An Author's Estimate of Piracy of Books

The importance of intellectual property generally and copyright protection for authors in particular remains a question in debate. In rehashing the arguments given for the need to extend copyright protection periods in the US, it is often stated that piracy robs authors and other creative artists of a substantial income by curtailing sales of legitimate copies of works.

While it is understandable that authors on the one side and publishing firms have an interest in selling as high a number of copies of any work as is possible, one cannot help feeling that the estimates of the extent copyright infringement is based on guess work. My skepticism is oftentimes inspired by the argument that every pirated copy of books or music for that matter, reflects a displacement of another copy. I do not think that it is correct to estimate that for every pirated copy of music or publication displaces the another exact copy hence a 100% loss of income for the publishers and the authors. And despite this hunch, it is difficult to conduct an estimate as no experiment or survey has been conducted to resolve this question. indeed, most publishing corporations would be opposed entirely to such an experiment.

With this difficulty in mind, I am quite surprised that Paul Coelho has an estimate of pirated copies of books relative to total legitimate sales. In an interview appearing in the Guardian here on a an upcoming book, the author who has sold a total of 150 million books estimates that perhaps another 20% are available in pirated copies. Being cognizant of the fact that this is definitely an estimate, the figure is in stark contrast to what aggressive promoters of stringent intellectual property rights may argue for. In all, it suggests that the proportion of pirated works for this high-selling author is about 16%.

Taking this figure to advance this argument, I am aware that this may not apply to every author and every genre. In my view, the estimate is important to the extent that it confirms my suspicion that piracy of copyrighted book may be localized in certain places but is definitely not as high as is claimed by those with an interest in maintaining stringent standards. I also assume that degree of piracy may differ with the popularity of each book. For instance, would a popular book have more pirated copies as well or is that a book is popular in spite of piracy?