With a little bit of cleverness, you can read entire books on Amazon.com for free, assuming they have the "Search Inside" feature. Here's how.
Getting Started
When you first click the cover of a book that has Search Inside (for example Tales From the Tiltboys), you will be able to flip back and forth between certain pages, up to a point. Typically, they give you through the introduction, index and several pages of the first chapter. Once you get to the point where the page numbers stop going up by one, you need to go into "search mode". In our book this is after page 6. Search mode consists of typing in keywords into the Search Inside this Book box on the left until you locate either the next page in the sequence, or the one after, or the one after that. You have some leeway because you will be able to flip back and forth several pages from where you end up.
The key to efficient search mode technique is to choose a keyword (or small set of keywords) that are likely to show up on every page. Amazon is smart enough not to index commonplace words like "the", but based on whatever you are reading, there will always be words that are good general choices. For instance "tilt" appears on 90 different pages including 2, 3, 8-9, 17-19, 21-23, 25, 29, 31, 34-35, 37-38, 40-41, 43-44, 46-50. "Poker" appears on 94 pages including 1-5, 7, 12, 14, 16-18, 24, 26, 30-32, 37, 39, 41-42, 47, 49-50. The only pages that are not direct hits with either of these two keywords are 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 20, 27, 28, 33, 36, 45. And given the two page leeway in either direction, you can read every page in the first 50 with just "tilt" and "poker". In fact you can cover every page in the book with them except for two pages,* which you can easily pick up by adding "roshambo".
Minimal Amazon Covering Set (MACS)
A set of keywords that lets you read an entire book for free on Amazon is a covering set (CS). If the number of keywords in a CS is less than or equal to that of all other CSs for the same book, then it is a Minimal Amazon Covering Set (MACS). There may be more than one MACS for any given book. (And yes, someone who is highly skilled at discovering these could be considered a "MACS book pro").
Freeload it Forward
I have set up a Wikipedia page here where you can add MACS for your favorite books. It's fun and easy to do!
UPDATE: Wikipedia is threatening to be lame and delete my "apparent neologism". If they do, then just post your MACS here as comments and I will set up a true, open wiki if there is enough demand.
Also, if you Digg this post, it will spread faster and more people will add MACS for you to enjoy.
Note to Amazon
Before you look to close this loophole, first check to see your sales numbers are positively or negatively affected. Personally, I find it tedious and not that satisfying to read a book electronically and end up buying the book if I'm at all interested. There's something about being able to physically flip pages and read from print (as opposed to an LCD) that makes it a totally different experience, and one worth paying for.
* I'll send a free signed hardcover copy of TFtT to the first person who posts a reply with the correct two pages, and a free Final Table Poker DVD to each person who first finds a unique set of two keywords that cover the whole book. If you find a single keyword that covers the whole book, talk to me about a job opportunity. Tiltboys and direct relatives not eligible, Perry.
37 comments:
Nice blog! More people should read it. If you want, you can register your blog www.pokerweblogs.com. It is free and and it automatically updates when you do an update, so visitors of our site can see when you updated your blog. The big advantage is that it will attract much more visitors to your blog.
68,69
By the way, I love the TiltGolf. It has changed the way I play golf forever!
Caro's "Book of Tells" can be read with one word: player. Now that is a MACS.
now that I think of it, the word player will probably work for all poker related books.
I found a couple of two word sets that cover the whole book while trying to find a one word MACS. For example, "game" and "no." Or "one" and "you."
But the entire book can be read by searching the word "this."
What's the job opportunity?
I realized I didn't leave any contact info since I don't blog. So Rafe, if you were serious about the job opportunity, please contact me by dropping me a PM via 2+2. My handle there is PygmyHero.
Mike, I was kidding about the job, but what is your background, maybe some reader will be interested?
Happy to send you a DVD, just contact me on MySpace or Facebook with the address.
I just figured out how to search through the books using a bitwise OR symbol, which means that EVERY page in the book can be found with just one search. Search for:
tilt | poker | hand | phil | bet | luck | odd | win | card | call | one | game | lottery | four | roshambo | kim
That will return every single page in the book at once without having to run multiple searches.
This can be used for any book. Think of keywords and just separate them by the | (pipe) symbol.
This is really wonderful. We need to get a database of MACS for all books.
It's been a while since this blog was first posted but just as and FYI Amazon has put limitations on searching. See their disclaimer below as a result of me trying to view some of the pages other than the sample ones provided by Amazon.
"Amazon.com is pleased to offer customers the ability to view copyrighted material from books that are part of the Search Inside! program. To protect this copyrighted material, books are subject to viewing controls.
To view this page, you must be signed in to an Amazon.com account that has made a purchase in the past. Your account has not made an eligible prior purchase. To learn more, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.
You are free to browse sample pages from this book by clicking the links in the Sections area of the Amazon Online Reader. See more information or continue shopping."
Stop misusing Wikipedia, you loon.
Do NOT use Wikipedia for anything. They delete anything useful on the website.
I guess a much more intuitive way is to take some rare word from a page you currently have access to, search for it and then you can get the next few pages.
Now wash, rinse and repeat.
{t} is a MACS for Tales from the Tiltboys as well. Amazon seems to consider ' as a word boundary.
as someone else pointed out the word 'this' works. For a book of 500pgs i got 478pgs back. Pretty good. BTW Thanks...
CS for Essential McLuhan
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-McLuhan-Marshall/dp/0465019951/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product
n | m | t | f | h | i | j | p | mcluhan | media | print | culture | man | mankind | wrote | you | most | what
Wikipedia deleted your "article" because it IS a neologism. Something you make up one day usually won't be added by yourself; after it's been reported about independently, someone will make it for you anyway. Don't worry; I'm sure someone will recreate the article in the future.
May I ask what made you refer to the set of keywords as 'minimal amazon covering set'? It sounds mathematical..
Try "we".
Gets most of the pages and isn't filtered out automatically.
"that | have | with | this | from | they | will | would | there | their | what | about | which | when | make | like | time | just | know | take | people | into | year | your | good | some | could | them | other | than | then" etc... Choose the most common words of four letters or more, this should get you all the pages in any book.
Hey mate,
Why bother going through all that hassle?
You can just get a copy of a book from IRC (Undernet, channel #bookz). It's much simpler and if you like the book you can always buy it.
I think it depends on the OCRing, but I've had some luck searching for page numbers.
How tight do you need to be to happily pay for internet access, but not books? It's more hassle than it's worth. BTW - my name's Philip Brown... I won't post anonymously.
tsiakhyie asked "what made you refer to the set of keywords as 'minimal amazon covering set'? It sounds mathematical".
Yes, it's a mathematical concept, although someone on Myspace pointed out that it should be "minimum" not "minimal", since there could be more than one minimum covering set but minimal implies uniqueness. Luckily the acronym is the same so I could make the pun "MACS book pro", which is the real reason I called it that :-)
wiki please :) also very nice discovery .
Or, heaven forbid actually buy the book... radical solution I know...
So Amazon now has a limit on the number of pages from a book that a user may view.
Enter page numbers...simplest way to search...thats my opportunity cost for deducing MACS
thanx for such nice tips i really like it a lot now i can read my favorite book for free in amazon.com
jasmine
tech-chek.blogspot.com
A lot of books have the title of the book on every even page of the book in the header(for example, Tiltboys). Do a search for a word in the title and you get every even page in the book as a search result, but only if the title font is OCR readable, which Tiltboys isn't. The only pages this might not find are the first page of each chapter which usually don't have a header.
Amazon seems to stop you after a certain number of pages. At least it did for me.
I usually download books from http://avaxsphere.com/
Hi, I followed your tip for viewing an entire book on Amazon, but it's not working for me. When I type in a few words and search the book and try to click on each page, I go to a page that asks me to log in, so I can't view the whole page. What am I doing wrong?
Not sure why you are having that problem, it doesn't happen for me. I've tried logging out and it still works fine. Have you tried creating an Amazon account (it's free) and logging in?
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. I do have an account, but I haven't made a purchase on Amazon yet, and when I try to click on a page in a book after doing a search, I get a message saying that I have to make a purchase before I can view the entire book.
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