Argh, there's Pirates among us (and not the good kind)! by Jenn McKinlay

Recently, I was enjoying lunch with an author friend and I was telling her about a Twitter thread I had recently read put up by Maggie Stiefvater. She was talking about how the rampant pirating of e-books had adversely impacted her last series. Side note: I discovered Stiefvater's books when I was a YA librarian and I am a huge fan, but her Twitter thread also interested me as a working author. You can read the entire thread here: Stiefvater on Piracy, but the abridged version is that so many illegal pdfs of her book were downloaded that the publisher slashed her print run and the extras (box set with additional story) were canceled. 

Now because it would never occur to me to pirate anything I am probably very naive, but as I told my friend the Twitter thread shocked me. She wasn't surprised. In fact, she has a relative who downloads illegal e-books all the time and happily informed my friend that she should be delighted because her latest book had been downloaded over 10,000 times from her favorite freebie site. My friend was not thrilled and when she explained to her relative that what she was doing was stealing the relative waved her off and said "But it's out there for the taking." This is when I hear my mother's voice in my head saying her tried and true, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Is there really that much of a moral disconnect happening? Apparently, yes, and judging by the chart below, I'm glad I'm not in the porn or film industry. Sheesh!

Read the full article on e-piracy here: Fairer Buchmarkt

And lest we blame those young whippersnappers who are so savvy on the Interwebs, here's some cold hard facts for you: [A recent] study highlighted the fact that 70% of illegal downloaders have either graduated from college or have a graduate degree. The most common age-range of an e-book pirate is between 30 and 44 years-old with a yearly household income between $60,000 and $99,000. The study was done by Nielsen in conjunction with Digimarc, who is trying to come up with a solution, but the bottom line is that US publishers are losing over $315 million dollars per year in revenue due to pirating. If interested, you can download the entire report here for free: Digimarc.

Why is piracy so frustrating for authors? First, pirates are stealing our income. Straight up, if 10,000 pirates jacked my checking account for $2.25 each, I would definitely begin to feel the hurt. Second, they're crushing our careers with what looks like a drop in sales. Publishers are in the book business to make money. Period. If an author's book is pirated a million times, it still reads as no sales (i.e. no money) to the publisher. Third, they're destroying an entire industry as the editors, publicists, marketers, bookstores, cover artists, warehouse workers, truck drivers, etc., all lose out on all of those stolen sales, too.

What can be done? Not much until the technology preventing piracy catches up - and I believe it will. In the meantime, if you see a site offering free downloads, report it to the publisher. Most publishers have staff dedicated to stopping piracy and they'll go after them. Unfortunately, these sites are like poisonous mushrooms and they just springing up in other damp dark places. 

So, here's my question to the Reds: Has piracy impacted you or any authors you know? Readers of e-books, have you seen any piracy sites? Do you know people who do this and think it's no big deal? 

Lastly, let's all make a pact not to download copyrighted content from sketchy places. Agreed?