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Comment by crobertsbmw | Hacker News Reader

I wrote a book, Computer Engineering for Babies. I’ve sold about 25k copies in the last 12 months, but I don’t have a publisher, a marketing team, or even an Amazon listing. I talked to a publisher once, they told me if you sell 10k books you can easily be classified as a best seller. But The NY Times, or anyone else, doesn’t care about some guy selling baby books out of his living room, and I don’t care enough about awards to try chasing them.

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> I don’t care enough about awards to try chasing them.

It's great if you're satisfied selling what you're selling, but placement on the NYT list is more than just an award, it's a huge marketing opportunity. Getting on the list could easily 5x your sales and revenue, and have publishers and booksellers knocking on your door instead of other way around.

The "best selling" lists have some pretty "strict" criteria, and they're all kind of lame, even if arguably some are there to prevent "gaming" the system.

And "best selling" as a substitute for quality doesn't hold that well, either.

"Best selling" by the NYT has its own algorithm which weighs audiobooks, ebooks, indie vs big store sales, etc. all differently. Additionally I would suspect selling children's books would have to compete with school-sized purchases. 25k over a year is great, but in the realm of children's books you're dealing with Scholastic magazines book hawking to every school in the nation.

> I don’t have a publisher, a marketing team, or even an Amazon listing

Interesting, how do get them manufactured? I guess there are printing companies that operate separately from publishers?

There are countless self publishing companies, and while idk if it's still active, even Amazon had a try at this.

Yes, Amazon still runs theirs. It's part of the KDP program now.

lulu.com is another relatively big one. (They have a nice service, Lulu Xpress, if you just want to print copies for personal use.)

And then there is the other monolith, IngramSpark.

I just got my copy a few weeks ago! My 14 month old loves it, though she hasn’t yet figured out the AND gate yet. :)

Good work. How did you market your book?

Thanks! At first it was just a couple posts on Reddit and HN,m. Every once in a while someone will share it on Twitter or something and it will blow up for a few days. I’m spending a few hundred dollars a day on paid ads right now, but even that ebbs and flows on wether it’s profitable.

> HN,m

what's the 'm' ? typo?

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