I have sort of accepted that digital is inevitable whether I like it or not. I can sort of as an environmentalist appreciate the fact that we don't cut as many trees down when we do things digitally. But digital also makes it easier to steal things. The good news is that digital may also make it easier to track the stealing, which sounds good to me.
I have another little anecdote about this business. That is that the music industry, where this stealing started in such a wholesale way, eventually got around piracy by switching their focus to live concerts. You can take a cellphone and try to record a live concert but it's usually just junk. If you really appreciate the artist, the singer, the songwriter, or the band, you're going to pay the money. You're going to go to the concert. There's no way to cheat on that. The artist actually gets paid for it.
Unfortunately, there is no live performance equivalent of writing a 336-page book. Imagine how long it would take me to stand here and read this to you. Don't get me wrong—this book is a potboiler about earthquakes and it's a science mystery of how we didn't understand this problem. It's also the only Canadian version of this story in print so far that explains exactly what the biggest natural disaster in North America is going to be. In a way, I should be happy that people are stealing my book, because it gets the word out to the public.
On the other hand, if my publisher loses money because of the stealing, there will be no incentive to do this again. In fact, if it becomes the trend, why would they publish anything Canadian?