From Wakanda to Jamaica: Dr. Sheena Howard on Black Panther, Abduction at 19, Abuse, and Owning Your Creative Destiny

20:35I am very big on finding the back door and getting through anyway. A no is just fuel for me.

20:42James Altucher:well look you you you got to work at marvel comics and work on your favorite superhero but maybe yeah maybe that's a good opportunity and you got there's so many questions i want to get back to i wanted to actually speaking of instagram like you had this instagram post and we didn't even cover whether we would go over this or not in this podcast but okay you had this instagram post from january january 3rd when i was 19 years old i was abducted in jamaica Like, I survived, but never told the story because, honestly, I was embarrassed. But, boom. Like, what happened when you were 19? I did. I got abducted in Jamaica, yo.

21:21So I went on spring break with a friend of mine. And we didn't have any money, so we shouldn't have been going on vacation, James. That's just started. Because this was part of the problem of why we got abducted. We had, like, cash to spend, and that was our money for the week. Like, there's no ATM withdrawals. We just, right, college students. So we're walking, me and my friend are walking up the strip, and these guys approach us like, hey, do you guys want to do some tours? We do tours for cheap, and we could take you to Dunn's River Falls and, you know, all the tour spots. And we were like, you know, we don't have money for that.

21:56He was like, no, no, it'll be like 50 bucks. So we're like, all right. And he was like, he said he would take us other places as well because we said, oh, we wanted to see. Like, I used to like to go off the beaten path and see how people were living. This was before I got abducted. And like, you know, go into the neighborhood and the communities. He was like, yeah, we can do that too. So he's like, I'll pick you up tomorrow at like 9 a.m. He shows up tomorrow at 9 a.m. as promised, but he shows up with another guy.

22:24James Altucher:Well, let me just interrupt for one second. Usually criminals don't make appointments to be, to criminalize you. Well, I think if you're trying to disarm someone and kind of act like you're, you know, you're on the up and up right they got to transport us from where we are so we got it they have to establish some form of trust right so he showed up one time but he shows up with another guy which didn't alarm me it probably should have but me and my friend you know we get in the car and they take us everywhere we want to go they take us to duns river falls all the tourist places everything is going well nothing really nothing really seemed off it's nighttime and they're like do you want to go see like where people actually club like off of the strip?

23:05So we're like, yes. So we go to this club. Then after the club, we're like, okay, like it's time to go like back to the hotel. No, they're like, no, no, we're going to go to this house. Right. So this is when it started to not be cool. So they take us, James. I don't even know where we were, but I don't know if you know, like the, if anybody knows like Jamaica, like the, it was like dirt roads. It was just like dirt roads. It was, you couldn't see anything. We get to this house, we go in, and they lock the door. So for people that don't know, it was like a padlock. It's not like a normal lock, like, oh, and houses here.

23:42They lock it as a padlock, and then someone drives away with the car. So now we are in this house, locked in with these two strangers, basically, that we just spent the day with. So I sit on the porch where you can see the like where the car had just pulled off from. And I'm like, I'm not moving out of this chair until that car comes back. That's what I tell the dude. Now, my friend goes into the back with the other guy. To this day, James, I don't know what she did with that guy. I didn't ask. Sometimes we all got to do what we do to survive. I have no idea what she did. She was in the back room.

24:19So the guy is trying to take me to the back room. So now I'm like, OK, I know what this is about. So I told him, I was like, you're going to have to kill me. Like, you're going to have to kill me right here on the seat. I'm not going back into that dark room with you. Right? So hours go on. Hours go on. And the dude, I guess, that was supposed to be having his way with me in the back, he starts getting mad because he sees like I'm not.

24:44James Altucher:Is your friend not showing up at all? No, she's in the back. She's in the back, James. She's in the back doing whatever. I don't know what went on back there. I don't know. And I didn't have the heart to ask her after this whole escapade. So the dude that was supposed to be with me gets upset. And so now it's probably like three in the morning. The car comes back. They take the padlock off. They put us in the car. They're like, we're going to take you home. But the dude that's driving that didn't get his way with me is so upset. He's driving like 90 miles per hour on this dark road. There are no lights.

25:17It's just dogs. And we get in a car accident.

25:20James Altucher:Oh, my gosh. We get in a car accident. The car is, like, mangled. I see this other car, like, go down a hill somewhere. And then he's like, y 'all are going to have to give us money in order to get back home because now the car is messed up. So, wait. So, nobody was hurt, though? Nobody was hurt. Thank goodness. Nobody was hurt. The hood was just smashed up. The car was, you know, banged up. And he was turning it back on. He's like, I can't get the car back on. Y 'all are going to have to give us money. Me and my friend are like, we don't have any money. Like, seriously, we don't like we don't have any money because we really didn't.

25:52And so I start saying like, yo, if we don't get back home, like we're from America. People are going to be looking for us. We're college students. Like, I'm trying to like be like, yo, like if we don't make it back home, somebody's going to be after y 'all. At some point in this escapade, like the sun starts coming up because like now it's probably like six, seven in the morning. Like we're still out here. I get out the car. I start walking in the middle of nowhere, by the way. I'm like, you know what? I'll just walk back. and everybody's like, well, where are you? Like, y 'all don't even know where y 'all are.

26:23Y 'all are like an hour from your hotel. Like, so anyway, I guess he got over it and was like, you know what? I'll take you back home. He starts a car up like nothing happened and they drive us back to the strip.

26:37James Altucher:And that was that? That was that, yo. So let me ask you, like, during the whole day, he had never indicated, oh, hey, you girls are cute. I'm kind of interested. Like, he was just professional as possible? there was this one so they took us to a beach by the way that doesn't excuse anything i'm just right no you know fat facts facts they took us to a beach at one point and they were trying to get like touchy-feely and i'm kind of looking around like nah like so it was little things but nothing overly aggressive nothing nothing overly aggressive until we got locked in the house that's what that's when that's when I was like oh oh man so clearly there was a plan once that happened yeah yeah and luckily they weren't that bad of guys you know what I'm saying because it could have been it could have been you know he could have took me to the back room and just did whatever like I we just would have been fighting right he could have just forced you yeah yeah and so after after after the trip though me and my friend were like we're never telling anybody about like we're gonna and take this to the grave.

27:39So like, I didn't tell anybody for like 10 years. And then eventually I told my mom, like, yeah, like I got abducted one time in Jamaica. That's the last time I went on vacation and was like, wanted to like go off onto the, you know, off into the neighborhood and stuff like that. I stay on the tourist areas now.

27:56James Altucher:Well, why do you think, why do you think she, or why do you think you guys didn't want to tell anybody? I was embarrassed. Because you mentioned on this Instagram post, yeah, what does it, what does it mean to be embarrassed? You know what? But you know how I think it's similar to like, you know, sexual assault victims. When it happens to them, they feel like it's their fault. They made stupid mistakes. They should have known. I feel like that psychology of it. Well, even my questioning, it's almost like trying to bring that out. Like I'm asking you if they give you any hints throughout the day.

28:24James Altucher:Right. You sort of said, you sort of said yes. And so then the inclination is to think, well, why did you go back to the house then? Right. But of course. We also didn't have a choice because we were, I don't know. there's a really there's a psychology to abuse because I've been in an abusive relationship too and it just it's hard to explain and I'm always curious about this like when you're in an abusive relationship like you said and is this you have a son and it's just is this the did this relationship result in your son yeah so how do you then kind of so a lot of times sexual abuse is almost hereditary so how do you how do you raise your son to not be affected by the abuse that has happened to you?

29:09Oh, this is good, Jane. This is a longer conversation, but I would recommend everyone read my book, Nina's Whisper. It's a fiction book, but it's about my life because it's a whole backstory. So first, my son is my hero because when I had him, that's when I realized I was in an abusive relationship and had to leave. You'll take a lot for yourself, but when it comes to your kids, you're like, nah. that this is not right right so he helped me kind of snap back into reality to to see clearly the situation that I was in and I didn't want him to be raised in an environment like that because I didn't want him to be like that right but I was married to a woman when I had my son and we use a sperm donor who I know but it was her friend it's a whole long story it's in a book but yeah so you know once he came I left never came back but it was it was a terrible toxic horrific physical emotional abuse all the things and it's a psychotic I explained the psychology of it um from like a first person point of view in Nina's Whisper it's part of the reason why I wrote it because I was trying to figure out like how did I get myself in this situation and what can I share that will help somebody else get out of a situation like that because whether you're in like a physically abusive relationship or just like emotionally abusive, like men or women, like I have guy friends who are in emotionally abusive relationships.

30:32It starts to weigh on your like self-esteem. And if you're an empathetic person and you, I'm an empathetic person, so I can always see the other side. Like I can always see someone else's point of view. And when you're not with the right person, that could backfire on you. Because even when they're wrong, you'll still be like, oh, I can kind of, I can kind of see that.

30:52James Altucher:Yeah, I mean, how do you, first off, if it's emotionally abusive and even physically abusive, there's a difference between suffering from sexual abuse and being in a sexually abusive or an abusive relationship. A relationship implies something longer term. So it's kind of like you're worn down until you think, oh, this is what relationships must be like. And so how does someone wake up and say no to that? I feel, for me, it requires some external source giving me confidence again, because I would have lost so much confidence. I need some confidence to say no. I don't know how to do it anymore.

31:28That's right. Maybe you're right. Because for me, it was like my son. That is an external factor. I just kept making excuses for this person's behavior. Honestly, I didn't love myself enough. I think that's part of it. When you're in a healthy place, abusive people, they do this love bombing thing at the beginning where they're perfect and they're everything you want. This is part of their play, right? I mean, like, you're like, oh, this person is like a godsend. They're amazing. And then, like, and then the slow abuse starts. But you're already, like, in love with them because that's part of the stages, right?

32:04So then it's harder to walk away. But even in that love bombing stage at the beginning, there are signs. I think if you're in a healthy place, you see those signs and you walk away immediately.

32:17James Altucher:Yeah, so, like, I think, what are the signs? Because I think this is probably where I miss out. Because A, I love being love bombed. Yes. And B, I'm probably a love bomber. Because why not be a love bomber if you're being love bombed? Yeah. Yeah, what I learned, because one of the things I did for Nina's Whisper is I did deep research into what abuse looks like and what it is. A lot of people think that abuse is like it's only women experiencing it, right? But guys experience emotional abuse too from women. a lot of people think abuse is just somebody hitting you but before somebody hits you there's emotional abuse taking place some of the signs the relationship moves very quickly at the beginning that's the whole thing about love bombing it moves very quick yeah and they try to be this because in a great relationship it might move very quick also that's true but they're like these little things that you're gonna you're gonna overlook that are not right.

33:18So for me, this person was like late to the first date, but like didn't care. It was like, like, like she was late, but it was like, yeah, whatever. Like it was no like apology. There was no, right. And it's just like these little things when you string them all together. It's like, hmm.

33:42James Altucher:What other things? What other things? I think when learning about her past, there were like holes in her memory. I think some people that are abusive have like childhood trauma and things. It was like things about her childhood that didn't make sense, didn't quite add up, that I didn't like press enough or ask more questions. It just kind of, you know, everything that happened to her was somebody else's fault when she would tell these like stories. It was always like somebody else's fault. No accountability, no self-reflection, fractured relationships, you know, that kind of didn't make any sense that she had.

34:17It was like.

34:18James Altucher:In what sense did they not make any sense? Just unstable, unstable, you know, you know, unstable family relationships, friend relationships, that kind of stuff. All of it added together. And when I look at all of it added together in those first few months, evictions from her apartment, then she had to move in with me. This is part of the thing that sped up their relationship. She's like, oh, I'm about to be evicted. And I'm like, oh, we like each other. Just stay with me in my house. Right. And then living in my house, not respecting the boundaries of my house, like things that were important to me.

34:53This all adds up.

34:54James Altucher:I think that's the critical thing is the fact that there's sort of a slight movement past the boundaries. Yep. And so until eventually your boundaries break down because you love the person because you've been love-bombed. 100%. 100%. And so how do you now raise your kid to not do what you did? Instilling, you know, self-confidence. Even little things, even for a boy. Because I think we don't talk about this a lot for men and boys. The abuse conversation is mostly around women being abused. But he had a girl in class that was being mean to him. And instead of being like, oh, it's probably because she likes you, dude.

35:33It's like, no, if she's being mean to you, that's not right. That's not a friend. Just having him be in tune with his intuition, how he should be treated, the standards that he should have for himself. Letting him know that, hey, it's okay to have boundaries and not hug family members if you don't want to. That kind of stuff I think is important. Yeah. But you know, as parents, James, you don't know if all of this stuff works out until they get older. Then you're like, oh, I might have kind of screwed that little aspect up a little bit. But those are things I do.

36:06James Altucher:Yeah, I think that's good. I think having those discussions is good. Like probably all of our parents, people, everybody listening to this, nobody talked about feelings back then. No one said that you have to be able to have boundaries. No one used that language. so it was just like kind of sort of hey get good grades and then you're a good kid and we're good parents and that was kind of the main conversation and so now I'm going to back up in a different way I want to get to a conversation you and I had actually a couple weeks ago about Wakanda when I kind of saw the first Black Panther movie and my first impression was and I didn't know whether to say this was my impression of you my first impression was that the Black Panther movie was totally racist Oh, tell me more.

36:53James Altucher:Because they refused to share. They had this amazing technology in Wakanda, and they refused to share it with other African countries. They didn't want the other African countries to steal their technology and what made them great. So I felt like they were doing the same thing white people would do to African countries. And remember what I said to you, right? Yeah. So there's like nationalism, which is one of the things I actually talk about in my chapter in the Why Wakanda Matters book, how T 'Challa had to go from like a nationalistic, you know, isolism perspective to, you know, not that. Whatever the opposite is of that, sharing and helping and opening things up.

37:35But it wasn't racist because they weren't sharing with anybody. Like, it wasn't just African. Like, they weren't sharing with the world, period. It had nothing to do with color. but also they didn't use their power and vibranium to go and take things from other people, colonize other places, colonize other African nations and be like, hey, we're going to set up here and this is ours now. And like now adopt all of Wakanda's cultural practices. They didn't do that. They're in their little thing, protecting their little thing and not bothering anybody. So that's true.

38:12James Altucher:Although it wasn't imperialist. Right? It wasn't, like, you know. So it wasn't imperialism, but it's still racism because the African countries are bordering them. And to the African countries bordering them, those are the countries that are seeing them. And they look like just villagers, like behind the times villagers. And so those, it's the African countries they were specifically lying to and denying their resources. And probably the countries that needed them the most. Yeah, but that's not racism. That's protection. Okay. You know? But, you know, again, it wasn't based on color. Yeah. It wasn't even based on ethnicity.

38:52It was just like, we're not helping anybody. I think that's better than Wakanda saying, we are better, we're gonna go to all these other nations and like start putting our cultural institutions there and converting them and telling them this is the way, and now these other African nations no longer have their cultural practices or their cultural practices are being diminished, right? That's like, that's imperialism and racism, right?

39:19James Altucher:Yeah, so you're saying, but are you equating imperialism? What would be racism then if it's not imperialism? It's the systematic oppression, subjugation of people of a different color. Right, so they're being nationalistic in that, hey, leave us all alone and we'll leave. It's as if like the U.S., let's say the U.S. hadn't gotten into World War II in World War I, we're isolationists, like Leave Us Alone. It's more isolationist rather than saying, hey, we don't like somebody. Right. Yeah. Okay, I'll buy into that. I was all on my Wakanda is racist thing for a long time. Did I move in a little bit of a...

40:02James Altucher:No, you've convinced me. Man, I'm impressed with myself. I'm not going to lie.

40:20James Altucher:So now Black Panther is still one of the only really black superhero. Luke Cage, Power Man. Why do you think Ms. Marvel never really broke out in Marvel Comics? Because she was black from New Orleans. Yeah. Captain Marvel. Yeah, I think I did okay. I don't remember the number. I don't think you can compare them. I think, man, Black Panther is such an outlier. and power man yeah yeah yeah such such those are such outliers and remember earlier in the conversation i think it's okay for like series and black movies to just do okay right like why why does it have to always be that's why i feel like there's a pressure or a weight on on black media sometimes where you know just let us be mediocre sometimes right like it's like normal You know, it's funny because I'm thinking about it.

41:13James Altucher:Like, let's take the first gay superhero. It was like some character in Alpha Flight. I don't even know that one. Yeah, see that, but you don't know that one because it's almost like they took zero chances. Let's already put him in a mediocre group. It was a Canadian superhero group. So we're starting off mediocre to begin with. Then it's no big deal if he fails around. Or let's just take, let's take implications. Wonder Woman. She a lesbian. I don't know. Are the people on the island lesbians? It's all women, right? What do they do? What are they doing? Are they just fighting each other or are they doing something else?

41:45James Altucher:So that's kind of like there's these safer ways to introduce these gay characters, for instance, or potentially gay characters, gay themes. Whereas, you know, Power Man and Black Panther really tried to get an audience and did get an audience. Yeah. But, and I also just, it's the story behind it too. Right? It's not just about fighting scenes and animation. I do think if you tell a good, compelling story that people, sometimes I feel like we've lost the art of like storytelling in these films. But Black Panther was a good story that you would want to go see again to see what you missed, to see if you can interpret it in a different way.

42:30Like things do well when they're like polysemic or like there's multiple meanings. Like James could watch it and take one thing away. Sheena could watch it and take another thing away. now me and you can have a conversation about our different perspectives because we come from different places and now I can go back and watch the movie and be like what was James seeing that I didn't see? I think that comes down to the art of storytelling, which I think we lose in some of these superhero movies. Complex stories.

42:56James Altucher:Yeah, I agree. Obviously we didn't lose them in the comics. Stan Lee created so many iconic heroes. Joseph Campbell, it was 10 years later sort of sums it up in the hero's journey, like the story of Spatting. That's a word on my shelf. Yeah. And I feel like since the 80s, there's no new superhero comics. The superhero stories died in the 80s. Now, part of that is related to the, collecting comic books became this bubble, this mini bubble, and then it all crashed and burned. But why aren't there any more good, why isn't there any more good storytelling in comic books? I think if you're only, it's like hip-hop music.

43:38If you only listen to the radio, you're only scratching the surface when there are so many talented artists beneath that are not getting radio play, that are independent, that are telling really good stories. Comics is the same way. There's such a robust comics creation industry that you can't just focus on Marvel and DC if you're looking for really good stories, which is the whole point of New York Comic Con and San Diego Comic Con to be able to meet all of these independent creators telling amazing stories. I like Boom Studios. They do a lot of creator-owned comics where I think you get some good storytelling out of there, like actual creators telling new stories and selling their IP to them.

44:18So I think if you just go below the surface, you will find the storytelling you're looking for, but they don't have the backing of the distribution of a Marvel and DC. So you got to look for it a little more. And that's the industry, right?

44:31James Altucher:And I guess Marvel and DC benefited from the fact that there was only a few comic book companies and they just got distribution on magazine stands everywhere. So that was an easy... There's no such thing now as magazine stand distribution. That era is over. So it'd be hard to introduce a new kind of mainstream superhero. It would have to be something that got popular with a niche on YouTube or Instagram or something like that and it's a little harder. And you know, you got to build your own following. It's possible. We see it online every day. You create your comic, you build your following, you grind, you get your audience.

45:04you've reinvested your money into getting more audience for your thing. And you can get the attention of these bigger companies if that's what you want to do. Now, if you've already built the audience and you're monetizing, sometimes it's like, I don't need y 'all because I got this far. Now y 'all want to jump on? You know, that's where we are with it.

45:22James Altucher:But there's something to be said for kind of, hey, Black Panther was my favorite from childhood. And now I get to work on it as opposed to developing your own. So like you were, how did you get the position at Marvel? Like how did you, you know, have an input there? Yeah, so I wrote one thing for Marvel and it was called Wakanda Forever. My story was called The Illusion of Fairness. And I created a new character. Her name is Shantae. And the whole premise of the story was that she had to pass all these tests to be a new Dora Milaje warrior, which was really cool because I created a new character.

45:56So even after I leave this earth, I'm sure they'll pluck her out of oblivion one day and like do something with her. But what I did was, so I had already written some things for DC Comics, and I had already won the big award, the Eisner Award at San Diego Comic-Con like years before. So that kind of put me on the radar. Because everybody wants, you know, Eisner Award winner, you know, is now writing for us. So that kind of put me on the map. But when it came to Marvel, when I wanted to write for Marvel, I didn't have any connections or context or anything. I decided that I was ready to write for Marvel, and then I put a plan together that I thought would reasonably give me a shot to write for Marvel Comics, because I didn't have any in.

46:35And so I hired a private investigator to... What? Yeah. I hired a private investigator to get the email address for the editor-in-chief at Marvel. Because at the time, this is the only plan that I could put in place that might give me a shot, right? So it was like 50 bucks on Fiverr.com. So this PI got me the email address, and then I asked him, hey, give me the email address to the second-in-command, the person right under the editor, the chief editor. And I sent them both an email, and I was just like, hey, I want to write for Marvel Comics. I've written for DC. I attached some scripts just to show them that I could write.

47:15I told them I was the first black woman to win an Eisner Award because I knew that would get their attention. I didn't pitch them anything. I think this is where people make mistakes, too, when they're trying to write for Marvel and DC. They kind of pitch ideas about characters. You know, like, I would like to see this character. Right, right. And it's like, Marvel and DC already know what they want to do with these characters, right? They don't need your new idea unless they ask you. So I just was like, hey, I would like to write for Marvel. And of course, they didn't respond. So I was kind of like, I just let it go, James.

47:43I was just like, all right. I did everything I knew how to do at that moment. The only thing I know how to do now is just, like, just walk away and just continue to write. And maybe it'll loop back around. Like, I didn't send any follow-up emails. I didn't do any of that. Like, a year passed, and then an editor at Marvel emailed me and was like, hey, we have this anthology coming out called Wakanda Forever. Do you want to write a story? And then that whole process, the way it works is they'll say, hey, like, this is what the anthology is about. Here are some parameters for, like, the, you know, the book in general.

48:17Send us, like, three ideas. And then you write, like, a few paragraphs. These are the three ideas for the story. they pick one and then you go write it. And that's pretty much it. But after I wrote for Marvel, after I wrote that story, I found the editor-in-chief on Instagram. And I was just like, hey, I know you didn't respond to my email, but thank you so much for recommending me for this story. And he said, you know, you're welcome. Sorry it took so long. And he was like, I hope that we work with you again. So that said to me that he did read the email. Now, of course, I'm not 100 % sure. He never said I read the email, right?

48:52but his response seemed to say that he read the email. And so that was how I did it.

48:59James Altucher:So just the cold email, but then you're in their consciousness. Then they're thinking about you. That's what I'm saying, yes. You just have to be seen before you're heard, maybe. That's what I think. Yeah, I think even when you like, because some people will message me and they'll be like, hey, I've been sending these cold emails and nobody's responding. To me, just sending the email is sometimes enough because I at least tell myself, and maybe this is delusion, like I'm like, well, the person read it. They may not have respond. They probably took a couple seconds to look at my Instagram account.

49:30They see that I'm serious. And maybe something will come around and they'll think about me, right? And then I just kind of move on. I emailed you once. I don't know if you ever got it though. I emailed you once.

49:39James Altucher:Wait a second. Yeah. Wait a second. And I didn't respond? No, it was in, oh my God, I put up the email when I was getting ready for this. And it was June, 2025. I emailed the email address that you had on Instagram and this is so funny that I got to be on your show oh yeah June 22nd hold on I see it I think I was like something about a podcast series where I get to ask you questions about publishing oh yeah and it's funny because then it mirrors some conversations we ended up later having but I think this is a great idea yeah so I email me yeah Yeah, so like what I was saying in the email to you was like By the way, these are such great questions I'm surprised I didn't answer them And I thought that you would like, I was like, if he read it, he would definitely be into this Because I had listened to your, you did like a series It was like a four part series, do you remember doing that?

50:37James Altucher:Yeah, about writing Yeah, and I just had questions, I was like, man, I want to ask this guy these questions but obviously, again I just put the best plan possible that I could do at the time. I don't know. Things be working out for me, James. It's true. And it's a good idea because, you know, by the way, there's a lot of people don't really understand that the stigma of self-publishing doesn't really exist. Like if you write a good book and you self-publish it, people are going to read it. Or if it has a popular, it doesn't have to be like great quality. If it's just a popular theme, for instance, Fifty Shades of Grey, most people don't realize, was self-published.

51:16James Altucher:And only later, after it had already sold a quarter million copies, Simon & Schuster came in and said, hey, we'll buy the rights to this and republish it. So a lot of well-known books out there have been self-published originally. Also, people don't realize the average rating on Amazon, it's like a one to five star rating. The average rating on Amazon of self-published books is higher than mainstream published books, meaning self-published books on average are higher quality than mainstream published books. So there's no reason for them there to be any stigma. but people always view it as a stigma when it's self-published.

51:49James Altucher:They do. My best-selling books have been self-published as opposed to mainstream publishers don't know how to market books. You're going to know how to market your book better than the mainstream publisher will. Yeah. So what do you say to people? Let me get into my questions that I was going to ask you. Yeah, let's do it. What do you say? I know someone who's a really good writer, exceptional storyteller, and his thing was like, if I just keep writing great stories, I will be discovered and found. Now, he knows he has to do marketing and promotion. He's not really big on social media. But do you really believe that if you just tell a good story, people will find it and buy it?

52:27See, I feel like there's so many people. No, right?

52:29James Altucher:You got to have an outlet. Okay, I'll take Fifty Shades of Grey as an example again. She already had, like, she was writing fan fiction on some Twilight fan fiction website where she had, like, a million followers already. so she already had a huge social media following liking your writing and she took the same fan fiction and replaced the vampires with billionaires and boom she had 50 shades of gray so she already had like a built-in audience you know i hate to say it but social media is important but again like you have 163 000 followers of instagram that's huge so i've been you know i have a pretty big social media following like i have over a million on linkedin i have over 200 000 on twitter but as hard as I try, I can't break 100 ,000 on Instagram.

53:12James Altucher:I have 86 ,000 on Instagram. Yeah, like I don't even know how you got 163 ,000. Well, you know, Instagram is hard and I think that's why a lot of people that I coach are like, no, I don't want to do Instagram. It's too hard. They get discouraged. You know, they post something. But I'm like, the thing that keeps me motivated is I see other people with big followers. Like when I had a little following, I'm telling you, James, I was crying, like trying to grow on Instagram. Like when I had like 2 ,500 followers, I was posting three times a day and I was in tears. Like, but I was like, I gotta keep going.

53:44Like this is, this has got to work for me. The thing that works for me on Instagram is storytelling. Just telling little short stories. Like the Marvel story, my PhD story. And then they go viral. And then every time you go viral, you get these little big jumps. Yeah.

53:56James Altucher:I find that if you, if you write something that people are going to share, then that gets followers. Yep. And like, if you just, if you just post a photo of yourself, it's not, people aren't going to really share that. No. We're not going to. People want to learn something. They want to be entertained or, you know, educated, inspired, entertained. Those three kind of pillars. Like, I bet you if you wrote, like, a listicle kind of thing, how to write a great superhero comic book, then that will get shared and will go viral, is my guess. You think so? See, now I'm going to listen back to this podcast and then I'm going to, like, do all of the things you say.

54:29I feel like it's just such a grind being a writer and trying to make it and just trying to like get to some level of what you personally consider success because that could look different for everybody. And I just feel like it's remember when I talked about being invisible and like that would be my superpower. I still feel like it's so many things that I don't know. Like, for example, I'm going to ask you one of these questions from the email.

54:50James Altucher:Sure. You once said someone sold choose yourself to their email list and split the revenue. Yeah. How do you even get that kind of deal? And like, where does a normal person start? Like, I'm normal. Right. So, but you've been building your email list lately, right? That's true. Yeah, I do. Sub-sac you, though. No, but it's bit by bit. And so in that particular case, I had already known that person. He had a huge email list to his community. And he had a kind of like a podcast slash radio show. And I would go on it occasionally. And so I knew him. and he had read my book, Choose Yourself, and he felt he could sell it to his audience.

55:30James Altucher:He just wanted, and he wanted me to write a new chapter for it. And I did. So then he can justify, hey, I've got something, don't buy it on Amazon. We've got a special unique chapter from James and it's$20. Don't buy it for 99 cents on Amazon. Buy it for$20 here because of this new chapter. And he sold like literally within two weeks, he sold 10 ,000 copies for 20 bucks, sent me a check for$100 ,000. like in two weeks after he told me he was going to do this. Okay. Here's when I'm listening to a podcast like this from you, here's what I'm thinking. How does a person do that on a smaller level?

56:04Let's say we don't know somebody that has an email list that big, but maybe we know a friend that has, I don't know, a smaller, like how do we, is there a micro example that we can use and maybe do a few times that, that is that same strategy?

56:17James Altucher:I think this, I think the best strategy is to control your own email list. So for you, for everything you do, for every article you write, you have related articles, boom, boom, boom. In order to get the related articles, hey, sign up for my email list to get all these articles and to get my exclusive to list subscribers only five ways to break into the comic books. There's something that you have that's exclusive and make it free. A lot of newsletter writers are too eager to monetize. You want to build the audience first. So building the audience first, you're not, if you try to monetize too early, you're never gonna get to like a million followers or a million subscribers.

57:00James Altucher:To get a million subscribers, you just have to open it up for everyone. And some people might disagree, but then you have to offer something for free. You have to offer, like if you sign up, you get this, you get X, Y, and Z. Like you do it on your Patreon, like, oh, you know, maybe some Q &A with you, people sign for your Patreon. But already then you're monetizing. But first try to do, like, you have so much knowledge about the comic books industry. How about on threads, do a weekly Q &A? And throughout the Q &A, you know, say you're going to answer now. But to get the fuller answer in a week, you'll have this on your newsletter and constantly be directing people to your newsletter.

57:38So I used to do something like that on Twitter. Do you still think it still works on threads? Like I remember years ago on Twitter, I used to do these scheduled Q &As. Somebody would ask me a question. We use a hashtag and we answer it that way. that sounds like something similar as to what you're describing, but done on threads.

57:53James Altucher:Yeah, I used to do it on Twitter. And that's how I first built it up. I did it for six years every Thursday on Twitter, a Q &A. And it's only when I got a divorce that I kind of stopped because I didn't have my normal routine. But threads, I don't know. But I see you on threads. That's where I know I see your stuff on threads. I don't know if the audience is big or small there. I really don't know. Like 49 ,000? Yeah, so threads could be good. Twitter is definitely good. because I know because I used it. Or Instagram could be good. You know, do it on an Instagram post, like Q &A. Just have the post be picture of you, Q &A.

58:27James Altucher:See what people ask there. Like try all the platforms. But always be directing back to the email list. Okay. Because that's really, your email list followers are your biggest followers. And then later on, you could sell something to your email list, even if it's just a dollar. Like, oh, you're going to sell whatever. And it's just a dollar. But then what happens is then some percentage, like let's say 5 % of your email list will raise their hand and put their credit card number to you and say, hey, I'm willing to buy stuff from Dr. Sheena Howard. They will say this because they'll give you their credit card number.

59:02James Altucher:And now you know what percentage of, you know, if you keep building your free list, always that percentage will want to buy stuff from you. So that's the only way. You can't directly monetize. You have to build the free list and some percentage of that free list will buy something from you. And then, by the way, of the percentage of people who want to buy something from you, some percentage of that will buy something expensive from you. So, you know, like maybe a much more expensive book or a course or whatever. So that's how you build it up. Do you ever think it's appropriate for a writer to spend money on ads to build the email list?

59:35James Altucher:100%. So as long as you feel like, because you believe in what you're saying and you want people to be exposed to it, on the one hand, it feels like salesy or a little schlocky to like snake oil to put ads up. But if you feel like you have something of value that's being said and not everybody is hearing what, because they're not on your platform already, they're not hearing what you have to say, then of course, advertising is a good way to get the word out beyond your normal group. So I think that's very valuable. Okay. I definitely used ads to build. Even back when I was doing zero monetization, I would use ads to build, to promote.

1:00:14James Altucher:I would see which articles I wrote that had the most reach, and then I would advertise those because I knew people would like them. It's like I focus group the articles already, so I knew people would like these articles. So I advertised them, and that would drive up numbers on my email list. Ah, so that's good audience data because you already know people are interested in, let's say, these three blogs. These are my most popular topics. and then just running ad to something that you already know people are interested in and getting to subscribe to the email list. And then later you can sell them whatever book you have when your launch starts.

1:00:45James Altucher:Yeah, I mean, then that's going to be the way, you know, all book sales are going to be driven by either email list or social media or something. I hate to say that, but it's true. So as opposed to your friend who said, oh, if I write a good story, people will buy it. It's just not true. It just doesn't happen anymore, unfortunately. what if let's say so I have a webcomic called Rent Free it's only a few episodes so what if I have something like that that is free there's no good reason to run ads to that though right because that would just be because I'm not asking for anybody's email address I'm just trying to get their eyes on this comic and it's not going to give me any return on investment or is there ever a good reason to send to spend money to...

1:01:34James Altucher:You tell me. So let's say you have a huge audience. Let's say you have an ad. Okay, let's say there's some episodes of this Ren Free comic or some strips of this Ren Free comic that you see are wildly popular among your audience. So now you think to yourself, well, what would happen if I ran ads about this one? Well, you would drive more people to this comic and they would share with their friends which is the common behavior you noticed of people already reading it. The new behavior of people you got there from ads is going to be the same as the old behavior. And so what can you do now to add people to your email list?

1:02:09James Altucher:How do you connect the dots to the email list? Well, Webtoons is connected. For the sequel to this rent-free episode, subscribe to my free for email list. Okay, okay. I think the part that I struggle with, because I am spending money to send them to Webtoons website to try to get them to then take the next step. Right, you know what I'm saying? Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm not sending them to like my website. Would it be smarter to put the episode on my website and then run ads to my website? No, because the algorithm's not going to like you as much on Instagram or wherever you're posting it.

1:02:45Ah, that's what I struggle with.

1:02:48James Altucher:Remember, your whole goal is not to get visitors to your website or even Instagram followers. Your whole goal in this case is to just get people signed up for your email list. and now some percentage of those are going to always open, like let's say it's 30 or 40, 40%, let's say, 40 % are going to open up your emails. So let's say you have, I'm going to make it up. Let's say you have a million people now on your email list. Like you do this for a couple of years, you have a million people on your email list. Now when you write a book, some percentage, let's say 40%, 400 ,000, are going to open up your email and say, oh, she has a book.

1:03:20James Altucher:Some percentage of that, let's say even 2 % is going to buy the book. So now 8 ,000 people buy the book. By the way, New York Times bestseller, you just need 2 ,000 copies sold that week to be on the New York Times bestseller list. So now you've already got four times as many people that you need to get on the New York Times bestseller list. So now your next book, you get the big advance if you go to traditional publishing. Okay. But it's a numbers game. Right, right, right. It's a quality game too. I'm not saying you can't do this. You have to have quality to get people to want to be excited about subscribing to your email list.

1:03:58James Altucher:You still have to have quality, but it's like more of an effort somehow. It's like a grind effort to build up that email list one at a time. It's mostly been a grind. I don't even know how you get to all those things. It was a grind, James. When I tell you, oh, man. That's why it's tough to coach people on Instagram because I'm like, you got to be in this. This is not going to be easy. You got to be in it to win it, baby. Yeah, I mean, even for Twitter, on LinkedIn. It took me like five to ten years to build up a good number of followers and people are impatient. Like, oh, I did three or two videos and got no followers.

1:04:33James Altucher:And I'm not even patient anymore. My podcast does well on podcast platforms, but not on YouTube. And whenever I try YouTube, I just get frustrated too easy. I don't have the consistency.

1:04:54Angry T skip

1:05:00Do you think it's worth my time to start posting on Substack? So, like, James, I have decided I want to just kind of focus on a limited number of platforms instead of being average on a bunch of them. That has been my philosophy up until now. But I do see that there might be some upside to Substack, but then, right, it's a bandwidth thing. Now I got to post it regularly on Substack.

1:05:26James Altucher:Where do you host your email lists now? I use MailChimp. I use MailChimp. Yeah, I would just use... And Patreon is also an email list too, basically. Yeah, so I would put the same thing on Patreon, MailChimp, and Substack. Just put the same thing. Just have it like Jay would remember back in the day when I would write something, he would post it on every single platform. So that's how you do it. So there were times when I would... because I used to be a columnist for the Financial Times. Sometimes I would write an article for the Financial Times, post the exact same article on, let's say, Yahoo Finance, post the exact same article on my Facebook page and link to it from Twitter, post the exact same article on Forbes magazine, even though it was already on the Financial Times.

1:06:16James Altucher:Nobody ever noticed. Not one person in years and years ever said, hey, wait a second. I saw this article on the Financial. You can't put it both places. Nobody ever said that to me once. I would even have the same article in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and no one would say anything. So the reason why I like you is because you write about a lot of different things. And I like to write about a lot of different things. I'm talented in a lot of different things. And this is sometimes in my brain where I get a little frazzled because I'm like, does my subset have to be a specific thing?

1:06:45Or can I just write what I want to write? Right? Like, I can write about comics, or I can write about branding. I can write about how to build your Patreon, or I can write about hip-hop and comics. so a conventional knowledge says to me that if it's a niche thing and you just focus on one thing that's better than just talking about chess one day then the financial times the next and then like but that doesn't feel good to me like niching down doesn't feel good to me it actually hurts i

1:07:12James Altucher:know it doesn't feel good to me either and and i'm always thinking about this like we have podcasters who have big podcasts and they and they come on and they say you need everybody's got a niche down twice. So, okay, you're a lawyer, then you're a divorce lawyer, have a divorce lawyer podcast, you know, I have a podcast about legal divorces or whatever. I'm just not that way. But I don't know if the world has turned into that or not. Like maybe the world has double niched down and I don't know anymore. So I'm still trying to figure that out. But you're doing it well, though. You're doing it well.

1:07:44James Altucher:Well, look, but you could do it too, right? Because it is good, I think, to kind of vertically and horizontally slice up your content. So horizontally might be, you know, here's my five favorite superheroes. Here I'm writing about Wakanda. Now I'm writing about Superman. So you're writing about comic books. But then vertically slicing it up is like, okay, now I'm going to write about how to write a comic book story. Now I'm going to write about how to get the dream job that you want. Now I'm going to write about how to brand, you know, your PhD thesis so you sell it and so on. So that's vertically taking what you did and like doing the how-toos on that.

1:08:19James Altucher:So, you know, like there's people who create a million, I knew one guy, he made a million dollar hot dog stand. So he had a hot dog stand with a million in revenues. Then he wrote a book, how to make a hot dog stand with a million in revenues. And that sold a million dollars worth, that book. And then he makes a course, how to generate a lot of content off of your main business. And that became a million dollar thing. So that was vertically moving up as opposed to having a hot dog stand here and then, I don't know, a shawarma stand over here and whatever. Right, right. It's like scaffolding. It's like scaffolding one main thing into small elements.

1:08:58All right. My other question was, do podcasts really sell books? So I see a lot of the big people, they do their podcast circuit on the same podcast. We all know this. They do their thing, right? But everybody can't get on those podcasts. So if you're just a smaller, normal writer, can you do this on a smaller scale? with smaller podcasts?

1:09:22James Altucher:The thing is, it's a numbers game. So let's say someone has a million listeners. What percentage of a podcast listeners... So if someone listens to a podcast in two places, they listen to it while driving to work or they listen to it at the gym. That's the main two places. And there's some other places. Those are the main two. So they're already not buying things because they're driving to work. How are they going to buy something? So they have to remember when they, oh, when I get to work, I'm going to buy this book. So let's say you have a million listeners. I think best case 1 % of those million listeners are going to buy the book.

1:09:54James Altucher:And that's probably best, best case. And there's only a handful of podcasts with over a million listeners. So per episode. I mean, we'll get more than a million listeners. Sometimes I'll get it on an episode, but it's very rare. And I'll get it usually in a week or a month or whatever. And I think in general, the podcast circuit doesn't work unless it's like the real top, top ones. And then you have to go on all of them to work. I really think that the best thing is just, you know, your social media following. And then, and particularly if you're like an unknown, like if you're not already in the cool kids, New York City literary circuit.

1:10:35James Altucher:Right. I think you got to like, you got to work every angle. You got to build up the email list. You got to build up a social media following. You got to get some notoriety. So half of people love you, half of people hate you. And, you know, that stuff, that stuff works. Oh, man. So, but we know that building all that stuff up takes years, right? Yeah. So is this like a depressing podcast episode for a writer that might be listening who's doing their first book? No, it's an exciting one. Okay, because it's an opportunity. Yeah, you could take control of your destiny as opposed to waiting for Simon & Schuster to take control of your destiny.

1:11:09Because they are not coming probably until you get a big following.

1:11:12James Altucher:Right, nor do they like you. Oh, my God. They pretend to like you. oh, here's the$100 ,000 advance. By the way, we're going to give it to you over three or four years. Then your agent takes 20%. Then your taxes take 50%. So you really made no money from us. And then we're going to, by the way, we're going to market your book, which they don't know how to do. They actually don't market your book because all the big publishing companies, where do they make money? Not on new authors, but on their backlist. Like if they sell 50 Shades of Grey, one out of 6 ,000 books they might've published in that decade, that's the one that is the only way they make money now.

1:11:46James Altucher:so it's their backlist so they only bring you on in the hopes that maybe she'll break out and be part of our backlist 10 years from now otherwise they're not gonna they don't care about you at all until you prove you can be on their backlist they hate you oh my gosh that is that is tough man that is real though I need that and your agent too also doesn't like you at that point oh so so like cause you need to be She makes money when you're on the backlist also. So now you could try a little bit. She could try to get a few more advances out of you, but eventually that goes away until you're on some publishing company's backlist.

1:12:28James Altucher:But the best, like again, by far, my best-selling book was Choose Yourself, which was self-published. And I get 60 % or 70 % of the revenues on Amazon versus 10 % through Simon & Schuster. So it's just so much better deal. The advances are never a good deal because it's spread out over years. Again, the Asian and the tax thing takes all the money away. So the advance... Your royalties don't start until you basically buy the advance back. They're never going to make your royalties. I remember this one guy who is on the backlist told me, I think on this podcast, but it was like 10 years ago, told me, your goal is to get an advance high enough that the publisher never earns it back, but that you do well enough that they know that on the backlist in the long run they'll do well.

1:13:15James Altucher:So you want to maximize the advance anyway, but they're never going to give you maximum advance until they know you're going to make money for them in the long run, which is hard. Very few books make money in the long run. Fifty Shades of Grey makes money in the long run, but almost every other book published this year is not going to make money in the long run. So as a writer, how do you untangle your need or want to be on a New York Times bestseller? Let's say I'm a successful writer already, but I don't have all of the prestige of the industry, like New York Times bestseller and all of those things?

1:13:44James Altucher:You can go for two of three things or maybe one of three things. You can either make a lot of money, get a lot of readers, or be on a bestseller list. So you have to choose, though, which ones. Really? Okay. Because the New York Times bestseller list, that's a different kind of marketing campaign than having a lot of readers. We already know you don't need a lot of readers to be... By the way, the New York Times curates. They don't really... It's not a numbers game. They just put the books they like on the New York Times bestseller list. Wall Street Journal bestseller list is a numbers game. but having a lot of readers that means you're going to have more readers the cheaper your book is so better to self-publish and price your book down as cheaply as possible you will definitely get more readers than Simon & Schuster would get you but having a lot of money you can't price your book at 99 cents you got to price it a little bit higher so you can only maximize one out of these three things what do you think about these writers I see writers do a strategy where they just publish a ton of books And I want to sell them for like 99 cents or two.

1:14:42They're just publishing a ton of books. What do you think about that stretch? Because if the conversation is about financial freedom, let's take off the prestige of the industry. Financial freedom. To me, I feel like I probably wouldn't be able to write quality if my strategy is quantity. I don't even know if I have the bandwidth.

1:15:03James Altucher:You're right. Here's the other question. I remember we had one of those guys. I know exactly what you're talking about. On Amazon, you see these authors, like they write books, how to have a great conversation. That's one book. Then the next book is how to have a conversation on a date. That's the next book. And then the next one is how to increase your charisma. There's a whole book. And they go on and on. They make a hundred different books. Some of the books do well. We've had guys like that on the podcast explaining it. We had one guy, Steve Scott, who was making like 60 ,000 a month at his peak.

1:15:33James Altucher:But I don't know if that strategy is going to work as well with AI because you could write all those books with AI now. so it makes it too easy to write those to do those books so I think people are doing thousands of books now versus tens of books and I think it's just flooding it too much right right I don't know that will work this is a tough industry man the other thing like the other but the great thing is look what happened you wrote a book and you got this Eisner Award and then that got you leverage into Marvel right so you know a book is good leverage more than a money maker yeah so you can start a business or you can start another career based on a book you wrote, or you can start lecturing, like if you get paid for lectures, or you can get a job as a professor.

1:16:12James Altucher:You know, if you write a popular book, you get a professor at a different university for more money. And so I think for me, the books have been mostly like great leverage to get into other things. To do other things. And you never know what your book is going to do out in the world. Look, I'm talking to James Altucher. Like you just never know what just, one of the books out there, you know, making a splash. And my books, like I talk, Even my book, the first book I published, I still talk about it today. I talk about my books years. Some people, they do their book launch, and then they move on.

1:16:46Every book that I put out, I'm like, I'm going to talk about this forever because it's important to me. It's something meaningful to me that I still believe in years later.

1:16:56James Altucher:Yeah, I don't feel that way about all of my books. I feel that way about a couple of my books. And then I feel bad. Like I used to, from 2004 to 2021, I published a book a year. And since 2021, I haven't published a book. And I'm feeling a little anxious about that. I feel like I have to be writing again. And the game changes every year. So you have to kind of like get up on what's the current game. No. Oh my God. I just came from a speaking engagement this morning. And we were, I was talking to them about, like, if I don't have a book that I'm promoting, I'd start feeling like bad about myself like unproductive I feel like I always have to have something that's probably a problem James like I don't know what that says about me no I think I think it is sort of like you know why do I need to feel that I have to write a book of the year why do I maybe I don't have something to say every year you have to write something for it but since 2021 I have not written a book and I keep giving myself rationalization for not doing it and I just got to do it now.

1:18:03Yeah, it feels good. I mean, it feels good to like, it just feels good to publish a book, hold it in your hands, get to talk about it.

1:18:08James Altucher:Yeah. Yeah. Get to show it to people. Get to write it. Yeah. It's going to be like there when you're long gone. What do you want to write next? So I got a couple deals going on with the big five, but they take so long. Yeah, horrible. And I'm just like, it's just, it's actually not good for my self-esteem. Because first of all, you got to get through all the rejections and then when you do get someone's interest, it just takes forever. I'm like, I don't even know how people publish anything relevant with how long this takes. I agree. It takes like a year and a half to get a book out. That's why self-publishing, the first time I experimented with self-publishing, I wrote from scratch, started Friday morning and by Sunday night I had published a book.

1:18:54James Altucher:So like, and I started the writing Friday morning. So I just as an experiment and it's great. It's a great experience. That's why I like self-publishing. Right. And you know, now that I have the agent, you know, I'm doing the industry thing. So it just takes longer. But you know, I'm trying to do both. Most of my books are traditionally published, not with big five companies, but with different, like there's, I think also writers forget that there's like over 3 ,000 publishing companies that don't need agents and they're just independent. And they're great publishers too. If you want a publisher to publish your book and do the thing.

1:19:24James Altucher:It's true. But then, like I was talking to my daughter and she writes poetry And I said, oh, you should just self-publish a collection of your poetry. And she said, well, I got to find a publisher. And I said to her, well, okay, I'll create James Publishing, James Books, Inc., and I will publish your poetry book. And she rejected me on that. And she said, oh, no, that will feel scammy. And I'm like, well, then just make up your own publishing company and just publish it. No one ever asked me, well, who published your book? Like if someone asks you, who is the publisher Old Man and the Sea by Renners Hemingway?

1:19:59James Altucher:No one knows the answer to that. I don't know the answer. No one cares. But we think about these things so much. I don't know. Why is it so important? But I do think it cuts you out. I like seeing my book in Barnes & Noble. Okay, but by the way, most books published by Suleiman & Schuster will never be seen in Barnes & Noble. What? Only the backlist gets published in Barnes & Noble. But this is an example. This is a good example of what I'm talking about. Because my book, I've had a couple books in Barnes & Noble, but they're not published by the big five. They're just like Bimbella. Bimbella books.

1:20:35Awesome, awesome, awesome press. So there's different, people forget that there's different ways to do this.

1:20:40James Altucher:By the way, Simon & Schuster, you know how like some books you see the spine, some books you see the covers, some books are on that front table of new and notable. Simon & Schuster or Random House, they're paying for those placements. If the book is facing forward on the bookshelf, they paid for that. And if it puts on the new and notable, they paid for that. I always wondered how they chose who got on the, everything is money, it's capitalism. So that's how it works. It's capitalism. Yeah, that's like space. So, and also, like for instance, in the airport bookstores, you got to pay. If you want to be in an airport bookstore, you got to pay money for that.

1:21:11James Altucher:That's like 20 ,000 in love. But the publisher decides that, right? So let's say, let's say if I publish with the big five, as a writer, I can't say, hey, I want to make sure that this gets on the front table at Barnes and Noble. They decide that for me. Or can I be like, is it totally out of the writer's control? They decide it's totally out of the writer's control. And they could, by the way, they will promise it to you and then they'll lie. They just won't do it. Oh my God. And so, but here's what you could do. You could basically hire the Simon & Schuster distribution company where Simon & Schuster is not publishing your book, but they will, Simon & Schuster Distribution Inc.

1:21:48James Altucher:will distribute your book the way they distribute Simon & Schuster books. So you could hire the distribution company to publish your books. So there's one guy on the night who came on the podcast, Tucker Max. He's written a whole bunch of bestsellers. He did that with a couple of his books where he essentially self-published and then hired Simon & Schuster's distribution arm to distribute his books to bookstores. And then, and they did it. And that became a bestseller. That's a good reminder too, that like, it's way easier to make money as a writer than to try to rely on these big five companies and hope that you get picked.

1:22:20Like it's just way easier to build. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's a more valuable path to build the audience, write a good book and monetize your audience. And then you can buy all of the stuff that you just talked about. Like I can hire the distribution company.

1:22:32James Altucher:It's so much better to choose your, like you know what you want for your success. Yes. Their agenda is to have one success and to spend as little money as possible on everyone else as once they realize that person's not going to be a breakout for them. So, and they're very short-sighted because a breakout could happen, you know, it might require effort, and they don't want to put that effort in. So they're just hoping for the easy success, but their agenda is not aligned with yours. They don't want your success. They want their success. Mm. Mm-mm-mm-mm. Whew. This was so good. And I am, you know, I'm proud of Why Wakanda Matters in all of my books.

1:23:11I was really excited that Why Wakanda Matters was a clue on Jeopardy. I felt like that was a good, you know, It was just a good little metric of like, oh, I did something cool that not a lot of other people have done. And so there's just more to it than just the big five New York Times bestselling lists.

1:23:30James Altucher:Now, why don't you write more stuff for Marvel? Can you write more Black Panther comics? I could if I pitched them on something. I just not interested. I mean, if they came to me and asked me to write something, I would say yes. but I'm kind of focused on my own books and my IP and my ideas right now not what they want me to write or within their parameters. What's the next book you want to write? I have something right now that's a psychological thriller that I can't talk a lot about because we're in negotiations with the top dogs but yeah, it's coming. I think this deal is actually going to go through but I can't talk about it because you know how they are.

1:24:15James Altucher:What about like this? Does this like I know they do this a little with Spider-Man. Like, do they ever open source their IP Marvel? Like, can you write a Black Panther novel? Not that not that I would own. Like, right. Not that you would own. Right. OK. But you want to see. I could pitch him on something. Yeah, I could pitch him on something like. Like Shantae moves to New York City and. Yeah. So the artist that I did the that Marvel story for where I created that new character, We talk all the time about, hey, he tells me all the time, like, hey, like, just pitch them an extension of the story.

1:24:47But I kind of want, like, a little more ownership now, I think, for my writing career. You know, creating characters I own that might become something and can put money in my pocket.

1:24:58James Altucher:Yeah, yeah. And I do a blend. Yeah, I do a blend. Let me do my self-publishing stuff and let me do my industry stuff. And I just feel the more you put out, the more likelihood you'll have leverage to do more things. Like I want a streaming deal. I want one of my characters to be turned into a movie or one of my books to be turned into a movie, that kind of thing. That's where I'm going. That would be awesome for me if I created a story or a book that got turned into a movie. Like I've been in conversations with Nina's Whisper, the fiction book I was telling you about, about my life. I've talked to TV execs about that book.

1:25:30They're very interested in it because it's kind of a crazy story, like same sex domestic abuse. I have a baby by this guy who like is her friend, you know, headline worthy. These things take time. It has to be the right time. It's a process.

1:25:43James Altucher:Yeah. And I'm impatient, but which is probably a lot of the crazy making in my head because I'm like, I'm getting older. Well, let me answer this question. What if you shot a 15-minute movie of Nina's Whisperer? I've thought about that. And submitted it to short film festivals? Yes. On YouTube? I have a film that's coming out this year called Survive the Gap. So I had a viral video, which I talk about like survive the gap in the video. What's the gap? The gap is the space between where you are and where you're trying to go. So it's the emotional, psychological, spiritual things you have to go through to reach that big goal, right?

1:26:22James Altucher:I love this concept as a franchise. It's a franchise to survive the gap financially. Survive the gap emotionally. Survive the gap in your marriage. Yes. So I'm creating a brand around it. So we got the film coming out. I'm pitching the book. And yeah, that's what I'm doing. And people love the concept. so we'll see. I think that could be huge. I think so too. Like, you know, tell that to the gatekeepers. That's the whole thing. You got to make yourself the gatekeeper. That's what I'm saying. The film I'm doing on my own. So that's coming out on my own film festivals. I'll monetize it. I'll license it.

1:26:57Yeah, I'm excited about that.

1:26:59James Altucher:By the way, you could then upload it to Amazon and anyone searching on it, it looks like any other Amazon Prime show. Oh, really? Yeah. You don't have to be just a YouTube video. you just upload it to Amazon. And like I, somebody made a documentary series about my book, Choose Yourself. And of course, it didn't get any distribution. Nobody wants it. But I said, just upload it to Amazon. Now it's an Amazon Prime series. Nobody knows the difference between that series and any other series on Amazon Prime. Oh, that's so cool. I didn't know that. I'm so excited about this. That's what I'm saying. Owning your own stuff and being able to make your own moves.

1:27:31You know, why Wakanda matters? I don't own, but I sell a lot of copies. But, you know, I got to buy that from the publisher. they gotta ship me the books just for me to ship them back out to my audience and if I just owned it I wouldn't have to do all that I think do another

1:27:46James Altucher:Why Wakanda Matters and then you own it do like Why Wakanda Still Matters Why Wakanda Matters unlocked Why Wakanda Matters is what I didn't say and if you want a passport to Wakanda subscribe to my email list boom then you give like a certificate it like yeah you you've subscribed i love that i think you you got a lot of stuff going on i do i love this is exciting you you you re-energize well i was already energized but you re-energize me i i this is great this is great well and and china you have such incredible stories and thank you for for bearing with my question about if the black panther movie was racist so i was really nervous about asking you that i actually thought the first time i asked you that a few weeks ago I thought maybe I was being insulting, but I'm glad I wasn't.

1:28:35I think having those kind of conversations are healthy and good.

1:28:40James Altucher:Let me ask you a question. How should someone, like, let's say someone asks me, prove you're not racist. How would I go about doing that without seeming racist? Oh, I have black friends. No, I want to. Yeah, no, that's not good. That's not good. Prove you're not racist. Jeez, that's such a good question. I had because someone asked me this recently and I have all these things I wanted to say but then everything sounds racist like oh I wrote a book about racism like why am I defending myself I don't know how would you prove you're not the answer that I want to say is I don't want to say it I like my litmus right now this might this might this might be bad but like if you voted for Trump I kind of think you're racist and I know that's like opening up a whole nother we gotta go but yeah alright well that's you I by the way did not vote at all I've been following your stuff for a long time I highly recommend people read Why Wakanda Matters but is there anything else you want to point people read Nina's Whisper sign up for my Patreon we give away free money and then my next book coming out is Hip Hop and Comics it's coming out in April April 2026 let's go Oh my God, you got to come on for that.

1:30:02James Altucher:We totally forgot to talk about the relationship between hip-hop and superheroes. Well, I love ending on the fact that you want to learn more, so let's do it. Okay, really quickly, who's your top five? My top five, what? Hip-hop artist? Rappers, yeah. Man, I'm not a hip-hop head, so my list, please everybody ignore my list, but I'm definitely... You work with DMC. You write a vocal about hip-hop. I write for DMC, but Tupac is definitely my number one. B.I.G. is definitely on the list. And that's it, because I'm not deep into hip-hop. I'm not the voice. Broke DMC. Of course. I mean, he's legendary.

1:30:45Come on. Broke barriers. Let's go. That's my guy.

1:30:49James Altucher:All right. Well, hip-hop and comics. He's in his book, too. You'll come on the podcast for that. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Dr. Sheena Howard. I will talk to you soon. Thank you, James. Have a good day.

1:31:29James Altucher:We'll see you next time. Are you not entertained? And TV shows like Survivor, Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. You've seen the signs, and you know hoping it gets better isn't a plan. Symmetria Recovery offers real medical care for addiction, with fast relief from withdrawal and therapy that supports lasting change. No judgment, just help. Most major insurance plans are accepted, and they can start quickly. Symmetria Recovery. You make the call. We'll help with the rest. Call 800-844-5151 or visit SymmetriaRecovery.com.

1:32:14James Altucher:The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.