The Picard Syndrome
Nov. 18th, 2003 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arisbe[The author of the following gives blanket permission to forward it, so
I assume it is all right to forward it to my LJ friends in this manner.
It is rather long, but worth it. I will put cuts in, but, in fairness
to Mr. North, leave the commercial messages.]
> Gary North's REALITY CHECK
>
> Issue 293 November 18, 2003
>
>
> PICARD SYNDROME
>
> You probably suffer from an affliction. Millions of
> Americans share this affliction. I am doing my best to
> deliver you from it, but I am having only minimal success.
>
> There may be a book inside you. There may be two.
> Because of the Internet revolution, it is now possible for
> you to publish your book online for almost no money. But
> if you do, you will come up against a major resistance
> factor. I call it Picard Syndrome.
> Fans of the second generation of "Star Trek" are aware
> that only two adults on the Enterprise ever read books:
> Commander Data and Captain Picard. Data reads digital
> books online that flashed past his eyes at lightening
> speed. He shifts his eyes back and forth rapidly across
> the pages. Why he doesn't simply download the data
> directly into his positronic brain remains a mystery,
> rather like another major mystery, i.e., why the crew never
> wears seat belts when going into battle. ("Click it or
> ticket!")
>
> Captain Picard can occasionally be seen, sitting in
> his lounge chair in his stateroom, reading a book. The
> book is made of paper. It has a binding.
>
> Captain Picard is an amateur archeologist. He
> collects ancient tools and implements of various kinds. He
> loves nothing more on his vacation than to spend a few days
> on some planet that was noted for its ruins.
>
> As far as Star Trek was concerned, "books = ruins."
> Picard, an eccentric, still reads books.
>
> Today, millions of people still insist on reading
> physical books. They have a bias against e-books. This is
> Picard's Syndrome.
>
>
> THE FAILURE OF E-BOOKS
>
> Barnes & Noble recently announced that it is getting
> out of the e-book business. E-books don't sell.
>
> Why not? Think of an e-book's advantages. It can be
> printed out for a penny a page. You can underline the
> printout, make notes in the margins, or file chapters in
> filing cabinets. You can use a three-hole punch to create a
> permanent book on your shelf -- tall, but functional.
>
> You can search the e-text for key words
> electronically. You can use your cursor and CTRL-C to
> extract sentences or paragraphs that can then be inserted
> into reports or term papers, word for word, without the
> necessity of proofreading the citation. You can use a
> free-form database to store pages or extracts. You can
> add keywords to this database for easy future searching.
> You can't do any of this with a printed book.
>
> Yet there is no well-known free-form database, over
> two decades into the microcomputer revolution. College
> students still buy 3x5 cards for note taking. The cost
> advantages of electronic reading, filing, and printing out
> are passed over in favor of books with bindings.
>
> Book readers suffer from Picard Syndrome. If a book
> doesn't have a binding -- if it isn't suitable for reading
> in bed -- well, it just isn't a real book. That's what
> most book buyers believe.
>
> Why isn't an e-book a real book?
>
> We are operating in terms of our youth. Books came in
> bound form. Publishers had to order 5,000 copies to get a
> good price -- 5,000 copies in inventory. Five years ago, I
> had over 100,000 books in inventory. Then I gave up. I
> gave away all of them to a non-profit publishing firm. It
> took three semis, and the outfit now wishes it had never
> accepted the deal. I had at least $400,000 tied up in
> those books.
>
> There is now print-on-demand technology: one book
> order at a time. The machine prints it, collates it, and
> binds it. Then the printing company mails it. The
> technology is great for sufferers of Picard Syndrome, but
> it still has not taken off commercially.
>
>
> O COME, O COME E-MANUAL
>
> At the same time, I can sell an e-manual for over
> $100. Such a manual is typeset to look like a report: 13-
> point type, unjustified right-hand margins, and no binding.
> If it looks like a high-priced business report, I can
> charge what a physical business manual used to cost. It
> costs me virtually nothing to deliver it to the reader.
> The buyer downloads it, prints it out, and reads it. No
> problem.
>
> It's all in packaging. You can charge 5 to 10
> times what a physical book would cost, deliver it free of
> charge, and avoid inventory. Sufferers from Picard
> Syndrome get instant emotional relief when the read the
> words, "special report." These words calm the sufferer.
> He types in his credit card number and downloads the
> document.
>
> The document is not called a book, let alone an e-
> book. If it were an e-book, you could not give it away.
>
> An example is my manual on how to create a Yellow
> Pages ad that triples any existing ad's response. The
> local Yellow Pages directory is the primary means of
> advertising for 95% of businesses. Yet only a handful of
> businessmen know how to design an effective Yellow Pages
> ad. This market is a small fraction of 14%. I
> face what economists call an inelastic demand curve.
> Revenues do not rise proportional to a fall in price.
>
> I sell my 88-page manual for $176 -- $2/page. For a
> businessman who wants to make his Yellow Pages ad work,
> $176 is not much money. He pays that much every month, or
> even every week, to run his ad. As for everyone else, they
> would not pay me $17.60 for such a report. Most would not
> pay $1.76. They are not interested in writing Yellow Pages
> ads. So, I sell my manual to a tiny market at a high price
> -- high in relation to what paperback books at Barnes &
> Noble cost.
>
> http://www.publishers-management.com/store/gnypm.html
>
> Only a few people truly understand that the value of a
> book is the information it contains. Their buying habits
> prove this. They refuse to buy e-books. They think, "I'm
> paying for paper. So, the e-book ought to sell for $1."
> When it sells for $20, they refuse to buy. Ideas in
> digital form are not worth what the same ideas are worth in
> a bound book. Yet the seller's cost of production ought to
> be irrelevant for the buyer. What matters is the value of
> the information. Similarly, his major cost is the time it
> takes him to read it.
>
> They understand this with respect to computer software
> or music CDs or DVDs. They know that the cost of
> physical storage of digits is low: a 50-cent piece of
> plastic in a $1 plastic box. But they refuse to make the
> same mental transition when it comes to books. They suffer
> from Picard Syndrome.
>
> This also applies to newsletters. Subscribers to
> paper-printed newsletters will pay $200 a year to be sent a
> monthly report by second-class mail, yet they will not pay
> $200 (or even $100) to receive the same information by e-
> mail within 10 minutes after publication.
>
> Why? No one knows. Picard Syndrome produces
> irrational behavior.
>
> There is one area where Picard Syndrome has been
> defeated: standard encyclopedias. The day of the $2,000,
> printed, years out-of-date, 20-volume encyclopedia is gone.
> It is now on a disk, updated yearly, for $89 or less. But
> the mental transition from encyclopedias to books,
> magazines, and newsletters has not taken place.
>
>
> MY MAGNUM OPUS
>
> You can learn something about book publishing from my
> experience.
>
> In 1999, I paid a professional typesetter to typeset
> my magnum opus, a 1,300-page economic commentary on the
> book of Deuteronomy. Her bill was $13,000. To publish it
> in one hardback volume would have cost about $10 per copy
> if I ordered 5,000 copies, or $50,000. So, not counting
> shipping or inventory expenses, I would have had to pay
> $63,000 up front. That up-front expense is what keeps
> authors from publishing books.
>
> I decided not to do this. I made the right decision.
> Earlier this year, I used a copy of WordPerfect 8, which I
> bought on eBay for $25, to retypeset my book. I used a
> larger type face, so it's now 1,500 pages. I decided to
> publish it in three volumes.
>
> I then used a $97 program, pdfFactory Pro, to convert
> my Word Perfect files to PDF format, which can be posted on
> the Web. This took me under six minutes, total, for all
> three volumes.
>
> I then posted all three volumes/files on a Web site.
> This took a few minutes: under 10. Then I sent an e-mail
> to 3,000 subscribers telling of its existence. I offered
> all three volumes for free. People started downloading it.
>
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v1.pdf
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v2.pdf
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v3.pdf
>
> I mentioned in my e-letter that sometime next year, I
> plan to publish all three volumes in hardback. I will use
> new technology: print on demand. It allows book sales, one
> copy at a time: printing, collating, and binding. Then the
> publisher mails out the physical book. The author gets a
> standard 15% royalty.
>
> I immediately received a letter from someone saying
> that he was not going to download the books in PDF, which
> are typeset to look just like books. He would wait for the
> hardbacks.
>
> Consider what he is saying. My ideas are worth
> reading only in a bound book. Apart from a bound book, he
> is unwilling to read what I have to say. He will wait for
> months, then pay a lot of money. Here is another case of
> Picard Syndrome.
>
> I will charge at least $30 per hardback volume. I may
> charge $50. I will therefore get some buyers to spend $90
> to $150 for the set. They could download the same books
> for free and print them out for $15, total. But they
> prefer to pay me 10 times as much in a year. Why? Picard
> Syndrome.
>
> Are my ideas worth more in a bound book? For
> sufferers from Picard Syndrome, yes. These ideas are worth
> far more in dollars and sense. But they are the same
> ideas, bound or not bound. This does not matter in the
> slightest to some readers.
>
> Why?
>
> I offer this thesis. It is a holdover from pre-
> Internet times. Generations of book buyers for over 500
> years have become accustomed to the idea that what makes a
> book valuable is the pre-publication screening, especially
> by censors.
>
> This may sound crazy. Lovers of ideas joyfully paying
> for pre-publication censorship? Yet this is exactly what
> they did, and still do.
>
>
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>
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>
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> consistently rack up double- and triple-digit investment
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> strictly limited risk!
>
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>
> -----------------------
>
>
> RESPECT FOR CENSORS
>
> From the year 1450 until today, people have associated
> wisdom with printed books that have bindings. A book with
> a binding implied the following: (1) an editor, (2) a
> costly printing press, (3) a distribution system, (4) a
> publisher's risk. A book required a lot of front-end
> costs. The reader assumed that a book had value because a
> publisher concluded, "this will make me money."
>
> In a very real sense, the reader accepted the false
> idea of the labor theory of value. He paid money in order
> to compensate the publisher for his cost and risk. But
> then the equation got turned around: the value of the book
> was thought to be in its cost of production. This
> confusion was universal among economists until the 1870s,
> when a few of them finally figured out that the value of
> every item comes from people's willingness to pay for the
> item, not from the item's cost of production.
>
> People suffering from Picard's Syndrome have not
> abandoned the older view: economic value based on physical
> costs of production.
>
> Then there was the issue of editors, i.e. screeners of
> ideas. A bound book was a surrogate for the reader's input
> of prior intellectual evaluation. Someone else had done
> his screening work for him. Now all he had to do was pay
> for the book and read it.
>
> The problem was, and still is, this system of
> publication requires intellectual gatekeepers. It is a
> system of censorship. It allows the State and other groups
> to control what the public reads. This means that the
> gatekeepers can control what people think, merely by
> cutting off access to politically incorrect material.
>
> Picard Syndrome creates in its victims a longing for
> layers of hirelings, none of whom has ever written a book,
> each of whom declares "yes" or "no" with respect to the
> content of a book. These censors stand in between the
> author and his audience. They tell the author that "this
> book won't sell unless you allow us to modify it." They
> tell readers, "we will screen out the useless, the ugly,
> and the politically offensive." To both, they say, "trust
> us."
>
> Picard Syndrome is an affliction that is left over
> from the era of censors, i.e., pre-Internet. The Internet
> has created, for the first time in human history, an
> international society with almost no intellectual
> gatekeepers. An author can reach his readers without going
> through the labyrinth of printers and distributors. With
> Google, they can reach him.
>
> Picard Syndrome is visible evidence that we readers
> not only trusted them, but we are also still unwilling to read a
> book that does not show signs of the censorship system.
> Print-on-demand publishing has not fared well because it
> offers no censorship.
>
> In volume 3 of my book on Deuteronomy, I include a
> highly controversial essay, Appendix D. I prefer not to
> discuss its contents here. Let us say that an editor at
> any major book publishing firm probably would have asked me
> to drop it or modify it. Yet the essay is important for
> the overall thesis of my book. The only way for me to get
> the information into the hands of readers was by self-
> publishing. The cost of self-publishing is vastly lower
> this way.
>
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v3.pdf
>
> In contrast, for specialized manuals, which imply
> inside information, readers will pay a bundle and download
> them. A special report is special. It isn't supposed to
> go through layers of readers, editors, and all the rest of
> the censorship apparatus. No, it's a direct link between
> the author and the reader. For this, readers will pay big
> bucks.
>
> It's all in the packaging.
>
>
> TOUCHIE-FEELIE
>
> Why do book readers want to hold a book in their laps?
> Because they want to touch and be touched. They want the
> intimacy of holding a book.
>
> At some point, there will be book-sized electronic
> reading machines with screens that have the equivalent of a
> printed book's 1,200 dots per inch. We will then insert a
> card or download a book. The book will be there for us to
> read any place or any time, page by page. We will be able
> to extract passages, mark them with keywords, and in other
> ways file them for future reference. But until the
> electronic reader looks like a book and feels like a book
> in our laps, Picard Syndrome will keep the product from
> selling well. It will be a gadget, unlike a printed book,
> which is a necessity.
>
> At some point, public schools will require books on a
> disk. This will cut the costs of delivery and maintaining
> lists of students and books. Textbook production costs
> will fall. Then anyone can get into the field. The world
> of textbook publishing will cease to be a government-
> funded, textbook publisher oligopoly. We will then have a
> free market in textbook production. Well, not a free
> market, exactly, but something that some University of
> Chicago economist will call a free market: tax coercion
> coupled with lower costs of book production.
>
> Okay, so I'm wrong. Public school textbooks won't be on
> disk until long after the public has gone to digital
> lapbooks. But it sounded good, briefly.
>
> My point is this: Readers grew so fond of a system of
> censorship that was the product of the copyright-licensed-
> printing establishment that they still cannot look at a
> printed book and think, "screened by multiple committees
> acting on behalf of the State." We still think, "That's a
> real book." In fact, it's a censored book.
>
> There is a case for screening, of course: letting
> experts judge quality. But this is a service that
> publishing companies can charge for, based on productive
> services actually rendered. This screening will not be a
> function of printing and distribution technology. It will
> be part of editorial expertise. Those who want this can
> buy it. Those who prefer to get their books straight from
> the authors with no middlemen will be able to do so.
>
> Basically, it's a war between Matt Drudge and Jean-Luc
> Picard. When the editors at Newsweek spiked the story of
> President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the editors relied
> on Picard Syndrome to shield the president. Matt Drudge
> within hours blew away that shield.
>
> I am betting on Drudge and his imitators, but not
> before the death in the wilderness of the generation of
> Picard.
>
> When newsletter readers think, "I'll pay more for a
> newsletter because it's delivered electronically in
> seconds," Druge Syndrome will have replaced Picard
> Syndrome.
>
> What about you? Which syndrome do you prefer,
> Drudge's or Picard's?
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> I like to go to Barnes & Noble. I like to buy books
> on a shelf. I especially like to buy steeply discounted
> books that did not survive the stiff competition of the
> market. I buy other people's mistakes.
>
> But if I had a book reading device that looks like a
> book, feels like a book, and lets me store (say) 500 books
> that are searchable by text or (at my discretion) keywords,
> Barnes & Noble can kiss me goodbye.
>
> As for my 3,000 square foot library building and my
> 13,000 books, make me an offer. But not yet.
>
> --------
>
> Appendix 63
>
> Abraham Case Study #292 is another example of how to
> use referrals to build your business. I like it because it
> began with a failure.
>
> The testimonial comes from a man who had run a memory-
> improvement business. He finally quit. Then he read
> Abraham's books. Within a year, everything changed.
>
> He began with this principle: "fish where the big fish
> are." He had kept detailed records of who had bought from
> him. He discovered that the biggest buyers had been
> salesmen. He had not originally had a targeted market.
> This is always a mistake.
>
> Then he began testing. He had not done that, either.
>
>
> a. Doing a memory demonstration
> increased sales 10 times.
>
> b. Invite-only, limited seminars were
> three times more profitable than
> advertised seminars.
>
> c. Memory seminars were 5 times more
> profitable than motivational
> seminars. I now always do memory
> demonstrations, do invite-only
> seminars and have stopped doing
> any motivational seminars.
>
> The third Jay technique I have found
> invaluable is the referral generating tips.
> Previously at the end of the memory seminar I
> nonchalantly mentioned that I would like
> referrals. This resulted in an average of one
> referral for every two people attending the
> seminar. I repositioned the referral as if I were
> doing the clients a favour by offering the course
> to a friend and promoted referrals heavily. I
> also offered a free book to anyone who brought in
> at least three referrals. My referral rate has
> quadrupled, and considering referrals are on
> average four times more profitable than cold
> calls, this is an extremely invaluable technique.
> After I have dealt with the referral, I give the
> referrer a call to thank him and inform him of
> the outcome. This has resulted in more
> referrals.
>
> Here were the results: "I am earning more working
> 10 hours a week than when I was working 60 hours a
> week." More important, he is back in business.
>
> -------------
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Looking for an opportunity? http://arisbe.estarnetwork.com/.
I assume it is all right to forward it to my LJ friends in this manner.
It is rather long, but worth it. I will put cuts in, but, in fairness
to Mr. North, leave the commercial messages.]
> Gary North's REALITY CHECK
>
> Issue 293 November 18, 2003
>
>
> PICARD SYNDROME
>
> You probably suffer from an affliction. Millions of
> Americans share this affliction. I am doing my best to
> deliver you from it, but I am having only minimal success.
>
> There may be a book inside you. There may be two.
> Because of the Internet revolution, it is now possible for
> you to publish your book online for almost no money. But
> if you do, you will come up against a major resistance
> factor. I call it Picard Syndrome.
> Fans of the second generation of "Star Trek" are aware
> that only two adults on the Enterprise ever read books:
> Commander Data and Captain Picard. Data reads digital
> books online that flashed past his eyes at lightening
> speed. He shifts his eyes back and forth rapidly across
> the pages. Why he doesn't simply download the data
> directly into his positronic brain remains a mystery,
> rather like another major mystery, i.e., why the crew never
> wears seat belts when going into battle. ("Click it or
> ticket!")
>
> Captain Picard can occasionally be seen, sitting in
> his lounge chair in his stateroom, reading a book. The
> book is made of paper. It has a binding.
>
> Captain Picard is an amateur archeologist. He
> collects ancient tools and implements of various kinds. He
> loves nothing more on his vacation than to spend a few days
> on some planet that was noted for its ruins.
>
> As far as Star Trek was concerned, "books = ruins."
> Picard, an eccentric, still reads books.
>
> Today, millions of people still insist on reading
> physical books. They have a bias against e-books. This is
> Picard's Syndrome.
>
>
> THE FAILURE OF E-BOOKS
>
> Barnes & Noble recently announced that it is getting
> out of the e-book business. E-books don't sell.
>
> Why not? Think of an e-book's advantages. It can be
> printed out for a penny a page. You can underline the
> printout, make notes in the margins, or file chapters in
> filing cabinets. You can use a three-hole punch to create a
> permanent book on your shelf -- tall, but functional.
>
> You can search the e-text for key words
> electronically. You can use your cursor and CTRL-C to
> extract sentences or paragraphs that can then be inserted
> into reports or term papers, word for word, without the
> necessity of proofreading the citation. You can use a
> free-form database to store pages or extracts. You can
> add keywords to this database for easy future searching.
> You can't do any of this with a printed book.
>
> Yet there is no well-known free-form database, over
> two decades into the microcomputer revolution. College
> students still buy 3x5 cards for note taking. The cost
> advantages of electronic reading, filing, and printing out
> are passed over in favor of books with bindings.
>
> Book readers suffer from Picard Syndrome. If a book
> doesn't have a binding -- if it isn't suitable for reading
> in bed -- well, it just isn't a real book. That's what
> most book buyers believe.
>
> Why isn't an e-book a real book?
>
> We are operating in terms of our youth. Books came in
> bound form. Publishers had to order 5,000 copies to get a
> good price -- 5,000 copies in inventory. Five years ago, I
> had over 100,000 books in inventory. Then I gave up. I
> gave away all of them to a non-profit publishing firm. It
> took three semis, and the outfit now wishes it had never
> accepted the deal. I had at least $400,000 tied up in
> those books.
>
> There is now print-on-demand technology: one book
> order at a time. The machine prints it, collates it, and
> binds it. Then the printing company mails it. The
> technology is great for sufferers of Picard Syndrome, but
> it still has not taken off commercially.
>
>
> O COME, O COME E-MANUAL
>
> At the same time, I can sell an e-manual for over
> $100. Such a manual is typeset to look like a report: 13-
> point type, unjustified right-hand margins, and no binding.
> If it looks like a high-priced business report, I can
> charge what a physical business manual used to cost. It
> costs me virtually nothing to deliver it to the reader.
> The buyer downloads it, prints it out, and reads it. No
> problem.
>
> It's all in packaging. You can charge 5 to 10
> times what a physical book would cost, deliver it free of
> charge, and avoid inventory. Sufferers from Picard
> Syndrome get instant emotional relief when the read the
> words, "special report." These words calm the sufferer.
> He types in his credit card number and downloads the
> document.
>
> The document is not called a book, let alone an e-
> book. If it were an e-book, you could not give it away.
>
> An example is my manual on how to create a Yellow
> Pages ad that triples any existing ad's response. The
> local Yellow Pages directory is the primary means of
> advertising for 95% of businesses. Yet only a handful of
> businessmen know how to design an effective Yellow Pages
> ad. This market is a small fraction of 14%. I
> face what economists call an inelastic demand curve.
> Revenues do not rise proportional to a fall in price.
>
> I sell my 88-page manual for $176 -- $2/page. For a
> businessman who wants to make his Yellow Pages ad work,
> $176 is not much money. He pays that much every month, or
> even every week, to run his ad. As for everyone else, they
> would not pay me $17.60 for such a report. Most would not
> pay $1.76. They are not interested in writing Yellow Pages
> ads. So, I sell my manual to a tiny market at a high price
> -- high in relation to what paperback books at Barnes &
> Noble cost.
>
> http://www.publishers-management.com/store/gnypm.html
>
> Only a few people truly understand that the value of a
> book is the information it contains. Their buying habits
> prove this. They refuse to buy e-books. They think, "I'm
> paying for paper. So, the e-book ought to sell for $1."
> When it sells for $20, they refuse to buy. Ideas in
> digital form are not worth what the same ideas are worth in
> a bound book. Yet the seller's cost of production ought to
> be irrelevant for the buyer. What matters is the value of
> the information. Similarly, his major cost is the time it
> takes him to read it.
>
> They understand this with respect to computer software
> or music CDs or DVDs. They know that the cost of
> physical storage of digits is low: a 50-cent piece of
> plastic in a $1 plastic box. But they refuse to make the
> same mental transition when it comes to books. They suffer
> from Picard Syndrome.
>
> This also applies to newsletters. Subscribers to
> paper-printed newsletters will pay $200 a year to be sent a
> monthly report by second-class mail, yet they will not pay
> $200 (or even $100) to receive the same information by e-
> mail within 10 minutes after publication.
>
> Why? No one knows. Picard Syndrome produces
> irrational behavior.
>
> There is one area where Picard Syndrome has been
> defeated: standard encyclopedias. The day of the $2,000,
> printed, years out-of-date, 20-volume encyclopedia is gone.
> It is now on a disk, updated yearly, for $89 or less. But
> the mental transition from encyclopedias to books,
> magazines, and newsletters has not taken place.
>
>
> MY MAGNUM OPUS
>
> You can learn something about book publishing from my
> experience.
>
> In 1999, I paid a professional typesetter to typeset
> my magnum opus, a 1,300-page economic commentary on the
> book of Deuteronomy. Her bill was $13,000. To publish it
> in one hardback volume would have cost about $10 per copy
> if I ordered 5,000 copies, or $50,000. So, not counting
> shipping or inventory expenses, I would have had to pay
> $63,000 up front. That up-front expense is what keeps
> authors from publishing books.
>
> I decided not to do this. I made the right decision.
> Earlier this year, I used a copy of WordPerfect 8, which I
> bought on eBay for $25, to retypeset my book. I used a
> larger type face, so it's now 1,500 pages. I decided to
> publish it in three volumes.
>
> I then used a $97 program, pdfFactory Pro, to convert
> my Word Perfect files to PDF format, which can be posted on
> the Web. This took me under six minutes, total, for all
> three volumes.
>
> I then posted all three volumes/files on a Web site.
> This took a few minutes: under 10. Then I sent an e-mail
> to 3,000 subscribers telling of its existence. I offered
> all three volumes for free. People started downloading it.
>
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v1.pdf
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v2.pdf
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v3.pdf
>
> I mentioned in my e-letter that sometime next year, I
> plan to publish all three volumes in hardback. I will use
> new technology: print on demand. It allows book sales, one
> copy at a time: printing, collating, and binding. Then the
> publisher mails out the physical book. The author gets a
> standard 15% royalty.
>
> I immediately received a letter from someone saying
> that he was not going to download the books in PDF, which
> are typeset to look just like books. He would wait for the
> hardbacks.
>
> Consider what he is saying. My ideas are worth
> reading only in a bound book. Apart from a bound book, he
> is unwilling to read what I have to say. He will wait for
> months, then pay a lot of money. Here is another case of
> Picard Syndrome.
>
> I will charge at least $30 per hardback volume. I may
> charge $50. I will therefore get some buyers to spend $90
> to $150 for the set. They could download the same books
> for free and print them out for $15, total. But they
> prefer to pay me 10 times as much in a year. Why? Picard
> Syndrome.
>
> Are my ideas worth more in a bound book? For
> sufferers from Picard Syndrome, yes. These ideas are worth
> far more in dollars and sense. But they are the same
> ideas, bound or not bound. This does not matter in the
> slightest to some readers.
>
> Why?
>
> I offer this thesis. It is a holdover from pre-
> Internet times. Generations of book buyers for over 500
> years have become accustomed to the idea that what makes a
> book valuable is the pre-publication screening, especially
> by censors.
>
> This may sound crazy. Lovers of ideas joyfully paying
> for pre-publication censorship? Yet this is exactly what
> they did, and still do.
>
>
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>
>
> RESPECT FOR CENSORS
>
> From the year 1450 until today, people have associated
> wisdom with printed books that have bindings. A book with
> a binding implied the following: (1) an editor, (2) a
> costly printing press, (3) a distribution system, (4) a
> publisher's risk. A book required a lot of front-end
> costs. The reader assumed that a book had value because a
> publisher concluded, "this will make me money."
>
> In a very real sense, the reader accepted the false
> idea of the labor theory of value. He paid money in order
> to compensate the publisher for his cost and risk. But
> then the equation got turned around: the value of the book
> was thought to be in its cost of production. This
> confusion was universal among economists until the 1870s,
> when a few of them finally figured out that the value of
> every item comes from people's willingness to pay for the
> item, not from the item's cost of production.
>
> People suffering from Picard's Syndrome have not
> abandoned the older view: economic value based on physical
> costs of production.
>
> Then there was the issue of editors, i.e. screeners of
> ideas. A bound book was a surrogate for the reader's input
> of prior intellectual evaluation. Someone else had done
> his screening work for him. Now all he had to do was pay
> for the book and read it.
>
> The problem was, and still is, this system of
> publication requires intellectual gatekeepers. It is a
> system of censorship. It allows the State and other groups
> to control what the public reads. This means that the
> gatekeepers can control what people think, merely by
> cutting off access to politically incorrect material.
>
> Picard Syndrome creates in its victims a longing for
> layers of hirelings, none of whom has ever written a book,
> each of whom declares "yes" or "no" with respect to the
> content of a book. These censors stand in between the
> author and his audience. They tell the author that "this
> book won't sell unless you allow us to modify it." They
> tell readers, "we will screen out the useless, the ugly,
> and the politically offensive." To both, they say, "trust
> us."
>
> Picard Syndrome is an affliction that is left over
> from the era of censors, i.e., pre-Internet. The Internet
> has created, for the first time in human history, an
> international society with almost no intellectual
> gatekeepers. An author can reach his readers without going
> through the labyrinth of printers and distributors. With
> Google, they can reach him.
>
> Picard Syndrome is visible evidence that we readers
> not only trusted them, but we are also still unwilling to read a
> book that does not show signs of the censorship system.
> Print-on-demand publishing has not fared well because it
> offers no censorship.
>
> In volume 3 of my book on Deuteronomy, I include a
> highly controversial essay, Appendix D. I prefer not to
> discuss its contents here. Let us say that an editor at
> any major book publishing firm probably would have asked me
> to drop it or modify it. Yet the essay is important for
> the overall thesis of my book. The only way for me to get
> the information into the hands of readers was by self-
> publishing. The cost of self-publishing is vastly lower
> this way.
>
> http://www.demischools.org/pdfdocs/deuteronomy-v3.pdf
>
> In contrast, for specialized manuals, which imply
> inside information, readers will pay a bundle and download
> them. A special report is special. It isn't supposed to
> go through layers of readers, editors, and all the rest of
> the censorship apparatus. No, it's a direct link between
> the author and the reader. For this, readers will pay big
> bucks.
>
> It's all in the packaging.
>
>
> TOUCHIE-FEELIE
>
> Why do book readers want to hold a book in their laps?
> Because they want to touch and be touched. They want the
> intimacy of holding a book.
>
> At some point, there will be book-sized electronic
> reading machines with screens that have the equivalent of a
> printed book's 1,200 dots per inch. We will then insert a
> card or download a book. The book will be there for us to
> read any place or any time, page by page. We will be able
> to extract passages, mark them with keywords, and in other
> ways file them for future reference. But until the
> electronic reader looks like a book and feels like a book
> in our laps, Picard Syndrome will keep the product from
> selling well. It will be a gadget, unlike a printed book,
> which is a necessity.
>
> At some point, public schools will require books on a
> disk. This will cut the costs of delivery and maintaining
> lists of students and books. Textbook production costs
> will fall. Then anyone can get into the field. The world
> of textbook publishing will cease to be a government-
> funded, textbook publisher oligopoly. We will then have a
> free market in textbook production. Well, not a free
> market, exactly, but something that some University of
> Chicago economist will call a free market: tax coercion
> coupled with lower costs of book production.
>
> Okay, so I'm wrong. Public school textbooks won't be on
> disk until long after the public has gone to digital
> lapbooks. But it sounded good, briefly.
>
> My point is this: Readers grew so fond of a system of
> censorship that was the product of the copyright-licensed-
> printing establishment that they still cannot look at a
> printed book and think, "screened by multiple committees
> acting on behalf of the State." We still think, "That's a
> real book." In fact, it's a censored book.
>
> There is a case for screening, of course: letting
> experts judge quality. But this is a service that
> publishing companies can charge for, based on productive
> services actually rendered. This screening will not be a
> function of printing and distribution technology. It will
> be part of editorial expertise. Those who want this can
> buy it. Those who prefer to get their books straight from
> the authors with no middlemen will be able to do so.
>
> Basically, it's a war between Matt Drudge and Jean-Luc
> Picard. When the editors at Newsweek spiked the story of
> President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the editors relied
> on Picard Syndrome to shield the president. Matt Drudge
> within hours blew away that shield.
>
> I am betting on Drudge and his imitators, but not
> before the death in the wilderness of the generation of
> Picard.
>
> When newsletter readers think, "I'll pay more for a
> newsletter because it's delivered electronically in
> seconds," Druge Syndrome will have replaced Picard
> Syndrome.
>
> What about you? Which syndrome do you prefer,
> Drudge's or Picard's?
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> I like to go to Barnes & Noble. I like to buy books
> on a shelf. I especially like to buy steeply discounted
> books that did not survive the stiff competition of the
> market. I buy other people's mistakes.
>
> But if I had a book reading device that looks like a
> book, feels like a book, and lets me store (say) 500 books
> that are searchable by text or (at my discretion) keywords,
> Barnes & Noble can kiss me goodbye.
>
> As for my 3,000 square foot library building and my
> 13,000 books, make me an offer. But not yet.
>
> --------
>
> Appendix 63
>
> Abraham Case Study #292 is another example of how to
> use referrals to build your business. I like it because it
> began with a failure.
>
> The testimonial comes from a man who had run a memory-
> improvement business. He finally quit. Then he read
> Abraham's books. Within a year, everything changed.
>
> He began with this principle: "fish where the big fish
> are." He had kept detailed records of who had bought from
> him. He discovered that the biggest buyers had been
> salesmen. He had not originally had a targeted market.
> This is always a mistake.
>
> Then he began testing. He had not done that, either.
>
>
> a. Doing a memory demonstration
> increased sales 10 times.
>
> b. Invite-only, limited seminars were
> three times more profitable than
> advertised seminars.
>
> c. Memory seminars were 5 times more
> profitable than motivational
> seminars. I now always do memory
> demonstrations, do invite-only
> seminars and have stopped doing
> any motivational seminars.
>
> The third Jay technique I have found
> invaluable is the referral generating tips.
> Previously at the end of the memory seminar I
> nonchalantly mentioned that I would like
> referrals. This resulted in an average of one
> referral for every two people attending the
> seminar. I repositioned the referral as if I were
> doing the clients a favour by offering the course
> to a friend and promoted referrals heavily. I
> also offered a free book to anyone who brought in
> at least three referrals. My referral rate has
> quadrupled, and considering referrals are on
> average four times more profitable than cold
> calls, this is an extremely invaluable technique.
> After I have dealt with the referral, I give the
> referrer a call to thank him and inform him of
> the outcome. This has resulted in more
> referrals.
>
> Here were the results: "I am earning more working
> 10 hours a week than when I was working 60 hours a
> week." More important, he is back in business.
>
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