There are legal ebooks and illegal ones. There are authors who only write ebooks and these are sold through epublishers on the web. Twilight Times Books is one of these - my epublisher. These are legal, of course. I think nearly every book published today has an ebook version available. These are legal if the ebook version has been arranged with the consent of authors and their publishers and they receive royalties from the sales. The biggest online seller of legal ebooks is Fictionwise.
http://www.fictionwise.com
Fictionwise is a distributor of about every ebook that's ever been printed...including a couple of mine.
Some ebooks are distributed by the author for free - usually from their websites - not through epublishers or distributors where you'd have to pay for them.
There are also groups on the web who exchange pirated copies of ebooks....just like pirated software and games can be exchanged. Only ebooks that are sold without the consent of the author are illegal.
Phew...long answer :blink:
