Book giveaways - the other side

BooksontheBeach – ‘Cause that’s my idea of a dream vacation

Indie authors and publishers beware! E-book giveaways, even of short duration, make you a spicy target for e-book pirates. All e-books are easy to share if you have a little technical finesse, but free ones are the target of choice of e-book pirates, because they are not interested in buying books, ever, no matter how deeply discounted. These thieves troll the Internet looking for e-book giveaways. Download they go, and within hours your book is uploaded to various sites to be distributed as freely as candy at a holiday parade. Worse, auxiliary sites act as guideposts, pointing freeloaders to e-book host sites, though the auxiliary sites don’t actually upload/download your book nor host your file (a specious practice they hide behind to stay one step ahead of copyright infringement law).

My copyrighted romantic comedy, The Lesson, was pirated within 24 hours of being released for sale. I offered it free for a short time to spur reviews. I am rethinking this practice now that I’m about to release a historic romance, Crazy Woman Creek. Call ME crazy, but I was looking forward to making a profit off my years of hard work. I offered The Lesson for just $2.99—cheaper than a skinny vanilla latte grande—so that price would not be a barrier to a sale. Amazon sells e-books for as little as .99, so this is not about saving a buck. Neither is this about the glories of the written word. It smacks more of anarchism, that all-things-should-be-free-for-everyone mentality that benefits some and penalizes others. I believe in the freedom of information and wholly support an expansive, liberal approach to the distribution of knowledge. But a book you spend years (yes years) writing and researching is a product you offer for sale in the marketplace and the rights of the creator pertaining thereto should be respected.

If you discover that your work is being offered for free at pirate Web sites, there are steps you can take to get them to pull down your file short of hiring an attorney to send a cease and desist letter. Many thanks to author Stephanie Lawton for spelling out the details in her very informative blog post:
http://stephanielawton.com/2012/06/24...

Stephanie provides a list of freeloader and pointer sites, how to use search engines to find out if your book has been uploaded to any of them, and straightforward language to use when you contact them.