Friday, February 20, 2009

Free books aren't free?

One of our correspondents expressed the view that our free books didn't seem,
to him at any rate, to be free. Presumably because YouPublish asks for $1.00 to download PDF files.

But all of our books are fully viewable and searchable on Google Book Search, which you can try out below.

In addition most of the chapters of TBB (for example) can be downloaded without charge from our web site page.
The other issue, I suppose, is whether the $1.00 charge on YouPublish is irritating. Irritating, I mean, in the sense that your free Lone Ranger Decoder Ring (only $1.00 shipping and handling) was irritating when you were 12 years old.















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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

on YouPublish, you can always set the price to Free.

Anonymous said...

I don't agree with you. Look at Hatcher - Algebraic topology. It is a good example of what is a free book. I don't see a reason not to include all the chapters in the pdf file and not to remove the FREE VERSION on all YELLOW pages of the book. Please think about this. I am sorry for my english.

Brian S Thomson said...

Your English is actually very good.

What's free? You can read every page of the books online without any charge. Is that free?

If you want a paperback, though, you have to pay $20-30. Not free.

If you want a PDF file with hyperlinks that you can use on your computer, then sign up for $1. Not free, but close.