Quote:
Originally Posted by sabredog
If it has been published, it is online and available to be downloaded (in the vast majority of cases).
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Not true. If it's popular fiction, yes. Older fiction (pre-2000 or so) that wasn't science fiction or wasn't a bestseller is hit-or-miss. Mostly miss, for the YA stuff that wasn't award-winners. Nonfiction that doesn't have an authorized ebook edition generally doesn't have an unauthorized one either.
Science fiction: almost everything.
NYTimes Bestsellers, most genres: almost everything.
Romance, mystery, thriller: except for officially-released backlists, almost nothing.
Nonfic: If it didn't win any awards, don't count on finding it. If it did, and it's more than 10 years old and has no official ebook release, expect the ebook version available to be scanned and auto-OCRd, or just scanned images.
Comic books: almost all available somewhere. Call 'em a subset of science fiction.
Gaming (RPG, wargame) books: most available; those that aren't, someone'll scrounge up & scan on request. Gaming communities have always been big on sharing materials. (They've also been aware of the need to support the authors & companies that bring them what they want; it's always been a balancing act between sharing & buying. But when buying is impossible, the sharing takes over.)
Children's & teen books: almost nonexistent, even in the science fiction genres, except for the top bestsellers & award-winners.
Public domain nonfic: erratic, and most of what is available, is scan-and-autoOCR at archive.org or google, not decently-formatted ebooks. Post-1923 books in the public domain tend to be locked into paid archives that have researched the copyright status.