---
title: Episode 102 How To Write A Book
episode_number: 102
era: mid
source_file: Episode 102 How To Write A Book.mp3
audio_size_mb: 53.7
duration_sec: 1758.3
duration_min: 29.3
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.993
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T16:51:39Z---

# Episode 102 How To Write A Book

**Speaker 0:** Tom Torero podcast a 102 how to write a book. Don't panic if you're a daygamer. If you're thinking how the fuck does this associate with hustling, then listen on because the art of storytelling, the art of conveying an idea, the art of writing books to make a passive income, that's all connected of course with daygame and street hustling. Anyway, I've got an hour to go in Middle Europe before I'm going to the airport. I'm going to Wales via Bristol to see a family member who's just come out of hospital. They've had a very routine operation and I'm gonna be the living carer just for one or two weeks, which of course I'm happy to do. And also while I'm in Wales, I shall be polishing, not polishing a turd, hopefully, polishing, cold calling, my new book on daygame in the former Soviet Union. It's all done. It's just the final pieces of the puzzle have to be slotted together and checked, then I have to hit publish. That was the catalyst for this podcast, how to write a book. Loads of guys asked me how do you do it? How much money do you make? What's the point of doing it? Is self publishing better than finding a publisher? Etcetera, etcetera. First of all, why should you write a book? Well, you do have a unique perspective on something. Right? Guys say, well, I just work in an office or I work in a car phone warehouse store, something like that. It's still a unique perspective. It's still recollections. It's still memories. It's still experiences like Ricky Gervais as in the office, making something that seems so mundane be so human and so wonderful or you've got something you've been doing for five ten fifteen years yeah the thing that you love doing your hobby you've got a specialist knowledge in something and someone out there wants to know about it so you can pass that information on. So that's the first thing. The old cliche is true. You definitely do have a book inside you or she has a book deep inside her that you have to probe out. Yeah? But it's there and if it's not written down, doesn't exist as the old latin roman phrase says, if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. So when you, pop your clocks and you go six feet under or in ashes into the universe, if it's not written down, if it's not on the internet, if it's not in a library, if it's not in paperback, hardback, all those ideas, all those experiences you have are gone. And I think of, a book I've been reading, the memoir of Radislav Spielman, I think you say, a Jewish pianist in Warsaw, before and after the war and he survived the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Maybe you know the movie, but the memoir is even better. He wrote it in 1946, when it was fresh in his mind, the unbelievable horrors that he went through. And so, yes, it was therapeutic. Of course, it was a unique perspective and of course, if he hadn't written it down, then we wouldn't know all these fine details about what happened in Warsaw between 1939 and 1945. So definitely, definitely, definitely do it. I would encourage you to do it. Not just for the money, which we'll talk about later, but for for the therapeutic aspect of reliving some past experiences or ordering things if you're writing a fiction book, a textbook, clarity in your mind. Okay? Writing is a skill. It's a muscle. It's a habit and it's fucking painful. I don't like writing. I wouldn't call myself a writer, certainly not a writer of stories. Nobody feels like sitting down and writing. I think it's a bit sadomasochistic if you if you really jump at the chance of a white piece of paper and a pen. The old saying is true that if you wait to feel like you want to write, you'll be waiting forever. But here's the disclaimer, once you start writing and you're into day 10 or day 20 out of a thirty or a sixty day promise, you want to keep going. It's immersive. It's quiet. It's, a beautifully selfish pursuit with something to show for it at the end. As I said, it's therapy. When the book is finished, you feel a bit of a loss. So with cold calling finished, I'm feeling a bit bit of a loss getting ready for the next project but I've had a few weeks where I've just thought, oh, okay, well that's done. What next? To write, you have to read. I used to say that to the primary school kids at school. Good writers are good readers not to nick ideas, not to try and, copy your favorite authors of that genre but to understand narrative arcs, to understand how a non fiction book is laid out. We'll come on to the differences later but read a lot to get your inspiration. And this is an ideal pursuit for people like you and I who are, I'm guessing introverted. You're not a crazy loud night gamer. You're a day gamer. Writing can be great. Kafka said writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. That's a great thing but it's also catch 22 puts you in your head so you've got to get out there daily ninety minutes, 10 approaches out of your head into your body. I've said all that before. So yeah, balance it out. Now, I'm not a writer as I keep saying in that I'm not skilled with flowery prose. I'm not f Scott Fitzgerald. I prefer non fiction. Street hustle as a textbook was far easier to write than my other books. I'm an ex academic. I'm a former teacher. I like crystallizing ideas, clear thinking I like making things practical so, if you look at the differences between my books daygame to error travel street hustle and now cold calling you'll see Hopefully, you'll see an evolution but I'm still not a fan of flowery prose. I'm not good at it. But just because I don't call myself a writer doesn't mean that I haven't written four, five books and I don't make money off them. And as I'll come on to, think I make more money than the average author who's using a publisher. So a bit of sweet irony there. I much prefer making videos. I much prefer giving talks. I much prefer teaching live. I much prefer text book kind of stuff box outs and appendixes, appendices not the appendix, otherwise I'd be a doctor but you get the idea so how do I publish my books you know by now I use lulu for paperbacks and hardback books Then I use amazon kindle for kindle versions of daygame and Torero travels and how to flirt with girls. I've kept street hustle as just an academic textbook because it's niche. I like the fact that it's like a bio chemistry textbook. A very certain type of guy buys it and some guy might say well £60 for a book that's shocking. Well, university it's not and an hour Skype session with me that's a £100. So for £60 to get everything I've ever published or talked about in one place I think that's alright you know and, I used to fear kindle in terms of books being, torrented and copied as in daygam and Torero travels but yes, they are. There's loads of torrented versions out there but it still doesn't affect new readers, people saying thank you and buying copies. I think a lot of people just trust Amazon. They like it going straight to their phone or their kindle. So daygame and Torero travels and ironically how to flirt with girls. That was just a little throwaway, book which was to test the kindle process just with my push pull cocky funny breaking rapport lines in it. That still sells really well as well. But street hustle is going to remain as a hardback textbook and cold calling will start off as a lulu paperback and then it will move hopefully to amazon kindle. I'm not going to go through the process of lulu and kindle direct publishing. The links are below. They talk you through the steps and they're not difficult. Kindle is a bit of a faff in terms of pricing and tax and looking at how to get the right tax bracket and reclaim withheld US tax and all that but, you'll sort it out. You can even pay a freelancer on Upwork. That's a freelance website to sort all this stuff out for you. How much do you earn? That's the biggest question I ever get about publishing. How much do I earn per month? It is purely passive now. It wasn't passive when you're writing the bloody thing but once you release it into the universe, it's passive because I don't have any control. I don't want to have any control over the printing and the delivery of the lulu or the, delivery of the kindle stuff. I earn between £2,500 and 2,809 thousand. Almost £3,000 a month just from books. Now that is crazy if you had told me that ten years ago. You know, almost like a teaching salary if not more than a teaching salary and that pays for my rent, pays for my food and my bills and some of my my travel from my books. So I don't think of myself as a writer or an author, but I earn more than your average author. Right? The average author who's using a publisher, he gets 10% or even 8% from the publisher per sale. And I looked this up, this morning. The average published in The United States sells only 250 copies a year. That's books you see on bookshop bookshelves and about 3,000 copies over its lifetime. And I sell more than 250 copies a year per book and way more than 3,000 copies. They're still selling. Yeah. So people used to laugh at self publishing, niche publishing. They used to call it vanity publishing as in like bohemian poets selling their avant garde postmodern poetry. But now it's a real thing because if you've got the funnel of YouTube, of Instagram, of Twitter, of Facebook, content marketing, give give give give give. That's the trick. And then, link to, any kind of landing page. Mine is just a simple blog WordPress website. People have a little browse. Maybe they start with a cheap book. So my cheapest is how to flirt. Maybe then they buy Torero travels. Then they get a bit into daygame and they buy street hustle for £60 and then they think I want to see this live or some guys have said I just want to say thank you and they buy stealth seduction which is the most expensive thing to buy on my website. That's how the funnel works so you no longer need to do the spammy route. Yeah? The thing I hate about sales, links, promos, banner ads, cheesy email lists and you know smashing people with affiliate links or a crappy free PDF for signing up that's all 2,005 kind of pickup marketing. People are very aware of it and wary of it. Much better is to let your content do the talking. High quality content. Give give give give give. This is content marketing. Give away videos, practical videos on YouTube for one year, two years. Do a podcast, do articles, don't ask for anything. That's the mistake. And then after you've built up a following, a percentage of those people will buy. Okay? And that's a much better way to do it. It's a much easier way to do it and it's free. Right? Uploading YouTube videos costs nothing. Writing a tweet costs nothing. Starting a WordPress blog costs nothing. Minimal. How long does a book need to be? That's a good question. I've already said don't do that shitty free PDF three page, spammy book. But a real book is between forty and sixty thousand words for standard non fiction and 60 to 80,000 words for standard novel. Most of my books are 80,000 words. The first one is a beast, daygame 2,012. That's a 120,000 words. That was just copy and paste off my locked blog at the time and off a seduction forum so there wasn't any editor there wasn't any editing it was just wham bam, thank you ma'am, release that. No, no polish until the second edition but you know it was therapeutic. It gave me clarity about my daygame ideas. That's where girlfriend sequence came from. That's where the London daygame model was fleshed out a lot. Right. And that then 2014 was Torero Travels, which had an editor. It had a better cover. It had some internal design. It had narrative arc, then came my bible, my baby which I am proud of Street hustle which was released in 2016. That's a textbook, that's why it's way more my kind of thing and it's got illustrations and diagrams and charts and a beautiful artist beautiful cover design so that was 2016 this year 2017 cold calling also with illustrations and a really nice cover design front spine and back. It had a line editor, a copy editor. It's got photographs in there. So yes, proud of that. Let's talk about the split just quickly. Lulu just take their printing and shipping costs and you keep everything else. So for example in street hustle that sells for £60 or british pounds to you yanks I get 35 to £40 of that your choice how much you want to price it I could have charged £200 they just take their printing and shipping costs. So you can see for that hardback book, that is about £15. Paperback much less. So very fair. Think very profitable. Kindle, you choose between the 70% royalty if your book is between $2.99, $2.99 and $9.99 or 35% if you want to go over the $9.99. As I said, look into the tax being held, how you can get it back if you've done the wrong bracket. Recently, my accountant sorted that out for me and it's saving me money with the tax that I'm paying. But yes, I'd go with Lulu as market leaders and obviously Amazon as massive platform market leaders. Okay. The process. The nitty gritty because it's a muscle. It's just like daygging there's a process a to z of writing a book I'm speaking quickly because we got a lot to get through okay if you were storytelling don't speak quickly I'm gonna do a video on voice improving your voice in the next few weeks so look out for that. Step number one. Have the idea. Sum it up in a sentence. You should be able to tell somebody this is my burning idea, this is what I know, this is what I'm good at, this is what the book's about. If you can't do that, you haven't got the correct topic. Then on a piece of paper, shape it into contents. Start, finish, everything in the middle, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, etcetera. So that's what it's gonna be. Second thing start alright with accountability I said writing two thousand two thousand five hundred words on my blog every single day that was the promise I did then you have to do it's painful like daygame. By the end of it, you enjoy it. Little and often, write daily, have a word count and eventually, it's immersive and you look forward to it. Yeah? Keep the routine, same cafe, same seat, same coffee, same lap top, same time of the day. Get it done. Thirty days, sixty six days to form a habit. By the end of two months, you'll definitely have 60 to 80,000 words. You'll have a book in front of you. But before you press publish, there's a lot more to do. So first of all, that ramshackle copy to friends or people that are your peers in that thing, whether that's skateboarding or snow boarding or whatever and get them to make changes. Yeah, it's a sting to your ego but take it on the chin, because they know about what they're talking about. Make sure they're not just giving you praise but you know they're saying this is in the wrong order. This should be there. You should flesh this out. The style is too much like this. Why don't you try like this? As Hemingway said and he literally said, the first draft of everything is shit. And I agree. Although not as shit as you think because when you leave it, and come back to it, you can see the, wood for the trees eventually you will think, wow, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Yeah. Then you're going to give it to somebody else so a freelancer on upwork one of them is going to do a line edit or you could just get a friend who's got a high IQ or he's got a PhD he's diligent and he's looking at punctuation, spelling, grammar. You get another person or the same person if they know about your niche topic to do a copy edit which is look at the paragraph and look at the themes, at the ideas to zoom out and suggest changes. And then I usually get that back, let it sit for a little bit longer like bread rising, go back to it with fresh eyes and make the rewrite second edition and the changes and then yeah you can give it back to the copy editor or a friend or just, trust yourself get someone else to double check spelling once again and then you finished your manuscript at the same time the fun bit you commission illustrations from upwork you know test their style of design and then commission it. Use a different person or the same person for the cover. You got all that. You send it all off to a layout person. That's a different skill entirely. Hard for textbooks and academic books. Quite straightforward for a paperback book. Order a proof copy, that's the exciting point, comes to your door. Wow, wow, wow, you feel amazing. You hold it big and hard in your hands. Oh yes, you've done it. But go through it. Don't just press publish. Go through it with a pen. Look for page errors, formatting errors, final spellings, whatever. Correct and then hit publish. And it's amazing feeling. It's an amazing feeling. Once you've done it once, you can just repeat and repeat and repeat. There is a different way of doing it. I've heard of people dictating just, their thoughts and then getting that transcribed without the ums and the ahs and then giving that to a ghost writer and then shaping it. There are people doing that even in the pickup world. It's not really you writing the book. Well, it depends really how much input you're you're doing but that is a different way to do it. I don't know if I could dictate my ideas into a dictaphone like I am now for a whole book. It's hard enough just doing a podcast but to get it all logical I need to see it on on paper or rather on a laptop screen. And then yeah, how do you promote it? Well, I've already said, have that funnel in place. So you should already have a market whether that's actual students because you're an English teacher or a yoga teacher or a fitness instructor or people that are already following you online. That is through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or maybe you're still doing old school emailing lists but you have to have a following alright if you want to do content marketing alright for the last ten minutes we shall talk about storytelling and themes we're going to zoom out we're going to make it more meta this definitely applies to your daygame so to your stacking and storytelling after she gives you the topic definitely on a date Okay. And writing a book, telling a story is just like game anyway because authors, screenwriters, movie directors, you start with attraction, breaking rapport, the razzle dazzle of excitement, cliffhangers, suspense, drama. Okay? Push pull, push pull, push pull, and then you can't be all crazy. Imagine a book that's just all crazy. There has to be a calm before another another storm. That's the comfort. Yeah. Getting to know the characters, fleshing out ideas, giving the readers some breathing space, making it plausible, and then ramping things up towards the end of the book with seduction. Alright. For the grand finale. Stephen King said, good books don't give up all their secrets at once, and you could replace books with pickup artists. Good pickup artist don't give up all their secrets at once. Yeah. Open loops, push pull, fractionation, cliffhangers, all that classic game. Leave her wanting more. You're on and then you're off. You're badass and then you're gonna. You probably have heard me talking about Joseph Campbell, as in the guy who wrote Power of Myth and Hero with a Thousand Faces. He was just a professor of, I think a professor of comparative mythology. So he's looking at the themes in all major, religions, myths and stories. What keeps coming up? And you can think of The Hobbit when he talks about the hero's journey. And the hero's journey goes like this and you should be using this in every story, in every book you write, in every film script you write. Okay? And as I describe it, think of The Hobbit or think of Lord of the Rings or think of Ulysses. So in the beginning, the character or you are in the ordinary world. Okay? The world is normal. And suddenly, you have a call to adventure. Think of Bilbo Baggins. And there's fear connected with that call. You don't want to do it. You don't want to get outside your comfort zone. But you meet some kind of mentor. Think of Gandalf. Then you have to cross from the normal world into the adventure. So you're crossing a threshold and then comes the drama, the tests, the battles, the enemies, you've got allies, loads of ups and downs. Yeah? And that's building up to some kind of big challenge, big ordeal and surprise surprise you come through. Alright? You win. So, there's a reward. Then the ending of the book, ending of the film, the ending of your story is some kind of road back to the Shire or some resurrection and the lessons that you learned and probably that you're going to pass on. So it's cyclical. That's the hero's journey. That's the monomyth. And I want you to incorporate that into stories. And you think, fucking hell, how do I incorporate that into a basic story about having my breakfast or going on a weekend trip to Berlin? Well, write it down. Okay. It's going to start out boring. It's like when a girl says to you, where are you from? Or what is your job? Or where have you traveled? Or what are your passions? I say to guys, be ready. Girls are always going to ask you these things. So first write down the logical boring version of it and then pimp it up. I call this in girlfriend sequence, pimp up your profile. Right? Prepare set stories. Flesh them out on paper. Try them out in the mirror. Learn them through speaking them into your phone or in a dictaphone. Have some set stories as I talk about in daygame three point zero part one, which is free on YouTube. Have a set story for the topic she's going to give like where she's from or what her job is or what her passions are. They're gonna say, I can start but then I run out of things to say. No excuses. Don't be lazy. Okay? Mystery used to bash his students for this. Have stories ready. Have some qualification ready. Have a story about your childhood ready. Have a story about where you come from ready. Have a story about your job ready. Incorporate a bit of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey into that. Alright? And incorporate Mystery's switches which I've talked about with, photo routines. So in your story, subtly weave in some humble bragging, yes, some DHVs, demonstrations of higher value, pre selection, leader of men, protector of loved ones, a willingness to emote and being a risk taker. That's a massive one. Now they're humble brags. Remember, it's not show off, show off, show off and you've got to fractionate it. It can't just be action, action, action. You've got to go in and you've to go out. That's what she said. There's got to be spikes. There's got to be innuendos. There's got to be twists and turns and ultimately it's the way you tell it. So even listening to my voice now, I'm going up and I'm going down. I'm going quiet and then I'm going loud emphasizing a point. I talk very quickly in these podcasts because I have to. I've only got thirty minutes. But telling a story to a girl when you're seducing her or talking to an audience, you can pause a lot more. Watch me talking on, on YouTube when I'm giving a talk. We'll talk about voice soon. I promise you because many guys want to know how to improve your voice. But that's a big part of storytelling. It's your gestures. It's your mannerisms. It's your eye contact. That is what a great storyteller is. Okay? So take a dull story. You can even try it with what you had for breakfast and try turning it into a story full of spikes and anticipation and fractionation. Try it out. Maybe do some public speaking. Maybe do toastmasters or a comedy course. Or the best way for a daygamer to practice storytelling is to talk to girls. So she gives you the topic on the street after stacking, you tell a story about it. And if you're doing 10 sets a day, my friend, you will get better. And if you're going on two dates a week and you're practicing the same stories, you will get better. I love the quote from Chekhov. He said, don't tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass. Okay. So you can take something very mundane, like working in an office, and you can turn it into Ricky Gervais' The Office. Yep. Really, really, really think about how you can take those boring dull questions that the girl asks you and the boring dull topics that the girl gives you and how you can spice it up, how you can spike it up. Exactly the same for writing a book. Alright? Attraction, comfort, seduction, the same as seducing a girl. There we go. We're coming up to the end of that podcast. Let me know if you're writing a book, if you're thinking of writing your daygame diaries, your game journeys. More and more are being published. They're very, very interesting. As I said, I'm off to Wales now, so the next podcast will be from Wales. It's nice to have a bit of a break after a crazy month of March. That was a lot of daygame successes but a lot of over pulling, a lot of over egg in the pudding, me like a fisherman just reeling in so fast because I had a time limit and I was too horny, I was too impatient, so I was generating LMR or rather token LMR, ASD, anti slut defense, some buyer's remorse. Many of the girls said I was too much like a player. I've run out of time because I'm about to go home, so some open loops to come back to. That's always frustrating. Although see the meta game the game is gaming me I want to come back and close those loops that's just like a story that finishes a chapter on a on a cliffhanger yeah and, this podcast won't end on a cliffhanger It'll end, neither on a clanger. It will end on some news about infield coaching. I've said many times I'm not doing much infield coaching this year and the space I have is sold out. So guys are emailing now because the weather's getting better. Girls are wearing skirts. You can see more boobs. And they're saying, Tom, are you doing coaching in London or Europe or even further afield? And I'm saying, no. But my regular wing and the senior coach for me, Craig, who I've traveled around the world with, he is doing my coaching. He's based near London, so he does a lot of my London coaching. He's been over to Europe to do coaching. He does residentials in Middle Europe and he's gone further afield, know, he's taught in Canada with me, he's taught in America with me, he's been over to Australia this year, but he's not going to come over for a few hours of coaching. That would only be for residential. The system for London coaching with Craig is that it's a day's coaching, five hours one on one with him with all the microphones, 100% in field and it's £400. If you want to book, Craig's coaching with that's through me. So email Tom at Tom Torero dot com and I'll give Craig a ring and we'll sort out scheduling and then, then I'll get back to you. But anyway, that was podcast 102, how to write a book. Give it a go or at least improve your own storytelling for your daygame and dating. Until next time, keep grabbing life by those horny horns.