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Comment by qup | Hacker News Reader

That's an interesting take, given that the landing page demonstrates its value with some example pages, and the index of topics.

I can skim the chapter titles and get a pretty good idea of exactly what value there is. I'm not sure what's holding you up.

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I think that's true, but I'm also one of the people that's going to bounce from that.

While several chapters have mildly interesting titles, what I've come used to from these kinds of offers are mostly just rehashed blog articles from other sources. I remember one extra special case about an Elixir "book" that pretty much just copy-pasted the official getting started guide.

Generally speaking, these kind of hurdles don't inspire confidence in the quality of the content.

But you can see the actual content. 6% of the book is on display on the landing page. I think you should just judge the quality of that instead of inventing ways to make assumptions based on other factors.

Why not a series of blog posts?

To me, the reader, what value does sharing my email or it being in The incredibly less flexible "ebook" format have?

You, the reader, don't have a choice between a series of blog posts and an emailed pdf.

> Why not a series of blog posts?

It seems pretty self-evident that they wish to exchange something of value for something else of value. This is a pretty common activity among humans.

Unfortunately, as we see here, "instead, why don't you do even more work to change it to my specifications and then give it to me for free" is a common counteroffer.

Take a shot every time a HN pedant types "Why don't you just X".

I am already writing every tip as a blog post. But those blog posts take a full day to write as they are much more detailled compared to the short summary in the ebook. My time is limited like yours, and the short ebook is the best way to spread the knowledge: You get the information now, and I'll notify you when those full articles are written.

Hey man, thanks for the book.

Don't forget you don't owe these guys what they're asking for. You've done the work to share your knowledge, they can do the work to gather it.

Well, for example, intro doesn’t say which SQL flavor the author is targeting. As a MSSQL user I wouldn’t want to share my email in exchange for MySQL tricks

Your definition of value differs from that of others'.

Yeah, of course it does. Fully agree. I don't understand the point you're making.

I haven't offered my definition of value. I just said that you can clearly determine the value to yourself by reading the landing page, it has the relevant information required (besides actually reading all the content).

And what of values inherent in privacy concerns?

It just seems like you're applying a very narrow view of what can be considered "value" here.

The "privacy violation" is not the value of the book, that's the cost to you.

We're not discussing the values inherent in privacy concerns, we're discussing the value of the book, and whether or not you can guess at its value before you give the guy your email.

You're talking about something else.

No, you're talking about something else. Obviously OOP's concern is about the value of the book vis a vis what is demanded of the recipient in exchange for the book.

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