book sales update - end of 2023: 43,726 sold / $212k earned in royalties

royalties since Portfolio offered me $70k for lifetime rights to the pathless path: ~$129k (rough est.)

- 78% purchased in 2nd year
- 70% audiobook and ebook (mostly kindle)
- avg. royalty ~$4.68 per book In April I turned down a two book publishing deal for $70k for the pathless path and $135k for a unknown 2nd book.

https://x.com/p_millerd/status/1646190678412607523?s=20

Going to thread some thoughts as I read.

So far really fun read. Felt like @bp22 HAD to write this book which is my favorite kind of book. You can feel his passion injected in each page.

Love the core question “what’s the best way to allocate our life energy before we die?” Love the way he uses time trace to reframe how we think of money.

In a world with inflation there is a default feeling that we will run out but I sense many of us (including me) get TOO good at operating from “what if I run out?”

Four years of university at ages 18-22 is so dumb. People struggle so much to just say this.

Maybe like 1 year of business / engineering would have been good at 18 and then another year of philosophy at age 30

I had the dumbest ideas about how the world worked when in college Four years is required by regulatory rules. It’s made up. We don’t need to buy into this. It’s all us.

Everyone had those older students in their class that took things seriously and crushed it. They were the only real students.

The best and most fun way to build and audience is to not build an audience.

Luckily this Twitter app has attracted the nerdiest mofos on the planet. Just follow your weird curiosities and tell people what you’re finding out. The “others” will find you If you get annoyed by twitter but still come here you’re doing it wrong.

It’s possible to directly aim at building an audience and make silly amounts of money doing that thing but you have to operate in playbook mode.

Honestly jobs pay better if you’re down to run a playbook

If you’re single go travel. Just go. Don’t waste time on your career like I did in my 20s. Take it from Kevin Kelly

A lot of self help non fiction is light on personal story and heavy on tactics

I have a hunch there is hidden demand for the inverse. Heavier on personal story and lighter on tactics and other peoples stories and research studies.

We need more unique niche memoir non fiction Some good examples of this

Man’s search for meaning
Eat pray love
David whytes crossing the unknown sea
Tuesdays with morrie
Educated by Tara westover

People talk about these books forever

If you have a decent number of blog / newsletter posts and wanted to write a book, here is the process I'd recommend.

Many people get distracted by the "do I self-publish or get a publisher" question - this is just resistance at work.

The first thing I would do is open MS Word The next thing I would do is just copy and paste a ton of the blog posts into the document. For each one, I would format the title as H2 Header in Word

The key here is just to dump dump dump

If you have a super unformed thought that might be a good section, chapter just add it

The collective story about the role of work in our lives is falling apart.

For a long time, a job for a company for all of adulthood was the way you participated in society as a worker.

Now we have far more people outside of this story and we don't yet know what that means. The biggest struggle people have is that they don't have a replacement story for the grand narrative of the default path.

Many people look for grand stories because we filter so much of our experience through media like movies, and TV.

But there is no replacement narrative

I’ll help @DKThomp out here

…pathless paths 😂

I’m glad people are starting to acknowledge the liminal space we are in with regard to work scripts. I liked Derek’s workism thesis a lot when he first proposed it but I think there is some nuance I’d add in todays context

1. I… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… I genuinely think the whole modern calling this is a bit overblown. There was a period in the 2010s when people were captivated by the pursuit of meaningful work and companies were promising the world.

But I think this has shifted dramatically since the pandemic.

The best relationships I’ve made on Twitter and incidentally the people Ive learned the most from almost all understand the secret to Twitter

That it’s all about the non-zero sum reply game

Too many people see tweets as opening arguments. That’s a massive mistake. The best way to think about Twitter is as a game with a bunch of unwritten rules

This is applicable to tpot/FAN/strangely earnest Twitter.

One of the most important rules: approach replies with a “yes, and…” improv approach.

Take the joke further. Add on, ask questions

Publishing is an interesting industry. They’ve settled into a nice equilibrium with Amazon where both sort of agree not to compete too much

It seems there’s an opportunity for a creator-led publisher who could leverage YouTubers and other digital creators for distribution. With audiobooks and ebook demand growing, I sense physical in person sales will be less important in the future which I’m guessing the publishers may downplay because they love hardcovers

Spotify into audiobooks could upset the balance of things. Will be interesting to watch

A 1.5 hour 3x a week commute tips the scales for someone with $6.5m net worth to finally consider quitting.

Also given it wasn’t remote pre pandemic I wonder if these companies are just using return to office as a commitment device and way of doing indirect layoffs Returning to office to do zoom calls. Wild.

Also can’t retire with $3.8 million.

I could figure it out. 😂

This was a really great convo with @AliAbdaal and Cal Newport.

Both thinking deeply about their relationship to work.

Helped me make sense of a few things I've been thinking about and also an observation / potential blind spot from people like them 👇 First is just that there is this massive gap between people like them who have aggressively designed their lives around their work from a young age.

I was stupid and slow to figure out how to do this and actually got fully trapped in career/job world.

I saw no way out

This is the fourth David Whyte book I've read and it was my favorite.

I am a sucker for personal stories and Whyte's leap of faith in his 30s to become a poet was a powerful one.

Plus beautiful poetic language to describe taking an unconventional journey.

My favorite parts 👇 When I first read Whyte I was caught off guard by how much he praised "work." Here's how he starts:

"There is almost no life a human being can construct for themselves where they are not wresting with something difficult, something that takes a modicum of work."

We live in a employment-as-primary-mode-of-life and you know this because people that are laid off do not exist in a state of abundance and leisure, they can only exist in a reality where they *lack* employment pretty much all of humanity walks around with the fear of being kicked out of the employment system. even people that have reached financial abundance later in life can barely handle when their kids are out of work.

what matters most is being employed to a company

🌴 Sabbaticals & "getting famous for not working"

I talked with @mvarghoose and @cecile_mcm on the pod about their last couple of years of non-job experiments and how to get the most out of a break from work

Listen: share.transistor.fm/s/25502442
Watch: This was a really fun episode!
Also @cecile_mcm is prototyping / testing a 1-on-1 sabbatical coaching call with people if you want to learn more. I would definitely check it out.
(gift economy)
cecilemarion.org/on-sabbatical

Thoughtful reflections from @_Alex_Adamov on reorienting his time on Twitter.

There’s way more “how to grow on Twitter” hacks but the best strategy has always been the same:

Consistently share what you’re curious about & connect with people you respect

iterare.substack.com/p/mental-puke-… Something I shared a couple years back on similar things. Might remix this

https://twitter.com/p_millerd/status/1286303872751992833

In 2022, I somehow made $249k doing things I loved

When I quit my job in 2017, I only did freelance consulting until I fell in love with writing. I decided to secretly stop trying to make money and just write, living on very little

I can't believe it worked. Some reflections👇 Here is income (NOT PROFIT) generated per year. This is wild to look at because since 2018 I've mostly been spending my days the same - wake up and do work I like doing.

Even 2018 is high because there is lagging income from 2017 freelance work

It took me a while to realize I was an "ideas person" who didn't have enough ideas friends.

Ideas people love ideas and can consume a diverse range ideas without getting wrapped up in the drama of the source or needing to adopt underlying ideologies. The internet has radically increased the number of options for "ideas people" to make similar friends and even make a living

But in the business world, incentives tend toward gossip and needing to always be signaling how you interpret status

If you’ve got a degree, go travel the first few years after college. You can stay connected and learn a ton via the internet.

When I went abroad for two weeks after college we had to stop in Internet cafes to check email every few days.

It’s wild how much more you can do now People scripts about how to spend their time are lagging too slowly behind the changing dynamics of work, opportunity and the internet.

I think this is essentially the @Jack_Raines playbook too.

People still underestimate the power and possibilities of the internet.

There is so much legacy belief in traditional institutions. They will play a role but mostly once they are refilled with people who understand the internet and are building interesting things now. It’s kind of shocking how few people realize the upsides of sharing your ideas online.

Pretty much anyone who cringes at having to share their companies pdf report probably has more interesting ideas worth sharing.