Plato is arguably the most famous Greek philosopher -- next to Socrates and Aristotle -- and The Republic is his most famous work. What's most striking about much though thankfully maybe not all of ancient Greek writing is how relatable it is today.
Reading ancient Greek literature can also help you sound more pretentious at parties, which is nice. Download for free on Amazon Kindle or free on Apple Books. Sigmund Freud is one of those rare specialist academics who pierces into the zeitgeist. Oedipus complex, Freudian slips, id, ego and super-ego, and even the phrase "defense mechanism" are all related to Freud's works. Unfortunately, many of those works are intensely academic and dense.
At just pages, Dream Psychology is one of Freud's most notable works, and it's also one of the easiest to read. There are plenty of long reads on this list, so here's a short one. The Metamorphosis follows a man's sudden and inexplicable transformation into a huge insect, and despite spanning less than pages it has been the subject of rigorous psychological scrutiny and interpretation in the years since it was first published. Download for free on Apple Books or 77 cents on Amazon Kindle.
If you really want to challenge yourself, Shakespeare is the way to go. The language and format can take a while to get used to, but it's richly rewarding once you do. There's a play for everyone, for those who like romance, tragedy, comedy or even absolutely unhinged fantasy.
Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are among the most famous, so they would be good places to start. Almost everyone is at least a little familiar with the stories -- and trust us, familiarity with the plot helps a lot if you're new to Shakespeare.
Sherlock Holmes was cool way before Robert Downey Jr. This collection of stories was published over years ago, but mysteries have a timeless quality to them: Intrigue doesn't die with age. Sherlock Holmes may not be the most important book on this list, but it might be the most fun. We know what you're thinking: Wouldn't Jane Austen just be a more wordy and boring Bridgerton? What are they saying? What is even happening? And yes, Jane Austen books can feel very daunting and almost bland when you look at them through a modern lens.
Reading Austen books, however, is like a cheeky window into the past: They parody Regency society and poke fun at how ridiculous some social mores were at the time. Amazon is great at selling books. It gives Authors a lot of roads to success, and its algorithm rewards that success. Reaching the top rank in any category on Amazon will earn your book an orange bestseller flag. But some categories are easier to top than others. There are a lot more books on marketing than there are on boat building, so it takes more sales to capture the 1 marketing spot.
That said, a new book usually needs sales or more in the first 48 hours to capture the top spot in its least-competitive category. Reaching 1 on the entire Kindle store takes a lot more sales. Even selling enough to hit the top is a challenge. Why is it so difficult to hit the top ? Because Amazon rewards consistency. Selling 75 books every day for a month is harder to do than selling 75 books just once.
Hitting 1 here is even harder. Because Amazon Books includes every kind of book:. Topping this list means topping the sales of every edition of every book on the planet, at least for an hour.
Keep in mind that your book is competing against every other book available, fiction and nonfiction. Amazon also reports the top 20 most sold and the top 20 most read books each week, separated into fiction and nonfiction. Kindle readers track the number of pages read in a Kindle book, giving Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading books a huge leg up in every Kindle category.
Hitting the bestseller list in WSJ takes about 6, sales over the first week, but the trick here is this: pre-ordered books count as sales on the day of publication. You have to sell 6, books over several weeks or even several months, assuming you put your book up for preorder. Books sell more in December than they do in April, for example. Getting on this list during a busy season can take a lot more sales. The NYT bestseller list is as elitist as it gets. It weighs sales from independent bookstores more heavily than chain stores.
In short, the list is skewed heavily against self-published Authors. Hitting this list usually takes 10, sales or more over the first week. Like the WSJ list, pre-orders count as sales on the day of publication, but the NYT list is still a lot harder to crack. NYT tries to take bulk sales out of the equation. Not even one. If you are just looking for some numbers to benchmark your non-fiction book against, given our experience working with thousands, this is what we tell our Authors.
I have to make a lot of assumptions to even get to the numbers below, and this is the benchmark that we give to most of our Authors at Scribe. These numbers assume a normal Author, who has no audience waiting to buy their books but a decent set of personal connections, and they wrote a book that solves a clear problem for a real audience. How to Measure Book Launch Success.
Final Thoughts: A Sales Benchmark. Book Marketing. This blog post will solve that. And then at the end, I give you some benchmarks to measure your own book against. They depended on a handful of sales to the right people: Like Mike Brunel , who launched a second career when two friends in real estate asked him to present a series of talks based on the ideas in his book.
Or Tofe Evans , who created a worldwide speaking career from a book he wrote with the hope of helping just one person, any person, who really needed it. But self-published Authors have many more roads to success. Today, book sales come from 3 sources: Ebook digital sales Print book sales Audiobook sales It sounds simple, but each of these numbers has to be calculated separately.
Do a thorough analytic sweep: Make sure you know the ins-and-outs of your app before you decide to walk away. Dig deep, there may be a hidden golden nugget waiting to be discovered. Apple likes it when developers keep their projects fresh. Localize, add screenshots for different devices, create a preview video. This may be the most important thing you can do.
Change titles, keywords, categories, your first screenshot… Upload, record, analyze, and try again. Experiment with Price: Change your price around. A strategy I use frequently is to Remove the App from Sale, erase all metadata, change the icon, and re-upload as a brand new app. This is a last resort, but at least it will give you a fresh start when examined by Apple.
Secure a spot in the Bluecloud App Workshop for a full look inside the App Store with step-by-step strategies to winning with apps and downloads. You can figure this out. How do I get on the Top Charts? What special keywords are they using? The best data you have is your own. Use it. If you want to read more — subscribe to the newsletter and sign up for the app workshop. We wrote it for people who enjoy this type of article.
Easily the best place to start if you want to learn more about apps. Click here to sign up » Have a story about something YOU did that dramatically changed your downloads for the better or worse? Holy crap… talking about an AH HA! Joe- Awesome! Glad this hit home with you. I spent a lot of time trying to cram as much in as I could. Yes analytics is the key that opens all the doors in mobile.
Its like a backwards math problem, you have the solution, now you need to adjust the variables until you hit gold! We have experienced and heard from others having up to a 2 week delay before all ASO including keywords is processed.
Very important for a killer launch. Have you noticed this as well? Carter and several other experts spent a lot of time and energy putting these ebooks together. The great thing about the ebooks is not even the hundreds of pages of content and walkthroughs, but they also funnel you through steps and processes that are detrimental for your success.
Yeah I have noticed a lag… its making me second guess myself. Thanks for saying something! I was happy with those numbers considering I did no marketing, press releases or anything I know shame on me.
Every day after the 25th though the game slid lower and lower each day.. Great post Mark! I really like the rule as a rough benchmark to use. Thanks for the valuable info! Joe — Sounds like you already know what to do!
By re-releasing with some new ASO should hopefully give you some more firepower. Paid version sounds great. Andrew- Thanks for the feedback! Glad you got something out of it. I absolutely believe in cross-promotions! Its so easy to do and almost all ad networks are setup now days to get solid results. Other things I make sure to nail while launching are reviews. Best is word by mouth, but there are some powerful review services out there too. Social Media campaigns can be strong too.
But most important thing to nail during a launch are analytics and ASO. Have a great weekend! Awesome post, thanks for that Mark! Hi, thanks for this post. I have the same question as Fred. Can you explain a bit more about this installs Thanks. A year ago it was possible, but these days I keep getting my best keywords removed…. Fred Shili Jochen — Great conversation starter guys! This is a great topic to discuss. So you caught me red-handed.
Jochen — Correct. Those numbers for Chartboost sound accurate and Tier 1 is the most expensive on all platforms. I agree with you Jochen, my experiences with TapJoy have been bad in the past.
TapJoy has been traditionally used for straight installs. Nothing more than a download and a means to get on the Top Charts. On the flip side, Facebook offers more quality users because of their ability to target specific demographics hence the higher CPI.
So how can we get lower CPIs? One option worth exploring is to contact your ad network personally. Also reachout to new ad networks.
A couple times a week I get an email from a new ad network throwing a promotion at me. Thanks for your comments. Cheers, Mark. I either do the update with new features but lose the incentives for reviews and downloads of my other apps or let the app sit as it is.
Am I the only one getting updates knocked back for incentives? Is Apple getting tougher? And yes, there are times I do feel like Apple hates me! Very frustrating. Are they removing them too or is it only Apple that are cracking down? This last year i decided to take my investment and go with a company and create a game.
Across both iOs and android collectively. Thank you. This is a solid technique I mentioned in the post with the example of Crossy Road. Have your coder integrate multiple ad networks in your code AdMob, Applovin, Xplode, Chartboost, etc. Test each ad networks specifically for revenue generated and ecpms. Run several targeted ad campaigns to different demographics you think your app is made up of.
Then analyze the data and come up with a solid proven gameplan for your master app. Remove the others from the Store and publish the app in your master account and put it in 5th gear for your launch. As revenue and downloads start coming in, again measure your users and revenue. Finally contact the ad networks you are using even the ones you are not and tell them your numbers.
Pumped to learn more about your app and experience. This means releasing it in 1 or a few countries only, usually Canada, Australia or the UK.
Most big developers do this. Measure everything and tweak where necessary, so you have all relevant data and the perfect setup before the global launch.
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