Isn't there findings that show a high majority of pirates end up buying something after pirating it? It was the same thing with The Martian. I did download it and started reading, when I realized it was a badass book I ended up buying it on Google Play books to read the rest. Besides, pirated books are super low quality compared to legitimately bought books with horrible formatting and weird random characters.
People who pirate content are much more likely to buy digital content and spend more on it. So not only would these people probably not have bought your book anyways, but a sizable portion probably ended up buying it because they pirated it.
The study's modelling suggested that, for every ten percent increase in the number of clicks on illegal download sites, there was a corresponding two percent rise in legal sales. That's right: "clicks on legal purchase websites would have been two percent lower in the absence of illegal downloading activities". Within individual nations, Spain and Italy saw no effect but the UK and France saw a four percent increase in legal digital music sales attributed to the effect of illegal downloading.
Intriguingly, a ten percent increase in listening time on legal streaming sites only gave a 0.7 percent increase in the number of corresponding legal digital sales, suggesting that illegal downloads are a better "taster" of music content than legal streaming sites if the intention is to generate proper sales.
Companies need to understand that if consumers like your product, they'll want to buy it legally. People will want to support companies by purchasing IF they had the money to do so.
Isn't there findings that show a high majority of pirates end up buying something after pirating it? It was the same thing with The Martian. I did download it and started reading, when I realized it was a badass book I ended up buying it on Google Play books to read the rest. Besides, pirated books are super low quality compared to legitimately bought books with horrible formatting and weird random characters.
edit 1: I found some information on it.
People who pirate content are much more likely to buy digital content and spend more on it. So not only would these people probably not have bought your book anyways, but a sizable portion probably ended up buying it because they pirated it.
edit 2: Here's another interesting source on music downloads
Relevant quote -
Companies need to understand that if consumers like your product, they'll want to buy it legally. People will want to support companies by purchasing IF they had the money to do so.