e-pirates. Ahoy, me buckos!

Good morning bookies!

As most of you know, your friendly neighborhood bookseller hates e-books. He doesn't dislike them, he wishes they would burn in hell, their pages curling into ash beneath the fires of perdition. Except, of course, that an e-book doesn't actually exist or have pages or anything. You aren't actually buying a tangible item when you buy an e-book, you see, you are buying a lot of words that are stored electronically on a device that has a finite lifespan. And once you've read what you have bought? Try re-selling it, or lending it to a friend. Good luck with that. And I can't wait to see how an author is going to sign one.

Well, now this scam has new problems, the same ones the music industry has dealt with: piracy. People stealing e-books on file sharing sites. Who knew? But just like the local Memphis book thieves used to steal choice volumes from my store (and yes, I know who you are) they are now stealing e-books. The biggest difference is probably that with e-books they have to steal some batteries to go along with them.

Blackbeard's ghost on work among e-books