A Message About E-book Piracy from Meg Cabot

When I interviewed Meg Cabot for Kids Book Review recently, I was stricken by her impassioned plea on e-book piracy. Similarly to music and video piracy, which has a devastating effect on people who work so hard in these industries, e-book piracy undermines the years, sometimes decades, of work authors and illustrators put into their books.

Here is what Meg had to say:

E-book piracy is starting to become a major problem in the publishing industy, and we’re just now starting to see the effects of it in the publishing industry, at least in the US, with lay-offs and some new (and some old) authors not receiving contracts or having contracts renewed.

Adults, but especially kids, need to understand how badly e-piracy hurt.

Who does it hurt when you download an e-book for free online? YOU! When a few people download an e-book without paying for it, it costs ALL of us: your favorite authors, their publishers, your cousin who just graduated and applied for a job working at that publishing house, and maybe even YOU someday if you ever want to publish a book of your own.

With so many people stealing e-books without paying for them (illegally downloading e-books costs publishers millions every year), publishers are being forced to lay off employees and buy fewer new books from established authors … and they’re especially unwilling to take risks on publishing books by unknown authors.

One of those unknown authors could be you someday. So think about that next time you’re tempted to download an e-book without paying for it.

Learn more about e-book piracy in this CNN article.

See a Kids Book Review interview with Meg here!