Amazon Set to Publish Tim Ferriss | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Set to Publish Tim Ferriss

nytimes.com

47 pointsjamesbritt22 comments

I've spent hours trawling Amazon for cheap e-books, and I've come to the conclusion that self-publishing is not a model that produces high-quality books.

Editors provide significant value to me as a reader. Whatever strategy Amazon is using, I certainly hope it includes a competent editing arm.

It's not that different than an app store, youtube, itunes, etc. where there's virtually no barrier to entry. Most of it will suck, but so far we've done a decent job of separating the wheat from the chaff. The only thing that would worry me about books is how much longer it takes to review them compared to the other forms of media I mentioned. That will result in smaller sample sizes on reviews and a less accurate picture.

I wonder if it's simply that it will require volume and curation like a lot of other free/cheap content?

Book reviews are coming back, eh!

Agreed: I suspect that in the future virtually all writers will also write blogs (or the successor of blogs), along with miscellaneous other material designed to show that "Hey! I can at least write coherent sentences based on reasonable ideas."

I guarantee it produces higher quality books. You simply mean the market is saturated with mediocre books. When you open the floodgates, you get more of everything. It might be harder to find the quality books, but I guarantee there are more of them.

Really you have come to the conclusion that self-publishing does not produce cheap high-quality books.

"Some independent bookstores have already said they do not intend to carry any books from the retailer, not wanting to give a dollar to a company they feel is putting them out of business."

Oh no! How will Tim Ferriss recover from the 2% of books he'll lose from the mom & pop stores? His market is 99% 18-35 probably haven't stepped foot in an independent bookstore in ages.

Good news for him, I enjoy reading his stuff, even though some of it goes too far in my opinion.

Tim is pure infotainment. Some of his stuff is crazy and over the top, and it is mainly there as great fodder for talk shows.

Four hour body had some pretty ridiculous stuff in it, but the diet and bodybuilding advice was pretty solid.

Could you point to a blog post or something that separates the ridiculous stuff from the solid advice, for those who perhaps lack the resources to tell the difference themselves?

I assume you haven't read the book?

It makes some pretty crazy claims that "COULD" happen, but aren't likely. Like loosing 100lbs in like 3 months (it "could" happen, but it isn't typical) or gaining like 50lbs of muscle in 3 months, etc. The book outlines how he did it - what it doesn't go into too much is the fact that he had that muscle, then lost it, then gained it back. So the argument is that his muscle was just rebuilding itself and that is easier.

The point is not to take everything literally - if you follow his slow-carb diets & exercise even slightly you SHOULD loose weight - you probably wont lose 100 lbs, but you could. Most people healthily lose 1-2 lbs per week and with this you could certainly do that. I'm 6"5 & 300 and I lost about 20 lbs in the first two weeks doing it, although that is fairly consistent on any real extreme change I do for eating healthy.

You'd understand when you read it that it isn't a step by step to get from point a to point b, but rather information to help motivate/guide you from your own point a to your own point b... in a sensationalized manner.

(don't get me wrong, I liked both books)

Actually I own the book (and 4HWW), have read several chapters, and found much of it useful but some claims rather incredible. I was merely hoping for a more thoroughly researched rebuttal than my own gut instinct.

I know this article is supposed to be centered around Tim Ferriss but the meat of it, to me, was about how Amazon was walking right into the turf of book publishers and setting up shop.

Hey book publishers, you shouldn't be concerned at all, because you've seen this coming for years. They made and popularized the Kindle, and you could have made a huge and radical shift toward digital copies of books and including them in your contract negotiations.

Oh, but I guess you could have never seen this coming. Learning from the music and movie industry must not have been an option.

Come on guys!

You are completely wrong. The publishers saw this coming a long time ago (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_...) and attacked first (http://blog.laptopmag.com/ebook-price-war). This is just Amazon slowly following through on its threat of personally entering publishing, which so spooked the publishers years ago.

Ok, It's been a while since I read 4HWW, but how is there so much praise for this guy? That book was like a how-to on being an amoral, freeloading douchebag.

"the wildly popular self-help guru for young men."

This strikes me as a rather bizarre characterization and somewhat sexist. I haven't read his second book, but the first one was in no way geared to men only & I'm pretty sure the second wasn't either. Odd.

He certainly carries himself in that young man thrill seeker type way, which probably appeals on a mass scale more to men. The 2nd book did focus on males (weight lifting, giving women orgasms, etc) a bit but wasn't exclusively for men. To me, he comes across as a guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with.

I have read his second book and actually applied his techniques for eating and it works very well and also isn't to difficult to achieve.

I like his books in general cause he tries to maximize efficiency with minimum input mixed with a significant amount of discipline. I think this is why it also appeals to many people. Who doesn't want to get maximum output whilst putting in little effort !

I tried as well, but god I hate beans. If I could just do slow-carb by egg whites and chicken I'd be set... you actually feel good, eat more (so you aren't hungry) and have lots of energy. Neat stuff. No one will get the crazy gains/losses he claims, but it does work.

Business wise I love that philosophy and try to utilize it all the time.

Ah thats the opposite :) I love beans and thats why its easy for me to apply. I like green beans, kidney beans, lentils so its the perfect diet. I really like exercise but i kept wondering why i would get defined all around the body but the stomach took so much effort (hundreds of situps just didnt do it) until i realised from reading his book that my whole diet was screwed. And yeh eating right just makes you feel so much better.

I read four hour work week as well. Some of the stuff in that book is quite difficult to apply as is because of work constraints but i think for IT people , we are in the best position to apply it cause for example, working from home isnt such a far stretch for guys supporting a unix environment, or doing some dev work, where else for people doing sales or face to face work its much harder.

I tried applying some of his techniques to lessen my "in office" work time and i managed to get 4 days a week (with just a tad less salary then if i was in the office 5 days) and 1 of those 4 days a week working from home. That was the best i could do, i couldnt get 4 days work from home or anything like that and even so it wasnt easy to apply them, the build up to ask for that kind of schedule from your boss takes time and planning. You have to somewhat let him know thats what you want and then prove that you can really work individually and are on hand to address issues anytime thats needed so gaining that trust takes some time...

But reading his book did kinda of highlight the idea that hey it is possible and if you dont ask you will not get so i tried and it worked (not 4 hrs but close enough :))

I'm always surprised how Tim Ferriss sells so many books. He's such an aggressive self-promoter it's shameful.

Before Tim Ferris, the only other Ferris I'd ever come across was the fictional Ferris Bueller. If he'd been Tim Smith, would've that affected his success?

He comes across as some kind of Ferris Bueller character too!

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