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I am writing an Elon Musk biography

leanpub.com

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Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#31

Post by norswap »

shiven wrote: post #28

Apologies from the get go for my negative-sounding questions, but the skeptic in me wonders: 1. Is this biography in any way vetted by Elon Musk or anyone who has first-hand knowledge of events described here? 2. If not, then how is this anything more than anec-data, wikipedia and googling thrown together in a fantasy narrative? 3. If it is not vouchsafed by the principal, real, living person about whom this book cla…

There are plenty of non-authorized biographies around, which no one would think to call "fiction". Not being vetted by the subject does not preclude accurate research.

Basically, it looks like you're implying the author is making stuff up. If that's indeed what you're trying to say, it's fine. But please state it outright.

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#32

Post by swamp40 »

SuperChihuahua wrote: post #9
stuartjmoore wrote: post #6

Typos on page 2: “At one interview, he had to hung up the phone because the journalist couldn’t understand the difficult topics involved … If he don’t get it, will he be sad about it?” Regardless, awesome idea. I plan on reading it through.

Thank You. I am Swedish, so I might have made some silly errors. That's why I released it through Leanpub, so don't be afraid of complaining. Or as Musk himself said: "Don't tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like."

Great job on this. I can vouch that a lot of people are interested in Mr. Musk these days.

I do wish the pdf contained a few more anecdotes about Mr. Musk himself, instead of so much about his ancestors.

I think the sample might actually do better if you snipped out the "Lost Cities" chapter, even if you didn't replace it with anything else.

Just my opinion - I'm certainly no expert in book writing or book selling. Again, congratulations on this!

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#33

Post by swamp40 »

twodim wrote: post #12
SuperChihuahua wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I haven't. I have cleaned Internet and books on information, so it has 407 sources.

Did you attempt reaching them?

You should at least ask. Maybe you are destined to be a modern day Napoleon Hill?

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#34

Post by hk__2 »

SuperChihuahua wrote: post #20
hk__2 wrote: post #18

Original picture: http://unsplash.s3.amazonaws.com/batch%204/jet-sky.jpg

Downloaded from here: http://unsplash.com/ as in "Free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos." :)

Yes, that was for the people that would be interested.

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#35

Post by vertr07 »

nonchalance wrote: post #25
jonnathanson wrote: post #23

Scanning through the comments, I'm noticing a bit of skepticism over the "legitimacy" of this work. To a large extent, that's probably fair: people have every right to be skeptical of anything calling itself a biography. The rigor of scholarship, access, and sourcing involved in writing a competent biography is a high hurdle to clear. That said, the idea of Leanpub is to let authors write lean. Writing lean isn't an…

Going into a biography, most of us have a basic understanding of core life events. We read biographies because we are interested in unique insights that (hopefully) biographers can provide. The only real way to do that is by interviewing people and drawing out interesting details that haven't been published yet (for a dead person, you might draw from a recently-discovered journal) In this case, the author did neither…

Since when did the market price for books reflect the effort put in by the author?

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#36

Post by SuperChihuahua »

shiven wrote: post #28

Apologies from the get go for my negative-sounding questions, but the skeptic in me wonders: 1. Is this biography in any way vetted by Elon Musk or anyone who has first-hand knowledge of events described here? 2. If not, then how is this anything more than anec-data, wikipedia and googling thrown together in a fantasy narrative? 3. If it is not vouchsafed by the principal, real, living person about whom this book cla…

I believe that you can draw conclusions from the combined 407 sources that you couldn't have done if you read them individually, which by the way takes at least 4 weeks. You can't explain everything needed in a single article.

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#37

Post by SuperChihuahua »

swamp40 wrote: post #33
twodim wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you attempt reaching them?

You should at least ask . Maybe you are destined to be a modern day Napoleon Hill?

The only question I have unanswered is what the name of the game was that Elon Musk sold when he was 12. I had to include Blastar, Blast Star, and Blaster. I tried to ask that question on Twitter, but it got lost in the spam...

@alanctgardner2 I meant questions that will improve the material I have. You can always ask more questions, but I didn't want the book to be too long either. Well, I wrote it because he's an engineer and it's hard to find engineers that are role models, and I wrote it because he cares about peak oil and not so many others do.

Re: I am writing an Elon Musk biography

#38

Post by alanctgardner2 »

SuperChihuahua wrote: post #37
swamp40 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should at least ask . Maybe you are destined to be a modern day Napoleon Hill?

The only question I have unanswered is what the name of the game was that Elon Musk sold when he was 12. I had to include Blastar, Blast Star, and Blaster. I tried to ask that question on Twitter, but it got lost in the spam... @alanctgardner2 I meant questions that will improve the material I have. You can always ask more questions, but I didn't want the book to be too long either. Well, I wrote it because he's an e…

I find it hard to believe that, having looked at someone's entire life you can't think of anything to ask them if you met face-to-face. It kind of makes me worried that the book might be a bit superficial: you can have lots of facts about what he's done, but very little critical commentary or insight into his thought process, emotions, etc. What is it about Musk that made you want to write a whole book about him?
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