My first thought when I discovered that my books were being pirated was that someone was stealing from me. One site even claimed that they had over 2000 downloads of one of my ebooks. That is several times more than I have given away with Amazon Kindle free promotions. But they could have, and probably were, lying as after all they had been behaving dishonestly. I emailed them a complaint and they seemed to have desisted as I can no longer find it on their site when searching via Google.
Such sites are dangerous to download from as it is possible that any downloads might contain viruses that could at best disrupt your computer or at worse steal your encrypted data/passwords. I even found the black and white cover of my novel “Cogrill’s Mill” on a colouring page website. Now that was something I did not expect and made me think that I was possibly missing out on a promotion possibility.
Everyone expects that their hard format books will be lent or given away to charities at some point. I have given my own titles away or sold them at vastly reduced prices as part of promotions so I suppose I can look on pirated copies as another means of book promotion. My only request is that someone who reads a book they have acquired this way, and have enjoyed it, will seek to reward the author for entertaining them by buying a legitimate copy from an approved retailer. After all that is the way some of us seek to earn a living.
Keith Jahans
Editor, Peatmore Press
Peatmore News 