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Wednesday, November 22, 2017

PIRATED E-BOOKS!





I was dismayed to discover that the e-book edition of my book "Sunbeams from the Heart - A Collection of Twelve Romantic Short Stories" was being pirated online! 

I reported it to Amazon and they said: “I can confirm that we have not authorized these sites to loan your book and have not provided your file to them. If you have found your work available on an unauthorized website such as the sites that you referenced, we suggest contacting that website to confirm your rights and request removal of your work. If you distribute your book through other sales channels, you might contact them to inquire as to whether they have authorized the inclusion of your book on other sites. Our lending program allows a purchaser to lend a title once and does not allow the recipient to re-loan that book.” 

Amazon gave me a link to more information about Kindle book lending. None of this was of any help to me. I haven’t distributed my book through any other sales channels and I am reluctant to contact the pirated sites direct.

Fortunately, I found the following most helpful article by Derek Haines on this topic. It seems that there's really nothing any of us can do; that people who access these pirate sites can have their computer infected by viruses anyway; and on the plus side these pirates even get the word out about our books and can indirectly bring us more sales! Some sensible book buyers wouldn't dream of downloading a book from a pirate's site, but they may take note of the title and go to a respected source to buy it!


I guess I could contact the pirates and ask them to cease and desist. Apparently this sometimes works for a while, but it’s not long before they start popping up again. And then there’s the risk of getting a virus on my computer from these rogue sites.

I suppose I should just take it all as a compliment, as “Jenny Martins” posted on one of these pirate sites: “Finally I get this e-book, thanks for all these Sunbeams heart collection romantic stories I can get now!” and “Markus Jensen” wrote: “I did not think that this would work, my best friend showed me this website, and it does! I get my most wanted eBook.”

As the saying goes: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”!




2 comments:

  1. The same thing has happened to me. YYThere doesn't seem anything an individual can do, so I try not to stress about it, but I'm most certainly not flattered. No other form of theft is considered a compliment, so why should this one be?

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  2. Very true, Patsy! Sorry it's happened to you too. I did read that there are plans afoot to try and stop this, so hope it's eventually wiped out.

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