Those who order my books directly do so at a discounted price: in this case, $3.49 vs. 4.99 or $5.99 in the online bookstores, which take anywhere from thirty to thirty-five percent of each digital book sold.
In essence, I’ve cut out the “middle man” and saved you the cost differential.
(Even the online prices for my novels at, say, five dollars, cost less than a fancy coffee at Starbucks—and, hopefully, give so many more hours of enjoyment.)
I greatly appreciate it when readers spread the word of their enthusiasm for my novels. However, a few have uploaded my books on piracy websites, which offer the books as free downloads when you subscribe to their websites.
In other words, I get no royalty on the sale. In essence, the pirate is stealing from me: a sad reality in this day and age.
The best protection an author or publisher has against piracy is to attach “DRM” (digital rights protection). In my case, on certain pages, each digital book sold on my website is watermarked with a unique “purchaser I.D. That way, if one of my novels is uploaded to a pirate site, I can trace the source.
Large online booksellers (Amazon, BN.com, Apple, Kobo, and Google) also offer publishers and authors DRM protection. However, these sellers don’t also share with us the purchaser IDs relevant to tracing the pirating sources, let alone police those sites.
Thanks for shopping here with me.
—Josie Brown
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