Hi, this is Grace. Each month, I talk about what I tried and stumbled upon as a creator. I share exciting findings and honest learning along the way.
Let’s cut to the chase!
Early Result From Launching the New Book
Since I published my new book Building macOS apps with SwiftUI on Amazon in early December, I started seeing a more steady order stream compared with the other books I released before.
A few takeaways from this book launch:
Write a good high quality book that is in demand
Engage the audience early before the launch
A high-quality book that is in demand
For this book, I actually looked into existing books on Amazon and checked out the reviews, and made a list of things that I could write to improve for the readers.
During the research, I saw a review from a book that said along the line “there is no other book about building macOS apps, even if this book is not well written, I’m happy with it.” That told me there was a need for this book.
I also looked at reviews from other tech books of other genres (for example, Node.js and Jave) and took note of what people complained about. Those things would be the things I could do better at.
Engage the audience early before the launch
Many say you don’t need an audience if you publish books on Amazon. But my experience tells me, if you are new to the marketplace, you still need your audience, for early feedback.
Because of their support, I was fortunate to have this book as the #1 New Release on Amazon.
I published quietly the previous two books. The contrast in results is quite obvious.
I wanted to do a special shout-out to
, Hannah Z, Correy A, and Nathan K. Your feedback helped me tremendously.Other Teeny Tiny Bets
TwitTrackSheet
In January, I released a tiny product TwitTrackSheet.
I did this quick product release based on Medium stats. This product is not a big-price item, but how it became a product is a great lesson: picking up hints from the stats along the way.
Customers usually don’t tell you outright what they want, but their footprints show. Also, you don’t need a brilliant breakthrough idea to build a product.
If you are interested in the story, read it in this tweet thread.
Essays
Writing essays is something I take very seriously. I cannot imagine myself writing for a clickbait topic, or relying on AI to generate an article with no soul.
If I want to write one, I want that to be a piece that I will go back and read again and again.
In the past month, I wrote a few essays:
The Books I Read In 2022 (A book review that I do every year)
How To Request App Store Reviews From Your iOS and macOS Apps
My favorite one is How A Change of CEO Either Makes Or Breaks A Company. It was a learning experience while writing it. ChatGPT did help me with one example or two. However, the key details of those stories were from research in historical sources, such as autobiographies or articles published long ago.
Looking For A Long Shot
If you have been following me on Twitter or via this newsletter, in the past 6 months, I have tried many different things: books, essays, building apps/scripts, etc. These things fit my lifestyle very well.
However, sometimes I feel something is missing. I’m looking for an idea to be my long shot, a long shot to define myself, a long shot that I can slowly grow and improve over time.
I will report back when I find it. Or I should not have one at all. 🤣
That’s all for this month. I did a lot of traveling in the past month and did kid activities (my daughter won 1st place in the Floor Exercise and Uneven Bars for her first gymnastics 🤸♀️ meet! I’m one proud mom 🥰). I did not feel like I accomplished a lot, but, hey, look at this report, I feel a lot better!
Thanks for reading every month. My wish is that my newsletter could at least serve as maybe just a little inspiration. See you next month!
Nice summary of the various experiments. How often do you intend to review your pofrtfolio of experiments?