from Amazon
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Joining SABR?
A SABR member told me that I should join. I said that SABR is not for me. He replied “for all the wrong reasons”. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like my decision wasn’t being respected.
There’s lots of people out there, even regular readers of this very blog, that have not bought The Book. Indeed, rather than telling people to buy The Book, I highlight how you can actually read the whole book for free at Amazon. Sean gets millions of hits, but only thousands of people sponsor his pages, and I guess just hundreds subscribe to PI. I don’t know how much people donate to Hardball Times, but I’m quite sure it’s less than 1% of the total BPro collects in its subscription. Obviously, THT gives more than 1% of BPro’s value. There are thousands of posters at Primer and at team blogs, but only hundreds that post here. Bill James hasn’t attracted the following online that he did with his books. An Italian friend of mine has actually never seen The Godfather. Lots of you (non-Canadians) don’t follow the NHL. None of my friends subscribe to Consumer Reports, while I’ve been auto-renewing every year.
Why is all this the case? While marketing is one reason, the other reason is simply “it’s not for me”. Or, if you get a frustrating experience, you just move on. I don’t know why someone needs to understand the reason for someone not joining some club beyond that. If I was missing out on something, someone would tell me of the great stuff I was missing. And then I can decide if it’s for me. As it stands, it is not.
I know dozens of people in SABR, and I have yet to hear a single reason that appeals to me. It obviously appeals to thousands out there: I’m simply in the group to which they don’t appeal to. Feel free to use this blog to describe SABR, or B-R.com’s PI, or THT, or BPro, or Consumer Reports or The Book, or this blog, or whatever other thing that is for you and why it is for you. The rest of us can decide if it is for us, without having to have our personal decisions judged.
(If you read this post and think anything negative, then you are reading it wrong.)