Salient Review Mason,

I bought several of your books many years ago for non-poker play that were written by you Mason and others. Kindred spirits. It needs to be said again that certain individuals who possess knowledge that 'others' do not have seem to want to profit from their ethereal knowledge in a way that makes the word 'sucker' come to mind.

Content is king in today's information age. Those who have some sort of rare content that is only known to a few seem to desire to take the path of least risk and highest reward when pricing their content.

If a book is so good, they why not make a solid profit selling many copies instead of lesser profit by restricting the sales to only a 'select' few?

The best books on PLO right now can be counted on one hand. We need more to be sure and will have great new PLO Books quite soon :-)

I have worked on so many projects in the past that truly took time and effort and yes resources aka ($$$) to bring them to fruition. In the end the reason that they were successful is these products and services are new, useful and not obvious to others. They truly offer much more value than the selling price and appealed to wide niches in the mass market.

Mason you are a bit diplomatic to restate the obvious path to success that others try to follow via shortcut routes ie HIGH PRICE/Secret Forumula/Exclusivity/...

Lastly, I did very well through the 90's thanks in large part to content that was found in mainstream publications (much of it dealing with the mental and psychological aspects of my activities) and today enjoy a nice lifestyle as a result. I have to say the obvious applies here with the obnoxiously high priced knowledge (LOL) and limited distributions schemes and scams that have been surfacing lately here at 2+2 and across the net. Look at the truth for what it is and not what you want it to be -> for those of you considering being a - - - - and separated from your money without receiving real value in return.

Warm regards Mason and thanks for your writings/contribs in the past...

zeppy

Mason,

Certainly could be mistaken here in interpreting your post, but isn't this statement operating under the assumption that their #1 goal is to maximize profits on the book sales? I think, in this situation at least (and a couple of others with expensive e-books that I've spoken with) LFTV has made it somewhat clear that this is not his primary goal (or at least certainly not his only focus) with the writing of the book.

I am assuming that making a profit is at least a serious goal, but not necessarily their number one goal. In our business (at Two Plus Two), our number one goal was to put out a top notch product in all respects. We felt that if we did this the profit would take care of itself, and this approach just happened to work spectacularly well.

From my perspective it will be interesting to watch how successful these ultra high priced ebooks will be. But one thing that looks sure to me is that there will soon be more of them than there will be room for successful ones. So I suspect that at least some of these ebook authors will be very disappointed.

However, the exact same thing has happened in the more standard poker book market. There are now so many poker books and poker related books that most poker books on the market today are failures. To see this just go to Amazon.com and look at sales ranks.

But the ultra high priced ebooks do have another thing going against them. And that is, assuming they do contain super information, other authors will begin to rewrite it, and that's not plagiarism since you cannot copyright an idea, and begin to sell it at a much lower price. Thus I expect the ultra high price ebook market to be short-lived at best.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think that a book with high concepts has no chance of selling well. The books that sell well sell well because they start at a foundation that is easy enough for anyone to at least think they have a handle on what it is saying, it is applicable to the game they are presently playing, and they feel the book is understood with a few reads and no hard work. If book sales was dependant strictly on quality, MoP would be the best selling poker book ever, but most people who buy it don't even read it, and the last time I was at Borders, there was 2 copies there: both clearly returned. Trying to sell a book that takes genuine effort to work through is a losing proposition.

I think it is an interesting discussion, but styx2000 has a point: each and every >$100 ebook topic is derailed with it. Wouldn't it make sense to split the "price and model" part in another topic? Do you mind it, Tom?

Hello Mason.

I think you are missing a lot of points about the eBook market.

One: the actual buying price per book is much lower. The internet being what it is, I guess for 1 eBook sold, you get 10 on the market. End of the day, these eBooks are not so expensive.

Two: I have had the chance to read a few eBooks, and the contents are often much better than the one in normal books. See Baluga for NLHE for instance.

Three: poker information is more valuable if it is not common knowledge. I guess that one could argue that this makes these eBooks more attractive to their reader than many widely marketed books.

Four: poker information's value decays quickly. Having a year of privileged information will be largely worth your while if you play 3-6 or above.

Here goes. In my experience, eBooks have been worth the money so far. I am sure they might be scams or near-scms out there, but I have not bought one of those so far...

Advantages of this kind of books: They have a workbook, the material will be updated and it has an exclusive discussion forum. No cheap book offers these options.

i am a 50-100 max plo player and i just read the sample chapters and my head hurts. the book is definitley not for anyone below 2-4. it seems like the author put a ton of hours into making it. also, there is no way anyone can grasp the material on the first read. i'd have to read it at least 3 times before anything would sink in, but the book looks good non the less, i would definitley get it if i were to make it to 2-4

You mean no 2p2 book has a discussion forum?

I think the prize of expensive ebooks is imo justified, as they are often only available resource for higher limits. If 2+2 would offer comparable product in this market, I would by all means buy it.

He means no 2p2 book has an exclusive discussion forum.

I'm all for this pricing model. If one 'big book' is $25, then Tom is just openshoving from the button for 100bbs with the nuts and expecting that, even if he doesn't get many callers, the few he does get means he makes more than if he just gives them a normal price.

Quite apart from the content, the price also means that people expect the product to be out of this world. If you had the bankroll to buy both a $25 book and a $2500 book, and were looking to improve your game, wouldn't you just buy the $2500 book?

IMO it's a really simple, clever pricing model that wasn't viable before the days of internet and mass-market coaching sites. The difficulty is in finding the right price so you don't price yourself out of the market. I suspect the authors have done lots of behind-the-scenes work on pricing and markets and found their inflection point, meaning they don't even have to worry about the value of their time and effort. That's how to run a business.

The problem I have with expensive books is that they can only give you a strategy that depends on many factors and this will always result in a timing problem. You may more or less know how to adjust correctly, but you will always have a tough time to know when. Timing is a skill that you cannot buy.

The only book that has ever attempted to provide a full systematic approach to play poker is "Poker Strategy: Winning with Game Theory" by Nesmith Ankeny. While this may work with 5-card draw, I doubt that such an approach is possible for Hold'em except for the well known push/fold situations.

In the end we all know how tough it is to beat a blackjackdealer despite knowing his exact strategy. In poker we don't know the exact strategy of our opponents, but for some reason think that we can do it at virtually any level with some sort of secret system that will cost us $250 or $2500 or $25000. Sorry, but that is ridiculous.

All of these e-books remind me of the "Winning with..."-books in chess. Patzers can read these books all day long and they will still lose to an experienced player.

Actually the only safe way to beat poker that I could think of, is selling a strategy book named the "Ultimate Truth about Hold'em" to the masses, so that everyone plays that exact strategy and you can exploit them, because they don't adjust. That would be as close to beating blackjack as it gets.

wat? 2500$ are u kidding me. Just bull****..........!

These books do not contain "secret systems"; some people believe they do because one or two grands is an awful lot of money to them and they would only consider spending that much if it could allow them to have poker "solved", so to speak.

Very true -- except that the "Winning with" series is mass literature, so your argument is actually against $30 books.

This makes little sense to me. I hope you're not referring to violations of copyrights.

Most poker books are unacceptable. You need to compare how these ebooks stack up against the few truly excellent poker books.

I don't agree with this and it's not as simple as you suggest. As a counter example, I think everyone will agree that The Theory of Poker is a very important book to read and study, and the initial version of it appeared in 1978, and the current version is the 1994 release.

On the other hand, certain "how to" books do meet your specifications. And when the game changes, these books will lose much of their value.

Not necessarily. See above.

When books are no good, they should cause you to lose money. So in a sense a bad ebook that's very expensive won't cost you any more than a regular priced book. It's just that the money will go to the author/publisher instead of your opponents.

Best wishes,
Mason

You cant compare any of these ebooks to Theory of Poker, or HoH or something else that was published century ago. The target audience are midstakes or mid-high stakes players that want to improve their game in online shorthanded games. 2+2 offers minimal alternative to what these ebooks offer.

I think it's ok for me to say this, I don't intend it as advertising, just clarification/information re the last several posts:

This is not a how-to guide to beating online 6-max plo, even though the target audience plays online 6-max plo. As a couple people have said earlier in the thread, structurally it has more in common with a dissertation than it does with the other high-priced e-books. That said, I think "theory book" or "how-to book" is a false dichotomy. The best poker books are both. In the case of this material and my communication style, the theoretical foundation is necessary to get to the practical advice.

It's coming.

MM

Is it going to be like the "how to" books that lose value after a while or what?

Not trying to be a dick, don't know if that sounded hostile. Just wondering.

I'm not anxious to comment on manuscripts before I see them.

MM

Do you mean that more 2p2 ebooks in general are coming?

or do you mean you have new books on the way from some sick players/writers with information we haven't seen in other books?

Yes to both.

MM

So I am guessing you are referring to "Analytical Hold 'em" by Thomas Bakker which I am reading is based on "range based thinking" similar to many parts of these ebooks on the market. Is this book still in the pipeline for early next year?