Book Pirating Site - authors?

julie37619 · October 2014

So I've been searching for accounts and ways to tighten up my blog security and in doing some have come across a pirating site using one of my reviews as the blurb for a pirated copy of A Shot of Sultry. Other than issuing a take-down notice for the review itself, is there anything I can do to report the pirating of the book?

taylormillgirl · October 2014

There's a way to report pirated links to Google that keeps them from appearing in search results, but I'm not sure how it's done. Reporting these assholes is like the world's most annoying game of whack-a-mole.

GilliC · October 2014

This makes my blood boil a little. There was a post in a local expat Facebook group last night, where a guy was complaining about how people were posting links to illegal PDF copies of the Norwegian language textbooks. It generated a ton of traffic overnight, and for the most part he was the one being flamed for it! I was appalled!

The gist of the (admittedly ill-framed) complaint was, "If you can afford to pay $$$ for Norwegian classes, you should pay $ for the books instead of stealing them," and "If you truly can't afford $, use some of the gobs of free language-learning resources available online."

Excuses I saw mentioned before I got too depressed with the world and had to back away:

- "This guy foundout this after he paid his books"

- "The course books are periodically updated - when there is no need for them to be. The only reason for this is to make the previous publication defunct. This denies the student the opportunity to buy the books second hand from the previous years students."

- "The game that I developed 2 years ago got pirated. and i didn't lose nothing."

- "Not everybody is working in Norway. And not all students have free language courses. And not all people working in Norway can afford courses. But some of those people still want to learn the language."
[This comment came well after multiple mentions of the free online resources.]

- Also "The ones who don't need help shouldn't take it and should buy their own stuff but they shouldn't judge and condemn the ones who don't manage."

- "If you open some of the pdf's you will see that those are 'photocopy/scanned' so nothing illegal there"
[???WTF???]

I hate days when I realize/remember that there really are people out there who truly don't believe that downloading copyrighted material is theft.

taylormillgirl · October 2014

I wish more file-sharers realized how crucial library sales are to authors. Many libraries will only order the big, buzzy titles and those requested by their patrons. As of right now, more people have illegally downloaded Alienated than the number who purchased it. And I guarantee these are some of the same folks who email me asking if there's going to be a third book in the series. They don't see the correlation at all.

SnShne322 · October 2014

taylormillgirl said:

I wish more file-sharers realized how crucial library sales are to authors. Many libraries will only order the big, buzzy titles and those requested by their patrons. As of right now, more people have illegally downloaded Alienated than the number who purchased it. And I guarantee these are some of the same folks who email me asking if there's going to be a third book in the series. They don't see the correlation at all.

Holy crap. That's awful!

julie37619 · October 2014

taylormillgirl said:

I wish more file-sharers realized how crucial library sales are to authors. Many libraries will only order the big, buzzy titles and those requested by their patrons. As of right now, more people have illegally downloaded Alienated than the number who purchased it. And I guarantee these are some of the same folks who email me asking if there's going to be a third book in the series. They don't see the correlation at all.

This makes me ragey

taylormillgirl · October 2014

It makes me ragey, too.

Someone recently told me that the numbers you see on torrents aren't a true representation of actual downloads, (something about bots), but it's still a kick to the gut. Two months before Alienated released, some a-hole uploaded the digital galley to a bunch of file sharing sites. One torrent showed over 9k downloads...and this was BEFORE the book had released! Imagine how many more have taken place in the 8 months since then.

RevJen · October 2014

Can't your publisher try to shut some of these things down?

taylormillgirl · October 2014

RevJen said:

Can't your publisher try to shut some of these things down?

I pay for a service that issues takedown notices on my behalf, but I wasn't joking when I said it's like a game of whack-a-mole. Even if the site removes the file (and that's a big "if"), someone just uploads it again a few days later. It's a never-ending cycle. The main reason I stay vigilant about searching for links is because it's an outlet for my hate.

Skeezon · October 2014

It's so frustrating. I've found my book on lots of sites including foreign sites (Russia, Phillipines, etc). All I know to do is report to my publisher who has a entire department to go after these jerks. It sometimes seems like a losing battle.

Book Pirating Site - authors?

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