Ben Mezrich has sold over 10 million copies of his books.
And, by the way, that’s not even the impressive part. The impressive part is that he sells EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS BOOKS as a movie or TV show; in fact, if Hollywood isn’t interested in the treatment, he doesn’t even write the book.
Mezrich has gotten into this position because of a chance encounter with some MIT students, which led to his writing Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which led to Kevin Spacey snapping up the film rights before the book was even out, which led to the book spending over 60 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Then there was his book, The Accidental Billionaires, which David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin jumped on as Mezrich was writing the book and which, of course turned into the multi award-nominated movie The Social Network. (Mezrich is the only non-fiction author to have two adaptations open at #1 at the box office.)
He’s written numerous other books, including Bitcoin Billionaires and The Antisocial Network and is also a consulting producer on Billions. Oh, and his most recent book, The Midnight Ride, has an NFT component that already has over 3500 owners.
So how does this happen? How does a former struggling novelist become Hollywood’s go to guy pursued by designers who want to dress him for his book tours? And what is the secret to finding the sort of story that makes Hollywood salivate? It’s all in this episode.
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Mike De Luca has, arguably, more experience than anyone else out there when it comes to turning books into movies: three of the four times he's done it (for The Social Network, Moneyball and Captain Phillips), he has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and the one time he wasn't nominated for one of his book-to-film adaptations, it was for a little movie called 50 Shades of Gray. He's done several other million things in his career, including discovering Paul Thomas Anderson and David Fincher and running New Line studio at the age of 27.
But in this episode, we focused on the process of turning a book into a movie—including how producers find out about the books they end up adapting, how much control the author has over the movie and how much money they can make, among many other topics.
IF YOU'RE AN AUTHOR, YOU NEED AN ELEVATOR PITCH! GET YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH TEMPLATE AT WWW.BOOKELEVATORPITCH.COM
Paul Angone had an extremely unusual journey to success as an author.
First, he tried to sell a book. For eight years. Nary a bite.
Then a blog post he dashed off went viral. Very viral. From there, he was able to sell a book based on that blog post to a publisher. The problem was that he had to finish it in a month.
Well that book and the next have sold over 100,000 copies and launched a massive speaking career.
But that's not even why I wanted to have him on the podcast. I wanted him on the pod so I could Interview him about the process of turning his book into a course.
Listen in on this mega inspiring conversation about how courses and books work symbiotically—and how your reality may end up being even bigger than your dreams.
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While Jeff Kober is a terribly successful actor—having appeared on The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, Shameless, New Girl, NCIS: Los Angeles, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, ER, 24, The Closer and Criminal Minds, among many other shows—it is only one of the many things he does. In fact, although he's a good friend that I adore, I will admit right here and now that I've never seen any of his acting. Sorry, Jeff! But that's because I think of him primarily as a gifted meditation teacher and writer.
And I am selfishly so grateful that he recently turned his daily newsletter into a book, Embracing Bliss: 108 Daily Meditations. See, for many years, I read his newsletter religiously every morning before meditating and I pretty much curse Jeff every day for making me have to look at my phone to access it. I'm an addict, people! I can't help but get sucked into some stressful email or Instagram rabbit hole when I was just hoping to take in some spiritual truths, Damn it! Well, now that he's made these brilliant daily thoughts into a book, I have no one but myself to blame if I go down an internet rabbit hole before meditating.
You can grab your copy of his book of daily thoughts here. You will not regret it—I ordered multiple copies because I plan to give it out as gifts. But before you order it, do listen in on our conversation so you can learn about his process for turning pre-existing content into a book; it involved spreadsheets, consultations with a colleague and a whole lot of reflection on what people respond to (spoiler alert: musings on relationships and love).
IF YOU'RE AN AUTHOR, YOU NEED AN ELEVATOR PITCH! GET YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH TEMPLATE AT WWW.BOOKELEVATORPITCH.COM