Thoughts On The “Total Frat Move” Book

Since I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell first came out and became the huge success and cultural touchstone that it has, I literally cannot keep count of all the people who have tried to copy it in some form or another. Thousands upon thousands of people have started blogs about their “fratire” stories, and almost all are blatantly unoriginal rip-offs of mine.

It also seems like each one sends me an email either asking for advice or telling me how much better their stories are. As of yet, none of them have ever done anything of note. My agent Byrd Leavell estimates that he’s gotten 20,000(!) submissions where the author explicitly compared themselves to me in their proposal. He’s never signed one of them.

I’ve tried to tell people that the way to replicate my success is NOT by copying it. You cannot be a better “Tucker Max” than me; the best thing you can do is take my work as a starting point, and then build out from there to create something that is new and authentic to you and your experience. Yes, I get credit for inventing fratire as a genre, but the way I do it is just one way; there are an infinite other number of ways to write about the same basic things I write about.

This is my favorite part about the Total Frat Move book: It doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is. It’s a book about one dudes experience at a fraternity at Texas State, and that’s all it is. His life, his experiences, his thoughts and ideas, expressed in a pretty authentic way, and nothing more.

I won’t summarize the book, you can read the synopsis on Amazon. Here’s my my TL;DR review:

1. The book is not all that interesting to me personally, BUT,

2. I think its very well done for what it is, and a lot of my fans will really like it.

In fact, that’s already the case: a LOT of my fans have told me they like the Total Frat Move book. I can see why. It’s a light, entertaining read that absolutely captures the reality of a specific college experience. If I’d been in a fraternity–especially a southern fraternity–I’d really like this book, and anyone who can understand that experience will relate to Total Frat Move. 

I also think that people who like my books for the pure shock factor of the stories will like this book as well. If your favorite aspect of my writing is the light, entertaining style of humor, that you get a few cheap laughs out of, then you will probably see TFM the same way, and enjoy it a lot.

If either of those things apply to you, I highly recommend you go to the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon and read the first chapter. You’ll know very quickly if this book is for you or not.

Let me be very clear: I am NOT criticizing the book, or the Total Frat Move site or meme. I have a ton of respect for those guys; I know how hard it is to build an entertainment brand, and they’ve done a really good job. Which is sort of my point: Just because I don’t personally enjoy the book that much doesn’t mean that it’s bad, and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of people who do like it.

Let me be clear, again, because I know some people are going to get this wrong: I fully recognize that Total Frat Move is a funny book to a lot of people; I just don’t happen to be at the stage in my life anymore where I care about some bar stories. I lived it, and I’m done with it. But thats just me. It kinda has no bearing on whether YOU will like the book.

That’s sort of my second point in writing this review:

I HATE critics who think that their personal opinion of a book should be the defacto truth about the book. Bullshit. I cannot stand 50 Shades of Grey (yes, I’ve read it), but millions of people disagree; OK fine. My opinion is valid for me, and wrong for them.

This is the problem with professional criticism. Critics stopped being relevant when they stopped writing to inform and contextualize, and when they started writing to signal who they are, to display their identity by their stance on what they are writing about. Criticism should never be about the critic, but thats what it has become, and that’s why no one cares about professional critics anymore.

I’m off my soapbox now.

In short, I think TFM will be very appealing to a huge cross section of my fans, and if you think you might be one of those people, I encourage you to check it out and see if you like it.

 

[DISCLAIMER: My agent, Byrd Leavell, is the TFM agent as well. And I know their editor, Ben Greenberg, pretty well. But I am not getting anything at all to post this review; no money, no beer, the TFM guys didn't send any sorostitutes over to my place or anything like that. In fact, I've never even met any of the TFM guys. I posted this mainly because I legitimately think a lot of my fans will enjoy this book, and because I wanted to use this to rant about how stupid modern professional criticism is, and show that its easy to review a book where you separate your personal opinion from a legitimate informing piece.]

Quotes, January 2013

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
-Carl Jung

“Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.”
-Albert Camus

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.”
-W. Somerset Maugham

“It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.”
-Josh Olson

“Imagine a large corporate machine mobilized to get you to buy something you don’t need at a tremendously inflated cost, complete with advertising, marketing, and branding that says you’re not hip if you don’t have one, but when you get one you discover it’s of poor quality and obsolete in ten months. That’s a BA.”
-The Last Psychiatrist

“There is a big difference between danger and fear.”
-Paulo Coelho

“You cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you’re not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I’ve done you a favor, because now you’ll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.”
-Josh Olson

“He who feeds a Chaos will raise a Demon.”
-The Last Psychiatrist

“Middle-aged people–like me–often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin. What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”
-Dan Gilbert

“History repeats because the passions of man never change, but it is like lightening – it never strikes in the same manner and place twice.”
-Martin Armstrong

“Irrationality lies not in failing to conform to some preconceived notion of how we should behave, but in persisting with a course of action that does not work.”
-John Kay

“Critics stopped being relevant when they stopped writing to inform and contextualize, and when they started writing to signal who they are, to display their identity by their stance on what they are writing about. Criticism should never be about the critic, but thats what it has become, and that’s why no one cares about them anymore.”
-Tucker Max

“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
-Martin Buber

“When we gawk at the illusion of stability dissolving, it’s a reaction to the wrong half of the equation. If things need to change, it means that what we do becomes incredibly more important. Do. Action suddenly becomes more valuable. It means that there is opportunity, if one can perceive everyone else’s blind spot and find some white space for themselves. If everyone is getting together and complaining, it means that there’s a lot of unoccupied space somewhere. Basically, it means that your contribution matters. And if you can muster up the strength to push against your fear, you might be able to do something that changes the game, just like Eva did. It isn’t about being Anti. It’s about being pro-something-good and making and acting and moving towards Pre-something-incredible.”
-Frank Chimera

An intense lunch and better speech

I spent the weekend around New Years Eve at Renaissance Weekend, in Charleston, SC. It’s sort of like TED or Summit Series or something like that, except one major difference: You aren’t supposed to talk about it. Not about who was there with you, what you talked about, anything. Yeah, I know, but thats the rule and I agreed to it, so I’ll abide by it.

That being said, the one exception to discussing or posting things publicly is if you have the permission of the person involved, which is what this post is about. I met a bunch of really cool and amazing people there, but one stood out to me:  Simon Sinek.

You might know Simon from his famous TED talk, which was based on his very popular book. Through a weird confluence of circumstances (we met through his wonderful girlfriend, who thought she hated me but introduced herself to me anyway and found that we got along great) and ended up having a four hour lunch, that was one of the most intense conversations I’ve had in a long time. I’m not going to talk about that conversation now, but I am sure I will in time. My point about Simon is simple: he’s the real deal. If you haven’t seen his TED talk or read his book, you should. He’s not just some armchair intellectual. He walks his talk.

What I am going to share is something he directed me to on his site. It’s just a simple letter from an Air Force pilot to his superior officers. The pilot is not a writer, and he very much buries the lede, so it might be easier to watch the TEDx talk he gave:

I don’t really have anything to say or add to that. Not using this as a launchpad to discuss anything else. The video moved me, and I thought I’d share.

 

Quotes, December 2012

“You should write the book you would want to read, not the one you believe you should write.”
-David Ritz

“We are interested in others when they are interested in us.”
-Publius Syrus

“A man generally has two reasons for doing things; one that sounds good, and a real one.”
-JP Morgan

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”
-Galileo

“Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.”
-Lord Chesterfield

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
-Socrates

“Civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary.”
-Venkat Rao

“Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of friends who flatter you.”
-Alvaro Oberon

“Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.”
-Douglas Adams

“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”
-Thomas Carlyle

“In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn’t complacent, it’s stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That’s not wimpy—it’s powerful and productive.”
-Michael Azerrad

“Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.”
-William Monahan

“People constantly show you who they are. Believe them.”
-Tucker Max

“Death isn’t sad. There’s nothing sad about it. Living a shitty life, that’s sad.”
-Mac Danzig

“If you really understand something, you can: 1) explain it using a clear metaphor and 2) explain the strongest counter-argument to the idea.”
-Ben Casnocha

“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”
-Charlie Parker

“Facts that challenge basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.”
-Daniel Kahneman

“If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.”
-Ben Casnocha

“Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general.”
-Mark Rippetoe

“The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly.”
-Thomas Paine

“There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn’t one.”
-Scott Berkun

“To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means ‘not like this’ and ‘not like that.’ And the ‘not like’—that’s why postmodernism, with the prefix of ‘post,’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.”
-Eva Zeisel

 

Quotes, November 2012

“As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried.”
-Ben Horowitz

“Men sometimes confess they love war because it puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. In going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly in war, you are ripped back into being alive. Life is pain; life is suffering; and life is horror — but, by God, you are alive.”
-Joseph Campbell

“You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.”
-Paulo Coelho

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
-Leo Tolstoy

“Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.”
-Paulo Coelho

“The best way to learn is to do.”
-Paul Halmos

“It isn’t explanations that carry us forward, it’s our desire to go on.”
-Paulo Coelho

“What I’ve learned most clearly from blogs is that the majority of them write about the problems from the outside for a reason—because they are missing the abilities that allow people to move to the inside.”
-Ryan Holiday

“Maybe strength in the 21st century isn’t about dominance. My hunch is that it’s about the very opposite — it’s about the capacity to evoke. It’s about the willingness to serve a bigger purpose than yourself, the capacity to subordinate yourself to a larger goal than your own gain, the ability to spark the enduring bonds of shared values, intrinsic motivation, and mutually committed perseverance. It is, in short, not the power merely to command, subordinate, demean, insult — and then crow about it with impunity. It’s the power to inspire, animate, infuse, spark, evoke — and then connect, link, and collaborate, to be a force multiplier.”
-Umair Haque

“All that is clever eschew. Do not do.”
-Anne Herbert

“This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren’t interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story.”
-Philip Pullman

“But you know what I learned from this? Nothing. I learned nothing. It’s just something that happened. Life is crazy.”
-Chuck Klosterman

“Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.”
-Mike Tyson

“Design is the last great competitive advantage.”
-Seth Godin

“If you want to be seen as courageous by some and hated by others, just say what you really think.”
-Tucker Max

“Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action.”
-Frank Chimero

“The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they’re naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?…a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.”
-Philip Pullman

“I have no idea what I’m doing, and everyone is just making it up as they go along. This about sums up everything I know.”
-Frank Chimero

“Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.”
-Frank Chimero

 

 

 

What You Need To Know About Life, But Haven’t Been Taught

I gave a speech at Pitt yesterday (11/26/12). I have no idea if they’ll put the video or audio online, so this text version will have to do for now.

The basic idea of the speech is simple: what can a college student do, right now, to prepare themselves for a world that they are utterly unprepared for?

What You Need To Know About Life, But Haven’t Been Taught

Let me ask you a question: Do you feel ready for your life? Do you feel prepared to face whats coming when you leave here?

I doubt it. And if you think you are, shit, just look around you. How capable do you think the people around you are? I doubt most of the guys in here can even get all their cum in the sock, forget something that requires actual skill.

Seriously though, do you know any of the basic skills that you will need in life–how to negotiate a rent? How to get a job? How to even develop the skills you’ll need at a job? Do you know how to manage your finances? I know you don’t–how many of you have under $100 in your checking account?

You’re all totally fucked!

But I bet you hear this all the time don’t you? You hear it from your parents, you hear from your professors, from administrators, from the press…from everyone. They all tell you how fucked up you are, they all tell you what you need to change about yourself.

Here’s the difference: I’m not going to tell you its your fault. That’s always the implicit accusation, isn’t it? Whenever you hear about the failures of young people, all those breathless New Yorker articles about 27 year olds with masters degrees living at home, the implication is that it’s the kids fault. It could never be the parents, no of course not, they cared so much. Thats what you’re always told, that its your fault, right?

It’s not. Your parents and your educational institutions have completely and utterly failed you. They really have only one job, and that’s to educate you. For what? Fun? No, for life. They need to teach you the things that matter in an honest, truthful way. But they haven’t. They have failed you, and THAT is why you are so fucking unprepared for whats coming.

I know, because they failed me too. I went to a better undergrad, and a better grad school than most of you will, and when I left school at 25, I was still a child. I was utterly unprepared for ANYTHING I would face in life. You read my books, you know all the stupid shit I did in my twenties–you do realize I did ALL of that AFTER college right? Unlike you drunken fuck-ups, I studied and did real well. And yes, you can be brilliant and awesome at the same time, but the point is, I was a complete fuck up after school. I got fired not once, but twice, and one of the times was by my OWN FATHER. I couldn’t function as an adult.

This is fucked up. We did what we were told–I sat where you sat, went to same schools you went too, I know–and what do we have to show for? Debt and unpreparedness. That’s our fault? Fuck that.

You aren’t prepared for life, and its not your fault.

Don’t start crying Matt Damon. This isn’t that sort of speech. I’m not here to bitch at them, because even though they failed us, we still have to clean up the mess. Ultimately, its up to us to solve our problems, even if we didn’t make them.

That’s what the speech is about: I don’t feel prepared for life, so what the fuck do I do now? 

If this were a high school audience, I’d tell all you not to go to college, that for most of you its a waste of time and money, that you can learn everything faster and better elsewhere, and that you should apprentice or start a company instead…but you’re already here. We can’t put that shit back in the horse, can we?

I can’t even teach you all the skills you need to know. You motherfuckers have Google, you can read on your own. What I am going to try to teach you is how to think about your life and your problems, so you can solve them on your own:

1. Get drunk and fuck (take risks)

I’m exaggerating a little, but for effect. You need to push every boundary, try all kinda of new things, and figure out who you are and who you are not. Experiment, go a little wild, thats what college is about, right?

You know that though. In fact, you probably hear that a lot from speakers dont you? You know what makes me laugh though is that those same people then sneer and look down their noses when they see you reading “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.” They want to you experiment, but only in ways that they think are “appropriate.”

Fuck that. It’s not an experiment if you already know whats going to happen. And its not a risk if there is no chance of failure. If you really want to get the most out of this period of experimentation in your life, you really need to do things that are slightly unsafe. For example, don’t fuck me without a condom, but definitely fuck me.

Seriously though, why does experimentation and taking risks matter? Because the only way you can figure out the bounds of both the world you live in and yourself as a person is to push yourself into places you have never been, to see and explore and feel. Basically, experimentation helps you to get over fear, and learn to take risks and fail safely. Why does that matter?

Because everything in life worth having requires risk: Money, love, respect–all of it. You want lots of money? You need to take lots of risk. You want great love? You need to be willing to be vulnerable, to let someone in and risk them hurting you. You have to learn how to take risks, you have to learn courage, and you do that by demonstrating to yourself that you can safely try new things, and college is the BEST time in you life to do that, because you can recover from failure so easily and cheaply. This is the time in your life where the consequences of your actions are lowest.

You know why so many people like my books? You think its about the drinking and the fucking and the crazy stories, but its not. You’re all going to have stories like that when you get through your 20s, if you don’t already. You think its about the humor, and that is a big part of it. But the real reason Ive sold millions of books and inpired countless people is because I’ll say and do the things they want to do and say, but don’t feel like they can. You know what that is? Courage.

But courage is not fearlessness. Fearlessness is stupid and dangerous. Courage is the recognition of your fear, and the decision to face it anyway. How do you get courage? Demonstrated performance. I developed courage by experimenting, taking risks, failing, and then trying again and again until I succeeded. Through risk and failure, I found my courage, and that’s how you can do it too.

2. Ask questions (don’t just accept the rules)

Have you learned the fundamental truth of adulthood? We all have to face it at some point in our life, do you even know what it is? Of course not, they don’t teach Socrates at Pitt.

The fundamental truth that every young adult must face is the realization that the rules of society do not help you. The rules are made by those in power for their benefit, not yours, and this is hidden by rationalizations and lies. Essentially, everything you are told by the institutions that are supposed to be protecting you is bullshit.

Your parents are all in on this. Everything they told you is bullshit. Its not on purpose, they aren’t being mean or doing any of this consciously–really, they are just repeating the lies they were told. It starts with Santa Claus, it extends through the close door buttons on elevators, and it culminates with all the implied life lessons they give you; go to college, get a job, work hard for retirement, be good and then you will get rewarded in heaven. It’s all lies that exist to perpetuate the existing power structure.

You want an example? Let’s start with the easiest one: Santa Claus. Why do parents tell the tale of Santa? Get their kids to behave. They perpetuate a lie to control them (because thats the only way you can control people is to lie to them).

You probably think that’s ridiculous, right, Santa Claus is for kids, and I’m an adult, I don’t believe that. OK, thats fine. Here’s a fun thought experiment: Imagine you are talking to an alien. Now imagine explaining two things to them: Santa Claus and Christianity. Would they be able to tell the difference between what a parent tells a child about Santa Claus…and what Christianity tells you about heaven? Obey your parents or you don’t get presents…obey your church or you don’t go to heaven. Whats that you say, religion is true, but Santa isn’t? Really? So what would you show an alien to prove this?

Exactly. They’re both lies that control you.

You want another, maybe less ideological example? Why do you think drug trials exist? We’re told they are about protecting the public good. Hmm, OK. Well, they don’t have them in Europe. Are the Danes less human than us? No. In America, we have huge and very powerful pharmaceutical companies, and they actually WANT it to be difficult to create new drugs, because it limits competition. If there is only one statin on the market, they can charge WAY more. It keeps the small guy out. How do they justify this? They lie.

The rules are made by those in power for their benefit, not yours. They say its for your own good, but its not. Thats a lie. Thats how they get you to accept shit that is obviously bad for you. The rules are for their benefit.

Here’s another great example: College athletics. Why the focus on amatuerism? If you start pulling on the why thread, and follow it all the way back, you see where it leads: Football makes a ton of money for schools, but only if the players are amateurs. By having college athletics operate under amateurism, it restricts labor costs and the colleges don’t have to pay taxes on the profit. Do you ever hear this? No. Why not? Because the only way they can get people to accept this is to lie to them, to convince them that its about other things, while they make all the money.

I’m not telling you this to be depressing, I don’t mean that we live in a vast orchestrated conspiracy to controls our thoughts. I don’t have a tinfoil hat on. This is a natural evolution of all institutions and bureacracies, it happens everywhere that humans exist in modern societies. Most people who tell these lies don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re just repeating what they were told, because they never asked why.

I’m telling you to ask why so that you have a way to get to the truth and understand which rules are bullshit, so that you can take control of your own life. Its not foolproof, but instead of blinding accepting what a parent or a school or a professor tells you, asking “why” forces them to explain. If the explanation makes sense, then accept it. A lot of rules are great–the rule against drunk driving for instance. I understand why and I’m all for it. But a lot don’t make sense, like the rule that you have to go to college to get a good job or that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Why?

Remember this: If someone can’t explain “why”, then they are a pawn in someone elses game. There is always a reason why…the only question is if you know it. Like the poker saying–if you dont know who the sucker at the table is, then the sucker is you. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, then someone else is probably profitting from your effort more than you are. You are the sucker.

Be like a child. Remember how you used to do as a child, you’d constantly ask “why” and your parents would labor to answer you and get frustrated and yell at you, so you stopped asking. You know why they yelled at you? Well, you were probably an annoying little shit, but also because they don’t even understand why it is they do the things they do, and your questions made them face that fact, and its too emotionally painful for them to deal with, so they yelled at you. But now you’re an adult and if you keep asking why, you can get to the truth on your own.

If you want to be real legit, don’t just ask why–demand proof. Picture or it didnt happen, right! Great example: How many of you want to see proof of my stories? Thats fine, thats legit, I have no issue with that. But let me ask you something in return–Why do you demand proof of my stories, but you dont demand proof of why you have to follow all these rules from your school, or your religion, or your parents, or any of the institutions around you? Just because they are in charge doesn’t mean they know what they are doing or that they have your best interests in mind. Ask why, and see.

3. Don’t go trying to find; learn how to make

Whats the biggest piece of career advice you probably get? Find your passion, right?

That is TOTAL BULLSHIT.

You can’t “find” your passion, that doesn’t make sense. What’s always the follow up question: How do I find my passion? I don’t have any fucking idea, and I’ve never seen anyone explain how to find your passion. Every answer Ive ever seen, when you break it down, its just some goofy mystical bullshit. It’s no different than telling someone to be Frodo, and go on a quest through Middle Earth. Maybe that hot elf queen has it, that’d be pretty nice. I’d fuck the shit out of every elf in those movies. That’d be something to put on my Sexual To Do list–mythical elves.

There is no finding passion, just like there is no finding yourself. You don’t find yourself, you make yourself. You don’t find passion, you make passion.

I mean this very literally:  You decide who you become by what you do. The accumulation of decisions you make about where you focus your time and effort is what determines who you ultimately become. Excellence is not a single act, it is a habit. I dont think most people really understand this.

Let me tell you a story about me–you have read my books, you know who SlingBlade is. He’s the smartest, funniest, most brilliant person I’ve ever met. He has everything it takes to be a star, but yet…I’m the star. Why? Because I decided that I was going to become one, and I worked towards doing it. What did he do? Nothing. Took the easy, safe, normal route. I’m not saying what he did is bad or wrong, not at all. In fact, it was probably the right path for him. What I’m telling you is that me being “Tucker Max” was not destiny. I didn’t go on some quest where we all knew how it was going to end. I had a little talent, a little luck, and a lot of hard work. I made myself into “Tucker Max,” and the only way you can be who you want to be to make yourself into that person.

You want to know how to do this, it’s very easy: Decide who you want to be in the future, then start acting like him or her right now. Do what it is that makes them who they are. Lets use me as an example. Say you want to be me; not precisely me, but something like me–an author who writes funny stories about his life. Then you need to ask yourself–what does Tucker Max do that I don’t do? He writes well, he tells great stories, he’s really funny, and unlike most writers or artists, he runs his own business. OK, well, then figure out how to do those things. Learn how write a well-told story that entertains people. Its hard, as all of you who have tried to write a fratire story know very well. Its especially hard to be funny to people who weren’t there and don’t know you. If you don’t like it, maybe being what I am shouldn’t be your goal–thats not your passion. It can be done, but you have to decide to make it happen, and that takes dedication, hard work, and a willingness to do fun things, and fail at them–and if you love doing it, then you’ve not found your passion, you’ve developed it.

This can apply to anything. You’re passionate about video games? Great, thats a huge business. Learn to program, learn story structure, learn graphic design, etc, and you can do all sorts of cool shit with video games.  Fashion? Food? Gardening? Sex? These are all great places to develop passion through dedication and mastery of a skill.

But you develop passion by developing your skills at what you love. And you use those skills to create value for other people…and thats how you either get a job, or create a new job where one didn’t exist before, and how you do cool things with your life, how you create meaning.

CONCLUSION:

Let me stress, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know everything. No one does. IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU THEY HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING.

In fact, I don’t even know if I have ANY answers. I highly doubt there is anything that is always right. I think maybe there are just certain facts that are more right than others at certain times in certain places.

I stand here on stage, a fucking star, telling you this is how it worked in my life: 1. I took risks and learned how to fail so I could develop courage, 2. I constantly questioned why things were the way they were to understand life and didn’t accept bullshit answers, and 3. I worked my ass off to make myself into who I wanted to be.

I’m simply trying to teach you what no one else has: How you can find the answers that make sense for you on your own. College isn’t teaching you this. Your parents aren’t teaching you how to think. They want you to just follow the rules, to do the same things everyone else does, because thats what they did. They don’t know how to think, because they never have. If they did, they’d have taught you, and you’d be prepared for your life, and you wouldn’t need to listen to some asshole tell you this.

Here’s the thing: No ones going to do this for you. No one is going to hold your dick for you while you piss. The world is a cold, hard, uncaring place, and your parents and institutions have failed you. You can make a life, or you can just follow the rules, and become just another zombie. If you want to live a meaningful life, if you want to be the best version of yourself possible, you can. Its not too late, but what happens with your life is up to you.

Thank you.

Creating change

I hear this from people all the time, “I want to change the world.” And then they tell me their plan to make the world better, and it is always changing the things that already exist (and invariably it is some ridiculous unformed pie-in-the-sky plan, like “make the world by creating awareness”).

You really want to change the world? You change the world not by trying to alter what already exists, but by building new things that are better than what currently exists. This is true from everything from governments to restaurants to art. If you are tired of eating crappy fast food hamburgers, you don’t petition McDonalds to change the Big Mac. Why would they listen, Big Macs sell great. If you want better hamburgers, you have to make a better burger, and let people vote with their wallers. You change the world for the better by giving people a better option than McDonalds, not by changing McDonalds.

So few people get this. I know I didn’t in the past. I thought the way to create change was to identify the problem, and then fix it. That doesn’t work. You can’t change the institutions that already exist, except at the margins. They were created to solve some problem that may or may not still exist that you probably don’t understand, and they are now run by someone who is now more powerful than you, and they’ve created interest groups that benefit to much from their existence. It doesn’t matter how right you are about the good it will do for mammals, no dinosaur will ever buy a meteor.

I cannot stress this enough: Power does not cede anything without a fight, and if you try to fight an existing system to change into something else, that is nearly impossible in all but the smallest battlefields. The better avenue is always to create something new the replace what is old and broken.

Apply this to your life, even at the micro level: Are you fighting a hard battle by trying to fix something that is probably unfixable…or are you building something new and better to replace it? 

Attention Authors: I Tripled My Royalties, And You Can Too

So, I think this piece I wrote on the Huffington Post (and reprinted below) is fairly important. Or at least, it could end up being important, if other big authors understand what I’m saying and end up doing something similar. This is very much the same thing I talked about on TechCrunch TV last week.

This all ties into what I’ve been working on recently. I sold the publishing company I created to do my last two books with, Tropaion Publishing, to a three guys running a similar–but I think better–start-up called Lioncrest Publishing. It was mainly a talent acquisition, and I joined them as an equity partner in their company. There were a lot of reasons why I did this, but the main one is simple: I needed help in order to effectuate my vision in publishing, and these guys get shit done. 

I’m not sure how much you’re going to see about us in the press–we aren’t that type of company. If you notice I barely talk about the company in either piece. And I probably won’t spend a lot of time talking specifically about what we do at Lioncrest or how we’re doing it on this blog. Talking about doing shit means you aren’t doing it. That’s not us. But we are hiring, and I am always looking for motivated, hard working people to work with us. Show me you are one: tuckermax@gmail.com.

Here’s the Huffington Post piece, reprinted here:

 

Attention Authors: I Tripled My Royalties, And You Can Too

DISCLAIMER: This post is only intended for successful published authors, agents, editors and other people in the publishing industry. It might also be interesting to people who enjoy reading case studies about disruptive business strategies, but I can’t guarantee anyone else will care. If you’re looking for a funny, light read, this isn’t it.

Part 1: First the test, then the lesson

I know how an author can triple their effective royalty. This is on the same sales, with nothing else substantively changing in any other aspect of their book. Same books (print and ebooks both), same bookstores, same placement, same customer experience, even the same publisher (sort of). I’m sure you’re skeptical. I know you think this can’t be done. You’re wrong.

I know an author can triple his royalties on the same sales, because I’ve already done it.

First the backstory, and then I’ll explain precisely how I did this:

My name is Tucker Max. I published my first book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, in January of 2006, with Citadel, a division of Kensington. It spent the next six years on the NY Times Best Seller list, hitting No. 1, selling more than 1.5 million copies worldwide (it’s still selling great) and was called the book that invented the “fratire” genre. My follow up was Assholes Finish First, and was published by Simon & Schuster in 2010. Basically the same sales/press story — three years on the NY Times Best Seller list, hundreds of thousands of copies sold (still going strong), etc., etc.

After two very successful books, I realized the weird paradox of the publishing business that every author eventually learns: It’s terribly exploitive of authors (paying them a very small royalty on sales), yet it doesn’t even do a good job maximizing overall revenue from book sales. Publishing companies are like schoolyard bullies that can’t even fight well.

In preparation for my third book, Hilarity Ensues, I stepped back and tried to figure out a different approach. Frankly, I wanted to keep more of the money my books made, and I wanted more control over the publishing process, but I didn’t want to deal with the problems that come from being in the “self-publishing ghetto.” There had to be a way that was fairer and more lucrative to me as an author (and maybe even more productive to the publishing companies), so I set out to find it.

Part 2: “I’m not an author anymore. Now, I’m a publisher.”

I was not one of those people just happy to have an ISBN number and Library of Congress entry to my name. I expected the publishing industry to act like a real business. When that didn’t happen, I was well-equipped to figure out why, having come to writing by accident from an educational background of economics and law. I read everything I could about the publishing business, compared it to other similar businesses, saw how those were disrupted, applied my experiences with publishing and came to a key realization:

I could replicate everything that a publishing house did — except for distribution. So what I needed was a distribution deal, not a book deal.

Think about what basic services publishers provide for authors:

1. Paying an advance
2. Editing (content and copy)
3. Cover Design
4. Layout and production
5. Printing
6. Marketing and promotion
7. Distribution

Nos. 2 through 6 can be easily replicated with freelancers, and usually with a higher level of skill than a publisher can provide. If you are an established author who has sold a lot of books, you don’t need No. 1. Yes, big advances are nice, but what if you made more than three times as much money in the long term — on the same sales — by taking a bigger cut of the revenue? I would skip the upfront money to make more long-term.

The big choke point is No. 7. It’s essentially impossible to replicate the trucks, warehouses, retail relationships and sales teams that publishers have developed over the decades. And the reality is, even if you could replicate these things, the Big 6 publishers would still be better at this specific job.

These facts make the path forward clear: I would no longer be just an author. I would cut a distribution deal with a major publisher, become a publishing company, do more work — but keep all the profit.

Distribution deals themselves aren’t unusual. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of publishing companies in America. How many of them have trucks and warehouses and sales teams? Almost none. You didn’t think Harvard University Press handles book logistics or sends people to B&N buyer meetings, did you? Of course not. They use a Big 6 publisher to do their distribution. In fact, there are really only about eight major book distributors, and each of the Big 6 has a separate distribution division that handles the distribution services for other publishing houses.

Well, why can’t I do that? Why can’t I be a publishing company and just cut a deal directly with a distributor, do everything else, and keep all the profit of my writing for myself? Yeah, I’ll have to take a risk by skipping my advance on my third book, and it’ll require some more work on my part — but I am more than happy to hire freelancers if it means by royalty checks triple in size.

So that’s what I decided to do. There was one problem: No author had ever done this before (at least, no one I talked to had heard of this, but who knows, maybe it’s happened). I couldn’t find a guide or instructional manual to follow. I explained my plan to my agent, Byrd Leavell. Byrd is very smart and always willing to test new things, but even he was unsure how to do this. Not only that, we already had two seven-figure offers for my third book in hand. Byrd was very unsure about turning them down to try something so new and unproven (there’s a “Byrd in hand” pun to make here, but I’ll spare you).

The publishers themselves didn’t really know how to deal with my proposal. I won’t name the house, but Byrd and I took a meeting with an editor at one of the Big 6 publishers who’d made a seven-figure advance offer on my third book, and we brought our counterproposal to them. I told the editor I didn’t want a book deal. Or an advance. Or even an imprint with a revenue-sharing deal. I was now my own publishing house, and I wanted them to be my distributor only.

He looked at me with this confused, quizzical look, as if he couldn’t believe I would even think of such a thing, much less have the balls to ask for it out loud. After a few seconds, he said, “Tucker, we wouldn’t even give that deal to [huge author they publish who sells way more books than me].” I shrugged, smiled and said, “Well, maybe you should.”

There was no distribution offer from that publisher.

Part 3: Tropaion Publishing

I won’t bore you with all the details about the deal negotiation, but eventually Byrd and his partner Scott Waxman helped me get the exact distribution deal I wanted with Simon & Schuster. I was no longer just an author; I now owned a publishing company with full retail distribution. I had to do all the work a publisher does, but I also got to keep all the money. The terms were really no different than they give any of their distribution clients, and the way it works is very simple:

My publishing company (I named it Tropaion Publishing) contracted with the author to write the book (that would be me, obviously), did all editing and production work on the book, and paid all up-front costs for printing and distribution. Simon & Schuster handled the printing, shipping, warehousing, sales, accounts receivable and returns.

This means I went from just another author with the same royalty deal every author gets — 15 percent of hardcover price — to owning my own publishing company and taking 89 percent of net receipts. In practice, the amount of money I made on each hardcover book sold went from about $3.60 to about $12 (before distribution costs). Nothing else really changed.

This is not a theory about what an author could do. This is already done. Hilarity Ensues came out in February of this year, released under Blue Heeler Books (which is an imprint of Tropaion Publishing). It looks and feels just like my first two books. It was in all the same bookstores, same front tables, same press and marketing (that I handled, like I already had to do on my first two books, because publishing houses don’t think you actually have to tell people you have a new book). Everything was basically the same, except I did some more work…and my checks tripled in size.

There were a few other benefits too: because I owned the publishing company, that meant I was in charge — of everything. Now I could do all the marketing things I always wanted to do in the past, but couldn’t because of how risk-averse Big 6 publishers are. I could give various sales offers to my fans, I could immediately put my books on digital platforms all over the world, I could spend a bunch on co-op, I could do all sorts of things that I always thought my publisher should do, but didn’t. Outlining all the different ways I used this new marketing freedom to help sales would require a second post (that I will write soon), but consider these two facts:

1. Hilarity Ensues debuted at No. 2 on the NY Times Best Seller list — which is a higher debut than either of my previous books (and it’s still selling great, on a faster pace than either of my previous two best-sellers).

2. The marketing I did was so effective, it pulled my previous two books back onto the list. In the long history of the NY Times Best Seller list prior to 2012, there were only two authors that ever had three books on the non-fiction list at the same time: Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. Well, this year, my name was added to that list, because of the way I marketed this book.

Part 4: The path forward

Like I told you, this is not self-publishing. Nor is it a trick or a scam or anything like that. It is, quite literally, owning your own publishing company. It’s also an extremely effective way to substantially increase the amount of revenue you make on your book sales and gain total control over all aspects of your book’s creation and promotion.

I won’t pretend that this is easy to do. Figuring out that it was even possible to get this deal, and then negotiating it, was hard enough, believe me. And it’s also a lot more work than normal publishing. I didn’t just get to hand off my manuscript and then let everything take care of itself. And of course, there is a bit more financial risk involved — after all, advances don’t have to be paid back.

But it can be done. There is nothing special about me that would prevent other authors from doing what I describe above. I got this deal simply because I asked for it. If you are an established author who has a track record of success, you can do the same thing I did, and it can work just as well. 

Not only that, but I can teach you precisely how to do what I did. In fact, I am going to end with this offer:

If you are an author who has an established track record of sales success (lets say at least 500,000 books sold, either print or digital), and you are interested in doing this for your next book, I would be happy to talk to you further about how to do it. I’ve explained enough in this piece that a smart person can figure out the rest, but there are still some details left out for the sake of brevity (for example, how to structure the distribution contract or the specific production steps you need to take). I know I wish someone had walked me through all this at the beginning of my negotiations for Hilarity Ensues, it would have saved me a ton of time. I’m willing to save a ton of yours.

There is no catch to my offer. There’s no contract or NDA you need to sign (I already talked about this on TechCruchTV, after all). I’m not going to charge for this information, or even my time. Obviously, I won’t do the work for you, but a few emails or phone calls to help you really flesh out the specifics are no problem. (If you want the set-up I have, but don’t want to do the work, I can refer you to a brand-new publishing services company that will do everything I outlined for you, and of course, I have a financial stake in the company, but I don’t even have to mention their name if you don’t want me to.)

Understanding what to do isn’t the problem; if you are a successful author with a high level of consistent sales, the only obstacle for you now is the decision to take control of your career and own your own publishing company. If you want to talk, the best way to start the process is to just email me: tuckermax@gmail.com.

Please be clear: Unless you have a long track record of sales success genre such that you can be reasonably sure of future success, this sort of deal doesn’t make sense. You have to pay distribution costs upfront, so unless you know what your sales are going to be, you could lose a lot of money. Realistically, there might only be 250 authors currently publishing in America for whom having their own publishing company with a Big 6 distribution deal makes financial sense, and definitely not more than 500. For newer, smaller or mid-list authors, I think a very good case can be made that a Big 6 publisher still brings a lot of value, and for most beginning authors with no audience, self-publishing is probably the best bet.

I’m making this offer to help because I’m tired of the way publishing is done. I think it’s wrong and non-sensical for both authors and publishers in many ways, but instead of just complaining about it, I want to help change it for the better.

Yes, I could probably figure out a way to charge for this information. But that’s not really my goal. If I try to profit directly from this information, that limits the impact it can have. The more people that know about this alternate model of publishing the better. Frankly, I’d rather make a little bit less money if it means living in a better world for books and publishing in the future.

 

Book Summary: Brida, A Novel

Brida

by Paulo Coelho
Harper (June 24, 2008)

Tucker’s Rating: 7 / 10

Buy on Amazon

What’s it about?: I can’t improve on the publishers description, “Brida, a young Irish girl, has long been interested in various aspects of magic but is searching for something more. Her search leads her to people of great wisdom. She meets a wise man who dwells in a forest, who teaches her to trust in the goodness of the world, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the music of the world. As Brida seeks her destiny, she struggles to find a balance between her relationships and her desire to become a witch.”

Tucker’s Opinion: First off, you can never judge Paulo Coehlo novels by the description. A novel about an insecure wiccan girl, really? It’s awesome though. I love almost all his books, and I have learned a lot from reading them, even though they never sound like something I would care about. I think that’s because the subjects Paulo picks to write about are all overwhelmingly human, and he finds the stories that appeal to everyone not because of the obscure details or weird novelties, but because of the universality of the emotions and experiences in them. Brida is falls squarely into this category.

Notable Quotes (as marked by Tucker):

“Perhaps solitude has made his madness worse,” Brida thought, and again she felt the first stirrings of panic.  She may have been young, but she knew the harm that loneliness could do to people, especially as they got older.  She had met people who had lost the glow of being alive because they could no longer fight against loneliness and had ended up becoming addicted to it.  They were, for the most part, people who believed the world to be an undignified, inglorious place, and who spent their evenings and nights talking on and on about the mistakes others had made.  They were people whom solitude had made into the judges of the world, whose verdicts were scattered to the four winds for whoever cared to listen.  Perhaps the Magus had gone mad with loneliness.

She was beginning to understand that there was a big difference between danger and fear.

“I know how you must be feeling,” she went on.  ”Sometimes we set off down a path simply because we don’t believe in it.  It’s easy enough.  All we have to do then is prove that it isn’t the right path for us.  However, when things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on.”

But there was something else he had never told her, and which she would possibly never know:  that she, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning o life, that her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of his days.  It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, whose life was now fading fast, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after the battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child.

“I just want to say one thing to you,” she said.  ”Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions.  Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God.  If you think that you won’t be able to stand a world in which living is more important than understanding, then give up magic now.  The best way to to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.”

It isn’t explanations that carry us forward, it’s our desire to go on.

She was on the beach with her father, and he asked her to go and see what the temperature of the water was like. She was five years old and glad to be able to help. She went to the water’ edge and dipped a toe.

“I put my feet in and it’s cold,” she told him.

Her father picked her up and carried her down to the water again and, without any warning, threw her in.  She was shocked at first, but then laughed out loud at the trick he’d played.

“How’s the water?” asked her father

“It’s lovely,” she replied.

“Right, from now on, whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.”

Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself.  After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely.  She feared pain, loss, and separation.  These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all.  In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love.  It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.

She remembered Wicca telling her about people who followed certain paths only to prove that they weren’t the right ones, but that wasn’t as bad as choosing a path and then spending the rest of your life wondering if you’d made the right choice.  No one could make a choice without feeling afraid.

 

That was the law of life.  That was the Dark Night, and no one could escape the Dark Night, even if they never made a decision, even if they lacked the courage to change anything, because that in itself was a decision, a change, except without the benefit of the treasures hidden in the Dark Night.

Sometimes, certain of God’s blessings arrive by shattering all the windows.

“Only the present has power over our lives,” replied Wicca.  ”When you read the future in the cards, you are bringing the future into the present, and that can cause serious harm.  The present can confuse your future.”

“It doesn’t matter what image we have of ourselves.  It doesn’t matter what disguises we put on, what smart answers or honorable excuses we give.  During sex, it’s very difficult to deceive the other person, because that is when each person shows who they really are.”

“Never stop having doubts.  If you ever do, it will be because you’ve stopped moving forward, and at that point, God will step in and pull the rug out from under your feet, because that is His way of controlling His chosen ones, by making sure they always follow their appointed path to the end.  If, for any reason, we stop, whether out of complacency, laziness, or out of a mistaken belief that we know enough, He forces us on.”

“But you’re a Teacher of the Tradition of the Moon,” said Brida.  ”You know the answers.”

 

Wicca sat for a moment, absorbed, looking at the food.  Then he said:

 

“I know how to travel between the present and the past.  I know the world of the spirits, and I’ve communed with forces so amazing that no words in any language could describe them.  I could perhaps say that I possess the silent knowledge of the journey that has brought the human race to where it is at this moment.

“But because I know all this, and because I am a Teacher, I also know that we will never ever know the ultimate reason for our existence.  We might know the how, where, and when of being here, but the why will always be a question that remains unanswered.  The main objective of the great Architect of the Universe is known to Him alone, and to no one else.”

 

A silence fell.

 

“Right now, while we’re here eating, ninety-nine percent of people on this planet are, in their own way, struggling with that very question.  Why are we here?  Many think they’ve found the answer in religion or in materialism.  Others despair and spend their lives and their money trying to grasp the meaning of it all.  A few let the questions go unanswered and live for the moment, regardless of the results or the consequences.

 

“Only the brave and those who understand the Traditions of the Sun and the Moon are aware that the only possible answer to the question is I DON’T KNOW.

 

“This might, at first, seem frightening, leaving us terribly vulnerable in our dealings with the world, with the things of the world, and with our own sense of our existence.  Once we’ve got over that initial fear, however, we gradually become accustomed to the only possible solution: to follow our dreams.  Having he courage to take the steps we always wanted to take is the only way of showing that we trust in God.”

She thought about the greatness of soul of the true sages, sages who had spent their entire life searching fo an answer that did not exist, but who were not tempted to invent an answer that did not exist, but who were not tempted to invent an answer when they realized there was none.  Instead, they carried on humbly inhabiting a Universe they would never understand.  The only way they could truly participate was by following their own desires, their own dreams, because that is how man becomes an instrument of God.

“So what’s the point of looking for an answer then?”

 

“We don’t look for an answer, we accept, and then life becomes much more intense, much more brilliant, because we understand that each minute, each step that we take, has a meaning that goes far beyond us an individuals.  We realize that somewhere in time and space this question does have an answer.  We realize that there is a reason for us being here, and for us, that is enough.

 

“We plunge into the Dark Night with faith, we fulfill what the ancient alchemists used to call our Personal Legend, and we surrender ourselves finally to each moment, knowing that there is always a hand to guide us, and whether we accept it or not is entirely up to us.”

“Men have been holding parties since the days when they lived in caves,” said his Teacher.  ”They’re the first group rituals we know of, and the Tradition of the Sun took it upon itself to keep that ritual alive.  A good party cleanses the mind of all those taking part, but it’s very difficult to make that happen; it only takes a few people to spoil the general mood.  Those people think they’re more important than the others; they’re hard to please; they think they’re wasting their time because they can’t make contact with anyone else.  And they usually end up the victims of a mysterious form of poetic justice:  they tend to leave weighed down by the astral larvae given off by those people who have managed to bond with others.  Remember, the first road to God is prayer, the second is joy.”

“Not that it matters,” thought Wicca, because the age of miracles was returning, and no one could remain indifferent to the changes the world was beginning to experience.  Within a few years, the power of the Tradition of the Sun would reveal itself in all its brilliance.  Anyone not already following their own path would begin to feel dissatisfied with themselves and be forced to make a choice, they would either have to accept an existence beset with disappointment and pain or else come to realize that everyone was born to be happy.  Having made their choice, they would have no option but to change, and the great struggle, the Jihad, would begin.”

“You have found your path.  Few people have the courage to do so.  They prefer to follow a path that is not their own.  Everyone has a Gift, but they choose not to see it.  You accepted yours, and your encounter with your Gift is your encounter with the world.”

“You can only be close to people if you are one of them.”

“Never be ashamed,” he said.  ”Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup.  All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.”

 

“How will I know which is which?”

 

“By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.”

TechCrunch TV interview, and whats coming up

I haven’t been writing much because I’ve been busy selling my publishing company and starting a new project. I will write a lot about it I think, but not right now, I’m too busy actually doing it.

Here’s an interview I did on TechCrunchTV about something related. I haven’t talked about this at all yet, not in print at least. I’ll have a much longer piece about this coming, both on here and in some other places.