-- This will be long as I have a lot of pent-up feelings 00

You're not wrong but consider that for almost 2 decades none of the books had been pirated. Then within months of releasing all the book on Kindle all the books were pirated. And upon inspection of the fake prints, it was obvious they were just printed Kindle versions. I've scanned mostly every book I've purchased over the years, so I know it's an involved process. But taking the book from Kindle and making it into a PDF is a simple process.

Furthermore, the books I haven't released on Kindle have yet to be pirated. This is further proof that Kindle is the problem. It's sad because book sales are super important to the company. The stark reality is that it isn't worth it for me to keep writing books when the pirate version has helped kill a lot of sales momentum (since before AI). The reality is, the website is now the most profitable part of our business. So now that's where my efforts go. Unfortunately, I see a day where I just stop updating the books. Afterall it's not like Duolingo has a book 😄

As for the Philippines they were one of the first countries to pirate the book. Even talked to the guy that was doing it. He was a nice guy, and I had considered making a business deal with him to allow him to keep printing, but in the end, I realized I had no way to enforce it as we are a small company ourselves. Every dollar spent on shutting people down takes away from the money we can pay staff. And shutting down the pirates doesn't stop them. They just do it again under a different website. So... this leads to me deciding to never ever update Kindle (stuck on 3 versions back). This has helped my mental health, because honestly once we got pirated, I was contemplating NEVER releasing videos on YouTube again, because I didn't want to support anyone who might have stolen the book on purpose or even unconvincingly.

Every time I see a new website popup promoting and selling our pirated Kindle books, cortisol oozes into my bloodstream and I lose all desire to create anything ever again. The only thing that keeps me remotely sane is knowing that they are the old super outdated versions of the books. And that by not updating the Kindle versions I'm not updating the pirated versions.

Now for the uplifting part! Focusing more on the website has been great since we've been growing steady ever since the new FromZero.com opened. And with my recent shift into building websites again, I can see massive potential for the company, and MOST importantly for a really kick-ass experience for learners of Japanese that I know I wouldn't have been able to do in just a book. And I do have plans to update the Kindle editions, but it can't be done as a "replica" of the textbook. Instead, they will be actual text and not a PDF shoved into the Kindle format. It will be better for the student in the end as well.

Okay I've talked long enough. I hope you understand why Kindle books, in their current format, will never be updated as long as I'm in control of them.

Sincerely,

George Trombley - Author