AMEN Sister!!!

You know, there are very few blog posts that I just have to link to. Alessia Brio's 'Ahoy Authors There Be Pirates In These Waters' is one of them.

Hot damn she nailed it!

http://alessiabrio.blogspot.com/2009/09/ahoy-authors-there-be-pirates-in-these.html

I know that some titles are priced a bit high, and I wish we authors could do something about it. I try to go with publishers, like Phaze, that are reasonable about balancing price of the title with just what the author will wind up with at the end of the day. Other's are not so well balanced.

But that does not give anyone the right to steal from me, or any other author. And when you give away a copy of one of my ebooks, you are stealing from me. I worked hard to craft whatever story it was.

I will be honest here too, most authors don't make 6 figure royalties. Most don't make 5. Heck, some of us are lucky to break 4 when adding several years together. We are not rich! So every lost sale, because you mention the title to your buddy and then when they say that are going to get the ebook you offer it to them, hurts.

Please, please, please keep in mind ebooks are different than print books. When you have a print book and you loan it to a friend, you either get it back or you don't. It is ONE COPY of the book.

When you give a friend a copy of an ebook, you still have a copy and they now have a copy. When they in turn give it to someone else, who gives it to someone else, etc that HURTS! It isn't one copy being shared. You are creating new copies.

I do not write just for the money. But when pirates steal from me, it makes it that much harder to make time to write more stories. As it does for all of the other authors out there.

So please, please, please ... if you want to read a story, buy it! Don't steal it.

And if you come across a pirate site out there with an author's work on it, email the author about it! Help us shut them down!