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However, refusing to take advantage of the e-book format can sometimes backfire and drive piracy, says consumer technology analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.įor a relatively small amount of money, pirates can convert any hard-copy book into an unprotected text file, even if a legitimate electronic book is never created, Enderle says. They fear that e-book files protected by digital rights management (DRM) technology could be hacked anyway. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book series, from embracing the e-book format. Worries of piracy have kept many publishers and authors, most notably J.K. Publishers Stuck Between a Digital Rock and a Hard Place Pirated e-book files (usually available as PDFs) can sometimes be poorly reproduced, and are sometimes made up of scanned page images–not text. Pirates must be determined to track down specific e-book titles. “We’ve seen the music and film industry deal with this, and it stands to reason we will grapple with it too.” Aiken says that while he is concerned about the growth in the availability of e-book titles on the Internet, he is not convinced that the number of people who are actually downloading the digital files is increasing as rapidly.Ĭompared with music piracy, illicit e-books are not nearly as widespread or as easy to acquire. “We know e-book piracy is a problem, and we are taking the issue very seriously,” says Paul Aiken, executive director of The Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers.