First, you're calling me a prick for a straw man argument I didn't make. There's no need to get personal, and personally I write things for a living and am happy to buy the books I read. I will also happily admit that I often buy a printed book, then pirate the electronic version of that same book. In this scenerio, I pay generally a bit more than the eBook version, but I get more (a book I can set on my shelf and lend or give to whomever I'd like), the author gets more (a higher percentage of royalties), I have the chance to support independent booksellers, and the publisher gets a bit less (a lesser percentage of royalties, which I'm quite happy to live with).

What I was addressing is the issue of the way things are. Today, many people buy books by choice, not because they can't get them for free. And in the foreseeable future, I expect more and more people will buy books purely by choice.

Now - you didn't say as much - but I expect the argument you're leading to is that people who pirate books should be treated the same way as shoplifters. Which I think is a horrible idea.

Not because pirating things is morally laudable, or authors don't deserve to get paid, but because the practicalities of detecting and enforcing that punishment would have drastic and damaging effects on the internet and innovation.

So let's discuss alternatives.

If I want to steal an ebook, I have to go to a torrent site or wherever, download it, use something like Calibre to get it into the format my ebook reader will accept, plug that ereader into my computer and sync it over.

If I want to buy an ebook, I search Amazon's (or B&N's or whoever's) online ebook store right from my device, and click buy.

When I've completed the process, I get quite a bit more from the torrent option than the Amazon option. With my DRM-free pirated ebook, I can download it from any country I want regardless of publisher embargoes, read it on any device and share with whoever I want. With the Amazon option, I can't.

Leaving morality aside for the practical purposes of our discussion, currently the question this leaves consumers is whether to pay $12.99 for immediate convenience that comes with some future restrictions, or pay $0.00 and put forth about 15 minutes of effort.

That's a pretty uphill battle for convenience at $12.99. Particularly when you can buy a paper version of the same book, often for near about the same price.

The great thing is, there's a pathway to changing that balance, without ruining the internet or screwing the artest. It's called getting rid of - or drastically reforming - traditional publishers.

If I were to buy "The Help" for my Kindle, I'd pay Amazon $9.99, and the Author's Guild tells me - http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/e-book-royalty... - that Kathryn Stockett would get royalties amounting to $2.28. That's what we like to call a "metric-shit-ton" of overhead, particularly for a purely digital good.

You could cut the end-user price in half, and still have more than 50% of each sale go towards distribution, marketing and customer support costs. It's also quite likely that cutting prices in half would move more books, meaning that poor "fourth class citizens" like Kathryn would make quite a bit more money in the end.