When authors and musicians condemn piracy, they like to believe โ for some reason โ that 100% of that is lost sales.
In reality, probably less than 1% of pirated material represents a lost sale. Iโd guess somewhere around 0.25% or so, but I canโt find any good formal studies.
If I were an author, Iโd only hope my work would be widely pirated. For budding authors especially, exposure is far more important than anything else.