internet piracy and book sales

Internet piracy and book sales.A field experiment.

Wojciech Hardy Michał Krawczyk

CopyCamp6.11.2014

Joanna Tyrowicz

Group for Research in APplied Economics

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How harmful piracy really is?

Book industry representatives’ are becoming more and more concerned about internet piracy.

Studies on movie and music `piracy’ hint at at least some sales displacement.

Are the problems faced by other industries comparable to that of book piracy?

sssssssss

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Previous findings about booksMostly small-scale (e.g. several books).

Specific samples (e.g. only books on religion).

Usually not piracy per se (e.g. publisher/author’s sharing).

One larger study (Reimers (2014, Oct 16)).

Challenges: sample size, causality, seasonal effects, etc.

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The field experiment

Around 70 Polish publishers contacted

11 accepted (9 provided all the data)

Mixed genres (law, fantasy, course books,

…)

Some medium and larger publishers

ca. 250 books, for the experiment

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The TreatmentWe found the

comparable titles

And divided them into two groups

Protection by

Plagiat.pl

No interventi

on

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A year later… Piracy defeated!

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Yet no change in sales…

Neither for the level of salesNor their distribution

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Still nothing

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And again nothing

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Good thing about piracy that you don’t need a resultWe have performed a large field experiment on piracy’s impact on book sales.

We applied a robust methodology and checked for more complex relationships.

Internet piracy does not seem to pose a threat to the book industry. Still, the situation is likely to evolve quickly*.

* Reimers (2014) - findings in line with ours, but a significant impact on e-books.

Concluding remarks

Thank you for your attention!

Author: Wojciech Hardye-mail: whardy@wne.uw.edu.pl

More about our research on http://grape.uw.edu.pl/ipiracy

Twitter: @GrapeUW