How To Finally Write That Book & Make it a Bestseller w/ Keith Ferrazzi | EP #59

27:49And if you get really clever at sequentially asking better and better prompts, which get ChatGbt to write a better and better book or a better and better whatever, and look, maybe your point is and you should say co -authored by ChatGbt. I think that is not - And a minimum you should disclose that - I have no problem with that. I mean, for me right now, and I've seen long form content generated by ChatGbt and it was missing. But that's another thing, which is if you create a book with chat GBT, and it gets out there, you have to suffer the consequences of a mediocre piece that hasn't been fully fleshed out with your own ideas, right?

28:33But at the same time, one of the challenges people have is staring at a blank page, which is a great way to start. And I find chat GBT as a mechanism to say, okay, give me ideas. you know what you're going to write about in this chapter conceptually. And, you know, if you can outline like you did, here's the key point I want to make. Can you provide some content on top of this? It can break a log jam and give you an ability to get started. I want to take you and the viewers into a very terrified moment I had less than a few months ago, where I hadn't been fully immersed in the prompting within ChatJBT.

29:14I knew it was there. I hadn't the time to really play with it. And here I was right in the middle of my major book, my tone, my legacy of high -performing teams. This is going to be the most important book that I've written, perhaps aside from Never It Alone. That's far. That's far. I'll get it. Many, many. I can do it. And we'll talk about the pivots. But I got scared shitless because I sat there and I thought, But wait a second, I didn't ask chat GBT what it has to think about this book that I've now structured and formalized and I'm ready to ship. What if chat GBT could make it fundamentally better?

29:53I'm feeling castrated by the fact that I didn't co -author it with chat GBT and it scared the shit out of me because I thought, damn, I've done it in justice to the world to publishing my tone without the universe of all writing in it with my partner, Chuck, VP. Fascinating. And so I actually, I put a pause in the book. I said, we're not publishing the book. We're going through a rewriting process that will think about, you know, remember I was and here's something I did the other day. I just said, I've always, again, I'm all about high performing teams. I always thought, well, what would it be if I had actually read all the great works of philosophy, not philosophy, but of psychology, forage, great works, etc.

30:40So I started asking chat GBT, what does Freud have to say about high performing executive teams? And it gave me some very interesting stuff. And I said, what does young have to think about high performing executive teams? And then I asked more questions and more questions. And it made me realize there is a body of knowledge that I can give to my readers that was not there before. The way I think about it is as a writer, as an entrepreneur, as an executive, you only know how to think the way you know how to think. And having chat GPT in the conversation can give you massively different perspectives.

31:17And especially if you prompted properly and saying, take on the mantle of Freud, I'm an author trying to write about this. How would Freud look at it? And then the ability to prompt it and say, make it more compelling, make it more data -driven, make it more whatever. I had played with this idea by talking to a bunch of shrinks over the last five years about their perspective on executive names. Barely. Barely. And in three hours, I got this deluge. And then I started doing the same thing like I chased after the woman who was the coach for the women's soccer team that won the nationals. I got to sit with Coach K, asking him questions.

31:56So now then I did a whole separate thing about, you know, successful sports teams coaches, right? So all of this again is powerful. Now the question you were asking is chat GBT in book writing, I think they're going to be massively integrated. So the question, because so listen, at the end of the day, if there are, you know, 10X or 100X more books going out in the market, because it's easier, right? because an individual can now use AI to write their book, the question becomes what distinguishes your book. And is the future of books going to be this hard cover or soft cover or digital? And those are those two different questions, right?

32:44They are. They are. Because I think at the core, how will you differentiate your book from other books? Obviously, the quality is going to be important. Both abundance and never -ed alone were extraordinary books. And they had viral appeals such that when somebody read them, they wanted to pass them along. Yeah, I mean, the number of times I've heard, I'm sure you have. I bought a hundred copies and gave it up to all my teams. I've had all I've been doing is giving your book out and I've been doing it for 20 years. So there's that. You've got to write a great book and we know that Chatsch EBT will write a mediocre book.

33:13You've got to write a great book. But then the next question is the brand. Peter Demandis has how many followers. Keith has how many followers. As a result, our books get seeded into the world in a different way. So if you really want your book to differentiate, then you need to build a media company. And you and I were talking about this the other day, you need to build a media company around who you are. Now, if you want your book to inspire your employees, which is perfectly fine. And a great purpose for a book. And a great purpose for a book. Then you probably don't need a media company. If you want your book to have Ripple FX around the world and change a state of the universe, then you probably need a media company associated with it.

33:59You know, I'm super passionate about longevity and health span and how to add 10, 20 health years on to your life. One of the most under -appreciated elements is the quality of your sleep. sleep. And there's something that changed the quality of my sleep. And this episode is brought to you by that product. It's called 8 -Sleep. If you're like me, you probably didn't know that temperature plays a crucial role in the quality of your sleep. Those mornings when you wake up feeling like you barely slept, yeah, temperature is off in the culprit. Traditional mattresses trap heat, but your body needs to cool down during sleep and stay cool through the evening and then heat up in the morning.

34:39Enter the pod cover by 8 sleep. It's the perfect solution to the problem. It fits on any bed, adjust the temperature on each side of the bed, based upon your individual needs. You know, I've been using pod cover and it's a game changer. I'm a big believer in using technology to improve life and 8 sleep has done that for me. And it's not just about temperature control. With the pods, sleep and health tracking, I get personalized sleep reports every morning. It's like having a personal sleep coach. So you know when you eat or drink or go to sleep too late, how it impacts your sleep. So why not experience sleep like never before?

35:18Visit www .8sleep .com that's e -i -g -h -t -s -l -e -e -p .com slash moonshots and you'll save 150 bucks on the pod cover by 8sleep. I hope you do it. It's transformed my sleep and will for you as well. Now back to the episode. Let's dive into a few of the other fun subjects. We talked about writing process. On every day, you're on Fridays. I used to, one of the things I loved in writing with Stephen Kotler, is the back and forth, right? I would write a chapter, and he would write a chapter. We'd exchange them and edit them. And then the thing I found really powerful was we'd get on. Back then, it was Skype.

36:00We would get on with every morning. and we'd read the chapter out loud. And reading the chapter out loud really is for me the way to take a chapter to finish, because it's got to sound compelling and not boring to you. And when you read it, it's very different when you speak it. So I think we have, again, we have a very different way. You seem to write from the beginning with an expectation that what you're writing is somewhere in the direction of final. I do not. You explore. I write in a radically agile process. So I expect my chapters to be rewritten 20 times, significantly rewritten 20 times.

36:45So first thing, as I said, I did is memory. So think about how I'm writing books. I'm writing 10 sentences to 10 paragraphs, right? And I'm iterative, of iterative, and every one of those is a turn. Once you get to a chapter and you've got the first paragraph, now it's, for me, it's throw up on the page. Anything you would want free form, free form writing, anything you'd want to think about in this, then what I do, because I'm not expected to be the expert in writing where you, it's the difference between you and me, you went out and said, teach me how to write. I went out and I said, tall, write this, right?

37:22So I did I abdicated the need to be the writer I have a writing partner so my job was to throw the stuff on the page that I think was important and Then recognize that my writing partner knew how to read that and restructure it So that's what the way I do it. I and I think that's what Tony Robbins does to you speak to it. He's in writing Yeah, and Tony and I wrote life force It was an unusual process today, the list. And we had like five or six authors on the book. And it was, I wrote my own chapters in rewriting, but Tony works with a team of writers that will shape what he says and put into content.

38:08Let's talk about how you go from your idea to getting a publisher and a publishing deal. So did you have a literary agent when you went out with your books? I have. I've had three literary agents over my four book, True Jacketary. Okay. And my first one was exceptional. One of the things that I look for in an agent is somebody who cares about the content. And my agent, my agent number one in my agent number three have all been richly interested in the content and it hands in the content. In fact, my first agent sat with Tall and I for many days in his office in New York and helped combat and structure.

38:59I don't remember my first agent. I don't think he's in the business any longer, but I do remember the other ones. Yeah, I had John Brockman as my agent. John's amazing. His son Max Brockman has taken over Brockman and at this point. And I met him at TED and he approached me one day, he says, when you're ready for your book, contact me. And then I did on the abundance. It's interesting. All right. So an agent will typically take a fixed percentage of the deal. And so their motivated, not percentage can be like 10, 15%. Oh, higher, I think. 20%. 25. Okay. And they're motivated to get the maximum advance from a publisher.

39:40Now, interestingly, for a fiction book, if right? Can I? Yeah, please. Come. Let me debate that. So my agent now, so my three agents, the first agent was a small single, single guy. Yeah. And, um, and he really got in and never alone wouldn't be successful with that. Got it. Um, we ended up not needing an agent because we went with the first person who helped us bird the book. Somebody who just read the article and said, you should write a book. Then we went and got an agent. We shopped around, but we came back to the person who discovered me, so to speak. Sure. Then what I decided to do is I wanted a named agent after that.

40:16I thought I'm a big shot now. So I went to William Morris Agency, which is now William Morrison Devar. Yeah. And I got one of these big named agents. And I remember Ari Emanuel calling me when we hit number one New York Times bestseller. I never, I didn't know he was. I didn't know his, I'm not an entertainment guy. He's like, who's got your back, baby? I'm like, who is this? He's like, Google me, motherfucker. Who do you mean? Who is this? He literally said, no, I know Ari. And it's like my experience of Ari is being in this office, having a conversation and him having a conversation on two different phones at the same time.

40:47I'll call you right back and I just like, for those who don't know where I'm at, he's the guy who was the Ari in the series, Entourage. Yes, yeah, very cool. But what I found out about that whole thing, interestingly enough, was that person didn't care about my book. Yeah. That person was all about maximizing. Maximizing the income for the book and and frankly because it was a business book and business hadn't gotten cool on there Was no Netflix etc. There was no tale. There was no movie for never eat alone, you know that that sort of thing So I think today by the way there could be I think there's a there's a genre now emerging Like you see Brené Brown has her TV series and like and stuff but here but today asman harms worth He is a gem.

41:34He works in the detail of the content with us. And what I was going to say is, he in my last book, he agreed we went with Harvard Business School as a publisher. And this is important. Most publishers don't matter. Harvard Business School does. Harvard Business School has a category around the world that if your book is published on a Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School, People know that it has had peer review, it's had some degree of academic pressure to it. And as a result, there are business people in China and Vietnam who will go to their catalog and use their book. And as a result, speaking engagements go up on an international basis because you've got a Harvard Business School book.

42:20So I just wanted to put that out there. Ezman took probably a quarter of a million dollars less on that book because he knew long -term. It was better for me to have a Harvard Business School book. As compared to if I'm a Rochester or a few data points here. A literary agent is not necessary, but if you've got a great literary agent, they will maximize your income potential. So what John Brockman would do is he would have an auction. So there are proposals, I was amazed. So if you're writing a fiction book, you typically have to write the entire book and turn in a complete manuscript on a fiction book.

43:02And a nonfiction book. You write a book proposal. You write a book proposal. And the book proposal is typically an outline of, you know, each of the chapters, what's going to mean and how you're going to market it. And it may or may not include a chapter. It should include a mind check. These days you don't mind instead. Yeah with no buttons to not did not did not have and did not want a chapter Interesting and until you went out to bid And Simon sister won the bid for two hundred forty thousand dollars, which was like wow It was like amazing amount of money for me back then and and by the way when people hear about your Advance just to be clear that number two hundred forty thousand is split over three payments, right?

43:45So you get a third up front before you start writing, a third when you deliver the manuscript, and a third when the soft cover comes out. So it's not all up front. That was my deal. I don't know if it's a different. I mean, most of the time it's a third, a third, a third, and a third, a third has something to do with the success of the book or some delivery of some aspect of the book. But let me go back. I think what's important for our listeners is number one, if you want your book to be a big success out in the world. Having an agent is one path, and we'll talk about another path, which is self -publishing.

44:22But having an agent is one path. But please make sure that you find an agent that you love and they love you, and they love your ideas. They love what you're involved in. And they get their hands dirty. That's my big recommendation. The next piece then is, what is a book proposal? You should write a book proposal, which is, you write the introduction, which is telling somebody what the book's all about. And again, in a sense, that's the first chapter. you write about the book and then you write a structured outline of the book with half a page per. Now that's one version of it and I've often been told that you need one or two full chapters because they don't know if you're a good writer.

45:00They don't know if... Yeah, in my case you had Steve Kotler. Steve and Kotler was a known writer and I was a known marketer promoter entrepreneur. They do the scene you could structure a chapter that's pretty good and they want to see it on paper. And that's what you're selling. What a lot of people think they have to do is they have to go out and write a book and then sell a book, only in fiction to do that. In this case, fiction or a biography. I suspect a biography. I agree. But in the case of a book proposal, so that's your next step is write your book proposal. And your agent will bust their ass to make sure it's a good proposal.

45:36My agent has rewritten my book proposals. So me and my co -writer - Would you have they earn their money? That's how they earn their money. That's and then what they have that you don't Is they have the network of the ten people that they're gonna go pitch your book to yeah, you do not know the ten publishers that would buy your book tomorrow They do and so that's the idea that they're out pitching your book to people that they know who they are So you're gonna sell a book with certain rights and one of the things to think about is there's There's audible rights, there's the spoken book, and there's international rights.

46:14And when you sell your book to a publisher, they may say, we want U .S. rights only, we want global rights. Usually try to get it all. They do. And both ways sold it just U .S. rights and then had bids for rights around the world in translations, right? So like abundance. And this is where your agent coaches you. Yeah, and the agents incentivize to maximize your income. It was always fun to get like, oh, here's another language. I like, it's key abundance. Yeah, exactly. All these languages. So you write the proposal, you submit it again, you know, whether you're going with a known publisher or a press or Amazon, enter the business and disrupt the business in some interesting ways, they're now buying books.

47:02So they'll talk about that. So the publisher piece is first you I'm sorry agent and Going direct to a normal publisher. That's there. Yeah. Why do you want to do that? Well, you want to do that if you think you can get an advance Which allows you to pay for your writing partner Which allows you to pay for your marketing? Right and you also want to do it similar to why you some I some entrepreneurs want to bring investors You want accountability you want to have a third party giving you some pressure You know, they've invested in your book. So they're going to be expecting ship back from you and you also might want to do it because there's a group of people coaching you just like an envy like if you bring an investor Your investors you're now your coaches because they put money in you and they're gonna tell you, you know What they expect from you.

47:49So there's a lot of reasons to do still traditional publishing but every author knows that it's a very challenging and and vacuous process in many ways. The publisher does not do much for... Can we put a giant exclamation point on this? Yeah. You think the publisher is gonna promote the book and create press and really drive sales and in the final result, they don't. They do their best. They do, but they have a thousand books, et cetera. So you were gonna drive your... Success. People love Ferazi is because when I came up with never eat with who's got your back. Yeah. Reason it was number one year time's bestseller was I had a successful book.

48:33They gave you know 240 ,000. I think they gave me close to a million for my second book because off the back of the first one, they're expecting this, you know, this go to go to the next level and they give you a year to do it. Yeah. Right. The first book, how long did it take? Well, my first book took me 35 years to write because it was the book about the my life. It took a bunch of, it took about 18 months to write. The futures bowl took about a year and a futures faster about a year, but it's interesting. Once you turn in your book, then it's a year. It's another year. It's another year. It's another year.

49:07It's another year. It's another year. Going with a traditional publisher. It's a year. So I mean, don't think you're going to get it published in the next month. That's the big problem. If you, like I'm worried about my team's book, because for the sake of my business and where I'm going right now with scaling my business, I want my team's book in the market now. And I know that the team's book is going to take once I'm done with it, it's going to take another fucking year. If you go with a publisher versus a self -publish, right, which is the next side of the day. So let's talk about self -publish.

49:34So would you know more about the 90s? Yeah, so just to be clear, I went with Simon and sister for the first four books. The fourth one was Life Force with Tony. And we got a multi -million dollar advance. It was huge. And I didn't pocket a dime of it, either Dittoni, that money was spent on writers. It was spent on promoting the book significantly, and we donated millions of dollars to a health and longevity research. So it was great. I loved it. The book, we digest public with Saleem, Expanded for Organizations 2 .0, we decided to self -publish. And the technology is a lot better. So there's a gentleman named Kerry Oberbrunner who runs a company called Igniting Souls.

50:26And he is a complete turnkey self publication. So he has writers, promoters, translators, everything on staff. and it's just a lot faster. And so, Kerry, does he get distribution in independence and bookstores as well as on Amazon? He does, to some degree. Not as much as a publisher. And also, he does have international outreach and so forth. Probably not as much as a publisher. But at the end of the day, It is a fixed price with him and all revenues from the book come to the authors. Yeah, right. So that's the way when you get an advance, when you get an advance a quarter million dollars or a million dollars.

51:16Yeah, earn that up. So let's explain that. You have to sell a million dollars of profits, which almost no books do. Yeah. Very few books earn their advance. Earn their advance. Did the abundance. Yeah, abundance for all the books have so far. Yeah, and so did mine. But that's a big deal. And then you don't have to give the advance back. That's important to note. Like you get a quarter of a million, you're pocketing that, and that's the bet that the publisher has made on you. And if you don't sell a quarter of a million dollars for the books, you're getting 15, 20 % of a book. I forget the math.

51:54It's the most, right? So when it were the book sales for $20 bucks, yeah, whatever. Like $20, right? You get a nickel. I've there it's a 25 cents something small money, right? Right and that's what gets credited to your advance right the piece that you got not not the 20 not the 25 bucks But the piece that you got yes gets credit to your advance you have to sell exponentially that many books It says I earn four million books to earn back to quarter million dollars of advance, right? It's crazy and so the The challenge, I think, you know, so the math on that is a little bit weird. And then you get spifts for international publication, but you don't get advances on, you don't get royalties on this.

52:34Like, if you, every time your book gets published in Vietnam, you get $5 ,000. Okay. It's a one time thing. They buy the rights. They buy the rights and they buy them outright. And that goes to you as cash in your account somehow. But that's what you see. That's all you see. You don't get the tail. Now and most books don't have tail. You know most books don't have tail. The self publishing is very interesting because to your point you're paying a one -time fee of X tens of thousands of dollars to this person. Yes. And every bit of the book that you sell you set the price 20k 20 20 bucks 25 bucks.

53:12That's all coming to you. Yeah, I'll tell you the thing I love most isn't that yeah, it's the speed. Yeah, I get this. And when I'm writing about exponential technology and entrepreneurs, I can't publish this thing. It's a year out of date. Yeah, but that's ridiculous. Look, you and I both take our full advance and we pour it back into marketing and then some. Yes. Right? You and I pour it back into writing partners, research and then some. But there are some people that are watching this that could think of this as an income straight. It can. And if you do self -publishing, you could probably do a better business that way, particularly if you built your media company.

53:48And that's the point, which is if you go self publishing, you're getting nothing from the publisher. So we don't give the publishers too much credit for doing a ton, but they do some. Now it's all on you. Right? It's all on you if you self publishing. You have an extraordinary book list. You have an extraordinary presence. You snap your fingers and your team lines up 20 of the most important podcasts that you're going to go hawk your book on and as a result it sells. I just want to make sure that we're balancing for folks who are watching who don't have a media business. Yeah. The books don't sell themselves.

54:24You have to sell them. You don't have to sell every book. Yeah. It becomes it's packaged. Now, which I want to talk about putting your marketing plan together for your book, I have a good old school from back in the time when I published a book, a binder with tabs. and here's a tab on podcasting. Here's a tab on, you know, et cetera. Right, doing your book, we could probably do an entire podcast just on the book marketing. Absolutely. That's an entire thing. And it's critically important. I'm gonna hit a couple of other things here. The title and the cover. Oh my God. Yeah, so important. It is and battles and battles and battles.

55:06Oh yeah. I literally, the only time I lost my cool in Never It Alone was over the cover of Never It Alone. Funny story. So Never It Alone comes out, the book's done, so here's the thing, make sure that you write in your contract. In your contract. You have control. You have control. Yeah. Because most of the time you do not, there's a lot of times in the book contract the publisher owns the control. I didn't realize international covers are different. are different and they're controlled by the local. They're not can, there are published, there are titles, there are book covers out there that look like crap and I have nothing I can do about it.

55:48The English book title for Never Eat Alone, I hate. So the book cover was a guy's hand with a business card on top of a white plate as if like I'm handing you a business card at lunch. Now, you laugh because you know that that couldn't be further from who I am and what I wanted. Like I looked at that and I should've been a credit card. I flipped the fuck out. I was like, are you kidding me? That is transactional networking, smarmy, bullshit. I'm all about authentic, generous relationships that are life changing for both parties. And I said bullshit. And so I puffed and puffed and said no, and said no, and the publisher got so pissed at me that they said, well fuck you, this is supposed to be out tomorrow.

56:35I'm like, I said, I'm not gonna promote it. because I didn't have any rights. Yeah. I didn't have any rights. They could do it if I, and I said, fine, that I'm not going to promote it. I said, you want to fucking have rights over my book cover? I'm not promoting it. Fuck you. And so they said, well, fuck you. Here's your book cover. Some guy had gone in the back of the room and just taken an ugly orange color and wrote, never eat a loan on it. And they said, fuck you here. And I'm like, good, it's done. It's better than that other thing. And so that ended up being become a fucking I'm not very tall.

57:07I'm so hilarious. So I basically, I fight over or spend countless hours on the book title and then on the imagery on it. Because it's like, it's your brain. When it's, you know, the movie poster is the same example, right? You've got like one image and like one statement to capture people's attention. And it's important. One of the things I would do is do A .B. testing by Google ads of different book names and covers and see what people would click on. But to your point, the reason we both care goes back to the very beginning of our talk. It's your brand. It's yes. It's who you are. It's how you represent yourself in the world.

57:52It's your heart of your soul. If it really is a book that is meant to represent you, every aspect that's to represent you. Let's talk about a little about the marketing. So to get to a New York Times best seller list, I want to give some numbers here that my team research. So right now, to get onto the New York Times best seller list, not to get to number one, is you have to sell between 5 ,000 and 10 ,000 books in your first week. That's the current rough number. I would be surprised that that's enough. Okay, but it's on just on the list, right? And so there's many lists. There's fiction lists.

58:34There is nonfiction lists. There's children lists. There's monthly lists. And by the way, when people say, I've got a bestselling book, there's a thousand lists out there. Where you're in the Wall Street Journal and USA today, all of that stuff. It's funny. I was looking at somebody's bio the other day. I had set up a call with somebody and I was looking at their bio and it said, bestseller. And when I finally got underneath it, it literally was nothing. It was one day on Amazon, they had hit the top 10 of their category, which might be in a subcategory of atomic physics, or physics. And you were in the number three on a time of physics.

59:18So I think what's important is we spend a lot of time and have both of us have spent a lot of time sweating this idea of our bestseller lists. And I would argue. That's very ego -driven. Yeah. And the question is, does it matter? I mean, at the end of the day, when the realization I had a while ago was, I'm never gonna put on the book, number two in New York Times bestseller, right? You're either on the bestseller list or your number one. But you even just said it right now. You didn't even say New York Times. You just said bestseller list. Yeah. So for the I really think the answer is if you don't hit number one None of it matters right because you will always be able to say best seller with some moderate degree of integrity Because you're not putting a predisissue you're not saying Wall Street Journal best seller or Blog best seller right you you could probably say that you're a best -selling author no matter what and some subcategory or some sub -category with some degree of integrity.

1:00:20And if you're not number one, then you probably doesn't matter. And then just look at the amount, look at the net present value of the energy. Did you and I put into being number one? Crazy. And the favors you call it. And the money and the favors, et cetera. But just don't know what it's worth. But listen for those who can't. And the likelihood is that they, but for those who want to go for the gold ring, let me hit a few data points and please add to them. So if you want to hit number one, the number of pre -sales are probably in the 50 to 100 ,000 in the first week. To get somewhere on the list, the number is 5 to 10 ,000.

1:00:56You might be number 10 on the list. You might be on a secondary New York, this is the New York Times, which is, for some reason, the list everyone cares about. Well, let me also suggest that I have seen people get those numbers that you're talking about and not make the list. And the reason they don't is because the New York Times finally has an arbitrary ability to say, I don't trust your numbers. Right. I think that you don't have the pedigree. I mean, there is no open algorithm there. Let's repeat that. It's editorial. It's not. It's subjective. It's not objective. You can hit those numbers and not get the list.

1:01:32And one of the things they also do, if you look at the list and you see a double dagger next to a book. It is, if you look at what that means, it means that this book reached a number of sales, but it was in a fashion that doesn't represent public interest. It was some individual got tens of thousands pre -sold to their friends, which is what you do to get on the list. No, I think where, by the way, I want to hear more about this double dagger. Where I think it is unethical. And I've seen I've heard of people doing it. I've never I don't know anybody directly who's done it But people who are rich and buy 50 ,000 books and they send them to their warehouse Yep, and now they recognize that the wait there's a very intricate process which it's probably inside baseball but if you go on the Amazon and You buy five books.

1:02:31Yes, it counts as one So Amazon reports a transaction of a book purchase. Yes. And so what was happening for a period of time is there were agencies that were created. Yeah, I remember them. I hired one. No. And it would be your, like I had friends of mine who had companies that wanted to support. And they would buy 100 books or 500 books. And the agency would take the money, right? would buy the books individually and ship and then ship them to the employees of the company, right? Which you know from that actually I actually don't mind that yeah because that feels a Degree of integrity. There are a hundred people getting your book right now They didn't individually buy at the boss bought it, but they're getting your book I'm talking about people would buy 50 ,000 books go to that agency and have it shipped 50 ,000 times to people who never got the book, right?

1:03:27So that's I consider low integrity and that there were some people that got caught doing that and some articles written about them The challenges that only way you get to tens of thousands of sales in the first week is if you're you know President Clinton or if you are a famous actor and it's on the shelf and people know you and they want that inside story I what I was about to share yeah, what I was about to share again. This was back in an era. Yeah when what I cared about was the list. Right? So when I was trying to make the list, I went out and found a partner back in the day. Remember University of Phoenix?

1:04:08I do. I was doing something. It's still all right. Yeah, sure. It's doing well. I was doing some work with University of Phoenix. Yeah. And they really believed in the book, Who's Got Your Back? Because I was helping them design peer -to -peer coaching groups, young kids that at the university would be in small peer -to -peer coaching groups as a part of the learning experience and alumni that would be in peer -to -peer coaching groups in support of their career development. And so when who's got your back came out, they're like, that's an amazing book. We should get it for all of our students.

1:04:40And let's go on a book tour around the country. And so I ended up raising $2 million with University of Phoenix to just support my book launch. Amazing. Right? And it got number one year times best seller. It's it's you know non -traditional marketing and thinking. That's that's passing. So yeah, that's the point which is book marketing isn't just your advance. It's not just your own money. It's partnerships. It is getting partnerships with outside of what I did. What I did on bold to drive it again to number two. And both for abundance and bold it was some um, uh, sequel to a fiction book, you know, sort of like a, I think it was 50 shades of gray was like hitting number one.

1:05:27Oh, I thought you were like bold was like 50 shades of gray. I'm like, I'm gonna go back and reread that. I don't remember that in the book. No, it was like the follow on to 50 shades of gray. There was number one. It was like, no way I was gonna beat it. I mean, I don't care how many I sold. Um, but what I did with bold was I did something unique, um, and interesting. I went out to my community and I built a community through singularity university and through X Prize and I said I'm going to create a program, it was called the Vanguard program and I said I'm looking for 200 members of my community who are going to go out and sell 100 copies of the book.

1:06:08Yeah, that's great. If you do that, I think Gary Venturecheck did something that like that recently. It was a big deal. If you do that, I will give you an invitation to come and join me and Ray Kurzweil for a day to talk about exponential technologies at Singularity University, either by remote, viewing, or in person. It worked great. I had a small army of people who cared deeply about exponential tech and entrepreneurship who went into this. That was an interesting thing to do. Yeah, I want to pause on that because I feel like that philosophy, which is, I think if you are really going to go big on a book, you need to think of yourself as a movement leader.

1:06:51Yes. And if you think of yourself, as again, there's a difference between you doing it all yourself and a movement leader, movement leaders realize there they go, I must follow them, and probably I'm their leader, that was the Gandhi phase, right? You need to marshal volunteers. And as a movement leader, I start to marshal volunteers in the writing process. I go out to people who care about what I care about because they've been following me and I ask for case studies, examples. I ask for volunteers for people who are curious about a topic that they would go spend a month doing research on the side for and deliver it to me.

1:07:30Yeah. So I get people involved. That's what happened in EXO 2 .0. Seleme had built OpenEXO as a large community of thousands of entrepreneurs. And they contributed ideas. They reviewed chapters. And then they were there to promote the book. And we did, the day we launched the book, we did a five hour free global webinar, right? Teaching everything that was in the book and then offered the book at 99 cents on Amazon on for the digital copy for two weeks really for those individuals. It really is about getting creative these days and you have to care about the book content because you're going to spend a lot of energy.

1:08:16It's not a financial transaction. It's something that represents your heart and your soul. Let's talk a little bit about a lifetime of book writing. You and I have done that now. We both started and we keep going. I have a, you seem to have these short, agile sprints of writing book. A book might take you a year or two to be done. I have a long tail perspective. I've been writing one book now for 10 years. And you seem to help? I have had help. I've had lots of help, but it's a pivotal book for me. And I'm not worried about publishing it right away, because to me, it's about the learning. And I keep rewriting it and I keep reworking it and I'm not ready to let it go into the world yet But it's it's a it's a beautiful ongoing learning path that I've had with two writing partners Yeah, and so I just want people to think a little differently about it And the other thing I want you to think about is the pivots so When I was when I wrote Never To Loan it was serendipitous Here's an article about how you had your career be so successful.

1:09:26Would you write a book about how other people can be successful? Sure. Never get alone about networking relationships. Great. But that's not what I wanted my brand to be. All of a sudden I had this amazing success of a brand around networking that I was actually pushing away from. Because in my head, my friends were Peter Diamandis, who was a thoughtful scientist changing the world. My friends were my CEO friends who were changing the major corporations. I didn't wanna be the networking guy. And so I never captured the momentum of never eating. I feel that. You had a trajectory that if you held on to that, could have been game changing.

1:10:12Yeah, it's well in different ways. I mean I wouldn't it would have been different. I mean this was back at a day pre -timferrous Yeah, this was a day you could have been you could have been the ultimate podcaster from from day one all of those I had not to I had to let go of space which I had spent 20 25 years developing all the relationships building companies there when I switched over to exponential tech and in Sort of abundance thinking and it's really about constantly reinventing yourself Right, right. Which is a fun thing to do. Yeah. And that's what I've done with my books. Yeah. So if you look at my books They've and it's interesting because I may now come back around to that self -help space It's a space that I abandoned at a time when my sense of self and ego and other things Didn't want to be all in I didn't want that to be my brand.

1:11:02I wanted to be respected by Presidents and and CEOs and thought leaders and you are and ironically I am and they still respect me for the networking thing. I mean I've helped presidents build their networks during campaigns and it's ironic that people want to keep pulling me back into that core and I and I had fought it for a while. Everybody this is Peter, a quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the crisis in use network, I call CNN or Fox, and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet.

1:11:45I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. How entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do.

1:12:24If this is the kind of you use you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus .com, backslashblog, and learn more. Now back to the episode. So you're going to get to a point your book is published, you get the galleys, you get, you're going to go out there and look for book blurbs. Right, so what's a book blurb? A book blurb is getting someone on the back of the cover who has some notoriety to say this is a great book by it. Right. Which probably the author has written and handed to the blurbure. And it is 100 % what happens, right? I mean, yes. It's like it's like you don't actually send them the full book and say can you read it and send it give me two Sons do they do and nobody does and nobody so I went and someone asked me for a book blurb You know if I know the person yeah, I will do it.

1:13:12I will still ask for Summary the book because I'm not gonna have a time to really just slide it in and read it and What make sure it's not weirdly and what's its purpose? Yeah, I'm like and then how does it connect to me right and then I will say then write me three or four draft blurbs and I'll modify one. Are you abundant with your blurbing of other people's books? Because I know some people, I can say their names. I am, but they are very stingy with it. I know others who have written them. In the middle someplace. I have been careful not to just accept everybody, but there are those people who I know through singularity or ex -price, who I respect.

1:13:53But I'm not that stingy with it, but I get, I probably get a hundred requests a year, and I'll probably accommodate 20. My view is I don't get the stinginess because it's not like any human will have seen the 10 things that you've blurbed. I just want to make sure that you're authentic for me. Authenticity in that regard. So you get the book blurbs, you get your book jacket, you get your final heart copy, and you're gonna have a Launch event of some type which used to be in purse my first abundance launch event was Steve Forbes threw me a party and Ari on Huffington threw me a party. Now Ari has the best book launches She threw me mine too, right and and then you're on a press tour now, which by the way first of all I think a book launch party is useless.

1:14:47It doesn't it doesn't really think it's just for you makes you feel good Yeah, it's like a birthday. Wait, do I have a party or do we not have a party this year? Well, I'll have a party. Okay, that's as important as this. Don't spend any money. It's not going to drive anything. If you want to celebrate like a decade of work and your friends are there, have a party for that purpose. Right, right. And then you start your media. You start your book marketing. Yes. And at that point, it is eyeballs. It's getting on. NPR is probably the best thing you can get on. You know, and that changes. So when every alone came out, I had a relationship that got me on the New York time on the today show.

1:15:26And at that time, not today show. Yeah, today's show, the morning TV show, right? Today's show made number one. That was it. And today's Oprah will make you a number one. Does it anymore? I will maybe at least do. I mean, like, I mean, to even have book club anymore. I don't know. We don't know. We have to be careful. We don't say that. I don't know what you're gonna write. I'm not sure. Well, I don't think she has a show anymore, Peter. Oh, come on, she's happy. Oh, we'll find out. Anyway, anyway. Anyway, regardless, but you're the PR, you know. But I think the, look, what are the categories?

1:15:59This is any media person. There's the newspapers which do do reviews, and I don't think they matter as much anymore, except for New York Times doing a review is a big deal still, I think. You've got the morning shows, you've got radio which still has impact. Bob Pittman keeps reminding me who owns my art media. How important radio is and I really think it is. But I think the biggest issue are podcasters. Yeah. So it is today, it's going on a podcast tour. It's really speaking about your book. And people are like, I don't want to give it away. Oh shit. What do you mean? I mean, you want to talk about it as much as give everything away.

1:16:38And then a lot of people will buy the book just to have it on their shelf so they can refer back to it. Well, you know what portion of books that are bought or read? Oh God. What would you buy? It's less than 10%. Less than 10%. Wow. I mean, the reality is, you're... Anyway, I'm not even going to go there. So what to be, we're about to take this whole reason for watching this podcast and flush it down the toilet because no one fucking reads it anymore. Well, that's the big question. It's like, what's next for you? I'll tell you what's next. And we did this with EXO 2 .0. We basically trained a GPT -4 model on the book.

1:17:13And all the research. And you're talking to the BigQuery. Is that the thing I was talking to Peter Bot? That's a different version. And Peter Bot is trained on all of my books. And you can ask it concrete questions like, how do I develop an abundance mindset, where an exponential mindset, whatever it might be, or how do I, I'm in a cement business in Sao Paulo, So how do I turn myself into an experimental organization? And the book will give you context and a reason. Your books, I hope my books deserve to be read beginning to end from people who really believe in what we're writing about. If somebody wants to, I'm about to write the most important, consummate book today of high performing teams.

1:18:01The last team's book was 20 years ago, which was Pat Lentzioni's five dysfunctions of a team, which everybody still refers to. But think about what's changed in 20 years. So my book that we're about to publish is going to be very meaningful and important in the world. Most books don't have that like gravitas about them and you need to ask yourself again, what are you writing for? Sure, I'll tell you one thing that I've done recently is as I'm writing a book, I will release chapters or portions of chapters as blogs, right? And I ask for feedback. And I develop an audience on that way, right? Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian and wrote like my favorite book of the decade, Hall -Marry, both fiction books.

1:18:54It came out of no place, and he wrote his book, The Martian, and released it as chapters on the internet for feedback. And people get afraid. Yeah. If they do that, they're giving it away. And no one's going to buy the book. It just doesn't work that way. No, abundance works in this regard. So give the information away, get the feedback, develop people who want the next chapter in that regards. And I think that's really, you know, important. So what do we have to say in summary? Well, let's wrap this up. You know, one last thing, do you read your own books on Audible? Oh, great question. Yeah.

1:19:33And so when abundance came out and they chose the reader, and I listened to it, I was horrified. I was like, oh my god, I could not listen to this person for a chapter. You'd rather Peter bought, read it. Oh my god. So I ended up reading with Stephen Redbold and Futures Faster. Do you like the process? I do. I enjoy reading it because I can put the inflection into it. It takes, you know, a day and a half, two days to read a book. Yeah. I hate it. I know. Well, the thing that's interesting is you don't have to actually read it perfectly. You have to read it three times. You read a sentence and then you made a fub that you read it again.

1:20:16I mean, I'm getting my skin is crawling Well thinking about it. So the answer is I'm not ready to do mine. Okay. Well, I'll tell you we just trained up my voice model on 11 labs and It feels really good and I'm sure with that with not the inflection but not with the meaning right of the personal story that goes like Oh my god, you know when you really when you convey it in that regard, but it will get there But in the meantime, here's what I say to reading your book. I think it's a beautifully generous gift to give your readers that I've never given them. Because when I tried, it drove me crazy.

1:20:54I sat, I said, okay, you know what, this next book, I'm going to do it. And I sat there and I started practicing and I realized I have three days of this. I had a knee. I said no. No. What I did do is I interviewed the readers. So I got my publisher to give me three potential readers. And I listened to all of them and I found one that I thought was good. And then I had a meeting with them. Interesting. I said, listen, let me explain to you, I'm going with you instead of myself. I'd like you to understand why this book's important to me. Love that. I want you to understand and I want to talk to you about some of the stories.

1:21:29I want to tell you, I'm going to tell you with the inflection point that matters to me. I coached them. Yes, nice. And you know, I think it got better as a result of that, but I agree I should be a more generous better human I'm let and read him well. I'll tell you something that is interesting that David Sinclair when he wrote lifespan And he had a he had a a coat a Co -author on that in between the chapters not all chapters, but in that between the chapters When on the audible there was a conversation between David and the author about the chapter about the content of the chapter like has how that was amazing and how fast it's changed and that gave a little intimacy.

1:22:11So at a minimum if someone else is reading your book, getting into an audio and recording, having a conversation with that person about the chapter. I thought about that so we of course when I'm working with my co -writers I had a co -writer that I did two books with his name is Noel Wyrick, amazing co -writer. He was great. He and I would get into some really like knock down drag out fights. Like he'd be like, you know, that doesn't make any sense. I'm a book writer. I know what this is. It was like, but that, but you've turned it into mush and like we're yelling at each other. And I was sometimes just laugh and I said, we've got to publish this as a part of the book.

1:22:53Right? No, all the soup that, you know, the ingredients that go into the soup that makes it. I think we will, by the way, see books that are written in this multimedia fashion, where the making of the book is all recorded. The film even, perhaps, when they're together on Zoom talking about it. Imagine the richness of that. You've got the book and then you've got all the stuff that went into it. I mean, it would be powerful. So, ladies and gentlemen, our next book writers here, Keith Farasi, author of Never Eat alone, who's got your back, leading without authority, competing in the new world of work, Keith, which social media platform are you mostly active on these days?

1:23:37I'd say LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the right place. And you're, it's at Keith Farasi at LinkedIn. Yeah, at Keith Farasi. But wait, before we, we can't just close. We can't. We've got to say something poignant. Okay. I thought we did. I don't know. We were just, no, no, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we had an hour worth of poignants. Bring it in. So like both of us should give a reflective comment out the wrapper of the book. All right. So you go first. No, no, you go first. Okay. I had that spare. Don't think of a book as this crazy Mount Everest thing that only special people do.

1:24:15Think of a book as your heartfelt ability to sit and be contemplative about what really matters to you. who you are, what do you want to project to the world? And it doesn't have to be something that you're on deadline. It could be something that you evolve, but it's a forcing mechanism and accountability mechanism to focus on your brand and what you have to say to the world. And then I would also recommend that you get a coach. That coach could be a co -writer or something. So that you keep on and you work it through and you get to the end and you get to the end And you've got something for your legacy and the minimum your grandkids will love to see.

1:25:01Yeah, you know That was my point. That was okay. I felt the need to do something You're to birth to that Understanding why you writing the book is really important. Right. I think the why is is key and I remember the difference between I mean, I'm going to write a book about space because I'm the space guy to, oh my God, there's this incredible truth in the universe about technology making everything more abundant and where humanity was going and I want everyone to know about it. And the level of emotional energy that drove that was night and day. So hopefully, books listening can find that book inside them that really has this, we're emotional, we're emotional entities, right?

1:25:52You need that emotional drive. I found the bookwriting process incredibly meaningful and creative and it's artistry and You know, it can it changed my life abundance as a book launched launched me in a brand new direction as did never free to loan for you. And at the end of the day, it's gonna become easier to write a book, right? Use the tools. I think we had an interesting debate and discussion about using chat GPT. Use the tools, but make sure that if you're using chat GPT, that it isn't plain vanilla, that you're adding your own stories, that it is, what is on the page there is meaningful to you.

1:26:43But in the day, we're going to see a lot of books. And people say, I'm going to write a book to make money. Well, guess what? That's not where you make your money. You make your money in the speaking business. If that's what you want to do. And that's going to be the subject of our next podcast. We talked about you're on LinkedIn at Keith Farasi, two Rs, two Zs. And what if they want to reach you for, For have you speak or coach their executive team? Where do they go for that? A company is called Frosy Greenlight. Okay. So go to Frosy Greenlight and you can get in contact with us there. Awesome.

1:27:20Thank you, brother. This was fun. Always.