YouSaid · the spoken record

Charlie Hoehn

lines on the record: 116
first: 2024-12-10
most recent: 2024-12-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Nobody Well, like at the end of the day, there's humans on the other end being like, should this be on the list or not? I think it was Dave Ramsey who sold 60,000 copies at his lunch and didn't hit the list.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How it's for them is like people gaming exactly. Exactly, so they need to have reputable choices and they like they were sued by the author of the exorcist years ago. It was a big lawsuit. He said you're withholding because I'm outselling, I think, I can't remember his name, but he was selling tons of copies and they won the lawsuit because they're like, it's an editorial product. It is not a pure sales list. We get to decide. And so political things can come into consideration with the New York Times and them curating. Are you a minority? Are you a doctor? Like these are actual factors that influence whether you're on the list allegedly. I don't want to say like, I guess no vacuum.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“four hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of books. That's a lot. Now you have to hand that money to a service provider who will then funnel it through certain retailers who will make it look like they aren't bulk orders and that their geographically distributed across the United States. They need to couple those 15,000 copies with as many individual addresses as they possibly can and then send those books to those people. That alone is just ridiculous, right? Because you have to communicate like these are legitimate sales. There are other service providers and I'm reluctant, I'll say Rory Vaden. He's great. Like he knows what he's doing. I'm reluctant to mention other service providers because this space of will help you launch your book and hit the New York Times is filled with people who will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very difficult to do. You can, but it's very difficult. And it's just a pain. Like there are service providers out there who will funnel your bulk orders. Let's say you do pull it off, right? You sold 15,000 copies, right? So you have sold.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. There's validation. But I would argue that like. It's so let's get into the logistics before we get into the psychology, I guess, of it. So I hate hitting the New York Times bestseller list and how much effort and logistical headache that comes with it. You have to sell if you're going in an average time of year, anywhere between probably 10 to 20,000 copies. A safe place to bet is 50. Less than a thousand. Most”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the joke I make is it'd be easier for you to do six months of therapy instead. Because a lot of I want to hit the list is at its core. I want to be validated as super legit. I want to be picked. You know, it's similar to the traditional publishing in some ways for some authors, not all authors, right? But some want to just be picked by the tastemakers and say you're good. There is.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've helped authors hit the list in various capacities a little bit, some like very intensively. I've had authors come up to me and say, my goal with this book is to hit the New York number one New York Times, sell a million copies, and get on Oprah's couch. You're going to get to.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As long as it's not like a self-worth issue, like one of my best friends for a long time, he would reject compliments because he was like, you're wrong, you know, like that's not. And so now he has to like repeat the compliment, sit with it. And, but yeah, that's not your case.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the wrong time. Yeah. I mean, you've seen with kids Right, like you're a dad. So do kids flourish under negativity criticism or under reinforced positivity? It's obviously a balance carried and stick, but like if it's all stick, it stops to work.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, everybody has. Yeah, so it is a common thing. I don't want to act like you're completely normal in the front that you pay more attention to the negative than the positive. Are you that way in like sports and stuff? Are you only negative, only negative?”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“True, but our brains unfortunately are hardwired to pay attention to the negative, right? So a power cleanser. What is an email that you were like stoked to get from a reader?”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of books, yeah, especially if you've written one that actually impacts those people, that they actually read, that they actually implement and use to get real tangible visual change in their life. I mean, that's what ultimately propels these books to do well.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A hundred thousand, that I would probably put at ninety, I'm just making this up. I don't know the exact, but like 98, 99% for sure.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, most books do not sell. There's a great article called No One Buys Books, and it breaks down what the Department of Justice forced all the big publishers to reveal their sales numbers on books. And it was like, oh, wow, this is shocking. These publishers are taking the funds from book royalties that they publish 50 years ago to fund all these little projects, right? And the vast majority of them don't sell a dang copy. Part of that is authors neglect marketing and sales and they just kind of like they don't do it in the right sequence or whatever. Other parts of it is people didn't even want those books like the market doesn't demand them and the book wasn't good enough to take off on its own. And so it's a mix of variables. But yeah, like the average book. Most authors don't do it. So it would be a thousand for 90%.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's go, dude. Yeah. Like, hit me with your best stuff right here. If you want to spend some time pointing out the stakes of how important this is, cool. Like let's talk about that and I'll pay attention. But like I'm on this journey, I signed up. Let's go. Don't make me work for it.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They'll bury the best stuff in the back of the book. And it's like, what percentage of your readers are even getting to that They'll start with theory of like, here's how we got here. You know, here's the history of this topic. Can you believe the history? Well, guess what? Like, I'm trying to change my life. And I'm busy. And I have right.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And then the first story in chapter one should be the encapsulation of the message that you're trying to get across. It should be the most memorable. It should be the thing that you're like, oh, yeah, of course. And so if you look at great TED talks, Simon Sinek, if you just watch the first two minutes of his start with why, he does a dead simple draws three circles that anybody, a five year old could remember and then draw and show their friends like instantly gets the point across. Similarly, that's what you can aspire to with prescriptive nonfiction. What I think James did so well in atomic habits is he frontloads the book with the best stuff. And a lot of authors make the mistake, both self-published and traditional”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He starts his intro with a general recommendation I'd like to make, which is put them in the most intense moment of your life, basically. Put them in a situation where they're like, oh my gosh, like you grabbed them by the throat. And it's like, this was a personal thing that I went through. That's the introduction. That's an opening hook. In his case, I think he got hit in the face with a baseball bat. And he was, he had to do like fly for life or something like that. I can't remember. So you're like, whoa, okay. But that's just the introduction. The whole purpose of the introduction is just to sell you on reading the book. It's the sales page convincing you this will be worth my time, which is you've got smart readers. The thing that they're going to value the most is, is this worth my time?”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up front, 100%. You are correct. It's the YouTube hook. It's the retention graph. It's the exact same with books. And so with a book, if you assume that maybe 60% of readers are going to read the introduction, 100% of people who open the book are going to read the first page of this book. Can I get them to read past this first page and sear the message in the best possible story that's the embodiment of what I'm trying to communicate with this book? Can I sear that into their brain so that they can recall it five years later? James Clear with Atomic Habits, which is a great example because sold 15 plus million copies over the last few years, been number one on Amazon overall for five years. Years”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Case you're doing the exact same thing with your editing, you're editing it in such a way that they are not only staying engaged, they're taking action and implementing when you want them to implement. They are highlighting stuff. Like it feels important, they're, they're maybe even taking pictures of stuff. It's like you have these key points that you know similar to software when the reader gets here I know they will do this”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Takeaways segue. And you can open the chapter with a hook, or I'm sorry, with a quote that can come before the hook if you want. You can pepper quotes throughout. It doesn't matter. But when you're writing, yeah, follow that formula. There are other slight modifications, but generally speaking prescriptive non-fiction books tend to fall within that structure very consistently. It's in editing where you can make the chapter really sing. And so like we were talking about video before this, right? Similar in video, it's shooting in, okay, I want this act first. I'll shoot in this next act, this next act. Just because you have the structure of the story that you're telling in the acts does not mean people want to watch that video, right? You now need to edit it to retain their attention and keep them going through it. And then in a bookstore.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you should lean into a formulaic structure for chapters when you're writing it. And I want to differentiate between writing and editing. Writing is getting the clay on the table. Editing is shaping it into the sculpture, right? And so when you're writing, yes, lean into this structure. You have a hook. Something that grabs the reader, usually a story or a bold statement that feels novel or even dangerous, right? Then you have your thesis, which is. Making up all the points that you're trying to get across. And this can go on for a long time. This is the meat of the chapter. And then its key takeaways. And segue into the next chapter. If you follow those five beats, like you have a solid chapter.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brown's production style where she actually will come up with like her talking points and rent an Airbnb, bring her girlfriends and a bunch of wine and be like, can I just like present this to you for a day or two? And then they talk about it. They give her feedback. And she's like, oh, okay, that works. Similar to stand-up comedians, right? And so I think the great structures are co-created rather than isolated by the author created in isolation.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get that if you're guessing. You said it yourself. You have the curse of knowledge, of expertise. And so you're so close to your topic. What is remarkable to you is confusing to who you're trying to reach and what's boring and trite to you is fascinating to who you're trying to reach. And so if you're not having this be a an interactive communal process of producing a book, you're shortchanging yourself. And so this is another like common assumption that people have. We all have the idea of Hemingway and J.K. Rowling in our heads of like, this is how to make a book where they're hold up alone. They're being a tortured genius grinding through. And like, yes, that is how you can make a book. If you're a really good writer, you can do that. But I think people should lean more toward Brennan.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, it's easier, and so I'd imagine it's pretty similar in like songwriting, right? If you don't know the concept of a bridge and a chorus and like all these beats, and you're just told, write a song. You're probably going to write a terrible song. But if you have the structure that you can lean into, it will at least be more representative of what humans process. Similar with stories, right? You talk to a storytelling expert recently. Story structure is always the same pretty much. It's once upon a time and every day until one day, and because that and because of that and because of that, until finally, and ever since that day, right? Or it's the three-act structure, you know, climax resolution, all that stuff. I think the best structures quite simply are what the reader wants, what the reader wants and needs. And so you can't”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dude, I'm sorry, your publisher screwed you because there's no structure here. The table of contents was literally like it looked like an afterthought, like a thing. Here's what you fill in after you're all done. It's the exact opposite. It'd be like, we're building a house, so I want you to start picking out light fixtures and like your furniture. It's like, what are you doing? Like, no. Your publisher made a very bad move that wasted you a bunch of time. And now we have to figure out how to structure this. And like that takes almost as much time as just rewriting the thing.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good question. Well, I'll say to that point. Had an author come to me recently and he was told like, hey, the publishing house that I'm working with, they gave me this as like the template to write my book. He said, I feel like I don't know if it's a good book or not. I'm too close to it. What's your take on this? And I looked at it within a few pages, I was like,”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Potentially a chapter. The table of contents is this is the menu of the book. Do you want to eat here or not? If they say hell yes to everything, you have a really strong book on your hands. And it makes the writing so much easier after that because you're confident that you can help the person you're trying to reach and it doesn't feel like guesswork.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The three big milestones that help them go from zero to hero. Within each of those parts you have the sub steps, right? These little things that they have to do during that major milestone to ensure that they get there. Or you have questions that they're going to ask during those phases. So you take your table of contents and then you spend a bunch of time talking to real target readers showing them your table of contents before you write a word. And you say which of these is a hell yes? Which of these is an which of these is like not relevant? And that's the data you gather on early. And so like bloggers do this by writing articles and they see, oh, that one kind of, you know, that's a headline and then that content is really strong. Cool.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it tends to be like the big milestones, they'll be two to four of those typically. So if you look in table of contents of best-selling books, they're typically divided into two to four parts, soft and three. So I just, as a general rule.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is like the thing I geek out on a lot because I think this is the thing that if you over index on structure, you'll be in a really good spot. I can send a self-published author confidently off to do their thing if they over index on structure. So what I mean by that is you should be spending a ton of your time. You don't have to decide on a title till like the very end, really. You can be playing around with it forever. But you should not write a word until you have solidified your table of contents. Your table of contents is the thing. It is the structure, the makeup, the foundation of your book. And so the exercise that I like to do with the table of contents, how do I take my one reader, my perfect target reader from zero to hero? What are the exact steps?”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Precisely. Yeah. You want to get that data. You want to test your assumptions. With stand-up comedians, they'll sit and write a joke, right? And then they'll be like, that's pretty good. And then they'll go perform it in front of 10 audiences. And they're like, oh, my assumptions were wrong. This is off just enough to And I think the title needs to be treated with that same kind of respect. It can't just be a, oh, I like that. Like, no, you need to test it.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working on a book that I was trying to figure out should I call this paid to play or fuckwork. I pulled on Picfu and Fwork performed pretty well. But when I dove into the data, all of them had the wrong expectations for the book. That can kind of be solved with a subtitle, but not really. It's showing that oh all these people want like a funny book about venting about how much they hate work I'm not writing that book that's not what this is at all if that's their expectations going into this that's going to equal negative reviews because”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I lay out, which is like FOMO, fun to say, memorable. It's like seven criteria. And I rate them all on a scale of one to ten. I plug it into, I kind of made my own GPT book title score. So now I just punch in here's all the title ideas and it'll spit out. And here are the top ones. It's not perfect, right? It's not a guarantee, but it gives me some sense of like, okay, these ones are strong. These ones are weak. Anything that is under a score of 50, it tends to be like, that's probably not going to perform well. And then after I do that, I put them through pickfoo.com, P-I-C-K-F-U.com. And that allows you to do real quick testing with audiences and polling and to see their feedback on why they like a title or why they dislike a title.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is there a phrase that you're constantly using with clients for your book? Do you find yourself constantly leaning on this one phrase? And that's like the unlock phrase for them. That's the one that they're like, I always return to this. Okay, that's memorable. Good. The process I use, I have like a list of criteria.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My process, I'll tell you after I tell this quick story about Tim Ferris. So Tim and I worked together for years and one of the stories he told about the four-hour work week, which I would still argue is in the top five titles of all time in the nonfiction space. He did tons of testing. He tested like, I don't know, 30 to 50 different title ideas. A lot of them, he'll admit, were bad, stuff like the chameleon millionaire, you know, drug dealing for fun and profit. And he tested them at the time on Google Ads. And so he would just see which had the highest click-through in the four hour work week, I think, had a 2x over the second place highest. So he had some data to stand on. Other ways you can test is.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You say that. Yeah Testing titles in person and saying, like, have you read this and watching the person's reaction? Like, do their eyes glaze over? Are they curious? Are they leaning forward? These are important things that you kind of have to measure before. Title is the thing that you should take a lot of time, invest resources in figuring out and gathering some data. Is this going to be the best option?”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A book that I wrote is played away. I originally was going to my working title was like How I Cured My Anxiety, which was like saying that is a mouthful. It sounds like an attack if it's recommended to you. You ought to read how I cured my anxiety. It's like, whoa, you're making”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tip of the tongue thing that comes up that gets triggered regularly in conversation. This dovetails a little bit with what you've written about or the problem you're attempting to solve, right? So an example we used was like meeting suck by Cameron Harold would always come up, even if you didn't necessarily like the book, people would complain about meetings. Meetings were a constant in companies. And so this book would just kind of organically come up as like, oh, have you read, you ought to read this? And it would just naturally be recommended. Authors also kind of need to take into consideration what are the tip of the tongue conversations that are going to be happening and how does this sound when it's being recommended. So a title can't be embarrassing to say either. Like play it away.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book because it's virtually all books that sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to do a lot of things. When a person says it, it has to evoke curiosity, FOMO, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it's intrigue or even like repulsion in some cases. It has to be fun and easy to say. So like I always struggle with that FBI book that I mentioned. I always forget the title. I cannot remember it, but it doesn't really matter because there's a story that I'm telling with it. But with the title, it's kind of like a, it should be. Almost”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if you're wanting it to be too derivative of everyone else, it just kind of blends into the sea. So I think great covers often are iconic and bold in that they're claiming the most Courageous representation visually that the author could possibly put forward.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is again a conversation more with the designer, but I think they tend to be iconic in that it is bold in differentiated. A lot of cover designers find themselves being given creative direction of like, I just want it to look like that person's cover. Right. I just want it to feel like that. And that's useful on some levels of like, hey, kind of stay within these guardrails. It's also helpful to give a designer like, hey, these are covers that I hate. There's kind of genres of cover design. You'll see kind of Malcolm Gladwell type, rational optimist type where it's all white. And there's like one little image and then the rest is like kind of an elegant serif font, right? That communicates this is an intellectual book. So you can give them kind of guidelines to stay with and to communicate. This is that type of book.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, let the book was so good that it ended up reaching a lot of people, but like it was for the target reader and they were like, okay, this is exactly what all military presentations look like this level of design. A worthwhile expense that instantly communicates, are you legit or not? Is this a good book? It covers a direct representation of all quality inside. Yes.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awful cover, but it's actually aligned because he wrote the book for people in the military. And people who are trying to.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A thousand X. And I'm not saying a cover will make or break a book. That's not true. The book has to stand alone as a good product, regardless of the cover. So I don't want to sound too cosmetic. Yes. And it's got to evoke the right feelings from the target reader. Like, and it should be aligned with the story of the book and everything. There's a cover by, and I think he was in the FBI or CIA, but he was basically a guy who would build rapport with people in other countries and flip them, like make them into informants. So it was a very social or very specialized social skill to be able to do that. Very difficult. And so he wrote a book, I think it's called It's Not All About You, or it's not all about me. And this cover looks like it was created in Microsoft Word. And it's the classic like white 3D clay, you know, image with very basic arrows pointing out from it.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was Ship Kid, the guy who did the Jurassic Park cover effectively said something like it's a haiku all on one page or something, but it's basically the embodiment of the entire book within an image that you instantly understand what the book is trying to communicate in a way that compels you to pick it up and read the dang thing, which like when I say it sounds like kind of mechanical because I'm not a designer. I don't pretend to be one, but I've talked to enough designers to realize like this is a real legit specialty. And it's similar to YouTube where the right thumbnail versus average mediocre thumbnail that's clearly been created in Canva by the producer of the video. The right thumbnail outperforms.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yeah. So this would probably be a conversation you'd want to have with like pique ourselves who did Adam Grant's covers, James Clear's covers. He's brilliant or Zoe Norvell. She created a great site called I Need a Book Cover. And it's just a directory of the top cover designers in the world who consistently work with the Big Five publishers. So they're specialists in cover design, not in general design like they just do covers.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To begin, uh, I think there's a lot of places they go wrong from the reader's perspective, I would say they typically don't have a good cover. And so they immediately kind of shoot themselves in the foot. Traditional publishers will typically put out solid covers. When you're self-publishing and you've invested a bunch of time and money and you haven't made any money on the work and it comes time to putting a face on the thing, A lot of self published authors are like, I'll go to Upwork or I'll hit up my designer friend who puts together PowerPoints and I'll pay them $500. And it always results in something unremarkable. You have to pay an artist a book covered designer specialist to create the boldest thing that you possibly can”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gosh dip. Yeah, there was you, and I think Michael Simmons did a course on mental models. And it was like, I'm grateful you guys did that. Yeah. Munger, all he did was pour Charlie's almanac. I feel bad even saying that because he's so ridiculously great. I so wish that he had done that while he was live.”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did you actually talk to him? Yeah, amazing. So, just a very quick side note that I don't mean to cut you off. One of my good friends' moms was the CEO of John's Man Bill, and so she would hang out with Warren Buffett and stuff. And I was like begging her, please tell Charlie Mugger when he was live to publish a book on mental model”
2024-12-10 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT