Choose Complexity
by Ben Huot
ben@benjamin-newton.com
www.benjamin-newton.com
Discover the Great and Rare Value of My Books in Print
- Get 42 text books
- worth an estimated retail value of $1,095
- for download at no cost to you
- or buy print versions at half cost or less
- most books now on Amazon.com
Discover General Pricing Issues
I am not making any profit off my books, because I am a disabled veteran and if I did, I would jeopardize my pension. Another reason is that I think too many things in life cost too much money. Where most people who want a free culture express these views by stealing music and movies, because they think they cost too much money, I have taken a proactive approach and have instead released my books for free.
The greatest things in life are free and the greatest works have no copyright. If I want my work to last, the best way to do it is to not sell my copyright and license it for free distribution. Like most good writers and revolutionary thinkers, I will likely be thought of as more important after I die. As it is, the only writers who make much off their books are people who are already famous.
I am selling these books at cost and printing them out on a regular home printer would likely be more expensive. I am making no money off of them and have published them for the convenience of my readers as it is hard to read hundreds of pages on a computer screen.
I don't do any of the shipping or billing and I never see any credit card number, addresses, or any other personal information. All the printing, shipping, and billing is done by Amazon.com or Lulu and they are reputable companies that has been around for a number of years. I have ordered all of the books myself, before I made them available for purchase. So far, they have been top quality.
Discover Specific Pricing Issues
Compared to other books about similar topics of a similarly recent composition, you could expect to pay $15-$20 for each of my paperback books. For the collections, you could easily pay $30 for my paperback 10 Years, Continuing Philosophy, Additional Philosophical Works, Insights and Frustrations, and Free Thinking Christian collections each and $40 each for the Large Print Editions of each. For the Complete Philosophical Works, you could easily pay $50. My Complete Introductions Collection, Complete Psychological Topics, Complete Ideological Discoveries, and Complete Red Letter Collection books would each cost at least $20, $30 each for the Large Print Editions of each, Technical Collection book would cost at least $50 and $60 for the Large Print Edition, and my Book of Lists would cost at least $40 (because each one is composed of 2 books worth of material). Positive News would cost about $10.
You are paying about half price or less for my books compared to what they would cost in a book store, plus you can preview and know exactly what it is you are getting before you put money down. How many times and how much money do you go through buying books you later find are not worth your time to read? Including shipping to your door, depending on how fast you want it, you are still paying substantially less than you would in a bookstore. And my books are available exclusively online and there is nothing out there remotely like them in print or anywhere else online for any price.
I also offer my books in a number of different collections, which brings the price per book down even lower. If you buy the 10 Years or one of the Free Thinking Christian collections in paperback, you are only paying $3 to $4 a book plus shipping. If you buy the Complete Philosophical Works, you only pay $2 a book plus shipping.
Get these books now before Lulu.com raises the prices or cannot continue due to the poor economy.
Now 19 of my books are available for sale on Amazon.com. My publisher (Lulu) decided all on their own to make my books some of the first ones available on their Amazon.com store. I didn't submit any of my books for review, I didn't pay any money for this service, and I didn't even have to sell my copyright for this honor. My books on Amazon.com have much cheaper shipping and now have ASIN numbers.
note: add one week onto delivery time for printing and processing
Discover why I don't sell my books in stores
If I wanted to have my books sold in store, I would have to sell all rights (the copyright) to each of my books and would likely only get only $5,000 for each. Then I would not be able to release them for free or sell them at cost or distribute them online or in any other way at all.
Second of all, I would jeopardize the long term survival of my books. When you sell your copyright, since copyrights extend for 75 years after the author's death or 95 years after the date of creation, unless my book sells well enough for that entire 75-95 years, then it will be discarded and totally lost to future generations during those years. No one else will be able to distribute or copy the book until that period is over, so there would be no way to "save" it.
To promote a book in just one store costs $10,000. I tried giving my book to my local library, but they turned me down when they saw the word "Christian" on some of the books. Also, it is more likely for me to find several hundred people interested in my work worldwide then I would find in my home town.
Also, I think most people who would be interested in this kind of work already have Internet access. As my books are freely distributable provided you don't change anything in them, you can print them out and give them to other people you know who don't have Internet access.
