Update Your Shelf: BitLit Offers Access To Ebook Versions of Books You Own 82
First time accepted submitter Peter Hudson (3717535) writes Cory Doctorow writes on boingboing.net "BitLit works with publishers to get you free or discounted access to digital copies of books you own in print: you use the free app for Android and iOS to take a picture of the book's copyright page with your name printed in ink, and the publisher unlocks a free or discounted ebook version. None of the Big Five publishers participate as yet, but indies like O'Reilly, Berrett-Koehler, Red Wheel Weiser, Other Press, Greystone, Coach House, Triumph, Angry Robot, Chicago Review, Dundurn, and PM Press (publishers of my book The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow) are all in."
What could possibly go wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
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Just signing the acetate with a pen (normal, cd-writing pen etc). Hold the sheet over the book and take the picture.
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My phone is so cheap it doesn't have a flash, you insensitive clod!
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Mine has a flash. I generally have my finger over it though.
You don't need a cheap phone. You do need to know how to take a picture with it though.
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I wonder how often you will need to repeat this to keep your eBooks from deactivating....
Otherwise... you could use a removable ink.... and when you've got your eBook, remove your name, and sell the physical book.
Or for that matter... your 'qualifying physical book' might be a library book, or piece you've loaned from someone else.
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How are they even going to know it's a real copyright page?
Do you think they own every book they have an ebook of?
Wait a second...
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Yeah, you have to be REAL desperate to consider opening GIMP just to get a free ebook...
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
People aren't evil. The simple fact is if a publisher sells a book at a fair price people would rather pay money than simply download the book.
Case in point against DRM are the musicians and comedians who are offering a "pay what you want" model that is so successful these guys make MORE money than they would through a traditional publisher, with less advertising and less overall effort. Time is money.
So yeah some guy will offer the book for free... and a few people will see the link and realize they can BUY the thing, and they'll do that instead. The people who download it wouldn't have bought it anyway. How many books do you read at Chapters? Do you buy EVERY BOOK?
Nope.
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Pretty much the only musicians/comedians who make money with "pay what you want" or even with their own web site selling their wares for similar or even lower than the 'regular' price of similar merchandise are the ones who don't need the money and who have already 'made it'. They already went through the process of going through labels or promoters, dingy nightclubs, and made it big, so that lots of lots of people already know about them and what to expect from the product they buy. And they also get a w
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People aren't evil.
Sure they are. But this has nothing to with DRM or free books. its just nature, and we ARE evil to the core.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all books are the same. There are two major categories non-fiction versus fiction. I would have to be honest and say when it comes to say text books, I want to download them for free and never pay for them. I don't want a text book written by one author that only lasts a couple of years. I want one where hundreds even thousands of people expert in the field have collaborated on and update once a year. A government funded exercise, where it is not about generating a profit but saving money by reducing cost for education for every citizen. So open collaborative text books free of copyright hassles beyond keeping plagiarists under control.
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People aren't evil.
Welcome to the internet! You'll first want to take our new users orientation, where you study such schools of thought as this... [penny-arcade.com]
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If anyone wants to download a bootleg Kindle edition, you can easily find them online very shortly after publication
(And many books with no official ebook edition have homemade versions of varying quality as well.)
Most Kindle books are 500kB or so, less than a hi res scan of a page.
So this scan/print/sign/register/download method is much more work than what you can already do now.
Physical books are great (Score:5, Interesting)
Just bundle them. Do it as a pre-order thing. People might even be enticed to pre-order something they wouldn't otherwise.
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I used to buy many books second-hand. Then came the great bookshelf collapse. Nearly broke an arm when that thing fell on top of me.
I donated them all to the school I was a student with at the time to start the sixth-form library. Over the next two years I saw them used as paper plane material, soaked and stuck to the ceiling as paper wads, thrown, used to prop furniture and stuffed in a toilet. I never actually saw a student read one of them, though the teachers did.
Not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
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This app is incompatible with all of your devices (Score:3)
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is by far the PRIMARY motivator I have of pirating anything. Second is having to reveal my banking transaction codes in order to make a purchase, when I have no trust of either my own system, my connection, or my vendor, third, and LEAST, is the PRICE.
It has been my experience that DRM'd stuff is so finicky and unreliable I might as well throw it away like an old screwdriver whose shaft slips in its handle. Its
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Book Resale value (Score:2)
So, i have to physically damage my book by writing in it, and it will prevent the next guy down the line from ever participating in such a scheme.
Re:Book Resale value (Score:4, Informative)
So, i have to physically damage my book by writing in it, and it will prevent the next guy down the line from ever participating in such a scheme.
um, photoshop the writing in?
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I get the feeling you have to use their app to take the photo. But there are always workarounds.
Ink on a peel-able piece of transparent tape comes to mind.
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"Following the rules"
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No no, as the commenter above said, "People arent evil." Noone would actually work around this system, its all hypothetical!
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This is the dictionary definition of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Someone offers you another copy of your book for free, and your are pissed off. If it's really that onerous and awful, here's a thought: don't take that free thing you are being given.
See, that was easy.
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1 - Most of what i saw was not free.
2 - Why should my want of 'freeness' supersede the poor sap that buys my used books? Books that now have a reduced value. ( both due to it being tied to me, and that i have defaced a piece of literature )
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No iPad version (Score:2)
Write your name with a pen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Some of us really enjoy our books -- as someone who has a personal library with ~4,000 books, I would be appalled if I had to write on any of their pages with a pen.
Not because I am planning on selling any of them, but because to me, I just see it as damaging the book.
A good many of them are autographed or antiquarian books, and the last thing I'd ever want to do is sign them with a *pen*.
I find the whole deal oddly disturbing -- maybe it's just me as a bibliophile, but writing on a book sounds like a sacrilege.
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Use a business card with the picture and tell them why you have an aversion to defacing a book - they should probally like that as much as the written in pen, since it gives them much more information than they requested and they should appreciate the 4000 book personal library enough to understand your principalled stance
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Indeed. That is a great idea. Thank you.
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Yes, clearly I was unaware of this fact when I made this comment. Because, you know, it's an all-or-nothing world where people offering product features tell their users to do it their way or stick it.
If you cannot offer a helpful suggestion when someone questions something they aren't comfortable with, perhaps you should cut down the snark and just ignore the comment.
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I suspect the reasoning is that one physical copy == one license. By having the physical copy tied to you, by putting your name in it, they ensure you can't pass it on to anyone else, which means the license becomes non-transferrable. That means it's safe for them to give you a digital copy of the book, covered by the same license, in the knowledge that nobody else can claim a digital copy from the same physical book, without buying a new copy.
I would also be entirely unsurprise
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One of my small treasures is a copy of the Complete Works of Byron. One of the wonders it contains is the signature and dedication written in it by the original owner, who gifted it to a family member -- in 1847.
Even so, the notion of writing my name in my own books (probably 5000 or so volumes) gives me the quivering shudders. Not to mention the most horrid case of writer's cramp.
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Eh? No, we were bewailing a requirement of defacing our books, but then it occurred to me that such signatures might be valued by future owners, as I value my antique the more because it has a history.
(Just for S&G, I tracked down the original owner's descendants -- turns out they still live in Boston.)
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No problem... after all this is slashdot, you're *supposed* to misread stuff !! ;)
Unfortunately, US only (Score:2)
That offer is only valid for those who have a USA address for either google play or itunes,
Good concept, but useless for the vast majority of us who don't happen to have an address in the USA.
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There's an easier way with O'Reilly (Score:3)
However, if you sign up with O'Reilly (free), determine the ISBN of any of their physical books (which is on the physical copy that you bought, and O'Reilly keep a 'backup' copy of the ISBN on their website), you can receive an eBook copy of that book for - wait for it - also for $4.99.
How does this compare to Amazon's Kindle MatchBook (Score:1)
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So... (Score:3)
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