Dueling Magazines

[Ed Miller]

I just read the Andy Beal threads and realized that both CardPlayer and Bluff have plants on the forum promoting their respective magazines. The Bluff plant has been promoting for several months now, often under the guise of an enthusiastic reader.

I'm PMing warnings right now to both these posters to cease promoting their stuff. Just a heads-up.

Ed

[MrWookie]

Names, sir, names!

[Ed Miller]

[ QUOTE ]
Names, sir, names!

[/ QUOTE ]

pdparv from Bluff and pievegas from Cardplayer.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Everyone:

Just so all the moderators will know what happened, both pievegas and pdparv were banned by me on 2/14/06. Pievegas quickly appologized and promised not to break any rules again. She will be reinstated on 2/18/06.

Pdparv went on to attack us on the forums at bluffmagazine.com but has now appologized for his actions and posted to this effect in the Bluff forums. He will be allowed back on 2/20/06.

Best wishes,
Mason

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
Pievegas will be reinstated on 2/18/06.

Pdparv will be allowed back on 2/20/06.

[/ QUOTE ]The interesting question is whether we'll get PMs about it when they're back. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
-Sam

[Dids]

I made a note in one of the threads to the Bluff guy. I basically saw the post saying "hey we've got an article on this written by xxx" coming as ok, but random url spamming for updates as not. To be honest, I would have done more had I not been at work.

I didn't view it from a "they're in competition with 2p2 The Mag, 'cause our mag just seems so different. If y'all red folk can spell out some more explict guildines for me to work with, I'll be happy to slap some people around in WPT and NVG.

[Ed Miller]

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't view it from a "they're in competition with 2p2 The Mag, 'cause our mag just seems so different. If y'all red folk can spell out some more explict guildines for me to work with, I'll be happy to slap some people around in WPT and NVG.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not a competition thing. It's a shameless promoting thing. Authors or reporters or whatever are allowed to come here to defend or answer questions about their work. But they aren't allowed to promote it (plugging it unsolicited, posting links to it, spamming, showing up in barely related threads, etc.).

Basically, if someone asks, they can answer. But they can't bring it up. (The rule is a little flexible... we've allowed people to post one time only unsolicited announcements in certain circumstances... but it's definitely over the line if they do it two or more times.)

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Dids:

I've never gotten into this publicly even though hints have come out at times, but these two magazines are in my opinion very hostile to Two Plus Two Publishing LLC and everything we stand for. So even though they are not competitive to us in any way they are certainly not helpful either.

On a side note, I just happen to understand the poker book publishing business very well. Most of you will agree. The way I see the future is that while a great many poker books will be sold the next few years, most new poker books will fail because there will simply be more of them than there will be shelf space at the book stores. So the solution to having a successful new book title is to make sure that it is exceptionally good.

The reason I bring this up is that I suspect something similar is happening to the magazines. There are now too many of them, and I understand that more are coming, for them all to be successful. This includes Card Player which right at the moment is very well entrenched, but with nothing unique or worthwhile to offer that can quickly change (in my opinion).

So as the competition between the magazines intensifies and none of them is really worth reading, I'm not surprised to see Bluff and Cardplayer trying to come onto these forums to promote themselves. This should not be allowed. There many reasons for this, but one of them is that it is very unfair to our advertisers who pay for their space and support this whole operation.

Best wishes,
Mason

[MicroBob]

I'm half-tempted to create some stupid troll account for the card-player forums and go on about one of the better articles that I read in the 2+2-magazine.

I'm not going to do this of course...and I know that Mason and Ed and everyone else would agree this is not a very good idea...but I still think it's tempting.


I agree with Mason's ideas that there the magazine-saturation will be something of a problem for all of the various competitors.


I'm not sure I fully agree that being 'exceptionally good' is the only sure-fire formula to success for a given poker book or publishing company
haven't some really bad poker books had some pretty decent sales??
However, I'm not really sure I disagree either.

[Ed Miller]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I fully agree that being 'exceptionally good' is the only sure-fire formula to success for a given poker book or publishing company
haven't some really bad poker books had some pretty decent sales??
However, I'm not really sure I disagree either.

[/ QUOTE ]

Phil Helmuth's book sold a lot of copies when it came out, but the sales seem to have dropped off dramatically since. Whereas, 2+2, by and large, after an initial spurt, sells a consistently high number of books month after month, even years after initial publication.

I think the bad books tend to sell few books and then even fewer... OR they sell a lot right off the bat and then very few once the "word" gets out.