It is a dumb decision for it will not prevent a digital version to be shared on the internet and alienating your potential customers is not the best marketing move.
The ability to search and to copy/paste is something programmers usually like, being deprived of these on the premises that the author want to maximize profit is sure to alienate a significant portion of them.
Seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot, creating a bigger incentive to scan the book and promoting the distribution of unofficial digital version of their book and not getting a dime for those.
Now, not only they made themselves look bad, show they misunderstand the digital world but they will also pass on a whole market.
So it's ok to post links to third party instead of the original content now ?
here's the link to the video instead of this portal profiting from it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMpUaoA3Tg
KoL is something totally different, it started out as an attempt to create something that didn't exist and was more of a joke, now 10 years later it still lives on and to me it is one of the most enjoyable videogames I've played (and replayed) again.
Nothing even close to a major studio adapting an old hit to mobile platforms to squeeze out as much profit as possible.
When I found out that there was a mandatory quest at the altar of literacy to gain access to the chat channels of kingdom of loathing, I knew I was hooked. I even learned haiku to be able to chat on the haiku chan.
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/The_Altar_of_L...
You advertise the game as free with voluntary donations (Mr. A and Mr. Eh accessories). Without pressing for financial info, can we ask: Does this translate into a full-time paying job, cover the expenses of running the project, or simply add a bit of pocket change here and there? Why did you choose this business model?
KoL's donation revenue is currently sufficient to support a full-time staff and a second team working on a new game. I feel like we were extremely fortunate to have launched when we did and to have gotten the critical mass in the beginning that makes it possible for this to be a career instead of just a hobby.
As far as choosing the business model, I'm not sure there was ever a moment when I made a choice about it. A couple of months in, the hosting bills were starting to cost more than I was comfortable paying out of pocket, so I put up a link to ask for donations to offset the cost. A player suggested, "Hey, why don't you give donators an in-game reward?" and I figured "Hey, why not, it couldn't hurt." To my surprise and delight, it was pretty much instantly profitable. I was still processing the donations by hand for quite a while -- the revenue model was really kind of an afterthought.
After it got to the point where I was able to comfortably and safely quit my day job (and finally start paying Josh, who had been diligently working for free for several months), I started offering the monthly specials, which caused another surge in income and allowed me to hire an office manager, another writer/designer, and another programmer. Since then we've added a full-time customer service/abuse-tracking position and part-time forum and chat-moderation supervisors.
Nice FUD. But one could just scan it with an up-to-date antivirus to be sure. Unless it is some form of government funded virus it will most probably get detected.
I have yet to encounter a hard to detect and remove virus coming from a downloaded software from "somewhere else", I'd rather install software coming from the scene than a download portal such as softonic.
For a second you had me doubt that the banner was an image illustrating the adobe experience, but then I remembered I don't have flash installed on any of my computers.
At first the reason was that it was a resource hog diminishing battery life and destroying silence while being a security issue, but adobe dropped support anyways.
The ability to search and to copy/paste is something programmers usually like, being deprived of these on the premises that the author want to maximize profit is sure to alienate a significant portion of them.