If piracy had zero or positive impact, a genuinely greedy publisher wouldn’t care or would actively encourage it.

When I do finally finish this thing and try to get it published, I will go though a normal publisher, because I like listening to the advice of people who’ve been though things before: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-d...

Also, no: most authors need day jobs because sales are a generally power-law distributions.