Pirated eBooks – Writers

Pirated eBooks – Writers

There seems to be two schools of though amongst writers concerning pirated ebooks: those who think it’s a good thing or irrelevant and those who would have pirates walk the plank. I am in the latter group after discovering that one site was claiming to have given away 1,755 copies of one of my books when I have sold less than a hundred. That is just one ebook, I have fifty and that is just one pirate company and there are hundreds.

If you don’t believe that search for ‘Pirated eBooks’ on Google. They are promoting hundreds of pirates and thousands of articles telling readers where to download free copies of copyrighted books and which the best download sites are. Thank you very much, Google!

Google was a good firm when it started but they have been absolute tossers since Panda (look it up – they closed millions of small Adsense accounts so that the big ones could make more money (so they have to write fewer cheques)).

Ebook Pirates

Anyway, if you hate the ebook pirates too, what can you do about it? There are two effective approaches:

1) Google ‘pirated ebooks’ and check the sites for your books; or Google ‘mybook free pdf’ where ‘mybook’ is the title of your book, and then issue a DMCA with Google for every instance where you discover a link to pirated content. Google will ask whether you have asked the company to desist from promoting a free ebook download link to your book. Just say ‘Yes’, but don’t bother writing to them. They ask for so much evidence that you are the true author that it’s a joke. If they reply at all.

2) Join Blasty. It is still free at the time of writing. They will find pirated copies of your book and issue a DCMA to Google for you at the click (or two) of your mouse. The process can even be automated. I have been with them a few months and have issued 1,198 DCMA’s and there are 398 in the pipeline. All free. The link is below.

An important point to note about DCMA’s is that they do not force the pirate to remove the reference to your book, but they force Google to stop promoting it. However, to be honest, if your stuff is not on Google, you might as well close shop.

So, there you have it: three options: ignore the piracy, combat the problem yourself, or let Blasty do it for you.

Here is the link to Blasty

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All the best,
Owen

Podcast: Pirated eBooks – Writers