Book Piracy Isn't Harmless. My Children Paid the Price.

Every day, I wake up knowing my work has been stolen by book piracy sites. My stories, my heart, the parts of me poured into page after page…taken by faceless thieves with no respect for artists or shame over creative theft. The first time I found one of my stolen books on a pirate site was in 2013; aside from the injury of stolen creativity, I can't even imagine the financial impact ebook theft has truly had on my life or my family. My sense of outrage is...well, even I don't have adequate words for that.

And it's getting worse. Now, the industry of my dreams is overflowing with cowardly, talentless, wannabe writers, cheating in publishing by taking stolen content and using it to create unethical AI-generated books—without consent from writers. Without even the slightest ethical concerns for our stolen income. But it isn't just about "free books."

It's about a cultural system that preys on creators, constantly clamoring for more while denying our right to be paid for our work. It's about authors in poverty, stripped of their hopes and dreams, struggling to get by because too many people don't know or care to know how book piracy hurts authors. And in the meantime, every stolen copy of one of my books took literal food from my children's mouths and literal clothes from their backs.

It was bad enough before. But with AI book theft and AI training data being used for author exploitation...I’m done being silent. This isn’t a petty complaint; it's an injustice that needs recognition. It’s time to demand due respect for artists and writers like me.

The day everything changed, I woke up already exhausted. It happens so often these days; juggling my writing dream with life as a single mom, struggling against disability...it weighs me down. But I pushed through because I'm mostly on my own and pushing through is the only way to keep up. Thankful for Spring Break, I medicated, caffeinated, and went straight for my daily checklist—first up, social media interaction. Marketing. Networking. It's the frog I eat every morning, starting with Facebook, then Instagram, then Twitter/X. I interact mostly with the bookish and writerly communities—people who are at once inspiring and exhausting. We are both the beauty and the horror of passionate chaos.

I was scrolling through Twitter/X, half-expecting and half-dreading the current drama in the writing world. Lately it's all about AI writing vs human writing, why AI-generated books are a problem, what authors think about AI books, and various indie author struggles. But that day a fellow author shared her heartbreak after finding her debut novel on a pirate site—not only stolen, but now used illegally to train Meta's AI models without consent or opportunity to opt out. Years of work and determination stripped away, her art and creativity fed like shreds of nothingness into a machine intended only to nurture the growth of a thief's profit. There was a link for other authors to follow, to see if their works were equally violated. I clicked the link. And I searched for my name. Five of my books were listed.

Not only pirated—which is bad enough already—but now used to fuel the growth of AI systems, which are then used to flood creative industries with works based on stolen content.

Shock hit me like a gut punch. So much indignity. So much rage. And then the realization: if not for a class-action lawsuit currently working its way through the system, I’d be powerless to do anything. I can’t afford to fight this kind of thing. Not with my tiny income, not while I'm barely keeping my family afloat. I sat there, in the bedroom of my subsidized apartment, on a bed I made with my own two hands, my mind spinning into heartache and hopelessness as I thought of how this affects my family. As a single mom on disability, I don’t have a lot of breathing room.

My car is always broken down. Fixing it costs more than buying a new one would, but I'm so busy fixing it to maintain transportation that I can’t afford a new one. We don’t do vacations, big gifts for the holidays. We don't even go for professional haircuts; I cut our hair. Taking my teenager to Starbucks for a monthly treat is a stretch sometimes.

But what if those stolen copies of my books were actual sales? If my work wasn’t stolen, if people didn't selfishly cheat the system? My life could be so different. My hopes, my dreams of a better future for my family might have a fighting chance. For once, just maybe...my work and my sacrifice wouldn’t be...for nothing.

One of my greatest dreams is to open a Safe House for domestic violence survivors. It’s a shelter I created in FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM—one that provides not only short-term refuge and resources, but long-term mentorship, personal growth, and empowerment. It’s a place where healing happens without the pressure of arbitrary time limits, where success is determined by recovery rather than numerical statistics. And it is an incredible dream, because in the real world, shelters like the Safe House are few and far between.

The sad truth is, those doors might never open outside the pages of my books. The dream may only ever be a dream, because people like me, who care enough to imagine and plan and hope for something better, can't access the resources needed to bring it to life.

And I'll be honest; the dream is dying, slow and painful and desperate, like a suffocated bug trapped under an upturned candle jar. Because too often, the people who steal from creators and act like we don’t deserve to be compensated are the same ones whining about how authors "don't write fast enough" or "charge too much for books." Because too many people think $3 for a 100,000-word novel is too much to ask.

Because in a world so outraged by fair pay and livable wages, authors like me are expected to churn out books like chum in shark-infested waters...but if I could work 24/7 for a whole month (730 hours) to write one book and make one sale, my hourly wage (based on a $3 royalty, which I don't get from a $3 book) would be $0.00410958904. I'd have to sell 5300 books every month to make minimum wage (which averages $7.25 in the US).

So, here I am—another insulted, discouraged, disillusioned author. Another voice crying in the wilderness, another human trying to make a living, another heart longing for the chance to make a difference.

And I'm still writing. Because I choose, in spite of everything, to...