**Going on a rant here for a minute. Feel free to look away if you - TopicsExpress

**Going on a rant here for a minute. Feel free to look away if you cant handle it.** I spend a lot of time writing books. Publishers spend a lot of time and money editing, formatting, distributing, and printing books. We even make up ARCs (advance review copies) at OUR expense so we can give them to reviewers. We do that because early reviews are important. Book sellers (Amazon, B&N, etc.) want to know what people think of a book BEFORE they agree to put it on shelves. So we send out a limited number of ARCs, hoping that the bloggers/reviewers who get them are good, honest people, and will use them for that end. The problem is, sometimes they arent, and they dont. Sometimes, people think that they should be able to sell those ARCs and make money off it, or even give them away to whoever wants one. Besides the fact that that isnt what they are for, or the fact that selling/distributing books like that is illegal, people persist. Only this week I found a place not only selling ARCs on Queen of Someday (which isnt even out yet), but they were advertising their pirate site on youtube. Let me be very clear. If you are given a copy of a book by an author or a publisher for review, sharing, selling, or distributing that book is stealing, and its wrong. If you buy a copy of a book and sell copies of it that you made, its stealing and its wrong. If you upload an ebook to a file sharing site without permission from the copyright owner, its stealing and its wrong. If you take a book someone else wrote, make a few changes, and then publish it as your own (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID), its STEALING and its WRONG. And telling an author that they should be flattered that someone likes their book enough to steal it, is like telling a rape victim they should be grateful that someone thought they were pretty enough to rape them. So listen up, book thieves, if you keep up this kind of behavior, publishers and authors will have no choice but to stop giving out ARCs altogether. Then EVERYONE loses. Moral of the story? Dont be a dick. **end rant**