Quoting from Attitude, p. 110:
"Well, Rodregaz went independent. She found a publisher who had a profitable line of stolen ebooks that they use to fund their own publications. They started packaging her book in with bundles of older, similar books. So the savvy book reader looking for an old copy of Tolstoy or Kerouac would be pleasantly surprised to find they got a bonus copy of something they may well like, and they’d take a look at it. Through these illegal avenues, Rodregaz built a fan base and eventually started outselling some of her legitimate competitors."
Now, I agree that maybe not every step in Rodregaz's thought process is spelled out, but the basics are there. The publisher traffics in stolen e-books as a way to bring attention to the other books they are publishing. By working with this publisher, Rodregaz got attention for her work, even though it meant her books were part of packages that, for the most part, were pirated media. It says she started outselling some of her legitimate competitors without saying that all of those competitors are corporate-based. It doesn't specifically say why she chose this avenue, but the fact that it generated better sales for us gives us a pretty good hint.
Jason H.