Earlier today a reader contacted me to let me know a bunch of my books were listed on a pirate site. Not just any, run-of-the-mill pirate site with viruses and shady business practices. No, I am not so lucky.
This pirate site is one that’s apparently being heavily promoted on TikTok has having, “Free books for everyone!”
Free books?
I spent seven years writing this collection of work.
Three of those titles are currently down because they are getting a new – edited – edition. There is no way for anyone to legally sell new editions of those books at the moment.
Five of those covers are the first edition covers, no longer legally available for sale anywhere.
All my books are available free by request on my website.
My writing is available for free on Patreon.
I regularly get emails asking why I haven’t written more of the Heroes and Villains series… and this is why. The sales for that series have always been slow, but the piracy rate has remained steadily high. To the point where I have more fan mail than sold copies. Including library copies.
Yeah… people email me to say they loved me book that they stole. Such fun (this is sarcastic).
Here’s the thing: PIRATED BOOKS DON’T PAY THE BILLS.
I am a fulltime writer and freelance editor. My husband works more than 40 hours a week. We have four kids. I’m disabled and have a lot of medicine I need each month. And we live paycheck to paycheck.
And before you suggest I get a better work or better education: my husband has a master’s degree, I have a bachelor’s, he is working a stable job, and I am too disabled to work any office jobs. Writing is what I do to pay the bills. I spend 30-40 hours a week writing and editing. In theory, my compensation comes from the advance my publisher pays and from royalties of the book (25-35% of the sale price depending on the publisher).
If the books don’t sell, I don’t get paid.
If the books don’t sell, the publisher doesn’t get paid.
If the books don’t sell, my agent doesn’t get paid.
If the books don’t sell, my cover artist doesn’t get hired again.
If the books don’t sell, my editor gets fired.
No one (aside from some of the larger publishers I’ve worked with) have extra cash floating around. We’re not rich. We are not rolling in money and jetting off to the Caymans. We’re working class artists.
Most of my books right now are from a small press in Australia. It’s got four authors, two editors (hey, one of them is me!), and we can’t grow our small business if people steal our work.
The original publisher for three of those titles closed because so many books were pirated they couldn’t afford to publish.
The cover artist who worked on two of those covers just ended a GoFundMe for medical expenses because she’s currently unemployed because – this will shock you – the publisher’s she worked with have closed and the authors she was hired by have quit because the books got pirated. Pirated books are stolen work. There is no difference between you stealing my book and stealing my wallet.
Let’s Break Down The Arguments
~ Libraries give away free books! ~
Libraries LEND books to patrons, but the books aren’t free. In fact, the libraries pay more than a regular reader does because library editions have a cost that factors in multiple people borrowing the book. Publishers estimate how many times a book will be borrowed from the library and set the price accordingly. With digital editions there is often a limit to how many times an ebook or audio book can be borrowed before the library needs to renew their license to distribute the book. To the author, publisher, and cover artist the library book is a sale that brings in money.
~ But I have no money! ~
AND??? I don’t have money either.
It sucks. I totally get that. Being poor sucks dead donkey balls. That’s why I give away free copies of my book from my website. That’s why I have a Patreon with free stuff to read and post short stories on Tumblr. If you don’t like there’s free ebooks on Amazon, you can read stories on AO3, or you can do what I did and WRITE YOUR OWN BOOK. Not having money is not an excuse to take money from another person who also barely scraping by.
~ Okay, but Big Name Authors have money. I can steal from them. ~
Big Name Authors get older. They have health problems. They have families. Continued sales of their backlist are their retirement fund. You’re literally stealing someone’s retirement fund.
~ Everyone needs books! Books should be free! ~
Everyone needs food and if you want it for free you need to grow it yourself. If you want free books: WRITE ONE YOURSELF.I get it. I’d love for all art to be free. But artists have bills. We need to eat. We need to pay rent. We need to buy the expensive medicine that keeps us alive. Until we live in a society where I don’t need to pay for food, I need to get paid for work I do. It’s that simple.
~Writing isn’t a real job! ~
You seriously survived 2020 without any art? Without listening to a single piece of music? Without reading a single piece of fiction? Without looking at memes, pictures, or videos of any kind? It doesn’t sound like my cuppa tea, but okay, you do you. Not stealing books shouldn’t be a problem for you since you don’t read.
For everyone else art is an integral part of their day. From the music they wake up to as their alarm to the shows they watch and the social media they consume art is everywhere. Writers are everywhere. Stories are everywhere. The world would be a bleak and depressing place without writing. Writers give you hope on days when everything else seems lost. If that’s not worth the $5 or less most ebooks sell for I don’t know what is.
~ People Who Pirate Books Wouldn’t Buy Them ~
Then they don’t need to pirate them, do they?
I personally don’t drink lattes. That doesn’t mean I go in and demand latte artists make cute designs in foam for me for free. I don’t walk into the cupcake shop and tell the owners, “I’m not going to buy a cupcake, so give me one for free.”
That’s not how businesses work. All your arguing here is that thieves ought to be allowed to have things for free because otherwise they will go through with the theft they have planned. Theft is theft. Dishonesty is dishonesty. It’s as simple as that.