Do Not Buy Another $50 Poker Book

I have just seen another poker book advertisement, which has prompted me to write this rant. I usually stick with informative posts where reader walks away with some new information about a topic or aspect of poker universe. This post, however, is more of a opinion post.

It Is All About Motivation

This new book has a snappy title - “How I made my first million from poker”. I clicked the ad. For only $47 on pre-order it offers to teach you how to make your own first million playing poker. Stating the value  one of the testimonials on the promo page said - 

“...As a recreational player the books are fairly priced, and for a professional they are steal...”

Surprisingly this book was rather affordable among others. I saw another book on the author’s site for $947. My head was still buzzing after I regained consciousness from a severe sticker shock. The unspoken message stood in its shameless clarify - “I made my first million from poker. That was hard work. My second million will be a lot easier by selling my overpriced books”.

Beating Phil Ivey

An email confirming my access to the book excerpt also casually promised to teach me how to beat Phil Ivey. That got your attention, did it not? Perhaps the promo page calling this book fairly priced was spot on after all. Imagine yourself arriving to Vegas fresh after reading this book and challenging Ivey to a high stakes No Limit poker session at Bellagio. I know - suspense is killing you by now. Sorry, it is not what you think and I thought. It is just another snappy title designed to lure you into clicking further. For most of us beating Phil Ivey will remain a pipe dream even after Dec 15th. That is when this book gets released.

Value of A Book

My hat is off to the author if he has won $1M playing No Limit Holdem. Does that fact alone warrants writing a book? - You decide. It is a free country. Since I have not read the book, I am willing to assume it is a decent poker book. It even has an endorsement of Poker Hall of Famer Barry Greenstein. So it cannot be a total air. Would I buy it for $47 when books from world renown poker writers like Sklansky and Harrington cost $10-20? Certainly, I would not.

A search on Amazon for poker books returns 4560 items. I am going to hazard a guess that a couple dozen books out of that pile are decent poker books. But to play good Texas Holdem you only need 1-2 books and lots of time to make those theories into practice. I have to agree with Bill Rini who argues that there is no silver bullet in those shiny, overpriced poker books coming hot off the press. That sound advice falls on death ears. Apparently we stand ready to grab at every new book which promises to turn us into Phil Ivey by revealing some “proprietary, advanced” strategies.

Poker is an old game. Its fundamentals are well known and described in systematic and easy to read format by multiple authors.  Why not pick up one of D. Sklansky books? You can easily find used copy priced at under $10. You get the same advanced strategies with better copy writing for less! I just see nothing proprietary in a “strategy” telling you to adjust your game to an online tournament environment.

Book Business Model

Book selling business model had irrevocably changed. Ten years ago making a million dollars on selling how-to-make-money book was a relatively straight forward process. Price your book at $50 then promote it aggressively. As every good thing that model was overused and stopped working. There are simply not enough suckers around anymore. The audience is infatuated with books, magazines, systems which “guarantee” results, etc. The attention has become scarce. These days I routinely see up and coming authors releasing their books for free. Just spreading the word and hoping to get a following. If your writing is good, then your next book might make money. So my advice to the author of the next groundbreaking poker book: publish it on Kindle and price at $1.99 or lower. You would still need a celebrity endorsement or some kind of PR firepower. Absent that just writing outstanding material will get you there, albeit slowly.