Why Your Fiction Writing Feels Generic (And How to Fix It)
Nicolas Cole discusses why generic fiction fails and how category thinking fixes it. He's building a LitRPG portfolio and explains how nonfiction skills transfer to fiction. The conversation covers AI's role in writing and what makes a story feel like yours instead of like everything else.
Cole, why don't you give us a little bit more your perspective, little introduction of who you are and what got you into online writing.
Yeah, I guess the, the nutshell is I went to school for creative writing afterwards worked in advertising for a couple years, fell into ghostwriting, ended up ghostwriting for a bunch of executives and writing a lot of like thought leadership, business type of content. Ended up building and scaling that into a ghostwriting agency. So built a whole team and worked with hundreds of different clients, founders, CEOs, all sorts of people, scaled that business down. Coincidentally, right before the pandemic pandemic hit, I basically took a year off, didn't really do much, and wrote the art and business of Online writing, which is that book you were referring to. And then after I started a bunch of new businesses. So one was a writing program called Ship 30 for 30 which helps people get started writing on the Internet. It's primarily for beginners who want to start building an audience on social platforms. It's really like it was a, it was the cohort based experience of the book that I wrote. It was implementing all of those same ideas. I also co founded another paid newsletter at the time called Category Pirates where we would talk about category design, niching down, positioning things like that, scaled that into a six figure paid newsletter. It was one of Substack's fastest growing newsletters. And then like two years later started a business called Premium Ghostwriting Academy where now I train freelance writers on all of the things that I learned as a ghostwriter. Packaging, productizing your service, pricing, sales, all of the skills that you need to monetize your talents through a service. And now PGA is, is our largest business. It's done really well over the past couple of years, had a lot of fun building that. We're still running it. And on the side I experiment and I have our paid newsletter right with AI, which has been growing really quickly as well. So we have a portfolio of writing related businesses at this point. But you know, I went to school for fiction writing and on the side I still love reading fiction and I've sort of reached a point in my career where I've monetized writing just about every way you could possibly monetize it. And not just like monetized it and made like five grand. Like I've crossed seven figures in I think eight different business models. I've done it in SaaS, I've done it in services. I've done low ticket products, cohort based high ticket products, self publishing nonfiction books like over and over and over again. And one of the only career paths that I haven't done that in yet is fiction. And so now I have a bunch of these projects that I'm working on where I want to go deploy all of these things I've learned and do it again in fiction and show like. People think of nonfiction and fiction as completely separate. And I actually think that there's a lot of overlap with these skills. So I want to go show that that is true. And so then my next project is I'm going to build a paid newsletter all around, like documenting, building a seven figure self published fiction portfolio or fiction empire from the very beginning, from $0 so that everyone can see exactly what goes into that.
Okay, so a lot to unpack there. I'm curious what you just said about. About how you think there's more in common with nonfiction in fiction than people think. Could you give us some examples?
I'll give you tons. So, for example, most. I think that the most important skill in all of writing is category thinking. And where I think both nonfiction writers, everyone from content writers, copywriters, ghostwriters, everyone in the nonfiction world, and where I think all of the fiction writers that struggle, I think both of them share the same problem in common, which is they don't have the skill of category thinking. So what is category thinking? Category thinking is where you grow up and you think, I really want to be a fantasy writer. Well, the problem is that fantasy, for example, or sci fi or romance, these are some of the largest categories in the world. So what do you do when you have lots of different people that all say, I'm a fantasy writer. The problem is you have no differentiation. How do you create differentiation Immediately? Everyone thinks that it's, oh, I have to tell a different story. That's actually not how you create differentiation. The way that the ease. The single easiest way to differentiate yourself is by adding a category modifier. So it is not just fantasy. It's litRPG fantasy. Right? It's not just thriller. It's legal thriller. Why is John Grisham worth $800 million? Because of one word. He put the word legal in front of the word thriller. So if I. If I say to you, are you. Do you like reading legal thrillers? Most people will say, yeah, I love John Grisham. What just happened? What happened is they associated the writer with the category.
Right.
And so I think that this skill, which I have deployed at a very high level on the nonfiction side, is one of the most valuable things that you can learn how to do on the fict fiction side, because what everybody does is they lean on, oh, I'm going to tell a better story. And you don't realize that you've almost already lost. You've already lost because the person walks into a bookstore and they look at a whole wall of fantasy books and they go, all of those are the same, you know.
Right, right. So essentially you're, you're saying like the art of, of niching down. Yes, that, that kind of thing. Cool. Yeah, I can definitely agree with you there. I had, I had some other questions and then I lost them. But let's talk about AI for a second because you have your paid newsletter writing with AI that's doing really well right now. You like, I, I, I, I'd say it's safe to say that you are one of the most successful online writers out there. You certainly made your entire career out of it. You have, like you said, a whole portfolio of businesses around the topic. You've monetized every form of writing online except for fiction, like you said. And, and then AI comes around and you know, from my perspective, especially in the fiction world, most. Well, I, I hate, I hesitate to say most, but a vocal portion of the author community is very much against the use of it, of AI So what was it about AI that made you embrace it? And, and as opposed to like being upset for, for instance, that it is definitely trained itself on probably everything that you've ever written and, and gotten better accordingly. So if you could talk about that for a little bit because we're all very pro AI here, but a lot of people aren't.
There's, there's a lot, there's a lot of different ways that you could think about this problem or moral dilemma. There's a lot of different ways that I could dismantle those faulty beliefs. But the, the easiest one, the, the thing that made me understand the opportunity, the, the first day that I used ChatGPT was. Jason, have you ever played World of Warcraft?
I have not. I've stayed away with it. I've stayed away from it because it's dangerous. I, I know I would like it.
So, okay, so, I mean, I get it. So when I was a teenager, I was one of the highest ranked World of Warcraft players in the country, and I still play from time to time. I think it's the best video game I've ever created. A quick little story and I'll explain how this segues into AI was in 2007. The game came out in 2004. And for the first three years, it was the same game, but they just added in little updates here or there. They might unlock a new dungeon or some little update, but nothing meaningful about the game changed. And everyone in those three years, especially people that were playing it very passionately, they learned everything you could possibly learn about that version of the game. And some people got very, very good at it. In 2007, they came out with their first expansion. And in that expansion, when someone comes out with an expansion, especially in an mmorpg, the game is. Is completely different, right? It's like, yes, it's the same game, but there's new classes, there's new abilities, there's new rules, there's new zones. Like, the whole game changes. And in 2007, I had an Internet friend who was at the time like, one of. One of the most talented gamers in the game, and we spent every day together. I considered him like a mentor in helping me learn how to play this game. And overnight, I watched him reject the expansion. He said, I don't like these new rules. I don't like the way that the game has changed. And he rejected learning about it and then very quickly became very bad at the game. I and many others realized this wasn't going anywhere. I embraced it. And in that first expansion, that is when I started competing at a very high. I embraced it. I shot up the leaderboard. I bec. I started competing at a pro level. That, metaphorically, is exactly what is happening with AI right now. What happened is these companies just released a new expansion, and you have. You have two groups of players or two groups of writers, one that goes, I want to play the original version of the game. Real writing means I don't use technology. And then you have another group of writers who go, this new expansion came out. The game is only going to keep moving in this direction. I should probably learn how to use it. And that, like, I tell that story, because that was literally the thing that popped into my head the first day I used ChatGPT. And I was like, yep, this is where everything's going. It doesn't matter how I feel about it. I might as well learn how to use it.
Yeah, I. I think that is a fantastic metaphor, actually, with your friend in World of Warcraft. By the way, guys, I. I think if I'm not mistaken, one of your first successes online was you created a. Like a blog about it, right?
A gaming blog. Yeah, yeah.
And it was like you had like 10,000 readers or something like that before you finished high school. Like, that's awesome.
It was unheard of at the time. It was 2007.
Yeah, right, right. That's awesome. So, so, yeah, great metaphor. And I 100% agree with you there. Like, it's just one of those things that people might not agree with it, they might not like it, but this is the way people are going. Like, I, you know, my daughter, who was just born two weeks ago, I just imagine, like, what's it going to be like when she hits college or high school? How are we going to be teaching writing? Because it's going to have to be totally different, you know, in 14 years or so. Which actually brings me to my next question. And that's, this is one I, I really wanted to pick your brain on because I, you know, I follow you on Twitter and YouTube, of course, and, and I see you saying a lot of like, hormozy type statements like the importance of hard work and writing every day and doing all of these things and putting out more content, more, you know, working harder than the other person. That's how you succeed in life, that, you know, that kind of stuff. And I'm, I'm just curious because I've, I've gotten this concern from a lot of authors, even ones that are very open minded to AI and I admit, like, I've had this a little bit myself, but do you think that AI is going to make us worse writers because we're not actually doing the writing? Or at least will it keep us from building those skills as much as, as we would have built those skills before the rise of AI? If that makes sense.
I think I always, I think a great way of thinking about these questions is thinking in metaphors and metaphorically. That. That question reminds me of in the early 2000s, when people started suing Eminem for rapping about the things that he rapped about. And the, the lawsuit at the time, if you remember, was this music will. It will get. It will like cause more kids to lash out, do drugs, have violent encounters, etc. Right. Music, entertainment, technology, video games. I think it's very easy to look at these things and go, is this thing going to make me fill in the blank? And the, the reality is it's ultimately a choice, right? Like how, how will AI will AI make us worse writers? I think it will. For the writers that choose to defer more and more to the technology and choose to stop practicing their own craft, I think those writers will atrophy. Right. I also think that the writers who choose to use AI very deliberately and choose to keep practicing their craft and choose to thoughtfully integrate AI into the decisions they make will get exponentially better. So I'll give. I'll give you a cool example of how. Of a very specific use case that I'm using AI for right now. One of my favorite authors is David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace has a very unique writing style in the sense that he uses very strategically, a lot of vocabulary that you probably have never heard before. Like, he. Like, that's part of what makes his writing style is you got to sit there with a dictionary next to you and look up these words, you know, and if you were to ask AI, hey, you know, I love David Foster Wallace. I want you. You to write something like him. It's going to sort of, like, mirror it a little bit, but it's probably going to miss the core of like. But what are you really trying to say? Because David Foster Wallace in his essays were very thoughtful. He was writing about the impact of. Of television and early forms of technology on people's attention spans 30 years ago, 40 years ago. It was very prophetic at the time. So if I was to atrophy as a writer, what I would do is I would lean on AI More, and I would say, just rewrite this like David Foster Wallace. Well, then I wouldn't be building the skill. Instead, I want to use AI Very thoughtfully. And so what I am using it for is I might write a passage or I might write an essay, and then inside of the writing, I might notice, you know, here I'm using this word. This word means whatever the definition is, but it's. It's a. It's a familiar word. I want to replace just this one word with a less familiar word because that's a cool quality about his writing style that I like. So what do I use with AI I write up a little prompt. I educate AI on word choice, familiar words versus unfamiliar words. And then I want to give AI Just that one word, and I want it to feed me back, like a thesaurus, unfamiliar words that I might consider swapping in and out. So I'm not actually deferring the writing to the AI What I'm. What I have is this little brainstorming partner for a very specific type of thing that I want to do inside of the writing. And that's just going to make me smarter and better and more efficient and faster than if I was to do that manually with a thesaurus next to me. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. That's still a lot of work, though. That you're doing yourself a ton with that writing. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm curious because like this morning. So I recently created an automation and whether, you know, we could talk about whether this kind of automation should exist or not, but someone's gonna make. I made it. So I basically created this automation that will take an outline and write the entire book for me in one go. Now of course it's not finished, but it, it gets me like 80 of the way there. And so this morning I was going through and reading, reading through some chapters, making a lot of edits and stuff like that. And I was really thinking about it. I was just like, this has taken me a lot less time than it would have for me to like, I, I reviewed like six chapters this morning, so it was roughly 10,000 words or so. And it, you know, the time it took me to get through that 10,000 words, editing, cutting, adding a bit of my own text in there, et cetera, was so much less than it would have taken me to write 10,000 words of my own, just the traditional way. And so like, it made me think like, what am I, am I losing something here? Because I think I probably am. Word. Like in terms of total number of words, like the amount of experience I would get from writing 10,000 words would be a lot more than just editing these 10,000 words. But maybe hour by hour it's not that different because I'm still doing writing a writing task, right? I'm, I'm editing, I'm writing little bits and pieces, I'm improving it. I don't know, it's just, it's just this, it's a very different workflow, right? And I almost look at it like the rise of photography, right? To, to use a different metaphor, people poo pooed on photography as not being art in its time, but we've since come to accept it as a art form, but a totally different art form. And I wonder if we're going to be looking at, you know, working with AI as being a quite a bit different because for me that task of editing the AI this morning is, is a much different skill than writing those chapters from scratch.
So there's, there's a bunch of really interesting things in here. So first of all is I, I would agree, I do think that you lose something by, by using technology in, in any use case, but you also gain something too. So for, for example, if you are first chair violin in a orchestra and then you become a conductor, you lose something in the sense that you're no longer playing the violin, but you gain something because now you have control over the whole orchestra. So it really doesn't matter what you pick in life, any skill, there's always a loss and a gain depending on whichever thing you want to specialize in. The second thing is I think photography is a good metaphor. And I think the way that that's equivalent in the writing world is imagine if I was able to write a prompt. It might be a 30,000 word prompt that was capable of writing something as in depth and detailed and thoughtful as do's Crime and Punishment. If I could create a prompt that yielded that level of quality output, that means the prompt in and of itself is art. And I think that that's where things get very meta here, where like I actually don't think like at the, at the end of the day, I'm a little bit of a purist of. It doesn't matter how you generate the result. All that matters is that you generate the result. And so if you show someone two books and one book was written completely by a human, and another book was written completely by a 30,000 word in depth mega prompt, but the output was written completely with AI, but it was actually a better book than the first one, then that's all that matters. That's the only thing that matters. But you also have to realize the amount of work and skill that went into assembling a prompt that even was capable of producing that output. So you're not writing the dialogue, but you're writing the instructions for the dialogue. It's just a different skill.
That's interesting. I like, I love that you put it that way because I've said something similar to people before. When they, when I get criticism over using AI in a book, I'm just like, I have this story that I wanted to write and it is now written. And the, the result, the, what it looks like is probably pretty simple to similar to how it would have been had I written it the traditional way. And so I, I agree with you. I think the output is really all that matters. People just, you know, get their tongues in a twist. But yeah, okay, I like that. And I like that you say that there is something lost because, because I think, I agree. I think there is something lost there. I think anytime we advance as a society, something is lost.
Of course. Bows and arrows anymore.
Yeah, right, exactly. And I was talking to my mother in law who was down here to help with the, the baby, and we were actually kind of having this exact conversation. And I Talked about like, well, you know, back in the day, people were graded on spelling and grammar in their papers, which is not something that's typically done today because of spell checks. You can't really ban spell checks unless it's like an in person essay or something like that. And, and, and she went on for a little while about how she thought like it probably is a good thing to, to know how to spell, but we've sort of lost collectively, we've lost that as a skill because it's not really something that we're graded on or tested on often. And I thought she probably had a point there. But I also feel like that's, that's not something that we can do anything about. And I hear people say the same thing about people's sense of direction has been messed up because of Google Maps, you know.
Totally. I don't know where the I am.
Yeah. So I, so I hear like there is something lost and, and you know, we can probably take some time to, to, to mourn those losses, but at the same time we're gaining a lot more, I think.
Yeah. And it also depends on what you want to do with it. Like, I, I think it's okay to feel both ways. Like, 50% of me is very curious if I can assemble training resources and prompts paired with an automation that are able to write entire books 90, 95%, as well as I could. I, I want to figure that out. Cause I think that's a really cool problem to solve. But there's another 50% of me that even if that was possible, I would still want to write things completely on my own because I genuinely love writing. And so I, I think it, it depends on the person. Like I've met and talked to a lot of writers who, they really don't care about the art. They're just like, how do I self publish as many books as possible and, and, and make money? That's totally fine. I don't, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We just want different things. There's also writers that are like, you know, New York literary. If you're not writing every word in a cabin in the woods somewhere, it's not real writing.
Right.
So like, writers exist on this big spectrum. And one of the biggest things that I've learned and had to come to terms with is where I sit on that spectrum or where you sit on the spectrum is completely your decision. And you have to, you have to let go of writers over here, try to impose the rules of their Game onto you. And writers over here try to impose the rules of their game onto you. And I have found the most success by going, I reject everyone's rules, and I will come up with the rules that work best for me.
Yeah. And I like that. And I can definitely see myself on that spectrum. I'm probably a little bit further away from the loving the writing than you are. Okay. Which is one of the reasons why I got into a. I mean, and hey, like, I've been writing for my entire professional life, whether that's, like, online or through fiction or what have you. But me, I. I sort of. I like to plan things and to create these. I think, in terms of universes rather than individual books, and I enjoy seeing those things come to life. And one of those things that I've learned over the past couple of years is I am not too hung up on who writes the thing that I envisioned. I can write it. A ghostwriter can write it. AI can write it.
Yep.
And. And so while I do like writing, and I do still do a little bit of writing just to try and keep myself sharp there, it's definitely not something that I. I think I enjoy as much as you seem to. And. And like you said, that's totally fine.
Yeah.
All right. So talked about. AI, I want to talk a little bit more about your. Your fiction, because this group was primarily focused around fiction, because that's just what I've been more focused on myself. And you're about to start this whole thing, documenting your process from zero to. I think you said a million dollars.
Yep.
That. Is that total or annual?
I mean, at first, it'll just be total. But my. My goal is, I. I believe part of. Part of why I want to do this is because I've studied all these different career paths, and I actually think fiction has the highest earning potential. So, I mean, just look at it like, who are the highest paid, most successful nonfiction writers? Mark Manson. Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. James. Clear Atomic Habits. These guys have maybe made 10, 20, 30 million bucks. Who are the most successful, financially successful writers? They're all fiction. Stephen King, John Grisham, J.K. rowling, James Patterson. Like, they're all fiction. You literally cannot make hundreds of millions of dollars as a writer unless you are writing mainstream fiction. You just can't. And so I'm. I feel this was. To be perfectly honest, this was always sort of my master plan. Like, 10 years ago, I wanted to build all of these skills and monetize non fiction because it felt faster at the Time. But now I would agree.
Yeah, non fiction feels faster in the, in the near future.
It absolutely is. Like, if you're, if you're like, how do I make money tomorrow as a writer? It's nonfiction and its services. But if you have a longer time horizon and especially if you have some resources to reinvest into it, I think fiction has tremendously more upside. And so my. In the next couple of years, I would like to get to a point where all I'm doing is writing fiction because that's a game that I know that I would want to play for the rest of my life. Like decades. Because those like, I've written multiple nonfiction books. I've written 10 nonfiction books. The problem is that nonfiction books become relatively irrelevant after five, maybe 10 years. The information moves so quickly. Fiction could have a shelf life of 500 years depending on the story and the way that you tell it.
Yeah.
So I, I think it's a much more compounding game.
Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I hadn't even thought of it that way. I feel like there's perhaps more competition in fiction, although actually I'm not so certain about that because nonfiction is really competitive sometimes.
But I think there's more. I think there's competition everywhere. And people, writers especially, but just universally, people have an. A miraculous ability to come up with all the reasons why they can't. And it doesn't matter what the industry is, what the skill is. People always tell you why they can't. And I think all of the rewards in life come to people who don't think that way. And they just think, I think I can. What, what if it was possible.
That's great. Awesome. So give us a, if you would, if you don't mind, give us a little bit of a sneak peek of what your plan is for this, for starting your fiction writing.
So there's lots of different ways to go about this. So one is I. I have been thinking about doing this for a very long time and I have spent a lot of time researching. I've used kindlepreneur resources, I've played with publisher Rocket. There's a really niche website called K Lytics. It's all these detailed breakdowns, like I've really nerded out about, like, if I'm going to do this, I want to be very thoughtful about what I'm choosing to do. And about a year, year and a half ago, I discovered the sub genre of litrpg. And I thought it was the, the statistic that really made me interested in it is that it is one of the only subcategories where the majority of readers are male. The vast majority of reader categories and especially big categories are female readers. Now there's nothing wrong with that. I just think that it's fascinating that this is one of the only genres that gets guys to read, you know, so I'm like, okay. And then I think about, all right, so what are some of my unfair advantages? Well, I was a pro gamer for a very long time. I actually understand that world very, very, very well. Then I start looking into the subcategory and if anyone, you know, if you poke around LitRPG on Amazon, not that there's anything wrong with this, I respect writers that are that self publish and hustle, but the vast majority of the books look very indie and very low budget. And when I see stuff like that as an entrepreneur, I see a ton of opportunity. And so a lot of these pieces clicked in my brain and I was like, this is a fascinating growing subcategory. This is an, this is a sub genre where I have, I have domain specific expertise. And the competition, quote, unquote, is relatively, I'm going to use the word like immature in the sense that the category hasn't matured yet. So you have, you have books like Dungeon Crawler Carl is the first real lit RPG that now is like maturing into mainstream success. So when I see that the entrepreneur in me goes, there's a lot of potential here. So where I'm starting is writing litrpgs. But like, again, what's a category modifier? So One of the LitRPGs I'm working on is a, a startup fantasy LitRPG. So it's, it's students that go to school to learn how to be entrepreneurs and then they get put in this game that trains them on entrepreneurial skills. Oh, and like, okay, so modifier instantly differentiated, right? Then I went and found the person who designed the dungeon crawler Carl covers and hired him. Most people don't know you can hire these people, right?
And especially in the indie world, most of them are usually within most people's budgets too.
Exactly. Like couple, couple thousand dollars and you can have a book look absolutely pro grade. It's amazing. And then the third, the third. So you have, you know, category differentiation, you have cover differentiation, and then the third is in litRPG. I think that they're, you know, the, the fastest growing and where all the revenue is, especially in litRPG is in audiobooks. People actually prefer the audio to the Print. Well, as a gamer, you know what one of the coolest parts of playing games is, is the sound. It's the music of different zones. It's the sound effects. It makes it feel like an immersive world. And so I'm actually investing a tremendous amount of money in the audiobook, making it an immersive audiobook with music and sound effects and character voices. And like, it is a. It is an immersive world. And so when I look at those different differentiation points, maybe my first one won't be successful. It doesn't matter. But like, my bet is if you do enough of these, you start to dominate that subcategory and then over time, you can widen and you can widen and you can play in other related categories.
Cool. Very, very nice plan. Have you heard of Dakota Kraut? Have you read any of his work?
I haven't, but I just got introduced to the name, I think.
Yeah, he's another very big name in the LITRPG space that I've read. I met him a couple of years ago. He's a. He's a friend of. Of Dave Chessen too. So cool. That's how I got to know him.
I just looked him up. I'll check out his stuff.
Yeah, he's got some good stuff. I haven't read Dungeon Crawler Carl yet.
But it's pretty good. I've read the first one. It's. It's good. It's like a good entry point into the sub genre, I think, for the average reader.
Very neat. What are some of your plans to market those books? Are you just gonna go like all in on Amazon? Do the whole KDP select thing you're gonna sell from your own website? Like, what are your plans there?
So this is where I think the research component matters a lot because different. Different sub genre. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. You probably think the same way, but different sub genres perform better or worse in Amazon's ecosystem. And from my research, LITRPG in particular is like you're. You got to play the KDP select game.
Mm.
But that's okay because even if you put books in KDP select at some point in the future, you can always just take them out and then sell them broad or on your website. So it's not a marriage decision, which is fine. So for LitRPG, I'm going to go just fully play the KDP select game for marketing. I feel very strong and again, all my research has confirmed this, but I was already thinking and I feel Very strongly that for the first 10 books, the most productive thing you can do to market your books is just write another book. I don't think it's worth, like, writing one book and then going, how do I do some big marketing campaign? It's like, no, you just build the library.
I agree. 10 is good. I think 10 to 12 is a good marker there for most people. Minimum of three. I don't think anybody should really worry about marketing until you have at least three in the same series. Ideally.
Yeah.
Because then you. Because marketing fiction is all about your series and getting people hooked on the series because it's very difficult with the. The margins that fiction have to be profitable on one book.
Yep.
But, yeah, 10 is good. 12 is good. There's a whole Facebook group out there called 20 books to 50k with the. The whole idea about that meeting meaning, like, get to 20 books as fast as you can, and then from there, you know, you might be able to make a living as a. As a author or at least make 50k.
Yeah.
The idea. Well, it's very interesting, and you're certainly being extremely thoughtful about the books that you're. That you're planning on writing. Or have you. Have you started writing them already? Like, where are you at in the process?
Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'm working on two different series at once, and I'm hoping both the first books are. Will be out this year.
It's my hope.
And they've been in the works for about a year now.
Sweet. Well, let me know how that goes. I'll be sure to pick one up. I'm a big fantasy reader and writer, and LitRPG is close enough that I feel like I enjoy that stuff. So. So I'll definitely check that out. All right. I think if. If you're good, we can maybe pull in a couple of questions from the group. I'm sure we have several. Several people that want to ask. So everyone feel free to raise your virtual hand there or put your question in the chat. We'll get. Get into those. Okay. I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right, but Bin Bing.
Yeah, it's been. Hey, guys. Good afternoon, Cole. So I actually just finished a book, like, two weeks ago.
Let's go.
Yeah, man, it was great. And, Jason, I just joined your group two days ago, so this is, like, super.
Wow.
That's why I didn't know your name yet.
Yeah, that's right. But no, Cole, I loved your book. And so I think one of the Core principles that you really emphasize in your book was practicing in public, right?
Yep.
And part of the benefits, aside from practicing is getting data to understand what your writing really resonates with readers and getting an understanding of what to focus on. So I guess my question is, if we're in the world of fiction, what is an efficient way, I guess, to get as many ideas out there and see what really resonates with the market so that we can understand what to further invest our efforts on. Any thoughts there?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it has a different challenge than nonfiction. With nonfiction, it's. I recommend all the social platforms and things like that. That's not to say that you can't publish fiction on X or medium, like lots of people do that, but where, where I personally landed with it is I think that the, the best way to gather data is to try and write shorter stories or shorter books on Amazon. Because you have to sort of think of Amazon as a platform in and of itself. It is a social platform, you know, and so I, I wouldn't necessarily start by going. The first thing I do is I'm going to commit to writing a 600 page, you know, mega fantasy novel, because that'll take you too long. But there are lots of categories on Amazon where they have like 15 minute fantasy short reads, they have 30 minute fantasy short reads, they have 60 minute thriller reads. You know, you could do short stories, you could do novellas. So I would think of Amazon as a platform, realize that it's a little bit longer of a feedback loop than tweeting, but I think it's a more accurate representation of the data that you get. I also want to reinforce too that data doesn't have to just be digital. Like for example, Jason, you asking me that question and me sharing about that project. And then Gary in the chat goes, as a gamer, I agree, and that sounds great. That's data. I just got a data point. I shared my idea. Someone said, I think that's pretty cool. In my head I go, awesome. I now feel good about the direction that I'm going on. So data doesn't have to be digital. It could be you talking to a friend, it could be you talking to a group. Here you can get data from lots of different places.
Ron, thank you.
That makes sense.
Yep.
Awesome. This is a great question.
And I'll add my two cents to that. I've definitely seen a lot of authors see a lot of success by doing shorter fiction first and kind of testing out three or four different ideas. You know, you could write like three, three novellas, 20,000 words each. And then you measure the read through from one novella to the other and just see, you know which ones which. How many people are going from book one to book two. And the one that's having the highest read through rate that tells you something right there. So stuff like that can definitely help. Okay, Oscar, go ahead.
Hey Cole, thanks for the awesome presentation and interview. So the question that I have is about category thinking. And it reminded me a lot of the 22 immutable laws of marketing. And there's a chapter in that I believe it's called Become a Category of One where they talk about when Budweiser created the light beer category, it didn't actually exist. They just came out with it and they were like, now we're number one in this category. So is that the kind of thought process behind this? You want to slightly change a category in order to create a new one and then to just dominate in that category?
That. That is my personal opinion and belief. Yes, there are lots. Especially if you. Through a marketing lens, if you talk to a lot of different people in marketing or with marketing experience, there's a spectrum, like some people are where I sit, which is category thinking is the key to differentiation. And on the other side of the spectrum, there are people who say, no, the thing that you want to do is you want to go into a big existing category and just do something a little bit better. There are two completely different schools of thought. Rather be on the first one, but that book. So the authors of that book, I think I'm looking at my bookshelf. It's Al Re and Jack Trout, isn't it? So they also wrote a book called Positioning. And if you haven't read that, it's another great book all about this idea. But it really is, it's that one or two word modifier. There's beer and then they create light beer. There's chicken and then someone comes out and says, now there's organic chicken. There's cars. And then someone goes, well, now we have electric cars. Yeah, right. There's bread and then there's gluten free bread. And so all of that's always the question I'm asking myself is. And it applies to every consumable good on planet earth. But in, in the context of fiction and storytelling, I'm always asking myself, what would this look like if I put a different modifier in front of it? There's thrillers and then there's legal thrillers, right?
Yeah.
No, that's really interesting. Very interesting. You're the first person that I've heard that's talking about this process in fiction.
I have not. Yeah. To be perfectly honest, I have never talked to someone in fiction that thinks that way. And I think that that's part of what I want to share is like that idea is so incredibly powerful in the business world and in nonfiction that I don't really understand why fiction writers don't adopt similar thinking. And the only reason that I've come up with is because people typically think of these skills as completely different. Oh. If you're a fiction writer or storyteller like you, you can't learn anything from a copywriter. What are you talking about? It's like the same thing. It's just you're. One is selling probiotics and another is selling dragons. It's the same thing, you know?
Yeah. You're. You're also coming at this from a marketing first perspective as well. Whereas most traditional fiction writers, they've been writing a book for 10 years and then they worry about how to market it.
Yeah. I think it's the inverse. It's like people who write some. It's like they write an article and then at the end they come up with the title. Oh, you come up with the title and the title informs the article that you write. So it's just a hierarchy of how are you making the decisions.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, great question.
Part of my motivation for like getting into authorship and everything has been kind of a similar, similar motivation just because I. I've spent a lot of time in the, like, Russell Brunson, Alex Hormozi kind of marketing camps, direct response marketing, all of that stuff. And I look at what's going on in the self publishing industry and everything's like 10 years behind what other entrepreneurial people have done. And the traditional publishing sector is even further behind. Like they're still in the 1980s. Right. And part of my motivation has just been like, I want to make what clearly works in the non fiction space and then the services space, see if we can make it work for. For non fiction or for fiction as well.
Yep.
But I agree, like, I haven't really heard category thinking in the way you think of it used in the fiction space. There's certainly plenty of people that talk about writing to market and niching down and all of this stuff, but adding that modifier is so you become a category of one. That's. That's a different thing that I have not heard talked about too much.
Yeah.
Outside of like the, the direct response marketing group.
Yeah.
So.
Well, I'm glad, I'm glad it's resonating. I mean, this, this reaction here is better than sometimes I share this idea and people go, I don't think that that's right. I'm like, okay, well that's, that's fine. But at least there's some openness to it.
I, I know, like, for me, I, I, I can see where people would think otherwise because a lot of authors, particularly fiction authors, already know what they want to write and just want to market that. Uhhuh. And they're not willing to do the research first and then do what the research tells them to do. Yeah, exactly. And I'm kind of in the middle. I, I like to do what my heart desires, but I try to make sure my heart desires to do something that's going to be at least somewhat financially viable. You know, I try to find that overlap in the Venn diagram. But sometimes I will do a project just because I want to do it, but I go into those kind of projects knowing that I'm running the risk of not making any money from it, and I just have to be okay with that.
Yeah. Fiction is what I like to call a lottery career path, which is, you know, if, if you're, this is where you have to get a lot of clarity over what your goals are as a writer. Because if your goal is, I'm just trying to make the most money that I can make in the shortest amount of time possible, then fiction probably isn't the best career path. But if you say, you know, I'm okay with monetizing my skills in this way, but I want to create fiction, AKA create lottery tickets, and see which ones pop off and know that I'll probably lose some and win some, like, then that's great. You know, I think part of my strategy, and this is what I want to share with a lot of other writers, is I think it's, I tend to think that it is harder to produce good stories and really good fiction when you are simultaneously going, how does this thing allow me to pay rent next month? And I think you don't, like, it's not 1920 anymore. Like, you don't, you don't need to live under that amount of pressure. What you can do is you can monetize your talents in different ways and then create lottery tickets. Part of what drew me to your content, Jason, and this is a strategy that I want to share as I go into fiction is I think you do a really good job of monetizing the non fiction, which allows you to write the fiction. And I think one of the best strategies for fiction writers and where they leave a ton of money on the table is they don't realize that they can monetize the nonfiction, AKA the how to of the fiction.
Not only that, you can monetize other things that are even more directly related to your fiction. Like I, I know somebody that writes crime novels and she has a true crime YouTube channel and it like ties directly into her thing. And I know another person who's written a fantasy book and has a whole channel about swords and armor, and that's a great example. Yeah, Now I use YouTube because that's something familiar to me. But there are plenty of ways that you can monetize the stuff around your writing in a. In different ways so that you have the money to, you know, to take those risks.
Yeah. And again, this is where it's worth studying. I'm such a firm believer in studying people that are successful in completely unrelated categories, industries, genres. Like, for anyone here who's familiar with Ryan Holiday, most people don't know that Ryan Holiday makes more money selling little stoicism coins than he does his stoicism books. So it's not necessarily like, I'm not saying like you should be an e commerce entrepreneur and don't write. It's more this idea that writers can monetize in a lot of other different ways than they typically consider.
Yeah, 100%. Great. Do we have any other questions for Cole?
This was a lot of fun.
Yeah, for sure. Okay, jk, go ahead. Oh, no, wait, you're just putting your thumb up. Never mind. Cool. Well, we are approaching the hour here, so I think we'll, we'll go ahead and leave it there. But thank you so much, Cole, for coming on. Would love to get your thoughts again sometime. But thank you so much for coming. Do you have any last things that you want to promote? Maybe one of your programs or anything?
I mean, if all my stuff is on the Internet, it's, it's there if you want to go down the rabbit hole. But no, I just, I love, I love doing stuff like this. I really love talking about fiction because I don't get to talk about it very often, especially in the context of all our other businesses. But I hope that changes and I hope that I do start talking about it more because I think it's an amazing topic and a great industry and it's a lot of fun. So thanks everyone. For letting me come and share.
Have to be profitable on one book.
Yep.
But, yeah, 10 is good, 12 is good. There's a whole Facebook group out there called 20 books to 50k with the. The whole idea about that meeting meaning, like, get to 20 books as fast as you can, and then from there, you know, you might be able to make a living as a. As a author or at least make 50k. Yeah, the idea. Well, it's very interesting, and you're certainly being extremely thoughtful about the books that you're. That you're planning on writing. Or have you. Have you started writing them already? Like, where are you at in the process?
Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'm working on two different series at once, and I'm hoping both the first books are. Will be out this year. It's my hope. And they've been in the works for about a year now.
Sweet. Well, let me know how that goes. I'll be sure to pick one up. I'm a big fantasy reader and writer, and LitRPG is close enough that I feel like I enjoy that stuff, so. So I'll definitely check that out. All right. I think if. If you're good, we can maybe pull in a couple of questions from the group. I'm sure we have several. Several people that want to ask, so everyone feel free to raise your virtual hand there or put your question in the chat. We'll get. Get into those. Okay. I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right, but Bin Bing.
Yeah, it's been. Hey, guys. Good afternoon, Cole. So I actually just finished a book, like, two weeks ago.
Let's go.
Yeah, man, it was great. And, Jason, I just joined your group two days ago, so this is, like, super.
Wow.
That's why I didn't know your name yet.
Yeah, that's right. But no, Cole, I love your book. And so I think one of the core principles that you really emphasize in your book was practicing in public, right?
Yep.
And part of the benefits, aside from practicing is getting data to understand what your writing really resonates with readers and getting an understanding of what to focus on. So I guess my question is, if we're in the world of fiction, what is an efficient way, I guess, to get as many ideas out there and see what really resonates with the market so that we can understand what to further invest our efforts on. Any thoughts there?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think it has a different challenge than nonfiction. With nonfiction, it's. I recommend all the social Platforms and things like that. That's not to say that you can't publish fiction on X or medium, like lots of people do that. But where, where I personally landed with it is I think that the, the best way to gather data is to try and write shorter stories or shorter books on Amazon. Because you have to sort of think of Amazon as a platform in and of itself. It is a social platform, you know, and so I wouldn't necessarily start by going. The first thing I do is I'm going to commit to writing a 600 page, you know, mega fantasy novel because that'll take you too long. But there are lots of categories on Amazon where they have like 15 minute fantasy short reads, they have 30 minute fantasy short reads, they have 60 minute thriller reads. You know, you could do short stories, you could do novellas. So I would think of Amazon as a platform, realize that it's a little bit longer of a feedback loop than tweeting, but I think it's a more accurate representation of the data that you get. I also want to reinforce too that data doesn't have to just be digital. Like for example, Jason, you asking me that question and me sharing about that project and then Gary in the chat goes, as a gamer, I agree and that sounds great. That's data. I just got a data point. I shared my idea. Someone said, I think that's pretty cool. In my head I go, awesome. I now feel good about the direction that I'm going on. So data doesn't have to be digital. It could be you talking to a friend, it could be you talking to a group. Here you can get data from lots of different places.
Ron, thank you.
That makes sense.
Yep.
Awesome. This is a great question.
And I'll add my two cents to that. I've definitely seen a lot of authors see a lot of success by doing shorter fiction first and kind of testing out three or four different.
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