A Very Windy New Year’s Eve

Posted by Diana

Our back door has blown open twice this morning, the second time taking the porch railing along for the ride. I’ll tell you, it scared Rio pretty bad. She’s upstairs huddling in bed with Sailor Boy.

Spent a while this morning sending out cease and desist letter to a couple of pirates who are posting copies of my ebooks online. I got a really snippy email back from one of the sites about how they are performing a valuable service in developing countries where people have neither books nor computers and can download any of 10,000 works in the public domain. Which is all well and good, but a) how do they download these things without computers, and b) then just put up links to Bartleby, Project Gutenberg, or other public domain libraries and do not allow user-generated content, which you know is going to be about 90% piracy (and the rest fanfic).

I honestly don’t know if the posters in question know that what they are doing is illegal. They probably don’t really understand how copyright works. If it’s okay to give a book you’ve read to a friend, they ask themselves, why isn’t it okay to post it on the internet where thousands of “friends” can read it at will?

Here’s the difference: copyright. Copyright literally controls who has the right to make copies of a given text. When you give a book to a friend, there’s still only one copy. If your friend loses it or doesn’t give it back, and you want it, you have to get another copy. (I know this annoyance very well.) But when you send an ebook to a friend (or a thousand friends on the internet) you are making copies. You still have yours, and they have theirs.

I’m the only one who has the right to say who makes copies of my books. I’m the copyright holder.

Copyright is the only thing protecting other people from writing a book about Aimee Hasquale who joins a secret society called Daisy & Mausoleum and printing it as their own (remember Kaava Viswanathan?) Copyright is what is keeping a roof over my head and kibble in Rio’s bowl. Think of Rio! Don’t post my books online.

If money is tight and you want to read my book, please go to the library. If you don’t have a library near you or your library doesn’t have the funds to order my book, then may I suggest some other, fabulous books that are in the public domain and that you can legally get for free online:

You can even listen to audio books in the public domain, as I am with The Call of the Wild right now. I love public domain books. There’s so much good stuff available.

And if you absolutely *must* read something by me, just join my newsletter. I give away free stories every month.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it’s a happy and healthy one!

Posted in other writers, stories, writing industry, writing life