What do you think about Pirates? No, I’m not talking about the swashbuckling kind Johnny Depp played, though thinking about him now is making me go all gooey inside. I’m talking about those people and websites that take authors books and give them away, with no regard to the author, the publisher, the editors and everyone else involved in creating that book. If you’re like me, it pisses you off. So here is my rant to all the pirates and everyday folk who think its okay to scoop up a book you didn’t pay for.
I will admit, sometimes its tempting to grab up a freebie. Someone suggest a site that has plenty of good stories waiting for you to download. I mean, everyone likes free stuff. You check it out, see one you really really like and think, ‘what harm could it be to take one?’
It’s not okay to walk into a book store and just take any book you like. Why not? They’re just sitting there on the bookshelves right? How hard is it to just pick it up and walk out? Hmmm…well, let’s see. It’s Illegal!People think that just because it’s on the Internet, the normal laws don’t apply. Well they are wrong. Theft is theft and eventually it will catch up to you. I tell you right now, if you steal a Nora Roberts book, or a Stephen King book, they’ll have their lawyers so far up your arse you’ll be afraid to poop. Same thing goes with every author, big or small, not to mention the publishers. You’re stealing their income. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t get a Google alert telling me one of my books has been pirated. I don’t mind giving away the odd free book as part of a contest or to promote myself, but having ten, twenty, one hundred taken from me takes away all those royalties. It pissed me off. You wouldn’t take it kindly if someone were to suddenly take away half your pay check. It’s mighty hard to pay bills when there isn’t enough income to do so.
I spend weeks, months to create a story worthy of being published. It’s my baby, my heart and soul. Those characters are as close to me as any living breathing life. I build them from scratch, chose their lovers, put them through hell and finally wrap it all up in a nice tidy bow at the end. You think that’s easy? Try it! Each page is delicately constructed into a believable story. I spend days doing research to make my story have some reality. And once the story is finally finished, I go over it several more times again and make necessary changes, correct spelling errors, go through it for grammar. And then I send it off to a publisher who I pray with all my being that they will accept it. Then if they do, it goes to editing where they go through your work sentence by sentence to make it the best book possible. And once that is done, and sometimes it takes several runs through the manuscript to make it perfect, it gets sent to a final editor and to myself for one last turn to go over it all. Then it gets published and Yah!! I have a published novel. But that’s not the end. From there the publisher and I work tirelessly to promote my book, to get it out into the cyber world. I’m proud of my work, thrilled an excited to have my work published. Then in one email my excitement comes to a halt. Someone has stolen my work and putting it on a website for anyone to take. How Dare You!
So if you think taking a free book on some site offering all the latest books is okay, think again. We have ways of stopping you. It’s not that hard with today’s technology to get a hold of every email address of someone who has taken a book for free and send the police knocking on your door. We will send out take down notices and force the viral doors closed on every pirate out there. So watch for me thief, because one of these days you may receive an email from me and trust me, you don’t want to piss me off.
0 comments:
Post a Comment