Fastlane Opportunities for Writers

[Antifragile]

Artsy people say all kinds of things. Who know what’s really going on in their minds?

This is a business for you. It likely was a business for some world class writers too.

 

[MTF]

An actor friend who's working with many creatives shared with me an interesting observation. In his opinion, today creative work is no longer about creativity but about productivity.

And I agree with that to a great extent.

As a creative, you want to create stuff because it's fun. Creating art is supposed to recharge you. It's only when you truly enjoy what you're doing that you can create memorable art.

But instead, for example as an author, you're told to keep writing one book after another, to chase trends, to have the same structure as every other book out there, to imitate competition in other aspects, to build a community, to sell yourself on social media, to sell additional products because books don't sell, etc.

You're no longer actually writing as a creative endeavor. Instead, you're just doing a desk job that really isn't that different from what, say, a plumber does. Instead of being truly creative, you're just another producer doing the same stuff over and over again like other people.

Perhaps I'm sounding too much like a disgruntled artist here who can't respect the needs of the market but I think that if you want to be creative, you look at entrepreneurship from a different perspective.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Just a sidebar to this thread, I found my use of AI in non-fiction related content pretty worthless. As someone stated, the output is robotic, lifeless, and without personality. However in fiction, it definitely gives you some ideas and tangents to work with, an awesome tool for writer's block.

 

[MTF]

Maybe I'm too frustrated today but I'm starting to think that writing is such a commodity skill today that it isn't worth much anymore.

There's way too much content and people no longer value it. There's also much less interest in thoughtful content and way more in bullshit clickbait/outrage/entertainment stuff. Just look at the rise of platforms like TikTok and YouTube shorts getting millions of views.

What's the point of trying to deliver excellent content if a stupid 10-second video gets all the attention?

 

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[Supa]

I just don't believe you can teach people much in 10 seconds. I like brevity but not extreme brevity where all people come up with are vague one liners.

The world is awash with clickbait content because it works. Even smart people can't resist it. It's like selling vegetables by a hot dog stand. You know that you're selling a much healthier alternative but people just don't care.

What about like, 4-5 minute articles in reading time? Or even just 2-3 minute ones.

Or using Instagram and other social media to put out lenghty articles in short form and linkin to the long article?

I see Mark Manson doing this. He has some really long articles on his site, and his monthly newsletter is lengthy as well. But on his Instagram he puts the key takeaways in a few simple images with text on them, while linking to the whole article in his bio.

The School of Life publishes a lot of around 5 minutes videos on their YouTube, but they also have long articles on their membership site and books about these topics.

I believe that, while a lot of people enjoy the short TikTok and Instagram Reels type of content, as soon as they dive into a topic they want more of it than just a few seconds.

 

[KushShah9492]

I've just discovered 'Twitter Ghostwriting' and how people charge thousands of dollars for tweets that work well and get high engagement.

Although I do think it's fastlane, relying upon *just* a single source of income doesn't seem viable.

Twitter has been a blessing in disguise for me in terms of writing. I've been writing there (at least 2 tweets a day) since the beginning of this year and there are plenty of opportunities for writers if you network with the right people.

If you keep writing and engaging everyday on Twitter in whatever niche you're targeting, it has the potential to become a Fastlane business where you can divorce your time for the writing itself.

Again, I'm far away from that point, but that's what I think.

 

[Lex DeVille]

That's a good point and I agree with that. Then the big challenge is figuring out how to offer enough value that $99 per month for an individual customer is a steal. For most people $99/month is a LOT.



I also heard about that and find it mind-blowing that some companies are really willing to pay so much for writing short tweets. Not Fastlane until you hire people to write for you but could be a lucrative freelancing career.

I did a deal for $2k in tweets last month for around 30 total. Didn't know how to price it because I don't use Twitter. On the call, I told the client I don't use Twitter and don't know how to create engaging Tweets. He still wanted me to do it, so that's the price I gave and he accepted and paid.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Damn people are burning through so much money. At least you got paid because I seriously doubt they made even $1k back on these 30 tweets (unless they're selling something expensive).

They don't even have a product yet. It was for an NFT launch. TBH, I couldn't believe they accepted. The price was my "I don't want to do this, but here's what I'll do it for..." price.

 

[StrikingViper69]

That's pretty cool, thank you for sharing it.

When I first started writing books and they started selling, it was very easy for me to write a lot every day. I knew that my input translated into real-world rewards.

But when you're on a roll it's quite easy to do that.

It's only when you're not getting anything out of a given activity that you can see if you really can't NOT do it. For example, I had a business helping people publish books. The moment I shut it down, I stopped helping people publish books. I could very easily stop doing it. But I've never stopped writing.



They're too different. Forums and, to a smaller extent, Facebook groups are about exchanging longer responses and generally sharing more thoughts in a more focused way. Social media is mostly about interruption, catchy content, and—what makes it so inefficient for writers—recency (only new content gets exposure).



From my observation, dating, health, and wealth primarily apply to Internet marketers and their digital or physical products promising fast results (usually scams). Weight loss pills. Get your ex back ebooks. A rapidly scalable passive income system.

The problem with newsletters is that they don't sell a specific solution. In each issue you're writing about something different. Yes, a cycling newsletter will help cyclists but its value isn't the same as a better bike, more comfortable biking shorts, or skill-specific coaching.

It's like with my discomfort newsletter. I highly doubt I'd have more than a few paid subscribers. But I'm pretty sure if I were to write an ebook solving a specific problem (say, how to bounce back after letting yourself go too much) it would sell many more copies (still not enough to consider it a real business, though).



And the worst thing is that many writers today accept this as the current state of things. There's very little focus on writing timeless pieces because the most popular places where people now post content don't reward you for it. The platforms prefer a new repetitive piece of content every day than an occasional thought-out piece that would still provide value a few years from now.



Sounds like an awesome business opportunity for a productized service.

The platforms might, but Google is another matter. I was using a blog to promote my online guitar courses a while ago. While I don't sell anything from it, it pulls over 3000 people a month from SEO. I haven't updated it for a few months and the popular articles still pull a consistent amount of people from Google.

So Google will reward well written long form writing. If you want to write quality long form articles, maybe a blog format will work for you, as a vehicle to have your writing do something, if nothing else.

 

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[Cameraman]

What is your average open rate for a monthly newsletter?

I've just checked and it's running at 56.55% for the past 6 months.

To be honest, I've never really worried about my newsletter being monthly. I couldn't really manage more frequent editions. I just try to make it as helpful and interesting as possible. It then gets shared around a lot and generates 20-30 new subscribers a month.

Something I learned pretty early is that list quality is extremely important. I clean my list monthly by removing bounces and unsubscribes. I also check for honey-pot email addresses used to capture SPAM and remove those. Then annually I look for the subscribers who haven't read an email in the past 24 months and remove them. I know I could be removing people who block tracking but I've found most complaints of SPAM came from this group.

I do use a freebie for sign up which is a 50-page ebook. I also include a discount for a longer, more comprehensive book at the end which leads to some sales.

 

[Andy Black]

Sometimes we're blind to what's right in front of us.

And that's the beauty of forums and interacting with people. If other people don't point out your blind spots then sometimes you reveal them as you chatter.

 

[MTF]

Your skillset and superpower seems to be research and writing. I'd say that's the most important part of creating good videos for subjects people want to watch. You do your part and create the great blog posts, then use tools and/or other people to create audio and video from your source?

Audio is super easy to create with BeyondWords.io. In the last 30 days I had 1285 unique visitors on my site and 174 unique listeners of my articles (turned with BeyondWords into audio). So it's almost 15% of my audience using this feature.

All that would be left would be to somehow turn it into an interesting video.

I do use a freebie for sign up which is a 50-page ebook. I also include a discount for a longer, more comprehensive book at the end which leads to some sales.

That's a good way to do it. It's not a full-length book but it's valuable enough. I like the discount as well. I do that in one of my newsletter as well.

Or answering questions that people do answer, but badly or differently?

If you've not listened to "Who have you helped?" then the gist of it was that Tony had built a blog to no avail. I asked him who he'd helped and he realised he hadn't helped anyone. He then went to Quorra and started answering questions and the rest was history. He could then take his answers and put them on a blog, knowing they're battle-tested and help people.

In that SEO video I linked to the guy talks about an example of someone writing a rant article and getting no visitors and then writing about the same topic but writing it optimized for what people are asking and need help with. Sounds like a similar thing.

From reading your posts, I think this would be a good fit for "you". Y'know, being a stranger on the internet

Haha okay. I'm looking for an existing content website to acquire and improve but perhaps in the meantime I could play with a new website to test this theory.

One super interesting thing I learned from that SEO video I linked to is that keyword tools can't give accurate estimates for long tail keywords. The guy from the video said that they wrote articles for long tail keywords that supposedly got 0-10 searches a month (according to keyword tools) that are actually generating hundreds to thousands of visitors a month to their website.

 

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[Cameraman]

That's worth knowing - I was planning my keywords around recommendations from tools a while ago... but it's good to know that it's worth experimenting with long tail ideas and not rely exclusively on the tools.

Don't lose sight of the fact you can target any keywords you like with an article but that doesn't mean Google will rank you for that. You will though find it easier to rank for long tail keywords initially. If Google deems the article is good it will then begin ranking for other related, often more competitive keywords. The difference with Google Ads is that you target the keyword accurately.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Thank you for sharing your experience, Lex.

I actually created a website in the last couple of days (I mean identifying the niche, keywords, potential monetization, setting up the domain, hosting, site, etc. - no content yet) and then learned it would take at least 6 months to get any traffic using their methods.

I assume that after 6 months you merely BEGIN to get traffic, right? So it may take a year or more to get any visible traction and all this time you're writing tons of articles?

I understand that the 24 in their name is 24 months to have a website that can replace one's salary. If so, that's awfully slow, at least for a guy like me (and I assume you as well).

Yes, that's about the gist of it.

Some websites can get traffic faster if the niche is right, but generally, they're saying stick with it for 2 years. I think the timeframe can be reduced quite a lot if your YT channel starts to take off which is why they started pushing that method more heavily.

When I signed up, there was no talk of YouTube. I joined to learn about the blog side of things, and then discovered there was a YT aspect that got pushed more and more.

In their community, there are people who have pretty good results after 24 months. I forget how good those results were, but some were reaching 5-figures+ per month mostly from ads.

I think if you build it into a digital product site, then the money side of things really opens up.

Also, you should grow faster if you leverage paid ads to drive traffic, but then you're not really using their approach the way they describe it anymore.

 

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[Kid]

Amazon launched new service recently that offers stories in smaller bytes.
And each byte is available for some small fee.

Basically Amazon is thinking that book can be turned into "TV series" kind experience
and hope to milk that concept.

I'm not sure about it. Imagine paying 12 times to get to the end of 2h movie.

Lets see how it will pan out.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Thanks for that example. Damn that website is so ugly and cheap looking lol.

I hate their website. But for a long time they were a leading course provider for all branches of the military. I've taken some of their courses, and the quality is hit and miss. The one commonality is that I never really knew who the instructor was. The whole course is usually text with a video for each module, but the video is just the narration of the text. They offer continuing education units in addition to certificates of achievement, so I think that is why a lot of people use them.

 

[MTF]

I think the opportunities in publishing have been declining with the rise of the internet.

In the past, the barrier used to be lack of knowledge. Nowadays knowledge is overabundant, it is everywhere, a lot more knowledge than we’ll ever hope to consume. So selling knowledge when it’s overabundant isn’t smart anymore.

That's a very good point. That's why some people say that it's best to be a curator rather than create new content. But then to promote your curation business you still have to create new content lol.

What is missing instead is getting people results. There are a LOT of opportunities in that. Basically instead of info marketing, you have coaching, where people get immersed in the activity, learn by doing and are guided. It’s a surer path to RESULTS, which is what is missing.

The drawback here is that it's very hard, if not impossible, to make residual income from coaching. You can write a book and keep making money from it for years. You can't get a coaching client and keep getting paid without actually spending your time coaching them. Unless you make up for it through charging rates that are so high that selling your time is worth it. I guess that most Fastlane entrepreneurs would be fine charging $10,000 per hour of their time lol.

 

[MTF]

The relevant part here to writing is this: you love writing and you are trying to do both, create the freedom to write for fun and do so by earning profits from writing. Nothing wrong with that, but it is just not Fastlane.

To clarify this a little, I'm already financially independent and that has happened exclusively because of my self-publishing business going Fastlane. I can write for fun alone but it just doesn't work for me. You mentioned MJ's example and him being wired to do stuff the Fastlane way. I'm the same.

Say that I would want to write a book about one of my passions. If I knew for a fact that it wouldn't ever turn a profit, I wouldn't write it, no matter how much I'd want to write about the topic.

Platform that sells your books is leverage, it’s like getting a bicycle when before you only had running shoes. You can move a lot faster but it is not a car and definitely not an airplane. Even with a bike you can cover long distances, just slower that’s all.

There is leverage if you become a bestselling author on Amazon because it can generate organic traffic. I still keep making money from books I published a few years ago and that's not because of my own efforts but because of the leverage Amazon offers.

As for the platform that sells my books, I'm not sure how would this differ from any blog, authority site or anything like that. Is MJ's Viperion Publishing store his platform to sell books? I assume he still sells 90%+ via distributors like Amazon or iTunes. Or is MJ's platform this forum and by a platform you mean any website where you gather an audience? I'm just trying to understand what you mean by that.

 

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[Ywan]

I think the opportunities in publishing have been declining with the rise of the internet.

In the past, the barrier used to be lack of knowledge. Nowadays knowledge is overabundant, it is everywhere, a lot more knowledge than we’ll ever hope to consume. So selling knowledge when it’s overabundant isn’t smart anymore.

So the barrier to a better life is no longer lack of knowledge. Much more difficult to publish today something about weight loss that will take the market by storm than 40-50 years ago.

Same with publishing about entrepreneurship/getting rich. Guys like Joe Karbo, Ben Suarez, or even Gary Halbert/Dan Kennedy could create an info product and sell it to make millions. Those days are over, especially with the rise of the internet.

Now the market is FLOODED with info products. Everyone KNOWS what to do. But they still don’t do it.

In this environment, the only way to get rich by selling an info product is to OWN the audience. If you get a large number of people to trust you, they’ll buy whatever shit you put out. Some influencers have taken this route.

However, this doesn’t mean that info marketing is dead. But selling a PDF or even a video course, imo, unless you’re an influencer and you own an audience, that’s dead.

What is missing instead is getting people results. There are a LOT of opportunities in that. Basically instead of info marketing, you have coaching, where people get immersed in the activity, learn by doing and are guided. It’s a surer path to RESULTS, which is what is missing.

It is certainly true that there is already more info than one can consume. It's old wine in new skins (most of the time).

So you mean that today you basically have two ways if you want to sell information and info products efficiently.
Either you build an audience first and then sell them customized info products or you offer results in the form of coaching and similar things.

What would you prefer and why?
Do you think that it is necessary to build a personal brand to succeed in either endeavor? Or could a "corporate brand" also be successful without yourself as the face of the brand?

 

[FreeMan]

How about partnering with or identifying businesses where writing is integral to the success of the business but they aren't in the writing business. For example, an ecommerce company may use written content (e.g. marketing, documentation, internal processes) as their key differentiator (and value it nearly as highly as the product) but they make their money on selling products.

I think you mentioned newsletters before, but I follow Stratechery by Ben Thompson and he's built out a pretty decent business from subscribers willing to pay for his analysis on tech. If you don't want to be the 'expert', maybe you could be the writer for another expert who wants to create these newsletters.

 

[MTF]

How about partnering with or identifying businesses where writing is integral to the success of the business but they aren't in the writing business. For example, an ecommerce company may use written content (e.g. marketing, documentation, internal processes) as their key differentiator (and value it nearly as highly as the product) but they make their money on selling products.

I think you mentioned newsletters before, but I follow Stratechery by Ben Thompson and he's built out a pretty decent business from subscribers willing to pay for his analysis on tech. If you don't want to be the 'expert', maybe you could be the writer for another expert who wants to create these newsletters.

That's a solid suggestion for the right person. Same goes for ghostwriting for well-known people, as long as you can somehow negotiate a deal where you're getting a percentage of royalties (which I believe is rare). And of course, as long as you can convince them to let you write a book for them.

I once tried partnerships. Never again

 

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[MTF]

Or, are you writing to make a profit for the profit $$?

This. I don't really care about recognition (which is also why I use pen names).

That’s the power of his platform. How can you create something similar?

I have a list of almost 30,000 subscribers for my main pen name. So I sort of do have this platform but I think that my subscribers aren't super loyal or extremely interested in my work. I'm saying this because for the past several releases, I got at best 200 or so sales from this list (perhaps 300-400 if including audio and print). And that's for a $0.99 book.

Just out of curiosity, when you write this:

Because if you are after $$ money, my (one man’s) opinion is that writing is just not Fastlane. My analogy being, running shoes are slow, bicycle is much faster and get get you even across a country, but it’s not a car and definitely not an airplane. To me, Fastlane means very fast. You travel making profits faster.

Would you say that creating products for my list would be Fastlane?

In theory it sounds great but in reality it has never worked for me. I always got way more out of writing books for Amazon (where there's potential for millions of people to see it every day) than from trying to get traffic to my own site. But I suck at traffic generation so there's that...

 

[Antifragile]

I know why. I have way too many readers from poor countries who can't afford books. So maybe they are loyal but only if I can give them something for free.

True. Marketing is my big weakness.

That's an excellent realization. You see it, it's better to be fishing in a small but rich pond than a big ocean with vast empty spaces. To support those who don't have money to buy your books, you must have additional people on your list who have the means to buy full price. Or your books should help them attain the means to be able to buy a whole lot more. Like subscription to an email (think INSIDERS forum here) etc.

And here is a fun fact, I didn't have the attitude I currently do towards @MJ DeMarco when I got his first book. It was a totally random thing. It was years ago and I knew my own math was bad. I was a rat in a race that even if I win, too bad, still an f-ing rat. I was so frustrated that I was reading a book a week in hopes to find the right guide. Thinking back, what a terrible time of my life. And keep in mind, I was a C-suite executive! I was earning more than most. Yet I knew I needed something but I wasn't even aware of how to look for it. It's like not knowing what you don't know. And here is this book from a random guy MJ and it's like it spoke to me, not general more of the same garbage I kept seeing (invest like Buffet and when you are 10,000 years old, you'll be rich, dead for sure but rich). He got me. His book I gifted to so many friends I lost count. This is the power of marketing! I don't even remember how I got that book. But he did something right by getting it in front of me, the rest is history. Marketing... is a must.

 

[Metz]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on copywriting. Glad to hear you found a system that's working well for you.

Any time, friend.

I apologize if you already answered this earlier but I'm curious: what prompted you to start this thread in the first place? Been brainstorming ways to scale your own writing income or just making conversation with the good people of the forum?

 

[MTF]

You can define it that way if you like, but successful entrepreneurs don't.


Successful entrepreneurs can call it whatever they want. For authors, this is self-publishing:

Self-publishing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using POD (print on demand) technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, video content, and zines.

If you created a $97 guide and sold it via Clickbank, this is information marketing, not self-publishing according to this definition. I'm NOT arguing what you're proposing doesn't work. I'm merely saying it's another path, just like copywriting or blogging isn't self-publishing.

Can these work together? Of course. But you can't tell Mark Dawson (a well-known self-publisher) he's missing the entire point because he doesn't sell PDFs on his website.

Nope. First, this is strictly *book* sales; second, it describes the sales ratios, not the dollar amounts.

Well we're talking about book sales here. I sometimes make money through services for authors but this is not my writing income, just like public speaking wouldn't be writing income, either. She has multiple sources of income and that's excellent. Just not all of them are from writing.

Also, how is her saying "My book sales income alone is around about 2.5x the UK national average salary and 7x the average author income" describing sales ratios?

You're still conflating 'author' and 'writer' with 'self publishing entrepreneur'. I get that; it's a view many hold. But it misses the entire point of self publishing, which is not 'put ebooks on Amazon'. You're confusing 'books' with 'self publishing' and the business of leveraging publishing to develop multiple streams of income. You're still in the narrow world view of 'romance novels on Amazon'.

Like I said above, we're talking about different things. I don't publish romance novels on Amazon but those who do don't have a narrow worldview. It's what it is for self-published romance writers.

I publish through every retailer as well as internationally, including selling translation rights to traditional publishing houses so I do have multiple streams of income. It doesn't change the fact that for regular books (I'm not talking highly technical guides or books that you sell exclusively/primarily in print like some brands like Monocle do) Amazon IS the place to go (and other book retailers, too).

 

[MTF]

You have a list. You don't have an engaged audience in that list though.

If you only made $27 with a list of 30k people, you don't have product market fit. You're selling to the wrong audience. It doesn't matter if you consider it to be a good value—it's obviously not to them (or they're just cheap). Change your product or find a different audience.

Now, you're right, email marketing doesn't solve everything. But that might just mean it's not an email list for you—you need some asset that you control though.

That's a very good point and thank you for pointing that out. I've built a lot of this list through a few free books I distribute online. I assume that's what destroyed its quality. People joined it to get more free stuff, and among them, a lot are from very poor countries. I often get emails from people who say they can't afford my stuff or people who are begging me to send them more free stuff (even though I offer a lot for free).

The reason an engaged list—or some other asset like it that you control—is so important in this space is, as I said, to get around weak control, entry, and need.

If you control the platform, you're not as dependent on Amazon and other retailers (you still are to a large degree, just not as much). It's hard and takes time to build a highly engaged list—there's your barrier to entry. If your list is engaged, that means they're hungry for what you're putting out, which solves need to some degree.

Great observations, particularly that a highly engaged list is a barrier to entry. I'm now considering a new non-fiction series in a new niche (in addition to fiction but that's more in the future). I'll follow your advice and approach it from the asset point of view first.

Can you recommend any resources that focus on how to build an engaged list?

By the way, I have a great example of someone who's doing exactly what you're saying even though he's traditionally published: Brandon Sanderson.

He has many platforms where he has a highly engaged audience: his website Home | Brandon Sanderson (including a newsletter), conventions where he appears (he tells people where he'll be via his website), social media (with huge followings considering a topic that isn't really that super social media friendly), and his podcast for writers www.writingexcuses.com (pretty much all writers are readers so audiences overlap).

 

[Bekit]

As someone with nearly a decade of first hand experience in the book publishing world who's helped people sell literally millions of books, I'm telling you, you need an engaged list if you want to make big money.

You have a list. You don't have an engaged audience in that list though.

If you only made $27 with a list of 30k people, you don't have product market fit. You're selling to the wrong audience. It doesn't matter if you consider it to be a good value—it's obviously not to them (or they're just cheap). Change your product or find a different audience.

Now, you're right, email marketing doesn't solve everything. But that might just mean it's not an email list for you—you need some asset that you control though.

MJ uses this forum. All the authors in the space I operate in focus on their email lists as their bread and butter sales channel. They diversify with other products, yes, but that's also derived from the list. I'm talking best-selling authors who've sold millions of books each. They're all multi millionaires at this point.

The reason an engaged list—or some other asset like it that you control—is so important in this space is, as I said, to get around weak control, entry, and need.

If you control the platform, you're not as dependent on Amazon and other retailers (you still are to a large degree, just not as much). It's hard and takes time to build a highly engaged list—there's your barrier to entry. If your list is engaged, that means they're hungry for what you're putting out, which solves need to some degree.

Alternatively, you can leverage your big, highly engaged list into a book deal.

I know you're all about self-publishing, but the big publishers are not going anywhere anytime soon. The smart ones leverage the internet by filtering for people who already have engaged audiences to sell to. They mitigate their risk better that way.

In your experience, if someone is just starting out, has books to publish, and wants to do it right, what are some of the highest-leverage actions that person should take?

Obviously, build an engaged email list.

What else do you recommend?

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

I'm just reflecting on how many times I've heard "I didn't buy your book because of the title, it was only until it was recommended by 3 people I respect." When I hear that, and it is quite often, I wonder how many thousands of sales I lost because of it ... that I needed 3 people to recommend the book to secure a new reader, to me, speaks to negative skew, rather than a positive one.

I think some people feel like that because this market ("how to get rich") has a bad reputation, AND it's extremely crowded which means high buyer skepticism. When buyers are skeptical, it's not so much that your product is bad or lacks positive skew, but rather that buyers do not believe it, at least not upfront, without the other people they respect recommending it.

Back when I bought TMF , I had read Rich dad Poor Dad, and saw the book as a recommendation on Amazon. That's how I ended up looking into it, and it seemed cool, so I was like, why not, let me buy this. It ended up being a great decision.

I think that, unlike other authors, one of the core differentiators that you have is that you've created this forum, where people can come and interact directly with you. I'm sure that nowadays many people come to the forum, and THEN get the books. It's quite rare to have an author interact directly with his readers the way you do. I think that's really special.

 

[tnekwerd]

I think the challenge he has with this is a bit like myself ... we have ABSOLUTELY NO DESIRE to become a personal brand with some level of notoriety. We want to write, we don't want to be some figurehead on stage.

I completely sympathize with that as well.

Probably should have made it clear earlier that this is basically all just in service of building a personal brand.

 

[Andy Black]

There is a human tendency to overestimate our ability in our interest and underestimate our proficiency in our trade. If you are enjoying a new hobby right after knowing it three months it gives you a false sense of confidence that you could teach others. If you have been doing something for ten years you easily assume everyone else knows “such simple thing” and no one would need help on that.

Ha. This is so true. I’ve been a freelancer for 10 years and often forget it’s not as clear to others.