Loading ...Article: Not All Pirates Are in Somalia by Charlotte Boyett-Compo
I was asked by Rachel to explain to the readers of Bitten By Books about a huge misconception some people have about e-books and what they can and can’t do with them. This is a serious problem that every e-author faces on a daily basis and perhaps a little explanation will help you understand the situation.
Readers who enjoy the ease of being able to possess a book with the click of the mouse and have it available to them right then and there have three choices:
1. They can purchase what is called an e-book from the publisher’s website or through third-party sales such as Amazon, Sony, or dozens of other Internet distributors. That’s legal.
2. They can enter a contest where the giveaway is a download of that book directly from the author. That, too, is legal…up to a point.
3. They can download it illegally from a torrent or from a ‘friend’ who offers it to them free of charge. That is against the law.
Once you purchase an e-book, it is yours to keep but I stress the word ‘keep’. It is not like a print book that you can give away when you are done with it or sell at a garage sale. If you no longer want the e-book, you are required to erase it from your hard drive. You can not transfer it to a friend. You can not offer it as a prize in a contest. You can not re-sell it on eBay. You can not upload it to a torrent. You can not print it out, either, and attempt to sell it. Printing an e-book with the express purpose of re-sale is copyright theft. What is copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.
If you have won the book from an author in a contest you entered, the same restrictions apply. The author is not giving you his or her permission to copy, print out, or transfer the work. It is not the intent of the author that you either make money off the book or that you make it available to others to read. Just because you won it does not mean it belongs to you. Unlike print books that are actual, material goods, an e-book remains the sole property of the author and publisher. There is no inferred transfer of ownership.
Why can you not do these things? Other than being morally wrong it also against the law. Don’t believe me?
Check out and see for yourself here: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501
It is illegal to obtain an e-book without purchasing it and once purchased, an e-book may not be transferred from the purchaser’s computer or device reader to another. You can not upload up to a third party such as a torrent. You can not attempt to sell it on eBay.
Illegally downloading an e-book from a torrent or accepting it from a friend is copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property. Neither the author…who has struggled to bring that book to readers…nor the publisher…who has a monetary interest in the book…will see a single red cent from the illegal transfer of that book.
Piracy abounds in the literary world just as it does in the film and music industries. Just because you can does not mean you have the unalienable right to steal what does not belong to you. Theft is theft. If you download an illegal book, film or music, you are a thief. It is as simple as that. If you accept an illegal download of a book, film or music, you are not only abetting the thief, you have now become one.
Some people will read that statement and laugh. So what? They scoff. Authors and publishers, actors and producers, musicians and singers make more money than I do and can afford to lose a sale or two. What’s the big deal? Why should I give a rat’s patooty if they don’t get any more money? Get real! Everybody’s doing it!
The big deal is loss of revenue doesn’t always come from those who can afford it. We’re not talking about the Stephen Kings, Brad Pitts, and Madonnas of the world. We’re talking about people just like you and me. These are the same people who are struggling to pay their bills, their rent, and put food on the table just as you are. They’re not rich and the chances are very good they never will be. Chances are even better that they make less from their writing than you do at your day job. Every time you illegally download one of their books or give it to a friend, you are literally taking the money out of that author’s hand.
The average e-book author makes less than $1000 a year total on a book. Yes, there are those who make more but many of the name e-book authors make less than $10,000 a year. Believe me when I tell you that every download from every torrent or from every person giving away an e-book will average in the tens of thousands of dollars for some authors and in the hundreds of thousands for others. That isn’t chicken feed no matter how you look at it.
And it isn’t completely the loss of sales that are a problem with e-piracy.
Many e-authors who are popular with readers will find their books have been translated illegally into other languages. One of mine has been translated into nine different languages and even has different covers. Considering my publisher never translated the book into any foreign language that constitutes a copyright violation. It is plagiarism, pure and simple.
Ask any e-author out here and he or she will tell you exactly how they feel about e-pirates. Many publishers have designated a staff member to hunt down these thieves and turn over their ISPs to the authorities. New, tougher laws are being discussed to find and punish the pirates. They could lose Internet access completely as well as be slapped with hefty fines. Some…those who are repeat offenders…may face jail time.
Before you hand off that e-book you purchased from its publisher to a friend, remember that what you are doing is illegal. If you upload it to a torrent, you are a committing a crime. If you attempt to sell it, there are legal ramifications and you could lose Internet access if caught. (Since nothing ever goes away on the World Wide Web, there will be a page cached somewhere with that information. The right people know where to look. Do you really want to risk losing Internet privileges?)
Before you download an e-book in a contest, bear in mind neither the author nor the publisher is granting you permission to do with that book as you please. It, unlike a print book, does not belong to you.
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A big thank you from all of us to Charlotte for sharing this info, and making it clearer for everybody who purchases and reads e-books. I really appreciate the time you took to put this article together.
Here is another great posts about E-piracy from Anya Bast:
http://www.anyabast.com/2008/12/14/epirating/
(11 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Very well said, Charlee! And it is more than the authors. The line editor, the editors, everyone who shares in the nominal profits of an e-book lose. I hope this will make folks stop and think.
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I just had this same conversation on a number of blogs and emailing lists, and it comes down to this:
Selling copies of an ebook you purchased or won in a contest is amount to paying for a book in a bookstore, going to Kinkos, making a bunch of copies and selling it. Giving it away for free is no better–it’s still an infringement upon copyright law and it’s illegal.
Some people think that if they buy an ebook, it’s there’s to do what they want. What they don’t realize is that since it’s a file and that file can be transferred, it’s NOT the same thing as a physical object that transfers hands and you no longer have it.
Thanks for this very informative article, Charlee.
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I appreciate this article because like Charlee said, I don’t make a bunch of money off of my writing. I’m a single mom with two kids - one in college and the other one on the way to college next year. I’m not married to a wealthy spouse so I can stay home and write (though I hope to write full time someday).
I work and I work damned hard. Then I write, which is equally hard work. I make VERY little money from writing but I do it because I love it. But I still expect to receive the benefit of my work. My time, my effort, my resources (paper, computer, internet, phone, research materials, advertising and promotion, etc) all come out of my and my kids pockets. Add in the time the publishers put into the editing and covers for each book. It’s very selfish that someone else feels they are entitled to steal what so many people worked hard to produce.
It takes months to write a book, then months to produce the final product. Show me a single internet pirate that’s willing to go to work for MONTHS without getting paid.
TJ
http://www.tjmichaels.com
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Well said, Charlee. I thought they way you structured this article made the whole piracy situation easier to understand.
Jacquie
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Isn’t there some method our publishers can “restrict” the second hand downloading of an e-book? I’m only asking, I have no knowledge of this possibilty. Surely though, with all the tech. available there must be a way to stop this instead of leaving it up to the ‘moral’s’ and ethics of people like this woman on esnips
Sheila
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This would be less of an issue if publishing houses were clear that you were purchasing a non transferable licence to read a book on an electronic device. Historically print books allow you to give away, lend out, resell it is not therefore it is no surprise when people expect an ebook to grant them the same rights.
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so… that big ole notice:
Payment of the download fee for this book grants the purchaser the right to download and read this file, and to maintain private backup copies of the file for the purchaser’s personal use ONLY.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. Authors are paid on a per-purchase basis. Any use of this file beyond the rights stated above constitutes theft of the author’s earnings. File sharing is an international crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Border Patrol, Division of Cyber Crimes, in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance.
at the beginning of the ebook isn’t enough?? what more should they do???
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Hi Charlee,
Great article and so true. To put it bluntly E-book priacy is out and out theft, it is robbing an author of their livelihood.
Regards
Margaret
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A few responses rolled into one…
To add to what Charlee said, there is a fourth way to get an e-book…buy it illegally. Some pirates aren’t content with giving away e-books. They try to sell them. If the book isn’t being offered by a publisher or a verified reseller, don’t buy from them. Buying at the publisher site is always preferable, because the authors get a larger cut of royalties there than at third party sellers, and you KNOW the sale is legit.
There’s another reason that passing e-books is copyright infringement and passing paper books is not. Passing a paper book doesn’t make a copy. By the very mechanics of how an e-book is passed, you make copies to pass it.
Now…questions…
Can the publishers do anything to stop the passing e-books? NO. There is no such thing as DRM (digital rights management/secured formats) that are unbreakable. Hackers and pirates delight in being the first to break new DRM and passing the hack for it. There is no sure way to stop e-pirates, save legal repercussions to doing so.
In addition, e-piracy is NOT only the scourge of e-book authors and publishers. Thanks to OCR scanners, print books that were never released in e-formats are often scanned in, made into e-books and pirated alongside cracked secured e-books and unsecured e-books.
In answer to Areader, MOST e-books state in the front that they are not to be traded, resold, copied, etc. If the pirates are claiming NOT to see it, they are lying. And the whole idea that information wants to be free is based on public records NOT IP. Nice excuses but not fact, in any case.
For more information on e-books and the law, you can read my old article on the EPIC site at http://www.epicauthors.com/article-fallacyofebooklore.html and Rob Preece’s at http://www.epicauthors.com/article-epirates.html
Brenna
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Oh, and I HAVE to answer this one, since I saw it on another blog just this morning. Some pirates will use the excuse that they don’t have a close book store, so it should be okay for them to pirate e-books. That is probably the lamest excuse I’ve seen to date!
Even if you live in a place where you can’t order print books to be delivered to your door, which is true of some overseas readers, you can order e-books. I’ve had friends stationed (or expat) in China and the Middle East check for me. They can, in fact, access Fictionwise and several other approved e-book distribution/reseller points to purchase books from their locales.
In fact, my friend in China thanked me, because it saved him a monthly flight to Singapore to purchase English-language print books and the money to send those books home, when he was finished with them. Reading e-books on his laptop and/or PDA was the method of choice for him overseas.
So, the lack of a physical English-language bookstore selling paper books is NO excuse for stealing e-books. Buy the e-books, and you don’t have a problem.
Brenna
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I agree with Brenna. The ‘I don’t have a close bookstore at hand’ is a cop-out but one excuse is the same as another. Theft is theft and if you take something and don’t pay for it, it’s theft. All the excuses you use to justify what you’ve done are just that: excuses. Some people think they have the devine right to take whatever they want and the hell with to whomever it belongs but they will be the first to scream FOUL! when something of theirs is stolen from them.
As to what Areader asked: There is in EVERY ebook, a warning that the book is copyrighted and therefore it can not be copied, re-sold and/or transfered to another computer. IF you do not have that warning in your copy of the ebook, that means that is an ARC (an advanced reader copy) of the book that was provided to a reviewer. It also means that reviewer either uploaded the book to a peer to peer website or they gave it to someone who did. To most authors, that is a sin worse than the one where a reader buys the book THEN gives it away. Only unscrupulous ‘reviewers’ would do such a thing and that makes then a theif just like the rest of them…except only worse because the author and/or publisher had put faith in that person not to do what they ultimately did. Some ‘reviewers’ have tried to sell ARCs on eBay and have been caught. As I said: theft is theft and eventually those thieves are going to be caught, too.
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If you find names and addies, URLs to blogs and file sharing websites where pirated books are being offered, you might want to add them to a new Yahoo group and let other authors know. You might want to encourage your publisher to join so they can have access in one central spot to the list of pirates. When ISPs begin getting notices concerning the illegal activities of their customers, they will begin to deny access to the offenders. That might be one way to wake some people up and make them aware that what they are doing is unacceptable.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AuthorsAgainstE-BookTheft/join
Charlee
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Actually, Charlee… All of my ARCs have that waring in them, as well. Some publishers may not include it, figuring that reviewers should know better, but all of mine do.
Brenna
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Piracy threatens to undermine the entire book industry. Authors are choosing to write less books, have abruptly left publishing, or have stopped giving away free books as contest prizes in response to the resulting theft of their hard work.
Outstanding article, Charlee. Thank you for writing about this critical subject.
Best–Adele Dubois
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I know some authors who have received very nasty…some even threatening…letters from the pirates and their buddies. If this happens to you there IS something you can do about it.
First, do not answer these people. Starting a flame war between you and them will not serve any good purpose.
Second, print out the email…especially the header…because this will have the ISP address of the sender. Report it to that ISP. Keep your copy and a copy of the email on your hard drive. Be sure, though, to run the email through your virus scanner.
Third, report it every time you find one of your books to the website where you found it and if the person who sent you the nasty email has an account with them, send along a copy of their email to you.
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[...] A moment ago I commented that ebooks are intended only for the purchaser. This brings up an issue of prime concern to writers. It hits us in the pocketbook, hard. The Internet has spawned an underworld of ebook piracy wherein a single legally downloaded ebook is then reproduced and either sold or given away hundreds or even thousands of times. What’s the difference between that and the practice of buying a book in a bookstore and loaning it, giving it away, or taking it to a used bookstore? Basically, the original buyer of that book has the right to do whatever he or she wants with that single copy. Copyright infringement rears its head when an ebook is reproduced (which anyone can do) time and time again. Readers can get their virtual hands on copies of said book and then forward countless copies of that book to any and everyone they want who in turn can do the same thing. Lost in this potentially giant give-away is the writer who receives a royalty for the originally and legally bought book but loses out from then on. Everyone benefits except for the creator of that work and his or her publisher–and that creator’s spouse and children who are depending on royalties to pay the bills just like every other working stiff. For a more articulate take on this, please check out http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=3151 [...]
The very specific means of “passing” an e-book creates upwards of 8 copies of the book. When you get a paper book, passing it along means handing the single copy to someone else…still only one copy and no extras made…unless you are OCR scanning and paper book and pirating it as an e-book.
Brenna
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I’ve read through this thread and become angry one more time at how prevalent e-piracy is and how they seem to be able to justify what they’re doing. I’ve had book pirated and it’s a horrible feeling to know that the months of hard work I’ve spent perfecting a book is simply handed out freely by someone who thinks it’s their right.
I thought I’d do a little break down of how little an author makes on an e-book. Say the author has spent 4 months writing the book, and then another two in edits and proofing. That’s six months work on a book, okay?
This book will cost a buyer say $5.00.
Now, the author will make, at best, 50% or $2.50 off that book, per sale. Most publishers don’t pay 50%. Most pay between 35 and 40%, so the authors get less.
If you’re very lucky, the first month’s sales will be decent and you sell 50 copies. That’s $125. for the entire month, and that’s for six months of work. Some authors sell more, but some sell much less.
After the first month, those numbers drop drastically, because there’s new books out and yours will be shuffled off to the inside of the publishers website. The new books will get center stage for a month.
I don’t know many people who would work for this kind of money, do you? Even if you double those sales numbers to 100 sold in a month, which isn’t enormous, you’re still only making $250.
That’s for six months of work!
Yes, we must be insane. And to have our work stolen and given away, because we must be making so much, it’s enough to make you weep.
Jude
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Thank you, Charlotte. A very well thought out and concise explanation.
I constantly am explaining to people why ebooks are not transferable but print books are. The easiest way to rationalize it, I think, is how my Intellectual Property professor in law school laid it out.
When you buy a book, that copy is yours to do with whatever you like. You can burn it, use it as toilet paper, read it (my preference!), give it away, whatever you want. Because it is ONE copy.
With an ebook, when you send it to someone else, you’ve created a second copy, gone from ONE to TWO. Even if it’s for a moment - say, you email your best friend an ebook and then delete your copy - there are still TWO copies of the book at least for long enough to send the email.
Just you can’t photocopy a paperback and give them out, you can’t duplicate an ebook and send it out. The right to copy is mine, as the author, or my publisher’s, if the book is published, and ours alone. One to one = fine. One to two = illegal.
I’ve also heard the argument of, “well, you’re making all this money, why are you being selfish by enforcing anti-piracy laws?” For that, I agree with Jude’s comments. When you look at the number of writers in the world - be they published or otherwise - very few are multi-millionaires as a result of their books. I know some authors who are able to write full-time because they make enough money from their books to live on. I know others who are lucky if they make $50 in a quarter; that’s $200 a year. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.
It’s also about respect. If you’ve ever seen those commercials about dvd piracy at the start of movie, they’re cheesy but accurate. Would you walk into Walmart and shove a book down your pants, then walk out without paying? You wouldn’t, would you? It’s stealing!
Well so is downloading an ebook for free. It’s no different. A thief is a thief.
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A bit of food for thought to readers on the subject of intended or unintended ebook piracy: Piracy could silence a wonderful author’s voice, their as-yet-to-be-written stories lost to future readers because they could not “afford” to write for free.
I, for one, would mourn the loss.
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Whether it is in every book or not (how many people read every single page of a book?), it is not on the web page before you buy the “ebook”. Ebooks should be treated more like software rather than books. There will always be those that chose to pirate ebooks for whatever reason, however there are the ones who unknowingly pirate an ebook who wouldn’t if they realised that an ebook is like having a copy of Microsoft Office. You can put in on your computers but you can’t put it on anyone elses. Because of the history behind books, print books - I think calling it a book is somewhat misleading. It is a licence to read a book on an electronic device and should be advertised as such.
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It is said, quite accurately, that any security measures that can be devised can be defeated. We see it all the time with software and digital recordings of movies and music. We’re now seeing “digital versions” of movies being made available with released DVDs for transfer onto ipods and similar devices, as the film industry attempts to counter piracy. None of these measures will be foolproof, of course, because there will always be those with the skill and the intent to do it anyway.
The best security is going to be in social pressure and legal countermeasures. If one honestly loves an author’s work enough to WANT to share it with someone, one should also have the respect for that author to refrain from stealing money from their wallet. And one should make sure that one stands up for the author’s rights whenever the question arises. Respect is what it’s all about.
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The trouble with pirates is they have no respect or concern or care for anyone other than themselves. They are selfish, self-entitled egotists who believe whatever they want should be readily available for their use, the hell with everyone else. They don’t give a rat’s patooty whether or not an author stops writing or loses money. They’ll move on to another victim. I’ve heard them likened to leeches and…basically…that’s what they are. They feed off others. How anyone can brag about being a bottomfeeding, bloodsucking parasite is beyond me. That isn’t anything of which to BE proud…at least not to a sane person. They justify what they do because they believe it’s their gods-given right to be above the law and morality. Yet these self-centered thieves will be the first to scream bloody murder if someone steals their precious iPod or jacks their car or taps into their cable. Let’s hope one day they’ll know the sick feeling and get their comeuppance.
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Charlotte and Rachel:
THANK YOU for such a thoughtful and well-written article. I maintain Patricia Briggs’ website, and I’ve put a link to this article on her home page. This is a growing problem, and I have no idea what to do about it. Putting ever more draconian protections on legitimate e-books just inconveniences the honest readers, and I don’t know how to convince the dishonest ones to grow a conscience. . .
Thanks again!
Mike Briggs
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Thanks Mike! I am honored you found us and are referencing the article. The more the merrier. My husband is a musician, so he’s got a slightly different take on it. Now the music industry really relies on concert ticket sales and promos to actually make money. I hate to see for the publishing industry to go that way.
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Not to dilute the importance of this topic, but if so much of the pirating is translating English books into foreign languages, why don’t e-publishers branch out into translating their e-books? Perhaps a portion of those who read pirated e-books would think about purchasing a book if they knew there was an e-book available in their language? Or am I trying to look for a bright side?
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I found this article while looking for steps to take to get my works off of an illegal site. Some of you have probably already heard of.
I just found that they are ripping off every single book in my series. Not only that, but it lists how many times the books have been downloaded. As it stands now, I’ve lost over $400 dollars.
That counts, trust me. I have lost two different day jobs because of budget cuts/bad economy. And some little snot is going to rip me off?!!
I am also not married to someone rich. So I need the money. Hell, that’s a car payment they’ve cheated me out of!
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lot of piracy of ebooks here
http://www.expulsion-creations.com/forumdisplay.php?f=51
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You say, I’ve heard it elsewhere, that once you have downloaded a purchased e-book to a computer or reader, it is illegal to copy the book to another computer or reader, whether your own or someone else’s.
My problem is, computers, (and ebook readers are really just mini computers) wear our, get obsolete, and get replaced. If it is illegal to make any copy of an ebook - that means anytime I need to get a new computer or PDA, I need to repurchase my entire library.
I understand that authors need to protect themselves, but I don’t want to be accused of piracy because I don’t want to re-purchase my library every 5 years. And once I purchase a book, I want to be able to keep it, regardless of how computer technology changes.
For the time being the only ebooks I ‘own’ are through Baen’s Webscriptions, that I can read online from anywhere, without needing to download them.
Are there any exceptions in the laws for this kind of thing? Because as much as piracy is wrong, it seems like honest readers who aren’t stealing their books are being hurt by the laws more then the pirates are.
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My suggestion when purchasing an ebook is to download it to an external drive you use for safekeeping documents, programs, etc. that you wish to make sure you don’t lose if you have a crash. That way you can still read the book and if need be transfer it to another of YOUR computers. As long as you do not trade, pass on, share, or attempt to sell the book, I don’t think any author would have a problem with you transfering what you bought to another computer.
What we authors have a problem with is not the person who downloads our books as a purchase but rather with those who blatantly “STEAL” the work…either from a peer to peer sharing site or from a friend. Multiple copying of the book, giving it away, making it available to others illegally is the problem, not honest readers who have purchased the book and have no intention of swapping, sharing, or passing it on.
That’s just my opinion. I’m sure other authors will jump in with theirs.
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[...] piracy and the laws surrounding them. A few days before that, Charlotte Boyett-Compo posted one in Bitten By Books about the same subject. Over at EPIC, Rob Preece and I have articles on the [...]
Hi I generally buy books and ebooks online…after reading some of the blogs I wanted to know that if I keep a copy of the ebook on my laptop and upload it to my ebook reader like the sony reader you get…am I breaking the law…confused…???
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There are those who would say yes but as long as you keep it ‘in house’, I don’t think you’re breaking the law, Anita. You’re not sharing it with other people for them to download it to their computers or reader. You’re not uploading it to a torrent/file sharing site. You’re using it strictly for your own pleasure. I believe you are within your rights to transfer it to your reader as long as there is no swapping, loaning, giving away or selling of the novel to another party. Any other authors have a differing opinion?
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As I understand it, Fair Use still applies, which means that you are legally entitled to make and keep one (1) copy of any ebook, dvd, cd, or whatever other format intellectual property, and it’s no-one’s business. You can lend it, just like any other item, as long as you get it back. If you give it away, however, you have finally crossed the line. Most of the people who oppose piracy interpret things differently, and draw things too much in shades of black and white, which simply pushes away folks in the middle who aren’t partisans for either side of the debate.
Some of the arguments for piracy bears legitimate discussion, such as the excessive length of copyright protection, or out-of-print / out-of-business commercial content. If no-one is publishing a book written 20 years ago, and the holder of the rights is no longer operating, there is no way to simply purchase the book.
In addition, occasionally piracy may spur release of a legal edition. For years, the owners of the movie Heavy Metal did not release it, and bootlegs of the movie did a brisk business at conventions. Since the soundtrack was available in stores that whole time, I have to wonder why they failed to put the movie out as well. Until they did, it was the only bootleg I owned, and I replaced it with a much cleaner, legal copy when it finally came out, so I did them no harm. Had they published soon after it left theaters, as usual, the property would have been more profitable much sooner.
There are other issues worth considering as well, and a broader viewpoint would be helpful. You cannot stop piracy with narrowminded, zealous puritan rhetoric; all you will achieve is offending the majority of us who are in the middle of the road.
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One of my publishers now numbers each pdf copy they give me. I get 10 copies for review and prize purposes. I only give one numbered copy per review or prize and I keep track of who receives which numbered copy. If my publisher or I find a book has been pirated, my publisher will trace that particular numbered copy back to the person who received it and my publisher’s legal department will take it from there. At least that’s my understanding.
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William,
You can lend an ebook as long as you lend the device upon which the ebook is stored. If you make a copy to lend (by emailing it, for instance) you have crossed the line. Under DMCA, and author has the right to control the reproduction and distribution of her work.
If you email an ebook, you have reproduced it, and also distributed it.
Fair Use does not apply to an entire work. Fair Use applies to quoting a small portion for the purposes of critique, satire, review, reportage, or education.
You don’t have a right to anything and everything just because you want it. You are in effect saying that if something is not available for sale, you ought to have the right to steal it.
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A BIG HEARTFELT THANK YOU for this post on E-book Piracy!! It was clearly stated and thorough. And sooooo very appreciated by all of us who are authors being hurt by this practice.
Thank You!
hugs, Kari Thomas, http://www.authorkari.com
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Joe Konrath is running an experiment that might or might not be empirical, and of course it is self-serving (not intended pejoratively).
Nevertheless, it would be interesting indeed if the results of his experiment were to prove him wrong.
Check it out.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/steal-this-ebook.html
This is not a link to the book. This is a link to where he has posted the link to download his free anthology.
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