Launch team update #5: A killer quote, and "best seller" status
Oct 25, 2024 6:34 am
Hi – it's time for another book update!
(As a reminder: I'm planning on sending these updates weekly-ish. If you get sick of them, you can hit "unsubscribe" at the bottom and it won't affect your access to the other freebies I've promised you.)
Pre-orders are go!
Last week, I announced the name of the book on The Property Podcast and a couple of other channels and officially opened pre-orders.
So far, the response has been amazing, and the book got as high as #350 out of all books on Amazon. (That might not sound like much, but there are a lot of books in the world—The Price of Money is currently around 30,000 and still sells a fair few copies per day.)
Amazon is a bit odd in the categories it automatically applies to books, meaning I now hold the coveted "#1 best seller" status in the "APIs" category:
(This also tells you why every author these days is a "best-selling author": get a few friends to buy your book on the same day, hit #1 in some obscure category briefly, take a screenshot, and job done. This is why only the Sunday Times list truly means much.)
A killer quote
People in publishing spend a lot of time concerning themselves with "blurbs": those little quotes on the front of a book saying: "I have Rob to thank for everything I am today – Richard Branson"
Do they make much difference? Who knows. But I've managed to secure a corker for the cover of Seven Myths About Money:
"A masterpiece... this is the book I want my children to read"
Rory Sutherland, Bestselling author and Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy UK
I'm a HUGE fan of Rory, so securing this quote (and a nice personal email from him too) is pretty much the highlight of my authorial career.
Don't know him? You should! This long-form interview is fantastic if you have a couple of hours to dedicate to a fascinating conversation, or here's a more focused 15 minutes on some of his counter-intuitive ideas about advertising and marketing.
That's it for now!
I've just got back from a week in Vienna (with a day trip to Bratislava thrown in), so I don't have much else to report because I've only been doing the bare minimum to keep things ticking over.
Next week I hope to have a sales update to share with you, and I can give you a little insight into my sales goals for the launch and what it takes to hit the (real) best seller list.
Thanks!
Rob