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How Do I Get My Book in Book Stores?

How Do I Get My Book in Book Stores?

Today's episode is another one of those Q&A things, where I'm answering either questions people have sent me about writing and publishing or questions that I'm asked over and over. Today's question is: how do I get my book in book stores?

The short answer is: don't rely on your publisher.

The longer answer is in this episode.

Don't forget: if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM me on Instagram at @annabdavid.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

How Publishers Lie to You

How to Get Your Book in Stores Yourself

How to Get Your Book in Barnes and Noble

Why Does This Matter?

But What About Airport Book Stores?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David, where I talk to the world's most successful entrepreneurs and authors about how to launch a book and what a book can do for your career. And before I forget, by the way, this is episode 338, and I am answering the question today, how do I get my book into bookstores?

How Publishers Lie to You

So my background is I come from traditional publishing. I published six books with Harper Collins, and I really believed everything they told me. And so when they told me that this bookstore doesn't want you, I just believed them. So my first books, the first two weeks, they were in Barnes and Noble and Borders back when that store existed and then a bunch of other indie stores all over, including my local favorite, Book Soup.

And then when those copies sold, the books never came back except for Book Soup, because I had a special relationship with them. And then I would call literally call crying. I'm sure they didn't love that and say, "Why won't Skylight have my books?" And I would hear "They don't want your books." So I went around nursing this resentment for years...people would say, "Can I get your book in bookstores?" And I'd say, "No, they don't want my books."

How to Get Your Book in Stores Yourself

Lo and behold, I start this publishing company. And I have a client, Emily Lynn Paulson, who got her book in 60 bookstores. And I have to say to her, how did you do that? And she explained that she asked the members of her advanced reader team, if they would go to their local bookstore and ask and say, "Do you have this book?"

And then say, "I'm putting together a book club. I would much rather order this book from you over Amazon," which is music to any bookseller's ears. And that's how she got her book in bookstores. So I discovered randomly...I go into, wait let me tell you back story on Barnes and Noble; in 2005, when my first book came out, they talked about this woman says Sessalee Hensley. If Sessalee liked your book, you were in, you were made, you were going to be a number one New York Times bestseller because she was the buyer for Barnes and Noble. The rumor was she had worked as a clerk in some random Barnes and Noble in Tennessee or whatever, and worked her way up. Now I wasn't the anointed one by her. By the way, she was fired a few years ago. So that whole thing is over.

How to Get Your Book in Barnes and Noble

Then, I walked into my local Barnes and Noble about a month and a half ago. And I was just chit-chatting with the guy who worked there. And I mentioned in passing that I'm an author. And he says, "Oh my God, do we have your books?" And I said, "Oh no, no, no, you guys aren't interested in my books." And he said, "Well, why don't I order them?" He looks them up. He places an order. He said, "Hey, when your books are in, come in and sign them. And then we can really hawk them as special signed books."

Why Does This Matter?

So many people when they talk to me about wanting to publish a book traditionally, which is to say, sell a book to a publisher, they say, "Well, I really want to be sent on tour. And I really want my book in stores."

Well, authors don't get sent on tour, whatever we're in COVID time. Anyway, even before that, the only authors that were getting sent on tour were the authors who could well afford to fund their own tours.

And it blows my mind that it is actually easier for me to get the books I publish myself into bookstores than it was when my books were published by Harper Collins.

But What About Airport Bookstores?

There are a lot of people will say to me also, "I want to sell my book at the airport bookstores—at Hudson news. I know travelers would love it." Well, what's happened with Hudson News is...I've heard different numbers, but that's pay to play. Though not for everybody. I mean, they're ordering Simon Sinek's book or JK Rowling's book or whatever, but anyone else who wants to get in there, I've heard anything from $3000 to $10,000, just to have your book sold there.

And I have a client, Darren Prince who did this crazy thing. He wanted his book in Hudson News. And so he walked by when he was going on a trip and he showed his book to the guy who worked there and the guy's like, "Wow, this is an awesome book. I love it." Darren said, "Let me leave a couple of copies for you." And then when he was coming back through town he went into the store again and the guy said, "Oh my God, all these people came in and they were so interested in your book. I wished that we could sell it." So it's almost like the dude saved $20,000. And it looked like his book was in Hudson News. Alrighty. So the long and the short of it is that you are your own greatest advocate here.

Another (Potential) Way to Get Your Book in Stores

I heard a rumor. I will tell you, I have not tried this, that you can call a bookstore and say, "Hey, do you have so-and-so's book in?" They say, "No, we don't. We don't carry that book." And you can say, "Can you order two copies" and not have to pay. And if the person who orders the copies doesn't come to pick it up then the bookstore will sell your books.

One key thing to mention is for your book to be ordered, it has to be listed in a distributor site. Ingram Spark is the one that my company uses. And what that means is that you pay $50 and your book is available, not just on Amazon, but it can be in Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target, all the places. So if you list it through Ingram, except in very rare cases, it will then be on the website for Barnes and Noble and on the website for Walmart and on the website for Target.

And in this day and age, when people aren't even really going to stores as much, that can mean just as much as being sold in the store. It doesn't mean being ordered by, say, Walmart, because that is fricking huge: they buy mass quantities and very few books. But in this sort of world of perception and building up our own sort of stories and whatnot, that's the next best thing.

So that's it that. This was me, Anna David from Launch Pad answering the question: how do I get my book in bookstores? Remember, I would love to answer your question and give you a shout out. So just DM me on Instagram @annabdavid, and I will see you next time.

LINKS:

Emily Lynn Paulson book

Darren Prince book

How IngramSpark Works

RELATED EPISODES

How Do I Become a Better Writer?

How Long Should a Book Be?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!

QUOTE OF THE POD:

"It blows my mind that it is actually easier for me to get the books I publish myself into bookstores than it was when my books were published by Harper Collins."

How Do I Build Up My Profile Enough for a Publisher to Want Me?

WANT TO WRITE A MEMOIR? DOWNLOAD MY ONE-PAGE MEMOIR STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET HERE

The word profile used to mean what we looked like from the side. Nowadays it means what we look like online.

And for better or worse, this has become increasingly important when it comes to selling and promoting a book. So this week I'm answering a question from a listener that's all about how to build a profile, particularly on Instagram, and why publishers may or may not care.

And don't forget: if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM me on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, this is Anna David. You are listening to Launch Pad podcast, where normally I talk to the world's most successful authors and entrepreneurs about how a book can change their career and how to launch a book. But today I am answering a question from a listener and she is known on Instagram as @writinginblackandwhite, please go follow her. She's pretty fabulous.

So she wrote me and asked: can you speak to the platform you need to get a book deal. When you are an unknown, she mentions not having many Instagram followers, which is another reason you need to go follow her.

Here's what I have to say about that. One of the most disgusting things that's happened to publishing over the past decade is that a total idiot—I say with love and respect—with 3 million Instagram followers will get a book deal and a brilliant person with the best story you've ever heard, who's got 106 Instagram followers may not.

And this isn't because publishers are horrible people, it's that they look at it as a business. People want to invest in something they believe will sell. It's gross, but it's true. So the problem I think is less how do you build up your Instagram and more, how do you change your perception around this? How do you build up such a great audience that you don't even need a publisher?

So there are all sorts of ways you can do that. I have a course that talks about all the different ways you can do that. But one thing you could do is subscribe to something called Help A Reporter Out, which is also called HARO. And what happens when you subscribe is you start getting three emails a day of all the stories that journalists are working on. And these are journalists from the New York Times, from Forbes, from Entrepreneur, from wherever, and they put what source they're looking for.

So if you are an expert in anything—if you are a serious runner, if you are a sober person who has gotten into recovery, if you are anything, you do not need to have a special degree or even a book yet—you just need to be a source for that. So subscribe to HARO and start responding.

When journalists put out calls to action of sources that are looking for, you can start building up a profile. I did that. There was a query about somebody who was looking for a source for a Fortune magazine story that he was writing. I wrote him a two-sentence email. He ended up quoting me and then quoting me in a series of other stories that he wrote. So that works.

Also, you can try to connect to influencers. Now here's something I did. I really wanted to connect to James Altucher. I had read his book, Choose Yourself—by the way, I did a previous podcast episode all about him. So go back and grab that. And what I did to get his attention, because he's a very busy guy with lots of people going at him, is this: I wrote a story called "My Favorite Self-help Author Isn't a Self-Help Author." And I posted that story. I messaged him on Facebook. What he then did is he put that story out to his hundreds of thousands of newsletter followers. And then we became friends. So, so I didn't do it going, "Oh, well maybe he'll promote this" but he did. Just find the people that you are fascinated by who have big followings and see how you can express that and serve them.

That being said, if you do want to focus on building up your Instagram, there are definitely ways to do that.

I would say the main thing to do is ask yourself: what is the story I'm telling? Am I telling a story about a mother giving up her child for adoption? Am I telling you a story about why you need to share your story? That's the story I'm telling on Instagram. Once you know your story, make sure everything that you post serves that story, whether that's a picture or a quote card.

I recommend if you want to make your Instagram very attractive, make it a gorgeous grid where you're alternating: one's a picture, one's a quote card. So you can go to canva.com for free, take your best quotes. Make them into quote cards and then make sure your captions serve your story. Maybe it's a picture of you drinking coffee. What does that have to do with giving up your kid for adoption?

I don't know. That's up to you to figure out. Also use hashtags. They may look cheesy. You may judge them, but I will tell you my very first client ever, who came after me to publish his book—I wasn't even a book publisher yet—found me cause he was searching hashtags and that's how he became aware of me.

So then you've got all this great stuff. So how do you get people to know about it? The smartest thing to do is start going to the leaders in your field who have big Instagram followings, start following them, start liking them, start saying, Hey, I'm here. There are services that you can use like Boostgram and other services where they go in and start madly following all these people in the hopes that those people will follow you back. And then they unfollow them. It's kind of risky. I hear that Instagram sort of shadow bans you for that. And can lock you out of your Instagram.

So you really want to do it the right way. And the right way is pretty labor-intensive. So I would only recommend doing it if that would be fun for you, because the truth of the matter is even, let's say you do all of this work and you've got 5,000 Instagram followers; a publisher isn't going to be jumping all over that. So I will constantly emphasize do what's fun for you to find your audience because the misconception is, "Oh my God, I'm going to have a publisher and they're going to find my audience." They will not. In fact, sometimes they're going to be working against you because they have other authors that are more valuable to that publishing company. So sometimes having them as worse than not having them.

So I hope this helps. Keep sending me questions at @annabdavid on Instagram. And please, please, please let's all go follow this gorgeous girl at @writinginblackand white. See you next time.

How Do I Come Up With a Title?

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Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How and when do I come up with a title?

The biggest problem I see with authors and titles is that some become so committed to the one they came up with originally that they won't consider changing it to something that's going to resonate with readers more. I break that down and talk about how my titles have changed and which I think should have changed in this episode.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. You're listening to Launch Pad podcast, hosted by me Anna David, where we talk about books, how to launch them, what they can do for your career. And we are now answering questions. So when I say we, I mean, I, so please DM me any questions you have that you would like me to answer about writing? Find me on Instagram @annabdavid. And with that, I'm going to answer the question when and how do you come up with a title? So I've talked about this in previous episodes. I did a play by play breakdown of how Tim Ferriss launches a book. So just back and listen to that. If you want to know more, but his first book that launched him like crazy, The Four Hour Workweek, he had all these other titles, like Broad Band and White Sand, Millionaire Chameleon, Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit.

And he bought Google ads to see which of those titles perform better. He even did this crazy experiment where he had a fake cover mocked up and he put it in the Palo Alto Borders. And he went and hid to see which people responded to better. James Altucher, who is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Choose Yourself, has written about how he had all these titles, like The Choose Yourself Era, Pick Yourself and Choose Yourself. And he ran Facebook ads and Choose Yourself came in first by far. I will say that in terms of my, in terms of my own books, my first book, Party Girl, I was very dedicated to that title. I just loved that title. I've talked about that. I talked about this in the Rachel Hollis episode, and I've talked about it before, but when my agent was going out to submit it to publisher, she said, “Ooh, this book called Party Girl just came out, we have to change the title.” And so for the sale, we changed it to The After Party. And then that other Party Girl didn't sell well. So, so we were able to change the title back to Party Girl for the release and that other Party Girl was written of course, by Rachel Hollis. So suffice it to say she's gotten over it that and in retrospect, I don't really know why I fought for that title. Yes. I love that title, but I think if it had been called The After Party, it might have been, it was a little bit dismissed as, as Chick Lit. I mean The New York Post actually said I invented a new sub genre: Chick Lit with a Message. But I think if it hadn't had the title Party Girl it might not have been so easy to dismiss in that way.

So that is definitely something to think about. My fourth book, which is called Falling for Me, I sold it under the title, What I Say I Want, the biography of Tom Sizemore that I wrote, I sold under the title Seizing More: the De-evolution of Tom Sizemore and the title I gave it when it came out was By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There, which is a famous line of his from Saving Private Ryan. And also very much described the experience I had writing that book.

A lot of our clients will come in with titles that we will, we will revamp: Courtney Friel, who's a newscaster on KTLA, came to us and her book at that time was called Pretty Sobering News. And we changed it to Tonight at 10: Kicking Booze and Breaking News. Cause she hosted the 10 o'clock show.

And then we have clients who have a brand. And so if you have a brand already and you are doing your book in order to sort of further support that brand, it should be that name. We did a book for Alexis Haines who has a podcast called Recovering from Reality. So her memoir is called Recovering from Reality. She's in recovery. She's a reality star. Emily Lynn Paulson, we did a book called Highlight Real. She already had a very popular Instagram called Highlight Real Recovery. And so she knew what her title was going to be. And we, you know, used it and kept it. And it was wonderful. You know, but, but I think that a lot of people get committed to a title and they get possibly too attached to it, not realizing what the title is for the title is there.

So you can draw people in so you can make an impact: it should draw attention. And then you have a subtitle, you know, cause we're talking about nonfiction books to break down what that title means. And it's a title that the reader will only understand it if they read the book, it is not a good title. Think about how quickly we make decisions. People have got to know what your book is about to be interested in it. And I also think having titles that are easy to pronounce…my second book was called Bought. Yes, that is easy to pronounce. But whenever I said, “Oh, I have this book and it's called Bought,” people would think I meant, but B O T not B O U G H T. I didn't know till it was out that that wasn't a great title, but, but titles that are easy to spell, easy to say, easy to pronounce.

And it's like, you want a title that someone's going to feel…and this sounds a little ridiculous, but proud saying they read it. We read most books because they're recommended by people we trust. So you want a book that someone's going to say, “I just read this book, it's called, you know, Daring Greatly. And, and so I think that you have to think about it, but most of all, you have to be open to changing it. Don't fall too in love with your title.

And the keywords are important, which is to say, Amazon is the third-largest search engine in the world. So people go to Amazon and search for a topic. And so you want to have keywords that describe what your book what's in your book so that they will find it. But I don't think that's that important. I have almost never gone to Amazon and search for a book using a keyword. I've only really done that as research, not as a way to find a book I want to buy. So I don't think that's such an important thing to focus on, but it is something to think about. And that is it your answer to when and how do I title a book.

Episode 336: How and When Do I Come Up With a Title?

WANT TO WRITE A MEMOIR? DOWNLOAD MY ONE-PAGE MEMOIR STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET HERE

Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How and when do I come up with a title?

The biggest problem I see with authors and titles is that some become so committed to the one they came up with originally that they won't consider changing it to something that's going to resonate with readers more. I break that down and talk about how my titles have changed and which I think should have changed in this episode.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. You're listening to Launch Pad podcast, hosted by me Anna David, where we talk about books, how to launch them, what they can do for your career. And we are now answering questions. So when I say we, I mean, I, so please DM me any questions you have that you would like me to answer about writing? Find me on Instagram @annabdavid. And with that, I'm going to answer the question when and how do you come up with a title? So I've talked about this in previous episodes. I did a play by play breakdown of how Tim Ferriss launches a book. So just back and listen to that. If you want to know more, but his first book that launched him like crazy, The Four Hour Workweek, he had all these other titles, like Broad Band and White Sand, Millionaire Chameleon, Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit.

And he bought Google ads to see which of those titles perform better. He even did this crazy experiment where he had a fake cover mocked up and he put it in the Palo Alto Borders. And he went and hid to see which people responded to better. James Altucher, who is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Choose Yourself, has written about how he had all these titles, like The Choose Yourself Era, Pick Yourself and Choose Yourself. And he ran Facebook ads and Choose Yourself came in first by far. I will say that in terms of my, in terms of my own books, my first book, Party Girl, I was very dedicated to that title. I just loved that title. I've talked about that. I talked about this in the Rachel Hollis episode, and I've talked about it before, but when my agent was going out to submit it to publisher, she said, “Ooh, this book called Party Girl just came out, we have to change the title.” And so for the sale, we changed it to The After Party. And then that other Party Girl didn't sell well. So, so we were able to change the title back to Party Girl for the release and that other Party Girl was written of course, by Rachel Hollis. So suffice it to say she's gotten over it that and in retrospect, I don't really know why I fought for that title. Yes. I love that title, but I think if it had been called The After Party, it might have been, it was a little bit dismissed as, as Chick Lit. I mean The New York Post actually said I invented a new sub genre: Chick Lit with a Message. But I think if it hadn't had the title Party Girl it might not have been so easy to dismiss in that way.

So that is definitely something to think about. My fourth book, which is called Falling for Me, I sold it under the title, What I Say I Want, the biography of Tom Sizemore that I wrote, I sold under the title Seizing More: the De-evolution of Tom Sizemore and the title I gave it when it came out was By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There, which is a famous line of his from Saving Private Ryan. And also very much described the experience I had writing that book.

A lot of our clients will come in with titles that we will, we will revamp: Courtney Friel, who's a newscaster on KTLA, came to us and her book at that time was called Pretty Sobering News. And we changed it to Tonight at 10: Kicking Booze and Breaking News. Cause she hosted the 10 o'clock show.

And then we have clients who have a brand. And so if you have a brand already and you are doing your book in order to sort of further support that brand, it should be that name. We did a book for Alexis Haines who has a podcast called Recovering from Reality. So her memoir is called Recovering from Reality. She's in recovery. She's a reality star. Emily Lynn Paulson, we did a book called Highlight Real. She already had a very popular Instagram called Highlight Real Recovery. And so she knew what her title was going to be. And we, you know, used it and kept it. And it was wonderful. You know, but, but I think that a lot of people get committed to a title and they get possibly too attached to it, not realizing what the title is for the title is there.

So you can draw people in so you can make an impact: it should draw attention. And then you have a subtitle, you know, cause we're talking about nonfiction books to break down what that title means. And it's a title that the reader will only understand it if they read the book, it is not a good title. Think about how quickly we make decisions. People have got to know what your book is about to be interested in it. And I also think having titles that are easy to pronounce…my second book was called Bought. Yes, that is easy to pronounce. But whenever I said, “Oh, I have this book and it's called Bought,” people would think I meant, but B O T not B O U G H T. I didn't know till it was out that that wasn't a great title, but, but titles that are easy to spell, easy to say, easy to pronounce.

And it's like, you want a title that someone's going to feel…and this sounds a little ridiculous, but proud saying they read it. We read most books because they're recommended by people we trust. So you want a book that someone's going to say, “I just read this book, it's called, you know, Daring Greatly. And, and so I think that you have to think about it, but most of all, you have to be open to changing it. Don't fall too in love with your title.

And the keywords are important, which is to say, Amazon is the third-largest search engine in the world. So people go to Amazon and search for a topic. And so you want to have keywords that describe what your book what's in your book so that they will find it. But I don't think that's that important. I have almost never gone to Amazon and search for a book using a keyword. I've only really done that as research, not as a way to find a book I want to buy. So I don't think that's such an important thing to focus on, but it is something to think about. And that is it your answer to when and how do I title a book.

How Do I Become a Better Writer?

WANT TO WRITE A MEMOIR? DOWNLOAD MY ONE-PAGE MEMOIR STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET HERE

Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How do I become a better writer?

The short answer is: write. The longer answer is: write and read. The still longer answer is in this episode.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. This is Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David. I normally talk to authors and entrepreneurs about how to launch a book and what a book can do for your career. But I'm going through a phase where I am answering your questions, and that is anybody who wants to send me a question. Can send me a question the best ways to DM me on Instagram @annabdavid. And I will answer your question by the way, this is episode 335. So let's get into the question. How can I become a better writer? I am going to say that I do not believe anybody becomes a better writer from reading books about writing.

And I am saying this as someone who's written a book about writing. There are fantastic books about writing. Stephen King has a book about writing. Annie Lamott has a book about writing, but I believe the only way we get better as writers is by writing and reading, I majored in creative writing and literary writing in college. And we've, I know it was a long time ago and I was drunk a lot of the time, but I don't remember any professors really teaching us about writing. I remember that we wrote; my senior thesis was a short story. What I spent my last two years in college doing was workshopping stories. We would write our stories and the class would read them and we would give notes on each other's stories. But the other thing that is really important is reading. I coach writers and there was somebody who was briefly in one of my programs and he was writing a memoir and I said, “Well, what are your favorite memoirs?” And he said, “I've never read a memoir.” And I said, “I don't think this program is for you because if you do not love the form, then you shouldn't have the audacity to do it.” Now, this doesn't mean that you should feel like you need to be reading all the time. My reading has fallen off so much. We're all distracted by so many different options for entertainment. I will say I feel a little bit guilty when I don't open a book at night and said, I turn on Netflix, but I still do that. But if you don't like reading at all, writing may not be for you. I think it's for people who really, really care about words. But really the more you write, the better you're going to get, I will say in my membership program, Inner Circle, we launched in March and people would read their writing aloud and it's a group of about 40 people.

And I thought, well, you know, this is pretty average for a group of random people who are amazing people, but who do not have professional writing experience. They gather every single day - I am now recording this at the end of October and every single week since then this same group has gathered. And now we do reading series, which by the way, we do host a reading series. I mean, I host a reading series called See You Last Friday and you should come to it because it's on zoom and anybody can come and read aloud. You can find out more by going to see you last friday.com. But so I get to hear them read aloud there. And I get to see their work when I come to the membership program and nobody's teaching them and they are getting so good and they are getting good because they are putting their butts in the chair every day.

And writing this does not mean that you have to write all day. These people are doing it for an hour a day. So I believe if you want to become a better writer, you have got to commit to writing every day. And it's really about having the habit. The more we do something, the more we want to do something, whether that's working out or meditating or writing. And it's so easy, once you slack off one day to just slack off the next; it just gets harder and harder to go back. So if it's possible to just make a commitment, I will say a friend of mine, who's a TV writer Chris Brancato; he created Narcos and all these other shows. And he told me he's a prolific writer. He told me that when, what he has to do when he's feeling blocked is set a 10-minute timer and just go, “Okay, I'm just going to write for 10 minutes.

That's what I commit to.” And then of course, once after 10 minutes, he's in the flow and he wants to do it. I will say what I did when writing my most recent book is I decided to not get online until I had written three pages or whatever it was. And so my brain was totally clear and it would just be me and my coffee and I would write. So having some sort of a ritual around it I think is important, but really it's about the accountability. I wrote my first book because, and forgive me if you've heard me say this before my friend, Melanie and I both wanted to write novels and we talked about it and she said, “Well, why don't we send each other 500 words every Sunday?” And I said, yes, thinking I, you know, I live in LA where no one's word means anything.

I was just like, “Oh, well, she doesn't mean it.” And the following Sunday, I received her 500 words and I panicked realizing I had to write 500 words so that she didn't know that I didn't think she was actually serious. So I fire those off and thought, phew, don't have to do that again. And the following Sunday, I received her next 500 words. So I had to do the same thing. So at that point I had a thousand words and she ended up…she got this big job. She ended up not following through on her book and that, and those first thousand words are the same thousand words that are in my book Party Girl, which was the first of my eight books. So I never would have done it if I hadn't made that agreement, kind of unwillingly, to my friend to be accountable.

And so that's really it. I received emails from people all the time who say, you know, “Everybody tells me I'm a great writer, I've got this amazing story.” And I think that the more you write, the more you're going to see how bad some of your stuff really is. Cause sometimes these people will send me their writing and you know, they've written this paragraph into them and you know, it's just, you gotta, you know, you got to kill your darlings as you go. You got to start to know, “Oh, that's not good. That's not me at my best. That's cliched.” And know what's really original. And it's really from the heart. And you only know that by sort of subscribing to the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. That doesn't mean you have to write for 10,000 hours, but it does mean that the only way to become a better writer is to write. And that is my answer to this question. Thank you so much for listening.

Episode 335: How Do I Become a Better Writer?

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Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How do I become a better writer?

The short answer is: write. The longer answer is: write and read. The still longer answer is in this episode.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. This is Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David. I normally talk to authors and entrepreneurs about how to launch a book and what a book can do for your career. But I'm going through a phase where I am answering your questions, and that is anybody who wants to send me a question. Can send me a question the best ways to DM me on Instagram @annabdavid. And I will answer your question by the way, this is episode 335. So let's get into the question. How can I become a better writer? I am going to say that I do not believe anybody becomes a better writer from reading books about writing.

And I am saying this as someone who's written a book about writing. There are fantastic books about writing. Stephen King has a book about writing. Annie Lamott has a book about writing, but I believe the only way we get better as writers is by writing and reading, I majored in creative writing and literary writing in college. And we've, I know it was a long time ago and I was drunk a lot of the time, but I don't remember any professors really teaching us about writing. I remember that we wrote; my senior thesis was a short story. What I spent my last two years in college doing was workshopping stories. We would write our stories and the class would read them and we would give notes on each other's stories. But the other thing that is really important is reading. I coach writers and there was somebody who was briefly in one of my programs and he was writing a memoir and I said, “Well, what are your favorite memoirs?” And he said, “I've never read a memoir.” And I said, “I don't think this program is for you because if you do not love the form, then you shouldn't have the audacity to do it.” Now, this doesn't mean that you should feel like you need to be reading all the time. My reading has fallen off so much. We're all distracted by so many different options for entertainment. I will say I feel a little bit guilty when I don't open a book at night and said, I turn on Netflix, but I still do that. But if you don't like reading at all, writing may not be for you. I think it's for people who really, really care about words. But really the more you write, the better you're going to get, I will say in my membership program, Inner Circle, we launched in March and people would read their writing aloud and it's a group of about 40 people.

And I thought, well, you know, this is pretty average for a group of random people who are amazing people, but who do not have professional writing experience. They gather every single day - I am now recording this at the end of October and every single week since then this same group has gathered. And now we do reading series, which by the way, we do host a reading series. I mean, I host a reading series called See You Last Friday and you should come to it because it's on zoom and anybody can come and read aloud. You can find out more by going to see you last friday.com. But so I get to hear them read aloud there. And I get to see their work when I come to the membership program and nobody's teaching them and they are getting so good and they are getting good because they are putting their butts in the chair every day.

And writing this does not mean that you have to write all day. These people are doing it for an hour a day. So I believe if you want to become a better writer, you have got to commit to writing every day. And it's really about having the habit. The more we do something, the more we want to do something, whether that's working out or meditating or writing. And it's so easy, once you slack off one day to just slack off the next; it just gets harder and harder to go back. So if it's possible to just make a commitment, I will say a friend of mine, who's a TV writer Chris Brancato; he created Narcos and all these other shows. And he told me he's a prolific writer. He told me that when, what he has to do when he's feeling blocked is set a 10-minute timer and just go, “Okay, I'm just going to write for 10 minutes.

That's what I commit to.” And then of course, once after 10 minutes, he's in the flow and he wants to do it. I will say what I did when writing my most recent book is I decided to not get online until I had written three pages or whatever it was. And so my brain was totally clear and it would just be me and my coffee and I would write. So having some sort of a ritual around it I think is important, but really it's about the accountability. I wrote my first book because, and forgive me if you've heard me say this before my friend, Melanie and I both wanted to write novels and we talked about it and she said, “Well, why don't we send each other 500 words every Sunday?” And I said, yes, thinking I, you know, I live in LA where no one's word means anything.

I was just like, “Oh, well, she doesn't mean it.” And the following Sunday, I received her 500 words and I panicked realizing I had to write 500 words so that she didn't know that I didn't think she was actually serious. So I fire those off and thought, phew, don't have to do that again. And the following Sunday, I received her next 500 words. So I had to do the same thing. So at that point I had a thousand words and she ended up…she got this big job. She ended up not following through on her book and that, and those first thousand words are the same thousand words that are in my book Party Girl, which was the first of my eight books. So I never would have done it if I hadn't made that agreement, kind of unwillingly, to my friend to be accountable.

And so that's really it. I received emails from people all the time who say, you know, “Everybody tells me I'm a great writer, I've got this amazing story.” And I think that the more you write, the more you're going to see how bad some of your stuff really is. Cause sometimes these people will send me their writing and you know, they've written this paragraph into them and you know, it's just, you gotta, you know, you got to kill your darlings as you go. You got to start to know, “Oh, that's not good. That's not me at my best. That's cliched.” And know what's really original. And it's really from the heart. And you only know that by sort of subscribing to the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. That doesn't mean you have to write for 10,000 hours, but it does mean that the only way to become a better writer is to write. And that is my answer to this question. Thank you so much for listening.

How Long Should a Book Be?

WANT TO WRITE A MEMOIR? DOWNLOAD MY ONE-PAGE MEMOIR STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET HERE

Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How long should a book be? The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is that books are getting shorter. Confused yet? Listen to the episode and you won't be.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. You're listening to Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David. While normally I talk to the world's most successful authors and entrepreneurs about how they launch a book and what a book can do for their business. I am now going to start answering questions, and that is because I receive so many questions over social media, over email, over good old fashioned conversation. And I figured the easiest way to do it would be to answer the most common questions that I receive. If you'd like me to answer your question on this podcast, please, I would love to direct message me. This is the best way to do it. Direct message me on Instagram. I'm @annabdavid. I will not only answer your question on this podcast, but I will give you a shout out. In fact, tell me what you're writing and I'll give that a shout out.

So today I'm going to answer the question. How long should a book be? So I could start by answering this in a totally annoying way and say, as long as it needs to be, and actually that annoying part is partially true, but I would tell you something that is very interesting. Books are getting shorter. You may know this. When was the last time you read a book that was over, say 250 pages. There's a book I really want to read. It's called The Body Keeps the Score, been wanting to read it for probably 10 years. And yet I look at it and it's so long and I don't do it. Now. Then, in 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages. Then it just kept dropping and dropping and dropping. And now the average nonfiction bestselling book is about 250 pages.

That's like fallen 50% practically who knew we were going to be doing math. Now the thing is there are always going to be long books. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is over a thousand pages and, and novels. This really doesn't apply for fiction. Novels are still often 300 to 400 pages, but this comes up with clients at Launch Pad all the time. They, they think they want longer books because they believe that longer books show higher quality. And if that is true, you have to ask yourself, do I want people to read my book or do I want people to be impressed by my book? One of the, one of the things that did change, obviously our attention spans are shorter all the time. We have the attention span of a gnat. We're constantly distracted by bright, shiny objects. You know, endless news cycles, social media, all of these things, but when Amazon launched their Kindle singles, which was about 10 years ago, what they started doing is, is assigning authors, short, short books.

When I say short, I mean the length of an article, I was super lucky and managed to get in and be one of their authors. It wasn't many people, you know, really prestigious people. Stephen King did it. And I did two Kindle singles. One was called Animal Attraction and the other's called They Like Me They Really Like Me. Each was about 40 pages. And what Amazon did is because they controlled everything. They were able to put that those books, there weren't many Kindle singles and they were able to feature all of them prominently. And so I made more from those two tiny books that took me a week each to write than I have from books that I've spent years on. It's just sort of sad. But in addition to Kindle SIngles, there are just, you know, Brene Brown wrote a book called Gifts of Imperfection.

It's 158 pages. Austin Kleon wrote this book that people love and quote all the time called Steal Like an Artist, it's 160 pages. And what's interesting is that over 64%, yes, this is more math over 64% of the number one bestsellers since 2000 have fallen into the 200 to 400-page range. And there was a number one New York Times bestselling book called On Bullshit that’s 80 pages. So there you have it. And, and, and by the way, when you're writing it's best to think in word count instead of pages, because different people are doing single space, double space, space, and a half, whatever it is. So most of our books that we publish at Launch Pad are between 35,000 and 50,000 words. And I will tell you also, I knew nothing. When I sold my first book Party Girl, I had heard books should be around 300 pages.

So I made it around 300 pages and I didn't know that they meant space and a half. So it was 300 single-spaced pages. So it was twice as long as it needed to be. So, but, but this should come as a great relief for people who think, Oh my God, I've got to write some, you know, 300-page or 600-page opus. You do not. Books have gotten shorter and are going to continue to get shorter. That being said, if you're writing a full-length nonfiction book, don't make it under a hundred pages, maybe minimum, 150, but you know what? This is writing. You get to make the rules. Okay. I hope that helps. 

Episode 334: How Long Should a Book Be?

WANT TO WRITE A MEMOIR? DOWNLOAD MY ONE-PAGE MEMOIR STRUCTURE CHEAT SHEET HERE

Rather than interviewing a guest or breaking down an expert author's way of launching a book, this week I'm answering the question: How long should a book be. The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is that books are getting shorter. Confused yet? Listen to the episode and you won't be.

And if you want me to answer your writing question on this show, DM on Instagram at @annabdavid.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. You're listening to Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David. While normally I talk to the world's most successful authors and entrepreneurs about how they launch a book and what a book can do for their business. I am now going to start answering questions, and that is because I receive so many questions over social media, over email, over good old fashioned conversation. And I figured the easiest way to do it would be to answer the most common questions that I receive. If you'd like me to answer your question on this podcast, please, I would love to direct message me. This is the best way to do it. Direct message me on Instagram. I'm @annabdavid. I will not only answer your question on this podcast, but I will give you a shout out. In fact, tell me what you're writing and I'll give that a shout out.

So today I'm going to answer the question. How long should a book be? So I could start by answering this in a totally annoying way and say, as long as it needs to be, and actually that annoying part is partially true, but I would tell you something that is very interesting. Books are getting shorter. You may know this. When was the last time you read a book that was over, say 250 pages. There's a book I really want to read. It's called The Body Keeps the Score, been wanting to read it for probably 10 years. And yet I look at it and it's so long and I don't do it. Now. Then, in 2011, the average length of a bestselling nonfiction book was 467 pages. Then it just kept dropping and dropping and dropping. And now the average nonfiction bestselling book is about 250 words.

That's like fallen 50% practically who knew we were going to be doing math. Now the thing is there are always going to be long books. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is over a thousand pages and, and novels. This really doesn't apply for fiction. Novels are still often 300 to 400 pages, but this comes up with clients at Launch Pad all the time. They, they think they want longer books because they believe that longer books show higher quality. And if that is true, you have to ask yourself, do I want people to read my book or do I want people to be impressed by my book? One of the, one of the things that did change, obviously our attention spans are shorter all the time. We have the attention span of a gnat. We're constantly distracted by bright, shiny objects. You know, endless news cycles, social media, all of these things, but when Amazon launched their Kindle singles, which was about 10 years ago, what they started doing is, is assigning authors, short, short books.

When I say short, I mean the length of an article, I was super lucky and managed to get in and be one of their authors. It wasn't many people, you know, really prestigious people. Stephen King did it. And I did two Kindle singles. One was called Animal Attraction and the other's called They Like Me They Really Like Me. Each was about 40 pages. And what Amazon did is because they controlled everything. They were able to put that those books, there weren't many Kindle singles and they were able to feature all of them prominently. And so I made more from those two tiny books that took me a week each to write than I have from books that I've spent years on. It's just sort of sad. But in addition to Kindle SIngles, there are just, you know, Brene Brown wrote a book called Gifts of Imperfection.

It's 158 pages. Austin Kleon wrote this book that people love and quote all the time called Steal Like an Artist, it's 160 pages. And what's interesting is that over 64%, yes, this is more math over 64% of the number one bestsellers since 2000 have fallen into the 200 to 400-page range. And there was a number one New York Times bestselling book called On Bullshit that’s 80 pages. So there you have it. And, and, and by the way, when you're writing it's best to think in word count instead of pages, because different people are doing single space, double space, space, and a half, whatever it is. So most of our books that we publish at Launch Pad are between 35,000 and 50,000 words. And I will tell you also, I knew nothing. When I sold my first book Party Girl, I had heard books should be around 300 pages.

So I made it around 300 pages and I didn't know that they meant space and a half. So it was 300 single-spaced pages. So it was twice as long as it needed to be. So, but, but this should come as a great relief for people who think, Oh my God, I've got to write some, you know, 300-page or 600-page opus. You do not. Books have gotten shorter and are going to continue to get shorter. That being said, if you're writing a full-length nonfiction book, don't make it under a hundred pages, maybe minimum, 150, but you know what? This is writing. You get to make the rules. Okay. I hope that helps. 

Episode 333: A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How James Altucher Launches a Book

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There's no one like James Altucher. Now I get that there's no one like any of us but there's REALLY no one like James Altucher. The hedge fund manager, podcaster and author of over 20 books has one of the most unique writing voices around—a major reason why his book, Choose Yourself, sold 40,000 copies in its first week of release.

But there are a number of other reasons he sold so many copies and I break those reasons down in this episode. I get into how he hones his writer's voice, controls his destiny, gathers opinions, comes up with unique propositions and then gets media attention for them, spends what he can afford to and—most importantly—never stops writing.

You may not be someone The New York Times writes about when you decide to embrace minimalism but that doesn't mean you can't learn from what he does and apply all the same concepts and techniques to your own book release. In fact, in this episode, I break down exactly how.

[BTW, FOR A FEW WEEKS AFTER WE MET, I WAS ONE OF ALTUCHER'S FAVES AND I EVEN HAVE THE SCREEN GRAB BELOW TO PROVE IT. AND YES, MY SCREEN SAVER WAS A LITTLE INTENSE BACK THEN.]

And, as promised, here are the links I mentioned:

The blog post where Altucher breaks his process down

The $997 Choose Yourself course

The Entrepreneur.com story I wrote where I quoted Altucher

The James Altucher podcast

My Media Attention for Writers course

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there. Welcome to Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David. This is where I talk to the world's most successful authors and entrepreneurs about how they launch their books and what a book can do for your career. Now, this is one of my favorite new things. These play-by-play breakdowns, because it gives me an opportunity to study the best and break down in my opinion. So using my experience to break down my interpretation of what these incredibly successful people have done from, and for their books and how you can do the same. So before I forget, this is episode 333, and it’s on James Altucher.

And I have actually had the pleasure of meeting him twice. So I can tell you that he's a pretty fun guy to sit down with as well. If you are not familiar with who he is, he's a hedge fund manager, very prolific author, very prolific podcaster, and has founded, or co-founded over 20 companies and he's written over 20 books. And so he has so many things that he is very hard to categorize. I also remember him telling me, when we met in New York about how he had this job doing shows for HBO hosting shows in the middle of the night, involved, him being up and outside in the middle of the night in New York City. But he, he got new life as a blogger because he started writing these incredibly honest, incredibly bizarre, unique posts, and he started to develop this following and he started to sort of put out these ideas that people began to quote and follow.

He has this idea, this idea, this concept that you have to constantly be thinking of new ideas. And you know, he's just kind of gotten opinion on everything. You know, I remember reading that he said, you shouldn’t eat after a certain hour in the day; he wasn't calling it intermittent fasting. He was just saying like, what I really like about him is that in many ways he doesn't try to defend his position on something. He just says, this is what I think, and this is what I do, and it is true. And so, as he became known as this blogger he, you know, he did some very interesting things that he's written about and talked about. Like he during the crash in 2008, 2009, he went and stood there at Wall Street and handed out chocolate bars just to get people to smile.

And what he talks about is that his most popular post of all time is the most, the thing that brings more people to his website than any other is when they Google “I want to die” or “I want to kill myself” because he has written about that. And he's just incredibly honest. And like I said, he says things that other people don't. So, like I said, he's written 20 books and a number of these were traditionally published. So like me, he started off in traditional publishing got very disillusioned and now publishes his books himself, but among his books, there's something called My Daddy Owns all of Outer Space. There's Super Cash, The New Hedge Fund Capitalism. It sort of runs the gamut: 40 Alternatives to College. One of his controversial opinions is that college is a waste of time and money and nobody should go, Oh, he has a book called the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre People.

And the book that we're going to talk about today is his book, Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream. And it came out in 2013 and he published it himself. And I have learned so much from studying what he did with that book. And he's been very, he's very generously shared with the world how he did it.

By 2016, it had sold over 500,000 copies, hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, was number one on Amazon for all nonfiction books for a few days, and obviously hit number one in its different categories. Now, the very interesting thing, and this is going to be the first, well, no, here. I want to talk about the first tip that I have determined from studying what he does.

I've touched on it already but really hone your writer's voice. Don’t be afraid to share who you are and to just constantly be as honest as you possibly can. I actually interviewed him for a story I did for Entrepreneur magazine a few years ago. I can put the link to that story in the show notes. And what he said to me when I interviewed him for that, cause it was a story about how entrepreneurs use their books to become more successful, he said, “When I first started blogging, I wanted people to know how hard it is to strive for something to deal with failure, to actually fail, to confess mistakes in a world where everyone pretends to be perfect.” And then he added, “It was this very style of writing that multiplied by a hundred times my number of readers.”

So yeah, I mean, it's a nice sort of antidote to all the people out there that are telling you they've got it all figured out. His sort of platform, if you will, is based on how, how not figured out he has it. And we all relate. So that book I already told you about how well it sold like crazy, it's got almost 2,500 ratings and reviews on Amazon and this is how he did it. 

This is tip number two. It's basically spend whatever you can afford to spend. Now, this dude's like loaded, you know, he's done all these things. He's got, he's got a big old budget for this. So it depends on what your budget is. I'm not saying you should do what he did because most of us don't have the sort of budget that he did for this.

But he hired Ryan Holiday, who is the biggest and the best when it comes to marketing a book, he hired this editor who he really admired. And he said that they went through more than 15 different rewrites for the book. He hired the best audio book company. And he, he basically spared no expense. So I think that how that applies to you is…side note, one of my least favorite questions anyone has ever asked me is what's your budget for that? Because I always want to go “Well, what's whatever the cheapest is that I can get it for. “And apparently you're not supposed to do that if you want to be incredibly successful. So don't do that; I've gotten a lot better about it. I used to be sort of allergic to spending more than a hundred dollars at a time, but then I'd go around spending a hundred dollars on 800 things. Nobody has ever accused me of being good with money or any sort of a numbers guru.

I would highly recommend if you want to follow the James Altucher formula, figure out what your budget is and where you want to divide it, he suggested, I agree with him, spend the most of the money on the editing, that is what's going to pay off the most. And you know, he and I have both said, you can design a cover for free on Amazon or on Canva, but you are going to get what you pay for. And so a certain level. So I would say the school of James is spend the money on the editor and next would be the cover and obviously hiring somebody like Ryan Holiday is an indulgence—not an indulgence, but it's for those who can afford to hit it out of the park.

So tip number three that we can glean from James Altucher is control your destiny. After getting sort of frustrated with traditional publishing and deciding that he wanted to control the experience and he talks about it in the same way I do. It was frustrating to have to wait so long, that it was frustrating to not have control over the cover and the title and, and all, and it was frustrating not making any money. So not only did he decide on everything for himself, but he even went out and found a foreign rights agency to sell the foreign rights, which is something that it doesn't occur to a lot of people. Of course, it's not something that gets us rich. My first I've only actually had one book that was translated into other languages, Party Girl was translated into Russian and Italian, go grab it there, any Russian and Italian listeners.

So you don't get rich off of that, but it's pretty awesome. So he writes in a blog post and I will put a link to this in the show notes, he writes about how he got a foreign rights agency and he writes about how much he made from the rights when they sold it to Brazil, he made $2,500; to China, he made $4,300; to Korea, he made $5,000. So that was just another example of taking it into his own hands.

And that's something that I have really learned lately when it comes to bookstores, which is my experience with traditional publishing was that my publisher would say “Yeah, this bookstore doesn't doesn't want your book.” And so I would literally walk into Skylight Books, this bookstore, this very cool bookstore near where I live and actively resent, not just the store, but every single author who had a book in that store, not knowing how it really works.

Now that I'm out of the game and I know people who work in publishing I've discovered that, that the publishers only have a certain number of books that they can pitch to bookstores. And so they're not pitching yours. They are invested in it not being in that store. And I have just discovered quite how easy it is to get books in stores. For Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I reached out to Book Soup. They were happy to sell it. And they even did an online event with me. I reached out to Kitson, which is this kitschy kind of amazing store. And they said, “We'll not only sell your book, but once the pandemic is over, we would love to throw you a party.” And then, publishers always make Barnes and Noble sound like the white whale that none of us will ever get there.

My traditionally published books were all sold there when they first came out in the first month. And then when those books were sold, they never appeared in those bookstores again. And my publisher Harper Collins had paid for that placement in that. So I just randomly was in Barnes and Noble recently, God, I feel like I've told you guys this story already. And I apologize. It's like early senility. If I have an awesome, I was just there. And I started chatting with a guy who worked in the bookstore and I mentioned honestly, in a totally not even trying to be manipulative way that I was an author. And he said, “Wow, do we sell your books?” And I said, “Oh no, no, no, you stop selling them years ago.” And he said, “Well, why don't I order them?” And it was literally that easy.

What's ironic perhaps is he went in, I gave him my name and he went into the database and he said he said, which of your books do you want me to order? And I said, well, Party Girl. And he looked. And he said, “I can't order that” because the way the publisher had set it up, the bookstores couldn't return the copies if they didn't sell. And that is really what bookstores want to know is that they can return the copies if they don't sell. If you publish it yourself, you can set it up so that the copies can be returned if they don't sell. So he said, “Well, what's your second choice?” I said, "Oh, my new book Make Your Mess Your Memoir." And he said, “Great, I'm going to order it. And here's what I think you should do. I think you should come in once the books are here, sign them, post them on social media. And people will come in and order them. And we'll just keep ordering your book.”

Bookstores want to order books that people want. So that was so illuminating that it is that easy. And I say this because James Altucher, I was reading and he wrote something about how he was trying to get his book in more stores. And it is, as it turns out much easier than any of us may have realized. Certainly, I didn't. So that was tip number three, it was control your destiny. 

Let us talk about tip number four. And that is using group think in a way that is really productive. Now, what I mean by that is a lot of people will, when they have a title that they're thinking about or a cover that they're thinking about, they will go and they will post on Facebook or on Instagram or on LinkedIn.

And they will say, Which of these do you guys like? And they think that they are going to get an accurate response. By the way, I've completely done this myself. It's very tempting because it's very easy, frankly; the problem with it is that all studies say that people don't buy what they think they're going to buy. And the other problem of course, with posting it somewhere is that everybody's influenced. So they're influenced by the way you phrase the posting, they're influenced by what other people like. I mean, if they come there and they go, “Oh, I really like that second one, but everybody liked the first one. I must be wrong.” So it is actually the worst way to try to get feedback on what is better. And, you know, cause if you, if you go around asking people what is better, everybody's got an opinion and their opinions, frankly, don't matter.

It's what do the masses want? So what James Altucher did and Tim Ferriss did this too. And I believe I talked to you, I talked about this in the Tim Ferriss episode. So if you haven't heard that go back and make sure you listen to that. But he ran Facebook ads and he ran it with 10 titles that he thought would be good. And he sat back and watched what happened. And there were thousands of clickthroughs. And the one that he thought was the best one, which was The Choose Yourself Era came in third, Pick Yourself was in second and Choose Yourself was the first by far. And that is of course the title he ended up going with. He did the same thing with the subtitle and the final version of the cover. And you know, the proof is in how successful the book is.

So I think that that is an amazing tip, which is thinking that just going around and asking people which is better is going to get you the response that you want. I frankly think you're better off not asking anyone anything. If you want to invest in Facebook ads—both the time and the money and you know what it'll take to make those effective and you've got the time do it.

Okay. Tip number five: come up with unique propositions. That's part number one, but part number two is that you then have the ability to get media for, and he did two really great ones, which is he made an offer. He said that people could buy this book with Bitcoin. Did he do that to get rich from Bitcoin?

No, he did it cause no one had done it. And it was bizarre. And he, as I mentioned, was working with Ryan Holiday who had the ability to go get media to write about that. He also put at the beginning of his book, basically: if you read this book and you don't like it, I will give you your money back. Now I'm going to guess that very few, if any, people took him up on that, but again, it was bizarre and they got media attention for it.

It reminds me of this friend of mine who was very, very funny, Jennifer Belle, her first book was called Going Down. And I think for her fourth book, she said, “You know what I'm going to do.” She lives in New York. And she said, “I am going to hire actresses and pay them to read my book on the subway because that's how people know they want to read a book because they see other people reading it on the subway.”

So she did it. She found actresses. She got them to read it on the subway. I don't know if that worked but the New York Times heard about it or maybe she told the New York Times about it and they were at a story about it. So it's coming up with these ideas. But the problem is it's like the whole thing about the tree falling in the woods. If you don't have the ability to get it to media, then your amazing idea isn't going to get coverage. And if you're saying, “Well, that's great for those people. I mean, they hire expensive publicists and know people,” know this: anybody can get media attention. Go back and listen to my episode with Cameron Herold, or even buy his book, Free PR. In the episode we did, he walked me through exactly what you can do to figure out what your angle is and how not just approachable, but reachable journalists are. 

The quick overview is all journalists are on Twitter. And so if you can figure out who has written about, you know, let's say you come up with your unique idea for your book and you want media to write about it. So start looking around and see who's written about this or what TV shows have talked about this before. And, you know, journalists have a beat. Maybe their beat is, is just the topic or genre of your book: figure out where they are, tweet at them. There is also a website called hunter.io that has a lot of email addresses. There's also a paid service where you can get people's email addresses. And obviously, there's LinkedIn and there's Facebook and there's Instagram and there are all these places.

So it, it just requires a certain level of proactiveness that frankly, I don't always have, cause I am scared of rejection and, and bugging people. I'm a former journalist. But as Cameron Herold very eloquently explained: if you are doing their work for them, a journalist is going to be grateful to you. You are not bothering them. You are presenting them with a story. And another thing you can do is subscribe to Help A Reporter Out, which is also called HARO. And it is where journalists list, all the stories that they're working on and what they're looking for sources for. And they send three emails a day. And whenever you see a journalist that is working on a story that pertains to potentially what your unique proposition is, then you can reach out to them. And, and I actually do have a course that gets into this a little bit called Media Attention for Writers. 

I can put a link to that in the show notes. So that, and then, and then the final tip that we're going to glean from James Altucher is that he keeps writing. And like I said, over 20 books, he doesn't put all his eggs in one book basket. I can't tell you the number of people I speak to who say to me that they've got a book that is going to change the world. It is their story. Everybody's always told them they should write a book. And I can feel the future disappointment when I talk to them because it's just not how it works. Yes. It worked that way for Elizabeth Gilbert kind of; actually it didn't. Eat Pray Love was like her sixth book. It worked that way for the 50 Shades of Gray lady so it can happen.

But it almost never does. So if you want to be a successful writer, you keep writing, you do not assume that one book is going to be quote “it” for you. But the other thing, and this is related to that. What James Altucher does very well is books are just a part of his strategy. And they lead people into his myriad, other things, which includes his podcast. Of course, he has a huge podcast and he's interviewed people like Mark Cuban and Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington and Peter Thiel and a whole bunch of people on that. And he has courses. He actually has a Choose Yourself Guide to Self Publishing, which I can put a link to in the show notes. It's a thousand dollars. I bet you a lot of people buy that. So that is, you know, I, I guarantee you, he has made more money from that course than he did from book sales.

Even though I bet he made a lot from book sales…by the way, that course includes his books, a membership group publishing software, it looks pretty, pretty awesome. Frankly, it's $997. It's not a thousand dollars. And you know, he has eight different newsletters that you can subscribe to. So I don't know if he has cloned himself or if he just has an amazing team or whatever it is, but he is somebody who I have learned so much from studying in terms of his marketing.

And his writing! I should mention he is a hilarious, incredibly intelligent original writer, definitely worth mentioning. And hopefully you guys got something out of this that you can apply to your own books and book releases. That is it. I am Anna David signing off. I will see you next week.

Episode 331: A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book

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Today I'm doing one of those breakdowns of how the experts launch their books (check out my previous one on Tim Ferriss here). And this episode analyzes the moves made by the icon to middle-aged women across the globe: Rachel Hollis. 

Rachel has had extraordinary success, by any standards. Her book, Girl Wash Your Face, sold three million copies JUST on Amazon. She hosts a huge conference, has a Netflix documentary and has millions of followers on social media.

But this sprightly little thing didn't just waltz into stupendous success. In this episode, I meticulously break down what I believe are the four main reasons she's had such an impact:

1) She knows her audience

2) She makes it about them

3) She's consistent

4) She listens to that audience

To understand how she's done that and hear more of my analysis of her many bright moves, check out the episode.

Speaking of the episode...as I promised in it, here's the link to the story I read about doing a sales page for a book and here's the link to my sales page for Make Your Mess Your Memoir). 

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR IT!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Hey there. Welcome to Launch Pad, a podcast hosted by me, Anna David I'm a New York Times bestselling author of many books. I'm now a publisher, and this has been historically a podcast where I interview the world's bestselling authors and entrepreneurs about how to launch a book and what a book can do for your career, but how I've discovered this other secret passion of mine that I didn't know existed, which is to talk, to do a bunch of research and then talk to you guys directly. And I did it with a previous episode on Tim Ferriss. That was episode 330 for anybody who likes to be a good student and know exactly what I'm talking about and may have missed it. And I'm now doing it today. And just a brief intro. Basically, I'm obsessed. I became obsessed with the show Reply All because I realized I just liked people telling me things, especially if I found them funny.

And maybe you find me funny, but I'd like personally, I want to, you know, spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I want to be entertained when I'm learning things. So today I am breaking down Rachel Hollis and I don't mean breaking her down emotionally. I mean that I, I have learned everything that is possible to know about Rachel Hollis so that I can tell you how on earth somebody has maintained a spot in the top 10 bestselling books in the country for seven months, sold 3 million copies of one book on Amazon alone, gotten 1.8 million Instagram followers and done a billion other things. And my research comes to you because I've actually heard her speak twice at two different conferences. And I've read the book and I have bizarre things in common with her. So if you don't know who Rachel Hollis is, she's an American author, motivational speaker and blogger.

She is published by a Christian imprint of Harper, but it's like low-grade Christian. There's like nothing too freaky for anybody who's like, eh, that freaks me out. Obviously she has widespread, crazy appeal and she's this little thing she's real cute. And she was this picture. Perfect. she has this had, that's what I'm getting to this husband, Dave Hollis, who used to be a Disney executive. They have recently divorced as of this recording. But it has not slowed her brand down, even though she was just like, I'm them, I'm the mom and the wife. And we're so happy. And we have this lifestyle brand. It doesn't matter. They got divorced. This happens. And the reign of Rachel Hollis continues. So who is this woman? And how did she do this? Well, she decided she wanted to move to LA from the Midwest, decided she wanted to move to LA.

And guess why? Because she dreamed of marrying Matt Damon. Now, here's what: I dated Matt Damon in college. I talk about it plenty. I mean, honestly, like almost any, any chance that I get that I could slip it in, I do. He was just a really cute guy who I met at a party who had a lot of ambition who was a super talented actor. And I would tell everybody, Oh, my boyfriend is a super talented actor and we were 20. And no one really cared though. He was rising. He was making this movie called School Ties when I was with him. Anyway. So not only is she dreaming of dating my ex-boyfriend, but she publishes a book called Party Girl, which is the name of my first book. And when my book was going out to publishers, my agent said, there's this book called Party Girl, but this woman, Rachel Hollis, we got to change the name of your book.

And then it was, she came back to me and said, you know what? That other book didn't make any waves. Don't worry about it. We'll keep your title. And I was like, I'm the reigning party girl? Well, joke’s on me. While all of that was happening. Rachel Hollis was an event planner and she was going around planning events. And then she started blogging in 2008. She started a blog called my chic life that started, you know, just about, about these events and what was going on. And then by 2016. So that's some serious years she put in, it had 600,000 users a month, which is a lot, then her big move. Yeah. Don't you just love modern day life. This was her big move. She showed a picture on Instagram in 2015 that showed her stretch marks. Suddenly the Today Show, NBC News, all these places are covering it, but here's the thing you can be like, Oh, she just got lucky. She was well, set up luck comes to the prepared. And she had been building and building and building and was very well prepared when this, you know, quote viral moment happened. So when I heard her speak for the first time at Traffic and Conversion, which is a conference in San Diego this was in 2018. I heard her speak, and this is something she said, I took notes. So I thought this was really interesting because here I talked to writers about how do they find their audience? How do they know who they're writing for? And she said, I know my girl. And that's what she calls her reader. She is not trying to get men. She says, I know my girl because I've hung out with her every day for 15 years.

I'm actually going to break down the four things Rachel Hollis has just done to perfection. Number one, she knows her audience. She told USA Today about five years ago. I used to mostly talk about food on her blog. I was a mom of young children. I was just trying to figure out what to feed them for dinner. Over time, I started to do a lot of work in personal development and really cared about my own growth and how I was becoming a better version of myself. As I went on that journey. I just sort of took the fans along for the ride, and that has led to where we are today. So I think that is a very interesting idea. The pivot, I will tell you for me you know, I sort of accidentally got branded as the sex dating and relationship expert.

When I wrote a story for Playboy in 2004, and then went on this show Attack of the Show. And, and I thought, you know, after a while, like, I'm just not interested in this anymore. This isn't me. Can I pivot and start talking about addiction and recovery? And I was able to, and then I was like, okay, I feel like I've done what I can there. Can I pivot and talk about writing? And it turns out, yes, you can. So if you say, well, I want to write this book, but I don't want to be categorized as the woman who, who only writes about being adopted. And that's my brand. No, once you are out there and you get used to being out there sharing about yourself, you can pivot because it is all about your audience. That's what it's about. Back when I was talking about sex, standing in relationships, I had all the media, you could dream up, Today Show, Fox News, in all the magazines. Today, I don't get that media coverage, but I am a billion times more successful because we now live in a world where it is better to have an audience.

It is not about the gatekeeper. So what she said back to Rachel, which she said is, this is at back at Traffic & Conversion. It needed to take 15 years. I didn't realize then, then that I was building the infrastructure I have today. Now I don't say that to discourage you, to make you go, Oh my God, it's going to take 15 years. By the way, if all of us could be so lucky as to have Rachel Hollis's success in 15 years, that would be amazing. I'd happily build every day, 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. But it's just look at what you've been already doing. We live in a world for better or worse, where we are audience building a lot of us all the time, whether we're aware of it or not, but you don't have to know exactly where it's going.

You just have to see that there are people there and that you make it about them. I'm going to get to that next. That's another Rachel Hollis tip that I've, that I've decided she gives a tip that I have learned from studying her. Let's just say, so Rachel Hollis knows who her readers are. She said at Traffic & Conversion, I have three types. I have the diehard fan who has known me since I was a food blogger. I have the Target mom who doesn't work. And I have the hustler who has her own business. So here's something interesting. People will say you have to just, you have to have an avatar. You have to know what that person drives, what they read, what they, you know, podcasts. They listen to what books they read and know. Rachel Hollis shows that you can actually have three types of fans, but I will tell you, you might notice those three fans are not that different. They're all women. Somebody who's a diehard fan could easily be a hustler or a Target mom, but they are three and distinct. And she knows who they are. So as you are building your audience and your fan base, think about who they are. And if you don't know who they are, ask them, ask the people who follow you on Instagram. They're there. And once you have a bigger audience survey, your newsletter audience or whatever it is.

So I alluded to this before, but tip number three from Rachel…Oh, sorry. This is tip number two. I'm switching the order. Don't judge. She would never do this. Or maybe she would that's. Her whole thing is she's scrappy. She makes mistakes. I happened to be recording this while I'm in my pajamas, so that a Rachel Hollis move, maybe back to the tip, she makes it about the audience. Now in my stalking, I saw a Facebook post that she wrote on November 22nd of 2017. And she said, #ChicTribe. That's a hashtag. So she has named her people after her own brand—brilliant: chic tribe. We're looking for people. I'm sure she didn't write this. Someone on her team wrote this. We are looking for people to spread the word about my new book, Girl, Wash Your Face and to say, thank you for helping me out, you'll get all types of goodies, including an advanced copy of the book before it comes out in February. So if you're interested request to join this group and connect with the rest of the GWYF launch team, she's already got, you know, okay, you click on that by the way. And it's gone because she knows what she's doing. It's gone now. But back God knows how many people were probably trying to get into that group and joining that group—well, enough to make the book sell 3 million copies on Amazon alone.

Now she had a book tour and she didn't just kick back and let her publisher set up a tour. She sold tickets and the event was called #Rachexevereve. Yeah, that's a hashtag. So if you bought a ticket, you got a hardcover of Girl Wash Your Face before anyone else, you got cocktail hour and nibbles and a sweet gift bag. You got signing and photo opportunity with Rachel Hollis and you got 15% off all ever Eve. That's her line of products. You got a shop and sip party, plus personal styling opportunities from the ever Eve staff, which sister is how Rachel figures out, what to wear. See sister, like we're talking to our girl, plus you'll get the most fun night ever with your girlfriends. So she has made what is about her all about you, the reader.

And interestingly, if you go to her website for Girl Wash Your Face now, what is there? Ah, this is genius. It's a thank you video. And what it is s a video showing people's Instagram posts about Girl Wash Your Face. So her team, you know, took screen grabs of I don't even know how many women holding up this book. And she's saying, thank you for doing this, but it's brilliant because she's just also showing how many people love her. You know, it just is great social proof and great, a great way to make it about the audience. Totally gonna steal that. I just realized that now here's another thing that she said at the Traffic and Conversion event, which backs up this whole idea. Somebody asked her, cause she's got a documentary on Amazon prime about her Rise conference. And they, somebody said why did you start this conference and this documentary and all of these things.

The Rise conference as of last time cost $650 for a few days. And she said, I was running into all these people who were saying, I wish I could go to your conference, but I can't afford it. So she said, let's make it an Amazon documentary. God, it's pretty cool. I don't know. I didn't watch the documentary. Did you? Let me know now, okay, I'm going to go a slightly backward. You don't know I'm going backward, but I'm going backward in my notes. Tip number three, Rachel Hollis is consistent. She said at Traffic and Conversion: it is not about production value. It is about consistency. And that means as a back then at 8:00 AM central time, every single day, she got on Instagram and she would entertain for five minutes and then she would get in your face and issue challenges.

You know, that's kind of her vibe is she's not going to let you sit back and be ordinary. She is going to push you to be your best. That's her whole thing. Now I'm number four of what she does. These are all connected. She listens to her audience. So she's got that breakdown of who those three types are. And she says, cause now she's got a whole line of products, a whole bunch of other stuff. She says, if your audience isn't buying, that's because you haven't explained it right. If your audience isn't buying that's because you haven't explained it right. Now in terms of a book that is really, really interesting because sometimes we can be so close to our material that we don't see what we don't see. I will tell you a really good exercise for me with Make your Mess.

A marketing person I knew said, why don't you write a sales page for your book? You know, because for previous books, I'd always just had here's about the book, here's the cover on a website. And I thought, and this person said…I'm actually totally lying. It was an article I read that suggested doing a sales page for your book. And so I looked at this example and actually I can link in the show notes to this example, cause it was awesome. And it basically said break down what this is, why the reader should be interested, who your reader is, break it down into sections. 

But my point about telling you about this sales page, because I still have it up. I can actually put a link to that in the show notes too. But basically it showed me that there was another way to explain my book that wasn't the book summary that we were putting on Amazon. It was how, if I encountered my ideal reader or my ideal client or whatever it is, how would I break it down? What would I want someone else to tell somebody about my book? And so the example that she gave it trafficking conversion. She doesn't try to sell a jacket but she shows her—that's her audience—10 ways she can wear it. You have to educate your audience. So if your audience is not buying your book, it could be that they do not understand it.

And so you need to educate them about why it's important and you can educate them on Instagram, on your blog, on Facebook, wherever you want. She says, your audience will tell you how to make it better. And this is something that you know, I may have talked about before, but basically there, there are a lot of very successful authors who talk about testing covers and titles. Now, a lot of people, when they, when they hear that, they're like, Oh, okay, I'm so guilty of this post on Facebook in your group or on your thing, Hey, you guys, which title do you like better? Or, Hey, let's do a poll. Hey, what cover, what title, all of these things, the experts will tell you don't bother with that because what people say they like, and what they actually buy are completely different.

If you are going to test something with your audience, the best way is not to ask them, but to say, design a cover and four different ways and run Facebook ads to that cover and see, which does better. If you're doing a title, do the same thing, that, that people will show you how to make it better rather than tell you how to make it better. Maybe if you're Rachel Hollis and you've got 1.8 million people on Instagram and a separate, or maybe the same 1.8 million people on Facebook, you can just ask them. But most of us need to see what they're going to do. Cause there's far fewer people. Now, she also recommends talking about your product for months before it’s out. That's, you know, we have different, I've employed different strategies, lots of times for lots of my books. And what I recommend for clients is to do the Beyonce drop, where you don't talk about your book at all, and then you just drop it.

And it's already number one in all its categories. And it's got all these reviews. Everybody's got a different strategy about that, but I will tell you that as of this recording her book, she has a new book, I Didn't See That Coming coming out. And she has on her website, preorder this book to get an exclusive hour-long class and 16-page workbook personalized by Rachel. It's all about rebuilding your life. When you're going through a hard season, you learn to set intentions and how to take the necessary steps required to build the life you always wanted. So the exclusive hour-long class, when it's someone like Rachel Hollis who is paid a lot of money for an hour, that's a super valuable thing. Any Rachel Hollis fan is going to say, absolutely that is worth it, plus this workbook. So that is definitely something, a lot of people do.

I did plan to do that with make your Make Your Mess You Memoir, but I never got it together. I mean, I did a launch thing online, but, but really giving your audience a chance to preorder and incentivizing them is a good thing. If that's the strategy you've employed, okay. She said about her audience when 10 people say the same thing, listen. A big part of being a creative person is you give your work to people and you gotta know who to listen to and who to ignore. I am very careful with who I get feedback from, and I am very careful too. And I'm very clear about what sort of feedback I want. When a book is published, I do not want people to give me notes on it, but I will pick a few very select people very carefully. And I will say, this is what I want.

I don't want you to sit here and tell me, it's great cause that doesn't help me. If you really like certain things, great. Tell me, but I need to know what needs work, what isn't clear, what is over explained, all of those things.

And the final thing that I learned from Rachel Hollis when she spoke at Traffic and Conversion is you want scarcity. She said, selling out is key because of FOMO. This is really only relevant if you have, I mean, a book you can't sell out, cause it's all just going to be on Amazon. But, but you know, just that concept. And I think the FOMO and the scarcity is really good. If you're going to do a preorder campaign or you or you're giving bonuses…the one thing that I did for Make Your Mess Your Memoir is we had an advanced reader team that I had someone on my team organizing and we wanted to get over a hundred people in it.

And we did. And then what we said, we said, do you want to be an elite messenger? And if you are an elite messenger, what you have to do is you have to recruit three new people to join this group. Once you've done that, then once the book comes out, you got to do these extra things, which is like post this on Facebook, do this, whatever it is, not many things, but the big thing was recruiting through other people. And then you're an elite messenger. And then those elite messengers, I sent them, not just signed copies. Everybody who was in the advanced reader team got a copy, but they also got shirts that say, make your mess your memoir. They got canvas prints that say that, they got all of this stuff. So you cannot pay people to review your book, but you absolutely can reward and thank them.

And whether that's with the free course, like Rachel Hollis does actual shirts, whatever it is. I love my readers so much that I actually go to the post office, which in Los Angeles is pretty much the most hellish place you can possibly go, but I do it. And so that's the Rachel Hollis breakdown. How Rachel Hollis has been able to become the massive success that she has using these very specific and easy to follow, not easy to do, easy to follow tips and techniques to break it down. Finally, one, she knows her audience too. She makes it about them. Three she's consistent and four, she listens to them. So that is it. Your breakdown of Rachel Hollis. And if you like this way of breaking down the show, I find this super, super fun. If you listen this far, I hope you found it fun or entertaining or both. Please let me know in the form of an iTunes review. And that is at Anna David signing off. I'll see you next time.