[00:02:19] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, basically it’s Amazon publishing, so it’s a self publishing platform for anyone to publish ebooks, paperbacks, hardcovers without having to be associated with a publishing house.

[00:02:33] Nick Di Fabio: So basically it’s an opportunity to create books and just basically have you go that route versus having to be associated with a big five publisher. 

[00:02:43] Patrick Donley: So I want to hear how you got into this. I, we were talking a little bit beforehand about how you had 30 jobs before 30, 30 for 30, talk to me a little bit about those early days of just struggling to find your niche and then how you ended up finding this niche in self publishing.

[00:03:00] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, that’s a great question. So going back to, this is now 2014 ish, like 2014, early 2015. I was working a 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. job, hardly any breaks, and I think two 30 minute breaks at a desk the whole time. So I believe things have changed since then at that position. What was the job? What were you doing? It was a port, like a rail planner, vessel planner type job.

[00:03:24] Nick Di Fabio: So it was, so you had, you were talking to the yard all the time, the foreman, you had the phone. It was just basically, you were guarding the containers as they were coming off the ships. Thanks. So it was an important job, but man, two, three in the morning, four in the morning, like you should not be working in my opinion for the most part.

[00:03:40] Nick Di Fabio: So as I was telling you earlier, I had a friend, Matthew. com, Steph and James, who was making money with Amazon publishing three grand a month. And for me, It might as well have been 300, 000 a month. I was just like, this is an amazing opportunity. I love books. I love this idea of passive income, making royalties while you’re not physically working.

[00:04:01] Nick Di Fabio: So I just started to, as I approach things, I started to explore a little bit during my days off when I was single, wasn’t married with kids. And I just started to go down that path, made every mistake in the book you can imagine. And then I would probably say a good year. 18 months or so, I finally figured things out and from there, just started to follow the system and create books.

[00:04:24] Nick Di Fabio: And here I am. 

[00:04:26] Patrick Donley: So were you staying at the warehouse doc job while you were learning? Did you have time at two in the morning to study this? I imagine it’s quiet at two in the morning, but did you have time to get this started while you were in your W2 job, regular job and kind of get the ball rolling?

[00:04:45] Nick Di Fabio: There definitely were some research opportunities and some of that. I think for me, I was fortunate because I had a four on four off schedule. So I had 4 full days off. And it’s fun to have those 4 days off. Usually I would spend day 1 recovering from the shifts. Day 2 and day 3 were full days off.

[00:05:02] Nick Di Fabio: And then day 4 you prepare to get back to work for these 12 hour shifts because you couldn’t do much during those days anyway. So during day two and day three, I was encouraged by my employer to work overtime. I almost always declined, even though the money was potentially good. And I really spent that time just making progress on my publishing business.

[00:05:22] Patrick Donley: So KDP again, it’s Kindle Digital Publishing. How does it work? Let’s say I’m a guy that’s got a book idea, walk me through the steps of how it works. 

[00:05:32] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, for sure. So it’s Kimball Direct Publishing, and it’s a bit of a misnomer too, because on that platform, you can publish, as I mentioned, the digital version, the Kimball version, paperbacks, and hardcovers.

[00:05:43] Nick Di Fabio: So they, so you can publish all three. How the process works. For the most part, you select your niche, right? Select your niche, right? So if you go on amazon. com, you scroll down to the left hand side under books, pretty much 80 percent of the topics are going to be nonfiction, health and fitness, cookbooks, test prep, exam prep.

[00:06:02] Nick Di Fabio: So what you want to do is you want to find a niche within that niche. You want to choose some profitable keywords. So as an example, maybe you go to the cookbook section and then you go on a paleo diet, right? As an example, and then the process from there becomes the process of creating your high quality book.

[00:06:19] Nick Di Fabio: That’s really one of the big keys to this whole process is focusing on quality. You create a high quality book, such a beautiful cover, benefit driven, a sort of SEO based title with a benefit driven subtitle, beautiful product page, nice description, great content. And then the last sort of piece to the puzzle is launching this book, using some sort of method to get your book visible.

[00:06:43] Nick Di Fabio: a lot of people come to me and say, I don’t have an audience. And I say, it doesn’t really matter. You can publish these books in a certain way where you can get your book in front of literally hundreds of thousands of readers. So that’s another critical piece of the puzzle. 

[00:06:56] Patrick Donley: So walk me through your first project.

[00:06:59] Patrick Donley: Did you write it yourself? you explain these, the cover, the quality of the book. How did you learn how to do that? Is it just you just trial by fire and just figured it out as you went or were you following somebody else’s blueprint? 

[00:07:14] Nick Di Fabio: Definitely trial by fire. Like I said, I made every mistake in the book.

[00:07:17] Nick Di Fabio: I was, I did a scattershot approach where I would just publish on Multiple topics, thinking back, I think one of my first books, I want to say it was a dog training or something like that dog training, and it was terrible. It was terrible. The short cover was ugly. I had no launch plan. I was just, I just knew, I was desperate to make something work.

[00:07:38] Nick Di Fabio: And I just knew that this was going to work. So I was the pressure was off a little bit in the sense that I was like, let me just get something out there. Let me just go through this process once, because I struggled a little bit with it. Procrastination, perfectionism. So I was like, let me just get something out there, publish it.

[00:07:54] Nick Di Fabio: And then it was just a matter of refining things from there. 

[00:07:58] Patrick Donley: Talk to me a little bit about why someone would be interested in pursuing something like this and maybe who, I know you’ve got a, like a masterclass that you teach, who some of your typical clientele are. 

[00:08:10] Nick Di Fabio: I would say people generally fall into three categories.

[00:08:13] Nick Di Fabio: Number one, it’s someone who’s looking to supplement their main income source. Typically, it’s someone who works a nine to five. As we all know now, inflation is a bit of a challenge. So for someone to sit there and maybe make an extra one to three grand a month, it’s pretty nice. It’s a pretty nice option.

[00:08:29] Nick Di Fabio: So that’s one category. A second category is someone who said, you know what? Screw it. I’m actually going to go all out. I’m going to build this to the point where I can eventually leave my nine to five. And have that, a freedom, that freedom, which is definitely a possibility. It’s not going to happen overnight, but definitely can happen for sure.

[00:08:47] Nick Di Fabio: And then the third sort of person that we’re talking about earlier is someone who’s looking to leverage this idea of a book as a business card, whether it be for authority, for perhaps even speaking engagements, that sort of thing. That’s a huge opportunity as well. So yeah, that’s generally the three top categories.

[00:09:06] Nick Di Fabio: And then people might program, we have, I’ve got someone in my program who’s just going to turn 80, she’s going to turn 80 and she’s inspiring, she’s making progress and, she needs a little bit of help on some of the sort of backend stuff with perhaps uploading the files, but she’s got it.

[00:09:20] Nick Di Fabio: she’s got the program down and she’s making progress. I’ve got someone as young as 19. She’s a student in a university, so her mentality is to let me publish books. As opposed to getting a part time job while I’m going to school and see where this takes me and everything in between, we have people that are professionals working their jobs, people in between jobs.

[00:09:39] Nick Di Fabio: It’s just, it’s a really cool experience for me to be able to talk to people from all over the world, trying to publish books. 

[00:09:46] Patrick Donley: So you got started in 2014, is that correct? Right around then? 

[00:09:51] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, I would say probably sometime in like spring, summer 2014 or so. 

[00:09:57] Patrick Donley: So that’s 10 years, since that time, how has publishing changed in the past 10 years for you?

[00:10:02] Patrick Donley: How has this business model changed in the past 10 years? 

[00:10:06] Nick Di Fabio: Dramatically for the better. When I published back then, you could put up a book that was just okay. Content, okay. Cover, no ads, not much marketing support, and they could do okay. They could do okay for you. I call it this phase, and that’s probably phase one phase two of the book of that publishing path was a little more competition.

[00:10:27] Nick Di Fabio: Readers are more savvy. They’re looking for higher quality content, covers that catch the eye even more. And I think where we’re at now is what I call sort of the 3. 0 phase, where now, in my opinion, it’s never been easier with the power of AI. To create really high quality books that readers love quickly, relatively inexpensively.

[00:10:47] Nick Di Fabio: That’s where we’re at right now. It’s changed dramatically since those 2014 days. 

[00:10:53] Patrick Donley: We’ll get into AI a little bit here, but I wanted to ask you first, what are the main things to focus on? I’m thinking like in terms of niches, just like what somebody really needs to get dialed in to ensure success in KDP.

[00:11:08] Nick Di Fabio: I learned this the hard way. It’s really just about fundamentals. So the fundamentals for me are, first of all, are you in, if you’re doing a business card book, that’s a little bit of a different sort of topic. But if you’re doing a book that you want to generate passive income for you, are you going to go into a niche or a category that’s in demand?

[00:11:26] Nick Di Fabio: Are there people looking for this book? That’s number one. And then from there, it’s just the main focus is really on creating a high quality book. like that beautiful cover, a great product page, content that helps the reader in some way, the nonfiction space, I’ve done both nonfiction and fiction, nonfiction is really cool because you can actually create something of value that people are going to buy for literally years.

[00:11:49] Nick Di Fabio: So you have to really, in my opinion, focus on that. One thing I tell all my members in my program, I say, look at the reviews of other books. What are they doing well? What are they doing poorly? And make sure that your book either includes those good parts or overcomes those negative parts because that’s really what’s going to allow your book to sell for a long time.

[00:12:10] Patrick Donley: What’s the breakdown in terms of overall book sales? Aren’t 80 or 90 percent nonfiction books? 

[00:12:17] Nick Di Fabio: Oh, what do you mean in terms of Amazon’s general sales? It’s a tough question. fiction is a massive space. Fiction is a massive space. Fiction is a little tricky. I think a lot of people get into this space because you’re on a bit of a sort of hamster wheel.

[00:12:31] Nick Di Fabio: Like you do need for the most part to continue pumping out books on a regular basis because fiction people typically read it once and they put it away. That’s usually how it works for the most part. Non fiction, yeah, non fiction is massive too. Non fiction, take that a step further a little bit, or break that down further.

[00:12:50] Nick Di Fabio: When you publish non fiction, what you’re going to find for the most part is that I would say about two thirds, let’s say 60 70 percent of your royalties will come from the actual paperback version of your book, in most niches, and then the balance is filled out by the Kindle version, and then if it applies, the audio version.

[00:13:06] Nick Di Fabio: So that’s the way the pie is broken down in that space. 

[00:13:09] Patrick Donley: Let’s talk a little further about niches. How do you go about researching what a profitable niche would be? Like, I imagine that one of the people’s first questions is what am I going to, what is the book going to be on?

[00:13:23] Patrick Donley: What kind of advice do you have for people to find, do you suggest like people just follow their own passions and interests or are you not a follower of that and just say, here’s what the market wants 

[00:13:34] Nick Di Fabio: if you can do, that’s amazing if you can match your passion interest with market demand, that’s that perfect event diagram situation, but I tell people for the most part, Focus on what makes money first.

[00:13:44] Nick Di Fabio: I’ll give you an example. I had someone join the program and he went to publish golf joke books, golf jokes, and I was like, that’s not going to make money. the ones he wanted to write. And so we looked at it together after about five minutes of looking at it together, he was like, yeah, you’re right.

[00:13:56] Nick Di Fabio: It’s not going to make me much. So the way I do it, the way I approach it is a red light, green light. Things. What I mean by that is that I go into one of these categories, as mentioned, I got a list here that I have, but it could be self help, cookbooks, financial advice, spiritual, whatever it might be.

[00:14:15] Nick Di Fabio: You want to go in there, select a keyword. And then I typically recommend running through a criteria, things like, is there demand? How many search results are you getting? Can you complete things like, or is this book, can you perhaps put this book in a box set or a bundle? Which is great for revenue.

[00:14:34] Nick Di Fabio: Can it be translated and do well in translated markets? and some books, they’re amber, some books, you’re like, I’m not sure if I should go into that space, but there are, once you learn how to do this sort of criteria process, you’ll see a ton of green light, niches tons. 

[00:14:50] Patrick Donley: And are you using Amazon to do that research to determine the niche or are you using Google or what, where are you looking to get the data?

[00:14:59] Nick Di Fabio: My first point of contact is definitely Amazon. Amazon is an amazing resource. That’s the old school way to do it. I’ll go to Amazon and search there, and nowadays there’s just so many apps and softwares you can use as well. There’s one software I use called Book Beam where it’s just incredible.

[00:15:15] Nick Di Fabio: I can, you can find categories and keywords literally within about five minutes. 

[00:15:21] Patrick Donley: I heard you mentioned BookBeam in another interview. What does that platform do? It sounds like it’s something worth checking out for somebody that would be interested in this. 

[00:15:30] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, bookbeam. io. They have, in my opinion, they’re probably the most required tool for this space, the publishing space.

[00:15:38] Nick Di Fabio: They’ve grown a lot. Actually, I know the owner of the business. We’re casual sort of friends. He basically started off with a very bare bones sort of app, but now you can do niche research, product page optimization, You can do keyword finder, you can do, oh man, all sorts of things. This is basically this data mining tool that uses Amazon’s platform.

[00:15:57] Nick Di Fabio: It’s got a desktop app and you can just play around with it. It’s a really incredible tool for self publishers. 

[00:16:04] Patrick Donley: So let’s go step by step. Let’s say we figured out the niche. We figured out the subject we want to write a book on. What’s next? It’s creating the content. Do you actually write at that point or do you farm that out to ghostwriters?

[00:16:17] Patrick Donley: How does that part of it work? Creating the actual content of it? 

[00:16:21] Nick Di Fabio: You have options here. You have options here. There definitely is a path for you to write the book. What I typically do is for me, that sort of, I call it the book creation phase. The first step is the outline. The first step is the outline.

[00:16:32] Nick Di Fabio: Now, you can do this yourself. I typically use ChatGPT these days, AI these days to create some really incredible outlines. You can do some really cool things by enhancing the value of your book through some prompts. And then the option is you can use a ghostwriting service, so there’s a ghostwriting service out there that literally has hundreds if not thousands of writers for you to choose from.

[00:16:51] Nick Di Fabio: There’s ghostwriters you can hire as well. Let’s say you want to specialize on a specific topic, there’s tons of ghostwriters that would hone in on that topic. And then, There’s the DIY approach, which I don’t recommend for most people starting off with, because unless you have a really good game plan, and then there’s AI as well.

[00:17:09] Nick Di Fabio: And when you say DIY, meaning just write it yourself? Just write yourself from front to back. I think you can do that. Absolutely. But I think you just have to go into it with a really solid game plan of, okay, how am I going to structure this book? What is my plan to write, per day, per week sort of thing?

[00:17:27] Nick Di Fabio: So you can make sure you make consistent progress on that. If you’re not a professional writer. Have you done the DIY method yourself? Oh my gosh, I have tried it. I have tried it. I do enjoy, I love to, I’m a big reader, I do like to write, but I found it so challenging, in the back of my mind, thinking I’m writing this for money, at the end of the day, I feel like there’s a bit of a block there, typically these days, I also source to a ghost writing service.

[00:17:54] Nick Di Fabio: And it’s been working out great. 

[00:17:56] Patrick Donley: Let’s get into a little bit more about AI. How has AI impacted all of this? It’s got to have changed dramatically. Like where is the, where’s things going to go? What’s the direction of publishing? 

[00:18:07] Nick Di Fabio: AI has been a massive game changer, as you say. So I want to say that summer of 2023 is when AI really started to be more prevalent and visible on Amazon.

[00:18:18] Nick Di Fabio: In fact, actually, some people were getting their accounts terminated because they were uploading all these books at a fast speed that really weren’t that good. So Amazon smart, they’ve got tons of resources, so they put in place some sort of buffers and bumpers to eliminate essentially the crappy books for being uploaded.

[00:18:36] Nick Di Fabio: So in terms of how AI has changed things at a high level, it’s basically allowed people to create these super high quality books. Without spending months, creating books and a more practical level, as mentioned, it can help you create these amazing outlines, like some of the elements you create are amazing.

[00:18:55] Nick Di Fabio: I use it for things like niche research, title creation, book descriptions. I definitely, I’ve also played around with it in terms of creating the actual book itself. I know the ghost writing services I use. They actually asked, is it okay if the writer uses AI to create the book? So I’m always like, yeah, for sure.

[00:19:12] Nick Di Fabio: So it’s been a massive game changer. Actually, someone that I know said that what they do is they actually use AI for children’s books and they create the images with AI as well. So it’s been a massive change for them because now they can go really fast. They have the template down for one book. Now they create these beautiful images.

[00:19:30] Nick Di Fabio: And in children’s books, it’s maybe a thousand words. The content is quite low. So it’s never been easier for them to create these beautiful high quality books as quickly as possible. 

[00:19:41] Patrick Donley: And you’re using chat GPT mostly for your purposes.

[00:19:45] Nick Di Fabio: I like chat GPT. I’m like someone who likes to stick with that sort of first thing they started off with.

[00:19:51] Nick Di Fabio: So there’s tons of things out there now that are coming along. So I like to explore a little bit as well. One of the things for audio that has come across my plate is 11 labs, 11 labs, IO for some audio stuff. So always exploring, always testing different things. 

[00:20:06] Patrick Donley: When I use chat GPT for the same thing like title creation for the podcasts and things like that.

[00:20:12] Patrick Donley: Where do you think, where do writers end up with AI? Like how, what’s the role of the writer in the future? I want to hear your thoughts on that. 

[00:20:20] Nick Di Fabio: In terms of writers, I think the fiction space is always going to need that human element, for sure. I think it’s really difficult to have, at least right now, it’s changing so quickly.

[00:20:29] Nick Di Fabio: But the nuance of a fiction story, I think, is always going to need a good chunk of human, the human piece. Nonfiction. it’s moving along so fast. It’s incredible. I actually tested a quick story for you. I tested a sort of service from someone else where I was able to basically spend about 20, 30 minutes, filling out a form within about two days.

[00:20:50] Nick Di Fabio: I got back an outline within about seven days. I got back a 50, 000 word book that was 99, like 5 percent good. So it’s, it was, It’s amazing. I think at the end of the day, I think the path for AI is that it will be more and more involved with how we do things, but you are still going to need that human piece to personalize things.

[00:21:09] Nick Di Fabio: I think that’s always going to be the case. 

[00:21:12] Patrick Donley: I’m a big fan of a guy named Kevin Kelly, who was the editor of Wired Magazine, and he explained it the way he thought of it was like, it’s like having an intern do the writing for you, but you wouldn’t have your intern. You wouldn’t put that out as the final product, right?

[00:21:25] Patrick Donley: You still need to have the boss come in and edit it and clean it up and not use the intern’s work as your own. 

[00:21:34] Nick Di Fabio: That’s very well said. Yeah. That’s very, Kevin Kelly’s true fans. I think I remember reading that essay all the time, which is really good. That’s really well said. Yeah. I agree with that a hundred percent.

[00:21:44] Patrick Donley: Let’s get into that a little bit now that we’re talking about Kevin Kelly and a thousand true fans. Talk a little bit about what that is for people that aren’t familiar with it. And then does that same concept and idea apply to publishing? 

[00:21:57] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, so this idea of 1002 fans is born from the fact that you don’t need to be, not everyone needs to buy your services or product.

[00:22:06] Nick Di Fabio: You can have, relatively speaking, the world is huge and to have 1000 people that appreciate what you do. It goes a long way because there’s word of mouth and so many benefits from having that sort of core group. It certainly applies to publishing for sure. You know what? I think the idea is that when you launch these books, you want to make the most of those first few readers, right?

[00:22:29] Nick Di Fabio: Whether it’s a hundred people, a thousand people or more, because you know that if. There’s a positive experience there, it will absolutely lead to them telling people that they know about your book or having the book available at their house or that sort of thing for other people to see. So in my opinion, it can definitely apply.

[00:22:44] Nick Di Fabio: And the other way it applies is that one of the cool things you can do in this space is build email lists, right? So you can build email lists for a group of people that are going to be basically looking for your book every time there’s a new release on that topic. So that’s a really cool opportunity as well.

[00:22:59] Patrick Donley: Yeah. Let’s get into that a little bit more about the marketing side of it. For somebody that doesn’t have a huge social media following, maybe they’re an introvert actually and they just don’t spend much time on Twitter or whatever, Instagram or wherever people are promoting stuff these days. How would you recommend that they actually market their book, promote it, get the word out there?

[00:23:19] Patrick Donley: I’ve interviewed several authors. In fact, I’m interviewing one tomorrow and they go on this massive publicity spree prior to the book launch. Doing podcasts, doing all the Twitter stuff and, really just pushing, and this is traditional publishing, but really pushing to get the word out about their book, because if it doesn’t, What they were saying was like, if it doesn’t hit pretty quickly, it disappears.

[00:23:43] Patrick Donley: So it doesn’t matter if it’s the best book in the world. If it doesn’t gain traction pretty early on in the traditional publishing world, it just drops off the radar. 

[00:23:53] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, absolutely. you have about 30 to 60 days to really maximize that new launch, sort of a honeymoon phase. So the best way to answer this question is I learned this In 2020, when the world was shutting down a little bit in March, 2020, my wife just gave birth to our second child.

[00:24:09] Nick Di Fabio: And I was like, okay, this is not looking good. The kids are home, the newborn. So I was like, let me just 80 20, my launch plan, 80 20, right? All I did was focus on reviews. And Amazon ads, that was it. That was it. And it worked. The book did very well. So I was like, huh, that was interesting. Let me do that again.

[00:24:27] Nick Di Fabio: Sure enough, that worked as well. So Amazon, as we always, is a review based platform. So the reviews show relevancy. If you could show relevancy, plus you have Amazon ads. That backup that is relevant to people buying your book, that is a formula for success. you can certainly, if you have sort of your own personal brand behind you, you can definitely do this sort of book tour Twitter thing.

[00:24:49] Nick Di Fabio: But from my experience, you don’t have to, you don’t have to, you can go out there and leverage in my opinion, views, Amazon ads. If you have some sort of email list, even better friends, family, and with the option of going all out if you choose, but I’m a big believer in doing the 80, 20 approach.

[00:25:05] Nick Di Fabio: Transcribed And, to me, those two things are really what can drive tons of sales and visibility to your book. 

[00:25:10] Patrick Donley: You mentioned the 80 20. Are you familiar with Richard Koch? I think it is the guy’s name. K O C H. He’s written a lot about the 80 20 principle. The Star Principle is one of his books that is really fantastic.

[00:25:22] Patrick Donley: Had some great interviews on the Tim Ferriss podcast. 

[00:25:26] Nick Di Fabio: I do like his books. I’ve gotten to see them on my bookshelf right now. I’m looking at The 820 principle. It was a good one. Definitely. I have to learn about him through Tim Ferriss. And yeah, that approach I think is really critical because anytime you’re doing something, you can do so many things.

[00:25:40] Nick Di Fabio: You can do so many different things. And that’s what I was doing when I first started. It was a scattershot approach, a bunch of different niches, a bunch of different high content, low content, medium content books. let me do X launch plan and then Y launch plan. But I think once you have done that phase, okay, let me just slow down here.

[00:25:58] Nick Di Fabio: What are they? Literally three to five things that matter. Okay. Let me see, focus on those three to five things and inevitably those always lead to results. 

[00:26:08] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear a little bit about what the startup costs are for somebody. So I’m just getting started. I want to write my first book.

[00:26:15] Patrick Donley: I’m going to outsource most of it. What can I expect to spend to get it to the point where it’s on Amazon and ready to be distributed? 

[00:26:25] Nick Di Fabio: So this is very niche dependent. This is very niche dependent. For instance, let’s say you want to write a children’s book, right? Children’s books, children’s fiction, for instance, do quite well.

[00:26:34] Nick Di Fabio: You look at illustrations, look at the content piece. And then the marketing side of it. So I always tell people, budget anywhere from 500 bucks to two grand in that space. For the most part, that’s a really good starting range. If you really want to outsource all of it, probably more in the public two to three K range for outsourcing at all.

[00:26:51] Nick Di Fabio: And that includes the cover, the content, perhaps even the editing, formatting, that sort of thing. And so that’s the approximate investment. And if you want, you can go all out. I know some people. They’ll create these sort of massive what I call home run books that have maybe a hundred thousand words.

[00:27:07] Nick Di Fabio: There’s authority based books that are going to be a little more expensive than that, but those can also make three, four or 500 bucks plus a day. So those can be home runs. 

[00:27:17] Patrick Donley: I heard you mention the importance of having a quick win when people are just getting started. What do you mean by that?

[00:27:22] Patrick Donley: What is a quick win? What does a quick win book look like? 

[00:27:26] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, quick wins I think are important. I think it is very important for people to get that dopamine hit and continue on doing things. So quick wins, examples of quick win books could be books that have repetitive content inside. Maybe, when my program published a book on Yahtzee score sheets, Yahtzee score sheets.

[00:27:45] Nick Di Fabio: And they did the title, the subtitle, they got the cover all done by someone on Fiverr and they were basically launched within about two or three weeks. Is that book going to make you a lot of money? No, but you got to learn the process and maybe still make 10, 20 bucks a day off of that.

[00:27:59] Nick Di Fabio: Another example of a quick win book is let’s say you want to go into a niche like investing, right? So it’s a pretty big topic. this real estate investing, crypto investing, all sorts of different types of investing. Maybe book number one in that series is intro to investing. Maybe a short 10, 000 word book to just get used to the process, get a book up there published, and then boom, go from there.

[00:28:23] Patrick Donley: And then once you have the book, you’re, you mentioned different ways you can produce it. there’s audible, which is becoming really popular. Do you produce it in many different formats once it’s finished? 

[00:28:35] Nick Di Fabio: Huge fan of that. Huge fan of that. I think that’s really one of the advantages of publishing is you’re creating these assets.

[00:28:43] Nick Di Fabio: So you have the ebook paperback hardcover, sometimes spiral bound audio version. And I’m a huge fan of translations, Amazon, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, huge markets. Other markets are growing. So the way I tell people is to take that original idea you had. And then go as, as many possible formats as possible, and then as wide as possible, even outside Amazon is a good option too.

[00:29:10] Patrick Donley: I also heard you mention about creating bonus content for a book. What is a, what is bonus content? What does that look like? 

[00:29:17] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, bonus content is there to help people. it makes your book a no brainer to buy. So bonus content examples could be things like workbooks that go with your book that make it more actionable.

[00:29:28] Nick Di Fabio: Bonus content could be bonus audio that is included with the book. Things that, for instance, people do cookbooks and then they have meal plans to go with the book. So I’m a big believer in just Enhancing the value of your book, you become unstoppable, in my opinion, and hard to compete with if you have all the fundamentals in place that we mentioned earlier, plus these enticing bonuses, that is, that’s an excellent formula for success.

[00:29:54] Patrick Donley: So you’ve written, how many books at this point, how many books have you produced at this point? Oh, I’ve published well over 250. And you’ve had over a million dollars in revenue? Yes. That’s awesome. As you are going about your day to day life, I’m just curious how you structure your day to day, are you continually working on a book, producing a new book, or do you have stuff, is 250 enough at this point that you can rest and sit back and allow the royalties to kick in or?

[00:30:24] Patrick Donley: Talk to me a little bit about how your days are structured. 

[00:30:28] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, for sure. So I should preface this by saying as well, that those two 50, a lot of them were done during my scattershot phase, though, speaking of the 80 20 rule, that definitely applies to this. So for the most part, the. Book creation process itself, how I approach it is through a checklist.

[00:30:44] Nick Di Fabio: Have you ever heard of a Kanban board? I’m going to say that It’s a sort of philosophy from Agile productivity. And you just, you have essentially these columns and then tasks underneath each column. So for instance, in the book creation phase, you might have, choose a niche, create a title, create subtitles, and then outsource the content.

[00:31:02] Nick Di Fabio: And then the book launch phase, You might have those tasks that led to the book launch. So I’ve basically created a process, a checklist, a system that I follow for every book. I follow every book. So what I like to do is I like to patch things up at this point. I like to usually go into one category, one niche.

[00:31:19] Nick Di Fabio: Three to five books in that space, so I can leverage the power of having the catalog and that’s typically how I do it in terms of how I structure my day for the most part. My main focus right now is on the education piece, helping the members of the program do well. So I typically have my days filled with a couple days a week for calls and the rest of the time I’m going to do some deep work, create a Cal Newport for that on things to just, improve the program to learn more to just create something special.

[00:31:47] Patrick Donley: If you want to exit, how do you exit? You create this business. Are there exits in the publishing business? What does that look like? 

[00:31:56] Nick Di Fabio: yeah, this was a surprise to me. So I fell into this. So I sold 11 pending tickets for 71, 000. And what happened with that was it basically looked like this.

[00:32:08] Nick Di Fabio: You create a series of books. Ideally, no one is going to want to buy just one book that’s doing well. They’re going to want to see multiple books. Essentially, if you can have a revenue stream of royalties in the, say 2, 000 a month range, even higher is better, of course, but minimum 2, 000 a month for the better part of 12 months, you have an asset that can be sold.

[00:32:26] Nick Di Fabio: There’s multiple sites out there. Empire flippers is pretty much the gold standard. As far as I’m concerned, flip it as well as the old school one in there. And the process looks like you have. Like a business. So you have your accounting in place. You have your spreadsheet on your income, your expenses.

[00:32:42] Nick Di Fabio: And then you basically post your listing on one of these sites on these broker sites. And you track people that are looking to buy the publishing business. And the reason why they’re attracted to them, I found out, is because one, the margins are pretty good. And I tell people, if you’re not doing 60 percent margins and publishing, something is going wrong.

[00:32:59] Nick Di Fabio: Something is off. And also too, is it’s this idea of, as mentioned earlier, having these multiple assets out there. that are making you money 24 seven is an attractive idea for investors. 

[00:33:10] Patrick Donley: So you did an exit and it was what 71, 000 you sold, and it was a series of books. 

[00:33:17] Nick Di Fabio: It was, yes, it was a short series of books that had been doing well for the better part of, I think it was 18 months or so.

[00:33:23] Nick Di Fabio: And yeah, it was just, I had someone come, actually I got a cold email. I had a cold email from someone saying, I’m looking to buy these businesses. And I was like, confused. I was like, buy the publisher. What do you mean? So went from there in terms of the process. Yeah. That’s interesting.

[00:33:37] Patrick Donley: And is that kind of a business plan going forward for you? do you expect to do that, to replicate that, keep doing it if you can? 

[00:33:44] Nick Di Fabio: Yes, definitely. So I think, and this actually comes from Tim Ferriss too, is this idea that even if you don’t want to sell your business, you should still build it with the intention of selling it.

[00:33:54] Nick Di Fabio: So it becomes an actual business versus something that takes over your life. So I tell everyone that you should approach it like that. yeah, my vision right now is to build my current business to exit for quite a bit more than 71k. Actually, a funny story for you. Someone in my mastermind group, he was in the fiction space.

[00:34:11] Nick Di Fabio: He sold his business to a California real estate investor who had no experience with publishing almost seven figures. And it was interesting. I was shocked. I was like, that’s crazy. But this investor liked the numbers, like the fact that they had a good system in place for creating books and it was pretty hands off.

[00:34:27] Nick Di Fabio: And yeah, so that was. Definitely eye opening. 

[00:34:31] Patrick Donley: I wanted to get into it a little bit. We talked earlier. I’ve got a company that does cost segregation studies. You mentioned a real estate investor. This is a study that’s done for real estate investors to allow them to increase their cash flow, save on taxes.

[00:34:46] Patrick Donley: And I wanted to get your thoughts on creating a cost segregation book. There’s, it’s a very specialized niche, even most, a lot of accountants don’t even know much about it. A lot of real estate investors just don’t know much about it. My partners and I are thinking, maybe this idea of a book as a business card makes some sense.

[00:35:04] Patrick Donley: So can you talk to me a little bit about that, how I would go about it and just some general thoughts you have on that? 

[00:35:11] Nick Di Fabio: That’s cool. By the way, And that’s a really cool topic to be on. So I think the process for you would look like and just clear on. You know what the purpose of the book is and it sounds to me like it’s just to get out there.

[00:35:21] Nick Di Fabio: Would you say it’s to build authority or generate leads or both? 

[00:35:25] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I would say both build authority and generate leads. Yeah, there’s something about a book that I find that anyone that’s written a book it’s like you put them a little on a pedestal. 

[00:35:36] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. so it definitely is that first step you have covered, right?

[00:35:40] Nick Di Fabio: Getting clear on what the goal of the book is. And then pretty much the same process applies. Really focus on the fundamentals with having a beautiful cover, really outlining an excellent book, including those parts of the book that establish you as an authority. I’d also consider incorporating perhaps some sort of landing page or some way to capture emails so you can leverage that.

[00:36:00] Nick Di Fabio: You can put that right at the beginning of the book. Perhaps a bonus, perhaps some sort of bonus, maybe a seven day guide or a 30 day guide. I have some more ideas for you once I know more about your business. And then just follow a plan to launch your book, get it out there in front of tons of people.

[00:36:15] Nick Di Fabio: And then not only that, but also being able to maintain that ranking. And in my worldview, your book should do that. So build authority, generate leads. And also make you some passive income. Heck, why not, right? 

[00:36:29] Patrick Donley: Yeah, if you can. I think we would almost view it as we’ve got like an info pitch deck basically that explains what cost segregation is.

[00:36:37] Patrick Donley: But it’d be awesome to be able to hand somebody a physical book and say, this explains it really more in depth than our pitch deck does. But yeah, that would be our thought would be just to give it to people if they want to go further down to understand what it is. Because it’s taxes generally people’s eyes gloss over, but it’s one of our biggest expenses.

[00:36:55] Patrick Donley: Really pays to understand it. So we thought being able to hand them a physical book would be a great way to educate people and build authority. Like you said, 

[00:37:04] Nick Di Fabio: yeah, absolutely. The cool thing for you is with that info pitch deck, you can definitely hand that off to a ghostwriter and have them use that as a resource to help create the book.

[00:37:12] Nick Di Fabio: And also to, I think one of the things that we didn’t touch on yet, which I want to talk about is There’s this opportunity on Amazon, everyone’s on Amazon looking for books, but a real cool opportunity as well as to go beyond Amazon, right? So independent bookstores, colleges, libraries, universities, that’s a really cool opportunity to choose.

[00:37:29] Nick Di Fabio: So you can take this idea of your authority book and not only be on Amazon, but be beyond Amazon, beyond the bookstores of some independent bookstores in Vancouver Canada restrooms, for instance, Which is a cool thing. 

[00:37:43] Patrick Donley: Yeah, that actually was my next question: what is Amazon the only game in town or are there other avenues to explore for people that once they have their book, is it just on Amazon or do you seek out other platforms to sell it on?

[00:37:56] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, there definitely are other platforms. Amazon is, of course, like the big dog on the block, but then there’s other platforms as well. You can publish on Ingram Spark, for instance, where you can get your books as mentioned physically in other places. Barnes and Noble, huge opportunity. What you’ll find, I find with those places is that independent bookstores, they are not going to go to amazon.

[00:38:19] Nick Di Fabio: com to buy their books. They’re going to go to the wholesaling websites. So for, in your case, let’s say for instance, you published this book on Amazon, ideally to number one, new release, I do this number one bestseller, which comes with a lot of stories as well. And then what you want to do is a matter of converting the files.

[00:38:36] Nick Di Fabio: To these other platforms, so you can have a sort of worldwide distribution. 

[00:38:41] Patrick Donley: I wanted to talk just about future trends. Like, where do you see the whole world of self publishing going? What do you see unfolding? 

[00:38:49] Nick Di Fabio: Definitely growth. I think books are definitely a sort of recession proof space.

[00:38:55] Nick Di Fabio: People are always going to want to read books, especially physical books. That’s always going to be something that people are going to crave. The trend that I’m really bullish on for books is, as you mentioned, the sort of business card book, I think that’s a really good strategy to have in place.

[00:39:09] Nick Di Fabio: And the other massive trend I’m seeing is translations. There are voracious readers in a lot of different countries. Then, create these high quality books that are happy to buy them and also to multiple formats. I’m not sure if you’ve ever done this, but maybe it’s just me. I’m a little quirky, but I’ll buy the ebook and if I really like it, I’ll buy the paperback version.

[00:39:27] Nick Di Fabio: And in some cases, if I really like it, I’ll buy the audio version. So that is something that is available for people once they get into, as I mentioned, Amazon, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, that’s that translation piece is something that I think is really going to grow as we go into the future.

[00:39:42] Patrick Donley: Okay. Is the quality of self published books as high as it is as traditional publishing? I remember years ago, I did a NaNoWriMo, which is like a national novel writing month and thought about looking into publishing this really crappy novel that I wrote. And I studied a little bit about publishing and the knock at that time, this was several years ago, was that self published books are just like the quality is just not that good.

[00:40:09] Patrick Donley: So how is the quality compared to traditional publishing today? 

[00:40:13] Nick Di Fabio: Pretty good. Pretty close. Pretty close. I think that Amazon’s print on demand has come a long way. So one of the cool features of self publishing is you don’t actually have to carry any inventory, which is really cool. Yeah, here’s a little hot tip.

[00:40:25] Nick Di Fabio: Here’s a little hot tip. One of the opportunities is out there as well. Especially as your book starts to do well, you can start to explore doing things like doing physical products, versions of your books. What I mean by that is, Amazon FBA, for instance. So what you can do is you can start to even take your book quality to the next level and start to pre order some of your books from places, FBA suppliers, essentially to have that version as well.

[00:40:49] Nick Di Fabio: So I’m sorry, what is FBA? It’s fulfilled by Amazon. So if you go to amazon. com, You’ll see people have FBA, all toys and all sorts of things, basically. So FBA is another option for you where you’re pre ordering your book as maybe a traditional publishing house, to make sure that the quality is even to that next level.

[00:41:09] Nick Di Fabio: But this time you are sharing some inventory. However, having said that, though, honestly, the quality of the self published books is, you can do, matte, glossy, standard color, high quality, premium color. There’s lots of options for you when it comes to publishing these books. It can be quite impressive.

[00:41:26] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear a little bit about your academy, Publishing Profits Academy. How did that get started? Did you just have people start reaching out to you? I interviewed a guy that did a total of real estate investing and people started just reaching out to him and he was like taking calls all the time and it was the same calls over and over.

[00:41:43] Patrick Donley: So finally he created a master class. So I wanted to hear a little bit about your experience creating your academy. 

[00:41:50] Nick Di Fabio: So it got born out. I was happy to publish for a long time, but on my own and had this idea of building public. You hear that quite a bit. And what kind of spurred it for me was actually to help someone close to me build a publishing business.

[00:42:03] Nick Di Fabio: And they were, they needed some help with some things. So I helped them and I really enjoyed that. It was like, rewarding to help them that plus coupled with some things on YouTube. I’ve seen some people on YouTube talk about, in my opinion, some false information about folks on these low content journals and log books.

[00:42:18] Nick Di Fabio: And if you publish 1000 of them, my math is bad here, but a thousand of them at a dollar per, you make a thousand bucks a month sort of thing, whatever. And I’m vehemently against that approach. I think quality is the path to go. So I started creating content on Twitter and people flock to it.

[00:42:34] Nick Di Fabio: They’re flocking to it. And I was like, this is cool. And my wife was like, just go with it. Just go with it. People are interested in this topic. So then I was like, let me see if I can maybe just build lessons around How I’ve approached publishing by taking that sort of 80, 20 approach and making it no fluff.

[00:42:54] Nick Di Fabio: And yeah, here we are now over a hundred members later, everyone from 80 years old to 19 years old and growing rapidly and really enjoyable. I’m really, it’s really rewarding having people come to you, publish books, see that excitement. It’s really cool. 

[00:43:08] Patrick Donley: That is cool. And I’ve heard a lot of great reviews about the Academy.

[00:43:13] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear a little bit about how it’s structured. Do you have individual calls with you? What’s the cost? I just, I’m very curious actually for my own self. If I do this cost segregation book, maybe this is the way to go, just have you walk me through step by step. 

[00:43:27] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, so it’s funny.

[00:43:28] Nick Di Fabio: I’m new to this whole sort of education space. so I’m learning as I go, but the way I structure right now is that there is a sort of, so you get access to everything right away, number one. So there’s no drip feed. So you can access everything right away. There is a program checklist to follow. So it keeps you on track.

[00:43:46] Nick Di Fabio: And so how I do it is there’s. The biggest, sort of a welcome call is a niche review call, which we go into and it’s, 45 minutes, an hour where we not only go through your niche, but we also do a deep dive into, okay, how do we go about creating this book? so I’m a big believer in these calls to give some clear, direct action steps.

[00:44:06] Nick Di Fabio: What are the two to three things, three to five things we need to do some concrete tasks? I call them tasty tasks because you look at them, they’re so easy to do. So then from there, it’s accessible to me through weekly calls. Oftentimes I offer DM support as a community as well. So I’m very active in making sure people get their questions answered.

[00:44:25] Nick Di Fabio: I often share things. I’m still an active publisher. I think it’s important to be an active publisher. If you’re going to be able to teach these things. The cost ranges, programs range, usually around that 3, 000 range for about 12 month access, plus all those pieces I mentioned, and then it ranges from there, depending upon how much support you want.

[00:44:44] Nick Di Fabio: There’s even some cases where people are like, Nick, I’ve got more money than time. So can you help me do a done for you option? So I have that as well. So it ranges. 

[00:44:54] Patrick Donley: That’s cool. And I imagine, being a writer, publisher is a pretty little solitary journey. I imagine doing the coaching gets you interacting with more people.

[00:45:04] Patrick Donley: I know for myself, doing the podcast, I have the interviews, but a lot of it is very solitary. So I imagine teaching fulfills some Level of, I don’t know, just human interaction that we all need. 

[00:45:18] Nick Di Fabio: that’s been one of the huge benefits of this, because as you say, it was, I generally have a busy life with two kids and be married and such, but work wise though, it definitely is very solitary and adding this piece to the mix of having these calls of people from all over the world.

[00:45:33] Nick Di Fabio: I’m enjoying it. I’m really enjoying it. It definitely adds another sort of layer to life, which is, which has definitely been awesome. 

[00:45:42] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear, I’m looking at all those books behind you. I wanted to, and you’re a book lover. I’m a book lover. I just wanted to get into just some books that have made a huge impact on you lately.

[00:45:52] Patrick Donley: or not even lately, like just books that have changed the course and direction of your life. 

[00:45:57] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah, man, this has been so many, I think the one book that comes to mind right off the hop. Is the 50th law, Robert Greene, and I remember listening to that book. Those are my 6 AM days. I come back home, sleep from seven to noon, like maybe four or five hours of sleep, and I grab my headphones and go for a walk in downtown Vancouver, listening to that book.

[00:46:21] Nick Di Fabio: And this book was just Robert Greene’s voice, this idea about death, this idea about opportunities and just the 50 cent story was just so inspiring. That book really pushed me towards leaving that sort of comfy job because it was a salary based job to go on my own. 

[00:46:40] Patrick Donley: Have you read his other books too?

[00:46:41] Patrick Donley: The 48 Laws of Power was like, what, 50 Cent? And a lot of those guys, ready to make it in the hip hop world, right? I think it was actually banned at one point in prisons, 

[00:46:52] Nick Di Fabio: Yes. Laws of power, 33 strategies of war. He’s got so many good books. Mastery is also good. Yeah, definitely a big fan of Robert Green.

[00:46:59] Nick Di Fabio: Definitely a big influence. And then related to the 50th law book was on the shortness of life by Seneca, this book right here. So once every few months, I’ll actually read that. I’ll go to a coffee shop or something. I’ll reread that story. That’s part of the essay. It just really puts things in perspective from daily tasks that we all have to do and fill up our time.

[00:47:18] Nick Di Fabio: And then. In terms of, I’ll give you two more books that have been practical ones. The other one I forgot about was the slow productivity. That’s probably the most recent one that’s had the biggest impact on me. Just this idea of. Really honing in on your missions and projects, limiting them and also how to.

[00:47:36] Nick Di Fabio: How to approach productivity on a practical level and so I think that those are a good selection of books. There were definitely a few others that have impacted me for sure. Built to sell John Warlow was a really good 1 so that book was really easy to read. And this idea of. That mentality of putting yourself in a position to have this asset to maybe create this asset to, to sell it.

[00:47:56] Nick Di Fabio: Should you choose, I think it is a really good approach.

[00:47:58] Patrick Donley: So yeah, you did a great thread that I saw this morning in a book by Napoleon Hill called Outwitting the Devil that I wanted to touch on. It goes into what, a common question is like on the podcast is what holds people back from pursuing something like this?

[00:48:15] Patrick Donley: And I would say, I want to talk about that thread a little bit. So tell me a little bit about the book. Napoleon Hill was the guy that wrote Think and Grow rich for those that don’t know, but talk a little bit about outwitting the devil and then a little more go into depth about that thread that you wrote, cause it had a lot of value to it.

[00:48:32] Nick Di Fabio: Yeah. So basically this book was considered too controversial when I first came out, right? And so it was not available until I believe 2011, if I get the dates correct. And it has these pieces to it, right? like the way Napoleon Hill writes, about defining the devil within, right?

[00:48:49] Nick Di Fabio: Procrastination. And it talks about just, making the most of the time that you have here. And it’s a very clever book the way it’s written and that’s the dialogue. And so for me. That book was really helpful just with those fundamentals, right? Procrastination, fear, all those things that we all experience at one point or another.

[00:49:11] Nick Di Fabio: Heck, I still do. I still, there’s still perhaps moves I should be making in my business that are scaring me, but that’s actually, I think a good sign. So I just, I, that book was really monumental and just really builds upon the whole idea of thinking, growing rich, and then maybe more of that, holding yourself back ass, but getting over that piece.

[00:49:33] Patrick Donley: I listened to it years ago. I came across it on YouTube, I think, and it was on there and I listened to it. In the end, like what are some of the steps to outwit the devil and the devil is like your own negative self talk and limiting self beliefs in a lot of ways. 

[00:49:47] Nick Di Fabio: It’s that, it’s having that face, avoiding procrastination, understanding your purpose is really key as well.

[00:49:55] Nick Di Fabio: I think that’s really one of the keys as well. And I think on the day there’s this, Napoleon talks about this a lot. This is the subconscious mind piece, right? Really understanding that is an asset for you. That’s an asset you can use. And I think that’s something that, in my opinion, if you can be aware of those things and then work to make progress in those areas, that can make you unstoppable.

[00:50:17] Patrick Donley: Nick, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you sharing all of this. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you wanted to discuss at all? 

[00:50:25] Nick Di Fabio: One last thing, because I know sometimes people, when they think about doing new things, get bogged down a little bit. I think the one thing I want to touch base on briefly is just productivity.

[00:50:33] Nick Di Fabio: And what I have found, one of the things I found to work is this idea of limiting your missions, right? So maybe professionally, two, three things max. And then limiting your projects is going to be a game changer. One to three products at a time. And when, because products have overhead, right? So if you can limit your projects to one to three, and when that project lands on your desk, do all you can to either complete it or bring it to a natural stopping point.

[00:50:59] Nick Di Fabio: That is an excellent formula for, I think, being productive and also enjoying what you do and not being overwhelmed. 

[00:51:05] Patrick Donley: I like that a lot. I’m interviewing Scott Young tomorrow, and he teams up with Cal Newport that you mentioned in a couple online classes, and one is on the power of focus, I believe.

[00:51:16] Patrick Donley: Productivity, things like that. And I was listening to one of their interviews. They said, you really can only do one or one, maybe two missions at the most. Like a cow is a professor and an author. He said that is about the most you can do. And then Scott has this idea of a project based life, which is pick your projects and just crank them out and, don’t finish, don’t stop until you’re finished.

[00:51:42] Patrick Donley: I think it’s a really good concept and a good way to think about life and almost like a portfolio kind of life that develops over time. So for our listeners that want to find out more about you, learn about your academy, what’s the best way for them to do that? 

[00:51:56] Nick Di Fabio: A couple of ways. Number one is I’m very active on Twitter currently.

[00:51:58] Nick Di Fabio: So Nick Di Fabio on Twitter, number two article publishing profits. io, publishing profits. io is the site. it’s going under some upgrades right now, but those are the two best places to check things out and go from there. Cool. Nick, I really appreciate your time today. My pleasure. Patrick.

[00:52:16] Nick Di Fabio: Absolute pleasure to meet you. 

[00:52:17] Patrick Donley: Okay, folks, that’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real soon. 

[00:52:23] Outro: Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app, and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.