7 Things I Wish Every Non-Fiction Author Knew Before They Write a Book

Hello. Happy Tuesday. All right, let's make sure we've got sound. Hello, friends. Hope you're having a fantastic day. For those of you tuning in, if you can just please confirm that you can hear me, that would be great. There's nothing like talking for a while only to find out there was no sound. So, yes. So Today is Tuesday, February 9th. And while you're here, mark your calendars for February 23rd, our next live stream. This is a super special live stream because it happens to be the launch day for Self Publish and Succeed. The no boring books way to write a book. A non fiction book that sells. So it's going to be a great day. Looks like. Oh, Mars, I was wondering when you changed your name. Mars Bazaar, formerly Mars dlt. Awesome. And you guys can hear me now. That's great. Oh, and I think my hashtag no boring books mug just arrived. I didn't have it last time, so I had to find it. And great. Kevin McGuire is in the house and Angela Jones is in the house. They're going to make sure that you guys don't say anything you shouldn't say. All right? So awesome. Thank you. Okay, so, yeah, so as I was saying, February 23rd, we're going to have our next live stream and it is book launch day, so it is going to be super, super fun. So I do hope that you can join us then. Today we're going to be talking about things that I wish nonfiction authors knew before they started writing their book. So this should be a fun one. We're going to cover a lot of different things from writing to marketing to the things in between. So we're going to hit a little bit of everything along the way. So if you haven't already, just, you know, hit the thumbs up button because it makes you feel good. And me, not just me, it's you too. And then of course, say hello in the chat because if you're new, we always give prizes for participation as well as for commenting on the day a video is released, which is every Tuesday and Friday. Okay, so. Oh, I also want to mention self publish and Succeed. Thank you to the early readers. We've caught a few extra typos and one that was not a big typo, but it was a word that was an important word and it was wrong. And it was good timing because I'm going to be finishing the audiobook tomorrow. We have some pickups to to do. So it was just in time for me to fix it there. So that was awesome. So thank you, the early readers you are doing an amazing job, and I am very, very appreciative of your typo catching and your early enthusiasm. So thanks for that. Okay, so, in no particular order, here's my wish list of things I wish authors would know before they start to write. And it looks like Brian Krieger's in the house. Hello, Mary Lynn Turner. It's great to have you here. Wonderful. Okay, so number one today that I thought we would hit on is something that I think most of you have heard me talk about, but we're going to hit again, and that is that your reader is not a demographic. Your reader is not women between the ages of 30 and 40 or, you know, even parents of kids that have. That are between five and seven. That is so general. And certainly your reader is not everyone. I'm pretty sure you all know that one by now. If you think your reader is everyone, then your reader is not nobody. But your reader, especially if you want to write a great nonfiction book, you really want to think about who your ideal reader is in terms of the problem that you are going to solve for them and even going a little further and figuring out how it is they've tried to solve it, that they're not getting the resolution that they would ideally like to see. And if you can think of your reader in that way, you almost start to picture a person. You can kind of see what's frustrating them, what is exciting them, what their goals are. And you can much better align your message, your marketing message, but also your writing to that person. And you'll find that people will feel like you're reading their mind and that you're connecting with them in a much better way. It's really hard to connect with a demographic, and maybe it's accurate. Maybe the people reading your book are going to be women between the ages of 30 and 40. But that isn't the way to think about your reader in order to write your book and even market it in a successful way. So that's the first thing that I really wanted to touch on. And no matter how many times I say this, a lot of people still think that their. Their book is for a really, really wide group. So it's one thing I really wish people knew before they started to write, especially if they write a book without working with a coach or a company like Book Launchers. You know, focus on getting to know that reader very specifically. And, you know, some people will even go so far as to create an entire avatar. Like, you could say, you know, your reader is Mary. She's got two kids and a dog, and, you know, she's tried to lose weight five times. But you can kind of build a story for her if that helps you. For some people. You were your ideal reader. I know. In the case of More Than Cashflow, my first book, my ideal reader was somebody just like me, you know, about 10 years earlier in the whole process of investing in real estate, maybe even five years earlier, you know, and so I really wrote the book to my earlier self in a lot of ways, and so that can work, too. But, yeah, so that was. That's the first one. The next one I want to touch on is that you're not going to be a bestseller based on a great book alone. And I'm just seeing who else is here. Derek's in the house. Hello. Welcome. And Poetry from the Heart. You're reading the book. Thank you. Robert Williams. How are you doing? I'm in love with your channel and in love with you. Oh, that's sweet. I'm opening up my business and I'm writing my book. And after that, I'm going to go to the one and on to the next one. Yes, book writing can be a little bit of an addiction. I mean, this is my third book. I'm already planning book four. So my curds in the house. Welcome. And. Okay, let's see. Oh, and then he's leaving. He was here and now he's gone. Okay, so. So back to that bestseller. A lot of people, especially Angela, can attest to this because she reads a lot of the forms that come in with people who want to work with book launchers. And a lot of people say, my book idea is amazing and I'm going to sell, like a million copies. And the one thing I really wish people knew is that you can have the greatest book idea in the world. Even you could even write the greatest book in the world. You are very unlikely to be a bestseller based on a book idea alone. I am sorry to pop your hopes and dreams on that one. In rare cases, you may write a book that is very topical, and the keywords alone may catch a lot of people's attention, but that is very, very, very rare. So no matter how amazing your story is or how really incredible your book idea is, that is not enough. It really comes down to making sure it has a targeted reader, making sure you have a plan for it to get in front of readers. Because even. Even using Amazon, for example, and getting it on Amazon, your book will still not be discovered if you haven't laid a strong foundation and taught Amazon that people will buy it if there's traffic sent to that page. So there still requires, there still is a requirement that you're going to be marketing your book and getting it out there. And we've now kind of created a launch strategy menu, and I'm going to be giving you guys a copy of it with the book launch. So, so during launch week, you know, as much as I want you guys to all rush and buy your copy right now, I have created a really cool launch package for launch week. So you either buy one or three or ten copies of self publish and succeed, and then you're going to get some different gifts with each level of purchase. And one of the things that will be included at all levels is a copy of this launch strategy menu. And essentially what it's laying out is that if you have no platform, so right now you don't have any sort of existing audience and you don't have $100,000 budget, then your launch strategy is going to be one that builds momentum. So your early phases are going to be around awareness. You're not going to expect to sell hundreds of books, let alone thousands, right out of the gate when you don't have any foundation to sell it from. And so that's really what I call the momentum launch. So you're going to launch and then build momentum from your launch. And that is very common. If you don't have a platform, so you don't have connections, you don't have a network, and you don't have an audience of your own, you need more than a book idea to do really, really well, especially in the short term. In the long term, if you're doing other things to get awareness, you can create a situation where your book starts to get discovered and does kind of take on a life of its own. But again, I wouldn't plan for that. I would plan to have to market your book and work for it. All right, so why don't we do a participation prize? What do you think? Let's make sure we reward the folks who have tuned in early and joined us. So let's see. I don't know if we have enough comments yet. I was going to. Oh, Deborah. Hey. Welcome. So I was thinking that we would do a draw for the 23rd comment, because 23rd is the book launch day. So I. But I don't quite know if we have 23 comments yet. So you might want to say hello, make a comment really fast. So there we go. And we've got an aloha from Maui. Awesome. So, Angela, if you can go ahead and count out 23 from the start, that would be great. And Marilyn said a co worker who was in a startup band, he couldn't describe their vibe, but said that it was something that they played, stuff that everyone would like, and you knew that was going to be a problem. It's very true. And Brian, that's very creative. Brian said, this is my comment. Well, you guys, it might work. Hey, Chris, welcome. Derek. Hey. It's awesome. Denou Vorbon. I like it. Go Loco Diaries. Okay, so we got that. Got an Efren's here, too. It got people to say hello, so that worked. All right, so while Angela is picking our winner, I am going to go ahead and head on to my third point for the day. Oh, this one is one that I. I want to shout from the rooftops. For everyone writing nonfiction books, there are three different kinds of editors, and there's a specific order in which you should hire them. One of the things, because editing is the most expensive part of the process, good editors are really expensive. It is, you know, the way our service is set up. We have to spread the cost of editing out over a few months. And it is. It is a pricey, pricey proposition, especially when a book is long. Now, one of the things that I get a lot, and by a lot, I mean maybe once a week, but is, to me, it's a lot, because I know somebody spent a few thousand dollars on editors only to say this, and that is my book is grammatically correct, but this editor didn't make my book better. And when I hear that, I know they've hired the wrong editor. And not necessarily that they hired a bad editor, but they hired the wrong editor. They weren't at the phase of the book process where they were ready for a copy edit. They were actually at a phase where they really needed what is called a developmental edit or a content edit. And so how we do it is we pair you in the beginning with a story expert to craft the hook of your book. Figure out what makes you unique, figure out, you know, what is that desired outcome for your reader, and build the book plan from there. So the hook is the backbone, and then you create a writing plan from there. Once we have that, we pair you with either a writer to help you write or a writing coach. And at the end of that, even though you've worked with two professionals already, you still need a developmental or a content editor. And this is the editor that a lot of of people skip and they might, they might hire a copy editor that kind of does this, but you really want to have somebody who is specialized in this. And we've actually found our best content editors are people who have a journal journalism background and, or they're ghostwriters because they're able to see the structural flaws. They're able to spot the things that remove your credibility or that haven't built your credibility. They also can see where the story is weak or lacking. It's really. That's who we have found to be our top tier folks. Our developmental editors are not copy editors at all. And they are the folks that really get story. They get what makes a page turner, they get what makes people want to keep reading. And what they're going to do is they're going to go through and they're going to make sure that it is. It has the right flow, that the chapters are in the order that makes sense for the reader, that you've told enough stories, you are, you've built credibility. And so the, the developmental edit comes back in a lot of cases with a lot more work to do. There's questions. You may have to add material, you may be removing material. It can be a hard edit, emotionally. By that I mean, and it also can feel like your book is done and you think, I've written my book. And then you get the content edit back and you realize you still have a month of work to do. It can be tough, but from there you want to get a copy editor. A copy editor, like I said, is a different person. A copy editor follows rules. They're going to follow, you know, the Chicago manual style, for example, and they're going to do words, they're going to do sentence structure, they're going to do word choice, punctuation and flow. This is what most people think of when they think of editing. And as a result, they hire an editor that does copy editing. And they don't get that improvement in the quality of their manuscript. They just get it polished. Copy editing is a polish. So that's really. And then from there we usually do two rounds of copy edit. And then we do. Sorry, I just hit my mic. And then we do a proofread at the end. And again for us, the proofreader is different. But I do believe, and I have found in the past that really great copy editors can also be great proofreaders. But the proofreads really just, you know, consistency and then also just looking for those other little typos, it's really that fine tooth comb going through Your manuscript. So it's three different kinds of editing. I do find that proofreading doesn't require. It doesn't always have to be a professional. Whereas I believe your developmental edit and your copy edit really do need to be professionals. They're. They're two of the professionals that I think are a non negotiable hire. Proofread just takes an eagle eye. And that doesn't have to be professional. Okay, cool. Michael, welcome. Fantastic. Okay, so Angela. Mike heard. Mike Heard was 23rd. Ah. And Angela, she's a. She's a rhymer. I didn't know it. Okay, so Mike, have you got everything, my friend? Because if you. And I think you even signed up to be an early reader. Because I was gonna say. Oh, wait. So first of all, my question. Do you already have the mug and you already have the journal? That's my first question for you. And did he leave? He was in and out, wasn't he? He was the one that left. Oh, he left. Let's pick someone else. I think he's won everything already and he's not here anymore to designate. So who's our backup? Angela? Let's see. I'm just looking. I can't see. I think our backup would be the person who commented right after he left. But I don't know which comment was his 23rd, if it was the hey guys or the have a good one. I'll catch you later. So. So, Angela. Let's see. She sent me an updated one. Robert Williams was next. Okay, fantastic. So Robert Williams. And Mike, if you're watching this on the replay, I'm sorry, I think you've won things already. So, Robert Williams, congratulations. Let us know @TeamOK launchers if you want our fabulous mug. Or I'm actually not sure where I put my journal, but the oh so soft journal or the hashtag NoBoringBooks mug. The mug is proven to make coffee, tea and hot chocolate taste better. So let us know which one you want. Make sure you include your mailing address when you write us. And let us know which one you want, because we don't have the psychic abilities that I would like to have to know where you live. So make sure you include that. Okay. So let's see. Moving on to our next topic. So that was the editors. The fourth thing we're talking for all of you that just joined. We're talking about the seven things that I wish authors knew before they wrote their book. And number one was that I wish that they knew their reader was not a demographic. And to Even think of their reader as a specific person that has a specific problem that's tried to solve it in different ways, to really dig in. Number two was that a great idea is not enough to be a bestseller. There's a lot more involved in selling a lot of books. And even if you have a great book, it can still not sell if you haven't done a lot of things right. Number three is that. Oh, I skipped. I have two threes, you guys. There might actually be. There's probably eight tips. There's a bonus tip in here for you today because I wrote when I made my list, I put two threes on the list. How about that? To your lucky day. There's a bonus one in here for you. Okay, so I talked about the editors. I'll come back to the bonus tip at the end. Number four is really the best time to hire a company like Book Launchers. We get this question a lot, and part of it's because we are a monthly service. Sorry, I just lost you guys because I was checking my list. So part of this is because we are a monthly service, and people are trying to, you know, sometimes they want to save money, for example, and so they think they're better off to get all of their book written and then come to us for editing. And if you have experience writing, so you have a journalism background, you've previously written books, that can work. But, you know, one of our clients previously said. Said it the best. He. We had a call in January, I think this was 2019, in January 2019. And he. And we talked it through, and he said, you know what? I think I can write this on my own, and I'll bring it to you when it's done. And almost a full year later, he did bring it to us. And we looked at it, and we kind of had to tear it apart. And he said, you know, it probably did save me a couple of months of paying for your service. But in the end, he said, it was like I built a house without a blueprint. And then you guys had to rip up the walls, rip up the flooring, and at the end of the day, I never got the house that I really, really wanted. And so if you. Whether you're working with book launchers or you're going to hire somebody to help you with the process, I highly recommend you start with somebody who's going to help you build that hook, get clarity around your reader and build structure around your book so that you are delivering that hook in an engaging way. And all of that Stuff takes a commitment to, to really getting, you know, to diving in and doing the book, of course. But I really wish people would do more work before they start writing. So I mean, this is one of the reasons I wrote Self Publish and Succeed. I'm laying out in that book all of our process, all of the things that we teach and really trying to help you do the hard thinking work before you start writing, because that's really what we do. And for of our clients, you're going to spend a month before you even start writing and it can feel like nothing's happening. But it's that important thinking work that creates that blueprint for your book, that sets it up to be marketable, that sets you up to be more marketable, and then creates a clear plan to write a book that doesn't have to be completely renovated and gutted when it gets written. So the editing process, while still may have a little pain in it because we haven't figured out how to make editing pain free. It will be much better than if you just go off and don't think, think and just write. So it's really. I wish people would spend a lot more time. It's also. We have the Seven Steps guide. I think the Self Publish and Succeed is, you know, going to be. I think it's going to be 16. It'll be the best $16 you could possibly spend on your writing and, you know, on your writing experience and journey. But we also have the seven Steps guide, which you can get for free@book launchers.com forward slash, seven steps, the number seven. And, and that will also lay the foundation because there's five steps you take before you even start wr with that process. So. Okay, here we go. Efren. Efren says math's not my strength either. Thank you. Oops. It's just me giving you more. I'm just over delivering, that's all. Okay, we've got a few other comments here, Michael. Faculty says so far it's a great book, so thank you very much. Okay, so here we go. I'm just checking out a little bit more here. Oh, hey, Kelly, I emailed you. Oh, it looks like the sun's coming in. I might have to to close the blinds in a second here. It was really gray before. Of course, as soon as I go live on here, it gets less gray. Okay, so where are we? So number five. Oh, yes. Book publishing and book launching is a team sport. You, I mean, nobody has the mind as far as I know. This doesn't exist. Okay, I'm going to go close the blinds. One second. Just to have a commercial interlude here. One sec. Okay, there, I'm back. Okay, so book launching is a team sport. And what I mean by that is that I mean part, part of this is knowing that you, whoever you work with, you want to work with them and not feel like it's a battle, but also know that you have to participate as much as anybody that you may hire to help you with this. And also know that you will need to hire people because there's so many kind of minds that are required to create a great book. So first of all, there's the expert that is bringing the material into the book with the story. And then, I mean, looking at copy editing, like I said, there's different types of editors that we hire that are going to have different kinds of skills and different things that they're strong at. And then cover design is an art and a science. The interior layout, well, to me is probably the most painful thing some people try to do on their own because it's line by line. And it's one of those things where a lot of people, when they're in line, line edit. So your book is laid out for printing and they read it and they go, oh, I'm going to change this sentence and I'm going to add this paragraph. What you're doing is now causing your book to have to be edited on a line by line again basis because you want to make sure there's no orphans and widows, which are words that end up at the top of the page or at the bottom all by their lones themselves. You want to avoid word stacks, which are the same words that land on top of each other. You want to avoid weird word breaks. So it requires a line by line edit when you go through it. That takes a special kind of person to like doing that stuff. You can tell that's not my strength, but yeah, so there's, that's a different skill set. And then of course, all of the book marketing is an entirely different skill set as well. Some people can definitely do parts of this process by themselves. They have the skills and the, the ability to do it. But many I don't know, I've never met a single person who can do all of those things exceptionally well. So I think that's why I like to say book launching, book publishing. Book launching is a team sport and you want to choose the players on your team well so that you can win. I won't say super bowl, but because I don't want to bring up anybody who was maybe cheering for the other team, but it's a team sport and, you know, to get to the winning, to be on the winning team, you want to choose the right players for your team. Okay, so I'm going to do another draw here. I'm going to go over and do our. Our YouTube draw. So if you're new here, every Tuesday and Friday we have new videos. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous book launcher swag. Like our no boringbooksmug and our oh so soft journal for writing down all your book ideas. So I have put everybody's name in a random name drawer, and I'm just going to click the button right now and we'll find out who our first winner is. And today's first winner is. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Mojo. I don't know if Mojo's here today. I know Mojo has won before, but Mojo, if you're listening or you're here, you can let us know if you want the mug or the journal or if you already have both of those things. We will have a stock of. I'm sure you already got Dale's book. We'll also have a stock of my books. So if you haven't got that already, you can get a print copy if you weren't on our early readers list as well. So email us@teamoklaunch.com book launchers.com and let us know your mailing address and what you would like. And congratulations. Thank you for always commenting pretty much on every single video that comes out. You're awesome. Okay, so the next tip is. Oh, number six of. And these aren't tips, by the way, for anyone that wasn't here at the beginning. These are the things I wish authors knew before they started writing their nonfiction book. And this is number six. And excuse me, writing the book is hard, for sure, but marketing is harder. And there's no one method of marketing your book that's going to work for every author. Marketing is about test, and there really, truly are no guarantees. So it's something that a lot of people kind of come to us, especially people who've written their books, and they want a plan. They want us to market their book. You know, we're. We're turning away the vast majority of people that have completed books now because we found that there's so many elements that we need to put in place months before your book launches and into the book itself to set it up for success. And then even then, we have to test and try different things. Because for some authors, there may be a great abundance of associations or groups or different kind of places that want to feature your book and feature you and have you as a webinar speaker, but then somebody else's book topic may not lend themselves to that. So then we have to find a strategy that works for that. And then some strategies will work to get you exposure, like podcasts. But then that same podcasts really don't tend to sell a lot of books. Podcasts are great for business, building link generation, making connections with people who have potentially your audience in their, your reader in their audience. There's value in podcasts. Lots of interesting things can come from them, but rarely are you going to see a huge lift in book sales because of podcast interviews. So it's kind of a mix and match and what works and what kind of gets you to your goals, what's going to sell books. And it's hard and a lot of authors don't want to talk about themselves. They don't want to over promote. And so if you work so hard to write your book and you've written to help someone, I really hope you're willing to talk about it. But if you're not, then you're going to be trying a lot of different strategies. There's still ways to sell books. You can run ads, you can kind of pay a lot of places to get exposure and try to generate momentum that way. But, but it's going to take trial and error to find out where your readers are hanging out and where they're buying. And that is never the same for every author. And so you got to go into it with that mindset of I'm willing to test, I'm willing to try, and I want my book to get into the hands of the reader, to make an impact. And you'll create, you're a lot more likely to create success. It also helps tremendously. I mean, this has been really fun for me because this is the first, first time I, you know, I published two books before this. This is the first time I've had a team behind my book launch. And it's so fun because today I was hearing about the pitches that are getting prepared and there's already wins coming in and my team is there celebrating with me and they're pitching me, so I don't have to be doing all of the outreach to try to get my book out there. So that's been really, really fun. So hiring somebody who can be the Cheerleader for your book can help a lot too. Bridget, Hello. Great to have you here. And Daniel. Okay, I think we'll come back to questions in a minute and. Okay, cool. So Angela collects the questions and we answer all the questions at the end. So anybody who hasn't watched this before. Herschel, Hello. Welcome. That's how we'll handle the questions is at the end. Okay, so. And thank you for all the thumbs up. It felt good, didn't it? I told you. Feels good to hit that thumbs up button for me and for you. Okay, so that was tip number six. Well, I can't bring my list up again. Doesn't want to give me the list. Oh, there we go. So tip number seven is that book marketing is not something that happens once your book is done. It's something that you focus on from the moment you start writing. If you want to succeed, you're going to write your book with marketing in mind. And this really, in many ways, is the foundation of my book Self Publish and Succeed and really of book launchers and why it's in existence. Because what I, what I realized when I self published my books and I helped a lot of authors that had traditional deals, mostly with Wiley at the time, and that also were self publishing. There was a big gap. And the big thing with, you know, most of you probably know my story about how I had a book idea. Wiley. I had a conversation with Wiley and they said, oh, yeah, we don't like that book idea, but we're interested in working with you. And they gave me a book idea. And we went back and forth for three months on the book proposal. In the end, they came back and rejected me saying that I didn't have a strong enough platform to sell books and they just didn't think I'd sell enough books for them to give me a book deal. Now it was great, as I've. I've said many times, that was one of the greatest things that ever could have happened to me, even though at the time it felt like one of the worst. But it, you know, it opened up the door to self publishing. I wrote the book that I really knew needed to be written, and it ultimately has led me to running Book Launchers, which is pretty much the greatest company I could have ever dreamed of running. So that really was a great, great gift. But what the piece of that story that I hope you heard was that they didn't think that I would sell enough books. So before we had written a single word, they were creating, and that was a lot of what the book proposal was a marketing plan and they were figuring out who's going to buy this, what groups are going to support this, what marketing avenues are going to be available to us, who's in your audience, Ms. Author and so forth. And so the whole thing was planning marketing before a single word was written. Most self published authors write the book and then they figure out how they're going to market it. And so one of the things I really wish everyone knew was that you really have to be thinking marketing before you write anything and start thinking about who has this person in their audience, what's going to interest them, what do they need to know and try and align your message with what's going to match with the market and what they're going to want. And there's lots of ways to do that. But you set yourself up for so much more success if you do that versus just write your book. And this is when I mentioned that we turn away a lot of books now. A lot of them are really, really good books. And I've had some authors convince me to take their books on still because they were great books books. But it's really, it's hard because it still wasn't written with that marketing mindset. And so everything we do at Book Launchers comes back to layering and marketing from the moment you enter in the door. And that's really what self publish and succeed is about too, is thinking about marketing before you start writing. So that's number six I think. And here we go, number seven. Oh no, that was number seven. But there is in fact a bonus tip. Hey, how's about that? So the bonus tip today, which we will call the bonus tip, we won't give it a number eight because I did this is title as the seven things. So this is the bonus thing publishing is publishing. The book is not the destination. It's a stop on that destination. Your book is a tool and the more you think of it that way, the more you'll set yourself up for success. And you use your book as a tool to open the door to speaking, open the door to media, open the door to income opportunities like consulting and courses, product sales, building your platform. If you don't have an audience now, a book is a powerful way to grow that audience. But ultimately I encourage you to think of it as a tool and use it and be open to the possibilities. As I mentioned, I'm running book launchers largely because I wrote a, a real estate book. The the journey is not a direct one. A lot of Times it doesn't take you where you think it's going to take you. But if you really look at your book like a tool and use it to network to meet people that you previously weren't necessarily easily able to connect with and meet and, and really kind of leverage it into courses and workshops and other kind of opportunities. That's why one of my favorite questions that I ask in the Author Spotlight videos is kind of one of the biggest. What was one of the biggest surprises and often, besides the impact that they've had on people's lives, which is. Which is a common answer, there's something really cool that's come out of it. Some of the answers were, you know, another person reached out to me, like a really interesting person reached out to me. And now we're co authoring a book. There was one of our clients mentioned that they were now on a panel with the union. And so there's lots of opportunities that can come about if you're using your book as a tool to get out there. Of course you want to sell books, but to me, you know, it's great to make five or six dollars when a book sells, but to me it's even more. It's more cool. Really good English. I don't know, it's really, really exciting to see where the book can take you. And the book being out there isn't the destination. It's all the places the book takes you on the adventure that, that being an author can be. So that's really, I think, the bonus tip of the day. How about that? Which was also the second number three. All right, so we're going to answer questions, but before we do that, we still have two more prizes. So we did our participation prize in the saying hello, but now I've got the quote unquote skill testing question. So for those of you who have already written a book, what has been your biggest surprise? Was it on this list or what is something not your biggest surprise? What is something you wish you knew before you started, or if you haven't yet tackled that, maybe pick the one that you thought was the most surprising or that you're glad you caught today because now you know before you start writing. So go ahead and share that and we'll pick our favorite and that will be a prize winner. And then I will go over and do the YouTube one as well if you missed the beginning. February 23rd, we're back here again, same time and place, but it's book launch day, so it is going to be fun. We are going to be talking about the launch incentives. We're going to I'm going to give away some books of course and I also have copies of Dale Roberts book which came out February 1st. His book, the Amazon self publisher is is is already on the website as one of my recommended reads. If you are selling books on Amazon you must pick up his book. It is a really, really great foundational book. I'm going to be giving it to people on my team that are working working with clients on the Amazon Amazon portion because it really is a foundational piece that you really it covers everything you need to know about selling your book on Amazon. So that was the Amazon self publisher. But my book launch February 23rd. We'll meet back here. Also February 20th we have our deep dive training. So if you're new, the deep dive trainings are two hours where usually myself and one or two people from my team we spend two hours with you just teaching you something. And this next training is going to be on the business of being an author. So we're going to talk about author platform building, monetization of your book and a lot more. So I'm not going to be putting the link out live anymore or sorry link out publicly anymore. If you were there in December, you know why. So if you do want to register it's totally free. But you do need to be on our launch letter newsletter. So you can get on that by going to book launchers.com forward/number seven steps or just at book launchers.com you'll get the newsletter and I'll be sending the registration link out on Monday. It's happening February 20th at 10am Pacific Standard Time which is 1pm Eastern Standard Time. It's usually a two hour training and it's this is not when some people call training. It's code for pitching. Our training is not pitching. I sometimes even forget to mention that you can work with us. So those are the two important dates and I think that's it. Oh and I just want to mention so on February 23rd I am going to be announcing incentives for buying 1, 3 and 10 copies. If you have ever wished that you could just book a call with me for training, coaching, consulting because I don't offer my time one on one at all. Start thinking about nine friends that you can give your book away to. That's a hint for you because there will be a very short window of time where you can buy 10 books and you will get the opportunity to book a one on one call with me pretty Much the only time I think I will ever do this because as Angela knows, my time is in very, very short supply. But I want to do something really cool for people who buy 10 copies of my book. So this will be a one time only kind of situation. Okay. So I'm going to do my YouTube draw to wrap things up here and then we'll. We'll see who wins the other prize and we'll answer questions. Okay, so let me just pick a random name and while that's happening, I'm going to take a sip of water. Okay. Our YouTube commenter is. Oh, Poetry from the Heart. And I know she's an early reader, so she's already got my book and I'm pretty sure she already has the mug and the journal. So please do tell me, what would you like me to do? Would you like me to draw another name or do you have somebody you want to give this to? Just let us know, okay? Hey, Martha, great to see you here. Let's see. Gift. Okay, I. Okay, I'm just read. Sorry, I'm reading the answers to the question, see what would be the most useful to think which would be the most useful to focus on. Okay. One, two, three. Mars liked all of the tips. I think that's what we're saying. Kiwanis, welcome. That's great. Let's see. I'm just looking for a winner on this. Well, yes, you can draw another name. Okay. Mike, you're back. I thought you left. You may or may not have won a prize earlier. Okay, do we get a 10 bulk discount? No, not if you're getting time with me. There's no 10 bulk discount. Okay. It's not that expensive. I think we've priced the book, the print book at 15.99 and there's other things that go with it, not just my one on one time. Okay, there are. If you do want to buy more than 10 copies, there are bulk discounts available. You can reach out to us, of course, but for the 10 bulk incentive package. Discount. Sorry, for the 10 incentive. Let me try that whole sentence again. For the 10 book buying incentive during launch week, there won't be a discount on it. It may actually be tricky to buy. Amazon seems to have a four copy limit on it right now, so we'll see. Okay, so back to the drawing. Here we go. New winner. So thank you. Poetry from the Heart. And the new winner is. Brian Krieger. All right, Brian, I don't know if you've won before. There's actually a lot of really New names. But the. The. You know, they comment on the people who comment on every single video, which. Brian, I know you're one of them, so thank you. They do seem to be the winners these days. So congratulations. Let us know what you want. The mug or the journal. You may have won in the past, so let us know what you haven't won. And if you've won both and you want me to redraw, I can do that too. So just let us know and let me pick a winner for the best thing that they wish they knew. Okay. Surprise. Okay, I'm gonna go with Mars. These are some good ones, though. Efren says the best surprise post writing, how much potential there is for future endeavors, post publishing, Speaking, online courses, etc. Getting. And Brian says getting sales goes way beyond having a great book, which is very true. So. And a lot of people said all of them, but I think I'm gonna pick. This is tough, but I'm gonna pick Mars Bazaar. And the answer was. I learned more about the editing process. Three types of editors, line edit, plus the information. Online editing was all new to me. So to me, that's a win. If I can help you guys out by explaining to you that there are three different kinds of editors and making sure you hire them in the right order, I feel like I'm winning because I've saved you money. I've made your book better. So that's great. That. That was the takeaway. So, Mars, congratulations. I don't know if you've won yet, so let us know if you want the mug or the journal. And if you've won both of those and you're not on the early reading list. Why not? No, but if you won both of those, I can also send you a copy of the book instead. Okay. So now, Angela, if you can, please let me know. If you can just let me know what the questions are that we need to answer, that would be fantastic. And Herschel says, I wish I understood the marketing concept. Yes, yes, absolutely. I agree. Oh, Mars is waiting for this. This oh so soft journal to arrive. Yeah. Using USPS has not. Nothing has gone very fast, so we'll draw somebody else. Okay. Have you got my book, Mars? Because we could also send you a copy of my book or Dale's book. So I don't want you to be shortchanged. Let's see. The first question was from Robert. Nobody's ever said this, but I'm going to ask you how I can advertise my book on national television for Super Bowl Well, I think the answer is to have a very, very large budget. I don't know. But I know when I used to work for some larger companies and I don't know what it's like now, I certainly didn't look into it. But you know, I think you're talking about a million dollar budget for a lot of super bowl ads, if not more so. So I'm not sure that's a great question if anybody else knows the answer. But I also would. My bigger question to you would be what do you think is going to happen from that? Because unless your book has a very direct correlation to the audience in that's going to be watching the super bowl and you think they're going to take action in the middle of their super bowl party or you think that commercial might go viral. The bigger question is why? And could you do something else that you could get better results with? Television is not actually a great way to sell books. Television is a great thing to leverage. I mean, this is speaking that I haven't done commercials, but I've done a lot of TV programs, news and interviews and things like that. And it's rare. And our clients have done quite a few. I think Good Morning America did a great job of selling books. I can't remember statistically 2020 also featured one of our clients and they seem to sell some books, but not as many as you would think. And so my. I would be very concerned about spending a lot of money on TV ads. They're also hard to measure. So you can't really say that the commercial led to the ad. I would prefer to spend that kind of money running click ads on Facebook or doing something on Google where I could track it, I could target it, I could see what's working and do more of what's working and less of what's not. But again, it's not something that I have experience with, so I'm kind of winging that answer. Let's see. Oh yeah, Mars will get Dale's book. So yeah, email Angela and we'll send you a copy of Dale's book. We don't have them yet, so it'll take a couple weeks to get it to you. Dale's just rooting them to Angela so she can then ship them out. But it's a great book, so that's a good choice. And I assume that means you, you're early reader and you're going to get a cut. Copy my book already or you already have one or you were afraid to say so because I'M sure it's not that you don't want to read my book. Right. Okay. Yeah. Walter Wayburn says Super bowl ads are deep pockets, for sure. Yeah, I know it was. I know it was a million plus. And that wasn't the production cost. That was just to buy the ad before. Question 2. To answer your question from the other day, yes, I have plenty of time until my cousin has the baby. My cousin. My concern was what to do after my niece is born. So if I recall, this was about the time involved in writing the book and that he was going to be a caregiver for his niece. And. And so I think. I mean, I'm always telling people, if you have two to five hours to put towards this, to put towards your book, then there's lots of things that you can do to move your book forward, whether it's during the writing phase, the editing phase, or elsewhere. So, I mean, and I know having had a baby the first year while you're tired, especially if you're on night duty and you're the. You're the food source, it's exhausting. But there's actually a ton of time in the day where the baby's sleeping or, you know, cuddled up and, you know, isn't doing anything. It's much easier than when the child is 18 months and getting into everything and you have to worry about it. Everything they're putting in their mouth and all the things they're doing that they shouldn't be doing. So to me, a baby is a great time to be working on a book. The challenging time for many people is when that kind of 18 month to 20, you know, to two and a half years old, where they're, you know, fully dependent on you and they can do a lot of things that can hurt themselves if you don't keep an eye on them. So I don't know if you want more specifics than that, but depending on what phase of the process you're on, there's different things that you can be doing to move your book forward. Mike, it's not April 1st. I don't know. I missed something, I think. Let's see. Would a really small niche book be worthwhile? Example, A Santa memoir? Depends on your goals. I mean, it's really hard for me to answer questions like that, because what does worthwhile mean to you? Does it mean that you like worthwhile, as in you're gonna reach 500 people with it and they're going to have their hearts warmed by a story of Santa and the Life of Santa or is it worthwhile, you know, because you got on news? You know, I don't know what the speaking gig circuit is like for Santa, but maybe, you know, it really comes back to your goals. And then figuring out will the book and your size of the book or what the book's content, will that actually help you achieve the goal that you have for that book? Mars is an early reader. Okay, good. You're not in trouble then. We're still friends. Okay. Mike had issues with registration for the download, but it's okay now. Oh, that's good. And, Mike, I did mean that you. You won earlier, and then I thought you left, and so then I gave your prize away to someone else. So if you. I feel. Now I feel guilty about it because I thought you'd gone. So if you want a journal or a mug, if you don't already have them, let me know. Okay. Question three. I am writing a Christian memoir, and I've been thinking of getting in touch with CU C unions in the country to share my story and then point to where they can buy the book, perhaps with a discount. Good idea. Possibly. But my recommendation to anybody is when you're doing outreach, always try to figure out what problem the group or organization or company is having and how your book may be a possible solution. And often the book isn't even the solution. There may be some other solution that involves the book, so try to think of a good example. Let me think. Nothing's popping to my head right now. I'll go back to a default that I always talk about because it just pops into my head. So one of our clients wrote a book called Tactical Lock Picking, and this book, Reaching out to Fire Firefighter Associations. It is a book that helps them save lives and get through by getting through locked obstacles without damaging property. So they save lives and reduce property damage by understanding how to pick locks and get through locked obstacles quickly. So for them, the problem was that they're damaging property and not. They're not getting into locked places fast enough. The book and ultimately the author offering webinars and teaching courses and doing sessions on this subject and giving or selling copies of the book with that was the solution to that problem. So you got to figure out what. What's the problem that they have and how can you somehow offer a solution or be a part of a message or a cause that they already care about? You're rarely going to have any success when you reach out to somebody focused on you and your book. It always needs to be outreach. That Focuses on whatever that. Whatever is important to that person or that organization and really trying to tie into that. You'll set yourself up for a lot more success that way. April 1 Reference to super bowl advertising. Yeah, okay, got it. Okay. So does the book size influence sales? I'd like to print a 9 by 6 hardcover book. My manuscript is only 50,000 words. I'm worried the book will not appear attractive on the shelf. Okay. So, Marcus, the first thing I would have to ask is, what is the likelihood you're going to get shelf space with your book? It is unlikely for the majority of authors. It's also something I would question whether you want to worry about, especially with a hardcover. You're going to make zilch on a hardcover, self published, putting it into bookstores. And rather than take you guys through all the math, especially since I couldn't even count to seven today, you definitely don't want me doing math live when I can't count to seven. Check out the book and Angela can drop this link in there or check out the book. Check out the video I put out recently. Recently on do bookstores matter in 20. I think it's, I think the title, Angela, is Do bookstores matter in 2021. It's a recent like last eight video that came out because that will take you through the math on all of this. So my question is less about what's it going to look like on a shelf and more about, again, what are your goals for the book? Where do you want it to appear and why? Our focus with our clients, and we work with a lot of speakers, a lot of consultants, and some of them want hardcovers because they're going to be giving them to clients and they're high. You know, they're clients that pay them a lot of money. So they want the book to be hardcover so it feels more, you know, I guess legit, more valuable. So in those cases, the hardcover makes a lot of sense, but we're still focused on what does the COVID look like when it's the size of a postage stamp and how can we help them stand out when it's that big. So I'm less worried about that now on spine. Spine does matter. I want your book to be at least 35,000 words so we can get the title on the spine without having to do too much craziness inside to make the book thicker. But there's a lot, I feel like there's a lot more considerations than, you know, what does it look like on the shelf? Because, you know, even when it's on the shelf, it's going to be spine out. So it is something to think about. But you're not going to sell that many books on in bookstores, even if you do get bookstore distribution. So I would turn my focus to online and if you want to do the math, Ingram has a good calculator. You can go to ingramspark and you know, book calculator and you can figure out when you set your wholesale discount to 55% and you do a hardcover book with 50,000 words, you may have to estimate page numbers. You're gonna see that you're making probably like 80 cents a book, if that. Okay, let's see. And Angela did drop the video link for that. So thanks, Angela. Okay. Okay, let's see. Robert Williams said the super bowl commercial question I asked, the book will lead views to a link inside to sign up for the book club membership. So I mean, yeah, but I, my, my, again, I would say if you have a million dollar budget for doing that, I would highly recommend you start doing direct response ads instead because you can tweak them, you can reduce your costs per click and really ultimate ultimately see which audiences aren't just converting to buy your book, but are converting to then sign up for this paid membership site that you have. If super bowl audience is a great audience for you, you can still use Google and Facebook to target for that audience. That me personally, that's what I would want to do because your super bowl ad is a one time shot and if, if there's no results, that's pretty sad. Versus Facebook and Google. You can use that, a large budget to really play around and find what's going to work. Margaret says, I love my book cover. I don't have it here, it hasn't come yet, but I've ordered it. Margaret, so I could be showing it. Her book Young Reader is out now. And if you are a parent of a young child, this is going to teach you how to read and problem solve. It's really unique in that it's not just teaching your child, not just helping you teach your child how to read, but it's helping you teach them to, to problem solve, which is a really, really, I think invaluable skill. In fact, if there's one thing I look for when I'm hiring somebody, it's can they solve problems? You know, that skill I think is a lifelong skill that is more important than a lot of other things. So, so yeah, really awesome book. Okay, so let's just see. Okay. Marcus said that was helpful. Okay, I think we're done. Did I forget anything, Angela? Did I miss anything? Okay, so. So just to wrap up, I hope to see you all here on February 23rd for the launch of Self Publish and Succeed. We're gonna have lots of fun prizes, and of course, I'll be sharing the incentives for buying 1, 3, and 10 copies of the book. And we're also doing that deep dive training on the business of being an author. That's happening February 20th. To get the link to register, you do have to subscribe to the newsletter. I will no longer be putting the links out publicly so that we don't have any unwanted. We're less likely to have unwanted guests joining our party and adding a lot of flair and spice and inappropriateness to our deep dive trainings. So you will have to get the newsletter@book launchers.com if you're not already getting the launch letter. But that will get you the deep dive training. It's lots of fun. Aaron, hello. Yes, please do go back. We had a great. We had a great show today. We covered the seven, plus a bonus tip, Things I wish authors knew before they wrote Their book. I know you're almost done, so some of them still will help you, but you're quite far along on the process. But thank you so much. It was wonderful to have you all here. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Angela, for being. Is it as it has there, the wrench, the admins for the day. I appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you guys on the 20th and the 23rd. Have a great day.