By Gaurav Shrinagesh
From traffic intersections to India’s busiest bazaars, from university campuses to railway stations, counterfeit books are not just available; they are omnipresent. This is not a marginal issue. It is systemic, organised, and entirely visible.
And yet, there seems to be a collective underestimation of the severity of book piracy in India. What constitutes piracy? In its most basic form, it is the unauthorised reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material. But the implications of this are far from basic. From the outside, piracy is often mistaken for an access problem, a workaround in a price-sensitive market. In reality, it is intellectual property theft. It is a complete erosion of copyright protections and a direct attack on the publishing value chain—from authors and illustrators to editors, designers, printers, distributors, and retailers.
While digital piracy has grown globally, in India, it is physical piracy that continues to dominate. It is pervasive, normalised, and largely unregulated. Cheaply bound counterfeit editions of bestselling books are produced en masse and distributed through informal channels that are now well-entrenched. Based on conservative industry estimates, trade publishing in our country is facing losses to the tune of 20–25% annually due to piracy. These are not losses borne by publishers alone; they impact the entire ecosystem.
The irony is stark: never has it been easier to share stories, and yet never has it been harder to protect them.
Online platforms inadvertently or knowingly facilitate the sale of pirated books due to oversight, ease of access and delayed enforcement. In addition to online piracy, the physical markets continue to be hubs for counterfeit books. Major cities and smaller towns alike have marketplaces where pirated copies are openly sold without fear of enforcement. These realities not only threaten legitimate businesses but also undermines our commitment to respecting intellectual property.
The result is a growing crisis of legitimacy. A culture of piracy discourages authors from creating, disincentivizes publishers from investing, and sends a regressive message to global players about our ability to uphold IPR frameworks. Piracy hollows out the publishing industry from within, turning a sector that should be thriving on creativity and innovation into one that is forced into survival mode.
We need to address this issue by strengthening regulation for marketplaces, introducing strict penalties for piracy, implementing a more effective enforcement mechanism and collaborating with industry stakeholders to establish better IPR protection policies. But this effort cannot be industry-led alone. That’s where the publishing ecosystem must think more systemically. Can we create legal, wide-reaching access points that don’t undermine the creator’s right to earn? Can we work with public institutions, libraries, and digital lending platforms to bridge the access gap more meaningfully?
The goal should be consequential reduction through education, innovation, and cooperation. The focus, therefore, should shift to awareness and prevention. Readers need to understand not just the legal implications of piracy, but its broader consequences on the very books they love and the authors they admire.
The publishing industry is a cornerstone to India’s cultural and intellectual growth. Taking proactive measures to address piracy will safeguard the industry and affirm India’s commitment to valuing and protecting intellectual property.
Books must be valued not just for their stories, but for the human effort behind them. When people understand that piracy compromises quality and undermines creativity, behavioural shifts are more likely. Ultimately, this is not just about copyright enforcement. It is about reinforcing the value of intellectual labour. Behind every book is a chain of people—writers, editors, translators, designers—whose work deserves respect and remuneration. Piracy breaks that chain.
There are no simple solutions. But through coordinated action across industry, platforms, and policy, we can mitigate piracy’s impact. We can build a reading culture that is not only vibrant, but also respectful of the intellectual property that fuels it. Along with great books, talented authors, awards, bestsellers, all the things that celebrate reading, we also need to
reflect on how we preserve the system that makes reading possible. Because the world will always need books. And perhaps now more than ever, books need us too.
The author is CEO, Penguin Random House India, SEA & MENA. (Views expressed are author’s own and necessarily those of financialexpress.com)