Book Piracy in 2025: How Publishers Are Fighting Back

It’s 2025 and book piracy is supposed to be dead but it is not because the state of book piracy in 2025 is just as active as it was 10 or 20 years ago and perhaps a little bit more.

It is active due to the fact that there are dozens of shadow libraries and piracy websites operating with immunity and no one to check them actively.

The issue becomes much more complicated when you have to understand that these shadow libraries work hand in hand with peer-to-peer networks and torrent websites, which makes controlling book piracy nearly impossible.

But nearly impossible is not impossible and that is exactly what we are going to talk about today, because we will talk about how book publishers are fighting back against book piracy in 2025 and how this should make you feel safe as an author if you are planning on investing in your book.

So, firstly, we are going to look at the situation of book piracy in 2025. We will then move on to how publishers are pushing back.

The State of Book Piracy in 2025

The state of book piracy is still very much active in 2025 and here are some of the most popular methods by which books are pirated and distributed illegally across multiple media.

Offline Pirated Book Sales

Offline pirated books can be considered your traditional method of piracy, where the pirate will purchase a single legitimate copy of the book and make photocopies of that or create scans of that book and publish it in cheaper paper.

You can easily identify these books as they are sold on footpaths and can even be seen being sold by vendors at traffic stops and the like. A clear indication of these books is the quality of the paper utilised, as it is usually of the cheapest quality. Controlling this method is the easiest of the bunch because all it takes is identifying the source of the publication.

Shadow Libraries

Next comes shadow libraries in the form of Library Genesis (LibGen) and other names. These are illicit book-sharing platforms usually paired with a private server that holds all the copies of the book.

Since you are looking at EPUB, MOBI, DJVU, AZW3, FB2, CBZ, CBR, RTF, DOC and other formats that usually do not take up a lot of space. This means hosting thousands of books becomes quite easy, even on a single GB of server space.

This kind of piracy is out in the open and that is why it has become relatively easy for publishers to go after these illicit book-sharing platforms and libraries and many have been shut down as well.

Torrent Websites

This is where we get to the challenging aspect of book piracy in 2025; book piracy via torrent sites has been around for at least two decades.

Torrenting is basically peer-to-peer file sharing, which simply means that instead of a central server, every computer that accesses the network becomes a temporary server.

When you have an arrangement like this, pinpointing the source of piracy becomes impossible when your book is being shared by thousands of people with equal levels of accountability.

Social Media Groups

And finally, here is the latest form of piracy, which is not really traceable or even publicly available with just a Google search.

We are talking about book piracy through the sharing of books on private groups on messaging platforms such as Telegram, Kik, WhatsApp and the like.

This is usually done after the DRM from the ebook version of books is cracked and then privately distributed.

How Publishers Are Pushing Back

Legal Actions & Domain Takedowns

One of the most effective methods of combating book piracy is with the help of legal action, where publishers come together and file major lawsuits against shadow libraries and platforms that support piracy.

This is, in fact, very common, and you can often hear publishers coming together for something like this, such as educational publishers coming together against LibGen in 2024.

This results in domain takedowns with no other alternative for these shadow libraries to operate from because they are legally prohibited from doing so.

Enforcement via DMCA and Link-Busters

Publishers utilise something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 or something similar, depending on the region, to ask search engines to take down searches and results for pioneer persons of their books and this tends to work wonders when it comes to removing links and content.

This is because in this process, you are not going after the source but you are going after the method of reaching the source, which can often lead to the shutdown of these platforms.

Then there are organisations such as the Link-Busters, a Dutch anti-piracy intermediary, which issues millions and millions of takedown requests to Google and search engines on behalf of the bigger publishing houses.

Technological Tools: AI & Automated Monitoring

The advent of AI has truly been a gift for a publishing house, as they are now able to maintain automated, advanced monitoring systems that track piracy of their publications 24/7.

These AI-powered automatic tools can be utilised to automatically file takedown requests and we are talking about multi-site takedown submissions.

Publishers can utilise these tools with the help of simple dashboards that can help them track piracy across multiple marketplaces all at once.

Aggressive Pricing & Ebooks

Piracy has been around for a lot of years and one of the primary reasons behind piracy has been the cost of books.

Multiple studies have suggested that piracy can be dramatically reduced only if the content is available at an affordable price or at a pricing model that simply does not justify the risk of piracy.

You can see that happening in the music industry as players like Spotify and Apple Music have made music piracy redundant.

We can see just that with the advent of ebooks. The thing with ebooks is that, unlike physical books that have costs associated with them when it comes to publishing and material cost, etc, you can make infinite copies of ebooks at basically 0 cost.

Pair ebooks with aggressive market pricing and now piracy and the risks associated with it, like viruses, etc, just seem too much of a trouble when someone can download an original ebook at affordable pricing.

We hope this blog gives you an idea about the situation of piracy in the book publishing industry and how publishers are actively trying to stop it.

The thing with piracy is that it hurts everyone in the process. It hurts the author because they are not getting their due for their work and the publisher is not getting anything from a pirated book sale in spite of all the work they did with the publishing and marketing and all the investments they made.

Piracy hurts the reader the most because your pirated book distributor cannot ensure you quality of content and sometimes pages are misplaced and content is simply wrong. Other times, pirates will sneak in malware and viruses within the pirated book file, which can do more damage than good.

If you are someone who is willing to publish your very first book and you are concerned about privacy and looking for a publisher that takes book piracy very seriously, including active steps to prevent it, then we are here for you.

We are Orange Publishers and we are one of the fastest-growing and most popular book publishing companies in India that brings you the reliability of traditional publishing with the convenience of self-publishing all under a single roof.

We welcome you to visit our website and check out everything we do and we would love to publish your books for you.