No one will read your book (and other truths about publishing)

ellegriffin.substack.com

28 points·mathgenius··4 comments

Reminds me how the author of sapiens failed at self publishing selling just 2k copies and then went kn to republish with better marketing, strategy, which led to over 2.7 million copies

I think writing is no different than a startup, it takes incredible amount of time and strategy to make it through.

I dislike this whole concept, really wanting to be proven wrong but reality shows me otherwise.

Picking popular, marketable ideas and piggybacking on it, choosing strategies of putting your stuff out there under the pretense of "free", "paying it forward", "for the community", "right thing to do", "for the planet", etc. this actually works in the short run.

More people out there looking for free, sharable stuff, memes and buzz than those who know what they want.

And when all that matters is sales numbers, followers, likes and shares, its a volume business. Quality suffers, depth disappears and overall value in creating and consuming content worth consuming drops. This is what I ser happening today.

I feel that too. It doesn't just work in the short run it works in the long run many times too. Was it always like this or did a switch happen at some point? or are we just remembering the past with rise colored glasses

I so agree.

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