My Thoughts on Piracy

Specifically, the whole piracy-and-digital-rights issues as it applies to digital books.

Guess who's not doing NaNoWriMo this year, my lovely readers? Yours truly. (You can come join me in my Facebook group for No-Ners, too! https://www.facebook.com/groups/402513403209562/)

Why? Because she is hard at work editing and preparing Heart of Ember for submission to Rooglewood Press's contest and Sixteen for publication. (This thing is really happening! The day is drawing near! There are fewer than 100 days left until release. Am I freaking out? No, no, not -- OF COURSE I AM.)

Anyway, in preparation for January 18, 2014, I've been reading plenty about Smashwords. One of the topics I stumbled across was a discussion of piracy and DRM. Basically, DRM is something in some digital files created to prevent piracy. Piracy is when somebody steals your book. They could be stealing it on purpose, selling it for their own gain, but odds are definitely not high of that scenario. More likely is accidental piracy - someone buys a copy of your book, and then shares it with a friend/family/multiple people.


There's a lot of heated debate when it comes to DRM. In fact, there's entire anti-DRM movements. While I'm not one of the activists, I'm not exactly a proponent myself. The first form of piracy - selling illegally for personal gain - is a good reason to have DRM. Accidental piracy, on the other hand, shouldn't even be an issue, if you ask me.

I take this stance as both a reader and a writer. I'll admit, I've actually committed this form of piracy before I knew it was piracy - and, honestly, I really don't care now that I do know it was "wrong." I mean, I'd guess I have between 200 and 300 physical books in my personal library. I lend these out to friends, family members, folks at church, you name it. I even have a little roster of who has which books at a given time. But if I share a digital file similarly, it's piracy? I guess I see the technicality of it - after all, the digital file would stay on both devices, while a physical book can only be in one place at a time. Still, you can see where I'm coming from when I say I find it a bit ridiculous.

As a writer, my opinion doesn't waver. While it'd be nice to have every person who's going to read Sixteen pay for it, I know that never happens and never will happen, in the digital or print world. People are going to share books, win them in giveaways, buy them used, try before they buy, and all other sorts of things. I do it as a reader; I don't expect any differently from my own readers. I mean, let's celebrate the love the written word! Forget the dollar. If you're a writer for the money, you clearly don't know what you're doing and are 99% guaranteed to fail.

Conclusion: I have a book coming out in January. I would love for you to buy it. And if I discover half the people reading Sixteen got it free off a friend... well, that's twice the readers I thought I had based on sales figures. Woo hoo!