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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

The problem is that books that try and sell me based on promising some improvement in my lifestyle usually set my BS radar off.

I have a lot of programming books on my shelf about various topics , but I don't have one called "make a shitton of money with your text editor".

It would feel a bit like those ebooks that promise to make it easy to generate effortless income on the stockmarket or get highly attractive women into bed with you.

I have no doubt that such books sell, but I wouldn't feel confident writing something that might not necessarily do exactly what it said on the tin for everyone reading it.

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Thank you for giving me the title for my upcoming book:

"Make a shitton of money with your text editor: a genius stockpicker's guide to bedding the women of your dreams."

Advance praise from Armando Montelongo.

When can I pre-order?

Email me at brennan at planscope.io and I'll forward you a dozen emails from people who've bought my book (http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com) who now have a higher income and a better lifestyle.

The books on your bookshelf are meant to improve your lifestyle - they teach you new skills that you can charge for. Some books, however, do that on a higher, more general level.

I just glanced over the URL in your post and it took me a while to figure out your book wasn't called, "Double Your Freelancing Ingrate." :) Too bad too, because I thought the book was about how to gracefully get rid of ungrateful clients and that would actually be a great book too!

I'll back up Brennan 100% on his claims. I've _successfully_ raised my rates +30/hr after reading his ebook. The advice was relevant, pointed, and easy to implement. The book paid for itself in the first week I owned it.

After reading Brennan's book I raised my rate from $100/hr up to $150/hr. When I mentioned my rate to 4 new prospects they didn't seem to notice. It didn't seem expensive at all to them.

Maybe I should raise my rates further...

I'm not sure why you need a book to tell you that you can raise you rates if you think that people will pay your higher rates.

I've thought that I could raise my rates for over a year now. But Brennan's book gave me the drive to actually do it.

Why did you buy those programming books sitting on your shelf? Because you wanted to learn to code so you could do X. (Probably get a job, get clients, make cool things, etc.) Copywriting is an effort to connect with the reader and tell them that the product matches up with what they need/want.

There is nothing wrong with marketing. Marketing is how honest people get paid for doing honest work. (Both Jim and Nathan are honest. I've exchanged email with them both.)

I wouldn't feel confident writing something that might not necessarily do exactly what it said on the tin for everyone reading it.

In that case you'd never write it. The discussion isn't over some magic book of spells here.

It's about an honest product offer that with a modest amount of work the reader will move from point A to point B. Now you as writer could promise to refund the reader's money if it didn't work out, whether because the work was too much or the results didn't materialize.

That way everyone wins.

I'm much more confident of a book's ability to teach me how to program in Javascript that I am of a book's ability to teach me to make some arbitrary amount of money,

You haven't read many JavaScript books then, have you?

"The problem is that books that try and sell me based on promising some improvement in my lifestyle usually set my BS radar off."

Luckily for saturnflyer, nathanbarry, bdunn, and me, plus many others, that problem isn't a generalized one. A few folks obviously agree with you, but it doesn't seem to be impacting our sales or our customers' happiness.

That opinion is a minority.

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