Years ago, I used to joke that if I ever wrote a book, I’d know that it was well-received if it ever got pirated. I’d forgotten about that joke until today. I was Googling for an image of the cover of the book I co-wrote — iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition (and the first edition to cover SwiftUI) — when I found it available for download on a pirate ebook, er, I mean extralegal evaluation site! I’ve made it as an author — the free-as-in-piracy market has declared it so!
It would be a violation of my agreement with the publisher (and also in very poor taste) to link to the site, so I’ve simply posted a screenshot of the page that features the book.
Here’s what their summary says. They seem to like it:
If you’re new to Swift or programming in general, learning how to write apps can seem like an incredibly difficult task. In that case, you may need this book. It is divided into five parts, each of which describes a separate project. By the end of the book, you will have enough information to be able to implement your ideas in code.
Dignity:
➕ Absence of errors and typos;
➕ Quality Exercises.Weaknesses:
➖ Not Noticed.
The book has been liked by 58 registered users and shared by 74 registered users on the pirate site. I’m left wondering who registers on a pirate site that doesn’t require registration to download.
The payment model at RayWenderlich.com (the publisher’s name at the time; they’re now Kodeco) isn’t royalty-based, and the edition is pretty out of date now, so I’m not mad at all. In fact, I’m pleased — it means my work was good enough that people wanted to pirate it!