Recently by James Altucher: Why I Would Rather Shoot Myself in the Head Than Own a Home
I just self-published a book. How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive. I published it in paperback form, kindle form, and free PDF (see directions below to get free PDF). The entire process took me three weeks. Using an established publisher would’ve taken over a year.
I've written a prior post on my sales and advances on my first five books which were all published with major publishers. (Also, including a part about how my wife finally fell for me). But I'm never going to publish in the morgue of the publishing industry again. This post today is about why I did it and how you can do it.
The book publishing industry is dead and they don't know it. It's like how the typewriter industry died. And how companies like Blockbuster and Borders can't survive. And the entire music industry is dying. And broadcast television might be on the way. And the tablet industry is the first sign that companies like DELL might be in major trouble. And companies like Sirius mean the radio industry is dead.
Why did I self-publish?
Advances are quickly going to zero. Margins are going to zero for publishers. There's no financial benefit for going with a publisher if advances are going to zero and royalties are a few percentage points. The publishing industry does minimal editing. The time between book acceptance and release is too long (often a year or more). That's insane and makes zero sense in a print-on-demand world when kindle versions are outselling print versions.
Most importantly, the book industry sells u201Cbooksu201D. What they need to do is sell their u201Cauthorsu201D. Authors now are brands, they are businesses, they are mini-empires. Publishers do nothing to help 95% of their authors build their platforms and their own brands. This would increase author loyalty and make the lack of a meaningful advance almost worth it.
I'll give you a quick example. I've published five books with major publishers. The majority of books now are sold through Amazon. Not a single publisher told me I can log into Amazon Author Central, create an author's page, link my author's page to my blog, upload a video, have my twitter feed in there, have an FAQ in there, and all the other basic tools Amazon uses to market your book. Why? This is the world's biggest bookseller. Why wasn't I told about a basic marketing platform I could use? I just learned about it last week after writing books for eight years. Now I have it all hooked up and I have a feeling I've only begun to explore the Author Central area and what Amazon can do for me.
I don't want to trash the publishers. Again, I've written all about my publishing experience, complete with sales numbers. Here's also another article about my reviews on one of the books I've published recently with a major publisher. I completely open every kimono (and its pretty hideous inside that kimono). They are all hard working people and have done good jobs but it's just not worth it to me to go that route anymore.
Despite my five books I am sure zero publishers would've published u201CHow to Be the Luckiest Person Alive!u201D It's not in my finance core. Publishers, just like in any business, put you in your little corner and you have to stay there. They want to pigeon-hole you. If you try to get up and go to a different corner they SLAP you down. So publishers would ignore the topic of my book, despite the popularity of my blog which I would be able to demonstrate to them with the statistics. The statistics show that the less I spoke about finance, the more popular my blog got. People want more happiness, not more ways they can lose their money reading bullshit.
I recently looked at the Bookscan numbers for a bunch of very well known finance authors. They were all close to zero. Plus, in the link above I reveal all my numbers on my books. Again, almost nothing. Know why? Because people know that reading these books won't do anything for them. Very few people make money on stocks. The stock market is largely a scam. Nobody makes money owning real estate anymore. Personal finance is a joke with zero percent interest rates. And, to be honest, most self-help books are written by people with no experience and are just filled with meaningless platitudes.
Thinking about finance is the opposite of the true goal, which is being happy. In this book, I talk about my many failures. Going dead broke after making millions. Rising from the gutter. Getting fired from jobs, kicked out of school, losing a marriage, being at a crossroads in life and figuring out which way to go, and all the times where I could've used a book like this to figure out how to grow from the core inward to find happiness, success, and the other tools I needed to come out of the hole and find the motivation to achieve some good for both myself and the world. This book describes that and the specific techniques I used. I'm brutally honest, to the point of risking people hating me. I've lost friends (at least temporarily) over the material in this book.
July 23, 2011
