JOYLAND pirated

photo credit: www.guardian.co.uk
(From M John Harrison's review of Joyland)

That's just rotten!  And illegal.  . . . oh, sorry, story first:

The LA Times posted an article that Stephen King's novel Joyland has been digitally reproduced and pirated.  Amazing, since Joyland wasn't even published digitally.

Carolyn Kellogg's article, "Stephen King's 'Joyland' pirated as e-book -- like all the rest," notes that Joyland is not alone -- almost all of King's work is pirated in the digital format.  She points out that one site offers "The Shining," "The Stand," "Pet Sematary," "It," "The Green Mile," and "The Gunslinger." Sound like a lot of King?  Kellogg then points out that "and that's all just one bundled package."

King said in May that he was hopeful people would go out to real bookstores and buy a copy of Joyland instead  of downloading the digital version.  Kellog notes, "The problem is that to some people, a pirate site looks like a digital bookstore -- one where everything is free."

The full article by Carolyn Kellogg is at www.latimes.com/features/books

mediabistro.com posted Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai full statement:

We’ve seen dozens of websites over the past year purporting to offer pirated downloadable copies of JOYLAND, and so far they’ve all been frauds – if you try to download the file, you get malware or a virus instead.  But inevitably the book will eventually be pirated for real, just as every best-selling book and popular movie or TV show or piece of music is.  As a publisher, you try to prevent it or to stamp it out when you discover it, but it’s like the “war on drugs” – good luck.  Seize a boatload of heroin, and what does it get you?   There are more boats, there’s more heroin. 

But all of that would be equally true regardless of Stephen King’s decision to release JOYLAND initially in printed-book form only.  Books that do have e-book editions get pirated, too, and I’m sure JOYLAND would have been pirated just as quickly either way.  There were pirated copies of HARRY POTTER before J.K. Rowling decided to release electronic editions and there were pirated versions after. 

In the end you have to rely on the good behavior of the vast majority of the audience – I see no reason to think that pirates represent more than a small fraction of all consumers.  That doesn’t mean we don’t care about piracy – we do.  But it’s just one of the many punches you have to learn to roll with in the rough-and-tumble world of modern publishing.