Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

—1 Corinthians 13:1-6, New King James Version

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

—1 Corinthians 13:11-12, King James Version

I honestly don’t know how I survived this long. Or why my business doesn’t implode.

No editor is allowed to escape definition. Definitions become a second skeleton—an implacable logic, the arbiters of truth—words and what they mean.

And because I am apparently not that smart, I expect that other people understand the words they’re using. That they live within the lines they draw, that they mean what they say.

I can feel your gentle judgment. I have indeed been too long naïve.

He told me he retired from the military, but his rank took second billing in his email signature. Place of pride went to his honorary Ph.D.

He told me that after the military came “success” in corporate life. He used the word “integrity” often. And he asked me to help him publish a book of quotations. Quotes he was certain would “inspire” the next “generation.”

Almost every quote lacked attribution. Many were incorrect. Being daily immersed in words, and their elegant arrangement, I have committed many profound arrangements to memory and recognize them anywhere. Where once I would have run these down gratis, I have been adult long enough to know that if you are working for a client they should compensate you for time and effort expended on their behalf.

I sent him a second invoice and waited until he paid. Research commenced, investigation ensued. The people he imagined made these utterances never said them, never wrote them. He was dismayed when I showed him the original quotes in the books they had been lifted from. How they’d been altered, bent into bite-sized slogans, kneaded to make them more amenable to sharing in this superficial social media era.

Over a decade later I am still, it seems, too optimistic. Naïve.

He insisted that I publish the book as he had presented the “manuscript” to me. I confess to having expected better. Long, distinguished corporate career; long, distinguished period of military service. And he used the word “integrity” often.

Months after the book was published, he reached out to me.

Someone who knew him well had found errors, and because they knew he “identified” as a “perfectionist” they knew it would hurt him to know that a book he published contained errors.

These words and these definitions. Hurt? Identified? Perfectionist?

He asked me to make “corrections.” Ego bruised, now he wanted me to repair what he previously said wasn’t broken, and he wanted me to fix it for free.

His “request” was a thinly veiled “demand.” I have been an editor long. I decipher tone, and intent, for a living. I edit my clients’ books so they avoid being misunderstood. My clients pay me what I’m worth to help them, and their readers, find clarity.

His request was a thinly veiled demand, couched in a soft “threat.” He used the word “warranty.”

My response, word for word:

“Warranties don’t cover situations where the client was given multiple warnings, including a clear final warning, reviewed the book both in print and virtually, and signed off on the final file prior to publication. Talk soon.”

I have been too long naïve. Two decades ago, the fledgling editor I used to be would have taken joy and pride in running down the attributions for free. And then had my heart broken. And choked on the ashes occasioned by the conflagration of my innocent expectations set aflame.

You have to understand, I am an editor. Words matter. I arrange words until those words satisfy desires: Comfort. Success. Challenge. Career. Abundance. Gratitude. Health. Time. Money.

Comprehension.

I use words to create value, for myself and for my clients.

Words matter. Words matter as much as experience, and my grey hairs should tell you I have experienced the definitions of so, so, so many words. I am an editor. I don’t just know words, clichés, and their definitions. I know what they mean.

I never called him “Doctor” once, although he repeatedly insisted that I should. I know lots of doctors. Many of whom entrust their words to me.

I call him by his first name.

There are no sales, no discounts, for what I paid to make myself free. I had to earn my skill.

I am never impressed by honorary degrees.

I am doing cleanup work for a client. I see too many of these tragedies. I’m re-publishing a book my client published previously. They published a book, the book won’t sell, and the feedback from people they trust has not been positive.

My professional assessment did not help my client’s self esteem.

The book bears all the hallmarks of failure.

The cover is poor. Objectively sub-standard. To make matters worse, the publisher they paid to package the book and get it sold on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in Walmart apparently doesn’t know that the text on the rear cover needs to be both justified and hyphenated. A glaring error that causes the book my client worked their entire professional life on to look like a friend’s teenager did the design on an “I’m helping you out and you’re paying me with exposure” basis.

I visit the publisher’s website. I want to know what every side of this sad, regrettable, situation looks like. I am engaged immediately by the publisher’s sales team. They have one of those chatbots you can pay $9.99 a month to have hosted on your website, so when a visitor navigates to the site someone on staff can pretend to be helpful. The digital equivalent of “Can I help you with anything?” when you’ve been browsing in a boutique in real life.

The sales exchange causes me to re-evaluate my perspectives, but then it turns darker and changes how I view my client. The sales team is voluntarily sending me spreads and samples of work they’ve done and every single book has the same issues. Page numbers are missing. Dialogue is not contained inside quotation marks. The paragraph spacing is terrible, and the headings... The headings are what really give it away.

The headings were clearly done using WordArt.

All these books were done in Microsoft Word. No wonder they look amateur. No wonder they don’t sell. No book in this company’s portfolio has received more than three hundred reviews on Amazon. Nobody is buying these.

But that’s not the thing that changes how I feel about my client.

It’s the PDF I’ve attached below that did it.

From American Publisher’s perspective, when the sassy salesperson engaged with me, I was a prospective client. They told me how much they expected me to pay, right after they sent me this blurry, unprofessional PDF.

Now I get it...

You want to be a published author, you don’t have the time to learn how to distinguish professional quality books from amateur produced ones but how did you see this blurry, grainy, low resolution PDF and think to yourself, “These guys are going to treat my book with a high degree of attention to detail.”

And then I look at all the cheerful reviews clients have left on their website. I look at all the smiles and correlate them to the poorly produced books, still available, still not selling, on Amazon.

I look at that and I think, “People really seem to enjoy volunteering to be exploited. What a fantastic metaphor for our free-market economy.”

My friend has a heuristic he uses to be better at life. He doesn’t call it that, but that’s what it is. If you are being recalcitrant, and he has patiently explained to you that your behavior is inappropriate he will remove you from his life. But he doesn’t do it the way I do it. He stops being nice to you. He gray rocks you, and once you figure out that the orchard of wonderful things he used to provide, the oasis of Earthly delights he used to grant you access to has dried up, you will move on.

I am more direct. If you have proved irredeemable, I will remove you forcefully from my life.

I removed one of the best designers I have ever worked with from my life despite his brilliant book covers. He was triggered by the word “inclusion” and resented that he had to draw the people this book requires in a way that did not identify them as Caucasian. It also appeared to bother him that there were people in the world who do not share his sexual preferences. He really needed his illustrations to be Eurocentric despite what the author told him directly, despite her many requests for paid revisions. What follows is the email I sent him.

This book was originally written in the ’90s. Roslyn fixes children. Survivors of horrific abuse. People who were broken so badly, they had to completely reconstruct themselves.

These children need to believe the bullshit society sells to them on a daily basis. Because they don't have any evidence that it works, you understand? They don't have the experience that if they are good, society will reward them back. That has never happened to them. No, “You were a good boy today.” No day. Ever.

The other day I had to pull [redacted] off a woman slapping her 15-year-old in public because the girl had gotten pregnant, was soundly beaten for having the temerity to get pregnant, and in her distress had allowed the ATM to eat her mother’s card.

I know people whose parents put them out of the house at 13 because they got pregnant.

How you think that girl survives?

After Hurricane Katrina, I met little girls who would try to sell themselves to me for Arby’s.1 Arby’s is like a bootleg version of Burger King, with objectively worse product.

They didn’t want to live in the homeless shelter. They were abused there. Routinely.

So they decided to try to make it on their own. What kind of abuse do you suffer that makes you think a better life is living on the streets, no job, no money at 13?

Their experience is that they are excluded and marginalized, and bullied, and beaten. They know. They have the scars.

Little children.

Those children need to be able to look at something and see themselves. They need to believe that despite what their environment is telling them, doing the right thing can work for them.

No matter who they are, what they look like, what gender they think they belong to, or who they like to fuck.

Otherwise, we will continue to spend $40,000 a year, every year, to house them in prisons once they aren’t little children anymore. Or we will write about them going to their schools and shooting their classmates.

Inclusion has real consequences.

You can find Roslyn’s latest on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSTZTGNM/

Social media is toxic.

Not just because of what these algorithms do to us.

But because of who we become when we use it for too long.

Some of us get so good at marketing and branding we don’t realize we’ve become liars.

Sometimes I’m consuming content—a podcast, a YouTube video, an article on LinkedIn—and they get me. Their sales pitch wins. I’m convinced and I go to Amazon to buy this expert’s best-selling book. But as soon as I get there, it’s obvious the book isn’t a best-seller. Despite being published years before books I’ve published, despite that the expert has way more social media followers than authors I’ve worked with, the expert’s book somehow managed to sell less copies, and garner less reviews, than books I’ve published for my clients. The expert is lying and I can tell.

So many authors, publishers, publishing consultants, coaches, thought leaders, and “influencers” lie about having a best-selling book.

And for good reason.

The benefits of having written a best-seller are legion.

Recognition and social proofing—people know you and know that you are capable of producing content people will voluntarily connect with. Content that touches people.

Long-term career impact—not much needs to be said about this. Just one best-selling book is rocket fuel for a writer’s career. A best-selling book incepts demand into the minds of fans, movie producers, directors, actors, voice-over artists, and other creatives. A best-seller can lead to fame, and fame is a pretty good success lever.

Increased income potential—once you’ve demonstrated that you can do it, the assumption is that you can do it again. Investors will throw resources your way to find out. The thinking is, if the writer can produce this quality while struggling, how much better is the content likely to be when money is used to eliminate stress and distraction?

Social media, like money, amplifies. And just like money, social media amplifies both experts and frauds indiscriminately. Since social media doesn’t come with quality assurance built in, it can be difficult to sift the rare truth from the dross. It’s easy to get caught up in “Dr.” Berg’s bullshit, when you’d be much better off with actual doctor, Dr. Mike. If you’re trying to lose weight it’s much easier to get caught up in Simeon Panda’s or Logan Paul’s bullshit, when you’d be better off with Dr. Mike Israetel, Jeff Nippard, or Stephanie Buttermore.

I suspect, but can’t say for sure, that one of the reasons A.I. “hallucinates” is because it’s trained on massive quantities of internet data and, for better or worse, people pretend on the internet. They lie. They exaggerate their achievements, they curate their lives, they fake it till they make it, they confabulate. AI is no more than us, reflected, more efficient, and amplified by a machine’s relentless advantages.

But there are other paths.

The single greatest success characteristic is the ability to delay gratification. To act without seeing the result of your actions over an extended time horizon. —Alex Hormozi

Success leaves marks is another truism bandied about the internet. The proof is in the pudding. As hokey as it sounds, this one is more reliable than “fake it ‘til you make it.”

If you claim to be something you’re not, you’re an imposter—a liar. It doesn’t matter how much social media appears to condone, or justify, or normalize, this behavior.

A person lying, or confabulating, or faking it until they make it, is deliberately traumatizing themselves and everyone else.

You’re doing both yourself, and your audience a disservice by pretending to be something you’re not.

You’re robbing the person who looks up to you, who trusts you, of the actual methodology they need to live a successful life.

And you rob yourself of pleasure, of the unmitigated joy you experience when you actually do a difficult thing or help someone else accomplish a difficult thing. So many people complain that their lives feel hollow even when it appears to everybody else that they really don’t have anything to complain about. I am not a psychologist, but having spoken to many humans I’ve deduced that this is because they didn’t earn what they’re celebrated for. It’s hard to be proud of something you stole. They lied, and everybody believed the lie and then the world rewarded them for the lie. With no achievements, no foundation, why wouldn’t they feel hollow? Deep down they know that if anyone digs deep enough there’s no bedrock, no anchor—there’s nothing there. The soulless man is always empty.

I live in the data and have for years. I can tell when book-related people are faking. And since I can tell, I can show you how to tell too.

If you have an actual best-selling book, you will regularly receive the email I’ve screenshot above from Amazon.

Amazon is ruthless about sales. Being ruthless about selling—being relentless about ensuring that the machine gets goods into the hands of people willing to hand over cold, filthy lucre in exchange—is how the world’s biggest book nerd became the world’s wealthiest person.

Say whatever else you want about Amazon, but Amazon’s algorithm is ruthless about identifying winners, and then marketing them relentlessly.

If you want actual proof that someone is a best-selling author ask them to show you the email I’ve posted above. Ignore the influencers and thought leaders who go out of their way to find attractive “best-selling” badges to put on their book covers. Ignore the coaches and entrepreneurs who Photoshop fake best-seller tags onto a screenshot of their book’s detail page and then use that in marketing materials.

Ask the author to show you where Amazon asked them for permission to place their book in a Kindle Deal. If a person actually has a best-selling book on Amazon they won’t have any trouble sharing that with you. Amazon sends this email to best-selling authors over, and over, and over. It’s sent this email to one of my clients seven times over the past three years.

Like I said. The algorithm is ruthless, and relentless, about identifying winners. About identifying items that sell well, and then promoting them to people who will hand over cold, hard, cash in exchange.

I would know. I enjoy making best-selling books. And I got so good at doing it, that I make best-selling books for a living. I got so good at doing it, I can teach you how to make your next book a best-seller. All you have to do is ask. I even have the requisite “free eBook” on the topic, I'd be happy to share.

Years ago, I did a book for one of the most famous photographers still living.

After a conversation with Mike Krieger, one of Instagram’s founders, Trey asked me for my Instagram handle. He had come up with one of those golden crust, melted butter, sun-kissed ideas to promote the book.

Trey knew the book, Under the Influence, was going to be a bestseller. He didn’t even buy ads. It was inevitable. And he was right. We achieved best-seller before the book even made it out of pre-order.

Before we published, Trey decided he would give every person who contributed to the creation of the book the opportunity to include their Insta handle in the Acknowledgments. Trey is generous in this way. He’s always sharing his celebrity, his fame, with people he likes or is grateful to.

But I wasn’t on Insta then. To me, Insta was the app the girls I never called again used to take photos of wherever we went, and then photos of their food, when we went out. Insta and this behavior is precisely why I wasn’t interested in speaking to them again. If you need that much attention from people you don’t know, there’s no way we’re going to have a fun, nourishing, mutually beneficial relationship.

So, when Trey asked me what my Insta handle was, I told him I didn’t understand Instagram’s value proposition.

🙄

I know. I know. I’m really not that smart.

So, that’s what it says in the book beside all these tastemakers, journalists, CNN anchors, and Insta famous people’s Insta handles—people with hundreds of thousands of followers.

It says my name and then, “does not understand Instagram’s value proposition.”

😔

Did you know that Amazon knows your book is a low-quality effort, even if you, or your designer, or your publisher doesn’t know?

Amazon’s not just reading the metadata you supply. The algorithm is taking all kinds of “signals” about your book into account. There are many reasons why books don’t get organic sales. One of these is “your book is incorrectly formatted.” Even after you pass all the “quality checks” Amazon still distinguishes between well formatted books, and “made in my basement” efforts.

If you peer under the hood you can see that Amazon’s software (this one is called KindleGen) reads what is known as the book’s “semantic tags” when your book is uploaded.

I’m not so sure why this isn’t common knowledge. Did people forget that Amazon started life as an online bookstore run by the world’s biggest book nerd?

This is why when your reader purchases an eBook on Amazon, the first page the reader sees is either Introduction or Chapter 1. When Amazon is processing your book, KindleGen reads the semantic tags and it skips all the pages marked as “Front Matter.” Amazon knows that people who buy your book want to jump right into reading it.

If your book is well formatted and has some “engagement” (people leaving reviews—even negative ones) Amazon will literally send an email to other people it thinks will purchase your book and urge them to buy.

Ask me how I know. (Or just look at the image above.)

I’m fascinated by ads lately.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t ever see ads unless I’m out, or using someone else’s device.

But I’ve been actively hunting for ads over the last three weeks.

I want to see what my potential clients see, and how they came to whatever perspective they currently hold by the time they make it to me. This is a lesson I learnt from Heidi Weinberg.

Heidi is one of the smartest people I know. When we worked together she told me that she tried to DIY her book and most of what she was looking at looked like gobbledygook to her.

I publish, edit, and format books everyday, so to me there’s nothing confusing or even difficult when I’m doing book design or publishing. I don’t remember her analogy, but I think she asked me if I thought I could walk into a cockpit and fly a commercial airliner. To a seasoned pilot, all the instruments are second nature. I wouldn’t be able to distinguish an aileron from a Pez dispenser. Point taken Heidi.

The ad

Three days ago I came across an ad that led me to a series of videos on YouTube where a young man claims to be teaching people how to format books with MS Word. At the end of the video, I notice that the book violates most typesetting rules and best practices.

• Page numbers appear on chapter opening pages where they shouldn’t appear.

• The kerning and the leading on the book are incorrect.

• The book lacks proper hyphenation.

• And even worse, the book combines indents with block paragraphs.

This person obviously never heard of Butterick, or Bringhurst and he’s giving people typesetting advice. To the trained eye, the book looks like garbage. You really shouldn’t do this. Your book will be more difficult to read, your audience will think you’re a fraud, and no matter how good the content, the poor packaging will diminish your credibility in your readers’ eyes.

I see a lot of books released on Amazon by executives and thought leaders who should have either hired better, or known better. So many mysteries solved with this little adventure.

Now I understand why so many authors claim to have a #bestseller but when I look at the book, I see Amazon has slapped it with a “Quality Issues” tag.

Your readers may not know the difference between a Bastard Title and a Title Page, but they can tell when something is off… when something is missing.

And if you formatted your book in Word and omitted the Bastard Title page, and the Title page, or otherwise butchered the order of the Front Matter your book will be perceived as a low-quality effort. By Amazon, AND by your readers.

Most people don’t have an opportunity to peer under the hood. If you do, you can see that Amazon calculates all kinds of signals about a book. It’s not just taking the metadata you supply into account. Amazon’s software (this one is called KindleGen) reads what is known as the book’s “semantic tags” when your book is uploaded. I’m not so sure why this isn’t common knowledge. Did people forget that Amazon started life as an online bookstore, run by the world’s biggest book nerd?

This is the reason why when your reader purchases a book on Amazon, the first page the reader sees is either Introduction or Chapter 1. When Amazon is processing your book, KindleGen reads the semantic tags and it skips all the pages marked as “Front Matter.”

I’m not going to use ominous words like “shadow ban” because as far as I know, that doesn’t happen on Amazon. But the algorithm will treat your book differently. Let’s say Amazon will treat your book, AND your author name, as less “authoritative” than another author who isn’t making these mistakes.

This is also a good reason to steer away from producing “low-content” books. If you’re someone in the #hustlelife and you found a community of people who like to read your content and you’re writing books now, you would be better off creating a completely new account for your new author persona. You really don’t want the persona that has legs and might be able to take flight, to be weighted down by the “low content” or "low quality" association. At a bare minimum, you should go back and either unpublish the low quality books or fix them.

TLDR – Don’t follow advice from ads. Don’t format your book in MS Word unless you are an MS Word expert. Learn how to correctly organize your book, and organize it like a professional would. It matters.

I make a lot of mistakes.

“Your arrogance is astonishing. We’re done!”

Client emailed me that and fired me.

I’m being serious. Tons of mistakes. I’ve published more than 400 books. That’s a lot of clients. That’s a lot of opportunity for error.

I made mistakes. And suffered the consequences—loss of income; the reputational damage the rumor mill leaves in its wake.

I disconnected a client in a conference call while he was berating members of his team. And not sotto voce either. He’s shouting people down.

“How many times have I…”
“Do you know who I am?” He did actually say that. Wasn’t the last time, in case you were worried.
“Why are people so $%*# stupid? I just don’t understand why everybody is exactly the same way!”

And then he turned on a team member. Singled them out. He’s snarling.

Click!

Wasn’t even my team.

I’m wondering: “Why are we wasting time? You’re yelling, and while you’re yelling you aren’t even explaining what you want people to do next. Ugh. People can be so inefficient.” 🙄

I make a ton of mistakes.

But I am fascinated by the idea that so many of the people who actively portray themselves as powerful to the public, to their children, to their communities… They’ll see some injustice, however slight, however small… They will actually see it, or experience it, and in the moment choose to ignore it. Or be afraid to address it.

Sometimes we hear about it on the news. It gets hashtags and enters the national conversation.

More often than not, we only hear about it over a hushed, oddly tense, lunch.

That client fired me too by the way. Not then. Later on. He was contrite when he called back in that time.

I make a lot of mistakes.

Although to be fair, right after I digested the “arrogance is astonishing” thing I looked back at the email I sent him to see what precipitated his ire.

I did put: “I dislike it when I bring things to my clients [sic] attention, and they ignore it. This is becoming a trend with you. I would appreciate if you would respond to points I raise. You're probably very good at real estate.  This is my bailiwick.”

So, he’s probably right? 🤷🏾‍♂️😇

Remember a situation where you could have said things in a different way and not made a mistake?

Please share with me in the comments.

Something has changed.

Over the last three weeks I’ve had more than one prospective client tell me about their dream publishing journey.

But when I dig deeper, I find out this dream isn’t really theirs. This dream comes from an ad.

Maybe it’s just me. I excised ads from my life in 1999. The only time I ever see ads is if I am using someone else’s phone, or in a lobby somewhere, or at a friend’s place.

I can’t imagine basing my entire life’s plan on an ad.

I went looking for the ad, and I was lucky enough to actually see it. I saw it twice.  I tried to record it, but I never saw it again after the second time.

Some publisher is telling prospective authors that commissioning and creating audiobooks is a good way to make “side hustle money” and fund their dreams of living and working on the beach.

“Unlimited Passive Income!”

Yeah. That’s not how it works. You're never going to publish a bestseller that way.

First, print books still sell far and away more units than the other two formats – eBook and audiobook. See: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/publishing-trends

Second, the eBook format still moves more units than audiobooks. Ibid.

While it’s true that audiobooks are experiencing a growth spurt, if you can only afford to publish one book format, and you want a good return on your investment, you shouldn’t choose audiobook.

Are your publishing dreams just somebody else’s ads in disguise?

Do you want to know how publishing really works?

Do you want to know how to publish books and spend most of your days at the beach?

Ask me how I know. 😉

We need to normalize having a conscience.

I meet “editors” who don’t know when it’s appropriate to use em- vs en-dash.

I meet “typesetters” who can't tell you kerning from leading, or their verso from their recto. (Couldn't resist the pun. Forgive me. 😇)

I meet “ghostwriters” who have never heard the term “head hopping.” How can you have ghostwritten anything, worked with any editor of reasonable competence, and never, not once, encountered those words strung together?

And these people are claiming to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. 💲💸💲 They are claiming to have served tens, sometimes hundreds, of clients. These people make regular appeals to “community.”

Information is free. It’s not difficult to educate yourself. You can get almost all the information about your vocation for no more than time and attention.

I've been in the industry for over a decade. I have had the experience of being awed by an influencer’s marketing, her frequent posts, and her claims at expertise. Her books on Amazon.

I accepted unsolicited advice from her when I was green.

If I confront this lady, she’ll say I should have known better than to take free advice from a stranger. (And LinkedIn will likely ban me for “harassment.”)

They always have some excuse for it. For not having a conscience. For victim blaming.

Now that I am able to afford to purchase my own time, I’ve downloaded her publicly available lead magnet and though she claims to be a “Bestselling Nonfiction Book Ghostwriter” she doesn’t know the lines on the left page and the right page are supposed to be aligned. She doesn’t know about pagination or folios. She doesn’t know subheadings are supposed to be set in Title Case. The “book” is rife with serial comma, capitalization, and quote mark inconsistency. She doesn’t know why it’s less fatiguing to the eye for people to read justified text, so her poorly written eBook has ragged margins.

These aren’t errors, these aren’t oversights. These are the telltale signs of someone completely in the dark about fundamental elements of her claimed area of expertise. This woman sells courses now. “Training” other people to be ghostwriters. Still luring people into her funnel with her books on Amazon.

Or maybe she knows these things and doesn’t care. Can you tell which is worse? Will you let me know?

We need to normalize having a conscience.

Not to do the thing because of potential, imagined, praise. Not for recognition, or for kind words said by people who like us. Not for clout or co-signs. Not motivated by the fear that someone will one day reveal the Empress wears no clothes.

To do the correct thing because it’s what the situation requires. Because YOU know what you did and because the path to true happiness wends through woods where you complete challenging tasks and thereby earn your own admiration. You should make the choice to deserve your own self-respect. You are important, yes?

We need to normalize having a conscience. Even if only professionally. To stop pretending rules are merely recommendations. Suggestions to be ignored whenever we feel they don’t serve us. Or because we never bothered to learn them.

Or because someone disagrees with us, or someone waves more money in our general direction.

People’s claims don’t make them an expert.

You only become an expert by experience or education.

Nobody’s stopping you from obtaining either. You can get both of those for free.

And you should. You matter. And people—real people—are counting on you.

The cover on the left costs more.

And I don’t just mean that in the banal, “time costs money” — “money is expensive” claptrap way that fills your feed depending on who you follow on Substack and on socials.

Let’s put aside for the moment that equating time with money is a spectacularly debilitating fallacy that only young people are privileged to give credence.

Time was indeed misused. That is true. Multiple revisions were requested. My client got increasingly more frustrated. There were tears. There were recriminations. And then denials. Misrepresentations abounded. Lawyers were involved. Weeks passed. Time and money were wasted.

I literally mean the cover on the left cost more dollars 💲💸💲 than the cover on the right. The designer the publisher had on staff charged more for the cover on the left, than the person I trusted to do the cover on the right.

Imagine Lori going to market with a cover she couldn’t bring herself to connect with. Meeting this cover on the left someday—this dogwater cover adorning her book sitting on a shelf in a bookstore.

Her publisher had no issue with that. He repeatedly tried to twist her arm into going to press with something that looked like a book, but neither quacked nor waggled. 🦆

It matters who you trust your book to. What they know—what they can actually do—makes a difference to the outcome.

Either find someone who knows what they’re doing or pay for the privilege of pretending you have a best-selling book. Lots of people are doing that, btw. FYI just in case that particular tea hasn’t yet spilled into your personal saucer. ☕

Either find someone who knows what they’re doing or pay for the privilege of pretending you have a best-selling book.

Up to you.

When I was young, and demonstrably dumber, I subscribed to, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” ideologies. My clients depended on me to write their briefs, negotiate with their attorneys, research their cases, sometimes even to save their lives. All that “hustle” focused on their lives almost cost me mine.

These days all my clients require is that I make books they’ve written available to the public. But they always want me to make their books sell more copies. More copies. More copies. Moar!

Here’s a book I did for a Congresswoman that I took from 0 copies to more than 1000 copies a year:

Both in color, and in black and white.

Here are the atrocious covers the previous publisher wanted her book to go to market with:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1F9Ou_6cFNbVsgkFBGBSsgHdIz6m6hksl?usp=drive_link

Here are the alternates we had for her to choose from:

Everybody wants to sell more copies, build more audience, annex more reach.

Given what’s at stake, I did what I used to do when my occupation held people’s lives dangling precariously in the balance.

I investigated the rules. I read all the literature. I tested the theories. I played Chicken, and then Truth or Dare, with the consequences.

From that awkward alchemy, I fashioned blueprints and stratagems. I successfully reverse-engineered why some books sell many units, and some get chucked into digital and physical wastebins without guilt or further contemplation.

Every book that fails breaks the same rules.

1. Cover is unprofessionally done and gives, “My nephew is doing a PhotoShop course after school so he helped me with this.”

2. Editing and formatting is poor or non-existent. Errors from the first page to the end.

3. Writing is abominable, self-serving, delivers no value, is more focused on the author than the reader.

4. The author hates being a salesperson, and either doesn’t trust or can’t afford marketing.

Marketers will tell you about niches, and riches, and riches in niches but most of that is bullshit. Publishers have never been good at categorizing books. Publishers don’t even know how to properly classify books written by Colleen Hoover and she sells more books than God Himself. No joke. Colleen regularly outsells the Bible. And her publishers regularly fight over what categories her books are going to be placed in.

Moreover, categories aren’t uniform across platforms, across library classification schemes, or across agents’, editors’, or publishers’ experience or areas of expertise. How your book is classified at Bowker is not how it’s going to be classified in Barnes and Noble, and is certainly not how the Library of Congress is going to classify it. Niches matter, but not anywhere as much as the writing, or the marketing.

This is not to say that if your book navigates all these jagged shoals a bestseller magically presents itself; that your book gains whimsical cotton wings, soars off shelves, and nestles affectionately into readers’ empty bosoms like puppies seeking comfort. People still need to like your book. Your book needs to touch people. Lots of people. Make them laugh, cry, learn, think, discover truths about themselves, or the world they inhabit. 

The best writing shows readers that the world they believed they knew was false. That the real world is deeper, more complex, but still manageable. Maybe even easier to navigate by the light of the new flame you’ve risked your life clambering down the mountain to give them.

The authors of all good books, best selling books, cosplay Prometheus. They steal from the gods and spend the time after their discovery setting readers’ minds ablaze. Most would-be writers abhor reading, and having never read, have never walked with gods and have no fire to share.

In short, if what you want is a best selling book, then YOUR book needs to do more than just exist. Your book needs to be enjoyable. Your book needs to make your readers want more. Make them declare that this will do for now, but still somehow just isn’t quite enough. It needs to do that to people you know, and people you will never meet.

Those are the rules.

If you don’t know how to do that yourself, I’m happy to do it for you. I’ve already done it twenty times. If you can’t afford me, I’ll teach you how. I know lots of rules. Even if I am agnostic about them.

I don’t take selfies. That’s not a rule. Merely a consequence of how I live. Don’t judge me. 😔 I’ve always been more interested in everything else; more focused on the adventure than being concerned with me.