1. This week has been SO long. An ice storm, sick husband, and trying not to get sick myself. It felt endless. But finally, it’s Friday!
2. I’ve had e-piracy on my mind lately because in my website logs, I can see what search terms people are using to find my website. I’ve been seeing more and more searches for “read troy high online free” or “download something to blog about free.” At first, I tried not to get upset about e-piracy. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I became. Not just for myself, but for all authors battling illegal copies of their work. It’s one thing for an author to offer a free novella or short story or whatever because that’s their own choice to write something and offer it free to readers as a thank you for reading. It’s another for the work that we’ve spent years on to be taken away from us and put up on a website just because some people think they’re entitled to get everything for free. Think about it this way: You have a job where you work every day and expect to get a paycheck. One day, you come to work and your boss tells you he’s decided not to pay you anymore, but you’re still expected to do the same work you’ve always done. Only you won’t get any money for it ever again. Because hey, he expects you to do this for him for free.
Yeah. How long are you going to stay at that job if you can’t pay your bills or buy things you want anymore? I know a lot of people believe writers make tons of money and so a few illegal downloads of their books don’t make a difference in their profits. I know because I’ve heard the comments myself. The truth is, the majority of us don’t make a lot of money writing. E-piracy makes it possible that writers you enjoy reading may not be able to keep writing. If our books don’t sell, our publishers won’t keep publishing them.
3. I’m not saying you have to BUY every book you read. I don’t buy every book I read. There is this place called a library where they let you read books. For FREE. You can even take them home. If your library doesn’t have a book you want to read, talk to the librarians and ask if they can either order it or else borrow it from another library through an inter-library loan. There are also secondhand stores and book swapping sites where you can get legal copies of books. Some sites, such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble, sometimes offer a book for free as a limited time promotion. I use ereaderiq to keep track of current free books for the Kindle that I might want to read. I’ve gotten a lot of free, LEGAL copies of books that way and have discovered new authors I might not have found otherwise. Also, keep an eye on book blogs or author websites and enter contests to try to win free copies of books. There are options other than stealing. If you wouldn’t even consider walking out of a bookstore with a book that you didn’t pay for, why are you doing the same thing on the internet?
4. If you need more convincing that e-piracy hurts the writers you enjoy reading, go take a look at Saundra Mitchell’s great post on this topic.
5. It really has been a long week. Have a good weekend, everyone!
Exactly. Writers do tons of work just to get a book out there and most get very little back in return. Although I got a great advance on my books, you have to consider that I first began writing Something to Blog About in 2005. I then worked on it over and over again from then until 2008 when it hit the shelves. An advance divided up over 3 years of work is nowhere near enough to live on it alone.
I think teaching about e-piracy in schools would be a great idea. I think a lot of teens don’t see it as a big deal because they’ve grown up with instant access to anything they want over the internet, and they see e-piracy as a victimless crime. As long as they’re listening to music or reading the books or watching the movies, they think the creators of the work should be happy to have them as fans. But it hurts even them because illegal downloads don’t count as sales, and if no one is buying the music or books or movies, they won’t keep getting produced, leading to limited options for them as an audience.
Re: books
Thank you!! I’m so glad you liked it! I’m working on some more books, hopefully I’ll have some new ones in stores soon!
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