And, yes your book does get pirated

Nothing is sacred these day. After years of working hard on your book, putting in the hours, typing alone in your room, giving up hours of free time you could have spent with family and friends but instead you followed your dreams blindly. Then after years of hard work your book is finally published you discover to your horror someone on this vast planet has pirated it.

With millions of books out there, by hundreds of well known established writers and authors you asks yourself why? Why mine?

I can’t tell you why? The question that bothers me is how am I supposed to feel about it? I myself have mixed emotions. Should I look upon it as free marketing? My book is out quite a few of these sites, but going by my sales, it hasn’t made it into a bestseller. If readers are silly enough to download from these unofficial sites then they deserve to get a bad experience, or even a virus on their computer.

The trouble is you could spend a life time chasing down these sites trying to get your book removed, only to discover the next day your book cover has reappeared on four more dodgy sites. Most just use the cover, some have copied the opening chapters from Amazon sample read.

This morning while checking to see if I had any new reviews on Stone Angels, my crime novel, I discovered another pirating site has my book cover on it. Though there’s a slight problem. Instead of my novel being categorised as gothic crime, it’s listed as literary fiction. Yes, I love the idea of my first novel being listed in that category, but I take issue with the fact they haven’t done their homework