While strolling through my local Barnes & Nobles over last weekend, I did what I usually do when I find myself there. I strolled over to the Poker section of the bookstore, but wasn’t able to find the placard that said “Poker” peeking out over the shelf. I asked for some help from a clerk, who directed me to a rather depressing sight.
Instead of having its own section, the poker books were now lopped in with other “games” that have been written about. Chess, bridge, spades…they were all there, alongside such efforts as how to best sports betting, Sudoku strategy and others (nothing against these games, mind you). Not only that, there wasn’t a recent release that was among the poker titles that was there; it seemed as if the last book that B&N had received was “Check-Raising the Devil” (another fine effort, if you haven’t already checked it out).
It isn’t from the lack of effort from one publishing company that there is this dearth of poker strategy books. D&B Publishing, the brainchild of Dan Addelman and Byron Jacobs, have been pumping out poker strategy efforts for the past decade. Featuring such authors/poker players as Jonathan Little, Rolf Slotboom, Daniel Ashman and Rob Hollink, the roster of books they have released cover pretty much every discipline of poker in existence. We caught up with Addelman recently to see why D&B Publishing continues in this field and what they have coming in the future.
Poker News Daily: How long has D&B been committed to poker strategy book publishing?
Dan Addelman: We started D&B over 10 years ago and quite quickly realized that we weren’t going to be a poker book publisher that published books for beginners and lower level poker player market. We’ll leave those kind of books to the larger publishing houses with their huge marketing budgets and we’ll focus on the more serious poker players.
PND: What are the pros and cons of publishing poker books?
DA: Well, the pros – if you love books then there is no greater industry to work in. I actually find this a very exciting time to be in publishing, but you have to innovate. Your certainly can’t sit still. I’m always thinking about new ways to sell and market our books and eBooks. Our website is ever evolving and our eBooks will too.
As for poker books in particular – Byron is our resident poker expert so for him there is, of course, the pleasure of publishing books on a subject you love. My experience is in publishing rather than poker and I think the combination of mine and Byron’s skills is what makes D&B so successful.
As for the cons – well, the United States is by far the biggest market and “Black Friday” didn’t do any favors to anyone involved in the poker industry, publishers included. Without the restrictions on online poker in the U. S., our sales would undoubtedly be even greater.
PND: What are you looking for when it comes to poker books?
DA: Quality has to be number one. It’s not important to us whether the author is well-known or not. If we firmly believe the book can be a success then we would publish it. We also try to publish something on a subject that hasn’t been covered before. This may not always be possible but we always try to look for a new angle.
The good thing is that there are a lot of ways to play poker: shallow, mid-stack, deep, heads up, six max, full table, tournament, cash, NL, PL, PLO, etc. Players inevitably like to specialize in a particular area so there should always be a market for a particular variant. Also it’s important to remember that if you play poker then all forms should really be of interest to you because many of the concepts are quite transferrable between games.
There is a further point that is critical to emphasize when you are discussing a player’s poker education. There is a ton of online material available these days: forums, coaching, videos, etc. Because of this a lot of people might consider a simple book to be a bit old-fashioned and not that exciting when they could watch a video instead. However, there is a lot of evidence that reading books is still the best way to increase your knowledge of a subject. I think there is a strong tendency when you watch a video to treat it like you are watching TV and zone out a little, thinking, “Oh he won that hand, oh – unlucky river”, or whatever. Reading a book specifically forces you to focus and concentrate on the material in hand. There is no good substitute for this.
PND: What is coming in the future from D&B that will draw the interest of the poker community?
DA: 2014 will be another very strong year for D&B. We firmly believe in quality and not quantity. Publishing in a few weeks’ time is ‘Expert Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em, Volume 2’ by Will Tipton. The first volume exceeded all our expectations and the buzz for the second volume has been something else. I can almost hear the desperation for the book in some comments I receive as publication draws near.
We then have another book by the amazing Jonathan Little. Of course anybody who buys poker books knows his Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker series. In July we’re publishing Jonathan’s first cash book – ‘Jonathan Little on Live No-Limit Cash Games’. It’s in the editing stage at the moment and this is definitely another book by Jonathan to get excited about.
We are then publishing a PLO book. We thought it had been far too long since a decent PLO book was published so we were delighted to sign up Herbert ‘Huck3be1n’ Okolowitz and Wladimir ‘Insyder19’ Taschner for this title, based on an aggressive approach to PLO. This book will be publishing in September.
And then, towards the end of the year (November) we have a really special book – ‘Moorman’s Book of Poker’. To say we were excited to sign up Chris Moorman is a bit of an understatement. The achievements of Chris online are unsurpassed – he is number 1, end of story. Live – he’s earned over $4 million and of course recently won the World Poker Tour’s L. A. Poker Classic, which is very nice timing for the book! He’s writing this with Byron.
PND: Is there a limit to what poker books can be done?
DA: Certainly not. Poker is evolving at an astonishing pace. Books that were regarded as Bibles until quite recently now look terribly quaint and old-fashioned. We will always be publishing books with material that reflects current thinking about the game and this is constantly evolving. We predict a healthy future for D & B!
As you can see, D&B Publishing is continuing to try to bring the best in poker strategy books to a rabid audience. In Part Two of this story, we’ll take a look at a few of the latest offerings from D&B and their impact and success in the poker strategy book field.
