Ebook Piracy: How Can You Guard Your Ebook? -

 The last update was Oct 5, 2022

Perhaps you've worked for months or many years working on the ebook. You've launched it, with great excitement, to the world. It's made a few profits ... but maybe not as many as you'd have liked.

One day, you Google your ebook's title, hoping you might find some review or even tweets regarding the book. To your dismay there are websites that offer your ebook for free.

Your book is being pirated. All your hard work is being given away for free on a dodgy-looking website.

It's an upsetting moment for every author. Naturally, your first reaction likely to be trying to find out ways to shut down the pirates. It's possible you're worried about the fact that the information you've obtained is just the tip of the of the iceberg.

What can you do? (And are you really required to take any action at all?) This is everything you should be aware of to safeguard your eBook.

What is Ebook Piracy?

The term "ebook piracy" refers to when your book is released without your permission.

It can come in a variety of forms:

• A person purchases your book then shares it with their friends or acquaintances. This may be unintentionally (they aren't aware that they should not use it for sharing) or even deliberately.
• The ebook you've created was uploaded on a website for other people to download. This is what a lot of authors think of when they consider pirated ebooks. There are a myriad of websites out there - though (as we'll see in the future!) they often say that they have an ebook available when they actually don't.
• Your book has been sold by another person ... without your permission. They're taking all the profits. This is not so common like other types of piracy but it's certainly been known to happen.

Other Types of Ebook Theft

A related problem is people taking your work, then making it appear as their own. This isn't what most people consider "piracy" however it could be extremely damaging. It's also against the law, as it is a violation of the copyright you have.

A different possibility is the possibility that someone steals a portion or all of the work you wrote and incorporates it into their personal work without permission and not recognizing you as the author. It is plagiarism.

In any case the law provides legal safeguards. You may find however it's not necessary to go that much. Just warning people to stop or threat of legal action may suffice.

Combating Ebook Piracy With DRM (Digital Rights Management)

And what do you need to do about ebook piracy?

A popular option is to utilize DRM (Digital Rights Management) tools to protect the files you have. There are a variety of methods to accomplish this like preventing the sharing of or forwarding your ebook.

The idea is to deter the piracy. It's particularly effective in stopping people from buying your ebook and forwarding it on to friends.

DRM's drawbacks DRM

Sadly, DRM isn't bulletproof. Determined pirates will be able overcome it in one manner or the other. However well-protected your ebook can be, nothing can stop someone openly reading it in one device before retyping it on another. It's true that it is a lengthy process - so most pirates simply don't bother.

Another big problem in DRM is the fact that it may hinder the readers- and there are organizations that oppose DRM for reasons like the Defective By Design. Customers who have paid for the ebook might find it difficult to download and read it according to the way they prefer to. It's not something you'd want to do since it may put them off buying from you in the future.

Hugh Howey, a bestselling self-published science-fiction author, explains his attitude to DRM as follows:

I wanted it to be easy for others to access my books. That meant never putting DRM on my e-books. It is the digital rights management security which makes it hard to change my books' content and copy them elsewhere or any other thing. I wanted to reward buyers, not worry about the pirate.

Utilizing Social DRM

Social DRM is a process where the customer's ebook is printed or watermarked using information including the buyer's email address, day of purchase. This is possible for PDF documents. It won't affect negatively the customer, and it will stop pirates (as it is obvious who shared the file).

What else can I do to protect My work?

A simple way to hinder piracy but without negatively impacting customers can be to limit the often your ebook may be downloaded by a customer.

The reason is that people are not able to share their download links with anyone else.

It's best practice to allow individuals to download your ebook at minimum three times. If you only let them download it one time, this can cause issues if they don't save the file they downloaded, or if they want to download it to multiple devices (instead of simply copying it across).

The best solution to meet the user's needs and preventing piracy is to set the limit to 5 Downloads. This is the default setting when using .

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What to Do if someone steals your Ebook

How do you respond if someone's giving an ebook for free, thereby leaving you without any money?

If you are the victim of a copycat You can:

• Contact them (if the website has contact information). In some situations, asking the pirate to delete your eBook may be enough. They may not want to deal with you in the future.
• Send  Issue a DMCA note to the web hosting company (you can find this through whois.net). DMCA is also known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There's no set formula for an DMCA notice to take down, but it does need to include certain elements.

It is possible to find emails templates within this Google Doc, in both the event of contacting pirates themselves, and for creating the DMCA notice.

How Do You Know If Your ebook is being pirated

Occasionally, authors find out about an illegal ebook when an unhappy reader contacts them to inform them of the issue.

However, most pirates won't be disclosed to the user. If you'd like to find out whether your book is stolen, it is possible to:

1. Search for your book on Google

Type the title of your publication along with"download "download" in Google and see what comes on the screen. You may find websites that offer (or claim to have! - your book available.

Take care when you click on ensure that you are using a good antivirus program and running to guard yourself. A lot of pirate websites will be packed with questionable ads or worse.

2. Set up Google Alerts

You can set up Google Alerts to be aware of what times you or your book get mentioned on the internet. This is a fantastic way to be current with recent reviews or discussion of your work - and it can also let you find the extent to which your work has been copied.

3. Make use of tools such as Mention.com

Mention.com works like Google Alerts. It has advanced features like the capability to receive daily recaps in addition to the ability to get emails if there's a sudden rush of references to the name of your book or author.

Most Frequently Answered Questions

Here are some questions that people frequently ask regarding book piratey:

Do I have to copyright My Ebook?

No. In most countries, your book is copyrighted automatically as soon as you've written it. You don't need to make any changes to copyright it. A majority of authors place the copyright warning at the start or end of their ebook, but there's no requirement for this.

There is a website that lists my ebook for the download ... but do they actually have the ebook?

Most of the time, not! Many websites provide free eBooks however they really don't provide the books. In reality, as Dave Chesson explains that they're trying to make people sign up for subscriptions on their site ... or they're trying to distribute viruses and malware.

Do I really need to spend my Moment fighting Piracy?

If you're a brand new author ... probably not. You could spend all day fighting pirates, and this might not affect your sales for your book in the slightest.

As this piece from the Alliance of Independent Authors describes:

"Chasing down pirates that most likely don't violate your copyrights or hindering the sales of your book is a waste. It's time and money better spent on writing, editing, refining your marketing, polishing the descriptions of your books, and a myriad of other tasks that add in a significant way to the success of your business."

One time it does make sense to address the issue of pirated books is when they are dominating the results of a search. If the pirates' websites have been ranked very highly on Google such as the one Tim Grahl's has shared that you're likely to take action:

"My author friend found himself stuck in a scenario in which the third result of Google for the title of his book was a foreign website that allowed you to download the PDF version of the book at no cost."

Are I Concerned About Ebook Piracy?

If you're an aspiring author, most likely you're not. Being obscure is a greater chance for authors. If readers don't even know that about your work, they can't buy them.

Many people believe that the piracy market can benefit authors because it puts your books into the hands of greater numbers of people ... Some of which could be paying readers.

If you're an established author, however, you might discover that piracy has a negative impact on your book sales. YA author Maggie Stiefvater shared her experience of that through her facebook page in which she explained that the printing sales of her third book in her series was much more successful than ebook sales, and how pirates harmed her next book in the series:

Then [the publisher] told me they had cut the printing run for The Raven King to less than half of the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, they just felt that the demand of Blue Lily didn't justify printing additional copies.

Maggie Stiefvater was able to show that the piracy was harming sales by publishing their own pirated copy of the fourth book in which repeating the first four chapters. The printing run was sold out, with the ebook sales skyrocketing too (until real copies of the book started being pirated).

Author Elizabeth Lennox related a similar experience with piracy resulting an obvious decline in sales

At one point I noticed that my sales were decreased by 50. I was stunned. It was difficult to figure out what was happening until my husband informed me that he'd discovered my books on pirate websites. Then we engaged a lawyer to issue remove notices and following day, sales began increasing.

Ultimately, book piracy will not go out of fashion. You have to decide whether you're willing to fight it or not. If you're a first-time author It will be more sense to focus of marketing your book ... or creating the next.

If you're experiencing a significant decline in sales it's not clear if the piracy websites are showing up very high in Google for your book's name or the name of your author It's the right time to take action. The issue of DMCA notices is the best way to tackle the problem Be aware that you can find out easy-to-use templates on this Google Doc.