Actually, there is a Tivoli product that does more or less exactly what the OP asks for: IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Dynamic Content Delivery

I take the view that by downloading a copy someone else has made available, you are not personally infringing copyright. The person who makes it available has done that. Your action in downloading seems to me to be entirely equivalent to finding a copy that someone has left on the bus.

So I say download the e-text and read it, but under no circumstances should you re-distribute the copy you downloaded, because that would clearly be infringing on someone's legal copyright.

If you wish, you can write to the author and say you enjoyed it (if you did) -- that's just normal respectful behaviour and no different to what you might do if you had bought a first edition in hardback.

Under the circumstances I see no need to make any payment to the author, since neither she nor her original publisher seem to be motivated to earn further payment for the work.

FWIW I'm in my mid '50s.