A Penny Saved

Stephen at Freakonomics posted about a person who e-mailed the authors of the Freakonomics Book and admitted to it’s theft.

I downloaded your book FREAKONOMICS on Limewire. Can I pay you something for this great book? Call it guilt or trying to use file sharing in an honest way, but I’d like to pay you something.

Stephen goes on to detail the response that he e-mailed the person.

The combined share that Levitt and I receive from a hard copy of the book is a bit under $4; I think it’s less, however, for the electronic version. But if you were to pay us, why shouldn’t you pay the publisher? After all, their costs are just as legitimate as ours, right? That would bring the price to roughly $14. And then what about contributing to the distributor who got excluded—that’s got to be another $2 or $3. In other words, why should we be the only ones to get the offer of your generosity—are we simply more appealing b/c we’re the creator of the work?

It’s mentioned in the comments of the post on Freakonomics, but I thought that I would further comment on the subject.  As a proponent of digital media and it’s varied uses, I feel that Stephen did all of us a harm here.  Like it or not, Digital Delivery is the future.  While services like LimeWire may not be the optimal place to go about it, there are places that will be legitimate places to receive digital versions of popular media.

I would not have guessed that an economist such as Stephen would go on about this the way he has.  In truth, the publishing company really has no claim on any money from this particular usage of the book.  It was delivered digitally and so the distributor really doesn’t have a claim to anything either.  In fact the distributor in this case is LimeWire, which is a free(ad based) service.  The only entity with any claim to any money in this case are the authors.

As digital media delivery becomes more popular for items like books, the retail prices should drastically drop.  Stephen admits that the author’s cut is about $4.  Add a little bit to it for formatting, layout, and marketing and we could see the price of a “first edition” equivalent to a hardcover in the $6-$7 dollar range.  Beats paying in the $15-$25 dollar range for them now.  Of course, you will still have those that like to have the physical copies and in the end, as digital media delivery increases, the prices for those physical copies could go up.

What does everyone else think?  If you had a portable device that had approximate screenspace the same size as a average book page, and easy access and use.  Would you switch to a digital delivery method for your reading needs?  I like the feel of a book, but I think that I would switch to a digital solution.  Think of all the shelf space I would save.  Not to mention the backs saved whenever I move.

[tags]freakonomics, books, reading, digital media delivery, digital book[tags]