FWIW, I disagree with the idea that people who skim are less likely to understand the material, or that a person who buys a hardcopy is more likely to understand. It’s probably true that the people who buy hard copies are more likely to be “serious” about it, but that’s no guarantee of understanding.

Thanks.

I’ve been thinking a bit about this in terms of what strategy is the best. The problem is that a pdf gets printed, skimmed, and discarded after being partly understood. These people, armed with their half baked understanding, then head to the internet. The result is endless mail list discussions about things like AIXI and Solomonoff induction that are full of technical sounding nonsense. As much of it critical, I suspect that being misunderstood is worse than being relatively unknown.

A book, on the other hand, leaves a physical pointer in the world for decades to come. Its cost discourages skimmers and maybe even encourages those who buy it to spend a bit more time on the material as they have already spent the money. Of course I wouldn’t want to stop serious but poor readers.

So what I’m going to do is this: Firstly I’ll release it in print only, but I will release it at cost. I figure that most people who aren’t willing to spend $18 on a 200 page hard cover book probably aren’t willing to really think about the material either.

Then a few months later I’ll put up the pdf for free…