# Publishing Promised Everything and Delivered Almost Nothing. So He Built His Own Version.

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349/publishing-promised-everything-and-delivered-almost-nothing-so-he-built-his-own-version
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349/publishing-promised-everything-and-delivered-almost-nothing-so-he-built-his-own-version.md
Podcast: [Behind the Book Cover](https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349)
Published: 2026-05-19T00:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/103f26fe
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/103f26fe/197da6cb.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/behind-the-book-cover-737349/episodes/publishing-promised-everything-and-delivered-almost-nothing-so-he-built-his-own-version
Duration seconds: 2745

## Resource

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…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/behind-the-book-cover-737349/episodes/publishing-promised-everything-and-delivered-almost-nothing-so-he-built-his-own-version/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349/publishing-promised-everything-and-delivered-almost-nothing-so-he-built-his-own-version.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.