3 Ideas for Authors to turn NO into YES | Livestream Replay

You all right. Happy Tuesday, my friends. How is it going? If you're tuning into the replay, you know what do say replay and hello, let us know where you're tuning in from and what you're up to. All right, so today's topic is a pretty cool subject. I think we're talking about turning no into yes. And let's face it, when you are brave enough to become an author, you are also basically putting yourself out there into the world to accept the word no. You're going to hear no. That's just how it's going to go. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I've got kind of a three step or three point process or approach to handling those no's that you're going to hear. And I'll also share a couple of stories and examples of how a no can become a yes and your author journey. So as you're tuning in, do what Brian did and say hello and let us know that you're here. If you're just tuning into the live stream for the first time, it is always beneficial to participate because we always have prizes for participation as well as of course, we're going to answer all your questions. So if you have questions as we're going along, make sure you post those in. Angela is here from our office and she's going to try to help keep me organized and make sure that we hit all those questions. And of course we also have prizes for those of you who comment on the day a video is released, which goes for you folks watching the replay. Hey Jennifer, great to see you. So let's just get started on this topic. So turning no into yes, well, it's quite an adventure being an author. And you're going to hear no for all kinds of reasons. And even as you're venturing into this, if you haven't quite settled on self publishing, perhaps you'll be hearing a no from a publisher. Which was sort of my journey. In fact, it's ultimately how I got into self publishing. I was. Well, if you back up, when I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a writer. And I used to write when I was 8 or 9 years old. I wrote a ton of short stories that actually got published in some newspapers. I won an essay contest when I was 10 or 11. But when I went to high school, my English teacher really graded me hard and didn't make me feel like I was a good writer. And people told me writers don't make money. And also I thought I'd be a writer, a teacher, and I had relatives who were teachers that always complained they didn't make enough money. So ultimately that little girl who dreamed of being a teacher and a writer went off to business school and did an undergrad in business and an MBA in real estate and finance. I got into real estate. It's actually through real estate that I got back into writing because I started buying properties and I bought my first two properties in 2001 and, and then I was out of money and I had gone back to school to do my MBA so the banks wouldn't finance me. So I ended up doing creative deals. And so I partnered with my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband, and we started doing creative deals, which were other people's money, no money down type deals. And ultimately what we created was a really great portfolio of stories of all the things that can go wrong when you become a real estate investor. And I started writing a newsletter. And that newsletter eventually morphed into a training and education company helping real estate investors invest in real estate in Canada at the time. And through this kind of platform that I grew rather organically over the course of three or four years, I ended up getting connected with some publishers. And the one main publisher that was doing these kind of books, real estate investing books in Canada at the time, was Wiley and Wiley. And Wiley. I was introduced to this, this editor at Wiley. I told them this book idea that had been formulating in my head after 10 years of investing in real estate. And Wiley said, no, you know, that, that, you know, that kind of the general real estate book has already been done. But you know, we have this real estate book that we've been thinking about and we'd like you to write it. And so we went back and forth on this book deal for three months and I thought I was getting a deal. But ultimately the email that came through after three months of back and forth, fourth on the book idea they gave me was this email that said, julie, the marketing department doesn't think you have a strong enough platform to sell books. And so that poor little girl who had always dreamed of being a writer had gotten her hopes up and now she was devastated. So this was one of the biggest nos I've ever heard. For those of you turning in, tuning in now, we're talking about, as an author, turning no into yes, because get ready, my friends, you're going to hear no a lot. And, and it is a skill to take these nos and turn them into a yes. And I'm not Talking art of persuasion here. This is not about changing people's minds. I didn't go back to Wiley and convince them that they should give me a deal. Ultimately it took about six months before my ego recovered, but I ultimately decided to self publish and I self published my first book, More Than Cash Flow. And really I really thank Wiley because they took my ego out of this equation. So I wrote the book that I knew needed to be written and I wrote it with minimal regard for myself in that I shared the stories very openly, that I felt very strongly people would judge me badly. For we at the time we had investors who'd given us capital to buy properties. I had clients who I was teaching how to invest in real estate. And you know, I was telling them in this book that I'd owned a crack house, not unintentionally, when we bought it, it wasn't a crack house, it turn into a crackhouse. We had a property manager that punched a tenant and the tenant later died in hospital and he got charged with manslaughter. And you know, the stories just were intense to live through, pretty fun to read, I think, as somebody kind of, you know, vicariously learning. But, you know, all of those were in the book and I shared them, which were things my family didn't know. They were things our clients certainly didn't know, and they were definitely things our investors didn't know. But I really felt that people needed to hear these stories. And so I went into it with very little ego and I dove into self publishing with this mindset that I was going to do it better than if Wiley had given me a book deal. I thought, you know what, I don't want to look self published. I want to look traditionally published and do this better. And so that's when I wrote More than Cash Flow. And ultimately, I think largely because the message was so focused on the reader and so not about me at all, a lot of people rallied behind it and ultimately it to number one on Amazon, ahead of Dan Brown, ahead of Game of Thrones. And it was in the top 100 print books on Amazon in Canada for 45 days. So it did really, really well. And so this is my first lesson in no turning to yes, because again, I want to thank Wiley because I made eight times more money on my books that were sold through retail channels and I made a whole lot more through those that were sold at events and direct sales, of which there was, you know, at least a thousand copies sold that way. I own the rights to this book and it opened me up to self publishing, which in a wind about way, not a direct route, but in a wind about way, has led to creating Book Launchers, which is truly the greatest company. I feel like everything I've done to date has really positioned me to be the person to create this awesome company with these great people, these wonderful authors, many whom are here today on the live stream. So thank you for joining us. And it led me, you know, it really led me to, you know, building this community here at Book Launchers TV as well. So super grateful for that. I'm going to say hello to some folks now, now that I've introduced the topic and I'm going to be sharing kind of three ways for you to handle no's and take them and turn them into a yes. You know, my way was saying, okay, no, I'm not going to be able to traditionally publish this book, but I'm going to self publish it and do it better. So that's what we're talking about today. And every time. This is a quote and I think Angela's going to drop this in the chat for you, but this is almost like a mantra for me. But every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better. So in my mind I was being rejected from traditionally published. Being traditionally published. But it was actually a great gift because I was being redirected to self publishing, which I think is the greatest thing on earth. But I may not have gone down that road had I not hit this. No really hard. Okay, so who's here? King Bluntroller. 489. Deborah Lloyd Efren. Hello. We photogal. Hello from Connecticut. Hey, great. Great to have you here, Bill. Oh, another one from Connecticut. Right. Getting these abbreviations. Sometimes the abbreviations catch me off guard. Exotic Expression Dance Fitness. Hello. Hey, great. It's great to see all you guys here. Kimberly, Martha. Hello. If you guys haven't seen the video Martha did a couple weeks ago, there's people on my team that actually say it's our best author spotlight to date. Martha was very generous in sharing her experience of coming to us with the finished manuscript and working with us as we made suggestions about changing the direction of the book. So thank you, Martha. We've had some really great feedback from that left hand Libra 80. Hey. I don't know if I've seen you here before. Welcome. Great to have you here. Okay. Oh, you love crab houses. Yeah, it wasn't crab, it was crack. Yes. Okay. And how do I handle Angela's No, I don't know. Okay, let's keep going. It's so great to have all of you here today. Thanks for tuning in. And of course, if you're watching the replay, say hello to. Play along. Play along when you're. When you're here on the replay. Okay, so let me just go back to my notes so I don't lose my place. Okay, so again, we're talking about turning a no into a yes. And you're going to hear it when you ask for endorsements, when you submit your book, for awards, media podcast interviews, publishing options, reviewers, speaking engagements, bookstores. There's going to be a lot of no's and ultimately you're going to have to be okay with that. And my approach is to turn them into a yes as much as I can. And this is, you know, some of this really. I look at how my 4 year old does this and I model some of my approach after him now because, I mean, I actually try not to say no to him. I try to find another way to answer his request than say no. But ultimately sometimes I do have to say no. And what is the very first thing he says when I say no? He wants to understand why, why not? Why, why can't we do that? Or why can't I have that? And so he explores that. And I think that's the first thing for all of us to do is to. Is really to understand is this really a no? Because sometimes it's a not right now or not with that angle when we're talking, pitching, it's, you know, it's not always a no. I don't want to, I don't want to have you on my show. It's a no. That wasn't the right angle for me. That no. It's not the right timing for me to talk about that no. I just had somebody on last month that talked about that, so. And it's not always an option to ask why. I mean, you're not going to pester somebody who says no to endorsing your book. But you may have other options there. So we'll touch on that briefly today. But really understand, is this actually a no? And as much as you can figure it out, try to determine if it actually is a no or is there, is there something else here? Is it a not right now? Is it a not that way? You know, understand it because you can often uncover an opportunity within that. Note, no. This content isn't quite right. And what's the opportunity to improve it? Okay, the second thing Is are there other ways to achieve the same objective? So for me, my objective, you know, with the story that I shared at the beginning, the objective wasn't necessarily to get a traditionally published deal. At the time, I had this feeling that some of you maybe can relate to, which was I felt like I needed to be chosen. And like I felt like in order to publish a book, somebody had to tell me my book was worthy. And I now realize that's completely wrong. And in fact, many of the books that are chosen probably shouldn't have been chosen and many of the books that don't get chosen are far better. So ultimately, for me, the objective was to write a book that would help other real estate investors avoid a lot of the problems that we had encountered because we had taken a lot of the very popular, still to this day, they're popular get rich quick type courses. And you know, it's the one I'm talking about or one of the kinds I'm talking about when you hear it on the radio and it's like now is a great time in such and such city to foreclose or to flip properties or to buy foreclosures. You know, it's the same ad in every city and it's not the, it's not the best time in every city, but they run that same ad. So those kind of get rich quick type real estate investing courses, those no money down, those kind of things, that's what ultimately led to a lot of the problems that we encountered with our real estate. And I, and I really believe that people needed to understand that some of the risks, not just the riches that came with real estate. And so for me there was another way to achieve that outcome. It was self publishing. But other times there's other ways to achieve your outcome too. You know, a lot of people go after somebody go after that sounds very aggressive. I mean a lot of people approach somebody, a celebrity and they're looking for a forward or something big. But in fact what you maybe are better off getting from them is an endorsement or a shout out on social media that you can leverage and use in other ways. So you know, just kind of look at, are there other ways to achieve the same objective that you're after that makes this. No, not necessarily a no, there's, it's just kind of a redirection, right? Just kind of like the quote we shared earlier. It's not, it's not a rejection, it is a redirection. Finally, the last thing. And I'll break these out and give you Guys, some examples, and we can chat more and answer questions. But the final thing that I like to do is really look at the opportunity or the gift in that no. And there always, always is an opportunity or a gift in that, no. Sometimes the gift is kind of an awakening that you're about to head down the wrong path, and sometimes the opportunity is kind of. What happened to me is self publishing was way better, way, way, way, way better for me than traditional publishing ever would have been. I mean, and I've talked about this before, but in that when my book first came out, I made more than $80,000. If I had had that book deal with Wiley, I would have made less than $10,000. And that's a dramatic financial difference. And that's not the only difference. Right. There's a lot of other things that came into play. First of all, Wiley wasn't going to actually let me write the book that I thought needed to be written. They didn't think it was marketable. So I would have been writing a different book altogether, which probably wouldn't have sold anywhere. There's a whole bunch of opportunities and gifts that came from that first big no that I encountered. All right, so let's see what you guys are chatting about. Hey, Daniel, great to see you. Ron. Hey, good to see you. It's been a while. Okay. And Poetry from the heart. Hello. And Denise. Oh, lovely. There's so many lovely people here today. Okay, so let's do a quick prize. And if you guys have any questions at this point point, Angela, if there's been anything, I'd love to answer those questions. I'll give you guys some more examples or some examples other than my own story. So first, every Tuesday and Friday, we have a new video. Every other Tuesday, that new video is this live stream. When you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some swag. And today I want to give away a copy of my book as well, because I'm in Canada and we're going to head back to the States in a few weeks, and I have four copies of my book here. So I want to sign copies of these books and mail them out because my mom. My mom doesn't want them here. True story. She's got Martha's book sitting on the table. She hasn't even read my book, Martha. But it's okay. I'm excited that she loves your book so much. She's gonna keep your book. She wants my books gone. So anyways, I have copies of my book. Self publish and succeed And I would love to send you a signed copy. So that's gonna be one of your prize choices today, as well as our standard oh so soft journal. And I have to be careful because this actually has coffee in it today. And our hashtag, no boring books mug, which coffee does in fact taste better in it. Proof. Yeah. Okay, so YouTube. Our first prize today is. It's a spinning wheel and it's choosing your names. And today's first prize is going to Mary Lynn Turner. I know you've won before. I don't know if you're here today. I know you'll tune in live if you're not. So let us know what you would like to win@team temooklaunchers.com and of course, if you haven't already posted a review and you've got a copy of this, I would be ever so grateful for that review. We're getting close to having a reviewer party. I think last time I checked, we had 40 reviews and 50 is our first reviewer party. So post that review so we can have a big party. Okay, let's see. Oh, you are there, Mary Lynn, congratulations. I see you right there. And Martha, Martha is laughing about my mom loving her book. She's actually so sidetracked. So Martha, if you haven't seen her video that she did with us, I think it was released last Friday or two Fridays ago, she wrote a book and I don't know if I actually have it here, but you know, Martha, you're welcome to. Actually Angela will have to post the link. So you can post a link to Martha's book. But she's making your craf today. So it's all about keto using the keto diet to have more strength and energy through chemo treatments. And so my mom is actually making the crackers and it's a three bake process. So she's starting the first round of baking today. Okay, so let's see, back to the topic of the day. I don't see any questions. She tried to review it, Martha. She can't. I'm sorry. I see her review. We did, we tried to post a review for you, but I think again, Google or sorry, Google. Amazon reviews can be really tricky. They've got a clever way of figuring things out. And I think because my IP address is. I'm sharing an IP address with my parents right now because that's where we are in Canada before we head back to California. And I think also because Jacqueline logs into our accounts, our production manager, I think they have an IP connection. So, unfortunately, she was unable to review your book, but she did try, and Angela has dropped the spotlight there. And please drop a link to Martha's website as well. Okay, so, friends, I don't see any questions. If you guys have questions, you can post them. Otherwise, I'm just going to share a couple more stories. So as we talked about turning a no into a yes, it's asking, is it really a no? Are there some other ways to achieve this objective? And ultimately, what's the opportunity or gift in this no? So one of my favorite examples is, is a story from Michael Brenner, who came to us with a manuscript that his friends, a colleague that he trusted, a couple of them actually had said, no, no, this book is not good enough. Throw it in the bin. It's not good enough. And so it was not necessarily what you might see as a no, but I do see every no that you get as an author from all different directions. There's opportunities. And so for him, the opportunity was coming to us and basically saying, is this an opportunity to improve or is this my sign that I should stop and not publish this book? My team read it and they loved the story, they loved the concept. So his. His book was the empathy formula. And the feedback was basically, nobody wants empathy. You know, this isn't going to sell. And my team read it and went, well, you know, there's actually some really, really cool material in this book. The challenge is that it didn't have a strong enough hook. You know, kind of like his colleague had said, you know, it just. It didn't have that marketing oomph behind it. So he was having conversation with our story expert on our team, talking about the 42. I think it's 42 different jobs he's had. And he just kind of blurted out, you know, so many people think they need to be mean to get results, and mean people suck. And that's kind of ended up being the hook of his book. And the title, his title is Mean People Suck How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and A Better Life. And that's the hook. And it still is the empathy formula inside this book. It's just packaged in a different way. So for him, the no was a tremendous opportunity for a slight redirection and to repackage his entire message in an entirely new brand. And if you haven't seen it, it stands out. It's a green cover. It says Mean people suck on it. Whenever we're at live events, which has been a while now, people gravitate to his Cover and then there's actually another cover we have by Todd Nyholm, and I can't remember the exact titles, like why, oh, food, why do you trouble me so? Or something like that. And those two covers are like magnets for people. They just come over and they just want to see what those two books are all about. So that no was an opportunity because Michael was willing to look at it as an opportunity to change. We had another client named Gautam, Gautam Bade, and he had written this book, the Joys of Compounding, and he really wanted an academic publisher to publish this book and was not getting it. It wasn't getting the deal he wanted. And so he decided to self publish in pursuit of that deal. So for him, unlike me, self publishing was the end game after I was turned down by Wiley. For him, self publishing was the means to the end. And so he wanted to show that he was going to be able to sell a lot of copies of a book and ultimately be worthy, I guess, for lack of a better word, of this traditional deal. So he published the Joys of Compounding, sold a lot of copies, got the attention of that academic publisher. And then I've actually, I haven't heard from Gautam directly on this, but I saw, saw it's now published by HarperCollins India. So it looks like unless there's different publishing deals out there for him, which is possible because you can license off the rights to different places depending on what deal you've got, he may have an academic publisher and that, or maybe Harper Collins bought the ultimate rights, but it was for him a means to an end. And we've had other clients too that have wanted a very specific publisher, weren't getting anywhere. So they worked with us to create the manuscript all the way to the COVID and the layout. And once there was a physical book and somebody could see it, they bought it, or in Gautam's case, he sold a bunch and they saw that it was going to sell and then they gave him the deal. And then to go the other direction, one more, no, one of my friends, colleagues, I actually worked on his book. It was, I think, the first book I was in depth, I worked on in depth, kind of behind the scenes. It's called From Renos to Riches by Ian Szabo. And it was a wily deal that he had and he, after a while, he was actually approached by a production company that worked with HGTV to do a, to do a show. And so he wanted to do this show and the Production company wanted it to be based on his book From Renos to Riches. And he tried to negotiate with Wiley to get this TV production deal. But Wiley owned the rights to his book, the content, the title, everything. And Wiley wouldn't negotiate with the production company. Ian wanted to pursue this. So he ended up buying back his book, which involved buying every copy that was in circulation. So I don't know how much that cost, but I can tell you it was in every single bookstore in multiple counts in most bookstores in Canada. So it wasn't six figures. He only ever said it was a high five figure purchase to get the rights to his book back. So ultimately for him, the no from Wiley to negotiate with this company led to him being able to do this, the pilot. He also owned the concept and so he did a cross Canada tour, training tour. He branded a lot of things around this book that he couldn't brand before. He had different partnerships. I don't know for certain, but there was something with Home Depot at some point republished the book and then he started giving it away, which is something a lot of authors don't realize. But when you have a traditional book deal, you can't give your book away because you don't own it. It's not your book to give away for free. You can buy copies from the publisher and then give those copies away that you've purchased, but you can't just give copies away. And so for him, he ended up donating a lot of books to a lot of different causes and people and groups, which was, that was really near and dear to his heart. Ultimately, the TV show didn't happen. He flew down to Florida, filmed the pilot, was just about to make an offer on a house in Florida so that they could, he could move him and his wife and kids there to shoot the show. And then HGTV didn't green light the, didn't greenlight it. But I don't think he has any regrets whatsoever. But for him, that was a pretty big no. That turned into a huge yes for a lot of things in his life and his business. And you know, if you ever hear him talk about it, he has, he has no ill will to the situation whatsoever because to him it was a no that became a gigantic yes. And he was really happy to have his book back and own the rights again. All right, we got another prize. Let's do a prize for the folks that are here. Okay, so let's see, today is. Oh, may the 4th be with us. Right? It's May the 4th. So let's do a prize. Which. Which. Which is your favorite Star wars character. I have had two dogs named after Star wars characters. So the first person to name one of the two dogs that I had, which I don't think anybody would know, because my current, my last, my most recent two dogs are not Star wars character named, but so just by a show of what characters you love, that will be our prize for participation today. How's that for totally random? And while we do that, I will also choose our YouTube winner. You're spinning in circles right now. Everybody who's commented on the Tuesday and Friday videos, congratulations to Bill Miller. Hey, I don't think you've won in a long, long time. Bill, are you here live? I thought I saw you here. Let me see. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. Did I see. Bill, you are here or you were. Are you still here? Congratulations. Let us know if you want a signed copy of my book, the Journal, or the mug and email teamoklaunchers.com and let us know where to send it. Okay. I'm just looking to see who is the first one. Hi, Rhonda. Okay. Yes. Okay, Rhonda, you were right. Yoda was the first dog. And then, funny enough, chewy second one. So there you go. Congratulations, you guys. Great guesses. So, Rhonda, you were first. So congratulations, Rhonda, you can pick my book, signed copy, the mug, or the journal. Email team@book launchers.com and let us know what to send and where to send it. Thank you. Okay. And Angela says we have questions, so let's do some questions, and then I'll come up with one more. One more participation prize for you folks today. And we also have to give away a copy of my book. Who doesn't have my book yet. This is really outing you as somebody who hasn't bought my book yet, which is okay. I totally forgive you. And now is the time to get a signed copy. As long as you're in North America. I'm not going to send a signed copy over to Europe. I had to send a few, and it cost me $22 to ship it to somebody, but they were a early supporter. Bestie. Totally worth it. I think it was Michael. It was worth it all day long. But. But, yeah, I prefer not to send it. I can send you a different version of the copy. We'll just order it from here. Okay. Okay. So here's the question from Daniel. Can I ask LACCD and LAUSD middle school and high school libraries to carry my book and explain why I feel it can benefit students. Yes and no. This is actually something that we're building out extensively behind the scenes. And connecting with school libraries is a little bit more complicated in many ways. There's catalogs they buy through, there's reviews they rely on, and there's kind of packets that they like to see. And so we've actually hired a very experienced consultant that's worked and done mass distribution. So she's working with my team right now to build out some of these pieces. So the short answer is yes. The longer answer is you're going to want to do it in a very prepared manner. And you're probably going to want to have some reputable reviews of your book from some of a Reader's Digest type review because they take those things very seriously. You're also going to want to make sure you're listed in the Ingram catalog and it's all properly set up because that's where they're going to order it from. So those are going to be two pieces that you really want explaining why you think it's going to benefit students. Yes, to a point. But ultimately they're going to look at the reviews. They're going to look at your, probably your media kit or your information packet, your kind of cell sheet with all the metadata. And then they're going to consider that, make sure it's got to be listed in the right catalog. And that's assuming you get it in front of the right person at the, at the start schools that makes the decision. So it is a little trickier if you have a contact there already that can help. And you know, focusing on why it's beneficial to the students is important. But they do tend to trust these, review these certain reviews more than others. Okay. Rhonda says she enjoyed. She has a book. Great, thank you. Enjoying it when it's done. Please, please, please post a review so we can have our reviewer party. Question two, what would you say is the number one to do when self publishing? Number one? Just one. Okay. So I would say the number one thing is to think that you can do it all yourself, even if you're on a budget. You know, I understand that a service like Book Launchers isn't for everyone because we're really focused on the folks that, you know, don't have time to do a lot of the things themselves. They want to do it at traditional published quality or better. But no matter what, you are not going to be able to do everything yourself because there isn't a person alive that I've ever met or heard of that has the skills to excel in every piece. And nobody can edit their own work. Even professional editors, if they write a book, they can't edit their own work because our brain plays tricks on us. So no matter what, you're going to need editors. You're also very likely to need a cover designer and you want a professional book cover designer to work on your book. So if you're on a budget, I would say that, you know, the mistake, the number one mistake is trying is publishing it without involving some professionals and finding some way to make it work so that you can hire professionals. You know, there's certainly a lot of folks that have, have been successful self publishing in the over the years that have bootstrapped it in some ways. But you really, you don't want to look self published. And so you want to make sure that you invest in your book and you hire professionals where you know you're going to need it. And those are two places that you just can't skip on. Yeah. So exotic expressions says on a budget. So I ultimately I would say the, you know, you have to hire an editor and you can get away with doing beta readers early on, but beta readers can also send you in in completely the wrong direction. So, and Michael Brenner's story is a great example of that. If he relied on his beta readers, his book would have gone in the bin because beta readers didn't see a way to save it. Other times we see people who have put their book through beta readers and they spray it to us and they are very overconfident in their message because their beta readers have said how great their book is. But the beta readers lied. Either they lied or they really didn't know any better. But we go to read the book and we can't figure out the hook. We don't even know who it's for. We're 10 chapters in and we still haven't figured out what the goal of this book is. And the beta readers have told this author it's great. So you can bootstrap some of it with beta readers, but ultimately put your money into an editor and getting a great cover and you can figure out the other pieces along the way. The pages of my book are falling out, so let us know that. So we can submit a ticket and do let us know where you got it from. That does happen occasionally. KDP print, sometimes the glue. So if you got it from Amazon, that can be an issue, but we definitely want submit a ticket on that. And if anybody Else ever encounters issues with people telling them that their books have pages falling out, you want to submit a ticket on that and also let them know that I personally would replace the copy, no problem. But that's not something to write a review on Amazon for. Just. And you guys are authors so you probably get this. But it's not the author's fault that pages are falling out. So writing a bad review on their book page, that a page is falling out impacts their reviews and it doesn't actually get you anywhere. So you're much better off to return it to Amazon or return it to Barnes and Nobler chapters and get it, get a refund and get a new copy or contact the author directly as in our case and we'll just send you a new copy so you can email teamoklaunchers.com and we'll get you a new copy. And we'd love to know where you got it so we can submit a ticket. Okay. Any other questions? And oh, there we go. From we Photogal. Could you touch on asking for blurbs for a self published book? I feel a little timid in asking for my first book. So for blurbs typically I'm assuming you mean endorsement type things like for the front of the COVID the back of the COVID those kind of things. So asking celebrities for them. So there's kind of. There's a couple different approaches here. And a fun story from Michael Dominguez. Actually, I'm pretty sure I can share this. I think I talked about this somewhere else already. So it's going out there. Michael, if you're watching the replay, I'm telling it. So he wanted a blurb from David Chilton who wrote the Wealthy Barber book. And I had a loose connection. So we connected him through that loose connection. Ultimately David Chilton said no, he wouldn't blurb the book. But he ended up calling Michael and they had a 15 minute call which was so cool. I thought that was really, really fantastic. So sometimes your. Your no can lead to something even cooler. And as far as Michael's concerned, that was a bigger win than getting his endorsement or his blur. So. Yeah. So first of all it's kind of the networking and I don't know if I. Sorry, I don't know if I've posted it yet or if it's coming. But on how to how I like to network with people. So I look around and I see does anybody I know know this person so I can get a warm connection. So for these blurbs that would be my first step is There somebody I know that knows this person who I can get a connection, which is what Michael did. He knew that I had a connection to the Chiltons and so he reached out to me and got that loose connection and that's how that followed through. But you know, the way I often do that is look at LinkedIn, look at Facebook. Do you have any shared connections? If you don't use social media, just start letting people know that you would love to have, you know, so and so person blurb your book and here's why. And, and that might work. Otherwise, there's. I just saw a post recently that a lot of celebrities are sitting around doing nothing, which I don't believe, but, but they were basically saying that a lot of things aren't happening. And so, you know, their movies, their shows, a lot of the live events they used to do, so they're just not as busy as they used to be. So posting and commenting and connecting on a regular basis on their social media can make them kind of pay attention and be more open to a invitation to review your burk and blurb it. And finally, I mean, what's the worst that's going to happen? Ultimately, when you, when you get their contact information and you reach out, chances are they're going to ignore you, right? Like that's, you know, 85, 90% of the time they're going to ignore you. So there's really nothing to be shy about. You can just expect that nothing will happen. And that's totally cool because you're looking for that 10%, right? It's kind of like when you're in sales a lot of times, you know, the mantra is you want to get as many no's as you can because that means you're that much closer to the yes. You kind of look at it the same way with blurbs. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Ask 10 people, hope for two of them to say yes and give you a good one. And the final thing is make it as easy as possible for them to blurb your book. You can give them examples of what somebody else has done. And then once you've got a high, like a recognizable name, blurbing your book, you can leverage that to get other people to blurb your book. You can say, you know, hey, you know, Brian Tracy said, my book is xyz, you know, would love to send you a copy and see if you can review it and kind of outline it there. So hopefully that helps. That's how I approach it. That's how we often recommend our clients approach it. And if we don't have that video out on networking yet, it's coming out soon. Oh, Deborah, you won the copy last week and then, and then the pages fell out anyways. I wasn't saying you would, you would ever do that. I was. People, I've seen it happen to other authors. So I always want to share that to encourage folks about the pages falling out. If that ever happens to you and somebody contacts you with how to handle it. Okay, let's see what other things here. Any other questions? Sorry, I was just reading. I see a question from KW Matterhorn about how many copies a day is a realistic target for a first year KDP publisher. I have no idea. It depends on your subject, it depends on your genre, it depends on the hook, your keywords. You know, we have, we have one client who hasn't been able to do any marketing yet due to personal circumstances and the book has sold a ton of copies and we're guesstimating, although you never know for sure, but we're guesstimating. It comes down to the searchability or the high search volume on a certain set of keywords. That is with this book. So but, but we don't know. And that's the thing. So you might sell one a month, you might sell a thousand a month. It's really hard for me to gauge. I do recommend if you're curious about your category, KDP Rocket and Angela can drop our link in down below. We use that to see sales volume. To see category sales volume. That would be the best thing for you to do is to. Where? Sorry, I'm just trying to find kw. So that would be the best thing for you to do is to use a software program like KW or like kw, like Publisher Rocket to look at the category, look at books that are similar to yours and see what kind of volume they're selling. But even then that doesn't necessarily guarantee. It just gives you a range or a ballpark of what's possible because it really, really does vary. And then it comes back to your marketing, your audience, your platform, discoverability, how many reviews you end up getting. There's so many factors that go into it, so it's a tough thing to just randomly estimate. Number four, question four. Okay. And then I'm going to do one more prize. And here we go. What are the rules around quoting other authors? Just the odd line. Do you need permission for every single thing you mention? No. And actually am doing a video next month on permissions. But There are Fair Use and I think it's Ally A L L I of the alliance of Independent Authors. They have a really great resource on copyright and permissions. And I have a video that I did on like what can you quote in your book that I don't know if Angela can find it because I'm not sure if that's the exact title. But ultimately, if you know there's something called Fair Use and if it falls under Fair Use, you can quote it. And in fact you don't even have to always source it if you quote it, which is kind of bonkers to me. But there's. If it falls under Fair Use, you can use it and. Bye Brian, thanks for being here. And so yeah, so you can quote other people if it's for commentary supporting an argument for the purposes of discussion. So if you want to present something and then discuss it and, or support something that you've said, and if it's just a line or two, there really shouldn't be a lot of issues. Song lyrics are an exception. Song lyrics, you can't just quote a song lyric. There's all kinds of copyright issues. You have to have permission. So generally stay away from song lyrics. But books, articles, even speaker presentations, those kind of things. If it falls under Fair Use, you can quote it. Oh boy. Sorry, I was just reading this question. So, Chris H. Help. I'm a freelance designer and for a client wants me to handle the publishing of their first book and I've never self published before. Where can I get info about legally protecting myself? I'm not sure. I mean that sounds like you probably want a lawyer of some kind, but yeah, I'm not really sure how to help you with that. That's a complicated question that I'm not exactly sure how to unpack it if they're self publishing. So how we are set up is we don't even have a contract for our clients because we retain no rights, no royalties. All the accounts that are set up are our clients account. So we have terms and conditions that outline our membership and our services and so everything that we do belongs to our clients. All the ideas, all the, you know, all the source files go back to the clients when they're done their service with us. So it's very, it's very simple. We still had a lawyer draw up the terms and conditions and we have them reviewed periodically as well and updated. But it's very clean because self publishing means that the author owns the rights and so when you're self publishing you don't Necessarily need to legally protect yourself unless you're keeping some rights and it's muddy. So that's why I don't really know exactly how to answer that question. But there are some really great resources out there. Like I mentioned Alli, Ally or Alli. I don't know how they say it, but the alliance of Independent Authors. And then there's another one which just slipped my mind that we're also members of. There's a couple of different organizations out there, so you can go and check out some of the resources they have online and they're great. Okay, so let's do one more prize and then I'll answer one or two more questions and then I'm starting to lose my voice. It's been a busy day of phone calls today, so I feel like I've been talking non stop since I woke up. Okay, let's see. The final prize for today will be what was your favorite tip from the turning a no into yes. I'd love to hear what your favorite tip was from those kind of three tips I shared or the stories I shared. Whatever sticks out in your mind from no to yes. Let's kind of do a recap and I'll pick my favorite or I'll ask Angela to pick her favorite maybe. And that can be our final prize today. Okay, what about mentioning a song title is the same as lyrics? Yes, I'm pretty sure the song titles are the same as lyrics. I'm not a copyright expert. We always have to look things up. We have a great fact checker on our team who knows all this stuff and our editors are really up to speed on a lot of these things. And we'll flag it for our clients too. But generally speaking, I just stay away from songs. Allude to that song. You could say, you know, that popular song that talks about the Polaroid picture or something like that. Yeah, songs are tricky and we've tried to get permissions for our clients for songs and it can be. It can be really tricky every once in a while. Some of the older music, you know, they can have. There's more opportunities sometimes with the older music if they're not in with a big label. But it is, it is process and it's often not worth it. You kind of have to look at how important is it to have these song lyrics in your. In your book. That was the last question cued. All right, so let's see what you guys took away from today. Exotic expression says highlight was that I made 80,000 from self publishing in the first year versus less than 10 if I'd gone with traditional. And yeah, so the math on that, a lot of people don't realize that, but you might make about 80 cents per copy sold. You know, for simple math, say a dollar when you get a traditional book deal, when you self publish, I mean, you have a lot more control over how much you make, but you're probably going to make somewhere around four to five dollars per print book sold. You're going to make, you could potentially make more on an ebook. You're going to make more if you sell it direct. So, you know, I usually just say you make an average of $6 per book sold that way and then you have a lot more flexibility as to what you do with it. Now when I, my first book came out, prices of books were higher, so I was actually making six to seven dollars per book sold. And the royalty agreement that I probably would have had would have netted me somewhere around 70 to 80 cents per book sold. So, yeah, the math was startling. Okay, let's. So let's see. No takeaway. That's okay. Hey, Andy, Great to see you. Thank you. All right. So exotic. I guess you are the winner. So exotic. Let us know where we can send whichever prize you would like. And that was the last question. So I think we are done. I can give my voice a break. Thank you so much for all your questions and your interaction. It was a fun session today. We'll see you back here again in two weeks. And in the meantime, if you haven't contributed to whether you want us to get T shirts for our upcoming swag, head on over to our community tab. If you have ideas for a topic you want me to cover, you can go ahead and post that down below too. We also have another deep dive training coming up next weekend. I think it's May 15th. I'm sorry, I don't have it right in front of me. This one is going to be on marketing, so this is going to be great session. It's our last deep dive until September, so we'll be sending out the links to that on Monday and I'll be posting it on the Community Channel as well. But if you want to join us to chat book marketing, building a brand that can be leveraged from your book, that'll be happening on May 15th at 10:00am Pacific Standard Time. It's Zoom link and there's no replays. You got to be there live to catch the awesome content and get your questions answered. All right, you guys have a fantastic day. Thank you. You so much.