You could. And probably should. I've thought about doing that myself, as I have no shortage of quotes and inspirational passages that I have collected from my readings over the years. But this book was a good place to start, and while corny, I found the message to be solid.

Hey, this might do absolutely nothing for you, which is fine. Like I said, I found it helpful and I perceive a difference in my attitudes and behaviors after spending a year with this book. But that's just me.

I already have one. :)

I didn't question whether this book has worked for you or not, it's good if it has and more power to you.

It's about the reader's own attitude towards it. If you really believe in those passages (which, based on the passage, seem to be written like horoscopes) then of course they're going to work for you. Just like horoscopes magically seem to work into every situation.

In my humble honest opinion, advice like "I will persist until I succeed" just creates train wrecks. Especially when repeated 75 times in a month. I also believe that self help books like this one tend to cloud the reader's judgement and inflate their egos - which is not nice.

But then he wouldn't get the Amazon affiliate revenue :(

Yeah, that $0.48 commission is why I spent a year reading this book three times a day. You caught me.

It's a bit mean to call you out over an affiliate link; but if you didn't care about the commission, you wouldn't have provided the link.

Of course he cares about the commission, but he obviously (I hope) didn't care about it so much that it became the reason why he wrote the post. It's just a bonus perk that happens to be available -- why should he turn it down?

If I invite you to a party and you get yourself a drink when you get there did you only come to the party so you could get a drink?

If you care about him not having the commission then it is simple to work around.

I don't care one way or the other.

However I do think it's slightly disingenuous to brush off a comment about affiliate payments in such a flippant way, when monetisation seems to provide at least some motivation for writing the blog (http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/october-2010-blog-income-upd...).

The original poster suggested that one could simply put together a booklet of custom sayings and read that, to which mike-cardwell responded that I wouldn't receive the Amazon affiliate revenue in that case. This makes it sound like the culmination of all the work I put in over the last year is to be able to post this blog post and collect some affiliate revenue. I find this completely ludicrous; I'll be lucky to make $10 off this post. I'd make more money billing for a client in the time in took me to respond to this thread. I put affiliate links on everything I promote on my blog, but that doesn't mean that I live large sections of my life out differently so I can hopefully collect a few dollars down the road.

Fair enough - but I don't think the poster was insinuating you spent a year reading the book to be able to gain affiliate payments (especially since you read it back in 2007)

The insinuation was probably that you chose to write this post in order to advertise the book (as a monetisation strategy).

Anyway, good work with the blog :)

Good for you - earn some income for recommending a product you believe in. Nothing wrong with that. I hope it yields you enough income to pay for the people who can't/don't want to purchase the book and call you on your offer to purchase for them.

It was a joke, and implied nothing of the sort. Interesting that this was your response.

Sorry, just tired of the HN crowd (many of whom hope to create and sell products to people for money) freaking out any time a blogger links to something where they'll make a few pennies if someone purchases.