'Digital book piracy is one of the biggest threats facing authors' livelihoods today. Read more How BookTok motivated me to read again The hashtag had been gaining popularity for a while, but more and more authors recently started noticing the dire effects of their novels being circulated online.

The Z-Library site was taken down after Booktokers began sharing the link publicly, especially for Colleen Hoover's latest novel, It Starts With Us (Atria Books, 2022).Ī couple of viral TikToks about the novel being free for download on Z-Library spearheaded the #zlibrary hashtag to amass over 19 million views on Tiktok. Academics and readers depend on these websites, but the same cannot be said for the authors whose work gets circulated on the sites without compensation. There has been a debate over the validity and legality of 'shadow library' websites such as Z-Library for years. While the North South University's library provides me with a good supply of physical and digital academic journals and textbooks, sometimes they simply aren't enough'. For example, when I'm trying to design my syllabi, and I'm trying to source a hard-to-find textbook, sometimes there are no options than to turn to sites like Z-Library. 'That being said', she added, 'for those of us who work in academia or are simply fans of books, the shortage of book supplies in countries like Bangladesh makes it incredibly difficult for us to find the right resources. Read more The fault in our books: Why are Bangla books poorly edited?

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