Book Launch Party Ideas, Ideal Reader Identification and More - Holiday Extravaganza Q&A 2022

Foreign.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome.

Hello.

Hello. Long time no see for some of you. Been a while since we've had a YouTube live, so it's nice to see people's faces and I don't know, just feels like it's been a long time since on that deep dive.

It's been a while since I've been on deep dive.

Yeah, yeah. And I actually wasn't on the last one, so I think that's why normally I'm on like every single deep dive. So you can see we've got some clients in the house. Hello.

Hello.

Got some contracts in the house.

I see you, Victoria. Hi.

Richard.

Efren. I think I saw a. Bonnie. I think I saw a couple of others come in. It's good to see everybody. Feel free to have your video on or off if you like. Say hi in the chat. Say hi. And where you're from. And as a reminder, we do monitor the comments for special treats.

Yes, yes. And we do have an extra special treat today that will be as far as like a prize goes. But the key way to get a prize is to participate in the chat. So feel free. If you're on your phone, you can still. I think there's still a way where you can chat away. So, Efren, I see you're in your car, but you're not disqualified. You should still be able to type something in.

Do not encourage him to text and drive.

Don't. Don't do it while you're driving, though.

Awesome.

That's what stop lights are for.

All right, well, I think we should wait just another minute. Let's see what other people are gonna hop on and then we will get started. We will be keeping this just on schedule, just like with normal. So we will be ending right at 3pm Eastern. What does that be, Pacific? Yes, we will be ending it right on time. And I hope you guys have come prepared because the three of us do have things we're going to talk about. And we'll introduce ourselves for anyone who doesn't know us in just a minute. But this is also a Q and A session. And if you guys don't know, we really don't have consult calls, just randomly with people outside of our client base. So if you have questions, this and participating on the YouTube lives or commenting on the YouTube videos is the best way to. If you've just got a one off question, you want an opinion, this is the time to do it. So rack your brain, write them down and post them in the chat because we are going to Try to get to as many of those as possible. And Sarah and Jacqueline, I do have a word doc pulled up so we can. Or at least I can keep track of everything. So I will try to keep track there. If either of you guys want to keep track of questions as they start popping in, by all means.

I love seeing all of these familiar names and faces. I see Bernard over there. Bernard, nice to see you again. I see Deborah Lloyd. Dr. Pat, it's so great to see everybody and we're really excited to do this deep dive with you while this Q and A holiday extravaganza, as Julie puts it, right? Yes. My only extravaganza this year.

So should we kick it off with the introductions?

Yes. Yeah, let's go ahead.

All right, well, I will go first since my little name tag here is saying Julie Broad. This is a lie. I am Jacqueline Kyle. I am the book production manager at Book Launchers. I am the one who gets the book through editing, all the way through layout, and then hands it over to Sarah for marketing.

Hello, I am Sarah Bean. I am Book Launcher's marketing manager. It means that I oversee our marketing department and all of the fantastic team that works on your launch strategy and then the marketing thereafter. So, yeah, and do a little bit of everything. For those of you that are clients or are interested in being clients, Marketing usually entails platform set up, digital marketing, including, including email and social media content, ad space and then media pitching, book sales giveaways. I mean, kind of anything under the sun. So we do a lot of it on the marketing side.

And that leaves me. So I am Angela, the operations manager here at Book Launchers. Some of you guys will see me in the YouTube lives and on the other deep dives as well. And I am actually back of house. I do a lot of things behind the scenes here at Book Launchers. Just helping Julie keep the company running and hiring, working with leads that come in. So whenever people are reach out to us with an interest to work on their books, I am actually one of the first people that goes over that. So a lot of things backup House, but I love getting to interact with you guys because I don't normally get to do that very much. So this is always, always very fun for me. And then Julie, just as a heads up, Julie does send her regrets for not being able to be here. She is healthy. Just want everyone to know she is healthy, but she is not able to be here. So you get to spend some extra special quality time with Jacqueline, Sarah and myself today. And we are in Our Christmas gear. Hope you guys are getting into the holiday spirit because it is just a few days away and I was out earlier today. I was telling them I was out looking for like a Christmas hat or a necklace and the stores are packed and they have none of those things. So you get to deal with my point. That and a red shirt. But you're all.

The Christmas spirit festive enough?

Yes, yes, there is some red, which I don't normally wear. Okay, I think let's first. We've got someone from Texas. That's my heart. Awesome. Let's first kick it off with a prize because we do love prizes here. And as I mentioned, we have a super duper secret flag that only Julie and myself know what they are. So Jacqueline and Sarah don't even know what this is?

Yeah, we don't even know yet. We have no idea what it is.

So it's not going to be announced on the call right here. It's just whenever someone wins that prize, they're going to have a surprise when the package comes to them. So let's first do the prize of. Let's see who has been participating in the chat. Let's see what day is today. Today is the 17th. If we have 17 comments.

Let me count.

Let's go from 17. From the top.

9, 10, 11, 12. Who is the winner?

15, 16.

It's me. Not a BL person. It can't be a book launcher team member.

Then I will go to the next in line, which would be Deborah Lloyd.

Highly suspicious.

Sarah.

I had nothing to do with it. It was just 17, but we're going to go 18.

Awesome. Deborah. I don't. I don't see that comment. So I'm just.

Oh, there it is.

Awesome. Yay, Deborah. Well, I have your address, your mailing address. So unless it has changed, I will send you this super duper secret swag in the mail very soon, within this next week. So awesome. I'm going to note your name and.

Then you need to email us, Sarah and I so that we know what it is because I'm dying of curiosity.

Yeah, I actually really am. I know we've debated so many things.

Well, our team members will get one. They just haven't gotten it yet, so.

All right, that's good to know. That's good to know.

Okay, so awesome. Let's go ahead and start putting in your questions into the chat. Let's start going over some Q and A while we're doing that. Sarah or Jacqueline, does one of you want to kick us off with Some sort of tip that you have for authors.

Can I do, like, breaking news stuff?

Absolutely.

Okay, so I've got. I'm going to actually share my screen real quick because Amazon upgraded one of their features recently. They didn't make a public announcement about it, they just did it. And you just sort of have to discover for yourself that it's there. So I'm going to share my screen. They have upgraded the Amazon author page. So if you have an Amazon author page already, especially if you have more than one book, all of a sudden it looks pretty spiffy. Where you've got, you know, your most popular book is highlighted. The number of books that you have are all available in one place. Customers who also bought this item. I was laughing because I recognize some of these names. These are people who specialize in teaching people how to write and publish. So that algorithm is spot on. And then they've got like the about section where you can see, you know what, your bio is pretty big. And this was making me realize that we don't have extra photos of Julie in here or so we could have put like multiple pictures of Julie and then all of her books are in this section as well. Except I may have just hit customer service. So then you can see all of the books. So it doesn't actually change how it works in the back end of Amazon, where the portal is still the same. It is Author Central for Amazon.com if you're in your KDP account, you can access it directly in the Marketing tab and you still put in your bio.

Exactly how it was.

The interface looks the same. It's just the output got spiffied up. And this just came out this last week and looks really good. And then you can also customize how that link looks and be able to send it out to friends and followers where it's like Amazon.com forward/Victoria Short. And then you can send it out to people when they click it. It'll go to all the gobbling gook that it always looks like. But it's a pretty link when you can send it to people, which is nice.

That is fantastic. I didn't even. I wasn't even aware of that. That gives me all sorts of ideas on what it makes you think now about what you're going to input there. Even though it looks the same as you're inputting it now, knowing how the. The display has changed can really, really up how you enter stuff.

Yes. And Dale Roberts, who is Julie's best buddy on YouTube, was showing us on a live stream that he did. He's in another like pilot program and they had like banner photos that were in that and it was a very similar look and feel. So it's possible that we may get banner photos coming up as well where you can kind of put in something about your genre or an overall aesthetic for your books in the background. So that's the next feature that we're excited to see them roll out. And fingers crossed they do.

I can tell you that like from at least from a marketing perspective or from a consumer perspective, if you're not investing time in your Amazon Author Central, you're missing opportunities. Because what that shows your buyers, if you're not putting time into that Author Central because people do check it, that shows them that maybe you're not putting time and care and that maybe you're not a credible, trustworthy source where they should be buying books from. So making sure that Amazon Author Central is really top notch is a huge marketing tool and especially if you have the vanity links now. That's awesome.

Yeah. So one other thing I did want to point out on here is this follow button. I'm not logged into an account right now, so it's asking me to follow. When you follow an author on Amazon or get other people to follow you. When you put a new book onto pre order or a new format or something new comes out new that you're associated with, it sends a blast email to everyone who has been your follower that you have new content out available. And the same thing goes for Goodreads if you've got people who are following your Goodreads profile. When a new content comes out, when you publish a new book, they email everyone on the list saying, hey, an author you follow has a new book or new giveaway, something like that.

That's really cool. And Eric, oh, Eric put in a quote or something into the chat saying that he's had authors post holiday messages and suggested gift ideas that link to their book, which is a really great idea, especially for this time of year.

Cool. I. I heard someone say they had a question.

I think it was Eric. Eric had unmuted for a moment and then.

Got it. Got it.

Okay.

Speaking of like holiday messages, you know, one of the things that we've done in the past for our authors is around the holidays or around, let's say Father's Day or Mother's Day or something. You can change up your book description to include in there great gifts for dads or great gifts for your grandmother. Great gift for whoever your target reader Is doesn't have to stay there all the time. You know, you can do it for just a short amount of time, but it's a great little way to get the algorithm to pick up those keywords. Because I go to Amazon, I just type in, you know, holiday gifts for toddlers or holiday gifts for brother, and it'll bring you lists. So if you're then searching by category, you know, they want a book, hopefully that will help boost up who exactly your book is for.

And that's such a great idea because there are times when you might not know someone very well, but you know that they might like a certain sort of thing. I've googled that before as well. If you're just having like a brain stop. Where you cannot think of what to get something Googling the exact same thing that Sarah just mentioned. And if you're. If your book pops up on those lists, it's going to be seen by all of those people who are in that same situation. So, yeah, perfect.

Absolutely. Eric, you have a question. I see you have your hand up.

Go for it.

I don't know if you could.

There we go.

I'm sorry.

Trying to find buttons. It broadcasts an update even if it isn't a book. Correct. So if you link your blog, create a video, do an author bio, doesn't it. If somebody's following, say something's changed on the author page.

I'm actually not sure about that one. I know for Goodreads, it'll send out an email for authors you've read, authors you follow. And if there's a new giveaway of something by those authors or one you've entered before, they send you alerts. But I'm not really sure how. What triggers the emails from Amazon other than new books? I know for sure that one goes out.

Sounds like a marketing beta test.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because that was the reason we did the Christmas videos is I thought it would. They did it on Goodreads as well, but I thought it would like, hey, by the way, my book's still there.

If you haven't bought it. Yeah, I mean, and I think the bonus of having that content, whether it's on their Amazon author page or if it's just something that they can then use on social media, they can then put it on their website. They can then put it up on YouTube or any other place where they're doing promotion. I don't know if, you know, if Amazon might be trying with this to kind of compete a little bit with Bookbub, where bookbub really does reward those people that follow authors. And whenever there's any kind of change, BookBub will send out a blast. Hey, this author's added new content. This author has a new, you know, pre sale, anything like that. So it could be that Amazon's trying to emulate that. I don't know for sure how often they send out the notifications though.

Or, and here's the thing about Amazon is, and this is, this can go in any, anything that you're trying to do on Amazon. It may work today because they're testing something and then never work again. Or it's something that becomes like the super secret thing on the forum and then eventually gets solidified that they'll do it. They test things and then they tell people a year later, oh, this is available to you. And so what is available now may not be available later. What is not possible now may be possible later. They are constantly testing and then telling people after the fact, like these new Amazon author pages, they went live. And then if you go to your author central, there'll be an alert telling you that it's there. It didn't even launch with that to begin with. They just sort of do and then apologize later if it doesn't work out well.

Well, and I do have a tip about something that Amazon has been beta testing and I don't know if they're going to roll it out widely yet, but I learned about this at 20k20, what is it, 20 bucks to 50 camera that Amazon is now testing out for authors specifically including Goodreads reviews and Goodread review numbers in your Amazon product page. Which isn't something that they've done in the past even though they own Goodreads. But this is something that they are just now testing out. It's not on every page and frankly I haven't seen it on any of our non fiction books. My thought is they're more than likely testing this out on a lot of fiction books, but it will be an interesting feature. There's some authors that are for it, there are some authors that are against it. We'll see. They're probably just going to test it for a few months and then they might find out that it didn't track well and they'll remove it. So Amazon does testing all the time.

Okay, so hang on, let me make sure I understand. So if someone leaves a message like a review on Goodreads, it'll migrate to Amazon now.

That is what they are testing out. And I'm trying.

Things are heating up.

Someone I'm gonna. There we go. Currently, they are ab testing adding Goodreads reviews to product pages. Yes, they are ab testing that. At the moment I have not seen it on any of our non fiction books. It's possible that they are doing this more on fiction, especially genre fiction books that tend to get a lot more reviews on Goodreads than non fict. But it is something that they are slowly rolling out under the radar.

I'm curious if they're still going to be dismissive of like friends and family leaving reviews on books now.

I don't know.

I don't know how it's going to work.

Interesting.

And like I said, they're just ab testing it right now. So it could be that some people see them and some people don't. So it's a very interesting development. I learned this from Dave chessen at. At 20k or 20 bucks. I always say.

Okay, well, 20 bucks to 50k.

Yeah, I always say it wrong because it doesn't make sense to me.

But yeah, why don't you explain to people what that is just so they like, in case they're not familiar with it. Because of course as a nonfiction author, I wasn't.

Yeah, I wasn't either up until about a year and a half ago. 20 bucks to 50k is a publishing conference. It's a lot of education sessions, panels, all about various parts of the book process. So there's writing, there's marketing, there's sales, distribution, and all of the in between. It is very heavily genre fiction. I would say the majority of the people that attended were probably romance, sci fi, horror, thriller, mystery. But there was a pretty good subset of nonfiction people there. And I think it's growing every year. Really valuable information, especially if you're an independent author. It is heavily independent, although it doesn't focus on independent, but they just assume that most of the people there are going to be independent authors. So yeah, it was. It was a great session. It took place last month. Efren was there. It was fun to. Efren and I got to hang out at a mixer. So that was really fun. So yeah, something to really check out if you are looking to get the basics of like publishing, education and knowledge.

Well, in this time I have collected a few questions that some people have put into the chat. If you haven't, feel free to put a question that you have into the chat or multiple questions. So the first one that came through is from Michael Friedenberg. I hope I pronounced your name correctly. Hi Michael. And he was asking, what are Some cool activities. He specifically asked for six. But what are some of the coolest activities to include in a book launch party? Oh, okay.

Activities to include. Not just elements like activities.

That's what he said. I will ask you to unmute Michael if you want to expound just a little bit.

Yes, Straightforward. It's a virtual party and cool activities.

To entertain people as well as inform them at the same time.

Got it.

Okay. So for a virtual launch party for a book, that. That makes the difference right there. Okay, so for a virtual launch party, some of the things that I have seen work really well. Obviously, you want to do some kind of reading and content around the book so people know what it's going to be. You want to do a Q and A similar to how we're doing now where people send over questions. Another idea is to invite another author that is within that same genre and have them talk about their book. You can do almost Fireside Chat, where the two of you are talking back and forth, one asking the other questions. Prizes, always a huge, you know, no matter what kind of part it is, people love prizes. So coming up with some prizes. We also had an author. This was kind of a fun one. We had an author that did a virtual dance party where he. He was a dj and so it played in really well with his content and his followers. And he had a virtual dance party where he had different DJs come in and virtually do sessions. So that was a fun little aspect. We had another author who. Her book was on. It's called the Big Bliss Blueprint, and it was all about many chapters on how to be kind, how to be a better person, how to find your own bliss. And so she had three or four different authors coming in and just doing mini sessions with, like, mini lessons. I would say depending on your book topic, you can do things like a mini workshop where you're actually giving your audience tasks. And then you can do roundtable style, almost like mastermind sharing of whatever it is that you're teaching. Jacqueline, can you think of any others? I think that's more than six, but.

There was one client that. And I don't know if it would work outside of the pandemic, but he did a virtual launch party near the beginning of the pandemic, when people were desperate for entertainment, and he had a virtual magician show up and that. That engaged the all ages that were on. On the event.

Yeah, and that works really well with his brand because his personality is sort of boisterous and engaging. And I, you know, so that Worked really well because it made sense for him. You're right. I wouldn't say that that works for everybo, but it worked great for him. I would say any activities that you're going to do should fit in with the brand that you're building. You know, make sure that it is something that supports either what your mission is or something that supports your book content. So don't bring in a magician just because it's an idea. You know, make sure it fits in with what you're doing.

Yeah, awesome.

Perfect.

Anyone else have any ideas on things to include in virtual launch parties? Why don't you put them in the chat and Michael can pick them up?

Yeah, that's a great idea. Good one, Sarah. Okay, this is actually going back to the conversation of I hadn't seen this when we were talking about it, but altering the post on Amazon so that whenever it's certain times of year, you can say, oh, this is a great gift for so and so, or for this set of people. So Sheila had asked, can you add those additional keywords after it's up on Amazon? Can that be edited?

Yes. So, yes, you can edit your book description on Amazon and you can put those kinds of things, like the lists, into your keywords. What you do have to stay away from is the combination of free and book. Like, for example, we had a client whose book was about letting his kids roam free. And so it was a keyword that we used that said wild and free book or wild and free roaming book or something like that. And they kiboshed it. They wouldn't let us publish free book in the same keywords. So you have to be careful about that. But you could say, best gift for mom on Mother's Day 2023. And they'll pass it and let it, let it fly. So, yeah, you can always be updating your keywords or your book description. Both of them get indexed for the search results.

The one that I would give you. Sorry, real quick, Angela. The one caution I would give you is the one thing with Amazon is that you do want to give it time to adjust. So I wouldn't be changing your keywords or your description on like every other week or probably even more than, you know, once a month. We do refresh keywords quarterly. So we'll look every three months. We'll kind of refresh them just to make sure that they're still trending because keywords that are hitting at one point in time will shift as the world changes. And we have seen this time and time again. But we won't change the keywords themselves unless we have a real reason to. Like, for example, ads aren't performing and they haven't been performing for three months. Okay, then we'll shift the keywords, but we let those ones run for at least three months because it takes Amazon time to learn your book, learn your audience, and learn where to place you. So just by the way, if your.

Ads are really performing well, don't play with your keywords. Yes, it will take the results. So, yeah, if you're already dialed in on your ads, you can adjust the book description, but the keywords themselves in that little section, don't touch them.

Perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to add. Is just that timing of not changing it all the time.

Perfect.

Okay, awesome. Let's do one more question, and then I think we'll go for another prize. So this is a question from Bernard. It says, what writing strategies do you guys recommend for aspiring authors who are on a high, then all of a sudden hit a low mentally?

Been there, done that. I totally understand that question. And I think probably virtually every author in the universe has felt this at some time or another. I have my ideas. I don't know. Jacqueline, do you want to go first?

Oh, I would just say that publishing is an emotional journey, and it has its highs and lows, for sure. There are things that you're so proud of, and then, you know, you build it up in your head and it doesn't get those results. And then you have that. The corresponding dip that happens afterwards. It's. It's almost like Bridal blues right after, like, the wedding, where after your publication day, there's the. The dip as well. And you need to be prepared to ride the roller coaster and to stick on it and to continue.

Absolutely. I would say if you're looking for, like, something practical and actionable, writing sprints are a good way to kind of get the juices flowing again. And a writing sprint, it doesn't have to be an hour long thing. In fact, I encourage you not to. If you've never really done one, I would say start with maybe 10 to 15 minute increments. And when you're in that low period where it's like, it just doesn't feel like the words are coming. Like you feel like that block just sitting down. And to write 15 minutes, even if it's not on your manuscript, can help your mind and your brain remember. Oh, yes, this is something I enjoy. I want to get my words out into the universe so I would start with 10 to 15 minute writing sprints even, especially on the days that you're not feeling it. Just like, you got to go to the gym, right? Like, you got to get out and move when you really don't want to. And you're like, oh, God, it's so much easier to just like, forget about that for today. But if you force yourself to do that workout, I've never heard a single person be like, man, I really regret that 15 minutes that I spent on the treadmill. Right, so writing is the same way. Then 10 to 15 minutes on a writing sprint doesn't have to be good, doesn't even have to be on your book. But that exercise will help you get back into the groove of writing on a regular basis and you'll start to find the words coming again. And I would love, and I think with any of these questions, I would love to see in the chat, other people's solutions, answers, you know, ideas that can help your fellow author. Definitely put them down in the chat. And if we see some good ones, we'll. We'll tap you to expand on it.

Yeah, that's a great idea because that's something that we chat about a lot, you know, within the team and just, you know, with authors as well as. Especially if you've never written a book before, it is a very emotional experience. There are highs and lows and even seasoned authors who have done the process before, a new book might hit differently or what's going on in the world might hit differently for that book that they are currently writing. And so, yeah, if you have any tips, it is going to vary for every author, but there would be some great ideas out there because inevitably, practically every author is going to experience that at some point. So that's a great suggestion, Sarah.

And my suggestion, I guess, is that every author experiences this. And don't beat yourself up about it. Just keep going.

I see some good answers in the chat. Self hypnosis for writer's block. I don't know anything about self hypnosis, but if you've got some links to share, go ahead and throw that in there. I do like Cynthia's idea. Find a writing buddy or an accountability partner. It's always easier to work out together.

Right.

So I love that idea. Go for a walk outside. Absolutely.

Ooh.

Deborah Lloyd. I made a pledge. I would donate a dollar to write to life if I did not write every day.

I hate.

Right to life. I write every day.

Okay, well, there's the motivation for you.

That is a motivation oh, that's funny. It started out so strong and you said you hate them, and I was like, oh, yeah, just write something every day. Yeah.

Hate writing. Yeah. Yeah.

I love all of these answers. Oh, a cold shower to change your mental state. That will definitely do it too. How about a quick polar plunge? Your brain will start working real fast.

Julie's a huge fan of the polar plunge. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but yeah, anytime you've got something that is going on, she's like, have you tried a polar plunge? And I have always replied, no, you're crazy.

But ice baths. Nope, not for me. Not for me.

Awesome. Okay, well, there. Yeah, there's still comments coming in. These are great, great, guys. Okay, well, let's go to a skill testing question. So I have one.

Noted.

But if we don't want to do that one. Sarah or Jacqueline, do you, either of you guys have a skill testing question that you want to pose?

Is it a skill testing like. Like they're. They're asking, like they know something about book launchers, or is it just any kind of skill test?

Oh, it doesn't have to be specifically about book launchers. It could be about the industry. Like, what's a good.

I thought about one. I don't know if this is going.

To be too tricky.

You guys let me know.

We can try it.

Why don't we do a softball and.

Then we can do a tricky.

We can start with softball. Mine's tricky, so I'll hold on to mine.

Okay, then this prize would either be a copy of self publish and succeed, one of our hashtag no boring books mugs, which, by the way, thank you, Efren Delgado, because our newest mugs did not have the standard hashtag on there. So they are on the next set. Or a.

What is the other thing?

A journal. So one of those three prizes are what, you guys. Is it.

Is it the oh so soft journal?

They're black now. It is. It is.

The camel color has been out of stock for.

I use this journal all the time, and it is my favorite thing.

Yes. Yeah, so we haven't.

But they. Victoria's showing the new black one.

Yep. Oh, perfect. Yeah.

Oh, Kelly's got the camel ones. Nice.

Okay, perfect, guys. All right, so let's go with this off ball question first. And I know a lot of you are going to know this, so get your fingers ready. Where is book launchers headquartered? First person in the chat. Let's see.

Are you watching?

Oh, Victoria.

Victoria. Yay.

Vegas.

Vegas.

Fast. Fingers. I love it.

Mary. We did used to be in California. We were located in Los Angeles. And a year. No, a year and a half ago now we switched to Las Vegas. So we are now headquartered in Las Vegas. None of the three of us are in Las Vegas.

That we're all spread out.

So.

Victoria Short.

Yay.

Okay, awesome. Well, I will. Well, actually, you reach out to me, let me know what you would like. I do already have your mailing address on file because you're one of our awesome clients. So let me know what you would like and we will get that in the mail to you this upcoming.

Oh, she says she's got it all, so pick another winner.

Well, the next person to get it was J.Q. rose. Rosie. J.Q.

Rosie. Yay.

Okay.

J.Q.

Are you there? I'm looking for J.Q.

I see.

Oh, I see. I see it.

Okay, perfect. Okay, awesome. J.Q. i will message you with an email address to let me know your mailing address and which choice of prize you would like. Okay, Sarah, why don't you pose your difficult skill testing question.

Oh, are we gonna do another prize right now or are we gonna hold off?

We can give away the whole store. Julie's not here to stop us.

Okay. All right. So for this prize, what I would like to see in the chat is the best log line about what your book project is about. If you guys don't remember, a log line is a really short, just like one line sentence that talks about your book category and who the book is for. These do not have to be perfect. They're not being well. They are being graded because whichever one is able to do it really well, they're going to end up getting a prize.

All right, so describe the log line one more time. For those who aren't familiar with it.

A logline is a one line summary. It's similarly called a headline. It's your elevator pitch. If you've got six seconds to tell me what your book is about. Short number of words. It usually includes category or genre and who the book is for.

Do you have any examples? I'm going to put you on the spot. This is.

Yes, I do.

I do. Okay, so our author, Kathy Joseph, she has a book that is on the history of electricity and we. The log line for hers is science and history collide in these untold true stories of the history of electricity. So it's very usually very brief. Oh, I like the understand and manage your migraine disease.

Great.

How to keep your job and stay in school while recovering from brain injury. Awesome. I love it. Midterm rentals for couples. Mark, that is awesome. Happiness doesn't just happen. Learn to make it your goal. I love it. I think Deborah was up there. Fast and easy. Natural way to conquer depression. Thank you, Debra. Ok, so I'm going to have Angela and Jaclyn, the two of you, since I put the question out there, I want this two of you to put your heads together and decide on a winner.

Hmm.

Okay. That might take a little bit.

It's going to take a little.

I might need to confer. But yeah.

Why don't. While we're conferring, you brag on your most recent success. I heard there is something involving pbs.

Yes, this is true. So this is we're going to talk for a few minutes here about media and publicity. And for those of you that are going to be reaching out and doing your own publicity or working with a publicist, I learned a little bit of a lesson in the last week. So our client, AJ Coleman has a book on how to cope with grief, and he has eight interactive steps to get you to move forward after a loss. Okay. This book I started pitching in November, and I had pitched it to broadcast all around his area, which was in Chicago. And one of the shows that I had pitched him to is a nationally syndicated show that airs on pbs, just happened to film in Chicago. I had sent them a pitch, I don't know, about a month ago, didn't hear back. Followed up about a week or two ago just to make sure that they had the pitch and to give a little bit of information. And what happened? The host from the show wrote back to me, said, hey, I don't have anything for your topic, but could your author speak on this instead of speaking on grief? Could he talk about blended families because he had since remarried and they were doing a show on blended families. Well, what did I say before even conferring with my client? I said yes, because that opportunity can go away really quickly. And so AJ And I started conferring and talking about it, and I was helping him with it. The most important thing when you were working with media, maybe not the most important thing, but up there in the top five, is to be adaptable and to be able to adjust. Look at how your topic can relate to certain things that are happening in the media or certain other topics. Very often if media wants to work with you because you've got all your materials and you look like you've got your stuff together, they may ask you, hey, we don't have anything on that. Exactly. But could you talk on this related topic? Say yes, and then figure it out. That's what we did with AJ and it worked out fantastic. It was an overnight win. One of these things where the host called me at 8pm on a Thursday to say, hey, can you have your client down at my studio at 9am tomorrow morning? I mean, things can happen that quickly with broadcast. So what I encourage all of you to do is not only know what topics you can cover that are related to your book, but also what are some of the related things that you could potentially cover. You want to have as much kind of under your belt as possible.

Be adaptable.

Learn to adjust quickly. And whenever you get an opportunity to be on national tv. Yes. Put the. Put all of the nerves aside because AJ Was a wreck. He was just like, of course I'm.

Going to do it.

But, oh, my gosh. I mean, you could tell for someone who had never been on TV before, this was like, a really big deal. But he was willing to do it, and he did great. I got notes back the next day from the producer of. He was fantastic. He was professional. He totally went with where we wanted to go. He had great content. Who else do you have? So in that case, I was able to center more authors and get more wins for clients because AJ Made me look really good. So I would all of this to say, awesome opportunity for AJ to be able to promote his book on PBS that is going to run in January. Awesome opportunity to have AJ Realize that even if he wasn't talking specifically on his book topic, there are things that are related that still matter. And so he was able to talk about blending a family after the loss of a spouse, which is a different. A much different scenario than someone just going through divorce. He was able to talk about dating as a widower as opposed to dating as a divorced person. So that also opens up a lot more places that I can pitch him now. I can pitch him to shows about blended families. I can pitch him to shows about being a single parent. I can pitch him to shows on dating. So be adaptable, be adjustable, and understand how your content can be broken open into other areas as well. That's a. That's a lesson there.

And that. You're awesome. My goodness.

Yeah. And where'd you get, like, I don't know if we heard what that win was on, like, Friday or something, whenever you first mention it, but that's super exciting. I'm very.

It was. It was on. It had happened late on a Thursday night, and I Think I announced it on Friday at the huddle, but it was nice. Yeah, it was one of those things. And. And I will tell you guys that broadcast media do not expect that you're going to have a lot of time to prep. In fact, what I have found, more often than not, if broadcast media, like, we're talking tv, live radio, you know, morning shows, news shows, anything like that, the longer they book you out, the less likely it's actually going to happen. And when I say that, I mean, if I have a producer that says, hey, I need someone tomorrow, or I need someone, you know, two days from now, that means that they've lost something and they need content quick. So I always tell our authors, like, be ready, be ready. Have all of have your website done, have your social media done. Do not, like, just wait until you get the opportunity to have everything ready. If I have a producer that's like, that's great. Yeah, let's do it. But we're going to do it three weeks from now. That means you're a placeholder. They'll use you if nothing else more important comes up. More often than not, they cancel because something's happened in the news. Something has happened. You know that they have to change the order very quickly. So just be kind of aware of that when you go into broadcast media.

Yeah, that's a good one. Thanks, Sarah.

Yeah.

Okay. And Jacqueline and I have conferred offline and let me find it. I thought I saved it. We had decided on Cynthia Pans and Jacqueline. Do you have it bookmarked? I had it highlighted. There it is.

I see it.

Hers is, even at the end of life, you can still find meaning, humor, strength, and help others.

Great.

Awesome, guys. These are all fantastic, by the way. This would have been difficult because I've got at least five here that I'm.

Like, oh, yeah, I don't make it sound like it wasn't difficult for the two of us. Yeah, right. A lot to choose from.

That one stood out to me because it had a very specific audience and it had a specific outcome and what you would get out of reading the book.

I really like Sheila's as well. I mean, Cynthia, you did fantastic. I'm going to congratulate Sheila also on a great one. 25 extraordinary feelings to help you live a gorgeous and full and happy life. I like that idea as well. Yeah, some of these are really good. Thank you, guys. Thank you for letting me throw a hard ball at you guys. I just wanted to see the range of content that we have brewing in this awesome Group. I wanted to see what everybody is working on and this was a good way to do it. Congratulations, Cynthia. Yay.

Awesome.

And Cynthia is another one of our SPS Live clients. And she and I got to meet a couple months back and she told me all about her. Her book and I'm really excited about it.

I didn't know that when we picked her.

Yeah, that's why I have you guys pick.

Okay, what other questions? Were there any other questions that have come in into the Q and A that we should be diving into?

Yes. Yeah, there are. So this is a question that Richard posted and I think it'd be good to chat about with everyone. So he had written. My book is not yet published. Do I qualify as an author?

Yes.

An author is. Someone who has written a book. Doesn't. I don't think it. I don't know if you like graduate from writer to author at publication. That's a really interesting question.

Like if you go to file the copyrights on the book, it will ask who the author is. That's you. I don't know exactly when that line goes from published author. I mean that's your publication day. But even when the clients are in pre sale or in layout, we refer to them as authors. Like you have a first draft and you're in editing, you're the author. So yeah, I mean, at what point do you become an author from writer?

Yeah, I'm thinking about it in terms of if I was going to write your professional bio and if I was going to put in there, you know, author. In those cases, I would want to see a published book out there because that's social proof that you're an author. Because the book is available widely for people to be able to purchase. But if it's not in a professional capacity, when can you label yourself other? This is quite a question. I almost want to Google it. Richard looks like he has a response to it. Yeah, go for it. Richard.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, yes.

I'm wondering, like, as far as the author question goes, the Amazon author page, would I be able to get myself a page there even though I haven't launched a book?

You have to have a book that's in pre sale that has a listing to be able to claim the book and then create the author account for it. So same with Goodreads. To create an author page, the book has to be listed on their site and then you claim it and become the author of that book. So that one's easy. That's a technical one. I'M the one who does the technical parts. And actually Angela's been setting up author profiles recently too. But yeah, we get the book loaded first and then you claim it and then you are, you can have an author profile.

Thank you.

Awesome. I didn't, I didn't realize that would be a can of worms question there. But I'm glad, I'm glad you had posted that, Richard. Okay, we have another question. This one is from Bernard. Do you guys have the capabilities of republishing a book that has already been published or is that even possible?

Yes, it is possible. Most likely it would be like a second edition or revised or renewed. You'd need a new ISBN and then claim it as a second edition. And then you can reach out to Amazon and say, this is the second edition of this book. Please make this the primary listing. And the previous versions of it will kind of be behind in the shadows, which is nice so that people don't get confused about which one to purchase. But you do need to get a new Ibn and relist the whole book from scratch.

And that actually plays perfectly into the next question, which is from Krista, asking for any tips on republishing to Amazon. And that might mean she might mean marketing. So Krista, if you're still here, I might have you unmute if you can. If you were asking specifically for marketing or just like the logistics of doing that. But do either of you, while I ask her to unmute, have any suggestions?

I'm, I'm terribly, terribly sorry. I need the question again. I was trying to. I have Christmas chaos happening over here.

Tips for republishing on Amazon. And Krista, I believe you are unmuted if you meant specifically marketing.

Well, it's to do pre sales. I was typing weird when I can cookies over here. So just to do a pre sale. And I think you might have addressed.

It that I have to have the.

Book loaded first, which is key too, because I don't have an author page yet. So it was all around.

Yeah, there's, there's a couple of things that I, before I republished a book, I would reconsider because once you publish a book on Amazon, you can't change the title, you can't change your name, you can't change the subtitle. So I would go through first and just make sure I'm happy with all of those things. And then I would do a new cover for it as well so that it stands out for, for people in the current marketplace versus whenever you originally published. But yeah, then you would put the book on pre sale as an ebook and, and you could do a pre sale for paperback through Ingram and then start messaging Amazon to get the. The editions linked up.

Perfect. And Michael is just asking for more information on how to get Amazon to identify the second publishing of a book as the primary one.

So there's an addition section. When you go to load the book it'll say like what edition is this? And if you don't fill it out initially, it just is a blank. So you would say like second edition. And then especially if they're in the same account, it's really easy for Amazon to figure this out. If they're not the same account, then you need to go to their help bar and they now have a chat feature which I actually adore rather than having to talk to people on the phone because then they can go and find out the answer and you don't have to listen to the whole music, which is great. They also will do email, but that back and forth is not quite as fast. I'm not a fan of that one. But yeah, you just put it in as a second edition. They are going to want to verify that a lot of the information is the same between the two books before they will allow it. And they do have criteria on, in their help section on, on what, what they do, what they look at to make that determination. But I've done a couple of books over the last five years and I've argued with them and I've always won. So eventually they will just give in and just make you go away by giving you the second, which is nice.

Okay, perfect. So we have.

Sorry, real quick, I'm gonna. Eric made a comment after about pre sales on Amazon. Jacqueline, can you clarify real quick how you can set up a pre sale on Amazon when aunt KDP doesn't do pre sales?

Oh, so KDP will do a pre sale for an ebook up to 365 days out and you can move the date by only 30 days. So if you get really excited about your book, say I'm going to launch it next year and then it's wrong, then you can move it 30 days and that's about it. At that point, if you don't have a book to publish, they will turn off your pre order capability for a full year as like a punishment. The other option is Ingram who will do a pre order for a paperback. And so you go to IngramSpark.com, sign up for an account and you can put your book out into the future. And I think you could do over a year with Ingram and you can change the date longer if you need it.

And then Amazon will pick up the pre sale of the paperback that Ingram they will, they will pull from Ingram's catalog. So that's how you're able to have a pre sale of a paperback on Amazon.

Right. And then it'll also send it out to like Barnes and Noble and chapters indigo and bookshop.org and all those other fun places.

Awesome. Okay, so Susan would like our opinion on some subtitles. I believe so she had asked is, is this too much for two subtitles? What's your vibe? Following your passion and purpose to build your brand. And I know you guys are going.

To want to see this.

I'll post them in a second. And a self help memoir. Overcoming obstacles in life and business and moving forward with optimism and confidence. So Susan, I might have you.

Where are you?

So yeah, Susan, if you're on, I would love to chat with you a little bit about these titles. I see them in the chat. So the one thing that I really like about the first one, what's your vibe? Following your purpose, your passion and your purpose to build your brand. It's sharp. It very quickly tells you who it's for. So I really like that one. But what is missing from that is that this book is a memoir. If the second book is the same as the first book. A self help memoir. Overcoming obstacles in life and business and moving forward with optimism and confidence. I like that one. I would probably tighten it a little bit. I don't know that a self help memoir is a great first part of your title. I would want something a little bit more grabby for that. And I would usually put something like self help memoir in the subtitle on both of these. The one thing that you really want to do first before you start really nailing down subtitles is that keyword research. Using something like Jacqueline, what do we use? Publishers Rocket.

Publisher Rocket. Yep.

Publisher Rocket. Really do a deep dive into the keywords that your buyers are looking for because that's what you really want to pack your subtitle with is as many keywords so that when people are searching by idea as opposed to looking for your book.

Exactly.

Hopefully this will show up in the search results. Susan, I see you're unmuted now. Did you have some questions?

No, that was very helpful, thank you. We're just working on trying to finalize the titles.

I mean, you've got some great options here. I really think the first one pretty Much nails it. I would just find a way to include memoir in that because you want people to understand that this is your experiences. The what your vibe. Following your passion and purpose to build your brand really dictates to me that it's more of a. Yeah. Self help book, but that it's not. It doesn't have that personal lens that.

Is going to be coming through.

Yeah. Jacqueline, what do you think about these?

I think what's your vibe is a great title. Especially like I'm. I'm a Californian. Like we have been talking about vibes for years and I'm always curious about other people's vibes and how they're vibing better than I am. So like following your passion and purpose to build your brand. I'm good with that. Okay. But yeah, I just would want to make sure it was like memoir made it in there at some point.

So just to clarify and maybe you can help me with this, what's your vibe? Vibe is the name of the dance studio. It's my daughter's book. They're identical twins and the first part is building their identity. Their. They're as identical twins. So they built their personal vibe sort of organically as they went along. And then they built their business vibe, which is the. The name of the studio is Vibe. And then they later did a product which became a product brand. And then they also have a chapter at the end where they talk about being an author. So they have an author brand. So it's like four types of brands. They've branded themselves like they are. The whole thing is it is a self help memoir. It's a teaching. They have question. Reflective questions at the end of each chapter and there's a whole focus on. On confidence. Building confidence through their dance studio, through the cartwheel, through what they do. So that's why we're struggling with trying to get it all in one title. We like what's your vibe? Because it's a question and it encourages them to the reader and we want it to be all about the reader.

I. I kind of am getting the vibe of like sorry, California vibe. Yeah, the. That you're building a brand to grow with for your lifetime. Because there's like these different aspects of their lives as they have continued to grow that they are. Are utilizing this with.

So that.

That's kind of where my brain is going that I would play with that. But I am just kind of spitballing and I do usually have to sit down and write and type to get the thoughts coherent out of My mouth.

So, yeah. And they're also building leaders. They're growing their leaders because they talk about how they built their dedicated team of leaders, and it's all part of who they are. The whole leadership piece. Becoming your best self is another theme through it. Becoming your best leader. I don't know, it's just so frustrating because we're trying to get. We're almost at the end, but we're trying to get the title nailed. Makes a difference with the intro.

Let me ask you though, like, who specifically do they want picking this book up? Like, is it other dance leaders? Is it general leadership? Like, is it general branding? I'm trying to. Because when they have a dance studio and this is all about, you know, kind of how they built that, what I'm thinking is, okay, how will the reader trust them as an authority? Right. That's what you always want. You want your reader to trust you going into this. So I want to get an idea of who they see their readership as.

Yeah, Jillian's been making some good suggestions in the chat as well.

Yeah, I like that. Grow your vibe. Yeah.

Well, we had a whole list of ideal readers, but somebody said it was too much. We want, obviously the people in their. In their community are going to read their books. People who are impacted parents, for sure, of kids we have in their school. Their school is very special. They have kids in wheelchairs, they have autistic kids, they have dance kids as even teachers. So it's accessible, non competitive school. So that's quite incredible. They have a performance based approach where they take kids to basketball games and they dance on center court rather than competitions. So, yeah, they are an authority, but they're in a different kind of a dance school.

Mm.

So then they created a cartwheeler over Covid. That's when they started writing the book, which does the same thing. It's. It's. But this time it's a product and they. And they made a mistake because they didn't attach it to Vibe. They kept it secretive. So it's a whole learning in there about the whole idea of branding, but I don't think it's coming out in the title. That's the only problem.

Yeah, that's what I would say is like, I would like. I would want to include in there a dance school's memoir or something that. That shows what perspective they're coming from. The other thing that I would really recommend you looking at when you're looking at the title is, is you need to know what your readers are searching for they need to be thinking about it from the reader's perspective. So I would really highly recommend doing a deep dive on Publisher Rocket or some other keyword word tools and use. And use those keywords as the base before you go forward. Okay, thank you so much, Susan.

Thank you so much. Yeah, very appreciated. Thank you.

And that's actually perfect. I was just looking up a YouTube video that Julie had done about a year or two ago about how to get in the mind of your ideal readers. I'm going to post that link in the chat so that everyone can take a look at that after the deep dive. Not right now, but yeah, it's really helpful. And those are some of the exact things that Julie mentions in there is going through and trying to figure out what, what are the terms and where the. Where are the areas that your ideal reader is searching for answers to their questions or their concerns. She does mention Publisher Rocket and we do actually have a question about Publisher Rocket. So Jacqueline, since you're probably in there the most, can you, for anyone who doesn't know, can you just describe Publisher Rocket for everyone?

I can, but first I have to wave at Minnie Mark there.

Hi. I was guessing. Hi buddy.

Hi, kiddo.

Hi. Cute. So Publisher Rocket has a lot of different tools within it, but one of the big things that they do is you can put in like a keyword or a phrase that you are interested in using and it'll tell you not only how many people are searching it in Amazon and in Google, it'll tell you what the like ranking is, how hard it would be to be able to rank the book, what the competition is. Basically it'll tell you who the competitors are, but it'll also come up with a number of suggestions to similar to that that people are searching so that you can pull more information from that and really hone in on what the keywords should be. And your, your keyword words should hit a couple of different things. So you don't want to duplicate the same things over and over. You're going to want to, you know, the, the keywords work together because there's seven spaces and there's up to 50 characters in each space. So if you say best woman's book and in the next line say woman's best book on biography or memoir or something, you're basically duplicating all of that work from the first one. So you do want to have some differences across but you want to have like ones that identify the reader. Like best book for women in their 40s and then you're going to want to have one that talks about what the outcome of the book is, what someone is going to live, like they're going to live their best life. That would be a keyword we would look up is live your best life. And then the emotional amplifier or what the problem is that they're trying to solve. And so those are the four ways that we would look at the keywords and we would look at a selection and then we hone down those until we bought seven. And usually there's like two in the demographics and two in the outcome and then you know, two of one other one and then you know, one of the final emotional amplifier or whatever it is. So don't focus just on one thing. And you want to put in keywords that are not necessarily what your book is about, but how people would search for your book. It's, you kind of have to wear a different hat on this of like, what do people actually type into the computer? And you know, one of my favorite ones and I still haven't seen a book on this was like, how do I. And it auto filled in sell my soul to the devil. And I looked it up and like 5,000 people search that per month. Like, there's no book to go along with that because Amazon's never going to let you do it. But you know, what people are searching is never what you really expect. You need to be open to it to be able to see, you know, what your ideal reader is actually searching for and then put your keywords in there. And that kind of relates to like when we were doing best of lists earlier and I think Deborah Lloyd said, oh, my book would never be on a best gift list, but it could say best book about seasonal depression. And that could be a keyword for. For your book. Also. Tip. In December, you're always going to want to change your keywords that have years in it to the next year because people are already searching for 2023 now. So if you've got, you know, best, whatever, 2022, then you need to start looking forward at the end of the year and not in January because people are already doing their searches now. Sorry, that was a little rambly. Did that answer the questions?

Those were great tips. Yeah, awesome. But let's go to a prize again. So we are going to give you our another item of our super secret. So I think about how I wanted to work that. So the first person to either show us your copy of Self publish and succeed or some other form of book launch or Swag will win the super secret thing. Victoria. Victoria. So this is swag that I can 100 say you don't have.

Oh, thanks Bonnie. I like the pen. Eric's got the book. I love it.

Bernard held his up too.

Yeah. Oh, good job.

Kelly's got the journal.

Nice, nice. I'm trying to check page two, make sure I'm not missing anybody. Yeah, good job, Victoria. Quick on the draw.

I know she had it right there.

Oh, thanks professor. Yay.

Lots of self publish and succeed books in the house, Lynn. Perfect. Awesome, guys. Okay, well, Victoria, you don't have this swag. Would you like to be the winner of this super secret swag? Because it's, it's pretty awesome. I can't say what it is, but it's pretty awesome.

I'm not gonna lie.

So type. Okay. Yes, please. So we are going to put your name down for this super secret swag. Thank you, Victoria. Yay. Oh, jq, yours is on your Kindle. Yes, yes. As e reader people, we don't have it right here. Handy that we can just grab.

Okay.

And jq, actually your question is the next one that I have on my list. So there are two parts to this question. What are the pros and cons of presale? That's the first part. And if a pre sale, what is the best link to have a book on pre sale?

Should I take this one?

Yeah, go for it.

Okay.

I really can't tell you any cons to a pre sale. I don't think there are any. Pre sale is so valuable because that is the time when you were doing 100%.

All right.

And the longer you give yourself pre sale, the better. More likely you're going to have a really, really strong launch week.

Week.

I'm going to give you a quick rundown, a very quick because this can get into a whole can of worms on bestsellers. But just so you guys know, Nielsen Bookscan, it is the reporting service that reports up to 85% of all book sales across all platforms. We're talking Amazon, Barnes and Noble, indie bookshops, you know, Apple Books, Google, everything. It all reports Nielsen Book Scan, Nielsen Bookscan reports to the bestseller lists. Bestseller list being Washington Post, New York Times. Basically anywhere you see a bestseller list, it's pulling data from Nielsen Bookscan. When Nielsen Bookscan runs from Monday to Sunday, which means it that the week of sales includes Monday to Sunday. So if your book launches on say a Tuesday, Nielsen Bookscan is going to report how your book sold from that Monday to Sunday and that week is what your, your sales ranking is when you have a pre sale period. All of those pre sales like everything that you got. So whether, let's say your pre sale is two months, those eight weeks of sales up to your launch date all track for your first week of sales. So if you sell a thousand books over eight weeks, that means your first week on sale you have a thousand books. And that's how books tend to climb the bestseller charts. Amazon is slightly different. Amazon bestseller rankings are done differently than other bestsellers. I'm sure there's a video that we have done that covers that. Okay, so during your pre sale period, in order you want that presale period to start accumulating sales and reaching as many people as possible to drive traffic to buy your book. So you have that really strong launch. That really strong launch helps you on all the platforms as far as algorithms. Who's buying the book during that pre sale period? Your book will be shown to more people based on who the audience is that is buying it. The other trick with pre sales, pre sales are how stores, how stores predict how a self published title will do. So in order for Amazon to have your, your print on demand book in stock to ship immediately, they look at how you are doing during your pre sale period and that helps them predict how well it'll sell after presale. So they'll start buying copies, are not buying copies, they'll start printing copies to have in their warehouse so it ships immediately. If you have zero presale, Amazon has zero ability to tell you how your book will perform. So they don't have any in stock. And what you'll often see is this book ships in one to two weeks because it's got to go through the print on demand process. So those are the two, the, the kind of three biggest reasons. But really that marketing time is invaluable and you'll never get it back. You can do other things post launch that are going to help your book, of course, and we do all of those things. But that pre sale period is when you're building your audience. It's when you are gaining new readers. It's when you're doing your press, it's when you're doing your outreach, it's when other people in your network are helping you sell your book. And that launch time is so important. And I will tell you this as well, press, book review outlets, magazines, journals, they are way more excited about a book that has not come out yet than they are about the ones that are already out so they are more likely to talk to you. Feature you do book reviews on your book because there's something that is new and different that has not been out on the market marketplace before. So pre sell period, really, really important. Now when we're talking about links to use, I'm not 100% clear what you.

Mean other than length of time. Length of.

Length of time. Length of time. I thought you said links.

Sorry, length of time.

We recommend a minimum of eight weeks. Sometimes it ends up shorter, sometimes it, you know, it can end up a little bit longer. With our clients, the bigger the audience, the longer pre sale. Frankly, that's what I think works for us. If you'll notice, major publishers, like traditional publishers, they set up their pre sales a year to two years in advance. There are books for sale right now that aren't coming out until 2023, the end of 2023. So they do their publishing calendar about 18 months to 24 months in advance. So they do a very long pre sale period because they're trying to gain all of those sales over time. And when an author has a big following, they want to give it time. All those people to go buy.

Sorry.

Yeah, please.

Perspective. So Sarah's giving you all the marketing reasons why pre sale is a good idea. Yeah, I am a production person. I load the book to Ingram and then try to track all the links when they show up. And so Amazon, it'll show up on Amazon in usually about three days. Barnes and Noble is about a week. Bookshop is two to three weeks. Bookshop.org and so all of these companies need time to generate a listing for your book so that when you're promoting your book you can say, go buy it today, it's out today. And it actually is available to purchase rather than just in one outlet. So you, you need time for distribution to set up and connect to all the retailers available around the world.

Absolutely. That's another fantastic reason you want, all of you want your book to be available on all channels that your readers might want to purchase it on at the same time. The other thing, and this happens if you don't do a pre sale period and there's an error in your book, something didn't print right, something got messed up in the files, the formatting is not correct, the images didn't do, you know, whatever it might be, if you don't have a presale period, you don't have time to catch that before launch. Which means books that are purchased are going to go out with errors. So that pre Sale period is a valuable time to make sure that the book really is finalized, no errors, and that it's the best that it can possibly be.

Oh, and then I think Eric has a question.

Yeah, Eric, go for it.

Yes, I will have to ask.

Here you go. You should be able to mute.

Okay, I think you answered my question, but I'm the slow guy in the room, so I'm gonna like, go. We had a book up on pre sale. Sent out some copies through the author channel. A couple people said, oh, by the way, did you notice this error? Went back and fixed it before the pre sale period, but still had bad copies showing up after the live date. Is that because you're saying certain stalkers said, wow, this looks like a good title. Will go ahead and print in stock for like between production and presale. Where what screwed up besides me?

So this is a good question. We. We have what we call a blackout time period in the last month of pre sale because depending on the retailer, when they send the order to Ingram, they'll say, we need it three weeks before publication for you to actually print and ship to us. So depending on who that retailer is and Ingram won't tell us, they'll fulfill those orders early. And then, you know, the rest of the orders are fulfilled in like the last three days before publication. But whoever that first one is, they get all of their books and you put in a print request or a change request after that, the other books are already published. There's like 20 books out there that are already wrong. The other thing about the way Ingram works, and I'm sorry this gets a little technical, but they put your book in a queue. It like if you say, I want to change my print files, they'll say, that's great, but we already have 20 books that are in the queue. We have to print all of those before we will prioritize changing the book itself. So your title will go off sale when you change the interior file until all of the print books are fulfilled, and then they'll generate the E proof. And that was a big problem during COVID because they had a paper shortage, they had social distancing that was happening and outbreaks that were happening in their warehouses. And so it was taking a month to print a book, so then your book was falling off sale for a month. So, yeah, we just don't touch listings in the last month before they're published. So that's what I'd recommend is to get your print proof right away, make your changes right away, and then don't touch anything that last month.

So the recipient copy is not subject to the release date, but to the order date in the particular provider.

Yeah. So, okay.

Because I always thought as long as we got the changes in before release date, I think that's what Ingram calls it.

Yeah, Ingram. Ingram owns. So the Ingram is a parent company and they own IngramSpark. And so Ingram, the, the parent company holds on to the orders. And then certain retailers will say, well, we have to have the books early. And so then they'll send those orders to. To Ingram Spark and they'll fulfill it. And then when all the rest of the books are ready like in their normal pre order period, then they'll print the rest. So there's a gap there. Well, you'll, you'll see early fulfillment. And Ingram doesn't report. Sorry, I'm really in the weeds now. But Ingram will not tell you what a. What sales have happened until they have printed and put a shipping label on it. So all of a sudden they'll update once a day and you'll see, oh, I sold 10 books overnight. But where's the rest of my pre orders? I know I've sold hundreds. Well, they won't report it until they have printed it and put a shipping label on it. And their pre order report functionality is just completely broken. I don't even know why they had the link. It never works. Even after a book has been published, it'll still say zero was in the pre order report. Sarah's laughing at me.

I'm laughing at you. Just proved my point. There are so many things I love you going in the weeds. So humbly the most gracious. Thank you, Jacqueline. Is she ra. Okay. She is the shera of production. And here's the thing. All of the. She's 100% right. I gave all marketing reasons why it's important to have a pre sale, but Jacqueline just proved my point also, why pre sale so important? Because all of those things that can go wrong, which does often happen. I mean, there's 6 million books out there in circulation. Like things go wrong no matter how much you take precautions. So just, just know that that presale period is a great time to, you know, be making sure everything's right for your launch. I'm going to jump down to one question that came in just because it is related to pre sales. And then Angela, you can guess that's.

The one I was going to go to.

So I know I tend to hijack. I'm sorry. Sheila said if you don't get a ton of pre sales, does that reflect or harm anything when the book is out? No, I don't think it harms anything. I think if you are an author who is building your platform and is building your audience from scratch and you don't know who's going to be buying your book, you don't have your readership in place, you just build your launch strategy to account for that. Right. And so what that means is we do something with our clients called phase momentum, which doesn't use launch as the marker of whether or not your book is selling well, but instead looks at the first year that your book is coming out. And so during that pre sale period, you know, you still want to be doing all those things, reaching out, building your readership, you know, trying to get people to, to, to look at your book, look at your content. But instead of just focusing on pre sale, is that heavy marketing push. You're looking at what things you can do over time to continually be building that audience and driving sales. So in that instance, if you're not having a strong pre sale, I would recommend looking at the first year as a good marker for how your book is doing. You know, and during that year, you should be doing things like as much media and press as you can. You should be updating your website, being active on social media, engaging in conversations. You should be coming up with lead magnets. God bless whoever that was.

Sorry, my boyfriend's coughing. I'll just mute.

Sorry.

John, you should be, you know, coming up with lead magnets and content on a regular basis that's going to be attracting more readers and then be pushing the book out to them. So what I would say is if you are having a slow pre sale, look at the first year of your book sales and look at building momentum over time.

And see. Yay.

Thank you.

Okay, awesome. We have some more questions. Okay, Sarah, this one will also be for you. This one is from Cynthia. She had said any tips about doing podcasts? If you're invited to one, you're muted somehow.

Oh, it's because there's chaos happening, toddlers running around, Christmas cheer happening.

Do it.

Yeah, I mean, there's no reason not to. There are instances, for example, is if you do have something like you have your book launch date. You know, some authors like to have called a blowout period where they.

Want.

To stack all their media right around the book launch date. But I think that really is more fitting for broadcast and for like say magazine or print than it would be for podcasts, because podcasts record. So, like, some record and then they air it the next week. Some record and then they air it four months from then. So I think it depends on what that podcast schedule is. Ideally, if you can, you always want to be like, hey, do it around my. My press date. But podcast, do the podcast because you're looking for those opportunities to share your message. You're looking for. For those opportunities to connect with your audience. And frankly, podcast hosts are fantastic people to network with. You want to build that relationship with those podcast hosts over time because they are people that can help you promote your book, they are people that can help spread your message, and they are people that you can also be helping because your content is good for their audience. So I highly recommend doing podcasts and building the relationships with the host that you can continually check in with them and they can become a good networker with you. So is that Cynthia, did you have something specific about podcasts you wanted to ask or did I answer your question?

Yeah. Yeah, thanks. I was invited to do a podcast for a legal firm because of what I do. So about living wells advanced directives and promoting that. So I do agree. I think it's a great opportunity to network and to learn from each other.

Absolutely. Yeah. I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't.

And it's a credit that you can, you know, put on your media kit as seen on podcast when I heard on. Okay, I don't know how you do that. How do you phrase that, Sarah, when featured on the podcast? Featured.

Featured on.

Yeah, perfect. Okay, awesome. The next one. We're still going to ask this question even though Michael's not here, just because it's, I think, would be good for everyone to hear. He had asked what is the best buy now call to action that you have seen?

Saw this question and it was interesting because we usually will use by now. We'll say available now if you're looking for an alternative to buy now when it comes to things like social media content or how.

You know your newsletter piece that she missed off, was it asked specifically about the cta A Call to Action page?

Oh, was it about the CTA page?

I think so. I thought it was a call to Action page. Question.

Oh, what is the best buy now call to action you have seen? Is there a better way to word that cta?

Better way to word that cta? Oh, it really depends on. On frankly, your brand and your audience. Let's let me just put it that way. If you are writing a super serious book and your Audience isn't going to respond to funny like play on words. That's. That's one thing to consider. If you have written a very funny book and your audience is all about levity, then you have a lot more freedom to play with it. We use buy now, we'll use Available now, we'll use, you know, dive in here. Yeah, thank you, Bill. Yeah, get it now. Check it out. The time is now. You always. Thank you, Bill. You always want to be looking at how you can create that sense of urgency so someone feels insane, inspired to take action. I'm definitely open to other options. I'm trying to think of any like, yeah, creative wording we've used.

When it comes to a call to action, the action doesn't always have to be to spend money or to buy now. Sometimes it's get this free thing by taking action now or join this mailing list and get this free thing. So I would always be looking at what is the next step that you want to encourage your possible reader to take. So sometimes it is, you know, spend the money and buy this now and sometimes it's like join this particular thing and I'm going to drip more content onto you to get you to buy my course or whatever the case is. So I, I'm a little worried if we are telling someone to just purchase and spend money only all the time that we have to come up with creative ways to say it versus what are you adding to the conversation and what other ways can we interact?

Yeah, I mean I think part of it too is looking at your reader journey. Someone finds you, they find your book. What do you want them to do after that? We all that CTA page that can be included in books can can direct people to hey now I want you to check out my social media. Now I want you to check out my lead magnet or my, you know, my content. I want you to sign up for my mailing list and making it easy for them to take that journey. But that is one of the things that you really want to spend some time on is looking at what do I want my reader to do. So how do I instruct them to get.

Perfect.

Thank you guys. We are going to pause questions and go to another prize. This would be a prize for either our hashtag noboringbooks, mug, the OSO Soft Journal or a copy of self publish and succeed. And the question is what is the best tip that you have learned from book launchers in 2022? Doesn't have to be specifically from today's deep Dive. If there was a meaningful YouTube video that you watched or another deep dive that you were on in 2022, please let us know what your, what your favorite tip is that you have learned and we will choose our.

I feel like this is a question we should have asked in November and then created a video of all of our best tips as voted for by our, our viewers. You know, like that. That's content. I am always a best of list lady. I was just telling the team on Friday that I love like the best of book lists, like the Goodreads winners and, you know, the best books by npr. And I always find something good on those lists anyway, so I, I am going to mine this for, for a future reference for people.

Just, just so you know, that's a great idea. Okay, awesome. And while people are racking their brains thinking of the best tip that they have learned, Jillian asked a question. What do you think about creating a focus group during the development of your books?

I'm so sorry. I was reading the comments and no.

I got this one. So it is. Should you have a development group in the writing of your book? And I would say not in the beginning. In the beginning, this needs to be a book that you own and it's content that you are passionate about. And then you would send it to this development group to say, what did I forget? What did I miss? What is the most valuable thing? And you have to ask them specific questions and you have to give them guidance on what kind of responses that you're looking for. Because there's always that one friend that thinks that these kinds of groups are where they are going to put on their Mr. Hollywood hat and just tear it apart and make you stronger through just total criticism. So you have to say, this is the kind of feedback that I'm looking for. And be really directed. And then take all of that feedback and make your own decisions on it. Have an open door and then close the door again and figure out, okay, I got this feedback. And he's telling me I need to do xyz. And this person is seeing the same problem and telling me to do abc. So they both identified a problem, what's my solution to it? Because otherwise you end up having too big of a group and you're trying to serve too many masters. So what you want to do is just be very guided, have open the door, say, this is what it is, and then take that feedback and click close the door again and really focus on it. You know, a lot of people want to have development groups for positive feedback and like joining and, and really just ends up with too many cooks in the kitchen. So if you want to get through it, get their opinion, get like their, their feedback on what's resonating for them and what you should dive deeper into and what isn't working and what's disconnecting and then say okay, I got it. Thank you. Thank you. Hold, hold the phone. I will get back to you with the next version and then shut the door and figure out how you're going to do it in a way that's authentic to you and to your voice. Perfect.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And Jillian, I did ask you to unmute if you want to expand a.

Little bit or if you have any.

Feedback, feel free to do so. But go ahead, Sarah.

I was going to say my only edit to that is that sometimes when people go out and they get those other readers to give them feedback on how the book is doing, they aren't thinking about what that reader's perspective or problem is, you know. So like I would never go if I was writing a story on like a fiction story on romance, I would never hand it to my father in law who only reads business books. You know what I mean? Like, make sure that whoever is helping you is ideally your target reader who has a similar issue that you could potentially be solving. That is something that we do see. A mistake that we do see a lot of our writers make is that they will pass it to their friends and family for feedback. Not considering, oh, that person only reads gardening books. They won't know anything about my investing compounding book. So yeah, just make sure that anyone that you are having give you that, that early feedback as someone who is actually your target reader or is coming from a background where they're going to have some authority on what you're trying to say.

Yeah, my group of folks are people that have migraine and that struggle with it. And it's a lifelong struggle because everybody's so unique. And so the people that I have, I've interviewed them to get testimony, if you would, for the book because I believe real stories help people understand dry information much better when you, when you apply it in a real world scenario. And so I've taken these people and asked them to help me as I go along because the idea is fully developed. It's for when I get stuck. And also asking, does this make sense? Is there something that I could do or say better or take out? Am I saying too much? Have I overwhelmed you? Because my background is technical writing and policy, HR Policy writing.

Which is very specific. Yes. So, yeah, I think that you've come to a way of doing a group where it is controlled and it is informative versus critical. But I would also use these groups to identify what the problems are and not necessarily what the solutions are. And that's actually something that I say quite a bit when we are in the design process, is that we can identify what a problem is with a cover and then let the creative people come up with the solution for how they're going to make the. The COVID You know, a design that is going to work. If we get too prescriptive, then it crushes the designer's ability to come up with their own solutions that might be brilliant. And I am someone who is not a designer, and if I said, oh, this needs to be a gradient and it needs to be this percentage, they're going to be like, no, that looks terrible, and you're crushing my soul here. So same thing happens for writers where if someone comes to you and says, this is the problem and this is your solution, you take the note on what the problem is and the solution is yours as the writer and the creative person, to figure out how you want to do it. Authentic to you.

Right. Otherwise it won't be my voice.

Right, Exactly.

And I really want my voice to come through because people seem to really resonate with.

How I write.

Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.

Thanks, ladies.

You're welcome. Perfect.

Sarah, do you want to name who your favorite tip was that was posted?

She is muted.

Sorry, I'm unmuted. It's actually from Sheila. She said that the best tip that she got is that she can actually pitch her book to broadcast. She didn't know why she thought she wasn't allowed to do that. Now she just has to figure out the who and how. Yes. Those are the next steps. And there's a ton of great content out there at how to pitch yourself as an author. But I picked Sheila because I love that we were able to dispel a myth in her mind that is going to be able to. And, you know, it's going to enable her to be able to reach out to more people.

So, yeah.

Awesome. Yay.

Okay.

And we are nearing the end, guys, so I've got another question here. Noted. But if you've got some last questions, start putting them in the chat now. This one is from Consuelo and it says, can you please explain the difference between the pitch and the title? Title and subtitle. Can you use the same or similar wording for both?

What Is the difference between the title and subtitle and the pitch?

I believe the pitch meaning, like the.

Hook.

Meaning Consuelo, are you online?

You are able or you should be able to unmute if you want to expand just a little bit?

Consuelo.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you for taking my question.

Yes.

When you talk about the pitch that. That's the elevator pitch, that it's how you're going to kind of sell the book.

But then I was kind of getting.

Tangled with the same wording. The title for your pitch, it needs to be very short. So do you use the title or you need to come up with another phrase?

Yeah, I mean, when you think of it as, you know, the hook there. Excuse me, the. The title and subtitle, you know, that's, that's how your book is identified and it should include within it, you know, the keywords and the. What's going to hook them to try and check it out. But I think what you're talking about, as far as the pitch, like that log line that I was having people do earlier.

Yes.

That is your opportunity to give a little bit more information.

Right.

That's not something you're going to use everywhere, but it is something you'll use in your marketing. It's something, you know, if you were in an elevator next to, I don't know, pick an influencer name and they said, what are you working on? And you can say, oh, I've got my book. You know, self publish and succeed. The no boring books way to write a book that sells. And it's aimed towards writers to teach them how to market with their audience involved, with their audience in mind. That's the entire, you know, sort of log line. Self publishing. Succeed is just the title. Yes. You could definitely use it within the pitch or within the log line pitch, you know, and I'm sorry, because the phraseology there is a little bit different. Pitch is something that you would write if you were going to submit your book to media. Hey, do you want to feature me on your show? Because here's my pitch about it. Logline is that headline. It's just the one line sentence about what your book's about. It includes the hook within it. The hook is the. It's why your book is different. It is the main idea behind your book. So these are different things. You can definitely use your title and subtitle within your log line and that log line can be used within your marketing to explain the book.

Okay, so it's three different things. Pitch, log line, title, subtitle actually score.

Okay, gotcha.

Thank you.

Okay. And then we had another question come in. Sorry. Let me scroll down to it. This one is from Mark. I realized I have more information to offer my readers. I've been in contact with. With book launchers to do a second edition. Would it hurt anything to offer this extra chapter to my existing readers and subscribers via. I think. Is that mailing list and website email?

Yeah, I think.

Oh, email list and website. I don't want people that have purchased the book to have to purchase a second copy. There isn't enough. Isn't enough copy to warrant a second book.

Mark. So. Yeah, so. Okay, so I see what you're asking here. I would say if it's an extra chapter, it's just an extra chapter that you want to include in there. I would include it as a lead magnet or as content for your audience. And then when you're doing future books, you can look at incorporating that information in there. I. I don't know if you. I hadn't talked with you and your wife about whether or not you guys are doing any more books in the future, but I would think for you it would be great content to build more audience. So I would use it as that as opposed to creating a second edition of the book. Because you're doing our phase momentum.

Right.

Sorry, are you. Are you guys doing the phase momentum launch strategy where we're looking at, like the entire year and looking at marketing activities that you do throughout the entire year?

I think so.

I think you are. I think you and Nicole. Yeah. Have been talking about that. Yeah. I would look at that as great content that you can be doing to attract an audience. So, for example, we actually had another Canadian real estate author who had something similar where he had more content that he realized after he had finished the book, and instead he. He offered it as a lead magnet. And part of the reason he did that, too, is because if he had included it in the book, it was a list and it was going to have to be updated on a yearly basis. So instead he took it out of the book or what he thought he was going to try and change in the book. Jack was Dominguez, and we used it as a lead magnet. And that became a lot more valuable to him because people would come to access that list and then he could sell the book to them. Okay, so that's what I would recommend. And why don't you. You can reach out to me and Nicole and we can help structure how to do that.

Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. I just realized that, Mark, like I know you, but you haven't met me yet.

Surprise. Okay, awesome. We have another question from Richard. It says we're in the launch process. Can I start to seek reviews? And are reviews vital to pre sales?

Oh, so you always want to get reviews early, but Amazon won't let you post them until publication day. So it's, it's always a little bit of a juggle. Goodreads will let you post early and then book sirens. I'm going to let Sarah talk about book sirens. But yeah, you always want to get your book in people's hands so that they can figure out what they are going to, to say prior to publication day. And then you have to jump up and down on them to get them to actually post what they were going to say on the publication day. Getting reviews is difficult. Let me just say that right up front. Go ahead, Sarah.

Oh yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. And actually Richard, real quick, before I jump too much into this, I want to. Are you talking about reviews that your customers can leave on Amazon and they can leave a, you know, a star and they can write a comment on your product page? Or are you talking about getting early like endorsements and testimonials from more well known people that you would use?

That is a good question.

I want to make sure.

All right.

No, no, no, you did, you did almost exactly the same thing like I did the same thing. But I want to make sure because sometimes those terms are used interchangeably. So Richard, if you want to specifically.

Of, you know, just a review that I might be able to get from somebody in the media that I haven't really tested yet. But I do have contacts and know folks that would be open to reviewing my work. But I just don't know where in the process I can start getting those questions asked to those folks and then obviously gotta wait till publishing day to put it on the Amazon.

Okay, so. Okay, so I'm really glad I asked the question then. So these are two different things. And this is something I know we have videos on this as well. Reviews are from your consumers, right? Reviews are what you get and it's a product review. It's like if you're going to go to Amazon and you're telling all of the people who've read your book, hey, go tell me what you thought on Amazon and leave a review there. Those are called consumer reviews and those are vital to how your book performs. Those are the ones that you're trying to get. Once the book has launched. Endorsements are something a little bit different. They can also be called reviews, but endorsements are from those notable figures, influencers, media members, recognized media outlets. You know, you've probably seen, sometimes they're on a book cover, sometimes they're on Amazon under the editorial review section. It's the social proof that your book is trustworthy and can convince a consumer to purchase the book. So for the ones that you're talking about, Richard, that is something that you do during the pre sale process. I usually do it. We, we recommend doing it once your book has entered the layout period and you have a PDF that actually looks like a book as opposed to just a word doc. You have that nice laid out version of what the book would look like in its final form. You can use early versions of the layout. It doesn't, the book doesn't have to be perfect. There might be some formatting, they might catch some typos. But for media and press or for influencers, they don't mind. They're used to it. They very often get what's called ARCs or advanced reader copies, galleys, uncorrected proofs, all of these terms. Media is very used to getting those. Those are the versions that come out that you have access to prior to the book being launched and those are the ones that you would send out. I would do it when your book enters layout or within the first week or two of pre sale, if you have a full eight weeks because you want to gather all of those endorsements for your book prior to launch. So I would start it as soon as you kind of hit the layout. We actually have template letters that we provide so you can do that outreach and if you have people that are in the press, people that are in the media outlets, what have you. Yeah, definitely like start sending that out, you know, the beginning of your pre sale or right before your pre sale starts.

As a general rule of thumb for everyone, when you're reaching out to an influencer, if this is someone you know personally, the book doesn't have to be polished. The further you get into like people who are far outside of your influence influence sphere or you're just cold calling these people and asking them to do it. The more you are going to rely on how good your cover is and how good the layout is for them to agree. So it needs to be more and more polished. The further they are from you personally as you're leveraging your contacts. So you can always start with someone that you know with a proofread manuscript who is particularly Authors know what to look for and know what a word doc looks like and all of that versus someone in the media you want to be a little bit more polished for. So that, that's just my little tip on.

100%. Yeah. Richard, did you have another question?

Yes. Supposing I get like, you know, a half a dozen reviews from legitimate media folks. Where would they send it? Where would I ask them to send the review?

To you.

To you. And then what we do is part of our process is we create a document that's going to have all of them accumulated. Some of them might need to be trimmed in order to fit space. So for example, on Amazon during over in your editorial review section, I forget how many characters you have, but you have a limited amount of space there. If you were say to put it on a cover, which I only recommend to put on a cover if you have an A list name because otherwise it doesn't matter. I think you have, depending on the space, it's like seven or eight words. So you have to trim a lot of these down. You might use them on your website. You can use them in your media kit. You're going to use them in a lot of different places. So they might need to be trimmed for impact. We always put them together in a doc with the original quote and then a the trim version we get, we send it to you to get approved and then we kind of go from there.

And for non clients. Sorry, go ahead.

You guys would help me trim?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

For non clients. When you get an endorsement, you can leverage it in a number of places. You can put it on your website, you can put it on your Amazon listing, you can put it in Ingram Sparks listing. And so they'll send it out to the rest of the distribution places, media kits, where else, Sarah?

Social media. You can create graphic posts out of it, use it to promote the book. I use, if it's a good endorsement, I'll use it in my pitches to media to show hey, this book's got some social proof behind it. Yeah, I mean I think you hit the main ones website, you know any of your product pages, anything like that.

You can put them in a book trailer.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Speaking of. So creating a book trailer is always a good idea as well as you can do a book reading, you don't necessarily have to be on camera for that. If you're uncomfortable with it, you do a video of a book reading. And when you get your print proof, that's always a good one to do. An unboxing video and talk about the journey so far. So there's three, three trailer videos that you can do right there and be able to utilize them on your Amazon author profile and on your Goodreads profile and then on YouTube and send it out on social media.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you, guys. And we are nearing the end, guys. So I did see a question in here, and this is a really great question, if you've never been on a Deep Dive before. We actually don't really talk about Book Launchers itself as a company because we want to provide you guys content. So I do have a link to our website and our services page on there. And just a. The hook of what we do is we help nonfiction authors write, publish, sell and market their nonfiction books. So I will link our services page here. And Julie is normally part of these or our YouTube channels. She's not able to be on right now. She is healthy. But for our holiday extravaganza, we always have a few, sometimes more Book Launchers team members on here to provide some really great content for you guys. And I think that was the last question that we have. Oh, and Bernard just asked, will this deep dive be uploaded to YouTube? We have posted a few Deep dives here and there. We do record them all. So I can't guarantee that it will be posted. It very well might be. But that is why we love to give prizes away live, because we want to encourage people to be here live. It's so much more fun than if. If no one was here live and it was just Sarah, Jacqueline and myself just chatting amongst ourselves for two hours. We love each other, but that would be a little bit which we could do.

We probably, probably could do. Jacqueline, Angela and and myself all have things that, I mean, I could go into a two hour session just on bestseller list and you know how all that works and you know the intricacies of Ingram Spark.

Yeah, yeah.

But it probably wouldn't be that interesting.

So we do have one more prize to give away. But before we do that, is there any last tips or tricks or things that you want to leave with our viewers today, Jacqueline or Sarah, for help over the holidays? We're in this season.

I mean, I would say one of the, the biggest things that at Book Launchers that we really want to drive home besides writing with your reader in mind, is that the book is usually just one small piece of a much bigger puzzle. The book is one rung on a ladder of something that you were building whether you like it or not. If you're writing a book, you are launching a brand and you need to look at all of the pieces that are involved in that brand. Content is still king.

Still king.

So it's rare to be able to just put a book out and then do nothing else behind it. You want to be able to attract more and more readers and just going on podcasts is not going to do it. They want to see what else you have to say. So when you are looking to launch your book, especially if you're fresh to the market, think about those bigger pieces. Beyond what is the brand? How do you want to show up to the market? What's that website plan? What's that social media plan? What's that email marketing plan? What's the content plan? Over a year or more that's going to get you to your goal. Know where you're, know where you want to be three, three years or five years from that first book coming out and aim all your marketing that way.

And I'm going to be more practical on this at the end of the year. We tend to set goals for ourselves. Like I'm, I, my book is done, I'm going to publish it before the end of the year. Don't do that. If you have finished files and are tempted to publish it before the end of the year, on January 1st, your book will be a year old and the publication date will say 2022 and it will be 2023. And same thing going forward. If you are looking to publish a book and finish it by the end of 2023, January is the time to launch, not December. All anyone cares about is best of lists which were established by sales all year long and Santa Claus at this time of the year.

That is correct. And on the flip side of that, you're shifting gears and you're starting 2023 and you're like, I want to write a book or I want to write a new book. Go for those foundational pieces and we talked about it earlier. Start thinking of the foundation of your manuscript and what your message is. Who's your ideal reader? Get into the head of that ideal reader and do that research first as much as you can. Do some of the research on what they are searching for, what are the problems and things that, that your reader is facing and then start to create content around that because you're going to have honed in your message as opposed to having something that just fits every, every person on the market, which there's no books that, that really do that. So that would be my tip and I did post in the chat a little earlier the video that Julie posted about it, I think a couple years ago about how to get into the mind of your ideal reader. If you don't see the link on there, it is on our YouTube channel and it is time for the last prize. So this was someone who has been supportive and just really positive in the chat. And I hope you are in the continental U.S. jillian, because you are the prize winner. So I hope you're in the continental US because this is the prize winner for the super secret swag. So you will be getting that. So I am going to email you really quickly or I'm going to put the email address in there really quickly. So can you, you can reach out to me, let me know your mailing address. But I hope everyone has a lovely holiday season. Anything else that we want to add before we hop off? And while I frantically type my message.

To Jillian, Happy holidays. Thank you everyone for joining us. Happy writing, happy marketing. You know, let us know how, how we can help. And I hope we gave you some, some good things to think over and implement into your strategy.

And I am looking forward to seeing you all in 2023. Yes.

Awesome. Yes. And we will be doing. There will be more deep dives as well. It's usually one Saturday every month for the majority of the year, except we do take a couple of months off in the summer. So hope to see you guys in the new year on some new deep dives. Hope everyone has a lovely and safe holiday season. Jacqueline and Sarah, thank you for being here on a Saturday.

And I just have a question first. I have to go run and like my, like, do I just rock it?

Oh, you be festive.

Rock it, rock it.

There's gonna be a lot of moms there.

I'm wondering if.

That's great, that mom. You're very festive. It's perfect.

Be that mom. You got double thumbs up from Bernard. All right.

Nice. Thank you, Bernard. Awesome.

All right, well, happy holidays, guys, and we'll see you all around.

Bye, guys.

Bye, everyone.