Book piracy is the unauthorized copying and distribution of books that are protected by copyright.

US Book Publishers lost an estimated $600 million to book piracy in 2006.

Source: Association of American Publisher, “Publishers Welcome USTR’s Annual ” Special 301″ Report and Results of China Provincial Review,” April 30, 2007, (accessed: September 25, 2007).

A study by Attributor reported that 9 million digital books were pirated off the Internet in 2009.

Source:  Motoko Rich, “Report Finds 9 Million Illegal Downloads of E-Books,” New York Times, Arts Beat, January 14, 2010.

Popular file-hosting website Rapidshare receives requests to remove pirated materials on their servers for about 1 to 2 percent of all files each day.

Source:  Randals Stross, “Will Books Be Napsterized? ,” New York Times, October 3, 2009.

500 million pirated books are produced each year in China, with 40 percent of all books sold being pirated copies.

Source:  Clifford Coonan, “China’s publishers struggle to overcome book piracy,” National (UAE), August 27, 2009.

In India, between 30 to 40 percent of a book’s profit is lost to book piracy.

Source:  Sunitha Rao, “Book lovers are robbing authors of their due,” DNA India, August 11, 2009.

90 percent of all textbooks used in the English teaching market in Vietnam are pirated copies.

Source:  IIPA, “Special 301 Country Reports: Vietnam,” 2009.

As of July 2009, book piracy on e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle has not caused a large impact on sales.  This comes from an Associated Press report that states, “Piracy has been one concern for rights holders, although illegal works have yet to have a measurable impact on sales.”

Source: AP, “Pirated copies of Orwell books pulled from Kindle,” Google News, July 18, 2009.

In one month, textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons sent 5,000 notices to various websites asking them to take down pirated copies of their books from the site.

Source:  Motoko Rich, “Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web,” May 11, 2009.

Below is the estimated losses faced by each country to book piracy.  The figures is the most current data for book piracy from the International Intellectual Property Alliance.

According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, students are increasingly searching for pirated textbooks online.

Form The Chronicle:

A new survey of students found that about a quarter of them reported hunting for an illegal copy of a textbook from pirate Web sites.

The survey was small—only about 500 students from two colleges—but it is one of several indicators that downloading unauthorized textbooks is becoming commonplace at college campuses.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has been following the issue of college textbook piracy for awhile now.