Debra Dixon here. I'm the editor of the SF/Fantasy, Young Adult and Miscellaneous genres for Bell Bridge Books.
Okay, I'm taking a stand. Stealing the work of writers and posting books on file sharing sites is evil. I'm not good-natured about this anymore. I'm tired of people telling me, "Well, there is a school of thought which says piracy builds readers."
No. It doesn't. What it does is steal money from the author and the publisher. In the last two days I've had ONE file-sharing site take down files with over 500 downloads for ONE of our titles - BITE ME by Parker Blue.
What did that mean to her in real dollars? A lot. You can assume that not every scumbag who downloaded the free book would have bought a copy, but this is still a lot of money the author has lost, and from just one of these file sharing sites.
Large publishers and their authors suffer just as much.
When did it become okay to steal?
I checked this same site (there are dozens to work through) and found other books of ours. For EACH violation I have to fill out a separate form to request the file be pulled. www.4shared.com has quickly taken down the files, but WE (the publisher and the author) are required to find these violations. The process is a continual one. Get to the end of the file sharing sites and start again. Why? Because new files had been posted within 24 hours of having the first files removed from 4Shared.
How about the authors who share a group blog with me? (www.RidingWithTheTopDown.blogspot.com) This blog is x-posted.)
One of those authors has been ripped off to the tune of over 1000 downloads from 15 files. Most of the other authors had tons of files up. Let me say this again...there are dozens of sites. If an author has over 1000 downloads of her books from one site and you multiply that by dozens of sites...well, that's a whole lot of stealin' going on.
Some folks say book publishing better take a lesson from music file sharing and get the price down. What they don't realize is the printing cost is nothing. Especially if you're a large publisher printing tens of thousands of units at once. Books can't be divided into discrete stand-alone units in the same way that music can. Kindle lets you download a nice sample for free as do most of the ebook sites. Can't get much fairer than that. When wholesalers and booksellers expect discounts of 40-55% off the cover price of the book, there isn't much room for maneuvering on price. No one works for free.
If the authors can't make a living, maybe they'll go back to Corporate America, to the farm or simply retire. Then where would we be without that next great book from our favorite author?
We see this as a never-ending battle, but we're going to make the effort to treat this like the crime it is. We're not going to ignore this.
And let's not forget that Stephanie Meyer (TWILIGHT author for those of you living in a hole) has delayed/cancelled publication of a book in that series because of piracy. Her fans are heart-broken.
Join us in the fight against piracy. Say, "Hell, no!" to piracy. Don't download. Don't upload. If you find one of our books on a sharing site, email us so we can send a "cease and desist" to the file sharing/torrent site. Heck, notify the file-sharing site yourself.
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http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090
Not saying it's a fix--just a change.
Maria
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/06/a
(culled from my column over at www.BSCreview.com) There's also a link in the column to an interesting interview with fantasy magazine editors--not sure if that is of interest, but I thought it was informative!
Best,
Maria
First of all, forum creators that set up havens for illegal download links should be held accountable for the damages, and punished with fines and/or jail time.
Most of these illegal sharing sites do not host the links themselves, but they certainly provide the playground for the exchange to take place. They are 100% aware of what they are doing. These sites even place "terms of conditions" on their file sharing sites to protect themselves from accountability - even though the entire purpose of the forums is to illegally share material.
Then again, the ISPs that provide the forum creators service have terms and conditions as well. Users are not supposed to create sites for illegal purposes, and yet, when people do, the ISPs turn a blind eye to it because they are getting paid, and raking in the dollars. This can be a good chunk of change depending on the site's bandwidth. In my opinion, the ISPs are just as responsible for not cutting off their clients who traffick the illegal links. They should be held at least partly accountable for sites on their service that link to or host illegal content.
Just in the past two months, one pirate site had bundled three of my werewolf books into one torrent. It had been accessed roughly 800 times before they responded to my take down letter and removed the links. Now do the math: 3 books at $3.99 each times 800. One site. That book was up for less than a week.
For those who thinks this builds a paying readership - my royalty check that came along after this didn't crack $30.00.
I'm continually sending takedown letters, some of them to the same sites over and over. Someone should be held accountable for the damages. There will always be an underground network that passes along ebooks and other media. There's nothing that can be done about that. But something needs to be done about the large scale theft of copyrighted material. It hurts authors. Plain and simple.
This is a big problem - one that ALL writers face, even writers who are solely print published. The publishing industry at large needs to tackle this issue. Publishers, authors, the RWA, the HWA, the Authors Guild, and other organizations need to get together and petition their lawmakers, congress, anyone who will listen. As we move more and more into the age of the digital book, we need to establish a preventative way to handle piracy. Until we do, this sort of thing is only going to get worse.