[j_w]

I use AA and buy books. Typically I may start a series on AA epubs then buy the books. Sometimes authors take money directly (patreon, straight donations, etc) which is how I would rather pay them than pay the publisher for them to only get a small cut.

Are libraries unethical to use? You can go to your library and read books without paying for them.

[Philip-J-Fry]

But you must understand you are a minority. Most people don't do this, they will get something for free and fiercely defend this right to get things for free.

Libraries aren't unethical, because they're just letting you borrow stock of books. There's practical limits on how it scales, and any impatient users might just buy the book. Once you can infinitely duplicate a work, it's not borrowing.

[petu]

Half of the world lives on $300/mo. For majority of the world there's meaningful impact in saving $20 on a book.

[js8]

> Most people don't do this, they will get something for free and fiercely defend this right to get things for free.

So what? I think, if you read a good book, learn something or are well-entertained, it's a positive externality, so there is no problem with people doing it for free.

The only real issue with IP piracy is when someone gets money by copying the works. Which were originally the cases copyright tried to prevent.

Maybe you can clarify why you see people doing these things for free a problem, when there is a net benefit to society and also you.

[j_w]

If I didn't have a resource like AA I would likely read less and in the end spend less on books.

When people around me ask about how to "get into reading" I tell them to just find stuff they like online (via AA) or at the library and go from there. If you don't pay initially you don't feel as bad about trying things that may be "bad" or that you aren't interested in.

[mplewis]

How do you know most people don't do this? All my e-book-reading friends buy physical and digital copies of books in addition to whatever they get off AA.

[presbyterian]

> I would rather pay them than pay the publisher for them to only get a small cut.

Publishers aren't just stealing money that should go to authors. We can debate percentages and such, but buying a book also pays the editors (who any author will tell you are just as important to a book as they are), the typesetters, the designers, etc.

[TFNA]

For academic books, which are after all a substantial part of Anna, the publishers aren’t usually paying the editors if the book is a collection of papers. The editors got paid by the grant funding for the project that produced the research.

Moreover, many respected academic publishers no longer provide proofreading or typesetting: they expect the authors or editors to commission their own proofreading, and the editors to just send in a PDF with camera-ready output.

For monographs, the “editor” that the publisher provides is only there to guide the author in producing their own camera-ready output, and does not actually do any work on the contents of the book. The publisher will hand off the manuscript to 1–2 peer reviewers, but those peer reviewers are unpaid.

[j_w]

Obviously publishers provide some amount of value, but for a subset of the media I consume they are not great.

In the more indie fantasy scene authors often pay for editing themselves out of pocket. Often the only "publisher" they can get is direct publishing through Kindle, which then locks them into exclusivity with Kindle/Amazon. It's frankly disgusting but it's a way to help them get paid. I'd rather kick these people $20-50 directly than do anything else.

[specproc]

I just this week bought a book I first read from AA. Though I got it from a second hand bookshop, so I guess that was unethical, lol.

[throawayonthe]

the second part of your comment is weaker because libraries a) buy the book b) sometimes pay royalties per-checkout