The Book World Is Changing: Mark Cuban Creates A Best Seller Out Of Some Blog Posts

from the catch-up-with-the-times dept

A few folks have sent over this great interview with Mark Cuban discussing the fact that he has a best selling book on his hands, one that was put together quickly, mostly from old blog posts, sold as a $2.99 ebook online, with Mark handling most of the promotion himself. There are a bunch of things in the interview, but what comes across loud and clear is just how obsolete the old way of publishing is these days. In an era where it still takes years for books to come out, and almost a year between an author handing in their final version and publication, Cuban tells a very different story:

Of all your business ventures, the profit margin for this book is unmatched. Much of the book already had appeared as blog posts, and the production, promotion and distribution costs were negligible ...

Yes. That is what made this approach so appealing. I didn't have to spend a ton of time writing and editing, and Scott Waxman at Diversion Books was very accommodating in allowing me to make edits, literally up to hours before the book was released.

More importantly, I didn't have to commit to doing a book tour and a rigorous interview schedule because I controlled all the economics. I try to always be a good business partner. If a publisher had made a big investment in me, I would have felt immensely obligated to make sure they made money.

Instead, I can work to my schedule and work almost exclusively from my phone and laptop to do all the promotional work.

Before anyone says anything, we're certainly not saying that just anyone can do what Mark did. Given his fame, success, reputation and following, all of that played into the level of success here. And he's willing to admit that. But that doesn't mean that there aren't key lessons here for the publishing industry. The idea of being able to produce smaller books, much more quickly is really quite appealing. And the legacy publishers still just aren't getting it.

Filed Under: blogs, business models, ebooks, mark cuban, publishing, timeline