Read books? Wondering if book piracy is a real industry concern? Take part in Joe Konrath's experiment!

The below comes from a post on author Joe Konrath's website, jakonrath.blogspot.com:

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Steal This Ebook

Let's run an experiment and see if piracy is harmful to sales.

I'm currently selling my ebook JACK DANIELS STORIES for $1.99 on Kindle and Barnes and Noble.

...

Currently, on May 30 at 7:00pm, this ebook is ranked at #2009 on Amazon. It sold about 315 copies in the month of May.

It is ranked at #44,480 on Barnes & Noble.

So let's try an experiment. Here are some ways for you to obtain a copy of this ebook.

He then includes a bunch of different ways to get a hold of his book, ranging from free to $1.99 for the Kindle or Nook, along with a Paypal link if you want to get it for free but pay through Paypal. Check out the original post to find the links (I don't want to screw up his experiment or I'd include the links here).

He then goes on to explain that he'll track all the clicks/sales/downloads for the next 30 days. What's amazing is that he encourages everyone to pirate away, asking that folks link to where the pirated copies are found in the comments of the post.

Finally, he says:

Will giving the ebook away for free hurt sales? Will it help sales? Will I gain readers? Will people donate money? Will people who take the free ebook buy my other ebooks?

What do you think will happen?

Should be interesting.

Once again, this is via jakonrath.blogspot.com

Check out the post and take part in the experiment!

As someone who is interested in publishing myself, I'm very curious to see how this works out. My guess is that it helps sales. Especially since I've never heard of Joe Konrath but now I have.

My attitude on file sharing is that it always helps sales and never hurts. Perhaps in some cases there are a few lost sales, but not enough to ruin a company--certainly not a major company that can afford to prosecute individuals. I say that as a content creator, btw. Though I should say that all us little guys need WAY more help than we're getting. If you can afford to, buy Konrath's book--or my buy my book (or just click on one of my Google ads).

The big guys can survive just fine without every last sale. Us little guys can't. But hey, if more people read my stuff, that's probably more important than if I go hungry once in a while.

Posted via web from thepete's posterous