Anna David's Blog, page 20
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."
February 3, 2021
How Do I Use My Book to Get Speaking Gigs?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
It's Not as Simple as Just Writing the Book
Jess Lahey Breaks It Down
Here's How to Start
It May Be Worth It to Give Your Book to the Audience
Writers Can Make a Ton of Money Speaking
The Audience Can Be Your Future Clients
It's Not as Simple as Just Writing the Book
If an event organizer is considering two different people to speak on a certain topic and one of those people is a bestselling author, that person is going to get the gig. But it is not as simple as writing a book and waiting for these speaking offers to come in. You have to get very, very proactive.
Jess Lahey Breaks It Down
In another episode, Jessica Lahey, who's a New York Times best-selling author and has a law degree and is an educator and a teacher, walked me through what her process is.
Basically, she wrote thousands of letters to heads of schools, to principals, to superintendents with a passage from her book way before it was coming out and explained why it would be a really great book to show for their community and offered to come in and speak.
Then she said, "This is what the speech would look like. I could talk to your students as well as your teachers. And by the way, did you know that this is this could be part of your professional development budget that could pay for it? By the way, a parent association budget can pay for it."
So she went in there and really did the whole job for them, made the decision for them and broke down how they could do it.
So it should be no surprise that she speaks all over now if you want to speak.
Here's How to Start
Brainstorm a list of organizations that are related to your topic and start making a list—maybe an Excel spreadsheet—and start figuring out who to contact there.
You may need to contact somebody who's going to send you to the right person, but just stay on it.
This is what my friend Ryan Hampton did and it worked beautifully. He had a book about addiction and recovery and the opiate crisis. So he reached out to rehabs all over the country and said, "You do not have to pay me. I will fly myself there. All you have to do is buy books." And he set it up so that the organization, the rehab in this case, would buy books through a site called BookPal, which does bulk orders at a discount. It also reports to the bestseller lists.
Then he would figure out how to make his speaking event at said rehab into a local media event, and he would then reach out to local press there. Therefore, it's not just something that the rehab is getting for free but you are bringing press to this rehab or organization.
And he sold there was an organization that bought 1000 copies of his book that way.
It May Be Worth It to Give Your Book to the Audience
Previous podcast guest Cameron Herold talked about how he used to take 10 copies of his book with him, sell it to the first ten people that came up to him for twenty bucks, make two hundred dollars and then go get a massage or do whatever you do with two hundred dollars when you're visiting.
Then he met the former VP of marketing for Kodak and saw that that guy handed out his book for free to everyone in the audience—like 200 people. And that seemed counterintuitive: he thought why would he do that?
Then he realized if he was getting one client from that, it was so worth it, especially if, for bulk orders, he could be getting paperback copies for three or four dollars a book.
So he started to do that and he started to realize that he would get more speaking offers, more coaching clients, more of everything. And so now what he does is every time he's booked as a speaker, he reaches out, he does the deal, he does the contract, and he reaches out afterward and says, "Oh, I forgot to ask you about books. How many people will be there? I can send books for everybody for ten dollars, including shipping."
And he said usually they come back and go, "That's great. There are 300 people." And he sends an invoice for three thousand dollars. And if they don't, then he covers the three thousand dollars. And even though that is expensive, it is more than worth it for what comes in as a result.
Writers Can Make a Ton of Money Speaking
I used to do more speaking really just at colleges and I would get $2-3 thousand dollars and while I never went anywhere glamorous, I went to these tiny towns all over the country that I never would see otherwise.
Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Ferriss get fifty thousand dollars and Simon Sinek gets 200 thousand dollars. So it is definitely a way to make extra income.
Create a Speaking Page on Your Website
Make yourself available as a speaker by creating a speaking page for your site. Put reviews—try to get a testimonial from the person who booked you. Put together a reel. I sometimes will just trot out my phone and ask people who come up to me after I speak to thank me, "Hey, could I get you to say this on video?"
On your speaking page on your site, have your reel, have testimonials, have lists of places you've spoken, have paragraph-long summaries of the keynotes that you can give, have pictures of you speaking, have everything that you can so that somebody can just click on that and know that you'll kill it.
And why not buy your name plus speaking as a domain? (I used to have annadavidspeaking.com but I let it go.)
The Audience Can Be Your Future Clients
Some venues and events are very open to you, quote, selling from the stage, while others are not. I did three TED talks. You are not allowed to sell from the stage and selling can mean your services as a coach, whatever it is. But many of us do use that opportunity to get people on our email list.
And you can offer to send anybody in the audience the slide deck or anything else. Sometimes people will actually have a number that you can text and they'll say, "Text me right now and we'll get you a copy of the slide deck" or "We'll get you this one sheet cheat sheet"—just come up with some way to keep in touch with these people afterward.
RELEVANT LINKS:
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"If an event organizer is considering two different people to speak on a certain topic and one of those people has a book and is a bestselling author, that person is going to get the gig. But it is not as simple as writing a book and waiting for these speaking offers to come in. You have to get very, very proactive."
January 27, 2021
How Do I Get Blurbs for my Book?
TO SEE ME ANSWER THIS QUESTION ON VIDEO, CLICK HERE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
What is a Blurb?
Why Blurbs Don't Matter
We All Think We're the Exception
A Blurb is a HUGE Request
To Increase Your Chances...
Strategically Befriend Micro-Influencers
You Only Need One—or None
What is a Blurb?
Somehow people have morphed this word so when a lot of independent publishers say "blurb," they mean like book description. A blurb is an endorsement. It is one of those nice little or long quotes from luminaries that you see on the cover, on the back cover on Amazon that you see all over the place.
They are also one of the most misunderstood book marketing tactics.
Why Blurbs Don't Matter
Think about your book-buying experiences.
Have you ever bought a book because of the blurb?
Like, Oh, holy shit, yeah. John Smith blurb that I better, but nobody does that.
Blurbs are simply sort of social credit and validity and they show our legitimacy and all of these things.
But as an author and as a publisher of many authors, I have both experienced and seen how misunderstood they are.
We All Think We're the Exception
What happens is an author gets really excited about their book. If you're an author, you feel me. You think everybody is really excited about your book. You think, "You know what I'd really like? Let's get Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle and Brene Brown to blurb my book." The problem is millions of people all over the world are thinking the same thing.
So what you think is, "Well, I know millions of people are thinking that, but if they read my book, they're going to want to blurb mine." The problem is Glennon, Elizabeth and Brene already have a long list of really good friends who want them to blurb their books. And I know this because I am certainly not Elizabeth Gilbert, Glennon Doyle, or Brene Brown and I have that.
A Blurb is a HUGE Request
For my first book, Party Girl, I didn't know. I just thought you just ask hundreds and hundreds of people. So I asked everyone I knew, which was mistake number one, because I couldn't use all of them. So now I've had somebody do me this enormous favor of reading my book, and I'm not even using what they did.
But I got lucky that first time.
I was out and I saw Jerry Stahl, who is like the person who made me want to be a writer and I basically said, "Oh, my God, you made me want to be a writer. I have my first book coming out in eight months" or whatever. And he very generously said to me something I never say to anybody. He said, "Would you like me to blurb your book?"
And I was blown away. It turns out Jerry Stahl is the most generous. There could be a club for people whose Jerry Stahl blurbed our first books, but he wrote me the nicest blurb. And then because I had this incredibly generous, nice blurb from somebody that was very well respected, I then went and sent that around. I remember I sent it to Dr. Drew, who I am now friends with, but I barely knew at the time. And he said, "Oh, my God, after reading that blurb, I have to read this book."
And then I got a blurb from him and it sort of went from there.
I Was Ungrateful
Now, what I didn't understand is I was so excited about my book, I thought, "Well, it's just a great honor for people to be able to to to blurb my book."
It's not an honor. I just sort of took it for granted that people would want to do it. And it's only when people started to come to me to blurb their books and I started to see in —the same sort of ugly behavior I hadn't recognized in myself. I remember this is who taught me: Lisa Smith, who's now a good friend of mine, asked me to blurb her book. Girl Walks Out of a Bar, I blurb it, she sends me the book, she sends me a gift certificate to get a massage, all of these things.
And I realized then this is a really big deal. So if you ask anybody to blurb your book, make sure you express your gratitude, you don't have to get them a massage. But that was really, really nice. I got was outdoors at the hotel back when we could all go outside. Oh, lovely. Thank you, Lisa.
But my point is this. I get emails all the time from people who have clearly not read my books but are very excited about their book and they believe that I should be very honored to blurb them.
If you send a blurb request to a stranger, your chances of getting a yes are not great but there are ways you can go about this that are super, super effective and super, super ineffective.
Below this post you can read examples of ineffective and effective blurb requests I've received.
To Increase Your Chances...
Make sure you've read their books and make sure you are being very, very clear about why they are the perfect person to blurb your book and how much it would mean to you to have a blurb from them.
This is also something that happens increasingly...back 10 years ago, I heard about this and I was like, Oh, people do that?" You could say to somebody who's extremely busy, "Hey, I know you're really, really busy. You don't have to read the whole thing. And in fact, if you'd like, I could write something, run it by you. And if you approve it, then we can use it as a blurb." Some people may be incredibly violated and offended by that. I know that I have both done that and had people do that to me and I am completely fine with that.
With some of the books that we've done, we've gotten celebrities—we got Magic Johnson to blurb a book. He didn't even have time to sit down and write it. So you could interview somebody and get the blurb over the phone.
But I also think let's say you have a book coming out in a year and you want to get big names to blurb your book?
Strategically Befriend Micro-Influencers
Now, I'm not talking about Glennon Doyle, I'm not talking about Tim Ferriss. I'm talking about like the tier down from the tier down, from the tier down...like me kind of level. If you want somebody who is just say they're not famous, but they are New York Times best-selling authors, they are Ted speakers, whatever it is, start stalking them in a very gentle, kind, loving way online. Start following them, start subscribing to their newsletters, start reviewing their podcasts, start joining their paid communities, whatever you can do, and start responding.
You'd be shocked how much you can be noticed. I have people that I have helped tremendously because they just started popping up in all the places. And I have had people who have helped me tremendously because I started popping up on their places and commenting and all of these things.
So let's say this is like an influencer that you've developed a relationship with over the years. When you have a book coming out, you can just tell them. You can say, I would love to send you a copy of this if it resonates with you. I would love it if you could write a blurb but no worries. I know how busy you are, blah, blah, all the things.
But let's say you're like, OK, fine, I don't have the time to do that. I don't know any New York Times best-selling authors or TED speakers or influencers or whatever it is.
Your next best bet is somebody who is an expert in your field and maybe that's a professor you had from college. Maybe, you know, we did a book on franchises. And so the franchising experts that we got blurbs from are not, you know, boldface names that anyone else is going to know. But in the franchising world, everybody knows them.
You Only Need One—or None
So so it's basically you just want this is what we do with Launch Pad. We only require our clients to have one blurb because we put that on the back cover. Anything else is extra credit.
Darren Prince, the client who had Magic Johnson blurbing his book, he literally got so many blurbs that we filled the entire back cover and then 12 more pages in the book. But it's not necessary. I think one of the reasons people think blurbs are so important is that it's kind of fun to get a blurb. You know, it's kind of like, hey, let's talk about how great I am. So if that's something that is fun for you, absolutely.
Go and gather them. But please, please don't let it stress you out. It is not required. And let's say you've got some influencer who's who you can call in one favor with someone, don't blow it on the blurb.
Wait until your book is out. Ask them to post about it, send out a newsletter about it, whatever it is. So that is how you get blurbs for your book. If you liked this video, if you're watching it on video, please give it a thumbs up hit subscribe. Do you go watch the other videos about building your brand with a book? And if you are listening to this on the podcast to God, I love you, please don't forget that you can D.M. Me your questions for me to answer.
Want me to answer your question? DM me on Instagram and I will see you soon.
Talk to you next time.
INEFFECTIVE/EFFECTIVE BLURB REQUESTS
Here’s an example of an ineffective request I just received:
Hello Anna . . .
I am a writer and a long-term member of the recovery community. My publisher recently released TK BOOK NAME, the sequel to my first book, TK BOOK NAME. All three books share addiction themes.
Here’s what’s come in so far:
BLURB EXAMPLES FROM PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW
All I ask is a three-page read; if I don’t have your attention by then, pass (I take no hostages).
A brief description is here: TK WEBSITE. The book is 220 pages long, published by TK PUBLISHER. I would be happy to send copies.
Thanks
Here’s why I deleted the email:
-It’s clear he sent a blanket email to people he thought could help him having no idea what I write [think about asking a stranger to read your material without bothering to read any of theirs first!!]
-The “three-page read” ask still puts a busy person [and who isn’t these days?] in a bind, leaving me to write him back and basically say his book didn’t grab me at all or to say yes.
-There’s no acknowledgment of the fact that this is a hefty request; the tone suggests instead that I would be so excited by the first 3 pages that I would be getting a lot out of doing it.
In short, asking someone to blurb your book is A HUGE favor. If you don’t have a personal connection with the person, I highly recommend making it clear WHY you’re asking that particular person and that you understand it’s a major thing to ask from a stranger.
Now here’s an example of the sort of blurb request that would get a “hell yes” from anyone (it’s from someone I knew and had had on my podcast):
Anna:
You are a gem! The interview sounds FANTASTIC (it was a delight talking to you) and I have shared it a few places on social media already and will continue to share in various outlets over the next few days. I also have it up on my resources website. And thanks for electing to use the sassy picture!
I am so stoked about your work and everything that you are doing. If you need me or see any further possibilities for collaboration, just give me a shout out. I probably won't be out to LA again until next year but lots can be done remotely as you know.
Also, might you have a willingness to take a peek at my upcoming book on Expressive Arts Therapy & trauma recovery (Process Not Perfection) as I prepare to gather "endorsement blurbs" for the cover? It would mean a lot to me to have as many strong female recovery leaders as possible on the pages. Let me know, and no pressure at all if this is something you're not willing or able to do.
Much love, Jamie
RELATED EPISODES:
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How James Altucher Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Tim Ferriss Launches a Book
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"You think everybody is really excited about your book. You think, 'You know what I'd really like? Let's get Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle and Brene Brown to blurb my book.' The problem is millions of people all over the world are thinking the same thing."
January 20, 2021
How Do I Use My Book to Get on Podcasts?
TO SEE ME ANSWER THIS QUESTION ON VIDEO, CLICK HERE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Start Doing Your Research
Only Pitch Yourself to Shows You Love
Think About the Show And Not Yourself
Know That The Host (Probably) Won't Read Your Book
Pitch at the Right Time
How Do I Use My Book to Get on Podcasts?
The best way to get on podcasts is the most obvious one and it's the most overlooked, which is listen to the podcast you want to be on.
Start Doing Your Research
Start by making a list of the podcasts you want to be on and be realistic: you are not going to get on Joe Rogan. You're probably not going to get on Tim Ferriss.
So go to the podcast app, go to the Apple store on your phone or your computer or wherever you are and start doing a search for the podcasts in your topic. And you are looking for podcasts that have at least a hundred episodes and at least 50 reviews. There are sites like Chartable where you can find out the actual number of downloads but there are billions of podcasts out there and this is the easiest way to do it. So as long as you can see they post every week, there are at least 100 hundred episodes that are at least 50 reviews, this is a podcast that is well worth your time going on.
So make a note of that podcast, then look under where it says "listeners also listen to or subscribe to" and start noting those again. Just constantly be revising and editing based on the podcasts—many start out strong and then they haven't updated in a couple of months or only post every month.
I would just strongly recommend sticking with weekly podcasts for now, then go and listen to them; maybe batch this and do 10 at a time. If it's a podcast you can't stand, forget it. It doesn't matter.
Some hosts and producers are very easy to reach—the information is very accessible—and sometimes they're not. There's a website called Hunter IO that lists really hard to find email addresses. They may not be accurate, they may not be current, but they are sometimes so that is that is who you pitch to.
Only Pitch Yourself to Shows You Love
When you love a show, what do you do? You review the show and keep listening to it. When you reach out to the host or the booker or whoever it is and tell them you love the show, show them a screengrab of the review.
I have been pitched hundreds of podcast guests over the years and I've accepted maybe four of those and the other ninety I rejected, usually because it was so obvious they had never listened to the show and it was just a blanket pitch.
And the ones that I did put on the show who were amazing guests, they had listened to the show or their publicists had listened to the show.
Think About the Show And Not Yourself
When you're listening to shows, make a couple of notes about episodes you like and then when pitching say, "I absolutely loved this episode and that episode. And also, I reviewed your podcast. Actually, here's a screen grab of my review and here's what I think I could tell your listeners."
Remember this: No one cares about your book. No one cares about my book. They care about what your book can do for them.
So the podcast host does not care about promoting your book. He or she cares about you sharing something with their audience that will be helpful that they haven't heard before and then you sharing the episode.
So share with this podcast host how excited you would be to share your episode and talk about whatever your abilities to share are; if you don't have a big social media following but it's a podcast you really want to get on, say, "I'm so excited to do this. I would love to drive Facebook ad traffic to the episode"or whatever it is.
Just make it so hard for the person to say no.
The Host (Probably) Won't Read Your Book
You should still send it to them. There are some podcast hosts who are extremely assiduous about reading guest's books—James Altucher talks about how he reads every guest's book over and over and over again. But I just heard Lewis Howse talk about how he has an assistant who reads the books, who flags the parts that are relevant to him and these are the biggest authors in the world.
As an author, it can be very disheartening when you're being interviewed by somebody who it is very clear has not read your book. But as a podcast host, I've had both: I've had people I've absolutely read their books and I've had people where I haven't had time to read their books and I've interviewed them.
The important thing is it's somebody that has taken the time to prepare—has gotten information about you and your book—and it can be just as fruitful to have that conversation. So please don't be offended by the fact that the podcast host is probably not going to read your book.
Pitch at the Right Time
Make sure you pitch way ahead of your book release. Some podcasts batch episodes so you can't say, "My book is coming out in May. So in April, I'm going to start reaching out to these podcast hosts."
Some hosts don't want you pitching or promoting anything on their show. Marc Maron famously says he doesn't want people promoting things. But some are very open to it. You can absolutely request and say, "I have a book coming out April 1st. I would love for my episode to be released that week."
I really tried to do that with my recent book and I had all these podcasts that were scheduled to come out that week. And then people screw up and they forget when your book is coming out.
In the book world, people are very into preorders. But as a consumer, I am an immediate gratification baby and am so much less likely to buy something if I see it's not coming for another six months; I am so much less likely to hit Buy now.
So I recommend booking these podcasts for once your book is available. And while there is a great advantage to having them all be released at once, there is also a great advantage to keeping your sales going by having podcasts come out over a certain period of time.
So your homework is to start listening to the podcasts. Start researching which would be best for you, start being realistic and start stalking in a very gentle, loving and affectionate way, the hosts and showing them that you're out there.
RELATED EPISODES:
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How James Altucher Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Tim Ferriss Launches a Book
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"No one cares about your book. They care about what that book can do for them."
January 11, 2021
How Do I Get Clients From My Book?
TO SEE ME ANSWER THIS QUESTION ON VIDEO, CLICK HERE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Work Backward
Show People How to Do Something So They Hire You to Do It
Your Ideal Client Knows Other Ideal Clients
This Works No Matter Your Business
Whatever You Do, Don't Create a Course
Work Backward
Be very strategic—say, "Okay, I have a business where I help people do whatever it is you do and I need a book where I can educate my future client or customer."
Let's say you help people with branding: your book can be bout why branding is so important.
Picture your ideal client when writing. For my most recent book, I pictured a couple I know who I had talked to about hiring me. So as I was writing Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I thought about this couple every page. I would think, "Would he like that? What she would she be shocked by that?"
And the reason that I did that isn't that I was thinking small but that I was thinking big. I was thinking about the Kevin Kelly idea of a thousand true fans and how you do not need the masses. You need a niche. I used to think books should be for everybody. But they should be for your ideal client.
The couple I pictured when writing the book haven't read it. They certainly haven't hired me. But I've brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in business from people that are just like them. It's sort of like on Facebook, the lookalike audience. Your ideal client is an avatar. And there are if there's one, there are many.
Show People How to Do Something So They Hire You to Do It
I wrote a book about how to make your mess into your memoir because I wanted to help show people how to do that. But I also knew by showing people that I was the expert in how to do that, they would then want to hire me.
But you can't write the book, publish it and then say, OK, cool, who's going to call me and ask if they can hire me?
I was able to get on Good Morning America to promote the book. Now, you might think, "Wow, that must mean she sold a lot of books." I probably sold a handful from Good Morning America. But the handful that bought it then hired me. So it's not about how many books you sell. It's about who is buying it and who is reading it and who is hiring you as a result.
There's a business coach named Alan Weiss who wrote Million Dollar Consulting. I went to one of his seminars in New York, where he put up at the front of the conference table a large notepad and then he went around the room and asked each person, "How did you hear about me?"
One person said, "I read your book." Another person said, "I saw your YouTube video." Another person said, "I heard you on this radio show." But 99 percent of people were there because we had read his book. And I actually took a picture of this!
Your Ideal Client Knows Other Ideal Clients
Here's something else I learned from Alan Weiss.
He says when you write a book, sit down and think about who your ideal client is, then think about everyone you know, and then you think, "Could John Smith know my ideal client?"
Basically, you go through what old people call a Rolodex but what current people say is your address book on your phone. And you think about who you know who might know people. Because whatever it is you do for a living—if you coach people about how to be healthy with money or you coach mothers about how to be healthy with their children or whatever it is—you know people who know people who will pay you money to do that.
So what Alan recommends and I always recommend to my clients is sign two copies of your book and send them to a prospective client because a prospective client knows another prospective client he could give the second copy to and nobody throws away a signed book.
So now you've got two prospective clients.
This Works No Matter Your Business
At Launch Pad, we have published books by a sports agent, by a recovery coach, by somebody who owns a non-profit, by somebody who sells to the government. It works for every business I've seen.
I first learned this from my client, Darren Prince, the sports agent.
Aiming High was his book about his addiction and recovery. And right after it was released, he was getting offered six-figure spokesperson deals and getting paid ten thousand dollars a gig to go speak around the world.
But what he told me is that it brought in so much more business to his sports agency because when he sat down with people for meetings, they had read his book about addiction or they knew he had done it. And then it was less a business meeting and more two friends hanging out. And when you're two friends hanging out, the negotiations are going to go a lot better than when you're people just doing business.
I won't sign clients that I don't think can earn back at least ten times what they're paying me. It's silly to pay a lot of money to a company to write and publish your book when you don't have a plan to earn it back.
A client said to me, "I'm an angel investor and I want to write a book" and I said, "OK, great, let's figure out what your business is." And so we came up with this idea for a company where she's going to help women build their businesses. It will have two tiers—one for the ones just starting out who need to know, like what's an LLC, what's an S-corp, what's a DBA, how do I incorporate? And then the other tier, which is how do I get how do I write a business plan? How do I get investors?
Whatever You Do, Don't Create a Course
A lot of people will write a book and they'll say, "I'm going to create courses and use the book to sell them."
I find that the course building market is supersaturated and it's really hard to get people not only to buy your courses, but also to take them. How many courses have you bought that are just sitting there?
Creating courses isn't the author's path to gold but building a business around your expertise, writing a book that supports that business and then getting that book into the hands of the people who will pay you to do that is.
RELATED EPISODES:
How Do I Get People to Buy My Book?
Katie DePaola on Using Your Book to Build a Brand
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"I won't sign clients that I don't think can earn back at least ten times what they're paying me. It's silly to pay a lot of money to a company to write and publish your book when you don't have a plan to earn it back."
December 30, 2020
Gene Moran on How His Book Transformed His Business
Gene Moran on How His Book Transformed His Business
Gene Moran has helped myriad clients navigate the murky waters of federal sales. As the Founder and President of Capitol Integration and an active duty Navy Captain, Gene has established himself as an expert who consistently brings agility, creativity and results to companies of all sizes: small startup firms, prime and sub-prime contractors, and large multi-billion dollar public enterprises. He is a proven Navy Financial Manager, designated Joint Specialty Officer and was just named one of top lobbyists of 2020 by the National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics,
But to me, he's much more than that; he's a client who I'm thrilled to call a friend. We published his #1 Amazon bestselling book, Pitching the Big Top: How to Master the 3-Ring Circus of Federal Sales, last year and are publishing his second book next year. Why is he doing two books, you ask? Well, you won't have to ask once you listen to this episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: 00:00 Oh, well, Gene, thank you so much for doing this.
Gene: 00:04 It's my pleasure, glad to be here.
Anna David: 00:06 I don't pick favorites, but you're my favorite client. Any client who's listening. You're a favorite too, but we're just not talking right now.
Gene: 00:17 Only Anna could get away with that.
Anna David: 00:20 What's special about us chatting today is that you got, literally an award today already from the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics. Can we talk about that?
Gene: 00:33 We can. It's just amazing timing. It was a peer recognition award you know, by lobbyists of lobbyists. I refer to myself as a government relations advisor, but it's always nice to be acknowledged by peers for the work that I get to do with clients that are just great to work with. Thanks for mentioning it.
Anna David: 00:57 Well, and this, I have a self-serving question that probably isn't relevant, do you think your book had anything to do with that award? Probably not, huh?
Gene: 01:07 Actually, actually, yes, because a part of the criteria I learned was how have I helped innovate within the field? And one way that they viewed my innovative effort was that I wrote a book that made the process of Washington more approachable for clients, companies who aren't living in the Washington area. So many of my clients are from all over the country and different parts of the globe and they don't have that regular access and understanding of the process. And so, this book was a way to make it more approachable and that was our goal at the beginning. And it had a secondary effect for us.
Anna David: 01:56 Yeah. Just more frosting coming all the time. So, let's talk about your decision to write a book. I am pretty sure it came from being in the Alan Weiss community. Is that right?
Gene: 02:10 He certainly is somebody who has had a major influence on how I have organized my business and thought about my business. And after reading his material, participating in his events, it became clear to me that I was not fully appreciating the degree of expertise that I could bring to the field. And it didn't take me long to accept that, yeah, I have enough material that's original that I can package in a different way. And I got a little professional help to do that.
Anna David: 02:50 Well. Yeah. And I think everybody should know that if you have at least a decade in your field, you have a lot to teach people, probably even if you have less time. Gene and I are lucky enough to have a lot more time than that in our respective fields. But I, you know, and I remember at the event that we met at, but didn't meet at, which is to say we were both there, but didn't connect until afterwards really. I remember it began with Alan taking out a whiteboard and saying, going around the room and saying, how did you hear of me originally? And 99% of the people said it was from his books. Do you remember that?
Gene: 03:30 Absolutely. That was an eye opener probably 25 people in attendance at a workshop about how to work on your business. And that was a clear message from a very, very diverse audience, that books tell a story.
Anna David: 03:49 And we should say 25 hands out of probably 35. It wasn't like this was some huge workshop. It was a, I don't know, I'm terrible with numbers, Gene. I know you're really good with numbers.
Gene: 04:00 No, no, no, no. You're right. I can stick with the 99% because that's where it was. This, this was a focused group, but an extremely diverse group meeting in New York City. And there was no doubt everyone had come to him because of a book or a book referral.
Anna David: 04:16 And interestingly, I found out about his book by listening to a podcast, I was listening to a business podcast. I listened to all the time, I was on a hike and I just said, who is this man? He's sharing truths in a way that I've never heard someone talk before he really got my attention with Napoleon Hill was full of it. He was the worst, you know, when every other entrepreneur always talks about Napoleon Hill, anyway point is, I remember you saying when we first talked, you wrote it so that I think the expression you used, so that you could be in the public square. Was it something like that?
Gene: 04:52 Correct. And you know, that's a concept that I think people in any business need to just embrace. I was a little slow to embrace it. The fact is if you are in business, people are evaluating you long before you meet them. Or even if you've been referred to them, they've checked you out pretty well before you have your first conversation, you may be 30% through a sales qualification process before you had that first conversation. And so, one's presence in the public square, what do you look like all the time? What's your body of work? Do you have books? Are you on social media? Do you write articles? That sort of stuff matters and it adds up to how people evaluate one's professionalism, capabilities, body of work in today's society.
Anna David: 05:50 Yeah. And I think one of the misperceptions about books is that you have to sell a million copies for that to be true, and it is not true. So not true, you know I know you, well, first of all, let's go back to this first book. You got professional help from someone who already worked with you in terms of the writing process, what was the writing process like? Did you follow a structure? How did you do it?
Gene: 06:14 Well, I wouldn't encourage everyone to follow my model. I sort of just went at it from an outline that I had been using to brief clients with. And I had a very bright intern working with me who was between college at Georgetown and starting law school at Boston College. And she was a gifted writer and I would give her bursts of my product and she would try to clean it up for me. And we went back and forth doing this. My wife and I were actually, on our boat in The Bahamas while I was doing some of this. And in a matter of a few months, we got what I thought was a pretty good manuscript. And then I connected with another person at Alan Weiss's community Dan Janell, who is a gifted editor in his own right. And former newspaper person. And he looked at it and said, yeah, you might need a little developmental work here. And he helped me sort of formulate it a little differently, put a creative title to it that we continued to improve. But then I got to a point where I was like, okay, now, we think we have a product, but how do I get it to market? And that was where the magic of Anna David came in.
Anna David: 07:34 That's where I came in. What were you going to do before you met me? Were you going to find a cover designer and do this uploading yourself? What were you, what was your plan?
Gene: 07:44 So, yeah, like many people who try to do their own marketing. I thought that, yeah, this Kindle Publishing through Amazon that doesn't look too difficult. I knew people that had done it. Some people make it look very easy, and I'm sure in some ways it is people described it. You can go to Fiverr and get someone to do your cover and get an ISBN. And suddenly I came to recognize that, wow, this is a lot of cobbling together, and it's going to take more time and effort than I really want to put into this. I don't get that cathartic experience from the whole writing, and putting a book together. Some people do, but I'd rather focus on my work and hobbies and have the book just come to life. So, when you and I were fortunate enough to run into one another after the New York event, that was where I recognized, Hey, I just found somebody who can take this across the finish line for me. And that's pretty much what happened.
Anna David: 08:49 Yeah. I will say, technically, you could say it is easy to do the Kindle Publishing because you could, you can create a cover on Amazon. You can create a layout, but the difference between doing it right. And doing it, you know, doing it and doing it well is mammoth. And I know because I had to learn first-hand. So, yes, so we published this book, it became number one in its categories. We were all very happy. And then what happened next? How did you market it? How did you use it to attract clients all of that?
Gene: 09:30 Well, I wish I could fully describe the magic nature of what unfolded, but it seemed that my existing organic network definitely latched onto the idea that I had a book. You know, the congratulations start to flow the just the noise level and the like, I guess the social media impressions rise considerably. And suddenly my network, I think, was viewing me in a different way. Oh, wow. Look at this. I didn't know he did that. Or I didn't know he had it in him. And referrals start to come in at a different pace and of a different quality pretty much immediately, I would say within the first quarter, I knew, wow, this, this was really a smart move. And I hadn't really thought it through like that. Prior to that happening, you know, embarking on a book, seemed like a smart idea, if nothing else, it was another piece of professional credentialing, but the activity and the sort of the flywheel effect definitely kicked in fairly quickly for me.
Anna David: 10:49 Did you have to do anything? Did you mail out copies or did it just happen organically?
Gene: 10:55 I had not done a big mailing, others I understand do that fairly regularly. My, the nature of my work is that I don't have a big client turnover and I don't look to attract a huge number of clients in any given year. I just, I have sort of steady growth of a small number of clients. So, my whole client acquisition mindset may be a little different than others. So, I have not pushed that too, too much. Somebody asks, you know, I'm happy to sign them and give them away. I've made them available for free on some occasions. When I speak at events or, you know, pre COVID certainly make reference to it. And you can see that, you know, people go to the website and download it.
Anna David: 11:55 And so, I'm really glad you mentioned this higher quality of client. It attracts because I think any entrepreneur spends a lot of time, maybe you found a way to avoid this, speaking to people who are not the right client or agreeing to work with somebody who's not the right client. And a book is an excellent weeding out process because you get to show kind of the quality of your work. Do you know what I'm saying?
Gene: 12:23 Absolutely. you know my business is about helping companies connect to the Washington process. The very large companies, excuse me, have a full-time Washington presence, smaller companies, medium sized companies don't necessarily have that. And some just don't have the bandwidth to support that sort of support. So, I can be that bridge to them to help them in the DC space. That doesn't mean that everybody is ready to work the DC environment. And so, there are some companies that are, you know, you watch Shark Tank, you see, you know, Hey, you're not quite ready for us, so we're not quite ready for you, that exists I think in many businesses, it does exist in my business. So, I am always looking for companies who are ready to make that step increase in activity and sales to the government help their, you know, improve their own government positioning. And that requires a company of a certain sustainability and cash flow and to cut through its quality they need to be ready to go work with me.
Anna David: 13:38 Yeah. I think also a thing for me was, well, what you start to notice, ironically, is the people who are trying to, and this is kind of off topic, haggle the price are often the people who are going to be the most difficult. And then the people with this abundant mentality who are just like, okay, great. Let's just do this are the ones who end up being a joy to work with. And I will say, I remember when I told you the price, you just go, I'm still standing. Like you didn't, you know, you weren't like what? But so, okay. And so then let's talk about, then you decided, Hey, this was so great. I want to work from the beginning with Launch Pad. Was that partially you know, I'm imagining it took a lot of your time to write that book on your own. Would you be able to estimate how many hours it took you?
Gene: 14:37 I really have never tried to put a number to it. Let's just say I made the go decision in April of 2019. I remember this well, I was at an Alan Weiss event and I came of it and saying, what am I waiting for? And within months, you and I were talking, so we published in October. So that was six months. So back up some of these developmental back and forth efforts you know, to get to a manuscript, it was probably four months of commitment. You know, I'm still, I do still work and you know, that's the full-time job. So it was, you know, months of effort, some people pour years into a book, I've come to recognize that there are faster ways to do it and, and less labor intensive ways to do it.
Anna David: 15:31 Well, you did. That's pretty fast, what you're describing. When somebody says they're working on a book for years, I go, Oh, God, not because they've wasted the time, but because the book is probably in disastrous shape, because it just suggests that they've been writing without a structure and just kind of changing and all those things that not just take a long time, but really make the process fixing more difficult. Do you know what I mean?
Gene: 15:59 So for anybody out there who questions, their ability to write, I'm a great example of somebody who is not a naturally gifted writer. In fact, I recall Dan Janell coming back to me saying, we've got to get rid of this passive voice. And I didn't even know what he was talking about. Dan, how do I identify that? And he rattles off these words that are, they just glare at him. He can't even stand that. They jump off the page out at him as passive voice. Now I've finally, and coming to recognize what that really means and why it's so boring to read that way. We do tend to speak that way often. And that was part of my problem. But you know, having some professional eyes help work through that sort of thing you know, makes it much more readable or enjoyable for the reader to actually read the book. So some of those people I'm going to get back to your topic here of self publishing.
17:04 I've observed many, many colleagues who have been counseled to go with a professional publisher, go with a commercial publisher, not professional commercial publisher. And they wait forever. They wait 18 months using an agent or multiple agents, and they go to 50 publishing houses to try to get published in there. They're just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. We went from start to published to number one in six months, such that it was having an effect on my business within months after that publication date. And I've shared this story with many people who are clinging to this idea that you have to have an expensive literary agent that's working the publishing houses for you. If your goal is to have a book that will help your business, my experience with this book is that that's a lot of wasted time that you don't have to waste.
Anna David: 18:04 I know. And you have generously sent me probably 10 people who I've talked to, who have not been convinced of that. And it's, I think it's this. And I get it. It's like that dream that they know the statistics are really bad for selling a book, but they think they're going to be the exception. And they just, you know, and they say things because I talk to these people all the time. Whenever I talk to someone who says that, I'll circle back once I've, you know, sort of gotten the agent and publisher, I know they're never publishing a book. I know it. And they'll say things like I want to be sent on tour. This was pre COVID. I don't know, personally any writers who the publisher sent on tour. I know a lot who arranged their own tours and they say, I want to get my book in bookstores. And that, you know, getting published traditionally doesn't mean that I find it easier to get my book in bookstores now. I got this new one in Barnes and noble by walking in and chatting with someone who worked there. I wasn't even trying.
Gene: 19:06 Well, that's the magic of Anna David right there. You bring this infectious enthusiasm to your work that people can't ignore. And so they want to be a part of that.
Anna David: 19:18 You see how to become one of my favorite clients. You just have to say things like that. Now, you're too classy a guy to talk numbers, but how much money would you say this book has made you? I mean, I guess percentage wise in terms of new clients and all of that, I mean, I'm imagining the actual book sales. We all tend to make a couple hundred bucks, like not a lot, but what about in terms of new clients and business?
Gene: 19:45 Yeah, it's not the book sales. It's the access to clients and landing business from by leveraging the book. We are now 13 months from our publication date. It's November, 2020. And that number is between 35 and 40% higher business revenue, 35 to 40% higher than pre-book. How much of that is the book? Some significant piece of it has something to do with the book. I can't tell you the exact makeup.
Anna David: 20:23 I mean, and that's the thing about books. It's also the thing about podcasts. People say, how much does it show off your business? And it's impossible to quantify because it's not a number that adds up. You just know it adds to your legitimacy. I will point out to anybody who's doing mad calculations. He mentioned having a boat in The Bahamas, so we know he was already doing pretty well. So 35% is probably a significant number. That's all I'm saying.
Gene: 20:51 So I get asked regularly, Hey, is it worth the price that you pay to do these things, have an editor, have somebody do the publishing for you? To me it was an absolute, no brainer. And, you know, we can talk about our follow on projects if you'd like, and, you know, those decisions were quite easy for me to make as a result.
Anna David: 21:16 Yeah. I mean, so then we signed up you know, to do a monthly retainer with you where, you know, and we're figuring out what it is, but we got blog posts and speakers you know, packets and these things together, and we're in regular communication. So it becomes, I think if you're smart, a relationship, and then of course, we're releasing your next book in 2020, and we're helping you write it, 2021. I told you I'm not going to work.
Gene: 21:47 So the, I lost my train of thought there, sorry.
Anna David: 21:54 That we decided to keep working together.
Gene: 21:57 Yes. So we're here's something that you know, maybe listeners would gravitate to. I mentioned your infectious enthusiasm. You are also in a very different bubble, so to speak, then I am in, and I think this election showed us we are all sort of in bubbles. We work in different areas. We self-select our news in different ways. We, we are coming at things from a different perspective. As we speak today, I live in Florida, but my work effort is focused on Washington DC. My being outside of the DC area, 90% of the year helps me have perspective. You being in Los Angeles have a completely different perspective on things about how people consume information about how I'm perceived in a marketplace. And so, yes, we have a retainer relationship that has some flexibility to it because there's different things that come up about what I might need help with, or want perspective on. Sometimes it's about how to write something in short order, a blog post, how to reposition for speaking opportunities. These things don't just naturally happen where people show up on programs of associations to be a speaker, or be a panelist. There's somebody in the background helping make those things happen. Anna is on my team to help make those things happen. And you know, it takes that load off of me and it's a very, very minor price to pay to have that sort of higher caliber support.
Anna David: 23:40 Cool. Love it. Love it. Yeah. I mean, obviously I love it. I do think that's another misperception is that people think we'll have a book, so speakers or, you know, speakers, agencies and bookers are going to come knocking down my door. Nope, Nope. You got to make it happen.
Gene: 23:59 I happen to know personally and I'm sure many people listening do too. I know personally many of the people that are political pundits on the major cable channels they are not there by accident. They're there because they want to be there many are there because they're paid to be there and they have aggressively positioned themselves to be there. It's the same in speaking opportunities throughout the country, whether it's in an industry association sort of event, or if you're invited into maybe a prospect or another business setting, those things it's rarely just by power of your own personal brand. There has to be some effort on one's part to do that. I sort of left off the second part of our follow on work about the second book that you alluded to seeing the success of the pitching the big top, how to master the three ring circus of federal sales. That convinced me that that's not my only message that I can share and that I would like to tell.
25:11 And I would like more people to know about, but you know, me, I'm a fairly reserved person. These things don't just you know, come out when somebody interacts with me. But I recognized that my prior military experience, my corporate experience, my now entrepreneurial experience working in Washington, there's a through line there that many people might be able to relate to about transitions in life and opening up to different opportunities. And so I knew that had book potential, but I didn't want to sit down at the computer and type it out. So you have another way to do that. And you know, that appeals to me and I'm excited to do it. And I know goodness will come from it. I don't know exactly what that will look like, but you have to be willing to move in that direction toward these big goals and amazingly good things come.
Anna David: 26:12 Yes. And I don't want this to sound like one long commercial for Launch Pad. I want it, I want more people to understand what a book can do for your business and to see how possible it is, and to see that, you know, frankly you know, well, I got a good college education. It's my fault. I squandered it a little bit, but this is sort of the new college degree. Do you want to go get another degree or do you want to be considered an expert with a book and no matter how you do that, this will help you. No matter what business you're in. That's what I think. So, Gene, this has been a delight, unsurprisingly, is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?
Gene: 27:01 I wasn't expecting that one for the close Anna, I have to say, I really enjoy working with you. I use the word enthusiasm a lot. You bring a lot of energy that I get energy from. I love working with people that are like this. I love working with clients that bring that kind of energy. It makes the work that much more pleasant. This has been great experience for me. I certainly not thought twice about embarking on a book and as we've discussed moving onto more. So I look forward to a long relationship.
Anna David: 27:37 Well, thank you. Thank you. And thank you. Anybody who is listening, I hope you are super motivated from this story. And I will see you next week slash talk to you next week. Thanks. Bye.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
December 23, 2020
How Do I Get People to Buy My Book?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Just Ask
Be Strategic
Reach Out—and Out Again—to Everyone You Know
Don’t Expect Strangers to Care
Just Ask
If you're thinking...”Really? She's telling me just to ask people to buy my book?” Yeah, I am. And it's a mistake I made so many times: just kind of expecting the world to care that I had a book.
Here's the thing. No one cares. No one cares about my book. No one cares about your book. What they care about is what that book can do for them. So you’ve got to approach it like that—when you're writing your book, you approach it in your book description, you approach it in how you talk about the book on social media, in newsletters to your friends, everywhere.
Be Strategic
The number one strategy is to have a sales page for your book. (See the link section below for an example of one I did for my most recent book.) Most people will create a basic web page that just shows the book cover and description. And really that’s just serving the author. You need to serve the reader, show them why they should part with their hard-earned money for your book.
I also highly recommend making the book 99 cents when you first launch it and gathering an Advanced Reader Team, which is to say, a group of people who agree to read your book ahead of time and then write and then copy and paste a review a few days before the book is officially released on Amazon. The ideal scenario is you get a couple of hundred people to join the group; I realize that's a lot but just know that probably half the people who say yes will flake. Still, I recommend you set up a BookFunnel.com account for 20 bucks a year, upload your book there and send your ART members a link. If you can outsource this and have someone else run your Advanced Reader Team, that's ideal. But either you or someone else wiil send them a series of emails. Down below is a link to my PDF that breaks down exactly what you should say to them.
The reason you want to keep it 99 cents for your Advanced Reader Team is that you don’t want to say, “Hey, buy my book—it's 10 dollars—and do this review.” And even when it's 99 cents, know that you’re going to have to follow up with them. You might have to follow up a couple of times. I'll tell you, with people who flaked on mine, I followed up a couple of times and they all wrote back “Sorry, this thing happened, but now I'm going to do it.” And they did.
At Launch Pad and for all my books, we just keep the books at 99 cents and then we change it once the book is out. You can also leave it at 99 cents for a longer and then D.M. your Instagram followers, your Facebook friends, your LinkedIn connections. People think, “Oh I'm just going to post about having this book and people will go buy it.” Not really. How about you do a copy-paste—or again you outsource and you have someone else write something like, “Hey my book is out. It's 99 cents for a couple of days. I would mean so much to me if you went and got it.”
Reach Out—and Out Again—to Everyone You Know
I’ll be honest, when I'm sending out those "please buy my book" emails, I kind of go, “I'm not going to send it to him. I'm not going to send it to her. She's not going to be into this.” So you don't have to send it to everyone, but send it to almost everyone you know. It's amazing how people have to be asked to do something that we think is super, super obvious.
If you have a newsletter list, absolutely send a newsletter about it. But why not send multiple newsletters about it? Don't worry about bombarding your list—although again, make it about them or about something newsy to do with your book.
You can send three emails but don’t just say, “Hey, I have a book out.” No. Maybe you're going to tell them, “Hey, it's a number one bestseller. Hey, I'm going to be on Good Morning America. Hey, I really think this passage is relevant for you.” And then when you post about it on social media, again think about what is useful for them. Take sections of the book, take anything that's scandalous or interesting or will catch someone's eye and just keep sharing those things and linking to the book.
Put a link to the book in your signature for your emails, put it as a pinned tweet, put it at the top of your Facebook page, put it wherever you can and keep talking about it. You can create cards that have a link to it. You can carry around copies.
Don’t Expect Strangers to Care
The statistic is that somebody has to hear about your book seven times before they buy it. So one media appearance isn't going to do it. You constantly hawking your book is what's going to do it. And if you're thinking, “I'm sorry, I'm just not a self-promoter. This makes me uncomfortable,” look at it like this: First of all, writing is only half the job; if no one buys your book, you did a journal. So this is part of the job.
And if you feel like it's obnoxious, I kind of think of it as the opposite of obnoxious, because if you have information that can help people and you are not sharing it with them, you are doing them a disservice. You are here to leave the world with a message. And there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of competition out there. So in order for you to get it out there, you're going to have to hawk it more than you are comfortable hawking it.
Remember if you have any questions you would like me to answer, please DM me on Instagram @annabdavid.
LINKS
My book sales page (scroll to the bottom to see)
RELATED EPISODES:
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How James Altucher Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book
A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Tim Ferriss Launches a Book
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!
QUOTE OF THE POD:
"If you have information that can help people and you are not sharing it with them, you are doing them a disservice. You are here to leave the world with a message. And there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of competition out there. So in order for you to get it out there, you're going to have to hawk it more than you are comfortable hawking it."
