manwithdream

Earl,

Morris Rosenthal's blog for self-publishers also tells how to handle online piracy using the DMCA(?). Here is a link:

http://www.fonerbooks.com/selfpublishing/?p=1344

Kenneth Greifer

EarlDoherty

Shesh,

What do you think has kept me going for almost 30 years in my research and writing? The pitifully small amount of financial return I've gotten from it (and which has now dried up to virtually nothing)?

Thanks for the sermon.

Earl Doherty

DCHindley

Earl,

Hopefully you did not quit your primary job (whatever it may be). Why don't you send a private message to Stephan Huller, who has published a book (maybe 2). Ask him how he markets it/them and whether he realizes any income from the efforts. He may be a loose cannon when he starts brainstorming, but he isn't unapproachable.

Back when there was the stink over the James ossuary, I was in e-mail exchange with Robert Eisenman (early 2003 I think), who had published several books on the text of the DSS and James the Just in early Christianity. When he came out with James the Brother of Jesus (1997), he had been vilified by some (mainly Jack Kilmon but others on Crosstalk2) as just another person just trying to make money by sensationalizing a very serious subject. Sound familiar? And this wasn't even about Jesus, just his brother!

He mentioned that he had a second volume all ready for publication. So I asked him if he planned to publish the follow up on James the Brother of Jesus any time soon. He almost sounded like he was turned off to book publishing, stating that Biblical Archeology Review publisher Hershel Shanks had stiffed him for costs of publication of The Facsimile Edition of the DSS, 1991, which was the straw that broke the camels back and caused the Universities holding photographs to release them to the public) and claimed he hadn't made much if any money at all from the other books, and was frustrated that his publisher was just sitting on the complete 2nd volume (now published) waiting for the wind to change.

However, Crossan seems to sell well, and if anybody is sensationalizing the subject of Jesus to spur book sales it is him. You could approach him for advice maybe. Pick his brain. There are thousands of adult bible study groups across the globe that use his books to promote discussion, whether they accept what he says or not. Maybe you are not tapping some markets (bible discussions of all stripes, especially Unitarian and mainline churches).

Do you have a business plan for your research and publication efforts? Who are you trying to reach out to. What formats can they afford or read conveniently or profitably? Estimate of market size? Long term plan? Remember, "A watched pot never boils," and "Time flies when you are having fun."

Don't dwell on it too hard ... just let it flow ...

DCH (who has never published a book)

EarlDoherty

Thanks, Kenneth, I will look into these things.

One of my problems is that I kind of blow hot and cold on the whole thing. I often go months without doing anything in the research and writing business and concentrate on my other activity (music, which also involves my 'day job' such as it is, since I'm more or less retired). I get burned out, then rekindled later down the road. Maybe Ehrman's book will strike a new match for me. (I also get discouraged by my lack of intuitive friendship with computers and the Internet, which is probably one reason why I'm having such difficulty with the Kindle conversion.)

I'm not someone like G. A. Wells who seems to want to publish a new book every year or so (I admire his work ethic, being now in his 80s!), because I think that makes it inevitable that one simply repeats oneself, and how can you keep a readership interested in that case? I did face a decision on how big to make my 'second edition' of The Jesus Puzzle. Just a few changes and expansions, or create one book that essentially made the entire case as I was capable of making it after 20 years of research? I knew that would make it pricey and limit its sales, but I felt that I wanted that product all in one. I still don't regret it, but I'm having to live with it.

Of course, I never anticipated the piracy situation. Perhaps I was short-sighted.

Earl Doherty

mountainman

Good thinking Earl,


I am interested in what you see as "the larger issue(s)".


Also I noticed above you mentioned involvement in the music industry. Nice one again Earl. Music is altogether another medium separate from texts and books, and there are many benefits to running parallel interests in as many fields as you have time to study.


[Philosophy for the pirates and the pirated]

We all came into this world with empty hands
and that it the way we will all leave it.

[/Philosophy]


Finally about the "Kindle format thing", dont they have 1-day courses for this in your local area? Education is the open door, but it requires one to become a new student again, and walk through the process. Otherwise you pay some expert $x for their training and/or assistance. Good luck with dealing with this process.



Best wishes



Pete







PS: Constantine was described as a brigand - a pirate on land.

(Sorry could not resist)

EarlDoherty

I have come to a decision about my future writing and publishing.

Yesterday using Google I embarked on an organized survey, taking detailed notes, of the piracy of my books, intending to try to keep on top of the situation and as much as possible have them removed. What I encountered was a many-headed Hydra (you are all familiar with Greek mythology, I take it?) beyond anything I anticipated or was hitherto aware of. After dealing with ten file-share sites (barely into the second page of Google) offering free downloads of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, including checking on those I had contacted earlier to have the book removed, I came upon one Google link to a site which had 8 separate links to separate pirated downloads. Talk about a tsunami! One of these was actually called “piratebay” (apparently located in Sweden). In what can only be described as a gleeful tone of “up yours!” they bragged that they had never removed and never would remove any book file, regardless of copyright. They essentially tell the victimized author or publisher to go fuck themselves.

Just before that, I had come upon a file-share site with world-wide servers from Brazil to Siberia, www.euko.net, who managed in a combined snarky, smart-ass, and aggrieved tone that you better fulfill some very rigid conditions about complaining of copyright infringement for them to even consider your request. They themselves complained about legal threats and harassment from authors and publishers, and threatened a legal response in return. Gee, fellas, I’m so sorry that you’ve been subjected to all that annoyance from people you are making it possible to steal from, and how guilty I feel for approaching you hat in hand to politely request that you stop letting people rape my intellectual orifices.

On another site, I had earlier left a Comment which I quoted to you here in my OP, thanking them for their thievery. Yesterday I noticed a comment on my comment by some sort of moderator, who took umbrage at my antagonism, saying that all they were doing was championing rationality (they had some sort of atheist connection). They apparently have no problem at all with engaging in that rationality by stealing from me and wrecking my business.

What is going on here? Suddenly we, the victims, are the bad guys, fit only to be mocked, threatened and complained about? What has the Internet done to the modern brain? Has it turned things like morality and rationality to mush?

I’ve had enough. Some here have claimed that the pirates don’t really affect overall sales, since they wouldn’t have been disposed to buy anyway. I beg to differ. Prior to last fall, when the piracy monster started to get into full swing, I was selling at least two dozen books (of all three of mine) a month on Amazon. It is now down to about 5. The same goes for sales to my British distributor who covers Europe. Shipments to them have stopped. (I guess with the Swedish “piratebay” right off their shores claiming some kind of ‘immunity’ to DMCA provisions it is truly a world-wide phenomenon everyone can indulge in.)

My return from those two sources, while limited, was an important part of my income as a senior with no workplace pension and a very modest govt. one. Now that business has been destroyed, and without something like SOPA cannot be rescued. I guess I can use the 1500+ books I’ve still got in my basement as kindling on these cold winter nights. (The last printing run of The Jesus Puzzle has put me at a financial loss for it, and without being able to sell the last quarter of the print run of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man I’m in a position of hardly breaking even on it.)

What can I do about this? Not much. What kind of statement can I make? There’s only one open to me, it seems. I will be writing and publishing no further books, including any rebuttal to Ehrman (including on my website). To do otherwise is to surrender my ass to this culture of larceny which has taken over the market, to meekly accept their literal insults (as I’ve recounted above) added to the injury. I’m essentially going on strike (with the difference being that if I continued to work, I wouldn’t get a paycheck anyway). You can spread the word, if you like. And I’m not doing it simply out of spite. If these assholes can be brought to realize that in the long run they are only depriving themselves, maybe it will have some effect. I can only hope that other writers will join me. I will certainly be suggesting it to them.

I will also spend a little time on those pirate site Comments pages when I can access them. Maybe they haven’t had enough ‘face’ time with those they are hurting, maybe they are just too dense to understand the ramifications. One commenter about Jesus: Neither God Nor Man which he acquired for free remarked that it was “An excellent book!” I’m so happy he appreciated it. No doubt he thinks I should reward him by making future books available for more looting.

And those who have expressed the view here that I should continue to do so are part of the problem.

Earl Doherty

DCHindley

Earl,

Are these folks scanning your books into PDFs to share online? From what I gather, you do not offer e-versions.

There is a class of "hackers" who believe that all info should be shared freely, to whom copyright means nothing. They are essentially anarchists. If they destroy the existing infrastructure, a new Utopian society will automatically arise like a phoenix from the ashes. Your pitiful copyright belongs, in their opinion, in the dung heap of history.

The sphere of those who believe this way overlaps to some degree with the sphere who like rational skepticism. The same guy, though, who says he really enjoyed his pirated copy, also probably thinks that pirated books about cooking up the nerve agent Sarin are a "gas," and secretly stocks his basement with K-Rations and a million rounds of .223 ammunition for his hot-rodded AR15 clone made from pieces and parts purchased at gun shows and an illegal rewelded auto lower bought from "bubba" down by the railroad tracks. (Sorry, I just got bilked for $30 at a show I took my son to, and the smell of their badly tuned junk trucks and the garlic they eat by the fistful still fills my nostrils).

I don't think this kind of gentleperson describes all freethinkers, sceptics or rationalists. I was just at your website, and think you could "bundle" your books with other resources (aids for learning Greek, reprints of 19th and early 20th century books out of copyright, "classic" modern books on the subject of Jesus Mythicism/Athiesm or Agnosticism, etc). An e-book version of your work with scans of older books might go hand in hand. Put the scanned volumes of out-of-copyright works on a CD like Roger Pearse or Peter Kirby do and sell with your paperbacks. Host an online discussion group dedicated to your books. Like FRDB does, review in-copyright books with those links to Amazon so they send you a finder's fee if anybody buys. Folks who run online discussion boards find ways to make at least a little dough from them, so find out how they do it, then you do it too.

Do you play music or spin music?

DCH

manwithdream

Earl,

Before you give up try to make a Kindle version of your book (I gave 2 links explaining how before) and sell it at a much lower price than the printed version. There are millions of honest people who actually pay for books just like there are millions of shoplifters and millions of people who don't shoplift. Your target market is not the people who steal books, but the millions of other people who do exist also.

Your books have a very small potential market because they are very controversial, very big, and very hard for the man on the street to understand. Maybe you can "dumb" it down for average people who have never heard of your ideas and can't understand your current material. I have looked at your work and I can't say I understand it because I don't know philosophy, etc. Many other people are also less-educated who might be interested in a simpler version, if you try. Especially, if you make Kindle books. If you read the blogs I linked to, they say that Kindle is more important than any other self-publishing you can do. You can avoid inventory using Kindle and using print on demand self-publishing for printed versions like I linked to earlier.

You might even make back some of your lost money if you can lower your price on your current book and make a new easier version for the ignorant masses (like me). Although I don't read books on the subject you write about, I know other people do.

Millions of people support the pirates and millions of them avoid them. ALso, some people might read the PDF on the internet and buy the printed book because some people like printed books still.

You have nothing to lose by making a Kindle version of your book and an easier version too. Just stop paying for pre-printed books and start using print on demand. You have popularity on your side already. I think you should not give up, but try other things.

If you don't buy stolen books, and you are not alone, shouldn't someone sell books for people like you? Or do you think you are the only one of your kind left?

Kenneth Greifer

Gorit Maqueda

So do I.

I bought a book from him several years ago, when I had very little money, and I feel a bit annoyed knowing that this same book is being download by many for free. I think I can imagine how he feels.

Many people seem to perceive that an unethical act is less unethical when you just have to click on a screen from your chair to commit it.

Chocky

Earl,

As someone who owns both Neither God Nor Man and The Jesus Puzzle - real copies bought from ABE Books - let me encourage you not to give up. Torrent sites like thepiratebay are choc-a-bloc with pirated ebooks, and it's actually astonishing how many biblical studies and sceptical books can be found if you look hard enough.

You could still turn this to your advantage. It may be small comfort to you but I have just downloaded one of these rogue .pdfs, and whoever scanned it did a good enough job that converting it to .mobi format is quite painless. You shouldn't need to worry about converting to HTML first. I've just created a .mobi version myself in about five minutes using Calibre, a free open-source ebook library program, and the result is not bad as retail ebooks go - I found no major formatting errors or spelling mistakes! - but there are no working footnotes.