The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton
All five of these highly successful books found their start as self-published titles. All did so in age well before it become easy to build a professional looking product and distribute it to reach a critical mass.
That’s an achievement in itself.
What they also have in common is this: each book was powered by an idea that was considered too different from what the market thought people wanted.
Being different is scary because it invites the greatest amount of risk that you’ll be rejected.
But most people don’t judge what they like based on a scale of sameness or how different something is.
They just like ideas that help them see things differently.
