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Comment by runjake | Hacker News Reader

z-lib.org is responsible for me buying more books in the past couple years than I’ve ever bought.

It essentially acted like an in-person bookstore for me that allowed me to browse a book to determine whether it was worth buying.

Before z-lib, I generally tended toward avoiding wasting money. I guess I’m back to that again.

(I like paper copies of tech books and Kindle copies of novels so I can sync reading and highlights between devices)

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Me, too. Although in my case, my consumption of legitimate books usually goes up because I'd get so irritated by the typos in the Z-lib copy that, if the book was interesting, I'd eventually go buy it from a legitimate source just so I could have a properly formatted copy.

It's weird how many I've grabbed look like they were native EPUBs at first glance, but the repeated typos that no human would make betrays that they were sourced from OCRs.

Exactly. The idea that there is a zero-sum trade-off between pirated books and for-profit books is nonsense. I look through hundreds of books every year - often just skimming the introduction, or most relevant chapter - and if I like them enough, I'll take them out from the library or buy them. I buy more books because of libgen and z-lib, not less.

I too like to buy books to have a physical copy. I almost always buy them used though, which probably doesn't help the copyright holder at all either.

There are plenty of other sites to find books to skim before buying.

It helps the trees though.

Although I have grown increasingly frustrated with the Kindle ecosystem, I don't think this is a fair complaint. Amazon lets you download a sample of any book in their library, which is usually pretty substantial -- can be multiple chapters depending on the length of the book.

I use this mechanism as my "shopping cart" where I just freely download samples of books that seem even slightly interesting. Later I can browse through my backlog, start reading, and either file it away for later, buy it, or delete it if it's clear that it's not for me.

Everyone's different. You find that a sample that Amazon chooses for you is sufficient for you. OP finds that physically picking up the book and looking at whatever they want is sufficient for them.

The OP specifically mentioned using z-lib to get electronic copies of the books.

I agree that physically picking up the book is a satisfying experience; I find myself often browsing in physical bookstores or libraries in order to find material that I will buy on my kindle. But that's not what OP was saying or that I was responding to.

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