Authors and Bloggers Against Piracy Blog Tour

You know, you hear about authors having their books stolen all the time, and you pray it never happens to you. Yesterday, the latest website to��illegally distribute books from hard working authors was exposed. The community rose up and has done a lot to have those books removed. Of course, the sad fact remains that that won’t be the last website to provide illegal downloads of books.

Tricia pointed out to me that simply holding copyright doesn’t mean as much as it should. Anyone can still come in and take your hard work simply because they want to. If you don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to fight the person that stole your work, you are out of luck. She also made an excellent point. People think that because we are published, we are all like J.K. Rowling, rolling around in money and on the cusp of a movie deal. They think that we have countless agents and a huge fat cat publisher backing us. So they aren’t really taking money out of our pockets. They’re taking money out of the hands of corporate fat cats… How wrong they are.

So that got me thinking. How can we as a community educate our readers and the general public as well as keep people from downloading our books illegally? The answer was quite simple; a blog tour! A week (or more, depending on how many people sign up) set aside for authors to share as many of their books as they wish for free.��Why free you ask? Well, people pirate books because they don’t want to pay for them. So, why shouldn’t we as authors control that? Why shouldn’t we offer our book(s) for free for a week��and encourage people to get our books the right way?

So this is a call to arms. We need bloggers to promote and host as few or as many days as they would like.��You will not be comp’d because this is a free tour. No money is exchanging hands. If you are willing to use your blog as a platform to speak out against book piracy, please volunteer.

We need authors to offer as few or as many books for free as they can. If you’re fortunate enough to make a living off of your writing, don’t put yourself out. One book is what we would like to see but if you want to contribute more, you are more than welcome to.��If you already have a book that is offered for free, you are welcome to contribute that.

I would also like to encourage giveaways, raffles, personalized prizes… Whatever you want to do to make this a fun event. If you sign up for the event, you are not required or expected to do anything more than put one of your books up for free for a day.

This tour isn’t going to be about putting one out or in an awkward position. It’s just a way for authors to take back control of how and when their books are free. It is a way to discourage book piracy.

We also need a logo, so if you’re a graphic artist and are willing to donate a logo, that would be awesome! Depending on the turn out, we’ll do a vote to determine the official logo. If this is successful, I’d love for it to be an annual thing.

I will share more information as it comes in.

Thank you for your time. If you are interested, please request to join our group on Facebook