One Hundo.....probably comparable to 250$ now or something....later it dropped to fifty. Big Book though, hardcover, expensive layout etc and special Brunson lingo. How his terminal cancer disappeared virtually overnight, maybe through prayer of hundreds of people....,,If a man keeps pounding on me, me and him are fixing to play a pot" in those weird, sometimes bold, sometimes not bold SuperSystem letters. Pictures of the old day schemesters and the first WSOP with like 9 players and Johnny Moss was VOTED the best of ´em. A true monument to Poker. The original title was ,,How I made over a million dollars playing poker". Makes more sense than Super/System, but hell, if you´re self publishing you get to be boss over everything.

That's why I copy yours.

Hey Mason,

If you happen to read this.
I am just curious.

If Tri (&cole) sells 1000 books at 2000$ or even 1000$ then he(they) makes 1,000000. That's 1 million dollars.

I find it hard to believe many poker book authors are making more then that.

Especially when everything I know about the publishing industry is only best selling authors make any real money.

I don't know about 2plus2 but from what I heard most authors only make 1$ or 2$ per book. Even if you triple that at say 6$ or even make it 10$ a book which I doubt is the case one has to sell a whole lot of books to make a million bucks.

Now I am sure you sell way way more books then most poker publishers but you state you have sold 2million books. Thats only like 20 million to go around for all your authors in what I would say is the best case scenario. I just can't see how it every gets to a point where all your authors are making way more then 1 million bucks.


From what I understand about the publishing Industry in general it is becoming next to impossible to make any money selling/writing books (other then huge best sellers). Now I imagine you are still doing better then most publishers partly because you can sell books for 30$ and not 8$ or 10$.


anyways I was just curious about your math and why you are so sure these high priced ebooks sellers can make more money selling 30$ books with you (if you would have them of course).

Daily Variance boasts "over 2,000 orders shipped." That's for all six titles. I'm sure the biggest seller is Blueprint, which is the least expensive of the lot.

Some of that will be going on costs of making the book....just because it is an ebook, doesnt mean there arent costs involved.

It's not right for me to give author's specific royalty rates, but I can state some things. Our best selling book is Harrington on Hold 'em: Volume I. As of this moment we have sold 304,347 books, and it is still selling. That's over 9 million in sales at retail list, and remember, we pay far higher royalty rates than industry standard. So you can take it from there.

Furthermore, there is a large disparity between book sales among our authors. Obviously the team of Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie have sold a lot of books, some of our other authors have not sold that many, and sales of poker books have slowed down a lot from where they once were. So using your $20 million number for our author's royalties, and keeping in mind that this amount is not distributed evenly among our authors, some of your conclusions may change.

As for authors with very high priced e-books, I'm nor privy to how many they sell. But I suspect that the first few of these books probably sold enough that the author made a fair amount of money by most people's standards, but I also have reason to believe that those amounts are not continuing today.

By the way, when we say over 2 million books sold (actually 2.2 million is more accurate), that doesn't include what our foreign language publishers have sold. Their sales would add a few hundred thousand to this total, but we only get a royalty from foreign language sales, not the full wholesale price.

Best wishes,
mason

Even if LTBR only sold 200 copies (lets say 50 at original price) that is 250,000$ . The cost of an ebooks is almost nothing. I will say generously it cost 10,000$ but I totally doubt it is that high.
I think you would find that all but the very top selling poker books like Helmuth's (who knows why) and Harrington have made less then $240,000 for their authors. There is a reason publishing companies are going under these days.

In response to Mason's comments.
For what it is worth.

I think twoplustwo is a great company.
I have read all but a few.
I think any poker author should try and get published with you first.
I am sure your authors do better then elsewhere.

I can see your point about new really high priced ebooks not selling well.
Perhaps I was comparing apples to oranges (new ebooks vs ltbr)
but you did mention ltbr specifically.

I don't think anyone would doubt that Harrington has made a lot of money.

Now you didn't actually say this but you sorta implied that selling ebooks (maybe even at 100$) was not a good way to go but I think for most authors it is probably the most profitable (and honestly I don't think it is even close). I guess (not including LTBR) you are right in the sense moving forward an author with you would do better but for most people that isn't a option. I guess maybe its an apples and oranges thing.

Anyways I appreciate the discussion

Thanks, Eric

I get why the pricing is making such a ruckus, but if you stop and think logically, there are actually many justifiable reasons for pricing it the way they do. Here's a few factors why:

1. It's a self-published e-book. / It isn't going to appear in a bookstore.
2. The authors aren't THAT famous. TV Poker fans would very likely have never heard of them.
3. Chances are, the authors aren't going to spend money marketing the book (much).

What this adds up to is a high chance that the book will not hit a very high quantity of people. The book is therefore likely to hit a fairly specific demographic: Poker players from the online community. What happens when you aren't able to rake in a high volume of readers? You go for bigger value from less readers. (I feel this is a similar concept to multi-tabling with less efficiency vs. extracting greater value by single tabling)

There is a reason behind why restaurants can charge $10 bucks for a can of coke, or a few grand / annum for country club memberships. Its because of the spending power their audience has, and exclusivity. Amongst the poker community, and those that are successful at that, do you think the $950-1900 is within their spending power? I'd say it definitely is. Whether this is fair or not to the common player is a whole different argument altogether.

There's also the point of prestige. When you look at a $900 dollar book, the first question that comes to mind is: "Is information contained -that- valuable? It must be extraordinary in some way...." In a warped way, this has been a boon for the book as its helped it to build some buzz.

All that being said, I've previewed the book and from a purely publishing stand-point I am thoroughly disappointed. I'll bring back the coke analogy. Would a $10 can of coke differ from an ordinarily priced one? Probably not. But the difference here is I'd expect my $10 coke to be served up, ice-cold, in a nice glass with excellent service. Apparently LTBR was "edited", but I don't think the authors made so much of an effort to run a spellcheck. I'm not even bringing up the unimpressive charts and Microsoft Word-ish preparation behind it.

As for the information contained, to each its own. I can't vouch for how useful the information would be for the players that could already comfortably afford the book, but for me, it presented a refreshing way to study the game that I haven't yet come across in other books. Overall, I'd classify it as quite an advanced read. But with all the spelling errors, it might just be the sentences not making any sense...

Way to much for me lol

The book is not so advanced as its price might seem it is. For someone who plays middle stakes it's a waste of time to read it. A really advanced book is Mathematics of Poker. Someone who reads LTBR and then MoP will want to throw LTBR in the trash.

can anyone tell me if let there be range is only for NL or some concept in there can be usefull for limit?

ty

its geared towards NLHE. some concepts may be relevant, but not many

this soudjsn like a good deal fora poker book!I suggest mersennearly watch pri1nnyraiding volume4!