Book piracy revisited…
I’m probably considered an outlier in that wide statistical distribution of author types, and for many reasons. But an important one is that I don’t have to make a living from my writing, so I can just enjoy it and be satisfied that a few readers will also be entertained by the stories I produce. It annoys me to no end, however, that I never can know how many readers I actually have. There are delays in reporting those numbers because I go wide; multiple retail sites mean more exposure for my books, but these sites are slow to report sales to my traditional publishers and to my book aggregators Draft2Digital and Smashwords. But I will never know how many of my books have been pirated!
I can look at this website’s stats and see how many visitors I have, eventually I might learn how many books people legally purchase (I’d never trust Amazon’s numbers, of course), and I know how many copies I’ve sent to friends and others for promo purposes. But I can never know the amount of royalties lost to book pirates.
Book piracy is frustrating. It’s one reason I decided to give away Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, #6 and #7 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Publishing a book does not solve the piracy problem. If anything, it exacerbates it. Ebooks are just computer software. People buy pirated copies of the latter all the time, no matter the security. Ebooks are worse, though, because they have no security. Amazon’s DRM is a joke and just an inconvenience for readers who want to share books with other members of the family (which I’m OK with because that’s done with paper versions all the time). Smashwords’s Mark Coker just pretends book piracy doesn’t exist. I don’t know about Draft2Digital, but their recent merger with Smashwords will probably encourage them to ignore book pirates as well.
How do the Big Five publishing conglomerates handle this problem? Their tactic is to encourage the purchase of expensive print versions by making their ebooks almost as expensive, but that’s a stupid policy. An expensive ebook is more expensive software that can be stolen and sold for more profit by the pirates. And pirating print versions, while rarer now, still exist. Maybe the Big Five have lawyers on retainer ready to pounce on major pirating enterprises? That’s a vicious circle, though, because that just makes their formulaic and fluffy fiction books more expensive.
I’ve never seen any author’s organization (the Authors Guild only represents the interest of the Big Five and the old mares and stallions in their stables but has no antipiracy efforts) or government legal task force worry about book piracy. Maybe they should declare it a felony? And maybe major pirates in other countries should be pursued by the FBI and Interpol, especially in those countries like China, India, and Russia where piracy is rampant? I suppose I’ll be dead before that ever occurs…or books will no longer exist as frivolous streaming video and Hollywood blockbusters kill all the worthwhile entertainment found in books.
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$0.99 cent sale! The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” are now both on sale at Smashwords. The first series contains the mystery/thriller novels Muddlin’ Through (QS68B), Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By (SH53M), and Goin’ the Extra Mile (VX88P). The second contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Zamba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! (all three novels are contained in an ebook bundle, GF69F). All four ebooks are only $0.99 each. (If the promo codes don’t appear, you see them here and can use them to get the sale price.) Enjoy!
At PubProgressive.com yesterday: “Five Old Men Taking Away Rights!”
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
