In which I rant about ebook piracy
[I also have some exciting news, so stick around and find out!]
Once upon a time, in a magical land far, far, away, people lived in peace and happiness. Chocolate flowed in the rivers, mountains made of candy and rainbows filled the sky, pouring Skittles instead of rain. Best of all, there were buildings full of books that people could take home and read for free.
Sadly, we do not live in that world with the chocolate rivers, candy mountains and Skittle filled rainbows; but we do have those magical buildings filled with books you can take home for free! Those buildings are called libraries.
Yes, a library is full of thousands of books just waiting for you to take home and read. Did I mention that it’s totally free? There’s a reason I keep mentioning that. That’s because there are millions of people in this world who conveniently forget that and illegally download ebooks every single day.
Can you believe it?! With libraries all across America, each one full of thousands of books that we can take home and read legally, these people continue to break the law and download all these books without paying for them.
Legal – author gets paid. Illegal – author can’t feed his/her children. These authors pour their hearts and souls into these books and most of the times it’s their ONLY source of income. These pirates, and the people who illegally download the books, are keeping these authors from getting the money they rightly deserve for their hard work. Am I trying to guilt trip everyone who has ever illegally downloaded a book? Yep! Is it working? I certinaly hope so.
While I was doing research on ebook piracy, I discovered several crazy things. One of them was the overwhelming amount of blog posts saying that ebook piracy is a good thing! Basically, the point each one made was that ebook piracy allowed readers easy access to books they wouldn’t otherwise read due to the fact that they (the readers) can’t afford to buy the books.
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Have these people not heard about the magical buildings called libraries?! Clearly that must be the case, otherwise they wouldn’t go around breaking the law. Right? That’s the only reason I can come up with as to why they can even claim that epiracy is a good thing. It’s not a good thing! Never a good thing!
Shiloh Walker has a wonderful article on her website all about copyrights and ebook piracy. (You really should go read it. It tells you how to become a spy!) Instead of just reposting her article, I’m going to give you a snippet:
You can resell a paperback, because after all, there is just the one copy.
But you can’t resell ebook after ebook after ebook because that’s not selling one copy-that’s making new copies and you know what that does? That violates my copyright. I own the rights to my work. Me. Just me.
That leads me to the other point that those pro-piracy blog posts made. They said that there’s no difference between reselling a book and an ebook. There is a HUGE difference. When you are reselling a physical book there is only that ONE SINGLE copy of that book. Someone originally paid for it, probably at a bookstore, the author got his/her for that single copy of the book and like I just said, there is only one copy of the book. With ebooks, you can literally make a million copies of a book to sell. Can you see the difference between one copy of a book being resold and a million copies of a book being resold or given away for free?
Jackson Pearce, a totally awesome author (and by the way, everyone needs to go read her books), tweeted this:
Today I ate Ramen noodles for lunch because I am broke. Meanwhile, 187 people illegally downloaded my book.
Is the guilt burning like acid in your stomach, all you ebook pirates? It should be.
So to recap, we don’t live in a world with chocolate filled rivers, candy mountains or rainbows filled with Skittles. But we do have magical buildings called libraries filled with books for people to read for free. Epircay is BAD and illegal. If you can’t afford to buy every book you want to read, GO TO YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY.
Okay, so for my exciting news. Lara Adrian is hosting a huge contest on her facebook page, where her fans can submit a picture of her latest release, Deeper than Midnight, on summer vacation. The picture with the most likes wins a bunch of awesome books and I totally want to win! Sadly, I’m aprroximately 500 likes behind, and the contest ends next Tuesday (August 8). So here’s my deal: If you guys help me win, then next week’s rant will include a contest for some of the prizes I win from Lara’s contest – I’ll share the wealth! So mosey on over to Lara’s facebook page, like picture #18 before next Tuesday and if I win then you win too. (And it’s a totally LEGAL way to get free books!!)
Hear hear! I have never illegally downloaded an ebook. I have never even been tempted to. I have never even tried to find a free download of an ebook I wanted to read. I try to get the best prices for books, I borrow books from my friends sometimes, and I buy secondhand too, but I don’t steal. Partly this is because I want to own paper copies of the books I love, but also, I want the authors whose books I love to write more books for me and other people to enjoy! And if they are reliant on other sources of income, they will have less time to write. And like you say, there are those wondrous things called libraries, and at least in my country, authors get paid when their books are borrowed from libraries.
Many libraries also provide ebooks available to download through their website for free (with a library card.) So if it’s the electronic format that these people want, libraries can legally provide that in addition to the physical book.