Is Becoming A Bestselling Author A Waste Of Time?

0:00Today, we're going to be talking about if books really help with marketing. You see companies all the time releasing books to help them generate more sales. But do they really help? Now, Eric, you have a book. I have a book as well. You're a best-selling author, right? And I was also a best-selling author. You're a New York Times best-selling author. Yeah, it's all the same stuff. And I found that a book didn't help me generate more revenue, didn't help much with marketing. Did you find it helping you with much? No, and I'll tell you what, I think we both have really interesting stories here. So you want to go on yours first?

0:33So Neil's book was called Limitless. Hustle. Hustle. Same thing. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Okay, so the book was Hustle. We sold a lot of copies to corporations, sold a lot of copies in general. Hit the New York Times list, I think, three weeks in a row. I could be wrong, but I think it was three weeks in a row. And what we found is it didn't do much for us. I think there's a few issues that I learned when it comes to books and marketing. One, Hustle is a broad topic. It's not related enough to marketing. So it didn't help from that aspect. Two, I had co-authors, nothing wrong with my co-authors, but if I published the book and it was just me, I think it would have done better.

1:10Three, unless your book could be on something really, really mainstream, I don't think it's going to, like Tim Ferriss for our work week, I don't think it's going to help that much. And four, if you create an industry-related book, it can help with marketing, but you got to spend a lot of money promoting it and look at your book as a loss leader, not a money generator and you have to look at your backend as the money generator. Yeah. So interestingly enough, I have a book. So we're recording live right now. I'm going to actually pull the book into the screen. So give me one second as I pull it up.

1:43All right. What's the book called? YouTube Formula. All right. So the book that he has, because you probably can't hear him on the microphone, is YouTube Formula and it's by... Daryl Eves. So Daryl Eves. All right. What do you want to talk about with the book? So this guy, he has worked very closely with Jimmy. So Mr. Beast, he's worked very closely with the top YouTube creators out there. And this guy's literally, his business is like YouTube coaching, basically. And he like has a lot of equity in other YouTube channels. And so he knows what he's talking about here. And so I was picking it up and I was reading, I said, oh, there's some good stuff in here.

2:14And so I was looking at Amazon and this book has, sure, it's a 4.7, 826 reviews and all that. And it's decently ranked. I'm trying to look at the rank for it right now. So it is ranked. It's too hard for me to pull up right now. But point is, do I think this helped this guy's business? Yes. But do I think it's like a massively transformative thing? No, not. Dude, the problem with writing a book is a lot of the information, depending on the industry year and gets outdated the moment the book is published. That's the bad part. Yeah. And I found that the people have done best from books that are businesses that release them.

2:48They use a book as a promotion method and they spend an arm and a leg promoting it, getting into a lot of hands. They lose money on the book, even though they're getting massive advances and they're making money on the backend. That's the key I've seen most people do really well. Remember the growth hacking book that Sean Ellis and I think it's Morgan Brown did? Yeah. So they got like a big advance for it. But then I think afterwards, I'm not sure if the book got the result that they wanted. Sean already did well before the book. Yeah. Oh, so this actually this book does well right now. So this book's been around for a while.

3:18I actually have two copies of it. And so this is ranked number 1579 in all books on Amazon. on this. That's actually really high. What rank? 279? 1579 in all books. That's high. Yeah. And then number one in computer hacking, which is like a BS category. Number three in e-commerce professional and number four in web marketing. So this is actually a high performing book. And this was published. It's a first edition. So I think if you are going to publish a book, like if we publish on a marketing, we would be publishing additions because marketing changes so quickly. Yeah. Now let me talk about my experience.

3:472021, this book was published 2021. So I published a book that's completely unrelated to marketing. Same as Neil. Both ours was like in the personal growth space. Right. Yeah. And mine was how I should just see life as a game. Neil's was on hustling. So it's kind of similar. Right. And I wrote, it took me like six years to write it because I was writing it on and off. And if you're going to write a book, it's a labor of love. Yeah. And do I, it definitely, would you do it again? No. Everyone's like, Hey, do you want to write a book? We can help you with them. Like, it's okay. okay i would if i would write another book if it was in marketing and because i mean you get hit up on all the time like wiley hits me up sure right like i would do it on marketing because it would help our businesses right but dude even i do and i i don't think i would do it right now it's too much work for the roi like yeah i get hit up at least twice a year for a company to write a book on marketing yeah and they'll range in advances for people willing to pay like a half a million bucks to maybe seven eight hundred yeah last book i got a half a million although oh, there was co-authors, so we split the money.

4:47And it's just not worth it. It's a lot of work for the money. You know, we talked about like the relationship platform versus like, sure, the book is a relationship platform and you do kind of get to know someone. So I think if you're going to write like a biography, cool, do it like later in your life, maybe. Like that would be cool, right? I'm looking at the Hermoses right now. I'm looking at Alex. So he has 16 ,000 reviews on$100 million offers, 4.9 stars. And I think he said he sold like three or 400 ,000 copies, which is amazing. That's a lot, good for him. It's a lot. And now he has his 100 million leads coming out.

5:15Now, do I think this is going to help with his deal flow? What do you think? I think he already gets enough deal flow. The issue is the right type of deal flow. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it certainly helps with his brand. Yes. And I do think in the long run, it'll help with deal flow. But he loves writing too. Yeah. He loves creating content. Yeah. But I think there's better ways to generate leads. And this isn't to pick on Alex. I bet he would agree with this as well. I think there's better ways to generate leads than writing a book. Yeah, I agree. And it's a lot. So here's the thing though. We both have leverage in our own respective rights.

5:50Like this podcast is leverage, right? Yeah. So you would just pull the lever a little more and it's like, you get a lot more from it. It's like, you know what I mean? So I don't know, man, I will probably won't write a book for like at least the next five years. We'll just put it that way. You're probably out maybe 10, 15 years. I don't think I'll write a book again. What if you wrote it yourself fully? I still won't write a book again. All right. Well, that's fair. Oh, you know what you could do? before we go, you can do what Mark Cuban did and Ben Horowitz did. You know what they did? No. They just took all their blog posts and just combined it into a book and the books crushed it.

6:20I could do that, but I don't want to do that either because marketing, a lot of it's old and outdated. So I would have to keep publishing editions as you mentioned. And I don't want to go through that. You do an edition every year. Anyway, that's an idea for you guys to do out there. We're probably not going to do it. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, hit, review, subscribe, five stars, please. And we'll see you tomorrow.