Here's a prediction: by the end of 2010 authors and publishers everywhere will be looking at their bank accounts and wondering where the money went. Ebooks are going to be with us big time, and with the coming of mainstream digital publishing comes the the arrival of book theft so widespread it may one day make writing unviable for some.

<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/01/ebook.piracy/" target="_blank">According to CNN</a> Dan Brown's latest opus, <em>The Lost Symbol,</em> had 100,000 illegal ebook downloads within days of its release. And these were cracked ebooks too, copies that had had the DRM 'protection' removed by some hacker. I don't come anywhere near to Dan Brown in sales. But I know my own work, in ebook form and as audio, is widely available as torrent downloads out there. Thanks to Google's search robots set up to look for reviews of my work I get weekly reminders that someone, somewhere is ripping me off somewhere in the world every day.

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There are those who claim book piracy isn't the threat it might appear. A ripped-off book is not the same as a lost sale. Some of the people who pick up your pirated work wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Maybe, too, someone who wouldn't have bought your book will get it for free and like it so much they rush out and pay money for the real thing.

I'm not convinced. Does a shoplifter who discovers they've stolen something they like go back and pay for it next time? Not usually. They just go back and steal some more. And piracy, remember, is theft, nothing more, nothing less. I don't care if someone argues, 'Well I wouldn't have bought your book anyway.' Can a shoplifter get away with saying in court, 'Well I wouldn't have bought that bottle of Moet, guvnor.' Of course not. The fact there is no physical loss in digital crime doesn't make it less of a crime. And certainly not one of those so-called 'victimless crimes' we hear so much about today, crimes, it seems to me, that are mainly committed by people who find it socially unacceptable to think of themselves as common thieves.

Don't misunderstand me. I think the arrival of ebooks is a good thing. I don't hate the Internet. I don't think copy protection is a great idea -- it seems to punish the honest buyer while the ripoff merchant finds some way round. And I certainly believe there are occasions when books should be given away for free for promotional purposes (though I do think it should be the choice of the writer and publisher to hand it out for nothing, not some geek looking for someone new to pirate).

But theft is theft, and if we're not careful we're headed for a culture where millions of casual readers will simply sift the net for 'free' books for their ereaders the way they once downloaded 'free' music from Napster. The music industry has struggled with the problem of piracy for years. It's changed the way musicians work, making many more reliant on touring and appearances than music sales.

Where does that leave authors? I can't make money from public appearances. In fact it costs me to go on tour, and will doubtless cost more as embattled publishers cut back on their own marketing budgets and rely on authors to sell their books for them. The only income I have from writing comes from the sale of books and, at less than 50p a copy or so in royalties for a paperback, it's not exactly rich pickings. It's also worth pointing out that books are actually cheaper today than they were ten years ago, by a considerable margin. You can pick up discounted paperbacks online, in supermarkets and book chains for perhaps two thirds of what they cost a decade ago. And still some people want them for free?

There is a real danger that we're sliding towards a cultural shift which divides creative writers from their work, where copyright itself is somehow seen as theft, a conspiracy against a public that has a 'right' to take what it wants from the web for nothing. If that happens we're headed for fewer professionally published books, a poorer range of literature, and the dumbing down of mainstream publishing to a handful of established genres and big-time authors. This is not what books should be about.

I'm deeply grateful to the vast number of decent, honest readers out there who wouldn't dream of pirating a book, no matter how easy it might become. But I do wonder if you are an endangered species -- and if so how soon it will be before professional authors begin to join you. Those of us who write for a living are lucky, but it's still a job. If we're just producing books for others to rip off for free it won't be long before some begin to find other ways to pass the time.