I prefer reading too but most people will pay more for a video than they will for an ebook regardless of the value contained within because they've been trained repeatedly that books are cheap.
Patrick and Ramit Sethi discuss this very thing in the last Kalzumeus podcast.
Book pricing isn't as hopelessly broken as music pricing, but that is faint praise indeed. It's sad. Writing a good book is a great deal of work, reading a good book provides a great deal of value, but the psychology of the book market recognizes neither of these facts. People vaguely imagine that producing books costs approximately the time required to type them, and expect to buy books for the cost of buying, inking, and shipping the paper - if the paper is absent they expect the price to be negligable.
Whereas the one good thing to be said about modern college tuitions is that they provide a nice big anchor for the cost of a "course". Practically anything looks like a bargain next to the list price of an hour of TA instruction at Harvard. [1]
[1] That's a fun math problem: Assuming five courses at Harvard, five hours per week of lecture and recitation per course, a fourteen-week semester and $38k tuition and fees, I come up with about $55 per hour per student. Of course, Harvard does not bill by the hour, but that's a whole 'nother essay.
re: "you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality" LOL, that's a back-handed compliment there.
I think he's aiming to get better at his video production and presentation skills, and believes video delivers more perceived value than just text. Text is not a course, it's an ebook. Courses are worth more than ebooks every day of the week. Perceived value > actual value when it comes to sales... Who's going to pay $2,000 (site license) for an ebook?
BTW, I love video and audio players that allow you to speed up play - 1.5x, 1.75x or 2.0x . Coursera has that, love it.
I'm a self-proclaimed patio11 fanboi, and rave about him to anyone who'll listen. But admittedly, his writing is what I rave about. I'm ambivalent about his videos.
The ideas are still there, but I admit, it needs to be at my reading speed to be interesting.
I'd like to preface this comment by saying that I'm a huge fan of your work. You've personally helped me a ton.
That said, I must ask what made you choose video as the medium for this content. Frankly, you're a much stronger writer than on-camera personality.
Even beyond congeniality, why is five hours of video at 150wpm superior to a medium-length ebook I can read at 800wpm?
Thanks!