Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth;
Even though I haven't read a word of this book, I can almost guarantee that it isn't worth its price. The reasoning is very simle.

If you have a terrific poker book, and sell it through the standard mass marketing publishing, sales can be terrific. For instance, three of our books have sales of a quarter of a million copies (or more), four of our other books have sold over 100,000 copies, and one of our more recent publications, Harrington on Cash: Volume I, which has now been out for almost a year, has just over 48,000 in sales and is still selling well.

So my point is that if this book is as good as claimed where it is actually worth the price, the authors would make far more by selling it through conventional means (and if they went with us as a publisher, assuming we would be interested in doing it, their royalties would be substantial). In addition, we would also offer the book to our foreign language publishers, where additional royalties would be received by the author. So it is difficult for me to believe that it can be worth the price.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth;
Just so there is no misunderstanding, I believe these books are over priced even though I have not read them. Furthermore, because of my long experience at working in the poker/gambling authoring and poker/gambling publishing business, and being more successful at this than virtually anyone else, it's my opinion that my opinion is a very good one.

Also, just because they are over priced does not mean that the information they contain is not of value or not accurate. My suspicion is that is where you are getting confused.

And finally, assuming I'm right, we should begin to see lower priced material that is at least as good becoming available in the not to distant future. And when this happens, our opinion about being questionable will go away.

MM


Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
The reason why an author should prefer to go the $30 route as opposed to the super high price route is that because of large sales he can actually make much more money at the lower price. But there is a catch...

At Two Plus Two, we have now sold approximately 2 million books. The vast majority of these carry a $29.95 retail price or more. We also pay royalties that are far higher than industry standard.

It's not proper for me to give out specific author royalty rates and how much they have made. But I guarantee that some of the figures are substantial and are also far more than what the ultra high priced e-book authors will make in both the short run and the long run.

What has happened is that poker, particularly on the Internet, has been constantly evolving, and some of the high priced e-book authors have addressed games, or have at least addressed aspects of games, that the more conventional book publishers, like Two Plus Two, have not yet addressed. But we have them coming.

When we do a book, it's not done quickly. It takes time for an expert player to write a book at an expert level that is clear, concise, and detailed. It then has to go through our review and rewriting process and not all manuscripts that we receive survive this.

And this is the catch I was alluding to above. There's no question in my mind that if we were to put out one of these high-priced e-books at the $30 to $35 price, the author would make far more money. But in most cases it would require a great deal more work on their part (and in many cases include significant expansion of what they have written), and that might not be something they care to do or are even capable of doing.

Anyway, I'm a strong believer in the free market, and if authors with high-priced e-books can successfully compete with us, then that's great and you, the consumer, will benefit. In the meantime, our authors are working on new titles and we expect them to meet all our standards, and this includes our new Pot-Limit Omaha: Understanding Winning Play by William Jockusch which should be released next week.

Best wishes,
Mason