Book Piracy Update

When my publishers copyright department checked out the site advertising free downloads of The Lady's Slipper, they discovered that the site is hosted in Moldavia and registered in Russia. It appears to be a malware site used to infect unsuspecting visitors machines rather than a genuine book download site i.e. there is no copyright infringement.
However, what that does mean is that anyone trying to download the book for free may end up with a nasty surprise! Ho ho ho.

My book has been pirated!

I suppose it was inevitable, but it is pretty disappointing as a writer to find that "The Lady's Slipper", which is barely out of nappies - still in its pristine hardback edition in the uk - has been copied and is now available worldwide for people to download free from the internet. I the writer, can do absolutely nothing about it, and will of course receive no royalties from them at all.

When I got on the 'get books for free' site, I was astonished to find I could download lots of just-released pirated books, and yes, it looks tempting to a bookaholic like me to have all the latest books available for nothing.....


Of course in the end, if people download the books, (which are probably of varying quality) and they therefore don't sell in an official version, then publishers will not be publishing them, or supporting their writers.

Those that do get books this way for free are slowly strangling the publishing industry. But we've seen this before, haven't we, with the music industry.

I have to say it is frustrating when the US Kindle edition is still a few weeks off, but also I suppose its flattering that someone could be bothered to copy and upload it.

Tell you the name of the site? You must be kidding.