There was a time, a few years back, when you couldn’t swing a dead ferret in a Barnes and Nobles or Borders book store without hitting a brand new book that told us how to improve our poker games. Everyone from recognized professionals, to celebrities, to people whose poker experience includes being challenged to a boxing match by Gus Hansen seemed to have a book out about the game. This waterfall of poker publications has seemed to have developed a clog, and new poker books seem to have been reduced to a bit of a trickle. There are a couple of plausible reasons for this.
First of all, for the moment most of western civilization is still based on a capitalist economic model. While the guy in the white house is doing his best to turn the west into a Banana Republic type socialism, for now supply and demand rule the roost. There could be fewer poker books simply because there is less demand. The game may still be very popular, but the market got quickly oversaturated and any new player can still drown in the sea of options. Add this to the fact that there probably isn’t a whole lot new to say on the topic, and you have a condition where publishers are about as enthusiastic about pouring money into a new poker book as they would be about a liquid nitrogen enema.
The ban on online poker in the United States and other places may also have something to do with the sudden lack of new poker books. Most people don’t live near a casino, and if they can’t play poker online, they may just forget all about the game and just join a fantasy football league.
For whatever reason, there are fewer new books coming out about poker. Until somebody has something new and interesting to say about the sport the release of new works will continue at the pace of a lazy trickle instead of a mighty flood of new books.
