Piracy: It's Real. And It's All Your Fault.

Piracy is a huge concern for authors and publishers now that ereaders are becoming more popular. But really, who is to blame? The reader stealing profits away from the publishing industry? The author who would rather lose untold amounts of money rather than risk his or her book being stolen? The publishers that will hold back an ebook thinking the obsessed masses will spend upwards of $30 to buy a hardcover edition rather than wait a few months for a cheaper ebook version?

This may be an unpopular opinion but I think it's your fault. Yes, you. It doesn't matter who you are, you are part of the problem. The system is broken and no one has any idea what they are doing. And it's hurting everyone.

The first thing people need to realize is that pirating ebooks isn't like pirating music. Everyone has access to pirated music. Use any file sharing program and every song imaginable is available for the taking. Ebooks, not so much. They're on the internet, sure, but most are only available to the elite few. It's hard to be a pirate. No, seriously. I went "undercover" and well, it's obvious I'm not one of the chosen.

It's possible that you could download every book ever written for free. If you know someone. Ebook pirates are crafty people. They've seen the drama of the music pirates and decided that secrecy is key. Want access to their secret websites? You need to be invited by a member. You can find members easily on chat boards, but you'll have to spend months posting before gaining their trust. It's seemed like too much trouble, so I tried another track.

I Googled my heart out before learning that I could download free ebooks through a bit torrent program. I Googled some more to learn how to use said program and how to find ebooks I could steal through the program. I then searched for books I already owned (because I was undercover and really had no desire to actually "steal" from anyone) and found most aren't available. I downloaded the few I could search out and uploaded them to my ereader. Yay, success!

Except, not really. Yes, I had successfully stolen a few books, but at what cost? I wasted untold hours searching for these books. And not for nothing, but the ebooks were virtually unreadable. They were scanned page by page by a pirate. Once again, this is nothing like music piracy where you pop a disc in, hit copy and viola, free music. Here you have crooked pages, cut off pages, too small font that can't be magnified, etc. Why bother? This is the big threat to the publishing industry? People who want something free this badly might as well just steal it off the shelf at the store and be done with it. The risk is greater, but so are the rewards (I guess.)

Authors - please just stop it. Really. People who are stealing your book are most likely doing it for the sake of stealing it. Chances are they weren't going to buy it anyway. If you are an author who chooses to not provide your book in an ebook version because you're afraid pirates will provide your content for free, well, they already are. I've read plenty of interviews with ebook pirates and the one thing they all say is that they won't spend the time copying a book that's already available. It's work. Once again, why bother?

Thousands of readers are more than willing to spend money on ebooks. By not providing a legal copy of your book, you are not receiving that money. Would you rather prevent the few from getting a copy of your book for free (and you are failing at that) rather than profit from those who legitimately want to buy your work? If so, you are only hurting yourself.

Publishers - We are well aware of what some of you are doing. We know some make the decision to hold ebooks back for months in order to get us to buy hardcovers. How is that working out for you? I'm not buying your expensive book. I can get your books from the library. For free. Legally. Or I'll wait until a paperback copy is released. I don't need the book immediately. I can wait. I would imagine most others can too. I would love to support the author and purchase a reasonably priced ebook, but you won't let me. That's your right and it's also your loss. Wouldn't you rather me spend $9.99 on a ebook on release day or have me get it from the library? How about pirate an ebook copy? Holding the ebook version back makes the pirates feel justified in their actions. No one should be giving the pirates any reason to feel righteous.

Readers - it's our fault too. Myself included. We know we want reasonably priced ebooks readily available. We know we need to speak up and make sure the publishing industry knows what we want and where we stand. How do we achieve our goals? We complain. To each other. Hmmm, that doesn't seem to be working. So the question is, what do we do?

I ask you: What can we do as readers to fix the system? How do we convince the publishing industry that there will always be pirates (look at the music industry) and that they don't matter in the long run? Am I completely wrong about this?