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My favorite book is a little known one called "Black Holes and Timewarps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" and I reference it so much that I would really like a copy that's fully mine and searchable, but I also care about the author receiving compensation for the purchase. Where do you get your PDF copies from?

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[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Buy a physical copy and there are book scanning services companies like blueleaf and bookscan. They range from cheap to extremely high quality for about $20 more.

Your local library might also have a "book edge" scanner that lets you scan books easily.

Just know it's a pain in the ass and slow as hell so maybe it's worth it to pay someone else to do it.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Guess I never considered that. Is that a common service at a print shop? I've owned the physical copy for decades

I somehow missed the part where you said that you already own the book. You should definitely just pirate the pdf, there is nothing wrong with that when you already own it.

The link to its page on the archive https://archive.org/details/blackholes-time-warps-throne-hawking

The direct link to the pdf https://archive.org/download/blackholes-time-warps-throne-hawking/(Commonwealth%20Fund%20Book%20Program)%20Kip%20S.%20Thorne,%20Stephen%20Hawking%20-%20Black%20Holes%20and%20Time%20Warps_%20Einstein%E2%80%99s%20Outrageous%20Legacy-W.%20W.%20Norton%20&%20Company%20(1995).pdf

Dont worry, only the cover is low resolution, the rest is nice and crisp. Even the internal references are working.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

You could also buy a physical or digital copy or donate to the author directly and then still just pirate the pdf. That would be morally unquestionable imo.