Part 2: How to Write and Publish Your First Book in 30 Days - Frameworks, First Lines, and the Craft of Storytelling

0:00Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

0:30And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small, medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. A lot of people ask me, is it really possible to write a book in 30 days? I mean, there's this famous writer or this famous writer that says it took them 15 years to write their bestselling book, or it took them 14 years, 12 years, seven years to write their first book.

1:16Well, I'm here to tell you, not only is it possible to write your first book in 30 days, but I initially described this process that I'm going to be going in depth on to you. I originally described this process in an Instagram live that I did almost three years ago. And I would say well over 100 people have at least contacted me since then to tell me that they wrote a book in 30 days and probably many more didn't contact me who wrote a book in 30 days.

1:54This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

2:08Why 30 days? And why is this important? And why is it possible? First off, Why is it possible? I am going to give you four very concrete frameworks. I'll call them meta outlines, and I'll describe what that means in a second. But I'm going to give you four very concrete frameworks to how to think about your book that these frameworks will guide you along. And you'll find yourself writing 20 or 30 chapters in that first month. Plus, you're going to be using techniques I described in this course to not only write and edit the book, but then get a cover, get a designer, launch the book on Amazon, publish it as a paperback, hardback, audiobook, and Kindle, and all within 30 days.

2:53So the key is, though, is we're going to describe these four frameworks. And you'll see what I mean when we get there, where it will be very concrete what you do. Now, you might think, well, if everybody listening to this gets the same four frameworks, will we all write the same book? And the answer is no, because they're going to be very general in terms of how you structure the book and what you write about. But they're going to be very specific in terms of the step-by-step process you need to finish the book using each framework. I'll give you an example of a framework that I've used to write a book, which I'm not necessarily going to talk about in this.

3:29So this is a very super simple framework, and I've used it to write a book called Think Like a Billionaire. This was a book that I never published on Amazon, but it was a special deal I did with Scribd. And it's spelled S-C-R-I-B-D. There's sort of like a Netflix for books. You subscribe and you have access, free access to millions and millions of books, magazines, documents, and so on. So they wanted to launch this thing called Scribd Originals. And even now, I believe some very famous authors, like Stephen King-style authors, have written Scribd Originals, where the book just appears on Scribd.

4:01So I wrote Think Like a Billionaire. I think it was the first or second script original. And essentially what I did was I took every podcast that I had done with billionaires, billionaires like Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, Mark Cuban, and on and on. And I edited them really thoroughly. So it didn't seem like a transcript of a podcast. I took the transcripts and I edited them very thoroughly. And then I wrote an introduction for the book. And for every podcast interview, for every billionaire, I wrote an introduction and an outro for each chapter. And the result, which was written in less than 30 days, was this book, Think Like a Billionaire.

4:42It's over 400 pages. And it was a very successful book for Scribd. You know, thousands or tens of thousands of people read it. They never told me the exact number. And I've read it. I love reading it, actually. And it tells exactly how someone like Richard Branson or Ken Langone, the founder of Home Depot, or Mark Cuban, what their best habits were for achieving their first, second, and maybe hundredth billion dollars. And there was lots of interesting stories. And of course, I wrote intros and outros for each one. The audio book we made because we had the audio from the podcast, plus I did the audio for the intros and outros.

5:18Anyway, that's an example of a framework where if you have a podcast, you could take a category that you, let's say you interview 20 writers. You can pick a dozen of them, get the transcripts, edit them, write the intro and outro, read the whole thing for an audio book. And suddenly there's various ways you could publish it to have a paperback, hardback, audio book, Kindle, ebook, whatever. And that's a very simple framework, not one of the four frameworks I'm going to talk about in a little bit, but let's call this the podcast framework. And I use that to create Think Like a Billionaire in less than 30 days.

5:55And it was very popular. I gave talks about it and so on. So it is possible. And for every podcaster out there, you could write your own book using the podcast framework, but it'll be a different book than my book. So that's an example of a framework. That's an overly simple framework. I'll talk about it again later, but it's not one of the four frameworks that I recommend where I think you could perhaps make a book even much more interesting than Think Like a Billionaire. Hard to believe it would be more interesting than one of my classic books, but it's true. You'll be able to write many books using these four different frameworks.

6:29Now, why 30 days? It's because I want to get rid of the myth that, oh, it takes years and years of writing to write your first book, to join the community of writers. I think many writers are elitist. Like, oh, you're not a real writer until you have your first book published by a major publisher, or you're not a real writer until your book is a bestseller, read by millions of people. You're a real writer right now just by listening to this. First off, you're a real writer right now just by even listening to this because it shows commitment and dedication. This is something you're interested in doing.

7:08This is something you want to master. This is something you could be passionate about, whether it's writing or the subject that you're writing about. And so right now, start calling yourself a writer. And again, this is something I wish someone had told me in 1991 or 1992 when I first began to study the craft of writing. I did take two years to write my first book. It was a novel. It was horribly written. I never got it published. This is, again, 31 years ago. I sent it out to over 40 publishers and agents and so on. Got only form letter rejections. Looking back on it, it was awful. But I wish I had just wrote my first book in 30 days.

7:51And trust me, it won't be a bad book. It'll be a great book when you listen to the frameworks and when we talk about the craft of writing and so on. But there weren't like this back then. There were little ads in the back of Writer's Digest and I didn't trust any of those, like how to write better, but these were being given by people who had never written a book before. But I want you to feel good about being a writer. If someone says, oh, you're not a writer until you've written a book, you say, oh yeah, well, here's my book. And there's so many different topics. Your book could be about it and we'll talk about that later.

8:23But let's say you're writing a book on negotiating and you're trying to get a speaking gig for negotiating, you could say on your resume when you're pitching yourself to do this speaking gig, hey, I'm a writer, a published writer. Here's my book, How to Be the Best Negotiator in the World. And they could read it and I have something to show and you could feel good. I accomplished something. I wrote a book. I'm a writer. Nobody could ever take that away from me again. We'll talk about the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing. but no matter how you do it, nobody asks who was your publisher.

8:59Only writers ask that. But everybody else say, oh, you wrote a book. Oh, you must be an expert on negotiating. And by the way, by the time you write the book, you will be. I'll give you a quick example. I wrote a book called The Power of No. It was a Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2014. And I was very proud of the book. I am very proud of the book. but I was not an expert at saying no to people. I had to really think, am I qualified to write a book about how to say no to people, how to put boundaries up in my life and what are different techniques for saying no? In order to write that book, I had to really study and research the topic and not only the benefits of saying no and how to set up boundaries in life and why people don't say no as often as they should but also I had to come up with techniques and use them myself in my life in order to write that book.

9:52So when you're writing a book, you don't necessarily have to be an expert on the topic, but even if you're writing a book in 30 days, I'm going to show you how to very precisely and specifically research different topics. And again, I'm gonna give you these broad meta outlines you can use to write and execute on publishing that book within 30 days. Look, does it take you 31 days? Does it take you 40 days? I've seen somebody take three days. The fastest book I've ever published, actually, I started on a Friday. It was a novel and I self-published it by Monday. So it took me three days. But the fastest book I've ever seen using the process I'm gonna describe here was two days.

10:35Actually, it was more like three or four. A friend of mine wrote a cookbook using a concept I called idea sex, where he took two different cuisines, like let's say Mexican and Japanese, and he would make a recipe for a combination of the two cuisines. So for instance, the Sushi Rito, he would make the recipe and he used AI to help with the recipe and to help with the image creation of what a Sushi Rito would look like. And he published the AI cookbook and it took him about three or four days. He published it as hardcover and Kindle and maybe also ebook and some other formats. But in any case, it is possible.

11:16And I want you as quickly as possible to feel like you are a writer and to have something in your hand, physical object in your hand. And you can say, I wrote this because this is probably not going to be your first book. Once you learn the techniques of writing a book in 30 days, I'm going to show you how that can turn into various streams of income. And you might end up writing many books. I've known people now who've written hundreds of books. You don't have to write hundreds of books. Maybe you'll stick with the one and I'll show other ways to make income from that. But it's important for you to know, yes, you can write a book in 30 days.

11:50Yes, you're a writer. Yes, you can write a great book, even a bestseller in 30 days. And I've mentioned in another section, my friend Kamal Ravikant, his book, Love Yourself As If Your Life Depends On It. He wrote that, I believe, in fewer than 30 days, not using one of my techniques, but using his own techniques. and he has since sold millions of copies of that book. And I know many people like that. So in several of my books that I've written, I've written in a very quick amount of time. So I've learned through the years how to write quickly without sacrificing quality, which is very important.

12:26In any case, yes, it's possible to write in 30 days. Yes, it's possible to write a good book in 30 days. Yes, it's possible to publish in 30 days. And I want you to celebrate it. You know, it's almost like a tiny goal. Instead of writing something for three years and then finding out, oh, nobody will publish this or it's no good. It's important to get that first book done out the door, something you're proud of, and don't forget to celebrate it. This is a very important topic that I'll close with on this. Often we do not celebrate the good things in our life. Often something happens. Let's say you lose money on investment or you don't get a job you wanted or you get a book rejected by a publisher or your relationship ends and you feel really bad and you sulk and mourn for months, maybe even years.

13:16And I'm guilty of this as well in periods of my life. And we often think, oh, I just published a book. Now what? Now what's next? Oh, it wasn't a bestseller. Now I'm back to feeling disappointed. So very important. You have only so much positive energy in you at any one point. and think of that as a bank of personal energy. And whenever you're sad or upset about something or complaining about something, you withdraw from that bank of personal energy. And whenever you're happy and you celebrate something, you put more energy into that bank. Well, almost everyone I know, they do a lot of withdrawals.

13:55They're always upset about something or they're always looking towards the next goal or they're always impatient. So they do a lot of withdrawals from that personal bank, but they don't really add positive energy. So I want you to finish that book in 30 days and really be happy about it and celebrate it and be proud of it and really add to that bank of personal energy, which will catapult you into whatever career goals you decide you're going to use this book for or whatever other career goals you have. So anyway, this is a long answer to the question, is it really possible to do a book in 30 days and why should it be 30 days and so on?

14:31and let's move on to the next topic. A friend called me the other day and I've been helping him write his book. He's a very innovative philosophy about entrepreneurship and how to tell if something is a good idea or not. And he was asking me, I don't know if we should even write the book anymore, he and his co-author. Is AI our competitor? Will AI start writing better business books than we can write? Or is AI gonna be writing better mystery novels? or is AI going to be writing better self-help books or whatever? And the answer is quite simply no. First off, at today's level, I don't consider AI a good writer.

15:11Yes, AI can summarize a subject and do it in proper English, but it's not really writing. Now, it'll get better in terms of the craft of writing. Just like right now, an AI can compose a musical piece that's indistinguishable from a Mozart piece. Does that mean is it as good as Mozart? Maybe, I don't know. I'm not an expert at Mozart or music, but I can tell you the AI writing I've seen is B minus at best, mediocre. But more importantly, much more importantly, I don't care how good AI gets at the craft of writing. The one thing, writing and art and all that, it might turn out to be a commodity because of AI.

15:54Just like, yes, of course we could run fast but I'd rather drive a car, use a machine, than run from one city to another. So machines can replace some basic functions, even functions that we work hard at, but here's what AI will not replace for writers, period. Living an interesting life and having interesting experiences and having interesting stories that are unique to you, that will never replace AI. and in everything you write, even advice, everything you write is autobiography. Everything you write has your own stories in it. Again, even if you're giving just a tweet or even if you're giving advice, if I give someone advice, here's how you should exercise or here's how you should diet, not that I'm experts at these things.

16:46Here's how you should ask a girl out that you meet. I'm not just giving advice because I'm an expert and I might not be an expert in any of these things, but I'm giving advice based on personal stories, personal experiences, things that I've learned in my life. AI never has personal experiences. AI can learn from all the millions of personal experiences it reads, but the frontier of your personal experiences, it expands and widens every single day. And you're the only one qualified to write about them. So every time you sit down to write a book or a blog post or article or whatever, you're bringing to it your years and years and tens of thousands of days of experience.

17:31And that is valuable and cannot be commoditized. Don't ever forget that. That's why storytelling, and we're going to get to storytelling in a second. That's why storytelling and learning the craft of storytelling is really important because an AI will never beat you at your own stories.

17:51Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates at the end of the day. The most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

18:22And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash Altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So of course, the art of storytelling and the craft of writing go hand in hand. I just told you about the arc of the hero, which is the arc of every single story.

19:02And I gave you some examples ranging from tweets to romance novels, to nonfiction, to Star Wars and so on. Then, of course, once you know the arc of the hero, you have to be able to write your story or tell your story if you're talking to an audience. So the craft of writing is different than the understanding the art of storytelling, but it's just as important. So I'll give you an example where I kind of had to learn the hard way in a very direct way, what I was doing wrong when I was telling a story. This was like when I was 20, 21 years old. And during winter vacation, I had stayed at the university I was studying at because I wanted to spend my time applying to graduate school, which turned out to be a complete waste of time.

19:51But I spent this winter vacation filling out grad school applications. And I was there with my friend Sankit, who was also filling out graduate school applications. And Sankit was a very funny guy, very personable, very charismatic. Just like me, I wouldn't say a good looking guy at all. But at night, after we did a whole day of grad school applications, we'd go out to a bar and we'd have a drink. And Sanky had this amazing ability to talk to just about anybody. And often he would find a table of other 20, 20-year-old women and we'd go over and we'd start talking to them. And he was fearless. He was able to go and talk to anybody.

20:33And then sometimes I would talk in these conversations and I would tell a story about something. Everybody was telling stories about their experiences, just like people do. And one night after these women all said goodbye and they left and nobody seemed interested in us, Sankin turned to me and said, listen, James, let me give you some advice. And I said, okay, sure. Here it is 30 years later. I always remember this with every story I write. He said, whenever you tell a story, why don't you try leaving out every other sentence? Meaning, I talk twice as much as I should. And he was basically saying, edit my words a little more carefully.

21:13Leave out irrelevant information or information that doesn't add to the story or doesn't add to the experience of the character or the arc of the hero. And he said it in a jokingly way. Obviously, I'm not gonna take out every other sentence, but this idea of taking out, of editing lots of sentences, almost half of every story is very important and something I've used in my writing ever since. And we're gonna get to the specifics in just a little bit but this was a hard slap in the face that I needed to get better at telling a good story by again, in Sanket's words, leaving out every other sentence but in my words, basically cutting out all the irrelevant information, anything that didn't add to the story, which was usually about 50%.

22:04The most important line in your book is obviously the first line because that's the line where someone's going to read it and they're going to feel compelled to read the second line and then the third line and so on. Your first line sets the stage, not only for the story of the book, but it also ignites the curiosity of the reader. Curiosity is the biggest motivator for any reader. They're curious what happens next. It's why cliffhangers are so important in stories. But your first line is your first attempt at communicating to your reader. And by the way, who writes the best first lines? Who are the best writers in general, the ones to learn from.

22:46The best writers are fiction writers. And I'll tell you why. Let's say you're a fiction writer. You write a best-selling literary novel or collection of short stories or poetry, whatever it is. You spend 20 hours a day writing or thinking about writing. You really study the craft of writing. And the best authors of books on writing, for For instance, Stephen King's On Writing or Chuck Palahniuk's book Consider This or Kurt Vonnegut's book Pity the Reader. The best authors of books about the craft of writing are often fiction writers. Again, because that's what they do. They spend their whole day thinking about writing.

23:29Now, but you might say, well, what about someone who writes a great book about physics? Okay, that person is probably a pretty good writer, but what they really have spent their lives mastering is physics and writing came second for them. So I'm not saying ignore the quality. Nonfiction writers could be great writers. And when we talk about your first book, we're going to talk a lot about nonfiction writing and I want you to write a great book. But the writers I always read before I start writing, and that's a critical part of writing is to read some great writers beforehand to kind of get those writing juices flowing.

24:08Best writers are fiction writers, the greatest fiction writers. So now when I want to figure out what's an example of a good first line, I look at the greatest books over the past century and see what the first lines of those books are. So I'm going to read you a couple of them. So this first line is from a book called The Stranger by Albert Camus. And Camus won the Nobel Prize sometime in the 1950s, and he died an early death. But The Stranger, it's maybe his greatest novel. So here's the first line. Mother died today, or maybe yesterday. I can't be sure. That's the first line. So what do you see in that first line?

24:49It's three short sentences. First off, his mother died today. Second, he says, or was it yesterday? I can't be sure. So now we know a close member of his family died. The main character seems to be almost detached from it. He's not really sure whether it was today or yesterday, almost as if he doesn't care. And so there's like this apathy and the book is called The Stranger. It's almost like this man is a stranger to even the closest events and people around him. And that sets the tone for the entire book. So it's a beautiful first line. Like, I want to know, why does this person not know when his mom died and how does that affect the story?

25:30So that's one example. Ralph Ellison's book, The Invisible Man, is our next example. It's one of the greatest books written in the 1950s about civil rights and in particular, a guy living in New York City dealing with civil rights issues. So his first line is simply, I am an invisible man. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean he has superpowers? Is it a metaphor because people ignore him? How does he justify his existence if he feels at his core that he's invisible? So plus, it's really simple. I mean, the book's titled The Invisible Man, and he's just saying, I am an invisible man. And then we're going to launch into a story about how he tries to get visibility in a world that ignored him.