Who HASN'T had this conversation before?

Parenting, Tiltboy Style

A friend of ours named Ace became a parent recently. He made this PowerPoint slideshow on his experience that is reminiscent of several of the Tiltboys' own experiences.

How to Read a Book for Free on Amazon

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.

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* 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.