From $30k in Debt to an 8-Figure Publishing Empire with Yehuda Niv

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. and oh so much more. And today we'll talk about the state of publishing, first time author advantage, the AI revolution, and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Yehuda and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Yehuda, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:14Hello to everyone. It's great to be here on the podcast. And regarding what you asked, I think that the most important thing about being successful is resilience. People think you need to be smart, you need to come from the right schools, you need to know the right people. But I believe that what makes the difference is who stays when time becomes difficult and when extreme challenges appear. and you need to push through them no matter what. And eventually that's what makes the difference between those who succeed and those who ditch their mission. Well, Fire Nation, Yehuda has definitely persevered.

2:00He has definitely pushed through because he went from 30K in debt to an eight-figure publishing empire. And I want to talk right now, Yehuda, about the state of publishing because I want to start big. I mean, what separates those who succeed from those who struggle to build a thriving business in book publishing in today's new world? You know, with Spines, what we do, we are an AI-based publishing platform. We allow authors to get their book published instead of six to 18 months to only three weeks. And we help them to save a ton of costs in the production. So instead of the production of the book costs over between $10 ,000 to$50 ,000.

2:42With our plans, it started from$2 ,000 and could get up to$17 ,000. And I think that the reason that Spines is nowadays the fastest growing publishing house in the States, we are the first one to integrate AI technology to improve the process, to save friction, and to give our authors the best solution possible to get their book published in this today's era. And I believe that specifically in publishing, most of players, like the reason we are doing so well is because most of the players in the publishing industry, in the States specifically, are pretty old fashioned. You know, when we just started, we had this decision to make, will we sell this technology to publishers or will we sell this technology to authors?

3:37and realized that working with publishers, that's going to be a challenge because they know nothing about tech and it's very hard to explain to them the possibilities of running AI-based publishing solutions. And this is why we decided to target the authors themselves and which authors, you know, they only care about their book. Like they only want to have the best solution, the best scenario possible for their book, like the best proofreading, the best formatting, the best cover, the best distribution for the book to actually get a chance. And to get all of those high tier services done by humans, that can cost a lot of money and requires a lot of time.

4:32and with our solutions, like it happens in days instead of months, in weeks instead of years. And I think that's what makes the difference with Spines. That's what allows us to grow so fast. And it's obvious that you're really doing some cool things there because I can vouch. I mean, I've mentored and coached people that have tried to write books and it is just stretched out so long. And it's like pulling teeth because they just have to sit down and write. And at the end of the day, a lot of them are looking at a blank page and they can't go forward, but you have created ways to push through that blank page fear.

5:07So I want to talk about the first-time author advantage because for someone who's writing their very first book, Yehuda, what's the smartest and most strategic way to get started? We're talking about from idea to launch. So I think the most important thing is to convince yourself to actually finish writing the book because authors, we have this, you know, me being a second-time author, I had this myself that we will always want to rewrite and edit it and rephrase and read it again and again and we will never finish writing our own manuscript because it's it's you know a book can never be perfect so for you to decide that okay i'm done it will never be perfect okay but i need to go through the next process, which is editing.

5:56And this is, I believe most of the books that are never being published is stuck in that phase, which is an infinite limbo loop that the author himself keep on trying to improve his own book. And when I finished writing my first book until I finally believed it's ready to be published, It took me four years, four years of me trying to improve it. And eventually, when I started to work with an editor, like his suggestions about how the book can be improved was way, way better than what I ever could think about. Because, you know, this is me writing a book for the first time. And of course, an editor is very well experienced in how books should be written.

6:46So trying to figure it out by yourself, that's a never ending story. However, I think that the most important task of an author is to realize, okay, I did my best. That's my book. It will never be perfect. I will now partner with a publisher and he will take care of proofreading, formatting, editing, whatever necessary for the book to be as close to perfection as possible. But again, it will never be perfect. And I think this is the most important thing that authors are refusing to accept. That's why they never become a published author. And maybe there is another one, a second one, is the fear that what will happen if that specific person will read my book.

7:33Okay, so what happened if my mom read my book and didn't like it? What happened if my high school teacher read it? And that's something which is, I believe it's a psychological barrier that you need to push through. And it's okay if people, because, you know, when someone is reading the books that you have reading, you like feel naked. Like, okay, you can read my deeply, like my deepest thoughts are all written on those pages. And now my grandma can read it. okay so it's a um um so it's a psychological barrier that you have to overcome to be willing to put your word out there and let your work like don't prevent your book from the word uh because you are afraid of certain people what they think about your writing or something like that so i think that's the second point fire nation first-time authors there's a lot of struggles you're going to face, like Yehuda just shared, that's why it's great to have somebody in your corner, a company, a team who can keep the ball moving forward, especially in this world that we live in right now, Yehuda, which is the AI revolution.

8:48Because AI is shaking up every single industry. I mean every industry. And we're talking publishing. There's no exception there. So how do you see AI changing the world of authors, of editors, of publishers in the next few years? After publishing my first book, it was 13 years ago, I was amazed by how inefficient the publishing process was. So this is why I decided to stop my master's degree at electronics engineering and bootstrap my own publishing company in Israel, Niv Publishing. I wasn't that clever about the name. I named it after my last name. But it started in my dorm room, but it grew to become the largest publishing house in Israel.

9:31and about six years ago, I started my journey as an angel investor in startups and while I met those tech founders and realized what they're actually working on, I came across this amazing technology. Back in the day, it was kind of in the emerging phase and I realized this AI will revolutionize everything. Probably publishing will be one of the first ones. So I better do something about it again. So this is why I started Spines. And, and, you know, I believe AI will affect our, every aspect of life. Okay. And, and because of that, I realized that, you know, if I won't do something about it, probably my publishing company will become irrelevant.

10:22So this is why I decided to start Spines. and anything that we think that can only be done by humans actually can be done with okay, so now it's like in the co-pilot phase okay, so we still need the decision maker to be human but all the heavy lifting can be done by AI however, in the future I think a lot of professions will be replaced. So for example, just yesterday, I met a tech founder working on an amazing startup. He developed an AI-based accountant. So for any business owner who want to save costs on their accountant, here is an AI tool that can do that for you for a fraction of the cost.

11:15So same thing, for example, with Spines. Instead of you going to a publisher and paying$50 ,000 up front for getting your book published. Here's an AI best solution that can do that in$2 ,000. So it will lower the barrier of everything you would try to do. Everything will be much more affordable, much more effective. However, it will affect the economics in a certain way that is very hard to predict how life will look like after AI finished into integration phase. because now we are in the beginning of the integration phase. AI is getting integrated in every aspect of our life. In five years, when it's completely integrated, and for heavy human-based service, you can buy a cheaper one, a faster one, more accurate one, which is AI-based.

12:15Who knows? Who knows how the world will look like? It might be a bit weird. It is crazy, Fire Nation. It's so hard to imagine what the world is going to look like in six months, let alone two, three, four years down the line. And we have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I'm all about the basics when it comes to running my business, and there's nothing more basic and important than how you talk to customers and keeping your team on the same page. That's why today's episode is sponsored by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the modern alternative to run your business communications.

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15:48So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Yehuda, we're back, and I want to talk about balancing automation and quality. How much of the publishing process can truly be automated? We're talking about from editing to marketing before it starts impacting the quality and authenticity of that book. You asked a question within a question, and I think the question within the question is more important, is who is really responsible for the content of the book.

16:32So with Spines, we are not here to replace the authors. We are here to empower them, okay? So, and I give you an example. I am an electronics engineer that worked with the calculus, okay? I solved amazing, complicated, uh uh mathematic problems but i had a calculus as a helper okay i i cannot do those calculation in my head a previous generation of our fathers they could do all of this complicated mathematics in their head because they didn't have an access to a calculus however today you can accomplish more because you you can kind of allocate those heavy calculation to a calculus so i believe the calculus is the mathematician's best friend.

17:26So same thing will go with AI assistance writing tool. Okay. So let's say you envision this amazing scene and you start to write it and the AI can boost your writing. It can help you. It can, let's say you get stuck in the storyline. You want a few ideas. Let's say you want to make this character more funny. Let's say you want to fact check some things that you kind of remember, but you don't accurately remember. So you can give it a task to fact check the specific things that you want to reference in your book. So I believe the AI will empower the author in the writing phase as well. By the way, everything I just described isn't available yet on Spine's product.

18:14We are developing that. This is like the next phase of our product. Now we are focusing only on the production phase. So for now, for you to be published with Spines, you will have to completely finish writing your manuscript. And only after that, you can use our tools for editing, for proofreading, for formatting, for cover design, for AI narrated audiobook, for distribution across 100 distribution channels worldwide, marketing your book, everything can be taken care of with AI. However, we will never write your book for you with AI, but we will offer you solutions eventually that AI will help you to boost your writing.

18:51So let's say you write 60, 80, 30 % of your book, you can upload that to Spines and it will start help you to figure out, I don't know, even a thinking map of all the scenes and all the characters and all the word events in your book and how to keep going writing the book. But it will never write it for you because that's not our vision. We are not here to replace the authors. We are here to empower them. And so this is like every company out there, I strongly believe in empowering people and not trying to replace them, okay? So for example, I just had a chat with a friend of mine who just raised$5 million for his startup, which is AI that will replace the executive assistants.

19:46Okay. So it's like AI executive assistants that will help you to reschedule meetings, to clear up your email, like will help you with certain specific tasks. And what they are doing is like, so if there will be something need to be solved, which is needed a decision-making which is complex, then they will integrate a human in the process. So it will be like a team leader, which is human, but it will manage clusters of EA agents. Okay? So this is the future. Okay? So instead of team leader will oversee humans, team leader will oversee AI agents. Okay. So that's in this specific company. So, so, so I believe that's the way that AI will integrate in every process and it will empower people instead of replacing them.

20:49And, and few people could do much, much more and can affect the world in a better manner. Yehuda, I want to know if you have a success formula. Like my listeners love formulas, they love processes. Do you believe there's a repeatable formula for creating a successful book or is each product its own unique journey? I think if there was any formula for success, the day it was put together and shared with the world, that's the day it will stop working. because if everyone will do the same thing then it will stop working and every entrepreneur you meet you see he has a specific journey very different than the others and I don't think there is one way to succeed either with a book or with a company or with a product or in any direction of your career like you can create your own path and make your own mistakes and learn from them.

21:59Well, then on that note, what do you want Fire Nation to do if they're dreaming about writing or publishing their first book? What is one move they can do today to turn that dream into a reality? I think just start. If you have already started, then just decide to keep pushing no matter what. If you haven't started yet, just start now. like the best time to plant a tree was two years ago but the next best time to plant a tree is today so start today if you haven't started yet if you already did keep pushing no matter what

22:40and the path will appear as you walk into it so you don't need to know all the steps ahead you just need to know the next step and that's actually one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King which is you don't have to see the whole staircase, Fire Nation, to take the next step. And so that's such a powerful thought, such a powerful reality. Yehuda, give Fire Nation a call to action. If they want to learn more from you, if they want to connect with your company, what is your call to action for our listeners today? You can go on spines.com. You can see all our packages and what we offer. You can leave your details and book a meeting with one of our publishing experts.

23:22They can explain how can we help you either continue finishing writing your manuscript or publishing it. And I'm also very active on Instagram. But it's in Hebrew, by the way. But if you would like to see more of what I'm doing, you can look me up on Instagram, Yehuda Niv. Probably soon I will create a new account, which is English only. But the one I have now is in Hebrew. but Spines already 5 ,000 and 200 authors has onboarded to Spines. We'll probably finish this year with 6 ,000 authors and if you want to join this movement of authors who are choosing a different way, a more efficient, more productive way to get their book published, try out Spines and I'm pretty sure you will fall in love in what we developed.

24:20Well, Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with YN and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Yehuda, that's Y-E-H-U-D-A, and the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Yehuda, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much, John. It was great. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Yehuda for sponsoring today's episode.

24:53And Fire Nation, don't let another 90-day slip by inside the Freedom Circle, my community. Entrepreneurs are building real freedom with proven playbooks and community support. Claim your spot now at freedom-circle.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.