The Book Arrives
Over the weekend, I received a large box from Random House containing copies of my brand new book, How to Be a High School Superstar, which is coming out next week. (Click here to pre-order.)
- Here’s what the book jacket says it’s about: applying the philosophies of sustainable success I preach here at Study Hacks to high school — teaching students how to build interesting, engaging, and low-stress lives, yet still do well during the college admissions process.
- Here’s what it’s secretly also about: my general philosophy on how anyone — be they a student or CEO — can build an interesting life. I combine a diverse collection of scientific results — from signaling theory to the economics of superstars — with in-depth case studies to deconstruct exactly how people become fascinating.
I Want Your Help
I tend to feel guilty about my abysmal book promotion skills. My lack of a Facebook fan page, for example, has been cast as a mortal sin. But as I explained to my publisher, I do have one secret weapon: the smartest, most engaged readers in the world of advice blogging.
Here’s my request: if you’re a serious fan of my philosophy, and believe this book deserves an audience, send me a proposal for how you can help spread the word. It can be something local, such as organizing a reading group with parents at your local church, or something epic, like convincing your good friend Oprah that it’s worth a read.
- I’ll send a signed copy of the book — and my eternal gratitude — to the best (implemented) idea.
- If there are lots of great ideas, I’ll send out lots of signed copies. (I have a bunch.)
- If the idea is particularly epic, I’ll throw in a free phone consultation on admissions, interestingness, or whatever else you want to chat about.
If you’re interested, e-mail me: author [at] calnewport.com
What to Expect Over the Next Few Weeks
The book launches next week on Tuesday, July 27th, so you’re going to see a lot more post traffic over the next month or so.
As part of the promotion efforts, I’ve arranged fascinating guest posts with a series of high quality advice blogs. I’ll announce and summarize these posts as they go live in late July and early August. The result: expect a large amount of original content in the near future.
These are exciting times. I hope you like the book, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts…
Congratulations Cal! Glad to hear that it has finally come out. Looking forward to all of that new content, I read every post!
Congrats on the release!!!
Use twitter and your friends on Twitter to promote. Easy to reach many people quickly and can direct them to your site.
I could promote your book on my youtube show or website. No charge of course… I love the advice you give. If you’re interested, let me know and we’ll work out the details.
Congrats on the release!
And wo0t for new content!
Cal, I am buying the book for my younger cousins tonight. I would also like to pick up a copy of it for my Kindle but I noticed the price is actually higher. This makes no sense. Can you please explain why the publisher would do this? Thank you.
E-mail me. I’d be happy to chat the potential for a YouTube video..
Welcome to the weird world of book selling. The list price of the book is $12.99, but Amazon sells books at huge discounts to try to increase volume, which is why it has the book available for $8.79. It’s not allowed to do this, however, for Kindle books — due to the detailed of the complex contracts they have with the publishers.
Good marketing strategy. Was it inspired by Seth Godin?
Well, you could do a competition like Tim Ferris does.
buy 100 books gets a phone consultation
Buy 200 books and the guy/gal gets to meet you.
I’d try to help with the promotion, but since I live in a country that’s populated by Chinese speaking people…
Oh, but I must add that the Chinese version of the yellow book has made it onto the bestselling lists.
Awesome! Can’t wait to read it. Only wish it was released last year or the year before (I’m going into Grade 12 right now).
Congrats on the book ! I was especially interested in the fact that you wrote it by dedicating a certain amount of time per day and allocating it to the task.
I think your blog is especially helpful for anyone wanting to manage their time effectively. Does your advice still apply to people employed with a side of startup ? Can you give an example of schedules to work by ? Thanks a ton – best !
I’m so excited! I had already pre-ordered one copy, but I’m going to go order a couple more for my son’s friends. They’re all entering 9th grade in the fall. My daughter, who will be a senior, is taking some copies of your red book back with her to Israel where she goes to school. She said her dorm-mates will love it!
So glad this book came out, right around the time I’m going into 11 grade, which is considered to be the hardest grade out of all four years!
I kind of slacked off during the first two years of high school, so I really need advice on how to make the last 2 years so successful that I can get into a good college and study my dream career, pre-med.
And I would be thrilled to get a signed book from you…it would really inspire me to work hard..so one idea is that you can put an advertisement on websites that high school students look at, such as Sparknotes, collegeboard, etc.
or you could do sample videos on youtube about some of the information in your book and if people really like the advice, they’ll buy the book!
Do you think your book would be helpful for homeschooled kids? I’d like to get my 7th grade homeschooled daughter and a group of peers thinking about their college plans and what “high school” might look like for them. In other words, this would be a reading group. I’d invite interested teens on all my homeschool lists–if the book made sense for homeschoolers, of course.
I had something like that in mind. Let me announce here and now: buy 100 books, and you can chat with me as long as you want!
Which list? There is a Chinese version of the red book coming out, I don’t think, however, that the high school superstar (or, the blue book as I might start calling it), has sold its Chinese rights yet.
Hopefully you’ll still find it useful. One of the students I profiled made her transformation to a relaxed superstar during her 12th grade year. She’s at Princeton now.
Start-ups are a little out of my area of expertise. But my friend Ramit Sethi, over at the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, has been writing up a storm about the reality of making money on the side.
You can never have too many!
This is a great idea. But I should clarify, for the giveaway, you have to implement an idea, not just suggest it to me.
I think it’s a great fit for home school. The bulk of the content is on how to transform your life into one that’s engaging and interesting. Keep me posted on your experiences applying the content in this setting…
It’s not much of a bestselling lists though. I saw the yellow book on the shelves underneath ‘the best sellers of the month’ sign. Ah, the bookstore’s called “Stepping Stone”. I’m not sure of the lists as of now….
But I did see someone add the yellow book to their stack of books the other day :D.
Taiwanese students are really prone to ‘grinding’ what we learn into our heads, like staying up late studying before a test, and yet only scoring an average score. It’s common to see students heading to cram schools after school, and taking the MRT or bus home around 10 at night. (I was one of them unfortunately. But it payed off@@)
I always wanted to study smarter, especially right after I stumbled upon your site, but somehow I wasn’t really able to incorporate your methods with the vigorous schedule we have here. It was almost downright impossible after I holed myself in a famous cram school a month before my college entrance exams. From 8 in the morning to 9:30pm, with twenty minute breaks and an hour more lunch/dinner breaks in between, the cram school was practically my second home. All I did, with two hundred or more students, was study, study, and study.
This may sound insane to others, especially those to foreigners, but it’s really common for a student to go to cram school, for classes ranging from Chinese, Math, English to Physics, Chemistry, History….etc. But yet, I know classmates who cram 6 subjects in a week, earn below average scores in school.
As a teenager who moved back to Taiwan after spending her childhood in the States, I’ve always wondered why Taiwanese students seemed unable to ‘study smarter’. Somehow, everyone thinks a student must sit in front of a book for a whole day in order to get good grades.
Then I realized most teachers never actually ‘teach’ a student how to study their subject. They usually pass on knowledge, and expect students to fend for themselves. I’ve always felt resentful when I ask people how to study Math or Chinese (since these are my poorest subjects HA!), as they often reply ‘Just read the book.’
As if I don’t know that.
Thank you for sending in these excellent ideas, and please keep them coming! So far I’ve talked with 42 of you about your suggestions, and they’re definitely changing the way I envision promotion.
I want to clarify two things about the signed book giveaway:
— To be eligible, you actually have to implement an idea. (Unrelated to the giveaway, however, I’m still happy to hear your ideas for me.)
— I’m making my giveaway decisions in mid-August, once people have had a chance to put implementations in motion.
I can help you spread the word about your new book (how to be a high school superstar) to my friends (juniors and seniors who are going to the US under scholarship). About 130 of us here =)