I read around 300 books and learnt a lot from them. And the biggest learning from it is that a human being can do anything which he wants. It's whatever you think you can achieve it. Where our thinking goes we can go there. This is a very common slogan that many have heard but at the same time very impactful and that's my major learning.
1. Tell
us about your background and journey.
I am from an IT background. 1st I did MBA in marketing then I moved into SAP consulting and overall I worked for almost 15 years. And after IT I moved into corporate training and after those training, my inclination towards books started to go up. With corporate training, we started this channel on YouTube in Jan 2019.
I am born and brought up in Delhi. Our setup is also in Delhi NCR. The journey has been good with this Readers Books Club channel and the ultimate thought is to create more and more content so that people can understand the hidden knowledge of books for free. When I started reading books at that time I took a lot of time to start reading books.
My mentors and seniors used to tell me in my office and college time that read books because they contain a lot of things but I didn't understand them at that time. We pass out of college and stopped reading. Then slowly and gradually I started to understand that this is something very important.
Then I purchased the magic of thinking big from the roadside and that book was in my home but I didn't read it and when I read that book I actually felt that there is a lot that I don't know and that book started to change my thought process and then I realized that I took a lot of time to read a book and there must be a lot of people who are and might be taking a lot of time in reading books so why not to do something about it.
My wife is an animator and she is post graduated from Jamia college and she is very good with video editing. So I thought to start this at home. I asked her that I will read books, make content and convert them into audio and she can convert them into video. When we finally started to upload it on the YouTube channel it was initially very slow. But we understood that people needed it and they want it and that's how our journey started.
1st
year we were around 30,000 subscribers, 2nd year it was 3 lakh, 3rd year
it was around 1 million and right now after 3.5 years, we are on a 1.5 million
subscriber base. This has become my full-time work and I do a lot of corporate
training also and a lot of law of attraction courses. After lockdown my time go
to YouTube.
2. What
inspired you to read books? Any experience you would like to share that made
you love books or was it your passion?
My
seniors were consistently nagging me to read books because they are very useful
and when I started to read those 4-5 pages then I realized that there is a very
big uncovered area that I had to explore and implement in my life. Reading
books was never my passion and I am not at all studious, I was just an average
or rather a below-average student in school and college. I used to run from
books but ultimately when it becomes sensible to you then I start liking them
and it became my passion.
3. How
did the idea of making blogs and reviewing books on Instagram and YouTube come
to your mind?
Like I said there was a big and unexplored area which I took so many years while working in my job for 12-13 years to understand just 1 thing that you should read books and then I understand that there are so many people just like me who don't read books and they are missing a lot of things. I asked myself if they are missing a lot of things so can that gap be filled?
We decided that if we could make these videos in our home then we will share with our friends to help them but we didn't understand how we will share them after making the videos, how will we upload them and where we would send them. Then we decided to upload and send it on YouTube to our friends. That's how it started and then the liking for books started a lot.
4. How
did you manage to make a presence on Instagram and YouTube? What challenges did
you face and how did you overcome them?
When I started my prime focus was only on YouTube and when it started growing and reached somewhere then we started to focus on Instagram. We never intended to make a presence on Insta initially but now I feel I should do it because different platforms have different people with different needs.
Insta is only for short videos and posts and that's what we also started to do. In a reel of about 1 min, I talk about a book and 3 learnings from it and if people like it then they could buy the book and read it and that is my thought. About managing the SM then we have a dedicated day where we record 8-10 videos in a go for Instagram and YouTube.
We make a proper schedule and do time management and that's how it gets managed. We have also started exploring FB and it's just in the initial stage now the focus is on these 3 platforms. We are also focusing on Twitter and LinkedIn now.
5. Is
it financially sustainable to be a book blogger and how do you earn from
it?
Yes, it
is very much sustainable as my last role in corporate was as a head in IT in a
company called Bacardi India and now I left everything and doing this so yeah
there is a lot of scope and money. The money we earn is basically from google
AdSense, affiliate income from amazon, and brand collaborations are the 3 major
revenue sources.
6.
After reading so many books what learnings from them would you like to share
with others?
I read around 300 books and learnt a lot from them. And the biggest learning from it is that a human being can do anything which he wants. It's whatever you think you can achieve it. Where our thinking goes we can go there. This is a very common slogan that many have heard but at the same time very impactful and that's my major learning. I have read books and autobiographies of millionaires and billionaires and they have said the same things.
You dream it you get it!
But the condition is you know where you want to go and you know that you can
reach that destination. If I talk about myself then being a non-YouTube background,
a non-video editing person and after doing MBA in marketing I could move into
IT and being an average student I could read so many books so anything could be
done.
7. Is
there anything else you do besides blogging? What are your future plans and how
do you want to take this to next level?
As of now YouTube video creation is our primary focus besides it I have another channel name Amit Kumar Live where I do a lot of free courses like there are many courses like time management, personality development and the law of attraction and people pay a lot of money on such courses and on this channel I am doing it for free.
The duration of these courses is 2-3 hrs. Recently we have done Master the art of Public Speaking. We are setting up a website where people can read books now we are into proper blogging besides YouTube. Now we will also give content in writing and soon we will come into podcasts on audio platforms like Spotify where our audiobooks will be there. This is in the process as of now.
8. As
there’s a lot of work behind book reviewing – reading, taking notes, editing
your Blog. Can you give us some insight into your life behind the scenes and
what motivates you to be so consistent with this tedious work?
The process of book reviewing is definitely a very tedious job. 1st is a selection of books, the read the entire book, I finish a book in around 5-7 days and then I summarize it, then we have to translate that book into Hindi, then it gets into checking, audio recording, video recording and at every level the quality of the content is checked.
This entire process takes 7-10 days but it gets
adjusted to our cycle. We have multiple video editors, audio editors, and
editors and this makes our process less hectic. What motivates me is that I am
a very organized person so I have a schedule for everything as what to do, when
to do it, etc, and as a result, we work in advance. We have a great team in
place and with their support, everything gets with time.
9. Do
you follow everything that a book states or do you sometimes disagree with it?
There are definitely a lot of books from which I don't get agreed as there are things in books which I have not experienced and the book talks about such things and as a result, I couldn't connect with those things. Whenever a book is written the thought process is the entirety of the author his/her experience, journey and hard work behind work.
And that's why their life challenges, experiences
and thought process gets different and had been handled differently. So yeah I
don't agree with it and I don't have the intention of opposing it, but I don't
agree with it because it never happened to me, but yeah at the same time there
are many books from which I learnt and use that learning in my life.
10.
Have you read “The Secret” and “The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind”? Did the
methods mentioned in the book work for you or not?
Yes, I believe a lot in these two books. These 2 are the best-selling books on our channel and got millions of views my life changed entirely after reading these 2 books particularly and their basic method is Law Of Attraction which I believe. I use LOA in my life for the last 10 years.
I earned a lot of things because of LOA and where I am today is because of this only and of course hard work but whatever opportunities I received I believe it is because of this LOA. This method has always worked for me whenever I want something and I can see a way towards it. It is very powerful and I take a lot of sessions on it and I know 1000s of people personally whose lives had been changed because of LOA. It is awesome.
11.
Some underrated books from self-help and top books in fiction which you would
like to recommend? Also, suggest some best books for a beginner.
Underrated
book-
Minimalism
Do it today- time management and self-disciple
Win
your inner battles- amazing book
Don't read fiction
The alchemist is an amazing book jis cheez ko tum poori shiddat se chaho toh poori kayinaat usse milane main tumhari madad kari hain is the whole essence of this book.
Books for beginners-
The magic of thinking big
Limitless
The secret of the millionaire mind
Men are mars and women are from women( for a relationship)
Power of subconscious mind
Magic( for gratitude)
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