E-pirates. They're the douchebags of the online world and they need to be stopped!
I'm not the most tech savvy girl, but I do a lot of research and I'm a quick learner. When Eve Of Samhain released, I quickly set up a Google Alert. Any time my book is mentioned on the World Wide Web, I get a notice with a link. Pretty cool huh? I think so!
So, you can imagine my dismay this morning when I received an alert linking me to a file sharing site where someone was asking for a pirated copy of my book.
Things got ugly in the Sanchez home. Thank God my girls were all upstairs playing in their rooms. Several vile and grossly profane words were muttered.
Don't be an e-pirate, people! If you can't afford the $4.99 for my book, save your pennies until you can. Trust me, I'm totally flattered you want to read my book. I'd much prefer it, though, if you purchased it when you have the spare cash as opposed to stealing my hard earned compensation.
When you download books, music etc. illegally, you are stealing from the person who spent weeks, months, in some cases years, toiling over their creation. It's wrong! It's immoral! It must be stopped!
If you have to have a book that badly and can't afford it, borrow money. Ask for it as a present for your birthday or Christmas. Even better, go down to your local library and fill out a purchase form. I'm a firm believer that EOS should be in every library across America. Lol! But DO NOT, download my book illegally from a file sharing site. Or anyone else's for that matter.
Don't be an online douchebag!
I hereby award the person trying to poach EOS illegally a Doucheé-Bageé. The worst of all known douchebags. Shame on you!
7 comments:
One gal was talking about people pirating her blog. Wow!
I'll come talk to you about Google Alerts when my day comes. :)
How did you approach the pirates?
M Pax- I contacted my publisher right away. They're having their legal team look into it.
Not cool!!
I'm so new to this stuff I feel like a dork! This is the third or fourth time this week an author has mentioned this happening. Is it specifically e-books/pdfs? How do people get a copy of your book in the first place? Then how do they get to a site for others? I mean, how can they do that if it's not theirs? Is it like those places that used to share music files, peer to peer sharing or something like that?
I've been to scribd and their policy is anything uploaded is owned by the uploader, but how do you actually prove that?
This actually stops me from doing writing on line. Like, it has me frozen. Can you point me to some material to educate me on this?
Wulfie-Yes, this is about e-books. And yes, it's just like those music sharing sites. Someone purchases the e-book and then uploads it to a file sharing site where others can then download it for free.
It takes away from the authors or musicians sales and is unethical.
There are definitely ways you can fight it ie. with take down requests. But honestly, it's sad that authors are forced to police their own work because of thieves with zero respect.
Well said! I hope it all gets stopped!
Hey,
That's awful about the book! Wow, so sorry to hear that. It's commonplace theses days. I was reading a blog the other day and one author worked out loses of 18,000 or there abouts for her book.
The google alert thing is very cool. How would one go about setting up one of those handy alert?
Carol-
The Google alerts are easy :) You just go to the website and type in the name of your book, or whatever else you want an alert for and VOILA! It's that simple! Woohoo!
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