I was reading the blog of a writer friend of mine, Karen Gowen, this evening. She was discussing piracy. She posted a link to a site, Torrenz, which tracks pirated downloads of a book.
Firstly, I wanted to share this site with you, and secondly write down my mixed emotions about book piracy.
When I checked how many times The Englishman had been downloaded illegally on Torrenz, the results showed thousands of hits. Looking at the comments section of Karen’s blog post, I saw that 1,000 hits could mean 10 books, which brought my pirated works down to under hundred, rather than thousands, of copies.
All the same, the fact that people out there are getting my book for nothing, left me feeling really confused.
First of all I was rather pleased that the book is still being read; the online sales have been disappointing after my week-long free promotion (I’d expected this because everyone said it would happen, but it’s still depressing). Secondly, I felt angry, mainly due to the fact it still only costs a measly £1.99…then again, my motto has always been that as long as people read my books, I’m happy.
Still…
The Englishman took me best part of two years to write, it cost me good money to have the text professionally edited and cover made by an experienced designer. It would be quite nice to at least be able to cover my costs. (Even us writers need to eat occasionally.)
End of rant.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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