How to Become a Best Selling Author and Have Positive Impact on an Unimaginable Number of People

Eric Eden:
0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Mike, who is a best-selling author who has written over 20 books. Welcome to the show today, mike. Eric, thank you very much, appreciate you being here. Why don't you start out by sharing just a minute or two, a little bit context-wise, who you are and what you do?

Mike Capuzzi:
1:23

who you are and what you do. Yeah, I've been around the business world for longer than I can believe. It seems like yesterday I was just graduating college but didn't start off as an entrepreneur business owner. I actually went to school for engineering and did engineering for a number of years. This is back in the 80s. Then I moved into a company, a software company, that did engineering software and traveled the world for this software company. That was very small. It got very big, but during that time at that software company I transitioned from a technical role to a marketing role and that's where I really just had this passion for marketing and this love of marketing. So at the height of the dot-com bubble back in 1998, I left this great job and started my own marketing consulting company. And since then Eric literally has helped thousands of business owners at various levels some one-on-one, some through courses, some through events, but it just helped a ton of people and now, through books, do better marketing so they can have more time, make more money. All that good stuff.

Eric Eden:
2:28

You are an Amazon bestselling author, so tell us a short story about some of the marketing that you've done that you're the most proud of.

Mike Capuzzi:
2:39

Yeah, and again, I've done a lot over the years and I've done a lot of speaking, a lot of events. All that all this stuff when you have decades of history. And I think the thing, eric, that I'm most proud of, obviously because now all we do is focus on helping other people do the same thing is becoming a published book author. It was something when I was a little kid. My mom's mom, my grandmother, taught me a love of books at a young age. I used to have to travel like two and a half hours to get to her house, so it was like a jaunt and she had this library and after I get to her house I'd go to the library and pull a book off, and these were all typically fiction and I just found a love of books and always, even in college and in my corporate days wanted to be a book author. But I just never thought I could. And once I got that head trash removed or made smaller and published my first book in 2007, it's just been an amazing journey. I just published my 20th book. Now these are short books. That's what I specialize in for our clients, that's what I believe in. These are short, about hour to two-hour reads. They're very focused and the impact Eric, I have my own podcast.

Mike Capuzzi:
3:55

It's an opportunity to spread that word. That way, the books obviously help a lot of people. You can read the reviews of some of my books on Amazon. I think it's just about the impact of helping people, most of the people I don't ever know about. Once in a while, someone will email me. I just got an email before our interview. Someone just said I love your books, can you help me? And that's very cool. I think that's the very cool thing about being a published book author is that your word spreads can spread, is that your word spreads can spread and the impact that it can make is unimaginable Because most of the times, you will not know as a book author who you're really helping.

Eric Eden:
4:40

But that's really been the big thing I'm most happy about and most proud of.

Mike Capuzzi:
4:42

That's great 20 books is quite remarkable. There's a couple of questions I have about it that I often wonder. Books seem to give people this magic credibility. When you have books, people have a certain different level of respect is what I've noticed. Why is that? It's a great question.

Mike Capuzzi:
5:11

First of all, and unfortunately or maybe not unfortunately, but things have changed a lot. Self-publishing has made it a lot easier and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm self-published Now with AI God knows how that's going to impact it but for decades, literally over a hundred years first of all, books have been around for over 1,000 years, but over the 20th century, 21st century era, books have always been something that most people expect to pay for. Most people don't think they can write a book, so it's only a small. The author's club tends to be small. Even today, it's still a small group of people who actually take the time and energy to write a book.

Mike Capuzzi:
5:47

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons why a book itself it's perceived differently than a lot of things People. There's libraries, right, there's collections of books. There's bookstores. There's Amazon, of course. There's online bookstores, so people are used to paying for them. There's value placed on them. So it's just been a mechanism, a type of media, unlike, for example, podcasts. Most people don't expect to pay for a podcast. I'm a podcast host. I get that Most people don't expect to pay for a podcast, but yet most people, if it's a quality, real book, they expect to pay for it. So that's probably the biggest reason. It's just the psychology and how we all grew up and even currently how people look at books and the people behind them.

Eric Eden:
6:34

And you have this idea of bite-sized books or shorter books that can be consumed in an hour or two. How did you want to spend more money, more time and energy in researching?

Mike Capuzzi:
6:45

investigating. Let me do that, but don't force me to have to read 500 pages to get the idea of the book. So it was the idea that I. Obviously our attention spans are getting shorter and there's a lot of things competing for our time. So that was one thing. The other thing I mentioned I did engineering. I have an engineering degree.

Mike Capuzzi:
7:19

I wanted to build a better mousetrap, if you will, and I just felt like why not construct a formula, a recipe, if you will, for a short, helpful book we call them shooks short helpful books. That gives the reader helpful information, delivers on a big promise, a big idea, but they only have to read it at about an hour. And the reason it's shorter, Eric, is because the book then points the reader, or those readers who are interested in more from the author, to other ways to connect. So it's not just about you close the book and, okay, how do I get more from Eric? That's a great book, but I don't know what else I can do. It's about leading those interested readers to other pathways with you. So that's the thing we've created and really perfected over the years.

Eric Eden:
8:12

I think it's great. In today's culture, a lot of people are used to TikTok and Instagram videos that are two or three minutes. The attention span is just a lot less. But even more than that, when in my corporate job as a chief marketing officer during COVID, every meeting moved to a video Zoom moved to a video Zoom. I actually worked for a company where we had flashcards created that I would hold up during some of the Zoom meetings, and some of them were like get to the point, wrap it up.

Mike Capuzzi:
8:51

You know you probably could market and sell that.

Eric Eden:
8:54

You know, I think that you're on mute. There was a lot of good ones.

Eric Eden:
8:59

Get to the point and wrap it up were two of my favorites, because a lot of times people just want to fill an hour long meeting and so if I was writing a book, I really don't think I needed to start with. It all began in Ohio in 1972. There's no reason to start there other than to fill a lot of pages. Because I actually was asking Chad GPT what is the average length of a book? And I'm like, ooh, that's long, that's a lot of words. 75,000 words is like a lot of words.

Mike Capuzzi:
9:30

The average nonfiction is somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 words. I call them books with bloat, b-l-o-a-t. There's oftentimes when there's a especially when it's a traditionally published book, it needs to be longer because the book needs to have more heft so they can charge more, et cetera. There's a reason why people have to elongate the content Now in some cases and, by the way, I am not poopooing textbooks and there's times when a traditionally long book is necessary For a lot of folks for writing and for reading shorter content.

Mike Capuzzi:
10:06

So one thing I'll say, eric, is I always say rather than write one 300-page book, write three 100-page books, break it up, give the people what they want. They can choose the book they want, they can focus on what they want. They want more, they go to the second book or the third book. So there is an appreciation. Obviously there's a time and place for long form content, but I do believe a lot, especially for first time authors, writing a shorter book. Now, it's got to be good, short, helpful, got to be quality. But it's definitely a better strategy. It's got to be good, short, helpful, it's got to be quality, but it's definitely a better strategy.

Eric Eden:
10:40

I was a journalism major in college and I decided to go into marketing because the first editor that I worked for while I was interning when I was in college he said you should just go into marketing and do technology instead of writing about technology, because you can't write more than 250 words without making a spelling error. And this is I'm so old. This is before spellcheck even existed in my own defense, but regardless, I think that as a journalism major, I was always noticing that it was harder to write good things that were more concise, like I had to write it out long first and then go back and rewrite it to be short. But when I did that, people were so thankful and I just have to share.

Eric Eden:
11:25

One more thing is that because I had this journalism degree in corporate America, I started out my career and I would really write these long emails and it got me access to people in management because I could share my ideas. I could write them out. They're very eloquent, but people are like what are with these emails? They're so long. Can you just make them a little bit shorter? So I think that applies to books, because some people thought my emails were like books. But they were great emails, but they would have been even better if they would have been shorter. So I think maybe you're really onto something can I share the historical quote with you?

Mike Capuzzi:
12:02

I just brought it up. Can I share a historical quote which is really great? It's from 1657. So what's that? 500 years ago there about somewhere, I know somewhere. So it's from a french author, blaise pascal. I heard of him said this is a quote I've made. Now think about this for a second, eric. I've made this letter longer than usual only because I've not had the time to make it shorter, to your point. It's easy to bloviate, it's easy to spew. It's actually more of a challenge to think tighter, more focused. How do I stay more with less right? How's that?

Eric Eden:
12:41

and that takes thought, that takes intention so you've helped over 250 people get the word out and write books like this. What advice do you give people who say I want to write a book Like? How do they take on a project like that? Even if it's a shorter book like you pointed out, it's not quite 75,000 words it's still a pretty big project. A lot of people sit down to write a book and they just have writer's block. They can't even start. How do you advise people to take on a project like this and get it done, since you've done it successfully and helped so many other people do it?

Mike Capuzzi:
13:19

It goes with one of the reasons of the name right Approach it in a bite-sized manner. So don't think of it as this big, huge task. Break it down into bite-sized chunks. First of all and I will encourage anyone watching or listening it's doable If you have this passion, if you have this skill, something you help people with, or historical you're interested in history. I just was talking to a gentleman who all he writes about is whiskey and bourbon history. It doesn't matter. If you have this passion on a topic, whether it's helping people or learning about people can learn about something.

Mike Capuzzi:
13:51

You can write a book. There is a need for your book. There is a need for your voice. There's a need for your knowledge, your wisdom, your insights. Then you have to really break it down, eric, there's a ton of people. There's books online. You can read my books. How to do it? There are people that will help you. You don't need to go the traditionally published route. You can self-publish. You can work with a hybrid publisher like my company, which is an in-between, but it's doable. I would say you want to focus, really identify who your target reader is and how you're going to help them, or what they're going to get by reading your book and get really clear on that. That's really the first thing Eric is trying to write who's my ideal reader or readers and what's the transformation I want them to experience through my book and get clarity on that. And then the rest is mechanical. I'm not saying it's easy necessarily, but it can become fairly formulaic.

Eric Eden:
14:46

So you mentioned self-publishing and I think some people have been critical of self-publishing since it's risen in popularity, but I actually think it's quite great. But can you explain a little bit about the dogma of before you had to get a publisher and it was really hard. And now there's the other side of the spectrum where you can self-publish, but is it really as impactful? And then you have something in the middle that's a hybrid, and talk us through that.

Mike Capuzzi:
15:12

Yeah, and it's again another interesting insightful point. You're right, there are still people so I've now interviewed like 230 people on my podcast, the Author Factor. I only interviewed nonfiction authors and there's people that I've had on my show who've said I will not self-publish a book. Then there's majority of people who said I'm never going to traditionally publish a book. There's different reasons. Now there's no denying a traditionally published book, that is, with a recognized publisher, what that looks like and what that could feel like.

Mike Capuzzi:
15:45

I think where most people, what they don't realize is that traditional publishers for the most part are just they're not marketing the book. The hardest part with anything relative to a book is the marketing and promotion. The writing is actually the easy part. The publishing is actually the easy part. It's getting that thing out there day after day, letting people know because books in a box don't do any good. Traditional publishers really don't help a lot with that. For most nonfiction authors they have to.

Mike Capuzzi:
16:12

You're still author marketing it, but there is still the allure I was published by such and such. There's a lot of issues with that. They control, they own, they can dictate what the title is, what the content should be, all that stuff. I'm more of a free spirit. I don't want anyone telling me what to do. So if I come up with a good book title, I want to use that book title. So that's the self-publishing route. Obviously, amazon has made self-publishing a lot easier and by all means it makes it so that anybody with a book idea can publish a book. And then the hybrid is that in between you're working with someone who can help you help you with the marketing, help you with ideas but it's still you are. You are in control that's great.

Eric Eden:
17:01

Yeah, I think I like the self-publishing because it makes it accessible, like you're saying. Yeah, and the the criticism of the traditional publishers is you lose control and they don't really follow through on the marketing and you put in all this time and effort to write the book and then you lose control of your own thing, and that's the horror story is that you hear at that end of the spectrum. Let me ask you you have an offer that you make to people who would want to learn a little bit more about this, to get a few of your books. Can you share that?

Mike Capuzzi:
17:34

what that offer is yeah, as a marketing guy you'll appreciate I call it my magic kit. It's actually three of our short, helpful books the magic of short books being the the centerpiece of that trifecta, the magic of short books, the magic of working together and the magic of gratitude. So three little books, they're all. In this case they're digital so you read them online, but I'll send your listeners a link. They can read all three of them, the whole books, the entire book, same book that you can buy on Amazon and they just have to go to mikecapuzzicom forward slash magic.

Eric Eden:
18:11

All right, I will link to that in the show notes. I encourage everyone to share this episode with your friends. Some great advice here on how you can write your own book and get the word out. Thanks, mike, for sharing your insights and advice today with us. We appreciate it.