Traditional, hybrid or self-publishing? A 3x author's playbook for your first book

0:00Magesh: Hello explorers, welcome to another podcast with Soundarya. This is the second podcast that we are doing. Today the topic is about how to write a book, or

0:08Soundarya: should you write a book? If you should, how do you do it, and how can you make it successful?

0:13Magesh: Awesome. That's what we're going to be talking about today. She has written two books so far, and her third book she just completed writing. The name of the book is 1000 Days of Love. The very first question: should we self-publish a book or should we approach a publisher? Broadly, there are two classifications, right? Either we can go the Kindle Amazon route and publish the book ourselves, start an LLC and do all that, or we can go through a publisher who will put my book in a library. First we'll talk about this, and then I want to ask about how a book ends up in a library.

0:45Magesh: I want to see, potentially someday in the future, my book in a library. A random library in Europe we walk into, and then you see your book there. That would be amazing, right? It's like a dream.

0:55Soundarya: I think it's closer than you think. You'll get there. First of all, there's a third pathway. There is self-publishing, hybrid publishing, traditional publishing. Self-publishing is what I have done twice now. And my current book, I'm in the final stages with a few literary agents who I'm signing up with, who will then find me the publishing deal. That's another thing. You can't just talk to a publisher directly. Generally, they always go through an agent. So, there is a book agent that you have to first find.

1:20Soundarya: Hybrid is interesting. I have an offer from a hybrid publisher for my current book, 1000 Days of Love, where you pay some upfront fees, let's say $5,000, and for that they would take care of things like one proofread to just check the book. They'll take care of setting up your Amazon page, the ISBN, designing the book cover, and then giving you a few thousand copies at author price. Author price generally means, in this case, it's at cost. There's no margin on top. So that's another option, hybrid.

1:47Soundarya: Why would you go hybrid? If you don't want to worry about the operations of self-publishing. Because you said KDP, but what about physical books? You could do Amazon print on demand.

2:00Magesh: Wait, wait, what is KDP?

2:01Soundarya: KDP is Kindle Direct Publishing.

2:03Magesh: Okay.

2:03Soundarya: But that's just digital. What if you want your books to be physically available? Then you could do Amazon print on demand. That's also an option. But if you want to have copies of your books to send to people, then Amazon is not the best way to do that. So the hybrid publisher means they'll take care of all the operations and supply chain, and you'll get a bigger cut of royalty.

2:23Soundarya: And this is where we have to talk about royalties. What's a royalty? When you're working with a traditional publisher like Penguin or HarperCollins, they give you a royalty of about 7 to max 15%.

2:34Magesh: 15% of the book?

2:35Soundarya: Of the book's MRP, generally. So if your book is priced at $20, every sale you get 10%, $2. Which is why you can see authors who sell, let's say, 10,000 copies, but still end up making $20,000. Not that much money for the amount of copies you're selling.

2:50Soundarya: Hybrid publishers, at least the one I'm talking to, offer 25% royalty. So per book, I'll be making $4. So instead of $20,000, if I sell 10,000 copies, I'll make $40,000. Then there is self-publishing, in which case you will probably end up retaining, yes, I think, 40 to 50%.

3:10Magesh: Okay. So Amazon's share, 50 or 60%, covers the printing cost as well?

3:16Soundarya: Printing, shipping,

3:17Magesh: Okay.

3:18Soundarya: everything. In fact, I recently enabled Amazon print on demand for Unshackled and Admitted, and I haven't seen the numbers yet to see how much they're giving me, but I can't imagine it being more than 40 to 45%.

3:29Soundarya: Now, you asked me, should you do self-publishing or one of the other routes? If you come to me and ask me that question, I would say, okay Magesh, why are you writing this? Tell me five reasons, or three reasons, why you want to write this book right now.

3:40Magesh: Yeah. Okay. So, I have something in my mind. Let's say it's about fitness. How to integrate fitness in your daily life. Imagine, like, Atomic Habits for fitness.

3:50Soundarya: Oh, okay. Great.

3:52Magesh: This is the exact same example that you told me. After spending like 5 minutes explaining my book, she found a one-liner.

3:58Soundarya: Wait, did I say that?

3:59Magesh: You said that.

4:00Soundarya: Oh my god. For fitness. Nice.

4:02Magesh: Okay. So yeah, take fitness to the mass audience. People think lifting a heavy barbell in a gym is what fitness is. But if you can integrate a smaller routine that you are more likely to do every week, that is what fitness is. I want to demystify that, put that in a very small book and give it to people, that they can finish in maybe one weekend.

4:24Soundarya: I'm going to ask you the question again, but in a different way. Why are you writing a book? The emphasis on the book part. Why this medium? Is the goal to document your knowledge in one place in the form of writing? Is it to make money? Is it to reach a lot of people? Is it to start a speaking career where you can use the book as a visiting card, like most people do? So, what's the top reason?

4:45Magesh: Can I have top two reasons?

4:46Soundarya: Sure.

4:47Magesh: Okay. That would be to reach more people and to make some money.

4:51Soundarya: Okay. To reach more people and make some money. Right now you're already reaching a lot of people through your YouTube channels, these podcasts. You want to reach people in a different way, it sounds like,

5:00Magesh: where they spend hours with you

5:02Soundarya: by reading this.

5:03Magesh: Yeah.

5:04Soundarya: And also to make money.

5:05Magesh: I feel like when you are reading a book, you are also including the time to think about what you read.

5:11Soundarya: Definitely.

5:12Magesh: But when you're watching a video, the video never stops. When you're reading a book, you can take a pause: oh, how do I do this in my life? You can take a few minutes to think about it. So that's why a book is a different medium than video.

5:23Soundarya: And I also think it's more common for someone to say "this book changed my life" than "a video changed my life."

5:29Magesh: Right. Yeah. You have to watch so many videos.

5:32Soundarya: Yeah. So, okay. So these two are your top two reasons. You really care about it reaching a lot of people. So now let's go back to self-publishing, hybrid or traditional publisher.

5:42Soundarya: The reality of self-publishing is that you would have to do everything that comes after writing the book. No one is there for you. I did this for two of my books. I can say it's operationally extremely intensive and exhausting. Although I do think with Amazon print on demand, KDP and AI coming up now, it can be much less than it was 5 years ago.

6:02Soundarya: The reason I would say going through a publisher makes sense: publishers can get into libraries, airports, bookstores, and just other bookstores in general, a thousand times easier than you could. If your specific goal is, I don't just want to sell this book online, but I want it to be in physical places, and if you're not banking on the revenue you make from the book to take care of yourself, then it makes sense to go through a publisher. They have all these tentacles and hands all across the world, in all these places.

6:31Soundarya: Hybrid is actually an interesting point for you as well. You could do hybrid, because they also have the supply chain set up for bookstores and libraries, but they don't have the reputation. It's like getting into MIT versus getting into Ohio State University. I'm just giving an example. Probably MIT and Ohio State can both get you into the same job,

6:48Magesh: Mm.

6:49Soundarya: but you will not be able to go out there and say "I graduated from MIT" for the rest of your life.

6:54Magesh: Yeah,

6:55Soundarya: that's the difference. It's about how much do you care about that stamp on your resume: I'm a Penguin-published author, a HarperCollins-published author.

7:04Soundarya: That's one thing. Another thing I learned recently from a literary agent is publishers will barely pay you anything on the first book, probably, for fiction. For fiction, I don't think if you're a debut author you're probably going to get more than $5,000, $10,000 max, is what I've heard.

7:22Soundarya: For non-fiction, because you have a following, what they really care about is: is the person credible in their field, and do they have a reach that they could sell this to? So, I have seen, there's a person named Tiago Forte who wrote a book called Building a Second Brain, and he already had a following. He had a community ready to buy it. He was able to get a deal for $300,000.

7:44Soundarya: And so I've seen a few authors who are able to get $100,000-and-above deals like this because they had this existing following. But remember, the money is just coming from your royalties. It's not like free money.

7:55Magesh: What does a deal encompass? Was there any upfront money that the author would get, and then the rest is royalty?

8:03Soundarya: So let's say I am Penguin. You come to me. I'm saying, I like your book. I'm giving you 100,000. I'll give you a $100,000 advance. You will be able to make that back, and you won't get any royalty from me until you sell 50,000 books.

8:17Magesh: Oh.

8:18Soundarya: Because you're getting $2 a book. Probably only after you sell the 50,000 first, I'll start paying you your royalty.

8:24Soundarya: And even this 100,000, I've heard that it comes in stages. The first maybe one-third will come immediately. Then it'll come once you finish the book and it's about to be launched, and then maybe after launch, something like that. That's how it works: it's just coming from your future sales. I'm seeing potential in you, so I'm giving it to you.

8:40Soundarya: Now, what I've heard from this lit agent is that for fiction, he was telling me first-time authors don't get, in India, if you get two lakhs you are very lucky, first-time authors, as an advance. But if your book does well, and let's say you sell 100,000-plus copies in a few years, the second time around you'll get a really big advance, like almost a crore.

8:59Magesh: That's a big jump. Like two lakhs to a crore.

9:02Soundarya: It could be several hundred thousand. In my case, I'm still choosing to go with a big publisher for my third book, and I'm talking to, I haven't confirmed anything yet, because I really want this book to reach the masses. I know my limitations of how many people I can reach just through Amazon, and I don't have the time or resources to go to local places and put it in bookstores.

9:23Soundarya: And I also see this as the first of many novels, or in general books, I will write for the rest of my life. If my book does well, then they'll give me a bigger advance the next time, and the next time it'll keep increasing. And so it makes sense for me to go through traditional publishing.

9:36Soundarya: In your case, you could actually make a case for doing hybrid as well, where they still take care of the operations. If this is the only book you'll ever write and you don't care to keep writing books,

9:46Magesh: No, I don't think this will be the only book I'll write.

9:48Soundarya: Okay. Okay, good.

9:49Magesh: I mean, nothing great ever comes out of doing it one time. That's just my opinion. There's no way you can make one YouTube video and get 1 million subscribers. You have to make 100, 200, 300 videos. Only then will you actually make some videos that are worth watching. What I mean by that is we have to do more. But anyway, so yeah, not one book.

10:09Soundarya: In that case, I would actually push you towards traditional publishing, once again, because it's also non-fiction. You will get a much bigger advance. If I had the same following as you and I was writing fiction and you were writing non-fiction, you would still get much higher than me.

10:22Magesh: Oh, okay.

10:23Soundarya: It just works that way. Makes sense, right? Fiction is not about the author's following. It's about: is the story good? Is it worthwhile? Which is why I also spent 2 years writing this book, longer than any other book, because it took 2 years to make it really good.

10:38Magesh: So your first two books were non-fiction, and the third one, is it really fiction or non-fiction or based on a true story? Where do we put it?

10:45Soundarya: It was inspired by my relationship with Rajesh Setty, who is my godfather, someone who changed my life 5 years ago. I would say 75% of it is fictional. 25%, yeah, it happened, but it happened in different timelines. So I took incidents from my life and I rearranged the timelines. No one would know. Unless you know me really well, you would know this happened and this didn't happen. Otherwise, yeah.

11:10Magesh: Okay, can we say fiction based on true stories?

11:13Soundarya: That's what I'm going to write. So my book cover will say, not based on, sorry, "inspired by real events."

11:19Magesh: Okay, awesome. Co-authors. Should I go at it alone, or should I try to find a co-author? Kind of like starting a company, where you could do it alone, but having a co-founder, you could share the load. How does it work in the book world? Let's say I'm writing non-fiction. In your second book, I remember you worked with a lawyer to publish that.

11:40Soundarya: Yes.

11:40Magesh: So what was the reasoning behind that?

11:43Soundarya: It was so specific, because I was talking about US legal immigration. I'm not a lawyer. Why should you or anyone listen to me? That was a very specific legal educational topic. Having a lawyer, a good lawyer, will add a lot of credibility, and Samir was also interested. Kind of a perfect marriage, a good fit. Otherwise, I cannot imagine having written 1000 Days of Love with a co-author. It's fiction. It's my imagination. It'll be incredibly hard for me to meet someone who has a similar imagination as me. Although I would love it, because it's such a lonely profession.

12:13Soundarya: I think it's more common for non-fiction to have co-authors than fiction. In your case, I mean, you yourself are a fitness trainer. But if you weren't, bringing them on would add a lot of credibility, or a doctor. If you bring a PhD, someone who's a professor, that adds a lot of credibility. It makes more sense to me than fiction.

12:30Magesh: Okay.

12:30Soundarya: I'm going to assume, let's say, non-fiction. You are asking, should I bring on a co-author? I have this hypothesis, I don't know if it's true: the load always falls on one of the two authors more. It's like the class assignments where one person does most of the work. It's going to be that way. If you're going to bring somebody on, just like a co-founder, you have to set the expectation of who's going to do the major work here, and they should also be majorly compensated, then.

12:51Magesh: Yeah. Next up is editor. How do we find an editor? Do all books have editors?

12:57Soundarya: Good books do. The bad books probably don't.

13:01Magesh: Do people try to do DIY? Can the author do it themselves?

13:04Soundarya: These days, people are using AI to write a book without even touching the manuscript. It's sad, but it happens. So the question is not "can they?" I think people are already doing it. The question is, in your case, once again, you don't think of this book as "I just want to churn out some content." This is a serious thing.

13:20Magesh: Serious thing. Yeah.

13:20Soundarya: And you want to write more books. I 100% think anyone who wants to be a good writer, who wants to create good work, should work with an editor. I worked with editors for the last two books, 1000 Days of Love and Unshackled, not for Admitted, and you can see the difference.

13:34Soundarya: For Unshackled, I worked with this wonderful person named Ana, who Rajesh introduced me to. She has worked with people like Seth Godin. She was excellent. Even though she's not an immigrant in the US, she was in New Zealand, she was able to come in, take this mess of a manuscript, and then come back with a clear structure. As simple as: before her, there was no glossary in the book, but then she said you need to add a glossary, and clear tables explaining what these terms mean, cited to all the pages where they're mentioned.

14:00Soundarya: In one place in the book, I might have said "U.S." for United States. In another place, I would say "US." In another place, I'd say "USA." It has to be consistent.

14:09Soundarya: I also had a research assistant for my non-fiction book, because it's a legal book. So, besides me and my co-author, who's a lawyer, who proofread the book several times, we also had a third person, Ben, who made sure to cite everything we wrote. You can't just make up things in a legal book.

14:23Soundarya: Fiction was very different. I worked with two people: Hassan Kuba, who is an author himself and was also a book coach, and Nathan Bransford, who is a veteran editor who used to be an agent at a big publishing house. Nathan was the one who gave my book back with 10,000 comments after the fourth draft. It's not like Ana, where she came in and made the book structured in a different way. What he did was he made sure every single scene in the book follows the formula of how to write a good scene.

14:49Soundarya: You would think fiction is just "write a scene, what's so hard about that?" But writing a scene is a science. Every scene you read, let's say in a Harry Potter book, follows a formula where six things are present in the first page, and it has to have an arc. There has to be a resolution. There has to be conflict set up. You don't notice it because it's so good that you just read it fast.

15:07Soundarya: He taught me how to write good scenes. I could have sat with my book for another 5 years and I would not have been able to do the things that he did in a few months. Work with an editor on your book.

15:17Magesh: So how early should we bring in this editor in our process of writing the book?

15:23Soundarya: For non-fiction, I would do it after I write the first draft. For fiction, I would say after a few drafts. I'm very biased because I brought the person in after a few drafts.

15:32Soundarya: Although Hassan read the first draft, the other person. He's not a veteran editor. He's more of an author and a coach for authors. His feedback was really helpful on the first draft. He didn't give the kind of minute, scientific comments that Nathan gave. Hassan was more broad strokes: hey, this whole chapter, I just felt bored, or I'm confused here, the character development is not good enough. It was a bit higher level, I would say.

15:56Soundarya: I'm going to take my answer back and say after the first draft, but don't bring them in when you just have chapter outlines.

16:01Magesh: So I've heard a few words: chapter outline, first draft, manuscript. What is the order? How long should you spend in each stage?

16:09Soundarya: Okay.

16:10Magesh: Maybe first let's crack the order. Let's put the order there, and then we can talk about the timeline.

16:15Soundarya: Once again, for non-fiction, I would begin with a chapter outline, first and foremost. I mean, even before the chapter outline, I would write a one-page synopsis of what this book is about. What would the back cover of the book have? Can you write that first?

16:27Magesh: The back cover usually has accolades, right? Like people who read the book, what

16:31Soundarya: But it generally also has a summary, a two-passage summary.

16:34Magesh: The complete back cover, like right here.

16:36Soundarya: Yeah.

16:37Magesh: Okay.

16:37Soundarya: I guess some books have it. So if you had to distill your book in two passages, what would you say? That's the first thing I would write.

16:43Magesh: Okay.

16:44Soundarya: The second thing I would write is: why am I doing this? One of my friends once told me you should have five mutually exclusive reasons for why you're writing a book. For example, "I want to get speaking engagements" and "I want to make money" are still related in some way. You're saying you want to make money through speaking engagements as well. Versus "I want to improve my craft" and "I want to make money": two very separate things. So write down at least five reasons you can think of to do this. In your case, you already mentioned a few. Start there.

17:09Soundarya: Then I would write the chapter outlines. I would read a lot of good books before I write a book. Not you, but in general, if someone's new to reading good books, read a few good ones before you write, and take notes. Let's say you're writing a book on fitness: you should probably read five to 10 books that are well regarded and take down ideas from them, because you could quote those in your book later. So, I do a lot of that in my non-fiction books.

17:30Soundarya: Once I do all of this, the chapter outline, then I would start writing the actual chapters, the first draft. That's where most people get stuck. I think they start writing and then they get stuck. After the first chapter, they don't know what to say. So whenever you feel stuck, I think the good thing to do is, it means either you're not spending enough time quietly in deep work, or you don't have enough creative juices in your brain. So go back and read some more. Every time you get stuck with something, take a quiet walk, go back and read good articles, essays and books on the topic. Come back and write.

18:00Magesh: Okay. So I've written the table of contents. Now I'm writing the chapters. I've written two chapters. I'm trying to perfect that chapter. Like chapter one, I've dumped everything in my brain onto paper. Should I try to make it better while chapters three and four are still not even written yet? Or should I complete all the chapters and come back to chapter one and make it better?

18:20Soundarya: The way I do this is I use Scrivener. I used Scrivener to write. It's software used by a lot of writers. Every time I have an idea for something in the book, I capture it on a separate page. I wouldn't do it right away. See, if it's as simple as a typo, go change it. Fine. But if it's something like, hey, I think I need to talk about the history of this topic over here, don't do it right now. Keep a note of all of it, and then go back when you want to do a full revision of the whole book. So to answer your question: don't do it now. Keep a note, capture it, but don't work on it now.

18:49Magesh: So now all the chapters are written. There are some typos in there, some things I want to change, but it is there. I have all the chapters now. Is this called the first draft?

18:57Soundarya: Definitely. Yes.

18:57Magesh: Awesome. And when does it become a manuscript?

18:59Soundarya: Oh, manuscript just means another word for draft. It's a manuscript already.

19:04Soundarya: I can't think of a single writer whose first draft is the final draft. You should just assume that your first draft is meant to be bad. It's meant to be shitty. And you don't want to do that, because you spent hundreds of hours doing this. No one wants to admit it. It's bad. I remember now the way I felt after writing my first draft. Now I go back and see it. It's horrifying. It's like seeing your first YouTube video.

19:25Magesh: Yeah, I've unlisted that. No one can see it. Sorry guys.

19:31Soundarya: So I would, minimum, it's hard to say this actually. I was going to say minimum do three drafts, but then again, it changes with people.

19:40Soundarya: There's also AI. We didn't even touch upon AI and writing. I use AI for a lot of brainstorming. A lot. I mean, I'm by myself on a farm. There is no one to talk to who has enough context about this book. Sometimes I talk to Rajesh or one of my close friends, but even they don't have as much information, or they're not always available.

19:57Soundarya: So I use AI a lot to brainstorm things like "critique this scene, tell me what's missing," or sometimes very simple things like "hey, I need an example of a song from the 1980s that was popular in this genre, that people would be listening to in this location of the world," and it would just give me some songs. Those kinds of things were very helpful. Sometimes I also used it to generate ideas for metaphors.

20:18Soundarya: But if you ask AI to write an actual page in a book, it's still very bad. Of course, a lot of people are divided on this: should you even be doing that? Because if you do that, are you a writer? There's a lot of discourse around that. I just don't think it does a good job. If you ask AI to write a book, it would feel like you're eating dal and rice for the rest of your life, versus having flavor in what you're creating.

20:40Magesh: As we move through the drafts, we start with the first draft, and then when do we bring in proofreading, or some of your friends and family? When it comes to proofreading, it also takes a lot of time to actually read and provide you the feedback. Is this going to be paid proofreading or unpaid proofreading? How does that work? How do I find people for this?

20:59Soundarya: I've never had paid proofreading. I do know there are sites out there where you upload a chapter, and there are probably also sites where people do it for free just because they enjoy writing or reading. I've always asked friends and family. In the case of 1000 Days of Love, I had people read the second or third draft a year ago, and of course the fifth draft after I finished it. I didn't have anyone read the first draft.

21:20Magesh: Not even the editor?

21:21Soundarya: Well, no. I hired Hassan. I paid him money to read it and give me feedback.

21:25Magesh: Okay.

21:25Soundarya: That's different from sending it to a friend and asking for feedback.

21:28Magesh: Right. Right. Right.

21:29Soundarya: I wouldn't send it to a friend or family until the editor has gone through it. I think proofreading should really come at the end, to give you almost a reality check of: is this ready to go?

21:40Soundarya: Because I feel that now, when I sent the book after the second draft last year, most people didn't even respond, saying that they read one chapter. A few people finished maybe three. It wasn't bad feedback. It was good feedback. They said they enjoyed it, and they also gave me some feedback to improve it. But after the fifth draft, when I sent it to a lot of people, one-third of them have read the book, and the feedback has been truly incredible.

22:01Soundarya: So in a way, I'm glad I did that, because I can see the difference in the feedback between this and this. So maybe for that reason, you should have a few people who read both, so they can tell you the difference. You would need to ask that of somebody who really loves you, because it's giving you a lot of hours as well, because they're going to have to spend 6 to 7 hours to read a book.

22:19Magesh: If we ask for proofreading from one person at the second or third draft, we're not going to ask the same person again after the fifth draft, right? It's a new person.

22:27Soundarya: No, no, no. I'm saying the same person.

22:28Magesh: Same person.

22:29Soundarya: Yeah. All the people who read my second draft also read my fifth draft. That's what I'm saying. It was helpful to hear how back then it's like somebody coming and saying, "Haha, it was good," versus saying, "Oh my god, I cannot sleep. What have you done?" See the difference in feedback.

22:42Magesh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

22:42Soundarya: Now I know, okay, this is really good. Then

22:44Magesh: The editor's involvement: are they reading after the first draft? What if I'm too shy to show the first draft even to an editor? Or should I show it?

22:52Soundarya: It's a question of: do you have money? If you are okay with spending the money to hire somebody to give feedback, you should. If you don't have the money, ask a friend of yours who has read many books. But the friend cannot give critical and clinical feedback in terms of "hey, this scene is not working." What they can tell you is "I'm bored, I'm confused, what are you trying to say here?" That's what they can say, but that's enough. That gives you a sense of, huh, they're bored in chapter 4. What is going on in chapter 4?

23:20Soundarya: If it's fiction, it's different. Fiction means it's a story. I need to go back and look at the story. For non-fiction, it's once again different. You could ask them more clarifying questions, like: why did you feel bored? Or, what kept you going so long, even though you felt bored? Maybe they could say, it's a lot of numbers, you're just throwing information at me. So then you could think, okay, how can I make this more into a story? Stories always work, versus giving numbers. Bring in a friend if you can't afford an editor.

23:44Magesh: Let's say the book has been published. It's out in the open. It's been one week, two weeks, maybe some months. You're expecting something would happen. Then the numbers were not as impressive as you thought they would be. How would I feel in that moment? I'm thinking, after publishing, how is the emotion after publishing?

24:02Soundarya: I wonder if the numbers will ever be as much as you want, because our mind always wants more. Recently I spoke to somebody who was an author in India, who had published their book just a few weeks ago. I spoke to them, I think, a month after they had published, and they were feeling so sad that day. When I asked why, they said, "I got my first four-star review on Amazon." It was actually a good review. It wasn't even a bad review. They just said somewhere in the review that the pacing was slow. It's deeply hurtful.

24:32Magesh: In India, people are more brutal in the reviews. I noticed with Google reviews, some of the restaurants that are 4.5 in the US would only get three or four in India. Most of the good restaurants also have four in India. So people, I guess, are more brutal in the star section.

24:47Soundarya: I remember my first one-star review for Unshackled. You know what the review says? "There's no information in this book about marriage-based green cards." And I was like, the book was never meant for marriage-based green cards. You didn't tell me how to lose weight in a book that's talking about how to be a software engineer. But I mean, it really hurt me, because a one-star review brings down your five stars a lot faster than adding another five-star review.

25:11Magesh: I think it's the same question as a founder would ask. I've built this awesome product. I put it on the market. No one's wanting it. What do I do?

25:19Soundarya: The difference, though, is a founder can go and improve the product. You can't do that with your book, generally.

25:23Magesh: Exactly. Yeah. Once it's published, it's there.

25:26Soundarya: Which is all the more reason why you should work with an editor. You should get it proofread and make sure people actually say, "Man, that was crazy. What have you done to me?" You want to hear the words "What have you done?"

25:37Soundarya: So yeah, once it's out in the market, you can't go back and change it, which means now it's just about your marketing and selling. And if you're not even proud of your book, I wouldn't bother even putting time to market and sell it too much. Writing-wise, my first book, Admitted, I don't think I'm proud of it anymore. But it doesn't mean it hasn't helped people. Several thousand students have read it, and they have found it really helpful.

25:57Soundarya: Generally what happens is, if you feel like you did a good job with the book, it's just about finding people who would care. The question I would ask you is: do you even want to sell more books?

26:07Magesh: If it's helpful for people? Yes.

26:08Soundarya: No, but the question is: knowing the financial returns, do you still want to sell more books that you're probably not going to make much money from? Do you still want to take up the job of selling it?

26:20Magesh: Oh, okay. Okay. That's a good question.

26:22Soundarya: And the answer could be yes. If you come and ask me, I would say yes, because I want it to reach people even if it means I don't make money. But for many people the answer is no: why do I want to spend money on something that loses money?

26:33Soundarya: In your case, let's say you do still want to do it. Then it's a question of just finding the hunger alignment, like Rajesh says. So your book is about fitness. Somewhere in the world, somebody has to badly want to read this book to get themselves out of a slump, where they want to be more fit. Who doesn't want to be more fit? Everybody does. You just have to find that person. That's now a sales question.

26:55Magesh: Sales and marketing.

26:56Soundarya: Marketing too.

26:57Magesh: I want to talk about marketing as well. So, the book is ready. We are getting close to publishing. How should we think about marketing? What are all the different avenues that are available? How do we play to our strengths? Where are our weaknesses? How do we patch that?

27:12Soundarya: Very few writers are also good marketers, because they're fundamentally different parts of your brain. I think I've been lucky in some sense, that I would consider myself a decent marketer. I'm not someone who would say, "Oh my god, I'm so shy of promoting my book."

27:26Soundarya: You won't believe the number of writers who really put their heart and soul into this thing they created, and then they say, "I don't like promoting." So many people feel that way. And I just feel like that's probably coming from a deep-seated insecurity or fear: either you don't think your product is good enough, or you haven't believed that it is good. You just have to believe it. Because if you put your heart and soul into something and you created something, why wouldn't you want it to go out? It's going to benefit the person. I realized a long time ago, if I truly want to be a great writer, I cannot shy away from marketing. I have to learn to swallow the pill and do it.

28:00Soundarya: In terms of avenues for 1000 Days of Love, we are trying 10 different things. I have my own social media presence. It's a small community I have, but you know, still a few hundred thousand people follow me, and that's helpful to get the word out there first.

28:13Soundarya: Second would be collaborating with communities whose audience would care about this topic. In my book, 1000 Days of Love, the protagonist is a South Asian woman entrepreneur. I can work with, let's say, women's groups or women entrepreneur groups, and go to them and say: could we collaborate on some event topic that'll be useful for your audience, and in exchange, can I talk about my book? Some win-win.

28:34Soundarya: Third would be working with creators: a workshop or podcast with creators. I guess this is another marketing tool too. Yeah, paid ads. I am trying paid ads. With paid ads, I've been told it works better when you have an email list already, because if you have an email list of 50,000 people or 20,000 people, you upload that into Meta, and then Meta will know who these people are, and first start by targeting the ads to those people and then people like them. But it needs to know who your first people are, who already care about you, who would buy your book.

29:03Soundarya: Then we are doing cold reach-outs. Of course, I have relationships built with a lot of people already in the South Asian space, but there are also people I don't know. So, I'm reaching out to them to pitch ways we can collaborate together on events.

29:16Soundarya: I generally host book launches for all my books. I'm going to be doing several events for 1000 Days of Love next year. So, through this, I'll sell copies: by getting people to come to the event, and by coming and buying a ticket, you get a copy of the book, things like that.

29:30Magesh: So these are in-person events. You would probably be traveling for this as well.

29:34Soundarya: Yes. For Unshackled, I did a book tour where I went to 15 universities across the US, and in each university we found a student club who was willing to take care of the logistics, so we could go and speak there. And honestly, it was a free event for students, and in every place I was bringing a lawyer and a few other experts on immigration to come with me. We gave incredible value to the students. Why wouldn't they show up? The money we made came through sponsorships for the event. And as part of that, every event had a book stall where people could come buy a book and get it signed by me if they wanted to. We probably sold 600 or 700 books through that.

30:06Magesh: Is there anything we did not cover?

30:09Soundarya: Why even write books anymore? In one of my YouTube videos, the first comment, or the top comment, was: why write books when AI can write it?

30:17Magesh: Me personally, I'm still looking for book recommendations. Recently, I came across this book called Good Strategy Bad Strategy. If a human put in that much energy to create that one book, I would want to know more from that book.

30:31Soundarya: Interesting. So you're answering from the perspective of a reader. I'm trying to echo a question that people watching this would be thinking: why should I even write a book? Why should I put in all the effort when I can use AI to do it?

30:44Soundarya: I personally think writing is an art form at the end of the day. It's not a science. It is also a science, but I think it's more art than science. Writing has been the best way that I have immersed myself in any topic. By writing your fitness book, you have had to go and read so many other books. You have had to go and watch videos out there and talk to people about it. You have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours on this topic, pushing you to become an expert further.

31:10Soundarya: I think the question people should ask themselves is: what do I want to be an expert in? By the time I die, assuming we all have a good life of 80 years, what should I be called an expert in? An expert genuinely means you've spent 10,000 hours by then. Not a few hundred, but 10,000, tens of thousands of hours. Whatever answer comes up for people, they should then think: okay, could I write a book about this topic? Because writing a book will push you to learn as much as you can about that field, just as it has done for all of my books.

31:38Magesh: Awesome. Hope you guys learned a lot from this video. I learned a lot. Wishing our best luck to Soundarya. Check out 1000 Days of Love, and see you guys in the next podcast or video. Bye.

31:49Soundarya: Bye.

Source: YouTube auto-captions, edited for readability (filler words removed, names corrected, speakers labeled).