Big Picture Book Marketing Goals

Hello, Happy Tuesday, Tuesday in October. We are nearing Halloween. We're all decked out and decorated at our house and ready for that. And happy day after Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends. Hope you had a fantastic long weekend. All right, so today's topic is big picture book marketing. So thinking about not just book sales, but also, you know, what, what are you really trying to achieve with your book? Because a lot of people focus on book launch. And yes, having a strong launch can set you up for success, but not having a strong launch doesn't mean your book is going to bomb and not be a great success as well. And so the big picture book marketing that we want to talk about today is really going to dive into, you know, what is it beyond launch? Like, why did you write this book? And what are you thinking? What strategies are you implementing in order to achieve it before we dive into that Saturday? So Saturday, October 15th at 10:00am Pacific Standard Time, we're doing our next deep dive training. And this deep dive, by your request, is all about the publishing process. So we'll go not like into nitty gritty detail, but we will talk about the process, what you need to be aware of, what you what steps to follow. You know, I'll compare that to our book Launchers process. So I'll talk about some things that you can skip, some things that you absolutely should not skip if you're going for quality and all that fun stuff. So to get registered, go to book launchers.com deep dive and that will get you the registration link. And I will drop that in the chat for you right now. And there we go. And Angela, hello. Welcome. Thank you for being here. And so I just put the Deep Dive registration into the chat and of course, I will have it in the book description or not the book description in the video description after the fact as well. Okay, so next thing is diving into today's subject is really, I think ultimately the industry itself puts a lot of emphasis on launch day. And you know, a lot of authors put emphasis on launch day. And having a big launch is fun. It's a lot of work and it's a rush and it's a good time. But after launch day has passed, what are you doing? What are you doing with your book? And I've talked about how a lot of people think about their book as their baby, but after their baby is born, they don't think about feeding their baby or taking care of their baby when it's a book. And so when it's a book, I encourage you, if you've thought about it as a baby while you've been creating your book, think about it as a baby after it's born and give it some love and attention so that it can grow up to be a wonderful piece of your business, your ecosystem that you're creating as a creator. And I mean, I haven't met an author that has written their book just for launch. A lot of people say they want to be a bestseller, but even then it's not about being the bestseller, it's what the bestseller gives them or the perceived benefit of being a bestseller. Whether that's credibility, dollar signs, you know, a boost to their ego, bragging rights, whatever it is, it's not the bestseller as the goal, it's something else. And so, you know, even if you've written your book for that bestseller status, its bigger picture goal. And usually a lot of the authors I talk with anyways are writing it for impact or bigger picture results that they want to achieve. And so if you really want to make cool things happen from your book, you should be thinking about how you will use your book to get attention, how you're going to deliver massive value after you've gained that attention, how you're going to build relationships with people who do look at you and then what you're going to do to create or what you're going to create for them next. So all about that relationship, the value add, the value delivery and building that long term relationship. And you know, I like the question of what's the experience you're going to offer when someone finds you? You can answer that in a lot of different ways. But I think that's a really good positioning statement to put your mind in a good place. Efren, hello. Welcome. Poetry from the heart. Hello. And we're talking about big picture book marketing goals today. So it's great to have you in the house to chat about that. And I think what I'm also going to do right now, right, right at the beginning, let's dive in and do the YouTube prizes right now before I get into a lot of the content. So of course every Tuesday and Friday there's a new video and when you comment, the day of video is released just like today. If you're catching the replay, you can still comment and get entered to win. And we have Angela, I'm pretty sure we still have T shirts. And I found in my garage a stock, I have a small stock of our, I'm calling these the vintage logo mugs. So I'm also giving away mugs Today. And of course, we always have our self publish and succeed. So if you are one of our YouTube commenting winners, you have a choice between potentially a T shirt. We have limited sizes, so you can ask, when you email Angela, you can ask for your desired size. We have mugs and we have self publish and succeed, of course. Course. Which I have right here. There we go. Okay, so I've put you all in my wheel of fun and I'll just click on it. I don't know if you can hear it, but it's whirring just like the wheel of fortune. And it landed on Ann Johnson. Congratulations, Ann. Oh, it's even clapping. This is a new wheel. You guys probably can't hear the clapping, but I could hear the clapping in my ears. So congratulations, Ann Johnson. You have been selected as one of our YouTube commenting prize winners today. And let me just go ahead and do prize number two while we've got the wheel up. And it's Professor E.A. burlingame. So congratulations. Yay. I, I don't know if you're here live right now, Let me just see. But I'm certain you're going to catch the replay and find out that you were a winner. Doesn't look like it. So you can let us know what you would like and we'll get that sent off to you. Okay. So I'm just trying to think of where to pick up on this. So for some authors, I understand that talking about author platform building and the fact that your book launch isn't the end result, you know, book marketing is a long term game. And for some authors, that's kind of a horrifying thought because when they started writing their book, they had this vision that if they wrote a book that was good enough and they put it into the world, that it would find its audience. And that occasionally, occasionally happens. But for 99.9% of us, we have to have either spent five to 10 years building an audience of fans of people who support and are excited for your next creation, or you're going to use your book to do that in order to gain momentum and get some results from this effort. And ultimately, you know, I think the mindset you want to go into being an author with is what you're, what you'll do with your book. What are you going to do with your book? Not how your book is going to do, but what are you going to do with your book? So talking about the big picture goals. Yes. You want sales. You know, obviously sales is a good measurement of some of the things you're doing and the results it's creating. But for a lot of nonfiction authors in particular, sales are the result of a lot of things, not any one thing. And that's a really important thing to realize. Remember, if somebody's never heard of you before and they've never heard of your book before, telling them about it once is rarely going to do anything. You know, in this day and age, you have to reach people multiple ways in multiple angles before they take action. I mean, it's even more difficult today to get somebody to join an email newsletter list. It costs them nothing. But people don't just go, oh yeah, I'll sign up, I'll sign up, I'll sign up like they used to. So you have to get to people in multiple ways and be creating that feeling of, you know, oh, this person is everywhere, this book is everywhere. And that takes more than one appearance. And so it's really going into this with the mindset that you need to do multiple things to get results. And a book sale is rarely the direct result of any one thing. Probably the only thing that results in a book sale quickly is a referral, right? Somebody saying, and I've seen this happen repeatedly in a lot of, especially the business groups that I'm in. You know, somebody says, oh, I read this book and it was awesome. And people just go, oh, I'll get that. And they buy it. So referrals, I think, are a one touch thing. But in order to have referrals, you have to create that base level fan or that fan base to begin with, and then build momentum from there. The bestseller launches. I want to emphasize this again because a lot of people come to me and they say, tell me about your most successful launch. And I don't think it's fair to present best like your best launch, because that makes it sound like it was a direct result of what Book Launchers has done. When somebody sells thousands and thousands of copies on their launch day. Yes, of course, having a great title, having a good book, having a good book description, having done the right steps, having engaged their audience in the right way, those are all things that we help with and that will impact the launch. But at the end of the day, if that author comes to the table with an audience of fans that are ready to buy their book, they're going to create success with the steps that we give them versus the person who comes to us, and they're going to have a big launch. But to say to any random person, hey, this is the success that we've had and infer that that's possible for them if they don't have an audience. It's not necessarily possible. It rarely happens on launch if you haven't built an audience or if you don't have relationships that have great audiences that you can leverage. So it's one of those things that a lot of people don't talk about. But a big, big launch is almost always the direct result of a big audience and a lot of relationships with people who have your audience in their audience or your reader in their audience. And so if you haven't, you know, Tim Ferriss is a great example of this. You know, it's, it's. He was out there for quite some time before the Four Hour Workweek came out. And he was a networking machine. He, he made, he made very strategic relationships for, I believe, a couple of years leading up to the launch of his book. And a lot of publishers didn't want his book. I think it was rejected 25 times. And he finally had a publisher say yes, and of course, you know where Four Hour Workweek is now, because everybody knows that book. But it sold well because he had built up relationship capital, he had invested. He went, you know, to all kinds of conferences. I know south by Southwest was one that he was at and made a lot of relationships at, but there was lots of other conferences leading up to it where he built strategic relationships, and that was what he leveraged in order to have that launch. So if you don't have strategic relationships and you haven't built your platform, then your book is a great tool to do that. Okay. But it's not about your launch anymore. Now it's about, again, what are you using your book to do? Seth Godin. I wrote it down. Seth Godin has written a lot about book launches and launches in general. And, and what he wrote was what happens after the launch isn't the result of momentum. It's the result of a different kind of showing up of word of mouth, of the book being a part of something else, of something bigger. So again, remember, your audience needs to hear about this multiple times. They have to be exposed to things over and over before they join by or engage. So bigger picture, if you want to be a speaker, as an example, you first need to be prepared as a speaker, because a lot of people think my book's going to come out and I'm going to become a speaker. And it is not. It doesn't. If it does work that way, you're probably not prepared to truly make the most of it. So take a step back and think about what are you going to talk about? And you can look at your chapters. What are some cool topics that might make a great talk? Who would want to share that information with their audience? And then just start local, start with a local meetup group. If you're in a market that, I mean, almost every market has meetup groups. But look at your local meetup group. Use your book as credibility when you introduce yourself. You could even offer, you know, go to, go to one of the meetups and introduce yourself to the organizer after, give them a copy of your book. Talk about how the book might be a good or your topic might be a good fit for their audience. But you have to be clear before you do this, because this won't happen accidentally. You have to think about what am I going to speak about? How do you describe yourself as a speaker? And who are you looking for to have in your audience? Who can you have the most impact on with your audience? And then you can use your book as credibility as you go out into the world. I've often talked about how a lot of speaker submission forms nowadays, they don't say what they don't say, have you written a book? They say, what books have you written? List your books here. List the books you've written here. One of the, I've listened to a podcast recently, Alex Charfen. He has a company called the Simple Operating System and, and his podcast is the Momentum podcast. It's one of my favorites. And he had one recently about the power of intention. And he talked about how, you know, one of his early lessons was before every call, before any action, he would just take a minute to think about what's his intention. And I think a lot of people don't take that minute. They spend a year putting a book out into the world or longer. But they don't have that intention about, you know, what do you want to speak about? Who do you want in that audience? And what do you want your speaking career to look like after your book comes out? And how is your book going to play into that? So take some time to strategically think that through, if that's your goal. Okay. Just seeing what's going on in the chat. It's a quiet, it's a quiet day today. I think maybe the Canadians, they've got the turkey hangover. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure where the American friends are. Hopefully you guys are all watching the replay afterwards. So let's see. New video idea, TED Talk type of Speaking structure, content. Yeah, we did one actually, Efren. It was with Carol Cox. So Angela can probably pull that video down for you. It had some really cool ideas about how to kind of use post it notes and create some story structure to your talk. And if it isn't in the YouTube, it's in the foundation library because it might have been a client only training. So you can access it in the. In the foundation library. Just FYI, because as I'm saying that I'm thinking it was too long for it to have been a YouTube video, so. But I do agree, I think that I could also do a YouTube video on that. Although, you know, I haven't done a TED Talk myself. I've done a ton of talks, but I have never given a TED Talk myself. So maybe I would leverage an expert on that subject and do some sort of a collaboration. We did do a YouTube. I also think there's a client only training, Angela. I swear we did a longer one for, for our clients on that subject. But yeah, that's Great. There's the YouTube link for you there, Efren. Okay, so speaking, let's see. Oh, okay, so if, say this applies to speaking too, but I'll tie it to another goal, which would be consulting business. So if you have a consulting business or you want to grow a consulting business, why not package your, you know, think about who you want as your clients, you know, figure out their job title, where you can find them. And there's lots of researchers you can hire that can get you contact information, mailing list, email mailing addresses, those kind of things. You know, I hire. We have one that we work with, Upwork, she's fantastic. She gives us a lot of research that we use for book marketing. So you could get a list like that. You know, you have to get your specifics as to who you want. But then why not create a little bit of a mail campaign, a physical mailing campaign. I mean, if your consulting services are going to be 10,000, 20,000, $30,000, you can, you know, spend, you can afford to spend, you know, $50 on acquisition of a client if you're strategic about it and you're clear about the benefit that you offer with that consulting business. So then you could send a postcard, follow up the postcard with a book, and then follow up the book with a postcard, and even potentially call or email as well. So you want to think through what the campaign looks like. But again, this isn't necessarily about getting the book sale. It's about using that book as a tool in order to get the attention that can lead to that bigger picture goal that you have. And this has been a little bit more challenging for people in the last couple of years because people weren't in offices. They, you know, some of them still aren't in the offices and that's the mailing address that you're going to get for people. But I would say, you know, people are back in a lot of the offices and you can get creative with this. And I always like to. It's not the same, it's, it ties back to the airport bookstore thing. But Robert Workman was a client of ours and he, and we did a YouTube video with him about how he got into airport bookstores and how he achieved a lot of things as a salesperson. And it was good old fashioned Mrs. Fields cookies in a box and including a book and a letter and those kind of things. And he got tremendous results from these things. But he always followed up, he always said, hey, it's, it's, you know, it's Bob Workman, Colin. And I just, you know, I sent you that box of cookies last week in my book. And you know, there was always that thing and it was memorable. It was memorable and it gave him a tie in. So I would say you should think about how you can use your book creatively. But it's not just about sending the book. There has to be other pieces of follow up because a book in the mail and we've tested this, just the book is not going to do anything. You'll get almost no results if you want to create impact. So a lot of authors have become an author because they want to help people, they want to have an impact. You know, it's that kind of a feeling or a goal. It's not necessarily monetary, although I think we all want to have a return on our investment of time, energy and money on our books. But if your, if your real goal is impact or even if you have a book that has a local market, so you're a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, you know, insurance, you know, whatever it is. If you have a local market of any kind, why not focus on your local market for your kind of grassroots initiatives? A lot of people just stay at home and I would say there's so many opportunities if you just get out of your house and you can host an event at a local business. I've done that with my past books. I did events at the library, the bookstore, my CrossFit gym at the time, because I was A regular person that got a regular CrossFit, I don't know what you want to call it. I went four or five times a week, so I was there all the time. That's what I'm trying to say. So if you have a business that you frequent on a regular basis, maybe there's something you can do together. Because a lot of businesses are happy to have events. It gets new people in the door and you might be able to do something fun. I did things to raise money for charity. At the same time, you can host training events at your local library. A lot of libraries are looking for community focused content. So if you have a book that is going to help people buy a house, save money on their mortgage, you know, pay off their debt, and these are all finance examples, but you know, even diet or parenting, those are all subjects. Libraries are often looking for programming. So why not stroll on in and introduce yourself to the person in charge of programming and find out what they're trying to create. Finding, find out what themes they have coming up. It's not, especially if you're just starting out and you don't have a big audience. I find the authors that are willing to get out there and do things, they're, you know, sitting at home waiting for the Today show doesn't really work. It happens occasionally and, you know, with a really great pitch and a timely, you know, topic, you might get on the Today show with nothing else. But most of the time you need to build momentum and some grassroots following and your local market can be a tremendous place to do that. And again, if you want to use your book to grow your platform, which is what I think should be the goal of almost every author is to get newsletter subscribers to have that audience of people that are interested and excited. And I've told this story before, but you know, I launched book launchers to 10 with bit with 10 beta clients. And that was solely from the email list that I had from my previous business. It was a real estate investing training company. And all the people on my, on my email list were there because they wanted content from that on real estate investing. And then I said, hey, you know, I've, I've, I'm shifting all of this content over to a different owner. But in the meantime, if you're interested in writing a book, I'm starting this self publishing services company called Book Launchers and I'm looking for beta clients and I got 10 clients from that. And that's because I had a platform. And actually, you know, it's a It's a fun little world that we live in because I we're doing self publish and succeed Live, which is this book kind of this book turned into a course. It's really with an emphasis on writing your no boring book. Your hashtag noboringbook, getting that first draft done. And one of the people in my class was somebody who took my real estate training class many years ago. So you know that platform. She's stayed in contact through that email newsletter. And she said, you know what, I've been wanting to write this book for a while and I was excited to take your class. So that platform building has massive, massive value for you. And I encourage you to do it in the beginning. Yes, it feels slow. Like getting to your first 100 subscribers can feel slow. Slow. Getting to your first thousand can feel slow. But it's that consistency of, you know, giving them value, creating that experience and your book is a great way to grow a platform. If you're in person, you know, if you ever meet us at a live event, we almost always have books to give away in exchange for email addresses. So you come up to our booth, chat with us, we'll say, you know, oh, you know, here's a free gift for you. And, you know, all you need to do is just give us your email address so we can stay in touch. It's that simple. And then I usually have inside of the book. I don't. This is just my copy, but there's usually a sticker inside that, you know, asks for a review and lets them know our contact information so they can reach out. You can also give your book away online for free for downloads. My friends Nick and Tom Caradza had a book many, many years ago. They gave the book away. If you wanted a physical copy, you could buy it, but if you were okay reading the PDF version of the ebook, you could get it for free in exchange for an email address. You know, Russell Brunson clickfunnels. His model is the. I say free plus shipping because it's not really free, but it's usually like a 7.99 spend. And you get the book, you get a copy of this book sent to you. You know, I say free in quotes because the print cost of the book is usually about $4 and media mail to send most books is 3, 350. So it's actually not a free book. You're covering all the costs. But when you run ads to an offer where they have to pull out a credit card, you know, you're at least recouping some of those ad costs. And almost all businesses will spend money on generating leads anyways. And now you've got a qualified, not necessarily qualified, but a buyer, somebody that's willing to invest in this problem, solve solving the problem that they have that your book solves. And you know, in many cases, after they read your book and then they reach out, they're a much more qualified potential person to work with. So there's a lot of benefits to doing it that way. I've talked about this before. You know what I do, because I don't. Not that I'm against the free plus shipping model, but it's just not genuine to me. If I was to do it, I don't think I would call it free plus shipping. I'd just be like, you can get my book for 7.99 and I'll ship it to you. But what we do do is@self publishand succeed.com you can buy a copy of the book and we have some, some incentives to give to you. In addition to that, you get an E version of the new brand you and a few other things. And I'm in talks with a couple of companies that do audiobook distribution and I'm looking at potentially giving the audiobook version of the book in that package or some other package as well. So I'm working on that because that's a good avenue for people too. If you can give away or sell your audiobooks to Direct, then you can run ads to sell audiobooks directly as well and not have to rely on other providers to sell your audiobook. Regardless, all I'm trying to tell you is that your book is a wonderful lead generation tool and will help you build your platform. And when you do these speaking engagements or you have you leverage your book into other opportunities, you should always be offering something in exchange to get email addresses to build that relationship. And I think it was a Chris Rock. I can't remember. There's a comedian that it could be Chris Rock. Somebody was telling me here locally, here in Vegas, Mark Wahlberg hangs out at one of the local gyms quite often. I think he's got an affiliation there, but that's why I think it's Chris Rock, because they've done some movies together. But anyway, the whole story was coming out that, you know, one of the things he did early on, and I think it was Chris Rock, but don't hold me to it, was he went to like all kinds of comedy clubs, especially in places where he wasn't super well known and he would do. He would do a show and he would collect email addresses after every show. And by collecting those email addresses, he built this huge platform that then became a negotiating tool that he used when he was getting movie contracts. So it is valuable for everyone to do this. And if you. And then I'll touch on thought leadership in a second. But let's give some prizes for those of you hanging out here online. Oh, ea, you won earlier. I don't know if you were here when you won, but you were one of our winners today. So make sure you email Angela@teambooklaunchers.com we have a few T shirts left. We also have our vintage hashtag no boring books mug. And of course, self publish and succeed as well. So you were one of our winners earlier today. And Krista, welcome. So great to have you here. Quizmaster China's in the house and. Oh, that's a good comment. Is. I think the best tactic is to use free ebooks to sell the print copies. And it works. Really. You know, I haven't tested it in a while, but I know my friends, Nick and Tom in particular, their book sold quite well. They gave away thousands of ebooks free. Built a really strong email newsletter list, and to my knowledge, it's still a strategy that they're using as well. Kevin Hart. Yes. Kevin Hart. Thank you. I think it's Kevin Hart. Efren. I knew Chris Rock didn't feel right. I was like, it's, it's whoever's doing all the movies with Mark Wahlberg these days. Thank you. I believe it is Kevin Hart. I'll have to check this. I'll have to check my, my fact. I need a fact checker for my stories here. That's what, that's what happens when I go, you know, I tell you stories that are not on my notes and I haven't fact check it. I just, you know, it pops into my head and I'm like, hey, this is cool. I'll share this. And then it's totally wrong. So thank you. Okay, moving on. Moving on from my misinformation here. So. Oh, yeah, prizes. That's what I was like. What was I doing over here? Talking to all of you fabulous folks that have joined in live. So let's do our first prize. What is the date today? It's the 11th. So let's go from 11 up from Kevin Hart. So Angela posted Kevin Hart or. Yeah, yeah. So Efren. Sorry, Efren posted Kevin hart. So go 11 up from Efren Angela. And let's see who our prize winner is for today. It's probably going to be Efren or Quizmaster China, because that's all I'm seeing. But either way, let's do that. And then our final prize of the day will be a. Let's see, I'll. It'll be a question for. For you all. And that will be. Let's see, what is one approach to use your book to get speaking gigs? What is one approach to use your book to get speaking gigs. So you can go ahead and post that in the comments and let's see what comes back. It'll benefit the people who are here early, but, you know, you can use your own creativity too. There's no. No wrong answers. And it was Efren. And Efren would like to donate to Krista. Thank you, Efren. And Krista, if you are still here, you are a winner. And so we have. Yes, she said she'd love that. So thanks, Efren. So again, we have the mug copy of Self Publish and Succeed, or Angela has a few T shirts left. We're almost out. We're clearing out our stock because we changed our logo this summer. And so we're clearing out all the old stock of our old logo so we can make way for the new stuff. So thanks, Efren. Thanks for sharing. Efren wins all the time, so it's really kind when you share with others. So thank you. Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. So thought leadership. That's the last kind of big picture goal that I wanted to touch on today because a lot of authors write their books for thought leadership. And the one thing I want to emphasize is that if your goal is thought leadership, you have to put yourself into the world and be seen as a drum roll thought leader. So to do that, I mean, you can apply everything that I've said today. And I would also say take advantage of the fact that your book gives people a reason to talk to you. Podcasts, media, write articles, do live streams. You know, again, you could look at your local library or other events, speaking engagements. Your reason, your book is a reason for people to talk to you. And the more you're seen as the person, the better. And just to give you an example, we have clients who host a pretty large event. I think they have, I think about 600 folks that attend this event every kind of late spring. And they're clients, they're working with us. But it wasn't until they got our welcome kit where we send a copy of Self Publish and succeed. When they got that, they kind of went, oh, look at this book. You know, we should have Julie speak at our event because, you know, there's a lot of people in our audience who want to learn how to write a book, and it would really help them. And so it was interesting because it's a really good example of how you need multiple touch points and you need to sometimes physically put your book in front of people repeatedly before they sometimes come up with ideas or want to connect in a different way. And so that's where I think thought leadership is really important. You know, creating your own content somewhere as well. So your newsletter, but also, you know, elsewhere. So I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn lately, starting to get some really interesting contacts that way because they search for certain things and they find you on LinkedIn. And then, of course, YouTube is my favorite hangout. You guys are my favorite. And so that's where I spend the majority of my time. But I do believe. And you don't have to do everything at once, like that is one thing I would say, you know, focus on your email newsletter list and then pick something. You know, for me, for a long time it was YouTube. I didn't do much of anything else. And now I'm really, you know, I'm still focused on YouTube, and I'm feeling like, okay, I can add something. And so I've added LinkedIn as kind of the next place where I'm posting content on a regular basis. With YouTube and even with Instagram, I'm looking, looking to also do more with the content that I've created. So we're. I'm working with someone who's going to help turn some of my videos into shorts and some other content. But ultimately, you know, it wasn't. It was. It's been very strategic, but it's still having to be in multiple places in order to be seen as a thought leader yourself. And I think, you know, elements of that thought leadership puzzle are, you know, being in front of people that have audiences. You know, that's through podcast media, you know, all those kind of things. Writing articles for people, you know, that's that kind of stuff speaking, but it's also building your own audience as well. And none of that happens with one or two interviews. In fact, it takes years, and it takes years of consistent effort. Again, you know, it's those people that do this consistently over time that see the results. And I sent an email out to our past clients, and it was really interesting to read the responses. You know, and some of them started with no platform at all. And we're now, you know, celebrating these cool partnership opportunities that had come up. And I'm going to do a video, you know, kind of summarizing and featuring some of these folks, because I thought it was really cool. But one of them said, you know, they got so busy that some of these opportunities that were really cool in the beginning became not as important as they went along. And I thought that was really interesting because they just kept going. They kept, you know, in this. This particular person was using the book to build a business and had a YouTube channel growing at the same time and found that, you know, so many opportunities came, that those opportunities that happened at first that were so exciting eventually became things that weren't worth continuing to pursue and continuing that relationship because other, cooler, bigger things came along for them that were more in alignment with where they wanted to go. So. But it didn't happen instantly. And for that particular author, the first year was really slow for him. He didn't sell tons and tons of books, and, you know, he didn't get a lot of momentum. But he kept going, he persisted, and now he's reaping the benefits, which is really, really cool. And we've had Martha Tattenborn on here. She talked about how she kind of just kept doing, you know, kept doing podcasts, kept doing different things that came up. And one of the podcast interviews led to a documentary feature, which she was thrilled to be a part of. And so it's that consistency and keeping going, and it's also really focusing on what you're going to do with each opportunity. I've had clients say to me, oh, well, those podcasts didn't do anything. And then I kind of. I push back gently and say, well, were you prepared for that podcast? Did you do any research on the host going into it? Did you know that that host had X business? And that business may be an opportunity for you to partner with them? Or, you know, it's those kind of things that if you do that extra step, if at the beginning of the podcast, you ask the host, hey, what's going to make this your best podcast ever? What's going to make this a great podcast for you that you're going to want to tell everybody about over and over again, and then at the end, you know, afterwards, most of the time, the podcast ends and there's. There's a little bit of time to talk to each other, and that's a great opportunity to say, hey, what are you working on? Right now, what are you excited about? And learn about that podcaster. Sometimes, yeah, you know, there's nothing there. But really, if you take every opportunity and try to figure out what you can do to add value to that relationship, to that opportunity, and you do that consistently, I think amazing things will happen in your big picture. And none of it is going to direct. I shouldn't say none of it. Most of it won't directly sell books. But if you're doing this consistent, consistently, you're going to sell books, and you'll find yourself moving closer and closer to those bigger picture goals that ultimately were the reason you started down this path of becoming an author in the first place. I'll kind of wrap up and then I'll go and see the answers to the questions. I'll read the answers to the questions that I saw you guys were posting. But Ryan Holiday, he wrote a really great book, perennial seller. And I'm, I'm reading through it for a second time because I'm, I, I found. I just found it so valuable with the first round that I wanted to go back through and take notes. And so I really recommend this book. I think it's really, really smart book for every author and business person to read. But one of the quotes I wrote down from the book was this, and it was where far too many projects experience a flash of publicity and popularity only to disappear under the pressure and expectations of that attention. The steady drumbeat is better. So I, I think that it's a good kind of mantra to think in your head is the steady drum beat is better. It's if you can just be consistent and show up and do something every day to market your book. You will find a year from now, two years from now, that that book has created momentum and cool opportunities that you've stepped through. And if you're able to step through one, you'll find that one leads to another one and you'll keep going and it will be very, very cool. Cool at the end. Okay, so let's see what quizmaster China said. How can you get speaking engagements from your book? Giveaway is the magic question. So I'll come. I'll come back to that. I think that was a question, not. Not an answer. Efren. Efren says for speaking gigs, get involved, get out of the house, get into your own community and volunteer to speak. Yes, you already wins the race. And Ea, you won already, too. And Juan, I liked Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, too. Yeah, that's a good one, too. Obstacle is The Way is another really good one. I haven't read his new one and I haven't read the other one on. There's one other one that he's. Oh, I think he's written quite a few, but I've read Obstacle Is the Way and Ego is the Enemy and Perennial Seller. They're all really great. Juan, great to have you here. All right, so I'm just thinking, I think ea, you are going to be able to choose the other winner. You already won today, so choose another winner for today. And so back to Quizmaster China. How can you get speaking engagements from your book giveaway? I mean, so if you're talking about mailing it out, then you want to think about or want to do the research on who are the event planners. And again, going back to what we talked about at the very beginning is the intention is thinking about what are you going to speak about that's going to offer value and going so far as to even create a talk title or a proposed workshop or something like that. I'm going to be speaking at the ALA event, so the American Library association event in, at the end of January. And what we're trying to do as a company is build stronger relationships with libraries because I think especially in the self publishing, but even in the publishing world, it's an area where they want content, they want relationships. And a lot of book publishers and self publishers haven't put a lot of time and effort into building those relationships. And so what my talk is going to be, I thought about, okay, what do librarians want? It wasn't about what what do I want to talk about, it was about what do librarians want? And I know they want programming and they want to figure out how they can engage their community. And I know this because after we went to the American Library Association's major event in July and talked to hundreds of librarians and this was kind of a common theme. And so my talk pitch, which to be honest, I still was surprised they accepted me because we're not libraries, we're not librarian members. But my talk title is all about leveraging self published authors for great community programming and community events. So I'm going to be talking to them about that. I didn't think about what I want to talk about. I thought about what are they going to want to learn from me, what can I share? And a lot of libraries aren't leveraging the power of their self published author. And yet in a lot of cases, the self published author is going to be a lot more motivated to create a really cool program and go and teach it at a library than a traditionally published author who's maybe expecting to go big right from the start. Libraries and bookstores seem to be the unicorn all the self publishers are wanting to catch. Yeah, to a point. I mean bookstores, I think bookstores are incredibly, I mean even libraries, you don't go into a library expecting to make money because let's face it, you get, you sell one copy of your book and they can, you know, you can have a thousand people read it. So you're not there to make money directly from book sales. But I do think it goes back to that bigger picture goal. And for me, you know, when I did events at the library, they almost always bought two copies of my book. So woo, two book sales. But they often did a lot to support me. So they would allow me to sell copies of my book at the back of the room. When we did events. They did a lot of promotion. They have, they have newsletter lists. You know, I'm part of my local library list. I spend mostly time there with my son because my, you know, a lot of libraries do really great things for kids. My local library does wonderful programming. They have a Lego club, they have a science, a STEM kind of science program. So I take my son to a lot of these things and, but I'm on the email newsletter list and they send really great content, community programming and things like that. And so I think if you just pay attention to what they're doing, you know, might spot those opportunities. And it's not necessarily again about the book sale, but it's about can you collect email addresses and start to build that momentum. And you never know who's going to be at your event, that maybe they have their own event or maybe they have a business where they're, where they go, whoa, like that would be a phenomenal thing for all of my employees to get a copy of this book or that would be a great thing for me to sell in exchange for such and such or build those relationships and opportunities. And that's why I say like it's, it's not often going into it expecting a certain result, but going into it and you know, seeing what comes of it and trying to do everything you can to build that platform and build those relationships. Word of mouth is a powerful long term goal. Libraries and giveaways can be great tools for this. Absolutely. You know, I find that giving books away when you do it strategically, what I'm not a fan of, you know, I don't Find a lot of value in just doing an ebook giveaway. You know, just going online and giving ebooks. I don't think they get read, I don't think they get remembered. I don't think people pay attention to them. So if you're not getting an email address for that free book, I don't, in very rare cases do I see it as something to do that has value. But I do think there's massive value. Like I said at an event, you know, when it's a group of people who are a great fit, for example, to work with book launchers, to have a short conversation with them and then say, hey, like I'd like to give you a copy of my book as a gift. And at the end of all of the events, we always say, you know, we'll give you a book we, because we have all our clients books there, we'll give you a book, you know, in exchange for an email address. And so we just use it as a tool to get that relationship started. And you know, again, every book has a little sticker inside of it that encourages reviews and you know, says, hey, you know, you got this from book launchers and here's their contact information. So. But yes, I think libraries, bookstores are tremendous places where you can start to build relationships when you don't have anything. And my real goal today is to, to really help a lot of authors who are launch focused and focused on sales as their metric. I mean, it's great. There's, this is nothing against launches. You know, I've had, I've had a number one best selling launch that was, you know, topped Amazon and it was super fun. I mean there's, to this day it was, it was 11 or not 11. It was nine years ago, right? 2013. Yeah, it was 2013 and it's still one of the highlights of my life was that my book was on the top of Amazon. So yes, it was awesome. And really the best part of having that book was the partnerships that I gained after it, you know, through Canadian Real Estate wealth magazine and how I spoke at the investor forum all across Canada afterwards, how they gave away a copy of my book in exchange for two, two years of a magazine subscription and how that built my relationship with them. And I wrote dozens of articles. I was on the COVID of the magazine a couple of times. Like it's those things that came as a result that were, you know, again, the launch was fun, but it was the other things. It was the growth of my businesses, it was the people to this day that still work with me in my totally different unrelated business as a result of the exposure and the brand building, the thought leadership positioning that took place after that book. So it's really, I want you to think a little bit more like Efren said, it's like long term, it's think about this as a long term approach and the opportunities that can come one by one. Not trying to get it all done at once and thinking strategically about where are the opportunities and if you aren't starting with a platform, what are you going to do to use your book to grow that platform? So. Oh, we've got Angela, we need your admin services, please. All right. New video stickers, bookmarks, et cetera, to handout at meetups for email addresses. Yeah, I think that's a great subject, Efren. I will definitely talk about that. I don't think any of that is really valuable for the most part. Part. There's some companies out there that offer that as a service as part of their marketing and I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in doing that. But I think that's a great video, so I would love to do that. Free stuff does work for getting email addresses, but I like to make sure my email addresses are just a little bit more qualified, not any old email address. So. But that's a great subject. So I definitely want to dive into that. So that's great. All right, friends. O', Sean, you're in the house. You can catch the replay, my friend. It will be there for you. I think that that's it. Angela, were there any questions? I was kind of keeping an eye on things while I was chatting. But before I say goodbye to all, I want to make sure that I didn't leave anybody's question unanswered. So Deep Dive Saturday, we are talking about the publishing process. We're going to talk about some areas that you can kind of cut corners, if you will, where you shouldn't cut corners, if you met if quality matters. And it's going to be, I think, a really good session. It's going to be me and probably Angela. So you'll have the two of us there and hopefully many of you there. So it's book launchers.com deep dive to register and then in November we're going to do a writing session because it's NaNoWriMo and December will be our holiday party for the deep dive. So lots of good fun deep dives coming up if you haven't already caught them all. All right. I got all the questions, so thank you. Thank you. Krista, congratulations for winning today. And ea you too. And make it a great rest of the week, y'. All. I'll see you in the see you Saturday and then hopefully back here again in two weeks. By.