Discuss this topic on Cocos2D Central.
My Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development book is out and that inevitably meant it would appear on websites offering download links to illegal copies of the book.
Since there’s really nothing that can be done about it that actually works, and because I understand (but not necessarily condone) the reasons for downloading ebooks illegally, I wanted to take a different stance. And so I’m posting my thoughts on the matter on forums and websites, where a link to an illegal download of my ebook is shared.
That way, I hope to convert a minority of the downloaders to buying customers. But my actual goal is to use their websites as marketing instruments. Shamelessly placing my links on their websites and asking their users to come here is just fair and square. If they enable illegal downloads the very least they can do for me is to allow me to enable users to more easily come here, or on rare occassions to actually buy the book. Who said that illegal downloads can’t also be a mutual relationship?
Here’s what I’ve been posting to “warez” and “free ebooks” websites offering downloads or download links of my book:
My Response on Illegal Download Sites
I’m Steffen Itterheim, author of the Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development book.
I see that my book is offered here for download illegally, either directly or via linking to an externally hosted file. I wanted to share my thoughts on this matter.
1) I’m not offended, disappointed or furious.
Why should I be? It’s to be expected. I’ve been working long enough in the software industry to have come to accept piracy as something that shouldn’t affect you at all.2) I don’t judge you.
A lot of people download(ed) things from the Internet that they shouldn’t have. For some, it’s part of their culture. For others, it’s the only way to take part in a world that they couldn’t otherwise afford to join. For a few, it’s simply a hobby, or a habit. Some claim it’s for research and trying things out before buying, but quite honestly I think they fall in one of the aforementioned categories. Or they’re merely being pragmatic about their spendings, cutting corners where they can.3) I won’t lecture you either.
Piracy is a fact. It’s not even a market because if piracy wouldn’t exist, most pirated products wouldn’t be selling noticeably better anyway. Only very few pirates would ever buy a product they downloaded.Those are my convictions on piracy. I think it’s pointless to complain about piracy, and it would be especially stupid of me if I did so in the lion’s den, so to speak.
I’m a realist. I understand that some percentage of you will download the book just to have it. You’re the collectors, you may skim over the book before you set it aside in your amazingly well-assorted, categorized archive of eBooks. Enjoy it. Then there’s a percentage of you who download the book on a hunch that you might need it soon, or that it might spark your interest (again) in game development or programming for iOS devices. You probably wouldn’t buy it either. Except for a select few for whom the book did spark a flame - but how could you know beforehand?
To everyone else who truly want to read the book, I can only encourage you to buy the book in hindsight, after the fact. I know it costs quite an effort to pay for something you have already used, or read in this case. I still hope some of you will, I’d be grateful for that.
And what I’d really like you to do, regardless of where you got the book from and what your intentions are, is to stop by and visit my website Learn & Master Cocos2D Game Development:
I also want to make it very convenient to those who *might* consider buying the book, to actually do so. I know that one aspect of piracy that shouldn’t be neglected is merely convenience. So for that reason I’ll give you the links that lead you to Amazon and other websites all around the world which carry the book, as well as links to eBook versions of the book The Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development:
Purchase the print book via Amazon:
Amazon.com (United States)
http://www.amazon.com/Learn-iPhone-iPad-Cocos2D-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284664414&sr=8-1Amazon.ca (Canada)
http://www.amazon.ca/Learn-iPhone-iPad-Cocos2D-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284664526&sr=8-1Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-iPhone-iPad-Cocos2D-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284664462&sr=8-1Amazon.de (Germany)
http://www.amazon.de/Learn-Iphone-Ipad-Cocos2d-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1284664401&sr=8-1Amazon.fr (France)
http://www.amazon.fr/Learn-Iphone-Ipad-Cocos2d-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=english-books&qid=1284664539&sr=8-1Amazon.co.jp (Japan)
http://www.amazon.co.jp/Learn-iPhone-iPad-Cocos2D-Development/dp/1430233036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=english-books&qid=1284664550&sr=8-1Purchase the eBook:
From Apress (PDF): http://apress.com/ecommerce/cart?act=add&bid=1524
NOTE: the Apress PDF eBook has no DRM, it is not copy-protected or password-protected. It’s probably the exact same file that is being shared here.From Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/Learn-iPhone-Cocos2D-Development-ebook/dp/B004E0Z4YY
I hope you understand that if you offer my book for download illegally, it’s just fair to reply to that with promotion of my websites and making it a bit more convenient for the few people who tend to download books exactly because it’s convenient. At least this way I’m getting something positive out of it.
Thank you for your time and for allowing this message to be posted.
Steffen Itterheim
Over 9,000 visits in the past month with 40% new visits. 40% of that traffic is driven by google, close to 30% is direct traffic (which I believe includes Twitter) while cocos2d-iphone.org sends less than 10% of the total traffic. My own and recently neglected blog (last post May 23rd) gaminghorror.net still sending about 5%.
I am having a hard time making anything out of it actually, I have been running only one other notable website before and the focus and traffic stats were wildly different. If anyone would like to share and compare numbers I’d be happy to do so. Especially I’m interested if the ratio google vs direct traffic vs cocos2d-iphone.org is comparable to your numbers, or possibly totally different. I also don’t know what numbers can be considered good, ok or bad numbers, especially in context of cocos2d related websites.
The short little peak on July 10th was when I sent out the Newsletter announcing the closed sales period of the Starterkit, the plateau on July 19th was coming from the public announcement of the Starterkit. It’s notable that both resulted in the same number of visits but the Newsletter spike was very short-lived since most people are reading their emails within 24 hours. A funny self-made statistic: I’m able to convert approximately 0,0034% of website visitors to Starterkit customers. How is that for a conversion rate?
I did notice two things, which both surprised myself. One is how cocos2d-iphone.org accounts for less than 10% of the total traffic. The only time I saw a real spike in traffic from cocos2d-iphone.org was with the blog post announcing the Learn cocos2d website. That’s when the website was all fresh and new, and everyone went there at once to check it out. Interestingly, that wasn’t a spike followed by a severe drop-off by several hundred %, instead it created just over twice as many visits as the website gets on average anyway. The other thing I’m stunned to see is how the total number of visits curve over the whole time is astoundingly flat, especially for a website which is less than 3 months old:
Double-Rainbow all the way! But what does it mean?
I have no idea, mostly because I have nothing to compare it to. Maybe you have some thoughts or website statistics you’d like to share?
Here are the full learn-cocos2d Google Analytics results from the last 30 days as PDF:
Analytics_www.learn-cocos2d.com_20100625-20100725_(DashboardReport)
I hope you’ll find that interesting. I know, it’s data alright … boooooring. 😀
