Look, 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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bawolff an hour ago | parent [-]

> 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.

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dsizzle 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Libraries spend like $2B / year buying books https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/2021-08/fy19-pls-re..., which is like 10% of the total book market. So even if no one ever bought a book because they first encountered the book, author, or genre in the library that's already a signficant difference

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j2kun 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think I agree, the FAR bigger impact on my book's sales was Google search deciding not to surface it in search results. Presence on pirate websites had no effect, and eventually I switched to the PDF as "pay what you want."

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brookst 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you imagine if we didn’t have libraries and someone tried to create them today? From publishers to right wingers, they would be painted as communist plots to destroy creativity.

	▲	toomuchtodo 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The Internet Archive tried to defend its ability to lend books as an online library due to format shift, and were told no by the system, so pirating it is until copyright changes and becomes more reasonable. Disk is cheap, and the Internet global. The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758 - September 2024 (793 comments)