Ask Me Anything About Self-Publishing Live Replay

All right. Hello, everyone. Happy Tuesday to you. Happy February Tuesday. Today is, well, I call it the first look book review show with Julie the book broad. However, we don't have a book review today we're gonna do an Ask Me Anything. So you can ask me anything about self publishing your books, whether it's on Amazon, Ingram, whether you want it in bookstores, whatever your question is. So you can ask. Ask Me Anything. Today when you join, please say hello. And I would love to confirm that we've got good sound. Last time somebody. Hey, Amber. Thank you. Somebody complained about the sound. So my office is a little echoey. You can see it's all glass. So today I went with the, you know, looks like I'm a telephone operator instead of a more stylish mic. But I did this in the hopes that there's less of an echo for you all today. So, yeah, I went for function over fashion just for you. All right, so today we have kind of an interesting show. If you've got a question, you can go ahead and type it in the comments. I'll answer it. I've got some that have been sent in and. Great. Thanks for confirming, Amber. I appreciate it. And I am actually going to ask. I think it's you, Amber. I don't know. There's a few ambers hanging around. Ms. Amber had submitted questions. Is that you? Are you, Ms. Amber? Oh, a pilot. Yes, I'm a pilot. That's. That's a little bit more exciting than a telephone operator because I don't know if people actually do telephone operators anymore like Ms. Maisel. If you've seen the Amazon show, Ms. Maisel, you know how they work the telephone, you know, putting it in. Anyways, it's a great show. If you have not watched Ms. Maisel yet on Amazon, I highly, highly recommend it. But so today we're going to answer questions. If you've got them, you can go ahead and type them in also. And if you're watching the replay on YouTube, even Facebook, you can say hello. But it's harder to find the comments and keep track of them on Facebook. But on YouTube, if you're watching this live replay, you can go ahead and type your questions in and I will answer them and I might even shoot a video for you. So it is you. Great. Thanks, Emma. Okay, so we're also going to do prizes, and we have a boatload of prizes. And I'm going to kick it off with the very first one. So we missed our last livestream because Sarah on my team, who was going to do it, she ended up sick. It's been like a January month of sickness for everyone on my team. And we all work. We work remotely for the most part. We have meetings to get together. We work remotely, and yet we still all managed to get sick. So Sarah had to cancel that last livestream. So I have a ton of names because we've got the draw that she was supposed to do as well as the regular draw. And then we've also got my special birthday draw to everyone who joined for my birthday. So I'm going to start with the birthday draw right now. And the birthday draw was a copy of either the School of Sport or Return on Courage. I believe I have them both here. Let me see. Yes, I do. Perfect. So you can see what you're getting. Here we go. Okay, so you can choose. If you are selected, you can choose between the School of Sport by Christian Bach and Return on Courage by Ryan Berman. So that is your choice. This is for anybody who posted a comment and wished me a happy birthday. You see, I bribe you guys to celebrate my birthday with me. And it worked because I had a ton of people wish me a happy birthday on my YouTube channel on the day my video was released. So thank you for that. And if you win, I'm going to draw it out of this little bowl right here. There's actually a lot of names in there. I just. Too many names to fold. So I just stuck y' all in there. Got a cramp cutting all the paper today. So this is for one of those books, so you can just email me@team Temtemooklaunchers.com and let me know which book you want. Okay. So just so you see, I'm not cheating. I'm not looking at it. And there we go. We have a winner. So, hey, speak of the guy who actually is awake. And here live, Kevin McGuire. Congratulations. So you can choose between the sport of school and Return on Courage. Now, the sport of school is for folks who have kids that are athletes that aren't applying the same drive to their athletic Or. Sorry. To their academic endeavors as they are to their athletic endeavors. So probably Return on Courage. I'm assuming I can ship it to you over there. I think it'll work. This one was set up a little differently than some of the other ones. Oh, that's funny. Amber just said she just saw someone in the waiting room with the Courage book. The Return on Courage book. That's awesome. So Ryan's doing a great job of getting his book out there. All right. So congratulations, Kevin, and thank you for wishing me a very happy birthday. Okay, so now I'm going to. Just so you guys see this, I'm keeping everybody from the birthday draw and everybody else is going in for the other draws, which we'll do shortly. Okay? And Kevin says, woohoo, courage. Okay, great. And Kevin says his daughter's more artistic, even. That's cool. And, you know, this book actually is pretty cool for anyone with kids, but it's really meant for athletic kids to take the same drive and motivation that pushes them on the field or in the pool or whatever their sport is and use it in school. Okay, so that. Is that the first question I'm going to answer? Like I said, if you're joining in, you can post questions here or on YouTube after the replay. Afterwards, you can go ahead and answer questions and I'll answer them there. Ask questions and I will answer them. So number one, the first question that we get all the time. So I'm just going to answer it. Why don't we work with fiction books? I get this. I get emailed multiple times a week, if not daily, asking to get help with fiction books. Fiction is a different animal than nonfiction. Book Launchers only works with nonfiction for a few reasons. One is that it's what I know I've never written or published fiction. But two, it's also because what we do as a company is not really focused on creating a book. It's on what happens when the book comes out. So it's really, really driven towards people who want to get more leads for their business, get more speaking engagements, who want to, you know, in the rare case, maybe, you know, blow up a brand and get a TV deal or something bigger. On the other side, they have a bigger kind of goal. So it's not just about the book. And so we really focus on helping you create a book that will achieve that goal or set you up to more likely achieve that goal. Fiction is a lot harder to do that kind of thing. And you know, my whole background, while it's a lot of it was in real estate, it was really around building a brand. So people came to me and I didn't have to sell myself. And a book is another great tool that does that and opens the doors to media and speaking and drives leads, shortens the sales cycle, and on and on. And that's really why we focus on nonfiction, but also fiction. You would need. You need experts in genres, right? So you can't just get a fiction editor. You really need somebody who knows your Specific genre. So like a horror genre or a sci fi or a romance, like those are all different types of books and there's different, you know, different covers that are appropriate. You know, like all the things that are appropriate. You need to find specific experts for each of those. So I already have a big team and I need like a 10 times size team to do fiction. So maybe someday. But that's why we don't work with fiction right now. And that's why I love nonfiction. Okay. Kevin's all about fiction, but you still hang out with us, so. Thanks, Kevin. You're awesome. Trivial. Hey, welcome. Now I want a TV show to my series. Yeah, that would be awesome. Fun fact. I don't know if you know this, Kevin, and a few people I know, I think Tribal knows this. So one of our writing coaches, Tim Testa, he wrote a computer software book many years ago now and he pitched it to a TV network or production company and they ended up taking it and turning it into a TV show that ran for seven years. And Tim wrote and starred in that. It was called Home Computing. If you ever want to look it up on YouTube. Like I said, this was quite a few years ago, but talk about being able to take what is kind of a dry subject, computer software, and turning it into something that TV networks and audiences will want to watch. That's pretty cool. Okay, so just checking the links here. Oh, I also have a huge, huge congrats to Gillian Gertzen, one of our clients. She has this book right here. Got some books behind me here I could show you. There you go. She. We just found out today that her book was named in Up. I think it's called Up Journey. It's a pretty big blog as one of the top 13 fitness books to read in 2019. And she was amongst some good company like James Clear. So we were really pumped for her on that. It was a pretty big win. Okay. Wendell Wilcox asked, I want to release my ebook from my personal website only. How can I be assured that every potential buyer will be able to download the book to their device? He basically, it's a lot longer question than that, but ultimately the answer is going to stay the same even if I read the whole question. You got to look into other services because he wants it to be available like an ebook, not just in a PDF format. I like book funnel, if you've ever seen to have books so you can have. Oops, you guys still there? It just disconnected on me. Hold on. I know what I'm going to do. One moment Here we go. That might help. Okay, so hopefully you guys are still there. It just disconnected for a brief second. So anyways, Book Funnel is what I was saying to look into. They will have. It's a way for you to sell ebooks in all versions in a lot of ways so that your buyers can download them. It also is a great way for lead magnets because you actually will get the contact information. Hey, Dale, thank you for the thumbs up. It always looks so fun on the screen when you get the thumbs up and the hearts and all that kind of stuff. It's great. All flies up there and look at how happy it makes me. So Book Funnel, great tool and I think that that would be what would work for you. So look into that. Wendell, if that's not what you're talking about, then just go ahead and post another comment and I will happily look into other sources or other solutions for. Yay. Thanks, guys. Awesome. Makes my day. Okay, let's see if there's more comments here. Still here. Okay, great. Hey, and welcome. Okay, we had a little glitch there for a second. The screen flashed and Kevin says, thought it was me. But now I think. I don't know. I think it was me. Okay, Ms. Amber, who is here? Yay. She asked a question which I'm just going to summarize, which was basically, do you need a different ISBN if you are uploading your softcover book, for example, to KDP and Ingram, or do you need different ISBNs? And the answer is you need an ISBN for each format, not each distribution source or wholesaler or whatever. So you need an ISBN. If you're going to have an audiobook, you need a different ISBN for an E version of the book. If you're just selling the book only on Kindle, you don't need an ISBN for that. You can just take the Amazon assigned one. That's fine. But if you're going to sell it through Apple Kobo or you're hoping for other distribution in the ebook version, then you want to use an ISBN for that format. So you know every format. So softcover, hardcover, large print, audiobook, E version if appropriate, and so on. So hopefully that makes sense. It has nothing to do with the distribution and everything to do with the format. Cool. All right, just check in here. Dale's getting tired. All right, we got to ramp it up because we got to keep Kevin. Sorry, not Dale's getting tired. Kevin's getting tired because it's late over in Europe. All right, so we have today, inspired by Dale A little bit. And his unboxing series over on Dale Roberts self publishing channel on YouTube. We actually have a client's book that has just come in. I haven't opened it yet, so it's still sealed. Pretty sure it's her book anyways. This could be embarrassing. You never know what's inside of a brown box, do you? Anyway, I thought it would be kind of fun to unveil this one, because assuming it's the book that I think it is, it's a hardcover book printed by IngramSpark. So a lot of people don't know this, but you can print hardcover books through Ingram. And, you know, most people just get soft cover done these days, and for the most part, I think soft coverage cover is fine. Me personally, as a reader, I don't like soft. I don't like hardcover that much because they're heavy. I don't like to pack them around. I don't like to hold them. I get tired. But they do look good. Like Ryan's here is a hardcover, but it wasn't printed through Ingram. So let me just try and wrestle this open, and while I do, you guys can talk amongst yourselves. Okay. So opening it up. This is awkward. Dale, how do you do it and make it look so smooth? You got skills, man. Okay, so here we go. It is the right book. Okay, so there we go. Let's check it out here. So it's called unblocked by Alison McCauley, and it's how blockchains will change your business and what to do about it. And there you go. There's the front cover, and it's got what's called a dust jacket. Okay. When you're getting your covers designed, if you are getting a hardcover book like this. There we go. If you are getting a hardcover book, you can get it printed on the COVID like the COVID directly printed. Or you can get what's called a dust jacket, which is this little piece that slides out. Maybe. Did you guys hear my Canadian there? Out? I can't hide it when I say that word. Here we go. So it slides out. So that's the dust dust jacket. Okay. So you got to be careful because if you do a quick look on Ingram, the hardcover options that are available, not all are available with the dust jacket. So the first thing that happened with her, she actually was initially working with someone else designing her cover, and they designed it, not realizing that this spec was a bit different when it's dust jacket versus a non dust jacket cover. So just FYI. So overall, it looks Great, actually. See you guys. Show you guys over here. So, yeah, it's great. I mean, this is a substantial book. It's 200 and it's about 300 pages all in, like, with the footnote, not footnotes at the end of the book. You know what I'm talking about. Bibliography, I think. Anyway, so that's pretty cool. So congratulations, Alison. Your book looks fantastic and it's great. So the one drawback, though, just so you know, when you do a hardcover with Ingram looks great, but the amount of money you're going to make, very tiny. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but I think, like, she's only making a $1 50 on every book sold with hardcover. So I think it's really a choice of whether you want hardcover or not. In many cases, there can be more profitable ways to get it printed. Ryan's books were printed through. It was offset printing. So it was done through a different. The printing was done through a different company. And he bought a volume of them, like thousands and thousands of of books. So that's another option if you really want hardcover. So his margin is much better on those books than Alison has right now. But regardless, it looks great. Hey, Marnie, welcome. At least it's a brown box and not that ridiculous bubble envelope. That's true, right? I don't know why. What makes them choose? Sometimes you get it in a brown box and sometimes you get it in that yellow envelope. Sorry, let's just get this in my recycle bin back there so it's not on my desk. All right, more prizes. Cool. So as I mentioned, we are behind on our prizes, so we have a huge stack of names here. Oops, a couple of you just fell out. Okay, so these are all for folks who comment on the day a video is released. And we have three. We're behind by three live streams in terms of these because there was one at Christmas break, last one we canceled, and now here. So we've got three different prizes, and they are all for our book launchers mug, and it has the hashtag of no Boringbooks on it. So if you win, you email teamoklaunchers.com with your address and your name, and let me know that you won the mug on today's livestream and we'll get it sent right out to you. Okay, so I was just sorting through names there. Let me just pick. Okay. Okay, so this is for mug number one. And I'm just putting this up here so you guys can see. I'M not cheating. Okay. Let's just not looking. Okay. You finally won. Congratulations, Ms. Amber. There you go. You can see. Yay. I know you've been really, really anxious to win a mug. So congratulations. You've got yourself a mug. And Dale said, oh, they do great work. And Amber said, I love hardcover. Personally, I can't stand bent pages or spines, so I'm not a huge fan of paperback. That's awesome. That's good to know. Everybody has different preferences, right? So that's why I think it's important to put your book out in as many formats as possible. And I've heard from a lot of authors that they're large print, especially when you're doing fiction, but, you know, inappropriate categories for nonfiction, too. Large print can be a really good seller, too. And Joanna Penn talks about all the time. She added hardcover and large print to her repertoire of books last year. Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn Podcast, which was one of my five recommended podcasts. If you guys missed that YouTube video, make sure you check it out. Nobody posted others that they love down below, so I'm assuming I hit all five, and you guys got your favorites. Sorry, I just got to take a drink. And Dale agrees with Amber, so. So it's just me. I'm lazy, I guess. I don't like to lug these hardcovers around. They are great for media and speaking appearances, though, because they sit so nicely on stages and on desks and things like that. So that's a really good advantage for it. And Kevin's making fun of my Canadian accent saying, how a boot. How about a boot? Okay. Do I say about. I guess it is. It's not a boot, but I still say it a little funny. References. Yeah, I think that's what they're called. Okay, both winners online. Yeah. Yay. It's good luck to be online, folks. It's good luck to join live. Okay, let's do. I have one more. I have one more question that I have to answer, and then we'll do two more draws. I have one other celebration, and then that's it. Unless you guys have more questions. So the other question is just another one that we get all the time. Can you give me a quote for editing? And that's not how book launchers work. So without giving you guys a huge explanation of how we work, I set up the company because I wanted to have a holistic view of the book publishing process. I want to start working with our clients, knowing what their end goal is, because, again, as I mentioned, it's not just about the physical book, it's about, for example, a perfect example is about helping Ryan get more paid speaking gigs. Like that's really what we're dedicating a lot of time to right now. Because that's what he wanted his book to do. You know, he had other aspirations. You know, he wants to grow. He's building an entire brand off this. Like he has an entire courage educational platform and courage workshops and things. So he's building an entire business off of this. But and same with actually Alison, she's kind of relaunching her entire career. She's becoming known in the blockchain space as one of the experts and the kind of go to business consultants in that area. So it's not about the book, it's about what the book is doing for them. And that's why I don't quote on just editing because it's really about everything that is going to happen in order to get you to that point. And you need, you need people thinking strategically early on in the process so that you can make sure that you've got a title, a category, you know, it's written, the table of contents is engaging. The book is written so that it's going to be marketable so that media is going to want to talk to you about it so that people will want to put you on stage to talk. So those are all things that we are strategically looking at early on in the process. So we're actually not just doing editing. When we do editing, we're doing a lot more. So we don't quote a single price for editing. That's why we're a membership based service. And if you're a member, we're working on your book to help you achieve success at the end. So hopefully that helps explain it why we do it a little differently than everybody else. Nobody else does it quite this way. And that's why it's because we're really not, we're not just helping you with editing, we're not just helping you with the COVID We're really helping you with creating success from your book. So hopefully that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Time to buy a lottery ticket, right? Hi Amy, welcome. So good to see you. Okay, so now the last two things we have today, unless you guys have questions, is we've got two more mugs to give away. Oh, I love those little faces as they go by. It makes me happy. Okay, so two more mugs. Let's just pick this here. Okay. I'm looking you guys right in the Eye so you can tell I'm not cheating. Okay. There was one stuck together. There we go. Okay. Mrmike Clown, Congratulations. He is not on here live. But where. There we go. He's not on here live right now. However, he is more than likely going to watch the replay on YouTube because that's where he's hanging out. So, Mr. Mike declown, email me@teamoklaunchers.com with your mailing address so we can get you one of those fabulous book launchers mugs in the mail. Okay? And, oh, Deb, you're here too. And Sarah, welcome. Yay. It's like a little live party now. It's wonderful. And by the way, my big, big announcement is really a thank you to all of you because book launchers just crossed eight YouTube subscribers. So thank you so much. Dale is now kicking my butt. So if you have already subscribed to Dale's channel, but you haven't subscribed to my channel, please come over and subscribe to my channel. Dale is going to hit 10,000 subscribers, and I'm gonna be lagging behind at 8,000, which I'm super pumped. And Dale has worked really, really hard to create a lot of great content for you guys. So do subscribe to his channel if you haven't already. And there's so many folks, actually that hang out. I didn't even realize how many people had awesome YouTube channels that are hanging out on book launchers TV. So we've done a few posts where you can check out some of the channels. And so thank you to all of you. And yeah, do post your channels when you're on our YouTube channel and we're talking about YouTube videos, post your channel and we can all subscribe and be friends. We're YouTube besties. That's what I call it. All right, so that was my little announcement. We'll do one more mug away. And that's it for today, folks. Okay, here we go. We need the drum roll. We just lost somebody. Sorry, Whoever. We lost you. Okay, here we go again. I'm looking you right in the eye, so you know I'm not peeking. Okay, here. Who do we have now? Len Erickson. Len Erickson. Congratulations. So again, email me@teamoklaunchers.com with your mailing address. We'll get you one of these fancy, no boring books mugs in the mail. And that's it today, guys. No extra questions. You guys are easy, easy to work with today. Not working. Me too hard with too many questions. So fantastic. Thank you again so much for the wonderful birthday celebration and for helping me get to 8,000 subscribers. You guys are awesome. I'm so grateful. I really appreciate it. And today was a bit of a screw up. By the way, there's two videos out today because I forgot this morning I uploaded my video and then realized today's live Tuesday so you get two for the price of, well none. Today you've got this live and there's a video out on how to get your book into bookstores because that's something that we help you do. It's not always easy. It takes more work as a self published author but it is entirely possible to get your book into bookstores and so I'm talking today about that. So check that video out on Book Launchers TV and we'll see you again here live in another two weeks. So thank you so much for joining me. It was wonderful to see you all here. Okay, bye.