The site should’ve been an author’s dream. All these threads talking about books, places to get them, the excitement of waiting for new releases, discovering something new. Hours after a book is released, there’s a good chance you’ll find it there.
The problem is, the people who frequented the site have no intention of paying for the books. They’ll click on the links, go to fileshare sites, and download the books.
As one of the members once said, “…why pay for the books when you can get them for free?”

Walking the e-plank

Whether published in e-format or print, there’s a good chance many writers will have to deal with piracy.
For Ginn Hale, author of Wicked Gentleman, the problems have been twofold.
“The first is the amount of my creative time that has been wasted by the endless cycle of having to write and request that a link be taken down only to have it pop back up under a slightly different name,” said Hale. “This can go on and on for weeks, until I just give up in frustration.”
“My second problem is that it’s made my first experiences with the readers of digital works a very negative one. I want to believe that most readers of e-books and electronic works are honest people, but being constantly pirated — and being told that I should be happy about it because it’s promotion — hasn’t done much to buoy my optimism.”
Like Hale, other authors have been frustrated by the pervasive links. (continue reading…)