If you're thinking about writing an authority building book, and I really hope you are, and you don't want to be counting pennies or checking your book sales all the time, you actually want a book that's going to change your life, I can tell you how. Just go to sevenfigurebooks.com. I'm not trying to capture your email or anything. You can just download this PDF that's going to tell you exactly how to turn an authority building book into revenue, speaking, authority, and no exaggeration, a whole new life.

Steve Sarner spent eight years at Amazon and was VP of sales at Goodreads, which means he understands something most authors don’t:

Book sales are not the point.

What Steve focuses on now is something I think more people should be talking about: not selling books, but seeding them—that is, getting them into the hands of the exact people who can turn them into something bigger.

This, you could say, is my obsession.

We get into:

• How many books you actually need “out in the wild” before anything starts working
• Why giving your book away can be more valuable than selling it
• How books turn into $10,000+ clients (and the rough math behind that)
• The surprising places he’s putting books—from niche events to inside massive companies
• Why reviews matter…even though getting them is borderline impossible

There’s also a story about someone finding their company through AI, requesting the book, reading it and becoming a client—which is basically the entire thesis in action.

Find out more about the company where Steve works, ShelfLife, here.

Sign up for ShelfLife’s 3-2-1 newsletter here.

Want to know more about my company? Legacy Launch Pad Publishing is a boutique hybrid publisher for entrepreneurs and established founders. We help clients create books that build authority, attract opportunities and grow businesses. More info 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com

Curious how entrepreneurs use books to generate seven-figure returns, speaking opportunities and high-value clients? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/7-figures

Interested in working with a selective hybrid publisher that focuses on strategy, authority and long-term business growth—not just publishing a book? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/apply

Want to get my book that breaks down 30 years of experience and hundreds of interviews with publishing experts and authors—newly updated for 2026? (You can even ask the book questions. [Really!]) 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/good-authority-book

And if you just want to know more about me, 👉 www.annadavid.com

Remember, if there's anyone in your life whose wisdom you deeply admire, or who you know could be considered an authority in their field if they were better known, share this show with them.

If you're thinking about writing an authority building book, and I really hope you are, and you don't want to be counting pennies or checking your book sales all the time, you actually want a book that's going to change your life, I can tell you how. Just go to sevenfigurebooks.com. I'm not trying to capture your email or anything. You can just download this PDF that's going to tell you exactly how to turn an authority building book into revenue, speaking, authority, and no exaggeration, a whole new life.

Rex Sorgatz is one of those people who has been early to everything—blogging, digital media, startups—and now AI storytelling.

We go way back to Lower East Side readings, when I quickly discovered that he was surrounded by people building the future before I really understood what that meant.

This conversation is about AI and publishing, but not in the way people usually talk about it. Not “AI will write your book” or “everything is over.” More like: what actually changes when technology shifts how we interact with ideas.

We also get into:

• Why most “AI writing” isn’t writing at all
• How he actually uses AI (and why most people are using it wrong)
• Why talking to your computer might be inevitable, even if you hate the idea
• The product he built to remember everything he’s ever read—and why 100,000 people built the same thing a day later

Also: a brief detour into an erotica reading I made him do years ago that I’m still not sure I should have been responsible for.

Check out the AI company Rex co-founded here.

Want to know more about my company? Legacy Launch Pad Publishing is a boutique hybrid publisher for entrepreneurs and established founders. We help clients create books that build authority, attract opportunities and grow businesses. More info 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com

Curious how entrepreneurs use books to generate seven-figure returns, speaking opportunities and high-value clients? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/7-figures

Interested in working with a selective hybrid publisher that focuses on strategy, authority and long-term business growth—not just publishing a book? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/apply

Want to get my book that breaks down 30 years of experience and hundreds of interviews with publishing experts and authors—newly updated for 2026? (You can even ask the book questions. [Really!]) 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/good-authority-book

And if you just want to know more about me, 👉 www.annadavid.com

Remember, if there's anyone in your life whose wisdom you deeply admire, or who you know could be considered an authority in their field if they were better known, share this show with them.

If you're thinking about writing an authority building book, and I really hope you are, and you don't want to be counting pennies or checking your book sales all the time, you actually want a book that's going to change your life, I can tell you how. Just go to sevenfigurebooks.com. I'm not trying to capture your email or anything. You can just download this PDF that's going to tell you exactly how to turn an authority building book into revenue, speaking, authority, and no exaggeration, a whole new life.

Charlie Hoehn worked for Tim Ferriss for years and got the job in a way Tim has actually written about (worth the click). Then he spent a decade watching publishing promise everything and deliver almost nothing, until he built Author Inc to fix it.

Most people in my line of work make me want to lie down in a dark room. Charlie is the opposite. I would venture to say that he knows more about the topic of book publishing and where it’s going than anyone else out there. So this episode is less an interview and more a look at how someone I respect is actually building the thing.

There are so many parts of this conversation that I love but none more than when he shared about the Bullseye reader test. See, I always struggled with those “avatar” exercises marketers were throwing at us a decade or so ago, where you’d have to answer a bunch of questions like, “What does my avatar drive and read and drink?” I always either felt like I was either answering the questions myself or simply making things up.

That's why Charlie makes every author he works with name a single specific person they could text. Not a composite, not a Pixar character built out of demographic data, not "ambitious female founders, 35 to 50." A real person with a real phone number you know. In Charlie’s world, if you can't name them, you don't have a book yet.

We also covered the four planning exercises his company does before a single word of the book gets written, his company’s two-day recorded-conversation process in a downtown Austin hotel suite that produces a 50,000-word first draft about an hour after the sessions wrap, his American Idol critique of traditional publishing, the book ROI calculator he built because he got tired of explaining how lucrative a book done right can be and why everyone should be able to name a non-fiction book that changed their life.

Want to know more about my company? Legacy Launch Pad Publishing is a boutique hybrid publisher for entrepreneurs and established founders. We help clients create books that build authority, attract opportunities and grow businesses. More info 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com

Curious how entrepreneurs use books to generate seven-figure returns, speaking opportunities and high-value clients? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/7-figures

Interested in working with a selective hybrid publisher that focuses on strategy, authority and long-term business growth—not just publishing a book? 👉 https://www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/apply

And if you just want to know more about me, 👉 www.annadavid.com

Remember, if there's anyone in your life whose wisdom you deeply admire, or who you know could be considered an authority in their field if they were better known, share this show with them.