Perennial Seller Book Summary - Perennial Seller Book explained in key points
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Perennial Seller summary

Ryan Holiday

The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts

4.1 (38 ratings)
18 mins
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    Perennial Seller
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    Creating a perennial seller requires hard graft, and great ideas alone will get you nowhere.

    You know that old maxim about product success being 20 percent creativity, 80 percent marketing? Well, you can safely ignore it, because it’s pure bushwa.

    If you want to develop a perennial seller – a product that always sells, year in and year out – you’re going to need to put a lot of work into the creative process. Marketing is not a magic wand. To be successful, your creation will have to be a world-beater from the get-go. And there’s no escaping the hard work that creation entails.

    No company knows this better than Microsoft. It’s forced some real stinkers on the market, hoping that marketing would make up for product shortcomings. Just think of its failed MP3 player, Zune, or its dismal search engine, Bing.

    In contrast, Microsoft Office has only gotten better over the years, and is now a classic 25-year perennial seller, thanks to its sound software design.

    But, of course, if you're going to market a product you'll need to develop one in the first place. Just having lightbulb moments will get you nowhere.

    To drive this point home, consider how many aspiring writers you’ve met who haven’t actually published a thing. You know the type; he talked your ear off at this or that party, claiming he would soon produce a masterpiece, though he hadn’t written anything yet. It’s one thing to have an idea for a film’s plot, or a concept for a start-up, but it's quite another to actually get going.

    Ideas alone are worth nothing. Take the writer and comedian Sarah Silverman’s advice. You needn’t wait for someone’s approval to get going: just write!

    So exactly how do you turn an idea into something real? Just what kind of hard work is needed? Let’s turn to that now.

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    Key ideas in Perennial Seller

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    What is Perennial Seller about?

    Perennial Seller (2017) explains how to ensure that great creative work also succeeds in the market. These blinks not only demonstrate how to generate success for a particular project, but also how to secure continued long-term success for yourself as a creative individual.

    Best quote from Perennial Seller

    Lots of people want to be the noun, without doing the verb. – Austin Kleon, poet

    —Ryan Holiday
    example alt text

    Who should read Perennial Seller?

    • Creative types
    • Entrepreneurs
    • Dreamers with high ambitions but low success rates

    About the Author

    Ryan Holiday is an author and media specialist who left college to become assistant to Robert Greene, the author of the 48 Laws of Power. He later became head of marketing for American Apparel and now owns his own consulting agency. His other best-selling books include Ego is the Enemy.

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