(Or Apple I guess but that's not relevant as I don't own any of those anyway)
Well this is objectively cool, but I'd rather be able to pay the authors.
(Although I know that most of the money probably gets stolen by the publishers anyway so maybe I'm better off just buying merch or something..?)
I am an author and I endorse this website. Haha authors do get very, very little royalties from their work, but it is also their income, meagre as it is hahaha. You're definitely right to support authors, especially smaller ones, whenever you can :D
Stealing books is the same as buying them no? The author gets royalties either way right?
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
If you can't just find them for free verso has good stuff.
Verso , Haymarket , OR Books , Pluto Press , Gutenberg for a whole bunch of public domain books.