After releasing my first book If These Fists Could Talk: A Stuntman’s Unflinching Take on Violence (on Amazon), I started thinking about how I made my first short film, or my first feature film. Making those things requires a team, some cash, and technical know-how. But writing a book requires one person (you), a computer, and a budget of $85. Here’s how I did it.
First of all, my first book was originally called The Unoptimized Strategy, a quick and dirty theory of human aggression including a section on history, a list of theories of violence, and a fictional kinship story. I began the research project around 2018 when I was just reading anthropology and historians like Josephus to supplement my Bible study. This exploded into a reading list including James Frazer’s unabridged Golden Bough, a couple dozen war and aggression books, evolutionary science books, kinship studies like Totemism and Exogamy, the history of science like Thorndike’s History of Magic and Experimental Science, and lots of other books. I would estimate I read between 50,000 and 75,000 pages during that time.
I began writing Unoptimized in November of 2023, and I finished it around Feb of 2024. I first wrote it in pure text form, then I put it into a Word doc and exported as a PDF. I signed up for an Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), which took five minutes, uploaded the PDF, uploaded some temp artwork made on Adobe Express, and ordered 5 preview copies which cost $3 each (after shipping, ~$20).
The Unoptimized Strategy was 80 pages long and I sent the preview copies around for peer review to folks like Eric Preiss, Ian Erickson, and some SuperAlloy folks, all of whom have been super generous with their time through all of this. Generally their feedback was that the theory of aggression (the ROBA Hypothesis) made sense, but it made for dry reading since I didn’t use any stories or examples from my career to illustrate my points.
The first half of 2024 involved mostly research (as well as my usual SuperAlloy tasks and settling into single fatherhood). I read ~25,000 pages in 2023 which is an intense amount at 68 pages per day on average. If taking notes, that typically requires 4-5 hours per day, which I do in the morning from 4am to 9am. So I aimed for the same bogey in 2024.
I also spent the month of March writing the ROBA Hypothesis whitepaper, which is very dry as a whitepaper supposedly should be, but it would serve as the foundation of the book later. (You can read the whitepaper here http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4831349.)
Mid-year in 2024 I attended the Colloquium on Violence & Religion in Mexico City, where I presented the ROBA Hypothesis in a live presentation. The audience was small, but I proceeded to pitch the theory to every attendee I could corner, honing it into an elevator pitch that proved pretty convincing. No matter whether the person cited Darwin or Dawkins or Pinker, I could bob and weave these with ease and make a compelling case.
On the flight, I started rewriting the book from scratch, using basically the same format as the presentation at the conference, modified for a more general audience. I took out all the psychology and kinship details from Unoptimized, deciding those could be their own books someday. I included lots of career stories and ways I applied the theory. I renamed this version of the book If These Fists Could Talk, and after writing for 4 months (July to October) it became a 350-page manuscript. I did the same process with KDP, and the peer reviewers gave their feedback: the stories enhanced the read, but I took too many detours before getting to the end.
In December, 2024, I rewrote the book from scratch again, deleting a 30-page history section, removing a 50-page summary of historical theories of violence, and a bunch of misc. stuff like how the theory relates to autism, primatology, etc. Then I added more stories, and got the manuscript down to 190 pages. I paid a professional copy editor this time, who helped me with tonality, tense consistency, and avoiding the passive voice (which I do constantly and I have no idea why).
I also paid for hand-drawn cover art. The same fellow who has done my YouTube thumbnails for years did a bang-up job. This is, of course, optional for an author.
Then I did one more pass through the manuscript using Grammerly, which does a good job but will continue offering corrections to the point of insanity. You can never really “finish” using Grammerly. It also, messed up some commas, and I think it made some weird typos as well that some readers have pointed out after the release.
Some of the delay in release was while waiting for quotes I could put on the book by proofreaders who praised it. I was very fortunate to get some from Andrew Bartlett (who also ran through the entire manuscript with a fine tooth comb for me), Adam Katz, David Moore, and Chris Wallace. Quotes lend credibility to your book and I highly recommend getting at least one before releasing.
The last thing I did was add QR codes, which took me a day or so. I use QR codes generated from my own blog so they will never expire and I can change where they direct. I also use custom links, so that the links themselves, which I put at the back of the book, look clean and aren’t complex YouTube links or anything. One could type them out manually if necessary. I like to think the QR codes were a smart addition to the book and next time I can probably make them smaller and lean more on linking them to animated gifs, which are really simple ways to sell ideas rather than relying purely on written words.
The final polishing and formatting stage took two whole weeks. The first thing was getting the PDF to look right for print. The margins were wrong, the text had shifted incorrectly due to the QR codes, and various other things, and each time I had to spend $7.50 on an author copy. This again is an optional cost, but to get it right you’ll want to keep printing author copies until the physical copy looks exactly like you want it to. I decided on a matte cover; it just seemed nicer.
The other format is the eBook, which is made using an Amazon-provided app. It’s really simple: you import your Word doc and go through the entire eBook by hand, formatting section titles as you see them. Generally there was no issue.
I made one massive screw-up when publishing: I set the eBook for pre-order, and then canceled it. I realized later that Amazon penalize you heavily for doing this, and normally they won’t let you repeat this for a year afterward, but will offer you one exception, which I managed through their online chat system. Generally I still don’t understand their publishing dates system. Somehow I managed to publish the paperback as well, but when I canceled it, it didn’t cancel, got caught in some loop, preventing me from editing the book. In the end I just deleted the entire thing and published from scratch. Since it’s such a simple process, this was no issue. And no, you can’t set a pre-order on paperbacks.
Once the book was out, I started on my usual slow-mail campaign. I tend to reach out to people individually, and I have a list of about 200. I find this is more effective than sending out spammy emails to mailing lists saying, “Hey, recipient! Here’s my book! Stay safe!” Instead, I write each email individually, tying in our relationship into the conversation, and make it as personable as possible. Anyone who helped with the book I also offered a free digital copy at least, and sometimes a paperback. If you’re one of those people and I forgot you (there were many) email me so I can make it right.
I also filed the book at the US Copyright office, which costs $65 and is pretty straightforward. Hence, the total essential budget is this $65 + ~$20 for 3 preview copies of the book.
When releasing your book on Amazon, you’re asked to put it in 3 categories. Pick one or two which are highly relevant, but pick at least one which is still relevant but which will give you a higher chance of being a best-seller. I picked Structuralist Philosophy (since I think I’m more of that school than the Functionalist school, being I tend to quote more Lévi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins than, say, Boas) and I got a best-seller ranking on there. I snapped a photo of that, and now I’m technically a best-selling author on Amazon. Yay!
I decided not to run ads on Amazon because they’re generally cutthroat. I am running ads on X, and I set my budget at $5/day. So far I don’t think it’s been worthwhile, but I’ll let it go another week or so to see how it does.
I also don’t think my YouTube audience is buying the book much. Maybe it’s too off-brand for them, most of them being either fans of Tekken IRL, Blindsided, or Rope-A-Dope. Yes it’s relevant to some extent, but not very. So far, the best success I’ve had is in organic sales.
I’ve yet to do any talks or book signings or podcasts, but my publicist (David Moore) and I are working on those things. We’ll see whether they drive more sales.
Generally speaking, being a self-published author (and one, like me, who is treading into the human sciences where I might not be too welcome) is a long game, much like when I started The Stunt People. And I always knew that. I never banked on a viral hit. Those come organically. Same with writing: I don’t plan on my first book being a smashing hit. Maybe book eight or book thirty-six will be a hit. The point is to keep working at the craft. So far I think I’ve made 60 sales in 12 days, with a big spike in the beginning, and some days being zero sales. That’s fine. You can’t be an author until you write your first book.
And after thinking about it, my first book is still a kind of theory-of-everything. That seems fairly standard. The next books will be more focused, and that might lend to more success.
Lastly, I have three target demographics: 1) the wide audience which is typically males 25-65 either in entertainment or pop science, 2) podcasts where I can demonstrate expertise, and 3) clients who will hire our studio for action design and consulting. You might consider such a scheme for your book so that you’re not relying on brute force numbers. If one high quality pair of eyes reads your book (or watches your video) and gives you a contract, then that might be worth more than a million sales.
It feels strange calling myself an “author.” I don’t know if I have quite deserved that title, even though I technically am one now. It feels like I can’t really say this until I’ve published at least, say, 5 books. But for anyone looking to self-publish their book, I’m happy to lend whatever I know as an “author” to help out.
I’ll keep posting updates as they come. In the meantime, check out If These Fists Could Talk on Amazon (https://a.co/d/9Vhz1wS), and if you enjoy it, please leave a review. Thanks!
