Erik Huberman's Book Was A Huge Success (And Cost Him $350,000 Instead of $50,000)
“If I ever did this again, or in hindsight, I would have hired Scribe in a heartbeat.”
— Erik Huberman · Founder, Hawke Media
Erik Huberman built Hawke Media into a 250-person marketing agency, bootstrapped over ten years. When he decided to write The Hawke Method, Scribe quoted him about $50,000, and he chose to put the pieces together himself for less. He ended up spending $350,000, seven times the money, for the same result.
Erik is not a Scribe author. That is what makes his story worth hearing. He came on Author Hour, unpaid, as he put it, to tell it as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about building a book on their own. Watch or read his full Author Hour interview with Eric Jorgenson.
A $50,000 quote and a $350,000 bill
Clip · Erik on what the book really cost · 17s
About six years into building Hawke Media, Erik met a writer at a friend’s party who asked if he had ever thought about writing a book. Erik already had the material: a marketing methodology the agency had used from the start. The writer offered to help him put it together.
Erik also reached out to Tucker Max at Scribe to ask what it would cost. As Erik remembers it, the answer was about $50,000, possibly closer to $35,000 because Hawke Media could handle some of its own marketing. The writer had offered to do it for three thousand dollars a month. Erik went with the writer and set out to build the rest of the strategy himself.
“Let’s say Tucker had actually done it, and Scribe had done it for 50 grand, I ended up spending 350 grand, and I promise I could have done all of that with Scribe for that 50. The amount I put into it that ended up being a waste was significant.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
He knows the pattern. He did the same thing with his wedding when he fired his wedding planner, and he did it with his book.
Where the money went
Clip · Erik on the miscategorization that cost him the big lists · 26s
The writing was not where the money went. It went to service providers hired to promote and market the book, a team pieced together from friends’ recommendations. One mistake did lasting damage: somewhere along the way, the book was labeled a multi-level marketing book. It has nothing to do with multi-level marketing.
“Somewhere between one of my book marketing companies and my publisher, they miscategorized the book, so we became ineligible for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, even though we would have made it on book sales.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
The Hawke Method still became a USA Today bestseller, a list Erik describes as based on sales alone. His hybrid publisher also held his money: the book sold 12 or 13,000 copies in its first month, and Erik did not get a single check for about 13 months.
None of this happened for lack of advice. Erik has a large group of friends who are New York Times bestselling authors, and he showed them his whole launch plan.
“I showed them my whole launch plan, I told them who I was working with, like I had a great community of people that signed off on everything I was doing. And still this all happened.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
The writing was the easy part
Clip · Erik on how the book was written · 23s
The manuscript came together quickly because Erik had given the talk behind it hundreds of times. He and his writing partner recorded 15 thirty-minute Zoom calls, seven and a half hours in all, one per chapter. Erik riffed from an outline and flagged the claims that needed a supporting stat. His writing partner edited the transcripts and found the evidence, then Erik did his own pass.
“It wasn’t the writing process that was hard, it was everything else.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
That is also his advice to anyone weighing a book: write about what you already know.
“If you want to get the most value out of the book, you want to write a book that’s about an expertise you already have because now I get asked to go speak all over the place about marketing.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
What the book did anyway
Clip · Erik on the book becoming the Hawke Media Bible · 26s
The book launched in March 2022, just as interest rates climbed and companies cut their marketing budgets. Erik never expected a quick boost. He wanted a long-term credibility tool, and the book turned into something he had not planned for: the shared playbook for his entire company.
“What it did that I didn’t foresee is now every client, every employee, every partner we give a copy of the book to, and now we’re all speaking the same language. So, it became the Hawke Media Bible.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
At 145 minutes, it is an easy book to hand out. On the day of the interview, Erik spoke to the board of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and gave every member a copy. With the USA Today bestseller logo on the cover and a foreword by Keith Ferrazzi, it carries the third-party validation the book itself teaches.
“It’s a calling card. It’s a business card.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
The book put him on The Drew Barrymore Show and The Adam Carolla Show, and it appears on the Hulu and A&E show where Hawke Media helps Cedric the Entertainer and Anthony Anderson launch their barbecue brand. It is in NYU and other schools. Erik is candid that the TV moments did not move book sales much. The value he sees is the long tail.
“It’s those things that you think are these like lightning in a bottle moments sometimes are minuscule amounts of momentum. It’s more about that long tail build off of it.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
A box of books in the trunk
Clip · Erik on getting his book into the Milken Global Summit · 44s
Erik keeps a box of books in his trunk. At the Milken Global Summit in Beverly Hills, the conference bookstore never answered his request to carry the book. The next year he asked again in person, they asked whether he had copies on him, and he walked in wearing a suit and carrying a box of 36. The bookstore sold them on consignment, and the book sat front and center on the shelf for the whole event. He has done the same at South By and other conferences.
“There’s certain things a book can do that other things can’t.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
“I go to a conference, and I’ll ask to do a book signing. And all of a sudden, I’ve got the entire conference lining up at my desk to get my book, and now I get those connections and everything too.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
“Sincerely, hire Scribe”
Clip · Why Erik would hire Scribe next time · 26s
Asked what he had learned and what he would do differently, Erik’s first answer was three words.
“Sincerely, hire Scribe. And that’s why we’re here. I volunteered to be here to say this is a thing.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
Beyond that, he would build an audience of book buyers before launch, since people who buy books buy books, and he would not hire any of the firms that promised to get him onto bestseller lists.
Six sevenths of the money
Clip · Erik on what going it alone cost him · 42s
Erik still counts the book as a good investment. He looks at it as a decade-long one and expects it to pay him back. His point is how much bigger that return could have been.
“So I wasted a lot of money. Will I make a return on that money anyways? Yeah. Would I have made a much greater return if I had just done it this way? Yes.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
“[It] ended up costing me seven times as much money to get the same product and same result. So thankfully, it still was a great result and what I wanted, but I could have saved literally six sevenths of the money and just gone with Scribe and probably not lost as much sleep over it.”
— Erik Huberman, Founder, Hawke Media
Watch Erik’s full Author Hour interview and read the transcript.
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