The growing problem of illegal file-sharing and digital piracy, which has long hounded the music and movie industries, is now threatening to affect the e-Book business as well.
One of the best examples of the impending threat to e-Books is the illegal file-sharing of Dan Brown’s novel “The Lost Symbol,” which was earlier released in September.
The blockbuster novel could have set the pace for the future of e-Books withmajor e-Reader manufacturers outselling hardcopy editions.
However, the projected paradigm shift from hardbacks to digital books was marred by the illegal downloading of the e-Book copies, which also threatens publishers and authors, who have agreed to digitize their books for a more lucrative market.
Reports told that less than a day after “The Lost Symbol” was released, pirated digital copies of the e-Book was already being shared to peer-to-peer file-sharing websites like BitTorrent and Rapishare.
It also told that less than a week after the release, the e-Book copies has been downloaded more than 100, 000 times in the said P2P networks.
Experts said that the digital piracy problems, which has long been confined to music and movies, may only get worse as demand for e-Readers continue to grow.
Since its launching, Amazon’s Kindle, Sony e-Reader, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, as well as other Smartphone manufacturers like the Apple iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry has made significant sales records in 2009.
The Association of American Publishers said that digital book sales in the second quarter of 2009 has rallied to more than $37 million, three times higher than the sales record in the same period in 2008.
The group said that they did not publicly release the said study, fearing that it could attract illegal downloads.
However, with the rise in the number of digital book readers and the availability of millions of e-Book copies on the Internet, publishers and authors will have future headaches in 2010 as the industry faces more tough challenges ahead.