Retiring The Personal Excellence Book

Hi everyone!

This is a quick update to let you guys know that I’m retiring the Personal Excellence Book. (Update July 1, 2016: The book is now officially retired.) The Personal Excellence Book is an ebook compilation of the best articles on PE. Over the years, I have released 2 volumes (so 2 ebooks in total), with each volume having 101 articles each for a total of 202 articles. These articles were published between 2008 and 2012. PE Book is the first product I’ve ever sold on PE and it’s one of the best-selling products in our lineup. We have sold over 3,200 ebooks to date!

Why am I retiring PE Book then? Truth be told, it was getting very exhausting updating the product. I have never publicly mentioned this but I spend several hours, sometimes a few days, updating PE Book every month, ever since it was launched in 2010. Because I’m always making changes to the articles on PE, be it grammar updates, image changes, minute text updates, and so on), that means that the material in PE Book needs to updated as well. While at first I’d make the changes immediately, subsequently I switched to batching, where I would track all the little changes in a text file, after which I’d transfer them to the two ebook volumes once a month. This whole process is incredibly micro, where I had to hunt for the article using the Control+F function, look for the changes in each 1,000-page ebook, edit them, arrange them nicely, export the PDF (which takes a while because it’s a large book), login to my product server, and then reupload them. As you can tell, this becomes very tedious very fast. And I have been doing this for 6 years.

Some of you may wonder: Why not just continue selling PE Book without updating it? While I can do that and it’s certainly the easier way out, I don’t want to. Since PE Book is meant to be a compilation, I’d prefer that it accurately reflects all the content live on PE, at least at the point the customer buys it. I feel it’s the right thing to do. And while I suppose I can hire someone to do this, there are usually many minor changes that are difficult to relay to a third party without there being some sort of miscommunication or misunderstanding. It then becomes a cumbersome process of trying to spot and correct mistakes of what are really small changes to begin with. Not to mention, hiring someone means additional cost, which needs to come from somewhere, be it raising the product price or otherwise. The question then comes to, “Should I even be allocating resources to an activity that is highly micro with little output?” It became clear that it’s a “no.”

There’s another reason too. Since releasing PE Book Volumes 1 and 2, I have written about 400 new articles. Originally my plan was to create a new volume of PE Book every 2–3 years so that readers have the option to purchase my best articles in each time period. But after seeing all the work required to maintain Volumes 1 and 2, I held back from releasing Volume 3 and eventually scrapped it. Given that PE Book is meant as a compilation of my best articles, but I’m only putting my best articles from 2008 to 2012 in the books, I eventually felt a disconnect selling the product. It’s not that the articles in PE Book aren’t good — they are, all 202 of them, covering golden topics of personal growth and the result of my blood and sweat of my first 4 years of PE. It’s just that I also have other in-depth articles, building on what I’ve written in my first 4 years, that I’d want to sell in a compilation too, but it’s just realistically not feasible after seeing all the back-and-forth with the first 2 volumes. And I believe this disconnect would only become bigger as the years pass, when I have more and more new articles not inside the compilation, while I need to spend all this resource and energy maintaining something from so many years ago when I could be doing something else.

At the end of the day, I think the idea of a compilation book is great as it’s useful to have a handbook of the best articles in a blog, neatly organize in a beautifully designed ebook that one can read on the go. Many customers of PE Book have told me that they found PE Book very useful. In fact they have read articles in the book that they didn’t even know were on the site — because the PE website has so many articles that it’s easy to get lost in the site sometimes!

Just some past testimonials of customers who got PE Book:

“Hi Celes, I received my copy on Monday and let me say I was blown away. There is so much high quality content in there (over 800 pages) that I’m only one quarter of the way through and I’m already improving my productivity on my business by miles!

Really, for the price of this you have totally over delivered. So if there’s anybody out there who’s wondering if it’s worth it or not. It totally is. This book has helped me increase my productivity, overcome barriers and gain confidence thus boosting my personal and business performance. In fact, I’ve increased my (business) turnover by 30% in the past two weeks!

Thanks for the excellent work Celes and your writing style absolutely rocks. Helps me read and absorb the info so easily.” — Bailey Ing, the UK

“One word, stunning! Not sure if you’ve ever seen TPEB (The Personal Excellence Book) in iBooks on an iPad. If not, I can assure you it is a reading experience second to none. First, the appearance with all the graphics, color scheme and font choices is visually appealing. Second, the detailed Table of Contents (TOC) makes it easy to quickly go to a given subject. For me, TPEB is not the kind of book you read from front to back. Rather you read topics most relevant to you at any given time. The TOC makes this happen. Though I just downloaded, I can clearly see the strength of the book is its content. Far more topics are covered than like books and they are done in a practical manner.

I hope this feedback is useful. Normally I wouldn’t be compelled to spend the time doing so, but I’ve been so impressed with the work you’ve done with the book and your website, I figured it’s the least I could do. Please pat yourself on the back for me. :-) ” — Steve

“Dear Celes, Thank you for the wonderful book. I have one word to describe it…”SUPERB”. It is an excellent tool which i will use to enhance my personal and emotional skills, gain focus in life as well as discover more meaning in my life overrall. Your blog is awesome but many times i am unable to get to all the articles but composing them into this wonderful ebook has made it so much easier to read and practice your words. My main problem is that i am a perfectionist, and also have high self-doubt and your book with all its tips and easy-to-use guidance is an amazing resource. Your wealth of knowledge and experiences that you share with others is beyond the words i can find to thank you! You are awesome and i will definitely recommend this book to my friends and family. Keep up the great work and i look forward to your blog and another book soon ;) “

Best wishes and hearty thanks,
Ashna (Davis, California)

“I have been following Celes’ site for some time and was hence very eager to get her book. I’ve found the book to be captivating and inspiring. I’ve been reading through the book and it’s really great and just what I needed at this point in time. A huge resource at over 2,000 pages, the content is well- organized and easy to read. It is not a book about just theories and concepts – there are exercises and practical tips which you can instantly apply, and Celes also shares her own personal experience. Celes has really inspired me to think about my purpose and reassess my own goals. Definitely a great book to have and I recommend it to everyone.” — Ishwari, Mauritius, Africa

“The Personal Excellence Book is a goldmine of tips, articles, and quality writing to help you live a better life. So far, I’ve read the first ‘Purpose and Meaning’ section, and have gained from it immeasurably. The first chapter is about 50 pages long and is worth more than the book’s price alone. Celes’ tips are – unlike many other similar sites I’ve read – actually practical, and can be put to use right away in everyday life.

“Not only that, but I’ve communicated with Celes personally and can honestly say she is one of the most lovely people I’ve ever spoken to. Celes is an inspiration to me — positive, sincere, honest, and funny. Summing it all up, I’d say that Personal Excellence Book could probably be the most valuable purchase I’ve ever made – don’t hesitate to buy it a moment longer.” — Jack, the UK

“The Personal Excellence Book is what I’d refer to as the “Road Map” for my personal development. There are two parts to maximize personal development of each individual. First part is “the concept” and second part is “the execution”. This personal excellence handbook closes the knowledge gap between concept and execution, especially the part of selfreflection tools. e.g. Life handbooks, How to discover my life purpose. These tools really work and make me understand myself in the new level.

Thank you for creating this excellent book and congratulations to this success to create this album. This could be perceived as your red ribbon project in my eyes.” — Kasiwoot, Thailand

But in terms of implementation, it’s not feasible as it’s a compilation of content that is updated almost every week. One thing I didn’t expect is that I would update my articles and old articles so often. While most blogs would post content and leave it as that, I believe in regularly revisiting my articles to keep them timeless. This means having to update PE Book every few weeks/month, which makes me feel like I’m forever stuck tweaking a product from the past as opposed to moving on to other, bigger projects. If there’s a way to automate this process, I’d have done, but there isn’t (not that I know of).

So it’s time to say goodbye to PE Book as I pull it from the PE product lineup this month. It’s sad as this is a product I have put a lot of sweat into creating and maintaining, perhaps more so than some of the products, but I think retiring it and letting it go will pave the way for other higher value products to come. I have just updated the ebooks for the last time before I officially pull it off the shelf.

Revenue-wise I’ll be cutting away one good revenue stream (just like when I retired Blogging Success Program and Passive Income System), but I think this is something that has to be done as I focus on new plans.

The Personal Excellence Book, Volumes 1 and 2. My best articles from 2008 to 2012.

Update July 1, 2016: Thank you everyone for your final purchases before the retirement of the product! Many of you have shared very nice comments, thank you! Here’s a note I got from reader Joan,

“I have been your fan for years….. so glad to get the whole works…. worth every penny. Love ya…” Joan Sheldon, Calif ♥

Thank you and your support means the world to me. :) I believe that this will free up more mind space for me to focus on creating more higher value products for all of you. Love you guys! :)