A customer of mine recently informed me that he found pirated copies of my books illegally available for download on a major torrent website. I’ve run across those same links before myself, usually while searching Google for reviews of my books.
Today’s reality is, people will pirate anything and everything available digitally. And if it’s not available digitally — say, an older book available only in print or an album that was released only on vinyl — they will convert it to a digital format so that they can pirate it. That’s reality. Whether you apply no DRM (digital copy protection) at all to your product, allow whoever distributes your product (Amazon, iTunes) to apply a modicum of DRM to your product, or you implement a level of copy protection so thick and convoluted that it affects even your paying customers (Ubisoft, Sony), people will pirate your stuff.
I was heartbroken the first time I found a link to a pirated copy of my book, mostly because at the time I had just started selling electronic copies of my book for 99 cents on Amazon. I estimate that I spent 200 hours writing, editing, and producing Commodork. After ten years of sales, my “pretend” profits are approaching minimum wage, while my “true” profits are closer to breaking even… almost. (Tomorrow morning I’ll talk about pretend profits vs. true profits.)
Instead of worrying that somebody might possibly pirate your work and simply accepting the fact that they certainly will (because they certainly will), you can start to move forward. To make this simpler for me to deal with, I created a grid containing four possible scenarios. Let’s start with my two favorite groups:
PEOPLE WHO BUY MY BOOKS: Yay! You guys are the best! You are the ones that persuade me to keep writing! Whether you head about my book on one of my podcasts, someone recommended it to you, or you simply found it through Google, you took a chance on me and risked three dollars on me. Often times, these people email me and tell me that they liked the book, and sometimes these people email me and share their own similar experiences with computers. Sometimes it takes me a day or two, but I email every one of these people back. Some of these people, I’ve been emailing for years. I really try to give people their three bucks worth.
And then we have:
PEOPLE WHO ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD MY BOOKS, READ THEM, AND THEN PAY ME FOR THEM: Also, yay! You guys are just as good as the first group as far as I am concerned! You guys downloaded the book, read it, said to yourself “Hey, I enjoyed that, that was worth a few bucks!” and then PayPaled me some money. We all know there are a lot of horrible self-published (and for that matter, published) books out there. I don’t blame you for adopting the “try before you buy” model. But you guys did the right thing! You tried, and then you buyed (er, bought) the book. Thank you!
Occasionally people in the above group will say to me, “I know three dollars isn’t much,” and they’re right. Three dollars will get you 60% of a large coffee at Starbucks or half of a Taco Bell combo. It’s not about the amount, per se — it’s about the fact that you read the book, you liked the book, and you bought the book. Again, you guys keep me going.
Next up are:
PEOPLE WHO ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD MY BOOKS BUT DON’T READ THEM: Who cares? If they’re not reading books then chances are these people never will be my customers anyway. If you’ve read Commodork, you know that I spent way too many years of my youth uploading and downloading pirated Commodore 64 games. The fact is, I never would have bought 99% of those games. In the past I’ve downloaded music and movies that I’ve never watched or listened to. It’s all a waste of time, but I get it — pirated media is the currency used by torrent websites. There are people uploading and downloading my book all the time who will never read a page of it. You can’t worry about these people. If anything, I think of these people as advertisers for my products. Hopefully someone in the “try before you buy” group will download one of these torrents, actually read my book, and become a fan!
And finally:
PEOPLE WHO ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD MY BOOKS, READ THEM, AND DON’T PAY: While you can’t let things like this keep you from sleeping, I’ll admit, this was the group of people that gave me the most heartburn in the beginning. I’ve had a few people, two or three maybe over the past decade, send me emails bragging about how they downloaded pirated copies of my books and then expect me to engage them in conversation. You know how actions speak louder than words? These people are saying to me, “I stole your book and read it. I didn’t think it was worth three bucks, but I would like to talk to about how much I enjoyed it and also tell you a bunch of stories about my past and continue to converse with you.” If you’re going to steal someone’s hard work then do it, but don’t rub it in a guy’s face.
The takeaway here is that some people buy my books and then read them and some people read my books and then buy them. I love both of those groups. Thank you guys for continuing to support me. When I am writing, you are the people I am writing for. We’re all in this together!
Then we have the people who download my books but don’t read them. Eh.
Finally, we have the people who download my books, read them, don’t pay for them, and occasionally, feel the need to tell me about it. Poop on those people.
When I finally got around to producing ebooks of my books, I put a note at the end that basically says “Hey, if you downloaded this from somewhere other than where you’d pay for it, you can go to this page on my site and at least throw a few bucks toward the site’s upkeep. Or more, if you like.” This isn’t permission to just grab the thing, but more of a case of glancing over at a would-be paying reader, and saying, sorta like Peter Graves in “Airplane”, “Billy, have you ever considered the possibility of doing the right thing?” I know it’ll fall on deaf ears 95% of the time. Maybe as much as 98%. If I ever catch sight of that 1 or 2 or theoretically as much as 5%, I’ll feel vindicated.
I’ve seen my books, my DVDs, just about everything out there too. In the end, hoping someone will feel like doing the right thing is really all you can do.
Commodork was the first book I bought for my Kindle Paperwhite. I don’t remember how much I paid for it, but it wasn’t enough. I really enjoyed it. It brought back many memories of me struggling with BASIC from very limited resources. My parents wouldn’t buy a modem until years later, so I had to learn through trial and error. I wish I’d known you a little better in the 7th grade…I would’ve learned a lot from you. Since I’m from Yukon, the book mentioned several things and people that were familiar to me. In fact I kind of want the paperback for my bookshelf. It looks like you have Commodork and Invading Spaces for $35. Yes, please!
You emailed me back a couple of years ago as well
Which was fantastic.
i had the book as a xmas present from the wife i think as i was not allowed to purchase my own presents….
Sent her the amazon link (Even though we have a joint bank account lol)
And i have a nice hard copy of it.
and yes i did enjoy reading it reminded me so much of my self but more with the amiga :-0
That’s too bad about people pirating your book but I think Earl has a great idea. Put a little blurb in the back and give people a chance to PayPal you the money.
I bought Commodork as a PDF from your website for $3. I really enjoyed it and when I finished I thought, “gee, that was worth WAY more than $3 and wanted to send you some more money but there wasn’t an obvious way to do it.
I also think you should set up a Patreon page so people can contribute to your podcasts. I really enjoy YDKF and am very interested in keeping you incentivized to create more content. I think Patreon is a great way to do that.
Dr. Sparx
(Jake)