Radek: I'm already aware my stuff appears on the net without my permission. I'd ask people not to do it -- at least to do me the courtesy of asking first -- but I'd be wasting my breath. My personal opinion is that as long as they're not making money off it, i.e. diverting income away from me, it's not a big problem. But for my official opinion, you'd have to ask my publishers.

Matthias: think back to before you transitioned from being a library reader to a book-buying customer. You didn't have the disposable income to buy books, did you? In which case, you were not a lost sale. Someone who can't afford to buy the product is not a potential customer.

On the subject of CDs and music -- one of the dirty little secrets of the music industry is that musicians make most of their money from merchandise and live performances. A CD with an autographed cover sold at a concert for $10 delivers $9 of profit to the band, compared with the $0.5 of a CD sold via a record label. Frankly, I think the people most threatened by music downloading are the record labels, not the musicians.

On the book sales thing, publishers don't keep books in print long, especially SF -- but that's not entirely their fault: the blame can be pushed down the chain to book distributors and book retailers. On the influence of free e-books on sales -- can I suggest you look at Eric Flint's editorials for the Baen Free Library experiment? He's got the actual sales data to back up the thesis that giving e-books away for free towards the end of the books natural sales cycle actually sells more copies of the paper editions.

The problem with the music industry is really that the middlemen call all the shots regarding distribution, and nowadays they have no real artistic ambitions themselves, so they work purely for maximum profit.

Yes, indeed. Luckily book publishers -- in fiction -- aren't much like that, because people who want to make money go into music or film instead.