
$26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launch - richaclark
http://nathanbarry.com/behind-the-scenes/
======
ruswick
I'm fascinated with and profoundly envious of people who can accrue huge sums
of money in such short periods of time.

Given that this was all done within 24 hours, it's unlikely that many sales
came from the quality of the book: people won't have had time to read the
book, and so word-of-mouth-based sales will be negligible if not nonexistent.

In the first few days of sales, most every transaction is derived from
presentation, notoriety, or luck...

I haven't read the book (and I couldn't afford it even if I had a desire to do
so), and it may be a fine product. However, Nathan could have easily published
a piece of abject trash, full of platitudes and banal tautology, and done
perhaps just as well. Quality has no bearing on the initial success of a
product, and only comes into play later. It just goes to show how much gravity
factors like marketing have on sales.

~~~
csomar
_I'm fascinated with and profoundly envious of people who can accrue huge sums
of money in such short periods of time._

1\. 26k is not a huge amount of money.

2\. He didn't make the money in 24 hours. There was a lot of work involved in
the writing and making of the book.

~~~
ruswick
1\. Over 25% of households in the country live on less than 26k/year. You have
obviously succumbed to some sort of upper-class myopia. Not everyone is rich.
26k is quite a bit of money.

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income))

Even if that weren't true, it's still an inordinately large amount of money to
earn in a single day. When is the last time you made 26k in a day?

2\. The amount of time spent making the product has nothing to do with the
amount of time in which the sales were made. What you're saying is just
incoherent. Within a 24 hour period, he earned 26k. The assertion that the
time put into making the product also qualifies as time over which he earned
money just isn't logical.

He made a lot of money in a short time based on notoriety and marketing. What
is so hard to accept about that?

~~~
mhuffman
On your second point, that is like saying that the 3 years and 80 million
dollars spent developing a game should be ignored because it made 90 million
in the first 24 hours.

~~~
ruswick
Yes, it should be ignored. That's my point. I'm saying that investment and
shouldn't be taken into account when gauging first-day success, because that
quality and time-investment don't factor into first-day success. No one knows
how long it took him to produce the book, so no one buys on quality initially.
My whole point is that his success was based on marketing, not quality.

~~~
nathanbarry
I started the book September 6th and released it December 12th. So it took 3
months from start to finish. Sales are now over $40,000 for the last couple
weeks, so if we average it out that is at least $13,000 a month for the time
created. Plus sales will continue for months to come.

~~~
ruswick
Even if one extrapolates earning out over the time-to-produce, it's still
quite a sum of money.

The actual time vs. value comparison is irrelevant, though. Regardless of the
time and effort it took to make, the 26k figure is pretty remarkable. We would
not be having this discussion if he had made 1k-2k each day over the course of
the past few weeks.

Moreover, the true quality of and time invested in the book doesn't change the
fact that those who bought in the first day likely did so out of ignorance and
without knowledge of the quality.

Given the amount of work put in, is it a truly huge payday for Nathan? Not
really. Is it still a massive one-day sale figure? Yes.

------
robbiea
Nathan,

I finished v1 of my ebook from a post that did really well on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3837264> I have been really looking into
distribution of the eBook and this is such a timely post for me.

Did you think about publishing the book on amazon / other eBook sites? Did you
ever think about making this into a real book or using kickstarter to get
funding?

Thanks for this post. Seriously Awesome.

~~~
nathanbarry
There are three reasons I sold exclusively through my own site:

\- Stores like Amazon and iBooks limit the price you can charge. iBooks limits
it to $15 for the book, Amazon radically changes the royalty payments if you
go above $10 (or so). I want to charge premium prices, so those audiences
wouldn't work.

\- Selling through another provider means that they aren't my customers. I
don't have contact information for follow-ups, other sales offers, or anything
else. Owning the customer list is really important to building a sustainable
business.

\- When I sell through my own site I keep about 95% from every sale. If I sold
through the iBooks store I would only get 70%. I would be willing to accept a
lower percentage if it meant I was able to build my customer lists.

A final thought is that I've seen people put all their effort into creating
the product (whether it is an app or an eBook) then put it up on the store,
just expecting it to take off and organically get sales. By selling through my
own site I was forced to do all the marketing and promotion myself. Since that
is a skill I am still developing, it was important to me.

Good luck!

~~~
robbiea
great, thank you.

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jjets718
Nathan, if you see this, have you thought about using AdWords to promote your
books instead of using an affiliate network? I think it might be interesting
to see if the CPA with AdWords or other online ads can be optimized to the
point where it is cheaper than the CPA with affiliates.

~~~
bdunn
I think Adwords and other paid traffic would be more effective driving traffic
to an email capture squeeze page that delivered a series of free reports over
a few weeks.

The final few emails would then try to sell the book. IMO it's too hard to
sell this sort of product to an audience that has never heard of you.

~~~
nathanbarry
Yes, absolutely. I can't believe I overlooked this. Especially if I had other
related products to cross sell down the road.

Right now it is just a matter of figuring out where to spend my time.

~~~
charleshaanel
Check out Influads.com - very targeted display advertising for your target
audience. CPM's are slightly high though. If you can pull a .5% ctr you would
probably end up paying ~$1 click (note: I WOULD not try CPM media buys BEFORE
making sure it converts with CPC first).

Shoot for an optin rate ~45.1% at least (if this is hard straight out the box,
just have 1 data field, i.e. email address not name+email address)

Profit hack: consider a funnel like this:

squeeze page-->immediate redirect = sales page-->sales page thank you has
something like PayWithATweet.com on it...offer a bonus for a social share.

Good luck!

------
antidaily
Guess no one really cared about Facebook, etc. logo usage.

------
sixQuarks
great post. You are obviously a good copy writer. Perhaps you should consider
doing your next book on that subject.

~~~
nathanbarry
Thanks, but I'm just getting started on learning copywriting. Maybe in a year
or two. For now check out CopyHackers: <http://copyhackers.com>

------
pushpak_io
Nathan: i think you should run that discounted sale again because i was one of
the person who missed to buy it even though i had subscribed to email alerts
(because i was hospitalized). Wouldn't buy it for $250 so im still waiting for
another round of discounted sale and expecting an email obviously.

------
kennethologist
Congrats Nathan! Has anyone gone through the material completely and can
comment on the quality and utility of the book? I'm considering purchasing
(I'm a developer with no design skills) and was wondering how hopefully this
will be to me.

~~~
nathanbarry
Yes, a few people. One said "The book paid for itself in the first 10 pages."
Still working on getting a few more reviews live that I can link to.

------
nathanbarry
Thanks for posting the link to this. I'm happy to answer any questions.

~~~
justjimmy
I have a few questions:

1\. Did you have to 'kick back' any money? To those that you interviewed, or
companies where you used their screenshots in your examples/critiques? Did you
reach out to them and notifying them that they/their company will be in your
book for profit?

2\. From the sample chapter, you talk a lot about principles and critiques of
interface design but are there any area in the book where there are data or
user ability studies to explain it further (ie: why they work)? Or is most of
it based on experience?

3\. Any plans for a sample page on the case study? I think that's where the
most value is - the full process of where you take us through your thoughts
and reasoning on designing a product.

~~~
nathanbarry
1\. No, I didn't. Everyone was very gracious and there was never an
expectation for money. For some people like patio11 and Jason Fried my book
sales would not represent a meaningful amount of money. It's better to not
even bring it up. Many of the people I interviewed have become friends and I
try to help them in any way possible.

For companies I didn't contact them in most cases. The few I did talk to were
thrilled their designs were being used as an example in a book.

2\. This book is light on data and studies. That's a short coming. These are
all techniques that I know work well, but I don't always have a study to back
it up.

3\. I'm not sure what you mean about a sample page for the case study. To
better market it? That case study has a lot of great content and I'll be
working with the company further to write a lot more articles and tutorials
around what we all learned in that process.

~~~
justjimmy
Thanks for the answers. Copyright use of images, especially screenshots, had
always been a confusion point for me.

For the case study, basically I'd like to know what it entails before
purchasing. All the other content speak of principles and guidelines but I
find it more interesting to read about an actual case study, the thoughts and
reasoning behind the decisions made. (I can't find what the case study was
about too - just that it's a time tracking service. Is it Harvest? Basecamp?)

You said you'll be working with the company further, I look forward to that
one!

~~~
nathanbarry
The company is called Tsheets (<http://tsheets.com>). Lots of great stuff
coming from them in the next 6 months.

------
tekniiq
"to be successful, one must portray an image of being successful", good
marketing strategy imo but yeah probably bogus lol

------
stinkbubble
I just downloaded you full book for Free! You need better security on your
WordPress website!

~~~
nathanbarry
Curious how you got it. Send me an email: nathan@thinklegend.com

~~~
tekniiq
u made 26k so quick u better know!!

------
azio
Bullshit. Fake it till you make it, huh?

Don't believe this bullcrap people. This person is lying to get covered by
Hacker News and similar sites. I bet he didn't make $500 in total.

~~~
daeken
What evidence do you have for that allegation? Regardless, your tone isn't
even remotely constructive; you should back that off a bit.

