First, choose a topic. It should be something many people strongly care about, have different opinions about, and many of them are optimistic about. Good choices are: making money, sexual relations, human nature, human thinking… essentially “how to live well in this society?” or “how to understand humans?”. (Avoid topics like conspiracy theories, politics, or religion, where people usually just get angry.)
Second, do a research. Find many books, magazines, blogs, etc. related to the subject. Make notes about everything, but most importantly about interesting stories (humans love reading stories about other humans). The more quotes from various sources you make, the more serious and valuable your book will seem.
Third, make a structure and write a book. When you have your notes, perhaps some clusters will appear there naturally. Those will be the main parts of your book. Separate the notes to piles, and write each part of the book. Always start a chapter with an anecdote, then put in everything that seems related, and finally write a simplictic easy-to-remember conclusion using large letters. Write an introduction describing why the topic is personally so imporant for you, why destiny chose you to describe it, how you spent all your life researching the topic, and how writing the book completely changed your life. Write a finishing chapter where you will repeat all the wisdom from the previous chapters, thank readers for buying your book, and suggest that the knowledge in this book, if properly understood, will completely change the science and the society as we know them.
Fourth, marketing. --- I don’t know much about that. Sending a free copy of the book to some influential people, and paying some bloggers and journalists to write some hype about you would probably help, but I guess there is a whole industry that does the same thing professionally, and you just pay them to do it for you.
Yes, there are different types of bestsellers. I used the ones mentioned in the article as a template.
If you are strongly partisan, then you must optimize for partisan writing. You can’t afford to write about interesting topics too, because then you limit your readership to people who both share your party line and are interested in the topic.
Eh, when I get free books sent to me that I’m not going to read, it’s usually b/c I think they’re lousy. I don’t want to sell them to someone else who might have read a good book instead. Straight to the trash.
Probably wouldn’t be the most productive use of time for their assistants; it’s hard to be influential while needing the sort of money you can make reselling free book copies.
I think if it’s not a productive waste of time for their assistant, they need another assistant. Assistants don’t require nearly as much pay as influential people.
This is especially true since they don’t need to sell the books immediately. If they never have time for that, they’re clearly overworked.
Most of the people who are influential for selling books are bloggers. Some of them do have virtual assistants but no physical ones that are at the location to which books get send.
If you have someone like Oprah I don’t think that they will sell the books on ebay either.
Don’t underrate the complexity of the accounting. I book that’s thrown into the trash isn’t earned for accounting purposes. If you however get free books that you sell, that’s probably income for the IRS.
My guess about a good strategy:
First, choose a topic. It should be something many people strongly care about, have different opinions about, and many of them are optimistic about. Good choices are: making money, sexual relations, human nature, human thinking… essentially “how to live well in this society?” or “how to understand humans?”. (Avoid topics like conspiracy theories, politics, or religion, where people usually just get angry.)
Second, do a research. Find many books, magazines, blogs, etc. related to the subject. Make notes about everything, but most importantly about interesting stories (humans love reading stories about other humans). The more quotes from various sources you make, the more serious and valuable your book will seem.
Third, make a structure and write a book. When you have your notes, perhaps some clusters will appear there naturally. Those will be the main parts of your book. Separate the notes to piles, and write each part of the book. Always start a chapter with an anecdote, then put in everything that seems related, and finally write a simplictic easy-to-remember conclusion using large letters. Write an introduction describing why the topic is personally so imporant for you, why destiny chose you to describe it, how you spent all your life researching the topic, and how writing the book completely changed your life. Write a finishing chapter where you will repeat all the wisdom from the previous chapters, thank readers for buying your book, and suggest that the knowledge in this book, if properly understood, will completely change the science and the society as we know them.
Fourth, marketing. --- I don’t know much about that. Sending a free copy of the book to some influential people, and paying some bloggers and journalists to write some hype about you would probably help, but I guess there is a whole industry that does the same thing professionally, and you just pay them to do it for you.
On the contrary; there’s a substantial market for partisan cheerleading. Just ask Ann Coulter or Al Franken.
Yes, there are different types of bestsellers. I used the ones mentioned in the article as a template.
If you are strongly partisan, then you must optimize for partisan writing. You can’t afford to write about interesting topics too, because then you limit your readership to people who both share your party line and are interested in the topic.
Influential people get a lot of free copies of books that go straight to the trash.
Otherwise I think there are many people who rougly follow your strategy and write a book that doesn’t find an audience.
That seems terribly inefficient. Don’t influential people have personal assistants and soforth who can sell stuff on ebay?
Upon learning from his publisher that college professors were selling complimentary textbooks for profit:
(from Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track)
Eh, when I get free books sent to me that I’m not going to read, it’s usually b/c I think they’re lousy. I don’t want to sell them to someone else who might have read a good book instead. Straight to the trash.
Different people may dislike different books.
Probably wouldn’t be the most productive use of time for their assistants; it’s hard to be influential while needing the sort of money you can make reselling free book copies.
I think if it’s not a productive waste of time for their assistant, they need another assistant. Assistants don’t require nearly as much pay as influential people.
This is especially true since they don’t need to sell the books immediately. If they never have time for that, they’re clearly overworked.
Most of the people who are influential for selling books are bloggers. Some of them do have virtual assistants but no physical ones that are at the location to which books get send.
If you have someone like Oprah I don’t think that they will sell the books on ebay either.
Don’t underrate the complexity of the accounting. I book that’s thrown into the trash isn’t earned for accounting purposes. If you however get free books that you sell, that’s probably income for the IRS.