Ah, yes...the entitlement of those who steal books. I'm constantly shaking my head at the pure and utter audacity and bullsh*t of these entitled little...people who think that it's perfectly fine to steal from authors. More surprising (NOT) is how quickly these thieves are to defend those who created the one stop stealing shop known as Z-library. Forget that those who operated the site have been arrested on criminal charges, including racketeering. The justification by those using the site to steal from authors involved some very interesting mental gymnastics.
My favorite was a hold over from a previous thieving site, that information should be free and no one should own intellectual property. I only have one thing to say to that but I can't post those words. I'll let you fill in the blanks. It's a little two word phrase. F_CK YOU! I did the math, once, when I discovered three of my books on that site before it was pulled down. Those three books were still with my original publisher, so when an ebook was purchased through them, I earned about 33 cents per book. On that thief's site (and his multiple mirror sites), each of my 3 books had been downloaded an average of 10,000 times. That's 10K illegal downloads per book. I lost over $9,000 across those platforms because a lot of someones felt entitled to steal my hard work. Again, I have a simple response to that. F_CK YOU.
I went through all of my social media accounts and if I found someone who had been defending stealing from an author following me, I sent them that simple response and then blocked that person. Petty on my part...sure was. And, to be totally honest, it felt darn good. Don't endorse and support stealing from me or my fellow authors and expect me to condone your behavior.
My favorite was a hold over from a previous thieving site, that information should be free and no one should own intellectual property. I only have one thing to say to that but I can't post those words. I'll let you fill in the blanks. It's a little two word phrase. F_CK YOU! I did the math, once, when I discovered three of my books on that site before it was pulled down. Those three books were still with my original publisher, so when an ebook was purchased through them, I earned about 33 cents per book. On that thief's site (and his multiple mirror sites), each of my 3 books had been downloaded an average of 10,000 times. That's 10K illegal downloads per book. I lost over $9,000 across those platforms because a lot of someones felt entitled to steal my hard work. Again, I have a simple response to that. F_CK YOU.
I went through all of my social media accounts and if I found someone who had been defending stealing from an author following me, I sent them that simple response and then blocked that person. Petty on my part...sure was. And, to be totally honest, it felt darn good. Don't endorse and support stealing from me or my fellow authors and expect me to condone your behavior.