I get so upset about piracy. Book piracy in particular, but it bothers me to see friends and family with pirated movies as well. They don’t seem to realize it’s not only illegal, it’s stealing–that it will slow down the production of books and movies.
It hurts so many people on so many levels.
But I’m finding most don’t care. It’s so depressing. Ebay alone is full of people selling copies of books. That is money out of every author’s pocket. It’s why so many are not getting contracts renewed, why so many new authors are having trouble breaking in. People live under the delusion that authors make the big bucks. They don’t. In fact most have more than one job. They work long, hard hours to create and hope they can make a career–hope they’ll be able to take care of their families. And people are downloading free books over and over without a care for what that is doing to the industry.
Here is an EXCELLENT breakdown of excuses people use and exactly what this theft is doing to authors.
http://shilohwalker.com/piracy.htm