TL;DR:

After being dissatisfied with his earlier publishing efforts, Shed Simove found a cheap printing house online and used Amazon to sell his books directly, rather than going through a traditional publishing house.

Once he had the book printed and available on Amazon, he enlisted the help of a PR firm to start convincing journalists to write about it and media to talk about it. Together with some good photos and a Youtube video, his sales ended up taking off.

Lessons for hackers: technology is helpful, but marketing is more important than you think it is. Get in touch with people who can help.

Your TL;DR misses the most important part of the summary: the book was titled "What men think about apart from sex" and the blank pages were the punch line.

I don't think that's very important, though, is it? I've seen these books years ago, one example was a blank book called "What men know about women". His book wasn't even that original...

I think it's rather important. It's the equivalent of spending years writing (say) a MMRPG that turns out to attract only a handful of customers, then giving up and writing a fart app that goes on to sell a whole lot.

I was initially left with the impression from the link title that he was running some kind of a scam or was selling books with the brute force of his marketing prowess. So yes, it is an important part of the TL;DR in that this is the piece of information that would have saved me from clicking on the link.

Sure it is. His normal job is designing/selling novelties like the "Man Controller" which is a non-functional remote control.

This book is another novelty, really. So he got to the top of the charts by playing his strength - novelties.

What I took away from this was the rather specific info that the PR firm made up (so far as I can tell?) a story about students using these as notes books.

The reason this is interesting to me is that I can see why journalists would use that much more than a generic press release about a new book.

I used to have an agreement with a used book dealer who would sell me any unprinted, blank misprints that he got. They make good bound notebooks, with better paper than all but the best notebooks have, and they cost less than the cheapest notebooks.

The most important piece of info is missing imo. How much did he spent with the PR firm? It seems it was the whole key in this story, and it's a good lesson for us.

I personally have no idea how much a PR firm costs, or what the lowest amount they take is. Is it $5k? $10k? Or more like $50k? Anyone here have suggestions of cheap but value-for-money PR firms, especially useful for bootstrappers?

I asked a guy from a PR firm about this at an event at my local University.

He said getting stories in local newspapers costs about £2000. National press (meaning in the UK, not the USA) costs more. But it costs way less than the $20k I thought it did.

That is a made up number

I have had national level press at a cost of £0

Journalists will listen to you if you have something worth hearing

I read that Viaweb spent $20k on national press.

Good idea to increase sales of his previous books. It would be good to know the PR costs, but I guess it must be a few thousand british pounds.

The point I like most out of the story is that there is still space to get viral with really limited budget. Creativity and having a plan is key.

This is the answer to yesterday's "Why can't I make as much as I make?".

That's also a good title for a blank book

I'm just impressed that my NaNoWriMo book, which consists of two words repeated over and over, has sold 19 copies.

http://www.amazon.com/Hipster-Posturing-ebook/product-review...

Now I'll be really impressed if he manages to get the Kindle version into the top 50.

TL;DR: I hired a PR firm who came up with a creative idea to get this novelty product some press coverage.

with consumer getting crazier every passing day it becomes harder to guess what people will buy and what not.