Episode 459 - The Martial Artists Handbook
In this episode, Jeremy talks about the much-anticipated whistlekick book called, "The Martial Artists Handbook"
The Martial Artists Handbook - Episode 459
Since the 100th episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, Jeremy has been pondering about making a book that is based on the podcast. After a few hundred episodes, the book is now a reality and it's called The Martial Artists Handbook. Listen to Jeremy as he talks about how the idea was conceived, what the book is about, and the important work that people behind whistlekick have done to make the Martial Artists Handbook come into fruition.
Show Notes
You may get your copies on Amazon here (Paperback or Kindle) or shop at whistlekick to get that special autographed version!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey what's up everybody, welcome! This is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 459. Today, were talking about the book that I just finished, the martial artist and book. If you don't know who I am, well I'm Jeremy, Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host here for martial arts radio, I'm the founder at whistlekick and apparently have written a book and my whole life right now is dedicated to the martial arts. I love traditional arts, I love also I'm not even going to name any of them because I love them all. And I train in as many as I can and it is from this love we launched whistlekick and we do all the things we do and I do all the things that I do throughout the day. If you want to check out everything that we've got going on go to whistlekick.com, that's our online home. You'll see everything that we've got going on. Links all the different projects, the products we make, and if you make a purchase in the store use the code PODCAST15 that'll save you 15% off. We've got a ton of stuff in there, there's new stuff coming out all the time and the best way to stay up on what's happening is to subscribe to the newsletter. We email you once, twice a month not too often. Just to keep you informed of what's going on with whistlekick. You know we're not gonna sell your address or do anything silly like that. Now, this show has a separate home whistlekickmartialartsradio.com that's where you're gonna find everything about every episode we've ever made, we do two episodes a week and it's all under the heading of connecting, educating, and inspiring traditional martial artists. And if you want to show some love, you can make a purchase, you can share an episode or our most recent method of connecting with everyone Patreon. If you're familiar with Patreon on it's a method that podcast listeners and content consumers can support the people, the companies behind it. Go to Patreon.com/whistlekick and if you're willing to contribute at least five dollars a month you're going to get exclusive content. We’ve got links to those from our various websites so check it out, thank you in advance for your support. Let's talk about the book.I started playing with the idea of a book based around content for martial arts radio years ago. At first it was, let's do a book on the first hundred episodes. I started thinking about that but put down some ideas and then we were to 150 and then 200 episodes, I said wait a second that's not gonna be the right way to do it. I don't want to do some kind of compendium, some archive of the episodes that we've done. It's gotta be different it's got to be original. What does the idea of writing allow us to do we can't do in audio? And then I start to think about one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read and if you know your martial arts radio history, my favorite martial arts book Zen and The Martial Arts. I've always loved this book and I love it for a few different reasons. One of which is that it's written in small, digestible chunks that you can pick up and read at any time and hopefully take something out of. And it was my dream to do something similar. So, I started looking through and realized if we use the Thursday shows as a foundation, there's a lot that we can do now I'm not just gonna take the transcripts and slap them together in a book but we can use those transcripts as an outline and this is where I want to give a shout out to Lester who will probably never hear this. But Lester who is a former member of the team, somebody that that we had working on podcast episodes. He's moved on to other things but he helped put together the outline, he did a tremendous amount of work on this and without him I don't know that the book would've come to light. So, one day, probably six months ago, he sent me an outline that was 30 pages? Bullet points, organized under chapter headings based on particular episodes. I said wow there's a lot here. And I wanted to try something because I'm a writer but I'm not a fast writer. I am getting pretty good at doing these audio episodes with nothing more than an outline, in fact I'm doing this episode with nothing.And I thought what would happen if I recorded the audio first, so let's try it. So, we did! So, I recorded the audio for an entire book and all in all I think it was 10-12 hrs. Of audio something like that and I said now what? Well, we have a wonderful member of this community Jenny who has helped us in the past with transcribing and I reach out to her and I said hey Jenny you want to help me transcribe this book? She said: yeah, I'd love to! Well, she did, she did a phenomenal job on it. It's awesome! You may not know what a transcript typically looks like but she killed it and along the way she was the first person to edit it and offered some suggestions and again another person who supported this project so thank you to Jenny. And then I put it out there, I shared the book with a few people and said hey, I need some editing done, some additional editing, I wanna make sure we're catching as much as we can so I had a few people who read through it very quickly 3-4 days. They got me their thoughts and I incorporated them and made some edits, and now the book is LIVE.We don't typically talk about dates on the show. You'll never hear me mention the date that something was recorded, but I'm recording this episode on December 10, 2019. The paperback just went live on Amazon, the Kindle version goes live the end of the week, and the audio version should be live at Audibl which is a division of Amazon right, in the next few days. We’re finishing up some final audio editing there of course editing audio takes a lot more time and I'm super pumped about this.Let's talk about what the book is. First off, the title: The Martial Artists Handbook. I spent a lot of time thing but the title because I didn't want it to be overly authoritative. I wanted to express that hate these are things that I think, that I believe, that seem to be commonly held beliefs but I'm also leaving some room for changing it, for improving it and I do intend to come out with subsequent versions. Or version one who knows how many versions we do? But the idea of making it a handbook, where else you have handbooks? You have handbooks at work, maybe you have a student handbook at your martial arts school. It changes, it gets updated. It's a reference and that's what this book is. You could sit down, you could read through it, you probably hear my voice come through in the words because I write the way I speak and, in this case, I spoke the way speak. But you can also just look at the table contents and flip to a section and it's my hope that the information in here, not only helps people, but improves. I want people to challenge it. I want people to give me ideas on how to improve it, how do we take this topic or this circumstance. How do we make a better? How does version 2 of the martial artist handbook become so compelling and so much better than version 1 that everyone who owns it says I can't wait get the next version. And that's my goal as with everything we make I wanted to continue to get better and I want it to deliver value.I've had a number of people say that they're going to buy copy simply to support me or to support whistlekick and I'm good with that. But I hope if you get it you read it and I hope you take something from it. I don't simply want people to donate money. That's why if you look at the Patreon, anything five dollars and up you're getting something for it. I'm going to deliver value everywhere possibly can. I'm not just going to sit there with my cup out and ask. As I was going through the book, one of the things that was hardest was to figure out how to organize it. What sections, what chapters? In the end, there are 14 sections ranging when everything from teaching to basics to forms, physical considerations, I'm just going off the top my head, I don't have the outline in front of me. And you'll recognize a lot of the content but here's the thing, I’ve changed some of it. I didn't just read the transcript, I used as a reference and some of my thinking has evolved. Not dramatically, you're not to read anything in this book and think, oh, who is this guy this is a Jeremy. But hopefully if you've been following the show for a while you'll see the evolution of my thought process because I don't want to be so stuck in what I think that It can't change.I have no idea where this book takes whistlekick if anywhere. It could be a complete flop, we might sell four copies, I don't know. We might sell thousands of copies, that would be cool. But in the end, I learned something in the process. I plan to write more books, there already three or four bounce around my head and it just becomes another way that we at whistlekick can reach you. One of the book ideas involves some collaboration so stay tuned for that. But if you want to learn more you can go to whistlekick.com and under the books section, you will find it and you can also purchase autographed copies. But if you want to go write to Amazon, just search for the martial artist handbook or search for me by name, you'll find it. And it is available in Kindle form and paperback form and soon audio form. And from what I understand of the audiobook landscape you'll also be able to find it on Apple, in the ibookstore as an audiobook once were done with that. I'd love to give you some trivia or something like that, some behind-the-scenes stuff for the book but it wasn't that fancy. It was me using this very same microphone to record this very same desk that I'm knocking on, to the type at, the same computer record with, I emailed and edited. It's an extension of the show. Without the show, this book never would've happened so for each of you who are listening, without you, without the last 4 1/2 years this book would never have existed that's why it's dedicated to all of you. To those of you who have shown support for as long as you've shown support, I appreciate, I appreciate you. And I'm glad this was the first book but I chose to write in this way.Thanks for listening. If you have questions about the book that aren't answered online, please email me jeremy@whistlekick.com and feel free to email me for other reasons. If you want to support us, you've got a bunch ways. You can buy the book, you can support us on Patreon, Patreon.com/whistlekick, you can share an episode, you can make a purchase at whistlekick.com use the code PODCAST15 to save 15%. Yes, that would cover the autographed copies of the book. You can leave a review Facebook or anywhere, tons of review places. If you want to make a guest suggestion, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com and you can follow us on social media @whistlekick. Thank you for being an audience that is so supportive, for giving me the space the opportunity to write this book. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day!