“To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.”

-Abbie Hoffman

The business world is a hard, cutthroat industry that eats naïve and kindhearted people alive. To succeed in business you must be ruthless, cold hearted and resilient while also being able to ward off shots of negativity that happen to be thrown your way. The greatest entrepreneurs plow through adversity. Others crack under the pressure and drama that the industry provides on a daily.

I can go on and on about the problems in the book industry from the ill priced  e-books to the oversaturation of street stories that paint black people as  violent, weed smoking, gangbanging, sex-crazed savages living in Section 8  housing. However, the problem that many in the industry have had to deal with recently is the epidemic of several  websites bootlegging books, especially black owned and  produced books.  It  was brought to our attention that several  independent authors and publishers  books are being found on  these file sharing e-book websites. These websites are  causing  documented drops in sales for authors on Amazon and plenty of  legal  headaches.

These websites are infringing on the electronic rights that we wait  for months to  be inserted into the Library Of Congress portfolio.    Also, it’s putting salt on an  already beaten and wounded black  book industry. The value of novels are  steadily going down and  the experience of reading a paper or hardback book is  being  tainted. What’s the point of spending well over $10 for a physical copy of  a novel when you can get it for free from one of these e-book websites?

E-books have been causing authors and publishers plenty of stress in the  literary world. From Amazon and Hatchette’s back and forth price dispute to  these literary hustlers trying to get a quick come-up putting out books for .99,  the problems we’re experiencing is overwhelming. Maybe it’s time to make a  statement. Maybe it’s just time we decided to give the e-book market a rest and  focus on moving our respective physical books.

This is a discussion that we need to have amongst ourselves as authors, publishers and readers. What’s our next move? How do we combat the stranglehold that e-books have on the publishing industry? Who’s behind this? Is this an inside job? Just talking about how you’re going to get a robust attorney team to deal with this issue isn’t achieving anything. Neither is visiting these websites to view any content. We have to maintain some type of solidarity family.

Many will never understand the anguish an author faces when they see the novel or story they’ve worked so hard for stolen and released for free. Months, years even, of hard work is flushed down the toilet as each of our work is downloaded. Corporate publishers like Penguin, Kingston and Hatchette can probably withstand this attack. Independent authors and publishers are getting their heads chopped off at every turn.

One of my DC Bookdiva Publications label mates Jannelle Moore is a victim of these free e-book sites. Her three novels she self-published before she got with the company is on one of these infamous websites. One of her novels have been downloaded four times. Here, she expresses her extreme displeasure.

Jannelle Moore

It was only a matter of time. Authors who have hovered over their computer for months and sometimes years to complete a book, submit the book to various agents and publishers and for the self-published, formatting the book and designing the cover to upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon) or Pubit (Barnes and Noble) only to have to endure the indignity of selling the book for .99 cents or giving it away just to build a following-victims of pirating and e-book fraud. I have been in the literary game for close to four years now, and I knew what I was getting into before I typed my first sentence as an author. I came in this game fully aware of the surge of e-books and the ramifications of their presence. 

However, it still doesn’t make knowing that my books, the books that I have spent endless late nights and early mornings working on, are being read free of charge without my consent. The books that’ve kept me cooped up in my room and on my butt typing thousands of words a clip. The books that I’ve agonized over in the editing process and the begging, pleading for reviews and support has been stifled by ambitious, tech savvy, bootleggers eager to make a  huge payday.

 I discovered that my self-published novel Wild Cards and my novella series Thirst, Thirst II, and Love’s Hangover was on these sites by a headed warning by one of my Facebook friends.  It took everything in me not to lose it seeing all the work that I’ve written and released on the website.  At first, I thought it was a reader just like other authors did. But it seemed that only  the books that I had for sale on B&N were affected.  I immediately thought it was an  inside job. But it couldn’t have been an inside job because the company would have  caught the perps immediately, fired them and pressed charges. 

 I can’t speak for other authors but I put my heart in this business and in every project  I’m involved in. I’m not in this industry for posterity. I’m in it because I love to  entertain readers with my words. I love to experiment with different ways to tell a  story, and I’m good at this and know without a doubt that I can live comfortably  financially with my words.  And for these sites and some of the sell outs who have  copied files to share to take from me and other authors is sickening. .99 cents and free  giveaways from publishers and authors themselves isn’t good enough anymore? 

These free e-book websites and some readers are infringing on our livelihood  when they do this. The only solace I can take in this is the fact that the entire  publishing industry is affected. It isn’t just a black literature problem. This is an entire  industry problem and this is a problem that everyone, be it traditionally published or  self-published, must ban together and fight.  While many of us are just talking about  our outrage at this point, I have a few solutions. 

 The first thing we should do other than getting in front of our attorneys and having them draft a cease and desist letter is to get together and file a class action suit.  Saying that class action suits are ineffective is wrong. Case in point, look at the record industry’s takedown of Napster. They took them down and implement some regulations that you see today every time a song is downloaded from iTunes or streamed from Pandora.

  Another thing we can do is take each and every one of our titles down from those sites and develop our own e-book distribution channels.  For the tech savvy geeks among us, we can develop a way to protect PDF files from being copied.

Whatever we do, we must do it now. Either that or all we have to show for our work and sacrifices is venting sessions among authors laced with empty threats  to our foes and  hollow bragging rights to family and friends.

 

 

 

 

Buy books written by Jannelle at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Jannelle-Moore?store=allproducts&keyword=Jannelle+Moore

 

Support DC Bookdiva Publications

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3ADC+Bookdiva&keywords=DC+Bookdiva&ie=UTF8&qid=1404390057

 

 

The cover to my novel, The Diary Of Aaliyah Anderson. It’s coming out in October. Also, My novella is dropping this summer.  Make sure you look out for me! You can read a preview of The Diary Of Aaliyah Anderson on Wattpad now!

 

Do you have any questions, comments or concerns? Was I right or wrong on this issue? I would love to hear from you! Contact me directly at:

Email: [email protected]

Kik: @AuthorRandallB

Ask.Fm: @YoungandGiftedBooks

Twitter: @AuthorRandallB

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/randall.barnes.501