The thing is they may be starting out in advice giving, but they have the experience playing the game which is what counts. You can look Baluga, CTS, aejones and see they are really beating the game. I would be very reluctant to take advice from say, David Sklansky who I don't think has much (any) experience in NLHE 6max and HU.

The same obv applies for PLO and LearnedfromTV.

When HOH first came out much of the material was ground breaking and players rushed to buy it. Even though it was only five years ago, that's actually a fairly long time in the poker strategy book market.

With that being said, the market today has become much more fragmented and there are many more books available competing for the buyer's attention. So 280,000 will probably be a difficult number for a not yet published book to ever achieve. However, if players believe that a book has come out which will improve their win rates, a lot of copies can still be sold.

By the way, I have no objection to these high priced ebooks. From my point of view it is just a business model which is different from ours, and the ebook authors certainly have the right to go this route. It's just that, and again this is my opinion, if their material is as good as they claim, they would be much better off going with a more conventional pricing and sales approach.

Of course they would (in most cases) also discover that to go the route which I think is better is not as easy as it seems.

Best wishes,
mason

While I agree that 280,000 copies is out of reach, partly because PLO doesn't have the interest that let's say no-limit hold 'em tournaments had, if this book is as good as you claim, we would have no trouble selling 28,000 copies (though that won't happen overnight) provided the manuscript was of the appropriate length for one of our publications and also met our writing standards. (I have no idea if this is case since I have never seen the book.)

Also, lots of people have written books that belong in book stores and their sales are no where close to 28,000, and this includes many poker authors (and their publishers) who in many cases have not even been able to get their books on the bookstores shelves simply due to the fact that so many poker books have come out the last couple of years. (Fortunately we at Two Plus Two do not have this problem.)

Just to go a little farther on this, when you walk into a large book store such as a big Barnes & Noble, you can easily be looking at well over 100,000 different titles. What's interesting is that virtually all of these titles have close to zero sales and are known as "wallpaper" in the publishing business.

Best wishes,
mason

I don't play poker seriously anymore. The Two Plus Two experience now dominates my life. However, if it was say ten years ago and I was convinced that for a fee of $2,500 my win rate would go up by a statistically significant amount, that is a purchase I would make.

But that's not my argument here. I believe that if these extremely high priced books contain the quality of material that the authors claim for them, they would be much better off going a more conventional sales route. Also, when you are the author of a book that sells extremely well, many doors can open for you, and sometimes in very unexpected ways.

Best wishes,
mason

You took a little bit of a cheap shot here, but I suspect it was not intentional. David Sklansky is not offering any advice on NLHE 6 max and HU. However, based on his track record giving poker advice and his overall impact on the game, if he was to offer advice in these areas, I would bet it wouldn't be done unless it was top notch.

Mason

every one of these threads about high priced ebooks turns into a debate about
a) can a book be worth that much and
b) mason telling the author he would be better off mass-distributing over 2p2 (if his material is really that good) and a discussion about these two alternatives.

would it be possible to make two threads, so that people who are interested in the content and reviews of the book dont have to wade through the posts in the other category which make up 99%?

i guess it would be too much of a hassle for the mods.

are there any reviews yet?

what stakes, handle, and site does Tom Chambers play on so we can look up his stats?

Having read all the previews I agree with the view that this is certainly not a 28,000 copy selling book! I believe the adage goes that for every equation you put in a book you halve it's sales? Well if that's the case I pity the author, because there's an absolute ton of stats and combinatorics in the bits I've read. It's clearly a highly technical dissertation on the game that would only really appeal to a small percentage of math-literate, hardcore plo players who play against other decent, thinking players. I doubt it would sell mass market because frankly you don't need to know any of this stuff to beat say plo25.

Whether one distribution model or another is superior I don't know, but I think you have to choose the one which you feel is best suited to your product and it's intended (and likely) audience.

I just wish I had 2,5k going spare!

Those who dismiss the book outright due to its price(and I agree, it's kinda outrageously high) need to realize that if your roll is $500K then a $3K expense is nothing.

Let me put it another way: how many high stakes pros do you think would love to shell out $50,000 for a book titled Comprehensive Guide To Crushing No Limit Hold'em by Tom Dwan???

I'll bet you every single player that has ever sat at a $100/200+ table.

You should also take into consideration the fact that Toms book is teaching people who are probably gonna beat him out of pots in the future.

Kind of a moot point if he's making more money coaching/writing than he is at playing poker.

Mason ~ if someone sent you a demo copy of one of these 2500$ books would you take the effort to read it ?

I am a student of Tom Chambers and I did buy his book. It would have been nice if his book was more expensive so less players would buy it. And I wished it was only one guy who did buy his book and this guy was me.

I'm sure I would.

MM

I object to these kind of posts. I'm sure we could find lots of people to write the exact same thing, and mean it, about any number of our books.

All that this is saying is that you think the book had worthwhile information. I remember reading literally hundreds of posts similar to yours concerning a specific book designed for low limit hold 'em that many people swore buy. It was so discredited on these forums that the author had to completely rewrite it.

In addition, I have recently seen posts on here praising another book which is simply terrible. Here is my review of the book in question: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...ook-Review.php

For a post like this to have any credibility, you need to tell us something specific about the book and explain exactly why it's terrific.

MM