Help Stop E-book Piracy! Trading an E-book is NOT like trading a Paperback!

When you trade a paperback, you no longer have possession. You gave the book to someone else to read, and SHE has possession now. So if someone else comes to you to ask for the book, you send them to the person who has it. In short, you have ONE book, and ONLY ONE book to hand off.

Trading an E-book is NOT like trading a Paperback!

People who buy an e-book STILL HAVE THAT E-BOOK that they can send to others. In effect, they can give away countless copies, which means it's $ authors will never see in royalties.

HELP STOP E-BOOK PIRACY!

Please take one minute out of your day to sign this petition against online clubs which "swap" e-books. If something isn't done about this, pretty soon there will be countless places like this all over the internet, and your royalties will be drastically reduced!

(The following is reprinted with permission.)

Hi everyone

I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed.

It's about enforcing the same sort of laws for authors as are enforced for musicians and movie makers. While other types of media have had their copyrights protected, we authors are being left to suffer losses of income because our copyrights aren't being protected.

As some of you may know I once had to go to court to protect my ownership of the first Through Neon Eyes book, Zoner which was illegally used by a foreign publisher a few years ago. That was settled by lawyers via the international copyright laws.

This time my books are being uploaded to 'sharing sites' where hundreds of books and ebooks by myself and other authors are being traded and shared without any of us making a dime for our hard work.

I've found many of my books on pirate sites, including Apocalpyse Dance, Zoner, Control, Mercykill and Ragnarok Tango. Royalties are all ebook authors make on their books. If books are being traded on pirate sites that means we make nothing, and that hurts, not just us the authors, but you the readers too. If each of us were paid for every book that was shared by people who never bought it many of us might be able to quit our day jobs and write full time which would mean more books for you to read.

I really think this is an important petition, and I'd like to encourage all of you to add your signatures.

Please take a minute to fill out the form which can be found here:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ebooksandpirates?e

Thanks!

Michael Barnette

(Many thanks to Dani for bringing this to my attention!)