How Old Ideas Turn Into New Bestsellers

Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene created one of my favorite career paths for nonfiction authors. And how it works is really simple. Take an old outdated topic, modernize it, curate stories of well known figures and add a little commentary of your own. It's so simple. For example, Robert Greene got famous writing about topics like war, mastery, power, seduction. But he didn't just sit down and write about those topics. What he did was go back and study Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat and philosopher from the 1500s. He wrote some really smart shit. It was just dense and outdated and really hard to read. So Robert Greene pulled all those old insights, rewrote them in modern English, combined them with stories of well known figures to make them more entertaining and relatable, and then added a little bit of his own commentary. And then wha, bam. You know, six international bestsellers. It's actually a genius framework if you think about it. And Ryan Holiday did the exact same thing. He took an old outdated topic like Stoicism, went and studied Marcus Aurelius Meditations, rewrote the insights in modern English, combined them with stories of well known figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger, LL Cool J, John D. Rockefeller, Amelia Earhart, and then added a little bit of commentary on his own. 5 million copies sold around the world.