Making It

It looks as though I've made it to the top.  How do I know this?  I've been ravaged by pirates!  Aarrgh!

Unfortunately not the parrot-supporting, peg-legged sort, or the eye patch and swaggering variety, or even just the sailing-swashbuckling kind.  The boring, thefty kind that thought enough of my erotica to throw it up to share with their fellows, or perhaps to use it to lure unsuspecting downloaders into d.l.'ing a virus.  I'm talking now about torrent sites.

I won't link to it here because I don't want to seem to be advocating the theft of my work, exactly.  I need the money I make from writing, although I'd still write if I didn't, but I'm not a wealthy bestselling author here.  I don't clip coupons but it's out of laziness rather than an excess of funds.  I eat beans and rice more than once a week and it ain't because I'm from Louisiana.*  Downloading my work for free rather than buying a copy is theft from me and from Amazon, although I dare say they can afford it more than I can.

However.

I don't really care.

You heard me.

The thing is, most good people don't use torrent sites, or if they do, they use them for one or two specific things and then sort of forget they're there, because they're illegal and with every download you're taking a chance on what you're getting along with that episode of Game of Thrones.**  And I believe most people are law-abiding and basically good.  Say, ninety-five percent of people.  That natural goodness is the reason I started publishing DRM-free last year, after I gave up my Sony Reader for a Kindle and discovered that the legally-purchased and rather expensive books I'd already paid to read were unreadable on my new device.  I decided not to force anyone to re-purchase (optimism) or just delete (realism) my work when swapping old devices for new ones, and subsequent publications have been DRM free and will continue to be that way (I also ALWAYS enable lending, because I'm a pip).

Let's face it, the people who use torrents all the time weren't going to pay for my book, or that cracked copy of Photoshop, or the last Twilight movie,*** anyway.  They use torrents because they don't want to pay for their media.  They don't give crap one about missed royalties, or the rights of the artist, or whether I can feed my imaginary blood hound this week.****  Which is fine.  Honestly I think pirated media is kinda low on the list of Bad Things People Do To Each Other.  I'm much more worried about genocide, and serial killers, and dicks who don't put their shopping carts in the cart returns when they've finished loading groceries into the car.

So to sum up, don't use torrents.  You could get a virus.  Also it's illegal.  But if you do use torrents, grab a copy of my book and let me know how you liked it.

*Red beans and rice is like my second favorite dish.  I'd eat it all the time even if it weren't practically free to make.

**Downloading GoT eps is understandable and even forgivable.  If HBO didn't have their butts so tightly puckered they'd put up their own download site so we could pay a fee to watch it without a big expensive cable package.  Who can afford cable in this economy?

***Not deserving of jail time, but absolutely deserving of a virus.

****I can always afford to feed my imaginary blood hound.  His imaginary kibble costs next to nothing.