Since ebooks went mainstream (thank you, Kindle), book authors are now finding themselves in the same awkward spot that musicians have been in for over a decade. Readers can bypass bookstores, Kindle, and everything else, and own your book without paying a dime to you or anyone else. You’re being ripped off! What do you do? How are you supposed to react when that huge project you labored over and poured your soul into and sacrificed other parts of your life for, is made available to the whole world for free?
The standard reaction of most writers is outrage and frustration. Even litigation if they can afford it (most of us can’t).
I was pretty surprised the first time one of my books started appearing on illegal “file sharing” websites. It happened very suddenly, a few months ago. I got a Google Alert (an invaluable tool — you can register so that any time a search term of your choice is indexed by Google from a new webpage, you get sent an email with a link to that page; I have an alert set for my name) in my inbox pointing to one of the many, many file sharing websites where my last novel, Nightmare, was available as a free ebook download. [Read more…]