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Comment by ntumlin | Hacker News Reader

Clicking the link to the HTML version of the book takes you to a page that makes you tweet (and grants some pretty far reaching twitter permissions) to read the book. If you click to the chapters folder and then on the individual .asciidoc files, GitHub will render them for you.

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Yep, you can read this book in a few different ways:

- AsciiDoc via GitHub. Nav to the chapters and they'll render into HTML. Cost: Free under Creative Commons [source]

- HTML via Pony Foo. Cost: authorize app and auto-share a single tweet (feel free to revoke right after), Creative Commons. [html]

- The book was released on Amazon today (PDF or physical copies) [amzn]

[source]: https://github.com/mjavascript

[html]: https://ponyfoo.com/books

[amzn]: https://amzn.to/2OQ8vMe

[license]: https://ponyfoo.com/license

"Do X to unlock" schemes are not popular with the HN community and you'll get a lot of flak for trying to use game theory mechanics to get people to market your book.

The "tweet to unlock but you can find an ugly version in the source code" was enough to turn me off your product and lose any interest in discovering more. Just feels like a cheap tactic, especially since I don't have a Twitter account.

Meanwhile I find it petty to complain about the small price of a single tweet. I don’t understand what or how it’s a “game theory mechanic.”

Is it also a manipulative tactic for a store to impose the “Pay $1 to unlock a candy bar” mechanic on you? I bet you use the same dark mechanic on your employer.

I'm a prospect that explained how the journey disinterested me from the product. I provided specific examples along with my best understanding of why I felt that way. This is one of the things that HN was founded on.

I'm asserting that you were only backsplaining something you couldn't be fucked to download and read regardless. :)

Did you miss the part where I said I was prospect? That means a potential customer that was clearly interested in the book, but changed his mind. The author screwed up a chance to convert me and many other customers.

Agreed and well stated. Will definitely not be reading this as an attempt to slyly market the product is enough to turn me off. If the content is valuable it should stand on its own.

It's one of many alternatives. You can purchase the book, read it on my website like you've mentioned, or just read it on GitHub as HTML.

HTML link, no further steps necessary:

https://github.com/mjavascript/mastering-modular-javascript/...

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