The book made more than 100k as it's still selling pretty well. In fact, the sales have increased over time, even if the book is now 5 years old.

I keep on updating it and will release a second edition soon.

The marketing effort is not just for the book. It also helps me sell:

- video courses

- on-site training

- online training and workshops

- find consulting opportunities

- subscription licenses for a software product I created, Hypersistence Optimizer, https://vladmihalcea.com/hypersistence-optimizer/

That makes sense. From what I’ve seen, most authors don’t write books just to make money from the books themselves but as the center of the “flywheel”.

I manged to get some training engagements because someone in the company read the book and liked it.

So, it can surely help you sell other services. However, this Twitter thread aimed to point out that a book can also make good money, not just be an exposure mechanism.

> Anyone that smart could make more than that - guaranteed just by consulting.

I'd have absolutely no idea where to even start consulting, or whether I'd have any aptitude for it. I'd be very surprised if anyone anywhere wanted to pay me $100k for consulting!

But I could probably write a book.

People have strengths in different areas.

Yes you could write a book, but no one would buy it or even hear about it unless you put in the work that he did to make a name for himself.

By the time you established yourself as an expert in the field like he did, consulting opportunities would open themselves up.

I just have a very small network compared to him, haven’t tried to market myself and just through word of mouth, I’ve had a couple of people asking me about consulting for their startups that could have easily netted $30K - $40K at $125-$150/hour.

I have a strict policy about not doing side gigs so I turned them down. But now, I probably would have had to turn them down regardless because of a conflict of interest since I do consulting as part of $day_job.

It all tends to be interconnected. A number of people ask me for advice based in part on the last book I wrote. I'm happy to give them a free hour phone call as it's sort of good ambassadorship associated with my day job. I could do a side consulting business in the space but don't really have an interest so I give them the name of one or two people I know who do have consulting businesses if they want to dig deeper.

> Yes you could write a book, but no one would buy it or even hear about it

Lol thanks for the attack on my writing skill and ability to promote myself!

Being an expert in a field and being able to write a book doesn't mean you're any good at consulting. That's my point. It's a different skill.

That’s not what I said at all. I in fact said just the opposite. The process he took to promote himself so his book would sell is the same process it would take to promote himself as a consultant.

Also, consulting really involves only a few things:

- marketing yourself

- being able to listen to people and figure out their needs

- being a good communicator and being able to explain concepts well.

- being technical sound enough to solve the problem.

- being disciplined enough to be a consistent worker.

Most of which overlaps with being a successful technical author.