Write Something People Want to Read | Charlie Hoehn

0:00:06 The title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book
0:00:14 because virtually all books that sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth.
0:00:21 The title has to do a lot of things. When a person says it, it has to evoke curiosity,
0:00:29 FOMO, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it’s intrigue or even repulsion in some cases.
0:00:36 It should be almost a tip-of-the-tongue thing that gets triggered regularly in conversation.
0:00:42 An example we used was “Meetings Suck” by Cameron Harreld. Even if he didn’t necessarily like the
0:00:49 book, people would complain about meetings. Meetings were a constant in companies and so
0:00:54 this book would just kind of organically come up as like you ought to read this and it would just
0:01:04 naturally be recommended.
0:01:08 Welcome to The Knowledge Project. I’m your host, Shane Parrish. In a world where knowledge is
0:01:13 power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best of what other people have already figured
0:01:19 out. Today’s episode will transform how you write and communicate. My guest is Charlie Hohn,
0:01:24 the secret weapon behind bestsellers like The 4-Hour Workweek and dozens of other books that
0:01:30 have collectively sold millions of copies. While Charlie isn’t particularly well known to many
0:01:35 people, he’s the book whisperer to the people in the industry. Whether you’re crafting crucial
0:01:40 emails, high-stakes presentations or reports, or that book you’ve been meaning to write,
0:01:45 Charlie breaks down exactly what makes writing connect and convert. We explore everything from
0:01:51 hook-driven titles that grab attention to structures that keep readers engaged to marketing
0:01:57 strategies that make ideas spread. We also dive into the real trade-offs between self-publishing
0:02:02 and traditional publishing, what actually makes book covers work or fail, and how AI is changing
0:02:07 the game for writers. This conversation is packed with immediately useful insights on how to make
0:02:12 your ideas stick. Something Charlie has helped authors do repeatedly at the very highest levels.
0:02:20 It’s time to listen and learn.
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0:03:09 In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There’s some awesome new breakfast wraps
0:03:14 at McDonald’s. Really? Yeah. There’s the sausage bacon and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one.
0:03:20 Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing. That they taste amazing too.
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0:03:43 restaurants, ba-da-ba-ba-ba. How would you summarize what you do? I help authors go from idea to
0:03:48 successful book. It takes a variety of shapes. You know, sometimes I’m helping them with the
0:03:54 actual production of the book, sometimes just editing, other times focusing mostly on the
0:04:02 lunch. I’m an author myself. I’ve done 20 years in video productions, but mostly I’m just helping
0:04:07 authors with their books. You’re at three times. If I understand this correctly, New York Times
0:04:11 bestselling editor. What have you learned about writing that you wish more people knew?
0:04:19 The best books are written for one or two real people on the other end. And a lot of authors
0:04:28 write as though they’re speaking to a huge general audience or to their perceived fan base,
0:04:35 the entire fan base. It’s the fastest way, in my opinion, to kill a book, because it’s not
0:04:41 interesting. They start speaking in terms of, “We need to do this. We should be like this.” And it’s
0:04:47 like, who are you talking to? There’s one person on the other end of that book. Speak to them.
0:04:55 Or speak about yourself. I learned this. And if you want to apply it, you can do this. The most
0:05:01 powerful, interesting books tend to be written for one real person in mind, and the paradox is
0:05:07 they tend to reach a lot more people that way. And that person can be the author. Are you making
0:05:13 something that you want to consume repeatedly? And if you are, it’s probably pretty good. It’ll
0:05:18 find an audience eventually. Do you think most authors, especially in nonfiction, are working
0:05:24 through the subject that they’re talking about? And that’s the writing? Mark Manson. He cares,
0:05:30 right? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck is him trying not to care as much. James Clear was
0:05:35 really working on his habits when he was writing about habits. So you’re writing the book you
0:05:44 almost want to consume? Yes and no. So you have to become the embodiment of the book first. So you
0:05:52 can’t really write it as though you’re that person that you haven’t become yet, or the person that
0:05:57 you’re becoming. You kind of have to write it from a place of, “I’ve already become this. I’ve
0:06:03 already grown into this, and I’m the embodiment of this.” Naval Ravikant had a great quote where he
0:06:08 said, “In order to write a great book, you must first become the book.” I work on prescriptive
0:06:16 nonfiction exclusively. I don’t help with memoirs. I don’t help with fiction. Just like business books,
0:06:21 self-help, personal development, that type of stuff. If you think of the author, their expertise is
0:06:28 a ladder, right? And so they’ve climbed so many rungs to where they are. If they’re trying to write
0:06:34 for people on their rung or above, it will not be a good book. They need to write for the people
0:06:42 below them and address those people. Because they can pull those people effectively up to their rung.
0:06:46 They can’t push somebody who’s on their rung up further, you know what I mean? Because they’re
0:06:52 not there themselves. Is that the transformation for the readers? Like I start at X and now I get
0:06:56 pulled a little higher. Yeah. And I might not reach the level of the author, but I’m moving
0:07:02 forward or towards them. Yeah. Or I have a blueprint to get me there. How do you write for a particular
0:07:08 person? Like what does that look like? Well, there’s a variety of ways. One, you can be talking to them
0:07:13 in real life, right? So a lot of authors who’ve written good books are like, “Yeah, I’ve been coaching
0:07:18 clients or consulting with these companies for years. I have this stuff down cold. I know the
0:07:24 questions they ask. I know their common emotional challenges, the technical obstacles they face.”
0:07:32 That is a great way to write a book because you know that person very intimately or that avatar.
0:07:44 And other ways are you can do it kind of online now. You still need that real feedback though,
0:07:52 from actually helping a person transform. Just to clarify on that, you could in theory be writing
0:07:58 for an online audience and helping them with a particular topic and seeing, “Oh, they left a
0:08:07 comment here about this. They had a question about this.” Okay. But when you go to write the book,
0:08:13 you’re not actually witnessing what they’re going through. It’s similar for software development.
0:08:17 You think you have a good app that you’ve developed and you’re like, “This is awesome.”
0:08:23 Cool. Go put it in front of somebody and watch them use it and watch how quickly they get stuck
0:08:30 or they’re confused or they’re bored. It’s the same with books. And so I think it’s important to get
0:08:38 that real personal feedback that you can see, “Here’s where this person is struggling. Here’s
0:08:42 where they’re succeeding.” How does an author do that? They’re writing the whole book, right? So
0:08:48 you can’t write the book, publish it, then get feedback and say, “Okay, now what do I do with
0:08:59 this?” Well, you can, but I’ll circle back to that. The method I encourage is teach it in real
0:09:07 time first. Ideally, you’re somebody who’s already transformed numerous people, at least three,
0:09:16 with the transformation that you’re trying to codify into a book. So generally speaking,
0:09:21 you ought to have coached, consulted, helped at least three people achieve the transformation
0:09:28 you’re trying to make into a book. You can, in theory, publish a book and then
0:09:36 see where people are getting stuck, see their reviews, and then adjust the book afterward.
0:09:43 I don’t recommend it. It’s not a strategy that most authors will stick to, but how well Rod,
0:09:48 who’s based here in Austin, he did that with The Miracle Morning. And so in the first year,
0:09:55 he promoted that book, sold like 13,000 copies or something like that, which is quite good for
0:10:02 its first year. With every negative review that he got, he went back into the manuscript and made
0:10:07 revisions so that that feedback couldn’t be given again, so that review couldn’t be given again.
0:10:15 He’s just kept doing that until the negative review stopped. And to date, it’s sold millions
0:10:23 of copies. I think he said in year six, it sold its millionth copy. But he stuck with that book,
0:10:28 and he was like, “I really believe in this. I’m going to keep modifying this as though it is
0:10:34 software. I’m going to release v1, v2, v3, v4, etc. Most authors don’t do that.” One of the reasons
0:10:42 that I am reluctant to advocate for the traditional publishing process is your book is set in stone
0:10:49 there. If you’re lucky, get a 10-year update, the 10-year anniversary, but you’re not going to
0:10:55 touch that book again. What’s your take on the pros and cons of self-publishing versus
0:11:00 publishing? What are the considerations that you look at? When does it make sense? When doesn’t
0:11:07 it make sense? How do you think about that? I agree with my buddy Nat, Eliason’s take on
0:11:15 traditional publishing. And it’s a very simple lens to look through, overly simplistic, I guess.
0:11:24 But if you can get a publisher to give you a $100,000 advance or more, you should probably do it.
0:11:30 I mean, if you have millions of followers, $100,000 is not enough, but you get the general concept.
0:11:37 You want them to have enough skin in the game to take you seriously. You want to get as substantive
0:11:42 of an advance as you can to actually put some money into doing the book as well as you can
0:11:48 and launching it as well as you can. For 95-plus percent of authors I talk to, I tell them,
0:11:52 “It doesn’t really make sense for you to do that.” There’s a number of reasons.
0:12:00 Most authors care about financial ROI. We can start there. Granted, the worst way to make money
0:12:09 with a book is by selling lots of copies. But with a traditional publisher, they’re going
0:12:15 to be taking, I think it’s upwards of 90 percent of your royalties. It may not be quite that high,
0:12:21 but I remember talking to James Clear and we were talking about how much he would have made,
0:12:26 how he’d gone the self-publishing route with Atomic Habits and I did the math and it was like,
0:12:31 “Ah, it’s about three X more per copy.” But would he have sold as many copies?
0:12:34 Exactly. Would he have sold as many? It’s a great question. We’ll never know.
0:12:41 The distribution is much higher with a traditional publisher. You’re getting into retail stores.
0:12:48 That’s not an easy game as a self-published author. But my argument is over 90 percent,
0:12:54 I believe it’s at minimum of 80 percent of book purchases are through Amazon online.
0:13:02 If you’re applying the 80/20 to book sales, self-publishing typically makes sense. You should
0:13:08 invest in making the best possible product. Other things to consider with traditional publishing,
0:13:14 what a pro is, they’ll assemble your team, your production team, so they’ll help with editing.
0:13:20 They’ll prevent you from getting into legal issues in their editing process.
0:13:28 They will help you design the cover. The con is, I’ve seen their processes. It’s not that…
0:13:32 You’ve seen the cover of my books. You know how terrible it can be.
0:13:41 I won’t say a bad word about your book. What was your experience actually?
0:13:47 I don’t know. The whole thing for me started in 2018 when The New York Times wrote this article
0:13:51 about me calling me out as a spy who helped people on Wall Street.
0:13:58 And within 72 hours after that became public, I was the number one story on TheNewYorkTimes.com
0:14:08 for two days. I had all of these inbound contracts basically from publishers. No book title, no book,
0:14:15 a lot of money. And I was like, “Oh God, I don’t even know what to do. I don’t have an agent at
0:14:23 this point.” And so I remember Nikki from portfolio had come to one of my events in 2015 or 2016.
0:14:27 And so I just reached out to her. And she’s one of the people sort of like bidding on this too.
0:14:33 And I was like, “Hey, can we chat as friends?” Not as you as an editor trying to buy a book,
0:14:37 but I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know who to talk to. I need an agent.
0:14:42 Like, do I even want to do this? Do I don’t have a book idea? And so I finally ended up
0:14:48 interviewing a couple agents, got an agent, and then the money was, I mean, it made sense in my case
0:14:53 to do it, but I didn’t take the money and use it. I just sort of like put it in the bank. So this was
0:14:59 a weird thing too. Like as an entrepreneur, I don’t want a boss. And for four years, I basically
0:15:04 felt like I had a boss, right? I would get this email, you know, at the start, it’s like this trickle
0:15:08 once every two or three months. And it’s like, “Where are you at on the book?” And I’m like,
0:15:11 “I don’t know. I haven’t even started the book. I don’t even have the idea yet.” You know, like,
0:15:15 I have some ideas. And then all of a sudden towards the end, it was like weekly, you know?
0:15:18 It’s like, “Where are you at?” And finally I was like, “Do you want your money back? Like,
0:15:24 I’ll just give you your check back and we can just call it a day.” Because I don’t want the
0:15:29 pressure. It’s going to be done when it’s done. I know I agreed to a timeline. COVID happened,
0:15:34 timeline changed. And the process from there was actually pretty good. Like, Nikki’s an
0:15:39 amazing editor. She added a lot of value to the book. There’s pros and cons to it. You know,
0:15:44 I sort of ended up with a cover that I don’t personally like. I don’t think it did the book
0:15:49 justice, sort of like the titling could have been better. And I don’t know what I don’t know the
0:15:55 first time. And so I’m relying on the recommendations of sort of the publisher. And they do know. I
0:16:00 mean, they have a lot of data. I don’t know how accurately they use that data, but my experience
0:16:05 was pretty good. And I know people have different experiences with publishers, but we also got
0:16:10 worldwide distribution. We’re in like 28 languages now. And I don’t know if that would have happened
0:16:16 if I saw public. I might have made more money, but the goal wasn’t sort of make money. The goal was
0:16:21 distribution. How do we pull people back into our ecosystem? So when I think of like Farnham
0:16:27 Street as an ecosystem, remember that Disney map from like the 60s, it’s like theme park characters.
0:16:33 It’s like, well, I want this to reach people that I haven’t reached yet. And then a certain
0:16:37 percentage of those people come back to the website and a certain percentage of those people
0:16:43 listen to the podcast. And how do I pull people into our ecosystem? So I looked at the book as like,
0:16:47 I don’t want to make any money on the book. I really just want to grow the business and get
0:16:52 better at what we’re doing. Because if we get a bigger audience, the optionality for the future
0:16:57 is huge. And the optionality is we get better guests on the podcast, we get more advertising
0:17:02 revenue, which doesn’t come out of any individual pocket, sort of comes out of corporations in a
0:17:07 win-win way. They’re reaching an audience that’s hard to reach. We have one of the smartest audiences
0:17:11 on the internet. And so like, this is how I thought about it, which is like, how do I just
0:17:16 maximize my optionality? And I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, because we never talked before
0:17:20 I published that I wish we had, I would have changed the cover. So when the paperback comes out,
0:17:27 we’re definitely going to do that. So what you said is a common thing, is just wanting to raise
0:17:32 visibility and create opportunities or bring more opportunities in. So it tends to be like,
0:17:38 raise visibility, bring in opportunities, grow the business, leave a legacy. Tends to be with
0:17:45 nonfiction. I’m curious, with your cover in the title, what was the process with how did you
0:17:50 end up there, where you’re publishing a cover in a title that you’re not crazy about?
0:17:56 Well, the subtitle came first, actually. So I had the turning ordinary moments into
0:18:01 extraordinary results, and I loved it. And then the title was like 10 people basically brainstorming
0:18:06 a title from my agent, the editors, to people who work at the publisher. And we’re just back and
0:18:13 forth until, you know, we’re like weeks away from printing. This is where it gets really tricky,
0:18:18 right? So it’s like, in everything in my body, and I’m writing a book about decision making,
0:18:22 you know, I’m like, this feels pushed, and I’m like trying to pull back, right? I’m like, slow
0:18:26 down. Like, it doesn’t matter if we hit this deadline, it doesn’t really matter. But they’re
0:18:31 like, no, we’ve got the book, like, you’re booked into the printing queue, you’re like, this is
0:18:36 happening. And, you know, effectively, it’s like, we will take over one way or another. And the book
0:18:41 is no longer yours. And you sort of get this message. And it’s like, well, I want to slow it
0:18:46 down. I want to test it. I want to sort of like, figure it out. And I want to come up with different
0:18:50 options. Didn’t have time to do that at that point in time. So the process sort of like,
0:18:54 you get to a certain point in that, no, had that been three months earlier, I totally could have
0:19:00 stopped it before it was sort of like booked into printing, before we had the buyers buying it,
0:19:04 before the bookstores have bought it, before the sales agents go out, you can sort of slow it down.
0:19:09 But once that process gets rolling, you’re sort of at the whim of them. And you do the best you
0:19:15 can given the situation. Now, having written a book, if I write another one, it’ll be all take
0:19:21 a different approach to that whole thing. So you lost creative control, which is like a common
0:19:26 thing. Well, sort of, yeah, I mean, effectively, that’s what happened. I mean, it sounds a little,
0:19:33 you know, on a continuum, it sounds probably very far right, right, where it’s like slightly more
0:19:40 pulled in. Sure, you were a participant, obviously, and you were the main… But once they accept your
0:19:46 manuscript, title or not, like, they can pretty much do what they want with it, contractually.
0:19:53 Yeah. And that’s like two entrepreneurial people. I find that that is very difficult oftentimes.
0:19:57 And like, obviously, you and I are friends with people who thrive in that and like have done
0:20:04 extraordinarily well. Ryan Holiday, you mentioned Tim Ferriss, James Clear, like these guys have
0:20:10 and continue to do well. I’m not taking anything away from that. But I have seen the other side
0:20:17 as well, where entrepreneurs are dumbfounded by decisions made by their publishers or like
0:20:23 creative control being taken in a way that they’re like, this actively hurts us because both sides
0:20:28 have pros and cons and both sides can be done wrong. I do want to say like most people screw up
0:20:33 self-publishing. They don’t do it well. And so traditional publishers are right to stick up
0:20:38 their nose at self-publishing. But it’s like to your point, if it’s your first go-round as an
0:20:43 author and you don’t know what you’re doing, the likelihood that you’ll step on a landmine that
0:20:48 hurts your book during the self-publishing process is even higher than if you’re working with a
0:20:53 traditional publisher. Well, I’ve done self-publishing, too. Right. So we took the great mental models.
0:20:59 I created a publisher effectively from start to finish where we created content. We got creative.
0:21:06 We laid it out. We found printers. We printed. We found distributors. We stored. We monitored
0:21:11 storing. We fixed the updates. We’re constantly doing Kindle revisions. It’s a lot of work.
0:21:18 It was like a full-time person, if not more, just from a meeting’s point of view for four books,
0:21:25 let alone doing any other books. Yeah. It’s a lot. It’s also expensive up front.
0:21:31 Totally. I was paying $8. People don’t understand the economics of self-publishing
0:21:35 from a hardcover perspective. Audio and Kindle are great because the margins are good,
0:21:42 but from a hardcover perspective, we were paying $8 US, $7 US approximately for printing. We were
0:21:49 charging $30 for the great mental models on Amazon, which means we get $15. Then the distributor takes
0:21:56 approximately $3 per book. Then there’s shipping costs per books. There’s storage costs per book.
0:22:02 By the time the hardcover sort of worked out, I think we made like $0.50 to maybe a dollar a copy
0:22:06 from a hardcover point of view. And it wasn’t worth doing, but we weren’t doing it for money.
0:22:12 We wanted these books to exist, still do. It didn’t make sense from an economic ROI point of
0:22:17 view to do what we were doing in any way, shape, or form. I would have a higher production value.
0:22:25 But I would argue that the perception of Shane after doing those books was elevated.
0:22:29 Well, I don’t know. We didn’t originally, we didn’t even have my name on them. It was like
0:22:38 it was all about the ideas. We basically created this niche encyclopedia of big ideas. And that’s
0:22:43 what it is today still. I mean, it’s morphed into something. Hopefully, they get better distribution.
0:22:48 But so we created this niche idea and it came from talking with Charlie Munger. And I was like,
0:22:52 “Oh, I’m going to all do this. Why doesn’t this exist?” Did you actually talk to him?
0:22:57 Yeah. Amazing. So just a very quick side note, and then I don’t mean to cut you off.
0:23:06 One of my good friends’ moms was the CEO of John’s Man Bill. And so she would hang out with Warren
0:23:12 Buffett and stuff. And I was begging her, “Please tell Charlie Munger when he was live to publish
0:23:17 a book on mental model.” That would have been amazing. Yeah. The closest he came was, I guess,
0:23:22 the Psychology of Human Misjudgment, which if we had a fifth book in the series, I wanted to
0:23:26 tackle psychology, but we couldn’t do it as well. So he actually gave us permission to distribute
0:23:36 the accurate version of his talk online. And as a bonus, if I was publishing a fifth book,
0:23:41 that would be it. But I can’t tackle psychology as well as he did by any shape or form. I wish
0:23:46 he would have done what we did in his words with his ideas. I mean, we did the best we could.
0:23:52 It took seven years to create four books. Oh my gosh, dude. Yeah, there was you and I think Michael
0:24:00 Simmons did a course on mental models. And it was like, I’m grateful you guys did that. Oh, yeah.
0:24:06 Yeah. Munger, all he did was poor Charlie’s almanac. I feel bad even saying that because he’s so
0:24:11 ridiculously great. Yeah, I so wish that he had done that while he was live. Me too, 100%. And
0:24:16 so my name wasn’t even on it. I don’t even know if it was in the original version. It was all
0:24:21 co-author. We had multiple people. We had no bylines. We’re not into that stuff. It was more
0:24:27 like the economists. It was like, the ideas stand on their own. And we did that for three versions.
0:24:33 And we had three different people working on those versions. And now, my name is on the cover,
0:24:38 but there’s massive contributions from everybody else. Sometimes I’m the least of the contributions,
0:24:42 but from a sales and distribution point, it makes sense to have my name go first,
0:24:47 because we can’t fit all three names on the cover the way that we design them. And the covers actually
0:24:51 look really good for this one. Yeah, they’re great. So where do people go wrong in self-publishing?
0:24:59 You said like… Where to begin. I think there’s a lot of places they go wrong. From the reader’s
0:25:07 perspective, I would say that they typically don’t have a good cover. And so they immediately kind
0:25:15 of shoot themselves in the foot. Traditional publishers will typically put out solid covers.
0:25:20 When you’re self-publishing and you’ve invested a bunch of time and money, and you haven’t made
0:25:27 any money on the work, and it comes time to putting a face on the thing, a lot of self-published
0:25:32 authors are like, I’ll go to Upwork, or I’ll hit up my designer friend who puts together
0:25:38 PowerPoints and I’ll pay them 500 bucks. And it always results in something unremarkable.
0:25:47 You have to pay an artist, a book cover designer specialist to create the boldest thing that you
0:25:54 possibly can. So go deeper on that. What does a book cover artist know that most people don’t?
0:25:58 What makes a great cover for a book? And does cover matter?
0:26:03 Yeah. So this would probably be a conversation you’d want to have with like,
0:26:09 Pete Garceau who did Adam Grant’s covers, James Clear’s covers, he’s brilliant,
0:26:16 or Zoe Norvell. She created a great site called I Need a Book Cover. And it’s just a directory of the
0:26:22 top cover designers in the world who consistently work with the Big Five publishers. So they’re
0:26:29 specialists in cover design, not in general design. Like, they just do covers.
0:26:32 What does that mean? Like, what are the nuances to cover design? I reached out to Pete,
0:26:36 actually, because I was like, oh, for the paperback. Right.
0:26:40 But we’re years away from that. But for the paperback, it was like, I want to work with you.
0:26:47 I think it was Shipkid, the guy who did the Jurassic Park cover, effectively said something like,
0:26:56 it’s a haiku all in on one page or something. But it’s basically the embodiment of the entire
0:27:05 book within an image that you instantly understand what the book is trying to communicate in a way
0:27:11 that compels you to pick it up and read the dang thing, which like, when I say it sounds like
0:27:17 kind of mechanical, because I’m not a designer. I don’t pretend to be one. But I’ve talked to
0:27:25 enough designers to realize like, this is a real legit specialty. And it’s similar to YouTube,
0:27:31 where the right thumbnail versus a average mediocre thumbnail that’s clearly been created
0:27:38 in Canva by the producer of the video, the right thumbnail outperform 1000X. And it’s,
0:27:42 and I’m not saying like a cover will make or break a book. That’s not true. Like the book
0:27:50 has to stand alone as a good product, regardless of the cover. So I don’t want to sound too
0:27:57 cosmetic. You like pick it up. Yes. And it’s got to evoke the right feelings and from the target
0:28:01 reader, like your target read, and it should be aligned with the story of the book and everything.
0:28:11 So like, there’s a cover by, and I think he was in the FBI or CIA, but he was basically a guy who
0:28:17 would build rapport with people in other countries and flip them, like make them into informants.
0:28:24 So it was a very social, or very specialized social skill to be able to do that, very difficult.
0:28:30 And so he wrote a book, I think it’s called It’s Not All About You, or It’s Not All About Me.
0:28:37 And this cover looks like it was created in Microsoft Word. And it’s, it’s the classic like
0:28:47 white 3D clay, you know, image with like very basic arrows pointing out from it. It’s an awful
0:28:54 cover. But it’s actually aligned because he wrote the book for people in the military.
0:28:59 And people who were trying to appeal to a mass audience. No, but the book was so good that it
0:29:05 ended up reaching a lot of people. But like, it was for the target reader. And they were like,
0:29:10 okay, this is exactly what all military presentations look like this level of design,
0:29:19 a worthwhile expense that instantly communicates, are you legit or not? Or is this a good book?
0:29:24 The cover is a direct representation of all the inside. Yes. Okay. Absolutely.
0:29:29 I wonder if we could go through like, what makes some of the most popular books like Great Covers?
0:29:35 And this is again, a conversation more with a designer. But I think they’re tend to be,
0:29:44 they tend to be iconic. And in that it is bold and differentiated. A lot of cover designers
0:29:51 find themselves being given creative direction of like, I just want it to look like that person’s
0:29:58 cover. Right. I just want it to feel like that. And that’s useful on some levels of like,
0:30:04 hey, kind of stay within these guardrails. And it’s also helpful to give a designer like, hey,
0:30:11 these are covers that I hate. Right. Right. There’s kind of genres of cover design. Like,
0:30:19 you’ll see kind of Malcolm Gladwell type, rational, optimist type, where it’s all white.
0:30:26 And there’s like one little image. And then the rest is like kind of an elegant serif font.
0:30:33 Right. That communicates, this is an intellectual book. So you can give them kind of guidelines
0:30:40 to stay within to communicate this is that type of book. But if you’re wanting it to be too derivative
0:30:48 of everyone else, it just kind of blends into the sea. So I think Great Covers often are iconic and
0:30:58 bold in that they’re claiming the most courageous representation visually that the author could
0:31:05 possibly put forward. So like, then title, subtitle, subtitle promise sort of,
0:31:13 titles, what goes through titles, like what goes into a good title and subtitle title is the most
0:31:23 important marketing decision the author can make for the book, because it’s virtually all books that
0:31:29 sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to
0:31:37 do a lot of things. It is when a person says it, it has to evoke
0:31:45 curiosity, FOMO, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it’s intrigue or even like
0:31:52 repulsion in some cases, it has to be fun and easy to say. So like I always struggle
0:31:58 with that FBI book that I mentioned, I always forget the title. I cannot remember it, but
0:32:03 it doesn’t really matter because there’s a story that I’m telling with it. But with the title,
0:32:11 it’s kind of like a, it should be almost a tip of the tongue thing that comes up that gets triggered
0:32:18 regularly in conversation. This dovetails a little bit with what you’ve written about or
0:32:26 like the problem you’re attempting to solve. An example we used was meetings suck by Cameron
0:32:31 Harold would always come up. Even if you didn’t necessarily like the book, people would complain
0:32:38 about meetings. Meetings were a constant in companies. And so this book would just kind of
0:32:45 organically come up as like, oh, have you read, you ought to read this and it would just naturally
0:32:51 be recommended. Authors also kind of need to take into consideration like, what are the tip of the
0:32:57 tongue conversations that are going to be happening? And how does this sound when it’s being
0:33:03 recommended? So a title can’t be embarrassing to say either like played away. A book that I wrote
0:33:10 is like played away. I originally was going to get my working title was like how I cured my anxiety,
0:33:17 which was like saying that is a mouthful. It sounds like an attack. If it’s recommended to you,
0:33:23 you ought to read how I cured my anxiety. It’s like, whoa, you’re making, it’s almost like you’re
0:33:27 making a statement about the other person and yourself when you say that. Yeah, if you say read
0:33:33 meeting suck, it’s like, I’m not saying meeting suck, but this book might be arguing the testing
0:33:39 titles in person and saying like, have you read this and watching the person’s reaction like
0:33:44 do their eyes glaze over? Are they curious? Are they leaning forward? These are important things
0:33:49 that you kind of have to measure before. Title is the thing that you should take a lot of time,
0:33:56 invest resources in figuring out and gathering some data. Is this going to be the best option?
0:34:04 How do you test it? My process, I’ll tell you after I tell this quick story about Tim Ferriss. So
0:34:08 Tim and I worked together for years and one of the stories he told about the four hour work week,
0:34:14 which I would still argue is in the top five titles of all time in the nonfiction space.
0:34:23 He did tons of testing. He tested like, I don’t know, 30 to 50 different title ideas. A lot of
0:34:29 them he’ll admit were bad, you know, stuff like the chameleon millionaire, you know, drug dealing for
0:34:36 fun and profit and like, and he tested them at the time on Google ads. And so he would just see
0:34:44 which had the highest click through in the four hour work week, I think had a 2x over the second
0:34:53 place highest. So he had some data to stand on. Other ways you can test is like, is there a phrase
0:34:59 that you’re constantly using with clients if for your book, do you find yourself constantly
0:35:04 leaning on this one phrase? And that’s like the unlock phrase for them. That’s the one that they’re
0:35:11 like, I always, I always return to this. Okay, that’s memorable. Good. The process I use, I have
0:35:21 like a list of criteria that I lay out, which is like FOMO, fun to say, memorable. It’s like
0:35:27 seven criteria and I rate them all on a scale of one to 10. I plug it in. I kind of made my own
0:35:34 GPT book title score. So now I just punch in, here’s all the title ideas and I’ll spit
0:35:40 out. Here’s its score. And here are the top ones. It’s not perfect, right? It’s not a guarantee,
0:35:45 but it gives me some sense of like, okay, these, these ones are strong. These ones are weak. Anything
0:35:51 that is under a score of 50, it tends to be like, that’s probably not going to perform well. And
0:35:59 then after I do that, I put them through pickfoo.com, piscfu.com. And that allows you to do real quick
0:36:06 testing with audiences and polling and to see their feedback on why they like a title or why
0:36:12 they dislike a title. So an example was, I was, I was working on a book that I was trying to,
0:36:19 I was trying to figure out, should I call this paid to play or fuck work? I pulled on pickfoo
0:36:26 and F work performed pretty well. But when I dove into the data, all of them had the wrong
0:36:31 expectations for the book that can kind of be solved with a subtitle, but not really, right?
0:36:37 It’s showing that, oh, all these people want like a funny book about venting about how much
0:36:41 they hate work. I’m not writing that book. That’s not what this is at all. If that’s their expectations
0:36:47 going into this, that’s going to equal negative reviews because you’re not meeting the expectation
0:36:51 precisely. Yeah, you want to get that data. You want to test your assumptions with stand-up
0:36:57 comedians. They’ll sit and write a joke, right? And then they’ll be like, that’s pretty good.
0:37:02 And then they’ll go perform it in front of 10 audiences and they’re like, oh, my assumptions
0:37:09 were wrong. This is off just enough. And I think the title needs to be treated with that same kind
0:37:16 of respect. It can’t just be, oh, I like that. No, you need to test it. How important is the
0:37:21 structure of a book once you, so you’ve got a title, you’ve got a cover, now it’s structure.
0:37:25 This is like the thing I geek out on a lot because I think this is the thing that
0:37:32 if you overindex on structure, you’ll be in a really good spot. Like I can send a
0:37:40 self-polished author confidently off to do their thing if they overindex on structure. So what I
0:37:46 mean by that is you should be spending a ton of your time. You don’t have to decide on a title
0:37:51 till like the very end, really, you can be playing around with it forever. But you should not write
0:37:58 a word until you have solidified your table of contents. Your table of contents is the thing.
0:38:06 It is the structure, the makeup, the foundation of your book. And so the exercise that I like to do
0:38:14 with the table of contents, how do I take my one reader, my perfect target reader from zero to hero?
0:38:21 What are the exact steps? And it tends to be, like the big milestones, there’ll be two to four
0:38:25 of those typically. So if you look in table of contents of best-selling books, they’re typically
0:38:31 divided into two to four parts, often three. So I just, as a general rule, I’m like, just do three
0:38:38 parts, right? So three big milestones that help them go from zero to hero. Within each of those
0:38:45 parts, you have these sub steps, right? These little things that they have to do during that major
0:38:51 milestone to ensure that they get there. Or you have questions that they’re going to ask during
0:39:01 those phases. So you take your table of contents, and then you spend a bunch of time talking to
0:39:07 real target readers, showing them your table of contents before you write a word. And you say,
0:39:14 which of these is a hell yes? Which of these is an eh? And which of these is like, not relevant?
0:39:21 And that’s the data you gather on early. And so like bloggers do this by writing articles. And
0:39:25 they see, oh, that one kind of, you know, that took off that headline. And then that content is
0:39:31 really strong. Cool. That’s potentially a chapter. The table of contents is this is the menu of the
0:39:37 book. Do you want to eat here or not? If they say hell yes to everything, you have a really
0:39:42 strong book on your hands. And it makes the writing so much easier after that because you’re
0:39:48 confident that you can help the person you’re trying to reach. And it doesn’t feel like guesswork.
0:39:53 That’s so interesting. I mean, this is one of the big mistakes I made writing clear thinking is like,
0:39:57 I just sat down and wrote it like a blog article the first time and then the second time and the
0:40:02 third time. And even now I was like the actual structure that I would do today is different
0:40:06 than the structure of the book. But I felt like it had been published for two or three weeks. And
0:40:11 then I was like, ah, I missed it. Like, I know exactly what it should have been at this point.
0:40:15 How did you know what was like the aha moment where you were like, ah, that’s how it should
0:40:20 have been? Well, I like the idea of showing readers. I think, you know, I didn’t have a
0:40:26 structure. I wrote the book. I deleted it. I had a loose structure. I wasn’t confident with it,
0:40:31 wrote the book, deleted it. And then I sat down and I was like, I’m going to do that thing. Ryan
0:40:35 told me to like in a structure of the book. And I sort of came up with something that made
0:40:41 sense to me, but I never verified it with a public like even my editor with anybody else.
0:40:46 And so I came up with it. But I have all this knowledge about the subject in my head, right?
0:40:50 Which is different than where the reader meeting the reader where they’re at and taking them from,
0:40:55 you know, you said the word zero to hero. But like that’s different than positioning it for
0:41:01 where they’re at. I would not change the content of the book, but I would change how I structured
0:41:08 the content of the book. And I think it would have made it an easier read for people,
0:41:13 because I do think structure does some of the lifting for you if you let either a headwind or
0:41:18 a tailwind. And in my case, it’s probably neutral, but it could have been a tailwind. And I don’t
0:41:22 think I nailed it. But what’s the difference between, like if you’re looking at a structure,
0:41:25 and I give you like four or five different ones, like what’s the difference between
0:41:33 a good and great structure? That’s a good question. Well, I’ll say to that point.
0:41:41 I had an author come to me recently, and he was told like, Hey, the publishing house that I’m
0:41:47 working with, they gave me this as like the template to write my book. He said, I feel like I
0:41:53 don’t know if it’s a good book or not. I’m too close to it. What’s your take on this? And I
0:41:59 looked at it and within a few pages, I was like, dude, I’m sorry, your publisher screwed you because
0:42:06 there’s no structure here. The table of contents was literally like, it looked like an afterthought,
0:42:11 like a thing, here’s what you fill in after you’re all done. It’s the exact opposite. It’d be like,
0:42:20 we’re building a house, so I want you to start picking out light fixtures and like your furniture.
0:42:28 It’s like, what are you doing? No, your publisher made a very bad move that wasted you a bunch of
0:42:34 time. And now we have to figure out how to structure this. And like that takes almost as much time as
0:42:40 just like rewriting the thing. The writing is super easy. I actually want to nail the structure,
0:42:44 because then we just do a substructure, like what does the chapter look like? And then you can sit
0:42:48 down and it’s really easy at that point to sort of write it out. Well, not easy, but you know what
0:42:53 I mean. Right, it’s easier. And so it’s, I’d imagine it’s pretty similar in like songwriting,
0:42:59 right? If you don’t know the concept of a bridge and a chorus and like all the, like these beats,
0:43:05 you have, and you’re just told, write a song, you’re probably going to write a terrible song.
0:43:10 But if you have the structure that you can lean into, it will at least be more representative of
0:43:16 what humans process. Similar with stories, right? You talked to a storytelling expert recently.
0:43:22 Story structures always the same pretty much. It’s once upon a time and every day until one day,
0:43:28 and because of that, and because of that, and because of that, until finally, and ever since
0:43:33 that day, right? Or it’s the three act structure, you know, climax resolution, all that stuff.
0:43:42 I think the best structures quite simply are what the reader wants, what the reader wants and needs.
0:43:48 And so you can’t get that if you’re guessing. You said it yourself. You have the curse of
0:43:56 knowledge, of expertise. And so you’re so close to your topic. What is remarkable to you is confusing
0:44:02 to who you’re trying to reach. And what’s boring and trite to you is fascinating to who you’re
0:44:11 trying to reach. And so if you’re not having this be an interactive communal process of producing
0:44:16 a book, you’re short changing yourself. And so this is another common assumption that people
0:44:23 have. We all have the idea of Hemingway and J.K. Rowling in our heads of this is how to make a
0:44:31 book where they’re holed up alone. They’re being a tortured genius grinding through. And yes, that
0:44:36 is how you can make a book. If you’re a really good writer, you can do that. But I think people
0:44:44 should lean more toward Brene Brown’s production style, where she actually will come up with her
0:44:50 talking points and rent an Airbnb, bring her girlfriends and a bunch of wine and be like,
0:44:56 “Can I just present this to you for a day or two?” And then they talk about it. They give
0:45:01 her feedback and she’s like, “Oh, okay, that works.” Similar to stand-up comedians, right? And so I
0:45:13 think the great structures are co-created rather than isolated by the author, created in isolation.
0:45:18 Man, I wish we had met before I published that book. What about chapters? In nonfiction books,
0:45:24 they seem almost formulaic now. Yeah, they are. Here’s the story. Here’s the point I’m trying to
0:45:30 make and here’s like a summary. That’s sort of the why does that work and is there a more effective
0:45:36 structure? Yes, you should lean into a formulaic structure for chapters when you’re writing it.
0:45:42 And I want to differentiate between writing and editing. Writing is getting the clay on the table.
0:45:48 Editing is shaping it into the sculpture, right? And so when you’re writing, yes, lean into this
0:45:55 structure. You have a hook, something that grabs the reader, usually a story or a bold statement
0:46:01 that feels novel or even dangerous, right? Then you have your thesis, which is in this chapter.
0:46:07 I’m going to yadda yadda yadda. Then you have the body, which is just making up all the points
0:46:13 that you’re trying to get across. And this can go on for a long time. This is the meat of the
0:46:22 chapter. And then it’s key takeaways and segue into the next chapter. If you follow those five
0:46:29 beats, like you have a solid chapter, things you can hope thesis body structure link takeaways,
0:46:35 segue, and you can you can open the chapter with a hook or I’m sorry, with a quote that can come
0:46:41 before the hook if you want, you can pepper quotes throughout doesn’t matter. But when you’re writing,
0:46:45 yeah, follow that formula. There are others like modifications, but generally speaking,
0:46:51 prescriptive nonfiction books tend to fall within that structure very consistently. It’s in editing
0:46:58 where you can make the chapter really sing. And so, like we were talking about video before this,
0:47:07 right? Similar in video, it’s shooting in, okay, I want this act first, I’ll shoot this next act,
0:47:13 this next act, just because you have the structure of the story that you’re telling in the acts does
0:47:19 not mean people want to watch that video, right? You now need to edit it to retain their attention
0:47:25 and keep them going through it. And then in a book’s case, you’re doing the exact same thing
0:47:32 with your editing, you’re you’re editing it in such a way that they are not only staying engaged,
0:47:39 they’re they’re taking action and implementing when you want them to implement. They are highlighting
0:47:45 stuff, like it feels important. They’re they’re maybe even taking pictures of stuff. It’s like
0:47:53 you have these key points that you know, similar to software, when the reader gets here, I know
0:47:59 they will do this. Talk to me about editing. So we have, at this point, we’ve got a cover,
0:48:05 we’ve got a structure, we’ve got a chapter, and then we have a book. So we have a series of chapters.
0:48:11 So we have a rough draft and rough manuscript. Should we allocate our editing time, like,
0:48:16 80% of your editing time, you have 100 blocks of editing, right? Like, no matter what, it’s
0:48:21 a finite amount of editing time. Should you allocate 80% of that to the first like 50 pages?
0:48:27 And then, you know, 20% to everything thereafter. So I think it’s like the average person, I think
0:48:33 Amazon released this one, it’s like they read 15% of a book, 16% of a book, and they get all the
0:48:37 stats from Kindle, they know exactly where people drop off, just like YouTube gives you like, here’s
0:48:42 the drop off points, Spotify does the same thing. Amazon doesn’t give that to authors,
0:48:47 but there’s drop off points. And so should you allocate your editing time equally across the
0:48:55 book or up front? Up front, 100%. You are correct. It’s the YouTube hook. It’s the retention graph.
0:49:05 It’s the exact same with books. And so with a book, if you assume that maybe 60% of readers
0:49:13 are going to read the introduction, 100% of people who open the book are going to read the first page
0:49:23 of this book. Can I get them to read past this first page and see the message in the story,
0:49:28 the best possible story that’s the embodiment of what I’m trying to communicate with this book?
0:49:34 Can I see that into their brain so that they can recall it five years later? James Clear,
0:49:40 with Atomic Habits, which is a great example because it’s sold 15 plus million copies over the
0:49:50 last few years, been number one on Amazon overall for five years. He starts his intro with a general
0:49:56 recommendation I like to make, which is put them in the most intense moment of your life,
0:50:03 basically. Put them in a situation where they’re like, “Oh my gosh, you grabbed them by the throat.”
0:50:07 And it’s like, this was a personal thing that I went through. That’s the introduction. That’s
0:50:13 an opening hook. In his case, I think he got hit in the face with a baseball bat. And he had to
0:50:20 do like fly for life or something like that. I can’t remember. So you’re like, whoa, okay.
0:50:23 But that’s just the introduction. The whole purpose of the introduction is just to sell
0:50:32 you on reading the book. It’s the sales page convincing you this will be worth my time,
0:50:36 which is you’ve got smart readers. The thing that they’re going to value the most is this
0:50:45 worth my time. And then the first story in chapter one should be the encapsulation of the message
0:50:49 that you’re trying to get across. It should be the most memorable. It should be the thing that
0:50:55 you’re like, “Oh yeah, of course.” And so if you look at great TED Talks, Simon Sinek,
0:51:02 if you just watch the first two minutes of his “Start With Why,” he does a dead simple
0:51:10 draw three circles that anybody a five-year-old could remember and then draw and show their
0:51:16 friends like he instantly gets the point across. Similarly, that’s what you can aspire to with
0:51:22 prescriptive nonfiction. What I think James did so well in “Atomic Habits” is he frontloads the book
0:51:27 with the best stuff and a lot of authors make the mistake both self-published and traditional.
0:51:32 They’ll bury the best stuff in the back of the book and it’s like what percentage of your readers
0:51:40 are even getting to that? They’ll start with theory of like, “Here’s how we got here. Here’s the history
0:51:44 of this topic. Can you believe the history of it?” Well, guess what? I’m trying to change my life
0:51:54 and I’m busy. Let’s go dude. Hit me with your best stuff right here. If you want to spend some time
0:52:01 pointing out the stakes of how important this is, cool. Let’s talk about that and I’ll pay
0:52:07 attention. But I’m on this journey. I signed up. Let’s go. Don’t make me work for it.
0:52:13 I love that. We’ve talked about a lot of numbers. I think so far we’ve had like 10,000, 100,000
0:52:19 million books. We’ve used these milestones. How do we think about those in terms of percentiles?
0:52:26 What would be a 90th percentile and 99th? I’m imagining a million is like 0.001 percent.
0:52:32 0.003. Of all books ever published, right? So what would be the 90th percentile? Is that like 10,000
0:52:39 copies? I’d say 90th is a thousand copies probably. So you’re in the 90th percentile if you’ve sold
0:52:44 a thousand copies of your book. Yeah. Most books do not sell. There’s a great article called No One
0:52:50 Buys Books and it breaks down what the Department of Justice forced all the big publishers to
0:52:57 like reveal their sales numbers on books and it was like, oh wow, this is shocking. These publishers
0:53:04 are taking the funds from book royalties that they published 50 years ago to fund all these little
0:53:10 projects, right? And the vast majority of them don’t sell a dang copy. Part of that is authors
0:53:16 neglect marketing and sales and they just kind of like they don’t do it in the right sequence or
0:53:22 whatever. Other parts of it is people didn’t even want those books. Like the market doesn’t demand
0:53:28 them and the book wasn’t good enough to take off on its own. And so it’s a mix of variables. But
0:53:33 yeah, like the average book sells less than a thousand copies over the course of its lifetime.
0:53:38 And so my focus with clients I work with is like, let’s get you to that threshold as efficiently
0:53:44 as possible. Anybody can do it if you’re doing the right sequence of things. Most authors don’t
0:53:52 do it. So it would be a thousand for 90 percent. Okay. So what’s 100,000? 100,000, that I would
0:54:00 probably put at 90. I’m just making this up. I don’t know the exact, but like 98, 99 percent for sure.
0:54:05 All books ever published. For sure. There’s 500,000 books plus published every year.
0:54:10 That’s crazy. 20 of them sell a million copies and most of those are fiction.
0:54:16 You know, nonfiction tends to not move huge volumes. Have we lost track of sort of like what
0:54:21 numbers mean? Like I think of this politically when we toss around billions, but in the context
0:54:26 of books, I’m thinking like people are like 10,000 books. That doesn’t sound like many. I got 12,000
0:54:33 Twitter followers. But it doesn’t translate. Like 10,000 is a lot of books. It’s a lot of books.
0:54:43 Yeah. Especially if you’ve written one that actually impacts those people, that they actually read,
0:54:49 that they actually implement and use to get real tangible visual change in their life. I mean,
0:54:55 that’s what ultimately propels these books to do well. That can be scary too. Like I’ve gotten
0:55:01 two emails now from people who’ve read the book and they’re like, I broke up with my fiancee
0:55:06 after reading this book and I’m like, wow, oh God. Well, you ultimately did them a painful favor,
0:55:11 right? But like reading this going, oh boy, what have I done? I would, I would absolve yourself of
0:55:16 that guilt because they’d made that decision over. We talk about inertia and how you take over a
0:55:21 relationship. Yeah. So you end up just sort of progressing, but you’re not consciously progressing.
0:55:28 Right? And they were like, yeah, I realized like this was just happening. Yeah. I was like, oh God.
0:55:33 Like, so these emails are usefulness. They don’t always put a smile on your face.
0:55:39 True. But our brains, unfortunately, are hardwired to pay attention to the negative,
0:55:45 right? Let’s do a power cleanser. What is an email that you were like stoked to get from a reader?
0:55:50 Well, you know, I have this weird thing and just being a little bit vulnerable here. I don’t hear
0:55:56 compliments. And like my mind, like you reject them or they just ask for you or what? My mind
0:56:01 turns off. Interesting. I’m working on this because I do want to, I think at some point,
0:56:06 like if you want to dive into the roots of it, it’s like somebody used it against me or took it away,
0:56:12 right? Used it as power, which removed my freedom. If somebody says something nice about you and,
0:56:17 you know, you believe it, then you want them to keep thinking that. And so if they’re manipulating
0:56:22 you, it becomes like a source of power of them over you. Well, this is how I don’t know. Like,
0:56:27 I’m working through this because what happens with me is like the minute I think I’m predictive,
0:56:32 right? Like the minute I think somebody’s saying something nice about me, my brain turns off.
0:56:38 Like it literally just passes through. But on the other hand, you have a program that says this is
0:56:42 not helpful to me. It’s going to reason. Nothing. You know, like, and I might love the person,
0:56:47 I might respect them a ton, but like, oh, this is good news. Like, I don’t need to show the good
0:56:53 news. This isn’t a self-worth issue. It’s literally like, this is not useful to me, no thanks.
0:56:57 But I have a predatory, almost like instinct when somebody’s saying something negative. It’s like,
0:57:02 what are they saying? Is that true? Is it not true? Like, how can I use this piece of feedback to,
0:57:08 is there a hole in my boat? Is there, you know, do I need to fix this leak? And so it’s like,
0:57:12 always skewed towards the negative. And I’ve talked to people about this, like,
0:57:16 even James is like, I remember the negative reviews. Of course, everybody had a positive
0:57:21 review. Yeah, so it is a common thing. I don’t want to ask, like, you’re completely normal in the
0:57:26 front that you pay more attention to the negative than the positive. Are you that way in, like,
0:57:32 imports and stuff? Are you, you’ll, you’ll only negative, only negative. It’s almost only, yeah.
0:57:38 I would encourage you to consider, it sounds like a super boring book. Have you read The
0:57:44 Inner Game of Tennis? Yeah, a long time ago, we got it again. Probably, right? Yeah, at the wrong
0:57:51 time. Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen with kids, right? Like, you’re a dad, so do kids flourish under
0:57:58 negativity, criticism, or under reinforced positivity? It’s obviously a balance here at
0:58:03 and stick, but like, if it’s all stick, it stops to work. But it doesn’t impact, I don’t want to go
0:58:08 too serious on it. It doesn’t impact my happiness in life, my satisfaction. Like, if I see a five-star
0:58:15 review on Amazon, I’ll read it, but like, it has no, it doesn’t stick. Or it’s a part of you, like,
0:58:20 yeah, yeah, I know. No, not at all. It was just sort of like, this isn’t necessarily useful. And
0:58:25 please don’t go leave, like, negative reviews down. Do you want me to read them and like,
0:58:31 assimilate the, and it works for any compliment in life, right? It could be like, you’ve hosted a
0:58:36 good party. As soon as somebody’s like, oh, I had so much fun, like my brain, and I’m still paying
0:58:40 attention. I’m in the moment, but I’m like, oh, this isn’t. As long as it’s not like a self-worth
0:58:45 issue, like one of my best friends, like, he, for a long time, he would reject compliments because
0:58:52 he was like, you’re wrong. You know, like, that’s not, and so now he has to like, repeat the compliment,
0:58:59 sit with it. And, but yeah, that’s not your case. Talk to me about lists. Like, a lot of authors
0:59:05 have the goal of making the lists, right? So the most common ones being the Wall Street Journalists,
0:59:10 which went away, which was a pure bestseller list for people who don’t know that was statistically
0:59:17 the books that sold the most regardless of publisher, no editorial control, the New York Times list,
0:59:25 which is the only major list now these days. That people think in their minds that they hold
0:59:30 numerical qualities, right? And that’s an editorialized list. And so a lot of people set their
0:59:36 goal as like, I want to be a New York Times bestselling author. I’ve helped authors hit the
0:59:44 list in various capacities, some a little bit, some like very intensively. I’ve had authors come up to
0:59:50 me and say, my goal with this book is to hit the New York, number one New York Times, sell a million
0:59:56 copies and get on Oprah’s couch. You’re going to be disappointed. Yeah, the joke I make is it’d be
1:00:04 easier for you to do six months of therapy instead. Because a lot of I want to hit the list is at its
1:00:14 core, I want to be validated as super legit. I want to be picked. You know, it’s similar to
1:00:19 the traditional publishing in some ways for some authors, not all authors, right? But some
1:00:26 want to just be picked by the taste makers and say, you’re good. There is a validation. Yeah,
1:00:34 absolutely. There’s validation. But I would argue that like, it’s so let’s get into the logistics
1:00:41 before we get into like the psychology, I guess, of it. So I hate hitting the New York Times bestselling
1:00:52 list and how much effort and logistical headache that comes with it. You have to sell, if you’re
1:00:58 going like in an average time of year, anywhere between probably 10 to 20,000 copies, a safe
1:01:05 place to bet is 15,000 copies. So you have to sell 15,000 copies right out of the gate.
1:01:08 How many copies did I say the average author sells over the course of their lifetime?
1:01:14 Less than a thousand. Most week sales, 15,000. People try to manipulate it, but you can’t.
1:01:21 It’s very difficult to do. You can, but it’s very difficult. And it’s just,
1:01:29 it’s a pain. Like there are service providers out there who will funnel your bulk orders. Let’s
1:01:38 say you do pull it off, right? You sold 15,000 copies. You know, that’s times like 30 bucks,
1:01:50 right? So you have sold $450,000 worth of books. That’s a lot. Now you have to hand that money
1:01:56 to a service provider who will then funnel it through certain retailers who will make it look
1:02:01 like they aren’t bulk orders and that they’re geographically distributed across the United
1:02:08 States. They need to couple those 15,000 copies with as many individual addresses as they possibly
1:02:16 can and then send those books to those people. That alone is just ridiculous, right? Because you
1:02:20 have to, you have to communicate like these are legitimate sales. There are other service providers
1:02:26 and I’m reluctant. I’ll say Rory Vaden. He’s great. Like he knows what he’s doing. I’m reluctant to
1:02:32 mention other service providers because this space of will help you launch your book and hit the
1:02:37 New York Times is filled with people who will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars and
1:02:43 not guarantee a thing. Like the New York Times is pretty dang sophisticated. Well, they must
1:02:48 be onto this, right? Because the worst thing that could happen to them is like people gaming.
1:02:56 Exactly. The list. Exactly. So they need to have reputable choices and they were sued by
1:03:02 the author of The Exorcist years ago and there was a big lawsuit. He said, “You’re withholding
1:03:09 because I’m out selling.” I think, I can’t remember his name, but he was selling tons of copies and
1:03:15 they won the lawsuit because they’re like, “It’s an editorial product. It is not a pure sales list.
1:03:20 We get to decide.” And so political things can come into consideration with the New York Times
1:03:28 and them curating. Are you a minority? Are you a doctor? These are actual factors that influence
1:03:33 whether you’re on the list, allegedly. I don’t want to say like… I guess nobody knows, right?
1:03:38 It’s like nobody knows how the Google algorithm works. Nobody knows. At the end of the day,
1:03:42 there’s humans on the other end being like, “Should this be on the list or not?” I think it was Dave
1:03:49 Ramsey who sold 60,000 copies at his launch and didn’t hit the list. Well, think of the psychology
1:03:53 of money. It never made the New York Times the best selling list. Yeah, that’s happened to a lot.
1:03:58 He sold 5 million copies of… Ryan Holiday didn’t hit number one on New York Times until his ninth
1:04:04 book. Yeah, I mean, but that… He was trying to manipulate the system. He was very… Not on his
1:04:10 book, but he had talked about all the ways he had manipulated media. Oh, for his first book. Yeah.
1:04:14 Why are they going to validate him at that point? You know what I mean? Like, if I’m in the New York
1:04:19 Times, I’m like, “I’m not.” This is what I’ve heard. They have screwed over enough politicians and
1:04:24 billionaires with their books at this point that they had to come up with a set of criteria that
1:04:30 guaranteed you hitting the list. Not necessarily number one, but they can put you at number eight,
1:04:38 number ten. What’s the criteria, do you know? The criteria in this, again, is put a big asterisk of
1:04:43 Charlie probably doesn’t have this right at all, but it’s a certain number of copies sold through
1:04:54 certain retail people or retail that geographically maps. It is a percentage of those being e-books,
1:05:00 not audio books, e-books that have been read a certain percentage. So interesting. And so you
1:05:05 can’t just buy a bunch of e-books and they all register as zero percent. Which would actually
1:05:10 be a sign of you’re manipulating it, right? Correct. Yeah, okay. Again, New York Times,
1:05:15 they got a budget to set up some sophisticated trackers and they’ve had this list for many decades.
1:05:25 So a mix of traditional PR, legacy PR. So like you’re on radio, newspaper, TV shows that are
1:05:30 hitting a certain number of regions in the United States. You’re hitting all these markets. Okay,
1:05:35 that tracks to the number of sales that you have. Digital. Interesting. A certain number of,
1:05:43 and this is this pure guesswork, but a certain number of blog articles that have come out,
1:05:48 a certain number of podcasts that have come out, a certain number of Facebook engagements,
1:05:57 Twitter engagements, and I mean comments and reshares, not just likes. And so it has to
1:06:04 basically map. They have to be able to see on a holistic level is all this tracking with the
1:06:09 minimum number of sales that we require. Ali, Abdaal, I don’t know how many copies he sold,
1:06:15 but it was it was under 15,000 at his launch. It was a lot, but it was under like the general
1:06:20 recommended. This is the other thing you have to take into account is which month are you are
1:06:25 you releasing the book? If you pick December, like my client Cody Sanchez, who is, you know,
1:06:33 very confident she can hit it. But I was like, dude, like this is the worst month you could pick
1:06:38 because you have to sell double. It’s a book buying sales. Yeah. Whereas August is like for
1:06:45 nonfiction. Atomic habits will sell 50,000 copies that month. And like it’s been out for five years.
1:06:53 Good luck hitting number one in December. Yeah. Selling 20,000 copies versus 50,000,
1:06:58 it’s exponentially harder. It doesn’t guarantee you anything either, right? Like 20,000 you can do
1:07:06 as much as you possibly can. But yeah, I mean, you’re right. Things, things go wrong too. Not
1:07:12 everybody’s publishers like keen on you working with these service providers who do these services.
1:07:19 It’s so much. And I think it’s just kind of not worth it. And so that’s one of the one of the
1:07:25 reasons, frankly, I like the self published route is you don’t have to play that game at all. Like
1:07:31 it is a political logistical nightmare. And I will say to people who hit the list, like congrats,
1:07:36 it’s hard to do. And you’re probably going to make whatever investment you made into hitting
1:07:41 that list back, but it won’t be because of the list. It will not be because of the New York,
1:07:47 it will be correlative. In other words, all the marketing that you had to do to get it on there
1:07:52 marketed you in your business and you will reap the benefits of that. There’s a great video by
1:07:56 Anna David about the called the truth about hitting the New York Times bestseller list.
1:08:02 She’s hit it. And she’s like, it was the brokest I ever was. Oh, you know, I think she wrote a,
1:08:07 she wrote a memoir, I think. And she was basically like, look, it didn’t change my life.
1:08:14 I eat out on the title and whenever I can, you know, and I’ll say it for the rest of my life.
1:08:20 It’s a legit credential. So I made it. Yeah, congrats through luck. Right. Like just totally
1:08:26 didn’t. Yeah. Didn’t follow the publisher’s advice on like how to go about it, had a big list. Yep.
1:08:30 You know, sort of just marketed it to the list, but didn’t do bulk orders. Just said, hey, you buy
1:08:36 one copy, we’ll give you the pre-order bonuses, not by 10 or 100 or 1000. Like it was just sort of
1:08:41 low key. And I was also like, if I make it, I make it. And if I don’t, like I can hold my head high.
1:08:45 What was your number? How many did you sell? I’m not going to reveal that. Oh, can you give a range?
1:08:56 No. But so like I made it and the only change that I saw really, and you’re right, like you do all
1:09:00 the work beforehand. Like I did all the work when it was like, what’s the key message of this book?
1:09:05 Like how do I market that to my audience? How do I get people to read it? How do I write a good book?
1:09:09 And the only thing that really changed was the distribution in the physical stores.
1:09:16 Mm-hmm. They moved it from like the shelf of like new to like a New York Times section for like
1:09:22 a week or two. Yeah. And then it like goes back to the whatever. I think we made it twice,
1:09:27 or maybe three times. I think it was twice. I felt good about it. Like that was something
1:09:32 where I was like, oh, I have this, this thing that I can’t, I didn’t know you could buy it like a,
1:09:37 I can’t buy. Somebody’s given me this thing. And for the rest of my life, I’ll forever be
1:09:41 sort of like a New York Times bestselling author, which is kind of cool, but it doesn’t,
1:09:44 you know, my signature block and my email doesn’t say like,
1:09:47 you know, a Times bestselling author. It’s just shame.
1:09:53 There’s a clip of Jim Carrey where he goes up and he’s, he’s introducing an award and he’s like,
1:10:00 I’m two time Emmy winning Jim Carrey. And he’s like, when I dream at night, I think about being
1:10:05 three time Emmy winning Jim Carrey, because then I’d be enough. Yeah. And so I think it’s,
1:10:11 it’s a cool credential. Like you can, you can add it to your thing or to your list. But
1:10:16 I will say the traditional publishers, yeah, Cody’s with portfolio, right? So like if they
1:10:23 definitely wish you to, to try not to, I would say they don’t cross the line in terms of like
1:10:28 manipulating it, but they’re definitely trying for you to hit that list. I don’t know if internally
1:10:34 they have some sort of incentive or bonus or something if their authors hit it, but they
1:10:37 definitely like, they give me a whole bunch of ideas. And I was like, I don’t like that. I don’t
1:10:42 think that’s like high integrity. I know, you know, it might be right, but it’s not something I want
1:10:47 to do. I don’t feel comfortable with it. So like I rejected a lot of the things that they were sort
1:10:53 of trying to get me to do. And they weren’t crossing a line into like illegal. It was just things that
1:10:58 made me uncomfortable. Yeah. Like, yeah, it’s like, well, if I was the New York time, I’d just put
1:11:03 myself in their shoes. I was like, and I knew I was doing this, that’s probably detrimental to
1:11:09 their thought process on an editorialized list where it’s like, they’re trying to come up, you
1:11:12 know, I’m like, what are the reasons that they would exclude you? But what are the reasons they
1:11:17 would want to include you too? And yeah, wait, I didn’t put a ton of thought into it, but I’m
1:11:22 lucky because I have a big audience that I built up over a number of years. So it’s a lot easier
1:11:30 for me to do that. Right. And well, like think, your brand has a prestigious reputation, right?
1:11:37 Like Farnham Street is known as kind of catering to a very smart audience. The New York Times,
1:11:42 that’s like a good association with them, right? And so I’m not saying that’s why they put you on
1:11:47 the list necessarily, but certainly it’s something they took into consideration of like, oh, they’re
1:11:53 showing you actually love to see like any book little in mind, like watch the algorithm in process,
1:11:58 right? And people involved that like, what are the considerations that would be fascinating to watch?
1:12:04 That’ll never be revealed. It would be. But like at the, the whole, my whole feeling on
1:12:10 these lists is like, you’re not writing it for the list. You know, like you don’t make a movie to
1:12:16 win a trophy. You don’t play a sport to win a trophy. Like you do it because it matters to the
1:12:21 people that you’re trying to serve. Am I helpful to the reader? Right. And I don’t think hitting the
1:12:27 list equals you will get stronger visibility and reach more people for any significant period of
1:12:33 design. The list is a byproduct. It should be a byproduct. You can do stuff at launch and you
1:12:38 should and like, I don’t advocate not doing your best at your launch, but it’s kind of like how
1:12:44 Bo Burnham’s like, if you can live your life without being famous, you should. I think if you
1:12:50 can write and publish a book without chasing a New York Times bestseller list or any list, you should.
1:12:55 Yeah, you shouldn’t be chasing anything, right? Right. You should be just like, how do I serve?
1:13:00 The best book possible. Exactly. As a writer, how do you see the impact of AI?
1:13:07 The cost of writing dropped 10,000% with the advent of AI, which like, historically, it’s
1:13:17 been over $100 for, you know, writers to write. And then it just dropped precipitously. A few
1:13:24 years ago, when ChatGPT came out, I would stay up after I put my kids to bed and I would just
1:13:31 see what it could do. And it became very clear very quickly that, hey, this isn’t a great writer.
1:13:39 It can be kind of an okay editor. Where I had an unlock was realizing, oh, it’s really good
1:13:46 at cleaning up transcripts. And if you give it a clean input, a clean structured input,
1:13:53 it can do some crazy stuff. Now take this and make it into a chapter.
1:14:01 So now, not to plug my stuff or anything, but I developed a process called first draft in a week
1:14:08 where we over index on structure, we get all the clay on the table as efficiently as possible
1:14:13 by using AI on the back end. Like there’s no interfacing with it, but like you feed it the
1:14:19 right transcript. Right. And it will just spit out a book following all these prompts I’ve laid
1:14:25 out using Zapier and ChatGPT and Clod and Airtable and all this stuff. But it’s like magic. It’s
1:14:33 magic. And there’s been these book in a weekend programs forever. And they produce garbage.
1:14:37 The way people are thinking about AI right now, I found in publishing, there’s two camps. There’s
1:14:42 one that’s like sticks up their nose at it. They’re like, it’s a parlor trick. It’s garbage. And to
1:14:47 those people, I say, you don’t know what you’re doing with it. You haven’t experimented enough
1:14:52 to make that claim. If you’re making that claim, I guarantee you, you have not put in the hours
1:15:00 and run the experiments. To the others who are AI enthusiasts, they’re like, let’s strip away the
1:15:06 creative process entirely and generate books in 15 minutes. And it’s also a disaster because
1:15:12 they’re going off minimal inputs. And they’re like, fill out a form and you can create a book.
1:15:19 Isn’t that great? It’s like, no, it’s embarrassingly bad because AI sucks as a writer. It’s not a good
1:15:23 writer. I don’t know if I agree with that. And I’ll tell you why. So I put two paragraphs in
1:15:30 clear thinking that are completely AI generated. My editor couldn’t tell. And today, no reader has
1:15:37 correctly guessed the paragraphs that are completely generated by a keyword paragraphs.
1:15:41 Yeah, you didn’t write a chat. No, I did it just as like a fun, right? Because that might be like
1:15:48 a nice Easter eggs or that’s my point. Yes, it works for a paragraph or two or three even.
1:15:54 But once it hits a certain point, it stops being good and you can run it through zero gpt.com and
1:16:00 it will show you this percent was written by AI. Interesting. It can tell. And the data on this is
1:16:09 readers will as soon as they detect its AI, their retention drops in half. If the exact same paragraph
1:16:13 is presented to a reader, I say it’s AI generated, their retention drops.
1:16:18 None if you say it if they detect it. Oh, if they detect it. Yeah. You have read blog posts and
1:16:23 articles, I’m sure, where you’re like, oh, this is AI. Yeah, a lot of them. Right. Yeah, exactly. And
1:16:31 so if it doesn’t feel human, if it doesn’t feel conversational and accessible, people won’t read
1:16:35 it. And so that’s what I mean by it’s a bad writer. It can do a little bit. It can’t do the whole thing.
1:16:39 Where do you see this going, though? Because I mean, this is the worst it’s ever going to get at
1:16:46 writing. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll be able to thread the needle for hundreds of pages.
1:16:55 I don’t. I’m not sure. But for now, what I do know is you can produce a book that is conversational
1:17:01 and accessible written entirely by a human being, but leveraging AI in the right way to produce it
1:17:07 90% faster at 90% less. So how do we leverage AI for writing? I mean, with my kids, I’m like,
1:17:12 you need to do the work yourself and you could submit what you wrote to AI and be like, where’s
1:17:17 it weak? Where’s it? Yes. What am I missing? Yeah. And I keep the full history because I’m like,
1:17:22 if I ever have to go to the school and sort of like, arg zoo, because the school is like anti AI.
1:17:25 And I’m like, this is ridiculous. You’re growing up and this is like telling me not to use Google.
1:17:30 Don’t use calculators. And so I’m like, you can, but I need the full chat history. Right. So that
1:17:34 if I ever have to go to the school, it’s like, here’s what you submit it. Here’s what happened.
1:17:38 But like, how do we leverage AI from a writing point of view today?
1:17:47 The ways that I have found that I really like are for idea generation, structure suggestions.
1:17:56 I’ll often tell chat GPT or Claude, which Claude, by the way, I found is the strongest editor,
1:18:07 but it’s not perfect. I’ll say interview me on this one question at a time for up to five rounds
1:18:15 until you can come up with the strongest, whatever I’m going for. Because people I think are
1:18:21 either not very good at or just don’t want to go through the whole process of laying out here’s
1:18:26 the precise context. AI is way better at like, let’s pinpoint precisely what I need to do a
1:18:32 decent job. So if you want to draft something, I would do that as the precursor moves. It will
1:18:38 yield better results pretty consistently. My favorite use is what I baked my process around
1:18:46 is cleaning up transcripts, because conversational is eight times faster than sitting and typing.
1:18:54 And it is very rarely do people get talkers block, they get writers block all the time,
1:18:59 because the reason people say, but I’m such a better writer than I am a speaker, it’s like,
1:19:05 yeah, because you get to edit while you write. And you’re so much slower too. And you’re also
1:19:09 hitting imposter syndrome perfectionism, you’re hitting these emotional landmines that are
1:19:16 effectively emergency breaks on your process. So I say, do it conversationally, but structure it.
1:19:23 And then use AI to clean up those transcripts and retain it in your words. You can crush
1:19:28 with putting out content. That’s crazy. Yeah. One thing people don’t understand about AI that I
1:19:35 teach the kids is like, you can actually get AI to generate a prompt for you that you can feed
1:19:41 into AI. Yeah, I found this better because I’m like, summarize the podcast. And I’m like, well,
1:19:45 I’m writing, you know, summarize a podcast forward prompt. And I was like, well, one day I was like,
1:19:51 okay, well, you need to write me a prompt on what matters that I can feed into AI somewhere.
1:19:54 And it writes back like five or six sentences. And it’s like a way better job. Oh, yeah,
1:19:58 summarizing the podcast and what I was doing. What have you learned about prompting?
1:20:04 Yeah, this is it. That’s precisely what I do too. I say, give me the ideal prompt that will
1:20:11 achieve this outcome. That’s really like, AI is better at communicating with itself than you are.
1:20:17 So just prompt it to do. I think the keys is like, people just don’t tend to experiment with this
1:20:24 stuff. I think we’re probably in a small segment of society that actually is like, a lot of people
1:20:28 have used StatuePT, they know about it, et cetera. But kind of in the same way that a lot of people
1:20:34 know about Bitcoin, people aren’t actively using it all the time. There, you might be around people
1:20:40 who are, but the vast majority of people aren’t. And so I don’t know, we’re in such an exciting,
1:20:45 unique time where it’s like, all you have to do is play around with this stuff on a regular
1:20:50 basis. Like that’s all you have to do. Just see if you can like break it or impress yourself or
1:20:56 whatever. And exciting things come from that. Let’s switch gears to marketing. What strategies
1:21:02 are most effective when it comes to marketing? Most authors lose at marketing because they
1:21:08 miss their shot during the production process to like, sow the seeds with their readers. Here’s
1:21:14 the typical journey of a self-published author releasing a book in the eyes of their friends.
1:21:19 Their friends receive an email one day, “Hey, I wrote a book. It’s out today. Please buy it.
1:21:23 Please review it. Please share with your friends.” And their friends are like, “Where the hell is
1:21:30 this coming from? I haven’t heard from you.” Or their business contacts. And so no one takes any
1:21:36 action because all of a sudden it’s just being thrust upon them that you’re in charge of my
1:21:42 success person that I haven’t really connected with at all and has no idea that I’m making this
1:21:49 book or why they should even care. There’s zero emotional investment into the book. And so I say
1:21:54 most authors lose because they could have been co-creators with their readers. They could have
1:22:02 done really simple, easy things that would make the reader feel like, “Oh, this is just as much
1:22:08 mine as it is the authors.” Send a survey to your list and say, “I’m writing a book on this topic.
1:22:13 What are the two questions that you have on this that if I answered them, it would make it worthwhile?”
1:22:18 Or, “What are the two biggest pain points you have in relation to this? The two things that you’re
1:22:22 most stuck on that if I helped you with this, it would be amazing.” That’s an easy one to start
1:22:32 with, right? Just announcing it and hinting at it, movie studios do this. They spend
1:22:37 hundreds of millions of dollars on movies. It’s never like, “Hey, the movie’s out right now.
1:22:42 You should go see The Dark Knight.” It’s like, “No, they teased little behind-the-scenes photos.
1:22:47 They had little whispers the whole time, and then you finally got the trailer.” And the trailer
1:22:52 was a big event, but the movie’s still not coming out for months. There’s this whole buildup of
1:22:59 building anticipation and teasing and whispering that authors neglect. And so you could also send
1:23:05 out, “Hey, here are some title concepts I’m thinking about. Can you vote on these? Get
1:23:09 them involved in that. You don’t have to do pick food. That’s another alternative you can do.
1:23:16 Hey, I just got my… I’m thinking about doing a cover. This is where I’m at. Just sharing updates
1:23:23 and being like, “This is where I am in the process of this.” Even sharing like, “Oh, today was horrible.
1:23:31 This went wrong.” They’re not on the journey with you at all unless you are sharing those types of
1:23:36 things. And it’s normal to want to resist those during the creation process, but it’s a lost
1:23:42 opportunity, right? Because you could be letting them in on showing how hard you’re working on this
1:23:49 or showing that you value what they care about. You could be using helpthisbook.com,
1:23:55 which is a service for beta readers, where you can upload chapters or your whole manuscript
1:24:00 and see data on what they found confusing, what they found valuable, insightful, boring.
1:24:07 You can see with very clear data where they’re dropping off in those chapters, right? You can
1:24:12 show them multiple cover concepts and have them vote. Do you think… I love the idea of going
1:24:16 out and being like, “Hey, I’m writing on this topic. What are the two things that I need to
1:24:20 include? What are the biggest problems you face here?” Do you think you can do that at a chapter
1:24:25 level or do you do that at a high level? 100%? “Oh, I have a chapter on focus. What are the…”
1:24:32 Yeah. Yeah. My point being, the more involved you can get your community into them feeling like,
1:24:39 “Man, this is really a thing,” the easier promotion is because when you pre-launch,
1:24:45 they’re buying copies of your book. They’re actually talking about it. They’re like, “I’ve
1:24:52 been so excited about this for months.” It’s a natural thing. It doesn’t feel weird. It doesn’t
1:24:57 feel forced. They’re in it with you. So we have pre-launch, we have launch, and then we have post.
1:25:03 So what do I do during launch and what do I do post-launch? Do you make the book evergreen or
1:25:09 constantly bring it up without being obnoxious? Yeah. So I’ll define pre-launch too.
1:25:14 You’re building up hype. The movie hasn’t come out. You get the trailer. You got people in
1:25:19 Vesta and then launch. The movie is out this week. The movie is out right now today.
1:25:25 Yeah. What changes from marketing perspective? I’ll answer that. I just want to make one point
1:25:30 about the pre-launch and the launch. These are the two windows where sales will spike.
1:25:35 So the announcement of the book, basically, that it’s up for sale, and then the announcement that
1:25:40 it’s officially live. Those have the two highest conversion rates for sales. So authors need to
1:25:48 optimize for those by offering, basically, there’s a saying, people will buy what you’re
1:25:54 selling when you start selling what people are buying. If you can package buying multiple books
1:26:00 with services or products that you know people are already buying from you, it makes it easier for
1:26:05 you to sell a bunch of books during those windows. So basically, it’s easier to sell a lot of books
1:26:10 at once than one book at a time. And to couple it with something that you know people value and
1:26:15 purchase. So like coaching calls, you can just package those with buying three to ten books or
1:26:20 whatever. During the pre-launch, it’s having that infrastructure set up so that they can
1:26:27 buy more than one copy, basically. And then sending emails, just leading up to it and then
1:26:35 closing it out. It is boring product launch. It’s like the X is like blocking and tackling.
1:26:41 Yeah, it’s just setting up those emails and seeing them through. And it’s similar with the
1:26:48 launch, but my philosophy on launches is if you’re self-published, if you do not care about lists,
1:26:57 your launch should be your victory lap. It should be the least stressful week. The pre-launch is
1:27:04 where you determine like, “Hey, I’m going to set a goal that’s modest, but it’s a bit of a stretch.
1:27:10 I’m going to hit it, and I’m going to go into launch week knowing I sold a thousand or two
1:27:14 thousand copies or 500 copies, whatever.” And when you get to launch week, it should be a
1:27:19 celebration. I’m not stressed. Right, you’re not stressed. You just achieved a huge milestone.
1:27:24 I know so many people who watch launch week, every minute, they’re so stressed.
1:27:31 Yeah, it’s horrible. An intellectual baby has come out of your body and you’re yelling at it
1:27:39 to grow up, be a fully formed adult. And it’s like, dude, celebrate. This should be a blissful
1:27:45 week that you’re celebrating with friends, with family, with peers. You just hit a bucket list
1:27:51 item that most people never accomplish, celebrate. And so that’s my emphasis during launch week.
1:27:57 You can do an event. And if you want it to be a big thing, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. But
1:28:04 I firmly believe the launch week should be as enjoyable and low stress as possible.
1:28:09 And so what about post-launch? The book came out. It’s a week later now. How do I,
1:28:16 as an author, publish with a publishing house or self-publish? How do I remind people that already
1:28:21 know about the book, that the book still exists, that I haven’t bought, maybe? Or how do I let
1:28:26 new people know about it without being… I think we’ve all been on those email lists where we get
1:28:33 like 30 emails a bit of book. And it’s like, I got the hint. Create products you want to consume.
1:28:40 So if you got 10 emails about my book, and they were dedicated emails with no other value add,
1:28:46 I wouldn’t want that as a reviewer. And so how do we do this subtly? Who does this really well?
1:28:50 What can we learn from them? The launch week, the only metric I care about is reviews.
1:28:58 Hit a certain number of reviews based on the number of copies. So one percent of copies you
1:29:05 have out in the world, try and aim for that number of reviews. It’s a good metric. Because then you
1:29:13 lay the foundation for the book converting indefinitely, or converting well. So what do you
1:29:25 do to set up kind of an evergreen system? You set up an email sequence, but have actual value from
1:29:31 the book be delivering it. So it should be like standalone stuff from the book. So for play it
1:29:41 away, I set up a 10 day series, helping people who are struggling with anxiety. And I restructured
1:29:48 parts of the book so that the quickest wins were first. So it was like, I know somebody who’s anxious,
1:29:53 all they want to start is give me a pill. So I’ll recommend the couple supplements that actually
1:29:58 make a difference when you’re in that state. And then we’re going to go on to a little bit bigger
1:30:04 stuff. And it’s going to be a 10 day journey, taking them from zero to hero. And in each email,
1:30:08 I mentioned this is excerpted from the book. Instead of like that, because it’s like I’m offering
1:30:14 value, it’s a subtle, it’s not overbearing. It’s not sort of like buy this book right now.
1:30:21 It’s an automation sequence. So that I added it to a blog post that was doing really well for years.
1:30:28 And so I think 30,000 people or something went through that series as this is excerpted from the
1:30:33 book. I think it was like every 30 email, I would be like, if this was helpful, this is from play it
1:30:38 away. If you wouldn’t mind leaving a review, that’d be great. I have a three times higher conversion
1:30:44 rate from sales to reviews than a typical book because of that. And it’s sold plenty of books
1:30:52 too. So I think it’s just you set up that system that’s effectively like a car wash that cleanses
1:30:57 the person who signed up and introduces them to the best parts of the book and encourages them to
1:31:03 grab a copy if they want. But then you move on. It’s in your ecosystem now. So you should be focused
1:31:10 on let’s keep creating and let’s keep doing stuff. And you can be the person who keeps
1:31:15 pounding the drum, the same drum for years and years, but like most creatives have other things
1:31:20 they want to say. So let opportunities kind of come to you, keep putting yourself out there.
1:31:29 But move on. That is my philosophy. What I kind of like about books and podcasts,
1:31:33 at least if they’re done in a certain way, is that you do all that you fight up front,
1:31:39 you do all the work, you launch, you have your systems and processes in place, you can go,
1:31:43 you can earn money while you sleep at that point. Like this conversation, hopefully people are
1:31:48 listening to it in 10 years. All the work’s done, all the editing is done, all the costs are already
1:31:54 incorporated. And then hopefully it just like keeps adding value to people. But you do that by not
1:32:00 talking about topical things, by sort of being classical. What else do you think goes into like
1:32:07 creating an everlasting book? Obviously, content matters. Structure matters, title matters. But
1:32:14 like what makes a book shareable? I wrote an article that basically breaks down the 12 tests
1:32:19 that consistently determine whether a book will sell a million copies or not. It’s not comprehensive,
1:32:29 but it gives a good idea. The big ones are like, does this transform the reader in a visible way
1:32:35 that other people want to talk about and ask about? This is why a lot of diets will take off
1:32:40 is because it literally changes the body of the person in such a remarkable way.
1:32:45 Oh, let me tell you about this diet. I’m doing carnivore, I’m doing keto, I’m doing blood.
1:32:50 And it’s like, which diet’s right? It doesn’t matter. They all transform the person.
1:32:56 Like even David Goggins book can’t hurt me, which is a great book just on its own. But
1:33:05 he used exercises in there and inspired people to do what he does. And so they would physically
1:33:11 transform. I saw this consistently with a lot of books is like, do they provide a quick transformation
1:33:17 that the reader wants to talk about and the people around them can’t help but notice and talk about
1:33:26 right. The other things are has this kind of hit a zeitgeist of where it’s kind of a contrarian
1:33:37 message during a time of peak people grappling with this. It’s kind of unexpected or it goes
1:33:44 against what most other books are saying. So let me give an example. So I thought Mark Manson’s
1:33:53 book, the subtle art came out at a time of peak social media awareness that this is creating
1:34:00 a lot of mental health issues. It’s like, it’s too much. It felt like too much. It felt like it
1:34:06 was finally under the under the microscope of like how bad is this problem really. And Mark came in
1:34:15 with a proven mass market product, Buddhism, and he millennialized it. He made it through
1:34:20 here’s what’s happening in the zeitgeist right now. I don’t know how intentional he was around
1:34:27 like, this is the zeitgeist. I think he he hit at a perfect time for that book. It was similar to
1:34:33 like one of my buddies and long, long time clients Tucker Max, he came out with I hope they serve
1:34:41 beer and hell at a time of kind of like peak college partying awareness, I guess no one had
1:34:47 done that type of book before it was like contrarian for its time. And so it was novel and unique in
1:34:51 a way. I almost wonder if you could maybe this is a great idea for people listening who are looking
1:34:57 for book ideas like go back to like the 1920s, 1930s, like what are the best selling books?
1:35:02 How do I take that concept and sort of like reposition it for today’s world where we have the
1:35:05 core concept that still exists, which is timeless, like you filter for sort of like
1:35:10 Buddhism or something that like this is enduring, it’ll be talked about every,
1:35:15 I don’t know, 100 years, 30, 40, 50 years, like go back and then you take that concept and then
1:35:21 you write about it now. But you’re really just positioning the exact same thing for today’s
1:35:29 world. It’s possible. The challenge with it is the zeitgeist changes faster than ever now. And
1:35:35 it’s it can be kind of a dangerous game to play the topical thing. But I hear you,
1:35:39 if you can root it in timelessness, this is this was one of the tests I say,
1:35:45 is it timely and timeless? Right. So like Mark’s book wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t rooted
1:35:51 in a timeless concept. People who write about like Trump, you know, when he was in office and
1:35:59 like a tell all sales go up, fall crashing down and never return ever again. You got to balance it.
1:36:03 So what else goes into making a book shareable? You had a list of things.
1:36:09 Again, is the author the embodiment of the message? I think there’s a lot of books out there
1:36:16 where the author, and this is part of the problem with the creation process, if they isolate themselves,
1:36:20 the author’s trying to project that there’s somebody that they’re not, they’re hyper aware that this
1:36:26 is going to be read by people. And so they want to put on this false bravado and act like they’ve
1:36:33 achieved more than they have. And it’s like, no one wants that. It’s boring. Humans have really
1:36:39 good BS detectors, we can tell when you’re effectively lying to yourself. We sense it,
1:36:43 right? And not even consciously, like we know when somebody’s walking towards us and they’re
1:36:46 sort of like suspicious. Yeah. And we’re not consciously paying attention to it. We just
1:36:52 feel it, but the same way we feel like it comes across, but not in a way that is necessarily
1:36:58 quantifiable. But you feel it when you read it. Same as that, oh, I feel this is AI generated,
1:37:03 even if I don’t go to like this, I can’t prove it, but I feel it. And the minute I feel it,
1:37:08 I discount it. Yeah. And one of the guys who’s really interesting to watch in YouTube videos
1:37:15 is Jordan Peterson, because he’ll say something and you’ll watch him check in with how he feels
1:37:21 about what he just said. And he’s like, that didn’t feel authentic. You can see him being like,
1:37:26 that wasn’t authentic. And he’ll pivot and say it in a way that he’s like, that’s truthful to me.
1:37:31 May not be the truth, right? But it’s truthful to him. A lot of the stuff he says,
1:37:38 it feels solid, right? And substantive. What are the, that may be a different direction on
1:37:43 this is like, what are the tips and tricks that you see authors doing today that you’re like,
1:37:49 oh, that’s really clever. The last time I was like, oh, that’s, that’s a clever
1:37:56 way to go about that. Interesting was seeing Oprah and Tim Ferriss produce books
1:38:01 that were interview based. Oh yeah. You know, Tools of Titans. And I forget Oprah,
1:38:07 I think has done a couple like this. And maybe that format was common before, but I just didn’t
1:38:13 notice it. I don’t really know. I remember thinking that was a very clever way to produce a book that
1:38:22 was fun, sustainable, and not a huge heavy lift. I think it’s a really hard to pull off for the
1:38:28 average person. You’ve got to be a media. You have to have an audience like listening to your
1:38:33 interviews. Yeah. For you sort of do that. Exactly. I’ve seen other people try and do that. And it
1:38:40 doesn’t, it doesn’t really work. It’s kind of a very small segment that can do that. I, you know,
1:38:46 I’ve been most impressed. Ryan Holiday and I, we started our careers at the same time and we’re
1:38:50 kind of on, we were kind of on similar tracks. He’s always wanted to be an author. I’ve always
1:38:56 wanted to be just like an entrepreneur who does creative things. I’ve just been super impressed
1:39:00 just watching him through the years. It’s been awesome to see his like just steady beat of the
1:39:07 drum coming out with books a year. And what was, what people don’t necessarily know or remember
1:39:12 about him is he started writing marketing books. And I think to this point he’s written like three,
1:39:18 maybe four marketing books and they just don’t perform as well. What he did though was he created
1:39:27 a category for himself with stoicism with kind of a dead or obscure topic and he revitalized it.
1:39:32 We were just talking about that, like going back, taking a subject and like putting it in position
1:39:38 for today’s world. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Somebody might be able to do that for Epicureanism,
1:39:46 who knows, but I thought it was a really cool to watch him test, test, notice that that’s a thing
1:39:53 and then basically create this blue ocean category for himself. That would be like the
1:39:59 ultimate tip and trick. And that’s actually on my list is does this create or revitalize a category.
1:40:06 And so if you can do that, it’s like winner take all scenario. Tim Ferriss did this with
1:40:11 lifestyle design. Right. And so like tons of other books came out after him on lifestyle
1:40:19 design and businesses, but he’d already won because he he’d like named that thing. It was a new thing.
1:40:25 Lilu Lemon did it with athleisure. Mark did it with the subtle R2 because remember all those
1:40:29 books came out after with like fucking the title. Right. He created a category that swears
1:40:35 on the cover. Yes. He was the first that I noticed that did that. Creating a category is
1:40:41 difficult. And there’s a good book by these guys called the category pirates called the 22.
1:40:47 I think it’s called the 22 laws of positioning or it might be the 22 laws of category design.
1:40:56 That book, I think it was really smart of them to write because category design is
1:41:02 super important positioning super important. It’s not intuitive. It’s not easy. It’s similar
1:41:06 to like coming up with a book title where you’re like, I know this is the most important thing
1:41:11 I could do. Yeah. I it’s not something you can just snap and figure out. You got to really
1:41:16 sit with it. Just don’t sit down. And yeah, I mean, I don’t anyway. Right. It comes with a lot of
1:41:23 experimentation. And I think that’s the ultimate tip and trick experiment and public see what
1:41:28 hits. And once you’ve found an oil well, just drill. Keep going. Yeah. Well, this has been a
1:41:33 fascinating conversation. We always end with the same question, which is what is success to you?
1:41:37 It would have been a different answer several years ago, but success to me now is just
1:41:47 household love with my kids. For sure. My kids and my wife. And that is my daily marker of success.
1:41:52 What changed? You had kids or something? I had kids for a long time. I was just
1:41:57 career focused. I felt like I was good at what I did. And then I had these narratives around
1:42:04 having kids pulling me off of that track. And yeah, it’s just realigned my values.
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