Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The most recent Harry Potter book was available as an (atrocious photos) ebook a few days before the release date; someone had gotten a copy from a store (maybe an employee?) and photographed the whole thing, one page at a time, and uploaded the photos to the net.
Sometimes the official digital copies get leaked by publishing employees, on or before the official release date. And very popular books have scanned versions available as soon as the print version gets to the stores, before they're allowed to sell them.
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Yes, but there are two things here:
Said atrocious quality you mentioned yourself. Most books on my kindle I did not pay money for. One of those is a pdf. Of actually pretty good quality, it is well scanned. But I have no motivation whatsoever to read it because it is compard to "normal" ebooks rather annoying because I constantly have to pan the page I am on. I will very likely leave it be until I have really nothing else to read or until I can find a "real" ebook of it.
It isnt really compareable to a real ebook. And that is one of the *good* examples of such a type of "ebooks".
Basically, the "readability" of an ebook version is important. When you compare two ebook "versions" and do *not* mention the readability you either
- "forget" to mention it, in which case the whole comparsion is deeply flawed
- assume it to be identical and as result has no impact
And, sorry, that - getting a free ebook *in the same quality* (or at least compareable quality) as the pricey version *before* the release day - is something extremly uncommon.
What I take offense of - and what I still call BS - is Worldwalker stating it like it is the norm or in any way a semi-common occurence. Which is quite simply not the case.
From my personal experience I would say from the books I read (fantasy/scifi) I can find very few at release day. A good amount a few days after release. Another (bigger) amount in the weeks after that. And a small amount (but still far far bigger than that of the release day ones) I find never (And, yes, they are available es pricey ebooks. And, yes, I bought some of those due to that.).
That you have "waiting time" as factor for
your average free ebook isn't really something which should be open to discussion because it is about as clearly present as gravity.
Of cource it isn't for
every ebook, but the only sensible way of talking about stuff like that is to assume you are talking about an "average" version of the subject your are discussing.
Maybe I should have made that clear, but isn't that kinda obvious...?