| IDL PDF Book No Longer Available [message #60050] |
Fri, 25 April 2008 07:13  |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Folks,
Odd that we were talking about stealing books yesterday.
This morning I learned that a French bookseller has
purchased a single copy of my PDF book and is selling it
on their web site (for about three times my price).
I am afraid I have had to discontinue selling the PDF
version of the book until I figure out what to do about
this. Selling an electronic copy of the book was an
experiment that involved a great deal of financial
exposure on my part. I was worried something like this
might happen. (Although, frankly, I didn't expect it
from a bookseller. Blame it on naivety, I guess.)
Stealing people's intellectual property turns out to
have bad karma for everyone.
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
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| Re: IDL PDF Book No Longer Available [message #60149 is a reply to message #60050] |
Mon, 28 April 2008 01:31  |
Maarten[1]
Messages: 176
Registered: November 2005
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Senior Member |
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On Apr 25, 2:13 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
> Odd that we were talking about stealing books yesterday.
>
> This morning I learned that a French bookseller has
> purchased a single copy of my PDF book and is selling it
> on their web site (for about three times my price).
Yikes!
> I am afraid I have had to discontinue selling the PDF
> version of the book until I figure out what to do about
> this.
Encrypt each copy you sell with a unique password, and sell directly
though your website. Yes, this will probably require more work than it
is worth. (pdftk is capable of encrypting the pdf file server side).
As a service, you could give people who have bought a paper copy
access to the electronic version by giving away the pdf (encrypted
with a specific word from a specific page of the paper copy). The book
"Python Scripting for Computational Science" by Hans Petter Langtangen
uses a similar method. Searching in the electronic copy is generally
quicker than in the paper copy, although your index is pretty good.
> Selling an electronic copy of the book was an
> experiment that involved a great deal of financial
> exposure on my part. I was worried something like this
> might happen. (Although, frankly, I didn't expect it
> from a bookseller. Blame it on naivety, I guess.)
This is very low indeed. Which reseller should I avoid in the future?
Maarten
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