Doug turns the mic on himself for a mailbag episode, fielding listener questions about the leap from a corporate career to published author. He traces his own path to writing Invisible Generals with Simon & Schuster and lays out the first questions any aspiring author should ask: who the book is really for, and why you're the person positioned to write it.
He warns against memoirs written without built-in name recognition, and instead pushes listeners toward finding the story only they can tell — then testing it against a clear-eyed read of their niche category and the marketplace around it. From there, he walks through what a credible marketing plan actually looks like when the realistic goal is tens of thousands of copies sold, not viral bestseller numbers.
On process, Doug draws a clear line: AI is fair game for research and editing, but not for writing the book or the proposal itself. He closes with practical next steps — hiring a dedicated book proposal writer and finding a literary agent — as the path to pitching the "Big Five" publishers.