The author wouldn't get paid for a returned copy either. And publishers have very wide discretion over things like giving out freebie copies — in pretty much every standard publishing contract they control what happens to the books, not the author. An author is usually given a small amount of copies of the book (in O'Reilly's case 10) — beyond that what happens to all the rest is entirely in the publisher's hands.
Comments
You're probably right, but it's still wrong to do that without asking permission first.
The author wouldn't get paid for a returned copy either. And publishers have very wide discretion over things like giving out freebie copies — in pretty much every standard publishing contract they control what happens to the books, not the author. An author is usually given a small amount of copies of the book (in O'Reilly's case 10) — beyond that what happens to all the rest is entirely in the publisher's hands.