$26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launch

http://nathanbarry.com/behind-the-scenes/

by richaclark • 14 years ago

110 57 14 years ago

nathanbarry.com

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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

richaclark• 14 years ago

Since you're here, how did you go about writing two books so close together?

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

The most important thing was my commitment to write 1,000 words a day. I am 160 days in. After that was having a short deadline. Since I made the december 12th launch date public I knew I had to hit it. So I compressed everything necessary into that short time.

More about that here: http://nathanbarry.com/commitment-changed-career/

justjimmy2• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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.

anthonys• 14 years ago

Maybe have a chat to Drew Wilson who is working on http://spacebox.io. It's a nifty little tool for collecting payments via Stripe.

I believe he's currently working on adding subscription payments (and hopefully invoicing) which I am very keen to get but affiliates/electronic delivery could be another great add-on for him to deliver.

pnathan• 14 years ago

Glad to see another Idaho person on HN!

fudged71• 14 years ago

The twitter handle on your book's site should really be a link. For better UX ;)

sixQuarks• 14 years ago

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

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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

antidaily• 14 years ago

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

jjets7182• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

When I worked out the value of each visitor (on average) I thought about using AdWords. I really don't know much about it, so it will be a new area to pursue.

Unfortunately selling with Gumroad I can't track conversions effectively, so that may make page optimization more difficult.

I'll give it a try soon and report back the results (on my blog).

pdog• 14 years ago

Gumroad doesn't give you meaningful metrics? Can someone recommend a competitor that does?

dools• 14 years ago

Hey Nathan, I'm working on my AdWords eBook called "Your first three months on AdWords" right now (this post was quite timely!!)

Would be happy to share it with you for free in return for an endorsement if you find it helpful.

My email is iain@workingsoftware.com.au if you're interested!

bdunn• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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.

jjets7182• 14 years ago

Thanks for the response, Brennan! That's an interesting insight!

robbiea2• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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!

robbiea2• 14 years ago

great, thank you.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

By the way, I love the post! Excited to hear more about the book. Email me, nathan@thinklegend.com, if you have more questions.

ruswick6• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

I guess that's true, but it is really important to build a reputation for quality work. Also this was my second book, so I had people buy off of the quality from my previous book.

ruswick6• 14 years ago

Was your first book anywhere near as successful in the first 24 hours as this one?

csomar2• 14 years ago

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.

ruswick6• 14 years ago

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_...)

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?

stinkbubble• 14 years ago

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

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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

tekniiq2• 14 years ago

u made 26k so quick u better know!!

tekniiq2• 14 years ago

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

azio2• 14 years ago

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.

hartror• 14 years ago

Proof?

azio2• 14 years ago

You've to ask him for that, not me!

daeken• 14 years ago

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

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

It's real. Though I'm not sure how to prove it to you in a way you would believe. Want to see a screenshot of my Gumroad account showing $75,000 in book sales? Oh wait, I've already included that in my posts.

kennethologist• 14 years ago

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.

nathanbarry16• 14 years ago

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.

pushpak_io• 14 years ago

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.

$26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launch

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