How To Succeed

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-succeed.html

by davidw • 15 years ago

7 6 15 years ago

jakonrath.blogspot.com

davidw2• 15 years ago

It's about publishing, but a lot of the advice makes sense to me. That industry too, is made up of a lot of big hits and a long tail.

wccrawford• 15 years ago

He talks a lot about luck, but I think the better your skills, the less luck you need.

I've noticed that the great writers don't talk about luck, but they DO talk about writing a lot before they got published. I just looked up Stephen King and he started avidly writing at 12, started sending to magazines at 16, and got published when he was 20. That's a lot of writing. Source: http://www.horrorking.com/interview9.html

But for us normal people who aren't giants, luck will be needed to find just the right conditions to get published.

I do think this somewhat applies to programming as well, especially game programming. You can't just jump in and have your first game be an overnight success. You need to practice for a while, write some mediocre games, and then finally get your stride and start turning out gold. Luck is still needed, though.

Minecraft is a good example. It was a relatively unknown game. Then one day it got published in a magazine, the internet got ahold of it, and it blew up. It was still exactly the same game as the previous week, but now it was popular and famous and selling like hotcakes. Not that it wasn't a good game... But without luck (getting published in a magazine) it wasn't going anywhere.

davidw2• 15 years ago

> But for us normal people who aren't giants, luck will be needed to find just the right conditions to get published.

Much like some forms of the web startup, barriers to entry are much lower or gone for publishing. Amazon's KDP is free to publish to, and you can get formatting, a cover image and some editing done fairly cheap.

ethnomusicolog• 15 years ago

Getting lucky is an art. Knowing that you have to be lucky change everything. People who know that, will be lucky. It is as simple as that.

argonz• 15 years ago

Absolutely agree, in the case of Minecraft luck was important.

With fat tails anything can happen, partly because luck, most of the explanations are just hindsight bias.

marcin• 15 years ago

This piece particurarly reflects the tech startup world:

"You can quit if you want to. Or you can stick with it until you get lucky.

The are no easy answers. No quickie fixes. No direct paths to success.

No one is forcing you to do this. You have to love it, and to believe in yourself. Even when you fail.

Especially when you fail.

If you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough.

And if you aren't trying hard, it's going to take a lot longer to get lucky." Everyone say ROVIO and a hundred others.

How To Succeed

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