The pirates really don't like it if you happen to speak out in public about their nasty thieving habits. I've been quoted in the media twice this week about book theft and, hatemail and abusive comments on the web site apart, there are other consequences.

Here's one... <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1TMYUHMWX7UBN/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R1TMYUHMWX7UBN" target="_blank">someone posting a one-star 'review' of <em>The Fallen Angel</em> on Amazon UK</a>. They don't even claim to have read the book . They just want to give it one star so the ratings go down and have their say which is...
<blockquote>Hewson was complaining in The Metro about eBook piracy, yet the Kindle edition of this book is almost the same price as the hardback. He needs to wise up a bit and get a grasp on reality. Paying more for a couple of MB of data, that costs little to publish or distribute, than for a real, printed, book, is a rip-off. Before complaining about "thieves", he should put his own house in order.</blockquote>
Is that a book review? Is the poster even aware that authors write books, they don't publish or price them? What exactly is the house that I'm supposed to be putting in order? And why are Amazon allowing this kind of thing -- which clearly isn't a review of the book at all -- to be published?

Here's another way they get you -- by spreading simple lies. <a href="http://unbored.co.uk/reviews/2011/04/22/fun-stuff-i-found-friday-9/" target="_blank">A site called Unbored</a>, the purpose of which appears obscure, throws in a random insult...
<blockquote>It’s been an interesting week. We’ve had <em>Portal 2 </em>being released in the best possible way, David Hewson in ‘The Metro’ complaining about his eBooks being pirated, when the eBook is priced at £9.35… I don’t have a kindle and I want to pirate his books, I don’t even want to read his pathetic snivelling dross, it’s just on principle! eBooks are not worth that much!</blockquote>
He's entitled to an opinion I guess, though quite how he knows I write 'pathetic snivelling dross' without reading it is a bit of a puzzle. It's also slightly worrying to see that someone with such a poor grasp of grammar and punctuation, and hampered by a childlike obsession with exclamation marks, claims to have 'studied English and Creative Writing at Portsmouth University'. Really?

What he's not entitled to do is to play fast and loose with the truth. I don't have any Kindle books priced anywhere near £9.35. The current mass market in Kindle eBook is £3.98 against a paper price of £4.19 . The current hardback in Kindle is £7.19 against a paper price of £7.79. And as we always have to remind people, those ebook prices include 20 per cent VAT, so the real price to the publisher and author is substantially cheaper.

But as I've said before. This isn't about price. It's about theft. Which is pretty clear when you see the kind of individuals you're dealing with.