Study Hall: How to Write & Self-Publish a Book with Ash Cash

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My graduates from my school being forced bad drop b drop, Mike, drop bag, drop drop.

You're an entrepreneur. You do a lot of different things, but one of the things that you do is you're an author. Yes, and you wrote seven books? Seven books? All right, so can we talk about that. We haven't covered the book industry yet. So what is the process of writing a book? Like as far as from the do you like, yeah, can you just walk me through that? Do you have a ghostwriter?

Do you? Yeah?

You actually sit there?

Yeah, I'm gonna tell you. So.

When I wrote my first book ten years ago, it took me about eight maybe eight nine months to put the book out because I literally I had a BlackBerry at the time. I literally would like sit in my car and like write the book of my BlackBerry. Now fast forward, I got done by the book in two months, maybe less than that, because technology is the great equalizer

And then now work your way backwards.

Right, So if I want people to get the financial lessons that jay Z taught in four forty four, that's the main thing. So when people who are finished, they're going to understand how to build generational wealth.

And so how do I do that? So now go backwards and I outline.

I say, all right, so I'm going to go from from self sufficiency to cooperative economics to generational wealth, right, and I'm going to break down each of those into chapters. Now that I've broken down into chapters, I'm going to go to each chapter and I'm going to bullet point everything and say these are the main things I want to talk about in each different chapter and literally dictate the rest.

Now you didn't did you go to formal school for that?

You study literature and this is just all all self to it.

So here's what I realized, and this is a great message as to you don't necessarily have to listen to people because they've done it, or because they have a master's or whatever the case may be.

Do what works for your audience, right.

And what I realized was when I wrote my first book and then I started you know that one did pretty well, and then I wrote my second book, which is What the Fight Go Twelve Steps of Repairing Your Credit.

What does that? What does that mean?

So like literally I pulled my IF phone out. I gotta yeah, I got an MV eighty eight and I literally so now I got this outline, right, I have this outline. I know each of the chapters or chapter one, you know, uh you know, don't spend money on a V twelve engine. And so now right, and so now I'm literally speaking into my phone as if I was teaching it. Right, And so as a public speaker, you know, if you tell me right now I need you to talk about a topic, I could get on my feet

The great thing about technology is because you have you know, you have.

Uh not as you have services like fiver Right, you go to fiver and get somebody to translate, right, to transcribe what you just said into the written form. And so now you go to fiverr they transcribe it for you. Now you have a whole ten pages that you just dictated in twenty minutes, literally in twenty minutes because the cost for maybe one hundred dollars, maybe two hundred dollars.

You know what I'm saying.

It depends on how you know, how much time right, and so you know, you get them to to you know, to to transcribe it for you and then that that way, Now you have this book written all raw form of how you talk. You go through it first though, right, you go through it, you make sure it reads right. You you know, you may have to do some research, like so for me, I had to research certain stories. Right, So if I'm talking about you know, owning your rights

You dictate that. You go through the book, and literally I think you can.

You can.

You can write and publish a book for three months tops.

And that's been the process from the first second book on or No. So I started this process. So I'm at I'm at seven books, book four to seven. I've dictated so all right, so that's how you actually write the book. Now the next step of actually publishing a book getting it out there?

What's that? Yeah?

So publishing the.

Book is literally going through Amazon, right, and so you know Amazon used to have a company called create Space, but they all kind of merged it now into their their kindle Kindle.

So if you go to.

Amazon dot KDP dot com, so it's like Candle Direct Publishing is the name of the company. Literally, Uh, you would go, So I use five her again, right, so I get a book cover done?

So can you playing with five? I just heard that company book? Can you explain?

Oh?

Yeah, So Fiver is a marketplace for any service that you need. Graphic designers, uh, anything you need, you need freelance, yeah, freelance people, right, and so the great thing about Fiver is that Fiver has freelancers from all over the world. And so in someone in Indonesia who is a graphic designer is not going to charge you one thousand dollars for a book cover. They're literally going to charge you ten to fifteen dollars or twenty dollars or thirty dollars.

Something that we look at all this is nothing but for them.

You know, they're cost of living is so low, so that's a lot of money for them, right, And so I use fiver to create you know, I use a graphic designer on Fiver. I literally never paid more than fifty dollars for a book cover after I use fiver and my book cover is. If you go to Amazon right now, you look at all of my book covers, they all look professional. They're all done, you know, with top quality. But I'm paying fifty dollars for that. You

I use five for that as well. I go to fiver. Wait, hold on me, stop giving them plug.

Cut the check five cut.

So you can go to any but but but you know, like you could, you could literally, you know, get somebody to design the inside of the book for you as well. And that's how you get the professional look, right. And so once you have your cover, your cover file, you

All right, guys, So a lot of people access how do they make a podcast? So I'm let you see on the easiest, most productive way to start a podcast and get it up and running, and that is the app called Anchor is free. They have all kinds of cool creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone a computer. They will distribute your podcast for you to all of the major outlets including Spotify, Apple, Google, many more, and you can

Let's do it.

The only sort of caveat to that is that Kindle Direct Publishing will give you an ISBN number, right, and so your ISBN number is your is the book where people search the book as your barcode. And so if you go through Amazon to get an ISBN number, when you go to Amazon, is going to show Amazon is going to say you independently published this book, right, Or you can buy your own ISBN number, which is if you go to Balkers. So Balkers is the company that

Why is that important? Right?

It's important because for me as a speaker, as somebody who you know, my books are are how I teach the people.

But it also is a way like a resume that lets me in so.

People could book me for speaking engagements, people book me for media, you know, media opportunities, things of that nature, which give me more visibility to sell more books. For some reason, there's still this negative taboo on self published office and so if I use Amazon to to give me my is number, it's gonna show that I'm independently published and people are not gonna take me as serious.

Serious.

So what I do is I go to Boukers, and I buy my own I VN number under my own company called One Brick Publishing, right, so all of my books have been distributed under One Brick Publishing. The reason why it's One Brick Publishing and it's not ash Cash Publishing is because I want you to I don't want.

You to be like, oh, Ash Cash, the same guy. You know, it looks better if it's a bigger exactly.

So now people are like, yoke Ernest, what's up.

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I literally get people to hit me like joke.

Can you connect with one brick publisher back the sound dope And honestly, you know what one brick publishing is because back in the days, I used to move those bricks.

One brick publisher, one brick out of time.

That's where that's where, That's where I got it from.

Actually, I was watching a Will Smith story, and will Smith was giving his example about how him and his brother got you know, his pops tore down his wall and told him to rebuild the wall. And they were looking like, yoha, I'm gonna rebuild the wall. They said, Yo, build it one brick at a time. As you make sure that this is the best brick possible, then you'll have a good wall. Was like, oh, that's a dope story. Then that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna build a

You know, everything's professional.

It gives this you know, illusion that you're signed to a publishing house and and people take you more serious from that.

Now that's dope. Before I just want to see you're early legion.

Man.

We give it a lot of fact game like, yo, honestly, we might have to start charging myself. It's a little different. It's getting crazy.

It's crazy. So you have you haven't done an audio book yet, right.

Book?

So is it the same process? Like, so if you do it through I'm not gonna say the companies yet, right, you send it to an editor.

Now they tell you what you need to say and you do it through the audio.

So so so when I do the audios, and that was that was another thing, right, I was like, so I make I make a living off a book, so you know what I'm saying. And what I realized was that you know, and it happened and I went backwards because when I put out the j book, the four forty four book, I had uber.

Drivers like yo, bro, I need this book, but I'm in my uber all.

Day and I'm like, oh, and so I kept forgetting about a market of people who either drive who don't have that's.

Like me, or not pick up a physical book.

And so literally like fashot out the garage band, like I literally recorded my audio books right right, I'm saying, like I literally you know what I'm saying, like like recording my books on garage band once to you, and I like, I read the book. So I'm literally like reading the book once it's done, even if I mess up with whatever the case may be. To get get everything right, I send it to somebody on on that company again, and you can look.

For you know, you know, audio edit to whatever the case may be.

They edited. They even take out the dead air, so like like sometimes if that doesn't sound right and there's dead air, and they take they like they edited compress it. I mean you you know you listen to it. A freelance, right, yeah, all freelance. So yeah, all these people are freelance. And then there's a company called a c X. It's all owned by Amazon. Amazon run things.

So yeah, they run things. So a c X right, A a c X dot com.

Uh, if you go to them, now, you upload your file, you put the title and all that stuff, and then they distribute the book to audible dot com and iTunes. And so now if you look look for my book on audio, you'll see it on Audible, You'll see it on iTunes.

And that's how how I do audio books.

They do it for free.

Yeah.

So so the so the thing about Amazon and a c X and on these people, it's print on demand, right, which means that it's all consignment. So it's not like you don't have to pay anything. They just take a percentage of what's being sold.

I was gonna ask you that because somebody else try my man, I M P.

O P.

Steve. Yeah, he wrote a book and that's my guy too.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he was saying that like you said, because I was asking him, like, what if you have like a thousand books and they're not selling. He was like, well, they only print the books right as you want it. If you go into a show, you can have like one hundred books, but until then it's ordered, and then when they actually order it, then they'll print it. Can you explain that product? Yeah?

So it's the dopest thing. And that's why I think. And it's two different business models, right. I'm not of the thinking that one is better than the other. Do what works for you, right, because we all know Eric Thomas, the hip hop preacher, when he came out with his book, he did not put it on Amazon, right, He sold them straight out his garage.

He did all that, right. And you know, obviously you keep the lion Shire.

But if you have the capital upfront to do that, to buy the books and do all that stuff, then that's fine. Or if you have the you know, if people are reaching out to you, right, you have the demand, then that makes sense. But if somebody's just starting out, I literally write like I can literally put out a book for less than five hundred dollars, right, because all I'm telling you is that all I mean is the

I mean for me as a speaker. And that's the great thing about it too, is.

That you know, when I when when people buy books on Amazon, I get I get a check from them each month right at the end of the month.

But when I do speaking engagements, I'm not, you know, I'm I'm ordering my books from them. And think about it.

If I print out this book and it cost me two dollars and fifty cent, I'm selling to you hand in hand ten dollars. So I'm still making seven dollars and fifty cent and I had to put up no, you know, like I had to put up the two fifty up front to get it. But I already know I'm about to go to the speaking engagement or you know, I'm about to speak at the school and the school

You know what we got? We got.

I mean it's pretty similar to us. Like a lot of times we go places and people ask it's like, yo, can I get a shirt?

A shirt?

And we're like, well, we were gonna carry the shirts, right, we got a copy that you order them online, you go to our website, you can get them. We don't walk around with inventory, right because, like who wants to be stuck with exact five hundred s exactly and right exactly, putting out that upfront capital and then having to wait or hustle your way to get rid of that inventory, opposed to just saying, you know what, if the demand is there, let me put it out there.

And if if the demand is there, it's a win win for everybody. And that's why I like that that business model.

And all right, so for independent authors, how does that work? As far as different, Like if you signed to a major public kit like Simon and Schuster that time, Like it's like I think Charlamage because he actually Chearlamagne. He spoke about that where he signed to parliament. Shuster and he did the book Black Privilege. Then think he did another book, yeah, and he was saying he was like, you know what, I should have just did this myself and killed it. So like, what's the like, is it

Is exactly like it?

Is it exactly like a record deal? So so pretty much it's exactly like a record pretty much. Simon and Schuster says, oh you hot, right now, all right, I'm gonna put out this book and I'm gonna give you points off the book, right, and so if I sell the book for ten dollars, I'll give you a dollar, like and then numbers are like it's so archaic, like their numbers are probably steal that. Right, If they sell a book for ten dollars, you probably still only get one dollar off of every book you sell.

Right, he has two number one best sellers exactly, And.

So what happens is, you know they they they definitely gave him an advance because of who he is, right, So what happens is they but they give him this advance. They say here's this money up front, and then whatever we sell you get, you know, like we deduct that from the advance and you'll you'll get royalties forever. Right, You'll get a dollar off of every book you sell forever. But who gets that nine dollars?

Right?

It's Simon and Schuster.

He's a big enough name that if he self published the book himself, he would have kept the line share of that. And that's why I love being a self published author, right, because that's exactly that. When I first wrote my book, I knew that I have direct access to my consumer through Twitter, and then Instagram came and then Facebook to the point and I'm not even done yet, Like I haven't even hit the height of where I

Where can I go? I want to learn about this? And they go and get all these books. I eat off that forever. You know what I'm saying.

But the intellectual probably, and like you said too off camera, is like that's something that stays, that's a catalyg like music. So we talk about, like evenh Nipsey. A lot of people just got up on Nipsey last year with his last album, but he had a Body of Work mixtape before that. So when they heard Victory Lap, they were so impressed with it, and it's like, Okay, let me go back to pulletaink got no names on it and all the other stuff that he did early on, but

It's like they had the Wall Street Jonna actually published this article on Slick Rick and how a lot of that he is the most sample song in the history of hip hop and he still.

Makes money over it, but not as much as she could have. Right, he still is you know.

YO, think about this and I think I wouldn't say I wrote it in the four forty four book. I talked about Whitney Houston right when Bodyguard came out. I Will Always Love You her biggest record ever. Dolly Parton wrote it. Yeah, she made the least amount of money from it. Whitney used to make the least amount of money from.

It, Dolly Partner. It's a sample. She wrote her song.

It is her song.

It's her song. I think she actually performed it before too. It's a remake and remake up the song, right and so she so, so you know now Whitney Houston, you know, crossed over. She has this movie with Kevin Costner and all these people are like, oh my god, I will always love you.

I think I think it's so forty two.

Million, they're crazy number. And she had, I mean, thankfully for her. She had like three other number ones off that soundtrack, but the biggest.

One was you know what I'm saying.

So and so the point is, as as the Honorable Sean Carter says, until you right, until you own your own, you can't be free. It's about it's about ownership. And you know, again, you have to believe in yourself right. And a lot of times people are gonna say, yo, you know what, I'm gonna take it. I mean, you know, sometimes people will sell their intellectual property because they want to put it in the door. They want to do certain things. But if you believe that your information is gold.

Offered me a million dollars, I realized, I knew you know what I'm saying. And so because of that, he held out and that's why he made so much money. And so we have to be of that mindset.

And that's what you know, I like to teach, and that's what we're teaching is ownership is key because that that is that is your you know, that's your income, that's your legacy.

That's what you could pass down.

You can't pass right, all right, great, if you get this royal from another company them like they were not. They did not write the book, they did not, they did not write the verse. Why are they getting the most of it? Why? Why why am I signed to you?

Right?

Yes, if you have the distribution channel, then we should partner, we should make money together.

But why am I on again ten percent?

And and yeah, you got casts associated with it, but you're still making more than me and it's my name, my likeness, my information, my music, my whatever, and now you're you're able to profit the most of it.

It doesn't make sense.

Gems him right there.

My graduates from my school being forced back. Drop drop, Mike, drop bad drop.

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