Sunday, October 19, 2008

Book Piracy

I've finally got to putting this post up. I know a few people have been waiting to see my thoughts on it. So here it is: I've seen that my books have finally made it into the file sharing craziness. I don't know where else they are but I know they're on www.scribd.com . My view is this...I'm fine with it. I think online file sharing is a bigger problem for the music and movie industry and that's for them to figure out. I think with books most people still want to read the actual book or have it in their hand via the kindle or sony reader. I take a different view than most other authors in that I don't think I lose any sales if my books are distributed online. If someone downloads my book, and they like it, I'd hope that they'd decide to buy it. If they don't like it, then they don't lose any money buying something they didn't like. I've seen and heard some authors say they're losing thousands of dollars to book piracy. I think that's crazy. If someone is gonna download your book and not pay for it then guess what? They weren't gonna pay for it anyway so you weren't gonna get the sales. If someone downloads my book and likes it but doesn't wanna pay for it, chances are they were never gonna buy it to begin with. And if thats the case then it just makes me a bigger name and will still help my sales in the long run. It's a controversial topic and there's no right or wrong view but that's my take on the subject.