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While piracy has long been an issue for the book business, the rapid rise of unauthorized audiobooks on YouTube, which publishers and authors believe are eroding sales for their books, poses a new challenge for the industry.

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Grisham said YouTube should bear some responsibility for the spread of illegally copied audiobooks on its site.

“The thieves and pirates who steal my work and try to profit from it, in any format, should be punished civilly and criminally,” he wrote in an email to The Times. “And in this particular example, YouTube is complicit because it’s clear they know what is happening and refuse to stop it.”

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It’s hard to determine how many pirated audiobooks are available on YouTube. People uploading them often try to evade detection by changing the files, adding pauses or music or even slightly altering the text. Sometimes, pirates put unrelated content at the beginning to throw off detection. And when one channel featuring pirated content is taken down, another often takes its place.

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