Book piracy redux…
Every so often I write an article about book piracy. It affects the whole industry negatively, of course, but it hurts self-published authors more than other authors and publishers. (Most of my books are self-published, hence my personal interest.) One of my doubts about the still-ongoing Draft2Digital (D2D)-Smashwords merger was that Mark Coker, the Smashwords owner, never saw piracy as a problem. It seems that his attitude has contaminated D2D. Let me explain.
Most of my books are self-published ebooks. These are just computer files, and computer files can be copied and/or changed. Moreover, diabolically clever people can turn those files into PDFs, and those, as most people know, are transportable across many electronic platforms, which is an ideal situation for book pirates. Amazon tries to combat this by using .mobi with DRM, but many readers don’t like DRM because they can only use the ebook on the computer they used for downloading the ebook; i.e., they can’t share the book with family members. (I have no problem with that, by the way, and wouldn’t even call it piracy because it’s akin to common praxis with print versions.)
There was even a “legal website,” OceanOfPDF.com, where the above process was done for visitors to that site; they could download a PDF for free. (For those who are slow on the uptake, let me state that “for free” means that the book’s author receives zero payment!) Authors naturally complained, and OceanOfPDF was offline for a while; but it came back, and even two of my most recent books, Legacy of Evil and Cult of Evil, both published via D2D, became available on the site.
I choose to offer free PDF downloads at this site (see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page); they only represent a (big!) investment of time on my part, not money, and are my gifts to readers. An ebook I self-publish with Amazon, D2D, or Smashwords also represents an investment of time and money I’d like to at least recover by selling it and have a bit of spending money left over to invest in future books.
Bottom line: You’re participating in a criminal activity when you become a book pirate. You might consider it only petty theft (your Venti at Starbucks generally costs more than my ebook!), but it’s still a crime. Don’t do it!
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Rogue Planet. Did you like the “Game of Thrones” fantasy novels? This novel about an evil Iranian-like theocracy in the far future and a prince’s fight to overthrow it is hard sci-fi not fantasy. There are no dungeons, dragons, sorcerers, or other fantasy creatures, but you might think the stuggles are somewhat similar and perhaps more believable. Hard sci-fi is an extrapolation of reality not fantasy, after all!
This novel is set on a world outside the International Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP), but ITUIP, created in the “Chaos Chronicles” series, plays an important role. From palace spies to warring armies, there’s enough intrigue and military action to keep the most adventurous sci-fi readers happy. Available wherever fine sci-fi literature is sold, in ebook or paper format (even on Amazon).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
