E-Book Pirating is a Problem
I just found a pirated version of one of my writer friends' novels. Just as her friend, I felt violated and protective of her hard work. I know what she went through to publish that novel and it's disheartening to see others trying to make money off of someone else's sweat and tears. And contrary to popular belief, unless an author is selling tens of thousands of copies of their books, authors do not make a lot of money. For my friend, this is her sole source of income right now along with unemployment and she's a single mom. Every penny counts for her.
Pirating is an ongoing struggle for any person in the creative industries – people selling illegal copies of artwork, fiction, music, etc. for their own profit and at the expense of the creative individual. Though it's impossible to stop all such activities, our combined efforts – as readers, authors and publishers – can work together to stop what we do find.
Pirating is Illegal
According to the FBI, pirating software, music, movies and books (among other things) is a punishable offense of “up to 5 years in federal buy xanax online safe prison and fine of $250,000.” Ouch!
But if you're an author and you find your books being pirated, what can you do? Report it!
Report Pirating
Why not go directly to the people who have the resources to stop pirating? The Internet Crime Complaint Center (iC3) is that resource! Who's that? As quoted from their About Us page: “The IC3 was established as a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to serve as a means to receive Internet related criminal complaints and to further research, develop, and refer the criminal complaints to federal, state, local, or international law enforcement and/or regulatory agencies for any investigation they deem to be appropriate.”
Whew! Quite the mouthful…but they're a powerful ally. If you see artistic work being pirated somewhere, please be sure to inform the author immediately and you can provide the above link for their reference so they can report the pirating directly. You can also post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media what website and individual is in violation of that piracy, warning friends and family.
Thank you for protecting the hard work we authors put into our stories.
That's my two pence…
Arial 😉
