The New York Times examines various author and publisher sentiments on the double-edged sword of electronic books.  Now that they are in this format, it’s a never-ending battle to keep them off of file sharing sites.

“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”

Everyone from Stephen King, to Ursula K. Le Guin, to Harlan Ellison chimes in about a problem that Russell Davis describes as, “…a game of Whac-a-Mole. You knock one down and five more spring up.”

Despite the piracy, the Twilight Saga is still bringing in big bucks for parent company Hachette.

Get the full story on the New York Times.