VERY RARE - FA or Buy It Now - Ralph Babel's "The Amiga Guru Book"!!!

[vidarh]

Dude!  This is an important book in Amiga programming circles.
Ralph self published it.  He didn't make a fortune.  No publishing company made anything.
Ralph had publicly talked about a 2nd edition revision as late as 7-8 years ago, but as soon as the scans showed up, it made it easy for him to decide not to bother since he had no reason to believe it wouldn't immediately be scanned too.

While I can understand that it annoyed him, his response is/was out of all proportion: the book is by most accounts finished. He's had several offers to get it published which would cost him nothing, including questions about whether a bounty could convince him. Whichever option would certainly net him some money, with little to no further work on it, but he's refused our of some combination of principle and insistence of only letting it be offset printed.

His choice of course, but not very rational - he's pretty much thrown away a huge amount of work he's already done while people are *still* regularly begging him to take their money. Even an unfinished draft copy released as a PDF only would get a decent amount of sales.

It's particularly ridiculous because the success of the Amiga is deeply intertwined with piracy - without it, his potential market for his first book would have been far smaller. And as many says here: For reference works, while it's great to have a scanned copy, having a paper copy too is fantastic.

I had the German edition of his first book, and I cherished it (unfortunately it got lost in a move at some point) - it was fantastic. And it probably vastly improved my German... I'd buy the second edition in a heartbeat if he chose to publish it just of out of nostalgia. Even if only a PDF.

Wouldn't it be great if all information were free, sure, but someone has to know enough to put something of substance together, and their time and expertise should be worth enough to make it worth their while.

There are any number of possible business models we choose to not enable because we need to strike a balance. Yet all our experience is that a lot of people put something of substance together even without the guarantee or even chance of an income. And *the vast majority* of authors of books - *especially* technical books - never make a profit on their work even if you account for their time at minimum wage.

If you write for the royalties, you'd be far better off taking a second job working minimum wage and putting your extra income in shares. If you write fiction or certain very specific genre non-fiction books (like self-help books, though a lot of those ought to qualify as fiction) you stand a chance, though extremely tiny, of making it big. If you write technical books, you pretty much don't. If you write technical books for niche systems and do it for the money, you're not very bright.

Most people writing technical books understands this: They write because they care about the subjects, or to create a reputation for themselves. In that case piracy is no big deal, or often helpful.

In Babel's case he seems to have expected to make much more than he did *and* taken personal offence at the thought that his book is not read only from his precious offset-printed paper-book. That's ok. It's his "baby" and his choice. But his expectations appears to have been and be completely out of whack with reality. That substantially diminishes my sympathy.

When someone is self publishing and supporting a niche platform that needs all the help it can get, it might be nice if others using that platform supported the effort by not pirating his book.  It's the same as pirating software.  If you want to the Amiga to die, keep encouraging piracy.

I agree it would be nice. But at the same time, the Amiga would never have reached the heights it did without piracy. While many lost out because of piracy, a huge proportion of the sales people *did* make in the Amiga market would never have happened if the Amiga market did not reach the size it did either. I doubt I'd have bought one without ready access to pirated games and programs, for example, as there's no way I could have afforded enough originals to make it worthwhile.

These days I'm a lot more willing to spend the cash, but then again my salary today is roughly 1000 times my pocket money back then....

[vidarh]

Uh oh, so it is all Babel's fault?

No, it isn't nor did I write that, or imply that. Did you actually read what you replied to?

But while holding it back is not all his fault - that he felt burned by the piracy of the first book is clear, and the piracy certainly has part of the blame - he is a grown up and needs to take some of the responsibility for the choice he made himself. The piracy gave him a reason not to *want* to release the second version, it did not force him to hold it back.

To be clear: He does not owe us anything. But that doesn't mean I need to fawn over his choice or reasoning. Just as he is free to withhold the book, it is also my right to point out why I believe his expectations seems to have been out of whack with reality if he actually expected to make more than a token sum of money - piracy or not.

Nor do I need to avoid mentioning that in my opinion he made a silly and irrational choice in withholding a second version when people have been prepared to put in a lot of work to ensure he'd get paid properly for it, which frankly would put him in a far better position than most tech writers can hope for.

But do you actually write software for Amiga anymore? Is this just about nostalgia to you?

Now and again. But yes, even when I do get time, it is mostly about nostalgia to me. I would very much like more to come of it, e.g. with AROS, as there are many things I miss day to day from AmigaOS. But again you miss the point, which was to praise his books influence as great enough that there are at least some of us willing to pay for it - and over the odds - if here were to allow someone to release it, *even if* we don't actually *need* the content any more.

It is his own work and he can do whatever he wants with it. I would like to buy his book too. But there is no book to buy and I cant demand anyone to publish book because I would like to see that happen.

Which is why I expressed my wish for it rather than demand anything.

[vidarh]

Ah, back to blaming the victim, sad really.

So copyright laws only exist when they are convenient to you morals; a copy for sale is right in front of you, so there is no reason to steal one!

You lose all respect from me the moment you equate copyright infringement and theft. Copyright law exists explicitly because theft by definition can not have occurred if the victim still has the the supposedly stolen item in their possession.

As such, in its modern form, copyright is explicitly an *exchange*: Society grants certain additional protections that does not follow from any concept of natural law. These additional protections are granted temporarily as part of a bargain to encourage the creation of more works.  These restrictions are directly and intentionally limitations on free speech, on the assumption that these temporary restrictions will enrich society as a whole.

If a work is withdrawn from the market, society gets no benefits from maintaining that bargain - on the contrary, in that case enforcing copyright impoverishes society.

It is certainly "convenient" morally to believe that if someone is not acting in accordance with the goal of copyright, we should not care all that much about being bound by it either. And indeed, in many jurisdictions, this is recognized by copyright law implicitly or explicitly: Non-commercial copying in cases where the original work is unavailable is most places treated very lightly exactly because there can not realistically be said to be a commercial loss if the work is not available for sale.

The US is the most notable exception with its massive punishments for statutory infringement.

But there is thus no universal agreement that copying a work that has been taken off the market is bad.

(Note: I still, as I've pointed out, believe Babel was in his right to make the decisions he did, and I don't know whether or not it is correct that the book was sold out and that he refused further printings of the original version or not; but I also won't condemn anyone for copying his works *now* when he has shown a total disinterest in trying to make any further money from the work)