Anna David's Blog, page 15

Why to Write a Book Your Clients Won't Read with Angela Lauria

 

Dr. Angela E. Lauria is the founder of The Author Incubator and creator of the Difference Process for writing a book that matters. A Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of several books, she has helped over 1,000 authors write, publish and promote their books and her clients have been responsible for over $100 million in cumulative revenue.

In other words, she's a big believer in using your book to build and grow a business—a woman after my own heart!

In this episode (transcript below), we talked about when the publishing industry broke, how why she believes it's possible to write a book in a week and why the people who read your book are never the people who hire you.

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna:

I would love to have my listeners hear about your approach to books. I think you were very early in going, "Hey, book sales don't matter; it is really about what a book can do for your career." And I really liked that because in a way it was controversial.

Angela:

Oh yeah, it was super controversial. I started in the publishing industry in 1994. I was a senior in college, and one of my professors recommended me to work for this New York Times bestselling author, who was a investigative journalist. And then I worked with all the DC investigative journalists on like journalism e-books. That was the beginning of my career. And they all made money from writing books, and they all had big book contracts, which at the time for like a journalism book was like 500,000 to $2 million book advance. These were dudes, and they were all old white dudes that I worked with, just that's just who I worked with at the time. And these were dudes who had all made money on a salary from a newspaper. All the fancy publishers that I worked with, they would wine and dine the dudes that were producing the content that was making them money.

Angela:

It was very classy. I used to get to go to dinners at like Duke Zeibert's, which was like this CNBC place in Washington, DC, for all the investigative journalists. They were held on a pedestal in a very special way as published authors, like these were the best journalists. And now, instead of making a hundred-thousand dollars a year as a reporter, they were making $500,000 a year to write books. It was beautiful. It is not the way it works anymore, and it's not the way that it works for the coaching and consulting industry. When I started in publishing, there wasn't really an internet in it. There was America Online CD-ROMs. And so when you run into a bookstore, that was how you got books. You were not buying books online. People were afraid to put their credit cards in online. So when you walk into a bookstore, there's about 250,000 books, the average bookstore. When you pick a book from 250,000 books, that book has a very good chance. One out of 250,000 is actually really good compared to what happens now, which is we go to Amazon. There's about 25 million books to choose from with 250,000 books coming out every month. There are 250,000 books published every month. How do you stand out in that? Those numbers don't make sense anymore.

When David Wise, my first boss, was giving up 90% of his revenue to a publisher, he was giving up 90% of his revenue because how the fuck else was anyone going to find his books? We needed an intermediary to take a book from his hard drive and turn it into something and put it in bookstores. People think they're paying publishers for marketing. Publishers don't do marketing; they do B2B marketing to get your book in bookstores. They do printing and logistics. And most of us don't need that anymore. We don't need printing and logistics.

Anna:

I come from traditional publishing, too. And I sold my first book to Harper right when it broke, when everything changed, so I was like right on the cusp. It was 2005. They took me to lunch at Michael's. You know what I mean? That movie, Down with Love, did you ever see that?

Angela:

Yes.

Anna:

I was like, oh, this is my life. It's super glamorous. I'm very important to my publisher. And then I sold six more books to Harper and I just watched it dwindle away. And it kills me, because they never did anything. I'm a very slow learner. Even when I had a New York Times best seller, they did nothing because it wasn't like a number one.

Angela:

Yeah. You weren't Dan Brown.

Anna:

I wasn't Dan Brown. So I listen to people all the time go, oh, I want to go on a book tour. I was like, oh, good luck, good luck. I want that support that a publisher brings. And like, they just don't want to listen.

Angela:

Yeah. Because people have the fantasy. It's like an old fantasy. I remember coordinating David's book tour for a book called Nightmover that he had about a $1.5 million advance on. And they did a 25-city tour. They paid for hotels and flights and dinner. And I had to keep all the receipts, and I sent them in, and they got reimbursed, and then his next book came out and they said, we're going to... Which was '95, I think. Maybe it was '96, beginning of '96. And they're like, "We're going to do five cities for this book." And then by the next book, which I wasn't his assistant anymore, but by the next book, there was no book tour anymore. They were going to set up an AOL, Ask Me Anything, with AOL keyword book. So it's this old fantasy of the way the publishing... And I think the publishing industry even has that fantasy. I don't even think they know how much it's changed.

Anna:

So you have this realization, what year did you realize this is all broken?

Angela:

It was really 2014, and it happened by accident. I had been a ghostwriter, helping people write books, researcher, publicist, since 1994. Then in 2013, I launched The Author Incubator. And that was specifically with the goal of working on personal development books. So all my books before 2013 were espionage, politics, and then technology. Those were kind of my spaces, so I've ghostwritten a lot of books with Microsoft MVPs. Very exciting.

Anna:

Very.

Angela:

The books I would read, I would take the money from ghostwriting a book on Windows Server Backup. And I would take that money and I would go buy personal development books. I would go buy Marianne Williamson books. And all the books I bought were from Hay House. And I was like, why don't I do books like Hay House does? I want to have the next Hay House. I want all those authors.

Angela:

So I started working with those authors, and I realized something in that first year in business that changed everything for me, which was these personal development authors didn't have any fucking clue what they were doing. So everyone I had worked with before, they were like journalists and writers, and they had a strategy, and they were being paid by publishing companies, but that was their salary. And they worked, it was like a job. The only thing they did is they were a writer, and they would get up in the morning and they would go to their office and they would write and research and do interviews. They were journalists. Or I was working with these computer companies. These guys knew nothing. And they were like, "We are going to give you $50,000 to ghostwrite a book for us," and I'd make between 30 and $50,000 a book.

They're like, "We know nothing, you do it." They knew how to make money from software. They knew what they were doing. Personal development authors, I would do all the things I did with my other authors, and these people would change their topic five times, they didn't fucking finish their books. That first year I had 350 clients, maybe it was 250, 350. It was around 300 clients, which is great. Who gets 300 clients in their first year? One person finished her book, Jill Farmer, bless her heart. She like saved my soul I think that year. They didn't even know how to write books. They didn't even know what the fuck they wanted. They wanted to call me and talk about books.

Anna:

How did you find these people?

Angela:

I went to events for life coaches, and I would be like, "Hey, I've been in the publishing industry for 17 years. I'm a ghostwriter and a book coach and an editor," and everything I've been doing, "and a publicist. And if you need help with your book, I'll help you." I think I charged so many different, I didn't know what the hell I was doing either, but I don't know, $50 an hour I think is where I started. I was like, "I will help you with your book." And then I had this crazy idea that people would come to me with a book idea like all my other clients had ever hired me in 17 years. They're like, "I want to write a book about Windows Server Backup." And then six months later we had a book on Windows Server Backup. And I'm like, these people are fucking crazy. They just want to talk about writing a book. If you want to write a book, you'll have it done. It doesn't take that long. It's three to six months.

Anna:

I know. What takes a long time is, first of all, not knowing what you're doing when you're writing. And second of all, making a lot of excuses and claiming writer's block. That takes a lot of time. A lot of time.

Angela:

Oh, yeah. You can spend years on that. And nobody that's a real writer does. Like as a ghostwriter for 17 years, in 17 years I wrote 29 books. I also had a whole other career as an editor. That was my side hustle. In my free time, I wrote 29 books in 17 years.

Anna:

It doesn't take that long.

Angela:

It's really not that fucking hard.

Anna:

It's not. I'm with you. It's not that hard.

Angela:

You might need to do research, and that might take time. Like if you're doing a study over a year, you might need to put the study into the field and wait a year to gather, but writing up your findings, it takes three months to write a book. It's just not that fucking hard. And so I tried all these different things in my first year in business, and then I realized, oh, I'm asking the wrong question. The question isn't, do you want to write a book? The question is, do you have a business that would benefit from a book? Once I switched that question, then I had personal development professionals that had a business, and they were like, "I would like more clients for my fork-tuning sound healing business." I'm like, "Great. I can get you sound healing clients." Or "I do life coaching, and I would like life coaching clients," or "I do career coaching, I'd like career co- "

Angela:

Once I flipped the question and started with what's your business and do you need more clients? Then I went to, we now have a 99.6% completion rate. I think this year we have one person who didn't finish.

Anna:

How many books do you launch a year, and is it under your publishing company?

Angela:

Yeah. So that's a trick question because we did change that during COVID. Our biggest year we did 400 books. This year is definitely a slower year for us on purpose. I moved to the beach, half retired, and I've been much more selective about where I spend my time. I also have a teenager, but I think it will do about 200 books this year.

Anna:

Do they do all the writing and you guide them through it?

Angela:

Yeah. I find it's much faster and better to do your own writing, and I'll tell you why: as a ghostwriter for 17 years…when I write books for people, if you want me to write your book, I'll write it. It's a hundred-thousand dollars now and I'm happy to write your book for you. I don't think you should, though, and this is why. When you write your book, you change. Your brain just gets more organized. And you could think about this. If you ever had to put together a slide deck to pitch anyone anything, your potential clients or an investor or your mother, you have to organize your thoughts to do a slide deck or to write a proposal. And when you write your book, you become a better coach and you get more clients just from your own confident. You'll be like my shit's badass.

If I write it, you'll think I'm a badass. And luckily I already know I am, I don't need help with that. So it will change you and you could do it in less time and with less frustration, because when you work with a ghostwriter, you're going to tell them what you want in the chapter. That's going to take as long as it would take for you to just fucking write it, then I'm going to write it up slightly wrong and you're going to read it, and it's going to be like nails on a chalkboard. You're like, "Why does she say it takes two weeks? I told her it takes two months," but you actually misspoke and said two weeks and you don't remember that, but you would've caught it if it was your own thing. And so you're going to read it, you're going to be annoyed. And then you're just going to rewrite the chapter, or you're not going to read it, and you're going to say "That's good, publish it."

Anna:

I vehemently disagree, but we're all allowed as fellow bad asses!

Angela:

Tell me your perspective. That's just my experience after ghostwriting, I don't know, 50 books now I guess.

Anna:

Well I only ghostwrote one, but it did become a New York Times best seller. So I do think, I do know... And I'm a writer. I wrote for every magazine. I wrote for the New York Times. I majored in writing.

Angela:

Yeah, but did the person who came to you have a book contract?

Anna:

No, we sold it together. I got him the agent. He was a disaster. I don't ghost write at all. I won't do any, it was such a bad experience. I would never write another person's book. And the way I started my company is that so many people came to me and said, "Would you write my book?" And I said, "No, no, no." And finally someone said, "I don't care." So I said, "Look, I'll ask my friend to write it." And then that started the company. I believe if you don't write every day all day and you haven't for a decade, you're not going to write as good a book as someone who does

Angela:

Yeah, I get you on that. I get you on that, but I think that happens in the editing phase.

Anna:

I find it really hard. My team does the editing, I don't do it. I find that I watch them struggle - it's easier to start from scratch than to fix something that's broken.

Angela:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. But I really feel like if the purpose is to get clients, then the quality of your book, not that it doesn't matter, but if your focus is on writing a really good book and not on attracting clients, then you're just doing something different, not better or worse,

Anna:

Fair enough.

Angela:

Just a different thing.

Anna:

I think that's a middle ground, too. I mean, I think it can be... Look, a lot of people not only don't care about quality, but they can't even tell the difference. They can't even tell-

Angela:

Most people can't tell the difference, and 16% of people read the books they buy. None of them are your clients. The way you know someone is going to buy from you is if they get your book and don't read it. Once they've read it, they're not a client.

Anna:

That's so interesting.

Angela:

Now after they become a client…

Anna:

Then they read it.

Angela:

They will then read your book, but people will read your book after they become a client.

Anna:

Basically, how does it work? People come to you and you say, "Go write the book and we'll help you with the cover, and we’ll launch”?

Angela:

No. We do an elaborate developmental editing process. We're developmental editing every single chapter. There's three months of work before they're allowed to write.

Anna:

Okay.

Angela:

We have to figure out what the fucking book is. Because most people's ideas are horrible, and they would never finish. So for each chapter, we design...We do this for the whole book first. And then we go chapter by chapter and we design a purpose statement, which is like a main topic sentence. And then we have a certain layout that we have them use, and then they come up with 10 slugs. The slugs are what's going to be included in the chapter. You don't have to include all of it. So when you go to sit down to write, I know everything that's going in that chapter. I might not know the order, and I can finesse the sentences, our editors can finesse the sentences, but we've crafted what is each chapter, what's in it, what's the purpose of the book, how do we want the reader to be different?

Once all that developmental editing is done, when you go to write the book, we do it as a timed test. We'll actually proctor it with you. You have two hours to write the chapter. And I want the shittiest job, if that's what it is, but it's just the best job you can do in two hours. I don't care how good it is or how bad it is, just give me something in two hours and no more. And then the editors take it over and we can turn it into good writing.

Anna:

When you say proctor, are you sitting on a Zoom call with them?

Angela:

Sitting on a Zoom call. Ready? Go. You got two hours. And then I do a little Tim from Project Runway and I say, "All right, you got 30 minutes.”

Anna:

Make it work.

Angela:

"Even if you haven't started writing, make it work, because this is your chapter." And then we pull it out of their hands and they can't look back at it until the whole book is done.

Anna:

And then you do copy editing, layout, launch?

Angela:

Yeah. We have three levels of edits. We do a high-level edit, and then we do line edits, which take about six weeks, and then we do a proofread.

Anna:

Yeah, and it's launched under your imprint?

Angela:

Yeah, you asked that before. We've done three things with this. I have an imprint, which is called Difference Press. We also have partnered with companies that have in-store distribution. So we put it out as a collaboration, a Difference Press collaboration with another partner that gets it in bookstores. When we do that, we give up 80% of the book revenue to get it into bookstores. And when COVID hit, I shut down all of those partnerships, because I'm like no one's buying books in bookstores, and they're not buying these books in bookstores. And they're definitely not buying these books in bookstores when the bookstores are shut down. So we canceled all those partnerships, which I had kind of wanted to do anyway, because I looked at how much money we were giving up and the percentage of sales online versus in stores, and it just didn't make sense.

Eight-five percent of our sales were happening online, but we were giving up 80% of the revenue. So we now teach self-publishing, and if people really want their books in bookstores, we can hook them up with partners, but then it's not a collaboration anymore. We make an introduction, and they put it under their publishing label. For most people, I don't see a good reason to put your book... That's not for everyone, but for most people we work with... If you want to make a quarter of a million dollars from your book in a year, don't work with a publisher. We have 76% of our authors make $250,000 in the first year from their book.

Anna:

Not from book sales.

Angela:

Not from book sales, not from book sales.

Anna:

Do you help them set up a system where they're going to get more clients? How does that work?

Angela:

Yeah. We build book funnels for our clients, teach them advertising, show them how to do what we call a thank-you video, so how to connect with their readers, how to build a list from your book. I teach something called the L.O.V.E. Sales Method, which is how to turn your readers into clients by just listening to their problem and offering to help solve it. The focus is get as many readers as possible. We have a really cool calculator. If you go to the author incubator.com/calculator, most of our authors can make $250,000 by giving away about 2000 books, between 2 and 3000 bucks.

Anna:

Who do they give them to?

Angela:

Prospects. We identify prospects. For instance, one of our clients, Lesley Moffat, wrote Keep the Job, Lose the Stress. And she works with teachers, stressed-out teachers. She now has a six-figure consulting business with teachers, and she specifically started with band leaders, high school band leaders. Turns out there are organizations of high school band leaders. Who fucking knew? She's in all those Facebook groups, all those groups. She speaks. We have a keynote speaking coach, as well, Nina Sossamon-Pogue, who trains all of our authors in how to use their book to get speaking gigs. She is the top speaker for high school band leaders. You find a high school band leader, they will know Lesley Moffat. She speaks at those events, and then she gets contracted by schools and teachers to work with them and has a six-figure business as the world's top coach for band directors. Who knew?

Anna:

You're a firm believer, I assume, in the riches are in the niches, like find your niche.

Angela:

Has to be. Has to be. If you do the kind of books that we loved growing up, like if you do the self-love for women in transition, generic books, those books that were successful, like my favorite book of all time from one of my best friends, Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love, that book changed my life and so many others, but it wouldn't sell now. If you are even as good of a writer as Marianne, which is like two people in a million, even now, that book just wouldn't sell the way it did then. There's too many other books.

There's too much other information. There's Netflix. You're competing on a totally different scale. So if you can focus on a group that we can access like band directors, real estate agents, divorce lawyers; if we can focus on a group that we can find, do your spiel on self-love for women in transition, because I can tell you everything in Lesley's book is all about self-love for band directors in transition. But if we can focus that information in a specific group we can reach, and you could be the best in the world in this blue ocean instead of a very, very bloody red ocean, then we can generate revenue.

Anna:

You used to do weekend retreats.

Angela:

Three Days to Done. So very interesting you should ask. I had a castle. The reason we got this castle, which we called the authors castle, was to do... All the rooms were themed. We had the Maya Angelou room and the Pablo Neruda room. All of the rooms had their own theme. And we would bring authors in every weekend, and over the weekend you would write your book. And then when COVID happened, we were like, well, no one's coming over to write their books at our house anymore, so much for that. So we left the castle, which we had a lease purchase agreement, so we kind of had to walk away from $2 million. It was a little bit sad, but we're like it's going to be a long time before someone wants to come over and do a writing retreat. So we paused. And then this year we got a bunch of beach houses in a little town on the Chesapeake Bay.

We now have those houses open to do Three Days to Done again starting in January. So I have my first one, the first week in January. You get a whole house with your weekend. You can take a friend, and we've got like three or four houses that are near each other in this tiny little beach town. So we meet up in the morning on the boardwalk. Everyone gets their assignments. We check in on Zoom during the day. Then we have dinner at night, but everyone's got their own COVID bubble to write in.

Anna:

If people are interested, what are the price points for all of these things?

Angela:

We have our virtual... We call it book week. So we have a virtual version of that, come to my beach house and sit with me and we'll get your book done in three days. So that is $500. Anyone can do it. We do it the last week of the month. It's 500 bucks. At the end of the week, your book will be done. And you don't even have to come in knowing what your book is about. You just have to have a business. If you have a business and you want more clients, come in on Monday, on Friday you will have a finished manuscript. Then if you want to work with us to do the editing and publishing and speaking and marketing, that is, I think it's like a 25K commitment for us to do all your editing, get you Amazon Best Seller status, do all your design, all your marketing, get you coached up to get speaking engagements, build your book funnel, get you out there.

That's a much longer engagement to do all that stuff. But if you just need your book written, 500 bucks, and then at the end of it, we'll tell you exactly how to do everything on your own. By the way, if you do it on your own, you're going to spend a lot more than $25,000 doing it on your own. It's a lot of work.

Anna:

If you want to do it right.

Angela:

If you want to do it right, yeah.

Anna:

You can do it wrong.

Angela:

You could do it wrong for less, for sure. But you'll probably get one editor, they'll flake out. They'll tell you things you don't want to hear. You'll have to get another editor. They'll ghost you. When we do it, it just gets done and we keep it on a timeline. Then our Three Days to Done, when you actually come and stay with us at the beach house and we feed you, and I literally sit next to you when you write your book, those are substantially more. So you pay 25K for the weekend. But at the end of the three days, your book is done, and that does include a round of editing.

Anna:

And you just stay in the beach house.

Angela:

And you have to stay in one of our beach houses and hang out, and hopefully eat crabs, since we're in Maryland, that's what we do here.

Anna:

So if people want to find you, what is the best way?

Angela:

The author incubator.com, and the trick with that is the article, T-H-E, the. If you go to author incubator.com, you won't find it. Although I do own that domain, and I should just set up a re-direct, but here's my take: if you can't figure it out, we weren't meant to work together. So, the author incubator.com. Then if you want to chat with me about your book, there's an application, which is really... It just keeps me organized, because I got a million things going on. So when you fill out the application, it drops you into like an automated funnel for me, telling me who you are and to follow up with you. That is the best way to get to me. A lot of times people DM me and be like, "Hey, I have a book idea. Can I talk to you?" I love you, whoever you are, just fill out the application, because then my team keeps me on track, and I get super disorganized. This will get you put on my calendar and everything will just happen the way it's supposed to.

Anna:

Do you charge for those calls?

Angela:

No. We'll talk about your book, and we'll see if it's a fit to work together and all that good stuff.

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Can Being a Part of an Anthology Help Build My Business?

 

My First Time

The first anthology I was a part of was called Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys and it helped my career more than I could have even imagined. I had never been in a book before and a friend of mine was editing it. She asked if I had any stories about loving gay men. Turned out I had a doozy—the time I “converted” a gay guy straight. This was back in the glory days when publishers paid real money so I remember that I was paid $750 to do an essay it took me about a half hour to write.

But that wasn’t the best part. The best part is that the literary agency I’d just signed with submitted said essay to the New York Times “Modern Love” column and they accepted it. I had no idea what a big deal this was but it’s sort of a lottery ticket kind of thing.

The publishers arranged for a book tour and I was a part of the one that went to Marin County, San Francisco and Sonoma. AND the book was optioned and MADE into a reality show!

So you might say that I think being a part of an anthology is a must. 

But I really don’t know.

Then I Realized, Um, No

The third book I sold to HarperCollins was an anthology of essays about reality TV. My thinking was, unsophisticated people watch reality TV and sophisticated people are writers. (As someone who’s both, I had a great understanding, I thought, of both groups.) I believed if I did a book that was for both the sophisticated and unsophisticated, I would capture, well, the whole world.

So I gathered an amazing array of writers—among them James Frey, Neil Strauss and Jerry Stahl. I threw a party to end all parties—complete with a red carpet, all the press in the world and appearances by reality stars.

And all of nothing happened. Turns out reality TV fans don’t want to read books about reality TV so much as watch reality TV and readers don’t want to read books about reality TV. The book got reviewed widely, including by The New Yorker, and it even still pops up as a “best of” reality TV books. But, in the end, it was not what one could call a rewarding endeavor.

Not one to learn a lesson easily, I sold another anthology—this one based on a storytelling show I hosted at the time—a few years later. It was called True Tales of Lust and Love and it featured essays by everyone from Meghan Daum to GLOW staff writer Rachel Shukert. I hosted readings all over LA, did a lot of media and, well…nada.

But really it was my error for not having thought it through beforehand: I didn’t want to have a career based on talking about reality shows, lust or love and so those books COULDN’T have served a purpose in my career.

It was a time-consuming lesson to learn.

Then I Did an Anthology with a Purpose

In 2020, I got an idea: to put together an anthology of addiction essays that could help those with experiences with addiction establish their credibility. I published it through Launch Pad, which means that we charged people to be a part of it, and this one was quite rewarding.

One of the participants started getting new clients for her coaching business before the book came out, simply because she was a part of the book, while others found themselves starting social media accounts that helped establish themselves in the recovery field. Others have had their careers really take off as a result of being in the book.

The Kevin Harrington Model

I really got the idea from my friend, Kevin Harrington, the original “shark” on Shark Tank, who established an anthology model where they charge contributors and his partner’s team writes the essays; they guarantee it will be a bestseller.

He’s doing another one, called MindStirring Business Secrets, and in the promotion it breaks down why it’s valuable for business: how each person’s chapter can include a CTA and how native ads for business perform better than Google, Facebook and Instagram ads.

The contributors’ names all go on the cover. So while you could say it’s wrong of him (and me) to charge people to contribute, that’s missing the bigger picture—that it’s a much easier (and less expensive) way than launching an entire book for people to establish expertise.

But What About the Writing Experience?

You may notice that I’m talking here about everything but the writing. So here’s what I’ll say about that: I’ve contributed essays to other anthologies over the years, and I’ve found the writing to be rewarding. It’s basically the equivalent of the sort of piece most of us write and post online, not only for free but with very few eyeballs taking them in, and there’s something pretty cool about them being in a book along with some very well-known writers.

And I watched the members of my writing community, the Inner Circle, put together an anthology called The Epiphanies Project (I wrote the foreword).

Here’s what one of the editors, Beth Robinson, had to say: “Getting to know the writers on such a deep level and the pleasure of collaborating, both with Chris as co-curator and with each of the writers individually—it was such a strong sense of doing something really worthwhile on so many levels with a great group of people and building a connection that we'll all have forever.”

Strength in Numbers

When it came to The Epiphanies Project, they were really able to use the fact that there were so many contributors to do a massive launch; each of the writers agreed to recruit at least 10 readers and so they were able to launch to the number one spot in numerous categories and have an array of people posting about it. One of the contributors, Susan Zinn, even got the book mentioned on the Today show blog.

If you’re thinking you want to put together an anthology, here's advice Beth had:

Start with a budget and a timeline; build in time to chase down drafts
Make sure you see a hard copy before actually launching
Work with good editors; have a developmental editor, copy editor and a proof reader.

My advice, of course, is to figure out your goal: unless you just want to consider it service you do for the world, determine how it can help your contributors (and your) business. Know that (as of now), only 10 authors can be listed as authors on Amazon and giving someone an opportunity to have an author profile on Amazon is uber powerful. Plus, for a first-time author, having your name on the cover is undeniably cool.

Also be very intentional. Don’t let ANYONE contribute or the book will lack quality control and be very uneven. Have a screening process and talk to each contributor ahead of time about what they want the book to do for their career. Hire an amazing editor who can tell you—and them—honestly if what they’ve written won’t help them meet their goals.

And know, as while Beth’s co-editor Chris Joseph told me, corralling all the writers to something akin to “herding cats.”

RELATED EPISODES

How Do I Avoid Hiring the Wrong Editor for My Book?

How Do I Make Money From My Book (Aside From Through Book Sales)?

How Do I Get Clients From My Book?

Chris Joseph on Publishing a Book About His Recovery From Cancer

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

Writing (and Not Publishing) Four Books with Joe DeMaria

 

Joe DeMaria helps coaches, consultants and peak performers create online courses and group coaching programs to increase their impact, expand their product offerings and create new pillars of revenue in their businesses. He also started sitting on major boards when he was ridiculously young. He's also an expert in scaling businesses. Are you getting the idea that he's a genius? Well, you're right. And so it was time for me to do a "booktervention"—a word I just coined to describe my aggressive attempt to find out why in God's name someone who so clearly has a book (or several) in him hasn't published one yet.

This episode was recorded on the hot new app Wisdom so it was an entirely new way of doing a podcast: first off, there was an (admittedly small) audience listening. Secondly, I thought I had to talk for 10 minutes at a time (long story; once you listen it will make sense). And make sure you follow me on Wisdom!

For now, enjoy my conversation with the great Joe DeMaria on how he started his journey into entrepreneurship by hawking sodas to fellow nine-year-olds, how that evolved into doing work for the mob (seriously!) and the way he was able to parlay all of that into a massively successful career. And, of course, listen in on his attempt to answer the age-old question: why hasn't he published a book yet?

RELATED EPISODES 

How Long Does It Take to Publish a Book?

How Do I Figure Out the Core Audience for My Book?

How Do I Make Money From My Book?

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Should I Hire a Company to Write and Publish My Book?

 

You could call this one self-promotional since this is exactly what my company does, but honestly it’s not. (I’ll get into that in a second.) Really, I’m asked about this so much that I decided it made sense to record a podcast episode about it.

First Things First 

If you use a company like Legacy Launch Pad, it is a paid service. We don’t provide introductions to agents or help aspiring authors sell their books to traditional publishers. And we don’t do one-off services—say, just ghostwriting or just marketing.

Our core business is writing and launching books for seven and eight figure entrepreneurs. But what does that mean?

It means that when a client comes to us, I partner them with one of my writers; I have a very small team for the very particular reason that I find that finding amazing writers is challenging. And I’m a writing snob. Our writers are WSJ and USA Today bestselling authors who write for publications like The Huffington Post and the NY Times.

The Relationship Between Writer and Client

The partnership and chemistry is so important; this is a person the client will be sharing their innermost feelings with and it becomes quite intimate.

The client and writer are not writing together. The client should never, in the ideal scenario, ever put proverbial pen to paper. The writer is essentially acting as the client’s personal documentarian, capturing their philosophies, experiences and thoughts into a compelling narrative.

Oftentimes clients will be concerned that working with a ghostwriter means the book won’t sound like them. To that, I say: seasoned writers have been trained in different voices. You could call it our core skill: being adapatable with our words. When I was a freelance journalist, one day I’d be doing a story for Cosmo and the next for Playboy and still the next for Vanity Fair. Each of those publications had a different “voice” and the editor assigning me the story knew that it was my job to make the story fit the publication’s.

The same goes for a client’s voice. The book uses their turns of phrases, their expressions and their jargon.

So Why Shouldn’t the Client Write the Damn Book?

To be clear, the client absolutely can and some absolutely do. We actually have a Publishing Only service for those people. But it’s not our core business and we only started offering it because so many people came to us wanting it.

Here’s why it’s not our core business: if someone doesn’t spend every day all day writing and hasn’t been doing that for at least a decade, they are not going to be able to write a book that’s as good as someone who does. The best writers are the ones who do it for a living and even if someone is often told they’re a great writer, if they do not do it for a living, the book is probably not going to read as professional without some serious editing.

And That’s Where It Gets Complicated

I can’t tell you the number of clients who come to us with “finished” books they believe are ready to publish. And they believe that because before finding us they hired an editor—often an editor who charged them a fortune—and that editor told them the book was “done.”

The problem is, my cat could call himself an editor and get hired. Well, not quite but while you and I can’t walk into a hospital and declare ourselves doctors (unless you yourself are a doctor to which I say, much respect), ANYONE can call him or herself an editor. And from what I’m seeing, many who are not qualified do.

Trust me, the last thing a Publishing Only client wants to hear after forking over moola for an editor is that the editor sucked or was lazy. The problem is we don’t know what we don’t know and most people looking around for book editors don’t even know there are all sorts of editors out there (I’ve gone deeper into that in other episodes).

So the real issue is the space between what the client thinks of as “finished” and what we do. And like I said, I’m a snob.

But Let’s Say We Have a Finished Manuscript

After getting feedback on the draft, the writer completes a second draft and then it goes through the editing process—developmental edit, copy editing and proofreading. Then it gets laid out in book form and is proofread again because no matter how many humans look at a book for errors, they are human and thus miss things. 

We simultaneously are working on the client’s cover. This starts with a client filling out our cover questionnaire and giving examples of book covers they like. We give them four different concepts and then dozens of each of those concepts.

And this is where the real stopgap can happen.

Let the Experts Decide 

The problem with book covers is it’s a somewhat subjective choice; people like certain fonts and colors. And then they ask their friends, who also like certain fonts and colors. And then we’ve got a whole lot of opinions from people who don’t necessarily understand that what people like and what they buy are different.

So this process can take months. We have a “customer is always right” philosophy so I’m sad to say that when a client is absolutely insistent on having a certain cover that we know doesn’t work as well as another one we’ve designed, at a certain point, we just have to let it go. And it sucks because while we don’t know about a lot—don’t try to get me to help you figure out the dinner tip—we know about publishing!

The same goes for titles. We put all potential titles through a massive brainstorming operation, taking in the latest research about works, keywords and the right combination of creativity. It’s a process that’s half art, half science and wholly works.

The Small Things That Are Actually Big

Based on what I see on Amazon, there are a lot of people out there who think just throwing a paragraph up on the book page will suffice. But HELLLLLLLL no. A book description is the difference between having someone purchase or dismiss. Do you know how hard it is to get someone to your Amazon page? Why would you not pull out every stop? So we do our book description and author bio magic.

You can have different descriptions for different places; Amazon prioritizes bullet points when it comes to searchability, whereas that may not work on the back spine of a paperback.

The Extras

I’ve already talked a lot about bestseller launches but that’s something professionals also do and traditional publishers for the most part don’t because they tend to be Amazon averse and thus not clear on the best methods. And we have clients that want all sorts of add ons, from introductions to Hollywood producers to VIP premieres to conversion of books into TEDx talks to marketing and placement in publications to consultations with publicists to websites to EPKs.

You’re Really Paying for the Knowledge

One of the biggest things a company like ours provides is the knowledge from decades in publishing. There’s a world of difference between pitching yourself to podcasts to promote your book and effectively pitching yourself so that you actually get booked. Ditto EVERYTHING else. People who are constantly researching the latest tools know about things that you couldn’t—how to get a book listed in 10 Amazon categories instead of the two Amazon requests, using Amazon A+ content, printing QR codes on bar codes to name a few.

In the end, if you’re going to do something as major as a book, do it right. The reason I want to be 100% clear that I’m not telling whoever is listening to hire us is that we serve a very specific sort of client (there’s way more about that on our website). We are not right for everyone, or even most people. And there are literally dozens of other companies out there that do this, some of them much bigger.

The reason there are so many companies out there that do this is crucial: there is literally no better tool to grow your business. The fact is we charge a lot of money for this service and we have a policy of not taking money from anyone we don’t think can earn back at least 10 times what they pay us. (There are exceptions; see below.)

You Should NOT Do a Paid Service If…

You don’t have a business connected to your book. UNLESS you are 100% fine spending the money. And we have had those people. Just be clear with yourself; you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if your expectations aren’t realistic.

RELATED EPISODES

What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and 7 Days Before Your Launch
What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?
Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?
How Do I Avoid Hiring the Wrong Editor for My Book?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

 

2021's Most Popular Topics: Media Attention, Book Relaunches & Book Parties

 

Featuring the three most popular episodes from 2021
#1 Most Popular Episode: How Do I Get Media Attention From My Book?

 

Your Book is Not Newsworthy

It is not a newsworthy event except for your mother. Unless you're J.K. Rowling or Brene Brown or one of these people, nobody cares that you have a book out.

It used to be different. Back when I first got into this, it kind of was newsworthy when people had books out.

But essentially it's quite self-obsessed of us to believe our book is newsworthy to anybody. So you need to give the media a reason to cover you. And since journalists and TV bookers are often overworked and underpaid, coming up with a way to do their work for them is the most effective way to do it.

How I Did This 

With my most recent book, I said, "Okay, I have written a book about writing and making a messy life into a memoir. What on earth does that have to do with the news?"

I thought about the pandemic and how statistics about depression were rising all the time. And so I corralled a couple of those news stories and studies about that and thought about writing has been very healing for me.

So I came up with a pitch about how writing about what we're going through can help us heal. And then I had a publicist friend pitch that to Good Morning America. And I was able to go on to Good Morning America and talk about how writing helps heal our depression.

That idea is not anywhere in my book. And it didn't matter because they introduced me as New York Times bestselling author of this new book, Make Your Mess Your Memoir. They showed the cover.

How Ryan Holiday Does This

Ryan Holiday talks about something called News Jacking, which was apparently popularized by somebody named David Meermin Scott. And basically, you make the news. When Ryan Holiday sold his first book, he wasn't known as a writer so he wrote the then existing website Gawker and pretended to be someone else, talking about how that guy Ryan Holiday got a book deal. 

And then Gawker wrote about it. And then he sent the Gawker piece to someone else. And he really knew how to how to snowball it and make himself the news. So think about your book. 

We are publishing at Launch Pad a memoir about somebody with a special needs kid, so we could pitch an outlet on the impact covid has had on parents who are already overburdened. 

If you have a self-help book on the importance of meditation and it's near the new year, pitch an outlet, a story about making a New Year's resolution to meditate—basically you come up with the story. 

How Cameron Herold Does This

Previous podcast guest Cameron Herold has a book called Free PR and he says go to Twitter, look up hashtags of who's tweeting about your book topic, identify those journalists and if you can't reach them on Twitter, find their email addresses, maybe on a site like Hunter IO.

But journalists are very active on Twitter so you can tweet at them. And what Cameron does is he gets their numbers and he calls them and says, "Hey, do you have two minutes? I think I have a good story for you."

He also talks about looking at how what you are teaching in your book, if you are, in fact, teaching something in your book and how it has helped people wherever they live. 

He talked about he has somebody who ranks as the number one service in Cincinnati who loves the content of Cameron's book. So he would contact all the Cincinnati business media about how his book content helped this local company. And I think that that's what's really important: You don't think, "Who cares about local news? I want national news." It's all online and local leads to national.

Cameron also talks about using each media hit to its maximum advantage. So that can mean oftentimes driving paid traffic to that story or really it can just be posting it multiple times. He says that he'll post a podcast interview at least five times on Facebook over the next year, five times on LinkedIn, share it five times on Twitter, link to it on the press page of his website and then have it go out on his newsletter list and ask his team to put it on their social media.

And there are programs and websites where you can do that. Lately, which is about a hundred and fifty dollars a month, uses AI so you can basically put a URL for some interview you did into Lately and it will then come up with 40 different social media posts based on the content that's in that and then schedule them over the next however long period of time.

It's not about getting the media hit and forgetting about it. It is getting the media hit, using that media hit to get bigger media and then sharing it.  

RELATED EPISODES:

Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Having a Vivid Vision for Your Book

How Do I Use My Book to Get on Podcasts?

RELEVANT LINKS:

Good Morning America segment

Free PR by Cameron Herold

Hunter IO

Lately  

#2 Most Popular Episode: What I Learned From the Party Girl Re-Launch

Ohhhhh, does your own book launch teach you some lessons and that goes double when it's a re-launch like my recent one for Party Girl.

In this episode, I broke down what went right (fun events out of town, asking someone I knew to help me get in a cool store), what didn't (Launch Squad, I'm talking to you if you said you'd review the book and still haven't!) and what was kinda ehh for the money put out (a publicist). That last question really comes down to...Is this story worth $5k?

Hear the whole rant in this episode!

AND PROVE ME WRONG ABOUT REVIEWS BY BUYING THE BOOK AND REVIEWING IT HERE.

RELATED EPISODES

 How Do I Re-Launch a Book?

What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and 7 Days Before Your Launch

How Do I Get Reviews For My Book?

How Do I Get People to Buy My Book? 

 

Most Popular Episode #3: How Do I Throw a Book Launch Party?
Know That It Won't Sell Books 

Bad news first: your party, no matter how awesome, won't help with book sales (unless the party is at a local book store but even then, you can only count on so many). Chances are, you'll actually be giving books away! So why do it? Because it's fun. Because you deserve to be celebrated. And because why not? So what are some ways to do it?

Rent a Venue

For Party Girl, I rented out the top floor of a (sadly now gone) restaurant next to Book Soup for the few hours after my book signing there. It was fun. It was an investment. I got great photos. End of story.

For my second book, Bought, I threw a party at a New York restaurant and that's when I started to wise up. Yes, I got lovely photos, yes I got to celebrate, yes it even got some press but it was a lot of trouble to go to for not a terrific payoff. And so I thought: I need to have a party that attracts a lot more buzz!

And so, for my next book, Reality Matters, I coerced some genuine reality stars (from The Bachelor, The Real World, Sober House and more) to show up and rallied to get the press there. Again, a lot of trouble for not a huge payoff. So figure out why you're doing your party and whether or not the planning is going to be fun. I'm a slow learner so it took me three times to realize I didn't think it was fun. For my next few books, I didn't do any parties.

But really, I concluded...

It's a Great Idea for Your First Book 

That's why we offer what we call a VIP Launch for clients of ours who want to come out to LA to get the celebrity treatment. We get the press there, we gather a crowd, we even get a red carpet featuring their book cover and secure meetings for them with movie and TV producers to discuss the viability of their book as a movie or TV show. My feeling is: if you can afford it and someone else is going to do the leg work, go for it! 

And Then There's the Marie Forleo Way

In many ways, Forleo was the first online marketer—and she's certainly the most glamorous. Her first book was called How to Make Every Man Want You and her husband is an actor who’s been on Sex and the City, for God's sake!

As legend has it, she was a bartender who started her mailing list by asking people who came in for drinks to sign up on a notebook. And she’s managed to not only show people how online businesses are done, get endorsed by Oprah and make millions in the process but also to incorporate her myriad interests (hip hop dancing anyone) into her business.

You get it: she doesn’t just break the rules; she makes new ones. And so when she was figuring out how to launch her book Everything is Figureoutable, she basically pulled an Erika Jayne: declaring herself a stage presence.

And she pulled it off, selling nearly 2,000 tickets for her New York launch, with people flying in from 42 states and 21 countries.

What'd she do? She danced! "Imagine," as she put it, "if a Beyoncé concert and a TED talk had a baby, then threw a block party."

Then she took it on the road, securing famous friends in every city to help bring the hype— Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach in Orlando, Chase Jarvis in Seattle and Brene Brown in Houston. She and her team went on to London and Australia.

Did it work? Well, the book became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Was that solely because of her Beyonce-like tour? Surely not. But it sure looks like that made the trip to the top fun. 

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS

A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book

Neal Pollack on How He Launched His Book 

 

 

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How Do I Arrange Readings for my Book?

 

The number one best thing to do, when thinking of a venue, is to consider it from the venue’s perspective. If you’re approaching a bookstore, think: what does a bookstore want? Easy answer: to sell books. So how are you going to help them do that?

It’s harder than you may think to sell books. That being said, I’m coming from a Los Angeles perspective, where—at least pre Covid and still a bit in Covid 2.0—there are fabulous events every night. So with a reading, you’re competing with premieres, parties and dinners for attendees. Back when readings were all in person, you were also dealing with the traffic nightmare—which is to say you’d lose a lot of people who would otherwise come if it wasn’t at rush hour, which is when most readings are.

 The other factor is that a lot of people who come to readings—even your friends—aren’t going to buy your book at the reading. It’s such a Catch 22 as the author: you’re seriously grateful your friends showed up but then you’re thinking, “God damn it, am I not worth $19.95 to you?” if they leave without buying.

Bookstores know this which is why they like to book celebrities—certainly in LA—for their book signings. People, even very popular people, can’t be counted on to bring in the droves. Those with fans can.

What Can You Do If You’re Not a Celebrity?

Try to get a well-known person to host the event with you and bill it as the two of you “in conversation.” Admittedly this is far easier said than done but I was able to do it for my Jeff Garlin Party Girl Book Soup event. (Sidebar: for someone who’s lived in LA since the late 90s, I’m terrible at befriending celebrities—a major bummer when you want to get the movie version of your book made and it’s all about who you can attach as talent. But I happened to become friends with Jeff over Covid and he was generous enough to agree to host the event with me.)

Before I became friends with Jeff, I asked other authors I knew to do events with me (I’ve done this repeatedly, most recently with Lisa Smith). Two authors, even if they’re not famous, are going to bring in twice as many people as one.

Still, if it’s your first book, you may well bring in a crowd. (For the initial release of Party Girl in 2007, my in-person Book Soup reading drew over 100 people; for all my book events that followed, only a fraction of that number showed up. The fact is, people are terribly excited when their friend publishes their first book; by books two and on, it’s just not that exciting to them.) So if you can get solid commitments from people that they’ll attend and buy books, include that fact in your pitch to the bookstore. (Yes, it’s kind of weird to ask a bunch of people if they can promise to show up somewhere AND buy a book but this will make a difference.)

How to Get People There

To get people to show up, remember to make it something people want to show up for. Let’s face it: listening to someone read from their book is boring AF. People don’t come out for book events. They want to feel an emotion and be entertained.

How can you make it more interesting? I once hosted a virtual book promotion by allowing attendees to pitch their own book ideas. Maybe you can ask a comedian friend to tell jokes before and after you read. Maybe you can make up a song about your friends, print up the chorus, hand it out to the crowd and lead them all through a rendition.

 Then pull out all the stops when it comes to promo. Boost the Facebook post about it.

 What About Non-Bookstores?

Here’s the thing: you can have a book event literally anywhere: a restaurant, a coffee shop, a friend’s house, a fricking street corner. If it’s a restaurant, consider pitching the venue on doing something there off-hours (a Tuesday at 3 pm?), paying for a certain amount of food or arranging to have media there. (A note: obviously, “Author Holding Reading at Restaurant” is not news-worthy so think about ways to make your event newsworthy; for my book on reality shows, I got different people from those reality shows to come and everyone down to People magazine covered it.)

If you’re holding the event somewhere other than a bookstore, you’re going to have to, of course, arrange for your book to be sold there. While there are mobile services, usually local bookstores, who will send an employee to an event to sell books (and thus count those sales for bestseller lists), they usually won’t do that unless the event is massive (so they can justify paying an employee for the trip). It’s far easier for you to order author copies from Amazon or from a printer and just sell them yourself (or get a friend to set up a table and sell them).

RELATED EPISODES

How Do I Throw a Book Launch Party?
10 Free Ways to Promote a Book
How Can I Use Social Media to Promote My Book?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

  

Should I Create Swag for My Book?

AS PROMISED, THE LINK TO FOLLOW ANNA ON [THE HOTTEST NEW APP] WISDOM AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE CHAT SHE HAS WITH JOE DEMARIA ON 12/22 AT 9 AM PST IS RIGHT HERE!

 

Swag can be tempting. It’s fun to make.

I’ve also wasted more money than I can even imagine on it. Part of the problem is that I get an idea and start having t shirts and other stuff designed before I’ve even thought the concept through. And part of the problem is that I don’t really know what to do with it. I can’t sell it, really; it’s promoting my book, after all. So am I giving it away? If so, to who? And why? What is this going to do? If I want to throw money at a launch, why not do it with something that will have a better chance of paying off?

I don’t have answers to those questions which is why I have a garage full of swag in my garage.

My Party Girl Swag

With Party Girl, I really thought I had the answer. I would create REFORMED PARTY GIRL shorts, pens and stickers and send them to the sober “influencers” that I knew. Each goodie box was painstakingly created with tissue paper in my company color’s theme and specialty boxes with my company’s logo on it.

What happened? Nothing.

Most of the people I sent them to didn’t even respond. Some, when I followed up, just said, “Oh yeah, thanks!” One very sweetly did an Instagram post about it. Why didn’t the others? No clue. Maybe bootie shorts aren’t as desired a commodity as I think they are. One good thing that happened with that expense, however, is I reached out to My 12-Step Store about selling them and they’re interested.

Still, when I did book signings at the Dry Society Gala and Voices events, in Reno and Vegas respectively, I had the REFORMED PARTY GIRL stickers and pens with me and people went crazy for them. Did they use them? No idea.

My Make Your Mess Your Memoir Swag

For Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I had bookmarks made that had the book cover on one side and then the chapter format for writing a “biz oir” on the back. I got the idea from Cameron Herold when he was on my podcast. Again, not sure of the impact that made but it wasn’t pricey.

I also had “I’m making my mess my memoir” thumb drives made. People seemed to like those. Maybe the moral is that the swag should have a practical use? Don’t know.

BTW, Vistaprint offers all sorts of things you can make that it would never occur to you to make (and arguably it shouldn’t). But because VistaPrint is really good at offering you something that could be really cool right when you’re hitting the shopping cart, I ended up with Party Girl pillows and coasters that I like but probably won’t ever use.

My Falling for Me Swag

Back when I was on TV regularly, and thus had a far more active “fan base” than I do now (and that fan base was 99.9% male, seeing as my main gig was as a sex and dating expert on Attack of the Show), I had postcards made up of all the different activities I embraced and wrote about in Falling For Me and had them sent out to anyone who bought the book in the first week. Cheaper than anything else I did and arguably more effective.

Cool Stuff Other Authors Have Done

For the sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, Marian Keyes’ publisher had special books made with a sprayed edge. Not swag but special and cool!

Marie Forleo had computer wallpaper made for her book, which is completely genius because it’s digital and free for her and makes anyone who downloads it think of her book regularly.

I still remember reading about how the people who worked at Random House when they were getting ready to lunch Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep had special green belts sent out to media to match the pink and green belt on the book’s cover (I remember this because I was bitter my publisher wouldn’t even lift a phone, let alone have a belt made, to support my book!) Alas, I just tried googling the article that mentioned this great gift Sittenfeld got and it’s been lost in thee Google machine.

Ridiculous Swag Ideas

The New Yorker finds the whole book swag thing so silly that they did a humor piece about it!

Knopf did some swag for a posthumous release of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar but, like, are there people who would wear a Bell Jar shirt??

Finally, here’s a round-up of some cool book swag ideas.

RELATED EPISODES

Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Creating a Vivid Vision for Your 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

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"The moral of the story is make swag that people will actually use."

What Makes a Great Book Cover?

 

What Makes a Great Book Cover? 

Start with the Basics

Ask yourself which fonts and colors you like and find examples of covers you like; the best place to start is www.bookcoverarchive.com, where you can see famous book covers and nail down ideas. You can also go to the bookstore and look at where your book would be; see what's there and why certain books catch your eye.

Your cover has to go with your genre and feel of your book is. In other words, even though you might love pink and floral and it looks so beautiful and whimsical, if you're writing this deep, dark book, it's not going to work.

Of course, make it original. It’s really easy to make covers that look like everything else but having something that's really distinguished is going to be important because that's what people are going to gravitate to.

What Else to Think About

You also need your cover has to match your story and communicate clearly what your book title is about while also standing out from other books like it

Don’t make it too weird; think KISS: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.

Don’t make it too crowded. A lot of times where you'll have people will want their blurbs, a long subtitle and extra visuals. But if the cover gets really busy, it takes away from what you're actually trying to accomplish, which is having people be attracted to your book!

Fonts and Colors

Make sure your font is not too small so people can actually read it when it’s postage stamp size on Amazon but also make sure it’s not big and wild—like a loopy font where it’s really stretched out because then people can’t even read it

Make sure your font color works on your background color—don’t have a cream font on a light pink background; you want something that pops and you can see it clearly

If you’re going to have images, choose elements from your story as images (as opposed to doing that in the title)

Get the Right Kind of Feedback

Once you have it, give it to a few select people for feedback; we had a client whose mother-in-law had a pretty hilarious response which caused us to switch an image on the cover but we’ve also had clients who have asked everyone and their mother for feedback and gotten so twisted by not listening to themselves and us that it’s caused no end of revisions.

Though it’s tempting, don’t ask people on social media to vote. Study after study shows that what people say they like is different than what they buy and people get really influenced by what previous commenters say. If you’re going to do A/B testing on social media, you can do what Tim Ferriss and James Altucher did and create different websites and run ads to them to see which people click on more.

Other Things to Consider

You can be on your cover if it makes sense but most people who aren’t famous aren’t on their book cover.

Remember, you’re the boss so don’t let a designer go too into their own vision (many times your designer won’t have read the book) but DO listen to experts who can tell you what they think works.

On that note, don’t be too attached to your ideas; we see visuals that are really beautiful and they call to us but they're not great for marketing. We’ve had clients who really loved images artists had created and though they weren’t right for the book cover, they got so attached to what they thought their book should be before they came to us that they stuck with that lesser cover.

My Re-Launch of Party Girl

For my re-launch of Party Girl, I decided I wanted a cover that would really take advantage of the current trend of beautiful, bright, Instagram-worthy letters but also be completely original. So I sent my designer images of covers I loved, both ones I snapped in bookstores and ones I took from online—and it’s my favorite cover I ever had. It was also the first time I went in with a really clear vision of what I wanted—but was also open to partnering with my designer to get his take on my vision.

RELATED EPISODES

A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How James Altucher Launches a Book

A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Tim Ferriss Launches a Book

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I'm Now a Book Critic! Here are the 5 Books I Recommended

 

Yours truly has become a book critic.

Well, sort of. She—meaning I—is/am now recommending my five favorite books of the month every month on KATU TV in Portland. And I’ll be releasing each of the segments as a podcast episode. Is it because I’m hurting for content? Possibly! But it’s also because I want you to see—and hear—what’s possible when you’re an author.

Yes, sometimes they’ll let you go on TV to recommend other books. So enjoy this mini episode (and especially enjoy hearing me call the Emmy award-winning host by the wrong name).

Here's a breakdown of the books:

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier

A thorough examination of the creation of the social media platform that has come to take over many people’s lives, this comprehensive page-turner shows how an app created in 2010 came to be purchased by Mark Zuckerberg in less than two years for a billion dollars—and then the power struggles that ensued from there. The author, who’s a reporter for Bloomberg News, where she reports regularly on Facebook, Instagram and the other social media platforms, has earned awards and come to be considered an expert on the whole social media game. The book caused a bit of a sensation when it came out because it delved into Zuckerberg’s obsession with controlling Instagram, despite having assured the creators that they could have independence, just at a time when Facebook’s PR was getting worse and worse. 

If You Lived Here, You’d Be Famous By Now: True Stories From Calabasas by Via Bleidner

Written by a 21-year-old and published by a major publisher, this book is basically the female, modern-day version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High if Fast Times was immersed in Kardashian culture. The author is wise beyond her years, painting a hilarious story that manages to cover adolescence in a way adults will find entertaining and illuminative. The most amazing part about it isn’t its wisdom or humor but the fact that the author is so witty and positive that the plastic culture she describes doesn’t seem tragic…just oddly real. 

Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson

Covering the recent history of an industry that has undergone a more rapid transformation in the past decade than it had in multiple decades before, this is a decidedly intellectual book by a British author that manages to be incredibly approachable and actually something of a page-turner. It’s clear this author has done his research and is particularly compelling while doing a meticulous breakdown of why companies that seemed to be on the cutting edge of capitalizing on the emergence of ebooks failed. (In short: no one could predict where the ebook market was going; people originally thought entrepreneurs would be the big ebook readers; turns out it’s the romance crowd because they love to devour series books and besides, romance books aren’t necessarily ones you’re proud to put on your shelf!)

Traction by Gino Wickman 

This isn’t a new book but it is one of the clearest explanations of how to grow a business that I’ve read in a while. It focuses on six components a business needs to be profitable—Vision, Data, Process, Traction, Issues and People—and gives tips like keeping scorecards for every week, accountability charts for team members, issues lists and process documents. It also stresses the importance of having Rocks—otherwise known as 90-day goals. There are charts, questions to answer, worksheets and examples aplenty. It also emphasizes the importance of creating company core values so that everyone you hire and every decision you make can be weighed by whether or not they fit them. 

My Addiction and Recovery: Just Because You’re Done With Drugs Doesn’t Mean Drugs Are Done with You by Ed Kressy 

Don’t let the kind of basic title or cover of this one fool you. My Addiction and Recovery is one of the most sophisticated, original, gripping recovery memoirs out there. A first-person account of how a man from an upper-middle-class family descended into meth addiction, this is one of the most riveting accounts of addiction I’ve come across. While describing the paranoid delusions he had that he was being tracked by the FBI because he had played a part in 9-11, Kressy introduces himself as a new voice to the Quit Lit movement. His story is one of going to a place that few survive and even fewer document. Even if you think you’ve read and seen it all, I guarantee you’ll find yourself as shocked by Kressy’s story as you are moved by his writing.

To see the segment, click here. Otherwise, just give this a listen.

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Brianne Davis on Launching a Book on Sex and Love Addiction

 

Brianne Davis is a gorgeous, successful actress—i.e., NOT the sort of person you’d think would launch a roman a clef about sex and love addiction. But do that she did and Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex and Love Addict came out in 2020 (for anyone who read it and is clamoring for more, have no fear; it’s the first in a series of four).

For someone who’s dyslexic and never thought she’d write a book, Davis pulled the launch off with serious panache—writing articles for huge publications, booking hundreds of interviews, landing big celebrities for blurbs, getting the book in libraries, entering the TikTok universe and so much more.

While she admits that the fact that she’s a “name” helped her, she’s also full of tips for anyone launching a book (spoiler alert: it requires a whole lot of hustle).

Listen in on our chat about why she wrote a novel and not a memoir, the rationale behind her two different covers and how the book launched her massive coaching business and speaking career, among so much more.

RELATED EPISODES 

Erika Schickel on How Friends Make Your Launch

What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and 7 Days Before Your Launch

Sarah Alaimo on Going From "I Can't Write a Book" to Launching Her Book

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