It would be great if authors accepted donations. Then pirates can choose to pay.

Wonder if that gets them in trouble with publishers. Maybe creator should have a newsletter (however low effort) with a donation link at the bottom.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing stopping anyone from making a website listing authors of books and how to pay them. And strictly speaking, there's nothing stopping pirate sites from taking said website and embedding the relevant author donation info next to a torrent/DL of the book they wrote.

Publishers wouldn't be able to take down the list website, as it's perfectly legal to send authors money. Publishers wouldn't be able to take down the pirate sites either, because they've already been trying for decades and can't win the whack-a-mole.

Idk they're getting pretty good at the whack-a-mole thing, zlibrary is hanging on by a thread at this point.

Awesome idea. I may work on this.

I like Peter Watts' approach with Blindsight. He directly provides a variety of DRM-free (including plain old HTML!) versions of it and has licensed it under Creative Commons, and he accepts donations to the "Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund": https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

I had thought he decided to distribute this way specifically as a response to how much publishers kept from commercial sales, but I can't seem to dredge up a source confirming that at the moment.

I mean it doesn't sound like you are doing anything to do what you say you would like to do though?

Generally if I say I would like to do something but I can't be bothered it's because I don't actually care about it at all and I'm just saying that as part of my complicated get away routine.

I believe what you probably really mean is you would be ok with rewarding the authors if it was convenient and met your requirements. Then you wouldn't pirate and the author would be paid as part of your purchasing in the way you wanted.

on edit: sorry, I see it wasn't you that made the original comment, and you were just pointing it out.