TORONTO - Scores of readers have embraced devices like Kindles and iPads, but their newfound popularity has also brought about concerns that ebooks are having a "Napster moment."

Google searches for illegal downloads are up 50 per cent in the last year. Publishers hope to appeal to readers to make the right choice, said Jim Pitkow of Attributor, a company that attempts to track and fight copyright infringement.

"I think there's a hope that we can do things different than the other industries have done before," he said, with a particular nod to the music industry, which has endured a painful struggle ever since the MP3 format took hold.

"What we'd like to try ... is to see if people care about the (ebook) choices they make, similar to how they care about fair trade and where they buy their coffee, and how their clothes were produced.

"There appears to be less angst towards book publishers than to music labels. People tend to be connected to the books they read in a different way, the relationship is different than with music."

In a recent study, Attributor created a series of fake download websites for the most popular ebooks on Amazon's bestseller list and tapped into Google search statistics to assess the state of ebook piracy. The report estimates there are as many as 1.5 million to three million Google searches registered daily for illegal ebook downloads and interest jumped by about 20 per cent after the release of Apple's iPad tablet.

But Attributor also embedded some links to Amazon's ebook store on those dummy pages and about one in five web surfers ended up buying a legitimate copy of the ebook they were searching for.

"That shows us that people are malleable and they're open to the different choices they can make," Pitkow said.

While Attributor only collected limited demographic information about the web surfers looking for pirated ebooks, the list of the most requested titles is revealing.

The most searched-for book was Stephenie Meyer's latest "Twilight" novel "Breaking Dawn," followed by "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert, and "The Power," a self-help book by Rhonda Byrne, who has been featured on the "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Pitkow said he hopes the company's next study will reveal more about the users pirating ebooks and the resulting cost to the publishing industry.