Walk the Plank!

Piracy has always been a problem in the electronic age. It’s easy and seems harmless, but it’s not. Someone gets an illegal copy of software or a movie or an ebook or an audiobook, and it’s no big deal. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Piracy disproportionately hurts small independent authors like myself more than the big names, but it hurts them as well.

As an example, consider my novel Xenophobia, which came out as an audiobook in 2014. Even with protests from me, it regularly appears as a “free” audiobook on YouTube. Trying to get it taken down is like playing whack-a-mole. And, as you can see here, it pops back up every few months.

In two months, it’s had 11,000 views! That’s great, but that’s also 11,000 sales that never happened.

Ah, but what about the sales that DID happen? That’s where the author and audio producer make their money, right?

Hmmm… about that… Over the past decade, Xenophobia has sold less than 500 copies.

For me, this is heartbreaking.

As an independent author, I struggle to get traditional publishing houses to even respond to emails, let alone pick up any of my work. When it comes to audiobooks, it’s a dead-end. Thankfully, Podium has thrown me a lifeline with some of my recent books, but most of my novels will NEVER be produced as audiobooks as they can’t pay for their production costs, let alone put bread on the table.

And the crazy thing about this is all the YouTube “fans” are hurting themselves. They’re the ones that are missing out on other audiobooks that will never be made because of how badly piracy hurts the industry.