From a bookstore? Ya. At that point the bookstore has already bought the book from the publisher, afaik.

But, with pirating, nah. If you pirate an ebook instead of buying a copy of the (e)book, author doesn't get money. So stealing books is higher on the praxis scale than pirating them, except in regards to ecology.

So buy/steal small writers' work, and pirate the rest. o7 hahaha