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19 Comments

How many books do you read per year?

Before I became a Growth Marketer I used to read one or two books per year.

But this year, so far, I have read 8 books.

I'm on my 9th book.

Initially, the plan was to get to 12 books at the end of this year.

But when COVID-19 happened, I had more time since I was no longer commuting to and from work.

The goal now is to get to 14 books.

I know it's not much, but it's better than what I used to do.

At Invesp, book-reading is part of the company culture.

We believe that books are crucial for personal and professional development.

When interviewing for a job at Invesp, one of the questions you get asked is:

"What book are you reading?" Or "Do you like reading books?"

Companies that want to grow and succeed utilize books as an invaluable resource to build a strong and educated workforce.

Personally, I recommend that you get your hands on these:

  1. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
  2. Strategy First: How Businesses Win Big
  3. Risky Is the New Safe
  4. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
  5. Finding the Right Message: How to turn the voice of customer research into an irresistible website copy.
  6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

That said, how many books do you read per year? And which ones do you recommend?

  1. 2

    Years ago, since I've discovered https://www.pdfdrive.com/ and several similar sites with freely available thousands if not millions of books in just about any niche you can imagine, I am reading at least 3 to 5 books in a week, easily.

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing the site.

      3-5 books a week? Is it cover to cover or?

      1. 2

        PDF files, but yes, cover to cover. Most of them are between 160 to 350 pages, not really an issue to finish it in few hours.

        Also check https://b-ok.lat/ , they do have some daily download limits, but you can register for free and up the limit.

        tip for pdfdrive : open links in another tabs, when you have 10-15 of them opened go and click Download each of them, one by one, but don't wait to load the file.

        When you come back to the first link it will already finish the loading of the file so you can do a much faster download in the second round. And keep the niches in separated folders, it can get messy when you see how much of everything is there and file names are not always the same as the book title.

  2. 2

    About to finish the 17th for this year. Currently reading, or rather "listening" to "Thinking Fast, and Slow"

    I've discovered audiobooks in January and I'm addicted ever since.

    1. 1

      I like the book Thinking fast, and slow. It's must readers for marketers, designers, entrepreneurs, etcetera.

      Yea, audiobooks make it all easy. I'm young but old school –I enjoy reading an actual book than listening.

  3. 2

    I read a ton of escapist books, 100 or so a year. I start a lot of business books, but I rarely finish them. Mainly though I listen to a ton of podcasts and read a lot of articles online, I think generally they are superior to business/startup books.

    1. 1

      I like podcasts too, I listen to dozens every week. Actually wrote about my fav episodes.

  4. 2

    Great question, Simbar! I try to read at least 1 book per month. I wish I had more time to read, but that is about the max with everything else going on. But it is super helpful to always have something to read. Usually, it's a marketing book of course.

    1. 1

      Which marketing book are you currently reading Nic?

  5. 2

    Can't really answer that, but I've learned that what I enjoy is rereading and getting everything I can out of a book. But not all books are meant to be consumed this way so I now have various modes of reading.

    1. 1

      That's an interesting system. Will try all the modes –hopefully, one will work for me.

  6. 2

    +1 for Good Strategy Bad Strategy. Absolutely fantastic.

    I’ve read a book a week without fail since 2015. But I think I may change this next year and read deeply on a topic for several weeks at a time rather than focus on doing a book a week.

    1. 1

      A book a week? That's nice. I read about 15-20 pages per day.

      1. 2

        Up until last year, the effect was really meaningful.

        I think the quality of the learning I was previously hitting has dropped. Also, my enjoyment of reading a book is now more important to me and I haven’t found a huge amount inspiring this year tbh.

        I think at first, quantity actually did matter because it opened my mind to exploring more and more new areas. But these days, I really just want quality.

        1. 1

          How much time a day are you spending to be able to read that many? I feel like at my pace I'd need to spend 4+ hours a day easy.

          1. 1

            I read between 10pm and midnight every day (although, in fairness, I often fall asleep towards 11:15pm)

  7. 2

    I read 30-40 books per year. A couple of recommendations:

    • The Passion Economy: Nine Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century by Adam Davidson
    • Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday
    • Sweating Bullets: Notes about inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins
    1. 1

      Thanks for the recommendations, just added those to my reading list.

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