Many self-published books sell less than 100 copies. Research has shown the average self-published book sells about 250 copies, while the average published book sells 3,000. With that said, 5,000 copies sold is no small feat, which is author and entrepreneur Josh MacDonald’s latest accomplishment.
The book was published by Morgan James Publishing in New York, but Josh explained multiple times on his blog that he still considers the book self-published as the publisher didn’t offer much assistance in the launch and left most of the promotion to the author. Traditionally published books often benefit from greater reach at the cost of smaller royalties, however, Josh drew the short stick in both categories.
The Non-Technical Founder was published July 3, 2018, the year after entrepreneur Josh MacDonald graduated from the University of Toronto. He was coming off an exit for his software startup SerpClix. Although he studied computer science at the University of Toronto, his college startup SerpClix and his childhood startup Keyword Scout both were built without him ever writing a line of code.
Drawing on similar ideas as found in Gino Wickman’s Rocket Fuel, Josh found that focusing on vision, sales and marketing was a better use of his creativity, so he hired an engineer to bring his visions to life.
The book breaks the process up into 3 stages – Ideation, Development and Marketing. In the ideation stage, founders are to test their idea to ensure it’s worth pursuing. Once your idea is deemed solid, the second stage involves building the project. This part includes raising venture capital, although Josh bootstrapped his projects. The last stage is when it’s time to bring the project to market and gain your first users.
The Non-Technical Founder has been well-received by a number of reviewers on retailer websites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, Chapters and Indigo. It can be found in the libraries of renowned institutions like MIT, Stanford, Yale, Brown and Columbia University. For those outside of the US, it’s available in libraries worldwide – even countries as far as Iraq and Nigeria have copies available at local libraries.
