(January 9, 2016 at 1:49 pm)Pony Wrote: Fuck copyright laws.
Nah. Fuck the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Copyright laws are a necessary evil. The DMCA simply stripped all the consumer protections from the original copyright laws in favor of protecting those who sell the media. Even the right of first purchase has been killed by it. There is simply no reason for the lock down the media companies want, other than their own bottom line.
To the OP, I have to agree with Steel's sentiments. If your book gets noticed enough for people to start file sharing it, that's good news, not bad. I don't remember which author I heard say it, but the gist was that "I fear obscurity far more than I fear piracy."
Have you looked at smashwords.com yet? They don't have the arduous contracts, you keep the rights to your work, you get to set the price points and they take a much smaller cut. But, you have to do your own promotion. This is the thing that most people simply don't understand about the media companies. They don't just sell your book. They market it. That costs money. While the biggest of them do take too much and bind authors way too tightly, they are still entitled to compensation for the work they've done promoting your book.
Smashwords does require that the books be DRM free. I look at that as a plus though...
Consider this: Someone buys your book from Smashwords and they absolutely love it. They tell their friend about it, but their friend doesn't buy it. So, they give them a copy of it and the friend loves it too. Did you lose a sale? No. The friend wasn't going to buy it anyway. Will the friend buy your next book? Maybe, maybe not. But they certainly won't if they never read the first one. Most people are honest and willing to pay for what they enjoy. Don't let the great "internet piracy" demon scare you. If it were anywhere near as bad as big media claims, there wouldn't be any big media.
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
