Books, work, and and angry art

Last week I discovered a "legit" sharing site had some of my books up for free download. They took them down right away when I asked, but the thing is I noticed that people do not just upload one pirated book: they do a lot. So the same guy had tons on his account, and he 'liked' friends that had tons, and so on... So I spent some time wandering from one group to another noting down books by friends or publishers I know (and some I don't know but saw too much abuse). I sent them off email telling them the addresses. A few thanked me, some didn't, and most said "yeah, it's a never ending struggle getting rid of these."

Which is too bad as most of these people don't make a lot per sale, and often don't even recover the cost of doing the book to begin with. If they lose sales through this,  they just decide why bother doing something if it will cost them time, money and effort, and no one cares. 

But anyway, I was really close to finishing off a WW1 book last week, and then I discovered a bunch of new stuff, and decided I could just keep on track and finish, or I could split the book and rework everything. I WOULD have just made it bigger, which is what I always end up doing, however when working in ebooks this is a problem when you start adding in illustrations: i.e. maps. And I have decided the one thing a military book can never have is too many, or too good, maps. So with these restraints I am considering making it so you can hit a link under the in book map and it will take you to (if connected to the web) to a larger, higher resolution copy of the map on the web. It's still not a great solution, but better than nothing.  I still think the Army got it right when they did the original Green Books- a fold out map you can look at while you read. I wonder if the thing to do is make it so people can print out the maps themselves, thus they can more of less do the same thing?

And I have started to find myself more interest in dug brass WW1 artillery fuzes. I have some I have picked up; they used to be basically worthless and everywhere. Now I am looking at them in a new light, but shipping is so damn expensive. Oddly enough, while minty examples are great, I find I have an interest in ones that are damaged by use, and have become accidental works of art. I have a few damaged grenades like that (like a burst WP one) and it is pretty cool. When I collected ACW bullets I found I also had a thing for ones that had mushroomed upon impact. I guess  it must be something about it being actually used, and turned into a very unique piece of what I call "angry art."