There have been a couple of interesting discussions over the last couple of days on articles pertaining to piracy of e-books. (A lot of piracy-related articles here tend to grow interesting, long discussions—take this one, for instance.) They have brought in a lot of new readers—at least, we hope they’ll become new regular readers—who have raised a number of interesting points. The City of Lost Wages One common theme seems to be feeling deprived of income by pirates. Celine Chatillon wrote: Every pirated book is a royalty (about 50 cents in most cases) that I do NOT earn. I’m unemployed and in poor...

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Given that Baen is frequently used as a counter-example whenever the matter of printing costs making up a small fraction a a hardcover’s total cost comes up, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from Baen about how it is able to keep its prices so low. Consequently, I arranged this e-mail interview with Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher. Weisskopf has many interesting things to say about Baen’s overall strategy, pricing, and the question of e-books “cannibalizing” printed books. The interview begins below the jump. (Links added by me.) Many voices in the publishing...

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