On Good Authority: Publishing the Book that Will Build Your Business

While Mark Gottlieb has agenting in his blood—he’s a second generation lit agent—he’s not your typical agent. He doesn’t specialize in any particular genre but bounces between fiction and nonfiction, with some children's books and graphic novels in between. And though he works with the Big Five publishers, he’s open-minded when it comes to self-publishing and the new wave of publishing.

In this episode we talked about how ...

You know that kindergarten teacher we all wish we'd had?

That's Erin Lee. But part of what makes us all wish she'd been our teacher is the fact that in addition to being a teacher, she's an award-winning children's book author.

Still, as we discuss quite a bit around here, being an amazing author doesn't always guarantee book sales.

But Erin HAS sold thousands of books. So how has she done it? Well, she started dressing up as...

Kevin Anderson never meant to get into the publishing business after growing up in a small town in Canada before getting his PhD and graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and starting a tutoring company.

Nevertheless, that tutoring company transitioned into what is now a massive publishing company that employs 30 writers and editors that have collectively worked on over 200 New York Times bestselling books and sold ov...

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. Her other books include: Wherever You Go, There They Are, and You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up (coauthored with Jeff Kahn). 

She was the co-host of Dinner & a Movie on TBS and has appeared on NPR, The Today Show, CBS Early Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS, and numerous CNN and...

Dave Chesson is the creator of Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching advanced book marketing which even Amazon KDP acknowledges as one of the best by telling users to “Gain insight from Kindlepreneur on how you can optimize marketing for your books.” Having worked with such authors as Orson Scott Card, Ted Dekker and more, his tactics help both fiction and nonfiction authors of all levels get their books discove...

Ashlea Hearn is not only a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserves but also the author of Genesis Mortalis, Book 1 of the Take It Trilogy.

We met when she reached out to me about the upcoming release of that book. But here's what's relevant: by that point, I had noticed this lovely person named Ashlea Hearn reviewing me wherever she could—different books, this podcast, on Google...everywhere.

But here's what I really noticed: sh...

Scott Duffy is an entrepreneur and business strategist who's listed as a “Top 10 Speaker” by Entrepreneur and has been named one of the “Top Influential People To Follow” by Yahoo! Finance.

'But that's not why I brought him on the pod. I brought him on because he's also the author of three different business books on three different topics, from three different publishers and launched in three entirely different ways. When ...

Greg Behrendt is the #1 New York Times best-selling co-author of He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken. He's appeared on every TV show known to man, including Oprah, The Tonight Show and The Today Show, is a life long standup comedian and co-hosts the relationship podcast Don't Take Bullshit From Fuckers.

He's also a life and writing coach, who can walk you through exactly how to write a ...

Katie DePaola is an author, speaker, entrepreneur and the founder of Inner Glow Circle, a company dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs find their glow and live purpose-driven lives.

But most relevantly for our show, she is the author of At Least You Look Good: How to Glow Through What You Go Through, the latest release from Launch Pad Publishing. The book is part memoir, part self-help and all love; it's Katie's story a...

Alex Sanfilippo is the host of the top-rated podcast Podcasting Made Simple, the founder of PodPros.com, a software company focused specifically on the podcasting industry and the co-creator of PodMatch, a service that matches podcast guests and hosts together for interviews. That's not all! He also co-founded PodcastSOP, a project management tool that helps podcasters keep up with their episode releases.

You get it: the gu...

Boy, does Craig Stanland have a story to tell.

It starts with the FBI knocking on his door, followed by two years in prison.

But that's not really what we delve into here. Instead we talk about the book he wrote on his experience—and the one major mistake he made.

Now that he's at work on book number two (title TBD—we get into that in the conversation), he's approaching everything differently.

Find out about that, as well as h...

Peter Shankman is many things, among them a five-time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate in-person and virtual keynote speaker who focuses on customer service. But in this episode I got him speaking about something so many of you ask me about: HARO, or Help a Reporter Out...the website he started (and sold to Cision many years ago) that helps so many authors get featured in mainstream media.

In this conversatio...

Rich Goldstein is a patent attorney, speaker, host of the Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast and, most relevantly for this show, the author of the bestselling book The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent, which was published by the American Bar Association.

He's someone who understands through and through what a book can do for someone's business and in this episode, we got into all that as well as how writing a boo...

This may be the most useful podcast I've ever released. That's because it's with a guy who's an expert on something EVERY author wants: getting people to recommend your book.

His name is Rob Fitzpatrick and he's a former programmer who dropped out of grad school to go to YCombinator with his first startup.

It's that background—along with his nearly decade and a half of experience as an entrepreneur—that helps make sense of t...

I literally don't have the words to describe the experience of recording this episode but suffice it to say that it was the most fun interview I've ever done.

Back story: Zara Barrie and I knew each other online (I find her incredibly glam and we're mutual fans of one another to the point that I recommended her book, Girl Stop Passing Out in Your Makeup, on KATU). She told me that she and her podcast co-host slash work wife...

Paul Angone had an extremely unusual journey to success as an author.

First, he tried to sell a book. For eight years. Nary a bite.

Then a blog post he dashed off went viral. Very viral. From there, he was able to sell a book based on that blog post to a publisher. The problem was that he had to finish it in a month.

Well that book and the next have sold over 100,000 copies and launched a massive speaking career.

But that's no...

Jesse J. Anderson's journey to bookdom is unlike any other guest I've had on the show. 

For one, he's not launching a book to help build his business. 

Also, that book—Refocus: A Practical Guide to Adult ADHD—hasn't launched yet. In fact, he hasn't even finished writing it. 

Why, then, you may ask, would I have him on the show? 

Well, Jesse has also built up an impressive Twitter following by releasing Twitter threads of book ...

Ben Mezrich has sold over 10 million copies of his books.

And, by the way, that’s not even the impressive part. The impressive part is that he sells EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS BOOKS as a movie or TV show; in fact, if Hollywood isn’t interested in the treatment, he doesn’t even write the book.

Mezrich has gotten into this position because of a chance encounter with some MIT students, which led to his writing Bringing Down the Ho...