David Burkus joins Eric Jorgenson to talk about Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams — his fifth book, and the first he published professionally after four traditional deals.

David lays out the math he gives every author weighing the two paths: still write the proposal, and if the traditional offer comes in between $75,000 and $100,000, take the money — but if it’s “20, 25 grand,” that’s not enough to deal with the hassles of signing away your IP.

He explains why a traditional proposal is written “for an audience of one,” how his publisher’s push to make his networking book a career book earned him exactly two speaking gigs in the book’s entire history, and why the timeline sealed it: guided author in June 2022, on Amazon everywhere by May 2023.

Then he opens up the speaking machine itself — lanes and problems, the caveman test that named Best Team Ever, micro videos that get found, the bureau secret of bringing agents in on deals you already have — and the production system behind five books: six months of research in piles on the floor, 500 to 750 words a day, and “when you write nonfiction, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s just you haven’t researched it enough.”

Plus the LinkedIn message from a Lithuanian event planner that turned a book into a homecoming.

For more information on David Burkus, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/david-burkus

For more information on Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/best-team-ever