Blockchain for Authors, California Retreat & More! LIVE

Okay, cool. So we're good. So it must be on your side, Jacqueline. All right, so welcome to the first look book reviews. I'm Julie, the book broad with Book Launchers. And for those of you who don't know, I am the founder of Book Launchers that helps entrepreneurs and professionals write, publish and sell a fantastic self published book. All right, today we've got so much great stuff. I'm really, really excited to. Oh, great. Welcome, Emery. Welcome. And clear as a bell there. That's great. Okay, so a couple things before I get into the program for today. In addition to these weekly or, sorry, bi weekly live videos, every Friday I release new videos on my YouTube channel. So if you're not already subscribed, check that out. Book Launchers tv. And now when you go to that link, thanks to a little tip I saw from Dale, it'll give you the option to subscribe right away. So thank you, Dale. Hey, Chris. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Oh, and by the way, the fun part about these videos, if you guys haven't figured this out already. So right over, move my finger here. Right over there is the conference room. There's nobody having a meeting today, but sometimes we can spy on the meetings. Isn't that fun? Okay, so I go live every other Tuesday at 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time, 5:00pm Eastern. So welcome. And I want you to mark your calendars for the next live, which will be happening on June 12 at the same time and the same place. And I also want you to mark your calendars because on June 13th I'm doing a special live video with Jessica Rhodes, who is the founder of Interview Connections. And we're going to do a really cool two way interview. And it'll probably be two parts, but we're going to talk about basically how you should pitch yourself to get on podcasts. And it's something to think about, you know, if you have a book, how you can pitch it. But before you even start writing your book, it's important to start thinking about how it's going to be pitched to get as much exposure as possible. And podcasts are a great way to promote your book if you can find the right ones for your, for your audience. Like, really, you're trying to find your ideal reader and so it can be a little tricky. So Jessica's gonna help us figure a whole bunch of that stuff out. So that'll be a really fun interview, actually. It's really gonna be like a conversation. So think podcasts. But we're gonna be doing it live here on Facebook as well. Okay, great. Sound video. Awesome. And, Dale, I love your email newsletter. Awesome. Yes. Every Monday, I send out the launch letter. So if you're not already subscribed, go to book launchers.com and you can check that out. Okay. So today, really cool, I have a book review. This is the viewer book review. And I'll tell you how you can enter your book. Because once a month I draw from all the viewers on YouTube and select a book to review. So today we've got a viewer book review. And then I'll do the draw for that. And then you'll also find out we've got some cool prizes. So I can't wait anymore. So today we're kind of sponsored. I'll just say we're supported by Vitre Energy mints. And this is really cool because now you can have. You don't have to have coffee breath to get a boost of caffeine. So every mint is like half a cup of coffee. So you take two of these and you get fresh breath and energy. So we've got some of these to give away for you guys that are here joining us. Unfortunately, they're only going to ship to you if you are in the United States. So Canadians, Sorry, Chris, you're out on that one. But I'm sure we can figure something out. So we're going to do some draws for that. Of course, we have our usual book launchers mug that you guys all see backwards. Actually, that looks not backwards today, right? Are you seeing it normal today? That's weird. All right, cool. So anyways, it's the book launcher's mug. We'll be doing that draw prize and I'll tell you how you can win that, too. Okay. And we're going to talk about blockchain and self publishing, and I am by no means a blockchain expert. Our company is working on a few blockchain books, but they're not in draft fashion yet, so I haven't read them. But I have been researching it because there's some interesting implications and benefits and advantages and opportunities and all those kind of things for authors that I just kind of wanted to put on your radar so you can start thinking about it. Okay. Yeah, you can read it today. I don't know why my camera's not backwards. Normally when I hold up the bug, you have to put it in the mirror to actually read what it says. So who knows? And I think that's everything we're gonna hit. Unless you guys have questions or other stuff you want to chat about. So exciting. News, we're hosting our first writers retreat. It's gonna be small, exclusive group. Some of it will actually happen in this office space, but in a cool meeting room on this floor. Some of it's going to happen at a different location nearby here that I think you guys will be really excited about. So if you're interested in joining us, this is really a trial run, which means we're charging much less than we'll charge once we've got all the kinks ironed out. But still going to be a fantastic 2.5 days. We're going to start Thursday evening, get you all set up, and then we're going to spend at least 8 hours writing. Plus we're going to work on your book outline and your book publishing plan all the way through to marketing. So we have some great people on the team who will be here, and it won't quite be one on one with those people. You'll get one on one time, but the ratio of our professionals to the attendees is going to be very high. So I think it's a fantastic opportunity for you to join us. And let's go. It'll be book launchers.com juneretreat and I think Jacqueline's gonna try and put in some links for you all in the comments so you can check that out. Okay. That is that. Oh, and there's an early bird deal on until May 31st if you want to join us. You can get a deal if you use the code exclusive. And after May 31, it's still a fantastic deal. But up until May 31, we've got a discount on just so we can lock in all our spaces and have a good sense of how many people will be there. All right, so today's first look book review. Like I said, it's a viewer's book review. So this is how I've handled A lot of people contact me and say, hey, please review my book. Please promote my book. I need support and it's just not possible to do that for everyone. I have a lot of clients that we got to work with and figure out how to get their books out into the world and promoted and reviewed. So I want to support everyone, which is why I do a lot of content like these videos. However, I thought this would be a great way to thank everyone who watches the videos and give you some extra support. So what we do is anytime you can post a link to your book, as long as it's a nonfiction book on Amazon, and I will draw once a month for the book that I will review and I will be honest. So just so you know, I'm not going to, you know, tell you your book is great if I think it needs some work. So just prepare yourself for that. If it is four or five star worthy in my mind, I will write a review on Amazon for you. Okay, so the book today is called the the Builder. Rejected by J. Law, a fantastic, fantastic gal. I'm so grateful to have you in our YouTube and book launcher community. So I was really honored to have the opportunity to read your book. Now, first thing, I checked out the price on Amazon and it's a UK book. You can't actually get it here in the States or unless you go through Amazon uk. But my first impression was that it was really short, which I was not expecting based on the pricing because it was Roughly, I think $14 for a print and 5 for an ebook US when you translated pounds. So at first I didn't expect it to be so short. But it's a fast read. It's less than 50 pages and I did struggle because it was a very emotional read. And I read it here in this office space. So not exactly the right space for reading about, you know, it talked about depression and alcoholism and rape and I'm trying to remember all the things like parental relationship issues. Hey, Wes, welcome. It's my brother. So happy he got to join us. This is my office, by the way. Wesley. Someday you'll come visit, hopefully. All right. Oh, and by the way, happy birthday tomorrow. Tomorrow. I don't know what day it is. It's nearing. I know your birthday is just around the corner, so happy early birthday. Okay. So it was a tough subject matter and I was not in the right environment for reading that tough subject matter. I also found it a little challenging for a couple reasons. And the first was the long paragraphs. Like some of these were 400, 500 word paragraphs, which is tough to digest. Especially nowadays we're in that age of like really short paragraphs, short sentences, and you don't have to write like that if that's not your style. But you have to break up these long, long paragraphs so that it's easier for somebody to digest, especially when it's deep, heavy, emotional subject. The other challenge, I had, to be frank, was that I didn't actually know who the book was about. So the. When you read the Amazon review, I think it or not review the description it references Carla, I think. But the whole thing is I. And so that makes me feel like it's the author, but the author's J. Law, so it's a little lost. And I really could have used some more context right at the beginning so I understood who this was about and, you know, what had happened and what I was going to get from this read. You know, I was reading, I don't know, I think I was four pages in and there was some mention of I was dropped off. I didn't get home until three in the morning because I was at a, I was performing and I was like, performing, what do you do? So I was really a little lost. All that said, there's some beautiful stories in here and it really does wrap up with an empowering message and I think there really is some gold in here. It just needs a little bit of reworking so that people can get it, you know, really understand what they're taking away and how they can use it and, you know, really in a little bit more context so they can relate to you and to the stories. And so from a marketing hat, which is where I often go, because that's usually what I'm thinking about when it comes to books, is I wanted to know who's your ideal reader and are you trying to use this book to build an author reader platform? And if so, you know, that piece was missing in there as well. And I would kind of, I'd be willing to open a dialogue with you and try and figure out some ways to help you get there. So I'll leave that with you. I'm happy for you to reach out and we could talk about some ways to rework this and then to make it so you can build a platform from this and really get clear on who your ideal reader is so you know who to promote it to and where to find them and really what they're going to get out of this book. So there you go. So thank you so much for sharing your book. Like I said, it has it, it has a very empowering message at the end, which I think is fantastic and there's some incredible stories there and, you know, I really think you're brave for sharing it. So that's today's First Look. Book Review the Next Live Video is a book of my choosing, which I think I can't say for sure because I have to make sure I'm going to be allowed to review the book. But I think I'll be reviewing a book that may not even be launched yet. I'm going to get my hands on it on June 9th and hopefully power read it so I can give you Guys, a real true first look book review on June 12th. So stay tuned for that. That's going to be exciting. Okay, so if you want your book to be reviewed nonfiction only, please, because that's what we do at Book Launchers. And all you have to do is go to my most recent YouTube video and post a comment with what your book title is and ideally your Amazon link so I can buy it. And I want to buy it on Amazon because if I think I can give it a four or a five star review, then it'll show up as a verified purchase, which is much better for you. Okay, I'm just checking the comments and people, so do say hello and give me that thumbs up and all those kind of things because it shows up on the screen and then it makes it worthwhile that my neighbors see there's Moses right behind me. My office neighbors, they think I'm crazy. He's just sitting here talking to myself in my fishbowl of an office. So you guys talking to me reminds me. Thank you, Dale. I can see your little thumbs up going up there. Thank you very much. It reminds me that I'm not here alone. And if you think I'm talking too fast, it could be these Vitre Energy mints. And Jaclyn's going to let us know. Hey, Keith. Thank you. Welcome. And Jacqueline's going to let us know who our first winner is of this. And again, unfortunately, they'll only ship to folks who are in the US So if you're not in the US we might be able to get them to ship it to me and I can find a way to get it to you somehow. But that was their caveat to me was that they really wanted to be somebody in the U.S. and if you don't win and you want to buy them yourself, Jaclyn's also going to post the link here. Or you can search for Vitor energy myths. They actually really taste good. And I don't know, I had so much coffee today already. It's hard to compare whether the mints actually made me more hyper or not or I'm just so darn excited to be here with you guys. All right, cool. So I covered how to enter your book, and I've already told you about the writer's retreat, but I didn't tell you the dates. It's June 21st, 22nd, and 23rd happening right here in Los Angeles, but in a really fantastic part of Los Angeles called Playa Vista. And we're seven minutes from the beach and we are in what I call a bubble, a happy bubble, where Google and Yahoo and all kinds of tech companies have decided to call this home. So it creates a very cool kind of beachy silicon, which is why they call it Silicon beach vibe. Oh, hi, Kelly, welcome. We've got the dynamic Dale and Kelly here. You can catch them every Thursday on Dale's channel. Dale, you can search Dale Roberts Self Publishing and check out their live show every Thursday. Sure. You guys can post a link to it. I'm totally fine with that. Promote your show because it's fantastic. Okay, so blockchain for authors. I hope there's no blockchain experts here. Actually, no. I hope you are a blockchain expert and can correct me when I make a mistake. So I dove deep into this on the weekend because I've been hearing more and more about it. And so blockchain simply is a ledger of value transactions. Basically, what actually helped me really start to wrap my head around it was imagining that it was a whole bunch of a Google Doc that everyone could access. And that's a very simplified, not accurate version of it. But it was how I was able to finally wrap my head around it was thinking about it as a Google Doc so everyone can access it. Everybody who accesses it is an authenticated user. And because it has like 30,000 nodes just making up numbers. Okay. But because it has all these nodes and every node has a copy of it, it's harder to. It's more stable. Okay. Now there's a really, really, really great white paper that explains it and actually talks about it specific to authors. And it's put out by the alliance of Independent Authors and you can download it. Jacqueline will put the link in the comments for you. And they're basically saying that Blockchain has the potential to create Self Publishing 3.0. So Self Publishing 1.0 was the old school. You have to go do a print run of a bazillion book. Nobody wanted to do it because it was expensive. And then you had to have a garage to store all the books in while you figured out how you were. How the heck you were going to sell them. Self Publishing 2.0 is where we are right now in the wonderful age of print on demand and digital self publishing and, you know, being able to distribute your books through different platforms. Self publishing 3.0 is what we're talking about now with which is enabled by blockchain. So I kind of already mentioned it's a public ledger system. I'm going to check my notes just so I Don't say anything that's totally wrong or crazy for you guys, because I want to make sure that you get a good sense of it and also understand the opportunities, because there are some pretty cool opportunities coming. And not that I think you have to do anything today, but prepping yourself for it. I think it's smart. So it's permanently timestamped. Like I said, it's kind of a ledger system that's permanently timestamped and it's not controlled by any single entity, which is part of the interesting part for me, because if you think about it, Amazon. What? Amazon, Google and Apple. I would say maybe some others, Facebook. But there's kind of a few big ones that control. And in the publishing world, it's really like Amazon, Apple, Amazon, that control pretty much all of the content now. So it's really creating the opportunity for the author to drive the content and to have transactions that happen immediately. Because right now we've got these third parties that slow everything down for us and we don't get paid for a while. Like my. My Audible, My Audible, my audiobook sales. I think I get paid 90 days later. I go through Authors Republic, which is kind of a. Oh, I've forgotten the word for it. An aggregator. That's the word. And so they send it out, they publish for me on all the platforms. But I think I'm getting paid. And I think this is the case for a lot of my book sales, too. I'm getting paid 90 days later for the book sales that happen. Hey, Adam. Welcome. And so it really slows things down. Whereas blockchain provides this opportunity for instant payment, and it'll have access. It'll have all of the contracts there. So everything can be instantly calculated, too. So it'll also be harder for some of these arrangements when you get into a deal with a hybrid publisher or a vanity publisher or a traditional publisher, where you get certain splits. And then it's like, oh, I thought I was getting 10%. Well, no, it's 10% of, you know, not retail price. It's like 10% of the wholesale price. And all these things happen. And so there can be contract issues and all these things. This will all happen instantly and calculated by the system because the contracts would live there as well as these transactions. So I won't go any deeper than that because I know some of you are going, oh, my gosh, what is she talking about? Check out the white paper. It's really, really great. And I think, you know, I think the three kind of opportunities I want to leave you with is this would mean that we weren't beholden to these big publishing companies or even Amazon or Apple or Google, any of them. We could take back control of our work. And you know, really, we're really reliant as independent authors on Amazon. And that can be kind of scary because there's been lots of people lately who've. I shouldn't say lots, but there's lots of stories of people who are getting their accounts pulled or they're not getting paid what they think they should have been paid on the Kindle Unlimited because, you know, there's somebody that's been hacking the system and you know, because they're paid on. They're paid based on page reads in the Kindle Unlimited library program and some of these other programs. And so there's all these stories now of people not getting paid and people losing their income because Amazon's revoking their account access. And on. Hey, Linda. And you're in San Diego right now, so that's great. I hope you're feeling better. So lots of, I think opportunity for the future there. And like I said, right now everybody gets paid before the author makes money. And in this world, the blockchain world, it would happen instantly. So we wouldn't have to wait 60 to 90 days. And thank you for confirming. Oh, hey Ron. The wizard's in the house. Awesome. Excited to have you here. And the other thing is piracy and copyright issues. Because it's timestamped, it will have an immediate record of who wrote what. So there's lots of cool things. And this is probably something Linda knows way more. So we probably have somebody who's closer to a blockchain expert in the house. She's definitely got a way more technical background than I do, but I think there's lots of opportunities. So just kind of keep your ear open. And like I said, this white paper has some great information on it. I just want to check my notes to see if I missed anything. Copyright tracking is accurate as a royalty commission payments. I said that. And everyone has authenticated identities. So you'll always be known as the work of, as the author of the work. But it also, because of the way there's a three point authentication system. It also will allow you the opportunity to be anonymous and still get paid because the way it works right now you're only kind of anonymous because you still have to get paid and your anonymous Persona won't get paid. Right. Your anonymous Persona doesn't have that Social Security number, which I've learned Is, you know, the be all, end all here in the United States. Being a Canadian, it was quite a shock to my system. I've often joked that I was waiting for them to ask me at Whole Foods for that number so that I could buy my groceries. But anyway, all that said, because there's a three point authentication system, you would have that opportunity to be anonymous but also be known as the author of your work. So lots of cool stuff coming down the pipe. Anybody have questions about blockchain? Check out that white paper. Again, I'm not an expert. I've just been reading up on it. We have, I think, three books in the works on something, either crypto or blockchain, because crypto technology uses the blockchain. Cryptocurrency uses the blockchain technology. And yeah, thank you for putting the link up again, Jacqueline, so you guys can check all of that out. All right, I think I'm about to wrap up, unless you guys want to talk about something else. And like I said, there's no meetings going on over there, so there's nothing to spy on, nothing to talk about. And so far, nobody's walked by and made faces at me today. So I just want to give a few folks a fantastic shout out and then we've got prizes. Oh, Jacqueline, did we give away the first set of minutes? I didn't see if you selected somebody for that. No. Okay, so we were going to do. We had a couple different people that we were going to select in terms of, you know, most comment or first to comment, those kind of things. So Jacqueline's gonna go ahead and pick those folks and then we're gonna do a random draw at it right after I talk about this final prize that we're going to give. Oh, she had connectivity issues. Okay. So she'll take care of that while I thank some folks. So some folks have been fantastically supportive of my YouTube channel. So I just want to say thank you so much. Weaver 2600. Ron, who's in the house? The wizard in the house. Thank you, Ron, for all your comments. Mooshin fael and Kevin McGuire, who said he couldn't make it tonight because he's going to be asleep. I think he's in the uk, but normally he's here and he comment. He's one of the first to comment on almost every video I post. So thank you all. You make my day. All right, so while Jacqueline's doing that, I'm going to do a couple of the draws here. So of course, every Friday, when the video Comes out, the first people to comment on the video on the day of you get entered to win one of these fantastic book launchers, mugs that say no boring books. Right. So that's happening right now. So I've got 15 people or so in here. So I'm going to draw that name first. All right? Okay. Oh, Kevin's in the Ukraine. Okay, thanks. And our first. Oh, there you go. That's perfect. Oh, except for she's in the uk. Okay. So warrior chick. She won the mug, but I'm not going to ship it out to the uk. But what I will do is give you a copy of my audiobook, the new brand new. So that's what I'll do instead for you. So reach out by email and I will get you a copy of the new Brand U audiobook and I will draw for another mug. Oh, hi. Hi. Kai. Is it Kai? Do I say it Kai or K? Is it K? Not sure, but anyways. Hello. Okay. And the winner, Kevin. Oh, and he's. He just won last week. It pays to be consistent. So, Kevin, if you'd like, I can ship another one over to the address that we sent the other mug because I think it's not leaving here for another two weeks. So congratulations, you won another mug and I'm happy to send you you a second one. So thank you. Okay. And I saw Jacqueline say, I know how does Kevin keep winning? I swear there's other names in there. Swear. Okay. Jacqueline said the first winner of was Keith. Okay, great. So Keith, you are the first winner of the mints. So you're gonna have to send me your mailing address so I can send it over to the Biter Mints folks and get you that prize. So congratulations and let's see. Okay, so you'll do that. You'll do the next one. Whoever was the first commenter, other than you, Jacqueline. Oh, Dale. Dale. There we go. And it's pronounced K. Okay, got it. Not Dave's mom. I was wondering. Okay, there we go. Sorry, I'm live. There's only so much you can do. Don't ask me to do math because it would not go well live. Okay, so these are. There was three books submitted for the next reader or sorry, viewer book review. So that's what's in here. So I'm gonna pick that one now. And oh, yeah, Dale Roberts, congratulations. I already have your address, so I will send it over to the vitrements, folks, and you're gonna get yourself a little caffeine punch in the form of a Breath mint. Fresh breath and caffeine. Okay, so, Laie Ajayi. Sorry if I'm saying your name poorly. This is the Amazon book that I'll be doing the review for next month, not June 12, but Jacqueline will probably tell us what day. And this is called Business Excellent Business Excellence. I believe he's a Canadian. I'm not sure, but I seem to recall him being from Manitoba in Canada. So I will grab a copy of your book and you can watch for it in a month. All right, so thank you very much. And one more. We have one more mint to give away, Jacqueline, so I don't remember who that was going to. Thank you, everybody, for being here. And let's just see if you're wondering how you can win one of these prizes. We'll be here live. And who knows? We might have more cool prizes for you to get. You never know when another company is going to say, hey, listen, we like what you're doing. Will you share my product with the world? And then I get to feel a little bit like Ellen, except for I'm giving away mints instead of cars. But, you know, we all have to start somewhere, don't we? All right, so Jacqueline's saying, who wants a mint? So I guess put your hand up right now if you want to be entered in, and you have to be in the United States if you want to be entered in to get that. These mints, some of these shipped right to your door going, going. So put your hand up, say something in the comments, give this video some love, and then you could be the happy winner of the final jar of mints, and then we'll bid everyone adieu for the day. All right, Ron gets the next mint. All right. Very sophisticated system we have going on here. So thanks, Dale's mom, for stopping by. Kay, it's good to have you here. Good to have everyone here. Next live is happening June 12th at 2pm Pacific Standard Time, 5pm Eastern. And like I said, I'm hoping to be doing a book review of a book that may not even be out yet. I'm going to the launch party on June 9, which might be when it goes live, but I. I have a feeling it's not quite live yet on June 9th. So who needs a car when you can have fresh bath and some fuel instead? That's going to be the tagline. All right, if there's something you want me to talk about in two weeks, you got a topic idea, let me know. Otherwise, just thank you so much for being here. It was fun to have a great crowd in the house, so thank you. Dale, Kelly, Ron, Kay. I'm trying to remember everybody else who was here. Jacqueline, of course, Linda. And I'm sorry if I've. I've missed other people. All right, have a fantastic week, you guys, and we'll see you here again June 12th. Bye.