After discovering his debut novel was being pirated for Russia's e-book market, author Peter Mountford made an unusual choice: he began assisting the man toiling away on the unauthorized translation.

Mountford released his book A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism in April 2011. Set in the world of international finance, the novel follows a young hedge fund employee sent to work in Bolivia amidst a presidential election in that country.

After buzz over the book had waned, the Seattle writer learned that an eager reader was flooding an online forum with specific queries about the novel.

"I was very flattered," Mountford told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC's Q cultural affairs show.

'The sad truth of being a writer now is that I'm just eager to have people read my work... If someone's going to be translating it, I might as well get a good translation out of it'—author Peter Mountford

"At some point, one of the other people in the forum said to him 'Why do you have to know everything that [the author]'s saying?' ... And he said 'I'm translating it for a Russian publisher.'"

However, Mountford hadn't sold publishing rights for the Russian market. Monitoring the forum, he realized how much trouble the translator — clearly not a professional — was having. So, he decided to reach out.

"I was sad to be taken out of the moneymaking process," the author acknowledged, "but at the same time, the sad truth of being a writer now is that I'm just eager to have people read my work... If someone's going to be translating it, I might as well get a good translation out of it."

Though Mountford's missive was first met with silence, the translator slowly came around. The pair have "worked together" on the translation for about five months. In the meantime, the author has also written about his situation for media outlets such as The Atlantic and The Guardian, and picked up interesting facts about Russia's rampant black market for e-books.

Mountford learned that since Russians are voracious readers, "they have a really thriving e-book market – not just for pirated books, but in general. In the last three years alone, e-book sales have increased three-fold in Russia," he said.

"Increasingly it's very hard to sell foreign rights in Russia because of the piracy issue. Even those books that are officially published in Russia have a great number of pirated versions as well, competing with them."

Mountford talked to Q about his strange relationship with the rogue Russian translator and why he, like hit writer Neil Gaiman, accepts book piracy in Russia.