[Pokey]

Not to pee in your Cheerios or anything, but a few months ago I approached Mason (Malmuth) about possibly writing a book, to see if 2+2 would consider publishing it. His response:

[ QUOTE ]

Hi Pokey:

I'm not optimistic. Right now we have committments to a lot of books (for us) and this include five (and possibly six) books on no limit cash games. So for us to work another one in it would have to be exceptional.

Furthermore, I don't believe that intermediate or beginner material has much sales potential. The market has matured and the sales of those level books is now quite poor. You can see this yourself by going to Amazon.com and looking at sales ranks.

If you finish a manuscript, we can take a look at it, but I really doubt if we would have much interest.

best wishes,
mason


[/ QUOTE ]

He's right -- the market is FILLED with beginner and intermediate poker books right now. Even worse for potential writers (like you or me) is that many of them are written by "poker celebrities" like Annie Duke, Phil Helmuth, Dan Harrington, Phil Gordon, Doyle Brunson, T.J. Cloutier, etc. Since you don't have a famous name, you don't have a draw. Beginners are going to see a book by you and a book by Phil Helmuth and they're going to say "who the hell...oh, WAIT! I know Phil Helmuth! I'm buying THAT ONE!" Maybe your book is a masterpiece and maybe (OK, certainly) Phil's is a steaming crap pile, but the beginners won't know the difference. Until they're good enough that they don't need the book, they won't recognize good advice versus bad advice. That's why I'm always happy to see a new Cloutier or Helmuth book hit the market -- they'll make the fish WORSE rather than better. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

In short, unless you've got a brilliant marketing strategy or you're secretly Clonie McGowan, I'd say you might want to reconsider this project.