alt Hacker NewsLook, fair enough from your perspective. But a lot of those books probably wouldn't exist if the author couldn't make some money from their work.
I can't find the post but years ago on Reddit an author posted stats showing when her book turned up pirates online, real sales for it collapsed.
Because of this I make a point of buying books, programming books especially. Yes I download pdfs, I use them as previews. This has led to buying way more than I would have.
Anyway, I appreciate this doesn't apply if you live somewhere that these books can't be purchased. But everyone praising these sorts of sites tends to look at them from only a positive perspective.
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> But a lot of those books probably wouldn't exist if the author couldn't make some money from their work.
I think that's at least a bit debatable. People thought that about (normal) libraries back in the day, but it ended up having the opposite effect.
Not to mention out of print books or academic books which is a big usage of sites like these, since lots of people prefer physical books and only reach for pdfs as a last resort.
Not gonna argue with the point that we need to support authors, but “can be purchased” is a relative concept.
I live in Iran and the administrative hurdles the op was mentioned are not an issue here because you just can't even buy intwrnationally to begin with so there is no hurdle you might need to circumvent. The few English books I have are largely illegal reprints of a pirated version or some old ancient printed version that have somehow gotten imported (no clue how or is there an actual legal way)
I remember opening "thinking fast and slow" and noticing the weird paging. After checking the official version's page count and seeing how the version in my hand doesn't match, my best guess was that someone had printed a pirated epub version.