As one data point, the Institute of Economic Affairs (which has had pretty major success in spreading its views) prints out many short books advocating its viewpoints and hands them out at student events. That certainly made me engage with their ideas significantly more, then give the books to my friends, etc. I think they may get economies of scale from having their own printing press, but it might be worth looking into how cheaply you can print out 80-page EA primers for widespread distribution.
Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and twentieth century neoliberalism more broadly, owes a lot of its success to this sort of promotion. The book was published in 1944 and initially quite successful, but print runs were limited by wartime paper rationing. In 1945, the US magazine Reader’s Digest created a 20-page condensed version, and sold 1 million of these very cheaply (5¢ per copy). Anthony Fisher, who founded the IEA, came across Hayek’s ideas through this edition.
As one data point, the Institute of Economic Affairs (which has had pretty major success in spreading its views) prints out many short books advocating its viewpoints and hands them out at student events. That certainly made me engage with their ideas significantly more, then give the books to my friends, etc. I think they may get economies of scale from having their own printing press, but it might be worth looking into how cheaply you can print out 80-page EA primers for widespread distribution.
Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and twentieth century neoliberalism more broadly, owes a lot of its success to this sort of promotion. The book was published in 1944 and initially quite successful, but print runs were limited by wartime paper rationing. In 1945, the US magazine Reader’s Digest created a 20-page condensed version, and sold 1 million of these very cheaply (5¢ per copy). Anthony Fisher, who founded the IEA, came across Hayek’s ideas through this edition.
Source: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/320553.html
I wonder if there have been any “cost per conversion” estimates for the Gideons.