Is Aaron Reed’s book worth this much?

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From Amazon:

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Pricing by bot is a pox on this modern world.

(For the record, I’d be willing to let mine go for just $10,000.)

Edited to add: The image in the original post is a screenshot from Amazon showing Aaron Reed’s Creating Interactive Fiction in Inform 7 priced at $40,886.09.

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I think now Inform is open source, the real cash cow is dead.
Imagine the market cap of an NFT based on the md5 hash of the grand secret Makefile while the repo was still private :grin:

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I thought this was going to be a thread about his forthcoming book, and I was ready to say “yes.”

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He has stated that he hopes to issue an updated version in the future, so you will presumably be able to acquire it at an actual human-determined price if you wait.

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You can actually purchase the e-book from Barnes and Noble for a much more reasonable 40$.

I’d say it’s worth that much.

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I’ve been so tempted to get this but I’m unsure if the number of now deprecated things that may be included by virtue of it being a bit older might create some confusing situations when learning…

Also knowing he has said he would like to release an updated version keeps me a little at bay…

Decisions, decisions.

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So I tried to purchase this book on Barnes and noble and unfortunately as I live out of the US I can’t purchase it. Bit of a bummer…

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If you genuinely can’t purchase it despite trying, it might be morally acceptable to search the internet for something like “Aaron Reed Inform 7 PDF download”.

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Since @aaronius is planning an updated version this might not be necessary.

I’d advise against buying used copies for inflated amounts also. I think these are people prospectively seeing what they could get for a used copy and if someone buys it they’ll obtain it at a normal price and profit off the markup - this money does not go to the author.

I have a copy I actually won as a prize several IFComps ago on my shelf. Maybe I should re-offer it as a prize again since it’s sought-after.

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People running bots, and the bots are feeding off each others’ inflated prices. It’s an extremely stupid situation.

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So the issue is that Barnes and noble don’t allow you to purchase an electronic book if the shipping address is outside the US.

I did some searching and people get around this by using a random address generator and it generally works.

Unfortunately I did do this and it initially processed the payment but after around 15 minutes I was refunded by PayPal and B&N sent an email saying the verification process failed, likely due to my credit card or mandatory phone number was not from the US.

I have done some digging but am unable to find a copy anywhere in PDF form except on sites which are clearly scams (or at least look that way from prior experience).

I’ll purchase the new book when aaron gets around to editing and re-releasing it or if he is able to publish the existing text without copyright issues but I doubt thats really feasible based on what he’s said previously.

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Before I found and purchased a used paperback for a reasonable price (£40) I saw a PDF version at z-lib dot org (Z-Library - Wikipedia).

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Oh, I looked at Z-lib and couldn’t find it. But I looked again and there it is! (I’m not sure it’s okay to post a link–or the file–, but I’m willing to share it–With @aaronius’ permission, if there’s dms or something. I’m still learning how this forum works.)

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  1. No, it’s not worth that much :joy:
  2. On the other hand if someone wants to just give me $40,000 directly, I will happily answer any and all Inform 7 questions you might have
  3. The new version won’t be ready until late summer at the earliest, so if you find some way to acquire a copy before then, knock yourself out (but please don’t tell me about it, this is not an official endorsement of anything etc)
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Perhaps a good compromise is if someone finds a copy, they could buy one of Aaron’s other books as well!

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I can second that; I bought two copies of that book and had fun reading and comparing. Funny how the Backrooms took off after it came out.

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I endorse his story game Archives of the Sky, too!

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I actually recently started Blue Lacuna, it’s really really good so far.

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It is available on the kindle store.

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