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Justin and Jason host return guests and show favorites Pete Michaud and Rob Walling for an experimental panel episode. Some of the topics discussed include scaling via automation, finding and managing freelancers, building a content business vs a software business, Pete’s Goal Mapping web app, the obsession of a new project (The Madness), the relative strengths of blogging and podcasting, the format of Rob’s podcast Startups for the Rest of Us and the value of growing an audience.
A big thanks to @JacobChapel who got me thinking about using software to remove background noise. In this episode there was a huge amount of background noise added by skype on the channel recording Jason, Rob & Pete.
I downloaded and used Audacity for mac to sample some of the background noise and then remove the noise based on that sample.
I did this on the .aiff file _before_ edit and mix down. The results are great! Only very occasionally can you hear weird whispy noises on their track.
Thanks Jaocb. Awesome! 🙂
Does anyone else find the idea of automated writing completely deplorable?
Jason and Justin, for the sake of clarity, I’d like to commend you on your podcast. It’s real and authentic. I’m a fan.
That said, Pete Michaud’s remarks about automating the writing of books broke a tolerance threshold for me. Halfway through the podcast I couldn’t listen any more.
For me, books are a window of humanity. Stripping the humanity from books seems downright creepy.
I’m done making my point. To quote Jason at the end of every podcast – I’m out.
@rinkjustice – Thx for the feedback. It’s not a debate I personally want to get into… but it will be interesting to hear what others have to say about this too.
I am about 30 minutes into the podcast so I have only heard the book automation and I do love the idea from the business perspective but I also question myself the credibility of the documents. I am sure Pete goes through enough steps to ensure the product is valid but I wonder at one point people will start noticing the patterns when buying the books, what if I were to buy 2 or 3 books with the end or introduction with the same wording? Will I feel like I am paying extra for the same information and start to question the credibility of the material?
At the same time, at one point do the writers start to expect that extra information to be added to the document in which case is not necessary to produce enough content to fill a good size book since there will be written information that can be added to the book at any time?
Same as @rinkjustice, I am a fan of the show and I believe Pete and Rob are very smart guys. I am just glad to know that I was not the only one thinking the same way about the beginning of the show.
Wow! Two of my most favorite guests on the same show! 😀 It really feels like Pete is taking the spotlight for the whole show.
As for Pete’s automating book creation, I don’t really take much offence to it on the grounds that Pete had so far create books that deals mostly with really niche medical conditions, in which there’ll hardly be any major publisher would take enough interest in satisfying that demand. And from my point of view what Pete has done is essentially have researchers to compile and curate the information that’s available and package it as a product.
As for having the same information that , it almost inevitable to books that have some sort of a technical nature. Or academic textbooks for that matter. If these books with niche medical conditions are a target audience who aren’t in the medical profession(which I inferred from the conversation), the repeating sections (that were copied verbatim in several books with similar themes) is almost necessary: if I were to buy it due to a complicated medical condition, I really don’t want to be hassled to look up the topic separately.
You can listen to episode #38 to get a fuller context of what Pete’s doing: http://techzinglive.com/page/187/techzing-38-pete-michaud-retired-at-25
Two great guests, both having great points to make about life in there own business spheres.
I don’t see the dilemma in the automation and outsourcing of a fact based book on a niche topic, even if some of the copy is used in more than on book. If its the difference between crawling disparate parts the web for 10 hours or buying a researched $10 – $20 ebook I know which one I would choose.
It is no different than Rob creating a niche product that didn’t exist before to solve a specific problem using open source or pre written libraries.
Great interview guys.
@rinkjustice, that’s just foolish. Pete made it very clear he’s making sure to write quality content, not garbage. He blasted a competitor for selling junk. Real people are writing real books.
Rob, “Data is my cofounder” would be a great blog post title.
My comments are often sporadic, I love listening to your show.
I have to join the negative commentors regarding “Pete and the book factory”.
To hear him openly admit that chapters are the same between books, has me sad, with a small amount of anger.
I actually wanted to know the name of his publishing company so I could avoid reading that book.
My worries could be misguided yet it is clear to me “profit” comes long before “quality content”. The only reason “content” is a little better than the very bottom is because he sees it increases “profit”.
That aside, I do think Pete is a very clever individual and did like some of his approaches with the feedback loop, using reviewers before hand etc. Some really smart thinking.
Have really enjoyed the last 5 shows, even with hyperactive Jason of podcast 80.
Judging by some of the remarks, I guess making money is more important than what you’re contributing to society. I can’t imagine how Pete Michaud would openly admit (even proudly so) to spamming the internet with automated books with regurgitated content.
Buyer beware!
@alexandra have you even listened to the podcast, or just commented with no real self made opinion?
Thank you everyone for the comments, especially the critical ones. I’m not being sarcastic–ethics in business is critically important to me, and I appreciate being taken to task on my decisions because it keeps me on my toes.
I want to respond to everyone fully, and I plan to do so, but I have very limited time today, so I’m going to come back in the morning and share my thoughts.
Looking forward to it!
Holy shit. What an awesome podcast so far.
I’ve been thinking about this model for software too but software is too hard to create (so that is the problem I want to solve.)
Pretty thought-provoking show!
Since I was behind on downloading the episode I had started to browse through the comments ahead of time. I wonder if the reactions were based on the fact that maybe Pete’s and Rob’s business models are maybe a bit different from most web entrepreneurs. As a result unless we have had a chance to get into these models, it is a bit difficult to really grasp the challenges and techniques needed to make it work.
Like Robin, Chris, and Felix, I think Pete is not trying to auto-generate the content or even mass-reuse chapters or sections, but rather trying to rationalize the scaling of parallel publishing of multiple titles at once, by leveraging a pool of writers and editors. Also the topics seem very niche-specific and fairly technical in terms of content. I can appreciate the complexity of managing a publishing workflow across external parties. I can understand that Pete has decided to focus on his core strength related to the process as opposed to the writing. For folks who did not get a chance to listen to episode 38, please check it out. Things will make more sense then.
In general I am pretty impressed with both business models even though they don’t necessarily attract me personally.Again it’s all about passion!
Like Justin I feel really queasy about the big brother aspect of ODesk even though the approach works for many people. Plus reviewing screenshots seems like a sure waste of your valuable time. I would much rather judge freelancers based on the more factual evidence such as: do they deliver on time, on budget, with the expected level of quality. In my opinion you can’t really automate team management. If you can’t quite entrust someone with valuable tasks then you have to start them on less risky tasks where you are willing to loose some money if things don’t work out.
Again it was interesting to hear how Pete and Rob approach finding and managing freelancers. Rob actually has an interesting section on finding/managing virtual assistants in his book Start Small, Stay Small. Finding and selecting freelance developers seems much harder in my opinion unless you can get a good sense of their skills, what projects they have applied your target skills on. That’s why over the last couple years I have become a believer of the skills map approach or the 360-degree resume.
So good thought-provoking show and nice way to experiment with a new format.
Love the MasterMind idea. I’d been thinking of the same thing. I’ll join 😉
Im not going to comment on the books things.
But what I will say is you guys totally have to do the Mastermind thing. Its essentially what I get from this podcast, but with 4 people you could really get a lot of insight. That would make it potentially more valuable then what Andrew Warner is doing with Mixergy.
There are 3 points I want to address that seem to have upset some people: automation, reuse, and profit motive.
I think it’s misleading to say that my books are “generated” in any sense, or automatic in themselves. I don’t use a scraping process–I use a system that identifies niches that haven’t been filled, and I essentially hire people to find out what humanity knows about the niche so far, and to compile that research into a book that lay people can consume. It’s only “automated” in the sense that the workflow between contractors is automated. That means passing a topic to a researcher, and research to a writer, etc. is automatically handled by a piece of software, instead of by me having to monitor some e-mail account or ticketing system and assign the work manually.
In the end the books are written by human beings who care about their work, edited by different people both for prose and factual accuracy, and delivered for a low price to consumers who otherwise would have almost no information on the topic.
I feel good about that.
The only question left is about setting up a system that can make money without the owner’s intervention–whether it’s morally acceptable to make money without working… but that’s not a question for my business in particular, that’s one for Capitalism.
The next potential problem area is reusing content. In this case I’m really glad I’m talking to software developers. Imagine you’re a developer that uses a framework like .NET for a few different products. Now imagine a customer calls you, angry at some information he just found out. He bought your Invoice widget and your Payroll widget, and they work perfectly and do exactly what he needs them to do, but boy is he pissed. He just found out that you’re using the EXACT SAME .Net framework File IO module in both pieces of software. Worse, they both use the same modules to connect the internet, totally identical Open/Save Dialog code, the same font rendering–why, practically the entire program uses identical code, except some “filler code” that makes it create invoices or process payroll respectively. It’s beside the point, he says, that the programs require identical functionality: he paid for both programs, so he paid twice for the same code, period.
But that’s silly. That’s how we as programmers become productive–we build components that are reusable, and we use them whenever possible. We write more than one program that requires some of the same background code, but no one expects us to rewrite the background code for the sake of it. We’re encouraged to reuse it.
It’s the same with my books–if there’s a genetic disorder, and it’s fundamentally important for the reader to understand some basic genetics to understand what they have, then I’m going to include that basic genetics information. I don’t see a reason to rewrite the identical content from some kind of moral imperative, just like I wouldn’t try to reinvent the .Net Save Dialog just because I’ve used it before.
As for people noticing the similar content: 1) Software users undoubtedly notice similar functionality, which doesn’t cause a problem, and 2) our buyers generally are suffering from a very rare disease. If you’re suffering from both Huntington’s Disease and Angelman Syndrome, you have bigger problems than whether I reused the brain chapter.
Last, in response to this, from Chris:
“My worries could be misguided yet it is clear to me “profit” comes long before “quality content”. The only reason “content” is a little better than the very bottom is because he sees it increases “profit”.”
One of the major factors that keeps me building this business even though I don’t have a particular passion for publishing, is the people. I have a passion for people, and the torrent of e-mail I receive daily from people who say I’ve changed their lives or that of their child or spouse, makes the journey ultimately worthwhile.
I’m just one small time guy, I can only do so much, and that means I have to pick the books we produce carefully, and you could call that profit motive if you want. But the reality is that if I’m not making money, then I’m not helping people–I make money when I choose to produce a book that people need and that doesn’t exist already. When I do that, people buy the book. If I choose a book that no one buys, then it’s because no one needed it, and no is helped by it.
And if it’s a crappy book, people are quick to say “hey, this is a crappy book,” and sales immediately plummet. I know that because we’ve released a couple that did exactly that–people spoke up and said it was too short, or too simplistic, or whatever, and the books never sold more than a couple copies. We go back to drawing board on those and produce what people are asking for. Information between consumers is too liquid in this industry to get away with selling crap over the long haul.
So sure, I have a profit motive, which is why I’m in business, but I strongly feel my incentives are aligned with my customers in that if I want to win I have to give them quality content on topics they want to know about. I think that’s healthy, don’t you?
Superb answer, clearly well thought out, pondered and even written in places.
Ever since writing that post, I have been trying to nail what is the underlying problem with “reusing chapters” as it is this part which frustrated me the most.
Equally I hope it was clear I was disgusted with “@lexandra” for there brain dead interjection, which was just adding noise. It was certainly not giving credit to a great interview with real tidbits of information.
I believe ultimately my problem with “reusing chapters” is a romantic view of what a book should be. ( Please dont ask me to try and explain that one, as I cant clearly, or perhaps that should read, I cant without sounding silly and maybe even old fashioned. )
Your example as you will be happy to note, I could relate to as a programmer.
Even if it was “.net” used as the reference.
Relate to it, is all.
First a “soccer analogy” of sorts ( Coined by Jason of Techzinglive, used heavily by Jason of Techzinglive. )
I have read a few “self made books” including rags to riches et al. Yet usually get frustrated due to this “feeling” of, “I just read that”.
Maybe the same sentence reused, or the same meaning to closely rehashed. Ultimately the same message.
There is a whole book industry with which this theme is common, to which I stand tall and arrogantly look down on.
If I had both the diseases you mentioned, had gone out and purchased both books. I personally would have felt cheated to discover a “word for word” chapter, same in both books.
Or even “very similar” chapters.
People who are reading these subjects are clearly in a worst position than someone reading “rags to riches” yet trying to put myself in their shoes, I would be equally frustrated to have wasted time reading material I already know.
I do commend you for trying, to help give “the people” clearer none phd waffle to read. To which is one of the reasons I found this podcast so interesting.
You are clearly trying to be 1 man making a difference!
Pete –
I believe you said you pay an average of $250 per 50-80k word book to your writers. How is this possible, especially with medical content that requires a certain level of expertise? Do you have a system in place to insure your writers aren’t scraping or plagiarizing content from other medical sites and or sources?
Tyler
I highly advocate a mastermind group. I’ve started two – one with two other programmer entrepreneurs, and one with music producers. One has 3 people, the other 4. Both are endlessly helpful. Choose your company wisely, but otherwise, make it a regular thing, and stick with it.
The one point that wasn’t really mentioned that I think is arguably the most crucial is accountability. Every meeting I write down what everyone is going to accomplish by the next meeting. It helps people plan, and it helps people stick to a plan.
Tyler,
We use TurnItIn.com to ensure nothing is scraped. Plus, once you get to know your writers you can tell when something is out of place because you know their “voice.” These aren’t anonymous people, they work closely with us, so plagiarism is very nearly impossible.
How do you deal with authorship?
I have some serious ethic problem with the show. The only one I’m not able to go through. I think this kind of people-using (paying short, lots of control, no rights for the people because they are overseas and outsourced) is the worst combination. You have that combo when a small new capitalist that was an employee or a solo, start making a business and want to do it the worst capitalism scenario possible: no rights for the people, maximization of the profit without giving any rights to the people. The freelancing of the whole society.
That’s fucking bad. I think Justin could more realte to what I’m saying (I think, but..Justin, what do you think?) because I’m a European. While the large part of you are Americans.
But definitely, it is not (only) having the book written using (for a couple or three chapters) IDENTICAL words from other books: what about paying poor people to write review for Amazon AND publishing just the good one? That’s shit. Really, SHIT.
From your blog Pete you seemed quite ethical guy. Maybe or the ethical people just come out as they are when they meet money.
Guys, the worst show ever. I was OUT at 42′.
Pete seems shady, especially paying people to write Amazon reviews. Doesn’t that violate Amazon’s TOS?
The madness. I have a notebook full of the madness.
I have listened to podcast 82, waiting to see you talk up about some of the comments, yet it is clear 82 was recorded before 81, potentially.
I wonder if you give us your views on the debates in 83?
@Jason you have been quite silent on the boards, @Justin your silence can at least be traced to a comment saying your not saying anything…
@Alessandro makes a very interesting point, which I and others have glossed over.
@Pete I had expected more dialog.
@Chris
Maybe you’re thinking of books in terms of features rather than benefits–another software analogy. Remember that people spend money for benefits. They don’t care if your Lawn Care Business management software and Antique Store management software output almost identical reports. They just want software that solves their problem and saves time/money. Plus, it’s almost impossible that someone is going to be running a lawn care service and an antique store.
So it is with my books.
@Alessandro
To your first point, about ownership versus freelancing, your point is that the contractors who work for me should get royalties for their work, I think.
My first question is, who should get the royalties? The guy who finds the topics? The researcher? The writer? The editor? The type setter? The cover designer? The web programmer? I guess I’m asking, what functions deserve royalties, and how are those functions different from the ones that don’t deserve royalties? I built more websites for people than I can remember when I was a freelancer, and I never see any royalty checks from any of the money those people make with the sites, I just built it for a price and gave it to them (it’s called “work for hire” in the US).
In fact, I’ve tried a completely different model before in which we go 50/50 with an author. I give complete autonomy to them, and they come up with their own topic, with my help picking a good niche if they choose, then I help them generate the outline of the content they will produce. They are then completely responsible for the content. After they produce the content it goes through the “machine” — it’s edited, fact checked, designed, published, marketed, everything, and all they have to do is give me the content.
That’s the theory anyway, because every time I’ve tried that the partner author has not even come close to finishing the content for their own title. There is a serious issue with motivating people to accept autonomy and responsibility. I am willing to work that way, but I haven’t yet found anyone who has followed through.
The other problem with your idea that everyone should get a continuing share of the work they produce, is that as I’ve explained before both in interviews and essays, you don’t make any money for a long time. The tradeoff is simple, and the people who write for me are fully aware of it. The options are:
1) Either the company takes care of everything, and pays you a lump sum for your content, or
2) You take the entire burden of producing the content on yourself, and you make money only if, and to the degree that, your work sells.
But most people don’t have time to write content that will produce $10/month. Sure, they may make $500 over the course of 5 years, but their electric bill is due now, so they take $100 up front for their work instead. And in exchange for what amounts to a loan against future earnings, the company gets to collect royalties.
In the end, these are not victims, these are people working for wages that support them, and deliberately choosing a tradeoff between short term and long term benefit that makes sense for them.
To the second point, which was made also by Taylor, paying people for reviews: remember that I use those reviews to improve the content of the book before they go out. Most of the time, any complaints that people have are corrected before the book hits amazon, so they wouldn’t be relevant anyway. Also note, I pay people for whatever review they provide, whether it’s posted on amazon or not, so no one has any incentive to lie. The only incentive I provide is to look at the book and tell me honestly what they think. I don’t think that’s such a terrible thing.
It’s easy to take a limited view into someone’s life or business and question a particular thing, but I think if you saw the realities of my business and what I actually do–not what you think I do based on what I’ve explained and what you imagine–that you’d think everything was kosher.
In the end I produce books that help a lot of people, which I know because they tell me. The people my books don’t help get full refunds–I give a couple refunds a month, no questions asked. I’m not stealing from or scamming anyone. I also provide the livelihoods of many people both inside and outside the US (including that of my family included).
We can debate the details, but I provide value to both my customer and employees. There are a handful of people who can work from home comfortably because of me. There are countless people whose lives and health have been turned around by the work I do. I feel good about all that.
By the way Alessandro, I appreciate your passion and empathy for people. Don’t ever lose that.
I don’t understand why there is such a romanticised view about the creative process of what is essentially a fact based help manual.
I could understand this view if Pete was creating books in this way and claiming that all books were written from scratch, or that he himself had written the books, but he isn’t he has given us a transparent view of his working process and while it might not be something you or I would do it doesn’t make it wrong or immoral for him to.
I guess there is a comparison between the way Pete has automated his book publishing business and the way the music industry which is essentially a similarly creative industry has automated music production, do sound engineers, session musicians etc get a piece of the royalty pie? No, they know their creativity is for hire, there is no secret and no wool being pulled over anyones eyes.
I have read all the comments and i still don’t see the ethical dilemma.
What an interesting debate on the blog! Pretty cool to see the differences in opinion and ways people are coming from.
@Pete, I am quite impressed with your participation in the comments and the good argumentation all while maintaining a positive stance. 🙂
This is another great example of why TechZing is such a great show. Where else would we see great ideas being presented and sometimes debated?!