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500 handwritten notes, 100 hours
Each note went with a copy of The Five Types of Wealth, and in each copy the author hand-marked the pages he had referenced in the note, choosing something he knew that specific reader would like. The effort paid off in extraordinary support from the people who got early copies.
Later he found out that a few authors he knew were replicating the strategy, which he had told them and his publisher was successful. They did it in an automated, scalable way. The publisher printed the notes in handwriting, and generically marked a set of pages in the early copies it sent out.
The automated version was quick and efficient, and entirely ineffective.
Why does visible effort make a gesture count for more?
Economists call this costly signaling. Michael Spence's 1973 work on job-market signaling showed that a signal is believable when it is expensive to fake. Hours of handwriting are costly to the sender, so they credibly show that the recipient mattered. A mass-produced version costs almost nothing, which is why it carries almost no information.
What are early copies and why do publishers send them?
Publishers send advance copies, often called advance reader copies or galleys, to reviewers, booksellers, journalists, and influential readers months before a book goes on sale. The goal is to build reviews and word of mouth before launch day. Early support matters because a book's first weeks of sales shape how stores stock it and how the best-seller lists rank it. Advance copies have been a standard part of trade publishing for decades.
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