shiver me timbers

I've been pirated. I've had one of my books - The Stolen Days of John Mann - stolen (oh the irony). A website that calls itself an on-line library, has been recruiting 'editors' whose task it is to upload ebooks that will then be available to download from the site. The 'library' doesn't seem to much care where their 'editors' are sourcing their uploads from. Obviously self-published authors are an easy target for this kind of scam because we have no big publishing house behind us to threaten legal action if the uploads aren't removed.

Users subscribe to the site and pay a membership fee for access to all the 'free' content. So the website's creators are receiving payment for content that they don't own, and the authors and creators of said content get nothing, no royalties at all. 

I found out about this this morning from @BookSpotlight on Twitter. They tweeted about it as several authors had contacted them to highlight what was going on. And it seems that @BookSpotlight is doing a sterling job of bringing this situation to the attention of as many authors as possible on Twitter (and receiving a lot of abuse for their troubles), which is how I found out.

The 'library' website had a contact email address so I sent them a very polite message asking them to remove my book from their site, pointing out that I was the copyright holder of that particular title and they hadn't asked my permission to make it available for download. I've yet to receive a reply.

I'm not going to lie. I was flattered, for about 30 seconds, that my book had been included on this site. The fact that it was there meant that one of the 'editors' owned a copy of Stolen Days and had deemed it worthy of uploading. My book sits on the site in amongst some very esteemed company. But, but...that's not the point. It took a very long time for me to create all the characters, and then write the story, edit, publish, and then market my work. And I've received very little money in return for all that work. A copy of the book will sell occasionally, usually through Barnes & Noble, and I'll receive a small share of royalties, but not in anywhere near enough quantities to recompense me for all the hours I put into it. And, sometimes, I don't even mind that. Sometimes I'm just really proud that I actually wrote it, edited it, and published my own book. And I'm really chuffed when sometimes a copy does sell, knowing that someone somewhere in the world chose to part with their hard-earned cash to buy it, when they could have chosen to buy one of a million other books. And now these bastards at this 'library' website (I won't name it and give it any free publicity) have stolen it and are charging people to download it for 'free', without my permission, and I don't see a penny in return. There are some shitty people in the world.

If you come across a website like this in your travels, please don't support it. If you sign up to a site to download free books, and it seems too good to be true, well, you know what they say? Someone somewhere will have been a victim of pirates.

This Jolly Roger is courtesy of  https://www.freeimages.com