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Funny how a chain of thought goes: 1. I read a few titles and thought "Hmm, I'll go and buy a few of these on Amazon." 2. Then I thought: "I already have some
by AlexMuir 14y ago
Funny how a chain of thought goes:
1. I read a few titles and thought "Hmm, I'll go and buy a few of these on Amazon."
2. Then I thought: "I already have some of these books that I never read, I could gift them to others."
3. Perhaps I could set up some sort of book exchange where HN users can share books.
4. It would barely be worth the hassle and cost of postage.
5. Couldn't we share digital copies and avoid the postage?
6. That's PIRACY. The idea is dead.
It seems to me that a future where books cost a maximum of $2.99 is inevitable. I would unhesitatingly have bought 10 of these books, and there'd be almost no point in 'pirating' them, or even in sharing physical copies.
- SatvikBeri 14y agopaperbackswap.com is a decent book exchange. The major advantage is not that you save money on books, but that you can find a lot of obscure older books.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoGood call. I noticed they have a lot of the older Executioner (Mack Bolan) books (the original 1-50 series) which I'd like to check out. I still have the first printings of the first five books in the series.
- zmonkeyz 14y agoTalk about a blast from the past, my dad used to read all those Mack Bolan books. :) I swear there was one where he was on a tractor shooting someone on the cover...
- mindcrime 14y agoTalk about a blast from the past, I used to read all those Mack Bolan books. Back in the 80's / early 90's, I devoured those things. Haven't seen or read one in years now though. It might be fun to go back and re-read some of them.
- kqr2 14y agoAlso check out http://www.bookcrossing.com/ http://www.bookcrossing.com/
- subsystem 14y agoA good book on piracy from a cultural and business perspective is The Pirate's Dilemma. It used to be "pay what you want" but the payment system seems broken. http://thepiratesdilemma.com/about-the-book http://thepiratesdilemma.com/about-the-book
- Kerrick 14y ago> 5. Couldn't we share digital copies and avoid the postage? You can. There's a service called "Lendle" that facilitates sharing (lending) Kindle books. http://lendle.me/ http://lendle.me/
- gcr 14y agoMost books used to cost a maximum of $2.99.
- hooande 14y agoFear not, Ben Franklin already went down this thought path. An old fashioned library will stock most of these titles, and might order the others on request. I'm fortunate enough to live in a city where the library does home delivery ("It's like amazon, but without the money"). Having to physically return the books can be daunting, but it's a small price to pay for eclectic reading habits with no buyer's remorse. I'd recommend that more people look into using the local library. Now that all of my books are free, I have more reading to do than I have time.
- lesterbuck 14y agoI've never heard of a public library offering delivery. Could you tell us where you live? Will they take back the old books if they are delivering new?
- rdl 14y agoThere is a surprisingly large amount of bookwarez out there. I pretty much buy on amazon (kindle), but if it isn't available on kindle, bookwarez seems the easiest way to get an ebook. I have bought a bunch of Audible audiobooks too, but their DRM is so annoying that I rip them to mp3, and if I can bookwarez the audiobook, would just do that to avoid wasting 3h running the conversion and encoding.