Business on their own: a book with the tactics of the passage of this game

Hello! I wanted to say that yesterday our third book came out, and the posts from Habra also helped a lot (and partially entered). The story is this: for about 5 years, people who did not know how to design thinking, did not understand different business issues and asked the same questions came up to us.

We sent them a forest. In a sense, politely refused, because they did not consider themselves entitled to give advice.
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Because they themselves have not understood. Then we stepped over the line of small business and came to the middle, tinkering with the methodology of plugging holes into normal processes, grabbing all kinds of crap like the theft of our own employees, big bureaucracy and other joys of a large company, then came up with a very logical and unexpected decision with large partnership.

Then they began to answer questions. Tellingly, these were the same questions and required the same answers. Two years ago, there was a moral right to tell about what we have already seen on this path. Six months ago, the book was added. Yesterday she finally came out.

When you write the third book, you already begin to understand what and how. Below is a story about what you should know when you write your own. Of course, this is my personal opinion, and not a ready-made methodology.

How to write

You make an approximate table of contents, write 3-5 chapters with the most interesting. Next shows to the publisher. In the cover letter - briefly, who you are, what you are, why it is important. We had a letter like this: “it seems the best in Russia is a systematic look at how to do a small business.” Not without distortions, but others simply did not exist. Just recently, the Tinkov book (judging by the language, Ilyakhov) appeared “Business without an MBA”. She is cool, she is about the same, there is a different look.

The publisher reads your prototype chapters and asks what the trick is. We say - we do not give advice on how to live. We talk about specific situations and what happened in them. How often. How to test a hypothesis with examples. What to look for in order not to screw it up.

Here is the table of contents:





Our main goal is to show not “successful success”, but how it is.

You know, it's like marrying a person you don't know well enough. You can conclude an alliance "at random", and then divorce, and you can learn something about your potential second half in advance. We are in advance. Even if something terrible comes up there. Because they saw how people sold apartments to close the debts of their business. And then they stayed outside with their family and two children.

If possible, avoid this.

So here. Then the publisher says - fundamentally "for." And offers to send a manuscript. It remains only to draw the rest of the owl.

I have already written two books by that time, and roughly represented the process. But it was very hard. We rewrote the book twice, because we were constantly discovering new and new things. It helped that we recorded a course for the Cursors in Russian in the process. There are many thoughts that are included in the book. The course helped to understand what we want: there are tasks and an educational result.

On assignments, I came off and understood approximately what stories are needed in a book. Here are a couple of spoilers with answers:


The book does not have practical tasks, but there is a lot of real information. Here is an example:



Okay, back to the project. In the end you write. By the way, it is easier at times to do it together than one, because where one has stopped, the second already knows what to say and how - and the opportunity arises not to “hang out”, plus the second point of view. Many years ago, the first published material - back in Astrakhan, in the newspaper - we also wrote in two hari. Recommend. Nightly gatherings with a huge pile of printouts, pens in the "Circle" for football (because only she worked) - this is a bonus.

The next step is the publisher takes the manuscript. Reads and confirms his opinion that the book will be normal. In our case, the opinion was: “Oh, here I’ve also done something for myself to manage the publishing house.” Otpad

Then the contract and everything.

Contract and all affairs

The publisher wants an exclusive license, that is, it will not be possible to upload a copy without typos to Flibusta. More importantly, the publisher wants a global license, that is, it will not be possible to translate and start selling on Amazon. But at the same time the publisher wants 5 years, and then it is necessary to re-sign. This means that there are only a couple of years left until the moment when I make a break in 1 day to transfer my first book to the pirates already officially and correctly.

Now there is a trend in the development of home dofiga smart speakers and wireless headphones, so the podcast market comes to life in the West. This will be noticeable in a year, but audio versions are needed now. The corollary is to sign the dopnik about audio right away. It is better to write an audio version in the voice of the author, but I do not pronounce the letter “p”, therefore I stated this rrrrdochno and got the opportunity to choose a speaker. Urrra The audio version problem is the tables. In the book they are. Heavy rendered on the links.



In our contracts, we still changed the order of approvals (not “the publisher suggested, but the author did not go away”, but a more correct one) and the order of quotations (I can quote up to half of the book on the Internet). Over the years, the myth has become so friendly to the authors that it’s a pretty sight.

If for the first time we were just offered a cover, now we are asked to fill out a brief. The result was a design, as desired, and not how it went. And without a capital set. And with more or less correct kerning. And without turning off the title in the center.



For the myth, it was somewhat bold. But I am happy.

In parallel, there is work with the editor and proofreader. These are publisher services that are included in the training package. The editor in our case suggested swapping a couple of chapters for better logic, asked for a bunch of footnotes with explanations, showed where to write a couple of chapters and about that, followed the logic and everything else.

The proofreader just pissed me off. I returned the first version back with the comment that you need to roll back all edits that do not relate to errors. Because the proofreader decided that he himself would like to write a book and corrected everything in the language to the level of the official police protocol.

Publisher said that yes, something overdone. And they did it fine. But still, there were language corrections, so I had to carefully read everything. By the way, it’s a special joy in upholding the language to say that if anything, I will change all the terms to the word “horseradish”, because the plant and it is literary. With this to argue within the rules can not be. After this discovery it became somehow easier.

Oh, and one more. They adjust in Word, and somewhere from the third iteration they only look at edits. Therefore, if you add something with Easter eggs with white text on the white background, then later, in the layout, they roll over styles and everything becomes black. Pay attention to the Latin name of the sales funnel (specifically funnels) in the table of contents.

Promotion

When you have a pre-packaged preview file (with no output and no cover), people should give it to reviews. We gave it to Eugene from Vkusvill, and they wrote a review, from which it is clear that they met there about the same thing, but are somewhat afraid to tell. A couple more people just did not have time to read (we gave friends from large businesses, and there many had the nearest window in May, when the circulation was already leaving the printing house), Tinki did not answer at all.



It turned out that the MYTH does not mark the files it sends. That is, if there is a leak in the network, it is not clear who leaked it. Here's how: I do not mind leaks, but I want to know the vector. Therefore, we have marked our own. The technology was described in the fiction of my childhood - I advise the story "The destruction of Angkor Apeiron" by Fred Saberhagen.

Circulation comes almost last. This time the format is smaller than “Business as a game” and “Business Evangelist”, thick and white paper (thick and yellowish), fixed a bug with a ribbon booklet that can fly into the production under the cover and do something like this:


^{This is a rare case on "Business as a game"}

Then you all agree on the participation in the promotion. I already knew that I would have to talk with journalists, participate in the airwaves, do an autograph session (refused), this year the Instagram-broadcast has also been added. Plus there were requests for additional materials. As usual, reporters will be given chapters directly to quote. I think they will like the logic of the “Why pay taxes” expansion. Spoiler: not because it matters. And because there is the principle of Gaffin - you assess the chance of getting caught and the benefits of crime. And if it is, it has a rationale. Plus other reasons. A rational game is that in the tax are smart people who build restrictions on this principle. True, the problem of Russia is that there are more traditions.

The book itself

It turned out five main parts:

• Preparing for the project even before you start to do something: these are basic things like what you need to understand, what you are getting involved in. The story is this: there is a chance to earn a lot and lose a lot. And this is exactly a couple of years of your time. The first chance is not high, the second is higher. If you could buy such a lottery ticket instead of starting a project, would you?
• Now the numbers: we are looking at the financial model, we are conducting exploration, we are experimenting. The most important part of the project, because if you don’t understand what is possible and what is not, then everything will be bad.
• Opening the first point on the example of the store, everything from start to finish. Here you can find out some of my posts from Habr, adapted for the book. Why shop? Because there all operations characteristic of other types of business are offline, plus more.
• Marketing - basic things. We barely touch online (specific details become obsolete when the book is published), but we give general principles on how and what to evaluate.
• The staff is a damn important chapter about how to manage a team at a basic level for introverts.

<sup>As usual, all this with a bunch of stories. A major from my childhood read a past book and said that he was very happy. I think he is waiting for another hello from the past.


And practice, a lot of practice. Check out the latest story on this page.</sup>

Some chapters are very large and dense in scope of information:


This year we tried an exclusive with the publishing house: it is very important for them to see sales on their online store and collect the first audience (otherwise we would sell everything directly from our site and in our stores). Therefore, only two weeks the book is only with them, but for this they invest in the promo much more than usual, and promise a good numerical result of sales.



Here is a link to the MYTH and all the details , there you can buy. Well, I want to say thank you to all those who asked us uncomfortable questions (about half - on Habré), which helped to really walk on what is important.