Matt Mason’s book, The Pirate’s Dilemma, goes into book-length detail about many of the copyright and file-sharing issues I so cavalierly lambaste. Mason is leading by example by releasing digital versions of his book online for a set-your-own price model.

Why would an author give away a book for free? Obviously it makes a lot of sense given the arguments in this particular book, but it’s true for all authors that piracy isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity.

There are millions of books on amazon.com, and on average each will sell around 500 copies a year. The average American is reading just one book a year, and that number is falling. The problem (to quote Tim O’Reilly) isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Authors are lucky to be in a business where electronic copies aren’t considered substitutes for physical copies by most people who like reading books (for now at least).

By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.