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Distribute HPMOR copies in Bangalore, India

🐧

Mikhail Samin

9 months ago

@saulmunn left a top-level comment

Distribute HPMOR copies in Bangalore, India

🐧

Mikhail Samin

9 months ago

Thoughts:

Rowling now limits printing fan fiction to 25 copies. (It’s not clear to what extent she would care, but beware that it might be illegal/etc.; you can contact her agent if seems important and you’re unsure.)
Getting people with high potential to read HPMOR might be great.
Getting random people to read HPMOR via giving them printed books is probably not cost-effective, you can do that cheaper.
In Russia, we have thousands of copies essentially for free (it was impossible to to spend on anything other than printing), the cost of delivery to people is usually <$5, and we target winners of national and international olympiads&competitions. To get a book, a student needs to be actively interested and fill out a form. A bunch of people whose opinions high-potential students in Russia might value endorsed HPMOR, which we use, and there are huge network effects we achieved and used. I have no idea how you get to anything similar without first getting some sort of influencers to endorse the book.
(We also buy and give copies of The Precipice and Human Compatible to students who receive HPMOR. And we do surveys etc. to have some measure of the impact.)
So far, we’ve sent copies of HPMOR to 1.3k winners of olympiads. Again, I have no idea how anything like that would be possible to achieve without having aligned media, aligned people who prepare regional & national teams for olympiads, aligned famous science communicators, literary critics, etc. (it got to the point of even an unaligned most famous modern Russian sci fi author talking negatively about the book).
Possibly think about other ways to get people with high potential to read HPMOR? I expect it could be much more cost-effective than via printing physical copies.

Comments

Distribute HPMOR copies in Bangalore, India

🐧

Mikhail Samin

9 months ago

@saulmunn left a top-level comment

Distribute HPMOR copies in Bangalore, India

🐧

Mikhail Samin

9 months ago

Thoughts:

Rowling now limits printing fan fiction to 25 copies. (It’s not clear to what extent she would care, but beware that it might be illegal/etc.; you can contact her agent if seems important and you’re unsure.)
Getting people with high potential to read HPMOR might be great.
Getting random people to read HPMOR via giving them printed books is probably not cost-effective, you can do that cheaper.
In Russia, we have thousands of copies essentially for free (it was impossible to to spend on anything other than printing), the cost of delivery to people is usually <$5, and we target winners of national and international olympiads&competitions. To get a book, a student needs to be actively interested and fill out a form. A bunch of people whose opinions high-potential students in Russia might value endorsed HPMOR, which we use, and there are huge network effects we achieved and used. I have no idea how you get to anything similar without first getting some sort of influencers to endorse the book.
(We also buy and give copies of The Precipice and Human Compatible to students who receive HPMOR. And we do surveys etc. to have some measure of the impact.)
So far, we’ve sent copies of HPMOR to 1.3k winners of olympiads. Again, I have no idea how anything like that would be possible to achieve without having aligned media, aligned people who prepare regional & national teams for olympiads, aligned famous science communicators, literary critics, etc. (it got to the point of even an unaligned most famous modern Russian sci fi author talking negatively about the book).
Possibly think about other ways to get people with high potential to read HPMOR? I expect it could be much more cost-effective than via printing physical copies.