Pre-order Personal Development for Smart People (Blog)

[Adrienne]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

The timing of the release of various versions is up to Hay House, but they do have the ebook rights, so a Kindle version is certainly possible. I'll certainly push for a Kindle version.

I'd especially love to see the book translated into other languages. Hay House is an International publisher with branches on several continents, and they have the ability to license the book rights to other publishers for territories they don't cover directly.

My web traffic was built on referrals, so I expect the book will do really well in the long run. I just wish the brick-and-mortar book business moved at the speed of blogging.

Ahh to order, or wait for the kindle version? That is the questions.. ummm i just may like you enough and want to support the book enough to order both, and give the printed version away when there is a kindle version.. oh that is a good idea!
Off to order mine now!
Thanks for pushing the kindle version!

Adrienne

[AuspiciousEight]

Originally I wasn't going to order...until I read this post. Steve, you are a hell of a salesman.

The amazon sales rank is now sitting at #419 and #12 for the category of personal transformation. Not bad for a book that doesn't even ship for another 3 months.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what you're going to do with all of this new found money...

[Savage]

The Amazon sales rank is now at 364. I'll be sending out a newsletter later today, so that will hopefully push it even further. It would be amazing if it could hit the top 100 just on pre-orders.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by AuspiciousEight

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what you're going to do with all of this new found money...

Buy groceries?

I don't think most people realize how little money there is in book publishing for the author -- unless you happen to have a mega hit that sells hundreds of thousands of copies. Of course that's what I want to see, but we have a long way to go to get there.

I heard a statistic that 95% of books don't sell more than 5,000 copies total. And apparently 200,000 new books will be released this year.

Obviously this website gives my book a definite edge, but I actually lose money by promoting it.

I get a royalty for each copy sold, but it's around 10% of what I'd earn if I self-published. If there's a financial payoff, it will most likely come from being able to book more speaking engagements as a published author.

Writing a book isn't a good financial choice for most people. Most people will do better financially by creating a product and selling it direct, especially if they already have a platform. But a good reason to work with a publisher is that they can help you get your message into the hands of people you'd otherwise never reach.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Tuumble

While a 30,000 initial print run probably makes sound business sense in the circumstances I suspect it will turn out to woefully short of what will be needed.

I think it is very possible for the initial printing to be half or more pre-sold before the book is released to shipping. What do the rest of you think?

[Jonathan Browne]

I'm not sure why steve isn't more confident about how big this could become for him. Yeah, books aren't that lucrative if you only sell 5000 copies total. Whatever happened to the law of attraction man! Visualize that best selling book.

I'm pretty sure JK Rowling is one of the richest people in england from her book series. This book has the potential to be as big as Stephen Coveys 7 Habits of Effective People in my opinion because of its logical structure and broad appeal. This is a book by someone who believe in law of attraction principles but its not another the secret, harmonic wealth, ask and it is given etc.

This looks to be a very specific guide to keeping personal growth on track. I believe Steve has been the real reason for start of a lot of peoples personal growth journeys because unlike guys like Tony Robbins hes not this larger than life figure with over the top outrageous marketing. Not that the approach those guys take doesn't work as they prolly are currently a lot more wealthy than steve. However what steve has done is make personal development look somewhat neutral.

Your not going to get weird looks from people for having that book like "oh look at that guy reading the weird new age book". At face value it seems to be a practical and pragmatic book about personal development. A salesperson is prolly going to get laughed at if he brings "the secret" into work to read on the break. This book will prolly escape that kind of judgement.

I also think it's the job of the Steve Pavlina community to help promote this book! Lot's of us have blogs, some of which are very popular blogs in their own rights. Let's start promoting this book so that millions more people who would otherwise never have heard of these concepts can be introduced to them. Many of us prolly owe a lot of our progress in our lives right now to Steve. Show your appreciation.

[AuspiciousEight]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Buy groceries?

I don't think most people realize how little money there is in book publishing for the author -- unless you happen to have a mega hit that sells hundreds of thousands of copies. Of course that's what I want to see, but we have a long way to go to get there.

I heard a statistic that 95% of books don't sell more than 5,000 copies total. And apparently 200,000 new books will be released this year.

Obviously this website gives my book a definite edge, but I actually lose money by promoting it.

I get a royalty for each copy sold, but it's around 10% of what I'd earn if I self-published. If there's a financial payoff, it will most likely come from being able to book more speaking engagements as a published author.

Writing a book isn't a good financial choice for most people. Most people will do better financially by creating a product and selling it direct, especially if they already have a platform. But a good reason to work with a publisher is that they can help you get your message into the hands of people you'd otherwise never reach.

I'm just speculating here...but I'm betting that this book will be fairly successful(It's now at #333 sales rank on Amazon).

If this book is very successful it could easily bring thousands, if not millions, of more people to this site via word of mouth. This is where I see the extra financial boost coming from.

And, of course, you'll be able to buy a lot more groceries.

Take care,

[Fullcrum]

If I were Steve spending his money on groceries I'd experiment with various expensive raw food items.

Acai berries and such. See what all the hype is about and post about it.

[Brendon Colby]

I stumbled upon your blog in 2006 through a link in "Mind Performance Hacks." Like many others it's had a HUGE impact on my life. I'm so excited that you have written a book, not for the monetization potential but simple because it's obvious without you saying so that you're very passionate about these ideas. I've pre-ordered it - hopefully we can push you into the top 100!

[Savage]

I think the problem I'm having is that while I do expect the book to become a hit, I'm not really comfortable with the celebrity it may generate for me as an individual. I very much want these ideas to spread, but I don't want to be turned into some kind of phony guru. I tell a lot of failure stories in the book to try to prevent people people from forming any kind of guru image. There's a whole chapter in the book (Chapter 5: Authority), which is about how we need to become the authorities of our own lives and not give our power away to external gurus.

It's no secret I'm not a fan of mainstream media, so I'm a little concerned about how the media might screw up the message if the book becomes very popular and generates a lot of attention. A section of Chapter 1: Truth even talks about the problems of media conditioning (as a block to truth).

So I must admit that I'm feeling a little anxious as to whether the real message will get through the noise if the book does really well. I know this is something I'll need to work through soon if I want to be congruent about seeing the book succeed.

Too much celebrity is a problem because it can conflict with the principle of oneness. It can actually create more distance and disconnection.

If the book generates a lot of income, I intend to use the money to help launch the non-profit foundation I've always wanted to start. I want to create a global Toastmasters-like organization for people who are dedicated to personal growth, something that would ultimately have thousands of individual clubs around the world. Small groups of people would meet regularly to help each other work on personal growth challenges. Think of it like a global network of local support groups for people who want to grow. I've already been talking with a consultant who works with non-profits to get advice on how to start one. Apparently there's a lot of red tape involved.

[Savage]

I should mention that another of my goals is to eventually turn StevePavlina.com into an ad-free site. All the free content will remain free, so I'm not creating a membership site.

You may not have noticed, but I've already been lightening up the Adsense ads on the site. For starters, most of the Adsense ads have been removed from the home page.

I make less money by doing this, but I think it makes the site more usable. Many of the ads being displayed just aren't congruent with the message of the site, so I realize they have to go.

It may take several more months before we can go totally ad-free and still keep everything sustainable, but we'll eventually get there.

[Jonathan Browne]

lol, I never even really noticed the ads once. If people are clicking on them they must have some value to people so why would you want to take them away?

Then again maybe you can find a way to move away from google and into more of a sponsored approach so the ads provide more value.

As for celebrity, I really don't understand that problem. I would welcome celebrity in my own life because to me it just means more opportunity. Maybe you still struggle with some kind of subconcious resentment of the popular crowd. Im going to venture to guess you weren't the coolest guy in high school.

Yes, the mythology of a celebrity can sometimes take on a life of it's own. I'm pretty sure though that already people reading your blogs don't really know the real you, they know the personal development Steve Pavlina. Your already pretty much known as guru. You don't see many posts about your actual day to day family life etc. You just have to take charge of your PR and trust that the message of your book is clear.

If people aren't reading the book and instead are getting some kind of message about you and your ideas from the media what's the big deal anyway? I don't think your going to become the next L Ron Hubbard just because a lot of people are reading your work and coming up with additional speculation beyond what you intended.

I can't imagine this nonprofit idea will come to a full fruition without this book giving you the nationwide recognition you need to have the leverage for something like that. The world moves for celebrities in ways it doesn't for average people. Especially celebrities using the law of attraction properly. Just look at oprah.

[Bruce Achterberg]

So Steve went ahead and wrote a manual for living (although you could argue that it's a manual for consciousness, and I'm sure it has applicability to raw consciousness, but I don't want to conjecture about what non-physical consciousness is comprised of just yet since it'll probably blow our mind ). And it sounds unreasonably good (good is the new bad; unreasonably good is where it's at).

I've been kind of saying "why isn't everything easier?" for most of my life, so it's glad someone has kind of said, "indeed, why isn't everything easier?" and gone and taken a figurative shot at the "easier" bullseye—a 3 million copies sold best seller shot.

It makes me wonder, though: if someone went ahead and figured out this stuff and wrote a book about it (that's well-structured and actionable, even), now what am I going to do?

The answer? Read Steve's book for the solution! See how that works? Touche, Steve. And good game!

I really do like the compass analogy, though. I tend to use a lot of compass concepts myself that kind of explain a ridiculous amount of things in disgusting amounts of detail. You know I'm talking about a compass concept when my writings lapse into the 500 words or greater mark, or people start looking at their watch when I speak with them.

Also, as a leader in the strengths movement, I liked that Steve said "feeling strong" in his article and seems to have recognised "feeling strong" as vitally important as it is. Plus, you know a book is good when the author uses it himself.

I look forward to spreading Pavlina propaganda wherever I go (more so than I do now). And finally, it's cool to see Steve starting to monetise his site with his own products now. He said he would, but it's much cooler to experience.

I will now proceed to use no smilies for a month. *wink* *lie face*

[Bruce Achterberg]

On another note, I need to fix some text from Steve's article. Steve says:

If this book sounds like it would be helpful to you, please take a moment to pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth at Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. The book will be shipped to you as soon as it’s available.

That's a little too modest. Let's see here...

If you have money, please take a moment to pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth at Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. The book will be shipped to you as soon as it’s available.

Nope, not quite there yet.

If you have money, please take a moment to pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth at Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. If you don't have money, steal some and sell your shoes.The book will be shipped to you as soon as it’s available.

Nope, a little too illegal.

If you have a pulse, pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth at Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com—now! The book will be shipped to you as soon as it’s available.

That's better. More concise, even.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

If the book generates a lot of income, I intend to use the money to help launch the non-profit foundation I've always wanted to start. I want to create a global Toastmasters-like organization for people who are dedicated to personal growth, something that would ultimately have thousands of individual clubs around the world. Small groups of people would meet regularly to help each other work on personal growth challenges. Think of it like a global network of local support groups for people who want to grow. I've already been talking with a consultant who works with non-profits to get advice on how to start one. Apparently there's a lot of red tape involved.

That's an exciting idea!

Yeah, there seems to be more redtape involved now - I'm surprised and dismayed now that at my Toastmasters club we now have to yearly file an IRS form....something we didn't need to do before.

Anyhow, I love the idea of a personal development club network where you can go and meet people to help work on your growth as well as theirs! I'd love to eventually hear your vision of how the meetings would be setup, what kind of structure you'd have in the club as well as in the organization overall. From what I've seen myself in voluntary organizations such as Toastmasters, campus clubs and fraternities for a good while - having a strong headquarter and organizational strutures seems to help a lot in helping individuals clubs and chapters succeed and do well and fullfill their purpose.

[digitman]

Is the book going to be released in ebook? I don't want to pay for S&H and prefer to read on the laptop

Also if you make the site ad-free how do you plan to make money?

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Originally Posted by seeker5

From what I've seen myself in voluntary organizations such as Toastmasters, campus clubs and fraternities for a good while - having a strong headquarter and organizational strutures seems to help a lot in helping individuals clubs and chapters succeed and do well and fullfill their purpose.

Yeah but then in 200 hundred years from now the success of it would turn it into something like the catholic chruch

Seriously though, it would be great to see such an organisation. It would make it much easier to meet personal dvt minded people localy.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by digitman

Is the book going to be released in ebook? I don't want to pay for S&H and prefer to read on the laptop

Also if you make the site ad-free how do you plan to make money?

An ebook version may come out later -- that will be determined by Hay House. I'm not sure how they like to time ebook releases vs. hardcover or paperback releases. But they have the rights to release an ebook if they want.

I'm sure I can generate plenty of income by selling original info products. I think that's a better fit for this site than selling advertising. Some of the ads Google has been serving up lately have seemed pretty lame to me... i.e. not a very good fit for the content.

[Dave Kaminski]

How do you feel about the fact that your book will most likely be widely available via torrents?

I imagine (as you said, the profits aren't really coming from the book) you'd be happy to see your work so widely available. Are you at a stage where this wouldn't upset you in the slightest, as you knew before you wrote the book that it would end up ripped off somewhere some day anyway?

[Lucas]

Congratulations, Steve. I will be picking this up. I like the concepts a lot.

[bigadam]

I asked in another thread about an Audio version. I connect with your podcasts quite easily, and think I would better absorb an audio version than printed version of the book.

How are those decisions made? Do certain sales targets have to be met?

Regardless, I have preordered the book - very excited for it.

[Neutral]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

It’s possible there may be an audio version if the book sells well, but so far there’s been no commitment to that. If Hay House sees demand for an audio version, I’ll be happy to record one.

Would it be recorded independently, or under Hay House?

Many authors on Audible read their own books. But I have no idea what that's like for new authors.

But hearing it professionally recorded would be great. And you could write about your recording experience (I've heard many conflicting things).

I know I'm jumping the gun on all this, but if you couldn't do the recording, who would be your choice as a replacement? Would you feel that if someone else did the recording, you'd be selling out your "baby"? Would it "disintegrate" the work?

[Jonathan Mead]

Steve,

Dude. I was totally right. When you first talked about the book release a while back I suggested a core principle. That the How in your life is more the root of all the other aspects of life: the what, why, when and where. You suggested that what I was describing was intelligence. Correct.

Now you say Truth + Love + Power = Intelligence.

I knew I was on to something. Coincidence? I think not. =)

Can't wait for the book to come out.

[borisg]

Its amazing how high and fast your star has risen.

About two years ago I donated $5 to you because I read some articles that really helped me. I figured it would buy you a pack of Boca burgers. (don't you miss those now?)

Just preordered your book and looking forward to buying some extra copies for my dearest friends.

I won't be sending any more $5 donations as my financial situation is not so hot at the moment...hope its ok! Maybe after bush is out of office my outlook will improve...we'll see..

Keep going like your going!

Boris

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

How do you feel about the fact that your book will most likely be widely available via torrents?

As long as people read it, that's what matters most. Everyone will get a chance to learn about the contributor vs. moocher mindset in Chapter 10.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by borisg

Its amazing how high and fast your star has risen.

Yup, 17-1/2 years ain't bad.

[Savage]

Here's how the audio version works...

If Hay House green lights an audio version of the book, they come to me and ask if I want to record it. I get a small recording fee if I agree to hit the studio and make the recording. Unless I'm completely swamped at the time, I intend to say yes to that.

Otherwise, they have the option to have someone else record it. I'd much rather record it myself though.

So far there's been no commitment to an audio version, but I'd certainly love to see that happen.

Keep in mind that from Hay House's perspective, I'm a first-time author with no track record in book publishing. While they've been excited to work with me because of the strong content and online track record I can bring to the table, this is a unique situation for them. At this point it doesn't make sense for them to overcommit until they see how well the hardcover version sells, at least during the first week. They paid me a sizeable advance that they need to recoup. Assuming the book sells really well, it opens the door to many more possibilities -- ebook, audio, translations, bobblehead dolls, etc.

One product I'd like to see them develop would be a card deck, such as they've done for some of Dr. Dyer's books like The Power of Intention. Imagine a deck of 60 or so cards with key points from the book. That would be nice to give people as a gift.

[Savage]

The book's Amazon sales rank is now at 175. Will it reach the top 100?

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Since I'm sure some computer game players will notice the connection, I'll say that the computer game Ultima IV was definitely one of the many inspirations for this book. That game presented a system of virtues that includes honesty, compassion, valor, justice, honor, sacrifice, humility, and spirituality, which are based on different combinations of truth, love, and courage. You can learn more about it on this Wikipedia page.

Peculiar. I remember that a few months ago I actually visited that page (despite never having played the game). I found the system compelling and even printed the pages.

[Neutral]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I’d written many articles about personal growth, but I still didn’t have a clear definition of what it means to grow as a conscious human being. What the heck does it mean to grow anyway? Basically it means you make your life better in some way. But how do we define better? I realized that if I was going to write a book about personal growth, I needed a clear answer to these questions...

I don't mean to go off topic, but I wanted to comment on this.

In the past, I've seen posts like, "I've followed your advice Steve, and decided to become a lawyer (or whatever). But my life is still miserable."

You'd respond to the effect of, "If you think that's the most empowering choice, go for it. I won't interfere with you're decision."

I'd think, "He's saying that to be nice, but isn't he disingenuous? Surely, he has an opinion. He must belief that things, whether an idea, belief, choice, value, purpose in life, etc., can be better or closer to correct?"

Obviously, you believe your living the most intelligent life/purpose you can currently think of. I believe the same of myself.

But do you extend that judgment of others?