Piracy

Mostly I can't be bothered with piracy.

My books are all over the place and I can hear you saying that I SHOULD be bothered. After all, these people are stealing from me and my family.

So, me making a sweeping statement about not caring seems a little at odds with my passionate wish for life to be fair.

But you have to understand one thing.

I have 70 or so books out there. Books like Texas, Throwaway, Sanctuary, they're all available at various points in time on torrent/download site. They have figures for amount of downloads next to them, which you only have to see on the screen shot below, that make you think, holy ****** shit... they have downloaded that many? I have had books appear on pirate sites within an hour of release... a freaking HOUR...

When people tell me I issue take-down notices. Most of them remove my books pretty damn sharpish. Some sites appear to have NO links for take-down and I spend as much time as I can trying to find a link but for ***** sake... it takes so long. Every hour that takes me away from writing, worrying about people getting my books for free, dissing me by freely sharing what I worked hard to create... that is a lost hour. Not to mention that I get so cross and upset.

You only have to look at the screen print below. Say I make £1 per copy of Jesse's Christmas (ish) that is £617 that I have lost. I know these people wouldn't have bought, I know all the theories backing up piracy... But... if I let that keep me up at night then I wouldn't write.

So, I don't think about it. In fact I genuinely try to avoid it, I don't go searching, I just deal with pirates if someone tells me. So... when I get a new book out and someone buys it then refunds it immediately. or when I have a pirated version of a book appear when only 20 have been bought, an hour after release... what do I do?

I could rail, and rant, and spend time working on it, but I am one person. I have to prioritize and after five years of this I have found my way of dealing with it. I DO care, I DON'T want to be pirated, it makes me ANGRY and UPSET and VIOLATED... so I do what I do best in my life. I compartmentalize it and shut the lid of the box I put it in so I can carry on with the more positive things in my life.

I want to write, and I don't want people to steal my work... That's all. It's not much to ask is it?