Nicolas Cole
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, so a couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80-20, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I remember the days. 14 on the internet. Yeah. But now it's like 50-50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female-oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through, and every single book cover is like, male enters game world, defeats dragon.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly, but it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers... cause you have a part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle unlimited, like for free part of your subscription, basically they read something like eight to 12 plus books a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover's. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything. I like to know everything about this shit. She's moving like millions of copies. And her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So there is tremendous demand. And even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out. Like what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So if you pair all that together and go female oriented like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, just to entertain the shiny object, there's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? couple grand, couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books, like one a month, and you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really liked that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer or longer. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I mean, there are books as big, and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative, like my book is doing well, could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. On Amazon, the books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I think it depends. But I think on average, it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months. And then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which it's like the whole game, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Oh, okay. Sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently, what I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make a hundred grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And I was, when he said that, I was like, Like not only is the cash return 10 or 20X if you get it right, but the long-term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of, copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
He's like, if you know how to do that, and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are 10 times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like, and the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
The best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers. The IP value is astronomically different. You know, James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of legal thrillers. plus the value of his library and IP.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm gonna go into a sub-genre, I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm gonna flood it with quality volume, you're also not just building Cashflow from book sales or long-term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
We'll acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, so I have a very niche one. Go. So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur because his business is he has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon- organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like five or 10 X cause you're buying IP. It's gotta be, it's not two X, you know, five to 10 X profit or revenue. I'm going to guess it's probably top line because they care more about the longterm value.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That's a nice round number to use. Let's just say it's 7.28x is the average.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
No, dude, I got it even better.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific subject.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So it's one thing to go, I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt. where AI can create the version of each new book to 80%, and then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And by the way, the total side, maybe people are doing this already, but talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing, I'm dead serious.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
No, but this is the thing, is that the majority of romance books are women that are literally reading porn at home.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
There you go, right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular OnlyFans girl be like, here's my tell-all e-book of this experience that I had on OnlyFans, I have to believe that that would do some numbers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is, you could publish to anyone or you could do Kindle Unlimited. That's like specific to their subscription service.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Or you need a, just the rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Yeah, the real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this, too, is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the lit RPG stuff is an amazing idea. But I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it, you know. And so when you when you come up with ideas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
The mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on versus you're like, I know that's a great idea and I know that would crush, but I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like what what is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on the number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So you get these little like royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was, he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
With and like taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went, we took this idea from the podcast. We researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
That's a great idea. It's also, that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely rewarding. repeatable. It's tied to a financial outcome.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But if you're creating something really niche, You should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically like try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You know, you're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire. That's called lit RPG.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Like I have to go in person?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I have to leave my house?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example, could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Have you heard of this? No. OK, so it's RPG like role playing games literature, right? Lit RPG, but it's not literature. This is, I mean, this is, this stuff is not well-written at all, but it's essentially reading a video game. So you would, the story, like you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
If you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited, multiplied by a hundred books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the backend,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow. And I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game. which if you think about it is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So lit RPG, anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
New subgenre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs. And I'm like, wow.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like very indie. The cover design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're going to elevate the writing. We're going to elevate the stories. We're going to elevate the book covers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
We're going to elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where like you had a lit RPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel. You had a paid newsletter. You had like a digital product. Like you created that whole value ladder, but it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre in Kindle Unlimited.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like publishing houses where like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us. We're like, what would that take? I would literally take, you could hire a writer. You could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
They write those stories full-time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub-genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up, there are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So there, so there's a tool called publisher rocket and it's made by this guy. This guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called, um, the site's called something self-publishing and basically, or, uh, Kindle publishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon. Super niche, but like really lucrative site.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any anything, and it shows you the search volume. It shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I'm obsessed with this tool. Like once a month, I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you like look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
And then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. you're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding, lit RPG. I don't wanna just write one book in that category. I wanna write a hundred books in that category.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality cover in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear. you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over, but it doesn't cost that much money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
So this is what's so interesting about this subcategory. Great question. Okay, did anyone see, this is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like neither one is really my target consumption.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books and he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I have one, but is there somewhere you'd like to start?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
These are guys, like just guys that want to read about his debauchery. He's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of especially because the majority of readers are female, like two thirds of all readers are female, not male.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming, because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I think, so I've seen some interesting stats like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff, but Wattpad is, is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton, but it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
From Asia.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and things like that. Like your average.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Tell us what the kids are doing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
You know what's another great data point that proves that? Do you remember, this was a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the Explorer, but it's DM. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like what? This is the most used feature?