Somewhere, a publisher is giggling as they change the constants in problems in an otherwise unchanged first semester physics book with an upcoming new edition.

Somewhere, a publisher is giggling as they change the constants in problems in an otherwise unchanged first semester physics book with an upcoming new edition. I think a lot of good books never pay their authors much, at least in proportion to the effort that goes into researching and writing them. Scihub was also violating copyright, but academic paper authors don't get paid by publishers; they the journals. Lots of intellectual labor goes into producing a good where the author would much rather you read it without paying than buy it but not read it. This is all to say, the publishers, who are perhaps no longer needed in the 21st century, are sales motivated, but there's at least a substantial category of authors who are not.