The future of poker books

[mchilger]

What is your take on the future of poker books? What trends do you see developing in the next 1-2 years? What niches do you still think need to be filled.

Matthew

[NickChristenson]

Oooh. Good questions.

First, I think until we can get a lot of new people interested in online poker again, I think poker in the United States has peaked. I don't think it will crash, and I don't expect overall interest to drop to 1990s levels, at least any time soon, but I think the peak is behind us.

That will mean interest in things like poker books is almost certainly waning from the peak. Yeah, I've badly mis-timed the market. The last couple of years we've seen well in excess of 50 poker books released per year from the major and well-known niche publishers. I think we'll see this number start to drop over the next few years. There will always be room for very good new books, but the inundation of repetitious books with titles like "Tournament Poker for Mouth Breathers" will drastically slow down.

With the peak in poker interest, I'm hoping that the folks who stick around will be the more serious-minded players. I expect that Hold'em will continue to be dominant, but I'm hopeful that players will become interested in other games as well. I'm also hoping that mixed games in tournaments and at lower stakes will start to become more popular, especially considering the interest in the 50K HORSE event at the WSOP.

I expect the books that do come out over the next few years to become more specialized. Especially after the Harrington cash game books come out (I haven't read these yet), I expect that to pretty much put a sock in the soup-to-nuts NL book market. I think there will still be NL books, but they'll focus on more narrow aspects of the game. In that regard, I think "Winning Strategies for No-Limit Hold'em" will be a harbinger of things to come. I'm also hoping that there will be an emerging market on other games as well.

If someone is looking to write a poker book, there are a couple of areas that I think are unsatisfied and ripe for a book to fill the niche. Number one on my list is a book on online poker tools. We need a book that discusses the following topics: Which hand history organizers do what? What things should we be doing with our hand histories? Which HUDs do what? Which HUDs work with which hand history aggregators? Which software do the big poker sites allow, and which do they not allow? How do people get around these restrictions? This is an untapped area.

Another game that has a niche popularity with no book on the subject is Badugi. Writing this one won't make you rich, but if you *know* the game and do a good job, you may be able to write a category-killer, and that's not bad. I think Stud8 is an underserved game, as is pineapple. Again, these books won't make you rich, but done right, you can close out the topic, much as Sklansky did (IMHO) with "Sklansky on Razz" within "Sklanksy on Poker".

[Doc T River]

Do you think we will see any kind of rating system on poker books? By that I mean something on the back cover (or somewhere) telling people what level of player the book is for.

I used to post on another forum and too often I would see a book criticized by a very experienced player who criticized the book because it did not approach the game at the level he was on. The criticizer would ignore the fact that the book was not written for his level.

I still read the comments on that forum and I must say I see your book coming under this unfair criticism.

I think making it clear what level the book is for would help everyone. I have over forty books and I have a number that I bought when first starting out that I would not have bought had I known it was written for players at an experience level greater than where I was.

So do you think my idea is possible or would it limit book sales too much.

[NickChristenson]

[mchilger]

This will never happen. Sometimes it is hard to label a book. For example, I think ITH has a lot of advanced material, at the very least a lot of intermediate material, but many people recommend it as a "beginner's" book. I guess that goes into how you define a beginner - is he someone who doesn't know that a flush beats a straight, or does he understand the rules of the games, has played a little, and is buying his first book. Both are really beginners but ITH is much more suited for one than the other. I'm not sure how I would label ITH. I certainly want it appeal to players starting out, even though some of the material might be too advanced for them right now.

I also doubt a "rating" would matter too much. Books like Texas Hold'em for Advanced Players or Small Stakes Hold'em - Winning Big with Expert Play are bought by beginning and advanced players alike.

There are too many publishers, too many markets for that to happen. But that is why the internet is a valuable resource. I have a summary/overview of what books players should buy by game as well as others like Nick who reviews books. But for those browsers in the book stores, many will just have to be satisfied with Playing Like the Pros

Matthew

[Doc T River]

It is the buyers in the stores who have not done research on the web (and I was one when I first started buying) was one thing that motivated me to make this suggestion.

Given that people talk about basic poker being ABC, I thought maybe publishers could you the letters ABC. A would be for advanced, B would stand for Basic or Beginner, and C would stand for I don't know (complicated?).