Six Innovations on the idea of a Book from the Navalmanack

Note: Republishing this post I shared on the Medium paid subscription a few years ago. This was originally written in September 2020.

I’ve created a book! The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A guide to Wealth and Happiness is a compilation of all of Naval’s wisdom from tweets, talks, and interviews over the past 10 years.

A stack of Naval’s wisdom on a table.

A few unique things about the Navalmanack.

Not all of these are completely original to this project, but the combination has made for something that feels… more… than just a book. Let’s break these down and explain each one for readers and future authors. Here’s the list:

• Created entirely from public sources

• Rich with Insights

• Fractal Format

• Readable and re-readable

• Freely Available Online

• QR Codes

Created entirely out of publicly available information about Naval Ravikant.

The raw material of this Naval book is Tweets, Podcasts, Videos, Articles, Books, and Blog Posts. I didn’t write one word past the Author’s note.

(Though don’t let that fool you — I did work my ass off to build an incredible reading experience with the existing raw material.)

Rich with Insight

The original amount of raw material was enormous. ~80 sources, ~20,000 tweets, Well over 1,000,000 words. Over a decade of creation to curate from.

A book distilled from this much raw material is the most insight-dense book possible. Here’s a test: open this book to any random spot, read one page, then close the book and think interesting thoughts for an hour afterward.

As I organized building blocks, I could see ideas germinate and develop, as Naval Ravikant articulates them more and more clearly over time. We could select the very best version of an idea, and pair it with another complementary idea from a different platform to strengthen each insight.

While it all flows smoothly, you don’t have to read every word to learn something. Most books are 1 idea expanded into a book. The Navalmanack is 100 ideas woven together into one conversation.

Fractal Format

The unique constraints led to the creation of a new book format. Inspired by the internet origin of the content, and some solid advice from Nivi and Sean O’Connor, this book is fractal. You can zoom in and out of it. If you read just the Table of Contents, you would learn something valuable.

Next, you could read just the tweets, which are formatted like pull quotes, in large text throughout the book. Read in this way, it’s almost like a book of aphorisms (pithy statements of general truth) and koans (puzzle within a statement (from Zen Buddhism)).

As you read the body, it feels like a conversation with Naval about the depth of each of these ideas. Reading feels invigorating and engaging.

Maybe most interestingly, the final section of the book is “Naval’s Recommended Reading.” It shows the sources of his worldview, the books and blogs that informed it. For readers who really want to dive deeper into the first principles, the foundation of Naval’s ideas… this is the beginning of years of interesting reading.

Readable and Re-readable

While many Alpha Readers just binged the book in 2 days, it is also easy to bounce in/out of. This is partly due to the structure (each section and chapter stands on its own), and in homage to Naval’s own reading style. He “treats books like blogs” — picking up, putting down, and skipping around.

One early reader called this an “ADD — friendly reading experience.” And while the book format is timeless, the bar for holding a reader’s attention is certainly higher now. I can say this book lives up to that.

Naval tweets and short punchy statements are formatted like pull quotes as seen below, but they are unique content (unlike normal pull quotes.) These are almost like notes — you can flip through reading just the large-print to refresh your memory on the ideas. Here is an example:

Excerpt from the Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Freely Available Online

We’re providing the full content of the book available free online in a variety of formats. Information wants to be free. Open sharing of information is how we can help create equality of opportunity around the world. Just as Naval wanted it to be.

Not only that, but now the full text is: Indexed, Searchable, Sharable, Highlightable, and Copy-and-paste-able.

Navalmanack QR Codes

I’ve expected QR codes to make a comeback for a long time. Now, a QR code reader is built-in to smartphone cameras, it’s accessible to everyone instantly.

Many books recently have included URLs in footnotes or at the end of the book. It’s not many readers who will type out a whole Url with a blog post extension. There has to be a better paradigm for this.

In the Naval’s Recommended Reading section, where so much of the content is links to books and blogs, QR codes are the perfect way to be most helpful to readers as they move from physical book to web sources.

These images transition you quickly between text and web. The camera reads the link instantly and pops up a notification. Open the camera, tap the notification bar. 0.3 seconds at most.

After a little ‘user testing’ with a few friends and family members… I did realize these images needed a small instructional caption. But if more books adopt this in a few years, maybe everyone will pick up the habit!

Try it now — pop open your phone camera and point it at this image:

To purchase a copy of the Navalmanack, head to Amazon. To read Naval Ravikant’s wisdom for free or download the pdf online, head to Navalmanack.com.