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by austenallred 3394 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.
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.

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

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.
Outlier results come only from methodically searching for, taking chances on, embracing, and building on outliers.

Search for the things that no one else sees or has the vision or boldness to turn into an outlandish success.

Take a chance. Live a little. Dig deep down for your inner crazy.

Not that I'm aware of
I found the GumRoad Case Study on the meteor book:

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

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.

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)

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