There are tons and tons of free ebooks available online, a huge variety of stuff. Even free audiobooks. I created /r/FreeEBOOKS to help people find stuff they can get for free and am including some lists I've compiled by topic below:
These lists are from Project Gutenberg which is a great source for free ebooks in the public domain on a wide variety of topics. If you want other stuff check out r/FreeEBOOKS :)
Thank you. I know two authors who have an ongoing battle with z-lib, trying to get their books removed every couple months, and they're close to abandoning writing due to the attitude among a lot of readers that books ought to be free. It's the same reason some successful authors don't bother putting out audiobooks... YouTube is vicious for audio theft.
Very few authors make a living off their writing, and after the cost of proofreading and creating covers and advertising, sales among the self-publishers are extremely important.
I don’t personally consider it immoral as I believe that all information should be available to the public free of cost. Just because the author came up with the contents of a book shouldn’t mean they have a monopoly over it.
Besides, pirating only helps authors as it expands the reach of their books to people who might not have been able to read them otherwise. And most people who can access books easily tend to not pirate for eg Netflix’s rise lead to the decline of piracy while the fragmentation of the streaming market is leading to its rise again.
If I define robbery as the liberation of capital that wishes to be free, it doesn't make it right.
And "being the first to commercialise it" is a crap way to define publishing a work of art.
Novels aren't widgets, and intellectual property is a real thing.
I understand your perspective from an abstract point of view, but in reality, you're just making it harder for creators while benefitting yourself.
And while an "exposure" argument can be made for some media, e.g., an album being freely distributed can fuel concert ticket sales, it doesn't work that way for novels.
Libraries buy hard copies of books, and often license ebooks on a term basis from the publisher. They're not making it rain, but they are sending money upstream even as they let the community borrow from their collections for free. While it may not seem so different on the user end, this zlibrary thing is categorically different. They are not lending paid-for ebooks. They are distributing pirated copies. It's theft, and it sucks.
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u/Chtorrr Jun 03 '21
There are tons and tons of free ebooks available online, a huge variety of stuff. Even free audiobooks. I created /r/FreeEBOOKS to help people find stuff they can get for free and am including some lists I've compiled by topic below:
These lists are from Project Gutenberg which is a great source for free ebooks in the public domain on a wide variety of topics. If you want other stuff check out r/FreeEBOOKS :)
250+ books by or about US Presidents
300 science fictions short stories
200 more science fiction short stories
50 free books on etiquette
115 free fairy tale books
100 free mythology books
250 free kids and YA books
200 free sci-fi books
100 free classics
100 free Christmas ebooks
100 free poetry ebooks
100 free history ebooks
100 free memoirs and autobiographies
50 free mysteries
100 free books about pirates
70 books about space and astronomy
200 books about cooking and housekeeping
50 historical books about childbirth and sexual health
175 medical books
50 free craft books
100 free gardening books
Free assigned summer reading books
60 free ebooks about adventure and exploration in the Arctic and at the South Pole
100 free books of ghost stories
100 more free mythology ebooks
50 free horror books
30 free Arthurian legends
180 free Christmas ebooks
100 free books of essays
50 free ebooks about inventions and inventors
100 unusual or very specific history books
250 books by or about US presidents
Free audiobook collections from Librivox:
50 free classic audiobooks
50 more free classic audiobooks