Tag: piracy

Indie News Beat: Lashings of Irony

Yesterday, the Evil Mastermind told me there was a problem with the reactor core in this Death Star of a blog. Yesterday, I went to have a look, armed with my trusty elastic bands and bits of dried chewing gum. But he didn’t tell me he keeps a very small (but quite friendly) black hole down there. I go down there for one night and return this morning to find months have gone by up here. Damn.

Time to catch up with what’s been going on, and irony has to be the theme of this month’s column. We begin with Phillip Pullman and his ill-advised rant against copyright pirates, whose activity he described as “moral squalor”. In a powerfully written, but ultimately misguided piece, Pullman says that, “The principle is simple, and unaltered by technology, science or magic: if we want to enjoy the work that someone does, we should pay for it.” Continue reading “Indie News Beat: Lashings of Irony”

Avast ye maties, there’s Pirates!

Piracy has been the hot topic everywhere lately, even if you didn’t know it. From SOPA to Megaupload to the recent discovery of plagiarism on Amazon.

I remember the day my first traditionally published novel was released. I already had mixed feelings about it but then I got an e-mail from a ‘friend’. It seems my book had been pirated. Already. It had been out for a little less than an hour or so. For a newly published writer dreaming as we all do of leaving the day job, I was horrified and furious. They were feeding on my dreams AND stealing out of my pocket! How dare they?!  I got a little hot about it with one of my coworkers. He insisted that if I were a true artist, and writing because I loved it then I should do it for free. I asked if he liked his job, because if he liked it that much as his supervisor I’d be more than glad to take him off the payroll.  Not that it mattered, I wasn’t going to change his mind, he was still going to download. And of course, the pirates did dare and after a little time I gained some perspective.

As Joe Konrath said in his most excellent blog Continue reading “Avast ye maties, there’s Pirates!”

The Why and How of E-Book Piracy by Arline Chase

Preface:  The other day a Google alert informed me that my first novel, Lust for Danger, was mentioned on a site called 4shared.com.  I clicked through to discover that they were offering my novel as a free download.  I immediately emailed my Indie Publisher, Write Words Inc., to notify them of this issue.  Within a couple of days they’d managed to get the site to take my book down.  Honestly, I never thought this would happen to me.  But it did.  Arline Chase – owner of Write Words, Inc. – will explain why, and how, pirates steal our titles.  

Without further ado, here is industry veteran Arline Chase:

I can’t speak to how pirates get hold of every title, but I can mention some of the ways they are able to “find” material to give away and why they do it.

Some publishers, not me, but some, put the PDF up at Bowker’s Books in Print when they register the ISBN. As a protection to our authors, Write Words does not send the whole PDF there, or to Google’s “search inside the book” or anywhere else except sales sites where we actively participate. Bowker’s security is good, but no Internet Security is infallible.

Authors get tons of spam all the time. One ploy is to offer “free advertising” to authors by e-mail and ask them for one free copy to use for promotional purposes. If the author sends them ONE PDF book file by e-mail attachment, they can then give it away hundreds of times and they can claim to have your permission to do so as it was sent willingly. I don’t know that this is how they got your book, but it DOES happen. A Lot. You would also get lots more “offers” from them to buy advertising on line. Continue reading “The Why and How of E-Book Piracy by Arline Chase”