Making Over $1.2M By Resurrecting Old Books

I skipped last week, but I’ve got a good reason - I was heads down in an experiment growing Hampton’s newsletter, and I’ve got some insights on that for you below.

This week, we’re looking at…

1. Case Study: $1.2M Per Year Resurrecting Old Books

2. Experiments

3. What I’m Reading

4. Final Thoughts

1. Case Study: How The Lost Art Press Makes Over $1.2m Per Year Resurrecting Old Books

This is just a snapshot of a much more in-depth case study I’m working on at the moment. But I’ve recently been obsessed with this company called Lost Art Press.

It was started back in 2007 by two woodworkers, with the goal of reviving and preserving all the old woodworking books written by the masters before the days of power tools. They also write new books too.

All-told it ships 60,000 books per year, along with courses, merch, custom tools, and a paid substack that brings in subscription revenue. With the books ranging $20-$71 the low estimate for top-line revenue would be $1.2m on those alone.

They have just one employee.

Big Picture: The company is successful despite itself. They’re doing well because they’ve built an excellent reputation for the quality of their work, and their long (looong) dedication in the woodworking community. They deserve their success.

But there are a few key parts of the media engine that are under-performing:

• Their email capture is not optimized

• They have 5,000+ articles but no discernible SEO plan

• Not sure what’s going on with their email list (below)

Basically, a company this good, that’s been around this long, should be bigger.

Why I Love It: It’s the opposite of everything we’re used to and rewarded for in tech startups.

• The business has bootstrapped slowly because, “growing the business slowly ensured that it would be difficult to fail.”

• They pay their writers 2-3x industry standard in order to ensure they attract the best

• Their books are all made from the highest-quality materials, right here in the US, and designed to last for 100+ years.

• They’ve been in the game for 16 years

Basically just uncompromising quality, humility, and a long-term obsession with the craft, which is refreshing.

What I’d Change: I wish these guys made more money. Not because bigger is always better (I don’t think it is). But because I really like what they’re doing, and more money could help them keep doing it.

I think you could grow the business substantially too, without changing much about how it functions day-to-day, or interacts with readers. The big things I’d focus on would be…

• More Ecap Forms: I published a detailed piece on the 5 ecap forms that major newsletters like The Hustle use to maximize signups. We executed on these at Hampton and have seen a big lift in subscribers. Would find a natural way to include them on LAP too.

• Lead Magnet: Related to the above. They have so much content. I’d pull something out of the archive and turn it into an irresistible lead magnet.

• Newsletter Format: Right now, that whole back catalog is going to waste. I’d experiment with newsletter formats to get any evergreen pieces back in front of new readers.

I’m in the middle of a much deeper dive into everything from their ad strategy to how they actually have their books produced. So more to follow on that.

But for now, I’d say this is just proof that there are a lot of ways to make it work in this industry.

There’s probably also an opportunity here: I don’t see why this model couldn’t be replicated for other crafts, sports, and hobbies. There are so many great old books in the public domain that deserve to be revived and recirculated.

2. Experiments

I mentioned at the start of this email that I skipped last week because I was heads down in a growth experiment. Figured I’d tell you a bit about that

Background: I have a theory that the Reddit and Hacker News will be great sources of future Hampton members, if we can become well-known and respected in those circles.

Hacker News is essentially the community hub for Y-Combinator (e.g., lots of great founders). And Reddit has an r/Entrepreneur group with 2.4m+ members.

Both of those groups are incentivized to keep attracting great new members. So if we work our way into the community, stay active, and provide a lot of value, it should pay off over the long term.

It’s really no different than what anyone is doing on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The Challenge: The key challenge is also the key opportunity here - namely that you can’t be a shill. You can’t be overly self-promotional, or opportunistic. You’ve gotta be a real person, and try to make actual connections.

Most people don’t have the patience to do this.

But I know from experience as a community manager that it doesn’t take much to stand out as a member of one of these groups. Even huge online communities will only ever have a handful of people who show up regularly, and share great stuff.

My Approach: I’m adopting what I’ve come to think of as the Trung Phan approach: Essentially taking cool stuff you learn in one group, layering on your own insight, and sharing it with people in another.

Trung is a master of this. We worked together at The Hustle, where I watched him hone his craft. Scroll his Twitter feed any day, and you’ll see custom stories from him, along with a smattering of interesting videos, photos, quotes, etc. pulled from all over the web.

His ability to find interesting things in one place, and share them in another is a cornerstone of his approach, and has helped him build an enormous personal audience (Elon is literally a subscriber).

The beauty of this system is that…

• It’s easier to find cool content than to make it from scratch

• If you find a few groups with similar interests but not a ton of member cross-over, and share between them, you quickly stand out for your ability to curate interesting stuff.

You could visualize it like this:

So essentially, I spend a little time each day pinging between these 3 channels, trying to do 3 things:

• Looking for interesting links to share elsewhere

• Giving thoughtful answers to questions members post

• Very occasionally: Linking to content we’ve written on the Hampton blog

The Outcomes: It’s still early, but one thing I’ve found is that there’s definitely a Pareto distribution on what works. A small number of posts drive most results. And you never know what will take off.

For example, on the night I skipped sending this newsletter, I was heads down answering a bunch of questions on Reddit. I was trying to rack up 10 “karma” points, so that our account could start sharing articles.

I woke up the next morning with more than 100 “karma”, the vast majority of which came from a single reply I made to one post.

Early signs are promising. But it’ll take time to know whether or not this works.

3. What I’m Reading

📚 Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book In An Hour: It’s weird, for someone who runs a blog, I feel like I don’t get enough time to read. This was recommended to me by one of our members at Hampton. She says she increased her comfortable reading speed by about 60%. It’s a very short read, and so far, I’m loving it.

📈 How A Pickleball Newsletter Grew to 150k Subs: Really enjoyed this piece from Chenell Basilio on how Thomas Shields built The Dink.

✅ Smart Brevity 101: Sam Parr shared this with me the other day. It’s a great (and very brief) overview of Axios’ guide to writing short, punchy, easy-to-read stories that get noticed.

🎥 How To Manage Freelance Writers (Loom): This is a video from Alexis Grant about the exact process she uses to manage a team of freelance writers over at They Got Acquired. If you don’t know her, she’s a total badass - built and sold multiple media companies, and this has been helpful for me as I think through how to scale our content ops at Hampton.

📚 Buy Back Your Time: For me, this book completely reframes how to hire, and the exercises (specifically the 2-week time audit) have probably been the best investment of time or money that I’ve made recently.

4. Final Thoughts

One of the most useful things you can do for yourself when it comes to newsletter writing is settle on a repeatable format – a series of sections you know you’ll include in every issue.

Not only does it make the newsletter faster to write each week, but it also helps you recognize stories that’ll be a good fit when you come across them in the wild.

I haven’t quite settled on the format for this one yet. But hit reply and let me know what you’d like to see in here. I read every message.