Torrents are killing the technical book industry and making it really difficult for me to provide a decent holiday season for my family.  I know times are tough all over, but the number of stolen copies of our three books compared to the numbers sold is almost 1000 to 1.

A simple web search will find both The Essential Guide to Flash Games and The HTML5 Canvas First and Second Editions (as well all every other technical book released in the last 20 years)  in 100’s of Torrent files.

That’s awesome for anyone who wants to learn these languages for free, but REALLY sucks for the authors(and publishers). Let me give you a brief lesson in the economics in being an author of a second edition of a book.

You get no advance payment and you need to write at least 50% new content, while revising EVERY page of the first edition.  You release the book and hope that sales will pay for the 500-1000 hours or so hours it took to write, re-write, and test this content on multiple platforms.  After that, you get royalties on the 10% of all sales. It is as simple as that.  But, when no one is buying your book because they can get it for free, those 1000 hours turn into no money for the authors or the relatively tiny book publishers  that you are trying (or not trying)  the “screw” by obtaining and using intellectual property for free.

We have a great book company, O’Reilly, that should NOT be screwed out of anything.  We also have no incentive to write any more books if we are not going to make a dime by writing them.

So, here is my proposal. If you have Torrented ANY of our books – The Essential Guide To Flash Games, The HTML5 Canvas or the HTML5 Canvas 2nd Edition, and have found them useful, we ask that you donate to the cause of helping give us incentive write a 3rd edition. It won’t happen with the current royalty stream. In less than a year, royalties have dried up beyond belief.

You can donate via PayPal by sending $2.00 (10% of the discounted $20,00 e-book price) or any amount you want to info[at]8bitrocket.com Paypal address.

No questions asked. We appreciate your honesty. Also, we understand that some people truly cannot afford books. That’s OK.  For those who can afford to donate and are using our hard work, please give donating some serious thought.

Thanks,

Jeff Fulton