A comprehensive guide to protecting your books from piracy.
Proven strategies, real data, and practical steps for authors and publishers. Updated for 2026.
If you're an author in 2026, book piracy is an everyday reality.
Between January 2020 and December 2025, MUSO measured 1.2 trillion visits to piracy websites.
Publishing piracy is one of the fastest-growing segments. The Italian Publishers Association estimated annual losses of €705 million from book piracy. Japan's manga sector reported a staggering $12.5 billion in losses annually.
And those are the numbers from major markets with well-funded trade bodies. For individual authors, especially self-published authors, the losses are harder to quantify but no less real.
This guide is the most comprehensive resource available on how to protect your books from piracy. Whether you're a traditionally published author, an indie self-publisher, or a small press, you'll find actionable strategies you can implement today.
Book piracy is the unauthorized copying, distribution, or sale of copyrighted written works. It happens across every format: PDF, EPUB, MOBI, audiobooks, and even unauthorised print-on-demand copies.
Understanding the distribution channels helps you fight back:
Several factors are accelerating book piracy:
Pirate sites are becoming more professional. They invest in SEO, user experience, and reliability. Some piracy sites now look more polished than legitimate retailers.
Distribution is becoming more fragmented. Pirated books spread across dozens of platforms simultaneously. Removing content from one site doesn't stop it appearing on ten others.
AI tools are lowering barriers. Automated scraping, format conversion, and distribution tools make it easier than ever to pirate content at scale.
Global internet access is expanding. More readers online means more potential pirates — particularly in markets where legitimate ebook pricing doesn't match local purchasing power.
This is the question every author asks, and the honest answer is nuanced.
The Authors Guild has tracked a sustained decline in author income over the past decade, with median income from writing falling significantly. While piracy isn't the only factor, it's a substantial contributor.
For self-published authors, where every sale directly impacts livelihood, piracy hits hardest. If you're pricing an ebook at $3.99 and earning $2.70 per sale, every pirated copy represents real lost income.
You'll hear the argument that piracy provides free exposure. There's a kernel of truth here for a very narrow set of circumstances: a completely unknown author with no marketing budget might see marginal benefit from widespread piracy.
But for the vast majority of authors, this argument doesn't hold. Here's why:
For most working authors, piracy is a net negative. The scale varies, a debut author with one title faces a different calculation than a backlist author with fifty, but the direction is clear.
Yes. In virtually all major jurisdictions, downloading copyrighted books without authorisation constitutes copyright infringement.
Both uploaders and downloaders can be liable, though enforcement has historically focused on distributors rather than individual downloaders.
You don't need to register your copyright to be protected, copyright exists automatically when you create an original work. However, registration strengthens your position if you pursue legal action.
Beyond the legal issues, pirate book sites pose genuine safety risks to readers.
Malware is rampant. A 2024 cybersecurity investigation uncovered ViperSoftX spyware hidden inside compressed ebook bundles distributed through pirate sites. This malware can steal passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and personal data.
Other risks include:
If your readers are finding your books on pirate sites, they're not just stealing from you, they're putting themselves at risk.
Let's be honest: no. Complete elimination of piracy is not realistic. As long as digital content can be copied, some piracy will exist.
But that doesn't mean the fight isn't worth having. The goal isn't perfection, it's reduction to manageable levels. The strategy has three pillars:
Think of it like shoplifting in a physical bookstore. You can't eliminate it entirely, but security cameras, staff awareness, and good store design reduce it to a level the business can absorb.
Anti-piracy is an ongoing management practice, not a one-time fix.
Piracy often spikes when a book is available in one market or format but not another. If readers can't buy your ebook legitimately, they'll find it illegitimately.
Launch across Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and any other relevant retailers on the same day. If you're using KDP Select (Amazon exclusive), understand you're trading broader availability for Kindle Unlimited revenue and potentially driving piracy from readers on other platforms.
Forensic watermarking embeds invisible, unique identifiers in each copy of your book. If a pirated version surfaces, you can trace it back to the source.
This is especially important for advance review copies (ARCs). Piracy frequently originates from early copies shared with reviewers. Keep a log of every ARC you distribute and use watermarked versions where possible.
Make your book available in EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and audiobook formats. Regional pricing matters too a $9.99 ebook may be fair in the USA but unaffordable in Southeast Asia.
Readers who can easily buy your book at a price that feels fair are far less likely to pirate it.
Give legitimate buyers something pirates can't replicate:
The more value your legitimate product offers beyond the raw text, the less appealing the pirated version becomes.
Strategic pricing reduces the incentive to pirate:
A reader who balks at $9.99 might happily pay $2.99 during a promotion rather than seeking out a pirate site.
A brief, genuine note in your book's front matter can make a surprising difference. Not guilt-tripping, just honest communication.
Something like: "If you're reading this and didn't purchase it, I hope you're enjoying it. If you'd like to support my ability to keep writing, a purchase or review on [retailer] means the world."
Many readers genuinely don't understand the economics of authorship. A human note from the author can shift behaviour.
Don't wait until you stumble across a pirated copy. Set up active monitoring:
The sooner you detect piracy, the faster you can act and the fewer copies circulate.
When you find pirated copies, speed matters. The longer a pirate link stays live, the more copies get downloaded.
A DMCA takedown notice is a formal legal request to remove infringing content. Most legitimate hosting providers comply within hours to days. You can file them yourself (it's free) or use an automated service.
Key targets:
Even if a pirate site refuses to remove your content, you can cut off its discoverability.
Google processes millions of DMCA requests and will delist infringing pages from search results, typically within one to two weeks. This doesn't remove the content from the pirate site itself, but it stops new readers from finding it through search.
For many authors, Google delisting is actually more impactful than site-level takedowns, because it addresses the visibility problem at scale.
For authors with more than a couple of titles, or anyone experiencing persistent piracy, manual monitoring and takedowns become a full-time job.
A dedicated service automates the entire cycle: scan → verify → takedown → monitor → repeat. This is where the economics shift — the time you'd spend chasing pirate links is better spent writing your next book.
MUSO Protect automates the entire anti-piracy workflow:
Discovery: Real-time scanning across torrents, cyberlockers, forums, dedicated piracy sites, and search engine indexes. MUSO scans 38 billion web pages daily across a database of 70,000+ high-traffic piracy websites.
Verification: Algorithmic scoring verifies genuine infringements and weeds out false positives — so legitimate uses (reviews, quotes, academic citations) aren't targeted.
Removal: Automated DMCA takedown notices are issued to hosting providers, platforms, and search engines. MUSO has processed hundreds of millions of Google delistings.
Monitoring: A live dashboard shows piracy hotspots, trending activity, takedown progress, and the overall reduction in your piracy footprint over time.
Setup takes about five minutes. Add or drop titles as needed.
You can also use the revenue leakage calculator on the MUSO indie creators page to estimate how much piracy may be costing you.
If you're reading this because you've just discovered your book is being pirated, here's your immediate action plan:
1. Document everything
2. File a DMCA takedown notice
3. Request Google delisting
4. Notify your publisher or distributor
5. Set up ongoing monitoring
Search for your book title on Google along with terms like "PDF," "free download," or "epub." Check known piracy sites directly. For comprehensive coverage, use an automated scanning service that monitors thousands of piracy domains simultaneously.
It varies enormously by genre, audience, and market. Industry estimates suggest publishing piracy runs into billions globally. For individual authors, even a modest piracy rate, say 10% of potential sales, compounds significantly over a catalogue and over time. Use a revenue leakage calculator to estimate your personal exposure.
If you're selling more than a handful of copies per month, almost certainly yes. At $8/month, you only need to recover two or three sales to break even. The more titles you have and the more you sell, the stronger the ROI.
Technically, yes, copyright infringement is actionable in court. Practically, litigation is expensive and pursuing individual downloaders rarely makes economic sense. The more effective strategy is systematic takedowns that reduce supply and visibility. Legal action is typically reserved for large-scale commercial pirates.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) can slow casual sharing, but it's routinely circumvented by determined pirates, often within hours of a book's release. DRM also frustrates legitimate buyers who want to read across devices. Most anti-piracy professionals recommend focusing on monitoring and takedowns rather than relying on DRM alone.
It depends on the target. DMCA-compliant hosting providers typically remove content within hours to days. Google delistings can take one to two weeks manually, but minutes when using a trusted provider like MUSO. Non-compliant pirate sites may not remove content at all, but delisting them from search engines significantly reduces their reach.
In most jurisdictions, downloading copyrighted content without authorisation constitutes infringement, regardless of whether you uploaded it or not. While enforcement typically targets distributors rather than individual readers, downloading pirated books is illegal in the US, UK, EU, and most other markets.
Yes, but proportionally. If you have one book earning modest sales, $8/month for protection offers peace of mind without breaking the bank. If you're just getting started and haven't published yet, focus first on the preventive measures (watermarking, multi-platform availability, fair pricing) and add active monitoring once you're generating sales.
Book piracy isn't going away. But it doesn't have to define your career or drain your income.
The most effective approach combines prevention (smart distribution, fair pricing, watermarking) with active management (monitoring, rapid takedowns, search engine delisting). Neither alone is sufficient.
For many authors, the turning point is shifting from reactive, discovering piracy by accident and filing manual takedowns, to proactive, automated protection that works 24/7 in the background while you focus on what you do best: writing.
Whatever stage you're at, the worst response is no response. Every pirated link you remove, every search result you delist, every reader you redirect to a legitimate purchase — it adds up.
Ready to protect your books?
Start with MUSO Protect from $8/month, or contact our team for publisher-level solutions.