#authors deserve to be paid

Today, I stumbled onto a phenomenon called E-book piracy.

Let me tell you how. 

Remember that Midsummer sale I decided to throw on Pathfinders?

Because of the COVID19 I guessed the sales wouldn’t be great, but usually when the price is 0,99£/$/€ I can expect at least a few people to buy the E-book. 

0.99 means I get paid around 0.30 for each sold book. That’s 0.30 for five years of work.

It’s less than Donald frigging Duck makes shining Scrooge McDuck’s coins. Donald Duck at least makes 0.30 per hour. At least in my country. . .

I throw the super sales to promote the books and offer them to those, who couldn’t otherwise afford them. A win-win situation. 

Guess what? The e-book hasn’t sold a single copy. 

I begun to wonder why —And after Googling a little came across a phenomenon called e-book piracy. 

Yep. There are a couple of sites that are offering my books for free. I think it is unnecessary to say they’re doing it without permission. 

They’re offering other books as well, bestsellers, Indies and beginners. 

They’re doing it because of the following statement: 

“We believe that knowledge and information should be free and accessible to everyone around the globe. There are many developing countries where you cannot easily buy your favorite books. They are literally out of reach of many people. Secondly, Amazon doesn’t deliver to many countries and not everyone has the financial means to buy stuff from the internet.
Libraries are out of reach In remote developing countries. There are few good book stores in large cities only. Libraries are hundreds of kilometers away. So we believe they deserve to get easy access to knowledge…”

They also say: 

“We would like to encourage book readers to support authors whenever where-ever they can. Making money as an independent author isn’t easy, Please follow below two steps after downloading a book from here.

1. If you like a book, please take the time to leave a nice book review on Amazon / online bookstore or Goodreads etc. This will support the author indirectly. Someone might buy the book after reading your review. This is the least you can do and you must do this after reading a free copy.
2. Secondly, word of mouth is important for every book, so if you can recommend books to friends & communities who have more cash to spare or who can buy online, that would be awesome too!
   If you get financial means later to buy the book, then you must support your favorite authors and buy that book. This will ultimately benefit them and will encourage them to write more and eventually you’ll be able to read more.”

We all know this isn’t going to work. People who download the book for free from one of these sites KNOW it is illegal and will never leave a review. With luck 1 in 100 will leave a review, if they have a conscience. 

They will NEVER buy the book later because they’ve already got it for free. 

CONCLUSION: 

Sites like this justify their actions by telling they wish to help the poor, students and those who otherwise cannot access these books because libraries aren’t an option. 

(The super poor have money to have e-reading devices?)

In truth they’re doing damage to poor authors: Other poor people, who would have needed the little money they make from the sales during these uncertain times —And I am not just talking about myself here. 

They will do damage to the very groups they claim to help through their crime.

These ‘free pdf sites’ will manage to destroy every E-book within an year if they keep this up. 

Why? How?

Publishing houses don’t like to lose money and neither do huge Indie platforms like Amazon KDP. 

Soon they will not publish e-books anymore, since they or the authors will not get paid.

Books are expensive: Without e-books, the poor and students won’t have any access to these books at all. 

You may ask yourself: Is e-book piracy truly so bad? Won’t the writers make more sales since they get free visibility? 

The piracy IS bad. The authors WON'T make more sale!

And these quotes back it up: 

“Stiefvater later explained that, when ebook sales for the third book in the Raven Cycle – Blue Lily, Lily Blue – “dropped precipitously”, her publisher decided to cut the print run of the next book in the series to less than half of its predecessors.”

"—Stiefvater, who had seen fans sharing pdfs online and was “intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle”. So she and her brother created a pdf of The Raven King, which consisted of just the first four chapters, repeated, and a message explaining how piracy affected books."

“The effects were instant. The forums and sites exploded with bewildered activity. Fans asked if anyone had managed to find a link to a legit pdf. Dozens of posts appeared saying that since they hadn’t been able to find a pdf, they’d been forced to hit up Amazon and buy the book. And we sold out of the first printing in two days.”

Read whole article here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/06/pirated-ebooks-threaten-future-of-serial-novels-warn-authors-maggie-stiefvater

Sounds bad, huh? Well it is. 

But since books are so expensive what are people supposed to do? 

Well, my solution would be a free e-book day, 1-3 times a year. Any author or publisher would be allowed participate as they please and to support the above mentioned groups, I imagine many would. 

This solution most likely will not remove e-book piracy, but it might at least take it down a notch. And it might help to save and keep E-books for those, who actually need them. 

What are your thoughts on the matter? 

Do you have a solution or an idea how to help out authors and those, who aren’t wealthy enough to purchase the books they want/need?

#authors deserve to be paid

#authors against e-book pirates

#people are supposed to be paid for their work

#support writers

#support reading