Ben Putano 📚

Here's an interesting trend I've noticed among non-fiction authors: The Direct Pre-Order. Instead of doing pre-orders through Amazon, B&N, and other major marketplaces, you sell your books directly through your own (or your publisher's) online store. Why do this? There are three huge benefits: 1. Build a direct connection with your readers 2. Offer bundles and unique pre-order perks 3. Keep 40% more of each sale by avoiding Amazon royalty fees Plus, it's just a better experience for your readers. Look at the examples I share in the video. We are doing direct pre-orders for Damn Gravity's two upcoming titles: 'The Experimentation Machine' by @bussgang and 'Building Rocketships' by @ojiudezue and @ezinneudezue But we aren't the only ones. @jposhaughnessy is doing this with his new book (published by @infinitebooks). Louis Grenier and @justinmooretfam are too (@TiltPublishing ). It's not a new thing... HBR and other indie publishers have experimented with this for a long time. But now it's easier than ever to pull off with platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. The Direct Pre-Order has tradeoffs... your sales don't count towards major lists and shipping is a bit more expensive (compared to FREE via Amazon Prime). But I believe it's worth the direct connection to you make with your readers. We will offer our books on Amazon, B&N, and all the major platforms when we launch early next year. But for Pre-Orders, we love being direct. What do you think?

@Jon_Finkel Time for more dead hangs 😂

@BenjaminPutano haha... i was a legit 5'11" on the nose my whole life... then a few years ago, at my son's physical, i got measured for the first time in 20 years... and i lost half an inch! 5' 10.5" devastating!

a lot of dudes who have been saying they're "about six feet" since high school are about to be exposed as 5'10" hahaha the MLB's Short King Scandal is upon us, Joe! (spoken as a 5'11" dude who always said I was 'about six feet' haha)

@kevinxu @scottkosch 👀

friend’s kid asked what they should major in college i almost cried what do you even say anymore

@Eric_Erins Is this from Aon? You are very high up!

Looking back this photo really misrepresents the scale of these buildings. NEMA at the far end is 900 feet but it looks absolutely tiny from this perspective

@jmckinven Four Thousands Weeks is great! We just published a book in that spirit called A Compounding Life by Ted Karns. Check it out

Pretty much managed to kick all social media distraction and been reading a ton instead. So far this year I've read 13 books, more than I've done in the past 4 years combined it's great. Favs - Digital Minimalism - Stolen Focus - War of Art - Four Thousand Weeks

@Nrcoope These are the best!

Watching these girls build this company has been an absolute pleasure. eatgonanas.com 🚀🚀🚀🍌🍌🍌

@packyM This cover too 🧑‍🍳😘

John McPhee's Levels of the Game is even better than advertised. I just don't understand how someone writes that well. I expected it to paint the match in vivid detail (it did), but the way he weaves in all of the stories, the callbacks, the character tics, it's just so good.

@chrisfralic Minor league hockey is the best. More fighting than playing. Toledo Walleye vs. Rock Lobsters would be epic!

What’s the greatest pro sports team name ever, and why is it the Athens GA Rock Lobsters?

It’s the perfect Second Winter here in Chicago. Winter storm AND flood alerts on the same morning :)

@AlexandraAllen_ This is a great push! Forcing me to think back to when I started and what lessons I could share from that time. It's easy to think "everyone already knows what I know"

Most CEOs and founders have wisdom that’s been in the wings so long they’ve forgotten it belongs on stage. Frameworks they’ve spent years developing. Hard-won lessons that could save others years of pain. Points of view their industry has never quite articulated. Oddly enough, riches-to-rags sitcom Schitt’s Creek makes the case for what to do about it. Sharing isn’t just goodwill. It’s how you compress your sales cycle. Read the full post & subscribe for more: alexandraallen.substack.com/p/the-script-y…

@Jon_Finkel @KevinKaduk My all time fave

@KevinKaduk i 100% agree, Kevin... i wrote this column just last week: x.com/Jon_Finkel/sta…

The fall of Sports Illustrated had a huge impact, IMO. Getting a great cover and in-depth story in your mailbox 4-7 days after the event definitely prolonged the moment and served as anchor for the memory going forward.

@landon20s The Mediterranean of the Midwest

Chicago will always be the best city to land in 🛬

@Jon_Finkel DMing you!

@BenjaminPutano man i'd love to figure this out... i am not the tech person to do it... but i don't know a single author that wouldn't jump on board! yes!

It's March 5th and so far this year I've built two tools that will save me $8,000 in software subscriptions. Latest product: PodcastDisco, an AI-powered Podcast PR Agency for authors and business leaders. Last year I spent $3,000 on a podcast database just to find relevant shows for my authors. This database was supposed to provide contact information for the shows but it was only accurate 30-40% of the time. It also promised concierge list-making services, but they would take 2-3 business days to get back to you. On top of all that, I had to write and manually send each email. Very time-intensive. PodcastDisco is built on the same free API as the $3k tool... It has access to 4M+ shows and uses AI to rank them for relevance. There are 3 steps: - First: Natural language search and author context. I upload a profile of my author to the platform. Then I tell PodcastDisco what types of shows I'm looking for. Add filters like minimum episodes or reviews. Then it searches and returns shows. - Next: Contact info. PodcastDisco finds ACTUALLY relevant work emails for hosts, not generic company inboxes that no one monitors. (Right now I'm using a tie-in with Clay to find this contact info, might try another tool that can be more deeply integrated into the platform.) - Last step: Custom pitches. This is something the $3K podcast database didn't even pretend to offer. PodcastDisco will generate a custom pitch email for each host. Context is pulled from the show description, past episodes, and the author's profile. The hardest part of building this so far is getting the search and filtering algo right. It's getting better and better... I'm also going to build a self-reinforcement loop so that the tool learns what good results look like. This has been super fun to build and is going to save me probably 10 hours a week. Not to mention that $3k!

@Jon_Finkel This is a great idea! Want to talk more about it? I'm in a building mood

@BenjaminPutano this is impressive... the holy grail is building a tool that continually promotes your backlist with meta ads, social ads, keywords and whatever else may be working that doesn't put you underwater extend the promo time to infinite with ads, budget, etc...

@tomfgoodwin It is a great place

Every time I visit Chicago it hits me as objectivity a very very good place to live and almost the perfect size and I love the buildings and just nice . I’m surprised more New Yorkers don’t move there

@jurassicsharkKB @nguyenhdi @skdh I'd sell the movie rights to Netflix

@nguyenhdi @skdh @BenjaminPutano you need an author like this haha. The Stephen King of this genre

I'm starting to think the problem is Thomas...

@landon20s @Waymo @robotaxi I'll feel 100x better riding my bike next to a Waymo than a human driver

If @Waymo and @robotaxi autonomy work in Chicago, it will work everywhere

I've been drowning in royalty reporting for years. Each DG title is sold through 4-8 different channels, all with radically different reports and payout periods. Each royalty report takes me ~1.5 - 2 hours to do manually. That was ok when I had just 1 or 2 titles. But now that we have 10, it's become impossible to keep up. I started looking into royalty reporting software. The cheap tools couldn't ingest Shopify or Amazon Seller Central reports -- literally our two biggest channels. The software that COULD ingest these reports cost $450/month 🤯 So I built my own royalty reporting tool: 1. No spreadsheet mapping -- it automatically identifies the sales channel, titles, units sold, costs, and net income. 2. Can ingest ANY file -- From CSVs to barely-formatted PDFs 3. Creates beautiful reports for me and authors 4. Super easy to update: If I add a new sales channel, I ask Claude to write a new pattern to ingest it moving forward. 5. Instantly splits royalty payments. Generating a royalty report literally takes 5 minutes now. I just download the sales data from each channel, one-shot upload them to the Royalty Calculator, review the mapping (which it gets right 99% of the time) and then hit "Generate report." Bonus: I can easily pull historical reports for any book(s) over any time period. Earlier today I wanted to see the sales patterns for Great Founders Write. Report took less than 30 seconds to pull. So not only did I save $450/month (not including my Claude Code subscription, which I use for 5-6 other projects), I built EXACTLY what I wanted. We live in incredible times!

@Jon_Finkel Iconic!!

This photo is perfection. If I was in middle school or high school, this would be the cover of SI and I'd have it on my bedroom wall... Gonna have to find it, blow it up and put on the wall of my garage gym. I love everything about it.