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The Mysterious, Shifting Landscape of Non-Fiction Book Publishing — Tucker Max
Today’s episode will forever change how you look at a “book.”
For example, did you know that pretty much all bestseller lists are scams?
Book publishing is a fascinating industry, with a rapidly changing value landscape, and is also very opaque — the business is pretty mysterious in its ways.
How publishing business works directly affects our culture, so much that it’s not a coincidence that the word “author” and “authority” have a similar spelling.
Over the last 20 years, this area has completely changed with the internet, and traditional publishers are struggling to keep up.
To pull back the curtain, I had an animated conversation with Tucker Max, the former CEO and Co-founder of Scribe Media, which is a new-age book publishing and author marketing company focused on non-fiction. He is himself a 4-time NYT bestselling author, and has helped launch the books of some of the world’s most popular authors, from Tim Ferriss to David Goggins.
We get into many fundamental questions about the books business, dissecting everything about the publishing value chain and uncovering fascinating insights along the way!
As usual, this is a power-packed episode with content you simply won’t find anywhere else:
- How many books are published each year, and where people buy them
- The fluid, changing concept of a “book” — what is a good definition?
- Why the future of books is in audio and video
- The diverse types of publishing firms, and why new models are emerging
- How the traditional “book deal” to authors is dying
- Why bestseller lists are scams, and how much it costs to be on one
- Why fiction books are a totally different world with their own economics
- Scaling a high-end services company — frameworks, economics and strategy
