Day 43: Writers, are you getting ripped off

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 43: Writers, are you getting ripped off

This might be of interest to self-published writers everywhere.

Have you noticed that your sales are down? Mine are. For a while I did fairly well, I was by no means competition for James Patterson, but there was a steady flow of sales.

Then suddenly, I noticed a decrease. At first, I thought it was because of summer. People are more likely to do some gardening, go swimming, or get together with family and friends when the sun is shining rather than curling up with a book.

As I found out a few days ago, it’s wasn’t the sun who was to blame for my lack of sales, but several pirate sites. One of these sites is Lucentfun.com https://signup.lucentfun.com

Lucentfun and other pirate sites offer free download of books. Mine are all there. Other sites have my books as well.

I wasted no time. I contacted several of these pirate sites and threatened them with legal action if my books weren't taken down immediately. How much effect this will have, I don’t know. Maybe they will take the books down, maybe they won’t. Maybe they will take them down and later put them back up again.

Lucentfun claims that all books are free, but anyone who wants the read anything has to sign up with their site and provide credit card information.

How do I know of these pirate sites ... because I’m subscribed to Google alert. Anytime any of these pirate sites offers my books for free, I get a notification.

If they were to offer only the books of well-known authors, I wouldn’t care as much. Authors such as James Patterson, Stephen King, Dan Brown or Danielle Steel sell millions of books and probably won’t care if someone offers free copies of their work. What do they care about a dollar or two? For self-published writers though, they do care.

Not only do I care about lost income, but I also care about my books’ Amazon ranking. If someone buys a book, the book goes up in ranking and make no mistake, readers do care about ranking, especially if it’s a book by an unknown writer/author.

I have a few favorite authors and when any of them releases a new book, I don’t care about the ranking. I know the story will be good. However, when none of my favorites have anything on offer, I go looking for something else. That’s when I do care about the ranking, the stars awarded and the readers’ reviews.

Not that the reviews are always to be trusted, after all, what’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. Reviews are up to a certain point valuable though. If I read a review that rates the book ‘absolute rubbish’ or ‘a complete waste of time’ I’m not likely to buy it.

So, not only do these pirate sites rob self-published writers from their royalties, they also rob them from potential reviews.