Selected Quotes and Ideas from the Book

Perennial Sellers

• “In every industry—from books to movies to restaurants to plays and software—certain creations can be described as ‘perennial.’ By that I mean that, regardless of how well they may have done at their release or the scale of audience they have reached, these products have found continued success and more customers over time. They are the kind of art or products that we return to more than once, that we recommend to others, even if they’re no longer trendy or brand new. In this way, they are timeless, dependable resources and unsung moneymakers, paying like annuities to their owners.”
• “Perennial sellers—big or small—not only refuse to die or fade into oblivion; they grow stronger with each passing day. The works of Homer and Shakespeare, along with hundreds of other dead playwrights and philosophers—despite all being available for free online—still sell hundreds of thousands of copies per year.” 
• The Lindy Effect: “Every day something lasts, the chances that it will continue to last increase.”
• “If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years...Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• “Longevity isn’t an accident.”

The Creative Process

• “The better your product, the better your marketing will be. The worse it is, the more time you will have to spend marketing and the less effective every minute of that marketing will be. You can count on that.”
• “The first step of any creator hoping for lasting success—whether for ten years or ten centuries—is to accept that hope has nothing to do with it. To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus.”
• “People [who are] thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product.” -Phil Libin
• “Ideas are cheap...The difference between a great work and an idea for a great work is all the sweat, time, effort, and agony that go into engaging that idea and turning it into something real. That difference is not trivial. If great work were easy to produce, a lot more people would do it.”
• “In my work with authors, I’ve met with no shortage of smart, accomplished people who, I’ve realized, don’t actually want to write a book despite what they say. They want to have a book.”
• “Lots of people want to be the noun (writer, entrepreneur, etc.) without doing the verb (writing, inventing, etc.).” -Austin Kleon
• “I can’t say I know too many people whose success was built by spending one fifth of their time creating and four fifths loudly hawking the work they’ve just thrown together.”
• “If there is any magic in creative expression, it’s how small, even silly ideas can become big, important, awe-inspiring works if a person invests enough time in them. How within seemingly ordinary people there can exist depths of wisdom, beauty, and insight—and that if they put in the work to plumb those deep depths, they might reap incredible rewards.”
• “You don’t have to be a genius to make genius—you just have to have small moments of brilliance and edit out the boring stuff.”
• “Getting into action generates inspiration. Don’t cop out waiting for inspiration to get you back into action. It won’t!” -Robert Evans
• “People want things that are really passionate. Often the best version is not for everybody. The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record and half the people who hear it absolutely love it and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well. Because it is pushing that boundary.” -Rick Rubin