I am looking for feedback on my Limit Hold'em book

[Daithi]

One more month -- July 2004.

I can't wait, even though I've been playing mostly NL lately. If I can 50 large I may need to change my game of choice. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

I hate to admit this, but for the longest time I just broke even at low limit games. My starting cards were better, I played aggressive, I didn't allow free cards, and had a pretty good idea how to play. So how on earth could I spend hours at a table and just break even?

It took me a while to figure out I needed to jam with my draws, and wait until the turn to attack with top pair (two-pair and sets as well) when there was a lot of people in the pot and draws on board. I'm looking forward to other strategies I hadn't figured out on my own.

[Mason Malmuth]

We don't do this. Unless we already know the author quite well, we ask to see a completed manuscript. The most important thing to us is top quality material. If that's the case then the marketing will often take care of itself.

By the way, since we know our field quite well, we don't need a submitted marketing analysis.

MM

[Randy Burgess]

You are possibly the most pugnaciously argumentive human being on the face of the planet, or at least that part of it west of the Rockies.

Two Plus Two may not require a market analysis, but if an author didn't think about considerations of market and potential readership before writing a book proposal, let alone an entire manuscript, he would be being making a big mistake. This would be the case no matter to whom he intended to submit the manuscript - you guys or anyone else.

As for manuscripts needing to be "top quality," one red flag for any manuscript is when the audience for it isn't immediately clear. I think Ed Miller addressed this pretty well. Whereas with a good manuscript it's clear right away.

Hey, look at the cover for "Theory of Poker" - the subhead says, "A professional poker player teaches you how to think like one." Not only is this a great hook, it immediately defines author, audience, and why the audience should buy the book. Now *that's* good marketing.

And though you don't require your authors to submit a market analysis, I don't think anyone would believe for a moment that Mason Malmuth doesn't have some pretty good ideas of who Two Plus Two's audience is and what they might want to read about. In effect you are doing a market analysis every time you look over a new manuscript, whether or not you think of it concretely or in those particular terms. You'd be a fool if you didn't, and no one has accused you of that particular character trait yet.

[Daithi]

Wow, have you got some cajones!

Someone is looking for advice on publishing a book. The top publisher of books in the field for which advice is being sought says "here is what I look for." Now it so happens that some of his advice contradicts you, and you start with name calling. I seriously hope that was just a joke that didn't come off well.

Mason didn't say that other publishers, that are unfamiliar with the market, wouldn't like a marketing survey. He simply said he didn't need it.

[Mason Malmuth]

The following is our standard reply when we get an inquiry about publishing a book from an author we don't know.

We would be glad to look at a completed manuscript. However, most of the manuscripts sent to us are not accepted because they do not meet our standards. You need to know that. Also, even if we accept the manuscript, we
may require much rewriting to make the book extremely accurate and complete.

If this looks familiar this is exactly what we sent to you. As in your case, it's reduces the amount of work that we need to do since you never submitted the manuscript.

MM

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Daithi:

Virtually all publishers are familiar with the field in which they publish their books. In addition, I would really be surprised to get a marketing analysis from an author that didn't argue his book was well worth doing. Yet even in the gambling field, we know that many topics don't have much selling value even though the book might be fairly good.

What has set us apart from other publishers is expertise. For example, I think everyone knows that books on hold 'em are currently entering a very good market. Yet we still wouldn't be interested in a book on this subject if it wasn't extremely good.

Best wishes,
Mason

[David Sklansky]

"You'd be a fool if you didn't, and no one has accused you of that particular character trait yet " . Wrong again. According to Mike Souchak, Barry Shulman called him an idiot. I think we can agree that the words are synonyms. You really need to take more care with the accuracy of your posts Randy.

[bwana devil]

The reply from Randy sounded very good natured to me. I read it that Randy was disagreeing w/ Mason on certain specific points but ribbing him a bit in doing so.

All in all, I have enjoyed the exchanges between Randy and Mason & David.

btw, after reading the discussions last week I wanted more insight and went and purchased HFAP and Tournament Poker.

william

[RowdyZ]

I am not sure why people are jumping on Randy for, the outline he gave for an author wanting to write this type book wether it is about dieting, being a better business leader or in this case poker player is probably true for 90+% of publisher.. the book proposal comes first to see if there is any interest before you write the thing, If you can convince the publishing house that it is a wothwhile (ie will make money) then you hammer out details and write it. If it is a hot enough topic then the publisher might reach out to an author asking for a proposal about a subject. I can see how 2+2 might be different and I respect that but their way of doing things aren't the norm, what Randy described is.

[King Yao]

[ QUOTE ]
I gather (correct me if I'm wrong) that Pi Yee press is Stanford Wong's imprint.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is correct. For those interested, here's how I went about the process of convincing him to publish my book even though I have never published anything.

He knew me from his website SharpSportsBetting.com (I posted under an assumed name there, and had built, what I believe, a respectable reputation in sports) and I met him briefly one day within a group format (Pi Yee Press was hosting a seminar). Two days after that seminar, I sent him an outline of my book, along with a two page writing sample. A day later he offered me a deal. My belief is that he was willing to do this because he knew my previous "work" in sports, and was impressed enough to assume I would do an equivalent good job in poker. In that sense I was very lucky as I did not have to do all the legwork that many other first-time authors have to go through. Now the only question is whether Stanford actually made the right decision. We shall see soon!