Zombie illustration for a book cover or magazine by illustrator Duncan Long

An excellent overview of the “free” culture, and why it is killing the creative process (and some possible solutions to the problem) from Elmo Keep: Combating The Cost Of The Free Economy.

For those wanting to find out if their book is being pirated — and how to stop the piracy — there’s this nitty gritty piece: Hacker Tools to Combat eBook Pirates

If you’re unsure there’s a problem with piracy and the book industry, there here’s a place to start (it’s a tad dated but still interesting): Five reasons why piracy will kill the ebook digital publishing industry.

In Moving away from free Connor Tomas O’Brien notes: “We all recognize that the Free Economy is broken, but, as consumers, we face a prisoner’s dilemma situation: because there’s no clear incentive for any individual consumer to pay, nobody pays, which means we all end up getting screwed when artists are no longer able to create the content we enjoy.”

In his “state of the industry” piece, Scott Turow tells of The Slow Death of the American Author. Perhaps most to the point is Scott’s contention:

“It seems almost every player — publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars — is vying for position at authors’ expense. Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the Constitution, which instructs Congress “to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The idea is that a diverse literary culture, created by authors whose livelihoods, and thus independence, can’t be threatened, is essential to democracy. That culture is now at risk. The value of copyrights is being quickly depreciated, a crisis that hits hardest not best-selling authors like me, who have benefited from most of the recent changes in bookselling, but new and so-called midlist writers.”

Turow’s opinion piece garnered this responses: A few notes on “The Slow Death of the American Author” by Scott Turow

If worries about piracy weren’t enough, now Amazon is threatening authors’ revenue streams as well: Amazon Ebook Resell Plan May Kill Author Royalties

And finally, one interesting article that is NOT about piracy: How New Technology Is Reinventing Typography.