Friday, April 11, 2014

The Price of Piracy and Theft #RomFantasy


First off, that image is for real–it hasn’t been Photo-shopped or messed with in any way. There was a time when I would never have shown anyone a cheque like that, I’d have been ashamed of it, figuring you’d all think my writing sucked so bad no one wanted to buy it. I’ve learned since that the real shame lies with every person who steals my hard-earned reward for the work I do and thinks nothing of it. I’m not alone in this, either–there are a lot of authors who are stepping up and stating they see similar cheques now, and many are getting so discouraged they are wondering if it’s even worth the effort to continue publishing books for thieves to steal.

Ironically, this cheque represents December sales–right in the middle of the Christmas gift giving season. The truth is, the publishing house this is from is a well-known one, and the books this represents have been the victim of piracy sites no less than six times in recent months. The count on one site alone stated that there were 5000 copies of these titles downloaded by pirate supporters. You see the result of all those stolen books, it’s there in black and white. It’s a damn good thing I don’t have a family counting on me to support them, because we’d be living in a cardboard box by now.

Most people don’t stop to think that when they grab that “free” book they’re stealing from the creator of the book.  After all, it’s just one little book, right? All those one little books add up, though, and this is the result of it. So, for the titles I spent a couple hundred dollars promoting and bringing to my readers, I have earned the grand total of less than $50. THIS cheque is actually a few cents more than last month, too.

I know it’s human nature to like to get things for free, everyone does it–but at some point we have to weigh that against supporting artists we claim to like and admire. If there were children waiting to be fed in this equation, it wouldn’t be pretty. The average reader has a home and family, they work hard to have a decent life, they’d be horrified if their work was given so little credence and appreciation that they weren’t paid. Realize it’s the same for any artist/writer/musician, etc. Creative arts are a business as well as a calling to many, and people who love to create are suffering losses and trying to find ways to stop the flow of their work’s life-blood.

There is no way to stop this, many people fight it tooth and nail–others give up in despair after losing days/weeks/months to constantly battling with pirate sites. Some exceptional voices will one day fall silent because they will give up. Others will persevere because they refuse to do less. The only way to stop piracy theft is for people who read to buy their books, not steal them. I’m not talking library borrowing, but actually going to sites knowing you’re stealing the money from your author of choice. Maybe if you’re a huge name in the business this is less of an immediate concern, but for the mid-level and starting authors–this is devastating. If you worked for weeks on a project at your job, and your company invested other people’s time and work into it, then presented it to the public–but you didn’t get paid a dime for all that effort, ask yourself how you’d feel about that? Would you want to keep working that job?

Too much of life comes down to dollars and cents these days, and art has always been a prime target for theft in one way or another. But, at the end of the day, stealing is still stealing, and if you don’t want to be part of the problem, be part of the solution and always buy the book you want, or borrow it from a legal source, like your local library. Too many authors are getting cheques that don’t even cover the postage cost to mail them, it really isn’t remotely fair to them to devalue their work to this level, is it?


48 comments:

  1. An eloquent plea, Denysé, and I hope your voice will be heard in the wilderness. Alas, however, the ones who steal from authors are not the ones who are apt to read this blog. I have seven books currently on a pirate site, and my sales on those books have dipped to almost nothing. In spite of cease-and-desist orders, they keep cropping up after a few weeks. The FBI cannot be bothered. Who will protect us?

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    1. No one, unfortunately - all we can do is keep making noise, and then ask ourselves if we want to put ourselves through this for the sake of writing books. I know I'll write, even if I give up publishing anything... no great loss to the literary world, perhaps, but if more and more writers walk away because no one gives a damn about how their work is being stolen, it will be sad indeed.

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  2. Piracy of E-books, movies, music, etc, are not victimless crimes. Let's hope readers realize this soon....

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    1. Absolutely true, Tabitha. Thanks for coming by. I figure if this can make even one person stop and think, and maybe BUY the book instead of steal it, it's worth looking like a loser with that cheque.

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  3. My publisher is great about sending the take down notices. It's very disheartening what's going on. I'm surprised that a code can't be written into the download that would corrupt the text if some asshole tried to download the book for free.

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    1. I've seen the kickass piracy officer at Ellora's Cave do her thing, the books are removed within a couple of hours - and then we discover they've just been moved to a different part of the site - it's never-ending. I've been told by programmers that the technology to fully protect ebooks does exist, but companies are reluctant to make it harder for people to buy, so they don't employ the process of making a book pirate-proof. Who knows anymore... it's just very hard for authors to know what to do at times.

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  4. Denyse, does the publisher lose money with the pirate sites up and running or is it just the author?

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    1. The publisher loses, too - and they have to pay cover artists, editors, marketing people, accounting people, and in some cases a piracy officer.... as well as all other staff, so it hurts everyone.

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    2. Then if that is the case, you would think it would be more economical for all involved to buy the pirate-proof software. At least in my mind, but I don't know the business.

      As a reader and a buyer of books, I wouldn't mind if that would mean a higher price for a book of quality. When I buy a book I want the ones who put in the work to be justly rewarded it for it. And I find it offensive that there are those who would cheat and steal a piece of work that I just paid for. I am not wanting it for free, just think that everyone should pay for a product equally.

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    3. More people should think the way you do, April. Thank you.

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    4. There are other considerations when it comes to, what's called, DRM (Digital Rights Management). That's what this boils down to. There all kinds of restrictions that can be put on digital downloads, but unfortunately, it wouldn't just translate to higher price. It would translate to a number of restrictions on you as the downloader, and to the author of the work. You can (relatively) easily create encryption for an eBook. But then the encryption has to determine who actually has permission to view the content. It doesn't just know. And that's where things can get very complicated and very inconvenient. Factor all that in, and consider that any and all encryption can eventually be broken. No solution would be absolute. It would then all have to rethought and started over.

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  5. Its amazing to think that coming from "Fans" who pirate an authors work that that price that is all a part of a writers lives, their time, their hearts, and their talents are worth to them. How would those people feel if we walked into their place of employment and stole cash from their time they spent laboring to earn their money? I've seen people say its not the same thing but its exactly that because many authors rely on that money to support their families, their children and their lives. I don't see how people can say that they're any different than the authors struggling to make a living just because they think all authors are rich and glorious and famous and can take the financial sacrifice because they think pirating a book wouldn't matter. Not all writers are Stephenie Meyer. But in no case is it right to steal from a writer because they think it wouldn't make a difference. They wouldn't walk into a Barnes and Noble and jack a book off the shelves because they can't afford it, how is it okay to do it online? Because they think that they're just another faceless person that won't be held accountable? Where does the line get crossed? If piracy continues there won't be an entertainment industry providing books to readers and then where will they be? Wondering what happened and why there aren't books any more. When that happens they won't have anyone to blame but themselves. When they're off wondering who is responsible, the very people claiming to be fans of authors work pirating it online are the very people that are going to bring them down. They need to understand how much they affect others when they do that.

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    1. Exactly right, Krissy. This is what I keep telling people, too - would you walk into the book store, pick up a book and walk out? Hardly - that would be stealing, right? So why is it not stealing to take that same book off a website without paying for it? Insanity. Rationalize it anyway you want, but it's stealing - plain and simple. Thank you for coming by and sharing your thoughts, Krissy. Well put.

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  6. I cannot even begin to understand how people can justify stealing like this. If you want to read a book for free go to the library people! I'm astounded that people do not understand that by purchasing books by our favorite authors helps those same authors produce more stories! I am so sorry that you, and so many other writers are having to deal with this.

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    1. I agree, and the stance that eBooks don't cost anything to produce is what you get as a defense if you do confront someone who uses pirate sites to get their books - maybe it's time some of our publishers became vocal and let it be known that each eBook they produce costs a fair bit of money - maybe not the same amounts as traditional print, but there are still a lot of costs involved. As to the authors - well, if we're so worthless we shouldn't be paid, maybe we shouldn't be supplying at all...

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  7. I am totally lost here. How are they stealing the whole eBook? How is that possible? Have you thought about going to Smashwords? I have never seen that problem there. I am sorry this has happened to you, but if they cannot safeguard you- RUN.....

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    1. Smashwords is the distributor for most of the books of mine that are pirated, unfortunately. As to how can pirates steal books - easily - all it takes is someone winning a book/buying a book - and then uploading it to "share" it with anyone who wants it. One of my titles was uploaded to Scribd at one time, and I recognized the name of the person who put it there - I wrote and asked her if she would like to pay my publisher for the 285 copies she gave away as gifts? Once she stopped sputtering the reality hit her - maybe she'll think again, who knows? DMCA had it removed in less than 24 hours, but there again - one title and almost 300 copies neither my nor the publisher will be paid for.

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  8. A fellow writer friend of mine was threatened with legal action when she contacted a pirate site to removed one of her books. The owner of the site had the nerve to accuse her of bullying, sending several vicious email rants before he/she finally gave in and took the book down when I stepped in. In the end, I guess he figured two irate authors wasn't worth the trouble. But, sadly, you can bet the book was uploaded again almost immediately under a different link. It's a never-ending battle. I know my books are all over pirate sites and I gave up long ago trying to fight them. I just didn't have the energy to do it anymore, it got too depressing. Kudos to authors who are still getting in there and fighting them, though.

    Great post.

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    1. I feel the same way - I was on the bandwagon hunting these idiots down for months, and realized I wasn't getting anywhere except deep into a rut of anger and discouragement. If I happen across the sites, I report to the publishers, but I've stopped hunting... it's an impossible situation to win.

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  9. I have one title alone that has been illegally downloaded over 21,000 times, and continues to appear on pirate sites over 2 years after it's release, so I feel your pain, Denyse. Here's what I've learned in the meantime, while I send out DCMA's:
    1. To those who say "Oh, suck it up and deal. An author's worst problem is obscurity, NOT piracy. Illegal downloads actually help you in the long run." If this is true, then the experience should've translated into huge sales on future books, and it just ain't so.
    2. The title in question was initially with a small e-publisher, and I've since gotten the rights back to this story. The cover art has therefore changed, but it continues to be the publisher's version that is pirated. Actually, it's the publisher's ARC that I find posted illegally 99 times out of 100. As a result of the debacle over royalties at that house (Silver Publishing) I self-publish now. One decision I made was to not hand out ARC (.pdf) copies of my self-pubbed titles. For those reviewers who insist on a .pdf, I make a special one for them, and watermark the file with THEIR name. Guess what? The releases I've had since have yet to show up on pirate sites. (Don't take that as an indictment of reviewers, either. That was the file I used to give away during promotions, so I cannot assume it's reviewers doing the illegal uploading.) Doesn't mean someone won't eventually post the Kindle or Nook files online, but it would seem to indicate that there's some difference in people's minds about whether or not the .pdf version constitutes a "real book file". As a result of that, I also now change/add to/improve the ending on the retail file. Yep, that's right, the ARC/reviewer's version is not *quite* the same ending as those who buy the retail version receive.

    I'd agree that some form of credit card engine cannot be that difficult/expensive to institute, a system that unlocks the file purchased on each new device where it's downloaded by entering the credit card number used for purchase. That would stop piracy in it's tracks, since people who are willing to share their files wouldn't be hot to do so if sharing the file was useless without also sharing their cc#. See, when it's THEIR fiances at stake, they'd be much less inclined to this kind of "generosity."

    Excellent post!

    All the best,
    ~E

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    1. Thank you, Eden. Excellent points. A lot of the books I've found on overseas sites especially are from my very first publisher - back in 2004 - those covers and content. The idea what we would wallow in obscurity is a lame ass argument to support piracy. As you said, if we all smiled and accepted it, we should all be famous now.

      There has to be a way to make this preventable. I just wish it would be found and implemented - soon. Thank you for stopping by.

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  10. Thank you for this post, Denyse. I've had the same experience with my books--small checks but lots of illegal downloads. Piracy is theft, plain and simple. I doubt the people pirating would work for free and would be furious if someone suggested they do so. If you don't want to pay for someone's work, you aren't entitled to steal it.

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    1. AND, the people who steal our books because they're on these sites would scream bloody blue murder if we walked in and lifted their paycheques from their hands, yet they don't think of themselves as thieves - I think it needs to be spelled out in black and white - and that's why I chose to post that sad cheque - so it would be there for real, not just words.

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  11. Speaking as both an author and a computer software engineer, it is not possible to protect an electronic book from being pirated, any more than you can prevent someone from making copies of a printed version and reselling them. You may have noticed how that virus protection software on your computer is constantly being updated. That's because every time a fix is put in place, some people consider it a personal challenge to come up with a new virus that can slip past the scanner. The same is true with software pirates, only all it takes is one person being successful with one version of the book, and then your precious work is released in a new easily pirate-able format to all the world. The cat is out of the bag and can't be put back in.

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    1. Bill, I have been told by programmers on more than one occasion that the technology does in fact exist - but companies like Amazon don't want it implemented because it will slow the sale process and piss off customers if they have to work a little to collect their files securely. I agree it would be an ever-updating/evolving type of protection, but at some point, there will need to be more protection for the work of artists in all walks of the entertainment industry.

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  12. Thank you for sharing this Denyse. I saw thousands of downloads of my new books on pirate sites this fall/winter and also got a very skimpy royalty check. Heartbreaking.

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    1. Hi, Katalina. Thanks for visiting. I think there are very few of us who haven't been affected by this form of theft, and it's sad and so wrong. My sympathies on your losses, too.

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  13. I have submitted to larger publishers with my work, thinking this would not be such a problem. But, I now see, it's likely not going to matter at all. I recently saw a facebook post where a mother was charged $60 by her internet service provide because her son had downloaded two MP4 songs illegally. I know the money doesn't go to the artist, but to the ISP. However, what if they were reported to their providers? If fines were inflicted, since they need their internet, perhaps it would slow down?

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    1. I think in most cases, Kahleena - the publisher's piracy officer DOES report the sites to the ISP, and in some cases it effectively cuts off the site or sees it removed - the problem being the pirates have already planned for this contingency and have a new site up again in hours. The battle never ends. My books went down on one site, and the following day all 27 titles were uploaded to a new area of the site - so the DMCAs had to be sent again - this time they were ignored, the site is Russian, so there's no recognition of the copyright law.

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  14. Thanks for sharing. It's hitting the entire industry. Until some of the big names in publishing, King, Shelton, Roberts, Baldacci, and some of our big Romance authors go to congress with their publishers and demand action, which is what finally happened in the music industry, there's not much we can do. From what I've heard the fines imposed on downloaders stopped a lot of music downloads.

    I figure I lost about $200 dollars on downloads on just one book last quarter. And I'm with an excellent small epublisher. I can imagine what it's doing to the big guys, so why aren't they standing up and yelling? Their books are being pirated too. I think every book Nora Roberts has written is on most sites. Setting fines might help a lot, but that will take an act of congress, and although it won't stop it, it just might discourage quite a few.

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    1. I hear what you're saying Allison - and I agree that until the big names of this industry start to fight with the little guys, there isn't going to be much incentive to change the way things are done. We have to collectively value what we are producing, or no one else will. I wish more of the top name authors were willing to speak up and put it out there, but so far few have stepped up.

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  15. It's not possible to stop all ebook piracy because some of it doesn't even come from the ebook version. Up until about two years ago (?) the Harry Potter books were not available in digital, only paper. And yet they all were available as illegal digital copies on pirate/stealing sites. The latest one within 24 hours of the paper release. Just buy the book and put it through a scanner - instant pdf version.

    Even heavily DRMed ebooks are instantly hacked and uploaded to the illegal sites - there is no such thing as totally secure software.

    I wish there was a term other than "pirate" - too many people think that sounds dashing and fun. It is stealing, thievery, whatever, not Johnny Depp.

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    1. Absolutely true. I wonder how many people have a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and think it's a legal copy? There is no way to make the system foolproof, but it would be nice if it could be made a little more difficult. Technology set this up, though, it was sort of an inevitable, and traditional publishing knew that anyway.

      I hear you on the pirate thing, too - creates a romantic image of people who are essentially thieving bastards who just want to steal so they don't have to do an honest job.

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  16. I hate to say this, but no matter what you do your novels will eventually be stolen. Which is part of the reason why I refuse to do free downloads, especially. It's rare that your sales actually compensate for what people downloaded for free, then to add insult to injury those who downloaded it give the book away like it's theirs to pass on. I believe people do it because you've just devalued your own work by handing it to them for nothing.

    Unless someone has actually written a book, and put the time and effort into it, they don't care and would never understand. I did a calculation how many pirate sites had my first five novels, and how many downloads they'd done, and between myself and the publisher we lost well over a million dollars in revenue. It made me sick and angry, but no matter how many take-down notices I send out, rarely anything was ever done.

    What needs to happen is: the governments worldwide should have a monitoring website, where we can register our pirated content, or place a claim, then the government or policing body would check on the website(s) we've listed as offenders, and if they are found to indeed be pirating content, they can pull the plug. Very simple. According to techies, it is very easy to wipe out any given website, or cripple it. And we should be given information to sue and recoup our losses. They could be charged and face serious penalties. I guarantee if this was done on an international scale and made public (the scammers were punished hard) the incidents of theft would dwindle to a trickle.

    And it doesn't help that the book distributors discourage DRM, not that it's overly affective. But it is a start. Anyway, just my thoughts.

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    1. Absolutely agree with you, Blak. This is a reality of life, especially with the advent of electronic publishing. There is little anyone can do to impress upon people's minds that they are stealing books as realistically as if they are walking into stores and lifting them off the shelves. They simply don't see it that way, and until it dawns on the average mind that efiles of creative works are as valuable and real in property terms as printed books, CDs, etc., nothing will change. Any DRM pisses people off, and is easily broken anyway, so it's not worth the hassle to most. No easy answers, to be sure. Thanks for stopping by!!

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  17. I took my books off the review sites. My DRM book, a protected book, was pirated. The only pdfs out there? The review site. It's disheartening.

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    1. I don't trust blog review sites unless they're affiliated with well-established and respected sites. I remember 10 years ago when the business was still young, my publisher at the time said they were getting requests daily for review copies of books, and they simply made a select list, and seldom added new sites to it. PDFs can be made useless with watermarks and personalized copies, but realistically even that won't stop some people. I've had short fictions from my blogs pirated, how crazy is that?

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  18. One quick question, though- are your books ebooks only? Ebooks have taken a hit as of recent years, and the sales are starting to go down instead of up. Add into this fact that most people with e-readers and tablets pirate books rather than pay form, it's becoming a loss market rather than a new and exciting one. I wouldn't say you can blame the pirates for this- that's too simple. Would these people have bought your book rather than pirated it? How can you say either way? Esp if it was pirated in a bulk of romance books. Pirates are kind of like people who buy $1 books- rarely do they get read. Rarely would they have been bought in the first place. Also, you're being published by a small publisher of ebooks, who probably have a very limited promotion budget.

    Not to say piracy is not a problem in the industry. It's just not THE problem. There are other things swimming about.

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    1. Regardless of the size of the publisher, their promotional budget has nothing to do with the books being pirated. I have print and eBooks out there, the only problems are with ebooks, because there's no profit to be had if you have to buy a printing press to pirate a book. And, if the book is NOT in eformats, it just takes a patient person with a scanner to create that e-copy. I don't believe every pirated download of a book is read, but if thousands of various titles are being downloaded, someone is clearly reading them and seeking them out.

      THE problem is defined differently to every person you meet, for authors who pour weeks and months of time into their work, having it stolen by whatever means is still theft, and theft is a serious business. I don't think anyone would want to see weeks worth of working hours receive nothing in payment, regardless of the type of work you want to discuss. The average person doesn't work a 40 hour work-week to receive no recompense for their labour - why are authors expected to sit back and accept it?

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  19. The writer who commented on free offers makes a good point! Since the proliferation of ''99c' or Free ebooks, people have come to ''expect'' something for nothing. They therefore neither care nor value the work of the writer behind the book. In the same category are those who ''return'' ebooks to Amazon and get a refund. (I have had this happen twice) Sorry - it seems to be an American phenomenon.As many of your commentators and you say: what is the answer? I do despair sometimes, especially for those young writers starting out.

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    1. Amazon is a huge contributor to many of the issues today's authors are facing. Their return policy is being abused, but as long as they make money, they don't care much. People boast about how they never pay for their books, they just read and return, and get the next one they want. I saw one of my statements show 36 purchases, all returned, which is nuts, of course - actual sales paid - none. I don't believe there is an answer, other than to educate people that grabbing free books off unauthorized sites makes them thieves who can be charged with theft if they are discovered. But the odds of that happening are slim on a good day. Boxed sets for 99 cents is a great gimmick, and it's making it more difficult all the time to sell for anything more.

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  20. Here in the UK, in an attempt to fight this problem, a lot of download sites have been blocked by ISPs. Not that that makes very much difference - the really determined thieves (yes, there's no other word to describe them) can still find these sites by using a proxy server.

    Carol Hedges (above) makes another good point. Amazon has an unnecessarily long time limit for returning ebooks; I think it's seven days - more than enough time for an unscrupulous buyer to buy an ebook, read it, then return it for a refund. When this happens, Amazon reclaims the money from the author. This is just as much a case of theft as downloading pirated copies of ebooks - but unlike the latter, it appears to be perfectly legal.

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    1. The sites that seem to be the biggest thieves are usually in countries that don't recognize copyright laws, so all authors and their publishers can do is make the request on good faith. I don't know how many pirates operate with good conscience, so it's probably a moot point. I agree wholeheartedly about Amazon. They're in a unique position and could do a great deal more than they're willing to presently do to help protect authors - who are supplying the mighty machine with fuel, but don't seem to get even small benefit of consideration.

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  21. another reason to wonder whether writing is worth it anymore.

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    1. Sadly, Charles - there are MANY who would tell you it's not worth it - and I'm leaning that way myself.

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  22. I had to share this post. Most of us have been a victim. I'm always surprised to hear authors say they are flattered when this happens. Really? I wrote a long blog this week about all the free books out there and how many readers truly never have to buy another book if they don't want to. Add pirate sites to the list, and Amazon returns and you really have to ask yourself, "What's the point?"

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    1. Most of us are at the "what's the point?" stage, and that is truly sad...

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Thank you for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.