ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES

I don’t love the idea that we thank and acknowledge the friends and family who helped with a book but merely list our sources. For this book, I wanted to take the time to individually acknowledge and credit my sources, instead of listing them in some boring bibliography because they helped make this book a reality. Before I get to that, I’d also like to thank my partners at Brass Check, as well as our clients, especially Tim Ferriss, Robert Greene, and James Altucher, whose books and advice served as case studies. I want to thank my researcher, Hristo Vassilev, my editor, Niki Papadopoulos; thank you to Nils Parker and to my agent, Steve Hanselman. Thank you Portfolio for giving me the space and opportunity to create my own perennial sellers. Thank you to my wife, Samantha, for dealing with the piles of books all over the house and for my tendency to get lost inside them. I’ve been able to thank my pet goats in previous books, but now it’s time to take it up a notch and thank my pet donkeys. Buddy and Sugar, I am watching you out the upstairs window as I write this. I’d thank my son, Clark, for his help, but to be perfectly honest he did not do anything to make this book possible.

Introduction

I owe a debt to Cyril Connolly, who served as the major breakthrough of this book and pivoted me away from a typical marketing book. The quotes about James Salter and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn come from the back cover descriptions of their books. The quote about Bob Dylan comes from this CNN piece: cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/Music/05/23/dylan/. Here is a Wall Street Journal article on The Shawshank Redemption’s perennial success: wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304536104579560021265554240. Nils Parker found out about Cire Trudon and sent it my way. Nassim Taleb discusses the Lindy effect in his book Antifragile, and I also read the article “Lindy’s Law” in The New Republic from June 1964. I’d known about Ted Turner’s brilliant play with MGM but was reminded of it by a reader named Zach Grogan, who sent me a passage from The Lion of Hollywood. My editor sent me the news about catalog albums outselling new releases, which can be seen in this Verge article: theverge.com/2016/1/22/10816404/2015-album-sales-trends-vinyl-catalog-streaming. The data on Tucker Max’s book comes from Tucker, and I owe him a great deal for giving me my start—same too for Dov Charney.

Part I

Thanks to Derek Halpern and Pat Flynn, who helped kick off the Twitter discussion that opens this part. All quotes from Robert Greene come from an interview we did in 2015. Paul Graham’s quote comes from this tweet: twitter.com/paulg/status/630132481732120576. The Sarah Silverman exchange is taken from her great appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Casey Neistat’s quote comes from his vlog (youtube.com/caseyneistatofficial) and then later a discussion we had. The line from Austin Kleon is from a tweet and newspaper blackout poem he did in 2015 (twitter.com/austinkleon/status/623940649025302528). You can watch Elon Musk discuss eating glass here: youtu.be/1NeqRhgtC1o?t=42m51s and find Warren Beatty’s line about vomiting in this New York Times profile (nytimes.com/2016/10/30/movies/warren-beatty-rules-dont-apply.html). The Drake lyrics come from his song “Tuscan Leather” (and I owe thanks to his manager, Tony Hernandez, for the support). You can find more about Alexander Hamilton’s writing style on page 250 of Ron Chernow’s biography. The Stefan Zweig quote is in The World of Yesterday. The quote from Peter Thiel comes from his book Zero to One. The wonderful history of Star Wars is detailed in Cass Sunstein’s book The World According to Star Wars, and the quotes from Rick Rubin come from his episode on the Tim Ferriss podcast (though we also had lunch in 2015—thank you, Neil Strauss—and discussed the same ideas). I’ve eaten at Clifton’s Cafeteria many times and must thank them for the food. Joey Roth’s design philosophy can be found in his 2009 interview with Boing Boing: boingboing.net/2009/10/19/joey-roth-on-design.html. The quote on On the Road comes from this article on NPR: npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11709924. One of the creativity studies referenced comes from 538.com, and thank you to Scott Barry Kaufman for agreeing to be interviewed. John Boyd’s drawdown period can be found in Robert Coram’s biography of the great man. Here’s the piece where I found out about Frank Lucas’s process: nymag.com/nymag/features/3649/#print. Den of Geek has a great piece on the early beginnings of Pixar movies here: denofgeek.com/movies/pixar/36648/the-early-versions-of-pixar-film-stories. Brian Koppelman has told his Rounders story many times, but one version can be found on his episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast. I owe my wife for buying Worms Eat My Garbage, and the Robert Evans quote comes from his autobiography. Paul Graham’s essay is here: paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html. Stephen King’s quote about the ideal reader is from his book On Writing. Kurt Vonnegut’s quote comes from his eight tips on how to write a great story, narrated here: youtube.com/watch?v=nmVcIhnvSx8. You can find the John Steinbeck quote here: theparisreview.org/interviews/4156/john-steinbeck-the-art-of-fiction-no-45-continued-john-steinbeck. Craig Newmark’s quote comes from our e-mail interview done in 2015. Jon Favreau’s quotes come from his interview with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast, and Albert Brooks’s quote is taken from his interview with Judd Apatow for Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy. Chigozie Obioma’s piece can be read here: themillions.com/2015/06/the-audacity-of-prose.html. The numbers on Slayer’s sales come from the book Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Elizabeth Wurtzel’s quote is from her short book Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood. Stephen King’s “darlings” line is from On Writing. Robert McKee was nice enough to answer a few questions via email from me in 2015. I cannot recommend Pressfield’s The War of Art highly enough.

Part II

The scene from John Fante’s Ask the Dust is beautiful, and it remains one of my favorite works of fiction ever (thank you to Neil for turning me on to him). The biographical details about John Fante come from the biography Full of Life and basically everything about him ever written—my appetite for him is insatiable. Stats on YouTube are here: tubefilter.com/2015/07/26/youtube-400-hours-content-every-minute/ and stats on books published are here (bowker.com/news/2014/Traditional-Print-Book-Production-Dipped-Slightly-in-2013.html). I recommend this Jonathan Mahler article on Harper Lee’s editor: nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html; and this Rolling Stone piece about the creation of Adele’s 25: rollingstone.com/music/news/adele-inside-her-private-life-and-triumphant-return-20151103. I discovered Neil Gaiman’s writing rules from this post by Maria Popova: brainpickings.org/2012/09/28/neil-gaiman-8-rules-of-writing/. Y Combinator’s FAQ can be read here: ycombinator.com/faq/. James Altucher wrote a case study about writing, Choose Yourself, which you can read here: jamesaltucher.com/2013/07/how-to-self-publish-bestseller/. Max Martin’s car test is detailed in The Song Machine by John Seabrook, and the Rolling Stones story is told in Rich Cohen’s biography of the band, The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones. (James Hetfield discussed his version of the test on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2016.) I’ve written more about Amazon’s internal process in Growth Hacker Marketing. Brian Koppelman and Seth Godin discussed genre on Koppelman’s podcast in 2016. Favreau is quoted again from the WTF podcast. The Justin’s Peanut Butter quote came from a talk by Justin Gold at the Two12 conference in Boulder, Colorado, in 2016. Bret Taylor tells the story of Google Maps here: firstround.com/review/take-on-your-competition-with-these-lessons-from-google-maps/. Steve Jobs’s six-figure logo story is in the Walter Isaacson bio, and Marissa Mayer’s design testing is here: nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html. The fascinating story of Salinger’s pulp cover is listed here: newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/pulps-big-moment. You can read about the rebranding of Edge of Tomorrow here: variety.com/2014/film/news/tom-cruise-edge-of-tomorrow-gets-repositioned-as-live-die-repeat-on-home-video-1201283383/. Letters of Note has the Weinstein letter here: lettersofnote.com/2010/01/youre-boring.html. The Seneca essay referenced is On Tranquility. The story of Snapper turning down Walmart is here: fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart (though sadly they later reversed course). The Bruce Springsteen story comes from his book Songs, and Chuck Klosterman’s quote is from his book But What If We’re Wrong? Nabokov’s quote is from Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940–1977 (in both cases I owe Austin Kleon for the heads-up). Jeff Goins’s quote is from his forthcoming book, which I was lucky enough to work on. Kanye West’s lyric is from the song “Run This Town.” Churchill’s struggle with writing and releasing is detailed in the first volume of The Last Lion, an epic masterpiece.

Part III

The Peter Thiel quote is from Zero to One. The Honoré de Balzac quote is from Lost Illusions. Herb Cohen is quoted by his son, Rich Cohen, in The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones. “Marketing is anything that gets and keeps customers” appears in my book Growth Hacker Marketing. The Ian McEwan quote appears here: post-gazette.com/ae/books/2013/03/24/A-conversation-with-Ian-McEwan-on-the-hows-and-whys-of-fiction/stories/201303240168. Jason Fried was nice enough to be interviewed via phone in 2015. Byrd Leavell, who has represented a few projects I have ghostwritten or marketed, answered some of my questions via email in 2015. The Ries and Trout quote appears in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Ben Horowitz’s line is from his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. The Facebook statistic is from here: facebook.com/business/news/Organic-Reach-on-Facebook. Shawn Coyne told me the story of their launch of The Warrior Ethos and provided the numbers. You can read about Bonobos’s early days here: medium.com/@dunn/get-one-thing-right-89390244c553. The McKinsey study mentioned is here: mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/a_new_way_to_measure_word-of-mouth_marketing. Jonah Berger’s data is here: jonahberger.com/the-secret-science-behind-big-data-and-word-of-mouth/. I must thank Milt Deherrera for telling me about the Centralia coal-mine fire. Seth Godin’s “sell one” comes from Tribes, changethis.com/manifesto/show/50.01.Tribes. I owe Austin Kleon again for the Padget Powell quote, and you can read the interview here: believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=interview_powell. The Truman Capote quotes are from Capote: A Biography and Life magazine’s February 18, 1966, edition. I was made aware of the W. Somerset Maugham quote about posterity in Chuck Klosterman’s But What If We’re Wrong?, and I found a slightly different version. The story of 50 Cent is in The 50th Law, and I heard it directly from Robert Greene’s interviews when I was a researcher. The “addicts” line is from a conversation I had with Shawn Coyne. Brady Dale, a writer I edit at the Observer, got those gems from Hugh Howey—the full interview is here: observer.com/2016/03/hugh-howey-wool-amazonkindle/. Tim Ferriss’s quotes come from here: tim.blog/2013/05/02/a-few-thoughts-on-content-creation-monetization-and-strategy/. You can read the “Pretty Lights” story on Hypebot: hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/12/pretty-lights-gave-his-music-away-now-has-a-grammy-nomination-should-you-do-the-same.html. Paulo Coelho’s thoughts on piracy are here: nytimes.com/2011/09/27/books/paulo-coelho-discusses-aleph-his-new-novel.html, and his Facebook post is here: facebook.com/paulocoelho/photos/a.241365541210.177295.11777366210/10153068240216211/. The restaurant with the stolen pen is Texas Grill in Bastrop, Texas. Cory Doctorow discusses piracy here: publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/55513-cory-doctorow-how-writers-lose-when-piracy-gets-harder.html. George Ouzounian (aka Maddox) was nice enough to do an email interview in 2016—my high school self never would have thought that would be possible. Andrew Meieran of Clifton’s also did an email interview with me. My publisher argued with me quite a bit about Amazon’s claim regarding ebook pricing, but I think the data is quite clear (price elasticity is also a fundamental law of economics). For more data, this Observer story is good: http://observer.com/2015/09/do-e-books-earn-more-money-at-lower-prices. The LA Times has argued against it (http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-amazon-e-book-numbers-20140731-story.html), but I think they come up short. Wrigley’s price increase is here: articles.orlandosentinel.com/1986-03-12/business/0200420078_1_chewing-gum-chewing-gum-wrigley. The New Yorker has a fascinating story on pulp fiction: newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/pulps-big-moment. Raymond Chandler’s quote about the overestimation of the importance of literature to people is in The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959, and the numbers on his books sold are from The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. Thank you to BookBub.com for the discounted promotion and Tim Grahl for putting me onto it. Thank you to Neil Strauss for Ask the Dust. Drew Carey’s story of his Carson nod is here: splitsider.com/2012/05/drew-carey-on-johnny-carsons-impact-on-stand-up-comedy/. My editor put me on to Kathy Sierra’s concept of the “audience’s audience,” and it’s told well in Sierra’s talk “Creating Passionate Users,” which you can watch here: youtu.be/eSlRd6MnDv8. Marc Ecko’s swag bombs are discussed at length in his book Unlabel. (I was also lucky enough to work on that.) I must credit Samantha Weinman, Milt Deherrera, Nichole Williams, and Michelle Lemay for their work on fashion bloggers at American Apparel. George Raveling and Shaka Smart both told me the story about Calipari. Stories of paid excerpts are from Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage, F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, The American Village in a Global Setting, Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion, and Ray Bradbury: Uncensored!: The Unauthorized Biography. You can read the New York Times profile of me here: nytimes.com/2016/12/06/fashion/ryan-holiday-stoicism-american-apparel.html, and the wedding announcement: nytimes.com/2015/03/01/fashion/weddings/reclaiming-their-moment.html. The 20/20 story was titled “Faking It,” and can be seen here: youtube.com/watch?v=p-7y1DohK5M. The Sports Illustrated piece is here: si.com/nfl/2015/12/08/ryan-holiday-nfl-stoicism-book-pete-carroll-bill-belichick, the podcast here: tombarnardpodcast.com/ryan-holiday-777-1/, and the blog post here: patriotsgab.com/2015/10/23/the-patriots-2014-secret-weapon-may-have-been-a-book/. You can read about “trading up the chain” in this excerpt from Trust Me, I’m Lying: slideshare.net/ryanholiday/tmil-slideshare-v19. Here’s the Times piece on DeWitt service: nytimes.com/2013/06/24/us/in-the-bible-belt-offering-atheists-a-spiritual-home.html, and the Boing Boing piece by Zeds Dead: boingboing.net/2015/12/04/dj-duo-zeds-dead-stuck-heart-r.html. My Trump article is here: ryanholiday.net/dear-dad-dont-vote-donald-trump/. Please read David Meerman Scott’s book Newsjacking. Here is more about Amazon’s drone stunt: cnbc.com/2013/12/02/did-amazon-just-pull-off-the-best-pr-stunt-ever.html. Adweek’s piece is here: adweek.com/galleycat/author-experiments-with-genius-com-excerpt/106207. Jane Friedman’s insight comes from an interview we did over the phone in 2015. Here is the history of the Koss Billboard: onmilwaukee.com/market/articles/kossbillboard.html. The Maxwell Perkins story is in A. Scott Berg’s biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. H. L. Mencken’s quote is from Mencken: The American Iconoclast. The 1985 New York Times piece on publishing is here: nytimes.com/1985/06/09/books/why-best-sellers-sell-best-and-other-publishing-secrets.html. Ian Fleming’s advertising insights are in his wonderful book of letters, The Man with the Golden Typewriter. The New Yorker has the story of Patagonia’s unusual ads: newyorker.com/business/currency/patagonias-anti-growth-strategy/. You can see my Times Square billboard here: instagram.com/p/BHAuZmEledp/. To be fair to the teachers at my high school—most were great. Here is Paulo Coelho’s ad, which I love but am pissed he beat me to the punch: adweek.com/adfreak/paulo-coelho-just-published-entire-text-his-novel-alchemist-single-ad-167068.

Part IV

Stefan Zweig’s quote is from The World of Yesterday, and so is the sad story about his flight from Europe after the rise of Hitler. Iron Maiden’s stats and stories come from countless sources (as you can tell I am infatuated with this band). There is currently no great biography of them, but there should be. Management turned down my requests for interviews. Please read Kevin Kelly’s essay here: kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/. Michael Hyatt discusses platform in his book Platform. Winston Churchill’s story is told in the second and third volumes of The Last Lion. I highly recommend Jackie Huba’s book Monster Loyalty, on Lady Gaga. Marcus Aurelius’s quote comes from Meditations. Casey Neistat and I discussed platform many times on runs up the West Side of Manhattan, and he has also mentioned it many times on his vlog. Kevin Hart tells the story of building his email list and social media on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and the leaked Sony emails reveal more. Craig Newmark’s quotes come from our interview. I also recommend Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. Chris Lavergne’s quotes come from an email interview in 2015—thanks for all the support, my friend! I credit Ian Claudius for discouraging me from starting an email list—it’s what made me do it. Thank you to Noah Kagan for his thoughts on building a list. Porter Gale wrote Your Network Is Your Net Worth. I’m so lucky to have met Tim Ferriss at SXSW, and thank you to Tucker Max for bringing me along as his assistant in 2007. Here are some of Tim’s networking strategies: tim.blog/2015/08/26/how-to-build-a-world-class-network-in-record-time/. Jay Jay French’s quote is from this article: inc.com/jay-jay-french/how-the-twisted-sister-brand-survive-for-five-decades.html. Thanks to Barbara Hendricks for doing an interview. Thanks to Robert Greene for suggesting I give Structure of Scientific Revolutions another chance many years ago. Here’s a history of the book: theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions. The quote from Kafka’s publisher is from this piece in The New Yorker: newyorker.com/books/page-turner/posthumous. Thanks to Steve Hanselman and Ralphie May for answering some questions. Thanks to Nassim Taleb for answering some questions on Incerto via email. The music study mentioned is here: chicagobooth.edu/research/workshops/AppliedEcon/docs/Sorensen-Music.pdf. This piece on Woody Allen and the “writing life” is amazing: theimaginationgame.com/2012/12/18/writing-is-the-great-life-woody-allen/, as is this profile of Seinfeld: nytimes.com/video/magazine/100000001965963/jerry-seinfeld-how-to-write-a-joke-.html. John McPhee’s quotes are from here: chron.com/life/article/John-McPhee-isn-t-slowing-in-72nd-year-2123857.php. Goethe’s line is from Maxims and Reflections. The hip-hop book I alluded to was with Birdman and Slim Williams, founders of Cash Money Records. The project is currently stalled, but I hope it picks up again. In regards to Michael Jackson’s empire, read Michael Jackson Inc. by Zack O’Malley Greenburg. Steven Johnson’s piece on creativity in the New York Times is here: nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-creative-apocalypse-that-wasnt.html. Jay Z’s lyric is from his song “No Hook.”

Conclusion and Afterword

The Born to Run story is from this interview with Bruce in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruce-springsteen-on-making-born-to-run-we-went-to-extremes-20150825. The MxPx documentary that precipitated my artistic crisis was Both Ends Burning. Thank you to Mike for the interview and for staying in touch—it’s an unbelievable honor. The first time I saw MxPx play was a month after September 11th in Modesto, California. The Bill Walsh line is from The Score Takes Care of Itself. Nassim Taleb’s quote is from this Boing Boing post: boingboing.net/2009/01/29/black-swan-authors-r.html. And thanks to Craig Newmark for the perfect end to the conclusion. And thank you to Judd Apatow because his interview with Steve Martin in Sick in the Head gave me the perfect way to end the book.