Ethics of downloading e-books

Recently I found some different e-books, pdf, and pgn files on chess. I thought I had hit the jackpot completely. For example: in chesszone.org I was very much attracted to Pandolfini's Endgame Course.

So is it allowable to download it and use it? Or am I like destroying the chess knowledge market? Does this apply to all Chess books (say I found more recent books, like "Reasses Your Chess" by Silman, or "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual")?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Sure, you can do it, I don't see Bruce P. or his publishers following you around in a black van waiting for you to let your guard down, or should I say "break the tension", if you'll pardon the pun.

 The real question is => If roles were reversed, you were the author of a good chess book and somebody else did what you did,  would you be cool with it? What if 1000s did it? What if your publisher said that your numbers are low because people are not buying it anymore although you know that over a gajillion people downloaded the PDF (because they can) and are reading it on their iPad (bought ironically with money that should have also gone to you)?

If this is a non-out-of-print book you can buy (even used) and you actually plan on enjoying it cover to cover (not just skimming), I'd say you owe it to chess literature in general to buy it and make sure the author is rewarded for helping you.

There's no way to rationalize this being okay.    If it was open season on downloading chess books which you can still buy, you're going to start seeing the watering down of good chess literature the way popular music reached the gutter during the past 10 years.

I am a published author. Every book I sell nets me $2.00 US. That's from a $45 cover price!

Every time someone downloads a copy of my book without paying, I don't get my $2.00. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but one warez site shows download stats. My book has been downloaded over 3,000 times from that site alone. Assume there are ten other sites out there just like it (because there are). That's a nice Audi I don't have because of illegal copies of my book. Or maybe a year or two of college for my kids.

I used to download "stuff" all the time. Not so much any more.

Unless the book is out of print and extremely difficult to obtain, I would say you shouldn't download it.

Are you serious? You don't have to respond to this of course, but was there any initial payment, or is that 2$ per book the only income you're getting from the book? 2$/45$ for the author sounds totally unfair.

I have checked the address you shared. Books are from 1920-80 there. Some of them may become public domain. Some others still might have a copyright holder, but they all seem like old dated books. 

Welcome to publishing. Author in this publishing house get's 10% of wholesale.

Cover price: $44.95

Wholesale price: $22.00 (yes - HALF!)

Author royalties: 10% = 2.00 per book.

Wow. Thanks for responding. I didn't know things were that bleak for the authors in "publishbiz".

I don't know if I'd call it "bleak". That's my first book, and it's a technical book, so I can't say what it's like for fiction bestsellers. Still I would be surprised if the numbers weren't similar.

Remember, without the strength of a publisher getting the book to stores, I'd be selling it on my own. I've sold something like 40,000 copies, and I'm here to tell you that there's no way I'd have sold that many on Ebay or on Amazon by myself. My book has been translated into multiple languages and is available around the world. No way I would have done that myself either.

There's a reason that most writers aren't rich. :) There's a reason that rich writers are rich - they're very good, they work hard, and they produce salable material. Writing is hard work, and you have to sell lots of books to make a lot of money. 

You're making the mistake of assuming that these three thousand copies would have been purchased if they weren't downloaded.

Whether it's three or three-thousand he's still being deprived of income he should have received. 

Says who? Maybe none of those people were interested in spending 45$ for the book and would have simply passed it by if downloading it for free was not an option.

This is a stretch I realise, but it can't be summed up as, "my book has been downloaded ten times, I am missing twenty dollars which I would have if downloading books for free was impossible". It's not as black and white as that.

There are all sorts of other factors as well, maybe some of those six thousand people who downloaded the book recommended it to friends who bought it, generating income which wouldn't have existed in the first place. But of course that's just a hypothetical.

I wonder why the 70 years after death though? So that the author's grandchildren can afford Audis as well? Or more likely the publisher's grandchildren.

As a college student it just irks me to see so many technical works that will cost me $20-50 just to view for 24 hours (and obviously I can't make a copy, so if I need to recheck something...). And that's with all of the access I get through my institution, there are still about three works I'd have to buy for every one that is available. I wish that there were another way to reward the knowledge and effort of technical writers than making the people who want to learn pay through the nose for it. A better educated population will be more productive, which is why we have public libraries, but I think we could go further. Oh, but we have to spend that money developing new high-tech stealth destroyers, because there sure are a lot of terrorists in the oceans.

Sorry for the rant.

Uhhhh....

Kupov, if someone downloads it, any friends they recommend it to are likely to download it as well! (By recommendation!)

On a side note to my earlier post, this means that you can now download any Buck Rogers comic strips, or the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D. with a completely free conscience. 

I'm sure many of the downloaders would not have bought the book, but perhaps some would have and that's the point.  As for recommendations, don't you think it more likely that they'd just make a copy of their illegal version or recommend that their friends download it?  I think there is a lot of dubious rationalization going on in that post.

I'm sure he meant popular.

Of course all of those arguments have merrit. It's the same with downloading mp3s illegally, and I've seen/heard them all, and been on both sides of the argument. I'd be willing to bet that some of the people who downloaded then went and bought a copy because they liked it. That doesn't make it right.

I tend not to speak up too much about it honestly (this is my first post online about it in years), because there's nothing I can do to stop it. It really bugged me at first, but I've been in the industry and around personal computers since their inception. I know there's no way to stop it. All I ask is that when and if someone does download, that they think of the author. If you like it, buy the book, or hell, just send him $2 through paypal. :)

I'm not sure I agree with this. Not everyone enjoys reading from their computer monitors, and how many people, upon giving out a literary recommendation, say to their friends "oh by the way, be sure to download this online"?

Do authors have the same issues with public libraries as they do with downloading E content?