# You are being pirated BIG TIME



## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

I know there have been many threads on pirating, but you might want to check this out. There is a website that is offering free downloads of pdfs: urbooklibrary.net. People tell each other about the site on forums.

There have been close to 50,000 free downloads of my books on urbooklibrary.net. I just filed a take down notice with Google. Using Google is the quickest way to get your books off any site. The link is:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?complaint_type=circumvention&pli=1&rd=1

If you Google your author name and go deep, you'll probably find your books being offered as free pdfs. I actually saw the numbers go up as people were downloading one of my books. I didn't expect to spend my Sunday this way.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Pirating doesn't bother me in the least. People who buy books are always going to buy books. People who pirate books are never going to buy books. The sheer bulk of pirating sites are actually malware sites. Pirating is going to exist no matter what. I'd rather waste my time writing.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

YodaRead said:


> Pirating doesn't bother me in the least. People who buy books are always going to buy books. People who pirate books are never going to buy books. The sheer bulk of pirating sites are actually malware sites. Pirating is going to exist no matter what. I'd rather waste my time writing.


That's how I look at it anymore. Let them get a virus. Then they'll pay more than if they'd just bought the book.


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## Michael Cargill (Sep 12, 2011)

I'm not bothered by pirating either.  I actually uploaded my books to some torrent sites some time ago and posted on their forums to say so.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

You can type in any random assortment of letters into the search bar of that site and it will return with thousands of seeders and leechers. It appears to be a phishing scam to get your info--don't create an account there.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Marian said:


> There have been close to 50,000 free downloads of my books on urbooklibrary.net.


That's extremely unlikely. People with permafree books (like me) pay good money to chum the waters with this many downloads. Much more likely is that the site, which is scummy enough to pirate, is lying about the number of downloads, and/or is not offering your book at all, but will simply put malware on people's computers.

In any case, it's SSDD; feel free to imitate Sisyphus if you like.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Sever Bronny said:


> You can type in any random assortment of letters into the search bar of that site and it will return with thousands of seeders and leechers. It appears to be a phishing scam to get your info--don't create an account there.


I didn't, thank goodness. What a learning curve this is!


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Someone's getting my books in front of people without me doing any work?

How do I sign?


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## B&amp;H (Apr 6, 2014)

David VanDyke said:


> That's extremely unlikely. People with permafree books (like me) pay good money to chum the waters with this many downloads. Much more likely is that the site, which is scummy enough to pirate, is lying about the number of downloads, and/or is not offering your book at all, but will simply put malware on people's computers.
> 
> In any case, it's SSDD; feel free to imitate Sisyphus if you like.


This, if you aren't getting 50,000 downloads of a free title on Amazon you sure as hell aren't getting it from obscure pirate sites that most people have never heard of.

Only the very technically adept bother to pirate, people pay for the convenience of pressing one button and having a book magically appear on their device.

Given their low intrinsic value and competing content, few authors should lose sleep over this issue. People pirating books are never going to pay you anything, they are the digital equivalent of shoplifters.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

I'm not big-fish enough to get pirated, but I also can't say that it would bother me too much if it happened.  A lot of movie reviews on Amazon and other websites come from people who pirated the movie.  And that's pretty much the stance I would take.  Please don't pirate my stuff, but if you do, review it on Amazon.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Le sigh. 

I'm not worried about pirates, and you'll find most every experienced author here isn't either. In the grand scheme of things, I rate worry over "pirate" sites way down in the deepest, darkest hole.

Also, SSDD! I've had to explain that so many times since my USAF days.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

David S. said:


> That used to be said about music, and movies.


It's a shame that iTunes is going out of business.


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## Nathalie Aynie (Nov 24, 2013)

Those are not real people talking on the forums. How do I know?
They talked about my book here, one year ago. It was published this year with that cover.
Not real. 

http://meditationincolorado.org/libri-1363-3206-electric_blue_butterflies/

ETA: Ohh, they're smart, the words on the page have changed, and also the dates since I looked at it yesterday. Very smart.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

ML-Larson said:


> I'm not big-fish enough to get pirated, but I also can't say that it would bother me too much if it happened. A lot of movie reviews on Amazon and other websites come from people who pirated the movie. And that's pretty much the stance I would take. Please don't pirate my stuff, but if you do, review it on Amazon.


You never know. I'm a minnow and I get pirated, but I accepted it as a downside to the business and stopped worrying about it. Otherwise, you'll spend all your writing time sending out take down notices.


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## JV (Nov 12, 2013)

I've pirated. I still pirate. I support pirating. I think the studies have shown it does more good than harm. I say let them pirate away.


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## JV (Nov 12, 2013)

David S. said:


> That used to be said about music, and movies.


It's still true for music and movies. There's no conclusive evidence that piracy has been the downfall of traditional sales of music and films. Many believe it does more good than harm, including myself (after much studying). Also, as someone that has a massive film collection (I'm talking over 1,000) and still rabidly pirates, I can say that piracy hasn't prevented me from buying, it just allows me to buy more wisely.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Also, SSDD! I've had to explain that so many times since my USAF days.


Aim high, fly higher. Semper gumby, baby.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

My next book was "pirated" before I uploaded the draft to Amazon or anywhere else. It still hasn't been released. The same thing happened with Diabolical Taste, IIRC. They must be taking the ISBN data to populate some of these websites.


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## TechnicianCerberus (Feb 14, 2015)

David S. said:


> That used to be said about music, and movies.


The big issue music labels and TV networks were having back in the day wasn't the pirating itself, it was the fact that customers could get their stuff more conveniently through piracy. Rather than changing their business model to give customers what they wanted they tried to suppress a more convenient distribution system while sticking to the old methods. Price wasn't so much the issue as the fact that music labels were churning out CDs to sell in stores while litigating against online downloads, and TV networks were suing illegal streaming sites while forcing people to buy cable and watch a show on their TV at a specific hour. It took years for the big businesses to figure it out and provide paid alternatives to the convenience pirating sites provided, in the form of places like iTunes and Hulu.

You notice after the huge deal they made out of piracy through endless lawsuits and scolding PSAs, those businesses actually adopted the superior methods thought up by pirates to increase their own profits. I'm not saying I support piracy, but it's always more worthwhile to find ways to get your product in front of paying customers rather than bitterly fighting free distribution from illegal sources.

To cite a personal example, back when Game of Thrones first came out I searched around to see if HBO had a way I could stream it from them to support them and the show. They did have a streaming service, but only if you had a paid cable subscription that included their channel. Since purchasing cable was impossible for me due to where I lived I had no way of legitimately watching the show, so I had to wait until it came out on DVD and purchase it then. Which I did. I didn't resort to piracy and I pride myself on not doing so, but I was still annoyed that HBO wasn't giving me a way to pay them for a product I wanted.

Like Yodaread and others have said, people who pay for things will pay for things, and people who pirate things will pirate things. Stopping the piracy isn't going to get you many more customers.


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

Michael Cargill said:


> I'm not bothered by pirating either. I actually uploaded my books to some torrent sites some time ago and posted on their forums to say so.


This.

I've been thinking of uploading one or a portion of one. It's a very controversial subject I know, but I do think pirating exists because there's a problem with the way the system is set up. I don't think it's all about bad people doing bad and the rest of us needing protection from them baddies.

Those who pay for books will do so those who don't won't. As an author it's a pain, yes, but I think we need to think about this and not simply react.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

TechnicianCerberus said:


> Like Yodaread and others have said, people who pay for things will pay for things, and people who pirate things will pirate things. Stopping the piracy isn't going to get you many more customers.


This is the key takeaway for the new folks, the ones we all see posting their outrage at being pirated (which we all understand, emotionally). It doesn't really affect you, and it's not actually personal. Let it go, free your mind, and write your next book.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

**********


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I do not accept VerticalScope's Terms Of Service on Kboards, and have asked for my account to be deleted, along with all of my posts.

If you are here as a result of a Google search, _*leave now*_. The owners of this site are interested only in your possible ad revenue.


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## SB James (May 21, 2014)

JRHenderson said:


> Pirating's "cool" until you try to join Select, and KDP discovers that your book isn't exclusive to Amazon 'cos those cheeky, lovable pirates are offering it for free on a dozen different websites.


Actually, my first book appeared on General's Ebooks about a week after I published it, and Amazon never sent a nastygram to me about it, even though at that time I _was_ in KDP Select. I never even thought about that until you mentioned it just now,


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Wrote an essay about this recently: http://jakekerr.com/2015/03/04/if-youre-an-author-piracy-doesnt-matter/.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

T. M. Bilderback said:


> My solution to that? I simply won't join Select!


Same.

If they can't figure out that the book is pirated and react accordingly, that's on them, not us and not even the pirates.

It'd be like if someone stole your car, ran someone over, but stayed at the scene... but the cops came, busted down the door and beat you about the head and neck because they never bothered to check and see who was driving.


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## Walter Spence (Nov 22, 2014)

Nice article, Jake.

I think the convenience argument made upstream is what insulates so many authors as regards piracy. In order to pirate a book, one has to jump through multiple hoops in order to gain access to so many of these sites, many of which appear to exist solely for the purpose of propogating malware. My daughter once downloaded a lot of movies and such, and couldn't understand why her relatively new and speedy laptop computers were slowing down to a crawl until I explained this to her. Creating the ebook reader was key, like the creation of the iPod for iTunes. Unless the book in question is priced outrageously, most folks will opt for convenience versus the time and trouble of getting a useable copy sans malware on a pirating site.

Hereabouts where I live, it's not unusual in the summertime to see small stands selling watermelons. These stands aren't staffed, they simply consist of a stack of watermelons and a locked wooden box for people to drop their money into. These places are still around, so the business model seems secure enough at the moment.


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## FictionbyAngela (Nov 8, 2014)

You're right.  I looked it up and found mine on some free download PDF sites.  Sure, I'd like to have the income from it.  But honestly, I'm kind of flattered.  At least it's being read.  

And those sites are probably crawling with malware, so I guess pirates are paying in some ways.  It's one thing that keeps me from pirating.

But honestly, this seems to only be an issue in the digital age, right?  Did pre-internet authors care much about readers letting others borrow a book they just finished?  And I'm pretty sure there are still book stores that buy and resell pre-owned books...


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

**********


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## Marc Johnson (Feb 25, 2011)

I don't know if I'm being pirated big time, but I am being pirated. I find it weird to get Google Alerts about people looking for a torrent of my books. I find it even weirder to watch them argue about how great and terrible I am.


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

Nathalie, say hello to Toulouse-Lautrec...should you
run into him.  

Merci, mon cher.


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## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

Thanks for the link ... not just that, my pirated print copies are being sold on Amazon, and it's a hassle to get Amazon to stop them.


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## AngryGames (Jul 28, 2013)

YodaRead said:


> Pirating doesn't bother me in the least. People who buy books are always going to buy books. People who pirate books are never going to buy books. The sheer bulk of pirating sites are actually malware sites. Pirating is going to exist no matter what. I'd rather waste my time writing.


Thread winner clocks in at the #2 post so I don't have to


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)




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## Nathalie Aynie (Nov 24, 2013)

Kirkee said:


> Nathalie, say hello to Toulouse-Lautrec...should you
> run into him.
> 
> Merci, mon cher.


Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi, and died in the 19th century... I doubt I will run into him... OR ARE YOU WISHING ME DEAD?


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## ilamont (Jul 14, 2012)

I rarely put books in KDP Select, so I don't have to deal with the exclusivity issue, but two things that do concern me are:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Pirate results ranking higher than the legitimate purchase/download websites (see my recent blog post for a sample of what this looks like)
[*]Pirates scraping the book and turning it into blog content
[/list]
For the first issue, it's a problem when people are searching for my books and the legitimate links are pushed down (or even off) the first page of search results. Even if only 1% of browsers have the know-how to access the torrents, it cheapens my brand when my books are so obviously available for free, and makes it harder for people to find the real versions of the ebooks.

That's not all. The pirate sites potentially exposes people to garbage pop-ups, malware, and other scams. This stuff can mess up their computers and lead to data being stolen, and further associates my brand of how-to guides with some pretty nasty stuff.

Regarding the blog issue: I occasionally repost content from my books as standalone blog posts or pages months or years after the guide is published (example: What is Google Drive?). If a pirate takes one of my guides and also reposts the same content, it may not only rank higher, it might also give my site some negative Google juice if the pirate content was posted first. That is, based on the earlier publication date, Google's algorithms may assume that the pirate created the content and I copied it from them!

I've worked out a system based on some simple templates that lets me submit a DMCA takedown request to Google in about 4 minutes. It doesn't scale to thousands of pirate sites but I use it against the sites that show up in Google Alerts and on the first page of SERPs.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

Nathalie Aynié said:


> Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi, and died in the 19th century... I doubt I will run into him... OR ARE YOU WISHING ME DEAD?


He lives on in us painters.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Richardcrasta said:


> Thanks for the link ... not just that, my pirated print copies are being sold on Amazon, and it's a hassle to get Amazon to stop them.


Trying to figure out what this means...how do you pirate print? Is there someone else doing POD for cheaper than Amazon?


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## Bluebonnet (Dec 15, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> Trying to figure out what this means...how do you pirate print? Is there someone else doing POD for cheaper than Amazon?


They get a copy of the print book and scan it.


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## TonyWrites (Oct 1, 2013)

Hmmmm... I see the point regarding piracy and lack of impact on book sales.  It is analogous as to how stores like, say, my old employer Cub Foods advocates zero theft from its stores but suffer regular losses from shoplifters who stroll in and help themselves. Despite this, the stores stay in business. (I used to help my Cub's loss prevention associate stop shoplifters, by the way.  It was an interesting experience.)  

That being said, I once demanded that an article I posted to one of my personal blogs be removed from a website it got copied and pasted to, and recently asked another blogger to remove a screenshot they took of another blog article of mine without permission.  I deeply believe in intellectual property rights and, while I acknowledge that dealing with online pirates is like playing the game "Whac-a-Mole", I still believe in speaking up whenever my intellectual property gets swiped.


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## Nathalie Aynie (Nov 24, 2013)

Caddy said:


> He lives on in us painters.


NECROCANNIBALS! HALP!


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

TonyWrites said:


> Hmmmm... I see the point regarding piracy and lack of impact on book sales. It is analogous as to how stores like, say, my old employer Cub Foods advocates zero theft from its stores but suffer regular losses from shoplifters who stroll in and help themselves. Despite this, the stores stay in business. (I used to help my Cub's loss prevention associate stop shoplifters, by the way. It was an interesting experience.)
> 
> That being said, I once demanded that an article I posted to one of my personal blogs be removed from a website it got copied and pasted to, and recently asked another blogger to remove a screenshot they took of another blog article of mine without permission. I deeply believe in intellectual property rights and, while I acknowledge that dealing with online pirates is like playing the game "Whac-a-Mole", I still believe in speaking up whenever my intellectual property gets swiped.


I guess it's all about how you want to spend your time, and more importantly, emotional energy, the latter being far more important to me personally. I issue DMCA notices when I run across things, especially when they actually affect my books in some way, but I never get spun up about them anymore. Sound like you don't either, but the OP, like many newbs, seemed terribly worried about it. I think it's important to keep it all in perspective. For me, the #1 thing is, does it affect my sales or my brand? If not, I'm devoting the minimum to it and moving on.


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## leep (Aug 25, 2011)

I'm generally take the view of "it's better to be read than not" but in case you're not, hopefully this will put your mind to rest (a little):

http://leepenney.com/general/i-am-not-a-book-pirate/

Having been accused of being a pirate, I decided to do a little digging. That is what I found.


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## delly_xo (Oct 29, 2014)

I don't know that pirating matters - also, with the comparisons to movies and music - I remember growing up and having to press two buttons on my cd/tape/radio so I could record songs on the radio and play them back when I wanted. Same thing with VHS.


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## Jennifer R P (Oct 19, 2012)

Urebooklibrary is a link aggregator to all kinds of piracy sites. Including scammy ones - I think one MAY have my book, but to find out I'd have to give them my credit card number...


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> I guess it's all about how you want to spend your time, and more importantly, emotional energy, the latter being far more important to me personally. I issue DMCA notices when I run across things, especially when they actually affect my books in some way, but I never get spun up about them anymore. Sound like you don't either, but the OP, like many newbs, seemed terribly worried about it. I think it's important to keep it all in perspective. For me, the #1 thing is, does it affect my sales or my brand? If not, I'm devoting the minimum to it and moving on.


I'm not terribly worried about it. It's going to happen. It probably wouldn't have been as bad as it was if I had checked it every few months instead of ignoring it for close to a year. Google removed all of the sites, but I'm sure there are new ones already. It will never end, but it could slow down if people get malware with their books. Meanwhile, it isn't a bad idea to check your books every month or two and fill out a simple take down notice.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Marian said:


> (fighting piracy) ...will never end, but it could slow down if people get malware with their books.


Why in the expletive deleted would anyone want to slow down people getting malware with their pirated books? Me, I want them to get all the malware that's out there. Welcome to Karmaland.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Having ignored pirating for close to two years, my mind was changed last week when I received an email from Amazon that my content was available for free on the Internet and I was in violation of the TOS (Select), and the book was held up in publishing update.

It was found EVERYWHERE but Amazon specifically gave me the site it's bots found. It had a chinese name in an email at the bottom.i found this same email on a dozen sites that had my book. I nicely asked this person to remove from all his/her pirating sites, and I was blown away when he/she did remove my books and emailed me back with one word: Removed.

Needless to say, I was a bit in a tizzy for the three days this was happening...watching my rank, freaking out. 

My stuff is still all over, but it's been removed from the one Amazon caught. I'll worry about the others if/when I have to. The book in question is coming out of Select on the 27th, two are actually. But I have 7 more that are staying in because they are shorter works and I use KU for that. 

Thus, pirating can be a problem we eventually have to deal with.  

This might be a good time for a start-up service to handle take-downs, DMCA's at a reasonable price for Indies, if anyone wants to take that on. At least then we could prove to Amazon we are 'trying' to get them removed and hope they don't freeze our books in the meanwhile.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> Why in the expletive deleted would anyone want to slow down people getting malware with their pirated books? Me, I want them to get all the malware that's out there. Welcome to Karmaland.


If they're stung, they won't do it again. People don't want anything corrupting their computers. Eventually the word will get out that many of the sites have malware. It would be great if someone would blog about it.


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## Guest (Apr 16, 2015)

1) This: Pirating doesn't bother me in the least. People who buy books are always going to buy books. People who pirate books are never going to buy books. The sheer bulk of pirating sites are actually malware sites. Pirating is going to exist no matter what. I'd rather waste my time writing.

2) Make it as easy as possible for people who want to buy your books to buy your books. Zero Friction.

If you make it too hard, as someone in this thread pointed out earlier, they'll pirate for convenience.

3) Make it hard, if/when possible, for people to steal.

However, this is a slippery slope because by focusing on people who pirate, you don't know if there will ever be any return.

It's a very common mistake to assume that everyone or 50% of or even 10% of the people who pirated your book would have bought it.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

So how did everybody enjoy the first four episodes of Game of Thrones, Season 5?


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## katetanner (Mar 8, 2015)

Marian said:


> If they're stung, they won't do it again. People don't want anything corrupting their computers. Eventually the word will get out that many of the sites have malware. It would be great if someone would blog about it.


A couple of the bigger/more popular sites have no malware and people are downloading easily. I don't worry about pirating, my books are being read and i'm still making a nice income. 
There are a mixture of people who download from these sites. I've met someone who downloads movies and books and the reason she does it, is because she has a low low budget. She used to spend quite a bit of money on books and movies when she was working full time. She said she will return to buying books and movies once she has a higher income. 
There's always lots of different reasons why people do these things.

In my opinion some authors spend too much time trying to get their books taken down from pirate sites. I understand if Amazon says you are breaking their TOS, then you want to take action but besides that I don't worry about it.


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## Jennifer R P (Oct 19, 2012)

I do warn people.

Yes, it's wrong to pirate, but some of these scams are a little different. For example, there is one circulating that offers "discount" PDFs of books. People might not realize that it is an unauthorized/pirate site...and not everyone is savvy enough to, like me, take one look and realize they're harvesting credit card numbers.

I WANT people to know pirating books is risky because then they're less likely to do it.


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## katetanner (Mar 8, 2015)

Jennifer R P said:


> I do warn people.
> 
> Yes, it's wrong to pirate, but some of these scams are a little different. For example, there is one circulating that offers "discount" PDFs of books. People might not realize that it is an unauthorized/pirate site...and not everyone is savvy enough to, like me, take one look and realize they're harvesting credit card numbers.
> 
> I WANT people to know pirating books is risky because then they're less likely to do it.


i've seen those on youtube


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## Gennita Low (Dec 13, 2012)

L.L. Akers said:


> This might be a good time for a start-up service to handle take-downs, DMCA's at a reasonable price for Indies, if anyone wants to take that on. At least then we could prove to Amazon we are 'trying' to get them removed and hope they don't freeze our books in the meanwhile.


Many of the bigger authors are using DMCAForce. It's a pretty good service.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Gennita Low said:


> Many of the bigger authors are using DMCAForce. It's a pretty good service.


Thanks, Gennita!


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## eleanorberesford (Dec 22, 2014)

Fanfiction and piracy are not equivalent.

As for malware, in my experience once stung, people will get a more IT literate family member, preferably one who has not so much as torrented a tv show in her life, to spend hours cleaning and fixing the computer...

...And then do exactly the same thing again.

Bitter? Me?


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

L.L. Akers said:


> Having ignored pirating for close to two years, my mind was changed last week when I received an email from Amazon that my content was available for free on the Internet and I was in violation of the TOS (Select), and the book was held up in publishing update.


^^This, or the day when Amazon price matches the pirated book that GP is selling, and that person selling it is not you, and then GP says you don't get any of those royalties and keeps said money, and tells you to sign a release stating all illegal copies sold are no long your property and that you won't sue them--we all had a good laugh at that  --so their customers can continue to have a "positive experience".

Pirates are thieves. I have zero tolerance for people who steal.


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## JV (Nov 12, 2013)

PeanutButterCracker said:


> Pirates are thieves. I have zero tolerance for people who steal.


No...they really aren't. Not legally speaking...not even logically speaking. Until people drop that simplistic, black and white outlook on the issue it will continue to be a 'problem' (though...it's not really a problem, since pirating has been shown to increase sales...but don't let the facts dissuade you).


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

JV said:


> No...they really aren't. Not legally speaking...not even logically speaking. Until people drop that simplistic, black and white outlook on the issue it will continue to be a 'problem' (though...it's not really a problem, since pirating has been shown to increase sales...but don't let the facts dissuade you).


I'm not even interested in having his argument. But yeah, they are. Not my problem if thieves don't realize the difference between right and wrong. I certainly do.

I have sold more than half a million books and none of that came from pirates. <--those are my facts.


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