Worst Countries in eBook Piracy

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E-books have revolutionized the publishing world. They are easy to carry, have a global reach, and for some, can be easily pirated. Yes, as publishers, agents, and writers; we are aware of the scenario, but we cannot do much about it. What we can do, however, is learn more about it, so we have compiled a list of the countries that are the most notorious for e-book piracy.

Russia

Russia is a major player when it comes to e-book piracy. Although the e-book market has almost doubled since 2012, piracy is still on the rise. According to Eksmo, the largest publishing house of Russia, almost 95% of all downloaded e-books are pirated. This amount costs almost $120M to the e-book industry. The problem is so severe that a state agency launched a media campaign to encourage readers to buy books instead of pirating them. More than 70% of e-books published in Russia are from local authors. This means that piracy can be harmful to the country’s own resources.

Netherlands

According to a Dutch research company, Gfk, only 10% of the e-books downloaded in the Netherlands are actually paid for. A large section of the book-loving audience there prefers to share them with their friends or simply download them from torrent sites. And this behavior is not even illegal in the country. While uploading these books is illegal, downloading them is not. This might be a reason why the Netherlands is big in e-book piracy.

USA

There are many book lovers in the United States, but not all of them are willing to pay for what they enjoy. As a result, the industry has lost $3B in the country. If we take an average, for each e-book published, almost 10,000 copies are downloaded for free. Some popular genres among pirates are technology and science, making such books lose as much as $1M in sales.

How to Turn an Ebook into a Doc or PDF

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The process of converting an Ebook into a doc file or a PDF file is relatively simple and straightforward. One of the simplest ways of converting an Ebook into a PDF file is to use an online converter, such as this one. Simply enter the information for the Ebook, upload the file, and convert. The only problem with this option is that it is not capable of doing conversions using Doc files. It is, however, capable of converting to and from PDF and rich text format (RTF). RTF can then be easily converted to doc format using Word.

Many programs also exist to take care of this issue. One of the best is Calibre. The Calibre user manual has extensive information regarding the conversion of Ebooks to other document types. They have formatting considerations for the conversion of popular Ebook formats such as .mobi or .ePub to formats such as doc and PDF. The conversion usually requires a user to obtain plugins for the input and output file types, but those plugins are usually free. Calibre is one of the best document converters available and, best of all, it costs nothing to use.

Post Conversion Concerns

One of the most important aspects of the conversion of an Ebook is to check for errors after the conversion takes place. This includes common problems such as formatting and basic grammatical errors. Without sounding superstitious, strange things can happen during these conversions. Common sources of errors are hyphens and bulleted lists. Both of these usually require a little extra finesse when trying to get a clean looking final product.

Using any kind of software to convert one file type to another, particularly with documents, is likely to create a few errors. This is simply a part of the conversion process. If you are looking to make the conversion using an automated process and save yourself the frustration of doing it by hand, expect to go over the completed document at least once to check for errors that may have occurred during the process.

How Pirates Use Stolen Books for SEO

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Pirates are able to use the stolen digital media (primarily books) that they have in their possession in order to implement some search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and make money through both advertising and the sale of illicit materials. This is a widespread phenomenon that is only growing in size with the increased levels of book digitization and the sale of digital documents.

Here are the brief steps through which this occurs:

1.     The pirate gets a copy of the digital media in question. This is usually an Ebook, as the technique is more difficult to apply using either movies or music.

2.     A website is created along with a list of popular Ebooks, related search terms, and keywords.

3.     The website is promoted on the Internet and, as it grows in popularity, advertisers apply to be associated with it (often for less-than-reputable products).

This works because publishers often have trouble reaching high search rankings for their books. They promote themselves and promote the book using traditional means of marketing, but neglect to use SEO techniques themselves. This allows the pirates to reach the tops of search rankings. For instance: If you were to search for “Name of Book”, you may find some rankings near the top for sales of that book through traditional means such as the website of the publisher, the author’s website, or online marketplaces. If you were to change that search to “Name of Book PDF”, you will likely encounter a pirated website. This is simply because pirates know what their own users are going to search for and they are able to “game” the system by using the Ebook titles for SEO and getting their sites higher on search results.

This phenomenon is damaging to both authors and the publishing industry because it is not only spreading illicit copies of their books, but it is putting money into the pockets of the individuals who are making the copies of those books. The largest problem with this situation is that SEO is a specialized service and many publishers do not understand the need for its application in their business until it is too late to repair the damage caused by their own inaction.

Websites Known for Book Piracy

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Along with an increased level of digital media and the digitalization and monetization of print has come an increased level of piracy and illegal sharing of copyrighted documents. This, in turn, has led to a number of issues in the E-book industry that affect authors, publishers, editors, and literary agents. The ease with which books can be digitized and shared has never been higher. Compounding this issue is the fact that most of the files are very small and can be shared easily.

There are a few websites well known for book piracy, though many of them host other pirated materials as well. These sites both illegally host book uploads and damage the economy of the publishing industry as a whole:

·       EbooksHeaven – Ebooks Heaven is a site primarily created and run for the sole purpose of sharing copyrighted books and digitized print material.

·       BitMe – BitMe is a private tracker (only accepting new members through either rare open signups or through an invitation from a current member) which specializes in torrents for textbooks and academic texts.

·       The Pirate Bay – Pirate Bay is one of the most well-known torrent sites. While they do not focus only on books like some other trackers do, Pirate Bay has an extremely large and extensive collection of fiction, non-fiction, and textbook torrents.

·       Kickass Torrents – Kickass Torrents is a search engine for torrents which catalogues torrent files hosted on other websites and condenses them into one location. They have an extensive book selection in their list of torrents.

·       4-Shared – 4-Shared is a website that hosts uploaded files. It is often used by pirates to host their uploaded E-books. Books are often hosted as PDFs or epub files. The site has been known to remove hosted content, but only if it has been flagged.

·       Scribd – Scribd is a large E-book repository. They operate as a legitimate business, but have an upload/download service that makes it extremely easy for pirates to share copyrighted material with very little to no consequence.

·       Textbook Nova – Textbook Nova is another torrent tracker providing torrents for textbooks and academic texts.

·       EbookShares – EbookShares is another private tracker hosting torrent files for books.

·       Bibliotik – Bibliotik is one of the premier E-book sharing sites on the Internet. It is, like many of the others, private. This one only shows a blank login page for non-members.

·       Demonoid – Demonoid is another torrent hosting site which features pirated movies, books, and music. They have an extensive section in which book torrents are shared. Though the site features a log-in and account section, anyone can download from the site.

Administrators of these websites often modify the ‘robots.txt’ file on their server to prevent search engines from cataloguing the items that are located there. This makes it very difficult for copyright holders to determine where their work is being shared. Though private trackers have less web traffic (and, thus, less users) than public trackers and other websites, there is nothing preventing a user who downloads a file from hosting that file on any other site. Any site that hosts torrents or offers easy upload capabilities is going to have its share of printed and copyrighted book material being shared; legally or illegally. This sharing cuts into profits and damages the integrity of the work being done by authors and other members of the publishing chain.

The Cost of Book Piracy

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Given the increased popularity of E-books and digital copies of print material, the economics of digital reading has exploded. This means increased readership for authors, publishers, and agents representing their clients in the marketplace. All of this, eventually, translates into increased profits. A major factor that is disrupting the booming E-book industry is the prevalence of pirates and pirated material in the marketplace. This is particularly true given the lack of digital rights management (DRM) on digital books.

Specific Costs of Book Piracy

There are many aspects to this problem, only one of which is the time and effort that must be spent removing pirated books from websites that they are located on. The amount of money lost to this effort depends on the amount of money charged per hour by the individual performing the takedown notices. For freelance workers, this could be upwards of $100 an hour.

It is estimated that around 10% of the books currently being read in the United States are pirated texts. This has led to estimates and reports that the publishing industry (and the authors on whose behalf they work) has lost upwards of $3 billion. This includes potential lost sales based on the number of shared copies of books estimated to be in circulation at any given time. These losses trickle down from the publishers at the top of the industry down to the authors providing their work.

It is often difficult to assess exactly how much money is being lost to book piracy due to the fact that digital media is capable of being easily copied. This makes the economics of loss more difficult than it would be when determining loss of physical stock. Losing fifty books in a store is going to be a fixed cost. On the other hand, having fifty books copied and uploaded to sharing sites is a dynamic cost.

Copyright Law Fees

The cost of fighting book piracy is another aspect of the situation. Hiring a lawyer to help with a copyright issue can become an entire issue unto itself, but it usually starts with paying somewhere between $10 and $50 dollars for a paralegal at a given law firm to look over the facts of the case and decide whether it is worth pursuing.  If they do, the fees will vary depending on the exact nature of the claim, but usually run between $200 and $300 an hour. These fees can add up very quickly and make filing copyright claims almost impossible for most authors.