I would really, really love to know why you are doing this.

I mean, I totally get being motivated to offer a book for free download when it's old, and out-of-print, and you know there is need for said book but it just cannot be gotten anywhere at all (or for a price that is in the hundreds, if not thousands, of Euros or Dollars or Pound Sterling).
I totally get not wishing to pay for a five-page scientific article that is fifteen years old, costs an arm and a leg to access for twentyfour hours, and of which you a) don't know whether the content will actually be of any use for you and b) do know that the author is not getting paid for copies sold.

I totally get that. But "The Middle Ages Unlocked" is brand new. It is easily accessible and it is fairly priced (at least I do think so, and I know that the price may still be out of range for some, and though I'm sorry for that I cannot really help it, but that's an entirely different topic and one only partly related to the book piracy issue).

The thing is... to upload our book to a filesharing site, or a download site, either as epub or as mobi or even as pdf, you must have gotten hold of a copy first. Did you buy it? (At least the very first of you uploaders must have bought it.) Thank you. Your buying the book supported Gillian Polack and myself. We are both freelancers, and income from our books are part of what we live on.

And then? Why did you upload it to share? I really don't understand. This is not like handing out a few copies to friends and relatives, because you are so excited about the book. Or like getting one copy and splitting the price among a small group, and then sharing the book. It's giving away somebody else's work, a book you presumably liked or found important and good enough to be worth reading, for free to a gazillion of people you don't even know. That's what I cannot understand. (Except if you got the book to upload it as bait for a scammy site that tries to spread malware, or get people to divulge their credit card information. That's something I could absolutely understand. Even though it makes me feel a bit sick to have our work used for that purpose.)

If you liked The Middle Ages Unlocked, wouldn't you want to have more books by Gillian and me? Wouldn't you want to support us so we can actually do that? Giving our work away for free is not a good way to go about it. Unless you buy multiple copies and give each of them away - that would be a very good way. (Also unlikely, I know.)

Or is offering the book for free download a way for you to make us suffer, because you hate the book, or you hate us personally? If so, congratulations. You have achieved your goal - we are both feeling stressed out by this issue, and are wasting time and effort on keeping the situation as much under control as possible. We are also both losing income over this. It's not much per book, but it is going to mount up over time. Gillian told me she lost a lot, almost all, of income from one of her books due to ebook piracy from free download sites. We are not getting advances (not every author does) so each sale lost is a real loss to us.

Authors put in work to make books, any books. It's nice to have that work appreciated, and a very tangible way of that appreciation is getting paid for it. If I have the impression that writing can actually contribute to my making a living, I will be happy to write and publish more. On the other hand, putting in a few years' worth of work, but getting very little or nothing in return... it's not going to make be utterly motivated to sit down at the desk and in the library again.

Having "The Middle Ages Unlocked" pirated and offered for free download so soon after its release also makes me wary of having ebooks of my work in the future. I'm a physical books girl by default, though I do know a lot of people appreciate ebooks, and I was beginning to change my stance. Now? Not so happy about it.

So. If you are thinking of uploading "The Middle Ages Unlocked" by Gillian Polack and Katrin Kania to some warez or dealz site for free ebooks, or some filesharing or torrent or bittorrent site because you like the book so much - please think again. You are not doing us a service.
If you would like to read our writing for free, I have this blog here, and Gillian blogs, too. She also posts on History Girls. Yes, it might not always be a topic that interests you, but in case of my own blog, you are invited to engage with me in the comments to ask for specific topics, or any questions you might have. I won't promise that I will be able to answer all of them, but it could not hurt to try.
If you would like to spread awareness about our book, blog about it or leave a review on some site offering the book for sale (Amazon has the most impact, but any bookseller will help). Or, even better, do both. Facebook-post about it. Share it on Twitter, or whatever other socialising site you like to use. We're happy about reviews, and we're happy if you spread word about The Middle Ages Unlocked.

If you're thinking of uploading it because you hate either Gillian, or myself, or the book - well. I think we'd both much prefer to get a personal hate mail to this, or even better some constructive criticism on what we could do better, but I guess there is not much I can do to keep you from making us suffer in this way.

And if you're a scammy baiter... well. Probably nothing I can say here will change your mind anyway. If you are indeed offering our book as ebook and not just pretending.

I've written several notices about the ebook piracy thing, and those we found initially have been taken down. It seems there are more popping up, though, so it feels a little like playing whack-a-mole in spite of not really wanting to do so.

Otherwise, my paper is finally about finished - just the formatting of the bibliography has to be taken care of. The lots of rain in the last days mean that I can finally finish washing my fleeces, so one of them is soaking right now. The cat is sleeping, as usual...

...and the chili plants are making nice and colourful chilis:


I've also made a little bit more progress on the fleur-de-lis prototype - one side leaf and the band are left to embroider:


Here's the view from the back:






I'm already looking forward to the next step - doing it again while taking pictures...

Dear Little Cat,

you are very soft, and very cute, and very cuddly. You are also a very friendly cat, and I do appreciate that you like to be in my company. I like to be in your company, too.

I can also understand that you wish to be petted from time to time, and that a nap close to someone you love is much better than just a nap. Finally, I am delighted that you take an interest in my work, and sometimes wish to participate.

However, you curling up on my desk? Especially in a way that means your paw rests on my laptop's touchpad?



Not. Helpful.

I have pondered whether to blog about this or not... but I've decided to do it, in the end. Our book "The Middle Ages Unlocked" has been out for a week now... and it has already been pirated, as the epub or mobi version. Yes, really.

Gillian told me about this just this morning, and I have since wasted some time reading up on ebook piracy, getting some information from our publisher, and other related stuff. I have also sent off a notice to the cloud service thingie that hosts the download link, duly informing them about the infringement. And now I'll do my best to forget about this until it requires further effort from my side and move on. (Well, after this blog post, that is.)

I am, let me whine for a bit here, please, not at all happy about this. Gillian Polack and I have spent many, many hours working on the book, reading, researching, writing and refining. (I actually logged the hours. I have not checked yet how many they were. I am not planning to - it scares me too much.) We have spent a lot of time looking for a publisher willing to take on this exciting-but-also-slightly-daunting Beast of a book. Neither Gillian nor I are going to get rich off this (as is usual for authors).

Neither Gillian nor I expect to get rich off this book. What we do expect, though, is to be treated fairly - and that does not include somebody taking the hard work that we and our publishing house Amberley put into the book and placing it online, for free. That makes me sad, and a bit angry, and also a little depressed.

While the cat is sleeping right next to my feet, curled up and sometimes purring loudly, I'm doing things. Lots of them. A brief overview of what happened yesterday and today?

One of the things was sorting my way through a huge stack of paperwork (there's still some more left to go through and sort into appropriate folders, but it was a very good start). Running a business is a huge stack of paperwork on top of the normal, daily-life, everyone-has-it paperwork, and from time to time that needs to be properly sorted out and re-organised into appropriately labeled folders and binders and things.

There were also some emails to look into getting things made, or re-stocked - results of these will hopefully come in the middle future. (I've long since learned that these things take time. In some instances lots of time.)

Gillian and I have written up a stack of guest posts for our blogtour to promote The Middle Ages Unlocked, aka The Beast, and we're looking forward to see where they will end up. We had a lot of fun doing a kind of interview with each other - it really is amazing how differently two people will see and think about something they've been working on together for several years!

I'm also in the process of finishing up a paper about spinning; two fellow textile nerds have graciously agreed to give it a proof-read, so I'll get some feedback on the contents and hope to have it all done and dealt with soon. Meanwhile I'll have to beat the pictures and the references into shape.

Plus some editing work, some drafting, a lot of looking at picture websites (for the spinning paper), some cuddling the cat, some computer maintenance, some getting the book-keeping up to date (again...) and some getting things ordered via the webshop ready to send off. And shooting a gratuitous cat picture. Because it's Friday...

It's finally raining again here, and there is a good amount of water coming down gradually - very, very much appreciated by all the plants. (Plus it means I might soon be able to finish washing my fleeces!) The cat does not feel as happy as I do about the rain, though - for her, it means a sleepy day, as she prefers not to get wet if she can help it. No umbrella for her - though she could theoretically accompany me, under my umbrella, when I'll walk to the post office later today to send off some parcels.

Speaking of outside and the garden, we recently had the pleasure of meeting this guy:


It's a ladybird beetle larva, doing what they do best: eating aphids. In this case, sitting on a (wild) poppy bud. Judging from the amount of aphids still left, we could have used about twenty more of its kind, though!

Some things... they just don't go away. One of them is TTIP. Another seems to be Gamergate.

They have been around long enough, and have been important enough as a disruptive force, that there's a PhD project about them. Which is, unsurprisingly, something the members of that group do not like... at all.

Well. While being one of the reasons to doubt the "sapiens" in "Homo Sapiens", at least the Gamergate folks make a very interesting PhD.