Not all pirates are sexy!

I was just getting caught up on my favorite author blogs and it made
me sad to read so many of them having problems with
piracy of their work.

Internet piracy is a growing disease, spreading
as quickly as a plague!  The end result for ebooks
is its robbing the readers from books that would
have been written and from the authors it is
taking not only income but the drive that makes
them sit down and write the stories in the first
place.
This theft affects all writers, whether they are
with smaller presses or the large ones.  Stephanie
Meyer was affected by this tragedy when a partial
copy of the 5th book in her twilight saga was posted
on line - that book was never finished, or if it was
no one ever read it.  I personally would have loved
to read the book that was written in a different
perspective than Bella's ... but now I won't get to
because someone decided it was their right to post
whatever they wanted on the internet without thinking
of the consequences.
I have several author friends that are constantly having
to put their writing on hold to issue endless requests to
have their work taken down from illegal sites.
Ebook piracy affects more than just the author, the publisher
loses revenue as well and the result of that is they publish
fewer books than they could have.
Someone recently commented to me that if your book is
being pirated than it must be a fantastic book because if
it wasn't no one would be passing it along ... this person
is still dangling from their toes from the tree in my backyard
(inside my mind at least). Whether the readers think your
book is the most amazing, riveting story ever is not the
point.  To the author that has sat there writing, plotting,
proofing, editing and working their keyboard until their wrists
hurt any piracy is an insult that you don't ever recover from.

There are sites that will help you get all your work taken down
- for a fee.  Which is wonderful that someone is out there to help,
but if you're already losing royalties while paying for promotion -
is this really the way??
We are in a time where you can post something in the window
of your own computer while sitting at home and in less than
twenty-four hours it's being read world wide - so why can't
we find a way to stop the illegal downloads of our work?
Do we need to co-ordinate one day where every single person
on all of our networking lists posts the same thing to get some
awareness going?  It could happen with enough planning.
One day on the calendar where everyone helps bring awareness
to as many as they can reach around the world ... would this
stop a small percentage?   I really don't know but I do know
that something has to be done.

Help spread the word and join the fight!

Sexy pirates....

not so sexy!