

Copywriting for Geeks - sr3d
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61632188/Copywriting-for-Geeks

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macournoyer
Wow! OK. I'm the author of this book and I have no idea how it ended up there.

Here's the full product: <http://copywritingforgeeks.com/>

I don't mind that much if ppl just share the pdf, but asking 10$/month for MY
product? WTH is that ...

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jerrya
Thanks for responding, and providing the link to your work.

Okay, so it seems you want $99 for your book, which is fine, that's the price
you set. It seems that someone uploaded it, presumably without your permission
to scribd.

Scribd is now letting people download it with some form of monthly plan, or it
turns out, for free if you upload a new file to them.

I uploaded a new file to them, it consists of the words, "I think your
business plan is bogus" repeated many times.

So Scribd let me download your book, as a pdf, for free. (Opening the pdf, I
see the 37 page presentation that the link of this thread points to.)

I don't know what's up with scribd, but I think they trash authors and
misrepresent them when they host materials they didn't have permission for and
on top of that try to trap people into monthly subscriptions and encourage
people to upload random crap to them in order to get other stuff downloaded.

This is a business? A business that gets respect?

Seems crazy to me.

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mikevm
I agree with you, and I would appreciate seeing less scribd links posted on
HN. Surely people can find other places to post PDFs...

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jerrya
I visited the page, but wanted to read it as a PDF in my preferred reader.

It asked me to login, so I tried to login through Facebook. It's a pdf, so I
am not too worried about what it might post.

It asked for permissions to post to access my news, and I was a bit surprised,
why would scribd need to access my news? There was no explanation.

So I denied it that access.

At some point it demanded that I sign up for a paid plan that it assured me
was just a $10 per month and easy to cancel. There seemed to be no other way
to access that file unless I joined their paid plan. If there is such a way,
it seems very non-obvious how to do it.

This all so I could download a pdf that it had offered to me in the beginning.

Now maybe it's because I am something of a Facebook newbie, or maybe their
facebook app was having problems, or maybe my combination of Chrome settings
and extensions broke their app somehow.

Regardless, it seems terrible that scribd demands access to post on my
timeline, to read my news, and that I pay to login.

I have flagged this link as spam (sorry sr3d) and though I understand that
scribd is a YCombinator alum, I hope more than ever it fails and fails hard.
Scribd was and always has been an abomination.

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tzs
Go to scribd.com and click the sign up link. You can create a free account
there.

On the download link, under the place that asks you to login with Facebook,
there is a small link to login with your scribd account instead. Click that
and login, and you can complete the download. No money is involved.

~~~
jerrya
Hmm, actually tried that later, and scribd still tried to make me pay to read
this pdf. A pdf that according to the author he is selling and that scribd has
no permission to be distributing and is not sharing their profits with him.

It turns out I was able to download it for free, and this was before I knew
that scribd did not have permission to distribute it, and that was by taking
advantage of their "offer" to upload a document to get the document I wanted.

All of that is crap.

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shanellem
This is fantastic. I studied rhetoric and persuasion in university for a
couple years. I think copywriters should too! There are so many old theories
that are relevant online. Some of them were covered here.

Thanks for sharing.

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gruseom
I highly recommend the book this is based on, Cialdini's _Influence_. It's
gobsmackingly readable and memorable. And once you've read it you can just use
the principles yourself.

