Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn’t Think So

“Before you click that download link at a torrent site or megaupload or sendspace ask yourself one question. If I was in a bookstore, would I just drop this book in my purse and walk out of the store? Because that is exactly what you are doing when you download a book without buying it.” So says Delilah K. Stephans in a blog entitled “Think before you download”.

It’s easy to talk theoretically about crime as long as nobody puts a face on the victim. Stephans puts a face on a victim of e-piracy and it’s her own.

“My book sells for $2.99 of that I make just over a dollar on every sale. So if say 50 people download the book those 50 people have reached into my wallet and removed a $50. What if it was a hundred? A thousand? Now, ask yourself would I reach in a stranger’s pocket and take a fifty? Of course you wouldn’t. Recently a fellow author found his book on a pirate site – there were 150 downloads. That’s 150 books or in his case $300.00 that was stolen from him.”

The author asks, “Do I think you are evil if you pirate a book? Of course not.” But why not, Ms. Stephans? Last time we looked, stealing was a breach of the eighth commandment. Some may shrug off e-piracy as a misdemeanor, but there is no footnote for “Thou Shalt Not Steal” distinguishing between e-books and bank vaults.

So, we support Ms. Stephans’s admonition: “Before you click that download button – consider the money you are pulling out of the author’s wallet.”

Tags: Book Piracy, Writers
Posted in All, Copyright and Piracy | 2 Comment »

RowenaBCherry wrote on February 22, 2010 at 3:11 pm

Well done for sharing your story.

Have you also been ripped off on EBay or any of the other auction sites?

An EBay vendor told me today that EBay employees are telling would-be vendors of ebooks that it's fine to sell private collections of authors' ebooks as long as the vendor burns the collection onto a CD.

When innocent readers pay good money for CDs and emailed .pdfs from auction sites, those are real, actual, quantifiable sales that have been stolen from the authors and their agents.

ShojoBakunyu wrote on April 29, 2012 at 1:46 pm

You are correct, except for the fact that many many many people that illegally download eBooks are doing so because the people that are selling YOUR BOOK are not selling them for $2.99 each… They’re selling them for $24.99 each… They are selling eBooks, which don’t have overhead costs like utilities, property costs, payroll, shipping, manufacturing/printing, etc. that the Physical Stores do, for MORE than the same book costs AT A PHYSICAL STORE.

Why is it that I can buy a book on Amazon.com for $24.99 OR buy the same book in paper format at Barns & Noble for $12.99? And that’s for NEW books in hard cover… BN.com sells the same book for $24.99 in eBook Format that they are selling ON THE SAME SITE for $8.99 for paperback or, if I wait a month or two, for $3.99 for a paperback.

If you want people to stop stealing money from your pocket, you and your fellow authors need to stop the rape of your customers by refusing to sell eBooks at the same price scale as the physical books.

We all KNOW it is a scam when they are selling an ebook kept on a server somewhere for 4X the cost of the copy that requires:

1. Materials, Printing, Binding, & Processing.
(Employees, Utilities, Machinery, Taxes, etc.)

2. Shipment from the manufacturer to a distribution facility. (Employees, Utilities, Taxes, Machinery, Drivers, Brokers, Trucks, Trailers, Fuel.)

3. Storage at a distribution facility. (Employees, Utilities, Machinery, Taxes, etc.)

4. Shipping from Distribution Center to Stores. (Employees, Utilities, Taxes, Machinery, Drivers, Brokers, Trucks, Trailers, Fuel.)

5. Stores. (Employees, Utilities, Machinery, Taxes, etc.)

And they may not sell all their physical copies for months or YEARS so that is Inventory Costs that eBook sellers don’t need to cope with because they just keep copying the same goddamned file over and over and over again.

Talk to your publishers and distributors about lowering the cost of eBook Files and it won’t be necessary to pirate eBooks, your sales would skyrocket, and you’ll make up for all you’ve lost due to Publisher/Distributor GREED.

2 Comments - “Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn’t Think So”