First and foremost - to everyone who bought a copy of my book legally - thank you so much. I really, genuinely appreciate it. Writing a book was a tremendously difficult task. It took nearly a full year to write, then on top of that, three months of back and forth editing with my publishing company. We're talking 4-5 days a week, four to eight hours a day.
In the end, the returns were hardly worth it. But you know what? I don't even care about that. I'm happy that people use the book and while it's a bit out of date now, it's still out there and people can enjoy it for what it is.
I have even toyed around with the idea of having a second edition, to update to all the recent developments of the past three years.
But leave it to some bad actors in the community to ruin all of that 'goodfeel'.
The Game-Guru Community, for as long as I've known it, has had a major scourge that we all gently touch around - something that seems to stem from it's status as a low-cost beginner's engine.
That is, to be fair, some people think that everything in the world should be free.
They have no care or concern about someone else's hard work. Piracy is the order of the day. Steal and steal alike. I mean, it's not like you're actually harming anyone, right?
Wrong.
The Game-Guru community is pretty reasonable with respect to pricing. Modules are fairly priced. Knowledge is given freely. Heck, there's even a massive host of free assets available from legitimate sources.
People spent their time on their work. Their code. Their art. And in my case, my book. I lost a year of my life for what basically amounts to a feather in my cap.
It's nice to have, sure, but that's about it. I'm proud that I did it, but would I do it again? Definitely not. It was stressful, difficult, and ultimately if I've pocketed a thousand dollars total from royalties, I'd be surprised.
So let me just say how deeply disappointed I am that someone in the Game-Guru community decided to post my book on a pretty widely used 'document sharing site'. That 115+ people have downloaded a PDF that can be obtained for fifty-ish dollars. Yes, I realize that's a lot. There's a reason for this - I cannot control the pricing of my publisher. I can, however, offer discount coupons (fairly hefty ones) and even have free copies available for me to distribute.
You can rent it on kindle for like 20 dollars. Honestly, I imagine at this point you'd probably find it in the discount bin at a retailers, if you really wanted to.
I get that people don't always have the money for this type of thing. What bothers me here is that someone took the effort to take the ebook, make it a PDF, then upload it by using IDENTITY FRAUD to falsely say that I was providing it for free.
I mean, that's a level of spiteful and disgraceful behavior that I find genuinely insulting.
So congratulations, whomever you are. I hope it was worth it. There is little to no chance of there being a second edition. Whatever drive I had has definitely evaporated. I mean, what's the point of spending all that time, when it's just going to be pirated and stolen. I do intend to have a talk with my publisher about lowering the price, so that people are less inclined to want to steal a copy.
Not like that's stopping the hundred or so of you who wanted to.
To those who purchased, again, thank you so much. I really genuinely appreciate the support. It's hard for me to be upset and know I'm basically punishing everyone here. But that's how it goes. I have a limited pool of motivation, energy, and time - and seeing such a blatant thing occur is absolutely deflating.
Ciao.
