And it's a multi-billion dollar business. Please make sure that you purchase e-books from a reputable seller because it is a federal crime to download copyrighted material, even if the site makes you pay for it. There are many file sharing sites that have copyright protected e-books uploaded everyday, but if you share copyrighted material, or download it, you are guilty of committing a federal crime and can be prosecuted, sent to prison and fined as much as $150,000.00! A woman who was recently convicted of the illegal download of file shared music was fined $1.5 million dollars by the judge! And it does not matter if you don't know the material was illegally uploaded, it does not matter if the site makes you pay a monthly fee to download, or even if a friend sends you a copy of an e-book they bought--it is a crime.
Please make sure you purchase only from a reputable vendor like Amazon or Barnes & Noble on line. If in doubt Google the author's name, go to their website and look for the buy link, or go to the publishers site and purchase through them directly.
As authors of e-books we work very hard to produce a manuscript. A single book can take from a few weeks to a few years to write, and then we work even harder getting them ready for publication, finding a publisher, promoting, editing, and can wait several months to more than a year to see our work actually published and available for purchase. Few of us are wealthy and most have day jobs that support us while we strive to be full time authors. Please show that you enjoy our work and support us in writing new books by only purchasing our work legally.
For more on Internet piracy, try the following links:
http://thepaganandthepen.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/here-there-be-pirates/
http://www.chillingeffects.org/piracy/
http://www.chillingeffects.org/piracy/faq.cgi
