly than any other.
An Oblique Approach went into the Library
a few days after Mother of Demons -- i.e., it's been available
for free for a year and a half now. That novel first came out
in paperback in March of 1998. (There was no hardcover edition.)
Here are the royalty figures on that novel, beginning with the
first period for which figures are available and ending with
the last:
Period Net sales S/T New sales
July-Dec 1998 30,431 70% 30,431
Jan-June 1999 35,977 80% 5,546
July-Dec 1999 36,812 78% 835
Jan-June 2000 37,607 77% 795
[An Oblique Approach goes into the Library
mid-way through this period]
July-Dec 2000 39,268 77% 1,161
Jan-June 2001 41,172 77% 1,904
The most interesting -- and unusual --
aspect of these figures are the ones on the right, in the column
titled "new sales." From the beginning, An Oblique
Approach has enjoyed an excellent sell-through -- 77 to 80% --
so it would be surprising to see much change there. (The average
for SF paperbacks in the industry as a whole is no better than
50%, and probably a lot closer to 40%. In short, in terms of
sell-through, An Oblique Approach is doing almost twice as well
as the average.)
The overall net sales figures are not
especially surprising either. An initial "out of the gate"
net sales figure of about 30,000 is nothing outstanding, but
is eminently solid for a paperback title, especially when combined
with a good sell-through. (The average paperback sells, traditionally,
about 15,000 copies -- but the actual figure has probably been
lower for several years now because of a "soft" market.)
And, given that the standard experience is that 80% of a book's
sales happens in the first three months, it's not surprising
that the sales are concentrated in that period. In the next period,
January-June 1999, the novel had a solid 5000-plus sales. Thereafter...
What usually happens. Within a year after
a novel comes out, the sales usually drop right through the floor.
Thereafter, sales steadily dwindle away. And, sure enough: in
the third and fourth periods, An Oblique Approach sold considerably
less than a thousand copies each period -- 835 and 795 respectively,
showing the expected slow and steady drop.
It's what happens next that is significant.
Because, all other things considered, those "new sales"
figures should have kept steadily dropping. Slowly, perhaps,
but what most certainly shouldn't have happened is a sudden rise
in sales -- and a rise which increases in the next period.
Nor can this be explained, as the sharp
rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result
of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me,
is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach -- and Dave
has been a very well known SF author for at least fifteen years.
Granted, my increasing popularity as a writer was undoubtedly
responsible for some of that increase. (Just as, for that matter,
the fact that Dave's popular Lord of the Isles and With the Lightnings
series started coming out during this period and undoubtedly
attracted some readers also.)
But... but...
Nonsense! Between the January-June 2000
reporting period and the period one year later, the sales for
that title -- which had now been out for two years, remember,
long past the time when it should have been selling very much
-- were suddenly almost 250% higher. (239%, to be precise: 1904
compared to 795.)
What happened in the interim? Well, obviously
I can't "prove" it, but it seems blindingly obvious
to me that it was the fact that An Oblique Approach went into
the Library in the fall of 2000 that explains most of that increase.
It would certainly be absurd to claim that being available for
free somehow hurt the novel's sales! I can guarantee you that
most authors would be delighted to see a two-year-old title suddenly
showing a spurt of new sales.
It's worth noting, by the way, that the
second volume in the series, In the Heart of Darkness, shows
much the same pattern. In the Heart of Darkness went into the
Library at the same time as An Oblique Approach, a year and a
half ago. In the last period before it appeared in the Library
(Jan-June 2000), Heart of Darkness sold 1,704 copies. A year
later, during the equivalent reporting period, it sold 1,886.
The difference is certainly not as dramatic
as the difference in sales of An Oblique Approach, much less
the near-doubling of sales which Mother of Demons experienced.
Still, the mere fact that sales increased at all instead of declining
is significant.
Before I move on to my next point, I
want to take the time to emphasize the significance of these
HARD FIGURES. I stress "hard figures" because those
people arguing the "encryption/enforcement" side of
the debate NEVER come up with hard figures. Harlan Ellison, for
instance, screams that he has "Lost sales!" because
of piracy -- but, to the best of my knowledge, has never once
even tried to demonstrate that this is true. Not once has he
done more than endlessly assert the "axiom" that since
a title of his was pirated he "must therefore" have
lost sales of that title.
I think my hard figures demonstrate how
absurd that claim is. It does not follow that simply because
a copy is available for free that sales will therefore be hurt.
In fact, they are more likely to be helped, for the simple reason
that free copies -- call them "samplers," if you will
-- are often the necessary inducement to convince people to buy
something.
Everyone should remember, also, that
the titles available for free in the Baen Library -- very much
unlike pirated copies -- have the following two unusual characteristics:
a) They are readily available in a well-known,
well-advertised and STABLE web site. I stress "stable"
because one of the inevitable characteristics of pirated copies
is that trying to find them is a monstrous headache in the first
place. For obvious reasons, those addresses tend to disappear
constantly. In fact, every time I speak publicly on this issue
I urge my audience -- please! be my guest! -- to test my claims
by going online and trying to steal one of my titles. (The one
you find easily and immediately in the Baen Free Library doesn't
count, of course. That one is not pirated.) And I confidently
advance the prediction that they will soon discover that the
amount of time and hassle they have to go through in order to
find a pirated copy somewhere of an Eric Flint title -- again,
excepting the legitimate copy available in the Free Library --
is hardly worth the effort.
b) The titles -- again, very much unlike
the typical pirated product -- are in excellent shape, having
been professionally prepared, and are available for downloading
in no less than five different electronic formats. (For which
we even provide the software, if the reader doesn't have it already.)
Try finding ANY pirated copies of which
you can say the same, even if you can find them in the first
place. As anyone knows who has ever looked at a pirated edition,
as a rule they are very sloppy scanned-and-barely-proofed editions
which are miserable to read.
And yet... and yet... despite the fact
that these COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE copies are available for free
-- easily, conveniently, and professionally prepared -- you have
seen for yourself that in no less than four instances I have
been able to demonstrate no discernable financial damage done
to me as the author. To the contrary, I have been able to advance
a very strong case that the Library has helped the sales of those
books.
2) Since we set up the Free Library,
I've received a total of 1,161 letters to me as "Librarian."
Well over a thousand letters in about a year and a half -- and,
at a rough estimate, I'd say that about two-thirds of those letters
(certainly well over half) state specifically that, as a result
of becoming exposed to an author through the Library, the sender
of the letter went out and bought some book of theirs in a print
edition. Very often, a number of books.
I will grant you immediately that this
is purely anecdotal evidence. Still, the fact remains that I
have well over a THOUSAND anecdotes. How many does Harlan Ellison
have, based on which he filed his now-famous (or, in my opinion,
notorious) lawsuit? Five? Six? As many as a dozen?
The thing you should not overlook for
a moment is that everyone's argument in this dispute is based
entirely on anecdotal evidence. (Except for me, I should say.
To the best of my knowledge, I am the only author who has put
up free titles and then tracked the actual effect on royalty
statements. Still, even there, I will immediately grant that
there are a number of variable factors which cloud the issue.)
The difference is that I can marshal
a huge number of anecdotes to support my viewpoint. My opponents
can marshal, at most, a handful. And even that handful is suspect,
since they base their logic on the assumption that simply because
a title has been pirated that the author has therefore "lost
sales." I think that assumption is highly dubious -- and
is precisely what needs to be proved in the first place. (See
my various remarks elsewhere in the Free Library for an expansion
on this point.)
Keep in mind the difference, because
it's quite significant. Not all anecdotes are equal. I can point
to hundreds of letters where a specific person says specifically:
"based on reading Book X in the Library, I went out and
bought it." Whereas the anecdotes of my opponents are not
specific at all. In essence, what they do is simply demonstrate
that someone put up a pirated edition somewhere. Fine. But it
does not thereby follow that a SALE was lost. Who knows if the
person who downloaded that title would have bought it in the
first place? In order for my opponents to have anecdotes which
carried the same weight as mine -- even in quality, much less
in quantity -- they would have to show statements where a specific
person stated that they had intended to buy a copy of Book X
but didn't because they found a pirated one instead. If Harlan
Ellison has even ONE anecdote of that nature, I'll be surprised.
3) Here's another anecdote. Last April,
I attended an international conference in London on the current
state of the e-publishing industry. In general, the tone of the
conference was pessimistic -- accurately reflecting the general
state of the industry.
I was invited to come by the organizers
more-or-less as the "devil's advocate." In my own remarks
at the conference, I stated that the fundamental obstacle to
the success of electronic publishing was the industry's obsession
with encryption. The only successful electronic outlet I knew
at the time -- <Fictionwise.com> can now be added to the
list, from what I can see -- was Baen Books' Webscriptions. And
that was precisely due to the fact that Baen made no attempt
to encrypt its product. As a result, they were able to sell electronic
books both cheaply and with no hassle and aggravation to their
customers.
I measure "successful," by
the way, using the only criterion that means much to me as an
author: Webscriptions, unlike all other electronic outlets I
know of, pays me royalties in substantial amounts. As of now,
I've received about $2,140 in electronic royalties from Baen
Books for the year 2000. (The last period reported.)
That sum is of course much smaller than
my paper edition royalties, but it can hardly be called "peanuts."
Every other electronic outlet I know of, in contrast, pays royalties
-- if at all -- in two figures. My friend Dave Drake has given
me permission to let the public know that his best-earning book
published by anyone other than Baen, in one reporting period,
earned him $36,000 in royalties for the paper edition -- and
$28 for the electronic edition. And that's about typical for
even a successful book issued electronically.
In contrast, Dave earned probably about
as much as I did in electronic royalties from Baen for the year
2000. (I don't know the exact figure, but since a lot of my Webscriptions
royalties come from titles I co-authored with Dave, I'm sure
the amounts are approximately equal.)
At the conference -- at least in the
public sessions -- my remarks were basically greeted with pained
silence. But, in private, several publisher representatives told
me that they agreed with me -- but also told me that trying to
get the publishing industry to give up encryption would be impossible.
Why? Basically because the corporate bean-counters who now run
most of the publishing industry just can't bear the thought of
-- gasp -- GIVING something away for free. Even if it benefits
them in the long run.
There was one exception. A gentleman
from a publishing house which primarily produces textbooks rose
in support of my point. He stated that, much to their own surprise,
his company had found that those textbooks which they made available
for free online ALSO had the best sales.
4) A disconnected anecdote? No, not really.
MIT Press discovered the same thing. A friend of mine sent me
a letter recently after listening to the President of MIT on
a radio talk show. Here is the relevant excerpt from his letter:
I just have a little more fuel for you
to add to the fire. Yesterday on my way home from work I was
listening to "All Things Considered" on NPR a little
before 5pm CST. They had a story on MIT's offer to create a Web
site for most of its classes and to post materials (outlines,
detailed class notes, homework assignments, etc) from each course.
Besides being an interesting story in
itself on free information on the net the guest, Charles Vest,
president of MIT, as an aside mentioned that when college textbook
presses (like the one at MIT) put up free e-text copies of their
new textbooks at the same time they published the print version,
sales of the print versions went UP.
If it works to increase the sale for
things as over priced as the normal college textbook...
All right, I'll stop there. I believe
I've provided enough evidence to support my point. Making one
or a few titles of an author's writings available for free electronically
in the Free Library seems to have no other impact, certainly
over time, than to increase that author's general audience recognition
-- and thereby, indirectly if not directly, the sales of his
or her books.
I believe it also -- I leave it up to
each individual to weigh this out for themselves -- places such
authors on what you might call the side of the angels in this
dispute. For me, at least, this side of the matter is even more
important than the practical side. It grates me to see the way
powerful corporate interests have been steadily twisting the
copyright laws and encroaching on personal liberties in order
to shore up their profit margins -- all the more so when their
profit problems are a result of their own stupidity and short-sighted
greed in the first place.
Eric Flint
is a gifted new star of military SF. His writing career began
auspiciously with the impressive first novel, Mother
of Demons (Baen), which was selected by Science Fiction
Chronicle as one of the best novels of the year With David Drake,
he has collaborated on An
Oblique Approach and In
the Heart of Darkness, the first two novels in the "Belisarius"
series. Flint earned a masters degree in African History from
UCLA. A Trotskyist, he has remained true to his faith by working
as a steel worker, machinist and meatpacker.
Copyright: Eric Flint
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