Written By: Jon Finkel
Just wanted to write a quick ‘thank you’ to everyone who has bought Jocks In Chief so far. The book is doing extremely well and I couldn’t be prouder.
It has been featured in the New York Post and lead to my live guest appearance on CBS This Morning last week that was seen by three million people.
It’s truly been an incredible ride…and it’s all based on a goofy idea I had a few years ago: that there’s no way I was the only person out there who was interested in the athletic ability of the US Presidents. I love sports. I love US history. I love rankings. It seemed like a perfect fit for me to write. I showed it to several people I knew in publishing back when I first had the idea and nobody quite knew what to do with it. Most people agreed that there was something there, but nobody could agree on the proper format, style or the hook, etc… And so everyone pretty much everyone passed on it or told me to keep hammering away and get back to them if I figured it out.
Out of initial failure came success. Rather than take each rejection or polite pass as the end of the road, I digested all the feedback and sharpened my focus on what the book should be, instead of on what it wasn’t.
In the end, I went through several titles and hooks and frameworks for the book before I settled on what is available today. I know there are other versions of this idea that I could have done, but the questions I kept coming back to were these: Would the book be an easy, fun read? Would I want to read it? And if I didn’t want to read it, who would?
So I trusted my gut and I settled on this version of the book. The response thus far has justified my decision and I think the book is only at the beginning of reaching its potential. More signings and speaking engagements are on the way.
But it’s always good to pause and reflect on the path of the project, and right now, for a brief moment, Jocks in Chief is ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legendary fitness book, The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
For those who don’t know, I ghostwrote several of Arnold’s columns back in the day at Muscle & Fitness, so this is a cool thing for me. I’m sure by tomorrow I’ll be back out of the top ten and Arnie will be right where he belongs, at the top, but so what? That doesn’t diminish the accomplishment of today.
Thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far! Recommend it to your friends and if you haven’t yet, please write a review on Amazon. I appreciate all of the support!
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Jon Finkel is the author of Forces of Character with 3x Super Bowl Champion and Fighter Pilot, Chad Hennings, Heart Over Height with 3x NBA Slam Dunk Champion Nate Robinson, as well as Jocks In Chief, The Dadvantage – Stay in Shape on No Sleep with No Time and No Equipment, and all twelve volumes in the Greatest Stars of the NBA book series for the National Basketball Association, which won several ALA Young Reader Awards.
As a feature writer, he has written for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, GQ, Details, The New York Times, AskMen.com, ComedyCentral.com, Yahoo! Sports’ ThePostGame.com and many more. His work received a notable mention in the 2015 Best American Sports Writing anthology.