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@Elfwreck, that still leaves the problem of sorting out a difference in sales based on illicit downloads versus a difference in sales based on, say, reviews for the book. That's the big problem with any attempt at teasing out one variable out of the many that affect book, music, movie, or any other sales: it's impossible to have a control group. It doesn't help that ebooks are rarely downloaded individually; they're usually in bundles of hundreds or thousands. So it's hard even to determine if a downloaded ebook is a read ebook -- it could just be bycatch to whatever the downloader was really after -- let alone whether it was the existence of that ebook which had an effect on sales. There are just too many factors, such as reviews, marketing, word of mouth, etc., that are individual to any given book.
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