Mike Simpson's Honed Was Cited in Congressional Testimony and Gave Him a Head Start on a Fantasy Trilogy
“Finding out after the fact that my name was brought up in congressional testimony and that my book was cited as a reference for the specific reason of screening the force for testosterone.”
Mike Simpson, author of Honed
Dr. Mike Simpson spent 32 years in the U.S. Army, most of it in special operations as a Ranger, a Green Beret, and an emergency medicine physician. He published Honed: Finding Your Edge as a Man Over 40 with Scribe to help men keep their edge as they age. Years later, he learned the book had been cited in congressional testimony on screening the force for testosterone.
From special operations to the page
Mike spent 17 years as an operator, first in the Ranger Regiment and then on a Special Forces team, before medical school, residency, and six more years supporting special operations units on five deployments. Honed drew on all of it: his work as a physician and his life as what he calls a warrior athlete, turned into advice for men over 40 on diet, exercise, and recovery.
The first chapter recounts a night mission with the Rangers on his last deployment to Afghanistan, and it changed what he wanted to write next.
“I wrote the first chapter of the book as kind of a summation of a particular mission on my last deployment to Afghanistan. And I had so much fun writing that chapter because it’s a narrative.”
— Mike Simpson
The book that reached Congress
Clip · Mike Simpson on Honed being cited in congressional testimony · 56s
In Honed, Mike goes into detail on testosterone in special operations soldiers and how it is affected by reverse-cycle schedules, elevated cortisol, sleep deprivation, and traumatic brain injury. He did not know the book had traveled until a former colleague stationed at the Pentagon asked whether he knew his name was coming up in hearings.
“I talk about all these things in Honed and it all got brought up in congressional testimony.”
— Mike Simpson
The book has 713 reviews on Amazon with a 4.5-star rating, and Mike says it continues to sell. Readers still write to tell him the book made staying in shape simple and that it helped them turn their lives around.
A head start on the next book
Clip · Mike Simpson on how publishing Honed with Scribe gave him a leg up · 32s
During the pandemic, budget cuts eliminated Mike’s role as medical director at a pre-hospital supply company. With three months before his next clinical job started, he finally wrote the story he had carried for decades: a dwarf cleric from his old Dungeons and Dragons games, now 6,000 years old, teaching archaeology at NYU by day and hunting dangerous artifacts by night. It became The Last Dungeon Crawler, the first book of the Falgrim Firebeard trilogy.
He published the fantasy series himself, and the experience of publishing Honed with Scribe meant he already knew the ground. Scribe had handled pieces like Amazon keyword research the first time around.
“I’d seen how things work. I’d had [Scribe] to kind of guide me through that.”
— Mike Simpson
“Picking out your keywords on, on Amazon, which is something that, you know, Scribe did for me when Honed came out, I didn’t even have to worry about it.”
— Mike Simpson
Hook them on page one
Clip · Mike Simpson on hooking readers on the first page · 42s
Mike believes storytellers now compete with every app and video in a reader’s pocket, so the opening has to land immediately. He threw away an entire first chapter his advance readers loved, because the action did not start until much later.
“If people aren’t feeling it within the first couple of pages, they’re just not going to feel it at all.”
— Mike Simpson
Many of his fantasy readers came over from Honed: about 65 percent are men over 45. The series has also reached their wives, and middle and high school students, some of whom have written book reports on it.
Measure what you market
Clip · Mike Simpson on measuring every book ad · 46s
Facebook ads have been his most effective channel for the fantasy books. He recently tested nine ads; six did not work. KDP attribution links tell him which ad is selling books and which is not.
“You have to be able to measure it.”
— Mike Simpson
Looking forward
Book three of the trilogy is due out in December or early January, and Mike says it is the best of the three. After that, he has 6,000 years of his character’s life to explore. He is also waiting for one moment: a stranger in an airport or a coffee shop asking, “Excuse me, are you Mike Simpson? The author?”
“I think that to me, that’s, that’s the moment that I know I’ve arrived and I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m still hopeful.”
— Mike Simpson
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