Penguin

Mark Manson's book made his publisher profitable for the year

Sam recalls Mark Manson saying his parents only took his blogging seriously after his publisher's annual report credited his book, which sold about 20 million copies, with outselling Hillary Clinton and making the company profitable that year. Publishing, games and movies all run on one or two hits that carry everything else.

“He was like, well, Penguin put out their annual, I think it was Penguin, I could be getting it wrong. They put out their annual report because they're owned by News Corp. And he was like, They said that I outsold Hillary Clinton and I was— and I helped like make the whole company profitable that year. And he like was— and I was like, wait, so you were the reason the company was profitable? And basically with a lot of these publishing businesses, whether it's games or it's movies, it's like one or two things, it drives everything and the rest is like, hopefully it doesn't fail.”