The latest Incubus album If Not Now, When? has leaked, over two months before the release date. Fan Boys like myself are in complete meltdown. I'm planning to wait until the release date, because I'm a morally superior Luddite.Succumbing to a leak is a bit like finding your Christmas presents early, I always think. When I was younger (so much younger than today) I used to have a sneaky peak behind my parents' bed in the run-up to Christmas, to see what they'd got me. I think they cottoned on pretty quickly and hid the bounty elsewhere, but even if they hadn't, I would have stopped. It doesn't matter what you see, you'll always feel guilty, and a little disappointed (WHERES THE HELICOPTER??); and Christmas day becomes null and void.
What's exceptional about the Incubus leak is that it's come before the album cover art has even been released. That's way early. And it underlines the key thing about leaks; they happen because the digital content precedes the physical content.
That's never been a problem with books. You need to wait for the things to be printed to read them. But, actually, wait. What's that thing everyone's talking about? Begins with an 'e'. Ends with a 'reader'...
So here's my question. Will we start to see high-anticipation titles getting leaked onto the internet weeks (even months?) before the official release dates? Don't they already send out review copes as ebooks?
It happened to Stephanie Meyer with what was supposed to be a 5th book in the Twilight series, and that wasn't even due to ebooks or ereaders and the book wasn't even finished so I think it will definitely be an issue.
ReplyDeleteOn top of that, another probable problem will be the pirating of ebooks like what is considered a problem in movies and music, but I know people justify pirating music by saying the artists really make their money in ticket sales (not accounting for how their sales numbers may effect how much their label supports them) and not in album sales. Even though that excuse won't fly for pirating ebooks, that probably won't stop folks from doing it.
Also, just hearing the name Incubus makes me flashback to senior year of high school/freshman year of college when I listened to Morning View and Make Yourself nonstop for like two years straight [I know I didn't list those albums in chronological order, but I got Morning View first..."She called out a warning (waaarniiiing) don't even let life pass you byyyyyy"].
I hadn't heard about that happening to Meyer, I'm gonna look that up.
ReplyDeletePirating could be terrible -- as you say, authors don't even have the (paper thin) fallback of tours'n'tshirts. (On a side note, I would definitely buy author t-shirts and posters.) I wonder how easy ebooks are to reproduce, share, and get on to devices? How mp3ish are they?