Anna David's Blog, page 19
April 7, 2021
Jess Lahey on Influencer Endorsements & Much More
Jess Lahey can talk about so many things so brilliantly that interviewing her felt a bit like walking through an outlet mall: so many choices and they all look so good!
But really, here's what you need to know: She's a former New York Times columnist and current Atlantic contributor, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure whose new book, The Addiction Inoculation, is the one that the world has been clamoring for. It addresses the question on pretty much every parent's mind at one time or another: how do I prevent my kid from becoming an addict?
Lahey addresses this issue from her own perspective (as a sober woman from an alcoholic family who's taught high schoolers in recovery) but with a reporter's brilliance (coupled with scientific and medical knowledge, with some help, she acknowledges, from her in-house researcher, her husband Dr. Tim Lahey). In short, she's the perfect person to have penned this book and she couldn't have penned it at a more perfect time.
She's also, it turns out, the perfect person to talk to about building a business from a book—particularly if that business includes speaking, podcasting and newsletter writing. She's got tips aplenty for how to get speaking gigs, be booked on huge podcasts and have celebrities endorse your work. But—trigger warning—you'll never again think, "Oh, look how lucky that writer got, I bet it was easy for her." In other words, a sh*tload of work goes into these "lucky breaks," and Jess breaks down every single one.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
Jess Lahey on Influencer Endorsements, NY Times Bestsellerdom & Much More
Jess Lahey can talk about so many things so brilliantly that interviewing her felt a bit like walking through an outlet mall: so many choices and they all look so good!
But really, here's what you need to know: She's a former New York Times columnist and current Atlantic contributor, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure whose new book, The Addiction Inoculation, is the one that the world has been clamoring for. It addresses the question on pretty much every parent's mind at one time or another: how do I prevent my kid from becoming an addict?
Lahey addresses this issue from her own perspective (as a sober woman from an alcoholic family who's taught high schoolers in recovery) but with a reporter's brilliance (coupled with scientific and medical knowledge, with some help, she acknowledges, from her in-house researcher, her husband Dr. Tim Lahey). In short, she's the perfect person to have penned this book and she couldn't have penned it at a more perfect time.
She's also, it turns out, the perfect person to talk to about building a business from a book—particularly if that business includes speaking, podcasting and newsletter writing. She's got tips aplenty for how to get speaking gigs, be booked on huge podcasts and have celebrities endorse your work. But—trigger warning—you'll never again think, "Oh, look how lucky that writer got, I bet it was easy for her." In other words, a sh*tload of work goes into these "lucky breaks," and Jess breaks down every single one.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
March 31, 2021
Jesse Krieger on Crowd Funding Your Book Launch
Jesse Krieger knows his way around a book launch. His company, Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press, has published over 100 books in six years and his own book, Lifestyle Entrepreneur, has been featured all over the media.
His current focus, however, should perk the ears of anyone who wants to invest in publishing a book but doesn't want to have to pay the hefty fees: crowdfunding. Yes, Jesse and his team select authors and then help them go to their peeps and offer bonuses in order to raise the money required to launch a successful book.
We got into discussing that model and also dove into some launch techniques you might not have thought of (read your book over a series of YouTube videos, anyone?)
To find out more about Jesse, go here and to delve right into his process for crowd funding your book launch go here.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
March 24, 2021
How Do I Avoid Hiring the Wrong Editor for My Book?
Your editor is there to make you sound your best, not to rewrite you. Here are the questions you should be asking anyone you're considering hiring as your editor.
What books have you edited?
Do due diligence here...ask if the books were bestsellers and if they were thanked in the acknowledgments—anything that can help you determine that they’re legit and telling you the truth!
What’s your favorite genre of book?
This doesn’t mean that if they usually edit historical romance and you wrote a recovery memoir, they’re not a fit but it may. Find out if they’ve edited ANY books like yours in the past.
Do you do developmental editing or just copy editing?
There is a huge difference here. Developmental editors often come from the world of traditional book or magazine publishing and they are there to take a big, wide look at the project as a whole. They’ll say things like, “Let’s consider taking Sally out” or “I totally lost track of where you were going in the third chapter.” Big stuff. Often a developmental editor will do an edit and then need your input (because they’re filling in holes that they need you to provide information for) so two edits may be involved.
A copy editor or proofreader, meanwhile, is just looking for typos. If you have a big conceptual problem in your book, this person will not address it because it’s not what they’re trained to do.
Sometimes an editor just reads a manuscript and provides feedback. If that’s what you’re getting, you’re going to need another editor after so MAKE SURE YOU CLARIFY ALL OF THIS UP FRONT.
TO BE CLEAR: In all likelihood, you will need TWO editors: a developmental one AND a copy editor. (At Launch Pad, we actually put the manuscripts through three or four editors, because the more eyes on it, the more likely we are to catch everything.)
Even after shelling out money to this editor(s), your book will still have typos. It sucks. And it’s the truth. Don’t hate your editor. Human eyes miss things. Harry Potter and The Tropic of Cancer both had typos when they were first released. I highly recommend giving your book to five friends and asking them to read (do this at the same time that a copy editor is going through it). Just clarify to your friends that they are looking for TYPOS ONLY (I’ve seen way too many people get dragged down rabbit holes when they give their completed manuscripts to non-writer and non-editor friends who find their inner writer or editor and start explaining how the book should change. DOUBLE NO!) Ask your friends to send you a list of the typos they find so you can make the corrections. To make extra sure there are no typos, after you have the completed version from the copy editor/your friends you can always use a dictation software to “read” your book aloud to you. Many times we hear mistakes our eyes didn’t see.
What do you charge? UM, YEAH, OF COURSE.
Here’s the thing: editor fees vary WIDELY. I charge a minimum of $5000 to edit a book, while I know others who will do it for $100. I would avoid people who charge by the hour because you never know how quickly or slowly they’re going to work. If you want to play it safe, I would budget a minimum of $1000 for your editor; an editor I refer people to charges four cents a word so a 50K word manuscript would be $2k. YES this sounds like a lot but it’s the most important place to put your money.
Do you have any references?
Get this information and then reach out to previous clients. It’s a pain in the ass but I can’t tell you how many clients come to me having worked with an editor that didn’t do anything and overcharged them. Confirm this person has raving fans before you part with your cold hard cash.
Can you do a sample for me?
Most editors will edit roughly five pages in order to give you a sense of what they do. You should be able to get a sense of how liberal or careful they’re going to be based on that sample.
How long do you estimate this will take?
Just because someone can do it quickly doesn’t mean it’s a rush job. Because editors are freelancers, their workloads vary all the Ime so you may catch someone when they don’t have any other projects on their plate, or when they’re drowning in work. For a full (30,000-50,000 word) manuscript, I would say a month is a good turnaround Ime.
What format do you work in?
Most editors I know work in Word and then have the editor use Track Changes but some people like to work in Pages or Google Docs. Any are fine but just get on the same page from the beginning.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
March 17, 2021
Samantha Perkins on the Anxiety of Launching Your First Book
Samantha Perkins had all the anxiety that any first-time author has.
Except she had more.
Her book, after all, is about anxiety—well, anxiety that was exacerbated by drinking.
That book, Alive AF: One Mom's Journey to Becoming AF, has not only become a #1 bestseller but has also ushered in a plethora of opportunities—including coaching, speaking, writing assignments and more.
And I had a front-row seat through all of it, since I walked her through the process of writing her story and sat back proudly as she took what I'd guided her through and ran with it.
In this episode, we talk about when she knew she was going to follow through on her desire to write a book, the anti-climax of release day and the emotional hangover no one tells you about, among many other topics.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
March 10, 2021
How Do I Get Reviews for My Book?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Reviews Are Currency
Ask People Interested in Your Topic to Review Your Book
If A Review Isn't Approved...
They Don't Need to Buy the Book to Review It
There are Book Review Exchange Sites
Compile an Advanced Reader Team
Also: Encourage Your Readers to Write a Review
Reviews Are Currency
Readers are a thousand times more likely to buy your book if it has more than a handful of reviews. Writers know how important reviews are but other people don't. So this means that no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, you need to ask people to review your book.
The worst part of that is you then need to ask them again, because a lot of people will say, "Oh yeah, yeah," and they don't. Remind them that it only takes a few minutes, that they don't necessarily have to read every word of your book to do it and that they don't need to stress about the wording. People will say, "Well, but I'm not a professional reviewer," and that's the whole point of all of these reviews.
Amazon has a very strict policy when it comes to reviews that they think could be biased. So it may not approve reviews from people it deems too close to the author. And that can be everything from people with the same last name to even people who follow each other on social media. I had somebody who's an acquaintance review a book of mine. She had been reviewing books of mine since long before we knew each other. And she got an email that said "We consider this review biased and we're not posting it." And you can get apparently you can get a lot of trouble for it.
The science on this is not exact because it seems to happen through both people and bots. Nobody's really telling how Amazon does this.
Ask People Interested in Your Topic to Review Your Book
The reason that it matters that they're interested in your topic is that they have a history on Amazon of buying books like yours. So that means that that the thing called the "Also Boughts"—which is where Amazon will put "Customers who bought this also bought"—is so much more likely to kick off because Amazon knows if a person has bought a bunch of books about, say, adoption, then other people who are searching for that would like this book as well.
If A Review Isn't Approved...
Let's say a friend says "I read your book and it wasn't approved"—it either never showed up or they actually got an email saying it wasn't approved. They can resubmit their review with a lower star rating and a shorter review and then try it again. Or they can reach out to Amazon. And oftentimes Amazon will then approve the review.
They can then copy and paste the same review onto Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target, wherever else the book is available
They Don't Need to Buy the Book to Review It
If a reader did buy your book, their review will say "Verified." And if they didn't buy it, it's not going to say that. And a verified review is so much better. Unverified counts, but verified means a lot more in terms of sort of kicking the Amazon algorithm in when more reviews come in.
You Don't Necessarily Want All 5-Star Reviews
If I see all five-star reviews, I think they look fake. I tell people for my books, "Be honest. If there are things you think could have been better, please put that in the review and don't feel obligated because I've asked you to do this review to give me a five-star review."
And remember, you cannot pay someone to review your book, but you can give them the book for free and you can thank them afterward with a copy of the book or something else.
There are Book Review Exchange Sites
I tried Pubby, which is twenty dollars a month.
Here's how it works: You fill out a profile with your book and words that people use to describe your book and then basically you agree to review someone's book and then in exchange, you earn credits so people review your book.
I did reviews of books. I just used the words that they told me to use. And I might have somehow screwed up but I got one review and it reads like a review from someone who didn't read my book because they didn't read my book. So you get what you get. I don't recommend using sites like that because it doesn't even really feel good to know people didn't review it because they wanted to or because they even read your book.
Compile an Advanced Reader Team
I've talked so much about Advanced Reader Teams; it's where you gather people ahead of time to read your books so that they can copy and paste reviews right when the book comes out so that it debuts with all these reviews.
But I also compile a list of people in my address book that I email once the book is out and there are already reviews on there. I don't send it to everyone in my address book, just the people I think are open to doing that.
Also: Encourage Your Readers to Write a Review
In an earlier previous podcast episode Dave Chesson talked about how at the end of a book, he'll write about what brought him to the point of writing the book and the fears that came from it—as he said, "Just reminding people that I am a human being. I tell them a little bit about my journey and what I had to go through to get this thing that I created for them."
And then he reminds them how important book reviews are.
And actually, through Dave, I know how to create a link where basically you can put and so it's obviously only in the Kindle version. (Scroll down to links below to get it.)
RELEVANT LINKS:
How to place a link directly to your book reviews in your book (thanks, Dave!)
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"If I see all five-star reviews, I think they look fake. I tell people for my books, 'Be honest. If there are things you think could have been better, please put that in the review and don't feel obligated because I've asked you to do this review to give me a five-star review.'"
March 3, 2021
How Do I Get Media Attention From My Book?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Your Book is Not Newsworthy
How I Did This
How Ryan Holiday Does This
How Cameron Herold Does This
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, "OK, 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:
Free PR by Cameron Herold
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"It's quite self-obsessed of us to believe our book is newsworthy to anybody. You need to give the media a reason to cover you."
February 24, 2021
How Do I Figure Out the Core Audience for My Book?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Don't Be Like Me
The Riches are in the Niches
Don't Try to Find A New Audience with Your Book
Decide Who Your Book is For
Don't Be Like Me
For me, I can tell you, I didn't do this for six books, and instead I thought, well, they're for everyone homogeneous who wouldn't love this, that is the worst way to do it.
And strangely, in my experience with HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster, no publisher ever brought this up with me either. They never said who is the audience for their book.
Nobody asked possibly because it didn't occur to them in the same way that it didn't occur to me. So I've said this before, and I'm certainly not the only one.
The Riches are in the Niches
In Ryan Holiday's The Perennial Seller, he talks about how his first book, Trust Me I'm Lying, was targeted towards people who work in social media.
And this was many years ago before so many people worked in social media because he knew that it's about having converts and not readers.
And that goes back to the Kevin Kelly infamous blog post, 1000 True Fans—the idea behind this is that you do not need to Brene Brown or J.K. Rowling to make a wonderful living as an artist; you only need a thousand people who will buy anything you do.
Of course, a thousand followers on Twitter as not the same thing as a thousand true fans, a thousand people on your newsletter list is not a thousand true fans. True fans are converts. The reason you want converts and not readers is that converts will start doing the selling for you.
We buy books usually because they're recommended to us, not because we heard the author hyping them on Twitter. So you want a bunch of people going out there and saying how your book changed their lives and they're happy to do it because you've helped them so much because you have identified who they are and what they want.
Don't Try to Find A New Audience with Your Book
I will have clients that say to me they want their book to educate or convert people beyond their target. And I always explain that thinking smaller in this case is actually thinking bigger.
What I mean by that is there's a Facebook group called Australian Made Products and that has one point six million fans. There's an instant pot community on Facebook that has two point seven million fans.
My point is that your community is way bigger than you realize. And if you create something that's specifically for them, they're going to become an advocate for it in a way that they will not if it's just kind of sort of for them and sort of for other people.
I remember hearing about a guy who had a course called How to Use LinkedIn, which nobody bought. So he made a new course and he called it How Lawyers Can Use LinkedIn. More people bought it. Then he made it How Lawyers Can Use LinkedIn to Get Clients and it blew up.
The more specific you are about who it's for, the better it's going to be.
Decide Who Your Book is For
Don't say "People like me."
Maybe it's mothers of high needs children or people suffering from co-dependency issues. or CEOs of nonprofit companies; these are just a few of the core audience groups of books launch pad has published recently.
When you've figured it out, go to Amazon, find books that are for that core audience and see from the negative reviews what those readers are not getting that they want.
Then get to know this core audience. Hopefully, you do a little bit already because you're writing a book that's meant for them. So you're probably very invested in this topic. But make sure you subscribe to their podcasts, join their Facebook groups, sign up for their newsletters and infiltrate their world so that you can write something that will serve them.
Don't Sacrifice Your Creative Desires
Remember, you're looking for where their needs and your creative gifts have a crossover.
And that exists. You're going to feel it when you get there.
Whatever you do, don't try to enlarge the group by hoping to appeal to a group who wouldn't normally be interested in your book topic because people don't pick up books on topics they're not interested in, no matter how brilliant you are.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"Your community is way bigger than you realize. And if you create something that's specifically for them, they're going to become advocates for it in a way that they will not if it's sort of for them and sort of for other people."
February 17, 2021
How Do I Make Money From My Book (Aside From Through Book Sales)?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Pat Flynn Made $111,000 in a Day
Cameron Herold Has Made Millions
Jay Abraham Made $28 Million From One Book
I'm Not Jay Abraham and Yet This Worked
Pat Flynn Made $111,000 in a Day
Dave Chesson told me during our interview that he helped Pat Flynn with the launch of his book, Will It Fly, which teaches people how to verify their business idea. So for Will It Fly, he created a mini-course that's like a video version of the book to use as a study aid for the book.
At the end of every single chapter, there is a link to this mini-course that is absolutely free and he put it at the front of the book so a lot of people would click on the "Look inside" that you can click on an Amazon and sign up for this free mini-course without even buying the book.
What Pat Flynn has publicly said is one-third of every person who bought that book signed up for the free course. So he had a huge email list from the book: it was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Then he created a paid course, which was the next step up.
And the day he launched the paid course, he made over one hundred and eleven thousand dollars just to the email list he built from the book, not his huge emails.
He made one hundred and eleven thousand dollars in a day. God knows how much more he's made now. But obviously, so much work went into that.
Cameron Herold Has Made Millions As a Result of His Books
In our interview, Cameron told me that he's made millions as a result of his books and that's a combination of the coaching—because he gets paid twenty-seven hundred dollars an hour—and speaking, and he gets paid thirty thousand dollars to speak. And I actually interviewed him for Entrepreneur magazine way back several years ago and he said he didn't even want to write a book. He just wanted to increase his speaking fees. And so that's why he wrote a book and he increased them and then he increased them again.
Jay Abraham Made $28 Million From One Book
Another previous podcast, guest, Jay Abraham, explained that through one book he made twenty-eight million dollars. Now, that is from sales. Jay Abraham is not your typical person or author.
He priced this book at 377 dollars, and he got away with pricing it at that because he was giving away trade secrets that people pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars for. And he's well-known enough that he sold 72,000 copies of that book. Now, if I price to book at three hundred and seventy-seven dollars, I wouldn't even buy it. I was going to say only my mother would buy it but my mother wouldn't buy that. I don't know anybody who would.
I'm Not Jay Abraham and Yet This Worked
But I did speak to him right before I published my most recent book, Make Your Message Your Memoir, and what he said was so valuable that even though the book had already been printed, I went back and changed the beginning so that I could implement exactly what I'm about to tell you.
He said you start off the book with something along the lines of this: "I wrote this book because I realized that my ideas, advice, strategies, methodologies, support—whatever—was outproducing success or wealth or whatever it's producing by as much as two hundred and fifty percent; [this is just an example]. And what it made me realize is that I don't want to just help the people who can afford my expensive services. I want to help everybody. And it is my hope that by studying the lessons or the methodology or the strategy that I share in this book, you'll be able to use it and transform your life. And perhaps when that happens, you might wish to contact my office and explore how we could, help you even more. But that is not the primary driver. The primary driver of me writing this is that I break down what I have spent decades learning.
So I did that, and I will tell you, I didn't make a lot of money from book sales on that book—maybe five thousand dollars. But so many people saw it that I am contacted regularly by people who read that book and reach out to me about helping him as a result of that.
So, you know, I've probably added a hundred thousand dollars to my bottom line based on the number of people who have reached out to me.
I don't even know how many of them read the book. I don't know how many took in that introduction. But I do know that that is what I added and that is the result I got.
RELATED EPISODES:
RELEVANT LINKS:
My Entrepreneur Magazine story quoting Cameron Herold
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"I didn't make a lot of money from book sales but I've probably added a hundred thousand dollars to my bottom line as a result of the book."
February 10, 2021
How Do I Use My Book to Get Email Subscribers?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Offer a Link to a Free Course
Mainstream Publishers Don't Let You Do This
What We Do at Launch Pad
Email Them Once You Have Their Email Addresses
Start With a Nurture Sequence
Then Send an Email on the Same Day Every Week
Your Open Rates Will Be Depressing
So Why Do This?
Consider Setting up a Funnel
Offer a Link to a Free Course
I've talked about this before but what Pat Flynn did to get email subscribers—and therefore to make one hundred and eleven thousand dollars—is for Will It Fly, he put links to a free course based on the book in the book, gathered email addresses through that and then sold those emails subscribers a paid course.
Mainstream Publishers Don't Let You Do This
If you are publishing a book through HarperCollins or Simon and Schuster—one of those places—it's very hard to get them to agree to let you put a link to your newsletter in the book. I did notice that Brendan Burchard was able to get that in The Millionaire Messenger, which was published by a mainstream publisher but usually they are not interested in helping you get email subscribers.
What We Do at Launch Pad
We put a QR code at the beginning of the book and say "scan here" and offer a lead magnet. For Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I offered a one-page memoir structure cheat sheet and made it a special link so I could track how many people came from the book. We have a client who is releasing a book about keto and he's doing a fasting guide. You can do a quiz you can link to—whatever is relevant for your book. We have a client who is creating all this video content that the book is going to link to. It just has to be organic and very much related to the book so that it's interesting to the reader.
Email Them Once You Have Their Email Addresses
I used to just have a sign-up on my regular website and people would sign up and I didn't do anything with them.
If you are just starting out in the newsletter game, MailChimp is the best option: it starts with a free plan for up to 2000 contacts and you can send up to 12,000 emails a month to that. There's nothing too complicated about it. When you get into other email providers, it starts you doing segmenting and you're doing all this other stuff. So I think MailChimp is sort of what we all start with.
And then you graduate. There's also Constant Contact, Convert Kit, Aweber and Drip. And there's what I use, which is Kajabi. I will say I went from MailChimp to Drip and oh my God, did I hate Drip. It was so complicated that I had to pay people to do it for me and I still didn't understand it.
If you want to have a site where you do everything—which is to say your website, courses, emails, products, anything you want—you can do it through Kajabi. And you can do things like segmenting, which means you can set it up so that if somebody clicks on one offer, they get put into one list and they click on another offer, they get put into another list. And let's say you have a specific campaign where you're going to send a bunch of emails in one week about something you can say at the bottom "Click here if you're not interested in hearing about this anymore. But you still want to stay on my list, click here" and it will unsubscribe them only from that offer.
Start With a Nurture Sequence
Set up a series of four to six emails for new sign ups that introduces who you are and spread them out over a week or several weeks. You could say you're completely going to overwhelm them if you send the four in a week or you could say over several weeks they're going to forget who you are. I don't know.
But set it up so that the nurture sequence doesn't come at the same time as your regular emails.
When I didn't have that set up, one girl wrote me and she said, "You know what? I'm so sick of reading your emails, you've got to stop sending me so many emails," and I wrote her back and I said, "I am so sorry. I am literally not selling you anything. I am just trying to help people who want to write books."
She wrote me back and she said, "Oh my God, you know what? I didn't really realize there was a person on the other end of this. I didn't think you were really going to see this. I was having a really bad day and I took it out on you. And I am so sorry." And I just thought that takes such a courageous, awesome person to admit that and to write me.
So I wrote her back and I said, "You are the greatest. You are my favorite subscriber." And she wrote back and said, "You are my favorite newsletter I subscribe to. So it became a total love fest. That can happen but it usually won't!
Then Send an Email on the Same Day Every Week
I decided to send my newsletters on Thursday mornings because a lot of people seem to send their emails on Thursday mornings. And so I figured out that must be the best way to do it. But that's actually very counterintuitive because if a lot of people are sending emails on Thursday mornings, I should not send them on Thursday morning. Maybe I'll change that.
But in the nurture sequence I write, "You're going to hear from me a lot at first and then you're just going to hear from me on Thursdays."
And do not stress about the weekly emails that you send out. You do not need to spend hours and hours creating them.
You just need to give them something that's relevant to them. Maybe you have a Google alert about what your topic is and you send them the best stories that you saw that week. I know that I don't want to read long emails or newsletters.
Your Open Rates Will Be Depressing
Here are some stats about my open rates from recent newsletters: I had a newsletter titled "The Reason I made three figures from one book and six from another" and that open rate was sixteen percent. If you are a newsletter subscriber, that means that sixteen percent of you were interested in that. Then I wrote one called "As I write this chaos reigns supreme" and that had a 26 percent open rate. That is really, really good for me. Then I wrote one I put so much effort into and it took so long and it was quite fun to write. And it was called "Quick Name Ten Good Things that happened in 2020," which I sent the last week of 2020 and that was seventeen percent open rate.
So Why Do This?
You do this because that twenty-six percent or seventeen percent or sixteen percent is gold.
These are your people; these aren't just your future readers, these are your future evangelists. So have fun with them. Don't try to sell them stuff all the time. And don't even think about it in terms of sales; you are offering them opportunities to do what they want to do—whatever it is that had them buy your book and then sign up for your list.
Consider Setting up a Funnel
Funnels were popularized by Russell Brunson and the idea is you give people something—a lead magnet, a cheat sheet, whatever it is—and then you sell them something very small...something that's nine dollars or fifteen dollars or whatever it is. And if they buy that, then you sell them something bigger, which is to say more expensive.
So you are slowly acclimating people to buying something from you, which is also to say up acclimating them to having you help them fulfill their dreams.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Will It Fly by Pat Flynn
The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"With newsletters, you are offering readers opportunities to do what they want to do—whatever it is that had them buy your book and then sign up for your list."
