Why I Write Books Even Though I’ve Lost Money on Every Book I’ve Written

Maybe he should. I write for a publisher whose offices are more than a thousand miles away from me. We have this nifty thing called the Internet now, and postal mail works even when you don't live in the same city anyway (postal mail being how most book proposals and manuscripts are delivered when they are not sent digitally). Even if you have to fly halfway across the country twice a year for meetings, which is more often than many people would have to actually meet face-to-face with editors at publishers (judging by my limited experience at least), it costs less than sweet digs in the financial district of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Because the only two choices are whether to live in the heart of Manhattan or the middle of nowhere?

Well, the feeling is mutual!

Some people on HN are dicks sometimes. You weren't asked to judge him, I don't even think he wanted your sympathy. Read and enjoy, take what you need to take from it, and leave the rest.

One of my key takeaways was that he's since come a long way, are your feelings aimed at him 10 years ago? Doesn't read like that. I for one enjoyed it, and look forwards to the next installment landing in my inbox.

Genuinely, I don't understand how or why someone would read that post, and think to write the words you wrote. Full-circle: you came off like an ass.

> contemplated insurance fraud plus suicide in one swell foop

It's technically only insurance fraud if you commit suicide and manage to make it look like an accident (IE drive into a lake or river known for accidents and just don't try to escape) rather than actually getting killed (IE starting a fight with the nearest drug dealing gang banger after signing a DNR order).

You're assuming it's a big mystery why no one wanted his book proposal or that the agent hadn't previously covered this ground, neither of which is stated in the post. (Plus, this is an author who admits he's lied about his contract numbers in the past.) From my read the facts are damning enough:

* He'd gotten a big advance on his previous book but it didn't sell. (Money loser = big red flag #1)

* His reputation alone no longer sells a book idea (evidenced by the sudden need for him to write a proposal to sell a book.) (Warning flag.)

* His financial judgment is suspect. ("The Forever Portfolio" delivered to the publisher just as the market starts a giant slide.) (Warning flag.)

* His last book was, well... Here's a sentence from the first Amazon review: "That said, the book is horribly written -- the author has about 20 pages of interesting content interspersed with 200 pages of random digressions, about his love of computer games and the longest words in the English language." (At the very least, a warning flag.)

* His proposal read like it was cribbed from Wikipedia (Big red flag #2.)

* He's a real peach to work with, insisting he knows other people's jobs better than they do (after all, he claims he chose the $20 price point for the previous loser, and we know how he treats his agent). (Warning flag.)

Now look what happens when that book idea (not the proposal) finally sells -- the publisher insists on bringing in another, trusted writer as co-author.

Sorry, but I don't think there's a mystery here that the agent needs to solve.

> Better still read the last paragraph first .... you may save yourself five minutes of reading.

Started reading, realized it wasn't worth my bacon, check the comments, found yours and read the only meaningful thing I could deduce from the article.

It is impossible to be good at any technical niche if you don't know the nitty gritties of every other option out there. I just happen to talk about Windows Azure a lot because that's what I work on :).

Sure, but opportunity cost is not a line item on a budget.

Oh really? Look at the best-selling investing books on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Business-Books/b/ref=bw_ab_3...

Here's some more twisted internet reasoning for you: maybe if all of the comments on this article suck as much as the article itself does, it will fall off the front page like it deserves to.

It's a meaningless story about a guy who, by his own admission, has written several books just for the attention. Then he meets, dates, and marries a girl in the space of a single paragraph, which somehow justifies the entire experience.

Now here I am, reading it on Hacker News, just wishing it would go away. We can debate internet philosophy (interacting with a System vs a Community) all day, but I'll just go ahead and concede the entire battle to you right now, because you're right, it was a bad comment made for unsound reasons. However, I am not a rational agent and will not delete it.

This comes up almost every time someone does what I just did. You're right about the Voting-Based Social Media Site Psychology of it, but I think we've covered it enough that it doesn't need to be said.

I do regret adding that to the end. I really didn't mean to influence the votes. Now, of course, I can't remove it without eliminating the context for our discussion.

Edit for more meta: Apparently I am now That Guy In The Thread Whose Comments Are All Downvoted Regardless of Contribution to the Discussion. I am also That Guy Who Left A Stupid Reddit-Style Comment, That Guy Who Is Spending To Much Time in the Thread, and That Guy Who Thinks Hacker News is Going Downhill. Time for a sandwich.

Contemplating suicide plus insurance fraud in a single act without talking about the background for why he would have thought this was a good idea is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Foisting books he thought sucked onto editors while scamming them for ever-larger advances by bushwhacking them with out-of-nowhere agents is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Talking about how he lies to people about his career -- especially when casting the reader directly in the hypothetical role of wronged target of these lies -- is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Writing a book about how to claw your way to riches as a means to make money off credulous readers to forestall your own bankruptcy (and/or suicide) is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Acts of desperation redolent of co-dependent personal issues, such as writing strident appeals to the most vulnerable people on the insides of one's books in the hopes of essentially tricking people into buying them, is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

He paints himself as an asshole and a fuck-up who lucked out despite his best efforts to make a lot of money (off and on) and uses that to get people to listen to him. It's certainly not the most sympathetic picture he could have painted of himself.

Also . . . whether the previous person meant "sympathetic" or "worthy of sympathy", it is entirely reasonable -- and in the context of literary criticism (formal or otherwise), quite common -- to refer to a "sympathetic character", which is exactly what Altucher is not by his own presentation other than once probably by accident, and another time at the end quite surprisingly. This is because "sympathy" is not the same thing as "empathy", though many think it is.

From the American Heritage Dictionary, third definition of "sympathetic":

> Agreeably suited to one's disposition or mood; congenial: sympathetic surroundings.

Other definitions hint at the idea as well. That idea is, simply put, that there is a sense of connection and sameness between subject and object. Even those who are not much different from Altucher in all the myriad ways he presents himself poorly are likely to feel his is an unsympathetic character, if only because they would not want to admit to themselves the same depths two which they have descended. If it were not for the engaging style with which he beats the crap out of his own image, I suspect almost nobody would read all the way through such a painful litany of character flaws as he presents.

It helps that he ended it when he did. If it went on for another half-dozen paragraphs, I might have gotten sick of it, engaging style or otherwise.