3 ms·

> I'm generally tired of the whole "I pirate it but if the content is good I will buy it" line of thinking This is a natural thing to do when buying expensive

by eps 6y ago

> I'm generally tired of the whole "I pirate it but if the content is good I will buy it" line of thinking This is a natural thing to do when buying expensive physical books, because that's exactly what you can do in a bookshop. Imagine if all books in a bookshop were shrink-wrapped. The need to do this has been somewhat alleviated by Amazon's "peek inside" feature, but for the books that don't have it's basically a binary choice between not buying it at all and getting a shady pdf first and then deciding if to purchase the real thing or not. Applies to cooking, technical, programming, history books - pretty much all of non-fiction. Especially if it's thick and over $50. So it's possible that his drop of 40% in sales basically means that 40% of his prior buyers regretted purchasing a book and would've not bought it if they had a chance to preview.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
I sincerely doubt that the inside pages of books are a major factor in any buying decision.
- iamben 6y ago
  Curious as to why you think that? It definitely affects my decision when buying non fiction - particularly if it's a book with a lot of photos.
- azalemeth 6y ago
  It the factor in my decision for programming / scientific books: I have a PhD, am interested in many disparate things and therefore need to find texts at the right level for my current amount of understanding in the topic. This is surprisingly hard. Flicking through the pages is the best way to do it. I've never bought an e-Book with DRM. I never will. Occasionally I've downloaded PDFs of books I have the dead-tree version of but want to be able to search through. Most publishers really are terrible at moving into the 21st century. Online e-library lending restrictions are a gigantic pain in the arse, are massively over-engineered, and pointlessly exist to restrict information from those who are best placed to understand it.

by eps 6y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

I sincerely doubt that the inside pages of books are a major factor in any buying decision.

iamben 6y ago
Curious as to why you think that? It definitely affects my decision when buying non fiction - particularly if it's a book with a lot of photos.
azalemeth 6y ago
It the factor in my decision for programming / scientific books: I have a PhD, am interested in many disparate things and therefore need to find texts at the right level for my current amount of understanding in the topic. This is surprisingly hard. Flicking through the pages is the best way to do it. I've never bought an e-Book with DRM. I never will. Occasionally I've downloaded PDFs of books I have the dead-tree version of but want to be able to search through. Most publishers really are terrible at moving into the 21st century. Online e-library lending restrictions are a gigantic pain in the arse, are massively over-engineered, and pointlessly exist to restrict information from those who are best placed to understand it.