Anna David's Blog, page 18
July 14, 2021
How Did Alex Strathdee Get 40,000 Students to Read His Book?
Alex Strathdee is no ordinary writer.
That's because he's as much an entrepreneur as he is a writer.
How do we know this? Because when he wrote his book, Experience Over Degrees, and it didn't transform the world—or even his life—he didn't just shelve the book and the experience like most people.
Instead, he asked: how can I get more people to see this?
What followed was a targeted campaign to colleges and then a targeted campaign to businesses to pay for that first campaign. It's an ingenious approach and he breaks it all down in this episode.
Now he helps other authors make an impact with his company, Advanced Amazon Ads and he even has a free gift for YOU where he breaks down his strategies. Get that free gift here.
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RELATED EPISODES & LINKS
The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson
Affiliate link to Dave Chesson's AMAZING Publisher Rocket software
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM~
June 29, 2021
How Does Pat Flynn Launch a Book?
Pat Flynn is one of the kings of the marketing world and that showed in the way he launched his 2016 Wall Street Journal bestseller, Will it Fly?
Because he’s very open about the methods he used, I was able to do research and determine some of his most effective strategies.
He Focused on Pre-Launch
He made an effort to build a big pre-launch audience and he did that by continually educating readers on the “value proposition” of the book—in other words, what the book would DELIVER for the reader and not what the book was ABOUT.
He had the person he hired to manage the pre-launch group, Daniel Decker, on his podcast and shared that he had over 500 people in it.
They made a big effort with GoodReads: about a month before the launch, they made sure the book page was connected to Pat’s author page and his author profile was updated with his website, bio, photo, and favorite books on his “Read/Want to Read” lists.
They asked the Street Team to post early reviews and used the built-in blog feature to announce when the pre-order was ready, the launch day party and when the book was officially live. Later they used Goodreads advertising and giveaways feature.
For the pre-launch team, they showed the behind the scenes of writing the book, he made a book trailer, he showed snippets of advance reviews of the book, he shared preliminary concepts, he showed the audience book covers that were inspirations, he shared quotes from book and he shared fun facts like the number of hours he spent writing. He also shared daily updates.
He also focused on any other “exclusive” content that he could find.
He Threw a Virtual Launch Party
But he didn’t just throw a simple thing on YouTube. He had it on Google, Periscope and YouTube on release day where he was able to announce its already impressive Amazon statistics: that it was the top 84 of all books, #2 in all of entrepreneurship.
He also shared openly about some of the issues that can definitely creep up on launch day—namely that the Kindle version was still in review!
In the 90-minute video, he’d thought of everything, down to the WILL IT FLY shirt he was wearing and the people he featured, including other impressive entrepreneurs like Jamie Tardy, Hal Elrod, Amy Porterfield, Michael Stelzner and Cliff Ravenscraft.
He Got Social
He created a hashtag: #willitfly, which generated 1,561 posts
He started his social media plan with Twitter (where, as of right now, he has 162 k followers). As he said, “Once that content was crafted, we could then extend it naturally to other social media platforms.”
This approach, he added, “proved to be very effective because Twitter forced us to keep this simple at the start and then expand and enrich them for other channels like Facebook, Periscope, and Goodreads.”
Pre-launch, his team retweeted all the #WillItFly hashtag and he knew the primary call to action, which was to drive followers to book pre-order page and then the secondary CTA of tweets which was to drive followers to book trailer, blog post, launch team signup
On Facebook, he focused on images and videos. After the launch, he featured images of readers holding the book.
(RIP Periscope. In 2016 this meant something!)
He Went All Out on the Book Trailer and Website
He made two trailers—one one-minute one that featured his ridiculously adorable kid making paper airplanes and one of him at San Diego Air and Space Museum where he talks about why he wrote the book, how it’s broken down. In other words, it is all about the viewer and not about him. The one-minute video has over 6000 views and the three-minute one has over 8000 views.
At first, Willitflybook.com was an informational page where people could sign up to be the first to hear about the book, then it became a pre-order page with graphics and then it redirected to the Amazon page (where it still redirects today).
He Actively Used a CTA
Dave Chesson, who assisted Pat with his launch, said when I interviewed him, that Pat created a mini course that was kind of like a study aid, video version of the book. As Dave said, “It's not like without the course, you can't finish the book—that might piss people off. But it's like more or less that this will help you with the book as you go.”
He made the course free and put a link to it at the front of the book so that people browsing on Amazon could click on the “look inside” and sign up for the course without even buying the book.
According to Dave, Pat said that one third of the people who bought the book signed up for the free course and he built a huge email list from that. He then created a paid course that was the next step up and the day that he launched that paid course, he made over $111,000 just from the email list that he built from the book.
What Can We Learn?
He focused on things he could control—not media but his friends, his audience and serving both. He didn’t try to do everything but double downed on the things he knew would be effective. He published the book himself, knowing that he was surrendering a chance to be on The NY Times bestseller list but making the WSJ list. Because he wasn’t being controlled by a traditional publisher, he could put CTA’s in the book and release it how he wanted.
He didn’t do everything himself. He hired someone to manage his advanced reader team. He hired Dave Chesson to help. He has a team. He spent money. He didn’t throw together a video. He hired pros. That’s not to say that this makes sense for everyone. Spending money on a video team may not make sense if thousands of people aren’t going to watch the video. Hiring someone to manage the launch team might not be logical if you can’t get hundreds of people to join.
He leaned on friends to help promote. He wasn’t afraid to ask for support.
He made it about the reader and not him. He constantly reinforced what the reader would get out of the book. He shared behind the scenes stuff so they would feel like a part of it and get ideas if they wanted to publish their own books. He featured people they would know about in his video. He featured their images after the fact. He created a course they could use.
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RELATED EPISODES
Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?
How Can I Use Social Media to Promote My Book?
The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
“He made an effort to build a big pre-launch audience and he did that by continually educating readers on the “value proposition” of the book—in other words, what the book would DELIVER for the reader and not what the book was ABOUT.”
June 24, 2021
How Does John Lee Dumas Launch a Book?
John Lee Dumas, or JLD, is one of the kings of the marketing world and that showed in the way he launched The Common Path To Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment.
If you don’t know about JLD, he is absolutely brilliant and part of his brilliance is that he is arguably more open about his methods and income than anyone else out there.
He created his podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire or EonFire with the kind of fervor and passion I’ve never seen and that’s why had millions of downloads and has featured such guests as Tony Robbins and Barbara Corcoran, among everyone else. It’s a daily interview podcast. He knew no one so he hired a mentor and ended up launching into the stratosphere. I joined his group, Podcasters Paradise, and I highly recommend it for anyone launching or hosting a podcast.
So it’s not surprising both that his book was successful and that he was very open about the methods he used to make it successful.
He Leaned on His Friends—Intentionally
This comes straight from the man himself. As is documented on Chet Holmes’ site, JLD said, “When I sat down and was getting ready, going into book launch mode, I said “Who are my Dream 100?”
And I said ‘Who are these hundred people?’ and the list was done so quickly. I’m like ‘There’s still a ton of people I want on this list so I’m like, let’s bump into 200. Okay now, there’s 200. Let’s bump into 300.’ And by 300, I’m like ‘Okay I’ve just carved out a lot of work for myself.’
Because all of my Dream 300 had been a guest on my show, I knew I had built up a lot of reciprocity bringing them on my platform, sharing their voice, their message, their mission with the world. Now, I was like ‘It was so great having you on my show. To share your message with the fire nation, now I have spent 480 hours writing this book 71 000 words 273 pages. I spent almost all of 2020, my quarantine time writing this book, and it is such a passion project of mine. Will you help me share this message with the world? Because by the way, you are part of it.’ I’m saying this in the video and I’m like ‘Pat Flynn, Amy Porterfield, you guys were a part of this because it’s the 3000 people I interviewed that are the knowledge of this book. This doesn’t come from my brain and my story. This is your story, your brains that I learned over the years as a mentee to your mentorship during these interviews, and all these things that make this book up. So I would love to ask you these three specific asks.’
Then I got really specific on this and these are during the four-minute videos. I said, ‘Number one, will you go onto Amazon and buy three hardcover copies?’ I was really specific, I wasn’t like ‘Buy one or buy a few.’ I said, ‘Will you buy three hardcover copies? Then I told them why: ‘Amazon will base their bulk orders based on how many pre-orders that we have. So I would love to really jack that up to have as high numbers as possible, so Amazon has their bulk order as high as possible.’ So I asked them specifically what I wanted them to do but then I gave them the why. I didn’t just want them to do it, like ‘Give me three dollars because I get about a dollar per book.’ I wanted them to do it because it was going to help the book sales with Amazon buying their bulk order.
Then I said, ‘Number two, I made all these great bulk buy options where you can start at 12 books and go up to 1200 books. Will you check out the bulk buy options? And if it makes sense, will you buy one of those bulk orders for your team or for your audience?’
‘Number three, you have an amazing platform. Would you consider having me on your platform to talk about The Common Path to Uncommon Success? This is your knowledge that I would love to share condensed into this 17-step road map that I’ve created to financial freedom and fulfillment. Will you let me do that via a podcast? Or a show you know or Instagram live, Facebook live. Whatever platform you feel best serves your audience, I’d love to do it. Here’s my booking link to book me right now. Or if you want to reply with your booking link, I’ll find a time that works best for you.’
A great example is when Rory Vaden sent it to all his clients. Rory has baller clients, and so all of them were like ‘Hey, I have big platforms. I’d love to promote the book as well. Let’s make this happen.’
So I did a lot of research on what the best video platform would be to actually share these videos. And I settled upon this tool called Bomb Bomb. It’s just really cool because you can record the video and like hi-def really easily and quickly. Then you have a little button to click that’s just going to click the email Html code that you need to then paste it into the email, and it gives this cool three-second preview of you actually talking.
So instead of just a screenshot since you know you can’t have a video in the email, it actually gives you this three-second gif of you talking.’”
He Created a Website
He didn’t just make a site that gave a book summary and showed a cover. On uncommonsuccessbook.com, he created a one-minute video of him talking about the book. He drops names of people his readers will have heard of, like Jeff Walker, Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn. And just like Pat Flynn, he makes that video all about the reader.
His site breaks down his bulk buy offers (these days it just says that the bonuses have expired but you can email him for information on discounts).
On his site, he also gave away the first chapter.
Now About Those Bulk Order Bonuses
He gave anyone who pre-ordered the $17 Kindle version or the $28 hardcover three of his bestselling books: The Podcast Journal, The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal. That’s a $150 value that he had shipped to everyone who pre-ordered. But he’s open about the fact that he got a $350k advance so that was surely worth the investment (if not in terms of financial rewards now, it does in terms of getting another book deal should he want it).
For a certain amount of pre-orders, he even flew the person and a partner to spend a weekend with him and his girlfriend in Puerto Rico.
He also did a live Ask Me Anything for just the people who pre-ordered.
What Can We Learn?
He spent money on the bonuses. He knew his goal, he knew that a dollar in might be two dollars back.
He was open about his process all the way through.
He leaned on his friends with big audiences.
He focused on his medium: podcasting. He’s very open about the fact that he’ll go on podcasts, even small ones, but he gives a time limit for how long he’ll be on and schedules one after another on podcast interview days.
You may not have that budget or those friends with big audiences but you have your own version of that. Like everyone who’s successful, he focused on a few small things and double downed.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
“I said, ‘Number one, will you go onto Amazon and buy three hardcover copies?’ I was really specific, I wasn’t like ‘Buy one or buy a few.’ I said, ‘Will you buy three hardcover copies? Then I told them why: ‘Amazon will base their bulk orders based on how many pre-orders that we have. So I would love to really jack that up to have as high numbers as possible, so Amazon has their bulk order as high as possible.’"
June 23, 2021
How Does an Author Build a Newsletter List?
A newsletter list is the single most important tool a writer can have when launching a book. But how do you get started—and what do you do once you have?
First off, you need to, no matter how daunting it seems and how much it seems like you don’t have time to.
You Start Small
Don’t get discouraged when you hear other people with newsletter lists talking about their huge numbers because having a small number of people who open your newsletter and take action is better than having a huge number that doesn’t. I’ve been building mine for years and can’t get it above 4000.
You can start by adding people you know but I will say when I did that, I got some grumbling. Maybe the people you know are nicer than the ones I know? I’ve had friends add me and I’ve been happy about it and then people I don’t know very well add me and I’ve found it annoying so use your best judgment about who to add.
Get a Newsletter Provider
Most people start with Mailchimp, which is free for up to 2000 contacts
You can also do it on Go Daddy. I host my site on GoDaddy and found their newsletter options too limiting but I know people who are very happy with it.
Other options include Constant Contact, Drip, ConvertKit, AWeber, InfusionSoft, GetResponse and IContact. I use Kajabi which I love but I do everything from there—website, courses, payment, the whole nine. If you need that, there’s no better and if you want to sign up using my affiliate link, do that here.
Have a Lead Magnet
If you offer people something, they’re way more likely to sign up for your newsletter than if you just say, “Sign up for my newsletter.”
A quiz is definitely a way to capture interest from people who care about your topic since everyone is endlessly interested in themselves! When I had one, I used a website called TryInteract.
If you’re saying, “Well, what would I put on my quiz,” here’s an example of a quiz I used to use as a lead magnet:
1. I would like to have a career where I could help people through my creative work.
2. I would be more motivated to embark on creative projects if I knew I had an audience for my work.
3. I believe sharing my creative work could help other people.
4. I believe sharing my creative work could help me.
5. Friends tell me I should share my experiences.
6. I have never heard of someone with experiences exactly like
mine.
7. I have a unique take on things.
8. I believe if more people knew about my experiences, I could help
them.
9. I have spent some time thinking about creating work based on
my experiences.
10. If I'd been exposed to work like mine when I was struggling, it
would have helped me.
11. I have been wanting to embark on new creative projects for a
while but haven't known the exact steps to take.
12. At some point in my life, I have kept a journal.
13. I tend to feel better after doing something creative.
14. I believe I could complete a project I was passionate about.
15. I am open to sharing what I’ve learned with the world.
16. I believe my life would be better if I did something creative
every day.
17. I believe I would follow through on a project if I had guidance
and accountability.
18. I believe I would follow through on a project if I had a way of
knowing people would hear about it.
19. I've gotten encouraging feedback when I've expressed myself
creatively.
20. I have occasionally made excuses for not meeting my goals.
21. I periodically believe I can meet my creative goals but then find
myself discouraged.
22. I think my work is as good as work I’ve read and seen and
heard.
23. My recovery from my darkest experiences is one of the most
interesting things about me.
I then created two videos based on people’s responses to the quiz and funneled them into two different email sequences from there.
Truth? I found this process very confusing so I switched back to a cheat sheet.
Finding the right cheat sheet has been a challenge but I think I’ve finally found one that works: 20 Ways to Launch a Bestselling Book which if you’re reading this, you probably have. If not, remedy that now! The purpose of the cheat sheet is to give your newsletter readers something they can use but can lead to a need that your book can meet.
I just found out about someone named Glenn Allen who offers a mini course as his lead magnet and that seemed really interesting so I am considering looking into that.
Have a Nurture Sequence
Introduce yourself to your people through a few emails spaced a few days apart. Try to set it up so that if you’re sending regular newsletters, they’re not coming at the same time as the nurture sequence.
If your book is already available, tell your readers during the nurture sequence about it and offer a link to it in the last one. If you’re writing your book, tell them about it. If you have a product, use your nurture sequence to offer it to them.
And then send newsletters regularly. I recommend picking a day of the week, telling them during the nurture sequence that day and sticking to sending newsletters then. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get people used to opening your emails.
Provide Value
If you use a newsletter to just tell your readers about yourself, people are going to stop opening. Find out what they care about and give it to them. Make your newsletters entertaining. Here are some examples of amazing newsletters I subscribe to:
Ash Ambirge: No matter what she’s writing about, it’s hilarious. She’s not dashing these off. She’s infusing her personality in every line. And don’t say, “I don’t have time to do that.” Consider a newsletter a writing exercise. She defies my advice about how you have to have a lead magnet to get subscribers but that’s because she’s that good.
Jane Friedman: If newsletters for writers were studied in school, Jane Friedman would be core curriculum. She tirelessly scans for the most relevant stories. She has a weekly newsletter, Electric Speed, and then a paid subscription called The Hot Sheet that comes every 2 weeks and is worth so much more than the $59 a year she charges. (You can get your first 2 issues for free if you want to check it out.) She was onto the paid subscription model early. In that, she lists, dissects and reports on the most relevant stories about publishing, sometimes from sources like Publishers Weekly, sometimes exclusive reports from book expos and then every link that could possibly be of interest to anyone interested in writing and publishing a book.
Anne Trubek: I honestly don’t know how I stumbled across Anne but she has to write the best newsletter I’ve seen from a publisher. And I’m a publisher. Her company, Belt Publishing, focuses on books about Rust Belt, the Midwest, and its writers. and while she promotes those books in her newsletter, Notes From a Small Press, she also writes honestly and articulately about the business of being a writer. A recent one just killed me in all the best ways—it was all about why she was resentful about being quoted in The NY Times. She says the things other people won’t.
Ann Handley: She’s considered the queen of newsletters and for good reason. Her newsletter, Total Annarchy contains links and thoughtful stories; it’s the perfect mix of personal and professional. And she defies my advice about how you have to send a newsletter every week because she sends hers every two weeks. It’s so value packed that she gets away with it.
Here’s the thing: None of these people aggressively push their books in their newsletters. In fact they barely mention them. And yet I’ve bought and read all of them because I became such a fan of them because of their newsletters.
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RELATED EPISODES
How Do I Use My Book to Get Email Subscribers?
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM~
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"None of these people aggressively push their books in their newsletters. In fact they barely mention them. And yet I’ve bought and read all of them because I became such a fan of them because of their newsletters."
June 16, 2021
How to Land a Book Deal With Rea Frey
Oh, do I have a great guest for you today. Rea Frey is the award-winning bestselling author of three suspense novels and four nonfiction books with St. Martin's as well as the CEO of Writeway, a multiple six-figure business that helps connect authors to agents so they can land publishing deals (Writeway does proposal writing, query letters...the whole shebang.)
Frey also knows her way around a book launch, having built up an active Instagram through a very specific strategy and landing herself in publications like US Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Popsugar, Hello Sunshine, Marie Claire, Parade, Shape and Hello Giggles (spoiler: this also involves having a very specific strategy).
Listen to her share her top launch tips, her journey through the web of publishing and find out how you can get a free 30-minute consultation with her by listening to this episode.
RELEVANT LINKS:
CLICK HERE TO GET THE SHOW ON ALL THE PLATFORMS OR CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
[IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW, I'D BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU'D GIVE IT A REVIEW; ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CLICK HERE!]
June 9, 2021
How Long Does It Take to Publish a Book?
I've talked about this extensively but it takes a long time to get a traditionally published book released—often two years between acquisition and release. You're competing against all the other books on their slate. Of course, publishers can rush highly anticipated books, which is why you see some come out quickly.
So Let's Talk About You Doing It Yourself
Okay, first things first: the writing. Oh yes, the writing. Of course, everyone varies; I know people who have written massively successful books in a weekend! But the rough statistic I've heard quoted is that if you’re going to write it yourself, expect to spend about 300 hours on the first draft. The reason many entrepreneurs look at that and then hire a ghostwriter is that they'll calculate what they make an hour, multiply it by 300 and then say, "Whoa! This is just not a good use of my time."
Obviously, this isn't true for people who have grown up always wanting to write a book; this is for people who want to use a book to grow their business.
Another number I've heard thrown around regarding the writing is to take a year writing a first draft and another year to polish. While I wrote my first book faster than that, I had a decade of journalism experience—writing quickly to make deadlines—which helped me prepare.
But the Time Frame is Different For Everyone
William Faulkner wrote Light in August in seven months and As I Lay Dying in less than six weeks (while working the night shift at a power plant, no less).
And then there's Anthony Burgess, who was diagnosed with a disease, told he was going to die soon and wanted to provide for his family so he wrote A Clockwork Orange in three weeks. (This story is widely debated.)
Then there's Junot Díaz and Margaret Mitchell, who each took a decade to write, respectively, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Gone With the Wind.
Once You're Done Writing
If you're publishing on your own, once you're done with your final draft, your book will need a developmental edit. How long that takes is entirely dependent on how busy your developmental editor is and how many other books they're juggling but plan for a month or two. You may be going back and forth with that editor or they may deliver a final product; clarify that upfront.
The Cover
I would recommend researching cover designers once you've finished your first draft. Of course, any time before that that you see a cover you like, save it so you can give it to your designer for inspiration. Expect the cover to take a month at least. It depends on your designer's experience and how many other books they're working on (over designers range in cost—anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand but you can also create your cover yourself [see below for a link to my class that shows you how]).
The Bio and Book Description
It shouldn't take long to create a bio and book description (if you already have a bio, reframe it however you need to as a writer's bio). Book descriptions are an art form unto themselves (my course also gets into how to do those).
Blurbs and Feedback
Leave yourself plenty of time to get feedback from trusted friends and colleagues. And perhaps some of them will be providing your blurbs, or endorsements (a practice I heard about from Jay Abraham when I interviewed him.) Speaking of endorsements, give anyone you're asking plenty of time to read the book—at least a month or two. (My course also delves into blurbs, as does the episode I'm linking to below.)
You can put blurbs on the front or back cover but you don’t have to.
Typos
After your book has gotten a developmental edit, hire a copy editor to fix grammatical errors and typos—give them about two weeks. Then get a proofreader to scan for mistakes the copy editor missed—another two weeks. I highly recommend giving your book to about five trusted friends when the copy editor is working on your book because they can also help you catch typos. You can also use software to have your book read aloud to you and if you're recording an audiobook, now would be the time (so you can catch even more errors and bits you want to change). This continuous editing process can take a month or two. An audiobook is a whole other project unto itself, which I got into in another episode (link below).
Layout and Uploading
Layout designers can cost anywhere from $5 (on Fiverr) to thousands of dollars. If you're uploading directly to Amazon, they can lay it out for you for free. That is pretty instantaneous. Your layout designer will take at least a week, I would guess. There's also Vellum software (Mac only), which costs $249 for lifetime access for paperback and ebook. That's pretty instantaneous though you'll have to go in and make adjustments to spacing after. Once it's laid out, I would go through it again to scan for mistakes. Give that another week.
If you're publishing exclusively on Amazon, you'll load your book and description and cover and all the other elements into Kindle Direct Publishing. If you want to also have your book published on Barnes & Noble and other outlets, you'll also upload it to Ingram (Ingram also can distribute to Amazon so you can upload just to Ingram, though there are advantages to uploading to both). This should take a few weeks to figure out.
Then There's the Launch
Know this: none of what I'm about to suggest is required. I break down all of these strategies in my Launch Your Book class and in previous episodes but my main suggestions are: figure out the news hook for your book and contract press when you do. Scan Help a Reporter Out (HARO) for the months before your release so you know journalists and can be quoted as a source on your book topic. Put together an Advanced Reader Team that can read your book before it's released and post reviews during your launch. There are all sorts of other strategies—I broke down everything I did for Make Your Mess Your Memoir in the post I link to below. A launch can take anywhere from a year to a week to a day; it all depends on what you want to put into it.
If you publish traditionally, you’ll have to do all the same launch plans but they will take care of the editing, copy editing, cover design and release for you.
RELEVANT LINKS:
How Do I Get Blurbs for My Book?
How Do I Get Media Attention From My Book?
How Do I Avoid Hiring the Wrong Editor For My Book?
How Do I Get Reviews For My Book?
What Do I Need to Know to Record an Audiobook?
Link to Vellum software (affiliate link)
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"I know people who have written massively successful books in a weekend. But the rough statistic I've heard quoted is that if you’re going to write it yourself, expect to spend about 300 hours on the first draft."
June 2, 2021
Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?
One thing I need to tell you right off: there was no bigger snob about self-publishing back in the day than the person writing this post. If someone told me they published a book, I would raise an eyebrow and ask, "Traditional or..." and then let the sentence trail off. If they answered "Self," I looked at them with sheer disdain and wondered how they had the audacity to call themselves the author of a published book.
All of that changed around 2012.
Self-Publishing Used to Be Called Vanity Publishing
Self-published books used to be those things that were put out by your great aunt who thought she had a great story to tell but no one else did. They were never sold in bookstores and never got reviewed.
Today, there are more self-published than traditionally published books and schools like the University of Central Lancashire offer programs in self-publishing. Self-published books are reviewed in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus and everywhere else.
That being said, some people are committed to going traditional and about that I'll say the same thing I always do: if you want to put in a year—sometimes two—into finding an agent and then wait another six months or so to see if that agent can sell it, you could get of anywhere from $2000 (my lowest) to...well, the sky's the limit when there's a bidding ware. Just know that it will be another year or two before publication, that very few books represented by agents even sell and that those that do often sell struggle to find audiences, with no help from the publisher.
Obviously, to get a traditional deal, you need an agent and for that agent to be able to sell your book, you need to be able to show you can sell that book (with, say a social media following of over 100k, a newsletter list of over 50K) or something of the sort. One thing that can help sway publishers is if you offer to buy, say, 5000 copies but you have to already be someone they'd be interested in giving a deal to; they're not going to make a deal with anyone who offers to buy their own copies.
The Cons of Traditional
Of course, with traditional publishing, you're giving up your rights. That may not seem like a big deal but if you're sitting where I am—trying to wrestle the rights for Party Girl back from HarperCollins and even though the contract stipulates that they are mine after a decade, Harper won't sign off on that so I can't republish—you'd see it is.
With traditional publishing, you really have no say over the title and cover. Now obviously if you're a well-known writer with a lot of power, you have say but I remember with my fourth book, Falling For Me, the cover they created was so awful. Everyone I showed it to felt bad for me. So I paid another designer to do a great version of what they did. There was no way you could like the bad one and not like the good one but for reasons they never clarified for me, they went with the first one and it really made the book dead on arrival.
You also have no control over what happens. When my publisher was fired a few months before Party Girl came out, the entire division dissolved so there was no marketing team, no sales team—no anything. And I had never published a book before so I didn't know how unfortunate it was to have no one advocating for the book in the media and at stores.
But here's the reality about your publisher advocating for you in the media: they don't. They advocate for Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle and those other authors that don't need advocating for—because those authors are their big moneymakers.
Case in point: I always wanted to go on Good Morning America for my six books with HarperCollins. Harper always told me GMA wasn't interested in me. When Make Your Mess Your Memoir was released, I reached out to GMA directly and got on.
Did GMA care that I had published my book and that a company like Harper hadn't? Absolutely not.
Of course, the prestige of traditional publishing is unparalleled! So please ignore all of that if it's what you want.
What Traditional Publishing Expects
There was a widely circulated story recently by a traditionally published author named Kacen Callender about the pressure she feels from her publisher. I'm pasting a quote from it below but I highly recommend going and reading the entire post here.
“There’s an expectation by many that authors give more of themselves: to come up with their own marketing schemes, to search for as many opportunities to publicize themselves and their books as possible. There’s an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) suggestion from publishing companies and professionals that, if the book doesn’t do as well as the author might’ve hoped, then it’s actually the author’s fault.”
I found that to be true X1000.
The Reality: Self-Published Rates Are Better
With a traditional publisher, after the agent's take and the publisher's take, you end up with maybe 10% of the profits. If it's a massive book, that's a lot of money but most books, alas, are not massive.
Advances are paid out in either two or three installments and so usually you get the first third when you sign, and that's what you use to live on, spend on research or whatever else. Then you tend to get the second part when the manuscript is approved and the third when the book is released. Since it can be a year or two between acquisition and release, you can end up waiting for a long time for those second and third installments.
If you earn out the entire advance, you begin to earn royalties but the often cited percentage is that only 15% of books tend to earn out.
With self-published books, however, you get to keep anywhere from 50-70% of your book’s profits. The only expense that's subtracted is the printing and shipping. And you own all the rights!
But let's be real: almost no self-published author makes a lot from book sales. That's why so many have businesses connected to the books they publish; through those, they can make hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would with a traditionally published book. (See link below for an episode that gets into that.)
Another Reason People Choose to Self-Publish
A traditional publisher's goal with each book is to get that customer to buy more from that publisher. It's why the publisher's and not the author's contact information is in the front and back of the book.
With a self-published book, you have the opportunity to attract that reader to you and not the publisher. Many self-published books have calls to action in the beginning, the end or throughout the book that are designed to get the reader to sign up for their email list. You can put a QR code at the beginning for readers to scan and be led to a page on your site. You can put your email address. You can virtually do anything you want; it's your book.
Biggies Now Go The Self-Published Route
People like James Altucher, Jeff Goins and Pat Flynn could easily sell their books to traditional publishers. But they don't, for all the reasons I've broken down above. And when there are success stories like The Martian (Andy Weir self-published it and it ended up selling three million copies and being made into a movie that made $630 million) and 50 Shades of Gray (100 million copies sold and you know the rest of that story), more big writers are going this route.
While it's hard, if not impossible, to make the New York Times bestseller list as a self-published author, you can make the USA Today and WSJ list, though you usually have to sell a minimum of 6000 copies.
How Much Does the Publisher Matter?
Let's play a book: Name a book you love. Now name the publisher.
Exactly.
And here are some of the divisions of Simon & Schuster: Adams Media, Avid Reader Press, Emily Bestler Books and Free Press. If you saw any of those names on the side or back or front of a book, would you even know if it was a traditional publisher?
So my final answer is no, people do not look down on self-published books. And if a self-publishing book snob like me can come 180 degrees, anyone can.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Do I Need an Agent and If So, How Do I Get One?
How Do I Make Money From My Book?
How Do I Use My Book to Get Email Subscribers?
How Do I Get Clients From My Book?
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"I always wanted to go on Good Morning America for my six books with HarperCollins. Harper always told me GMA wasn't interested in me. When Make Your Mess Your Memoir was released, I reached out to GMA directly and got on."
May 26, 2021
What Do I Need to Know to Record an Audiobook?
First things first: the audiobook market is exploding. It is now a $1.2 billion business when ebooks are a $983 million business. In other words, for the first time ever, US audiobook sales have outgrown ebook sales. The most popular genres are mystery/crime, suspense, science fiction and fantasy, personal growth and career and money and longer books often do better since Audible works on a credit system and it makes more sense to use a credit for a longer book.
Another thing to know upfront (and forgive me if this is obvious): you need a different cover than the print and ebook because it has to be square.
So what else do you need to know?
Anyone Can Do It
Before 2011, Audible had to acquire your book and only 3% of books were acquired. This meant that they set you up with a booth and engineer, handled the cover and uploading and owned the rights. In 2011, they opened up Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) which made it so that anyone can upload their book and sell it on Audible, provided it met their requirements. As of now, over 100,000 authors have uploaded via ACX.
But be forewarned: ACX doesn’t have nearly the customer service Audible has; when my company was having trouble getting through to anyone at ACX, we had contacts at Audible who told us they were entirely separate companies and couldn’t help us.
It's Harder Than You Think
I know the fantasy of recording your audiobook; I had it myself!
But here's the reality: you’re stuck in a booth for hours upon hours (I highly recommend breaking it up so you give your voice time to rest; spread it over a week if possible). And it takes practice. When I recorded Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I had screwed up the levels so I had to re-record the entire book. And you'd better believe I was much better the second time. This isn’t to say you need to read it through one full time before recording but the practice is going to make it better.
You may want to consider getting a narrator but of course, there are serious pros and cons to that. Many nonfiction authors want to narrate their own books because they’re so close to the material and many listeners want to hear them read by the authors because it’s a way to really get inside an author’s head. It is the ultimate connection – as the author, you’re with your reader while they walk, drive, clean and do whatever they do when they listen to books. But if you do want to work with a narrator, you can get one through AC and even split profits with them so you’re not paying anything up front. If you have zero audio or entertainment experience, this may be your best bet. So be honest with yourself. Don’t trick yourself into thinking it’s just a glamorous fun thing because it’s really not.
If you have a podcast, you probably should read it because you have audio experience and also because people know and hopefully love your voice.
Programs like one in beta at Descript.com will allow anyone to create a digital voice double, so that “you” can read your book, without really reading your book. In other words, those hours you would spend reading it could become maybe an hour as you set up the program.
You Need the Right Recording Space
You need a quiet, sound-friendly place to record it. A sound studio is best but otherwise, if you just record in your room with your iPhone, ACX will not approve it. Worst of all, they can take months to approve and then, if you need to fix something, you have to resubmit it, which means it takes even longer.
This means that if you have a book launch planned, you can miss making it because of Audible's approval process and you never know how long it's going to take. We once waited 6 months for them to approve one of our books while Make Your Mess Your Memoir was approved right away . To make sure you don’t cause yourself unnecessary anxiety, I suggest planning to launch your audiobook months after your paperback and ebook release. Then you can only be pleasantly surprised if it's ready in time.
You Need the Right Help
If you can get a director/engineer– someone who will tell you that you didn’t sound impassioned enough on a certain line or could do better - you’re going to be better off. Ideally, that person has read the book ahead of time and is familiar with the material. Of course, you can improvise; I had my boyfriend sit outside my sound booth and note whenever I made a mistake. You definitely don’t want to do it alone because it will be way more work for the sound editor, which you’ll be paying for!
Your sound editor may be the engineer or someone else. This person will listen to the entire recording, compare it to the text and note when phrases are unclear or something needs to be redone and then give you the lines to re-record and then splice those in.
After editing, the book needs to be mastered. Possibly your editor can do it, or someone else can.
You Need to Decide if You’re Selling on Audible Exclusively
To be clear, Audible means Audible, Amazon and Apple. Audible counts for about half of audio sales and that's a significant portion but, of course, some people are vehemently anti-Amazon.
An advantage to doing it just on Audible is that your royalties are higher: for an exclusive contract, your royalties are 40% while a non-exclusive contract means your royalties are 25%. Audible requires authors to sign a seven-year contract for exclusivity but that really doesn't mean anything because you can change it to non-exclusive after one year.
A popular option for many authors is Findaway Voices (FV), which gives you a higher royalty rate. FV is a reasonable option as they get your audiobook on numerous bookstore and library sites.
Another advantage to FV is they have a partnership with Chirp, which is the audio version of BookBub—a site that can blow up your sales if they select your book for a featured deal. (Note: the selection process is extremely competitive so this is only relevant for a fraction of authors.)
An advantage or disadvantage to FV, depending on your point of view: When a book is kicked back for not meeting audio requirements, FV will automatically fix the issue without telling the author. Still, the quality usually isn’t as high, and that can affect the author's ratings and reviews.
All that being said, I tried FV and didn't have a good experience. While I could get support from actual people (as opposed to ACX, where you're stuck in an endless customer service hole that feels like it's run by bots), none of the people were ever helpful. And they did a major screw-up in my case: even though I'd made it clear that Party Girl was already published on Audible, they re-published a new version there and that new version showed up instead of the original version, which had several wonderful reviews (the FV version had one one-star review).
Because of my personal experience, my plan is to go strictly Audible. To me, some of its other selling points are that you can earn up to $75 each time a new Audible listener becomes a member by purchasing your ACX audiobook through your unique link with the Bounty Referral Program. $75!! That's insane. But the reality is most people who want Audible subscriptions already have Audible subscriptions so the number of conversions may be low. Still, I think it's pretty cool.
Going exclusive with Audible also means you get promo codes—10 freebie copies of your audiobook to give away to readers, whom you can then ask to promote your book. (Once your first 10 codes have been redeemed and your catalog of titles has reached 100 qualified sales, you can request an additional 25 codes.) Supposedly FV offers the same sort of promo codes but I never could access mine and my attempts to get that information from anyone there failed.
But one important thing to note: I'm not in this to make money off of audiobook sales so the royalty rates don't concern me. I like my books being available in audio because it makes the whole publishing process feel complete and because it will attract some readers it wouldn't otherwise.
That's why I'm less concerned about the endless controversy over how Audible pays its authors. (See the link below for more on that than you may want to know.)
RELEVANT LINKS:
Audible audiobook requirements
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"The audiobook market is exploding. It is now a $1.2 billion business when ebooks are a $983 million business. In other words, so for the first time ever, US audiobook sales have eclipsed ebook sales."
May 19, 2021
What's the Difference Between a Ghostwriter, Editor & Coach?
A Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is not a co-writer. A ghostwriter is interviewing you, shaping what you say into a book and presenting it to you for you to approve.
Usually, with a ghostwriter, you are getting the sole byline and there is nothing that is considered dishonest about this. The assumption for many successful people is that they did have a ghostwriter that they are not crediting.
A co-writer is someone who gets credit. When I wrote a book with the actor Tom Sizemore and I was represented at William Morris at the time, they negotiated this whole thing where my name had to be as big as his on the cover.
The idea with a ghostwriter or co-writer is that it's built around what's best for the "name" person—the person paying the writer. I had Adam Corolla on this podcast and he talked about how he "wrote his book" by talking to the writer while driving to comedy gigs.
Everybody is going to treat this relationship differently. I don't even think Tom Sizemore read the book that we wrote together whereas some people are going to be very meticulous. At Launch Pad, we have some clients that are very involved and want to read pages every week and we have some clients who just have full faith, are hands-off and just sort of approve the book at the end.
I would just say it's safe to assume that most celebrity biographies were not written by the celebrity, even if it says otherwise.
If you have sold your book to a publisher, the publisher may pair you with a ghostwriter. Oftentimes the author picks who they want beforehand. That's what happened with Sizemore. In fact, I'm the one who got the agent and got it sold. If you're working with a company like Launch Pad, we will pair you with one of our ghostwriters. We will figure out who would be the ideal person for you.
If you are publishing on your own, you hire that ghostwriter and editor.
An Editor
I did a separate episode on different editors (see link below) but the short version is that editors are either going to be very involved or not at all. My editor at HarperCollins never changed a thing. At Launch Pad, we really get in there and tend to change a lot.
Editors can be really expensive. I just heard about one that charges just $45,000 to edit a book! I do know editors that charge more like $2000 and I'm sure you can find editors that are more in the $1000 range, but you may get what you pay for—although you do not need the $45,000 editor.
Your editor is there to make you sound even better than you are. And I know from my own experience that it is easy to come to resent your editor. I was very lucky when I wrote for magazines; I had editors who made my writing so much better; I had one in particular at Details magazine who just made me sound amazing. And I had one experience with one book where the editor was very insistent on changing something that changed the meaning in a way that made me uncomfortable. When I told him that, he basically said "Either do this or we're not publishing your book." But that only happened to me once in many, many years of being a writer.
A Writing Coach
A writing coach is someone who is just your cheerleader throughout the process. And every coach has a different method.
So when you start working with one, you will establish the role and the boundaries, how often you want to talk and what you need from them. The range in cost can be wide.
I'll tell you that I don't love being a writing coach so I have what I call a "go away" price that's really, really high. And most people say "No way." I have one person who said "Fine."
So I have one client and our process is very it's very malleable. I am there to provide accountability. I do read pages. That is something to clarify with a coach: will they be reading and editing or just reading or not reading at all?
We offer coaching at Launch Pad and our coaches read and provide feedback for clients, but they do not do editing. So everybody's got a different way. But for the most part, a writing coach is not going to do editing.
RELEVANT LINKS:
How Do I Avoid Hiring the Wrong Editor for My Book?
Adam Carolla on Why Having a Great Book is the Best Launch Tip of All
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"The idea with a ghostwriter or co-writer is that it's built around what's best for the 'name' person—the person paying the writer. I had Adam Corolla on this podcast and he talked about how he 'wrote his book' by talking to the writer while driving to comedy gigs."
May 12, 2021
How Can I Use Social Media to Promote My Book?
Pick Your Platform(s)
Do not try to be everything for everyone. I've found that Instgaram, Facebook and LinkedIn work best for book promotion, though I know people who swear by Pintrest (links to that below).
Instagram: Top Tips
Use Canva. The easiest thing to do is to take quotes from your book and make them into Instagram posts on Canva; use the same font and the same color as your book cover and short ones are going to work the best.
Put multiple links in your bio. Use LinkTree or another platform that allows you to put multiple links in your bio because links are not clickable in Instagram captions and you only get space for one link in your bio. If you use something like LinkTree, you can link to your Amazon page, to a book page on your website, to media interviews and other things that you're doing for your book.
Tag other people. Don't abuse that by tagging strangers all the time because it's annoying, but do tag other people that you want to see and ideally like and comment on your post.
Encourage interaction. You can always urge people to take action by writing something like "give a heart if you agree" or "tag a friend who needs to hear this." When people comment on your posts, comment back. When they like your post, go and like some of their photos.
Encourage people to save your posts. Apparently, the Instagram algorithm loves it when people save posts. So if you are posting a quote that is teaching something useful, why not encourage your followers to save it?
Post multiple photos in a series. Instagram also loves carousels—having a series of photos in a sequence, which keeps people on your post.
Put excerpts from your book as captions. You have 2200 characters on Instagram, so you can definitely take excerpts from your book and paste them. See below for a link to a website that makes your captions have pretty paragraph breaks because if you just paste paragraphs into your captions, the layout is pretty ugly.
Do Stories. If you have over 10,000 followers you can do stories that say swipe up and you can put a link. If you don't have 10,000 followers, still do stories. I recently heard an Instagram expert say that if you really want your audience to fall in love with you, do 10 stories a day but dear God that's a lot of stories.
Do Reels. Reels are all the rage and I'll link below to an expert who teaches about Reels. A lot of people do Reels videos where they're pointing different words. I even did one before I realized I think we all look ridiculous doing that. Lately I've been experimenting with making funny Reels that don't actually teach anything.
Post reviews. You can post screen grabs of people's reviews of your book. You can grab the screen grabs from Amazon and post them or you can take little bits from them and make them into quote cards on Canva.
Post cool graphics of your book cover. I recommend using a site called Adazing because it can make your book cover into really cool graphics—it can create an image of your book cover on a tablet or show a cat with your book. (I'm actually an affiliate for them so you can get this SUPER AWESOME DEAL if you click here or at the link in the Useful Links section)
Use Instagram Live. Go onto Instagram Live and talk about your book, possibly doing interviews with other people about your book. Or even better, go on an Instagram tour. We had a client who spent a month after her book release doing Instagram takeovers, where she took over literally the friend's account. She just introduced herself to that person's audience and talked about her book and it was really effective.
Use hashtags. Hashtags are, like it or not, important. You can use up to 30 hashtags in a single post and the most effective way to use them is to come up with a list of ones that are relevant for your content and then search Instagram to see which of those are the most popular. Your goal is to rank in the top post for that hashtag so if that hashtag is used millions of times, it's going to be impossible to rank high. So you're looking for hashtags that are used hundreds of thousands of times or less, depending on how many followers you have. I'm linking below to a class on hashtags that breaks this process down.
I got my very first client because he was searching hashtags. This was back when I posted a lot about addiction and recovery; he was searching like recovery hashtags. He found me, he came to me and said, "I would like you to write and publish my book." Instagram may feel like just an ode to our vanity but I've gotten plenty of clients from it.
Facebook: Top Tips
Change your main images. I recommend changing your Facebook cover, your Twitter cover, your LinkedIn cover, your YouTube cover and any other cover you have to an image that includes your book cover.
Take advantage of the opportunity to pin posts. Make a link to your book sales page a pinned post on Facebook and also on Twitter and in your email. Put it everywhere you can.
Create a Facebook public page. Don't be self-conscious about calling yourself a public figure. A public page is not going to have this same reach as a personal page because Facebook just doesn't prioritize the public page in terms of the algorithm, but it's something that professional writers should have.
Share personal stories, photos and long captions. On Facebook, the posts that are going to perform the best are personal stories related to your book. People love stories of triumph. They love stories of success, and they love photos. Facebook really wants to keep you on and everybody else on Facebook, so links that take them out of Facebook are not going to perform as well. Longer posts are better.
Run Likes campaigns. To get people onto your Facebook public page, you can run Likes campaigns. Facebook advertising is pretty complicated but running Likes campaigns is the easiest kind of Facebook advertising to do.
Invite people to Like your page. Whenever somebody likes one of your posts on Facebook, you can then invite them to like your page and you will over time build up the number of followers on that page.
LinkedIn Tip
LinkedIn is definitely the more professional of all of these. So I recommend, if your book is about something where you're teaching something, if there's anything relevant for people who are interested in building their business in any way, that's what you post on LinkedIn. Hashtags are also are important there.
Finally, Don't Be Afraid to DM
When your book comes out, you can direct message people on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I've DM'd people videos of me saying, "Hey, my book comes out tomorrow. It would mean so much if you would go and get it." You can do voice notes, whatever you can do to get people excited.
It's really easy to assume, "Hey, if I post this, everybody's going to know to go get my book." You'd be amazed how much more likely people are to do something if you ask them directly to do it.
RELEVANT LINKS:
ADAZING SPECIAL DEAL [NOTE: AFFILIATE LINK!]
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"It's really easy to assume, 'Hey, if I post this, everybody's going to know to go get my book.' You'd be amazed how much more likely people are to do something if you ask them directly to do it. "
