Comments on: Brown’s Lost Symbol already pirated

By: apdinesh kumar

apdinesh kumar — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:47:00 +0000

http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/2009/09/dan-brown-the-lost-symbol-reviews.html?cid=6a00d834526c3e69e20120a5de6e5e970c

By: Liviu

Liviu — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:12:13 +0000

Random House announced it sold 1M+ (that’s million) copies Tuesday, so Dan Brown and his publishers laugh the piracy all the way to the bank

Obscurity kills not piracy as books go…

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:46:04 +0000

Tony,

It seems none of the various types of media wants Australian money. They all do this. So I’d suggest obliging their suggestion, and not giving them any.

By: Spider Mattheson

Spider Mattheson — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:44:13 +0000

May I suggest that you just get the ePub version, Don? It’s a better format than Mobi and easily convertible should you need to do so. Well, that is assuming you strip the DRM. Which is also easy to do.

The Lost Symbol was actually pirated the DAY OF. I saw it available within a couple hours of its release. It seemed to me that someone downloaded it, stripped the DRM, and converted it to different formats. It appears to have been downloaded as a LIT and converted to HTML and ePub. I downloaded the ePub and for whatever reason the format of the book looked a little messy. I looked inside the ePub archive and saw that it was converted with Calibre (how happy it must make Kovid to know his software is being used for piracy). So instead of just using LITConverter, someone must have used Calibre to convert to ePub. Wasn’t the best result. After just checking again, I see that the commercial ePub has been cracked and offered up for free.

Just thought that info might be interesting for some. And if you’re thinking about posting something accusatory along the lines of “OMG PIRATE!” I will let you know that I have deleted the book. I was only interested in how fast the book was pirated and if the copy was the real deal (the Harry Potter books dealt with a lot of fakes popping up around the internet before their releases). Besides, I really hate Dan Brown.

By: Don Brubaker

Don Brubaker — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:18:58 +0000

I’m not surprised… but I’m going to be purchasing the ebook next week (waiting to see if a Mobi version is going to be available and if not, then picking up the EPUB version). I’m happy to pay for any book that I want to read.

By: borax99 (AlainC.)

borax99 (AlainC.) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:09:46 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this. I purchased three copies of the book, fair and square (ereader, Sony + the hardcover) – but I wouldn’t mind having a text-based electronic version as well – that way, I can do what I want with the content, i.e. convert it to another format, etc. I think a smart publisher should at least give a purchaser access to an HTML or PDF version (non-DRM, that is)

By the way, the book is a corker ! I read the Sony version into the wee hours last night, and it was so WORTH IT …

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:58:43 +0000

Whilst I do not condone this pirating, I understand it. I live in a country that has draconian copyright laws and am unable to purchase a lot of books that are sold overseas, so as to protect our local Australian publishers and authors. Because we dont have a large E-Book market it seems that hardly any books are not made available for sale in electronic format. If a book is printed in this country by our local publishers and printers we can not purchase the book internationally in any format. I assume that this would be happening in other countries as well, and to me the next logical step is to investigate other means of obtaining the book. The publishers need to take a good look at why is a book on the pirate sites so fast. The printed version of the lost symbols sells for over $50.00 in Australia…… Hello…… and they wonder why a Pirate version has become popular. Go figure.

By: Luke Bergeron

Luke Bergeron — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:41:48 +0000

I don’t know that this is really as big a problem as it seems to be. Cory Doctorow distributes e-book copies of his print books for free and says that it ends up increasing the sales of the print books. Even though Brown and his publishing company aren’t offering this, it should still increase publicity for the book. I mean, the fact the places are covering the pirating story are basically free publicity for the book.

By: Michael Pastore

Michael Pastore — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:31:59 +0000

Electronic versions of ==The Lost Symbol== have been found on Pirate Bay and on Scribd.

Scrbd is no longer a free-for-all document sharing service, they are trying to build a legitimate ebook-selling site. Scribd has responded already:

“The document ‘the lost symbol dan browns new novel’ has been deleted.”

With Pirate Bay, good luck.

By: Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:04:03 +0000

Surprised? No. Disappointed? Of course.

Every time a book is pirated, the soul of the author darkens a bit. Eventually, they will have a soul as black as that of Harlan Ellison’s. Why some people want more authors with Harlan Ellison’s light-stealing soul is well beyond me.