I Quit My $250K Job To Become an Author

This guy quit his $250K job to become an author.

His name is Paul Millerd.

He wrote the Pathless Path. A bestselling book.

In this email, I will break down:

- why he turned down a deal with Penguin
- and how much he makes from his book
- also how he got the Penguin deal

Paul was exploring a variety of ways to publish his book. He considered the traditional route but decided against it.

Despite getting an offer of $200,000 from Penguin.

Paul recognised that Penguin had relationships that could help scale the book to a wider audience. Ultimately though Paul decided to self-publish.

Paul decided to invest his own money into creating his book. Why?

He said that giving up creative control was too high a price to pay.

Penguin were only willing to give him 10% royalties on his hardbacks and 7.5% on his paperback.

Here’s how that looks:

Instead by doing it himself, he makes a lot more in royalties. Paul makes 35% from hardcover sales and 40% from paperback sales.

In the last two years, Paul has made $125,000 in royalties from book sales.

These figures are from just shy of halfway through 2023.

If the trend has continued then conservatively Paul will be at around the $230,000 mark.

BUT Paul doesn’t just make money from his royalties.

Paul also makes money selling courses and consulting. The book has brought a lot more attention to his website, and social media and helped him sell more of his core services.

He says he has earned around $250,000 in revenue from these other revenue streams.

Also after posting this on Twitter. Paul reached out and said he self-published first. Then Penguin approached him with the offer to buy the rights from him.

Love that he turned it down and kept true to his vision for the book.

If you’d like to start your publishing journey. Reply to this email with the words:

let’s publish

And we will take it from there.

Patrick 👋