I don't get it. He was spending $40,000/month on his living expenses while being afraid that he wouldn't be able to afford diapers and food for his baby? How was this guy running his life so wrong? Did it somehow cost him that much to maintain his unsellable house in the financial district of New York? Are we supposed to feel sympathy for him?

EDIT: I've deleted my comment and my other replies to this discussion. As irrational as it is, my silly e-psyche recognizes it's easy to hit the delete button rather than watch my opinion down-arrowed.

Maybe he should. I write for a publisher whose offices are more than a thousand miles away from me. We have this nifty thing called the Internet now, and postal mail works even when you don't live in the same city anyway (postal mail being how most book proposals and manuscripts are delivered when they are not sent digitally). Even if you have to fly halfway across the country twice a year for meetings, which is more often than many people would have to actually meet face-to-face with editors at publishers (judging by my limited experience at least), it costs less than sweet digs in the financial district of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

"We have this nifty thing called the Internet now"

I accept your criticism of my comment (in support of living in areas beyond your means), but that's unnecessarily snarky, sir.

Nothing personal. It was meant to be merely "flippant", and not so much "snarky".

Because the only two choices are whether to live in the heart of Manhattan or the middle of nowhere?

> He called me back one time. We had known each other forever but had never had an issue where someone didn’t want one of my books. So now I saw what happened when someone didn’t want one of my books. “If you are going to tell me how to do my job,” he said, “this relationship is over.” I mumbled an apology and he hung up.

When I first read this, it seemed to me that the agent is at fault. If every editor rejected the proposal, shouldn't he find out why?

> So I wrote an email to Hollis and explained why the book would be good for her. She agreed to meet me. She said to me, “this proposal seems like it was written by wikipedia. You need to give us a real methodology for what to do when the end of the world hits.”

So our author had to do the agent's work for him?

Yeah -- that moment and the moment at the very end where he found his happy ending were the only two moments in the whole thing where I felt any sympathy for the author at all.

The rest of the time, where he wrote crappy books he knew were crappy, alienated editors, and contemplated insurance fraud plus suicide in one swell foop, all whilst capitalizing on others' credulity to sell them financial advice when his own finances have run like a yo-yo, he came off like a complete ass.

Congratulations to Altucher for writing in such an engaging, and hypnotically, brutally honest style that I felt compelled to read all the way through, despite the fact he induced me to distantly hate him through about 98% of the tale.

Some people on HN are dicks sometimes. You weren't asked to judge him, I don't even think he wanted your sympathy. Read and enjoy, take what you need to take from it, and leave the rest.

One of my key takeaways was that he's since come a long way, are your feelings aimed at him 10 years ago? Doesn't read like that. I for one enjoyed it, and look forwards to the next installment landing in my inbox.

Genuinely, I don't understand how or why someone would read that post, and think to write the words you wrote. Full-circle: you came off like an ass.

When did I say that he wanted my sympathy? I explained something, from my point of view, about the character of the tale -- which is pretty much what everyone else here is doing, when not just asking questions. Are you such a fan of the man that you cannot accept that? Am I not allowed to engage in discussion here just because my opinion of how he came off in the story differs from yours?

> Full-circle: you came off like an ass.

Fair enough. Maybe it looks that way to you. Too bad for me.

Your "sit down and shut up" routine makes you look a bit worse than merely abrasive judgment of his self-portrayal, though -- at least in my opinion.

My routine isn't sit down shut up (Did you just assume that?)

I just think you said something that didn't need to be said. The second piece, "how he came off in the story" is almost my exact point: I don't really see how your opinion on how he came off is valuable, unless your really going to delve into some psychological reasoning, use an anecdote or note a similar example - which you didn't. HN is for intelligent discussion i.e. value, not how you thought the guy came off.

Maybe if you'd have made a REAL comment, i.e. "hey, seems like a bumpy ride but it sure does seem like persistence prevails. [enter your comment here]" then it would have been fine.

But as it was, you just attacked him personally based on what you read in that post. Maybe its just a lesson in looking at things from other peoples perspectives, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought what I thought.

Well, the feeling is mutual!

Oh? Do you really think my writing here was engaging and brutally honest? Thank you. I strive to achieve that tone in my writing -- which you appeared to achieve so naturally and with such ease in your self-deprecating tale.

I appreciate the compliment, even if what you meant was insult.

I actually looked this up once as part of pondering a hare-brained fundraising scheme involving quantum suicide.

Apparently, most insurance companies have a clause where suicide voids the insurance if done within a few years of starting the insurance, but they will simply pay out without a fuss after that point.

I suppose they reason that there aren't many people who can calculatedly wait several years to off themselves to benefit someone else. I've never heard of anyone actually doing it and insurance corporations are still in business (and quite profitable, judging from Warren Buffet's holdings), so they seem to have been right.

(And really, is it 'fraud' if you have to die for it? If someone scams me financially and has to die in the process, I'm not sure how angry I could be with them.)

> shouldn't he find out why?

In retrospect, I should have been a little clearer here. This guy is already a published author, and so presumably editors will treat proposals with a little more respect - he's not an unknown trying to break into the industry with no track record. One would expect at least one of 20 targeted editors to have been slightly interested or at least offer a quick one-sentence negative review. That they didn't should have set off alarm bells and caused the agent to dig.

To offer an analogy, imagine your salesman comes to you and mentions casually your biggest client just called and canceled his contract; and no, he didn't bother to ask why (and so, boss, how's the weather?).

You're assuming it's a big mystery why no one wanted his book proposal or that the agent hadn't previously covered this ground, neither of which is stated in the post. (Plus, this is an author who admits he's lied about his contract numbers in the past.) From my read the facts are damning enough:

* He'd gotten a big advance on his previous book but it didn't sell. (Money loser = big red flag #1)

* His reputation alone no longer sells a book idea (evidenced by the sudden need for him to write a proposal to sell a book.) (Warning flag.)

* His financial judgment is suspect. ("The Forever Portfolio" delivered to the publisher just as the market starts a giant slide.) (Warning flag.)

* His last book was, well... Here's a sentence from the first Amazon review: "That said, the book is horribly written -- the author has about 20 pages of interesting content interspersed with 200 pages of random digressions, about his love of computer games and the longest words in the English language." (At the very least, a warning flag.)

* His proposal read like it was cribbed from Wikipedia (Big red flag #2.)

* He's a real peach to work with, insisting he knows other people's jobs better than they do (after all, he claims he chose the $20 price point for the previous loser, and we know how he treats his agent). (Warning flag.)

Now look what happens when that book idea (not the proposal) finally sells -- the publisher insists on bringing in another, trusted writer as co-author.

Sorry, but I don't think there's a mystery here that the agent needs to solve.

On the other hand, the author explicitly said to his agent "Find out why she rejected it," speaking of Hollis. That suggests the author, at least, did not know why.

Perhaps. Or perhaps the agent had already told him obliquely and the author didn't want to hear it.

We know from the story that the agent had previously done his job -- selling the author's books for increasing amounts of money despite declining sales. And we know from the story that after he meets with Hollis and is told the proposal reads like a crib from Wikipedia, he goes home and writes another proposal for her. And what happens? She likes the ideas but not the writing. And when the WSJ steps in, again it's for the ideas -- they want a co-author for the writing part.

Perhaps the agent should have been more direct, "Jim, the word on the street is that you're a one-hit wonder; that your ideas are great, but your writing sucks. What do you say I check around and see if I can hook you up with a co-author for the next proposal?"

Put this in HN terms, if people like your ideas but aren't willing to fund your startup, do you think it's someone else's job to find out why?

Frankly, what I found most alienating about the story was the me-me-me focus. (I mean really, going unsolicited into stores and signing books with random messages?) Too bad there was so little focus on providing value for his readers. Once I hear an author refer to a book of his as "garbage", I'm inclined to agree with him and dump him from my recommended list.

Make sure you read that article until the very last paragraph. It has a heart-warming ending. I awwww'ed. :)

Better still read the last paragraph first .... you may save yourself five minutes of reading.

I'm at a complete loss as to why this artice is on the front page - to say that I didn't learn much from it is an understatement of some magnitude.

> Better still read the last paragraph first .... you may save yourself five minutes of reading.

Started reading, realized it wasn't worth my bacon, check the comments, found yours and read the only meaningful thing I could deduce from the article.

Yeah, it's nice, but it's also a total non sequitur. At the beginning of the piece he says his first book was a success and he wrote the follow-ups trying to recapture the good feelings -- apparently without success. Books take a lot of effort and may not make you any significant money. So I guess the real moral of his story is that -- if you're like him -- you shouldn't bother writing books if you're already in a good relationship.

Just an observation on the first bit:

Wow, kind of concerning how money centric some people are. He would rather kill himself to leave his family money, than try to raise his family poor? I don't have kids so I don't know. Is this a realistic thought for any of you? Would you commit suicide in lieu of being a failure, to try and leave something for your kids? Is that making the best out of a bad situation?

Writing a book (my O'Reilly book) was the hardest thing I've ever done. It took me a year and I can't count the number of days I just sat in front of a blank screen just willing myself to write something (and usually failing).

All that was worth it when I first got to walk into a bookstore and see my book on the bookshelves. :)

My beautiful wife took me on a date to the State Library, where we looked up my name and saw my entry as 'author'. That was the big buzz for me (although I did like walking into a book store, having given away all of my copies, and seeing my book on sale for 1/3 price. I bought 3.)

On that subject . . .

Have you worked with any competing platforms, or is Azure pretty much the platform you know? I'm just curious about your thoughts on Azure from a comparative, rather than strictly technical in-a-vacuum, perspective.

It is impossible to be good at any technical niche if you don't know the nitty gritties of every other option out there. I just happen to talk about Windows Azure a lot because that's what I work on :).

Would you mind giving me a quick, thousand-foot view of your thoughts on the various options, relative to each other, then? I must admit to knowing little more about Azure than the simple fact of its existence (in part by having seen your book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble), and I am afflicted by idle curiosity.

That really depends on what your application is, what your constraints and priorities are and what your appetite for risk is. The discussion I have with a large NY financial services company is very different from the one I have with a 2 person YC startup. There are many, many ways to slice up your options.

I'll be happy to help (my email address is in my profile) but remember that I'm not unbiased - I work on one of those options :)

If you're losing money on your books you're doing it wrong. With self-publishing companies like lulu.com and the negligible costs of selling e-books on the Nook there's no reason to have negative costs

... unless you're so caught up in image that you're willing pay money for the fake "prestige" of having a "real" publisher.

As a throw-away statement, he referred to the fact that losing money on his books factors in the time he spent (and, presumably, the money he could have made doing other things). I'm not sure I buy that means of estimation, given the way he also informed his readers of his tendency to get himself into crushing debt and nigh-homelessness even when he wasn't writing, but if you accept his premise that his time could have been more (directly) lucratively spent, he does in fact kinda-sorta "lose" money through the writing process itself, regardless of what it costs to publish.

Sure, but opportunity cost is not a line item on a budget.

I didn't say it was. I said that was his point.

It /can/ be. If I'm working on a project for myself I try to keep track of hours spent as if I were working for a company.

As James is participating on this thread, I will simply ask this question rather than speculate: How many good things have come as a result of the credibility being a "published author" has given you?

Great question. There's definitely been some good thats come of it. Let me think for a bit and respond. Probably in a blog post.

You know, I started investing heavily in the stock market around the time that "Forever Portfolio" came out in late 2008. By not being frightened about the current economic turmoil and actually investing with a long-term outlook, I'm sitting pretty damn good now 2.5 years later.

I'm not surprised noone bought his books. Trade Like a Hedge Fund is $35.08 on Kindle. People will always opt for the $9 book (even if they think the book that's $25 more expensive will make them more money)

You know, thats just not true for finance books. Trade Like a hedge fund was $70 when it first came out and sold more than all of my other books combined.

Oh really? Look at the best-selling investing books on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Business-Books/b/ref=bw_ab_3...

I'm just telling you the facts on my books. My most expensive one was the one that sold the best. For high-end finance books price-point doesn't matter as much (one successful trade makes up for it, 100x).

"...I eeked out my $40,000 a month..."

OH NOOOOOOOOO

(I write insightful comments so that I may also write cathartic ones like this. Vote however you like.)

Edit: This comment was ill-conceived in every way possible.

I'm probably going to get downvoted for saying this, but putting "vote however you like" or "I expect downvotes for this" or "I know this isn't going to get upvotes" in a comment almost guarantees your comment lots of upvotes. It's almost as if when you say you expect people to downvote you their instinctive reaction is "Don't tell me what to think!" and they do the opposite.

EDIT: Apparently implying a parent comment is pandering for karma is an equally rapid way to get it downvoted. Please don't downvote the parent comment because of this one- I actually found it quite witty.

This comes up almost every time someone does what I just did. You're right about the Voting-Based Social Media Site Psychology of it, but I think we've covered it enough that it doesn't need to be said.

I do regret adding that to the end. I really didn't mean to influence the votes. Now, of course, I can't remove it without eliminating the context for our discussion.

Edit for more meta: Apparently I am now That Guy In The Thread Whose Comments Are All Downvoted Regardless of Contribution to the Discussion. I am also That Guy Who Left A Stupid Reddit-Style Comment, That Guy Who Is Spending To Much Time in the Thread, and That Guy Who Thinks Hacker News is Going Downhill. Time for a sandwich.

I don't mean to come across as criticizing you for that comment in any way! Seriously, I think it's a fine and well placed comment! (Plus HN is always more mellow on Sundays).

I'm just incredibly interested in crowd psychology and mass control, and pointing this out as an effective tactic.

There is indeed a balance. If one of my two word comments results in 50 upvotes, I feel the need to balance it out with some trite anti-HN-hero comment that'll restore order.

The Internet: You aren't interacting with people. You're interacting with a model of the average personality on sites you frequent. People end up falling into manipulation bundles. "If I do X, bucket P will do Z. If I do K, bucket M will do A, ..."

Want to try it out? "DHH sucks!" -> bucket A: "Yeah, he kinda does." bucket B: "NO! He's our HERO!" bucket C: "Well, he's good at what he does, but he panders." bucket D: "What? It's nice outside. I wasn't paying attention."

Here's some more twisted internet reasoning for you: maybe if all of the comments on this article suck as much as the article itself does, it will fall off the front page like it deserves to.

It's a meaningless story about a guy who, by his own admission, has written several books just for the attention. Then he meets, dates, and marries a girl in the space of a single paragraph, which somehow justifies the entire experience.

Now here I am, reading it on Hacker News, just wishing it would go away. We can debate internet philosophy (interacting with a System vs a Community) all day, but I'll just go ahead and concede the entire battle to you right now, because you're right, it was a bad comment made for unsound reasons. However, I am not a rational agent and will not delete it.

funny, for a guy who hates it you sure spent a lot of time on it.

A) not sure what dawkins has to do with anything. B) i thought there's value in providing advances / sales numbers, etc. As a writer I can say there's nothing like that out there. It helps to understand the reality of the publishing business.

I think the numbers are the best part of the article, refreshingly candid. When a startup posts its revenue/traffic numbers it is lauded for honesty. The same should apply to this post.

It seems that books are like startups- unless you hit a huge home run, you really shouldn't be doing it for the money.

Others have said the same about Richard Dawkins, a man whose company I would be proud to be in. That's not to say that I think I come anywhere near him in terms of contributing to the discussion.

This is the first time in a while I have seen an article I disliked so much get up so high on the front page, so I feel obligated to explain my position to others so that they will think more carefully about what they vote up.

the new book seems likely to be another case of bad timing... the apocalypse seems to be over, at least on wall street.

I feel like you could've made yourself sound a lot more sympathetic than you actually did. You come across as an asshole?

I think you mean "worthy of sympathy." And while I agree with you, I wish you would provide examples to back up your assertion.

I came to my opinion by observing that he spent most of the article cataloguing his unsuccessful writing career, and then brings in a one-paragraph love story out of absolutely nowhere.

Contemplating suicide plus insurance fraud in a single act without talking about the background for why he would have thought this was a good idea is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Foisting books he thought sucked onto editors while scamming them for ever-larger advances by bushwhacking them with out-of-nowhere agents is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Talking about how he lies to people about his career -- especially when casting the reader directly in the hypothetical role of wronged target of these lies -- is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Writing a book about how to claw your way to riches as a means to make money off credulous readers to forestall your own bankruptcy (and/or suicide) is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

Acts of desperation redolent of co-dependent personal issues, such as writing strident appeals to the most vulnerable people on the insides of one's books in the hopes of essentially tricking people into buying them, is not well-calculated to induce sympathy.

He paints himself as an asshole and a fuck-up who lucked out despite his best efforts to make a lot of money (off and on) and uses that to get people to listen to him. It's certainly not the most sympathetic picture he could have painted of himself.

Also . . . whether the previous person meant "sympathetic" or "worthy of sympathy", it is entirely reasonable -- and in the context of literary criticism (formal or otherwise), quite common -- to refer to a "sympathetic character", which is exactly what Altucher is not by his own presentation other than once probably by accident, and another time at the end quite surprisingly. This is because "sympathy" is not the same thing as "empathy", though many think it is.

From the American Heritage Dictionary, third definition of "sympathetic":

> Agreeably suited to one's disposition or mood; congenial: sympathetic surroundings.

Other definitions hint at the idea as well. That idea is, simply put, that there is a sense of connection and sameness between subject and object. Even those who are not much different from Altucher in all the myriad ways he presents himself poorly are likely to feel his is an unsympathetic character, if only because they would not want to admit to themselves the same depths two which they have descended. If it were not for the engaging style with which he beats the crap out of his own image, I suspect almost nobody would read all the way through such a painful litany of character flaws as he presents.

It helps that he ended it when he did. If it went on for another half-dozen paragraphs, I might have gotten sick of it, engaging style or otherwise.

- never contemplated insurance fraud. not sure where in story you got that. - i never foisted a book i thought sucked onto editors. i liked all my books and the only one i dont like right now is Supercash. - i never lied to anyone about my career. not sure where you got that. - i never needed to write a book to forestall bankruptcy. i was already well-recovered. please read the story.

I dont think you really read the article. but maybe i did paint myself as a "fuck-up".

You explicitly talked about contemplating ways to make your suicide look accidental as to allow your family to collect the insurance benefits. i.e. insurance fraud.

no , i did not. most insurance policies actually allow for suicide after a year. The real reason for making it look accidental is for effect on daughters. its an insane way to look at it (any discussion of suicide is insane but this was 10 years ago) but thats the way it was.

Normally I would not reply to anything in this whole thread because people are saying a lot of rather harsh things to you. But it may help to know that your perspective on how you wrote the text is clouding how the text actually reads to someone who is not in your own skull.

I don't know a single person who actually has a life insurance policy, but movies have taught us (rightly or wrongly) that people who buy life insurance policies and then talk about killing themselves to make it look like an accident, these people are trying to do so specifically because, in movie-plot-reality, and who knows, maybe in some actual contracts, suicide would not be covered.

The appropriate response here is to say "gosh I didn't think of that, you're right, people are likely to get the wrong idea since I didn't say WHY I was thinking about making it look like an accident." Simply saying "no no you're wrong, I never said anything like that" is fighting with the reality that what you think about what you say has little bearing on the most natural way that other people are going to perceive what you say.

. . . and while I do not currently have a life insurance policy, I did at one time -- and the exception for suicide never went away on that policy.

I got the impression the bit about making it not look like suicide was for purposes of insurance fraud -- and a lot of your other readers probably read it that way, too.

If you never foisted a book you thought sucked onto editors, you need to do a better job of not writing about your books as though you thought they all sucked.

You gave a number for an advance, then said that if "I" (meaning you) ever told "you" (meaning the reader, presumably) it was more than that, you lied.

I did read the story, and your timeline regarding when you were broke and when you were writing books was quite confused.

I read the story. Perhaps you didn't read what I said very closely, considering I actually explicitly pointed out that I read it, and found your writing engaging, as well as appreciating what appeared to be brutal honesty about yourself.

Sorry if I misunderstood your meaning in several cases. I think there's quite a bit of ambiguity in how you phrased things. If you are not able to see where I could come to the conclusions I did, I suspect that either you are being just a smidgen willfully blind about it, or you are just being an asshole. I reserve judgment, given that I don't know you.