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There is no love lost between me and the overhyped SAT video hucksters over at 1600.io, but I do share their pain as a fellow test-prep author (SAT Vocab Capacity, GRE Vocab Capacity, Vince and Brian's Free GRE PowerPrep Explanations), one who has seen free PDF downloads of his books appear on the internet not long after their publishing dates.
For teachers and tutors, it has become exceedingly difficult to profit from authoring a book in the age of easy digital piracy, since any truly popular guide will eventually be leaked as a free PDF on websites such as Libgen.
A popular strategy used by such well-known test-prep authors as Nielson Phu (College Panda Math), Erica Meltzer (The Ultimate / Complete Guides to ACT and SAT Reading / Grammar), and now, the 3 writers of the 1600io "orange book" math guide is to release a print-only version, in the hope that skipping the Amazon Kindle / digital version will make it easier to avoid piracy.
Unfortunately, this is simply not enough of a deterrent for the determined pirate: all it takes is a good multi-page scanner, or even just someone with a cell phone and a lot of time, to anonymously upload a book onto the web in PDF form, which is why multiple PDFs of both Phu's and Melzer's books have already leaked all over the internet. That's one of the grand ironies of the digital age: once your book / album / show becomes truly popular, it gets leaked, and you begin selling far fewer units than you should.
In 2021, the writing is on the wall: unless you're already a famous author, writing a test-prep book is simply no longer a for-profit venture. Thus, I have decided to abandon the profit motive altogether, and to release Master the SAT as a free Google document—as well as the 3 published books I've co-authored as free, downloadable PDFs (see links above). I now charge only for my tutoring / coaching time, because all my self-created materials are 100% free.
-Brian
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