Book Pirates - You Stole More Than Just An Electronic File

I was watching the piracy groups being exposed on Facebook this past week, but I was working on a killer deadline and didn’t have any time to do any housecleaning. I promised myself I would undertake that task this weekend.

Then I got a look at the list of authors who were victims of the thieves and some of the books that had been pirated.

Let me back up a little here and tell you some of the backstory.

The first time I edited a fiction book, sure enough, I heard later that it had been put up on a pirate site. I reported it to the author, and she filed all of the proper paperwork to have it taken down. Sure, that didn’t stop other thieves, and pirating clusters continue to grow like the virulent, fulminating cancer they are.

I remember the feeling of finding that first book on a pirate site – the anger, a sense of betrayal of my friend who was then and is still a client. I edited that book; there was a piece of me in that story. Sure, it wasn’t a big piece, but some of the words in that book were suggested by me and later used by the author. Seeing them in electronic media and knowing for the first time that an author trusted my judgment enough to use words I’d suggested or rework a scene based on my advice? I’m telling you – it’s a high like no other. Why? Because authors are my rock stars, movie stars, heroes and heroines, the top of the heap, kings and queens of the mountain. And let’s not forget the stories they tell. Those stories have gotten me through some pretty dark times in my life, taken my mind out of the horror of some issues I’ve faced in my life and transported me to worlds where I could be, do, and say anything.

To be mentioned in the Acknowledgments, thanked specifically for the work that I did on that story? To have an author include me in a Dedication?

I can’t begin to find the words to describe how these things feel. Oh yeah, I get paid for doing the job, but truthfully, no career I have ever had compares to working with my friends who just happen to be authors.

What’s this got to do with piracy?

I watch, advise, act as a consultant, provide a shoulder, encourage, push, stalk (on request), cheer, find needles in haystacks, plead, cajole and even give the occasional NCIS headsmack while the story is being written. When the story lands on my desk for edits, I reassure, soothe, reassure again (no, the story does NOT suck – it’s pretty damn good), while I pull the story apart and look at it down to the last punctuation mark and word, then put it back together again - please gods, goddesses, book fairies and other writer patron saints and spirits -  better than it was when I first picked it up.

And through it all, I am awed by the author’s creativity in being able to make the characters live in my mind and the worlds they inhabit as real as the one outside my office door.

To be a part of that process is amazing, astounding, humbling, beautiful – a lifelong dream come true.

To see that stolen is heartbreaking. To find out  the thieves are people I know or have interacted with on one level or another is devastating, and the feeling of betrayal is crushing.

I saw the lists, and there were books the Red Quill team and I worked on. It was like being kicked in the gut – on behalf of the authors who are also my friends, on behalf of my team whose hard work went into those stories, and yes, for myself. I felt like we had been robbed.

Knowing how I felt – and I had only been the editor or headed the editing team – I could only imagine how the authors felt.

The author is the mother of that book baby. The editors, cover artists, and formatters are like a child’s teachers and caregivers. All of us, under the mother’s umbrella, have had a hand in getting that baby out into the world. Once out in the world, the street teams and fans carry that baby on its journey. And we all do it for the love of the written word and to take a reader’s mind to a different time and place with people the reader can only dream about.

Pirates – let’s call them what they really are – thieves steal that from all of us. But how is that possible, you ask?

It’s possible because it steals the author’s hard work and the hard work of all those who had a hand in bringing that story to the world. It steals the author’s motivation to continue to write those stories we enjoy. After all, if the bills can’t get paid, families can't be fed, and the author cannot provide a roof over their heads, why do it? Why watch thousands of copies illegally distributed whose royalties could have kept the writer writing basically disappear into thin air?

When all is said and done and the author hangs up their pen, computer, typewriter – whatever media they use to bring a story from their imagination to reality, we all lose.

The thief thinks, “It’s only one copy. What’s one copy?” Yeah, one copy for that thief and the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of other thieves who are thinking the same thing take away from the author and that author’s support staff who helped to put that book into the hands of those thieving, lowlife, waste-of-air, douchebags.

So, here’s a message to those who think “sharing” books is okay. The next time you work your ass off on something you are intensely proud of, I fervently hope that someone comes along and literally and figuratively stomps the result of your efforts to smithereens while you stand and watch. I fervently hope that you come home one day and find everything you treasured stolen or destroyed.

In the meantime, be careful who you invite into your “sharing groups” because we are out there and we know how to use sock accounts and other little tricks to out your sorry asses. And we will out you, shame you, and generally make your lives hell.

Why?

Because Karma is a bitch of the First Order and she’s is kicking ass and taking your names.

Next up: The difference between legal sharing and piracy.