10 Things Authors Need to Stop Doing to Succeed Livestream

Hello, welcome to the Tuesday live stream. My friends, sorry for the confusion. Last week I do believe some of you were here waiting for the live stream to start and it didn't start. So a couple of things. One is I mixed up the date in the launch letter, so sorry for that. And the other side of that was that somehow some. Some live stream had been scheduled. So it looks like I gotta dive into this and now I'm in a new office space and I can set up my live streams. I just moved in today, so I haven't had a chance to beef up this space and make it look super cool. But I'm going to be putting something on the wall, going to be doing some soundproofing, and then I'm going to play with the setup so that we can have a little bit more fun and excitement during these live streams. And you can actually see the draws when they're happening. So that'll be pretty awesome. But for those of you who were waiting for the live stream last week, sorry, but here it is, it's happening this week. So welcome as you join in. As always, please say hello. And if you're catching the replay, then you can still say hello. And of course, all comments that are put on the day a video is released do count towards our book launcher swag. So I'm going to dive right in because of the mix up last week. I don't know how many people are going to be joining today, so I'm not going to wait. Let's just dive in. So today's topic is the 10 things authors need to Stop doing in order to create success for their book. So listen carefully and as we go ahead, we will be looking for your input because I only made a note of nine. So we're going to be looking for you to share one of yours to also fill in the gap. So hello, Poetry from the Heart and hello Angela. Thank you for being here. I don't know if you were caught in the mix up last week, Poetry from the Heart, but I'm so glad that you know the regular live streams are happening every other Tuesday. Although we're going to be skipping the next Tuesday livestream because I will be on my way to Austin, Texas for fincon. So anybody who is attending fincon, I would love to see you come on by the booth. Or if you're doing pro networking, set up a meeting time. I've got space. Oh, see, so you were there, but it was fun. So I guess you guys had a good time in the chat, wondering where I Was I've got some things I'm going to fix with YouTube and set up. So that's my project. That's going to be a project I do in October, now that I'm finally in a new office space, so. So 10 things authors need to Stop Doing In Order to Succeed. Number one, which will be no surprise to those of you who are regular YouTube viewers, it is to stop letting. I call them your monsters in your closet. But let's be real, it's your ego to stop letting your ego get in the way of the impact that you can have. So those monsters, for those of you who maybe don't know those monsters, are fear of success, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, and of course, my personal big monster, the fear of judgment. And I also have that imposter syndrome thing going on, too. But the fear of judgment has been my big monster. And so those monsters are really your ego getting in the way. And this rears its ugly head in so many forms for authors that it is number one on this list. And I think it's one that everybody kind of needs to pay attention to. So it is the fact that your book is. This is the challenge, right? A lot of people tell you that you need to write a book and your story is so incredible, you need to write a book, and that makes you feel like you have to share your story and that the book is about you. And it is, but it's not for you. It's for your reader. And the more you can focus on that reader, the more impact you can have. And the smaller the monsters get. They never quite go away. But when you're choosing your cover, it's not the one that your friends like. It's the one that will stand out for your reader. When you're choosing the title, same thing. It is not the one that your wife or your husband says was the best one. It is the one that's going to appeal to the readers and to the search engines when your reader is typing in certain things to find your book. When you put those monsters, I usually have to bring the monsters along for a ride. I can't put them back in the closet. They just join me for the party. But you make them quieter by focusing on your reader and ignoring those monsters. And when you do that, you're more likely to set a book up for success. You'll get your book done. You'll do the work you need to do to market it, because you're focused on the impact that you can have. Hey, Jason. Welcome to the live stream today. It's great to have you. If you're just joining in, do say hello. We always have participation prizes, and we're Talking about the 10 things authors need to stop doing in order to succeed. And number one was really to put your ego aside and focus on the impact you're going to have with your book. That was number one. Number two is a good one. I think we run into this. So at Book Launchers, we work with nonfiction authors. They're subject matter experts. They are often writing a book to grow their business, grow their brand, expand their message. And they also are often very successful and very well educated. Not always, but in some cases. And they want to sound smart to their friends and they write books that are more complicated than really they should be. And so number two is to write for your reader level, not for your industry, not for your colleagues. You're not getting graded by a professor that you have to write that's going to decide if you're smart or not. So if you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend in Word, using their little tool that allows you to see the Flesch Kincaid grade level score. And it's equivalent to the US grade levels of education. And it shows, you know, the grade level that is required. So the grade level of education that's required to understand the text that is inside of your manuscript. Nonfiction books geared towards an average reader really should be no higher than grade 8 level, which is about a 13 to 14 year old. And on the other side, you don't want it to be simpler than a grade six level. I would say the vast majority of nonfiction books really should be written for that grade six to grade eight level. In fact, a lot of people think that writing simply makes them sound less intelligent. But there's a lot of data, research and information out there that actually shows it is more difficult to write in a simplistic way that conveys that you understand your material so well that you can explain it to anyone. Right. So that's what shows true expertise, is being able to take a complex subject and distill it down into something that a grade 8er could understand. So that's your goal. Now, there's exceptions to this, although I would argue otherwise. Still. But before I start an argument that hasn't started, or before I start arguing in an argument that hasn't started yet, you know, the other side of this is if you are writing, you know, you're a PhD and you're writing this book for other PhDs, you may find yourself writing at a grade nine or grade 10 level. And that makes sense, right? It makes sense to write at a higher level if all of the readers are going to be at that level as well. But I would still argue the other side of this because we want, I mean, that's because we're all about hashtag, no boring books. I want people to want to read your book, not have to not feel like they have to get through it in order to get to some sort of a result or something like that. So in Word, if you don't know this, when, when you do the spelling and grammars check, you can also choose to display information about the reading level of the document, including including a readability score according to the Flesch Kincaid grade level. So you can go into. I think it's file. I'm looking, I'm just opening up Word here, just so I tell you the right thing. But it's file. I think it's file properties. And then you select proofing or something like that. If you just Google Word, because different versions of Word are going to do this differently too, but Google Word and then Flesch Kincaid grade level, you'll be able to see that. And I'll put the typing or the spelling of this into the chat so that you can see. Hello, author, CTO Rega Richard from Seattle. Great to have you here. Hello, Melissa from Wyoming. Fantastic to have you here as well. All right, so I just dropped the. Oh, yeah, I just dropped the Flesh Kincaid spelling in there so that you guys know what I'm talking about if you need to Google it to find out how to calculate that for your manuscript. Still Talking about the 10 things authors need to stop doing. I'm going to cover number three, and then we're going to do some prizes because it's not a live stream if we're not doing prizes. So number three, stop fearing failure. Now, you may or may not realize that you're fearing failure, but many people make decisions that show clearly they're afraid of failing. One of those is coming in and really not being open to the process. And, you know, with book launchers, we start people most of the time with a story expert to really dig into, you know, you know, the three whys that matter, which is, you know, well, the three W's, actually what's in it for me, being the reader? Why should I care about this? Which is the outcome, the hook of the book, and why should I read what you've written? So that's the author definition, and that's really what we're doing when you work with the story expert is defining all that and building a book that gets to that outcome and sells that hook of the book and the hook of you, the author. And so when people come into us there, the more open they are to just having an impact and creating a specific outcome for a reader and doing it in whatever way is kind of coming through to create that hook. They're the ones that tend to enjoy the process more and often get better results, too. The ones that come in pretty much afraid of failure, make decisions and they hold, you know, they kind of really grind, grind, dig their feet in and often grind the process to a halt at various stages. So I saw something. Pat Flynn posted this from one of his kids, I think teachers, and they said that failure should be redefined as first attempt in learning. And I just thought that was fantastic. And I think if more authors come in with that mindset, they will experience more success and more enjoyment from the process. In that vein, I got an email from one of our authors this morning, and I don't have his permission to share this, so I'm going to tell you what he said without telling you who he is, but he just said, I want to take a moment to tell you how grateful I am for the team and the opportunity to go through this process with your company. Writing this book has changed my life and has helped me become a better leader in the process. And I'm so excited to work on this project each week, and I look forward to meeting with your team every time. So that was an email, and he's coming into this with the mindset of openness and wanting to learn from the process versus being afraid of failing in the process. So it's really, really a different experience when you do that, and I think you create more success as well. All right, let's start with the participation prize. So here's where we find out who's been lurking and not talking. So make sure you have said hello. Oh, Caleb. I can definitely Caleb. Thank you. Okay, so make sure you say hello, because I'm going to get Angela to count out. Today is the seven. So she's gonna go. Let's see, we're gonna go seven from the bottom. So seven from where Caleb said his name is Caleb. And we'll go ahead and choose today's prize. And I'm also gonna pop on over to choose our YouTube commenter prize. So every Tuesday and Friday, we have a new video coming out. Again, this livestream, there was a bit of a mix up my fault last week, my fault and a tech glitch combined together to make last week's livestream a bit of a glitch. So it didn't happen. We do live streams every other Tuesday, but that counts for the for commenting. And so every Tuesday and Friday, we have a new video. When you comment, the day a video is released, you get entered to win our noboringbooks mug, our oh so stuff journal, and also a copy, if you don't have it, of my book, self publish and succeed. So today's first winner is, and it's in the random name picker. And, oh, this is a new winner. Vegans in the wild, over 50. I'm pretty sure that you have not won yet. So when you're watching this, please let Angela know so you can email Angela@AngelaokLaunchers.com and let her know if you want the mug, the journal, or a copy of my book. And of course, let her know your mailing address as well so she knows where to send your prize. Congratulations and thank you for commenting on my videos. Okay, cool. So, oh, and and from our other prize, we have Melissa Cook as our participation prize so far. We have one more participation prize today. So those of you just tuning in thinking you've missed out on the prizes, you haven't. There's still more. Em Lee, hello. Welcome from Southern California. Fantastic. Okay, so Melissa, same thing. Which of the three prizes I think you've won at least once before. So let us know what you want. Just shoot Angela an email@AngelaokLaunchers.com with your mailing address and whatever prize you want to take home. So thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. All right, so carrying on with our 10 things that authors need to Stop doing in Order to succeed, we're at number four. Number four. This is another one that I've shared a lot and I think it's so good it's worth repeating over and over again. Do not read what you've written. When you sit down to write again next time, just start writing. So what's that mean? That means you're not editing the work that you did the last time you were writing. When you're writing your book, you are going to set up a prompt for for yourself so that when you sit down to write next time, you sit down and you write. That's it. What's that look like? You start off the next sentence for your paragraph and put some bullet points of what you're going to talk about next. So when you Sit down. You don't need to reread anything or read anything or edit anything. You just start writing. This is going to be an enormous time saver because you're going to edit your book when you're done anyways. So why not just get everything out of your head onto a page and then go through the entire thing from start to finish. Get your book drafted and move it through the process as quickly and efficiently as you can. That's, I think, the best writing tip I can ever give. Number five, stop asking your friends and family their opinion on things that are really, really important for your reader. Your ideal reader, I mean top. I'm talking about COVID title or even the content of your book. The only exceptions to this is if your friends or family are in your ideal reader category. Ideal. They're, they're in that ideal reader. Yeah, that's right. Category. Or they're book publishing professionals. Those are the only two times when I think you should ask them. Generally speaking, you can ask them, but I wouldn't make hard and fast decisions based on what they're saying. You really have to look at your competition. How are they positioning their books? What are their book titles? What are the keywords for your book title? What's really going to stand out to your ideal reader? If you already have a business and your ideal reader is in your audience of clients, then I would be talking to them. I would be using your emails, if you have an email newsletter to put things in the subject line to see what people are clicking on. I would even be putting cover polls out to your client base. If they're your ideal reader, that's the information you want to rely on a lot more than your friends and family. We've seen a lot of less than great decisions come as a result of saying, oh, my family, my cousin, my coffee barista said I should do this or didn't like this. And that's really not the market research that you want to apply to your book publishing experience. Let's see what's going on in the comments. Let's see. Mark Wilder. Hey. Hello. First timer. Welcome. And Bill, thank you for coming. So it's so great to have all of you here. Like I said at the start, we had a bit of a mishap last week. So I'm thrilled to have so many of you join me today, which is the properly scheduled day. But yeah, anyways, we won't go into that. But I'm so excited to have all of you here. So thank you so much for that and we're Talking about the 10 things authors need to stop doing in order to create success. And we're currently on number six. Number six is the one that's kind of funny in that it's not specifically about books. And I think this is really a general success tip for everyone. But it's stop surrounding yourself with people who aren't achieving the kind of things you want to achieve. I could put this in many ways. They don't have the mindset. They're not supportive. Or you could put it the other way, which is start surrounding yourself with people who have already achieved the things that you want to achieve. But since this is a list of things you have to stop doing, that didn't quite fit. But I would have preferred to label that in a more positive way. But what I mean by this is if you're traveling in, you know, you spend 90% of your time or even higher with people who aren't writing books, have never written a book, think writing a book is crazy, or they think money, you know, having an impact or earning money is, you know, not a good thing. Whatever that mindset is, if that's who you're hanging around with, it's going to be very tough for you to succeed at whatever your endeavor is. So I highly recommend, whenever you want to do something that's fairly big, it's out of your comfort zone, it's making you nervous, you're not sure if you can do it. You really need to find a group of people who have already done it or who are at least, at the very least, doing it right now, and so that you can surround yourself with them. And for me, if I look back on my entire life, whether it was writing books or starting companies, I found that every time I really wanted to level up and achieve something that was big and scary, and there was a part of me that didn't really know or even believe that I could do it. I had to find a new group of people or peers to associate with. And usually this meant paying money. But what I found is when you kind of first join that group, you walk in the room and you feel like. Or in this case, probably a virtual room, but you kind of feel like you almost don't belong, like, you know, you're out of your element. That's great. That's what you want. Because what's happened every time I have done that is I have managed to achieve the very thing I wasn't sure that I could achieve. And, you know, even. Even book launchers is a really Good example of this. Angela, Angela will know this because we joined a business mastermind kind of group, a business coaching group where, you know, one of the very first things you do is everybody talks about how much revenue the, the, the other people or the other companies in the room. You know, you stand up and you tell them how many employees you have and what's your revenue. And I was one of the smallest numbers at the time. I think I only had three employees and we were under half a million in annual revenue. And I was listening to all these people with 20 plus employees and 3 and 7 million and 10 million dollars a year companies. And I was going, oh, I don't belong here. But three years later, it's very much my room. You know, I have quite a sizable team and our revenues are much larger than they were then. So it's really, really important, I think, to find the right people to be around, to feel a little uncomfortable, like you don't belong, but to absorb that and to learn from those people in that room and push yourself and also just get reassurance that your dream isn't that crazy. Other people are doing it or have done it and you can follow some of their lessons and learned. And just by being around them, I find that it's easier to achieve bigger things. Number seven is to stop looking for or expecting quick wins. And this goes especially for people who have money to buy them. Because in book publishing there really aren't a lot of things that are like quick wins. Even if you have money, you really have to work to do most of the pieces, you know. And I've seen this with some people who just say, look like I, you know, I want to give you money and you just make a book and it's like, well, it doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. You still have to get the information out of your head. And the hardest part is coming up with that concept and sharing your expertise and your perspective. And then on the marketing side, a lot of people just want to pay money and get bestseller status and get this and get that and you can, but it's gimmicks and there's trade offs. So legitimate success comes from consistent effort, driving to have an impact and being willing to fail so that you can learn along the way and try new things and build momentum and ride the waves of up and down. There really aren't quick wins. And when you see quick wins, for example, if you see somebody's book skyrocket to number one, often it's because they Spent five, ten years building a massive platform before that book ever came out. So the book might seem like a quick win, but it was a quick win. Ten years in the making. So it really takes consistent effort. And if you don't have a platform and you're talking in a new subject, your book is kind of that piece that's going to launch you as the expert. You really can't expect a quick win. You really have to plan to be putting in effort on a regular basis in order to create success and learn and try new things and keep those monsters at bay. All the lessons that we've talked about today. All right, I'm going to do another prize to shake things up a little bit, and the other participation prize is coming up because I don't have a number 10. I want to see what you guys think is one of the things authors should stop doing. So you guys can start writing that down now. And I'm going to head back over to my little random name picker where I've put everybody who has commented on a Tuesday or Friday when a YouTube video has come out in the last two weeks and see who else is a winner. Today's second winner is Heysher or Heyshar. H E Y S H A R so congratulations. I think that's two people who have not won before today. I think so. Yeah. Congratulations. And you, email Angela, let us know if you want the mug, the journal, or copy of my book and let her know your mailing address as well. Congratulations, and thank you for commenting on the day a video was released. All right, Kit, you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Yeah, exactly. Hello from California. Hey, Dee. Great to have you here. And Christopher Mattish. Hey, that's fantastic. I'm enjoying each step, page, and paragraph. That's great. Wonderful to hear. Thanks for stopping in for our livestream today. Okay, so we've got three more to cover, and then I've already told you what the final participation prize is. I'm looking for the tenth thing authors need to stop doing because I only have a couple left. Albert, welcome. Okay, now, number seven was stop looking for quick wins or expecting quick wins. Number eight is stop setting goals you can't actually control. Switch the focus to things that you can control. Again, this is kind of a life tip, but it applies to authors. So one of the things that you can't control is if you become a bestseller, you absolutely can't control that. There's a lot of things you can do that will lead to that success or that possibility of success. But ultimately, you can't control whether you become a bestseller because there's so many factors that are out of your control. One of them being actually making people buy your book. That's out of your control. But the other is you can't control what other books come out on the day, the week, the month of your book launch. And if you're competing with some blockbuster book, then you might have a challenge and you can look ahead at the publishing schedules and see what's coming up. But ultimately they move them, they change them, and you could be surprised and still be up against like, the equivalent of a Harry Potter series. So you really can't control that. So set the goals for things you can control. You can control how many people you contact to get a review. You can control how many places you pitch yourself to get podcasts. You can control how many speaking opportunities you submit for. You can control how many times you post on social media. You can control how many times you go live on social media. You can control how many influencers you reach out to. Those are all things that you have control over. Even setting a goal for a certain review number is challenging because you can't control whether people actually do the reviews. So it is a goal like, you know, we were just talking at our company how we want to get self published and succeed to 100 reviews, and we're planning a reviewer party to give you guys all kinds of fun swag as a thank you. But ultimately we can't control whether somebody posts a review or not. So I focus more on asking people to write the reviews, and we're testing different sites to get more reviews. Those are all things that we can control. But try to set goals for things you can control and break down an ultimate goal that you have a desired outcome. For example, break that down into the things you can control to try to achieve that. It's a better feeling for the whole process, and I think it sets you up for a greater chance of success. You're less likely to get discouraged when you can control the outcome on a process. Number nine, stop procrastinating. This can take the shape of, you know, research that you don't really need to do. This can take the shape of rereading what you've written before. It can take the shape of just cleaning your house or doing anything but doing the work that you need to do, whether that work is writing your book, asking for reviews, looking for new places to market your book, pitching yourself for speaking engagements, whatever it is. Just stop procrastinating. Just do it. You can waste a lot of time not doing the things that you really need to do just because they're hard. You fear rejection. You're struggling with it for some reason. And if you're really struggling, get support. You could hire book launchers. Of course, that would be my choice, but get support in the form of a writer's group, accountability partner, something like that. And find a way to not let yourself progress, and you'll find yourself achieving more success. All right, so what's number 10? Let's see what you guys have got. Let's see over here. Okay, we've got a few good ones here. Authors should stop worrying 10 steps ahead. Oh, Caleb, that's such a good one. Enjoy step by step of the process and fall in love with the process more than the desire for the results. I don't even know what other ones are there, but you're absolutely a winner. That is such a good one. There's so many people. Oh, this is fantastic. I love it because there's so many people who are worried about proofreading their book or about the distribution for their book, and they haven't even written it yet. I mean, let's take it step by step. I do say worry about the ultimate. Who's that ideal reader? What's the outcome? How are you going to be marketing this book? Or what's your goal for it? And then build your entire book with that in mind. But that's very different than knowing the intricate details of when you're going to post on social media and all those little finer things. I love it. Okay, you're definitely a winner. Email angelagelaoklaunchers.com and let her know if you want a copy of my book, our mug or the Journal. That was a good one. Thank you, Sydney. Great. So good you could join us. I have problems writing than reading a how to write blob. I think that's probably supposed to be blog. How to write a blob, how to write blog, book, video, and then deciding I was doing it wrong. Yeah, that's a good one, too. You know, taking. And that's kind of why I said you. You don't want to take too many people's advice. You really want to just focus on that reader. Focus on what you have to do. If you need to get a process or, you know, some help along the way, do so if you need process, get a copy of my book. I mean, this is. I think it's $16 or cheaper. If you get it on Kindle. And the whole process is right here. So that will give you a step by step, proven process. We've had more than 300 authors work with book launchers now, as well as my own experience writing books. And our many writing coaches and writers and experts have contributed as well who have experience outside of book launchers. So lots of really, really great material there. But yes, you know, it's fear of failure, fear of success, imposter syndrome, you know, all those monsters, they come out as soon as you read some other approach, then it can make you doubt your own approach. So see, procrastination is a real issue. Yes, it is. Mindful Eats says authors should realize that there are people out there who desperately need your book. Yes, it really, really is about focusing on that person that you're going to have an impact on. And I often tell people, if you don't write the book, what's going to happen to that person? How are they going to get helped and what are they already doing now that's not working and how will they ever find your solution? So I highly recommend you focus on that reader because it kind of gives you a butt kick. Euphema. Trying to become the thing that my monsters are afraid of is difficult. Yes, I know it's a challenge. That's why you focus on the reader as much as you possibly can. Surround yourself with people who are achieving this. Because when those doubts or when the monsters come in, those people can often be the very example you need to see, see to know that it's possible to see what the outcomes can be when you achieve great things. I think that's why it's so important to make sure that you're surrounding yourself with the right people as well. Albert says, I think some people out there try to sell an idea that a book can be written in in a few to six months. Stop believing them. I mean, six months is feasible. The 30 day thing, I mean, yes, it's possible and I've seen a few people do it. But you know, we're all about writing a great book. And the rare person who can write a book really fast and do it well is typically somebody who is, has been teaching their stuff for a long time. Because the part of writing a book that's actually slow is the thinking and it's the figuring out how are you going to explain this so that it has an impact? What stories are you going to tell? How do you tell a great story? That stuff takes a lot of time. And so I find that the people who can write fast. I haven't seen anybody do a 30 day book and have it be great. But the people who can write a book in 90 days or six months are typically people who are already really close to their material and they're getting support. A lot of our clients will write a book in six months, but they've got a writing coach alongside them and they've also got the story expert they work with in the beginning to get clarity around what they're doing. Book is about. My first book took me, I think 18 months to write. Self published and succeed took me. I started it and then I stopped it for about 16 months. Once I started it again, I think it took me four months to write amongst a very busy schedule. So, you know, but that's, it's also material that I talk about all the time. I took some of the transcripts from YouTube videos and used those. So I wasn't writing, I wasn't staring at a blank page. So it is possible. But if you're brand new to this, you're writing on something you haven't done a lot of speaking on or teaching. Yeah, it's going to take you a while. You've got to do some hard thinking work. So that's a good one. I think that's another you could stop. So Melissa and they think you should just release it when you're done writing and editing. It's hard for them to understand why it's still not available and why I'm still busy working on it. Oh my goodness. That is another one. Stop thinking. The process is quick. A lot of people don't understand that when your book is, is now drafted, that's there's still about six months more of work to do on it to get it to the book launch. And that work for most people is like three or four months of editing. And then there's cover design, there's layout, there's launch prep, and then there's a six to eight week period of pre launch where you want to be setting your book up to sell. So there is a lot. So that's a good one too. There's so many good ones here. You guys are awesome. I love it. Hey, Lady B. Ashley, great to have you here. Nassir, I've written three books in eight months. It's definitely possible I did it alone. Yeah, that's great. You probably had experience, you knew your topic well. It's the people who don't know their topic as well as you think. If you've talked about the subject, you've already got all your information on hand. You know, it's stuff that you know well, you absolutely can write books fast and then if you don't have a busy business and you've got more time on your hands, you don't have kids. Those are big factors. I mean I have full, full work days and I have a four year old now. When I was writing the book, he was three and that's very time intensive. Like from the moment I was having to get up at 5 in the morning because he wakes up at 6. So I would write from, I actually get up at 4:45 and I would write from 5 to 6 and then some days he'd get up at 5:30. Rare days he would sleep till 6:30 or 7. So I'd get a little bit more time. But during the workday I didn't have time and then as soon as I'm done work, I'm with him again. So it is a real challenge and that's often the bigger thing. If you've got open schedule, you know your material. Yeah, you can hammer out books quite quickly. If you're not procrastinating, you're not rereading what you've written, you've got a clear plan. So yeah, absolutely. Everybody's got a different kind of different things they're dealing with. Typically most people are going to take six months to a year to write their, their first book. After that you might go faster and if you don't, if you know your material, you might go faster as well. Okay, let's see. I'm just, sorry, I'm just, I'm just reading all the comments here, seeing what I want to talk about next. Denisha Pratt says I have two kids and there are so many distractions. Thank you for your transparency. Yeah, it's real. I mean, and it's one of those things too where before I was a parent I didn't fully understand. I mean I got that the kids were time intensive. I didn't really truly understand the challenge. I was often telling, in a different business I had, I was often telling them, why don't you just get up earlier? Like well now I've been taught why you don't just get up earlier. Like it's not that easy, is it? But anyways, it's, you can do it. That is the reality of this. There is, there is a way to get this done, but it's not always going to be as easy as some people want you to believe. Okay, cool. So I think that's all of our things. Now, you guys had some good ones. So I want to pick one more prize. I want to do one more participation prize because so many of you are here now all the way. So I think let's do Angela, if you can just put the last. I don't know. Since the. Since these comments, take all of them except for Caleb, which was author CTO Ricktega, which is why I'm calling Caleb. So he won. But then take everybody else that shared a number 10, the 10th thing to stop doing. Can you just take them and do a random draw of one and we'll choose one more winner? Because you guys gave me so many good ones, I have a hard time choosing what would be our other winner for today. And while I've got you here, we also are looking for more video topics. I'm doing a full series over the next three months on marketing because guess what the next book's gonna be? It's gonna be all about book launches and book marketing. Because that book was self Publish and Succeed is really about writing the book and then publishing it. We touched on marketing a little bit, but there's so much to go into around book marketing. And so I'm writing an entirely separate book. So I'm going to be doing a whole bunch of videos because my process is I create the video, I take this transcript, transcript. I put it down into the format of a book, and then I fill in all the gaps and that becomes the book. So over the next three months, I'm going to be doing a ton of videos on marketing. So outside of the marketing realm, if there's a topic you want me to cover, please let me know because I don't want to only be putting out book marketing videos in the next three to three to four months, because this channel is all about writing, publishing, and promoting nonfiction book. So let me know if you've got video ideas. And I'm really just talking until Angela gets the prize. So Nasir says, I didn't do it the right way. I didn't spend enough time promoting it like you said. And I had to go through more rounds of edit because of that. Yeah, I mean, if you do a book without help, you often will find yourself needing more editing. But that's okay. I mean, I think it's great to just get the material out of your head and into a first draft as fast as you can. I think if you were in person, I'd still give you a great big high five because that's awesome. Thomas, first time I caught you Live. Hey, great to have you here. Thanks for tuning in. Okay. Oh, hey, Char. You won. I don't know if you were here in time to see that you were the winner, but for the YouTube commenter, you were one of today's winners. So you can email Angelaoklaunchers.com and let her know if you want the mug, the journal, a copy of my book. And of course you need to tell her your mailing address so she knows where to send it. Mr. Keating, I wrote a 10 book anthology in three weeks. Oh my gosh, two weeks straight. Bed, face down in the shower, brainstorming. In three hours, vigorously typing. Wow, that's incredible. And Nasir said I spent 10 hours a day writing. Writing and not working. I don't want to know where you work. Let's see. Self publishing those. Yeah. So Euphemia said, I've been writing a lot of short stories lately. Publishing those is a different world. Yeah. What's your take on email marketing for book sales? I mean, I think the number one way to sell books is to an email newsletter list or. And then the number two way is to get somebody who has your readers in their audience and get them to send an email to that audience to promote your book. That's how my first book went to number one on Amazon, you know, selling thousands and thousands of copies. It was only through email marketing. I had a newsletter list at the time of about 10,000 people. It was a different time. My open rates were around 60% which is extremely high for email newsletters. But that was 2013. And then I had colleagues and friends in the real estate space. My first book was a real estate investing book and those colleagues and friends sent emails to their lists. And that's how my book went, you know, top the charts and. And that was solely from email marketing, nothing else. I expanded later and did PR like traditional media and I still, I didn't run Amazon ads on that book. I was a. I was a baby self publisher. There's so many things I didn't know. I started running Amazon ads a year later or so. But yeah, so email newsletter, it's huge. It's just, it's a challenge to consistently add new opt ins and it's a free full dedication on the part of an author to grow their. To grow their email list. Scully, so good to see you here. And Yefima, congratulations. You're our final winner of the day. Thank you so much for your contributions today. Email, Email Angela and let her know what you would like for your prize. I bet Most of the topics I can think of. You can pop a link to one of your videos. Well, it's true. That's why I'm kind of running out of topics at the moment. So I'm looking for ideas. So no, no bad ideas. And sometimes what I am finding is somebody asks me a question and I go. And I find the video and I go, it's 80% what I would say. But I've learned more since I put that video out. So I will release a 2021 or a 2022 version of that video. So all ideas are welcome. If you're watching the replay, please post them in the comment. Okay. How many copies of Self published? I don't actually know. My team just told me today that I had 63 or 64 reviews and I haven't looked since I broke the 50 review mark. So that's the beautiful thing about not writing a book for book sales, because I really, it's not that I don't want the book to sell. I do, but that's not what I'm driving towards. I'm really driving towards getting the book out to help people, to get the right people to come work with us at Book Launchers and to have a resource that I can just turn, you know, I can say to people, hey, you've got questions like, this book has all the information that you need. And then I've been able to strike some really cool partnerships. Like next year, my book will be given out with one of the book awards. So everybody who submits for this book award will get a copy of my book. Next month, my book is going to be inside of this Hamptons, this, this really cool company called Bedside Reading that does these promotional packages for all the Hampton, or not all, but some of the Hamptons hotels and there's a film festival. And so my book will be on iPads in the hotel room for people to read as well as in some of the gift bags. So that's why I did it, is to kind of explore promotional opportunities to see what works for our clients to help anybody who has questions about this that may or may not hire book launchers. And so as a result, I'm not actually fussed about the sales and it's not selling like tens of tens of thousands of copies either. It's a very niche kind of book and I'm not marketing it hard, hard, hard. I'm really, I'm really just using it as a tool. So I'm thrilled with how it's doing and what the doors it's opening, but yeah, it's not. It's not, you know, it's not crushing any sales records. Let's see a couple more comments and we're gonna wrap up. Let's see. I published my first book back in 1999, just before the digital boom hit. Hey, that's great. Congratulations. Oh, Angela just said it's 64 reviews. See, I didn't even know. Okay, so got some good or good video ideas how to get in the newspaper in bigger cities and you have a press release. Press releases won't get you into the newspapers. Just FYI, takes a pitch. But I'll do a video on that for you. What about how to present your book on Amazon? It's not as easy as you think. The tax bundles up. Yes, absolutely. That's a great one. Thank you. Oh, these are good. I love it. I love it. Great comments. So I'm going to come back after this live stream is over and read your comments to pull some of the video ideas and of course, if you're watching after, you can post them as well. Thank you so much for joining me this week. There will not be a live stream in two weeks. I will be in on my way to Austin, Texas for fincon. We will be meeting back here. I'm just pulling up my calendar so I can tell you the exact date. We will meet back here on October 5th. So it'll be a month from now. Can't wait to see you there again. I will be doing. There'll be lots of prizes that day because we have. We'll have four weeks of YouTube comments to make up for. For. Can't wait to see you then. Thank you so much for tuning in today, you guys. Bye.