To commemorate the release of my three Tetris guidebooks, I have several key points to share with my potential readers and audience.

1) The Price Justification of the Books

I have priced the three books on Amazon.com at USD 24.99 (Book 1), USD 47.99 (Book 2), and USD 49.99 (Book 3), respectively.

I believe that these are perfectly reasonable prices to set for the books, and I will explain why.

The reason is three-fold:

1. Making Tetris knowledge accessible: I aspire to democratize Tetris knowledge by making it relatively affordable for others.
2. To avoid the sin of capitalism: Some monopolies (like Activision Blizzard or Ubisoft) overcharge their customers and cut down on quality. I find this morally repulsive, so I will not overcharge.
3. To cover costs: Books 2 and 3 cost USD 21 to print. Their breakeven cost is about USD 37 before I can make any profit. Amazon takes 40% of my royalties, while Singapore and the USA both take 30% tax cuts. This leaves only a USD 4.50 to 6 profit per book.

Here is some more transparency on the price justification:

First, the closest competing Tetris guidebook on Amazon is priced at USD 19.99 for 44 pages of content. My first book costs only USD 24.99, which is approximately 25% more, for 182 pages of content, or about 4.5 times the content of the competition. It is also entirely free on this website. My second and third books cost around USD 48 each, with nearly 500 pages each, meaning I am charging 2.5 times the cost of the closest competition for 12 times the content per book.

As such, in terms of value for money, one is getting around 5.5 to 6 times the quantity of content per unit of currency. This does not take into consideration the quality and depth of my Tetris guides, which could then increase the value to approximately 10 to 12 times the quality and quantity of content per unit of currency.

When I researched the price determination of the books, with AI to assist me, DeepSeek and ChatGPT suggested increasing the prices to as much as USD 55 to 70 for books 2 and 3. I did not comply with this.

To reduce the price further to affordable levels, I chose Amazon’s standard color ink and paperback. If I had selected the premium color and hardcover option, the costs of books 2 and 3 would have risen to about USD 100, which is too expensive. Standard color ink provides an excellent balance between acceptable and clear diagram quality and price.

In my next clause, I cover the next reason why this price is justified:

2) The One-Man-Army Toll of the Tetris Books

The works have taken me 5 years to research and write. This involved 2.5 years of research and 2.5 years of writing. It also includes the time to test and master the methods, to gain vital authoritative experience to author the books.

It is a highly laborious process that involves 10-hour workdays, over many months, of painstakingly researching, testing, fact-checking, editing, proofreading, illustrating, and pagesetting the books. This has taken a severe toll on my mental and emotional well-being, caused by long-term burnout.

The book creation process also had me work with individuals who were extremely difficult to deal with (gaslighting, imposingness, not respecting my boundaries, etc.). This imposed a hefty toll on my psychological health over many years.

As such, I believe it is entirely reasonable and fair to expect some financial compensation for the amount of effort put in. I also need the money to see a therapist to recover from severe spiritual, emotional, and intellectual burnout.

3) No AI Text or Image Generation Was Used in the Three Tetris Books

No AI text or image generation was used in the creation of the in-book content for the three books. This includes the usage of tools like DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Claude AI, or Qwen AI.

All 10,000 Tetris fields were painstakingly created by me using a custom template in Paint.

All 250,000 words were diligently drafted and written by me, then carefully reviewed word by word through multiple rounds of editing and proofreading.

I illustrated the book cover, as I am also an artist who illustrated my own spiritual and philosophical fantasy novels.

The only parts that involved AI usage were of an editorial and assisting nature, such as:

1. Fact-checking: AI was utilized to verify the accuracy of all details, ensuring that technical definitions, terms, and concepts were precise. This also involved verifying the mathematical calculations of the probabilities of perfect clears.
2. External book marketing (such as blurbs on the Amazon store or this website’s book promotion pages): While I authored most of the blurbs myself, AI was used to streamline and enhance the book blurbs and other marketing campaigns.
3. Areas beyond my authority: Just one area involved the most AI-assisted editing: the Classic Tetris chapters. As I am a modern Tetris expert, two pages, which involved mechanisms on crashing and rebirth, were completely beyond my level of knowledge and authority. Therefore, while I wrote everything manually, AI was there to rewrite, fact-check, and improve about four or five paragraphs in these two pages.

In addition to these, editing was entirely manual, involving a word-for-word review. However, I did employ Grammarly and ProWritingAid premium as additional sets of eyes to spot editorial problems that I had missed.

4) Slight Variations in Individual Printed Copies

As part of the quality control process, I personally ordered two proof copies of each of the three Tetris guidebooks (six books total). Overall, I’m satisfied with the results.

However, due to regional printing differences on Amazon’s end, there may be minor variations between individual printed copies.

For example:

• Book 1: Both copies were identical with no issues.
• Book 2: One copy had a slightly warmer (amber) tinge on the cover, while the other had perfect colors but was about 0.5 cm taller.
• Book 3: One of the copies showed a faint grayish tint in some small paragraphs (very rare and scattered) — roughly 20% lighter than pure black — but the text remained fully legible and clear.

These differences are rare, subtle, and cosmetic. They do not affect the content or readability of the books. Unfortunately, as these variations stem from Amazon’s global print-on-demand network, they are outside my control.

Think of each copy as having its own small “birthmark,” a unique print signature — just like a fingerprint. If you happen to receive a quirky one-of-a-kind misprint, who knows? It might become a collector’s item someday — just like those rare Harry Potter editions with printing oddities!

Thank you for your understanding!

A Final Word

These three Tetris guidebooks (a fourth in the making) took plenty of sweat and blood from me. Five years were spent just to author and polish them to the quality they are today.

I hope that you all will enjoy the guidebooks, and may they serve as valuable reference books for decades to come, promoting Tetris.

My books’ success hinges upon the success of Tetris. I did not go through years of mastering Tetris just to see it decline in popularity. Therefore, I will do everything in my power to promote and market Tetris, ensuring it remains relevant as a timeless and honored classic, even a hundred years from now.

On my famous Galactoid Tetris WordPress research blog website, I wrote about how to promote and expand Tetris:

Tetris is Dying and What to Do About It

The Epistemology of Tetris (And How to Expand Tetris)

Suppose any company, such as The Tetris Company (TTC), is interested in collaborating with me to promote and spread the word about Tetris. In that case, I am more than happy to contribute many ideas, despite my introverted nature.

Thank you and enjoy my Tetris guidebooks!