How The Lean Startup Became A Best Seller (And Movement) - with Eric Ries

I've had other authors refuse to do interviews till the first week that their books go on sale. They want people to get a chance to buy their books after watching their interview.

Eric discovered that he could sell his book for months before it launched and that the NY Times Best Seller list would count those sales AS IF they were made in the book's first week.

That allowed him to spend months selling his book and refining his sales process.

What I've found in my interviews is that successful founders often discover these little nuggets of understanding that give them a leg up over others.

The other thing that's interesting about my conversation with Eric is that he didn't have to come to that discovery on his own. He learned it by studying another Best Selling author, Tim Ferriss.

If you want to understand the reason for Mixergy, that's it right there.

The world's first movement based on exhaustive study to figure out exactly what people wanted to hear before telling it to them. Exactly the opposite of what wee celebrated Steve Jobs for, isn't it? Are marketing gimmicks really the soul of the new internet generation? Not real products that male people's lives better?

I met a marketing analyst who used incredibly sophisticated Machine Learning techniques to figure out which banking customer segments are more likely to respond to a mail campaign that was addressed to "Our Neighbor". It's disheartening that marketing tricks are what so many are putting their best thinking to, and these successes are what we celebrate..

It's great that Eric Ries used his own lean startup methodology to figure out what influenced people to buy the book.

Eric built a website to take pre-orders so he could A/B test the book's cover, title, and marketing to figure out how to get as many preorders as possible, Since preorders count as orders when your book launches, he managed to become a best seller.

If anyone else prefers to download videos and watch later at their leisure, this one can be found here: http://mixergy-cdn.wistia.com/deliveries/595300a2494d37e6386...

Just rename to .flv and you're good to go.

Eric Ries wrote a great book, he deserves the success he is having with it.

I have bought 3 copies: one for myself, and 2 for customers as gifts.

Very intelligent, calculated marketing (especially Lean city-wide events, $30 bucks per event and you get the book). Congrats, Eric!

Neat! I looked and I've been using the term "Lean" to describe development for 14 years now:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970602013356/http://www.scrawls...

Sweet interview, nice to see how he published a book in a different way.