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Comment by woolion | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that it's necessarily true, but the big problem is that discoverability is almost impossible, and that the investment to know how good a book might be is much higher than other forms of media. It's also why you might get more out of books, you have to make some efforts to ingest them, but this means it's a problem if you have no idea how good it might be.

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> if you have no idea how good it might be.

for games, steam offers a trial of the game which can be refunded in full if you do it within two hours. It's a great feature for consumer protection imho.

I'd like to try a chapter or two of a book first, and if it doesn't grab, get a full refund. This is how you can prevent sinking time (and money, presumably) into a bad book.

I don't know where the divide comes from (cultural, generational, social class, or something else) but the idea of thinking "I want to get my money back" for something like a book, music, or a video game is strange to me.

Sometimes I make bad purchases, and that's just too bad.

The more that media becomes a product, the harder it is to feel like you're conning an artist by getting a refund on a purchase.

It's gotten incredibly easy to put media out there, and it's great that people are able to tell the stories they want through the medium they want. At the risk of sounding like I'm just bootlicking, traditional outlets used to be able to filter out some of the more low-effort content and it was easier to expect that you were at least getting mediocre stuff. At this point, a lot of really low effort and low quality junk is in the ecosystem and it's harder to just buy something that looks cool.

I agree on the state of things but I still think that's just my problem.

Sometimes I read reviews for a restaurant, go, and come out thinking the other reviewers and I have a totally different take on things. It happens.

Same goes for movies, books, games, etc. I "do my research" and sometimes I'm wrong.

And sure, I absolutely sometimes feel "scammed" but to me that's just something that happens.

I'm not too bothered by the idea of demos (eg 2 free chapters), but I am a bit bothered by the idea of "I want a refund if I'm not satisfied enough".

I guess everyone would have a different threshold on what "satisfied enough" is.

In all reality, I've eaten larger purchases as losses than some dumb $20 steam game or ebook or whatever. I just don't think that people are terribly unreasonable if they feel burnt badly enough to press for a refund. It's never been easier to do the old "if I can get x number of people to give me $5 each..." bit

Yeah. I guess it's just a question of where you draw the line between a scam and a customer just making a bad choice.

This is literally the whole value proposition of brick and mortar book stores...

This is often (far from always) available on kindle. A one or two chapter sample for free.

please, don't forget about your local library! you can probably read the entire book (digitally, too! or listen to it!) at no cost to yourself.

compounded by the fact that reviews, awards, and any institution which formerly served to find good and worthy books or movies seem to have become completely detached from genuine popular interest and quality.

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