My novel has been pirated! No, I don’t mean that a creaking, monster of a ship pulled up along side my apartment building and spewed out pirates that ravished me before taking all my print copies away. That would have been awesome. Rather my book has been uploaded somewhere on the internet for anyone to take. I have to admit, I was bummed when I first found out. I estimate that I made about $50 before this happened. Total. I didn’t receive an advance for The Cat in the Cradle, and drumming up sales for an unknown author is harder than you might expect. Still, if there’s one unstoppable force in the world, it’s piracy. Knowing there was little I could do, I decided to go with the flow and posted the following message to the place it was being downloaded from:
“Wow! My book has been pirated already. Well, I hope you guys enjoy! If you do, please leave me a nice review on Amazon or consider buying the print version. Happy reading!”
I thought this was a pretty cool attitude to have. When I checked back the next day, I found my message had been deleted. Why? That’s the equivalent of a homeowner saying to a burglar, “Ah! I’m being robbed. Well, don’t mind me. Help yourself!” and then getting punched in the face for his benevolence.
The bright side to all of this, is that my book has been downloaded more than a hundred times. That’s a lot of readers! Any legitimate author writes for themselves first, penning the story they’ve always wanted to read. The next consideration is the audience, and knowing my characters have found so many potential fans is pretty thrilling. If I weren’t in a financial partnership with my publisher, I think I would offer the ebook for free and see if I could live off of print sales or donations to this site. I’d like to think I could make enough to keep writing, and if my book is going to be given away, it should be on my own terms. This might be something I pursue with my next novel. Until then, I can only hope that anybody that reads The Cat in the Cradle, no matter how they come by it, takes a little time out to help support the book, even if only by word of mouth. I mentioned donations… right?