I only have like a dozen email addresses. Several of them are for junk mail and subscription type stuff. Do you... not have a junk email address? I would strongly encourage you to start on that, because, even just a stupid gmail account you never use for anything important but use for junk is probably a life changing situation for you if you've never heard of doing something like this.
Edit: Super power here is setting up a 1Password Identity (or whichever tool you use, hell, even a snippet) to auto fill junk email in when signing up for stuff vs not-junk email. I have three identities. One for work, one for personal, one for junk. Makes this stuff super easy and fast.
I wasn't trying to make a point about price (e-mails are practically free). The book could cost half a penny and my comment would still stand. People just view items that cost something differently than genuinely free items, and not in a rational, economic way.
YouTube asks you to watch ads, but we still consider it to be free. Many mobile games make you create an account (and provide your email) before you can play but we still consider them free because you don't have to give any money. That's the definition here: don't have to pay money = free. This ebook is free
The question here is whether this ebook meets the definition of free as it is commonly known/accepted. As can be proven by the general population calling YouTube free or a mobile game that requires an email free, this ebook can be called free
Yes "nothing is free" yet we still often call these things free. It definitely wasn't free for him to make it.
Average person on here views those hours as billable if they were to do it themselves, when they make decisions about what to do, or alternatives (opportunity cost).
Maybe he should charge them consulting rates for this PDF (and not take their -- correction: an -- email. The horror).
It's only because this is HN that it's even a discussion.
The thing is that calling something free and then asking for something in exchange can trigger someone on autistic spectrum, where likely there is an overrepresentation of on HN.
Edit: Super power here is setting up a 1Password Identity (or whichever tool you use, hell, even a snippet) to auto fill junk email in when signing up for stuff vs not-junk email. I have three identities. One for work, one for personal, one for junk. Makes this stuff super easy and fast.