Here’s what happened last week:

One thing I’m struggling with

My writing routine is finely calibrated, despite being admittedly mundane.

When followed, I get into the flow and rip it. When interrupted, everything goes to shit.

This last week, everything went to shit.

All three kids were at home. That, plus family was in town, sleep has been bad, and I missed a few workouts.

Sometimes sitting down to write is easy. And sometimes it’s hard.

One thing going well

The Invisible Heist is being written long-hand in a notebook. So far, I’ve emptied two pens over 15,000 words.

Writing by hand if slower. But, as Erica Dhawan writes in her upcoming book Use Your Brain (I have an early copy) “the friction is the learning”.

Dhawan continues:

“The rough draft, the awkward pause, the manual struggle of thinking before the answer appears, the difficult conversation that can’t be automated, these are not inefficiencies.”

If you’re stuck. Or if you feel like your work has become bland. Or if you just kinda feel like your brain isn’t able to think good thoughts anymore, grab a notebook and a pen.

A counterintuitive tip:

Buy a cheap notebook. Pretty notebooks make you think you need pretty thoughts to fill them. You don’t want pretty thoughts. You want messy thoughts. Messy thoughts are more interesting than pretty thoughts.

The biggest highlight from last week was a writer’s day with Alex Hutchinson. He’s long been a mentor, and now a friend too.

We met at 9:15am. Rode our bikes 15 km to the ferry. Talked about what’s going well, but also about things we’re struggling with. Wrote. Then headed home around 4pm.

One thing I’m making progress on

In a first draft, follow every rabbit hole.

Overthinking too early on is a mistake. It makes for stale writing. The stickiest ideas are the weirdest ones.

An example:

I was in the library when I got hacked.

Now, I could leave it at that in Heist. But then I started to remember all the crazy stuff that happens in libraries. And how, when you’re there, you never really know what the other people are doing.

I tell the story of Ross Ulbricht. He started The Silk Road – the biggest drug dealing operation in the world. Dude ran it from the Glen Park branch of the SF Public library. They caught him by first distracting him with an attractive plain clothed officer sitting at his table.

He was literally a dork in a hoodie at the table in the library on his laptop RUNNING THE BIGGEST DRUG DEALING OPERATION IN THE WORLD getting distracted by a girl.

I wrote that. Then I wrote this:

“One time while studying in University at the library a beautiful girl sat across me. She smiled. It was as if my life had changed. I passed a note to her.

“Coffee sometime? Yes, no, maybe. (Circle one)”

“Yeah, I really did that.

“There was a barrier between us. I tossed it over.

“What the . . . “ Then “Oh my God.” Followed by giggling with her friend.

“She tossed it back. Circled maybe. Then wrote “Email me” and included her email. It was a Hotmail address. That’s how old I am. This exchange excited me so much that I left the library because I didn’t want to screw anything up. I emailed the next day. She did not respond.

“All of this to say, the SWAT team’s plan to distract Ross in multiple ways, first, with a petite asian officer, was a good one. And it worked. Gangster shit.”

One thing I can’t stop thinking about

“Dabbling is the secret to success.” I wrote in The Obvious Choice.

The fewer things you do, the more interesting your work will become.

So, do less, wander more, go down more rabbit holes, and write it all down old school, in a $1.50 Hilroy notebook from the dollar store.

-Jon

P.S. Are you interested in either of my next two books? Let me know

Each week, I’m planning on doing an update like this. Quick and dirty.

And, each week, I’ll invite you to put your name down on an early interest list for either the two books.

No newsletter or anything else. I’ll just personally email you when that book’s ready.

This is how I’m capturing traffic ongoing for each book.

If you’re interested in The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe, please enter you email here.

If you’re interested in The Invisible Heist, please enter your email here.

If interested in both, that’s cool. Please enter your email for both individually.

One is a parable called The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe.

The other is a memoir about the broader implications of getting $1.6 million in Bitcoin robbed called The Invisible Heist.

I’m planning to release both close together. Not sure when. Heist probably end of year. Greatest Trainer probably March.

Putting out multiple books this quickly is aggressive. Producing them for different audiences is probably a terribly bad strategy.

It’s a lot. And I constantly find myself scattered. So I’m starting a new series of this diary to organize and share ongoing.

In each one, I plan to share:

1. What I’m struggling with,

2. what’s going well,

3. what I’m making progress on, and

4. what I can’t stop thinking about.

Before I get into it, for this first entry, here’s why I think many small books are better than one big book

-Smaller books (80-120 pages) are less daunting to start, consumed faster, get shared more, and more profitable per unit.

-Instead of one theme explored ad nauseam over 300 pages, I can explore the same theme in a hyper-specific way, over 2 books.

-Each book is for an audience, making marketing and distribution more clear.

But also, it’s scattered.

One thing I’m struggling with

Becoming known for one thing is hard enough. I’m trying to do it for two.

What content do I publish? What platforms do I use? How do I guide my team to produce the right stuff?

Here’s what I do know:

Social media algorithms want to put content in front of people that they will like. If you create content, the clearer the signals you can give to the algorithm about what you produce and who its for, the more it will help you.

In the past, I’ve tried to talk about different topics on the same platform.

I think that was a mistake.

The change I’ve made is to keep one topic per platform.

On Instagram, I’m the personal trainer fitness guy.

On X, I’m the Bitcoin and lifestyle guy.

And here, on LinkedIn, I’m the books guy.

That drives my content. It also drives my outreach. I send 15-20 follows and connection requests daily on each platform to people from these audiences. (More on social media growth here.)

What I’m struggling with is the contextual editing for each. I want this to be strategic, not just some guy who got bored talking about fitness all day for 15 years and has other interests.

One thing going well

Writing my next book long-hand in a notebook.

It’s been reinforcing a lot of good behaviors:

The tactile element gets my brain thinking differently. There’s no distractions. I can’t edit ongoing, which forces a fast and messy first draft. And it’s eliminating AI from every part of the process.

Plus, I can do it anywhere.

One thing I’m making progress on

The Invisible Heist book is coming along well. I made the mistake of launching a Kickstarter or it. Then my attention got placed solely on marketing the Kickstarter.

Which led me down a bad path.

It forced me to try and figure out what the book was about before I knew what the book was about.

I’m now doing this one differently.

First, I cancelled the Kickstarter.

Instead of planning out the book, I’m sitting down and ripping it. Start to finish. Letting come out of me whatever needs to. If my brain goes down a weird rabbit hole, I go with it.

Write the mess, clean it up in editing later.

My friend James Tonn is smart. He’s the guy who discovered Andy Weir’s The Martian in 2013. Crazy story. What he said to me about Heist is worth repeating.

“Sounds like you’re following where the story may lead you like a documentary filmmaker dances with the unknown and only once done shooting is finished is the ultimate narrative able to be witnessed. I dare you to write this differently than any other book. For fun’

One thing I can’t stop thinking about

I got robbed. For over a million dollars. That’s such a messed up thing to write.

At first, I was angry. Now I’m reframing this terrible thing that happened to me as a gift.

Up until now, I was a guy with a cushy life. Good family. Good upbringing. Always had friends and a girlfriend.

When I wrote books, I was simply somebody who decided to think deeply about things, run life experiments, and talk about them. Just a guy.

Then, on July 29th, hackers stole a lot of money from me.

And, in return, they gave me the gift of a story.

-Jon

P.S. Are you interested in either of the books? Let me know

Each week, I’m planning on doing an update like this. Quick and dirty.

And, each week, I’ll invite you to put your name down on an early interest list for either the two books.

No newsletter or anything else. I’ll just personally email you when that book’s ready.

This is how I’m capturing traffic ongoing for each book.

If you’re interested in The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe, please enter you email here.

If you’re interested in The Invisible Heist, please enter your email here.

If interested in both, that’s cool. Please enter your email for both individually.

Thanks, and talk soon.

This is a hard post to write.

A few things first:

1. Nobody has been charged and nobody will be.

2. I’m still writing the book.

--

I think that I released the Kickstarter campaign more as a trauma response.

Don’t think I realized the trauma of what happened to. Instead, I defaulted to productivity. In a weird way, If I’m doing stuff, I don’t have to think or feel.

I started to write the book last weekend long-hand in a notebook and it made me realize that that needs to be my focus, not marketing a kickstarter.

--

I’m still planning to release a book.

It’s not about Bitcoin. Instead, the broader implications of invisible heists like this. The book will probably be called The Invisible Heist.

--

What I’ve realized is that this isn’t a story about me.

This is a much bigger story than a guy losing his kid’s savings or a single heist.

Our money, our photos, and our identity all run on technology the average person cannot hope to understand.

This is a story that affects us all.

We have been forced to trust code we’ve never seen, written by people we’ll never meet.

--

My plan is to sell the book for $4.99 on Kindle and $9.99 in paperback. (Audio will be recorded in-studio too.)

I don’t know when it will be done. But, when it does, I’m happy to send you a personal message.

If that’s something you want, can you please enter your email on this quick interest form?

-->

http://theinvisibleheistbook.com

Thanks,

-Jon

OK, I’ll start at the end.

My next book is called DRAINED: What Losing $1.6 million in 7 Minutes Taught me About Investments That Can’t be Stolen.

It just went live on Kickstarter.

--> Please back it right now

Early pledge support is WILDLY valuable. Please do that right now.

(Pledging to a Kickstarter, also called ‘backing’ is the same as preordering a book.)

This Came Out of Nowhere

I did not plan to write this book. I have already finished the first draft of a parable set in the gym. And had been researching Kickstarter as a platform to release that other book next March.

Sometimes life’s slow. You look peacefully out the window at the rolling hills. “Oh look Margaret, an alpaca farm. Should we stop and take a look?”

And sometimes it feels like you’re strapped in the back of a beat-up 2004 Toyota Camry speeding on the wrong side of the road driven by a maniacal clown as he shoots paintballs out of the window.

Here’s what happened next:

Between 9:36 PM and 9:43 PM on July 29, 2026, I had $1.6 million stolen

It took only seven minutes to drain 18.25245667 Bitcoin from three hardware wallets.

All because one line of code, written in 2021, in the device that generated my password, had a vulnerability.

We picture a heist as a guy in a ski mask with a pistol. That’s not how heists work anymore. They’re invisible now.

My money was locked in a bank vault that was never opened. I don’t know who took it or what country they’re in. I found out about it two days after it happened.

Over 10 million people read my posts about the hack. It was the front page of most national newspapers.

The reason millions of people read my post is because it touches on something much bigger than the hack

Our money, our photos, and our identity all run on technology the average person cannot hope to understand.

This is a much bigger story than a guy losing his kid’s savings or a single heist.

This is a story that affects us all.

We have been forced to trust code we’ve never seen, written by people we’ll never meet.

A few days after the shock of the heist settled, I went for a walk to think about what comes next and decided that I had two choices:

1. I could complain, or

2. I could do something about it.

Choice number one obviously sucked because complaining doesn’t fix anything. So, I took the second option.

My next step was to take stock of how this experience changed me, what tools I have, and what value I can offer.

And, well, I can write. And market. And publish books with the best of them.

How about I tell the story and become both an advocate and support presence for victims of all sorts of unforeseen bad stuff?

Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’m going to do.

So screw you clown. I’m not taking your shit

I have skills.

The robbers stole my money using tech. I’m going to earn it back using tech.

I’m going to write a book showing others how to gain the skills, build the resolve, and gain the resilience to stand tall when things outside of your control try to take you down.

There will be future thefts, sadly. And even if your disaster never comes from a screen (a business failure, divorce, health scare), the framework you’ll learn in DRAINED is the same: you can’t predict when or how you’re going to get punched in the face. You can only become the kind of person who can take a hit.

This book matters whether or not you’ve ever touched Bitcoin

All of us are trusting technology we’ll never fully understand with the things we cannot afford to lose.

The story’s still unfolding. The money is moving through mixers somewhere. Nobody’s caught the bad guys.

I’m asking you to back the DRAINED Kickstarter today. Early backers are essential to a campaigns success. Please do not put this off and say you’ll do it ‘later’.

You’ll be entertained. And you’ll finish reading with the tools to be resilient if any unexpected bad news comes your way.

Please back the Kickstarter right now via this link:

--> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathangoodman/drained-what-losing-16m-in-7-minutes-taught-me

-Jon

P.S. DRAINED is not a technical manual about blockchain code. Nor is it a tragedy about a victim who lost a staggering amount of money.

It’s a raw, masterclass on investing, resilience, strength, and community. From the initial psychological shock to navigating a viral storm of global media headlines and internet trolls, I’m going to strip away the comforting lies we tell ourselves about safety in the digital age and arm you with the tools to overcome it all.

P.P.S. I included a tier for an author workshop. It’ll be the first time I’m ever sharing the behind the scenes of writing, marketing, and selling books (including all of the numbers).

If you write books, or want to, that’s for you!

Please back the Kickstarter right now via this link:

--> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathangoodman/drained-what-losing-16m-in-7-minutes-taught-me

–

I sold over 205,000 self-published books. Then I took two six-figure book deals with HarperCollins. Now I’m going back to self-publishing and releasing The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe on Kickstarter.

The campaign will go live March 2027. Everything below happens between now and then.

In this article, I’ll share why I chose Kickstarter followed by my 3-part plan.

Despite being unconventional, Kickstarter solves a lot of inherent problems with publishing

Let’s rapid fire these:

1. You retain the rights to your book

You keep all of your profits. There’s no publisher or middleman to keep a high percentage of your earnings. You also retain creative control. And, also, you can always sell the rights to your book later once sales are proven.

By proving sales first, you reverse the sequence. That means more leverage negotiating with publishers, better options, and great editors will be more eager to work with you.

2. You get names and emails of your book buyers

Amazon’s a black box. Same as book stores. I’ve no idea who buys my books, can’t follow-up with them, and have no method of upselling them or selling them additional books.

The greatest asset every author needs is a direct line to their readers.

3. You get paid in advance

Good editing, design, and printing are expensive. Money up front pays for book production and reduces your risk profile.

4. Bundles and limited editions increase profits

Sell in bulk, bundle digital and physical, and create limited edition copies.

Your only limits to increased average order value (and profit) are your creativity and customer research.

5. Add urgency

Book launches have no natural urgency. It’s like “my book is live. Buy now! Uhh, or later. Six months from now. Or a year. For the same price.”

With Kickstarter, you can add in expiring bonuses and limited editions so people have a reason to get it right away.

Ok, so self-publishing a book and releasing it on Kickstarter sounds perfect

Not so fast.

According to Oriana Leckert, Kickstarter’s head of publishing, the current success rate in publishing is 41% (though that number increases to 85% in campaigns with at least 25 backers). There are reasons. Loads of little tricky bits.

You need an existing community. You have to do extensive customer research. And it will require a lot of manual outreach.

There’s a lot of random info published info on how to use Kickstarter to launch books. But very little centralized.

Over the last two months, I’ve held calls with friends who have collectively raised over $10 million, read books, studied successful launches, flew to NYC to have lunch with Oriana, and run incredibly detailed research reports in Claude.

First, some key Kickstarter-specific insights.

Following that, my 3-part plan to sell 18,000 copies of The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe via Kickstarter.

Kickstarter’s main function is to concentrate spending amongst existing superfans

While it’s possible to get some sales directly via the platform, I’ve chosen to view it as a bonus. Going into my campaign, I do not expect Kickstarter to expand my audience or bring on new readers.

This is a good thing. Here’s why:

Trying to both attract new readers and sell to existing ones are two different jobs. It is not possible to do both well at the same time.

With my next book, I’m splitting my goals into two launches.

1. The Kickstarter launch will be focused on leveraging and rewarding existing readers.

2. The Amazon launch (that will come later) will be focused on expanding my readership.

Loads of clarity on how to tackle Kickstarter follows:

• Most of the sales copy on my page will be for my existing readers, and not to convince strangers to buy my book.

• My marketing is focused on reconnecting deeply with my community.

• Reward tiers will be designed with a small percentage of my most engaged readership in mind.

There’s a few other key Kickstarter insights I’ve discovered worth quickly pointing out before I tell you my plan.

1. Do not include a physical copy of your book for less than what it will cost you to fulfill it

Low-priced tiers with physical fulfillment crush authors. The time, effort, and cost to print and ship the thing will take you out.

That said, Kickstarter is designed to attract a large number of small-dollar backers. The average backing amount across the entire platform is $25. It’s important to have something in that range.

My lowest tier will include the Ebook and audiobook. In order to justify a $50+ tier that includes the physical book, I’ll be creating a limited edition version.

2. Set a low funding goal so that you hit it as quickly as possible

The Kickstarter algorithm works on attention. If you have a lot of backers, commenters, etc., that’s what signals the platform to bring you traffic. You want your goal to the floor, not a ceiling––ask for the minimum amount you need to bring the project to life.

Your goal should be to make sure it’s funded within a day or two of it being announced.

There’s a social proof component to this too. Nobody wants to be the first to a party but everybody wants to show up to a rager and start fist-pumping.

My plan is to set a low funding goal of $5,000 - $10,000 and grow a presupport list. The day the page goes live, I’ll include a fast-action bonus for the first few hundred backers. Then I’ll do manual outreach. The campaign will only be announced publicly after it’s been funded.

3. Do not offer free worldwide shipping

International shipping costs a fortune, takes unpredictable amounts of time leading to customer service headaches, and has higher returns. Free shipping to the USA will be worked into my pricing and I’ll charge for shipping elsewhere.

4. $60 average order value (AOV) seems to be the sweet spot for book campaigns

Out of the three most relevant campaigns I found, I was surprised to discover that the AOV ranged from $59-$61. Such a tight window was a key data point. (According to Oriana, the average backing amount this year has risen to $79.)

Campaigns with higher AOV raised less money or had way less individual buyers. Which, initially, seems counterintuitive but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

5. 2-5 copy packages are going to be the workhorse

This range tends to sell more than all other tiers put together.

6. Multiple stages of limited editions creates fabulous urgency and tangible additional value

It’s possible to create a version of your book in a (very) limited quantity that goes out to the earliest adopters. Sell out. Then create a new type of limited edition.

I’m obsessed with baseball cards because I’m a dork. That industry manufactures value out of thin air better than anything else I’ve ever seen.

A base card is worth pennies. That same base card with a stamp on it that says 1/10 could be worth thousands. Both are pieces of cardboard with a picture. The only difference between the two is that one version has a completely made-up-by-the-company limited quantity.

My proposed Kickstarter tier structure

-$25 - Digital trio (audio, ePub, Mobi)

-$50 - Hand-numbered limited edition

(first 500) + digital trio

-$50 - Limited edition (for when the first 500 sell out)

+digital trio

-$75 - Buy one, gift two

Limited edition + 2 paperback + digital trio

-$100 - Buy one, gift 5

Limited edition + 5 paperback + digital trio

-$250 - Personal trainer pack

Limited edition + 25 paperback + digital trio

$500 - Behind the scenes secrets (for authors)

Limited edition + 5 paperback + digital trio + book marketing masterclass

-$1,000 - Business / gym owner pack

Limited edition + 100 paperback + 100 audio licenses + gift notes + digital trio

-$15,000 - $50,000 - Sponsorship

Still loads to consider with tiers. Based on this, my AOV needs to be closer to $100 and not $60 to hit my goal. Not unreasonably because I’m relying on B2B sales. But it is something I’m thinking about.

If you have feedback, please share it with me in the comments.

Bit more on the sponsorship . . .

There’s a $1.4M line in one of my books

In 2013, I made a deal with a software company I liked. A few affiliate link placements inside Ignite the Fire, plus some social and email promo.

That deal has made me $1.4M since. It still pays me $15k a month.

I’ve thought about that deal a lot. Few authors sell the attention inside of their book.

I’m toying with the idea of product placement.

In my next book, our hero drinks a protein powder and trains at a gym. Why not sell the naming rights to both? Movies do it. I could bundle in some social and email promo alongside it. With 500,000+ followers across social media and an email list of over 70,000, there’s value there.

Sell each spot for a whackload of money? I dunno. Could work. Worth a few emails and phone calls to find out. If you’re interested, message.

My useful constraint is that I’m only selling books in this campaign

A funny thing happens to writers who get successful: the world conspires to pay them a lot to do everything but write.

Nothing against speaking or consulting or whatever. They’re objectively better ways to make money than selling books. I just don’t want to do them.

So, no speaking or consulting bolted onto a tier.

Knowing I want to only sell books as part of the campaign has proven to be a useful constraint inside of the box to derive more value from existing sources. (Tip of the cap to David Epstein.)

How I hope to sell 18,000 books on Kickstarter - My 3-Part Plan

Success on Kickstarter depends on a pre-support list

The bigger and more engaged, the better your campaign will do.

My goal is a 20,000+ pre-support list. This should translate to 3,000-5,000 book buyers and 10,000 - 18,000 books sold raising between $200,000 - $325,000. It’s ambitious, but I’m fairly confident that I can do it.

That said, the size of the list is less important than its quality.

Here’s my 3-part plan:

1. Capturing support intent ongoing via a form.

Lots of people are good at generating traffic. But that’s not enough. You also need to capture that traffic, file away the intent, and make use out of it.

I’ve created a support page on my website and a form that I’ll link to in my content ongoing. When I speak about the book or share behind the scenes, I’ll link to this page and capture support intent ongoing.

A regular email opt-in would result in a bigger list, but less committed. Conversion to book sales would be low.

To overcome this, I’m doing two things:

1. Asking for a phone #

2. Promising discounts and bonus perks for people on the list

The form specifies exactly how people can volunteer to support the book.

It then populates a Google Sheet, making it easy for me to personally follow-up with each accordingly.

For now, I’m letting this build organically. No paid.

Whenever I’m working on the book, I’ll snap a pic and post it to my story.

Across my 5-Reps Friday newsletter and this Diary of a Book Launch newsletter I’ll invite people to join.

Then, across my organic content that reaches over 20 million people monthly on IG, FB, Threads, LinkedIn, and Substack, I’ll include it ongoing as a call to action where appropriate.

I’ll follow this for at least six months. Then I’ll begin texting and emailing every person on that list, manually, one-by-one.

–

Want to commit your support of the book?

Fabulous. Please tap the link below for info and to fill out the form: https://www.theptdc.com/articles/the-greatest-personal-trainer-in-the-universe-book

2. Diary of a Book Launch Newsletter

There’s good material out there on crowdfunding. Almost none of it is about books. And most of what exists was written after the campaign ended.

That’s different thing to what I’m doing here.

I’m writing this as it happens. Before I know if it works.

Post-mortem retellings can be useful. What they miss is what I’ve always found most interesting:

Why’d the dude do that thing that failed?

Like, he must’ve had a good reason for it.

I hope what I’m doing here is both interesting and useful for you.

And yeah, I’m hoping that if you follow along, you’ll be invested enough to support it by buying copies.

3. 100+ research calls with gym owners

As the esteemed philosopher who goes by the name of Pitbull once rapped:

Ask for money and get advice,

Ask for advice, get money twice

In the last three weeks, I’ve spent over 20 hours on calls with 43 different gym owners. I’ll do at least 100. Probably more.

This is the single most important thing I’m doing.

These calls:

• Provides texture that add depth to the book

• Gives me marketing language

• Helps me to figure out reward tiers and pricing

• Generates a pre-committed bulk order insider launch-day cohort

These people are literally my ideal reader, the bridge to a larger audience, and perfect beta readers.

An example: There’s a scene with a 50ish year old woman push-pressing a barbell. I had a call last week with a gym owner who, for the last 25 years, has run a barbell gym for 40-60 year old women.

Look, there’s lots of tips and tricks when it comes to marketing. But the most important step that basically everybody misses is talking to people.

If you only do one thing, talk to people.

Figure out who your ideal reader is and ask them for advice. They’ll tell you everything you need to know. And they’ll want to buy a copy of your book, too.

So, yeah. Book. Kickstarter. Cool story, bro.

If you’re digging this and want to pledge your support to the project, please click here

-Jon

Coming next in Diary of a Book Launch

Next in this newsletter, I’ll share my exact process for research calls. It includes outreach, tech, my line of questioning, AI-stack for synthesizing insights, and follow-up email.

Please subscribe here on LinkedIn or, if you’d like an email notification when that article’s live, please subscribe via Substack (same content).

And if you’re an author (or want to be), please send me a connection request Jonathan Goodman–you’re my kind of person, I think far too much about this stuff, and it’s fun to share it.

–

I sold 205,000 self-published books.

Then I got 2 multi-six figure book deals with HarperCollins.

Now I’m going back to self-publishing for my next book. And it’s going to be released initially on Kickstarter.

Everyone I’ve told thinks this is a step backwards. I think it’s the smartest way to produce and release a book right now.

The rules of publishing just broke. Which means the winning move is now the opposite of everything you were taught. I’m betting my own money and career on it.

First, how AI broke the old rules.

Next, why weird little books are going to win.

And finally, the math of fuzzy slipper and caviar money.

Let’s light this candle.

AI and Social Media Broke Book Discovery

There’s always been a power law distribution with books–where the bestsellers wildly outsold all else. But before, lots of books were still able to clear a real sales threshold in a category.

That has changed for two reasons:

1. AI-driven search has collapsed book discovery.

When everybody asks a central intelligence for recommendations, and that central intelligence pulls the most common recommendations, the same few books get recommended.

2. Algorithmically-driven social media incentivizes creators to share already-popular titles.

A post about Atomic Habits gets engagement. A post about a book nobody’s heard of doesn’t. That is why creators keep posting about Atomic Habits.

The Game’s Rigged Against You

Wrote a self-help book? You’re competing against How to Win Friends and Influence People.

A book for small business? The E-Myth.

A book about money? Rich Dad Poor Dad.

The game’s rigged against you. You’re a toddler who just learned to dribble, challenging Michael Jordan to a game of one-on-one.

Want to know how to beat Michael Jordan?

Don’t play basketball.

The Solution, You Little Weirdo You, is to Target the Smallest Available Market

-Andy Weir’s The Martian was written for space geeks.

-Mark Kurlansky wrote a book about cod.

-Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl began as a free web serial on the fiction site Royal Road.

All broke out to become worldwide phenomena.

The correct approach with a book is to go crazy niche.

That way you can go directly to your ideal reader, bypass gatekeepers, and sidestep maddening algorithms.

And with that, allow me to introduce my next book.

Introducing: The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe

My next book is a short parable that can be read in an evening.

I’m probably the only person in the world who has the funky combination of 22 years in fitness, a worldwide network of trainers, and an instinct for storytelling to write a book like this.

Instead of trying to write a book anyone could write, I wanted to write the one that only this particular mix of background makes possible.

This book exists because it sits right at the intersection of those experiences. If AI can synthesize everything, the only defensible book is the one it structurally can’t make.

A weird, unreplicable book like this is my best chance at winning the new game.

If You’re Going to Win, it’ll be by Word of Mouth

The old way of producing big books to make the money work stops word of mouth in its tracks.

Traditional non-fiction books are 250-300 pages because that’ll give them about a ¾-inch spine. Thick enough to look like it’s worth $28, in order to overcome the costly unit economics of the traditional publishing model.

OK. This is important. Let’s talk about virality, referral velocity, and word of mouth.

But, like, with Mars chocolate bars.

How good are Mars bars by the way?

If every person who eats a Mars bar convinces 1.2 others to buy one, that’s called a 1.2 viral coefficient.

And because the thing’s going to get crushed right away in a parking lot before my wife gets back to the car, the product-consumption cycle is basically a day. In only four days, you have four cycles, or one full doubling.

Start with 100 people eating a Mars bar,

and, over only four days, that number doubles to 200.

Another four days, 400. Then 800.

And so on.

A 1.2 viral coefficient is pandemic-level virality but is entirely dependent on the speed of consumption.

Which brings us to the mind-fuck of books.

It’s estimated that the average 250-300 page non-fiction book takes five months to finish (and most never get finished).

First, it sits on a shelf where the buyer feels guilty for not starting it because the thing’s (often unnecessarily) big and intimidating. Starting gets delayed. Then, excused away in the “to be read” (TBR) pile.

Even at an elite 1.2 viral coefficient, sales take 19 months (~578 days) to double.

By the time your book goes through a single doubling cycle, Mars bars will have gone through 144 of them. The absurdity of this example is that every person alive will have eaten one by day 105, less than a fifth of the time it takes your book’s reach to double once.

Your bottleneck isn’t writing a book worth sharing. It’s getting people to finish the damn thing fast.

Word of mouth is not a content problem. It’s a product-design problem.

The old way of making books reinforces slow consumption. A short, punchy, approachable, wildly-specific-to-you, page-turner-of-a-parable that bypasses your TBR pile and you read in one evening, on the other hand, is a three-week cycle (at most) – 11 weeks to double instead of 19 months.

I both enjoyed publishing with HarperCollins and I believe self-publishing is the right move

Two things can be true.

My publisher was good to me. They paid me good money to write my last two books. I liked the team that I worked with. The credibility mattered. If I were to do another large-scale non-fiction book, they’d be my first email.

This isn’t a story about traditional publishing being wrong. It’s simpler than that: no publisher would buy this book. Even if one would, it wouldn’t make sense for me to sell it.

Traditional publishing requires a large available market.

And I get why. They’re hedging their bets. But I do think this is what sets good books down bad paths. When you sell a traditionally published book for a large advance, the publisher both needs to account for their unit economics and wants to know how the book can appeal to a lot of people. The result’s often a larger, generic book.

With a book like what I’ve written, the marketing has to be scrappy. A groundswell starting with becoming the biggest damn fish in a small pond. Maybe, eventually, breaking out into adjacent markets. Or maybe not.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with this book.

But I do know that it’s going to start with gym owners and personal trainers. And my job is to talk, one-on-one, to as many of them as possible. I’m doing hundreds of calls. Way more on this in a future article. (Subscribe to Diary of a Book Launch so you won’t miss it on either LinkedIn or Substack.)

How to make fuzzy slipper and caviar money

A poker player is happy if they lose a hand so long as they made a good bet. That’s because they understand expected value–the average result if you made the same bet a thousand times.

An advance from a publisher buys you an insurance policy at the expense of owning your upside.

They hand you money up front. In exchange, they keep most of what each copy earns.

The tradeoff is simple: You capped how bad it can go. You also capped how good it can go.

Self-publishing is the opposite bet.

It costs money to self-publish a book. You pay for the editing, design, printing, and project management yourself.

The reality is that losing everything is almost impossible, because a book written by an author with an audience makes its money back. Worst case, you’ll land near even or lose small.

What I can’t stop thinking about is what happens if a book blasts off. There’s no ceiling. And it happens. Once in a while a self-published book blows up. Like Andy Weir’s The Martian. Dude’s making fuzzy slipper and caviar money. Yeah, it’s rare. But when it hits, and you own the whole thing? Yowza.

The correct way to approach creative projects like this is to trade a little more downside for a lot more upside. Because, on the rare attempt that it does win, that one win pays for all the near-misses combined, so long as you retain ownership.

My buddy Billy Murphy calls this opportunistic approach to business ‘Millionaire’s Math.’

If you identify a bet that has a small downside and huge potential upside, take it 100% of the time, so long as the upside multiplied by the probability of success exceeds the cost.

(A useful counterexample is a lottery ticket. While it still has small downside and large potential upside, the probability of success is so low that it does not represent a good bet.)

The main requirement of Millionaire’s Math is surviving long enough to place the bet enough times for it to pay off. One book proves nothing. The math only works if you keep showing up.

My next book might not be the big one. Odds are it won’t be. Not because it isn’t great. It is. Just stating the obvious odds. Few books are breakout hits.

This next book will be my fourteenth. I plan to write many more.

Going weird and specific is how I’m tilting the odds slightly more in my favor.

For this next one, I’m betting on myself.

The safest bet is to trust the thing that only you can make

The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe isn’t a book about how to train.

It’s not a manual on how to develop your physical strength.

The whole thing is a metaphor – about what happens to your confidence, career, and relationships if you keep showing up for fitness.

This is a book about the power of identity.

In the last month, I’ve asked 42 trainers and gym owners why their clients quit.

One of them explained why he can’t be the one to fix it. “It’s like a pro basketball player teaching you to shoot.”

He’s in shape. And that’s exactly what disqualifies him from being the one to help his client on a deeper level. Four others told me a version of the same thing without prompting.

A story doesn’t have that problem. It puts you next to somebody who was where you are six months ago, and lets you watch what happens.

Traditional fitness books are instructional – sets, reps, macros, whatever. The idea is that once you have a plan, you’re good to go. You can’t instruct somebody into a new identity. You can only show them someone becoming it.

The fitness industry has spent forty years perfecting the answer to a question nobody’s asking. Everybody knows what to do. Not enough are doing it.

If this book works, somebody’s still training in five years who would have quit in six weeks.

I need your help

I can’t get this book to all of the people who need it by myself. Books spread through word of mouth.

The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe book will be launched on Kickstarter early next year.

Starting today, I’m opening up a pre-support list. I’m asking you to raise your hand and pledge how you can help: anything from committing to buying a copy, writing a review, or a bulk order of 5-100+ copies to share with your team and/or clients.

In exchange for pledging your support, you will get early access, limited edition copies, plus a secret reward tier with a bigger discount than what’ll be available publicly.

Please click here to join the pre-support list for The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe.

-Jon

–

Coming next in Diary of a Book Launch

Next in this newsletter, I’ll share my three-part plan to sell 18,000 books and raise $325,000 on Kickstarter.

Please subscribe here on LinkedIn or, if you’d like an email notification when that article’s live, please subscribe via Substack (same content).

On June 1st at 7pm EST I’m joining and 📚Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS) live.

I’ve said so many times how important it is for authors to work together. I hope you attend the free workshop we’re putting on. But also, I hope this puts a fire under your butt to work alongside other authors to amplify your message.

We all rise together.

In addition, so much goes into book launches. So little into what happens after a book’s release. Mike, MBS, and I all released a book about Habits this past year. It wouldn’t work during our launch. But such a great thing to do after.

Anyway . . . YOU SHOULD COME TO THE LIVE EVENT.

Oh, btw, it’s free.

We’re going to be talking about:

• What work moves the needle (versus busywork dressed up like discipline)

• Flexible, flowing, high-impact frameworks for success

• Habits that lead to financial and personal success and happiness.

If you’ve been consistently working hard, yet feel like you’re in a rut. This is for you.

Here’s the info:

~Cost: Free.

~Date / Time: June 1st, 7pm EST.

~Location: Worldwide on Zoom.

Please register here: --> ​Norms Make Your Normal event​

--

This’ll be a candid, contrarian conversation from three guys who have sold over 2 million books.

Mike: The author of Profit First and The Money Habit MBS: The author of The Coaching Habit Me: The author of Unhinged Habits

We’re all friends. And thought it’d be fun to put on this free event. Hope you can make it.

Please register here: --> ​Norms Make Your Normal event​

-Jon

P.S. Your habits follow your beliefs. Change the beliefs, and everything else gets easier. ​Let’s do that, together​.

The two are connected by a single thread: the compounding nature of relationships over time.

Here’s how this stuff actually works.

Catch them in the act of doing something good

Our story starts on May 4, 2011, when I sent Alex an email thanking him for the column he’d been writing in the Globe and Mail—a column he still writes today.

Too often, we jump on people when they screw up. I did the opposite. I made a point of saying: “CAUGHT YOU! You did something awesome. I noticed!”

We went for coffee on May 21st. I ran an interview to promote his book that same week.

Over the next 14 years, we slowly built a friendship.

The fastest way to earn a seat at the table is to host the meal

The first author meal that and I hosted in Toronto was on April 29th, 2025. I invited Alex Hutchinson. He said yes. And I asked if he knew anybody else who might be interested.

Alex introduced me to . I asked if she knew anyone else who might be interested. Because she was directly referred through Alex, she felt confident extending that trust to another referral and introduced me to .

Alex and Alyssa came to that dinner. David politely declined. But because he was referred through someone he trusted (Alyssa), he offered a hangout.

We walked and chatted.

I continued to invite David to author meals. He said no six times. Finally, on December 18th, he came to a lunch.

This is the lunch that changed everything. But only because I’d been building relationships for 14 years.

What you ask for is what you get

Even with a major publisher like HarperCollins, getting media placed isn’t automatic. I asked my senior publicity director for help getting an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

They passed along two editor emails and said: “We’ve had better luck when authors reach out directly. We’ll follow up on your pitch.”

I got advice from friends, wrote a piece, and sent it off.

One editor sent a polite rejection. The other never responded.

This is reality: nobody’s going to do it for you. Not even the biggest publishers. The world runs on relationships you build yourself.

So how did the Globe and Mail piece happen?

When you host the meal, you decide how it operates. After doing it 40 times, we had a good rhythm: each person shares what they need help with. The rest of the table offers advice or assistance.

David Sax was at that December 18th lunch. I knew he’d published extensively in major newspapers.

My ask: “I’m trying to get an opinion essay in the Globe and Mail about the real benefits of returning to a more seasonal life.”

David’s close friends with , the Deputy Editor of the Globe’s Opinion section. I didn’t know this.

Luck plays a major role in all success. The people who win understand that while you can’t manufacture luck, you can increase your surface area for it.

How?

1. Know what you want.

2. Ask for it specifically.

3. Ask often, and to a wide range of people.

Was it lucky David was friends with Mark? Or was it the compounding effect of 15 years of relationship building? In retrospect, it was inevitable that somebody I knew would have the ability to facilitate the connection. I asked for help with an opinion essay ten times at different meals before that December lunch.

Before I even got home, David had sent Mark a message to his personal email, pitching me better than I’d ever pitched myself. He knows Mark personally and knew exactly what aspects about me to highlight.

Mark responded quickly. We agreed on a topic. He asked me for 1,000 words.

I sent it to him on December 24th (in retrospect, a dumb move).

No reply.

On January 14th, I followed up. He apologized for missing it and asked me to resend. I did. Then I followed up again on January 20th. He told me it would run January 31st.

When he sent me the edits to approve, I proactively offered photos for the piece, stating clearly that I owned all rights and the Globe was free to use them.

Trust bypasses busy inboxes

I’ve wondered what would have happened if I pitched Mark myself. Would this have worked?

Honestly, I don’t know. If I kept cold pitching opinion editors at major newspapers, eventually something probably would have gotten approved.

But this story showcases the reality of how the real world works, doesn’t it?

The work has to be good. Mark gets tons of pitches—just like those two Wall Street Journal editors I messaged. He didn’t do me any special favors. He still had to believe this essay was right for his readers. He’s the Deputy Editor of Canada’s largest newspaper. He has standards to uphold.

What David did for me was get me to the top of Mark’s inbox. The relationship didn’t get my piece published. It got my piece seen.

There’s a difference.

And that difference started 5,386 days earlier with a cold email to Alex Hutchinson, thanking him for doing good work.

-Jon

P.S. I’ve pulled out some lessons from the story that have been useful for me, and I hope they prove useful for you.

On Building Relationships:

• Send the cold email

• Catch them in the act of doing something good

• Promote their work publicly

• Host the meal

• No doesn’t mean no. It means “not now”

On Making Asks:

• Know what you want

• Ask for it specifically

• Ask often, to a wide range of people

• Make your asks clear and specific

• Give people a chance to help one another

On Execution:

• Act fast and execute

• Follow up (multiple times if necessary)

• Proactively give them what they need

With so much attention paid to launches, I wanted to share what I think is more important: ongoing efforts to keep promoting your book after launch.

This’ll be a tactical essay covering the 8 things I’m doing to continue selling copies.

Please share this with anybody who has already released a book. It’s all stuff that can (and should) be done years after a book’s release.

What I’m saying is: no matter when your book came out, this will help you sell more copies without burning yourself out.

The first step is to set up your capture and canned response systems

People share your book. Awesome. But you’re on the go. And busy. You fire off a quick thank you. Then forget about it.

Later on you want to create content or email or whatever. But you don’t have assets, or pics, or things to say.

Easy solve: Set up two capture systems and a few canned responses:

1.Add links to all articles, podcasts, and social media shares in a google sheet.

No matter where you are, grab the permalink to anything that goes live when it happens and add it to your sheet.

2. Save pics of people with your book in a dropbox folder.

Anytime somebody tags you or sends you a pic of them with your book, save it to a Dropbox folder.

3. Create a note with canned responses for common situations.

Write a good response once, save it in the notes on your phone, and copy and paste it moving forward.

With these 3 simple systems set up, your ongoing promotion becomes easier and more effective. You’ll see how I’m using each in a bit.

Always ask for reviews

Whenever somebody says something nice about your book, send a quick ask for a review. Do this on the go. Hence the saved canned response.

Comment a quick call to action underneath shares

Somebody shared your book. Yay. Comment twice: one showing appreciation for the share; one adding your canned response call to action for your book.

On social media, posts with links get killed in the feed. Creators don’t include them. I like to drop the link to my book in a comment on each post.

An example from Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠 ‘s popular promo of the book. (see here)

Build your network and platform by sending strategic connection requests

Give access to your Google sheet—where you’re collecting the list of posts sharing your book—to your VA. Ask them to send 20-30 daily connection requests to people who engaged with posts promoting your book.

Give guidance on the type of person you want added to your network. For me, that means people who define themselves in their profile as writers or authors and aren’t commenting AI-generated slop.

Each day you’ll have new connections. These are people who already showed an interest in your book and actively engage on LinkedIn. After my VA sends the initial message, I respond personally.

On average, of the 150 requests sent each week, 35% accept. That’s 52 new connections a week, or 2,704 in a year.

Create book-specific content to share

In addition to pics of illustrations or key quotes from your book, you can compare your book to other popular ones in the genre and tag the authors. Because you’re also promoting them, in many cases they’ll reshare the content.

I already published an article on this from the largest book influencer, Alex Wieckowski. So I’ll refer you there: 7 different ways to turn your book into a viral piece of content.

I’ve got a bunch of these prepared. They’ll be nice to slot in from time to time.

One-off bundle deals with other authors

The problem: After the book launch, there’s no time-sensitivity to buy. As a result, loads of people ‘plan’ to buy my book at one point.

The solution: I decide on a week 2-3 times a year where I promote and sell my book alongside another author’s as a 2-for-1 bundle.

I’ll find somebody with an audience and topic that complements mine. Then work with a bookstore to fulfill the orders. So long as I can guarantee the bookstore at least 250 orders, they should be willing to discount the books 50% off, making it a 2-for-1 deal. We’ll both promote the deal for a week to our audiences with a defined end date.

This will give everybody who plans to buy our books “at one point” an incentive to buy now.

A lot of the reason I invested so much time and money hosting authors for meals last year was to build the connections to make partnerships like this possible.

Mass personalized email promo to hyper-specific interest groups

Some of the most energy I’ve gotten around the book has been from the ADHD community. They tell me that a lot of traditional productivity advice doesn’t work for neurodivergent folks.

That’s a nugget.

I’m going to acquire email lists of experts, coaches, and practitioners who specialize with this group. Then I’ll send mass personalized email blasts to them offering a sample chapter from the book using a Gmail plugin called GMass.

I plan on repeating this with multiple specific interest groups.

I got this idea from Jimmy Soni , who individually emailed 14,000 computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics University professors inviting them to preview his book.

Here’s Jimmy talking about the strategy:

(Super annoying note: LinkedIn won’t let me embed the exact time stamp. You’ll want to scroll forward and listen from 45:17 - 47:21.)

Low-lift weekly email

I send my 5-Reps Friday newsletter to just over 70,000 people. It’s designed to be low-lift, something I can reliably get out even when I’m busy.

The newsletter has slots for quotes and passages from the book. In addition, I’m adding a box at the bottom each week where I’ll grab a pic of somebody with my book from Dropbox and include it.

Weekly articles + syndicating across social media

I didn’t publish long-form book-specific articles before the publication of Unhinged Habits. Preordering books is a wholly unnatural behavior. Instead, I focused on the post-launch phase and banked all content for this period.

I’m aiming for an article a week.

These articles will then be cut up for social media. All articles will end with a call to action to get the book and a pic of somebody with their copy.

Here’s an example of an article that went live on my website this week:

You can read that article here: The real reason you’re exhausted (+ a fix). It lives on my main site where I talk about the habits and life design topics from my book, whereas here I just talk about the book itself. Both newsletters are run separately. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to my main site via that article.

Book marketing is a marathon, not a sprint

Unhinged Habits preaches seasonality. It teaches you how to design a set period of time with a singular focus that leads to growth, pushing back against trying to be consistent at all the things, all the time.

The launch of a book is a season. It’s intense and focused. I’m done with that. Now I’m in a season of focus on my family, strengthening bonds with my kids and wife.

Post-launch needs to be more consistent. For those who have already read the book, you’ll understand me when I say that it’s “off-season”. You must have a long time horizon, which means you need to design strategies that can be done both on the go and on the side. Then, every so often, do an intense push (like a week-long bundle deal).

Too many authors burn themselves out during launch and give no thought to what comes after. The launch is exciting, but it’s just one intense season. The real work—the work that actually sells books over time—happens in the months and years that follow.

If you design your post-launch efforts to be sustainable and consistent, with occasional bursts of intensity, you can keep selling books for years without exhausting yourself.

It’s simple, really.

• Capture shares and pics as they come in.

• Be ready with canned responses.

• Design a strategic yet manual ongoing outreach system.

• Mass-personalize promotions to hyper-targeted niche groups.

• Partner with others for time-sensitive bundle promotions.

• Produce ongoing content.

Hope you got something useful out of this you can bring into your ongoing book promo.

-Jon

(Oh, and also: If you’re a writer or an author, please either follow me or send a connection request on LinkedIn ( Jonathan Goodman )- you’re my kind of person.)

I’m 13 hours ahead of New York. When ​Unhinged Habits​ released on Tuesday, I was asleep.

I woke up to over 1,000 messages and comments.

My chief of staff booked a call with me for today at 10:30am. I figured it was a check-in.

After dropping the kids at school and working out, I hopped on.

And my stomach dropped.

20 of my friends—influential authors, mega influencers, top podcasters—all busy people—had secretly planned a surprise Zoom book launch party call. One by one, they said nice things about me and the book.

Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before. I didn’t know how to act or what to say. I still don’t.

I’m trying to respond to every message personally. It might take some time.

For now, I just want to say thank you. This has been so special, and overwhelming and fun. I’m grateful.

​Unhinged Habits​ is about habits, yes. But it’s really about the deeper values of community, health, and meaningful work. It is about getting the order right by balancing short-term desires with long-term planning. The book teaches you how to set yourself up for a bright future without missing the magic in the present.

There are over 100 newsletters and articles promoting the book going live this week and next. Major media hits too.

For now, I’ve hand-selected a few things I thought you’d enjoy:

​Why Intense Focus Beats Steady Habits​ (Psychology Today article)

​I’m taking a mini-sabbatical and Unhinged Habits made me do it​ (Article from a mega-popular author)

​Thoughts from someone early in their career​ (LinkedIn post from a young and ambitious man)

​There Was Never a Flame in the First Place​ (Article from a fabulous essayist)

Next, I wrote about how I’m feeling as an author on launch day. If you’ve ever done the scary thing and put years of work into the world, this is for you.

​How I’m feeling as an author on launch day​

And finally, a podcast. I only recorded 6 for this launch. The others aren’t live yet. So this is the only place to hear me talk through the book’s transformational concepts.

​Seasons of Unhinged Intensity​ (Lift Free and Diet Hard podcast with Andrew Coates)

The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given came from a mentor.

It was at the height of the Online Trainer Academy’s success. He said: “What’s happening is really cool. You should enjoy it.”

And I didn’t. The best advice I’ve ever been given is advice that I ignored. Instead, I worried. I worried about payroll, the next launch, and about growth. I worried about others I was jealous of. And I obsessed about all of the wrong things. About what others had that I felt that I deserved instead of what was going well.

I wish I’d enjoyed the ride more. But I can’t change the past. What I can change is the future. And I can say with honesty that right now I am truly, genuinely, enjoying myself.

Thank you for being a part of it all.

-Jon

It’s insane how much stress authors feel when they launch a book. We’re made to think that if it doesn’t sell a ton of preorders (before anybody’s read the damn thing, mind you) then we’re a failure.

As a result, too many authors ignore the people that they love, neglect their health, and get so mentally crushed by their own launch that they begin to resent their own book. I’ve made that mistake in the past. Never again.

The launch of Unhinged Habits has been different

I’ve had fun.

No, seriously. Pinky-swear, it’s possible to have fun launching a book—I promise.

From sharing meals with 150 authors this last year, to focusing on LinkedIn and not maddening-IG, to mailing 288 influencer copies, I’ve been focused on humans and not algorithms.

But mostly, I made a promise that I wouldn’t put my life on hold for this book launch.

To make sure I kept to my promise, I wrote down my ideal life properties:

I refuse to miss a single undue moment with my young kids. I need to exercise every day. I will surround myself with interesting and impressive people. And I want to write.

Our brains suck at planning but are excellent at working backwards. The trick, therefore, is to figure out the end-state first. Establish your ideal lifestyle properties. Assume them to be true. Set them as constraints. Then build your plan within those constraints.

The most useful part of this process is what it allows you to say no to.

In my case, I decided not to do podcasts. Think about it: They mean less writing, abiding by others’ schedules, and travel. All of that flies in the face of my ideal lifestyle. It would mean less writing and less time with my kids. The decision to forego podcasts was an easy one to both make and maintain.

In its place, I decided to go all-in on newsletters. They can be written in advance. Done asynchronously, on my schedule, and from anywhere in the world.

The reason that I’ve had fun launching Unhinged Habits is simple: I accepted that I can’t do much. Once I accepted that, I figured out the best opportunity, did it as big as I could, and ignored the rest.

As I wrote in Unhinged Habits:

“Most people think the solution to feeling overwhelmed is to do more, optimize better, and work harder. That’s wrong. This book will show you how to do less, but with more intention.”

As of right now, there are 86 newsletters promoting the book to over 4 million subscribers in the coming weeks.

It’s not all good. Social media is still triggering me

I haven’t figured out how to manage all of the social media I want to do.

Between Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, and Substack, I feel guilty for not sharing more content ongoing related to the book.

I have the content. It’s the editing and design and scheduling that bogs me down.

Leading up to the launch, I did not publish as much as I wanted to across social media.

There’s a weird part of me I can’t quite put into words that feels guilt around not doing more. I’ve gotta make sense of that at some point.

I told this to Corinne Low . She’s the author of Having It All and an associate prof at Wharton. Here’s what she told me:

“I do think there’s a part of us that evolutionarily craves social prestige, so we feel pulled toward activities that produce that outside sense of accomplishment even if they don’t increase our own utility!”

Smart. I think she’s right.

Want to know something crazy? I haven’t seen my book yet

I left Toronto with Alison and our three kids December 29th. Author copies weren’t ready yet. My publisher sent me the book jacket in advance knowing I’d be abroad. The only pics I’ve shared are of the book jacket on a random book.

Is that ideal?

Nah.

But we wanted to leave Canada for our 13th consecutive winter abroad. Toronto to Abu Dhabi then to Bali. It was 26 hours on a plane and a 13-hour time difference.

And I made a promise that I wouldn’t put my life on hold for this book launch.

Because of the travel and jet lag, I couldn’t work for two weeks.

But Calvin and I had a Daddy/Son day in the desert in Abu Dhabi. How cool is that to say?

Will I remember that I couldn’t work leading up to the book launch?

Nah. But I will remember launching my kid in the air in between some sand dunes and later that night him lying on my chest looking up at the stars.

I once heard somebody say that in order to write interesting novels, you must have novel experiences. That was correct then. And, in the age of AI, it is even more correct now.

Doing more won’t get you ahead. There’s no competitive advantage in working harder anymore. If your work is creative, your competitive advantage is the sum of experiences you’ve ventured out to have. Call it strategic (in)efficiency. Are you interesting? What are your values? How deeply do you live and demonstrate them?

Four days before my book’s release, Alison signed us up as partners for a Hyrox race. That’s a fitness race. I’ve never done one. But we did it together. It sucked in all the best ways. Doing hard things with your wife is an underrated way to build a tighter bond.

This morning, the day of the book launch, I went for a jog with a friend along the sea. I told Jenny Wood about it. She wrote Wild Courage. “Running along the sea sounds like a great way to launch a book to me,” Jenny responded.

I could have done more to market Unhinged Habits. But I’ve done enough and haven’t punished myself in the process by sacrificing my well-being, mental health, craving for adventure, or time with my family for it.

Unhinged Habits is a book about happiness and habits, joy and purpose, health and exploration. It’s a guide for optimizing your habits to set yourself up for a bright future without missing the magic in the present. I’m proud to be living the lessons within its pages.

I am a Dad and an author, in that order.

-Jon

UNHINGED HABITS is officially out today.

I wrote it after years of watching talented, passionate people get stuck in their own bad habits - lost in the noise of a routine that doesn’t serve them––overbusy, yet underhappy.

And I get it, because I used to be that way too.

But there’s a better way. And it’s to develop Unhinged Habits.

It’s not actually as crazy as it sounds. The idea is simple:

Decide what you want and focus on it.

Or be OK not having it.

Both are fine. It’s the middle that’s the issue.

There’s frameworks to help you apply the idea to your work, relationships, and health.

After travelling 1,800 days learning from other cultures, building 32 different products, and spending 2 years thinking, writing, editing, and obsessing over every word, my singular goal is that this book is *useful* for you.

If any of this resonates, please buy a copy of Unhinged Habits today. It is available in hardcover, Kindle, and audible from all bookstores and booksellers.

Amazon link:

→ https://amzn.to/3Yn80is

I hope it finds you at the right moment,

-Jon

P.S. If you liked Atomic Habits or Essentialism, you’ll love this book. Same vein with more focus on the deeper values of health, exploration, and community. Unhinged Habits launches today. Please order your copy here.

Mailing personalized books is a wildly difficult project.

You need to collect addresses, order designed materials, write notes, get books shipped from the publisher, compile packages, and ship worldwide—all in a tight window.

The project started three months ago when I was in Canada and was completed this past week with me in Indonesia. I’ll walk you through:

• The thought process behind each step

• The timing of when to do what

• The logistics and materials involved

• Everything that went wrong (and how we handled it)

First, you need to figure out who to send books to and collect their addresses.

Step 1: Making a giant list of people to send books to

Thinking of every colleague you’ve met or messaged that’s a good fit to receive your book is a damn-near impossible task. Don’t do it all at once. Instead, build the list ongoing.

Every time that you come across a person, podcast, or newsletter you think might be a good fit for your book, add them.

In a previous article, I shared my author marketing plan tracking worksheet. You can steal it.

I made a new spreadsheet for Unhinged Habits and added names this past year. Then I looked through the spreadsheet I had made for my last book, removed people who I sent a book to but didn’t respond or help share word, and added those who were big supporters last time to my new list.

Next, I sifted through all of my emails and social media accounts and added any names I had missed.

Start your contact tracking sheet as soon as possible. Then, two months before launch, sift through your social media and email accounts, add names, and begin cleaning it up.

Step 2: Getting permission and gathering addresses

Next up, the onerous task of manually sending a message to the 300 people on my list.

I sent messages through FB, IG, X, LinkedIn, email, text, Whatsapp, and Telegram––wherever I talked to that person before.

There is no easy way to do this. Throw on some old school hip hop and go down the list, one-by-one.

Mark them yellow on your spreadsheet once you’ve sent an initial message. Change it to green when they respond with their address.

The message you send should be short and to the point. Include one tantalizing line about the book.

I wrote a template with two spots for personalization: The greeting and a line with what’s inside specific to what I know about them.

Here’s an example email that I sent to Andy Galpin, a leader in human performance and host of the Perform Podcast under Andrew Huberman’s Scicomm Media. Red blocks around the personalized bits.

They’d respond, and I shot a quick message thanking them, acknowledging receipt, and telling them when to expect the book.

Begin sending messages 1.5 months before your book’s release. Some people will respond quickly, but you’ll need to follow up 2-3 times with many of them.

After a week, follow up with non-responders in a different place (if the first outreach was through FB messenger, send an email, for example).

After another week, send one final follow-up and make it clear this is the last time you’ll message.

Step 3: Organizing the spreadsheet and assigning numbers

My spreadsheet was now mostly filled out and green with people who had responded but had multiple gaps––people I couldn’t get a hold of or said no thank you.

If no, I deleted their name.

All non-responders still highlighted in yellow were moved to the bottom of the spreadsheet.

This bunched all confirmed recipients together.

In order for my team to compile the personalized packages properly, each recipient needed a number. I used their row on the spreadsheet.

With the responders spot on my sheet locked, I could now begin writing the notes for each of them.

As stragglers continued to respond, I highlighted them green and put them at the bottom of the list.

Have your spreadsheet organized a month before your book’s release. It takes time to write all of the notes and compile the packages.

Once the spreadsheet is locked and addresses are confirmed, it’s time to build the actual packages.

Step 4: What’s in the entire package

Each package has seven components:

1. The book

2. Signed book plate sticker

3. Post-it notes placed inside of each book

4. (Totally-unhinged) form letter

5. Bubble mailer

6. Sticker for the bubble mailer

7. Customs froms

8. Mailing labels

Here’s how each component came together—including what went wrong:

The book

My publisher agreed to 300 influencer copies. They shipped everything to my team member in SF.

If you’re self-published, you can time it.

I’m traditionally published with HarperCollins, which means that the books only arrived 2 weeks before my launch date. I knew this would be the case and made sure that everything on our end was prepped and ready so we could quickly compile the packages and ship the books back out.

Signed book plate sticker

Ideally I’d sign the books directly. But I left Canada on December 29th. The books weren’t ready until mid-January.

We had a 4*6 book plate sticker designed. Then used Sticker Mule to print 300 and had them shipped to me in Toronto.

Order these two months out. Begin writing the personalized notes as soon as your spreadsheet is organized.

Here is an example book plate sticker:

We screwed this up. The stickers were glossy. They should have been matte. Notice the black smudging. That’s with a pen. I had to switch to a thick red marker. It’s ugly. But, by this point, it was too late to order new stickers.

I added numbers on the bottom left and right.

Bottom right is the corresponding row on the spreadsheet so my team can match it with the correct address. Bottom right are two pages inside of the book I selected for that person to get post-it notes.

Here’s the instructions I sent to my team.

I left Toronto on December 29th. All stickers had to be signed and shipped out by then. For two weeks I signed them every spare moment I had.

Here’s me signing early morning on December 17th before the kids woke up:

And continuing to sign on Christmas morning, waiting for the rest of the family to wake up. Calvin’s keeping me company in his Christmas jammies. We scratched my Christmas Day tradition lottery ticket after and won $10!

Finally, on December 27th, I finished signing all of the stickers.

By this point, 243 people had responded with addresses. I signed the remaining 57 book plates without personalization them and sent it all off with expedited shipping.

The book plates should have arrived in San Francisco on January 3rd. American customs held up the package. It arrived January 15, a day before our deadline.

Phew.

Post-it notes placed inside of each book

Each book sent out had a post-it note in 1-2 spots I chose based off of what I thought that they would be interested in. Making a specific page recommendation increases your chances of the recipient opening the book.

When choosing which page to tag, I over-indexed on pages with illustrations. These were designed with social media sharability in mind. The easier I make it for influential people to get a viral post from my book’s illustrations, the more likely they’ll share them. Win/win.

I wrote a list of representative book sections on different topics during one of Calvin’s gymnastics classes. When signing the book plates, I kept this page beside me. The only exception is that if the recipient was mentioned inside of the book, I tagged that page for them.

Umm, Calvin signed it too.

Recall that I coded each book plate in the bottom right with the page numbers for the post-it notes. That’s so my team knew where to put the post-its in each book.

Each post-it note got the hand-written line “I chose this page for you” added. The line was written upside-down on the bottom. That way the sticky part goes inside of the book with the note peeking up above the pages.

Here’s what the book looks like with the notes added. Note the hand-written line peeking out above.

27 people sent me their address after I mailed the package to the team. Their package includes a signed book plate with no personalization. I instructed my team to tag the same two pages for the post-its for all of these people I felt was strong and representative material.

(Totally-unhinged) form letter

Most letters that come with books are boring.

I like pattern-interrupts. I like to identify the boring operation parts of a process and make them more fun. It’s unexpected.

Here’s the letter I sent with the books.

I designed it on Canva and ChatGPT to make the testimonial photos.

It might be totally stupid. Or maybe it’s outrageously brilliant. One of the two. Nowhere in between. Which is fine. The in-between is always the boring dead space that gets ignored.

Bubble mailer

We ordered designed bubble mailers. They got delayed in production. We didn’t leave enough time to account for this. So we had to instead get plain white ones and put a sticker on them.

Sticker for bubble mailer

Just a plain sticker of the book. It’s not great. But it’s fine. Better than nothing. This way the recipient at least knows that it’s the book that they were (hopefully) waiting for and it won’t get accidentally recycled.

Mailing labels

My publishing is paying for this project. We sent them the addresses and their shipping department prepaid all shipping labels.

The catch is that they have to print the labels and ship them to us.

Annnnnnnnd . . .

Those got delayed too.

They ended up re-printing them and overnight shipping them to us. But some of the customs forms were missing for international orders. Which delayed those even more.

I think that’s four separate delays. But honestly, I stopped counting.

But hey, the books are getting out now. Projects like this are big and wildly difficult. You have to expect delays and curveballs.

One more quick question I’ll answer:

Why not just have the publisher send out the books?

It would have been easier for me to send my publisher a list of names and social media accounts, have them reach out on my behalf, try to get addresses, and send the book.

I could’ve sat back and done nothing.

But when publishers send review books directly, two things happen: recipients don’t open them, and there’s zero personalization.

I worked too hard on this book to fumble on the two-yard line.

I’ve got 288 books going out this week to people I admire. How cool!

-Jon

—

P.S. If you would like to read a sample from the book before buying your copy, please click here

A lot of people are about to judge the book.

Your brain optimizes for safety, a remnant of a more dangerous time. We excuse away risk, inventing reasons not to take chances. Like the smart kid who stops trying—if he doesn’t try, he can’t fail, but if he does and fails, he’s exposed as a fraud. I feel a pull to keep quiet with Unhinged Habits. To not promote my work. Because then nobody can judge it. Safety is where weak people hide when they can’t overcome their own impulses. And so I push on.

Up until now, this book was a project I was working on. Not yet real. But here I am, a week from its release on January 27th, nervous and excited like a stage actor before the curtain opens.

Unhinged Habits challenges the notion that long-term consistency is the most important element of success

The advice to pursue slow and incremental progress for a vague, yet improved future always bothered me. Consider your own experience. Are you consistent? Do you even know what that means? Consistent at what? For how long? Forever? In all things? Like, if you are consistent in one area—say health—what about money and relationships? Are you consistent in all three, in all the ways you need to be, all of the time? I can’t.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized: I don’t know anyone who has achieved anything meaningful through consistency alone. What’s always missing are seasonal bouts of unhinged intensity.

Consistency maintains, but intensity transforms. Like cardio and weights, you need both for well-rounded success and longevity.

This is a book about wanting a better life and going after it.

It’s got a contrarian spin. But so has my life.

I didn’t become a doctor like my family thought I would. Instead, I built the first certification for online fitness well before the industry was ready. Then I lived in a different country for 4-6 months every year for 13 years. During that time, I built big enough social media followings to learn that building big social media audiences is a gloriously inefficient way to build a business and that real connections with real humans is a far better marketing strategy.

You should not accept normal. Nobody has ever gotten anywhere interesting by always doing what they were supposed to do.

Contrarian spins are useful because they are challenging. They force you to reflect on your way of being. You will either change or become more confident in your direction. Both positive results.

They say the work must be the win. And I believe that to be true.

Whatever happens—whether this book becomes a top-selling success or not—selfishly, it has already been a win for me.

The lessons from Unhinged Habits have already transformed me into more of the father, friend, spouse, grown-up son, businessperson, and human that I want to become. My hope is that what I’ve written down will be as useful for you as it has already been for me.

-Jon

Unhinged Habits is available in hardcover, Kindle, and audio. You can currently preorder it from Amazon, Indigo/Chapters, Barnes and Noble, or through your local bookstore. Bulk order discounts are available for 25+ copies. Please send an email to Jonathan@theptdc.com with subject “Bulk order - Unhinged Habits” for more details.

Want to read a sample chapter before ordering? Please click here

I just put the Unhingedhabits.com website live. Check it out. On there, you’ll notice that there’s an offer to get The Habit Accelerator if you preorder three copies.

First, do it. Preorder three copies. Any combination of formats from any retailer. If I’ve added any value to you via this newsletter, that’s what I ask of you in return.

Figure I’ll share four things in my note to you today:

1. Why promote preorders now, only two weeks before launch?

2. Why The Habit Accelerator, what’s in it, and the dates

3. The tech and setup

4. How I’m marketing it

Why promote preorders now, only two weeks before launch?

There’s nothing that stresses traditionally published authors out more than thinking they have to push huge preorder numbers.

Publishers love preorders. It helps them know how many books to print and can help with getting book store placement.

But preordering is a wildly unnatural thing to do.

Like, before I wrote books I never preordered a book. Not once. And I don’t know many people who do.

If I was a mega-celebrity then I’d do a large-scale (and early) preorder campaign. I’m not. Instead, I’ve been mentioning and linking to the book natively in content but without a preorder push.

Until now. Because the book comes out in two weeks.

Why the Habit Accelerator, what’s in it, and the dates

My goal is to get some percentage of people who are ordering one book to instead order 3. I’m incentivizing them by offering a host of bonuses related to the book.

The Habit Accelerator is available today, two weeks before the book’s release. It will expire one week after the book’s release, on February 3rd.

I’ll leave it live for the week of the launch to capture all the increased attention around that time.

I’m shutting it off a week after the launch in order to create both urgency and scarcity.

Here’s what’s included inside of The Habit Accelerator:

• The Ten-Minute Habit Reset: A fast starter ritual to create instant clarity ($20 value)

• The Ten-Minute Minimization Challenge: A daily reset strengthening your “let go” muscle, one small thing at a time ($20 value)

• Companion Reflection Pages: A guided reflection to help you become more aware of your progress ($20 value)

• The Habits of Success Video Series: Insights from top performers across thought leadership, business, and health on routines that actually work ($150 value)

• Finish What You Start Mini-Course: A timeless framework for following-through ($200 value)

Just a few quick notes on why these resources specifically.

The first two are designed to be done quickly and third is actionable. I want the benefits, usefulness, and ease to get results obvious.

The next two are bigger bonuses with higher values. Neither of these are net new resources. The video series is a selection of interviews I did for a different project and the mini-course is from a program I no longer sell.

I don’t think we need to build net new stuff for it to valuable. A lot of us have phenomenal content gathering dust. All that’s needed is some careful curation and rebranding.

The tech and setup

Unhingedhabits.com is hosted on Wordpress. It’s a simple one-page site. You can copy my format.

Basically:

-Hero image with headline and a few juicy passages followed by a call to action.

-Second section with a more direct call to action (what it is exactly) followed by some proof elements (blurbs).

-Comparison charts of the two options (’Buy one’ or ‘Buy One, Gift Two’).

All Habit Accelerator materials are hosted in a Dropbox Folder. When somebody emails their receipts to the new gmail I created, we’ll message them back with a link to the folder.

Pretty simple and low-cost tech setup.

How I’m marketing it

I’ve written an announcement email to my main list in addition to this diary article that’s published both on LinkedIn and on Substack.

On Instagram, I have both a story and a post. If the person comments the word “Habit” on either, they’ll get a DM with a link to unhingedhabits.com (powered by manychat).

On Facebook I have a post asking people to comment if they want to see the website. We have to manually follow-up.

On LinkedIn I also have a post asking people to comment if they want to see the website. We have to manually follow-up.

All this stuff will drip out today and tomorrow.

Moving forward, I’ll link the website with the three-book offer on all content pieces until January 3rd, at which point I’ll publish last chance content telling people to grab it before it’s too late.

It’s almost time. Let’s make 2026 the year of better (and unhinged) habits!

-Jon

–

I just linked up all seven bonus downloads for Unhinged Habits.

These worksheets, reflection questions, and implementation tools help readers apply the book’s concepts. Readers scan a QR code in the book and enter their email to access them.

This approach adds reader value, builds my email list, and generates more Amazon reviews.

Here’s how to create bonuses, link them up, and leverage them for reviews. Plus a few conversion tricks I’ve learned in 15 years of internet marketing.

Aim for 5-7 bonuses

I keep a notebook page beside me while writing. Whenever I spot an opportunity for reflection questions, a worksheet, or extra examples, I note it. By the time I finish, I have 10-15 ideas. After the second edit, I cut it to 5-7.

5-7 bonuses is the sweet spot. Enough to be present throughout the book. Not so many that the calls to action distract readers.

AI is helpful for initial drafts

I paste a book section into Claude and ask it to build a worksheet. The output is mediocre, but starting is the hardest part. I go back and forth with Claude, then revise on my own with pen and paper.

From there, I iterate and test with friends and colleagues.

Once finalized, I create a Google doc with design notes and send it to my team. Before I had a team, I hired designers on Upwork.

Keep it simple. Design the pages for printing. Each one should include:

• Page numbers it references in the book

• A link to the book website or your website at the bottom

Save all PDFs in a single Dropbox folder with clear naming (#, name, book title).

Link it all up

Each bonus gets a one-line call to action (CTA) in the book: a separator, the CTA, a QR code, and a custom link.

Two important details:

Each link is unique but points to the same place.

Specific CTAs convert better. “Download the bonuses” with one generic /bonuses link converts worse than seven unique links for seven bonuses.

On the back end, redirect all seven links to the same page that delivers every bonus.

Include both link and QR code.

Physical and Kindle readers can scan the code. The written link is backup and works for the audiobook recording (I read the link aloud).

Capture emails and request reviews

When readers scan or type the link, they land on a simple page asking for their email in exchange for bonuses.

This page shows the book, confirms the downloads, and adds personality.

I use Kit.com for email management (here’s a big feature they just published on me!). The embedded form triggers an automation that:

• Delivers an email with the Dropbox link

• Checks if they’re new to my list

• Adds them to my introduction sequence if so

Here’s the email readers receive:

Notice the star rating request at the bottom.

This automated approach gets readers to respond. When they reply with 4 or 5 stars, follow up: “What did you like most about the book?”

You’re getting natural feedback, not forcing a formal review. Reviewing books feels weird. Saying what you liked doesn’t.

When they reply, say: “Perfect! Would you copy-paste that as an Amazon review? Here’s the direct link: [your review URL]”.

(I covered this more fully in “4 Sneaky Ways Smart Authors Get More Amazon Reviews“.)

The complete process:

1. Note potential bonuses as you write

2. Use AI to create initial drafts

3. Hire a designer to create PDFs

4. Upload all PDFs to a single Dropbox folder

5. Include a CTA, QR code, and unique link for each bonus in your book

6. Redirect all links to a single email opt-in page

7. Use an email autoresponder to send the Dropbox and ask for a star rating

8. Respond to 4 and 5-star emails with a request to leave an Amazon review

Oh, and maybe write an article sharing the entire system as a way to covertly market your book a few weeks before its publication.

Hope this is useful for you.

-Jon

My answer was “not great”.

I was disappointed with sales and so was my publisher.

What makes it harder to swallow is how good the feedback has been––almost unanimously. People who have read or listened to the book have loved it. The reviews across both Amazon and Goodreads reflect this.

The problem is that not many have given it a chance.

This disconnect between quality and reach isn’t unique to books. It’s the universal challenge of any worthwhile creation: how do you get your best work in front of the right people?

I’m not an exceptional person, but I am a grower. I do have the ability to look at my shortcomings and improve for the future.

With the release of Unhinged Habits fast approaching (Jan 27), I’m sharing five crucial lessons I learned from my past experience and what I did differently this time. Not to complain, but to illuminate the path for anyone bringing something valuable into a noisy world.

Whether you’re launching a product, sell a service, or creating art––these five lessons transcend any specific field.

1. Positioning: The Art of Framing Value

People buy business books because they’re hoping for frameworks to solve their immediate problems (getting more leads, improving sales, scaling staff.)

Choice isn’t like that. It’s a self-help book disguised as a business book.

It’s about finding your way in a world gone mad. One that’s designed to distract you.

But, it was positioned as a book to help you make more money. And, honestly, I underestimated just how little the world wants another business book.

This applies beyond books. The fitness instructor who positions their service as “building a better body” versus “creating sustainable health habits” will attract entirely different clients, even when the actual training is identical.

If somebody knows that they have a problem, they’ll buy the solution. General information, irrelevant of how useful it is or how much a person needs it, doesn’t sell the way it used to. Distraction and overwhelm are too strong forces.

In my case, everybody these days wants to know how to build a bigger and more engaged following on social media.

I wrote a book that, in large part, tells them that that’s a waste of time.

Which I still believe to be true.

But nobody wants that. Nobody is waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying to themselves, “I hope somebody tells me that this thing I’m working hard on and stressing over is a waste of time and presents a different way.”

The way your book, product, or service is framed determines who finds it and how they engage with it. My mistake wasn’t just about marketing; it was about clarity of purpose.

Ask yourself: What problem does your audience believe they have versus what problem you’re actually solving? The gap between these two perspectives often determines success or failure.

A few questions to filter your positioning through:

1. What’s your audience searching for right now?

2. What language do they use to describe their challenge?

Figure this out by looking at headlines of magazines that serve your audience, the language used in bestselling books, or the content shared by the top thought leaders that market to your people. Then go one step deeper and read comments on their posts and write down the words and phrases actually being used.

In my case, I created a thoughtful exploration of finding purpose in a distracted world but packaged it as just another business growth manual. I missed the sweet spot.

Once people read it they get it. But, they have to read it to get it.

People say not to judge a book by its cover. Which is ridiculous. Of course you should judge a book by its cover. That’s why books have covers.

Getting the positioning right is only the first step. Even more important is ensuring you’re speaking to the right audience in the first place.

--

(What I did different this time: Took 179 days to go through 5 titles and 50 covers.)

2. Audience: Quality > Quantity

In Choice, I write:

“If the way you’ve built an audience is inconsistent with the product or service you want to sell, you’ll end up rich with likes but poor with dollars.”

I anticipated that I’d have this problem. Even called it out in the book.

A part of me is happy because my experience has proved out the lesson from the book.

Another part of me is upset because of just how true this lesson has proven to be.

Having thousands of followers who don’t convert into customers isn’t just a business problem; it’s a fundamental misalignment between who you’ve attracted and what you’re offering. The metrics that feel good (followers, likes, subscribers) can become a mirage that obscures the metrics that matter (engagement, conversions, revenue).

I’ve built an audience online of people who work in fitness over the last 15 years. For the most part, people who work in fitness are disinterested in the business.

They might say that they want to grow their business. But then they’ll buy a seventh course having to do with fitness or nutrition before seriously studying anything to do with business or marketing.

Which I totally get.

They love fitness. They don’t love business.

Here’s another passage from The Obvious Choice that bears repeating:

Superficial engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and followers are all measures, not targets. Relying on them as your only insights is like playing a game with no scoreboard.

Many of us build our platforms backward. We create content that’s easily consumable, build an audience around it, then try to sell something that doesn’t align or requires a different level of commitment. The strongman lifting logs over his head for likes on social media that “trains new moms”. The 21-year old ripped influencer who helps “busy parents”. The entertainer who comes out with a flavoured water supposed to help you workout harder, focus better, or hydrate more––as if any of those things solve the underlying problem.

As John Delony says, “If your house is on fire and there’s an alarm going off, it’s not the alarm that’s the problem.”

The result’s predictable: an audience that loves what you say but doesn’t value what you sell.

Don’t ask “How do I convert my existing audience?”

Instead, ask “How do I begin attracting the audience that aligns with my true purpose?”

I’ve made some changes since Choice was released to better align my platforms with my work. As a result, my audience has shrunk.

My email list has lost over 6,000 subscribers. Instagram’s down 5,000+.

While seeing the numbers go down can be hard to swallow, I know the truth:

“Metrics are a like a spotlight,” said Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School and the New York Times best-selling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Goodhart’s Law states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Superficial engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and followers are all measures, not targets. Relying on them as your only insights is like playing a game with no scoreboard.

I’m still hopeful that the book will expand outside of the fitness industry. Going in, I knew this would be a mountain to climb. But, if it happens, it will take a long time.

Last week, a trainer that bought my book told me that she gave copy to her partner, a real estate agent. That agent read it, then immediately bought copies for the ten realtors that work in her office.

I hope more of that happens. But hope is an opiate, not a strategy.

Which is why I need to move into other markets. And that’s going to be hard. Because when you change focus, you start over.

Once you’ve aligned your offering with the right audience, you’ll still face another challenge: the contextual nature of influence.

--

(What I did different this time: Focused mainly on growing my LinkedIn to 10,000+ followers, co-hosted 40 meals with authors, and started this Diary of a Book Launch pop-up newsletter.)

3. Influence: The contextual boundaries of your authority

In the fitness industry, I can get a lot of people to answer my messages. In other industries, not so much.

What we perceive as “global status” is actually a collection of micro-reputations, each confined to its own ecosystem. Your authority isn’t a portable asset you carry from space to space—it’s deeply embedded in the relationships, history, and social proof you’ve built within specific communities.

This isn’t just about fame or follower counts; it’s true for all forms of credibility:

• The respected professor who switches universities and has to re-establish classroom rapport

• The business leader who moves industries and finds their expertise questioned

• The community leader who moves homes and becomes just another neighbor

John Berardi sent me a text one day. He co-founded Precision Nutrition and sold it for close to $200M. The guy is now all-in on youth athletic coaching, starting over in a new field.

Something he said stuck with me:

“it’s interesting to note that when starting any new gig, you sorta start over the stages of yes from scratch...regardless of where you were at in your previous life.”

This reality hit me hard during my book launch. I got ignored by people I thought would respond—the self-publishing guru, the online course expert, the newsletter wizard. Each with smaller platforms than mine, but in their worlds, they mattered. And I didn’t.

A simple test confirmed this: I messaged someone on X (where I’m unknown) and got a thumbs up. I sent the same message on Instagram (where my follower count makes me look important), and suddenly they “loved my work” and wanted to “talk shop”. Even though they’d never heard of me before.

This isn’t cynical; it’s reality. We’re all simultaneously somebody and nobody, depending on where we stand.

Two key principles emerge:

1. Compound in one place: There’s immense value in building deep reputation in one field over time.

Reputation compounds when you stay consistent in a specific context.

2. Reset expectations when moving: If you choose to expand into new territories, be mentally prepared to be a beginner again.

Ask yourself: Can you separate your previously earned identity from your current status in a world where, once again, nobody gives a shit who you are?

I’m back to scratching and clawing.

Trying to make a name for myself again.

Back in the good old days I’d stay up late after clients and write articles in the corner of my one-bedroom apartment hoping, begging, anybody would pay attention.

Well, it’s 6am on a Sunday morning and here I am again––writing an article. Thinking not in weeks, months, or even years, but in decades. Hoping I can do it what I did in the fitness industry again but on a bigger, worldwide scale. Hella fun.

--

(What I did different this time: Dedicated a $50,000 gifting budget to bulk buy books of others I admire as a way to fast-track building relationships amongst other authors.)

4. Mastery: The illusion of transferable excellence

This is embarrassing. But, whatever, here it goes:

I botched my podcast interviews.

Two of the bigger shows I was interviewed for sent a message on book launch day to say that the episode didn’t meet their quality standards and would not be published.

If you wake up in the morning and see a jerk, maybe you saw a jerk.

Then you go for a walk and see another jerk and I’ve got bad news for you, you’re the jerk.

I was pissed when it first happened, blaming the host.

When it happened again, I realized that I was the problem.

It hurt. I was pissed.

A few hours later, I put my ego aside and asked for feedback.

What he sent back hit me like a ton of bricks.

1. I’m happy I asked for feedback.

2. I’m grateful he gave me useful feedback.

How you practice is how you will perform.

Here’s what happened:

I’ve recorded over 1,000 podcasts. Figured I had it in the bag. I was going to go on all these shows and blow them away. I didn’t practice. Just went in there and ripped it.

That was a mistake because I’d been practicing the wrong way.

Over 800 of the podcast episodes I’d recorded were on my own show. The format of that show is designed around me speaking for 80-90% of the time.

Almost every interview for other shows I’ve ever done were ones from the fitness industry where I knew the host well. It was a natural conversation between friends.

Neither prepared me to be interviewed by well-prepared hosts to audiences who didn’t know me.

What looks like transferable expertise often contains hidden contextual elements we don’t recognize until we fail. The skills that make you exceptional in one environment may be precisely what undermines you in another.

Mastery is highly contextual.

There’s examples everywhere: The star employee who struggles after promotion to management, the successful small business owner who fails when scaling up, how bad of a basketball coach Michael Jordan was––all examples of how mastery in one context doesn’t automatically transfer to another.

Two lessons I can pull out here:

1. Practice deliberately.

2. Always ask for honest, uncomfortable feedback.

The mark of a true professional isn’t flawless performance in familiar territory—it’s the willingness to become a student again at the edges of your competence.

What happened sucks. I’m grateful it happened. It exposed me to an area of improvement.

Putting yourself out there and stretching at the edge of your comfort and competency will show you where you need to improve.

But there’s an even deeper lesson about expectations that completes this journey.

--

(What I did different this time: Focused on newsletters for promotion and not podcasts. I also stopped recording my own show.)

5. Self-reliance: The ultimate liberation

This final lesson was both the most painful and liberating.

It transcends creative work and touches on a fundamental truth about all human endeavors.

By and large, I was disappointed by the lack of support I got from colleagues and friends for my book launch. Not in every case, but in many cases.

Call it the expectation-reality gap.

During the writing and editing process, friends and colleagues were in my corner, encouraging me on.

Then the book came out, a few showed up for me in big ways, most didn’t. The disappointment gap got huge.

We experience disappointment not because others fail us, but because our mental models don’t recognize that each person is the protagonist of their own story, not a supporting character in ours.

As time’s passed, the gap decreased. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing this article today. Liberated. Entering into self-sufficiency. Firmly appreciative that I’m on my own. That no white knight in shining armour is going to show up and make all my hopes and dreams come true. That it’s up to me, dammit. It’s up to me.

As I’ve moved through this disappointment, I’ve developed a three-part framework that might help you navigate your own expectation-reality gaps:

1. Acknowledge the Gap

-What specifically did you expect? -What actually happened? -What emotions did the gap between your expectations and reality trigger?

2. Extract the lessons

-What unrealistic expectations did you have? -What aspects were in your control? -What are you going to do differently next time?

3. Reframe the narrative

-How’s this experience going to serve your long-term growth. -What surprising positives emerged? -How’s this setback going to prepare you for future success?

--

This thing that I worked on for three years was a thing important to me.

Over those three years, my colleagues and friends were also working on things important to them.

I cannot realistically or justifiably expect them to care more about my thing then their thing. And everybody has things that are pressing for them at any given time.

We’re all too close to our own world, and too far away from others.

I don’t hold it against everybody. And I didn’t go into it expecting anybody to go out of their way and stop what they were doing to support me.

All of the stories I told myself about how I did nice things for them in the past are irrelevant. They’re rooted in my reality––in the stories I tell myself––not in the reality of others. I don’t know what’s going on in another’s world. I don’t know what they’re thinking, their struggles or stressors.

You can only control your efforts, and the intention behind your efforts.

You’re on your own isn’t cynical, it’s liberating. Getting to self-sufficiency is a painful process but I think that you’ll be happier with the trouble.

And when you do get there, you will also become genuinely appreciative of whatever support does materialize. It transforms unexpected assistance from an entitlement to a gift.

This perspective doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build communities or support systems. Instead, it means we build them authentically, without the hidden agenda of future reciprocity. Support others because it aligns with your values, not because you’re banking social capital.

--

I’m being hard on myself here. Harder than I should be. Truth is, I feel great. I’m on fire right now.

I did a thing.

It was hard.

And I crushed aspects of it.

I wrote an incredible book.

Moreso, I went all-in. Left it on the table.

I’m proud of what I did; happy for what it taught me.

And excited for how much better the next book will be. And the one after that. And the one after that. And that. And that.

I invite you to embrace your own expectation-reality gaps not as failures but as the necessary terrain between where you are and where you’re going.

The journey matters.

The learning matters.

And most importantly, your willingness to continue creating despite disappointment matters, perhaps more than anything else.

What you do for work isn’t a one and done. You can’t think like that.

You cannot think of your work as a series of ten-day sprints. Or short-hit social media posts. You can’t even think in years.

Instead, I invite you to think in decades. I invite you to be a grower.

-Jon

P.S. It’s ok for something to not go well. That means you tried. Not everything that you do will work.

So long as you learn from it, even a loss is a win.

That’s what I’ve tried to do at least. If you haven’t yet, you can read my entire book launch plan here. Much of it is the result of the learnings above.

P.P.S. Thanks for reading. If you’re a writer or author (or want to be), please send me a connection request on LinkedIn (Jonathan Goodman )––you’re my kind of person.

“Honestly, all I did was kept better track of people I meet and come across leading up to it.”

That demystified book marketing for me.

Here’s something I’ve figured out:

The first 10,000 copies of your book will get sold via relationships. Because of course they will. Nobody’s read the thing yet. If you’re selling books, you are in the relationship business. The better job you do building and keeping track of relationships that you have with colleagues and other authors, the better chance you will sell those first 10,000 books and create the momentum word of mouth needs to take over.

After Jason dropped that wisdom nugget, I built a book launch tracking spreadsheet. Its main function is to collect all of the names of people I came across ongoing. That way, when I began marketing in earnest, much of the heavy lifting of cataloging my network was finished.

I want you to steal the author marketing plan spreadsheet I use.

--> Click here to get my author marketing plan tracking spreadsheet

Using the spreadsheet is easy.

• Every time that you come across a person, podcast, or newsletter you think might be a good fit for your book, add them.

• Every time you have a conversation via social media messaging, email, or in real life, add the person and link or note the conversation.

There are tabs for bulk orders, newsletters, influencers, podcasts, published articles, and your marketing assets.

Once you download the spreadsheet and make a copy, you can adapt it however best suits you.

Build this over years and add everything as you go. That way it’s ready for you when you begin marketing in earnest.

A lot of the stress of previous book launches, for me, has been the massive undertaking of cataloging my network.

This recent book launch has been less daunting because I’ve been collecting people and resources over time on this spreadsheet.

I hope this system and spreadsheet is as useful to you as they have been for me.

Click here to get my author marketing plan tracking spreadsheet

-Jon

P.S. If you’re a writer or an author, please send me a connection request on LinkedIn (Jonathan Goodman)––You’re my kind of person.

Alex wanted to learn how successful authors write and market their books.

Together, we started co-hosting author meals.

In 2025, Alex and I have traveled to 7 cities, hosted over 40 author meetups, and met over 150 new authors.

As a result, our community and knowledge have skyrocketed.

We didn’t have connections or a network when we started. But what we were willing to do was book a table and send the invite. As it turns out, that’s all you need.

This is the story of how our author meals started, grew, and how you can host them, too.

Alex signed with Simon & Schuster to write his first book in November of 2024

He got an advance, big-5 publisher, and a respected editor, but it felt like he had jumped off a diving board into the deep end of a never-ending pool.

After a brief sense of excitement, the suffocating feeling of “what now” crept in. Stress, anxiety, and overwhelm followed.

He had so many questions, to which there were no clear-cut answers:

• Do I write the introduction first or last?

• How do you write a book and manage a business simultaneously?

• Beta-readers . . . are beta-readers a thing?

• What does it take to get on the New York Times bestseller list?

• Should I care about the New York Times Bestseller list?

And on, and on, and on.

Nobody he knew wrote a big book. And he didn’t want to email an author asking to “pick their brain.”

You’re told to ‘add value’ first, he thought. But how?

Then the answer came to him:

Connection.

Alex figured out that he can add value by connecting authors to one another.

And, as a reward for his elbow grease, he’d be a fly on the wall and maybe, occasionally, ask a question of his own.

Here’s what happened next, in Alex’s words:

So, I reached out to an author who I knew lived in NYC–Rob Henderson , who wrote “Troubled.”

I pitched him the idea of an author dinner. He immediately loved it. He also knew one other author in NYC who might be interested in joining.

Then I saw a social media post from Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD where she mentioned she was going to be in NYC to record her audiobook. So, in a non-stalkerish way, I cold messaged her and told her about the author meetup.

She also loved the idea and asked if she could bring another author. “Of course,” I said.

The next month, I messaged Nick Maggiulli and asked him if he’d like to join us. He said yes, but then asked if we had space for his friend.

“Who’s your friend?” I asked.

“James Clear,” he responded.

At that dinner, James gave a 2-hour masterclass on everything he knew about the art of writing and selling books. It was like LeBron James teaching you how to play basketball. And Alex got to attend. Why? Because he hosted the meal.

What if we do it in Toronto?

I saw Alex’s post about the meal and messaged him soon after:

“Hey, what if we hosted one in Toronto? I’ll pay for your flight and hotel and invite people I know here to attend too.”

The first meal went well. Then I texted Alex.

“What if we partnered up and hosted these author meetups in different cities? I’ll cover the cost of food and travel for you, and you organize the meetups?”

Since that call, we’ve gone on to host over 40 meals in Toronto, New York City, Austin, Nashville, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Vancouver, breaking bread with some of the most successful and well-known authors in the world, including Arthur Brooks, Gretchen Rubin, and Michael Bungay Stanier.

We’ve also met dozens of unique authors, including a North Korean defector, a ghostwriter who has written 35+ celebrity memoirs, a self-published author who has sold 3+ million books, and a business author who manages a $200 million business portfolio.

Most non-fiction authors aren’t full-time writers. They’re scientists, business owners, or professors. Writing is a part-time job that they have to squeeze into their already busy schedule.

But unlike their day job, the writing journey is often lonely–they don’t have any friends or colleagues who are on the same path as them. They’re longing to connect with fellow authors.

And that’s what we were able to provide them.

These are people who (likely) would’ve never returned our calls if we worked in their industry. But because we’re inviting them to join others who share this uncommon commonality (being an author), they enthusiastically accept. And, once done, they recommend their friends to join us next time.

How to Host An Author Meal

A few tips for group size and venue:

• Find a restaurant that’s relatively quiet. Avoid bars, tourist areas, or restaurants on main avenues.

• Look at Google images to see if the restaurant has round tables. They’re better for conversation.

• Max 6 people per meal.

• Schedule two hours per meal.

How to manage the flow of the meal:

Unlike other networking events, the theme of the meal is clear from the invite–we’re here to talk about writing and selling books. This does 90% of the heavy-lifting. There’s not a lot of moderation needed. Here’s what we do:

• Everybody orders food first.

• Next, quick intros. 2-3 minutes per person. Name, what you do, what your book is about.

• Ask the waiter to take a group photo when food arrives.

• Finally, everybody shares the one biggest obstacle they’re currently facing or something they want feedback on.

One-by-one, people share and the table gives feedback and support.

After the meal is done:

• Alex sends a group email with everybody’s email, the pic, and asks for an introduction to any other authors who’d be interested in attending a future meal.

• We post the pic on social media and tag the authors.

Writing is a lonely journey

Few authors have friends who can relate to this weird book-writing thing that they do.

Not only that, the publishing world is constantly changing. The way books are written is evolving. Same with marketing.

The more we share what works with one another, the more we all collectively win. It’s not a zero-sum game.

Established authors know what worked, new authors bring fresh ideas. And Alex and I get to take it all in––all because we host the meal.

-Jon

PS: If you’re an author interested in joining a future meetup, DM me or Alex, and we’ll add you to our author meetup list.

It has little to do with content, and a lot to do with connection.

Why write this now?

LinkedIn’s a great platform for authors. People there still read.

I decided to build an audience on it six months ago with an old (dead) account and just passed 10,000 followers.

Not a huge number, but a good start as I race towards the Unhinged Habits book release on January 27, 2026.

Figured I’d share how I did it. Hope it’s useful for you.

Some history

In the early 2010s, I built a Facebook page with over 200,000 followers. Then, in 2015, I self-published a book called Viralnomics. It became the #1 marketing book on Amazon.

Many were surprised at how little my strategies had to do with content.

In the early stages of growing an account, your focus should be on two things:

1. A narrow topic / area of focus.

2. Connecting with people who showcase a predisposition to engage.

Following the same principles from that book, I built an Instagram account to 253,346 in 2021. And now, in 2025, I’m following the same formula on LinkedIn.

Early on, your focus needs to be narrow

On LinkedIn, I wanted to be the author guy––a new persona. (I’m the personal trainer guy on Instagram.)

What I did:

1. Created a LinkedIn newsletter called Diary of a Book Launch.

2. Made my posts almost exclusively about authorship.

3. Sent connection requests to writers and authors.

The algorithm wants to show content to relevant audiences.

If your account focuses on one topic and is being engaged with by similar types of people, the algorithm easily identifies others like them on the platform to show your content to.

People who comment, comment lots

The key to building a valuable community isn’t attracting thousands of passive followers. It’s finding people who already engage, and engaging with them.

It’s so obvious: If you want engagement, connect with people who are already engaging.

The Sea Lion Strategy:

My family was on a fishing boat in Alaska.

Birds suddenly began congregating in one spot.

Our boat’s sonar started broadcasting whale calls.

Bubbles formed on the water’s surface, trapping the krill fish.

Then 15 whales shot up. It was carnage.

What most people missed was the sea lions. Those little clever opportunists.

They stayed on the perimeter. Didn’t do much work. Just caught the fish that the whales flung aside.

The lesson?

Influencers (the whales) have already done the hard work of congregating like-minded people.

When they post, it creates a bubble feed of activity.

Don’t try to get the influencer’s attention. Target the people engaging with them.

The exact steps I followed to grow my LinkedIn to 10,000 followers:

1. Focused my account on authors and books

The account’s bio and branding contain book-related keywords and highlight book sales and my publisher, not my other companies.

2. Started the Diary of a Book Launch newsletter

It is useful to have a place to publish deeper and more useful content in order to showcase your expertise. Notice that the keyword “book” is also in the title.

3. Chose 7 influencer accounts who speak to my ideal audience

These are large and active accounts with engaged followings. I chose authors in the self-help and personal development niches because people who love their books will love my books.

4. Wrote an operational document for my assistant

Her task is to send 150 connection requests a week (30 per day max) to people who comment on the influencer’s posts. She specifically looks for anybody who identifies themselves as either an author or writer in their bio.

(It’s my VA who sends the original connection request and message and then I follow up once the invite is accepted.)

Assume 30% will accept. If you send 150 requests a week, that’s 45 new connections, which amounts to 1,080 in six months.

Because these are people who are preselected to:

-be interested in your topic, and
-Actively engage

Your content will begin to have a disproportionate amount of engagement for its size and a tight focus. LinkedIn’s algorithm will notice this, and share what you post organically to others.

Snowball.

Hope this was useful for you,

-Jon