It’s been 7 months since I launched an e-book.

So far, I sold 2,425 copies and made $10,715.27

This is everything I learned...

Last year I felt the urge to reconnect with the software development community.

I used to travel all the time to give talks, and now I was stuck at home.

So I decided to write a book!

Writing a book is freaking scary.

When you say out loud “I’m writing a book” you immediately get anxious and nervous.

That's why, at first, I decided to stay quiet and not tell people about it.

Instead of reaching out to traditional publishers, I decided to take the self-publishing route.

This means doing *everything* by yourself, like designing a book cover, drawing illustrations, editing, reviewing, promoting, etc.

I approached this like any other software project.

Breaking down big problems into tiny tasks and working on them one by one.

How hard could this be?

It was hard. SUPER hard.

There were days when I was super inspired, and there were weeks when I didn’t write a single word.

A couple of months later, the book was done!

Now it was time to think about logistics.

How would people buy it? How much should it cost?

When you write a book you have to make a choice:

You can either optimize for distribution or optimize for monetization.

I decided to optimize for distribution.

That’s why the price is $9.99, and you can get it on Amazon, even though they take 30% of all sales.

I also put it on Gumroad, where they take only 3% of each sale.

https://gumroad.com/l/14habits  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BF74RRG 

In the first month, there was a lot of excitement so I quickly reached the #1 best-selling position in the Software Development category.

As time passed, things slowed down, and the best channel was word of mouth.

When using Amazon, you have zero visibility on who buys your book, so I had to get creative.

I added several bonus sections inside the book. That way readers could go to my site and enter their emails to get the bonus.

Because of that mechanism, today I have 3,713 subscribers on my @ConvertKit mailing list.

Now I'm able to connect with the readers and send them weekly emails.

Having a site also gives you credibility. So far http://14habits.com  received 43,514 pageviews.

The top three acquisition channels are:

1. Social: 35.6%
2. Direct: 27%
3. Referral: 20.6%

In terms of sales, here are the numbers from @gumroad.

423 copies sold
$3,799.39 in sales

And here’s the breakdown from @amazon.

USD: $2,096.77
GBP: £210.05
EUR: €350.37
JPY: ¥155.26
INR: ₹3,800.42
CAD: $113.03
BRL: R$26,149.79
MXN: $750.17
AUD: $68.64

Putting it all together I have:

2,002 copies sold
$7,915.88 in sales

We grow up thinking that only these super intellectual people are allowed to write books.

The reality is - you don’t need permission from anyone.

Books can have a huge impact on someone's life. If you're hesitant about doing one, put that fear aside and go do it!