You all know by now that as a rule I’d rather give away my books in electronic format than sell them, because piracy is rampant and there’s nothing I can do to stop it except hope that if I gave away copies it might build a relationship that piracy never will. But let me point you at an excellent post about the effects of illegal downloading on authors, and let me make it clear that when I say “authors” I mean “me”. I haven’t gone to the trouble of numbers that this writer has (because, frankly, it would make me absolutely bloody insanely crazy, and I choose not to do that to myself), but basically: what she said.