One scans a book, convert it to pdf and upload it to one of the websites. Another visits the website, downloads the ebook, reads it, likes it and shares the pdf with some friends. Nothing wrong in that, you think? This is where the problem starts as many do not realise that supporting ebook piracy is a cruel thing to do.

Pirating ebooks have been on the constant rise and is threatening the very survival of authors. Ebook piracy has become one of the biggest problems authors have to face every day. Fighting against ebook piracy will be a one-way battle if only the authors and the publications are involved without making the readers aware of its seriousness.

Those who pirate the books, the piracy websites that makes it available and finally, the huge mass of readers who download the pirated books, all need to know exactly how it affects the authors.

One of the alarming factors about ebook piracy is that people do not even feel guilty about participating in acts of piracy. They have several opinions that they consider ‘legitimate’ enough to continue indulging in ebook piracy.

Misconceptions About Ebook Piracy

Many try to justify by giving excuses for being a willing participant in the act of ebook piracy. Here are some that we have heard of.

“It doesn’t cost much to make an ebook.”

Creating an ebook doesn’t mean that they just write and upload it. Every author spends time and energy in creating an ebook. Apart from that, they pay the editors, illustrators, proofreaders, marketers, spend money to acquire royalty, to name a few. Hence it isn’t fair to just let all hard work and money spent to go waste by pirating a book.

“I wouldn’t have known about the author, if not for the ebook I downloaded.”

This is just a defensive answer people look for when they are questioned about supporting ebook piracy. If someone wants to really know the author’s works and give them the appreciation, the only way to do that is to buy their books from trusted resources, instead of resorting to downloading books from random piracy websites.

“I am poor.”

You may be poor but that does not give anyone the right to rob the authors of their book sales and make the author poor.  Do you know that more than 95% of the authors are not making even $10,000 from their book sales every year? This is mainly because of people downloading and using their books but never in return giving them anything back.

If you are poor, you can use a library or loan a book, but do not support piracy which actually reduces the monetary benefit of the authors.

You desperately want to read a book but can’t afford it? Piracy isn’t the option to go for. Here are a few ways by which you can read books of your favourite authors without denting the book sales with piracy.

• You can directly contact the author and ask for an ebook in exchange for an honest review. Many authors give books for free directly from Amazon to a lot of fans for a review. But please do not forget to write a glowing honest review after you have read the book. If you have already written an honest review of a previous work of the author, you can use that to create a trust factor to read the next book for free.
• If you are a member at AllAuthor, you can request free copies of authors’ in exchange for honest reviews by clicking on the button, ‘Join Author’s Review Club’.
• You can join the ARC’s Club for authors, in which you can get an advance copy of the book for free before it’s release to write an honest review on the day of the book’s release.
• You can join the author’s newsletter through which you will know when the books are available for deals or free, or if there are any giveaways like signed paperbacks.
• If you are running on a tight budget, you can join the Kindle Unlimited.  With a small monthly fee of $9.99, you can read as many books as you want.

“Books should be made free.”

This is a group of people pointing out that information should be made available for everyone and shouldn’t be put under a price tag. Some even go to the extent to say that authors with passion will never put their books for sales. This is like asking all the engineers, craftsmen and sportsmen to work for free, as they too are doing what they love! Authors may do it because of their passion but everybody needs to survive and earn money. Just because they converted their passion to their profession, one shouldn’t expect them to do their profession for free.

Hard work is just like any other kind of service that you pay to use. These authors’ hard work can only be compensated by the revenue generated from their books. If proper revenue cannot be generated, then they need to increase the cost of the book to compensate for all the money that was put into the making of the book and this starts a vicious, never-ending circle.

 

There may be many more reasons that people could justify themselves for supporting ebook piracy, but it all boils down to how much they are ready to hurt the authors, the creators of the books they enjoy, to suffer. Do realise that you are an accomplice in this ‘thieving‘ activity. Yes, it is thieving because you are stealing someone else’s hard work. Authors who used to sell thousands of copies of their books are now barely touching a thousand.

Put yourself in an author’s shoes and think about the situation when all your hard work is being made available for free, or worse, for some amount of money of which nothing ever comes back to your pocket, instead, your hard work is lining the pockets of these piracy website owners.

A form of gratitude you can show to the authors is by buying their books. It’s a form of appreciation that says that ‘your book is worth every penny I spend’. Show respect to the authors, help the authors to survive.

On this day, we, the team at AllAuthor, have made a pact that we will never support ebook piracy in any form and will try to stop any kind of ebook piracy we may across.

Take a pledge with us to fight against ebook piracy.

I am a true bibliophile and

• I will never download books from piracy websites.
• I will always buy the book from trusted resources and leave an honest review for the author.

I take my pledge with AllAuthor to fight against ebook piracy.

Let’s all join our hands in support of authors and get them the recognition and the benefits that they truly deserve. Your small contribution will go a long way in helping the authors’ community.

For authors to find the pirated version of their books available on piracy websites, please visit the page Piracy Monitoring.

If your books have ever been pirated, then find out how can take down your book – How To Remove Your Books From Piracy Websites?

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