Everybody's different. For me, an inverse correlation happens: libgen etc. act as a bookshop where I can freely browse and evaluate stuff before I buy. So I wan

Everybody's different. For me, an inverse correlation happens: libgen etc. act as a bookshop where I can freely browse and evaluate stuff before I buy. So I want to make sure I'm not cheated. Sometimes the brand is enough, i.e. I know by experience that if a book is from Manning I can trust it, whereas if it's from Packt it's hit-or-miss-but-probably-miss. Self-published ones? 90% are worthless, 1% are gems with the rest on the verge. You can't really know this from reading a sample chapter or the ToC.