i have every book need some help picking

I agree with streetfighter and would not want to encourage illegal downloads of chess books.

I'm glad I am not the only one who thinks stealing someone's copyrighted work is wrong.

I think then asking for advice about it takes the biscuit!

Street fighter is right,

It can 3-6 years to write a really well written chess book where nothing has been left to chance and the author put alot of time and effort into it!

Announcing you violated a GM's or IM's copyright may leave you open to legal action there's a good chance that the authors of those books come on this site they'll want to know who you are or will hear about it. In John Nunn's books there's an explicit warning about violating his copyrights on the inside of the cover.

Buy the books it shows respect and rewards the authors for their hard work!

I have downloaded such pdfs in the past, but only to see for myself what the book is like prior to buying (or not) the full paper version. Sometimes an official pdf excerpt is available, but not always. To my mind, it is like browsing in a bookstore.

How can it be stealing if I delete the download after looking at it? If I use Amazon's "Look Inside!", am I also stealing? My intention and use are exactly the same in both cases.

It's not the same as using downloaded software with the "testing" excuse, because I am not using the chess book text - I am simply looking to see what it is like. The only benefit and/or enjoyment I derive from doing so is knowing that I can avoid ordering a book that won't come up to my expectations. (Of course, the content may still turn out to be disappointing or inappropriate when considered in detail for the first time in paper form - but that's a risk I am prepared to take.)

Online reviews are helpful, but they don't always give the information I am after - such as the relative amount of text and annotation, number of diagrams, quality of typesetting, etc. For that, I really need to see the book.

I don't have a local bookstore (although there is an excellent Oxfam secondhand bookshop just round the corner for me which gets in one or two decent chess books from time to time, though most are in the older, descriptive format). My local library's chess section isn't very good.

Finally, I estimate I have spent about 1000 GBP on chess books in the last year, so it's not as if I am depriving authors of royalty revenue!