Comment by ChuckFrank | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckFrank | Hacker News Reader

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.

Thanks. I was assuming some fake reviews were a ironic piece of guerilla marketing :)

I can't imagine that condoning astroturfing would be good for business, either as a retailer (Amazon) or a book author.

Unless it's a case study for their NEXT essay

> BTW, do you have any data on the optimum pricing of an ebook being $2.99-4.99?

I smell a new post!!!

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 --

http://evilgeniuschronicles.org/2011/01/12/ebook-pricing-vs-...

Here are some more current discussions.

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/09/whats-the-best-price-for-a-self...

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-can-the-avera...

(see pricing barometer above)

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/16/whats-the-most-profitable-p...

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120728/...

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.

Who knows. Even Porlandia wadded in on the topic.

http://www.newscastic.com/news/did-portlandia-show-us-the-fu...

*Note -- Charlize Theron NSFW (not actually it's part of the joke)

"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.

Why the book? Why Priceonomics? Because this ^^^^

Well done.

> Many people had advanced copies of various drafts of the book

Seems like you cherry-picked who got the advanced copies...

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!

As far as I know, Eric Reis' "Lean Startup" book was largely a repackage of his blog posts, but that didn't stop it from being a success.

Then again, much like you, as an avid reader of the original blog, I did not pick up a copy ;)

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