Thank you, Helen.
Benny’s book is only 30 000 words long? That seems kind of…thin. It must really pack a lot into each sentence for $40.
As I understand it, André Klein wrote “A Mindful Guide to Online Living”. Is he an active LingQ member?
Oh…I spelt his LingQ name wrong. No wonder I couldn’t find him [tuts].
Well, I don’t think Grokker belongs to the most active members… but I like reading his blog, like that of so many of the members here.
lol, this thread is funny 
The guide isn’t a book, it’s a huge number of separate files currently amounting to 42MB, and increasing very soon. It’s actually going to contain about 240,000 words in early July (provided as a free update), then about 3 times that at the end of the summer, since the entire content is being translated to several languages by natives right now. I’m not sure if Steve’s book is available in Spanish, Polish etc.? I think it’s more interesting for language learners to read the content in their target language. The book will be proving its own point by being readable in the target language for many people. I wanted to release it in English first to test the waters and get feedback before providing the free translations.
As Jeff said it’s also got some fascinating interviews with people I’m sure most of you would be interested to hear from. I’ve never seen anyone interview Khatz or Moses McCormick the way I have for example. Stuart Jay Ray has also agreed to an interview, and he loved reading my website and watching my videos. But he is very very hard to get online at the right time!! Hopefully we’ll talk in time for version 2.0 update. So the guide isn’t just my “dubious unsupported opinions”, but those of very well known language learners too.
If it was just one PDF file I’d price it a lot less, but it’s free updates to the multilingual version, hours of unique interviews, worksheets to make sure you apply the advice, and the actual book is in several formats (printable, computer screen format and ePub for Sony Reader / iPad). Considering it’s multilingual and multimedia I should actually be charging much much more for it than I currently am if I wanted to go by standards of other products. Printed books like Steve’s one don’t give you free updates and if I was to price it as a typical e-book (say €10) then the price would be in the hundreds due to the number of different e-books that are actually going to be included.
There’s no way I could charge less than €32 for all of this if I wanted to be fair to value for money. It’s a bargain for the amount included unless you think of it as just one PDF e-book. I can understand the confusion, so I hope that makes it clearer.
For those of you curious, you can see the Table of Contents and read a free chapter about how I use music to learn phrases in my first week by joining the e-mail list on my blog. You can unsubscribe immediately after you get the attachment if you are not interested in my free weekly language hacks in your inbox.
If you think I’m crazy and a liar (as Steve seems to be implying above: I don’t practise what I preach apparently and spend all my time studying?) then don’t buy it. People are free to look around my blog and see that I’m genuine. The criticism here is all over the place - I’m too wordy and yet I didn’t write enough, I’m a conman and I’m not a real polyglot. None of these deserve a response and are just pointless insults from people angry with me for FSP knows what reason…
Meant to say FSM, whoops!
Now, let the unprovoked abuse towards me recommence 
The only criticism I will make is that you are a bit too sensitive for someone who has, I would have to say, quite knowingly put himself in the spotlight.
BTW @Chris My blog is LingQ-proof. You can click the segmented first link and you’ll still get to the right page 
@Peter People love to throw the word sensitive around in this forum and on Steve’s blog. It’s like it’s the magic word that cancels any reply I may make to the fact that someone is portraying me inaccurately. I wonder how any of you would reply to someone calling you a fraud and a wallet-hacker? I’m not interested in spotlights, I want to help people achieve their language ambitions. If I wanted to be famous I’d become an actor or something. People seem to be confusing what I’m ultimately aiming for.
Anyway, I can see another record-breaking thread coming from this if I keep satisfying random taunts. The forum in LingQ was not recommended in my book because I have yet to feel welcome here, although I recommended the reading system. I continue to use the LingQ system to occasionally read German now that my exam is coming up in 2 weeks.
I’ve got an OCR system set up that I can have thousands of words of text from any magazine in the LingQ system in just a couple of minutes using just my digital camera and get through it much quicker than if I were to use a dictionary manually. But maybe people here wouldn’t be so interested in hearing how I do that, I’d be way too wordy
Does your book contain videos of you speaking extemporaneously with native speakers for more than 5 minutes or so in all the languages you claim to have become fluent in? (I would appreciate a short answer without unprovoked abuse. )
@Benny - Just out of curiousity, do you consider my last comment a ‘random taunt’ or just my own personal opinion? You make it sound like anyone who doesn’t bestow a great deal of confidence or enthusiasm upon you is part of this great big ‘anti-benny’ mob. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
@Benny: Steve’s book is available for free in a lot of languages here in the LingQ libraries with text and audio. Only the printed version cost money. I haven’t checked it for all languages but maybe other users or Steve know it exactly.
I’d like to see the interviews that Benny has done, but would rather download them for free on a torrent site like I do for everything else I should pay for…
@blindside70 That’s called stealing…
@Veral I’ve seen small transcripts on LingQ but never the whole book as a download in any language.
I’m starting to collect money for the book, one euro at a time.
It’s not a good marketing stragegy to price your product according to the cost of production + a profit margin, but rather according to what the market will bear. LingQ members are a market segment that consider the costs and benefits very carefully before parting with money for a language learning product. I hope you won’t consider this to be personal abuse, when I say that you will meet with resistence to purchasing from this particular group. There will doubtless be more profitable market segments elsewhere.
Having said that, your ideas are always of great interest, as I hope our ideas are to you. (You can read mine for free, on my blog as well as on the LingQ blog). I had considered the idea of using a digital camera as a scanner. My husband said he didn’t think the resolution would be sufficient. I shall have to do some experiments.
In fact I have two books, one is The Linguist, A Language Learning Adventure, and the other is The Linguist on Language, a selection of blog posts over the last 5 years.
The former is on sale at Amazon, but can be read online at www.thelinguist.com in a number of languages, I cannot remember how many, The book is available for free download at LingQ for those languages for which we have a recording, since the LingQ library has to consist of audio and text.
The Linguist on Language e-book is free.
I agree with Victor that Benny represents an interesting social phenomenon. To me his major contribution to language learning is his enthusiasm, which no doubt helps many others overcome their inhibitions or get interested in language learning. I do not agree with a great deal of what he says, as for example in his recent blog post talking about the importance of learning non-verbal communication in language learning, see my comment on this (http://bit.ly/dAjRlA).
However, what I find interesting as a social phenomenon ( to quote Victor) is this inability to accept any criticism or counter arguments to his theses. As an example, I am blocked from commenting at Benny’s blog simply because I state what I think. I do not mind Benny coming here to our Forum to try to persuade people of the value of his book and to complain about how unfair we all are.He can say what he wants.
I think this intolerance of debate is something that is more common among young recent university graduates than of people of my vintage, but maybe I am being unfair.
As to the price of Benny’s book, that is up to him. He can charge what he wants. The consumers will decide what the book is worth. The cost of the book is important to Benny, but, I agree Helen, irrelevant to the people considering buying it. I also do not see Benny telling us how many copies he intends to sell, nor what his anticipated revenue and profits are. Nor should he, it is all his business. So the cost of the book does not interest me either, nor does the book, for that matter.
I think the problem with hawking advice for how to learn a language without accepting any criticism is that personal experience is not a good measure of reality. This is why we don’t go with our personal experience that the earth is flat.
Learning a language is a long involved process that at best takes many hundreds of hours, and from where I am it looks very flat and I don’t know how much good any particular method is doing me.
So, someone who has learned a language in the past has many methods that probably did them some good, and probably that were useless or outright counterproductive. Now because learning a language is such a large undertaking you cannot know just from your personal experiences which methods were the most important…
Now this is where we get to the first part of “Fluent in three months”, which is this: Benny had an idea of a set of methods that helped him achieve fluency. He was even being kind of scientific and doing an experiment to see if these methods worked how he said they did.
The next step is after the experiment you assess the results and publish your findings. So Benny, more or less did so.
and then there is peer review, people critique the results, and methods and of course people come in with evidence and previous research, and this is where I think Benny went off the track.
People questioned the results, and Benny moved the goal-posts, they insisted that he was not being straight with everyone and continued asking for evidence, and he called that personal attacks.
Now a person who was more self-aware might say “hey wait, why am I insulting people who don’t agree with me, and moving the goal-posts for my experiment? I was testing a theory and it didn’t meet my expectations, maybe there’s something wrong with my theory.”
Steve, I blocked you because you were spamming my site with irrelevant comments unrelated to the post and because of the many misleading derogatory comments you constantly produced on your site about me. I have only ever had to block 3 people out of almost 2,500 comments to date and ALL THREE OF THEM are either you or regular commenters on your blog.
I’m not the first person to block you, you have a history for creating mischief online for anyone with the slightest different approach and enthusiasm behind it, and have conveniently forgotten all the other sites that have blocked you for misbehaviour. I invite people to read my explanation here: http://bit.ly/cs2Jw4 Among other things you were blocked on the Internet’s biggest language learning forum and created a separate account to get around it apparently? You have a history for annoying language learners with different approaches to you.
You implied that you didn’t mind me blocking you, but you clearly still hold a grudge and bring it up again out of context like I make a habit out of blocking people because of stating “what they think”. Your exaggeration is incredible, but typical of you to throw me in such bad light.
Feel free to say that I’m sensitive and all that rubbish, but I cannot stand this obsession you have with me! It’s like a crush gone bad. You keep poking and prodding me on your blog. If I give such terrible advice, why do you keep linking to me? There are plenty of things I don’t agree with in the world, but I’d rather give productive rather than destructive advice on my blog, not use it as a channel to dictate who is right and wrong. There are different approaches to learning a language. Get over it!
I have no doubts there will be a wave of people against me here because the whole point is that it’s your site so they will back you up almost by default. I thought that I could simply elaborate on my e-book in a discussion I never started, without this turning into a pis*ing match again. One drawback of my enthusiasm is my naive hope that some people will change…
For some strange reason I still hope that you’ll stop this ridiculous competition. Most of what I have seen on your blog has been negative and listing reasons why all methods and attitude but yours are wrong. Why not focus on the good of your approach and blog about that instead?
I appreciate the comments about the book, and I’m glad you give away yours for free.
For Pete’s sake, can’t we just virtually shake hands and make up?? If you’d stop this crusade against me I’d be happy to have you comment on my blog again! This may come as a shock to you, but I have more to contribute to the language learning message than just enthusiasm. You are going to have to get used to the fact that I am here to stay to give advice that will conflict with yours. Couldn’t we talk about the 99% that we clearly agree on?
Benny.
- What is your definition of spamming, writing a few comments to question what you have to say?
- The fact that I was blocked at one or other language learning site on the web only proves my point about this modern culture of “dialogue” according to which certain people decide what is allowed to be said and who is going to have the right to speak.
- Which of my comments was misleading? My comments may not be flattering, but they represent what I think. You make claims that are, in my opinion, not true. You do not learn languages in three months the way you imply you do. You do not sound like a native in any language although you imply you do. I said these things at your blog. That is why I was blocked.
- You call my comments silly and rubbish, or some kind of ridiculous competition or a crusade. It is not. I write on language learning. You are a public figure on the web, as is Tim Ferriss, whom I also criticized. At my blog I comment on language. I will continue to comment on those of your claims that I do not agree with and do not think true. I will also continue to comment on your intolerance to criticism and inability to defend your position. You cannot prevent me doing this, except at your blog.