Come on Bobo. Stop letting facts get in the way of a good argument. Or a shitty one.

Lifetime yes, but the last 5-10 years I think I'd take that bet. D&B have plenty of books that didnt sell a dime I'm sure but they also have Modern Poker Theory the biggest selling print book in a very long time plus J Little seems to knock one a year out which I suspect sell well.

While I think this thread is pretty ridiculous and not the first time Mason would have benefited from keeping his feelings to himself instead of airing them out to NVG, I definitely don't despise him. Quite the contrary, all my personal dealings with Mason have been nothing but pleasant and enjoyable.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. If that incident had happened a decade later ( you know, when society finally started at least kind of caring about women), Sklasnky and his defenders would be hiding under a rock.

We are here to watch an old man "tilting at windmills".

(From google search:

"Don Quixote believes the windmills are giants, and even when he comes face-to-face with the facts, he refuses to accept that he could be wrong. The absurdity of this encourages the reader to consider how ridiculous it is for others to ignore the truth, even when they are presented with undeniable facts.")

And how do you know this? I follow this stuff probably closer than anyone and don't now the answer.

The Modern Poker Theory book, for which I gave a good review, came out just under three years ago. If you follow Amazon sales ranks, like I do, you would know that on Amazon it's been the best selling poker book since it came out. But The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky has been the second best selling poker book on Amazon during that time and it has long-term gigantic sales.

But many of our book sales are not on Amazon, they go through a book wholesaler. I don't know what D&B does, but suspect that almost all of their sales go through Amazon (and we're moving that way as well). So comparing the sales of one of their books to ours is something I can't do.

Mason

What a frivolous thread.

I use Publisher Rocket https://publisherrocket.com/

Its all Amazon sales of course but given Amazon accounts for 60-70% of all English language book sales I think that is a reliable indicator of overall book sales. It had Modern Poker Theory doing double the sales of Theory of Poker, which is 2nd overall. Alton Hardin's book is about the same as where Theory of Poker is in sales, but the next three are all D&B books.

D&B also put pretty much all of their books on audible, I've not seen many 2+2 books on audio. That will have quite a significant impact.

I presume D&B have their books go through other channels too.

We'd never be able to settle this of course because D&B would never share their numbers to settle an argument, but I think D&B are much more ubiquitous than you think they are.

Hi Dave:

Look at what I bolded and ask the question how long a time period is it you're looking at? Many books will start out with good sales but then don't have "legs."

Mason

He sometimes focuses too much on small details and leans towards being overly precise. Probably a side effect of his Virginia Tech math training. When we collaborate on a book, I sometimes have to take out one of his sentences when it involves going into detail about a tiny, sometimes obvious, exception to a general principle, because it disrupts the flow of what we are talking about. This proclivity sometimes spills over into other areas and is often misinterpreted.

Is this a Jedi mind trick to get peeps to lookup this book and possibly buy it?

That's Hokiist.

FWIW Matt Sklansky seemed like an interesting guy who did actually care about the site and its users (and the mods). But I don’t really “know him” and again my interaction with him was very limited.

But I’d actually rather like to have a beer with him one day. Assuming he wasn’t involved in a “scandal” I observed only from a distance but still have personal opinions about. Then I’d pass.

A lot of you think this thread is a joke, but I look at a lot of the things in here very seriously.

One of these things is what is known as KDP Amazon. We're in the process of moving almost all our books into this program and will certainly use KDP for any new books that we do.

One of the results of this is that it'll cut our expenses way back and allow us to offer new authors exceptionally high royalty rates, perhaps at least 60 percent and up to 80 percent.

Now a question for all the D&B authors. Wouldn't you like to have this royalty rate? And just in case there was any doubt that our royalty rates were not a lot higher than our competitor, we decided to put those doubts to bed once and for all.

Mason

Mason, if it makes you feel any better I own a ton of 2+2 books and I still pick them up to this day to re-read from time to time. I'm mad that I lent someone a h/l book many years ago and I have never seen that one return. I may have to order another copy of that one.

I see the point of the thread. How could you offer 80% when the maximum Amazon offers directly for ebooks in 70%? For paperbacks, it is 60% after "printing costs". Presumably 2+2 would put their name on it, and do editing, formatting, marketing etc.

Hi deuce:

It's 80 percent of the money that we receive. That's the way all our contracts are written. It's not 80 percent of the retail price. Sorry for the confusion.

Also, when you say Amazon pays 70 percent for ebooks (kindles), that's only for kindles where the publisher's retail price (for the kindle) is below $10 (and $9.99 works). For all other kindles, they pay 35 percent. Also, on the cheap kindles where they do pay 70 percent, there's also a delivery charge which is taken off the 70 percent so you never actually get 70 percent (but in most, but not all, cases it's close.)

We also do more than just editing, formatting, etc. We have a lot of expertise in the poker/gambling area and, in my opinion, have often made the submitted manuscript, with the help of the author, much better.

Mason

We understand this. That is why you are being so thoroughly dragged.

It’s possible some people ITT may come somewhere near Mason’s intellect (highly doubtful) and those folks probably think “ohhh. This guy…I see what he’s doing.” Then they make up this wild scenario in their heads regarding self promotion and wanting to sell stuff he’s been working on his whole life and PROBABLY they sometimes click one of those threads and think it’s harmless goofy fun, respects the promotion, and doesn’t bother engaging.

And on occasion maybe one thread is especially what someone may call “mason-y,” appreciated it, and decided to have some fun and play in the waters a little bit.

It’s a highly unlikely scenario but given the sheer number of folks who have passed thru 2+2 over the years, it probably happens on occasion.

You wouldn’t understand. And frankly, neither would I. I ain’t that smart, and I’m wrong far more often than I’m right.

Nothing that fancy. Just a thread promoting claimed high royalties to potential authors, and implying 2 +2 books are generally higher quality than the competition. I little indirect, which is why some people thought it was weird.

I used to like the way the spines fell apart.

Like seriously, it meant I was LEARNING.

I can’t stand what I know about DS but I’m fine admitting his stuff was very very good at the time and really encouraged critical thought. I never saw them as “how to play” but rather “how to think” or “how to approach.”

I’m a huge fan of critical thinking and I think the books I read then did a great job at that.

And the binding was cheap (and yes I get it may have been the most expensive best binding ever but the reality is for people who aren’t publishing snobs or in publishing most prob don’t really care who or how books are published as long as they are good and feel good), but that seemed like part of the charm.

I’d just mark pages with other pages.

But as I get my desire/need to read those books waned.

Honestly the best poker book I ever read and the one that most helped me in my career was “Limit Texas Hold’em” by a likely losing player named Gary Carson.

I’m prob wrong about the title, and I have no idea who published it. I’d be surprised if it was 2+2 cause I remember when I lent it out it was still in great condition despite me absolutely devouring it at the time. And it could well have been 2+2 but because of that I doubt it.

But for research/resource books I never thought about it or cared till right this second. And now I’m back to not caring. Heck it may have been an intentional decision to make the pages so malleable. It never bothered me and at times was useful. I assumed it was cheap binding and a cost saving measure but never cared. Wether or not it actually cost more is irrelevant to me, and prob most consumers.

The quality of these types of books lie in the words, I don’t care how they’re made as long as they are usable and legible. And they always were. Great font choices, IMO. To me that > PERCEIVED quality.

But that’s just me, and as stated previously in this thread, i’m weird.

Edit:
Disclaimer: I’m high AF rn and have no clue what I actually wrote. If it’s word salad and Mason or anyone want to remove it to eliminate noise I’m cool with it. I don’t want to “derail” whatever this thread is actually about. I haven’t read most of it I’m just bored. If this is “serious ****” I shall away.

The problem of the covers coming off some of our books was fixed almost 20 years ago.

Mason

Mason you use to say "best wishes" at the end of every post and now have stopped. Do you not wish the best for us anymore?

Joke? No. My entire participation in this thread comes from one sentence in the original post:

Having read a page and a half of posts, I now realize that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. We each should mentally or literally construct a Venn diagram of the following groups:

A. People who have read the foreword. (Note: thanks to Amazon's preview, these are not necessarily people who purchased the book.)

B. People who would conclude that 2+2 was one of the rejected publishers referenced in the foreword.

C. People who might reasonably consider authoring a poker book.

A ∩ B ∩ C, however large or small that group is, are the people who Mason should be worried about. I (and I would imagine many others ITT) think this group is small to the point of being insignificant. Mason evidently thinks its substantially larger. As long he does, more power to him, nothing we can say to change his mind. Making this exercise more futile is that no one has any data on A, B nor C.

Anyway, Mason: yes, I think you're being too worried, but I have no empirical information to back that up. So please carry on.

It may not make sense logically, but it is obvious what Mason is doing has little to do with the apparent topic of this thread. The purpose is to promote 2+2 publishing in general and specifically its publishing books via Amazon KPD