The problem with piracy doesn’t so much have to do with people in Taiwan as it does with mainland China, where piracy of all sorts is thoroughly endemic and essentially state-supported. Misha Glenny’s ‘McMafia’ describes how the Chinese government literally bootlegged an entire high-speed train system built for them by a foreign company and proceeded to rip that company off by building duplicates all across the country. Shops are filled with bootlegged clothes, bags, books, CD’s, videos, you name it. If Taiwanese publishers are worried about anything, I suspect it’s about the Chinese mass-distributing their ebooks. Taiwan is an affluent country, and I can’t see that many people here actively engaging in piracy, although that’s purely a personal opinion.

I should add that the level of literacy here is evident in the sheer density of bookshops everywhere you go. It’s just a shame for me most of them are written in Mandarin.