So now I download from Anna's archive and if it's as good as I expected based on ratings then I pay for it, which I've done most recently for Children of Time.
Thankfully I live somewhere where I can download legally.
Second language in the world by native speakers, piracy being effectively legal in Spain (non commercially), and so on.
[0]: https://software.annas-archive.gl/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv...
In the section for my native tongue, I zoomed in a few times, here and there, and I only once did I stumble upon an author I knew.
To me, writing a book feels like such a monumental endeavor that I find it hard to fathom the amount of collective effort that it took to write all this, especially considering how most of these works are almost forgotten by now (something something power law).
I hope they can fix this in the long run. We need to preserve digital information on a much broader basis.
There's nothing AA could "fix" here, this depends entirely on volunteers uploading the books. Your best way to help is to buy the books yourself, use a book scanning service (eg. 1dollarscan), and upload it to ZLib/LibGen.
You can also make a book request on ZLib, that way someone else will be able to do that for you if they want to
With a few other options in search:
https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22steel+construction%22&mo...
When zoomed all the way, it is a book shelf. Totally un-expected, nice touch.