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Originally Posted by mr ploppy
But presumably not very likely for someone who has never heard of you? Think of it like the difference between selling your book on Amazon and selling it on your own site. Which would be most likely to get you new readers?
People browse pirate sites the same way they browse Amazon, and download anything that looks vaguely interesting. In most cases that will be the end of it, but some of them will be looked at, and then they will choose one of those to read. The odds against the person who chooses to read your book stumbling across you in any other way are pretty remote.
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I haven't been to a pirate site, so I don't know how they're set up. But one of the posters further down indicated torrent, a popular one, doesn't have much of a browse feature.
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There will always be people making money from you. The only way to avoid that is to never publish your writing. Like with any service, you need to weigh the benefits against the cost. Amazon brings you more buyers but takes 30-70% of your income. Pirate sites bring you more readers but no immediate income from those readers.
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Let me be more specific, people I didn't contract with making money off of me. I've got no problem with Amazon getting their cut because they offer me a service of value. Bob's House of Pirated Goods on the other hand may or may not provide value to me. That's still up in the air.
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If they download your book they might read it. If they read it they might like it. If they like it they might tell other people about it (through reviews, etc). If they like it a lot they will buy your next book as soon as it comes out because they won't want to wait for the pirate edition.
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Or they may dislike it and write bad reviews, where not only do I not make any money on them, but they then damage my ability to sell to others. They may buy my next book, or go for the pirated version. They may tell their friends, but they'll also probably give their friends the pirated version.
As I said, I'm not clinging to the idea that money can't be made this way. That's why I'm giving copies of my book away. But there's a lot of ifs there.
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With most services you would weigh that against the benefits you would gain from letting them take their cut. With piracy the choice of whether to participate is taken away from you, so it basically comes down to a choice between waving your fist or ignoring it and hoping for the best. You can have your book removed from most of those sites, or you can have Google remove links to it when people search for your name, but that's pretty much the extent of your powers.
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Right now I'm not sweating it. Nor do I intend to sweat it. The time and effort necessary to stop the tide is not worth it to me. But that doesn't mean I'm thrilled when pirate sites make money off of my work.