Tons of authors are worried about this right now (including my wife, who self-publishes on Kindle Unlimited). There's stories of major authors being taken down every few days because copies are being found on pirate sites, which they can't control. I want to say there was 4 authors my wife heard about that had their works taken down suddenly from Kindle Unlimited just last week because of this.
There's some software out there that's like $7/month per book I think, that's supposed to help find and help issue Cease and Desists for this stuff, that my wife is seriously considering getting to at least point to in case hers gets taken down to show she tried to do something about it. Problem is, for each book she releases, that's an extra $7 a month she's paying. Feels like mafia extortion money almost.
There's even been some anger lately because of pirated books that keep getting uploaded on Scribd, who now have an ebook subscription service, so Scribd is making subscription money off of pirated ebooks.
It's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of, that Amazon punishes authors for this. If they carried process over to tv, movies, music, etc, they'd have to take down their entire catalog because all of that has pirated copies out there somewhere.
I'm a publisher for >10 years. At first I used the policing services, but I stopped worrying about torrent sites and other low-grade pirates when it was clear that A) most readers don't use them B) site operators are located overseas and don't give a FF about U.S. C&Ds and C) I have better things to do with my time.
As for pirates on Amazon itself, or other major marketplaces: That's a different story. I have a registered trademark on Amazon Brand Registry and do use it to find bogus copies and copyright violations (usually in the marketing copy or cover images) to get them removed, with about 60 or 70% success.
She doesn't care if people pirate her books, she just cares that Amazon might take her books down from Kindle Unlimited if they discover a pirated copy online like they've done for many other authors.
Almost all of her income is from KU, not book sales, so it would crater her revenue.
It's MUSO. $7/mo per book or $70/month for your whole catalog, so I guess once you get 10 books out there the price flattens out.
Only reason I didn't mention it by name in my earlier comment is I forgot what it was called, I had to ask her.
And to be clear I don't think MUSO is a bad company or anything, just that it's insane to me that authors have to feel like they have to get this service just to maybe hopefully keep their books on KU (or maybe hopefully facilitate getting them back on if they do get removed).
She doesn't have to (not that she ever would). The article states that it's already being done automatically in many cases, from Amazon-provided files.
There's some software out there that's like $7/month per book I think, that's supposed to help find and help issue Cease and Desists for this stuff, that my wife is seriously considering getting to at least point to in case hers gets taken down to show she tried to do something about it. Problem is, for each book she releases, that's an extra $7 a month she's paying. Feels like mafia extortion money almost.
There's even been some anger lately because of pirated books that keep getting uploaded on Scribd, who now have an ebook subscription service, so Scribd is making subscription money off of pirated ebooks.
It's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of, that Amazon punishes authors for this. If they carried process over to tv, movies, music, etc, they'd have to take down their entire catalog because all of that has pirated copies out there somewhere.