No secret.
The ultimate weapon against e-book piracy is legal downloads—easy to find and reasonably priced.
Now Francis Turner has delved into the issue, following up on Eric Flint’s DRM-related essay for Jim Baen’s Universe.
And Francis finds that legal editions have an inherent advantage because they they come out far, far ahead in search rankings, compared to pirated files. He confirmed this himself with a bunch of searches.
Francis concludes: "Contrary to the claims of DRM proponants, not to mention the paper only folks, and agreeing 100% with Eric Flint’s hypothesis: the best way to avoid having bootleg ebooks available appears to be to offer them for a reasonable price in an easy-to-find location."
"Torrents," he says elsewhere, giving examples, "are available of all best selling books no matter whether they are available electronically or not and no matter whether DRMed or not. That fight has been lost. However if you are honest, then when legal e-books are available…they tend to show up at the top of the search results" so they are "easy to buy."
As Francis sees it, rich older people are the ones most likely to purchase books, and they prefer a convenient, time-saving approach.
I believe there is a parallel here with paperback books. Nobody in their right mind photocopies paperback books as the genuine articles are cheap and easy to find. Further, as asserted here and elsewhere, most people want to “do the right thing.” Not everyone, mind you, but the vast majority do.
One should also note that paperback books are also occasionally stolen. Retailers lose money through inventory shrinkage (theft, etc.) and publishers lose money when supposedly destroyed books, one with covers removed, are sold anyway (usually at deep discount).
Expecting that electronic book distribution will be free of any problems is unreasonable. The question should instead be, is there a business model here where publishers can make money–perhaps even doing as well or better than the business model currently in place, with all its flaws, for their paperback and hardcover counterparts. I believe there is and publishers such as Baen have gone a long way to proving I’m right.
The other thing about going to sketchy sites in pursuit of illegal ebooks is the malevolent code just waiting to infest and infect your computer! Going the free route can be bloody expensive in its own way. Often too expensive.