It seems like the Amazon reviews might be stacked. There certainly are a ton of them popping up at 10 am this morning. Plus you can always tell a sock puppet review when they don't actually mention content and say things like "Greatest Book Evah" instead.
I know it's important to appear that the book is a proven reading experience, and reviews are the essential way to do that, but fake/paid/friend reviews just raise red flags.
I'm a huge fan of Priceonomics, and I would love to buy their book, but my concern is that a good portion of the book is repackaged articles. And anything that is a "heavily edited mashup" makes me cringe.
"Everything Is Bullshit consists of some new essays, some of our favorite older essays, and some chapters that are heavily edited mashups of various pieces we’ve written before.
If you’re a fan of our blog, we hope the new essays will be reason enough to buy the book: The Seal Clubbing Business, Why Is Art Expensive, How to Sell Nothing for $1000, The Big Lie, The World’s Most Expensive Free Credit Report, and The Food Industrial Complex.
Some of our most popular essays on diamonds, taxi medallions, academic publishing, wine, colleges, and other bullshitty things also make an appearance. Some of the essays are in a different form than when we originally published them; others look mostly the same."
So, with the sock puppet reviews, and the essays that "look mostly the same", they didn't convert me into a buyer.
My advice:
1. Sincere pre-release reviews. Praise and criticism.
2. A clear TOC with the new stories outlined (and republished ones linked to)
3. Enroll in Kindle Match. $9 an Ebook is outside the optimum pricing range for Ebooks. (2.99-4.99)
4. Use this to build the Priceonomic brand and not as a revenue structure. Price accordingly.
5. Look at your Freakonomics and Gladwell covers. I like yours, but I don't think it's the best version you could come up with. Though I recognize that good covers are hard. Very hard.
If you want my help, msg me. This, all of this, is what I do.
Hi there, I work at Priceonomics. Thanks for the suggestions. We'll probably do a blog post about our marketing strategy of this book, but I wanted to address your point that the book had reviews as soon as it launched on Amazon. How is that even possible?
Many people had advanced copies of various drafts of the book. When the book went live this morning we emailed all of them letting them know it was up there. Hence people (all of whom are regular readers of our blog and seem to like us) could review it even though the book was only just released. Hope that clears up your questions!
BTW, do you have any data on the optimum pricing of an ebook being $2.99-4.99? I would love to see it.
Ah, yes, the amazon page went live this morning. That makes sense. You may have wanted to curate, or to pull out some specific talking points for your reviewers. I think good good reviews are better than bad good reviews. But I understand the challenge.
As to the pricing info.
I like this post, though it's old and prices may have changed --
At 266 pages, I think you $16.95 book price is perfect. You might have even been able to push it up to $18.95 because of your brand. But being conservative, I think $6 a copy profit is good.
I would have priced the Ebook at $5.95, and I would've signed up for the free matchbook service, so when you buy the book you get the ebook for free. I'd drop the DRM too.
But these reviews are just stinkers:
"I was taught to question everything when I was in school and have practiced that ever since. Everything Is Bulls* is a fine example of that. Love it!"
&
"Love it! Rohin and the guys really put together a fantastic book. They did a great job using stories to explain the concepts. Very engaging - I highly recommend!"
Because, you don't actually use 'stories' to explain concepts. You use data. And his 'questioning everything' isn't really the gist of your work. You don't question everything, you examine some things in great detail.
Still, congratulations. I think that your marketing/content/service structure is really the future. Instead of you wanting to be bigger than the NYT, I could see the NYT following your model - if they could build a service structure that isolates it from the content structure.
"you don't actually use 'stories' to explain concepts. You use data."
In fairness, some of the Priceonomics posts are more overtly "story" driven, and even a fair number of the data-driven pieces involve interesting stories as framing devices. Using data to explain and analyze is the primary mission, but presenting that analysis in a compelling way is at least half the battle.
I have been fortunate enough to have written a few pieces for the Priceonomics blog. I don't speak for the company, and my impressions are my own $0.02... But if anything, my experience was that they'd ask me to tone myself down if I was getting too dry, too wonky, or too data-centric. The data needs to be there, as it needs to ground the analysis. But there should be a story behind it, too.
A big reason why Priceonomics' blog is so good is that it's not just a data dump. The team there has a very strong editorial focus. Believe me; there were some articles I wrote where we'd hop in a Google Doc and collaboratively edit for days and days on end, searching for the right narrative thread. Or the right way to phrase something. Or the best way to break wonky topics into approachable pieces, while still maintaining intellectual depth. I'd consider their editorial process to be at least as rigorous as that of any national publication I've written for.
"Questioning everything" seems a little much; I'd agree. It's not so much about "questioning everything" as it is peeling back the layers, and understanding why certain things are the way they are. Oftentimes, peeling back the layers of an industry -- diamonds, wine, etc. -- reveals a healthy amount of bullshit. Hence, "X is bullshit" is a semi-recurring theme in the blog. The beauty of it, IMO, is not just calling out bullshit -- but using it as the starting point, and explaining how bullshit works in specific contexts, and why it exists.
Now THAT'S an excellent review. Include the relevant disclaimer of having written for Priceonomics, but even this alone, explaining the process of getting the stories, is better than anything I've seen so far about the book.
Addressing your concern about 'repackaged articles', the 'Hyperbole and a Half' book was in the same situation. I really just bought it to support the blog, but I really enjoyed reading it. Even when though you've read half the content before, the distance of a few years and the feel of paper make it an enjoyable experience. Plus I've been able to loan it out to a few friends who wouldn't otherwise go and read through a few years of blog posts.
I will be buying this book too and I expect the same enjoyment. If only I had a pleasant, crackling fire!
I wouldn't have said it in so much words, but the authors are onto an important new business model:
free web stuff and sell books
The key point is that content in the form of a book (a unit of meaningful discourse) can be productized and offered in a sidebar. Instead of advertisements that pay micro cents per impression, why not offer a book and make 40% profit on print books and 97% profit on eBooks sold?
I'm not sure this will work for journalism, but for a lot of other types of content (ahm... hm.... textbooks), it's going to work for sure. The questions are: (1) what kind of reading is better done in book-sized chunks, and (2) how to decide which content goes into the free stuff and how much into the paid book.
The OPs are using the improved blog posts + new content equation, which has never been tried before. It will be very interesting to watch.
Agreed. "Stuff White People Like" is perhaps the earliest one I can think of, but "Shit My Dad Says", Dan Lewis' "Now I Know" and even our own Patio11's "Sell More Software" have all executed this business model, or one close enough to it to count as prior art.
I guess what I find new is the how easy it has become to print stuff these days, e.g. via peecho.com or lulu.com. I'm all for eBooks, but there is something about the printed book that makes me more likely to want to pay for it...
Could you show me examples of Webcomics and/or Webcomics for sale? Are they in print or PDF? I'd be interested to check their pricing models.
Nothing new in that business model. I have seen several popular bloggers do the exact same thing way before this initiative. That's natural : build your audience through a free service, then monetize goods targeted to this audience.
Did you self-publish or work with a publisher? What were your margins like in the end?
You're right, this is not a new model per se, but it's becoming more mainstream.
What fascinates me is the power of print-on-demand because it allows anyone to easily get into the book business. If Gutenberg's invention of technology giving people access to books was a revolution, it would make sense that technology that gives people access to printing presses is also going to cause a stir.
(I keep a notebook of links to articles about the book business here spundge.com/notebook/6774/ , in case anyone is interested.)
One-click buy is literally scary. I bought several books for Kindle on impulse this way. "Oh, what an interesting book, I'd read it. Hmm... <click> [creditCard -= $14;]".
Just a quick suggestion to the Priceonomics team... Start with the bottom half of the article. I had to go half way down the page to find out what the book is about. The first half talks about you WAY too much.
Well, I thought reading about them was really interesting. I think it made me a lot more likely to buy the book, especially since they were delightfully honest in explaining their motivations.
I've enjoyed Priceonomics blog posts and will probably get the book. Anyone remember when this was a pricing service startup though? Did they pivot to writing?
its amazing to me that these guys pivoted (or at least forked) from data services to journalism, but i think they do a phenomenal job as writers. watching their path has been as confusing as its been encouraging. congratulations on your book!
I'm genuinely confused about the legality about building a business whose sole purpose is to scrape the web, repackage and sell that information.
One side of the fence, you have all this publicly accessible information, so it's like.. why not? Anyone can obtain it. Why should you be restricted?
Then on the other side you have companies who will place all sorts of legal restrictions, TOS/EULAs, etc to prevent against web scraping; sending out cease & desists and even sometimes going as far as taking someone to court.
What's the best + safest approach here for a company like Priceonomics?
Exactly. I am very much on the side of "If it's publicly available info, it's free to access and repackage" but a lot of companies and judges feel otherwise.
I think part of the problem is that some services' TOS do give users the option to restrict access to their information so if you go and scrap it that might cause problems to the startup where that content was posted to.
If you’re a fan of our blog, we hope the new essays will
be reason enough to buy the book: The Seal Clubbing
Business, Why Is Art Expensive, How to Sell Nothing for
$1000, The Big Lie, The World’s Most Expensive Free
Credit Report, and The Food Industrial Complex.
It made me chuckle that trying to share the book on Amazon using the email share option on the page is blocked. I suspect due to the word Bullshit in the title
In fact, Hitler even beat out Jesus for total references for a good stretch of the mid-20th Century. For a long time, he was also stealing Christmas. But we're happy to note that Christmas overtook Hitler in the 1980s, and has narrowly edged him out ever since.
I know my karma is going to get nuked, but as a datapoint to the authors of Priceonomics: I'll never buy a book with a curseword in the title. It screams "amateur hour".
EDIT: Maybe you can use that topic for an upcoming blog post.
I agree with you somewhat that using curse words in book titles can be amateurish, like clickbait in the physical world.
PS the reason you're being downvoted is most likely because you prefaced your comment with "I know my karma is going to get nuked, but...". That's very Redditesque and is usually not tolerated.
I agree, and I got nuked as well, but I'm still going to express my opinion. It seems to me that it's possible to come up with a creative title to draw people in without resorting to profanity. Profanity has shock value but also will turn off some people, so it's risky and possibly counter-productive.
Or, you know, when your 9-year-old asks you "Papa(Mama), what is 'bullshit'?" You could explain that it does not literally means cattle manure, is a strong and rude expression sometimes used by people, and it's best to avoid that kind of expression in conversation.
Either you kid will learn the word from you (instead of their peers) and gain more knowledge, or they'll just mentally shrug and think "What the _, I'm nine and my dad thinks I don't know bullshit!"
Just don't act horrified when you're asked. That will fascinate your kids to no end.
Source(?): I have a 8-year-old daughter. (Hopefully she doesn't know what is 'bullshit' yet... but what's the big deal?)
I'm surprised at all the somewhat naive and pseudo-street-wise responses to what I consider a common sense stance.
Of course, I know that my child is being exposed to this kind of language in the schoolyard and in the media. She's heard me accidentally say it in earshot a few times, for Pete's sake.
I just consider it a coarse and low class way of expressing oneself. I know she'll eventually be teaching me swear words I've never even heard. I know she'll privately be speaking that way amongst her friends and peers. I know it's in literature and essays that she'll be reading.
I just find it distasteful to hear a young child speak that way, and I find it offensive to hear an adult talk that way in front of a young child. It's how I was raised, how nearly everyone in my generation was raised.
Look, if one of these kids, who thinks it's cool to put words like "Fuck" and "Bullshit" in the title of a blog or e-book, were to walk into a five star restaurant that requires fancy attire and start dropping the F-bomb, they'd be asked to leave or at a minimum generate some annoyance and disruption.
But they wouldn't speak that way in a five star restaurant, nor would they walk into a day care center and speak that way, nor would they curse in front of a neighbor's young children. Why? Because they know better. They know that society, even today, does not condone that kind of language around young children.
Many, if not most, parents would disapprove to the point of threatening with violence someone who was clueless enough to curse in front of their children. At a minimum, parents would whisk their children away and shun such a person as a clueless jerk or someone with mental problems.
If the authors of the book think they're being cute by using bullshit in the title, they're wrong. They're just resorting to a cheap trick that may trigger the "so what, that's how everyone talks" type of reaction in some, but will trigger the equally legitimate "Get that off my screen!" reaction in others.
A simple solution is to not leave this book out for your 9-year-old (or realize your 9-year-old really isn't interested). You can't seriously expect them to release a PG alternative.
9 year olds are typically in what, 3rd or 4th grade? Unless you are homeschooling him, he may not be swearing at home but that ship has long since sailed. I'm sure he and his recess buddies could teach you a few new words.
Could you explain a bit about this? Is this an American thing? Two different online advertisement platforms refused to place ads for my book because of the "swear word" in the title. I didn't get it...
To me bullshit isn't a swear word at all... except for the unpleasant graphical nature of reference, I would classify it totally in a different category from other swear words. It like a strong version of "crap" ... as in what kind of crap is this?
"Crap" is a weaker word for "shit" because sometimes the word "shit" is too strong. There's a language phenomenon called "code switching" - in different contexts, people will use different words or even switch languages. Remember in Firefly, when people got emotional and started swearing in Chinese? It's like that. http://english.stackexchange.com/a/29271
I know it's important to appear that the book is a proven reading experience, and reviews are the essential way to do that, but fake/paid/friend reviews just raise red flags.
I'm a huge fan of Priceonomics, and I would love to buy their book, but my concern is that a good portion of the book is repackaged articles. And anything that is a "heavily edited mashup" makes me cringe.
"Everything Is Bullshit consists of some new essays, some of our favorite older essays, and some chapters that are heavily edited mashups of various pieces we’ve written before.
If you’re a fan of our blog, we hope the new essays will be reason enough to buy the book: The Seal Clubbing Business, Why Is Art Expensive, How to Sell Nothing for $1000, The Big Lie, The World’s Most Expensive Free Credit Report, and The Food Industrial Complex.
Some of our most popular essays on diamonds, taxi medallions, academic publishing, wine, colleges, and other bullshitty things also make an appearance. Some of the essays are in a different form than when we originally published them; others look mostly the same."
So, with the sock puppet reviews, and the essays that "look mostly the same", they didn't convert me into a buyer.
My advice:
1. Sincere pre-release reviews. Praise and criticism. 2. A clear TOC with the new stories outlined (and republished ones linked to) 3. Enroll in Kindle Match. $9 an Ebook is outside the optimum pricing range for Ebooks. (2.99-4.99) 4. Use this to build the Priceonomic brand and not as a revenue structure. Price accordingly. 5. Look at your Freakonomics and Gladwell covers. I like yours, but I don't think it's the best version you could come up with. Though I recognize that good covers are hard. Very hard.
If you want my help, msg me. This, all of this, is what I do.