E-book Piracy

In our business we certainly hear about film piracy—but I’m guessing most of us don’t participate in it. I mean, I’m hoping you’re not trying to download films for free from nefarious websites—how will people who work in film have jobs to make more films if we steal their work, right?

I just discovered, though, that the same thing is happening in the book world. And since so many films begin as books, I think this is important to take a look at—it’s a problem that’s getting out of control.

I was at my book group and one of our members was bragging about getting all her books for free from some guy on the Internet. She tells him what book she wants and he finds it, scans it, and sends it to her. She then reads it, owns it, sends it to her sister in Mexico and other friends… And no one is compensated.

First of all, who does this? What kind of person is copying books and why—as it’s not even providing him/her a profit. I expect it’s someone who thinks words should be free or something…

But if you’re a book lover like me, you should know that this problem is plaguing the book world. E-book piracy--downloading a book for free from an illegal Internet source--is taking money from the pockets of writers--and if the writer can't earn money from his/her work, there will be no great books for us to read or make into films! It's such a problem I wanted to share some concerns with you.

It amazes me that people who would absolutely never walk into a department store and steal a tie or a blouse will gladly steal a book. Here are some thoughts on e-book piracy that might interest you from a recent Nielsen survey: 

E-book piracy currently costs U.S. publishers $315 million each year in lost sales, and the Nielsen survey revealed that people who illegally download e-books are largely ordinary consumers, students and working professionals who access e-books from a wide range of digital sources, including online auction sites and via email from friends. The study highlighted the fact that 70% of illegal downloaders have either graduated from college or have a graduate degree. The most common age-range of an e-book pirate is between 30- and 44-years-old with a yearly household income between $60,000 and $99,000.

“When it comes to book piracy, you can’t prevent what you can’t predict. This is the challenge for publishers as they grapple with preventing illegal piracy,” said Devon Weston, director, market development, Digimarc Guardian. “Our new Nielsen data makes it clear these pirates don’t fit a typical criminal profile. They access digital content from a vast universe of web pages, social platforms and file sharing portals. 

The key word in the paragraph above is "criminal"--because that's what you are if you are stealing books via the Internet.

You can legally read books for free--or almost free--by joining a library that will lend you a book for a 2 or 3-week period for your Kindle, just as if you walked into the library and checked it out the old-fashioned way. So look into that as a solution if the cost of buying a book is a problem for you--that's why libraries exist! And they pay for their books, you don't get to keep them, but you get to read them.

As a writer, I'm very concerned about this issue and with E-book piracy growing I'd encourage you to share the quote above with any interested readers so that we can hopefully warn people about committing this illegal act. 

Like any other worker in our world, writers deserve to be paid for their work. Period.

Copyright © Diane Lake

25Jun17

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com