2023 update: crossed 3,000 in June of this year!
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Today is October 16, 2021, and I just sold my 2000th copy of Friendly Ambitious Nerd! I made a video in March 2020 when I released it: rewatching it now, I came up with the idea Feb 2nd, made it available for preorder on 3rd or 4th, wrote and published the book in a month by repurposing twitter threads, blogposts. Topics that I can talk about indefinitely. The challenge for me isn’t to have material, but to frame the material in a way that is sensitive to the reader, that makes sense, that isn’t overwhelming, that’s a good introduction that brings you into the ideaspace. I wasn’t satisfied with the job that I did.
A year and a half later, I’m kind of embarrassed about the fact that I haven’t updated the book yet. I’ve been spending that time mostly working on my second ebook, Introspect. (2023 update: also 3,000+ copies sold!)
“I’m a reader before I’m a writer, and when I read my own book I’m not satisfied – it’s all over the place, too many details in some parts and not enough in others, the layout of the chapters isn’t as thoughtful as it could be,”
A few weeks later I wrote a post on my marketing blog about the marketing thinking behind FAN, and I’m really glad I wrote this because a strange thing that’s happened in the year or so since is that I’ve forgotten a lot about what it was like to try to come up with the idea for the book.
The following Venn diagram does a good job of capturing how I was thinking about it. I was very conscious of the fact that whatever I published and heralded as my “debut work” would be quite definitive – it would influence how people introduce me to others, it would influence how people interpret my other work, it would influence people’s expectations of what’s to come. And so I wanted to be careful not to pigeonhole myself into writing about a subject that I didn’t feel comfortable being defined by.
I vaguely remember surveying and reviewing my existing threads and blogposts to try and figure out: what’s really good, by my own standards? What resonates with people? What is the message or story that I want to get out into the world? A lot of it was about making friends, being kind on the internet. And it was quickly apparent that I’m a nerd in my heart of hearts, and I wanted to write a love letter to that, encourage that. Of the 3 variables, I think Ambition is the one that’s least central to my personal identity. Ambition is something I’ve struggled with. I define Ambition as distinct from prestige-seeking – it’s not about wanting accolades, trinkets, awards, sex, money, power – to me, it’s about wanting to gratify your taste and embody your aesthetics and ideals in the most powerfully resonant way possible.