My book may not be for you

Now that I have actu­al read­ers, I’m learn­ing quite a bit about what I’ve writ­ten and how it’s received.

This book may not be for you…

Early in the process, I real­ized that I need­ed to ask myself “what is it about what I’m say­ing that’s unique?” Certainly, there are tons of div­i­dend rein­vest­ing books. Heck, I was read­ing them back in 1980 when I start­ed invest­ing this way.

If there are a lot of books, and the invest­ing tools I’m talk­ing about aren’t new, then a lot of peo­ple know how to invest the way I describe in The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck. While I believe the met­rics I’ve cre­at­ed are unique, and that they’re help­ful even for advanced investors, I sus­pect that peo­ple famil­iar with div­i­dend investing/reinvesting don’t need the extra “feel good” my met­rics pro­vide.

So who’s the book for?

It reminds me of a story

A good friend bought an iPad. He want­ed to get one for his wife, but the peo­ple at her job were insis­tent that the iPad was a “gim­mick” (just a big phone but with­out the phone). Instead, they sug­gest­ed she get a kin­dle.

He tried con­vinc­ing her. Showed her what she could do; talked about the great tech­nol­o­gy; how it was the future. All to no avail.

As a tech­nol­o­gy per­son, he had a deep appre­ci­a­tion for the iPad that she would nev­er match. The more he pushed, the more she tuned him out.

In a final attempt, he drove her to Starbucks. They got cof­fee and he dropped her at the Apple store to speak with the staff. Let them try.

I hon­est­ly don’t remem­ber how the sto­ry end­ed. But that’s not the point. The point is, there are things that peo­ple just don’t appre­ci­ate learn­ing from their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er. The hard­er one push­es, the more they get shut out. Especially when it has to do with tech­nol­o­gy or math — sub­jects that peo­ple with exper­tise have trou­ble explain­ing to peo­ple with­out the same back­ground.

…It may be for your spouse

The break­down of book pur­chas­es is quite inter­est­ing. It’s most­ly women. Which is what I’d expect con­sid­er­ing that’s my tar­get read­er.

The feed­back that I get from the women is around want­i­ng to start invest­ing or want­i­ng to do more but not know­ing how and not know­ing where to get impar­tial yet per­son­al advice. They’re buy­ing the book for them­selves.

In a bunch of cas­es though, the buy­er has been a guy ((Every pur­chase has aligned by gen­der as far as I can tell. The guys have invest­ing expe­ri­ence, the women want to know how to get start­ed. It’s not a huge sam­ple, but I’m being lit­er­al­ly in my use of pro­nouns.)). A guy that’s been invest­ing for a while. These are usu­al­ly peo­ple I have worked with in tech — gen­er­al­ly smart, edu­cat­ed, and good with num­bers. They bought the book more because I wrote it, than because they had some need to learn a new way to invest. They gen­er­al­ly know I tell good sto­ries. (Thank you guys!)

In these cas­es the feed­back was what I expect­ed. Something along the lines of “I knew this stuff”.

Very inter­est­ing­ly, even those with advanced invest­ing expe­ri­ence real­ly enjoyed the sto­ry. Not just for them­selves, but because they’re try­ing to explain invest­ing to their spouse who’s just not that inter­est­ed.

The sto­ry I tell is a quick read and helps inex­pe­ri­enced investors under­stand div­i­dend invest­ing basics with­out the com­plex­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al (bor­ing) invest­ing books. It’s good, read­ers say, for help­ing to explain their invest­ing strat­e­gy to oth­ers.

It’s the book ver­sion of “going to the Apple store with a lat­te” and let­ting some­one else do the explain­ing.

If you have a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er who remains aloof from your fam­i­ly’s finan­cial port­fo­lio, The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck makes a good gift for that last bit of sum­mer beach read­ing we’ll still have time for before September.