Book Piracy: Unattractive Swashbuckling

IN THE NEWS: Washington couple collects cans to pay for wedding. Read more HERE.

Well, e-book pirates are real.
I know because I recently have become the victim of one.

I won't tell you what site is illegally giving away free downloads of my book, because 1)I assume most of you are law abiding citizens, and 2) if you are an ebook pirate then you already know where to go to break copyright laws so you don't need me to tell you.

Maybe I was being naive, but I never thought it would happen to me. Why would a small, no-named-sweet-romance-writing author even be on a thief's radar? I thought this kind of thing was reserved for big named authors or writers who wrote "hotter" romances whose titles these pirates would not want showing up on their credit card statements. But I was wrong. Cheap is cheap.

Did you know that according to CNN, Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Lost Symbol sold more digital copies on Amazon.com for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions? But less than 24 hours after its release, pirated digital copies of the novel were found on file-sharing sites. Within days, it had been downloaded for free more than 100,000 times.

Now I may not be losing as much money as Mr. Brown, but it doesn't make stealing from me any less wrong.

If you are an author,

1)know your copyright law and protect yourself by asking your publisher what their guidelines are if this happens to you.

2)Also, if you don't have yourself on Google alerts, do so now, so you are aware anytime your name is mentioned on the Web.

If you are a reader, please do not go to these sites. You're hurting the author, the publisher, and in the long run other readers. If you enjoy reading, then please use your local library.

Thank you.