Well, here's something I learned.

Years and years ago, I got two books in a series published by a tiny imprint that did zero marketing, and I was too noob to do any myself. Didn't sell shit. Had trouble even getting anyone to read the damn things.

Years pass. I get disabled, and make new friends. One of them asks to read the shit, so I send him some epub files I made for my own use.

He, being the awesome fucktard he is,promptly puts copies in his book folder. Which is one of the folders he shares via soulseek.

A few weeks later, I start getting emails from random people asking if the third book is available. My files have my author email in them, so it wasn't super confusing, but it did take a bit to figure out where the files came from for these strangers.

To date, more people have asked about the third book than ever read the printed version.

Now, would I rather have gotten paid for those reads? Fuck yeah. But, when I sent the small list of interested people a link to the series I'm currently publishing via amazon, maybe ten percent went and bought a copy of the file.

So, despite having had maybe fifty people "steal" my two books, those thefts resulted in sales anyway. Sales that I absolutely would not have gotten from those same people if they hadn't read and liked the older stuff.

Piracy is not some noble pursuit. But, realistically, it can be an advantage if you're small enough that it serves as advertising, or big enough that it won't decrease sales enough to matter monetarily. Mid range "creatives", though? They're going to be in a bad spot from it. The conversion from pirated works to sold works is fucking SMALL. It's small enough that if you're struggling to make enough income to create full time, you're fucked because you aren't going to get serious grass roots awareness pushing sales to bump you up like that. People are going to pirate instead of buying at that popularity level.

But me? I'm fine with it. My old books, I may put up on Amazon at some point, but since I am unlikely to finish the third in the series (which is a long story), I don't see the point. So, they're out there, and that makes me happy. Now, maybe once or twice a year, I get a new email. That, for a no name hack like me, is better than the chump change I'll ever get from Amazon.