Online piracy of e-books is not yet causing a major dent in the profits of publishers, but it could eventually--as book-reading technology improves. Along with the rest of the e-book biz, it's growing. For a preview of the future, see Welcome to the worldwide web of on-line book piracy, from newindpress.com in South India. An excerpt:

The seven books of Frank Herbert’s science fiction series Dune, Michael Crichton’s out-of-print Andromeda Strain and My view of the Flat Universe, an unreleased lecture of physicist Stephen Hawking, which Hawking delivered to select students at Gonville and Caius College, are only few of the reading materials that Sudharshan Venkatesh, an engineering graduate preparing for his MBA here, has got for free from the Internet, besides all his course material.

‘‘I read off the monitor all the time. I’ve read Crichton’s Timeline four times on my computer,’’ Venkatesh says, adding that he has no problem sitting up and staring at the monitor. He has good reasons for this also – one, there’s nothing except Tamil music that he has not found via the peer-to-peer file sharing services he uses and two, it saves him lots of money (Recently, he downloaded a 10 MB Java tutorial that saved him Rs 1,400).

Whether these have been legally put on the Internet or not is not of concern to him and his ilk. It’s all about generosity and sharing and nothing else matters, they hold. One user spends in buying and scanning the original text and uploads it on a public or niche site and then it’s free for all. Especially via software like kazaa, morpheus and grokster.

If you don't want there to be internet trade in particular materials, don't release it in only some countries and not others. Furthermore, don't release it in only some languages and not others.

If you are going to hype a book like Harry Potter and Whatever He is Up to Now to the point that you have thousands of fans lined up to get a copy when they go on sale around the world, do not be surprised that the folks who you left out in Spain and Portugal go immediatley running to their computers to try and get a lead on where they can find a copy in their language so they, like their British neighbors to the north, can shell out $30.00 equivalent.

And if you have the excuse that there wasn't enough time to translate and proof a book into spanish [or whatever other language] in time for the release date, I'd just like to remind you that there are eBrarians out there who can put out a translated and fully proofed text within a week of its appearance on the market.

While I loathe Adobe PDF for e-books, I love Planet PDF, an independent Web site devoted to the format. If I were Adobe, I'd fire the whole PR department and replace 'em with the Planet's chief inhabitants.

In character, Planet Editor Kurt Foss just emailed me the following:

Thanks for the recent Teleread references to several of our recent news items at Planet PDF. Wanted to let you know that I've long shared your disgust over the way some eBook publishers have chosen to apply permissions restrictions to public domain books.

If you'd like a version of Huck Finn in PDF--but not secured with the Adobe Content Server, and thus no such restrictions--we have been building up a collection of freebies on our site.

So what anti-reader tricks might the big software companies try to pull off in the future? Just what DRM schemes might they use to help businesses gouge readers or invade their privacy? A nasty omen may be here already in the form of eBook Pro Viewer, a product mentioned earlier this year by Web Advantage:

Another, even more restrictive DRM solutions provider is eBook Pro Viewer. The combination of their software and site administration gives you the power to control such things as activating or de-activating copies of your ebook, limiting the number of times users can view it, the copying and pasting of your content, enabling/disabling the printing of your ebook, and exactly what personal information you require from your customers in order for them to even gain access to your content. Furthermore, a reader may only access the file on the computer to which it's originally downloaded.

A first-time visitor to your web site might not be ready to buy when they read your salesletter or product information... but when they download and register your FREE eBook you will automatically be sent ALL of their personal information!

(All eBooks compiled using eBook Pro must be "registered" before they can be opened. I will explain this in greater detail shortly.)

This means that you can follow up with these potential customers time and time again... and all the while they have your product information installed on their computer!

Do not underestimate the power of this! These are your best potential customers! They could not be any more targeted. Think about it--not only did they take the time to visit your web site, they actually downloaded and read your eBook! This creates credibility and builds a relationship that will make selling to them in the future much easier!

What good will Microsoft's free e-books do if you install Reader 2.2.2 and then can't even read your existing collection? Only a minority of users will suffer. But before upgrading, it's best to check first with the maker of your PDA. The owner of a Viewsonic Pocket PC V37 has written:

Now, when I try to open a book, Reader just hangs with the rotating pie "wait" symbol.

This device is running Pocket PC 2002 and Reader was preinstalled in ROM...Now I can't use this device to read MS e-books at all.

"Far Eastern Economic Review Malaysian correspondent S. Jayasankaran said the sale of electronic versions of books through the Internet had in fact pushed sales of printed books in places like the United States. 'I would think it is impossible for the Internet to replace a book,' he said." - The Star Online, Malaysia.

The TeleRead take: Wrong! Granted, we are talking about evolution, not the immediate death of p-books, which I hope will always be around in limited form--just like horse-and-buggy rides in places such as Central Park. Still, Jayasankaran is extrapolating from present technology rather than looking ahead to popularization of, say, E Ink. I doubt he even knows that it exists--and that e-books with flippable pages won't be that different from the conventional variety. Deane Barker once felt like Jayasankaran, but now is of a different mind:

Prompted by Microsoft's generosity, I've started reading e-books, and I think I'm addicted. I read a book last year called "The Social Life of Information" which put forth all sorts of reasons why e-books weren't going to work. I agreed with it then, but after actually trying it, I'm hooked.

I started out with Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." I read it in Microsoft Reader, mostly sitting on the couch with my trusty Toshiba Satellite in my lap. I'd even take my computer to bed, resting it on my chest. It was much more natural than you'd think. After a few pages, I mentally slipped into the book just as if it was a hardcover. Before I knew it, 600 pages had zipped by. (Phenomenal book, by the way.)

Reading a book on a laptop is much, much more natural than I imagined for one important reason: a laptop sits up by itself. You don't have to hold it like you hold a book. On the couch, I'd slouch down with the laptop out on my knees, one arm holding a drink, and the other arm draped over a cushion. Every once in a while, I'd reach out and hit the space bar to "turn" the page. It was almost... luxurious.

I've gotten in the habit of reading over breakfast. I'll sit the laptop on the counter, eat a bowl of cereal, and stop only to turn the page. When I'm done for the moment, I just close the laptop and it suspends itself until I "open" the book again. Because of this, my supposed need for an e-book reader or a Tablet PC has evaporated. Neither of those would keep themselves upright like my Toshiba.

Amazon.com wants to allow full-text searches across thousands of books to help shoppers preview the wares. This could be a major boost for e-books since Amazon will scan oodles of p-books into its database. It's hard to believe that many won't end up online in electronic form for sale to consumers, regardless of what Amazon might say right now to confuse competitors. Some details from the New York Times:

Amazon is calling its program Look Inside the Book II, the publishers said. It would expand on a current program that lets shoppers read a table of contents, a first chapter or a few selected pages provided by the publishers of certain books. But Look Inside the Book II would let online browsers search by terms such as "Caravaggio," "sans-culottes," or "Osama bin Laden," and then see a list of books mentioning such terms along with the sentences that contains them. Browsers could then choose to see several pages around a citation.

But to see those pages, users would be required by Amazon to register, and Amazon plans to limit the amount of any single book a customer can view.

Most book contracts allow publishers to give away excerpts for promotional purposes, but authors may contend that Amazon's search service more closely resembles some kind of research system. "This sounds like an anthology right, and that has to be specifically approved by the author, and if a publisher is going to license the electronic rights to the whole work there has be to reasonable compensation for that," said Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild.

So what's a good "handbook" for writers? Here's a possibility--not a dreary manual but an autobiography of one of the Victorian greats, Anthony Trollope.

You can download An Autobiography from Project Gutenberg for free. It comes recommended by Washington Post critic Michael Dirda, who discusses the author at length today. The Trollope autobiography is among Dirda's top five introductions to "the writing life." The other picks are:

--"Flaubert's correspondence, especially with Louise Colet about the composition of Madame Bovary.

--Henry James's notebooks, overflowing with details about the genesis of his stories and novels.

--Chekhov's shrewd letters and observations about writing.

--Rupert Hart-Davis's life of the now-forgotten Hugh Walpole--the story of how a young man of good looks and modest talent made his way in literary London during the early part of the last century."