How David Burkus Left Traditional Publishing for Best Team Ever and Built a Speaking Business Around It
“I sat in on guided author with Scribe in June of 2022 and the book was available on Amazon and everywhere else in May of 2023. No publisher is ever going to work that fast.”
David Burkus
David Burkus is an organizational psychologist, a former business school professor, and one of the busiest keynote speakers in the leadership lane. He had already published four books with traditional houses when he decided the fifth one was not going that route. Best Team Ever, written with Scribe Media, went from his first Guided Author session to on sale everywhere in eleven months. It is also the book his speaking business now runs on.
The Math He Gives Every Author
Burkus does not treat the choice between traditional and professional publishing as a matter of prestige. He treats it as arithmetic, and he tells authors to write the proposal either way, because the thinking a proposal forces is worth doing no matter who publishes the book.
“I assume that a successful book is going to sell a minimum of about 10,000 copies. And if you do the math somewhere between a 75,000 and a hundred thousand dollar offer is where you should like, okay, take the money and don’t professionally publish, take the traditional published money, right?”
— David Burkus
Below that number, he says, the trade stops making sense. Most offers now land nowhere near it.
“Like 20, 25 grand is something your agent would be excited about. That’s not enough to deal with all of the hassles of signing away your IP and they’re, they’re being involved in so many different decisions, including covers and all that sort of stuff. So mine, it’s purely economic.”
— David Burkus
The Book That Produced Two Speaking Gigs
His third book was half about personal networks and half about organizational networks. His publisher pushed it toward a career book, because a career book was the thing they knew how to sell. It worked, in the sense that it sold copies. It did nothing for the business he was actually building.
“They really, really pushed hard to make it kind of a career book, right? […] and it worked and we sold a decent amount of copies. But I think in the entire history of that book, I’ve gotten two speaking gigs from it, right? Because who wants to hire someone to come teach all their people to be great networkers so they can get their dream job? It’s never going to happen.”
— David Burkus
His diagnosis of the root cause is the part that should stop every author considering a traditional deal. The proposal is not written for readers.
“Most people who do a traditionally published deal are still in this mentality of, I need to sell the acquisitions editor on the idea. And they write a proposal for an audience of one, and then you’ve got one person’s fingerprints and tastes on it. And you have no idea if it’ll actually work in the market and no surprise. That’s why most of them don’t, you know?”
— David Burkus
Why the Timeline Decided It
Burkus had been speaking on the ideas in Best Team Ever for about eighteen months before he wrote it. Clients were asking for the content. The window was open, and a three-year traditional cycle would have closed it.
“I had an idea for a book just purely on teams and team culture, location agnostic. But I knew a publisher wasn’t going to get it out in time. […] even if I started today, it would be out three years from now. […] And so I needed something much, much faster. And that was why Scribe was the only choice.”
— David Burkus
He had known Scribe’s co-founder since 2016, and had run every one of his traditional offers past him first. When the answer was finally that no offer was worth taking, there was no shortlist.
“It wasn’t like he was the choice. He was the only person I called. It was just like, hey, it’s finally time.”
— David Burkus
Control, One Hundred Copies at a Time
Because speaking had become the dominant part of his business, Burkus needed a book he could hand out at will, bundle into engagements, and ship in bulk without asking anyone’s permission. That is a practical argument for owning your book rather than licensing it.
“It’s so much nicer now to have a professionally published book where […] I can just say, hey, would you like 100 copies of the book? […] That’s obnoxious to do with a traditional publisher. But when you’ve got it and you could just go in IngramSpark and fill out a form and boom, it ships them off. It’s amazing.”
— David Burkus
Lanes, Problems, and the Caveman Test
The publishing decision was only half of it. The other half was naming the book so the people who buy speakers could find it. Event planners, Burkus says, do not think in big ideas. They think in lanes and in the specific problem they are trying to solve this quarter.
“Here we call the fifth book Best Team Ever. Why? Because what do managers want? They want to lead the best team ever, like super simple […] a caveman should be able to read the title of your book and know exactly what it’s about.”
— David Burkus
He gave up the clever titles of his earlier books on purpose. Clever wins cocktail parties. Clear wins bookings.
“So how you package yourself needs to be very, very clear on if you have this problem. I have this framework, this body of content, these takeaways, et cetera, that can meet that problem. Once you do that, it gets really easy.”
— David Burkus
How He Actually Writes
Five books in, Burkus has a production system, and it starts long before he opens a document. He does not begin a chapter until the research for that chapter is finished and physically stacked on the floor in front of his bookshelves.
“I don’t actually start the writing process anymore until I know this chapter opens with this case study. And here’s the main takeaway. Here’s the research supports the takeaway. And here’s the three to five applications. And it’s all mapped out.”
— David Burkus
Which is why he does not believe the thing most first-time authors are most afraid of actually exists.
“When you write nonfiction, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s just you haven’t researched it enough.”
— David Burkus
Then he writes like a marathoner rather than a sprinter: about an hour a day, first thing, before his brain turns to mush.
“I’m much more just lay a little brick, come back the next day, lay another brick 500, 750 words or so is the target.”
— David Burkus
The Part He Could Not Have Planned
Asked about the unexpected good that comes from having a book out in the world, Burkus told a story about a LinkedIn message from a stranger. The stranger ran business conferences in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. He had read one of Burkus’s books, noticed the surname, and had a question.
“I think it’d be really fun for the audience to have a speech from an American author with a big book who’s also Lithuanian. Do you want to come to Lithuania and give that speech?”
— David Burkus
Burkus is a third-generation American who had never been to the country his family left during the Soviet occupation. He went, spoke, and came home with a Lithuanian-language edition of his own book.
“So little stuff like that, no way to plan it, no way to expect it. And it just sort of pops up because the book’s out there in the world doing the work for you.”
— David Burkus
His Test for Anyone Considering a Book
Burkus has no patience for the idea that a book is a business card. His filter is simpler than that, and harder to pass.
“The first question I ask them is, do you just want to be heard or do you actually have something to say? […] the way that you know that is that people are already asking for that kernel of an idea that that intellectual property, whether it’s a framework or a process, whatever it is, like if there’s already some demand for that, then […] one of the best ways to show the world that that idea needs to spread more is to show them that it’s packaged, that it’s done developing.”
— David Burkus
Best Team Ever cleared that bar before he wrote a word of it. Eighteen months of clients asking for the framework, then eleven months from Guided Author to on sale everywhere. It is, he says, his favorite of the five.
“It’s the one that was the most fun to write. It was the one I had the most freedom to write, because, again, it was professionally published.”
— David Burkus
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