Book

“To me, the book thing feels a little bit like a swan song for, you know, a technology that you know, there will still be a place for. But, like, it was the best way we had of delivering information, and now there's new ways, and they're more compelling and mor…”

“I think a small amount of tastemakers read the books and then other people look at books And if they're like sort of blessed by the right people, then there's sort of this like mimetic celebration of the thing.”

“So I think most people, if they're going to be in that game, Are probably gonna write their best book first and last.”

“Because gaming is bigger than movies, music, books combined.”

“But five years from now, do you really think that people are going to write books even by themselves? I assume you would be co-authoring a book with AI. I imagine people will be writing articles at minimum with AI if AI is not doing it in entirely”

“Every word that you write is actually an obstacle that the reader does not want to have to go through. Your book is an obstacle between them and the result that they want.”

“So, I haven't, this is, I haven't read a book in, like, 15 years, and I think it's very, very contrarian opinion, but I think, like, I have so many friends that are authors that I talk to that are just, like, trying to get the words out, but if you, like, list…”

“Podcasts, far easier, far more valuable to do than to write a book.”

“I would say, like, maybe it's 70% angel investing, could be 80, 20% podcast, 10% books.”

“AI is the best learning technology, learning being part of how we elevate As human beings that has been invented, even including the book now builds on the book as a way of doing it.”

“We have the best learning technology we have created in human history. It's more important than the book relative to a learning technology.”

“In the age of AI, someone sending a book about AI, because you're like, no one wants to consume that.”

“You sold 50,000 dollars of pre-orders for your book before you had written any of the book. You just said, I might write a book and buy it here. And you got 50,000 dollars of sales.”

“A book still to this day is the primary way that you break through the wall of the mainstream to become recognized as a true thought leader.”

“Most people don't remember books. They remember a couple sentences from their books. So even if you're like, oh, I love that book. I read that book 10 years ago. Changed my life. Loved it. You probably remember like three or four sentences. And it's those, lik…”

“A two minute long TikTok video is a better way of understanding a topic Then a 20 minute long YouTube video, which is a better way of understanding a topic than a few hundred page book.”

“The best books are written for one or two real people on the other end, and a lot of authors write as though they're speaking to a huge general audience or to their perceived fan base, the entire fan base. It's the fastest way, in my opinion, to kill a book be…”

“The method I encourage is teach it in real time first. And ideally, you're somebody who's already transformed numerous people, at least three, with the transformation that you're trying to codify into a book. So generally speaking, you ought to have coached, c…”

“Virtually all books that sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth.”

“I think like books started out as luxury goods. And then because of the printing press, they became like, there is this push to make them cheaper because you needed ways to get more information into people's hands. And they're no longer necessary as cheap form…”

“Facebook ads, When you're holding something physical, like a book work really well.”

“A lot of the reason that people don't like reading, why people don't read as much as they should, or if they say, ah, I'm not a big reader. A lot of the reason is because they feel like morally that they need to finish every book that they start. And we realiz…”

“So that, that random access, the ability to access anything that's ever been created instantly has huge value for music. Almost zero value, effectively zero value for books.”

“The issue with podcasts is they're highly inefficient. Like, if you think about all of the ways to consume content from newsletters to social posts to books to podcasts, I would actually say podcasts are similar to books in the regard that they're really ineff…”

“And we think the future of books is going to be like this. A book that was, took a few years to write, et cetera, will be out of date if it's not being constantly updated and refreshed.”

“For content that has a longer shelf life basically somebody spends their entire life's work studying something, and they, they'll spend years trying to, like, find the perfect way to explain what it is they spent their entire life learning, and in five hours y…”

“57% of Americans read zero books last year.”

“At the very, very best, you're gonna be able to get those books at 50% off from the publisher.”

“I don't read books anymore. But my daily reading time, although it is not on my calendar is probably on the order of three to four hours.”

“Books is a much bigger industry, but it has no strategic value to Google or Apple or Facebook.”

“I no longer think books are a good use of time in any way, shape or form. They're a waste of time, but they have a content, but you're not going to consume as much content with a book as you will with surfing, 20 different web pages on the same topic where you…”

“So that book is going to fail. I happily put that in writing right this minute. That book is going to fail.”

“A book is two things. First, it's a signal to the reader to say this person, who you know could have written a blog post, decided to devote a year of his or her life to handing it to you in this complete form that is timeless and shareable. And the second part…”

“The book sold over 400,000 copies.”

“Many people talk about the length of books and the fact that the content is repetitive and books should be shorter. That way people would read more, but I actually think the potency of it is that it's long and the narrative is repeated over and over and over a…”

“I always demanded Myself to finish books, and I actually heard Bill Gates actually say something similar recently. He always finishes a book. I could not think of worse advice. I think the main goal is to be reading a lot and if you find that yourself caught i…”

“And by the end of a couple of weeks, we had sold out of all of the books, and each book represented one suitcase that we ordered. So we had sold out of our first order.”

“There's this amazing study showing that if you sit across from someone else, and there's a smartphone on the table, even if it's inert, it's not actually being used. The conversation that you have with that person, if that person is a stranger, will be diminis…”

“It is a completely different medium, and it's going to have its own set of rules, its own set of pluses and minuses, and people don't talk about books not being, you know, a worthwhile, valid medium because you can't sit in a room with a hundred other people a…”

“Seeing something on screen, you know, sticks in your mind more than reading it on a book seeing it in VR even more so.”

“Books are sort of the closest you'll ever come to finding cheat codes for real life. It's like, you can access the entire learnings of someone, someone else's career, and, you know, sitting down for, you know, what is it, 12:14 hours, if you're a slow reader.”

“If you give a book away, the danger is a person will read it just because it's a gift. Unless you think it's the book they should be reading, it's actually a slightly cruel act to give someone a book.”

“They should probably cost 50, I can't understand why books are so cheap. Putting that aside, I think the reason they're so cheap is because so many idiots write books”

“So I would just say if anybody's thinking of writing a book, it's the obsession on as much time, effort, energy, and pain goes into writing the book. You got to triple that on the marketing and strategy to actually sell it.”

“A really good book costs 10 or 20 dollars, and it can change your life in a meaningful way. So it's not something I believe in saving money on. And this is even back when I was broken. I had no money. I always spend money on books. I never viewed that as an ex…”

“I think books are really kind of like broken elevators. On the one hand, you need both an elevator pitch But also it's like 203 hundred pages long. So if the elevator breaks, you need to be able to entertain people for eight hours.”

“There's no better business card to hand somebody than a business card in the form of a book.”

“I don't read any online sites. I never surf the web or anything. And so I only read books.”