Good Books, Bad Books

[Supern]

I think Ciaffone is the best author besides the masters here at 2+2.
But it seems he's not selling alot on Amazon.
These are the sales rank of his books:

Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker: #6144
Middle Limit Holdem Poker: #8903
Improve Your Poker: #10181

I have all of these and they are very good.

The 2+2 books are doing very well.
Especially Harrington with #28 and #53 in sales.
TOP is #113 and HPFAP is #264.
You guys at 2+2 must be selling truckloads of books. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

But Ace on the river is the best selling poker book right now at #22.

[King Yao]

I am new to the publishing business, so I may be wrong: I think those Amazon numbers on Ciaffone books are excellent given that he is a self-publisher.

[avatar77]

I believe that the success of a poker book will be a combination of both content and marketing.

Case in point: Ciaffone's book under achieve in sales based on its content but that is undoubtably due to its poor marketing and distribution access.

Whereas Hellmuth has been fairly successful with his books due to his name and personal brand and the backings of a fairly large publisher despite the fact that the book is not that good (not bad but definately not a poker masterpiece)

Two plus two has done well because it has both. The content is obviously the industry standard for overall quality but just as importantly (as far as book sales are concerned), two plus two has very powerful marketing avenues: this website which generates incredible traffic and word of mouth/loyal fan base.

Every serious player has heard of two plus two and recommends those books to others who are new to poker.

[Easy E]

But what I find most interesting is we have noticed that one of the other poker publishers, a company with many more books than we have, seems to be missing the release date of many of their new titles. That is a bunch of their books which according to Amazon should already be out are not yet released.

Now I can't be absolutely sure, but I suspect that most of these not yet released books that should already be out will do poorly (in terms of sales). I also suspect that many of this publisher's line of books are also doing poorly.
[]
The conclusion to this, and I have stated this before, is that for a new poker book to be successful, it better be good regardless who the publisher is.


Are we to infer from this that the books that are being delayed are of poor quality (thus the delay) and that is affecting this publisher's entire line of books as a result? Or are all of the publisher's books going to aquire a poor quality reputation due to their poor, delayed poker books and overall sales will suffer?

Because either I'm tired or I'm missing your point (if it's not the obvious one), Maxi-Ed.

[archangel]

[ QUOTE ]
but all in all apart from learning the utter utter basics from ken warren ive never really learned much from poker books.

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Supern:

MLH is not very good. It is a flawed work, people know it, and that has hurt its sales. The other two books are very good but while on poker, they are not on subjects that are quite as popular.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi King:

Actually you are wrong. Given that he is a self-publisher his books might not be distributed as well. This will have the affect of inflating his Amazon numbers since his books are available there and not always in the stores.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi avatar:

I believe that Hellmuth was a bit of a fluke. His first book timed the initial World Poker Tour shows perfectly. All of a sudden there was a big demand for poker books and there was actually a shortage of books, plus he was being featured on the initial shows.

I believe that if his book would come out today it would fail miserably because now there is strong and numerous competition. Furthermore, its sales have slowed way down and his other two books aren't doing very well.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Supern]

How is it flawed besides being too weak?
I like the way he walks through the hands.

I must say it's one of the books I like alot.
I like Ciaffone books as much as the 2+2 books.

But of course does he fold too much in MLH.

I think the main reason for the low sales is that it doesn't have a cool cover and not enough advertisment.
NL & PL are considered very good and that one isn't a blockbuster either.
If you say NL & PL is poor as well you are making me confused here Mason. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[King Yao]

Again, I'm new to this industry, but these were my thoughts:

Ciaffone's Amazon numbers may be inflated (high sales, lower number in sales rank) with respect to his total sales, but his books physical visibility is relatively low, thus his Amazon numbers get hit a bit. So on one hand, he gets a nice boost on Amazon because physical bookstores don't carry them, but he doesn't have the visibility at physical bookstores, so that should hurt his Amazon sales some.

In other words, having books out in Barnes & Noble / Borders physical stores should help sales in Amazon because of the visibility of the actual book in stores. I often go to the physical bookstores and browse. If there is something interesting that I like, I jot it down in my palm pilot. When I get a chance at home, I search through the book titles on Amazon and buy it there at a cheaper price. This saves me money and costs me just 30 seconds per book title that I search. I don't know how many others are like me, but I imagine some poker readers do that too.

How important is one factor relative to the other? I don't know. My initial thought was that they were relatively close and thus negate each other. I'd assume you'd disagree based on your post.