posted
Is it wrong to download SotG for free but buy it later when it is out in softcover (a year later)? A hardcover book is around 40$ and read in 2 days a soft cover is 9$ yet also read in 2 days.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
At Amazon.com, Shadow of the Giant is $17.13 +shipping. You could also try any libraries near you.
Posts: 2149 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Yes, it's wrong. But I'll tell you what, Sid. Many, many years ago now, a poster -- now long-gone from this site -- sincerely touched me by buying a Card book for me with absolutely no prompting. I've always wanted to pay that forward.
If you send me your snail-mail address, I'll get you a copy of SotG.
posted
I'm surprised that you'd even have the guts to post this on Card's own site! If he doesn't even tolerate fan-fiction being written, I don't imagine he'd appreciate his work being downloaded, even if you do intend to buy the paperback later. In any case, isn't that what public libraries are for?
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
OSC doesn't have the same views on downloading as most of the publishing industry. Check out his articles about downloading MP3s.
Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
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Well, I checked mine out from the library and paid all of nothing! I will get it when the paperback comes out, though. Or you could just sit around at Borders and read an entire book with the other weirdos.
Posts: 93 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
You'll actually buy me a copy!? WOW your really generous, okay umm [deleted for national security] Thank you thank you thank you!!!
As for the nerve of actually posting on this site thats why I asked first. American and Canadian currency is different so 25 American dollars is about 40 Canadian. As for the local library since SotG just came out they wont have it for about 4 years.
And Tom *deep breath* Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!
posted
It is not like that they'll come to my house and stalk me. And I also wanted to show how thankful I was. And yeah no one would want to travel god knows how many miles from their comfy chair in a nice warm house to Canada in the middle of winter with freezing winds just to travel to some remote Francophone town travel all the way to my street just to stalk my home in 4 feet of snow. Unless your into ice fishing....
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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For all you know Sid, I'm an insane serial killer who just found out he lives two streets over from you... Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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"two streets away from me" doesnt work since there are no two streets away from me you have the highway that goes past my street that branches off into this penninsula and then a dead end. Theres a beach there during the summer, during winter its ice fishing, and theres a hydro dam up me street. I used to flood once a year but it stopped since they raised the streen 5 feet. Oh ya and by the way even if you did live next door I'll sick my 7 fingered cat after you.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Tell you what, Sid. Delete that address and send it to me in E-mail. I'm not going to send you a book without your E-mail addy, anyway, and you really don't want to leave your snail mail address flapping out here in the wind.
But, yes, I'd be glad to do it.
(Note: please clarify your address, too, in your E-mail. I THINK I can translate that into a standard postal block, but only if I ignore things like "Near West Island." Is it safe for me to do that? *grin*)
posted
I'd be interested to know where you would download a free copy of Shadow of the Giant.
When I used to put my manuscripts up for free, I put them up as soon as they were written and took them down the day the hardcover came out. Everybody benefitted, but we weren't competing with the bookstores.
I'm grateful for the generous soul who gave a book to the would-be downloader. That was very kind. And I appreciate the honesty of asking what others thought about downloading.
In truth, i'm not WORRIED about downloading - most people would vastly prefer having the book on paper. Way more convenient than either reading it on the screen or printing it out.
But i'm really pissed off at whoever scanned the book to put it up online. THEY are the ones who are stealing a right they don't have - the right to publish something they didn't create. My publisher takes a great risk in paying for paper and printing and distribution; the uploader is contributing absolutely nothing yet fancies himself a "public benefactor."
Ah well. It's all very complicated, morally. But this is part of the reason I believe copyrights are being extended beyond all reason. While I think right now it's a bit premature <grin>, it's part of the copyright benefit that the author's rights expire and the work then belongs to the public. When the public domain is too long postponed, then it asserts itself with unauthorized uploads early on.
Meanwhile, though, it's worth remembering that there are lots and lots of ways to get books free. Libraries. Circulating book clubs. Heck, my whole career exists because PEOPLE LOAN BOOKS TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY. I remember hearing Jerry Pournelle talk about telling people, when they said they lent their books to others, "Make 'em buy their own!" But ... how do we find new readers, except by word of mouth, which includes handing a book to a friend and demanding, "You have to read this book!"
I'm just not sure where that uploader who makes my book available to total strangers fits in to this. He's not sharing it with friends or family. He hasn't, like a library, paid for each circulating copy. Yet I still would like people who can't afford to buy the expensive hardcover to have access to my books (which is one reason I used to upload the manuscripts myself).
I guess the thing that bothers me most is the sheer rudeness of unauthorized online publication. Like taking flowers from somebody else's garden and offering them as if they were your own gift. (Of course the analogy is faulty, since the flowers you take are no longer in the garden, while online copying doesn't deprive anybody of a copy.)
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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"I'm grateful for the generous soul who gave a book to the would-be downloader."
Whee. But to be fair, I'm only doing it because John Hansen -- John Binder, y'know, who left these parts long ago after some strange conjunction of stars turned him into a curmudgeon -- sent me a copy of Ender's Shadow for no apparent reason. The day it came out, he posted something like "Who wants a copy of Ender's Shadow?" And I said I did. And two days later, I got one. Like I said, it made a lasting impression.
So there's probably some kind of moral in this.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Hey, speaking of copyrights, I know one poster here likes country music. I wonder if he would be interested in a site that provides free listening while being 100% legal.
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Now I feel bad that I got people's hopes up that I was John Hansen when I first started posting here. What a great thing to do!
Posts: 1635 | Registered: Aug 2002
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K I edited it out however I have to go to school so I'll email it asap.
You can usually get anything for free from Shareaza, Kazaa etc, I don't like the idea of downloading books either but it takes so long for good books recently published to go into softcover that I'm very sorely tempted. Thats why I was aksing first. I currently own a softcover copy of every Ender and Shadow Book to date except Giant. Thanks for making this clear to me.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Mr. Card, I don't know how much you know about peer to peer, but for exemple, a few hours after the release of the latest Harry Potter, the Order of the Phoenix, it was available in .doc on E-mule, and in several versions, so I assume a lot of people has scanned and then made text recognizing of the book. (and before anybody asks : yes, I downloaded it, but I had already bought it online and the (censored) package arrived two weeks after the release ! )
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Look, don't worry about this. I make enough money for any rational person and it's obvious that downloading is not hurting my income OR my publisher's. I am not granting permission for anyone to upload and distribute my work, but I am also not condemning anybody who downloads it. My personal standard would be the one that you are already following: If you download a book, read it, and like it, then you'll eventually buy an edition of the book - at least the paperback. And if you read it (or start to read it) and dislike it, then you don't owe the author anything.
As far as I'm concerned, that keeps you honest and hurts nobody. At least that's the standard I use. People have occasionally given me ripped cds. i listen, and if I like it, I buy a legitimate copy; if i don't, then ... I won't be listening to the ripped copy anyway, will I?
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
Thanks for clearing this up Mr. Card from what I hear from SotG I'm going to love it once I get it. I was never to sure about ever reading Memory of Earth since I wasn't sure if it was my kind of science fiction or not but I think there's an old copy in my room somewhere. I found it cleaning up so I'll give it a try.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I'm always interested in nice. YOu could tell me how cool I am. That would be nice and something I rarely here. My students all insist that I'm the exact opposite. Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Not that anything can be done about texts that are out there now... just something to keep in mind.
BB
=== Mods feel free to edit away those links after OSC has seen them (perhapse, forward this to him then edit, maybe).
Posts: 116 | Registered: Sep 2004
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WOAH! One thing to anomynously upload it peer to peer over shareaza but this is just blatant. I hope those are mostly for storage rather than for distributing them to the masses. But ya I beleieve that if people who download those books truly appreciate Mr. Card then they'll buy the actual copy eventually.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
At least some of those sites are Russian - but one has to understand the cultural framework behind Russian online pirating.
First, there's the long tradition of samizdat publication - typing out copies of entire banned books so that they can circulate without benefit of state permission.
Second, there's the equally long tradition of books being "fairly" published - that is, ten thousand copies are printed of each edition, regardless of demand. When they're gone, they're gone. So to Russians who grew up knowing that the books they wanted would always be impossible to get, it won't seem so unreasonable to "share" them on the nets.
The trouble is that distribution is international, and they do it in English as often as in Russian (primarily because translation is a LOT OF WORK and scanning and English book is not).
Still doesn't make it right, but I don't think of them as evil.
I think those ads they run in the movie theaters equating illegal duplicating of movies with theft are way overblown. It all depends, I think. The people who make and sell copies of first run movies are profiting from someone else's property. i think they should go to jail. (I just got offered Be Cool in a fast food restaurant when I was on the road yesterday. All right, I admit it, McDonald's. I had a Big Mac and fries with hot mustard sauce. so sue me. At least i didn't have their d*** caramel sundae.)
But sharing copies of old movies that should have been out of copyright years ago except that Hollywood has lobbied Congress into extending copyright beyond all reason, while NOT protecting at all the rights of the actual creators of the movies - well, see? I'm as much a practitioner of situational ethics as the next guy.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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When I first saw online versions of books (and yes, it was the Ender series, back when I was googling for Enzichel Vinicenze), I was thinking "Wow, someone did a lot of work typing that all in." This was after the advent of document scanning and letter recognition, but before my instinctive awareness of it.
Then I couldn't help but think of scanning the book as opposed to re-typing it to Moses copying Jethro's book in Stone Tables. "'True,' said Jethro ruefully. 'But then, no one reads a book as carefully as the man who's writing it out by hand.'"
Nonetheless, I downloaded the text files, because (a) I have the books already, and OSC had already made known his feelings at some point so I figured it was ok, and (b) it's easier to search for that quotation in a document than to page through the book. That's right, I'm admitting it -- I haven't actually memorized all the Ender books.
posted
With the help of Baen.com, Fictionwise.com, eReader.com, and Project Gutenberg I am slowly replacing a large chunk of my library with e-books. Partly because even though I've bought literally hundreds of them online, I still have dangerously overflowing bookshelves, partly because I love the ability to carry 100 books with me at all times on my Palm, and partly because it frees up the space so I can replace my favorite tattered paperbacks with hardback editions. So far my collections of OSC, Robert B. Parker, Spider Robinson, Jennifer Crusie, Harry Turtledove, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman have all been upgraded in those rare cases where I didn't have the hardback already.
But I want more! And frankly, downloading them for free generally means lesser quality, not-quite-word-for-word scans, no cover image, often no intros or acknowledgements or afterwards, and the author gets squat. So I'll harass the publishers instead to keep 'em coming.
Mr. Card, Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets are both (legally) available as e-books. Where's the next one? Is there a good person at Tor to ask?
Edited to add: wow, Fictionwise needs to catch up on their OSC prices. Their copies of the Shadow books are still at hardback prices, where eReader.com dropped down to paperback prices soon after the paperbacks were available.
[ March 12, 2005, 01:25 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Generally they're a bit cheaper, especially with promotions and rebate offers and membership discounts and newsletter coupons, etc.
And the SF publisher who jumped headfirst into it before anyone else really thought about it is Jim Baen. Not only does the Baen Free Library offer a ton of free books (something that has resulted in higher book sales for those authors, imagine that) but his Webscriptions service lets you order 5 books for $15 and you can read them ahead of print if you like, in biweekly installments that ultimately result in the entire book being available online a few weeks before print publication. Perfect for us obsessive series-reading types.
OK, cards on the table (no pun intended). My real reason for liking e-books? Impulse buying. I can click on a book and be reading it within minutes. Until Amazon.com perfects teleportation, there's no faster way to feed your fix.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I'm a big fan of ebooks as well, for certain situations, like traveling, waiting in line, or walking the dog at night. Portability is definitely great. Random access kind of stinks though.
I like my Sony Clie PEG-SJ20 - good screen lighting, and a side scroll wheel that makes one-handed reading very easy. Unfortunately, Sony is getting out of the PDA business. I don't think any other PDA's that I've looked at have that side scroll wheel.
I also like Fictionwise. They have a great selection. I wish more stuff were in the e-book format, however. Like Shadow of the Giant.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I own all of the Ender Series in hardcover and most in book-on-cd format. I really like to listen to books while playing video games; it makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time that way.
My confession is that I also do have downloaded copies of the Ender books (that I paid for in Hardback and audio formats), but the eBook type versions of the books I have are just as illegal as the MP3 downloads of music that is getting so much media attention. I do NOT have any text file copies of books that I do not own.
Here is how I use them. They are loaded on my Palm Pilot and I usually have about 20 different books at a time loaded on it. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, I pick up the Palm Pilot and read one of the books. It is backlit and I can adjust the size of the text so I don't have to find my reading glasses and I don't have to bother my husband by turning on a light. I also use the Palm for travel. I never know what book I'm going to feel like reading while I'm on a flight and hardcover books get heavy (Imagine bringing and Ender Book and the latest Harry Potter book in your carry on!). This way, this tiny device has a books ready that suit most of my moods
Mr. Card, I know you read this a lot, and I promise you that I own at least one copy of each book I have downloaded. In the case of your latest, I paid full price for the audio of Shadow of the Giant (I didn't wait for it to show up for less on audible.com) and I bought the book the day it came out as well. But, I don't believe that being able to adjust the text file to large print and reading without waking my husband up is doing something immoral or something that takes money away from you. Besides, some of the copies of your books are versions that he had signed years ago at BYU and I don't want them to get all banged up.
To the person who is buying a copy for the other board member, what a wonderful thing to do! I've done that kind of thing once in a while. When the person has felt uncomfortable taking such a generous gift, I've just told them that someday when they are in the position to do something like that for someone, pass on the good deed in your own way. I do not believe in karma, but I believe in living like it is real.
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