Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How One Book About Naval Ravikant Built a Publishing Empire | Eric Jorgenson - Author & Angel Investor

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Lessons - How One Book About Naval Ravikant Built a Publishing Empire | Eric Jorgenson - Author & Angel Investor · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, learn how best-selling authors refine massive bodies of work into
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  timeless, useful books by focusing only on what truly resonates. Learn how audience feedback
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  from tweets to beta readers helps shape what stays and what gets cut and learn why the best
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  books solve real problems quickly, making them worthy of your time and attention.
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  What do you think when you look at all the different ideas that you brought into this book?
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  How did you select the universally applicable ones and maybe just some wisdom for other authors
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  that are trying to figure out what to put in their body of work versus what to leave out
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  so that it has the highest chance of commercial success?
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  Yeah, so I think my process is weird because I'm starting with a huge body of work, but I started,
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  my napkin math is like there were well over a million words of source material that I worked from.
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  Everything that I've all had ever shared publicly went into the pot and I just tried to
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  cook it all down and cook it all down and the final book is like 40, maybe 50,000 words
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  and it just is like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle and so it's trying to like pick up every idea,
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  understand it, figure out which idea is it connects to, how to create a thread through them,
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  and you know, my first draft, it's like funny in retrospect, my first draft was like 150,000 words,
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  it was like a massive thing and I sent it to my friends and I was like tell me what you think
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  of the book and they're like they're all of them were like I really liked what I read,
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  but I did not shit. That was like okay, thank you. Which parts did you jump to? What did you skip?
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  Like where, you know, where were you excited to flip to? And it was just a process of like
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  cutting out anything that didn't really vibe with people and that was heartbreaking because
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  there's a bunch of stuff in there that I thought was really interesting that I loved that I wanted
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  people to know and Tucker has got great lines that I've now adopted on this which is like
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  nobody gives a shit what you want them to know, like they want what serves them, like
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  who are you, you're not prescribing, you're not lecturing, like nobody wants to be on the
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  receiving end of a lecture, deliver things that the reader wants and so much of so many of
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  all's ideas really speak to like universal desires as you said and so it was really a process of
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  like getting rid of niche things, getting rid of anything contemporary and making sure that it was
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  I truly think we got this book to a point where any human being on earth can pick it up and take
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  away at least one useful idea from it that can that if applied can change their life.
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  Truly like no matter what your circumstances are, this book can do something for you.
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  Did you have a process for testing which ideas resonated with an audience that again somebody,
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  again, so someone like me, I have a huge body of work, I don't know what to put into a book,
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  I have my own thoughts, I have, you know, I could do some tools of Titan type stuff like Tim
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  Ferris did, pretty easy to do that, but is there a framework or a process or even like a focus
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  group, I don't know if people still do those but maybe a focus group or just hit up your friends
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  and texted them and we're like, hey, does this idea hit awesome, I'm going to include it.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think this is the the open secret of like so many of the greatest authors of this
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  sort of decade like James Clear was a blogger. He spent years writing that book tweeting, seeing
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  the responses of different tweets, putting things in newsletters, talking to people, doing talks,
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  seeing what resonated in different blog posts and he was so methodical about that book itself.
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  This is also Morgan Housel story. This is also Tim Ferris' story.
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  In a way, this is Nevolse, right? Like the internet had already made Nevol popular for these ideas
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  and I wasn't systematic in like I'm going to make sure all of the most liked tweets are in this
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  book. That's not how I approached it. It was much more curatorial of like what's the most useful
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  thing? How do they all fit together? And then just removing things that people found boring. And so
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  I think process wise, to your point, like you have a lot of data, you have a lot of information
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  already just based on historical behavior, what people have found interesting. You could look at
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  replays on the YouTube, on your YouTube like they, you could look at what clips are performing,
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  you could look at your open rates, you could look at on different subject lines, you could look at
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  you can export your whole tweet history and look at the likes and retweets on those things.
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  There's so much data available to you as a creator who's like gone through this for years and
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  years and years. And then once you're in book form, I really, I've become a believer in the like the
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  you know, beta readers. And so I get to some point in the manuscript where I'm like, I don't know
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  how I'm good. I'm reaching my crossroads of like I'm not, I don't have high conviction in the
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  decisions I'm about to make, but I think this is getting good, but I feel like I'm slowing down on
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  it. So I'm going to take a snapshot version of this manuscript, I'm going to stop working on it.
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  I'm going to send it to 25 people. They're all going to read the same version of the manuscript. I'm
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  going to have a call with each of them. I'm going to ask them all the same questions. And I'm going
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  to see what they recall. I'm going to see what they're excited to talk about. I'm going to see
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  what parts they skipped. I'm going to, and then you know, you can't overweight on any one person and
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  you want them all to read the same thing. And then you just use your judgment to process all of that
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  and try to get it, you know, diverse group of people. So you got a different set of opinions.
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  And I found that to be a really, really good way. And then just frankly having the balls to edit
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  and edit and edit and keep cutting and remember that nothing's wasted, you know, maybe,
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  maybe you're writing two books at once and your scrap goes into the start of the next book. Maybe
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  it goes into the blog, maybe it goes into marketing, but it really helps to know that you're not just,
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  you know, lighting that work on fire when you pull it out of the manuscript, but you're doing a
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  favor to the core book and you're building something, you're getting another asset out of the
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  sawdust basically. How do you launch a book that's self-published? Take it to market, sell it,
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  all of that. It's pretty simple. I mean, it's the same things you do if it's, if it's traditionally
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  published, the difference is just that you own the whole upside. You know, it is a process of like
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  gathering your people around you, preparing them for this book that's coming, asking for what you
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  need, being organized. There's some things that you do that are like, it depends a lot on the book
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  and the goal. And now, you know, in my role at scribe, I've gotten to take, you know, more and more
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  authors through this. And it's always a process of trying to understand what each individual author
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  is trying to achieve with their book. And the tactics, the specific tactics are changing,
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  sometimes like year to year or quarter to quarter. But it's a really, you know, you get listed
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  on a few distribution platforms. You sort of inventory your assets, where your audience is,
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  come up with compelling offers, come up with messaging. And you try to orchestrate a big launch,
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  but then the real game is like, do you just keep marching and keep driving impressions on this
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  book for weeks and months and years down the line? I think a lot of authors main mistake is like
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  over and next on the launch. And then you never talk about their book again after, you know,
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  a month after they launch it. It's like, how many times do you have to hear about a book before
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  you actually buy it? Let alone a lot. A lot. A lot. Yeah. A lot. And like, I mean, like,
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  atomic habits has been around for forever. But now like people after hearing about it on
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  10 podcasts, like, finally, they'll go and get it. So I mean, it takes a lot to convince,
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  because you're, you're, it's somebody's time and energy, right? And, and that's really what you're
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  tapping into. It's not the 25 bucks or the 30 bucks. It's like a week of somebody's life,
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  for a month of somebody's life. Or, you know, the, the, the, the parameter I used for, for me,
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  whether or not I wanted to assume a book is like, okay, is it worth me downloading this unaudible
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  for like my five hour flight? Is that worth it to me? Is this what I want to spend my flight doing?
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  And there's a lot of options. There's a lot of options out there. So you, again, it's going to
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  take a lot to convince somebody to actually consume that content. Was there any, you're going to
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  take something or no? Oh, I can't if you want me to. I think that goes back exactly. Go for it.
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  Go for it. Go for it. Yeah. Dude, that comes back exactly to like, what is the reader's benefit?
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  Like, nobody's going to sit down and spend six hours reading a book that you think they should
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  read. They're going to send six hours. They're going to choose the book that they think makes their
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  life the most better, the soonest, right? Like, what problem are you trying to solve? If this book
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  is going to help me solve that problem, I'm going to pick that up right now and take it into my
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  flight. And I'm going to listen to this thing. And hopefully I got new ideas for how to solve this
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  problem and improve my life by the time I land. Like, if that's how your book feels to people and
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  you've trimmed out all the other bullshit, like, it'll go. You know, I, I think, you know, you ask
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  how to launch a book and I ultimately like, I don't know how to sell books. Like, I only know how
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  to write books that people sell to each other. Like, when you read a book, it's rarely because you
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  saw an advertisement for the book or were just randomly scrolling and saw one impression on it.
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  It's because your friend who read it said, this book is fucking awesome. It talks about solving
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  exactly the problems that we were just talking about last week. I just read it. You should read it.
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  Here it is. Like, so in that way, like, being doing the work to start the flywheel of word of
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  mouth and start people talking about your book, recommending it, you know, getting it as an author
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  invited on a podcast or newsletters and it just, that's the flywheel that has to get started and
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  you just have to keep pushing to get that thing started no matter how hard it is. Thanks for tuning in.
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  If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an
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  episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the
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  description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.