[scardine]

I love his book "Authority" (not affiliated with the author, just got a lot of value from it). It states that one of the best moves to make a claim of expertise is writing a book, and contains a framework to write a book about something you know in ~3 months.

http://nathanbarry.com/authority/

[austenallred]

I can confirm.

I co-wrote a book on "growth hacking" (https://secretsaucenow.com), which really serves as a hand-held, step-by-step guide to user acquisition. (I originally called it "user acquisition" but unfortunately "growth hacking" performed 4x better in A/B tests). It was really hard to do, but wow. Sometimes the self-promotional marketing feels kind of cheesy to me, but man, it's so worth it.

First there's the cash. We've sold over $120,000 worth in the past 9 months, and did it direct without any publisher, so that's all straight into our pockets (after fees). I now have 2-3 people reaching out per week asking me if I can work for them, including big/successful YC companies.

I'm turning all of those down, but I feel like if I ever needed a job again or wanted to go freelance I could do it 100x easier because of a book.

I'm pretty proud of the book; I think the book is really good, and so far as I've found it's the only actionable Internet marketing guide out there. I put a ton of thought, effort, and energy into it. But I had no idea that a book could have such an effect in a day and age that's seemingly flooded with this kind of information.

[polysaturate]

Second time in a week I've seen you post about this(not a dig). Not quite sure there is the same sort of market for 120k in eBook sales for programming books, but your success definitely helps me hold hope my pre-sale continues to gain traction.

[austenallred]

Talk to the people who wrote the first book on Meteor.js. I know they pulled in over $500k.

That's probably a unique case because in the beginning the documentation was so bad, but especially in new and esoteric programming languages/methods $50 is no big deal, and there are lots of willing buyers. I'd bet the HaskellBook authors pulled in 100k+ too.

[polysaturate]

True, but that seemed like a really trending market. Anyway, do you know if there are any articles, etc about their experiences?

[blennon]

This is not meant to be a dig but just an observation for you to think about. Your last two comments are about how it isn't or shouldn't be possible to make money.

It's true that market opportunities are hard to find, but you'll never find one if all you see is the "yes, buts". You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

[polysaturate]

No offense taken. I'm just trying to have a healthy optimism about writing, marketing and selling a book. 500k and 120k in sales seems like outliers. Would just be great to hear more about those experiences though.

[austenallred]

Not that I'm aware of

[polysaturate]

I found the GumRoad Case Study on the meteor book:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gumroad/blog/DiscoverMeteorCaseStud...

[michaelbuckbee]

Adam Wathan (PHP + Laravel stuff) had a $100k book launch - http://www.productpeople.tv/81

I know a half dozen other authors of technical/programming books who have probably made between $50k to $100k over the life of their books.

[graeme]

I wouldn't be so sure. Programming has a distinct advantage: people can make money from programming skills. And also, people can save money on programming costs if a book teaches them/their programmer enough knowledge that outside talent isn't required.

So there's a lot more money potential for the average programming book than there is for the average novel. (Bestselling novels make much more, but only a few books get that status)

[puranjay]

The thing about business/education/training books is that they don't have to be priced like conventional non-fiction books. You sell them on the value they provide.

If you give me a system that will help me become a full-time programmer in 12 months, making $75/hour, then I'll gladly give you hundreds of dollars for the book.

Out of 100, at least 3 people will see that value. If you charge $50/month for the book/course, and have a list of 3,000 people, you are effectively looking at a full-time income

[GuiA]

The fact that you can't buy the book alone for $20 or so - but instead have to buy some sort of premium package that starts at $179 - is a definite put off for me, and also makes me wonder whether the content of the book is that deep/interesting, or if it's a trick to get the buyer so involved emotionally with the purchase that they'll end up believing it was absolutely worth it.

I get that by selling $300 book bundles, he only needs to sell 1/15th of what he'd need to sell if the book were $20; and that of the people who would buy the $20 book, there are probably more than 6% of them who will buy the $300 book; but it's still pretty offputting.

I'm certainly glad that I didn't have to buy K&R's C book as a $200 package complete with "file templates" and an "audio book" and "an exclusive skype session with the authors who will give you personal feedback on your C program"!

[graeme]

Here, $29: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-...

I read it in 2013, and it's probably earned me at least $100,000. That's being veeeery conservative.

Not everyone will have that experience, of course. I had an existing book series, and Authority gave me an idea for how to repurpose it into a larger business.

As for the package on his site: he probably wants to avoid support. You get a lot of it with a $20 price point, and as he wrote in the article, he's focussing on converkit. Whereas with the amazon listing, amazon handles all customer support.

(I learned that lesson with my own books. My amazon royalties are smaller than my overall business, but I'm still very glad to get them, because there's basically zero admin work required.)

[enraged_camel]

Heh, I found your comment from 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5746020

[graeme]

Wow, thank you! Literally a life changing comment/purchase.

[enraged_camel]

I ordered the book on Amazon after reading your and a few others' comments.

I'm also interested in the 90 day plan. Unfortunately, it is only available through the $299 package, which I don't feel comfortable paying for.

[graeme]

In your position, I'd get the book, read it, evaluate, and then consider whether to get the larger package.

Basically, if it seems likely to lead to a profitable idea, then $299 is trivial. If it doesn't, then just the book will be fine.

For me, it was clear from reading the book that I had an idea I should pursue. You'll probably either get that from the book, or not. If you do have something to launch, then you'll have a better idea if the rest of the package is worth it.

[SnacksOnAPlane]

Weird, it isn't available for Kindle.

[hackerboos]

Ironically that's covered in the book. Raise prices until a drop-off - although I always thought that rule was for B2B not B2C - consumers are far more picky over the price.

[scardine]

I got it for $79 in July, 2015. Not cheap also.

[hackerboos]

Reviews are pretty mixed on Good Reads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18070394-authority

[nathanbarry]

Check out the reviews on Amazon as well: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-...

[hackerboos]

Some of those reviews don't pass the smell test

http://fakespot.com/product/authority-become-an-expert-build...

[zem]

i was interested, so i clicked through to the page ... and there's no way to just buy the book! the best i can do is a $180 package with the book and a bunch of other stuff i do not want. so i went to see if it's on amazon, and there is a hardcover edition there, but no kindle edition, despite the packages on the author's site all including ebooks. not sure if it's a deliberate barrier-to-entry (as in, "if you're not going to take the time to go through the video courses etc. too the book will do you no good") but it seemed like an odd set of decisions to me.

[luckyisgood]

There used to be "just a book" option before at $49 if I remember correctly, that's when I bought it. So I'm pretty sure Nathan's decision to remove that option is intentional, or an experiment of sorts.

The book is really good; however, I would not have bought it then if I had had to pay $180. Is it worth it? Yes, if you're 100% absolutely certain that you want to create a business around a book.

[nathanbarry]

Yeah, It was an experiment I started running when I focused on ConvertKit. So far it's increased revenue, but it obviously has the side effect of fewer purchases.

[mendelk]

It seems to be available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-...

[zem]

there's no ebook on amazon, just the hardcover

[mendelk]

There's also this: https://gumroad.com/l/authority

[j_s]

You can get the audio book for $15 there.

[manmal]

Just asking - you were curious, but now you are not because the book is not available in the form you like best?

[zem]

i'm still curious; i just know i have a ton of new paper books sitting unread in my bookshelf because whenever i go to start a new one i do it on my kindle, so i've resolved to buy new books in ebook format only. i might still buy the paper book at some point, but it's lower-priority now.

(at a higher level, i'd like to write a book sometime, but it's competing with everything else i'd like to do sometime)

[ashark]

Huh. "Buy my (assuredly terrible, amateurish, e-)book!" or "sign up for a free PDF copy of my book!" is one of the quickest ways to lower my opinion of a person (or website). Immediately digs a giant hole that they then have to climb out of to convince me they're not scumbag get-rich-quick scam artists or one of their hangers-on or imitators, assuming I don't just close the tab immediately on seeing that kind of thing.

Exception if there's a clear association with a real publisher and/or university, obviously.

[polysaturate]

So, wait, anyone who writes an eBook and would like to sell it is a scumbag? Unless there is a clear association with a real publisher or university? Is this opinion specific to marketing or do you hold the same disdain to programming books as well?

[ashark]

My observation has been that there's a strong correlation between "buy my ebook!" in a website sidebar and someone ticking boxes on some scumbag marketing process which they probably learned from someone using scumbag marketing processes to sell their ebook and lessons in the sidebar of their website about how to get rich quick selling ebooks and lessons. Apparently it works, but I'd prefer to avoid the whole mess, aside from using it as a strong signal to Beware everything else on the site.

[polysaturate]

Everything is a skill. Writing is a skill. Marketing is a skill. Some people will pay to read a book about the skill. Said writers would like to make money from writing said books.

I would think it would be fairly known if someone's books are snake oil. Just my opinion, though. Scumbag seems like a harsh judgement.

[whostolemyhat]

Marketing makes you a scumbag. Got it