Book Piracy

When I put on a movie at home, I always fast-forward through the FBI warning.  It never meant a whole lot to me.  It’s kind of like those commercials about donating to cancer research.  You don’t think much about it until someone close to you comes down with the disease.  Well the copy write warning never meant much to me until I was chatting with a fellow writer the other day.  He told me he had lost over 1000 downloads of just one of his books that he knew of to illegal internet piracy downloads.  1000 books gets you near the best seller’s list.  That’s also a nice piece of change coming out of his pocket.  He said every time he appeared on a blog or wed site, his pirated downloads went up.  So I asked him how to find the sites offering one’s book.  He told me and I decided to look.  I didn’t expect to find anything.  Little old me?  No one would bother pirating my books.  I was mistaken.  5 sites were offering my books for free!  Who knows how long they have been out there but there they were, clear as day.  The evil part of my brain hopes they downloaded some malware or virus along with the book.  I contacted my publisher (Who is great at this sort of thing, by the way) and they applied the pressure to have them all taken down within 24 hours.  One of them, however, had the audacity to just take the words “for the” out of “Quest for the Red Sapphire” and had the site back up again the next day.  What are they getting out of this that they want to give my book away so badly?  Did I wrong them in some way?  Was I mean to them in school?  Some of these sites could have been up for over 2 years.  How many sales did I lose?  I love to write but I also love to get paid for it.  How much money was stolen from my family?  According to my publisher, this happens when I send a blog a copy of my book to review.  After they’re done reading it, they have an electronic copy just hanging around.  Instead of deleting it, either they or a friend offer it to the general public for free.  That is not what was agreed upon when it was sent to them!  The saddest part of all in this is that many people see this as a victimless crime.  These books represent years of our lives in making them.  The publisher, cover artist, editor and author all deserve to be paid for that work.  You work hard.  You deserve to be paid for your work, just as we do.  So next time you want a book, order it legally.  You’ll feel better and so will the people who made the book.