Anna David's Blog, page 12
August 9, 2022
Sh*t You're Not Supposed to Write About with Zara Barrie: Trauma
Previous podcast guest Zara Barrie writes about all sorts of things you're not even supposed to talk about. And, well, so do I. That's why we decided to do a 10-week special that we'll be playing on both of our podcasts called Sh*t You're Not Supposed to Write About (well, it was supposed to be 10 weeks but then I realized one of them might destroy my life if released so it may be a Mandela Effect thing where we'll call it 10 episodes and then when you get to the 10th week and wonder where the last one is, we'll go, "What are you talking about? We always said it would be nine." And then you'll go back and read these words and not know what's real and what's not.) But enough of that. Please enjoy this episode on sh*t you're not supposed to write about: drugs.
Not sure I've ever gotten more honest than I have in these. Wish me luck. And let it be an inspiration for you to write about it ALL.
RELATED EPISODES:
Sh*t You're Not Supposed to Write About with Zara Barrie: Drugs
Sh*t You're Not Supposed to Write About with Zara Barrie: Sex
Turning Online Readers Into Book Readers with Zara Barrie and Dayna Troisi
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
August 3, 2022
The 5 Most Common Questions of First-Time Authors
Today, in this solo episode, I'm answering the five most common questions first-time authors have. They are:
Do I need a copyright for my book?
How many copies of my book will be printed?
If I launched a book, and I didn't sell many copies, should I relaunch it?
Should I sell my book only on Amazon?
Forgive me, that's four. I honestly thought when I recorded it that it was five. I am truly this bad with numbers. Good thing I can do words, no?
RELEVANT LINKS:
RELATED EPISODES:
Should I Hire a Company to Write and Publish My Book?
What I Learned From the Party Girl Re-Launch
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
July 27, 2022
11 Reasons Every Entrepreneur Should Launch a Book
This solo episode is focused on the 11 main reasons an entrepreneur should launch a book. They are:
Less money spent on ads
Less money and time spent on client acquisition
Less money spent on PR
More effective podcast interviews
Less time spent creating content
Less time spent coming up with keynotes since they can come from the book
Less worrying about the competition, and wondering why someone else got the media hit or speaking gig
Numerous opportunities to impress the F out of everyone who hears your best selling author
Have the most impressive business card imaginable on you at all times
Jump to the front of the line
Be a hero to your family (cheesy but true!)
RELATED EPISODES:
Mike Koenigs on Why You Need to Have a Product Embedded in Your Book
Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Creating a Vivid Vision for Your Book
How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
The 11 Main Reasons Every Entrepreneur Should Launch a Book
This solo episode is focused on the 11 main reasons an entrepreneur should launch a book. They are:
Less money spent on ads
Less money and time spent on client acquisition
Less money spent on PR
More effective podcast interviews
Less time spent creating content
Less time spent coming up with keynotes since they can come from the book
Less worrying about the competition, and wondering why someone else got the media hit or speaking gig
Numerous opportunities to impress the F out of everyone who hears your best selling author
Have the most impressive business card imaginable on you at all times
Jump to the front of the line
Be a hero to your family (cheesy but true!)
RELATED EPISODES:
Mike Koenigs on Why You Need to Have a Product Embedded in Your Book
Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Creating a Vivid Vision for Your Book
How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
July 20, 2022
The 7 Biggest Mistakes First-Time Authors Make
This solo episode is focused on the seven biggest mistakes first-time authors make. They are:
Skimping on cover design
Not optimizing book descriptions
Not have a reason why/CTA
Slacking on editing
Not gathering reader reviews
Not getting that it's not about them
Listening to people who give bad advice once the book is written
Listen to get all the deets!
RELATED EPISODES:
What Makes a Great Book Cover?
The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson
What's the Difference Between a Ghostwriter, Editor & Coach?
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
July 13, 2022
How to Save Yourself From a Disastrous Book Launch with Scott Duffy
Scott Duffy is an entrepreneur and business strategist who's listed as a “Top 10 Speaker” by Entrepreneur and has been named one of the “Top Influential People To Follow” by Yahoo! Finance.
But that's not why I brought him on the pod. I brought him on because he's also the author of three different business books on three different topics, from three different publishers and launched in three entirely different ways. When I was at his mastermind a few weeks ago, he articulated why entrepreneurs should launch books in a way that was clearer than I'd ever heard. That's why I wanted him on the show but what I actually got out of our talk was so much more.
In this episode, we got into the importance of subtitles, why authors should be featured on their book covers and how his most recent book launch was a disaster.
RELEVANT LINKS:
RELATED EPISODES:
What I Learned From the Party Girl Re-Launch
What Book Would Help Build This Entrepreneur's Business?
Approaching Your Book Like It's a Business with Bonnie Habyan
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Thanks for being here, Scott.
Scott Duffy: Hi. Great to be here.
Anna David: So you are a genius, and a genius and author. And also, as I was just telling you, someone who articulated what I have been trying to articulate for many years, and you just did it off the cuff. Well, let's talk about what you said that I loved so much.
Scott Duffy: So what happened was we were talking about, you and I were having this conversation in Park City. So, I was throwing an event we had, say, 50 entrepreneurs, small business owners there, and a whole bunch of them wanted to write books. But the challenge that I saw, which is a challenge I've seen, since the last, you know, 30 plus years they've been around this industry, is that most people don't know why they're writing a book. So, when we start a business, we write a plan, I always like to say start with the end in mind, right? Think about where it is that you want to be, what you're doing this for, and then back out a strategy. So what we were talking about was this, you know, I always ask people, are you writing a book, because you want to be a New York Times number one best seller, and you're willing to invest the time and the money in this project, because you believe it'll bring you a tremendous amount of business, whether that's in speaking fees, or in other ways that help you and your company to grow? Are you writing a book number two, because you want to have a business card, that you're able to hand out to everybody?
And this is like your introduction to them. And the strategy for doing that is much different, it costs a lot less to do, you're gonna have to your cost per book is going to have to be super low. So, you're going to be able to give away a lot of these books, right? Are you writing a book number three, because you want to, for example, build a list. So what you want to do is you want to have a book online, people enter an email address, or they enter a phone number, and then they're able to download your book in exchange for you being able to send them marketing messages. So, it's like, what is your strategy? What is the reason that you that you're doing this? And what you and I were talking about is like your client, that you primarily is writing because they want to hit? You know, they want to be that New York Times bestseller.
Anna David: Well, so these are, this is actually the way I remembered what you said, it's slightly different. When entrepreneurs write books for three reasons. One is the free plus shipping, or give away for free, basically, they want your email address is that it's my business card, but I kind of hope you don't read it. Like it's there. And you know that I did it, but there's probably tons of typos and stuff like that. And then the third is the legacy book. And I don't look at that as like the number one New York Times bestseller. You know, I don't believe in shooting for things that .00001% of the population can get the don't make a difference. Take it from someone who is a New York Times bestselling author and was borrowing money to pay my rent after I hit that list, is not a thing. So, to me, a legacy book is it does those things, those other two ideas do, but it's something you're proud of. It's I think the way you feel about your book for entrepreneur, maybe you feel that way about all three of your books. I don't I don't know, you tell me. Are they legacy books?
Scott Duffy: No, they're one of them is one of them. Maybe two. So, the first book that I wrote was called How to Invest in Self Storage. And the reason I wrote that book is I, I had come from I've been in the tech industry, I'd had a series of kind of wins financial wins in the tech industry. And I wanted to, I decided I wanted to invest in real estate, and create passive income. And this is, this is a long time ago. And it's back before there was a self storage, you know, like a Public Self Storage where you put your stuff and you keep it. Like before those were on every corner. And before I'm a real data driven person. And so before I invested anything, I wanted information, I wanted to learn about what I was going to potentially invest in. And the challenges the self storage industry didn't have a lot of that. So in the just for perspective, in the self storage industry, there's like 50,000 self storage facilities in the United States. And the biggest owner of self storage facilities only owns 3% of the market.
So, the majority of the industry is people that just own a one or two, so it's a lot of mom-and-pop businesses, meaning you don't have big companies that are aggregating public data in order to share it, they don't have to do. So what I did is I went out there to talk to everybody, I could assemble all of my notes. And I'm like, if I want this, I'll bet there's somebody else that wants it, too. So, I went to the biggest publisher in the industry called Mini Co. And I said, What do you think? And so they said, We think that's a great job that doesn't exist out there. And so they helped me to hire an editor. And we put the notes together, we launched it. And I think to this day, it's the best selling book about self storage in the industry, which is kind of ironic. So I wrote that. I wrote that entirely, because I was trying to aggregate research. So, I could decide if this is a good decision to invest it in, like crazy. My second book was called Launch. Yeah. And that was a whole different process.
So, I wanted Launch to be a legacy book. And my goal was to make that a number one New York Times bestseller. And so I ended up getting an agent, she was amazing. We ended up selling that, that book to portfolio, which is a division of Penguin Publishing, working with the exact time and we were scheduled to be the number one like the big release for Thanksgiving weekend for the holidays that year, in business books. So here's the thing, I had never written a book like this. And I wanted the book to be written about how to scale a company. That was the goal. Okay, and this will come back, it'll be important. So I, because it was the first book I'd ever done for a publisher like that. They required that I have an editor. And they were very hands on in helping me determine who that editor was. And the editor was, he was that head of entrepreneurship, and those kinds of articles for one of the two biggest business publications in the world. So, we're thinking to ourselves, this is going to be a home run.
Well, here's what happened, we had one year to write this book. So we started to work on it. And number one, he started to get all of these covers for that magazine. He had three while we were working together, so he would disappear. So, it just never really worked. It never really gelled. I kept going back to the publisher saying, I need more time, or I need different help. And they kept saying no, no, no, just every entrepreneur goes to this. Every writer goes through this. Just put your head down. It didn't work. Until one day, the book, it just was so bad. It was so bad. And nobody would listen. Yeah, I wrote a text actually was a I wrote an email to the head of Penguin portfolio. And the subject was in all caps. This book fucking sucks. Okay, I wrote this book fucking sucks. Because I had to get somebody's attention. Yeah, he was on vacation in Mexico. He called me right away. He said, this book does suck. You're right, we need to make a change.
And he said, the change starts with you. And it's really important for authors for writers, that change starts with you. He said, We'll do our part, we're going to help find you another editor. But what do you really know about what you're writing about? You see, my core competency had always been launching companies taking ideas from idea to market. And he said, What would naturally just kind of pour out of you. And it would be those stories versus the stories about growth and scale. So, what it is I sat down, I was so by the way, depressed after that call, I'm like, shit, now I got to change the book. I got to change the title. I got to figure this out. We don't have much time. And what happened in a is I went home that night, and I was talking to my ex wife was looking at my kids. And she said, Well, what if the book wasn't about like, you weren't doing it for yourself? Who would you do it for? And they said, You know what, I would use this book to tell my kids who their dad was. That's what I would do. That became the purpose.
And then over the next six weeks, I started from scratch. And I wrote every word of the book from front to back.
Wow, in the book was called Launch and it was all about doing what I really knew. And so for me, that was a big lesson. And I think that, you know, when you're writing a book, it's really important not to focus on what you think is going to make money or what you think is going to do something you've got to focus on what it is that you know, it naturally comes to you. Because those are the stories. And those are the lessons that will truly connect with an audience. And so, I think, you know, that's kind of what kind of what happened.
Anna David: But don't you think it's where what you know, meets what you know your audience wants? Don't you think?
Scott Duffy: I think that if you're writing about seeing this is the mistake I made, I was trying to write. See? Okay, I have to answer your question. I have share the story. The day the book was published, and I got my first copy, got my first hardcopy, I drove up to one of my mentors, houses. And he was gonna be the person first person I gave it to. He was like ADA, an iconic venture capitalist. And I walked up to him, he said, I got the book I've been telling you about, you get the first copy. He said, would you sign it? And I signed it. And he looked at the cover. And he said, your book is called Launch? And I said, Yes. He said, “You're gonna he broke.” That's what he said to me. And they said, Why would you say that? He said, “Scott, you have to make a decision. Before you do anything in business? Do you want to have a rich customer or a poor customer?” And he said, “if you're talking to people that are launching companies, they're probably broke, or at least they don't have a lot of free cash, because they're investing everything they can into this business.”
He said, “So you can be the very best in the world writing this book or doing what you do. But if you're going to have a poor customer, you'll be broken because they can't afford to pay you.” He said, “Where would you rather have a rich customer?” And I said, “Well, these are the stories I know how to tell.” He said, “If you told them just a little bit differently, what you know, they would appeal to that person too.” So that was a really big shift. I wouldn't I wouldn't try and in invent. First of all, I would get really clear on who my target is. And can they afford to pay me what I want them to pay me? Number one. And number two, I would focus on the content that they really know and understand. And if I have to tweak that a little bit, to make it relevant for a different market, I would do that. But I wouldn't start from scratch. I wouldn't try and lie, or not stretch the truth about what I was really good at.
Anna David: Did you rewrite it after he said that? Or you just said, fine. You leave it?
Scott Duffy: I said, Fuck. Are you serious? I'm like, are you serious? And by the way, it was it was it was really awful. For me, my stomach, like his I love I love this man. And so to my feet, and I was so embarrassed, you know, but it was the right lesson for me at the right time. I actually, it was the right lesson for me. It would have been great if the timing was a little different.
Anna David: It was the right lesson at the wrong time. But also, the Jeff Walker book Launch was already out or?
Scott Duffy: No, so Jeff and I were talking so Jeff. So, Jeff was working on lunch while I was working on launch and a mutual friend Travis Euston put us together because Travis was in the product launcher world. And so Jeff and I talked by the way, in our books came out like the same month. In there's two things I learned from that experience. Number one, you can't trademark the title of a book. So a lot of people will seek see that they can stay claim to a title, you can't trademark that right. What I learned is the most valuable part of selling a book is the subtitle. And that was just what Jeff and I talked about. He said, We can both have the same title. It can look the same way it can be identical. But your subtitle has to talk to your market. And my subtitle has to talk to my market. And that was a really big lesson for me.
Anna David: That's so interesting. I think yes, I don't want to interrupt you. But I do think it depends on the book. I think there are subtitles where you don't the reader doesn't even notice what the subtitle is. A short title, absolutely. And especially like your subtitle is no pun intended, critical. But I don't think that's always the case. I think it is true in this case. Okay, so keep going.
Scott Duffy: I think that the subtitle really has, because if you're in a bookstore, I mean, I don't know how many people but when Launch came out, people are still going to bookstores, if you're in a bookstore, and then your target customer is looking at a shelf and they're skimming. You only have a few seconds for them to know if that's the book, right? So what attracts the verse, it's going to be the color and the font, the positioning on the shelf, who you're around or who you next to. By the way, when I wanted to sell more. I went into every bookstore I could wherever I was, I moved my book next to Gary Anarchic. I moved in next to whoever was hot at that time. You got to do that. You got to have a little bit of Sara Blakely from Spanx in you.
Anna David: And nobody stopped you. Right. That's gonna stop you. You're like an affable big dude. Nobody's going to be like, ah, that guy stopped the guy moving the books. You just did it, right?
Scott Duffy: No, I did. And here's the thing, the people in the bookstore couldn't care less, because they just want to sell books. Right? So, I did, I would take pictures. Yeah. So I learned about the importance of a subtitle learn about the importance of the impact that your cover, and that needs to have in a very short period of time. Yeah. So that if two people are looking at books like and so and when, when the subtitle for Launch was the critical 90 days from idea to market. And the reason was, our publisher had research showing that in the next year, having a number in the subtitle was going to be like the thing. So they actually did that.
Anna David: I mean, the publisher research...you don't even want to hear my rants about traditional publishing. So it sounds like that was a great learning experience, but not necessarily a wonderful publishing experience.
Scott Duffy: It was a terrible publishing experience. It was awful. It was incredibly stressful. The book fizzled, because by the time, by the time it came out, I was so burned out from the project. I just I had no energy or desire to go out into to promote it the way the way that you should do, you know.
Anna David: Me too. And so, the next one, you said, "This is going to be different." Right? Is that what you said for your most recent book?
Scott Duffy: Well, I actually said, "I'm never going to do this again," first. That's what I said, I'll never do this again. And then what happened was, I had a video series called Business and Burgers. And we would go, I would travel across the country, Alan Taylor, and I, and we would go the awesome burger places. And we would interview entrepreneurs like Daymond John, and people like that, over burgers and sides, and it was a blast. And we ran about 45 episodes of that show. And while that show was airing, I was contacted by Entrepreneur Magazine, and they said, you know, the publishing group, Entrepreneur Books, really enjoyed the first book and didn't understand why it didn't get bigger pickup. And they said, "What if we went in and we updated the book, and we updated the stories, and we added some more connective tissue, would you be open to that?" And so that's what we did. Now, the problem that I ran into in this circumstance was a disagreement about the title and the subtitle.
So, here's the thing. If you read the breakthrough book, the title and subtitle don't tell you what's in it. So you don't know what you're buying. And so that was a big disconnect. And that hurt. And I'm just sharing I mean, yeah, I'm committed to sharing the good and bad of everything, you know. And so what I learned is I was much happier with the book itself, but I think that the title and subtitle got in the way of it, and so we're actually in the process of redoing that with new stories. And I can't show the title yet, but it's very descriptive to come out next year.
Anna David: Okay, wait, stop. Breakthrough is your brand. So I would think that that's the perfect title for you. Well, so
Scott Duffy: Here's what I learned. Breakthrough is a brand. But if you are a personal brand, your name has got to be your brand. And that was a lesson for me. It was a lesson for me because my brand was Launch. Oh, no, no, no, it's not. My brand is Breakthrough. Oh, no, no, it's not. I'm in education, technology. I'm working on a book right now. Right education, right, is that Lybrand? No, my brand is Scott Duffy. And so, for me, that was a that was a that was a real big. That was a real big lesson. And I think it's interesting, because if I used to be back in the day, you're too young for this, but it used to be when I was starting in the industry. The way you got to know somebody and see who they were, was there was a one inch by one inch picture on the back cover of the book. Yeah. So like when I worked for Tony Robbins back in 1990, right. The way anyone got to see him before the infomercial was he had a book and on the back there was the picture. That was it. I think that as it relates to books, and today when personal branding is so important, I am an advocate of putting your picture on it somewhere, you know, on the cover. Yeah, because you are the brand. And I'd be curious to see to hear what you have to say about that.
Anna David: You know, it's very interesting that you say that I'm a narcissist, and I'm very vain. So, I think I should not just be on the cover of all my books, but on every book, and yet I've never done it.
Scott Duffy: Why not?
Anna David: Out of fear of being judged as vain. And all also I really vacillate between, is it my experience? Or do you? You know, it's sort of like that idea about marketing, change all your eyes to use, make your stories. Imagine yourself that, you know, I don't I don't know the answers. I do this. Because every book, I learned more, I mean, I think I approach it a lot like you do, it's like, but I also have to, so that I can stay on the cutting edge for my clients. So I mean, I'm kind of excited. I'm like feeling something inside, like, ooh, could I go on the cover my next book, but I don't know. So you didn't do that. So, this is how you feel now, you didn't do it before?
Scott Duffy: That's how I feel now. And like in terms of change, you know, a change in approach, one thing that I did really learn what was the Breakthrough that I really loved. versus the way I wrote Launch the way we're Launch, is I literally sat behind a computer all day, and just wrote, and then what I would do is I would write a chapter, I would send it to an editor. The next day, the editor would send it back, I make corrections. And then we move to the next. Now, I'd like to say that I wrote a chapter every day that in practice, it doesn't work that way, you know, some take longer than others. But that was kind of like what the flow was, with Breakthrough the flow changed. So, with Breakthrough, what I started to do is I love to move and I love to be active. So I downloaded an app called Rev. And I actually wrote a lot in the book while I was walking. So I would be walking, or I would be in the gym or whatever. And I'd record on Rev. And then what we would do is I hit play, and then when I was done, I would I would I would have that translated, right? And then or whatever the word is, yeah, yeah, you transcribe, it would go. By the time I was back from the gym, or my walk, or my run, or whatever it was, it would be in my inbox, I would send that to an editor. And the editor would then organize it and compile the thoughts in there was my chapter. What was really cool about that also is, once that was done, I can take that I could turn that into a blog, quote boards, a million other things. So I highly recommend if you're not the kind of person that wants to sit behind a computer all day, leverage a tool like Rev. If you're a blogger, and you're in the car, just talk about what you're thinking, and boom, you're done.
Anna David: Here's what I want to say about that. Yeah, and I'm this is not like, this is not sucking up, you speak the way a lot of people try to write you just are naturally like that, I do not think that works for everybody. And I say that because we've had clients who have said, oh, I'm just gonna send over my like brain dumps. And it is very hard for us to make that into written material, it is far more effective for us to interview them, I think somebody interviewing you is going to be more effective. However, if you're like Scott, and you've got the gift of the gab, then I do think that can work more effectively. But sometimes you are making an editor's job hard if you do it like that.
Scott Duffy: Okay, so a couple thoughts on that, because you're right. I think an interview is like the gold standard. If you can get interviewed, I mean, like that's freakin awesome. I think, if you're a speaker, a professional speaker, it can really be a challenge. And you got to learn to get better when you're dictating. And the reason is, speaker can just talk forever, and say nothing. They're really awesome at it. Right? So, it's almost like you got to get that inner Tik Tok voice working in you where you got like, eight seconds to a minute, or whatever it is. Yeah, you got to learn how to talk in shorter in shorter sound bites. And so, I think I've seen that with speakers. When I wrote Launch, the way I would tell a lot of the stories because the way I teach is story based; the way I would tell a lot of the stories was almost like dictating a speech. And this is really important for right for people who want to be authors. The way you speak at people, right when you're onstage, is different than the way people read. It's really important.
If you just gave them a speech, they're not going to get through if you give them something like should be written about. Totally different. The other thing is if you're hiring an editor, this is a lesson I learned in Launch. The person that we used was a magazine editor. Okay. So think about this. They were exceptional at writing things that were really short, and it stood on their own So if you're writing a book, and you need an editor for a book, you need somebody that understands basically how to craft a story that builds as it goes, right? And where there's connective tissue from one thing to the next. So, when I wrote Launch, and I was dealing with that first editor, the reason the book didn't work is everything was totally disjointed, like a bunch of articles. So, it's really important to know, you know, you got to have like, the perfect target avatar of who your writer or your editor is, in order to have a book be as successful as you want it to be.
Anna David: The good news is that most magazines have gone under. So most magazine editors have transitioned into being book editors, I came up as a magazine editor. And then I learned to edit books, because you know, necessity is the mother of invention, you just learn, right? But that's great. That's a great tip. So let me ask you what have and we got to get close to wrapping up? Tell me what these books have done for your career?
Scott Duffy: Well, I mean, they done a number of things, I think that the one thing they did is they helped me to, actually, I'll tell you what the most important thing is, the most important thing that they've done is they've helped me to develop a business philosophy that became like, I was successful doing things. And I didn't necessarily know how I was doing them. I thought I did. But what I did is I was able to, like codify my superhero power, right. And I think that that's incredibly powerful. And if you want to be a great speaker, you want to be great at growing an audience on social media, you want to be great at building a personal brand, I think you really unmeet to understand who you are, what you stand for, and how you get to the results that you get to. And so, this really helped me to learn that, and it helped me to find where there were holes in what I did, where I really needed to, like grow myself.
And I really worked on those areas when writing the book. In fact, on the book breakthrough, I added a section on growth and scale. But instead of doing it myself, I went to a friend of mine named Rolan Frasier, who is exceptional at scaling a company, and almost made those chapters more like interviews, where we talk back and forth. And the way we positioned it is here's how we work with this company. Here's how we work with that company. So the content was organic, it was authentic, but I couldn't have done it on my own. But when I was done with it, I'm like, I understand that now I can really help a company in that area now. So, in addition to a branding tool, it was like a growth hack for me as well.
Anna David: I love that. I love that. Because it's kind of like I think a lot of successful people. They can't teach what they do. Because they don't know how they did it. It was so organic. It was when I started teaching that I'm like, oh, I got to figure out how did I write a book? I don't know, I just did it. So, I think that I've never heard someone say that, the book is the opportunity for you to drill down and articulate. How did you do this? How can your reader do this? And so, and in terms of business, in terms of speaking, I mean, you were already killing it on the speaking circuit, but what difference has it made in your business?
Scott Duffy: You know, I think the book, it enabled me to market myself in the bigger companies was one of those things. So it's one thing to have a personal brand, it's one thing to have success with companies that you're a part of. And for me, many of those were big media companies, big media brands, but having your codified philosophy, bad how you did it. I think, you know, that really helped me to open to open more doors. You know, I feel today that the book is like it's a learning tool for us as authors. But I think that as a door opener, it's incredible. It's just you need to get clear as to which doors you want to open. Do you want to open the door of somebody hiring a speaker in a fortune 500 company? Or do you want to open the door of an entrepreneur that wants to learn how to create sales funnels?
So, if I were to share with anybody, like if somebody said to me, where do I start? And so, we'll start by getting clear on what you want the end result to be and my second step would be create the perfect avatar of who it is that you want to speak to. And the more narrow you go, the more successful you're going to be. Because if you try to talk to everybody, you're not going to connect with anybody. The riches are really in the niches and when it comes to writing and when it comes to author when it comes to putting out a book, if you nail who your target audience is, I mean from the beginning. You're gonna be on fire.
Anna David: Yeah. Yeah. You are fantastic Mr. Duffy; how can people find you?
Scott Duffy: Go to Scottduffy.com. There, or you can you can find me on social media at Scott Duffy media across all the platforms.
Anna David: I love it. Thank you, Scott. Thanks, you guys for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
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July 6, 2022
How to Get Over Yourself and Just Promote Your Book with Jerry Stahl
Jerry Stahl is the iconic author of Permanent Midnight (made into a movie starring Ben Stiller), among nine other books (among them, OG Dad, Pain Killers, I, Fatty, Perv, Plainclothes Naked, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, Bad Sex on Speed and his latest, Nien Nien: One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust).
A Pushcart Prize–winning author, Stahl’s work has appeared in Esquire, Vice, The Believer, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books and the New York Times, among other places.
He also wrote the HBO movie Hemingway & Gellhorn (which earned a Writers Guild Award nomination), Bad Boys II and the cult classic Dr. Caligari and has written on the TV shows Maron, CSI and Escape at Dannemora (for which he received an Emmy nomination).
So you get it; he's done a lot. So why does he hate promoting his work so much? And how does he promote his work in spite of that? Find out in our spirited, sarcastic and deeply salacious (no, it's not salacious, I was just in the mood to be alliterative) interview.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Jerry's interview with the Village Voice
RELATED EPISODES:
10 Free Ways to Promote a Book
How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
June 29, 2022
The Business of Being a Writer with Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman is an icon in the publishing space. With over two decades of experience in the business, she is truly considered the world's leading expert on traditional publishing, self publishing and where the twain shall meet. She's the curator of The Hot Sheet, a biweekly paid newsletter, oversees a wildly popular blog and is also the author of The Business of Being a Writer.
In this episode, we discussed how important it is to know what you want your book to do for you, how to get bookstores interested in hosting you, the biggest changes in the publishing industry over the past year and so much more.
RELEVANT LINKS:
The Business of Being a Writer site
RELATED EPISODES:
What Your Non-Fiction Book Needs with Elizabeth Lyons
How Do I Arrange Readings for my Book?
Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Well, thank you so much for being here, Jane, I really appreciate it.
Jane Friedman: My pleasure.
Anna David: One thing, I have actually spoken about you on this show before and one of the conversations I recently had about you was with Elizabeth Lyons, and we were talking about how much we both love that you, you don't pick a side. You are really right there, you can't go well, Jane is very true. She's all for tradition but no, no, no, she's all for self publishing. So would you say that's accurate that you haven't picked aside?
Jane Friedman: Absolutely. And I am glad you have noticed that. I hope everybody notices that I like the 360 degree view. And I've experienced stories or met with enough authors that I know that there isn't like a right side to publishing paths. Everyone's position and needs are unique.
Anna David: Yeah, I love it. This is the quote from your said, I love it. “I've been working in book publishing since the 1990s, but my views are not from the 1990s.” So what would you say because it's changing so quickly? How would you say traditional publishing has changed the most in the past year? So right now we're recording this in June of 2022. What would you say is the most significant change in the past year?
Jane Friedman: The supply chain issues have gotten worse. I mean, they were bad a year ago. But I know it seems insane. But it's getting worse. And I think that a lot of publishers are struggling to get their printing time to get their paper and to do the things to have a normal publishing schedule. And I think it's just creating a lot of stress. So that's one piece. Another piece is labor issues. So there are a lot of people as we're coming out of the pandemic, knock on wood, that are reevaluating their priorities. And the pandemic has resulted in a wake up call for a lot of people about work life balance. And so we're seeing a lot of discussion about how to treat publishings workers. I have no idea where that's going to fall out. But we'll see what happens.
Anna David: And in terms of the supply chain issues, it almost feels like being in traditional publishing, it's more of a concern, because, you know, Amazon and print on demand those that, you know, they are just printing every night, right?
Jane Friedman: Right. So print on demand is a bit of a different animal, traditional publishers are using print on demand to fill in the gaps. But because of all of these supply chain crunches, prices are going up, it's probably going to result in higher book prices for everybody. Some people listening may have already noticed higher prices on books, and POD prices are going up too. So even self publishing authors are affected by this.
Anna David: But it's not really affecting the speed a little bit. I am noticing right now that Amazon KDP has had just kind of exquisite customer support for years. And now it's like Sorry, there's a delay in there. There are no explanations. There's just excuses, which is unusual for such amazing tech support.
Jane Friedman: Yes, I see and hear a lot of varied experiences with Amazon, it's really hard to understand what's going on behind the scenes, because one person will have a smooth problem free experience and others are just banging their head against the wall. So yeah, it's hard to comment on Amazon's customer service given the variety of diversity of the experience.
Anna David: So one of the things that I have always felt very aligned with you on is this idea about writers and making a living there are these ideas like oh, I just, you know, we all think it's gonna be different for us. We all think it Yeah, yeah, no one can make a living, whatever, it's gonna be different for me. What do you think is the best way for a writer to make a living?
Jane Friedman: If it's your first book, The Living isn't likely to come from book sales alone. Now, you may have received a really ginormous advance, which might keep you afloat for a while. But I would say that most authors if they're making a living, it's through ancillary activities related to that book. So for nonfiction authors that could be speaking and consulting. Things that grow their business footprint. If it's fiction, it gets a little bit tougher. So usually, then you're getting into services where you're helping people with less experience. Come up the ladder, so you're providing editing services or marketing services, things that maybe you've become an expert for children's authors, classroom visits and speaking engagements can be very important and provide additional revenue. Some writers are great freelance writers, although some of those opportunities have been drying up just because of the state of the media and magazine industry.
Anna David: I'm interested in, so you really would say your main business is the Hot Sheet? And if so when did it become clear, this is my main business, everything else is adjunct?
Jane Friedman: It's probably about a third of my business. The bulk of my business is online education. So running one time webinars is where I earn most of my income. And then book sales would probably be less than 5%. At this point. Yeah. As far as where I recognized the hot sheet would become the size it is today. I mean, I think I knew all along, just because of my experience in the industry, that it could be basically the entirety of my business if I chose to focus on it to the exclusion of all else, but I like variety. I don't want to do just one thing. Yeah.
Anna David: Yeah. It's interesting, because it was my first introduction, it was, you know, before Substack existed, I was like, wait, you charge for a newsletter. And now it's become so commonplace. But I'm very intrigued by it. So it's, you know, anybody? Because it is everyone I know who reads it, it's if you open it right away, it's all these? How do you do it? How is it you and your husband work on it, you have a team that works on it, I know you have original reporting in it. So you have freelancers and all of that.
Jane Friedman: Most of the writing gets done by myself. So it's my writing, reporting and research, then I have a freelance copy editor who goes through all of the content, does the fact checking and style and you know, fixing grammatical errors. And then my husband who does work for me in the business, he does what I consider the production, which is you know, loading it all into the MailChimp system and then doing customer service. So you know, when people have deliverability issues, or we need to invoice someone, or people aren't, you know, whatever the issue is, for the reader, he's there to take care of it.
Anna David: And how are you finding all of those stories? Is it just your voraciousness in terms of researching them? You have Google Alerts, you're going to events? How are you doing it?
Jane Friedman: Well, it's somewhat incestuous, because I read a ton of newsletters to make my own newsletter, right? And, but, you know, I've been studying industry publications, you know, since the early 2000s. So I obviously subscribed to all of the main industry outlets like Publishers Weekly, the Bookseller's Shelf Awareness, Publishers Lunch, I could go on. But there are lots of others like publishing adjacent newsletters that are super helpful, and that I'm always scanning for bigger picture trends, like related to Substack, or to advertising, or serial reading and writing apps. So the publishing world is very multifaceted. Some people call it, you know, two dozen industries and one and so that always gives me a lot of fuel for the fire.
Anna David: So I'm curious, what would you call it? How would you define success for a book? I know it depends on the author, but what would you consider a, quote, successful book?
Jane Friedman: If it's my personal definition, what would success mean, for me publishing a book, it's going to raise my profile and more strongly identify me with a specific message or a specific audience that I want to be known by. So in my last book, The Business of Being a Writer, my goal was to strongly associate myself with writers interested in the business. And I would say by that measure, it's been a success. It's also been for the publisher of financial success. So there will be a second edition, which I happen to be working on now. Another one of my goals was to get to writers early in their journey. So I really wanted to see the book adopted by professors in MFA programs or undergraduate writing programs. And that's one of the reasons that I worked with the University of Chicago Press on that book, because they have the clout and the ability to get books into classrooms. So again, I would say check mark on that, because it is being used by those programs.
Anna David: Do you think a writer should go into a book knowing this is what success would look like for me?
Jane Friedman: Oh, yes. It just affects the writing and the development of the book to know why are you spending time doing this thing that is basically going to pay you pennies on the hour? Or maybe even like a percentage of a penny on the hour. So you have to really be clear and honest with yourself about what you would like to see happen. That's hopefully not related to sales, which you have no control over. To some extent, you have no control over it.
Anna David: And how could someone know if their idea is good or not?
Jane Friedman: I think it really goes back to your understanding of who you're writing for a lot of people are writing, not in a bad way for themselves, and they haven't really thought about, okay, who is the ideal reader for this? Whose life am I trying to change? Who am I speaking to, that really needs to hear this message or story or benefit from this information? And by either planning the book or writing the book with that person in mind, it helps avoid going too broad trying to include everyone or serve all audiences, which is a classic mistake. And just dig into the people that you think will be most likely to read it and the easiest for you to reach.
Anna David: It's so interesting, because I come from traditional publishing. Why did they ever say that? Why did that never come up in all those meanings? No one ever said that, six books. Do you know what I mean?
Jane Friedman: I do know what you mean. I mean, I think this is a problem primarily with the more literary and publishing or, especially in New York publishing, where there's a lot of respect for personalities and people's gut instinct. And there's this overriding myth, neither good nor bad, that no one knows what books are gonna sell. And they were just going to throw it all at the wall and see what sticks. And if you are making decisions by gut instinct, then yeah, that sort of thinking makes sense. But I actually started working at a publishing company that did market research. And it was my first responsibility, in my first year on the job to do that market research into certain segments. And we had book clubs where we could survey our members and say, which of these books do you want to buy next? And so that really disciplined me early that you can find out the answers to what people want, and you can develop books that have a waiting audience, but that is not normal for most of big publishing.
Anna David: Why do you think that they are so anti research?
Jane Friedman: I don't think typically, there haven't been departments devoted to it, you would have to actually hire and market research people. And again, there's this art commerce tension, you know, although I think that's changed a lot more in the last 10 to 20 years, especially with the advent of Amazon, which showed, oh, look, if you pay attention to some data and analytics, and you measure the audience, it has results. So I do think there are more people in marketing departments at big publishers today that are involved in marketing analytics, but still, that it's hard to change that culture.
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, and I think it's sort of like will they know those big hits, they're going to hit so big, if it's a JK Rowling or Brene Brown, or whatever it is, that they don't need to bother, because we're gonna, you know what I mean, we're going to be okay, in the end, like, even though we're going to lose money on on 99% of these. I mean, that's how it feels to me.
Jane Friedman: It can feel that way. And, it's really sad for the authors, you know, of those books, who aren't, you know, inevitably they're disappointed by performance. And they think their publisher could have done more, and maybe the publisher could have.
Anna David: Yeah, it's interesting now that I'm on this side of it. And I remember speaking to a publicist, and she told me what I always suspected, she had been an in-house published publicist at a big five publishing company. And she's like, you just kind of had to avoid those authors that you weren't doing anything for. Because what are you going to tell them? Like, you don't matter? But the author feels it. It's almost I don't know, I guess it's good. If someone had sent that to me, I would have been really upset. But since it really is, you know, each author is really in it for his or herself. What do you think? What do you think is the most crucial thing to do all authors need to have Newsletter Lists?
Jane Friedman: Well, it is like the number one most powerful sales and marketing tool hands down. There is nothing in my mind. That's a better asset to have that protects you from the changes happening. If your publisher drops you if your agent dies, if you know, whatever happens, you've still got that direct connection to your readers. I always hesitate to say, you know, you must and there is no other way, but it is one of the best insurance policies against change in the industry. And certainly we're seeing now with the growing privacy protections through social media or Apple. They're coming on Google too, that It makes those channels less effective, it makes the advertising less effective. And if you hear people inside publishing talking today, even at traditional publishers, they're trying to beef up what they call their first party data, which is their direct experience of selling to readers and that often through email, and not through their own website. And of course, Amazon's not sharing any data. So that's really incumbent on whether it's the author or publisher to figure out who those readers are, and reach them without depending on a third party.
Anna David: Even when people go, Well, emails dead, who opens email anymore? It's just simply not true?
Jane Friedman: It's not true.
Anna David: In terms of social media, you know, one of the most fascinating things and I know you definitely covered it, but was that New York Times story about a year ago that said, like, “Okay, here we go, if publishers had been, you know, really prioritizing social media, but Billie Eilish has millions of subscribers.” And she sold, I think it was under 60,000 copies, and Justin Timberlake, you know, over five years under 100,000 copies. So what is it with social media? Will you explain how it matters and how it doesn't matter?
Jane Friedman: Well, it is really like, big stories that you see in the New York Times that look at this issue, the one that you mentioned, is a particularly fascinating one, because I don't see any evidence that the publishers were actively collaborating with those celebrity authors to use their social media platform to help sell books. So if the author themselves haven't kind of brought people in, and you know, taking them along on the journey, and themselves being excited about the book and talking about it, of course, there's not going to be any sales of it. So the publisher just can't sit back and wait for the social media numbers to do their job. There has to be an actual engagement, surprise. The other thing that I think people miss about this distinction is that, for example, on Tik Tok, we have the book talk phenomenon, which is indeed selling tons of books. It's responsible for the bulk of fiction sales growth this year, and last year. But is it the author's themselves doing that? Not really, it's the influencers and other people who are just excited to talk about and recommend books. So social media, in that instance, does sell books, but it's because of community engagement and enthusiasm. It's not because the author amassed some enormous Tik Tok following, although I will say, there are some authors like Colleen Hoover, who are wonderful at using Tik Tok. And, you know, using it for engagement in order to boost visibility and boost sales, but you can't tell someone who's a debut author? Yeah, go get on Tik Tok. And that will ensure sales? It does not.
Anna David: I mean, that's the thing. I'll talk to people and they go, Well, I really need to focus on that. And it's true, but Oh, my God, is it a? It’s a day in day out slog, I do think it works. I think anyone who's listening, you know, you don't have to go like I had Tik Tok up. Find your path, find your thing. Try to make it fun. That thing that makes you creative. When everything in you says this is sick, this is social media? Well, you're a creative find a way to make it fun is sort of where I stand with that. But you don't think writers have to be on social media?
Jane Friedman: I think you make your life increasingly difficult as an author if you don't use anything whatsoever. It's possible. I've seen authors do it. Yeah. But you're, I think you're making your life harder. And so it's not a path I recommend, unless you just feel like for whatever reason that it's just going to drain you and take away and the negatives are going to really outweigh the positives.
Anna David: How important do you think media attention is for an author?
Jane Friedman: It's increasingly hard to get because the number of media outlets covering books has diminished over time. And it's one of the number one things you're going to hear a publishing industry say is that media outlets don't cover books like they used to. Part of this has to do with the socio-political environment. Certain presidents who have been in office, climate change, gun violence, like there are a lot of things competing for people's attention, particularly right now when we feel like the world is on fire. And it also raises questions for writers themselves about why am I producing art or talking about my book, when there are these apparently very serious issues in the world today. But that doesn't directly answer your question. I'm just talking about how hard it is. But I think any marketer or publicist would tell you that right now, part of the game is just keeping visibility consistent over a long period of time. So to the extent that you can get some media hits, even if there's from a smaller outlet That's to keep the ball rolling. The larger the number of impressions, the more likely you're going to get sales over time. It usually doesn't happen with the first impression unless we're talking about someone who already knows you. And has been waiting for your book to come out.
Anna David: But also seeing how your book relates to the news. And obviously, that's not always the case with fiction. It's not easy. But but with nonfiction, you know, there again, it's using your creativity to find a way like, well, how does the business of being a writer fit into what's what? That's what we figure out, we’re creative people?
Jane Friedman: Yes, you have to find those links between what people are talking about, what's in the Zeitgeist, and what's in your book.
Anna David: Do you think there's particular media hits that really moved the needle? Obviously, Terry Gross. But are there others? I mean, I know from personal experience, like being on Good Morning America, Today show that doesn't necessarily result in book sales.
Jane Friedman: That's correct. The big favorite right now is CBS Sunday Morning, because they actually give the author a good seven or 10 minutes to talk about the book. And so people like to have an opportunity to really kind of sink into who this author is and what they're concerned about. Whereas the other morning shows, I don't know how long those segments are, but they're really short. Other things, any sort of celebrity book club or influencer book club. So this includes Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush, retailer book clubs, the Barnes and Noble, they all have these pics, and those are all super helpful.
Anna David: Do you have any tips for getting attention from those celebrity book clubs?
Jane Friedman: I mean, unless you already have an existing connection, I don't know that I would recommend trying to knock on those doors. It's really something that's facilitated through your publisher.
Anna David: Yeah, yeah. Do you recommend book tours?
Jane Friedman: I think they can still be super useful, but you have to be strategic about it. And there's probably going to be some sort of hybrid tour from now on out. So you'll do some things online, because it's just not going to be worth the return on investment to fly out to the other end of the country. But I do think it's still super useful, especially in your region, to get media going to have that library or bookstore winery launch event because that allows the media to report on something interesting, and it's happening. So this goes back many years, often it was the bookstore event, it was used to get the local and regional media, it wasn't necessarily that the sales in the store was the point, it was the bigger impression that you were making in that media market. So those reasons to do events still exist. I think that I would encourage people to think about collaborating on these events, rather than being a solo author. Can you be in conversation with another author? Can there be a theme surrounding the event? So it's not just about you reading from a book, instead, you're analyzing a pertinent current events issue that your book ties into, as you mentioned earlier? That just makes the events more appealing and dynamic.
Anna David: And so in the two, would you recommend that somebody, because this is a conversation I have with people all the time, I just want to try traditional publishing first, do you think everybody who wants to be published traditionally should try first? And have NBP be a second option?
Jane Friedman: Yeah, if that's what you want, I would suggest trying it like the only thing you have to lose is your time and maybe a bit of your ego. Right? So you can set up a submissions process that you kind of knock out I would say in three months, I wouldn't like to wait forever and ever to get responses. I'd like to test the waters, see what responses you can get and give yourself a deadline to finish that process and then move on. I think it's really important not to get caught up in like this hamster wheel of submission where you kind of stopped for a while because you're feeling dejected. You think well, maybe I'd get this edited or there's a lot of hemming and hawing and doubt, which is totally normal. But I would say do not linger in that process, move through it, and then move on.
Anna David: So that's three months for an agent, and then maybe another three months, like if you don't get an agent in three months, move on and then give your agent three months to try to sell the book. If you get an agent?
Jane Friedman: The agent will offer realistic expectations there. So what I'm hearing right now is that it's taking editors longer to look at manuscripts and read them. So it could be that it takes longer than three months. It might be six months, but I would say you know, take your agents' guidance on that one, but if they can't sell it in a year, that's definitely what I would cut loose and consider another avenue.
Anna David: What do you see as today the advantages of having a traditional publisher?
Jane Friedman: Oh, boy, it depends so much on the publisher we're talking about. So for instance, Amazon publishing, which many people confuse with self publishing, it's not their traditional publishing operation that does 1000 titles a year, they're enormous, they have about two dozen imprints covering every category and genre. If you get a deal with Amazon publishing, you're probably going to have a small advance relative to like a big New York house, but you're gonna get the power of Amazon, putting your book in front of the people, it's pretty sure it's going people that they think are going to buy the book. They're probably going to put it in Amazon Prime, or it's going to be in Kindle Unlimited, and you're going to get huge exposure, that it would be very hard for like a big five publisher to get you. But you're in the Amazon ecosystem, you know, you're not in the bookstore ecosystem.
Now, if you're the sort of author who feels like Oh, my God, this is the independent bookstore book, I think it's going to the bookstore, people are going to love this thing. And you can sometimes see exactly what titles are like that, because they're actually about bookstores. And those are just you can tell these are dead ringers for bookstore promotion. Anyway, if that's what you want, you kind of need a big five to help you do that, or at least a really strong, independent house like Grove Atlantic. So it really goes back to what you're looking for. Not that you have the choice of publisher there. But publishers are great at getting your book stocked and bricks and mortar. They can be really powerful at online marketing and promotion, if they have that direct to consumer list, which some do. So if they have an active publishing program in your genre, or category, you then also have the benefit of the relationships, I hope, of other authors in that imprint. And it helps build your network as well.
Anna David: Yeah, that's a very rosy look at it. I have a much easier time getting my books I published myself in bookstores than the traditionally published ones, because if you are publishing independently, you can make your book returnable, and my publisher didn't. So they don't want to or, anyway. Oh, Jane, you don't want to hear me? Just trust me. Oh, so what I was going to ask you is for somebody who doesn't have a book publisher behind them, how would you recommend making yourself attractive to a bookstore or a winery or wherever? Is it saying, you know, I loved your idea about making it a themed event? Is there anything else like that? Or how would you recommend people go around trying to secure those?
Jane Friedman: Well, it's gonna depend a little bit on the venue. So like bookstores, if they're going to order the book, for the event, it needs to, it needs to be available on certain terms from certain places. So like, we're not going to order your book from Amazon, if you've self published it strictly on Amazon. You have to have it available through Ingram and you need to choose the appropriate discount, which is 55%. So there are those like little technical logistical pieces, if you're dealing with book oriented venues that have certain expectations, aside from that, any venue is going to be looking at your ability to get turnout. And so you need to look for evidence that you can generate an audience for this venue, unless they're charging you and that's how they make their money. Right. So you have to show that oh, well, you know, at my last event, it's such a venue, we had so many people turnout, and we sold so many books. And so if you're totally new, though, and don't have that track record, then you could mention maybe that you have an email list of a certain size, or you're active on social media, or you're partnering with this person who does have a presence and is going to be marketing and promoting it. So essentially, what I'm saying is you have to give them an idea of how you're going to market and promote the event and show that you're not relying on the venue itself to gin up interest.
Anna David: And I didn't actually know that there were bookstores that you could possibly pay to have an event. That's a great idea. If you're brand new.
Jane Friedman: Yeah, there are some venues where you can just pay them outright. All right.
Anna David: Well, this has been fantastic. Is there any final piece of advice you have for somebody who is sort of I know I want to write a book, but I'm not sure what to do. What final advice would you have for them?
Jane Friedman: Have patience with yourself in the process. I find that a lot of people are either if they're not paralyzed by self doubt, they're rushing or they expect things to happen more quickly than they actually do, especially in the publishing industry, which is notoriously slow, but writing itself is a slow process. So just give it the respect and attention it deserves and take some joy, I hope and the act of writing and revising because that's what it all boils down to is taking joy in the work.
Anna David: Okay, great. So Jane, if people want to find you what's the best way?
Jane Friedman: My website is Janefriedman.com. That points to everything that I do, whether it's the paid newsletter or the classes and events.
Anna David: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jane. And thank you guys for listening
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
June 22, 2022
How to Make Your Book Into a TEDx Talk with Bridget Sampson
Bridget Sampson is a Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies, the author of Communication Secrets for Success and the co-author of Communication Training and Development. She's also a TEDx speaker who helps other people write and deliver their TEDx talks.
All of this made her the perfect person to talk to about how to convert your book into a TEDx talk, whether or not you should outline or write the talk out completely, how to book a TEDx slot, how many times to practice, what to wear and what to do if you bomb, among many other topics.
She also shared that people never seem to care that she was a professor for decades but they all care that she has a book and a TEDx talk. So get on it! It's easier than you think.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Bridget's Growth & Gratitude podcast
RELATED EPISODES:
How Authors Can Get Booked to Speak with Topher Morrison
David Nihill on Selling a Book to a Publisher After Self-Publishing
Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Thank you for being here Bridget.
Bridget: Thank you for having me. So excited to talk with you.
Anna David: I love how we were just talking about how I'm casual verging on unprofessional. And then I'm like, that is the name of a book. That should be the name of my podcast.
Bridget: Yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I love it.
Anna David: It's not what we're here to talk about is that
Bridget: No. It could be related, because I think that that might be the way we want to be in any of our talks, especially a TED talk.
Anna David: Absolutely Okay, so, so many people come to me, and they say, I want to do a TEDx talk. And, and I say, you can make your book into a TEDx talk. So you are the perfect person. You've been a professor for 20 years in public speaking. Is that right?
Bridget: Yes.
Anna David: Did I get the number right?
Bridget: It's more, but let's leave it at that because people will think I'm younger.
Anna David: Well, you look 20. So you did a TEDx talk. And then you coach people to do TEDx talks. So let's talk a little bit about Well, first, let's talk about your journey. So how did you become a professor of public speaking?
Bridget: When I was an undergrad in communication studies. And I didn't know what I wanted to do after I graduated. So some professor said, why don't you do the master's program in communication, and you can teach. You can teach the basic public speaking course, I started teaching that course at 22, which is insane. They just threw me in, you know. I was teaching public speaking. And we got lots of great training on how to teach and public speaking skills. So I started really early. But the truth Anna was when I took my public speaking course, I waited until the last minute to take it. I was terrified. I completely fell apart. During my first speech, I was one of those super anxious, terrified nervous speakers, which is why I think I was so passionate about helping other people overcome that fear because it was so paralyzing for me. So that's how it all started. And that's how I love teaching public speaking. I love teaching communication, all of the communication courses. And I continued to do that for many years, as I also started my consulting business coaching people on their communication skills.
Anna David: Okay, wait, so you were terrified when you were an undergrad? And you were taking this class? And so what advice do you have for people who are terrified of public speaking?
Bridget: Yes. Well, that's my first thing is, I can serve as an example, because I was terrified that I fell apart during my speeches and was teaching that same exact course two years later. How insane is that? Right? So I have tons of advice. But the truth is, while I love what you said about um, casual verging on unprofessional, the best speakers are people who realize they can just be themselves. Yeah, just be you, for God's sakes, be real, whatever your personality is, are you funny? Are you sarcastic? Are you serious? Just know that you can just be yourself when you're speaking to an audience. Yes, you should prepare your thoughts and have some valuable content. Of course, the people just stress about the delivery way more than we need to, in my opinion.
Anna David: I know and I think but I think TEDx is one where it has an even greater stress value, because it's so it's the it also let's talk about how most people don't know the difference between a TED Talk and a TEDx talk, which is true.
Bridget:I agree. And I love that, that works for us. Right?
Anna David: Absolutely. And to clarify, a TED talk is, you know, the thing where it's like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates give TEDx TEDx is something where any community can, as far as I know, get sort of getting a license and put on a TEDx event. It is not easy to do. But um, so I don't even think TEDx knows how many TEDx events there are to you? What do you know about this?
Bridget: Yeah, I think at one point, I heard there's at least one TEDx event happening every single day. And I think it's even more. I think it's way more than that if you go global, right? So yes, I agree with you. Sometimes I say I gave a TEDx talk. Sometimes I just say TED Talk. Absolutely. You are affiliated with the TED brand. Even if it's a TEDx talk, it is a TED talk, because it's the TED brand. They own it. Right? They have somebody thankfully, not me, not us. But the coordinator of the TEDx event that you're at, went through a lot of trouble, as you said, to get to be able to have a TED, you know, sponsored conference and have TEDx speakers. So yes, use it by all means. It is not as hard as people think to get a TEDx talk to apply. Just make the case that you got something important to say, it's only 18 minutes if you've written a whole book. My goodness, you have got enough gems in that Look for sure to give a 10 or 15 minute talk that is going to wow people. I am just so passionate. I believe that wholeheartedly.
Anna David: I mean, it doesn't have to be that long. I mean, I read somewhere like there's like a three minute talk that's really successful. Yes. Do you have a favorite TED Talk?
Bridget: Probably Brene Brown's talk on vulnerability. I just love her so much. I love all her work. I gosh, I have so many favorites. I love Shaun Akers' work. I don't know if you've heard about him. But he talks about happiness. Oh, my gosh, his talk called the happy secret to something that happy secret to better work? I think it is. And it's all about how we generate happiness in our lives internally. We're looking for it in these external circumstances. And that's not where it comes from. And we all know this, but he shares it. And I think his talk is only 12 minutes. I've shown that at countless trainings, and shared it with countless coaching clients and everybody loves it and says it was really a mindset shift for them as far as how to feel good in our lives. So you're absolutely right. I think a 10 a 12 minute talk can be life changing for us. That's why I love Ted so much.
Anna David: One of my previous podcast guests, Chris Voss told me and he's a big media star. Now he prepared for the media by watching Angela Duckworth, grit talk. Oh, I love it. Yeah. He said, Yeah. What is powerful about this, and he analyzed the tone of voice and all of these things. I think my favorite is Derek Severs. Have you ever seenHow to start a revolution?
Bridget: No, I have to watch it.
Anna David: He barely talks. It's mostly showing a video. So it's like, you can get so creative.. So what do you know about the process of finding and applying? What can you share?
Bridget: Yeah, I think it's a matter of I think you have to have grit and you and persistence. And you have to do a thorough search. And you have to talk to everybody you know, and tell them you have a TED talk, and you're looking for a venue. And for me, it was just through the avenues of people I knew and I gave it at the university where I was teaching. But I've talked to lots of people who just were really aggressive, assertive about going out into communities, googling where TED talks are happening, talking to everyone in their networking community. A lot of people say it came through someone they knew or some connection they had, but that they didn't initially necessarily know that that person had a connection to a TEDx conference, right? And so you gotta be a big mouth. You gotta tell everybody.
Anna David: So do recommend deciding this is my TEDx talk and writing it out and memorizing it before applying?
Bridget: Yeah, I do and have a catchy title, have a timely topic, I don't think you have to, I think it's great. If you can do that. I don't think you have to have it. 100% fleshed out. In fact, a lot of what I do as a coach when I coach TEDx speakers is give me kind of a rough outline of their talk. And I can really, really help them flesh it out. We talked about this before Anna, but you know that I'm big on stories. And people, they come with an outline of all this, these are the things I want to teach people, these are the points I want to make. And then I help them say, no, no, you're gonna do that through storytelling, because the most popular TED Talks have lots of stories and your TED talk has been testing stories and your story about the homeless man, and all your experiences, you got to have your stories. So I actually maybe want to take back what I said and say, have definitely have your title, your topic, let be ready to let people know that is your area of expertise, but have it outlined and be ready to work with a coach or to even if it's just working with the people, you know, on fleshing out those powerful stories, because that's what people remember.
Anna David: Yeah. And by the way, one of the places where I got in, they were like, I've got my talk, and here we go. And they go, “no, no, no, no, no, we want to help you come up with the talk”, right? That was the only TEDx place where they actually had coaches where it was like free coaching. Yeah. But most aren't going to have that right?
Bridget: Some do. I mean, mine did, but I was the coach. Not only the responsibility of giving my talk and being ready and being the first speaker of the day, but to actually coach all of the other speakers. So in some TEDx conferences, do they bring in someone as a volunteer coach, or they have the funding, they'll pay for a coach, but many don't, from what I understand. Yeah.
Anna David: Okay, let's say you have a book and you go, I want to make this into a TEDx talk. How do you start and we can take some of my clients as examples. And I've had a few clients that have done it, but like, Okay, I'm thinking of a client, who wrote a memoir about growing up Mormon in this crazy family and unraveling different aspects of it. How do you take a story like that and go, Okay, I'm gonna make this into a 10 or an 18 minute talk. What do you do?
Bridget: I think You pull out what you think the beauty of having such a short time is you get to pull out your most powerful material. So I'm a big fan. Maybe it's because I taught public speaking for so long, though, right? But of having like your two or three key points like what are they real? Remember that people forget 25% of what you say two days later, I'm sorry, forget 75% of what you say. So people will forget 75% of what you say two days later, this is based on the communication academic literature. So what they'll remember is the key points, like, that person helped me understand that happiness comes from within, it doesn't come from external circumstances, right? They'll take away a key point. So you want to be clear from the get go from your 200 or 300 page book, whatever it is, like, what are their two or three core points that people will take away that will be most meaningful and most memorable? That's where you have to start?
Anna David: So my key point, you know, is that like, you know, you never really know your family or something like that. Do you cry? So you decide what the two or three key points are? And then you find the best story to illustrate?
Bridget: Yes, exactly. That would be my order, I would truly recommend it. And I think the title, like, really makes sure your title is catchy, intriguing, but also a really good indication of what people are going to get out of it. I don't think people like when the title has nothing to do with what the talk is actually about. It can be, you know, I know like your title, how were your labels. I love it, because it is what you talk about. But there's a little surprise about where you're going with it. So I like that. But I also think it's important for people to have some inkling of what they're gonna get out of it. It's like a teaser, right?
Anna David: Well, I'll tell you the absolute truth about my talk, and listeners I'm telling you to, I hired somebody to write that talk, which is shocking to us inside. This is all I've ever done is right. But I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't taking a book and making it into a talk. I wish I had, it would have been much easier. And I hated what they wrote. But they came up with that title. And I liked the title. In retrospect, now that this is years later, I know so much more about titles, and mostly from learning about book titles, that no, no, no, you have to give more of an indication in it. Because the competition is so fierce. So would you recommend, I don't know, key words, or just like how do you know what to put in the title?
Bridget: Yeah, so my title is How Public Speaking Will Change Your Life. And I'm actually happy with it. Yeah. Because I think it's why I have no paid advertising whatsoever, you know, 300,000 views, like people just found their way to it if they were searching for a TED talk about. Yeah, so I did nothing to do that. So and I'm not I'm not I'm not bragging because there are people with millions of views. But I'm saying with no paid adverts with nothing, I like literally just did it and wanted to have it and didn't do anything with it really. So people found their way to and I'm really happy with that, because it is about public speaking. It is about how to overcome the fear of public speaking and embrace public speaking in your life and your career and to feel good about it. And to see that it's a gift to the world that you have some kind of gift to give the world so I'm really happy with the title. The only thing I would say for you and I right, you probably agree is I would have had addiction in the title somehow. But the thing is that I do like that kind of peeking people's interest. I weighed myself because I know you and I know your story. When I saw the title, I was like, Oh, I can't wait to listen to that. Because I know what it's really going to be about what kind of labels she's talking about. So it can work for you, really you have to play with it, I think but I do. I do agree with you, Anna, that like, make sure your title gives people a clear indication of what it's really going to be about what they're going to get from it. So I had to have public speaking in my title.
Anna David: Yeah. And you know, to be clear, my mind doesn't have nearly doesn't have anywhere near 300,000 views. So it's like, it's wonderful if the people who know you are going to be interested, but it's not much more wonderful if people interested in your topic are going too.
Bridget: And I am telling you that that's because of my title. Yeah, I don't have nearly that many views or listens on, I have three podcasts and I have all this other stuff out there. And I really think it's because, one, it's the TED brand. And two, it's about public speaking. So people are searching for a TED talk on public speaking because it's in the name, remember that keyword, the SEO, the search, you know, all that all that really comes into play here. So back to you know, my recommendations have a really catchy title but a title that has the key words of what your talk is about. Have your two or three key core points and then anchor them in the most powerful stories that you can think of from your personal life. Anna, when you said to me that you had someone else write that really blew me away because it's so personal. And it's so you and it's so authentic and you're so vulnerable and open and real. I just love your talks so much. And because it's so us, it speaks to how you can get so much as you can even now to someone, right, and you probably didn't use what they wrote, but it was a starting point for you. If you can afford to get someone to write your speech, you can afford a coach, go for it, because you're still going to end up with your authentic piece of work. Yeah, why not get that help to give you something to start with? And to give you something to work from?
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't recommend, well, now it's so different. Like this was a place where they were like, we've done talks for everybody, but nobody wants to admit that they have their talks written. So we can't tell you who and so I don't even think it was like that legitimate right dinner party told me about it. But what was helpful is they had a questionnaire and the questionnaire had a lot of personal questions. And you know, and so it got me thinking about it. In the end, I would say to anybody, don't do what I did, hire a professional. Write the talk yourself, right.
Bridget: And you can write it in collaboration, much like you do with books. Anna, you know, I say the same. I tell people about you all the time, like recommending you. If you want to have a book out there. You don't have to do it all yourself. Yeah, to do. You don't have to do a lot of it. If you want to get full service work with someone like Anna's company. But same thing with a TED Talk. I've had many people come to me and say, Can you write it for me? And I say no, absolutely not. But let's sign up for 10 coaching sessions. And we'll write it together. And it'll be amazing. Because you're gonna tell me and what I've done. It's the most fun coaching because I'm like, Okay, tell me your stories. Tell me what you most want people to know. And we write it together. And they're so happy at the end.
Anna David: So how does that work? So they show up? Does it have to be 10 Sessions?
Bridget: No, but this is what I typically recommend when someone is starting with nothing.
Anna David: Yeah. You're starting with a book, maybe five sessions?
Bridget: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say at least two or three, you know, but I've also had people come to me. I've actually had people come to me, when they have the whole thing written, practiced. They have their TED Talk, they've practiced it with a million people, and they just want to do one session to get my take on it. My feedback, and that's great, too. So anything? Yeah, absolutely any level of service, which you offer as well, many different options there.
Anna David: So you know, talking it out with somebody, and then how much of it is written and how much is bullet points?
Bridget: You know, it's interesting, because I am a fan of writing the whole thing out nearly for a TED talk only for a TED Talk. When I taught public speaking for 28 years, I'll say, it was always bullet points. It was like Do not write out your talk because you're giving it in front of this live audience for just this one time and it's a small intimate group and you can just be yourself. Just have your bullet points and speak naturally, speak extemporaneously or conversationally, right. That's always my recommendation for most talks, but with a TEDx talk, given the stakes, the gravity I have to say honestly, you know, going in knowing Ted now owns this, you have no rights to it. You 're gonna put it online forever for you know, in perpetuity. So you want to have it be as close to perfect as you possibly can. So yes, write it out word for word. But the challenge with writing out word for word is you really have to practice and rehearse so that it sounds natural and conversational. Nobody wants to hear you read your speech.
Anna David: Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so you write it out word for word. And then do you recommend I mean, one thing I do is I will tape record myself and then play it back, do recommend doing that?
Bridget: I do exactly the same thing. Yep. record myself or just I have a PDF reader. So I can just have the words written now you can whatever technology works. We also recommend videoing yourself, recording yourself and looking at your body language and your movements. Is there anything awkward going on there? It's really important to have an awareness of how you're carrying yourself, your voice, your pacing, eliminating those vocalized pauses, hums and ahhs. All of that is work that I do with people and then I had to do myself as well.
Anna David: So let's talk about your talk. How many times do you estimate you’ve practiced it?
Bridget: Oh my gosh, practiced? Oh my gosh, I don't know. Maybe 100. I mean, maybe 50. I don't even know. I mean, I just listened. I definitely listened to it over and over hundreds of times, because why not? You're driving in the car, running, exercising. You're cleaning your dishes, washing your dishes, doing your laundry, you could be listening to it over and over. Right? Well, maybe 25 Maybe 50. It's really hard to say Yeah, and I did. I practiced it over and over.
Anna David: Until you're so sick of it.
Bridget: Yeah. Do you know how many times you did?
Anna David: No. I have no idea but like How do you keep it fresh? You know, when you're like, I'm so sick of hearing myself say this sort of thing, you know, how do you do that?
Bridget: You don't think you can keep it fresh for yourself. I think when you're in front of the live audience now I know a lot of people are doing type two TED talks, virtually now, I was lucky mine was before COVID. So it was with when you're in front of that live audience, and you look at them, and you see that they're hearing it, they're there and excited to hear it for the first time. That energy naturally is sparked in the moment.
Anna David: Yeah, yeah. So you just resign yourself to being bored with it and being like, well, and maybe you can pretend you're someone new, almost like an exercise? Or an audience member? So the order is, look at your book, you know, find the key points, find the stories that match it, write an outline, either work with someone or write it out yourself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And then start searching, you know, it is not yes, they do not make it easy to find TEDx talks, because there's no unified center. So it really is a lot of Googling and spreadsheets and going, Oh, okay. Some TEDx events make it really clear, submit, hear most do not? Most do not. And I say if this is your goal, say, you know, I know people who've gone to Amsterdam to give. But yeah, for me, I said, I'm willing to go anywhere in the state of California. And so I just applied to every one I could find in California, they each have different themes. They're very general themes. So you can kind of make your topic fit a theme.
Bridget: 100%. I believe any topic can fit any theme. Yes.
Anna David: And each place is going to be different in each place, tech is going to be different. I did a TEDx talk in an auditorium where you couldn't even hear me. It was like a, it was like an I mean, a frickin school auditorium. And then I did one that was really great. So understand that you cannot control how high tech or low tech an event is. Yeah, you could do some Googling to figure out if this is, you know, some of the TEDx stages are a much bigger deal than others. Do you know anything about that?
Bridget: I don't know that much about it. But I think you can research you know, thankfully, you can research. You can look at the TED talks from that conference. And you look at what their website looks like? What does it say just you really, it's where the grit and the persistence come in. If you're serious about it, and you have a book, you will get it, you will get a TED talk. And you will, if you're willing to put in the work and the time and research, you'll find a 10x conference that matches what you're looking for. But you've got to be willing to dig deep and do the research. And you can even reach out to someone like yourself, so many people reached out to me, through my TEDx talk, they thought you know, you can Google anybody and you'll find an email for them somewhere or a contact page on their website. people reach out to me all the time. Hey, I found your TED talk, I'd love to talk to you about it, you know how I can do one. So you can find someone's TED talk at that conference, try to find them, reach out and be like, Hey, can I get five minutes of your time to ask you about what it was like speaking at this conference? Keep persistent, be assertive, find out from all the people who you can potentially tap into to learn and pick. Yeah, maybe you're going to be in the lucky position of picking which one you would most prefer to speak at.
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, you can do what I did, which is I just did the same talk and a bunch of them which one of them yanked me out you know, said you can't do that but most don't care and if you were to decide. If you're going to the trouble of applying for all these and you get in, why not? Why not have this experience? Yeah, what about the actual talk? What do you recommend? Like you know, it's down to don't wear red or don't drink too much water?
Bridget: I would say just wear something that's comfortable that you feel great in whatever you feel you look your best in but that's comfortable for you to move around in. I regret wearing a tight skirt. You know, I would want something a little more comfortable but I love blue and I feel good and blue. So I knew from the get go that I was going to be wearing a blue tarp. So I don't wouldn't say don't wear red but I would say wear what you know you feel good and look good in Yeah, and get a good night's sleep if you can. That's so ironic because I didn't sleep the whole night before my TED Talk. So get a good night's sleep but if you don't then just Just be careful of your trash talk in your mind. Right so I didn't sleep all night. So I didn't couldn't change that. It was like you know what you can do. You can teach and you lead all day training programs with unknown sleep, you can do this, you can do this talk on no sleep, you'll be fine. You can get through it, you know. So make sure that your self talk I think is really affirming and positive, no matter how much everyone else tells you. Yeah, you're gonna do great. You have to be able to speak to yourself that way. And just take good care of yourself. Yeah, don't drink too much water, so that you're gonna have to pee right in the middle of it. Take care of your physical needs, make sure you're in good shape physically, emotionally, mentally, as much as you can. And really just tell yourself, you've got this, you can do it.
Anna David: Do you recommend going early and mingling with the audience? And do you do? Yeah,
Bridget: I do. I mean, if you can, depending on what's going on with your TEDx conference, I was lucky enough to be among many friends, because it was at the University where I had been teaching for many years. So I felt really good to get there early, and get hugs and talk with people and have people say, I'm so excited to hear your talk. But then I'm a big meditator. I meditate every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So I definitely needed to be able to pull away and find a quiet hallway and just sit and center myself and get quiet and do some breathing. Breathing. So if that works for you, if you know that works in your day to day life, to calm yourself and center and ground yourself and find a way to find that space for yourself.
Anna David: And did you have to apply? Was that awkward?
Bridget: Yeah, no, they didn’t, I was worried that I wouldn't get picked because they didn't want to be incestuous. And say, no, we want to have community leaders, they had student speakers as well at my conference. So I thought, well, they might not pick me because I'm a professor at the University and they figure I can get a TED Talk anywhere. But it ended up working in my favor. And I knew the curator of the TEDx talk. And I talk about that in my talk that, you know, net, we always say like, networking is everything. And it's who you know, and you know, you and I are people, people, people anyway, and I like, sincere, and we love connecting with people. But I got that TED talk because of connections, that I was always very conscientious about making real and deep and genuine connections with people in all of my circles. And I would not have gotten that TED talk if it weren't for that. And I didn't do it because of the TED Talk. Because I didn't know that this person was the curator of the TED conference when I got to know her. But it happened to work in my favor.
Anna David: No, what do you do if you're bombing? What the hell do you do? Can you reel it back in?
Bridget: Yes, you can always reel it back in. And I've always taught this in my public speaking training programs and courses, you've got to be able to read the room, you got to be able to read the audience. If energy is low, when you're looking out there, or you feel it, like pick up your energy, pull yourself together, manage your mind, so much of it is going to be the talk in your mind is like if you're bombing and don't tell yourself, you're bombing, just saying I'm feeling a little low energy, you know what, I'm gonna raise my volume, I'm gonna, like, do that inner work of talking louder and talking a little faster, maybe and telling that story with a little bit more oomph and passion and enthusiasm. You can absolutely turn it around in the moment. I have done that many times.
Anna David: I love it. Now, would you say that as an author, you're that much more likely to be able to book a TEDx talk?
Bridget: Yes, absolutely. You're applying like you're applying for a job? Yeah, they want people who have credentials, who are going to bring a bigger audience who are going to capture people's attention more, having a book is a huge advantage for you.
Anna David: And you told me this thing that you're like, nobody cares, did we? I can't remember if I said this on tape. Nobody cares that I was a professor for 26 years. But everyone cares that I have a book and a TEDx talk. And that's true.
Bridget: Absolutely. Absolutely. Whenever I'm introduced, it's the book and the TEDx talk that come first and I self published my book, I'll say that proudly, nobody knows. Nobody cares. I went through that process and got lots of support, like the kind of support that you provide, and, you know, books and the TEDx talk.
Anna David: And well how has having both of those changed your life and your career?
Bridget: Well in that way, I mean, I just want to elaborate and say they give you credibility that you simply cannot find through any other activity you might do. You can be on a board of directors, you can be on the you know, in the leadership of your organization, which is great. I love doing those things. You know, I volunteer for a bit I'm involved in a million different things but you're gonna have credibility and that those that brand, like nothing else you can possibly do, but honestly, I'm not like and I didn't realize the extent of how much I would get this from it, but the the feeling of truly helped and people, like your TEDx talk was so meaningful and so powerful. And I know it's helped so many people, right? Who, who also identifies with being an addict and the empowerment that you brought to that talk, and I don't I have, we all have lots of labels. You know, It's so funny how your talk can be so meaningful and so deeply helpful and transformative for people who you wouldn't even think of, like your talk was so meaningful for me for a million reasons.
But because as you know, I have a transgender daughter. And that's a label that we have in our family, right? That is very scary to share with people, I have a transgender daughter, I've embraced it over the years, we, you know, we are out there in the world, educating people. But in the beginning, it was really, really scary to say that, you wouldn't necessarily think that in my TED Talk, where I openly talk about the label of being an addict. It's going to empower and inspire and transform all these people's lives who are going to hear this, who have totally different labels that I can't even imagine, right. So that's where I think it's going to be something of value in people's lives that they can't even imagine. That you're going to be giving a gift to the world that's going to feel so rewarding and meaningful and just profoundly deeply important to you in ways that you can't possibly feel before you ever have the experience of giving a TEDx talk.
Anna David: I love it. What a note to end on. So, Bridget, what's the best way? And so you guys are podcast listeners. So you have two or 3 podcasts?
Bridget: Three. Okay, so the most important, well, they're all important to me, my daughter and I the most popular for sure is my daughter and I have a podcast called Transgender School. And she identifies with three of the letters of the acronym LGBTQ plus. So we talk about sexual orientation and identity, we talk about gender identity.
Anna David: You talk about dog identity.
Bridget: My dogs are barking. So yes, we do talk about our dogs, talking about our dogs. It's very supportive. They want to be heard. And so please listen to that to be an ally, to be educated. It's not just for people in the LGBTQ plus community, it's for all of us, for everyone. It's so important for people to learn, and we're learning. And then my personal podcast is just me, my coaching podcast is called Growth and Gratitude. And I just started it. I'm just about to release my second episode, and I talk all about coaching, life coaching, executive coaching, we all have it and how to just live a meaningful and happy and rewarding life. And it's okay if it's not happy, and how to process emotion and feel sad, and just everything around living our lives fully and wholeheartedly as Brene Brown talks about. And the third podcast, which is on Hiatus, but we have 30 episodes, and I am so proud of is called The Right Questions, which is with my partner Todd, who's a fellow coach in my company, and we talk all about how asking ourselves the right questions in life leads us to the answers and where we want to go in life. And it's all about powerful questions, the power of questions. So those are my three podcasts, find them. They're free. They're out there, all of them. Also, we have the video of every single episode on YouTube. So you can watch us you can hear us there on all the podcast apps and I would love for people to find us and learn from us
Anna David: Also hire Bridget, you know, if somebody's interested in working with you on their talk, what's the best way for them to find you?
Bridget: Yeah, find me, go search for me. I have my coaching and consulting website called Sampsoncoachingandconsulting.com. We have transgenderschool.org. So find my website, you're welcome to email me. Both of those have contact pages, they go directly to my email, find me just google me, you'll find me I'm out there in a million different places. Bridget Sampson, Find me I would love to work with you and I do a free 20 minute consultation for anybody who wants to talk with me. Absolutely. I have time in my schedule for anything, any kind of coaching, any kind of training or I leave retreats, group experiences, whatever you need, we can chat.
Anna David: I love it. I will have links to all of that in the show notes. So Bridget, thank you so much. And you guys, thank you so much for listening. Go get your TEDx talks.
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June 15, 2022
How to Get a Journalist's Attention with HARO Creator Peter Shankman
Peter Shankman is many things, among them a five-time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate in-person and virtual keynote speaker who focuses on customer service. But in this episode I got him speaking about something so many of you ask me about: HARO, or Help a Reporter Out...the website he started (and sold to Cision many years ago) that helps so many authors get featured in mainstream media.
In this conversation, which happened in rapid fire while he was in the throws of salmonella, Peter shared with me how he started HARO accidentally, the best way to get a journalist's attention and why someone stealing a Yoo Hoo truck ended up being the best PR Yoo Hoo could get, among many other topics.
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Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow
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How Do I Use My Book to Get on Podcasts?
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Hi, Peter, thank you so much for being here.
Peter Shankman: Glad to be here.
Anna David: So in addition to being an author, you many times over, I consider you someone who has helped authors get coverage more than anyone else out there because the first thing I do, as anyone who listens to this podcast knows, is I say go to HARO when you're writing your book, because you are writing a book on this topic, therefore, you are an expert on this topic. So I say thank you on behalf of all authors, Peter.
Peter Shankman: You're welcome. It's nice to see something I created almost 15 years ago now. It's still very popular. So that's makes me happy every time I hear it.
Anna David: More popular than ever, it seems like.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, people tend to keep using it. There's always a part of me that wants to buy it back. But they can't go back again.
Anna David: Well, and also there are these poor imitations that I have tried, and I'm just saying, they just they suck in comparison. I'm not naming names. So tell me about the inspiration to start HARO. How did that happen?
Peter Shankman: So I talked to everyone I have massive ADHD. And when you imagine ADHD, you talk to everyone and if I'm on a plane, and you're next to me, unless you fake your death, I'm gonna know everything about you by the time we land. And so over time, you know, just growing up and living in New York City and Boston and California, I created this massive Rolodex. If anyone listening to you is under 30, a Rolodex like Outlook that has cards, and you turn it. And I came with this massive Rolodex of 1000s and 1000s of people and journalists. I ran a PR firm at one point in my life and journalists knew me and they knew. Peter, you know, I'm doing a story on whatever, who do you know, who does? I tell them, ya call this guy or call that guy.
And over time, more and more journalists are calling me asking me hey, I'm doing this or whatever. And the straw that broke the camel's back was I'm calling for the Wall Street Journal, a friend of mine at the Times said that, you know, a lot of you I'm doing a story on African farming. And my friend said, you have a lot of friends that are subsaharan soil experts. And 12 hours later, I found a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend at USC who knew someone, right? So it's alright, this is getting a little ridiculous, maybe if I, what if I put all the queries together and send them out automatically. And you know, that led to what is now Help A Reporter Out.
Anna David: That is amazing. So my personal experience with harrow is the very first time I used it, I wrote a two line thing. And suddenly, next, I'm quoted in Fortune magazine, I ended up being quoted millions, you know, dozens of times by that writer, then I have written elaborate, amazing things like blogs that are super random, and I never hear back. So what is the secret? Is it just a numbers game?
Peter Shankman: I think it partially is a numbers game. But more and more across the field. I think it's about an early response game, you know, think about this when the Herald was at 545. In the morning, by six o'clock, there are at least 100 people that have sent in a response to every single query. And so if you're smart enough to know your answer, you need to do a couple of things, you need to make sure that your response is quick and to the point, and is easy. You need to make sure that you can write in such a way that the reporters are willing to use the answers to all the questions they have without wasting their time. Most importantly, that you haven't done it quickly. So I mean, the best recommendation I can give, create a mock write up of what you would send with some key parts left blank. And those key parts are usually with reporters going to ask. And so you know, my name is Peter, I recently found a company called blah, we do blah, based on your query about blank. I think I'd be the perfect person to answer the question of what is blank, because our company, blank, and you know, that gives you that much more to work with and you can really read the Harrow, fill it out and send it within three minutes. The speed game, a lot of the speed,
Anna David: It goes up at 5:45 East Coast time, right.
Peter Shankman: 5:45 am East Coast, 12:45 pm East Coast and then 5:45 pm East Coast. Yeah, I have a friend of mine on the West Coast who paid me a compliment when she goes, I know I've been awake too long on the West Coast when I get Peter's morning HARO before I go to bed.
Anna David: I know that's my recommendation to you in California. It's just staying up all night. You'll be the first.
Peter Shankman: Well there are people who set their mailing program on their phone to have the Harrow act as an alarm. And so they wake up at 5:45 when it comes out so they can review it and answer it. Yeah, there are some junkies out there.
Anna David: What I think is really genius about it is, you know, I started in journalism back when we would never have conceived of taking emailed answers as a quote and tie and it just changed. Did you understand that that was changing? Or was that just a lucky break?
Peter Shankman: I started my career. I mean, I was a journalism major in the early 90s. And then when I'm starting my career, my first job in a school was I helped found the Newsroom in America Online. And I watched digital news be born. And I watched the birth of digital news between the US and MSNBC. People don't realize that MSNBC actually served from Microsoft NBC, and it was a Microsoft NBC joint venture. And we launched a newsroom in the height of the dot com boom, well, not the height of the dot com boom, but back when the dot com boom was first gaining its legs in the mid 19, early mid 90s. And some of the time the.com boom came around. I mean, do you remember something called Point cast? When cast? Was this this screensaver that would turn on and bring you information? Right? bring you news to your screen while your screen is off, right?
While your screensaver was on. So you know, all I saw was where it was going. And I saw more importantly, that for every new bit of technology that was impacting journalists negatively, journalists are consistently having to do 10 times more with five times less or bite or scratch that reverse. And so for me, I'm like, Well, what can I do? I always had my job as a PR person back when I did PR isn't to make a client happy to make a reporter happy, they make the reporter happy, the clients I'm having by default. So what can I do to make that client happy? And for me, that was always offering them information, I didn't necessarily need to pitch them. And that was really the foundation of HARO. So the concept of being able to help a journalist do more with less, is really what sort of blew it up.
Anna David: And you also have a book about how to, one of your earlier books was really about how to, you know, kind of awesome PR sort of stunts, would you say?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, my first one was called, Can We Do That? It was all about outrageous PR stunts and how they can benefit your company.
Anna David: So how has it changed now? Do you have to be more outrageous today than when you wrote the book?
Peter Shankman: You know, it's funny. I'm talking about on CNN and MSNBC, and a lot of what they call me for back eight, nine years ago, they used to call me when when companies or people did stupid shit, when they took a PR stunt too far, when a celebrity said something stupid. With the invention of Twitter, and the dumbing down of America, and you know, our previous president, things like that, the bar for what stupid things actually are, has dropped, or has raised I guess, depending on how you look at it. And I don't get caught about that anymore, I get called about other things. But you know, a company making a stupid statement might gather two seconds of screen time when 10 years ago gather 10 minutes worth. So you have to ask yourself, you know, where is the bar? You know, it's the same thing with customer experience, the customer service bar is so damn low, that I don't need you to be awesome anymore.
I need you to suck slightly less than everyone else. And the same thing sort of applies from a PR standpoint, there are so many bad pitches going out every single day in the media, that I don't need you to be awesome. I need you to just get the facts right, get them to the right journalist and get their name right. I will, you know, my two favorite stories, one which happened a couple days ago. And quickly is my new favorite story, as I was in the Omni Hotel in Florida two days ago about to give a keynote. Yesterday actually, I was about to give a keynote. Ming you, I was doing this with salmonella, so I wasn't happy to begin with. And I couldn't get online and I called the front desk. I'm like, “Yeah, my like, well did you enter your last name, and your room number in the bottom. I'm like, “yeah.” “Are you sure you are spelling your last name right?” “Well, it's been my last name for almost 50 years. So I'm pretty sure I got that part down, thanks.”
You know, and then the other one my favorite is, you know, last Mother's Day, I got a pitch. I still get tons of pitches all the time from the media. And I got one last Mother's Day. Dear Peter, we know that working moms like you have it tough. So you know that if that's where the bar is, I don't need you to be awesome. I need your walk crossfire. That shifts hard. I don't need to do any of that. I just need you to [inaudible].
Anna David: I mean, you're preaching to the choir, this thing with hotels, like basically the companies that used COVID as an excuse to suck and never come back from sucking. Because they're just like, oh, no, we don't clean rooms anymore because of COVID. Sorry, sorry, what does that even mean?
Peter Shankman:: Yeah, I got the same thing. Yeah.
Anna David: So but in terms of a stunt that would work, you know, what kinds of things would you recommend? I mean, I'm looking at some of the things you talked about in that book. A small yarn shop that got people to eat their sweaters?
Peter Shankman: No, no, the small yarns shop, the best one for that. Well, yeah, that was made with a handsome Martha Stewart sweater, but the best one for the yarn shop was that we created. You know, the problem with the yarn store, they were just outside New York City, and when you’re just outside New York City, no one wants to visit you because you're outside of New York City, you might as well be in Wisconsin. And so what we did was we created a bus and we put two giant needles on the two giant needles and two giant balls of yarn made out of like, you know, plastic on the roof of the bus and drove around New York City picking people up taking them to the yarn store and bringing them Back called the Yarn Bus. And it was everywhere saying the show it was on Martha Stewart was all over the world. And they made a fortune. Because you know, they were the average spend, I think for every customer is like 200 bucks. And they're bringing like, you know, 300 customers a day, it was crazy.
Anna David: And so, so these PR stunts that you wrote about in the book, were they all once you engineered?
Peter Shankman: Yes.
Anna David: Okay, another one. You got CEOs to jump out of a plane in the name of brand visibility? Who is that for?
Peter Shankman: So that was actually for my PR firm. During the dotcom boom, everyone had a PR firm and it was trying to do better. And I'm like, Well, how can we get press that you know, what can we do to invite reporters and potential clients to do? Oh, a softball game, boring, picnic, boring, dance party, boring. Let's go skydiving, someone said. I don’t remember who. One of them. I mean, so 150 of us jumped on a plane. We called it a web dive 2000. We got a front page, tons and tons of press. My lawyer had a heart attack. When I told him what we're doing. It was incredible. And the best part about it was that the 150 people, 149 of them you know, jumped and had a great time. And I left it at that. Now I've wound up getting my skydiving license and I have over 500 jumps now. I've jumped over the Pyramids of Giza and all over the world. So yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Anna David: That was your first time though?
Peter Shankman: Yeah.
Anna David: And okay, another one: a stolen Yoo Hoo truck became a financial and media relations. Can you tell me about that one?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, we had a client. I was repping Yoo Hoo at the time. And we had a garbage truck that traveled around the country to go to the Warped Tour concerts in summer 2002. And they were followed by a truck with all the supplies, all the Yoo Hoo and everything like that. And that truck was stolen. And so we put in an APB offering a free lifetime supply of Yoo Hoo if someone found the truck, it was found in like 45 minutes.
Anna David: Oh, my God. So your brain, which as you've discussed many times, works really fast, just automatically thinks of these things. What do you think of something like that, that's going to be a stunt?
Peter Shankman: A lot of times, it's just understanding that, hey, this could be worth you know, I asked myself what I want to read about this, right? And that's really doing you should ask yourself, Is this something, if I didn't know, this company, if I wasn't attached to this brand, would I want to read this, but I want to take a look at what's going on with this interest me? And if the answer is yes, you know, why not give it a shot and see what happens?
Anna David: I mean, I think that that is the major problem. And I used to come at it this way. Like we think of our books as news. Our books are not news to anyone, no one cares about your book.
Peter Shankman: There is very little stuff that we do that could be considered news, very little. A lot of it is going to be the question of what is interesting enough to be worth the time of the journalist, because so few things are. So the question is, what can you find that becomes interesting to the journalist? What can you take a story that would otherwise be boring as shit? Repainting your conference room is not a story. Right? So what can you find that you can then take to the journalist? It's okay, this has some interest because it's not just about me.
Anna David: Right. So how have you used this for your books? Did you do stunts? So how did you promote your books?
Peter Shankman: Well, I mean, faster than normal. My most recent book, which is about ADHD, is the premise that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. And every media outlet I talked to, you know, thought of what they've been told, which is that ADHD is obviously a curse, it's a terrible thing to have. It's the worst thing in the world. But I cannot have a lot to say, actually, no, there's some benefit here. If you understand how to use your brain, and a better way, you can actually do pretty well. And you know, saying that, Oh, wow. Okay, never thought of it that way. Give me some examples at four or five examples ready to go at any given time, that changes things. So it really, it's a way of, can you make people think, a little different.
Anna David: And so it's not like you wrote that book with the concept like, Oh, this is gonna be really needed for journalists, this is what you know for books.
Peter Shankman: I wrote the book based on how I can help people channel their iterative gene and how they can use it to their advantage, but I understood how to pitch it because of what I do for a living.
Anna David: So somebody who doesn't have your contacts and doesn't, you know, but has a very creative brain and can think of saying, what would you recommend? Let's say they're like, I want to be on the mainstream media, and they've got a book about, you know, let's try to think of some kind of boring, I have no idea. Nothing is boring, adopting a kid. And they're like, this is my memoir. It's a really heartwarming story. How did they get media attention?
Peter Shankman: Well it's the human interest angle, right? You talk about, you know, I wasn't able to have children. And this was my journey towards eventually finding the child of my life, finding that child who changed my life is my journey of saving a child from abuse in Russia, whatever it is. You know, it's not just about her duplicate, where's the better part of that story? Where's the part that would make you go oh, wow, I want to read that. Where's that? You know, we have a very short attention span of 2.77 second attention span this country. So what can you do to make the reporter or the person or the reader stop and say, Okay, I'll give you more time?
Anna David: Yeah, yeah. And do you, I had a previous guest who said, "Oh, you've got to call journalists" because others never call a journalist.
Peter Shankman: No, you never do not. If someone called me right now and I wasn't expecting the call, I'd have them killed. No. There is nothing good about making a phone call. I mean, I can't believe I used to answer those things without knowing who was calling. I grew up in the 80s. The phone rang. Hello? No, no, do not email, text anything with the report. First of all, find out who the reporter likes to get their information. The best way to do that is to ask them how they like to get their information, they'll tell you and you use that way.
Anna David: So how do you ask them how you look on Twitter? What do you say?
Peter Shankman: Hey, curious, I got your email from the station or from wherever I'll have an idea for a story. What's the best way to pitch? They will respond and they will say "Oh, thanks for asking. Do it this way."
Anna David: Okay, so it's better to do that than just to go in for the pitch.
Peter Shankman: Oh, god. Yeah, make that first connection. Or follow them online. Hey, I saw this piece you wrote on XYZ. I loved it. I'd love to pitch you something similar. What's the best way to do that? Read their bios, a lot of time they'll write out what their bios are.
Anna David: Right. Right. And so you do occasionally, like you have a webinar coming up by the time this takes place, it's passed, on how to pitch journalists newspaper, TV, online, all of that. How often do you do these webinars? Can people just go to them?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, and actually, you know what you can actually even though it's, it'll be past when you run this, people can still buy the audio recording. So I'm happy to give you the link. So Shank.com/press.
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, even though the hotel doesn't know that Peter knows how to spell his last name. He does. He just proved it. So I'm just, I'm just looking at some of the things you're covering in that. What guarantees you'll never get a response from a journalist.
Peter Shankman: Pitching them the wrong way, pitching them off topic or complaining that they wrote a piece and you weren't in it, they're obviously mistaken.
Anna David: But you could write and say, I've actually done this effectively before, you can write and say I absolutely loved your piece. I'm going to not so humbly say, Hey, I also have a podcast about this topic or whatever.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, next time, if you ever do this again, once again, feel free to file this. If you ever do this again next time. Yeah.
Anna David: How To piggyback back off a great media hit. What's the secret?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, the secret is to grab that great media hit, figure out why it went, why it was a success and alternate it, and pitch it in different ways. There are different brands out there, if you got a great TV hit, how can you turn that into press, how do you turn it into written word, you know, blog format, maybe some want to follow that up with a podcast, whatever it is.
Anna David: I remember I had a publicist on this podcast who said to me, you could never get on a mainstream show first time out, you got to work your way up through local TV.
Peter Shankman: You have really stupid guests.
Anna David: I mean, that's weird, because my first TV thing was CNN. And so is that just someone who doesn't get how to play the game?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, first of all, anyone who says anything like, you'll never. I had a great teacher in school who told me that on a true or false test, if there's not a multiple choice test if the answer if one of the choices are at are usually never or always those usually wrong. Great piece of advice. So yeah, there are tons of ways to do better than that.
Anna David: Yeah, you can absolutely get on CNN or Today Show your first time out, if you want the right thing. I'm related to that, something I used to say, to like, you know, when your thought is always or never, it's not a true thought. A no, it's gonna be like, whatever it is. So that can be applied in many, many places. What are the best email subject lines to get responses?
Peter Shankman: It varies, but you know, for me, and I'm not giving away everything for the webinar, but I would say that I've had a lot of success with just being straight up a pitch on XYZ. You get, you should follow the NY Times pitch bot, it's pretty funny. They come up with some of the worst pitches possible to be sent in here at times. But you know, anything that you can do that's out there, you know, just figure it out. Again, don't waste a journalist's time.
Anna David: Yeah. I'll tell you in pitching you because I was just looking at the email. And this is how I pitch people I really want on the podcasts, I'll go podcast requests 950,000 Plus downloads, not a bad thing. You said yes, quickly.
Peter Shankman: I think at the end of the day, for me I don't mind doing things like this because it's good karma and [inaudible]. Yeah, I’m happy to help where I can, I think more people in the world should help.
Anna David: Great. Well, thank you so much for doing this while you don't feel well. If you could leave authors with one piece of advice, your final advice for them when they want to get media attention for their book or for themselves, what would you recommend?
Peter Shankman: One piece of advice. Don't focus so much on crafting a story about you, focus on what crafting a story that other people would find interesting that includes yourself.
Anna David: Great. I love it. Well, Peter, thank you so much, the best place for people to find you.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, my entire world is Petershankman.com. My social name everywhere is @PeterShankman, including Peloton. And yeah, reach out. I'm Peter Shankman. When it comes to my email, I'm always happy to chat.
Anna David: Okay, I'm going to find you on Peloton later today. Thank you so much. Thanks guys for listening.
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