It's interesting that we've "been there/here before" - i.e. the music industry.
There, the sums involved were vast, and the problem so much larger.
However, an answer or compromise was, in a way, found.
It was to basically licence/authorise "sharers" - or big business ones, anyway - to provide music downloads......... and not attempt to bankrupt themselves by using the law on a wholesale effort to put them in jail or out of business somehow.
BUT, a big mindset change here, at a
far lower price for downloads, than the "legal" forms of supply - CD's etc... Perhaps because they regarded the "sharing" community as lost income anyway ?
Indeed, some musicians had begun giving their music away, initially, for free anyway, as they saw it as a way of getting core followers.
Which terrified music moguls !
The financial model made sense, & staved off an inevitable collapse of the industry - which I feel could still occur, depending on technology probably, somewhen in the future.
And there was no equivalent to DRM - other than trying to technically stop people copying/burning/ripping. And that failed totally, and it always was going to.
I think the difficulty for the publishing industry is that it is a much smaller, and probably shrinking, market, accustomed - like the music one was - to high profit margins. Also that the financial "reward" for writers can never approach the scale of (successfull) musicians.
So the near parity of price between physical and digital book is, in a way, the same engine that drove piracy in the music business i.e. cost to consumers.
And I can't see how this can be addressed in the same way with books.
I don't know the figures, but I'd assume the "loss" to publishing is a lot less, percentage-wise, than the huge music busines was facing.
Sorry for the length, but I found myself working it out as I went along.
