I'm as excited as the next guy or gal about the possibilities of e-publishing, but I have to admit a new fear: e-book theft.
This is not your run-of-the-mill piracy. That I can handle. There are two major camps on this older issue: 1) Anger over lost revenue because people are sharing your book and not paying you for it; 2) Excitement because it means your book is being read by more people. More people = more fans, and thus more readers and potential buyers for future products.
Yeah, I'm more in camp 2 on this point, and I think it's just an inevitable part of the business.
But I'm talking about something else here entirely, and it scares the heebie-jeebies (sp?) out of me. E-book theft is when someone takes your digital book and reposts it online under their name. In other words, they've stolen your book and selling it as their own.
And it's on the rise. Dave Farland in his Daily Kick yesterday talked about one 'author' who had stolen 350 titles and reposted them as his own e-book.
That's so outrageous it makes me more than angry. It makes me highly anxious over what may happen to the budding industry, to new authors with little clout to go after such thieves, especially in lawless lands like China where US copyright law has no power. Remember when the unauthorized Harry Potter book 7 came out before the official release date? The one with Gandalf in it?
Just in case you think I'm overreacting, read this article on "Spam Clogging Amazon's Kindle Self-publishing."
Scary because we might lose control over our own product, our own revenue, and even our own names.
It's also scary because it will impact how Amazon handles self-pubs. It will impact other sales vehicles, like Smashwords and B&N. And it will eventually, but quickly, impact how we as e-authors want to market and sell our books.
Suddenly I'm wondering if the big publishers won't find their own niche in this new world faster than we thought. If they can find a way to fight this kind of piracy successfully, they will have given themselves an edge they so desperately need.
We'll have to stand fast and find a way to beat these new nemeses.
As for me, I'm still working on option 3--the one I told you about a few posts ago. Don't worry, I'll reveal those plans soon!
4 comments:
Very interesting. Fast changing world and expanded opportunity always seems to create opportunity for crooks too. I often think that if crooks just put the same amount of energy into actually working at something as they do at working at crime, they could make just as much money....
I'm not too concerned about this. When you publish anything to Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, etc you have to confirm that you own the copyright to what you are producing. Someone who steals your work and publishes it under the name is breaking the law, and you have legal recourse in that case. And since this type of thing directly hurts Amazon, they will work (and already are working, according to the article) on developing algorithms that will detect and pull out work that has been stolen.
One possibility I've seen elsewhere is that Amazon will require self-publishers to pay a small fee (around $10) to use their service. This is much more likely, and for an honest writer who is producing quality work that people want to read, it shouldn't be a problem.
@Melissa: You hit that nail right on the head.
@Joe: I hope Amazon can make that work, but I suspect crooks will get around it, especially if they can buy the book for $0.99 an then rip the file and put it up elsewhere.
I'm glad you are not concerned--a little balance is a good thing. Still, I think it's something we should pay attention to.
I didn't really know that kind of pirating/plagiarism was going on. Disturbing. It's unfortunate too, because while there is very harsh legal action that you can take against the offender, you can only do that if you a)find them (and if they have a different title/cover etc, it might not happen too quickly. And b)have the money to hire a lawyer.
As it is most authors will probably just resort to contacting the site that is making the book available and report the issue. But that doesn't really do enough to punish the offender.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
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