I am curious about whether the goal of making lesswrong books is driven by a general interest in making a book “It would be fun to get together a book, I would love to have a copy of my favourite ideas in physical form”, or is a way of trying to introduce people to your favourite essays? Because, I worry that if its the latter a book might not be an efficient approach. There are many, many random self-published books available, most of which probably sell 10′s of copies (if that). So, if you made the book as a way of reaching people, you would then still need to reach people (somehow) to tell them about the book, and the inertia against buying a book of unknown quality is probably higher than that against “read this random article someone has linked me, hey look it says its only a 15 min read”.
Many thousands of people have bought the last two sets of books we produced. They were to a much higher quality standard than 99% of self-published books available.
Yes, part of my motive is for lots of people who haven’t read these posts to have them in a beautifully designed physical format and finally get around to reading them. I would guess that there are less than 100 people who have read every essay in each of the books (before the books were published), so I think most people who bought them got new content.
I have no-doubt at all that the books are of a much higher quality than most self-published material. And the thousands of sales of the last two books is impressive! My point was that someone who had never heard of lesswrong before was unlikely to purchase a book “cold”—which is what I had read as your intention. But from the reply your goal is instead to connect people already in the know with more good stuff faster, which a book probably achieves well. (In addition to the “books are just really nice things” angle.)
I am curious about whether the goal of making lesswrong books is driven by a general interest in making a book “It would be fun to get together a book, I would love to have a copy of my favourite ideas in physical form”, or is a way of trying to introduce people to your favourite essays? Because, I worry that if its the latter a book might not be an efficient approach. There are many, many random self-published books available, most of which probably sell 10′s of copies (if that). So, if you made the book as a way of reaching people, you would then still need to reach people (somehow) to tell them about the book, and the inertia against buying a book of unknown quality is probably higher than that against “read this random article someone has linked me, hey look it says its only a 15 min read”.
Many thousands of people have bought the last two sets of books we produced. They were to a much higher quality standard than 99% of self-published books available.
Yes, part of my motive is for lots of people who haven’t read these posts to have them in a beautifully designed physical format and finally get around to reading them. I would guess that there are less than 100 people who have read every essay in each of the books (before the books were published), so I think most people who bought them got new content.
I have no-doubt at all that the books are of a much higher quality than most self-published material. And the thousands of sales of the last two books is impressive! My point was that someone who had never heard of lesswrong before was unlikely to purchase a book “cold”—which is what I had read as your intention. But from the reply your goal is instead to connect people already in the know with more good stuff faster, which a book probably achieves well. (In addition to the “books are just really nice things” angle.)
You don’t need to have brought a book to read it. It can also be gifted.