For what it's worth: I don't live in Silicon Valley. My routine dinner company does not include investors or people working on startups. Eric Ries has over the last several years demonstrated his credibility to me on his blog by teaching me things which, on multiple occasions, I was able to implement to dramatic effect in my own business.
Want a concrete example? He had a post, years ago, on why A/B testing needs to be a one-liner or you will never do it. That resonated with me, strongly, and that became the design brief for A/Bingo. I prioritized that feature over pretty much everything else in my implementation, and it is a major part of the reason why it works for me. Some years later I'm considered somewhat of an authority on the subject (funny how that works), and when I go in to companies to work with them on A/B testing, the best single process improvement we get -- and we get it virtually without fail -- is going from "A/B testing takes a bunch of work with logging into a product from a large multinational advertising agency, filling out a few forms, and copy/pasting up the wazoo -- and as a consequence we did three A/B tests a year ago and haven't done anything since" to "our engineers put in the A/B tests themselves automatically because it is easier than not doing it."
By the way, as it regards picks and miners: it takes a special kind of mind to see publishing a book as a route to fame and fortune on the backs of the little guy if one is also capable of, say, consulting on A/B testing.
Some people say Tim Ferris helps them in similar ways. Little tips that push you into doing things you already knew you should doing.
They probably both offer some value by packaging existing ideas in more palatable ways. If you don't mind the motivations and style (like I do) you can probably extract some benefit. It's just not for me.
Reply to your edit: You must not be aware of how much money conferences can make to not see the profit motive there. Even moderately successful tech conferences can generate millions per year. Far better than a consulting business. It takes time to build up to that of course. Publishing a book is Conference Building 101.
There's a huge difference between Tim Ferris and Eric Ries. If you made these charges against Ferris, I'd agree with you. Ferris is constantly self promoting, and attempting to cultivate a cult of personality. I know what Tim Ferris looks like because his mug is on everything he does.
I have no clue what Eric looks like. I find Eric makes suggestions that are far less obvious than Ferris. I find that Eric promotes his ideas over himself.
The accusation that this is all just "existing ideas" is kinda silly, given how infrequently this perspective existed even in cutting edge circles like "Hacker News" even a couple years ago.
It has started getting traction, this is true, but 5 years ago, it was a radical idea, and 3 years ago, there were very few practitioners and 2 years ago it wasn't even a movement.
In fact, I strongly suspect that Reis is the source of the ideas that Ferris used in his book.
Want a concrete example? He had a post, years ago, on why A/B testing needs to be a one-liner or you will never do it. That resonated with me, strongly, and that became the design brief for A/Bingo. I prioritized that feature over pretty much everything else in my implementation, and it is a major part of the reason why it works for me. Some years later I'm considered somewhat of an authority on the subject (funny how that works), and when I go in to companies to work with them on A/B testing, the best single process improvement we get -- and we get it virtually without fail -- is going from "A/B testing takes a bunch of work with logging into a product from a large multinational advertising agency, filling out a few forms, and copy/pasting up the wazoo -- and as a consequence we did three A/B tests a year ago and haven't done anything since" to "our engineers put in the A/B tests themselves automatically because it is easier than not doing it."
By the way, as it regards picks and miners: it takes a special kind of mind to see publishing a book as a route to fame and fortune on the backs of the little guy if one is also capable of, say, consulting on A/B testing.