5 Surprising Tips for Authors

Hello. Happy Tuesday, my friends. It is November. Can you believe that? It is already November. So, yeah, happy November. And today's topic is five random and probably surprising tips for authors. And actually it's gonna end up being more than five because what I did was I went through and I combed through through the last month of YouTube questions and I plucked some questions from the group and they are random indeed, but they are questions that come up a lot in different versions. So I thought it'd be a kind of a fun thing to randomly address a bunch of things that you are all asking about on a regular basis. So once you're here, let me know that you're here, say hello and all those things. And, and I'm just checking it doesn't look like Angela's here yet, so I'll give her a second to join in. Now, with the supply shortages, we are running into a tiny little snag with our hashtag noboringbooks mug and our oh so soft journal. The snag being that we don't have any suppliers that have stock anymore and we're out. So it's going to be a fun filled adventure of what's the prize going to be? These. So today we of course have copies. One moment, please. Of self publish and succeed. So if you haven't already got a copy, today is a great day to win a copy of that. And then we also have swag that we were saving for our holiday extravaganza in December, but I'm going to give it away now because we don't have mugs or journals. So we have these fridge magnets that say write the book you want to read. So. So it's a great, a great little fridge magnet. I could put it on my filing cabinet over there so you can see it, but it's a magnet, so we'll be giving those away too. And so what you need to do is what exotic expression, dance, fitness and Efren and William have already done that, is make sure you say hello and play along because there's participation, prizes and of course we also have our draw for the commenters on the YouTube videos. So. All right, so hitting it with those random questions. Let's just dive right in. So as I mentioned at the beginning, I just picked questions from you on the YouTube channel, and some I've answered already and some I haven't, but they're questions that I get in different kind of variations all the time. So I thought it would be great to cover them live today. If you have your own questions. Now is also a great time to go ahead and ask them and Angela will collect them for me and I will answer them all at the end. So the first question is from Michael Griffin. And Michael said, I'm finishing editing and just about ready to print my book. I bought an ISBN and my plan is to do a small run of books from a couple of printers to check their quality as well as use Ingram. Can I use the same ISBN for both printing orders or do I need a separate ISBN? So there's lots and lots of questions that come in about ISBN. So I thought, whoops, I hit the wrong button. There we go. I thought today would be a great day to cover to answer Michael's question, but to also answer a few other common questions that come in. So, first of all, the answer is yes, you can use the same ISBN across all the printers. ISBNs are specific to your book format. So when you have a softcover, this will have one ISBN. When you have an audiobook, it will have another ISBN. When you have a hardcover or stuff's falling everywhere, or any other version, an ebook, a large print, those are all different formats. And each of those formats need their own ISBN. It doesn't matter where you distribute it through or print them. That's not relevant to the ISBN. All that matters is the format. Now, a lot of confusion comes up when you get the free number from Amazon and that Amazon number is an ISBN, but it's only valid on Amazon. So you can't take that number and upload your book somewhere else. And you won't be able to, you won't be able to print it other places if you've taken the Amazon number. So that's the big difference. And that's where a lot of people get confused. And there's also the asin, which is the Amazon identifying number. But you do get a free ISBN from Amazon, which supposedly works on their global network, but only if Amazon is the printer. So hopefully that clears it up. You need one ISBN per format. Now, a lot of people in the States, you really should be buying your ISBNs from Bowker. B O W K E R. I think their website's my identifier. Regardless, when you buy that ISBN, you are upsold. A barcode. Do not buy the barcode. You do not need is a way that they make more money from you buying from their database of ISBNs, but you don't need to pay money for that barcode. You actually, Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur just came out with A great barcode generator that's free on his website. So you can go to. I think you can go to kindlepreneur.com and get it. And also your book designer can do it when you upload your book. A lot of times that ISBN number, depending on I did it ISBN, it's really hard not to call it an ISBN number, even though the N stands for number that if you upload it to kdp, it'll generate a barcode automatically. So there's a lot of places that you can get ISBN, the barcode from your ISBN without paying for it. So don't pay poker for it. Okay, so let's see. There was a secondary question. And so this was kind of. I already answered this, but I wanted to address it specifically. This is from Alina Chamomile. She has her books on Amazon with the free Asin and now wants to sell it through Shopify on Lulu. You don't. You can't sell them anywhere because. But Amazon with that number now you do if you're going to sell it through Shopify at Lulu. I don't know for sure if, if you need an ISBN, my guess is you don't. So you could upload it there because Shopify is your own store. That's different than uploading it to Lulu to distribute wider or uploading it to Ingram to distribute, in which case you do need your, your own ISBN and the one that you have at Amazon's not going to work for that. But if you're selling it through Shopify, that's your own store. So you could upload an ISBN list, a version without an ISBN there. I don't, there's no reason why you would need it there because the ISBN is an identifying code for, you know, the stores and the libraries and all of those places for scanning and selling your book. If you're selling your book through your own Shopify store, you don't need it. But if you are going to try to sell it through Lulu's store or anywhere else, then you would need your own. Okay, so just. I see a few more people. Jennifer's here. Hello, Arthur. CT Ortega is here. Great to have you. Bill. Hello, Linda. Hello. Great to have you here. Okay, so that's all for barcodes. Let's do a quick participation prize since so many of you have already said hello. Now, let's just see. Usually I go by the, the, the day of the month, but that's a little tricky because it's only number two. So why don't we do the month. So 11. So, Angela, let's pick the 11th person from top that said hello. Hopefully there's been 11 and you can be the. You can choose your prizes. As I noted at the beginning, we have a shortage. The supply shortage doesn't just apply to paper. We are not able to. We haven't sourced a great place for our mugs or our journals lately. So these are your prizes today. You can get a copy of self published and succeed, or you can get our fabulous new write the book you want to read magnet. Jason, hello. See the prizes, they always pull you quiet lurkers out from behind. Georgia, hello. Oh, starting on NaNoWriMo. I'm glad you mentioned that NaNoWriMo is happening. It is technically for fiction writers, and if you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, you can always Google it. But the intention is you write every single day in November, you set a goal, and you write an entire book in the month of November is usually the goal. Some people do it for nonfiction as well, and there's a version of it, but NaNoWriMo is technically for novel writers, and it's a great. It's a great way to kind of share in a community of people writing and trying to achieve a goal. And a lot of people post on Twitter or Facebook what's going on with their NaNoWriMo goals and achievements. So Mindful eats. Wow. Congratulations. I feel like I just mailed you something. Maybe Angela just mailed you something too. So you are the 11th comment, so I'm pretty sure you already have the book, but you can now claim your magnet if you would like. So email Angelaoklaunchers.com to collect your prize. All right, onto our next random tip here. Okay. On getting Amazon reviews Now, this was a huge comment from Graham Cossam and, and it was on, I think, one of my videos about getting Amazon reviews. And I'll try to skim some of the comment because it's pretty big. But he said, I'm not writing this to put down your video, but as an example of when you do everything right, you can still get not get what you want. And what he posted was that he's on a forum where people actively follow and engage with what I write about. And he talks about what his topic is. And he said that I asked 38 of my best followers and if they would review my book. More than half didn't even bother to reply to my request. And of the 14 that did reply, they were at least enthusiastic and they agreed to leave a review. I gave them three weeks to read the book. And then I got in touch to ask them to leave a review. And most ignored my request. And he only got one review today. So, yes. And so this is something that I thought is worth addressing because I try really hard to mentally prepare everyone for the fact that getting reviews is hard. And it's rarely the people that you think are, are going to be the ones to support you in the biggest ways that will support you. And I've given the example before where, you know, when my first book came out in particular, I didn't know this lesson yet, and I had some really, really close friends and I truly just thought it would be a given that they would write read the book, but also write a review. And I was very, very sad and, and disappointed to discover that not only had none of these friends read my book, but they never, ever did post a review. And I had a few other friends that I didn't actually think would be such, you know, big supporters. And they bought the book themselves. They wrote the review without me even asking. And I saw it on Amazon and, and was delightfully surprised. So that's something to kind of mentally prepare for is it's often a surprise who will be your big supporters, which is why it's important to kind of mention it to everyone that it's important to write a review for you. And at the same time, I also recommend a personalized approach right from the beginning. Now, I'm not clear from this message, Graham, if you had personally reached out because it kind of sounded like you made a post to them. And often it's really easy for people to ignore that, or if you send a mass email, it can feel very easy to ignore that as well. But I. People also have good intentions, right? And I always tell people this. You know, you're going to get five people who will say they'll write a review, and of those five, you're really fortunate if one does. So that's why I'm always telling people to, if you want to have, if you want to have 100 reviews, you need to have 500 people tell you that they will write a review because that's just the way it goes. And I know from my own experience that, like, I just now tell people I'm not going to write a review for their book because it's too, it's too much for me. I have far too much on my plate to make those kind of commitments, except in very rare situations. But for the most part, people really do have good intentions and they might read your book and not like it and not know what to say. That's a reality that we don't always want to face as authors. But, but you know, it goes back to the old adage many of our grandmothers taught us. And that is, if you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all. So that may be the case. Okay, you don't have to take that personally either. Everybody has different taste and some people are going to enjoy the book and some people won't. And you know, that's just a reality. But they may choose not to write a review because they don't want to write a bad review and they don't want to write a review. That's not the truth. So that's one thing. The other thing is a lot of people never get to read, never get to finish reading your book. So what I often recommend is to tell them, hey, listen, maybe you're not done reading the book. And that's okay. You can post a review right now with what you think at this moment. And when you're done reading, you can always update that review on Amazon. That's totally fine. And that can help you get over the hump, because a lot of people will never finish reading your book. I mean, how many of you have had books you started but didn't finish? So it happens. And so that can get people over the hump. And then the other side of this is just to keep asking, right? You know, so of those 38 of those 38 people, I mean, I would have expected you to probably get five reviews from them. You know, if I was kind of looking at the law of averages, if you got one, you know, there might be more to it, but some of them might just be wanting to finish reading the book and they haven't yet. So you might want to give them that option also. That's why I did that YouTube video. On paid review sites that you can use, you may or may not get reviews from them, but Angela can probably grab that YouTube video and post it here. Booksprout is one book. Sirens was another that we've used and we've, we know in the comments you can see people have had different results from each of those sites as well. Also, doing a Goodreads giveaway can result in more reviews. Doing a 99 cent ebook sale can also result in more reviews depending on where you promote that. And I have a video coming out really soon on the ebook sites where we promote them and kind of the results that we see from, from those ebook sites that we use to promote those 99 cent ebook sales. So, okay, so let me just see here, checking your guys's comments over here. So, okay, so Mindful E said. So if you've already uploaded on Amazon and they give you an ISBN, can you upload it to Ingram too? No. So you, once you get the free ISBN from Amazon, you can't use that anywhere else. That is only for Amazon. It is for Amazon to print your book. Now Amazon has that global distribution option which makes it seem like you can sell it through Amazon elsewhere. But that Amazon ISBN makes it so you can only print the book on Amazon. There is a video where I explain the difference very recently. So Angela, if you're looking through the current or the recent uploads, that video on ISBNs, which I think came out maybe two weeks ago, that that explains it more clearly than I can on the fly while I have a bunch of things on my brain. Okay, let's just see. Okay. Okay. I'm just reading some of the comments here about a missing prize and some of the things. Oh my goodness. Oh. So my. I sent that shirt to Mindful to you. Mindful Eason. It cost me $65 to send it to you and now they're still charging you $38 to get it. So I think we're probably going to have to say no mailing outside of North America for anything that isn't a book. And so that might apply to the magnet as well. Mindful Eats. Unless Angela's able to get something else. Because yeah, when I went to the post office to mail the shirt, I was stunned at what I had to pay to send it. Now you're telling me you have a customs charge of $38. So if you are not in North America, I think from now on we're going to have to say we can only send books and we'll send it through our inside, through the Amazon or through Ingram so that it can go straight there. We can avoid the customs issues. And the post is postage issue because we have been running into that with, with a lot of the other swag that we've tried to mail. And I mean, we're mailing swag that's worth less than $20 and it's costing $100 to get it there. So as much as I want all of you to have our amazing swag, no matter where in the world you are, I think that's probably something we're going to have to implement. We used to say only North America, but we felt bad leaving People out. So I think that's going to be our new policy. So apologies to all my international friends. But yeah, that is, that's come up a few times. And then we've also had things that take like four months and people are constantly asking us, where is it? And, you know, there's nothing we can do once we've sent it. So it's been a journey for some of those things. By the time they finally arrive to their end destination. Okay. Okay, bye. Exotic eats has to run, but we'll watch the replay. Okay, so. So no fruit baskets. Yeah, we're definitely not shipping fruit baskets. Efren, Jose, welcome. It's great to have you here. Okay, so let's just carry on to the next thing on ghostwriters. So like I said, this is the random. These are random tips today. And so this was in comment to one of my videos on hiring a ghostwriter. I don't remember exactly one. Which one, but Donna Lyntz says, after everything you describ ghostwriter after everything you described, a ghostwriter should publish the book themselves. It seems as though they did all the work when you should get all the credit of it being your own book, or then they should get all the credit of it being their own book. So I love this topic for a variety of reasons, because a lot of people won't work with a ghostwriter because they feel like it's not a, you know, then they haven't written their book. So that's part one of it. And then part two of it is thinking, you know, the ghostwriters in some cases will have rights to your book. And so there's a whole bunch to unpack here. But the first part of this is at least in how we do it. So I can't speak to how every ghostwriter does it or how every company does it, because there are different ways to approach the ghostwriting relationship. But at Book Launchers, if you were to work with one of our writers, it is essentially a writing assist. And what that means is that book does not exist if you do not provide the content. You are the one that has the ideas, that has the experience, that has the stories, that's done the research, that's done the interviews. That's not our ghostwriter. Now our ghostwriter. Our writers might do a little bit of supplementary interviewing of people that you have sourced to interview on this subject. We occasionally do that, but typically the way we function is a client will come to us with an idea. We pair them with one of our story experts. Story expert Works with them to really get clarity on the audience and the hook of the book. So what's the outcome of the outcome when somebody reads this book? So when somebody reads the book on, you know, leadership, it's not just about becoming a better leader. It's what happens in their career or their business or their social circle or whatever it is after they become a better leader. And with the slight angle that you're putting on leadership. So your direction been for your specific audience. And then they create a plan. So often that has a story arc in it, because even though we're doing nonfiction, there's a lot of story elements that we use to create these no boring books. And they create that writing plan. And then we pair you with a writer, and the writer will do a couple of things. Now, if you've got a podcast or you've got blog posts or you've got talks, it's your responsibility to figure out the material that you have that's relevant to that writing plan. We had a client once upon a time who did podcasting, and they dumped I don't even remember how many pages of transcripts on us and said, make this into a book. And this was early on in Book Launchers. And our writer actually tried. But sifting through 100 hours of podcast interviews to find the book is not an efficient use of anybody's time. And at the end of the day, it's no longer. It's not really your book if a writer does that. And so what we do is we really lean on the author to be the provider of the content and the material, and the writer is the one that sits there at the keyboard and types it out and structures it, and they'll interview the author for everything in between. That maybe is a gap from the content they don't have or from the interviews that they don't have afterwards. So that's how we approach it. And so in that. In that approach, the ghostwriter is working, but they're being paid for that work, but they are not the originator of that content. And so they shouldn't get the rights to that book. They shouldn't put their name on the COVID They are just like the editors and the designers who work on the book. They're being paid for that service. Now, sometimes a ghostwriter is partially the originator. So they might be given a concept by somebody and some content and some of the materials, and they might be doing the research, doing a lot of interviews. And in that case, I can understand why a ghostwriter's name should be on the front. And they're not really a ghostwriter, then they're a co writer. They're a co author. But yeah, at Book Launchers, that's how we do it. That's how a lot of ghostwriters do it. But it all comes down to the contract that you have with a writer. Sometimes a writer wants credit for it, sometimes a writer wants some royalties. And those are all different kinds of arrangements. But, you know, the way we do it, there is no book. And I tell people that you're still going to feel pain. Like, you know, even if you have somebody else doing your typing for you, you. You are still going to experience the pain that comes with becoming an author. And that's the honest truth. There's pain involved in becoming an author. Okay, let's just see. Okay, thanks, Mindful Eats. We're getting some encouragement to get thumbs up. I love it. Okay, let's see. Oh, and Marla said, I purchased a copy of my book for my aunt, and I had it sent to her house. We went to dinner to her house two weeks later and went to autograph it, and she hadn't even read the dedication page. I. I've said this before, Marla, our family and friends, I mean, my parents haven't. My dad hasn't read any of my books. I've written three books. My mom has read two of the three. The third one sitting on her table beside her tv, or the tv, whatever, the table beside where she watches tv. But I'm quite certain she has not read it yet. And my aunt, who. One of my aunts who has quite, quite a lot of money, you know, she's got a very comfortable net worth. She asked for a free copy of every single book that I've written. She didn't buy it and support me. She had me send her a free copy. Not because she wanted it signed, but just because, you know, she thought that being family, she should get a free book. And I don't know if she ever read them either. So I feel you. I feel you. But, you know, that's also why I love my YouTube besties, because so many of you have not only bought the book, you've written reviews, you've shared it, you're constantly endorsing it to other people. And so I'm so grateful for you because that kind of support means everything. And those are the kind of people you want to look for and celebrate and thank in your own community, because those are the folks that, you know, they really become those. Those surprise sales Folks and supporters for you and for your book and your work that you do. Okay, so back to my tips. If you have questions, Angela will be collecting them. We'll do another participation prize in a minute and I'm going to do the draw for the YouTube commenters also in a minute. Okay. So this, I just, I just love this person's YouTube name, the up to no Good Club. Her question is after a launch example, three months later from launch date, would you recommend these sites which was on my paid review sites YouTube video. So Angela, I think already, I already mentioned it so she probably already dropped that link in there. But if she hasn't, it will be coming. So. So after launch, I. E three months after launch, would you recommend these paid review sites to help momentum and thank you in advance for your time. So Jane. Oh, and then she signs off Jane. So. So that was in reference to the paid review sites which I already mentioned a couple of them being Book Funnel and Booksprout or Book sirens and book sp. So we every after 90 days we run a Goodreads giveaway again. We also do a 99 cent ebook sale and promote that to quite a few places. Fussy Librarian is one that I know has been quite successful for us. But we have five or six different sites that we typically do depending on the book. And like I said, I have a video coming out really soon that will actually spell all of that out for you. It's November. I'm suspecting it will be out at the end of November, but because I just filmed it and so it's just gone into the edit and the editing queue. So but those, there's some really great sites that you can. Fiction authors have a ton. Nonfiction authors have some. But running those paid review or paid promotions for the 99 cent ebooks is also a way to just, you know, give your book a boost and keep it going. But yeah, we typically 90 days after launching, we will. You can't run book. I don't think you can do two of the books route. So that's a one one and done. Book Sirens I think lets you keep going as long as you pay because you pay for every download. So I think you can keep going there for as long as you want. It doesn't stop. And but Goodreads giveaways is what we do every 90 days. We also will do the 99 cent ebook. And then we're constantly looking for opportunities to put, put books in front of bigger audiences. And you know, we, our authors, we put our authors on a lot of Podcasts. But we're also looking for those written sites where they might do a written interview. Like I just did one with eventable and talking about, you know, the merits of being an author, you know, as they pertain to events and things like that. And it was just a written interview. So they sent me a list of questions and I wrote out answers for each of them and it's going to get published in a couple of weeks. Writing newsletters for, for different publications or online publications, those are great things to just keep trying to get your book and your website and your links out in front of people. And I always recommend, post launch that your focus is more on building your email list when you're doing these kind of things. And then in your email list you want to be promoting your book and continuing to offer your book so that you can build long term relationships with people. Whether you're going to be selling courses or you're going to be offering consulting or you are going to write another book. Building that relationship through these email lists is really, really important. And a lot of times people will sign up for that free download, but they won't necessarily rush to Amazon to buy your book unless you said something that was really, really impactful for them. So I think that was all I was going to say about that after 90 days. So hopefully that helps. Jane. Okay, let's do a prize for the YouTube. Sorry, my link closed. So one moment please. Random name picker, here we go. Okay, let me just pull this in quickly. And so every Tuesday and Friday, including the replay for this, we have prizes for anybody who comments on the video. And normally that is a mug or a journal, but today we have of course a copy of Self publish and Succeed and we have our brand new magnets which were not going to be unveiled until December, but due to the shortage of mugs and journals, you can get a magnet. Okay, so let me just hit our random name picker and today's prize is going to. Oh, and I just finished saying we're not going to send anything international, but we might be sending a magnet to Japan. Congratulations, Alan West. All right, so thank you Alan, for all your comments, likes and shares and my other YouTube prize. We'll have to see how the magnet shipping goes for Alan. Let's give it a try. And if it works better than shipping the other prizes, then we've got a new thing. Oh, yay. Steven Searle. Congratulations. You can choose my book or the magnet right here. And I'm cheering for Stephen because we, he has, he has A book out, which I don't have here at. Here. It's at home. It's a giant book, heavy. And I ordered a copy of it and took a picture of my son in a dino costume because he was looking for people wearing dinosaurs. It's a fiction book, Destroyer of Worlds, I think is the title of it. And he wanted people in dinosaur costumes. And my son was a dinosaur for Halloween. So I bought a copy of his book and took a picture of my son holding it. Now my son's four and this book, like, weighs pounds, so getting pictures of him holding it straight up was quite fun. But anyways, congratulations, Stephen. Let Angela know, and Alan, of course. We, I think we know how to reach you, but let us know what you want@angelabookcurrs.com all right, just checking the comments over here, see what else we've got going on. Iron Index. Hello. Great to have you here. And Leticia. Okay, so I think some of these questions, Angela is going to be collecting for me and Mike, saying, did you get your supplies yet? If you mean the mugs and the journals, no. Angela actually thought she had a supplier. Our suppliers are completely out. Our usual mug and journal suppliers, nothing. They don't have plans. They don't know when they're going to have them again. So we've been looking for new places and Angela found a new place that was going to be able to make the mug in the same look that we had. And she ordered, placed the order on a Wednesday, and by Friday they called her and said, sorry, it's out of stock and we don't have it. Don't know when it's coming back in. So. Okay, now let's see. Okay, there's questions there. Now Mindful Eats is asking about the ISBN. And, and it's. This is, this is the question that seems to really confuse people. If you upload to Amazon and get their free ISBN, but you want to upload to Ingram, do you need a different manuscript or can you use the same one with your own ISBN? If by that do you mean a different book altogether, like a different version of it? And I, this, this, this part of it gets really nuanced for me and I, this is where I really need Jacqueline, our production manager, to be here. My understanding is that you need your own ISBN and if you've uploaded it to Amazon with a different one and then you upload it elsewhere, there are issues with that, but I think you can still do, do it as long as you have your own ISBN. But there can be some copyright things that can pop up if you do it. So it's just, that's why I just tell people, don't use the free. If you think you're ever going to distribute somewhere else, get your ISBN, pay the money, get it. Because this, this gets really messy and nuanced and I'm not deep enough into the weeds of doing those things. Plus, we don't ever have that situation with our clients because we never get a free ISBN from Amazon for our clients. We always have an ISBN that is bought from Bowker or if they're Canadian, from, from the Canadian source. So, so we never have that kind of a nuanced thing. So I'm sorry, I can't really answer it because A, I'm not the person that's deep into it and B, like we never encounter that situation because that's not how we set our process up. But Jacqueline would probably know because she, she is the one that's in the weeds on that stuff every day. So next time we have her, we will ask her, which will probably be in December for the holiday extravaganza. So if you come to that, then you can ask that and Jacqueline will likely have the very accurate and specific answer for you. Okay, so back to my random tips. Maria Holmes has asked on a couple of different videos and I've had this from other folks is how can I say speak with you? So how if you want to talk to me, these lives are probably the best bet. Unless you have a non fiction book that is a really good fit for us. Then we can have a strategy call. But I don't do paid calls, so you can't pay a consulting fee and get me on the phone. There's just not enough time in the day for me to do that. But if I'm considering you as somebody that my team would work with to help you bring a nonfiction book to life, you will probably get a call with me sometimes. We've had other people on the team doing the strategy calls, but most of them are done by me. And then that would be going through our application process. So you would fill out the form@book launchers.com apply and Angela can drop that in the links here. And I'll try to remember to put that in the description after the fact as well. So that's how you get a call with me. Otherwise the best way to speak to me is to show up to our deep dive trainings which happen monthly. Monthly, although we're not doing one in November because we're going to do one early in December, I think. Angela, I don't know if you can check the calendar, but I think our deep dive, our holiday extravaganza, our deep dive party, if you will, in December is the first weekend of December, so we didn't want to do a deep dive in November and then a week later or two weeks later do the holiday extravaganza. So we're kind of combining November and December, the holiday extravaganza. If you've, if you've not caught these in previous years, we used to do them with the team live, but we haven't been getting together live. It'll be on Zoom on a Saturday from 10am Pacific to 12 noon. There'll be probably five, maybe four people from the Book Launchers team. We just do open Q and A and give away a lot of prizes. So the magnets are some of the prizes we'll be giving. But we've also got some other swag that is on its way. Not the mugs and journals yet, but working on that. And we'll have some books to give away. It's just a really big prize festival. And then Angela spends the next week at the post office mailing everything. Okay, so I went from how can I speak with you? To come join us in our holiday extravaganza in December. But hopefully you got the point there. So book launchers.com forward/apply. If you've got a nonfiction book that's a good fit for us to help you with, that will get you a one on one call with me. Otherwise, the best way to speak with me is through these lives every other Tuesday and our deep dive training. So, okay, I got one more random question and then I'll answer all your guys's questions. So this question came from Linda K. Lee. Actually, there's two more. Sorry. Linda K. Lee, how long do you promote and market for, for your authors? I remember in one of your videos you said to do something once a day for 90 days. Marketing and promoting can get very tiring. So I love this question because I think, yes, I always tell people to do one thing every day because marketing can get overwhelming. And so that's something, you know, if you've been on these videos a few times, you've heard me, you've heard me say do one thing every day. And after a year you've done 360, 65 things. As for how long we market and promote our authors. We're a monthly membership, so as long as you're a member, we keep working on your book. And we have, we have a few clients actually that have been with us for years after their launch. And so we're, we're still promoting the book years later. So we will keep marketing and promoting your book for as long as you stay a member. And what that entails is, you know, we're looking for podcasts, we're looking for live events, we're looking for appearances. We're looking, we submit you to book awards, library catalogs, bookstores, those, those written interviews that I mentioned. One of our clients, he's been on a deep dive training before as one of our featured authors, Scott Bradley, we look for conferences where he can feature his, his book on horror. He's a, we call him our horror historian. He knows all things, everything there is to know about the horror genre. And so he does a lot of different conferences where he's on panels. And that's a very successful way for him to market himself and get his book out there because he does know so much and he's so passionate about it. It's hard not to get excited about what he's sharing, even if you aren't into horror. So, I mean, for us, I mean, my own personal view is your book, if you do a great job of building momentum over the course of a year or two, you can back off marketing and your book might still sell a little bit. But generally speaking, if you want your book to sell, you need to be doing to promote it. And that has wide and varied meaning for different authors. I'm always using my book as a testing ground for things. So we just did a promotion with a company called Bedside Reading, and they put the book on iPads in a whole bunch of hotels in the Hamptons. And it was featured during the Hamptons Film Festival. And there was a hundred copies of my book put into bags for VIPs that attended that film festival festival. So that was just a test run to see, you know, does, does anything come of this, and if it does, well, now we might have something that we want to do for some of our select authors. And so we're always doing things like that. But I'm also looking for partnerships. You know, I'm always looking for places where I can put my book in front of people in exchange for something. And I've talked about this with, with one of the awards that we're partnered with for next year. So everybody who enters this award, and we'll be talking about this a lot more starting in December, but everybody who enters this award will be getting a copy of my book. And in exchange, they're going to be promoting my book a lot. And so those are different kinds of partnerships that we look for. So just get creative and keep going. And if you find marketing and promotion tiring, that's where it can be really useful to have, have worked with a company like Book Launchers that's going to be promoting your book or to find somebody else. You know, I've, I've worked with Interview Connections. They're a podcast booking company, so they can be a great source if you want somebody else out there just, you know, pitching you. And all you have to do is show up to interviews. I mean, that's what we do in house as well. But again, I'm always testing things. So I'm test, you know, I've tested Interview Connections. They've been great. They have a guaranteed number of interviews that they'll book you for in exchange for their fee. So, yeah, long answer, lots of information. I can talk about marketing your book all day, so hopefully that helps. Okay, one last random and then we will go to your questions. And I've got. And I'll give you your participation question for today too. So this question came from Lucia Sheppo. I think hopefully I said your name right. What if I submit my book to a publishing company and it's only one person doing all the things you mentioned? My book was published by one person who did the COVID design, formatting and editing. So, I mean, I don't know, maybe this person has some exceptional skills that are extremely rare. But I know from my experience hiring people and our experience at Book Launchers, there really isn't one person who would be, who would have the skills to be exceptional at all of those things. I can tell you the person on our team who is an extraordinary, you know, cover and graphics designer, she would not be the person to do the editing. And I mean, she's genius creatively, but she would not be the person to follow the rules that editing requires. Those are two very different skills and personality types too. You know, you've got a high creative who is typically creative, and that's the opposite of rule following the editor. There's actually, and I've talked about this before, but I find it, you need different editors too. You know, the person who is a developmental editor, we have found they typically are either ghostwriters or they are journalists, or sometimes they're both. And we love the journalists that do content editing because they have that background of what hooks people. They also have that background for kind of sniffing out what just doesn't feel right. Something's off here, you know, you're not telling the truth or something doesn't. Something's missing. So we love hiring journalists for that piece. And that's a very different person again than the person who follows the Chicago manuals style to put the commas in the right place to do the em dashes and all of that stuff that, you know, personally drives me a little, a little bonkers because I'm not that high detail kind of person. So I'm not saying I don't know this person's book at all. So I don't know the quality that came out. But I know, do know that if you want to have a top quality book that's competing with a book that is traditionally published, that traditional publisher didn't have one person doing all those things. And if you want greatness in all aspects of your book, it has to be different people, because different people are going to be exceptional at different pieces of that puzzle. So it doesn't mean you were scammed. And if you paid a lower cost and they did all of this, then you probably got good value for your money. But it just depends. So, phew, that was a lot. So what the participation prize is, we covered so many random things. So I would love to know, so what was your favorite kind of random tip or what was something that was surprising that you learned today? So go ahead and post that in there while I answer the first question that Angela has collected for me. And I'm going to take a drink too. Okay? Okay. Hey, Stephen, there you are. You won a prize today. I don't know if you were here when you won a prize. Here for the rant. Hey, Coach Deb. My goodness, I haven't seen you in forever. I hope you're doing well. Okay, so Angela, I'm just looking for my first question. Here we go. From Jennifer Olson. Should you ask family and friends to leave reviews? So Amazon's terms and conditions expressly state that your reviews need to be, you know, essentially arm's length. So you need people who are outside of your first sphere of influence. Now, how we define friends is interesting to me. So that's, that's the part that Amazon has had to define for themselves. But technically the answer is no, you don't want friends and family. My answer to this goes to the Amazon algorithm. So you want people who are your ideal reader to be the ones that are buying and reading your book. If that is somebody that's a friend of yours, you can try and get them to write a review. But there's really not a lot of point in feeding the Amazon algorithm the wrong people. So getting people who would never otherwise buy or read or review your book can be detrimental. Because you want to help teach Amazon who your ideal reader is. So that's why, you know, for me, all of the fabulous folks at who are watching Book Launchers tv, you were all the perfect people to read and write a review for self publish and succeed because you're here, you're watching tips on becoming an author and marketing books and things like that. So you're an ideal reader for this book and so you're the ideal person to write a review. Some of you are people like Coach Deb, who I'd consider a friend. Now, Amazon has their own ways of blocking and figuring out who your friends are and how they define it can often be as simple as are you connected on social media? Which isn't necessarily fair. So long answer to say, generally speaking, it's not a great idea to focus on friends and family for writing reviews. Really focus on people who are your ideal reader and probably outside of your immediate circle of people. Okay, question two, and I will come back and check your guys's tips in a moment. Question two from Jose. Any advice for writer's block and procrastination? Yeah, two things. One, hire book launchers because we're a monthly membership and if you procrastinate that costs you more money. So it's kind of a good kick in the butt. But number two, and this is really applicable if it's nonfiction, not as applicable if it's fiction. But I think you can find your own version if you're a fiction writer is to really connect to the person who needs your book and really figure out how their life is going to be better. Which comes back to the hook of your book. But what is their life going to be like if they don't ever get your advice, they don't ever get your story, they don't ever get the tips or the process or whatever it is you're sharing in your book. What is going to be missing for them and how could your book have made a difference? And for me, you know, that's always been the thing that kind of gets me going again is knowing that there are people that would benefit from my book and getting clarity. Now, if you have writer's block, usually writer's block just means you don't have clarity around what you're supposed to be writing about. Because if you have a clear hook to your book and you've created a writing plan, then you should always know what you need to write next and so there wouldn't be writer's block. Now, procrastination is different, which is why I said tip one and two first. But you know, writer's block doesn't really exist if you have a writing plan because you know exactly what has to be written and why it's relevant to the outcome of the outcome for your book. Okay, let me check out your tips here. And Coach Deb said, love your art behind you. So here's a fun fact for you. I mean, thank you, but these are actually soundproofing pictures, if you will, because this is my office inside of WeWork. And anybody who has ever been in a WeWork knows that it's kind of a fishbowl and they have an echo. And so I have got these soundproofing art pieces all over to reduce the echo sound here so that I can do more videos without having noise coming from neighboring offices as well as reducing the sound. But that is in fact a real plant. It was one of those plants that is guaranteed, like, to not die if you don't take great care of it. So I was like, yes, that is for me. Okay. And Linda Magoon, I'm going to give you the prize. Linda says, I learned not to buy the barcode from Bowker. I think if that is one thing I can offer all of you, I am totally fine with it. So Linda, congratulations. Email Angela@AngelaokLaunchers.com and let her know if you'd. Oh wait a minute, I have another magnet I forgot about. Here, this. Speaking of this, today, it says the greatest gift you can give an author is a review on Amazon. So put that on your fridge, my friends. That's going to go on my filing cabinet right now. There you go. The greatest gift you can give an author is a review on Amazon. So we have that magnet too. So Linda, you can email Angela and let her know if you want the write a book. Write the book that you want to read or that magnet or self publish and succeed. Angelaoklaunchers.com okay, let's see. Just reading some of the other comments and teach Amazon who your ideal reader is. Elsa, bots are important. Absolutely. Thank you for recapping that. And Deb says, reminds me when my 80 year old dad was on YouTube when I asked him to subscribe, he says as well. I guess it depends on what your channel's all about. I love it. It's a great one. Okay, Marla, Okay, Angela, I'm just looking for question three. Did I miss it? If you want to give me question three, Coach says zero. Echo. I never would have known you were at we work. I thought you were home. Exactly. That's point. Okay, related to who should buy your book. Yeah, exactly. The YouTube comment about that. Okay, great. How would you prefer I buy your book? On Amazon? You can buy your book wherever you want, but I do prefer the review to be on Amazon. So if you buy it on Amazon, then it's a verified review. So thank you for asking, Brian. And I look forward to reading your review after you read this. Thank you very much and thanks for all your comments. I've been noticing your icon is impossible to miss. So I know you've been commenting on my videos. I recognize it. So thank you. Question three is from Diaspra. What do you recommend? Sorry? What order do you recommend? Uploads to Amazon. Ebook, paperback, audio, or does it really matter? We usually time everything as much as possible for a launch date, but audiobooks you can't time. So if you're uploading to acx, they approve it and launch it whenever they want. The good news is what we have found because some of our audiobooks have been out before the actual book. The good news is if that happens to you and your audiobook comes out before you've actually had your ebook and your print book launch, people can post reviews early. So that can be a huge advantage because in pre launch, when people can buy your book but they're not getting a copy yet, they can't post reviews on Amazon yet. And of course that's not ideal. If you've got early readers, you've sent them arc copies, advanced reviewer copies, and they haven't posted that review. Of course, it's not ideal that they can't post a review yet, but if your audiobook gets launched early, which you can't control with acx, then they can post reviews so you can start getting reviews early. So that's not a bad thing. But generally speaking, we will upload them all at the same time. The ebook is usually the last thing that we upload. But yeah, I don't think it really. It really matters. We're usually timing it all to a specific launch date. Okay, Angela, next question. Oh, here it is. Adam, what are your thoughts on publishing unproduced screenplays along with your novels? I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I'm a nonfiction person. Haven't done much with screenplays personally and haven't done Anything with novels other than read a lot of them. So I don't know. And I'm trying to think strategically what the advantage would be to that, and I just don't think I have enough expertise to answer that. So I'm going to have to pass. I'm sorry. And I don't even know where to refer you at the moment. We've done some work with some folks that turn nonfiction books into screenplays, but yeah, that question hasn't come up that I can remember. Okay, let's see. Next question. Lakeisha Cole. Does the ghostwriter interview the author, then put the words into the book? I have the names of chapters I want to put in my book, but writer's block. Yeah. So, yes, our writers. Like I said, our process is that you start with a story expert and you actually craft your book first, because even chapter titles isn't enough. And actually our process looks a lot more like a Hollywood treatment than an outline by the time you go to one of our writers. And what I mean by that is every chapter has a chapter summary that goes to the writer, and often that contains the story arc of the entire book as well as the story arc of that chapter, as well as the key points that need to be extracted from you during that interview process. Or if you have podcasts that you're going to be trans that have transcribed and you're pulling content from that, it also provides that plan for what content you're going to pull from other places to give to the writer. But yes, you'll be interviewed. And the fun part of that journey, especially for our writers, is when they uncover something great that you maybe didn't even realize was an insight that you had or a story or an experience that you had to offer. The interview process can be really fun and actually help you develop your book in a really meaningful way. But chapter titles aren't a notch for a writer to go from. Typically, you really need a bit more of a plan than just chapter titles in order for the interviewing to be effective and for them to really understand what they're getting at. Now, some writers will develop that with you. It's just with our process, we're trying to make it very efficient for the writers and also cost less because writers can be very expensive in those early phases where they're doing that developmental work. So that's how we've streamlined the process to make it a little bit more cost effective. Okay, six out of six Ferdis, I'd like to write, but scared. What advice do you have for Me. You need this book, Fertis. This is for you. I wrote that book for that exact reason. So please grab your copy of Self publish and succeed. I promise. It is it is our hashtag noboringbooks way to write a book that will be set up to sell, but it will also help you overcome this writer's block thing because you're going to connect to who your ideal reader is, why they need this book, and what you're going to be writing about. And it will help you create that writing plan that you need. Okay? Oh, Mindful Eats noted that I didn't re gift your magnet, so let's re gift it. So if you want Mindful Eats, you can choose somebody. So if there's been somebody that you've thought was really supportive or fun or lively today, why don't you go ahead and re gift it today. Okay. And Brian just bought it. Thank you, Brian. That's awesome. I can't wait to hear from you after you've read it. Okay, so we'll regift that and then that'll be a wrap on today. That was a big one, my friends. And you guys stuck with me, so thank you. It was great to see so many people here today while we're waiting for the re gifting of the magnet. Bill says good material. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for being here, Bill. Janice said, I wrote a wedding planning book just before the pandemic, and I'm considering to write a workbook to go with it. Now that weddings are coming back. Would this be a good move or money down the drain? So, I mean, we do a lot of workbooks for a lot of our clients and there's kind of two ways to approach the workbook thing. There's lots of ways to approach it, but there's two ways we typically approach it. So we, we put the book together and then we extract workbook pages from within the book. So if it's a natural fit, then that's a really cool, you know, low cost way. It still costs $1000 or $1500 at the end of the day by the time you design it and put the COVID on it and you know, edit it and all those things. But you can extract it straight from if you don't already have it. You can, you know, create it, but you don't necessarily have to publish it in a fancy way. You can do an ebook version and inside of your book, just make sure you've got an email address and say, you know, to download a printable version of a workbook to help you plan your wedding. Go to this email address and download it. And so you can create an ebook, a PDF version of that ebook, and you can do that for less than. If you want to print it and sell it as a separate product on Amazon, you can't really bundle it very easily. What we've done is kind of make it like a series and bundle it that way. But it doesn't workbooks and books don't bundle as easily as you might like them to it without doing a whole bunch of steps, which would be a whole different conversation. But I love the. The PDF version to get email addresses, but it depends on how hefty and big it is and how. How much you're willing to kind of invest in that process. But that's what I would recommend, is use it to get email addresses. It can be a great value add for people who buy your book. And of course, then you can actually get connected with them. Okay. Okay, here we go. We got our winner. Marla, I think. Right? Did I get that? I think it was Marla. Yes, it was Marla. So thank you for choosing Mindful Eats. And congratulations, Marla, on winning a magnet today. And thank you, all of you, for being here. We'll see you again in two weeks. And, yeah, until then, if you've got more questions, go ahead, post them here. I'm always looking for content to put in videos, and we'll do another one of these again soon. All right, take care.