So You Want To Be A Thriller Writer, A Discussion Group discussion
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book piracy
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You publish e-books, you get pirated. It annoys the hell out of me. I feel like the musicians of the 90's who went ape over Napster.Since most of these are overseas servers, there's not much you can do. Maybe if enough writers banded together and formed a vigilante hacking posse to attack the pirates on the digital seas and hung them from tall trees ... (Is that enough mixing of metaphors?)
There's a notice--I forget the exact wording--you can send the website that supposed to cure all and force them to remove your title from their site. I doubt it works.
I'm open to suggestion.
Scott,Inre your last line: me too. A bit of research echoed your first line, though. I guess my problem is that Google, who probably has the resources, does nothing about it. Why do they even permit those oversea servers to come up in a Google search?
As a twist on the overseas servers, I used to peruse Simon Royale's list. Many so-called reviewers there ask for the ebook file but never write a review, and many of those are from overseas. Am I being paranoid when I think there might be a correlation? I call these people AWOL reviewers. At best they want a free read and use the excuse that they won't write a review if they're going to write something negative, which reduces the effectiveness of the reviewing process. At worst, that ebook file goes right on one of those servers you mention! In any case, I've stopped perusing Simon Royale's list!
r/Steve
I don't know Simon Royale, but I agree there's probably some scammers lurking in the reviewer lists. Hard to know who's legit and who just wants a free read. (Or a free file to post on their rip-off site.)Google will tell you it's not their place to police the internet ... all they do is collect every bit and byte of data on your web activity!
Look at the 419 scams from Nigeria. The FBI has to ask permission to investigate and request--very politely--the Nigerian police to affect and arrest. When you consider the difficulty in prosecution of those scams, our little book pirates are chump change.
Hi Scott,Simon Royale's list (at a website called The Indie View) is a compendium of so-called bookbloggers who are willing to be queried for reviews BY INDIE WRITERS (not just indies, but they have to be willing to consider them). People sneak in there with bad intentions all the time. The most common sin is wanting to charge for a review, but I'd bet there are some book ferrets there passing ePubs and the like to those servers. Simon might be willing to eliminate them if they are exposed, but they'll sneak in like weeds in your vegetable patch. I've reported a few of those review sellers myself.
Book piracy as a whole is probably not chump change if it's so prevalent. I'm not sure how the music industry handles it, but I suspect that getting a huge corporation (Apple for iTunes, etc) on your side makes a huge difference. Pox on Google, I say.
BTW, there are ways to limit how much data Google collects, but they're small potatoes in the grand scheme of data collection compared to those data mining companies who collect and sell data about all internet users. That's eerie. You look at a webpage of new cars and the ad bombardment for them starts. And we complain about the NSA! At least THEY CLAIM they do it to protect us. Corporations do it out of greed.
r/Steve
There are scammers everywhere, and there are many reviews that are not legitimate. I think it's just a sign of the times. People are constantly getting over on others. I read many books for review ( Scott, I have yours very close by); I spend a long time reading and thinking. I just finished two reviews; however, I was puzzled by the lack of editing in one. There were errors---blatant errors throughout. Steven, I would be very careful with things you place online, and I am very cognizant that is how you are selling your book, too.
@ Skye: Don't think for a minute I was including you in with the masses from reviewer sites. I've seen your reviews and know you do a conscientious read and review.@ Steven: I've used the Indie View and found it worthwhile. I try to chose with care, but who knows? I might have picked a loser along with the great people willing to give their time in exchange for a chance at a good read.
Skye, If by "...how you are selling your book, too" you mean online retailers (Amazon, Smashwords, and retailers), yes, I do that--who doesn't? If you mean from my website, never. I don't even accept ads on my website!Scott, I suspect most reviewers in Simon's list are OK, but (1) when you only get 10% return from those who ask for your book, and (2) when I've found other questionable antics (charging for reviews, if only be saying "you can speed up your review by paying $X," and deciding not to review indies w/o informing Simon, one has to wonder about the potential for piracy.
I too review many books (see my reviews on my website or Bookpleasures) and generally have a lot more to say than atta-girl or atta-boy or this is crap (a summary of a large percentage of reviews on Amazon).
There's an interesting current affecting the internet and much of society now--a sense of entitlement for freebies and deals. Too many customers expect a deal that's tantamount to product devaluation and lack of respect for the creators of said product. Readers are affected by this too. And I'm afraid "services" like BookBub and retailers like Amazon all too often encourage this behavior. Pox on their houses.
r/Steve
Scott wrote: "@ Skye: Don't think for a minute I was including you in with the masses from reviewer sites. I've seen your reviews and know you do a conscientious read and review. Scott, I am so glad you replied because I felt very badly that it has taken so long. I also work seven days a week with academic high stakes tests, so my reading time is limited an the pile of books is enormous.@ Steven: I've used the Indie V..."
Steven wrote: "Skye, If by "...how you are selling your book, too" you mean online retailers (Amazon, Smashwords, and retailers), yes, I do that--who doesn't? If you mean from my website, never. I don't even acce..."Steven, I only read books in print: most are kindly gifted to me, but when I buy and I do purchase, I only buy at book stores and Barnes and Noble; I have never bought from Amazon, and I never use my cc online.
@Skye. Not to worry. Another reviewer just sent me her recap, which came from a request I submitted in February!
Skye,I respect your choices as a reader. I do have books in print but (1) they're more expensive to produce (the Big Five keep them afloat by charging almost as much for the corresponding ebook, which is absurd), and (2) I think killing trees (forests are the lungs of the planet) is probably worse for Gaia than discarded ebook readers (my Kindle is still going strong and it's really old). That's an interesting debate because stats are so scarce.
Inre (1): production costs are bringing me around to the idea that maybe traditional publishing contracts aren't so bad. Indies writers have to pay the production costs, while trad pubbers pay them for the authors. For PR and marketing, there's no difference, of course--only the coddled stallions and mares in the Big Five stables get any PR and marketing help nowadays. I have two manuscripts on my laptop that might and another in the works that might never be published because I'm so far into the red. But I'll keep working to publish more print versions! Stay tuned. :-)
FYI: libraries have no problems in accepting my print versions, but bookstores do. I have yet to find one where noses aren't turned up when I talk to them about my books. I only buy books at used book stores now!
Finally, to get back on track with this thread, I wonder why you think piracy only results from online sales. Even print books have pirated versions--they have for years. They're killing the textbook industry, for example, just like the music and software industry.
r/Steve
Steven wrote: "Skye,I respect your choices as a reader. I do have books in print but (1) they're more expensive to produce (the Big Five keep them afloat by charging almost as much for the corresponding ebook, w..."
Steve, I more than understand: I taught for 26 years in a university and when books began to go online, the students revolted; they claimed if they wanted an online course, they would have registered for one.
I prefer and only read print books because I spend so many hours grading standardized tests online and I feel the need to escape from the EMF's.
I do understand your concern: I also write and having edited research documents, essays and Ph.D. dissertations, I know that piracy exists; it's just our society, I suppose, and of course, it's unfortunate, sad and just WRONG.
Skye,You touched on another related issue. As an ex-scientist, scientific ethics are a big interest. Today at both the high school and college level, data is often manipulated to guarantee certain results; preprints, articles, and dissertations are plagiarized and pirated; course notes are reused without giving credit; "original" reports are written using paste and copy from other documents on the internet--the list goes on and on.
Some of this is driven by publish or perish (college level push to tenure, maybe even at high school level), and some is due to sheer laziness, All of it is wrong, as you say. This is one reason I have a "Notes, Acknowledgements, and Disclaimers" section in almost every book--I want to give credit where credit is due.
In my old day job, I heard a story about the MatLab CEO. He was in Beijing. A fellow walks up to him and offers him pirated copies of MatLab software. When he returned to Natick, MA, he immediately charted a course that led to long activation codes and copying limitations, DRM to the nth degree. Can't blame him, even though typing in those 128-character activation codes isn't easy. While my piracy experience, and probably every individual author's, doesn't represent the financial loss that MatLab might incur, it must be significant for big book publishers and the book world as a whole. You'd think everyone would be furious at Google for allowing this to continue.
Thanks for your comments. Good discussion.
r/Steve
I am not at all surprised by all you wrote: I saw too much in my time, and it erased all the sense of academia, and intelligentsia from my mind. I was scandalized and jaded by inside knowledge.Disappointed as well, and yet I continued on and tried to impart free thinking and a sense of risk taking in writing arts. But you are right 'on the money,' Steve, the mediocrity has taken over and will continue to thrive and do so with a sense of legitimacy and no sign of being dishonest, despite blatant and egregious plagiarism; in fact, they feel entitled.
Steven et als,If you think your book has been pirated, odds are it has not.
This is a recurring thing.
You’ve probably run across some link to some website that offers you free novels, all you have to do is register to get access to all the FREE books.
Except it’s a simple con. They’re after your email/ID info. Once they get that, you get sent to a page that, for free, provides you with a link to your Amazon buy page.
If you searched WHOIS for the URL, you would probably find the “registrant” is from China, Philippines, India.
What's your opinion on piracy? Is there anything we can do about it? Google doesn't think so, because they enable it and do nothing about it at all.
BTW, the book in question was an "old one" (2013) The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, about a secret government program designed to make sure retirees with Top Secret security info in their heads never get a chance to divulge it. There might be other books of mine that have been pirated. Wonder how I can determine that?
r/Steve