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Although consider that a book lent by a friend is more likely to be read, than just a download in the middle of a 100 in a torrent. I believe most pirates download just because they can, not reading 1% of what they download.
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That's the thing a lot of people aren't getting (most of them in the publishing industry).
If someone reads one book a week, which is probably far more than the average person does, that 100-book bundle is two years worth of reading (during which time, of course, they've more than likely acquired even more). I just went poking around some torrent sites (now I'm all sticky!) and bundles of 1000, 1500, and more seem to be a more common size. Also, those are the ones more likely to contain books by non-famous authors like Steve here; it seems you need a bestseller or two to merit your own personal piracy.
I did a bit of googling, and after sorting through hits on MobileRead threads, I finally found "Verdant Skies" on a torrent site. It's in a bundle of about 350 books, apparently an update pack for some bigger collection. (yes, I know that's undoubtedly only one of many, but this is the first time I've tried to find a pirated ebook, so cut me a break here) They're all PDF, by the way. Ick. Anyway, it's in a bundle with authors like Stephen King, Todd McCaffrey, etc. The chances that anyone who downloads that is going to read "Verdant Skies" are, frankly, slim to none (unless they mistake Steve Jordan for Robert Jordan). It's just stuck to stuff that people really want. In fact, the books in that bundle are so disparate that I found only a couple of dozen that I would read, were I to download them, and at least a third of those were books I already own on dead trees.
It goes back to the teenage warez d00d comparison: just because someone has the file (be it
Verdant Skies or Photoshop CS5) doesn't mean they'd have bought it at full price, or at any price, if they couldn't obtain an illicit copy. That bundle of books I was examining would be seven years' reading for our "average" book-a-week reader. So if they download a similar batch of books just once a year, only one out of seven of the books in that bundle will get read at all. And the odds are pretty low that a book from some obscure author will be one of them.
P.S. Steve, you've got a pretty cynical view of life if you think that the only reason people will be honest is because they're afraid of being caught (legally or socially). You are
extremely wrong about thinking that people are more likely than not to behave dishonestly behind closed doors. Were that the case, society would have collapsed long ago.