7 Tips for a More Successful Book Launch | Live Stream Replay

All right. Hello, hello. Happy Tuesday. It's lovely, lovely April. It's spring. Spring is in the air. The birds are chirping. The sun is out. More days are longer. It just feels like spring, doesn't it? So, hello. I'm feeling that spring energy. Can you tell? Today's show is all about setting you up for a more successful book launch. We have seven tips, and as I was preparing them, I realized I could probably have 40. So I really tried to refine this to the seven most effective. I don't even necessarily mean, you know, they're not necessarily the seven most important, but I think they're probably the seven most effective. So if there was only seven things to focus on, then these would be the seven that I recommend you focus on. So, hello, if it's your first time here, please do say hello like Brian and Mary Lynn and Efren have already. And Angela is in the house to help me keep track of questions and keep track of all of you folks who win prizes today. So definitely say hello when you get here, and we will mostly dive in. I'm just checking to make sure that you've got audio. I'm assuming everything is good there. It's great to see you. Hello, Bill home of espn. That's awesome. All right. Okay, so as I said, today's topic is the seven tips for a more successful book launch. And oh, by the way, before I dive into that, the prizes. I've got four prizes for you today. I have our oh so soft journal, which is right here. And it really is soft. If you haven't won one yet, it truly, truly is soft. We also have our hashtag, no boring books mug, which mine is in the dishwasher. I used it this morning, put it in the dishwasher, and then the dishwasher is now running, so you can't see that, but it is pretty awesome. Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are all pretty proven to taste better in that fabulous mug. And then we also have a copy of my book, self publish and succeed, right here. Ta da. And then we also have Dale Roberts, the Amazon self publisher. We've also got that book for you all as well, which I don't have a physical copy. I have a copy on my Kindle of that book. But we have four awesome prizes for you today, so you'll be able to choose from those four which one you would like. And there's prizes for participation as well as for all you folks who have been diligently commenting every Tuesday and Friday that a video has come out Also, quick housekeeping detail before I dive into tip number one. Our next deep dive training is happening on Saturday, April 17, and hopefully I got that date right. Hopefully. This is. There is a Saturday, April 17th. I think there is. Okay, so Saturday, April 17th, we're doing a deep dive on writing techniques. So nonfiction writing techniques. I am pulling some of our brilliant writing team members out from behind their menuscripts and behind their screens, kind of. Of course, they're in front of their screen still to talk to you, but in order to showcase and share some of their genius to help you write a better book, this is a rare treat, and I'm probably just as excited or more excited than you are, because I know how extraordinarily talented my team is, and I'm really excited for you to all get a little taste of some of that brilliance behind the scenes and get them to, you know, answer your questions, share some of their best tips, and workshop some of your book challenges. So that's happening Saturday, April 17, at 10am Pacific Standard Time. If you want to register, it is book launchers.com deep dive. All right, and I'll drop that link in there for you. Angela's probably already on that, but I'll put it in there as well. And you've got it. Oh, they came out looking funny, so. Oh, it says my connection is unstable. I hope you guys didn't have me frozen in some sort of a weird face. My connection reset itself. We're having some fun times with Internet over here the last couple days. But anyways, somebody in my fabulous early book review team. I sent out signed copies to everybody who posted a review of my book in the first week, which was just awesome. So thank you to everyone who did that. And then somebody in the book review team crew who has not said anything to me about this yet, but somebody got a book for Ann who wasn't Ann. Oops. I realized this after they'd already gone to the post box that I had printed the paper in a funky way, and Ann's name was on the top and the address was on the back. And I realized later where Ann lived. And somebody got a book addressed to Anne, and they haven't identified themselves yet. So I don't know if they're just kind or if they haven't opened their mail yet or, you know, they didn't want to embarrass me. But anyway, I think I corrected it, and so I think that person is getting another book addressed to them. Anyways, all good, right? They just got an extra book and if they have anybody that they know that's named Ann, they can now give them a personally signed copy. Okay, let's get into the tips. We don't need to confess. I don't need to confess all the things that. This is what happens when I'm in charge of things like that, which is why Angela is in charge of most of these things. Okay, so seven tips for a more successful book launch. The first three are things to do well in advance of your book launch. So for those of you who are hanging out here in your six months or further away from your book launch, these are, these tips are really for you. And then the rest of it are going to be things that are really, you do right around your book launch to set yourself up for a stronger book launch. So, number one, the first tip, this is for everyone that is more than six months away from launch. And this is to cultivate relationships. And now, just because you're at launch doesn't mean you can't do this. I just recommend that you be doing this early, early, early and often. Cultivate relationships. In May, I'm actually coming out with a video on how to network. And it's really going to be how I network because I'm a very, very high introvert. As I mentioned in the video I put out last week with Dale Roberts. Dale is my go to. So if there's somebody in the publishing space that I want to meet, I reach out to Dale and I go, hey, Dale, do you know anybody at X Company? And more. Most of the time he does and he introduces me. And so I don't have to do the hard work of a cold. Of a cold outreach because Dale already has made the work of making that relationship. And then he does beautiful introductions and he tells both parties why they should meet. Does a really great job of introducing people. So Dale is my go to for a lot of things, but ultimately my recommendation to you is to cultivate those relationships. And in May, I'm going to give you, I'm creating a video right now that will come out in May on how to network and how to build those relationships as an author at all phases in your book launch. But generally speaking, earlier the better. And so a couple of tips. Look, look at, look at the influencers who are already talking to your audience and start making connections. My preference, as I just alluded to, is to see if I know anybody who already knows them so I can get a warm introduction. That's going to be a much stronger way to meet somebody than a lot of the other techniques, but sometimes you don't know. So if you don't have somebody like Dale, I haven't. I have a couple other friends I seem to have, not on purpose, strategically created some friendships with people who are highly connected. So I often can reach somebody in my network that already has this connection to get an introduction. But my second attempt or my second approach for this is to figure out where somebody's going to be live and try to go there to meet them. This is obviously an expensive, time consuming way, but for certain strategic relationships, it has been absolutely, you know, incredibly valuable. And this is how I have made some really important relationships, friendships by going to live events and making that effort to, you know, basically shake hands and say hello and try to start that relationship in person so that I can develop it off, offline or online, I guess, better. Third is to just be there. So kind of like a YouTube bestie sort of approach is, is really just to be there. So if this is an influencer who has a live stream every week, you know, or somebody who posts on Instagram all the time or Facebook, whatever it is, just start commenting and adding value to their audience and to their, their posts and their streams and whatever it is they're putting out into the world. And I promise that the vast majority of folks will take notice over time. It is not. It is something that sometimes it can feel like they have a million followers. They're not going to pay attention. But I have done this on several occasions and sometimes it takes three months of consistency. But over time you can get somebody to get to know you. They see you're adding value and they will build, you will build a relationship to the point where you can reach out and ask for small favors. So that can be another approach. The final way is cold outreach, which also can work. I, you know, one of our nearest and dearest friends, which Michael knows them, Nick and Tom Carradza, they're near and dear to mine and my husband Dave's heart. They're, you know, they're just standup guys who we are so grateful to know. And they're largely the reason that my first book, More Than Cash Flow, went to number one on Amazon, was because of their promotion and their support. And that was a cold outreach. That was kind of. Dave and I found them online blogging and kind of talking about the same stuff that we were talking about. And we just kind of wrote them one day and said, hey, we saw you and here's what we do. And we thought maybe we could be friends Something kind of like that. And little bit by bit, we actually built, you know, really, really incredible friendship. So ultimately, just start looking around and figure out who do you really want to know? And it's not about who can I use to make my book successful, but, you know, where. Where are the people that you want to connect with hanging out, who's already talking to them? And how can you start to build relationships and start to network and add value to those people already? And that's really my goal, is to add value. And over time, I think you build relationships and those relationships will pay off in other ways. Okay, so that's number one. So number one again, for those of you joining in, we're talking about seven tips for a successful book launch. If you're, if you're launching, if you are watching the replay, make sure you say hello, too. Especially if it's still Tuesday, because everybody who comments on a video the day it is released gets entered to win some fabulous, fabulous swag. Boy, it's going to be one of those days. We're going to have some bloopers. Just so long as it's not another one where I. I choke on the. Or spilled a coffee all over my head. I don't know if anybody was here for that deep dive training. When the pandemic first hit, I went to show my mug and it had. It had coffee in it. I'd forgotten that I had coffee in it from the morning I went to take a sip and coffee all down. This is like down the side of my head. It was dripping down here, all down my arm. And I had to text message my husband for a towel so that I could keep keep going, but, you know, not sit in coffee dripping off of my face for the rest of the day. So it just feels like one of those kind of days. So number one, the first tip I shared today is to cultivate relationships with influencers well in advance of your book launch. Tip number two is to decide. So this is tip two. Decide what kind of a book launch you want. And actually, let me rephrase that. Define or decide what a successful book launch is to you and really get grounded in this and commit to it. Because it's. Book launches are kind of brutal. And I think a lot of people put tremendous pressure on themselves for a successful book launch without defining what a successful book launch is. And then they're sad when they don't hit that successful book launch. So I want to help all of you with that today. And we're going to dive a little Bit into this. But first, I just wanted to check out what you guys are chatting about because there's a whole bunch of stuff going on over here, and I feel like I'm missing out. All right, so Alan's here from Tokyo. Hello. Oopsie poopsie. I always say, man, if. If. If that was my saying, you guys would be hearing it all the time. Okay, Alan says hooray for instructions, for networking, for introverts. So you're gonna like the video that comes out of me. I know you're already subscribed, so I don't have to tell you to do that. Okay. Okay. So Mindful Eats. We'll save that question for later. Angela will be writing those down for me. And she actually said that, so that's great. Thank you, Angela. Okay, no boring books, baby. You got it. Hello from the Isle of Wight. Very cool. Okay. I'm glowing today. Yeah, I'm pumped. I don't know why I've got this. Like, maybe it's. I had extra coffee today. That could be it. But I'm. It's. It's spring and I'm feeling it, so. Okay, let's keep going. So back to the successful book launch. So here's what I really want you to think about. And we talked about this, I think, a couple of live streams ago, where I walked through the kind of four book launch strategies and how to really choose one that's right for you based on the resources that you have. So if you haven't seen that, go back and watch it. I also have a shorter, more condensed YouTube YouTube eyes diversion of that coming out soon. But there was a live stream where I went into those four book launch strategies and really defined them. So here's the thing. A big book launch is exhausting and all consuming. And so when I'm saying big book launch, a lot of people are going, I got to be a bestseller. So whatever that is. So think about this carefully before you think before your book launch, because I want you to define what success means for you so you can apply the appropriate pressure and then, you know, really measure your results realistically. So a big book launch, where you sell thousands and thousands of books and hit bestseller lists, even if you hire a team like Book Launchers, it's going to be all consuming. You're looking at, you know, almost a 247 kind of thing for the many weeks leading up to launch. And certainly in launch week, it is a ton. It's more than 40 hours of work a week. And, you know, it is really Push, push, push. This is you asking everybody you know to write reviews, spreading the word to every single person you know. This is leveraging all your corporate connections, all your colleagues, all your friends, everybody to promote your book. It also assumes in order to hit those big bestseller lists that you've got a large list, a large audience to leverage in the first place. We've done launches with clients where we're coordinating a lot of book, a lot of bulk sales. So, so they've got other companies or they've got companies that are buying hundreds of books and we're coordinating them so that they can all be sold during launch week in order for that book to have a better chance of ranking on a bestseller list. And the effort in coordinating those sales to run through Nielsen Bookscan, so they count for these lists. It is tremendous. It is really a full time job, or at least a part time job for somebody to do for months leading up to an all around launch. And there's also the fact that you have to sell those things in the first place. So, you know, you're pitching people, you're sending a copy of the book out, you're getting on the phone, you're talking to them about what the exchange is, what the rates look like, how many books they're buying, and then you're coordinating the sale. Plus, if you do a launch like I did for More Than Cashflow, when I hit number one, you're emailing, you're creating copy for other people to email, you're creating all of this stuff and then you're following up to let people know, okay, now's the time. Send a reminder. Here's where we're at. It is intense, really, really intense. It can be so fun, incredibly rewarding. I mean, I will never regret how hard I work to get more than cashflow out there and to create the success I did with More Than Cash Flow hitting number one on Amazon, you know, selling thousands and thousands of copies in a single week. And then, you know, being in the top 100 on Amazon for 45 days. But I was pushing hard and leveraging every contact I had and I didn't do much of anything else for probably six months. It was almost, I would say, 75% of my days were focused on book stuff and then the rest of it was my businesses. At the time I had a real estate investing training company and a real estate investment business and my husband worked with me on those and he took the brunt of the work off my plate for those things so that I could focus on the book launch. What I'm trying to say is it is a choice and if you're thinking you're going to have a really successful book launch, but it's just going to happen because your book is great, it's just not going to happen. So better to decide what success looks like for you and focus on. And focus and really commit to making that happen. So let's contrast that to what I did for self publish and succeed. So that book I knew I don't have the capacity to do what I did to make more than cash flow. A successful book Launchers is an all consuming creature of a company, which I adore. And my focus is on growing that company and being a great mom. You know, in my family life, you know, those are kind of my main priorities right now. And I don't have room for an all encompassing book launch. So I did not put that pressure on myself at all. What I focused on instead is creating a strong foundation with that book so I can leverage it for the business purposes that we have in mind for the book. So what that meant was activating my book army. So I decided I was going to focus exclusively on my YouTube family. Because, you guys, I spend the most time with you. I'm here every two weeks doing a live stream. I'm here on YouTube every, you know, twice a week, every week. And I've gotten to know you. All right, I, I know Kimberly, I know. Alan. I know I could start naming all of you Andy W. On and on. Brian Krieger. The list is long, right? Of all you fabulous folks who are here with me all the time. So that was who I activated for my book army, knowing that the most important thing I could do was get book reviews. Which reminds me, if you have not posted your review, please post a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Amazon's ideal I'm focusing on. When we hit 50 reviews for Amazon, we're having a review party. Angela's house is full of swag. We've got backpacks, we've got brand new hoodies you haven't seen yet. I haven't worn one. I don't have them. Angela has them at her house in Texas. But we're all stocked up with swag waiting for that 50 reviewer party. And so if you have not posted your review, please post your review. But that was my focus, was get book reviews. I promoted the launch to my newsletter list. Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur sent out a little bit of social media promotion. Dale Roberts had me on Livestream But I didn't do a massive push. I was not worried about selling thousands and thousands of copies. Of course that would be wonderful. But I knew I didn't have the capacity to create a massive launch. And so my focus is on getting the book solid review base so that when we are doing things, which I'll tell you about a couple of things that have already happened, to create strategic partnerships to open the door for promotion so that we can continue to grow book launchers and build its profile that those things are happening. And it's already worked. We already have struck a really, really cool deal, which I think I can talk about, pretty sure. So there's this really awesome program or company out there called Winning Writers and they do various book awards and one of their book awards is the North Street, North Street Book Prize. And so now what we're doing is for 20, we are co sponsoring their award for 2022. And they're a really great award. So some people, this is something I'm going to is on my list for you guys too, is to do a video on the award companies that we do recommend. Because the vast majority of book awards out there are not worth their charge. But North Street Book Awards, I think they give one of the biggest prizes next to Writer's Digest. And they are in it for the authors. Right? They're a really genuinely great company. Their book award prize unfortunately doesn't take business books, but memoirs, creative nonfiction, they have a category for that. And so in 2022, everybody who enters their award is getting a copy of my book. So there's 2000 or so award entries. They're all getting a copy of Self publish and succeed. And so that's a really phenomenal opportunity that comes about to give our company more exposure to get my book into more people's hands. And that comes from having a solid, you know, solid review base, a great book. And now it's opening those doors. So that's just one example of the partnerships and opportunities we're using. There's some other things that we're working on with the book now. And that's my focus. That was my focus. So great reviews. So that everything else we do has a better chance of success when people look at the book reviews. So what kind of a launch do you want? What is most important? What are you willing to commit to? And that's really the big thing. You want to commit to this and dive in and go for it and really look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, of course, we all want to be best sellers. But what's reasonable to expect for your book and for your book launch? And just focus on committing to that so that you can take the pressure off if a big launch just isn't in the cards. Okay. Because you don't have to have a big launch for your book to be massively successful for your goals and for your business and for your brand. Cool. Cool. Okay. Number three, and we're still on those. The early book launch days. So, you know, this is kind of six months. Number three is kind of more like six weeks before your book launch is start building that book army. So what I did was, I think starting in January, maybe late December, my book launch was February 23rd. I started saying, hey, my book is going to be out, and you fabulous YouTube friends, you're going to get the first shot at reading the book in exchange for writing a review. Now here's the thing. What we have really learned, but I've known for a while, but my book launch, and then a lot of our authors have encountered this in the last month because Amazon has gotten really smart, extra smart at identifying who has connections. And so what's happened a lot more now than ever before is the reviews are being blocked before they even get posted. What used to happen is anybody could post the review and then Amazon would remove it later. That's still happening. But what's happening even more is people couldn't even post the review. You're getting shut down. So you painstakingly type up that review and then Amazon goes, nuh, sorry, you have a relationship with this author and you're not allowed to post. So why I'm telling you that is because many companies and coaches and other people in this space tell you that your book army should be friends and family. And generally speaking, friends and family are the most likely to write reviews for your book and support you. However, Amazon is really smart and they know who your friends and family are. We have tips, of course. One of them is to set your Amazon account up with an email address you don't use for social media. And that will. That will lengthen the distance between you and your friends and family for the purposes of these things. But we're quite certain they're using other tools like IP addresses and other things to identify things. So without going down that deep rabbit hole today, try to make a list of arm's length friends, family, clients, colleagues, associations, groups, any people that you can think of where you may want to reach out and start to build that book army. And Your goal is 50 people, 30 is a minimum. 30 to 50 people that agree to read your book in advance and write reviews. That's it. That's all you want. Some people get fancy and they want them to then post on social media. That's great if you do that. But social media really doesn't sell a ton of books unless it's like at the higher echelons of really super engaged people that are really driving people to take action on their Instagram or Facebook or something all the time. Generally speaking, your friends and family might sell a book or two here and there, but your focus, the thing of value you want is those reviews. Okay, so I am so pumped today. I have to take a breath here. So let me just give you guys a YouTube prize because that always gives me a moment. So for those of you who are new here, if you don't know, every Tuesday and Friday we have new content. Today counts. So if you're watching the replay, make sure you're saying hello, you're commenting. Because when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our swag. So we have four prizes today. And right now I'm doing a draw from all the folks who have posted on Tuesdays and Fridays the last four videos. Here we go. We've got our drum roll, please. And I'll take this moment to take a breath and a drink. Okay, so our first winner of the day is. Where's my winner? Oh, a new one, I think. Anna Howell. So I don't know if you're here today, but if you're watching the replay, please email Angelaemooklaunchers.com and let her know which of the four prizes. And Angela, you might have to type out the four prizes. Bolivia Life. Can I win a shout out? Absolutely. Here's your shout out. Thank you for being here. Okay, so Angela, the prizes were my book, Dale's book, the mug, and the journal. So Anna. And it was Anna, right? Oh, dear. Anna Howell. Okay, so Anna, thank you so much for commenting. The day a video was released, email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know which of the prizes. And please include your mailing address. It happens. It happens all the time. Somebody says, hey, I'd love to win the mug. That's it. We don't know where to send it if you don't give us a mailing address. So please include that mailing address. Okay, let's see what you guys are chatting about. Oh, and now. Okay, what was that name of the organization? It was Winning writers. Winning writers. And it's the North Street Book Prize. I think I'm saying it right. Let me just do a quick little Google search so that I am not. This is also new. That's why I wasn't even sure winningwriters.com and it's the North Street Book Prize. That is the official title. And that is so new. Well, I think Angela would know, because I did. I did post it in my weekly report, so she probably heard about it now. But it's a new, new, new, new thing that we just. Just set up. Okay, just checking you guys comments. We photogal. Hello. You're. You're. You're not the only one here from Connecticut, So welcome. Okay, so let's do a participation prize today. And you know what? What I had written down for participation prizes, I had said, who was the first person to say hello today? And that person, if they're still here, was going to pick somebody. How about that twist, huh? So let me just check to see who was the first person who said hello today. And, Brian. Hey, you're. You get to pick somebody today. So you get to give. It's. It's like it's passing on that feeling of winning. So you win the opportunity to give to somebody else that should get a prize. How's that? I thought we'd do something different now. Brian's won before, so I know he's not going to be sad because he has won before. This may have. This may have backfired if it was somebody who had never won before. So, Brian, who do you want to give a prize to today? Let us know. The 15th person below. Blow me. I love your style. Okay, Angela, the 15th person below Brian is today's winner. All right. Thank you. That's great. Angela loves that you're making her count. Why? I always get my son to count. I'm like, now we're going to count in Spanish. So let's go. And so. So now he has to count in Spanish. Okay, let's go back to my notes. So, recapping. So the seven tips. Oh, sorry, I lost my notes. There we go. So the seven tips. Number one I covered was networking. So building those connections early. Number two was, where's my notes? Oh, yeah. Decide on the most important thing for your book launch. So really commit to that one thing. Of course you want a lot of amazing things to happen, but what's the most important thing? Commit to that and lower the pressure a little bit so that your book launch doesn't blow you apart. And also make you sad if you miss your, your goals. Number three is build your book Army. Start connecting with them. Reach out to people. Build that list. There's some technical pieces to that. Angela, there's a video on Book army. You can drop in the comments if you didn't already. Now, we are close to book launch in terms of these tips and the next couple of tips I have for you are kind of things that you can do early on, but they lead up to that book launch week. So tip number four is build your launch assets. And there's a lot of things you can do that would fall under the launch asset category. And so, so I'm going to just kind of give you a list. We've got a few videos to refer you to and a few of the pieces that we haven't talked about before. I'm going to build out some videos for you that will probably come out probably in June because they'll, they'll fall into my next recording schedule. But number one is build out your media kit. Have these ready early so that you can be sending it out with early reviews, early pitches for podcasts and media and things like that for launch. So build your media kit. And we do have a video on media kits if you want to check that out. Angela will drop that into the comments for you as well. Build out your social media posts. And this is the one video that kind of comes to mind that I'm going to create for you for June, probably. We create 10 different posts for our clients and it's a mix of text and image posts. It pulls some quotes from the book, it highlights some reasons why somebody might want to buy the book. It's a nice variety. And so, and so I'll showcase this and put it in more detail for you. Again, I don't dedicate a ton of time and conversation to social media because if you haven't already spent years building social media, it's not going to sell a ton of books for you at launch. But you do want to be talking about it. You do want to have consistent messages across any social media that you are on in order to create or showcase or position yourself as an expert. Because when you go to media, you reach out to create any partnerships you are looking to speak, any of those things, chances are they're going to check you out somewhere. And if you have consistent messaging everywhere around your book topic and you're speaking to that ideal audience, then you're more likely to get moved forward in the process and ultimately get to these winning relationships and Opportunities because everything is consistent and showcases you as an expert. So that's where the value in posting on social media and having those posts really is in my mind. Unless you already have that social media influence, in which case that's going to help you sell books. You want to have copy ready to go for your emails. So there's, there's a few different emails that we send out. One is kind of that early launch, hey, it's coming. Get excited. You may want to drive pre launch sales. Pre sales. And then you really want to have that launch week email that talks about any incentives for buying. If you're doing a 99 cent launch promotion, any of that stuff, don't make the emails too long. One of them could have an excerpt from your book to kind of showcase some of the content to tease some of the material. But prepare those in advance because there's going to be so many things going on launch week that it's good to have them ready to go. So you can just hit send to whoever it's going to. You also want to have launch week incentives if you're doing that, and a corresponding web page. So the websites for those are the self publish and success seed. I've just forgotten. But I did give it to Angela so she can post that one. And then also the. Yeah, so that's, that's the launch week incentives. So I'll get Angela to drop that in there so you guys can check that out and then I'll read it out loud. For those of you who, who aren't seeing the comments. I know some people don't. They're just listening. They're not able to or aren't watching. So for you, I will read that URL out in a moment and then also have your emails to your book army. So separate from your emails, your book army. And so what you want to be telling them is okay, buy your book on pre sale. Right now I set my book at 99 cents for my book army for a week so that they could buy a copy for 99 cents so that when on Amazon so that when they post their review on Amazon it showed as a verified purchase. But you don't have to do that. But it's also just getting them ready and saying, hey, it's coming. You're gonna be able to post your review here. You could post the reviews early on Goodreads so they can start posting them before launch on Goodreads. So just letting them know all those details and then letting them know when the book is out and they can start posting their reviews. I also highly, highly recommend that you create a reader magnet with a squeeze page. And I know I'm throwing a lot of terminology at you. So the reader magnet example is book launchers.com forward/getagost. That is an example of a squeeze page, which is essentially a page that is designed to get somebody's email address with a lead magnet, which is the download of how to hire a ghostwriter. So you can check that out. And then Angela posted the launch week incentives, which were at. Oh, that URL got cut off for me too. Okay. They were at launch week. Okay, so it was self publish and succeed forward slash launch week. No spaces or anything like that. So for self publishand succeed.com launchweek that shows you an example of a web page that has launch week incentives. You can definitely have stronger launch week incentives. It's just an example for you so you can see how it can be set up and how you do it. And then the squeeze page with a reader magnet or a lead magnet example is book launchers.com forward/get a ghost. Okay, that's a lot. A lot of assets, a lot of pieces. And I'm sure you're taking notes, but going, oh, my goodness, there's so much to do. So this is why you do it in advance from your book launch to try to get yourself all organized. And Mike says, package just arrived. Thank you so much. Much appreciated, bestie. Thank you. Okay. I'm so glad your book got there. Okay. Oh, okay. So you just said, please don't say blank. I scream whenever I say that. And so now do you want me to say that to make you scream? I won't say what's in quotes. Okay. Oops, I just hit my. Hit my table. So. Okay, I don't think I've ever said that, but anyways. Okay. Okay, now, so those were a lot of links, a lot of things to do. Let's take a breath and remember that we have a goal for your book launch, and you have to do the things that are going to set you up for success. And if there's only one thing you do, it is try to get those book reviews. So focus on that book army. Focus on getting those reviews. That's really fundamental to every book launch. Okay, number five, one thing that we do that you may want to do is to load your book up on site, like book sirens or book funnel for your pre launch so readers can gain early access and you can have secure digital copies delivered. Some people didn't like that. And don't like that our clients, when we set them up too, because they have to opt in. But it allows you as an author to have secure digital copies. It does create a level of security out there so that you can also communicate with your launch list. There's some pros and cons to it. I'm not really fussed about having secure copies because I'm kind of like, what's the worst case scenario? Somebody gets my book, reads it, signs up, maybe wants to work with us as a company comes to visit, YouTube becomes a new bestie. So I'm not that worried about that. But there are obviously risks and drawbacks to those things. So some of these sites can be a great tool to use for that. We also set up a lot of our clients on Goodreads giveaways to help get more reviews, to help elevate the profile of the book on Goodreads. For some of our clients, we also use NetGalley as a paid review service. You can also look at Union Square review service. We haven't used them yet, but I've had a call with him and I really like what they're doing. They have high quality reviews and then if you get a four or a five star review, you get to go into their book club program and potentially into their bookstore program where they have, I don't know, 25 or 50 independent bookstores that they have partnerships with. So it's a pretty cool review service. Those are paid review services. They don't go on Amazon. They can be editorial reviews, which if you haven't seen the recent YouTube video that I put out explaining what editorial reviews are and why they're useful, then definitely do that. But ultimately, you know, those are some things you can do pre launch. You want to be looking at some of the professional review sites and professional reviewers before launch because some of them will only take your book pre launch and they generally want to have a as close to a final copy as possible. And you will be. Some of the professional review sites are quite critical, so you do want to give them your best copy, which is another reason to have your book done well before launch. If you're pursuing these kind of things, you can also apply for a bookbub promotion and other promotions kind of in the pre launch period. You may have to book some of the promotional sites out there. You have to schedule your promotions well in advance. So you might want to be doing that before your launch number six. So number six is I'm going to not give it a time frame because you can use it pre launch, you can use it for launch week and you can use it later on. It's kind of a multiple prong tool. It's one that we use sometimes for launch week if a client wants to do it. Otherwise we use it as a 90 day strategy. A 90 day post launch strategy. It can also be a pre launch strategy, which is what I used it for. But it's running a $0.99 promotion. So this is promo price, this is not the list price and this is obviously just ebook. But I did this early for my book army and then I'll do it again at 90 days to kind of give the book some lift on Amazon and continue to have Amazon know that the book is selling and you know, to keep that momentum going and even regenerate some of the momentum. So what you want to do is you set your book to 99 cents and it gives you that, it gives you the option to now promote it at 99 cents. So it gives you kind of a reason to email people and you know, you know, encourage people to buy it right now. It also gives you the opportunity to pay for some promotional sites that want your book at 99 cents to $2.99 like BookBub. But there's other promotional sites out there too where you want to be on for 99 cents and, and then this allows you to get a boost in your book sales and then it does pay off. If you do this and you get that promotion, there tends to be a little bit of a trickle effect afterwards so that Amazon is now rewarding your promotion because you've already got consistent momentum and you've already taught Amazon that your book is going to sell and then you get boozed. This can be a great way for Amazon to showcase your book for keywords, showcase your book in the categories, even send out an email to their readers that your book is out. When they see who buys your book this, they now go, okay, now I can send it to other people that have bought books like these other ones because we are seeing that people who buy this book will also buy this book. So those kind of things can work really, really well as pre launch launch or post launch. The key is not it doesn't work if you're doing it all the time. So we like to do it on a 90 day basis, kind of a 90 day rotation. We set these 99 cent ebook promotions and you're mailing your list, you're sending out promote, you're paying for some promotions that will run it for 99 cents to their lists. And it gives you that overall boost every once in a while that you really do need to keep the momentum and Amazon to keep selling your book when you're not doing too much. But tip 7 is for you to keep doing something every day for your book. So this is pre launch, this is launch, this is post launch. I make the suggestion all the time and I do this. This is the one thing I do do, except for Sundays. I don't work on Sundays. If I'm working on Sundays, it's because I didn't work on Saturday. But I try to do one thing every day to keep promoting my books. So here's just a short list of things that you can do. Pitch for a podcast, ask for a review. Look for a new partnership I told you about North Street Book Prize. That's just one partnership. We've got some other really, really cool partnerships coming out that I can't tell you about yet that we're working on. Some are in progress, some are committed, and it's all because of just reaching out and saying, hey, I've got this book. Here's your audience. Do you think there's something we can do? And maybe not quite in that order. It's kind of like, hey, you know, trying to understand what somebody's doing with their audience and seeing where there's a fit. Post on social media. Thank a reviewer. Send some books to some potential readers or people that may have a lot of your reader in their audience. You can send them a book, a physical book in that case. I don't recommend sending PDFs cold. A physical book will at least usually get opened. Although it's really hard to know where to send books these days because the office addresses are not. I mean, right now I'm not in Los Angeles, so all the mail that gets sent to our office gets opened by a friend of mine and then shipped up to Canada. So we're returning to the States next month though. But it is, it's been a little bit of a pain having an office that is, you know, somebody else has to monitor the mail. So it is something that's been a challenge for us on a lot of these book mailing strategies because people don't post their home addresses, they post their office addresses and then who's getting the mail and is it getting where you want to go? That said, I still recommend books being mailed out strategically as a great way to get corporate prosp, corporate relationships built. Can book workshops, can book speaking gigs. That way it still can be an effective tool. It's just been more challenging in the last year because of the pandemic. But try to do one thing every single day for your book and for your launch. And over time, these little things can make a huge, huge difference, because you never know which podcast is going to lead to that massive business opportunity, which book sent out is going to lead to that next speaking gig. And let me tell you, it only takes one really cool speaking gig or one amazing podcast interview to open a lot of doors now. Now, you may have to do 50 podcast interviews before that one really cool one hits. But I'm telling you, it's almost always a surprise. Which podcast interview, which speaking engagement kind of leads to that phenomenal opportunity. And these things are now possible when your book is out. So use that book. Talk about that book. Keep talking about that book once it launches, before it launches, once it launches. And remember that you might feel like you're talking about it all the time, but nobody's listening to you every single day. And you know, as long as you find different ways to kind of work it into the conversation, it's okay to keep talking about your book. That's why you wrote it. All right, friends, that was the content. That was a big one. Like I said, I could have done, like, 25 things. So I really tried to keep to the seven that were going to be the most impactful. So, oops, I just hit my mic. So the seven today. Who was paying attention? My prize today is the person who can name the seven. So don't do them. Don't hit enter if you can. Try not to, because that'll be really hard for Angela. And actually, you know what? To make it easier, name three of the seven. How about that? Name three of the seven tips that I said for a more successful book launch. Give us three. Try to do them all in one post together so that we don't have to try to track it all down. The first person to post three. Right. Will be our winner. And then I'm going to give you the other YouTube prize. And we'll answer questions for until we are out or until it's 3pm Pacific. Whatever comes first. Okay, so where's my little random name drawer? There we are. Okay, so again, Tuesday, Friday, if you've commented, you're in this draw. So here we go. Who's our winner? It is going to Tobias Baldo. Congratulations. I do believe, I think this is the first time you've won. So congratulations. Email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know which of those four prizes you would like and include your mailing address. So congratulations. I don't know if you're here right now live. I haven't seen you. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't. I don't think I've seen you on there today, but I think you'll probably catch the replay and you can shoot us an email after. Thanks, you guys. I see lots of thumbs up, so thank you so much for that. It feels good, right? It doesn't just, you know, make me feel good. It makes you feel good to give a thumbs up, too. Phew. That was a big one. And I see you guys are chatting away in the comments, so that is fantastic. Okay, so let's see, where do we go here? I gotta pick my winner. Okay. Sorry, I'm just reading, trying to find the person who says the three. You were close. Early Years Matters tv. But not quite. It's not quite the seven. You definitely. You listed three things that I totally agree with, but it wasn't quite specifically the seven that I talked about. Let's see. Michael Dominguez. Yes. Okay. Michael, you nailed it. Okay, so build Book Army. That was definitely one of them. Do something every day that was number seven. So Book Army, I believe was number three. Number three on my list. And do something every day was number seven. And decide what is a successful book launch was number two. So you did it. Congratulations, Michael. Let us know what your prize is that you want. And yes, it was very dense content today. I really. I had a lot to cover. I. I could have. We could talk about this. All this could almost be. Not almost. This could be a full day of training on this topic. So. So, yeah. Congratulations, Michael. Email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know what you want. We have your address, but make sure it's the one that you want us to send things to. All right, so let me just answer questions. What do we have Angela for questions? And we'll wrap it up. So thank you, guys. You guys have been busy in the comments. I'll have to read them after and catch up on all of these amazing conversations that you guys are having over there. Let's see. Okay, Mindful Eats, if you upload to Amazon, does that mean you are signing up for exclusivity on kdp? No. And in fact, I have a video that just came out on Friday, last week, I think on exclusive to Amazon. So Angela can drop that in the comments for you, the link on that. But so no you have to opt into the KDP select program in order to be, to be exclusive. There we go. So what? We, we generally don't, but there are advantages to it. So some of our clients will go 90 days, which is the requirement exclusivity, in order to participate in some of their promotional opportunities that are only available to the folks that are in the KDP select program. But generally Speaking, we use KDP print to upload to Kindle and Amazon.com and, and you don't go exclusive. You, you just don't check off that KDP select enrollment. And so you can go wide and be distributed on your website or anywhere else. So there you go. And then Early Years Matters tv if you upload your book on Amazon, will they automatically pay you when you reach a threshold? Or how does this work? You get paid? I think with Amazon KDP, I think it's every 30 days and it just goes into your bank account, whatever amount it is. Jacqueline Kyle, our production manager, would know better, and I don't think she's here today, but I think it's every 30 days. It just goes straight into your bank account. I'm pretty sure I get an email notification every month from, from all the amazons. It's like Amazon.uk has deposited money. Amazon, you know, all these Amazons deposit money into your bank account every 30 days, no matter what the threshold is. Now, there are criteria and if you're in a different country, that can change. If they're mailing a check, they only mail a check when it's at a certain rate. But if they're depositing straight to your bank, it happens every 30 days. Okay, how does your publishing work? What's the cost? Oh, Alan. Okay, so our services are on our website@book launchers.com and the thing to know with how we work is we're a full service self publishing team. We're not a publishing house. We are. We're really a team that is marketing focused. So right from the very first conversation you have with me, we talk about how, who your book is for, how we're going to help you sell it, how we're going to position it, and if you're a good fit, then we work with you all the way through the process to write and publish and market a nonfiction book that's really generally geared towards some sort of a business brand. You know, building, boosting outcome. You have a purpose for the book beyond just selling books. Selling books is great and there's a lot more that you can do with a book. So that's really what we focus on. So the prices are all there. We're a membership based service, so what that means is as long as you're a member, we keep working on your book and that accounts all the way through to marketing. So some of our clients, their books launched in 2018 and we're still working with them. Some of them are writing new books, some of them, we're still marketing the book. They launched in 2018. So it's kind of a cool thing. We build long term relationships. But our service is really right for folks who want that all encompassing service. They keep all rights and royalties and set up fully independently. So okay, whew. Let's see. I'm an American living in Bolivia. Oh, that's awesome. I love that you guys are all connecting on in the chat. All right, you guys, it has been a whopper of a session today. Oh, wait, organizations. As a children's book author, should I look for collaborations? I think so. I don't know. Children's books are not my specialty. I'm all about nonfiction books. But you know, Keith Wheeler books is a fabulous resource on children's books. So is Dale Roberts self publishing with Dale on YouTube. So look, look up Keith Wheeler books and self publishing with Dale. They both do really great content on children's books. So check those folks out. They're awesome, awesome guys with really great, solid advice. So check them out. All right, you guys. Oh, Angela says we have a lot more questions. Okay, I'll take, I'll take a couple more questions and then I gotta call it. My voice is gonna go. I can feel it. I put a lot into today. Okay. Do you? Yes. So Efren's question, do you enter book launchers clients into any writers awards? Yes. We have just rolled out a change to our service effective April 1st. And so now at our platinum level, we'll enroll you into one book award every three months that you are with us in marketing. At the Platinum plus, we are going to enter you into three awards for every three months that you are in post launch marketing. We are working with a book award service in part to find these awards. And then we also have some awards. That's why I had that meeting with North Street Book Prize and, and there's lots of really, really, really cool opportunities. We're using my book, but we're also building relationships to help our clients and find the awards that really matter, that are going to give authors some exciting exposure, some credentials. Something more than just saying, I won X award and the award Went to almost everybody that entered and they just took the fees and went home and didn't tell you who judged your book or anything. So there's some sketchy awards. But yes, we are entering our clients into carefully curated book awards. So that's been really, really fun. Something that we've been building out to try to do this. And now as of April 1, we are doing that for all of our clients. What other questions did Angela find here would you say is a reasonable amount of money to spend on your book launch? Totally depends and reasonable. So relative. So I wish there was an answer to this because it really depends. I mean, some of our clients are hiring us on top of a PR firm. On top of they have people in their company that works exclusively on the book launch, which, that is a huge launch. So if you're going for a bestseller list, that's what you really have to do. So the couple of clients that have had us, plus pr, plus their internal team, they're going for the Wall Street Journal, the. What's the other, The Washington Post, the USA Today, they're going for those kind of lists. They're coordinating a lot of sales. So you're looking at spending, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 on your launch alone, because most PR firms are charging somewhere around 3 to $5,000 a month for PR. And then you've got book launchers on top of that, and then your internal team as well. So you're spending a lot on launch. You can go to the other side of the spectrum and spend almost nothing and just bootstrap it. My launch, my book launch, or sorry, my more than cash flow book launch, it was all me working really hard to make connections, to leverage those connections. I didn't spend money on my book launch to get to number one on Amazon. I just reached out and worked hard. And so I put time. I mean, it was a lot of hours that went into that. I also had many years of building relationships, so those were. That was kind of the investment going into that. But I did spend on PR post launch. So I hired a PR firm. It was $3,000 a month, and I did that for three months. So there's $9,000 just on a PR firm. It was worth it. I was on TV all across Canada. I was in many newspapers, syndicated, you know, radio broadcasts. I did a lot of media as a result of that pr. So it was worth it. But again, that was that. So you can also spend money on Amazon ads. Really, it's focus on your goal and then Figure out what you need. Or you can look at your resources and figure out what's possible based on your resources. That's a better way to approach it. Okay, what else? Angela, let's do one more and then I'm gonna call it. Okay. Will Amazon delete reviews from my social media followers? Yes, yes, Amazon will delete reviews. They will, on their own prerogative, decide if you have any connection to your social media and an Amazon. So if you've signed up for Amazon when you connect your Goodreads. When you sign up for Goodreads. Sorry, we set up Amazon accounts as much as possible with a different email address than you use for your social media to keep that distance. For starters, secondary is when you are on Goodreads and you claim your book on Goodreads. Do not connect your social media to Goodreads because Amazon owns Goodreads. Amazon has really amazing ways to figure out how you have connections. And they have deemed social media as a connection. So it doesn't matter that you are arm's length from them anymore. They are. We've had clients who couldn't post reviews on my book. We think we know how the connection happened, but it doesn't matter. Like, they have identified it and it's really. It used to be friends and family. I think they just now say they don't want you having anybody any relationship, not their reviews to be clean. And there were to be too. So it's kind of a catch 22, right? We want the reviews to be valued and we want lots of reviews. So it's hard. But yes, they will and they can and they have remove the reviews. So do everything you can to keep the separation from people that you have any connection with and your book reviews. So that's. There's a whole other thing I could go into on that. But ultimately that's why it's really important to cultivate as many people that you don't have close relationships in any way and keep your social media and Amazon separate. That's it, you guys. That's all I've got. We've got lots of questions, so come join us on our deep dive because then you get me and a lot of other people from our team answering these questions. Deep dive. You can connect with us. It's on April 17th at 10am Pacific Standard Time. We're there for two hours. We're talking nonfiction writing techniques. But you can ask all kinds of questions. I'm going to have. I'm pretty sure our production manager, Jacqueline Kyle, will be there and I'm pulling some of our phenomenal writing team out to talk with you that day as well. Be kind on them. They don't normally come out from behind the manuscripts and the screens to share their expertise, but I think it'll be fantastic. I'm really excited. So book launchers.com deep dive to sign up for that and we've got awesome content for you every Tuesday and Friday, and we're back here again in two weeks. All right, make it a great Tuesday. Thanks so much for a fantastic, fantastic. Oh, so many comments, you guys. I can't wait to catch up on all of the conversations afterwards. Make it a great day. Bye. Thanks Angela. I appreciate you.