关于《把时间当作朋友》电子版

About the E-book of Make Time Your Friend

> By Li Xiaolai · 2010-05-30 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110906173644/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/9456.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

The years fly by like a shuttle.

In the blink of an eye, a full year has passed since Make Time Your Friend (《把时间当作朋友》) was formally published and released. In this year, the book has brought me countless surprises.

When I was writing this book, the target readership was students, but in fact the book got an even warmer response from another group of readers I had never imagined before—newcomers who had already struggled in the workplace for a year or two. Of course, by now I can understand the reason for this: because some of the principles this book talks about need a certain amount of experience and setbacks before they can really be understood. To people who have not yet done anything real and have not yet met any setbacks, these principles look so simple, so obvious, that they are almost the same as nonsense—and words like "the earlier you wake up, the better" are quite pale to them; an attitude of so-called "earnest, patient persuasion" is quite cloying to them.

In fact, I have always known clearly myself that, if not for today's era, this book would have had a hard time seeing the light of day.

Some principles are just hard to spread—because people only pass on the things they themselves agree with. Some principles are just not very likely to be agreed with by most people, so no matter how much sense they make and how useful they are, they are not very easy to spread. This era is a great one—because of the internet. The enormous significance of the existence of the internet and the popularity of blog engines (I use WordPress) does not lie only in their lowering the cost of passing on information (the cost of online publishing is close to zero); it lies even more in their strengthening the speed and the breadth of the flow of information—to the point that Make Time Your Friend has, without anyone quite noticing, already won considerable acceptance. The page views of the blog posts, and the number and quality of the readers' comments, all play a part in promoting the passing on of information. This book's publishing producer, Ms. Zhou Yun (周筠), was also a reader, recommended to me by one of my blog readers (Mr. Che Dong, 车东).

In June 2009, through the efforts of Ms. Zhou and the members of her team, Make Time Your Friend was finally published and released. As of today, on Douban more than 5000 people have already rated Make Time Your Friend, with an average score of 8.7; it has consistently ranked first in the [time management](http://book.douban.com/tag/%E6%97%B6%E9%97%B4%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86) and [self-management](http://book.douban.com/tag/%E8%87%AA%E6%88%91%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86) categories. In the short space of a single year, this book has actually been reprinted 8 times.

Being reprinted 8 times in its first year of publication can of course be treated as capital for bragging. However, the facts were not what I had originally imagined. This book's selling well is very likely not entirely the same as the "selling well" that you and I know. The contents of this book are one hundred percent public on my blog ([www.lixiaolai.com/archives/464.html](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/464.html)); many readers, after reading the electronic version, still buy the paper edition to keep. And quite a lot of readers, after buying one copy and reading it, buy several more copies to give to friends, classmates and colleagues. A middle-school teacher in Xi'an, Ms. Zhang, bought 45 copies in one go to give to all the students in her class, and later one of her colleagues also bought copies for all of his or her own students. The most extreme is probably Mr. Guo Zhongxiang (郭忠祥) of the Shanda Networks Innovation Institute, who gave them away "bundle after bundle"; exactly how many copies he gave to his Shanda colleagues, he can no longer remember…

That is to say, this is a book with a great many "passive" readers.

That is why this time I wanted to discuss it with Ms. Zhou Yun, and make an electronic edition with a clear format and a complete layout. Since its nature determines its inherent cost of spreading, I ought to find a way to make it spread more easily. As the author, it doesn't matter to me—I never planned to make money from this book in the first place (of course, that I actually made some is my good fortune)—but for Ms. Zhou Yun, as the publisher, agreeing to let me make a free, public, complete PDF edition does not necessarily mean it doesn't matter. Yet Ms. Zhou agreed without hesitating for a single second, and immediately had someone send over the proofs of the book's third printing for my use. To tell the truth, my long acquaintance with Ms. Zhou meant her response did not surprise me. But I write it here because I feel it is necessary to let the readers of this book know that Ms. Zhou Yun, as a publisher, really is of uncommon magnanimity.

There was a small episode. At the beginning of December 2009, a [reader wrote to me](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/7871.html) to tell me that [Docin](http://docin.com/) (豆丁网) was actually offering "paid downloads" of several of my books—[Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/everyone-can-use-english/master-toefl-essential-vocabulary-in-21-days?order=ASC) (《托福核心词汇21天突破》), [High-Scoring TOEFL iBT Essays](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/everyone-can-use-english/toefl-ibt-qualified-samples-for-ets-official-185-topic-pool?order=ASC) (《TOEFL iBT高分作文》), [Breaking Through New TOEFL iBT Vocabulary by Category](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/english-learning/toefl-ibt-topic-vocabulary?order=ASC) (《新托福iBT词汇分类突破》), and [Make Time Your Friend](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/464.html). In fact, the contents of my books are all one hundred percent public, all published on my blog, with no fee needed at all. Yet someone was actually charging 5.8 yuan RMB for a single book! I wrote a blog post asking for help. A Beijing lawyer, Mr. Li Gang (李刚), wrote a lawyer's letter for me and took it up with Docin. Afterwards Docin removed those paid download links. I often wonder: those people who paid to download, after reading the book, would they make some progress and come to know that "learning is the method that saves the most time"? If they learned how to use Google, they could at least have saved that money, couldn't they?

People often ask me on all sorts of occasions, "You've made your books completely public; I want to know what your real purpose is?" I can't be bothered to answer. On April 10, 2010, when I gave a talk at Shanda at the invitation of Mr. Guo Zhongxiang, a member of the audience said, "I'm very sorry, I didn't buy your book, because there's an electronic version…" I cut him off and said, "I never expected to make money from this book in the first place." The audience applauded me. In response to this applause I didn't go on to say anything, but in fact I felt there was really no need to respond to this remark of mine with applause—some people have no utilitarian motive at all in some matters; what is so strange about that?

I only wrote some words. And there are so many readers who paid out of their own pockets to buy copies to give to others—what they used was real gold and silver.

May the years pass like a song.

Li Xiaolai
May 30, 2010, in Shanghai

Download link for the PDF edition of Make Time Your Friend:

> <http://www.lixiaolai.com/time-friend.zip>

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