Let’s pretend we are at a friend’s house and she turns her back or leaves the room for a moment. A secret door opens in the wall and a stranger walks into her home and steals something precious, useful and valuable to her. The stranger disappears and the door closes. When our friend walks back into the room would we tell her what just happened? Of course we would! This is the exact situation that is happening to our friends who are e-authors. E-authors are being picked cleaned by pirated books and internet share sites. With the good comes the bad. Any published e-author knows how much work is involved in promoting an ebook and how wonderful it feels to have a “Release Day”.
Sadly along with the traditional excitement of releasing a new book and waiting to get reader feedback or reviews comes a new tradition- Release-Day e-pirates! Actually the e-pirates show up before anyone else.
Literally within an hour of its release the requests went up on a pirate-share sites for “Beautiful Stranger”. By sundown the Downloads had begun. I raised the alarm to my publisher and copied and emailed pages that contained other Ellora’s Cave authors, including Amber Skyze’s new release “Pretend with Me” and many others...
It’s very frustrating to me that pirates are allowed to monetize their sites with lots of advertizing while openly encouraging a black-market of stolen content to be traded. Why can’t these guys be flagged and deprived of their revenues especially the blatant repeat offenders?
Intellectual property is one of the few things America is manufacturing these days and we should be doing a better job of protecting it. The pirate-share sites are an intolerable part of an unsustainable business model. The music industry stood up on its hind legs and roared and the publishing industry had better do the same. It’s time. There’s no tomorrow on this stuff. It’s time to demand basic protection and rights as artists. As it stands e-authors are the lowest on the totem pole and they are the golden goose.
The vast majority of readers are honest people but apparently a few of the readers we are reaching with our promotions are the same ones who are asking to illegally download our books on release day. I turned in a file-sharer who was offering a dozen current Ellora’s Cave titles on just one page. A campaign against e-piracy should be launched with the same fervor we promote our books. Too many people believe e-authors are paid royalties up front. They don’t understand or care that a single stolen book proliferates on the web and starves sales to the author. E-pirates need to understand they are stealing from someone who works hard and needs the money and often doesn’t make much money on ebooks to begin with.
Kelly, who fights pirates for Ellora’s Cave said her computer constantly, gets infected with malware and viruses galore from some of the share sites. So I ask the casual “e-thief” is it worth the time, hassle and expense of fixing your computer just to get a “free” download of a great book that was a bargain to begin with? There really are advantages to being honest…
The internet has given the world a whole new level of freedom but freedom comes with responsibility. Sharing files is stealing. Be responsible toward your fellow human beings. Let’s not use the web to steal from or abuse others. Report e-piracy when you see it. Piracy@ellorascave.com
XXOO Kat
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