301 Days Between Books

The publication date of my first book was October 11th, 2016. The publication date of my second book, The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales, is August 8th, 2017.

The October release date of book one was six days after my birthday, depriving me of the ability to say I published my first book at an age that was one year younger than the actual age I was when the book was published. The August release date of The Lost Art of Closing is one day before my Mom’s birthday, depriving me of publishing the book on her birthday.

There are exactly 301 days between the release dates of these two books. That’s a pretty fast clip. For reasons I was never told, the release date for The Lost Art of Closing was moved up from October, 2017 to August, 2017. I never had the chance to ask why it was moved, and no one at the publisher has ever shared with me any more than the changed deadlines.

There are a few reasons I was able to write and publish two books this quickly.

First, I have been writing every day for many years now, and I can now write faster—and sometimes better—than when I started writing. Writing is like a muscle, and putting that muscle to work daily builds the capacity to do more work.

Second, when you write and spend time in a domain, you tend to develop a lot of content. You make certain distinctions that you wouldn’t otherwise make, and you see things that wouldn’t get your attention if you weren’t writing down your observations. The content in both books was developed over a long period of time and written in a shorter one.

I also started writing the second book (TLAC) the day I turned in the final manuscript for the first book (TOSG). On the plane ride home from New York City, I wrote the first 4,000 words of The Lost Art of Closing. I was hyped-up to start working on the content I wanted to share. The writing went fast,but the editing was painful. The early reviews have been extremely positive, and that makes the work of marketing the book easier, even though that is the real heavy lifting.

Now, how many days until the third book?

As I type these words, I have five outlines on my computer. I have an outline for a book about how to become a trusted advisor and how to sell now, in the 21st Century. It’s a very prescriptive book. The second outline is a book on how to coach salespeople, but with principles that apply across domains. The third outline is for a book on productivity, or how to work in an age of accelerating, disruptive, constant change. The fourth outline is for a book on leadership. The final outline is The Hustler’s Playbook, my thoughts on success that originally started as ideas I was sharing with my three children.

I haven’t decided in what order I am going to write these books, and I have no idea what the publisher is going to want from me, but they are all going to be written, and they are all going to be published.