Little late to this party but yeah I do this ha. I read Crooked House by Agatha Christie and used the entire cast of Knives Out. Turned everybody American and even swapped out some words/sentences when it didn’t seem like how an American would say it.

I always cast actors in the books I read too, I use RDJ and Jude Law for every Sherlock Holmes book I read because I wish they had more than 2 movies, and I use Timothy Olyphant for anything set in set in any southern states of America. He made a great Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove 😆

I personally wouldn't copy an entire book, but I'm not a scofflaw.

If you are in the US (not sure about other countries), you can likely get the ebook for free, which is much easier on your budget.

edit: Free from a public library.

That's totally fair. But there's the person who has a book they want to read but needs a digital copy to do so, and then there's the person who seeks out the cheapest damaged copy of a book to exploit the backup copy laws of their country - if they download the same book from the same source for personal use the two of them both participate in redistribution the same way but it's not the same level of ethical.

I don't think it's too grey. Personal use is acceptable. Redistribution is unethical.

I'd argue it to be more unethical to force someone to pay for the same thing twice just because the medium is different. Whther physical pages or digital text, the words don't change and the individual already paid for access to the words.

You could probably use some phone apps to make a digital "backup" pretty fast without even cutting the books. My guess is one payed app for easy high quality results or 2-3 free alternatives with a bit of extra effort. And those apps are important for accessibility until we have better solutions, because it's not however many years ago so we're not just telling disabled people they are SOOL.

Imo it's a very ethically grey area. So my vote is unethical for convenience, acceptable for accessibility if there's no better alternative (eg getting assistive devices like glasses).

I think this would be more akin to buying a book and owning your own printing press. You are making a copy to be privately used in case the original is damaged. This is a practice going back to scribes and handwriting copies.

You bought the first copy and there is no law stating that you cannot reproduce it for personal use and that is the line.

It has nothing to do with the book itself or any number of copies. If I'd purchased an original scroll of an ancient text, nothing stops me from hand-vopying it as many times as I desire. That it is digital and, thus, easier is no different than moving from handwriting to the printing press. I wouldn't feel entitled to walk in and get a different book, but this is not that. This is copying the book by hand in a larger font and saving the original book, essentially. To grab another copy from a store would not be the same. Those materials are still worth something, even if you already purchased the story part. It isn't equivalant.

What stops me from recounting the tale orally from memory? Is copying it to my mind and redistributing it aloud breaking some law? We could argue the lines all day as it's all mere social agreement.

Thus, to me, the line is drawn at true redistribution and the nuance of the situation.

If i am OP, this is my thought:

I have already purchased a hard copy of the book.

I own a physical access pass to the words the author wrote.

I have multiple ways to consume words.

A physical book does not emit light of its own has a few other issues and being able to read on the go then return to the physical book would be nice.

I am not redistributing the copy I make for myself.

Making another copy for myself does not harm the author as I have already paid to read those words.

Where I read them does not matter.

Purchase is access to the book and words therin. You now own that book for any level of personal use. Make 1000 copies and wallpaper your house with it. Let anyone who's anyone borrow a read while they're in your home. As long as they stay within your personal sphere of influence and are not goven to others, you violate nothing.

To flip your analogue... What of a DVD i've purchased? Must I charge every person who comes to my home a Box Office fee and pay the distributor of the movie a fee for allowing a few friends to consume it with me? I am the one who paid for access yet they did not. Now a number of people have seen the movie without paying anything for it.

You paid to own a copy of that movie and watch it yourself. Not redistribute it. Is that then illegal?

The reality is that there is much more nuance to things than we'd like to think. You purchased a pre-written pre-copied version of the book distributed by a single publisher and a single author. If anything, you are paying for the work done and access to the story. You pay as much for the materials as for the access. If I were an author and someone came to me and said "i read your book into the ground and the pages are frayed and unreadable. I'd love another copy." I'd... Give it to them. I lose on the materials, but they already bought access to that story. I got paid once for the story I wrote once.

Having to repurchase a same book is a quirk of capitalism and of physical product. If I pay for a digital book, i indeed have "infinite copies" because I can view it on any device and read it as many times as I want wherever I want. I even have the option of printing the book into as many physical copies for my personal use as I'd like. I'm just not allowed to redistribute it. That's the consistent lynch pin.

Totally depends on the content. If I'm reading something by Pinker on neuroscience, I'll generally have to peel back about two or three paragraphs. When I'm reading something like Warhammer fantasy, I can normally just pick up and read and it'll fall back into context quickly.

When I set a book down for a while, I'll typically just skim the previous few pages upon picking it back up to see if I remember what was going on.

The Complete Works of Dickens. The style of writing is a hard read for me, but I’m determined to read his entire collection of stories. It took 3 starts before I finished Oliver Twist, and while I knew the dynamics of the story, I never knew the ending until I actually read it all the way through. The more I read, the easier it became.

I will disagree with the others for two reasons. One, stealing people's work is just not cool and two, ebooks give the author more money than a hard copy does.

House of Leaves is a good example of a book that experimented with formatting successfully. That said, it's pretty rare and it's important to understand why best practices exist, and practice working within those bounds, to be able to successfully break them. I think the odds of your friend pulling this off are low, but not impossible.

I'm assuming by "got published", you mean self-published. This would reduce my confidence in the experimentation being successful since there wasn't an additional layer of critique involved. I'm not saying that self-published authors haven't produced good work, because they absolutely have, just that there is value in an additional set of eyes in the decision making process.

I googled it and came up with a hit on the author and now I'm not sure this post is anything more than proof of concept for some marketing experiment.

I do the same. I really believe it relates to how individual brains work. I have learned a lot about working memory and short term and long term memory. It makes so much sense when I look at how I remember things. If anyone has recommendations on a book that helps explain the brain and mental exercises that we can do to help the weaker parts, please let me know. If I need to be a scientist to read it, please don’t recommend.

I’m trying to read the classics myself. I started Oliver Twist 3x last year before I finally finished it. I want to read The Complete works of Dickens but that style of writing slows me down. I want to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Hunchback of Norte Dame. Frankenstein. Phantom of the Opera. I would even like to tackle Shakespeare. I bought the book of complete works of Longfellow.

Classics can’t be rushed. Reading shouldn’t be rushed. A good book is savored, like a glass of good wine. Take your time and enjoy the books.

Having said that, a friend of mine has the most appropriate screen name: 2manybooks2littletime

I occasionally do that and don't see anything wrong with it, but obviously its still technically against the law. Not sure I'd let reddit decide your morality for you either.

"You already paid for access" that's interesting to think about.

Imagine it were like 50 years ago and digital books didn't exist yet. You buy a book at a store and lose or damage it and need a new copy. Or, to keep it like the OP, your eyes got bad and now you need it a different font. Do you feel entitled to walk into a bookstore and grab a second copy for free because you already "paid for access" to the text itself?

When you buy a book the general understanding is that you are buying *one copy* of the book, not an infinite number of copies of it. The text doesn't belong to you, it still belongs to the author and publisher. What you've bought is one physical copy of that text, not the right to make other copies of it.

Now that we've made the transition to digital, and creating an infinite number of copies of a book is far easier, does this somehow mean what you've bought has changed? Did you buy one digital copy of the book, or does the price include lifelong access to as many digital copies as one might need?

Can you check to see if your library offers them on Overdrive or Hoopla? It's free with your library card.

My take: You already paid for it. You could go through the process of cutting the binding, scanning it into a computer converting it into a PDF, and then reading it on your phone... Or you can find a PDF someone else already did that for. You already paid for access, digital is just a backup.

Until you can get your eyes checked out (and you should, that could be signs of various health issues!), you could stick to reading stuff online that's legally free.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ At Gutenberg you can read thousands of classics for free - legally, because they're so old they're out of copyright or were written before modern copyright laws.

On Amazon, many authors offer books for free for exposure, you could sort by price and download a couple dozen free books to read.

I totally agree with you. Some people throw out unrealistic numbers. Impossible numbers! You have to eat, sleep, most people work. How does someone read 200 books a year?

Don’t get depressed over the number of books you read or don’t read, because frankly, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

There are only 365 days in a year. Reading 200/year sounds impossible - unless they’re third grade golden books 😁

If I stop reading at the end of a chapter I usually don’t. But if I stop reading mid-page I usually just start at the top of the page - read it in full or skim down to where I was depending on how well I remember.

The aesthetics do matter, at lest to me. I don’t want the act of reading a book to take me out of the book experience, if that makes any sense? I don’t want to be pulled away from the writing. I remember reading the huge book forever ago. It had lots of necessary footnotes. The author never wanted you to forget you were actively reading, so he stuck all the footnotes at the end of the book. Ugh.

I don’t set reading goals. I see many readers want to top the number of books they read the previous year, but imo, that takes all the fun out of reading. I read because I love to. 2020 and 2021 I read nonstop. I don’t know how many books I read, but I always had a book open in my spare time.

2022 was totally different. I was given short notice that my rental agreement would not be renewed. I ended up buying a house (I’m so over shitty landlords), I packed up to move, then unpacked, and came out of a short-lived retirement and went back to work.

I’m still not totally unpacked, so I feel guilty if I sit down to read for even 30 minutes because there’s so much yet to do.

The other issue is, you have it in the back of your mind that it’s all about numbers. You may find yourself rushing through a book without really absorbing what you’re reading. You read just to finish the book and move on to the next one, scratching another line on the tree adding to the number of books you’ve already read.

This all defeats the purpose of reading. Read because you love to, not because you want to top yourself.

I’d love to try the read my height challenge. But I’m 6’3” and that is a lot of books…

I only reread when I drift off, read like 4 pages without realizing it, and then noticing I have no clue what's going on.

I appreciate aesthetics as long as they are done in moderation and don't impact the readability of the book. I read because I love to read, and so I don't feel like I need the book itself to be embellished to keep or hold my interest. I'm going to read the book either way. I do get wary when I see books that have a lot of artsy touches on the pages, because I feel like I want the writing to speak for itself and not rely on these types of things to create the aesthetic or mood of the story.

That being said, minor things like small designs around the chapter titles, the font choice, even the font color, etc., are things I do appreciate in novels when done in moderation. Even beautiful jackets on hardcovers, or engraved designs on the hardcover itself are great. They aren't on every page, and don't impact readability. I think more gratuitous artistic choices are great in poetry, and one of my favorite collections has artwork all up and down the pages and worked through the poems themselves.

It sounds like in your friend's case, the aesthetic aspect might be a little overdone for the average reader. I think it's great you have come to like it and can see how it reflects who they are, but I'm not sure if this message will be communicated as well to the average reader who hasn't met your friend and doesn't know them. To them, the style might come off as confusing or distracting and they might miss how the style is a reflection of the author's personality.

I do like when books are unique, such as visually showing a letter or something like that, but if I can’t quickly and easily read a page, I’m completely turned off. For example, I wouldn’t enjoy what you described in your friend’s book because it would probably slow me down or take away from my immersion in the story.

I really appreciate artistic freedom, but I do think the reader’s experience needs to be kept in mind if you want to publish a successful book.