I want to talk about piracy. Not the Captain Jack Sparrow or Captain Pugwash kind, but the one that affects me as an author.
Week after week a new pirate site crops up and my books are on there. I don’t know if you’ve read me, I don’t know if you’ve downloaded any of my books from a pirate site, but each time someone does it affects my income. I’m a single parent, money matters. I’m not J.K. Rowling or E.L. James. I haven’t got some vast advance or selling millions of books a day. I do all right in a small genre, and that’s it, my entire income.
In the scheme of things you may think the odd book downloaded is unimportant. But if you bought a series of mine I could put dinner on the table. If thirty of you bought the series instead of downloading it I could pay my utility bills for the month. My problems aren’t your problems. I realise that. I’m not expecting you to pity the starving author in the garret. But each book stolen from me is that crucial.
I’ve seen many justifications for the pirate sites from people who should really know better. The one that made me laugh (cynically you understand) is that I should be grateful for the additional exposure, because people would find my books, like them and buy them. Oh, really? They wouldn’t just download another book of mine?
I don’t chase the pirates. I’ve got too much else going on to waste time playing whack-a-pirate. But I’m asking you, the readers, to think about what you’re doing every time you download a book from a piracy site. You’re not stopping me funding my yacht in the Mediterranean. You’re preventing me from paying my bills.
Thank you to each and every reader who buys my books. Thank you for taking the time to read me and for spending your hard-earned cash on me. I really appreciate it.
Much love,
Sue Brown xx
About the Author
Sue Brown is owned by her dog and two children. When she isn’t following their orders, she can be found plotting at her laptop. In fact she hides so she can plot, and has become an expert at ignoring the orders.
Sue discovered M/M erotica at the time she woke up to find two men kissing on her favorite television series. The series was boring; the kissing was not. She may be late to the party, but she’s made up for it since, writing fan fiction until she was brave enough to venture out into the world of original fiction.
Dan had been Jesse’s partner for many years, and always there for Jesse on his return from difficult assignments. However, after breaking his promise not to leave again, Jesse learns to his cost that Dan can be pushed too far. When he returns home, broken in body and spirit, Jesse finds his house empty and Dan in the arms of someone else.
To fill his life, Jesse decides to get a dog. His friends and neighbours take him to choose a puppy. What he doesn’t expect is for Norman to choose him. As Jesse takes on a new job, with Norman’s assistance, he realises that Dan isn’t far away, and he still loves him. Dan has moved on with his life. Can Jesse do the same?
Great post, Sue! One of the most heart wrenching moments for me was when I read on the comments on some pirate site (I don’t go to them anymore) when someone claimed to be a huge fan of my writing and was so thrilled to find my work there. Hello. If you’re a fan, why not support the author? Why not *buy* the book. Why not comment on my blog or subscribe to my Facebook page or newsletter? Why would a real fan go trolling the internet to find my stuff for free (because my real fans know that if they stick around long enough, they’re likely to get a happy surprise; I set aside the odd promo copy for people whose name I see over and over and over because I *love* my fans.)
Real fans don’t steal from an author’s dinner plate, because real fans have figured out that this is how we make our living. Even the authors who *can* afford the theft shouldn’t have to put up with it and I sure as heck am not grateful to the pirates or flattered by their efforts. I think there’s a special circle in Dante’s inferno reserved for the people who enable electronic thievery. Like you, I don’t have time to track them down (and honestly, you take one down and another one crops right up), I just wish the people who did it would be honest about what they are: thieves. Period. Maybe if it was a little less romantic sounding, people would realize that what they’re doing is wrong.
This really hit home for me. I *do* try and battle the pirate sites. I send takedown notices, and get Google to block torrent pages on their search engines. The sites, in return, block my IP address so I can’t ever determine if they are in compliance or if they violate my rights again. I don’t do this because I’m a mean and nasty author who doesn’t want readers to have a cheap source of books. I just don’t think asking someone to pay the less than a Starbucks Grand Latte for six months of my time and effort is asking too much. And I think it is wrong for a site to illegally profit from my works–even going so far as to sell my free stories! It is one of the reasons I’ve stopped participating in big online writing fests and I hear many authors say they will no longer do giveaways because they feel that the bulk of their contest prizes are ending up on torrents and pirate sites. That old argument about ‘free advertising’ is a joke when a pirate site is selling nine of your fifteen established works! Sometimes when I count up the lost sales from all these pirate sites and torrents, it makes me weep.
I am dependent on this income, too. The lost sales represent the pair of glasses I haven’t replaced yet (lenses alone cost $400), or the television I didn’t replace in the Great Electronics Disaster of 2012. It’s why I’ve only taken one major (i.e. week long) vacation in over a decade, why I haven’t had cable television for the last ten years, and why I’ve been forced to make some sacrificial decisions recently–the kind that break your heart.
Worse, the lost income may make me have to choose between writing and finding additional work to fill the income gaps. Is that what readers want? I guess they figure someone else will step up to fit the bill and the passing of a favorite author won’t be noticed. I only wonder how many of them stop to consider that if a pirate site will steal an author’s works–how safe do you think your identity and credit card information is with them?
I do understand that there are people in parts of the world who cannot legitimately buy my stories. Or people that would never be allowed to read them otherwise. I strongly suspect, however, this represents very few of the readers who are taking advantage of these sites.
Loved the post. Leep writing those wonderfull stories and I keep buying your books
Piracy really makes me sick. I am a reader and I love the stories you and other authors create for my enjoyment. I NEVER mind paying for a book. My husband may complain about the amount of money I spend on books, but it’s my entertainment-he likes HBO, Showtime, Netflix and my book budget is less than what he spends on TV.. I want my authors to keep writing. And for them to write, they need to get paid. Thank you for this post!
Seeing how books (ok, books and coffee) are my only real entertainment expenditure, I don’t mind at all spending money on the stories i want to read. I don’t really watch tv anymore, and i think it is like four years since i last bought any new music, so other than the occasional trip to the movies, I mostly just spend all my extra money on books. Like I always have. Just because they are electronic means that you now have the right to steal/sell things that are not yours. Granted, being a reviewer helps, since I can get my hands on some of the books I want in exchange for a review, but it is not physically possible to review all the books i want to read, so I still spend a decent amount of money on books each month. Honestly, I very rarely regret paying money for books.
As a reader I’ve used pirate sites to find out-of-print old books that I read and lost years ago – modern books should be bought or downloaded from legit sites when given away free if you can’t afford to buy them. *Has author daughter and knows the cost of pirate sites to her*