Anna David's Blog, page 21
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."
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."
