Excellent Reviews of Excellent Books

It’s time for a special review, where I have a look at other media, and this time I want to talk about crowdfunding. I did support some projects in the past, so I wanted to look into Kickstarter.com,  the biggest crowdfunding website, to see if there are some interesting books to be found. For those of you who don’t know what crowdfunding is, here is a short introduction. A creator initiates a project by opening a project page on Kickstarter (or another crowdfunding platform). There, he or she presents a pitch and every information that they think will get people to fund (“back”) their project. The backers decide if they want to pledge some money, to receive rewards. These rewards usually come in tiers, where a higher pledge means a better reward. Typical reward tiers range from adding the backer to a mailing list (for a very low amount of money pledged) over the thing that the project is about (like a pair of shoes or a book or tickets for a performance) to special editions, meetings with the creators and other goodies at a higher price. The creator will get the backers money if, and only if, the specified…

Review: A good coffee should be dark, intense and rich in taste, right? That’s what you and me will tell when asked. Based on consumer research, coffee companies will create new coffee roasts that are extra dark and strong and full of flavour. Then you and me are going to completely ignore those and go buy something mild, probably with a lot of milk and sugar in it. Because everybody lies. There is a difference between action and intent. We may mean what we say, but we do not follow through. What we actually do is what we really, secretly and often subconsciously mean. That is why everybody lies. When we voice our preferences and opinions, even to ourselves, we are always feeling constraints to remove the edges, to be acceptable to others, to fit in. Even under absolutely no legal or moral restrictions we adapt our opinions to what we perceive to be the public opinion, an effect known as social desirability bias. Ultimately, Everybody Lies is a book about Big Data, and about revealing the truths by mining it. Stephens-Davidowitz brings colorful anecdotes from horse races, political campaigning, sex, marketing and other fields to illustrate the power and…

I already mentioned that I’m a big fan of Dilbert. Creator Scott Adams is apparently in the process of writing a new book called Win Bigly – Persuasion in a World where Facts don’t Matter. I do not really care about Adams’ non-Dilbert activities (especially not his political campaigning), I do not read his blog and I know absolutely nothing about the book, but recently a post headline got my attention. Adams is offering a bonus chapter to people who preordered the book. At a first glance this is just a nice addition for his fans. On a second thought, however, I am appalled by this and preorder culture in general. We have seen this before with video games, that are absolutely pestered by this. Loads of content that should just be in a game is held hostage in an opaque system of editions, preorder bonuses and future paid additions (that can of course also be preordered and have their own preorder bonuses). All designed to make the customer fork over their money as soon as possible, months or even years before they can expect even a glimpse of the promised goods. With ebooks and digital distribution steadily on the…