I saw the other day a post about book piracy in Anastacia Moore’s blog. She was rightly fuming, because, while checking out her video trailers, she noticed that someone was advertising on You Tube a link to receive free copies of said books.
A few days before that, my friend N.N. Light had kindly emailed me to let me know that she had found her book, “Princess of the Light” on a similar website, and that she had seen my work there as well.
Then came the news that Australia’s Copyright Agency has welcomed a decision by the British High Court requiring internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites hosting millions of pirated e-book titles. The decision means Britain’s five major ISPs – BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk and EE – will be asked to block seven offshore-hosted websites within 10 working days.
The sites – AvaxHome, Bookfi, Bookre, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap and LibGen – host download links to full copies of e-books, including from best-selling Australian authors such as Tim Winton and Fiona McIntosh.
The British Publishers Association said about 80 per cent of the 10 million or so titles hosted on the websites named in the case – and in some cases as much as 90 per cent – were found to be infringing copyright. Publishers had already issued 1 million take-down notices relating to infringing material on the sites.
Just Ignore Them
And I know that all this sounds awful, but in most cases it’s not. Contrary to what you might expect, my advice is to just ignore these “pirates.” To understand why, all you need to do is try to download your book from them. You’ll soon realize that they don’t actually have it. After an annoying merry-go-round, you’ll either be taken to a dead link or to Amazon…
You see, most of these people only pretend to have free books, just so they can lure unsuspecting victims to their websites. The reasons vary. In the most innocent case, they are looking for eyeballs: they sell advertising, and get paid for impressions – i.e. how many people see the ads. The more people visit their website, the more money they make.
Or, the reasons may be sinister. They may be looking to lure you into a subscription or an address verification. In Charles Yallowitz’ case, any authors demanding their books are removed from the site are asked to fill in a form. Only, that form is designed to get author information and deliver some brutal malware once the send button is hit. So there are sites out there that are designed to prey on an author’s desire to protect their work instead of going after readers. The real aim, of course, is to steal your credit card or personal details.
I’m not saying that all pirate websites are phishing. Piratebay, for example, traditionally has good content, delivered to your computer hassle-free. But why take the risk?
Piracy vs. Obscurity
So, should you be worried should you find your book there?
Well, since it’s usually the bigger authors that make it to places like PirateBay, the first thing I’d do is pat myself on the back. You see, I’m convinced that the Indie’s enemy is not piracy, but obscurity.
Neil Gaiman says it best, in the interview below:
In this sense, it may actually be good for your sales if a book were to be pirated and given away for free, therefore generating interest in the rest of your titles. This is why I allow people to read my children’s book, Runaway Smile, for free on my blog, and give away Pearseus: Schism, the first book of my fantasy series.
It’s also why I’ve decided to allow lending of my books, and distribute them DRM-free. I strongly believe that DRM only annoys people who have bought my books, while doing nothing to deter thieves.
In 2010, book piracy surged after the introduction of the iPad. Although some publishers and authors fear that this will cause their revenues to dwindle, there are plenty of signs that the opposite will happen. Comic book writer Steve Lieber said that his sales went through the roof after pirated scans were shared on 4Chan.
So, sure, if you’re a big publisher, go ahead and worry about piracy. For us smaller fry, though, I believe it’s pointless to do so 🙂
5 Common Myths About Piracy
Justine Tajonera debunks 5 common myths about piracy. This is what she has to say on the subject:
1. Myth #1: You can’t compete with free
While it sounds true, Michael D. Smith, Professor of Information Technology and Marketing, Carnegie Mellon University disagrees. His research shows that people would actually rather pay for content. It’s only when the content is not available that they turn to piracy.
2. Myth #2: DRM or Digital Rights Management is about stopping piracy
Determined pirates will get what they want. Those who have the technological knowhow will find ways to pirate content, whether books, videos, or music. However, what DRM does is deter over-sharing says Ursula Mackenzie, Little, Brown, UK CEO and UK Publishers Association president. DRM represents a social contract between the buyer and the seller. It simply means that people cannot lend your book to their friends, thus severely limiting the power of word of mouth.
3. Myth #3: Pirated books are lost sales
According to authors like Neil Gaiman and Olivia Waite, this is simply not true. Don’t treat pirated books as “lost sales” but rather “money never received.” That’s because many of the people who downloaded that book for free would never have bought it if there had been a price tag.
4. Myth #4: Delaying the release of the e-book edition will decrease piracy
This is a common trick by publishers. However, according to Michael D. Smith (cited in #1), that’s a wrong assumption. The opposite is true. Delaying a digital release might actually increase piracy. Smith cites how a publisher delayed its release in e-book format to push hardcover sales. This resulted in a 0.4 percent increase in hardcover sales and a 52 percent decrease in e-book sales. Now, what do you think happened to the customers who couldn’t get the e-book? They didn’t buy the hardcover, that’s for sure.
5. Myth #5: Pinoys prefer the black market
In Russia, commercially sold e-books were unheard of. Only the black market was available. However, LitRes, an e-book website started selling e-books and was clearly anti-piracy. The effect? In 2013, Russia took over the UK to be become the third largest e-book market. That’s because piracy thrives where there is no other option.
Don’t get me wrong. Piracy does affect business. However, there are two great ways to fight it:
- making e-books easily available, and
- pricing the e-book right.
More Links
This debate is raging, of course. The thoughts above are just my 2c, and I respect anyone’s right to be incensed by pirates. So, I advise you to read on by visiting these people and listening to their arguments:
Dr. Skippy has an interesting analysis on why people illegally download books.
Celine Kiernan explores the perceived ethics of piracy and condemns it in no uncertain terms, as does Rachelle Gardner. The latter has a great list of additional reading, both in favor and against piracy:
- Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Backby Robert Levine.
- Book Piracy: Less DRM, More Data (O’Reilly)
- The Millions: Confessions of a Book Pirate
- A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy
- Fighting piracy is the dumbest thing you can do
- E-book business should take a page from music industry and go DRM-free
- Authors demand drive to raise readers’ awareness of book piracy’s cost
- Ebook piracy – one author’s opinion
- ISPs Fight Piracy: Meet the Six Strikes
- Last but not least, if you find a place that gives away your book and want to do something about it, here is a PDF that gives explicit instructions on how to follow up on obtaining the information needed to report and shut down these thieves.
I have a load of small local history books for sale on Amazon but they have vanished from the listings and big wholesalers are listing them at massively inflated prices. eg a local parks book that I sell for £3 is on sale here and in the states for £200. I am utterly exhausted trying to get Amazon to understand the problem. One is in the states and claims they are supplied by firm in Japan. They do not have these books as I am the sole source and have not given them copies. Help !
That’s certainly confusing… Why have they vanished from the listings?
Good luck to anybody who wants to steal my boosk. LOL. Who was it that said there is no such thing as bad publicity?
Lol – love your attitude! 😀
You’ve provided some great arguments here about piracy and sales, Nicholas. Thanks for another thought-provoking read!
A pleasure, Sue. Thanks for reading 🙂
And what do you do about the person in another country putting a new title and author on your book and selling it word for word as their own ebook? I have heard several cases of this lately. From what I can see you cannot stop that type of piracy for ebooks.
That sounds absolutely awful! Are you talking about illegal translations of a book?
From what I was reading the books were not translations. A woman happened to be visiting England and saw a book she thought she might read and found her book word for word with different cover, title and author. Another writer came in and said they had one of their books also pirated that way. It was a blog several months back and I don’t recall which one, but I imagine if a thief can figure a way to make money, they will. I am not sure how you can protect yourself from those who will take advantage of others work and call it their own. In the US, we have lawsuits and possibly criminal prosecution. In other countries, I have no idea, but I imagine one would have to travel there and stay there for a time until it could get straightened out.
I’m no lawyer, but I do know that there is a conspicuous gap in copyright law in Europe – each country has its own. There’s been a push for a harmonized legislation on a European level, but that’s probably years away.
Still, that woman could contact the UK publishers, or even sue them (although if they liked the book enough to publish it, and they’re legitimate publishers, it makes sense that they’d want to avoid a scandal).
For those that just can’t stand the thought of someone using their book to hack into others computers or to infect computers with malware and want to fight back, I have an idea. If you have the bucks, hire a professional hacker and have them download a site take-down whammy virus. That should cause a few headaches for the pirates and cost them some time and money to put it all back. One good turn deserves another, as they say.
Apparently, you can hire hackers off Craigslist nowadays…
Hi Nicholas,
You dropped by my site Reflections yesterday. I am glad you liked my Dropbox article. I will soon be moving to a new site, mostlyblogging.com. I hope you will visit me there after I move. Thank you for bringing the issue of book piracy to everyone’s attention.
Janice
Gladly! Thanks for the update 🙂
Good insight, and I love the Neil Gaiman’s thoughts too. Technically it is dishonest to download an author’s book without paying for it, but if people are reading their work it does have its benefits. For myself, I have an Amazon Prime account that is very useful for borrowing books, and I’ve found sites like openlibrary.org useful also. There are options other than piracy if you want to read. 🙂
That’s very true! I should do a post on these one of these days – thanks for the idea 🙂
I am a bookworm, have been since I was old enough to read. There is no way I could possibly buy all the books I read. 🙂 I make use of the local library also. I just don’t think you have to steal in order to enjoy a book. As was pointed out, the copyright laws for different countries can cause some confusion, but borrowing books is usually pretty simple.
As a fellow bookworm, I have a different problem; there’s no way I can read all the books I’ve bought 😀
Hahaha, I do understand where you’re coming from. If I bought every book I read, I would quickly max out my credit cards and would end up having to invest in another Kindle or move out of my house to make room for all of those books. It’s just easier to borrow them. 🙂
This issue seems to be an ongoing dilemma for authors. I’ve heard from many, like you mentioned, that it’s free exposure for our books, regardless of the fact that it’s still thievery. On the other hand, matters are worse if we try to send the form, we’re not left many options. Although you mentioned plenty of sites where the download doesn’t even happen, there are still plenty of them that work. 🙁 Great post as always. 🙂
Thank you! You’re right, it does put us between a rock and a hard place. All things considered, however, I think it’s not an issue for small authors.
Thanks for this info and your insight, Nicholas. I’ve been pondering on this topic for a while, but figured since I am such a small author (not in person – I’m tall!) it wasn’t worth agitating over it.Just one more thing to give me wrinkles.
We definitely don’t need any more wrinkles 😀
Long, long ago and far, far away, I worked in the copyright division of Colonial Williamsburg. My main job was to send cease and desist notices to vendors who named their products ‘Williamsburg’ anything. You can imagine the response I got, chiefly outrage that a city name could be copyrighted, but indeed it was. Can you guess why that division even existed? I was told it was because if you don’t take steps to protect your copyright, you could potentially lose it.
Do I mess with pirate sites that claim to have my books for sale? Not right now. And now that I know notices could expose me to malware, I’m not likely to any time soon. Who has time, anyway? But sooner or later, I need to investigate whether copyrights could be lost without efforts to protect them, or not.
Lol – amazing; thanks for sharing 😀
We should ask a lawyer, but it sounds rather unlikely to me!
Now, on to rename the capital of Pearseus to Williamsburg…
As long as you don’t describe your characters as having Williamsburg Blue skin, I think you’ll be okay. 😉
Lol – noted 😀
I think the fight against piracy is focusing people’s attention on the wrong thing. I understand why people feel it’s money they’re missing out on, but really all it’s doing is trying to make people pay for something they don’t particularly care about. That’s not the way to build a long term career. The focus should be on finding those real fans who will buy all the books an author releases, who will write glowing reviews, who will spread the word and tell their friends…
Since you mention Neil Gaiman, a great example of that is his wife, Amanda Palmer. Looking at her patreon page, she has just over 5000 supporters. For a well established artist like her that might seem like a small number, but these are die hard fans whose support is her entire income: she releases her songs for free online. Yet between those 5k people, she gets over $30k per ‘thing’ she releases. That’s a pretty decent income! (I say ‘they’, I’m one of them)
So I don’t think there’s much point worrying about or focusing on those people who share copies of our work electronically. As you say, if anything they help battle an author’s (and any artist’s really) greatest enemy which is obscurity. What we need to focus on finding those die hard fans with whose support we can build a career and make a living off our writing.
Couldn’t agree more. I once read that all anyone needs to make a living out of their art is 1,000 real fans. Palmer’s case is a great example of that. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I heard that too, it was from the boys over at the Self-Publishing Podcast, but I don’t know who coined the original saying. Very true though – and a very positive outlook since it seems within the realm of the possible, doesn’t it?
I sure do hope so 🙂
Great piece, Nicholas. It surprised me, but makes sense. 🙂
Glad to hear it (that it makes sense, that is 😀 )
Excellent post, Nicholas, with great links to articles that have their own links! I couldn’t, however, link to “Fighting piracy is the dumbest thing you can do” directly. Perhaps one needs to be a subscriber to view the article from your link. I did find the article at this link, however: https://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/fighting-piracy-dumbest-thing-you-can-do.
When talking to one of the “Big Five,” I was told that they seek out and report piracy sites, but that most sites are scams for data. (Thankfully, I’ve never tried to download a book from such sites.) They also don’t go after those selling copyrighted books on eBay because it would be too expensive to do so.
I read somewhere that at first people were downloading lots of “free books,” whether the author was making the offer or via a pirating site; however, because they never got around to reading very many of them, they simply stopped doing so. This opinion wasn’t based on statistics, so I don’t know how true it is. I know that I don’t download books I’m not likely to read, even if they are free.
Will press this for reblogging later. Thanks once again for doing so much research and summarising the main points.
Thanks for the link, I’ll be sure to update the post 🙂
I’m convinced that many “pirates” are just hoarders. They enjoy the thought of a hard disk choke-full with movies/books/music/comics etc, even if they never get around enjoying them.
It’s a lot easier to be a hoarder of things that don’t take up space, too. I’ve had to donate many boxes of print books to charities that re-sell them, and still I have too many! (I do, however, have some quality works signed by authors that I value and would never donate.)
No argument here 😀
Reblogged this on Books and More.
Reblogged on anastaciamoore and you have made very good points here Nicholas. BTW, I didn’t go on the crusade to ferret out all these pirating sites. But . . . it felt kinda good just to ‘vent’. LOL.
Reblogged this on anastaciamoore and commented:
Nicholas makes very good sense here. And though I did not go on the proverbial ‘crusade’ to track down these pirating sites, it didn’t take long to just sit back and say . . . perhaps it may help with exposure. 🙂
Reblogged this on Stevie Turner, Indie Author. and commented:
Very interesting post. However, regarding myth #5, what is the right price for an e-book? In my opinion we should never give our work away for free, as some readers will grab anything for nothing, even if it’s not in their preferred genre. When they eventually get around to reading your book and it’s something they do not like because it’s not what they usually read, you will get a bad review.
If we price our e-books higher than say $3.99, then probably we will have trouble selling them at all. Mine are priced at $1.25. I still feel that is too low for the amount of work I have put into them, but I have sales every day and am loathe to interfere with that.
What price do other authors think e-books should be priced at?
Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Page.
Thanks for another great post Nick. I didn’t know much about DRM and think I have it enabled on my books. But I hardly think piracy is a big deal for an unknown like me.
Sadly, that’s probably true. Of course, you know me: I’d have your books as part of school curriculum if I could 🙂
Reblogged this on Poetry by Pamela.
Reblogged this on Pamela Turton and commented:
Taking the P out of Pirates (a pirate is a pirate is..a taste of their own rum and all that?)
I’m with Mr Gaiman. If people pirate my stuff it’s a bummer but at the same time, at least it means they’ll read it. They may buy merchandise, who knows. Pirate sites increased Neil Gaman’s sales if people love my books and talk about them, new readers get to hear about my stuff, readers who may well buy legit copies.
Cheers
MTM
Let’s hope so! 🙂
Reblogged this on Shirley McLain and commented:
This is a great blog about book piracy that I want to share with you. Have a blessed day. Shirley
Great blog!
Thank you so much, David! Much appreciated 🙂
Great post. Piracy is certainly upsetting. We have been successful as a writing community in taking down some sites (one on facebook rings a bell) where the host is well known and we’re unlikely to be attacked by viruses and malware. In those situations, I think vigilance and concerted effort makes sense.
That said, my books were pirated on a Chinese site. I was afraid to address it for all the reasons you mentioned, and I figured none of them would have bought the book anyway. According to the site, thousands of copies were downloaded. Whether that’s true or not…who knows?
Legislative measures are awesome! I’d love to be able to report copyright infringement to an agency who would then follow through and shut down those sites! Perhaps we should be lobbying our lawmakers as a community 😀
You’re one step ahead of the world, I’m afraid. I’m in Greece, therefore not subject to US law. Even if I could sue in the US, US agencies would still have to shut down a server that’s probably located on yet another country, with its own law and procedures.
Even within the EU, copyright law is a nightmare. I’m afraid that international law is still catching up with the borderless nature of the Internet 🙂
I was dreaming, Nicholas, not expressing reality (sigh). You are so right that it’s a mess. I hope someday it will be easier.
I’ve run across this with my audiobooks. At first I reported them to Audible but finally just let it go. Audible shuts one down site and another site pops up. As several top narrators told me — the time to worry is when they don’t want to pirate your recordings. 🙂
Oops! That should read ‘Audible shuts down one site…’ 🙂
Lol – well said 😀
Great piece on piracy.
Thank you so much – and welcome 🙂
Reblogged this on Suffolk Scribblings and commented:
I’ve been meaning to write a blog about how piracy could be a good thing for up and coming authors for a while now but Nicholas has beaten me to it. A really thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.
Reblogged this on Archer's Aim and commented:
This is a great analysis by Nicholas Rossis about piracy – reblogging on Archer’s Aim.
If I read correctly, you seem to have much the same outlook as I. At least at this point in time.
I would be absolutely thrilled to find something I wrote had been pirated, for it would mean someone thinks my work is good enough to share with others.
Also, I am glad Charles avoided the attempted malware attack.
I just cannot understand why some people get off destroying other people’s stuff. Hackers are far worse than pirates.
Couldn’t agree more!
Thank you, Nicholas, for a very interesting post!
So glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I had sort of reached that conclusion on my own and I plan to ignore those websites in the future. I figure anything that makes people aware that my books exist is good. And I’m more afraid of phishing than I am of losing a couple of sales.
Well said!
Great blog. Will reblog on my site. I rarely worry about piracy, though when I did search them out several years ago I found a few places some of my books were being pirated. Whether they were actually available for download as you mention above, I have no clue. At 30 some titles I don’t even look anymore. Bottom line is you can drive yourself crazy trying to follow the trail, spend a lot of time trying to get things removed, etc. etc. It’s a personal choice if you feel the need to follow that route. I don’t endorse any kind of piracy, but I’m just not heading down that road to ferret out piracy sites. Believe me, like any other author I value my work, spend a lot of time on my craft, always offer DRM free and I offer free books from time to time. This actually brings to mind in the late 80’s/early 90’s authors weren’t happy when Amazon began to allow used copies of your paperback to be sold right alongside your new book. To me it’s all about exposure.
Last sentence: Not saying piracy and the practice Amazon began with used books is seen as piracy, just that the bottom line is exposure of your work and in that way the Amazon example is cited. 🙂
Lol – I know what you mean. To me, there is an extra similarity in people’s reaction when they’re afraid of something they don’t really understand – hence my post 🙂
Lol – at 30-something titles, you’d hardly have time for anything else, should you wish to go down that road 😀
DRM harms authors and book-buyers without providing either of them a benefit.
In addition to preventing legitimate lending, the added code:
– increases delivery fees
– takes up more space on an ereader
– makes a book more likely to not display perfectly on certain readers.
Yet, breaking DRM takes less than a minute and can be done without any coding knowledge.
The only benefit it brings, is to CEOs of publishers &c. who can show their shareholders they are addressing piracy.
My feelings exactly. Thanks for putting it better than I ever could 🙂
Another great article, Nicolas! I’ve often repeated Neil Gaiman’s words to friends on Facebook and Twitter. It’s far worse for us up-and-coming writers to be obscure than to be pirated.
Going to reblog this!
Thanks, Nat! Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Great advice, Nicholas. I’ve known authors who’ve spent countless hours trying to track down their pirated books, when their time would have been better spent writing new ones. We’ll always have underhanded scum in this industry. To me, they’re not worth my time or energy.
Good attitude 🙂
Most folk here are afraid of the pirated sites, and rightly so, with viruses and malware being all over the place. Mine is pirated on dozens of torrent sites, and there is nothing to do but ignore them. I have only seen my book actually downloaded once from one of those sites…so, I’m still virtually unknown. Don’t worry about it anymore.
Sounds like a healthy attitude to me 🙂
Good advice. I’ve seen many authors practically turn their job into combating piracy, which resulted in some odd responses. For example, removing all of your work from sale sites and work exclusively through your blog. That rarely ended well for people since you end up losing a lot of exposure.
I do remember one site having a very nasty trap for authors. They had a form to fill out if you wanted your books to be removed. I was going to do it, but forgot for a few days. When I remembered, I went to look at the form and my malware/virus checkers went berserk. Nothing happened since it didn’t even let me access the page. I looked around for information and found that the form was designed to get author information and deliver some brutal malware once the send button was hit. So there are sites out there that are designed to prey on an author’s desire to protect their work instead of going after readers.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet, there! I’ll add the info in your comment to the post, to warn others of the dangers. Thanks for sharing that 🙂
Definitely avoided a disaster. Glad to pass on the info.
Sounds like I may have dodge Nicholas’ ‘bullet’ as well. I was recently updating some pictures on Google and found the cover of one of my books with a link to an Australian website selling it. My first reaction was anger and I was going to complete their form for having it removed from sale. However, I then developed an interest to see what the apparent reviews where like. I tried to create an account to see, but could not do so and after a couple of times I become annoyed and just sent an e-mail to their ‘contact us’ link. I heard nothing. As you both say, probably just a scam.
Most likely! Congrats on dodging that bullet 😀
It’s such a bizarre thing too. You’d think indie authors wouldn’t be a big target because most of us don’t have a huge platform. Makes me wonder if it’s not about the money at all, but the scamming and data mining (right term?). There was one site a while back that apparently stole Amazon’s entire library. From indie authors like me to every work by Stephen King. It made no sense that they could have done that.
Nope – unless it’s about phishing 🙂
Piracy on any level….aaaaarrrgh !
Lol – easy, tiger 😀
Reblogged this on cicampbellblog and commented:
Nicholas Rossis puts forward a great way to help authors deal with piracy. And he lists other arguments by other authors if his doesn’t convince you.
Good common sense Nick. I’m new to publishing but I really can’t get too worked up about this perceived loss. The money not received is the way I look at it. If someone is fool hardy enough to chase my book and save a couple of bucks while playing with fire on such a website then so be it. I will go on merrily writing and publishing and stay in my bubble.
A lovely down-to-earth approach 🙂
Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
Worried about pirates on the mighty web ocean.. read Nicholas Rossis opinion and ease your mind.. I used to get furious when I saw my print books for sale.. not because the people offering the books had any copies since I have always held the stock of new books or they are second hand having been bought and sold on. I was angry because they were conning people into going into their websites for other purposes. Anyway read the article for yourself.. common sense prevails.
Reblogged this on Barrow Blogs: and commented:
Of interest to all writers
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
Information and advice from Nicholas – what’s YOUR opinion?
Let Nicholas know 😀
People who download pirated media, whether films or books, often boast about getting this or that latest thing for free. I usually wonder if this was their sole purpose, and if they actually watch or read all of it.
Some interesting ideas here Nicholas, as always.
Best wishes, Pete.
I suspect many are just hoarders. I mean, why download music, for example, when you can have a free spotify subscription and listen to all the music in the world?
Hoarders might be right Nicholas. I know some people who have over 1,000 films illegally downloaded, yet have hardly watched any of them. They offer free copies on DVD Rom to friends, as if to prove that they have something we do not. Sad.
Totally. You wouldn’t have their number now, would you? :b
Got a pen handy?
ROFL 😀
Reblogged this on Thoughts by Mello-Elo.
Reblogged this on Have We Had Help? and commented:
The latest from Nicholas. 😉
Here’s my feedback – I’ve been following you mostly because you are a published novelist (something I aspire to), but I have not read any of your books. It was your insights I craved. Now I have downloaded this free book to have a look, and it grabbed me at my computer for quite a while. Mind you it’s in PDF format (erk!) but I liked what I read sufficiently enough to pop over to Amazon and buy all 3 in the series so I can sit on the train of a morning reading them. 🙂 I guess there is something to all this 🙂
Wow! Well, two things: One, you’re my new best friend 🙂
And two, thank you!
My pleasure ☺
Hi Greg! If you have a Kindle, you can email a copy of the PDF to your Kindle email address. Just put the single word, ‘convert’ in the subject line, Occasionally there will be some odd errors in converting but, in general, it works pretty well.
That’s an awesome tip – and one I’d never heard before! Thanks for that 🙂
Thanks Wendy 🙂
Actually works best if you do it with a Word docx; no weirdness usually. Sometimes you get funny stuff happening with PDFs. I use these methods with my narration as I have the authors send me a Word MS which I can then mark up. I send a copy to my Kindle for the recording part and a PDF to my tablet for editing purposes.
It’s great too for instances like Greg has. I’ll often load PDFs to my Kindle so I can read for reviewing easily.
You’re a star! 🙂
It is a nasty, underhand misuse of people’s work… whatever the reason that
generates these sites and none of us would want our work to be in any way associated with phishing scams that can cause so much damage… But, as far as the books themselves go, I am inclined to agree that the possible exposure may well outweigh the damage for we small fry of the publishing pond. Nor do I feel that those who attempt to get the books for free would have bought them anyway.
Sometimes it’s good to be small 🙂
I have been saying that all my life 😉
😀
😀