From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.

The pirates got hold of me.

I know this because I have Google Alerts set up on my name. All versions of my name. Especially my authorship names.

Every couple of weeks I get alerts about someone tweeting my name.

It's always a pirate.

It's always someone who's discovered my flagship book title, who's ripped it off in a PDF, and who is flogging it so other people can read it for free.

It's the reality of producing any kind of art. I don't care if you're a musician, or a visual artist, or a writer. People are going to rip off your work and flog it off to other people for free.

The freebie seekers come up with bullshyt comments like, 'all information should be free'. 

Sure, it should.

Except that we live in a capitalist society in which people have to eat and pay rent; and you're getting it for free because you're privileged enough to have a digital hivemind at your fingertips. You're so attuned to getting everything for free that you think there's no problem with ripping off other people's work.

Whether it offends you is a matter of attitude.

On the one hand, people who read it for free are still reading it. Some of those will purchase it.

On the other hand, you poured your blood, sweat, tears, and life experience into your art and now some ingrate downloaded it and isn't even going to read it.

My attitude is more former than latter. Though it would be nice if I got a few bucks for every freebie reader out there. It would make me quite wealthy!

If anything, it's the pirates that bother me.

I mean, if you're going to put effort into things, why would you just flog stuff off for free?? 

In any case, the lesson for you is this:

If you publish a book people will rip it off. You will never have any luck with a strongly worded letter from your lawyer. You just have to suck it up. So before you go publishing anything, ask yourself whether you could stand it.

Knowing this ahead of time will save you loads of angst later on.

And with that, we're down to only 9 days before Christmas Eve! The special deal is rolling on!

Help me pay off the Christmas gifts everyone expects by booking a job for 2022. When you do, I'll gift you a 15% discount for the entire first quarter of the year.

On any service or product.

It applies to all of these, and more...

So if you have projects lining up on your desk and you reckon that help is in order, now is the time to do it.

xx Leticia "big enough to be pirated" Mooney

PS. I'm going to plug this deal until Christmas Eve, so you don't have to decide today. You can decide tomorrow, or the next day. Just make sure your booking is in by the 24th. :)