Legolord sure you have loss on income but how much gets the printing companie (i just asume your relative is a writer then your say Autor)? IIRc ist around 90-95 % of the win the book creates. The situation of the writers is mostly made by the printing companies (atleast here). Pirates "steal" from the Printers which have stolen from the writers. The printers also steal many rights from the wirtters which is for me the greater loss by the way.
A fair deal would be having the book on the net for download.
3 Euro per 300 pages generates at 10000 downloads 30000 Euro of income which could go directly to the artist. And if E-Books would be 3 Dollars i would buy them in Dozens instead of pirating them (which i dont do that often) because 3 Euro (or even 5) is for me a fair price and i know i did nothing wrong + if the money goes intirely to the Artist i know that i have paid the person who brought me enjoyment.
Sadly our (german) printers roll with the idea that a ebook has to be as expensiv as a real-book thus making the Ebook 15-20€ (~20-25 Dollars) in price which is just too much.
I also think that Copyrights are to long. 50 Years or by some ideas of the EU 70 Years are just rediculous. 3-5 years works just fine because in the Book sector most people pirate anyway Books which are older then that because you cant get them anywhere. A webbased distribution would also never run out of copys
.
So in my oppinion it summs up at this: Reasonable prices + good web based shops = very big parts of bookpirating gone. Money goes directly to the artist + the artist keeps all his rights = everyone satisfied.