François CholletVerified account

2/ Writing a book isn't something you do for the money: *any* other activity would be more profitable. You do it for the sake of teaching

3/ I’ve spent over 400 hours writing this book, so at $13/h (SF min wage), I've sunk $5,200. Unclear yet if I will even make that much back

4/ In addition, I will make most of the book’s contents available for free on my blog (within the limits allowed by the publisher)

5/ In any case, if you think my work has no value, no one forces you to buy anything. There are many other books on DL, and plenty of blogs

/dev/null the trolls.

Honestly, for pp in third world country, that might be a genuine concern, 50$ for a book in many countries would be like 10% of month salary

Most books get pirated in developing ("3rd world") countries and China anyways.

yes, maybe. But I don't see why it should be an argument against the prize of books in poorer countries.