So he spammed all the piracy sites with a version of the book that turned out, after downloading and reading a third of it, to be incomplete.
As someone who has pirated things in the past and ended up being pissed that it didn’t finish/wasn’t complete/etc. I don’t think that would send me screaming to spend money on it.
Quite the opposite, what this is proving is that providing an intro to your work to prove to the customer that they actually like it (like Amazon’s “try a sample”) is hugely valuable.
> As someone who has pirated things in the past and ended up being pissed that it didn’t finish/wasn’t complete/etc. I don’t think that would send me screaming to spend money on it.
So what? You weren't going to buy it anyway, eh? What are you going to do, pirate harder?
maybe, but if that was what I was doing I would write "as someone who has pirated in the past because I want digital copies of books I buy in paper form.." so their not having written that makes me think the what, are you gonna pirate harder crack is reasonable.
The big criticism of the original author is that they got a better experience from a piracy site than from the legitimate product. The author referenced by GP turns that around: ensuring a better experience from the legitimate product than from pirate sites.
It's entirely fair. You've got no business being pissed about something you got for free on a piracy site. Especially not when it actively points you where you can get the legitimate version.
I don't understand how your last line proves the opposite: if it's hugely valuable, that shows that this is a good idea, doesn't it?
As someone who has pirated things in the past and ended up being pissed that it didn’t finish/wasn’t complete/etc. I don’t think that would send me screaming to spend money on it.
Quite the opposite, what this is proving is that providing an intro to your work to prove to the customer that they actually like it (like Amazon’s “try a sample”) is hugely valuable.