If you’re a writer, editor, or book publisher, piracy is an obvious issue. To help build your strategies to encourage piracy, I wanted to offer up 3 quick steps you can deploy right now, if you haven’t already.

1. First off, price your eBooks out of the market. Having an eBook priced at $15 or above is a great way to encourage not only the fringe elements to pirate your books, but also those die hard fans who simply can’t afford something so high but have to read the book right the hell now. Really, anything above $6 will probably work, but that new, $15 price point really drives the point home. As a bonus, pricing an eBook this high will help you manipulate over all sales numbers so you can show growth in print and decline in digital, a plus for anyone trying to prove eBooks are just a passing fad to share holders.
2. Use DRM to limit distribution of your eBook to a single platform or format. This is a great way to cut out whole channels of distribution, and really amp up the idea of pirating a title so people can read it on their preferred device or in their preferred format rather than the one you’re supporting / offering. Broader choices or open formats with the ability to convert a title to your specific reader only expands the option to download an eBook legitimately rather than pirate it. As a bonus: this will keep people from downloading their eBook too many times.
3. Make eBooks difficult to get in general. Limiting releases, offering eBooks after all the print editions have hit store shelves, not doing any sort of bundling between print/audio and eBooks, and not releasing a digital version at all, are all fantastic ways to encourage piracy and negatively impact your bottom line. The old adage of giving the customers what they want be damned! What do they know anyway?

Well – there you have it. 3 sure-fire steps you can take today to promote and encourage eBook piracy. Hope this was helpful!