James Altucher: ‘I never hit publish unless I’m afraid of what people will think of me’

By Jason Boog 

Would you pay readers back for reading your book?

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was author and entrepreneur James Altucher, sharing his unique promotional strategy for Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream. Once you read his inspirational book, he will give you back your money.

During the interview, Altucher also shared some of his unorthodox writing advice as well.

Here’s more about his unusual deal for readers:

Within the first three months of the official publication date, do these two things: 1) Send me a copy of the receipt to IReadChooseYourself@gmail.com.  There is a kindle version, a paperback, and an audio version and they all cost different amounts. I need to know what you paid. 2) Then chose one of the following to send together with the receipt: You can write an honest review anywhere you want. You can take a photograph of yourself reading the book.  You can write me a testimonial or an email asking me questions that show you’ve read the book. If you can think of other ways, that’s fine too. The point is: prove to me you read the book, and get your money back. Or, you can tell me to give it to a charity. This is the charity I will give it to: WomenForWomen International 

Press play below to listen to the whole interview on SoundCloud. We’ve transcribed some writing advice excerpts from the interview below…

Altucher shared this advice for aspiring writers:

With so many outlets for writing right now, whether it’s publishing, self-publishing, blogging, video, you really have to stand out. The only way to stand out is to bleed. Everybody’s got different blood inside of them. But you literally need to infect your readers with whatever diseases you have in your blood. That’s how much you have to bleed.

He concluded:

One friend of mine told me he was so nervous about publishing his book because he was afraid what his colleagues would think of him. I never hit publish unless I’m afraid of what people will think of me. You have to bleed so much in every post that your superficial “you” is scared. The intuitive, internal “you” that’s in touch with this creative source knows what the right thing to write is and what the right thing to bleed is. And of course, you have to educate with every post. So bleed and educate are the two most important things.