Scanning through the comments, I'm noticing a bit of skepticism over the "legitimacy" of this work. To a large extent, that's probably fair: people have every right to be skeptical of anything calling itself a biography. The rigor of scholarship, access, and sourcing involved in writing a competent biography is a high hurdle to clear.
That said, the idea of Leanpub is to let authors write lean. Writing lean isn't an excuse for half-baked scholarship, but it is an opportunity to publish an "MVP" book and iterate from there. To me, that's what the author is trying to do here, and he should be applauded for that effort and gumption.
This is a huge undertaking, and for that reason alone, I'm intrigued. I wish the minimum price weren't as high as it is (probably another big blip on the skepticism radar), but I would love to check it out.
Going into a biography, most of us have a basic understanding of core life events. We read biographies because we are interested in unique insights that (hopefully) biographers can provide.
The only real way to do that is by interviewing people and drawing out interesting details that haven't been published yet (for a dead person, you might draw from a recently-discovered journal) In this case, the author did neither. Which is not to say this biography is bad, but the price should reflect that
The only question I have unanswered is what the name of the game was that Elon Musk sold when he was 12. I had to include Blastar, Blast Star, and Blaster. I tried to ask that question on Twitter, but it got lost in the spam...
@alanctgardner2 I meant questions that will improve the material I have. You can always ask more questions, but I didn't want the book to be too long either. Well, I wrote it because he's an engineer and it's hard to find engineers that are role models, and I wrote it because he cares about peak oil and not so many others do.
I find it hard to believe that, having looked at someone's entire life you can't think of anything to ask them if you met face-to-face. It kind of makes me worried that the book might be a bit superficial: you can have lots of facts about what he's done, but very little critical commentary or insight into his thought process, emotions, etc. What is it about Musk that made you want to write a whole book about him?
That's another game released in 1993 by Core Design. Elon's game was released in 1983. I've written in the biography that the two games shouldn't be confused.
Slightly meta - Just a recommendation on your "pitch". When you are trying to get someone to buy something using the word "try" makes you sound less serious. I understand you're trying to be humble, but confidence in your work will get you more book sales. Be confident and people will take you more seriously.
That being said...the book looks interesting! Grattis for shipping.
Good advice, though when sharing with the HN audience, humility is probably a decent strategy. In fact, I might have suggested "I am writing..." rather than the past-tense "I wrote" or "I tried to write." This would imply that the writing is an ongoing process, of which sharing on HN is the first major feedback stage.
no, when I read "try" I thought the book isn't finished. And of course Elon is what 40 years old. He's not really cooked well enough for a true bio yet. So I'm also not ready to buy the book yet.
One thing that sticks out to me is the price. Where did you choose $24.99 from? Recently I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (which is a more reputable book) for $13.60. I'm not saying that you're book isn't worth it but I don't see anything on this page to justify the cost.
> The book was based on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two-year period right up until shortly before his death. Isaacson also drew on conversations with friends, family members, and business rivals of the entrepreneur whose vision revolutionized computing, music, phones, animated films, and publishing
It also was published shortly after his death (AFAICT Musk is still alive)
"Maybe the best comparable person is Christopher Columbus"
Columbus was a religious extremist who thought the world was egg shaped and that he had landed in India rather than the Bahamas, even after it became increasingly clear that he hadn't, and who thought that his own travels were to do with the bringing about of the end times according to Christian prophecy. I am not sure he is necessarily the best person to use as a comparison.
All of that is eccentricity compared to Columbus' very real crimes against humanity that he committed during his voyages. He enslaved huge numbers of people and put them to work in forced labor under brutal conditions. It was so egregious that the Spanish had to remove him from his governorship. He should rightly be one of the most controversial figures in history. Comparing him to anyone in modern history (except maybe Stalin or Hitler) is at best an insult.
There are plenty of other people who are comparable to Musk, obviously not the same in every way, but similar in certain respects. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates come to mind, Jobs more than Gates. Henry Ford. Andrew Carnegie. In an odd way, Ray Jardine. Nikola Tesla.
Thanks for the input. I didn't know that it was wrong to compare Elon with Columbus. Others have complained about it as well, so I will probably find a another explorer.
Not being funny, but if you are writing a book about someone and intend on comparing them to historical characters, you probably should go through history a bit more generally and find people who genuinely reflects the person you are describing, rather than go and decide that you just want an explorer and then seek one to wedge in.
Typos on page 2: “At one interview, he had to hung up the phone because the journalist couldn’t understand the difficult topics involved … If he don’t get it, will he be sad about it?”
Regardless, awesome idea. I plan on reading it through.
Thank You. I am Swedish, so I might have made some silly errors. That's why I released it through Leanpub, so don't be afraid of complaining. Or as Musk himself said: "Don't tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like."
This is what I have been asking for - the Elon Musk biography.
However, the one thing that I'm after, and the only thing I would be willing to buy it for, is answer to the question - "How did surmount his challenges?" He must have faced a thousand naysayers, both at the business level and at the technical level. People who he had to convince to make his successes happen. What is it that he has that enables him to overcome these challenges and succeed? It's probably not any one thing, but whatever it is, he has it in spades.
I would like to know if/how this book addresses that. Thanks.
I've for example included how he convinced experts to join a new rocket company. In the beginning, no one wanted to join SpaceX because so many other rocket companies had failed. So what he did was to pay the experts to participate in a series of meetings so they could convince themselves.
One paragraph from the book:
After the meetings ended, the conclusion was that it would be possible to build better rockets than had been made before. The experts were now convinced that SpaceX was different and wouldn't be yet another failed rocket company. "I essentially led them to a conclusion that they created," Elon said. "It was sort of a Socratic dialogue on a technical level. The essence of a Socratic dialogue is that people wind up convincing themselves. People are much more willing to change their opinion if you're not forcing it."
Apologies from the get go for my negative-sounding questions, but the skeptic in me wonders:
1. Is this biography in any way vetted by Elon Musk or anyone who has first-hand knowledge of events described here?
2. If not, then how is this anything more than anec-data, wikipedia and googling thrown together in a fantasy narrative?
3. If it is not vouchsafed by the principal, real, living person about whom this book claims to be about, then perhaps a disclaimer about it being a work of fiction should be on the cover itself...
People write unauthorized biographies all the time. There's no reason to assume that just because a biography isn't authorized by its subject that it's inherently less reliable. They can even be more reliable; the subject may require the biographer to agree to respect certain no-go zones in their life in order to gain authorization, or the biographer may come to unduly identify with the subject after spending lots of time with them and write a book with a sympathetic slant. Another biographer writing from outside the subject's personal bubble can avoid these risks and restrictions.
Which is not to say that all unauthorized biographies are automatically great, just that you should evaluate them based on the quality of the author's research rather than just on whether or not they've been authorized by the subject.
An unofficial biography is not the same thing as a work of fiction. In fact, it might be less fictional than an account by that person. So long as the author has not invented anything he put's into the book and has fact-checked all of his claims, then it's at least as much a biography as nearly every book you've ever read about a now dead historical figure.
There are plenty of non-authorized biographies around, which no one would think to call "fiction". Not being vetted by the subject does not preclude accurate research.
Basically, it looks like you're implying the author is making stuff up. If that's indeed what you're trying to say, it's fine. But please state it outright.
I believe that you can draw conclusions from the combined 407 sources that you couldn't have done if you read them individually, which by the way takes at least 4 weeks. You can't explain everything needed in a single article.
Yes, just to clarify for non-native speakers, this is a positive (but very colloquial) expression in English. The person who said it was giving a complement.
Very interesting. I have been following Musk/Spacex closely since the 2007. Even wrote a small inspirational coverage on him back then (Searching though, to post it here!). At the time they were going through challenging times as third and rather defining flight of Falcon was round the corner.
That said, the idea of Leanpub is to let authors write lean. Writing lean isn't an excuse for half-baked scholarship, but it is an opportunity to publish an "MVP" book and iterate from there. To me, that's what the author is trying to do here, and he should be applauded for that effort and gumption.
This is a huge undertaking, and for that reason alone, I'm intrigued. I wish the minimum price weren't as high as it is (probably another big blip on the skepticism radar), but I would love to check it out.