Piracy often brings down price of product

Last week while on my way to office, my cab stopped at a traffic signal. A small kid came to me waving a copy of the Harvard Business Review (HBR). I asked him "kitne ka hai?" (how much is it for?) He replied "pachas rupiya" (fifty rupees).

I realised it was pirated, but it was a steal at fifty bucks, given that the original costs Rs 750. Before I could decide whether to buy it or not the signal changed, and I had to hand over the copy back to the kid.

All kinds of pirated books are available at Mumbai traffic signals. But this was the first time I saw a pirated HBR. A few years back, Dhirbubhai Ambani's biography The Polyester Prince, written by Australian journalist Hamish McDonald, and which has never been available in India, became a traffic signal bestseller. Gregory David Roberts the author of Shantaram commented in an interaction that his book sold thrice as much at traffic signals than through normal distribution channels.

Full report here Economic Times

No to literary pirates!

It’s just been a couple of days that Mark Billingham, one of the most popular British authors of crime fiction, arrived in India. But he has already raised a voice against a crime rampant in the literary markets of India — book piracy.

Being someone who earns his bread and butter writing novels, Mark is agonised that piracy in India is bringing down the quality of books. The 48-year-old writer says, “I haven’t been able to see Mumbai that much but I have already noticed the abundant book piracy that is going on everywhere. At every traffic signal there is someone selling pirated books.

Mark feels the reasons for book piracy in India is home-grown. He says, “Books are very cheap in the UK. There you can buy them even at supermarkets. With such low costs, no one feels the urge to fake books.”

Full report here DNA

Book piracy rampant in Yogyakarta; publishers lose Rp 10b

Publishers in Yogyakarta claim rampant book piracy in the region has led to annual losses exceeding Rp 10 billion. "We are aware of *piracy* practices but we can do nothing to prevent them" said Apri Dhian, cooperation and promotional division coordinator of the Association of Indonesian Publishers' (Ikapi) of Yogyakarta, in Tuesday.
Dhian blamed the practices partly on weak law enforcement, saying that book piracy cases in the province had never been handled thoroughly.
Filing legal suits were likely to cost publishers a huge sum of money.
"What we can do is just expect the authorities to pay more attention to book piracy cases," Apri said.
Book piracy, Apri said, is mostly done by copying the original books or reprinting the books without the publishers' permission.
The copied version or the illegally printed ones are made in such a way that they look original and sell for much less.
"Customers sometimes can even make an order for copied version of the original books that they can not find in the seller's shelf," said Apri, who is also the marketing manager of Jalasutra publisher.
He said pirates mainly target best-sellers, mostly books published in response to current and controversial events, like Membongkar Gurita Cikeas, which was published in response to the bailout scandal implicating Century Bank.

Full report here The Jakarta Post