I want a book, I can choose to buy from a local shop or Amazon or print on demand shop selling a pirated copy.
Those options are listed most expensive to cheapest.
But a portion of the the sale goes to that business, who in turn passes it on to various places.
The local bookshop uses the money to keep an asset in my local community and employs people in my local community. Amazon ships from a warehouse, and provides no local amenity. But they might employ someone locally. Maybe. The print on demand shop is giving me a counterfeit product, but it's the cheapest. It provides no local benefit.
So I'm not confusing book for bookstore. I'm specifically saying that the second order effects of seeking the cheapest copy of a book have implications beyond the sale of the book itself.
You’re conflating cheap with copyright violation, which is a bit disingenuous in an attempt I guess to guilt people for wanting to buy a cheap book.
It’s fine to want a cheap book, want to support the publisher/author with a legit purchase, and not care about supporting a bookstore. Not everyone who likes books cares to keep alive the industry of physical books and bookstores.
What is "fine" is a values judgement. I would say that there's a continuum that goes from downloading an unapproved copy (worst) to buying the book at a local bookstore (best), and buying from Amazon instead sits somewhere in the middle. Somebody else might find the whole publishing industry gross, and decide the most moral choices are to either pirate the book or buy a secondhand copy.
>would say that there's a continuum that goes from downloading an unapproved copy (worst) to buying the book at a local bookstore (best),
Because you’re still fixated on bookstores, which tons of people don’t give a shit about. You’re incorrectly putting stuff on a one-dimensional continuum.
>or buy a secondhand copy.
Being a secondary market participant supports a market. If you don’t want to support publishers, it must be pirated.
I'm not trying to guilt anyone. Some folks need to optimize for cheap.
What I'm trying to say is that cheap might not be the best general metric, and laying out reasoning behind that.
I try to avoid saying that someone is bad for choosing cheap, and if I did earlier, I apologize. The goal is to say, "here are some conditions to consider when making a decision".
