Yuval Noah Harari's Entrepreneurial Pursuits, Book Income and Creator Stack + Top Jobs

How to build your creator stack

Historian and author of blockbuster non-fiction “Sapiens” had a hard time getting published. Most publishers turned him down when he pitched to them. They thought the sweeping history of mankind will not be of much interest to the readers. The topic seemed too broad for a book and too vague to capture audience interest.

After some back and forth, he decided to get an agent for his book who nudged him to redraft the manuscript. Finally it got picked up by a publisher and published in 2014. Initially the book sales were mellow but 2 years after publication things started heating up. It sold more than 200,000 copies in UK. To give you a sense of book sales, 98% of books published in 2020 did not sell 5000 copies.

In 2016, President Barack Obama recommended the book on CNN saying it gave him “a sense of perspective” on our extraordinary civilization. By 2019, Sapiens had been translated in more than 50 languages, selling over 13 million copies.

In 2017, Harari published Homo Deus and followed it up with 21 Lessons for the 21st century in 2018. Overall, Harari has sold over 23 million copies worldwide.