The word ‘revenge’ is readily hearkened — even by the most compassionate and understanding of writers — upon finding their hard-earned prose copied and posted on a file-sharing site. In the last year or so, I’d heard of such literary tragedies happening to well-known, best-selling authors but thought that self-published independent eBook writers would likely glide underneath the Book Pirate Radar, sequestered safely in the ‘small fry’ section of Lake Literature. Not so. Self-published author Cheryl Kaye Tardif stumbled across her books on a file-sharing website called 4shared and reacted thusly: “I immediately sent a cease-and-desist notice to the member who posted my content and infringed on my copyright, plus I sent a similar message to the site owners. Many hours have passed and as of yet there has been no reply from either, and my material is still on the site. Many of my author friends have discovered today that their works are illegally posted there too. If you’re an author, check! Then report the copyright abuse and demand your work be removed.” (Copied with permission from her blog cherylktardif.blogspot.com)
Last week, my husband and I joined the sad club of looted authors; one of our paying customers emailed us a one-line warning that she’d seen our best-selling book Draw Me a Picture on 4shared, for free. Indeed it was, along with five of our other titles. Oddly, they were all Kindle Editions from The Kindle Store, a fact which rather surprised us. We immediately began a long search of popular file-sharing websites in order to wrest our hard work away from the savvy book pirates.
Fiction writer A. F. Stewart directed me to a piece she’d written on the subject: “I have been engaged in a few discussions lately on these topics and one question keeps raising its ugly head. Who is hurt by copyright violation, piracy and illegal downloads? Many people, mostly the reprobates that run the dishonest download sites, say no one. They are wrong. The artists, musicians and writers are hurt. Of course, the pirates don’t want you to think about that because they are making too much money off their website membership subscriptions and advertising.”
One of our LinkedIn contacts emailed us with his own horror story of finding his POD books on Google Books for free, posted without his permission.
The good news is that these websites are subject to the same copyright infringement laws that human violators are. Once authors have taken the time to look up their various titles on the most popular sites, copied and pasted all the links to their pirated books, they can then write up a copyright infringement abuse form, also known as a DMCA Takedown Notice, and email it to the offending website. Doing so is the digital equivalent of bawling out “Avast!” drawing sword from scabbard and sending the pirates fleeing back to the dark waters from whence they sprung. As with most legal issues, the language of this form is apparently quite important to get right in order to produce the desired result, namely having access to the pirated file(s) removed. One can view an example here: DMCA Takedown Notice. After receiving the run-around from 4shared, I emailed the proper ‘Infringement’ form; they removed all the links two days later. Scribd reacted a bit faster; they removed my pirated book a mere10 hours after I sent the form their way.
A small victory won, we soon discovered that finding our pirated novel online as a free download wasn’t the worst part; with a little research, I found that file-sharing sites profit handsomely from the files posted thereon and boast web traffic numbers that most website owners only dream of. According to Checkwebsitestats.com, 4shared earns $113,000 a day from advertising alone and gets approximately 64 million daily page views and about 1.25 million unique visitors each month. It is logical to assume that such figures would cause a writer’s blood to reach the proverbial boil.
After sending out queries to my various writer contacts on the subject of file-sharing, I received a rash of replies touting similar stories to mine, save one:
“In all honesty, I have found my sales have jumped since the pirates found me,” Indy writer Rebecca Goings wrote. “Perhaps it’s due to wanting to try out a new author before buying their books. However, I do know a lot of eBook pirates scour those sites to get books for free. Am I losing sales that way? Oh yeah. However, I take it with a grain of salt. In all likelihood, my books probably wouldn’t have reached such a vast audience so quickly.”
Inspiration struck. After making certain the full versions of our novels were taken down, we quickly put together some non-editable sample PDFs which included the first two chapters of each book. We ended each file with this line: “Like this book? Buy the full version at BelatorBooks.com – PayPal verified merchant.” Links to the sample files were then tweeted and shared liberally, along with a request that our customers and followers post comments and ‘rate’ each file.
Having satisfactorily exchanged revenge for reciprocity, I look forward to writing a follow-up piece in the near future: Indy Writers Loot Book Pirates.
Meredith Greene has been a reviewer for SBR/SFBR since April of 2009; a wife of thirteen years, mother of four and self-published novelist. She, nevertheless, finds time for poetry, blogs, home projects, and gardening.
Come on over and read what Meredith has to say about home, gardening, and other general musings in her column Greene Ink.
Visit Meredith’s website www.BelatorBooks.com.
Meredith,
Thanks for this great idea. I’m going to link to your article from my blog. Perhaps you can link to mine in your follow up, or quote me and give me credit. My blog was republished on a pirate site. Not links. The whole articles. And they didn’t even link back to my blog. One thing I did was use their list of “contributors” against them. I knew many of those similarly used and let them know as well. I did manage to get them to take down the list.
http://sciencefictionmusings.blogspot.com/2010/06/pirated-again.html
I know only too well, the pirates are out there. My first publisher went out of business. They did not tell me, they just disappeared. This happened years ago, but you can find my first book on Amazon for a very large sum, which I am not receiving royalities on, of course. My blood has over boiled lots of times over this fact and haven’t had the funds to hire an attorney to investigate the situation. I was not aware of the above mentioned forms and will give me a direction to investigate.
Because of the above mentioned, is one reason I decided to publish my current book myself. I feel so sad each time I look at that book, knowing all my dreams flew out the window. It really hurts. The Pirates should be hung by their big toes!
I really appreciate the information and if there is anyway I can help stop these thief’s, count me in.
Excellent article Meredith, and thanks for sharing the takedown notice. I will share this with my Savvy Book Marketer followers.
Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. I do google my book titles and myself and my trademarks from time to time and it’s a good idea for everyone to do so.
A great article. I have heard about a few authors like Rebecca, who have seen sales increases due to piracy, but the majority of authors I know who’ve been pirated have horror stories. I know of one writer who is so frustrated she is considering not writing a planned sequel to a pirated book. I’ve also talked to new writers who wonder if they should even offer their books in digital form because of piracy.
Great, informative article, Meredith! Once you publish a book, it is automatically copyrighted. But we suggest, for further protection, you register it at http://www.copyright.gov. For a small fee, this will protect you against any copyright infringement issues. I have the name of a good copyright attorney if anyone ever needs his services. He helped me carefully word a section of my book, so I wouldn’t have to be concerned about a lawsuit.
Thanks for the information Meredith. The day before you posted the article I discovered that someone was selling a class I’d written for another site (and whose contract ended last year). I wrote the company and used similar language to the DMCA Take Down Notice. After having no reply for 2 days, I did a little research and got a phone number and called today. They took it off their site immediately and said it had been passed on to them from the previous company and didn’t know the contract had ended. Turns out nobody else saw the class either, as nobody signed up for it in the last 6 months. Which either says a lot about the popularity of the site and/or my class! Anyway, thanks gain for your article and recent reply.
Well, When You posted an article about e-Books, the first thing that came to my mind was how would avoid this kind of situation, where anything on the web is more or less like leaving your book at a Public park for any one to Pick it up? Oops, Yes the cover looks very attractive.
That was a nice informative article on the Pirates of the e-Books. Thanks for Sharing the Information. Its interesting to read Rebecca’s take on the Issue. I hope these readers will go back to a store and do buy her books. After all at the end its the penny that matters.
This is the big question facing all authors publishing ebooks.
Do you only publish with digital rights management systems (DRM) in place and thereby restrict your potential market OR do you accept a level of piracy as you reach a much wider audience and get your thoughts and ideas out to many many people. In my view there is no simple answer. It comes down to the personal aims of the author/agent. … a balance between revenue protection and market penetration.
Thanks for the article, its an area I’m sure we will all visit many time again!
The publishers’ relationships with Amazon.com are part of the problem. They have been allowing Amazon to sell “used” books illegally for years. “Used” meaning the promotional copies sent out when the book was new. Too often those books aren’t marked “NOT FOR RESALE.” These so-called used books were for sale on the same Amazon web page where the book was featured. For a fraction of the cost. Books that I would never receive a dime in royalties for.
I complained to the publisher, who did nothing.I complained to Amazon, who did nothing. So now they are allowing Kindle e-books to be pirated? Not much of a leap I think. While the film industry prosecutes for pirates, the publishing industry just sits there. Any wonder they’re going out of business in droves?
My book was also in development for a “reality show” based on it — a therapy for the home book, redesigning the home to address family and personal problems with space and communication, and other issues of personal growth. The lawyer representing the producer (and co-author) looted the book with his wife and sister-in-law, who’d been hired to host the show. They secretly made their own show and put it on the web, using our slogans and headings, our process and methods. Neither a simple letter, nor a strong one got them to stop. This is now a major lawsuit. Watch out for celebrity psychologists if your book is for self-help!
Meredith, your post is quite well researched and important. However, the times they have changed drastically and once a work is out there in cyberspace it’s out there forever.
The bottom-line is that once a digital file is in cyberspace there’s no taking it back. Under the current entitlement mentality, when any title becomes popular and a big best seller, authors will never fully realize the financial rewards that are rightfully and legally theres. With all the surveillance equipment in stores to catch shoplifters in the act, it would seem that cyberspace provides a safe zone for thieves making them virtually invisible.
Unless there are immediate legal means to protect the author and publisher from cyber thieves, the only solution I can see is that NO new title should be offered in any digital format until after it has had its first run as a traditional book. Anything less just feeds the frenzy.
Interesting piece. Presumably unless the users of pirate sites check file sizes before downloading they won’t know whether they’re getting the full novel or the two-chapter version you put up there, and at least it publicises your work.
I think there are two ways of looking at the problem. One is to say pirate file sharing is intellectual property theft and try to prevent it – a ‘law enforcement’ approach that many people are now trying with not too much success. The other is to say it’s intellectual property theft, but authors should look at it with what is essentially a profit maximising, commercial view – in other words the approach is ‘we know it’s happening, so what strategies are there to turn the situation to our advantage?’
The former approach has had some, though very limited, success and no doubt bigger players will continue to pursue this option which will at least keep some pressure on the pirates even if it doesn’t make a big dent in the situation.
The latter approach suggests different players in the market will find different strategies. Someone starting out may feel that piracy gets their work out to a larger audience and can be monetised at a later stage. A big-name author can probably get away with publishing the first half of a book and then announce the second half will only be released once enough people have made donations to his/her own website (an electronic parallel to the chapbook era of Charles Dickens?). Between these two extremes people will need to find other solutions that rely on the idea of the work being freely available and income being derived in other ways – special editions, customised editions, membership-only websites with additional material or whatever. In all probability we’re going to have to start being more imaginative… Putting up two-chapter come-ones to compete with the full editions is a good ploy though.
Great post, Meredith. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this sensitive topic.
Like you, it took a couple of days to see my works removed from 4shared.com. Since then, I’ve spoken with dozens of authors affected by piracy. I’ve also spoken with pirates. Their excuses and sense of entitlement are mind-boggling.
Theft is theft.
Yes, piracy will be around. It will be a constant battle and will take some vigilance on part of authors and publishers. I’ve contacted both when I’ve seen copyright protected work on pirate sites and authors and publishers have been very grateful. We’re all in this together.
I highly recommend that if you’re an author, you check common pirate sites like 4shared.com, astatalk.com, demonoid.com, and mininova.com. There are many more pirate sites out there and organizations of anti-piracy advocates that are trying to shut them down. At the very least, get your books removed–unless you can afford the loss of sales.
If you search “piracy” on my blog, you’ll find a handful of posts on this topic.
Cheryl Kaye Tardif
http://www.cherylktardif.com
http://www.cherylktardif.blogspot.com