78 The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing (and Selling Thousands of Books Yourself) with Tucker Max

"The most important thing for marketing anything is having something that people want." - Tucker Max Learn from the best. Tucker Max describes what it takes to publish and market a best selling book. To learn more and get the details on publishing and marketing go to www.lewishowes.com/78 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 78 with number one New York Times bestselling author Tucker Max. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up everyone? Thanks so much for tuning in today on another episode of the School of Greatness. Got a good buddy of mine on today. I'm super pumped.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  I've been wanting to get Tucker Max on for a while. It's taken 78 episodes and you're in luck. We actually recorded two different episodes with him. In this first episode, it's all about how to become an amazing marketer with your book and how to sell a ton of books. Now, for those that don't know Tucker Max, he is one of only, I think, three people who's had three different books on the New York Times Bestseller List at the same time. That's pretty much almost impossible to do. And this guy is a machine at selling books, at marketing books, at writing them, and at having them go viral because there's such a great content in the books. So you guys are in for a special treat today.

• 1:27Lewis Howes?

  And I don't even know if Tucker's been actually been talking about this as much. So you may not be able to get this content anywhere else with him talking about it because I think he's just starting to do interviews. So you're in luck. This is all about the ultimate book marketing guide. And his newest book is called Create a Bestseller by Yourself. And it's all about what he has learned over the years and the information from Ryan Holiday and a couple of the people on his team where they've done dozens of campaigns of bestsellers, sold millions of copies of books. And all of their methods and details on how to become a bestseller, how to market and sell thousands and thousands of copies yourself is in this book.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  In this podcast, he's going to be really breaking down the key principles for building an awesome marketing campaign for your book. So you guys are in for a treat today with this episode and I'm very pumped to bring on Tucker here in just a second. Now, let's get into the juicy details of how to create a best seller by yourself with the one and only Mr. Tucker Max.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I'm with my good man Tucker Max. What's up Tucker?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  What's up Lewis?

• 2:48Lewis Howes?

  I am, I'm excited about this episode and actually I don't know if you've done many podcasts except for now you have one out, but I'm actually, I haven't seen you kind of do the rounds and I don't know if that's on purpose or if I'm just missing that.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Well, I think for, for a while, podcasts have only gotten big in the last two years or so. And my last book came out in 2012 and they kind of came out before podcasts really blew up.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  So I haven't really had a reason to go around and be like, oh, I'm promoting nothing. I'm just here, you know?

• 3:18Lewis Howes?

  I feel you. Well, now you do have something to promote. You've got, you've got your own podcast, which is called The Mating Grounds, right?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  And I just listened to an episode. It was really good. We'll get on that here towards the end, but you're really well known for a lot of things, but being a great writer and a hilarious writer and basically creating a new category on the New York Times list in, in essence, right?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  And you, you had three books. I think they're all three still on the New York Times list. Is that right?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  I don't know if they are right now, but I had, me and Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis are the only authors to ever have three books on the nonfiction list at the same time.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  At the same time. It's so ridiculous. You know, you're making bank when you got three books on the list for a long time. So congrats on all the success there. And basically you, now people come to you, authors come to you, major authors and ask for your advice and your consulting on book marketing because you've just repeated it over and over and over. And whenever you help someone, they pretty much repeat your success. So you, you and Ryan have put together a new book and it's over at bookstrapper.com slash marketing. And the book is, what's the book actually called? Creating a Best Seller?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  It's called The Bookstrapper Guide to Book Marketing, Creating a Best Seller by Yourself.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. And there's so many, you know, it's so challenging these days to get on the New York Times list. It's actually easy for some people and challenging for a lot of people. And once you understand kind of the tools and the strategies on how to get there, I think it's, you're going to give yourself a much greater opportunity. And there's a lot of people who are coming out with books more than ever. I don't even know the numbers. You probably, you probably have better stats than I do.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Hundreds of thousands of books a year. Seriously.

• 5:03Lewis Howes?

  A year.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  If you're, if you're including self-publishing too, you're looking at upwards, I think last year was like 400,000 books were published.

• 5:10Lewis Howes?

  400,000.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm serious. If you include self-publishing. And, and a big part of that too is like, so like there's companies that have these algorithms that will print out like sort of, they will scrape the internet and, and like do books based on, you know, like, like Linux stuff or something. They'll sell only 20 copies. But because it's essentially a computer programming, program writing them, that it's, you know, it's all upside. So real books published by real people, you're looking at about 100,000.

• 5:37Lewis Howes?

  100,000. Okay. 100,000 books a year, probably going to continue to increase by 20 or 30% a year. I'm assuming for a little bit.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  At least.

• 5:45Lewis Howes?

  At least, right?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  So, and there's only what, 20 on the New York Times Bestseller list every week?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, 25. I forget what their list is. It's, it might be 30. It's kind of depends, but right. There's different categories, but yeah, there's, you're looking at less than 100 or so that, that, that are getting on the list each week.

• 6:02Lewis Howes?

  In all the different categories. Got you. It's crazy. So the chances of actually getting there are less than, I guess that's less than one, like a quarter of a percent or something, less than that of making on the list. And you've done it a number of times. And plus, if you go to bookstrapper.com/marketing, you can see all the other people that have followed Tucker and his strategies. And he's got a number of books up here listed who've followed it, who've made the New York Times Bestseller list. So it's not by accident of what he's doing and what he's teaching for other authors to do. So what, um, what are some things that you can talk about in this book? Obviously the book has got pretty much everything. It's the definitive guide. So everyone make sure to go out there and check it out. And the people who are listening on the School of Greatness, there are a lot of experts and entrepreneurs.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  I highly recommend writing your own book if you want to become a bigger expert and get your brand out there as it's going to support that. So make sure to check out this book. But what are some things that authors need to know about just kind of getting started? Whether they're going to publish it themselves or get a major publisher, what do they need to know about marketing their book?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  So he- here's the thing, Louis. Marketing a book is not fundamentally different than marketing other things, at least in sort of in the in a meta-analysis. The most important thing for marketing anything is having something that people want, right? And so you wouldn't believe how many authors come to us and they're like, oh, I'm writing a book about how to, you know, crochet underwater, get me on the bestseller list. And I'm like, no, it's not possible. That's fucking stupid. No one cares. Right. You know, maybe there are a hundred people that care and that's great, write the book for them, right? So the first thing you have to do if you really want a book on a bestseller list is you have to think, are there a lot of people who care about what I'm writing about, right?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I'm talking about nonfiction. For fiction, it's a little bit different. Fiction, you have to, you have to, there's, you have to write a great book and there's a lot of different ways to do that and that's sort of its own discussion. Nonfiction, you don't have to write a great book. It doesn't have to be really articulately written in beautiful sentences and everything is like, you know, birds and flowers and trees, you know, every, everything you read like blows your mind. No, it just has to have really good information that people value a lot and they think that that will help them, right? And most people don't. Most people's books are very self-centered. They're, they're very much about themselves or what they want to talk about, or they're just, they don't explain things well, they don't teach things well.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Very few people actually think about what other people will think of their book. They only write for their own reasons, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's called a diary. There's no reason to sell that. You know what I'm saying? Right. Right. So like, I mean, think about like, you would never ask, if you're talking about a consumer product, like food or something, you never ask, oh, you know, do people even want to eat this? Like, that's assumed. Of course, you have to find something that people want to eat, that they've already demonstrated they want to eat. Then the question is, how do I then market it better? But a lot of people don't even ask that fundamental question for books. Does anyone else care? That's the first thing you need to ask, right? So what are you gonna, how do you get enough people care?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Well, it's a good question. So generally speaking, I think you can start looking on Amazon. So if there are, like, let's say, whatever, if you really wanna write a book about vertical gardening, right, you really like growing stuff indoors, go to Amazon and look and say, oh, wow, there's fifty books on vertical gardening. A lot of people like, oh, that means all the books are, you know, like, the space is taken up. No, actually, that means probably that a lot of them, the books suck. You know, maybe look at the top one or two and see, like, if they're really amazing, okay, maybe that, that, maybe vertical gardening isn't the way to go. But the point is, if there's fifty books there, that means there's a market. That means a lot of people read stuff on that, and that means writing

• 9:53Speaker 01

  another book in that category might be a good idea. Now, maybe you don't take the, uh, the direct sort of thing, maybe you, what you're doing is vertical gardening in apartments or something like that, right? All right, so that's a little bit more of a niche, you think there's less of an audience, but for the audience of people who are vertical gardening in their apartments, that book is gonna be the one they buy, not just the generic vertical gardening book, because that's the one they think is for them, right? So, basic market research, look at Amazon, look online, how many blogs are out there? How many people are writing about this subject? How many Twitter accounts? How many, uh, you know, Pinterest accounts? Are, do people care about this? If they do, then it's probably a good, uh, topic for, a general topic for a book.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  If they don't, that doesn't automatically mean it's not a good topic, but you need to ask yourself, why does, why is there nothing else out there about this? If it's some brand-new subject, like, you know, some new solar cell that was invented, the reason there's nothing out there is because it was just invented, right? But if it's quilting, well, you know, maybe not many people care, you know?

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  Right. Well, even if there is a lot of successful books out there already, you know, I'm just, I'm looking at your, uh, bookstrapper.com/marketing, and I see the first book on the left is, uh, your personal paleo code. There's probably, from my memory, five to ten different New York Times bestsellers that are paleo books.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  At least.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  At least, in the last year, and maybe there's twenty, thirty, I don't know. So it seems like there's a new paleo book that comes out every couple of months that hits number one. And, uh, so, there are some instances, from what I see, that you can basically repeat what someone else has done, and just put your own spin on it, and it'll still be successful.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  But that's exactly, you're exactly right. That's exactly what I said. Like that's it. Seeing a lot of competitors doesn't mean you should be scared away.

• 11:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  It means there's a lot of demand, right? I'll tell you, what I've found is that in most situations, even very crowded fields have huge, huge amounts of space. Because most people just blindly imitate someone else. But if you can bring, like you said, bring a new spin on it, like, look at Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle is a perfect example.

• 12:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and he crushes it.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Dude, he crushes it. Sells millions, tens of millions of books. All like, he does all this amazing stuff, right? That, that, have you ever read that fucking book? It is just.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  The Love Languages or which one?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It's just fucking Buddhism.

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  Which book? We're talking about The Power of Now or the, uh, which one of them?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Power of, Power of Now is just mindfulness. Like if you read Thich Nhat Hanh stuff. Or, uh, I mean, go down like, I, I actually read a lot of Buddhist, uh, sort of literature. Those guys are really smart. They've, they've been around for thousands of years. They've figured a lot of shit out. What Eckhart, Eckhart Tolle did, and I'm not criticizing him, it's fucking genius, actually. What he did was, he took a very complicated but informed subject, Buddhism.

• 12:41Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And he simplified it to its, the most basic, uh, elements. So that someone who watches a TV show like How I Met Your Mother can understand it, you know? Like, seriously, like if you want it, if you, if you, if your listeners don't know what to do, I, to make money or to have their business, I'll tell you right now. The next 20 years are gonna see an explosion of people explaining and simplifying and, uh, curating very complex subjects for the average person. So if you can take Buddhism and make it and turn it into something someone shops at Target can understand and use in their life, then you're Eckhart Tolle.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  For real. That's exactly what he, that motherfucker has not had one original thought in his life. Not one.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  He doesn't have to.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Exactly, dude. Because here's the thing. No one who shops at Target is ever gonna read, um, you know, like anything from Thich Nhat Hanh. They're not gonna read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They're not gonna read the Blue Cliff Notes. They're not gonna read those, right? And they're not gonna understand them if they do. If Eckhart Tolle is smart enough to take those subjects and make them, simplify them and distill them into very usable, understandable stuff. So that Walmart America can get it. That's an actual service. He's done something. He's created something new, right? And I'm not, believe me, I'm not criticizing him. Because he has helped absolutely unequivocally helped people and changed their lives.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  Millions of people have read his books, right?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, no doubt.

• 14:05Lewis Howes?

  And seen improvements in their lives.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly. Dude, I mean, one of our good friends, Tim Ferriss, a good friend of both yours and mine, Tim invented very little in Four Hour Work Week. What Tim did is take a bunch of ideas from a bunch of different places that people had roughly worked out and put them together into a cogent coherent thing called lifestyle design, right? Great. I mean, Tim actually did have real, uh, his own original ideas. Eckhart Tolle does not. I don't care what anyone says, that dude just ripped off the Tibetan Book of the Dead and all that other thing. But either one is fine, man. Either is fine. If you can take difficult, complex things and make normal people understand them and basically sell them. If you can market those ideas better, then you can make a shitload of money and you can actually help people.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  It gives people, uh, who might be intimidated to write their own book because they don't think they have an original idea. It gives them an opportunity to say, hey, listen, if you don't, it's okay. It might even be better for you not to have an original idea. Just to repackage something in a way that people understand it.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Dude, I mean, listen, Louis, I'll apply the exact same logic to the book Ryan and I just wrote.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  So like Ryan, Ryan worked for American Apparel for a lot of years and ran marketing there and I sold my own books and whatever. And most, I would say, I would say between Ryan and I, we've had,

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I don't know, 10 original book marketing ideas, maybe, probably, probably three, actually, if I'm being really honest.

• 15:28Lewis Howes?

  What are those? Can you talk about them?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  So I think we were the first ones to use, um,

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Planned Parenthood?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. So I was gonna say, we're the one of the first ones to use stunts, to negative stunts of book marketing. We were one of the first ones to use slide shares for books. We were the first ones to really, I think, take advantage of Reddit AMAs for authors. Um, you know, we might not have even invented any of those. That's why I'm saying if I were to go through and name all the things that we kind of brought to book marketing, I'm not even sure we invented them. I know we, we thought of them ourselves, but maybe someone else did it before us. I don't know. But the point is, what Ryan and I have done with our book is, is really take all our experience in marketing, all these different things all over. The internet and learn from tons of other people, direct marketers or advertising agencies or copywriters. Or we'll look at how do you sell car, whatever, all these ideas we've had and we put them all together.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And then that's what we sold to our clients. That's you know how we launched for our chef for Tim Ferriss. That's how we launched Matt Berry's book, Robert Greene's book, all these number one bestsellers. And all we did was combine a bunch of ideas and then put them together. First we provided a service, then we did the book. That's it. That's all we did. So like we're no more original than Tim Ferriss or Eckhart Tolle. We're just in a different field, right? There's so much information out there and so few people that can put it together in a cogent coherent. Sort of assemblage for normal people to understand that if you only do that, if you're only explain and simplify things. You can become rich and you'll deserve it.

• 16:57Lewis Howes?

  Right. Cause people need simple ideas. They need simple steps laid out on how to do things. How to make their life better, business, health, whatever it may be. And if there's no easy way to do it, or they can't understand how to do it. And what's already available to them, then when you solve someone's problem like that, you can get rich for sure.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I isn't, I mean, that's exactly dude, that's, that's how all business works is. Find a problem someone has, solve it, get them to pay you for it, right? Right, exactly. And so that's what how information especially works. What, what do people want, right? Figure out what do they want? I want. Remember, don't sell a process. You want to sell a result. You want to sell, I want to be, you know, sexier. I want to sell more books. I want.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Six pack abs.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Six pack, six pack abs. My God, Mike Geary, we could talk about it all day, right? Like, uh, like I want a result and then figure out, okay, how can I? Provide the informational structure so that people can get that result easily and quickly. If you can do that, you can make a ton of money and you make people's lives better. Yeah, dude.

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, so what should people be thinking about if they want to write a book? Should they be thinking about, I'm gonna take the publishing route and try to sell this thing?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Or self-publish it? What and why?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  So here's the thing, uh, the only reason to use a mainstream publisher anymore is credibility. Is if you really, actually, if you want to hit the New York Times Bestseller list. It's, you can do it self-publishing, it's just much harder.

• 18:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Right? Um, otherwise, not even credibility, it's just credibility with the mainstream media. Normal people don't give a shit anymore. Like, no, no one ever thinks, because most people buy their books digitally now. Like, eBooks have passed physical books in sales. Most people don't think who, they don't ever look at the publisher.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  What they look at is how professional is this book? They look at the social proof, right? So is the cover professional? Does it look like a good book, you know? Uh, because people judge, absolutely judge books by the covers. You can lament that all you want, but that's the truth, so you need to have a great cover. Uh, then you need to have really professional book description, right? Like, it needs to really succinctly explain what, what the book is, what, what you're gonna learn from it. And then kind of should teach you exactly how you're gonna learn it, but not fully. You want them, obviously, to have a reason to buy the book, right? Um, then you want, uh, some social proof, some blurbs, hopefully, from people who are in, uh, the field that you're trying to sort of talk to. So for instance, if I was gonna write, like Louis, if you were to write a book about greatness,

• 19:29Speaker 01

  you'd want to get blurbs from like, you know, Tim Ferriss is like lifestyle design type and people like that, right? You want to get those people because that's social proof. Then what you want to do is obviously make sure the content is really good. Although the content is, like, you want to start there, right? So I, I don't think you even start with publisher or, or traditional. You, yeah, your assumption should be, I'm going to self-publish the book, unless you know you absolute, your goal is to hit the New York Times Bestseller list, right?

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Because you kind of, you don't have to, but it makes it way easier. And you have to understand, a publisher is not gonna care about you unless you already have a big platform.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Now, first, to hold you there, why does it make it easier when you have a New York Times best public, or, or, a publisher, to make the New York Times list? Why is it easy?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Because, uh, having a publisher means that you'll be in bookstores. And the New York Times heavily waits, uh, for their list, they heavily wait books in bookstores. Bookstore sales. That's it, that's the only reason.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  How come you can't get in bookstores if you self-publish?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Uh, because bookstores, right now, the only bookstore that matters is Barnes and Barnes and Noble, and they won't talk to you.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why not?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  They, because, dude, it's, it's, it's hard to under, when I explain how the book publishing business works to people who are used to being in other businesses, they look at me like I'm retarded because they're like, they're like, this can't be how it works. I'm like, no, it really is. It's a bunch of people who, the book publishing business is essentially full of people who think it's their social responsibility to worry about culture and to not actually sell things, which is why it's going out of business, for real. Like, Amazon doesn't think like that. Amazon wants to sell shit, and they want to sell shit that makes customers happy.

• 21:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Barnes and Noble wants to be high status and highbrow, which is like, if you want to do that, go have a fucking cocktail party on the Upper East Side in your town home. Don't fucking sell books, right? But like, whatever, that's been, that's for, that's just the sort of historical way that book publishing has sort of developed. So they, they literally, I'm, I'm telling you, you cannot talk to them, they won't talk to you, they will not stock self-published books. Now, what you can do is you can be on Ingram, uh, so you can self-publish, certain self-publishing, uh, sort of companies like Lightning Source or others, uh, will put you in Ingram's database, which means that being in locations can order your books. So people can go in and order it. But guess what? We live in the fucking 21st

• 21:52Speaker 01

  century. No one fucking does that shit anymore. Either you buy the book on Amazon, or if you go to a bookstore because you want to buy it right away, you know?

• 22:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So, like, there's absolutely no reason to go with a mainstream publishing house unless that's what you care about. But here's the thing, I, we get so many people come to us like, oh, I want to go to a mainstream publisher. And I'm like, listen, dude, they're not going to give you a book deal. They're like, why not? I'm this and I'm that, and, and I know all these things, and my book's going to be the best, I just know it. And I'm like, listen, here, this is, you can talk to any editor in publishing. Publishers have finally realized that they don't know how to sell books and the only thing that sells books now are author platforms.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And so if you have a big email list or you have a huge, you know, uh, YouTube channel or whatever, if you have a permission asset where you already can talk to you or a big podcast like you do, Lewis, if you have a way to talk to people that are already listening, then you have a channel, then you are very likely to get a book deal. If you do not have a channel, it's almost impossible.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  So how are publishers still in business? Cause I feel like there's still a lot of publishers out there that are spending a lot of money still. From at least from what I hear in my, you know, channels.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:03Lewis Howes?

  How are they still affording that and making money if they're not selling?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  There's two ways. A backlist is one of the big ways they make money, right? So if you go to, if you go into a bookstore, there's a lot of books there and a lot of those sell, but they're, you know, like Mark Twain or something, you know, seriously, or Harry Potter. Or like the books that sell, sell so much.

• 23:26Lewis Howes?

  So many.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Right. That it kind of keeps everything else afloat. It's basic hit, it's basically a fat tail or a fat tail economics. That the few hits support all the, everyone else. And dude, publishers are in, there's a reason that the two biggest publishers disconsolidated, dude. Like, I mean, they have backlists that keep them afloat, but also like most publishers on a year over year basis lose money with acquisitions. Uh, and a lot of reasons why that they keep acquiring stuff is to be, I'm telling you, to be relevant in their industry.

• 23:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Because like, like if I'm.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  They want to have the next big book. They want to like say, I've got this guy or this book, right?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  What they want, they want the next big book that Barnes and Noble wants to stock, right? Because it's so, all right, here's a great example. Uh, you, you, you readers can watch this happen. Lena Dunham is about to come out with a book. You know, the girl who does girls.

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  She's amazing. Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Right. Well, that's one word for it. Do you, do you know?

• 24:22Lewis Howes?

  It's a great, she's great at what she does, I think.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Well, okay, do you know how many people watch, well, I mean, let's look at the numbers. Do you know how many people watch your show on HBO?

• 24:29Lewis Howes?

  No clue.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  So I, I think, I'm pretty sure, the highest rated episode of Girls ever had a little bit over a million viewers.

• 24:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Do you know what the high, not the highest, the average, the average midnight rerun of Big Bang Theory on TNT? Do you know how many viewers that has?

• 24:47Lewis Howes?

  A million.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  About four million.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Right. No one watches Girls.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  No, no, Girls is very popular with certain people in media.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It's seen as very high status, et cetera, right? So Lena Dunham got a three million dollar advance. I think actually a little bit more, right? Her book's gonna come out in September. It won't, it won't even sell fifty thousand copies.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  To, to, to, for, so just for numbers wise, to, to make back a three million dollar advance, she's gotta sell a million hard copies.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  A million! There's no way.

• 25:19Lewis Howes?

  There's no way, huh?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  No, she's gonna sell less than fifty thousand. Because her book will sell in New York, San Francisco, and LA, and nowhere else.

• 25:27Lewis Howes?

  London, maybe, or something.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Right, it'll sell nowhere else. Because no one in America gives a shit about her except the certain type of person who's very media savvy and media elite. Which is fine, that's a knock on Lena Dunham, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But look at, publishing houses didn't give her an advance based on any reasonable metric. But they, they gave her a big advance because it makes them look good to other media companies.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Right? It, I, I, I know it sounds crazy and you think it's, there's no way this is the case. It took me years to understand this because it's such kooky nonsense, dude. But it's, that's the way publishing works.

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  So they're willing to spend money on someone just to have them even though they know for a fact they're not gonna make their money back?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  They.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  On that book?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  They probably convinced themselves they could make their money back.

• 26:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Here's one of the other reasons why, though. So because, I forget who signed Lena Dunham, Penguin, whatever. Because Penguin signed her, they're gonna be able to make Barnes and Noble buy a bunch of other books and a bunch of other copies, and they're gonna get really good sort of, uh, shelf picks.

• 26:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Right, so that's. It's not just status, it's also how they can trade that status through the media chain, right? And then what happens is that that Lena Dunham book will get a bunch of coverage. It just, it won't sell at all, okay? But all that coverage is gonna justify um the purchase. And so the editors will keep their jobs because like, oh, we did everything we could, right?

• 26:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And like, you have to understand, anyone in a corporation understands this. You don't make decisions based on what makes sense or what's smart or what's rational, you make sense.

• 27:04Lewis Howes?

  Emotional decisions.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  No, you make emotional decisions based on what's gonna keep, what's gonna make your boss happy and what keeps you your job.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  That's the way publishing works, dude.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  So is Barnes and Noble gonna go out of business anytime soon?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, uh, they'll probably be bought. They're struggling, they're ba- basically keeping their head afloat.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I mean, Borders just went out of business, you know, like a couple of years ago. And it would not shock me if, if Amazon loses and it looks like they're gonna lose the sales tax battle in all the various states, so eventually online will be taxed the same as local. I would not shock me to see Amazon buy BNN. Because the only reason they didn't buy books, uh, bookstores is because they didn't want, not the only reason, one of the reasons. They didn't want to have to deal with the sales tax thing, right? Uh, but now I think they're gonna lose that battle, so they, they may end up doing that. Although I could see Amazon buying, not skipping over BNN and buying a huge big box retailer and then kinda competing that way. Uh, I don't know, there's, there's a lot of things where Amazon maybe is gonna, they're just gonna win the sort of same

• 28:10Speaker 01

  hour, same day delivery sort of thing.

• 28:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  I don't know what's gonna happen to BNN. Books aren't going anywhere.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  More people are buying more books and reading them than ever before. I don't think old school publishing is gonna be around much longer, but books are definitely not going anywhere.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Why are people buying and reading more?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Because it's cheaper and easier and books are better than ever. Well, I mean, if you think about it, books used to be only the only books that were published prior to nineteen ninety six or so, the only books that were published were books essentially that convinced, if you could convince the New York literate elite, literati elite, that your book should be published, they would publish it. But that was the whole business. Every publishing company just about was New York media elite. Now, anyone can publish anything. Dude, Fifty Shades of Grey did not get published mainstream. It got picked up by Random House after she'd sold five million copies. And Random House absolutely leveraged their machine and turned it from five to fifty million,

• 29:10Speaker 01

  no doubt, but it would, they would, she would have sold twenty million copies anyway.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  You know, they, they maybe helped, helped double her sales or something like that. But, um, no dude, like, like tho- those sorts of books would never have been published, uh, ever, prior to the internet. Uh, what the internet does is it takes the gatekeepers away. So now, you don't have essentially twenty or a hundred editors in New York deciding what gets published for the entire country. Now, anyone can publish anything and the good stuff floats to the top, generally speaking.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  You know, Hugh Howey is another example. That dude doesn't exist twenty years ago. Neither do I, dude. I, I, I sent all my stuff out to publishers, every single one rejected me, every single one, without exception. I put up my stuff on the internet, blew up, and this is two thousand and one, uh, then got a book deal that way.

• 29:57Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  You know?

• 29:59Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I know.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  Did you think you were gonna finally get your books out there? Or was it because of the internet and putting it out there, you're like, okay, now I see that I could get published?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Uh, dude, I, I, I didn't really think about it. I was just some, some, you know, uh, twenty-five-year-old bum living in Chicago. I had no fucking idea. I was just trying to get laid, I don't know. Like, I was a nonsense, I was full of shit. I don't know, I didn't think, like, most of what's happened good to me, I've either lucked into, or I made a couple of smart decisions. Uh, uh, I, like, very little of it has been planned out long-term. I, I'm thinking the next ten, twenty years, I have a little bit of stuff slightly planned out, but the first ten years of success was just luck and pure effort and some things happened to work.

• 30:44Lewis Howes?

  You had some talent too. I mean, you created, you know, content that people loved.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  I mostly worked hard. I mean, like, dude, most people, I'm telling you, the va- you know this, Louis, you know as well as I do, talent's nice and talent helps, but there's a lot of talent.

• 30:56Lewis Howes?

  Develop skill.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  A lot of talented people who don't do shit.

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  They don't hustle and they don't work on their skill.

• 31:01Lewis Howes?

  You did hustle hardcore and that's, that's why you're successful.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  But let's, let's real quick get back to your original, cause we all track. So your original question is someone could get published, what should they do, right?

• 31:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I actually, I used to think that you, I've changed my mind on this pretty recently. I think some of your listeners will be interested in this, cause I think publishing is gonna change again. It used to be if you wanted to write a book, you had to sit down at a computer and spend hours and hours and learn how to write and all this awful shit. And I think there are a lot of great books that could exist that don't, because that's what people think book writing is. I actually think you don't need to do that anymore. I think the better thing to do is first start with your idea. What do I have to say that other people care about, right? Just basic sort of, any sort of product growth hacking sort of breakdown. What do I have that, that can, that other people will value? Then I think what you do is you, all the tools and technology exist to write a book without having to write it.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  If you have a great idea, outline your idea, really think what is it I'm trying to say? Okay, like, let's say you're a plumber and you can teach, uh, uh, people who aren't plumbers how to, how to, either how to do basic plumbing things themselves and then how to ask the right questions so your plumber doesn't screw you, right? That's a really basic book.

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Right? So that's a gr- simple idea, I could totally see that book selling. So instead of writing that, I think what you do is you outline that idea, you come up with a bunch of interview questions, get someone to interview you or you do it yourself. I think you talk through each thing.

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Then you get it transcribed, send it to a good editor, someone who can take a spoken interview and transcribe it into written words, cause they're not the same medium. You don't just get a straight transcription, you have to get someone to interpret it essentially from verbal to, to, uh, reading. And then, uh, I think you put it, then do it really professional design, really great cover, really great sort of, uh... Uh, you know, like a description, et cetera, and a good website, and then I think you put it out that way. You know, and, and not everyone should do that. If you can write, you can write. But someone like you, Louis, like, you're a perfect example, because you, you're like, very, uh, very dyslexic, right?

• 33:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Not a great writer.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  No, but you're a really smart dude, and you have a lot of smart things to say. But if you have to sit down and write something, like, you're gonna fucking put a bullet in your brain.

• 33:16Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Uh, well, why not just think of, okay, what am I trying to say? What am I, what are my ten things I can teach people? Does it all, how does it fit together? What's the sort of lesson here, right? And so you figure all that out, write, put it all down in outline, and then talk it out. Then take that, maybe even, even arrange the audio file so it all fits, then transcribe it, then get someone to edit it, right? Like, dude, I, I actually started, I started, I've started doing this for book clients. We've had a ton of people come to us, to my publishing company, and they want us to ghostwrite the book. And that's really expensive, right? That's fifty, seventy grand. So instead of ghostwriting, I'll, we'll, I'll have one of my assistants run them through this process, and we'll have a book done in about a month to two months, and it'll be amazing, and they'll be super excited about it.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  It's only fifteen to maybe forty thousand words, so it's not super long, right? Doesn't work with novels. This is generally non-fiction.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  Non-fiction, yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Non-fiction people have skills or attributes.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  Information, yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Right, they're trying to sell, or they're trying to sort of establish authority or credibility, and they love it. And we can charge them something like anywhere from six to ten grand, so like, like, fi- uh, s- ten times almost less. Somewhere between five to ten times less than ghostwriting, and they get an amazing product. Then, you know, we help them do professional cover, all that sort of stuff, and they're totally thrilled, and it works amazingly. So I think for most people who are writing books, that's the better way to do it.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  And what, uh, just so, you know, for people listening who are interested in doing it that way, do you guys open that up to the public, or is that just kind of case by case? Could people go somewhere and, and sign up for that service with you?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Right, it it's funny. I I didn't even come here to talk about this. We just literally launched. I swear to God, I like you could you could tell your listeners. I didn't even, when you were asking me, what do I want to talk about?

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  I know. But when you said this, I was like, oh, this is great. People might want this.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  It's called, we call it Book in a Box. So just go book, like book in, like I N A box dot C O, book in a box dot C O. And basically, what is this? The website just went up, I think yesterday, the day before, and it explains the whole process. And and and what it does. Dude, Lewis, I'll do this for you if you want, man.

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  I might be down.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I I won't do this for your listeners at cost. For you, I'll do it at cost, if you want, like as an example. If you want to try it out, see what it's like. And then then if you want, like, we can put together a special package for your listeners, maybe like with a discount. And they could like, do something like that.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm down.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Because we actually talked about this when you were at my place for South by.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  And I'm I'm in the final stages of my my proposal. And so, you know, I'm gonna be writing it soon. I've got almost the whole proposal done, but I'm gonna have to write it soon. So this might be some something to talk about. So after this, let's talk more about that.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  But cool, yeah, book in a box dot C O. So people can go here and they can fill out a form or.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  It's just what what it'll do is just say you're interested. There's a little thing at the bottom. It's a free consultation, right? And I have Zach, who he's my guy. He's really fucking smart and he helps talk people through. Because not everyone should be doing a book. Some people, really, it would make a lot more sense to do other things. So we kind of figure out, all right, does this make, what are your goals and objectives? Does a book make sense? You know, like, how much time do you have? It doesn't really take much time. Well, the way we do it, it takes people maybe about ten to twenty total hours. We we do most of the work.

• 36:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure, that's great.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  That's why, you know.

• 36:36Lewis Howes?

  And if you get, for those that are listening, if you can get a book finished for, it sounds like fifteen to twenty grand all in, maybe even more. With with a service like this, that is like the biggest steal I've ever even heard of.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  It's actually less. We generally charge between, I think it's between six and ten. And that's professional, that goes, that's. Idea to fully publish professional book like with a cover.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  Cover editing, everything.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Editing everything.

• 37:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, that's like a steal.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible and you'll get it done in probably like a few months, which as opposed to trying to do yourself would take you two years.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Depending on how responsive you are, it's about.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's incredible. Well, uh, yeah, make sure if you guys are interested in that, I'll link it up on the show notes as well, but I'm at a book in a box.co right now at the bottom. I see a little, uh, form, fill out the form if you're interested. It's like four little things to fill out and then just put that you're a listener of School of Greatness. And I'm sure Tucker will hook you up with some type of discount or, uh.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll give you a kickback, Louis. Next time, when, next time when you come stay at my place, I'll give you a bed instead of a sofa. How about that?

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've stayed at Tucker's, uh, place in Austin a few different times. He's always very, uh, welcoming and gracious and I stayed on the couch the last time. So it reminded me of my days when I was, uh, sleeping on my sister's couch. So thank you for that.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  My pleasure, dude. You're, you're a great guest. You, you sent a, you sent one of the on it, um, one of the kettlebells. Kettlebells. Yeah, I actually had dinner with Aubrey the other day. He's a pretty cool dude.

• 38:04Lewis Howes?

  Nice. I've been trying to get you guys to meet for like six months now, so I'm glad that happened.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  He's a good dude.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  He is. He's a good dude.

• 38:10Lewis Howes?

  Are you using the kettlebell? Or you like to have dollars?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, dude, of course. I mean, kettlebell is like, it's one of the best ways to stay in shape. It's amazing.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, very cool. Well, to get back to the book, um, stuff, let's, let's go into some, you know, you could have all this information and you could have a great book and you could write this, you could do everything, you could be out there, but it really doesn't mean shit unless you execute it the right way. And that's something that you and Ryan have done really well with your own books and with clients is the execution process.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  Now, how does really someone set up the execution process and the marketing behind the book? What should someone be thinking about? Should we be thinking like hiring a team and really three months prior, starting to set things in, in motion? Is it, you know, obviously there's a lot of, from what I see, a lot of guests posting on single author blogs and in media and things like that and getting that content ready. So what should someone be doing before the book launches? Like how far in advance and kind of just some basic ideas there?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  So, so the, the basic, uh, like sort of tactics for, for book marketing are generally speaking, it's, it's not fundamentally different from normal content marketing, right? Uh, so what you want to do is, um, You wanna think, okay, just like when you, when you're trying to come up with the idea for a book, what do I know that people care about, right? So then just take it one step further. What's already in my book that some, that people care about? And then the, the quickest, easiest way to get attention is to divide up your book into sections or to write, either write new, new material poaching from your book, or just divide your book up into sections about things, right? So for instance, if you're like, go back to the plumbing book, right? Cause that's one of those things that's so obvious and, and, and like, you think, who wants to read a plumbing book?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  But then, now think about it like this, uh, the five ways to know that your plumber isn't screwing you or something. Or the five questions to ask your plumber to make sure he's not screwing you. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people who would love that information, right? So you take that blog, you put it, put the, those five things into a, you know, a thousand word blog post and put it on whatever sort of platform or content sort of place where people go when they, they're asked, thinking about plumbing or home improvement stuff. Like I, I can't think of those things off the top of my head because I live in an apartment. So I have no fucking idea. Right. But like, if you care about that stuff, then you put, or then you're gonna go, you're gonna either Google that and that's gonna be what comes up. And you're gonna look at that and say, oh, great material.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Oh man, I really wanna like, you know, I, my plumbing breaks all the time. This guy wrote a book on, you know, what, what you need to know about plumbing without having to be a plumber or something. That's a great book. I'm gonna go buy it, right? So, so that, that piece of content becomes, uh, an evergreen lead gen for your book, right? Forever now, whenever people Google, uh, how do I know if my plumber's screwing me, whatever? Your thing comes up, people read it, it's great content, they're super excited. And if they want to know more, which will be a certain percentage of the readers, they're gonna go buy the book. Okay, that, that's pretty basic content marketing. The other thing, things you can do, and you, you don't have to, those don't even have to be on special blogs. You can get a HuffPost account and put that on, you can put that on Medium. You can even just put that on your own blog, you know?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I mean, you're not gonna get as much SEO, but you can, uh, you can, and you can put it on all those places, actually. The next thing you really wanna do is you wanna go to people who are, uh, curators or respected voices. In your niche and you want them to sort of you want to partner with them and do things with them. So for example, like um like when you launched your podcast, you probably went on a bunch of other sort of self-improvement type podcasts, right? Exactly, right, because all the people who are going to care about your content are already listening to these other podcasts. Exactly. And so if you go on there and you blow all those people away with, man, that Lewis Howes, I didn't know who he was, but he's done all this cool shit and he had so much good advice. I'm gonna go listen to his podcast. Right.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  And then you become one of the curators, right? And then now you already have your audience and you can kind of sell whatever you want through to them uh because they trust you, because they get good information. So i- if you're just an author with a one-off book, you need to find the trust agents in media that are speaking to your audience and partner with them. That's the basic easiest thing. Now, the other thing we teach is how to deal with media. Because most people don't can't afford a PR like sort of agent. So we have like a lot of templates in the book, like how like exactly how to send an email to someone who works at Business Insider, New York Times. That's helpful. Uh very helpful, actually, like exactly what how to structure it, what to ask for, how to interact with them.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  We tell them like how to find email addresses, how to figure out who to go after. Um like and then basically the big the big takeaway is do all the work possible for the press person and they'll they'll be super likely to run it. So well, first the first thing is make sure it's an angle they care about. Like everyone thinks their book is interesting, but it's not, okay? It's just not really like even even stuff that sells really well, like you know, uh is gonna be only interesting to a certain number of people. So don't go after people like i- i- if you're good, if someone writes about food for the New York Times, don't fucking spam them about your self-improvement book. That's stupid. It doesn't make sense unless it centers around food and there's some angle that involves food, right?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  So find the people that will care and then uh Present your material in a way that benefits them, not you. Of course, everyone knows you want to market your book. They don't care. What they care about is how your book can help them. So if I'm a reporter at Business Insider, let's say, I have to put up three or whatever, five pieces a day. If you send me, Lewis Howes, like, let's say you have a book out. If you send me something, oh, the Lewis Howes book, and you talk about yourself, I'm like, oh, I don't give a shit. Get this email out of my inbox, right? But if you send me an email that's like, hey, Tucker, I read your piece on where you did, you know, the five life tips that Richard Branson, you know, can teach entrepreneurs. I really liked it.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  It was a part of the inspiration for my book. Here's an excerpt from my book. I thought you might want to run this on Business Insider. It might be interesting. Also, here's a slideshow that can go with it, right? And if it's like, you know, the, whatever, the 12 things being a pro football player can teach you about starting a business or something, you know, I'm just like-

• 44:29Lewis Howes?

  That's good, I like that.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Right, trying to spit all, like, sort of ideas from your life, right?

• 44:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Like, that actually might be interesting. It might be really cool. I can actually think of three or four lessons that would be awesome, right?

• 44:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  And so, like, if I look at them, like, oh, this is awesome. And I might change it a little bit, whatever. And then it's like, oh, I'm putting it up, and I put it up under my name. And if it's a really good slideshow, I get 100, 200,000 views. I get a little bit of a bonus. My boss thinks I'm awesome. You did all the work, right? I didn't have to do anything. You basically sent me a story-

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  Copy and paste it, maybe add an intro, and that's it.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, exactly. So the more work you do for me, the more you frame it, the more you make it something that I think my audience will like and enjoy, that will make me look good as a reporter, the more likely the reporter is to cover it.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, very cool. And you got all this information in the book. So people can, people can basically just copy and paste and tweak and-

• 45:23Speaker 01

  So our goal with this book is that if someone has a lot of time, but not much money, they can read everything in the book, they can copy everything we do. Like, we have a lot of instructions, a lot of it's complicated and takes time to learn, but we walk you through all of it.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I think most people, if you're doing a book, sort of as- Allegion for your business, you have more money than time. So most of them would want to hire sort of me to do this or whatever, that's fine. But a lot of people have a lot of time and not much money. So what we tried to do is show the people with a lot of time how they can do all this stuff themselves. Right. You know? Give yourself the upper hand. Exactly. So you can go either way, or with some of these things, you can maybe hire us for one small thing. And then do all the rest, but the idea is, here's why we wrote this, this, this book, Lewis, to be honest, is we saw all these fucking clowns. Uh, writing these book marketing books who've never marketed a book and didn't know shit. Whoever been a best seller.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. They've never written or marketed a best seller in their lives and they're selling themselves as book marketing experts. And it really fucking pissed me off, man, especially because like one of my friends like bought one of their books and they tried all this stuff and it all failed. I'm like, why didn't you come to me? And they're like, well, you're always so fucking busy and like, you know, you never have time. And I'm like, well, I am busy. He's like, well, I can't afford this shit. I'm like, well, just fucking ask me, dude. He's like, like, uh, well asshole. Why don't you write this shit down first and then I don't have to fucking ask you anymore. I can just read it. And I was like, oh yeah, you're right.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  And so, so I wrote every, like, that, that was sort of the impetus. And actually, we wrote this. So the book in the box idea I got from the way Ryan and I wrote this book, because Ryan didn't want to write this book. He's too busy running marketing campaigns, right? He's doing it all. Uh, exactly. So I basically made him sit down with me like three different times for an hour. And I just asked him a bunch of questions about marketing and then I already knew a bunch as well. Did you record it? Oh yeah, I recorded it, transcribed it, put it in outline form. You did the book in the box format? Almost exactly. He, Ryan did go over this a couple of times and edited himself because he didn't want his name on something that wasn't really in his voice. Right. You know, so he made sure it was very much in his voice as well as mine. Uh, but we used, we, I, I kind of, um.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  I figured out and sort of tested the format of for book in a box on the book marketing book.

• 47:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Hmm. Very cool. And so this just launched a book in a box and have you tested with other books as well?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we have a couple of books that that we we generally speaking like we don't talk about who we do with this.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  People they don't want everyone to know that like they because there's idea like, oh, you didn't sit down and type your book out. You didn't write it, but these are here's the thing. That's why we can charge six to 10,000 for this is because these aren't our ideas. These are their ideas.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Just so people know about this, if you hire a ghostwriter to write a book proposal, you're spending, you know, 10, 20 grand minimum. If they're a great, you know, if you're a great writer, if you're hiring a ghostwriter to do a book, like you said, it's like 50, 70 grand in that ballpark. Right?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  So, I mean, if you can get the whole thing done with editing and the graphics and the cover and everything for like less than 15, I feel like that's just unbelievable. It's such a great deal. And if you can get it done by Tucker Max's team, who knows how to do it and set your book up for success and selling it, then it's even like next level. So, I mean, that's incredible.

• 48:51Lewis Howes?

  Man, what else can we talk about here? There's just so much. Okay, give me here's what I want to know. Let's say someone doesn't have a lot of time and they don't have a lot of money, right? Which is probably a lot of people. They've got three main things to focus on when their book comes out. They've written the book, it's about to come out, they're doing it themselves, or they got a publisher, whatever it may be. They got three main things that'll give them 80% of the results that they can get. What are those two, three main things?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  So the biggest ROI that we found, and you can go look, I think I wrote a guest post about this on Tim Ferriss's blog. And I know Tim has written some about this on book on book marketing as well. The biggest ROI are going to be niche blogs that are specifically directly in your audience's niche. Right? So, so for instance, Lewis, if you did a book based on your podcast, it was like a really good self improvement book. The first person you should go to is Tim Ferriss.

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Because that's his audience, right? And if Tim likes your book and you do a A guest post, you're gonna sell anywhere from three to 10,000 copies off of his, just off of his.

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  One guest post, you think?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Oh, easily, easily dude. I think Ri- Ryan, so for Obstacle is the Way, Ryan did the, his audiobook with Tim instead of with his publisher. And I, I honestly don't know the numbers, but I do know that Ri- Ryan marketed the fuck out of Obstacles Away.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  He did. He was everywhere.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Dude, he was everywhere and it didn't really even sell that much because it's a book about Stoic philosophy. It's really hard to market. I mean, Ryan did an amazing job.

• 50:21Lewis Howes?

  Great job.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  But that's like really hard to market, you know? And I'm pretty sure that, uh, I know the biggest impact was when Tim, uh, released the audiobook. And I think it sold, it sold a couple thousand copies of the physical book.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not sure what the audiobook did. I really don't know. Uh, and probably Tim would be mad if I told you the numbers if I did know.

• 50:41Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I do know the audio, the physical book went from something like 700 on Amazon to top 100. It went to like number 50 or something.

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  Like in the next couple of days after.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yes, and it stayed there, stayed in the hundreds for a few days.

• 50:54Lewis Howes?

  That's nuts.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Because, because here's the thing, who talks about Stoic philosophy online? Nobody! But Tim Ferriss actually does.

• 51:03Lewis Howes?

  You're right.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  About it a lot, right? So there's no better place for, for Ryan to put that book. You know what I'm saying?

• 51:09Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  So there's no bigger ROI than finding the specific audience. It doesn't mean, doesn't have to be the biggest name. It needs to be the specific audience.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Then the second biggest thing I would do is figure out what are the one or two big ideas in your book? And if you tell me there's eight big ideas, you're full of shit. You don't know your book. There are no books that, there might be a few books that have eight big ideas. Like, you know, Isaac Newton's Principia and shit have eight big ideas, okay? Like, you're lucky if your book has one big idea. So if it has one big idea, figure out what that idea is. And then figure out a way, multiple ways, to write great pieces that talk about that idea, right? And then put those up other places. So, uh, Huffington Post, Reddit, Medium, like, like I was saying, like the 12 things.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Being a professional football player can do 12 things pro football can teach you about how to run a startup or something. Like, that's kind of a cool piece, right? Then you wanna go to places like BuzzFeed and all these places and and try and get that on there. Because that that that's how you're gonna get the broadest sort of expanse, right? So one, one, you start with niche, two, you start broad. And then I know that this is gonna be not what people wanna hear. But I'm telling you, the most important thing you can do to to to uh market a good book is to have shit to market. So you need to think ahead of time. Before you even write the book, think, how am I gonna market this? Who's gonna care? Who is the audience? Why are they gonna care about this book? How am I gonna reach them?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  You know, where do I find them? If you don't know the answers to that before you do your book.

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

  Don't write the book.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Seriously, because I've seen a lot of people that that they'll come to us with books. And I'll look at them and I'm like, I wish you would come to us before you started because there's a great idea buried in this book. But it it need the book needs to have a different title and a different cover. You have to understand that all these are marketing decisions. Your title is a super important marketing decision. Uh, the book cover, people judge books by the cover. The cover's a super important marketing decision. All how you structure the book, uh, what the book is about. Is it three short books or one huge book? All these things are major marketing decisions. And if you don't realize that ahead of time, if you cannot lay out your marketing plan, even if it's even if you're poor and you can't spend any money, you can still market a book, right?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  What where what who cares about your book? Where is that audience? How are you gonna reach them? Why are they gonna care?

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  If you don't can't answer those questions.

• 53:46Lewis Howes?

  Unless unless you don't care about making sales and getting the book out there, you just wanna say you have a book and be known as an author, then I guess.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, then then don't waste any time marketing the book.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  No, like, I I there are a lot of people who, you're exactly right, uh, Lewis. They wanna they wanna write a book because they wanna be able to put it on their speaker page and they can double their speaking fee. Totally fine. If that's your goal, just do a super professional book and don't spend one dime marketing. Cause it doesn't matter.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Right, it doesn't. Well, I mean, I wanna I actually wanna transition into uh your personal life for a second. And and why you transition out of uh.

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  Writing the books that you were writing about and to kind of doing what you're doing now, which is more writing about book marketing and doing the dating stuff and also, you know, just kind of changing things around in your life. You know, when I saw you last, you have a, I don't know if you're even, you know, public about this, but you're, you've got a-

• 54:41Speaker 01

  No, no, the one thing I know you're gonna talk, I'm public about the fact I have a girlfriend. The thing I know you're about to talk about-

• 54:46Lewis Howes?

  Cause you're not public about it. Okay, okay. Well, you're, you're, you're kind of like taking it easy, I'll say. You're kind of like putting your roots- You're putting your roots down. And why is that? And is that making, you know, is having a girlfriend and kind of like transitioning into other things? Is there a reason for that? And, um, you know, what, kind of what's next for you with all this?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Honestly, man, it just became one of those things where it was like, there wasn't one day I woke up and I'm like, oh, I wanna like, put my roots down and have a girlfriend and get married and have a family. It's just like, like-

• 55:33Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Tucker and all of his juicy details on how to create, market and sell a bestseller, uh, and really how to be a successful author by yourself. Again, writing a book is challenging enough. Marketing it is even harder, but there are some key things you can do to really optimize your experience with this to get the maximum amount of copies sold. So again, make sure to go back to the show notes over at lewishouse.com/78 and get all the details. You're gonna get a link to the book you can go buy. Um, and also, if you're looking to, you know, have additional services, we'll have a link for that on

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  there as well as how you can really get signed up and have your own book done and supported with you with, uh, with Tucker's new service. Very cool. I've already sent a couple of people there who are starting to use it and they're loving it already. So again, check out the show notes over at lewishouse.com/78. If you enjoyed this episode- So please share it with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook and Google plus and post a picture on Instagram of where you are listening to this episode. Make sure to tag Tucker. I believe he's at Tucker Max, but we'll have all of his links over at LewisHowes.com/78. And please subscribe to the School of Greatness over on iTunes. The best way to share and promote this podcast is to be a subscriber, to download the episodes,

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  because that's going to help the rankings in iTunes and get the word out there. I appreciate you guys so much for coming on. I hope this was a valuable episode and you learned a lot from this episode. We're going to have Tucker back on here probably in a couple of weeks with another very intimate episode on his life, his relationships, his kind of change in his life over the last couple of years, how it's evolved from what he used to be writing about to what he's doing now, and just how the changes have affected his business, his personal life, a lot of different things and some juicy stuff in this interview. You're going to want to make sure to subscribe so you can get access to that when it comes out. Very pumped to have him back on and share that episode with you. I think you guys are going to love it.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  So again, make sure to give Tucker a shout out. Go buy the book right now for anyone looking to sell a book, write a book, you're going to want to get this book. It's, there's nothing else out there that's better. So check it out and it's all back over at LewisHowes.com/78. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.