John Dolan
YO HO HO and a bottle of Rheum
Ok, so
here’s the thing. You’re a self-published author. You’ve planned out and
written your book (or you just started writing without a plan and somehow got
it finished anyway). You’ve read it and re-read it
until your eyes bleed, done
some editing, fine-tuning, whatever.
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| Amazon Link |
Maybe you’ve employed a professional
editor, run it past beta-readers, let your mum see it.
It’s been formatted for
ebook publication and as a hardback/paperback. Somebody (perhaps you or maybe
your mum) has designed a cover.
You’ve checked the proof copy and tweaked as
necessary. You’ve planned the launch and executed it impeccably using a
combination of social networks, advertising, book signings.
You’re either
working your way through your marketing plan systematically or making it up as
you go along. But whichever route you’ve chosen, you’re working your butt off.
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| Amazon Link |
Wrong!
There’s
something else you need to worry about.
Pirates!
Unless you
plan to give away all your writings free and you don’t care to know how many
people have downloaded copies, you need to think about pirates. And I’m not talking
about the cuddly, Johnny Depp style of pirate either. I’m talking about the
ones who will copy your work and offer it free (when you’re charging for it) or
sell it themselves (and you get no royalties).
The first
problem you have is actually finding out that someone is selling or giving away
your book without your permission.
A few weeks
ago I Googled my novel ‘Everyone Burns’. For the first few Google search pages,
everything was well. The web addresses were as I expected them to be. Then a
website popped up for some organization called Atabal Books who were offering
my novel as a free download in all common file formats. Interesting, as my book
is sold exclusively through Amazon and retails for $3.99.
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| Amazon Link |
So what do
you do next? Well, you could do a lot worse than reading this article:
http://www.sfwa.org/2013/03/the-dmca-takedown-notice-demystified/
http://www.sfwa.org/2013/03/the-dmca-takedown-notice-demystified/
In summary,
find out who is hosting the offending website and serve them with a DMCA
Takedown Notice (an appropriately-worded e-mail will do). Strictly speaking,
this notice is only effective for USA-based hosting companies, but there are
many international companies who are reputable organisations and do not want to
be seen to be hosting copyright-theft sites. The company hosting Atabal Books,
is in fact NOT USA-based but on receiving my email they REMOVED the Atabal
Books site within six hours. Impressive, eh?
Lessons
learned:-
- Read the article in the link above, and bookmark it for future use
- Google your book from time to time to see if anyone is doing anything naughty with it
- If you discover a pirate, find out who is hosting them and send them a DMCA Takedown Notice (even if they are not US-based). Tweet me @JohnDolanAuthor if you want a sample Notice
- Follow up and shame the host by whatever legal means are at your disposal. Threatening to summarily execute members of their family is probably not a good idea
- Smile while doing all of the above.
John Dolan hails from a small town in the North-East of England. Before turning to writing, his career encompassed law and finance. He has run businesses in Europe, South and Central America, Africa and Asia. He and his wife Fiona currently divide their time between the UK and Thailand.
When not writing, John can be located at:
Thank you, John, for a very interesting and useful article. Hope you've sunk 'em for good!
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
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