Why only 5% of aspiring authors finish a book


Jaclyn Strominger 0:19

What separates someone who says, today I'm going to write a book from the person who actually gets it done?

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah, great question. And you know, no one writes a book alone. And I you know, a lot of people that let's say there's a lot of unwritten books out there. I think we did a there was a survey that said something like 85% of Americans have thought about or or wish they wrote a book, and then only 5% actually ever do.

Jaclyn Strominger 1:14

On this podcast, we hear from amazing individuals, leaders, professionals that they get to share their tips, their insights, and their tricks on having unstoppable success. So today, and I'm going to just pull this over so I can read properly. So I've got a question for you. What if the idea, experience, or story inside of you could become one of the most powerful assets you ever create? And today's guest knows exactly what it takes to turn great ideas into books that make an impact. So Kevin Anderson is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of Kevin Anderson and Associates, one of the world's leading book writing publishing firms. His team has helped thousands of authors bring their ideas to life, working alongside

Scaling to 500 books a year: hire people smarter than you


Jaclyn Strominger 2:03

best-selling writers, former big five publishing executives, literary, literary agents, entrepreneurs and thought leaders. But Kevin's story isn't only about books, it's about entrepreneurship, it's about scaling a business, building authority and turning knowledge into something that can outlive you. So, Kevin, welcome to Unstoppable Success. It's so good to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, likewise. Happy to be here.

Jaclyn Strominger 2:27

Okay, so Kevin, you know, you've worked with obviously lots of people, authors. What separates someone who says, today I'm going to write a book from the person who actually gets it done?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, great question. And you know, no one writes a book alone. And I, you know, a lot of people let's say there's a lot of unwritten books out there. I think we did a there was a survey that said something like 85% of Americans have thought about or or wish they wrote a book, and then only 5% actually ever do. So there's a lot of books that are just kind of left on the shelf or left in the mind. I think the biggest difference is people who get help, whether it's a really great family friend or a professional, people who have some kind of accountability partner to get it done or the ones that actually finish a book. Um, there's lots of ways to get help to do that.

Jaclyn Strominger 3:19

Right. Okay, so when you wrote your first book, did you get help?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Of course. Yeah. Uh there were three of us. There were three of us that wrote the book. We wrote it together. And yeah, absolutely. I mean, the I you know, nothing and any entrepreneur knows this. You can never do uh anything alone. I mean, the only reason that we are what we are today is because of the the amazing people that we brought in to help and make it happen. You can't do everything, and no one's an expert at everything. So, you know, you need professionals to help you to do what you need to get done that you either don't have time to do or the skills to do.

Jaclyn Strominger 3:52

Right. Okay, listeners, I just want you to understand what Kevin just said. It is so important. It is such a good nugget. Because you may be an entrepreneur or you're a founder or you're the CEO, you cannot do it all yourself. You all there's always somebody else that is with you. And so if you think you got to the top on your own, I'm gonna tell you to go back and rethink that because you didn't. There are definitely people that have helped you along the way. So such a good nugget. Such a good nugget. So, you know, when you're thinking about all those ideas and people have all these books in them. You know, what's the the tip or the insight that you can say that your idea is actually worth writing about?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, it it's that's a great question. And there's you know, people write different people write books for different reasons. Sometimes it's your story that just you know, telling a story, your story, your experience in an authentic, honest way. And we've all had this experience where a friend or a family member or someone from the stage is is is telling us about their life, and it's a powerful story, and we relate to parts of it. It's never exactly the same experiences we've had, but often there's enough correlation and we and it's inspiring. And most people have have stories that are inspiring to other people. The trick is to write it into a book format that that resonates and reads well and actually connects with readers in an authentic way. On the business side, especially professionals, entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, or people that even people that have not maybe just starting out, but have actually kind of went through a couple of the stages of of starting a business, they've gone through a few things, learned a few lessons. They have valuable information, especially for the people that are coming just behind them. And one of the things that we talk a lot with, you know, with our authors is, you know, there's this, I'm not sure if it's an imposter syndrome or what it is, but uh people often think they need to have accomplished everything in their life to then write the book. You know, they're oh, I'm not ready to write the book yet. I got a couple more things to accomplish before. But the the problem is that the further you get along in your journey, the further you're away, the further away you are from the beginning. And people learn best from the from those who are just in front of them because they're able to relate to them much more so because they've just been through all of that. And and sometimes you forget some of the little lessons that you learn when you first started your company or you first ventured out. And so there is value in that, in those stories and in that experience and in that wisdom of, you know, if you're only on step three of the ladder, well, the people that are on step two and one, I mean, they're they're ready for your information of how you got to where you got. And then, you know, and then maybe when you get to the the sixth or seventh round, then you write another book for the people that are then behind you at that point. But you know, there's there's nuggets for, you know, if you've ex if you've had any kind of success or experiences and learn from them, you've got wisdom to share with people that are right behind you.

Jaclyn Strominger 7:03

Yeah, no, that's so true. So I a couple things that just come to mind because some people said, Oh, it's already been written.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Well, okay, it's already been written, but by who? Right? There's always a different angle, you know. I mean, which president of the United States had the same journey, you know? Uh, so and you know that's at a high level, but it it's with it's with anything else. It's all about the angle and the experience and your unique take. You know, this is why AI, you know, is is is a difficult, you know, it doesn't really work to just write your book with AI because it draws from everything that's already out there. What we really want to know is your unique edge, like what makes you you? What's your raw human experience? So even if it's even if a book has already been written on you know how to build a business, well, but how did you build your business? What were the unique ways that you reacted to your experiences? And I think that that's what that's the what people want to hear.

Jaclyn Strominger 7:58

Right, right, right. And I always feel that it's again, and listeners, I think this is a really important point to note, because if your idea has already been out there or somebody's already done something similar, then but it's like the same thing with wine. Well, there's lots of different wine out there, right? You know, there are thousands of cabernets. Maybe yours is a little different, right? Like exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Like your your yours had a more southeast hint, had a little bit more clay in the soil, you know. So you may not know this, but we you know, we have a winery in in Italy, and it's uh it's it's there's a villa and a vineyard that we have writers' retreats at in Tuscany. And it's you know, we have a an incredible wine, a grand selezione, it's a it's 100% Savagno, or sorry, it's 100% Sangiovese.

Jaclyn Strominger 8:49

Back up, you gotta say Sangiovese. Sangiovese.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Sangiovese.

Jaclyn Strominger 8:54

I'll tell you why about that in a second, though.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And and you know, and so, but but yeah, it's all about the expression, it's all about the edge. Everything is unique, every human is unique. There's no two stories that are the same, there's no two fingerprints that are the same, and that's important when it comes to books, and that's also why it's important to give your authentic original experience and and with all of the imperfections, because that's what people learn from, that's what people understand, and that's what people connect with. You know, it's it people wanna people want to experience something real and that's human and authentic. So, and that's very true in in your book.

Jaclyn Strominger 9:36

Right, that's true. All right, so I want to go back a little bit. What got you started into making your business, right? And becoming this, you know, right, I'm gonna say the writer's helper.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah. So you know, we didn't start out in the book industry. Uh, we started

How a Harvard tutoring business became a book writing firm
2

SPEAKER_00 9:56

out in the service industry, and I had a real passion for just helping people. I went to school, my undergrad. I I I I wanted to be a teacher, a high school teacher. And then I really fell in love with it with just I fell in love with academia. And so I went to grad school thinking, okay, I maybe I want to talk more about these things that I'm learning and you know, at a higher level. So I want to be a college professor. So I so I I got into Harvard University, I did my graduate studies there, thinking that I was going to be a professor. Then I started a business in in tutoring. And so we were tutoring students, typically in English, but inevitably I would, you know, I got a lot of I got I had clients that wanted help with other subject matter. And so I started hiring other people that I knew from the university to be tutors as well. And I would just take a cut, you know, and it seemed I never really thought of it as a business. I just thought of, well, let's just, you know, okay, you need help. Okay, sure, I'll do that. Just you know, give me a kind of the yeah, it just it was just kind of a natural opportunistic, you know, you know, thing for me. And and that really grew into you know, the this whole business where we all of a sudden had, you know, 40 different, you know, tutors working for me and in different subject matters. And at that time, it was all, I'm not sure if you remember Craigslist. It was a big thing at the time. And we're yeah, we were all advertising. I was advertising through Craigslist. It was, you know, it was uh you know, we're an all Harvard, you know, team, and we can and so and but it had nothing to do with books, but it had to do with service, and it was really about giving a great service and being, you know, we were really strict beyond time, you know, have a great attitude, all these things that just with any service company that you need to make sure that you're bringing to the table that differentiates you from you know, simple things that that some people overlook, like you know, always having someone that's answering the phone, like no matter what, someone's answering the phone, no matter what, someone's answering that email within half an hour, tops. Like we're never leaving this email to the next day. We're answering all their questions, you know, we're never overlooking anything. Things that seem really common sense, but but with so much automation that goes on, and with you know the way that people approach, especially online businesses, a lot of this doesn't happen. It's really hard to actually call a business and get somebody, a human being, to talk to, right?

Jaclyn Strominger 12:14

Oh my god, you know, it's the the dreaded, oh, I need to, you know, like Agent, agent, yeah, representative, whatever your word is.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Exactly. What is it? Zero, zero. I'm sorry. Click. Yeah, so so we and and it was the same, it was the same. That was back in 2007. It was the same back then. You know, it was hard to just find a real human responsive service. And anyway, so that's how we started the business. And then we had we had a lot of PhDs and and uh on the team. That was kind of one of our our our calling cards was that you could hire a Harvard PhD. And and anyway, publishing company came to us and said, Hey, you have all these English PhDs on your on your team. Can you copy edit our our books? And it was a it was a vanity press that was coming out with like you know, business books of a variety of front of subject matters, and and that's and and we said, of course we can. Yeah, of course. And and my my my attitude was always, you know, say yes and then figure it out. And just, you know, as long as you take ownership and you do what you promise and you deliver the service, there's you know, give the customer complete confidence that you can handle it. They don't need to know what's going on in the kitchen as long as you bring out, you know, a really good food, really good service. And that's what we did. So anytime, so when they said, you know, can you edit books? We had never edited a book, but you know, and that doesn't seem a bridge too far, right? Like edit a dissertation, edit a book. I mean, it's English language, but there is some difference for sure, some nuance. But then one day they brought a book that was in a complete shambles, and they and we said, you know, we can't even edit this. This this is too, this is this is this is too far for us to even edit. Like you've got to start all over.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

And then you need to rewrite.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Right. And naturally they said, Okay, can you rewrite it? And again, we had never rewritten a book, and we were kind of like, well, you kind of got to start from from scratch here. You know, this is this isn't a rewrite. This is like just start over with the someone who can actually write, thinking that they would say, Okay, well, sorry, I guess, yeah, sorry, but we've wasted wasted your time. And they responded with, Well, okay, can you write it? And again, you know, I I I didn't really hesitate and I said, absolutely, we can write it. Just let me get back to you with how much that's gonna cost, and we'll we'll come about the contract and and you know, whatever. And then, you know, the next hour was on the phone with everybody I knew, like, okay, who's ever written a book on this topic? You know, let's get a team together. And you know, we put it together, and I, you know, and it's I I I think the the the cost to write that book, I I think it it was something like $8,000, and it cost me about four or five thousand dollars in in professional services. So we we you know, we we made a a 40% cut. And you know, and now the same service, well, not the same service, because you know, it's a lot more robust and it's a higher level service, but now we're selling, you know, 50 to 100 to even 350, 400,000 for the for for writing a book. But you know, at the time, but it was our first, it was the first book, and we just you know, we we said yes, we made it happen. And and you know, from there, we just really realized the the value in a book. And also it was so much more interesting to write a book. It was so great to write material and be part of something that was that really resonated with broader audiences. A book is so powerful, you know, it's it's it's so much more powerful than like a YouTube snippet or a TikTok video because it it's really grappling with a concept and and soaking in it and thinking about all the angles and thinking about how this concept hangs within a greater network and and intersubjective ideas. And so we really fell in love with the book as a form. And you know, you know, not to beleaguer the point, but I think I think us coming at it from an outsider perspective and learning the publishing industry, learning the book industry, coming from a really critical standpoint. Like we were kind of like my background was literary theory and criticism. So it wasn't like we were completely outside of the genre, but or sorry, outside of the of that skill set. But coming at it, but we knew nothing about publishing, but coming into it from that angle, it really forced us to figure it all out on our own. And it gave us this kind of edge where we could talk to our future clients and say, yeah, we know how hard this is, we know all the ins and outs, you know, we we know what it's like to come in from an outsider. And so anyway, so that that was kind of our foray into the book world. But you know, what we well, we changed a lot of things to to become who we are today. I mean, we once we realized the potential in in writing books and and and and how important it was and we could do it, and it was what we really wanted to do. I didn't want to have the company do like also work on academics, also work on tutoring, also work on resumes. We did a whole bunch of things. So I split the company up and I had I hired a CEO to run the PhD level service, and that company, we we completely rebranded and had that company do its own thing. We this is all in 2014, took this company, Kaa, uh, rebranded it for just books. So now Ka, which is my day job, because I found it a lot more fun than than the uh the the dissertation work. Yeah, and then so and and that's what you know that's that's what we do is we just focus on books, writing, editing, and helping authors at any stage of their journey to to finish or write their book and and and get it published at a really high level.

Jaclyn Strominger 17:47

I I love it. Okay, so a couple things. So there are obviously there was that point when you decided obviously to split it, uh, split up the business. I mean, so what was that was there like a big aha moment because you could have kept it under one umbrella and had different divisions versus separating the company. So what made you what made that choice or help make that choice?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah, uh it was a couple different things. I I mean, you know, there was something just about being the expert in a single thing that I felt was stronger. And also at that point, I mean, there's a number of different things. SEO is easier when you're just like if you're just the expert at the one thing and we could really just focus on books, it you know, it was easier for advertising, marketing, you know, just being able to really focus on a specific industry rather than having so many different things. Also, yeah, the team that we just had in place, I mean, everything like from the CRM, the marketing, uh, you know, operations, it was just it was just hard to do a whole bunch of different things. You could just divide it into different divisions, sure. But we really felt like if when we wanted people to land on our website, we wanted them to think, okay, this is these are the book industry experts. And even now, I mean, even now we wrestle with because you know, we do multiple genres. So, you know, we do novels, we do memoirs, we do business books, and you know, even that's kind of you know, that's a difficult, it's difficult to navigate that. I mean, we have editors that are experts in each thing, but there's something that's really powerful. Like if you're wanting to be a business author and you land on a website and their entire business is writing business books, there's something that feels just okay, this is where I this is where I need to be. Whereas if you land on a business that's like, oh, we sell boats and we write books, you know, it's like, okay, well, that's a lot, you know. I don't know if I really trust you guys. I mean, that's an extreme example, obviously. But but yeah, you know, we really just yeah, yeah, there's a balance there, but I felt there was another thing too. It was really important to me if we were gonna get into ghostwriting, that we were going to stay very far away from the academic side because I really believe in academic integrity. And, you know, I didn't want to kind of conflate ghostwriting and any kind of academic work in the same vein. I think ghostwriting is a very different thing than plagiarism, because ghostwriting with an author, you're really helping extract their thoughts, their ideas, their stories, and you're helping someone who has who doesn't have that skill set to connect with their audience. So you're helping someone who's got all this wisdom, all this value, all these amazing stories, but they can't write. They're not a good writer. They, you know, they also aren't really good at doing their own taxes. That's why they hire an accountant, that's why they hire a lawyer, you know, that's why they hire a realtor to do these different things in their life that they're not an expert at. And that's why they hire a writer to be able to communicate their incredible ideas to a reader. And so, you know, we really believe strongly in the value of that, but I didn't really want to have that be conflated with the the academic side, where the academic side is really about the self-discovery of the, you know, of the academic and what they're you know, and it needs to really be their work. And you can't do the same thing with a dissertation that you can do with the book.

Jaclyn Strominger 21:07

Right. That's so that's true. It's it's it's well, I think it's great that you kind of you split it up and make the two companies. So as you're scaling, you know, this company, what were some of the lessons that you've led, you know, that you've learned along along the way to scale? Because obviously you had, you know, you started it with a couple of people, and and how many people are there now?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Well, there's 35 in-house people in the United States, all across the United States and in the UK. And we have a great office in the UK. We expanded to the UK in 2022, and then we have about 500 freelancers. And when I say 500 freelancers, I mean 500 freelancers that we work with fairly regularly, that we're getting work to pretty frequently and know well. Some of them are are full-time freelancers for us, meaning that their entire income is coming from from our company. We do about 500 books a year, and we have Yeah, and we work with uh people from 75 countries. I mean, it's a it's a it's a lot to keep up with. But you know, you know, to to your question uh in terms of you know what what what's the number one kind of lesson in scaling? And uh you know, I I think I think I can maybe capture it by saying this, you know, I I am not a writer. You know, I'm not a writer. I'm I'm a pretty good editor in the academic side, but I'm also not like, you know, I don't really have much experience in editing books either. I wasn't at HarperCollins or Random House. So what what's the lesson? The lesson is I hired people that were. You know, I hired people that had edited Brene Brown. I hired people that had edited Harlan Coben. You know, we hired people hired people that had edited New York Times bestselling books with the big five publishers to be on our team. I hired experts. And this is this is very, you know, any entrepreneur that scaled the business beyond a million a year, five, ten million a year knows that you can only do so much. You have to hire people to help make, you know, you can't do it alone. But I think for me, the big lesson was, you know, hire the people that my clients want to work with. You know, I mean, if you if you can't do it, if you don't have the credentials or you don't have this skill set on your own, but you have a knack for sales and you have a knack for presenting, you have a great idea for service, then then hire those people because you and you'll be surprised if you put together a a great health care plan and and a salary and a team that they can that they can connect with, you'll be surprised how many people are attracted to that. And if you're good, and for us, we always wanted to deliver the highest caliber service. Like, you know, I I get it that there's companies that it's like, hey, you know, be the mid-market, go high volume, low ticket price, you know, and and and I totally get that, but that wasn't our model. I wanted a small team that I could that I knew everyone at the company, or at least the you know, the the internal management team, and I wanted to do a high caliber service, high touch. And so that was kind of the way that we went with it anyway. And so, and you know, and I guess the lesson is you know, bring surround yourself with with people that are more talented and smarter and better than you at at all the things that that you want to accomplish. And you know, that's been that's it's it, and you know what, you know what's awesome about that too is that those are the people you get to work with every day. You know, I mean you hire those people into your company, and then now you're just inspired by these incredible, talented, smart people. And you know, obviously you have to make it work financially. You've got to make sure that you're selling something at a level and a sticker price that's gonna be able to afford it. But I think, you know, with a lot of the service industry or or in a demand industry where people are paying a premium for something that they can only get there, you know, you know, hire the per hire whatever it is internally and then mark it up and you know, and and create that marketplace.

unknown 25:06

Right.

Jaclyn Strominger 25:07

I love that. You know, it it's the quintessential thing for an entrepreneur. And as you're growing, you're skilling a business, it is. It's it's hiring and surrounding yourself with people that are smarter and better than you. And it's even as a leadership, as a leader, you want to bring people on who, you know, are more talented than you because what's the ultimate goal as a leader is to help other people rise up, right? And and you're to me, I always think the leader's role is to lead and let them lead to go beyond you, or you know, make things better, right? You know, and help people along the way. So something that's been sort of sitting in the back of my head as you're talking, you know, you see this all the time. I feel like, you know, you all the ads, all the tons of them. Hey, go out and write a book and sell it on Amazon. You can be, you can make money just, you know, go, you know, being your own author, just go research what's peop what people are are the best selling things right now and go write it and sell it, and you know, you'll make millions.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger 26:15

Um what do you say to that?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Well, what I say is if you got a whole chunk of money and you want to and you want to make money, put it in the SP 500 or an index fund and go that route rather than writing a book. Look, so but but but let me caveat that a little bit. Financially, there's a lot of benefit to writing a book. And there's studies on this, we've been part of recent studies. There's huge financial upside when you're a professional, when you're touting a business, when your book is aligned with some sort of professional pursuit. There's there's

Will a book make you money? Authority, ROI and paid chapters


SPEAKER_00 26:52

big financial upsides to having to becoming an author. Having a book on Amazon, having a book become a bestseller, you know, uh publishing a book as a media event. You you you get on more podcasts, you get on, you get cited in more articles, you you're a talking head. If you become a best-selling author, you can put that beside your your name. It it increases your speaking fees, it separates you from your competition, it makes you an authority in your field. There's a ton of upside when it comes to publishing a book, if it's aligned with your professional goals or your company. That there's no doubt about that. Just don't expect to make money on your book sales, you know. And so if you're a novelist or a memoirist or or some something that's not tied to a business or professional pursuit, then you really gotta, it's gotta be a passion project, and you've gotta be okay with the fact that it might make you negative money. And because that is even people that get published by the big names, Harper, Rend, which you know, I mean we've done literally hundreds of books. Probably it's probably in the thousands now, with with traditional publishers. Most, and but what when I mean most, I mean like 80% of those authors are not making money. I mean, they might make a small advance, but when you look at the time investment and everything, they're not making money on book sales. And even the published industry, they make they lose money on 80% of their books. It's the 20% that that it's it's the you know, the ones that absolutely like do a fire, it's the atomic habits, you know, that that make up for all of the losses.

Jaclyn Strominger 28:31

It's the 80 money rule.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Right. Yeah, exactly. It's like and you know, it's like it's like anything else. You know, you it's the it's but but you don't but but when it comes to an author, if if they if their book is related to their professional goals and helps them get a bet, you know, uh I mean if you think about it, like one, depending on the industry, you know, having becoming a published author and being the authority in the field, getting on a couple more podcasts or TV slots or whatever, I mean that that could be a couple clients and you know that that that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars alone just because you got those slots that you never would have got otherwise. So it's a powerful tool for for a professional, but if it's a novelist or a memoirist or whatever, you just have you you have to take a different approach financially to the to to the endeavor.

Jaclyn Strominger 29:18

Right. That's interesting. Okay, so now I have to ask you the question that you know you see um so many people offering, hey, get yourself in, write a chapter in a book. Write a chapter in a book, and then the book, you know, it becomes a collaborative, whatnot. So how would you rank that versus like writing your own book? I mean, some people look some places or some companies are charging 2,000, 4,000, 5,000, you know, there's so many different prices, just to have a chapter in a book.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

I would not pay any money to be a contributor to a chapter in a book. Unless it's unless like Jay Shetty or something is the main author, I would, you know, I would really be careful about what the value of that is. You know, you got other options to get your voice out there, especially if you're if especially if they're asking for money for that. I I would be really cautious about that. Now, if you're getting co-author credit, or if you're being, you know, I mean, we've we've done, you know, I've I've collaborated or being a contributed author to multiple books, never have I had to pay for that. Like the publisher's almanac, publishers weeklies, publishers almanac. We were we contributed three different chapters to that book. We didn't get paid for it, but we also didn't pay for it.

Jaclyn Strominger 30:40

It was you know, it was it was a it's that's more that's like branding name recognition. That's like it's authority driving. It's you know, it's right.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Just weigh it. Weigh it like that, right? I mean, if it's you have to weigh those those elements. And you know, and and I I say that tongue in cheek about Jay Shetty, but if it is a book by a prominent author and you're gonna get some kind of co-authorship. I mean, you see these with there's a couple prominent business authors where and it it's kind of a money-grabbing scheme where they co-author it. So you have like this best-selling author's name on the front of your book. Meanwhile, you paid like 100K, you know, to have that author's name be a co-author on your book so that you can say that it's like, you know, with best-selling author. You just have to weigh it whether that you know, a lot of people in the industry will will kind of roll their eyes at that, and a lot of stout readers will roll their eyes at that. That said, you know, there could be value in that, you know. If that does push your business goals to, you know, to have a best-selling author on as a co-author in your book, even though you paid 100K to have that happen, you know, it's all about if that's your goal is just to make money and that's gonna be an ROI for you, then it's hard for me to say that you shouldn't do that. You just have to be okay with the fact that some of your more, you know, some of your smarter friends are gonna roll their eyes and and you know, and think that was kind of cheesy. But you know, you just gotta weigh those weights and balances.

Jaclyn Strominger 32:14

Right. So speaking of that, that weights, balances, and all that, you know, we talked a little bit before the show. One thing that's happening a lot in your industry is is is the for lack of a better word, the scamming, like some of those, you know, the fake offers. So talk a little bit about that because I feel like there's so many industries right now that are that are being hit with different types types of scams. I really want our listeners to know about it so that obviously, you know, I do think you know, having a book is amazing, writing your story, but don't get bamboozled.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you you you when you're looking if if you want to become an author and you want to work uh with a professional, you just have to just really make sure you're actually talking with a professional writer. Don't don't fall for, I mean, there's lots of scams out there that are pretending to be people they are, they're pretending to be literary agents, they're pretending to be publishers, and you'll get these messages in your LinkedIn, you'll get them in your email. And AI makes these, you know, AI is able to make these emails look really great. You know, I I looked at one the other day that was from me to a prospective client, supposedly from me. And I was like, oh man, we I was like showed it to my salespeople. I'm like, this is pretty good. Like, look, look, look how they like they knew my history, they knew my latest podcast, they knew what books I'd read or sorry, written, and you know, and it thought

Book scams and AI writing: how to protect yourse

SPEAKER_00 33:40

through a lot of the, you know, it was a good email, and but it was completely AI. I could tell that there was little hints that I could tell was AI, and it was clearly a scam because it came, you know, it was a it had the URL had one letter different than our company's URL. And a client thankfully sent it to us and said, Hey, this is just so you know, this I got this email from this scam, you know, from the scammer. When when before you send money to anybody, you know, you you always do the triple check. You know, never just never trust just the source that you're getting that information from. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Connect if they don't have LinkedIn account, that's that's immediately suspicious for a business person. They might not be super active, but it's unusual to not have anything at all. Make sure you connect with a reference that they didn't give you. You know you know, you as someone who's hired a lot of people, I can tell you I've never gotten a reference from somebody that didn't say they were an amazing employee, right? Like they're never gonna give you a reference that's that's that's gonna say anything otherwise. So be careful there. If it's a reference that's a known quantity, this is another thing. You know, I mean, if you see their name, and you can you can collapse you can corroborate that it's that it is who they say they are on the cover or in the credits, don't fall for the, don't fall for the, oh, all my relationships are confidential. So I can't tell you all the amazing politicians and celebrities and business people I've worked with because I had to keep I have to keep that under an NDA. But trust me, you know, I've worked with you know Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and all of them. You know, you just don't trust, you know, you cannot trust that. At this day and age, almost any collaborator has got a that you want to hire anyway, has a list of credits that you can verify. So, you know, a lot of these different ways you can. We have a whole article on our website that talks about like there's like 10 different things you can do to make sure that you're working with a legit person. And you know, at this day and age, unfortunately, you really do got a triple, quadruple check that stuff because there's a lot of people pretending to be people they aren't. And there's also a lot of people that are just that are just pretending that they're much more accomplished or or skilled than they really are.

Jaclyn Strominger 35:56

Right, that's really true. That's really true. So I guess maybe is this like the like wow, I I've I've arrived, I'm getting people are scamming me.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I mean, like are using my name as a scam. It's like I'm like Apple.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

People are trying to like, you know, yeah, they they say that they say imitation is the flattery and all that stuff. It's just really annoying. And we've been dealing with this forever. I mean, people have copied our website, they copy, they even copy our our images and our our testimonials, like our clients' testimonials are on their website. It's gross, you know. People, it's yeah, but you know, uh, but that said, we just try to really focus on what we're doing and making sure that we're giving a good service to the client and just and you know, just letting clients know to be aware. And you know, don't ever feel guilty about triple quadruple checking that you know who you're talking to is really who you're talking to, and making sure that they actually have real credentials. And you know, especially in the writing business, with AI, especially now, you've got to make sure that you're working with a human and that they're not just using AI because you know, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, when you got scammed by a a writing company that was not legitimate, and they would try to kind of keep going a little bit and pull you along, you would get a chapter or two, and it was just dismal. It was like, okay, but clearly someone from Pakistan wrote this that does not an ESL for I'm sorry to pick on Pakistan, but like that was where some of the the it was coming from. And it was just like, okay, all right, I got scammed, like this is terrible writing, like there's no way this is a professional writer, and then you could kind of suss it out with AI. Like, it's you and the problem with AI is you, you know, you you have it takes someone who knows about it to be able to recognize where it's falling short. Like, if I have AI put together a math equation at the goodwill hunting level, I'm not gonna be able to tell whether it's right or wrong. Like, I need a PhD in math to do that. And it's the same with writing. You know, the average Jill or Joe doesn't recognize that this writing is terrible, but you know, my professional editors can look at it right away and say, oh, this is extremely mundane and like repetitive, and you know, it's using the same constructions every every third sentence. You know, so it's it's so you don't know what you don't know. And that's what the scary thing with AI is is that they can they can really make it look to the to the to the non-expert, they can really make it look like it's legit. And so that's why you really got to be careful. Right. And and just just on that note about AI, the reason why that is so important too, and I'm not sure if you've if you saw the latest, but there was like a a whole there's a two $2.5 million pub deal, which means that the publisher paid two and a half million dollars for the rights to publish a book. And they and that all got canceled because they realized that some of that was written with AI. So, like traditional publishers, most publishers are not, they don't take manuscripts that have any kind of AI content. So this, if you're if you're hiring someone that it sounds great, but they're using AI, you know, it could actually become a big problem for you if you're trying to publish a book.

Jaclyn Strominger 38:58

Wow, so important. Huge, huge lesson. I mean, I always say you have to be authentic when you're using AI.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger 39:07

And and don't you can't let it think for you, you know, put stuff in there, but it's you know, there's it's a tool and use it as a tool. It's a great tool, but use it as a tool. Not as a, you know, it can it can be there, you know, in some ways to edit. You have to ask it how to edit, I think. I have a sort of book that I always use, but figure that, you know, figure it out, figure that part out. But again, use it as a tool. So Kevin, I could talk to you about this for so forever because I think it is so important. And I I really truly believe that you know, having, you know, a book or you know, even writing, whether you're writing for an article, you know, if it's an article that's on LinkedIn, but you know, it's it really truly is important. And I think the message that you're sharing today is really great. So, how can our listeners connect with you, learn more about what you're doing, maybe even hire you to write their memoir or write their business book or write their entrepreneurial journey story? How can they best connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah, you know, our website is kawriting.com. You can email or call us. The number email is right on the site. You will be connected with a real human being right away. We'll connect you. And and you know, we offer we offer free consultations. So we'll get on a call, we'll talk all about your book, figure it all out. And you'll be talking with a New York Times bestselling writer. So they're human. It's gonna be a real human, that's gonna be someone that that that has a New York Times bestselling book to their credit, which is not easy to do. And we'll just figure out what your book is and and what the options are. And even if it's something, even if we're not the best fit, you know, we'll we'll let you know what could be and put you in the right direction. But yeah, we're we're we're yeah, we work with anybody at any stage. So we work with people who have already written their manuscript and just need some final editing and and maybe they need they want someone to help pitch it to a publisher, or someone that's starting at ground zero and just you know, and needs a lot of help, just navigating the entire industry and writing the book. We're happy to help anybody and and everyone.

Jaclyn Strominger 41:13

So that's awesome. All right, so listeners, please do me the favor, connect with Kevin because he truly is amazing and the service that he provides is absolutely fantastic and it's legitimate, um, which is really important in today's day and age. And so once you connect with Kevin, then I want you to make sure that you are doing the favor of hitting subscribe, hit the plus to follow the show, but also become a supporter of the show. Um, as a supporter of the show, you actually get some of the behind the scenes takes extra notes all about the podcast. So hit that support support the show. And lastly, make sure that you share this episode with your friends, your colleagues, and your business associates, because I know there are some nuggets in here that other people really could listen to and use for their business. And so Kevin, thank you for being an amazing guest. Listeners, thank you for listening. This is the unstoppable success podcast. I'm your host, Jacqueline Jometer, and we want to help you lead to your greatest success. Here's your unstoppable success. You've been listening to the unstoppable success podcast with Jacqueline Jometer.