Thursday, April 22, 2010

Downloading books for free

Have you heard of this practice?
Are you tempted to go to one of these sites and acquire or "SHARE" an author's work?
If so, you are not only ROBBING an author of income she worked hard to gain, but you are putting her or him OUT OF BUSINESS.
Which means that you are also eventually going to have no books to read.
Kind of like sawing on your own wrists.
Authors work for the love of writing.
But they have to eat and pay the electricity bill, just like any one else.
In Europe, a recent class action suit resulted in a multi-Euro fine to such a company that shares files and commits the crime of copyright infringement.
We authors pray for such a case here in the States as well and soon!

12 comments:

Maria said...

Downloading a share file is no different than stealing something from a store. It amazes me that people find this practice okay. Hopefully people will get a clue, it's not that hard to get free books by entering contests and many review sites are always looking for more people to review. There is no reason to "share" a book at all. Hopefully more can be done to stop this as this does hurt us all, it's part of the reason that ebook prices rise.

Regina Carlysle said...

I have pretty much stopped giving ebooks away in contests because of this. Last year a woman here in the US was found guilty in a file-sharing deal and was fined half a million dollars. Bet she thinks twice about doing that again.

Julia Barrett said...

Yup. Short and sweet post. You nailed it.

Nina Pierce said...

I don't think people realize how discouraging it is for an author to find her new book given away on a file share site the same day it's released.

Darah Lace said...

Well said, Cerise!

Francesca Hawley said...

Great post. My novella was being requested on the site before it was even release and within days it was available. Every single download of that is money, I don't get. Money that I'd use to keep writing...to pay my bills.

Like you said, if authors become too disheartened they'll quit writing and there will be no more books for the readers who love them. Publishers will continue to jack up the prices of books (both print and electronic), too. Readers who get books this way are hurting themselves in the long run!

Francesca Hawley said...

Actually, I wrote that wrong - the publishers will have to raise prices in order to cover lost earnings - the book jobbers and booksellers will have to raise prices to get profit due to lost sales...it's a vicious circle.

Cerise DeLand said...

You know I never thought about the fact that booksellers would have to increase prices to pay for the "lost" money, but that is so true.
And that means, too, that what is left, by those who don't mind (??) writing for nothing will be really bad books. REALLLLLLLLLLLLLY bad, for the most part, because who will provide the litmus test of good lit???

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think writing isn't a 'proper' job, like being a musician (another area where there's a lot of illegal downloading and sharing). They think we should do it for fun or for free - but it would be very different if suddenly they were expected to do their jobs for nothing!

Lia Slater said...

Cerise, you're right. It's theft through and through and authors are suffering from it. I love to write and I hope I can continue to write but if sales continue to drop, what can we do? Seeing the books I worked hard to create downloadable for free is incredibly frustrating. Thanks for posting this! I hope it resonates with anyone who might think this practice is okay.

Adele Dubois said...

Cerise--Thank you for saying what needed to be said.

I stopped giving away free books a year ago due to file-sharing and pirating. No good deed goes unpunished.

Best--Adele

Lisabet Sarai said...

Cerise, your logic is impeccable. However, I'm a pessimist about piracy. I don't think that it will really be possible to stop it by legal expedients. I also doubt that most people who will download your book for free would be willing to pay for it. It's the so-called "free" aspect that motivates them.

My personal approach is to try and create relationships with as many readers as I can. When I put a "face" on the author, making it clear that piracy is not a victimless crime, I hope that will make them think twice about that free download.

Best,
Lisabet