So I launched a podcast.

Teeeeechnically, it’s not true that I launched a podcast; I guess it’s more accurate to say that Sean Platt, Dave Wright, and I launched a podcast. But I’m the guy with the mixer and the recorder and the knowledge of how it all works, so without me it’s just the two of them talking to their computers, not even connected via Skype, and wondering why nothing is happening. (And just between us, I’m fairly sure that’s what was going on before I entered the mix. Dave: “So I feel that XYZ.” Sean: [sleeping hundreds of miles away] “.” Dave: “WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?”)

Our new podcast is The Self Publishing Podcast with Johnny, Sean, and Dave. It’s all about how to get your work published in the age of eBooks and Kindle and actually make some money at it — because you CAN do that today, and it’s a mindblowing time to be a writer. You CAN actually make money as an author — even of fiction! — without being Stephen King or (as Dave says it) DEAN FUCKIN KOONTZ.

(And speaking of Dave, his obsession with goths who may or may not be pissing on trees rears its ugly head more than once, after which a melee inevitably ensues.)

You should check it out if you’re at all interested in getting something published — be it fiction, nonfiction, or grotesque elf porn.

Here’s the official podcast description, from iTunes. (Side note: We’re already ranked #1 for “self publishing,” proving either that we’re awesome, that there’s no competition, or that nobody is interested in self-publishing):

Want to get your words out into the world without contending with agents, publishers, or any of the other gatekeepers in traditional publishing? There’s never been a better time to become a writer, and to be in charge of your own destiny rather than jumping through hoops to please the Powers that Be. Self-publishing ninjas David Wright and Sean Platt — who have manufactured a publishing machine around Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform — join popular blogger and author Johnny B. Truant to explore everything related to getting published in today’s new DIY digital publishing frontier. This isn’t artsy talk… we’re business guys with no-BS strategies to help you make self-publishing a rewarding reality. Submit your questions at SelfPublishingPodcast.com!

We’ve got two very different perspectives on self publishing on the podcast, which is part of what makes it interesting… and applicable for just about any type of writer.

Sean and Dave (who are basically one person; I call them “Seave” or “Daan” or “Brangelina”) have built a very complex, very prolific machine around their own writing, enabling them to write and publish as their full-time jobs. I, on the other hand, am stepping into publishing much more slowly. I have one bona-fide novel, one short story, one humor collection, and a handful of experimental small titles that began life as posts on my blog. I do NOT have a complex, prolific machine. I’m a guy who has another business, and who gets a kick out of the idea that I can actually write and sell real books while using my marketing mojo to drive new readers to them.

Need tips on how to format your book? No problem.

Need marketing advice? We’ve got it.

Need ideas on how to create book covers, info on how to use free promos to drive sales, pricing tips, or anything else? We’re your guys.

Come on over and check us out our awesome new Self Publishing Podcast. It’s dandy good fun. (And really, it’s fun even if you don’t give a shit about self-publishing. There is much tomfoolery.)

Oh, and also: You can ask us questions! It’s way cool. We’ve got a call-in number right on the homepage. Call with your questions about self-publishing and we’ll play your question and then answer it on the show if we can. Just like a real radio show, as if we were professionals or something.

We’re pretty psyched about this new venture. Join us, will you?

I don’t eat before 3pm. It’s a strategy called “intermittent fasting,” and I do it every day.

There are a lot of reasons for intermittent fasting (many relating to body composition and hormone normalization), but for me, as an insulin-dependent diabetic, it also results in fantastic blood sugar stability. I don’t have to figure out how what I eat will affect my blood sugar because I’m not eating. And, as a bonus, not stopping to eat allows me to work through the most productive part of my day without being distracted.

But there’s one other reason I fast, and one other reason I like doing it.

It gives me the opportunity to make a difficult and unpopular choice.

The problem is choice

Humans — and Americans in particular — just won’t shut the fuck up about choice. Give us more options! More channels! More colors! More open hours and more variety of inventory! Give us more service levels, more ways to connect! And we’ll get bitchy about it, too. It’s our right to have choice! Don’t you dare try and take our choice away! This is why Wal-Mart thrives. It’s hard to resist a store that has everything, for cheap, and is always open.

We devour choices. We want more, and more, and more, and more. If we can’t currently do or have something, it only increases our desire to do or have it.

And so, responding to both market demand and their own sense of wanting more choices, people innovate. They create something new, crack a code, solve a mystery… and once they’ve solved it, that becomes one more choice that’s available to everyone.

You didn’t used to be able to split atoms to create electric power. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to get in touch with anyone, anywhere, anytime and from anywhere, for dirt cheap. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to sit on the couch and be entertained nonstop, for days and weeks on end, while pizza was delivered right to your door. You didn’t used to be able to get so much great-tasting (but nutritionally deadly) food for so cheap, so fast. You didn’t used to be able to conduct your life without any physical exertion.

But now you can.

We’ve got all the choice in the world nowadays, and the buffet of choices available to us is only expanding.

We can choose whatever we want, whenever we want it.

And we’re choosing such stupid, stupid shit.

Dig your own grave

You’re poor. You have zero prospects. You’re having trouble finding enough money to survive, literally. Your kids are starving. Maybe your spouse has medical issues you can’t afford to treat.

And some guy in a red suit (who may or may not be George Burns) comes up to you and says, “Okay. I’ll give you more than enough money to be set forever. All you need to do is to use a hatchet to cut off one of your fingers.”

Maybe you take it. Maybe you don’t. If you decline the offer, you’re taking the risk that your whole family will die in the gutter. If you accept it, you’re going to have to do something extraordinarily unpleasant.

But the mental fuckery is where this scenario really hurts.

If you take the offer, as you’re wielding the hatchet, you’ll be wondering if there was another way out. Could you have found a job? Could you have gotten an inheritance? Could you have written a blockbuster book while you were homeless, like J.K. Rowling did?

But if you decline the offer, if your kids start to get sick, you’ll wonder if you should have taken it. How bad could it have been? One quick strike and it’s over, and then you’re set forever. You might feel guilty, like you chose your own comfort over them. You’ll feel selfish, and cowardly.

Ironically, the only scenario where there’s no regret and no real downside is to have not been given the choice at all.

Today, tempting choices are everywhere. Some improve our lives, but many are slowly killing us. And sometimes we’ll wish that we’d never been given the option.

It was a lot easier to exercise when there was no choice, when you had to walk from one place to another, hunt the deer, build your house, split the wood for the fire. Now, you can choose to do none of that, and you can eat every meal at McDonald’s for dirt cheap.

It was a lot easier to get kids to read when there were no video games or TV.

It was a lot easier to experience quiet and calm when you couldn’t be called anywhere 24/7, when you couldn’t pull your phone out of your pocket five times every hour to check email or Twitter or Facebook.

It was a lot easier to disappear for a while when it was still possible to get lost.

Maybe sometimes, when your phone is ringing over and over, when the traffic is at its worst, when you feel like a video zombie and your kids won’t stop bothering you about the latest fad that seems to be advertised around the clock, maybe in a few of those moments you kind of wish you’d lived back in the “good old days” that your grandparents are always pining for.

But really, we could still do things the hard way — the “good old days” way — even now.

We could raise our own livestock and grow our own plants. We could live without TV or any other kind of screen. We could eschew all cellular phones. We could even be Amish, and not even use electricity or drive cars.

But we’d have to choose to do it. We’d have to know what was available in terms of convenience and pleasure and hedonism and instant gratification… and we’d have to turn our backs on it, willfully and deliberately. And that’s very, very hard.

Now: Am I saying we should be Amish, that the modern world is bad and evil? Not at all.

I have a smartphone and an iPad. I wouldn’t be alive without the healthcare advances that make my diabetes a mere inconvenience. Sometimes I check my email too often, but I’m still glad to have it, to have the internet at my fingers.

But there has to be a line somewhere, and nobody knows where it is.

My generation is the first to have a lower standard of living than our parents’, because we spend so much more than we make. My kids’ generation is the first that’s expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents’, because they eat like hell and don’t move much. Most people don’t enjoy what they do all day. Depression is high. Alienation is high. Health is low. All because of things we’re choosing to do — things we never had the option to do until only recently.

It’s as if someone handed us a gun and said, “Use this if you’d like to take away your pain.”

But we didn’t realize it was a gun. We thought it was ice cream.

Progress

Humans are good at persistent curiosity. Give us enough time, and we’ll figure out how to do almost anything.

Not that long ago, the idea of human flight was ridiculous. Unthinkable. But people kept at it, and today you can get from New York to London in an afternoon, while being served pretzels and charged excessive baggage fees.

It wasn’t that long ago that we learned DNA even existed, but once we did, it took no time to start moving things around to create disease-resistant crops and smart bacteria that would do our bidding. You can even have your pets cloned. Got a great dog and want to have him forever? You can. You just have to start over after each lifetime ends… unless you’d like to have two of him at once, which I suppose you could do too.

Today, billions of dollars are going into figuring out how to interface electronic circuits with human brains. Ostensibly it’s about solving medical issues, like helping paralyzed people walk, but you know the commercial sector sees the promise there, too. What if you could operate your TV or your computer with your mind? What if you could drive a car truly hands-free? What if you could call Frank simply by thinking at him?

I figure teleportation is right around the corner. Pretty soon everywhere will be just a few steps away. Going from New York to London will take seconds. It’ll be awesome. We’ll be able to attend every event and will never be able to back out. So what if your boss’s daughter’s bridal shower is at the same time as your kid’s Christmas play? Just pop over for ten minutes. And if the office needs you for a half hour in the middle of your honeymoon, no big deal, because it’s so easy.

I don’t want to have some of these options.

I like that I have the best reason of all (“It’s not possible”) for not doing certain things I don’t want to do. I like that I won’t have to decide whether to accept some Faustian bargains because they can’t currently be made.

Keep my avenues closed. Restrict my options. Tell me what to do. It’s cool to be forced to do something, at a certain point.

But Pandora’s Xbox can’t be closed once it’s open. Once a choice is out there, it’s out there. Nobody’s going to deny you that option. Except for you.

We as a culture seem to say, “We can do that? Awesome! Add it to my inventory of options. Choice is good.”

But it’s time to stop being choice whores. It’s time to stop doing things just because we can.

Opt out

For a while there, Burger King was giving out free cinnamon rolls with every order. It’s as if they were trying to fatten up their customers. Like they were being instructed by their alien overlords to get us ready for a bloody harvest.

Most people took the cinnamon rolls and ate them. And why not? They were free. They smelled and tasted good. The fact that it was an unwise choice didn’t cross most people’s minds.

But it can cross yours.

You can look at something that’s available, and free, and easy, and enticing, and decide to let it go if it doesn’t suit you. You can opt out. People will think you’re nuts if you do this. “But they’re free,” they’ll will say, as if that’s all that matters.

It’s not all that matters. We need to stop living by default and start paying some fucking attention.

Start to look for things that are freely and easily available to you right now, but that you might do better without.

Maybe you check your smartphone too much but you don’t want to get rid of it. So, turn off the 3G or 4G connectivity and use it only when you’re near a wi-fi signal. Now… it’ll be tempting to cheat. You could easily turn it back on and surf Facebook from the beach, and it wouldn’t cost you a cent. But resist the urge.

There are programs that will block internet access from your computer for whatever time periods you set. If you spend too much time online, get one and use it. The only way to break through and get your access back would be to re-boot… and you could, and that would let you IM with your buddy in Seattle about nothing and Tweet about that sandwich you just ate. But don’t. Have some restraint.

Get rid of those fucking donuts and cigarettes. They’re free to keep, but just because something is available doesn’t mean you should say yes to it.

You’ve got nonstop entertainment on TV, but if your family dynamic is suffering, turn it off.

You paid for that giant plate of onion rings, but if you’re full, stop.

There’s an elevator in your building, but if you’re trying to get into better shape, don’t use it.

You’re opting out of something that has been offered to you when you do these things, and people will think it’s nuts.

But it’s there! they’ll say. But it’s free!

One day, someone’s going to offer free arsenic with the Quarter Pounder meal and everyone’s going to eat it because hey, it’s free.

It’s time we stop acting like we need to “get our money’s worth” from everything, everywhere, all the time.

Try suffering

You’re being controlled.

Don’t worry; it’s human nature. We’re social animals, and conformity is baked into our cores, so don’t go feeling bad about being a puppet sometimes… but yeah, it’s true. Other people’s opinions and arguments are controlling some of what you do, say, and think.

You just need to figure out which parts they are. And that involves a bit of suffering.

Choosing to do something unpleasant is the only way to be sure you’re making a choice that is truly your own. Easy, pleasurable choices aren’t like that. Choices that feel good are the ones you can easily fall into, be funneled into, or be brainwashed into.

But the ugly decisions are all you.

Ever wonder why monks spend weeks at a time doing nothing but meditating or chanting?

Ever wonder why anyone would take a vow of silence?

Ever wonder why the minimalist movement is so strong today?

Ever wonder why people go off on vision quests, walkabouts, or become hermits who live in the woods?

Those are all choices to do something difficult and uncomfortable. They are all choices that go against the way the “normal” world operates, creating friction. They’re a way of saying, “Fuck you, world. I’m not going to participate in your bullshit.”

Political prisoners sometimes go on hunger strikes. To a lot of people, this looks dumb. Nobody is going to care if they starve themselves. But it’s not about anyone else caring. It’s about showing themselves that they can’t be owned. It’s Kunta Kinte refusing to say his name was Toby.

Personally, I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. Kellogg’s has a lot of commercials showing me how great Pop Tarts are. They also show my kids how great they are. My kids watch those ads and ask for Pop Tarts.

I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. And fuck Kellogg’s.

I fast every day because I choose to.

It’s my choice to make, and mine alone.

Deprive yourself

Look at how you’re living. Ask yourself if it could be better. Ask yourself if there are any voluntary but dumb things that are getting in between you and what you want, in between how you are and how you want to be.

Look at everything around you — what you do, how you think, what you consume, how you respond — as if it were a room filled with objects. Ask yourself if the room is too crowded. Ask yourself if you can move around, or if you feel walled in. Ask yourself if, in this room, you feel like you can breathe.

Your choices filled that room.

How many were truly your choices, and how many were made by default? Did you get a smartphone because “why not”? Did you take the cable TV package upgrade because it was only ten dollars more? Do you Supersize It as a knee-jerk reaction? Do you want that new gadget because you actually need and will use it, or because it’s “the newest whiz-bang version”? (You really need to ask this one if you had an iPad 2 and bought the new iPad to replace it.)

Are you going out tonight because others are going, and you figure “what the hell”?

Do you ever find yourself watching a TV show simply because you never turned off the TV when the previous show ended?

Do you take the cinnamon rolls because they’re free, or finish your huge meal because you paid for it and don’t want to “waste” it?

Now, at this point, I want to clarify something:

Eat the fucking rolls if you want. Seriously. Just don’t do it because they’re free. Do it because you want them.

Check your cell phone all the time if the urge strikes you. But don’t do it out of nervous habit, like a smoker twiddling his thumbs while waiting for a smoke break.

Make your own decisions, and know what you’re getting when you make them.

And if your decision-making muscle is weak, if you’re more often than not at the whim of the normal and the accepted? Then try some self denial, to build that muscle.

• Desire something and don’t buy it.
• Stop checking your email.
• Put yourself on a budget — not to save money, but to see what it feels like.
• Fast, and learn to appreciate hunger. (And learn that it won’t kill you.)
• Experiment with sleep.
• Take a sabbatical.
• Take an ice-cold shower.
• Turn off your TV.
• Take an internet holiday.
• Go somewhere remote and live there for a while, totally unplugged.
• Do something that hurts, something that pushes you to your edge.

Not everything that is offered to you is something that you should accept. Get used to sitting in front of life’s buffet, picking and consciously choosing only the best of all that’s offered.

If you don’t, if you aren’t careful, you’ll be like diners at a Golden Corral, stuffing yourself with everything until you waddle out sick and disgusted.

Get used to being offered something, and saying no to it.

The world, more and more and more and more, is conspiring to give you exactly what you want.

Fight back.

Do something that sucks.

You know how sometimes you read blogs and wonder if the blogger is telling the truth because everything they write makes it look as if everything goes perfectly for them all the time? Well, I hope to break through some of that perception with this post.

Here’s the story:

A little while ago, I released my novel The Bialy Pimps from the purgatory of my closet, where it had been languishing since I’d finished writing it twelve years earlier. I self-published it on Amazon’s Kindle platform, and celebrated its debut by doing a promotion that allowed anyone to get it for free. A bunch of you (you awesome people with excellent taste, you) snagged it. And a bunch of you wondered why, after spending all that time and effort on a novel, I’d simply give it away.

The full reasoning behind my debuting the book for free is here, but the short version is this:

1. Although nobody is totally sure how Amazon’s ranking algorithm works, one thing that seems clear is that a lot of activity will help your book rise in the overall rankings. I wanted to generate a lot of activity — more activity than I could generate by charging for the book — in the hopes that when the free period ended, The Bialy Pimps would be ranked well and would have impressed Amazon’s algorithm with my general awesomeness. Ideally, in addition to Amazon saying, “Dude, you’re awesome!” sales to people who didn’t already know me would start to happen on their own because Amazon would feel compelled to share the awesomeness by telling customers about me.

2. At the same time and maybe a little contradictorily, it was intended to be sort of a soft launch, going mainly to the fine people who read this blog, are on my list, or are one degree removed from either. I purposely didn’t do a BIG LAUNCH like a lot of authors do, which I’ll explain if you keep reading. In other words, the limited scope of this launch was intentional, and subsequent phases are still to come.

3. But even with that said, you hear stories where one free promo rockets someone to bestsellerdom, which ruin everyone’s day by setting unrealistic expectations of grandeur.

So here’s what actually happened, in real and sometimes embarrassing numbers, with no punches pulled.

My book release, by the numbers

The results of this initial release have been a mixed bag. In some ways, the first push was incredibly gratifying because people have had great things to say about the book, both in reviews and via Twitter and email. But in other ways it’s not been gratifying at all, because the numbers started off okay and then went downhill fast.

All probably totally normal, expected, and even planned-for… but not as much fun as unrealistic explosive growth would have been.

So without further ado, here’s what happened during those first few days and up to the present.

Tuesday, February 14th

Evening: I uploaded the final Kindle-formatted file to Amazon and then set the free promo to begin the next day.

Wednesday, February 15th

6:15am: I sent the first emails and put up the first blog post and sent the first tweets announcing the promo.

The book had been free for 4-5 hours by this time, but I’d had no downloads yet. This was a good indication that nothing was going to “catch” on its own and that the only people who found the book would be people I sent to it. From what I hear, this isn’t typical. Usually you can do a free promo, tell nobody, and people will start to download it. This happens because your book is already “in the system,” and Amazon has gotten it into their various algorithms. My book was so new, it wasn’t in the system or on anyone’s radar. This wouldn’t be a leveraged endeavor. This would be pushing a boulder on my own, with no help from physics.

6:15pm: After 12 hours, I had 444 downloads. Not bad but not ridiculous like some of the stories you hear from people whose books aren’t brand new and who catch a spark somehow or another. At this point, I was ranked #436 among all free downloads and #19 in humor.

11pm: 546 downloads, #420 in free, and #18 in humor.

Thursday, February 16th

6:30am: After my first 24 hours, I had 618 downloads and was ranked #500 in free and #19 in humor.

8:15am: 638 downloads, #422 free, #16 humor.

At this point, I began to realize how fragile the rankings are. My goal was to get into the top 100 free, and (spoiler alert!) the highest that I saw was #356, which happened on Thursday afternoon. But what I actually noticed about the rankings was that I’d have an hour with a smaller amount of downloads and the ranking would drop precipitously… followed by a good hour and a subsequent rise. You’ll drive yourself nuts watching it. I surely did.

2:30pm: 811 downloads, #378 free, #17 humor. This was the first time I noticed that I’d broken above #400 free.

7:30pm: 900 downloads, #382 free, #21 humor.

I’d crossed 1000 downloads by bedtime, but was also back below #400 in the free rankings. The promo only had a few hours left, due to end somewhere around midnight Pacific time.

Friday, February 17

Once the free promo was over, I woke up to get my total. During the free promo, 1025 people had downloaded the book from Amazon.com. I was also now ranked at #167,170 on the overall Kindle paid list. From what I understand, this ranking means pretty much nothing when a book is so new, but it was still amusing.

From what I’ve seen, heard, and read, any bump in paid sales that you’re going to get (if you get one) will start to show up a few days later. Nonetheless, I was prepared to accept worldwide bestsellerdom by noon. Hey, anything’s possible.

The way things actually went on Friday was a bit less impressive.

I got my first “borrow” at just after noon on Friday. Borrowing is a feature of KDP Select, the program into which I’d enrolled The Bialy Pimps in order to be able to do the free promo. Basically, people who are members of Amazon Prime can “borrow” your book for free within certain restrictions, and “return” it whenever they want. You do get paid for borrows, but it’s typically not as much as a sale. So in my case, with my book priced at $3.99, I get $2.79 for each sale. Borrows vary by month, but chances are I’ll get something closer to $1.70 for each.

I then got my first actual sale about a half hour later. Hooray!

By 3:15pm, my Amazon ranking had jumped up over 100,000 places, to #57,252 on the overall paid list. This sort of proved that rankings don’t mean much 1) when books are new and/or 2) when your rank sucks so badly. Could be either or both.

It’s probably also worth noting that at this point, those groupings of “people who bought this book also bought this” or “similar titles” that you normally see below Amazon listings were not yet showing up on my page — further suggestions that my book wasn’t really seasoned in the Amazon system and that it might have been smarter to wait on the free promo until it was. Given that I wasn’t totally in the system yet, it sort of felt like I’d generated a bunch of momentum that couldn’t go anywhere because the cables weren’t hooked up to the battery yet.

At 5pm, I had had no more sales or borrows and no customer reviews. Still, my rank was up to #36,313.

By the end of Friday, day one after the free period, I’d sold a whole four copies and had had one borrow, and my meaningless ranking was up to #22,086. This is the high life!

Saturday, February 18

Saturday was my “banner” day, with ironic quotes being very intentional.

I woke up to find that four copies had sold overnight and that my ranking was up to #17,910. I then had six more sales by 6pm and was up to #11,144. I also had gotten another borrow.

Alas, I didn’t crack the top 10,000. I ended the night at #18,284. By this point I’d also gathered six reviews, all of which were five stars. Aces.

Sunday, February 19

On Sunday, those lists of “customers also bought” that I mentioned had been missing finally began showing up on my page, indicating that I was at least making my way into the Amazon machine.

It was nice to see the fine folks whose work appeared in those lists on my page — people like Seth Godin and Julien Smith. So I went over to a few of those pages (not just the big names, but the smaller ones too) and tried to see if *I* was showing up on THEIR “also-bought” lists. This was, unsurprisingly, not the case. So nobody was really being sent my way from the algorithm yet.

Joanna Penn told me that she’s seen that it takes around three months for Amazon to really get you into their guts and start sending out emails to people who bought similar titles, suggesting they give yours a try. I guess I’ll see soon if that happens for me.

As of Sunday morning, I’d had a grand total of 15 sales and 2 borrows since the free period ended and was ranked #20,757. It all seemed quite random.

I wasn’t exactly raking in the sales, and this, if I’m honest, was a bummer. I told the world and told myself that all that mattered was to ship the book, but it was around Sunday that I realized I’d secretly been hoping for a lot of post-promo sales. Which was ridiculous, given that I’d intentionally not done a lot of the things that might bring about a surge…. but more on that later.

I sold nothing on Sunday. I just watched my rank drop all day, bottoming out around #35,000 by nighttime.

Monday, February 20 and beyond

I got another two purchases on Monday and had got a few more reviews, now up to eight 5-star reviews. My rank neared #50,000.

By Wednesday, I had a total of 18 books sold and two borrowed. It was pretty clear by this point that although the first week hardly determines the success of a book (especially without a big launch effort), the big surge wasn’t going to happen.

At the end of February, I’d sold 31 copies.

As of right now, I’ve sold three more copies in March and have had two borrows. My ranking hovers around #100,000, give or take. A few sales in quick succession will bump it up tens of thousands of places, proving further that ranks this low don’t mean a lot.

So…

Is this a success or a failure?

It’s neither.

It would have been great to see a big surge in sales after a free promo, but that was really just dreaming. Hell, it wasn’t even part of my plan, which I’ll go into in a minute. The first push was supposed to get the book into the hands of the people who were most predisposed to like it, review it favorably, and tell their friends about it. The first push was supposed to be about priming the pump so that when I do a later push, I’ll look impressive to the people who have no idea who I am.

So I guess it was kind of a success. I guess I’m happy that I, mostly by myself, could interest 1025 people, in under two days, in downloading a book that I wrote — especially given the fact that nobody knows me as a writer of fiction. I’m happy with my reviews, which now total fourteen — all of which are 5-stars. I’m really happy with the feedback I’m getting. People are saying it’s hilarious and poignant at the same time, which was what I was going for. People are saying it recalled their own fond memories, that it took them back to a cherished place. People are saying that it riveted them, kept them up late reading. This is all very good.

But I don’t know how much it helped my rankings. If I’d simply put the book on sale and not had a promo at all (free or a push for paid sales), would it be selling as it is now? Maybe.

But I still think the initial free promo is a good idea, and here’s why:

1. As I’ve already mentioned, it gets the book into the hands of people who are most likely to enjoy it. An anonymous push is a mixed bag. I can’t guarantee that any of my readers will like it, but they’re far more likely to enjoy it than a random person. This means good initial word of mouth, etc.

2. It’s a way to get good reviews. Reviews matter for two reasons. One, they seem to factor into the Amazon algorithm over the long haul, meaning that books with better reviews from verified purchasers are more likely to rise in the rankings and/or be promoted by Amazon. The second reason reviews matter is for social proof. New visitors will want to see that others enjoyed the book before they buy it.

(Side note: This might be a good place to say that if you got the book and enjoyed it, it’d be HOT if you’d click here and give me a review on Amazon.)

3. It’s a cool thing to do for your friends and fans. Look, I could have launched the book at $3.99 out the gate and I’m sure I could have gotten at least 500 or so buyers pretty fast. The good thing about that is that I have loyal readers I know would buy the book. The bad thing is that it’s my loyal readers who would have to buy the book. Then, when I offered it for free later, who gets it free? People I don’t know. What if those people are assholes? Do I really want my friends to have to pay and give it away free to assholes? That’s intolerable.

4. It’s a good karmic move. This goes hand-in-hand with #3 above. People like receiving gifts, and I just gave 1025 of my friends a gift. That’s going to generate some goodwill, I’d guess.

Now, does that mean I did it totally correctly? I doubt it. I don’t really like the impression I get that all of the free momentum was wasted because the book was so new to Amazon. I don’t know if this would make a difference, but a smarter move might have been to release the book on Amazon, say nothing about it, and just let it sit there on sale for a month or two or three… and THEN do the free promo. Maybe that would give it more teeth.

Here’s why I think there’s some truth to this, and to the theory that “seasoning” in Amazon probably really does matter at least for Kindle n00bs such as myself.

How I’m outselling myself

Check this out.

If you recognize that Kindle title, you get a gold star because it’s the same as this blog post. It’s up in the Kindle store because I took the advice of my friend Sean Platt and repurposed some of my blog material for Kindle so that i can reach a different audience.

Now, here’s what’s interesting:

The Kindle version of “The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You” sells about one a day on average, and has been for the past two months. This despite the fact that I don’t have it advertised anywhere, that I’ve never told anyone about it other than anecdotally, and that it still doesn’t have a single review.

Just in case you’re not engaged here, let me spell it out:

My novel, which I poured my heart into, which represents some of my best work, which has nothing but stellar reviews, and which I promoted heavily and was downloaded by over a thousand people in two days is being outsold by a brief piece that is freely available on my blog, which doesn’t have a single review, and which I’ve never, ever promoted.

This is obnoxious. But it’s also encouraging in a way, because the fact that none of the sales are my doing means that the only reason anyone is finding it must be because Amazon is promoting it via “customers also bought” or “Amazon recommends” or whatever.

In other words, this kind of proves that Joanna was right. All that piece did was to sit there for sale. Nothing else. And then it started selling.

So, given the better reviews, better traffic, and better promotion behind The Bialy Pimps, will it also start to sell on autopilot in a few months? Probably, right? It seems to make sense.

And when it does — when it finally seems to “catch” in the Kindle store — then that’s probably a good time to move on to phase 2 of my maybe-this-will-work-but-really-I-have-no-fucking-clue promotional strategy.

Phase 2

I mentioned that I didn’t go whole-hog with my initial launch. I don’t know if this is smart or will turn out to be dumb, but I can tell you why I did it.

I did it because I don’t want the first people who come to the page, buy the book, and leave a review to be random. I don’t want random, unbiased reviews and chatter to be the book’s first reviews and chatter. I want qualified, biased initial reviewers so that when the random people do show up, I’ll look really good.

My first fourteen reviews are all five stars. Think that’s sustainable, representative, or accurate? Not a chance. Those are the opinions of people who already knew me and who went into this expecting to like the book. This is what I wanted.

Once I’ve got good mojo going and have some momentum with the reviews (mission mostly accomplished) and once the book starts selling a bit better on its own (I give it a month or two more), then I’ll do a “real” promo.

But again, I’m going to do it via free, for all the reasons I explained in my last post.

I’ve got three days of free left out of the five KDP Select gave me. So what I’d like to do for phase 2 is to do another free promo, but this time do the stuff I purposely didn’t do this time. I’d like to try for a few high-profile guest posts, submit it for review, and ping sites like Pixel of Ink, which tell their readers about new free titles.

My hope is that next time, I’ll get the surge I didn’t get this time, and that I’ll get a little bit of a viral effect. Maybe this will tail off into higher ongoing sales. I’ve heard from a lot of people — and not all big-selling authors — that this does indeed tend to happen.

Phase 3

Phase 3 isn’t really a launch phase. It’s my ongoing plan to keep promoting myself — but this time prominently including “author of The Bialy Pimps” on my resume.

Phase 3 includes a lot of stuff — most of it boring to read about — but one thing it does include that may interest you is that I’m going to be starting a podcast. Stay tuned to this blog to hear more about that in coming weeks.

Phase 3 also includes writing more books. And more books. And more books.

I firmly believe that the bold new frontier of self-publishing means that you kind of can’t fail if you’re at least decent and you’re persistent. If your sales suck and a given title only makes you $2000 per year, that’s not much… but once you have ten such shitty-selling books, that $20,000 is a nice sideline. If you write 30 books, you can start to live pretty well as your backlist earns for you year after year after year.

It’s not “get rich quick”, but I think it’s “make a living with art certain.” I think that nowadays, math favors the persistent artist.

There’s probably a lot more to this, but this has been a long and rambling post and I’m going to let it be a long and rambling post. I’m not going to try and end it in a tidy manner. It’s just going to kind of fizzle out here.

So, you know, if you have questions or comments, ask or comment away. If you’re any kind of a creative person, we’re all in this together.

P.S: If you read The Bialy Pimps and liked it, would you be willing to leave me a review? That’d be seriously badass of you.

NOTE: The free promo described below has ended, so The Bialy Pimps now costs $3.99. Small price to pay for awesome, really, and people are LOVING it.

Yesterday I told you all about my novel The Bialy Pimps and how, after twelve years of indecision and resistance, I’ve finally rewritten it and published it, yada yada yada. And maybe that was interesting to you and maybe not, but what probably got your attention — if anything did — was the fact that I’m debuting this book at a price of FREE (through the end of today).

On hearing the whole “free” thing, here are some possible reactions you may have had:

“Wow, that’s awesome!”

or

“It’s free? That must mean it sucks.”

and probably most of all

“That’s incredibly stupid. He’s going to lose whatever for-sure sales he was going to get.”

I’m going to explain why I decided to launch for free in just a minute, but first I wanted to remind you to go ahead and download The Bialy Pimps for free here (non-US people, see the first P.S. below) before we go any further, because the free promo ends tonight.

Seriously. Go download it. It’s awesome.

In fact, download it even if you don’t have a Kindle, because there are apps that will let you read it… and even failing that, you can read right there on the website thanks to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which makes the process incredibly easy. Or, if you have an e-book reader that’s not a Kindle, email me and I’ll let you know what’s up. Hell, download it even if you don’t want it. Download it to humor me and make me feel better. I don’t have a tip jar, so downloading it to feed my ego (and spreading the word) would be an awesome way to give back if you’re so inclined.

Now, if you haven’t downloaded it yet despite my intolerable pestering, let me try something else in the interest of marketing professionalism:

C’mon.

C’mon.

Do it. You know you want to.

Please?

I’m totally serious. Go get it. It’s free. Then tell your friends and ask them to get it for free. Tweet it. Facebook it. Tell the world, so that as many people as possible can get it without giving me a cent.

Which raises an excellent point.

Why the hell would I be so eager to give something away for free?

Stupid, right?

After all, this book means a lot to me. It was written during a time of intense personal turmoil. It was born from a hell of a lot of pain, with hilarious results. It’s based (hilariously) on a real place and (hilarious) real people who I can safely say are, in the (hilarious) pages of this book, no longer that place or those people, but the sum of which is still (hilariously) still very meaningful to me.

I spent hundreds of hours on each draft of the book. There were four.

I spent dozens of hours prepping the manuscript for publication.

I spent scores of hours researching fiction marketing as it exists today, formulating my plan, and writing emails and posts like the one you’re currently reading.

And my strategy, after all of that work and head-scratching, is to give the book away — and not just to give it away, but to give it away to you, my prime audience… to the people who were most likely to actually shell out cash and buy it.

In short, I’m cutting off all potential royalties from the people most likely to earn me any royalties.

Why?

Angry Birds are smart birds

Let me explain by allegory, because that’s how I roll.

The other day, on a whim, I decided to download the Angry Birds app on my smartphone. I’d never played it before, but I’d heard a lot of hubbub surrounding it, so I figured what the hell. And besides, the app was free. So I opened it and I started playing. My son got very interested in it. Because he got interested, my daughter (who does everything her brother does) got interested.

While I was playing, I accidentally clicked on a few of the ads that exist inside the app. It didn’t annoy me, but it happened.

And then yesterday, we bought two sets of Angry Birds plushes. They are identical, but each kid had to have them. They spent their Christmas money. $25 each.

So if you’re following along, here’s what happened:

1. Angry Birds was released for free.
2. A lot of people liked it, spread it, and started talking about it.
3. Because it was free, I figured what the hell and decided to try it myself.
4. My son saw me playing and liked it.
5. My daughter saw my son playing and liked it.
6. We bought $50 in Angry Birds merchandise, and there’s no way that’ll be our last Angry Birds purchase. I also sent Rovio a few cents in ad revenue due to my fumbling fingers.

Now get this. Rovio could have priced Angry Birds 99 cents or $1.99 and there’s no question people would have paid it, because a buck or two is definitely worth it. Even the Android app has hundreds of individual levels, and it’s really addicting.

But at even a buck or two, I wouldn’t have played it, because I don’t care even a buck or two’s worth about games on my phone. Their decision to charge me $1-2 would have assured that they didn’t get my $50+ this week. And the same goes for millions and millions of other people.

But Rovio did a very smart thing. They created something great, and they made it free. Because of that — and ONLY because of that — they got my attention… and then they got my money.

It’s ironic. They got my money because they refused to charge me any.

The math of free

What would you rather do? Would you rather sell something for ten bucks, or sell the same thing for a hundred bucks?

Ideological concerns and matters of pride and brand integrity aside, you can’t make the decision without knowing how many of each will sell. The market’s appetite for what you’re selling will determine your success, and a large part of the market’s appetite is determined by price.

Again setting aside fears of bottom-feeder thinking and opinions about what a low price “means” or “says to the world,” the truth is that each time you lower the barrier to entry by lowering the price, you get more attention, and the sales get easier. You remove an excuse for a few people, and if what you have to deliver is good, everyone walks away happy.

Want more reasons why free is awesome? Okay, here are three:

1. Free results in delighted fans and lots of thank-yous. Everyone likes receiving gifts.
2. Free is very easy to promote. I can be more aggressive during this promotion because I’m not asking people to spend money; I’m trying to give them a gift.
3. Free is also very easy for others to promote. If you ask your friends to tell the world about your $2 (or $200) product, they’ll flinch because people hate to sell, or appear salesy. But friends are usually happy to tell the world about something you’re giving away.

Would you rather sell fifty thousand thousand copies of a bird-flinging app at $1.99, or would you rather distribute half a billion for free, each of which generate just a few cents in ad revenue?

It’s not a perfect analogy because price isn’t the only option, and I don’t plan to slash all of my own prices to see what happens. I also don’t plan to offer my book for free forever, and I’m not making ad revenue from my book the way Rovio makes it from their free games.

But given a limited and defined set of circumstances, I think you get my point.

The magic of free on Amazon

If you’re an aspiring author, pay close attention to this section.

I’ve enrolled my book in Amazon’s KDP Select program in exchange for the opportunity to offer my book for free on the Amazon Kindle platform for a total of five days, divided however I’d like. The way it works is, I give them a 90-day exclusive (the book’s not available on Barnes & Noble’s e-book store or anywhere else), and as a thanks, they give me the right to give my book away for free. It sounds like a shitty deal, but it’s not for a lot of people I’ve heard about.

It’s because of the algorithm, and because of critical mass.

See, there are two basic ways to drive sales of e-books. One is for people who already know you to seek out (or be driven to) your book. That’s significant if you have a gigantic audience or if you’re an established name. If Steven King farts and has it transcribed (with the possible addition of an evil clown), it becomes a bestseller because people know and love Steven King.

But if you’re like most people, the bigger source of sales is people who didn’t know you in advance, but who somehow run across your book. There are a few ways that happens (you rise in rankings like the top 100 or the genre bestsellers, or maybe you show up in the “people who liked this also bought” suggestions for books like yours) but all of them depend on you already being popular, and already being successful on Amazon.

In other words, it’s kind of a catch-22. You need buyers to attract buyers.

It’s a vicious circle, but the more positive way to think of it is as requiring a critical mass. If you — somehow, anyhow — get enough buyers who think highly of your work, you’ll rise in the rankings and more people will find you. As more people find you, more people will buy from you. And as more people buy from you, more people are able to find (and buy from) you.

Most authors aren’t able to achieve the critical mass needed to get the ball rolling. They don’t have enough “at the ready” buyers to sustain the reaction, and they fizzle out. Nobody can find them, so nobody buys them. And when nobody buys them, it becomes less and less likely that anyone will find them.

Amazon’s ranking algorithm is just as mysterious to the outside world as the Google search algorithm, but there are a few things that are known:

1. Popularity matters. The more people who visit your book’s page, give you good reviews, link to you, and buy your stuff, the higher you’ll rank.

2. Downloads of a free book give you the same momentum as do sales.

and the really important one:

3. It’s a lot easier to “sell” free than it is to sell non-free.

So yes, I’m giving up maybe a thousand relatively for-sure sales, but I’m doing it because much like Angry Birds, I’m trading those sales for what I hope are a lot more eyes. A lot more downloads. A lot more reviews. A lot more popularity.

I could sell X number of books at $3.99 this month and be happy, but I’d rather “sell” ten times that number for $0 and manage to hit my own critical mass.

Will it work?

Hell if I know.

I might as well say right now that what I’m doing scares the bejesus out of me. I write these posts in what probably sounds like a confident, authoritative voice, but it’s the magic of editing and zero body language that makes me seem sure of myself. I’m not sure of myself about this. Not at all.

Truth be told, I’m on a wing and a prayer here.

I haven’t staked my mortgage on selling even one copy of The Bialy Pimps, so no actual harm is going to come to me if, when the free period ends, nobody ever buys it. But I will tell you one thing: that would suck.

I would not like it.

It would seriously bum me out.

Because I spent a lot of time on this book, and because it’s a story that means a lot to me, and because (if I could pretend that it’s possible to be objective about my own work) it’s a really good story. It’s funny as hell, and I think it’ll also make you ponder a bit. I think the story will stay with you and resonate once you’ve finished reading. I think it speaks to some bigger, somewhat more serious truths. I think there are messages in this tale that are about conformity, about the fragile and random nature of fame, and about what we’re truly supposed to spend our lives doing.

It’s occurred to me, in my less-than-confident moments, that this book may have only a few hundred to a few thousand sales in it, and that what I’m doing right now may just be giving all of those sales away and getting nothing in return.

And although I don’t need that money, it’d be nice to have even that small amount of recompense if this thing totally bombs.

What the fuck

There’s a line in the movie Risky Business that forms a cornerstone of my life’s philosophy. It’s when Joe Pantoliano (as Guido the pimp) tells a very young Tom Cruise, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, ‘What the fuck.’ ”

Do I know what’s going to happen?

No.

Am I pissing away the small amount of reward I could get from my years of emotional and physical effort?

Maybe.

Should I remember that a (angry) bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? That if I know I can get some sales today, I should take those sales rather than rolling the dice on a free promotion?

Who knows.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, “What the fuck.”

So it’s free. And I want you to pick it up, and I hope you like it and share it.

If nothing else, I’ve shipped a work that’s been in my closet for over a decade, and that means a lot, too.

P.S: The book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites too, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: The free period ends TONIGHT. So be sure to download it now.

P.P.P.S: Remember, you don’t need a Kindle. Read the first part of this post again to see what I mean.

P.P.P.P.S: I think I forgot to mention that I have a book out, and that you can get that book for free. I forgot to mention that, right?

P.P.P.P.P.S: What the fuck.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S: Mitch Hedburg said, “At the end of my letters, I like to write, ‘P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.’ “

Monday night, I uploaded the final elements required by Amazon to publish my novel, The Bialy Pimps, in the Kindle store.

Go over and check it out. I made it FREE for today and tomorrow — a decision I’ll tell you all about tomorrow — so while you’re there, be sure to download the book. (Oh, and if you’re not in the US, see the P.S. at the bottom of this post.)

(Do it even if you don’t have a Kindle, by the way… there’s an app for that, and you can even read without an app… just order the book, and Amazon will deliver it to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which will let you read on your screen right away. It’s easy.)

Seriously. Download the book. Do it now; I’ll wait. Consider it a favor to me if you must, but do it.

Now, it’s kind of ridiculous, from a business standpoint, that I’m publishing a novel. You don’t know me as a novelist. Nobody was clamoring for this, and until a few months ago, nobody even knew it existed. I do have some marketing and follow-up ideas that will keep me in the fiction-writing world and hopefully make me some money at it, but this businessy, entrpepreneurish, human-potential-personal-development niche I’m in right now is where I’m known, and where I earn my living.

So why does it matter that I’ve published a novel?

Answer: It matters because it’s AWESOME.

Awesome

Think about what you really love to do, and then think specifically about the things you’re proud of even though none of your friends or family members give a shit. I have a few of these things. One day I deadlifted 475 pounds and came home and proudly told my wife, Robin, and she said, “Huh.” Another day, Seth Godin agreed to speak for The Badass Project conference and I told her, and she said, “Huh.”

She cared more about the book than she did about deadlifting or Godin, but she could never care as much as I care. When I solved narrative problems that had been dogging me and told her about my solutions, she said a nicer version of “Huh.” My parents were interested, and a few friends nodded politely when they heard what I was working on… but that was it.

We’re human. We like validation. We like to do things that seem impressive and then have others tell us that we done good. When that doesn’t happen, it’s annoying, but here’s the rub: many of the truly important things in life are the things that bore everyone else. Those things are important specifically because nobody gives a shit, since that’s how you can be sure you’re doing them for you… and not for anyone else.

(Now, for context, I’m about to explain why my novel means so much to me. But in the spirit of this post, it’s likely that you won’t care. If that’s the case, you can skip it and resume reading at the “For You” subhead below. In fact, I’ll even give you a link. Click here if you don’t give a fuck. I won’t be offended.)

Below, in full, is the “Author’s Note” that appears at the end of The Bialy Pimps. The character names won’t mean much to you if you haven’t read the book yet, so just ignore them if needed and read for the big picture.

Author’s note

This book took me twelve and a half years to write.

Or, more accurately, it took me six months to write, then another twelve years to find the courage to “kill my darlings,” as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch put it.

See, this book isn’t a true story. That would be ridiculous. But it was inspired by real people and a real place, and those people and that place were very dear to me. I started writing this novel after I’d left the people and the place behind in college, begun grad school laboratory work, and started having some really delightful panic attacks because I had ended up where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to do.

When this happened back in 1999, it felt as if in a mere six months, my life had gone from being filled with laughter and fun and camaraderie to having very little of any of those. Without the love and support and companionship of my now-wife Robin (to whom this book is dedicated), I think I would have lost my mind. I hated my new job in a way I didn’t think it was possible to hate something, but it wasn’t venomous hate. It was giving-up hate. I felt like I’d discovered that the best years of my life were behind me, and that the future I had to look forward to — at least the part of the future that comprised work, which was a lot of it once you factored in my 2.5-hour round-trip commute — was nothing but bleak.

I wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to college and the way it had been. But because Superman wasn’t around to scream in anguish and then fly rapidly around the Earth to inexplicably roll time backward, I settled for going back in the privacy of my own mind. So I started to write down the stories we’d shared back then, back there.

At first, the people I wrote into my new manuscript were as they had been in life, and the place was as it had been in concrete and glass. That soon changed, as “Bingham’s” became its own new thing and the characters began to blend and melt into wildly distorted, wildly exaggerated amalgams of the people I’d once known. The plot built itself, our for-real regular “Captain Dipshit” became a villain, Dicky Kulane materialized out of nowhere, and the characters began to think and talk for themselves. And what had begun as a kind of journal became the fully fictional first draft of what you’ve just finished reading.

But I still remembered who the people had been in real life, and I still remembered every small feature of the place that Bingham’s had been based on. There really was a chipped-out shape in the paint that resembled someone the place had once known. There really was a pothole in the middle of the office floor. There really was, once upon a time, a real-life Ghetto Phone.

I’d written this sprawling epic that was partially true, partially blue-sky fabrication — or inspiration, depending on how you see it. And because it was so important to me, I couldn’t edit it. I could nudge it a bit and clean up the wording and “punch it up” as the Hollywood types say, but I couldn’t address the biggest problems. I couldn’t remove the minor characters so that the reader would remember the main ones. I couldn’t remove my recounting of High Street’s many colorful characters that weren’t relevant, but that meant something to me. I couldn’t change the autobiographical truths of some real-life moments so that they made sense in the context of a fictional tale.

In other words, I couldn’t commit to the harsh rewrite it would take to turn something I cared very much about into something that others might care about — and remain interested enough in to read all the way through. The first, second, and third drafts of this book were filled with my precious friends and memories. They were filled with my “darlings,” and I couldn’t bring myself to kill any of them.

Flash forward a decade or so.

In November of 2011, a friend of mine named Adrian Varnam insisted that I read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. He insisted, in fact, that he pay for a copy and have it shipped to me. I tried to protest, saying that I could pay for my own books, but he very firmly said, “I’m sending you this book,” and so I let it be. The book arrived, and I read it in a day. And after a week or two of letting Pressfield’s words rattle around in my brain, I realized something troubling.

I realized that The Bialy Pimps was still unfinished, no matter how much I told myself it was complete. I’d given birth to a major creative work, but I’d let Resistance stop me.

I went to my closet and pulled out the manuscript box containing the 180,000-word third draft of my ancient novel (on the box: “IT’S VERY GOOD! TRUST IT! DON’T MESS WITH IT!” and the codicil I’d neglected to add “… UNTIL YOU’RE READY TO KILL SOME UNNECESSARY DARLINGS!”), and began reading.

On the first read, I figured my task would consist mainly of excising the irrelevant parts. This was encouraging, because it meant I could do it relatively quickly. I’d lop out the sections that went nowhere and remove the huge, windy, introspective passages that were all about me telling myself that life was going to work out if I had faith. I’d put myself in the shoes of an objective reader and simply ask myself what bored me. And after a distance of twelve years — time during which I’d gotten and remained very happily married, had two delightful kids, quit the terrible job and created an online business that I enjoyed every minute of, gained some internet fame, and made many amazing new friends — I was every bit objective enough to do that.

But the job was far, far harder than I’d thought. My emotion at the time had masked major problems with the manuscript. Dicky Kulane, who was the only major character that hadn’t been inspired at all by a real person, read like a cardboard cutout. Dicky’s plotting and motivations were totally unbelievable. I cut-jumped around the novel as it suited me as a writer, leaving the reader hanging and confused. A lot of it was still very funny and very good to my older and hopefully wiser eye, but it needed a lot of work.

But I was on fire like I’ve seldom been. I rediscovered that place, now mostly fictional. I re-met those people, now personae in their own, imaginary right. From this, I found the energy for a top-to-bottom rewrite of easily two-thirds of the book, and did it on top of a full-load of “real, for-money business” I had on my plate. I got up early. I stayed up late. I squeezed in over six hours a day on the rewrite in addition to my work and family commitments, and in around seven weeks, the final draft was complete.

Well, almost. Until I published the thing, it would still be incomplete in the way that counted. So I told myself that no matter what happened with this novel, it deserved to at least see the light of day. It deserved, in Seth Godin’s terms, to be “shipped,” regardless of what would happen next. And I pushed through until that happened.

I hope you enjoyed this book, but if you didn’t, I won’t be offended because I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it the first time for me, and the second time for the book itself.

No matter what happens next, I’m proud of this book, and what it’s grown up to be. I’m pleased it had the courage to be born, and then to be reborn. I’m glad it was able to tell its story, and to become what it was meant to become.

For you

We spend a whole hell of a lot of our time doing the things that other people want us to do, or require us to do. Most people go to a job and do the work a boss wants them to do. Freelancers do what their clients want them to do. Entrepreneurs, who like to act like free spirits who are beholden to nobody, spend their time trying to do what the market wants, because that’s what’s profitable. We do the dishes because that’s what our spouse or roommate wants, we pay the bills because that’s what the utility companies want, and we play Candy Land with our kids because it’s what the kids want.

If you’ve got a creative endeavor in the works — no matter which form that “creation” takes — and if that endeavor is something that nobody other than you gives a shit about, then you must take the time to work on it.

You must finish it.

You must ship it, and get it out there into the world.

Maybe the world will magically start to care at that point, and maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve completed something that you did for you, and for nobody else.

I’d love it if the world fell in love with The Bialy Pimps and it became really popular, but it doesn’t matter if that happens because that’s not the reason I wrote it, and it’s sure as hell not the reason I took the time now, twelve years later, to spend hundreds of hours rewriting it and preparing it for publication.

I did it because it was my own foolish dream to write and publish a novel, and on Monday night I pushed the button that, after decades of dreaming, made that dream a reality.

And it was so damn worth it.

P.S: IMPORTANT NOTE… the book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: Even though I’ve said I don’t care what happens, I do kind of care and would love if you’d download The Bialy Pimps (remember, it’s free for the first days) because then I get to watch the numbers go up. Even self-realized people who do things “for themselves” aren’t above shallow ego boosts.

P.P.S: If you have an e-reader that won’t recognize the Kindle file format, shoot me an email.

By the end of the week, I’ll finish the final draft of a novel I’ve been writing. It will then go to a few people who’ve agreed to give it a first read for me, and unless one of them says something very surprising, The Bialy Pimps will be for sale on Kindle by the end of the month.

But there’s more to this story. See, I wrote the first word of that novel on October 15th of 1999. For the past twelve years, my previous “final” draft has been sitting in the back of my closet, forgotten.

So in case you’re keeping score, here’s what happened:

Man writes novel.
Man shops novel around to literary agents, to no avail.
Man puts novel away for over a decade.

Then, in the middle of his busiest time, with a shit-ton of “brand-aligned,” “profit-generating,” and “strategically sound” projects on his plate that have absolutely zilch to do with fiction, man pulls novel out of closet and begins spending thirty hours or more a week working on it instead of on his more important stuff.

Why? Because this project matters to me, and because it doesn’t make sense to dogmatically follow any rules about how things “should” be done — including your own.

Question your assumptions

Here’s something we believe: Making money is important.

I’m not going to argue with that. I love money. I want more of it. If you feel you have too much money, go ahead and send it my way. I’ll give it a good home.

But the assumption that follows the belief that making money is important is that we should spend a lot of our time on what we know will make us money, and fit things that seem less likely to make a buck into whatever spare time remains.

I don’t buy it. Not this time, anyway.

I have no idea if this book (which is humor, by the way… think Catch-22* and you’ll be in the ballpark) will make me any money. I don’t care. Several things happened recently that created a perfect storm of disobedience, compelling me to work on a long-forgotten and less-than-lucrative project instead of creating products and writing sales copy, regardless of what it meant for business as I know it.

For one, I’d always wanted to write fiction, but I’d given up on it. When I graduated college, I was trained to be a geneticist but my dream was to be a novelist. Unfortunately, everyone knows that you can’t actually make a living as a novelist. A few lucky people win the publishing lottery, and everyone else has to settle for doing it as a hobby.

But a new medium recently came into play. Kindle. The Kindle revolution meant that authors could publish in a meaningful way (and for no cost) without getting the approval of agents or publishers. You still had to write quality and it wasn’t a magic fountain of cash, but you didn’t have to jump through everyone else’s hoops, either. So long, gatekeepers.

It just so happened that I’d been investigating and talking about Kindle for a while now . You know, coincidentally.

I knew from talking to my friend Sean Platt that thanks to said Kindle revolution, it’s now entirely possible to actually make part (or all) of your living writing fiction, even if you’re not Stephen King. Unthinkable!

And there was one more thing. With a decade’s distance from the first drafts of my novel and a hell of a lot of practice writing, I finally knew how to rewrite my book in a way that pleased me (pleased me a LOT, as it turned out) and make it feel ready to ship.

A perfect storm.

But there was one problem, and you can guess what it was.

Ridiculous.

I’m a business guy. A marketing guy. If you’re really generous, maybe I’m a “thought leader.”

What I’m not is a fiction writer. Not in the eyes of the internet, anyway.

It makes no sense for me to release a novel. Once I finish this one, it makes no sense for me to begin another, which I’m going to do. And it sure as hell didn’t make sense for me to push back some very relevant, very current tasks and spend six or eight hours a day working on a project that I hadn’t touched in twelve years.

Or did it?

I’ve mentioned how I’m okay with being abnormal because the usual definition of “normal” sucks. In the same way, I’m okay with doing stuff that doesn’t make sense because “making sense” is just someone’s opinion.

Who says that if you’re a writer, you shouldn’t write whatever strikes you, even if it’s a departure from your norm?

Who says that you shouldn’t follow where inspiration compels you to go?

Who says that you can’t be a novelist and… and whatever I am currently?

I don’t care if this book makes me any money, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might do so anyway. I’ve got a track record. I’ve got a network. I’ve got a readership. I understand marketing and promotion. And, now that I’m remembering how much I love writing fiction, I’m going to keep writing books and keep putting them out, which gives me more chances to hit the big dartboard. I have a sneaking suspicion that given persistence and patience, there’s no reason that book sales couldn’t eventually be a significant portion of my business, just as it is for not only J.A. Konrath, but also a hell of a lot of the people who comment on his blog. I’ve never heard of most of these people, and yet they’re making hundreds or thousands of sales each month. That’s paltry in the old world of book publishing, but it’s entirely livable with Kindle’s 70% author royalties.

Twelve years ago, I wanted to make my living as a fiction writer. After a twelve-year detour, I might actually be able to do that. But this way, this time, it would be even better than I’d imagined in my twenties. Back then, I’d have simply been a novelist. Today, I’m a blogger/business guy. And going forward, I can be both.

Maybe it doesn’t “make sense” for someone like me to write and publish a novel.

But I’m the one defining the terms here, and I say that ignoring all of the above simply because some rule says I shouldn’t mix fiction with business is the thing that wouldn’t make sense.

Question the rules

You may remember my course Question the Rules. Well, I’ve been planning a 2.0 release — adding new modules and new interviews, spiffing it up for the new 2012 kids — for months now, but never quite got around to it. I even did a new interview with Julien Smith for it this summer that’s absolutely amazing, but I’ve been sitting on it. The QTR 2.0 project just never felt very urgent. But recently, while working on this novel that it doesn’t make sense for me to be working on, all of that stuff about how arbitrary rules hold us back started to resurface in my head.

It suddenly started to feel urgent.

As the world and work continues to evolve, we need to look harder than ever at the rules that we follow, and decide if we should be following them at all.

2011 was a tough year for a lot of people. The economy still sucks. Everything is made in China. Companies are still laying people off. Many people still hate their jobs. People are still spending more of their time doing stuff that they don’t like than they spend doing stuff that they do like. Depression rates are climbing.

That’s “normal.” That’s what you get if you follow all of the rules.

And while I was working on my novel that doesn’t make sense, setting aside my logical and profitable projects because 1) I believe that I can be both “a business guy” and “a successful novelist” and 2) because I fucking felt like it, I figured now was the time to start talking again about doing things in unconventional ways.

Question the Rules, which has the lengthy but rather descriptive tagline “The nonconformist’s punk rock, DIY, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating the business and life you really want, starting with what you already have,” will launch in its 2.0 version next month.

Existing QTR members will simply get the new content for free. New folks will be able to get it all for a steep discount during the launch. And dude… the amount of content we have up there is just getting stupid. It’s going to be nearly 50 hours of assumption-challenging, life-changing information before I’m done, from a lot of the best minds in the business. (And in life, and in art, and in travel, etc.) PLUS a bunch of bonuses. It’s kind of ridiculous.

And you know what? Fuck it. Here’s a signup form, right in the middle of this post. I’m questioning the rule that says I should put it at the end. Go ahead and drop your email address in the box below if you want to know when QTR 2.0 launches, so that you can get it at launch-week prices:

Email:

Here’s what I think might be true.

I think that if you’re failing, it may be because you’re playing by rules that you don’t have to play by.

I think that if you think you can’t have what you want, there’s a decent chance that you’re not actually pursuing what you truly want. Once you do some introspection, you may find that your goals are closer than you think.

I think that even if you’ve never realized it before, the fact that you read this blog means that you are seriously punk rock. If you keep trying to follow the normal, non-punk way of doing things, you’re going to be frustrated and bored.

I think that if you’re unhappy with the hand that you’ve been dealt, you can reshuffle, or you can play it a different way. Are you holding a five and a two of different suits in the card game of life? Fuck it. Start playing a new game. Call a five/two off-suit a “Royal Awesome” and declare yourself the winner.

I think that even though there’s no reason for an internet marketing, business coach, thought leader kind of a guy to begin publishing novels, that I’m going to fucking do it anyway.

There are rules that it makes sense to follow, but only you can decide which ones they are.

* In case you’re actually paying enough attention to notice that I have described my book in the past as “zombies meet Fight Club,” that’s a different book. That’s the next one.

If you’re one of those nitpicky assholes who likes to try to catch people screwing up and then tell them Nyah-nyah, you did this wrong, you probably noticed that I’ve fallen short on my promise to try six 30-day trials during 2011 and were all set to yell at me.

I tried biphasic sleep, the Slow-Carb diet, releasing resistance, quasi-minimalism, fighting email addiction, and… and?

And nothing. And 2011 is almost over.

Well, ha-ha! I did a sixth trial already and just haven’t said anything until now… with eleven days in the year to spare.

Here’s what it was: from mid-November until mid-December (to embrace the holiday spirits of both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I suppose), I did a favor each day for friends… with the requirement that they did nothing for me in return.

A little background

I have a confession to make. I’m a little selfish.

I try not to be, but I’m driven and I have big goals, and one of the ways you maintain drive and make progress on big goals is to keep your eye on the prize — which means watching what YOU do and the results YOU are getting very closely, often to the exclusion of other people’s concerns. I think that the vast majority of achievers are in danger of being overly selfish — without meaning to be or wanting to be — for this very reason.

(In fact, if you’re thinking that I’m wrong and that there are a lot of selfless achievers, I’d argue that they’re selfish too… but in a very specific way. A person who wants to feed a million people has a plan to make it happen, and has to stay focused on that plan just like any other goal. Think there are any great world-changers and philanthropists whose families sometimes felt neglected while said philanthropists were out doing good for others? Think any of those great people were sometimes seen as bullheaded or unyielding? I sure do.)

So sometimes, I’ll be trying to go after something, and I’ll look back too late and I’ll say with regret, “Ooh, I didn’t really even thank that person for helping me.” Or, “That person really cheered me on, but I don’t think I’ve ever cheered them on.”

I’ve even been mad at people who haven’t dropped everything they’re doing to be impressed by something I’ve achieved. How selfish is that, when they had a big thing last month that I didn’t even notice?

So, noticing this trend, I thought about trying to reciprocate more and be a better team player from now on.

But that didn’t feel like enough. The karmic scale was out of balance thanks to all the times I’d inadvertently taken without giving.

For a change, I wanted to do a bunch of stuff for people and get nothing back.

What’s in it for me?

A lot of the people who knew I was doing this experiment nodded their heads with understanding when I told them and said something like, “So it’s a networking thing. You’re strengthening your connections.”

And that would have made sense. I think that keeping your network karmically balanced is a good plan (see how my client Ben Rubin explains it here), but that’s not what I was doing. Doing good turns so that people would “owe me one” is honestly not what I was after… especially since a lot of the people involved weren’t business connections anyway.

That said, there’s a lot here that’s splitting hairs.

After doing 30 favors for people and asking nothing in return, might I expect to have better connections, and might I benefit from said connections later on? Sure. But that’s not why I was doing it.

This is something Seth Godin talks about in his book Linchpin: giving gifts. The linchpin gives gifts of him- or herself, and that creates an economy based on art and generosity. But the linchpin doesn’t give gifts in order to receive. The idea is to give freely, and to receive freely.

So yeah, I suppose I might receive. I kind of hope I don’t, though, because I have enough without these favors coming back to me, and I’d rather not mar the intention of the trial.

How I went about it

The idea was super-simple. I sent the following to a bunch of people who have done generous things for me in the past:

At the beginning of this year, I decided to do six 30-day challenges. To end the year, I want to do one unreciprocated favor for a friend for 30 days.

So, as a friend, I’m asking you to let me do a favor for you… and I specifically ask that you do nothing for me in return regarding this favor.

It can be pretty much anything you’d consider to be a “favor” if you asked someone to do it. I can’t walk your dog or pick up your mail or water your plants while you’re on vacation if I don’t live where you live… but I can look over something you’ve written, connect you with someone else I know, make a testimonial or give you a review, participate in your XYZ, give you my recommendation re: the latest widget, give you advice on something I know well… whatever.

If this seems like a strange request to you, then you don’t know me very well. I’ve done much, much stranger things.

A few wiseasses replied with joke requests, like “no more naked photos of you in my email,” and a few more replied that they didn’t need anything. Some didn’t reply at all, necessitating some creativity (more on that in a minute) and a second round of emails.

I did get a few “Nothing, thanks” replies, but because people could tell that I was seriously trying to do this, I tended to get a variant on the theme: “I don’t know what I need. Let me think about it.”

I even had to talk one person into it. He didn’t feel comfortable receiving without giving, which really proved the point of the whole experiment. This guy ALWAYS cheers for and supports me, and wanted nothing. What the hell?

I had to remind a lot of people, too. Hey, remember this email? What can I help you with? And after sending a few emails like that (not to the same people, though. I didn’t want to be a pest) I started trying to be creative and suggest things I could do for them until we came to something that felt right.

What I did

I didn’t explicitly say whether or not these favors would be confidential, but I figure it’s better safe than sorry. So with the exception of a few public cases, I won’t say who requested what.

But that said, here’s the kinds of things I ended up doing:

• Telling others about their good stuff
• Giving advice (I gave a lot of advice)
• Reviewing people’s writing or projects and giving testimonials to people who’ve done good work for me
• Reading/looking through people’s stuff and giving my opinion
• Various personal tasks for the non-businessy people on my list
• Brainstorming with them
• Creating something amusing. One person wanted a funny photo and one wanted a funny video. I can tell you about one of these because he shared it on Twitter; Tony Clark asked me to draw him a picture of Lumpy Space Princess and Lady Rainicorn from the cartoon Adventure Time. OMG the resulting artwork was a masterpiece.
• I also decided to do a favor for my email list as a whole, because those are the clients and friends who make my business possible. So I did a no-strings-attached and zero-promotion Q&A call for them, and told them to ask me anything.
• One person said that he had all he could want, so he asked me to do something for someone else without that person knowing it was me.
• Two people hemmed and hawed but couldn’t really come up with anything, so I told them I’d make a donation to a charity I knew they supported.
• I did some technical fix-it jobs.
• Sonia Simone’s request was for me to record a Third Tribe seminar. I couldn’t believe this didn’t qualify as her doing me a favor.

That last one was interesting, and really brought the issue of reciprocation and synergy back to the fore. How could I not benefit from a Third Tribe seminar? But Sonia needed the content as much as I could use the exposure, proving that some of the best arrangements really do benefit everyone.

What happened

Nothing, and that was the point.

Have I seen any effect from the favors I did? No. I don’t want effects. People have asked me how it went, and my answer has been, “Well, I did the favors.” Sometimes I add “It was interesting” or “It felt good,” but that’s not the answer people are looking for. They want to hear what I got out of it.

When I did the biphasic sleep trial, I could point to something that affected my life: Interesting, but not for me. When I did Slow Carb, the same was true: It was close to a good fit, and it eased me into Paleo — and Paleo is a game-changer.

But this? What did it do? What has occurred? Nothing.

Well, nothing tangible. Maybe it’s realigned the karmic scales, and maybe it will improve my friendships. Maybe it’s shifted my perspective, and maybe it’ll make me more aware of reciprocity in the future. And I guess that’s not nothing.

Happy holidays, everyone. May you give as freely as you receive, and appreciate the joy of both.

Sometimes I run into people I haven’t seen since high school, or I meet someone new, and they ask me what it is that I do for a living. And so I tell them: I’m a blogger.

I used to pussy-foot around. I’d try to explain the substance of what it is I do (“I’m a writer.” “I’m a coach.” “I create online courses.”), but all of those things invite further inquiry, and eventually we end up getting into more questions — Who do you write for? What kind of people do you coach? What kind of courses? — and so I sigh and say what I start with today: “I’m a blogger.”

And that’s a shit answer, because it frustrates people.

You tell people that you’re a lawyer, and they get it. A little drawer opens in their mind and you go into it. Or you say you’re a paper salesman. Or a drill press operator. Or a social worker. People understand these things. They may not know the details, but they have a basic understanding of where a drill press operator fits and what he or she does. You operate a drill press. Probably in a big factory. You come home from work dirty, you probably earn X, and you’re likely in a union.

You tell people you’re a normal, predictable thing, and their brain gets all happy because it doesn’t have to do any more work. It’s like there’s a form in their mind that contains the essential information about all of your stats, and knowing your occupation populates that form from start to end in one fell swoop. They may not be right about the car you drive, but they can be confident that they’re close. If you’re a drill press operator and drive a new Mercedes and like opera, they’re going to be shocked, for instance. Or if you’re a banker and spend your weekends BMX racing.

You give people a convenient handle and they know what to do with you. But “blogger”? What the fuck is that?

When you tell people you’re a blogger, they don’t know how to populate the form. They don’t know where you go, so they can’t slot you into the mental box they have for you. You’re not neat and tidy. You become an open loop, a loose end in their mind. And people hate loose ends. Loose ends require mental energy. The brain likes to tag things with sweeping judgments — good, bad, happy, sad, fun, boring, tedious, difficult, easy — and to not worry about shades of gray.

(Imagine having a huge pile of receipts at tax time, and having a corresponding set of file folders that match up with where those expenses go on the tax forms. You sort through the entire pile of receipts, putting each one in place… but then there’s one big receipt left that doesn’t fit on any line. You’re going to need to call your accountant or maybe the IRS about this receipt. You aren’t even sure how to explain the receipt to them. Maybe you’ll have to drive down and show it to them, or contact the merchant on a 3-way call. Now: How much do you hate that receipt?)

If you tell people you’re a blogger, you become that receipt. Nobody knows where to put you, and how to profile you. What are your political views? How do you spend your free time? Are you fun and outrageous or boring? What are your kids probably like? What kind of house do you live in, and what kind of car do you drive? Do you even have a car, or are you one of those hippies who bikes everywhere?

Personally, I kind of enjoy confusing people, but if you spend enough time around people with orderly life descriptions and don’t know enough about your own field, you can start to feel that way to yourself. Where do you fit? What’s to be expected in “the blogging life” and what’s not? What’s working? What’s not working as well as it used to? Who are the others like you… and what are they like?

If you’d even consider telling people “I’m a blogger,” you’re probably used to being weird and you’re probably comfortable outside of the normal nine dots, but there’s a limit. If you’re totally out there on your own — and are out there on your own all the time — then things just gets harder and harder.

So how to do you deal?

Well, you meet others. You learn your craft. You treat blogging like a business instead of a hobby. Even if you never answer other people’s nagging questions (“How do you know what to write about?” “How do you make money?” “How do you build your traffic and keep people coming back?” “Are others like you making a living at this, and how are they doing it if so?”), you’ll at least know the answers for yourself.

You can learn those things by poking around online, but because I’m in charge of BlogWorld’s Virtual Ticket this year, I’m shamelessly going to suggest you register for a conference instead.

Yeah. I went there. But keep reading.

Ahem. You might have missed an important bulletin.

I suspect you might have missed my big announcement about becoming the head and the face (basically everything above the neck) of BlogWorld’s online program. And if you did miss it, it’s probably because I haven’t made a big deal about it, but that was dumb, because this is something that I’m really proud of and really excited about. Go ahead and give that announcement a read. I’ll wait.

See, if you tell people you’re a blogger, most people will ask what that means. You might not have figured out yet how to answer that question, and when it actually comes up for me, I do a lot of hemming and hawing too.

But if I were honest with these people, my answer would always be, “It means I do cool shit with cool people.”

That’s why I love my job: I’ve met a lot of cool people, and I do almost nothing that isn’t totally fucking awesome.

And how did I meet these cool people?

By going to conferences and learning my craft.

And what’s totally fucking awesome?

The BlogWorld Virtual Ticket.

You see where this is going.

Totally fucking awesome.

So how did all this awesomeness happen, you ask?

Well, as with any success, it started with irritating the right people.

About a year ago, I did something that pissed off BlogWorld Dave, BlogWorld Rick, and I’d guess also BlogWorld Deb. I didn’t mean to piss them off, but I was totally naive (that was my old slogan: TOTALLY FUCKING NAIVE) and made a faux pas that resulted in a few phone calls.

Ultimately, we came to an agreement wherein I wasn’t a total asshole and then nine months later, Rick says, “Hey, you’re doing some cool stuff and we’ve already spent time determining that you’re not a total asshole, so how about you kick the Virtual Ticket up a notch?” And I was like Bam! and Rick was like Awesome! and then we high-fived and rode sharks through hoops of fire.

This is how I met BlogWorld.

And my task about kicking it up a notch? That’s the fun part.

I’m not going to go through the entire Virtual Ticket sales pitch here because I did it so well here, but suffice to say that this isn’t your father’s virtual event. When we started working on the VT project (we = Jess and I; you know Jess from The Badass Project?), we basically went through this thought process:

Most online versions of live events end up being “the event on tape.”

If the BlogWorld Virtual Ticket was simply “BlogWorld on tape,” that would be TOTALLY FUCKING LAME… and remember, what we’re shooting for is TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME. So there was a gap. I don’t want to work on lame shit, no matter how well it pays.

So we said, “How do we make it awesome?”

And we said, “We make it as much like ‘being there’ as possible.”

(In other words, providing the content of a live event is not enough. We had to provide the experience as well.)

And so we got all excited and said, “We can make it just like attending live!”

And then we corrected ourselves and said, “What are you, an idiot? No virtual event is like being there live, no matter how awesome it is.”

And then we got all mad about that and were like, “Don’t call us an idiot, idiot. We just meant that we can replicate a lot of the experience and that’ll be way cool.”

And then a fight ensued. Luckily, we won.

But the end result? I hope you’ll agree it’s totally fucking awesome.

Check this out, yo.

The Virtual Ticket already had content in spades. You get over 100 hours of recorded session content, and you have access to it for a full year. That’s the “BlogWorld on tape” part, and even though it wouldn’t be enough by itself in my opinion, it’s still an insane amount of material. What other info product has 100+ hours of professional sessions presented by the best minds in the business?

But then, on top of that, we added a ton of extras that will give you as much of the experience of BlogWorld as possible.

We’ve got:

• Live video from the conference hall floor (or quasi-live if the internet underperforms on us).
• Exclusive interviews with the bigwigs.
• Random behind-the-scenes footage, wherein I attempt to catch Sonia Simone in line at a Starbucks in an US Weekly style “Blogging stars: They’re just like us!” moment.
• Q&A with presenters via social media.
• Quasi-networking opportunities with other VT attendees through social media.
• Brief, on-the-spot interviews with every single presenter who isn’t able to outrun me.
• A host and MC for the whole event. (I propose myself as that host and MC, I accept, I congratulate myself.)

So yeah, I want you to sign up… but the reason you should is because it’s totally fucking awesome.

So, okay… brass tacks.

The price is $247. For 100+ hours of content and all that experience stuff I mentioned.

But in true internet marketing fashion, the price goes up $100 on Friday. Don’t ask me why we torture you like this. It’s just something we do, like playing checkers or setting fire to buildings. It’s a personality flaw or something.

So if you want in, best do it before Friday’s price hike.

Here’s the link. Click it.

If you went to BlogWorld live, it’d cost you thousands of dollars between travel and hotel and a pass. This is like 1/10th of what you might pay.

If you’ve thought, “I wish I could go to BlogWorld but I just can’t make it,” the Virtual Ticket your answer.

(“Answer to what?” you ask? Why, to the question, “What is totally fucking awesome and doesn’t smell like fish?” of course.)

Here’s the link again, because another thing we do on the internet is repeat links because we suspect you missed the one above or somehow feel that repeated exposure will weaken your resolve, like if we said, “C’mon, do it!” and you were like “Nah,” and so we said “C’mon” and this time you were like, “You make a good point” and then did what we wanted.

But if you want to sign up, I’d do it now, before the price goes up on Friday.

So… I hope to “see” you there.

(Oh, and if you’re going live, you’ll get an email in a week or two giving you the opportunity to add the Virtual Ticket to your registration for a stupidly cheap price. So you’re not out in the cold. Unless you live at the North Pole. And if you do, say, “Wassup?” to Santa for me.)

P.S: If you’re wondering why this post started with ruminations on being in an unclassifiable profession and ended with a pitch for a conference, I’m wondering the same thing. So I can’t answer your question. I started writing and this is how it came out. What… do you think I have a plan or something?

This past weekend, on Sunday, I participated in a half Ironman triathlon. For those of you unfamiliar with triathlon, that’s a 1.2 mile swim followed by a 56 mile bike ride followed by a half marathon run (13.1 miles).

I spent much of the previous day getting my stuff ready, crossing off checklists, and planning.

I got up at 4:30am.

I drove nearly 3 hours.

I set up, got into my wetsuit, and, at the signal, began two large laps around buoys in a cold, muddy lake.

I got out, swapped gear, and rode the first 18.6 mile loop on my bike.

And then, after completing the second loop, totally out of gas and nauseated, out of metabolic fuel but unable to make myself eat or drink anything, I decided that this event had beaten me.

I packed up my stuff, unceremoniously returned my timing chip (which hadn’t been working anyway, I found out), and walked back to my car several hours ahead of schedule.

After months of preparation, many, many hours of work, and a $130 entry fee, I’d failed.

Not. Fucking. Cool.

How to deal

The entire trip home, I alternately steamed, pondered, and tried to decide what to do next.

We all fail. I’ve written repeatedly about failure, and typically my advice is the same coachy-sounding stuff that, this time, wasn’t helping my mental state at all: Learn and adapt. Dust yourself off and get back on the horse. If it means something to you, don’t give up. But somehow this felt different. This wasn’t my normal breed of “try and see” failure. This was deeper. Somehow it was worse. I had to process it. I had to fight past my initial reaction (anger) and get at what was beneath it.

My situation around this bit of failure was, of course, unique to me, but the process is something that anyone can use. So hang in there, and maybe you’ll learn how to deal with something that’s been eating at you, too.

Failure sucks. And when we face it, our choices ultimately come down to two:

1. Try again.
2. Bail.

Sometimes trying again is appropriate. Sometimes quitting is appropriate. The trick is to figure out when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

So here, in non-random order, are my six steps to processing and overcoming failure.

STEP 1: Determine the reasons for your failure.

You’ve got to know your enemy.

Why did you fail?

Answer that question. Be honest. This is no time to worry about looking like a jerk for making excuses. Go ahead and make excuses, but call them “reasons” instead. If you were sick, that’s a reason you might have failed at a physical endeavor. If you didn’t have enough money, that’s a reason a business might have flopped. If you simply weren’t in good enough shape to run a race, that’s probably the reason you didn’t win.

A “reason” becomes an “excuse” when you mentally claim victory in a magical, nonexistent world where the excuse didn’t get in your way and, as a result, you didn’t fail. We’re not doing that in this step. We’re admitting we failed, but figuring out why.

(Spoiler: Later on, you get to try again after the reason/excuse is eliminated… or you get to accept the failure regardless of the reason/excuse. You don’t get to say, “I failed because of X, so without X, I wouldn’t fail.” That’s claiming victory in fairy world. That’s where a reason becomes a bullshit excuse. Don’t do that. It’s a douchebag move.)

While you’re at it, go ahead and also list the reasons you felt like hell after failing. Knowing your emotional triggers will help you separate fact from gut reactions.

In my case, here are the reasons I believe I failed at my half Ironman:

1. I was riding the wrong kind of bike.
2. It was a really windy day.

Remember, I’m not making excuses here. I’m not saying, “I consider myself to have won this if I mentally eliminate the wind and give myself a better bike.” I’m simply analyzing the reasons I believe things went sour. If I don’t know these things, I can’t attempt to correct them.

See, 99.99% of people who do triathlons (especially the longer ones) use a road bike or a tri bike. I, because I’m new to the sport and not eager to spend $2k yet on a fancy-ass bike, decided to fit the hybrid bike I already owned with slick tires and use that. I knew I’d be slower, but I didn’t care about placing well… and besides, I’d trained on that bike for months.

What I hadn’t counted on was how bad a hybrid is in the wind, meaning that my two reasons for failure were working together synergistically. We had 20 MPH winds on the day of my tri, and sitting upright on a hybrid (instead of low on a road bike) was like putting a sail to the wind. Add to that the increased rolling friction and the extra weight and you’ve got a disaster. The people on road bikes were having a hard time, but I, on my hybrid, was being lapped on a 19-mile course. That’s a huge difference.

STEP 2: Imagine trying again while mentally removing the reasons for your failure, and determine your level of confidence under those revised conditions.

Still being careful not to cross the line between objective analysis and douchebaggy excuse-making, ask yourself, “If I changed or eliminated the things I just listed, do I think I could do it?”

You don’t get to tell people that you could do it. You only get to figure out how confident YOU feel that you could do it.

In my case, the answer to “Do I think I could do it on a better bike and/or with less wind?” was a big yes.

If you’re a big yes, begin working on convincing yourself.

I had three big reasons why I felt certain I could do it under those revised conditions:

1. Failing was a total surprise.
The biggest reason this failure hurt me so bad — much worse than the many failures I have regularly in the course of doing business — was because I didn’t see it coming. It honestly never occurred to me that I might fail. Mentally I was there.

And why was I so there mentally, you ask? Well…

2. I had done much harder workouts many times.
On Sunday, I dropped out after riding 37 miles. Combined with the swim, this meant that I was quitting after about 3.5 hours of effort. That’s a long time, but I’d done several workouts longer than 5 hours in recent weeks, including a 100-mile bike ride (on the hybrid bike!) that took me almost 7. I’d swum 1.2 miles several times. I’d ridden over 56 miles repeatedly. I’d done back-to-back “brick” workouts where I did one sport right after the other. All of this together made me feel like Sunday’s conditions of bike + wind + hills (did I forget to mention the hills?) were a sort of perfect storm of ineptitude that was unlikely to repeat itself.

3. I’d never quit before.
The worst part of all of this was I hadn’t been pulled off the course. I hadn’t sustained an injury. I simply became incapable of going further, and had had to make the conscious decision to throw in the towel. But as a convincing reason to move forward, this had punch because I have never before quit a long run or bike ride or any endurance activity because it was hard. I’ve quit if I’ve felt an injury, but never before due to fatigue. And the fact that it had never happened before in workouts up to 7 hours long meant that it wasn’t terribly likely to happen again as long as I was uninjured.

With all of my data gathered, my objective opinion (well, as objective as can be expected) was that given the right bike and at least reasonable winds, I could do it.

STEP 3: Determine if it’s worth trying again.

Seth Godin’s short book The Dip is all about knowing when and which endeavors to quit. Quitting isn’t bad in and of itself. Quitting things that matter because they’re hard is cowardly, but quitting pointless things that consume energy you could use better elsewhere is wise. You just need to know which applies to your situation.

My answer wasn’t straightforward. It involved asking a very hard question: Why do I do this stuff, anyway?

I didn’t hope to win. I didn’t think I’d ever get a medal, or a plaque. When I did an earlier, shorter triathlon with Joel Runyon, we hadn’t even paid attention to the closing ceremony. We just ate and left. I’m not in it for the glory, the fame, the money, or the adulation or respect.

This is still something I’m figuring out, but as near as I can tell, I do it because I want to find the edges of my own abilities. I want to know what it feels like to push until it’s uncomfortable, because I think that your life’s edges are where you learn what your life is all about.

Which meant, basically, that I was doing it to see if I could do it.

So if I knew I could do it, I could let myself off the hook and not actually repeat the half Ironman. But how can you know if you can do something you haven’t done? I could feel confident, yes. But I couldn’t KNOW.

I had two choices: Quit and be satisfied with not knowing, or remove the obstacles and try again… and know for sure, one way or the other.

The answer to this is simple. I want to know.

STEP 4: Decide.

The inelegant way to sum up this step is: Shit or get off the pot.

In other words, if you determine that you want to try again, book it and do it. If you decide to quit, make your peace with that decision and quit. Don’t stay in no-man’s land.

For me, I decided that I’m going to do it again, on my own if I have to. I don’t get to waffle. I get to find a date, get it together, and do it. Find out. Then let it go.

The worst thing you can do with a failure is to leave it hanging, undecided and unfinished, like an open wound. Either heal the arm or amputate it; don’t simply ignore it and let it fester. That’s what Heroin Bob did in SLC Punk, and you saw how much it fucked him up.

The following two steps apply only if you’ve decided to forge on and try again.

STEP 5: Remove the reasons for your failure.

In step 1, you listed the reasons for your failure. In this step, you get to mitigate, remove, lessen, and overcome those reasons.

Failed because you were out of shape? Get in shape.

Failed because you ran out of money? Get more money.

Failed because you went right when you should have gone left? Remember to go left.

In my case, I’d failed because I was using a heavy, upright hybrid bike with wide tires, and because it was an extremely windy day. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I don’t think my physical capability was a damning factor.

Solution? Somehow, I need to get my hands on a proper road bike. Oh, and I want to be sure that I don’t reschedule my event during a hurricane.

STEP 6: Just do it.

Try again. Try version 2.0.

If you fail again, run through the steps again. Maybe you’ll want to try a third time, or maybe it simply isn’t worth it.

Each time, it’s up to you.

And me? I’m going to do my half Ironman again. Soon. I still don’t totally understand why this matters to me, but it does, and the cost at this point is low. Really, my only cost is the time it takes to try one more time, and in light of that, I’m not ready to stand up yet, after all this effort, and decide consciously to quit.

If I fail the next time, using a road bike on a less windy day, I’ll have to go through this process again and — without a bike or the wind to blame for my failure — will only be able to conclude that I’ve failed because it’s simply beyond me.

I hope that won’t happen. I don’t believe it will.

Wish me luck.

…

POSTSCRIPT

I wrote the above on Tuesday.

Wednesday night, I drove out to a bike shop an hour away and rented a road bike for $50.

Thursday, four days after my big failure, I tried again. I made my own half Ironman — an unofficial combination of 42 1/4 laps in a 25-yard pool, a 56-mile bike loop, and a 13.1 mile run loop — and I had another go at it.

It’s now Friday night, and I’ve just made final edits to the above and written this little P.S.

This time it didn’t beat me. And I feel much better.

For my August trial (bleeding into early September because I started late and because I’m all nonconformisty and stuff about things like trial start/stop dates), I limited myself to checking email twice per day.

Sounds simple, I know. So simple that it doesn’t feel worthy of a 30-day trial, even. Seems like it’s the kind of thing you just decide to do one day, like switch flavors of gum.

Well, it may seem that way, but this was a vital trial. More vital, even, than choosing gum flavors. And I’d just like to say one thing:

Everyone should do this. Immediately.

Email and internet fasting

What looked at first like a simple act of scheduling and discipline was actually something else entirely: It was a fast.

One of the reasons people fast is to find out what food means to them. When you fast, you start to realize that food is fuel first and foremost, and that all of the other things we attach to food are emotional hangers-on that have nothing to do with its real purpose.

You get popcorn when you see a movie because you’ve created an emotional hook between movies and popcorn and start to feel that joy comes from combining them.

Family meals come to mean bonding and love, especially in certain cultures.

Cookies or ice cream mean release from stress. And so on and so on.

A main reason for a lot of my trials has been to uncouple the true meaning of things from the emotional or social add-ons I’ve added to them. Most of the trials boil down to the question, “How much do I really need X?” When you fast, you find out just how much you truly NEED food, versus how much you’ve learned to WANT food. My quasi-minimalism trial was an attempt to clarify, in my own mind, just how much I NEEDED “stuff.” And this email trial was an attempt to clarify how much I NEEDED to monitor email, social media, and the internet in general.

So, for the past five weeks or so I’ve allowed myself to only check in on my various communication addictions twice per day. If you want to know the rules I set for myself and my reasons for doing this, they’re here, but the following are what I learned from my trial… and it’s some game-changing stuff as far as I’m concerned:

1. I was truly addicted to checking email and social media.

I’m not qualified, medically, to explain the psychology and physiology of addiction, but I think I’m qualified enough to recognize it in myself when I feel it.

During the first days, I felt itchy and nervous about not checking in on email, worried that I was missing something by not monitoring things more diligently. But even more than that, I simply wanted the activity. It felt like how quitting smokers say they want something to do with their hands in the absence of a cigarette.

The nervous feeling abated significantly after a few days, but this discovery alone was enough to make this trial a part of my life permanently. I don’t like the idea of being addicted to anything.

2. The vast, vast, vast majority of my email, social media, and internet activity seemed to be about distraction, procrastination, and the perceived need to fill my time — rather than actual accomplishment.

When I started checking my email twice a day, I found that I could get through that email — and Twitter, and Facebook, and the other online places I spend my time — in 45 minutes or an hour per day. I never tracked how much time I spent on it before, but I’d guess it was 3 hours per day or more… and I was still constantly behind and felt that I was never able to truly stay caught up.

So where did that time go? What did I cut out, if, during this trial, I was able to get through it in roughly a quarter of the time?

Answer: I cut out fluff. Distraction. Busywork. Totally and completely WASTED TIME.

I used email as a way of breaking up a harder task that I knew was important but that required concerted effort. “I’ve written a paragraph of this post,” I’d think. “Maybe I should check my email to see what came in.” And usually something fluffy would have come in, like a Remember the Milk reminder about running with my sister in the morning. So I’d note it and delete it, and then decide I might as well check Twitter while I was at it. And hey, speaking of running, I’d been getting curious about ultramarathons and wondered how you’d train for something like that, and so I’d do a few minutes of quick research.

Eventually, I’d return to my task. I’d write a few more paragraphs and then repeat my distraction as a reward.

In this manner, I’d finish a piece of writing in, say, five or six hours. Of that time, two hours might have been solid effort. One or two hours were distraction time, in which I didn’t even make serious headway on email but instead dealt only with the simplest messages and then got sidetracked. And the final one or two hours was in re-gaining my momentum — getting back on track with my writing after mentally careening off in the opposite direction.

But while I had my “no email or other internet distractions” rules in place, I couldn’t go there. So I’d write the piece straight through and finish in two hours.

That’s not an exaggeration. At all.

3. I realized I don’t actually like email as much as I thought I did.

This is where this trial really began to resemble a fast, where I truly found out what email meant to me, the way fasters often discover that food is fuel.

I’d always thought that I enjoyed email, and no wonder — I used it as a constant reprieve, a place I went to over and over and over again when what I was doing was difficult or unpleasant. Email and social media were vacation destinations I could visit whenever I wanted, for a quick escape.

Once email could no longer be that vacation, I realized that I don’t actually enjoy the “guts” of email… i.e., the part that is about reading and responding to messages, divorced from the emotional high of “taking a break” or “checking to see what good stuff has shown up.” Stripped to its utilitarian core, email became a chore rather than a fun vacation.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I do enjoy communicating with people and shooting the breeze, but I started to look at new messages in terms of the time they would take to reply to rather than as constant “time candy.” You know how sometimes your best friend will call, and you enjoy talking but know it’s going to take up a crapload of time if you go too deep or do it too often? That’s the basic idea.

4. I realized I had way, way more time than I thought I did.

This has been a busy summer, and there have been days where I worked from 6-9am, did email from 9-9:30, and then accomplished absolutely nothing else. And yet, despite a number of days like this, I keep getting more and more important stuff done, and getting it done faster.

When you know how to make the best use of your time and prioritize your most important tasks and then can focus, totally uninterrupted, on those key tasks for only a few hours a day, it’s amazing what can happen.

With email confined to specific focused times and removed as a distraction, I began to realize that I could probably consistently run my current business in only 4-5 hours a day.

And because I haven’t yet found more epic shit to fill that time that I didn’t know I had, I found myself using it in one of two ways: Sometimes I’d work on projects that had been back-burnered forever, and sometimes I’d simply play or read, either alone or with my kids.

So what does this mean to you?

It means you should do this. Seriously. For real. Honestly. Fo sho.

If you’re worried about missing important stuff, ask those likely to bring you key stuff to call you or text you when something is red-hot instead of emailing. Start using a good appointment calendar (Google’s calendar and others will alert you to upcoming events with popups). Don’t “keep your to-do list in your inbox,” which is one of Charlie Gilkey‘s pet peeves; instead, write one on paper for the day or use something free like Nozbe.

Remove your email and social media shortcuts from the desktop of your smartphone so that you’d have to dig for those applications if you wanted to use them. Close mail windows in your internet browser or on your computer, and force yourself to find and open the required windows or apps each time you want to use them. Put obstacles in your own way.

Batch email and social media. Do it, but do it only during certain times and do it all at once.

For at least a while — for as long as it takes you to learn this lesson — make rules for yourself about when is and is not an appropriate time to check email. Stick to these rules. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “Well, I can’t check email… so I might as well finish this project” or even delightfully indulgent things like “If I’m not allowed to check Twitter or browse time-waster blogs, I guess I might as well go play Rock Band.”

You will not regret this. Give it a shot and let me know what you find out.