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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any advice on how I can pay authors to get a copy of their eBook without going through Amazon or Google? I really don't want Big Tech or advertising companies profiling me based on the books I read, but I absolutely want to pay authors for their work.

I've considered torrenting books and just sending a check or something to authors, but I'd love to find a better way.

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Go to bookshop.org. Buy the book you want. Then download from libgen or z-library guilt free. If you don't want the hardcopy, you can pass it on to a friend. Start a tiny library in your neighborhood. Or just leave it on a coffeeshop table to entertain some random person.

Bookshop.org is basically a coop organized by booksellers across the country. A local bookstore will fulfill your order and get the proceeds. Your purchase will support local businesses as well as pay the author.

Bookshop does offer ebooks via My Must Reads, but their ebook format looks to be non-standard. Still, you could buy via Bookshop / My Must Reads and still download a friendlier version from libgen, etc. So there's an option which would avoid getting an unwanted physical book while supporting bookshops and authors.

Kobo has a partnership with local bookstores, and supposedly gives them a cut. I don't know much about this, but it might be worth looking into. Kobo DRM is easily stripped so it would be a viable option. But Kobo is at least partially owned by Walmart and that might be something you'd rather not support.

https://www.kobo.com/indie

There are a few of methods I use. First, my local library lends eBooks. In the UK, authors get paid for each book that is borrowed.

Secondly, sites like hive.co.uk sell eBooks outside of the Amazon / Google services. You can read them on any device which supports Adobe's DRM - or you can remove the DRM yourself.

Finally, go to the publisher's website. Some of them sell books directly.

> First, my local library lends eBooks. In the UK, authors get paid for each book that is borrowed.

I'm in the US, and I wonder how it's done here. I also get all of my eBooks and audiobooks from my local library. Just yesterday I was perusing titles at Barnes & Noble and putting stuff that looked interesting on my library queue. I ended up actually buying dead-tree manga books from there, since I really can't get into eBook-formatted manga for some reason. If it's illustration-heavy, I still want printed stuff.

For the audiobooks I don't even have to strip DRM. The ODM files provide links where you can pull down unprotected MP3 files.

For the eBooks I keep a Windows VM just for running an older version of Kindle for PC, Calibre with DeDRM, and Adobe Digital Editions.

I know there are websites from where I can just directly download the DRM-stripped eBooks, but I figure that going through the library means that somehow some kind of revenue is making it to the authors.

I'd be more than happy to tip the authors directly, but I'd imagine that publishers forbid that sort of thing contractually.

Here’s a list of DRM free ebook stores: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks

Baen is one of the big sci-fi publishers which runs their own DRM free store: https://www.baen.com/

Baen also used to hand out CDs chock full of ebooks, and they're available for download here https://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

I recently came across a site called Leanpub [https://leanpub.com/] while searching for Jeff Geerling's ebook on 'Ansible for Devops'.

The company looks to be ethical, and is aimed at Technical authors who wish to self publish ebooks. Each ebook sold displays how much the author will receive from the purchase (usually 80%).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book [which Jeff Geerling seems to regularly do]

The big plus is that Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection.

I always wished there was a bandcamp like service for things other than music. Unfortunately they still take fees etc, but still quite an excellent user experience for owning and buying music.

Indeed. Bandcamp also has "Bandcamp Fridays" where every dollar goes straight to the artists you buy from (after payment processor fees, that is).

I'm pretty sure that's itch.io, which looks like a game site but it was originally (and still is) just a way for you to sell zip files.

Thanks for the heads up! I always thought it was some startup site lol!

itch.io is kindof nuts - IIRC the creator is also responsible for lapis and moonscript, basically building a whole lua-based stack just for itch.

I don't know about authors who themselves chose to publish with Big Tech or traditional publishers (& not asking for money elsewhere) but how about supporting authors who are asking for funding in crowdfunding sites (e.g. Indiegogo), membership subscription sites (e.g. Patreon), or the author's own website?

Yes, that's definitely an option. But I'd like to choose books for their content, not for their publisher.

Well if the author you like chose Big Tech as their publisher, and you don't want to support Big Tech, and the author isn't asking for money in any other place, I don't know, maybe you can write a message to the author so you can give them money somehow (if the author is interested in it at all)?

Have you tried other eBook stores? Depending on your country, there’s Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and often massive freely available collections through local libraries (at least in the US and some European countries).

Buy at a bookstore, buy directly from the publisher, or ask the author.

Cryptocurrency. Not bitcoin either, one that can actually be used for fast anonymous payments with low fees. Ask them to set up a Monero wallet and publish the address so people can send money there. There are easy to use apps like cake wallet.

I've actually gotten paid for code this way. Worked great. I sincerely hope this will become common. Cryptocurrency will never be real if we don't start using it.

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