New run of Guru Book cancelled due to pirate copy in circulation

[Hans_]

I've already added my name to the list of people that would buy the book if it were printed. I didn't even know about the bittorrent version. Regardless, a printed version that's even been updated would be worth so much more than a pdf.

We need to collectively convince Andreas & co. to change their mind.

Hans

[Hans_]

@webmany

If enough people said that they would buy it, he'd be an idiot to continue to say no.

Hans

[Hans_]

countzero wrote:

AltRN8 wrote:

Add your name below:

1.  TjLaZer
2.  AltRN8
3.  CountZero
4.  Hans

I already said that I would above, but here it is again.

Hans

[Hans_]

AndreasM wrote:

webmany wrote:
I asked "Any chance of doing a pre-pay, and if enough orders come in then print the book?"

but the response was "i think no"

i write today a email to ralph and ask him again that he allow that we print the book. when he say no is the project for me closed. dont make really fun when i look why he dont would like reprint the book....

I don't think that anyone is making fun of the decision or the reasons why. People disagree both with the decision and the reason why, and really hope that you and Ralph will change your mind.

Expecting that amongst all present and past Amiga users, no-one is going to be a pirate is simply unrealistic. Yes, it hurts to see your own copyrighted material being distributed, but as all of the threads on all Amiga forum sites shows, those few really don't matter.

Don't forget that not all people with a copy of the old book  are current Amiga users, so the guy that put the torrent online may not even have a working Amiga.

A whole bunch of us, me included, are respectfully asking you and Ralph to reconsider publishing the updated Guru book in English.

Hans

[Hans_]

spirantho wrote:

I think this would probably affect his sales by about 5%-10%, that's all.  I do say that a pre-order system is a good idea, though.... certainly much better than punishing an entire community because of one ignorant fool.

I think that the effect would be even less than that, particularly if it's made very clear that the new book has been updated. Most people using the torrent instead of buying the actual book would probably not buy the book anyway. If the price is the same as for the German version, then it's pretty affordable. Printing the PDF would probably cost as much (or even more, depending on the printer).

Hans

[Hans_]

Ok, I sent an email directly to Ralph regarding this, and he told me that I could post his reply on the Amiga forums, so here it is:

Dear Hans,

I appreciate your support, but this is not
a question of how many copies could be sold.

Let me try to provide some background:

Piracy is a fact of life in the digital age, and
current copyright law is certainly past its prime.

The new Guru Book, however, wasn't a commercial project
to begin with, and since I didn't expect to make any money
off it, I wasn't too worried about the old RTF/OCR version
(which I even mentioned on my Amiga web page). In fact, it's
been fun to dust off all of my old Amiga equipment, tools,
and documentation. (Though I have to admit that I used
Emacs and TeX on a Linux box to prepare the new edition.)

But claiming that pirates aren't customers anyhow
doesn't quite hit the nail on the head, because
this is where the line is getting blurry:

The new 300-dpi scan was prepared and disseminated not
by Joe Average Pirate with too much time on his hands.
It was a fellow Amiga enthusiast who knew exactly that
an enhanced version was being worked on. Nonetheless, he
decided to make the torrent available - just days before
the extended edition was to go to the printer -, which -
in my very humble opinion - exhibits an enormous amount
of disrespect for somebody else's creative work.

Maybe he considered free availability of the
1993 version more important than the update.

Well, so be it.

As I wanted the reprint to be of the highest possible
quality, print-on-demand was out of the question. Offset,
however, requires a certain minimum number of copies. Let's
face it: this is 2008; the audience for a book like this is
microscopic, and the new scans didn't make it any larger.

So why am I not making it available electronically?

I believe that text needs to be written not only to the
audience, but also with the target _medium_ in mind. An
article I write for my web site will look different from
one to be published in a printed magazine; the original
plain-text list of FAQs I wrote for the Usenet newsgroup
de.etc.sprache.deutsch differs markedly from my web site
http://faql.de etc.

The Guru Book was "designed" to be published on paper.

Yes, it would be nice to have an electronic edition, but
that would require a "redesign" I cannot reasonably spend
any time on. And no, I don't consider PDF adequate (which
the pirate was well aware of, by the way).

I do not depend on writing copyrighted works for a living,
but I feel that the cause of those who do (and thus society
as a whole) is best supported by me _not_ releasing the new
extended edition of the Guru Book.

The decision didn't come lightly. Please respect it - and
try to provide for an environment in which creative workers
are encouraged - and can afford - to share their work.

Sincerely

Ralph

http://babel.de

P. S.: Feel free to forward this message
to an Amiga forum of your choice.

So there you have it. I'm still hoping that he may reconsider at some point, but it looks like the market would have to be big enough to support offset printing. The estimates that I've seen put the threshold for offset printing being more economical than digital prints at 500-2000 copies (the large margin is because it depends on many factors).

Hans

[Hans_]

kolla wrote:
Point 3: there is really no difference between "deisgned for book" and "designed for PDF". It would be like saying "This music is designed for vinyl - not for CD". Claiming that there is much of a difference, in my view, is a kind of useless elitism, really. Oh, and I actually prefer PDFs that I can read on my tablet opposed to more dead trees filling up my shelves. PDFs are also searchable, which I like, and I can read them on whatever device _I_ like, be it my phone, tablet laptop or whatever. It works for other books, so why not this one?

Online versions can have clickable links, source-code files of examples, etc. There is a difference, and yes, if clickable links were available, I would write differently too. Ralph seems to be the kind of person that wants to do things properly, or not at all.

I have a feeling that the real sticking point is the timing of this torrent file, days before he was going to release the book. That and the belief that this guy did so knowing that an updated release was in the works.

Hans

[Hans_]

Well, the petition is almost at 200 now.

Hans