Always Be Thinking Book Marketing - 7 Tips | Live Replay

Foreign. Hello and welcome everyone to another Tuesday live stream. It is a fantastic day to join you, mostly because it's pouring rain outside and I don't really want to be out there. So it's wonderful to be with you in here. All right, today's live stream is all about always be thinking book marketing. So, you know, always, always be closing. If you have any Glengarry Glen Ross fans, I might be dating myself now when I make references to 20 year old movies or almost 20 year old movies. But instead of always be closing, think about always be book marketing. Always be thinking book marketing. So welcome. Hello Angela. Thank you for saying hello. When you arrive, make sure you say hello even if you're watching the live stream because not only do I reply to all comments, but also whenever you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some sweet book launchers. Swag. So today, as I mentioned, we're talking about always be thinking book marketing. So have some. I think I have seven, seven tips for you to be thinking book marketing that they span from when you're thinking about writing a book all the way to while you're writing the book. Always be think book marketing. So we've got lots of cool tips for you today. Really what I did was I took the best tips from podcasts and live events that I've done where people come up to me after and go, wow, that tip, nobody else has told me. So that's what I focused on for you all. Next live stream. You can mark your calendars while we're waiting for folks to join us. The next live stream will be happening on Tuesday, June 23, same time, 2pm Pacific Standard Time, 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Then we're going to have one more live stream on July 7 and then we're going to take a break during the summer. We'll be taking a four week hiatus from posting videos and then we'll be taking a six week hiatus from live streams. So our next live stream after that will be August 25th. I know I'll miss you guys, but it'll also be nice to have a few weeks off from live streaming and posting videos so that my video editor can get a break and I can get a little bit of a break too. So. All right, so let's just see who's in the house today. Say hello, Fee o'. Shea. Welcome. Benjamin Preston. I actually think I'm going to mention your book today. I think I was one of the ones. If not, I was working on your book today. You're Top of mind, my friend. Laurel. Hello. Welcome. Kevin McGuire. Always a pleasure to have you in the house. Joyce, Hello. All right, so thank you to everybody who's already smashed that thumbs up button to let me know you're here. And it's great to have you here. All right, let's just dive in. I mean, six months has almost passed. Has almost passed us by 2020. Wow. What, what a year so far. It's going to change the country, the world, you know, in many ways for the better. But, you know, Covid. I'm not sure some of the lasting impacts of COVID will be all that great for us. Ultimately, as authors, we have a really, really important job if we choose to see it that way. And our job is to offer perspective, another lens for others to see the world through. You know, everybody faces challenges, and it can be really hard to see those challenges in another way. So I think authors have a really important job to offer perspective on that. And every voice, every voice has something to offer. And if you write with your reader in mind and with impacting your reader in mind and what that specific impact that you want to have on that reader, then I think you can write a book that people will need for years and years to come. So there's tremendous opportunity and tremendous importance on what you're doing as an author now, as much as I want you to always be focusing on what's in it for your reader and really ultimately how they're going to benefit from what you're reading, even memoirs. And, you know, I put this video out a few weeks ago about mistakes people make when they write memoirs, and I talked about how they get hung up on it being their story and they forget that there still has to be something in it for the reader, some sort of a benefit, not just inspiration. It has to be more specific, something more, something bigger that they can take away from a memoir, even. So, but even though I'm saying focus on your reader, you still need to find readers. You still have to write a book that you're going to be able to market and you're going to be able to put in the hands of readers so you can have that impact, which is why we're talking about book marketing and always be thinking book marketing. So no matter what phase you're in right now, we're gonna have some tips that will help you. And hopefully, if you write, if you. If you're done your book and you're here for marketing, you're still going to get value from this. But you can also Be thinking I would do that differently, perhaps on my next book. So I've got a handful of tips. I think I have seven specifically. I made some notes. So the first tip, I'm just going to dive right in and then I'll check in. If you guys have questions, you can always post them. My team is here, so they'll answer some of the questions in the chat and then flag questions for me that I need to on. So, but the first tip is write a book. Well, while you're thinking about the book, while you're writing the book, think about marketing. And this comes back to your audience. So knowing who that audience is and what I like to tell people, you know, for those of you here who've had calls with me, you know, in the first half a dozen questions that I'm asking to understand your book surprise people sometimes because I'm not even really asking about the book itself. I'm really trying to figure out if there is a problem that a specific reader has and where that specific reader is going to be hanging out. The books I struggle with are the ones when people come in and they say, my book is for everyone. And then I struggle because I can't envision how we're going to help them market that book. So if you do this, what I think is think about where that audience is hanging out. So who are you helping and where are they? And for me, when I wrote my first book, More Than Cash Flow, this was really easy. Now, that first book, it focused on a new real estate investor, somebody who was getting excited about buying a bunch of properties. And I wanted them to make smart decisions to help them make money and minimize the problems as a real estate investor. And I knew where those people were hanging out because that's where I was going to. That's where I'd been going as a new real estate investor. I knew the meetup groups, I knew the magazines they were reading, I knew the bloggers and the newsletters they subscribed to. And I had made a list. And it was an easy list for me to make because I was that reader at some point. So if you are your or have been your ideal reader, you. It's easier for you to make a list. But again, think about it. If you're targeting everyone, if you think my book is going to inspire everyone, how the heck are you going to make a list of where you're going to find those people with that problem? That's the first thing is, before you even write this book, think about where your ideal reader is going to be hanging out. Erica Cisneris Honest Immigration. Her book is called Honest Immigration. It's not for anybody looking to immigrate into the U.S. her book is for folks who are in the U.S. and want to stay and they're eligible to receive a humanitarian visa for mistreatment. And that's a very specific audience. And she knows the professionals and the groups, there's churches and other places that, that these folks are hanging out. They're already going to for help. So she can get those books into those places and so you can, you can picture and you know, it's very specific, you know exactly who this is for and then it's just a matter of finding all of the places and all of the people, all of the companies and associations and groups that serve that specific audience. Another example, Alec Hansen's book bypassed. It's not just for mortgage professionals because that's who his target market is, but it's specifically for mortgage professionals who've been left behind by that digital customer. So typically I am picturing somebody who's been a mortgage broker, been a mortgage professional for a while and they haven't kept up with social media, they haven't kept up with their website, somebody's googling their name and they're not finding anything and they don't understand social media. So this is great because not only am I picturing mortgage professionals and companies, I'm picturing companies that have been around for a long time that are likely to have seasoned folks that have been there for 20 years who need a refresher. They're getting left behind by that digital customer. They're looking at the 20 something mortgage professionals in their office going, I don't know how they're getting so many business, so many clients when they're brand new to this. And it's because they get the digital customer. So hopefully you guys get that. You got to be able to see where that audience is hanging out so that when you're marketing to them, you already know where they are. And that's why when people say this book is for women between the age of 30 and 40 or this is for new dads, actually new dads you can start to picture, but still it's too general. That's why those things don't work because you can't picture how you're going to market them, where you're going to have outreach and those kind of things. So yeah, so that was tip number one. It was a doozy, wasn't it? All right, so self publishing With Dan. Gail's in the house, too. Efren. Mr. Thadalo. I don't think I've seen you here before. Welcome. Sorry, I butchered your name. Diani. Tamara. Mojo. We'll call you Mojo. Hello. Good to see you again. It's been a while, I think. Kevin. Number two. Welcome, everybody. Hey, it's great to see so many folks here today. Great to have you all here. Rachel, Marnie, vending guy 47. Derek. Awesome. All right, fantastic. Okay, so diving in. Likewise. I always forget about when Julie goes live. Oh, I was just looking at Dale's comment. I always forget when Julie goes live. I just stumbled over this in my subscription feed while I was researching. Great to have you here again, Dale. That's usually what happens for me with yours, too. I'm always so excited when I can catch you live, though. Susan, Valerie. So good to see you. So if you are new to the live streams, do make sure you're commenting and chatting because we do give prizes for those of you who are here live. So if you hide in secret and don't tell us that you're here, then you won't have a chance at getting a prize for being live. Of course, we do also give prizes for everybody who comments the day a new video comes out. So every Tuesday and Friday, and that includes live streams. So if you're watching the replay and it's Tuesday, you'd better go ahead and comment because then you'll get entered to win next time around. All right, so number two on this, in terms of, for those of you just joining in, we're talking about always be thinking book marketing. So while you're writing, think strategically about who might make a great marketing partner for you or your book. So while you're doing this, because a lot of times you're going to have these great ideas while you're writing, and then by the time your book gets published, you're exhausted and you forget what was in your book because you've read it 24 times and then you never want to read it again. But you've also forgotten some of the stuff that's in your book because some of the process takes a while. So make notes of people and companies specifically that you talk about while you're writing, especially if you're writing favorably about an author, a book, a program, or a product or a service plan, then to send those folks or people in those organizations an early copy of the book with a thank you note. It doesn't have to be a thank you note with an ask it can just be a thank you note and then later on reach out and say, hey, did you check out my book? And then maybe there's a way for us to work together. There can be. That's how I would do it personally. I would send the book first and then follow up to make sure they got the book and then also follow up perhaps with some sort of a, you know, hey, maybe we could do a webinar. Maybe we could do this. Or it just depends on what your goals are. And we'll talk more about that next week. June 19th, we have a video coming out, an Author Spotlight video from Ryan Berman. And he actually talks about when he was writing his book, how he knew or hoped he was going to leverage his book into more speaking engagements and really to grow his career as a paid professional speaker. And so he did some things and give some tips. I won't reveal it all now because I want you to tune in on the next 19th and check it out. But it's really cool what he did, you know, to get speaking gigs at organizations like Snapchat and then how that was leveraged into future speaking gigs. So thinking strategically while you're writing, maybe including some of them with the thoughts, you know, only if they're genuine, if it's genuinely something you want to highlight and it fits with your book, of course. But making a note of those companies, people, books, products, services that you are highlighting when you're doing it. So that. Oh, okay. We have a live stream crasher, my friends. Yeah, well, that's how things go sometimes. I just wanted to knock on my dad's room. I see that. Sorry, one minute. I'm just going to summon help. Okay, so, yeah, so everyone, that's Jackson. Do you want to come say hi since you're here? You might as well come and say hi to everybody since you're here. Come on, say hi. And then hopefully your daddy's gonna come get you. Okay, look on the screen. Say hi. Hi. Okay, come here, bud. Here we go. All right. Well, such is life these days, isn't it? Okay, so where were we? So, Ryan Berman next week. Make sure you check that out. So, yeah, I think that's all I want to say about it, is really make that list. And if it's appropriate while you're writing, think about those organizations or people that might make great promotional partners. And if you include them in your book, that may give you a better chance at connecting with them in the future and building a relationship where they not only will promote your book, but Perhaps hire you to speak, hire you to do some sort of a workshop or so on. Okay, so number three is collect your favorite quotes and excerpts while you're writing. So one of the things that I do, and now Melissa on our team, she does, helps me with, is we go back over a client's book after it's been published, and we pull out three to five quotes from the book that we then use in social images, social media images, to promote the book and to highlight some of the cool stuff that's inside of the book. If you're doing this while you write, you're going to. Or even while you're editing and even sometimes making a note of those phrases that editors will highlight and say, this is really cool, this is interesting, this is different. And you pull those out, you're going to have a document of probably 20 or 30 different quotes that you can then have a graphics designer or yourself, if you're creative like that, create some social media, social media imagery, and you're going to have a year's worth of quotes that you can use that are going to add value, be cool for other people, but also promote your book and promote some of the stuff that you believe and want to share with others. So I think that's something to do while you're writing or editing your book so that you don't have to do what we do, which is go back over the book after the fact and try to find the stuff that makes it cool. All right, so they all said hi. So thank you. Thank you for the child cameo there. I love how everybody's saying hi to him. So thank you for that. All right, so, yeah, and April, sorry, Angela's here as well as. Who else did I see from. Oh, Jacqueline's in the house, too. So wonderful to have you guys. Thanks for. That's to my team. So if you guys do have questions that I don't get to. They're gonna. They're here to answer them as well. Okay, so tip number four for you while you're writing, start your outreach. And I'm going to give another shout out to another video when I'm doing the. Afterwards, after I post the video for everybody to see, I'll put them in the description, the links to these videos. So to Ryan Berman's video and this other video I'm going to mention so that you guys can easily find them. But Michael Brenner did a video with us as well, and it was all about how to get lots of reviews for your book and his big takeaway when I asked the authors, I always say, what would you do differently on a future book? His big thing was that he would start his outreach sooner. So he would start reaching out to the people that he was hoping would endorse or provide blurbs for his book. He would do that much sooner in order to get more. So while you're writing your book, start your outreach. And for me, this is more about making the connections now and trying to serve other people in whatever way you can. You know, I tend to say yes to a lot of things to support others, and I don't do that, you know, with the intention that in the future they'll support me. But it's one of those things where the more that you're connecting with people who have your ideal, ideal reader in their audience today, the more chances are that they'll support you in the future if you've done things to support them in the past. And that's kind of what Michael Brenner says in his video, is that he got a lot of reviews fast for his book because he'd done a lot of reviews for other people in the past. So if you never, ever give any other books a review, it's going to be hard for you to call in any favors because you haven't been doing things to support others. So while you're writing, why not start your outreach, start building those connections if you know there's a YouTuber or a blogger or an Instagrammer, somebody out there that you're really hoping will endorse your book, you know, six, 12 months out, just start connecting on a regular basis. I mean, you guys know that I know who my YouTube besties are. I pay attention to who's commenting on a regular basis. If you only drop in and comment on one video, while I always appreciate that I'm not going to remember because there's hundreds of comments on my channel every single week. But if you're commenting consistently, then I'm going to notice. And I'm going to notice when you disappear. Right. I think I saw Derek here. He disappeared for a little while. Mojo has been gone for a while, so I notice when somebody is vanished. I mean, Studio 38 was a consistent commenter and then disappeared on me for a little while, too. Came back. So I noticed. And I will not be the only one. So find a channel where they're active, whoever it is, the influencer of the company, and start commenting and start building that relationship well before. And, you know, doesn't guarantee anything, but it increases the chances that you're going to be able to have some sort of a relationship that will help you promote your book when it comes out. Number five is write your table of contents to sell your book. You folks that are regulars on this channel, this is not news. This is not a new one for you. Again, I've got a great video on it. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this. But ah, see I did, I wrote down examples I knew Ben. I couldn't remember. I've been talking to Sarah about a bunch of stuff today too. Which actually I think we were talking about your book. Some, some ideas I had for promoting your book today too. But I knew, I knew Ben. Okay, I wasn't sure. I knew I'd been working on your book today. I just didn't know what it was for. So. So some really cool ideas for table of contents. So just a refresher if you haven't heard me talk about this. Every single chapter title should sell your book. And very, very few authors outside of our precious circle here do a good job of this. And we tend to see very boring chapter titles. Chapter titles that haven't been brainstormed, haven't put any effort in. It's just kind of like, what's this chapter about? Boom. That's my title. And off they go, every chapter title. When somebody opens your book, they're going to look at the chapter titles and if they're seeing stuff they think they already know what's inside that chapter, it's going to be hard to sell them that book. Same with the media, same with speaking engagements. If they look at those table of contents and go, oh, this person has some interesting ideas, then they're going to be curious enough to at least take another, take another look, read the first chapter, so on. So I did flip through some of our clients books today and just looking for some examples. Shel Phelps has a new book out called the Big Bliss Blueprint. One of her chapter titles that jumped off the page to me was a good choice Now Lays the Seeds of Prosperity. I like that one because it creates a little bit of curiosity of what makes a good choice now that will actually lead to prosperity in the future. So I like that she has some really cool titles as well. But the one that I actually started going through. And so kudos to you, Ben. Your table of contents had a ton of great chapters and I could see them not only creating curiosity and giving readers a benefit, but also potentially appealing to companies or organizations that might want a speaker. So I'll give you a couple of the ones that I wrote down. When to give up and when to give your all. I like that. I think that's really cool. Somebody's going to go, you know, you're going through a tough time and that's, you know, a lot of times you're thinking, do I give up or do I go all in? You know, it's kind of a thought that you have. At least that's a thought that I've had. Do I keep pushing? Is it worth it to keep pushing? Do I quit? You know, all those kind of things. So that's one that I go, oh, I wonder what his advice is on that. So it creates curiosity, also gives a benefit. It Quarter life crisis was just interesting. I think it creates curiosity. It makes you want to want to read it. And certainly if I'm in my 20s, feeling like everything is hard, I'm probably going to relate to that and want to know how to handle it. And then I really love the single secret to team success. It's the single secret. Team success isn't a new idea. But you're going, what's that secret? And why is it. Why is there only one secret to team success? So it makes you as a company want to know. As a person, it makes you want to know too. And then finally, I like Impact starts with you. I could see that being a movement almost. I could see that being certainly a talk or a workshop at a company. But impact starts with you just has power. I like that a lot. So those are just some cool examples. But just think differently. When you're looking at your chapter titles, imagine that every chapter title is a little salesperson that has to sell your book and just try to make every single one better. They don't have to be every single title doesn't have to be as good as a book title. But if they can create curiosity or sell a benefit or do both, then you're doing really, really well. And the big thing is just don't have it be something that you've seen in other chapters. And one example I give all the time is finding your why. And I picked on that one because I've seen it it at least five or six times in the last year. Finding your why is not is generic. And if somebody's reading your book and they're going to that chapter, they're going to go, I've already, I've already read this before. So you don't want anybody to ever think that. All right, so let's see I'm just checking here. Okay. Angela, you're. You'll pin my question. So you'll let me know when. I've got two more tips, I think, so you can come back to whatever questions we have. Mike, great to see you here. Elliot. Yay. Hello. And Ben says I actually got some emails, so Ben's in the house. I just gave his example. I didn't know he'd be here, so this is an extra treat. I actually got some emails about speaking to some companies and the woman I talked to said the chapter titles got excited to read. Yay. Just proves my point. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I know this from personal experience because I got speaking gigs off my chapter titles. My second book, book the New brand you. I had one chapter called you are who Google says you are, and associations and groups called me to come and give talks on that chapter title. So that's how I know that works. And, and, and it's powerful because, you know, people do flip to the table of contents and they will eliminate or go or go further based on that. So that's great. Yeah. And I see some people telling Dale they love his videos. You guys, if you haven't checked out self publishing with Dale, head on over there after the live stream and check out his content. He has amazing tips. I've started putting some of his videos in our playlists as well. So you'll see him in there. Yeah. And we've got another collab coming up. I'm pretty sure I just shot. So, yes, we do on YouTube videos for authors. So I knew I just had to reel back my brain on all the things I've got I'm working on. Okay, so a couple more tips for you. And then I know there was questions. So then I'll get Angela to flag those questions for me. Oh, and I had one more example. I'd written down Jeff Ruby Red Rock leadership. He had a cool section in his book called can't we just eliminate emotions. His book is a leadership book. And I just thought that was a cool chapter. It makes you go, oh, and you know, you'll have a reaction. You'll go, well, no, you need to have emotions. Or. Or, yes, like, let's get rid of all the emotional reactions to things. So. So you'll have a response to it and it'll in most cases will make you want to read that chapter. Also, I can see that one being something that you're training managers on dealing with emotions and those kind of thoughts. So I thought that was Pretty cool too. Okay, tip number six of Always be thinking book marketing previews and look inside all that early book matter. Must sell your book. And again, I have videos on all of these things, so I'll probably just link to a few of them. But a couple really quick pointers on this Acknowledgments to the back of the book. There is no need for your acknowledgments at the beginning. Most people are going to read them if they loved your book and they want to know who contributed. They don't need to see them at the beginning and it doesn't sell your book. So acknowledgments to the back Forward I get a lot of questions about forwards. Frankly, I don't like very many forwards. Most of them are very boring and we're all about no boring books at Book Launchers. And some people have actually paid people money for forwards that were terrible and they still put them in there because they paid people money for them. So here's a general criteria on a forward and I have a video on this for you. If the person is extremely famous, so the vast majority of people will know who they are when you say they did the forward or they're extremely famous in your niche. For example, if you're in the podcasting niche and somebody like and I've just James Lee Dumas, I could see Entrepreneur on Fire, but I couldn't think of his name or Pat Flynn or one of those other like they've been around the podcasting scene for a long time. They tend to keynote a lot of the podcasting conferences. Yet yes, if you get a forward from him and your book audience is a podcasting audience, by all means, that's that constitutes famous enough for that audience, but it's not famous enough for a general audience because there's probably many of you listening to me right now that don't know who those two people are. And that's because this is a wider audience than just podcasters. So you want that person to be a name that everyone will know so that you are borrowing credibility. The other thing is that they shouldn't be writing more than 500 words. And it does need to be interesting, like revealing a secret about you that nobody else knows, or revealing a secret about this topic or a little known fact or really the vast importance of what you're talking about that most people don't consider sell. It has to sell your book and sell you as the author of the book. That is the job of the forward. And if it does not do that, then it should not go in. Sorry if you have. If you paid somebody and they wrote a bad forward, but that's just the way it goes. It will hurt you more than it will help you if it is not Great introductions. These tend to ramble on about themselves. Authors and a lot of authors, and even myself. Write your introduction to center yourself in your writing journey. That's great. Rewrite it when your book is done and cut it down and make it only about the reader and make it shortened to the point point. And if it's not shortened to the point, ditch it and start with your first chapter. I still like introductions, but I like them to be short and all about the reader. If your introduction starts off I wrote this book because it's a very good sign that you should stop. That introduction needs to have a really big edit or just disappear. And then of course that first chapter, so important that it hooks the reader, it sells them, makes them want to keep reading. So that first chapter, that first sentence, has to grab them and offer them a benefit. Sell them on why they need to read the rest of your book. So really, really important that first 10, 15% of your book. Carefully consider every page and be thinking book marketing as you're putting all of those things together. I've even talked about dedications before and making your dedication. Even though it's kind of your one spot where you can give your loved ones a shout out, I still recommend you make it it something that's interesting for the reader to read because actually a lot of people read the dedications. So check that out. All right, tip number seven. My final tip for today on always be thinking book marketing. Probably not a surprise, but book titles. This is going to be about book titles. Now we've talked about book titles lots before. You know, just to recap, it needs to be easy to say, easy to remember, easy to spell. And in an ideal world, the website is also available. If you care about making this something that's going to be a long lasting part of a business, you probably should search for a trademark before you fall in love with the title. To make sure that the title is not trademarked, you can use the title of somebody else's book. If somebody else has a book by the same title, but there's competitive reasons why you might not want to, there can be some advantages to it, but you know, if it's a really popular, well known book, especially if it's in the same category as yours, you probably want a different title. But the bigger question then comes into, you know, is anything trademarked that you, you know, makes it so you can't have this or trademark it if you want it part of your business or are there websites available? Again, it's just about being search like searchability and you know, having it be relevant too. Of course. And spending a lot of time on title in advance is important because titles are hard to change. You know, Jacqueline's here, she can attest to the fact that you can change a cover. It's still a little bit of a pain to change a cover on a book, but you can do it. But changing a title means you have to change all your metadata, you have to get a different ISBN. You know, everything changes when you change your title, your registration, if you've registered it anywhere. You know, the title change is big. So spend some time and before you fall in love with the title, do some extra research and testing, you know, googling it, searching on Amazon for it, you know, even doing trademark search if that's going to be something that's important to you. Again, you know, trademarks are, sorry, titles can't be copyrighted, so you can use the same title as somebody else so long as that title is not trademarked. Some, some trademark. Just an example like Freakonomics, a lot of the Malcolm Gladwell titles, they trademarked them because there's a bigger brand around it. So some titles do have trademarking around it and you know, that's a whole, whole nother area. And actually Dale has done some really cool videos speaking of Dale Roberts on trademarks, when there's been some, some really funky things that have happened in the publishing world where people tried to trademark certain words, which was crazy. So he's actually done some really cool videos with some lawyers and things like that on trademarks if you want to dive into that with titles a little bit more. But some titles that I like that are from our groups, our authors mean people suck. So you know, it's just say it. Mean people suck. It's a great title. You will remember it. It's easy to spell. It's easy to say retire before mom and dad. Easy to say, easy to spell. It breaks my three word rule. But it also tells you what the book is about. It sells you on the book. So I love that title for that reason. A new one, Kaboomer, thriving and striving into your 90s, also tells you what the book is about. Kaboomer is the title. It's fun. It's fun to say. Might be a little trickier to spell because it's not a word that you're familiar with, but you know, kaboomer. It's spelt like you say it and it's easy to remember. So those are just some really cool titles that I like. Just as examples. But yeah, those are my seven tips. So what have you guys got for questions? I've been kind of ignoring you to make sure we got through the content. All right, so Angela's here. Oh, and we should do a couple prizes while we're at it. So Angela, let's do. Okay. I want to reward the folks that were here early. And some of you have probably learned to take notes. So my first tip was to know your audience before you write. But what was my second tip today? This is where it pays for those of you who do take notes. I know there's some of you there. So what was my second tip today? That's going to be my first prize. And then we'll do a random draw of everyone who has said hello today for our prize. Number two. And today is the. Let's see, what's our date today? Let's see, it is June 9th. So let's go. Number nine from. Did Mike heard? Did I just see a non book launchers mug? Yes. I don't know if I'm allowed to show branding. Sorry. I had someone do a delivery for me, which was quite kind. So there we go. See me self publishing with Dale. I'm not sure I just see me. I don't know. Lots of questions. Angela says okay, number two. I'm just waiting. You chime in Dale, he says, I'll be quiet. I don't know what you've been doing. I haven't checked the live stream. I was paying attention to the tips so I could make sure we got the content out before I dove into quiz. Oh, Laurel's nervous about the quiz. It's okay. Who can make a great marketing partner? Joyce. Yes. Joyce. I don't know if you're the first one Mike heard. Says it was the tip before the third one. You weren't taking notes, were you, Mike? Oh, Marnie's above that. Partners. And Kevin number two. Think of partners. Oh, there's quite a few of you. Okay, well, let's see. Kevin. Kevin was first as far as I can tell. You guys good? There's a lot of you got it right. So, Kevin, number two, congratulations. You are the winner. You let us know. You know what I think you've got? Have you got the mic? I think you've got the journal twice now do you want a mug? Email us@teamoklaunchers.com and Marnie, do you want a copy of Red Rock Leadership or Big Bliss Blueprint? You might really like that one actually. Big Bliss Blueprint or what was the other book I mentioned today? Harness your butterflies. Harness your butterflies. Bypassed. I met Red Rocker Leadership or Big Bliss Blueprint. As your. As a backup because you were number two, you can let us know which one of those you want. I'm guessing Big Blueprint Blueprint. You'll probably really like that one. But email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know where we should send it and what we should send. Kevin, number two, you can have a mug. After that you can start thinking about who is going to get your prizes. Then it'll be Kevin's. The Kevin's now become the designated donators because the Kevin's have all the swag. All right, awesome. Okay, so Marnie's saying Big Bliss Blueprint. Angela's here. I know. All right, so Angela, do you want to let me know what the questions are that I need to answer and I'll start answering them for everyone that's. That's been asking questions while I was going. And then we're also going to do draws, of course, for the folks that have commented every Tuesday and Friday. And I'll actually get that set up right now because I have to do a name generator on because I haven't been printing them off. I don't really have. In my makeshift office in the garden shed. I don't have a. Sorry, random name generator wasn't up. I don't have as easy access to printers and things like that. So I have been just copying and pasting the emails into a list randomizer and then I draw from there. So folks, that's for every Tuesday and Friday when a video comes out, we. We enter you to win a sweet Book launchers journal and a mug, which. The mug Mug. Unfortunately, you guys are right. I'm drinking a naan here. I'll hide it. A non Book launchers mug, but it's a hashtag. Noboringbooks mug. And of course our oh so soft journal, which Kevin number two has called the bloss. The Book launchers. Oh, so soft journal. The Bloss J. The Bloss journal. Okay, so let's just put these names in and we'll do a draw Right now we need the drum roll, please. And our first winner of our YouTube commenter is Google Wilson. So congratulations, Google. I don't know if you're here live today, but if you're catching the replay, I know you've been watching a lot of the videos, so thank you for that. You can just go ahead and email team temooklaunchers.com with whether you want the oh so Soft journal or the NoboringBook Books mug. Okay. All right. So first question, all of this applies to fiction books too, right, Julie? I would assume so. I mean it doesn't apply. So recapping the tips really quickly. I mean, I'm not a fiction expert at all. This would be a great question for some of the fiction authors in the house. Write a book while thinking about marketing. Know your audience before you write 100%. You should always know where you're going to be reaching these people after. Think strategically about who might make a great partner for your book. Yes. If you're a fiction author, you should also be connecting with your fellow fiction authors that have similar folks in your audience. And there can be corporate opportunities too. So yes, absolutely. Collect your favorite quotes and excerpts. Yes. While you're writing, start your outreach. Yes. Table of contents, not so much. I don't think fiction really sells based on table of contents because usually it's chapter three, chapter four, chapter five. Some of them label their chapters but but number six previews and look inside. Yes, absolutely. All of that early matter needs to sell your books and titles and branding. Of course it applies as well. So yes, I guess it does largely apply to fiction. Any advice tweaks depending on fiction versus non. So yeah, I mean the big Again, I'm not a fiction expert at all. I barely even read fiction anymore. I read so much nonfiction I don't feel like reading any fiction. But you know, I think there are some tweaks in the potential partnerships that you would have. I think you're looking more for cross promotions with other authors, but perhaps some apparel or some companies. There certainly could be potential depending on the type of book what you're doing. There might be company cross promotions there that you may want to think about and consider. But yeah, I think that would be the main one. Okay, second question. What type of marketing for young greenhorn debut fiction authors? Again, folks, I'm sorry, I am not a fiction person at all. So that's why Book Launchers does nonfiction only. There's some great materials. Check out Keith Wheeler Books, Mandy Lynn. She has a great site too. Dale talks about lots of strategies around. I think that would apply for low content as well as fiction. So self publishing with Dale as well. And let's see. I want to strategically invite people to contribute a chapter to my second book, an edited work of critiques of my first book. Huh, interesting. So critiques of your first book? I think it would be better to have case studies or examples, especially knowing your book and what you're trying to showcase in your book. Kevin, I would encourage rather it being critiques. I would have them have it, like, talk about what they did, you know, where they moved, where they found this mortgage support to save $100,000 on their mortgage and retire and have a comfortable retirement. So, you know, that would be my recommendation, is to actually take stories from it versus critiques and case studies and how it worked and what didn't work, that kind of thing. Okay. Angela. Yes. Mike Herd says, Angela, you need a profile picture. Absolutely agree with you. Ditto for Kevin number two, but he likes to. He likes to roll a little bit anonymously. Marketing for fiction again. Yeah. So I'm. I'm not a fiction expert, folks. If you guys want to talk nonfiction, I've got all kinds of stuff I can cover. Okay, just checking. Any other questions, Angela, that I should be hitting on before we wrap up? I got one more draw to do, so I'll go do that. Well, oh, wait, here's the third question. If Kindle only shows the first 10% preview, why waste the. The space? What do you mean waste? Oh, like maybe that person's reinforcing what I'm saying. Why waste the space? Use it for the things I'm talking about, but really use it to sell. You can, by the way, set your preview. 10% is the minimum, but you can set it to up to 80% with Kindle. So you can show a lot of your book. It gets randomized after the first 10%. It gets shown in 10% increments. So the first 10% is going to show on that look inside part. So that's where you really want to focus your attention. But you can add 20% or 30% and then they can click ahead. It doesn't show specifically the first 20%. It shows 10% and then randomizes the next where it's going to start for the next 10%. But the first 10% is really, really important, which is why I say ditch the acknowledgments, put them at the back of the book, look at every page, and really ask yourself, does this help my book sell? Does this connect with my reader? Does this sell my book? And if it doesn't, you really need to have a very, very important reason for including that material. I need a haircut and a shave first. That's what Kevin number two said. I know. I feel you on the haircut side. Only a couple more days and I'm getting a haircut. It's very exciting. Okay. Oh, the 10% was a comment. Really? Yeah, that's what I figured. That's how I. That's how I interpreted it. I didn't see who it was from when. Angela, when you're giving me the questions, can you tell me who asked the question? That would be helpful. Difference between intro and preface. Oh, do you guys use prefaces or prefaces? How do you guys say them? Preface, preface, preface. This is where I don't know whether to be what a Canadian would say versus an American, honestly. Yeah, I mean, again, typically, I find them boring. So unless there's a really good, important reason that needs to be there, then, you know, I think typically people use a preface as well. Just that. Right. It's like preamble before your book versus an intro, which tends to introduce the concept. So if you need to have material that somebody needs to know in order to understand the book. For example, Kevin number two's book, without telling you guys all about it, you know, his concept is. Is kind of how you're gonna. How you can move to certain places and have the government and essentially give you $100,000 towards, you know, your mortgage. That's more or less. I hope I'm not speaking too much there, Kevin number two. So you could have a preface of some concepts or some things you need to know about this program before you read the book. But personally, I would weave it into your book because the preface is probably not going to sell your book. It might. So. Yeah. And the difference between that and the introduction, I think it depends. Jacqueline's here. Maybe she can give you a better explanation. But we tend to not have prefaces in our books, so my guess is that they're not necessary. And I'm not that versed in what the difference is. So Laurel's asking, what exactly are Amazon keywords and how do they matter and help? That's a really, really big question. And there's actually. I mean, I have a video on keywords. And again, this is where I have to give Dale a shout out because he does really great stuff. Stuff on keywords. So the importance is searchability for your book. And the reason you want to really focus on keywords is not only for searchability within Amazon, but also thinking about Google. Your book actually tends to rank quite high in a Google search for those keywords. So we do Amazon keyword research as well as Google keyword research for the book descriptions. But it's all about, you know, having your book show up where it should show up. But there's a whole bunch of things you need to understand about what should and shouldn't go into a keyword list. And Amazon's also changed the number of keyword characters that it will allow, and there's a lot of stuff around that. So I highly recommend diving into the keyword video that I recently put out and then checking out some of the stuff Dale has on that subject, because he does a great job on that subtitles. IJ King okay, this is great. We'll probably only take two more questions and then we'll wrap up for the day and I'll do one more draw. Oh, wait, did we do the other draw? I said number nine, but I didn't give you. Did I get distracted? Angela, did we do the other draw for the. I said nine. Today's the ninth, and I didn't pick a place where we were going to go from, so I'm thinking we didn't too. Okay, so that's a question for Angela. I'll wait for that answer. Ij. I will answer your question right now. So any advice on the use of subtitles? So, again, this is specific to nonfiction, my friends. We're not talking fiction with regards to subtitles. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The importance of a subtitle is, in my mind, twofold. If you can put some version of your hook of your book into your subtitle that will clearly tell the reader that this book is for them and what they're going to get from that book. That is my ideal. And my secondary ideal is that you include keywords into that subtitle. So our process as a company is, well, first of all, to brainstorm the book title, if the client will let us. We like to get our hands on every title if we can. But we do spend a lot of time on subtitles because this is where we get the keyword research and we try to get a keyword into that subtitle if we can. Doesn't always work because it's more important that that subtitle really clearly state who that book is for and what's in it for the reader in a cool way. And this is actually quite tricky to do because, you know, subtitles. It's summarizing a book five to eight words. Usually that's hard. But when you do it, you can you. When you get it? You really feel it usually. So yes, subtitles super important for marketing the book, not because you're ever going to read it. Like nobody ever. And I miss all my books, you know, being here. I don't have my books in front of me so I could pick up examples of them. But you, you know, when you're getting introduced, nobody's going to say, you know, the book title followed by the subtitle in the introduction. They're typically just going to say the book title. But the power of that subtitle for people just self selecting whether the book is for them, searchability, all those things is really, really important. Hey co, great to have you here. Yes. Smash that like button. Let me know you're here and happy and if you're watching the replay, do the same. So thank you so much much for that. Okay, let's see. Okay, we did, we did one randomizer winner and we didn't do a random. Okay, so self publishing with Dale commented keywords are my jam, which is so true. That's why I'm sending you over to him to learn more about keywords. And we have people on our team that do all the keyword research. It's not me. It's not me that does that. That happens in Jaclyn's department. All the keyword research. So self publishing with daily comment. Keywords are my jam. Let's go back nine people from there and see who our lucky winner is. Okay, Angela, you got that one. And I'm going to do a randomizer and then I see Mona Johnson has a question. And that will probably be our last one for the day so that we're not keeping everyone too late into the day. But thank you all for sticking with me. That's been fun. Okay, so randomizer, where are you? Here we go. Let's go again. Woohoo. Let's see who comes out on top this time. Drumroll please. It's thinking. It's thinking really hard. Oh well, let's see. I don't know if I froze. I think I might have froze up a little bit. That might be the problem. Okay, let's see. I never know if this is happening. If I've actually frozen up. It still shows. I'm live, but here we go. The site can't be reached. Looks like we had a little, a little itty bitty glitch. All right. Did we lose you all? I'm still here. Are you here? It froze up on me. I don't know if you guys are there, so we may have to do this again another day. I will let you know who the winner is just in case you are still there. Write with Sid. Congratulations, you are the winner of the second prize. Hopefully you guys are able to hear me now. So write with Sid. Email us at Team T E A M Book launchers dot com. Let us know if you want the Bloss journal which is the book launchers. Oh, so Soft journal or our no boringbooks mug. I'm not seeing any chat so I can't tell you who won. I'm hoping you guys are here seeing me, hearing me. You know what, I'll open up Slack because then my team can message me there. So Angela and Jacqueline, if you guys are still seeing me, I'm showing people still here. I've seen thumbs up go up. So I'm just going to open up Slack. You guys can tell me if you are seeing this. You can message me who our other random winner is and anything else I need to know. So very strange. My chat just completely shut down on me. So they can still see the chat and Angela can still hear me. So good news, I'll be able to tell you guys who are winner. Oh, technically it was Kevin number two, however, and then there's a question left for Mona Johnson. Okay, great. Thank you very much. So we're gonna ask Kevin number two if he wants to nominate someone else since he already won today. Way to go, Kevin. It is your lucky day. Better get a lottery ticket today. Okay, so Mona Johnson's question was, what about having blurbs or testimonials on the book cover even when they're not famous, but highly credible, good topic. Okay, so book cover, everything that's on your book cover does need to sell your book. And kind of like a forward. If you're looking at your audience going, this is a name that the majority of people in my audience will know, then yes, I would say the blurb could go on the COVID but the blurb also should address something. And I have, I have a video on this and I probably should do a new one talking a little bit more about it. So it's, there's two parts to a blurb that that's cover worthy. One part is the recognition of that name and if not the name, then the company needs to be highly credible. So like a vice president of Google, for example, you may not know the name, but when you see vice president Google, so that, that part's, that's number one, that's important. Number two is that the blurb needs to sell the book. So ideally you want that blurb to either speak to a fear or an objection that a reader might have into reading this book. Like I've read this before. It also might. It also really should sell the core, the author. So there's kind of a couple things. So it should sell the core benefit of the book. You know, this, this book helped me or will help people do X or by or you know, achieve. Right. Go back to that hook. So if it clearly spells out the hook of the book in that if it is from somebody that's going to endorse the author as the person with the story or the message or the thing that you need to read, great. Or alternatively, you know, it needs to. Yeah, I mean those are really kind of the main things. They need to sell the hook or sell the author. And it needs to come from somebody with high, high status. If it doesn't do that, it could go on the back cover. It can go inside the book. But for it to be front cover worthy, it needs to really stand out. One of the books we have has a front cover quote and it was from Deepak Chopra I think was one of them. So like a name that most of you will know when I say it. And that's, that's a high value blurb on the COVID Some, some blurbs can go on the back cover if they address some sort of a piece of the hook or an objection to help a reader overcome that objection or see the benefit that they're going to get. But yeah, I think it's probably due time to do an update on my blurbs. What constitutes a cover worthy blurb. But hopefully that answers your question. If you are hoping to get blurbs, it's one of those things that you can get them at any stage in the process. But you know, ideally you're sending out ARC copies of your book to get those so that you're getting them before your cover is finalized. But you can update your cover after the fact. It's just that there'll be versions of your book out there that don't have them. But a lot of the big name books do that. Of course, if you get New York Times bestseller status or Wall Street Journal bestseller status, you put that on your cover after the fact. So those are things you can update a cover for. But hopefully that helps. All right, so let's see. I think we're. I don't know who Kevin2 has nominated as the winner. I'm not sure if that happened. So let's see. I'm just Checking my slack notices here to see if we had any updates there or if there's any other things. But thank you so much for hanging out with me. I'm sorry the chat went funky there. It kind of. My Internet seemed to shut, shut down on me. Oh, Edie Sotheby is the winner that Kevin number two nominated. So thank you, Kevin. Edie, thank you. Or Eddie might be Eddie. Sorry, I see double D in there now. Eddie Sotheby. Thank you so much. So please email us@teamoklaunchers.com let us know if you want the bloss. Yeah, Angela's. Angela corrected it. It's not my fault. The first version I think said Edie. But it's Eddie. Sorry, Eddie. Okay, so email us@teamoklaunchers.com and of course we'll see you again. Let me just double check my dates here. We'll see you again right here. Same time, Same Place on June 23rd. Let me know what you want to chat about. You guys have lots of questions. Maybe we should just do an open Q and A. Not sure. Let me know. Let me know in the comments below this video what you want me to talk about on the 23rd when we get together again. And I thank you so much for being here today, you guys. You were fantastic. It was fun to spend so much time with you. Sorry I couldn't see your last bit of comments. Hopefully they're on and I'll read them after this goes live with the replay. But we'll see you again and check out the video this Friday, which will be on. Let me just look at my notes. It is on how to prep for speaking engagements. If you're using your book to get paid or unpaid speaking engagements, you're going to want to check that one out. And then we've got a couple of really cool videos for you next week. Like I said, next Friday is the one with Ryan Berman. And then on Tuesday we've got how to turn your book into a movie. We previously covered whether your book could be a movie. And on Tuesday we're talking about how to turn your book into a movie. So. So lots of great stuff coming up for you. Coming up. And thank you so much for being here today. It was a pleasure to spend this rainy, rainy, wet coast day with you all. Take care. Stay safe.