In my country, you can find libraries that literally abet piracy; check out their shelves. Thousands and thousands of hard bound photocopied books.

Then there are CDs full of digital media.

But while piracy can’t be stamped out, I think people will still continue to buy simply because millions of us still want a physical copy of the real thing.

Kinda like collecting Nikes or Rolexes

For example, I recently borrowed a series of books from a friend. (Actual, real, physical copies. Not a copy she had made for me. (g) And therein lies the problem with a digital file – you can not only share it with ONE friend, but everyone on the planet without actually giving up your original. ) They were fabulous! I enojoyed them so much I felt guilty for having borrowed them, and enjoyed them so much, I felt they deserved keeper status, so I should go out and buy my own copies.

Good intentions as they are, I still haven’t bought those books. And, truthfully, if I have limited money to spend on books, I’m more likely to spend my money on something NEW, something I haven’t read yet. Because that’s the point of a novel – encountering a new story, new characters.

So I don’t buy the “give it away and they will buy it anyway” theory. (shrug) I’m all for giving consumers a way to sample the book — even in eformat — but I’m not giving away the whole thing.

Stephen King’s Pay on the Honor System experiement didn’t work out so well. And he’s Stephen King.