Are my eBooks being stolen?

My writing/teaching/consulting business has been very poor in November---extremely poor.


While going through some Web statistics yesterday, I discovered that I had 10 downloads of my Visual C# Express 2008 eBook from my Web site last week---pretty interesting in that I only sold 1 eBook.


You see the disparity---10 download vs 1 sale---that's 9 too many.


The obvious conclusion I can come to is that 9 people who didn't pay for the eBook have downloaded it. There may be other reasons---some customers download it to their hard drive, then forget where they put it or delete it, and download it again. Some customers may download it to multiple computers--that's fine with me.


However, a ratio of 10 to 1 gives me reason to think something is up.


I don't ask for much for these eBooks---$12.95 via Paypal, or $13.95 via regular credit card, cash, money order, etc.


I sell about 40 of these a month which helps out with the bills---for some reason, I haven't sold a single one in November.


Could it be that someone has posted a link on the Internet to my site?


It's possible. The eBooks are password protected, and in my instruction email to my readers, I ask them to please NOT share the password. I also tell them if they of someone who can't afford one, then to have that person contact me and I will work out something with them---and I have gladly provided free eBooks to needy people.


I just spent 10 minutes changing the password of all of my eBooks---that may help.


More likely what will happen is that someone will post the eBook on a file sharing site, the way they have with my C++ eBook, and make it available for free to millions of people.


My books take about 6 to 9 months to write, and help pay for my two boy's college tuition.


I don't ask for much that people pay for my hard work, do I?