Yes, taking a tip from Emma "Shit for Brains" Watson, who skipped around the underground in London leaving copies of Maya Angelou books around, S&S played a GAME today.
Today, some genius has declared, is "Hide a Book Day." As if anyone can look up from their cellphones to find one.
Ha ha ho ho hee hee. Merrily we leave some books lying around.
Simon and Schuster is run by, what, a bunch of dumb clucks? A bunch of dizzy girls and chorus boys? What's this "On the Town" crap?
This book company already wastes money on paying people to TWEET. They also pay them to romp around "hiding" books? But they don't have anyone sending DMCA's to vero@ebay.com? REALLY?
S&S has some fools TWEET on TWITTER to a following of almost NOBODY, but can't spare an INTERN to type in a new title and add "EBOOK" OR "PDF" or "KINDLE" to find EBAY piracy?
Just for FUN, I took ONE MINUTE and typed in the name of EACH book in that TWEET photo. Guess what. There was an eBay seller who had EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AS A BOOTLEG. The seller is robbing Simon and Schuster. Also, when people are reading bargain dupe downloads, they aren't in bookstores or libraries.
I could've posted all three books but one will do:
THE LYING GAME. Yeah. WHAT kind of games are the major publishers are playing. HIDE and SUCK?
It's not just Slime and Schuster.
Most book companies do NOT have a "REPORT PIRACY" link on their website.
I've reported links to the few book companies that DO have a "REPORT PIRACY" link, and gee, what a surprise, the eBay items were NEVER stopped.
Too much effort to monitor what's reported? Can't find an Intern to do the job?
As a VERO rep for over 15 years, I can tell you that you do NOT need a lawyer charging $200 an hour to stop bootlegs on eBay. You don't need Digimarc or Web Sheriff or some company that charges so much per takedown that it isn't worth it except to protect the latest titles for a few weeks.
ALL You need is an INTERN. A concerned person. Somebody willing to volunteer. Sending in takedowns is EASY. A person needs a brain, some time, and a signed document faxed to eBay that explains that the copyright owner has authorized the takedowns.
There is absolutely NO downside to this. Pirate scum in Sri Lanka and Croatia don't file countersuits. NOBODY does. The only reason Simon and Schuster's books are being bootlegged (or booklegged) by somebody named DOUBER2 is that they are 2 crapathetic to do a damn thing about it. It's crap. It's apathy. It's pathetic. It's CRAPATHETIC.
Simon and Schuster is sending a message: WE ARE RICH. WE ARE FILTHY RICH. WE HIRE PEOPLE TO PRANCE AROUND PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH FREE BOOKS, INSTEAD OF HAVING SOMEBODY TAKE DOWN PIRACY.
Simon and Schuster, you'll recall, sent another message not too long ago:
WE ARE RICH. WE ARE FILTHY RICH. WE ARE GIVING A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS TO A GAY PROVOCATEUR ASSHOLE: Milo Yiannopoulos. He's Piers Morgan if Piers Morgan had no testosterone and a fetish for pretending to be Ellen Degeneres:
To use a Piers Morgan catch-phrase, "IF I'M BEING HONEST..." I wouldn't give a damn if S&S published that guy's book and it was bootlegged all over the Internet. What I DO care about, is that bookstores and libraries are collapsing due to crapathy. I care that back-catalog authors are suffering, and that authors, never exactly well paid, are getting less advance money than ever.
Only a few "best seller" authors of purple prose, hack fiction, and "the same book I wrote I've written again as part of the series" make any money now. Non-fiction authors get nothing unless it's a celebrity writing a tell-all.
This is the BOOK industry, which is supposedly not run by the same drug addicts, jackasses and pinheads that have run the MUSIC industry into the ground and bankrupted almost every record store. Record companies thought that as long as Jay-Z and Mick Jagger sold a lot of copies, everything was all right? Obviously NOT. And like the Yankees buying a few players for $10 million and having no farm system, the record stores ignored new talent, didn't put their publicity machine behind deserving young artists, and the result is almost nobody rising above a few hundred streams on Spotify.
Bookstore owners, libraries and mid-catalog authors are all being hurt.
EBAY, where people go to get a good price on new books and used books, shouldn't be the place to get sidetracked by cheap download bastards.
Stephen King today Tweeted about how sick it is...that Trump Tweeted somebody's animated gif showing him knocking a golf ball into Hillary Clinton's back and knocking her down. He didn't Tweet about how sick it is that his books are being offered for low-ball prices on eBay. Stephen, a guy in Ireland offering 72 of your books for $3 as a download from a Google cloud. YOU and your publisher haven't stepped in. THAT is SICK.
No comments:
Post a Comment