My issue with this guy is that he is spitting out the same data that you can read on a 100 more blogs just like his. It reminds me of SEO advice, or marketing advice that a thousand yahoos on the internet believe they are experts at. It's basically drivel for the most part and you could follow his "advice" to the letter with absolutely no results. The kicker: he uses E. L. James as an example. I'd rather buy a lottery ticket than try to become the next E.L. James. Basically 50 Shades was lightning in a bottle for that author. It happened despite anything she did.
I agree in that the article posted has the exact same content as other blogs, but Altucher is one of the most respected bloggers and business authors in America today. He has started many successful and doomed businesses throughout the boom and bust period of the Internet revolution and Financial Crisis. His book has much more info than how to self publish a book. It is just covered in a few pages in a book that is about 150 pages long. The book is more of an inspirational source of ideas to find ways to make a living outside the traditional tenets of employment.
Not reading the book, I have nothing to go by, but my gut instinct and my own experience over the years. Being an aspiring writer myself, I've read MANY MANY books on the subject of writing. Usually I can tell within the first two or 3 pages weather the book is a bunch of nonsense or if it has something significant to say about writing. Most books in this area are bull**** drivel, by the way. I few books are not, but that is the exception, and while I understand that your recommendation is not specifically about books, my concern applies to other genres as well, specially self-help books. Books that I found valuable as a writer are: Constructing a Play - Marion Galloway Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace The Rhetoric of Fiction - Wayne C. Booth Dictionary of Narratology - Gerald Prince A Grammar of Motives - Kenneth Burke Elements of Style - Shrunk & White Any book from the writer's digest is probably crap. Also, the best teacher is actually the authors themselves. I particularly read: Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, lorrie Moore and a few others.
I remember the rejection thread you posted. Amazing to think that experience morphed into your book on Amazon! Props to you!!
Hey sorry I've been away for a few days. To answer your question, I started speaking on this topic. This TED talk I gave was wildly popular, and almost became my business card. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZFWyseydTkQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> After that, I started getting invited to give talks at all kinds of places, and the message of overcoming rejection fear resonated with everyone. In one of the talks, a publisher's editor was in the audience and sold me the idea of publishing the book. So here I am. Two years ago if you asked me where I would end up , there is no way I would tell you being author is my destiny. Of course, I don't have everything, if anything, figured out. I still have a lot of aspiration to build something amazing on top of this mission of helping others to overcome rejection. But I do know one thing: life is really fully of surprises, and you only encounter them when you go out and do stuff.
Great work. On a different topic, you mentioned you were invited to give talks. Did you ever have any fear of giving a speech in front of hundreds of people? If so, how did you over come it?
