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All right, so I got curious about something.
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I saw this So there's this guy named Mark Manson.
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Mark Manson has this book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a [ __ ] Then he created a couple spin-offs from it.
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So I'll tell you quick a funny story.
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So this book was the best-selling book of 2020, I believe, or 19.
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Either 19 or 20, I forget the exact year.
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Um and it maybe even prior but before that actually.
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But it sold like many many millions copies of books.
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I actually had dinner at a conference with Tucker who we're just talking about and Mark Manson sat next to me.
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And I was talking to him and I was like, "So what do your parents think about your job?"
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And he goes, "Well, they kind of make fun of me and ask me when I'm going to get a real job.
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They don't really know what I do.
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They just think I play in the computer all day and I play video games all day.
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They don't truly understand like what I'm doing.
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But they kind of understood it this year when they released a report for New York Times saying I sold more books than Hillary Clinton.
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So that's when they That's when they kind of understood what I do."
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And so that's a funny story about Mark, but I looked up I was I was curious about something about him and I Googled him.
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The first article came out that he had a condo in New York City that he recently sold for $14 million.
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And I got curious about that because I think that book I was like, "Books can't make that much money, can't they?"
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And Atomic Habits this year sold or so far has sold around 5 million books in total.
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And this year Atomic Habits was the best-selling book on Amazon in 2020. Um or 2021.
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And I was curious about how much bookmakers authors make.
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So I I have a friend I can't talk about his name, but he sold 30,000 copies of a book that was published on a major publisher.
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And I'm going to explain to you how much money he made.
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By the way, and that 30,000 that's a ton.
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That's like in the top 1% tile, you know, I think of of books.
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book is in bookstores and it's probably in the airport and things like that.
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So they were given they didn't have a book before.
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They were given a $250,000 advance, which is basically just like here's 250 go I'll pay for this book. Yeah.
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and and go write the book.
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Um off that 30,000 in books, they have not made a cent in royalty or licensing fees.
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And he told me that when he was looking at the contract, he doesn't even entirely understand when he's going to get paid past that amount.
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And he only gets paid like pennies on the dollar for every like $14 book sold. Right.
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And he said, he's like, I he goes, basically, I get paid they spent a certain amount of money to help me make this book and they get paid once it's surpassed I get paid once it surpasses that amount, but I can't even understand in the paperwork how much they spent it like including everyone's salaries on doing this and publishing and things like that.
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But, I have made, he said, an additional $400,000 this year on selling other stuff, like courses and coaching and consulting, which wouldn't have happened because which happened because of the book.
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But basically, on 30,000 copies sold, he has not made a cent other than the 250.
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And he told me that his editor wasn't that good, that he had to spend a little bit of money getting getting their his own editor, and that their marketing people weren't that great.
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And I found it to be very interesting.
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And so, I looked up Dan Bilzerian.
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Dan Bilzerian, you know who he is, the Instagram guy.
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He self-published his book.
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And so, Dan Bilzerian's book, it costs $35 and he has a Shopify store that sells it.
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You can't buy it on Amazon.
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And it works for Dan Bilzerian cuz he just posted a link on Instagram and he goes viral.
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But David Goggins did it as well.
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And so anyway, this whole publishing kind of thing got me interested because these people do not I guess Mark Manson, he must have crushed it somehow.
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But for someone who sells 30,000 books, they don't make [ __ ] off their off their books.
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And I found it to be incredibly fascinating.
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I guess if you're like Ryan Holiday, I heard that he makes he does good, but a lot of people they just don't get paid.
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Well, I think it's two things.
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It's if you take an advance, the economic and it's your first book, the economics are to be super skewed against you.
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If you um if you have multiple hits like a Ryan Holiday, then you know, by the time you negotiate your third book deal, you're going to have much better economics in the thing.
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You know, Tim Ferriss probably made more off his last book than he did off the first book, which is the best-seller.
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Um and then the last thing is self-publishing, you know, changing the game in a way.
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So, you know, let's say a book sells for $13.
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99 or whatever, 14 bucks.
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Um you know, I think it's going to be like probably uh you know, seven, eight bucks of just the cost of the book plus shipping to get it to a customer.
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And you know, so you're left with four, five bucks uh at the end to play with.
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Now, whether that goes all in your pocket or your publisher's pocket, I think that depends on how you negotiate.
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But even if you just take four bucks per copy, um you know, 5 million copies sold for Atomic Habits, you know, I would believe that he's grossed, you know, 20 million, 30 million in sales uh or sorry, like gross profit off that.
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Now, I don't know what his deal was, if he I don't know if he self-published or what.
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Well, 5 million books times $14 is 70,000, 70 million.
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So, the the revenue on that I would have bet is in the 50 to 100 million range. Yeah.
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That huge ballpark, but I don't know what a guy like him would make, but I bet you he could get paid like many thousands an hour to come and talk.
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I mean, I bet you it cost him $50,000 to show up at a at a boardroom in New York to give a discussion.
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Yeah, like I just got paid $8,000 to do a Zoom call for 1 hour. Um Really? to give a talk.
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And so, that means that somebody who's you know, the author of Atomic Habits is definitely commanding, you know, 25, 50k per That's crazy.
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And now maybe it's digital. That's crazy.
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So, anyway, I thought uh I thought this was interesting and uh it it shocked me.
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Writing a book you cuz you're going through this.
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I knew you're I know you're or you're thinking about going through.
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I don't know how far how far you are.
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Yeah, I basically paid to write the book and now I got to write the book this year, so that'll happen.
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Uh and so, yeah, I don't I would predict that you don't make money directly off of it, but I imagine there will be money made in some ways.
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Yeah, I think a book is a pretty horrible way to make money, so I'm just doing it for fun.