"Piracy has increased my e-book sales 700%"

Often, people respond with incredulity when we explain our political objectives. "What? You want to promote sharing? On the Internet? No-one who actually produces creative works would possibly support that!" Well, no, you see, that's not actually true. Enter Joe Konrath, a prolific US author. I recently came across his blog, and thought that you might appreciate his explanation of why fighting piracy is not only futile, but quite likely counterproductive.

In the past 24 hours, four separate writers have emailed me to tell me my books are being stolen online.

Well... no duh.

The internet was created to share and distribute data. It's the whole reason the world wide web exists.

Of course some of that data is going to be copyright-protected work. If it can be digitized, it can, and will, be shared.

What continues to amaze me is how freaked-out authors are by this. The thought that someone is sharing their work--without paying for it--seems to evoke the same reaction as having someone hack your bank account and drain your life savings.

As you see by the recent picture, I'm being pirated. Google pointed to 8880 different sites where my work is being illegally shared. And these are just torrent sites. This doesn't count file lockers, which I believe account for many more downloads than torrents.

And yet, I'm not worried. I'm currently selling 220 ebooks per day, and that rate shows no signs of slowing down.

So everyone needs to take a big, collective breath, let it out slow, and stop worrying about illegal file sharing. Here are some reasons why.

1. Copyright is unenforceable in a digital world. Period. Exclamation point. At no time in history has any individual, company, or industry been able to stop file sharing. No country or law has been able to stop it. No technology has been able to stop it. Which brings us to...

2. People want to share files. There is this much file sharing going on for a reason. It's what people want. Fighting piracy is fighting human nature. This is a battle no one can win. Getting your undies in a bunch at the thought of someone copying your ebook is a waste of a good ulcer. Worry about some problem that eventually will be solved. Like world hunger. Or cancer. Or war. Those will be conquered before file sharing is.

3. There is ZERO reliable evidence that file-sharing hurts sales. A shared file does not equal a lost sale, any more than someone reading a library book is a lost sale.

My ebooks that I'm selling on Amazon and Smashwords are available for FREE on my website. As in "they cost zero dollars." And yet the ebooks keep selling. Clearly, being able to get something for free doesn't inhibit sales.

4. The more people who know who you are, the better. File sharing certainly helps spread brand awareness and name recognition, and it does so without any effort on your part.

Which is, in fact, what we've been saying all along. You'd probably also want to read the rest of his post, which provides some pithy answers to common questions about piracy. And, heck, maybe buy some of his books!

Why the title? Well, when I e-mailed Joe to ask him if I could repost part of his blog post here, he agreed, and added, "So far, piracy has increased my ebook sales for [Jack Daniels Stories] about 700%. That's seven times what I was selling recently."

There you have it, from the horse's mouth: no, piracy is not killing the small-time artist.