Creative daily

Ebook Piracy: How Can You Secure Your Ebook? -

Oct 7, 2022

 Last updated: October 5, 2022

You've spent months, maybe several years, writing your ebook. It's been released, with huge excitement, into the world. You've made some sales ... although maybe not as many as you'd like.

A few days later, you type in the name of your book hoping you might find some comments or tweets on it. But to your horror there are websites that offer your ebook for free.

Your book has been pirated. All your hard labor is given away to anyone who visits a questionable site.

It's an upsetting moment for any author. Your first response, understandably, is probably to figure out how you can stop the pirates. You may well be worried that this listing may only be the tip of the iceberg.

So what can you do? (And do you even need to do anything at all?) This is everything you should learn about protecting your book.

What is Ebook Piracy?

The term "ebook piracy" refers to when the ebook you own is distributed without your consent.

It can come in a variety of forms:

  • Someone buys your ebook then shares it with their friends or contacts. This may be unintentionally (they don't realize they shouldn't be sharing it) or in a deliberate manner.
  • Your book was uploaded on an online platform for others to download. This is what many authors are thinking about when they think of ebook piracy. There are many websites available, though (as we'll discover further!) they may often claim to have an ebook available when they really don't.
  • Your book is sold by someone else ... without your consent. They're taking all the money from it. It's not as common in comparison to other kinds of piracy but it's been reported to occur.

Other Types of Ebook Theft

Another issue is stealing your work and making it appear as their original work. This isn't what most people consider "piracy" but it can be very damaging. It's also against the law, as it is a violation of your copyright.

There is also the possibility that someone takes part or all of the work you wrote and incorporates it into their ownwork, with no permission from you and not recognizing your name as the creator. This is plagiarism.

If you're in one of these cases the law provides legal rights. You may find however that you do not need to take it that to the extent. Just telling people to stop and threat of legal action may be enough.

Combating Ebook Piracy With DRM (Digital Rights Management)

So what can you do to stop pirated ebooks?

Another option that is popular is to utilize DRM (Digital Rights Management) tools to safeguard your data. There are many options to do this, such as by restricting users from sharing or forwarding the ebook.

It can definitely deter pirates. It is especially effective at preventing people from buying your ebook or forwarding it to acquaintances.

The drawbacks of DRM

Sadly, DRM isn't bulletproof. Certain pirates will be able to circumvent it in one manner or the other. However well-protected your ebook can be, nothing could stop someone openly reading it on one device and retyping it onto another. It's true that it could be time-consuming which is why most pirates would not take the time to bother.

Another big problem of DRM is it can create a lot of difficulties for the readersas well as organizations that oppose DRM for this reason, like the Defective By Design. Legitimate customers who've paid for your book may discover it difficult to download and to read according to the way they prefer to. This is not what you'd like to happen because it can turn them off from buying your products in the future.

Hugh Howey, a bestselling self-published author of science fiction, describes his approach to DRM like this:

I was hoping it would be as easy for others to own my stuff. This meant that I would never put DRM on my e-books. This is the protection provided by digital rights management that makes it difficult to convert my book or copy them to another format, all that stuff. I wanted to reward buyers rather than worrying about the pirate.

Using DRM for Social DRM

Social DRM is a process where the customer's ebook is stamped or watermarked with details including the buyer's email address and day of purchase. This can be done for PDF files. It won't affect negatively the customer, and it can hinder the piracy (as it will be clear who used the document).

What else can I do to protect My Job?

A simple way to reduce the risk of piracy - and again but without negatively impacting customers is to restrict how often your ebook may be downloaded by customers.

This prevents people from sharing their download links with anyone else.

It's best practice to allow individuals to download your ebook at minimum three times. If you allow them to download the ebook once, it can cause issues if they delete the file they downloaded, or even if they wish to download the file to several devices (instead of copying it across).

An ideal compromise between meeting the reader's requirements and stopping pirates is to establish limits of five Downloads. This is the default when using .

Sell E-Books

Join more than 130,000 sellers who have launched their online businesses with

What to Do if You are the victim of a piracy Ebook

What can you do when someone is giving away your ebook, depriving you of any revenue?

If someone pirates your work If someone copies your work, you are liable:

  • Contact them (if the website has contact information). In some instances, asking the pirate to take down your ebook may be enough. They may not want any hassle with you in the future.
  • Make a DMCA note to the web hosting service (you will find this information on whois.net). DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There's no formula that's standard to use for an DMCA takedown notice, but it must contain specific elements.

It is possible to find emails templates within this Google Doc, in both the event of contacting pirates directly, as well as issuing the DMCA notice.

How Do You Know If Your ebook is being pirated

Sometimes, authors discover about a pirated ebook because a concerned reader emails to notify them.

But most piracy won't be reported to you. If you want to know the extent to which your eBook is stolen, it is possible to:

1. Search for your book on Google

The title of your book and"download "download" into Google and see what comes up. You may find sites that have - or claim to possess! - your book available.

Be careful what you click, however be sure to have good anti-virus software installed and in use to safeguard yourself. The majority of pirate websites are full of dubious ads, or worse.

2. Install Google Alerts

The book can be set-up with Google Alerts to be aware of when you and your book are mentioned online. This is a great way to keep current with the latest reviews or discussions about your book. It can also let you find out whether your book is being stolen.

3. Use tools like Mention.com

Mention.com works similarly to Google Alerts. It offers advanced features, such as the capability to receive daily recaps, and you can also receive emails when there is an influx of sudden references to your name or the title of your book.

Commonly asked questions

Here are some questions that customers often ask concerning book piracy:

No. Most countries recognize that your book is copyrighted automatically once you've completed the book. You don't need to make any changes to copyright it. A majority of authors place an acknowledgement of copyright at the start or end the book, however this isn't a requirement.

There is a website that lists my ebook for downloading ... but do they really have the book?

In most cases, probably you won't! Many websites list ebooks for free download however, they do not have these. However, as Dave Chesson explains, they're trying to make people sign up for subscriptions to their website ... as well trying to spread malware and viruses.

Do I really need to spend my time fighting Piracy?

If you're a new writer ... probably not. You could spend an enormous amount of time trying to stop the piracy problem, but it's not affecting your book sales at all.

According to this article by the Alliance of Independent Authors provides:

"Chasing off pirates who likely aren't infringing on the copyright of your business or affecting the profits of your business is inefficient. That's time and effort more productively spent writing, editing, refining the quality of your marketing, polishing up the descriptions of your books, or a hundred other activities that contribute in a more meaningful way to your prosperity."

The one time when it does make sense to tackle the pirates is when they dominate search results. If websites of pirates appear to be ranked highly on Google when it comes to cases such as that one Tim Grahl's shares it's time to act:

"My writer friend was in a position that the 3rd result in Google for the name of the book was an international site where you could download the PDF version of the book at no cost."

Should I Be Worried About Ebook Piracy?

Also, if you're not new to the writing world, you're probably you're not. Obscurity is a much bigger risk for most authors. If about your work and they don't have the money to buy them.

Some people even think that pirates can benefit authors since it allows your books into the hands of greater numbers of people ... Some of which could be paying users.

If you're an established author, though, you may discover that piracy has a negative impact on your book sales. YA author Maggie Stiefvater wrote about her experience with that on her Facebook page and explained how book's print sales for the third book in her series were much higher than ebooks, and also how pirates harmed her next novel in the series.

Then [the publisher] told me that they were cutting the printing run for The Raven King to less than half the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, it's just that the sales of Blue Lily didn't justify printing any more copies.

Maggie Stiefvater managed to demonstrate that piracy was harming sales by releasing their own fake pirated version of the fourth book in which the first four chapters repeated. The printed edition went out of print, and eBook sales increasing dramatically (until real copies of the ebook started being pirated).

The author Elizabeth Lennox related a similar experience which resulted an obvious decrease in sales

At one point I noticed that my sales had been decreased by 50. I was stunned. I was awed. was happening until my husband told me that he'd discovered my books in pirated sites. We then hired a lawyer to send remove notices and next day the sales started rising again.

In the end, book theft will not go out of fashion. It's up to you to decide whether you're willing to fight it or not. For the majority of first-time authors, it's going to make sense to spend your time instead of marketing your book ... or making the next.

If you're seeing a distinct decline in sales it's not clear if the piracy sites are ranking very highly on Google for your book's name or the name of your author, then it's an appropriate time to do something about it. The issue of DMCA Notices are the most effective solution to the problem Be aware that you can find out easy-to-use templates on this Google doc.