Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction

by Rob Fitzpatrick

I started with just an occasional blog post. But then I realized that I’m a very lazy person, so I started my newsletter as an accountability scheme for myself, since it forced me to send something out every week. I’d write a chapter or a section of my book, post it as a blog post, send out the same thing as a newsletter, and then read it aloud — plus a little extra commentary — as a podcast episode. The most important thing I learned was consistency. Thank goodness that tools exist to make this easy. I went away for a vacation, and we did a digital detox with no phones or computers. So, the week before, I spent a few hours queuing up all the stuff I wanted to send out while I was away, and it all happened without me.[35]

If you’re collecting emails while the book is still under development, then I suggest offering a multi-tier signup that allows people to tell you whether they’d like to get involved in beta reading or whether they’d prefer to wait for the finished version — this helps you make the most of your fledgling audience.

With my book The Daily Stoic, we built a 40,000 person email list by sending out one additional free meditation every single morning. This is an incredible amount of work — basically one additional book written per year — and I do it totally free. BUT — it helped the book spend five weeks on the Wall Street Journal list. And without really any other marketing, the book now sells 1,000-1,200 copies per week.[36]

When folks started asking how to preorder my new book, instead of whipping up a landing page, I decided to try this alternative opt-in technique. There is no landing page or website for the book. Just a few photos and an email address! I sent out a few tweets telling people to email me if they were interested, plus one post each on Facebook and Instagram, for a total of 358 likes, 9 shares, and 25 comments. In 24 hours, 90 people had emailed to request a pre-sale link. And more keep coming in. It’s a lightly manual process, but it also means that I get to read every email folks send. Which brings me to the two best parts. First, if you think getting waiting list signups feels good, getting actual emails with personalized messages from people who are excited to buy your thing is NEXT LEVEL. I’m hearing from folks I haven’t talked to in ages. People are asking to buy multiple copies as gifts for friends and coworkers. Second, when it comes time to launch, I plan to actually reply to all of the emails that folks sent in. I know that my emails will reach their inboxes because they’re being sent by a human. Plus, my message will show up as a reply to an email that they sent ME, which is safely prioritized as “not spam” as well as being more likely to stand out in their inbox.[37]

Beyond the main description, there are also several “hidden” sections that most authors (and many publishers) appear to overlook. These include: Author profile (filled out and linked via Author Central[40]) Featured blog posts and videos, if you have them (also via Author Central) Editorial reviews (written by experts but submitted by you, as opposed to the normal “customer reviews”) “Look inside” page samples (created automatically, but can be customized to show the strongest samples) Additional product images (potentially including more than just a book cover)

One accelerant for gathering the first few “verified” reviews is to launch your Kindle version at the lowest possible price (currently $1.99), which allows you to request a two-dollar favor from people willing to give it a fair look and share what they think.

Selling one copy of an audiobook is far less profitable than selling one paperback or ebook. For The Mom Test, I earn approximately $17 per paperback ($30 retail price, 55% royalties after accounting for printing costs), $7 per ebook ($10 price, 70% royalties), and less than $3 per audiobook (since they’re usually bundled into an Audible subscription). But due to the popularity of audiobooks, and despite driving less than 10% of my total profits, the audiobook represents over 30% of my “readers.” Assuming that you’ve built something recommendable, offering an audiobook is therefore extremely worthwhile since it increases the number of happy readers who are able to recommend the book and fuel organic growth. And surprisingly, an audiobook doesn’t cannibalize the other formats as much as you would think, since plenty of people only buy audiobooks.

My quick advice is to charge $20-30 for your paperback and $9.99 for your ebook.

The reason I recommend selling ebooks for $9.99 (as opposed to $20 or $30) is due to Amazon’s definitely-not-price-fixing policy of paying 70% royalties for ebooks priced at $9.99 or below, but only 35% for anything priced higher than that.[44]

When Alex Hillman told me about his decision to remove The Tiny MBA from Amazon and sell it only through his own website,[45] he explained that the long-term value of the customer relationship was a big part of it. He knew that he would sell fewer total copies without the flywheel effect and exposure of Amazon. But he also knew that each copy sold would be 10x more valuable if it arrived via his own website, since he would receive the email address of every buyer, allowing him to stay in touch and let them know about his business’s other relevant offerings.

I’ve recently been attempting to merge reader engagement with (finally) building an author platform. For the past few months, whenever a reader asks a question, instead of sending an email reply, I record the answer as a public video on my YouTube channel[50] and send them a link. This requires slightly more time, but doubles as a permanent piece of content to help build my fledgling audience.

The more professional option is to buy your own ISBNs and “publish” the book under your own publishing imprint — this is relatively straightforward if you already have a business entity, but requires setting one up if not, which obviously carries an accounting and admin burden You’ll use a different ISBN for each format (e.g., hardback, paperback, Kindle, iBooks, etc.) and each new version (only for major updates, minor fixes don’t matter)