Damn Gravity Media Updates: July 2024

What does the future of publishing look like?

At Damn Gravity Media, my goal is to craft a future where authors get the support and service they deserve from their publisher.

It’s been just over 3 years since I founded Damn Gravity as “The Book Publisher for Entrepreneurs.” Before that I spent 4 years running a content marketing agency for tech startups. Our business model has changed over the years, but the goal has always been the same: to publish the highest quality books for entrepreneurs and innovators, and do it in a way that made more money for authors.

Damn Gravity is a hybrid publisher with the service mentality of a marketing agency and the editorial standards of an academic press. Our goal is to create the best possible experience for busy authors. We work with authors every step of the way, from drafting their first outline to building their social media audience to launching and promoting their book.

We have published 3 books to date:

1. Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner

2. Great Founders Write by yours truly

3. From Grassroots to Greatness by Lloyed Lobo

I love each of these books, but I think our best work is still ahead. We have 4 books currently in the works, two of which have been publicly announced:

1. Building Rocketships: Product Management for Product-Led Growth by Oji Udezue (Chief Product Officer of Typeform, Calendly, Twitter, etc.) and Ezinne Udezue (Chief Product Officer of WP Engine)

2. The Experimentation Machine: Finding Product-Market Fit in the Age of AI by Jeff Bussgang (HBS Professor and Co-Founder of Flybridge Capital)

My team and I are getting better, more proficient, and more creative with every title. I’m in awe of the incredibly talented authors I get to work with.

There have been some major learning curves along the way. First, creating books that meet our editorial expectations is very difficult and has taken much longer than we thought. Our original promise was to have books written and published in 9 months. Now we plan on 13-15 months, and some of our books have taken 2 years to complete.

But I believe there are new ways to speed up this process without sacrificing quality, specifically using LLMs like Claude to help our writers research, analyze, and synthesize their ideas. “Thinking time” is the hardest part of writing a great book and AI is helping us do this more efficiently.

AI is also helping us make good on our other promise of creating social media content for authors. Once the author does the hard work of writing their manuscript, turning their writing into social content is relatively simple, but it still takes time and creativity. Again, this is where LLMs are making us more efficient. We can quickly review a passage from a book and identify potential social media posts from the content. Then we can rewrite that content to fit the social medium, whether that’s LinkedIn, Twitter or even Instagram (in the form of a Reels video script).

AI will inevitably play a role in the work of future authors. The difference between great work and mediocre work will be the extent to which the author chooses to “outsource” the all-important thinking time to the robots instead of doing it themselves. Great work will continue to be authentic, original, and surprisingly insightful—while AI can help authors develop those insights, it cannot be relied on to do it alone. AI written is the equivalent of the Canva template—generic and unoriginal. But in the right hands, AI tools can expand and amplify truly interesting and original ideas.

Damn Gravity Media started in a moment of professional crisis for me. As I laid awake one night, contemplating the future of my marketing agency, I could not picture myself running a large firm and enjoying myself. In fact, I realized that if I stayed in marketing, I would be miserable. That was the moment I decided to follow a pursuit I truly loved: books and big ideas.

Today, over 3 years into this journey, I’m more excited about the future than ever. I can see the future for myself and for this industry: it is one full of innovation, original ideas, and many, many more readers.