If you’ve recently come across your book on a pirating site, your first reaction may have been anger and indignation at finding your hard work being copied and handed out for free.
Many experts will tell you that trying to hunt down every illegal copy of your ebook is like playing whack-a-mole: for every one you successfully take down, three more will pop up.
While it’s up to you to determine whether your potential loss in sales is worth the pursuit, there are several steps you can take in an effort to stop illegal downloads of your book.
What To Do if Your Book Is Pirated
These 6 steps can help you find the right course of action if you find your book has been pirated. Note: Don’t skip step 1!
1. Don’t panic.
The first step is to take a deep breath and STAY CALM. Seeing that all your hard work has been essentially stolen and passed around for free can be incredibly infuriating, but don’t let thieves get the best of you.
That being said, you might not love what’s next, but it’s important: if you find what looks like a pirated copy of your ebook on the internet, in most cases, you should simply move on.
Why is that? Well, many pirated ebook sites may appear to offer your book in their archives. You’ll see flashy search results, like “DOWNLOAD [YOUR BOOK’S TITLE] FREE PDF.”
But here’s the thing: there’s a good chance they’re bluffing. The piraters plucked your book’s title from Amazon, thinking that it is or could potentially be popular, then claim to have the book in their archives. What they really want, though, is to get some poor suckers to pay their subscription fee, or attempt to download the book only to become the new owner of a virus.
So as the old adage goes, if you look for problems, you’ll probably find them, especially if your book is even remotely popular. Plus, as this article points out, ebook piracy isn’t always reason to worry—in fact, some authors deliberately leak their ebooks to piracy networks as a marketing strategy.
However, if you have proof or good reason to believe that your book actually is being illegally distributed and you feel it’s harming you and your sales, the following steps should help you.
2. Contact the site’s owner or editor.
In the heat of all your fury, there’s a chance you’ve overlooked what is perhaps the most simple, straightforward solution to your problem: just ask the bad guys to remove your book.
Really! Most likely, they’re not making much money off your one book, and to avoid getting dragged into deeper trouble or having their site shut down entirely, they might comply more readily than you’d expect.
Here’s a template you can use to write your email:
Dear [Name of Owner or Website]:
I’m writing to request that my book, [Insert Title], be removed immediately from your site. By reproducing and distributing my book, you are violating my copyright.
If swift action is not taken to remove my book from your site, I will contact your Registrar to report copyright infringement and file a DMCA takedown notice.
I trust that you will act quickly to resolve this.
Regards,
[Your Name]
To find the owner’s email, you can use the site Whois.com to enter their domain name or IP address and get the appropriate contact info. Note that even if you don’t see an actual name, use whichever email address or link is listed and your message should be redirected to the owner.
3. Contact the host.
OK, so no one’s responded to your strongly-worded email, or maybe you couldn’t locate an email address. (Or, worse yet, maybe those darn pirates had the nerve to refuse your request. Don’t worry—you’ll show ’em!)
Your next course of action is to contact the site’s host.
Escalating the issue to the host may have more promising results because if hosting servers are found to be hosting illegal sites, they could be shut down and put out of business, so it’s really not in their best interest to have illegal activity on their servers.
Like the site owner, you can also find the hosting service listed on Whois. Then, go to the host’s website and look for a “Contact” or “Abuse” form.
Be sure to describe the violation, include the specific URL, and let them know that you already tried contacting the site and will be filing a DMCA takedown notice if no action is taken.
4. Contact the registrar.
Many sites have their own hosting service, which means contacting the host isn’t really a viable option.
But don’t worry: even if that’s the case, all hope is not lost! You can always contact their registrar, since they can’t have their own.
On Whois, you might see a registrar abuse phone number listed along with an email. Try making a phone call to report copyright infringement, and again be sure to mention that your next will be to submit a DMCA request since the issue is stolen content.
5. File a DMCA takedown notice.
If you still haven’t had any luck, it’s time to bring in that scary DMCA thing we’ve been talking about. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a US copyright law that aims to protect content owners from online copyright infringement.
However, it’s important to note that this is intended to be the last resort, after you’ve contacted all the relevant parties outlined in steps 2–4.
So once you’ve done all that to no avail, you can submit a DMCA by searching the host company or registrar’s name and “DMCA” on Google. This should lead you to a DMCA page where you can submit a formal copyright claim.
6. Request removal from Google.
Once you’ve tirelessly worked through all these steps, the website has hopefully complied and taken down your work. But even so, it can take a while for their cache to change and actually stop showing that page on Google results.
If that’s the case, you can submit a Google URL request to have outdated content removed from Google Search.
Be Proactive Against Pirating
For most authors, seeing their work illegally copied and distributed online can feel like a punch in the gut. But if you find this happens to you, remember to stay calm and consider how serious the situation actually is (how many potential sales you’re probably losing as a result) and decide if it’s worth the time and effort of chasing those sites down in order to get your work removed.
If you decide that it would be worth the effort, you can rest assured that there is a course of action that can help you make an impact. You can also review steps for preventing book piracy to learn what you can do to reduce its occurrences.
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- How to Prevent Book Piracy: 5 Things Authors Can Do
- 10 Ways to Increase Your Book Sales and Earn More Money as an Author
- 73: Copyrights and Law Every Author Should Know with Brock Shinen
- Copyright Page Templates: Sample Copyright Language You Can Use
As a blog writer for TCK Publishing, Kaelyn loves crafting fun and helpful content for writers, readers, and creative minds alike. She has a degree in International Affairs with a minor in Italian Studies, but her true passion has always been writing. Working remotely allows her to do even more of the things she loves, like traveling, cooking, and spending time with her family.
