I Wrote a Book (well, a novella)

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]So, I wrote a book, uh, well, a novella, a short book. It's kind of like the Earl Boykins of books, so you should be able to read it really fast. And in this video, I'm going to give my totally unbiased opinions on why you should read this book, uh, novella, and tell you how did we get here. This is pretty wild. I feel like whenever you see someone opening their book, they always react the same way, and you think like, oh, I would be like way cooler when I react to opening my book. But no, I feel like I'm going to react the same way.

[00:00:31]>> Wow.

[00:00:32]>> Pretty cool. It's like decently thick.

[00:00:35]If you guys look closely, you'll see it's this is not for resale. This is a proof. So, it's so that I know what it's going to be like before selling it. I don't know. It's a proof. Feel like this is a sizable book. Here's a look at the inside and what the font looks like.

[00:00:48]Feels good in the hand, you know? It really it it feels like a solid. I was worried that it was going to not feel amazing, but it has like a substantial weight to it. It feels like a book. It feels like a book. This is crazy. Can we put it in the bookshelf and see what it looks like?

[00:01:02]>> Are you proud of your papa?

[00:01:04]>> Let's see how it fits in a bookshelf.

[00:01:06]This is the real test here. Yeah, looks like it belongs.

[00:01:09]>> Restarting is available now. Check the description. Let me give you a little backstory on how we got here.

[00:01:14]>> So, I started this book channel in January of 2025, a year after I really got into reading as a hobby. Every book you're looking at behind me I've read in the last 2 years because reading wasn't something I did a ton of outside of school reading and the occasional book to try to become a reader. I always wanted to become a reader and just never really found the right books for me or maybe I just wasn't mature yet. I don't really know. In any event, I read Pier and Essie in 2024 and my spark of reading was ignited. And then I read Red Rising and the subsequent books in that series and that spark turned into an absolute fire. I couldn't think of a more creative word than fire. A big fire. A big big fire. And that's the kind of amazing metaphors you can expect in this novella. But yeah. Anyway, for those who don't know, I also create content on an account called Phil Hates Gluten. It's primarily on Instagram and Tik Tok. YouTube really didn't work for that channel for whatever reason. It's a gluten-free channel and they kept sending it to like vegetarian and vegan people. So, it was just missing the mark. the algorithm. In any event, I focus most of my efforts there on short form. And so, posting long form on this channel is kind of like a breath of fresh air. As much as I love posting on short form and I love making gluten-free content, and I'm so grateful that it's my full-time job, after years of working in sales and wanting to do something creative again, I can do it for a living, which is amazing, and I feel like I'm helping people. But that being said, as a creator, because it's this weird job that I think about and do 24/7, I get really burnt out, especially when you're so niched down like me. I only talk about gluten-free food. And so, this book account has really kind of been a amazing thing for me so that I can not feel like I'm totally jammed into this one pocket. Because while being gluten-free and dairyfree is really important in my life and I live it every day, it's not all of me. It's not who it's not 100% of me. But if you watch that channel, you would think it is. And so, as someone who likes creating videos and have always liked creating videos, it feels weird to be kind of pigeonholed into just that. And I find ways around it. I make raps. I make weird things. But making this channel a book channel, which again came as a surprise to me. I just kind of posted a couple videos talking about books on my second channel and they did really well and people commented, "This is a book channel now." And and and I agreed. My hands were tied and I made it a book channel. And it's been awesome to talk about all these different kinds of books, different stories, and meet you guys and talk to you guys and learn and just be in this new niche that's been so refreshing and and finding a community just like me of people who are getting into reading or getting back into reading, it's been awesome. So, with my reading journey, having 2 years of reading under my belt, I've obviously been exposed to way more stories, way more authors, way more books, genres, and something in me in the back of my head was tugging. You guys don't really know this cuz why would you? But I used to be really into writing. And I'm not going to say like I wrote every single day, but my dream was to become a screenwriter when I was in high school and college, a screenwriter for television and film. That dream eventually turned into, oh, maybe it would be cool to be a broadcast journalist major and work for ESPN or something like that. And then that dream turned into, oh well, you know, maybe like a marketing job would be more realistic or an advertising job. And then that dream turned into ending up working in sales for years. I don't know anyone in the industry. I had no connections. And it was really difficult for me to find a job in marketing or advertising. And so yeah, I ended up in sales like a lot of people do. And I wasn't creative for so much of my life until I started Phil Hates Gluten, which by the way, I didn't start until I was diagnosed with an immune disease that really sucked. It's been a journey, a really awesome and amazing journey. But throughout this journey, social media has become my job. And I take the job very seriously. It's not rocket science, but there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. But long story short, being on social media as often as I am, is just not great for my brain. So, as much joy as Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube have brought me and bring me, I wanted to spend more time off of those platforms and find some creative joy elsewhere.

[00:05:16]You guys might have seen the video I made. It was like a 100 jump shots and 100 questions. I think it was like 6 months into my book. One of the questions was, "Would you ever consider writing a book?" And I think at that time I answered something like, "Yeah, I've thought about it, but I don't think I have the skill to." And I don't know if I have an interesting story to tell at this time, but yeah, when I was younger, one of my goals was to be like Stephen King, even before I even read Stephen King, but I just knew that he like lived in Maine and he would write and be kind of secluded and then come back and like make movies about his books. I like wanted to do that. But with screenwriting, I wrote like a handful of scripts. I submitted them to uh script festivals or competitions rather, and nothing ever came of it. I never ever got anywhere with them. So, most of like the things that I've ever written in my life, it's only been read by a handful of people. Most of the videos I made throughout my life up until Phil Hates gluten was only seen by a few hundred people, maybe a thousand at most. But honestly, I was probably like half of those views. But yeah, I I I've I've spent most of my life taking swings and missing. And by the way, when I was younger, I was taking these swings because it was just a boatload of fun. I loved making skits with my brother and friends. I loved writing anything. I really just did it for fun, but of course I I hoped and wanted that people would actually see it. You know, it was a pipe dream of mine that maybe I could do it one day, but I didn't actually think I could do it. Back then, you had to live in LA or New York City. When I graduated, I couldn't move to those places. I wasn't in a position to do that. But after the pandemic, a lot of like the entertainment industry, if you will, changed. And it allowed me to have a space to do it in Boston as a content creator, which is not something I that I ever thought I would be able to do. And the only reason I am able to do it because I was diagnosed with einaphilic esophagitis, which is like the worst thing to happen to me. It was terrible.

[00:07:03]So it turns out sometimes the worst thing to happen in your life can actually lead to some of the best things to happen in your life. Finally connecting honestly with Phil hates gluten after years of, you know, building it and feeling the confidence of like, oh man, like making videos can be something that I do. And then with this book channel, I am shocked that there's that that that you guys follow me. Honestly, I've always struggled with YouTube. I've posted there in the past and nothing has ever really hit. And so, this is crazy to make long form videos.

[00:07:30]And so, yeah, that brings me to writing a a book and why I did that. Again, that itch in the back of my ear, this isn't that's not that doesn't make sense. I don't know what I'm doing with that metaphor, but that itch got itchier and I had the desire to sit down and write something for the first time in years really. um maybe 8 years I first time I've like sit down to write a story, a screenplay, whatever. And so in August of 2025, my now wife went on her bachelorette party before we were married cuz we got married end of September. So she was gone for like five or 6 days. And you know, I did what any guy would do when his significant other goes away for the weekend and they got the house to themselves. I sat down to write a novella. Yeah. I told myself, it doesn't have to be anything. It it it could just be a short story. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. Um, let's just sit down and stare at this blank Google doc until I write words. And honestly, the very first line in this novella, it was the first thing that came to my mind. For some reason, whenever I write, I I think of the main character's name first, and I want to make it a funny name. And so, that's what I did with this. And that is the only thought I had going into it. And from there, his character was kind of born. And I just wrote what came into my mind. So, I've only felt this feeling when I do two things. One is editing.

[00:08:47]When I'm editing videos, because I actually like to edit more than I like to film, I can be sitting down and editing and hours can go by and I will look up and not realize what time it is.

[00:08:57]I think they call that flow state. I don't want to feel like I'm bragging or anything like, oh yeah, I'm in like flow state. But it happens with me when I'm editing. Sure, it happens to you guys without with maybe editing or other things. Another thing that happens to me with and I hadn't felt in years was writing again screenplays. I wrote mostly screenplays when I was younger because I always wanted to be in film and television. And so I had such a blast writing dialogue. You know that's what a lot of screenplays are. It's mostly dialogue. So when I started writing this novella I felt that I felt the flow state and it was so awesome. I just like had my headphones on. I was listening to the lowfi girl but like the synth wave radio one. Loi boy I think it's called and I was just clanging away. I wrote a ton that weekend. I wrote, I think, like 15,000 words. And the story went in such a different direction. I realized at this point in the video, I haven't even told you what the what the book is about. And I don't really want to tell you a ton what it's about because I feel like I don't want to spoil anything. I want you to experience it almost like how I experienced when I was writing it because again, I didn't I did not outline it that much aside from how the main character uses his restarts. what that means. This book is about a guy who's living an average ordinary life and he is suddenly granted the magical ability to restart the current day to whatever time he wants in that day. So he can like redo a conversation he has.

[00:10:20]He can redo something that happened.

[00:10:22]He's given these restarts to overcome his life's obstacle. And so he needs to use these restarts to overcome whatever it is his life obstacle is. I'm not going to tell you what it is. And the reason I'm not going to tell you what it is is because he doesn't even know what it is. He doesn't know what his life obstacle is. So, he's kind of trying to figure that out and use these restarts to overcome this obstacle because if he doesn't overcome this obstacle, within one week's time, he'll be killed. And yeah, that's that's that's kind of the premise. If you've read Dungeon Crawler Carl, if you like humor that you would find in a show like Shrinking or Parks and Wreck or Workaholics or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, those are all books and shows that the readers who have read this have compared it to.

[00:11:03]And honestly, it's what I was going for.

[00:11:05]But yeah, I think Dungeon Crawler Carl, that kind of vibe and that kind of wackiness is what you can expect from this, except it is less fantasy, more contemporary fiction, sci-fi. So yeah, the only thing I had really outlined was how the main character was going to use his restarts. I wrote that 15,000 words and then my fianceé came home and honestly I kind of needed to go back into reality and start working again and also start getting ready for our wedding. I put this novella on the back burner for months until this year 2026 in January. Throughout the holidays I was like I'm going to give myself like a week to finish this thing. I'm going to, you know, stack my work, get enough work done the previous weeks that I can take a week off and just concentrate on writing this, which again is a luxury that I wouldn't have if I wasn't working for myself. So, I totally recognize that. But yeah, I like instead of working all day, I wrote all day. So, in like Decemberish, maybe it was November, I read this book, which honestly I feel like anyone who ever wants to write has read this book. Uh, I listened to the first half of it before I read the second half. The first half is like a memoir of Stephen King's life and the second half is like advice on being a writer. And honestly, it was helpful to read. Not so much for like the nuggets of information that I could apply to my writing aside from a few things. It was more so like it realizing Stephen King doesn't know everything about his book going into writing his book freed me up to feel like I could write something without being an expert on everything.

[00:12:42]Stephen King is what he calls a pancer, which is the worst name for that kind of writer. I just feel like someone's going to come up behind me and pull my draws down whenever I say it. I am also a pancer and I feel like that is just how my brain works. When I get in that flow state, it's like I'm watching a show and just writing it down. So, I don't know if I'll ever be this guy who plots everything out and creates this world and magic system and all that stuff. For me, a lot of the joy was discovering the story as I was writing. It was so fun.

[00:13:10]It I was laughing to myself as I was writing and it didn't feel like it was from me. It felt like it was from these characters and I was just watching something. It's really bizarre to say and you're going to hear me say all this like crazy stuff and read the book and be like, "You're an idiot." But yeah, I do give a lot of credit to this book to kind of give me the freedom to just write and not worry about it being perfect because at the end of the day, I was just trying to get stuff on the page and I knew I could go back and fix it later. But I just needed a direction. I read that in like November or December, I forget which one it was, but right before I took my weekl long break and then I took the weekl long break and I was so rusty or I felt rusty in the beginning like it felt weird to sit down and write again for the first time in like 5 months. I had to read the story again a couple times, fix a couple things that I like might have spelled wrong or whatever, but sure enough, I started clanging away. And I do think it helped that I had some idea of how the main character uses his restart. So, I had some direction of like what I needed to get to. One of the things he says in this is to write 3,000 words a day. So, I so I tried to write 3 to 5,000 words a day. And I did that for 4 days or whatever it was. And I ended up with like a 27,000word document. Once I finished it, I was like really excited. It uh I felt like it was good. I was honestly surprised at the fact that it came together and it actually had some meaning to it, too, cuz initially when I started writing, I was like, I just want to write something funny. But as I kept writing, it kind of developed more and more underlying meaning. And not to say it's the deepest book in the world or it's the greatest book in the world. I know it isn't. But it became more than just like a surface level like just fun. It has a little bit of it has some themes in there. So yeah, I sent it to a few friends. I sent it to a fellow booktuber. Shout out Tim. Of the four or five people I sent it to, only two people read it. Tim being one of them. And we had a long call. We talked about it. He he gave me a lot of positive feedback and a lot of good constructive feedback. Also the same from one of my friends. I took their feedback and iterated, changed things around. And based on what they said, I felt really like energized. I felt like, oh, maybe this could be something I do put out there. cuz at first it was just like to write something and then once I noticed, oh, it's actually not bad. I made the realization that I wanted to have someone edit it. And I don't know how many guys are writers out there, but I had no idea what an editor did. Like, when you think of an editor, you just kind of assume that they edit everything. They fix all the grammatical errors. They give you tons of feedback on where your story goes. They just kind of clean it all up and they give you this perfectly polished thing and you're like, "Oh, that looks good. Yeah, let's just publish that." That's not how it works at all. So, I learned there's like four different types of editing. And what the editor that I hired off of a site called Reedzy, her name is Jod, is give me kind of the highlevel overview of like does this story work, you know, like what am I doing right and what am I doing wrong? Does does this stuff make sense? So, it's kind of more of like an overlevel edit versus correcting lines and stuff like that. Now, I could have done that too if I wanted to spend more money, but I, you know, I I was I'm already in the hole with this. This is like a passion project for me and I could only spend so much. And I'll tell you when she like marked up the manuscript that I wrote, it was like super humbling. I totally saw where she was coming from and in all these edits. I kind of just didn't touch the edits. I didn't really look at my manuscript for another couple weeks, few weeks. I was working all this stuff. And then eventually I was like, I need to go back into this and make some changes and add some things and listen to her insight. I took some of her advice. I didn't take some of her advice. I found new things just going back through my manuscript. I keep saying manuscript. I sound like a hardo. going back through the story and finding things that I could improve. And then again, it got to a place where I was like, "Okay, this is actually better than it was before." I reached out to you guys and asked if anyone had any experience illustrating book covers. And so, shout out to Heather Clydesdale. Seeing these characters come to life based on what she thought. Like, I didn't tell what I really wanted them to look like. She just read the story and made these characters. It was so cool. And so, it was interesting to see Heather's take on it. It was really motivating to see these things come to life and exciting.

[00:17:11]Heather sent over a cover and I was like, "That looks sick." And it really became real to me how I'm planning to publish this thing and how much time and money I've invested into this thing. And honestly, I felt a lot of pressure. It was like a really big realization for me to be like, "Oh crap, if I'm going to put something out to my audience, it this needs to be good. It it legitimately needs to be good." And that became like a big weight. It was really stressful and really scary to think about. And I don't want to take a step back here and appreciate the fact that I know that people are going to read this.

[00:17:43]Like when I would write something in the past, like I mentioned, it was almost impossible to get people to read what I wrote or video that I made to watch it.

[00:17:51]Now I'm in a position that people will read it because they might follow me on YouTube or Instagram or whatever it might be. And so that became really daunting, but at the same time, it's an absolute privilege to know that people will read what I write because of this kind of connection that we made online.

[00:18:07]I just want to say how grateful I am for that and how that isn't lost on me at all. But yeah, I feel like a pressure because in the past I just put things out and it wasn't that much pressure.

[00:18:16]Now, I know that strangers are going to be reading it and giving their opinions.

[00:18:19]And I know that because I again had the epiphany that, oh man, I'm like almost ready to put this thing out. And only like three people have read this. This could absolutely suck. So, I put out a call to get some beta readers. And I know people might be biased cuz they're my subscribers who are reaching out and emailing me to be a beta reader, but I just need to say thank you to everyone who reached out. I got like 80 emails of people wanting to read my novella.

[00:18:45]absolutely bananas. I picked like eight people at random and I sent a whole list of questions and said, "Be as honest as you can be." And I'll tell you, they were honest. They were very honest. And I'm going to put everyone's names in first initial just for anonymity. Thank you so much to you guys. I had email conversations with every single one of these people talking about where the story hit, where it didn't, where it could improve. And I will tell you, this story has gotten twice as good because of these people. like they might not have told me exactly what to do, but what they told me sparked a different idea in my head that I thought, "Oh, I could do this and that could give this person a better arc or whatever, you know?" So, it really really helped. And uh yeah, I'm forever indebted. Those people will be beta readers or early readers, whatever you want to call them, for life. They have they have access to whatever I write in the future first.

[00:19:34]So, yeah, I feel like the Nolla is in such a good place. The number one thing that people said was they laughed, that it was funny, that it was silly. And the second thing was that it was fast-paced and enjoyable. And then also another piece of feedback people said the Phil got books audience specifically will enjoy this book. The humor very much is random sports references, random pop culture references, dry humor, silly humor, play on words, things like that, and a lot of absurdist humor. There's sci-fi in there, there's action in there, there's fight scenes, battle scenes, there's a little bit of romance.

[00:20:06]There's a lot going on in this book. It really is a mix of all the genres that I enjoy reading. One thing I think people won't be able to say is that this was written by AI. If you watch my videos and read the book, you will realize that it's very much me writing it for better or for worse. I don't know if the humor is going to hit with a lot of people, but hopefully it hits with you guys. At the end of the day, I know this isn't going to win the Puliter Prize, but I want it to win the Pulitzer Prize of making you giggle. That's the Pulitzer Prize I want. I want the giggle prize.

[00:20:35]So, where am I now? I've been currently formatting my book on a site called Attekus, which has been really fun. And it and and the book's going to be way more pages than I thought. It's going to be like 180 pages, I think, because there's so much dialogue because I'm so used to writing screenplays that I really had fun writing. The dialogue, the scene descriptions and stuff are shorter than you would see in like a George RR Martin book, for sure. I'm trying to keep things going. I'm trying to keep the laughs going, the the pace going. I want this novella to be something you can read when you're in a reading rut or in between large books.

[00:21:04]Something you can read in a day. This should take you about 3 hours to read.

[00:21:07]And a lot of the beta readers said that they read it in one sitting, which is promising. Again, all in all, at this point, only about 11 people have read this novella, which is absolutely terrifying. I'm just about done formatting. I've been tweaking little things within the story. I've been kind of tweaking for the past like two weeks, 3 weeks, just adding and taking things away, fiddling with with the story. I feel like I'm never going to feel like I'm done, but at a certain point, I need to just say that I'm done and put it out because if I don't, it'll never be put out. I, you know, I did the best I could. For those of you who are interested, when you self-publish a story, you got to format everything. You have to buy essentially a serial number.

[00:21:45]It's called an IBSN. You have to buy like one or 10 of those. They only sell them in packs of one or 10. So I had to buy 10 of them because you need a serial number or IBSN, whatever you want to call it, for the paperback version of your book, for the hardcover version of your book, for the ebook. So you need multiple and then to actually publish, I don't have the money to buy like 500 books and just store them and sell them on my own. So most people who self-publish do a print on demand. So, the big names there are cur uh I almost said curig Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP, and there's Ingram Spark, and then I think there's another one, but I'm going to use KDP as a print on demand.

[00:22:25]So, you can buy it on Amazon there, or as an ebook, but I also want to find a different way to offer it that isn't Amazon. I'm figuring out pricing right now. Just full disclosure, to get these things printed is anywhere from like $3 to $4. And then say I charge $11 for a paperback book. I only keep 40 or 60% of that. I I I need to iron out the numbers. I forget what it is. But Amazon or Ingram Spark, they keep a lot of that money, a lot of the difference. So on these books, authors only make like$2 or $3 per book, which is a crazy realization, but I guess it's just how it works. So, I'm trying to figure out the price where it makes sense that will allow most people to get their hands on a paperback or, you know, download an ebook, which would be more cost effective. But also, if you cannot afford to buy this novella, email me at [email protected] and we can figure out something for me to get that novella to you. Cuz I know not everyone's in a position to support and you might want to support and I would appreciate that. But if you're not, just email me and I will find a way to get it to you free of charge. For those of you who can support, I appreciate it. It means the world to spend any amount of money on something that I wrote. That's why I put so much pressure on myself to keep editing and make it the best it can be. And I really do feel like it's in a good place right now. At very least, you guys are going to have fun reading it and laugh out loud a couple times hopefully. And I do want to reiterate, I recognize that as a creator with 50,000 subscribers, which bananas to me, I'm extremely fortunate and have a leg up on a lot of other authors who were probably way more talented than me and have been doing this for longer. like this is the first thing I've written in years and I although I did spend months on it.

[00:24:03]There's people who spent years on getting their book published. I just would be remiss to not act like I understand that I'm privileged in that sense. I've seen the other side of it.

[00:24:10]I've seen swinging and missing so many times in my life and you know not being able to work in these things. So I I totally understand that side of it. But now I'm in this position and it's crazy.

[00:24:21]And again I'm just appreciative of it.

[00:24:23]And for those who are interested in reading something that I wrote, it is just it's just wild. So yeah, that's why I uh wanted to make sure it's something I'm proud of and um something that's going to make you chuckle because I feel like that's my uh that's my value ad here as a as a booktuber. But for anyone who is interested in writing or is just like nervous to start, use this as inspiration. If I can do it, you can too. Um anyone can self-publish. This is really cool to kind of go through the journey of writing, editing, getting feedback, understanding the steps it takes to get books published, even like designing a cover on Canva and the dimensions of how big it's going to be.

[00:24:58]Like, it was a huge learning experience for me and one that was just so fun to do, especially the writing part. I cannot tell you how much fun I had writing this thing. Editing was a little bit more of a grind, but it ended up coming out way better than it started. I really hope that you guys enjoy. It's uh it's available right now. I'll put where you can buy. I'll also link it in the description. I'm filming this on April 13th, so I don't have the book yet. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoy and and uh when you read it, let me know what you think. All right, restarting out now.