The

Ultimate Guide to Self-Publishing

Your Bestseller Book
Copyright James Altucher

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ISBN-13:978-1501009945 | ISBN-10:150100994X

 C ONTENTS

Introduction: By Claudia Azula Altucher ..................................................................... 7

Why You Should Self Publish ...................................................................................... 14

What Is Your Goal With The Book? ........................................................................... 17

Reason 1: Spreading The Message ......................................................................................... 17
Reason 2: You Want A Best Seller ........................................................................................ 20
Reason 3: You Want To Make A Lot Of Money .................................................................. 24

How to Create a Professionally Looking Book .......................................................... 29

Editing ............................................................................................................................ 37

Design ............................................................................................................................ 38

Title ................................................................................................................................ 39

Audio Book ................................................................................................................... 40

Foreword/Introduction ................................................................................................ 42

Blurbs ............................................................................................................................. 43

Testimonials ................................................................................................................. 44

Professional Bio ............................................................................................................ 46

Professional Photo ....................................................................................................... 48

The Ultimate Check-List Before Self-Publishing ....................................................... 49

Create Space .................................................................................................................. 51

Kindle ............................................................................................................................. 52
Book Proof ............................................................................................................................. 52
Hit Publish Only After: ......................................................................................................... 52
Build Your Platform ...................................................................................................... 54

Ultimate Guide To Building Your Platform ................................................................ 55

Other Merchandise ....................................................................................................... 57

Foreign Rights ............................................................................................................... 58

Frequently Asked Questions ........................................................................................ 59

Do I need to worry about an ISBN? ..................................................................................... 59
How do I design that page with all the rights and the legal terms? .................................. 59
Do I need to have a professional do the recording of my audio book? ............................. 59
Is it hard to upload the audio files I get from the recording studio? ................................ 59
Do I really need all three formats? As in Kindle, paper back and audio? ......................... 59
Do I need to write every day? ............................................................................................... 59
Do I need to worry about what the reviews say? ................................................................ 60
Do I need to worry about copycats in Amazon? ................................................................. 60
Do I need to worry about Barnes and Nobles and Independent stores? .......................... 60
What should I price my book? ............................................................................................. 60
Should I Enroll in the Lending Library? .............................................................................. 60
Should I distribute onto all countries? ................................................................................ 60
Should I line up people to review my book on the first day? ............................................ 60
Should I try to book myself on TV? ...................................................................................... 61
Should I go on Podcasts? ....................................................................................................... 61
Should I start my own podcast? ............................................................................................ 61
What if I get bad reviews? ..................................................................................................... 61
Should I do a video to promote my book? ........................................................................... 61
How long should my book be? ............................................................................................. 62

Interview with Hugh Howe .......................................................................................... 63

Interview with Steve Scott ........................................................................................... 98

Interview with Michael Drew ...................................................................................... 131

Interview With Tucker Max ....................................................................................... 146

Resources ...................................................................................................................... 177

Other Books by James Altucher ................................................................................. 178

About The Author ....................................................................................................... 179


 I NTRODUCTION :
B Y C LAUDIA A ZULA A LTUCHER

T
he traditional publishing industry is almost completely dead and they dont know
it. Or if they do they deny it. I dont blame them because change can be hard.
Since the year 2010 I, personally (and as a completely nobody) have worn the hats
of publisher, editor, interior layout designer, cover designer, audiobook producer, writer,
talent, author, co-author and ghostwriter. And that is among a myriad of other
professions I now perform including video producer, sound editor, yoga talent, post-
producer and on and on and on.

Some of those jobs I did terribly, some I am getting better at. But no matter what, with
every step Ive learned that the need for a traditional publisher, or any other gatekeeper is
obsolete. As I see it now, I am a full publishing house in one person and there is nothing
stopping you from doing the exact same thing. Its not that hard. It just takes dedication
and a lot of attention to detail. Anyone can hit publish, but doing it professionally is a
different story. That is, mind you, the story of this book.

Throughout my brand new street education on self-publishing I got to talk to people who
are a lot smarter than me, like Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday, Stephen Dubner, Cheryl
Richardson. All people who have been best sellers, been on Oprah, done it all.

My eyes opened up when I saw that publishing a book, if you want to do it right, is a big
deal. How much you invest in it matters. The numbers matter, what you title it matters,
what you want the book to do, for example: do you want to sale lots of copies? Get
credibility? Spread a message? Whatever you answer to this is matters because it will
permeate the flavor of how you promote, price, and speak about your message.
On the other hand, the question: who is your publisher? is the most irrelevant of them
all. NOBODY ever asked me that. Ive never seen anyone ask James that. Nobody cares. Its
a whole different world out there.

The last book James and I wrote together through a traditional publishing house, The
Power of No, sent us a statement of debt after six months of being on bookstores all over
the country. Not only did we not make any money, we actually owe them something.
This is of course, after we did everything for the book. And by everything I mean: the
marketing, three special recordings for bonus materials, a video, all the writing, all the
mailing to our own lists, all the promotions, all the copy-writing, all the speaking, all the
going on TV (we booked our own TV). And still we owed money.

The book made it to the prestigious Wall Street Journal list of bestsellers, something I am
grateful for, as anyone would, and in all fairness the numbers on that statement of debt
reflected only sales for one month, the month of the release.

I am sure next month (six months later) we may probably break even. And I say that with a
hint of hope, in reality I dont know. Whatever amount of copies we sold in that first
month (which we do not know because we dont have the data) did not cover the advance.

That is the first issue I have with the publishing industry and why I prefer to self-publish.
I like to have control over my product, my costs, weather I can promote it to different
audiences and what I do with it in general.

Guess how much was the advance for The Power of No? It was $15,000. I kid you not. And
this was right after the huge success of Choose Yourself which sold over 200,000 copies
and has since grossed over $600,000+.

Please note that I am a fan of the publishing house we went through. Hay House treated
us very well, they are a small shop and everyone knows all other members of the staff. It is
not the people, but the industry that is in trouble.

If anything I am extremely grateful because I find that ultimately there is a little side of me
that still clings to the idea of being chosen. Even though I was not. They chose James
and I rode along because he chose me. I did my finest writing but I free-rode on his
invitation to write with him for them.
People now care more about how the book looks and about the value it delivers than who
was the publisher. If a book has a good message and it looks good you are in, regardless of
what logo lies on the back, sucking the life out of your work.

But lets get back to money. There is no money in publishing through traditional means
anymore. James was among the lucky ones to get those $15,000. Most get nothing.

Now, of course if you are Tony Robbins you get 3 million in advance, but are you? Im not.
So, if you are anything like me, you get between nothing and a maximum of fifteen
thousand dollars, and you dont get to set the price at which you sell (which is key as you
will soon find out) and you dont get any more than 15% on the royalties, after several
statements of debt.

Its kind of sad.

There is however a lot of money possibilities for those who self-publish with the right
tools, and you are reading the right book for that.

If you cannot control the pricing of your book you are subject to the traditional ways of
selling. And books are not selling traditionally anymore, that word died a long time ago.

For example, James is about to release a book called The Choose Yourself Guide to
Wealth through his own newsletter and by invitation only. Anyone on his list, who
signed up on his website (its easy to do), will get one. My own latest book Become An
Idea Machine will be a premium on that invitation only list. This may sound very
exclusive but it is not, it is natural selection, it is the way we transform and grown when
we are passionate about writing and need to feed families. When we get real, we realize it
is important to have control over how we distribute, sell, price and market our books.
Power lies with the author. I love it.

I hate to see bookstores vanishing as much as the next person, but the reality is they are,
and the few last ones standing can carry only so many books, so they will tend to load up
on copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, meaning whatever sales, what brings in money, of course.

Also, there are now websites like BuckBooks.net where you strike a deal in which you pay
an entry fee and for one day they will promote your book to their enormous mailing list.
In July of 2014 I saw one of their promoted books. It had been written in the 80s, and it hit
the New York Times list. How did it do that? It did that because the whole terrain is
shifting under our legs. Note that the New York Times is not easy to hit. We had a whole
Ask Altucher episode with a man who can put books on the list and he told us his very
elaborate system to make that happen. Listen to episode 105 of the Ask Altucher show or
read the transcript at the end of this book.

But in order to have your book accepted on this website, which is not the only one, you
need to have your book be expensive and suddenly lower the price, so it is a bargain and
they can offer it as such to their readers.

A publisher will never lower the price because you want to. They are likely to do nothing
ever because you want to. As a matter of fact they just fought Amazon so that they could
charge whatever they want for kindle books, which I think is fair, and better for us self-
publishers.

I am happy that publishing houses want to charge a lot of money for Kindle books.
Because it means more people will buy mine. And yours. Because we control the pricing.

If you self publish, as soon as you recover from the panic it can instill on some, you will be
able to manipulate the price and do deals with not just a discount websites but also with
other mailing lists, and at any time.

This book is about re-gaining control. Gone are the days in which you have to wait six
months to maybe see a 10% return on a book after a skim advance is covered. Now you
can start collecting your own royalties right away, the day you publish. There is no more
need for intermediaries.

When I heard Amazon would give me 70% of the price if I went above a minimum price I
didnt need to hear anything else. Do you?

Think about it, in the old fashioned way you need to have an agent who will take a cut on
an already skim advance, and then pay taxes.
In Amazon you determine your pricing and then you get the most of the money. But I will
tell you an even better secret. Audible, which is also Amazon and who will sell the voice-
recording of your book, will give you the most value for your money.

I had to convince James to do Choose Yourself in audio. He did not want to because it
takes a long time and a lot of effort to record a book, it is hours and hours of talking, and
it is exhausting. But it pays. Nicely.

Publishers will tell you they will help you market your book. This is not true. Ive seen the
process of James going through five major publishers and in no case did they ever do any
marketing at all, or the little they did was completely ineffective.

In this time and age the marketing is on you and me. We need to market our work, and
there is a section in the book dedicated to how to do that. We need to build the platform,
the audience, and give give give and give some more.

Here is James talking about the joke promise that the publishers once made to him (in his
words):

When I published with Penguin, they then met with a friend of mine whose book
they wanted to publish. They didnt know she was my friend. She asked them,
What marketing did you do for James Altuchers book? They said, Well, we got
him a review in The Financial Times, a segment about his book on CNBC, and an
excerpt in thestreet.com

Heres whats so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I WROTE
my own review. As a joke. For CNBC, I had a weekly segment on CNBC. So
naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And for
thestreet.com excerpt, I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So
instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt. In other words, the
publisher did NOTHING, but took credit for EVERYTHING.

Ultimately, authors (unless you are Stephen King, etc) have to do their own
marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even, before they look at
your proposal is, How big is your platform? They want to know how you can
market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.
 A traditional publisher is not even going to look at you unless you have your own
platform, which means a Twitter following, Facebook following and/or a
significant blog following. But if you already can hand-deliver the customers,
what do you need the traditional publisher for?

Wasnt that supposed to be what the publishers would get for you? Dont they
get you in bookstores? The answer is no.

Bookstores take very few of the books published by publishers. And whenever you
see a book facing forward, or on the front table, or a staff pick that means the
publisher usually paid to have that special placement. Most books dont get this.
And if you dont get that, chances are your books wont sell.

Claudia speaking: howd you like that story? Which reminds me, stories are great
whenever they are told at the right time. Otherwise, whats the point, right?

James book The Forever Portfolio was an optimistic book. I did a study of it and found
out that the majority of the stocks he listed (one of them was Disney) are up about 1000
percent combined. But the book was set to launch on December of 2008, at the worst
economic moment of our generation.

The publisher could NOT move the release date because they have whole corporations to
report to and deadlines and journals and publications and catalogues. They are huge
Trojan horses, once in, they deploy, and they are deadly. James book sold nothing. But it
did make for a very cute story. He autographed a copy at a random signing on a Borders
on 34th street, which is no longer there, on one of the copies he wrote: I love you. He did
that while looking at his then 7-year-old daughter and as a joke. But the book stayed in
the bookstore. And guess who picked it up? Yes, me I love that story. It was our fourth
date. I was floating. What are the odds of that?

Ill tell you, the odds of THAT are greater than that you will make any money if you
publish through the traditional route.

If you self-publish you control when the book goes out. And if there is a disaster you can
hold on, take a book out, re-publish later, update without much fuzz. You own it. And
you can move, fast, because you are no corporation.
Self Publishing Professionally is The New Black

T
he problem with the major publishing houses is that their staff has been cut so
thin they are struggling to just keep up, and in so doing they mistake the trees for
the forest. They try hard but they are too busy in an industry that is drowning
and water keeps on coming through more and more holes.

In being so hard at work they have no time to stop for a minute and connect with real
writers who are doing things differently. Even the ones who do, cannot really go against
the grain because big changes in a corporate (publishing) setting is very hard, it requires
meetings, discussions, project management, charts, focus groups, or whatever they call
them, and lots of layers of management to make decisions. I feel that industry is busy just
surviving, but fighting the wrong battles, i.e.: fighting to charge more for e-books in
Amazon (a fair fight as I dont think anyone should ever control prices) but again, its
missing the point.

It is not about pricing anymore but rather about elasticity, about how flexible you can be
depending on what change is coming your way. It is about working with an author and
helping her or him through all the decisions that need to be made.

In reading this you have the whole world open to you, and it has rolled the red carpet. As
you read you will notice the wealth of opportunities to write well, have a nice design, and
propagate your book in a way that reaches the reader, which is what this is all about.

The interviews at the end of the book are worth more than the book will ever sell for. You
have authors that are making a living from writing and they tell you how they do it.

There really isnt an excuse any longer to not have a book out.

Here is wishing you success with your own, professionally self-published work.


 W HY Y OU S HOULD
S ELF P UBLISH

I
believe everyone reading this has the content inside of them to write a book. If you
want to stand out in a world of content, you need to underline your expertise.
Publishing a book is not just putting your thoughts on a blog post. Its an event. It
shows your best-curated thoughts and it shows customers, clients, investors, friends and
lovers what the most important things on your mind are right now.

Unfortunately, most people suck at it. Ive largely sucked at it. Ive published 11 books
five with traditional publishers and six that are self-published.

The distinction now is no longer between traditional publishing versus self-publishing.

The distinction now is between professional versus unprofessional publishing. The
problem is, even the traditional publishers will unprofessionally publish your book. My
first 10 books were done unprofessionally. Especially the ones with the big publishing
houses.

Claudia talked about money in the introduction but there is more to professionally self-
publishing a book than a dollar sign. For example:

I really hope that everyone self-publishes. The benefits are enormous because of some
simple points, like:

A. Control over design. Traditional publishers usually keep that control and they do
a decent job, however, now for less than 300 dollars you can hire thirty designers to
compete for your business at 99designs.com. And the covers are good. We just had a
competition for the cover of this book, what do you think? Bet you cant tell that is self-
published. And I got my pick of over 60 covers.

B. Content control. My bet is close to 100 percent of the people reading this have
quality content in them that is strong enough for a book. But, 22-year-old interns at
publishing companies wont recognize that content. Even the editors, the publishers, the
marketing guys most of them will not recognize the message you have to offer.

To give you an example, I am now getting help from an editor from one of the big
publishing houses for another book project and even though I said I only wanted line by
line editing, this editor started making structural changes.

Thing is, you are the one that is familiar with your content and only you can make magic
with it. Suggestions are always good but when a publishing house is behind an editor,
disasters can happen. If you dont believe me you can check a book I wrote with a ghost
editor a few years ago which I wish would vanish into the archives of hell, it is called The
Wall Street Guide To Guide To Investing in The Apocalypse. Dont read it, I will tell you, it
is not my book. What that book says is mostly not what I wanted to have in it.

Which leads me to

C. Avoiding bad things in life. I hate getting that feeling of, I hope he or she
chooses me for X. Where X could be love, or an investment, an acquisition, publishing a
book, buying my product, whatever. I try to limit this feeling in my life whenever possible.
I HATE when I have to depend on other people choosing me.

When you have to deal with more and more layers of people who have to choose you, you
dont get the opportunity to choose yourself (!), which is infinitely more valuable.
 W HAT I S Y OUR G OAL
W ITH T HE B OOK ?

Y
ou may think this is not important, but it is. Matter of fact, it is the first step, and
you should have a notebook or a waiters pad nearby because ideas will start to
spark and you better keep them somewhere. If you dont get clear on what the
objective is you are much more likely to make mistakes along the way.

Reason 1: Spreading The Message

If youve just given someone your business card then you failed. If you have a business
card you might be about to fail. Nobody cares whats on it. I throw out all business cards.
You need to self-publish if you are in business, a blogger, a writer, or in any profession
(essentially all professions) where you want to stand out versus the competition. There is
one window, right now, where you have the right combination of easy to do, cheap,
and nobody is doing it. The key is the Era of Validation is over. Nobody needs to pick
you. You choose yourself.

If you, the entrepreneur, artist, consultant, yoga teacher, traveller, inventor, chemist,
retiree with nothing to do who found out a way to make money on the side, self-publish a
book you will stand out, you will make more money, you will kick your competitors right
in the XX, and you will look amazingly cool at cocktail parties. I know this because I am
seldom cool but at cocktail parties, with my very own comic book, I can basically have sex
with anyone in the room. But dont believe me- it costs you nothing and almost no time
to try it yourself.

Not only that but determining that your book will be your opening line, your hello, or
your business card, means that you know how to market it.

If you want a book to have you be known then pricing is not the priority, what you want is
high distribution, so you will want it in all the selling stores like Amazon and Barnes and
Nobles and Indigo, but you will also want it in PDF and make deals with others who have
audiences to give it away for free.

You also know you want people to actually read the book. Take for example Choose
Yourself. When I finally became clear that I wanted Choose Yourself to be widely read
(rather than a best seller or a credential) the way to market it became very clear, I knew
what to do.

Claudia didnt agree. This is comes from an email she sent to her newsletter about, she
titled it:

I Begged Him Not To Do This

James said: "I don't care if I make money on this book or even lose money on it. I
want people to get the message. I want to pay people back who buy my book and
can prove to me they read it."

I said, "Are you crazy? Why did you even think of this."

He said, "Well, to be honest, Tucker Max was the first one to suggest it."

I said, "You mean the guy who wrote, 'Assholes Finish First'."

Although I've since met Tucker. He's a great person and incredibly intelligent.

"But listen," James said, "We know that if people get something for free they
won't value it. And we also know that if someone buys a book, chances are they
won't read it."

"Ok..?" I said.

"So I know the ideas in this book helped me. Saved me. Even freed me from the
chains. I tell my story. I tell other stories. I give the methods. I WANT people to
read this. I don't care if I make money on it."

"It's too gimmicky," I said. "It feels desperate."

"I'm not paying people to buy the book," he said, "I just want people to prove to
me they got the message from the book. Then I'm happy. Then I will pay them
 back because that is more important to me than the money. And if they don't
want the money, we can send it to our usual charity."

The article went out in spite of her fears, but you get the point, she was terrified that
everyone would ask for their money back and we would have to mail hundreds of
thousands of checks and it would be an accounting nightmare. And maybe you feel that it
could be gimmicky, but it was not.

How do I know? Because of the numbers. Guess how many people asked for their money
back? One half of one percent. And the book went on to sell over 200,000 copies because
people read it, and they bought it for their friends.

Here Is What That First Page Said

I don't need to make a dime off of this book. The ideas in the book have already
made me wealthy in many ways. What I really care about is that as many people
as possible read this book and understand this message, even if it puts my own
personal investment at risk.

Here's how I'm going to try and create a situation where as many people as
possible get this message:

I know nobody values booksor anythingthat are given away for free. So, Im
not going to do that. This isn't one of those ineffectual self-help books designed
to look good on your shelf. You either read the book and use these ideas, or you
shouldn't bother. Thats why you have to front the purchase price. But, if you can
prove to me that you have actually read the book, I will give you your money
back. It's an investment that's all upside on your part.

How do you prove to me you've read the book? Do the following:

Within the first three months of the official publication date, do these two
things:

1) Send me a copy of the receipt to IReadChooseYourself@gmail.com. There is a

kindle version, a paperback, and an audio version and they all cost different
amounts. I need to know what you paid.
 2) Then chose one of the following to send together with the receipt:

- You can write an honest review anywhere you want.

- You can take a photograph of yourself reading the book.

- You can write me a testimonial or an email asking me questions that show

you've read the book.

If you can think of other ways, that's fine too. The point is: prove to me you read
the book, and get your money back. Or, you can tell me to give it to a charity.
This is the charity I will give it to: WomenForWomen International

I'm a man of my word. If every single person who buys the book takes advantage
of this opportunity, then I will lose money on it (since Amazon takes their cut).
But I'll be just as happy because it means the message will spread and you, the
people who read the book, will be helped.

I know I was helped. This book has worked for me.

I chose myself.

Knowing that your book is for wide readership gives you more choices. You can give extra
chapters as exclusives (with your best material) and then offer the book for free and have
the audience tell you something, or give you something for a reward (money back or
something else)

You can just have the book offered to anyone who signs up for your newsletter

You can use this as an opportunity to exercise your idea muscle and come up with ten
ideas to have people actually read your book.

Reason 2: You Want A Best Seller

If you already have a readership, you may want to get extra recognition. Then any of the
lists, like the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal or USA Today can help you, because
once you hit one of those lists then you can attach the title of bestseller to your name
wherever you go.
There is a hierarchy that gives meaning to the best-seller list effect, but like all
hierarchies, its going away. Vanishing. Fast. Nevertheless, for now, there are 3 lists you
can hit are these:

List #1: THE NY TIMES BEST SELLER LIST

You only need to sell about 2500 copies of your book in any given week to hit this list.
BUT it has to be spread over certain bookstores around the country and nobody ever
knows what those bookstores are (think secret sauce). Also, they DO NOT count e-books.

Also, their way of calculating what makes a best-seller changes all the time. Listen to
Episode 105 of Ask Altucher or read the transcript here as Michael explains how he has
managed to, for a fee, put every one of the books he worked on within the list.

So, yes, you can BUY YOUR WAY into the NY Times Best Seller List but it is not cheap
(north of 40,000 dollars plus buying the books in bulk), and it definitely will not work if
you dont already have an audience that will pre-order books.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with buying your way into a prestigious list, by all
means, go ahead and choose yourself to do whatever it is you want to do.

Having a NY Times Best Seller hit does still (my guess is not for much longer) get you
credibility, speaking gigs, and maybe advances for future books from major publishing
houses, although those advances are going down really fast. Here are my advances on my
first mainstream-published five books in order: $5,000, $7500, $30,000, $100,000, and
$30,000. Advances are coming down quickly, since as you read in the intro, the advance
for Power of No was $15,000 for two authors. Whichever way you look at it the trend is
down.

Publishing Houses also take advantage of the paying to hit the NY Times list in a
different way, i.e.: they can pay to get a book on that first table you see on those still
standing bookstores. It is never a coincidence that they are there, that is why we are all
more likely to buy them. Someone paid good money for you to see this book right away.

Good luck getting a publisher to do that for you if you are not Stephen King or your book
is not called Lean In, or This Town.
With Power of No we got to be on a table close to the front at the Barnes and Nobles on
Union Square in NYC for about a week. Then the book moved to the self-help section
with only the spine showing (rather than the cover). Claudia asked people to take pictures
of the book and around the country. We got photos from California, Florida and even
some bookstores in Canada, but it was not long until the book was not face forward
anymore. The reason why is because it costs publishers too much money.

List #2: THE WSJ AND USA TODAY LIST

If you get into any of these two lists you become what is known in the industry as a
NATIONAL BEST-SELLER. That is what Choose Yourself is because it hit the WSJ best-
seller list (on top of being a #1 in Amazon see next point).

I find the WSJ and USA Today lists to be a bit closer to reality at least when it comes to e-
books. They are less curated and they just go by the raw data. They are also not afraid to
count Amazon books sales as they are, without inserting some formula. That is why any
book that is promoted through a major email list at a discount ($0.99 cents) can get into
the WSJ list by selling, say, 3000 copies in a week.

List #3: AMAZON BEST-SELLER

This is by far my favorite list and I have a feeling it will be the favorite of everyone pretty
soon. Why? Because its real.

Yes I know, Barnes and Nobles does count too, but really, lets be honest, Amazon is where
things are happening. If you are in the top 100 most sold books on Amazon you are a best
seller, you are making money and 10 to 15 countries are ringing your foreign rights agent
phone off the hook (see foreign rights later).

Thing with Amazon is you need to clarify what type of best seller you are.

Are you in the top 100 best sellers for the whole world? (Meaning top 100 of ALL books?)
If you are congratulations! It means they will rank you as an author too. It is fascinating.
It is also VERY HARD.
At its peak James book hit #13, that is in the whole world! Which, for a NON-Fiction book,
is almost impossible. The top best sellers are usually in the categories of paranormal or
romance novels. Non-fiction is a hard sell!

When Choose Yourself was #13 in the world, it was also #1 for Non-Fiction books. BUT
that is a sub-category. Within non-fiction it was king, followed by the likes of the then
recently released Lean In.

So the thing to know about Amazon is that being #1 in your category is great, but not
exactly a total best seller.

When Claudias self-published book was first in Amazon in May of 2011, it hit #1 but for
the category of YOGA. Nevertheless it was a best seller among people reading yoga
books, and that is not a bad thing.

So whenever someone says they have a #1 best seller in Amazon, it begs the question: was
it in a category or was it for all books? If you do ask that question do it nicely. Authors
are very sensitive people.

Once a Best-Seller

Claudia was asked to give a talk about self-publishing because she knows a lot about the
industry by now. She is the editor in chief and head producer for all of my books.

The woman who was facilitating the talk called it: Get a behind-the-scenes process of
how James & Claudia self-published his #1 NYT Best Seller book Choose Yourself

Did you see what just happened there?

The book is a WSJ and an Amazon bestseller, it is not a #1 NY Times Best Seller, but IT
DOES NOT MATTER.

If you hit a list, ANY list, it will be good for the book. Not everyone knows what the
differences are. Now you do.

What I Wanted For Choose Yourself

For Choose Yourself I wanted to spread the message (business card) and to have the
largest amount of people actually read the book, and then, as a number two priority I
wanted to hit a Best-seller list.

You also need to become very clear on what your order of priorities is, else every step of
the way you will not have a clear guiding point of reference.

Reason 3: You Want To Make A Lot Of Money

I asked Joe Ragan if he gets jealous. His wife, Theresa, writes romance novels. She also
writes thrillers under the name, TR Ragan. Shes sold 300,000 copies of her books as of
2012. She is entirely self-published through Amazon/Createspace.

Why would I get jealous? he said and he was smiling so I knew he was up for the
question.

Lets say Theresa writes about a love interest in one of her books. Lets say her main
character is clearly based on her but the love interest is not like you in any way. Do you
get jealous of the love interest in her book? I was asking because I knew if Claudia was a
romance novelist and wrote about a love interest that was nothing like me I would
certainly get jealous. No matter how much self-work I did I would get jealous. I hate
having that mental illness.

Joe laughed. We were at a dinner that Amazon organized for a few authors who had used
Createspace for self-publishing, my latest self-published book at the time was I Was Bling
But Now I See.

Theresa had burst out a quick seven novels on that platform. Two thrillers and five
romance novels. Whitney, from Amazon, laughed and said, Thats a good question. She
wanted to know also.

I never get jealous, Joe said. And then I was jealous of him. Im stuck in my brain when it
comes to issues like this. Thank god Claudia is not a romance novelist. But then Theresa
piped in, I always make sure the love interest has some aspects that are like Joe. Maybe a
food he likes to eat, or clothing he likes to wear. Something.

See. A good romance novelist knows how to keep her man happy.
I spoke more with Theresa the next time we met, at the Amazon booth at the book expo
where we were both signing books. Now I had an opportunity to be jealous of her. Since
she started self-publishing in March, 2011 she has sold 300,000 books. 300,000! And now
she had just signed a deal with Thomas & Mercer, which is Amazons publishing company
that competes with the more traditional publishers. But Im still going to be using
Createspace and Kindle Direct for self-publishing, she said.

She told me she had been writing and trying to get published for 19 years. She had been
rejected by every publisher. She had had two agents but they hadnt helped her. She wrote
every day (1000 to 3000 words every day. If I get 1000 words done in the morning I can
feel happy for the rest of the day knowing I did it) she had been in writing groups, she
had tried everything to get published. I asked her if she outlined everything before she
wrote. No, she said, I just make sure I do those 1000-3000 words a day.

Over the course of those 19 years Ive received over 100 rejections, she said.

This is why I dont like traditional publishers. Think about it. Some 22 year old, fresh out
of college editorial associate rejected her books. Now, in just the past year, she has sold
300,000 copies. That would put her on any bestseller list in the world. Clearly the readers
have spoken! Shes a success! For 19 years the traditional publishers were wrong.

Her first book came out in March, 2011. Her second in April, 2011. With self-publishing you
have to be prolific. But with 3000 words a day thats possible. She told me, At first I was
selling hundreds of copies, then thousands, then one site, A Pixel of Ink mentioned my
book and things really took off.

So after 19 years of being rejected by traditional publishers, she CHOSE HERSELF and is
now making a great living.

Because of technology, and the total breaking down of societal, financial, and
psychological barriers brought on by the financial catastrophe, its become more
acceptable, even welcome, to choose yourself. You no longer have to wait for the big
media companies to call you. You no longer have to wait for the big companies to reach
down from the sky and offer you a job. You no longer have to wait for some website to link
to you so you can get thousands of followers. You can work hard, be persistent, and eat
what you kill. You can choose yourself to be the dream you always wanted to be. You build
your platform and then select yourself to be the star of it.

Theresa wanted to be a writer. She worked 19 years for it. Nobody would choose her. So
she uploaded one book, then two, then a thriller, then four more books. Now she is sought
after. But its too late for anyone to get her before she becomes a success. She already IS a
success because she chose herself to become one.

She had mentioned something about emailing reviewers reviews of her book and I wasnt
sure if I had heard right so I wrote her and asked her to clarify. She wrote back and we
continued our conversation through emails.

Theresa: When I emailed a reviewer every day asking for reviews this is what I meant: I
sent an email to actual book reviewersmostly romance reviewers and I asked them if
they were interested in reviewing one of my books if I sent it to them.

Many reviewers were interested, so I would send them a digital copy through kindle or
nook or smashwords, depending on what sort of ereader device they had. Some reviewers
took months to get the review done and many posted the review on Amazon. I would then
Tweet or put the review on Facebook. This helped to get my name out in the beginning.
The more reviews on Amazon, the more sales, more interview requestsmore
opportunities. Below are just two of many sites where you can find long lists of reviewers.
These are the types of people I would send an email asking them if they would be
interested in reviewing my book. I did this for the first three months in my self-published
journey.

So again, not only did she upload her book to Createspace and self-publish, she didnt rest
there. You cant just go back to your desk and write another novel. You have to keep
choosing yourself in every medium. Publishers will not market you. Amazon will not
market you. If you dont promote yourself, then nobody will. So she used every social
medium. She emailed all the reviewers she could find. She was polite and asked them if
they wanted a book rather than shoving it at them. So it was bulk asking,
Then she would take the review and spread it across all media: Facebook, twitter, Amazon,
etc. And for each review she saw a corresponding increase in sales. And because she was
prolific, her backlist would sell as well. So all seven book started becoming major sellers.

But theres one key component she needed in order to select herself. I wrote her again
and asked her if she was frustrated during the 19 years she couldnt publish. Here is her
response:

I was frustrated and in the middle of my journey I was even feeling a little bitter about
not selling. In 2007, I read The Secret and a book by Eckhart Tolle and those changed my
life literally. I also love your book!

I never wrote for money, but I did want readers. And I did want to see my book in
bookstores. That was definitely a motivating factor. Making money now is icing on the
cake. Its more than I ever imagined. If it all stops tomorrow, I am happy and grateful.

In 2007 I began to appreciate all the things that had always bothered melike weeds
growing in the yard and the fact that I had a roof over my head. I began to appreciate my
family and every single thing I hadwater to drink, legs to walk, eyes to see. Becoming a
positive person has changed my life. I started to see the world in a new way. My oldest son
said that the world was always that way, but I was just seeing everything through rose-
colored glasses, and he was right. Everything wonderful was always right there in front of
me, I just wasnt seeing it until I change my mind set.

I have two takeaways from this. One is the psychological barrier it takes to choose you.
First you have to love yourself. You have to understand that validation comes from within.
Not when the big bad media company reaches down from the clouds and accepts you,
like a parent loving a baby in a crib. You need to love yourself enough that the aura you
spread is noticeable by everyone. That the love and validation you crave comes from
inside first. And suddenly that validation will automatically guide your efforts as you go
through the process of selecting yourself for success in whatever you endeavor.

Finally, I want to add, I have now read Theresas thriller, Abducted. I couldnt put it
down. Its a page-turner, every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, and now Im compelled to
buy the sequel and then whatever comes after that. She deserves every success.
Can you make money writing? Absolutely!

Read the transcript of the James Altucher show with Hugh Howey and Listen to Ask
Altucher episode 120 for more.
 H OW TO C REATE A
P ROFESSIONALLY L OOKING B OOK

T
he first and most important step of self-publishing your masterpiece is actually
writing the book. I write every day after reading and two hours after I wake up,
when the mind is at its peak of productivity, and because of that, even if I write a
thousand words I end up with at least 360,000 words in a year. That is enough content for
5 to 6 books.

Bleed in the first line.

Were all human. A computer can win Jeopardy but still not write a novel. If you want
people to relate to you, then you have to be human. Penelope Trunk started a post a few
weeks ago: I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And
I took a picture. Thats real bleeding.

Claudia recently put up a post where the first line was painful:

On March 31, 1986, my mother jumped out of the 7th floor window of her
bedroom. On her way down she crashed onto a glass table in the backyard of
the owners of the ground floor unit. She died that day. She was depressed and
desperate.

I cried reading it. The New York Observer picked it up. People wrote to her and shared
their own stories.

Bleeding in the first line invites the reader in, it sparks curiosity for what is to come. A
well-crafted first line also inspires confidence that the writer knows what is doing, and
that it will carry the reader through.

Write whatever you want. Then take out the first paragraph and last paragraph.
Heres the funny thing about this rule. Its sort of like knowing the future. You still cant
change it. In other words, even if you know this rule and write the article, the article will
still be better if you take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph. But dont believe
me, do it and see for yourself.

Read. A lot.

You cant write without first reading. A lot. When I was writing five bad novels in a row I
would read all day long whenever I wasnt writing (I had a job as a programmer, which I
would do for about five minutes a day because my programs all worked and I just had to
maintain them). I read everything I could get my hands on.

Because of my podcast The James Altucher show, the amount of reading I do has
increased exponentially and now I read about fifteen books per week.

My recent reads on the Amazon cloud have Triumphs of Experience by George E.

Vaillant, a book that follows men who went to Harvard in the 30s and are now in their
80s; A Curious Man by Neal Thompson, a boo about Ripleys Believe it or Not!; God
Bless You, Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut is a regular read for me, Ive read
everything hes ever written, twice. Jesus Son by Denis Johnson, a book of short stories
Ive probably read over four hundred times; The Martian by Andy Weir; The Power Of
Now by Eckart Tolle.

This particular week I had no podcasts because of the new year break, that is why the
amount of fiction books is higher. I read fiction to learn how to write well. Any non-
fiction writer could benefit by reading crafted non-fiction books.

Write

A lot. A typical book is anywhere from 40,000-80,000 words. So if you can average 1,000
words a day, seven days a week, you can write four to eight books a year. Or maybe just
one very good, edited, revised, professional one. Or 10! Knock yourself out!

Read before you write

Before I write every day I spend 30-60 minutes reading high quality short stories, poetry,
or essays. Books by Denis Johnson, Miranda July, David Foster Wallace, Ariel Leve,
William Vollmann, Raymond Carver, etc. All of the writers are in the top 1/1000 of 1% of
writers. It has to be at that level or else it wont lift up your writing at all.

Write every day

This is a must. Writing is spiritual practice. You are diving inside of yourself and cleaning
out the toxins. If you dont do it every day, you lose the ability. If you do it every day, then
slowly you find out where all the toxins are. And the cleaning can begin.

Coffee

I go through three cups at least before I even begin to write. No coffee, no creativity.
Coffee can also help with the next suggestion.

Take a huge bowel movement every day

You wont see that on any other list on how to be a better writer. If your body doesnt flow
then your brain wont flow. Eat more fruit if you have to.

Sleep eight hours a day

Go to sleep before 9pm at least 4 days a week. And stretch while taking deep breaths
before you write. We supposedly use only 5% of our brain. You need to use 6% at least to
write better than everyone else. So make sure your brain is getting as much healthy
oxygen as possible. Too many people waste valuable writing or resting time by chattering
until all hours of the night.

Dont write if youre upset at someone. Then the person you are upset at becomes your
audience. You want to love and flirt with your audience so they can love you back.

Be Honest

Tell people the stuff they all think but nobody ever says. Some people will be angry you let
out the secret. But most people will be grateful. Else you arent delivering value. Be the
little boy in the Emperor Wears No Clothes. If you cant do this, dont write.

Dont Hurt Anyone

This goes against the above rule. But I never like to hurt people. And I dont respect
people who get page views by breaking this rule. Dont be a bad guy.

Dont be afraid of what people think

For every single person that you worry about, deduct 1% in quality from your writing.
Everyone has deductions. I have to deduct about 10% right off the top. Maybe there are 10
people Im worried about. Some of them are evil people. Some of them are people I just
dont want to offend. So my writing is only about 90% of what it could be. But I think
most people write at about 20% of what it could be. Believe it or not, clients, customers,
friends, family, will love you more if you are honest with them. So we all have our
boundaries. But try this: for the next ten things you write, tell people something that
nobody knows about you.

Be opinionated

Most people I know have strong opinions about at least one or two things. Write about
those. Nobody cares about all the things you dont have strong opinions on. Barry Ritholz
told me the other day he doesnt start writing until hes angry about something. Thats one
approach. Barry and I have had some great writing fights because sometimes weve been
angry at each other.

Take what everyone thinks and explore the opposite. Dont disagree just to disagree. But
explore. Turn the world upside down. Guess what? There are people living in China.
Plenty of times youll find value where nobody else did.

Have a shocking title

I wanted to a piece: How I Torture Women but I settled for Im Guilty of Torture. I
wimped out. But I have some other fun ones. Like Is It Bad I Wanted My First Kid to Be
Aborted. Dont forget that you are competing against a trillion other pieces of content out
there, as well as games, apps, calendar appointments, to-do lists, and TV. So you need a
title to draw people in. Else, you lose.

Steal
I dont quite mean it literally. But if you know a topic gets page views (and you arent
hurting anyone) than steal it, no matter whos written about it or how many times youve
written about it before. How I Screwed Yasser Arafat out of $2mm was able to nicely
piggyback off of how amazingly popular Yasser Arafat is.

Make people cry

If youve ever been in love, you know how to cry. Bring readers to that moment when they
were a child, and all of life was in front of them, except for that one bittersweet moment
when everything began to change. If only that one moment couldve lasted forever. Please
let me go back in time right now to that moment. But now its gone.

Relate to people

The past decade has totally sucked. For everyone. The country has been in post-traumatic
stress syndrome since 9/11 and 2008 only made it worse. Ive gone broke a few times
during the decade, had a divorce, lost friendships, and have only survived (barely) by
being persistent and knowing I had two kids to take care of, and loneliness to fight.
Nobodys perfect. Were all trying. Show people how you are trying and struggling.
Nobody expects you to be a superhero.

Risk

Notice that almost all of these rules are about where the boundaries are. Most people play
it too safe. When you are really risking something and the reader senses that (and they
WILL sense it), then you know you are in good territory. If you arent risking something,
then Im moving on. I know Im on the right track if after I post something someone
tweets, OMFG.

Be funny

You can be all of the above and be funny at the same time. When I went to India I was
brutalized by my first few yoga classes (actually every yoga class). And I was intimidated
by everyone around me. They were like yoga superheroes and I felt like a fraud around
them. So I cried, and hopefully people laughed. It was also a case where I didnt have to
dig into my past but I had an experience that was happening to me right then. How do
you be funny? First rule of funny: ugly people are funny. Im naturally ugly so its easy.
Make yourself as ugly as possible. Nobody wants to read that you are beautiful and doing
great in life.

The last line needs to go BOOM!

Your writing is meaningless unless the last line KILLS. Read the book of short stories Jesus
Son by Denis Johnson. Its the only way to learn how to do a last line. The last line should
take you all the way back to the first line and then BOOM!

For example, Charles Bukowski finishes a short story with: I got the hell out of there

Dennis Johnson ends his short story entitled Steady Hands at Seattle General with this
line: Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me Im fine

Deliver value with every sentence

Even on a tweet or Facebook status update. Deliver poetry and value with every word.
Else, be quiet. I tried an experiment last week on crafting a Tweet, it was right after the
mess over the release of the movie The Interview, it said:

I have one criteria now when I hit "send" on an email: am I comfortable with the leader of
North Korea reading this out loud.

138 people re-tweeted it and 181 favorited it.

Use a lot of periods

Forget commas and semicolons. A period makes people pause. Your sentences should be
strong enough that you want people to pause and think about it. This will also make your
sentences shorter. Short sentences are good.

A copy-writer who generated five million dollars with one letter last year once told me
that he cared not for grammar at all. I believed him.

Write with the same voice you talk in

Youve spent your whole life learning how to communicate with that voice. Why change it
when you communicate with text?
Break the laws of physics

Theres no time in text. Nothing has to go in order. Dont make it nonsense. But dont be
beholden to the laws of physics.

KISS

Use said instead of any other word. Dont use he suggested or he bellowed. Just he
said. Well figure it out if he suggested something.

Have lots of ideas

Your idea muscle atrophies within days if you dont exercise it. Then what do you do? You
need to exercise it every day until it hurts. Else no ideas. See Claudias Become an Idea
Machine for prompts if you need them. She offers 180 of them, so you can list your ideas
away. If you are not coming up with at least ten ideas a day your idea-muscle is dying.

Paint.

Or draw. Keep exercising other creative muscles.

Let it sleep

Whatever you are working on, sleep on it. Then wake up, stretch, coffee, read, and look
again. Rewrite. Take out every other sentence.

Get the Last 1% Done Right

Someone asked me on Ask Altucher how to get the final stretch of a project done. In a
book this can feel like hell, I hate the last touches, but they are key, it is what makes a
book professional.

Clean up the whole area around you. Clean up the table, clean up the entire room. This
will give you the feeling of a fresh start.

Next, list for yourself, even just in your head, why finishing this project will be good for
other people. Remembering why you started this project will help you finish it.
Lastly, picture in your mind what it will feel like when it's finally finished. You can listen
to episode 168 on Ask Altucher to feel the inspiration.

Then take out every other sentence again

 E DITING

B
efore I decided to really get serious about self-publishing, my editing was just a
spell check (which was actually more than some of my mainstream publishers
did.) Claudia asked me if I was kidding on this. But I told her to read my second
book and she stopped questioning it. In other words, it was awful.

With Choose Yourself I went all out. I hired two copy editors to go through the basics on
spelling and grammar. Then I hired a company run by Nils Parker to help me structurally
edit, i.e. do the job that editors used to do (example: Maxwell Perkins in the 1930s) but
have been sorely lacking in the past 20 years from traditional publishers. Nils has
previously edited bestsellers from Tucker Max, Kamal Ravikant, Ryan Holiday, and a
dozen writers, as well as written screenplays, books, etc.

I am not saying, hire Nils by the way. He is expensive now. Im just saying this is who I
used (and paid). Make sure whom you use is among the best in the world, or else you
arent taking advantage of what the self-publishing world has to offer. Nils and I went back
and forth on more than 15 different rewrites for my book. The difference between the
original version and the final version is like the difference between chicken shit and
chicken salad.

And yes, publishers have editors. But I specifically wanted to choose my own editor and
use an editor that has worked on books that have sold millions of copies. The entire idea
of self-publishing era is that I am not limited to who is on the publishers staff but I can
pick the absolute best people in the industry. With millions of books out there, the
competition is incredible.

My friend Jayson Gaynyard recently did something creative, he asked his audience to
power read his book before his release and give him suggestions. There are many ways in
which you can get collaboration other than editing. Regardless of the method you choose,
an extra set of eyes is always a good idea; just make sure those eyes have glasses. Denial is
the last thing you want in a professional book.
 D ESIGN

I
never liked any of the designs on my traditionally published books, but I had no
control over them. I dont mean this to sound so anti-publisher. But they were busier
with bigger authors, and I dont think they were always able to devote resources to
me. So, when I made sure I put out a product I could be proud of, I used Erin Tyler
Design who helped me find the right cover designer, and she also managed the interior
design process, which was a lot trickier than I thought.

There is also 99designs or Fiverr. Finding a designer is now just a Google away. Do not
cheap out on this because the way the book looks is the first thing your reader will see.

For this cover the winner was selected after running a contest on 99designs and looking
through 50 different covers.
 T ITLE

I had total control over the title. My first choice for Choose Yourself was The Choose
Yourself Era. But whenever anyone asked me to say the title I had trouble saying it. Era
sounds like Error. One person asked me if it was going to a book about archaeology. So
somehow it wasnt working.

So I picked 10 titles that I liked, combined them with the cover and created Facebook ads
that I sent out to all my friends and friends of friends in the U.S. Then I sat back and
watched the click-troughs. After a few days and thousands of click-troughs I had my title.

The Choose Yourself Era came in a distant third place. Pick Yourself! was right above it
in second place. And Choose Yourself! came in first by far.

I then took the same Facebook approach to pick the subtitle and the final version of the
cover design.

Results of the Facebook Title test:

Choose Yourself 72%

Pick Yourself 18%

Choose Yourself Era 7%

Become A Force Of Nature 2%

Only Do What You Want 1%

 A UDIO B OOK

I
was at an Amazon dinner once. One guy who was making a solid living self-
publishing science fiction novels told me that he always made an audiobook. I
thought that was a horrible idea, and told him so. But two things about audiobooks:

He said, When people see you have an audiobook, they see your book as even more
credible. It stands out from the average self-published book when you have an e-book, a
print version, and an audiobook. Plus, the audio book is more expensive, so even though
there are fewer sales, its decent money. By the way, if you self-publish, always do a print
book at the very least. Even if 99 percent of your sales are going to be e-book.

I asked the head of an ad agency what marketing tips he had for my upcoming book. He
said, first thing, Make an audiobook. For your kind of book, people will love listening to it
while they drive into work.

So Claudia, my wife who has been supportive of every aspect of this effort, set up her office
in our house to be a mini-recording studio. I wrote to Tucker Max that I was going to
make an audiobook. He wrote back:

James, where are you doing the audio, and whos editing it? Please tell me you arent just
doing it yourself with your Mac and a mic you bought online.

We looked at our Mac and a mic that we had just bought online and decided to go to a
professional studio. Tucker suggested John Marshall Media. They had done audiobooks
ranging from President Clintons autobiography to the Harry Potter books to
Freakonomics. It was a thoroughly annoying experience but it was worth it. I felt
uncomfortable just sitting there for eight hours reading words I had written. For one
thing, it hurt. Reading for eight straight hours was killing my throat.

Second, I didnt want to just read stories I had already written. So I did it totally
unabridged and improvised quite a bit, making it somewhat original compared to the
book.
But the best reason for doing the audiobook is it forces you to really look at your writing
and hear what works and what doesnt. I rewrote about 20 percent of the book after
reading things that didnt quite sound right out loud.

It meant another round of edits to improve the book, a process I never would have gone
through if I hadnt done the audio version.

Uploading a book is easy once you have the professional files done.

You will however, need to have the book first as a kindle or as a soft cover, or both,
otherwise ACX may not let you just upload audio.

Once your book is on Amazon it is easy to link and upload the files.

Make sure to get a five minute audio file that you will use as a sample so people
browsing can click Listen when making up their minds on whether to buy the audio or
the kindle or the paper back.
 F OREWORD /I NTRODUCTION

W
homever you choose to be your introduction and foreword can be listed as
such in Amazon. This means that if someone is searching, say for Stephen
King, and you were smart enough to get him to write your foreword, your
book will show up among his work.

This is why people will be hesitant to write an intro or a forward to your book. However,
if you get someone famous to do it you get an advantage. This is why I worked so hard at
courting Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, to write the forward for Choose Yourself. I
wanted the book to spread, and having a sign of credibility such as the CEO of a major
company helped it.
 B LURBS

T
he beauty of blurbs is that they are easy. You can ask people you like and offer
them suggestions so they do not have to read the whole book. I say this because
usually you will be asking writers for blurbs, and writers write and they are busy,
I know I am. So whenever you ask for a blurb be pro-active.

In the checklist I wrote that you need to ask for three. This is a minimum number,
because less than three means you are not really professional. If you only have two it
looks like you begged for it, but if you have three it seems you had to choose from among
so many. Dont ask me why this is, maybe is just my opinion, I like three.
 T ESTIMONIALS

T
estimonials sell. Even though people think that they need to have them just on
the website, testimonials are a great thing for people to see when they open the
look inside portion that Amazon displays. What testimonials do is give social
proof that your message works.

But you need to do them right. If you can get a name, last name and location of the
person, do that. But that is the minimum. If you can tell their web-site and even put a
photo of them that is even better. Of course photos are not good within a book because
they make files heavier and you have to deal with good quality and on and on, so you may
want to save those for the website, but when you are collecting them, think of everything,
not just the first name but their page, image, and anything that can further add solidity to
their claim that your message or product works.

If you open Tony Robbins book: Money, the first line, of the whole book, says:

He has a great gift. He has the gift to inspire.

And then it says: Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States.

How about that for a first page?

Paul Tudor Jones II, Kyle Bass, and among others, Steve Forbes, T. Boons Pickens, Serena
Williams, Oprah Winfrey, and on and on.

On the Look Inside (in Amazon) all I see is TWENTY SIX testimonials. Do you need
more? Are you sold? And you have not even read what they wrote, you just see the
names.

In the Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth I have testimonials of famous people and of
people who are not famous (yet) but who used the daily practice and the idea machine
and other principles described in Choose Yourself and literally transformed their lives.
You and I may not be Tony Robbins but we definitely can get some testimonials and you
should, because they work.
 P ROFESSIONAL B IO

Let me give you an example of what it means to have a professional bio vs. an amateur life
story.

When I was getting ready to publish Choose Yourself, I was getting a lot of help from
Tucker Max, who now owns a company called Book In A Box (bookinabox.com).

Note that I am not promoting Tuckers company I am just using the example because it
makes it very clear what a professional bio would look like.

So this is my original proposal for bio, a sorry example:

James Altucher is a highly successful self-made entrepreneur, chess master,

full-time writer (which means he writes religiously 3 hours each day) and
angel investor. He has run over 20 companies and sold several businesses for
eight figures+. He also has run a venture capital fund and a hedge fund.
James sits on the boards of many companies, from where he has complete
view of how the economic, as well as personal landscape is shifting. In 2010,
after writing for ten years in the financial space and being published by the
major publishing companies, he started writing the most intimate details of
his personal life on his blog, attracting over ten million readers and
provoking the creation of the first comic book ever to come out of the
blogging format. He also self-published four non-fiction books. He took his
experiences, his failures and successes, and distilled them into a
methodology he used to achieve success. To finally choose himself. He shares
that in this book. James has controversial stands on many issues and many
people have accused him of having too much common sense. In 2011
Business Week called him: The Keeper of the Pain.

He HATED it.

This is what he responded, by e-mail:

 OK, I would totally scrap that bio. It is WAY WAY to self-promotional, and it
reeks of someone deeply insecure--this is not the way you want to sound
James. That bio sounds like something written by someone who has not done
anything--you're the opposite. You've accomplished a shit load in yourlife.
You know what people who have accomplished a lot put in their bios? Bare
bones. Why? Because they have nothing to prove. Honestly, I'd go with
something like this:

"James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, chess master, investor and

writer. He has started and run over 20 companies, and sold several of those
businesses for large exits. He also has run venture capital funds, hedge funds,
angel funds, and currently sits on the boards of many companies. His writing
has appeared in most major national media publications (WSJ, FT, etc). This
is his 11th book."

If your first reaction to that is that its not self-promotional enough,then its
probably right. If I'm leaving out facts, then insert them. But that bio says to
me, "Damn, this dude has some done so much crazy shit in his life, he just
expects me to know the details. He MUST be big time." Don't believe me? Go
pull some books down off your shelf. Look at the bios, and then think about
what you know about the authors.

Claudia was a bit shaken when we read that, but we believed him, and it worked. So, to
reinforce the points, your bio needs to be:

Non-promotional

Show accomplishments

Bare bone and short

Fact oriented

Result oriented

Have a KABOOM! Effect

 P ROFESSIONAL P HOTO

Y
ou can take a photo yourself. Claudia is very good at this and she always does it,
but she has at least a thousand hours of doing photography and video because of
her yoga teaching. If you have no clue get a professional to take your shot. There
is nothing worse than a photo in which you have bad posture, or you dont have a look
that says something along the lines of what your book is about.

For example, Ryan Holliday has an interesting photo for his book Trust Me Im Lying it
is a headshot of him covering his face with his hands. This shows you that he is the man
behind the scenes, the marketer you never get to see but who is orchestrating the
promotion and sales of your books.

I work closely with Ryan and have learned from him that the photo is an essential part of a
professionally self-published book, as it will help people with their first impression of both
you and the message.
 T HE U LTIMATE C HECK -L IST B EFORE S ELF -P UBLISHING

Order is important when it comes to self-publishing professionally. Do not continue with

the process unless you can put a check next to each of these items:

1. Write Every Day

2. Decide what the book is about
3. Write it well
4. Have it professionally edited
5. Have the interior design done professionally
6. Have the full cover designed in four formats: PDF, paper back, kindle (epub
format) and Audible (following the format suggestions of ACX.COM) Just ask
your designer
7. Create your Amazon Author page. Link to your Twitter, your blog and
anything else. Put a nice photo in it, and your bio. Make sure to link your
books to you.
8. Determine what is the objective of the book (business card? Hit a list? Make
Money?)
9. Make sure you are adding value in a special way.
10. Come up with at least 100 ideas on how you will be marketing your book
11. Give a thirty second speech on what your book is about (your elevator pitch)
12. Think about a dedication
13. Think and get a Foreword
14. Get blurbs from at least three people
15. Think and if you want, get an Intro
16. Do the last page of your book (your bio). Make sure to include where people
can find you
17. Have a professionally done photograph that goes with the look of the book

 18. Record the audio book
19. Wait until you get the files back from the recording studio
20. Select a five minute period of your audio to be used as the sample that people
will hear and tell the studio to give you this file as well

Now you are ready. You know your message is good. You are proud of what you are
looking at, and you can tell in a short sentence what the book is about.
 C REATE S PACE

I
recommend you start here, at CreateSpace.com. You will need an account, so go
ahead and sign up, then click on add new title and go for it. It is very simple; you
need to fill up the tittle, the sub-title, the author, foreword and introduction.

The ISBN will be provided for you, both for paper back and kindle. As of the writing of
this book there is no way to create a hard cover version of your work, but this is likely to
change in the near future, so always stay tuned to Amazon and sign up for their updates.

Once you get to the page where you upload the cover and the content, if you followed the
ultimate checklist from the previous chapter you will be ready. Just upload the file from
your computer and you are done.
 K INDLE

C
reateSpace now gives you the option to create the kindle version right from their
page. Follow their prompts because you already will have all the files (if you
followed the ultimate checklist from last chapter). However in my experience it
does not always work. In order to avoid trouble I would find a designer that can convert
your files to e.pub (which is the format that Kindle uses). BUT make sure to revise the
files before uploading them because there will be differences between the layout of the
create space manuscript and the kindle one. It is just in the nature of how they work.
Always open and look at your files.

Book Proof

Create Space will offer you to get a proof of your book, meaning that you will get a printed
paper back BEFORE you hit publish.

You may be like me and get really impatient, but you do want to get a proof before you hit
publish onto the word. This is your professional baby, treat it with care.

There is something special about holding a copy of your beautiful work of art in your
hands, and you can use it to promote it on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else to
start creating noise around it.

Hit Publish Only After:

I recently published a book and got myself in trouble because I misspelled a word in the
sub-title.

NOTE: CREATE SPACE WONT LET YOU CHANGE A SUBTITLE ONCE YOU WRITE IT.

You will actually have to find their help page and hit the button so that they will call you.

The original information on the book, like the title, sub-title, author and forward/intro,
cannot be changed once you upload it.
Also, the day you upload things, even if it is for the purposes of getting your own proof to
look at, CreateSpace will consider it as the day of publishing. So make sure to call them
if you want another day to be reflected.

Do not go into Create Space without your e-pub files. Get everything ready before you
start the process so you will not miss anything and your book can come out professionally.

This means that you open and look at all the files.

Always get a proof file, a physical proof of the paper back, because there is nothing like the
printed thing to notice the mistakes in the table of contents or how you added a word
here or there that should not be there.

Once everything is done and youre satisfied go ahead and hit publish. See your baby go
onto the world and take on a life of its own.

How to promote and sell your book

Okay. So you have written your book and self-published it. Now what?
 B UILD Y OUR P LATFORM

B
uilding your platform should actually be something that you do before, during
and after writing your book. Connecting others, like for example people who like
your work, and who like what you have to say, and how you say it, is how you
find your true fan base.

It took me a long time to understand that having a personal newsletter is an important

part of the writers life today. I resisted it for a long time, but eventually I started it and
now I communicate directly with over a hundred thousand people, and reach another
huge audience, in the millions of readers, by propagating through LinkedIn, Quora,
Positively Positive, Thought Catalog, and on and on and on.

The audience will not find you in todays world because everyone is already into his or her
thing, so you need to find them, or at least meet them half way. My strategy is to be
everywhere, so whoever may have not heard of my writing will have a chance and if they
like it they may keep coming and reading.

I have seen great books fail because authors only begin to promote their book once they
are done writing it. They spend years writing the book, only to have it flop on release
because nobody knows who they are. Writing and promotion should go hand in hand with
each other.
 U LTIMATE G UIDE T O B UILDING Y OUR P LATFORM

A. Blog Everywhere. Have an honest voice. Dont be afraid to say things about either
yourself or your industry. Provide unique perspective. If it doesnt bleed it doesnt lead.
Make sure every post or video you do bleeds from the heart, entertains, and educates. In
that order. But once you do it make sure to distribute your posts to all sites you can. At
the moment I distribute my content on so many bigger sites that Ive lost count, but they
include Yahoo, Huffington Post, Quora (where I am a top writer), LinkedIn (where I am
an influencer), Thought Catalog, New York Observer, and on and on and on. People need
to find you, and your own blog may no longer be enough. Make sure to get out there and
be everywhere.

B. Become a Quora Top Writer. I love Quora, I like hearing what people ask and
reading responses, and I also love that I can distribute my own writing by answering
questions and by posting, or even creating questions and then answering.

One morning last October, as I was preparing for a TED talk in San Diego, Claudia came
running from upstairs, jumping around all excited. She had just been named top Quora
writer. That is how she feels about it. And it is a good thing, because being a top writer
means more people will follow you, more people will talk about you, and more people will
read and come to like your work.

To become a top Quora writer you need to feel passionate about your topic and answer
the questions in an intelligent way, always adding value, seldom linking to yourself unless
it is an absolute necessity, as it would be if you were to point to a special talk or something
that would add extra value, but always staying on the topic.

LinkedIn: As of the writing of this book Linked In has a special program called
Influencers but its a closed system and they are not opening it up further. I made it into
the list together with Branson, President Obama, A.J. Jacobs, and other luminaries mostly
because I posted heavily and on issues related to people who hang out in LinkedIn a lot.
It is key to respect the reader in LinkedIn and write things that are career oriented. My
post on why you need to quit your job reached over 1.8 million views and became the #1
post in 2014 hen it came to engagement, I am not sure how they measure that. I am not
saying this to brag, but to make a point. When you have hundreds of thousands of people

C. Podcast: A lot of people say that podcast is the new blogging but I dont buy into
that. It is however a great way to expand your audience and learn. People now have cars
with access to podcast streams and radio audiences are moving towards more specific
content. If you become the authority and trusted source on your specific topic people will
want to read your book.

D. Go on other peoples podcasts. This is a great way to strike deals. For example
you could do a special pricing for your book for people who listen to your friends podcasts
and distribute it in PDF form.

E. Create a story around your book. When I first published Choose Yourself I
offered it in Bitcoin, making it the first book ever to be sold through that currency. The
story landed me on CNBC where the anchor asked me if I had done it for publicity
reasons, to which I honestly answered that one way or another I was there, so yes, why
not? I also sold a fair amount of copies that way too, and since the value of Bitcoin went
up huge since, it ended up being as if each one of those books sold for 100 dollars. Not
bad.

F. Forget TV. TV does nothing. Trust me. You sell zero books unless you get an
hour on a popular show like Oprah, but that is not so easy to come by, and there are other
ways, for example, recently someone at USA Today ranked Choose Yourself as the second
most powerful business book of the year. That lucky mention (over which I had no
control) got me back to a really low ranking number in Amazon, a very good thing.

G. Free and Extra. Offer bundles with lots of valuable and free offers. For example,
you can design a landing page on which people can get the book and fremiums. Same can
be done through people who have newsletter businesses.

H. Give a TED talk.

 O THER M ERCHANDISE

Since YOU own the rights to your book, you can do whatever you want with it.

For Choose Yourself, I created a poster that is designed like the cover of the book when
you look from afar but when you get close to it you see clearly all 67,000 words of the
book. Im also making that into a shirt. What will I do with it? I have no idea. But its fun
and I wanted to do it.
 F OREIGN R IGHTS

I
found with my prior books that the traditional publishers would more or less wait
for foreign publishers to call and then they would sell the rights and my split would
be minimal. Typically the split was 50-50, but out of my 50 would come my agents
split. I was competing with too many of the other authors in the publishers stable to get
any attention from foreign publishers.

Now I own all the rights to my book. Most people who self-publish arent thinking foreign
rights. You still have to have someone who is going to be your advocate with the foreign
publishers. So I got a foreign rights agency, 2 Seas Agency, to handle all of the foreign
rights on a commission basis. They go to book conferences all over the world and have
connections in each country.

In June, the first month the book was out, Marleen Seegers from 2 Seas sold rights to:
Brazil (USD 2500), China (USD 4300), Korea (USD 5000). She is currently in negotiations
with publishers from 10 other countries. The three mentioned above are where the
contracts were finished blindingly fast.

The book is now in over 12 countries and languages.

 F REQUENTLY A SKED Q UESTIONS

Do I need to worry about an ISBN?

No, CreateSpace will assign one for your paperback and your kindle right away and free.
No need to pay for that stuff anymore.

How do I design that page with all the rights and the legal
terms?

Copy if from any book you like. They mean nothing in the end, or at least they mean
little.

Do I need to have a professional do the recording of my

audio book?

Yes, sound is tricky, dont be cheap with it

Is it hard to upload the audio files I get from the recording

studio?

No, go to acx.com and follow their guidelines. Its easy. You DO however need a book for
an audiobook to appear in amazon as a pre-requisite so you can link to it, so do the book
first.

Do I really need all three formats? As in Kindle, paper back

and audio?

Yes, if you want to be professional about it. Otherwise it looks unfinished.

Do I need to write every day?

Only if you want to have a quality book.

Do I need to worry about what the reviews say?

No, in fact most best-seller books have a low star review first, it is like a rite of passage, a
badge of honor, it means your book is being read and caused a reaction.

Do I need to worry about copycats in Amazon?

These are everywhere but they will vanish soon. I had someone do that to my books and I
put a one star review saying I had nothing to do with it. People do read those and if they
are written by the actual author they may respect it, if they dont then I dont care.

If someone uses your name as author or foreword and that is not true, you can report it to
Amazon, they will take it out.

Do I need to worry about Barnes and Nobles and

Independent stores?

Sure. Every one of these questions is a Google away, but I find that Amazon is the source,
and whatever appears in Amazon will eventually make it to every other venue.

What should I price my book?

Amazon will give you guidelines (a low level minimum), in general, depending on what
you want to do you will price for that. If you want more people to buy the book then
charge less. Do not make the mistake of pricing too high, you want readers, that is the
purpose of writing books.

Should I Enroll in the Lending Library?

Yes.

Should I distribute onto all countries?

Yes, as wide as possible

Should I line up people to review my book on the first day?

It is a good idea to offer the book around for people to read it before you launch it and
ask, if they are willing to, to give an HONEST review.
If you have 100 reviews on day one people will get suspicious and will start giving you one
star reviews because they will label you as someone who is trying to scam the system. It is
not worth it. It takes away from your message.

Do ask your true fans to help you, but remember that you cannot solicit reviews unless
you specifically want them with truth. Integrity is a part of writing your best work.

Should I try to book myself on TV?

TV does nothing for book sales. Wayne Dyer went on Oprah for his latest book, and, even
though I dont follow all of the numbers, I do know it hit the New York Times best-seller
list but only for a week or two. That was it. TV is useless.

Should I go on Podcasts?

Yes. Absolutely. Go on as many Podcasts as you would like. That is exactly what Tony
Robbins did with his book Money that I believe is still in the NY Times list. And that is
what all authors that know what they are doing do. Because podcasts open the door to
new audiences that otherwise you would not know existed.

Should I start my own podcast?

Yes

What if I get bad reviews?

Bad reviews seem to go with the territory. I would never engage with a bad review
because it gives the reviewer power. It signals that the author is giving more attention to
someone who is bad-mouthing the book instead of pouring her energy towards true fans
that loved it.

It is best to let the reviews take care of themselves.

Should I do a video to promote my book?

No. It does not pay, and it is very expensive. Unless you can do it yourself, and in a
professional way.
How long should my book be?

Nobody cares, as long as you are offering something special. A 40-page booklet in six by
nine is pretty solid these days. Many sell for 2.99 and do very well.

In fiction it is a whole different story, your novel can be anywhere from 100 pages (a
novella) to a masterpiece of 500 pages.

Worry more about offering a good product rather than the length, and you will see that
the length takes care of itself.

 I NTERVIEW WITH H UGH H OWE

James Altucher: This is James Altucher at the James Altucher Show and I have a very
special guest today, but first welcome to my cohost, Aaron Brabham. Aaron, hows it
going?

Aaron Brabham: Man, Im doing great James. Its another beautiful sunny day in
Orlando although its a bit chilly. Only high of 63 today.

James Altucher: Dont make me jealous. You know its negative three degrees here in
New York.

Aaron Brabham: Oh, is it? I didn't even know that James. I'm sorry.

James Altucher: Youre just rubbing it in. I know, I know.

Aaron Brabham: All right, so James look, you know for all of your guests I always
know the name in the very least, if not I'm very familiar with their work, but today I was
unfamiliar with your guest name, so I had to do a little research. I want you to tell your
listeners who the guest is and why you decided to have him on your show.

James Altucher: Sure. First off, his names Hugh Howey. Hes the best-selling author
of the Wool series. Its a science fiction series. Theres something very unique about this
series in that it was self-published. He had no publisher for it. He just basically uploaded
his files to Amazon, published the book.

As he explains in the interview, well youll see, it was his ninth book that he had self-
published and the book just took off and became this massive bestseller. Hes made, I
don't know, seven figures on these books. He wrote an entire series and then another
series after that. Ridley Scott bought the movie rights.

Two years ago or two and a half years ago, this guy was shelving books in a bookstore
making $10.00 an hour. And then choosing himself by; you know a lot of people want to
be writers, but they get rejected by the publishing industry and they give up. He chose
himself. He uploaded the files to Amazon.

He published himself and after the course of nine novels a book finally hit the bestseller
list and he quit his job. Hes made his own career and many people have done this. Hes
not the only one. We discuss this on the interview. Its really a fascinating way to choose
yourself and its a vehicle thats open to anyone.

I want to tell you one other thing. I just came back from Amazon where I was visiting
their self-publishing group, and those guys all they think about is how they can help
writers self-publish more books, make more money. Theyre very writer-oriented. Its just
an excellent vehicle for choosing yourself and Hugh Howey is a great example of it. Plus,
by the way, hes an excellent writer. I mean I highly recommend not only the Wool series,
but many of his books.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, thats outstanding. You know its good to see that Amazon is
still sticking to their roots, you know, because they originally started their company for
book publishing and of course its transformed with the Kindle and your Choose Yourself
book was huge and you self-published it through some of their software. It makes me
happy to hear that they still have their roots. Well, James lets not delay any further. Lets
jump right into the interview.

James Altucher: Great Aaron. Thanks. So, Hugh Howey, welcome to the show.

Hugh Howey: Thanks James. Thanks for having me on.

James Altucher: Hugh, many of the listeners might not know exactly who you are,
but Ill give a brief bio and then I have some questions about your bio which you can
elaborate on. Basically youre the bestselling author of Wool. Essentially youve written
about 24 novels that are on Amazon were bought by Ridley Scott, is that correct?

Hugh Howey: Yeah, the number of novels is probably inflated by the fact that
some were serialized, but yeah many 15 or so novels that

James Altucher: Okay, only 15 novels. Only 10 more than Thomas Pynchon has
written.
Hugh Howey: Well, I think Thomas would say that he aims for quality over
quantity, I don't know.

James Altucher: I don't know. Ive read a good chunk of your novels. If youve
written 15, Ive probably read at least 8 or 9 of them and I would say you have very high
quality, but whats really interesting in your story theres two things that are interesting
that I want to get to. One is how you got to be a bestselling novelist was a very unique
path that most people have not taken.

I think its a path that can be actually followed by many people who listen to this podcast
to some extent. Not maybe to the highest extent, but to some extent. I think also you
have a site authorearnings.com which discusses kind of the pros and cons of the particular
approach youve taken, so I want to get right into that, but I want to start off with a little
more background.

While you were writing or basically before you started selling big quantities of fiction,
what were you doing for a living?

Hugh Howey: I was paying my bills as a bookseller. When I wrote my first novel I
was out of work. I was trying to help launch a website doing book reviews and I was
covering the book industry from the inside doing interviews with authors, going to book
conferences, trying to review a book a day.

James Altucher: You were using the World Wide Web?

Hugh Howey: Yeah, I was using the World Wide Web. I was on the internet.

James Altucher: The internet, okay thats new technology. Howd that work out for
you?

Hugh Howey: Well, it worked out great because it invertebrated me to write my

own book. It didn't work out so well for the website cause I got lost writing my own
novels and I was doing 90 percent of the work on the website, so the website floundered
after that.

James Altucher: Did it motivate you because were you thinking to yourself Gosh
these guys suck so bad I can write a novel better than them?
Hugh Howey: No way. What happened I started one of these conferences and
meetings; well, I was doing interviews. I was doing at least one interview a week with
really topnotch writers and I was going to conferences and meeting them and what was
cool is learning how down to earth and normal these people were and the fact that they all
had day jobs.

The only thing different with them and myself was that they got up every morning and
spent a couple hours writing. I realized I was doing the same thing with

James Altucher: What time would they wake up?

Hugh Howey: Oh, it varies. But most of them had to write before they went to
work. A lot of them were university professors or they had jobs in journalism and so they
devoted a couple hours here and there. Some of them, you know, what I model myself on
were the writers who were getting up at 5:00 in the morning to write before they went in
to their day job.

James Altucher: So they werent making a living from their writing. It was just sort of
out of the pleasure of writing fiction and having it published and having a few readers that
drove them to this?

Hugh Howey: Yes, some of these were New York Times bestselling authors. I
assumed they were millionaires and that started dispelling to me the fantastical image I
had of what a writers life was like. That helped me. I think not putting authors on
pedestals has been crucial to me visualizing myself as not.

I don't have delusions of grandeur and I thought writers were some kind of special magical
beasts and it was really nice to get to know them and for them to offer encouragement. I
realized I was writing a couple hours every day for the website and for my blog, so why not
put that time into writing the fiction that Ive always dreamed of writing.

James Altucher: Did that disturb you a little bit though that they were New York
Times bestsellers and they werent making a living at it. They still had to teach or be a
journalist or whatever. Did that strike you that maybe the system was broken a little bit?
Cause a New York Times bestseller is going to sell like what, 30,000 to 50,000 books in a
couple weeks. That strikes me as a way to make a living.
Hugh Howey: Yeah, some of them, you know, you don't have to sell quite that
many to hit the list especially those who are non-fiction New York Times bestsellers. Its
pretty startling how you can creep onto the list with just a few thousand hardback sales in
the opening week by targeting certain bookstores that report their sales.

Being a New York Times bestselling author is something that follows you for life, so some
of the authors that I met in my bookstore were New York Times bestselling authors, but
they hadnt hit the list in several years. So, youre trying to live off of for some its maybe
$25,000.00 or $50,000.00 advance and after your agent and your taxes youre looking at
trying to live off of $25,000.00 or $30,000.00 even on the high end.

James Altucher: So, even a New York Times bestseller, theyre only gonna get a
$25,000.00 advance on their next book on average would you say?

Hugh Howey: I don't know what the average would be, but I mean I can only talk
about the anecdotal numbers that people would share with me. The six figure advance
kind of had its heyday for a while, but its very few authors who get that much money
upfront. For a debuting author the number that I see most often is around $5,000.00 as an
average.

Of course, the ones you hear about are the six and seven figure authors. I think its
dangerous to model our expectations around the outliers. I'm an outlier in the self-
publishing world and theyre outliers in the traditional publishing world, but most people
don't get deals like that.

James Altucher: Well, okay so you were doing this website and talking to lots of
authors and then you decided to devote your time more to your own fiction. This was like
inspirational to you talking to these authors. What happened next in terms of making a
living?

Hugh Howey: Well, not much. I wrote my first book and Id planned on giving it
away and gave it to friends and family and the feedback was that I should actually try to
get this published, that it was better than the last thing they had read from the bookstore.
Quite a few people told me that.
I started doing some research to find out what that was involved in getting a book
published and learned about the query letter which I found was more difficult to write
than the novel itself. That one page took almost as much time as writing the hundred
thousand word novel.

James Altucher: This is the letter that you would send to publishers describing your
book?

Hugh Howey: Yeah, right. This is you going from being a fiction writer to a
business pitch artist. I found it very difficult to write like a one-paragraph synopsis of
either who I am or what the book was or why this agent should care about it. I did that for
a few weeks. Sent it to agents and to small presses that took un-agented submissions and
I got two small presses interested.

One made an offer that I was happy with and I was shocked that someone was going to
pay me money for this manuscript. It was very little money, but it was I anticipated
having to spend money to self-publish it. To kind of cut to where I am now it went well,
but I saw that the tools they were using

James Altucher: I'm sorry Hugh. What was the title of that book?

Hugh Howey: Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue.

James Altucher: Okay great. Then you continued to write a series on that.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, when I published the second book I had an offer from the
publisher. They sent me a contract for the second book and I thought I think I can do
everything that theyre doing on my own and have more creative control and quicker time
to market and I would keep a larger share of the earnings. This time I wasnt thinking
about e-books at all. I was producing e-books, but they were an afterthought.

James Altucher: What wasnt the publisher doing that you thought you could do?

Hugh Howey: They were doing a good job. Its just I wanted to change small
things throughout the process and I felt like I was annoying them to have to email them
and say Could we tweak the back jacket this way? I wanted to fire up InDesign and
Photoshop and do some of the stuff myself and it seemed to be quicker that way.
I was also doing a lot of research on which print-on-demand company to use and how to
do the e-book, things that they werent doing yet, and what their publishing model. I saw
that maybe these were helpful avenues to explore. Then I was walking them through
using Lightning Source to try to get Baker & Taylor and Barnes &Noble distribution.

I started thinking. Man I'm doing a lot of the publishing work on my own. Why not just
take on a few extra things like the editing and hire that out and strike out on my own,
basically do what theyre doing.

James Altucher: Striking out on your own of course makes a big difference financially
because instead of getting, I don't know what your royalty was, but instead of getting lets
say a 15 percent royalty, you could get 80, 90 percent or does Amazon have 70 percent. I
don't know how that financially affected you given the advances you were getting from the
small publisher, but I can't imagine they were giving huge advances either.

Hugh Howey: No, they werent. It wasnt all financial, but it definitely paid
dividends. I started within a year of writing I was making at least $100.00 a month which
to me I lived on a very small budget and never dreamed that people were going to pay for
my writing. So, having my cable bill paid by my hobby every month was pretty startling. I
think that was only because I was in control of it all.

James Altucher: So Hugh, you wrote the first novel. You did it with a small press.
What got you from writing like one novel to having this huge amount of novels and then
making a living from it? Like what were you doing? What changed?

Hugh Howey: I think the biggest thing; I think this is the difference in the two
methods of publishing now. I have friends who have published through traditional
publishers who were given one or two books to hit it big and if they didn't have a
blockbuster there were enough other up-and-comers for publishers to choose from that
someone else was given a chance.

I was able to kind of ignore the challenge of continuously writing books and selling them
to publishers and just concentrate on the writing itself. I know that sounds
counterintuitive. You would think that a self-published author would spend more time
doing other things, but when I got busy was later in my career where I signed on with
publishers.

When I was working in a bookstore I spent my time writing the stories that I enjoyed and
getting them out there and then moving on to the next one. I didn't worry about how that
book was selling. I didn't spend a lot of time promoting it. I didn't care what the rankings
or sales were doing on that book. My idea was I love writing now.

Its been 10 years writing and later in life I might have 20 or 30 novels that I can tell people
that I wrote and to set up a booth in an arts and crafts show or go to book conferences and
set up a table, but you know I wasnt going to make it with one book. I was gonna have to
write all the stories that were in my head and get them all available and they werent
getting old.

It wasnt like they were dying on the vine. They were brand new to everyone who hadnt
discovered them yet.

James Altucher: You basically were working in a bookstore, but you felt your best
marketing for your books, in some sense, was writing a new book?

Hugh Howey: Absolutely. I think part of what motivated me was 20 years of

wanting to be a writer and not being able to finish a novel or putting it off and
procrastinating and feeling like this was something I would never get done. When I
finished that first novel, I realized that I could do it.

It was almost like summiting my first mountain and I got so addicted to the high of being
up there and feeling that sense of accomplishment that all I wanted to do was go climb
another peak. I didn't want to go around the country showing people slides of my not
nearing exploits and try to be someone who spoke about moutaining. I wanted to do it
again.

My passion was writing and I say this kind of with a lot of stark, but unfortunately I didn't
get 10 years of writing in before things took off. I was just putting books out there and I
think within 2 or 3 years I had about 5,000 books sold which is what Id planned to do in
my lifetime if I was lucky to sell that many books.
You see I had very low expectations this whole time. But then this one short story I threw
up there took off and kind of gave me an opportunity to focus my efforts on this series and
the sales got to the point that I could quit my day job and really focus everything on my
writing career.

James Altucher: This was Wool, right?

Hugh Howey: It started off as a short story.

James Altucher: Its interesting because you call it a short story, but it was about 70
pages ___ __.

Hugh Howey: I think its 12,000 words, so when its formatted by itself its about 40
pages long. I guess its considered a novelette would be its technical term.

James Altucher: And then so you wrote Wool, one through four, and then you did
the Wool Omnibus which is when I read it. By that point it had really taken off. I mean
your Wool, one through four, plus the Omnibus was like one through five on Amazon
science fiction list.

Hugh Howey: That was an unexpected benefit of having written it in parts, but the
exposure of the series was, you know, if you see one book in a bestseller list it looks like
every other title. It just blends in. But when all five of the parts of Wool were all
sprinkled throughout the list and all kind of climbed together I think they gave the series
a lot more visibility and they supported one another.

Yeah, at one point it was pretty obnoxious. You would get on Amazon and you would see
all five parts in the Top Ten. When I combine them into the Omnibus theres individual
parts kind of died down and the standalone novel is what went on to hit the New York
Times list and do really well by itself.

James Altucher: At this point were you still working in a bookstore?

Hugh Howey: Yes. Right up until, I think my last day was right around when the
Omnibus was released because even when I only had three or four parts out I was making
as much in a day as I made at a week at the bookstore. I was working a 30-hour job for
$10.00 an hour.
That job really allowed me a lot of time to write and what time I wasnt writing I was
spending around books. I was doing a lot of author events and dealing with reps from
publishing houses and it was very useful I think just to have those years spent in a
bookstore while I was writing. It taught me a lot about the industry.

James Altucher: Bookstore ___ ___ that they had like this writer there or did they all
have kind of a novel in a desk drawer that they wanted to put out?

Hugh Howey: No, my boss who sat right beside me. It was really just the two of us
ran the bookstore and we had some student employees who filled in every now and then,
but the two of us ran the bookstore. He didn't really think of me as a real writer cause I
was writing genre fiction. Hes still a really good friend of mine, but I think hes baffled by
it all because he really loves literary fiction and thats what he likes to write.

I like to read literary fiction as well, so we have a lot of the same taste. But he did not like
to shelve science fiction or young adult up on the front shelves and I was always fighting
to get those books better placement. Yeah, we had a fun relationship and I think when
the series started blowing up he was pretty baffled by it all.

James Altucher: The series started blowing up and you quit the job to do this full-
time. What did you do with this new time? Were you writing more or were you dealing
more with the publishing side of the business?

Hugh Howey: I would say I was writing about the same amount. My day job was
replaced with a day job spent answering emails and doing a lot of traveling, dealing with
demands from agents and publishers, and people who wanted me to come to conferences,
a lot of social media interaction.

My thrill with having a readership has been having something in common with all these
strangers online and my use of social media has basically been to make myself available to
existing readers. I don't really use social media to try to win over new readers. I just don't
think that works very well.

I became really swamped with emails and contacts on Facebook and through Twitter, and
I would spend a couple hours a day just handling those sorts of things.
James Altucher: Well, its really the opposite of a lot of marketing efforts of writers
where they do use those. You know a publisher will ask you Whats your social media
platform like because they expect you to, you know, the average writer to use that social
media platform to sell books. But you were using it more to build community among
existing readers and I think that worked very well for you.

Hugh Howey: I think it works better because its disingenuous I think for a writer
to tell strangers Youre going to love my book or My book is great. Or maybe that just
takes some kind of self-confidence that I don't have. I think its more effective to have a
great relationship with your existing readers and those are the people who are going
around telling other people You should check out this work.

I mean I don't read books that are recommended to me from publishers and authors,
people who have a financial stake in my decision because I don't know what their I guess
I know what their goal is. Their goal is to make money off me and I understand that
completely, but I would rather listen to my friends and family whose goal is to make me
happy with a good book and I think those are the people we listen to more.

We trust friends and family and word of mouth more than we trust either a paid critic or
the people who have a financial stake in that product.

James Altucher: Well, its interesting because after I became a fan of your books, I
also found books that you would either blurb or mention. For instance, I really like the
Marcus Sakey book Brilliance on your recommendation. I never would have known about
it, so thats really true.

I wanted to get into kind of the technical details at this point. So, essentially what was
your writing schedule like at this point and just technically how did you publish, like,
what platforms you used and so on? How did you get your books out there?

Hugh Howey: Well, I'm more creative in the morning. I do my best writing early
when my kind of my dream state I guess is still lingering. I find my vocabulary is a little
more its not that the correct word is always available; its just that I use more creative
word sentence structures early in the morning.
A lot of times I have to revise those scenes to make sense of it later in the process which I
do better in the afternoon. Everyone has to figure that out for themselves. Theres no
right answer for when to write. The right answer is to find time to write. The people who
are doing it wrong are the people who think they don't have time in the day to do it.

James Altucher: Why do you think they think that and then they watch four hours of
night of TV? What things did you have to eliminate in your schedule to find the time to
write? Because you already had a schedule, so you had to eliminate something in order to
write.

Hugh Howey: For me, I stopped playing video games and I stopped watching TV
and I was spending several hours a day during those two things. I'm still able to get as
much reading done as I was before and I just replaced some of my passive media
consumption with my active media production. I think we can all do that. Its just
difficult to do. Writing is a lot like dieting and exercise.

Its something that we all wish we could do more of and we have a hard time finding the
willpower to do any of it. Theres really no answer to it other than you have to just buck
up and stop thinking about it and dedicate yourself to it. And if you can't do that, you
know if you can't write every single day your chances of making it as a writer are really
difficult.

James Altucher: I think people don't realize the impact of, like lets say you just write
500 words a day. Well, by the end of a year thats 180,000 words.

Hugh Howey: Thats two novels.

James Altucher: Again many traditionally published authors write like three or four
great novels in their lives. If youre writing two novels a year or more its enormous.
People don't realize the impact of a little bit a day how quickly that adds up to something
significant.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, and if you do that for five years, you know your first two
novels might not be great and thats part of writing a lot of novels is you have to write a
couple just to learn what you just to get better. You do that for five years. Lets say that
gets you five novels that arent so good, but it gets you five novels that are great.
Thats enough to five years later to sit and try to market or at least if nothing else be proud
of. I think anybody who dedicates five years to writing every single day has a good chance
of making supplemental income off their work.

James Altucher: Well, how many books did you have out before you quit your job?

Hugh Howey: I believe Wool was my ninth title.

James Altucher: Your ninth title, so nine novels or novelettes or whatever you want
to call them, you had written and published before you quit your day job?

Hugh Howey: Correct, yeah. And I had planned on, you know this was two and a
half years in; I had planned on writing for ten years before I even worried about what I was
making off my writing.

James Altucher: So, in two and a half years you wrote nine novels?

Hugh Howey: Seven novels, a novelette and then Wool was my ninth which was a
novelette, and then I had some short stories that Id also put on my website for free.

James Altucher: Just as an aside I have to tell you The Plagiarist and The Hurricane, I
think thats the title, those were two of my favorites as well. I enjoyed Wool, but I really
liked some of your standalone science fiction and The Hurricane was more young adult,
but I really enjoyed those books as well.

Hugh Howey: I have a lot of people tell me that The Hurricane is my best work and
that, I believe, was my first or second NaNoWriMo book. National Novel Writing Month
is something I recommend to anyone who wants to make a living as a writer because it
teaches you the value of writing every day.

If you miss a single day, like, you use 500 words a day as your goal. If you miss a day you
have to write a 1,000 words the next day in order to maintain your pace. If you miss that
second day, now youre up to 1,500 words and so you can really the same is true of eating
right and exercising.
Taking one day off just snowballs into taking a week or a month off. You just can't do that
if this is your goal and what you want to do with your life. You have to be consistent and
NaNoWriMo teaches that better than any other program out there.

James Altucher: You know its not just the word count. I find for myself if I don't
write every day, then my writing is not as strong the next day. Like I have to kind of stay
this kind of consistent. I don't know. Its almost like a muscle that you have to keep in
shape or else you have to reduce how much you have to weightlift because you wont be as
strong any more.

Hugh Howey: Not only that, I think my best writing comes when I'm writing a lot.
The idea that it takes five years to write a novel, the disjointed mess that I would write if I
spent five years writing a novel it would be atrocious. I think when people say they spent
five years writing a novel it means they started it, then they procrastinated for five years
and then they finished it.

My best writing comes from when I'm writing 5,000 words in a day. Thats when I stay in
my book and in my characters mind and the words are flowing. I don't think people
should have a word count because the danger of that is that; lets say you aim for 500.
Usually 500 words just primes my pump and my next 2,000 words are great.

But if you set a hard goal for yourself, then when you hit that goal you give yourself an
excuse to say Okay, I'm done and walk away from it.

James Altucher: Right, thats a really good point.

Hugh Howey: I think you should write as much as you can in a day and set aside
the number of hours and don't give yourself a word count goal. Just say I'm gonna write
as much as I can for two hours and if thats one perfect sentence thats gonna resonate in
your readers minds for years, thats two hours well spent.

If its 10,000 words of action and adventure that people are gonna stay up till 3:00 in the
morning cause they can't put the book down, thats 2 hours well spent. Use every bit of
free time that you have to further our novel along and eventually youll complete it.

James Altucher: Do you heavily outline in advance or do you let it just flow?
Hugh Howey: I do a lot of brainstorming to know my story in advance. I make
notes, but I don't write a heavy outline. I think the best method for me to get writing
done is to daydream the next days, like Ill do my writing this morning which Ive already
completed and then Ill spend the rest of my day thinking about tomorrows writing.

The one scene that I need to write that day. It could be two characters meeting. It could
be them traveling a little bit or a bar scene or whatever it is. I daydream that scene all day
long. So, when I sit down to write tomorrow Ill know that scene. Ill know some of the
conversations they have.

Ill know what needs to happen during that entire scene. If I finish that scene in my head
Ill daydream a little farther along, but I always have to know where my story ends. You
Lost the TV show showed us what not to do when it comes to plotting. You have to know
what your story is about and what that final scene is gonna be like in order to have some
destination to move toward.

When I'm reading I can tell when the author did not know what was gonna happen next
and that those books never resonate as much with me.

James Altucher: Thats really interesting you bring up Lost because the story every
step of the way was so powerful and so intriguing and yet you could tell, particularly in the
last two or three episodes, you could tell the writers in the beginning really had no clue
how this was going to end.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, you can write some of your best stuff when youre writing by
the seat of your pants because youre just surprising yourself all the time and youre just
making stuff up and making sure something exciting is happening at every turn. But its
easy to do that and to write adventures for which there are no adequate solutions to and
then you get into ___ __ __ ___ and all these ways of, you know, its all a dream.

Just ways of tying things up that are less than satisfying. I would much rather have
foreshadowed events that if you read my novels a second time you can see these hints
dropped in very early that kind of tell you exactly what the story is gonna be about and
you just don't notice them the first time around.
James Altucher: Although so Wool eventually ended up being, you know Wool, Shift
and Dust like the whole kind of silo saga. When you were writing Wool did you know
how, you know, 12 novelettes later how it was going to wrap up like in terms of sequel and
prequels and all of that?

Hugh Howey: No, when I wrote Wool that was the entire story, so I didn't have
anything else that I wanted to write in that world. If youve read the novel you know that
after that first story theres really nothing left to write about this character, so you have to
start a new story in the same world about new characters, and thats what I did. I didn't
really try to pick up with existing characters. I used the second book to transition to a
new character who took over for the rest of the story.

James Altucher: In general its like you built a world, populated it with characters and
every character really could have a story. Like you were shifting character stories quite a
bit throughout the whole series and that allows even the fan fiction to be popular. So you
have a lot of fans who have now written books within your world and focusing on their
own characters.

Hugh Howey: If were able to invent one character then we should have the
freedom to move to other characters or to kill off characters and introduce other people in
other parts of the world. Its just I think we get so attached to our characters and were so
mystified by our ability to create them even as writers who know we can do this.

It still seems magical when you do it that I think we get a little too attached to our
characters. I think for world building its helpful to be able to take that ability to invent
people and invent crowds of them and jump around and flesh out the world a little bit
more. That also gives you the freedom to kill off main characters which heightens the
tension.

I think were getting spoiled in books and movies and TV shows where we know yeah, a
lot of dangerous stuff will happen, but nothing bad will happen to my main character. But
once a show or a book shows that theyre willing to do that to kill the protagonist that
creates a lot of tension for the rest of the series.
James Altucher: Let me ask you this. Lets say a listener has a book theyve written.
It doesnt matter how many pages. 30 pages or 500 pages. Now they want to publish, but
they don't want to go through the whole publishing route and they want to move to self-
publishing just like you did. Technically, what should they do? Like whats kind of an
outline of steps to get your book up and out there like in the next week or two?

Hugh Howey: Ill tell you what I would recommend and you should get a lot of
other opinions because everyone has, you know, I have my own experiences, but other
people would have their anecdotal evidence and their own biases.

I think there are three formats to concentrate on and I prefer using Amazon services for
all three because theyre tightly integrated and I see Amazon as being the best and
number one bookseller in the world, so its where I want to focus all my efforts. For the e-
book, I focused on KDP which is the Kindle Direct Publishing.

All three of these services by the way are completely free. Everyone who has an Amazon
account already has a KDP account. You can use your same login or password for buying
stuff on Amazon to log in to KDP and upload your first book. For print books, I use
Create Space.

There are other print-on -demand books that have better distribution into bookstores like
Lightning Source, but Create Space is tightly integrated into Amazon. It shows up
quicker. There are no fees for setting your book up. The copies you order for yourself are
very inexpensive. Your proof copies are very inexpensive.

You can even do a digital proof online and not pay a penny to produce your print book.
And then ACX which is the audible format is also a company owned by Amazon, and then
what that does is populate your Amazon product page with three different formats.

It makes it look a little more professional and gives the reader options and also shows the
e-book as being a discounted price from the print book which is very helpful. Having
print books is crucial. You can take them to events and do signed copies and stuff like
that.

James Altucher: Ill just add so Ive self-published Ive traditionally published five
books and Ive self-published about five books and I use the exact same three parts of
Amazon. So, Create Space, Kindle Direct, Audible. I didn't always do audio, but I found
again populating that page makes the book look more professional. Actually I found like I
kind of wrote more self-help or personal improvement. I found that I was getting a lot of
sales through my audible book that I did not expect; I was surprised.

Hugh Howey: Are you doing your own readings?

James Altucher: Yes, I'm doing my own readings and I do them completely
unabridged. I can't really read off of a page. I get a little bored. So, I just kind of riff while
I'm reading my book.

Hugh Howey: Oh, thats cool. I love your Facebook posts, your blog posts. I think
theyre really useful. So, knowing that youre creating that sort of content for the audio
format will probably be the first thing I look up after we get off the air here.

James Altucher: Did you do your own readings for audible?

Hugh Howey: Ive done one only because they asked. It was an autobiographical
piece that I did for the Kindle Worlds program and Kurt Vonneguts World. My wife and
I went up to New York and they put us in a booth and we did the audio for that. She did
Montana Wallpacks parts and I did my autobiographical parts.

James Altucher: Thats great. Just out of curiosity did you use John Marshall Videos?

Hugh Howey: I may have. It was Brilliance Audio set it up, but I think it may have
been John Marshalls. New York Times Square; just a little north and west of Times
Square.

James Altucher: Yeah, thats who I use as well. Thats who I think Harry Potter used
their facility as well and Bill Clinton used their facility.

Hugh Howey: I remember seeing his work on the wall there when you walk in.

James Altucher: Okay, so nine books in. You use Amazon for everything. From
beginning to end, you have a book done, from beginning to end how long before it
appears on Amazon using all their tools?
Hugh Howey: Well, once you have the final manuscript if you hit publish on the e-
book and its usually up within 12 hours, sometimes less than that. With Create Space
book, once you finalize the proof and hit okay, its usually up within a day. Audio takes
longer. They do a quality assurance so shell want us to listen to the whole thing I believe
before they make that live. It usually takes a couple of weeks once you submit the final
files.

James Altucher: Right. I want to stress how different this is from traditional
publishing. When you finish a book with a traditional publisher, it can sometimes take up
to a year before its published.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, and what youre paid on your advance is sometimes tied to the
publication date and it might be tied to different formats. So, lets say a third of it on
signing. A third is on hardback publication and then a third of that might be on the
paperback publication. So, it could be two years before you get the last third of your
advance depending on how it was structured.

James Altucher: And like you said then the agent takes a cut, then the government
takes a cut and meanwhile Amazon theyre about T plus 60, right. So, if you sell
something in June, then by August you get the check for it.

Hugh Howey: Correct. And if its at the end of June, its just a little over a month
before, you know, everything in June gets paid six days later, so yeah its pretty I think
publishers are having to respond to that. Ive already seen publishers doing sales portals
where you can see monthly sales data by format.

Random House has added a new sales portal and I think publishers are going to have to
get on to monthly royalty reports and direct deposits to compete, so were going to see
some excellent benefits trickle down to the rest of the publishing world because of what
these digital retailers are doing.

I will say, you know, I publish on KDP, but and I like using KDP Select which is a 90-day
exclusivity period, but once thats over I also publish to Kobo and DiBookstore and Nook
because its free to do it. You might as well get as many formats out there as you can.
James Altucher: Although let me just say with KDP Select you don't get to use I-
books or Kobol or Barnes and Noble, but people can lend your books out and Amazon has
a weird way of paying. They have like a pool and you get your prorate portion of the pool
based on how many books youve lent out.

That can actually be significant money if people are lending your book to their friends and
stuff, so it can actually work out to be better results than I mean I'm not trying to sell
anything, but it could be better results than iBooks or Kobo or whatever.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, I can say that I lost money by going out of Select and offering
my book in other outlets when I was doing really well two years ago because there werent
enough sales in the other outlets and I was losing the lending bonuses and the extra
product placement from Kindle Select.

But I had so many I was making enough to make a comfortable living and at that point I
was getting emails from people who had other devices, who didn't know that their device
also read Kindle books or they didn't know how to do that and so I kind of succumbed to
the reader pressure to have as many formats out there as possible, but youre right you can
lose money by offering your book in more places paradoxically.

James Altucher: Yeah, and its interesting that people who, like for instance have an
iPad arent always aware that theres a Kindle app for theres a Kindle app for every
device essentially. But I think that over time people will realize that Kindle dominates the
universe, so theyll just switch to that from their Nook or Kobo or whatever.

Hugh Howey: Well, for me its like iTunes with my music. I don't want to have my
library spread out everywhere. Even on my PC I havent purchasing my works through
iTunes which I find to be the best website for discovery of new songs and to sample and
listen to songs. But because thats where I started buying my music years ago, it just
makes sense to have it all in one place.

I can log into any device and access my entire iTunes library. The same is true for Amazon
and their e-books. Once you start buying books through Amazon it doesnt make sense to
have them everywhere else. You know you have all your so you really get locked in to
one device and one marketplace.
And for me its kind of a no-brainer which one to use. I mean the Nook is theres a lot of
talk about being spun off from the physical store. I like what Kobo does and I like their
devices, but I don't know that its as stable as what Amazon has.

James Altucher: Well, I'm curious now. Your coworker from the bookstore, he kind
of had this you sort of alluded to he was looking down on genre fiction. And I find a lot
of people look down on just self-publishing in general and not as much now as lets say
five years ago, and not as much then as ten years earlier.

Theres always been a slight stigma or it used to be bigger, but theres a stigma against
self-publishing. How have you encountered that? Now lets start moving into you also
have this site authorearnings.com where you really dive down on the numbers of how
much self-published authors make versus traditionally published authors.

Also theres kind of the quality issue, like, does traditional publishing really produce
higher quality in general on average? Whats some of your discoveries on that? Like can
self-publishers make a living and do self-publishers write better or worse books according
to the readers?

Hugh Howey: Well, that is a lot of topics to cover all at once.

James Altucher: Answer them all in five minutes.

Hugh Howey: I think self-published authors are generating the same quality of
content that people going the traditional route are producing. I know thats probably
controversial to say, but the difference is we see all self-published books. People that
choose to go the traditional route; we don't see all those books.

We only see the ones that publishers produce. Thats with their curation and their
gatekeeping powers. We only see the top 1 percent of books that go the traditional route.
With self-publishing I think we should really only look at the top 1 percent of self-
published books. That ignores the what people would consider the slush file.

There are some books that I have written that are part of the slush file that are not my best
works and that I wouldnt want to include in the top 1 percent of books. So, I include
myself in that category. There are a lot of traditionally published authors who not all of
their books, you know, they all have a couple of books in their drawer that no one will
ever see.

When you compare the two top 1 percent against each other and and anyone out there
who takes writing seriously and devotes time and energy into it and takes the craft
seriously they can get themselves into the top 1 percent. You have a lot of people who
arent trying very hard that youre not really competing against.

When we compare those two tips of the icebergs together which is what we do when we
look at the top 50,000 rated books on Amazon for instance, what we see is that readers
review the self-published works higher. There are a lot of reasons why that might be. One
is possibly that were producing more of the kinds of works that readers want.

Theres a bias in the publishing industry to publish more literary works and the kinds of
things that the people who work in publishing enjoy, but that would be like promoting
opera rather than promoting cinema. Just because you have high tastes that does not
influence what the market wants. The market wants cinema not opera.

Even though I try to write as lyrically as possible and as high quality prose as possible, I'm
writing the types of stories that I want to read where lots of exciting things happen and
that tends to be what self-publishing provides to readers, more genre fiction, more
romance, and action and adventure, and science fiction, and what used to be considered
pulp

We can denigrate that if we want, but I mean traditional publishing has made its living
publishing biographies of people like Snooki and whatever they think will sell. For some
reason the non-fiction categories with self-help and religious text and other things, they
are willing to cater to reader demand, but in the genre works it just does not seem like
they are willing to output as many works a year as readers will consume.

James Altucher: In terms of money now, what would you say is the kind of
comparison between the top 1 percent of traditional versus self-publishing? As you
mentioned youre an outlier, but can one make a living from self-publishing in your
opinion?
Hugh Howey: Yes, you can. There are several reasons why you can. One, you have
much higher royalty rates with self-publishing. Youre talking 70 percent for digital versus
12 and a half percent off the list price. So, if youre self-published you make 70 percent of
what the book sells for.

If youre traditionally published youre gonna make around 12 and a half percent of the list
price. People will say that 70 percent of the market is still print which I think is not
accurate, but even if that is true that 70 percent is not what the author is making. The
author might make 12 percent of the list price. The retailer and the publisher make more
on the sale of the book than the author does.

So, youre not giving up much when you self-publish on the print side, but youre gaining
a lot on the digital side. What we saw when we compared the top 50,000 books on
Amazon were the self-published books were earning more in that daily snapshot for self-
published authors than traditionally published authors were making.

James Altucher: Is that per author or all across the whole group?

Hugh Howey: Well, thats an average earnings per author. And then we also broke
it down to how much authors were making in each bracket and from the outliers which
were dead even the people making seven figures all the way to the people making a few
thousand dollars a year where the self-published authors vastly outnumbered the
traditionally published authors.

In every one of these categories self-published authors were doing better. It also turns out
that Amazon appears to be making more money from self-published authors than from
traditionally published books. The results were pretty startling.

James Altucher: That must be why Amazon has so little friction between, you know,
as you mentioned all of their services are free to the writer. Like its a very writer-friendly
environment.

Hugh Howey: Its massive because when we think that 70 percent royalty is
outrageous, but its really a fair rate when you think about what its not really a royalty,
its a distribution agreement. Were providing them a finished product that they only have
to list and put on sale and handle the transaction side. Theyre not doing editorial.
Theyre not handling cover art.

Theyre not doing print distribution and all that stuff. Thats what publishers do and so
they pay the author royalty. What Amazon is paying you is similar to what a bookstore
pays a publisher to carry a book. At my bookstore we typically got a 40 to 45 percent
discount off of a books retail price which means we paid 55 to 60 percent to the publisher
and we had to warehouse and staff and sell the physical book.

So, what Amazons doing is theyre taking a finished product and charging 30 percent
where we used to charge 40 percent for a digital book versus a print book, so its a very fair
transaction. Very sustainable. Its a higher rate than theyre paying their traditionally
published books where they might only make 10 to 20 percent per sale of the book and I
think it might be a lot less than that.

James Altucher: Now are you ever disturbed by the fact that self-published authors
don't make it into the bookstores because, for instance, at least for most self-published
authors Amazon doesnt offer the return policy that traditional publishers do.

Hugh Howey: You can make it into bookstores if your book does well enough. For
the outliers bookstores will carry your print-on-demand books. Ive seen this personally
and I know other authors who arent near, you know, my level of sales that are seeing their
books show up in bookstores and theyve had success getting their books into Barnes and
Noble.

I have a friend whos done several signings in this area in his area at Barnes and Noble and
have been very well supported by them. I think this will change. I mean were very early
in this process, but I would not be surprised to see Create Space do some sort of pooled
marketing where they would have sales reps and view their Create Space books as their
own in-house books.

And they would go to bookstores with a catalog and say Hey, these are our top sellers.
This is the book were most excited about that just came out. These are the books we
think you should carry. And basically do what publishers are already doing and offer
books returnable and just eat the cost.
I don't think theyll actually return the books. To writers I don't think theyll ding their
accounts. I'm not sure how theyll work that, but my guess is they can be profitable and
eat the returns the way publishers do.

James Altucher: Well, again I find Amazon to be incredibly writer friendly, so when
they have to make a decision thats either for the writer or against the writer, they usually
make that decision for the writer even if it hurts their immediate bottom line cause
theyre looking at this long term. Theyre creating a long term eco system for all writers,
so I think that helps the writer.

Hugh Howey: Ive seen this over and over again with Amazon where and we read
their clauses and we read what their lawyers wrote and everyone freaks out, but when you
deal with the people at Amazon they make commonsense decisions and they ignore their
contracts and theyll say Look this is what makes sense.

Every time theyve had to make a decision like that theyve made it against their own best
interest and for the writer and I'm baffled by that because Ive also worked with traditional
publishers and it doesnt work that way. Its also the only company thats ever called me
to say and this is before Ive had this level of success that Ive had, but called and said
Like hey what can we do better?

You know just as a random survey sort of thing. I know a lot of authors that theyve called
like that and they bring in to look at new products and systems and say What can we do
to improve this?

James Altucher: I just want to mention, so just two days ago I was at Amazon and I
met every single division of Kindle and Create Space and so on and I was astonished how
humble they were and every group asking What can we do better to help you? And it
was really great to see that in action.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, whats amazing is self-published authors know a lot about
marketing and a lot about their readership and I think this is something about the New
York publishers should really tap into. They should really contact their writes and say
Hey, what are you noticing? What can we do better?
They should really pool those resources. Its an unbelievable tool at their disposal and
Amazons taking advantage of that and other publishers should as well. Theyre already
doing that in the marketing side. When you sign a contract with a publisher theres this
assumption that if youre with a big publisher theyre gonna handle everything for you.

But the first thing theyll ask as you mentioned earlier is How big is your social media
platform? How many Twitter followers do you have? How are you gonna sell your book?
And I think thatll surprise a lot of aspiring writers when they get that first contract that
their publisher is asking them what theyre gonna do to sell the book. But thats the
reality.

They have to leverage the muscle of all of those authors in their stable and they can do
that as well for market research as well as they do on the actual sales and marketing side.

James Altucher: Why did you decide to do this authorearnings.com? What was your
goal with that? Cause it was a lot of work. I see youve put a lot of work into analyzing
the data.

Hugh Howey: Yes, its been a lot of work and a lot of money hosting the site and
getting things put up and formatted. My motivation has been the same for the last several
years. Ive been trying to do what I can with my agent with our negotiations with
publishers to make changes in the way publishers deal with manuscripts and with the
authors. I think we should have limited terms of license.

I think royalty rates should be better for digital works. Theres no reason publishers
should make a higher profit margin off an e-book that they make off a hard back. Weve
seen changes in every other entertainment and media format in Hollywood when digital
streaming became a revenue stream the writers had to strike basically to get what was a
fair payment for their work.

I don't think thatll happen in the publishing world without pressure from self-published
authors because right now publishers just don't compete with one another. They compete
on the size of advance which the differences there are small. Theyll go to auction and
theyll have competition there, but their contracts are boilerplate and they resemble each
other too much.
The reason for that website, you know an author contacted me with the first bit of data
from Amazon that anyone had ever really seen in a very clever way of coming up with that
data. And I saw this as being really hard proof of what Id already seen anecdotally for
years. If youre in the trenches this matches everything that youre seeing from authors on
both sides of this equation.

Dissatisfaction from traditionally published authors and complete befuddlement from

self-published authors who can't believe how much money theyre making whether its
several hundred dollars a month or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

There are people that youve never heard of that are making six and seven figures a year
and their stories are popping up everywhere and its hard to rationalize until you see this
data and you realize Oh my God, self-published authors are out earning traditionally
published authors on Amazon.

James Altucher: Well, I think whats particularly important is what you mentioned
earlier. Its not just that theyre making it on one book. A lot of times, I mean I know
some authors who have written over 100 books and all it takes is like a $100.00 per month
per book, and if youve written 100 books, youre making like a good living in the United
States.

Hugh Howey: Yes, incredible. Well, you know, thats one of the things that we
were concerned about when we saw these earnings. We have the author names, so were
able to see how many books they were earning across and what their total earnings were.
So, one of the things that we looked for was well is the difference in earnings only because
theyre publishing more books.

Well, that was only true of the authors earning seven figures. In every other bracket self-
published authors were earning more money on fewer titles than traditionally published
authors.

James Altucher: You know whats interesting also and your numbers probably don't
cover this is many of these self-published authors are in charge of how their books get
distributed as opposed to letting the publisher be in charge of how your books get
distributed.
So, for instance for me I often will bulk buy a print order and then sell through an email
list, so that doesnt get reflected at all in terms of how much I'm making cause I can put
together bundles of my books. I think there are a lot of creative ways that self-published
authors can market and sell and distribute their books which is also interesting.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, and you can give books away if you want. Through Create
Space I can get copies of my books for like $3.00 or $4.00 each which is cheaper than some
other marketing materials that you might, you know, if you wanted to give away thumb
drives or other doodads at a conference.

Giving away the book itself is cheaper than a lot of those things. I know people who they
get really fancy business cards that are about a dollar each. Well, I can print a novelette
for a dollar and hand that out. So, and its hard to do that through a publisher.

James Altucher: You know what I did with my last book; I had all 67,000 words
printed onto a t-shirt so you could actually read on the t-shirt every single word. Its
readable. I sometimes give that away.

Hugh Howey: Was that through Lithograph?

James Altucher: Yeah, exactly.

Hugh Howey: Yeah, they approached me at AWP and wanted to do that with one
of my works. I thought that was brilliant. I couldn't believe you can print that much onto
a t-shirt, but they showed me one. I was dumbfounded.

James Altucher: One of the things I wanted to do when I was up at Amazon just
again two days ago was allow them to let me put a t-shirt slot on the title page instead of
along with the audible paperback art cover, also a t-shirt cause the whole books there.

Hugh Howey: Thats brilliant.

James Altucher: I want to ask you also switching topics, like Ridley Scott calls you
and wants to buy the movie rights for Wool. What happened? How excited were you?
Whens the movie coming out?
Hugh Howey: Well, first thing I did was change my pants and told everybody I
knew. My expectation with everything to do with my writing has been so low that when
the movie talks started I just assumed no movie would ever come out because a lot of stuff
gets optioned, very few things get made.

But everything thats happened since then I just feel like theyre trying to get my hopes up
before they dash them on a rock somewhere. Theyve written a screenplay and weve had
all these pre-production meetings and everyone seems to be really excited about it. The
screenplay is brilliant. I still tell myself itll never happen, but.

James Altucher: Did you help write the screenplay?

Hugh Howey: No, I met with the screenwriter. Hes from London and they flew
me and him to LA and we spent a week together brainstorming and going over his notes,
but Ive agreed with his vision from the beginning. He knows what the heart of the story
is about and hes captured that in the screenplay.

James Altucher: Have you met with Ridley Scott or is he kind of hands off until
production?

Hugh Howey: Yeah, I think he would just show up to, you know, if the movie won
awards thats when he would show up to collect all those and put them in his trophy case.
Hes a busy guy and to be honest the movies that I know that hes working on theyre a lot
more that Id rather him see as a fan make before Wool, so thats one of the reasons Ill be
surprised if this gets made.

James Altucher: Well, are any actors interested yet? How far along are you in the
process?

Hugh Howey: We havent done the casting yet, but I know actress who have read
the book who have contacted me privately or in person and said that they are especially
female actresses who are dying to play Juliette. I was at a conference in Australia and
some of the media stars there started passing the book around and there was a lot of in
fighting about who was gonna get to be Juliette, so that was pretty cool. But if we do
casting that will probably be the next step and it will be sometime this year.
James Altucher: I know you keep your expectations low, but lets say we have high
expectations, when do you say a movie could come out?

Hugh Howey: My guess would be next summer if they not this upcoming
summer, but summer of 2015. If they cast it this year they will probably be filming in the
fall and wrapping up and doing post-production in the spring and releasing in the summer
of 2015. But thats like absolute best case scenario. Again thats not my expectation at all.

James Altucher: Hugh, two, three years ago you were like a clerk in a bookstore
shelving books. Now were talking movie next year. Youve got, I don't know, 15, 20 books
out. You are continuing to write obviously. This like just blows the mind. Like how has
your life changed? Did you buy a new house? Did you have a big party? Whats going
on?

Hugh Howey: I havent had a big party. I don't have that big of a social network.
My partying has been online with Facebook, but my wife and I will have celebratory
glasses of wine every now and then. We had to buy a new house when we moved from
North Carolina to Florida. My wife took a new job and we upgraded. We were living in a
750 square foot house in North Carolina and we upgraded to a 900 square foot house here
in Florida.

James Altucher: Wow, a 20 percent improvement.

Hugh Howey: So, instead of bedrooms that are like 10 feet by 10 feet, theyre now
like 12 feet by 12 feet and were really confused what to do with all the extra space. Its
been pretty amazing. Financially its a weird situation where I don't have to work for the
rest of my life, you know, I can write.

I can write duds and flops for the rest of my life, but I don't think about it that way. I'm
living the same lifestyle and still eat the same cereal every morning and wear the same t-
shirt and shorts and just concentrate on the writing and enjoying life which was my
philosophy beforehand.

James Altucher: Well, its really interesting because a lot of people always ask the
wrong question which is how can I make a lot of money, but what they don't realize is that
money is a side effect. Like if youre doing something really well, then a) youll tend to
love what youre doing as opposed to the other way around.

People always say find what you love and then do that, but I find if you do something
really well like writing say, youll love it automatically and then moneys just a side effect
of that. And you don't really have to change your lifestyle cause you love what youre
doing all of a sudden and you love whats happening during the day. You don't write on a
private jet or anything, you write in your home.

Hugh Howey: I think if people go into writing and we see this with the people who
claim that self-publishing is a gold rush. Well, there are a lot of elements of traditional
publishing that have the same mentality. Theres a big catastrophe or some big news
event and everyone jumps on writing and pitching that book immediately.

I think any comparison you can make or anything you can say about one of these routes of
publishing, you can say about the other. What I will say if you go into this to make
money, I just don't know how you would ever be happy because your chances of making a
lot of money are very slim.

Yes, theyre better as a self-published author, but thats not saying a whole lot because the
people who choose to traditionally publish which means they choose to submit to agents,
that doesnt mean they get their book on an end cap in a bookstore. They might not even
get a publishing deal. You don't get to choose that.

You just get to choose which route youre gonna go and that might mean rejection letters
from agents for the rest of your life. That could be the route that you chose. So, yes you
have a better chance of making money self-published, but thats only because your
chances of making money traditionally published are so woefully slim.

Why let money be your guide if your chances either route are that bad? This is where self-
publishing really wins, not on the monetary side, but the satisfaction of writing a story
that you believe in and making it available to the public and getting just one reader to pick
that book up and enjoy it, thats almost a guaranteed outcome if you dedicate yourself to
self-publishing.
By the time you write five or six completed works, you will have found one reader and
made them happy. If you stick to that as your goal theres no way you can lose. Its such a
liberating feeling to know that your success and all of your efforts and the ownership of
your art is all in your hands.

James Altucher: We both know writers who, like, take Theresa Ragan as an example.
She had been trying to traditionally publish for a decade or more until finally she went the
self-publishing route and now just through self-publishing shes a massive bestseller in
both the romance and thriller categories.

Hugh Howey: Shes made a lot of money doing something that she loved that she
could easily have given up on the other way. Thats another huge advantage is self-
publishing inspires people to continue writing. Ive got really good friends who have been
published with big five publishers who have given up on writing because of how their
careers have been handled.

They had something that they loved doing and the business side of it took all the passion
out of it for them. With self-publishing, again its a paradox because you think youll be
busier, but if it takes me two months to write a novel, it takes me two days to publish it.

So, when you think of all the stuff you have to learn and all the headaches of self-
publishing you can do it in a weekend. You can get your e-book, your print book, and
your audible book set up and formatted and ready to go in a weekend. Thats not a lot of
investment and time.

James Altucher: Its been really amazing for me as well. I have to say its changed my
life and this is after having traditionally published. You know I published with Harper
Collins, with Penguin, with Wiley five different books and self-publishing has been
amazing for me. What are you working on now? Do you work on like a bunch of books at
the same time or do you focus on one at a time? Whats your next bunch of projects?

Hugh Howey: I try to focus on one at a time. Right now I'm moving several
projects forward to see which one is gonna grab my attention. I just published really three
works this year already. That short story and the Kurt Vonnegut World for the Kindle
Worlds program a novel called Sand which has been a bestseller, and then an anthology
with John Joseph Adams called The End is Nigh where I edited 22 short stories and
contributed one of those and helped produce self-publish the book.

We just got that out a couple weeks ago. The last couple of weeks Ive spent in the fifth
Molly book playing around and also starting a couple of new novels and just see which one
captures my attention. Probably in the next week or two Ill pick one and run forward
with that for a couple of months until that ones finished.

James Altucher: Thats great. Hugh, thank you so much for coming on this show. I
really think youre living the dream and congratulations for all your success. Also, I think
youre really helping move forward getting rid of the traditional stigma thats been
associated with self-publishing and showing people that this is a viable route to either
express yourself creatively or to even make a living and youve been doing that really well.
Thanks again for spending the time and coming on this show.

Hugh Howey: Thanks James. Its an honor and Ill do it anytime man.

James Altucher: Excellent. Thanks Hugh.

Aaron Brabham: Well James, that was an excellent interview. Whats the one big
takeaway that you had?

James Altucher: Its really interesting to me that heres a guy who followed his
dreams. He kept his expectations low and then he blew away those expectations. Now
not everyone is gonna write a bestselling novel and note it took him nine novels to write a
bestselling novel. But I guarantee you for just about everyone there is something you can
do where if youre persistent and you keep, you know, your positive expectations high, you
keep your optimism high, youre going to find success.

Youre going to be able to choose yourself and find freedom. Everyone wants freedom of
choice in their lives. Hugh found it through writing. Other people find it through
building apps. Other people find it through owning a franchise or investing or whatever,
but theres always a way. If you do what you do well, youll end up doing what you love
and money is the side effect of that and freedom is the side effect of that. So, I encourage
everybody to choose this route really.
Aaron Brabham: Thats great James. Its a theme that you have over and over and its
what a lot of your guests have pretty much done with their lives. Theyve all kind of
bottomed out at some point, chose themselves and it pays off, but it is scary. One of my
favorite sayings I ever heard was when one door closes, another one opens, but sometimes
its hell in the hallway and its good to go to the new door.

James Altucher: Thats a good analogy and its one to think of even when youre being
persistent in the same area. Just because some agent rejected your book, you know, I tried
to write fiction 20 years ago and I wrote 4 or 5 novels. I got rejected everywhere. Then I
started publishing non-fiction. In my most recent book Choose Yourself I totally self-
published.

I used the exact same techniques and the exact same companies that Hugh talks about in
the interview and my book the day it was published hit number one for all non-fiction on
Amazon over every other book in the world. So, its possible and it is the dream.
Everybodys got a dream and I encourage everybody to pursue it.

Aaron Brabham: Thats awesome. One more note for the listeners out there. You
know we talked about doing the Ask Altucher segment where its a daily podcast about
ten minutes long. Weve recorded a series of those. Were just doing the technological
ends of it right now, but we should have those up in the next couple of days or so.

Its a chance for all the listeners out there to ask you a question or go to your Twitter
which you do a Q&A every Thursday. What is it, between 3:30 and 4:30? I forget the exact
time.

James Altucher: Yes.

Aaron Brabham: 3:30 and 4:30 and your Twitter handle is @JamesAltucher is that
right?

James Altucher: Yeah, and people ask me anything. You could ask me about
relationships, divorce, hate, anger, anxiety, fear, startups. People ask me anything. I
answer on the spot. But now Aaron, now that were doing this Ask Altucher well be able
to also take kind of the best and most interesting questions and expand on them further.
Aaron Brabham: Thats outstanding. Also you can also email James; you go to the
email address james@standsberryradio.com. Thats james@standsberryradio.com. I hand
select these. Ill ask you one a day. We started it. Well get em up and running real soon.
So, please we encourage everybody to do that.

James, another phenomenal podcast. I know your guest lineup that you have coming up.
Its spectacular. I'm really looking forward to these and I hope everybody else just hangs
in there and keeps listening.

James Altucher: Honestly, I can't believe some of these people said yes to coming on
the podcasts, some of the guest that we have coming up, but I'm excited. I'm excited to
talk to some of them since some of the interviews havent happened yet.

Aaron Brabham: Yeah, absolutely. All right James, well another spectacular show and
well talk to the listeners soon.

James Altucher: Thanks Aaron.

 I NTERVIEW WITH S TEVE S COTT

James Altucher: This is James Altucher with the James Altucher Show. Im very
excited to have Steve Scott on the show. Many people might not know who Steve is, but
youre gonna find out quickly because Im gonna ask him a bunch of questions that will
show you what an incredible job this guy has done to make a career for himself out of
nothing. So, Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Scott: Well, thanks for having me on, James. A big fan.

James Altucher: Thank you, Steve. And, Steve, Im gonna just ask you straight out.
How many books have you published on Amazon?

Steve Scott: Forty-one.

James Altucher: Forty-one books. How much money did you make last quarter?

Steve Scott: The last quarter Ive made, like I would say probably $45,000, but
this month Im on track to make about $40,000 just from this month.

James Altucher: Just from this month.

Steve Scott: Yes.

James Altucher: So has it been kind of like an upslope ever since youve started the
strategy that were going to totally get into, but I just wanna know if its been a general
upslope.

Steve Scott: I would say upslope, but its ___ some dips. I would say as good as
this month was, I would say the last month of April, that was definitely a downslope. So
its if you look at a chart, it kind of goes up and down, up and down, up and down, but
every time it goes up, it goes up just a little bit more.

James Altucher: Thats great. So when you say 41 books, its not under only under
Steve Scott. Its under S.J. Scott as well.
Steve Scott: Yeah, and I have another whole line thats about, like, childrens
animal books, but those kinda tanked, but I kinda took the lessons from those and applied
them kinda what Im doing now with the habit books.

James Altucher: Now, so Im just gonna read some of the titles of some of your books
because it seems to me like you took one huge book and divided it up into, like, 40 smaller
books, but its an ingenious strategy. So, for instance, one title is Make Money Online: 55
Ways to Make Extra Money Fast Using Your Computer. Another is Internet Lifestyle
Productivity: Master Time, Increase Profits, Enjoy Life. Your recent ones, which actually
have been selling better than mine, let me find them. I think these are under S.J. Scott.
Youve been crushing me.

Steve Scott: I think just with the one book, though

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah. Its that last one about yeah, Habit Stacking: 97 Small
Life Changes that Take Five Minutes or Less, which Ive read, by the way. I couldnt
remember the title of it just now, but I have read the book. So that ones been doing
better than mine this month. Also youve been doing very well with Twenty-Three Anti-
Procrastination Habits: How to Stop Being Lazy and Get Results in Your Life. So I love all
of these like, heres another one, Seventy Healthy Habits: How to Eat Better, Feel Great,
Get More Energy and Live a Healthy Lifestyle. Whos not gonna read that book?

Steve Scott: I hope as many people as possible. Yeah, you touched on the first
one, the Fifty-Five Ways to Make Money Online. I cringed a little bit when you read that
one off. That was my first attempt of Kindle publishing, and that was kinda if you look
at, like, someones first blog post, thats almost how it kinda related to the first feeble
attempt of someone who didnt really know what they were doing.

James Altucher: But you blow away a lot of conventions about what a book is. Like,
you know, some of your books are 40 to 50 pages, but youll you know, you price all over
the place. Like, youve really played with the concept of what is a book, and youve used
Amazon as almost a place to distribute these, like, I dont want to call them mini-books,
but theyre not quite large blog posts. Youve you know, youve developed your own
genre, and so lets take it back a little bit. I always whenever theres a superhero, I
always like to know the secret origin. So what were you doing before all this? Like, where
did you come from?

Steve Scott: Thats actually a fairly long story, but Im actually kind of writing an
e-mail about that for my list. But actually, Ill try and think in the Cliffs Notes version. I
would say I started online about a decade ago. Basically, I went through a divorce, I had
to move from where my ex-wife lives now in South Carolina back home to New Jersey, and
at the time, I literally

James Altucher: Now, wait, wait. Theres a lot in there. What were you doing as for
work when you got your divorce?

Steve Scott: Well, actually lets see, I was in the military before that and I had,
like, your typical entry-level job at Prentiss-Hall as a marketing assistant. But when we
were in South Carolina, and that was part of my frustration of living there and actually
probably what ultimately led to divorce is just kind of a little bit of self-hatred in who I
was as a person. But basically

James Altucher: So were you guys just unhappy and you werent getting along, you
decided, you know what, lets call it quits. Did you have any kids with your ex-wife?

Steve Scott: No, I didnt, but basically I would say its mostly my fault. I do like
to take the blame on this one just because I was so kinda angry at myself that I just Im
sure I was a very unpleasant person to be around, and that factored into a couple other
things, but I really were still friends, so its not like I hold a grudge and I hope she isnt
holding grudges, but I basically, at the end of the day, I had to move home and basically
with my parents and

James Altucher: Wow. Where in New Jersey? Cause when I moved to New Jersey, I
had to move back home to my parents so where in New Jersey?

Steve Scott: Red Bank, New Jersey. Its right in the Jersey Shore area.

James Altucher: Yeah, I know. I know where it is. Bon Jovi lives there.

Steve Scott: Yes, he does. He actually I saw him in passing, him and Bruce
Springsteen a couple times growing up.
James Altucher: Cool.

Steve Scott: Yeah. So basically I had to move home, and at the time, from like
2003 to 2004, I basically had internet like, I had a couple small internet web sites, so
basically only prospect that I could see was really building an internet business and
eventually, after about six months, I managed to earn enough where I basically got to
move out of my parents house, but it was definitely touch-and-go for a number of years
where I was basically trying to do the internet thing, but also I just had a whole gamut of
just part-time jobs like the temporary I forget what thats called, but those temporary
employment agencies and I was a part-time DJ, so basically anything I could do to make
money and hustle on the side, I pretty much did it, but I kinda ___.

James Altucher: And what was the internet business that you started?

Steve Scott: At the time Ive had a whole bunch of them, but at the time, I had
I sold Evil Eye jewelry that I imported from Turkey, and I sold directly through eBay and
on the eCommerce web site.

James Altucher: And how would you do that? So youd buy this, like, kind of Evil Eye
jewelry from Turkey. Would you build a store ___? How would you then up the price on
eBay to justify, you know, making a profit?

Steve Scott: Well, they werent too expensive per piece of jewelry. They were
only about a buck or two, and on eBay, you could sell them for $15 or $16, so the margins
were actually pretty good. And eventually someone a lot smarter than me came on eBay
and basically cornered like just used intelligent marketing, basically priced it down a
dollar or two, and what I didnt realize at the time is they were just making a lot of money
on the back end, but basically trying to compete with this person would just eat out my
costs, so for a year or two, I had just an eCommerce web site for people just searching
through Google traffic, but that kind of kept me afloat from there, but I would say, after
that, it was one series of kind of small businesses that went well for a year or two but then
completely died out, so that was kind of my life for a while.
James Altucher: What do you mean he was making money on the back end? So he
would this competitor came on, dominated the market and underpriced you, and then
you said he made money on the back end. Whats the back end?

Steve Scott: I think, and this is kind of my own stupidity and naivet is I didnt
really analyze what he was doing and try replicating. I just gave up. But basically I think
what they were doing was they were basically selling, you know, a bracelet for, like, 15
bucks and they would get just the customer. Thats all they really cared about was they
would just basically it was a lead loss. They would just get the eBay campaign would
pay for itself and then they would have the customers e-mail and potentially mailing
address and they would send follow-up, Im sure some types of mailers and theres more
expensive Evil Eye jewelry that you could price anywhere from, like 50 to 60 bucks, so I
guess they try upselling them, but at the time, I didnt take the time to really analyze what
theyre doing, see how I could have done it myself. I just gave up basically.

James Altucher: But, Steve, though, it sounds like you learned an incredibly
important lesson because I see this all over your web site now. Building an e-mail list,
getting that e-mail address so that you can later market to and upsell to that person, that
is the key to success in a lot of these types of businesses.

Steve Scott: Oh, absolutely. Like, I really I bang that drum nonstop. I believe
now, like, getting those customers and getting those e-mail addresses is really the most
important thing to do and

James Altucher: I think you have it in all your books too, like, to sign up for your list,
you know, give me your e-mail address. Like, people can click right on through your
books to your e-mail list.

Steve Scott: Yeah, Im definitely not subtle about it, but yeah, I feel Id almost
rather not make money initially just to get that e-mail address, to be honest.

James Altucher: Well, a lot of your books are priced for free, so I can tell you youre
not making money on them, and you even have a book an entire book titled 99 Cents is
the New Free. Its 45 pages. You sell it, obviously for 99 cents. How do you get, like, an
entire book out of a topic like that.
Steve Scott: If I remember correctly, I wrote sometimes I writ these things so
fast I kinda forget what I write about, but I wrote it, lets see, right after I came back from
Greece. I wrote it last August, but basically the whole premise was I just took the whole
analysis of what people think was conventional wisdom at the time for Kindle publishing
that you just release a book for free for five days and you just get a flood of sales, and I
really wasnt seeing any evidence of that. Instead, I would launch my book for 99 cents,
and which I currently do now pretty successfully, is I launch a book at whats considered a
pretty low price point for 99 cents. I get a lot of those initial sales, and then from those
initial sales and review, Amazon kind of just does the rest of the legwork. Once they see
that little bit of, hey, this book has some marketability, theres an audience, theres some
sales, they actually do a lot of the internal sales that they do with, you know, as far as their
e-mail campaigns and attaching book to peoples other customers also bought. I guess to
answer your question is I really just kind delved really into the to what I felt was a better
marketing strategy, which is launching a book for 99 cents.

James Altucher: So okay. So lets take a step back. So youve done all these
businesses, you did the eBay business. It worked out for a while. You moved out of your
parents house. But were talking it seems like a common theme was bulk businesses,
like doing quantity. So youve had all these different activities that were making money
for you and, with that, you started to rebuild your life in New Jersey. What happened
next?

Steve Scott: Well, basically I eventually did stumble on not stumble, actually,
put effort into it, but I eventually did build a couple reliable internet businesses, and it
goes back to e-mail marketing, but I really got heavily into affiliated marketing, which I
pretty much did up to the point where I found Kindle publishing, and that was pretty
successful. Like, the idea you build an e-mail list around a topic, you provide free content,
and if you find an affiliate offer, you promote it and then you get whats basically a sales
commission. So

James Altucher: So let me ask you. Whats like an example a very specific example
that you did?
Steve Scott: I would say I kind of did a lot of exercise and dating offers. So
basically, obviously I would do a front end of some sort of, you know, how to lose weight
in, like 50 steps or something. Im trying to use a random example. And basically you get
a bunch of people who are particularly interested in that topic, and I would basically
provide content to them. At the same time, I would find a couple of really good products I
felt were valuable to the end user and Ill promote those. It was kind of a merging of good
content with also some pretty aggressive marketing. Since then, Ive kind of dialed back
the aggressive marketing angle, or at least what Id like to think I do.

James Altucher: And were those good businesses? Like, were the affiliate fees high
enough that they pay the bills?

Steve Scott: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I really liked it but I also felt it just I didnt
like the idea of absolutely running a business where I always had to promote the latest
good offer, and I guess you can make the argument I do the same thing with Kindle books,
but I felt that sometimes Id promote something, theyd charge 70 bucks and sometimes I
really didnt feel like it was really worth 70 bucks and I just a little bit of guilt was
involved where I just didnt really like the entire business I was involved with. I feel you
can be a good, ethical affiliated marketer, but its also kind of a slippery slope sometimes.

James Altucher: And I know were covering a lot of stuff really quickly, but its really
fascinating to me. How would you build the list? Would you put Google ads up like
heres a free report, 50 ways to lose weight?

Steve Scott: Yeah. At the time, it was a lot easier to kind of I dont want to use
the word gimmick, but its easier to get people towards your e-mail list cause basically all
you have to do is just create a free report, a squeeze page, which is basically the place that
you sell your book for free or not sell, but basically promote your book for free. And
then there are a lot of sites like ezinearticles.com, and back then YouTube was really easy.
You just create free content on all these sites that basically drive people back to that single
page. So really, you didnt even need a blog or any sort of content type of machine that we
have now with podcasts, YouTube channels or blogging. All you had to do was just
basically drive free traffic back to a squeeze page and, for a number of years, that worked.
Actually its still stuff I havent touched in five years, Im still kind of making money from
just from the fact it ranks well.

James Altucher: What was the best way what was the best method for driving
traffic back to the squeeze page?

Steve Scott: At the time, it was ezinearticles.com, but basically they had a really
good they were given natural ranking preference in Google, but eventually Google basic
came down and they kinda just shut down that kind of that marketing method,
basically. If you want to post articles on ezinearticles.com, it doesnt really do anything for
your web site now, but back then you could write an article and it could rank really
quickly for pretty much in-demand key word. You could drive a lot of traffic back to your
squeeze page.

James Altucher: What would you do now if you were gonna be in that business?
Where would you post?

Steve Scott: I would say thats actually part of the problem. I would say
probably what I would do now is kinda what Im currently doing but just a different
revenue stream, but I would basically build a while authority niche around one particular
topic by blogging, what you do podcasting, YouTube channels. I would actually, honestly,
I would write Kindle books. Thats probably why I do it all the time now cause I feel like
you can really build an audience just by writing many books. And actually, I did agree
with your assessment before. I do consider them kind of mini-books.

James Altucher: Yeah. So okay, so lets get into that. So when was your first when
did you write your first Kindle book?

Steve Scott: I wrote that February 2012.

James Altucher: Wow. So, okay. And that was called what I said before. I dont even
remember the title now.

Steve Scott: Yeah, its and looking back, its such a spammy sounding title, but
its Fifty-Five Ways to Make Money Online and I honestly forget the subtitle, but that was
basically I just took five old blog posts, I basically talked about the different revenue
streams and just threw it into a Kindle book really, honestly not knowing what I was
doing. Just kind of threw it up there and thought it might be a good traffic generator
more than anything.

James Altucher: And, you know, I just want to point out youre self-published. You
didnt have a publisher for it or anything cause on Kindle, its ridiculous not and we
keep saying Kindle, but in general with books, its ridiculous to have a publisher thats
gonna take 15 percent thats gonna take 85 percent of the profits when you could when
Amazon allows you to publish a book and theyre the biggest publisher in the world and
they only take 30 percent of the profits.

Steve Scott: Yeah, absolutely. No, I once I actually discovered what I have with
Amazon, I was just amazed at what the opportunity that they provide to authors, or even
bloggers.

James Altucher: And how did that first book sell?

Steve Scott: It did actually it did terribly, come to think of it. I was about to
say it did well, but the first couple months, it was like I kinda mentioned before, but I
just consider it more of a traffic generation ___. I really, honestly, truly didnt believe it
would actually make money. So I threw it up there and I had a follow-up book a couple
months later, and I remembered that I had the first book in what they call KDP Select, and
at the time, you could give away a book for free for five days and it would actually kinda
trick Amazon into saying, hey, its a good book and then suddenly you would get some
initial sales. Well, I put the first book under KDP Select for five days, and when I looked
at the stats afterwards, it was selling, you know, five to seven copies a day, which was 10, 15
bucks. Not bad at all for something that was more of an afterthought, and thats kinda
what gave me the kind of Kindle bug where I was like, well, I knew the first two books
really werent my best efforts. What if I actually sat down and wrote a detailed book
instead of blog posts, just write a detailed book about specific tactics and try to do that
once every month.

James Altucher: And what was that third book?

Steve Scott: It was a and looking back, I guess I really didnt have the authority,
but basically it was about how to find good e-book ideas, even though the first two werent
that good. But I basically kind of reverse-engineered what I was figuring out with Amazon
and just wrote a book about that. But I knew at the time I couldnt get away with writing
a book writing like one of those meta-topics, like writing a book about how to write a
book or even writing a book about how to sell books because I really didnt have the
authority, but I felt that I was really good at least discovering what are good ideas for
books, so I just wrote a whole book about that.

James Altucher: Okay, this leads to two questions. What is authority? Like who has
authority in anything?

Steve Scott: Thats ___ something I debate with myself. I would like to think of
myself for running, I would like to think of myself as an absolute authority, but
sometimes I dont know if Id really even want to get into that just because its the sheer
volume of the topic, but I would say really the definition for me is at least you know more
than what most people do. You at least have some knowledge and or you at least have
some passion and stuff that youve tested on your own or have some life experience in that
particular topic, but I would say really its in the reader. Theres honestly probably people
that buy my habit books that probably know more than I do, but I would like to think
that, at the end of the day, I know a little bit more than most people.

James Altucher: Well, youve been so involved in at least online, in the habits of not
only weight loss and health and running, but writing is a huge habit. So, you know, that
has, over time, made you an authority on all these different topics, but let me ask you
what are how do you find good non-fiction ideas? You have several books about how to
find good non-fiction ideas for books. So what are some of the ideas?

Steve Scott: Well, theres two answers. Theres what I do for myself and then
what I recommend. What I do for myself nowadays is really just kinda what Im
personally interested in. Like, for instance, a couple months ago, I really like what was
really kind of an annoying thing for me was handling e-mail and I was just spending hours
a day responding to e-mail and it was really just eating into my life and my free time. So I
really just kinda got down a whole system, the whole inbox zero type of concept, but really
just practice it for myself for a couple months, and I felt just the experience from that
made a good book. Honestly, that one doesnt sell very well, so sometimes my book ideas
arent the greatest, but for me it just always comes down to personal experience. But what
I recommend is just basically just kind of reverse-engineering the Amazon Marketplace. I
would say start out by looking at blogs, forums, basically Yahoo! answers, even ClickBank,
which is kind of a depository of information products. Basically just look at whats out
there and kinda use those to see whats selling and basically just write down, I would say,
50 ideas. Literally just keep on writing down every possible idea and then go to Amazon
and just keep on looking at different books and seeing how theyre ranking. And the
litmus test I used for a long time is the 20,000 rule, but its kinda bumped up to 30,000
rule, but basically if you look at the Amazon bestsellers and if you see the number any
number below the number 30,000, that means it sells at least five copies a day, and if
youre selling a book at $2.99, thats, like, 10 bucks a day. Its not a huge amount of money,
but if you have a catalog of books that are each selling 10 bucks a day, it can quickly add
up. So I kinda like to use a combination

James Altucher: If you start selling 300 books, you know, now you have 40, but if you
get up to, like, 300 books, thats 3,000 bucks a day.

Steve Scott: Yeah. Its like I know obviously the math, and some books the
sales will drop down and some books will really just take off with what have happened
with a couple few, but I like the idea of basically just five sales a day is what Im happy
with for pretty much any book in my catalog.

James Altucher: And so, like today, for instance, I dont know if you went through
this exercise today, but what would be some ideas in ClickBank or on Amazon that you
might find today that cause you also seem to be on one particular category, which is,
like, the personal improvement category. So, like, what books would you look for today or
what titles would you think about today?

Steve Scott: I would say see, this is a hard one to answer because I actually
really also really believe in the idea of building authority on a platform and not going,
hopping from idea to idea, but I know for a fact that Minecraft is a big popular idea right
now. I actually dont even know what that is; its like some type of video game or
something, but I know that

James Altucher: Yeah, a lot of kids play it. Its big on YouTube.

Steve Scott: Yeah. I know people play that all the time. I would say maybe a
Candy Crush strategy guide. Wheat Belly Diet, I know I see stuff like that popping up.
But all that being said, I really dont believe in the idea of basically finding a topic just
because its selling well right now and just writing a book about that because honestly,
from my experience, whats been the driver of most of my sales is building a whole brand
around a catalog of books with the idea that, hey, if someone like one habit book, the
more inclined theyll go buy a second habit book, a third book, a fourth book, a fifth book.

James Altucher: Youre not gonna piggyback trends, for instance. Like, if Kim
Kardashian is trending on Twitter, youre not gonna write a book about Kim Kardashian.

Steve Scott: No. I dont, but I know people who do, and Im sure they do it
successfully, but I think my strategys more of the slow play, but I figure that ultimately
you will do better, have a more successful business long-term if you just stick to one topic,
and basically also build an e-mail list around it, like build a whole authority writing about
one type of Kindle books.

James Altucher: So I feel like your topics, and theyre all sort of related, you write
about writing, you write about how to make money online, you write about, you know,
healthy habits and, you know, those are kind of your main things.

Steve Scott: I would say right now, and I would like to think that down the road,
in a couple years when I start a family and stuff like that, Ill probably come out with a
parenting habits or relationship habits. I like the idea of any type of habits because,
honestly, I like just testing new things in my life and just seeing if I can improve my life in
some way just by developing small new little routines.

James Altucher: And so okay, so the third book came out and when did you start
seeing, like, money trickle in? And then how does the flow work? Like, you obviously,
you know, get people to come to your blog, you get people to sign up to your list. What
else do you sell off of that?
Steve Scott: Well, let me try answering the two questions separately. The first
one, like, the third ones when I really started picking things started picking up. That
was September 2012. And then I wasnt making a lot of money. If I look back, I think I
was making a couple hundred bucks a month at that point. But then I came out with the
fourth and fifth and sixth books, and basically those were all basically internet business
books just cause I ran a business for about eight years before that, so I kinda knew the
like, how to get a lot of traffic. I knew how to basically, after writing a couple books, I
knew how to write a book pretty fast. I knew about how to make a little bit of money from
YouTube, so I basically took all these little small little niche strategies I kinda knew and
just wrote whole books about them and just based them off my own experiences. And I
would say by December 2012, I was making a couple thousand a month. And then, from
there, its been progressively getting a little bit better, but kind of like I mentioned before,
some months it would go down a little bit.

James Altucher: So from September 2012 to December 2012, you went from making a
few hundred to a few thousand. Is that because you wrote a whole bunch of more books
or, like what did you do?

Steve Scott: Yeah, I would say really my only major strategy, and let me also
preface this one quick thing, but my major strategy was basically write a book every three
weeks, and that just I stuck to that schedule pretty well for, I would say at least four
months. But what else, kind of the one benefit I had that, unfortunately a lot of people
dont have, is I was blogging for a couple years up to that point about internet business, so
I did have a collection of e-mail subscribers. And at the time, I basic my strategy was
just release a book for free for a couple days and just basically like, hey, the books free,
guys. Please just do me a favor, go review it. And I would get 30, 40 reviews pretty much
overnight just by giving away a book for free, and I kinda milked that strategy for all its
worth, but kinda what I mentioned before, the giving away a book for free, Ive moved
away from that strategy.

James Altucher: Right, right. So okay, so were at the beginning of 2013. How many
books do you have out at that point?
Steve Scott: Im trying to remember. At that point, I think I was at seven or
eight.

James Altucher: And what was your most successful one at that point?

Steve Scott: Mine was kinda the metabook about how to write a book in 21 days.
So basically I wrote a book about writing a book, and that one did quite well for a while.

James Altucher: I love that one.

Steve Scott: Oh, thanks. Actually and that was actually the moment where I
found my e-cover designer. Ive really felt that really was a huge made a huge difference
in my business cause I feel that he has a particular good eye for creating really awesome e-
covers. As a side note, if anyone wants the name of this guy, just e-mail me and I can
supply his name. But, yeah, I felt like he did a really good job with that particular e-cover,
and since then, Ive really felt Ive been kinda having a visual representation of my brand
just by what he designs.

James Altucher: Why are you so open with, like youre totally giving away your
whole strategy and now your cover guy? Like, anybody can wake up tomorrow, call your
cover guy and write, you know, ten steps to writing the best non-fiction book in the world.

Steve Scott: Ive had people rip me off, but Id be honest. I feel that most people
will do themselves a disservice if all theyre doing is just ripping people off and, to be
honest, my strategy involves just a lot of hard work, and most people dont really want to
do the hard work, and Im sure they could shortcut a couple of my suggestions, but Ive
honestly the people I look up to online, like the Pat Flynns of the world, the people that
actually are the most open about everything that they do, and I feel that long-term-wise,
they do the best, so it only makes sense to model them and to really just be honest about
what works. And a lot of times, Im honest about what doesnt work for me.

James Altucher: Right. So okay, so youre at several thousand a month, you know,
in early 2013 and youre writing a book every three weeks. Youve stuck to that, I think,
pretty much through now. Like, I see a new book from you every three or four weeks.
Whats been working? How has the strategy evolved? Whats going on?
Steve Scott: I would say about so Id say right around February or March 13, I
would keep same thing, internet business books Id keep on releasing. And I got three or
four negative reviews, and they really got to me, and one of them, basically it was the same
theme. This guy, all he does is make money online by teaching people to make money
online. And, yeah, I could definitely say I was doing that at the time, and I was so
convinced that I knew what I was talking about. I was convinced I could go into any
market, write about it consistently in that market and still turn a profit. And basically, I
just said challenge accepted. Im gonna find a market that Im really interested and just
write books about that. So I went through a month or two of trying to figure out what I
was gonna write about and I chose just the habits market cause I felt that, at the end of
the day, everything I learned in the past decade since kinda my lowest point of my life had
to do with habits. So I just sat down, same thing and just wrote about small little habits
that either Ive learned or basically that I could at least teach someone just from my own
experiences. And if I didnt know that topic, I would just go out and test it for a couple
months and then write about it. But I just felt like the idea there that I felt that you
really could just build a brand on Kindle just by writing about one specific topic, and the
harder you work and the more books you produce, the better of a business youll have.

James Altucher: Yeah, and I see that, you know, you developed another persona, the
S.J. Scott persona, and the last three books are Habit Stacking, Twenty-Three Anti-
Procrastination Habits and Writing Habit Mastery: How to Write 2,000 Words a Day and
Forever Cure Writers Block. So it seems like you almost use that persona to really kind of
do the habits, but it still revolves around internet businesses and writing and so on.

Steve Scott: Yeah, its still like, I started habits with the glorious idea that only
write about specific habits, but at the end of the day, I realized I know a lot about, like,
productivity and time management, so fortunately or unfortunately, Im not too sure
which way you look at it, it would I just a lot of that time management stuff definitely
creeps into my books cause Im like a basically a time management junkie.

James Altucher: Well, like, tell me about your typical day so I understand what that
means.
Steve Scott: Sure. Basically I get up every morning and I do my one thing.
Thats basically for me, its whatever is the thing that either could be the biggest growth
of my business or the one thing Im working or the one challenge Im having. To give
two examples, writing was my basically my first thing. I would do writing before I
opened up my e-mail, look at Facebook or anything. I would just sit down and write for
two or three hours. And right now, honestly, my biggest challenge is Im having trouble
with recording video. Im trying to actually create an extensive video course, so Im just
not really a natural presenter. I just dont really Im not comfortable talking
information. So I know if I dont do it right away, Ill tend to procrastinate on, so I force
myself to do video for the first couple hours a day. And then I also like to kinda the most
important things that Leah ___ talks about is basically you write down three things that
could be like three things that basically are the most important part of your day. So I do
those, like, those three things in the morning. So the one thing is part of that, and I find
two other small projects that are really have the biggest benefit to my life, so I do those
three things right away before anything else. And then the rest of the day, Im just kind of
closing loops. Im answering e-mails, Im doing small little projects, but a lot of stuff that
doesnt take a lot of high energy or a lot of, like, mental brain power. I tend to do the hot
and heavy stuff right in the morning and then just kinda the lower-energy stuff in the
afternoon and then I got to Starbucks and kinda putter around for the rest of the day,
exercise, that sort of thing.

James Altucher: Thats a good life. Well, what did you write about today?

Steve Scott: I wrote, actually I did those videos pretty much all this morning,
and today I wrote actually thats why I was thinking about the decade ago. I basically
wrote an e-mail that Im gonna use as an autoresponder about how habits saved my life.
So its basically I realized that recently my e-mail sequence really doesnt have much
personality behind it, so I took kind of a long heartfelt explanation of really what I feel
passionate about habits and really what I was like ten years ago, which I was basically a
loser, so kind of the evolution of a few habits that really helped me along the way.

James Altucher: Can I tell you from my own personal experience and also Ive read
quite a few of your things, and all of your stuffs great. I really am impressed, but when
you start telling your personal stories, your reader interest and loyalty is going to
skyrocket because thats what people want to know. Its like when I was a kid, you know, I
would read about a Superhero, but my favorite comic book was Secret Origins, which tells
the ___ behind every Superhero. And thats people wanna know this is where Im at,
how can I relate to what this author is saying, and if you give a personal story, they can
relate and then they really take off with you.

Steve Scott: Yeah, and to be perfectly honest, I know all this stuff, but Im like
sometimes I have problems with my confidence and sometimes I sit and as Im writing Im
like, well, people really dont want to hear about, like, all a bunch of stories that I have.
Theyd rather just get the meat of the topic, and I do believe in good, like, step-by-step
strategies, but sometimes I tend to leave the personality out of that, and thats something I
really need to work on and try to make a concerted effort, but youre absolutely right.

James Altucher: You know, my problem is Im the reverse. I actually think no one is
gonna be interested in anything I say unless I tell my personal story, and its I hate to
bring Buddhism into this, but even Buddha said dont try any of my advice. This is just
what works for me. And you can then take it or leave it. It works for me. And so he
started from the personal story. I mean, the guy obviously was an expert marketer for his
day and age, you know, 500 B.C., and he did it by telling his own personal story, and thats
what works now too.

Steve Scott: No, I feel your absolutely right. Ive read your Choose Yourself and
Ive really enjoyed all the personal stuff and all the especially all the struggles that you
talked about. It really does engage the reader, and I should know better. I should
definitely include some of the stuff in my books.

James Altucher: So out of your 41 books, whats done the best and why?

Steve Scott: The one recently, the Habit Stacking, thats been in the Top 100 or
hovering around the Top 100 for a couple weeks now, so its done exceptionally well for
me. To be honest, why, Ive actually been trying to reverse-engineer that over the last
week or so. I would say maybe the cover. It has a catchy cover. I feel that it actually
teaches a concept that probably no ones ever talked about before, and Im sure, like, the
97 Small Changes, it basically speaks as a couple quick things that people can add to their
life with a whole new way of doing it without taking up too much time. I guess just the
marketing presentation behind it is pretty solid and

James Altucher: Well, Ill tell you my opinion, because Ive seen this in a lot of places.
Its the subtitle, and its the end of the subtitle where you say these small life changes take
five minutes or less. Like, everybody wants to work the four-hour workweek or they want
to have they want to make changes that are gonna take five minutes or less or they want
to be more productive without doing anything new. Like, I just see this in general. And
not because people are lazy; theyre not, but I think people dont know they want to
figure out the things that are out there that really are possible to learn in five minutes or
less or they want to learn how to spend 36 hours a week doing things that they enjoy and
only work for four hours. So they know these things are possible, but they dont know
they wanna know the path that gets them there. And so I think when you throw that time
element in, Ill bet you if you look back, your time the ones where you give specific times
do the best.

Steve Scott: You know, to be honest with you, youre probably right because I
know the 21 Write a Book in 21 Days, that was another one that sold really well for a long
time and yeah, I guess it speaks to basically giving people small wins or something that
can immediately apply into the life, and Im a firm believer in hard work and diligence, but
sometimes its hard to market hard work and diligence.

James Altucher: Yeah, so okay, so all together now, youve got 41 books. This Habit
Stacking ones gonna do great for you this month. Obviously youll make a few thousand
just from that, and Im sure like Twenty-Three Anti-Procrastination Habits, all these
books probably are good, consistent earners. What do you then do to supplement income
further?

Steve Scott: To be perfectly honest, right now Im, besides I still make some
decent money from ___ marketing firm, just stuff Ive done years ago, but really I would
say 80 percent of my income is just Kindle right now. I dont really I am in the process
of putting together information to talk about my experiences with Kindle, but for now, its
really Im just making pretty much everything from that one platform.
James Altucher: And so youre earning about almost 1,000 on average, almost
$1,000 a book from Kindle. Now, I know some are much less and some are much more,
but this seems to be the average. And I bet you that average will hold on as you write
more books.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I feel that there definitely is an 80-20 here that I would say
theres a couple here that do exceptionally well, and theres a couple that really dont sell
more than one or two copies a month, so its and sometimes it really just takes you
publishing continuously to really find out what those slam dunks are.

James Altucher: You know what this reminds me of, and gosh, I should remember
the name right off the top of my head, but the guy in the 1920s who wrote, like, 1,000 blue
books. Like, they were all the books were blue and they had, like, all these titles, kinda
like yours like, you know, how to avoid procrastination, how to they would even have,
like you know, he would divide it into lots of categories. So he had a biography category,
so like a biography of, you know, Napoleon. Or he would have a romantic category, so
like, how to kiss better or how to, you know, pick up a woman or whatever. And he
literally, I think he had about 1,000 books. And all together, he sold over 100 million
copies of these blue books, and each one was a nickel. So at the time, he was making a
small profit on each one, but if a book sold less than 10,000 a month, he would start to
drop it from the catalog. Like, he was very disciplined, and he would do a lot of testing.
Like, he would change the titles. So he would have some obscure title that would sell
nothing, and then he would change it to, you know, how to have a blonde mistress, and
suddenly that would skyrocket to 30,000 books a month. And he would do lots of testing.
So Im just curious if you do any testing on your titles or

Steve Scott: I should. I think of the old thing of how to win friends and
influence people. I forgot what the original title was, but I know they changed it to that
and almost overnight, the sales side started skyrocketing, but yeah, I do Im kind of
ghetto when it comes to my testing. I guess I should be a little bit better about it, but I do
run it by a couple people. Im in a Facebook group with Kindle publishers, so if Im really
struggling with a title, Ill throw a couple up there. I do recommend a couple services. I
think theres Pickfu.com, P-I-C-K-F-U, that you can basically get 50 different people that
basically vote on a particular title choice. And theres also basically ___, Muturk.com.
Basically both sites you can just poll a lot of people in a short amount of time, just
basically get people to pick your title. I have been meaning to try those. I just havent
really, like, had a chance yet, but I do once in a while will throw a different e-cover if I feel
books are slipping that used to do pretty well. But for the most part, Ive really tried to do
all the heavy lifting before I even launch my book.

James Altucher: Have you also tried rewriting a book enough that Amazon then
sends out an automated e-mail saying this book has changed so completely, you might
want to buy it again?

Steve Scott: I have not. I know people who do that, but it seems that strategy
always kind of, to me, seems a little bit dodgy like, I guess if you really do a good job of
rewriting it, but Id almost rather take the book down, just rewrite the whole thing and
just build a whole new audience behind the book and maybe improve it. There are a
couple books that are on my list to basically do a whole new version of.

James Altucher: So I see. So right now, you make money off the books, but the books
drive an e-mail list, but the e-mail list, its not like youre upselling any other products.
Youre just when the next books released, youll inform or e-mail us, hey, Ive got a new
book out.

Steve Scott: Yeah. Really its like the whole jab, jab, jab, right hook that Gary
Vaynerchuk talks about and what

James Altucher: Yeah, and Garys been on the show here as well.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I think I did hear it. I do remember hearing that episode. I
really like his whole idea of basically give, give, give, give then ask. And when I really
looked at the numbers, and Ive tried promoting a few things on the e-mail list, but they
really didnt go anywhere, I recently realized that basically I dont really need to do
anything else but provide a couple of really good solid e-mails, send them some content,
and then when I have a new book, just basically beg and plead as much as I can for people
to go buy it and leave a review, and thats all I really need to do for right now just to drive
sales. Just as long as I get as many sales as possible when that book launches. It tends to
just drive, Amazon tends to pick up the rest of the slack and does a lot of marketing for
me.

James Altucher: Whats your ratio of, like, lets say free content that you send via
your e-mails to the begging e-mails?

Steve Scott: I would say, for now, its about 75 percent free content, 25 percent
begging, but that Im definitely trying to actually increase the number of free content,
and thats the whole idea behind that story is Im trying to actually become more
personable and more engaging on the individual e-mail lists and maybe have five to seven
e-mails that really kinda speak to the individual reader, and hopefully when it comes time
to ask for something, theyll know me better as a person.

James Altucher: I mean, I think, you know, you talk about personal stories, but I do
want to say that I think the transparency, both in your books and on your web site is
admirable. Like, I mean, you talk about exactly how much you make. I love your last post
where you talk about exactly, and you break down the numbers, which marketing
strategies work. So you have a lot of transparency and people really appreciate that. That
builds a lot of loyalty. Maybe talk about that last post. Like, what are the best market
like, you have 41 books. How do you market these things, and what are the best
marketing techniques?

Steve Scott: Well, basically what I did was about a year ago, April, I used
Amazon Associate links, and basically what Amazon Associates is, its an affiliate program
that Amazon runs where you can promote books through an affiliate link, or pretty much
promote anything on Amazon through affiliate links, but what this program gives you is
also it shows you the exact clicks conversion rate and how much you made on every sale.
So you could literally create an affiliate link for every type of promotion you do, and I
decided I wanted to track each specific marketing campaign that I did with all my books,
so I would track the sidebar on my blog, so how many people clicked on that, how many
people bought through that. I tracked the individual e-mail campaigns. I tracked
mentions in blog posts. I pretty much tracked everything I could possibly think of, and at
the end of the day, really the results of the post is everything was predicated on e-mail
marketing. Like, I bought a bunch of ___ gigs and Facebook advertisements. Those didnt
really go anywhere and all the stuff I thought was awesome marketing strategies, they sold
maybe a few books, but they didnt really do much for the overall brand, but my the
biggest sales and the ones that really moved a lot of sales was that initial e-mail, or even
the follow-up e-mail where it basically said I have a new book, go check it out, and really I
would say if thats an 80-20, most of my sales are driven just by that first initial e-mail. So
for me, it made sense to really focus on that one strategy and to stop puttering around
with all this other stuff that doesnt really work as well.

James Altucher: And whats the best way you found to build the e-mail list?

Steve Scott: Its cyclical. Ive found that actually Kindle books help me build the
books help me build the e-mail list to sell more Kindle books. But basically

James Altucher: Where do you put the sign up for the e-mails? You put it in the
beginning or the end?

Steve Scott: In the beginning, and I just have a free report, 77 Good Habits to
Develop a Better Life, or something like that. I forget the actual title. And I just send
them right to a squeeze page thatll run through the lead pages software and now Im
currently testing a couple other things. Im testing search engine traffic, blogging and
SlideShare. Im trying to drive traffic from those sights as well, but for now its really the
Kindle list or the Kindle books is whats really growing the e-mail list.

James Altucher: It sounds like, also you mentioned in your post that SlideShare was
really good for building the e-mail list. Not for selling books, but for building the e-mail
list.

Steve Scott: Yeah, exactly. I try to do direct sales, so I had a couple, basically
every purpose ___ content, like from the procrastination book, I had a couple ___ to
procrastination. I tried to have a direct sales at the end, and those didnt convert at all,
but I found that those same presentations, as long as you provide a decent deck or
SlideShare presentation, people will go to your e-mail list and join, and so Im trying to
really leverage that. Im trying to increase the success for that strategy right now.

James Altucher: What about working with other people who have authoritative
voices and big e-mail lists? Like, have you tried working, you know, deals with them?
Steve Scott: The one thing Im exploring are all the paid advertisement platforms
BookBub, e-Reader, Newsday, all the ones that really promise to promote books for you.
Definitely Im gonna throw some money at that and see how well those convert.
Unfortunately, they dont really have sort of tracking links, so I just kinda have to take
them at their word that theyre actually doing it.

James Altucher: Ive tried that, and they dont really work so well, at least for me. But
I will tell you my numbers. So on Choose Yourself, so far its sold about 150,000 copies,
and 40,000 of that was through direct e-mail marketing. So e-mail marketing, by far, was
number one for marketing. You know, and the rest was mostly organic.

Steve Scott: Is that e-mail marketing through your list or were you just able to
talk to people in your like, people that you know and friends and stuff?

James Altucher: People would reach out to me and say I really love your book. Can I
promote it on my e-mail list and well do a 50-50 split. And then I would put together
like, we did this actually so Stansberry & Associates is hosting this podcast. Porter
Stansberry has an e-mail list. We put together a bundle of Choose Yourself hardcover,
which wasnt being released by Amazon, and I threw in some free books, and we priced
the bundle at $20.00. I think the real value was something like $60.00. And then we split
50-50 the result. He sold 30,000 copies in, like, two weeks and, yeah, it was great. And
then one other group sold about 10,000 copies. So e-mail marketing was really powerful.
So I think your strategy of just focusing on the e-mail list, nothing is stronger. Number
two was Reddit was very strong for me.

Steve Scott: Really? Ive had some traffic from Reddit. It doesnt convert at all,
but I think thats more just blog traffic. I wasnt it was more of a random thing than
more of an actual trying concerted effort on my part.

James Altucher: Yeah, Reddit was good because I did it in AMA, you know, an ask me
anything, and so if you did, like, and AMA about habits or how to make you know, if you
did an AMA how to make $40,000 a month on the internet, you would what happened
was people who werent aware of me at all suddenly became aware of me and bought the
book.
Steve Scott: Ill have to definitely check that out. I actually do remember you
now. I think you were talking to Gary Vaynerchuk about that strategy in that interview.

James Altucher: Yeah.

Steve Scott: Yeah, actually I wrote that it was one of those writer-downers, and
I forgot to write it down and actually follow up on it.

James Altucher: So whats your next couple of books that are coming out?

Steve Scott: Lately Ive been really kinda just trying to fine-tune my to-do list
and kinda I use a couple different to-do lists, and I really felt that kinda helps my
productivity, so Im writing about that. And Ive been really getting into the Evernote app,
so really been using that to kind of manage my entire life, so those are the next two. And
theres another strategy you can basically put a book for free on Amazon through just a
couple little techniques, so the one after that is basically Im gonna write about how to
develop good habits and kinda repurposing some blog content, but put it more of a step-
by-step strategy, but I hope to actually get that completely free on Amazon so I can use
that to kinda drive people potentially who would want to check out my other books.

James Altucher: And now that youve built this channel, have you thought and I
think I know the answer to this, but have you thought about writing, like, a novel or, you
know, a book on how to cure cancer or anything like this? Like taking you out of your
bread and butter?

Steve Scott: I guess so. I did talk one time to, like, an actual, for real publishing
company. I just dont really I dont know. I dont really have the interest there, and I
know, like, getting to New York Times bestseller, like, thats like a dream of most people.
I dont really have any desire to have that happen. Id rather Im kinda happy with my
own little niche that I have right now and the idea of writing a book is pretty daunting.

James Altucher: You know how many copies it took last week, so this is a very good
publishing month, you know, May, so a lot of people buying books, I guess. You know
how many books it took to get to be Number 20 on the New York Times bestseller list
last week?
Steve Scott: What was that?

James Altucher: Just try to guess.

Steve Scott: I would say 5,000 copies.

James Altucher: Eighteen hundred.

Steve Scott: Wow. When did that ___.

James Altucher: Yeah, so being on the New York Times and thats a guy, whoever it
was, I dont know who it was, but whoever it was was published by a mainstream
publisher because you cant really sell publishing yet on the list, so he got only 15 percent
in royalty on 1,800 copies, so you basically make no money being on the New York Times
bestseller list. I almost shouldnt say this out loud. Maybe New York Times will, like,
block me after this, but you know, so I think your strategy of making $40,000 a month and
growing is a lot more powerful than a strategy of getting on the New York Times bestseller
list.

Steve Scott: Yeah. Let me do say that I think that Ill probably reach $40,000 this
month, but its not a very typical month. I usually I do, lately, anywhere from $20,000 to
$25,000, so this months pretty good.

James Altucher: Yeah, but you never know. Like, havent your you know, what its
showing me is that your skills are getting better, you have more books out there, so theres
no reason to think its gonna go down a lot, and you know youre gonna have more books
out in the next month, so look at it that way.

Steve Scott: Thats shocking for the like, I knew the New York Times it was a
low volume, but Ive definitely done that in the last week. Ive done, like, triple that in the
last week so, man, I kinda wish I had a book out there ___.

James Altucher: Well, you know, eventually theyll do e-books, I bet, on the New
York Times. You know, they do e-books now, but you also have to be in bookstores at the
same time, so like the and Im talking about Number 20 on the advice list, which is
roughly the same as the nonfiction list, and youd be on the advice list anyway. But if you
were published by a mainstream publisher and you were in bookstores and e-books, even
if it was just your e-book selling, thats all you would need to sell is 1,800 copies.

Steve Scott: Yeah. Oh, wow. That really doesnt seem that much.

James Altucher: So, you know, you dont do anything with, like, ads on your web site.
Its all just kind of Kindle.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I just I guess those hard lessons I learned way back when,
even from the initial Evil Eye jewelry site is that you really just want to focus on building
your brand, and I really try not to dilute it by just sending people all over the place to
different products and offers. That being said, there are a couple of people that I really
like their books, like, Ill recommend those, but those are more of a I just liked this book;
you should go check it out, not like a trying to make money avenue. But yeah, I just felt
its better just to grow your brand and really since e-mail marketing is really my one
thing thats really driving sales, I should just really focus on (A) getting as many people as
possible on my list and (B) really engaging them so when they do come time for the ask,
theyll actually go buy the book.

James Altucher: And how big is your list now?

Steve Scott: Right now, I have two different lists. For the internet marketing list,
I have 13,000 and for the habits list, I think its right today I think it was, like, 7,500.

James Altucher: Thats great. Okay. And what made you decide to be two people
S.J. Scott and Steve Scott? And, you know, your photos even look totally different between
the two authors.

Steve Scott: Yeah, actually I really dont. I dont think I do. Im not even trying
to hide the fact theyre two separate people. Basically Im pretty honest about it. The
reason I chose those two is because I didnt want habit people to suddenly see a bunch of
internet marketing books and potentially lose a sale because it has nothing to do with
what they want to learn, and the same goes for pretty much internet business. I want
basically to have two totally separate lines where basically people can read the type of
content they want to read.
James Altucher: But you know, though, like internet marketing feels like declutter
your inbox to me as well. You know, theyre all kinda related.

Steve Scott: And Ill be the first to say I definitely promote the habit books to the
internet marketing crowd. Im not afraid to do that, but I also feel that if youre in the
habits market and you dont run an internet business, I dont want potentially lose a
lifelong customer just by them getting it confused looking at 55 Ways to Make Money
Online. I wanna make absolutely sure they get the book that they want to read and,
unfortunately the way Amazons designed, its really hard to set up a really pleasing
dashboard where I can I cant really tuck those books away. They have to be front and
center, so if you have more than 30, 40 books, it gets really cluttered on the actual
dashboard or the actual author page.

James Altucher: Well, you know, I love your strategy of using different Amazon
Associates affiliate links to track your essentially your book analytics. You know,
Amazon offers no platform for tracking analytics, and Ive talked to Amazon about this.
They are interested in eventually doing it, but its it takes a lot of work. So your
workaround is very powerful. I think its a business idea. I think you can basically go to
any author who has a lot of books or go to a publisher and say we have a way of tracking
analytics across marketing programs across all of your books. You know, charge Harper-
Collins, like, you know, $5,000 per book per month and theyve got 200 books they wanna
track, I bet you can make a lot of money that way.

Steve Scott: Yeah. Im sure you could. That being said, Ive recently learned that
maybe putting associates links in e-mails is not really is not allowed according to
Amazon Associates term of services, so I might have to rethink that. Like, for me, the
worst thing that happens I lose my Associates account, which that doesnt really make a
whole lot of money for me, but Im not too sure its completely kosher with their rules.

James Altucher: I see. I see right now, actually, in self-help, S.J. Scott is ahead of is
right ahead of Ryan Holiday in your author rank. You know, if you had S.J. Scott and
Steve Scott combined, you might be, like, the number one self-help author in the world
right now on Amazon.
Steve Scott: Yeah, I was thinking that the other day. Im like, too bad I didnt
combine these books, but I made a decision for a specific reason. I like to stick to it, and
at the end of the day, if Im not number one, I guess its more kind of a vanity metric. Id
rather just run a successful business than have some sort of accolade, I guess.

James Altucher: Yeah, and your author rank is number six in business and investing
and numbers one and two are the freakonomics guys, then Thomas Piketty, who had the
number one book, and then I dont know these next two, and then is you. And then
youre after youre higher than Michael Lewis, who wrote Flashboys.

Steve Scott: Yeah, sometimes thats always thats for Kindle books, and I try
to remind myself its just for Kindle books. Im sure if we did print versions, theyd kill my
numbers, but its kinda cool sometimes to see my face ___ a lot of people I deeply admire.

James Altucher: Whats your ratio between Kindle books sold and paperbacks?

Steve Scott: My paperbacks are terrible. I would say maybe 1 percent, 2 percent.
Its really low. Id say this month I think Ive sold 160 physical books so far, really not a lot.

James Altucher: And why dont you do audio books? Because, you know, the
personal improvement category, audio books like Amazon owns Audible, audio books do
very well.

Steve Scott: I do, actually. Six of my well, Habit Stacking is still waiting for
approval, but itll be number six, but six of my habit books there is an audio version.

James Altucher: Okay, great. And how do they do percentagewise?

Steve Scott: They do well. I would say maybe 5 to 10 percent of my Kindle book
sales, so nothing like the Kindle books, but they sell pretty well and at a little bit higher
royalty rate. I think I get 350 for every audio book sold.

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah, no, I was surprised how well audio was. I only did it
once for my last book and it was great. Like, the results have been fantastic.
Steve Scott: Yeah. I definitely like it. I feel that people are going to be listening
to more audio content in the future, so I dont do them myself. I just Im not a natural
speaker, like I mentioned before, so I have a guy who basically records them for me.

James Altucher: And so I always get worried about if Im gonna do a bunch of small
books that Im almost, like, saturating my lets say my personal brand too much, you
know, so Ive been doing kind of like a book a year, but you know, youve sort of convinced
me, like just seeing you in progress, you know, (A) books can be smaller and more
frequent and just another outlet for releasing content, the way blogs are. So its
interesting.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I the way I kind of describe it to myself and others is
everyone knows about blogs, and basically the idea of blogs, you write about one
particular topic and you kind of deep dive, and everyone knows about books that are
pretty much extensive 300, 400 page books. I like to think of kind of these Kindle books
as a little bit more advanced than a blog post, but not quite the multiple levels of edits and
all the stuff that goes behind publishing a traditionally-published book. But its just kind
of like you basically take a pretty extensive blog post concept and really do your best to
answer every possible question about that, and for me, thats what a Kindle book is. Its
that kind of merging area.

James Altucher: So lets take this to the listener whos listening to this right now.
They have an interest or a passion. Lets say theyre interested in, I dont know, golf or
computer programming or starting a business or whatever. How can they start doing
what youve done, basically, you know, lets take them to the end where you have 40 books
out there and youre just making this passive income stream thats coming in every day.

Steve Scott: Well, lets use golf as an example, and forgive me if I screw up any
golf terms cause I just I dont golf. But I know from a fact that golfing is like a huge
market. People absolutely love the idea of golfing. But I would take each individual part
of what it takes to be a good golfer and actually break it down into individual small little
books. So theres how to improve your golf swing or how to take ten strokes off of your
golf whatever, but basically you would break it down. I would say even how to find the
best equipment. They could write a whole book about that and maybe even whole
product reviews of certain drivers and putters and that sort of thing. you literally just take
the whole broad golf topic and just write a small book about each specific golf topic and
just build a brand around all these tiny little topics and just basically, I would start with
what you know best, what is the one thing you really know about golf and you write about
that and then get some feedback from readers what they like about it, what they dont like
about it and just keep trying to iterate and improve on every single future book that you
release.

James Altucher: And how would you market that first, lets say five or six books
before you have, like, an e-mail list. So you have a sign-up for so youre gonna have a
squeeze page and a special report for free, so people sign up for the e-mail list. Initially
you have zero people on the e-mail list.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I would say first off, and actually let me go back real quick and
say the first thing you should do is, honestly, you should start building the e-mail list. So
you want to create some sort of free report or some sort of quick offer that you can get
people to joint your e-mail list. So that could be your old like, how to reduce your
strokes off your golf swing or whatever.

James Altucher: And then where do you market that?

Steve Scott: I would say just put it on a squeeze page or a blog. I like squeeze
pages cause its a simple yes or no action. Either they join your list or they dont join your
list and you could basically type squeeze pages into Google and people can youve got to
find templates for free. You could go to Fiverr.com and pay someone to design a quick
squeeze page, or I use lead pages, which is, like, 30, 40 bucks a month, which is a little
more expensive, but basically theres lots of different software out there where you can
just host it on a single page and people can either join the list or dont join your list. And
then, from there, I would put in the front of put in front of your Kindle book. Release
the Kindle book for free, honestly, because, like, you really dont have an audience there,
so trying to release it for 99 cents, you wont have the traction thats required, but you
want to start building your audience and start getting those people on e-mail list. And in
conjunction with that, I would recommend starting one of three platforms, either a blog, a
podcast, or YouTube, just something where youre providing free content. It can even be
free content you ultimately put into a Kindle boo, but continuously provide free content
and throughout this free content, just kind of bang the drum of join my e-mail list for this
free report and try to build like, try to get as many subscribers as possible from this one
platform while youre writing Kindle books. I would just basically recommend do those
two strategies and just repeat those two strategies.

James Altucher: I see. So you wouldnt necessarily pay for, like, Google ads to drive
traffic to the squeeze page.

Steve Scott: Yeah, Im more of a bootstrapper. Im sure, if you have a bankroll,

you could definitely pay for traffic, but what Ive found for paid traffic is you really need to
convert that traffic and basically you need to make your money back as quick as possible,
and I just dont see the ROI on Kindle books being as I dont really think you can make
your money back as well if youre having these lower-end ticket products.

James Altucher: Well, if you think about it, Amazon is probably one of the biggest
search engines on the planet, and it ties right in very highly to the Google search engine,
so what better place.

Steve Scott: Yeah, absolutely. And I like the idea of youre basically building
your platform at the same time as youre making money, and honestly, I wouldnt I
would say dont be afraid of making mistakes or writing something, maybe, that doesnt go
over well. Like, Ive had a couple books that are complete disasters that just I thought
they were great ideas and they just they tanked, and just

James Altucher: Like what?

Steve Scott: Resolutions that stick. I was so absolutely sure that would be an
awesome slam dunk book right around New Years Eve, and no one wanted to be lectured
to about changing their New Year or the way they approached New Years resolutions.
So basically it was just

James Altucher: You know what I would do? I would write a book why you dont
need to do any resolutions anymore. Like, cause people dont wanna do stuff.
Steve Scott: Yeah, I kinda try to hook them in with the idea that they want to
find out about resolutions, but basically the whole book is about how you dont need New
Years resolutions; its better to create goals and to do things in small increments, but
yeah, that book tanked. It was I did make my money back that I invested for the e-cover
and the edits and all that, but yeah, it sells, like, two copies a month.

James Altucher: So you keep track of the P&L for each book.

Steve Scott: Yes. Im sorry, whats P&L?

James Altucher: P&L, profit and loss.

Steve Scott: Yeah, I definitely Im a big believer in keeping track of every

expenditure, how much you invested. I do keep track of each individual book and I make
sure that I at least make my money back and so far, I dont think Ive lost money on any
book. I might not have made a lot, but Ive at least made, you know, $500, $600 back on
the book where its not a total loss.

James Altucher: And do you sell on iBooks as well or do you stick to Amazon?

Steve Scott: I stick to Amazon just because I found, for me, the key to the ___
program, especially now that they have countdown deals, they really drive a lot of traffic
and they really drive a lot of sales just, for some odd reason, having a ticking clock really
kinda can push readers to really buy books cause they think oh, its a low price for only a
certain amount of time. Let me grab it now before its too late, and now that I have so
many books, I can basically have something on countdown deals pretty much every single
week and I really feel it helps the overall brand.

James Altucher: Well, I really hope my two daughters listen to this podcast because I
think this is what people should be doing instead of honestly, instead of going to college.
Like, this is how theyre gonna learn about topics, will start making money, theyll build
community. Im sure youve met a lot of people in the kind of publishing and self-
publishing space, and you start to build a like, what did you major in in college?

Steve Scott: I majored in psychology. I had illusions of being a criminal profiler

in the FBI, and that went away pretty quickly.
James Altucher: So yeah, you dont who was the last criminal youve caught?

Steve Scott: Yeah, exactly. None.

James Altucher: Right. So

Steve Scott: I would have been a terrible FBI agent.

James Altucher: Are you in any debt from student loans?

Steve Scott: Oh, no, no. I was in debt just for, like, dumb mistakes I made with a
credit card, but I was fortunate enough to have my grandfather pay for my super high-tech
Montclair State University degree. But yeah, I didnt really no student loans but, you
know, I was in debt for a long time, but I got myself out of it and Im doing pretty well
financially now.

James Altucher: Well, Steve, thank you so much for all that youve shared on this
podcast. Like, I honestly think this one podcast is business or self-sufficiency in a box.
Like, people could take this, take what youve just said and build careers for themselves,
and I hope some people do that because I think this is really great info. I know I love
writing so this is really fun stuff for me to hear about, and it was its great to have you on
the show.

Steve Scott: Well, thanks a lot, James. This has been super fun.

James Altucher: Yeah, thanks, Steve, and Ill talk to you soon. And look, Im gonna
sign up for your list so I get your next habit habit-breaking, or habit-forming books.

Steve Scott: Okay, cool. Thanks.

James Altucher: Thanks, Steve. Bye.

 I NTERVIEW WITH M ICHAEL D REW

James Altucher: This is James Altucher and Claudia Altucher with another episode
of Ask Altucher.

Claudia Altucher: Hello.

James Altucher: And, Claudia, we have with us a guest that Ive been dying to ask
this one question of. Its Michael Drew. Mike, how are you doing?

Michael Drew: Im doing great, James.

James Altucher: And, Mike, Im just gonna give kind of the highlight ofor some
highlights on your career, but the main thing is you help authors get onto the New York
Times bestseller list. And youre basicallyand correct me if Im wrongyoure 80 out of
80, so 80 authors youve attempted to get onto the New York Times bestseller list, and
youve succeeded all 80 times. Is that correct?

Michael Drew: That is absolutely correct.

James Altucher: Okay.

Claudia Altucher: That is amazing.

James Altucher: Yes, because its actuallyweve seenand you saw this with us,
Michael. We had an example on our most recent book where we got on the Wall Street
Journal bestseller list, we got on the USA Today bestseller list, and people we beat got on
the New York Times bestseller list but we didnt get on the New York Times bestseller list.
And so now you magically can get anybody it seems on the New York Times bestseller list,
so we have to ask youthe question of the day is how do you get people on the New York
Times bestseller list?

Michael Drew: Oh, James, Id love to say Im magical. That would make me in much more
demand than I am.
James Altucher: You are magical and you should be in demand because, you know,
as much as I am a believer in the choose yourself philosophy whereand I think the New
York Times list is just a gatekeeper, like anyone anywhere else. It actually is still looked
up to in the industry, so if youre gonna go that route of the traditionally published author
you might as well try to get on the New York Times bestseller list. It cant hurt, so you
should be in demand. So thats why Im asking the question.

Michael Drew: I appreciate that. So heres the thing to know. The New York Times or the
Wall Street Journal or USA Today, theyre not real bestsellers lists. They dont count real
sales in real time.

Claudia Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: They dontthey dont

James Altucher: Now you dont think the USA Today or Wall Street Journal one
does? Because it seems likeagain, because we made those lists, it seems like they were
pretty accurate.

Michael Drew: They have different sets of criterial that allowed you to make their lists.
But they dont count all the sales either. USA Today is probably the cleanest. If you meet
some very rudimentary criteria of having the right number of reporting channels, they will
count all of the sales that are reported if you have enough reporting channels, whereas say
BookScan, which controls the Wall Street Journal list, has about 70 percent of their sales
that come in counted. They are knownthey have it stated in their system that they
discriminate against book based upon very specific criteria. As an example, my good
friend Bob Hughes used to compile the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list. He is now a co-
owner of the company with me. And hewhen he worked at the Journal compiling the
bestsellers list, you would see Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on the business list
almost every single week, and thats because the book as a business title sells exceptionally
well with corporations. Well, BookScan has a policy that says if there are any bulk orders
at allB-U-L-Kthey will not allow that book to make the bestsellers list. That is their
policy.
James Altucher: How do they know somethings a bulk order, like if its order
though 1-800-CEO-READ?

Michael Drew: No. You know, Jack is a friend of mine; Ive known him for many years.
But they used towell, certainly 800-CEO-READ reports bulk sales, but its now those
sales are reported that makes a difference. If, as an example, you place anif a
corporation buys 50 copies of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People from Barnes &
Noble at an individual store, that individual stores computer system will report to Barnes
& Noble corporate that they sold 50 books to one customer, right? So that is then
reported by Barnes & Noble corporate office to the New York Times as, We had 3,000
orders last week with a total of 500 consumers placing the orders for those 3,000 books,
so they know the number of orders that are being placed.

Now in some regards I appreciate, say on a book of fiction, where you should not
be seeing many bulk orders coming through; that doesnt make a lot of sense. But again,
the Wall Street Journal through BookScan does discriminate against any order where you
have a bulk order. And if you were on the nonfiction side of things, you have a business
book or a self-help book or even some diet and cookbooks where you could have
corporations or associations buying in bulk, what you actually have is a discrimination by
BookScan based upon their own arbitrary decision to now count those sales.

And so every bestsellers list has their own criteria for how they count the sales.
USA Today simply says, If you have X number of reporting retailers, we will count all of
the sales that are reported. Now you could sellif you had one retailer, call it Amazon,
and no other retailers reporting, then USA Today will take a look at whether or not they
should count your sales or not. But usually if you have Amazon reporting youll have
probably Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million or one of the othertwo or three other
retailers reporting, and its not that difficult then to make the USA Today list, cause you
could sell 1,000 at Amazon and 100 over at Barnes & Noble and 100 at Books-A-Million; if
those are all reported youll make the USA Today list because you had enough sales
reported collectively and enough reporting channels. But if you only had say Barnes &
Noble, you had no other sales from anywhere else period, then USA Today may consider
not counting those sales.
 So I would say in terms of sales volume, USA Today is closest. The Wall Street
Journal has their own criteria for discriminating and eliminating sales. And the New York
Times, as the oldest list, has a more archaic system in terms of how they gather the data
and a further archaic system for how they count those sales that are being reported.

One thing to note, you still have a person at both USA Today and at the New York
Times that counts those sales. You have a person at Barnes & Noble and Amazon and
Books-a-Million and Ed Hudsons and beyond that reports those sales to the bestsellers
list. The only electronic system that you have is BookScan and they still only represent
about 70 percent of all books that are sold. And even thenIll give you an example. I
had a client who did a book signing in Cleveland. The retailer bought in 1,000 books.
They sold, Id like to say, 500, 600 books

James Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: One week, soat that event. So that retailer reported to BookScan, hey, in
one week that they sold 500 books, but the next week when that retailer returned books
back to Ingram, the wholesaler, then BookScan showed that that book retailer had sold a
negative 500 books for the week.

Claudia Altucher: Uh-oh.

Michael Drew: [Laughter] Which is silly, cause they didnt not sell the books. It wasnt
negative. There was awhat I call a precipitory event, a book signing. They sold the
books, they didnt need the excess inventory, and rightfully returned that back to the
publisher. So you have systems that are not flawless.

You know, getting a book on the bestsellers list is not that dissimilar to getting
your website ranked in search engine optimization except that the criteria is based around
the number of books that are being sold, the number of reporting channels, the weight of
those reporting channels within the algorithm at the various bestsellers lists.

James Altucher: So how do youso two questions really. How do you personally
guarantee a book to be on the New York Times bestseller list, and then what should
somebody do if they dont have you on their side to get something on the bestseller list,
any of the bestseller lists?
Michael Drew: Well, heres the thing. First of all, I dont guarantee my service. Im just
that good where I dont miss. Pardon the

James Altucher: Good confidence.

Claudia Altucher: [Laughter]

James Altucher: I respect the confidence, Michael.

Michael Drew: Soand thank you; I appreciate that. Sobut Im pretty darn good at
what I do. Heres the thing: you have the mechanics on the back end of how the retailers
report sales to the bestsellers list. The books that I would call organically make the list,
meaning theres not a specific marketing campaign designed to drive traffic into stores to
buy books, so its just naturally, organically selling. Those books have between 30 to 40
percent of their actual sales being reported and counted by the bestsellers lists. So when a
client hires my firm, what were doing is were leveraging what we call their marketing
platform in selling the book in a controlled fashion so that we can ensure that we have the
right number of sales going through the right reporting channels at the right timeframe.

We actually call this the Harry Potter effect. What most people dont realize in
publishing is that if youre Harry Potter or youre a John Grisham or a Steven King, you
have a competitive advantage over everyone else because your publisher will have a legal
agreement with the retailers called embargoing. And this legal agreement literally states if
a retailer, say an individual Barnes & Noble store, puts a copy of, say, Harry Potter on their
bookshelf before the pub date, that that retailer will pay a penalty of anywhere from
$2,500.00 per book to $2.5 million per copy of the book, which was what the penalty was
on the last Harry Potter book.

James Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: Now the advantage of that to these big authors is that the retailers are
spending a year or two or three years holding these sales on behalf of these big books. So
when a Harry Potter book was announced you had all of these fans go into local
bookstores, order the book. The retailers would hold the money, and when the Harry
Potter book was released you have a million or two or three or four or five million sales
that are dumped into the system all on the same day. So obviously the book is going to hit
number one when that book is launched.

Well, thats unfair to everybody else, because the legal cost for embargoing is
hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to the publishers and they dont do it very
often, and the retailers hate it. So what I advocate for my clients is to embargo their own
sales to consumers and to do a controlled release of those sales directly to the retailers the
week or two after the books been launched. Now the way

James Altucher: How do they do that, though? Cause most of your clients are
probablyyou know, have publishers.

Michael Drew: Well, Iso Ill give you a couple of examples. One of my authors, his name
is Roy H. Williams. Hes known as the Wizard of Ads. He owns the fourth-largest ad
agency in North America for buying radio advertising. Hes exceptionally well-known in
radio. Every general manager of every radio station in North America knows who Roy is
because theyre always vying for his clients money, and so ______ literally controlling
that. He also writes for Radio, Inc., which is one of the top trade publications for radio.

And what we did is we leveraged what we call his marketing platform, his name
and reputation within the radio industry. And what we did is we mailed out an advance
copy of the book to the 10,000 radio station general managers in North America with an
offer that said, If you buy 20 copies of this book on this date from this retailer and run
200 radio ads promoting the book, well give you a copy of Roy H. Williamsthis was a
few years ago12-tape training library which will train your sales reps on how to better
sell radio, and this book should be given by your sales reps to potential customers. The
book will advocate and ______ your customers on buying radio, and because these books
are given to them by your now-trained radio sales reps that were trained by Roy, youll
increase your sales conversion rate.

And so we mailed that out. We had 1,100 stations that participated. We launched
the book to number one on the Wall Street Journal, number three on the New York Times,
had over a million radio ads played nationwide. We leveraged his platform to be able to
generate those sales.
 Another example would be I have a clienthis name is Ivan Misner. He owns a
company called BNI, Business Network International. Its the worlds largest business
referral organization. And in BNI what they do is its a weekly chapter meeting, and a
chapter of New York or LA are basically the same. They allow one person per industry per
chapter, and essentially what they do is they have a forced referral system. So every week
they pick two members that all of the other chapters must go out and get warm or hot
leads for.

BNI is also a franchised organization, and so what we didand we did this with
two books, Masters of Networking and then Master of Success, is we had the franchise
owners contribute a chapter to the book, Masters of Networking, and then we did a
membership drive by doing the first time 56 book signings in 56 different stores
nationwide at the same time on the same day. We burned every Guinness World Record
and some other things, and we again launched the booknumber one Wall Street
Journal, number two New York Times, so on and so forth. And then when we

James Altucher: How did you know which stores to focus on?

Michael Drew: Well, heres the thing. There are some obvious ones. Barnes & Noble,
Books-a-Million, and at the time when we did that book Borders was still a relevant
retailer. What you know definitively is that the major chains all report to the New York
TimesBarnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Borders did, Amazon, Hudsons. So theres very
clear national chains that report. The chains that they rotate or the retailers that they
rotate for counting are the independent stores. One of the things that most people dont
realize is that, well, theres probably 800 stores that report to the New York Times each
and every week. Theyre only counting 50 to 75 of their sales every week and theyre
rotating which retailers theyre counting the sales from because they dont want you to go
into the independents to be able to game the system essentially.

So what I do with Roy and with Ivan and beyond is make sure that were leveraging
the big boys, which in some ways isnt as fun; in other ways it makes it easier because we
know that theyre reporting. We leverage the big boy reporters in driving the traffic and
sales to those stores, and then the independents come in. We do have independent stores
that we work with like 800-CEO-READ and Tattered Cover and BookPeople and others,
but we primarily focus on the big retailers.

Now its truth that requires having a relationship at the corporate office with those
retailers, which I do, because they know that my clients are genuinely generating sales. As
you can imagine, having the information and knowledge that I do it would be very easy for
someone to come in and game the system and literally buy their way onto the bestsellers
list, which people have done in the past. But for me and my clients, what II wont allow
my clients to do that. We are genuinely leveraging their existing platform to sell those
books and driving those sales through the retailers. Were simplywere not breaking the
rules. Were simply playing the game better than anyone else because of my relationships
and understanding of how to leverage ____ platform to pre-sell books so that we can have
that Harry Potter effect.

Claudia Altucher: Thats very interesting, and I have a question, Michael. There was
recentlyI dont know; you probably werent involved on this. But there was that book
America: Imagine a World Without It, and I think it released together with a movie, and it
was a little bit of a sensation throughout the United States. And the book made all the
lists except for the New York Times bestseller to the point where people started writing
articles on the Huffington Post and other media outlets saying, Hey, whats happening
here? How is this possible? And eventually the book did make it to the list on the New
York Times bestseller. And I was wondering, what are your thoughts on that? What do
you think happened?

Michael Drew: Well, theres politics thats involved at the New York Times. At the end of
the day you have someone that is the editorial director of the book portion of the
newspaper that approves the bestsellers list. So they go through and apply their system,
but dont be fooled. There is politics at the New York Times. In fact I worked on a book
by a Christian pastor a number of years ago, and we made number one on USA Today,
number one on Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times literally stated to us, We
dont allow religious books on our bestsellers lists so we are not going to include it on our
list, right?

Claudia Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: Its why you also dont see, say, the Bible on the bestseller list either. I
guarantee you year in and year out the Bible sells hands-down far more books than any
other book. It just does. Regardless of what your religious persuasion is, that is fact. But
the New York Times is a political list. Its a political decision.

James Altucher: So wait. Were you able to get that pastor on the list? Were you
able to kind of fight it?

Michael Drew: I fought and fought and I was able to ultimately get them to not allow us at
number one but get us at number two.

James Altucher: Oh, okay, and on the nonfiction or on the advice list?

Michael Drew: On the nonfiction list.

James Altucher: Great. Soso

Michael Drew: But note, we had the sales to be number one. We had more than triple the
number of sales for six weeks before they finally let it on the list, and it was a political fight
that I had to put my own reputation on the line for.

James Altucher: So heres a question, and I know this changes week by week, but
whats the minimum number of sales usuallylike lets say mid-March or mid-September,
whats the minimum number of sales to get on either the nonfiction list or the fiction list
for any of these lists?

Michael Drew: Well, you know, thats an interesting question because the New York Times
just changed their list yesterday. They added eight new monthly lists so that they could
bisect out diet and health and other things into smaller lists. So itll be interesting to see
what those new numbers are going to be as they change. September, December, and
January traditionally speaking are always verythe sales numbers are very high. Typically
speaking if you want to make the New York Times list in September youre gonna need to
have 6,500 to 8,500 sales to have a shot at the bottom of the list. Typically speaking with
my clients were aiming for 10,000 sales a week so that we can get the middle of the list.

Now I dont run campaigns after Thanksgiving, US Thanksgiving, because sales

volumes after US Thanksgiving become very hectic. I have had clients who launched a
book after Thanksgiving and hit number one with 15,000 sales. Ive had clients who sold
30,000 books and hit number 15 on the list or 20 on the list, at the very bottom of the list
because of the sales volume. So what I can tell you is that sales volumes between
Thanksgiving and New Years can be incredibly hectic, and in terms of the bottom of the
list I wouldnt even want to predict what those numbers are. Theres not a historical week
after Thanksgiving thats normally high or low as it pertains to book sales. Ive been
following this now for 17 years and there is literally no pattern in that timeline. You can
see the total volume of sales are about the same every holiday season, but which weeks are
gonna be high or low are not clear.

Now that being said, come New Years, the first two weeks after the first of the
years the sales volumes are always high and are usually going to be in the 7,500 to 10,000
book range to make the bottom of the list.

James Altucher: Wow.

Claudia Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: The rest of the year the numbers were looking at areon the low end are
4,500 or more. Now yes, it is possible in any given week that 1,000 or 1,500 sales could get
you the very, very bottom of the list, but that is a crapshoot that if you are aiming for
youre really aiming for hope at that point.

James Altucher: So another thing that we havent discussed but seems to be

important is what percentage of your books are selling where, because I know for instance
we sold enough books to be on the New York Times list at least two different weeks, but
because most of our sales were on Amazon I think that kind of hurt us rather than helped
us.

Michael Drew: Yeah, yeah. It was a balance. And again, the New York Times is different
than USA Today. At USA Today you have enough reporting channels; they dont weight
the retailers. But at the New York Times they do. So what theyre looking atand this
changes from one year to the next, but theyre looking at the total volume of sales. So if
you have a pie of 100 percent and Amazon is the number one retailer and they represent 17
percent of all sales last year, and the number two retailer is Barnes & Noble and they
represented 12 percent, theyre expecting that your sales at Amazon are roughly 30
percent, give or take, more than Barnes & Noble. Now if you have Barnes & Noble coming
in at 1,000 sales and Amazon coming in at 750, that also would raise a red flag at the New
York Times because thats not normal either, right? Theyre weighting is based upon the
volume of salesbased on the overall pie. So Amazon should be the biggest, should be
roughly 30 percent more thanat least for this year roughly 30 percent more than Barnes
& Noble. Barnes & Noble is about 25 percent bigger than the next retailer, which is again
about 10 percent bigger than the next, and so on and so forth.

So theyre looking at volume of sales. Theyre looking at the number of reporting

channels. Theyre looking at the weight of those reporting channels. Theyre also
although this is inefficient, theyre also looking at the number of independent stores as
well. The New York Times wants to see that you have a strong presence at the
independents as a whole. Now it may not be that any one independent sells particularly
well, but if you look at the independents as a chain, one broad chain, then you would look
at it as, hey, it needs to be roughly two-thirds, three-fourths of what Barnes & Noble
would be selling.

James Altucher: And so how important are these lists, do you think? Like, why do
you have clients who want to be on these lists? Like, what benefit is it, other than just
pure ego?

Michael Drew: Well, egos a big part of it. My mentor and first bestselling author Roy H.
Williams would say if you eliminate fear as a motivationso in business, why would you
do something positive like a bestseller campaign? Your motivations are one of three
things: fame, fortune, or making a difference, or some combination of the three. Most of
my clientsnot all, but most of my clients fall either into the fame or the fortune
category. Theyre doing it for a financial benefitessentially theyre using the book as a
business excuse to launch a new product or a new service or to be able to separate
themselves in their category from their competitorsor theyre doing it for ego. I would
say that the majority of my clients are doing it for a business reason. Id probably say 60
percent of them are for financial gain, 30 percent are for ego, and the rest are for genuinely
making a difference. But that would be the broad reason why someone would want to do
it.
 Now what Ill tell you isand this is a dirty little secretthe benefit of doing a
bestseller campaign isnt in appearing on the list. There is benefit there. Im not saying
that thats not true, and if you live outside of North America there is still a huge intrinsic
value of being a New York Times bestseller. And when I started in this industry as a
publisher 17 years ago, being a New York Times bestseller was huge. Betweenjust to give
you some context, between 1880 to 1980 the average number of books published each year
was 40,000 unique titles. Last year there were 1,076,000 books published.

Claudia Altucher: Wow.

Michael Drew: That means there were more books published last year than there were
books published between 1950 to 1980.

Claudia Altucher: Jesus.

James Altucher: Is that because of self-publishing?

Michael Drew: It is. Its because of self-publishing. Its because of digital publishing. The
world is now our oyster because of technology. Whats interesting isand the thing with
what happened in 1980 was personal word processing. We could now start writing books
on a word processor versus having to handwrite them out, and that made a big difference
in terms of the number of people who thought they could write a book.

So what happens with the bestseller list is as weveas more books have been
published, the focus has gone from the value of the content of the book to the authors
ability to market the book. The average retail bookstore only carries 100,000 unique titles.
Of those 100,000 unique titles, between 70 to 80 percent are what we call backless titles,
which are your perennials, your classics, and last years bestsellers. What that means is of
the 1,076,000 books published last year, only 20,000 to 30,000 of them made it onto a
retail bookstore shelf. And while its true digital publishing is increasing in terms of the
number of sales they have each year, if you took all books sold through an electronic
format, be that a printed book like a hardback book or paperback book sold through
Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com or a book sold through Kindle or iPad or Nook or
Kobo, they only represented 36 percent of all books sold last year. That means that those
brick and mortar stores as a whole still sell more books today than all of the electronically-
sold books combined.

And so what you have in this game, if youd like to look at it that way, is the need
to be able to get that retail shelf space. Now I predict in the next five years that that will
reverse and well sell more books electronically and online, but today the name of the
game is still that brick and mortar distribution.

So what youre looking at is the need to be able to get your book onto the retail
bookstore shelf and play with a publisher in a way that will maximize the distribution of
your book. And what publishersbecause theres so much competition for so little shelf
space, what publishers are looking for is how they can best sell their books to the buyers at
Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million and Hudsons and beyond. And note, Barnes &
Noble has 12 buyers. They have 12 people that make the decision on how many copies of
different books theyre going to carry on their shelf. And so you have a situation where
the buyers at Barnes & Noble, they dont read the books. They only care about how many
copies of the book theyre going to sell. So what theyre looking at is past sales history,
and theyre looking at the marketing of the bookcover and other things make a big
difference there. But literally the ability to market the book isin the book marketing
and publishing games is the most important thing, the ability to drive traffic into stores to
sell the book.

Claudia Altucher: Right.

James Altucher: Michael, Im so grateful you were able to kind of shed so much light
on the publishing industry. This isyou know, Ive written 13 books. This is more
information in a short period of time than Ive ever had before on the mechanics of
publishing, the bestseller lists, and all aspects of the industry, including kind of the
numbers you just shared of how many books are in a bookstore, how many books were
published last year, and so on. You shouldare you writing a book on publishing?

Michael Drew: You know what? Theres not a huge demand for a book on publishing. I
do have a whitepaper that Ive written titled How to Publish a Bestselling Book that goes
into a lot of the numbers that weve gone through here plus a lot of the machinations of
how publishing actually mechanically works and how to play within publishing. So we do
have that as a whitepaper.

James Altucher: So where canhow can we help you? Where can people go to find
you? What would you like people to look at? Share some info.

Michael Drew: Cool. So the marketing agency that I own is called Promote a Book, and so
our website is that easy; its PromoteABook.com. And we have a blog, and our blog sheds
quite a bit of information on the reality of publishing and how to properly and successfully
publish and promote your book, and our blog is at BeneathTheCover.com. And we have a
newsletter that we call the Midweek Missive. If you sign up for that on
BeneathTheCover.com we give as a thank-you the How to Publish a Bestselling Book
whitepaper.

James Altucher: Thats great.

Claudia Altucher: Im gonna sign up right away.

James Altucher: Yeah.

Michael Drew: Well, thank you.

James Altucher: And anything else you want to kind of get people to or promote?

Michael Drew: Well, [laughter] you know, the big thing is reallyyou know, I own the
marketing agency. As a side note, and perhaps we could have this as a conversation in the
future, Roy Williams and I have been researchers or marketing and cultural movements,
and we have done seminal research on the swing of society from one ideology to another,
from the ideology every 40 years of me to an ideology of we, and back from we to me, and
what that means both culturally and from a business standpoint. If youre interested or if
your listeners are interested we have more information on that over at
PendulumInAction.com. Ive been invited to speak at Harvard three times on that specific
subject. So if youre interested in understanding cultural swings orand how that applies
to marketing and how to have a competitive advantage, go visit PendulumInAction.com.

James Altucher: Well, okay, so last quick question, and yes or no. Are we inor not
yes or no, but are we in a me or a we? Period.
Michael Drew: Well, if you want a short answer the answer is we. We shifted in 2003 from
a me into a we. We will be in this we cycle until 2043. Right now we are on the upswing of
the we. We are starting to take we too far, and there are some dangerous cultural things
with that. From a business standpoint what that means is we are heading into 20-year
micro-cycle of witch hunts. In business what we need to do is replace our unique selling
proposition with a statement of what we stand against. And by 2033 well have taken we
so far that the youth of society will reject taking we too far and will become the gravity
that pulls us from we back into me.

James Altucher: Well, this is all extremely fascinating, Michael. Thanks for joining
us on Ask Altucher.

Claudia Altucher: Thank you.

James Altucher: A lot of incredibly useful information that I know people will make
use of. And good luck with everything.

Michael Drew: Thanks, I really appreciate it. I look forward to chatting with you soon.

James Altucher: Thanks, Michael.

 I NTERVIEW W ITH T UCKER M AX

James Altucher: Okay, so, Tucker, welcome back. This is also the first time not
only are you the first repeat guest, this is the first I'm having having back-to-back episodes
with a guy.

Tucker Max: Excellent.

James Altucher: So I wanna talk about totally different subject. Last episode we
talked about fatherhood, and you were, like, somehow a world's expert on having a baby.
And now I wanna talk about the book publishing business because you, more than just
about anybody I know, know more about book publishing. I'm just gonna tell a little
story.

So I was at Tim Ferriss' launch. He had this dinner launch for The 4-Hour Chef, and I was
talking to him just in general about how I wanted to kind of professionally I didn't
wanna just self-publish the normal way. I wanted to professionally self-publish so that
almost as if I was pouring my own publishing company. And Tim yells out to someone,
"Hey, e-mail Tucker's post on this to James." So I got the post, and I already knew you
from e-mails, but then Claudia and I flew down to Austin, hung out with you and really
kinda mapped out the process that became Choose Yourself. So I wrote it's a little
different than so now you're doing a business Book in a Box, which is a little bit different
than what we did 'cause I wrote Choose Yourself, but describe Book in a Box, and you just
started this and it's you just told me offline, since you started it in August, it's made
$360,000 _____.

Tucker Max: No, no, no, no, no. Actually more. So we did $200,000 the first two
months. We probably did that LinkedIn post is gonna make us anywhere between
$250,000 and $400,000 in revenue. So we're gonna be over $500,000 for the year the first
six months.

James Altucher: So I don't know my math. It's, like, four months.

Tucker Max: Six just call it six months.

James Altucher: So describe the business and then let's talk and also, just in
general, I wanna talk about publishing with you, but discuss this business first. What is
this business?

Tucker Max: All right. So Book in a Box is very simple. It is essentially it's kind of a
new way to write a book. For ten years, I've met people who have come up to me, "Oh,
you're an author. I have a great idea for a book." I'm sure you hear this all the time, right?

James Altucher: Yeah.

Tucker Max: Everyone's like and then they usually

James Altucher: Everybody wants to co-author or, you know, it's those are the only
thing like I have nothing else to do with my time.

Tucker Max: Right. Let me coast off your success for my book. No, but people always
ask me how do I become an author? How do I get a book? How do I get published, right?
And so and then I start usually explaining the process and their, like, eyes glaze over
'cause no one wants to do the work. Everyone wants a book but no one wants to do any of
the work, right.

James Altucher: And it's hard work. Like, sitting you know, slouched over a
computer for, let's call it, a year is not fun is not a fun activity. It's not a you know,
we're used to hunting for food. We're not used to sitting over a computer, and you get
that fight or flight, but you can't fight or flight; you're just sitting in front of a computer.

Tucker Max: It's a very unusual emotional and sort of neurological process, right. It's
very specific and it's a very specific skill, and some people are very good at it, but most
people aren't.

James Altucher: And on that point, how many New York Times bestsellers do you
have?

Tucker Max: Three.

James Altucher: And how many book copies overall?

Tucker Max: Three million.

James Altucher: Okay, so you know what you're talking about.

Tucker Max: Right. I have some idea what it means to be a good writer. The only three
people to ever have three books on the New York Times bestseller list at one time,
nonfiction, are me, Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis.

James Altucher: At the same time.

Tucker Max: At the same time. Three books at the same time on the list. Only three of
us. And so right. I have an idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to writing, and
so anyway, like, it's funny. I never define myself as a writer, but when people ask me that
question how do I you know, how do I get a book, then I always, like I kinda get a little
snobby and elitish. Well, you have to write it and you have to do this and you have to do
that and it's, like, the work and the hard work and the process, and that's really the
cultural narrative. If you look at anything at all about books or writing books or
publishing, it's like everyone emphasizes how hard it has to be. First off, because it is a
hard process. But then, I think there's a narrative in sort of publishing in the publishing
sort of informational system or the publishing media that, like, the more you suffer, the
more valid your art is or whatever, which of course is total bullshit, but whatever.

James Altucher: And by the way, book writing doesn't have to be art. I would say
there's also only a handful of writers who are artistically writing.

Tucker Max: I don't really make the distinction. I think if you're expressing yourself and
create a medium, it's art.

James Altucher: But a lotta people wanna kind of pass on information but they
might not have had the experience writing, and so they're good at passing on the
information but it might not be like, you might not _____ I just read the most beautiful
prose or ____.

Tucker Max: But why is that not art? I mean, like, you know, listen. David Foster
Wallace maybe is a much better a much more beautiful sentence crafter than I am, but
why is his stuff art and mine isn't? Or just for example?
James Altucher: I would actually say the reverse, but that's another discussion.

Tucker Max: Right. I think it's all art. Some of it is maybe good art or bad art or some of
it is high art or whatever. I know what you're saying, though. So most people don't read
for art. They read for information, right. But anyway, so I used to kind of give people the
answer, "Oh, you've gotta put in the work," and whatever. And that's the narrative is that,
like, this is a hard process, right. And I think a lot of writers say that because first off, they
like their identity. They like the exclusivity of being a writer, right, that it's hard to get a
book deal, it's hard to get anyone to buy your book. It's a hard thing to do, so if I'm in the
club, it makes me better than other people. There's really a snobby sort of elitism to it.
And I fully fell in that camp for years, right. And about, I don't know, six months ago, or a
little bit more, eight months, I was at an entrepreneur dinner in New York, the LDV sort
of series, and

James Altucher: What's LDV?

Tucker Max: I forget what it stands for. Evan Nisselson runs it. It's like a sort of like
an invite-only I should introduce you to Evan. I can't believe I haven't. I'm kind of
embarrassed. I know. You two would love each other. He's, like, a, you know, a mentor,
500 start-ups, he has his own VC or angel fund. He's, you know, exited a bunch of
companies. He's a really cool dude. He's sort of like, maybe not quite, but like the Ron
Conway of New York, right. Not quite that big, but a connector. Very much of that type
of person. And so I forget how I met him, but he invited me to one of the dinners, and at
the dinner, you know, he introduced me as a publishing guy, sort of like what you did.
And so one of the female entrepreneurs his dinners are really cool too 'cause they're
always 50/50 split 50 percent women, 50 percent men. And so one of the women came
up to me after the, like, the little intros. She's, like, "Hey, I wanna write a book. You
know, can you help me?" I'm, like, "Yeah, of course." And so, like, long, long story short,
she basically like, she doesn't have the time to write a book, and she kinda tried to figure
out the self-publishing and the traditional publishing process and she's, like, they're both
ridiculously complex and nonsensical and this is a mess.

James Altucher: Right. Unless you put in like with self-publishing, this is why I
was this is why I originally came to that question when we went down to Austin. To
professionally self-publish is 1,000 percent different than self-publishing and 1,000 percent
different than traditional publishing. And very few people have done it like, I've done it.
Like, I don't know other people who have ____.

Tucker Max: There are a few others, but you're one of the shining examples of
professional self-publishing.

James Altucher: I would say I don't know if you call it this but, like, with Sloppy
Seconds, your book, was that sort of a high-end professional self-publishing.

Tucker Max: A hybrid. Yeah, sort of a hybrid, yeah. Well, I mean, like, you know, like
well, we can talk about my publishing company and what I did with Simon a little bit
later, but so basically, like, she wanted she's smart, she had good ideas, and she wanted
a book, but she didn't wanna go through the normal book process, right. And so, of
course, you know, I start I give her my little canned speech about, "Well, writing, you
gotta sit down and do the work," and blah, blah, blah, and she rolls her eyes at me, right.
Like, not like her eyes didn't glaze over like, you know, like she wasn't listening. She
straight up rolled her eyes at me.

James Altucher: So she pushed back.

Tucker Max: Right. She's like

James Altucher: And she called you on it.

Tucker Max: She did, and she goes I'll never forget it. She's, like, "I'm an entrepreneur.
You're an entrepreneur, right." And I'm, like, "Yeah, of course." She's, like, "Well, in my
role, or in my job, I solve problems. That's what makes me an entrepreneur. Can you
solve my problem or not?" I was, like

James Altucher: So that's a great way to put it 'cause so entrepreneurs solve

problems, but they also do it with an unfair advantage. So she couldn't write her book
with an unfair advantage 'cause she wasn't a writer.

Tucker Max: Right. So actually, I think her exact quote was, "Can you solve my problem
or just lecture me about hard work?" And I was, like, ______, like well, the funny thing
is 'cause she's right. Like, this woman is extraordinarily her name's Melissa Gonzalez.
She runs, like, a pop-up retail consultant company, Lion'esque Group or something. Very
successful. She's, like, won Clio Awards and, like, made all this money and done all this
crazy cool stuff, right. And so she's a baller, right. She's not just some schmoe. And so,
like, I was, like, "All right, fuck." So, like, I was kinda embarrassed at the time, and so I
couldn't really you can't think when you're embarrassed. So, like, I went home, and a
couple weeks, like, I couldn't get past, like, how do I get her a book without her writing it.
And then eventually it dawned on me. I was, like, "Well, fuck, what if I just interview her?
What if she just talks her idea out? That doesn't take long at all." And the reason I knew
this doesn't take long well, I can't talk about who it was, but I was supposed to do, like, a
I was supposed to be a co-writer on the memoir of a really, really big celebrity. I'll tell
you who off air, but I actually signed an NDA. I really 'cause I got paid and they didn't
do the book, and I really truthfully can't say or they'll come take all my money. They cut
me a big check, so I don't wanna do that.

So I researched this a lot. Like, I talked to Neil Strauss about this 'cause he's kind of done,
like, all the big ones in that space, and you can usually get someone's full life story no
more than 40 hours, usually 20 hours, right. And so you're talking about a nonfiction
book half that time, maybe ten hours. I mean, if you're talking

James Altucher: So what people need to know, then, is the James Altucher needs to
know the exact questions so it's 20 hours instead of 40.

Tucker Max: Exactly. So that's why so what I thought was, all right, let me outline her
book. Let's figure out, like, let me get her idea clear, what she wants to say very clear,
which is basically an outline for the interview, and then interview her over the course of,
like, eight to ten hours, right. And usually normal talking, people can, with a good outline
and good James Altucher, can get about 8,000 words an hour. So ten hours is 80,000
words. That's way bigger than her book needs to be, right. So it's more than enough time.
So I called her up and I'm, like, "Look. What if I told you we can take you from your idea
all the way through to professionally published finished book on Amazon, everything
done, in twelve hours of your time?" She's, like, "Are you kidding? Done." And we like,
I forget what we charged her. It was less than what we're charging now, but not much
less, maybe like $10,000 or something. And said, all right, like, let's do it.
James Altucher: And just to be clear, this is important to her because it's one thing if
you hand your business card out at a dinner; it's another thing if you hand somebody a
book with all your curated life in the book. Like, this is me.

Tucker Max: Right. Well, so the process I'm about to outline, you can do for really
cheap. We just charged her a lot because she has a lot of money and no time, right, so
that's why she's paying us.

James Altucher: To be fair, like, I know the designer you use. We still use her for
books.

Tucker Max: She's amazing.

James Altucher: I know the editors. I know your whole team, so it's you provide
value where there's value.

Tucker Max: Well, the fact what you're paying for with us is our expertise and the fact
that you only have to spend twelve hours on it. Like, you're paying for time, right. Time
and expertise. So what we did is, like, we did the outline, came out really good, and then
did the interviews and recorded the interviews, sent the interviews to, like, SpeechPad to
get transcribed, right, which is, like, $1.00 a minute. Transcribed all of them. It was, I
think maybe a 60,000-word manuscript when we were done. And of course, if you've ever
seen a transcribed audio recording, it's gibberish. You can't read it. Like, it's a totally
different thing. All these ums and uhs and likes and thoughts go different places that
when you listen to make total sense don't make sense on the page.

So we took that 60,000-word manuscript, handed it to an editor friend of ours. She went
through it, basically same words, same ideas, same concepts, just turned it into book
prose, right. So she didn't rewrite it, she didn't write it. It's Melissa's ideas and her words
and her text, and she's got the outline so she knows exactly what she's trying to say. She
just makes the sentences read well then the paragraphs and then the pages and she's done.
It only took her, like, two days to turn 60,000 words into, like, 45,000 words of finished
manuscript, and it was great. I mean, it was fantastic. It was amazing and Melissa was
super happy. I'm kinda speeding up the process. There were other little things. And then
we did all the other stuff.
James Altucher: Like what other little things?

Tucker Max: Okay, so it took one other round of content edits at the end because we
hadn't refined our outlining process. Now we have our outlining process really tight.
Like, if I showed you it's almost an algorithmic process. Like, you can plug in anyone
smart into our process and they can nail it first step.

James Altucher: What's an example of, like, the things in your outline?

Tucker Max: So we actually have a set of questions that we ask people to get the we
know where they have to get, right, and so we know what questions get most people there.
Some people come in and they're fuckin' sharp and they're smart and they know exactly
what their book is about, they know exactly what they wanna say, so the outline is
essentially just putting shit in order, really simple. Some people come in like, I'm
working on one book now, even though, like, I'm the CEO, part of the rule of our company
so far is that all the employees sort of like in the Marines. Every Marine's first job is to
put lead on target. You've gotta be able to shoot first, then you do your job, logistics or
trucking or infantry, whatever, right. Our company's the same way. Our goal is to create
great books, help people create great books, and so everyone has to work on some part of
the process, regardless of what your job in the company is. You've gotta be good at
outlining or editing, right. And so we all work on books because there's no other better
way to understand the process and to get good at it and to make it really work well. So
I'm working with this one dude

James Altucher: And I think also, just to add, like, as a CEO, like, I have a sign next
to my computer, which Claudia actually had me write, which is "Remove myself from the
equation." So every project I get involved in, my first goal to the end is to remove myself
as much as possible from the equation, which means everybody else has to take up the
different parts of the equation. So it sounds like that's what you're trying to do with
_____.

Tucker Max: Yeah, we're trying to, but we also eat our own dog food. You know, so, like,
I'm writing a book now, how to write a book in twelve hours, which is essentially our
process, and I'm using the Book in a Box process to write the book about the Book in a Box
process, right, which is sorta like
James Altucher: Right, meta. It's like The Comeback on HBO.

Tucker Max: Well, it's like using a lathe to make a lathe, you know, like a machine to
make a machine, right. So anyway, so yeah. So what I was saying is, like

James Altucher: You did some content edits on

Tucker Max: Right. We did content edits because, like, the outlining process really is
the key. If you get the outline right, everything else is really easy. If you screw the outline
up, then sort of like garbage in, garbage out. It becomes shitty later on.

James Altucher: Okay, so then you were saying you were working on a book right
now where this is in the outline.

Tucker Max: Right. Well, this one guy I'm talking to, he's sort of like a real estate
inspirational speaker type, and he actually has really good ideas and he's a really smart
guys. He's just really scatterbrained. He's very dyslexic and he's very he thinks in a very
speech way, not a writer writing way, right. So I have to, like, translate his ideas to a
clear sort of order, right, and put them into not just an order but also a pattern and make
them work in a book. All the content's there, it's just the outline process is very difficult
with him. It's just more time consuming. It's not really that hard. It's just time
consuming, right. And so we what we're doing is developing a pretty clear set of
questions and then that help the person who does the outline 'cause we use almost all
freelancers, right. It's not I am being taken out of the equation, but the process has to be
set really, really well before we can insert freelancers, right.

James Altucher: Like what's an example question you would ask this real estate guy?

Tucker Max: So okay, so it's sort of like what's your book what is your book about?
Who do you envision the audience being? What value do you envision your audience
taking from this? Why do you think they're gonna take this value? Like, things like that,
like very sort of questions that really get to the heart of what is this person saying? How
are they saying it? Who is it for? And, like, what are the really important parts of what
they're saying, right? And so you'd kinda have to look at all the docs to understand, but
it's kind of a pattern, a set of questions we kind of give to our freelancers to ask, right, and
we've learned these over working with, you know, bunches of clients now, which
questions get to the core of it. Another example is like, for instance so we have the same
thing for interviewing, right. So for example, like, we have a couple meta rules. If
someone's being very general, ask them for a specific example. If someone's only giving
specific examples, ask them for what the general rule is or application. There's, like, ten of
those things, right, that really help the sort of interviewing freelancers go through it. And,
James, you wouldn't believe. We have such high quality freelancers. I mean, we've got,
like, people who used to be, like, feature reporters at the Washington Post and, like, it's
actually easy to get super high quality freelancers.

James Altucher: So is that a statement on media in general? Like how the media
landscape has basically shut down or turned upside down?

Tucker Max: No, it's changing a lot, and there's a lot of people what we found is the
freelancers who do really good jobs for us are ones who used to do specific jobs in old
media, and those jobs have changed a lot or gone away because we can pay them really
good. Like, we can take someone, like a Washington the former Washington Post
reporter, and we'll assign I think it's a her actually we'll assign her to a book, and she'll
spend so the outlining is done separately from the interviewing-editing. Interviewing-
editing is one job, freelance job. So what she'll do is she'll spend eight hours on the phone
with someone doing all the interviews and then someone else SpeechPad we actually
don't we use a different service now, but a service transcribes it. She gets a transcript
back and she edits it into a book, right. It really takes her about 20 hours total, right, and
we're paying a good four-figure sum to her. So she's, like, out of her mind excited 'cause
basically three to four effective work days, she's making, you know, $2,000; $3,000; $4,000,
right, and it's, like, amazing for her, and she can do four of those a month, you know, or
even more. You know, like, if she really wants to work hard, she can do ten a month and
she can make a six-figure income from us easily and do it from home and do work she
really likes doing and help people do really cool stuff, you know what I'm saying. So we're
getting really, really high quality freelancers. They're not cheap, but they're not crazy
expensive either. You know, it's not like ghost writing is $40,000 to start for even a
mediocre ghost writer. Someone like Nils Parker is $75,000 now or something as a ghost
writer.

James Altucher: Yeah, and ghost writers don't

Tucker Max: They don't do a good job.

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the same.

Tucker Max: Because they don't have a process. The quality is all over the place. Some
of them are amazing and some are crap.

James Altucher: And I think that was the criticisms in your the comments on your
article on LinkedIn about this. Everyone says, "Well, isn't this a ghost writing service?"
It's totally not. It's the words of the person. But now, here's the question. When you have,
let's say, that final 45,000-word document, do you do any kind of, like, content twists, like
put a at the end of one chapter, tease the next chapter, you know, have any kind of
cliffhangers?

Tucker Max: We have a few things like, we have a pretty good pattern for the
introduction, you know. Like for so we have a different sort of outline structure for
three different types of books. We only do nonfiction. I think we're gonna develop a
process for fiction. I'm actually meeting with a guy in New York when I'm here who I
think is gonna be the dude who's gonna help us develop our fiction process 'cause it's
totally different. But we have three different types. There's sort of how-to advice, right.
That's one type of nonfiction. There's sort of memoir autobiography type. That's another
type of nonfiction book. And then the third type is sort of like argumentation, like
making an argument or, like, raising awareness, right. And they're very different types of
books, and each one has a different outline structure, but, like, each one is, like, okay, like,
an introduction for a how-to book. You'll wanna start with something that grabs the
reader right away, a really interesting first sentence. Then, like, the coolest story from the
book is the first thing. And then, like, after that, you kinda lay out

James Altucher: I see. So you're using your experience, really, in what makes a good
book to basically motivate this outline process. So that's what they're paying

Tucker Max: Oh yes. Like I told you, expertise and time. We're not just they're not
just talking and we turn it into sentences. That's bullshit. You can pay a monkey $500 to
do that. We are taking our expertise in knowing how to structure books and how to
structure ideas
James Altucher: How to structure potentially a bestselling book.

Tucker Max: How to turn ideas into good book structure which then becomes books.
Here's the thing. If your ideas are really stupid, then we can help you get a really well-
structured, really beautifully-designed professional book that has stupid content. If your
content is great, you're gonna have a great book. Top to bottom, it's gonna be an amazing
book. Like, you have great ideas. You now have a great book with Choose Yourself. It's
the same basic process.

James Altucher: Which I just to mention, I wrote mine completely, but

Tucker Max: Of course you did.

James Altucher: I just have to _____.

Tucker Max: No, you didn't use this process. You are the last person that it would make
sense to use this process 'cause you're such a prolific writer. Our process is not for people
who enjoy writing or are good at writing or like writing. It's for people who have ideas
that they wanna turn into books but don't have the time or ability to sit through the
writing process or deal with the publishing process.

James Altucher: But then I did use your designers and editors.

Tucker Max: Yes, you did, and they were amazing.

James Altucher: They were great. And I still use Erin Tyler.

Tucker Max: She's amazing.

James Altucher: She just did the Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth for us, and she
just did Becoming an Idea Machine in 180 Days for Claudia.

Tucker Max: I saw that. It's an amazing cover.

James Altucher: That's a great one.

Tucker Max: It's a beautiful cover.

James Altucher: It's we're gonna frame it. It's a work of art.
Tucker Max: It really is. It's great. She did the she does she doesn't do all we have
kinda two packages, $15,000 and $25,000, and so $15,000's relatively basic. It's for someone
who has a great idea, they know exactly what they want, they just want us to do all the
work. $25,000 is a lot more guidance, more content editing, things like that. Like, it's just
more time, right. And then we do some marketing at the end, basic stuff, nothing really
sophisticated. But yeah, like, I basically I'm taking all the people all the things I know
that you have to do to do a great book and I'm creating a process where almost anyone
can walk through it and do it as a process.

James Altucher: And then you bring it so then you do, obviously, the design. Do
you do audiobooks for them?

Tucker Max: We that's a separate thing. It's a separate service. It's an add-on. Not
many people care about audiobooks, though.

James Altucher: But, you know, for self-help, audiobook is important.

Tucker Max: Yes.

James Altucher: And it adds to on Amazon, on the Amazon page, it adds a level of
professionalism when you see three lines Kindle, paperback, audio.

Tucker Max: Mm-hmm. We do hardcover as well as an add-on.

James Altucher: Who does your hardcover?

Tucker Max: We use Bang Publishing as our printer. Bang in Minnesota. I shouldn't
give all my secrets away, but I don't care. It's fine.

James Altucher: I'm gonna totally use them.

Tucker Max: You should. Like, of course I'm gonna tell you it. No, there's a bunch of
different printers. Most of them charge way too much. A lot of people use Chinese
printers. They're fuckin' terrible. Don't ever use Chinese printers. Even though they're
cheap, they'll fuck you 90 percent of the time. Their idea of quality control in China is not
American idea of quality control. Bang Printing in Minnesota, they are really cheap and
they are actually the best quality, or among they're in the top tier of quality. They're
amazing, they're easy to work with, they're great.

James Altucher: And then so you put it on Amazon and how many books have you
got out there so far?

Tucker Max: Well, we don't use Bang Bang is commercial offset. I think we use
Lightning Source for POD hardcover 'cause they I think they now have POD hardcover.

James Altucher: Okay.

Tucker Max: See, things change so fast in self-publishing, I don't even

James Altucher: And Lightning Source will get you on Amazon, will get you in
Barnes BN.com. Do they get you in bookstores?

Tucker Max: No, it's available to purchase, to order in bookstores. We can't put anyone
in bookstores 'cause we don't have I have a distribution deal with Simon and Schuster,
so an author who has a great book that I actually think is really good, I can push that to
Simon and ask them if they want it, but no one can guarantee you in bookstores except
publishers 'cause publishers are the only ones that have relationships with bookstores.
But honestly, being in a bookstore doesn't really matter that much anymore. I mean,
unless if you're doing big fiction, it matters. If you're doing a few big public releases, it
matters. The reality is the book landscape is totally changed.

James Altucher: What percentage is Amazon right now for everything? Kindle,
paperback and

Tucker Max: You mean digital or just Amazon?

James Altucher: Everything for books.

Tucker Max: It's hard to know 'cause Amazon doesn't release their numbers, right. But
from what most people can tell, it's anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of book sales,
depending on the book.

James Altucher: And for, like, what categories would you say it reaches, like, 80 or
90 percent?
Tucker Max: Oh, genre fiction. It's huge.

James Altucher: So if you're writing a genre novel, who cares about bookstores?

Tucker Max: If you're writing genre fiction, unless you're one of the big, big names in
genre fiction, you basically are selling everything on Kindle or iBooks. Like, the vampire
novels, like you know Sean Platt. He's a good buddy of mine. So Sean, I don't think he's

James Altucher: He ____ self-publishing.

Tucker Max: I don't think any of his books are yeah, write, publish, repeat, but it's
more about novelist stuff, and it's much more, like, his polemic on if you care about the
politics of publishing, it's a great book. If you're just someone who wants a book, it's not
what you should read at all. It's a very different sort of thing. All genre fiction almost is
it's Amazon is dominating it because most people genre fiction, for the most part, is
disposable. Like, it's, like, pulpy, you know. I don't mean that as an insult; it's just people
if you read, like, romance novels, you read 60 a year. You don't read two a year, right.
Women and

James Altucher: Right. So you're not going to the bookstore, and also with the
Kindle, nobody knows on the subway what you're reading.

Tucker Max: Well, right. So, listen, genre fiction still sells in physical copies, make no
mistake about it, especially urban genre fiction. So, like, stuff written for, like, black
people sells huge, huge.

James Altucher: In bookstores.

Tucker Max: Yes. Bookstores and, like, bodegas. You walk around New York City, you
can see, you know, like I mean, those actually still sell really, really well, but there's a big
basically the younger the genre fiction aims towards, the sort of the more dominant
Kindle is, but even things like romance fiction romance novels are becoming dominant
on digital because they're so much cheaper, it's so much easier to deal with, they're
disposable, it's so much more it's like it is just a better experience top to bottom,
especially if you use fiction as sort of a primary form of entertainment, and there aren't a
lot of people in America that do it, at least compared to TV, but there's still tens of
millions. It's not like some little tiny niche, you know.

James Altucher: Yeah, like just some numbers, I dont know them. Like, how many
books were published in the last year?

Tucker Max: So no one really knows.

James Altucher: How many ISBN numbers were issued?

Tucker Max: Oh, that's a whole separate thing. That's actually a really good question.
I'm not exactly if you told me this, I could have looked it up and found it before the
podcast. I know, like, three years ago or something like that, there were basically, like,
50,000 books that came out of major publishers, like the big at the time, big six or
whatever. There are about 50 those and then, like, Perseus and some of the other really
big ones. There were about 50,000 that would come out of what we would call a major
publisher. There were about 500,000 that were self-published, and that includes, you
know, the goofy computer-generated books and all the other nonsense. So it was about a
10X difference. I think both numbers have gone up substantially in the last three years. I
think like, it depends what your definition of mainstream publishers are, but that
number is almost certainly in the six figures now. I think it might even be, like,
substantially in the six figures, and the self-publishing is almost certainly in the millions
now. But you have to remember, like, 80 percent of the self-published stuff, like, sells less
than five copies or something. You know, it's not it's, like, just either kooky person stuff
or there's a lot of companies that do, like, these computer-generated books and, like, they
sell 20 copies and they don't care or whatever. It's, like, those numbers are juiced in a way
that's sorta weird.

James Altucher: Yeah, it's kinda funny, actually. Like, I'm starting to see like, I saw
this with Choose Yourself and The Power of No that Claudia and I wrote together

Tucker Max: Summaries.

James Altucher: Right away, somebody will come out with yeah, a summary, a
weird summary that has nothing to do with anything.
Tucker Max: No. Right. Because if they can sell, you know, ten whatever, 20 copies a
month of people mistakenly buying that instead of Choose Yourself, that's, like, whatever,
$100 for them. And if they can have 100 of those, then they're making, whatever, $10,000 a
month, and then they're gonna write some scammy blog post. I mean, these are basically
scammers. They're trying to scam the system, and I think Amazon if you bet against
Amazon in the long run, you're almost certainly gonna lose. The scammers are betting
against Amazon.

James Altucher: No, I visited Amazon, and they're very

Tucker Max: They have their shit together.

James Altucher: They're on top of it, yeah.

Tucker Max: Right. So you can make short-term money doing that. It's not a good
long-term strategy. I don't pay any attention to it. I don't think it's gonna work. There
are some publishers, like I know I talked to this one publisher, brand new, they're I
probably shouldn't even talk about where they are, but they are not algorithmically
publishing books. What he's done is he's almost done the Book in a Box model, like what
I have, except the reverse. Like, we charge only for services and expertise and time, right.
We you know, if you come to us, you it's your book. You own it, you get all the
royalties, if it becomes a Hollywood movie, it's yours. Like, it's your thing. We're just
doing you a service, right. He goes the other way around. He pays content like, writers
to create content for him. He has basically a team of dudes that algorithmically figure out,
okay, what's really hot in cookbooks. Okay, paleo and gluten free and these so let's turn
out, like, six different cookbooks that are in these little mini verticals, and he actually does
pretty good content. Like, he hires real photographers, real writers, they do good stuff,
and those things but it's not like an author. It's like the publishing company.

James Altucher: But that motto works too. Like, you know, Steve Scott.

Tucker Max: Of course. He was on your podcast.

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah. He's kinda made a specialty of the habit space. He
writes a book every three weeks, and the guy makes, like, a decent living.
Tucker Max: Yeah. He does pretty well. This guy's company's doing really well. He
wants us to do he wants to get in the celebrity memoir space and help build sort of
empires around celebrities and sort of disposable content, and I think we're gonna start
doing books we may start doing books with his company. We're gonna do the actual
book with the celebrity 'cause he doesn't want a dog shit book. He wants a real book with
a real memoir with a celeb.

James Altucher: I see. So he'll find the celebrity, he'll, like, buy the rights to the
celebrity's book story and then hire you.

Tucker Max: Right, right. The celebrity will commit to 40 hours on the phone. We will
it'll be our process, our sort of our ____.

James Altucher: That's a smart idea for both sides for all three sides, it's a smart
idea.

Tucker Max: Yeah, it's smart for all three sides. That's exactly right. I think it can work
really well.

James Altucher: So how will you do it with fiction? Like, will you kinda take a very
stand like, let's say it's genre fiction. Will you take a very standard story structure and
then apply it to someone's ideas or life or

Tucker Max: So the long-term not long it's not really that long-term.

James Altucher: Reminds me a little, by the way, of James Frey's strategy from a
couple years ago. He was kind of

Tucker Max: He's still doing it.

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah.

Tucker Max: He's pumping out he's basically taking James James Patterson, James
Frey both basically have content studios, right. And they're essentially trying to almost
like what movie studios are to movies, they are trying to do to books and to fiction, right.
And that can like, the sort of genius working with a team of copywriters, essentially is
what they are, that can absolutely work. We're doing the opposite, right. We are
providing an algorithm a structure a platform so that anyone can essentially write a
book without having to go through all the unnecessary pain points. So all you my goal is
to create a platform so that all you have to do is have great ideas and you can turn them
into books without having you don't have to learn to write. You dont have to find time
to write. You don't have to deal with the publishing process. You don't have to, like, you
know, design the cover. You don't have to deal with Amazon. We do all the shitty stuff.
All you have to do is have great ideas, whether they're story ideas for fiction or whether
they're whatever, self-help ideas for nonfiction or whatever nonfiction you do. Anything
like that, we are sort of it's books as a process, you know.

James Altucher: So let's say someone wants to come to you prepared. So they you
know, let's say they have some skills as a writer, but they're running a business so they
need the book out but they just don't have the time 'cause it takes a long time and
dedication.

Tucker Max: But the book is a legion for their business, which is very popular. We have
a ton of those clients.

James Altucher: So what kind of skills even skills as a writer should someone
ideally bring to the table _____?

Tucker Max: None. They don't need any.

James Altucher: So they don't need any of those. Even outline abilities.

Tucker Max: No. No. Because, I mean, like, if you have it, great. It'll probably make the
process faster. You don't need it. That's the whole point of our process. I mean, think
about like, think about how ridiculous it would be if Uber made you drive the car. It's
like, why the hell call Uber, right. It's ridiculous if we make people do part of the work.
Like, that doesn't make sense. That's why you're paying us, right. And so

James Altucher: I wonder how you can apply it to other things too 'cause, like, you
figure so there's books, there's nonfiction books and you divide it out into three
categories. And there's fiction, screenplays
Tucker Max: You're getting you're killing me, dude. You're gonna give away our
business model. Right, no, that's exactly you're totally right. Obviously, like, you're too
smart to for you not to understand this. Once we nail nonfiction, we wanna do fiction.
Once we do fiction, we wanna try and see what other things this works for. I think it can
work for screenplays. I think it can work for TV shows. I think it can work for speeches. I
think it can work for pitch decks, you know, like Excel-type, you know, presentations,
startup pitch decks. Anything like that, I think it can absolutely work for. In fact, I think
it can work for this is a little bit crazy, but I think it can work for essentially any creative
endeavor painting, music, whatever because if you think about it, creating like,
becoming a painter involves, like, this fuckin' difficult process of learning all the skills
involved, right. And, like, what if you could somehow eliminate all of the all of the pain
points of learning those skills and you could just transfer sort of your the image in your
head to the page somehow, right. Like, how does that work? What does that look like?
And clearly that's years away from what we're doing.

James Altucher: You know, it's funny. It reminds me, actually, I ran into someone
who was doing something slightly different, but this person was a professional forger, so
she would they would take a photograph, like a nice photograph, they would blow it up
and then put it on a canvas and or print it onto a canvas and then use oil paints to paint
over the photograph and then people would sell would buy the paintings for, like, tens
of thousands of dollars because no one would think to scrape the paint off to see that
there was a photograph underneath.

Tucker Max: Yeah, right. Exactly. No, no, no, exactly.

James Altucher: So it wouldn't be quite like that, but it just reminds me of that.

Tucker Max: Yeah, it's something like that. Like, I'm not sure what that would look like,
right, because I'm focused on books right now, but my real mission is I think it can be way
easier for people to create all sorts of different, whatever you wanna call it, art, creative
products. Even if you don't wanna call a nonfiction book a piece of art, at the very least,
it's a creative product, right. And I think that it would be really cool if people could put
their take their ideas and effectuate them. If you can reduce the obstacles to that, then
that adds a lot of value to the world.
James Altucher: See, what I like about this business is and this is typical of
businesses that I like is that you actually should never raise money, for instance, for this
business.

Tucker Max: We're not.

James Altucher: Because why be obligated

Tucker Max: We're already super _____.

James Altucher: Yeah, yeah. And also there's nothing you need to spend the money
on. Like, you're just gonna grow you could hire as you grow and fire as you not grow or
whatever.

Tucker Max: WE have no employees right now. It's me and Zach, cofounders. We're
about to hire our first employee. He's gonna be a project manager.

James Altucher: Yeah, 'cause you need someone to when you have enough projects
when you have more than ten, you need logistics.

Tucker Max: So we're I think we just signed a client somewhere between 20 and 30. I
can't keep up. So we definitely need a project manager 'cause Zach's doing all that now.
We're gonna pass to the project manager, and then everyone else we use is a freelancer,
you know, and so, like, we can obviously we could hire a lot of these people internally,
but that doesn't make any sense. We could probably pay them less and hire them
internally. I would actually much rather them be freelancers because I think they'll work
harder. I think they'll do a better job. I think they can make more money and we can get
better product.

James Altucher: Well, it's almost better we're moving toward this employee-less
society where it's better for everybody not to get fired and hired and you don't have to
deal with the paperwork, and it becomes what essentially you are is you're becoming the
Uber of book making. So that's what's happening.

Tucker Max: We're a platform, yeah.

James Altucher: There's you and there's you with a body of people who need work
and then there's, on the other side, there's a body of people who need to make books, and
in the middle, there's logistics of how it's getting all done, the process of how it's getting
done.

Tucker Max: Can I tell you what's really exciting about this?

James Altucher: Yes.

Tucker Max: I don't wanna talk about this on podcast 'cause I'm afraid someone's gonna
steal the idea, but

James Altucher: No one's gonna steal the idea. No one's listening.

Tucker Max: 'Cause no one's gonna ____. People will steal the idea, but no one will
execute it.

James Altucher: Right. That's actually an important thing. You can share any idea
and nobody executes.

Tucker Max: Right. Unless it's super unless they just have to do one thing or
something.

James Altucher: And also, don't forget, there's expertise. You're one of three so
maybe Malcolm Gladwell will steal the idea. Like, you're one of three people who were,
like, three times on the same time on the New York Times bestselling list.

Tucker Max: Yeah, so here's what I really wanna do. So right now, our service is, you
know, is very expensive, right. And like I said, I mean, I just outlined the basics of exactly
what we do. Anyone can do this. This is this process requires no like, there's no
special proprietary algorithm that you can't figure out or whatever, right? You can do this.
You know what I really wanna do is I wanna keep the high-end service, no doubt, because
there will always be a big market for people who have money but no time and want us to
do the work for them. All they have to do is talk. There's always gonna be a big market
for that. We're always gonna be there for that. But I wanna extend our service to people
who have a lot of time but no money, and the way we can do the way we can make this
Book in a Box process work for people who can't afford $15,000; who maybe can only
afford, let's say $500 or $1,000, is we make it software as a service.

James Altucher: Oh my God, I totally figured it out. So you could have people call
into a phone number where the phone call comes in

Tucker Max: No, why call? They can do it through their computer.

James Altucher: Okay, yeah.

Tucker Max: Yeah, it's a Skype, essentially.

James Altucher: So it's asking like, there's the questions are all planned, and then
you have, like, kind of a CreateSpace-type thing where you can design the book cover and
beginning to end.

Tucker Max: Right. And then what I think is really cool so we can have it where it's,
like, you know, maybe

James Altucher: Yeah, outsourced to India where take out the ums and the ahs.

Tucker Max: Exactly. ____ transcription whenever. I think we have it all different price
tiers. So it's maybe, like, $100 and you have to do everything yourself, but it's step-by-step
instructions, right. And then maybe, like, let's say you wanna do everything yourself
except the book cover. You just don't wanna design that, and you've got $500. You wanna
get a nice book cover. So then you can buy a $500 book cover. Like, we handle paying the
designer, we handle finding them, et cetera, et cetera. It's sorta like 99 Designs except you
don't have to go to 99 Designs. You just we just do it. You're, like, here's my budget. I
want the best one possible for it. You know you're gonna get a good cover. They know
they're gonna the designer knows they're gonna get paid. You can upgrade you can
essentially level up at any part of the process you want. You get stuck somewhere, for
$10.00 an hour, you can have or $10.00 a call, you can have a professional editor come on
and read through and help you, you know, whatever. Like, there's a million ways to do it,
but it's essentially software as a service with an opportunity to level up at every single
spot. So some people will spend $5,000; some people will spend $50.00; but everyone now
is essentially on an even playing field to get their ideas out there.
James Altucher: Okay, so then Part 2, which I forget if we talked about it offline or
online, but Part 2, which is book marketing. So a lot of people don't care about book
marketing because the book becomes their business card and they send it out to all the
clients and whatever. But other people, particularly fiction, when you get into that, other
people are gonna wanna sell, you know, lots of books. So how do you how will you deal
with and make it as service-oriented as possible? How do you standardize the book
marketing process?

Tucker Max: That's a tough question. So right now, with Book in a Box, we have a
marketing package, sort of like a mini-launch with the $25,000 package. We do, like, sort
of like ten different things, and it's not like a major, like, James Altucher or Tim Ferriss
book launch, but it's, you know, something good for most people, right. There's it gives
a lot of good social proof for their books.

James Altucher: You schedule a ____ at AMA. You could make a Facebook fan page.

Tucker Max: Right, you know, like press release, put people on a couple podcasts, things
like that. Really basic things, right. Give them a couple guest posts. Things that, like, for
the vast majority of people, that's more than enough social proof and they're, like, really
happy, and it gives their book the social proof they need for their book to accomplish their
goal, right. A CEO to put on his resume or, you know, business owner to generate leads or
a speaker to charge more or a consultant to get new clients, things like that, right. Yes,
that's a good question. What about the people that really wanna, like that don't have
another use for the book. The book is the end in itself. That's a very difficult thing
because now you're getting into discovery, which is a totally different business than
content creation, right. I know some people, one person specifically, who's working on
this, and we're working with him to try and help him develop sort of, for lack of a better
term, book marketing in a box-type process, but the thing is, I don't know if there's an
algorithmic process where you can do this. The best you can do

James Altucher: A lot of it is there's a magic in there. Like, how did 50 Shades of
Gray out of the blue, you know, sell tens of millions of copies? Like, nobody really knows
the answer.
Tucker Max: That's its own podcast, yeah. Right. I think the best you can do with book
marketing is you can ask people a bunch of questions and then, based on their answers,
you can recommend a couple strategies and then give them guides on how to effectuate
those strategies.

James Altucher: 'Cause they need to do stuff. The author needs to do stuff.

Tucker Max: Right, exactly.

James Altucher: Like, the author need it seems like the author needs to already be
engaged in the conversation with their community. Like, take your books. You had a
huge community already when Book 1 came out.

Tucker Max: Right.

James Altucher: So those people automatically went to the bookstore and bought
the books.

Tucker Max: Right. Right. So if you don't have like, you have, you know, $30,000 to
hire Ryan Holliday or Charlie Hoehn to promote your book, right. And so they do all this
stuff. But if you don't have that money, what do you do? I think a book marketing in a
box-type, like, algorithmic program could work really well, but what it's gotta do is teach
people, like, tell them, okay, here's ten possible things. Figure out what makes the most
sense with you, and then here's a guide on how to do each thing. Like, here's how to set
up a Reddit AMA. Here's how to pitch bloggers. Here's how to whatever, things like
that, right. I think that could work really well because right now, there's really not a lot of
great information on how to book market, and it's all over the place. Fiction's totally
different than nonfiction. Certain types of nonfiction or whatever, and what this could do
is sort of essentially be like a choose-your-own-adventure type thing where you
depending on what your goals are, what your resources are, how much work you wanna
put in, et cetera, et cetera, it's a different answer for what you should do for book
marketing for everybody, right. So a process like that that kind of algorithmically help
people figure out what's the right answer and then how do I do that, people would pay,
you know, a few hundred bucks for that and be extremely valuable for them, and I think
that would be a really good sort of process, but I think that's a different thing than Book in
a Box. It's just that book discovery and book marketing is just such a different thing than
creating a book.

James Altucher: Yeah, 'cause there's a little bit of art there as well as science, and
mystery in the middle.

Tucker Max: Exactly.

James Altucher: But still there's, like, the basic things. Like you said, like scheduling
the Reddit AMA, setting up the introductions to podcasts, stuff like that. So how's it going
with your podcast?

Tucker Max: Podcast is doing good, man. It chugs along and we

James Altucher: The Mating Grounds.

Tucker Max: We're gonna pass, I think, a million downloads before or by the end of
the year.

James Altucher: That's great. And, you know, Jeff Miller, of course, was on this
podcast. He did very well. Very interesting. Evolutionary psychologist on how to meet
women or men or whatever. And then you guys are writing a book together.

Tucker Max: Yeah. It should be out December of next year, I think.

James Altucher: Yeah, that's good. So I'm looking forward to that one as well.

Tucker Max: It should be pretty good.

James Altucher: Man, we're gonna have, like, nonstop repeat we have to have you
on when your kid's 15 years old. We have to have you on when you start doing fiction and
then when The Mating Grounds comes out, we'll have you on.

Tucker Max: Well, have Jeff on for that. He'll probably be better for it than me.

James Altucher: Yeah, no, we'll have both on. Now we've got this table here.

Tucker Max: Right, you've got this setup here. It's pretty sweet.
James Altucher: So yeah. And Jeff was a good guest, though. He was fun. And then
he answered separately a separate question we had. So Claudia and I were in Miami, and
we were wondering why everybody had blonde hair. So typically women who are in their
40s or 50s don't have blond hair.

Tucker Max: Neoteny is what it what'd he say?

James Altucher: So he said that, because women so I wrote him, Jeff, you know,
Dr. Miller, why do all these women dye their hair blonde? And he said, well, it's, you
know, because women don't tend to have blonde hair when they're older, when they're
younger and because men are seeking who are fertile, so they do this to, you know, send
out the signal that they're fertile, even if they're not, to men.

Tucker Max: Right. Well, send out the signal that they're young, which is a secondary
signal that they're fertile. Blonde hair, that's why breast implants are so popular. That's
why men care about big breasts because large voluptuous breasts are an indice of youth.
It's like an honest signal of youth. Biologically it's an honest signal of youth. Yeah, it's
because humans are neotenized. I can go deep into the biology, but it's exactly right.

James Altucher: So from Book in a Box to boobs. So all good stuff.

Tucker Max: You know what's funny? Everyone thinks I named it Book in a Box because
of the Saturday Night Live skit, dick in a box, right. And I didn't even think about that.
No, I was, like, the point is supposed to be it's like everything you need for a book, just,
like, in a box, like really simple, right, and it floated off the tongue. But now it's like,
everyone's like, oh, Tucker, you're making a fuckin' joke about dick in a box. I'm, like, no
I'm not really.

James Altucher: Well, you had the the rough draft of the book I saw,
Bookstrapper, you didn't like that name?

Tucker Max: Well, no, no. So well, that was a different book. That was about book
marketing, and so it's funny. Book in a Box emerged out of I had a publishing sort of
company. We did, like, consulting and some publishing work, and then a little bit we
did some book marketing and then, like, I had all these other things, and once Book in a
Box took off, I actually I shut all those things down.
James Altucher: And you love it. Like, you feel it.

Tucker Max: Yes. Yes, it's like

James Altucher: You don't wanna sell it ever.

Tucker Max: I'm not gonna say never.

James Altucher: Like, if it has $10 million of revenues, Amazon offers you $70
million, you might take it.

Tucker Max: I'm probably gonna take it, right. Like, let's not be ridiculous. I'm not
stupid. Right. 'Cause I'm not gonna fight with Amazon. If they come in with a check, all
right, Amazon, there you go.

James Altucher: Right because they could do it, not I mean, people always say, oh
Google can do this or Amazon can do this. The reality is, big companies usually don't do
entrepreneurial ventures. They buy them.

Tucker Max: They buy them, right. Yeah, so no, like, I mean, it's not I do love the
company, but it's more like one of the things I learned, man, is I gotta focus. Like, I was
doing way too many things, so the only shit I do now businesswise, Book in a Box and
Mating Grounds. That's it. That's all I do.

James Altucher: I think that's really smart because this is also these are the things
you love doing, yet you can only do stuff that you feel it in your chest. Like, this is what
puts you on fire. And then you're going to do good at it because you'll know exactly what
to do in every decision.

Tucker Max: Well, and you just have time to dedicate, man. You only have so many
hours in the I mean, I have a family now, so they get a huge block of time, and then I
have to, like, spend a little time, like, you know, on myself. So I only have, whatever, let's
call it eight hours a day of real work time that I can dedicate to stuff. And if I'm splitting
that across three or four or five things, then everything gets shit. It's like the

James Altucher: It's horrible.

Tucker Max: Yeah. It's like when you only have enough bread you only have enough
butter for one slice of bread. You try and put it on two. What do you get? You get shitty
bread, right? Put all of it on one slice and just eat one slice, and that slice is amazing, and
you're better off having one amazing slice than two shitty slices.

James Altucher: Well, but it's interesting, though, because there's focus and there's
focus. So you're doing Book in the Box, but Book in the Box is doing 20 books. But
because you've standardized and processed it out, you're able to kind of concentrate
you're able to take variety and turn it into focus, and that's the key, really.

Tucker Max: Well, my job I explained this to Zach 'cause we're kind of like co we're
cofounders. I'm the CEO, he's the COO, but what I explained is our job as cofounders is
to create stable ground for our employees and freelancers to stand on and do the actual
work, right. And so once we have the process I mean, the last three months have been
hell getting this process right, tons of work, but once we get it right, it's like we can plug
in any capable, smart sort of writing editing freelancer, and they're gonna do a fantastic
job, and we can have one really smart, capable project manager, and those two people are
gonna get 98 percent of the stuff right on their own and then we're always there when
there's a problem, whatever, right. Yeah, so, like, we just have to create the stable ground
and then, like, you know, we start doing software as a service, all right, then we have
that's where we focus on is creating something out of nothing and making it awesome,
and then someone else comes along to run it once it's awesome, you know.

James Altucher: Yeah, no, I actually I'm jealous. I think this is a great business
idea. This is good.

Tucker Max: I think it is pretty good too. I know, that's the best part is we don't have to
raise money. We're already, like I think we realistically are gonna do about $500,000
gross in the first six months.

James Altucher: Yeah, that's great.

Tucker Max: That's like, I mean, that's gross. Our margins are pretty good. They're
not amazing. I think we can get them amazing.
James Altucher: You don't have to worry about it so much yet 'cause they'll get
better too.

Tucker Max: They'll get better. Yeah, as we systematize the process more and we find
sort of better balance of freelancers, stuff like that. The most important thing for us now
is getting the books awesome, making sure they're really awesome, and so we're, like,
working with the most expensive people for the most part, so we don't have amazing
margins, but they're good.

James Altucher: But imagine when the next real estate guy comes to you. You're
gonna know the outline already, so it's just

Tucker Max: Exactly. It makes things way easier.

James Altucher: a lot of things that the more books you do, the better your
margins are gonna be. They're not gonna get 'cause you're always gonna have that really
professional freelancer who's gonna cost X.

Tucker Max: Good people cost money.

James Altucher: Yeah, so but you should be able to get up to a solid, like, you
know, 30, 40 percent margins, like, done right, so

Tucker Max: Way better. We're gonna do better than that. We're a little bit better than
that now, and I think we can really optimize margins without losing I mean, that's the
key. Optimize margins without losing quality, obviously.

James Altucher: I mean, basically every CEO in the Fortune 500 should have a book.

Tucker Max: Oh yeah, every CEO, every entrepreneur, every speaker, every consultant.
They should all have books.

James Altucher: You should almost take every TED talk, make a book out of it and
then call the guy and say, "Hey, I've got your book ready. Do you want it or not?"

Tucker Max: Well, but if they say no, I can't sell it, so what am I gonna do when they say
no? Just sit there with a book?
James Altucher: You might be able to sell it.

Tucker Max: Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna sell other people's ideas.
That's _____.

James Altucher: All right. Separate idea for the listeners. Go out there and make
TED publishing

Tucker Max: That actually well TED publishes their own stuff and they might come
after you. They're getting a little

James Altucher: Just don't use the word TED. Like, okay

Tucker Max: Call it Fred.

James Altucher: Ken Robinson on education, here's the book.

Tucker Max: Here's the summary. I heard Ken talk. Here's what he said, and it's just the
yeah, the speech. That would be pretty scammy, I think.

James Altucher: Yeah, that could be. All right. Well, Tucker, great.
Congratulations Book in a Box and fatherhood. So two episodes in a row.

Tucker Max: Thanks a lot. So how are you you're not gonna run these back-to-back,
are you?

James Altucher: Yeah, I think I will. I think I'll do next Tuesday and Thursday.
What do you think?

Tucker Max: It's your podcast. Yeah.

 R ESOURCES

If this feels all like too much for you visit Tucker Max website Book in a Box
(http://bookinabox.com) and hire them. They will help you get it done.

CreateSpace.com is the site where you start.

Acx.com for uploading your audio-book

Kindledirect.com

http://bookow.com/resources.php will generate a bar code for your ISBN

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ is the page where you will create your author page.
O THER B OOKS BY J AMES A LTUCHER

Trade Like A Hedge Fund

Trade Like Warren Buffett

I Was Blind But Now I See

Choose Yourself

The Choose Yourself Stories

40 Alternatives To College

The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

 A BOUT T HE A UTHOR

James Altucher is a writer, entrepreneur, and chess

master. He has started and run more than 20
companies, some of which failed, several of which he
sold for large exits. His writing has appeared in many
major national media outlets, including the Wall Street
Journal, The Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, The New
York Observer, The Daily News, Tech Crunch, and a
dozen others. His blog, The Altucher Confidential, has
attracted more than 20 million readers since its launch.
He is the author of 14 books, seven of which are self-published, including two WSJ best-
sellers: The Power of No and Choose Yourself. James hosts two podcasts The James
Altucher Show and Ask Altucher with over 10 million downloads in less than a year. Join
him at JamesAltucher.com or on Twitter @Jaltucher.