Piracy and the sales of ebooks

A point worth making at every opportunity:

"[Publishing consultant Brian] O'Leary makes the distinction between the instances of e-book piracy (the number of pirated e-book files available for download) and the impact of e-book piracy (the actual effect on the business of publishing). For O'Leary, the two are related, but different. He says that one way to measure impact is to pick a book, wait for it to be pirated, and then compare sales before and after."

"Back in 2009, O'Leary did this for one publisher, O'Reilly Media, which publishes technical books. Surprisingly, he found that sales actually increased after their books showed up on pirate sites. Piracy seems to have boosted sales. O'Leary says people may have been using the pirated editions to sample books before they actually opened up their wallets."

"This is just one example, and we shouldn't extrapolate one publisher's experience to the whole publishing industry. A technical book is different from a romance novel, which is different than a history textbook. But it goes to show: though e-book piracy is on the rise, it doesn't necessarily come at the expense of legit e-book sales."