Authority
by Nathan Barry · first published 2013
66% recommend34% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Step-by-step guide to writing and selling your own ebook: build an email list and audience before launch, create educational content, and market it. Suits developers and others self-publishing in a niche.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Here, $29: https://www.amazon.com/Authority-Become-Following-Financial-... I read it in 2013, and it's probably earned me at least $100,000. That's being veeeery conservative. Not everyone will have that experience, of course. I had an existing…
on “ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business” ↗…Niches are a great place to work because you can build expertise and a following. patio11 sold bingo card software to schoolteachers for years and it was foundational to his success. I recommend the book "Authority" by Nathan Barry as a step-by-step guide to getting started creating information products online.
on “Ask HN: Is it too late to make a side income by creating Udemy courses/similar?” ↗ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (good reference on good principles) Traction by Gino Wickman (how to create SOPs & scale) Authority by Nathan Barry (how to develop an audience)
on “Ask HN: Which books have helped you the most professionally?” ↗There's a lot out there. I'd start by reading Authority by Nathan Barry
on “Ask HN: Passive income ideas for solo developers?” ↗I love his book "Authority" (not affiliated with the author, just got a lot of value from it). It states that one of the best moves to make a claim of expertise is writing a book, and contains a framework to write a book about something you know in ~3 months. http://nathanbarry.com/authority/
on “ConvertKit: How Nathan Barry Bootstrapped an Email Marketing Business” ↗First, I want to congratulate Matthew on creating a truly valuable resource that people love and are learning from. That's the hardest part of any online business. Typography for Lawyers and Practical Typography are great resources that deserve every bit of praise and attention they've received. Whenever someone creates something this valuable I like to see that they get paid for their work. Afte
on “The economics of a web-based book” ↗The most important thing you can do to increase your odds of success when releasing a technical book is to have multiple pricing tiers, adding additional content so you give people the option to pay you more than $30 or whatever you are charging for just the book. I released a book in May 2016 teaching PHP programmers how to refactor code with lots of loops and conditionals into collection pipeli
on “How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails” ↗…me, isn't writing the book or figuring out what tools to use, but it's marketing. Email lists, FB ads, etc. are really what drive the success or failure of your book. Nathan Barry's writing on this in Authority is my bible for that. Also, if we're talking tools, shout out to Leanpub. Love that platform, especially for developer books! EDIT: Nathan Barry doesn't specifically talk about FB Ads, so in terms of…
on “The Tools I Use to Write Books” ↗Buy this book. Read it. Implement it. http://nathanbarry.com/authority/ Doing those three things have directly led to me earning approximately $40,000 from book sales in the last 16 months from my book Mastering Modern Payments[1], and I'm not even Nathan's best case[2]. Writing and editing and publishing and promoting a book, even a short one, is a difficult thing. It's one of the hardest thin
on “Ask HN: Making money with ebooks and video courses vs. writing apps?” ↗…for my self-published ebook this morning: http://www.petekeen.net/announcing-mastering-modern-payments... </plug> I've been working on it for a few months after reading Nathan Barry's excellent book Authority. Based on that I started a mailing list right away and have collected a few hundred email addresses that I can market to. I can't say I have any concrete advice (bdunn's advice sounds great, though).…
on “Ask HN: Has anyone here self-published a book? Any advice?” ↗Here are a few resources that might be helpful: Ask HN: Has anyone here self-published a book? Any advice? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052075 APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch http://apethebook.com Authority by Nathan Barry http://nathanbarry.com/authority
on “Ask HN: Best ways to promote an ebook?” ↗…like a great concept for a book, however, perhaps just a little bit more detail on the landing page? I definitely know that this is the route you should be taking (per Nathan Barry, if you haven't read Authority, check it out), but I'd like to see just a little more detail.
on “Show HN: Full Stack Entrepreneur – A Full Stack Guide To Entrepreneurship” ↗Here's how to turn your "problem" into an advantage: Write. You love learning new stuff, but get bored quickly. Seize the enthusiasm you have for a new technology while you've got it, and make the most of it. Create books, online courses (e.g. Udemy), and blog about what you're learning. Build up experience and a reputation as someone who can turn lots of new and confusing technologies into stuf
on “Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do?” ↗I've published two books through publishers and the actual writing experience was very similar to the book that I self-published. For the self-published book I followed he basic path set forth in Nathan Barry's Authority[0]. Financially speaking it was definitely more lucrative to self-publish, but I've got access to a large audience to sell to. There is another approach that I've seen that I fi
on “Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?” ↗At the end of the day it boils down to consistently making content and publishing it in multiple channels. Read Content Machine by Dan North and Authority by Nathan Barry. Both books give you really good insight into how to make "sticky" content. You will need to write articles on Medium.com and answer Quora.com questions - each piece should reference each…
on “Ask HN: How do you get people to use your product when you suck at networking?” ↗