Beware of these Self Publishing Contracts | LIVE Replay

Hey and welcome everybody. It's a fantastic Tuesday here in Los Angeles and today we've got a great little show for you and we're going to be talking about publishing deals, specifically self publishing, not traditional publishing deals, but some clauses to watch out for, some situations that you may want to avoid because it's come up over and over again. But last week, sorry, just adjusting. Last week there was someone I was speaking with who was interested in hiring us because they worked with another company previously, were not happy with a variety of things, want to make changes, but as we explored what they could and couldn't do, it was really limiting what was going to be the options with regards to working to us, so working with us. So I want to run those things by you because if you do choose to pursue some sort of an arrangement with another company and you're crazy enough to not use book launchers, then I want you to be aware of some of the things to watch out for. And I'm also doing this because a lot of folks watching this aren't a good fit to work with book launchers. So I want to help you avoid a lot of the problems that can come up. So I want to hit those points. Also, there was some questions that have come in around audiobooks and a couple other things. Plus we've got prizes, so many prizes today. So if you're here live, make sure you're saying hello when you arrive because it's the folks that are here live that I'm going to be giving books away for today. Everyone else knows the drill. If you're watching this as a replay on YouTube or even here on Facebook, in order to be entered to win the book launcher swag, you need to be commenting on the day a video is released inside of YouTube and then that gets you entered to win some fabulous swag, like our NoboringBooks mug, which is one of the prizes we'll give away today to the folks they're already loaded, that have commented on the day a video has been released. Alright, so, hey, April, welcome and hello. Hey, it's the A's in the house. Awesome. Love it. Thank you. And I especially like it when you give this video a thumbs up or a heart because it floats across the screen in Facebook and in YouTube. It just makes me happy too. All right, so thank you for being here. Okay, so I've got notes here just so I don't miss any points around this and I'll cover part of this and then we'll draw for books. Oh, I'll Tell you though, here's two of the books that we're going to be giving away today. We've got Screaming for Pleasure by Scott Bradley. Fantastic, fantastic book. And he just had a very successful event here in Los Angeles. He's not from Los Angeles, but he was in town for some horror events and they had a great signing up at Dark Delicacies. Huge turnout, packed house, and it sounds like it was a big hit. Sarah from our team was up there, so, so super pumped for Scott. So that's one of the books you guys will get to choose from. And then Ron Neitzel's the Green Wizard's Guide. Ron sent me two books to give away. So you guys, I'll be giving these away. But, you know, this is a short little book. And actually I'll note this. Okay, so when I'm talking to people, this is totally not planned, but when I'm talking to people and they're asking me about book size and I'm always saying the minimum we want is at least 30,000 words. Ron's book isn't quite 25,000 words. And we made it work, we made it smaller. So you can compare it to. To Scott's book, right? You can see the size is different. And then here's the spine difference. And Scott's book, I don't know off the top of my head, but I guess it's probably 60,000 words again, I'm guessing. So you can have a very short book and make it work. And this book packs a lot of punch. If you are at all interested in having the best possible vegetables, the best possible fruit and yard without organic or. Sorry, with all organic stuff or natural, none of this chemical, no chemical solutions to weeds or things like that. This book has all the secrets. So it's very, very cool. But anyways, just showing you now there are some situations where pages have fallen out of this book. So this spine is just barely big enough to handle creating a good quality book. So just FYI, because a lot of people ask for book size. Hey, Ernest. Welcome. Thanks for saying hello. Okay, so I got distracted talking about that, but today we're going to talk about. I've had some conversations with people who hired other service companies to help them with some aspects of their book publishing. And in that conversation that I had last week, this person published through a company called Balboa in I think late last year and was wanting to redo a bunch of things the book hasn't done very well. He also said he hadn't done a lot to market it either, but he wanted to change up some things. So as we were discussing the things that we would do and how we would help him, I said, but, you know, before we get too deep in this, I need to understand what you can and can't do under your relationship with Balboa. And it turns out even though he has the rights to the content in his book, he doesn't actually get the source files and he doesn't have access to where they're uploaded. So here's where that becomes a problem. And it really makes me question who really does control this book? Because in order to make any changes, he has to recreate the book. So what I mean by source files are your cover files, not the PDF that you use, but the InDesign file, if it was done in InDesign. So he doesn't have access to any of these things. So if we were to create a new cover, we have to take his existing cover and rebuild it, which is doable, but it's recreating work that's already been done. So if you are working with any other company, there's kind of three big things to watch out for and, or to ask. And number one would be, how will you be able to make changes in the future? How do you access your book? Because the other thing is he can't access it wherever it's uploaded. So let's just say it's uploaded to IngramSpark. He doesn't have access to that. So if he wants to make any changes to the description, to keywords, to anything, he has to go through them. So my question to any company that you're working, considering working with is, how will you be able to make changes in the future? If the answer is you have to go through them, just know that this could be extremely problematic. I like to control my stuff, so it really gives me real nervousness that I wouldn't be able to access it, make changes myself. The next thing is. And of course, the other question is, how much is it going to cost if you do want to make changes? Right. The next thing is, what is the markup on print books that you're ordering? Because if you don't get to order direct, then you're probably paying some sort of a markup to go through them. So ask them, what is the markup like specifically? Some companies are very clear in disclosing, it's $2 per copy or something like that. So find out. You know, our clients, we give them access to their print on demand accounts. They can order direct so they're paying the lowest possible price and they can even see the bulk arrangements. But a lot of other companies have a fee on top of this to order from them. So just make sure you ask that. And finally, if they ask if they offer any marketing services, get clear on what those are. So this particular client ordered like a light marketing service, which turned out, it was, I think, a press release. Bookmarks, postcards, and trying to think of what else maybe. Oh, a book catalog. I think the book got listed in some sort of a catalog. So guess what, guys? Bookmarks and postcards don't sell your books. I mean, if you get them in the hands of the very specific right person, it may over time, if they get inundated with enough messages from you, but they just don't sell books. They look nice. Press releases, very rare. They're going to do anything they can. There are certain situations where we do create press releases. Sarah just crafted one on the weekend. Sarah's our book marketing person for those of you who aren't familiar. But generally speaking, a press release doesn't do a whole lot either. It's really about direct pitching, specific to the media, crafting that angle that's going to make sense for that media. So if you're paying for a marketing package, make sure you understand specifically what it is and that it's stuff that's actually going to matter and, and actually going to sell books because that makes a huge, huge difference in the long run. Again, if you just joined, I've got books to give away for anybody who's here, so make sure you say hello because I will be adding your name into the draw. And there's four books to choose from today. Two I've already told about. The other two are books that are coming out next week. One is called the Joy of Compounding, and it's by Gautam Bade. Comprehensive book. It is packed. He studied 200 of the smartest people in essentially investing in finance in the last. I don't even know if it was a time period, but it was 200 of the smartest folks. He's studied them, compiled that along with his experience and piled it into one book. So it is comprehensive and it's also about lifelong learning. So very, very cool subject. The other book that's coming out next week is A Doctor's Perspective on CBD by Dr. Mark Lindholm, a chiropractor who in some ways is putting himself out of business with cbd. He said it's cured some of his clients, so they don't need to come see him as a chiropract. Chiropractor. But he's really passionate about and put in some really good case studies of all the different ailments, which opened my eyes because I always kind of thought CBD oil was good for pain. But I didn't realize all the applications that people have had success using CBD oil for and how safe it is if you know what to choose in terms of the right oil. So really great book. So those are the other two books that you will get to choose from. Hey. Hi, Tim. So good to see you. You would love the joy of compounding. Also, you might like the CBD oil too. Who knows? John. Hey. Hello from Newport Beach. Hey, you're not far. Awesome. Good to have you guys here. So thank you so much. So, going back to my main topic, I'm going to talk about audiobooks in a minute. I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything in terms of, you know, working with another publishing company. Make sure that you've got the right, the right, you know, you understand the clauses, you understand what you're signing. And I think I hit most those points. If you guys have questions, you can go ahead and ask me. The other thing is, so a lot of people, with Balboa in particular, this comes up all the time. And I don't normally like to name names, but I want people to be aware of this. So a lot of people sign up for Balboa as a self publishing company because it's under Hay House and Hay House is a traditional publisher. And I don't know whether Hay House says this specifically or it's just kind of become the rumor in the world. But a lot of people sign up for Balboa because they think it gives them a better chance at Hay House. The reality is I have not met somebody that's been a Balboa publisher that's become a Hay House that didn't have massive success as a self published author. And so what that means is any traditional publisher would have looked seriously at them if they sold a whole bunch. So they didn't need to be with Balboa. They just needed to have a big platform and sell a lot of books. The only thing is, maybe, and I'm just saying this, maybe because, I don't know, maybe because they were under Balboa, Hay House would have seen the big sales sooner, I don't know. But Hay House actually outsources this. So a lot of the services inside of Balboa are run by a company called Author Solutions. And you can Google Author Solutions to see how well you can see what their reputation is. So Author Solutions. All right. That's all I'm saying about that. If you are here, do say hello. I see some new people have arrived. Hey, Thee. Oh, I'm so glad you've made it. Great to have you here. Okay, so I'm going to do the first draw for a book and you guys are all here live. So what I need is to pick a number randomly. How am I going to do this? I'm just trying to think of how I could do this. So it's fair, you know, I'll just randomly pick a number and then that'll be. I'll just go to the comments. So I'll pick number six. Okay. Number six, because that's a number that's showing up on the top left hand side of my screen. So we'll go number six. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So, John Mack. Hey, you get to choose which book you want to be sent. So if you weren't here at the beginning, I said that there's Screaming for Pleasure, which is about horror. A fantastic read. If you are at all interested in anything in the horror genre, I highly recommend this book, the Green Wizard. If you have a garden or you would like to have a better lawn or garden. Fantastic tips, super fast read. And it's all about no chemicals, natural stuff, cheap stuff that you probably already have in your house for making your garden and vegetables grow fantastically. Or the two books that we are a part of launching next week, which is the Joy of compounding and a Doctor's perspective on cbd. So what you need to do is email me at team t e a mooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and your choice of book and we'll get them off to you. So congratulations. Tim gave me the number seven. So we'll use that one next. I'll have to go seven from John. Max, we need a few more comments because I don't think there's quite seven comments from there. So if you're here, make sure you say hello because I'm going to give one more book draw before we wrap up. Okay. The last thing I wanted to quickly touch on, I had some questions actually, Ernest, I saw you had a question. So he's asking if with IngramSpark, is it advisable to select 55% in order for the hardback to be in bookstores? If you want any retail distribution, you have to select 55%. That's if you don't care about retail distribution, then you don't have to select that. You can go to a different rate. So hopefully that helps. Okay. Audiobooks. So actually, I think this might have been your question, Fi you were asking me about audiobooks. Like, I think it was a general question now that I'm thinking about it on YouTube. But I had some other people asking whether they should record their own audiobook. So really quickly my perspective on this is if you're a nonfiction author, then you should probably record your own audiobook if there's some reason why you can't read very well, you know, and it would be very painful or slow or ineffective for you to actually be the one reading out loud for your book. You know, if you have any sort of speech impediments, then it's probably not worth the pain and effort to read it. But with that exception, with those exceptions, I would say you really should read your own audiobook because it's going to help establish that you're going to be the voice in the head of other people. So you're going to get that trust. They're going to hear your voice in the future and they trust you. They're going to know and like you. You also are going to be able to better explain your points, emphasize the right things, and communicate emotion in the stories that do have emotion inside of your nonfiction book. If you're a fiction author, hire a professional or get coached on it, because fiction really, I mean, most of the people reading fiction are voice actors, so they've been specifically trained in this. Again, this is really high level, but I encourage most of my authors to do their own books. And in terms of the logistics of how you do it, generally it's best to just go into a studio. It doesn't cost that much to rent a studio. You're going to have somebody there right on site getting you to correct your mistakes as you go. It'll reduce the number of pickups you have to do. Pickups are after the fact. When somebody's editing your book, there's a flaw, a stumble, or you. Our mouths make really weird sounds. So when you're recording your audiobook, there's a lot of weird clicks and clacks and spit. So an editor will send you pickups. But if you have somebody in a studio recording it with you, then they can flag it, record and rerecord right there. So it'll really minimize the amount of pickups that you do. Our clients who are doing it in studio are going back and doing one round of pickups and it's really fast. When I did mine, I set up a home set studio and I had to do probably two and a half hours and three different rounds of pickups. It was a lot of work because I didn't have that person there fixing it as I went. But you can record a home studio. What you should not do is if you're a podcaster, just pull out the old podcasting mic and use that. It really does require a higher level of sophistication of audio quality and it does require much more experienced audio editor that's going to produce and master it. And that's largely driven by audible. Audible's quality standards are really, really high and it really does require. And the audio listener has a different level of expectation and tolerance for the quality than a podcast listener. So you almost always need to bring in the professionals for this to get a high quality result. That will hopefully change in the future. Because it is expensive to produce audiobooks right now. Can you add multiple comments? Of course you can add multiple comments. Comments away. The more the merrier. Alright, so we need a couple more comments and then I'm going to draw for another book and then I'm going to do the usual YouTube commenter prizes and that'll be it for today, unless you guys have any more questions. So we need a couple more comments. So say hello if you're watching. Say something else. You can tell me how strange this hair is. I miss my hairstylist back in Nanaimo, back home, where Tim is, she always did a great job of my hair. And here in la, where you would think there would be bazillion hairstylists who are awesome, I just can't find that one. I just can't find the best one. Or at least one that doesn't charge $200 because they've cut Beyonce's hair once or some ridiculous thing. Okay, so we've got, we've got some comments now. Okay, here we go. Number seven from Dawn Mack. We're gonna go down. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Tim, it's like you rigged this. All right, Tim, congratulations. Hopefully you saw the four books that you can choose from. If not, I'll put them in the comments after. So let me know which book you want and I will send it home with my parents because they're here right now. And unless it's the two that haven't been out yet, and then I'll just, I'll ship it to you. But if it's, if it's Scott's book or Ron's book, I'll send it on. Cool. So now, drumroll. Yay. Oh, so congratulations, Tim, and thanks for tuning in. Now it's for the YouTube comment. So if you comment the day a video is released on YouTube, which is every Tuesday and Friday, then you get entered to win some fabulous book Launcher swag. So today you can choose from, let's turn this here fabulous Book Launchers mug or our lovely journal, which every writer needs to keep track of all of the fantastic ideas that's running through your head. So you can choose between those two today. Alright, so. Drumroll. Virtual drum roll. I'll put it up here so you guys can see I'm not cheating and pull it out. Last time it was funny, I think Kevin McGuire was on here and I had two in my hand. So I got him to choose whether I was pulling it from my left hand or my right hand. And I. He chose. I did left hand, open it up, gave it to the winner and then in my right hand, which he didn't know until after I'd shut off it was actually his name. All right, so the winner of the fabulous Book Launchers swag for today is. Kevin Noby one. So, Kevin, I don't think you're on live today, but you're probably going to tune in to the YouTube afterwards. So thank you and congratulations. All you need to do is email me@teamteamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and whether you would like to have the journal or the mug. All right, folks, I'm just gonna check to make sure there's no questions. Yeah, no one wants to hear dogs barking in the background. It's so true, especially on an audiobook, but even on a podcast. Tim needs a studio. Yeah, Tim's wife goes to my fantastic hairstylist in Nanaimo now. Okay, Ann doesn't want to talk about my hair. I totally understand. Hey, John Turner. Hello. Welcome. Alright, you guys, so that is the show for today. So thank you so much for tuning in. If you're watching the replay. Excuse me. If you're watching the replay, do say hello like you're watching live. And of course it counts if you're watching on the day it was released. So thank you, everybody. Have a fantastic Tuesday and we'll see you in two weeks.