MI350: Building a Self-Publishing Empire w/ Nick Di Fabio

6 May 2024 · 56 min

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The Intrinsic Value Podcast - Episode Summary: MI350 - Building a Self-Publishing Empire w/ Nick Di Fabio

Podcast Overview Podcast Title: The Intrinsic Value Podcast Episode Title: MI350: Building a Self-Publishing Empire w/ Nick Di Fabio Host: Patrick Donley Guest: Nick Di Fabio Description: This episode focuses on Nick Di Fabio's journey in self-publishing, particularly through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Di Fabio shares his experiences, strategies, and insights into building a successful publishing business, making over $1 million in royalties, and mentoring others in the self-publishing space.

Key Concepts and Discussions

Introduction to Amazon KDP

  • What is KDP?

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) allows users to publish eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers independently, bypassing traditional publishing houses.

Nick Di Fabio's Background

  • Career Journey:

Prior to KDP, Di Fabio held 30 different jobs before the age of 30. He discovered KDP while working a demanding night shift, publishing over 250 books that continue to generate royalties.

  • Success Metrics:

Achieved over $1 million in royalties and successfully exited a previous venture.

Finding a Niche in Self-Publishing

  • Niche Selection:

Di Fabio emphasizes the importance of selecting profitable niches and conducting thorough research. He highlights how to analyze market demands and competition.

  • Demographics:

Self-publishing appeals to various demographics, including those seeking supplemental income and individuals aiming to replace their full-time jobs.

Changes in Publishing Landscape

  • Industry Evolution:

The last decade has seen shifts towards higher quality content. Readers are increasingly discerning, necessitating better covers, titles, and book marketing strategies.

  • Impact of AI:

Di Fabio discusses AI's role in the publishing industry, enabling faster and more efficient content creation, such as outlines and book descriptions.

Marketing Strategies

  • Optimizing Marketing Efforts:

Di Fabio advocates an 80/20 approach, focusing on review acquisition and Amazon ads to maximize book visibility.

  • Building a Reader Base:

Emphasizes the importance of maintaining a core group of readers who will promote the book through word-of-mouth.

Exit Strategies in Publishing

  • Selling a Publishing Business:

Di Fabio shares insights on how to prepare a publishing business for sale, emphasizing the creation of a strong revenue stream and maintaining proper records.

The Publishing Profits Academy

  • Creating the Academy:

Inspired by helping others succeed in self-publishing, Di Fabio founded the Publishing Profits Academy to mentor aspiring authors.

  • Program Structure:

Provides members access to resources, live coaching calls, and community support to guide them through the publishing process.

Key Takeaways

  • Self-Publishing as a Viable Income Source:

Self-publishing can provide significant passive income with the right strategies and commitment.

  • Quality Over Quantity:

Focus on producing high-quality content rather than simply churning out numerous low-quality books.

  • Leveraging Technology:

Use AI tools to streamline the writing and publishing processes.

  • Community Engagement:

Build a community and engage with readers to enhance book visibility and sales.

Resources Mentioned

  • Books:
  • *The 80/20 Principle* by Richard Koch
  • *Deep Work* by Cal Newport
  • *The 50th Law* by Robert Greene
  • *48 Laws of Power* by Robert Greene
  • *On the Shortness of Life* by Seneca
  • *Outwitting the Devil* by Napoleon Hill
  • Tools:
  • BookBeam for niche research and keyword optimization.

Conclusion The episode concludes with an encouragement for listeners to consider self-publishing as a means to generate income and share their knowledge. Di Fabio emphasizes the importance of focusing on quality, utilizing available resources, and engaging with a community of fellow authors.

For listeners interested in exploring self-publishing further, they are encouraged to connect with Nick Di Fabio through his social media platforms and to consider joining the Publishing Profits Academy.

---

Connect with the Host and Guest

  • Patrick Donley: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/JPatrickDonley)
  • Nick Di Fabio: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-difabio) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nickdifabio)

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Transcript

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0:00You're listening to TIP. And to have 1000 people that sort of appreciate what you do is goes a long way because there's word of mouth and so many benefits from having that sort of core group. It certainly applies to publishing for sure. When you launch these books, you want to make the most of those first few readers, right? Whether it's 100 people, 1000 people or more, because you know that if there's a positive experience there, it will absolutely lead to them telling people that they know about your book. Hey guys, in today's episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with Nick DeFabio, who prior to discovering Amazon KDP had 30 jobs before the age of 30.

0:41He's since gone on to make over$1 million in Amazon KDP royalties, had a successful exit, and is now helping others clone his self-publishing strategies. You'll learn how to get started in Kindle Direct Publishing in this episode, how to select profitable niches, how AI is changing the publishing landscape, how to 80-20-year marketing efforts, and a whole lot more. Nick discovered Amazon KDP while working a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. job and has since gone on to publish over 250 books that continue to make him royalties. He also runs Publishing Profits Academy, where he teaches others how to build a self-publishing business.

1:18This was a fun episode for me. I'm a huge book lover, and it was fun to learn about the self-publishing business from Nick. Without further delay, let's dive into today's episode.

1:31Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network. Since 2014, we interviewed successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation. Now for your host, Patrick Donley.

1:58Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host today, Patrick Donnelly. And joining me in the studio today is Nick DeFabio. Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to get into our talk today. We're going to get into Amazon KDP. So let's just kind of jump right in. For our listeners that don't know what Amazon KDP is, I didn't actually up until a few weeks ago. Can you explain what it is? Yeah, basically it's Amazon Publishing. So it's a self-publishing platform for anyone to publish eBooks, paperbacks, hardcovers without having to be associated with a publishing house.

2:35So basically it's an opportunity to create books and kind of just basically have you go that route versus having to be associated with a big five publisher. So I want to hear how you got into this. We were talking a little bit beforehand about how you had 30 jobs before 30, 30 for 30. Talk to me a little bit about those early days of just struggling to find your niche and then how you ended up finding this niche in self-publishing. Yeah, that's a great question. So going back to... This is now 2014-ish, late 2014, early 2015. I was working a 6pm to 6am job, hardly any breaks, and I think two 30-minute breaks at a desk the whole time.

3:17So I believe things have changed since then at that position. What was the job? What were you doing? It was a port, like a rail planner, vessel planner type job. So it was, so you had, you're talking to the yard all the time before man, you were, had the phone. It was just basically you were kind of guarding the containers as they were coming off the ships. So it was an important job, but man, two, three in the morning, four in the morning, like you should not be working in my opinion for the most part. So as I was telling you earlier, I had a friend, Mastery.com, Stephen James, who was making money with Amazon Publishing,$3 ,000 a month.

3:51And for me, it might as well have been$300 ,000 a month. I was just like, this is an amazing opportunity. I love books. I love this idea of passive income, making royalties while you're not physically working. So I just started to, as I approached things, I kind of started to explore a little bit during my days off. At the time, I was single. I wasn't married with kids. and I just started to go down that path, made every mistake in the book you can imagine. And then I would say probably a good year, 18 months or so, I finally figured things out. And from there, just started to follow a system and create books and here I am.

4:28So were you staying at the warehouse doc job while you were learning? Did you have at two in the morning time to study this? I imagine it's quiet at two in the morning, But did you have time to kind of get this started while you were in your W2 job, regular job, and kind of get the ball rolling? There definitely was some research opportunities and some of that. I think for me, I was fortunate because it was a four-on, four-off schedule. So I had four full days off. And it's funny too, those four days off, usually I would spend day one recovering from the shifts. Day two and day three were full days off.

5:04And then day four, you'd prep to get back to work for these 12-hour shifts because you couldn't do much during those days anyway. So during day two and day three, I was encouraged by my employer to work overtime. I almost always declined, even though the money was potentially good. And I really spent that time just making progress on my publishing business. So KDP, again, it's Kindle Digital Publishing. How does it work? Let's say I'm a guy that's got a book idea. Walk me through the steps of how it works. Yeah, for sure. So it's Kindle Direct Publishing. And it's a bit of a misnomer too, because on that platform, you can publish, as I mentioned, the digital version, the Kindle version, paperbacks, and hardcovers.

5:45So you can publish all three. How the process works is for the most part, you select your niche, right? Select your niche, right? So if you go on amazon.com, you scroll down to the left-hand side under books, pretty much 80 % of the topics are going to be nonfiction, you know, health and fitness, cookbooks, test prep, exam prep. So what you want to do is you want to find a niche. Within that niche, you want to choose some profitable keywords, right? So as an example, maybe you go to the cookbook section and then you go to paleo diet, right? as an example. And then the process from there becomes the process of creating your high quality book.

6:21That's really one of the big keys to this whole process is focusing on quality. You create the high quality book, so beautiful cover, benefit-driven, a SEO-based title with a benefit-driven subtitle, beautiful product page, nice description, great content. And then the last piece to the puzzle is launching this book, using some sort of method to get your book visible. A lot of people come to me and say, well, I don't have an audience. And I say, it doesn't really matter. You can publish these books in a certain way where you can get your book in front of literally hundreds of thousands of readers.

6:55So that's another critical piece of the puzzle. So walk me through your first project. Did you write it yourself? You explained the cover, the quality of the book. How did you learn how to do that? Did you just trial by fire and just figured it out as you went? Or were you following somebody else's blueprint? Definitely trial by fire. Like I said, I made every mistake in the book. I did a scattershot approach where I would just publish on multiple topics. I mean, thinking back, I think one of my first books, I want to say it was dog training or something like that, dog training. And it was terrible.

7:32It was terrible. It was short. Cover was ugly. I had no launch plan. I just knew, like I was desperate to make something work. And I just knew that this was going to work. So I was kind of like the pressure was off a little bit in the sense that I was like, let me just get something out there. Let me just go through this process once because I struggled a little bit with procrastination, perfectionism. So I was like, let me just get something out there, publish it. And then it was just a matter of refining things from there. Talk to me a little bit about why someone would be interested in pursuing something like this and maybe like who, I know you've got a masterclass that you teach, who some of your typical clientele are.

8:12I would say people fall into sort of generally three categories. Number one, it's someone who's looking to sort of supplement their main income source. Typically, it's someone who works on nine to five. As we all know, now inflation is a bit of a challenge. So for someone to sit there and maybe make an extra one, two, three grand a month, it's pretty nice. It's a pretty nice option. So that's sort of one category. A second category is someone who said, you know what? Screw it. I'm actually going to go all out. I'm going to build this to the point where I can eventually leave my nine to five and sort of have that freedom, that freedom, which is definitely a possibility.

8:45It's not going to happen overnight, but definitely can happen for sure. And then the third sort of person that we were talking about earlier is someone who's looking to leverage this idea of a book as a business card, whether it be for authority, for perhaps even speaking engagements, that sort of thing. That's a huge opportunity as well. So yeah, that's generally the three top categories. stories and then people in my program, you know, we have, I've got someone in my program who's just going to turn 80. She's going to turn 80 and she's inspiring, you know, she's making progress and, you know, she needs a little bit of help on some of the sort of backend stuff with perhaps uploading the files, but she's got it.

9:22You know, she's got the program down and she's making progress. I've got someone as young as 19. She's a student in a university. So her mentality is let me publish books as opposed to gain a part-time job while I'm going to school and see where this takes me. And everything in between, you know, we have people that are professionals working their jobs, people in between jobs. It's a real cool experience for me to be able to talk to people from all over the world trying to publish books. So you got started in 2014. Is that correct? Right around then? Yeah, I would say probably sometime in like spring, summer 2014 or so.

9:59So that's 10 years, you know, since that time. How has publishing changed in the past 10 years for you? How has this business model changed in the past 10 years? Dramatically for the better, for the better. When I published back then, you could put up a book that was just okay content, okay cover, no ads, not much marketing support, and it could do okay. It could do okay for you. I call it this phase. That's probably phase one. Phase two of the book of this publishing path was a little more competition. Readers are more savvy. They're looking for higher quality content, covers that catch their eye even more.

10:34And I think where we're at now is what I call sort of the 3.0 phase, where now, in my opinion, it's never been easier with the power of AI to create really high quality books that readers love quickly, relatively inexpensively. That's kind of where we're at right now. It's changed dramatically since those 2014 days. We'll get into AI in a little bit here, but I wanted to ask you first, like, what are the main things to focus on? I'm thinking like in terms of niches, just like what somebody really needs to get dialed in to ensure success in KDP? I learned this the hard way. It's really just about fundamentals.

11:14So the fundamentals for me are, first of all, if you're doing a business card book, that's a little bit of a different topic. But if you're doing a book that you want to generate passive income for you, are you going to go into a niche or a category that's in demand? Are there people looking for this book? That's number one. And then from there, it's just the main focus is really on creating a high quality book. You know, like that beautiful cover, a great product page, content that helps the reader in some way, the nonfiction space. I've done both nonfiction and fiction. Nonfiction is really cool because you can actually create something of value that people are going to buy for literally years.

11:52So you have to really, in my opinion, focus on that. One thing I tell all my members in my program, I say, you know, look at the reviews. of other books. What are they doing good? What are they doing poorly? And make sure that your book either includes those good parts or overcomes those negative parts because that's really what's going to allow your book to sell for a long time. What's the breakdown in terms of overall book sales? Isn't most of it 80 % or 90 % nonfiction books? Oh, you mean in terms of Amazon's general sales? It's a tough question. Fiction is a massive space. Fiction is a massive space.

12:26fiction is a little tricky, I think, for a lot of people getting into this space because you're on a bit of a sort of hamster wheel. You do need for the most part to continue pumping out books on a regular basis because fiction people typically read it once and they put it away. That's usually how it works for the most part. Nonfiction, yeah, nonfiction is massive too. Nonfiction, I mean, take that a step further a little bit or break that down further. When you publish nonfiction, what you're going to find for the most part is that I would say about two-thirds, let's say 60 % to 70 % of your royalties will come from the actual paperback version of your book in most niches.

13:02And then the balance is filled out by the Kindle version. And then if it applies to the audio version. So that's the way the pie is broken down in that space. Let's talk a little further about niches. How do you go about researching what a profitable niche would be? I imagine that's one of people's first questions is like, what am I going to look the book going to be on, what kind of advice do you have for people to find? Do you suggest people just follow their own passions and interests? Or are you not a follower of that and just say, here's what the market wants? If you can do that, that's amazing.

13:38If you can match your passion and interest with market demand, that's sort of that perfect Venn diagram situation. But I tell people for the most part, focus on what makes money first. I'll give you an example. I had someone join the program and he went to publish golf joke books, golf jokes. And I was like, that's not going to make money. Well, the ones he wanted to write. And so we looked at it together after about five minutes of looking at it together. He was like, yeah, you're right. It's not going to make me much money. So the way I do it, the way I approach it is sort of a red light, green light thing.

14:06What I mean by that is that I kind of go into one of these categories. As mentioned, I got a list here that I have. It could be like self-help, cookbooks, financial advice, spiritual, whatever it might be. You want to go into there, select a keyword. And then I typically recommend running it through a criteria. Things like, is there demand? How many search results are you getting? Can you compete? Things like, is this book, can you perhaps put this book in a box set or a bundle, which is great for revenue? Can it be translated and do well in translated markets? And some books, they're amber. Some books, you're like, I'm not sure if I should go into that space.

14:45But once you learn how to do this criteria process, you'll see a ton of green like niche is tons. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make peer feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas. That's why we built the Intrinsic Value Community. It's a place to connect, share ideas, learn, and get feedback. Nobody ever wishes they'd spent more time buried in spreadsheets, but connecting and building relationships with others who may be smarter on a topic than you, but who are also schooled in value investing, that's valuable.

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17:31To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. And are you using Amazon to do that research to determine the niche? Are you using Google or where are you looking to get the data? My first point of contact is definitely Amazon. Amazon is an amazing resource. That's kind of the old school way to do it. I'll go to Amazon and kind of search through there. And nowadays, there's just so many apps and softwares you can use as well.

18:14There's one software I use called BookBeam where it's just incredible. You can find categories and keywords literally within about five minutes. I heard you mentioned BookBeam in another interview. What does that platform do? It sounds like it's something worth checking out for somebody that would be interested in this. Yeah. BookBeam.io. They have, in my opinion, they're probably the most required tool for the publishing space. They've grown a lot. Actually, I know the owner of the business. We're casual friends. He basically started off with a very bare bones app, but now you can do niche research, product page optimization.

18:51You can do keyword finder. You can do all sorts of things. It's just basically this data mining tool that uses Amazon's platform. It's got a desktop app and you can just play around with it. It's a really incredible tool for self-publishers. So let's go step-by-step. Let's say we figured out the niche. We figured out the subject we want to write a book on. What's next? It's creating the content. Do you actually write at that point or do you farm that out to ghostwriters? How does that part of it work, creating the actual content of it? You have options here. You have options here. I mean, there definitely is a path for you to write the book.

19:28What I typically do is for me, that sort of, I call it the book creation phase. The first step is the outline. The first step is the outline. Now you can do this yourself. I typically use chat GPT these days, AI these days to create some really incredible outlines. You can do some really cool things with sort of enhancing the value of your book through some prompts. And then the option is you can use a ghostwriting service. So there's a ghostwriting service out there that literally have hundreds, if not thousands of writers for you to choose from. There's ghostwriters you can hire as well. Let's say you want to specialize on a specific topic.

19:59There's tons of ghostwriters that would kind of hone in on that topic. And then there's the DIY approach, which I don't recommend for most people starting off with because unless you have a really good game plan, and then there's AI as well. And when you say DIY, meaning just write it yourself? Just write yourself from front to back. I think you can do that, absolutely. But I think you just have to go into it with a really solid game plan of, okay, how am I going to structure this book? What is my plan to write per day, per week sort of thing? So you can make sure you make consistent progress on that if you're not a professional writer.

20:34Have you done the DIY method yourself? Oh my gosh, I have tried it. I have tried. I do enjoy, I love to, I'm a big reader, I do like to write, but I found it so challenging in the back of my mind, thinking I'm writing this for money. At the end of the day, I feel like there's a bit of a block there. So typically these days, I outsource to a ghostwriting service and it's been working out great. Let's get into a little bit more about AI. How has AI impacted all of this? It's got to have changed it dramatically. Where is things going to go? What's the direction of publishing? AI has been a massive game changer, as you say.

21:13So I want to say about the summer of 2023 is when AI kind of really started to be more prevalent and visible on Amazon. In fact, actually, some people were getting their accounts terminated because they were uploading all these books at a fast speed that really weren't that good. So Amazon's smart. They've got tons of resources. So they put in place some sort of buffers and bumpers to eliminate essentially the crappy books for being uploaded. So in terms of how AI has changed things, at a high level, it's basically allowed people to create these super high quality books without spending months creating books.

21:51And at a more practical level, as mentioned, it can help you create these amazing outlines. Some of the outlines you create are amazing. I use it for things like niche research, title creation, book descriptions. I definitely have also played around with it in terms of creating the actual book itself. I know the ghostwriting services I use, they actually ask, is it okay if the writer uses AI to create the book? So I'm always like, yeah, for sure. So it's been a massive game changer. Actually, someone that I know that what they do is they actually use AI for children's books and they create the images with AI as well.

22:25So it's been a massive change for them because now they can go really fast. They have the template down for one book. Now they create these beautiful images. And on children's books, it's maybe a thousand words. The content is quite low. So it's never been easier for them to create these beautiful, high quality books as quickly as possible. And you're using ChatGPT mostly for your purposes? I like ChatGPT. I'm kind of like someone who likes to stick with that sort of first thing they started off with. So there's tons of things out there now that are coming along. So I like to explore a little bit as well.

22:58One of the things for audio that has come across my plate is 11 Labs, 11 Labs IO for some audio stuff. So always exploring, always testing different things. When I use ChatGPT for same thing for like title creation for the podcast and things like that, where do you think, where do writers end up with AI? Like how, what's the role of the writer in the future? I kind of want to hear your thoughts on that. In terms of writers, I think the fiction space is always going to need that human element for sure. I think it's really difficult to have, I mean, at least right now it's changing so quickly, but the nuance of a fiction story, I think is always going to need a good chunk of human, the human piece.

23:38Nonfiction, I mean, it's moving along so fast. It's incredible. I tested actually a quick story for you. I tested a sort of service from someone else where I was able to basically spend about 20, 30 minutes filling out a form. Within about two days, I got back an outline. Within about seven days, I got back a 50 ,000 word book that was 95 % good, right? So it's amazing. I think at the end of the day, I think the path for AI is that it will be more and more involved with how we do things, but you are still going to need that human piece to personalize things. I think that's always going to be the case.

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24:14I'm a big fan of a guy named Kevin Kelly, who was an editor of Wired magazine. And he explained it, the way he thought of it was like, it's like having an intern do the writing for you, but you wouldn't have your intern, you wouldn't put that out as the final product, right? You still need to have the boss come in and edit it and clean it up and not use the intern's work as your own. That's very well said. Yeah. Kevin Kelly's from that 1 ,000 True Fans. I think I I remember reading that essay on time, which is really good. That's really well said. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Let's get into that a little bit.

24:48Now that we're talking about Kevin Kelly and 1 ,000 True Fans, talk a little bit about what that is for people that aren't familiar with it. And then does that same concept and idea apply to publishing? Yeah. So this idea of 1 ,000 True Fans is born from the fact that you don't need to be... Not everyone needs to buy your services or product. You can have, relatively speaking, the world is huge. And to have 1 ,000 people that appreciate what you do goes a long way because there's word of mouth and so many benefits from having that core group. It certainly applies to publishing for sure. I think the idea is that when you launch these books, you want to make the most of those first few readers, whether it's 100 people, 1 ,000 people or more.

25:34because you know that if there's a positive experience there, it will absolutely lead to them telling people that they know about your book or having the book available at their house or that sort of thing for other people to see. So in my opinion, it can definitely apply. And the other way it applies too is one of the cool things you can do in this space is build email lists, right? So you can build email lists for a group of people that are going to be basically looking for your book every time there's a new release on that topic. So that's a really cool opportunity as well. Let's get into that a little bit more about the marketing side of it.

26:06For somebody that doesn't have a huge social media following, maybe they're an introvert, actually, and they just don't spend much time on Twitter or whatever, Instagram or wherever people are promoting stuff these days. How would you recommend that they actually market their book, promote it, get the word out there? I've interviewed several authors. In fact, I'm interviewing one tomorrow. And they go on this massive publicity spree prior to the book launch, doing podcasts, doing all the Twitter stuff and really just pushing. And this is traditional publishing, but really pushing to get the word out about their book.

26:40Because if it doesn't... What they were saying was like, if it doesn't hit pretty quickly, it disappears. So it doesn't matter if it's the best book in the world. If it doesn't gain traction pretty early on in the traditional publishing world, it just drops off the radar. Yeah, absolutely. You have about 30 to 60 days to really maximize that new launch honeymoon phase. So the best way to answer this question is I learned this in 2020 when the world was shutting down there a little bit. In March, 2020, my wife just gave birth to our second child and I was like, okay, this is not looking good. The kids are home, they're newborn.

27:15So I was like, let me just 80-20 my launch plan. 80-20, right? All I did was focused on reviews and Amazon ads. That was it. That was it. And it worked. The book did very well. So I was like, huh, that was interesting. Let me do that again. Sure enough, that worked as well. So Amazon, as we always, is a review-based platform. So the reviews show relevancy. If you could show relevancy, plus you have Amazon ads that back up the relevancy, people buying your book, that is a formula for success. You can certainly, if you have your own personal brand behind you, you can definitely do this book tour, Twitter thing.

27:52But from my experience, you don't have to. You don't have to. You can go out there and leverage, in my opinion, reviews, Amazon ads. If you have some sort of email list, even better, friends, family, and with the option of going all out if you choose. But I'm a big believer in doing the 80-20 approach. And to me, those two things are really what can drive tons of sales and visibility to your book. You mentioned the 80-20. Are you familiar with Richard Koch, I think is the guy's name, C-O-C-H. He's written a lot about the 80-20 principle. The Star Principle is one of his books that is really fantastic.

28:24Had some great interviews on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I do like his books. I've gotten to see them on my bookshelf right now. I'm looking at the 80-20 principle was a good one. Definitely have to learn about him through Tim Ferriss. And yeah, that approach I think is really critical because I think anytime you're doing something, you can do so many things. You can do so many different things, right? And that's what I was doing when I first started. It was a scattershot approach, a bunch of different niches, a bunch of different high content, low content, medium content books. Let me do X launch plan and then Y launch plan.

28:55But I think once you have done that phase, like, okay, let me just slow down here. What are the literally three to five things that matter? Okay, let me relentlessly focus on those three to five things. And inevitably, those always lead to results. I wanted to hear a little bit about what the startup costs are for somebody. So I'm just getting started. I want to write my first book. I'm going to outsource most of it. What can I expect to spend to get it to the point where it's on Amazon and ready to be distributed? So this is very niche dependent. This is very niche dependent. So for instance, let's say you want to write a children's book, right?

29:33Children's book, children's fiction, for instance, that does quite well. You're looking at illustrations, looking at the content piece, and then the marketing side of it. So I always tell people, budget anywhere from 500 bucks to two grand in that space. For the most part, that's a really good starting range. If you really want to outsource all of it, probably more in the probably two to three K range for outsourcing at all. And that includes the cover, the content, perhaps even the editing, formatting, that sort of thing. And so that's kind of the approximate investment. And if you want, you can go all out.

30:03I know some people will create these sort of massive, what I call them home run books that have maybe a hundred thousand words, these authority-based books that are going to be a little more expensive than that, but those can also make three, four or 500 bucks plus a day. So those can be at home runs. I heard you mentioned the importance of having a quick win when people are just getting started. What do you mean by that? What is a quick win? What does a quick win book look like? Yeah. Quick wins, I think are important. I think are very important for people to get that dopamine hit and continue on doing things.

30:35So quick wins, examples of quick win books could be books that have repetitive content inside. So maybe someone in my program published a book on Yahtzee score sheets. And they did the title, the subtitle, they got the cover all done by someone on Fiverr. And they were basically launched within about two or three weeks. Is that book going to make you a lot of money? No, but you're going to learn the process and maybe still make 10, 20 bucks a day off of that. Another example of a quick win book is let's say you want to go into a niche like investing, right? So it's a pretty big topic. You have this real estate investing, crypto investing, all sorts of different types of investing.

31:13Maybe book number one in that series is intro to investing. Maybe a short 10 ,000 word book to just get used to the process, get a book up there, published, and then boom, go from there. And then once you have the book, you mentioned different ways you can produce it. There's Audible, which is becoming really popular. Do you produce it in many different formats once it's finished? Huge fan of that. Huge fan of that. I think that's really one of the advantages of publishing is you're creating these assets. So you have the ebook, paperback, hardcover, sometimes spiral bound, audio version. And I'm a huge fan of translations, Amazon Germany, France, Spain, Italy, huge markets, other markets are growing.

31:59So the way I tell people is to take that original idea you had and then go as many possible formats as possible and then as wide as possible. And outside Amazon is a good option too. I also heard you mention about creating bonus content for a book. What is bonus content? What does that look like? Yeah, bonus content is there to sort of help people. It makes your book a no-brainer to buy. So bonus content examples could be things like workbooks that go with your book that make it more actionable. Bonus content should be bonus audio that is sort of included with the book. Things that, for instance, people do cookbooks and they may have meal plans to go with the book.

32:40So I'm a big believer in just enhancing the value of your book. You become unstoppable, in my opinion, and hard to compete with if you have all the fundamentals place that we mentioned earlier, plus these enticing bonuses, that's an excellent formula for success. So you have written... How many books at this point? How many books have you produced at this point? Oh, I've published well over 250. And you've had over a million dollars in revenue? Yes. That's awesome. As you are going about your day-to-day life, I'm just curious how you structure your day-to-day. Are you continually working on a book, producing a new book?

33:19Or do you kind of have stuff, is 250 enough at this point that you can kind of rest and sit back and allow the royalties to kick in? Or talk to me a little bit about how your days are structured. Yeah, for sure. So I should preface this by saying as well that those 250, a lot of them were done during my scattershot phase. So speaking of the 80-20 rule, that definitely applies to this. So for the most part, the book creation process itself, how I approach it is through a checklist. Have you ever heard of a Kanban board? I'm going to say that right. It's this sort of philosophy from agile productivity.

33:52And you just, you have essentially these columns and then tasks underneath each column. So for instance, in the book creation phase, you know, you might have, you know, choose niche, create title, create subtitle, and then outsource the content. And then the book launch phase, you might have those tasks that led to the book launch. So I've basically created a process, a checklist, a system that I follow for every book. I follow for every book. So what I like to do is like to batch things up at this point. I like to usually go into one category, one niche, create three to five books in that space so I can leverage the power of having a catalog.

34:26And that's typically how I do it. In terms of how I structure my day, for the most part, my main focus right now is on the education piece, helping the members of the program do well. So I typically have my days filled with a couple days a week for calls. And the rest of the time, I'm doing some deep work, creating Cal Newport for that. On things to just improve the program, to learn more, to just create something special. If you want to exit, how do you exit? You create this business. Are there exits in the publishing business? And what is that like? Yeah, this was a surprise to me. So I kind of fell into this.

35:03So I sold one pen name for$71 ,000. And what happened with that was the process basically looks like this. You create a series of books, ideally. No one is going to want to buy just one book that's doing well. They're going to want to see multiple books. Essentially, if you can have a revenue stream of royalties in the say$2 ,000 a month range, even higher is better, of course, but minimum$2 ,000 a month for the better part of 12 months, you have an asset that can be sold. There's multiple sites out there. Empire Flippers is pretty much the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. Flippa as well as the old school one in there.

35:36And the process looks like you have a business. So you have your accounting in place, You have your spreadsheet on your income, your expenses. And then you basically post your listing on one of these sites, on these web broker sites. And you attract people that are looking to buy the publishing business. And the reason why they're attracted to them, I found out, is because one, the margins are pretty good. I tell people, if you're not doing 60 % margins in publishing, something is going wrong. Something is off. And also too, it's this idea of, as mentioned earlier, having these multiple assets out there that are making you money 24-7 is an attractive idea for investors.

36:13Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows. We Study Billionaires is our flagship podcast, and we've made a name for ourselves over the years by interviewing the best investors in the world, including Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, and many, many more.

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39:11Between the screener and Legend Investment Portfolios to reference, I've gotten a ton of ideas from TIP Finance. What are you waiting for? Take the next step in your investment journey today with the right tools at your fingertips. Grab your device and type into your browser, theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance to get started. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. So you did an exit and it was what, 71 ,000? You sold the, and it was a series of books? it was yes it was a short series of books that had been doing well for the better part of i think it was 18 months or so and yeah it was just i had someone come actually i got a cold email i had a cold email from someone saying look i'm looking to buy these businesses and i was like kind of confused i was like buy the publishers what do you mean so kind of went from there in terms of the process yeah so that was interesting and is that kind of a business plan going forward for you like do you expect to do that to replicate that keep doing it if you can yes definitely so So I think, and this actually comes from Tim Ferriss too, is this idea of even if you don't want to sell your business, you should still build it with the intention of selling it.

40:23So it becomes an actual business versus something that takes over your life. So I tell everyone that you should approach it like that, right? So yeah, my vision right now is to build my current business to exit for quite a bit more than 71K. Actually, funny story for you. Someone in my mastermind group, he was in the fiction space. he sold his business to a California real estate investor who had no experience with publishing, almost seven figures. And it was interesting. I was like, just, I was like shocked. I was like, that's crazy. But this investor liked the numbers, liked the fact that they had a good system in place for creating books and it was pretty hands-off.

40:57And yeah, so that was definitely eye-opening. I wanted to get into a little bit. We talked earlier, I've got a company that does cost segregation studies. You mentioned a real estate investor. This is a study that's done for real estate investors to allow them to increase their cash flow, save on taxes. And I wanted to get your thoughts on creating a cost segregation book. It's a very specialized niche. Even most... A lot of accountants don't even know much about it. A lot of real estate investors just don't know much about it. My partners and I are thinking like, well, maybe this idea of a book as a business card makes some sense.

41:34So can you talk to me a little bit about that, how I would go about it and just some general thoughts you have on that? That's cool, by the way. That's a really cool topic to be honest. I definitely shouldn't. I think the process for you would look like getting just kind of clear on what the purpose of the book is. And it sounds to me like it's just to get out there. Would you say it's to sort of build authority or generate leads or kind of both? Yeah, I would say both. Build authority and generate leads. Yeah. There's something about a book that I find that anyone that's written a book, it's like you put them a little on a pedestal.

42:05Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So it definitely is that first step you have covered, right? Getting clear on what the goal of the book is. And then pretty much the same process applies, really focus on the fundamentals with having a beautiful cover, really outlining an excellent book, including those parts of the book that establish you as an authority. I'd also consider incorporating perhaps some sort of landing page or some way to capture emails so you can leverage that. You can put that right at the beginning of the book, perhaps a bonus, perhaps some sort of bonus, maybe a seven-day guide or a 30-day guide.

42:36I have some more ideas for you once I know more about your business. And then just following sort of a plan to launch your book, get it out there in front of tons of people. And then not only that, but also being able to sort of maintain that ranking. And in my worldview, your book should do that. So build authority, generate leads, and also make you some passive income. Heck, why not, right? Yeah, if you can. I mean, I think we would almost view it as we've got like an info pitch deck basically that explains what cost segregation is, but it'd be awesome to be able to hand somebody a physical book and say, this explains it really more in depth than our pitch deck does.

43:13But yeah, that would be our thought would be just to give it to people to if they want to go further down to understand what it is because it's, you know, taxes, generally people's eyes gloss over, but it's one of our biggest expenses. So it really pays to understand it. So we thought being able to hand them a physical book would be a great way to educate people and build authority, like you said. Yeah, absolutely. The cool thing for you is with that info pitch deck, you can definitely hand that off to a ghostwriter and have them use that as a resource to help create the book. And also too, I think one of the things that we didn't touch on yet, which I want to talk about, is there's this opportunity on Amazon.

43:48Everyone's on Amazon looking for books. But a real cool opportunity as well is to go beyond Amazon. So independent bookstores, colleges, libraries, universities, that's a really cool opportunity too. So you can take this idea of your authority book and not only be on Amazon, but be beyond Amazon, beyond the bookstores of some independent bookstore in Vancouver, Canada, or Rastrom, for instance, which is a cool thing. Yeah, that actually was my next question. was, is Amazon the only game in town? Or are there other avenues to explore for people that once they have their book, is it just on Amazon?

44:22Or do you seek out other platforms to sell it on? Yeah, there definitely are other platforms. Amazon is, of course, the big dog on the block. But then there's other platforms as well you can publish on. PublishDrive, IngramSpark, for instance, where you can get your books, as mentioned, physically in other places. Barnes & Noble, huge opportunity. What you'll find, I find with those places, is that independent bookstores, they are not going to go to amazon.com to buy their books. They're going to go to the wholesaling websites. So in your case, let's say, for instance, you publish this book on Amazon, ideally to number one new release, ideally to number one bestseller, which comes with a lot of authority as well.

45:02And then what you want to do is it's a matter of converting the files to these other platforms so you can have this worldwide distribution. I wanted to talk just about future trends. Where do you see the whole world of self-publishing going? What do you see unfolding? Definitely growth. I think for me, I think books are definitely a recession-proof space. People are always going to want to read books, especially having these physical books. That's always going to be something that people are going to crave. The trend that I'm really bullish on for books is, as you mentioned, the business card book.

45:36I think that's a really good strategy to have in place. And the other massive trend I'm seeing is translations. There are voracious readers in a lot of different countries that crave these high quality books, that are happy to buy them, and also to multiple formats. I'm not sure if you've ever done this, but maybe it's just me. I'm a little quirky, but I'll buy the ebook. And if I really like it, I'll buy the paperback version. And in some cases, if I really like it, I'll buy the audio version. So that is something that is available for people once they get into, as I mentioned, Amazon, Germany, France, Italy, Spain.

46:08that translation piece is something that I think is really going to grow as we go into the future. Is the quality of self-published books as high as it is as traditional publishing? I remember years ago, I did NaNoWriMo, which is like a national novel writing month, and thought about looking into publishing this really crappy novel that I wrote. And I studied a little bit about publishing. And the knock at that time, this was several years ago, was that self-published books or just like the quality is just not that good. So how does the quality compare to traditional publishing today? Pretty good, pretty close, pretty close.

46:45I think that Amazon's print on demand has come a long way. So one of the cool features of self-publishing is you don't actually have to carry any inventory, which is really cool. Here's a little hot tip. Here's a little hot tip is one of the opportunities is out there as well as, especially as your book starts to do well, you can start to explore doing things like doing physical products, versions of your books. What I mean by that is Amazon FBA, for instance. So what you can do is you can start to even take your book quality to the next level and start to pre-order some of your books from places, FBA suppliers, essentially, to have that version as well.

47:18So I'm sorry, what is FBA? It's fulfilled by Amazon. So if you go to Amazon.com, you'll see people have FBA toys and all sorts of things, basically. So FBA is another option for you where you're pre-ordering your book as maybe a traditional publishing house, make sure that the quality is even to that next level, but this time you are carrying some inventory. However, having said that though, honestly, the quality of the self-published books is, I mean, you can do matte, glossy, standard color, high quality, premium color. There's lots of options for you when it comes to publishing these books that it can be quite impressive.

47:56I wanted to hear a little bit about your academy, Publishing Profits Academy. How did that get started? Did you just have people start reaching out to you? I interviewed a guy that did a totally real estate investing and people started just reaching out to him. He was like taking calls all the time and it was the same calls over and over. So finally he created a masterclass. So I wanted to hear a little bit about your experience that with creating your academy. So it was kind of born out of, I was happy to publish for a long time on my own and had this idea of building public. You hear that quite a bit, building public.

48:28And what kind of spurred it for me was I actually helped someone close to me build a publishing business and they were, they need some help with some things. So I helped them. And I really enjoyed that. It was like, it was like rewarding to help them. That plus coupled with some things on YouTube. I've seen some people on YouTube talk about, in my opinion, some false information about folks on this low content journals and log books. And if you publish thousands of them, you know, my math is bad here, but thousands of them at a dollar per, you make a thousand bucks a month sort of thing, whatever.

48:56And I'm vehemently against that approach. I think quality is the path to go. So I started creating content on Twitter and people kind of flocked to it. They're flocking to it. And I was like, well, this is kind of cool. And my wife was like, well, just go with it. Just kind of go with it. People are interested in this topic. So then I was like, well, let me see if I can maybe just sort of build sort of lessons around how I've approached publishing, taking that sort of 80-20 approach and kind of make it no fluff. And yeah, here we are now, over a hundred members later, everyone from 80 years old to 19 years old and growing rapidly and really enjoyable.

49:31I'm really, it's really rewarding having people come to you, publish book, see that excitement. It's really cool. That is cool. And I've heard a lot of great reviews about the Academy. I wanted to hear a little bit about like how it's structured. Do you have like individual calls with you? What's the cost? I just, I'm very curious, actually for my own self, like if I do this cost segregation book, maybe this is the way to go is just have you walk me through the step-by-step? Yeah. So it's funny. I'm new to this whole sort of education space. So I'm learning as I go. But the way I structure right now is that there is a sort of...

50:06So you get access to everything right away, number one. So there's no drip feed. So you can access everything right away. There is a program checklist to follow. So it keeps you kind of on track. And so how I do it is there's a... The biggest... There's sort of welcome call. There's a niche review call, which we go into and it's 45 minutes an hour where we not only go through your niche, but we also kind of do a deep dive and okay, how now do we go about trading this book? So I'm a big believer on these calls to give some clear direct action steps. Like what are the two to three things, three to five things we need to do some concrete tasks.

50:40I call them tasty tasks because you look at them, they're so easy to do. So then from there, It's access to me through weekly calls. Oftentimes I offer DM support. There's a community as well. So I'm very active in there with making sure people get their questions answered. I oftentimes share things. I'm still an active publisher. I think it's important to be an active publisher if you're going to be able to teach these things. So the cost ranges. I mean, programs range usually around that$3 ,000 range for about 12-month access, plus all those pieces I mentioned. And then it ranges from there depending upon how much support you want.

51:13there's even some cases where people are like, Nick, I've got more money than time. So can you help me do a done for you option? So I have that as well. So it ranges. That's cool. And I imagine being a writer, publisher is a pretty solitary journey. I imagine doing the coaching gets you interacting with more people. I know for myself, doing the podcast, I have the interviews, but a lot of it is very solitary. So I imagine And doing the teaching fulfills some level of, I don't know, just human interaction that we all need. You know, that's been one of the huge benefits of this. Because as you say, it was, you know, I generally have a busy life with two kids and being married and such.

51:56But work-wise, though, it definitely is very solitary. And adding this piece to the mix of having these calls with people from all over the world, I'm enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it. It definitely adds another sort of layer to life, which has definitely been awesome. I wanted to hear, I'm looking at all those books behind you. I wanted to, and you're a book lover, I'm a book lover. I just wanted to get into just some books that have made a huge impact on you lately. Or not even lately, just books that have changed the course and direction of your life, maybe. Yeah, man. There's been so many.

52:30I think the one book that comes to mind right off the hop is The 50th Law, Robert Greene. And I remember listening to that book. Those are my 6pm to 6am days. I come back home, sleep from like 7 to noon, like maybe four or five hours of sleep. And I grab my headphones and go for a walk in downtown Vancouver, listening to that book. And this book was just the Robert Greene's voice, this idea about death, this idea about opportunities, and just 50 Cent Story was just so inspiring. So that book really pushed me towards leaving that sort of comfy job because it was a salary-based job to go out on my own.

53:09Have you read his other books too? I mean, the 48 Laws of Power was like what, 50 Cent? And a lot of those guys read to make it in the hip hop world, right? I think it was actually banned at one point in prisons. Yes. 48 Laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War. He's got so many good books. Mastery is also good. Yeah, definitely a big fan of Robert Bean, definitely a big influence. And then related to the 50th Law book was On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, out this book right here. So once every few months, I'll actually read that. I'll go to a coffee shop or something. I'll reread that story for the essay.

53:42It just really puts things in perspective from daily tasks that we all have to do, fill up our time. And then in terms of... I'll give you two more books that have been a practical one. The other one I forgot was The Slow Productivity. That's probably the most recent one that's had the biggest impact on me. Just this idea of really honing in on your missions and projects, limiting them, and also how to approach productivity on a practical level. And so I think that those are a good selection of books. There's definitely a few others that have impacted me for sure. Built to Sell, John Warlow was a really good one too.

54:17That book was really easy to read. And this idea of that mentality of putting yourself in a position to have this asset, you know, you create this asset to sell it should you choose, I think is a really good approach. So yeah. You did a great thread that I saw this morning on a book by Napoleon Hill called Outwitting the Devil that I wanted to touch on. It goes into what a common question on the podcast is, what holds people back from pursuing something like this? And I would say, I want to talk about that thread a little bit. So tell me a little bit about the book. Napoleon Hill was the guy that wrote Think and Grow Rich, for those that don't know.

54:54But talk a little bit about Outwitting the devil and then a little more go into depth about that thread that you wrote because it had a lot of value to it yeah so basically this book was considered too controversial right when i first came out right and so it was not available until i believe 2011 if i got the dates correct and it you know it has these pieces to it right you know like the way napoleon hill writes you know about defining the devil basically the devil within right procrastination and it talks about just making the most of the time that you have here. And it's a very clever book, the way it's written, the dialogue.

55:29And so for me, that book was really helpful just with those fundamentals, right? Procrastination, fear, all those things that we all experience at one point or another. I mean, heck, I still do. There's still perhaps moves I should be making in my business that They kind of scare me, but that's actually, I think a good sign. So I just, I, yeah, that book was really monumental and just kind of, you know, kind of really builds upon the whole idea of think and grow rich and then sort of maybe more of that, more of that sort of holding yourself back aspect, getting over that piece. I listened to it years ago.

56:04I came across it on YouTube, I think, and it was on there and I listened to it. In the end, like what are some of the steps to outwit the devil? And the devil is like, you know, like your own negative self-talk and limiting self-beliefs in a lot of ways, right? So it's having that face, avoiding procrastination, understanding your purpose is really key as well. I think that's really one of the keys as well. And I think at the end of the day, there's this, Napoleon will talk to this a lot, the subconscious mind piece, right? Really understanding that is an asset for you. That's an asset you can use.

56:38And I think that's something that, in my opinion, if you can be aware of those things and then work to make progress in those areas, that can make you unstoppable. Nick, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you sharing all of this. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to discuss at all? One last thing, because I know sometimes people, when they think about doing new things, get bogged down a little bit. I think the one thing I want to touch base on briefly is just productivity. And what I have found, one of the things I found to work is this idea of limiting your missions, right?

57:08So maybe professionally, two, three things max, and then limiting your projects than a game changer. One to three projects at a time. Because products have overhead, right? So if you can limit your projects to one to three, and when that project lands on your desk, do all you can to either complete it or bring it to a natural stopping point. That is an excellent formula for, I think, being productive and also enjoying what you do and not being overwhelmed. I like that a lot. I'm interviewing Scott Young tomorrow, and he teams up with Cal Newport that you mentioned on a couple online classes. And one is on the power of focus, I believe, productivity, things like that.

57:47And I was listening to one of their interviews and same thing. They said, you really can only do one, maybe two missions at the most. Cal is a professor and an author. He said, that is about the most you can do. And then Scott has this idea of a project-based life, which is pick your projects and just crank them out and don't stop until you're finished. I think it's a really good concept and a good way to think about life, almost like a portfolio kind of life that develops over time. So for our listeners that want to find out more about you, learn about your academy, what's the best way for them to do that?

58:25A couple of ways. Number one is I'm very active on Twitter currently. So Nick DeFabio on Twitter. Number two, I check out publishing publishingprofits.io. publishingprofits.io is the site. It's going under some upgrades right now, but those are the two best places to sort of check things out and kind of go from there. Cool. Nick, I really appreciate your time today. My pleasure, Patrick. Absolute pleasure to meet you and take care. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes.

59:03To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor's Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

From the publisher

In today’s episode, Patrick Donley (@JPatrickDonley) sits down with Nick Di Fabio who, prior to discovering Amazon KDP, had 30 jobs before the age of 30. He has since gone on to make over $1 million in Amazon KDP royalties, had a successful exit, and is now helping others clone his self-publishing strategies. You’ll learn how to get started in Kindle Direct Publishing , how to select profitable niches, how AI is changing the publishing landscape, how to 80/20 your marketing efforts and so much more!

Nick discovered Amazon KDP while working a 6 pm to 6 am job and has since gone on to publish over 250 books that continue to make him royalties. He also runs Publishing Profits Academy where he teaches others how to build a self-publishing business.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
00:00 - Intro
02:12 - What Amazon KDP is.
06:56 - How Nick found his niche in self-publishing.
07:58 - What are the demographics of people who pursue Amazon KDP.
10:02 - How publishing has changed in the past decade.
13:09 - How Nick selects niches to write about.
21:56 - How AI will continue to change the publishing landscape.
29:10 - What to do to 80/20 your marketing efforts.
35:47 - How to create an exit strategy in publishing.
42:46 - Why do people create a book as a business card.
49:26 - How Publishing Profits Academy was born and what people learn in it.

*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members.

Checkout: 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly.

Books mentioned: The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch.

Books mentioned: Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Books mentioned: 50th Law by Robert Greene.

Books mentioned: 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

Books mentioned: On the Shortness of Life by Seneca.

Books mentioned: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.

Books mentioned: Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

Check out the books mentioned in the podcast here.

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