Aero Wong
host: Aero Wong
creativity in writing, personal storytelling, pricing model for books, engaging user experience
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Transcript:
Aero Wong
Derek Sivers. Welcome to the show Derek.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. And yeah, you and I have been emailing for years and we even worked together on things we’ve emailed, but we’d never actually talked like this on camera, so it’s so nice to finally see you and talk with you.
Aero Wong
Yeah, it’s so, so real dream come true anyway. Let’s talk about your book. I’ve reread it many different, many times. You used to say it is like just telling your tales in this book. So my first question is does just telling your tales lit adequately. Because in my mind, you are a creative person. So yeah, that’s my question.
Derek Sivers
I think it’s creativity. I don’t know. I tried with every tale to have an insight. You know, I wasn’t just saying, “Hi, this is my life.” I was trying to think of stories that had a lesson in them that I thought that other entrepreneurs could use and apply to their work or their life. So if there was any creativity in there, it was kind of distilling and extracting the lesson from something that happened in my business or my life.
Aero Wong
And so. So it’s more about stress. Yeah, in a sense to me now because--
Derek Sivers
Yeah, the writing itself, it was just more like it’s really just these stories. I would just tell a friend, you know, or, if people email me and they say, “Hey, I’m trying to grow my business really quickly. What do you recommend?” And I’d say, well, you know, here’s a lesson I learned from growing my business. And so I would just try to share these things that had a lesson inside of them. But I think the telling of the story wasn’t creative, but maybe finding the lesson in the experience.
Aero Wong
Maybe asked another question because I hear about you talking about how to write a story and other podcasts or forgot what that is and, and you said something like, “If you want to write a story or write something, you want it to make sense to people.” Maybe sometime, even though you are just telling facts, you need some creativity. That’s the reason why ask this question. Oh yeah.
Derek Sivers
I think you can mix it? I don’t know. It’s funny. We have this definition of creativity is anytime we create anything, is it creativity? If I stick four Lego blocks on top of each other, is that creativity? If I play a Beatles song on my guitar, is that creativity? I think of creativity, as coming up with new ideas that didn’t exist before. So maybe, yeah finding when I say like, finding lessons in my business experiences does feel like creativity because I’m not just saying things like, well, work hard and it will pay off. You know, I’m trying to come up with new insights that I discovered, things that made me say, “Oh, wow, that was surprising.” You know, not surprising in the telling, but surprising in the discovering for myself. You know, like, I’ll just pick an example. Like, there’s this idea that persistence is polite, right? It really surprised me when I realized that when you’re doing business, that it’s actually polite to be persistent. You know, we feel like we’re being annoying, but it’s actually being considerate because people are busy and sometimes it just takes five times to reach them. And that to me was a counterintuitive lesson that surprised me. And it came from an experience of both me trying to contact a publicist and then later people trying to contact me when I was super busy. And then I put those two things together and I went, “Ah, persistence is polite. I get it now.” So that moment feels like creativity. Then just telling the story is just telling the story. Like talking with you right now.
Aero Wong
Yeah. I feel you now. So it’s so nice talking to you because you are a musician and it’s all about performance and making people understand what you’re trying to say. So you just do whatever it takes to drive the message home on the stage. You improve it on the stage and you improvise. Yes, it makes sense to me now. So I would like to because I’m a little bit selfish on this question because I’m working on both projects and would like to ask you, how long did it take for you to write Anything You Want third edition And what is the lead time for the audiobook production?
Derek Sivers
Oh, that’s an unfair question because I wrote Anything You Want in 11 days. Because Seth Godin just asked me to quickly tell my tales back in 2011. And so then when I did the new version, I just felt that a few things were missing from the original that I thought of just a little after those 11 days. Like I wrote it in 11 days, and then Seth Godin published it like a week later. And then I thought, “Oh God, they’re just a few more things I really wanted to put in that book. But oh well, it’s too late.” Then ten years later, what I did is I wanted to self publish that book since all of my other books were self-published. But that book, Anything You Want, was on Penguin Publishing. So I bought back the rights from Penguin. And then I added in those few stories that I just felt were really necessary. And again, that just took me a few days. It’s not really fair again, because these are tales that I had been talking with other people about for years, so it’s not like I came up with a whole new book in 11 days. It was really just me collecting the best of the lessons I had learned in ten years that I had already been talking about. And then as far as the audiobook, yeah, this booth that I’m in right now, uh, I just came in here for maybe one, yeah, probably just one day. I think it was just one day in this booth with many cups of tea and just read my book. It’s only 2.5 hours long. It’s not like I’m reading War and Peace. It was only 2.5 hours long. So each chapter I did a few different takes. And here we are.
Aero Wong
Nice. You just mentioned you added new chapters into the third edition. Eight chapters in total. I’ve written already. Can you use any of these new chapters as an example to illustrate the end to end writing process? I just want to know how your brains work. That’s my underlying question.
Derek Sivers
I’m not sure, honestly. You know, it’s funny. I don’t remember now which of the 48 chapters are the new ones versus the old ones, Because to me, they were always meant to be in this book. Yeah, again, sorry. There were things that I wrote down a few years ago, maybe even wrote down eight years ago, and thought, “Oh, I really wish that would have gone into Anything You Want. So when I republished it, I just I put them in. It didn’t take much effort. I’m sorry. That’s no help.
Aero Wong
Oh, okay. Got it. No, it makes sense, because when I’m reading this I see the new chapter like, customer service is everything. Every interaction is your moment to shine, lose every five chapters like that. And I’m thinking, yeah, these are the things that you, you keep talking about in the last decade. And I was just wondering, why don’t you put it in at first place? But no, I know it now because it was 11 days. Yeah. You miss something and you have to add it back around. Okay. Got it. I would love to know your approach in the book, you argue against it, and you have a hard time to let go of the arguments. And why? Because you mention something is wherever you look at one subject matter, you always put on different hats. I take on this perspective and take on the other perspective and argue against it. So I would like to know your approach in the book. Yeah. How you argue against yourself and you have any hard time to let go of the arguments. Why? Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Do I have a hard time? Sorry anybody listening. So, to be clear, yeah. This is something I’ve just been doing for ever. Often in my private diaries, whenever I’m thinking of anything, you know, should I move to New Zealand? I’ll just fill the page with thoughts on moving to New Zealand, but then I’ll also fill another page with thoughts, reasons why I shouldn’t move to New Zealand. And then I’ll fill another page with reasons why nobody should ever move anywhere. We should all just be happy where we are. But then I’ll think, actually no, the world would be a better place if everybody moved everywhere. We should all be moving all the time and I’ll write a whole page of those thoughts. And this is just how my brain works. I like to deliberately try to see another point of view and it’s almost like taking on a different persona or think of it like looking at a physical object. Like imagine if you were holding some kind of complex physical object in your hand and you wanted to see it from different points of view, you would turn it upside down, you’d spin it around, you’d look at it from different angles. So I do that with ideas. This works better for philosophical and lifestyle ideas.
Derek Sivers
When it comes to business, sometimes you don’t want to get paralyzed. If you start to think, “Wow, my business could do 50 different things.” Then you might never be useful to anybody if you’re trying to do too many things, but it can be a good tool to discover something you might not have thought of before. It’s otherwise known as brainstorming, right? It’s kind of just brainstorming. It’s deliberately coming up with new perspectives. So say that you had an initial idea like, I want to give a custom greeting in the beginning of my book so that I could say, you know, “To Aero Wong. This one is for you.” Then I’ll think of ideas and I’ll do that for a while, and then I’ll realize, “Oh, wait, I could do that with an eBook. I could generate the e-book on the server and take the latex master file and combine it with the greeting.” And, you know, I’ll think of different ideas like that, just kind of through brainstorming that and eventually I’ll come up with something that feels new and unique that somebody hasn’t done before or something that excites me a lot because it sounds fun.
Derek Sivers
Is that an example? Is that so? That’s how I apply it to business. But you asked, do I have a problem letting go of ideas? No, because there’s always one that seems to excite me the most. I can look at it from this point of view, that point of view, this point of view, that point of view. And then there’s one that makes me go, “Ooh, yeah, yes, that’s so cool.” And there’s usually one that I’m most excited about. So then I’m happy to let go of the rest. And they all exist in my journal anyway, so I can come back to them in the future.
Aero Wong
Oh, okay. The reason why I’m asking is I’m trying to educate the audience about your creative process. Because for me, I’ve been learning from your writing for a number of years, and then sometimes I might have a difficulty, “Hey, should I keep this or keep that?” But after a number of years, practice. I know that, I can stop right here and now I have the intuition. But to build that intuition to you, it becomes your second nature. And the reason why I’m asking is, can you teach your second nature to the audience? That’s what I’m trying to do. But no pressure. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
What do you mean? That’s kind of thing we’re just talking about. What do you mean? The second nature?
Aero Wong
The how to writing is a process and a project, Right? And creativity can go on and on. Can go on for infinity. Right. But you have to stop somewhere. The final brushstroke moment. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s teachable because it’s the same thing with any creativity. If you’re a graphic artist and you’re trying a bunch of different styles or designs or shapes and then something makes you go, “Ooh, that’s nice.” Or if you’re a musician and you’re writing a song, maybe you’re writing lyrics or you’re writing a melody or a beat, and then something makes you go, “Ooh, yeah, that’s good.” You know, in that moment, you always have to constantly latch on to the one that excites you the most. And then again, you know that you can always go back. I mean, that’s even without digital tools, even before digital tools, if you’re with a pen and paper and you come up with a lyric that you go, “Ooh, yes.” Well, maybe later, like next week you’ll go, “Oh, actually I like the previous one better.” Now I’m going to go back to like now a week later. I like the earlier version better. But I think, yeah, the second nature is just everybody has their own unique version, their own unique thing that excites them the most in the moment. So we just follow that yes thing that makes you makes your eyebrows go up, makes you gasp.
Aero Wong
Okay. You will know it when you feel it. So what is the last brushstroke moment of Anything You Want? The new chapter you added is my 3.3 million mistake. And the last one is “Why you lead your own company”. Is that the last personal moment? And how does that happen?
Derek Sivers
I didn’t write those chapters in that order. You mean like, how did I know the book was done?
Aero Wong
Yes, that’s the question.
Derek Sivers
I changed the order at the last month. It was actually the last thing I did was shuffle around the order to an order that I felt had a nice twist to it and came to a good conclusion but didn’t write them in that order. So I think I just looked at the other things I had written and I said, these are the stories that were missing from the original book that tells the tale of how I started, grew and sold CD Baby. And these were the eight more stories that needed to be in there. And then that just felt done. You know, it’s funny. I’ve heard this idea of creative people not knowing when something’s done, but I’m always eager for something to be done. I always want to call something done. I mean, how exciting to finally release this thing I’ve been working on for so long and say, “There, it’s done.” I put it out in the world. So yeah, I’m eager for things to be done because then you can release them. Actually, I like the fact that in English we use that word release, you know, like I released a new album, I released a new song, I released a new book because it is like the other definition of release is to let something go. You just push it out into the world and you let it go. So I’m always eager to be done.
Aero Wong
Got it. Let’s move on to the pricing model of your books so it’s done. And then how do you come up the pricing model? The reason why I’m asking this is an unusual approach in the digital age. Maybe you can talk talk a little bit about the pricing model, too.
Derek Sivers
Sure.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. That was from one of those journal moments where. I asked myself, “Well, how should it work in a perfect world? How would it be?” I feel like if I’ve bought a book and I won’t use one of my books, I’ll say, If I bought Atomic Habits by James Clear. I feel like if I’ve paid my 15 something dollars to buy the book, I should have every format. Because right now I want to lay on the sofa and read the paper book. But maybe tomorrow I’m going to take a long walk and I want to pick up where I left off. But I want to switch to audio on a long walk. It just feels like, come on, it should be all included and maybe, you know, in the future I want to keep it archived on a an e-book copy because I want to give away the paper book. So I thought, well, in a perfect world those would all be included. I was like, “Ah, damn, but the paper costs money, so it should be different. If somebody wants the book, there should be one price, but if they want the paper book, it should be just a few dollars more just to kind of the break even cost of the paper itself because they’ve already paid for the contents.” If we think of the book as the contents and the delivery system, those are two different things. Like when I buy a book, I think of myself as buying the contents, and the digital delivery of it should be free. But if I want the actual, you know, hardcover paper thing, yeah, well, that’s going to cost $4 each because that’s just what it costs to print and make. So yeah, so that’s my pricing model. It’s $15 to buy the contents and reimburse me my break even cost of $4 per printed book.
Aero Wong
Oh, can I go a little bit deeper on this question? The underlying question I’m trying to ask is the user experience. You always try to surprise the customers. I’ve been buying your stuff for a number of years. Every single time you surprise me in some small moments, like the last time you asked me. Not just me. I believe you email to your email list and then you ask, “Hey, how do you want the video? Be like a movie or 88 different videos.” And then I said, I wanted to watch a movie. And then two, 2 or 3 days later, you send that out. You have both of it. So when I’m asking you about the pricing model, I’m actually asking about how do you come up with the user experience, how do you think about it? Is it just trying to be considerate? Like you mentioned it. Yeah, you go ahead.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s always thinking of like, it in it what would be the dream come true scenario? What would be ideal? So like I just described for buying a book, to me, the ideal scenario of buying a book is I buy it once and I get every format forever. Even if a new format is invented next year, I already paid for the contents. I should get that format too. I shouldn’t have to pay $15 again every time. $15 for an audio, $15 for e-book, $15 for paper because that’s paying repeatedly for the same content, which I understand if somebody’s just thinking of it from a purely business point of view, right? If you’re Penguin or even Apple, you want people to pay again and again and again for the same content. But as an author, especially because I’m in direct communication with my readers, like we have a very direct one on one connection. I care about these people. I don’t think of them as just my profit center. You know, I care about these people, so I don’t want to rip them off. I want to give them a good value. But I have to disagree with what you said about the surprise. I’m never trying to surprise. That wouldn’t be a good user experience to try to surprise people. But I am trying to always give the ideal scenario, always trying to give the ideal service, the ideal product. So like the example you said about the video book.
Derek Sivers
So yes, I had worked for three years on this video book, always assuming that it was going to be a 2.5 hour long movie, that you would sit down and watch this 2.5 hour long video book. And then as I was almost done, I thought, wait, I’ve never actually asked anybody if that’s what they want. I just assumed I was like, maybe I should ask people. Maybe there’s some other way of this that I hadn’t even thought of. And so, yes, I emailed everybody on my mailing list or no, I emailed everybody that that had already bought the book, that everybody that had bought “Your Music and People”. And I said, “Hey, you’ve already bought “Your Music and People”, I’ve got this video book, how would you like it to be? And yeah, the answers were like 50/50, like almost exactly half the people said, “I’d rather have 88 little tiny videos.” And then almost exactly half said, “Oh, I’d much rather just have one long video I can sit and watch”. So I went, “Ooh, guess I have to do both, right?” But if if everybody had said, “Oh, we only want short videos.” Then I would have said, “Oh, okay, you all get short videos then.” But no, it was 50/50. So that’s why I did both. And that was really useful. I didn’t know so many people wanted 88 little videos.
Aero Wong
That makes sense to me now. And that’s why you need to have your own book publishing company because you can do whatever you want with it.
Derek Sivers
Yes, yes, exactly.
Derek Sivers
And that’s what I love about self-publishing. So when my book was published on Penguin, that was not by my choice. I mean, for some people that would be their dream to get a publishing deal. But I didn’t like that. I didn’t have the flexibility to give a special price. Like there was one time somebody putting on a conference wanted to buy 1000 copies of my book to give away to everybody at the conference. I said, “Great.” And they said, “Can you do a special price?” I said, “Yeah, let’s do it for like $2 per book.” So I contacted Penguin. I said, “Hey, how can I get them my book for like $2 each?” And they said, “Oh, no, you can’t do that.” I said, “What do you mean I can’t do that?” Thet said, “Well, yeah, you just just tell them to go to Amazon and buy a hundred copies.” I was like, “No, that’s terrible. For $15 each. I don’t want to do that.” They said, “Well, you know, sorry, that’s the only way.” Oh, man, this sucks. Also there was a time that somebody came along and said, “Hey, I want to do a French translation of your book.” I said, “Great, go for it.” And he said, “Can I do it?” I said, “Oh, wait, hold on. Let me ask Penguin.” They said, “No, you need you need to send him to our licensing department because they own the rights.” I went, “Oh, man, this sucks.” So even though the people at Penguin were super nice and I really liked my contact there and she was a big fan, she said, “Oh, we’ll publish anything you do in the future. The answer is yes, we’d love to publish anything you do.” But I said, okay, “I’m sorry, I’m just going to self-publish from now on.” I just like it better.
Aero Wong
Okay. So is your bookstore only for yourself? Is is it a publishing company? Okay, so it is not open?
Derek Sivers
No, no.
Derek Sivers
I’m not going to publish other people’s books. I’ll teach other people how to publish their own books. I don’t want to publish other people’s books.
Aero Wong
Got it. Makes sense to me now. Actually. Before that, I was guessing it was a no, but I want to ask you directly. So yeah, I would like to ask what is the utopian dream come true for a very serious bookstore? From the readers point of view. The reason why I’m asking is when you create, say, like CD Baby or all the other companies, you always ask yourself this question. I want to ask again this question about your bookstore.
Derek Sivers
Okay. It’s almost perfect right now. If you go to sivers.com is my bookstore and everything is almost exactly the way I want it. The only thing I want to do differently I actually said earlier in this conversation of the customized greetings for the book, like the dedication, that’s what it’s called, the customized dedication. So kind of like if you and I were in person and you said, “Hey, Derek, could you autograph this book?” I wouldn’t just write Derek Sivers. I’d write like, “To Aero Wong after all these years, a good friend. Look forward to working with you for many years to come. Derek Sivers.” How cool would it be to have everybody be able to do a custom dedication? The only problem is, unfortunately, I can’t do that with the paper books because I live in New Zealand. But all of the books are in America since that’s where most of my audience is and that’s where the books are printed. So the books are printed and shipped from America. So I can’t custom dedicate the paper books, but I do have a way that I can do the e-books and the audio books. I do have a way that I can custom dedicate them. So it’s going to be some more work to make that happen. But that’s the only thing separating me from my dream come true bookstore.
Aero Wong
Okay. You just remind me the bookstore may not be a big company. That’s why you make so many customizations. And I love that. So to wrap up this session, the last question is, what are the takeaways you want the readers of your books and the listeners of this episode to have? It could be anything the different.
Derek Sivers
What did you say?
Aero Wong
What are the takeaways you want?
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, the big one is that everybody listening to this should email me because Aero and I have been emailing for years, and so today you’re listening in to Aero’s questions that he’s had for me. But these might not be the same questions that you have for me. So I actually really enjoy answering my email. I know a lot of people hate their inbox, but my inbox is really nice. I enjoy it. I only do it when I feel like it. So sometimes I don’t do email for 5 or 6 days and then sometimes I do it every day. It only takes me about, I don’t know, half an hour to an hour per day. And I really like it and I like getting random questions from people. And I love it when people introduce themselves, especially when it’s somebody that’s interesting to me. You know, “Hi, I’m a horse trainer in Slovenia” or” Hi, my name’s Tracy and I’ve sailed all around the world. And I was listening to your book.” I get emails from interesting people around the world and I love it when people ask me questions that surprise me and make me think in a new way. And I just like it when people just introduce themselves and tell me. So that would be my main takeaway. Is anybody listening to this, yes, go to my website, go to sive.rs you will see contact me, click it, email me. I answer them all. That would be the big takeaway. So you can ask me your own question that you’ve got on your mind. And I’d be happy to help God.
Aero Wong
So just introduce yourself or say hello and have fun.
Derek Sivers
And have fun. Yeah.
Aero Wong
So thank you, Derek. Thank you so much for your time to talk to you. Yeah, it was really great to have you on my podcast.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, Good to see you. Thank you.
Aero Wong
So, yeah, for the audiences. Until next time.