Well, I haven't taken any marketing classes, so I'm not an expert. As a lay person with an opinion, what you said sounds like an excuse, and not really a sound reason. Is there any evidence that isn't just anecdotal?
Listen, its common sense: "hmm, that book got 202482 downloads, that must obviously mean that demand for it is satisfied, I'd better go for publishing that other book that only got 3 downloads instead, clearly that's where the money will be!" is just asinine.
The fact is: anything CAN be "pirated". Whether or not it WILL be "pirated" depends on whether there's even the slightest amount of demand for it, if there is, it will be, sooner or later.
Once there is, the amount of filesharing that's going on is the clearest indicator of whether a product is in any kind of demand anymore or not: anything with a metric fuckload of hits/downloads/whatever is obviously something people want.
Stuff that gets "pirated" is stuff that will actually sell, and the more "Pirated" it is, the better it will do commercially.
To think "oh well, its been fileshared so now there's no point in publishing it" is utterly moronic: as if the Watchmen TPB, with thousands of filesharing downloads, would clearly flop in sales on paper. Its idiotic, because people fail to understand that if you fileshare a comic/book/etc.,
and its any good, you're going to want to own a physical copy of said product.
The real fear these corporate fuckwits have is that their mediocre product will not be bought anymore if people have a chance to "try before they buy" in the form of filesharing; because the corporate fuckwits often depend on CHEATING people into buying second- or third-rate products that they KNOW are second or third rate. Filesharing won't stop excellent products from being sold, it will only challenge companies who rely on mediocrity rather than excellence (which is why the music industry is so damn worried).
RPGPundit