
$250k books sold, to save lives - gregalbritton
https://sive.rs/250k
======
stopachka
Derek is one of the kindest people I’ve gotten to know. I reached out to him
when I was 17 years old, about to embark on a hacker’s adventure. He took the
time to respond, and his advice was always a breeze of encouragement.

I recently read both his books. Hell yeah or no I imagined I would love...and
was right...but boy was I surprised by your music and people. It’s a book
about friendship and authenticity, disguised as a branding book for musicians.

I posit his ideas will stand the test of time. Highly suggest reading :) — and
darn happy that the orders went to help those in need

------
rajekas
1\. He made $250K self publishing a book. That itself is worth writing a post
about and such posts are routinely popular on HN.

2\. From all appearances, he gave the money away out of generosity rather than
the need for recognition. Didn't strike me as celebrity self aggrandizement.

3\. He felt both the _what_ and the _how_ are worth publicizing. He's a known
'thought leader' after all.

Of the three, only the third is remotely objectionable. I think it's ok to say
good things about oneself doing good things.

I bet it's correlated with generosity and more likely to be so than the mean
spiritedness that comes from wagging a finger at those who are putting
themselves out there.

------
renewiltord
Interesting. This baselines the cost of one life to $2000 effectively. So I
could trade two lives for a top of the line Macbook Pro. Buy an SF home for
500 lives. I spend one human life to live in SF every month. Huh.

~~~
owenshen24
The notion of "Dead Child Currency"
([https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6cRhG6PKeASdNHqxD/dead-
child...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6cRhG6PKeASdNHqxD/dead-child-
currency)) may intrigue you.

~~~
renewiltord
I enjoyed that. Interesting to me that I value arbitrarily children so low.
Getting my turbocharged engine vs. getting the same car without a turbo could
have saved a couple of lives. I suspect I would have made the same choice and
killed two kids for a turbo if I had thought explicitly in those terms then.

~~~
mtgx
Kind of puts the trolley problem in a new perspective -- forget about saving
five people or _only one_ , it's more about whether or not you'd save five
people or buy that long-range upgrade for your Tesla.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

------
garbagetime
I didn't find this exact page particularly interesting, but I enjoyed
exploring the website. It's a good example of a personal website.

------
camgunz
Thank you for doing this. I once knew a guy who said it should be your goal to
give over a third of your lifetime earnings to charity (I think it was a
third, somewhere between 10% and 50%) and this reminded me instantly of that.
Great to read about something super positive in these times.

------
k_sze
I see that on the pages about each of his books, all of the chapters are
listed. Are those actually the complete chapters or only excerpts?

~~~
garbagetime
They are the full chapters.

------
obilgic
$250k is the revenue? if he wired the whole thing, who covered the costs?

~~~
shric
Based on [https://sive.rs/m](https://sive.rs/m) and
[https://sive.rs/n](https://sive.rs/n) he's self-publishing electronically for
$15 (or $4 more for paperback), so I guess the costs are quite small.

~~~
obilgic
> I made 5000 limited edition hardcover copies of each, but those have sold
> out now.

Is this not part of the 250?

~~~
shric
I guess, so maybe it's >250K profit?

------
clintonfunds
Should have donated to the Clinton Foundation. They do great work.

~~~
dang
Trolling HN will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please
don't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
tozeur
Thank you dang

------
qazpot
Charity is to be considered charity when nobody gets to know about it.

Broadcasting it to the entire world charity to show the world how generous or
or good one is, is uncharitable. This is just someone getting ego trip after
spending 250k that they did not need.

~~~
anoffvu
This is assuming that the motive to post this was to gain publicity......

~~~
rsa25519
The assumption, even narrower, is that this is post is for gaining publicity
_only for the author_. Regardless of this goal, seeing this post had made me
(and likely many others) more likely to donate to charity

------
moreaccountspls
It's a bit sad that you've taken a wonderful, altruistic act and cheapened it
by feeling the need to broadcast it on the internet :(

~~~
jbc1
Charitable acts being lessened by others learning about them is possibly the
most harmful widespread opinion that exists today.

Your comment makes it less likely that others will broadcast their charitable
giving, result in less people being prompted to give, and overall reduce the
amount of giving in the world; all for no gain for yourself or anyone else.
You want "a bit sad"? Dwell on that for a while.

~~~
moreaccountspls
There's a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode where Larry David's character donates
to a museum with his name on the donation. There's no self deception for him;
he wants to do something good AND he wants the credit. And that's totally
fine! The character is self aware enough to know that part of his motivation
is selfish.

My point is that by not acknowledging the selfish part of "wanting the
credit", the author comes off as not self aware [or disingenuous, but let's
give them the benefit of the doubt]. That's what I meant by cheapening it for
them.

~~~
Infinitesimus
If the good is done and lives are improved, does it matter is someone felt
good about their act?

Re: "cheapening", who exactly is ranking the charitable act and why does their
perspective matter? I was raised with that ideology but eventually abandoned
it.

Nowadays, I care a lot more that something helpful is done that the signaling
attempt to admit our desire for recognition or hide our involvement in the
good deed because that mindset prevents a lot of helpful giving in my
experience.

