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

Can I share content with other Kindles?
Books can be shared between Kindles or iPhones that are registered to the same account. There may be limits on the number of devices (usually 6) that can simultaneously use a single book. Subscriptions to newspapers or periodicals cannot be shared on multiple devices.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

B

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