if you are writing a novel a poetry book or a non-fiction book you need to go throw it in the trash right now because we've been manipulated we've been programmed we've been whipped into thinking that we are not living in the Golden Age of literature right now there are thousands millions of sad boys and sad girls Mee left and right right now and saying no one wants to read my Works Tik Tok ruined the publishing industry let politics ruined everything there's no readers anymore and all that is is excuses excuses excuses because as a literary
fiction author as a poet as a non-fiction author there is no better time than right now to be successful as an author and your success is guaranteed and if you don't get it then it is your fault and I'm sorry people we've been programmed with this old mentality that tells us that publishing books is the Cornerstone of becoming a successful and great author and I agree that books are important they're transformative they build your legacy and reputation as an author but when did we forget that writing is supposed to be a communication to another human
being that's supposed to impact them in a certain way when did we get into this PO postmodernist that forgot the origin of oral storytelling which is to teach a lesson guys what is teaching a what does teaching a lesson do it transforms the other person you're not doing art for art sake you're not showing everyone how smart you are and right now I'm going to blow your mind with a statistic that's going to back up everything I just said and this is referring to substack over thousand writers make over $100,000 a year annually which is
more sixf figure authors than the big Big Five Publishers combined the company is on track to more than double most of these metrics in 2024 did you guys just hear that and we were talking about one website we're not adding in ghost beehive WordPress and any other places where people post their writing substack alone has more authors working fulltime with their writing then all the authors Under the Umbrella of the big five publishers and so writing isn't about money this channel is not about making money but writing is about providing a message to other people
and this is a graphic from my free writing school which is launching on October 14th and I'm not I get into it way more over there but if you look at the bottom of the graphic at the end of The Funnel are books and your paid substack or paid whatever and people have to trust you and be comfortable with you and go through this funnel 99% of the time if they are going to purchase your book or subscribe to you on substack or support you in whatever way and so everyone is working on a novel
everyone is working on a book but how many of you guys are building trust how many of you guys are building a Free Library of content and relationships with readers and is there po a point of writing a book until you've done that because a book launch is supposed to be a beautiful thing thing it's now turned into an event of misery where you post it online tell your friends a couple people buy it and you get to wave your book around but a book launch is supposed to be where you show all the people
that you know and that and and love you this big thing that you've been working on your big project this Legacy piece it doesn't happen the other way you don't get to wave your book around to an empty crowd and think that that you've done something good and then playing from behind and telling and trying to tell every every person hey go read my book go read my book no one is going to do it that's annoying needy and terrible and so I'm not saying you need to get on a microphone and speak like I
do you don't most of those authors in that a thousand plus pool on substack there are sixf figure authors don't sit and make YouTube videos but almost all of them have a great relationship with their readers and the ones that blew up and have built Their audience from scratch it and they the people do it every single day communicate and I understand that a lot of you guys are introvert that a lot of you guys maybe have people problems that maybe you aren't the most likable person in the world and it's fun to point out
me up here as the extrovert but I wasn't always like this I created and formed myself into this because there is a concept called character sculpting which means that you don't have to be the same person forever if you are an ugly introverted person that people don't like you can't change that overnight but in 3 to 5 years you can change that and it won't just be good for your writing it will be good for your life you will be happier and let me blow your mind again almost every single author behind me on that
bookshelf was a social butterfly there are Exceptions there are the outliers but why are you trying to be the exception why are you trying to be the miserable outlier with no friends that dies alone what the hell is wrong with you what happened to you why have we accepted that as our reality and it really is because of anim anamin online that we all just have assumed this weak Persona and I'm not speaking from a high horse here because I was just there there are levels to this game and I was shielding myself from you
guys for way too long because I just liked posting content and having no accountability with other human beings and I was kind of turned off because I got like weird death threats sent to my email and some some weirdo was sending letters to my house that had like Veil death threats and I was like Jesus Christ all my writers are these weird people but last May I was having an existential crisis as an author because very soon I'm going to be releasing my poetry book titled desert orus but I was sitting there with like my
65 poems or so and I was like there's something missing here and I feel like the poems are good I feel like this is enough to publish into a book I have an A audience obviously to read it this feels all about me and I tried to just be more introverted I tried to lock myself in a room every day and write more poems and some of them were good and some of them are added into the collection now but it still felt empty and I was like dude if I wrote a 100 more poems
that were great this still wouldn't feel complete and I said you know what I'm going to put this on the back burner and I'm going to make my total focus on interacting with my audience and so every single day I started talking to people just like you I started doing a ton of different podcasts with channels that had 50 sub subcribers I started emailing people zooming with people almost every single day and one day I was talking with one of these individuals and his name is Alistair and he has a channel here on YouTube he
is a part of the literary Renaissance and we were discussing translating poetry and we were having some fun and we were translating some poems together just laughing our asses off just so much fun and then suddenly I realized I said I need to add rila's poetry to my book my book is called desert Orphus and I think rila is one of the best poets ever if he may be the best and he is for sure in the top five and he wrote a book called sonnets to orus and so I decided to translate that entire
collection and add it to my book and now the book feels complete and I've actually added a bunch of other collaborative elements to the book also including poems from people other than myself and reala because I thought this isn't about me this is about hopefully releasing a great product this is about collaborating ation it it was crazy and that one addition to my book is just one of like a hundred different things I've learned from starting to collaborate and speak to the people who are reading or watching my stuff because a book is a hollow
event when you write a book and you publish it there maybe you'll get some reviews on Amazon or something like that but there is no direct response but right now if I publish writing on my substack people will comment people will say I like this I didn't like this I think you should change that and I could sit and discuss with my audience or ask them questions and they can help me I can get a Vibe check I can post certain things I can post a a poem like this or a short story like this
and just judging on how people comment and how many people like it or just by directly asking them I can see how good it actually is instead of relying on my own objective judgment which is flawed and guys it's really liberating liberating to know what people want from you and you don't have to follow that completely but right now you could do this and I could do this you and I could come up with 20 short story ideas that are fire within an hour it's not easy to come up with new ideas it's the easiest
part of writing novel ideas are a little bit harder because you have to carry that through if you're going to edit it for thousands of hours but something that's 3,000 words that's not the biggest deal in the world and to go fulltime on substack just requires you to have a th000 people paying you $5 a month but being a full-time self-published author with that would mean that you would need to sell 12,000 books every single year to reach that $60,000 which one sounds easier and what's funny is that if you work on one you get
the other if you have a thousand fans on substack that love your work they will all buy your book they will all leave a review and that will start to build momentum for your book writing career but if you let's say for whatever reason get really lucky and you sell 12,000 copies of your book on Amazon on the next year it's not going to sell 12,000 copies again that was just a oneoff and only a handful of those people are going to go find you and subscribe to you somewhere else and so we're doing everything
wrong here back in the day I mean the whole model of get a few short stories published publish a novel it's all wonky now and it's based on this idea that you just want to be a writer that has no connection with their audience because it doesn't matter how weird you are there are a thousand people that you can find that align with your views and it's liberating honestly it's the most liberating thing in the world to know a platform like substack supports Free Speech there have been multiple incidents just in the last couple months
where people have been cancelled extremely bad and substack said to them hey we're not going to do anything to you keep going say whatever you want and so for me personally there are things that I know I shouldn't say if I want to get everyone to like me on YouTube and if I want to be like Benjamin McAvoy and be the king of book and just be this Bland generic person but I don't care about any of that I just speak authentically because I know that there are a thousand people who align with My Views
and they will help me reach the global audience of people that align with me we all fantasize about having that book that becomes a bestseller but instead as an author in 2024 I want you to start fantasizing about meeting new people about them supporting you absolutely and and you know the nice messages you're going to be getting the things you're going to learn the things you're going to teach them the memory memories you're going to make with them I've met up with at least 10 people in Phoenix Tucson and Las Vegas since last May since
I started reaching out to people that would have never have happened I think in early August I saw the movie Ghost Dog at a vintage movie theater in Tucson with two random YouTube subscribers that reached out to me who were in town for some business conference and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time it was it was so fun I got home at like 1:00 a.m. and had to go to work work the next day and was so tired but I didn't regret it at all and what's crazy about this transformation that the
Ian from May that was more like hiding myself and not communicating with my audience was a much different person than who I am now like in public at my job as a teacher I carry myself different because when you know that people support you when you know that you are a part of something when you create your little pocket because that's what the literary Renaissance is you guys it is 50,000 of us going fulltime in in our little Zone it's not this detached experience because that's where Singularity happens because right now I have a whole
group of people when they talk about me they can speak about me in a personal level yeah I've taught him a bunch I know Ian I'm not some detached YouTuber or celebrity who's just trying to farm in views and brand deals to make it big or a writer trying to farm the big publishing deal or the professor job to be able to detach and not communicate with the audience and when people hear through Word of Mouth that you are a cool individual that you know the person that they know you know how easy they are
going to be to get into your movement to go check out your stuff that's how we reach out to people who aren't necessarily interested in writing because we've all been there before you say hey have you read Blood Meridian bro and they're like well what is it about it's about a bunch of scal poow hunters there's this guy McCarthy he was reclusive and he moved to Santa Fe like we've all given these long-winded explanations before but what if you told someone hey you like poach you like rupy car hey my friend Ian just released a
poetry book he has a small YouTube channel I'll give you my copy you should check it out I'll tell him what you think of it do you think they're going to what's the chance of them reading it it's a lot higher than saying hey there's this crazy guy from TWC who just released this book you should read it start by building trust and Goodwill with other people that's the job of an artist that's the job of a writer don't listen to history don't listen to all the negative NES that are going to show up in
the comments and say that's not what I'm doing okay well then that means that you are missing out on an actual connection memories and transformation with other people and within yourself and so that's why your book is not that important right now focus on making connections focus on putting out some content that those people like short stories poems even your first chapter of your novel like get people interested do it one person at a time and if you want the strategies on how to do that once again my school course is going to tell you
the four daily action steps that you need to take to get that done because I don't believe in hacks gimmicks or anything like that I believe in trust and Trust only so thank you guys for being here thank you guys for trusting me with your time I believe in you I believe in your work I believe that if you stand behind your work and are confident about it and are open to others that you can attain your dreams as a writer and it's insane to think that you may have a novel that's better than blood
marud you may have a novel that's better than whatever you think the greatest novel is of all time and your success may not be guaranteed if you just sit and send it to Publishers and don't do anything else and so I only wish you the best take what whatever path you want but the literary Renaissance is going in that direction toward connection
