Amazon reader makes it possible to read for free.

In my last post – my top10 list of birding web-sites, I started out mentioning that the Web-gurus frequently use top lists on different subject, such as social media and web 2.0 subjects such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, blogging, Search Engine optimization etc, in order to catch attention and to provide something immediately useful. I list these lists examples here again as one of the links was broken, just to make the point.

• 15 useful tools for wordpress bloggers
• 10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online
• 10 most egregious SEO mistakes

Ending that blogpost I put 5 books on these subjects from Amazon.com. When checking out each book on Amazon, much to my surprise I could read substantial parts of the books.

This is how I was to read the most essential parts without paying a cent. Clicking any book you get a page that shows the book, price, reviews and naturally how to purchase it. On the left above the picture of the book it says “Look inside”.
Go ahead – click away, you have nothing to loose.

Open the table of contents and go through which part you would like to read. If you have a large screen it is a good idea to open yet another window, so you can have the index handy at all times. In your second window you enter the page number – just the number – in the search box. If the page is available for view it will be clickable. You can read a couple of pages of content by turning the pages on the left or right of the screen. Once you finished these pages, put in a new page number in search to continue reading.

I don’t know yet, if there is a limit of pages viewed per book per day, there may be, and Amazon would be able to track the users based on their IP. I suggest to go slow and only look at the pages you really want to read. Please comment, if you find any such time/page-limits.

It will not be possible to read the whole book, but after some initial testing it seems to me that between 60-80% of the book content is available in most cases, maybe more. In the end it is up to the publisher how much of the material he/she wants to be available this way. Why the hell would Amazon let the users be able to read such a major part of the book this way without paying? Behind this concept is much of the philosophy that you actually sell more books if the users are able to look inside them. That is why there still are bookstores around in spite of Amazon’s cheap prices. Looking inside the books this way, is Amazon’s way responding to the “real” bookstores advantage to let their clients see before they buy.
So what if the sections you really wanted to read are not available for view, does this mean you have to buy the book to find out? No, not at all, simply pick up another book on the same topic and search for the same stuff. In the search box you can also enter keywords to search for. Below follows some more books on Amazon in the carousel on the same or related subjects. Feel free to go click-crazy with no obligation of buying. Read, read, read! All for free.
Having said this, it would not surprise me if some of you guys end up buying anyway. If you do, please send me a pdf of the missing pages (hehehe!). Happy reading.