In my last blog I wrote about Imagine Media selling books that were “cheap” at $25-$40 a pop. Lots of people thought I was crazy when I said that most books “written by successful online players” were 10-100x that amount. They said that most books were under $25 and they are correct generally speaking. But the ONLINE PLAYERS books are much more expensive. There is no delicate way to put this, the reason why the books are so cheap that are not written by the online guys is because they are usually written by folks who are NOT successful at poker, generally speaking. The online guys experience a great opportunity cost when they write a book because they could be making substantial sums of money playing online poker. So in order to justify taking time away to not only write a book, but also potentially lower their win rate because they are giving away so much great information, there needs to be a greater value assigned to their work to make it a mutually beneficial transaction between author and reader.
Simply put, you get what you pay for. You want a book written by a guy who crushes poker online, it is going to cost more. But the value of the book to the reader is much greater not only in my opinion, but the tens of thousands of people who have read Imagine Media’s books. If you want a book put out by another publishing company by some author who you may have seen on TV or heard about, the reason that author wrote a book and put it out into the world for $19.99 (and the author’s cut probably being in the range of $1 a book) is because the guy or gal probably can’t make much money playing poker. You don’t see truly successful poker players ever put out books unless there is a big price tag on it. When Doyle Brunson (who we can all agree truly is a GREAT poker player) wrote Super System back in the 70s, it was $100 a book! That was probably at least $500 if not $1,000 in today’s money. But you don’t see Ivey or Antonius or Durrrrr write a book. You don’t see any great players write books without huge price tags. What you see is people who leveraged some of their past successes into a career as a poker media person, which generally includes a book.
Anyway, I’m just trying to give the most truthful and honest representation. Again, I hate to burst people’s bubbles, but the books you are reading by your heroes are probably 90% of the time (some exceptions that come to mind from books that I have read are Dan Harrington and Ed Miller) garbage cash grabs put out by famous poker players who are trying to make money off of their reputation because they sure can’t make much money at the tables. The GREAT poker players who want to write books either carry larger price tags or occasionally, the player may have just wanted a new challenge in life and decided to write a book even though he knew it wouldn’t benefit him monetarily in a way that was worth the loss in poker income.
The best way I can sum it up is with this analogy. What would you pay for an investment book put out by Warren Buffet that exposed, in large part, the investment strategies he uses every single day? I’d imagine a lot of people would pay thousands for this book. There may be some big time Wall Street guys who may pay millions, who knows. But Warren Buffet is probably not going to do that because he is too busy using his skills to make money. Now if some investment “guru” put out a book for $19.99 telling you how to make “millions” (where his cut is $1 a book and he probably will sell 25,000 books max) shouldn’t you be a little worried you are being scammed? I mean, why would a guy who has such great investment strategies that he can make “millions” off of, want to make only a $1 a book AND give away his secrets at the same time. Again, you get what you pay for. This may be a bit of a bold statement, but if you want a cheap book (and therefore “cheap advice” in my opinion) then the $19.99 books are for you. But if you want the goods, it is going to cost more money. It is just simple economics and definitely NOT a rip off like some people may initially think when they see a slightly higher price tag. And the only reason Imagine Media is even able to put books out into the world for as cheap as $40, is two fold. 1. We are not greedy 2. We have a superior business model that allows us to put books out into the world for less than they should cost.