In this interview, Donald Miller recounts his early ambition to become a literary great like John Steinbeck, describing his first book—about crossing the country—that sold only about 10,000 copies, which he labels a failure. He reflects on the crucial moment of recognizing his status as a mid‑tier author and the importance of taking an objective inventory of his abilities, detaching ego from skill. Miller explains how his second book, Blue Like Jazz, became a New York Times bestseller, providing his first substantial financial success and boosting his self‑esteem. Subsequent books sold 100,000‑200,000 copies, but none matched the breakout impact of Blue Like Jazz. He then shifted from faith‑oriented memoirs to business writing with StoryBrand, a framework he developed after studying story structure for a screenplay. Despite publisher skepticism, the StoryBrand book became a bestseller and sustained long‑term sales, prompting Miller to formalize a company that now employs dozens of people. Throughout, he emphasizes the value of confronting failure, iterating on craft, and leveraging narrative techniques for entrepreneurship.
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They looked at me like, what are you talking about? I wanted to be the next John Steinbeck. Mm-hmm. And I wrote a book about crossing the country. The book sold 10,000 copies. Okay. And so that's a fail. That's a fail. I mean, it's a fail for you. If you had a, if you wrote a book and it sold 10,000 copies, you wouldn't be happy with that.
The average author sells 250 books in their lifetime.
Yeah.
Did you feel as a fail then, or is this in retrospect?
No, I was a fail. Failure. Writing that book made me realize I'm not John Steinbeck and will never be a literary great, which was actually an important moment for me to sort of settle in and say, hey, you're a mid-tier author in terms of your ability, and how can you make the most of it? How can you now write and develop this as a craft and a skill rather than trying to win the Pulitzer Prize?
So you realize that, but I'm surprised you didn't say, maybe books aren't for me. It sounds like you pivoted in that moment and said, well, what is for me? Is that fair?
Yeah, I think I was still sort of delusional about my abilities for, you know, the first book. The second book is the book that hit the New York Times.
That's the Blue Lake Jazz.
But it was very important for me to have my dreams crushed. I think it's very important for every person if they want to accomplish something great in a career to have a season where they actually take a careful inventory of what their actual abilities are. I mean, we all have friends who have delusional greatness in their subconscious, and because of that, they never actually get better, right? You have to be able to say, and this is another season of being able to detach my ego from my ability so that I could objectively say, you're not good at this, you're not good at this. So you need to work on those things and get better at those things.
Isn't there a moment you just throw your hands up. Like, I, I love that objectivity. I love evaluating, taking inventory. I like the trigger of being crushed. At least I comprehend it. But for me, I throw my hands up and say, curse you, God, you know, why me? I suck. I'm done. Like, does that really trigger inventory? Is— was there times that you wanted to throw your hands up and say, I'm done?
Uh, no. I mean, I thought, yeah, because, you know, if you can't, uh, be the greatest player in the history of the NBA, you can still play in the NBA.. And I knew I could still play in the NBA. I could still be a good writer. I could still do that. Yeah. And then also, you know, in this season, the commercial success of the second book, which is Blue Like Jazz, provided more money than I'd ever seen in my lifetime. And that was the first time in my life, I would've been about 28, 29, something like that, that I had any reason to have any self-esteem whatsoever. You know what I mean? Like any, that was the first success really. So the next several books would sell like 100,000 to 200,000 copies. And I would consider those okay, but not indicative that I'm like a national name bestselling author. So it was an important season for me to keep writing the next book, the next book, the next book, even though they weren't lottery tickets like Blue Light Jazz was. Yeah. And then StoryBrand was the second New York Times bestseller. Actually, I think there were other New York Times bestsellers, but they didn't stay on the list.
Yep.
And StoryBrand actually stayed a bestseller again. So it was like I struck oil twice. There were about 6 books between the 2. Yeah. Uh, but that was the first book that was a business book. Everything else was a sort of a faith-oriented memoir.
How do you make that transition? 'Cause you're the faith-based guy.
I had studied story structure in order to write a screenplay with some, some screenwriters about one of my books. And we actually wrote a screenplay and put it into theaters. The movie bombed, but it was a great experience. So I had studied story and story structure in order to write this screenplay and to write better books. And the publisher said, hey, we want another memoir. You know, they knew if they did another Donald Miller memoir, they could sell 200,000 and maybe we'd get a breakout bestseller. But I'd written like 7 of 'em and I mean, literally Mike, like nothing else had happened. No stories. Yeah. I can't, this is pre-AI, right? I can't, I can't make stuff up. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, I've got a book about narrative structures and how to use them as a filter for marketing messages for corporations. And they looked at me like, what are you talking about?, and I said, it's a framework I've created. It's called StoryBrand. Uh, I workshopped it in, to some degree with Accenture in a consulting format. And in fact, my agent confessed to me last week that he negotiated that contract and he and the publisher had a conversation in which they had both agreed this book was going nowhere.
So why would they do the deal?
They did the deal 'cause they didn't wanna lose me and they wanted me to figure out that I go back to memoir. Interesting. Yeah. And that book ended up selling more 8 years later than it did on the year it came out or any year previous, which is so atypical.
That's a growing long tail. Yeah. So you were kind of thrust into entrepreneurship at this phase. Do you have a background in it?
Well, I was always sort of an entrepreneur in terms of like liking to promote whatever I was doing and creating little products on the side. But okay. I think in terms of creating a formal business that, you know, has 35 employees and a significant payroll and all that, That was my entrance into that.
