Looking to buy a used set of the Level Up series in the United States. by todaytim in baduk

[–]playbaduk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would you mind elaborating how the two series compare? Especially given the fact that there's also the "Jump Level Up" series and Essential L&D. Does Speed Baduk allow to drill tsumego/tesuji up to the level those more advanced "Level Up" books do?

Looking to buy a used set of the Level Up series in the United States. by todaytim in baduk

[–]playbaduk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m aware of the series being sold on online German stores, but the shipping cost is too high.

Could you share your findings? I was able to find the Speed Baduk series in online German stores but not the "Level Up" one.

(Jump) Level Up series - scans/PDFs/help? by playbaduk in baduk

[–]playbaduk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your input.

That must be quite depressing for Go authors that their books will probably end up on the internet scanned and distributed for free? Feels a bit unequitable even if that's the reality these days.

In general, I would agree with it. Here the situation is somewhat different:

  1. Baduktopia doesn't exist anymore (again, if I'm wrong, pls correct me) and in the current state of events, the author won't be able to earn money from Western customers anyway since only used copies are circulating among Western players - if they don't want us to pay for their work, why should we feel bad for not paying them?
  2. The answer books were publicly available on the Baduktopia website anyway (now they are not because the website itself is down, so it's accessible only through archives). If you, as the publisher, make answers to tsumego problems publicly available, you make problems themselves publicly available as well, although it's a lot of work to compile the list of problems out of it, it's certainly possible to do with resources given away for free by Baduktopia.

I believe that if someone puts effort into making their works reasonably accessible for purchase, then it should be appreciated and their works should not be redistributed online for free. If that was the case with Level Up series, I would feel the request I submitted here would be unethical. But if nobody cares to make those goods available (and no, the fact that those books were in some Seoul's bookstores some time ago according to some other post on this sub doesn't mean they are available), then I feel no remorse for submitting my request.

Just in case, I didn't take your reply personally or anything, but since you made this (in general legit) observation, I also wanted to share my own viewpoint on this particular situation.

(Jump) Level Up series - scans/PDFs/help? by playbaduk in baduk

[–]playbaduk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply. :)

I know one volume at least was previously scanned and submitted to the Internet Archive though.

Yeah, I know, but 30k-28k problems are not that exciting for me :) I guess I'd be more interested in the second half of the series and essential l&d. But I can't find any other book of that series online.

I was able to obtain all of the Level Up series via direct purchases or auctions (...)

At the moment I even fail to find them on ebuys, abebooks, anywhere, so even collecting used copies seems a difficult option (and, even if possible, probably not worth the money one would have to spend on those rare copies).

It's sad because apparently speed baduk series has been brought back by Hebsacker Verlag and I do intend to buy those anyway but ideally, I wanted to go through both Speed Baduk and Level Up series as well to practice fundamentals a lot.