Lena Austin

Today I just learned I have lost close to $1000 in royalties thanks to pirates in the past two weeks. That's my mortgage payment on our house. My husband was out of work for six months, until recently. We swallowed our pride, borrowed, held garage sales, and wept futile tears until a miracle occurred and my aging husband was able to find a job. Now we're struggling to catch up against mounting late fees and penalties. That $1000 would have given us a much-needed break, but thanks to e-pirates who claim to be my fans, I'm worrying and wringing my hands as the end of the month approaches.

Sharon Marie Bidwell wrote this back in July. I can't say it any better. The highlights are my own emphasis.

To the person who left me a comment...
…saying they may look like spam but assuring me their comment wasn’t, your site looks like…well, spam. You say you’re not a publisher and yet you’re making money selling free ebooks? This is an oxymoron. If you are selling books they’re not ‘free’. Secondly, you say you’re not a writer so where are you getting these books from? Are you selling other people’s free ebooks? If you’re doing so without their permission you are in violation of copyright law. If you are buying ebooks and selling them on, you are in violation of copyright law. On both counts, I advise you to read the statement that runs in my side bar. If you are doing something else, which I don’t understand, my apologies, but no, I’m not going to download your report file from a site that says very little. For all I know it could be a virus. I’d advise everyone else not to do so either. This isn’t personal. I’m just being sensibly cautious. Sorry.
Look, copyright law on ebooks is simple. You cannot copy, distribute, resell or loan an ebook. Saying that, most of us wouldn’t object if we heard you’ve made yourself a back-up copy purely for your own personal use. We live in a wonderful age of technology but technology fails us from time to time. We hear you’re selling our work and we’ll come down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks. Writers and publishers are getting better at locating piracy sites and law enforcement is finally taking it seriously.
The most common question we hear is “If I can resell or loan a printed book, why can’t I as a reader resell or loan ebooks?” To be honest, even the reselling or lending of some printed books is a grey area. However, it tends to be overlooked because of several reasons.
Most people hate the idea of printed books being destroyed. If you’re finished with them and cannot pass them on in some way they are only good for recycling.
When a printed book is passed on, someone may find an author they like and start buying new books by that author on a regular basis. It’s sort of free-advertising and yes, one could argue this would apply to ebooks but there’s a major difference and reason why this doesn’t work so read on.
Many second-hand books are sold for charity purposes.
You are giving up your physical edition of the book and will no longer own it.
Point 4 is the major one. When you give, sell, or loan a printed book you give away the item you purchased. Even when loaning it, you risk not getting it back. You are not making a ‘physical copy’ of that book to pass it on.
When you pass an ebook on (and some people do this in innocence not piracy but they are still in the wrong) the reader tends to ‘keep’ their version and simply send the file on, thereby making a ‘copy’. I can assure you that this is just as illegal in printed works.
Imagine you took one of Stephen King’s novels, dissected it, scanned it in, printed it up either by POD (good luck — they would spot what you are doing in a flash), or via the printer at home, and tried to give it away, sell it, or hand to a friend. Should SK find out do you think he wouldn’t sue your arse off? Oh yes, he would!
The point is you are not allowed to make a ‘copy’ of any written work be it printed or electronic. You may (usually) print off an electronic book with the purpose of reading it in that form should you not wish to read on screen, but that printed form is subject to the same laws. You may not sell it, or pass it on. If you wish to pass on an ebook the only viable way to do this is buy an extra copy, and what’s so wrong with that? We all have people to buy presents for.
Oh…and to those who think they can file share their ebook library, has nothing I’ve stated sunk in? Besides, you are NOT a library and did you know that even if you were there is such a thing as the ‘public lending right’? This means that an author can, if they wish, claim a small payment every time a library lends one of their books. So next time you choose to file share, don’t be surprised should you receive a letter from the authors asking for an audit of the number of ‘loans’ and demanding payment from you!
You are not a publisher and the author has not signed a contract with you. You do not have the right to sell.
You are not an official state library. You do not have the right to loan (and let’s be honest — loan in electronic format means copy and give away).
You are not friends with thousands of strangers online that you simply ‘must’ lend your books to (and we’ve already established that you are not lending but copying) and authors and publishers will not turn their back on you ‘giving’ their work away.
I’m not speaking to those who are deliberately committing an act of piracy. They know they are breaking the law, damaging authors and the publishing industry, and they just don’t care. The most we can do is assure them that while there will always be crooks there will always be those willing to fight them. I’m speaking mainly to those that do this in innocence, not understanding that they are doing anything wrong. You claim to love us as writers. You claim to love our work. We do work — hard — at this. Most of us have day jobs, families, lives just like you. We have to find time to write on top of all that. We often forsake sleep. Many don’t make as much money as you think and even if we did, haven’t we ‘earned’ it? You love our characters, our worlds, our stories. You claim to love our work and even to love us. Why do something fundamentally harmful to someone or something you love?
Did you know there are pirate copies of the “I Do” anthology out there? A book I took part in for charity. The thought that people can be so low as to steal from charity has made some of us authors want to puke. If you’re doing this in innocence or not, rest assured, we’re very upset with you.

Lena again__ I personally know three authors who have been forced to stop writing BECAUSE of e-pirates. The authors could not sell enough works legitimately through royalty-paying services to justify remaining writers. One now works as a waitress because it's the only job she could find and she still earns more in one night than she did in any given month as a published author.

I would love to find some super-geek who'd write me a worm that I could upload into Astatalk.com and all the other e-pirate sites. When I see notes in the Comments sections under my books that ask not only for my entire book list but also for information on how not to get busted, I know these folks aren't innocently sharing. They know they're committing a crime and they don't care. They deserve to have a worm destroy their system, steal their identities and all the money in their bank accounts, then pass it on to the poor authors and artists they've ruined.

Merry Friggin' Christmas.

After six months of unemployment and almost losing our home to foreclosure, DH has a job at long last. In fact, it's such a good job, we're scared to celebrate. It's one of those "too good to be true" jobs, doing what he loves and was trained to do, for a company that seems to appreciate an older military veteran.

We learned an important lesson we're passing on to my daughter Susan's boyfriend-almost-fiancee. In fact, we're telling every military person we know to take advantage of the military's college offerings. My DH could have had his degree in Electrical Engineering long before he retired. He was only a couple of credits away, but he hated "school" and felt it was beneath him. He was positive he could get an electronics job and work for some company until he reached age 65.

We found out very quickly upon his retirement from the Navy just how little civilian companies think of military service and education. Without the sheepskin, you're as low as those high school graduates, and twenty years of experience barely gets you a nod. DH had no "proof" he could wire and run any form of communications or detection electronics known to God and man, and teaching the subject for ten years was less than nothing.

To say the least, it was a bitter blow. We have suffered every hit on the economy because Randy couldn't find positions better than repairing ATMs or building fans in a factory. Every year, as his hair turns whiter, the jobs he can find become more and more menial. We're hoping at least this company can learn to appreciate him.

This is the Marketing Coordinator of Changeling Press and part-time participant in Phoenix Rising Promotions with a small rant.

As you can well imagine, I post a lot of excerpts for other authors. One of my main problems I face on a continual basis is that of buy links. An author will willingly send me an excerpt, but other than the title, I’ll have little to go on. In some cases, I may know the publisher, such as when I work specifically for Changeling Press.

However, even then an excerpt without a buy link included means extra work for me going to find the work, getting the buy link and then including it in the post. How likely am I to work that hard if I have other excerpts that do include the buy link? I’m human, and I don’t want to work any harder than I have to.

This also applies to the readers. If the buy link goes directly to the book and link to purchase said book, are they more likely to buy? You betcha! The readers are even less likely than I am to go searching for that book if they have to click more than a few times with the mouse. The author does him/her-self a favor by making it easy for the reader to buy.

While this is not true with my present publishers, I have worked for a publisher with a very un-user-friendly website. It was difficult to find the author, much less the books unless they were a current release. If the reader wants to explore the author’s backlist, the buy link must provide that information, especially if the book is part of a series.

Make it easy to sell your books. Make it a habit to include the buy link EVERY TIME YOU CREATE AN EXCERPT. Make it a hyperlink to ensure your readers have to do little more than click the link.

Don’t waste the reader’s time –or mine—or they won’t waste time on you.