The top ten most pirated eBooks of 2009

Don’t look at this list if you want to believe that the Internet is feeding a hunger for a deeper kind of learning. The 10 books most downloaded on
BitTorrent (a free file-sharing application) this year do not include titles by Victor Hugo or Emily Brontë (or even Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling).

Instead, with the exception of Leonardo da Vinci and Stephenie Meyer, they mostly focus on either self-help or sex (or in the case of a couple of titles, both).

But the good news, as reported by FreakBits is “that illicit book downloads are not yet threatening the best selling authors you’ll find in the New York Times list.” So this list doesn’t mean that readers aren’t seeking out high-quality e-books – it just means that they’re not pirating them.

The rather eclectic selection are the books that have been downloaded on BitTorrent between 100,000 and 250,000 times this year. Click on the image on the right to launch our guide.