I am a New York Times best-seller and I would be happy to answer questions about how I went from blog --> book --> products, especially about the challenges of getting people to pay online.<p>My book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489</a><p>My blog: <a href="http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com</a><p>Let me know if you guys have questions about monetizing content, book sales, or the psychology of getting people online to pay. There is so much interesting stuff I've learned over the last few years.
I worked for a media company a few years back and we would hack the NYT by selling "limited edition" autographed copies of books.<p>We paid authors $5/signature and sold the book for $10 over MSRP. The author pre-signed thousands of books that we bought from major retailers at a discount (orders in the 10s of thousands). Then we organized speaking events and book tours the week the book released. On the book tour, when the stores ran out of stock they would buy our autographed copies because the publisher couldn't ship them fast enough. Any books that we didn't sell back to the retailers, we would sell on our online store at markup.<p>The key to hacking the system was negotiating with the retailer to report (on Nielsen BookScan) X number of books on release day, X number the day after, and so on...
Pre-ordering isn't really gaming the system, it's been understood that having a following pretty much ensures you're going to hit onto a list. The real question here is whether or not these two can turn their online-audience into an offline-audience.<p>With authors I've frequently decided to become an online fan after being an offline fan for up to years. However I've rarely done it the other way, and never for a book.
I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of hacking the best seller list.
Hey Ramit, can you talk a little but more about your comment on "many startups overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually convert. Hint: Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)"<p>Which channels are better than others for securing conversions? Which outlets SHOULD startups be focusing on?