【文章标题】：The Art of Self-Promotion
【文章标题】：自我推销的艺术
Five years after launching this blog, I’m stoked that
Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties
, is finally available for purchase! Buy your copy below:
在这个博客创办五年后，我非常激动地宣布
《Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties》
终于可以购买了！在下方购买你的书吧：
Buy Your Copy of Young Money!
立即购买《Young Money》！
There was, I believe, a time where the publishers, as well as a select few networks, magazines, and newspapers, could move the needle on a book. When there are five national newspapers, two relevant late night shows, and a handful of magazines that
really
matter, all it takes is one editor or journalist to care about your work and, suddenly,
everyone
cares about your work.
我相信，曾经有那么一个时代，出版商以及少数几家电视网、杂志和报纸，能够左右一本书的命运。当全国只有五家主流报纸、两档有分量的深夜秀，以及少数几本
真正
有影响力的杂志时，只需要一位编辑或记者关注你的作品，突然之间，
所有人
都会关注你的作品。
Publishers would identify and partner with talent, then they would work their network connections to get said talent’s work on the biggest stage possible. The artist’s job was to
create
. The publisher’s job was to platform the artist.
出版商会发掘人才并与之合作，然后动用自己的人脉关系，将这位人才的作品推上尽可能大的舞台。艺术家的任务是
创作
。出版商的任务是为艺术家提供平台。
The internet changed that.
互联网改变了这一切。
Suddenly, five national newspapers, two relevant late night shows, and a handful of magazines that
really
matter gave way to thousands of micro-blogging sites and web forums. Attention, which previously coalesced around a few central networks, was decentralized across the web. Still, I would argue that the early internet
benefited
many writers and creators: you could now build your own blog, forum, or some other platform to aggregate attention from like-minded individuals, and you owned the real estate.
突然间，五家全国性报纸、两档有分量的深夜秀，以及少数几本
真正
有影响力的杂志，被成千上万的微博客网站和网络论坛所取代。注意力，过去集中在少数几个核心网络上，如今分散到了整个互联网。尽管如此，我认为早期的互联网
惠及
了许多作家和创作者：你现在可以建立自己的博客、论坛或其他平台，汇聚志同道合者的注意力，而且你拥有这块“地盘”。
Then social media
really
changed that.
然后社交媒体
真正
改变了这一切。
Suddenly, a thousand different fiefdoms, from pickup artist chatrooms to weightlifting forums to personal cooking blogs, gave way to the “newsfeed.” A web of a million nodes collapsed to a new set of centralized platforms. But unlike the earlier regime, where Howard Stern, Oprah,
The New York Times
, and
The Wall Street Journal
, CBS, and ABC determined the storylines that we all cared about, “the newsfeed,” which became the de facto interface of Facebook and Twitter, was a never-ending carousel of “new thing” after “new thing.” You could build on top of the carousel, of course, but you never owned the carousel, and you never controlled the carousel. And as the carousel shifted away from follower-first content to algorithmically-driven content, you couldn’t be sure that your “followers” would see your content.
突然间，上千个不同的“封地”——从泡学聊天室到举重论坛再到个人烹饪博客——都被“信息流”取代。一个由百万节点构成的网络崩塌为一系列新的集中式平台。但与旧秩序不同——那时霍华德·斯特恩、奥普拉、
《纽约时报》
和
《华尔街日报》
、CBS、ABC决定了我们共同关注的故事线——“信息流”这个成为Facebook和Twitter实际界面的东西，是一个永无止境的“新东西”接“新东西”的旋转木马。你当然可以在旋转木马之上搭建东西，但你从未拥有旋转木马，也从未控制过旋转木马。而随着旋转木马从“关注者优先”的内容转向“算法驱动”的内容，你无法确定你的“关注者”会看到你的内容。
This, of course, led to what would become “trend-hacking,” where savvy marketers would chase and exploit hot “social media trends” to capture fickle attention before the game inevitably changed again.
这自然导致了后来所谓的“趋势黑客”，精明的营销者会追逐和利用火爆的“社交媒体趋势”，在游戏不可避免地再次改变之前，攫取那飘忽不定的注意力。
And now, AI has only accelerated the discoverability challenge first introduced by the newsfeed. While an algorithmically-driven newsfeed dilutes the connection between the follower and the followed, the act of “creation” did, until ~two years ago, require effort on behalf of someone. Writing a blog post, even a “bad” blog post, took time. So did making a video, or simply engaging with folks in the replies.
而现在，AI只是进一步加剧了信息流最初带来的“可发现性”挑战。虽然算法驱动的信息流削弱了关注者与被关注者之间的联系，但“创作”这一行为，直到大约两年前，仍然需要有人付出努力。写一篇博客文章，哪怕是一篇“糟糕”的博客文章，也需要时间。制作视频，或者仅仅是在评论区与人互动，也是如此。
But now you can just voice-to-text some rambled thoughts to ChatGPT / Claude / Grok and ask your favorite LLM to “craft an attention-grabbing LinkedIn post on this topic,” and 30 seconds later, you can pollute the newsfeed with your ClaudeSlop. And, of course, in the age of “building personal brands” where “everyone wants to be an influencer,” there are plenty of incentives to use AI to accelerate your content throughput, which means that other folks, competing for the same attention, will also leverage AI to accelerate their content throughput, which means the sheer amount of “content” being produced is growing exponentially.
但现在，你只需用语音转文字把一些零散的想法发给ChatGPT / Claude / Grok，然后请你喜欢的大语言模型“就这个话题写一篇抓人眼球的LinkedIn帖子”，30秒后，你就能用你的“Claude垃圾”污染信息流。当然，在这个“打造个人品牌”、“人人都想当网红”的时代，有太多理由让你用AI来加速内容产出，这意味着其他争夺同样注意力的人也会利用AI来加速他们的内容产出，这意味着被生产出来的“内容”总量正在呈指数级增长。
But our capacity to digest “content” hasn’t grown. Whether the number of new social media posts per day is in the thousands, millions, billions, or trillions, humans only have 24 hours, a subset of which can be spend focusing on any particular “thing” online. Combine this onslaught of “slop” with a decentralized internet where my newsfeed is different from your newsfeed is different from our mutual friend’s newsfeed, and breaking through the noise is harder than ever.
但我们消化“内容”的能力并没有增长。无论每天新增的社交媒体帖子是几千、几百万、几十亿还是几万亿，人类只有24小时，其中能用来专注于网上任何特定“事物”的时间更是有限。将这种“垃圾”的冲击与一个去中心化的互联网结合起来——我的信息流不同于你的信息流，也不同于我们共同朋友的信息流——突破噪音变得比以往任何时候都更加困难。
40 years ago, the artist’s job was to
create
, and the publisher’s job was to platform the artist. In 2026, the artist must both
create
and
platform
themselves. A publisher cannot, on their own, “platform” a promising artist in 2026 because attention is no longer centralized. There’s no single “show” or “publication” that, upon covering your work, will lead to you being “GOATed.”
40年前，艺术家的任务是
创作
，出版商的任务是为艺术家提供平台。而在2026年，艺术家必须同时
创作
并
自我平台化
。在2026年，出版商无法单靠自己“捧红”一个有前途的艺术家，因为注意力不再集中。没有任何一个单一的“节目”或“刊物”能够在报道你的作品后，让你直接封神。
No, in 2026, you, the artist, must somehow convince some subsection of the internet to care about what
you
have to say. But how could another endpoint in the metaverse possibly care about what
you
have to say if they’ve never heard of you in the first place?
不，在2026年，你，作为艺术家，必须设法让互联网的某个细分群体在乎
你
要说的话。但如果对方一开始就从未听说过你，他们又怎么可能在乎
你
要说的话呢？
The artist, therefore, must now fulfill three roles.
因此，艺术家现在必须扮演三个角色。
Can you make your work known?
你能让你的作品为人所知吗？
Can you make those who know your work care?
你能让那些知道你作品的人在乎它吗？
Can you make something worth caring about?
你能创作出值得别人在乎的东西吗？
Writing a book is hard. It’s a year-long, mental wrestling match with yourself. You finish a chapter, take a deep breath, and another blank pages taunts you.
写书很难。这是一场持续一年的、与自己进行的精神搏斗。你写完一章，深吸一口气，另一页空白又在嘲弄你。
“50,000 words to go. Good luck.”
“还有五万字要写。祝你好运。”
Of course, you’ll have to revise the prior chapter another 10 times, but you can deal with that later. For now, it’s on to the next one. And you do this over, and over again. You read the same words several dozen times, to the point you can’t possibly tell if it’s even “good” or not. And you don’t know if you can trust friends who read early samples, because would they really tell you if your writing sucked? And you’re stuck in this loop for a year.
当然，你还要把前一章再修改十遍，但那是以后的事。现在，继续下一章。你一遍又一遍地重复这个过程。你把同样的文字读上几十遍，直到你根本无法判断它到底“好不好”。你也不知道能否信任那些读过早期样章的朋友，因为他们真的会告诉你你的写作很烂吗？你在这个循环里困了一年。
Candidly, I underestimated just how difficult it would be, and I understand why the vast majority of books, particularly nonfiction books, are written by ghostwriters. It’s tough.
坦率地说，我低估了这件事的难度，我也理解为什么绝大多数书，尤其是非虚构类书籍，都是由代笔人写的。这太难了。
The nice thing about book advances, however, is that they create a powerful forcing function for actually writing a book. Something about receiving money that’s subject to being contractually clawed back should you fail to turn in a manuscript is quite motivating, particularly after you spend part of your first advance payment on a new watch. And then, upon turning in that manuscript, you unlock the rest of that advance, which is, of course, quite nice. When I first saw that book advances pay out in tranches, I was confused.
不过，预付款的好处在于，它为你真正去写一本书创造了一个强大的推动力。收到一笔钱，如果交不出书稿就会被合同追回，这本身就相当激励人心，尤其是当你已经把第一笔预付款的一部分花在了一块新手表上之后。而当你交上书稿，你就能拿到剩余的预付款，这当然很不错。当我第一次看到预付款是分期支付时，我很困惑。
“It’s an ‘advance.’ Shouldn’t I get it all up front?”
“既然是‘预付款’，难道不应该一次性全给我吗？”
Now, I think tranches make a lot of sense. Give enough money upfront that the author feels some reward
(and understands the stakes of having to pay it back if they can’t deliver)
, backload the rest as an incentive to actually turn in the work.
现在，我觉得分期支付很有道理。前期给足够的钱，让作者感到一些回报
（并明白如果交不出稿子，就得把钱还回去的风险）
，把剩下的钱放在后面，作为真正交出作品的激励。
But I think some writers misunderstand the purpose of the “book advance.”
但我认为有些作家误解了“预付款”的目的。
There’s a romanticized view that I imagine some folks hold of the author as an “artist,” and the advance is a patronage to support this artist’s endeavors.
我想有些人对作者抱有一种浪漫化的想象，把作者视为“艺术家”，而预付款是资助这位艺术家创作事业的赞助。
“Here are dollars for your labor.”
“这是给你的劳动报酬。”
But that’s an incomplete understanding. While, yes, the author does keep their advance assuming that they turn in their completed work, that advance is, really, an
investment
from the publisher.
但这是一种不完整的理解。诚然，只要作者交出了完成的作品，预付款就归作者所有，但这笔预付款实际上，是出版商的一笔
投资
。
“Here’s some money to write a book, we expect to earn that money back, and then some, from the eventual sales that result.”
“这是一笔让你写书的钱，我们期望从最终的销售中把这笔钱赚回来，而且还要赚得更多。”
A joke I’ve made a few times now that’s actually not at all a joke is that the relationship between publisher and author is akin to that of venture capitalist and founder, which is, of course, ironic, given that I sit in the “receive capital” seat as an author and the “invest capital” seat as a VC.
我开过好几次玩笑、但事实上一点也不好笑的一个玩笑是：出版商和作者之间的关系，类似于风险投资人和创业者之间的关系。这当然很讽刺，因为我既是坐在“接受资本”位置上的作者，又是坐在“投入资本”位置上的风险投资人。
Early-stage venture capitalists might invest in 40 companies per fund, knowing that 50% will be 0s, 30% will return their original capital, 25% will make “some” money, and 5% will generate 90%+ of your returns. Power laws dominate the venture capital game. But they also dominate the publishing game.
早期风险投资人可能会用一只基金投资40家公司，心里清楚其中50%会归零，30%能返还本金，25%能赚“一些”钱，而5%会带来90%以上的回报。幂律法则主导着风险投资这场游戏，但它们同样主导着出版这场游戏。
Depending on the fee split, Avery Publishing has probably made $150 million+ from
Atomic Habits
alone since it was published in 2018, likely dwarfing the rest of its portfolio combined. Avery likely has dozens, if not hundreds of books, that cap out at a few thousand sales. But it doesn’t matter.
根据版税分成，Avery Publishing自2018年出版《
原子习惯
》以来，可能仅从这一本书就赚了超过1.5亿美元，很可能超过了其投资组合中其他所有书的总和。Avery可能还有几十本甚至几百本书，销量只有几千本封顶。但那没关系。
Atomic Habits
will make them millions of dollars every year, forever.
《原子习惯》
每年都会为他们带来数百万美元的收入，永远如此。
Books with early traction
(not to be confused with the gamified “book launch” playbook so many folks run with shadow bulk buys to game the NYT ratings, where 50,000 books are purchased but never-once opened)
that experience a “virality loop,” where enough early readers tell other folks about it to the point that the book remains popular beyond it’s initial launch window, gain “staying power” that increases with each launch cycle that the particular book survives. Put simply, books are subject to the “
Lindy Effect
.” The future relevancy of a book is proportional to how long it has remained relevant.
那些早期获得口碑的书
（不要与许多人玩的那种游戏化的“图书发布”策略混淆——通过暗地里的批量购买来操纵《纽约时报》排行榜，比如买下5万本却从未翻开过）
会经历一个“病毒式循环”，即足够多的早期读者告诉其他人这本书，使得这本书在最初发布窗口之后仍然保持热度，从而获得“持久力”，并且随着这本书挺过每一个发布周期，这种持久力还会不断增加。简而言之，书籍遵循“
林迪效应
”。一本书未来的相关性与其持续保持相关性的时间成正比。
Atomic Habits
will always be a best-seller because it’s always been a best-seller. The same is true for
The Psychology of Money
,
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
,
48 Laws of Power
, and other books that remain at the top of the best-sellers list year after year. Ironically, I think the slopification of the internet
benefits
proven winners at the expense of new releases. Why? A couple of reasons.
《原子习惯》
永远会是畅销书，因为它一直都是畅销书。
《金钱心理学》
、
《重塑幸福》
、
《权力的48条法则》
以及其他年复一年稳居畅销榜前列的书也是如此。具有讽刺意味的是，我认为互联网的“垃圾化”
有利于
那些已被验证的赢家，却牺牲了新发布的作品。为什么？有几个原因。
First, readers have information overload. When you’re bombarded with billions of inputs vying for your attention, you’ll default to the “proven thing” that minimizes your own cognitive load. If you look for best personal finance books on Amazon and see
The Psychology of Money
, and you remember hearing a few folks recommend it on a podcast two years ago, you’ll buy
The Psychology of Money.
Why waste time looking further down the list.
首先，读者面临信息过载。当你被数十亿个争夺你注意力的输入轰炸时，你会默认选择那个能最大限度减少你认知负担的“经过验证的东西”。如果你在亚马逊上寻找最好的个人理财书籍，看到了
《金钱心理学》
，而且你记得两年前在某个播客上听过几个人推荐它，你就会买
《金钱心理学》
。何必浪费时间继续往下看呢？
Second, LLMs are becoming society’s primary information retrieval vector. LLMs, which were largely trained on internet data, tend to refer readers to those books which appear to have appealed to readers asking similar questions. Therefore the best-sellers in particular categories will be pushed out as responses to new prompts over, and over, and over again. Remember, the LLMs haven’t “read” the books, they’re pattern matching on their training data. AI is a flywheel for proven winners and a roadblock for new entrants.
其次，大语言模型正在成为社会的主要信息检索工具。大语言模型主要是在互联网数据上训练的，它们倾向于向读者推荐那些似乎已经吸引了提出类似问题的读者的书籍。因此，特定类别中的畅销书会作为对新提示词的回应，被一遍又一遍地推出来。记住，大语言