I have talked to a few published authors (most unsuccessful) and listened to a few successful published authors, and they all say the same as you. Some of them (esp. successful) give away free books on their website. They just want people to read their books.
The ones complaining here aren’t the authors, but the publishers.
Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.
Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.
And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.
