Jon Acuff

And they want me to go, no, not at all.

And they don't want to hear like, man, a publisher is going to want to know who's going to buy your book.

And it's a much easier answer if you've done the work of building a podcast or a blog or whatever.

Or like where people make me laugh is they'll go, what software do you use to write your books?

And they're so disappointed when I say Microsoft Word because they were hoping I had access to like a secret one that just like spits out books easily.

And I go, I got this crazy program I use no one's heard of called Word.

And I type it in and because it just it does take work.

And that's the reality of the things we really care about.

So I think you have to in life go like I do want to play this game.

I don't want to play that game.

For me though, if I want to say like there's things I do that are uncomfortable to me in the pursuit of serving a book.

Like I interviewed Steven Pressfield, the War of Art author who I love.

And he said he's leaning in on marketing.

And that was kind of contrary to some other things he'd said.

And I said, why?

And he said, I had a book that didn't sell.

And I realized I had abandoned my characters on the shelf.

They can't market themselves.

And for me as the author to not promote it, I've abandoned those characters who I care about and who I have a relationship with.

And so I love that at his age, he was like, I got to go play that part of the game in order to serve the bigger purpose.