Steal This Book? There’s a Price

For me that approach is just dumb. It's like "War on drugs" - you are fighting something you cannot defeat instead of trying to make a real change.

If I pirated a book, liked it and saw a message there "If you liked it, consider supporting the author in this and that way", I would probably just do that.

If you ever illegally downloaded a game you know that often there are messages like this from pirating groups and I believe that's the right thing to do - if you liked it, support it.