

Hacking The NY Times Best Seller List - BrandonWatson
http://www.manyniches.com/fun-stuff/hacking-the-ny-times-best-seller-list/

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ramit
I am a New York Times best-seller and I would be happy to answer questions
about how I went from blog --> book --> products, especially about the
challenges of getting people to pay online.

My book: <http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489>

My blog: <http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com>

Let me know if you guys have questions about monetizing content, book sales,
or the psychology of getting people online to pay. There is so much
interesting stuff I've learned over the last few years.

~~~
BrandonWatson
I bought your book months ago...great content. It was easier to have you
translate the content to family than for me to do it - I'm not a published
author, so I am much less believable. :)

I would love to email you some questions about my book project and where to
take it from where it is. I am blwatson at gmail

~~~
ramit
Thanks!

Let's do it here so others can benefit from the back-and-forth conversation.
You can email me your super-private questions separately.

~~~
BrandonWatson
Great idea on leaving the content for others to share.

I had put together an outline a year ago for a book. The working title is The
Failing Point. I started writing, and built up a good head of steam. I knew
that getting a publishing deal as an unknown was almost impossible. Since the
content is in essay form, I started posting them online in blog format at the
url www.TheFailingPoint.com.

I got into a 2x per week posting rhythm, and the strategy was to do this for
the first 2 chapters, over the course of 2 months, and then stop. I had
planned on taking the "success" of building traffic to a publisher. I didn't
want to keep posting all of the content that would eventually be in the book
at the risk of putting off any potential authors.

In the second of 2 months, I generated 20K uniques without spending any money.
Links were posted here and Digg. I also tried to incorporate TweetMeme (great)
and Yahoo Buzz (useless).

Well, the few publishers I was able to get the proposal to have either passed
or taken their time in getting back to me (which is the same as a pass). So
now what to do?

Based on the feedback I saw in the comments here at Hacker News, and emails I
got, people appreciated the content. My "why" for doing this is not to say
that I am a published author. I'd love to make some extra money, sure, but
mostly because I feel like I have a unique set of experiences and am a decent
enough story teller that the content is useful to those who would come after
me. It's the content I would have liked to have seen before I embarked on my
startups.

This project is well outside of my comfort zone, and perhaps I relied too much
on a "if you post it, they will come" strategy. Now that the first two
chapters are out there, and I have no traction with the few publishers I have
approached, what would you suggest?

~~~
ramit
(Uh oh...I just realized the threading on these back-and-forth conversations
may become a little crazy.)

Anyway, here's the deal.

You have clearly thought a LOT about this and have all the elements in place.
I'll just suggest a few different ways of thinking about what you wrote above.

1\. Publishers don't care about your posting rhythm or how many Twitter
clickthrough rates. In fact, many don't even care about your book topic.

They care about your platform and how well other books in this vein have done.

I noticed that you yourself indicated that there are few books on failure,
while many books on success. Why do you think that is? What would make your
book different?

2\. A series of musings is usually a very bad book. Who is the market? Do you
already have a presence there? For example, publishers started approaching me
once they noticed that iwillteachyoutoberich.com was popping up in the
personal-finance space.

3\. On a tactical note, typically authors find an agent, who then finds the
publishers. If you really want to publish a book, go find agents who have
written books similar to yours and send them a pitch letter.

4\. Also on a tactical note, driving 20k uniques in 2 months is very good.
However, from looking at your site, you haven't captured those people. In
other words, they came once and left, never to return. Think carefully about
how to capture these people so you can continue sending them material that
they want, love, and expect.

I can get into outbound marketing if people care, but suffice it to say that
many, many startups overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually
convert. Hint: Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)

4\. MOST IMPORTANT. What is your goal? You indicated you don't care about the
ego boost of being an author. So carefully consider whether a book is really
what you want to do. There are many, many other channels (ebook, blog, etc)
that don't require the back-breaking work of writing a book. Mine took 2 years
to complete. A book is specifically useful for building your brand and
spreading your ideas. But in most cases, there are other channels that work
better.

(Incidentally, we should come up with a name for areas where people who work
tell others NOT to do it. Examples: Authors, musicians, lawyers...)

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have other questions.

------
tbrooks
I worked for a media company a few years back and we would hack the NYT by
selling "limited edition" autographed copies of books.

We paid authors $5/signature and sold the book for $10 over MSRP. The author
pre-signed thousands of books that we bought from major retailers at a
discount (orders in the 10s of thousands). Then we organized speaking events
and book tours the week the book released. On the book tour, when the stores
ran out of stock they would buy our autographed copies because the publisher
couldn't ship them fast enough. Any books that we didn't sell back to the
retailers, we would sell on our online store at markup.

The key to hacking the system was negotiating with the retailer to report (on
Nielsen BookScan) X number of books on release day, X number the day after,
and so on...

~~~
sireat
Seems like an extremely risky strategy, even established authors happen to
write books that sell badly. If you hit on a book, which you couldn't sell,
what then?

Probably a good idea to filter only the "good" books, but how?

~~~
tbrooks
I don't think so, we only handled authors that had radio and/or television
shows. Radio is great for driving local traffic to book stores.

We were 4/4 for #1 NY Times Bestsellers.

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electromagnetic
Pre-ordering isn't really gaming the system, it's been understood that having
a following pretty much ensures you're going to hit onto a list. The real
question here is whether or not these two can turn their online-audience into
an offline-audience.

With authors I've frequently decided to become an online fan after being an
offline fan for up to years. However I've rarely done it the other way, and
never for a book.

~~~
BrandonWatson
Keith does a once a year comedy show on his birthday (Apr 15) in NYC and they
get fans coming in from all over the world to see it. He's not headlining
Madison Square Garden yet, but it's impressive regardless.

~~~
electromagnetic
It's the loyal fans that will pay your bills, but the loyal fans aren't likely
to get you on the NYT best sellers list (unless you're Stephen King).

I would be interested on what percentage of his online readership purchases
his book on pre-order/first week vs how many of his readers are buying it in 6
months to a year.

------
aplusbi
I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the
bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of
hacking the best seller list.

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jaboutboul
Hey Ramit, can you talk a little but more about your comment on "many startups
overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually convert. Hint:
Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)"

Which channels are better than others for securing conversions? Which outlets
SHOULD startups be focusing on?

