Authority Case Studies: $30k in sales from first-time authors

I've bought some of the books mentioned in the article, and many more which have been marketed with similar tactics, and have generally been disappointed with my purchases.

They are often the authors first book, heavy on the white space, with large fonts and so on, haphazardly organized, and night and day from something like a Pragmatic Programmers title.

I'm as susceptible as anyone to the copywriting strategy of "this book will solve your particular problem and, if you save even an hour, it pays for itself" but too many launches of this type have soured me on self published business and technical books unless there is absolutely no other place to get the information.

As a rule of thumb, if someone is selling a book in multiple "packages" , to me its an indicator that the quality will be poor and I will regret the time wasted reading it.

There are two awesome takeaways from this article. One, it is really smart that Nathan is showcasing his customer's results, because it makes it easier to sell the product if you can point to success other people had with it. We all love to tell ourselves the story that if they can do it, I can do it.

Two, if you look at some of the specific tactics like landing page, launch list, preordering, leveraging other people's audiences to sell your product, etc. and put them together all in the same campaign, you are much more likely to do well than if you do just one or two of those tactics.

I always like to read/listen for the little nuances that sometimes creep through articles like this in-between the lines. Some of the best little nuggets of wisdom are hidden in plain sight and never made a big deal of.

I have no experience with self publishing, but as an author with No Starch Press (http://nostarch.com/masteryourmac), I can tell you that publishers probably put more work into the books than the authors themselves.

Publishers hire people to design the cover, copy edit the manuscript, provide a tech review, lay out the book, and market it. The amount of work that goes into a traditional book is astounding, so it doesn't surprise me that some people here are complaining about the quality of self-published books. In my opinion, the logistics are simply too much for one person to handle.

And let's be honest here. The real work of an author should be to write. Should they really have to worry about marketing, layout, and copy editing? I think not.

I'll go with a traditional publisher again. My book looks beautiful, reads well, and is on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble. Sure, I don't get all of the revenue, but I do have a wider audience and steady passive income.

My book is one of the case studies (Mastering Modern Payments). If anyone has any questions fire away!

It seems that there are a lot of books being sold directly these days. For some reason, I'm a bit ambivalent about that, although I can't quite explain why. Perhaps it's convenience? No wishlist, no one click from Amazon to my Kindle? Perhaps it's the lack of exposure to reviews on Amazon or other sites?

It's certainly good for the authors, as they get to keep pretty much everything from the sale, whereas with Amazon, at best, they're going to get about 70%.

For whatever reason that I find difficult to spell out, though, it also means I'm more reticent to buy these sorts of books.

I haven't read Authority yet, but it is on my to do list. I did do most of what they suggested in this article though for my book[1] except one thing. That is price it high and do multiple packages. I think my biggest mistake was having Amazon as an option because that limits me to selling for $9.99. It hasn't been a total failure, but it hasn't made the ~5k these examples did, and I'm pretty sure pricing is the biggest reason why. I suspect most of the people who bought it at $9.99 would have also paid a higher price, especially with additional resources in a package.

[1]http://buildanappbusiness.com/

I'm in the process of writing a book right now (http://yourfirstwebapp.com) with the help of Nathan's Authority, and I can say that his book is jam-packed with useful info. It's been particularly beneficial in helping me develop a cohesive plan/strategy to plan, write, and market my book.

Biggest takeway for me: look at the effect unit price has on revenue

Just doing a quick analysis of the first two: http://d.pr/i/hhne

Having higher price-points dramatically increases total earnings.

All interesting and useful stuff. I would be interested to talk to some of those that enlisted outside help in getting the final finished product together about their experiences (particularly those of using elance etc for these kind of services).

What's great about Authority is that it essentially validates itself the more and more popular it gets.

Reminded again about the value of creating relationships with top influencers in a niche.

Writing a book and publishing it doesn't guarantee success, but having a network of influencers review and recommend is the closest thing you can get to a sure bet.

I'm late to the comments (been traveling all day), but I just wanted to add a huge congratulations to each author in the case studies. They worked hard and the success is well deserved!

I'm glad everyone's doing well with Authority!