book-notes

Authority

by Nathan Barry

I, Michael Parker, own this book and took these notes to further my own learning. If you enjoy these notes, please purchase the book!

Chapter 1: On Writing

• pg 5: You can continue to create cutting-edge work and strive to be the best in your industry, but until you start teaching and sharing, your reach and influence will be limited.
• pg 7: If you know a skill that other people use to make money, you can make a living by teaching that skill.
• pg 9: People will pay for content that is freely available, but is better organized and distributed.
• pg 9: Teaching skills necessary for certifications or career advancement allows you to set much higher prices, since your customers can easily calculate a positive return on investment.
• pg 10: If people are asking you for help in a particular area, then you likely know something about it, and there is demand for that knowledge.
• pg 11: You don’t need to be an expert to teach. Just be transparent about your skill level and people will follow along, and may even offer to help when you get stuck.
• pg 12: A few quotes from past clients combined with some in-depth blog posts or tutorials is enough to give you the credibility to write your book.
• pg 13: To look like an expert, join a trade organization with official-sounding names, summarize three best-selling books on your topic, write for other sites and magazines, give talks at universities and companies, and piggyback on other press.
• pg 15: An easy way to see if potential readers are searching for similar products online is with Google’s keyword research tool.
• pg 16: When there are many successful competitors, it shows that people are willing to pay for products and services in that market.
• pg 17: One of the best ways to ensure that you actually end up writing a book is to make consistent progress every day.
• pg 19: Sandra Tsing Loh said, “When faced with writer’s block, lower your standards and keep going.”
• pg 22: Self-publishing means you don’t have to wait for permission to start publishing my work and building an audience, but it does mean more work.
• pg 25: Sacha Greif found that deals with sites like AppSumo, Dealotto, and MightyDeals were the most effective marketing channels, accounting for 90% of revenue.

Chapter 2: Basic Marketing

• pg 28: If you teach, people will listen, and you’ll never have to pay for advertising because your audience will come to you.
• pg 29: Put up a landing page so that potential readers can directly tell you if they are interested in your book.
• pg 29: By using a single domain, you can ensure that all links and content promote just that domain instead of splitting everything between several domains.
• pg 30: Your landing page needs a headline to catch visitors’ attention, an image or detailed description of the product, and most importantly, a way for visitors to express their interest.
• pg 30: A headline should be clear, compelling, and should speak directly to the buyer’s pain point.
• pg 31: Showing a picture of a book instantly communicates that you are selling a book, albeit an electronic one.
• pg 31: To increase your conversions, give users a free chapter, a related article, or a discount code for users opting in via email.
• pg 32: Enumerate all the ways you have to reach potential buyers, and share the link to the landing page on any methods you control.
• pg 33: After you’ve exhausted what you can do on your own, ask your influential friends. Email them with a relevant sample, and ask them to share if they find it interesting. But give them an easy out.
• pg 35: Bluehost and Hostgator host low-traffic websites for $10 or $20 per month, but don’t fret too much over this.
• pg 35: Just use WordPress. Doing so gives you access to many themes, plugins, and many experts who know it inside and out.
• pg 36: You can purchase a WordPress theme for less than $100 from WooThemes.com, StudioPress.com, or PremiumPixels.com.
• pg 37: On the blog, feature three posts on the most valuable thing you have to teach. Each one should be between 1,000 and 5,000 words, and should show off your style.
• pg 38: At the end of each post, tell them about your book and let them opt-in, just as your landing page does.
• pg 40: Social media is useful for building relationships, but when selling, only a fraction of your followers will even see a particular tweet or post.
• pg 40: Email is best because you can push content to readers, everyone has an email address, engagement quality is higher, and you have ownership. It’s your most valuable asset.
• pg 43: By focusing on email you never have to start from scratch with a new product, allowing you to connect with your audience over the long term.
• pg 44: If you let your list become stagnant, then readers will forget who you are, and will typically unsubscribe. Keep providing valuable content every week or two and you won’t be forgotten.
• pg 46: Brandon Savage was most surprised that people would pay $39 for a book, uses sales to capture customers who are on the fence, and missed out by not offering value-added components with his book.

Chapter 3: Writing, Lots of Writing

• pg 49: You may have to write 7-10 guest posts at 1,000 words each, and 3 launch and update emails at 500 words each. But more teaching means more sales.
• pg 50: When choosing the next section to write, pick the one that inspires you, instead of the next one sequentially.
• pg 53: Keep learning as you write your book. Don’t copy the work of others, but ensure that you’re not missing anything important.
• pg 54: Think of different ways to organize a book: by topic, chronologically, and so forth.
• pg 55: Content you cut does not need to be wasted, but can be made into tutorials, stories, and lessons for use in guest posts and teaser articles.
• pg 57: When naming your book, be clear first and clever second.
• pg 58: List the ways in which your readers’ career and lifestyle will change after finishing your book. Try and incorporate these into the title or subtitle.
• pg 58: Many book titles follow a formula, like “Mastering OO PHP,” “Step-by-Step UI Design,” or “Professional Web Design.” Maybe choose one.
• pg 61: Jarrod Drysdale found the newsletter to drive sales most, and how people are kind, appreciative, and helpful when they realize you’re just one guy working away.

Chapter 4: Pricing & Packaging

• pg 65: Price based on value delivered. If your readers’ abilities and quality of product improves from reading your book, charge more.
• pg 66: When the author doubled the price of a product, he lost 25% of his sales. When you have a smaller audience, you must charge more in order to make a living.
• pg 67: Charging more for packages with video tutorials, Photoshop files, code samples, and additional training materials can nearly double your revenue.
• pg 69: If your goal is to build a huge audience, then a lower price may make a lot of sense, because you will sell more.
• pg 70: If additional material is offered in a different medium, like video tutorials or lessons, its perceived value increases.
• pg 71: Different media includes short video tips, video interviews, text interviews, design resources, sample code, explanation screencasts, video lessons, and Photoshop files.
• pg 72: A Video lesson has a higher perceived value than a PDF eBook, which has a higher perceived value than a series of blog posts.
• pg 73: By releasing book-quality content for free, more people will read and share your work, and there is more content to index.
• pg 74: People may still pay for this free content because they want to support you, they want it in a specific format, and they want additional content.
• pg 75: Interviews let you leverage the audience and borrow some of the status of the interviewee, who will likely share the interview with their followers.
• pg 75: Most interviewees will actually accept, because they are flattered that you admire their work, and they were once obscure like you are.
• pg 76: An interviewee expects a low level of commitment, typically showing up and answering questions. They should not have to do any additional work.
• pg 76: Don’t offer money, and they won’t ask for any. The small amount you can afford won’t sway them anyway.
• pg 77: Do sure the interviewee knows that the interview is part of a project you plan to sell.
• pg 78: Labeling your content as a course, guide, kit, lesson, or class instead of a book increases its perceived value.
• pg 79: If you want to know what someone really thinks of your product, ask if they will pay for a pre-order, right then and there.
• pg 81: DRM tells your legitimate customers, who have trusted you with their money, that you don’t trust them.
• pg 82: Those who want to pay for your book will. Those who don’t want to pay for your book will pirate it. You can’t control that, so stop trying.
• pg 82: Watermarking a PDF with the buyer’s name is ineffective because it’s easy to remove, and still tells customers that you don’t trust them.
• pg 83: Worse than piracy are people who try to pass off your work as their own and then sell it for profit. It’s impossible to prevent, and distracting.

Chapter 5: Design & Formatting

• pg 85: The PDF format allows you to fully control the colors, layout, and style of your book, unlike the ePub and Mobi formats.
• pg 87: Writing your book in HTML styled with CSS makes it easy to convert to ePub and Mobi format, since they are based on HTML.
• pg 89: iBooks Author is specifically designed for writing eBooks, and is free. Purchase templates from iBooksAuthorTemplates.com.
• pg 91: You can make your book available online through WordPress, where each book section is a blog post with categories to organize each chapter.
• pg 91: Ensure that the WordPress theme is minimal, and that the navigation is clear and convenient.
• pg 92: S2Member and Wishlist Member are two popular WordPress plugins for managing membership, but they limit your payment processing options.
• pg 92: The free, online version should have an obvious upsell to additional content, whereby you make money or gain subscribers.
• pg 93: Amazon’s CreateSpace costs you $3 to print a book and a few more to ship it, and allows you to give it away at conferences, and increases its perceived value.
• pg 94: Cover design is surprisingly unimportant since it won’t need to stand out at a shelf at a bookstore.
• pg 94: Simple cover guidelines: Choose a bold color, strong and classic fonts, consistent alignment, and plenty of whitespace.
• pg 95: The Noun Project has a large collection of flat icons, and SubtlePatterns.com has simple background patterns.
• pg 98: Landscape orientation allows interesting layout possibilities like multiple columns, pull quotes, and photos worked in, but requires more effort.
• pg 104: Mike Rundle bought advertising on Stack Overflow based on some targeted keywords, and is really focused on converting clicks.

Chapter 6: Prepping for Launch

• pg 107: When you sell the book on your own site, there won’t be a magic success that will sell thousands of copies. You must do the marketing yourself.
• pg 108: Between establishing the landing page and releasing your book, email your subscribers every week or two with helpful and interesting content, keeping them engaged.
• pg 109: Be everywhere on your launch day. Customize your content, finding an angle so that it is relevant to any site.
• pg 111: Build a relationship with someone by leaving helpful comments on his blog, making smalltalk on Twitter, and then sending him a helpful email.
• pg 112: Eventually you can offer a guest post, including a proposed title and short description. Give them an easy way out at the end. Don’t hard sell.
• pg 113: An affiliate commission of 50% for an eBook is not high because you don’t have any going costs. They bring you the sale, and you gain a new fan.
• pg 114: Make your affiliates an exclusive group, and fire anyone who uses questionable techniques. 90% of your sales will only come from 10% of them anyway.
• pg 116: You must overcome your fear of releasing a draft product to have testimonials when you launch, contributing to its social proof and your sales site.
• pg 117: To ease someone into reviewing your book, send them a short email explaining what you are working on first, and if they reply, send them a targeted chapter.
• pg 118: If you’ve had private conversations with the reviewer, you can write the testimonial for them, and ask them to sign off on it.
• pg 119: A giveaway is an easy way to continue talking about a product without saying something new, or costing you anything, while still delivering value.

Chapter 7: The Sales Page

• pg 121: A good product solves a painful problem. Talk to your customers to find exactly what those pains are, and then write to them on your sales page.
• pg 123: Every sales page should list reasons to care about your book, a sample chapter, table of contents, social proof, your bio, the list of packages, a purchase option, an FAQ to overcome objections, and another purchase link.
• pg 123: Provide a high-quality sample chapter or selected sections. Give a feel for the book’s design, readability, and the experience level you’re teaching to.
• pg 124: The FAQ should answer questions about file types, a refund policy, skill-level expectations, and any other objections from potential buyers.
• pg 125: Show the book design as a printed book. You don’t know where your visitors are coming from, so don’t assume they know anything about the book or about you.
• pg 126: Testimonials should have a photo, job title, and a link to the name. Put each one where it has the best context.
• pg 126: Social proof also includes logos of companies you’ve worked for, news organizations you’ve been featured in, and prominent companies using your product.

Chapter 8: E-commerce

• pg 128: To accept a payment, use a provider like Gumroad, PayPal, SpaceBox, and E-junkie.
• pg 129: The Amazon Kindle promises distribution, self-publishing, and a great marketplace for readers to find you, but pricing and not owning the customer list are drawbacks.
• pg 130: Download the Kindle Previewer application to test what your book looks like on different devices.
• pg 132: Apple takes a 30% cut of your sales, and the price of your book must be $15 or less.
• pg 136: Gumroad permits discount codes, custom fields in the purchase form, limited copies for sale, different packages, and pay-what-you-want pricing.
• pg 138: Gumroad lets you purchase through an SSL iFrame using only an email address, credit card number, expiration date, and security code.
• pg 139: Gumroad takes 5% and 25 cents off every transaction, and pays you via direct deposit every two weeks.
• pg 141: It’s a good idea to still offer PayPal as a purchase option, either because they don’t have a credit card or don’t want to pay with one online.
• pg 142: E-junkie is starting to show its age, but it has an affiliate system. They will sell nearly anything, so don’t expect a high-quality affiliate relationship.
• pg 144: Space Box doesn’t handle payment, but integrates with Stripe, and they take just 3.9% and 30 cents off every transaction.
• pg 145: Avoid any e-commerce platform that uses a shopping cart. This is confusing when you sell only a single product.

Chapter 9: The Launch and Beyond

• pg 148: Send your subscribers an email the day before the launch. Ideally, when the announcement email follows, all they need to do is get out their credit card.
• pg 149: Finally, test making a purchase in all major browsers, and write a launch email clearly stating that the book your list has been waiting for is here.
• pg 149: At 8 a.m. Eastern, move the sales page to its final URL, redirect the opt-in page to it, double-check your analytics, post to your blog, and send the launch email.
• pg 150: Then, draft an email that can be customized for each person you need to contact.
• pg 151: In the announcement email to friends, consider including sample tweets, making it easy as possible for them to share.
• pg 152: Send the email to everyone you interviewed, then anyone with a related audience, and finally any friends who are happy to help. Just don’t be afraid to ask.
• pg 152: Finally, ensure that your guest posts will go live by sending the site editors or owners a brief email.
• pg 153: Don’t get caught up in sales for a single day or week, but look at the trend over months.
• pg 154: When sales drop, keep teaching and giving content away for free in order to reach new people and remind your existing audience about your products.
• pg 155: Send new subscribers a selection of your best content spread out over several days. This gives them a great introduction, and ensures that your favorite articles don’t get buried.
• pg 157: In 8 emails that go out over 30 days, he soft sells with a simple P.S. on the third email, hard sells on the sixth email, and soft sells again on the eighth.
• pg 158: Customers will email you with typos. Assign them a label so you can easily find them later.
• pg 159: Don’t promise outright that updates will be free. This commits you to a massive, unpaid annual writing project.
• pg 161: When promoting through AppSumo, Dealotto, and MightyDeals, negotiate the terms so you can include an opt-in checkbox for future articles or tutorials on the download landing page.
• pg 161: To avoid upsetting your loyal fans, wait several months after launching to run a deal.
• pg 162: If you’ve made a good product that the deal site wants to carry, negotiate the 70/30 split down to 60/40 or 50/50.
• pg 162: Heavily discounting your product can make it seem not as valuable, so don’t run a sale at more than 50% off.
• pg 165: Trying to upsell the higher package at a discount to buyers of the base package doesn’t work so well.
• pg 166: Cross-selling to a future product or service, or hosting online workshops, allows you to increase revenue per customer.
• pg 167: Don’t fret about the quality of your product unless more than 5% of buyers ask for a refund. Just issue them and move on.