Comments on: Books: Does piracy now = marketing?

By: Avid Book Reader

Avid Book Reader — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:57:08 +0000

I've heard of this to some extent, but thanks for clarifying. I do know some people are putting links and other promotional material in ebooks, then giving them away for free. If the ebook gets passed around, it becomes a free viral marketing strategy for whatever they are promoting inside. Some also say that because Google likes .pdfs, they get a ton of backlinks if the ebook is distributed and posted around on the net (because they put a link to their site in the .pdf and Google reads .pdfs).

By: mathewi

mathewi — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:35:01 +0000

Nice to hear from you again so soon, Tom. And you'll notice that no one
responded to my Twitter call :-)

First of all, who said that p2p was responsible for album sales declining? I
never said it was, and I certainly don't think it's the only factor. --
perhaps not even the major factor. Legal music downloads, of which there
have been a few hundred million or so this year, likely have a lot to do
with it as well.

In any case, you're quite right that books differ from music, in part
because people still want the physical product. But I fail to see why p2p
can't be considered marketing in either case -- in the case of the music
industry it's just marketing for something different, such as a concert tour
or a T-shirt or a special boxed set of discs. Same concept.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:27:28 +0000

So let me see if I get this straight...p2p is responsible for album sales declining last year but responsible for skyrocketing book sales. But somehow this is evidence that p2p is an effective marketing tool for both. That makes perfect sense. Oh no, I'm picking on you again, better call a bunch of twitter people to protect you :)

No, no...I kid...I'm just messin' with you

But seriously, in the case of a book the physical copy is vastly superior to the digital version (sorry Kindle). So digital distribution is an effective marketing tool for books. That isn't true of music which sounds the same on an iPod no matter what.

I'm not saying it isn't true of music too, I don't think it is but my point is just to point out that they are different concepts and what is true for one isn't necessarily true for the other.