To Fight Book Piracy or Not? · Royalty Guild. Amazon KDP Kit

To Fight Book Piracy or Not?

Publishing piracy visits increasing by more than 20% year-over-year, and publishing actually overtaking film as the second most pirated media sector, the debate on whether to fight piracy or ignore it is more relevant than ever.

Here is a breakdown of the two prevailing schools of thought to help you decide which strategy fits your current author career.

The Argument for "Letting It Go" (Visibility)

For many authors, the biggest threat isn't piracy; it is obscurity.

Discovery Tool: Some authors have argued that piracy acts like a library or lending system, where people discover an author for free and then buy the rest of the catalog.
Pirates are Customers: Surprisingly, data suggests 41% of book pirates also buy books, often purchasing the same book in multiple formats.
The "Whack-a-Mole" Problem: Spending hours sending takedown notices can be a "Sisyphean task" that takes time away from writing.

The Argument for Fighting Back (Revenue & Safety)

However, for authors relying on book sales for a living, piracy can be devastating.

Proven Sales Loss: Author Maggie Stiefvater famously proved that piracy hurt her sales. When she uploaded "decoy" PDFs (broken files) to pirate sites, her legitimate ebook sales recovered immediately, saving her book series from cancellation.
Reputation Damage: Pirated copies are often imperfect scans or bad conversions. Readers may leave negative reviews on Amazon based on the poor formatting of a file they stole.
KDP Account Risk: This is critical for KDP Select authors. If Amazon's bots find your book available for free on a pirate site, they may interpret this as a breach of exclusivity, potentially risking your KDP account or leading to your book being price-matched to free.

Where do you stand? Is it free marketing or theft of your livelihood?

The fight against piracy costs more than piracy's losses.

I hate pirates. I will fight no matter what.

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