How to Write AND Publish a Book in 30 Days!

27:52So like in New York city, for instance, you could Airbnb for like$5 a night or$30 a night, a tent in someone's backyard in the worst part of the Bronx, which is like a dangerous area. So for$30 a night, and the idea was too, I would bring comedians with me. We'd have a party. It would be funny. And then the most expensive place in New York, I forget what it was, but essentially a palace somewhere in, you know, Soho or whatever, like 12 ,000 square feet. And, you know, for a hundred thousand dollars a night, you can rent it. And it was crazy. They seemed really excited, but then they never got back to me because, okay, maybe that was just small potatoes for them.

28:33I don't know. But my point then was any, and now even is any site with a lot of traffic can be a TV network and have original content. And HBO sort of proved that the Netflix sort of proved it and so on.

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30:17This message comes from Capital One. With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase and get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Spark Cash Plus Terms Apply. During this time, I was writing and I was excited about writing and I was still an avid reader, but I wasn't writing really novels at this point. I was writing for this 3am idea and I was getting familiar with TV writing and documentary writing and so on.

31:06So it was training in its own way. Then I started a business making entertaining websites. I don't mean for this to be my biography. But fast forward in 2002, I had two skills at that point, other than knowing how to make a website and computer stuff, like forget computer stuff. But I had already started day trading and was starting my hedge fund. So I had financial skills and I had writing skills. I had been writing at this point for 10 years. So I had some skills and I had a, I didn't know I had a unique style at this point, but I had a flavor to my writing. So I'm just curious, what would you say your unique style back then?

31:45I'm sure your style has changed. I had like kind of, I would say things no one else would say. So if I was writing about Apple, well, I'll get to it. So I wrote letters to a bunch of hedge fund managers saying, hey, can I work for you? Because I wanted to work for a hedge fund. I didn't want to run my own hedge fund and I wanted to get experience. And I wrote a letter to a bunch of financial writers and no one at all responded. So then this is where the 10 ideas a day come in. I researched each person I was writing to, came up with 10 ideas for them, and then wrote them the ideas and said, there's no need to ever get back to me.

32:22Well, one person who got back to me, several people got back to me at that point, but one person I had pitched, Jim Cramer, here's 10 article ideas you should write about stocks. and he was, you know, a contributor on CNBC. He didn't have mad money then, but, and he had started this website, thestreet.com, which was all articles. And he wrote back instantly and he said, these are great. Why don't you write for us? So in January, in December of 2002, I wrote my first published article. After 12 years of writing, not counting the 3 a.m. stuff for HBO, I wrote the first article that I was actually paid for.

33:00I was paid$200. I framed that check many years later, Jim signed the back of the check. I never cashed that check and I framed it. I don't know where it is now. Cause I threw out all my belongings a few years ago, but somebody it's probably in the garbage, but I wrote my, I wrote an article about stocks that were trading below the amount of cash they had in the bank, which was ridiculous. But I kind of started to have this style where that became very distinct, where I would write Instead of just writing, oh, Apple reported earnings, they made$20 a share, it was below expectations, blah, blah, blah, some boring article.

33:37I would write about my experiences like, oh my gosh, this is how I day traded Apple. And then I almost went broke. This is a big mistake I made. So I would admit my failures and my flaws. I wouldn't just – and this is, by the way, how humans will continue to beat AI. You can't just summarize news. AI could do that already better than humans. You have to have your own unique perspective and AI will have their own unique perspective eventually, but it won't be your unique perspective. And so people will want to listen to you and read you because you have your own unique perspective. And so I did.

34:16And so, so I did that for a year or two, the financial times contacted me, which is, you know, the biggest financial newspaper, maybe in the world next to the Wall Street Journal. It's a British paper. It's on that like orange or pink paper. they asked me if I wanted to start writing for them. They liked my writing at the street. And so I started writing for them. And I remember I wrote, I was really nervous. Oh my gosh, the prestigious financial times. And so I wrote these very conservative articles, like this is how Warren Buffett invests. And here's some of his stock picks. This is how banks work and so on.

34:48And Lionel Barber, the editor of the USFT, and he became the editor in chief for many years after this, he called me into the office. He said, these are good articles. And I said, oh, thank you. And he says, you're fired. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he said, we don't want you to write good articles. That's like everyone else here writes good articles. We want you to write like James Altucher. So if you don't come up with something batshit crazy, like James Altucher would, I don't want another article from you. And so he was a great editor. He really encouraged me to take my style and amp it up.

35:22My editor at that time, you know, he was the boss. So he was the editor in chief, but my specific editor, this guy, John authors, he got so nervous with my writing style. He was like, they're never going to let this go. They're never going to let this go. But Lyle, I always would go over his head, sadly for him. And Lionel Barber would say, publish it. And they would just get crazier and crazier because I was trying to see if they would ever fire me. And they never did. I mean, eventually all good things come to an end, but not for any bad reason. And then the Wall Street Journal had me write for them.

35:54One interesting story there. Very famous writer now. She's got a great newsletter, great perspective. Barry Weiss, she wrote for the New York Times, but she thought they were too alt-left or whatever. I don't know. And she started her own Substack, and now she makes a great living on her Substack newsletter. She's been on Joe Rogan. She's a great writer, great writer, has good political opinions. And she was my grammar editor at the Wall Street Journal, like straight out of college. So I know her from then. And then I just found out this weekend, Jay Merrick, a mutual friend of ours, who's also been on this podcast.

36:28Merrick told me that she's from Pittsburgh where I went to grad school. And her father is this guy, Lou Weiss, who I made a website for 25 years ago. No way. What type of website? He had a wedding store and I made a website where he could sell wedding stuff. I love reading Barry's stuff. Yeah, Barry's great. She has her own network now. Yeah, we should have her on the podcast. She's fun. Yes. Anyway, I'm going to get to a long story, and I'm going to make it shorter because this is not how I intended for this to go. But eventually, people wanted me to write a book. A publisher reached out to me, Wiley.

37:09Pamela Van Giesen was the editor there. She's retired now. And I wrote my first book. It was a financial book, Trade Like a Hedge Fund. Then I wrote another one, Trade Like Warren Buffett. Then I wrote another one, Super Cash. So I was writing financial books. And these were my first books. And they were very successful in the financial world. And they were priced very high. Like Trade Like a Hedgehog was$70. But it was one of their best sellers. USA Today said it was one of the best financial books ever. The Stock Traders Almanac had it featured as their book of the year. And so I was able to do financial books.

37:40And then I wrote The Forever Portfolio for Portfolio slash Penguin, a book for The Wall Street Journal, The Investor's Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse. And I wrote a bunch of financial books, but I didn't really enjoy that. And I wanted to write books my style. And I wanted to write about the time, like when I was day trading, when I went broke and I lost my house and the IRS was after me and how I was so depressed, I was almost suicidal. And then I started writing the 10 ideas a day. So I started writing those kinds of blogs and I got a much, every blog post, I got a much bigger audience than I had ever gotten before with the financial stuff.

38:21And I had a pretty big audience for the financial stuff. And I started writing for all sorts of publications like a yoga journal, a psychology journal, a Gen Z type of magazine about relationships, the Good Men Project. I wrote for crack.com. So I started writing for every website I could think of to basically, like no matter where, I started writing for TechCrunch about my entrepreneurship days. And everywhere you look, I wanted it. My strategy was, is that I was everywhere. No matter what journal you looked at, I was everywhere. And then I started writing books that were more about my, not about like BS financial stuff.

39:06Not that my financial stuff was BS, but I didn't enjoy it. But I wrote like Choose Yourself, which was about how ultimately I wouldn't get upset if somebody didn't want to use my writing or someone didn't want to have me on TV. I chose myself. Whatever I wanted to do, I would figure out how to do it. And that's possible in today's day and age. You want a radio show? Do a podcast. You want a TV show? Build your YouTube channel. You want to publish a book? Well, that's what I'm going to get to because I just made a course about writing and publishing your first book. So I wrote Choose Yourself. It was a bestseller, Wall Street Journal bestseller sold millions of copies i wrote reinvent yourself i just finished skip the line i wrote a book with charlamagne the god who's a huge radio host five million listeners i don't know i've written all together i've written a children's book i've written a comic book i wrote a novel under a pseudonym which um is called the i think i forget it now it's called the autobiography of Prince George, and he was only three days old.

40:10And so I wrote it from the point of view of his butler. Let me see if I can find it. Because it's under a different name, sometimes I actually can't find it. Oh yeah, the autobiography of Prince George Alexander Lewis Windsor. Oh, and it's got 15 ratings and an entire 2.9 stars. And the reviews all hated it. I think there are, oh, there's one, there's two five-star reviews. Interesting concept. But here's a one-star review. Rubbish. Suggestions in this book are crude and ludicrous. I would not recommend it to anyone, even though it was a freebie. So, but I wrote that book in three days and published it on Amazon.

40:50And it was a fun little book. And it's only like 10 pages or something. I don't know. But so they were right to give it bad reviews. It wasn't a good book. But my books have been bestsellers. My books have been very successful. But here's what I enjoy most lately is that so many of my friends and colleagues and family ask me, hey, I just wrote an article. I just wrote a book. I just wrote an essay for my homework, whatever. And they say, can I take, James, can you take a look at it? And so I would say, sure. And I really loved helping them, almost teaching them how to write. And I would basically, the best is we would get on, even if we were in different locations, we'd get on Google Docs and I'd be on the phone with them or on Zoom or whatever.

41:39And I would make a change and explain why I was making the change. And so I would never be critical. I was always constructive, but I would go over each change. Like, here's why I changed this sentence. Here's, because, you know, maybe you already wrote a similar sentence or had a similar word on a prior page. So I'm going to change this so it uses a different word. Oh, this sentence has too many adjectives, too many adverbs. Let's tighten it up. You don't need this first paragraph. You know, one of the pieces of advice I always have is take out, whenever you write something, even if you know this rule, take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

42:17and you know and i would always walk people through like why did you write this what are you afraid of if you hit publish like i never write something unless i'm afraid to hit publish

42:44i wrote an article once uh why i don't believe that any war is worth it and so many people got upset at me particularly since i wrote this on i think july 4th and i said the revolutionary war wasn't worth it and blah, blah, blah. I've probably changed my opinion on this one. We should do a change opinion podcast on this topic. But unless I was afraid or, you know, for TechCrunch, I would write such insane entrepreneurial stories that I was always convinced this is the last time they're ever going to let me write for them and everyone is going to mock me and people will spit on my kids at school because I wrote this and whatever.

43:23So unless I was afraid to hit publish, I would not hit publish. So I would always with people I'm helping with their writing, I would always ask them, what are you afraid of? If you're not afraid of something, then it's just, this is a boring book or an article or a blog post or whatever. What chances are you taking? You've got to take, just like with investing, you've got to take risks to have great rewards. And that really changed the way a lot of people wrote. People, even just recently, like Merrick, who's going to come on this podcast soon to discuss his brand new book. I spent a year working with him and his co-author going over all of these ideas, how to write a story, why storytelling is important in a book, not just the ideas, but the storytelling.

44:08Ultimately, you have to be an entertainer. What are you scared of? So I would spend months sometimes helping some of these people with writing. And, you know, Avatik, who's been on this podcast, he's my chess coach. Sometimes I look at his blog posts and And he's a very good writer to begin with. So it's a pleasure to work with someone who's a really good writer. And he sort of naturally comes to it. But it's a real pleasure to kind of go over his writing. And I always do it. I make sure I'm never critical. All my suggestions are very constructive. I work really hard at trying to teach well. And I love teaching writing.

44:45This is the activity. Writing is the activity I've done longer than anything else and more consistently than anything else. I've been writing almost every day since 1990, so 33 years. So here's what I did. This is why I'm such a bad at any kind of self-advertising or self-promotion. I wait all the way until the end of this podcast to describe what I did. I made a course about writing for the first time, and it's not related to any of my financial stuff. It's on Udemy, U-D-E-M-Y, which is an online learning platform. I'm launching it today with this podcast. It's called How to Write and Publish a Book in 30 Days.

45:29And I'm serious. Like, I will teach you how to write, not just write, but write well, and then step-by-step how to publish and publish so it feels professionally published in just 30 days. And even coming up with the ideas, I came up with four book concepts, what I call book concepts, where even if a thousand people all started with the same concept, they will write incredibly different books. With each concept, I go through it step by step, how to take this idea, how to research it, how to add your own stories to this, and in less than 30 days, write the book and write a great book. and I described.

46:11So here are some of the sections. Can I add something? Yes, you can add something. Yeah, so I was just there for the course when we were shooting it. Well, you shot all the videos. There's a video course. You shot all the videos. You're the director and producer. So on top of the four concepts, James doesn't talk about time management. What are the myths that can be debunked when writing a book, which is great. And also the mindset of writing the book. What are something that he does before writing a book as well. Yeah, like there's one section, nine ways to overcome writer's block, where I talk about all the times I've experienced writer's block and how, and I still deal with writer's block.

46:50I had to write an article the other day and oh my God, I had huge writer's block because anyway, that's a whole story. But I talk about the FK score system to determine if your writing is readable or not. Most people don't know anything about that. But basically there's this score that tells you what grade level your writing is at. And good writing, like let's take the book Old Man in the Sea, which helped Ernest Hemingway win the Nobel Prize. It's probably his best book. That is written at a fifth grade reading level. That fifth and sixth grade reading levels are the grade level you want to write at.

47:27And there's a way to calculate it called the FK score. And I talk about that. I talk about the Warren Buffett 525 rule, which I've spoken about before in this podcast, but I apply it to writing. I talk about, you know, is AI your competitor, how to beat AI. I talk about my favorite first lines in books. So the very most important two sentences you could write in a book is the first line and is the last line. And then almost like a fractal, like the very most important words in each chapter is the first line and the last line in the chapter. Each paragraph, the first line and the last time. In fact, there's a technique of speed reading, which is just read the first line and the last line of every paragraph.

48:16Or if you're really pressed for time, read the first line and the last line of every chapter and so on. I'm just curious on the spot, will you be able to think of your favorite first line? I just want to give them the taste. Yeah, I'll talk about two first lines right now that I really love. Like a first line in just one line will capture the soul of a book and will make you really feel what the writer slash the main character of the book was intending. So, okay, here's Albert Camus who wrote The Stranger. Albert Camus also won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I think, in 1957. He died when he was very young, and he was a very well-known absurdist philosopher and a great novelist.

49:03He wrote this very short novel called The Stranger. The very first line is, mother died today, or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure. So if you break apart that first line, first off, you know, they always say for murder mysteries, and this is not a murder mystery. This is like a more literary novel. But they always say in murder mysteries, you know, someone has to die in the first three pages. Well, here it's the very first line. Mother died today or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure. So there's death. But there's also this weird confusion. Like this is someone's son saying this about his mother.

49:43And he says, or maybe yesterday. Like why is he so confused? What is it about this person? What is off about this person that he doesn't know if she died today or yesterday? And then he says, I can't be sure. Why can't he be sure? Why can't he ask somebody, for instance, and then he would be sure? Why is being unsure very critical to the plot of this book? When he says, I can't be sure, it's almost like he doesn't care enough to find out. And that's why he can't be sure. Or there's also another great one, Kurt Vonnegut. A lot of people have read Kurt Vonnegut. His perhaps most classic book is Slaughterhouse-Five.

50:24And again, this will seem like the last one, but the first sentence of Slaughterhouse-Five is, all this happened, more or less. So did it happen or did it not happen? So we're about to hear a story, and basically Slaughterhouse-Five is one of Kurt Vonnegut's most famous books because it's his direct experience as a prisoner of war in World War II. He was captured by the Germans and he was in Dresden with all the other prisoners of war when Dresden was firebombed. Everybody in Dresden essentially died and except for the prisoners of war because they were kept so far underground. So that's what this novel is about.

51:08So it's almost like the trauma of that, all this happened more or less, that's what the rest of the book feels like, is that it's so much trauma. It's almost, is he going to be a reliable author or a reliable storyteller or not? We don't yet know. We have to read to find out why that is a critical first line. Oh, I got to tell you one more. So Jennifer Egan, she's a more modern writer, one of my favorite books, A Visit from the Goon Squad. And she wrote the very first line of her novel, it began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel. So what is it? And what is the usual way? And why would, I can't even think of anything that the usual way, unless you're going to the bathroom, the usual way would occur in the bathroom.

51:54And then it's very interesting. She's so general, like it, usual way, the bathroom, but then she gives a specific detail, the Lassimo Hotel, which is why is that, why that specific hotel that something called it has there, you do something that's usual and it's in the bathroom of this very, very specific hotel. So I'll just say one more, Charles Bukowski's post office. So, you know, he wrote it in three weeks, this novel. It's his first novel. It began as a mistake. So I just, first lines, I love the art of the first line. And by the way, in a world dominated by TikTok, and I do think TikTok is an excellent form of entertainment, you have to really, if you're writing a novel or any book, a nonfiction book, and so this course is focused on nonfiction books.

52:47I will do another course focused on fiction books. But a nonfiction book, you're competing against TikTok for eyeballs, for attention. And you have to start off very strong. The first line, the first paragraph. I talk about how to have a cliffhanger. Even in a nonfiction book, you need cliffhangers, every chapter, sometimes every paragraph, sometimes every sentence. I mean, these sentences I just read to you were almost structured like cliffhangers. You have to know the arc of the hero and you have to tell lots of stories. We were just talking to Ryan Holiday about the arc of the hero and storytelling.

53:21And we talked with Chuck Palinay, author of Bike Club, about the arc of the hero. We talked with Robert Greene about the arc of the hero. So this is such an important concept that I spent a lot of time on this in the course, because a nonfiction book, you need the arc of the hero throughout the book, every single chapter. I also talk about something that's very important to me when I'm writing. When you're writing a book, very important is you want to be completely authentic. It's just like when I was doing standup comedy. The audience is a great BS detector. They know when you're doing an act or when you're just talking.

53:56And the goal of a standup comedian is just to be up there as if you have never done comedy before and start just saying stuff that makes people laugh. And if they think you're doing a honed act, they can smell BS. They can smell fear also. So you have to just act like you're having a fun time. The party's up on the stage. They're invited. They can come or not. And it's the same thing with writing. You have to be totally authentic. So you have to ask, who are you? Why are you? Why now? So with every book you write, who are you to be writing this book? are you an entrepreneur and you're writing about entrepreneurship?

54:34Are you someone who came from, let's say we're going to see books later about what's happening in Ukraine now. Were you a child in Ukraine and these experiences happened? Why are you? You have to ask the question, why are you? Which is an odd kind of question. Why do you do the things you do? What's your mission in life? What is it your mission to spread the word about, you know, what happened in Ukraine? Is it your mission to write a novel about people who feel awkward and out of place in social situations that other people are totally comfortable in? And you write a novel about that. Are you someone who loves, you know, your mission is to create a better thriller than any thriller ever written because it's in your head, all these ideas for thrillers.

55:24Like, why are you? And why now? Why now do we need this book? Why now do we need a book about the history of the presidency, for instance? Well, it's because there's so much controversy in presidential politics these days, much more than there was 10 years ago. And so is this new? Is there a history to this? Like, why are you writing this book now? And so who are you? Why are you? Why now? And I talk a lot more about this in the very beginning of the course. talk about time management. I give examples of the arc of the hero, even in nonfiction examples. I give all of my best writing tips. I just load them in there.

56:03I talk about self-publishing versus traditional publishing and a lot of the myths that surround self-publishing. For instance, I don't know when this podcast will come out, but on May 5th on Apple Plus, I am so excited. I'm waiting for the TV series Silo to launch. It's a science fiction series. it's based on a bunch of books written by a friend of mine and former podcast guest Hugh Howey. He was actually a podcast guest in 2014, one of my first guests. And he self-published the series Wool. And it sold millions and millions of copies. Eventually, Simon & Schuster republished it. And eventually, Apple Plus made it into a TV series launching May 5th, about 10 years after he wrote the very initial book, which he didn't think would sell at all.

56:45It was like a novella. And so many people asked him for a sequel that he wrote a whole series called Wool Now it's going to be a TV series. So no one ever asks them, hey, you were just self-published. I'm not watching your TV series. It's just a great book. So I talk about self-publishing versus traditional publishing. I go step by step how to professionally self-publish your book. So it doesn't look like some low-grade self-published book. It looks like a professionally published book. No one would be able to tell the difference. I talk about how I personally learned storytelling kind of the hard way from writing thousands of bad stories and novels.

57:25And it took me 10 years to publish my first article and then about another two years after that to publish my first book. I teach you from beginning to end how to write and publish your first book in 30 days. It doesn't have to be your first book. It could be your second book or 10th book, but how to write a great book and publish it in 30 days. I go over the myths of writing. I go over the craft of it. I go over the four book concepts, which you could use. And I will, you know, for people who sign up for the course, I'll probably add book concepts along the way. But you could use any of these concepts to write a completely unique book that is unique to you.

58:07And, you know, ultimately, I talk a little bit about how to market your book. and I'm really proud of this course. It's the funnest thing I've done in at least three years. And I have so much pleasure helping people with their writing that I decided to make a course putting together everything I've learned about writing. And here I am, such a horrible self-promoter. You could get this course. The course is$179 and hopefully you'll make millions of dollars writing books, but you'll definitely, I can guarantee you, you'll make more than$179 if you write a book. But I should have had a money back guarantee there.

58:46Maybe at some point I will. But how to write and publish a book in 30 days. And again, if you go to Udemy and search for Altucher, you'll find the course. But better is go to jamesaltestershow.com slash writing. Don't go to jamesaltestershow.com slash writing. Go to jamesaltestershow.com slash writing and it'll take you right to the front page of the course. What can I offer right now? If anyone, because of this podcast, goes and gets this course, I'll read and write a review on your first book or second book or whatever that you use this course to write the book and you put it on Amazon. I will go to the Amazon page and review it.

59:30So I promise that just my email is altature at gmail.com. send me your manuscript or point me to the book. I will buy the book. Just don't charge$1 ,000 for it. I'll charge a normal price. And I will review the book if you sign up for the course because of this podcast. So it's how to write and publish a book in 30 days. Go to jamesalditricho.com slash writing and it'll take you right to the course. I am so proud of this course. I really hope you get it and that you learn from it. and review it and rank it and tell me how much you loved it. And if you have any questions at all, feel free to write me, outletcher at gmail.com.

1:00:12I will try to answer everything. And good luck. Good luck on your writing journey. I will say the writing journey has been incredible for me and has created so many opportunities, so many interesting and fascinating life experiences. It's really worth it to write your book. Thanks again.

1:00:37Thank you.