One of my books has been pirated so far and wide I have given up trying to take it down. It has all but killed my sales for that book, and for that reason, I will never revisit that story world again in any of my future efforts. There’s no point in it.

Piracy used to drive me half crazy, but I figure those readers who are honest will go and buy my books. The rest never intended to buy my work in the first place. Then again, there are far worse things than being listed on a torrent site, I can honestly say that.

The worst of my piracy woes was when someone bundled all my erotic werewolf romances and put them up for sale on eBay as a single .lit file purchase. That happened in either 2009 or 2010? Anyway, I had to fight eBay to get those books down. I was initially told eBay had an obligation to protect the privacy of the auction owner, who had over 600 positive feedbacks for selling illegally bundled books. I ended up having to file papers with eBay to get the listing for my books down, even though I informed them over the phone I was the copyright holder and the person was not a legal distributor of my work.

Soon after the listing was removed, the seller was removed from eBay entirely, but he/she didn’t give up their game. They went to an under the table auction site that isn’t moderated. I had never heard of that particular site before my books appeared there. I learned through the site forums that the owner had abandoned his post, so fraud literally runs amok there.

At any rate, the eBay seller I’d just gone toe-to-toe with joined and rebuilt their shop on the unmoderated site, and guess whose books appeared in their listings first? Yours truly. But I was not the only victim. Within days, this user had uploaded hundreds of authors, hundreds of listings with multiple .lit format books per listing.

I went through all the normal channels to get my books down from that site, but could not get a response from the owner or anyone else listed as being part of the web staff. I ended up having to go through an IP search to find the owner of the auction site and file a grievance with their ISP, and my state attorney general’s office. The attorney general’s office sent a certified take down notice to the owner, but still, I ended up having to contact the seller and tell them I was pursuing legal action against them if they didn’t take my books down. Finally, they removed them. But I tell you what, the stress in all that…you can’t put a price tag on that.

On another note, I have personally talked to authors who have been told by their publishers NOT to do anything about torrent or illegal auction listings. One mystery writer in particular told me you can’t get your books down from those kinds of sites. I was shocked. I sent her an email with instructions and a form letter for a standard take down procedure and told her if she had any further questions there is a page about it on the RWA website. She wrote me back, amazed. She honestly had no idea you could request to take your books down.

The misinformation given to authors over this issue is staggering. And what’s worse, the government has a division that is meant to protect authors against copyright infringement and counterfeiting, but they are not targeting the sites that perpetuate the problem. Why should pirates stop pirating if there are next to no consequences for it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to start a crusade. In truth, I don’t think this is a “fixable” problem. There will always be underground file sharing. Bootlegging isn’t something new. But at the same time, the means to do the crime shouldn’t be as accessible as it is right now. With technology changing, and e-books coming into the forefront the way they are, the publishing industry seriously needs to be thinking about ways to protect their investment in both books and their authors.

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2011/01/27/writing-on-the-high-seas/

Short version: Book piracy appears to be a net neutral, and the idea that X number of illegal downloads = $X lost sales is misleading at best.

cheers,

~JGS

I’m assuming you aren’t saying that they SHOULDN’T release an ebook before the prescribed 18 months, right? Because that would result in a LOT of furious ebook owners who can’t get their latest fix.

Also, I’d like to point out that even before the “Ebook Craze,” it was very easy to get pirated PDF versions of books for those who tried. So while yes, the book industry is certainly entering an industry rampant with stealing, it is incorrect in thinking that if they backed out completely the pirating would stop. If people want stuff for free, they will get it for free. And it only takes ONE person to scan (or type in Word) the words of a book and it can be copied an infinite number of times, and then you are done. (this is all coming from a reformed pirate who has since deleted all pirated materials and purchased everything he pirated as recompense).

I still feel the main issue is the fact that there is still a huge barrier when it comes to buying eBooks. iTunes (with iBooks) is trying, but the prices are just insane. Publishers are setting the prices, and they aren’t pricing them competitively. If you want to bait the pirates over, you have to make it seem like a deal. I mean, just browsing a well known torrent site, I found a 3 gb file with thousands of people “seeding” (distributing it) with over 11,000 eBooks of best-selling authors on it. 11,000 books. With a thousand people just CURRENTLY stealing it. That is completely insane.

Anyway you’ve heard enough of me, but all points on these comments are very valid. I hope publishers find some way to adapt soon. The faster they figure it out, the more money they make. Delaying only costs them in the long haul.

O’Leary’s data shows that for midlist authors, such as your client, piracy appears to lead to increased sales. His data shows that for the best selling authors, piracy does appear to impact sales. He’s subsequently said that he has been unsuccessful in convincing any of the big 6 publishers to give him access to better/additional data.

But the issue is even more complex than just this. Publishers are failing, miserably, in my opinion, in solving the barriers that currently exist to giving consumers a legitimate and fairly priced digital product that doesn’t break, vanish or become inaccessible when a device gets replaced or the technology or software gets upgraded.

The situation right now is that no one actually knows the impact of piracy on book sales except that there is one study that suggests your client should not be all that upset. Yet.

We should all, readers, authors and publishers, be asking for solid, rigorous data analysis. If we had that, we might have a clue about whether and when to devote resources to anti-piracy efforts and what eBook vendors should be doing to encourage readers to buy from legal sources and discourage all the things that lead readers to pirate instead (if, in fact, that’s happening) No one has actually answered the question about whether book piraters ever buy legally or whether, if were were able to eliminate all pirated book sources, those downloaders would then buy legitimately.

There’s also reason to believe that interest in ebook piracy has stalled with the spread of ereaders: http://tinyurl.com/2aaour2