SOPA’s Potential Impact on eBook Publishing

Since the eBook is based on Brad’s blog posts over the years, you can bet that it will include plenty of links to external sites. If he happened to link to something that contains copyrighted material that was used without permission, guess what? Brad’s eBook itself could be considered a party to piracy. Say “Arrrr,” Brad!

To those who say that SOPA applies to Web sites and not eBooks, we beg to differ. Every eBook is essentially a self-contained Web site that you can copy to your device of choice. How many already published eBooks would need to be rewritten to remove hyperlinks? Could we as BookBrewer continue to host them? Could anyone? The legal liability would be too high.

In the End, It’s About You

We’ve explained how SOPA would impact BookBrewer and our business, but that’s not what bothers us the most. We worry about what will happen to you, the self-publishing authors who are redefining what it means to “get published.”

It’s one thing for a startup to get shut down, but even worse for an honest individual to be made out as a criminal. The average self-published author is over 40 years old, and is someone’s mom, dad, grandmother, uncle or teacher. We’re increasingly seeing books from college students and teens, and even a few art eBooks from elementary school kids publishing with their parents’ permission.

We understand that piracy is a real problem for large publishers, but there are more effective and fair ways to deal with it. Tying the hands of honest writers and allowing them to be labeled as criminals is not the solution.

If you agree, please call or write to your member of Congress and let them know what you think of SOPA.

Dan Pacheco

Founder, BookBrewer.com

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