Piracy is as rampant in the publishing industry as it is in the CD, video and DVD industries. Pirated copies of Harry Potter are widely available. Chinese translations of the book have appeared in pirated version for before the official copies were even published. Pirated Harry Potter books sell for about $3 apiece, a third of the price for originals, are about half the length of the originals and are full of mistranslations and missing passages.

The Harry Potter books are exceptional in that pirates took upon themselves to do eh translator work. Most pirated books are simply copies of the published version. It esteemed that 1 million pirated copies of Who Moved My Cheese were sold in one year. Today, books have regional codes to ensure authenticity.