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Books cost money to buy because they cost money to make. Everything
flows from this. Or, it used to. Now, everything is different.
The book publishing world is radically changed from even three years
ago. My first book, Gold:
the Once and Future Money (2007), was picked up by a
major business publisher, John Wiley, and eventually was translated
into four foreign languages, also by major foreign book publishers.
It sold well for a book of its type, and is now in its fourth
English-language printing.
Along the way, a Kindle version appeared (I’m not responsible for
these things), priced a little lower than the print version.
Except for a few banner projects — I use Hillary Clinton’s
autobiography as one potential example — you don’t get much of
anything in the way of marketing by a book publisher. There just
isn’t enough money in it to justify the expense. You used to get
access to physical bookstores, which is more irrelevant by the week.
So, you are on your own — even with a major publisher.
For my second book, Gold:
the Monetary Polaris, I decided to go with Amazon’s
Createspace publishing platform. This gives me total control of the
contents, and the royalties per book are several multiples higher.
It is still available for physical bookstores to adopt, if they
choose to, with Createspace handling all the logistics.
Even so, this is not a money-making exercise. Pretty much any
money-making idea you can think of, including picking up old beer
cans for recycling, pays better than writing books about the details
of Classical currency management.
There was a lot of work involved. It would be nice to be compensated
for it somehow. It would also be nice to fly to the moon by flapping
my arms. I got over it.
That being the case, why was I doing this at all? Of course, it is
because I want to make available these ideas and knowledge.
It occurred to me that having 50,000 people download the
free eBook from a website – in terms of the propagation of
ideas and understanding — is not much different than having 50,000
people buy the book in printed format. Maybe better. Certainly
easier and more likely.
If making knowledge and ideas available is the goal, then charging
any price at all is an impediment. There’s a big difference between
free and even $0.99.
This is especially true considering that many of my potential
readers are not in the United States at all. If they were to buy a
physical book from Amazon, they might have to pay twenty or thirty
dollars for shipping, and wait several weeks. I want to reach people
in Africa, the Middle East, India, South America, and Central Asia —
the people who are already saying today that they are ready to give
up on Mercantilist funny money and adopt a Classical strategy,
including, ultimately, a gold-based currency.
I said at a recent
talk that the place to produce the first viable gold-based
currency of the new monetary era might be Nepal. Nepal has a
tradition of gold- and silver-based money, as do all people
everywhere, and they might be ready to go.
It might be the fertile field where these ideas can naturally take
root and blossom. They might be eager to do –today! — what Janet
Yellen and the U.S. Congress are extremely unlikely to do.
This was also the case for the Flat
Tax idea, as promoted by Steve Forbes for his presidential
campaigns. It got no real political traction in the U.S., but blossomed
throughout Eastern Europe, and even such places as Mongolia
and the Seychelles Islands. Who could have guessed that?
If that’s the case, then how would people in Nepal read the book?
What about people in Uzbekistan, or Moldova, or Nicaragua, or
Mozambique, or the Solomon Islands?
All indications pointed to free.
Once something is overtly non-profit, people can distribute it as
they see fit. They could stick it in an email attachment and send it
to their friends. They can make it available on their own website.
They can even make high-volume print versions, in places where
people don’t have computers and tablets.
My hope is that some people will be inspired enough to undertake a
high-quality translation into their native language. Once you are
doing things for the good of others, without expectation of benefit,
then others can be inspired to do the same.
I would like to see this book available in a half-dozen languages,
again in free eBook format. It could spread throughout the Spanish,
French or Chinese-speaking world, in a frictionless, costless
way.
I decided that a .pdf with a 5×7 inch page size (a standard trade
paperback book size) would be the best format for release. Yes, I
can do Kindle and ePub versions, but things are moving away from
dedicated readers and towards all-purpose tablets. The .pdf format
looks great on a tablet, especially if the page size isn’t too big.
This is especially true for books, like this one, with a lot of
tables and charts. Everyone knows how to use .pdf. Plus, you can
easily email and print .pdf files — in short, do all the things that
the .mobi and .epub formats are designed to prevent you from doing
easily, so that you have to pay money to the eBook publishers.
Of course, some people will think that a book that is available for
free must not have much value. We are accustomed to the idea that a
book that costs money has been through the selection process
inherent in the publishing business, and is thus worth our time.
But, those ideas are remnants of the old book publishing business.
That world is disappearing rapidly, and in any case is somewhat
irrelevant for my purposes.
In time, people’s attitudes will reflect the realities of the new
world of book creation. A good book is a good book, whatever the
price and whatever the format.
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