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for the “middle class” of titles between the 75th percentile
and the 97th percentile; and a small drag on the “super-rich”
in the 97th percentile and higher. Publisher Tim O’Reilly
describes this as “piracy’s progressive taxation,” apportion-
ing a small wealth-redistribution to the vast majority of
works, no net change to the middle, and a small cost on the
richest few.
>
Speaking of Tim O’Reilly, he has just published a detailed,
quantitative study of the effect of free downloads on a
single title. O’Reilly Media published
Asterisk: The Future
of Telephony,
in November 2005, simultaneously releasing
the book as a free download. By March 2007, they had a
pretty detailed picture of the sales-cycle of this book — and,
thanks to industry standard metrics like those provided by
Bookscan, they could compare it, apples-to-apples style,
against the performance of competing books treating with
the same subject. O’Reilly’s conclusion: downloads didn’t
cause a decline in sales, and appears to have resulted in
a lift in sales. This is particularly noteworthy because the
book in question is a technical reference work, exclusively
consumed by computer programmers who are by definition
disposed to read off screens. Also, this is a reference work
and therefore is more likely to be useful in electronic form,
where it can be easily searched.
>
In my case, my publishers have gone back to press repeat-
edly for my books. The print runs for each edition are
modest — I’m a midlist writer in a world with a shrinking
midlist — but publishers print what they think they can sell,
and they’re outselling their expectations.
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