Book Pirating.
The not so good, the bad and the ugly. But you CAN do something about it.
Today I am going to talk a bit about a subject I have mostly stayed pretty quiet about. Ebook pirating. I am sure most of you know about book pirating. If you don’t let me give you a quick rundown:
Book pirating is when someone uploads a copy of an Ebook (in any or various formats) and then uploads in on the internet for people to download for free. Remember years ago when the big uproar was happening over music downloads and the artists were upset because their sales were being hurt? It’s pretty much the same thing.
What’s worse is that a lot of these sites that Ebooks are being uploaded to are sites you have to pay to be a member of. They say things like “pay this 5$ joining fee for unlimited downloads”. So basically someone else is stealing an author’s work and making money off it.
Not fair is it?
Many of you might think because I have been so quiet of this topic that I have not been effected by book pirating. It’s actually the opposite. I have been effected very much by book pirating. I think at first I didn’t want to talk or post about it because it’s an ugly topic. No one wants to hear the negative stuff… and I don’t want to tarnish my books with that kind of negativity. You know what I mean? And also I thought that if I ignored it (in social media) it might stop happening. But it hasn’t. It’s becoming a bigger issue for me.
So I am going to share my story a bit and also share some pointers and information that I have been researching on what you can do as an author (or even a blogger) to keep your written words from being stolen.
Note: A LOT of my information on Pirating Prevention is going to come from
Stephanie Lawton (Author of WANT) who has also been a victim of pirating. Her awesome and informative blog post about pirating can be found here:
http://stephanielawton.com/2012/06/24/for-writers-steps-to-deal-with-book-piracy/
Back to my story:
I have actually been having problems with pirating since Before came out. (last November 2011)
I first got wind of the PDF reviewers copy of Before being passed around without my consent. Then it started to pop up on a few pirating sites (I will list the common sites below). Then Masquerade came out…
It popped up on several sites and thankfully I have some really good and loyal fans who emailed me and told me of some places. Some of the places my fans saw it they complained and sent emails about it to the site and it was taken down before I even got there. So thank you to all the fans who helped with this.
But the battle isn’t over. A few weeks later my husband googled my name (he does that sometimes to see what will come up, lol) and another pirating site popped up…
We went to the site and Masquerade had been on the site for one week and had a total of 20,000 downloads (in that ONE week)… it was number one is its category and even beat out and episode of the Vampire Diaries titled Masquerade (saw that episode and loved it, btw, LOL)
At first I was astonished that I got so many downloads and I was number 1… but then the reality sunk in and my publisher was shocked (they sent a cease and desist letter to the site immediately).
The reality of that was that if I had gotten those 20,000 downloads legitimately in a week I would have made it to the NY Times bestseller list. And this was a site that you had to pay to be a member of… meaning those people who uploaded my book made money off it. I didn’t make anything off those 20,000 downloads.
If those had been downloads from Amazon and my book is priced at 2.99 the profits would have been a little less than 60,000$. (I wouldn’t have made that much bc my publisher and amazon take their cut but I still would have made a lot).
Since then, Charade and Between have been published and I recently found both of those books on several sites as well. It is hard to keep up with them all but we try to stay vigilant and have the stuff taken down when we find it.
Many websites say they aren’t liable because while it IS on their site it is being upload on another site and then linked to their site so it isn’t there fault… no one wants to take responsibility because they all KNOW it’s wrong.
The way I feel about pirating is that it’s such a violation that it makes me sick. Authors work really hard and they work a long time on a single book. They get paid very little and what they do get paid a lot goes into marketing materials, giveaways and the next book… I am not complaining in ANY way because we all choose to do it because we love it. I know I do but sometimes it hurts to know that someone can take your hard work and just give it away. It is so disrespectful to the author.
Anyway, that’s some of my story. Just know that I am working on fighting the pirating (my publisher does as well) I have been seeing on my books and thanks to the recent article by Stephanie Lawton I know exactly how to fight it now.
So what can you do as an author to protect yourself?
To find out if your books are being pirated simply type into Google Search (or any search engine) your name and the word epub. Or you can type in the book title and epub.
For example this is what I recently typed in:
Cambria Hebert Epub
An entire page of pirated books came up. I have also just typed my name into google and found stuff (but beware you have to sift through all the blog posts and other things written about you and your book).
Once you find a site where your book is being listed as a free download you can sift through the site and find the contact page. This is what you email them:
Note: I got this exact email from Stephanie Lawton’s website with her permission. Here is the address to her site: http://stephanielawton.com/2012/06/24/for-writers-steps-to-deal-with-book-piracy/
Email this: Attn: Copyright Agent, [list illegal file share site here]
Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c) (3) (A), this communication serves as a statement that:
- I am [your name] the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder for [book title] as listed above;
- These exclusive rights are being violated by material available upon your site at the following URL(s): [list URLs];
- I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder’s agent, or the law;
- Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;
- I may be contacted by the following methods: [email address–many request physical addresses and phone numbers, too. I am leery of this].
I hereby demand that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on your service in as expedient a fashion as possible.
Regards,
[Your name]
I just emailed this to several sites that were listing Masquerade, Between and Charade as free downloads this morning. I can tell you I received two return Emails from two sites that said they would certainly remove the links to my books from their site. So this email WILL Work.
The only thing I took out from the above email was my contact info. I didn’t add it. I did email them from my regular email so they would have a way to email me back if needed. I don’t like to hand out my info though to places like that. That decision is yours to make. J
Here are some of the most common book pirating sites. I am grabbing copying and pasting this list from Stephanie’s site because it’s a great list. ALL credit for this list goes to STEPHANIE LAWTON (http://stephanielawton.com/2012/06/24/for-writers-steps-to-deal-with-book-piracy/)
Here are some of the most common pirating sites.
- RapidShare
- MediaFire
- Mobile9
- Mobile9 (heartnett) – she seems to be especially prolific on the Mobile9 site
- Mobilism
- nzblord
- 4shared
- plrebooksdownload
- PlayerGames
- FreeBookSpot
- BuzzBox
- dpgroup
- General-Files
- FilesPart
- AccurateFiles
Thanks to Stephanie for that list. Here are some more sites that I personally know of and found my books on: (I have found my books on the above sites as well)
Aside from sending the email (definitely do that) there are a few other things you can do that I just learned about (via stephanie’s blog).
You can write a blog post, like I am doing now. Why? Well, if you embed the links to the pirating sites (like I did above) then when someone searched one of these places or an epub version of my book guess what will also pop up with those? This blog post. Maybe it will serve as a warning that someone is getting a pirated copy of my book. Or maybe someone who is thinking of putting my book up on a pirating site will see this and KNOW that I am watching and being active in getting that stuff taken down.
Also, if you write a blog post similar to this one be sure to tag the crap out of it. That way it will pop up on a google search when any of those terms are typed in.
I also learned that you can:
Contact Google and possibly WordPress’s parent company, Automattic. Both will remove illegal content and links to illegal content from their sites/searches.
- WordPress info: http://en.support.wordpress.com/content-theft-what-to-do/
- Google info: http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs
SO, all in all, you can do something about pirating. It’s illegal, it’s wrong and it makes my stomach hurt (lol) but we as authors (bloggers and even fans) aren’t powerless.
I encourage you to hop over to Stephanie’s blog to learn more about this and read her other tips to prevent pirating. Or to research it on your own.
So that’s what I have to say about pirating.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me (via the contact form on this site) or leave it in the comment section below. Have something to add? A tip, a thought or an opinion? Feel free to leave a comment. I would like to know what you all think about pirating.
Excellent article. One thing I’ve heard from a reliable source is that many times these book piracy sites give their users a nasty virus. So maybe there is some justice after all.
I found my ebook PDF uploaded by an unknown party at Superiorz.org. I contacted them for explanation. They required me to “register” before even being allowed to see anything, such as whether this party is making money from my work and sweat, and Superiorz.org emailed me shortly after: “You did not meet our membership requirements, so your account has been deleted. Sorry!”
I also contacted the US Copyright office and gave them my cert number. I kind of doubt I can do anything further about it. Pirating is so hard to stop 🙁
Nice article. Another big source (May be above 100,000) of pirated book is “Viprasys.org” and torrent sites like “Kick Ass Torrent”. From reliable source, I’ve heard that “Viprasys.org” gives special membership for money to allow downloading the pirated books hosted directly on their own server. It is very difficult to register and get access to their book hosting parts.
I wish these pirates will stop stealing our money once.
I am a somewhat-known (if not exactly household-name) author who got fed up with the piracy of my books and the SEVERE harm to my income. No amount of trying to appeal to readers’ sense of decency has worked. One of my long-running book series (running since the early 80s) recently got cancelled because piracy had harmed the sales figures…though it is more popular than ever as a pirated series. I tried explaining to my “fans” how much harm they were doing by pirating my books, and many of them had the nerve to defend themselves and say they were helping to make me “more popular” by stealing my books. (Curse you, Cory Doctorow, for your misguided and shortsighted idiocy.)
Finally, I have arrived at the only solution I could think of. I’ve banded together with a couple of writer friends to hire a very talented software designer (herself a victim of pirates!) to create virus-infected copies of our books, which we are uploading to piracy sites ourselves. Maybe it will take some harsh lessons, and the word of mouth that will follow, to teach some of these thieves a lesson. It’s too bad it has to come to this, but I have no sympathy for these thieves. They often cry “poverty” as an excuse for theft, but my books are widely available at almost any library in the country (including Overdrive ebooks) — and I actually make decent money off the library copies. It’s not poverty but laziness and contempt for the hard work of authors that drives these assholes to steal books. They simply couldn’t be bothered borrowing a copy from a library that will pay the writer, instead of a piracy site. I highly recommend that more writers seek out the services of skilled coders and fight dirty against those who would destroy the career you’ve worked so hard to create.
This method is dangerous.
Uploading viruses and spreading them is illegal and will most certainly get a damn high fine or a sentence in prison. I’ve heard of people getting decades in prison because of spreading viruses. According to US law, the maker of the virus and the person who spreads it will be prosecuted.
The DMCA is the only way to take down these books.
And one more advice : Don’t believe everything on the web.
The step should be :
1) get the url
2) download the file and verify that it really is your book
3) if it is, send a DMCA. Make sure to add a time limit. 72 hour is usually accepted.
4) If they don’t take it down, send an email to them “threatning” politely of legal action.
5) by this time, most of the more organized websites will have taken it down. The websites that still does not delete your book, don’t worry too much about it. Reason is explained below.
I’ve seen that ebook piracy websites are made up of two sorts :
1) Level-headed websites and forums with organized groups and still has some moral. Those wesites lasts for YEARS.
2) Blockhead websites that will ignore dmca and give rude answers.
Category 2 websites don’t answer dmca and only lasts a short time. The PIPCU of the london police and the ICE of the US Gov takes down these sites in a jiffy. 785 of these sites were taken down in 12 months by the ICE alone. So don’t worry too much about these sites.
Category 1 websites have nice people with nice attitude.
Try to talk to them nicely and politely. What I saw was a bunch of normal people just participating in a group activity of sharing ebooks. And surprisingly, hundreds of authors willingly sharing their own books for free. These people are polite and nice if you ask politely. They’ll never ignore DMCA requests. And if you post a plea to not share your ebooks, they’ll discuss it by themselves and sometimes, help you in deleting your ebooks.
Stopping boon piracy is nearly impossible. Authors like myself just have to move fast in taking down these books.
The community at mobilism.org is especially civilized and after a polite statement, took down all my publications in an hour or two and haven’t posted my books for quite some time.
So I am a rather big fan of your Take It Off series, which lead me to your website to see what other books of yours I could be come addicted to and buy.I came across your article and reading it made me curious to see what websites I could find. I’m not sure if you know this but their is a website called Tuebl and if you were to search your name four out of five of your “Take it Off” books are available for free download along with the first book of Death Escorts and the first two books of Heaven and Hell. Just thought I would tell you about that one as that website was listed in the groups above.
Hi! Im so glad to hear that you are a big fan of my Take It Off series! Thank you for taking the time to look for pirated copies on my behalf, I do appreciate it. I recently hired a piracy company to assist in getting all of these pirated copies of my work taken down. So far they have successfully removed almost 40 places. I will definitely be sure to look into this site and get my work taken down there as well.
Again, thank you so much for letting me know!
Hi!
I am truly hating this piracy thing. I stumbled across gallery9.com through a Google search of my pen name and found my book on there. Now, this “book” of mine that they posted was only a couple of chapters long and something I was giving out for free anyway prior to publication, so it’s not that big of a deal. But it’s still posted without my consent and I’m damn sure someone would do it with the full length book.
Gallery9 requires a membership if the members wants to have access to “mature content”. The way they put this up is solely so that they can get money from readers (I see that ebooks are most popular). Meaning the site earns money on giving away others’ hard work.
I did a quick search on you, Cambria, and I found heaps of your work! http://gallery.mobile9.com/topic/?ii=3410&ty=551&tp=cambria
Have you been in contact with gallery9 before on your own? Any idea if they work with authors and help them with their issues? The site has little contact information. They have a facebook page but it doesn’t look too promising. They ask for money on their site, that’s all “contact” I can see 😛
Such a shame. Good luck in keeping your works safe! I will definitely check out your books on Amazon 🙂
Ebook, music and movie piracy are so difficult to prevent. I noticed several of my friends books on a couple of different sites that you listed. It’s sad. Even with the digitally protected ebooks, I hear it’s easy to remove those and then distribute the books via those sites.
I must say to ‘george m’; distributing virus laden ebooks to various places WILL get you, your writer friends and software designer arrested, charged and may face prison time. It’s a federal crime to knowingly distribute computer viruses and you/your friends will get into major trouble with the FBI.
‘The primary federal statute regarding computer fraud 18 U.S.C section 1030 was amended in October, 1996 to protect computer and data integrity, confidentiality and availability.’ Under this law is what you are proposing to do…i.e., computer viruses/worms, damage to systems (intentionally and recklessly), and extortionate threats to damage computers.
I would leave vigilante justice alone, and just focus on filing DMCA takedowns of your books, and NOT commit FEDERAL crimes by knowingly distributing viruses to others. While it’s not okay to steal others work, it’s also NOT okay to intentionally distribute viruses to others.
You state “I highly recommend that more writers seek out the services of skilled coders and fight dirty against those who would destroy the career you’ve worked so hard to create.”
No, please don’t condone and recommend others distribute viruses and other illegal activities, as a way to try to ‘get back’ at people.
The DMCA is the only way to take down these books.
And one more advice : Don’t believe everything on the web.
The step should be :
1) get the url
2) download the file and verify that it really is your book
3) if it is, send a DMCA. Make sure to add a time limit. 72 hour is usually accepted.
4) If they don’t take it down, send an email to them “threatning” politely of legal action.
5) by this time, most of the more organized websites will have taken it down. The websites that still does not delete your book, don’t worry too much about it. Reason is explained below.
I’ve seen that ebook piracy websites are made up of two sorts :
1) Level-headed websites and forums with organized groups and still has some moral. Those wesites lasts for YEARS.
2) Blockhead websites that will ignore dmca and give rude answers.
Category 2 websites don’t answer dmca and only lasts a short time. The PIPCU of the london police and the ICE of the US Gov takes down these sites in a jiffy. 785 of these sites were taken down in 12 months by the ICE alone. So don’t worry too much about these sites.
Category 1 websites have nice people with nice attitude.
Try to talk to them nicely and politely. What I saw was a bunch of normal people just participating in a group activity of sharing ebooks. And surprisingly, hundreds of authors willingly sharing their own books for free. These people are polite and nice if you ask politely. They’ll never ignore DMCA requests. And if you post a plea to not share your ebooks, they’ll discuss it by themselves and sometimes, help you in deleting your ebooks.
Stopping boon piracy is nearly impossible. Authors like myself just have to move fast in taking down these books.
The community at mobilism.org is especially civilized and after a polite statement, took down all my publications in an hour or two and haven’t posted my books for quite some time.
Anyway, the trick is to learn computer savvy tricks and deploy them to your advantage.
I use auto dmca form generators and mass submission programs etc I make myself. Works quite well.