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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
Every year, millions of people say they want to write a book.
Almost none of them do.
Not because they can’t write but because they don’t have a system that turns their ideas into something undeniable. Or they aren’t sure the juice is worth the squeeze.
The world is starving for books that actually transform people. Books that unlock outcomes. Books that hit with the force of a breakthrough. Books someone sees on their shelf and thinks, “That thing changed my life.”
Those are the books people proudly pay $100 for—because the value lives in the transformation, not the page count.
And you can write one.
We wondered if AI could write our books for us?
We tried to be an AI ghostwriter training it on all our content. We asked Lucy (our ChatGPT) to write the first draft.
It can’t.
It couldn’t write a book that matters, transforms, or becomes the dog-eared artifacts people return to for years. Writing the first draft of a transformational book is a tall task for any human writer too.
You can’t write a first draft about transformation unless you have lived it yourself.
You can’t just be a one-hit-wonder, but have unlocked transformations many times.
For you and for others.
We got a template, but templates can be thinking traps
Lucy was able to build us a mini-book template, reviewing our 200+ mini-books.
It seemed like a good idea at first. We were no longer looking at a blank page.
But templates turn off your brain. You default to monkey see, monkey do thinking. When you stop thinking, you stop writing with clarity and courage.
Our template became a thinking trap.
Don’t use AI for the first draft, but for first principles.
Once we stopped fantasizing about a magic ghostwriter, we discovered what AI can do. It remembers all the gems in the jam session that can be forgotten. It reflects your thinking back to you. It reveals gaps you didn’t know were there. AI helps you think about your thinking.
It collapses fog.
And when you combine an AI prompt stack for your thinking with a writing template, Substack, and a repeatable mini-book process?
Writing becomes inevitable. You stop trying to “be a writer.” You start becoming an architect.
The book that once felt impossible begins to assemble itself around you.
This year, something important happened on the pirate ship. Pirates started writing and releasing their own premium books. Pirate Paul Millerd did it. Pirate Chris is writing his version. Pirate Cole is writing his.
The water is warm.
Now it’s your turn.
Reject the premise of traditional book writing.
Wake up at 5 a.m. Lock yourself away. Drink black coffee and wrestle blank pages. Wait for inspiration. Pray for motivation.
Repeat.
Suffer.
But Pirates know better.
Writing isn’t discipline. Writing is a system. A system of thinking, writing and thinking
Once you have your system, writing stops being mystical or mysterious. It becomes procedural. The book that once felt distant becomes the obvious outcome of a deliberate process.
You don’t need a decade of discipline to write a powerful book.
You need a structure that does the heavy lifting for you.
You need a system that guides your thinking, sharpens your POV, and builds momentum with every step.
That’s what these 7 steps are designed to do and are the exact steps we use to write our books.
7 Steps To Start Writing Your $100 Book
Follow these to start writing your $100 book (even if you’ve never written a book before).
Here’s how to do it:
