Inside the Mind of a Book Pirate

Although we called last week “Book Piracy Week,” the impressive reader response reminded us that the issue will not go away. Like a cheesy holiday special urging you to keep Christmas in your heart all year round, we’ll help you keep piracy in mind during 2010.

Today The Millions published “Confessions of a Book Pirate“– an interview with a reader who had uploaded 50 books on the file-sharing site BitTorrent last month. In a long, probing interview, the file-sharing user nicknamed The Real Caterpillar defended his activity and gave publishers candid reasons why some readers are pirating books.

Here’s an excerpt: “My electronic library has about a 50 percent crossover with my physical library, so that I can read the book on my electronic reader, ‘loan’ the book without endangering my physical copy, or eventually rid myself of the paper copy if it is a book I do not have strong feelings about. I do not buy DRM’d ebooks that are priced at more than a few dollars, but would pay up to $10 for a clean file if it was a new release. I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may.”

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.