University Program Director Asks Readers to Pirate His eBook
The increasing usage of BitTorrent services has been a living nightmare for big industry publishers. The RIAA is one of the most notable opponents of BitTorrent sites due to most users using the service to pirate music among other things. Some of these opponents fail to see the upside to using BitTorrent technology as a great marketing tool. However, a Program Director at the University of Seattle has chosen to use BitTorrent to generate buzz and spread his latest eBook to the masses.
Pirate My Book Please
In an extensive guest post on TorrentFreak, a well known BitTorrent blog, Dan Morrill told his experience with offering his latest eBook, 'Selling Books On Amazon, Tips and Secrets' on popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova. Dan explains that his initial reason for releasing his eBook using BitTorrent was not for marketing purposes, but "to control the release and gather good stats on the process." We don't think he could've picked a better service. Within the first 24 hours, Morrill's eBook had been downloaded close to 700 times.
Based on the stats he received from Mininova, Morrill was also able to pinpoint the countries in which the eBook was being downloaded the most. Africa ranked high on the list, which is understandable because of the relatively large amount of e-commerce businesses that are set-up in Africa. Morrill was surprised to see India contributing to 5.2% of the overall downloads.
Operation BitTorrent a Success
Morrill rated his overall experience as highly satisfying and recommends using BitTorrent as a great content distribution channel for those that don't mind. The expansion of the BitTorrent network will only increase in the next few years. In doing so, we think this may be a tool that publishers will eventually start taking a lot more seriously than they do now. It's undeniable that BitTorrent can prove to be an effective marketing tool for a cheap price when used correctly. Nine Inch Nails concluded the same in March of this year when they uploaded part 1 of their 4 part album Ghosts I-IV to numerous BitTorrent sites. It became the #1 most downloaded album on The Pirate Bay, which helped to increase their sales tremendously for the rest of the album.
We can only wonder when others will catch on to the effectiveness of using BitTorrent sites to market and distribute content. You can download Dan Morrill's eBook 'Selling Books On Amazon, Tips and Secrets' here.
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Smart idea, the value of the metrics he gathered would have been more than the value he lost.
"Morrill was surprised to see India contributing to 5.2% of the overall downloads."
He should surprised on why India's share is just 5.2%.
If not, I am surprised about why he is surprised!
Awesome write up, Ranganathan, India is actually pulling in on 8%, give me a shout, would love to hear what you are thinking. Thanks for the write up RWW.
What limp Dick this guy is. Oh wait, his name was Dan not dick Dick right? My mistake. So, on to business. How can you "pirate" something if it was giving away freely?
More-over how can it be pirated if it was requested by the owner and creator to do so? The very definition of pirating denies this. That is, unless the creator no longer holds a copyright on it. What? Because this guy writes his own e-book he has the authority to rewrite the dictionary as well.
More-over once repeated, it was a good idea on using bit torrent. But it hardly justifies calling it pirating. Pirating is stealing and unjustified. Bit torrent is a good idea for commercial purposes but as far as the darker side goes, that stays open for debate and I'm not going there.
From: The Pot Smoker.. The. Profound Obvious Truth that may make you smoke a bit. from your ears?
fortunately P2P is not iligal in Spain :) despite the spanish-riaa's. they haven't win any trial agaisnt that
5.2 % in India is low or high ?
why was he surprised? Indian population is 17 % of the whole population..