How to Sell Millions with Self-Publishing — Hugh Howey, Bestselling Author of Wool

Tim Ferriss 0:00 My number one bucket list thing in life is to write a book, and no one was stopping me but myself, but for 20 years I couldn't do it.

Hugh Howey 0:06 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 0:07 And honestly, like, all I had to do was write a little bit every day and I would write a book. That's all I ever wanted. And so how can you get in the way of yourself that consistently, and we all do it as writers. And once I unlocked the ability to write, my fear was ever turning that switch back off.

Hugh Howey 0:24 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 0:25 And that's where I think the daily habit is critical. Like I wrote today before I came here, and it's Saturday.

Hugh Howey 0:31 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 0:31 And I'll write on a, on the plane and I'll write in the back of an Uber. I'll do whatever it takes to get some words in that day. [upbeat music]

Tim Ferriss 0:52 Hugh, so great to see you.

Hugh Howey 0:53 Good to see you, man.

Tim Ferriss 0:54 Yeah. I'm glad we were able to do this in person. And I wanted to say up front, I like to think of myself as being pretty unorthodox in my creative process in publishing, but you are the person in the last year or two who I've called the most for advice [laughs] and I've wanted to take out to lunch to ask questions, because you've had such a wild journey, man, on multiple levels.

Hugh Howey 1:21 You're like, "Who can think crazier than me?"

Tim Ferriss 1:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:23 I don't... This is a good thing, I guess.

Tim Ferriss 1:25 Oh, it's great.

Hugh Howey 1:25 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 1:25 It's a great thing. We're not gonna get to some of the crazy. We're not gonna get to the sailing adventures [laughs] although I'll probably tease that in the intro. But we are gonna talk about creative process. I thought I would start with something that I have a vague recollection of. We were walking in the woods together talking about this, and it was how you structured, and we're gonna bounce around chronologically, but how you structured the end of Wool. And I want to say it was related to a bit of creative sleight of hand-

Hugh Howey 1:58 The interview?

Tim Ferriss 1:58 ... taking readers through-

Hugh Howey 1:59 The interview, yep

Tim Ferriss 2:00 ... yes, emotions. And could you just walk us through, not necessarily giving too many spoilers for people who haven't read the book, but-

Hugh Howey 2:08 I can do it vaguely, I think.

Tim Ferriss 2:09 Vaguely, yeah. What did you do there? What was the artistic decision there and the practical decision?

Hugh Howey 2:15 Most of what I've figured out as a writer I've learned as a reader. Like, there's things that tickle me, and this actually, and this happened before. What I'm gonna talk about sounds a lot like the Marvel teasers after the credits.

Tim Ferriss 2:28 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 2:28 This was before any of that, but I had the same gut feeling that there are some things that you don't want to just turn the page and get hit with, that you really need to ask the reader to step away, have some emotional response, maybe even get upset at me as, as the author.

Tim Ferriss 2:45 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 2:45 And then after that pause, have that little extra nugget that they've been waiting for. You wanna make them feel like you're not gonna get what, what you want out of this.

Tim Ferriss 2:56 When they think the story-

Hugh Howey 2:59 They think the story's over

Tim Ferriss 2:59 ... runs to credits-

Hugh Howey 3:00 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 3:00 ... so to speak.

Hugh Howey 3:01 So I was trying to figure out, "Well, what could I put at the end of the story that's not part of the story?" It needs to be, you know, acknowledgements, like thanks to my family and whatnot.

Tim Ferriss 3:11 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 3:11 Needs to make it feel like the book is over. And what I came up with was an interview, a series of questions and answers, and of course I'm writing the questions as well.

Tim Ferriss 3:20 Right. With you.

Hugh Howey 3:21 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 3:21 This is a Q&A with the author.

Hugh Howey 3:22 Yeah. And I think the last question and answer is, "Did you write all these questions yourself?" And the last answer is yes.

Tim Ferriss 3:29 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 3:29 So I'm very upfront about it. But it's the first time after spending 500 pages with me that you're spending time with me and my own voice. And I think the thing that I, I, I didn't mean for it to work this well, but I was intentional about asking for this. One of the things, one of the questions was, "Hey, I love this book. How can I help other people discover it?"

Tim Ferriss 3:49 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 3:50 "And share the word?" And I, and the answer was, "Tell everyone you know about it. Write reviews. Go, go on Amazon and write reviews. Share it on Facebook." And that year, I think because... So what happens, you finish this book. You're happy it's a good book.

Tim Ferriss 4:05 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 4:06 But there's a little thing that's upsetting you. You read this Q&A and you're like, "Okay, it's hard to be mad at this guy. He's pretty funny."

Tim Ferriss 4:11 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 4:12 And then right after you're not mad at me anymore, I give you the thing you really want deep down after that, and it's up to you to find it, and not everyone does.

Tim Ferriss 4:21 And this is, this is after the interview.

Hugh Howey 4:23 After the interview.

Tim Ferriss 4:24 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 4:24 And I think the last thing they remember in this rollercoaster of emotions, like they hate me, "Oh, this guy's not too bad. Oh my gosh, that's exactly what I wanted. I love this guy. Oh, he asked me to write a review."

Tim Ferriss 4:34 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 4:34 "I'm gonna go do that right now." And so it worked in a way that I didn't anticipate. It worked so well that the year that Wool came out-

Tim Ferriss 4:43 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 4:43 ... it was the most reviewed and highest reviewed item on Amazon, which I didn't find out about until I was at a, a conference with some Amazon people, and someone on stage mentioned that-

Tim Ferriss 4:54 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 4:55 ... without knowing that I was in the audience. And I was like, I, it was news to me. I was like, "Is this a real thing?"

Tim Ferriss 4:59 It's a great way to get the news.

Hugh Howey 5:00 Yeah, and it was really cool, but it was because I was trying to engineer what would've tickled me as a reader-

Tim Ferriss 5:05 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 5:06 ... in thinking about that emotional rollercoaster and not being beholding. 'Cause when I published the book traditionally, publishers were not up for this.

Tim Ferriss 5:13 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 5:13 They were like, "No, we don't, we don't sandwich-

Tim Ferriss 5:15 It's not something we do.

Hugh Howey 5:16 Yeah. And you had to follow the formula, but in my case, breaking that formula really worked to my advantage.

Tim Ferriss 5:23 All right. So you, you have Wool, and your Silo trilogy was later adapted by Apple TV, becoming the number one drama of all time. So I think some people might have an inkling of, of this piece of work. My understanding is that you effectively committed to writing in obscurity for 10 years to see what would happen.

Hugh Howey 5:47 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 5:47 What did your writing career, so to speak, look like prior to Wool?

Hugh Howey 5:52 I was writing in obscurity, but I, you know, it's, it's amazing. My first book did better than a lot of first books that come out with a very small press. I ended up buying the rights back to it in order to self-publish the sequel, and then self-publish the first book as well. And within a year of, of writing, I was making a couple hundred dollars a month off my writing, which might sound, like, really small, but-

Tim Ferriss 6:17 That puts you already in what? In, you know, top, top 1%, probably?

Hugh Howey 6:20 Yeah, it's insane.

Tim Ferriss 6:21 Right?

Hugh Howey 6:21 It's insane how little writers make, and I knew that going in, 'cause I worked at a bookstore, and so I was spending time with a lot of writers. So I had low expectations going in. I told myself I would write two books a year for 10 years, and then after 20 books, I would know if I had what it took to be a writer. And basically, it lets you just get out of your own head.

Tim Ferriss 6:43 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 6:43 You don't market that first book. You don't wonder why success hasn't happened to you. You just work on getting better, producing content. Because what I'd seen as a bookseller is that these writers who broke out, who had three or four books behind them, like Dan Brown, when Dan Brown broke out, he already had a few books out that weren't that huge. The same with George, George R.R. Martin, and that backlist takes off.

Tim Ferriss 7:07 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 7:07 So it's almost like you instant published, you know, six books at once.

Tim Ferriss 7:11 Right, right. [laughs] You, so publish the prequels, but they are actually prequels. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 7:15 They are prequels. But it's beneficial for not your first thing to take off, 'cause I'll tell you, it's much harder to write once you've had some success-

Tim Ferriss 7:22 Mm

Hugh Howey 7:22 ... because you have other demands on your time, you have m- many more people watching and it's self-editing.

Tim Ferriss 7:27 Imposter syndrome.

Hugh Howey 7:28 Totally.

Tim Ferriss 7:29 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 7:29 All that stuff gets in the way. I hate giving this advice to writers, 'cause no one wants to hear this.

Tim Ferriss 7:33 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 7:34 But the time that you just get to write because you love to create, you're just trying to write one or two books a year, you're not thinking about sales, is the best time you'll ever have as a writer. It might not be your best time as a professional or a human.

Tim Ferriss 7:47 Right, financially.

Hugh Howey 7:48 But your best time as a writer is when you're doing it for yourself and no one's looking over your shoulder while you're doing it.

Tim Ferriss 7:55 Why did you make that decision? So there's the decision you made, but I'm interested in the thought process behind it, because you're very deliberate, in my experience. I mean, you're also very eager to, to grasp serendipity and so on, but that you're a thoughtful guy. So why commit to 10 years of doing that? What did you get from writing, or what did you hope to get from being a writer?

Hugh Howey 8:18 I hoped to put books out that weren't already there. I think when I was 12 or 13 years old, I read my first works of science fiction. I think it was, uh, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Ender's Game. I read them back to back, and I'd never read books like this before. There aren't many books like those two books. A lot of people rate them, you know, in, in their top 10, and I just wanted more of that, and I, and I wanted more newness, like things that just tickled me.

Tim Ferriss 8:47 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 8:47 And it's hard to find that. Like, again, something I learned as a bookseller is there's all these books on the bookshelves, but for any reader who walked in, there were very few that were actually gonna blow them away, and so I wanted to fill some of that void. My first attempt to write was right after I read those books, and it was basically terrible fan fiction, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan fiction. And yeah, I was trying to, to fill this space that I thought was on the bookshelf, which is why, to this day, when I write something, if I feel like it's similar to anything else, I'm not interested.

Tim Ferriss 9:19 I do the same thing-

Hugh Howey 9:20 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 9:20 ... in the nonfiction world, for sure. It's like I'll only write if I can't find it. If I'm-

Hugh Howey 9:24 Yeah, I don't wanna do it

Tim Ferriss 9:24 ... if I try to find it, I don't wanna do it.

Hugh Howey 9:26 I don't wanna do it.

Tim Ferriss 9:26 It's a lot of heavy lifting.

Hugh Howey 9:27 I give away my ideas all the time.

Tim Ferriss 9:29 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 9:29 If I think of an invention that I think will make a lot of money, I just try to convince someone else to make it, 'cause I just wanna own it. I don't actually wanna, like...

Tim Ferriss 9:35 [laughs] Kevin Kelly, same thing, right?

Hugh Howey 9:36 Yeah, it is the same thing. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 9:37 That's great.

Tim Ferriss 9:38 That's great about that. So you mentioned something in passing I wanna come back to, which is buying back the rights to that first book in order to write the sequel, but also to self-publish the first book. Why did you do that, and what was the language that you used? Because if the first one was more successful than you anticipated, did that mean the publisher wanted to hold onto it? How did that actually happen as far as conversation or negotiation?

Hugh Howey 10:03 Yeah, I got really lucky there. I was gonna give my first book away. I was gonna publish it on my blog, like a chapter at a time, and just use it to get feedback on my writing while I worked on more stuff. I was already sending the Word document to anyone who wanted to read it, like s- strangers on forums. You know, people who are worried about piracy and protecting their stuff, I was, like, emailing this to every cousin I had, all my family members. 'Cause what you realize is, like, yeah, you spent so much time and energy making this thing you love, convincing even a loved one to take the eight hours it might take to read it-

Tim Ferriss 10:35 [laughs] Yeah

Hugh Howey 10:36 ... is a huge ask.

Tim Ferriss 10:37 Yeah, it's a huge ask.

Hugh Howey 10:37 Most people won't do it.

Tim Ferriss 10:38 Yeah. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 10:38 And you're expecting people to pay you for the pleasure? Like, you-

Tim Ferriss 10:41 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 10:41 I was like, "Okay, I'm about to pay, like, my, my sister $20 to read this." That's how this was gonna go transactionally. So I was gonna give it away. People who were reading it were like, "You should get this published. It's great." And everyone's dream was to get a publisher, and so I was absorbing that dream secondhand, even though it really wasn't necessarily my dream.

Tim Ferriss 11:02 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 11:03 My dream was just to get people who wanted to read this to read it.

Tim Ferriss 11:06 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 11:06 Not even force people to read it, but just anybody who thought this would be a fun story, here it is. And the day that I signed the contract to sign my rights over to that publisher was one of the worst days of my life.

Tim Ferriss 11:19 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 11:19 And it was everyone else's dream.

Tim Ferriss 11:21 How did they find you or vice versa?

Hugh Howey 11:23 I was querying agents. I was doing everything-

Tim Ferriss 11:25 Okay, so you were like-

Hugh Howey 11:26 ... normal

Tim Ferriss 11:26 ... you were like, "Okay, I've, I've absorbed this secondhand smoke/dream-"

Hugh Howey 11:30 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 11:30 "... of getting a publisher."

Hugh Howey 11:31 I'm on the forums.

Tim Ferriss 11:32 "Here's how you do this."

Hugh Howey 11:33 "How do we do this?"

Tim Ferriss 11:33 Right.

Hugh Howey 11:33 Yeah. Going to the library, reading books on querying, how to write a query letter. "Here's the book of agents." This is like-

Tim Ferriss 11:39 I remember that

Hugh Howey 11:40 ... there wasn't a lot of online resources like there are now. Now there's apps to help you keep up with who you've queried and the responses and all this stuff. So I'm figuring this out, but I'm also, like, signing up for Twitter as soon as Twitter launches. I'm, I have a blog on Blogspot.

Tim Ferriss 11:55 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 11:56 This is like way, you know, back in the day. And on Twitter, I created a Twitter account under my character's name. I'm tweeting as her, which led to a lot of confusion in emails.

Tim Ferriss 12:06 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 12:07 People were emailing me as Molly, which is, like, my character's name.

Tim Ferriss 12:09 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 12:12 Two small presses saw my blog post and my Twitter feed and asked for a, a partial read.

Tim Ferriss 12:19 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 12:19 And both asked for a full read after reading the partial, and then both made offers. And so I kind of circumvented the agent route. And at this point, they were just... They were paying me money, which it was, like, not even in the tens of thousands.

Tim Ferriss 12:33 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 12:33 It was in the thousands. But they were gonna do all the editing, cover art, all the production costs. I wasn't gonna have to spend a penny to publish my book-

Tim Ferriss 12:41 Mm

Hugh Howey 12:41 ... which was already better than I thought. So my, my ambitions were so low that I thought this was a huge win.

Tim Ferriss 12:47 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 12:48 But then the night we went out to dinner, me and my, my ex-girlfriend, and decided, you know, and signed this contract to celebrate it, I felt sick to my stomach.

Tim Ferriss 12:58 So your system-

Hugh Howey 12:59 My system knew

Tim Ferriss 13:00 ... had a different take.

Hugh Howey 13:01 My gut knew. Here were these characters that was already hip-deep in the sequel. I was planning on writing, you know, at least a trilogy with these characters, and I was giving the, the IP away.

Tim Ferriss 13:12 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 13:12 You know, I was giving the rights away. And what I was giving it away for, I was like, "Wait, I would spend that amo- amount of money to own this for the rest of my life." And I will... I'll never forget that sensation, and ever since then, I've never done a deal where I'm giving away rights for my lifetime. Like, even major deals with big publishers. As far as my agent and I know, we're the only ones in the industry who get these, these deals.

Tim Ferriss 13:35 So this is, this is something... Can you say a little bit more about this? Because this is something [laughs] I think for any author or even would-be author who's listening, if they've done their homework, it's something they will find shocking.

Hugh Howey 13:46 Yeah, I still find it shocking.

Tim Ferriss 13:47 And yet [laughs] ...

Hugh Howey 13:48 It's crazy. So when we went around to the big publishers, Wool was already a New York Times bestseller. We had Ridley Scott on board and 20th Century Fox to do a feature. So it had... It, it was making a lot of money, selling a lot of copies, crowding out books in the bestseller list from the major publishers. And so people were offering seven figures plus for this, for the rights, and I was showing them my monthly sales and saying, "You know, you, you can't compete with what I'm already doing," which was a power imbalance they'd never really had before.

Tim Ferriss 14:19 And just for the sake of clarity, this was self-published.

Hugh Howey 14:21 It was all self-published. And I had an agent at this time, Kristin Nelson, the best in the industry, who was so cool because she was like, "I'm not sure you, you should do a deal with a publisher," which leaves her out of the money, too.

Tim Ferriss 14:32 Right. It's not her incentive to say that.

Hugh Howey 14:34 Yeah. But her incentive was she wanted to have these conversations with publishers to help her other clients.

Tim Ferriss 14:38 Mm.

Hugh Howey 14:39 She was like, "The deal that I wanna get, you will never get, 'cause it's too soon." She told me that early on. "But we need to start having these conversations so a future author can get this deal." And what we didn't know is that w- it would change quick enough that we would get that deal. And so we were turning down these huge offers from publishers until... And we just told them, like, "We wanna do a print-only deal with a time limit, and I get to keep all the digital rights, all the audio, the rest of the world. But you publish it, the print only, as if it's a major book."

Tim Ferriss 15:09 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 15:09 Book tours, major distribution, all that. And finally, Simon & Schuster said, "Uh, we'd rather make some money than no money." And of the Big Five, they're kinda the smallest, most nimble.

Tim Ferriss 15:20 So I wanna underscore something you said for, for people who may not be in the industry. The term limit.

Hugh Howey 15:25 Yeah, the term limit's the best.

Tim Ferriss 15:26 Okay. So for most authors who do a book deal, number one, it's all rights.

Hugh Howey 15:32 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 15:32 And it's usually world rights. So it's worldwide, and it's all formats.

Hugh Howey 15:36 Every format, even formats that aren't invented yet.

Tim Ferriss 15:38 In effect, you're handing over the copyright-

Hugh Howey 15:40 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 15:40 ... and you're like, "Okay, this is yours."

Hugh Howey 15:41 It's for the rest of your life and then, like, another 30 years after your death or something like that.

Tim Ferriss 15:46 It's a long time. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 15:46 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 15:47 But you did not do that. So what was the time limit, and what happened at the sort of expiry of that, that period of time?

Hugh Howey 15:55 We did a five-year print-only deal, and so after five years, we knew the date we'd get the rights back. A lot of other books, you might get your rights back because it stops selling. It goes out of print. But now that there's print-on-demand and e-books, it's easy to keep a book in print just to keep the rights.

Tim Ferriss 16:09 Yep.

Hugh Howey 16:10 The book was still a bestseller when we got the rights back, and so we got to go to auction again. And this is where you believe in your work more than a publisher does.

Tim Ferriss 16:17 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 16:18 Like, they didn't... I guess Simon & Schuster was like, "Look, we'll make some money for a year. This fad will go away, and in, in five years we won't be sad to lose it." And, and five years later, we got to go to auction with all the big publishers, and we'll get to do it again while the TV show's probably still airing, which will be a really unique situation to be in.

Tim Ferriss 16:36 So you get multiple bites of the apple, I mean, financially speaking, right? Because you get to resell the IP or the individual book every five years.

Hugh Howey 16:44 Yeah, I get to lease it to publishers.

Tim Ferriss 16:45 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 16:46 And the good thing is I'm hoping I don't get a tempting enough offer next time, because I'm dying to self-publish again.

Tim Ferriss 16:53 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 16:53 Like, I, I love knowing what's coming in every month, doing price promotions. I love being able to put a new cover on or, you know, create new interior content. Like, it's fun to just give new life to the,

Hugh Howey 17:07 to the editions.

Tim Ferriss 17:07 What would you say to people listening who think to themselves, I think rightly so, just based on what we've said so far, "Well, [inhales] look, he had a tiger by the tail or a dragon by the tail with Wool. He had Ridley Scott. He had all these offers, so he had incredible leverage that I will never have. So the idea of having a time limit is just... It is tantalizing but out of reach for people unless they have a situation like Hugh." What would you say to them?

Hugh Howey 17:38 I thought that about myself as well, so I get that. But what's amazing is that a lot of big-name authors who entire publishing houses structure around also don't ask for it, and they could do it.

Tim Ferriss 17:49 You're the only person I know who has this, and I know a lot of and you know a lot of very, very, very big authors.

Hugh Howey 17:54 Yeah, and I think there's a bit of a Stockholm syndrome with publishers and, and authors.

Tim Ferriss 17:58 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 17:59 And I love my publishers. I've loved all my publishers I've worked with, even the ones who, like, didn't do a great job. I still love working with them, 'cause they're book people, and I love book people. But I've always felt like we were in it together. Like, we, we helped each other get lucky. They didn't do everything for me, and I didn't do everything for them. But I think some authors feel like without that publisher, they wouldn't have had the break, they wouldn't have had the career they've had. Like, their relationship has always been with the publisher first.

Tim Ferriss 18:24 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 18:25 My relationship was with readers first, and so that's my bedrock. The readers and myself, we're in it together.

Tim Ferriss 18:30 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 18:31 And publishers have, can come in and play around, but I don't feel like I need to make stupid business decisions-

Tim Ferriss 18:37 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 18:37 ... just to thank them for our past relationship, but I think a lot of other authors are in that. But to the people starting out that you're asking about, I think you have to have confidence in your work.

Tim Ferriss 18:47 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 18:48 You have to write a book that you think one other human will find this the best book they've ever read.

Tim Ferriss 18:52 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 18:53 It'll be their favorite book, not because it's objectively better than other books, but because it finds the right, the right audience. Most writers I know have this... They, they feel two things at once. They feel like, "My work is terrible. I'm an imposter. I shouldn't publish this. There's so many mistakes in it." But deep down, they also think, "This is gonna find the right person. They're gonna love it."

Tim Ferriss 19:12 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 19:12 And, and I would say, when you're trying to believe in yourself, to listen to that voice and make business decisions based on that voice. Make your creative decisions based on the imposter syndrome, 'cause that'll make you be a better writer. But listen to that part of you that thinks, "This might be amazing."

Tim Ferriss 19:28 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 19:28 And protect your work with that voice in mind.

Tim Ferriss 19:34 You also mentioned something that I think will stick out to a lot of folks who have published or who are hoping to publish, and that is that you hit the New York Times list with a self-pub book. A lot of folks would assume that is not possible, if they've tried to do their homework, or maybe they've even been told by publishers that it's not possible. And there are some counter examples. Sometimes they're imprints, but then we get into a bit of a gray area, right? They're like smaller, basically, publishing houses within a publishing house, and it's not quite what we would consider self-pub, let's say. How does that work? Like, how do you get the distribution to count? Because the New York Time list- list specifically is kind of a black box.

Hugh Howey 20:13 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:14 Right? On some level, editor's choice list, there is input from Nielsen BookScan and stuff. But certainly, when I was shopping my first book, [laughs] I mocked up a cover and I threw a ISBN, like UPC code on the fake cover, which I just grabbed as clip art and, or, or some type of, you know, Google searches result, and they were like, "Is this self-published? Because if so, we're not gonna touch it."

Hugh Howey 20:35 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:36 And I would love to hear you just explain how you actually hit the New York Times list with a self-pub book.

Hugh Howey 20:43 It's changed over time. Other people have done it. There's been times where quite a few self-published books will be on the, on the bestseller list, but I... It is a curated list. Someone, I might get some of these details wrong, but someone did a, an analysis of New York Times contributors and found that their books were higher on the list-

Tim Ferriss 21:02 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 21:02 ... than made sense in any other statistical way.

Tim Ferriss 21:04 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 21:05 One, one of the weeks that I hit the list with Wool, I know what I sold that week, and I know what the number one author, who was a friend of mine, sold the week before, and I, I think I hit the list at like three or five, and it was just the New York Times not wanting me to be number one-

Tim Ferriss 21:21 Yeah

Hugh Howey 21:21 ... because my sales were like 3x what... So it's not based on sales.

Tim Ferriss 21:26 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 21:26 It's based on a handful of independent bookstores around the country that are called reporting stores.

Tim Ferriss 21:30 Yep.

Hugh Howey 21:32 They do take Amazon into account, but they have a, like, fractional multiplier-

Tim Ferriss 21:36 Yeah

Hugh Howey 21:36 ... to discount the sales, 'cause those aren't real book sales. Those aren't real book readers, all that stuff. So there's all these weird biases that go into it. I think I hit it because I got lucky that week that the people who, the gatekeepers just weren't paying attention. They saw something number one on Amazon, and they gave it-

Tim Ferriss 21:56 But you had retail distribution.

Hugh Howey 21:58 I had retail distribution, but it was through CreateSpace at the time, which was what Amazon's print-on-demand, I think it was called. So if a bookstore wanted it, they would have to go out of their way to buy it through like Ingram-

Tim Ferriss 22:09 Hmm

Hugh Howey 22:09 ... like an expanded distributor. There wasn't a sales rep from a publishing house coming in with a catalog and saying, "We believe in this book-"

Tim Ferriss 22:16 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 22:16 ... which is how most books are sold or purchased by bookstores in bulk.

Tim Ferriss 22:21 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 22:21 So it was the power of the reader. It was like too big to ignore. 'Cause at, at the time, I think I was selling, you know, 50,000 or so copies a month on the low end-

Tim Ferriss 22:32 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 22:33 ... month after month.

Tim Ferriss 22:34 That's a lot of, lot of copies.

Hugh Howey 22:34 It's a lot. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 22:36 Lot of copies.

Hugh Howey 22:36 And for it to do it, and there were times where it was double and triple that for a single month, and you can't ignore it when it happens that big. But I'll also say, you don't have to set out to, to do this to have a successful career. I was super happy.

Tim Ferriss 22:52 How many books had you completed prior to Wool?

Hugh Howey 22:55 I'd written five novels and another novelette, this thing that's like shorter than a novella, and then Wool came out, and that was like my seventh published thing, and it was also in that novelette range, like 50 pages.

Tim Ferriss 23:09 Okay. And

Tim Ferriss 23:12 what was it, I'm sure you've had this question a lot, but I've never asked it, so here we go.

Hugh Howey 23:17 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 23:18 What made it different? Like, why do you think it captured people in the way that it did, struck that chord?

Hugh Howey 23:27 I think I was very lucky that I was started to publish at a time when e-readers and print-on-demand were around. It's a short piece.

Tim Ferriss 23:35 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 23:35 You can read it in a lunch break. It's hard to recommend a book you don't finish.

Tim Ferriss 23:40 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 23:40 And it's hard to review a book you don't finish, unless you're writing a really bad one-star review.

Tim Ferriss 23:44 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 23:45 One thing that helped with word of mouth is that I was writing something that people could get through.

Tim Ferriss 23:49 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 23:50 And honestly, that once you start, it's hard to put down. It's hard not to finish. That really helped. It's super affordable. I was charging 99 cents for the e-book, and the, the little paperback, which I think only, like several hundred maybe got-

Tim Ferriss 24:02 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 24:02 ... purchased before the cover change, was like $4.99. Those little paperbacks now go for like $1,000 and I-

Tim Ferriss 24:09 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 24:09 ... I wish I had more of them. I don't, I don't have enough of them. So I, I priced it to really be read-

Tim Ferriss 24:16 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 24:17 ... not to be profitable. You make it up on, on volume, I guess, because next thing I knew, I was making more from this 99 cent short story than all of my books combined.

Tim Ferriss 24:27 Was that a lower price than your prior books?

Hugh Howey 24:30 Yeah, and Amazon tries to make you not price things that low. They don't want e-books sold for that little. So if you, if you price it at $2.99 to $9.99, you make 70% of the cover price as an author, which is huge. Traditionally published authors might make 15 and a half, 18%.

Tim Ferriss 24:48 Mm-hmm, yeah.

Hugh Howey 24:49 So you have to sell like five times as many books to, to get the same kind of royalty. But if you sell it for less than $2.99 or more than $9.99, then your royalty goes down to 35%, so-

Tim Ferriss 25:00 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 25:01 ... half.

Tim Ferriss 25:02 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 25:02 So it's a strong incentive from Amazon. They want e-books to be priced in a certain range, and they incentivize that.

Tim Ferriss 25:07 So despite that-

Hugh Howey 25:08 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 25:08 ... you make the decision to go low.

Hugh Howey 25:10 Yeah, because you don't want a bad review, someone to pay $2.99 for something they read in an hour. No amount of money is worth the onslaught of one-star reviews-

Tim Ferriss 25:20 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 25:20 ... from angry readers.

Tim Ferriss 25:23 How much of that was a fear of one-star reviews if you price it at $2.99, which for me it still seems dirt cheap, right?

Hugh Howey 25:32 You'd be surprised. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 25:33 Oh, right, versus you not really caring about the financial payoff and you just wanting to make enough to continue writing. That's a leading question. That might not be a driver, versus something else, right? I'm trying to figure out-

Hugh Howey 25:44 I'm glad it's a leading question because-

Tim Ferriss 25:46 Yeah

Hugh Howey 25:46 ... you're leading me towards a truth that I probably wouldn't admit to myself otherwise, but that's a huge part of it. You're making it-- I'm pricing it because I want my story to get picked up and to be... I wanna find an audience. And the proof of that is that as soon as I figured out how to make it free, I did that instead.

Tim Ferriss 26:04 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 26:05 So once the work was serialized and there was the five parts of Wool, the first part I made for free, and that's a great way to, to avoid one-star reviews-

Tim Ferriss 26:15 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 26:15 ... and to get more people hooked on a story.

Tim Ferriss 26:17 Yeah, get more people hooked. Serialized, how long would it take people to read all of the parts?

Hugh Howey 26:23 It ended up being a thick novel, like 500-page novel.

Tim Ferriss 26:26 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 26:26 So I'm not sure. I, I think I can look at this data, but I think it probably takes 10 hours to-

Tim Ferriss 26:32 Mm

Hugh Howey 26:32 ... read the whole thing for an average

Hugh Howey 26:34 reader.

Tim Ferriss 26:34 So we're, we're talking about the business a little bit, and I wanna stay with that for just a few minutes longer, and then we might come back to it. But what are some other terms or clauses where you have zigged instead of zagged, done things differently, where it's really been worth it?

Hugh Howey 26:50 Oh, man.

Tim Ferriss 26:51 Do you sell worldwide rights?

Hugh Howey 26:53 I do not sell worldwide rights, no. Because audio became huge, foreign rights became huge. I, I was shocked the first time foreign deals started coming in from Brazil and Germany, and it was way more than I thought I would ever get in the US for.

Tim Ferriss 27:07 And so for context, what often happens, right, is an author will sign a deal with a publisher. They kind of sell the farm, right?

Hugh Howey 27:15 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 27:15 They give, they give everything over, which by the way, for some people might make a lot of sense, right?

Hugh Howey 27:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 27:20 If they don't have the infrastructure or maybe if their agent isn't able or willing to do a bunch of legwork in, in foreign sales. But what will often happen then, let's say a publisher comes to me and they make me what seems like a very rich deal, and it might be a rich deal, right? Once that ink is dry, before they have wired me money, they will have already had conversations with foreign publishers and received funds from those foreign publishers.

Hugh Howey 27:48 They're in the black before you get your first check.

Tim Ferriss 27:50 They're way in the black.

Hugh Howey 27:51 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 27:51 So the, the sort of [chuckles] tear down the cheek, sort of like sob story of like-

Hugh Howey 27:57 We never pay authors this much. This is-

Tim Ferriss 27:58 ... woe, woe is us-

Hugh Howey 27:59 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 27:59 ... the publisher's not always reflection of financial reality.

Hugh Howey 28:04 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 28:05 So if, if that's the norm, what, what did you end up doing?

Hugh Howey 28:09 We've done, just for Wool, probably 50 deals in other countries, and then, and those are... So it's normal for foreign deals to be term limited-

Tim Ferriss 28:17 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 28:17 ... like five or seven-year deals, and most of those we've gone around and, and renewed since. So it's just a constant.

Tim Ferriss 28:24 And your agent is doing the legwork on that?

Hugh Howey 28:25 Yeah, they do. And I have one primary agent in the US, and I have a, a European agent, Jenny Meyer, who's doing all these deals around Europe, and then I have a, an Asia-specific agent-

Tim Ferriss 28:36 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 28:36 ... who knows those. And the way they know the publishers they're working with, so they'll say, "Okay, here are the three offers." My guy, my Asian agent, came to us with offers in Taiwan, and he said, "Okay, these two offer more money, but this third person," who you've never heard of any of these publishers, "but this third person is a one-man operation. He does all the translations himself. He only does one or two books a year. You should go with him."

Tim Ferriss 29:01 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 29:01 And I have no idea what, you know, I trust my agents, so we go with this person who's offering the least amount of money, and they were right. Like we, we had the number one selling book in, in Taiwan that year because people buy books because he touched them-

Tim Ferriss 29:15 Yeah

Hugh Howey 29:15 ... not because of, of me or my story.

Tim Ferriss 29:18 That's so cool.

Hugh Howey 29:19 And so having these people working on your behalf, it's, it's enormous.

Tim Ferriss 29:22 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 29:22 People hear me talking about self-publishing, and they think that I hate agents and I hate publishers. I hate bookstores. I love all those people.

Tim Ferriss 29:29 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 29:29 These are all book people, and I love, and I love the success of any writer, however they get published.

Tim Ferriss 29:34 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 29:34 If you sign with a big publisher, fantastic. It's so hard to do. It's so hard to write a book.

Tim Ferriss 29:40 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 29:40 Like, congratulations to everybody listening who's written a book-

Tim Ferriss 29:43 Yeah

Hugh Howey 29:43 ... because that's, that took me 20 years of like beating myself up, unable to do it, and, and I'm, I'm thrilled for everyone in this industry, however they get moved forward.

Tim Ferriss 29:54 So you are describing this process, and I imagine some people listening will think to themselves, "I have no interest in pricing specials. I have no interest in figuring out cover art." That might be an exception. But they might think to themselves, "I wanna write. I don't wanna be a business person running a venture, 'cause I think that'll distract from my craft," let's just say.

Hugh Howey 30:15 Yeah, nothing wrong with that.

Tim Ferriss 30:16 So if they want to go kind of Hugh Howey innovation light, and they're like, "I wanna go the traditional route-" But I want to be smarter than the average bear. What types of things would you encourage them to pay attention to?

Hugh Howey 30:30 I don't think you'll have any leverage going the traditional route if you're not self-published already.

Tim Ferriss 30:36 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 30:36 You really have to-

Tim Ferriss 30:37 You need something to bargain with, right? You need-

Hugh Howey 30:39 Yeah, and I, I think when you're making money and leaving them out of it, then you can say, "Well, I'll cut you in, but this, these are my demands." And publishers aren't super successful. Like, they aren't great at picking which books are gonna sell.

Tim Ferriss 30:52 That's like venture capital, right? I mean, it's like-

Hugh Howey 30:54 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 30:54 ... it's a power law of distribution.

Hugh Howey 30:56 If you can give them a guarantee, you know, revenue stream, you have a huge amount of sway.

Tim Ferriss 31:03 That's a great point, and I've really thought about it, 'cause you're already ahead of the vast majority of books that they will pay for up front.

Hugh Howey 31:09 Absolutely. You're like, "I, here's guaranteed readership. You know, here are the reviews. Here are the people online who are raving about it. Here are what people at Goodreads are saying about the book." And publishers used to think a book kind of burned out its welcome really quickly, and now they're realizing books have really long tails-

Tim Ferriss 31:27 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 31:27 ... successful books, and if you can get an engaged readership on board, it's worth so much money to have, like-

Tim Ferriss 31:33 Yeah

Hugh Howey 31:34 ... that engaged fandom.

Tim Ferriss 31:36 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 31:36 To your question, if you want leverage with traditional publishing, if you want to ask for things that will further your rights and your career, you really need to establish yourself in other ways, and it doesn't have to be from self-publishing. It can have a, have a podcast that's super successful.

Tim Ferriss 31:51 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 31:51 Platform, a website, a huge following on social media.

Tim Ferriss 31:54 Something that reduces their perceived risk. That's where you have leverage.

Hugh Howey 31:57 That's exactly it.

Tim Ferriss 31:58 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 31:58 That's exactly it.

Tim Ferriss 32:00 I read in the process of doing research, which is always fun for me to do with friends when I have them on the podcast, 'cause otherwise it'd be really creepy to do, like, a bunch of, like, Google sleuthing on my friends. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 32:11 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 32:12 And I was wondering, I think you gave the advice, and I'm wondering if it still applies, that writers not take days off. Now, that's one. That could be one of those, don't believe everything you read on the internet. The second is related to writing for, I think it was a book review website-

Hugh Howey 32:30 Mm

Tim Ferriss 32:30 ... and becoming accustomed to working on deadline, and I'd just love you to speak to the importance of that. Because I know for me, I think of myself occasionally as a writer. If I don't have a deadline, man, I am not terribly productive.

Hugh Howey 32:47 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 32:47 So there's the deadline piece, if you could speak to that, and then just how you would suggest people train themselves to write. Is it daily? Is it few days a week? Is it something else?

Hugh Howey 32:59 So I can only speak to what works for me, but I will say that I've found that I have way more in common with other writers than I, than, than we are dissimilar. Like, I hear the same laments like you were just mentioning. I know you and I have s- a lot of the same, uh, hangups about writing, and the famous, the famous quote about writing is, "I hate writing, but I love having written."

Tim Ferriss 33:18 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 33:19 Everyone loves to have, like, gotten some pages behind them, and I tried for 20 years to be a writer from age 12 to 32. My number one bucket list thing in life is to write a book, and no one was stopping me but myself, but for 20 years I couldn't do it.

Tim Ferriss 33:34 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 33:35 And honestly, like, all I had to do was write a little bit every day and I would write a book. That's all I ever wanted. And so how can you get in the way of yourself that consistently? And we all do it as writers. And once I unlocked the ability to write, my fear was ever turning that switch back off, and that's where I think the daily habit is critical. Like, I wrote today before I came here, and it's Saturday.

Tim Ferriss 33:59 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 33:59 And I'll write on a, on the plane and I'll write in the back of an Uber. I'll do whatever it takes to get some words in that day.

Tim Ferriss 34:05 Is there a certain amount or is it just something?

Hugh Howey 34:08 It used to be. I used to try to do, like, 2,000 words a day.

Tim Ferriss 34:11 2... Wow.

Hugh Howey 34:12 And, uh-

Tim Ferriss 34:13 That's a, that's a lot of words. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 34:14 Yeah. Now if I do 1,000 words a day, and what I find helpful in my Word document, whatever I'm working on, there's the word count written in the document at the end wherever I'm writing, and when I start my daily session, as I'm writing I can see at the bottom of the Word document what the current word count is, and I can just see the comparison.

Tim Ferriss 34:33 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 34:33 And that gives me my, like, "You need to do a little more." And then once I'm done for the day, I update that number-

Tim Ferriss 34:38 Hmm

Hugh Howey 34:39 ... to the day's number, and so I'm always just trying to march that, that forward. It sounds calculated and cold, but if you just sit around waiting for inspiration and try to write a few sentences here and there, you'll never stay with the story enough to know what it's even about.

Tim Ferriss 34:55 So when you said you, effectively when you turned on the spigot you were afraid of turning it off, so you kept up this daily practice, but how did you after so many years turn it on in the first place? Like, what was the catalyst? What was the-

Hugh Howey 35:08 You mentioned the review website I was writing for.

Tim Ferriss 35:11 I did.

Hugh Howey 35:11 So, uh, I was trying to help a friend get this crime mystery thriller website up and running, and he was doing the film movie side of it and I was doing the books. And I just put a call out to publishers that we... It was a beautiful website that he had made. So I was sharing the URL. I was saying, "This is what we're doing," and I started getting a flood of books in the mail. Like, and for a reader like me, this was like Christmas every day.

Tim Ferriss 35:33 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 35:34 I was getting more books than I could review, so I was having to go through and see which ones appealed to me, and I was building bookshelves all over my house-

Tim Ferriss 35:40 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 35:41 ... to house these things.

Tim Ferriss 35:42 For one genre. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 35:43 Yeah, for one genre, and but it was the biggest genre.

Tim Ferriss 35:46 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 35:46 You know, it was like the one that publishers make a lot of their money on. In order to keep up with it, I started reading and reviewing a book a day-

Tim Ferriss 35:52 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 35:52 ... and this was all I was doing. I, and I'd done this in college too. I'd gone through a period of, like, two years where I was reading a s- a book a day as a challenge, and some of these are, you know, 400-page books. So you're not doing much else.

Tim Ferriss 36:04 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 36:05 Just that. I didn't know how good this was gonna be for my writing, but absorbing that much prose just made it so easy for me to tap into not only the ability to string words together, but all the plot elements that I was absorbing from weeks and weeks and weeks of, of absorbing this many books. And then I was also writing that review every day, and so I was getting a daily writing habit. It wasn't even a job. I wasn't getting paid to do this.

Tim Ferriss 36:34 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 36:34 I was doing it for a friend to try to get a website going, and 'cause I love reading.

Tim Ferriss 36:38 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 36:38 But that experience is what made it possible for me to write.

Tim Ferriss 36:44 Hmm. Is there any Mount Rushmore of fiction books that come to mind? This is not a fixed list, but whatever comes to mind, if you were, if you were to say, look, and I'll, I'll make this personal. So I've been experimenting with short fiction for the last year or so. I think I will do quite a bit more, possibly in screenplay format, which I definitely wanna talk to you about at some point.

Hugh Howey 37:11 Oh, cool.

Tim Ferriss 37:12 But what are some books people should consume or that I might wanna consume to provide myself with really good nutrition for absorbing some of what you're describing?

Hugh Howey 37:26 I think reading beautiful prose is almost like striking a tuning fork before your writing session. I think it's really awesome to pick up... There's several things you can do. You can read stuff that's nonsense, but beautiful, like some Proust.

Tim Ferriss 37:39 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 37:39 And you can just turn to any part of Proust, it's all the same.

Tim Ferriss 37:41 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 37:42 The beginning of his story [laughs] reads just like the middle of his stories. But the way a good translation of Proust flows, that iambic pentameter, the run-on sentences, it's like it's, you start to hear the tonal quality of good music in words, and then you can start to sing in that key-

Tim Ferriss 38:00 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 38:00 ... yourself. Some of the books I've read recently that have, I think, upped my writing, one was This Is How You Lose the Time War, which is a-

Tim Ferriss 38:09 It's so good.

Hugh Howey 38:10 Yeah, it's so good.

Tim Ferriss 38:11 That is an incredible book.

Hugh Howey 38:12 And it's short, and it's one of those that you could just pick up and read again to, like, remind yourself what writing can sound like.

Tim Ferriss 38:18 Also fascinating because it was written by two authors-

Hugh Howey 38:21 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 38:21 ... who alternated back and forth.

Hugh Howey 38:22 Alternated back and forth, and, and which is structural to the story, which works. Circe, have you read that?

Tim Ferriss 38:29 I haven't yet read it. I have seen so many people reading it. I've seen friends reading it.

Hugh Howey 38:34 Took me forever to read that. The prose in that book is so special-

Tim Ferriss 38:38 Mm

Hugh Howey 38:38 ... and will make you a better writer.

Tim Ferriss 38:41 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 38:42 Just recently is, another one that someone recommended was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Tim Ferriss 38:46 Oh, I haven't heard of it.

Hugh Howey 38:48 I tried to read that, like, five times and it was the hottest thing, and I never gave it an- enough of a chance, but when I finally finished it, I was like, "That's, that's what I'm aiming for with my writing."

Tim Ferriss 38:58 No kidding. Why did it take you five times?

Hugh Howey 39:00 I've heard this from a lot of people, so if you hear this recommendation and you wanna read the book, get through the first, like, 70 or 80 pages.

Tim Ferriss 39:06 Mm.

Hugh Howey 39:06 And I know it's like, I'd rather read something that's captured me from the first page.

Tim Ferriss 39:11 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 39:11 This book pays off.

Tim Ferriss 39:13 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 39:14 So those are recent books that have, that have frightened me out.

Tim Ferriss 39:16 You recommended Lincoln Highway to me-

Hugh Howey 39:18 Lincoln Highway, oh-

Tim Ferriss 39:19 ... which I thought was spectacular

Hugh Howey 39:20 ... anything by Amor. Amor Towles is one of the-

Tim Ferriss 39:23 It's just a book full of literary and narrative magic tricks. It's wild.

Hugh Howey 39:28 He upsets me-

Tim Ferriss 39:29 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 39:29 ... because he, he, he wasn't even a writer f- as his primary career.

Tim Ferriss 39:33 Oh, no, one of those.

Hugh Howey 39:34 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 39:35 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 39:35 Super successful investment banker. You know, it's like Michael Lewis kind of story.

Tim Ferriss 39:41 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 39:41 Like, super successful in other ways, but it turns out the quality of reading that he does, and he, he's just one of the smartest human beings-

Tim Ferriss 39:48 Yeah

Hugh Howey 39:48 ... I've ever met, but his writing, there's a, there's a short story collection coming out by him this year called, uh, Table for Two.

Tim Ferriss 39:57 Oh, can't wait to read it.

Hugh Howey 39:58 Get it on day one, because there's one short story in particular in there that is the cleverest thing I've ever read.

Tim Ferriss 40:04 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 40:04 So he's another one that I'll read his works in order to remind myself, like, what we're aiming for.

Tim Ferriss 40:09 His wordsmithing is beautiful.

Hugh Howey 40:12 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 40:13 But it's, it's not Proust, right? It doesn't strive to be that.

Hugh Howey 40:17 It's clear.

Tim Ferriss 40:18 But his-

Hugh Howey 40:18 But clever

Tim Ferriss 40:18 ... it's so clear, and the story arcs and character development, and the weaving-

Hugh Howey 40:25 Mm

Tim Ferriss 40:25 ... right? And he's, like, sitting at a loom of prose and just, like, weaving these carpets, and you don't see the finished pattern until after, you'd say an hour, and you're like, "Oh, my God." [laughs]

Hugh Howey 40:36 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 40:37 "I didn't see that coming at all."

Hugh Howey 40:38 He's a genius, and he works hard at it, you know?

Tim Ferriss 40:41 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 40:41 Spends the, the years and time it takes. That's a level of writing that it's fun to aspire to, but I know I'll never reach.

Tim Ferriss 40:47 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 40:48 But you have to have, like, loftier goals than-

Tim Ferriss 40:50 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 40:50 ... than, you know, your, your expected

Hugh Howey 40:52 outcome.

Tim Ferriss 40:53 So update for you, this is personal, on my side, is that, and you have been along for the ride here, so I'm working on my first book project in six years or so, and I am collaborating with a friend of mine because I had written 72,000 words of this maybe five years ago, and then thrown in the towel. I was like, "I just don't have what it takes to get this to the finish line," because I recognize I'm seasoned enough, I recognize what it's gonna take to get this to where I'll be happy with it, right? And to scratch that imposter syndrome and actually be satisfied enough that I would put it out in the world. And this friend of mine kept bugging me about it, because he wanted to read it, and I was like, "Well, if you wanna read it so badly-"

Hugh Howey 41:37 You write it.

Tim Ferriss 41:38 Yeah, you write it.

Hugh Howey 41:39 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 41:39 Or you help me write it.

Hugh Howey 41:40 Yeah. Get it to the finish line.

Tim Ferriss 41:42 And it is, so far, we've been working on it for a few months, and inspired by a lot of your stories about collaborating with writing partners on the TV side-

Hugh Howey 41:52 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 41:52 ... has been a blast. It has been so much fun. It has been so much [laughs] -

Hugh Howey 41:57 Isn't it better writing with someone, like-

Tim Ferriss 41:59 It has been so great

Hugh Howey 42:00 ... 'cause we destroy ourselves when we do it-

Tim Ferriss 42:02 Oh

Hugh Howey 42:03 ... alone, right?

Tim Ferriss 42:03 Brutal. It's just being, like, locked in the padded cell-

Hugh Howey 42:06 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 42:06 ... with your own mind, and it's been great. The book is not done. It's, who knows where it will go, but it is, I can say at the very least, it is already partially succeeded, and I see that as such a tremendous unlock for myself-

Hugh Howey 42:22 That's awesome

Tim Ferriss 42:23 ... because I've been such a solo operator that... And the quality's good, right? It's not finished, it's not fully polished, but I was like, "Okay," like, "this is actually working." And-

Tim Ferriss 42:35 At this point, you know, based on our lunches and conversations, I'm planning on probably doing effectively as much self-publishing as possible, and then-

Hugh Howey 42:44 That's great

Tim Ferriss 42:44 ... potentially a print-only deal. And what I have been surprised by, I'd love to get your take on this, I've talked to a couple publishers. Just why not, right? Like, I'm friends with a number of people-

Hugh Howey 42:55 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 42:55 ... who are publishers.

Hugh Howey 42:56 You've worked with them. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 42:57 Yeah, and I've worked with folks, and the idea of a print-only deal, off the table-

Hugh Howey 43:02 Really?

Tim Ferriss 43:03 ... for bigger publishers.

Hugh Howey 43:04 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 43:05 Now, there are some, like, clever workarounds that I had one publisher who's, who I won't name, but-

Hugh Howey 43:16 Is it like a distribution deal, like a 50/50?

Tim Ferriss 43:18 Well, they- they do the profit sharing stuff-

Hugh Howey 43:20 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 43:20 ... but they want all formats.

Hugh Howey 43:22 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 43:23 And then there have been options where people have said, "Look, what we could do is, like, buy all rights, but then basically give you an exclusive license back for those other formats. So in practice, like, you'll get what you want. But publicly we have to say we got all rights."

Hugh Howey 43:37 And that's why they do that. So I can give you some behind-the-scenes stuff that I-

Tim Ferriss 43:40 I want some behind-the-scenes.

Hugh Howey 43:41 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 43:41 I would love it.

Hugh Howey 43:42 Two things that I found fascinating. One, I heard from people in the industry, because I got to know, like, editors in chief at many of the publishing houses over the years, going to conferences and kinda talking on a business side. I'd even get called in to talk to some publishing houses that I didn't even publish with. And one of the things I heard was a publisher who gave me a print-only deal got phone calls from all the other publishers blasting them.

Tim Ferriss 44:05 Oh, I'm sure.

Hugh Howey 44:06 Because the deal got listed in, like-

Tim Ferriss 44:08 Sets a precedent.

Hugh Howey 44:09 Exactly. The whole idea that competition exists in the marketplace-

Tim Ferriss 44:14 Yeah

Hugh Howey 44:14 ... it's insane.

Tim Ferriss 44:15 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 44:15 The contracts all look the same. The terms are all the same. The dollar amounts are all the same.

Tim Ferriss 44:20 It's like, just as this quick side note, I remember I- I threw my, uh, one and only, like, event, like a conference. It was like 150 people, super proud of it. [laughs] Blew all the money that I made on, like, producing the event, and it was in Napa. And I was like, "Why do all of these catering services charge $8 a cup of coffee?"

Hugh Howey 44:40 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 44:41 That's a little fishy [laughs] .

Hugh Howey 44:42 Yeah, I know, man. That surprised me, that publishers weren't willing to do deals because of the stigma and the social pressure from other publishers.

Tim Ferriss 44:50 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 44:50 Like, do the things that they won't do. Get that next Tim Ferriss book when no one else will.

Tim Ferriss 44:55 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 44:56 So that was really, that was kinda disappointing, but surprising. One of the things that happened, one publisher gave me a really good print-only deal with a time limit, then made an offer for the sequels and wouldn't give me the same terms for the sequels. So they thought that I was gonna be trapped, like, now giving them all the rights. So I was self-publishing sequels while they were publishing the first book-

Tim Ferriss 45:18 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 45:18 ... which creates a really awkward, like-

Tim Ferriss 45:20 Wait, what [laughs] I'm so curious

Hugh Howey 45:21 ... marketing synergy.

Tim Ferriss 45:22 What leverage did they think they had? They-

Hugh Howey 45:24 Yeah, they had nothing.

Tim Ferriss 45:25 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 45:25 They thought, I think they thought once I had a, a taste for the publishing life.

Tim Ferriss 45:29 [laughs] Once you had a taste of the high life.

Hugh Howey 45:32 Yeah. And I take a-

Tim Ferriss 45:33 Rolling around in your Richie Rich car and-

Hugh Howey 45:35 I take a pay cut to go with publishers

Tim Ferriss 45:36 ... eating Grey Poupon [laughs] .

Hugh Howey 45:38 I, I,

Hugh Howey 45:39 it's like I, I make less money to do a publishing deal than I do to self-publish.

Tim Ferriss 45:43 Why do the publishing deals at all?

Hugh Howey 45:45 Because you can reach different readers. You might not reach more readers because the pricing will be less appetizing in a lot of ways, but you'll get in different distribution channels.

Tim Ferriss 45:56 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 45:56 And so it opens up new avenues. It's also, for me, once the money was no longer an issue-

Tim Ferriss 46:01 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 46:02 ... because, you know, probably two years into my self-publishing of Wool, like, I didn't have to, I was gonna be able to live off that for the rest of my life, then I can make decisions that were just, like, what's, what's creatively fun.

Tim Ferriss 46:15 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 46:15 Like, I, I wanna work with these publishers because we get to do box sets and special editions and-

Tim Ferriss 46:22 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 46:22 ... go do a two-week book tour that I would never organize on my own, but that a publisher has all the infrastructure to-

Tim Ferriss 46:29 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 46:30 ... set up and do.

Tim Ferriss 46:32 Book tour. Let's talk about promotion for a second. Where do you fall on promotion? Because I believe, like, after your first book, or it might have been Wool, tell me which it was. It might've been after your first book came out. You started working on your second book, and I wanna say your dad maybe was like, "What are you doing to promote the first book?"

Hugh Howey 46:50 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 46:51 Okay, can you tell me-

Hugh Howey 46:52 My dad is hilarious.

Tim Ferriss 46:52 Okay, so could you-

Hugh Howey 46:53 He exists to make-

Tim Ferriss 46:54 ... expand on this, and then I'd love to just hear kinda where you fall on promotion, 'cause it can be helpful or it can be a huge distraction, sometimes both.

Hugh Howey 47:04 Yeah, often both. My dad was amazing. He didn't know anything about books or book sales or any of that, but he knew every small business owner in the town that he grew up in and the town that he lived in in Colorado. And when I published, like, next thing I know, he's got a table in front of, like, a, someone's coffee shop.

Tim Ferriss 47:23 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 47:23 Like, places you wouldn't expect to see books being sold.

Tim Ferriss 47:26 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 47:26 And he's driving me around. We'll do like three or four of these in a day, and I would do this for, like, the week that I was hanging out with him and-

Tim Ferriss 47:31 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 47:32 ... you know, visiting. We're supposed to be hanging out playing-

Tim Ferriss 47:34 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 47:34 ... gin rummy or cribbage. Instead, we're just doing, like, these book events.

Tim Ferriss 47:37 In front of the hardware store with some books. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 47:39 Yeah, totally. And you'd sit there all day and maybe sell, you know, five books if you were on a good day.

Tim Ferriss 47:44 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 47:45 So it makes no sense financially. You're better off spending that day writing. But I will say, if you can find something that you enjoy that counts as promotion-

Tim Ferriss 47:54 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 47:54 ... tap into that. And for me, that was engaging with readers on Facebook.

Tim Ferriss 47:59 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 47:59 I didn't realize this was promotional work until I saw how it snowballed my sales. But instead of ... And I'm, I've never been comfortable asking someone who's never read my stuff to go read it.

Tim Ferriss 48:10 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 48:10 I've never pushed my book on people. But what I have done is tried to, like, engage with people who've already enjoyed it.

Tim Ferriss 48:16 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 48:17 And I think that it works for me emotionally, 'cause I have the feedback loop of my writing-

Tim Ferriss 48:22 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 48:23 ... is, you know, doing something. It's got an audience. I'm getting a, a little positive reinforcement. So it made me feel less alone, but it also made them talk about my books more on their page or with their friends or family. Other people would see this interaction, like, "What are you, what's this person really jazzed about?" And they get curious about it So blogging, being on social media, putting out little videos, it looks like promotional work, but it was basically therapy for me to feel like I wasn't doing this just by myself and I wasn't all alone in this.

Tim Ferriss 48:56 Not feeling alone. You've been doing a lot more collaboration in the last, I guess, handful of years.

Hugh Howey 49:02 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 49:03 Why do that, and what have you found are the keys for you in good collaboration?

Hugh Howey 49:12 Personality is the number one thing.

Tim Ferriss 49:13 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 49:13 If you can just get along with your co-creator, then it doesn't feel like work anymore. You're just having fun. My, my co-writer in all things TV and film is this guy named Matt Michalatos, who's an amazing author in his own right, beautiful screenwriter. He's already had some TV and film stuff out there. And we started working together on a script for fun and realized this is better than doing this individually.

Tim Ferriss 49:40 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 49:40 So now we just do all of our projects together.

Tim Ferriss 49:42 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 49:43 And spending time with him brainstorming story and, and divvying up writing and working on scripts, I forget that it's work. It's so much fun.

Tim Ferriss 49:53 So let's focus on that last part. How do you work together in the sense that you actually ship things-

Hugh Howey 49:59 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 50:00 ... you and your partner ship things, so there must be some process with deadlines and so on. Are you working on multiple projects at once? Do you do one at a time? How do you divvy up responsibilities? Like, what does a week in the life or a month in the life look like?

Hugh Howey 50:17 We usually have something that needs our attention more than other things, but there was a, there was a day a few weeks ago where we pushed five projects forward on the same day.

Tim Ferriss 50:26 [laughs] These are all TV, TV/film?

Hugh Howey 50:29 TV and film, and they all have a good chance of going to the next phase, so they're all ... They all have momentum behind them. And yeah, that blew our minds. We're like, "Did we work on five things today?"

Tim Ferriss 50:39 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 50:39 Normally, it's one, maybe two things. This last week we got a, a two-page pitch out to a, a studio that was waiting on it, and then went back into a rewrite of a pilot that we're working on, a, a brand new IP for another major studio.

Tim Ferriss 50:54 And when you say we went into a rewrite, is one person at the keyboard, not to get too [laughs] nitty-gritty about it-

Hugh Howey 50:59 No, nuts and bolts are good-

Tim Ferriss 51:00 Yeah

Hugh Howey 51:00 ... because, like, it's-

Tim Ferriss 51:01 Yeah

Hugh Howey 51:01 ... how do you figure this out? We've done both. What we find now is we write an outline, like a rough outline together, brainstorming. Then we write a detailed outline, the kinda thing that you would show a producer, and then once you have that detailed outline, I'm like, I just feel like two right now. Like, I, I know where that's gonna go. We already have all the beats, so we don't have to debate anything, and I'll just be working on act two, and when you look up, act one's also written, which is one of the best feelings as a writer. [laughs] It's like having these little, you know, gremlins that come out at night and do, like-

Tim Ferriss 51:32 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 51:32 ... all the work.

Tim Ferriss 51:33 Because your partner's working on act one while you're working on act two?

Hugh Howey 51:35 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 51:36 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 51:36 And it's more than a doubling. I- it feels like you triple or quadruple your output. Also because, like, you, now you have a deadline. You have a social deadline. They're working, so you have to work-

Tim Ferriss 51:47 Mm

Hugh Howey 51:47 ... and you're doing the same thing for them.

Tim Ferriss 51:49 Are there any other mistakes, common mistakes that you see? Because you're known as someone who has experimented with self-publishing. You're known as someone who has tried a lot of things in publishing, so you must get a lot of questions and a lot of stories from various people who are attempting to take on creative projects on some level. What are some other mistakes, we've talked about a few in this conversation so far, but maybe other common mistakes that you see?

Hugh Howey 52:20 The number one mistake I see will undermine everything else I'm about to say-

Tim Ferriss 52:25 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 52:25 ... because I think it's trusting expertise-

Tim Ferriss 52:28 Ah

Hugh Howey 52:28 ... can get you in trouble.

Tim Ferriss 52:29 Uh-huh. Okay.

Hugh Howey 52:30 The industry's changing all the time, and so even what I know might be outdated, and, and I'm still operating on it. Like, I remember early on someone telling me that audiobooks were gonna be the next biggest thing, and this was way before they blew up.

Tim Ferriss 52:44 Mm.

Hugh Howey 52:44 They saw it before anyone else, and that, the advice they gave me, like, changed my career-

Tim Ferriss 52:50 Mm

Hugh Howey 52:50 ... in a big, big, big, big way.

Tim Ferriss 52:52 Changed because you retained your audio rights?

Hugh Howey 52:54 Yeah, and so I started focusing on creating audiobooks and launching them with the books and making sure the production value was really high. I just thought it was, like, an extra format. I didn't know it was gonna be one of the money drivers.

Tim Ferriss 53:05 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 53:06 So trusting your gut is often going against the established wisdom, and that can be really beneficial.

Tim Ferriss 53:13 Mm.

Hugh Howey 53:13 There's just so much change happening, and you might have an idea no one else has had. So being your own expert, I think, is one of the keys. A common mistake I see people make is thinking that readers won't follow you across genres.

Tim Ferriss 53:28 Mm.

Hugh Howey 53:28 So you see people spread out their name amongst different pen names. So I'm gonna write under this for sci-fi and under this for romance, and this is my nonfiction stuff. And the brand is you, and if people enjoy your prose, they'll follow you to other genres. So really consolidate your identity. And unless you have a reason to not write under your real name, embrace your writing under your real name and make sure that you are the brand.

Tim Ferriss 53:56 Mm.

Hugh Howey 53:57 The more readers can feel a connection with the person behind the work, better off your career will be.

Tim Ferriss 54:04 Mm.

Hugh Howey 54:04 I'm convinced of that. I think the relationship I have with my readers and the first thousand fans, I remember when we hit, like, 1,000 people on Facebook, the fans on Facebook would call themselves the first thousand. They were really proud of being early, and I still have a relationship with all of them today-

Tim Ferriss 54:21 Wow

Hugh Howey 54:21 ... like, 14 years later.

Tim Ferriss 54:22 That's amazing.

Hugh Howey 54:23 That bond was so real and so intimate-

Tim Ferriss 54:26 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 54:26 ... and I think anyone who tells you to shy away from that might be leading you astray. This reminds me of some behind-the-scenes stuff I was gonna mention earlier when you were talking about different rights in different-

Tim Ferriss 54:38 Yeah, yeah

Hugh Howey 54:38 ... regions. I had a publisher offering ... We were trying to do a print-only deal before the first one, and they were like, "No, we-" We will give you a million dollars for all the rights, but we won't, you know, parcel these things out. And they were talking about how the print was so important, and I was like, "Well, I'll do the print with you for free. You don't have to give me any money." And they wouldn't do that deal.

Tim Ferriss 55:04 [laughs] Okay.

Hugh Howey 55:07 Because I was like, "I'm making enough money on the e-book."

Tim Ferriss 55:09 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 55:09 "I'll give you the print for free. You run off of the print version, make whatever you want-

Tim Ferriss 55:13 That's wild

Hugh Howey 55:14 ... cut me into-

Tim Ferriss 55:15 Yeah

Hugh Howey 55:15 ... a little bit of royalty, but no advance at all."

Tim Ferriss 55:17 The other syndicate families would be very upset. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 55:19 Well, yeah, but they all said no, which... And then I realized they're all talking down about digital rights and trying to sell me on a beautiful print edition. But then when I would offer them the print rights for free, they were like, "No, but we'll give you a million for everything." They were telling me what the digital is worth-

Tim Ferriss 55:36 Yeah, yeah

Hugh Howey 55:36 ... in the business conversation.

Tim Ferriss 55:38 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 55:39 But in the creative conversations, they were telling me digital was worthless.

Tim Ferriss 55:42 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 55:43 And so I think that was really eye-opening for me. Like-

Tim Ferriss 55:46 Yeah, it's a bit of a tell.

Hugh Howey 55:47 Yeah, it was a tell. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 55:48 [laughs] You know, and I should be fair in saying that I, I spoke with one or two kinda mid, mid-sized publishers who are absolutely game for print only.

Hugh Howey 56:00 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:00 But the big boys and girls, and I won't name names, but anyone who's part of, like, what used to be called the five or six sisters, I can't recall.

Hugh Howey 56:08 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:08 There's been some consolidation.

Hugh Howey 56:10 It was down to five. Is it still five, or is it four now?

Tim Ferriss 56:12 I think [laughs]

Hugh Howey 56:12 I think it's still five, but...

Tim Ferriss 56:14 It's like Highlander.

Hugh Howey 56:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 56:15 Exactly. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 56:17 Yeah. Not as immortal, but yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:19 Not as immortal. They've been unwilling to, my perspective, right, I don't have any evidence here, but break rank, right?

Hugh Howey 56:27 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:27 Like, they're not gonna break formation. In their defense, I would say I understand that if that becomes the new normal, they have to go... They will necessarily have to go through major reorgs, right? I mean, I would imagine.

Hugh Howey 56:42 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 56:42 Unless they are able to create new revenue streams in, in some capacity, which I'm sure will happen at some point. I just don't know what form that would take.

Hugh Howey 56:51 They would have to cut expenses. They base themselves in the most expensive real estate. There's a lot of bloat.

Tim Ferriss 56:57 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 56:57 There's a lot of excess that could be cut, and they've cut a lot. It used to be, you know, the two-hour lunches and the... It was kind of a very breezy industry-

Tim Ferriss 57:05 Yeah

Hugh Howey 57:05 ... before the big box retailers. It's not even Amazon that changed it, it was the pressure that Barnes & Noble and Borders and those guys, 'cause they were doing huge discounts and demanding unbelievable deals from publishers-

Tim Ferriss 57:18 Yeah

Hugh Howey 57:18 ... in order to move big volume. So things started changing probably in the early '90s, but there's still room to cut if they wanted to.

Tim Ferriss 57:25 There's room to cut.

Tim Ferriss 57:26 So let's talk about peering into the future a bit. Last time we hung out, I wanna say, you showed me a number of cover mock-ups, and they weren't just mock-ups. They looked great, and you said, "I made this in," however much time it was, not a whole lot of time, "with AI." And I'm curious how you think AI is going to change, let's say, book creation and book publishing, because it's hard for me to imagine a corner of that that it won't touch.

Hugh Howey 57:59 Yeah, it's gonna touch everything eventually.

Tim Ferriss 58:01 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 58:02 The same way electricity and computation have. I, Kevin, I believe, is the first one, Kevin Kelly, to point out that we, like, electrified everything, and then we added compute to everything, and then we're gonna add AI to everything. And everything you can say about AI will all be wrong in the future, so the really hard pronouncements people make are hilarious. Like, AI would never be able to do this. Like, we have no idea.

Tim Ferriss 58:27 Yeah. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 58:27 We just invented this. Like, these new language models are, are, you know, less than a few years old. Right now, what AI can do is lift your worst skill up to, like, 80% minimum of what an expert can do. So I ha- I don't have any cover art ability, and you can see that with my old self-published cover art. But now I can get to 80% of an industry veteran on my own in, in a single day, and that's, that's game-changer.

Tim Ferriss 58:58 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 58:58 But we're doing a, a deluxe edition of Wool that'll be out later this year, which I'm probably upsetting somebody by talking about it. But we're going with a traditional cover artist, because for something this important, we wanna, A, contribute to the other arts-

Tim Ferriss 59:17 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 59:17 ... but also get it right and have the feedback loop to, like, make this the best cover art possible. But for the next things that I self-publish, I wouldn't hesitate to use AI to create something that was good enough that I loved, 'cause I was already doing this-

Tim Ferriss 59:33 Yeah

Hugh Howey 59:33 ... with, like, terrible Photoshop.

Tim Ferriss 59:35 What do you think about on the, on the text prose storybook side? Because I would imagine, and I don't know this for a fact, but I would have to imagine that there's already an avalanche of AI-generated books hitting self-publishing, and-

Hugh Howey 59:52 It, it's already happened.

Tim Ferriss 59:53 It's already-

Hugh Howey 59:53 Amazon changed their policy around it to limit the number of books you could upload in a short period of time.

Tim Ferriss 59:58 Yeah. Okay.

Hugh Howey 59:59 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 59:59 So where do you think that goes? I mean, how do you think that will impact the ecosystem?

Hugh Howey 1:00:05 I think there will be authors who no longer have a seat on the bus because of it, because th- there'll be enough AI-generated books to make some readers happy, and those readers are no longer buying books from another author. There's already more books in the public domain than anyone could ever read, and these are classics. These are, like, not self-published books, which are, can also be great. This is the, the great Russian literature. This is-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:37 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:00:37 ... you know, everything written more than 100 years ago-

Tim Ferriss 1:00:40 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:00:40 ... is all free to read, and you can download them all. That has not stopped people from having amazing careers.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:46 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:00:47 So the idea that there'll be too much to read and so no one will make a living, that's always been true. I'm not sure what AI would change about that.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:54 Well, I suppose what I'm wondering is- For instance, if somebody has... I, I guess Amazon as the dominant player here in the US at least will have to just get very good at different types of filters in the sense that much like if someone comes out with a hit product, let's, let's call it Matterhorn. I'm making this up, whatever. There's a new product called Matterhorn with two Ns at the end.

Hugh Howey 1:01:22 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:23 And if that product takes off, within a few weeks there are gonna be fake websites.

Hugh Howey 1:01:29 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:29 There are going to be people advertising on Google to try to poach that traffic-

Hugh Howey 1:01:34 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:01:34 ... and maybe-

Hugh Howey 1:01:34 Happens all the time

Tim Ferriss 1:01:35 ... right. So I would imagine the same exact thing would happen on publishing platforms if people are able to quickly generate-

Hugh Howey 1:01:43 So it was already happening-

Tim Ferriss 1:01:44 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:01:44 ... where people would download even some of my books. They would download them, copy and paste the whole thing, change the title and the cover and re-upload it, and they would start be selling copies.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:54 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:01:54 They would do that to Wikipedia articles.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:57 Oh, they would just use Wikipedia articles?

Hugh Howey 1:01:58 Yeah. They'd just copy and paste, and then say like, you know, "It's a gardening series and, and it's about every tree, and here's my book on sycamores."

Tim Ferriss 1:02:05 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:02:05 And it's the Wikipedia entry.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:07 Really?

Hugh Howey 1:02:07 It's totally illegal.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:08 Yeah, yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:02:09 That is pretty close to an accurate description of someone who I know made millions of dollars doing this very thing. It was like a gardening specific kind of Wikipedia plagiarism.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:20 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:02:20 So that's already happening, and Amazon-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:22 Somebody made millions of dollars doing that?

Hugh Howey 1:02:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:02:24 Wow.

Hugh Howey 1:02:24 Yeah. Well, 'cause they had thousands of titles up-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:27 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:02:27 ... and each one was generating a little stream of money.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:30 Wow. Okay.

Hugh Howey 1:02:32 Yeah. Amazon is been playing Whac-A-Mole with these kinds of schemes-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:36 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:02:37 ... for a long time. As soon as you open, you know, the, the floodgates up like this-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:42 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:02:42 ... you're dealing with... Everyone thought self-publishing would be a problem. We were amazing.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:46 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:02:46 Like, we were providing great books at, at great prices-

Tim Ferriss 1:02:49 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:02:49 ... for a lot of people. It's all the little scams that were

Hugh Howey 1:02:52 an issue.

Tim Ferriss 1:02:53 What are the opportunities hiding in the threats, right? When I see this, because I've also seen some fears around unemployment, which I think are, are valid in a lot of respects. I would disagree strongly with Kevin on that, right? And I think he wrote in his Wired piece that he felt net, net, no one would lose jobs because of AI. I disagree with that, but are there any opportunities that you see? And I guess we kind of telegraphed some of it in terms of getting skills up to 80% of an industry veteran, but as you think about all of the noise that's gonna be generated and all of the experimentation that's gonna happen, which is intrinsically interesting to me, what are some of maybe the opportunities that people might not see or things that come to mind for you? Because I think of, for instance, I'll throw one out there, which is just conquering the empty page. So if, if-

Hugh Howey 1:03:51 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:03:51 ... I could use voice to kinda ramble my ideas, which I'm very good at doing, they come out pretty polished, and I'm like, "Man, I wish I could have just written that." [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:04:00 So many times I'll, I'll say something to, to Matt, my writing partner, and it comes out perfect, and neither one of us are typing. And I'm like, "We will never get that back, will we?"

Tim Ferriss 1:04:08 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:04:09 That it's gone.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:09 Yeah. No. Exactly.

Hugh Howey 1:04:10 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:10 So if I could do that into an AI who would clean it up, make a few suggestions, boom, I've just conquered the empty page.

Hugh Howey 1:04:19 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:19 And now I have something. Once I have clay, like, on the table to work with-

Hugh Howey 1:04:23 Oh, yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:04:23 ... now I, now I can work with it. And-

Hugh Howey 1:04:25 Revising is, like, so much easier than writing

Tim Ferriss 1:04:28 So much easier, right?

Hugh Howey 1:04:29 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:29 So, uh, that would be one example where I could see AI enabling me to do better, more consistent writing. I'm wondering if other, other use cases come to mind.

Hugh Howey 1:04:41 Yeah, that's a really good one. One thing I'll say about, go back to Kevin's net unemployment, I think he can be right, but it doesn't make it any easier because net unemployment means a whole bunch of people are losing jobs while a bunch of other people are finding new things to do.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:56 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:04:57 And that transition is painful.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:04:59 And we've gone through it many times, so-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:00 Yeah, I would also say the people who are finding new things to do are likely the people who are already employed or most capable to find employment.

Hugh Howey 1:05:08 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:08 Whereas a lot of the folks who are gonna lose jobs are gonna have, I think, a, an, a very tough time in terms of reskilling.

Hugh Howey 1:05:15 It's gonna be tough. What's wild is how low unemployment is right now, and has been for a while-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:19 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:05:19 ... while all these disruptions are happening.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:20 Yeah, right. Gig economy, I mean, you... There have been a lot of scares over the last-

Hugh Howey 1:05:24 A lot of scares

Tim Ferriss 1:05:25 ... handful of decades, so we'll see.

Hugh Howey 1:05:27 And, you know, last year was supposed to be a recession for sure, and, you know, this year for sure, but-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:32 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:05:33 ... all the indicators are pointing in a better direction. I think AI will be one of the biggest challenges we go through.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:40 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:05:41 Because there'll be an existential... Like, we anthropomorphize our, our boats and our cars and our mechanical things.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:50 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:05:50 But i- imagine what we're gonna do when it's robots and, and things we're talking to.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:55 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:05:56 And it's just now starting to happen. ChatGPT was never really made to be a conversationalist.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:01 Mm.

Hugh Howey 1:06:02 But some of these, like, there's one called Pi.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:04 Yeah. There's one called Replica also.

Hugh Howey 1:06:06 Replica. Sheila. There's these handful that are so conversational, and they're brand new, and already with my wife and I, like, Pi is like a person that's living in our pocket.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:18 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:06:18 Like, it's so endearing. And so I'm not s- there's an existential threat.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:22 Why do you use it?

Hugh Howey 1:06:23 For lots of reasons. If we're like, "Are there only four states that have the same, like, the capital start with the same letter as the state?" Like, I think that's right. Asking Pi is so much more fun than googling it.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:34 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:06:35 Getting the weather, like, if we're traveling to LA, like, what's the weather gonna be like? And at the end of this conversation, Pi's like, "Stay dry," you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:42 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:06:42 Like, it's just we're wired to talk the way you and I are talking right now.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:46 Sure.

Hugh Howey 1:06:47 And our machines are gonna get wired up that way, and we're not gonna be able to get enough of it.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:51 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:06:51 And so I think the occupational crisis is gonna be one thing. I think there's an existential crisis that we're gonna face when we realize What you and I do is computational.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:03 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:07:03 What — our brains are large language models.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:05 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:07:05 We're not that special.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:06 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:07:07 We can replicate the human soul in a lot of ways. I think people are gonna have a hard time with that.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:13 [laughs] Yeah, I'd say so.

Hugh Howey 1:07:15 I'm having a hard time with it.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:16 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:07:16 And I'm pro it.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:17 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:07:17 I'm all for it.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:18 So you're also, I would say, one of the most optimistic folks I know, yet you write about the end of the world [laughs] and-

Hugh Howey 1:07:26 It's so true

Tim Ferriss 1:07:27 ... how do you reconcile those two things?

Hugh Howey 1:07:30 I'm a short-term optim- I'm a midterm optimist even.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:33 Okay, a midterm optimist.

Hugh Howey 1:07:34 I'm a long-term pessimist.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:36 Uh-huh.

Hugh Howey 1:07:37 We know for sure either the Big Crunch or the heat death of the universe is looming.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:41 [laughs] What's the Big Crunch?

Hugh Howey 1:07:43 Well, the Big Crunch is there's enough gravity that the universe collapses back in on itself-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:46 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:07:47 ... back to singularity, and that's gonna mean every bit of information and data that we've ever formed, every memory, every relic, every manuscript-

Tim Ferriss 1:07:55 Becomes a pinpoint.

Hugh Howey 1:07:57 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:57 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:07:58 So nothing matters in the long run.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:01 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:08:01 The heat death is things keep expanding and, you know, entropy wins. All the suns run out of energy. They all become brown dwarfs, and even those cool, and eventually the universe becomes lifeless.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:13 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:08:14 So either we're running the clock down or the clock has, like, been thrown up in the air-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:17 And this is minimum-

Hugh Howey 1:08:18 ... it's gonna smash itself

Tim Ferriss 1:08:18 ... billions of years, right?

Hugh Howey 1:08:19 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:20 Presumably.

Hugh Howey 1:08:20 Like 15 billion.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:21 Right.

Hugh Howey 1:08:22 But so-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:22 So most people aren't gonna worry too much about that.

Hugh Howey 1:08:24 Yeah. Well, I think everyone should embrace... If they, if they can embrace that nothing is forever, that 15 billion years is functionally a long time, but it's not forever, then now we're just talking numbers. Now we all agree.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:36 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:08:37 You know? It's all, we're all fucked. We can agree.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:39 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:08:40 And now it's just like, how many years?

Tim Ferriss 1:08:42 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:08:42 And some people think it's five years, which I think is crazy. We're not... The environment is not the number one threat that we have.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:51 Mm.

Hugh Howey 1:08:51 You know? It's, it's not the thing that's gonna end us. A comet, nuclear warfare, all these, like, short-term-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:58 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:08:58 ... crises have never been an existential threat. None of them have ever been an existential threat.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:03 Hm.

Hugh Howey 1:09:03 But we treat them like it.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:05 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:09:05 So I think in the short and medi- medium term we'll be fine, but the question, will we be here 200 years from now, which I consider the start of the long term, is iffy.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:18 Hm.

Hugh Howey 1:09:19 Because if we can build the, a technology that would end us all, and it would have to be a very specific targeted technology, someone will use it.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:28 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:09:29 If we all woke up tomorrow, and this is a common thought experiment, if we all woke up tomorrow with a button around our neck and it said, "If you press this, every human will die-"

Tim Ferriss 1:09:37 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:09:38 ... the question is, how long do you give us?

Tim Ferriss 1:09:40 Yeah, right.

Hugh Howey 1:09:41 It's a fraction of a second.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:42 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:09:42 As soon as all eight billion people finish reading that sentence, someone's gonna push it. And so the only question that matters is, are we developing that button? And one way we would develop that button would be to have CRISPR level genetic engineering that you could do in your basement.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:58 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:09:59 Nanotechnology, where we could develop a virus that infects everyone but lays dormant for 10 years-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:05 Hm

Hugh Howey 1:10:05 ... and activates all simultaneously.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:07 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:10:07 So you don't have time to develop a resistance. Or if we ever develop a battery that has infinite storage capacity, that would be really bad because you could set up a, set up a drone... We're seeing what drones are doing in Ukraine right now, this new warfare.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:23 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:10:24 But imagine being able to launch a drone from Chicago that can go to the other side of the planet, and all that's limiting that right now is battery technology.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:33 Hm.

Hugh Howey 1:10:33 GPS, making explosives, all that's pretty easy.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:37 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:10:37 So we're actively trying to build this button-

Tim Ferriss 1:10:38 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:10:39 ... that would create problems. I'm wondering if maybe that's not a great idea. Maybe we should slow down our pace.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:45 Is that even possible, though? A lot like talking about safety precautions and ethics boards related to AI, I mean, my feeling is that ship has really already sailed by and large. Like, you can, you could regulate on a, like a geo-fenced limited basis, but this is a global playing field.

Hugh Howey 1:11:07 Yeah. I hear that argument. The last time we went through something like this was when the nuclear bombs went off in Japan and people said, "This is worth fearing. This is like-"

Tim Ferriss 1:11:17 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:11:17 ..."this is more evil than our brains can comprehend and we don't want everyone having this." And the systems we put in place were pretty good at limiting.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:25 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:11:25 I mean, everyone knows how to build a nuclear bomb. It's like-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:28 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:11:28 ... most of the science, art science is out there.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:31 Yeah. You know, I don't want to take us too-

Hugh Howey 1:11:33 Yeah, we could go way off on this

Tim Ferriss 1:11:34 ... too o- too o- too, too off track, but there is no track. But I would say that when you're dealing with enriched uranium or very limited resources that can be tracked and locked down, it's one thing, but when you're dealing with, like, GPUs and open source code for-

Hugh Howey 1:11:49 So that's the difference.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:50 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:11:50 So when... GPUs are a limited resource.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:54 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:11:55 And people who've gone through the Bitcoin mining phase and couldn't get a GPU for their video games-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:01 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:12:01 ... saw how limiting it could be. What's different now is we have these things that could be crises, and instead of saying, "We need regulators, we need..." Instead we're like, "Oh, Nvidia's worth investing our money in."

Tim Ferriss 1:12:13 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:12:13 Like, "This is one of the best stocks." And so the people making the thing that's dangerous, we're actually just pouring gas on it-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:20 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:12:20 ... and saying, "That's the purpose now, is like we should all try to make as much money as possible."

Tim Ferriss 1:12:23 Hm.

Hugh Howey 1:12:24 And

Hugh Howey 1:12:25 so we're going at this a little differently.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:26 And now let me ask you if, if you don't mind-

Hugh Howey 1:12:28 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:12:29 ... a deeply personal question. Don't have to answer it if you don't want. How do you think about kids? If 200 years iffy-

Hugh Howey 1:12:36 What a great question, because my wife and I started embryos, like, two days ago.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:43 Wow. All right. So-

Hugh Howey 1:12:44 Um-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:45 ... timely

Hugh Howey 1:12:45 ... she's, she's still recovering from the procedure. I had mine a, a week before. And what's funny is I reached out to a mutual friend of ours-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:52 Your procedure's a little easier.

Hugh Howey 1:12:54 Whew.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:55 Oh, well, actually, I don't know which procedure-

Hugh Howey 1:12:56 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:12:56 ... we're talking about.

Hugh Howey 1:12:57 It was tough.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:57 Oh, I thought we were just talking about-

Hugh Howey 1:12:59 It was forced extraction.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:00 Ooh, forced extraction.

Hugh Howey 1:13:01 Yeah, needles.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:02 What?

Hugh Howey 1:13:03 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:04 Wait, now, now... Sorry. Now here we go.

Hugh Howey 1:13:06 It was rough.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:06 Wait. Forced extraction for you?

Hugh Howey 1:13:08 Yeah, I'm clipped. I'm snipped.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:09 Oh, okay.

Hugh Howey 1:13:10 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:10 I was gonna say, otherwise, it's just some bad videos in a cubby room.

Hugh Howey 1:13:14 No, I still feel it.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:15 Oh. Oh.

Hugh Howey 1:13:15 Yeah, it's been a day.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:16 That sounds awful. Okay. All right. I retract my, my judgment.

Hugh Howey 1:13:18 We can get as personal as you wanna get, Tim.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:20 [laughs] Okay, so kids, 200 years out.

Hugh Howey 1:13:22 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:22 And that's not that long in human, in human time, right?

Hugh Howey 1:13:25 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:25 I mean, if you take 100-year-old people who existed at any point in time and line them up back to back, like, it's not that many. You can... Like, to get back to the Egyptians is, is one small room of people, right?

Hugh Howey 1:13:35 I think if you try to decide on whether or not to have kids based on how, what kind of life you think they're gonna have, no one would have kids.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:42 Mm.

Hugh Howey 1:13:42 'Cause you... Nothing's a guarantee. Like, life is gonna be weird.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:46 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:13:47 You and I have been through a global pandemic.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:49 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:13:49 We've been through a crazy terrorist attack on our soil.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:53 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:13:53 That, you know, I was at ground zero for. My parents didn't... If they would've known the things that I would've seen, they might, they might not have had me.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:01 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:14:01 But those things didn't make me miserable. Like, I, I think our set point of happiness, and we can do a whole podcast about this, is pretty fixed.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:10 You mean from birth?

Hugh Howey 1:14:11 Yeah, from birth.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:11 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:14:11 I think it's, we're kind of delta-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:12 It's closer to height than we would like to think.

Hugh Howey 1:14:14 It's closer to height. Well, that's the best I've ever heard anybody present that. I'm gonna steal that.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:18 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:14:19 So my wife and I wanna have kids because we think it might be the best adventure that we ever go down. We think we would be great parents, and we think life, for whenever you live it, as a, a serf, you know, hundreds of years ago... Like, human life has been terrible for most people for most of human history.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:40 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:14:40 And yet, I bet there isn't a human who hasn't laughed-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:44 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:14:44 ... who hasn't felt love, no matter what their situation was. Our condition is so complex, and there's so much of it that makes all the rest of it worthwhile.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:54 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:14:55 So I don't think there'll ever be a time that a human life isn't worth having. I think the numbers-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:02 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:15:02 ... you know, we're, we're no longer having an average of seven or eight per couple.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:07 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:15:07 So we're over that danger. We're actually gonna enter into a much bigger danger, which is a huge population crash.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:14 I was talking to Kevin recently, and it was actually intended to be a podcast, but it was a walk and talk, and I screwed up the tech and didn't record the conversation. [laughs] Ended up being a great conversation with Kevin nonetheless.

Hugh Howey 1:15:24 It's one of my favorite things to do, is to walk and talk with him.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:26 Yeah. And I said, "Kevin, is there anything..." He said, "Well, I think this is tractable, and I think this is tractable." I was like, "Kevin, I don't think there's anything you think is intractable, so- [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:15:36 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:15:36 ... we have to state that bias up front." And he said, "No, no, no, I think I found something." You can hear Kevin's voice saying this.

Hugh Howey 1:15:40 Oh, really?

Tim Ferriss 1:15:41 He's like, "No, no, no, I found something I think that might be intractable." And I was like, "Wow. Tell me, please. This is so exciting." And he cited the population implosion.

Hugh Howey 1:15:48 Oh, yeah. That, we might not be able to fix.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:50 And we had a long conversation about it. [laughs] But it was lost into the ether. But... [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:15:57 It's one of the disagreements I have with a, a friend who thinks settling space is super important-

Tim Ferriss 1:16:02 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:16:02 ... because we can greatly increase the number of people without hurting the planet.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:08 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:16:08 And I do not see how we will increase the number of people.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:11 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:16:11 Like, I think that is, will never come back.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:15 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:16:15 Because the hedonistic reward for having your fifth kid is, will never be as great as your first kid.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:23 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:16:23 And I really apologize to all fifth kids who are hearing this.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:25 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:16:26 But the joy just has to get less over time with anything that we do.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:31 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:16:32 And so a lot of people I know, that you and I know, are either having no kids, one kid, or maybe two kids.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:38 Yeah, that's max.

Hugh Howey 1:16:39 But very few. For every couple we know or single, two single people we know not having kids, we need to know a couple having four kids.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:47 I went to this beautiful Shabbat dinner last night, and I'm not, I'm not Jewish, but it was a beautiful dinner. Amazing. And tons of kids, tons of grandkids. And I was thinking, "Wow." It struck me. I was like, "Well, what happens as the population gets smaller but the percentage of deeply religious people goes up?"

Hugh Howey 1:17:12 This should happen eventually, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:17:13 I would imagine that... I mean, it seems almost inevitable just if you, if you run the numbers, right?

Hugh Howey 1:17:17 So far, the opposite. Like, we're becoming more secular over time, but there's a funny article out there about when we will all be Amish.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:25 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:17:27 Because if you just look at the trends, it's statistically-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:30 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:17:30 ... 100% certain that everyone in the United States will be Amish at some point.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:34 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:17:34 That's only because you're, you're carrying out trends that won't stick around.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:38 Right. Right, right. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:17:39 But it is true that people with more traditional values, one of those being having a big family-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:45 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:17:45 ... to instill your values in even more people-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:48 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:17:48 ... that is going to change the makeup and maybe preserve something that we were losing anyway.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:55 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:17:55 Because we were, we're, we were, we're dropping religion like nothing.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:59 What is your take on religion? So I was built as an atheist for a long time, uh, in part because I saw my friend go down a really horrible path, and, yeah, I won't spend a whole lot of time on it, but I, I, I sort of studied up to try to rescue him from basically being inducted into this very extreme cult which had religious orientation. And I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly. I got to the point where I, I could basically match all of his arguments, and he's, and he is a very bright guy. He's very well educated, and he just went through a brutal time in his life, and the safety net ended up being this person he met who was like, "Come to my church," and got inducted into this group, which was pretty sort of theologically weaponized. Pretty scary stuff.

Hugh Howey 1:18:51 We're very vulnerable to that weapon.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:52 Yeah, and he and I kinda went toe-to-toe. I was trying to get him out of this situation, and I won't go into the nitty-gritty of it 'cause people lose their minds, uh, [laughs] as happens. But I, I figured out the argument that would kind of- ... defeat the last remaining resistance that he had-

Hugh Howey 1:19:13 Wow

Tim Ferriss 1:19:13 ... to my position. And when I looked at his face, because I was, like, edging into it, and I realized, like, the only thing this guy has in his life right now-

Hugh Howey 1:19:24 You might be taking that away from him

Tim Ferriss 1:19:25 ... is this religion, and I decided not to do it, 'cause I was like, "Wait a second." It, like, hit me last minute. I was like, "This is actually really selfish of me," 'cause I don't have to live his life.

Hugh Howey 1:19:36 Yeah. I've been where you were, and we need justification for the extreme change that we've made in our viewpoint.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:43 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:19:44 And so we need someone to agree with us so that we know that we're doing the right thing.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:48 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:19:49 I was raised very religious. By the age of 12, I was complete atheist. I told my parents I no longer believe in God. And I went through a period where I was a militant atheist-

Tim Ferriss 1:19:59 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:19:59 ... where I was like, "No one else should believe in God either."

Tim Ferriss 1:20:01 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:20:01 And I forgive myself for going through that phase, 'cause I was young, a- and it was, it was like having to drive in the other ditch for a while-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:09 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:20:09 ... 'cause I'd been in another ditch.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:11 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:20:11 I now feel like I'm on at least this, like, pretty bumpy road with the ditches on either side of me, and I have so much compassion for people in both ditches.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:22 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:20:22 Like, I just don't judge the way I used to. And everyone's trying to figure out the way through life. Any of us could be wrong, and I think we need to embrace that.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:32 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:20:33 But whether or not someone is being good to themselves and others is pretty easier to ascertain than whether or not their ep- epistemological system is accurate.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:41 Totally.

Hugh Howey 1:20:42 So if they're being abusive, if they're not giving their kids room to be creative and curious and, you know, pounding their belief system into people before they're old enough to think for themselves, I think that can be really abusive.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:55 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:20:55 And I think if you, if you trust in your system, if you trust in your religion, then your kids and people around you will find it as well.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:03 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:21:03 You can do it through being a good person.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:06 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:21:06 You don't have to do the indoctrination thing that I see a lot of. Same goes for atheism.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:11 You know, playing devil's advocate there, I mean, I find captivating the idea that religion has some deep fitness value, like evolutionary value, 'cause it's so prevalent. Which is not to say it justifies all of the atrocities that can be seen perpetrated in the name of religion, and there's plenty of beautiful things, and many, many beautiful things, music, works of art, you name it, right? Community building.

Hugh Howey 1:21:42 A lot of science.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:43 There's a lot of-

Hugh Howey 1:21:43 A lot of original science-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:44 A lot of science

Hugh Howey 1:21:44 ... was coming out of-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:45 Absolutely

Hugh Howey 1:21:46 ... theologians

Tim Ferriss 1:21:46 ... a lot of amazing science. And just the sheer prevalence and persistence over time, despite, in some places, persecution, right?

Hugh Howey 1:21:55 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:55 Is it like birds building bird nests, right? Is there some evolutionary inherent drive that is coded into us that leads us to pursue what we label as religion? I don't know. I have no idea. I j-

Hugh Howey 1:22:14 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:22:14 ... I just, I just find the sheer persistence and durability of it very interesting.

Hugh Howey 1:22:18 It's very interesting. Well, our superstition will never go away, and I think religion is a much more benign superstition than some of the other ones that we've seen lately, these deep conspiracy theories that people lose reality to. Not that believing in religion isn't also losing a sense of reality, but watching the QAnon-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:39 Right

Hugh Howey 1:22:39 ... like, that, that was, some of that was a gap left by-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:43 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:22:43 ... a loss of religion, I think.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:45 I'm so glad you said that, because I, uh, you know, I think a lot about, and I'm blanking on the exact writing or speech from David Foster Wallace, but the gist of it is we all worship something. The key is to know what you worship, right? And the key-

Hugh Howey 1:22:59 Yeah, that's a good line

Tim Ferriss 1:23:00 ... and if religion is removed from the picture, you still find people who will, like, die for CrossFit, die for veganism-

Hugh Howey 1:23:08 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:23:08 ... die for QAnon, die for fill-in-the-blank, die for atheism.

Hugh Howey 1:23:12 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:12 Right? [laughs] Like, I know atheists who are the most devout, dogmatic people I've ever met.

Hugh Howey 1:23:20 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:21 Right? And they-

Hugh Howey 1:23:21 They'd be devastated if God appeared. And like-

Tim Ferriss 1:23:23 Oh, yeah

Hugh Howey 1:23:23 ... I'm the kind of atheist where if God appeared, I'd be like, "Sweet, I've got questions."

Tim Ferriss 1:23:27 [laughs] Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:23:27 Like, let's... Can we talk?

Tim Ferriss 1:23:29 Yeah, and some of these militant atheists with, like, capital S, you know, skepticism. I'm like, wait a minute, you guys have all the trappings of a religion. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:23:37 You do.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:37 You just don't have, like, the, you just don't have heaven. [laughs] You got all the trappings.

Hugh Howey 1:23:41 At some point I realized we all serve a purpose.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:43 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:23:44 But there's criminality to all these things, too.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:47 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:23:48 And I think the thing that, that really should wake us up to the dangers is, like, how many children were abused in the Catholic Church because of a very small arbitrary change of just not allowing your leaders to be married people?

Tim Ferriss 1:24:03 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:24:04 It's just, it's a filtering mechanism.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:05 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:24:06 And so once you see that and make that change, and the fact that the religion is so dogmatic that it can make a change that will make the lives better of innocent children-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:14 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:24:14 ... like, that's the kind of thing that's pretty easy to turn people off-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:17 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:24:17 ... on religion as a whole for.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:19 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:24:19 And it's so easy to change.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:20 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:24:20 And that's a frustration, you know-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:22 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:24:22 ... that let's, let's see where we can make a small change and make lives

Hugh Howey 1:24:27 better.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:28 How do you think about a set of rules or moral codes for yourself? And I'm particularly interested in asking you this because you were raised religious. So you have had exposure to presets.

Hugh Howey 1:24:39 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:39 Right? Like, the on the menu options.

Hugh Howey 1:24:43 I believe in an objective moral truth.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:45 Okay.

Hugh Howey 1:24:45 I don't know exactly what it is, but I think that we're all working toward the same kind of, in the same direction.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:52 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:24:52 So it's asymptotic. So I don't think values and mores are necessarily subjective and cultural.

Tim Ferriss 1:24:59 Why do you believe in an objective truth? Is that just a decision you made to hold that as a belief?

Hugh Howey 1:25:05 One thing I don't believe in is free will.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:06 Oh, boy. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:25:06 So we can-

Tim Ferriss 1:25:07 I knew this was coming. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:25:07 That's another-

Tim Ferriss 1:25:08 I knew it was coming. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:25:08 That's another, another conversation we can have.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:10 It's another podcast.

Hugh Howey 1:25:11 Yeah. Um- I've encountered a lot of different ideas over time

Tim Ferriss 1:25:14 A decision was made on your behalf. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:25:16 Yeah, exactly. When I heard the argument for objective moral truth, it, it resonated with me and made more sense than morality is subjective.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:23 Who made that argument?

Hugh Howey 1:25:24 A lot of people have, but one of the best was a teaching company. Course was a, like a Harvard professor of philosophy. I don't remember the name of the course, 'cause there were several about ethics that I love, but one was about the idea that moral truth is objective, and it's like, you know, 40 hours of lectures about this.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:46 Okay.

Hugh Howey 1:25:47 And I found myself getting whiplash, I was nodding my head so much-

Tim Ferriss 1:25:51 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:25:52 ... through it all. It really synthesized a lot of things that I already believed and grasped at, but told them well. We just see more in common with each other than we do dissimilar.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:02 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:26:03 One thing that we're not touching on in this conversation is the years I've spent sailing around the world. I've done more sailing than writing.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:26:12 We, we can't talk about it all.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:12 We had to make some creative decisions-

Hugh Howey 1:26:14 Yeah. Maybe we can talk about the ocean first

Tim Ferriss 1:26:15 ... with our time constraints. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:26:16 Exactly. But the thing that I learned visiting all these countries, sailing across the Pacific, going to really remote islands and meeting remote people, is that we're the same everywhere.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:26 Mm.

Hugh Howey 1:26:27 And we have to be really creative in finding differences to talk about.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:30 Mm.

Hugh Howey 1:26:31 Because the way we love our kids, the way we love each other, the way we laugh, the way we spend our days is so similar that we have to like, "Oh, they wear this kind of clothes, and we wear these kind of clothes, and those are different," but we're both wearing clothes.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:46 Yeah, right. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:26:47 We have to really find ways that we're not alike. And the fact that I can read the Iliad, 2,000-year-old story written in a different language, in a different time, and the human emotion of it resonates with me today. I understand the, the fear and the jealousy and the conniving and all the things that were going on means that in that other culture 2,000 years ago, we were the same.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:10 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:27:10 And so how can moral truth be subjective when we're the same as a people?

Tim Ferriss 1:27:16 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:27:17 That's my best argument for it.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:18 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:27:19 But also, we're just moving in the same direction. We, we see a step backward here, but the two steps forward, we're just heading more and more towards this universal truth where we all want to be treated about the same way in general, and we think the fairest system is that if you treat me in that way, I'll treat you in that way as well.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:35 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:27:35 And even when we do the math and we make game theory things, we find this tit for tat game theory algorithm to win out over every other algorithm we, we can come up with. And it's one of complete fairness, equal retribution, and short memory. Like, as soon as you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you again.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:55 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:27:55 As soon as you break the rules, I'm gonna put you in your place.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:58 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:27:59 And if you cooperate with a tit for tat algorithm, you both benefit completely.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:05 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:28:06 And human history seems to, to reinforce that, and the golden rule, so much of which we find in almost every ethical and religious system, at least some sense-

Tim Ferriss 1:28:18 Mm

Hugh Howey 1:28:18 ... of treat others as you wanna be treated.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:20 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:28:21 I think objective moral truth is right there, and everyone else is trying to cheat that system.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:25 Mm-hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:28:25 We all are. Even you and I are trying to like, "Okay, how can we believe that, but then get a little bit more out of the system than we're willing to give up?"

Tim Ferriss 1:28:34 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:28:35 How do we violate the commons just a little bit? And most of our criminality and ethical dilemmas are all coming from us violating our own objective.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:45 Deviating from the code.

Hugh Howey 1:28:47 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:49 You know, I was just gonna go into this whole, whole entire new chapter of, of personal line of questions, but we are, we're starting to [laughs] descend from cruise altitude, beginning to land the plane. So let me instead... We'll do round two sometime.

Hugh Howey 1:29:07 We can have lunch and talk anytime too.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:09 Well, of course we can have lunch.

Hugh Howey 1:29:10 I forget we're even doing a podcast right now.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:11 No, yeah, we're gonna hang out, and I'll ask you the question which relates to your religious upbringing, but I'm gonna bookmark that and save it for another

Tim Ferriss 1:29:18 time. While we are recording, is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Got, let's call it five minutes.

Hugh Howey 1:29:25 Man, I wanna do one of these where I get just get to drill you with questions.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:28 Deal.

Hugh Howey 1:29:29 Has someone done that to you yet?

Tim Ferriss 1:29:30 You know, I've only done it-

Hugh Howey 1:29:33 You've been on other people's.

Tim Ferriss 1:29:34 Yeah, maybe once in recent memory, but it was very specific to, I'd say predominantly tech with a venture capitalist. So rare.

Hugh Howey 1:29:47 There's so much happening in life right now, like the journey of adapting something into the scope and scale of Silo, which I had a Hollywood friend tell me, like, "You know you got the last one of those deals, right?"

Tim Ferriss 1:29:59 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:29:59 Because the strikes all happen because these things have gotten ridiculous in budget ways and won't turn a profit. Being in the last wave of that was really exciting, and working with the creative people who made that happen, and watching fans just get rewarded for the-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:17 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:30:17 ... the show being a hit. I could talk about sailing forever, like some of those adventures you wouldn't believe, and the best thing that's ever happened to me is my wife, who you've gotten to know-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:27 Mm-hmm

Hugh Howey 1:30:27 ... really well.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:28 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:30:28 And us setting off on having, having a family.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:31 Congratulations, by the way.

Hugh Howey 1:30:32 Which, you know, I was talking to a friend. I was like, "What do you think about kids?" And he was like, "Have you listened to my podcast with Tim?" So you might know who this is, but I was like, "Huh? You're not gonna tell me?" He's like, "No, you have to listen to the podcast." So I had to go find out what he thought about having kids.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:47 Well, we can talk about it afterwards. [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:30:48 Yeah, we can talk about it off the air. But it's funny, you're like getting this out of more and more of your interviewees.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:53 Yeah. Well, it's on my mind too.

Hugh Howey 1:30:56 Cool. I wanna talk about that-

Tim Ferriss 1:30:57 Yeah

Hugh Howey 1:30:57 ... next time we have lunch. Let's have a cohort, man.

Tim Ferriss 1:30:59 Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, [laughs] I've got some prereqs to figure out, but I'm eager to start that adventure, and makes me think of actually this very close friend of mine who unfortunately passed away in the last handful of months, Roland Griffiths, amazing scientist from Johns Hopkins, and we spent a lot of time together. And he had his kids relatively late, and by relatively, I mean compared to other people in his family, and when he had his first kid, his, his brother slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Welcome to the human race."

Hugh Howey 1:31:30 That's cool.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:31 And I've thought about that a lot.

Hugh Howey 1:31:33 I had a friend tell me, he's got three kids. He's one of the best dads I've ever known. He said, "When you have kids, it's leveling up in the journey of becoming a man."

Tim Ferriss 1:31:43 Hmm.

Hugh Howey 1:31:43 And I feel that the more I take these small steps, it's like a little role-playing game, and this is next level.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:49 [laughs]

Hugh Howey 1:31:49 And I was stuck, like, you know, stuck at a lower level.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:52 Yeah.

Hugh Howey 1:31:52 And I'm ready to, I'm ready for the next level.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:54 I'm excited for you, brother. Thanks for taking the time today. So nice to see you.

Hugh Howey 1:31:58 My pleasure.

Tim Ferriss 1:31:58 People can find you at hughhowey.com. That's probably the easiest. Is there any particular social where you're most active?

Hugh Howey 1:32:05 No. I love, our, our Facebook group is a lot of fun, and I'm on whatever Twitter's calling itself these days.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:10 [laughs] Yeah, so facebook.com/hughhowey. Same for Twitter/x/hughhowey. HughHowey on Instagram as well. Hugh Howey, such a pleasure always to see you, man.

Hugh Howey 1:32:23 My pleasure, man.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:24 All right, man.

Hugh Howey 1:32:24 I love spending time with you.

Tim Ferriss 1:32:26 I'll see you soon.