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Packt Publishing ebooks free today with DOTDEBOOKFREE promo code

55 points by eik3_de ↗ HN
http://www.packtpub.com/

no credit card required, mailinator emails happily accepted :>

    DOTDEBOOKFREE

61 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] thread
veerbahadur
It really worked
rashthedude
at what point do I see the deductio? I have entered the promo code, checked out and hesitant now to enter my credit details.
morituri
If you do it right (i.e, just have one book in the cart), the button should say Check Out For Free
rashthedude
oh ok, so it's restricted to only 1 book?
morituri
One free ebook per account, apparently
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
imwhimsical
Hi, How does this work? I added a few ebooks to my cart and tried to use the promo code, but it still doesn't show any change.

EDIT — Worked like a charm. Thanks much!

eik3_de
add one to cart, apply promo, enter bogus data, checkout. repeat.
kelmop
script anyone?! :D
herokusaki
Why not torrent them instead? I mean it: I assume that collecting bogus data doesn't do them any good and torrenting would save the publisher some server load. A script that buys every book, on the other hand, doesn't even contribute to popularity statistics.
muyuu
I'm just going to go ahead and get just 1 the legit way. However I wish they made some sort of volume discount that wouldn't mean paying £300+ for a 10-15 book collection.

Honestly most of these books are on topics that would make them obsolete quite soon. The real practical use for these is as references across several topics. I understand it's hard to monetise that kind of thing though.

hmhrex
I for one would love to see a script. Haha.
u02sgb
Worked for me too, don't even need Mailinator (as you don't need to pickup the email). Address with randomly chosen Post (zip) code.
eik3_de
Any recommendations for well-written books?
arafalov
You could try mine: http://www.packtpub.com/apache-solr-for-indexing-data/book . It's quite popular and comes with a GitHub repo for the examples.
eik3_de
As an Packt author, can you opt out of those everything-free discounts?

How do you feel that a huge number of potential buyers gets your book today for free?

arafalov
I was not given any options at all, for this or other promotions. No do I know if I will get paid for copies they give away for free. I suspect not.

As to getting the book for free, please do. I have something even more interesting in the works. I would love for you to read my book, get excited about Solr, get on my mailing list http://www.solr-start.com/ and pay me for my next project eventually.

The authors usually do not get rich of the books (though I did cover my tiny advance and more). The rest of the conclusions is left as an exercise for the reader.

JPKab
Get Clojure Data Analysis Cookbook.

It's a concise, very fast introduction to doing stuff with the Clojure Incanter library. Combined with LightTable, it's very fun.

nekgrim
Can I create a 'real' account and centralize all my ebooks, or do I need to create one account per ebook?
gionn
For lazy, to ease copy-paste:

DOTDEBOOKFREE

:>

rashthedude
Adding the promo code in the Checkout section doesn't trigger or reset the price and it's still asking me to continue checking out using either credit or paypal. What am I doing wrong here?
endijs
Try to add only one book. That way it works for me.
eik3_de
maybe old cookies? try incognito window (crtl-shift-n in chrome)
daw___
No email confirmation and plain text captcha. They got to be kidding.
eik3_de
they don't even check if the email looks right. abc@abc.invalid works..
smoyer
It looks like you can get a second e-book for free if you allow them to send seven days worth of daily deals (I unsubscribed from everything before noticing the message).
eik3_de
you should add "... e-book for free per account ..."
slimbods
Not sure if they've just changed it, but the offer for the mailing list is now 50% off your next book. Or is that a different offer?
thehodge
the search functionality on the site is really inaccurate, I searched for ruby and the first book recommended is Raspberry Pi Media Centre, nothing on the first two pages had ruby in the title.
arafalov
Yeah, I find it funny given that they published like 10 books on Solr and Elastic Search combined. I guess they don't have time to eat their own dogfood. The problem with breadth publishing approach!
angry_octet
It's a pity they don't have akamai/cloudfront or something, it seems they are getting crushed.

So whomever is running 27 simultaneous downloads, please stop. You'll never read all those books.

wut42
You're right, I'll never read them. However I'm collecting a shitload of pdfs, I convert them to HTML, put them in an ElasticSearch database, so I can search their content when I need it.

It's more like a complementary documentation database.

ScottWhigham
That sounds fun - I'd like to hear more about that.
arafalov
Sounds like too many steps. Why not use ePub directly. It's just a Zip with funny HTML inside. Index that and you may even get page numbers. Contact me if interested in collaborating (it's one of my todo projects).
TeamMCS
Cheers mate. great stuff
obiobi
aaaand.. the site is down for maintenance.

got a few books though.

pranavkpr
Damn, now getting a status 503.
Pitarou
"Down for maintenance."

I guess it's the Hacker News effect.

Pitarou
Oh! They're back up again. I'm grabbing _Nginx HTTP Server Second Edition_ now. :-)
angry_octet
"Sorry, that promotion code is no longer valid."

Move along folks, move along now.

hmhrex
DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE...

great.

djeps
Now promo code invalid
prattbhatt
Is it still working for anyone? I see "Sorry, that promotion code is no longer valid".
hmhrex
Me too... That really sucks.
bcraun
Sadly, the code is, evidently, no longer valid.
ErolStaveley
Today, one of our discount codes escaped into the wild! If you were lucky enough to download a free ebook today we hope you enjoy it - we'd also like to thank the HN community in particular for highlighting some legitimate issues on our end. We'll definitely be looking into addressing these. However, nothing that good can last for ever, and the discount code itself should no longer be active.

We're happy to talk to any of our authors about the impact this might have had on individual titles on a case by case basis - you should always feel free to get in touch with your primary editorial contact even after publication (alternatively, you can email me directly regarding this particular discount at erols@packtpub.com). We're here to help and support you not only through the publication process, but also beyond.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused to customers who tried using a code that we emailed out directly. Please contact us at customercare@packtpub.com if you have experienced any problems as a result.