Is this where the money is with ebooks?

**Clinton** · September 17th, 2012, 11:23 AM

I won't mention the site, but I just saw a blogpost offering tens of thousands of Kindle books for "free". Some of the names of the books are listed and they aren't free books - they are copyrighted books that sell for real money.

So how does he monetise this large volume of pirated material? An affiliate link to a file download site! If you want to download the several GB of ebooks, you really have to sign up for a premium account at the file download site ... and the blogger gets a commission.

Is this where the real money is with ebooks? And is it that easy to get around the Kindle copyright restrictions?

**Kay** · September 18th, 2012, 5:41 AM

I don't know much about this subject but it seems to be related to what dsieg was saying here:
http://experienced-people.net/forums...plit-thread%29

Is it related or is this something different?

And is it that easy to get around the Kindle copyright restrictions?

Dunno about that, but discussions on here in the last few weeks have provided plenty of evidence that Amazon doesn't police its own rules and has shown a complete lack of interest in doing so.

**HotNiche** · September 18th, 2012, 11:23 AM

well, you can make money from filehost websites but... it's peanuts because you have two options:
- earn from affiliate premium sales
- earn from downloads (per thousands)

my shot goes for spreading the word, make it viral, try to gain authority.

but that's my opinion. i never got into this niche (Kindle eBooks)

**dsieg58** · September 20th, 2012, 5:38 PM

Wow! I don't know anything about Kindle DRM, but I have a Kindle and I can make some guesses as to how they did it. Their DRM is kind of an after thought and even they encourage you not to use it. In fact, with Kindle select, they encourage you to give it away for free. I understand the thinking behind it, and I tried it, but the nagging thought in the back of my mind always was..."Aren't I devaluing my own product? Who is profiting more from this strategy, Kindle or me?" (Answer..not me.)

Anyhoo...back to the main post...It seems to me, if someone is doing that, then it completely makes Kindle completely irrelevant.

Clinton...if you want to do something interesting, use whois and follow the host back to the country of origin. Just for giggles. My guess is the host is outside US jurisdiction. Otherwise Kindle's legal team would be all over them.

Just a thought.

**Clinton** · September 20th, 2012, 5:56 PM

Yes, it doesn't make sense as the aff commission from the download site can't be worth that much. I've now discovered it's not one site but several sites that have these free downloads.

On a different note, there are of course legitimate free downloads.

**dsieg58** · September 20th, 2012, 8:18 PM

Yes, it doesn't make sense as the aff commission from the download site can't be worth that much. I've now discovered it's not one site but several sites that have these free downloads.

On a different note, there are of course legitimate free downloads.

No, it can't be worth that much as single affiliate sales, but if they are getting a reoccurring commissions from the torrent sites, it's a different story. The commission is miniscule to the torrent site. They could pay 100% commission (first tier) and still make money at the end of the day, (lots of it) because they are charging on a continuity basis and dealing in mass volume. Sort of like, Clickbank for thieves. (I told you these guys were organized)

There's a hole in the market right now since Megaupload got nailed. People in non jurisdictional locations are rushing to fill the void. The entire point for the torrent networks is to get to the top of the heap as quickly as possible. Fully half the world is their potential client base. Since they can't use search engines, they get around it by having multiple affiliates, (1000's) in the same niche, promoting their site, or a network of sites all owned by the same entities.

I know this is kind of hard to believe sitting in a Western countries where patent and copyrights are at least respected, but there are ENTIRE COUNTRIES (And I mean big ones) who not only believe there should be no copyrights or patents, but are actively taking on the leading role of making it so, or at least making them worthless. They have been doing it for decades. Their own countries laws are either ineffective, or in collaboration with them for a cut of the profits. It's such a big deal, and so much money is being lost, heads of state are discussing it during summit meetings.

As far legitimate free downloads goes, they can go to the Gutenberg Project and get millions of them. But what fun is that? THEIR MARKET, and what people will pay for, is to target copyrighted works. Like I said, I'm not sure digital products are going to last much longer for small producers. At least not in their present incarnation. We're hit by thieves on one side, and higher costs to produce/protect on the other. I'm actively making the move to update all my books to paperbacks so at any time, I can stop selling ebooks all together, when I see my anti-theft software is no longer able to keep up with the hacks and start showing up on the torrent sites. The handwriting is on the wall.

My opinion only.