Back in college, I became a published editorial cartoonist…
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My favorite artist of all time in the genre is Bill DeOre, who drew over 4,000 editorial cartoons for the Dallas Morning News over a 34 year period.
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I myself have fewer than 100 published cartoons…
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But there was a period in my life where I DREAMED of drawing for The New Yorker and even briefly considered a career in the art…
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So when I made the decision to include illustrated diagrams in my upcoming book, Return to Real …
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I knew that I wanted to do the illustrations by hand myself (like the illustration of the waves you see above…)
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That illustration depicts “The Three Colliding Forces” that I write about in Chapter 2:
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An Economic Reckoning, Ecological Breaking Point, and Existential Crisis that is hitting humanity all at once…
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Collectively, these forces have created the conditions for the Return to Real movement that’s taking shape in the world right now…
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Like what showed up last week at the University of Arizona commencement speech delivered by former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, when he was booed multiple times by graduating students, each time he mentioned artificial intelligence…
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Have you seen the clip??
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Schmidt’s commencement speech is actually just one of several speeches mentioning AI that received boos in the last few weeks…
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So in a book that’s all about returning to what’s real in an age of artificial everything…
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(And the opportunity that provides…)
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You’re darn right I’m drawing the illustrations personally myself, by hand! :-)
And THIS is where I need YOUR help.
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Because I am down to designing the LAST FOUR (4) diagrams, and I would LOVE to get your feedback on them today before my deadline to get these diagrams finished in time before the book goes to print.
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(More on that in a second…)
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First, welcome to this second installment of Behind a Bestseller Book Launch, aka “Operation BBL” – a mini-series where I take you behind the scenes of what I’m actually doing to launch my upcoming book…
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The purpose of this mini-series is to show you what I’m doing so you can learn from all the strategies, tactics, and experiments I’m conducting to (hopefully) make this book a bestseller…
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Today’s issue is all about DIAGRAMS.
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Diagrams (and illustrations) are one of THE most important, yet under-utilized elements when it comes to launching a bestselling book.
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James Clear has spoken extensively about the importance of having “shareable” diagrams in your book, like this one here from Atomic Habits:
Sahil Bloom‘s book The 5 Types of Wealth has several diagrams that have gone viral and which have been shared by thousands of readers, like this one here:
And yet, so few authors take the time to create *highly shareable* diagrams like these in their books.
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Which means, therein lies the opportunity.
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In last week’s issue [#100] Behind the Scenes of a Bestseller Book Launch… you may remember that I ran live Zoom workshops with 25 beta readers to get feedback on a dozen or so diagrams I’ve been working on for Return to Real…
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I pulled up an iPad. Sketched diagrams in real time. Showed multiple variants side-by-side. And listened to which versions landed and which ones missed.
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These sessions were incredibly helpful…
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(I highly recommend doing something similar…)
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BUT there were FOUR (4) diagrams that came out of those sessions “unresolved”…
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Diagrams on which readers were TORN….
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Even one diagram on which I completely STARTED OVER from scratch BASED on the feedback from those sessions…
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As a result…
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I’ve been obsessively reworking these illustrations…
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And I’m now down to the wire…
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And because time is SUPER TIGHT, I could really use your help.
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BTW – This will take you 2 minutes (AND I think it will be fun…)
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Here’s the deal:
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There are FOUR illustrated diagrams, each with 3-4 variants that I would LOVE to get your feedback on by VOTING which version is your favorite (you can also provide detailed feedback, if you’d like.)
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All you need to do is click on the link or image below. That will take you directly to the poll:
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NOTE: Each image in the poll is “clickable” so you can ZOOM in on each variation and view it in more detail.
With each diagram, there is a brief description of the concept from the book that the diagram illustrates to provide some context.
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The diagrams you’ll see are all rough sketches that I’ve made by hand digitally on my iPad (for rapid prototyping). The final versions in the book (based on your feedback) will be high-fidelity hand-drawn on archival paper with Pigma Micron pen and ink.
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Stylistically, the illustrations are all in a modern naturalist field guide style that fits with the motif of the book (you’ll see what I mean…)
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And this is a cool opportunity to…
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- A. Get an early glimpse into these diagrams TODAY…
- B. See how I’ve setup PickFU in a very specific way for running this poll (feel free to copy my setup…)
- C. Shape the direction of these final illustrations before they make it into the book…
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NOTE: The poll will only be up for 48 hours, so if you’re interested (or even just curious), I recommend doing this now while it’s on your mind and in front of you. After that, all of the images will be taken down.
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Here’s the link again:
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Thank you so much for all your feedback :-)
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Before we wrap things up…
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What’s the takeaway in all this??
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Well, if I had to pick ONE it would be this:
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Diagrams are WAY more important than most people think.
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And whether you do them yourself or work with an illustrator, they ARE worth obsessing over…
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(Although admittedly, I might be a little crazy with how much time I’ve spent on these things…)
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In fact, I’ve been burning the midnight oil to get these last few illustrations over the finish line… and I am embarrassed at how late it is right now.
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(We’re at a Memorial Day Weekend soccer tournament in Boston for one of our boys, and everyone is asleep in our hotel room while I’ve been beavering away to finish this newsletter deep into the night…)
If you look closely at my screen, you’ll see the crazy hour at which I’m writing this to you. YIKES is right!
So with all that said, I’m going to wrap things up here…
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Have a GREAT rest of your day…
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Remember to HUG the ones you love…
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And until next week,
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Ryan :-)
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P.S. I would LOVE your feedback on these last few diagrams from my upcoming book Return to Real before the book goes to print.
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It will only take 2 mins, and it would mean the world to me.
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Here’s the link one last time:
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Thank you so much! :-)
