$250k books sold, to save lives

Derek is one of the kindest people I’ve gotten to know. I reached out to him when I was 17 years old, about to embark on a hacker’s adventure. He took the time to respond, and his advice was always a breeze of encouragement.<p>I recently read both his books. Hell yeah or no I imagined I would love...and was right...but boy was I surprised by your music and people. It’s a book about friendship and authenticity, disguised as a branding book for musicians.<p>I posit his ideas will stand the test of time. Highly suggest reading :) — and darn happy that the orders went to help those in need

1. He made $250K self publishing a book. That itself is worth writing a post about and such posts are routinely popular on HN.<p>2. From all appearances, he gave the money away out of generosity rather than the need for recognition. Didn&#x27;t strike me as celebrity self aggrandizement.<p>3. He felt both the <i>what</i> and the <i>how</i> are worth publicizing. He&#x27;s a known &#x27;thought leader&#x27; after all.<p>Of the three, only the third is remotely objectionable. I think it&#x27;s ok to say good things about oneself doing good things.<p>I bet it&#x27;s correlated with generosity and more likely to be so than the mean spiritedness that comes from wagging a finger at those who are putting themselves out there.

Interesting. This baselines the cost of one life to $2000 effectively. So I could trade two lives for a top of the line Macbook Pro. Buy an SF home for 500 lives. I spend one human life to live in SF every month. Huh.

I didn&#x27;t find this exact page particularly interesting, but I enjoyed exploring the website. It&#x27;s a good example of a personal website.

Thank you for doing this. I once knew a guy who said it should be your goal to give over a third of your lifetime earnings to charity (I think it was a third, somewhere between 10% and 50%) and this reminded me instantly of that. Great to read about something super positive in these times.

I see that on the pages about each of his books, all of the chapters are listed. Are those actually the complete chapters or only excerpts?

$250k is the revenue? if he wired the whole thing, who covered the costs?

Should have donated to the Clinton Foundation. They do great work.

Charity is to be considered charity when nobody gets to know about it.<p>Broadcasting it to the entire world charity to show the world how generous or or good one is, is uncharitable. This is just someone getting ego trip after spending 250k that they did not need.

It&#x27;s a bit sad that you&#x27;ve taken a wonderful, altruistic act and cheapened it by feeling the need to broadcast it on the internet :(