Something that I’ve noticed with the release of Web of Lies is this — I’m having a lot more trouble with book pirates these days.

What’s a book pirate? Basically, it’s someone who posts a free download of a book on the internet without the permission of the author/publisher. And believe me when I tell you that there are hundreds and hundreds of these sites out there with every kind of book on them that you can imagine.

So what’s the big deal? First and foremost, it’s illegal. Just because you have a digital copy of a book doesn’t mean that you have the right to post it online for the whole world to see. You may think that you’re doing your friends a favor by giving them something for free. You may even think that you’re doing your favorite author a favor by posting her work on a site for others to read.

Let me tell you that you are not.

Now, there’s a lot of debate about whether or not e-book piracy hurts an author’s sales. I don’t see how it can’t hurt sales. Why should a person buy my book in the store when they can read it online somewhere for free? Sure, maybe someone will like that first free book enough to legally purchase my next book — but I doubt it. After all, they found the first book online for free, so why not the second or the third or all of my backlist?

I only make 64 cents per book in royalties, and let me tell you that I need every single sale that I can get, just like all the other midlist authors out there. Publishing is a tough business to be in, and every sale matters, especially these days, when the economy is so craptastic. Publishers are dropping authors right and left. I saw one site where it said that a couple of hundred people had viewed my book — more than likely, that’s a couple hundred sales that I lost.

If you can’t afford to buy one of my books, there is a simple solution — go to your local library and request it. That’s what the libraries are there for, and your tax dollars go to support them. (And yes, I get royalties on library sales.)

I don’t claim to know all the ins and outs regarding book piracy. But more than the fact that it’s illegal, to me, it’s as annoying as all get-out. I work hard on my books — harder than anyone who’s not a writer can possibly imagine. I think I deserved to be paid for the work that I put into my books. I think that my publisher deserves to be paid for the various formats that they package my books in. You wouldn’t go to the grocery store and expect to just walk out with a loaf of bread for free, would you? Or walk out of Target with a free DVD or CD? So why do folks think that books are somehow different?

But perhaps the real kicker is this. I have some free Elemental Assassin short stories posted here on the website. This is something that I did for fans of the series and my other books. Not too long ago, I saw where the stories had been reposted on another site without my permission. The stories were here FOR FREE ALREADY, and someone pirated them anyway.

Grr! That’s the kind of thing that makes me angry — Hulk angry.

I don’t know why folks think that they can get away with this — I guess because the internet is so vast and it’s a hard crime to prosecute. Still, don’t they know that the links to the free downloads pop up in my Google Alerts? As soon as I see them, I contact my publisher and fill out a take-down form — EVERY SINGLE TIME. Yeah, I know, it basically amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, but I still do it.

So what’s the solution? I don’t know that there is one. I’m careful about who I send e-ARCs to, and if I find out that someone who got an e-ARC posted it online for free, well, they don’t get any more books from me — ever. That’s really all that I can do on my end. I think that until publishers really crack down on a consistent basis on all these sites, that people will keep on pirating books — and keep on stealing from authors.