Category: Uncategorized

The Business of Piracy

Another Monday, another alarm about a pirate website with our book covers and descriptions making the rounds on author forums and social media.  Face it, in this day and age, pirates will always be with us.  There’s simply no way to stomp them out short of disconnecting the internet, and then where will we independents be?  Seeing the outrage and the rush to file DMCA take down notices can be an interesting spectator sport if, like me, you’ve decided playing whack-a-mole with nasty people wasn’t a good use of your time.  Because it truly isn’t.  You may have noted that most experienced authors don’t climb on the alarm express when new pirate sites crop up because they know the truths I’m about to impart.

The internet is about 90% porn, 8% scams, and 2% honest commerce.  It means — leaving porn aside — that the scammers outnumber us by a wide margin.  We can’t win.  Governments can’t win.  Internet service providers (ISPs) can take a hundred per day offline and a hundred-and-fifty new scam operations will pop up the next day.  There are whole industries devoted to scamming in certain countries which shall remain nameless, meaning we can’t even expect ISPs and governments there to help.  Depressing, right?  Only if you allow it to be so.

Now, undoubtedly, a few sites have your precious books and are either giving them away or selling them.  But most — perhaps 99% — of these pirates don’t.  They scrape legitimate retailer websites for covers and descriptions (I can often identify which retailer they scraped based on the keywords and categories).  Why?  To attract idiots looking for cheap or free books, idiots willing to give out their credit card information so they can access the sites.  Why bother selling ebooks when it’s way more profitable to harvest credit card information.  By the time those tightwad morons figure out they’ve been had, their cards will be maxed out, and the money never recovered.  Oh, their banks will probably cover the losses, but the scammers have what they need.  That’s if they don’t sell the credit card information on the dark web, in which case it could be weeks or months before the morons find out.

What if it’s not credit card information they want?  Data is a commodity nowadays.  Sending a pirate site a DMCA take down notice gives them legitimate information they didn’t have.  There’s money in selling that sort of data on the dark web.  If the DMCA notice asks for a physical address, a name and an email address, as most do, then you may be courting trouble.  That bit of information can allow truly evil bastards to work on identity theft since you’ve now linked your work with more data.

And hey, in what universe would anyone expect a pirate — someone engaging in criminal activity — to honor a DMCA take down in the first place?  Sure, they might remove your books, but they’ll reappear.  Or perhaps be masked from your IP address so you can’t see them.  Trusting a pirate to follow international copyright law is asinine.  Besides, considering how many countries don’t care about enforcing copyright law unless an entity the size of Disney or Paramount complains, that DMCA notice isn’t worth the electrons wasted on creating it.  No one cares about independent publishers.

Here’s another truth.  The few pirate sites which really have your books don’t cost you sales.  The people who patronize them wouldn’t buy your stuff from a legitimate retailer in any case.  Some forums specialize in passing around pirated copies of your books.  Those who use them will never spend a cent on your magnum opus.  So there’s no point in crying over something that wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Bottom line, unless a legitimate site has copies of your books when it shouldn’t, as happened once to me when a user uploaded one of my novels to Scribd, don’t waste your time or emotional energy on pirates.  Scammers will scam.  By the way, Scribd took that down lickety-split.  Since then, I’ve listed my entire catalog on Scribd and we get along just fine, though the revenue stream is only in the double digits on my better months.

How can you tell if it’s a legitimate site?  Well, that can be a bit tricky, especially if you’re not wise in the ways of the internet’s darker side.  Best to ignore and walk away should the name not immediately ring a bell.  And even if it rings a bell, make sure you enter it via a URL you type in yourself, not via a link you found elsewhere.

But if you can’t identify the site, here are a few hints.  Run a search on the site name, but without the prefix (www.) or suffix (.com), and see what comes up.  Chances are a search on a scam site name will bring up a lot of unsavory hits, such as sites selling pills for various ailments, especially ED, or sites in foreign languages and scripts, or even porn sites.  When those results crop up in a search, you can be almost 100% sure it’s a scam designed to harvest credit card numbers or personal information.

I know our first impulse is always to protect our intellectual property.  But rushing into the web’s nastier corners whenever a pirate site crops up and the alarms sound on author forums and social media is just plain dumb.  Take the time to see what sort of site it is.  If you get the slightest feeling that it might be a scam, walk away.  Don’t even think about filling in a DMCA notice.  And remember, 99% of readers are honest.  They won’t visit pirate sites.  The 1% that frequents them deserve everything they catch.  Don’t join those losers by giving sites your personal information in the hopes they’ll remove the web page with your book’s information on it.  And by the grace of God, never try to download a book from a pirate site to see if it’s a readable copy of your magnum opus.  Not even if it’s free.  That’s the best way of ruining your computer and giving scammers access to everything on it.  The internet is rife with viruses, trojans and other malware, and they spread via unsafe downloads.

When the inevitable pirate site alarm rings on your favorite author forum or social media, step away from the keyboard.  Make yourself a cup of tea. And if you have time to waste, do a little snooping, but wear your virtual hazmat suit.

The Business of Reviews

Is there anything more controversial than reviews in the world of publishing?  I mean beyond the recent phenomenon of cancel culture.  See all those five-star ratings — they have to be fake.  And all those one-star ratings — the book must be total garbage.  Or never mind the ratings — this looks excellent/crappy/intriguing.  Oh, hey, a few of those scathing reviews look like jealous authors trying to pollute a successful book.  What a mess!

Just as price signals quality, so do product ratings and reviews, whether we like it or not.  Yet those ratings and reviews are about the most subjective things an author and publisher faces.  One reader will love, love, love, while another reader hates, and often it has nothing to do with the quality of the book.  Perhaps the story somehow invalidated the reader’s cherished world views or mocked deeply held convictions. I’ve had a book one-starred by a reader who objected to female military characters.  Then there’s the dreaded one-star that has nothing to do with the book at all, but with the retailer having somehow failed the reader’s expectations.  Sometimes, a publisher can’t win for trying.

But reviews and ratings are social validation on retailer and reader platforms, and there’s no getting around that fact.  And my, do some authors ever engage in drama over reviews.  You’d think they were operatic prima donnas!  For this discussion, I will assume well written, well-edited and properly formatted books, or as I call them, viable products.  Badly written, badly edited, or badly formatted books deserve every bit of opprobrium they receive.  So here’s my take on reviews.

Reviews are opinions, which inevitably brings up the famous Dirty Harry Callahan quip about opinions (mentioned in my very first rant) being like a certain part of the human anatomy.  Opinions are subjective, even if the reviewer has a Ph.D. in literature.  Writing is an art not a science.  If reviewers call your work crap, is it?  In their minds, sure.  Otherwise, probably not.  Of course, the same can go for a reviewer who gushes five stars with every sentence.

Reviews are for other readers, not authors.  If authors wish to have books critiqued, they can easily find groups whose sole purpose is helping each other improve.  And that means authors and publishers should avoid reading reviews on their books because nothing good ever comes of obsessing about a one-star.  Yes, it’s hard to do.  I regularly fail, though I’ve become somewhat inured to criticism since I know my work is good — otherwise, I wouldn’t be one of the most successful Canadian science fiction authors no one’s ever heard of.

The review system on Amazon, the biggest retailer of all, is broken.  There’s no doubt about it.  It’s worse in areas other than books, but books aren’t immune.  Authors and publishers are gaming reviews.  Even Amazon games reviews of its imprints.  Guess what?  Readers are smart.  They can tell when a book’s reviews smell gamey.  A book that’s been out for only a day and already has a hundred five-star reviews is no longer trusted by the average readers.  Savvy readers might not even consider a book unless it has a more balanced distribution of reviews — unless they’re already fans of the author or someone they trust recommended the author.

What’s a publisher to do, or not do?  I already mentioned not reading reviews of your books.  But if you read them, do not, under any circumstances, engage with the reviewer.  Just don’t.  Go back to my point about reviews being for readers.  Engaging with reviewers on your book’s Amazon page is a tad creepy.

Don’t obsess about getting reviews.  If your book is a viable product, and it sells, reviews and ratings will eventually come.  It might take a few weeks and a lot of sales, but they’ll come.  You need to sell a lot of books for every review, hundreds, or even thousands.  Readers aren’t inclined to leave reviews unless they feel strongly about your book.  Ratings without an actual review, yes, you’ll see more of those and as of early 2020, Amazon seems to be catching up with the other retailers by allowing a star rating and no text.  I’m aware some marketing services won’t take books without a minimum of reviews, but this is something you can’t rush.

What about paid reviews?  I see it all the time on various author forums — newbies so desperate about reviews to the point where they’ll hire sketchy review services and pay big bucks for that desperately sought after five-star social validation.  Not only is it against Amazon terms of service to pay for reviews, but most of these review services won’t even read your book and write a vague, boilerplate paragraph signifying nothing.  Is it worth losing your Amazon account for a lousy five-star review most savvy readers will recognize as bunkum?  No.  Never, ever pay for a review.

And those nasty drive-by smears left by nasty little people, a few of whom are unsuccessful authors?  You can always ask Amazon to take them down, but even when they’re against the terms of service, Amazon won’t do a thing.  Refer to my earlier advice.  Ignore them.  Any book that attracts attention by spending weeks in a category’s top 100 will attract drive-by smears.  I’ve had my share.  Yes, it’s infuriating, but the internet is filled with infuriating individuals whose sad lives make them want to harm others.  And by all that’s holy, do not engage with that sort of person, especially on websites devoted to readers, where carpet-bombing an author’s entire catalog with one-star reviews occurs more often than you would think.  In fact, the best way to be victimized by what an author for whom I have a lot of respect calls Common Internet S*** Gibbons (CISG) is responding to their malice.  Ignore them and walk away, no matter what.  CISGs eventually tire of being ignored and look for other potential victims on whom they can spew their venom.

Bottom line, reviews are not for authors or publishers, but for readers, by readers.  Let them show up organically.  Don’t force the process.  If you’re the sort who sends out advance review copies to a list of trusted readers, more power to you.  I’ve never done so and never felt the need to do so.  But make sure you don’t violate Amazon’s terms of service.  And if your book never gets reviews, then perhaps it doesn’t evoke strong feelings in your readership.  Folks forget books that are blah moments after reading the last page.  If it doesn’t get reviews because you’re only selling a handful of copies a month, you have a bigger challenge than merely zero reviews.

For the record, all reviews on my books are organic.  I never went looking for them, nor do I send out advance copies.  I also never engage with readers other than on my blogs and on social media, where it’s appropriate, and never ask for or discuss reviews (see my earlier rant on branding) with one exception. All my books have a polite request at the end which states:

“If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review with your favorite online retailer to help others discover it.”