Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 109

Barriers to Entry

Last Wednesday Shawn and I launched a new series called “A Long Tail Business.” It’s a video series. We posted the first three videos—each about two minutes long—on “Writing Wednesdays.”
Now we’re switching over to this Monday slot. We’ll have three more videos today, then three more for each of the following three Mondays. Fifteen “chapters”
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The Pareto Principle Meets the Long Tail

Remember last week when I wrote that Steve Pressfield’s publishing company, Black Irish Books, had sold 85% of the number of THE WAR OF ARTs that his Big Six publisher had sold per year? A few people who read the piece thought I overstated the viability of book publishing as a long tail business.
The gist
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A Long Tail Business

We’re gonna try something different this week. Instead of a post, I’m going to put up a video. Actually three videos, each about two minutes long.

Here’s what this is about:
After Shawn and I started Black Irish Books, we had the nutty idea to go into a film studio and talk about the process—why we decided
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Working on Two Tracks

[The blog is on vacation this week. As they say on SNL, what follows is an encore presentation of Writing Wednesdays. Back next week!]
When we finish any work of art or commerce and expose it to judgment in the real world, three things can happen:
1. Everybody loves it.
2. Everybody hates it.
3. Nobody notices that it
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Unsustainable

Breaking in and staying inside corporate book publishing is akin to gaining admission to a select New York cooperative building. Tenants are never issued a rules and regulations handbook, but are required to figure out the “way we do things” and abide nevertheless.
If you don’t have the bona fides that indicate you will play by
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Narcissism and Resistance

I’m aware that there’s an official definition of narcissism in the Psychiatric Handbook. The following is my unofficial definition—and a theory of how narcissism comes about in the first place.
Narcissism is self-iconization. To control our internal terror, insecurity, etc., one mode of coping is to erect an icon in our minds. This icon might be
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Outreach, Part II: Your Home Base

To learn more about the individuals being featured in this series, visit Outreach, Part I: The Introduction.
“What’s your home base?” is the question that follows “What-do-you-want-to-accomplish?”
Where are people going to learn about you?
While the answer is Facebook for some, my preference is a blog. In this case, I’m a pessimist. We saw what happened to
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Setups and Payoffs

One mistake that beginning writers often make is to forget about setups and payoffs. Sometimes they’ll have great setups but no payoffs. Other times they’ll invent a fantastic payoff, but fail utterly to set it up.
I used to make those mistakes all the time. I’d kick off Act One of a screenplay with all kinds
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Your Time Is Gonna Come

This past Tuesday, Simon & Schuster shut down an entire publishing division.
The publisher, editor in chief and three additional editors of The Free Press are leaving the company. The other editors and support staff were transferred to the remaining publishing groups—The Simon & Schuster Group, The Scribner Group, The Atria Group and The Gallery
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Too Much Mojo

We were talking last week about acquiring mojo, which I defined as that state when we are going gangbusters in our writing, art, or business. It’s “flow.” It’s “the Zone.”

The only problem with having Big Mojo, in my experience, is you can’t keep it up for long. I know I can’t. My nervous system can’t
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