Mason Malmuth Losing Sleep Over Book Sales at 2+2 Publishing
With the rapid rise of the Two Plus Two forums over the years, the perpetual poker publisher Mason Malmuth has seen a steady rise in membership at his site. For many years, the 50 something Malmuth has published many of the games greatest books. However, with the rise of his Internet forums many have now seen a dark, greedy side of Malmuth with the recent discovery of internal memos sent to the forum moderators.
Malmuth: “Here’s a great idea. Take the good info on poker and HIDE IT.” (See image to the left)
Here’s the short version – Mason has had a tough time monetizing the forums to his liking. Yes, they have a paid advertising model and some other agreements in place but Mason can’t get his head out of the paper-based book model. As a result, it’s now been leaked that he’s actually asking his moderators to delete “stickies” that point to quality content so that it’s harder for viewers to find it. I got the opportunity to see the memo personally and in it, Mason says: “So I ask all of you to look at the stickies in your areas and consider deleting some of the links that can substitute for book purchases.”
There’s even word that Mason strong-armed one of his authors, Ed Miller, into removing archived content on his own website and converting to paid model in order to view this content. There’s a big debate on many of the online poker forums right now over this discovery. Most are upset with the handling of this issue and are screaming foul. In fact, few people other than Mason and his close circle of friends support this move. How this will impact his forum membership remains to be seen. There’s quite a bit of solid content at 2+2, so deleting and hiding this information may prove damaging to the brand.
So what are YOUR thoughts on this? Smart business move or simply a donk move that will come back to haunt Malmuth and his publishing empire
Image courtesy of http://www.pokerbloggs.com
Curtom said
am August 22 2008 @ 11:11 pm
I think this entire thing is absolutely ridiculous! It defeats the entire purpose of having a forum to begin with. It’s a slap in the face to the very readers that visit his forum.
Pathetic!