#when will gringos leafn to shut the fuck up?

[alukardtheabysswalker]

Sometimes you can really tell that people here will argue only from their First World POV, specially in regards to piracy.

Let's take books for example:

"You can get them in your library!"

Nope, not how it works here. Either the publisher has to get the rights and make an effort to distribute and the libraries consider it a good enough profit to put it on sale or the author has to do all that work by themselves. Luckily localization has become easier with time but even then that doesn't cover small and indie authors. And this applies to big franchise libraries like Ateneo or Yenny, do you think a local small library can afford all of that?

"You can request that books be added!"

Again, not how it works. If a library considers a book profitable they will sell it. You can ask if they have a book and they'll tell you if they do or don't and if MAYBE they'll have it and in most cases this, again, does not cover indie authors. You could make a movement to ask for copies of a book and or works of an author but that would be a whole lot of work for yourself and many others and they might still not take it.

"You can wait for them to restock"

That's true, I have tried that. It takes between three months and never because they deem it not profitable anymore and not worth selling anymore but they won't tell you if you ask.

"You can ask the author themselves to sell it to you or make some kind of deal"

Okay, let's consider first that this direct approach requieres for someone to be: 1)fluent enough in the author's native language to communicate with them, 2)for the author to have the time to actually negotiate with everyone that asks and 3)That that copy will not be in my own language and again I would need to be fluent in at least one language that isn't mine, specially because I'm assuming you're talking about USA authors and, this might be a shock to you, not everyone speaks English. And second, you might have nothing to offer as a bargain because you're not a reviewer and have no platform to speak of because why would you need to be an influencer to get a fucking book? So you're stuck with paying for the book full cost AND shipping which is fucking expensive. You could argue that the author might be willing to pay for the shipping out of their own pocket but not only does this mean a loss for them sometimes shipping depending on the country can be as expensive as the book itself therefore in this scenario there's no profit for the author, but also in some countries they will tax you for a book when it gets there even without shipping so one way or another you are paying more for it.

"But they could email you a pdf of the book"

Okay, let's consider again that this means still needing to go through all the work AND the copy might not be available in a language I can understand, we finally get to the crux of the topic and the main reason I wanted to make this post. Do you have ANY idea with what kind of economy we're dealing with? I'm not asking you to be an expert, I'm asking you to consider that you live IN THE RICHEST FUCKING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. I don't care how bad the economy is there right now how bad do you think people in a third world country have it? Argentina's been having an inflation of over 40% for the past 8 years do you even know how many pesos is a dollar? No, you don't, here it is: 1 dollar=208 pesos. This will be absolutely obsolete by next week not yo mention a couple of months or years. And this is one kind of dollar, our economy is in such shambles that we have five different changes for dollars here. Do you think I have the money to buy that many books? Thank God resources like book depository exist where you can easily buy and be confident the book will get there but it's still full price and still only in English, and again still not a library here.

I am sorry for the situation of authors and indie authors in particular I really am, the way things are now they can barely make a scent and it shouldn't be that way. But also, as much as this may be a shock to you, the world does not revolve around the USA and if I want to read the books I want to read I have to either flip a coin with many libraries here and HOPE they have it or I pirate it, because if I can't then I can't read it.