I learned the growth hack The New York Times used to explode readership.

Last week I read An Honorable Titan, a biography about Adolph Ochs, who acquired The New York Times and turned the paper into an institution. Adolph executed this strategy in around 1900, but I think it’s ingenious and something others could find helpful. So, what’d he do exactly?

The Times’s daily circulation was stuck at 26,000, and it was losing money. The Times made money from sales at newsstands and advertising revenue. Adolph determined that he needed to double his circulation to 50,000 to break even.

His paper was respected and sold for the going rate of $0.03. Papers that sold for less than that were deemed sensationalized and from the yellow press. These lower-quality papers sold for $0.01. At the time, the thinking was that anyone who wanted to read a respectable paper would have $0.03. The $0.01 and $0.03 tiers were accepted pricing norms.

This pricing logic didn’t make sense to Adolph, and he decided to blow it up. He hypothesized that “the requisite number of readers could be found among those to whom the difference between three dollars a year and ten dollars a year for a newspaper was a material difference.” Using this logic, he priced the Times at $0.01. The move shocked everyone. His advisers and other publishers thought he was crazy because he essentially reduced his revenue from newsstand sales by 66%. Said differently, he had been losing money before, and he would lose money faster—and be wiped out—if he were wrong.

A funny thing happened. Circulation skyrocketed from 26,000 to 75,000. This jump allowed him to increase advertising rates because more people saw the ads. The Times went from losing money to being solidly profitable. The newspaper world called Adolph’s move a stroke of genius.

What did Adolph see that others had missed?

The unsaid and accepted logic behind pricing at that time was that the poor were unintelligent and, therefore, had no desire to read a respectable paper. Adolph recognized that intelligence is evenly distributed through the population at all economic levels. Doing the math, he realized that the rich are a small percentage of the population and if intelligence is evenly distributed, there was huge unmet demand among the largest segment of the population, the poor.

If, say, 10% of people are intelligent and 100 people are rich, 10 would desire a respectable paper like the Times. If 1,000 people are poor, 100 would want the paper if it was affordable.

Adolph didn’t just accept the status quo. He did his own thinking to reach his own conclusions instead of accepting the thinking of others. This approach allowed him to see an opportunity everyone stared at but couldn’t see.

Today, I bought a book on impulse.

I was listening to an interview of an entrepreneur I’m researching. When asked about things that shaped his career, he mentioned a book and how it shaped his thinking—and I immediately bought it. I didn’t look at reviews. I didn’t look at the price. My purchase decision was already made.

I reflected on the purchase later. It wasn’t a biography or framework book. It was a historical book containing the author’s opinion about how past events contributed to boom-and-bust cycles. I wouldn’t normally be excited to buy a book like this, but I was excited about this one. But why?

Simple. It was recommended by someone I deem credible. And that recommendation carried more weight than other factors.

I know that recommendations are how most people buy books. But I hadn’t thought much about it in the context of my book project. I’m thinking about it now, and I think a lot of value can be added to other entrepreneurs if you can show them in a simple way which books credible entrepreneurs found helpful (in addition to all the other cool stuff I want to show them). The information is out there; it’s just not organized in a way that’s easy to use.

Social proof is a proven psychological phenomenon, and deploying it could be a great way to enhance discovery of books by entrepreneurs who’d find them helpful.

I need to think about this more, but those are my preliminary ideas.