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Publicly creating anything is an interesting experience. I've spent my life coding, but in my spare time I've created things: magazine articles, apps, presentat

Publicly creating anything is an interesting experience. I've spent my life coding, but in my spare time I've created things: magazine articles, apps, presentations, books, and so forth. When you first start, you're usually in love with yourself. Anybody watch "A Christmas Story"? Most new creators are like little Ralph, amazed at how awesome their work is. At some point, you move into being a professional. Then you realize that everything you create sucks. It just sucks in various ways and to various degrees. The difference between an artist and an amateur is that the artist is never satisfied with their work. That's the internal battle. Externally, over and over again, you release some new "incredible" piece of work, tell everybody about it? Crickets. Nobody cares. You, if you're an average person, could find a cure to cancer today. Nobody would care. There's a whole universe set up in each genre around who's important, who to listen to, and so forth. The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues. I finished a book last month, Info-Ops. https://leanpub.com/info-ops https://leanpub.com/info-ops Took me six years to get through it. At the end, am I happy? Not so much. Angry is probably a better word for it. Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move on. The only people I know who are extremely pleased with creating a major work or either the already-successful -- or the people who don't know any better. I've heard successful startup founders describe it as going out there with your message and saying it over and over again until you're completely sick of it. Then saying it some more. When we see these successful companies, what we don't realize, as the tweet shows, they all spent time talking to the wall. My big mistake over the years was not romanticizing the creation part. I moved to professional status fairly quickly. It was romanticizing the curve of despair part, oddly enough. I had to learn that there's no honor or special hero status for moving through this stage. Lots of failed efforts go through it as well. (In fact, the stats say it's more likely that you're on a failed effort. You still have to go through here.) You have to mature and see it as just more work, like the rest of it. The reason I use the word "anger" to describe the feeling is that it's much like taking a shovel and digging a small hole -- then realizing that the job in front of you is to dig an entire trench. There's usually some cursing involved. You can say that's it's all fun and challenging, or you can say it's all pain and misery. But it's just the work. At the end of the day, it's just the work. Some people say successful startups are all luck. Some say they're all hard work. The truth is that they're all on this same journey, whether it all ends up well or not. If you stick with it, you might succeed. If you give up, you never will. (Insert Zen/Existentialism discussion here)

repsilat 8y ago
As someone who is just starting to head "up the other side" this is a difficult comment to read, but a necessary one. Thanks for writing it. I suppose you could generalise the curve by saying "One curve for creating a product, another curve for creating a company/following" etc. With a great product in hand, things seem rosy, so you say "Let's get famous!" and quickly realise it's more work than you anticipated. Maybe. That seems like a healthier conclusion than the simply dispiriting "fame is a catch-22".
Pimpus 8y ago
> The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues. People believe what they want to believe, and I think you've already made up your mind. From my view, however, you are just going to limit your success with such beliefs, and worse, the cynicism will drain your enthusiasm and energy. If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people. I know a ton of very talented chiptune artists who are struggling. Why? Well, would you buy a chiptune album? People spend too much time in their own private universes and forget what other people are looking for. I'm not saying you shouldn't make chiptune or mathcore or whatever, but you have to be realistic about it, especially if you want to make money. And look, I'll be honest -- not trying to be mean here, really -- but I'm not at all surprised your book isn't generating interest. My first reaction to "Info-Ops" is that it's super dry and technical, not to mention I have no idea what it means. So right off the bat I have a bad gut reaction. Did you not get any second opinions about this title? And $40 for an e-book... well, I admittedly don't know anything about pricing books, but if an e-book is too expensive then people will just pirate it, no?
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  Thank you for your comment. I consider it negative, but that's a good thing! I love negative feedback. I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work. After all, you don't even know what it is. You just know what you saw. So really all we could talk about is first impressions. I would like, however to take issue with your thesis. If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people. It is necessary to make something that's interesting to people, but it is not sufficient to do so. That was my entire point. The interesting and valuable part is table stakes. Price? I'd give it away for free. I'm not trying to sell the most books. I'm trying to help the most people. Price is an indicator of commitment. If I get a lot of people paying the money and blowing it off? I might raise the price. If people pirate it? I want it to make a difference. There are a lot of people who want to sell two-dollar self-help books and such. Wonderful market. That's just not my game. Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are wasting their time. That's awful. So it's all good. Thank you for the first impressions. I haven't really already decided about much of anything aside from there's a lot of work left to do -- and that considering as much work as I've been through so far, that pisses me off somewhat. So what? I've been angry before. It sounds like a lot of work has to do with the landing page. Cool. Time to get started. ADD: You know, there is a huge hunk of money spent every year on books that have great first impressions -- and don't make a positive difference in people's lives. Billions. So coming at this from "But your first impression sucks!" is kinda backwards, at least the way I see it. You want value, then creativity and interest, then honesty .... somewhere down the line you work on turning people on with a web page.

repsilat 8y ago

As someone who is just starting to head "up the other side" this is a difficult comment to read, but a necessary one. Thanks for writing it. I suppose you could generalise the curve by saying "One curve for creating a product, another curve for creating a company/following" etc. With a great product in hand, things seem rosy, so you say "Let's get famous!" and quickly realise it's more work than you anticipated. Maybe. That seems like a healthier conclusion than the simply dispiriting "fame is a catch-22".

Pimpus 8y ago

> The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues. People believe what they want to believe, and I think you've already made up your mind. From my view, however, you are just going to limit your success with such beliefs, and worse, the cynicism will drain your enthusiasm and energy. If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people. I know a ton of very talented chiptune artists who are struggling. Why? Well, would you buy a chiptune album? People spend too much time in their own private universes and forget what other people are looking for. I'm not saying you shouldn't make chiptune or mathcore or whatever, but you have to be realistic about it, especially if you want to make money. And look, I'll be honest -- not trying to be mean here, really -- but I'm not at all surprised your book isn't generating interest. My first reaction to "Info-Ops" is that it's super dry and technical, not to mention I have no idea what it means. So right off the bat I have a bad gut reaction. Did you not get any second opinions about this title? And $40 for an e-book... well, I admittedly don't know anything about pricing books, but if an e-book is too expensive then people will just pirate it, no?

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
Thank you for your comment. I consider it negative, but that's a good thing! I love negative feedback. I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work. After all, you don't even know what it is. You just know what you saw. So really all we could talk about is first impressions. I would like, however to take issue with your thesis. If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people. It is necessary to make something that's interesting to people, but it is not sufficient to do so. That was my entire point. The interesting and valuable part is table stakes. Price? I'd give it away for free. I'm not trying to sell the most books. I'm trying to help the most people. Price is an indicator of commitment. If I get a lot of people paying the money and blowing it off? I might raise the price. If people pirate it? I want it to make a difference. There are a lot of people who want to sell two-dollar self-help books and such. Wonderful market. That's just not my game. Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are wasting their time. That's awful. So it's all good. Thank you for the first impressions. I haven't really already decided about much of anything aside from there's a lot of work left to do -- and that considering as much work as I've been through so far, that pisses me off somewhat. So what? I've been angry before. It sounds like a lot of work has to do with the landing page. Cool. Time to get started. ADD: You know, there is a huge hunk of money spent every year on books that have great first impressions -- and don't make a positive difference in people's lives. Billions. So coming at this from "But your first impression sucks!" is kinda backwards, at least the way I see it. You want value, then creativity and interest, then honesty .... somewhere down the line you work on turning people on with a web page.