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Comment by throwaway091290 | Hacker News Reader

My kindle paperwhite is my favorite tech that I own. It has changed by life significantly for the better and allowed me to cut down the time I waste on doom-scrolling social media. I find a book on shadow libraries, convert them into epub format and then send them over to my kindle via USB. Calibre helps in all this. I have read close to a hundred book now--all for no dime.

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Shame you don’t see any need to compensate writers for your enjoyment of their work.

Not OP, but a few things:

- the authors are unfairly compensated by amazon and the public libraries due to publisher issues with ebooks already. OP is hardly contributing to this disparity.

- I choose to purchase expensive copies of books I love - but the digital copy is the one I read.

The fact that the situation for authors is already poor hardly makes it better to opt not to compensate them. If you or the OP feel that you’re only playing a small part, that’s between you and your conscience.

And sure, if you’re buying some copy of the book and downloading a convenient second copy, that’s totally different. I was responding to the OP being pleased about not having spent anything at all (except on the kindle itself presumably).

I was thinking about this recently when a friend group argued that someone getting out of paying hospital bills is unethical since doctors are just as much victims of America's bad healthcare system as patients (due to exploitative pay structures I guess). To me this feels like some kind of victim blaming. The writer isn't getting paid (much), the reader is paying too much to a stranger, yet somehow the reader is the bad guy if they opt out of the process.

I get that the idea is "if everyone opted out the writer would get nothing instead of peanuts!" Or maybe the company shafting the writer would go under and direct sales would happen instead?

The difference is that a reader isn’t in any way a victim. They’re choosing to read a book. And if they don’t pay, the writer will often simply be paid less, to the tune of the royalties on that one book. So, yes, that is stiffing someone.

If everyone opted out you could force major change, sure, but in that case you shouldn’t be reading the book. That’s a true boycott. Reading without paying isn’t principled - it’s just cheap. And if you don’t actually organise it achieves nothing - except stiffing the author.

if you pay, both the author and the consumer are taken advantage of. If you don't, its only the author.

Yeah, there are a lot of things in our political and economic system that are oriented towards making victim blaming, or blaming individuals for systemic problems, the easiest and most natural line of thinking.

Note that purchasing on Amazon and compensating the author are actually separate categories - if you mail the author the RRP in cash, then they get far more than they would have if you'd bought off Amazon.

In fact, if everyone used a shadow library but mailed the author cash, then Amazon would go bankrupt but the authors would be fine (and wouldn't need to use Amazon in the first place).

I think Amazon would be fine because of the money it makes on other products, but I agree paying the author directly is a more principled approach than just paying nobody.

Worth noting though that it’s not just Amazon and the author in the picture - you would be stiffing the publishers in this scenario, and they paid to get the book printed (and edited, and designed, and shipped to physical stores, and maybe some publicity, and probably gave the author an advance).

You might think “who cares?”, but if the author didn’t (traditionally) sell any of the books they published then they wouldn’t ever get another publishing deal, so you’re harming their career. They could self-publish, sure, but worth keeping in mind the author doesn’t necessarily want that, because of the benefits publishers bring (if they didn’t bring any benefits, people wouldn’t use them - they’re not idiots).

It’s very complicated, and I would argue that people using shadow libraries “for authors’ benefit” ought to be speaking to more authors about whether they want that kind of help. But I agree your plan is much more honest than paying nobody, even if it has some potentially negative effects at scale without more coordinated action.

I don't know about the commenter above, but most writers I read have been dead for at least a hundred years. Should I purchase their e-book online for $850 each or should I get it from a shadow library?

If they’re dead who cares? Often it’s in the public domain. Go nuts.

You should also try using Libby / Overdrive to see if your local library has the book. I've borrowed 20+ books this year and it's pretty seamless and easy!

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