In the past 18 months the market in pirated books has exploded, with publishers losing £260 million a year in sales of hardback and paperback books.

Now pirates are scanning texts to create e-books and are recording audio books to make counterfeit copies. They are also trading with one another over the internet to save them having to originate the texts.

The latest bestsellers by J.K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett and Patricia Cornwell are among their favourites — but they are just as keen on backlists and classics by Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming, among others. In the past few weeks the Publishers Association, which represents about 200 publishers, has identified tens of thousands of the illegal sales on eBay and other internet sites.

One pirate recently sold more than £22,000 of pirated audio books for £300 through eBay in 42 hours. Another, also operating on eBay, sold £8,000 of counterfeit recordings for £451 over two weeks.

Terry Pratchett, whose bestselling fantasy books have been published in 35 languages, told The Times that his agent regularly monitored the internet to keep a check on any counterfeit copies. Every week more examples were found. He said: “But there’s always a feeling that one is rushing around plugging holes into the dam. One is pursuing a guerrilla war.”

Any Pratchett e-book that appears for sale has definitely been pirated because only one of his bestselling novels, Thud!, is available legitimately in that form. No one has been given a licence to produce the others. Audio books that offer more than one of his books on a single CD are also pirated.

Colin Smythe, his agent, said: “When people are putting up thousands of CDs on eBay, one is concerned. Initially the people who were doing it were students wanting to cover a bit of their income. It’s now becoming much more commercial.”

Rob Hamadi of the association said: “In 2005 there was a significant increase in the volume of counterfeit works offered for sale in the UK. A lot of crooks are getting into this. You’re not likely to get stabbed burning a disc. Funds are transferred electronically.”

The criminal wouldn’t need to give his address to his customers. “They don’t have stockpiles of the counterfeit product in a warehouse. They keep it electronically on a hard drive.”

Although eBay is closing down auctions when notified that a digital book is counterfeit, publishing sources told The Times that it could be doing much more to clamp down on the sellers — who simply pop up again on another day. While the loss of DVD sales, box-office takings and rentals now costs the entertainment industry £818 million a year, there are no figures yet for those relating to digital books.

The association, which has yet to prosecute a pirate, is compiling a piracy database, which will help to estimate the scale of the problem. It is waiting for the implementation of Section 107a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which would give trading standards officers the power to take action against copyright infringers.

An eBay spokesman said: “EBay has an established system in place — with more than 14,000 intellectual property owners already signed up as members — that enables rights owners to inform our customer services teams of counterfeit items. We then remove infringing items swiftly and take action against any sellers.”

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