How Do You Keep Sane As a Published Author | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.420 | All right.

00:00:06.380 | Another deep life question here.

00:00:07.720 | This one is from Penelope.

00:00:10.580 | Penelope asks, what's it like to be a published author?

00:00:13.920 | And how do you keep sane amid all the competition

00:00:16.360 | and obsession with book sales and contracts?

00:00:21.040 | You can't-- Penelope, you can't pay much attention to it.

00:00:26.280 | Writing is weird, especially if you're

00:00:30.600 | doing big scale professional nonfiction writing like I do.

00:00:34.960 | It's weird and stochastic.

00:00:37.040 | Some books blow up.

00:00:38.640 | Some don't.

00:00:39.440 | It's complicated.

00:00:40.320 | No one can understand necessarily why.

00:00:43.200 | It's like a confusing world.

00:00:44.880 | Sometimes you come across a book, you're like, this is--

00:00:47.120 | I get it.

00:00:47.640 | It's a really interesting story, or it's really original,

00:00:52.600 | or it's Danny Kahneman is writing Thinking Faster,

00:00:55.480 | Slow, and it's his life's work, and he's finally

00:00:59.400 | put into a book.

00:01:00.400 | I kind of get that.

00:01:01.960 | And then sometimes it's random.

00:01:04.640 | It's like, I don't know.

00:01:07.040 | Why did-- why does James Clear's book on habits 5x outsell

00:01:12.760 | Charles Duhigg's book on habits?

00:01:15.200 | I don't know.

00:01:16.640 | Why did-- why is Mark Manson's first book, The Subtle Art

00:01:21.160 | of Not Giving Enough Word, why did that sell 12 million copies?

00:01:24.240 | It's a great book.

00:01:24.960 | But there's a lot of great books that don't--

00:01:26.960 | he doesn't know.

00:01:27.720 | I've asked him.

00:01:28.320 | It's like, I don't know.

00:01:31.240 | So you can't worry about it.

00:01:32.520 | So how do you not worry about it?

00:01:33.880 | Well, I'll tell you what I do is I never signed up

00:01:37.600 | for the author portals.

00:01:39.840 | I don't know how to look up sales numbers on my books.

00:01:43.080 | My agent will mention things to me.

00:01:44.840 | My editors will sometimes mention things to me.

00:01:46.760 | I'm like, that sounds great.

00:01:47.920 | But I mainly find out how well my books

00:01:49.600 | are doing twice a year when I get my royalty statements.

00:01:53.080 | I'm like, ah, that's great.

00:01:55.120 | And I think that has done really well.

00:01:57.080 | Contracts, don't worry about book contracts.

00:01:58.660 | That's such a small percentage of your time

00:02:00.080 | where that's relevant.

00:02:00.840 | Like, oh, I'm working on a book contract now.

00:02:02.600 | Great.

00:02:02.880 | And then it'll be two years again

00:02:04.160 | until you're working on another book contract again.

00:02:05.920 | You're just sort of writing at that point.

00:02:07.700 | So don't worry about that.

00:02:08.800 | But Penelope, that's my advice.

00:02:10.000 | It's not that you're going to do this perfectly.

00:02:11.240 | But you just can't compare.

00:02:12.440 | It's like a weird stochastic world.

00:02:14.400 | Why one book does well over here tells you nothing

00:02:17.240 | about how your book should do over here.

00:02:18.900 | Maybe this book should do really well, and it doesn't.

00:02:21.640 | Or it's going really slow, and then it does really well later.

00:02:25.360 | What I always do is just focus on the next book.

00:02:27.480 | So when I have a book out, I don't look up at sales numbers

00:02:29.920 | because I don't know how.

00:02:32.040 | And I always just get to the mindset of, well,

00:02:35.960 | forget that book, this new one.

00:02:38.120 | This is the one that's going to be a home run.

00:02:40.040 | I was rushed for that one, but this one's

00:02:41.800 | going to be the home run.

00:02:42.800 | I just get my attention towards what's happening in the future.

00:02:47.160 | Interesting story.

00:02:48.240 | I've talked about this before.

00:02:49.480 | I have a lot of books that seem slow and then sold a lot later.

00:02:54.320 | So "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

00:02:55.920 | That came out in 2012.

00:02:57.080 | That was my first major hardcover release.

00:03:00.540 | I had written those three student books.

00:03:02.200 | It was my first major hardcover idea book.

00:03:04.440 | Got a reasonable advance for it, a lot of energy behind it.

00:03:08.880 | And nothing really happened much when it came out.

00:03:13.680 | And so I think it was considered--

00:03:15.480 | assuming it was considered a failure because a couple years

00:03:19.160 | later when I sold "Deep Work," they

00:03:21.680 | knocked $50,000 off the advance that I got for "So Good They

00:03:24.600 | Can't Ignore You."

00:03:25.600 | Like, yeah, I don't think this book worked.

00:03:27.520 | It's 2012.

00:03:29.120 | Fast forward to today, that book has sold 300-plus thousand

00:03:32.320 | copies.

00:03:32.920 | It's a very successful book, but you never

00:03:34.720 | would have known it.

00:03:35.360 | "Deep Work" has sold a million copies.

00:03:36.920 | But I was worried when "Deep Work" first came out.

00:03:39.760 | I was on the phone frustrated with my agent.

00:03:43.160 | My friends can't even find this in Barnes & Noble.

00:03:45.480 | No one cares about this book.

00:03:46.480 | So sometimes it's random.

00:03:47.680 | You think something's not going to do well,

00:03:49.000 | and then it does really well later.

00:03:50.680 | Or you think something's going to do really well,

00:03:53.000 | and it never does.

00:03:55.080 | So write the next one.

00:03:56.840 | Don't look at sales numbers.

00:03:57.720 | Write the next one.

00:03:58.520 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:04:01.880 | (upbeat music)

How Do You Keep Sane As a Published Author | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

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