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.