Every once in awhile I believe the universe reaches out and taps you on the shoulder. It’s a brief notice that you will miss if you’re not paying attention. I don’t have an explanation for it, but I think one of these moments happened to me today.

Many people in the 200WAD community have written books, are currently writing books, or threaten to write a book (me). I have no idea how to write a book. I started with the habit of writing every day. I figured I would get to the nuts and bolts of writing and publishing a book somewhere down the line.

This morning in the app SmartNews I saw a story with the headline Scribe Books is Disrupting Self-Publishing by Giving Away All the Secrets for Free. Right away I noticed the story was published on Inc.com and the author was Benjamin P. Hardy. 

Tap #1: I became familiar with Benjamin P. Hardy while taking a create-your-own-blog course called Freedom Machine. One of the lessons recommended starting with Medium to practice writing and test topics before committing to a dedicated domain/topic/audience, and Benjamin was and probably still is one of the top writers on Medium.

Scribe is a company that helps people write, publish, and market non-fiction books. The company was co-founded by Tucker Max. 

Tap #2: I recognized the name Tucker Max from his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. This book has absolutely crazy stories about his life of partying, and I remember writing him off as some sort of nut until I heard him interviewed on a podcast a few years ago. I had forgotten that he has written numerous bestsellers. 

The list of people who have used Scribe is quite a who’s who. Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Peter Thiel, Robert Greene, Dave Asprey, and Nassim Taleb. 

Tap #3: On the Scribe website, the first book listed is Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins. This happens to be the audiobook I’m currently listening to.

The services come with a cost starting at $10,000. But Tucker’s philosophy is that rich people should not be the only ones with access to the best information about writing and publishing books. His mission is to help everyone write and publish a book. To that end, Scribe has an online course called Book School that it gives away for free. You don’t even need to sign up with an email address.  

Tap #4: @seunoyebode recently wrote about value and tying value to the price of a service and whether something given away for free will be perceived as having value.

Tap tap tap tap. Okay, Universe. You had my curiosity but now you have my attention. 

It’s time to learn how to write and publish a book.