Rage Against Pirates

Erica Chilson's RAGE against Pirates selling her work

I knew from day-one that my titles would be pirated eventually, and they have been since early on. I was passive about piracy, knowing it impacted my sales yet hoping it would draw in true readers. I likened the piracy to a twisted library of sorts. I purposefully left off the DRM from the first few titles in my series, and then put a DRM on the later titles. My stance, “Here, have a copy. I hope you get hooked, and then pay for the rest.” 

With that saying, I know from reviews on whether or not it’s a pirated copy. As I said, I was pirated from early on with Restraint, and that Restraint no longer exists. I don’t  even have a copy. Yet two years and some change later, readers are still reading, judging, and reviewing me based on the edition of a book that sold fewer than an hundred copies… so what are the odds you purchased the ‘extinct‘ Restraint  and it took you 30 months to review it? I’m no statistician, but I’d say the odds are next to none, considering the tens of thousands it’s sold in its current form.

My warning to pirates: You may not be reading the book in its actual form, and when you review it as such, you are caught. But not only that, you are missing out on what the book evolved into, ruining and confusing you when you read the subsequent books in the series. & that is a pity and a shame for the reader, the author, and most importantly, for the purity of the story itself.

Why am I writing this blog posting? Several times over I’ve been contacted about my books not only being pirated, BUT SOLD. Yes, SOLD by PIRATES.

If you want to read my book for free, then by all means, get it from a piracy site. I’m not being facetious. I’d rather you get it for free than pay your hard-earned money to my pirate. But if you pay that fuckerfucking pirate, damn you to HELL!

The authors listed on this site CREATED THE STORY FROM NOTHING. WE SPENT THOUSANDS OF HOURS PLOTTING, WRITING, EDITING, DELETING, EDITING, WRITING, POURING OUR SOULS OUT ON THOSE PAGES, LISTENING TO CRITIQUES FROM BACKSEAT EDITORS, READING BULLYING REVIEWS, GETTING SHIT FROM READERS WHO LOATHED THIS OR THAT. WE EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE PAID, NOT SOME BASTARD, ASSHOLE OF A  PIRATE!

If you want my book for free, fucking contact me and I will send one to your Kindle. But to pay the pirate for OUR HARD WORK, MAKES YOU AN EVEN BIGGER ASSHOLE! 

I work no less than 12 hours a day to earn 30 cents on the buck, to where I then pay the government a third of that. As an indie author, I then make 20 cents on every dollar I sell, but out of that I have to pay for business expenses: laptops, software, cover images, cover artists, (I’d pay an editor, IF I COULD AFFORD IT). WHO THE FUCK COULD LIVE OFF THAT? & I LITERALLY WRITE ENDLESSLY, AS YOU ALL KNOW, JUDGING BY THE 1,500+ PAGES I’VE PUBLISHED IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2014 To have my work not only stolen but resold… you have no idea how disheartening of a sensation this is, or how much fury is coursing in my veins. BECAUSE I’M FOLLOWING THE FUCKING RULES, THE LAW, PAYING TAXES ON MY WORK, AND THEY ARE NOT! FYI: Plead ignorance all ya want, but if you are ‘purchasing’ from a dealer no one has ever heard of, you know what’s up. If you are a reader, you know who the major retailers are, or you buy straight from the publisher. If it looks hinky, it is.

FYI: NEVER HAVE I EVER published a PDF of my work. If the copy you are reading is a PDF, it wasn’t from me!

FYI: I lowered the price on Restraint to 99 cents for this exact reason. Now I’m under-bidding my pirate selling asshole friends who are bilking the ignorant and the criminal out of $1.50 a copy.

FYI: I’ve given tens of thousands of copies of Restraint and Good Girl away for free, and will continue to do so along with my ‘honest’ pirate friends. If you’re the honest sort, you’ll be out 99 cents for 700 HUNDRED PAGES of my hard work. You can either get it for free during Amazon promos or from a pirate, pay ME FOR MY HARD WORK, OR pay some asshole pirate who is laughing at you all the way to the bank.

Now if this just doesn’t make a person want to say the hell with it all, and cut their losses, I don’t know what does! It’s a spit in the face. I feel like I’m in an uphill battle against an unmovable army. I’m selling more books than ever and only getting paid half of that because I’m literally giving my books away for Free.

I want to know your reaction when you go into work tomorrow morning and your boss tells you how you have to work the next six months of your life, an upwards of eighteen hours a day, and NOT get PAID! You could live on that, right? You could deal with that, right? How about then your boss takes your earnings and gives it to some asshole criminal- all of it. And then your boss makes YOU pay the taxable income on what that asshole stole. Yeah, chew that over.

-peace out!