Either way, this indicates how much demand there is to pirate ebooks. I compared them to the official ebook versions being sold on Amazon, and the difference is quite staggering. In my investigation, I discovered a lot of unofficial ePub versions of books - either they were created manually by a skilled programmer or they were Advanced Reader Copies sent to reviewers that were illegally distributed.

Either I could scan the entirety of the book or do it the slightly complicated way: create an unofficial, reflowable ePub. It’s easy to make digital copies out of a paperback, more so if I have PDF copies lying around. Let’s say that I have nefarious intentions to profit off of others’ works. Meanwhile, if a book doesn’t have an ebook version, a developer like me could whip up one. These authors may not exactly be thinking about the risks of ebook piracy, but if they knew, they would likely have been horrified. Ray Bradbury was also among the list of authors who was initially averse to ebooks. Another is Harper Lee, who, for a long time, withheld release of To Kill a Mockingbird until 2014. His son, Matt Salinger, said that he once talked to the older Salinger about Facebook and that the author “was ‘horrified’ by the notion of digital oversharing.” But eventually, the ebook version of the modern classic was released in 2019. Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger, who was known to hate the internet, is one example. For that reason and more, some authors do ebook holdouts or a release delay. Once a publisher creates an ebook and puts it up on the internet for sale, it opens up a lots of risks, including piracy.

By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.

Z library down