Piracy for Profit?

I’m a huge advocate against book piracy. It’s a major slap in the face to authors everywhere. Unlike software piracy, where people steal something they need or want to use for a function, book pirates are people who claim to enjoy our work. There’s no other reason to steal our books than to read them.

But piracy has jumped to a new level of insult. Thieves are no longer simply preventing me from profiting on my creativity by posting my books to pirate forums, they’re stealing those profits as though they have a right to them. They’re reselling them on eBay.

This morning there were 355 auctions for ebooks, all of them bootlegged copyright infringements. Many of them for the books by the most popular authors; Kenyon, Evanovich, Harris, Brown, Patterson… (so don’t think piracy is the problem of epublished authors) many of these collections of three to fifteen books for as little as  $2.99.

And don’t be fooled by this malarkey you might find on some auctions, either:
“Ebay no longer allows the selling of ebooks. In full compliance of this rule all of our ebooks are delivered via USPS on a cd. You must have adobe reader to open these files. If you do not have adobe acrobat you can download it for free. Most computers however, come with adobe fully installed.”

A) this is still blatant copyright infringement
B) there are still plenty of ebooks for sale as PDF or other electronic format.
This is just the last ditch effort of one seller to avoid being penalized for her crimes.

Not that eBay is doing much about it.

Authors, and readers who support authors, I urge you to sign this petition created to urge John Donahoe, CEO of Bay, to improve the VERO program and put an end to book piracy on eBay.

Open Letter to eBay and CEO about VeRO Improvements
http://www.gopetition.com/online/34171.html

Because nobody has the right to profit from my book except me.