You read the article. Hopefully you’ll send over a micropayment to support the author. Otherwise, how are content creators supposed to keep creating content? I

You read the article. Hopefully you’ll send over a micropayment to support the author. Otherwise, how are content creators supposed to keep creating content? I found the article interesting despite not having an interest in buying a book. It wasn’t trying to “sell” me anything or get me to sign up for anything. It was an unobtrusive experience. Do we criticize news articles because they are tracking our every move or dismiss news articles as just a host for tracking and advertising? That’s what journalism and broadcasting is— the writers and producers trade content in exchange for you seeing an advertisement. I appreciate the author’s work and, if I were in the market for a book about the history of salt, I would have been glad to click his link. I am sure the more financially blessed among us would love to live in a world that wasn’t so gauche as to require people actually making money from their work, but that isn’t reality. Not everyone has the privilege of just giving away work for free. The funny thing is that if the author had a paywall, people would complain about that. I don’t understand the resistance to people trying to make money with content, especially when done in an unobtrusive way.