It’s finally here, my book officially comes out this week.
The other day I said to my wife, “Wow, I really did it. I wrote a book.” She replied, “What’s the Netflix password?”
Like my wife, you might already be over my book, even if you haven’t read it yet. I get it. Congratulations Twitter can get tiresome, even if you’re genuinely happy for the person on the receiving end of it.
But if you’re going to make the effort to write a book (I put sixty weekends into this), you might as well sell a few copies. So I’m going to work as hard as I can to promote it, even if I receive some eye rolls along the way. Alright, with this out of the way, I spoke to Josh and Barry about the makings of this book, and wanted a mulligan on one question.
Josh: You wrote a 200 something page book, why did you write it?
First of all, the book is 165 pages, and this was deliberate. There were two sources of inspiration here. The first was Dear Chairman by Jeff Gramm. I loved the format of this book. I was excited to finish each chapter because there was always a different story on deck. I liked the idea of giving readers an opportunity to pick and choose. If they’re done with reading about Buffett, no sweat, move on to Bill Ackman. Sick of him too? Okay, move along to Stanley Druckenmiller.
The other book that influenced my thinking was Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield. This quote is burned into my memory:
When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.
The Benjamin Graham chapter had more than 10,000 words of notes before I went to work on it. It wasn’t easy to cut it down to less than 4,000 words, but nobody wants to read a 300 page finance book. I wanted to make the experience as easy and enjoyable for the reader as possible.
As far as why I wrote a book. I wanted to write a book for myself, as a final stamp on a long journey. I wanted to write this book for my father, who had my back every step of the way. And I wanted to write this book for my mother, who is no longer here, but I know how she’d be kvelling if she were. Lastly, I didn’t want to just write another finance book. I wanted to write a book that I would be excited to read. This certainly fit the bill.
Watch the conversation below
You can order my book on Amazon. Hopefully it will be in stores also, although I really don’t know how this works. Lastly, I’ve had a few people ask me if it’s going to be available on audio. I’m guessing that depends on sales, but I don’t have a firm answer on that. Thank you for reading!
