Timing; licensing your book to AI; men actually read: Newsletter 15 January 2025
Newsletter 77. The relationship between timing and success, an audio-only imprint for self-publishers, how to license your book for AI, plus three people to follow and three books to read.
Thoughts on timing
If I’ve learned one thing in 50 years in business, it is that timing matters. Great ideas need good timing to succeed. Consider this the debut of my grand unified theory of timing.
Timing matters in your personal life. If your spouse has just finished a tense and tedious three-hour Zoom meeting, that’s not the time to bring up that the toilet is leaking. In fact, I think the key to personal harmony is to understand the rhythm of what’s going on in your partner’s and family’s lives, to be supportive when they need it, and to ask for their help, not just when you need it, but when they can provide it.
It matters in your professional life. You don’t ask for a raise when you’ve just made a very obvious and costly mistake, or when your company has just laid off hundreds of people in the face of challenging financial results. You don’t embark on a career change into accounting when you can see trends that result in accounting jobs being automated away. You don’t pitch reporters and influencers in Los Angeles on things that will seem trivial when much of their city is on fire.
It also matters in your strategic decisions. The history of the biggest successes in business is a story of good timing.
Take the iPhone. It launched at a moment when nearly everyone had a mobile phone and many were emailing on their Blackberry devices, but few had an idea of what else was possible with a phone. Apple launched the iPhone when the combination of solid state storage technology, touch screens, and digital mobile connectivity made a new way of interacting possible, and consumers’ experience with the Web made mobile interaction desirable.
Netflix launched streaming at an auspicious moment when broadband and WiFi were becoming ubiquitous, consumers were becoming comfortable with on-demand entertainment from cable video-on-demand and digital video recorders, and subscription-based services were growing.
There are also countless examples of businesses that got the timing wrong. GM’s electric vehicles launched before battery technology and charging infrastructure were viable. Apple’s Newton personal digital assistant was too bulky to carry around easily and featured clunky and idiosyncratic handwriting recognition. WebTV offered web access on TV screens, but in an age of dialup that was a tedious experience.
Waiting too long is the flip side of those mistakes. Ask the people who launched the Microsoft Zune (never displaced iPods), HD DVD (never caught up with Blu-Ray), Barnes & Noble’s Nook (swamped by the Amazon Kindle), and the Facebook Phone. If you’ve never heard of them, it’s because they hit the market when everyone already had an acceptable solution to the problem they solved.
What does this mean for you? If you have an idea, this is what it means:
- Write it down. Now it’s official. You’re on the trail of the idea and looking for the best timing.
- Become obsessive about trends. What technologies and consumer attitude shifts will affect your idea? Look for the enabling elements that turn “could work” into “will work.”
- Build plans. Be ready to change them at a moment’s notice.
- Better too soon than too late. As Reid Hoffman said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” But keep resource commitments low until you see what’s possible.
The challenge, of course, is that things have a lead time. You can’t build products instantly. You can’t write and publish a book in a month. But you can get yourself poised and then start in anticipation of the trends coming together. That demands close attention to the market, and becoming a student of timing.
It’s tricky. But it’s lots better than leaping without a sense of timing, because timing makes all the difference.
News for writers and others who think
In the New Yorker, Katy Waldman writes about an author suing another author stealing her idea in the romantasy genre (subscriber link). The only problem: the tropes in this genre are so common and standard that it’s hard to tell what’s stolen and what’s just slavishly conventional.
Created by humans is a company launched to license authors’ works for AI, sharing 80% of the revenue with the authors. According to analysis by Jane Friedman, published in her Hot Sheet, the startup will offer three AI licensing plans: “(1) AI model training, (2) reference through RAG models (especially desirable for nonfiction), and (3) transformative rights, which would be required for derivative apps or media.” Can you license your content this way? If you’re traditionally published, you need to check your publishing contract.
Popular fantasy author Neil Gaiman faced multiple credible accusations of sexual assault, coercion, or abuse, as reported in New York magazine (free summary). Gaiman says it was all consensual.
Simon & Schuster launched an imprint exclusively for audiobooks of self-published authors, Simon Maverick.
Do men read books (and fiction) less than women? Yes, but a widely quoted zombie statistic — that “Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market” — has no credible source. Vox sorts out the truth about fiction from the fiction.
The estimable Alexandra Samuel, Ph.D. chats about how to write with AI and stay 100% human.
Three people to follow
Daniel Lemin , a hell of a writer and marketing thinker.
Ted Wright , CEO of longtime word of mouth marketing pioneer Fizz.
Heidi Saas , data privacy and technology attorney.
Three books to read
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose by Martha Beck (Open Field, 2025). Neuroscience-based advice on how how to not only reduce your anxiety but use it to improve your life.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester (Harper Perennial, 2019). A definitive history of the tiniest possible measurements.
The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking about by Mel Robbins (Hay House, 2024). How to stop letting other people take control of your life.