Ebook Piratey: What Can You Protect Your Ebook? -

The last update was Oct 5, 2022

It's been a long time since you've worked for months or several years, working on your novel. The book is now out, and with great excitement, to all the world. Some sales have occurred ... however, it's less than you'd have liked.

Then, a couple of days later You type in the name of your book and hope to find review or even tweets related to the novel. To your delight, however there are websites that will give you your ebook for free.

Your ebook was stolen. All your hard effort is available at no cost on a shady site.

This can be a very difficult period for authors of any kind. The first reaction, naturally will be to consider what you can do to protect yourself from pirates. You might be worried regarding the reality the data you've gathered is only the beginning of an Iceberg.

But what do you need to do? (And do you really need to do anything at all?) The following is what you must be aware of about protecting your ebook.

What exactly is Ebook Piracy?

Piracy of the ebook you own is distributed without your consent.

It can come in various varieties:

• The person who purchases the ebook then shares the ebook with friends or acquaintances of their acquaintances. This may be done in a way that is innocent (they do not realize that they should not be sharing the ebook) or even intentionally.
• Your ebook is uploaded on an online platform available for others to read and download. This is what the majority of authors are thinking about when they imagine pirated eBooks. There are numerous websites available on the internet however, (as we'll find out further!) they often say that they offer an ebook, but there isn't.
• Your eBook is sold by somebody who is not you ... with or without your consent. They're taking all profits from it. The situation isn't as widespread than other kinds of piracy however it's observed.

Other types of Ebook Theft

The other issue that can be a problem is stealing the work of others and making it appear as their original work. The majority of people don't consider to be "piracy" but it may be a cause of a lot of harm. Additionally, it's against laws since it is a violation of your copyright.

It is also the possibility that someone steals some of your work, and then adds it to his own work without permission from you and not recognizing your name as the source. This constitutes plagiarism.

If you're involved in a case, you do have legal protections. You may find it, however there's no need for that degree. Simply warning people to stop or threating legal action might suffice.

Fight Ebook Piratey with DRM (Digital Rights Management)

What do you can do to stop pirated ebooks?

An alternative is to utilize DRM (Digital Rights Management) tools that protect your data. There are a variety of options available for doing this, such as by restricting sharing with others or forwarding the ebook.

The goal is to stop the practice of piracy. It is especially effective at stopping people from purchasing your book and using it for sharing with friends.

The disadvantages of DRM

Unfortunately, DRM isn't bulletproof. Determined pirates will be capable of evading it in one way or another. No matter what your eBook's security level is it will not stop someone from being able to read it openly on one device before transposing it to another. It's true that it would take a lot of time, and that's the reason why many pirates wouldn't take the time to bother.

A major issue in DRM is the fact that it may create many problems for readers.There there are some groups against DRM for this reason for instance, DBD. Customers who have bought the book may have a difficult time downloading and then read the book as they would like to. That's not something you want as it may discourage them from purchasing your services in the future.

Hugh Howey, a bestselling self-published author of science fiction, explains his attitude towards DRM by saying:

I'd like it to be easy for the other people to use my stuff. That meant never putting DRM on my eBooks. This is the protection provided through digital rights management, which makes it difficult to convert my books or transfer my ebooks to another format or any other thing. I wanted to offer buyers rewards without worrying about theft of my book.

Utilizing DRM for Social DRM

Social DRM is the method which allows users to get their eBook printed or watermarked by using details such as email address, date of purchase, etc. This can be done for PDF documents. This won't impact the user but it will hinder pirates (as it would be obvious who shared the document).

How Else Can I Protect My Job?

One simple method to limit pirates and not impact the customers of your business in any way is to limit the often the ebook is downloaded by your customers.

This is because people are not able to send their download links to others.

It's a good idea that users get the ebook at least three times. If you let them download the book one time it could result in problems in the event that they delete the file you downloaded, or when they decide to download it on different devices (instead instead of download it on multiple devices).

The best way to fulfill the requirements of the user and stopping the spread of piracy is setting limits of five downloadings. This is the default setting when using .

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How to Handle a Situation When someone steals your Ebook

What should you do when someone's giving the ebook and you don't have the money?

If you have your work stolen by another person If your work is stolen, you could:

• Contact them (if their site has contact information). In some instances, asking the pirates to remove the book could be sufficient. They may not want to be involved to have any issues with you any further.
• Create an DMCA notice to the hosting provider for your website (you can find this through whois.net). DMCA is also known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There's no set formula that can be used for an DMCA notice to take down the copyright, however it must include specific aspects.

You can find some templates for email in the following Google Doc, when it comes to contacting pirates, as well as for issuing the DMCA notice.

How do you know if your ebook is being stolen

Sometimes, authors learn about pirated titles because an concerned user contacts them to notify them.

The majority of piracy won't be revealed to the user. If you'd like to know if your ebook is being stolen, there are a few options:

1. Discover your book by using Google

The title of your book with"download "download" on Google and see what comes in the display. You may find sites which have or say they have - your book available.

Make sure you are aware of what you are clicking on, but ensure that you are using an antivirus program that is active to protect your computer. The majority of pirate websites have a lot of shady ads, or even worse.

2. Set up Google Alerts

The book may be set-up with Google Alerts to find out how often you and your work are mentioned online. This is a excellent way to stay on top of the latest reviews or discussions about your book. It may also let you discover if your book was duplicated.

3. Make use of tools, such as Mention.com

Mention.com works in a similar way to Google Alerts. It has advanced features like the capability to receive regular reports and receive emails when there's an influx of sudden mentions of your name or book's title.

Frequently Answered Questions

Below are some of the most frequently asked questions about book piracy:

Do I Need to Copyright My Ebook?

No. In the vast majority of nations, your book will be copiedrighted once you've completed writing it. You don't need to alter the book to copyright it. The majority of people place an acknowledgement of copyright at the start or end of their book, however it's not a need.

The site has my ebook accessible for download ... but does the site actually have the book?

A majority of the times, not! A lot of websites have no-cost ebooks, but they don't. Instead, as Dave Chesson states, it, they're trying to get people to sign-up for subscriptions on their site ... as well they're trying spread viruses and malware.

Does it make sense to invest my Moment combating Piracy?

In the case of a fresh writer ... it's likely that you aren't. You could spend all day trying to stop pirates but this won't affect the sales of your books or in any way.

In this piece from the Alliance of Independent Authors the Alliance of Independent Authors explains:

"Chasing off pirates who likely do not violate your copyright, or reduce the revenue of your business are inefficient. Your time and cash should be used on editing, writing, refining your advertising, improving the descriptions of your publications along with a variety of other tasks that add an effective method to your success."

An instance where it would make sense to take on pirated book is when they dominate result pages on search engines. When pirate websites are ranked extremely highly on Google when you look at cases similar to this instance, Tim Grahl revealed the likelihood to act:

"My author friend found himself in a situation that the 3rd result in Google in search of the name of the book was an international site that allowed you to download the pdf of the book at no cost."

Am I concerned about Ebook Piracy?

Also, if you're not an aspiring author, most probably aren't. Being obscure is a greater likelihood for writers. If people don't know about your book, they can't buy them.

There are some who believe pirates can benefit authors since it allows your book to larger numbers of readers ... Some of which could be paid users.

If you're an experienced writer, then you may find that piracy has a negative effect on the sales of your books. YA author Maggie Stiefvater posted her experiences of this via her page on Facebook and detailed how print books of her third installment in her trilogy did much higher than those of ebooks and also how the pirates impacted the third book in the series.

Then , the publisher informed me that they were cutting the printing run for The Raven King to less than half of the printing run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. There's no hard feelings here Remember what I was told by them that the figures for Blue Lily did not allow for the printing of additional copies.

Maggie Stiefvater managed to show that the piracy was harming sales by publishing their own pirated copy of the fourth edition which consisted of repeating the first four chapters. The printed edition sold out and book sales increasing (until authentic copies of the book began becoming pirated).

Writer Elizabeth Lennox related a similar incident that led to an evident decrease in sales

In one instance, I saw the sales of my company had decreased to a half. I was completely shocked. It was difficult to figure out what was happening when my husband told me that he'd come across my book on pirate websites. Then we engaged an attorney to send takedown notices. The following day, sales began increasing.

In reality, book piratey isn't going disappearing. The only thing you can do is decide if you're willing to fight it or not. Most first-time authors It will be sensible to focus on your book instead of marketing your work ... as well as writing your next book.

If you're seeing a substantial decrease in sales you're not seeing a drop in sales or sites that are pirated appear to be being found on the top of Google when searching for the name of your book or your author name, then it's the right moment to do something. Issuing DMCA notifications is the perfect solution to the problem You can get templates that are easy to use within the Google documents.

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