131–140 of 148 posts
The comments here are incredibly harsh. As someone who has self published two books, quite a lot of this resonates with me. First book addressed a timely topic but ultimately aged out very quickly and I got burnt out trying to keep up with updates. It made roughly $80,000 in lifetime sales, of which I kept 96% (credit card fees + hosting overhead). Second book addressed a broader niche but fell into several of the tr…
> It’s because Hemingway’s Boat is broadly “about” a topic, whereas The War of Art promises—and delivers—an outcome. I certaintly don't know a damn thing about selling books. But I am an avid reader of nonfiction and this is exactly the opposite of how I shop for books myself. Other than the odd "how-to", I'm skeptical of any book promising me anything other than the author's diligent study and incisive distillation…
I share your opinion (I particularily like essays; I follow along the arguments, think whether I agree with them or not, etc. but absolutely hate the "how-to" kind of books which I strongly associate with the hustle and self improvement culture that I find quite toxic.) But I agree with the author that the later kind of books seems much more popular with the general public, being handed solutions appears to be more a…
There just aren't that many people like that.
For the gen. pop. you're better off making a crystal clear promise, being very clear about who should and shouldn't read it, and delivering on that promise so the book proves useful to the reader and gets recommended.
Most people read non-fiction to solve a problem. It seems that what you and I like is learning for learning's sake.
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Does it, though? I assume you mean "Billion Dollar Muslim: Why We Need Spiritually Inspired Entrepreneurs". It clearly makes mistake #3: "writing broadly about the topic instead of making a clear promise about what the reader will get out of it". What is "clear promise about what the reader will get out of it" in "Billion Dollar Muslim"? Frankly, based on the title I don't see why I should read it, even if I'm somewh…
I gave up marketing the book two years ago after trying for nearly 3 years. SSL certificate I will check out. That must be recent as the site has been running fine for years. You might have a point about the promise of the book, but that depends on whether your muslim or not. Most muslims who come across it, understand the premise immediately, but still, you might have a point there.
We talk more about the mechanics of useful books here.¹
Unfortunately, if it's not organically growing, it's not getting word of mouth, and if it's not getting word of mouth, it's just not that useful.
Either people don't have the problem you think they have, your book doesn't solve it, or the audience isn't right (in which case people don't run into people they can recommend the book to.)
Notes ¹ https://writeusefulbooks.com/resources/designing-nonfiction-...
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That's hilarious. Enjoy the book :) Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC age since you're competing with ever increasing ad prices. I have spent a lot of money on advertising regardless. One thing that has been a major sticking point for me however, ist hat distribution has been a huge issue. I wouldn't say my target market is that small. Most of the Middle East and Asia is quite ripe for my book but amazon doe…
> Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC ag And yet the free source of marketing (your twitter account) doesn't have a link to the book. Neither does your HN bio. Your website is broken (expired SSL certificate). As far as I can tell you don't have a single page that tries to sell the book. A link to amazon is a bare minimum. https://writeusefulbooks.com/ is an example of a master class of marketing a book. It de…
Strongly agree with this: >not a universal truth that you can only be successful with "huge budget".
That quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The true GOATS of advertising and marketing, like for example Dave Trott, beat the point that you should play games you can win into your head over and over.
If one can't compete buying a ton of ads, don't try. But making a book that's useful to a small group of people, by making a clear promise, specifying who it is and isn't for, and then aggressively iterate with beta-readers until you start to get word of mouth, changes the equation more from needing lots of money to putting in a lot of the right kind of effort.
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That's hilarious. Enjoy the book :) Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC age since you're competing with ever increasing ad prices. I have spent a lot of money on advertising regardless. One thing that has been a major sticking point for me however, ist hat distribution has been a huge issue. I wouldn't say my target market is that small. Most of the Middle East and Asia is quite ripe for my book but amazon doe…
> Marketing requires a huge budget in the VC age since you're competing with ever increasing ad prices. This is a mental trap that is super easy to fall into. The author of the article is writing a marketing guide. Marketing encompasses the entire product and go to market design, of which advertising is just a tiny part. Notice in his table of contents that advertising is only mentioned in one chapter very late in th…
I enjoyed this, I thought it mostly made good points, and it linked to other articles I will look at. Yet.. I started reading a blogger who teaches how to make a successful blog, sells courses about it, etc. I soon realized her blog is just about her making money from promising to help you make money from your blog. A frighteningly vacuous operation. It seems a modern cousin to the old ad in magazines promising to re…
I don't consider that good or bad, it just is. Similar to how some people prefer fish over meat and vice versa.
However, I will push back against the broad stroke generalization that you either teach people for free or charge money and be considered a scam.
Our advice is solid and battle-tested. There's Rob who wrote the Mom Test and Devin who wrote The Workshop Survival guide with Rob. And then there's our community with over a 100 up and coming authors who we're helping increase the probability of success through our process. The early results are already positive and it'll only improve as we keep trying to nail our process even more.
Is YC a scam because it isn't free?
If an author is like Tai Lopez you don't get word of mouth and burn through your lead pool. That means you're constantly trying to attract fresh leads, which is why these scams eventually tend to break.
What we're doing is teaching a process that minimizes some of the common mistakes authors make. Yes, we're charging money for that.
But if you look at our process, or heck, just read this article, you should be able to see that there's value worth paying for.
If you use nothing else but this article with these 4 common pitfalls to avoid, you'll do better vs. not having read it. And this was free.
So, I don't think your argument holds any water.
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The point of the article is explaining how a goal of a living wage can be earned directly off nonfiction writing, in addition to two different reasons that are explicitly stated at the beginning of the article as being commonly suggested. It also explicitly is calling out methods that do not require fame, nor does it espouse a goal of fortune (unless you treat a living wage as a fortune).
He does so dismissively, not treating them seriously: "you should therefore embrace your book’s predestined doom by reframing it as either passion project or calling card."
Shouldn't #5 be "not promoting your book effectively" because he's clearly promoting his book effectively. I think this is fine if fame and fortune are your goal, which is an unquestioned assumption for a lot of people, but there are other reasons to write a book, which he does not address.
In fact, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who write non-fiction books are absolutely aware that the royalties will likely be (maybe) beer money--assuming they don't have expensive tastes in beer. Rather they're reputational. In tech, being a published author on a topic often separates people from the pack as consultants but it can also easily differentiate you if you have an externally-facing role…
I.e. you can't just slap a book together and think you've got credibility. People see right through that.
This is something Tendayi Viki of Strategyzer talked to us about:
"HOW DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE BOOK AS A PRODUCT? In my line of work, credibility is very important. I can’t cold call companies and be like “Hey, you know that those innovation programs are very important? Well, we have the best one. You can buy it now for three easy payments of 599.” Reputation matters a lot. It’s so much easier if someone comes to you. If they already respect me before we start the conversation.
Now, there are two ways to do that. You can deliberately be the snake oil salesmen. But that’s why those books don’t work because it’s so obvious what the person is trying to do. They write a book so they can say “I wrote a book”.
Or, you can say “I actually have something authentic to share and let me share that.” That’s the approach I’ve taken. I know I need to build a reputation but I don’t want to build it on nothing. If people pull back the curtains, they can see substance."
Notes I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing you of saying that. I'm merely adding to your comment.
Reference https://writeusefulbooks.com/resources/Tendayi-Viki/
Step 1: sell 10k copies of your book through self-publishing. Step 0: already be successful at marketing or be well-known. There are certainly some valid points, but his solution pre-supposes that you already know your marketing. So the actual steps would be: * consistently produce good content for several years, build an audience (and an email list, as quaint as it sounds) * write a book, self-publish it * promote t…
You've got the order wrong. He got "famous" because The MOM Test did well. It wasn't "He was famous and then The MOM Test did well."
The danger with your line of reasoning is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If one truly believes the need to be famous, they can't ever succeed.
However, our process is designed to show that's not the case and to help "normal people" succeed.
I enjoyed reading the article. However, I think the author is over-generalising a bit with targeting this at "non-fiction" authors. #1 & #2 are perhaps broadly aplicable, but #3 & #4 seem more geared towards self-help books, books about management and the like. I suspect people who read a memoir, an auto-biography, an eulogy or about true crime may well be interested in reading about a topic rather than looking for a…
Those don't classify as the type of non-fiction problem solving books we're talking about.
All models and methods are an approximation of the world (excluding pure mathematics). That error in approximation creates problems when you don't respect the domain of validity of the theory.
Right now, what you claim as over-generalising, I argue is you taking our theory outside its domain of validity.
I agree that it breaks there, but that's only because it wasn't designed for that domain so it's kind of a strawman argument.