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I've written two novels, formally published in the UK, self-published in the US. Books available on Amazon, and DRM-free on my website https://gavinchait.com ht

I've written two novels, formally published in the UK, self-published in the US. Books available on Amazon, and DRM-free on my website https://gavinchait.com https://gavinchait.com. Both novels were stolen and uploaded to ZLib within the first week of release: https://b-ok.cc/s/gavin%20chait https://b-ok.cc/s/gavin%20chait Here's how I - as author - experienced it: - Within the first week someone buys the book via Amazon using a stolen credit card; - Book is uploaded to ZLib; - I complained to Amazon, raising both the issue of the stolen work and the stolen credit card; - No response from Amazon, although they were quick to reverse the charge (I'm assuming as soon as the card is reported stolen); - I complained to ZLib using their DMCA reporting tool; - ZLib care about as much as Amazon, and my novels are still up. I made it as easy as possible to read my work on my website and pay me direct. I released it as a DRM-free epub for use on any device or platform. You can even buy anonymously. Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers. And, while this won't stop me writing, it makes it impossible to afford to write as often as I'd like. Two years after my second, I'm still trying to save up enough to afford to write my third. Thanks OP.

rekabis 6y ago
Sounds like you are employing a reactive, defensive and antagonistic approach to eBook “piracy”. Which puts you into the very position you described - at a loss, angry, and frustrated; instead of fuelling your sales and playing a direct hand in your success. Unfortunately I don’t have the article on hand, but about a year ago I ran across a description of how an author _dramatically enhanced_ his sales by leveraging eBook “piracy” in order to drive people to official channels. Yes, he actually released his eBooks for free onto the piracy sites - with a twist: he included the entire first portion (quarter or third, cannot remember) of the book, gave info on where to buy the full copies (with zero recriminations - just the facts!), and then repeated those same early chapters to plump out a fully-sized eBook. He then flooded all the file sharing networks with this copy so as to make it difficult to find legitimately complete copies. The entire first quarter or third was used to get readers heavily enough invested into his novel to _want_ to run out and buy the official copy -- he _justified_ the effort and expenditure to his readers, and they responded (mostly) positively by actually doing so! Granted, there was a lot more to it than that, but this was the basics, and it pushed a lot of people towards not just his eBooks but also his physical sales. And there are probably many other strategies out there as well that utilizes the “piracy” platforms to your benefit instead of leaving you tilting impotently at windmills.
- genghisjahn 6y ago
  Where is this description that you ran across?
- amp10 6y ago
  With all that effort there is little time to focus on actual writing, so one can imagine the quality of that work. There is a reason real authors and musicians have agents (who are actually reachable unlike the YouTube service ...). The actual profession is a full time job.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Most fiction writers aren’t living from it. A lot of others books (educational material for instance) are written by people who have a job like researcher. So, writer is a professional job for some, but they largely don’t produce most of the work out there.
  - coliveira 6y ago
    That's exactly what I thought. If you need to go through all this gimmick to sell books, when are you going to have time to write them? I much prefer to suffer the monetary loss in writing and make decent money with something else.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > The actual profession is a full time job. But the actual professional isn't 100% writing, just as being an independent software developer isn't 100% coding. Half of your time (or more!) may be spent on other aspects of the profession.
    - enitihas 6y ago
      Other aspects are communicating, researching, not a deep dive into human psychology to ensure people don't pirate your software.
  - wishinghand 6y ago
    Jeez, mocking up a book to post on torrent sites is so much effort it eats a measurable chunk of time usually reserved for writing a novel? This is like an afternoon of work, compared with the months or years of writing a book.
christiansakai 6y ago
Not a writer but I can empathize. Do you have any proposed solution in mind?
- ge96 6y ago
  Not op: Can you add some unique tracker/signature per purchase so you can tell what copy was used to upload. Probably pointless with regard to the stolen cc comment/new accounts.
- Turukawa 6y ago
  Sure :) The biggest barrier is micro-payments. If I could charge as a streaming service, but without having to go through a major platform (I don't want Spotify-for-books), then that would be perfect. I actually pitched this to GrantForTheWeb using their Web Monetization toolkit.
stanmancan 6y ago
Do you think this actually hurts sales though? I’ve always been of the impression that the vast majority of people pirating wouldn’t have bought it anyways. Yes they’re getting it for free, but at least they’re enjoying your work when they wouldn’t have otherwise.
- acomjean 6y ago
  I think it does hurt. Some wouldn't buy anyway. But the mindset has changed. If you do the right thing, you're out say $30 for a book. If you do the wrong thing, you get the book and still have your $30. Some people don't care about others, and that mindset continues. (its kinda a Tragedy of the commons where the "common" is the market place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). DRM makes it worse, not only did you do the right thing and buy the book, now its not as useful as the copy someone "didn't pay for". So pushing people toward the free and better.
- tzs 6y ago
  > Do you think this actually hurts sales though? I’ve always been of the impression that the vast majority of people pirating wouldn’t have bought it anyways. I'm not sure how applicable it is for books, because generally prices are more uniform for books than they are for software, but in the case of software I wonder if the ones who lose sales to piracy are the makers of more affordable software? Imagine a world where piracy was effectively impossible for most people, and you want to do some occasional image editing. You look at Photoshop and it is way out of your budget. But you don't actually need most features of Photoshop. You find that Pixelmator Pro can do everything you want, and at $40 you can afford it and it is a good value. So you buy Pixelmator Pro. In a world where piracy only takes a little time and effort you pirate Photoshop. In both scenarios Adobe doesn't get any of your money so we can't say that pirating Photoshop in the second scenario cost Adobe a sale. But it did cost Pixelmator Team a sale. In general, I suspect that the main effect of piracy is to change our allocation of spending within certain categories or groups of categories, without changing the total we spend in those categories.
  - Macha 6y ago
clarry 6y ago
> Folks like the OP won't support writers. > Thanks OP. Is that the most appropriate thing you can say to someone who bought a book and (somewhat expectedly) got screwed by DRM? Maybe there's a reason they won't support writers. Maybe they'll eventually write a blog post about that!
- stevenwliao 6y ago
  This someone only bought a book when they couldn't pirate it anywhere, unlike the rest of their "virtual library". They then "lent" the book to "everyone involved who really wanted to read it" and then wondered why DRM exists. Seems appropriate.
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    He doesn't claim to pirate all of his books (or any actually), and he only wished to lend it to one friend (whilst noting that lots of other people were interested in the book as well). There is also no need to put 'lend' in quotes; it is perfectly legal to lend someone a book.
    - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
      He literally starts out saying that '[he] crawled the internet [...] but alas, it was nowhere to befound'. At the very least he was intent on pirating this specific book. >There is also no need to put 'lend' in quotes; it is perfectly legal to lend someone a book. Yes, and making copies doesn't fall under any normal definition of lending.
    - isochronous 6y ago
      He starts off by saying that he has a library of e-books, then goes on to tell a story about how he actually purchased his first e-book recently. How else would one build up a library of e-books without purchasing them?
      - sgath92 6y ago
gandalfian 6y ago
Not much comfort but it was still the better choice. DRM would have made it worse. Pirates would have still stripped it in 30 seconds while the honest paying readers would have been annoyed and put off. And readers are readers, if enough people like the books hopefully some will pay or recommend it to those who do. Hopefully.
GeoAtreides 6y ago
This man makes $13000/month (not a typo) putting free content out on royalroad, no need to buy anything: https://www.patreon.com/Shirtaloon https://www.patreon.com/Shirtaloon The patreons just get that free content a bit in advance. And in pdf form. It took him around a year to reach that number. He writes utter shit, sub-mediocre literature. Check other top writers on royalroad, they also make lots of money. The reason books don't sell isn't because of piracy, is because there's TON of free content (not only books) or almost free content (netflix, let's say).
- krick 6y ago
  I wonder what marketing/advertisement work was done to achieve this. It's not like you just need to open a Patreon account and start getting $10k+ immediately. P.S.: BTW, all this money is "donations", aren't they? So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that.
  - jiveturkey 6y ago
    > So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that. lol. try that in the USA. I dare you.
    - abellerose 6y ago
      Just name it the bible v2 and the patreon being a religion.
      - cat199 6y ago
        sole proprietorships and llc's, which would be the main mode of organizing a small company for donations, are for the most part pass-through to individual income for tax purposes and so would have roughly the same tax overhead (aka 0%) as a non-profit religious entity also: one could just as easily create a 'x rights activism' group as a tax-free non-profit so why single out religion specifically?
smegger001 6y ago
I know I have pirated pdf/epubs of book in the past (as a broke college student) but I also support the authors as often as possible, a couple of series I can think of off the top of my head I got into when I pirated the whole series liked and them bought paperback and then the audio-books on audible and have pre-ordered hard covers of new releases in the series then got several fiends to buy read them. Not all piracy is lost sales some is unwanted marketing.
watwut 6y ago
> Folks like the OP won't support writers. OP bought the book?
- mcguire 6y ago
  Then stripped the DRM off and shared it with friends. And then pointed to a piracy site and said he'd never pay for a book again. On the other hand, you can get Thinking, Fast and Slow for free: https://b-ok.cc/book/1214612/224dc8?dsource=mostpopular https://b-ok.cc/book/1214612/224dc8?dsource=mostpopular Or Hackers and Painters, ANSI Common LISP, and On LISP.
  - st1ck 6y ago
    If it's same collection as libgen, then you can find there maybe every second book you want to read.
noch 6y ago
> Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers. For what it's worth, Tim O'Reilly notes, in "Piracy is progressive taxation"[0], that: >> Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. [0]: https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxation-and-other-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-online-distribution/ https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...
wantstobuybook 6y ago
So, Lament for the Fallen sounds fantastic. I've got a break from school coming up, and would like to read it. I cannot find a way to purchase it on your website. The problem is that every retailer I can find that sells it sells a DRM'd version. Adobe Digital Editions isn't available for my operating system. There's no way for me to purchase a digital copy of your book that I can actually read. If you sold a DRM-free epub on your website, I'd be reading Lament right now. I wouldn't have batted an eye at paying you $10 for a book Amazon sells for $5. If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to pirate your book. I'll just end up purchasing an ebook from an author that has a DRM-free epub on their site. Your books sound interesting and I hope you find commercial success as a writer. I just can't contribute to that success until your work's available in a format I can read.
- aembleton 6y ago
  > If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. It's not the only option, a Kindle can read Kindle books from Amazon that you've admitted sell for $5.
  - wantstobuybook 6y ago
    How? My Kindle's quite old (4th gen, I think), it doesn't even support epub files. (I convert epubs to mobi to use on it.) As far as I know, you can't use the ACSM files Amazon on it. I can't convert them to anything because Adobe hasn't released a version of Digital Editions for my operating system. Technically, I could set up a Windows vm. But requiring a customer to use a particular OS to read a friggin' book is lunacy.
- IvyMike 6y ago
  > If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. It's in the kindle store... what am I missing?
  - wantstobuybook 6y ago
    My Kindle's old enough that it doesn't support the ACSM files you get from Amazon. I'd have to convert them to mobi from the DRM'd epub - which I cannot download from the ACSM because Adobe Digital Editions does not exist for my operating system.
enriquto 6y ago
> Both novels were stolen It is surprising that as a writer you engage in this misleading usage of the English language. People copying files without your consent may be financially inconvenient for you, in bad taste, even illegal in some jurisdictions, and definitely an ass move. But it is not stealing. You can firmly condemn this behavior without using metaphors.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  I have no idea what you think "stolen" means -- but whatever definition you are using, it is antique and not up to the task of describing the activity of theft as it exists today. Nevertheless historical usage includes, "stealing someone's idea", etc. which is as least an applicable sense.
- NoahTheDuke 6y ago
  Languages change. Arguing definitions doesn’t contribute to the conversation, it only makes you look pedantic.
  - the_af 6y ago
    I think the OP has a point though. Back in the beginning of the DRM wars, many argued that "IP theft", "thieves", "stealing" were metaphors used by media companies to mislead customers. You know the clumsy anti-piracy advert, "you wouldn't steal a car...". It was clumsy then and it's clumsy now. Illegal copying is not stealing. Sad to see this narrative won in the end, I thought we were past this. I though we -- the users -- had won.
    - ewb 6y ago
      "Stealing an idea" has been a phrase for far longer than that though. Stealing as a metaphor for intangible objects isn't a creation of the media companies.
      - the_af 6y ago
        Agreed. But this precise usage, "stealing" digital products, is an invention of media companies. A stretching of a metaphor beyond all reasonable interpretation.
the_af 6y ago
> Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers. "Folks like the OP" mentioned they use GOG, No Starch Press, etc, so they presumably don't mind paying as long as the experience is reasonable, DRM- and bullshit-free. That's the thing with piracy: it's often more convenient than buying the thing. If the pirate book/game/music is unencumbered and easier to use on more devices, but the legal book/game/music is DRM-laden and requires proprietary devices or apps to use, which one would you choose? I can lend or give a real book to whoever I want. Forever or temporarily. I can buy used books I find at discount used book stores.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  I don't buy it, the OP's first instinct was to see if they can pirate it. Only when they couldn't, did they pay for it. And how could you even possibly compete with a book piracy site such as z-lib? You can get any book you want, for free, within seconds with virtually no fear of legal repercussions. >I can lend or give a real book to whoever I want. Forever or temporarily. Because the physical limitations on lending make it unfeasible to share it with absolutely everyone. The same goes for sales of used books. A 'used' digital book is just as good as a new one and would directly compete with the original seller.
  - reificator 6y ago
    > I don't buy it, the OP's first instinct was to see if they can pirate it. Only when they couldn't, did they pay for it. I feel like this is intentionally ignoring the previous lifetime of experience which led to the OP's decision to attempt to pirate first. After Google Play Music was announced to be shutting down a few years ago I've been trying to rebuild a (legal) lossless music collection. It's shocking how difficult it is to find some tracks and artists in a lossless format legally. Some CDs I used to own years ago are now going for $250 used. Sites like HDTracks have apparently never heard of those bands, there's no Bandcamp site, the band site now redirects to facebook, all I can buy is 160kbps mp3. Some CDs I used to own are available for $6.99, but it's the George Lucas style remastered content where they changed the lead-in and chorus and everything sounds wrong. And that's not to mention the disks I still own that are copy protected. Sure I'll just pop this CD into my new car.... Oh wait it doesn't have a CD drive because it's 2020 and why would the manufacturer even consider including one? Is it okay to copy that CD? Why or why not? So I still can't listen to some of my favorite bands, on whom I've spent $$$ on merchandise and concerts and their original CD releases, because I'm restricting myself to following the law. I cannot begrudge someone for choosing to pirate in the slightest.
wishinghand 6y ago
You're being unfair to the OP, and would know if you read their article in full. They purchased a book and hated the DRM wrapped around it for use in their libre software lifestyle. Remember, piracy is a customer service issue. So perhaps buying your book isn't as easy as you thought, or your marketing is faulty, and you're not reaching the intended audience as well as you hoped.
deleted 6y ago
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lukewrites 6y ago
I'm curious how you know the copy uploaded to ZLib was purchased with a stolen card? From metadata in the book? Or because purchase + upload date match? Years ago I remember seeing services on Alibaba that would get you any Kindle ebook you wanted – I assume they did something similar. FWIW, I was quite surprised by your comment that "Folks like the OP won't support writers". The OP writes about _only_ being able to purchase a book in a way that involves submitting to very restrictive, platform-dependent DRM and not wanting to do it again. OP specifically contrasts this experience to buying from publishers who sell DRM-free ebooks as a counterpoint to the awful experience buying her/his book.
- Turukawa 6y ago
  Both metadata in the uploaded book, and seeing the transaction reversed a few weeks later. Publishers announce the books they'll be releasing a year in advance,and - seriously, this is a rabbit hole I knew nothing about when I started - people were offering bounties to pirate my book before it was available. I have a Google alert for my books so I can read reviews, so all this chatter was turning up. These are people who had no intention of paying for the work, no matter what, but also seemed to be going out of their way to make sure no-one would have to pay. You can talk about DRM and clunky websites, but that comes across as post-hoc justification. The pirates seem simply to hate the idea that creators might earn anything, no matter how little.
- UncleEntity 6y ago
  > For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook, because it's 2020, so why not. Presumably because nobody has taken the time to strip the DRM and post it to their "library" yet.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  >OP specifically contrasts this experience to buying from publishers who sell DRM-free ebooks as a counterpoint to the awful experience buying her/his book. Or maybe he just likes them because they're easier to pirate from? In a prior paragraph he admits that it was the first time he bought an ebook.
tomxor 6y ago
> it makes it impossible to afford to write as often as I'd like DRM is not the solution because the solution doesn't exist. The problem of the impoverished writer predates digital publishing, it's hard to make a decent living by writing anything interesting other than through indirect benefits. Sorry but writing something interesting is a luxury, writing something slutty is the only direct business prospect in writing. Consider this: did Charles Darwin make a living through the royalties of "the origin of species"? No, he was bankrolled, the book was simply the fruits of his investment.
wishinghand 6y ago
Also, I tried to go and purchase a DRM-free version of your book "Our Memory Like Dust" to see how easy it was. I can't figure out to do so. I clicked on the title for it, saw that you had some chapters laid out in HTML and figured, "Oh, I guess an HTML book is DRM-free". I clicked through and eventually had to login with Facebook to continue. That rankled, as I hate Facebook, so I checked out the rest of the site, thinking I missed the store page. I did not. I cannot pay you for a DRM-free version of your book on that site. This makes me feel like you're generating drama or something with your comment? I couldn't figure out an easy way to pay you real money for an ePub file. I'm not going to go pirate your book, but the same result ended up happening: I'm not going to buy it either.
gohbgl 6y ago
I am glad that you are unable to stop people from sharing information on the internet.
derangedHorse 6y ago
I don't think it should matter all that much if your stuff gets pirated. The reality is that if they're pirating your book, they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway. I feel like most people I know pirate books to get a feel for the book before they go ahead and purchase it. Almost like an extended sample. All my friends who end up liking their pirated books typically spend the money (given they have money) buying actual copies afterwards. The real number that would help you is finding out how many unique user downloads there were of your book and asking yourself if your marketing was strong enough to get that number of sales naturally? Or worse, is it that no one is downloading your book even with it being free? I am biased since I write free content and believe in getting sponsored by supporters, but being the distributor of my free content and able to view download statistics, I can see that marketing is my biggest problem and no one wants to consume even my free content

rekabis 6y ago

Sounds like you are employing a reactive, defensive and antagonistic approach to eBook “piracy”. Which puts you into the very position you described - at a loss, angry, and frustrated; instead of fuelling your sales and playing a direct hand in your success. Unfortunately I don’t have the article on hand, but about a year ago I ran across a description of how an author _dramatically enhanced_ his sales by leveraging eBook “piracy” in order to drive people to official channels. Yes, he actually released his eBooks for free onto the piracy sites - with a twist: he included the entire first portion (quarter or third, cannot remember) of the book, gave info on where to buy the full copies (with zero recriminations - just the facts!), and then repeated those same early chapters to plump out a fully-sized eBook. He then flooded all the file sharing networks with this copy so as to make it difficult to find legitimately complete copies. The entire first quarter or third was used to get readers heavily enough invested into his novel to _want_ to run out and buy the official copy -- he _justified_ the effort and expenditure to his readers, and they responded (mostly) positively by actually doing so! Granted, there was a lot more to it than that, but this was the basics, and it pushed a lot of people towards not just his eBooks but also his physical sales. And there are probably many other strategies out there as well that utilizes the “piracy” platforms to your benefit instead of leaving you tilting impotently at windmills.

genghisjahn 6y ago
Where is this description that you ran across?
amp10 6y ago
With all that effort there is little time to focus on actual writing, so one can imagine the quality of that work. There is a reason real authors and musicians have agents (who are actually reachable unlike the YouTube service ...). The actual profession is a full time job.
- tasogare 6y ago
  Most fiction writers aren’t living from it. A lot of others books (educational material for instance) are written by people who have a job like researcher. So, writer is a professional job for some, but they largely don’t produce most of the work out there.
- coliveira 6y ago
  That's exactly what I thought. If you need to go through all this gimmick to sell books, when are you going to have time to write them? I much prefer to suffer the monetary loss in writing and make decent money with something else.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > The actual profession is a full time job. But the actual professional isn't 100% writing, just as being an independent software developer isn't 100% coding. Half of your time (or more!) may be spent on other aspects of the profession.
  - enitihas 6y ago
    Other aspects are communicating, researching, not a deep dive into human psychology to ensure people don't pirate your software.
- wishinghand 6y ago
  Jeez, mocking up a book to post on torrent sites is so much effort it eats a measurable chunk of time usually reserved for writing a novel? This is like an afternoon of work, compared with the months or years of writing a book.

christiansakai 6y ago

Not a writer but I can empathize. Do you have any proposed solution in mind?

ge96 6y ago
Not op: Can you add some unique tracker/signature per purchase so you can tell what copy was used to upload. Probably pointless with regard to the stolen cc comment/new accounts.
Turukawa 6y ago
Sure :) The biggest barrier is micro-payments. If I could charge as a streaming service, but without having to go through a major platform (I don't want Spotify-for-books), then that would be perfect. I actually pitched this to GrantForTheWeb using their Web Monetization toolkit.

stanmancan 6y ago

Do you think this actually hurts sales though? I’ve always been of the impression that the vast majority of people pirating wouldn’t have bought it anyways. Yes they’re getting it for free, but at least they’re enjoying your work when they wouldn’t have otherwise.

acomjean 6y ago
I think it does hurt. Some wouldn't buy anyway. But the mindset has changed. If you do the right thing, you're out say $30 for a book. If you do the wrong thing, you get the book and still have your $30. Some people don't care about others, and that mindset continues. (its kinda a Tragedy of the commons where the "common" is the market place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). DRM makes it worse, not only did you do the right thing and buy the book, now its not as useful as the copy someone "didn't pay for". So pushing people toward the free and better.
tzs 6y ago
> Do you think this actually hurts sales though? I’ve always been of the impression that the vast majority of people pirating wouldn’t have bought it anyways. I'm not sure how applicable it is for books, because generally prices are more uniform for books than they are for software, but in the case of software I wonder if the ones who lose sales to piracy are the makers of more affordable software? Imagine a world where piracy was effectively impossible for most people, and you want to do some occasional image editing. You look at Photoshop and it is way out of your budget. But you don't actually need most features of Photoshop. You find that Pixelmator Pro can do everything you want, and at $40 you can afford it and it is a good value. So you buy Pixelmator Pro. In a world where piracy only takes a little time and effort you pirate Photoshop. In both scenarios Adobe doesn't get any of your money so we can't say that pirating Photoshop in the second scenario cost Adobe a sale. But it did cost Pixelmator Team a sale. In general, I suspect that the main effect of piracy is to change our allocation of spending within certain categories or groups of categories, without changing the total we spend in those categories.
- Macha 6y ago

clarry 6y ago

> Folks like the OP won't support writers. > Thanks OP. Is that the most appropriate thing you can say to someone who bought a book and (somewhat expectedly) got screwed by DRM? Maybe there's a reason they won't support writers. Maybe they'll eventually write a blog post about that!

stevenwliao 6y ago
This someone only bought a book when they couldn't pirate it anywhere, unlike the rest of their "virtual library". They then "lent" the book to "everyone involved who really wanted to read it" and then wondered why DRM exists. Seems appropriate.
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  He doesn't claim to pirate all of his books (or any actually), and he only wished to lend it to one friend (whilst noting that lots of other people were interested in the book as well). There is also no need to put 'lend' in quotes; it is perfectly legal to lend someone a book.
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    He literally starts out saying that '[he] crawled the internet [...] but alas, it was nowhere to befound'. At the very least he was intent on pirating this specific book. >There is also no need to put 'lend' in quotes; it is perfectly legal to lend someone a book. Yes, and making copies doesn't fall under any normal definition of lending.
  - isochronous 6y ago
    He starts off by saying that he has a library of e-books, then goes on to tell a story about how he actually purchased his first e-book recently. How else would one build up a library of e-books without purchasing them?
    - sgath92 6y ago

gandalfian 6y ago

Not much comfort but it was still the better choice. DRM would have made it worse. Pirates would have still stripped it in 30 seconds while the honest paying readers would have been annoyed and put off. And readers are readers, if enough people like the books hopefully some will pay or recommend it to those who do. Hopefully.

GeoAtreides 6y ago

This man makes $13000/month (not a typo) putting free content out on royalroad, no need to buy anything: https://www.patreon.com/Shirtaloon https://www.patreon.com/Shirtaloon The patreons just get that free content a bit in advance. And in pdf form. It took him around a year to reach that number. He writes utter shit, sub-mediocre literature. Check other top writers on royalroad, they also make lots of money. The reason books don't sell isn't because of piracy, is because there's TON of free content (not only books) or almost free content (netflix, let's say).

krick 6y ago
I wonder what marketing/advertisement work was done to achieve this. It's not like you just need to open a Patreon account and start getting $10k+ immediately. P.S.: BTW, all this money is "donations", aren't they? So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that.
- jiveturkey 6y ago
  > So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that. lol. try that in the USA. I dare you.
  - abellerose 6y ago
    Just name it the bible v2 and the patreon being a religion.
    - cat199 6y ago
      sole proprietorships and llc's, which would be the main mode of organizing a small company for donations, are for the most part pass-through to individual income for tax purposes and so would have roughly the same tax overhead (aka 0%) as a non-profit religious entity also: one could just as easily create a 'x rights activism' group as a tax-free non-profit so why single out religion specifically?

smegger001 6y ago

I know I have pirated pdf/epubs of book in the past (as a broke college student) but I also support the authors as often as possible, a couple of series I can think of off the top of my head I got into when I pirated the whole series liked and them bought paperback and then the audio-books on audible and have pre-ordered hard covers of new releases in the series then got several fiends to buy read them. Not all piracy is lost sales some is unwanted marketing.

watwut 6y ago

> Folks like the OP won't support writers. OP bought the book?

mcguire 6y ago
Then stripped the DRM off and shared it with friends. And then pointed to a piracy site and said he'd never pay for a book again. On the other hand, you can get Thinking, Fast and Slow for free: https://b-ok.cc/book/1214612/224dc8?dsource=mostpopular https://b-ok.cc/book/1214612/224dc8?dsource=mostpopular Or Hackers and Painters, ANSI Common LISP, and On LISP.
- st1ck 6y ago
  If it's same collection as libgen, then you can find there maybe every second book you want to read.

noch 6y ago

> Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers. For what it's worth, Tim O'Reilly notes, in "Piracy is progressive taxation"[0], that: >> Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. [0]: https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxation-and-other-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-online-distribution/ https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...

wantstobuybook 6y ago

So, Lament for the Fallen sounds fantastic. I've got a break from school coming up, and would like to read it. I cannot find a way to purchase it on your website. The problem is that every retailer I can find that sells it sells a DRM'd version. Adobe Digital Editions isn't available for my operating system. There's no way for me to purchase a digital copy of your book that I can actually read. If you sold a DRM-free epub on your website, I'd be reading Lament right now. I wouldn't have batted an eye at paying you $10 for a book Amazon sells for $5. If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to pirate your book. I'll just end up purchasing an ebook from an author that has a DRM-free epub on their site. Your books sound interesting and I hope you find commercial success as a writer. I just can't contribute to that success until your work's available in a format I can read.

aembleton 6y ago
> If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. It's not the only option, a Kindle can read Kindle books from Amazon that you've admitted sell for $5.
- wantstobuybook 6y ago
  How? My Kindle's quite old (4th gen, I think), it doesn't even support epub files. (I convert epubs to mobi to use on it.) As far as I know, you can't use the ACSM files Amazon on it. I can't convert them to anything because Adobe hasn't released a version of Digital Editions for my operating system. Technically, I could set up a Windows vm. But requiring a customer to use a particular OS to read a friggin' book is lunacy.
IvyMike 6y ago
> If I want to read your book on my Kindle, the only option is piracy. It's in the kindle store... what am I missing?
- wantstobuybook 6y ago
  My Kindle's old enough that it doesn't support the ACSM files you get from Amazon. I'd have to convert them to mobi from the DRM'd epub - which I cannot download from the ACSM because Adobe Digital Editions does not exist for my operating system.

enriquto 6y ago

> Both novels were stolen It is surprising that as a writer you engage in this misleading usage of the English language. People copying files without your consent may be financially inconvenient for you, in bad taste, even illegal in some jurisdictions, and definitely an ass move. But it is not stealing. You can firmly condemn this behavior without using metaphors.

mjburgess 6y ago
I have no idea what you think "stolen" means -- but whatever definition you are using, it is antique and not up to the task of describing the activity of theft as it exists today. Nevertheless historical usage includes, "stealing someone's idea", etc. which is as least an applicable sense.
NoahTheDuke 6y ago
Languages change. Arguing definitions doesn’t contribute to the conversation, it only makes you look pedantic.
- the_af 6y ago
  I think the OP has a point though. Back in the beginning of the DRM wars, many argued that "IP theft", "thieves", "stealing" were metaphors used by media companies to mislead customers. You know the clumsy anti-piracy advert, "you wouldn't steal a car...". It was clumsy then and it's clumsy now. Illegal copying is not stealing. Sad to see this narrative won in the end, I thought we were past this. I though we -- the users -- had won.
  - ewb 6y ago
    "Stealing an idea" has been a phrase for far longer than that though. Stealing as a metaphor for intangible objects isn't a creation of the media companies.
    - the_af 6y ago
      Agreed. But this precise usage, "stealing" digital products, is an invention of media companies. A stretching of a metaphor beyond all reasonable interpretation.

the_af 6y ago

> Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers. "Folks like the OP" mentioned they use GOG, No Starch Press, etc, so they presumably don't mind paying as long as the experience is reasonable, DRM- and bullshit-free. That's the thing with piracy: it's often more convenient than buying the thing. If the pirate book/game/music is unencumbered and easier to use on more devices, but the legal book/game/music is DRM-laden and requires proprietary devices or apps to use, which one would you choose? I can lend or give a real book to whoever I want. Forever or temporarily. I can buy used books I find at discount used book stores.

ImprobableTruth 6y ago
I don't buy it, the OP's first instinct was to see if they can pirate it. Only when they couldn't, did they pay for it. And how could you even possibly compete with a book piracy site such as z-lib? You can get any book you want, for free, within seconds with virtually no fear of legal repercussions. >I can lend or give a real book to whoever I want. Forever or temporarily. Because the physical limitations on lending make it unfeasible to share it with absolutely everyone. The same goes for sales of used books. A 'used' digital book is just as good as a new one and would directly compete with the original seller.
- reificator 6y ago
  > I don't buy it, the OP's first instinct was to see if they can pirate it. Only when they couldn't, did they pay for it. I feel like this is intentionally ignoring the previous lifetime of experience which led to the OP's decision to attempt to pirate first. After Google Play Music was announced to be shutting down a few years ago I've been trying to rebuild a (legal) lossless music collection. It's shocking how difficult it is to find some tracks and artists in a lossless format legally. Some CDs I used to own years ago are now going for $250 used. Sites like HDTracks have apparently never heard of those bands, there's no Bandcamp site, the band site now redirects to facebook, all I can buy is 160kbps mp3. Some CDs I used to own are available for $6.99, but it's the George Lucas style remastered content where they changed the lead-in and chorus and everything sounds wrong. And that's not to mention the disks I still own that are copy protected. Sure I'll just pop this CD into my new car.... Oh wait it doesn't have a CD drive because it's 2020 and why would the manufacturer even consider including one? Is it okay to copy that CD? Why or why not? So I still can't listen to some of my favorite bands, on whom I've spent $$$ on merchandise and concerts and their original CD releases, because I'm restricting myself to following the law. I cannot begrudge someone for choosing to pirate in the slightest.

wishinghand 6y ago

You're being unfair to the OP, and would know if you read their article in full. They purchased a book and hated the DRM wrapped around it for use in their libre software lifestyle. Remember, piracy is a customer service issue. So perhaps buying your book isn't as easy as you thought, or your marketing is faulty, and you're not reaching the intended audience as well as you hoped.

deleted 6y ago

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lukewrites 6y ago

I'm curious how you know the copy uploaded to ZLib was purchased with a stolen card? From metadata in the book? Or because purchase + upload date match? Years ago I remember seeing services on Alibaba that would get you any Kindle ebook you wanted – I assume they did something similar. FWIW, I was quite surprised by your comment that "Folks like the OP won't support writers". The OP writes about _only_ being able to purchase a book in a way that involves submitting to very restrictive, platform-dependent DRM and not wanting to do it again. OP specifically contrasts this experience to buying from publishers who sell DRM-free ebooks as a counterpoint to the awful experience buying her/his book.

Turukawa 6y ago
Both metadata in the uploaded book, and seeing the transaction reversed a few weeks later. Publishers announce the books they'll be releasing a year in advance,and - seriously, this is a rabbit hole I knew nothing about when I started - people were offering bounties to pirate my book before it was available. I have a Google alert for my books so I can read reviews, so all this chatter was turning up. These are people who had no intention of paying for the work, no matter what, but also seemed to be going out of their way to make sure no-one would have to pay. You can talk about DRM and clunky websites, but that comes across as post-hoc justification. The pirates seem simply to hate the idea that creators might earn anything, no matter how little.
UncleEntity 6y ago
> For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook, because it's 2020, so why not. Presumably because nobody has taken the time to strip the DRM and post it to their "library" yet.
ImprobableTruth 6y ago
>OP specifically contrasts this experience to buying from publishers who sell DRM-free ebooks as a counterpoint to the awful experience buying her/his book. Or maybe he just likes them because they're easier to pirate from? In a prior paragraph he admits that it was the first time he bought an ebook.

tomxor 6y ago

> it makes it impossible to afford to write as often as I'd like DRM is not the solution because the solution doesn't exist. The problem of the impoverished writer predates digital publishing, it's hard to make a decent living by writing anything interesting other than through indirect benefits. Sorry but writing something interesting is a luxury, writing something slutty is the only direct business prospect in writing. Consider this: did Charles Darwin make a living through the royalties of "the origin of species"? No, he was bankrolled, the book was simply the fruits of his investment.

wishinghand 6y ago

Also, I tried to go and purchase a DRM-free version of your book "Our Memory Like Dust" to see how easy it was. I can't figure out to do so. I clicked on the title for it, saw that you had some chapters laid out in HTML and figured, "Oh, I guess an HTML book is DRM-free". I clicked through and eventually had to login with Facebook to continue. That rankled, as I hate Facebook, so I checked out the rest of the site, thinking I missed the store page. I did not. I cannot pay you for a DRM-free version of your book on that site. This makes me feel like you're generating drama or something with your comment? I couldn't figure out an easy way to pay you real money for an ePub file. I'm not going to go pirate your book, but the same result ended up happening: I'm not going to buy it either.

gohbgl 6y ago

I am glad that you are unable to stop people from sharing information on the internet.

derangedHorse 6y ago

I don't think it should matter all that much if your stuff gets pirated. The reality is that if they're pirating your book, they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway. I feel like most people I know pirate books to get a feel for the book before they go ahead and purchase it. Almost like an extended sample. All my friends who end up liking their pirated books typically spend the money (given they have money) buying actual copies afterwards. The real number that would help you is finding out how many unique user downloads there were of your book and asking yourself if your marketing was strong enough to get that number of sales naturally? Or worse, is it that no one is downloading your book even with it being free? I am biased since I write free content and believe in getting sponsored by supporters, but being the distributor of my free content and able to view download statistics, I can see that marketing is my biggest problem and no one wants to consume even my free content