The Success Story of a Book: From Blog to Bestseller
Summary
In this article, we explore the success story of a book that started as a blog with a dedicated following. The author shares their experience of pre-ordering the book and testing the marketing message with test readers. By the time the book was published, they had already sold around 10,000 pre-orders. The author also criticizes the backwardness of the publishing industry and discusses the need for a new management system to cope with the transition from industrial work to entrepreneurial work.
Table of Contents
- The Pre-Order Strategy
- Criticizing the Backwardness of the Publishing Industry
- The Rise of Entrepreneurship and the Need for a New Management System
The Pre-Order Strategy
The author of the book shares their experience of pre-ordering the book and testing the marketing message with test readers. The author had taken people’s money through PayPal and had a webpage for pre-orders even before writing the book. They had been practicing getting customers to pre-order the book for months. By the time the book was published, they had sold around 10,000 pre-orders. The author criticizes the backwardness of the publishing industry, as they had to pay people to manually enter orders into Amazon and Barnes & Noble to count as official orders for publishing analytics and rankings. They wrote software to automate the process and faced resistance from engineers who didn’t understand the irrationality of the publishing industry.
Criticizing the Backwardness of the Publishing Industry
The author loves their publisher, but they had to pay people to manually enter orders into Amazon and Barnes & Noble to count as official orders for publishing analytics and rankings. They wrote software to automate the process and faced resistance from engineers who didn’t understand the irrationality of the publishing industry. The author believes that the attractiveness of traditional career paths compared to becoming an entrepreneur has changed, and people are becoming involuntary entrepreneurs because the things they used to do that worked great don’t work anymore.
The Rise of Entrepreneurship and the Need for a New Management System
The speaker believes that current ideas about entrepreneurship are not effective and that there is a need for a new management system to cope with the transition from industrial work to entrepreneurial work. The startup industry is seen as the beginning of a movement towards a management science of entrepreneurship. The speaker is cautious about citing success stories as proof of the effectiveness of the lean startup approach, as there is a temptation to make claims that sound good but may not be true. The speaker believes that the future of civilization depends on entrepreneurship because routine jobs are becoming obsolete. The idea of lean startup has become popular, even in the US government, and they believe it’s because there is a hunger for better ideas about entrepreneurship.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the success story of the book shows the importance of pre-ordering and testing the marketing message with test readers. The author also criticizes the backwardness of the publishing industry and discusses the need for a new management system to cope with the transition from industrial work to entrepreneurial work. The rise of entrepreneurship is seen as the beginning of a movement towards a management science of entrepreneurship, and the author believes that the future of civilization depends on entrepreneurship.
