Blog Archives
Another day, another pirated-books database

The Atlantic has created another search tool to reveal what pirated texts Meta used to train its AI, and once again many of my works appear, including Has the World Ended Yet? and several of my Azrael the Angel Gunslinger stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
This is incredibly frustrating as I suspect a company like Meta could certainly afford to pay licensing fees to use works rather than rip off creators (struggling or successful). But as The Atlantic makes clear, the use of pirated works was approved at the highest levels of Meta.
Hopefully there will be some legal action that addresses this scandal. In the meantime, if your AI seems fascinated with homicidal angels and has an unnatural obsession with supernatural six shooters, then you know who to blame.
Tell me again how piracy isn’t a problem
Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia woke up this morning to find someone has pirated one of her stories and is selling it on Chapters online — under Silvia’s own name. It’s a pretty devious act of piracy, as it looks like a legit book from the writer, but I’m pretty sure Silvia will never see any of the money from the sales of her own pirated work. And people wonder why most writers can’t quit their day job….
Coffee Break: I Stole Your Cream and Sugar
So that reddit thread about piracy got people talking online. Here are the relevant reads:
- “9.6 times what I bring in in a YEAR from Amazon.” – M. Todd Gallowglass writes a blog post about how many pirated copies of his books are available on one site alone and what that may be costing him.
- “Is this immoral?” – reddit responds
- “If you’re an author, piracy doesn’t matter” – Writer Jake Kerr weighs in on the subject.
In other news:
- The Days of Meta-Meta: Fictional Characters and What They Might like to Read
- How and why Thomas Wharton went hybrid – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The politics of piracy
I may have weighed in once or twice on this reddit thread about whether book piracy is OK or not. Spoiler: I don’t think it is.







