hi folks.can anybody tell me how the book pirates make any money at bootlegging books and other material? thanks

They don't pay the writer royalties is one way.

I can think of a number of methods - but there is no way I'm going to put them in an open forum to give others ideas.

Bottom line though is that a book can be cheaply produced and sold in a number of sources without the seller/printer having any rights to the work and with no royalty to pay or shipping costs to cover all profit goes to the pirate! Even worse is that the pirate's profits, even at lower sales price, will often exceed the royalties paid to the original author via more conventional and legal routes.
Today's technology makes it pretty easy with only a moderate amount of technical know how.