New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)

It's official: we've decided on the new cover for The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (2nd Edition).

The book cover "reveal" is below, but before we get to that -- some context:

Last year, I decided I wanted to do two things:

Thing #1. I wanted to update and re-release The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing

The first edition of the book was published back in 2014.

My original intent was to share what I had learned from using Pay What You Want Pricing to sell books, coaching, art, and more.

It was an experiment, like most of the things I do.

And...it flopped (sort of...).

I won't go into a ton of detail here because you can read the complete Pay What You Want launch report here.

But for those pressed for time, here's a quick summary:

Wins:

  1. It was the first book I published after leaving the Army 🪖
  2. About 100 people bought the book 👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿
  3. It generated about $1,000 in contributions 💵

Yay!

Now for the bad:

  1. It took me close to a year to write 😶‍🌫️
  2. I had help getting the book edited and formatted, which negated essentially any profit from the book 🤢
  3. Only about 100 people bought the book 🤏🏿

Yikes.

Luckily, I did the most important thing:

I validated the idea.

So I spent the next year writing about and sharing the book as widely as possible.

  • Since then, thousands of copies have been sold.
  • The book has been featured on Inc (among many other outlets and publications).
  • It's led to a ton of press and interviews (which helped to grow my audience + grow book sales).
  • It created a nice 5-figure passive income stream (after the initial 'hustle' period ended)

And now that we're going on close to a decade since the original publication of the book -- and because I never published on Amazon, nor published a paperback of the book...

I decided it was time for a 2nd edition.

Thing #2. I wanted to test out the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) space.

NFTs were the hot new thing in 2021.

In many ways, they looked and seemed insane to me:

nft tommorkes cryptopunk 3100 - New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)

Why, why, WHY would anyone pay $7 million for a jpeg?

The whole thing just looked like a money-laundering Ponzi scheme from the outside. I just didn't get it.

YET...The underlying concept and tech are pretty neat.

And once you get past the initial NFT jpeg cash-grab, one starts to realize that maybe there's something to this idea of digitized ownership.

Here's how NFTs are defined by Ethereum.org:

NFTs are tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenise things like art, collectibles, even real estate. They can only have one official owner at a time and they're secured by the Ethereum blockchain – no one can modify the record of ownership or copy/paste a new NFT into existence.

ethereum.org/en/nft/

Here are a few of the key concepts that I think make NFTs interesting for creators:

  1. Verifiable ownership of unique items (“This is my *token*. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Hoorah!")
  2. The potential for creators to earn resale royalties on digital products (content creators should be paying attention to this...)
  3. The potential for NFT holders to resell their token and earn a profit (this is probably the most exciting feature...but more on this later)
  4. The ability (and incentive) for the NFT creator to continue to provide VALUE to the NFT holder (which becomes a "win-win-win" strategy b/c of the reasons listed above)

That last reason -- The ability (and incentive) for the NFT creator to continue to provide VALUE to the NFT holder -- is what prompted me to combine Thing #1 and Thing #2 above.

So, I'm releasing "The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (2nd Edition)" as an NFT.

Want to follow along?

Sign up (FREE) to get first access to the book, NFT exclusive bonuses, and more.

Plus, I'm documenting my NFT journey and will share what I learn for people who register above.

So if you are:

  1. Interested in using NFTs for your books, courses, art, or digital products...
  2. Want first dibs on The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (2nd Edition)
  3. Would like to support my work for the many years I've been teaching for free from this blog, my podcast, etc.
  4. Or just because you are awesome...

Join me for the launch of my first NFT here.

And now for the book cover reveal...

A few months ago, I shared 8 potential book covers for the 2nd edition of TCGTPWYWP.

You can see all the covers here.

In the end, here's how things panned out:

Least Favorite Book Cover

This cover received the LEAST amount of votes:

pwyw pricing 3 - New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)

This book ended up with exactly 0 first-place votes. I guess not completely surprising.

Although I liked the aesthetic, I think the magnet confused people.

Next up...

Most Voted Book Cover

This book cover received the most "cumulative" votes:

This was the original cover idea I had for the book. And while the cover is very rough around the edges, it seems like the minimalist aesthetic attracted a lot of readers.

This book ended up getting the most number of votes in total.

HOWEVER...

In the end, I felt like the 'tip jar' idea, while catchy in a minimalist sense, didn't fully articulate the value proposition behind Pay What You Want pricing.

I mean, can you imagine an attorney, software startup, or [pick name of profession/business/enterprise here] self-identifying with a 'tip jar' for their pricing model?

In other words, as much as I loved the aesthetic of this cover, it felt like it missed the mark from a "market" perspective.

I don't want people to think that Pay What You Want pricing is a tip jar.

It can be -- but it doesn't have to be.

I want people (entrepreneurs, creatives, business owners, etc.) to see that Pay What You Want pricing can be a sustainable, socially beneficial, and even lucrative pricing technique.

So in the end, this cover was edged out by our winner:

Book Cover Winner

This book cover received the most #1 votes by percentage:

pwyw pricing 2 - New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)

While this cover doesn't have that 'Malcolm Gladwell minimalist item design' like the one above, I still think it has a nice, professional aesthetic.

It's clean. Simple. Professional. And it feels...precise.

Most importantly, I feel like it will appeal to the broadest market of entrepreneurs, writers, artists, creatives, and business owners.

Here's an updated cover mockup + teaser of the book (don't you love the floating Tom body in the top left corner!?!?):

Pay What You Want mockup - New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)

So there it is.

What do you think?

Anything we should change or adjust for the final version?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Oh, and don't forget:

Click here to follow along for the NFT launch of The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (2nd Edition).

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6 comments on “New Book Cover Reveal (And Why I'm Releasing This Book As An NFT)”

  1. I think your problem with the jar is that you automatically add "tip" to it. That's YOUR experience. When I think "pay what you want," the first thing that comes to mind is the street musician with the instrument case open for people to throw coins and bill into--the original "pay what you want" model.

    Of course, non-musicians have to use something else to collect their payments in, like a big jar.

    (You could have used a hat, except that it's harder to see the money--most hats aren't transparent.)

  2. Congratulations on the new cover! It's always exciting to see a project come together and evolve over time. I appreciate the context you provided about the journey and the lessons learned from the first edition. Combining the idea of updating your book with exploring the NFT space is a fascinating approach. It's intriguing how NFTs can provide verifiable ownership and open up new possibilities for creators.

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