From Our Brains to Yours
Taking My Lumps: Getting Burned in the NYT
Judging by our email inbox this morning, quite a few folks read the NYT article on e-books, which included a few paragraphs indicating that I’m participating in some sort of digital piracy and stealing books from Amazon. My friend and now co-worker, Nikki Enfield, and I both have Kindles registered to Nikki’s Amazon account. When I buy a book on that account, it’s available to Nikki to download to her device, and vise versa.
We’re not in violation of any policy or rule, and we do, in fact, pay for books. No digital piracy or rule-skirting here. (The official Amazon policy is here: Can I share content with other Kindles?) And now we’re in the NYT being accused of stealing content, and I’m getting emails accusing of being a scofflaw, happily stealing books, and tweets calling for my prosecution.
Yikes.
So what did I do wrong? Many things, and as a communications pro I should have known better. The greatest hits of my missteps:
1) I talked to a reporter as if he were a friend. He’s a friend of a friend, which is how I was connected to him – but he’s still a reporter first. Since I was just chatting with a friend, I didn’t pay attention to what his angle might be.
2) I didn’t insist on understanding the exact nature of the story. The reporter told me he was writing a story about the “renaissance of reading” and how e-books are contributing to that. If you’ve read the article, you know that’s not quite it, but it was on me to make sure I knew what he was going for. Shame on me for failing to do that.
3) I talked to the reporter for a long time, and didn’t confirm what he was planning to quote. Again, it’s his job to get me talking and my job to say only what I would want to see in print. He did his job, I didn’t do mine.
So there we go. Just goes to show we all make mistakes. Feel free to share yours in the comments (or send me an email if it’s too embarrassing… shayna@englin.net)
Maybe you need to get the ereader from Barnes and Noble that allows you to “share” books. I heard about it on NPR the other night as I was driving home. I thought that would be the kind I would get since my daughter, sisters and friends all share books. Sorry you were treated badly in the NYT, you are right reporters have their own agenda. You will now be cautious with anyone who says they work for a paper. Sad.
Thanks, Delores! You can share books on the Kindle legally, which is what we do – the article got it wrong.
Clearly you didn’t engage in a violation of the terms of service. I am surprised that so many people throw around the terms “thief” and “steal” when those types of statements are defamatory per se.
I’m sorry, but if you dig deeper into the terms of service, you’ll see that the shared kindles must belong to the same account. If you’re buying on Nikki’s account, you’re still costing the publisher a book sale and therefore, a writer royalties. And, you can spin it all you want, but it’s still stealing.
My son, a former U.S. Senate staffer, then Hill reporter, whose work has appeared in the Time (and whose education was paid for by my book royalties) is Executive Director of the Copyright Alliance, a coalition of parties, including NASCAR, major league baseball, artists’ unions and major publishers. A sweeping swath of creative works are represented, from songwriters to photographers, motion pictures to videogames, recording artists to graphic designers, software developers to sports leagues. You might want to check out their website at http://www.copyrightalliance.org.
From their site:
The Copyright Alliance believes that copyright law promotes creativity and job creation and strengthens the U.S. economy. Those who create, render, and publish copyrighted works rely on the copyright law and its enforcement, for their creative and financial success. Without it, these creators would likely cease to exist, or at the very least, cease to produce these important works that are enjoyed by billions of people around the world.
JoAnn, our Kindles do belong to the same accounts. No spin: we’re sharing books in accordance with the rules.
Joann Ross – these two Kindles do belong to the same account. How else could they BE REGISTERED TO THE SAME ACCOUNT? Maybe you should take your issue up with Amazon instead of throwing around accusations against the reading public.
You do realize that the very same law that vests you, an author, with IP rights, vests a consumer with rights as well.
The line that hurts you is “We haven’t really looked closely at Amazon’s terms of service. But I do suspect we are breaking the rules.”
It implies a suspicion of doing wrong but doing it anyway. And not caring. If this was a hatchet job on you by the reporter, the reporter did damn good because that was a very damning sentence.
That one sentence is what has authors up in arms. The article makes light of e-piracy as if it’s not a major concern. It is. Shiloh Walker has a huge backlist of e-books but has decided to greatly reduce the amount of books she writes for her e-publisher, cutting off an entire series completely, so she can focus on her print publisher because of all the illegal downloads of her books.
This is a very touchy subject with authors who are being ripped off right and left.
Thank you for pointing out the policy on sharing. The wording in the article (loophole) was not favorable. I see that the Kindle allows 6 exchanges which is not as bad as implied in the article. Authors have seen their books downloaded free & illegally in excess of 20,000 in one day though so obviously, the way the article suggested books were just being passed around freely set off an alarm for us.
The article also states you, yourself, have never paid for a book on Kindle and are reading more books than ever… You can imagine the image that gives. I hope for the sake of all e-book authors that this was a misquote. OK, so Kindle says you can trade… It’s not an official crime in that case so I retract my heated tweet that you should be sued, but anyone thinking of doing this should read Shiloh Walker’s article about e-piracy and free downloads:
http://www.shilohwalker.com/piracy.htm
It pretty much sums up why this is such a big deal to authors. We’re not trying to be nasty. We’re trying to make a living. This is a hard business to make an income from. Not many can do it full-time.
Again, if this was a hatchet job, I am sorry on your behalf and the reporter should be ashamed.
I fail to see how piracy is worse than the thriving second-hand book trade or lending libraries.
I don’t know a soul who’s pirated a book, but I know dozens who only buy used or read only library books. Authors receive nothing for used books or library check-outs, so how are those better than a pirated book?
I don’t pirate books, but I do make a point of stripping the drm on my books whenever possible and I’ve lent some ebooks, ToS be damned. If I can lend the paper books I buy, I will lend the ebooks I buy for hardly less money.
I believe I was one of the first to read and tweet about this article, Ms. Englin, so I think it’s appropriate that I comment here. Thank you for your clarification, and fast response. I spent 18 years as a professional public relations consultant and media specialist, and I think you have nicely summed up the lessons you learned about dealing with the media and the potential pitfalls from a casual, off the cuff remark like you made. These are lessons I taught my clients, and I warned them that “certain” newspapers notorious for taking your words out of context and making a benign comment quite incendiary.
Several other commenters have beautifully captured the sentiment of authors who are losing not only our income, but our chance at NEW income (contracts are based on sales) because of the growth of epiracy. You are clearly NOT guilty of this, as you and your friend are following amazon’s policy and rules. However, your cavalier attitude — as it was portrayed in the article — is exactly the “can’t win” battle we are fighting. Many people have no idea they are breaking the law when they download an illegal digital version of a book. Or, they believe that authors are so rich, we will never miss that royalty. Many believe we work for the sheer joy of creating novels, and that, somehow, our mortgage gets paid by another source of income. Most don’t care about the author…but complain mightily when that author “is no longer writing.”
Again, I appreciate your candor and response and sit firmly in the “blame the NYT reporter” court for the uprising. However, the issue is real, it has us divided, and it is costing people jobs and joy.
@Crystal – so what, even if she thought she was breaking the rules, she was not. You aren’t guilty of something for thinking you are doing something wrong unless you actually commit an illegal act.
Wrongfully accusing legitimate purchasers of wrongdoing does not endear readers to you, nor does it encourage them to read or buy your books.
I should have said “I fail to see how piracy is a worse threat to sales than…” I think that’s more accurate.
Yes, pirating is bad, but is it really much worse than paperbackswap.com, used bookstores, and libraries? I can think of a few dozen people I know who pretty much never, ever buy books new and haven’t for decades. How is ebook sharing worse?
Caligi, you asked how piracy is worse than secondhand book sales, libraries, or friends sharing books. E-book piracy is exponentially worse than any of these other options. (And to be clear, I’m a fan of libraries, used bookstores, and friends passing along books they enjoyed. Word of mouth and the ability to “try out” a new-to-you author are golden. I can’t even count the number of authors I buy new now that I discovered via the library or a book passed on by a friend.)
If I buy a book and three friends want to borrow it, I have to read it, pass it on to one, who reads it and passes it on to the next, and so on. If I upload an e-book file to an illegal filesharing site, thousands of people can download and read it at the same time. Those thousands can then share with thousands more, and so on.
To be clear, this is NOT what Ms. Eglin is doing. The shared book feature on Kindle is analagous to sharing a paperback with five friends – at which point, in hard copy, it’s probably starting to get a bit worn out anyway.
I just spoke with Kindle support, and apparently six neighbors can all share the same account when it comes to kindle. (Though the guy did warn me that if I put five neighbors on my account, I’d — yikes! — be responsible for paying for every book they bought.) Also, having spent several years writing for AZ’s largest daily newspaper, I understand how stories can be colored by reporting. So, I’m sorry if your comments were slanted.
But I do have to agree with those writers who pointed out that it was your statement about suspecting you were breaking the rules that was upsetting. My publishers send out tons of “take-down” notices for tens of thousands of illegal downloads of my books. I’ve stopped doing it myself, because 1) it’s hugely depressing, and 2) it’s like playing whack-a-mole; knock one down, ten pop up in its place.
Unlike many of my writer colleagues, I’ve never had a problem with used books being sold. When a reader buys one of my books, he or she has the right to share it, sell it, donate it, toss it out, or line the bottom of the birdcage with the pages. (Though I’d rather not know about that!)
As an avid reader, I’ve shared books and doing so is protected by the “first sale” doctrine. The difference is that physical books have a finite life. After a few trades or sales, they’re no longer readable. Illegal e-books, however, can go one forever, multiplying daily as people pass those torrent links on. And, as Roxanne St. Claire pointed out, this hurts writers whose contracts depend on prior sales numbers. And eventually readers, when their favorite writers don’t receive those new contracts and stop writing.
As everyone knows, the music industry was hugely impacted by illegal downloads. Unlike musicians, we writers can’t go on tour, read excerpts of our books to packed stadiums, then sell T-shirts. So, yes, as anyone would, we tend to get a little stressed out when we see our income being threatened illegally. (Which, again, you’re not doing, Ms. Englin.) For those who want free books, if you don’t have a friend to borrow from, may I suggest the public library.
Now, having a Nov 1 deadline, I’m returning to writing. Because, just like every other person who works for a living, I’ve come to depend on having a roof over my head and regular meals.
Nice non apology Ross. I hope no one shares your books ever.
BTW, Shayna, I hope you know that being called a thief and liar, being accused of criminal activity, is defamatory per se which comes with damages implied so long as your suit is successful.
#1 Pirating is worse because a printed book can really only go so far. There was an author who saw her book illegally downloaded 20,000 times on the FIRST DAY OF RELEASE. One day, people. Now multiply that by whatever number you want to multiply it by. It adds up and it’s frightening. We don’t care if you get our book at the library or buy it off eBay because at some point that book was purchased and a royalty was paid. And that book isn’t going to last through 20,000 readings. There is a big difference between the two.
Would you work for free? No, because you couldn’t support your family working for free and you wouldn’t want to work for free. Authors love to write, yes, but we also love to feed and clothe our families. Authors don’t get health insurance or those other lovely benefits that come with a lot of jobs, and the J.K. Rowlings and Stephen Kings are few and far between. Authors really don’t make much. Shiloh Walker’s blog post on this clearly states the difference.
#2 Jane – I believe I pointed out the reason why authors were upset. Stating “But I do suspect we are breaking the rules.” definitely sounds like someone who is breaking rules and doesn’t care. Of course that’s going to draw an angry reaction from e-pubbed authors who have been ripped off in this way. I also clearly apologized on here if it was a case of a hachet job by the reporter and retracted my earlier comment. The whole way the article was done led to mass confusion.
The issue here, I would think, is the reporter’s angle which caused the article to come off the way it did. I did review the TOS and didn’t see anything about the sharing of ebooks on other Kindles because it is buried in there. I don’t just blindly accuse people of anything.
When it was brought to my attention and the actual part showing that ebooks could be shared up to 6 times through the system was provided, I apologized for it and retracted my comment and I did not make some big public comment anyway. I sent a tweet to another author. Unless someone followed BOTH of us or specifically searched for “Shayna Englin” they wouldn’t have even seen it.
And I would hope any reader interested in reading any of my or any other author’s books would understand how piracy hurts us and why that article which appeared to be making very light of what sounded like piracy and referenced Ms. Englin in a way that directly indicated pirating upset so many.
If upset by any of this, why not send a statement to the reporter advising how the article came across instead of bashing on authors who have come to this blog to thank Ms. Englin for the clarification and apologize?
I can’t make it any simpler than this: The article indicated shady passing around of e-books through ” exploiting a loop-hole” Ms. Englin discovered so she was reading books she never paid for…and the article doesn’t stae she did this with one person. It cited multiple friends doing this. The TOS didn’t mention allowable sharing of ebooks (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530) at all when I reviewed it. Apparently, it is buried deep in there somewhere. I replied to an author’s tweet about this article.Again, a reply only seen by those who follow BOTH of us or directly search for Ms. Englin’s name. Once Ms. Englin sent me the link to this blog and showed where it is legal to trade books on the Kindle I apologized.
Ms. Englin herself admitted to the article misconstruing her statements. I have apologized and pointed out WHY it sounded so bad. The article was misleading and provoked misled comments by authors. We’ve apologized. That is all we can do.
Here’s the problem as I see it.
When we sign a contract with our publisher, it is with the understanding that X number of books will be printed as a result of that contract. Those books go out into the world, and I hope they reach as many people as possible. I don’t mind sharing. Once you own a book, it is yours to do whatever you want, except copy it, thus creating a book that was not included in the terms of my contract and that I was not compensated for.
If I have a print run of 100,000 books, and all of those books sold, then I know I’ve received fair pay for the copies of the books that now exist. If 400,000 people read those 100,000 books, well I say great. My contract was met.
Here’s the problem with ebooks. It only takes a click of the mouse to make a new copy, and that is effortless, so people don’t associate it with causing a problem. But here’s what happens.
I sign a contract that allows certain publishing entities the right to distribute new copies of my book. In that contract, I’m compensated from the legitimate sources of the copies of that book.
If one person uploads that book onto a torrent site, they have become a new ebook PUBLISHER one that did not sign a contract with me for the right to produce and distribute my work. That’s not sharing, that’s public distribution of protected work. Anyone can download it as many times as they want, creating hundreds, or thousands, or heaven forbid hundreds of thousands of new books without any contractual protection or compensation for the author.
One upload can cause massive damage. I don’t know what people get out of doing that. What is their payoff? They’re usually not getting money, so it must get some sort of high about their “generosity” to the poor people who want a free copy. The only way we can fight that is to have the community of readers decide that distributing illegal copies of books is a scumbag thing to to and scorn the people who choose to do it.
I’m all for readers. I know readers just want to be able to read all our books without a bunch of headaches. I’m for that too. Just be aware of how your choices as readers affect the authors you love. It’s not caring if you’re hurting authors that is a large part of what does hurt us. Please don’t create new copies of electronic files.
We love our readers. But we do depend on you to keep us in this business. So let’s everyone do what we can to come together as a community, and throw all our angst and scorn at the people who really deserve it.
Jess Granger
I don’t really care how “upsetting” the original NYT article was; IMO anyone who called Englin a thief or accused her of stealing owes her an apology. Not an explanation — an apology.
And as a reader who buys tons of books (literally tons), I can tell you that I’m far more likely to be influenced negatively by an author accusing a reader of stealing than I am by anything the NYT might write. Seriously — authors labeling a reader who reads legally a thief indicts all of us who are law-abiding, and IMO it’s a much greater risk to keeping your readership than piracy.
@Caligi
I think at least part of the difference is when you borrow a book, or buy a used book, or read a book taken out from a library, the physical book can only be in one place at a time.
Often e-pirates never even paid for the first copy of a book, and even if they did pay for one copy, there can be hundreds of thousands of copies made from that one copy very quickly.
Authors are seriously being hurt by this. It’s no joke. And while the music industry has already been dealing with this issue, at least a musician can also earn money from touring and playing gigs, etc. Royalties from the sales of books is the only way writers have of earning a living. And used book stores don’t do any damage, when compared to digital theft of books.
And it seems like kindle’s policy is trying to mimic the actual way people read physical books and share them with friends, if they like them.
It was the statement quoted in the article, and the reporter’s tone in the article that digital piracy is no big deal that angers authors.
Why are you authors talking about piracy with this woman who is doing nothing more than engaging in legitimate authorized sharing of a book that the publisher has clearly authorized?
Is explaining your paranoia about piracy a way to apologize to her for calling her a thief and liar on a public forum? Why not simply apologize?
Or do you equate sharing with piracy?
Because just saying “I’m sorry” is generic. First, we must explain what the confusion was about that led to statements made and WHAT we are sorry for.
Somehow this is still not clear.
The article was very misleading, making it sound like piracy. Rather than just say “Oh, my bad” it’s important to say WHAT caused this whole thing and why we are sorry.
We now know it was ***NOT*** a piracy issue so we’ve tried to explain that we know this now and explain the difference for people who don’t know and don’t understand what the initial uproar was about and we have apologized.
We are STILL getting comments from people unclear why anything was said or what piracy even is so we have explained this just as Ms. Englin explained that her statements were misconstrued.
Not very fair if both sides can’t explain their actions.
This is my last post on this because it’s just getting ridiculous. Ms. Englin’s direct quotes were very damning but we have read her explanation and we are taking her word this was reporter’s misuse of what she provided in interview and have APOLOGIZED, yet even after taking her word & apologizing we are STILL being attacked. Why can our apologies not be accepted???
The saddest thing about this is it started with a reporter misconstruing a reader’s statements but no one is attacking the reporter. Let’s all just attack the authors who have apologized. I’m just not seeing the fairness in it but I still maintain that I apologize to Ms. Englin and ANY reader offended by this whole mess. I know I can’t please everyone, but I do sincerely hope Ms. Englin can accept the apology since her name was directly mentioned. And to make it clear: WE ACKNOWLEDGE SHAYLA ENGLIN DID NOT ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD ANYTHING. We APOLOGIZE for the misunderstanding of how the Kindle allows sharing and are sorry she got caught in the crossfire of what has been a very heated debate for some time now.
Thanks, all for the attempts at clarity. Apologies accepted all around.
Let me put it to you another way. You and your friends have found a loophole in Amazon’s system that the authors were not aware existed. Are some angry at you? Sure. But more, we’re angry at Amazon.
Why? Because it was introduced to US that it was to allow one person to share the book on devices they owned…to allow husband and wife, mother and daughter, two sisters or two best friends (hey, I’ll go that far) perhaps to share books. Not six unrelated friends to do it.
There is an established way to lend e-books, and Amazon breached it. Look at B&N, and you’ll see the RIGHT way. You get the publishers to opt in. You have a limited number of shares…okay, Amazon did that right. You have a limited number of TIME on shares; I’ve heard 2-3 weeks batted around for most systems, with one person using it at a time and/or and only the total of 12-18 weeks (6X2 or 6X3) of sharing allowed on a book EVER, allowing for two times on a single person, and you lose a share that way to someone else. Amazon has defaulted on this by leaving publishers and authors COMPLETELY out of the loop and misrepresenting to us how this would be handled and used.
Did it floor some authors to learn it was being used this way? Of course. Because it’s common sense to US that you don’t do this without publisher approval. Yet again, Amazon has jumped into an established game and screwed up the works, confusing the issues. But Amazon seems to excel at that.
Simply put, Amazon needs to do what B&N is doing…and do it fast. They’ve lost about a thousand points in my book in the last few days.
Brenna
Oh, wow… The complete misinformation being spread here is AMAZING. This is why we educate people.
Is sharing a print book different than “sharing” an e-book? Yes. It is. Sorry to burst the tender bubbles of some people in here, but it is. e-Books are software…a book but not in a solid form that will eventually fall apart. Paper books don’t last decades, as they did when they were made a century ago. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game these days. There is no wear and tear on e-books. They don’t wear out…ever, because there’s such a thing as backward compatibility. But, back to the meat of the subject.
Valid e-book lending, as a result, has limitations set on it. DRM to make them only good for a certain length of time and number of lends, for instance. Someone MIGHT say that the DRM in question makes it allowable, if it was legalized into X time and Y number of lends, to lend them without publisher approval. I’d be WITH them, if such a law existed, but it doesn’t.
Right now, we’re dealing with copyright law, which says NO unauthorized copies of the book made and distribution. And we’re dealing with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which covers all electronic media, including e-books. Kindle’s method of “sharing” doesn’t break copyright, per se, IF only one of the six can use it at a time, like passing a paper book hand to hand. If more can, it breaks it, right there, because they don’t have the author’s and publisher’s permission to make those copies (more than one person holding and reading the book at a time) without paying royalties for them. Simple, elegant, but as I said, Amazon rarely thinks these things through, from what I’ve seen.
The other types of piracy noted in posts above are not legal, because they are creating and distributing (illegally) multiple copies of the book. It’s not LESS illegal to make copies of an e-book and hand them out than it is to slit the cover of a paper book, make OCR scans of it to make an e-book, and then pirate that as an e-book, which has happened to many print-only books, like Harry Potter. Or to use a Xerox to make paper copies of an entire book and hand it out, which most people DO know is illegal…and impractical. Hurray for innovations that make copyright infringement easier. Tongue in cheek…firmly.
I have nothing against someone who is (for instance) vision impaired OCR scanning a paper book to have ReadPlease or Adobe read the book to her. That’s use of the book you purchased (used or new) for your own purposes. A-okay, in my book, though Author’s Guild would have a heart attack to hear me say that, I’m sure. There are legitimate uses to the hardware in question, but pirating books isn’t one of them.
Neither do I have an issue with one person sharing an e-book with A friend (singular). Never did. More than two starts to fray at my nerves, especially if I find they are both/all keeping copies of the book. A lot of people really don’t know this is wrong, and I try to educate them about it. It’s the big pirate sites that are the bane of my existence. Not these piddling little sister/sister shares.
So, is piracy worse than USB? YES! Both legally and from the standpoint of sales numbers for the authors. Legally, I’ve covered. Realistically…the entire paper books eventually wear out thing…I’ve covered, not to mention that even USB can only sell one copy at a time of a book, whereas pirates can give away thousands of copies at a time of the single purchased book. I’ve found 800 entries for my books at a single pirate site, and I find dozens of sites every year. Taking them down can be, if you let it, a full time job.
Maybe it’s not a big deal to a bestseller in NY, who will pre-sell 250,000 or more of the newest book in print form alone, but to the indie/es and the midlist in NY…yes, it’s a plague that will discourage authors, will waste a heck of a lot of our writing time, will adversely affect our royalty checks, and will (in many cases) keep a NY author from getting offered another contract, because the sales aren’t up to snuff on the one being pirated.
A plague? That’s not an exaggeration. There is no such thing as a book that cannot be pirated. There is no DRM that cannot be broken. There is no way to make a paper book that cannot be scanned. All we can do is be enough of a pain in the backside to pirate sites that we slow them down.
Brenna
Ack! Just so you don’t think I’m brain dead… I meant to type UBS (used book store) not USB, but I’m fighting the flu this morning, and my mind is not at full speed yet.
B
Would’ve posted this yesterday, but my cable wireless always goes out when it rains and internet on my iPhone can be spotty and cut out at inconvenient times. So, I’m catching up. . .
I’ve always tried to learn something new every day. It appears as if not only having a rough couple days in the public eye, we’ve both learned something, Ms. Englin. You learned the dangers of making casual “off the record” responses to a reporter, while I learned 1) not to retweet before coffee, and 2) that people other than household members can share a kindle account, which makes me wonder if my dear friend in Canada who’s been craving one, but doesn’t have a U.S. credit card, could share my account.
I also relearned the old journalism rule about fact checking three sources. Should’ve, would’ve, didn’t. And I apologize for that. And for any discomfort my earlier statement regarding your having stolen Amazon content — which I did later state you did not! — might have caused you.
I’m in D.C. quite often. Maybe someday our paths will cross and we can have a drink and share a friendly discussion about all the books we’ve enjoyed reading on our Kindles.
Ms. Englin,
Speaking as a writer, one who writes both ebooks and print books for NY, and who worries about and has been affected by digital piracy, I have to say I am so, so, SO sorry this happened to you. It is absolutely inexcusable that you were treated this way. Even if you WERE bending Amazon’s rules (which you clearly are not) there is absolutely no excuse for the name-and-shame witch-hunt you were subjected to. How is what you do any different from a group of friends with low incomes, say, who band together and pool their money to buy a new book every week, and pass it around? In what world is what you do equivalent to piracy? Isn’t the fact that you buy more books that way a good thing? Shouldn’t we be glad of that?
I’ve been pirated, numerous times. It’s incredibly upsetting. It also does not give me license to behave like the fastest runner in the lynch mob. Who in the world can honestly feel justified in encouraging people to harass an innocent woman, in public, especially on Twitter where you obviously have a professional presence, which may well have been damaged by all of this?
Even if you had been breaking a law, the correct way to deal with it would have been a private email. Not this. On behalf of those of us who have brains and love readers, I want to apologize. We’re not all like that. The vast majority of us aren’t, in fact, and myself and all my friends are horrified by what happened to you. We need readers like you.
My email is above, not publicly listed as I want to remain anonymous here but I’m sure you as the admin can see it. If you like, send me an email and I’ll be happy to send you ebook or print copies of any of my novels.
[...] of these Upholders Of The Law authors, they had the nerve to issue half-assed apologies. (Some are here in Ms. Englin’s blog post about the incident.) One or two of them even tried to lay the blame at the feet of the original writer of the NYT [...]
I heard about this and I’m sorry you’re going through all of the backlash from it. I don’t see it as any different than lending a friend a physical book, assuming you’re not sharing it with 20,000 friends. =) If it makes you feel any better, my husband and I do the exact same thing with our audible accounts. We both have our individual accounts and we often share books between them.
Shayna, while you’ve admitted you learned a lesson from that off-the-cuff remark made, the reaction was way over the top.
I’m glad you’ve ‘cleared’ your name by not being guilty of what so many thought you were guilty of.
Readers depend on writers for entertainment. Writers depend on readers to earn money (or get feedback, etc.). We’re co-dependents or enablers to one another…only healthy ones.
I’m not sure if anyone’s made this point or not, because my eyes went blurry trying to read all the long comments, but while piracy is illegal distribution/copyright infringement, authors talking about losing large portions of their income due to it aren’t correct.
People who download pirated e-books from download sites/file sharing networks know they can buy them. They don’t want to buy them, that’s why they’re on those sites downloading them.
Your book’s not been pirated and there for them to download? They just download the e-books of someone else’s that have been.
You’re not losing a sale from someone like that. You can’t claim to be losing sales from people who have no intention of buying your e-book titles.
Your readers, those loyal fans, know where to buy your titles, and they will continue doing so.
The others won’t. They can’t get it for free, they just won’t get it at all.
Since Amazon has terms of use that state the purchaser may download to other kindle book supporting devices providing they personally own said devices, how can continue to argue that you do what you do unless it is to to avoid having to buy more than one copy of each book between you and your non-household member friends.
You don’t own their Kindles, do you? Be honest and admit you and your friends are ripping off authors by making permanent copies of digital books kept devices you each own.
Actually, Deirdre, the Amazon TOS says no such thing. Here’s the policy, cut and pasted from the Amazon Kindle help FAQ (link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=sv_kinc_8?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200127470#share)
Note that it doesn’t say anything about households or the same person owning both Kindles or anything else of that sort, just that their *may* be limits on the number of devices that can simultaneously use the same book, usually up to six.
Shayna, I’m so glad to learn that you are not a thief! I saw the article and was afraid that the Amazon Cops would be busting down your door with a battering ram.
Also, on the Question of Free, I believe that there’s not a zero-sum tradeoff between e-books and tree books. There are people (such as myself) who will read a free e-book and then decide to buy a hard copy, much as I might check a book out of the library (or read it in the bookstore) before buying it. There are also authors who give away e-books and find that it increases sales. See here for on article about that: http://bit.ly/7o3Su