I'd say, maybe buy the physical book and pirate the Ebooks. I haven't been the best at this... I just buy the ebooks and strip them... But I suppose I could buy a physical book locally and have a loaner for a friend, or give it to charity
Kill a tree just so that you can feel morally correct and the author gets a 2¢ royalty? Naw, just pirate and don't feel bad since apparently that is what publishers want you to do[0]. Maybe buy the author a coffee if you ever run into them.
[0] based on their actions it sure seems like this is the case.
Those forest they own came with trees that would be preserved if they didn't exist.
They do make deserts out of forests when they clearcut. A lot of land is owned by others (governments, native tribes) and permits are used to extract the pulp
Trees grown for paper pulp regrow quickly and are farmed. If you know of old-growth forests that have recently been clearcut for paper pulp, please cite a source.
The physical copy exists to be a conversation piece on a shelf, to loan out, talk to friends about, not mind losing to a family member who's visiting, etc.
The digital copy exists to mark up, index, search, highlight, learn from, etc. If it's not on LibGen I'll buy it on Kobo and strip it in to my library using Obok DeDRM and an old ePaper reader I wouldn't want to use otherwise, and then buy a physical copy of it's something I'd want to share.
So often the books I loan out are "clean" and don't even have a wrinkle in the spine but sometimes I'll go through and dog-ear important passages or pencil-line particular parts. I've had friends assume I hadn't actually read the book until we pull out koreader and go over my highlights.
