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It's obviously very difficult/impossible to come to any accurate figure for the claimed lost sales due to ebook piracy. I cannot even gauge how representative my own purchasing history is, but, in the 18 months since I purchased my 505, the book industry has received more money from me that it did in the previous 10 years - so the industry has gained sales. And this despite the fact that I do, very occasionally, download from the darknet. I acquire ebooks from the following sources, in order of moral preference:
1. Legitimate purchases and PG downloads;
2. used books, scanned and OCR'd into ebooks by my own fair hands;
3. Darknet as a very last resort, where my desire to have an ebook is frustrated by geo restrictions or unavailability.
As a general principle, I would always prefer to buy legitimately; sadly not every title in a publisher's backlist will be made available electronically, even more sadly, geo restrictions will continue for the forseeable future.
Overall, the publishing industry has done better out of me now I've got a liseuse, any piratical acts I've committed are NOT lost sales - if I could buy the titles, I would.
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