Can I stop the free sharing of my e-books? Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Swapnil, who wrote in saying— let me scroll up here— "I want to ask you, what should I do to stop illegal and free sharing of ebooks?" He's in the ebook publishing industry, and when people buy his ebooks, he finds that people are sharing them through various sharing websites and it's losing him a lot of money. So, what to do? Thanks for the question. Common problem for a lot of people who are in ePublishing or any kind of publishing really. There's not a whole lot you can do unfortunately. And so, here's what I would do. And I'm in this industry as well. So I have worksheets that I sell for entrepreneurs and we have 32 up now. We're going to have 50 or 60 and they're downloadable products that are for sale. And unfortunately, sometimes people will share them with others. For free without giving credit back and paying for it. My best strategy here for you, what I would try to do is showcase that you are a small company, right? So a lot of time people do this because obviously looking for a deal, but also they don't want to pay the big guys lots of money. So when you're selling a product, you can ask them, please don't share this, and tell your story and say you're a small company You know, it's hard, you're trying to get this business off the ground and every sale is important. If you have, you know, your face, if you have a video, or at least just explanation of your story, just to make an emotional connection, because some people are so used to sharing these files that they don't care, they don't give it a second thought, it's what they're gonna do. So if you can have some kind of emotional connection to let them know that every sale really is important to you, and that you're not some big, huge, profitable company company, but a small business and you're trying to get it going, that might help make sure that they don't share it. It's not a legal way, there's no way to actually enforce it, but you'll find that if people, you know, get that emotional connection, then, you know, they may think twice about it. So when you are asking people for the sale, or after they've purchased it, you have a thank you page, you can put that as part of your message if you're really worried about it happening. The next thing you can do is if you know who is actually doing the sharing, then you can try to reach out to them. Again, with a personal message, I wouldn't try to do any kind of legal action, but try to just explain again you're a small business, this is really hurting you, and if they wouldn't mind taking it down. That's only if you know them. Often it can be hard to find out who the person is who's sharing it. But that's a tactic. Again, you're just appealing to the good in them, and it can help if you can actually identify who the person is. Next thing is potentially doing some kind of legal action and going after the websites who are publishing it. If it's a big website like Pirate Bay, good luck. There's huge companies who are trying to take them down already. If it's somebody who's just put it up on their own website, you may be able to reach out to them and say, "Can you please take it down?" But if it's one of the bigger file-sharing sites, you don't really have a lot of options here. There are some people who will never pay for products, and it really just depends on how convenient it is for them. So even going to these file sharing sites, there is some work involved versus just somebody landing on your website and making that purchase. So some people value their, their time a lot more than their money, and some people value their money a lot more than their time. So the guys who will spend 2 hours trying to find a free copy of a $5 book they're probably not gonna buy from you, right? They're not your ideal customer. Maybe they might be at some point. It's usually, you know, younger people don't have a lot of money, they're willing to spend a lot of their time but not their money on things, and as they get older and as they have more money, disposable income, they start valuing their time more, and they'll spend the money because it'll save them half an hour, an hour to try to find something. So there's not a lot you can do with it. What I would try to do is use your current book books that are being sold to also market other potential books. So if something is being downloaded for free on one of the file sharing sites and you can't really impact it too much, within each of your books have a promo call back to your website, back to other related books. So even if it is going to somebody for free, there's some kind of call to action that you might be able to get somebody on your newsletter, back to your website, or follow you on social media so that hopefully they can coming to your engine and there's some way to follow up with them, and hopefully they can become a customer in the not too distant future. So I know it's a big challenge, and sorry to hear that it's really hurting your business. Those are the steps that I would do. So again, have some kind of personal message when somebody is buying them, your products, and encourage them not to share it. If you know who is doing it, try to reach out to them, again, with a personal appeal. If you see the websites and they're not too big, you know, talk to them, and again, stress how important this is because you're a small business. And then for the ones that are still leaking through to the sites, have some kind of marketing message within your ebooks at the end or at the beginning, or some kind of watermark, um, so that people will hopefully come back to your website, sign up for your newsletter, or take whatever next call to action you have. Hopefully that helps. Uh, for those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me wanna do more for you. And, uh, if you have a comment about this, uh, video or another question for your own business, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always read those and I try to respond to everybody who does ask a question. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.