Name: Perennial Seller
ISBN: 9781781257661

Perennial Seller

"How did the movie The Shawshank Redemption fail at the box office but go on to gross more than $100 million as a cult classic? How did The 48 Laws of Power miss the bestseller lists for more than a decade and still sell more than a million copies? How is Iron Maiden still filling stadiums worldwide without radio or TV exposure forty years after the band was founded? Bestselling author and marketer Ryan Holiday calls such works and artists perennial sellers. How do they endure and thrive while most books, movies, songs, video games, and pieces of art disappear quickly after initial success? How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity? Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham, as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time.

What Hacker News says

pedalpeteMay 2024

The Obstacle is the Way - Ryan Holiday

Holiday, in most of his books, makes stoic philosophy relatable and gives examples of we'd be familiar with in modern day. It's a fairly easy read, and I gift it the most as well.

As a software engineer, I found his less popular book Perennial Seller to also be very good. It describes his writing style, which honestly is very similar to coding, but also talks about his approach to marketing his books, which drives the content.

Play Bigger by Al Ramadan (and a few others) which talks about category design. I haven't tried their newer books, but I'm somewhat tempted.

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pedalpeteAug 2023

For an interesting perspective on this, I'd recommend Ryan Holiday's book Perennial Seller.

In it he describes the process of both his writing and his marketing.

You're not done writing when the chapter is written, that is just the start. All the editing is the time consuming part.

The marketing needs to be part of the plan before the writing starts. It isn't "write a book and then sell it". He's continuously building his audience, trying to figure out what to write, writing, editing, "selling" (not actively selling, but doing the work to get feedback or get people excited about what he is writing).

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

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pedalpeteOct 2021

I feel like the people who do "extra", never feel like they're doing extra, they feel like that is part of the job.

The example of "creating two screens", you make the screens, and then look at them and think...is this the best I can do? Is there a better way to protect the security? Is there a way I can reduce the boilerplate? Can I refine this so it's easier for somebody else to maintain later?

That's the job, as far as I'm concerned. It's the same in many other professions.

I like Ryan Holidays perspective on this in Perennial Seller. As a writer, you're not done when you write the chapter. That's the start, now you've got editing, and re-writes, promotion, sales...that's the work.

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pedalpeteJun 2020

I've been reading Ryan Holiday's book Perennial Seller, and it's great to read as a developer, and someone who is learning the importance of being able to sell.

The big take-away so far, is that it is all about editing. Get something down, and then work it again and again. When you write a sentence, that's just the beginning, not the end. If you take that approach, it may help.

I now view some of my writing as "wordsmithing". Sure, I write, but then I re-write and review, and get feedback, etc. etc.

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alan_wadeDec 2018

I highly recommend everyone to read "Perennial Seller" by Ryan Holiday. Really insightful and fun to read book on the same subject that does a much better job of explaining it than this dude.

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