Piracy

There's a subject that's talked about by a lot of authors everywhere. It keeps coming up in just about every author's group I'm a member of. We talk about it with each other and some of the discussion gets quite heated. That subject is piracy. Making unapproved copies of what we've written and giving it out, selling it, etc.

I decided to do a little experiment to find out how its done because of course I have a number of books out. One of the things you need to do is remove the digital rights management or DRM for short. It's actually not all that difficult to do. There are plug-ins that are readily available for popular e-reader software that will strip it out easily. Not a lot of thought is needed for the process and it doesn't take long.

Since I found out how easy it is to get rid of it why would I bother with even enabling it? It doesn't make much sense to me so I won't be including it on any future releases. Also if you legally got a copy having the DRM keeps you from putting the book on multiple devices. What I'm referring to is a book on your Kindle and you want to convert it for your Sony reader.

Now why wouldn't you want to pirate my books since I won't be adding any DRM to future releases? Well, for one, why would I continue to write and put out books if I'm not making anything off of them? It would seem to me that a lot of other authors will feel the same way as I do. Over time you'll actually decrease what you have available to you to read. I don't know about you but that idea doesn't sound good to me at all. So you're not just hurting an author you're hurting yourself. This does apply to music also.

Giving away a copy or two of one of my books isn't a major issue for me as long as its limited. I just don't want you making a million copies and giving them out or selling them. That is something that really would bother me. It would also cause me to never write another word.

Do you really want a free copy of an authors work? Get in touch with the author and offer to review it. Just about any author wants their book reviewed, myself included. I'll be happy to send you a copy of any of mine that you want. Just make sure when you read the book you actually write the review that you agreed to do. Make sure you also find out what goes into a decent review.

Right now, I have a shelf full of books from large publishers. In fact a picture of them is at the top of this post. I reviewed all of them except for one. I also have many books on my Kindle that are review copies. While I've reviewed many of them there are quite a few to review still. Slowly but surely I'm reducing the list over time. Since becoming an author I've had less actual time to review books. Sometimes I actually have to focus on the next book or story that I'm in the process of writing that hopefully you'll enjoy.