On the list of illegally downloaded e-books, that is.
Here’s the Washington Post with the story, and here’s the N.Y. Times.
The underlying study claims that more than 9 million copies of books were illegally downloaded last year.
Freakonomics a Chart-Topper
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What? That’s it? No analysis on how much revenue was lost or gained by this? Come on, if anyone can do a good analysis on the actual reduction in revenue from piracy it would be the Freakonomics team.
Don’t forget to compare the lost revenue with the revenue lost from traditional library lending and used book websites like Amazon and Half.com to put things in perspective.
this is a sign that readers of the book understand the concept of ‘free riding’.
I would imagine if the concept of a public library were invented today, you would hear similar doomsday stories from the book publishers about lost revenue.
I was wondering how the researchers got from 9 million illegally downloaded copies to $3 billion dollars in losses to publishers. Those numbers don’t match. But then I noticed the NY Times article actually says that more than 9 million copies were downloaded illegally in “the final months” of last year. Very different than 9 mill for an entire year. I think the first sentence of the WashPo article is misleading.
What about Superfreakonomics? Perhaps people are brushing up on the original before they download the sequel?
I hope you guys don’t mind the lost revenue, but I borrowed Freakonomics from a friend. It just so happened that Superfreakonomics was released a month later, so I bought it for my Kindle. The only thing I can’t figure out is where to put my autograph bookplate…
Could this have anything to do with the global warming debate? (i.e. people wanted to read the article on geoengineering to form their own opinions on the controversy but weren’t interested in reading the whole book?)
Or maybe it’s proportionally pirated, and since it’s just so popular, it came out on top
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But most likely, economists are just cheap…
In a world with zero piracy, how many of those 9 million would have actually bought the book? Some, of course, but I’d reckon a fairly small percentage.
Now, of all the people who pirated the first book, how many were inspired to buy the sequel?
The numners would be nearly impossible to divine, but it’s not out of the question that, overall, piracy has lead to more sales than it’s lost.
I’m looking at the NYT article, and the numbers are a bit surprising.
The first quote “A study … estimates that there were 9 million illegal downloads of copyrighted books in the final months of last year.”
Then the second “… although not every pirated copy represented a lost sale, the potential loss to the publishing industry could be as high as $3 billion.”
Are they claiming each book is potentially worth $333? Is the $3 billion figure counting every book ever pirated? I wish they would make it clearer how they come to that number.