Book Launchers FAQ & Fun Times - LiveStream Replay

All right. Hello and happy Tuesday, my friends. I hope it is a fabulous day, wherever you are. Let's just dive right in. Today we're going to do something we rarely ever do. We're going to talk about book launchers. Imagine that. I'm sure you've watched a couple of the YouTube videos, so you probably heard me say, hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad with book launchers. We're your professional self publishing team, helping you write, publish, and promote a nonfiction book that will grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part, you keep all rights and royalties. There we go. It's a little bit weird talking to my computer and saying that instead of talking to my video camera. Anyway, so I say that at the start of every single video. Yet many of you ask me all kinds of questions about book launchers because I don't actually talk about book launchers. So I thought today we would dive in and answer some frequently asked questions. And you guys can, of course, go ahead and ask your questions too. It's crazy. There's a weird pattern going on behind me. I don't know, it must be from the light. It's pouring rain. Very typical west coast rainy day here. And maybe the light's coming in funny. So, yeah, welcome. Poetry from the heart. Angela Kuplik and Angela Jones from the Book Launchers team. She is, of course, our company operator. She keeps everything spread flowing, or if we were, you know, if we had trains, she'd keep them all running on time and ultimately just keeps me organized. Hey, Jill, Welcome. Yes, we've got two. Two Angela's and. Oh, Efren. Hello. Welcome. You guys can also hit that thumbs up button. Gives you something to do while I'm rambling as we get things rolling. So. So, yeah, so I'm gonna explain a little bit about what we do, how we do it, and why we're a pretty darn different and cool company. Because I do get lots of questions about it. And I thought for once, I don't think we've ever done a live stream where we've actually just talked about book launchers. We're going to do that today. But just like our hashtag no boringbookspolicy, we're going to have a no boring video policy. And to prove that to you, I'm just going to kick it right off right now with a prize. So if you're hiding there lurking, as I know some of my team members do, now is a great time to just say hello and let us know that you're here. And while I give you a chance to say hello, let me tell you that on November 21st we're having our next deep dive training. So if you're new. Deep dive training is when we spend two hours, usually one, sometimes two members of my Book launchers team join me and you get to meet the real experts behind what we do at Book Launchers. And they're the specialists. I have a broad knowledge of all things self publishing, book marketing, writing books, but my team are really the specialists that are in it every single day. So it's really fun for me to get to showcase their expertise to you. And it's a two hour training session where we dive deep into a subject, give you massive value and have some fun along the way. And our next one is happening on Saturday, November 21st and it's going to be at 10am Pacific Standard Time. They're two hours long. And this one is going to be. Where's my title here? Trying to find my title in my notes. I don't think I wrote the title down. Anyways, we are going to be talking about launching. So we're going to be planning out a pre launch strategy. Talking launch strategy. And what does book launch planning look like? What steps lay the foundation for a strong plan and what is a book pre sale period and why it's important. I found my notes so it's going to be a really, really great session. If you don't get the Book Launchers newsletter, which comes out every two weeks, you really should get your name on that. It's not a sales list. We just give you great content updates on the industry, the best videos of the previous couple weeks. You can go to Book launch and that will get you on the newsletter list. Or you can go to the community tab on the YouTube channel and that will also get you the link for this training. So hope to see you there. All right, so I'm going to do a prize and then we're going to dive into. I wrote five questions down. If you have questions about book launchers, now's a great time to ask as well. And then we'll do some random or general questions at the end as well. Okay. So I figured because it's November 10th, right? That's what day it is. So let's do the first and the 10th person. We're gonna do two prizes right off the bat. How fun is that? Okay, so the first person to comment was. Hey, Ron. Hey. It's been a long time. Green Wizard. Good to see you here. Let's see. So, Poetry from the Heart. I think you've won both of our beautiful swag pieces. For those of you who don't know, we have our oh so Soft journal and our noboringbooks mug. But if you haven't won both Poetry from the Heart, happy to give it to you otherw, you can choose who you would like it to go to instead. And then our 10th one, which I will get Angela to count for me so that I don't have to count. Let's see. Oh, it sounds like we've got some rain fans here. And Honaheim Productions. That was hope I said that right. You've had a lot of rain last two weeks. Thankful. Dry days. Oh, dry days. Kind of jealous. Christina. Yay. Hey, good to see you here. Tamara, welcome. Devin, Ms. Kimoli. Don't know if I've seen you here before. Welcome. So good to see you. Yes, the recording will be available later on the YouTube channel. All the lives are on later. And if you're tuning in after the fact, you can still comment the day the video comes out and get entered to win the swag. Because that's what happens whenever a video comes out. Every Tuesday and Friday. If you comment the day the video is released, you get entered to win the mug and the journal. So if you can't show up live, you can still. There's still lots of ways to win. Cool. And Beatbox Poet is watching from Toronto. I did my MBA in Toronto, York University. Okay, let's see. Joanna, thank you. That's very kind. And let's see. Angela Koeplik is number 10. Hopefully there's no Angela name bias there. All right, congratulations, both of you. So email team T E A M book launchers dot com, let us know which you want, the mug or the journal. Oh, Poetry from the Heart says we can choose the winner. That puts the pressure on me. That's hard. Let's see, Angela. Let's see. Who should we choose next? What other number could we go with? November 11th? No, that's too close to the other one. I'll come up with something. We will find another winner to replace Poetry from the Heart. Okay, so Angela, you did win, so you can email us. And Angela, put the the email address in the chat box so you know where to send it. All right, well, let's dive in with the first question. So the first question today is the most common question that I get asked is, does Book Launchers do editing? So, yes, we do do editing. We take editing extremely seriously. One of our clients, I Think it was Rob Berger who wrote a book called Retire before Mom and Dad. I think it was him. He put in his acknowledgment. Sect. You know, huge thank you to Book Launchers for their editing and also for their editing and also for their excellent editing. Something like that. So yes, we do do editing. However, we aren't an a la carte kind of service. So really to explain this, I have to give you guys a two minute spiel about how we work. So Book Launchers is a marketing focused company. So we help you write and publish and promote a book. And because we're on the promotional side, we, we will pitch you for podcasts, we try to find corporate partnerships, we pitch you for associations and newsletters and niche media and book reviews and all of those kind of things. And we build relationships and we have to have a standard of the kind of books that we're sending out there so that we can have continuous success and be able to leverage these relationships that we develop. Also that also gives us a firsthand look at what people are interested in, what's selling, what catches people's attention. So that side of it, and it's also where we get judged, right? It's the quality of the book for sure. But then are we able to help our clients sell the book at all? And that's really where we, where we get judged. And that's a hard part of the business. And that's really one of the main reasons I started the company, because there are phenomenal editors out there. There's some great writers, there's really good cover designers, and there's some great marketing people. The challenge is if they're not all working together, it's very hard to create a book that is then marketable at the end. So Book Launchers does do editing, but we really want, we're so much more than editing. We're marketing focused. So everything comes back to having a book with a strong hook, a clear, clear reader. And then, and then we do everything else. And then we do three different kinds of editing. So we have a developmental editor or content editor who takes a 30,000 foot view. Look at your manuscript. They're looking at it from a credibility, a structure, an engagement kind of point of view. That kind of edit I find to be the most painful because it comes back to you with questions and more work. You think you're done writing and then you go through the content edit and it's just more stuff to be done. Move this around, add this story, take this out. So it's harder. It's hard work. But this is where your book really starts to take shape. And then we do two rounds of copy edit, which is your sentence structure, word choice, grammar, punctuation. Kind of what people think when they think of editing. And I've talked about this in videos before, but usually when people come to us and they have a book that's been edited, but it's actually not a really great book, it's because they got it copy edited, but it didn't get that developmental work first. So the order to do this in is developmental, then copy and then proofread to pick up those final typos. And me personally, because I'm not a detail person, I actually get another proofread on my books when it goes through layout. So we have another set of eyes go look at it. So yes, we do editing, but you won't contact us to get a quote for editing because we don't just do editing. We're full service. You can come to us at various different stages of your book process so your book can be drafted. You can already have had an editor. Some people come to us with an almost finished book and we can put all the finishing touches on it. And occasionally we take a book that is done and we'll just work with the client on marketing. So we really take a holistic approach and you start talking to the marketing team once your book is in content edits. So that's why we don't just do a la carte because we layer on our services and everything comes back to really helping you create that marketable book. So hopefully. So let's see. I'm just gonna check over. I see some questions. Do you think you will. Okay, I see a question about fiction, so we'll definitely touch on that. That's absolutely a frequently asked question. Mike Hurd, good to see you. And let's see. Oh, and Ron. Ron Neitzel, the green wizard. He has gone through our editing process and he says awesome editing. So thanks, Ron. It's great to see you. It's been a while. Aaron. Yay. You made it live. So good to see you. Okay, let's see. Michael. Woohoo. You missed the start. You missed the first two prizes, but we. Well, actually first prize, because I'm going to give another prize out as soon as I come up with an idea. Still thinking and talking at the same time. Joanna. Yay. So, so great to see you. Okay. Jude, welcome. Okay. So. Oh, Emily, hey. Great to have you here too. So. So yeah. So I'll Answer the question about fiction right now. And then my next question is kind of in line with the whole editing idea that I get asked. So another common question is, do you work on fiction books? And we actually have a YouTube video where I answered this question because it does come up all the time. I love you fiction friends. I really, really do. However, I have only written nonfiction books. I know the business of nonfiction books. And even nonfiction books is a huge category. So to be a specialist, to be really, really awesome, we can't. We're already spreading a little bit wide with nonfiction. So we tend to veer towards self help, you know, kind of fitness and health and business oriented type books with a splash of memoir. Because we do love a good story and most of our books will fit into that kind of a nonfiction category. You know, we don't do poetry books, we don't do journals. There's a lot of stuff that kind of falls in that nonfiction that we we don't do. We don't tend to do story compilations either. So there's lots of nonfict fiction that doesn't fit into what we do and the challenges. So here's the challenge and why we don't do fiction. A, I don't have the expertise in it. I don't understand the business model clearly on fiction. But also we already have a large team and if we went into fiction, you need people who are ya. Thrillers, action, every kind of fiction genre. You need editors and cover designers that know that stuff and then writers and writing coaches if you're to do everything we do. So for the very, you know, for the next few years for sure, I don't see us expanding into fiction. I really just see us doubling down and continuing to get more and more awesome at what we already do in the nonfiction space. But I love you fiction folks. And we have some really fabulous YouTube besties and regular contributors, regular commenters who are in the fiction space. So if you ever have fiction questions, there's almost always somebody that can help you out on the channel. So thank you to everyone, you know who you are. Okay. All right, let's see. Okay, just check in here if there's anything else over there. Okay. Nothing there. So I'm gonna move on to the next question. I'm just gonna double check my list here. Actually. Let's do the other. Let's do the other draw or the other extra to replace the one at the beginning. So let me see here. Trying to think of something. What skill testing question. How about this is going to be Biased for my Canadians, but that's okay. Wednesday is a holiday in Canada. What day is it? What are we celebrating in Canada on Wednesday? So that's tomorrow, right? Today's Tuesday. Okay, so that's a biased one. I'm basically tossing a. Tossing a lobbing one over there for you fellow Canadians. Okay, it's Wednesday. We do celebrate Wednesday, of course, because who doesn't love the middle of the week? But it. Jill. No, see, I said in Canada. See, in the US It's Veterans Day. In Canada, it is not Veterans Day. So there's got to be somebody here. Either that or you guys could Google it really fast. The fastest Googler. If you're not. If the Canadians have left. This is funny. Sorry. Hump day came up multiple times. And then there's Canada Day, a statutory holiday. Thanksgiving. No, we had Thanksgiving in October. Sorry. It's kind of humorous for me to see that nobody can get this. My Toronto guy must have left. So otherwise, we're really in trouble. If the Canadians don't even know what holiday is happening tomorrow. I'm just waiting for somebody to Google the answer. I think I'll come back to this. The Canadians watching the replay are gonna go crazy. Okay, so the second question that I get all the time is, can I send my book in and get a quote for your services? And so going back to what I was talking about, about how we take a really holistic view of what we're doing. We also don't do quotes because we're set up very different. We are set up as a membership. And so what that means is as long as you are a member, we keep working on your book, and things are in a very sequential fashion. We do have two levels of service. So in our Platinum plus, we do work on the book. There's two things happening at every time on your book versus our Platinum, which is kind of our core service. One professional works on your book at a time. So in the beginning, you're working with your story expert and then a writing coach and then a developmental editor and then a copy editor. Along the way, you have conversations with our book marketing manager and start to lay some foundational elements for your book. We're doing the research, the competitive research, the keyword research. We're doing the copywriting for your book description in your bio with that keyword research. We're doing pricing discussions and analysis for you, and then proofread and all the way through to the end. Now, the really, really cool things about membership, and part of the reason I went this angle is because number one, I want to work with people that we develop a long relationship with. They market their book with us and then they roll into the next book and we just have this great long relationship. The other thing is I don't really want there to be an end date to our time together. If we're getting you results on the marketing, we want to work with you for as long as you want to work with us. And so having a membership allows us to continue working together. It also allows you to cancel at any time. Because one of the challenges that I, when I self published my two books before I started this company was that a lot of, you know, first of all, the first problem was the piecemeal aspect of things. So nobody was really taking the whole picture like a traditional publisher does. By the way, a traditional publisher thinks book marketing before they sign anybody to a book deal. And self publishers, for whatever reason, most of them write the book and then figure out the marketing. And so if you're really thinking like a traditional publisher does about your book, you know, you're being the CEO of your book like a traditional publisher would. You're thinking book marketing before you start writing, which is what we do. And when you do that, you need to be thinking book marketing every stage along the way. And as a result, my whole team needs to be involved and always have that bigger picture. So that's, you know, that's the non piecemeal part for those people who missed the beginning. The second piece of this is a lot of companies out there require you to pay a huge lump sum and you're committed. So if something happens in your life or you don't like the team for whatever reason, something goes wrong, you're committed to this contract. And I also didn't get a great feeling from that. Now you can prepay our monthly services and so that might look like something similar to what you've seen. However, you can cancel it anytime and you get a prorated amount back. So we are essentially a monthly membership service. We have a very detailed process that we follow, gets more and more detailed every day as we get better and better and refine what we do and everything moves along in a very timely fashion. These slowdowns, sometimes it happens on our team side because we are humans and people get sick and some people quit or they change direction or whatever it is. But generally speaking, if this slows down, it's because our client slows down. So I always tell people this is not a good fit. If you're not going to put Two to five hours a week into your book, most weeks. And if you can do more, your book is going to move along faster. But that's kind of a long answer to tell you. There's no quote. We don't need to quote your book because if you change your mind, if you change the COVID or you make decisions, or you come in and you've got a cover, but you need editing, and then we're going to be publishing and promoting your book, you can bring that cover in and we just skip that part. Although truthfully, we almost always redo the COVID because cover is one of the core elements of marketing, and titles and covers tend to go through an improvement when they come in our door. But that's all part of the process. But all I'm saying is you can come to us with pieces. We don't need to quote on it, because that just means we don't do that part, and then we just move forward. So hopefully that answered that. Okay, so let's see. Remembrance. I know somebody got it then, because I see somebody. Somebody saying Remembrance Day, and then somebody else is saying, how could you type that wrong? I'm trying to find the first person. The National Day, Day of Remembrance, Commonwealth Day. Oh, my goodness. This is quite. This is quite humorous. How many people did not get this? Okay, so I think you'll have to confirm for me, Angela, but I do believe Ms. Kimoly or Kimily. I'm not sure how you want me to say it. Miss Kimily. I kind of want to say it. Miss Kimily. That sounds more fun. Is Remembrance Day. Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, which I think is similar to Veterans Day, but. But we've got our poppies, and there's. Yeah, there's a whole thing to it. So tomorrow is remembrance day here. So, Ms. Kimily, I think you're the winner. Angela will confirm that for me, and you can choose whether you get the mug. The mug or the journal. Oh, dear. It's gonna be one of those days. Okay, let's see. Does book launchers ever work with authors who self publish music method books? Music method. And so we do have a book. I don't know what a music method book is. So my gut reaction is probably not. We have worked with a band. Oscar Damas put out a book. Angela can put the title in there. And it was really for band leaders on running band and putting together great band programs. And then we have another book, which I can't talk about yet in the music space, which is going to be lessons on music. But it's not. I'm assuming that's not a musical method book, but I'm not certain. Let's see. And not sure what that is. Angela will collect the ones that I missed. So if I've scrolled past you, I will free falling from grace. Confirmed. Thank you. That Ms. Now I can't say it. Ms. Kimberly was first. Okay. It's. I'm starting to feel like you guys are gonna think that I'm drinking something else, but I am just drinking kombucha. Okay. Teaching music. Yeah. So as in like the music, like it's got musical book, like musical notes and things like that. We're really story structure based. So if your book is a how to or you know, it's got a story structure to it, that's really our thing is creating really interesting. Like that's why our hashtag is no boring books. So. Yeah. And Angela just put Oscar's book title in there. Okay, let's go back to my questions and give you question number three. So question number three. How long has Book Launchers been in business? So let's do a prize. How many years have we been in business? How old are we? Who's going to get it right this time? See? All right, Jill. Woo. Diana, you are not too late. We are just right in the thick of it right now. So welcome Jill. You got it right. Book Launchers is as old as my son. Only a few. I launched, I had a baby and then a few months later I launched Book Launchers. So yeah, we are three and a half years old now. It's a lot of people some six years, good guesses, two years old. So yeah, a lot of people often think that we've been around a lot longer. But I spent a, you know, I started, I self published my first book in 2013. So I really started researching and diving deep into self publishing in 2012. So I've been in this space a really long time and without going through the whole backstory, I'll give you kind of the short version and that is that Wiley and I were going. Wiley, the publishing house and I were going back and forth on a book which I thought was going to turn into a book deal. And they ended up turning. First they turned down the idea that I had and then they gave me an idea they were looking for an author on and they thought I could write that. And then they ended up telling me that they didn't think I had a big enough platform to sell books. They didn't think my reach and my audience was big enough. And so I was kind of forced into self publishing, but I'm not the kind of person who just goes, oh, now I'm going to have to self publish. I was like, wait a minute, I'm going to do it better if they won't. If they won't publish me, I'm going to do it better than if they had published me. And so I dove. I didn't just get into self publishing, I dove into self publishing and figured out how to do it as good or better than a traditional publisher. And in fact, I did. I took my book to number one on Amazon in Canada, ahead of Dan Brown, ahead of Game of Thrones, better than any real estate book that Wiley had launched in Canada, you know, to take it to number one overall. So I started in the self publishing world many, many years prior to launching Book Launchers. And the idea kind of formed in my head over many, many years. And this was my third business. So we got it up and running pretty fast because this wasn't my first time starting a business. And I was very fortunate that when I moved to Los Angeles and started the business that I was able to hire a couple of people that have been really instrumental and foundational in creating the company. Jacqueline Kyle, who is our production manager, and Tim Testa, who is our story expert. They were my. They were my first two, first two employees, and they have really been fundamental to creating the company. So I was very fortunate to get two really very different people who brought two very different skill sets to the team, and it really helped balance out mine. And we were able to get things going pretty quickly. So it's very cool. So while we are three and a half years old, in many ways we function like a much older company because we have deep processes, a great team, really good culture. So, yeah, lots of fun. Number four is a question I get all the time and I never know how to answer it. And so I'm just gonna. I'm telling you what it was, what it is, even though I don't like answering it. Who is your most successful author? So here's the thing. I'm gonna be totally real with you guys. When somebody has massive success on their launch, it is almost always because they have an audience. So they have built. You know, they show up to the table with 10,000 subscribers on their newsletter, 50,000 subscribers on their newsletter. They've got 100,000 Instagram followers, they've got a huge Twitter following. Something like that. And so for me to run around telling everybody who our most Successful authors are says. I shouldn't say. It doesn't say anything about us, but it really says everything about their audience and doesn't, you know, I don't feel like we should be saying this is, it's not fair, basically, is what I'm saying. It's more fair to look at the people who have been with us for years and they're building an entire business around this. But a lot of people aren't looking at it that way. They want to know who's the famous, famous person we've worked with. So I struggle with this question probably because I am very practical and I'm also realistic and I kind of think if I tell you who you know, who sold know, thousands and thousands of copies right out the gate, you're going to think that that's what you should achieve when you don't have the hundred thousand Instagram followers that that person had and they just had to post two times to Instagram and they sold all those books. If you haven't built a really big following, you're going to have to do the things that we tell you and work with a company like us or do all the things that we do to build momentum over time. Because it takes a long time to really get the word out, get people to know who you are to sell books over time. It takes effort. And so, yeah, it's one of those questions where, you know, I can tell you about the, you know, Gautam Bade is one really great example who. He had a really great Twitter following. You know, we did some great things on our side as well, but he ultimately sold enough books that he got the attention of a publishing house and they've now republished. Well, they're in the process of republishing his book. And so that's a really, really great success story. But for me to kind of tout it like it's our success just doesn't. We played a part, but it's him. It was his, it was his audience that he'd worked hard to build that relationship with. So it's a hard question for me to answer, you know, and we've worked with some, you know, some ex NFL players we've worked with. One of our, one of the fun ones we worked with was William Hung from American Idol. But it's, yeah, it's a, it's a weird question for me to answer. So that's my real answer for all of you. Okay. Okay. Let's see. And Mike, that's so kind. Mike says anyone and everyone in nonfiction will be a winner working with you, period. And let me just put a caveat on that. If you actually work with us, because it really is a collaboration, for this to be successful, we have to work together. And there's certainly a lot that my team does for you. But the authors that do do well are the ones that go, okay, what's next? What can I be doing while you're doing this? How can I help? And. And the biggest thing I always tell our clients is to get reviews. We do a lot of things to try to get reviews, but ultimately, reviews are the backbone of your book's success. And it's hard to get reviews. We've talked about that before, too. And so if there's one thing that you do is get reviews when your book is coming out and rally your launch team so that you have early reviewers, that is really fundamental. And going forward, everything that we do to pitch you for podcasts and, you know, media and speaking engagements and live appearances, if you have a lot of reviews as social proof, your book is going to do so, so much better. So. Okay. And without paying for those reviews. Yeah, we use some paid review services, but you're not paying for the review. You're paying, like, for example, NetGalley, which. Angela, I do have a video on YouTube about NetGalley that would be a great one to drop in here, because a lot of people aren't familiar with them. So we do use netgalley and we pay for that service, but it's not paid reviews, it's paying them. And then people will express interest in your book, get a copy, and then they write a review. The cool thing about NetGalley, and also the challenge which I talk about in that video, is that they're professionals, so they're librarians, bookstores, book bloggers. So the caveat on that is they can be very particular, a little bit critical, and so sometimes we get some pretty mean reviews through that. That venue. But, you know, your. Most of our books are really awesomely edited, as we've already talked about, which is really essential. So if you haven't put your book through rigorous, rigorous editing and design, then I would not pay to submit them to services like NetGalley, because these are professionals, and you're. They're going to post the review everywhere, and your book will get reviewed. So you want to make sure you're really confident in your book's quality before you do that. But you can get quite a few reviews that way. Way. Okay, let's see. Oh, Jill, that's Awesome. Jill just said, as a first time author, I could not have gotten this far without the expertise of book launchers. I'm learning so much about the book business. It's great to have you here, so thank you so much. Okay, I think I had one more question, but I'm going to do a YouTube draw. Yeah, I have one more question and then of course I'll get Angela to round up all the questions that I've missed as you guys have been chatting away there. And I can't keep my eye on that. So let's do the YouTube draw. So for anyone who's new here, every Tuesday and Friday we have a new video that comes out. And when that video comes out, you comment and you get entered to win our sweet, sweet journal and mug noboringbooks. And then if you start doing that on a regular basis like some fabulous folks like Mike and free falling from Grace and Kevin McGuire, I don't know if I saw him here today, I could go on and on. There's a great big list of you fabulous folks, but you become one of my YouTube besties. And so there's something really cool that we're doing for the YouTube besties this year. When we hit 25,000 subscribers, which is gonna happen in the next four weeks, we are going to have a huge celebration here. The live stream, It'll probably be four weeks to today. We're gonna have that big 25,000 subscriber party and we have some super sweet swag that Angela and I have been working together to create. And we're entering all the YouTube besties into that draw and we're going to choose two of you to get that. So just as an extra special, thank you for being a bestie because once you're a bestie, you've probably already won the mug and the journal. So now you're just doing this, you know, because you're awesome and I'm so grateful. So I wanted to do something special for you. And then of course we will have our. We've got some hoodies again, our hashtag no boringbookshoodies are back and always journals and mugs. So it will be super, super fun. And. And there you go. So back to the YouTube draw. So when you comment the Tuesday and Friday you get entered to win and over time you can get entered to win even more. Okay, sorry. Free falling into grace, not from grace. Oops. There is a difference. My apologies. And yes, I. I knew exactly who you were. I didn't know if I could use your Name? Natalia. I didn't know. I didn't want to, you know, out you. Okay, so let's see. Let's go back to my spinner. And you guys should. If you don't check out book launchers on Instagram. I posted a picture of what the spinner looks like today. It's literally a spinning wheel with all your names on it. It's actually making me really dizzy. Okay, so the first winner today is Rachel Robertson. Man, I'm pretty sure she's won almost everything, but I don't think she's here today. So, Rachel, you can collect your prize. Teamoklaunchers.com I'm pretty sure you'll tune into the replay if you're not here. I don't think I've seen your name, but thank you. Rachel is one of our fabulous YouTube besties. She comments on every single video. I don't think she misses a single one. So congratulations and thank you, Rachel. Okay, so last question is, how big is your team? That is one of the other questions I get asked all the time. Some people are just curious and other people I think, are trying to figure out if we've got enough people to help them. So currently, as of actually yesterday, we are. We have now a dozen people that are in house as our team, and the majority of them are full time. We have a couple people who are part time and. And then we work with. I think at Angela center, count is at 35 contractors. So the contractors are largely editors. We have writers and a few writing coaches that are on contract and then design. And then all our marketing is largely in house and our project management is in house. And then we've got some writing people and coaching in house as well. So it's a little bit of a mix on the coaching and writing side, but otherwise the division is fairly clear. I like having the editor as contractors because we can give them very specific deadlines and timelines. But a lot of our team we've been working with since the beginning. Again, I've been very, very fortunate to, you know, some of the people were people I worked with on my. On my first two books. I brought them in. But we have been very fortunate to attract some really fantastic talent to the team, which makes everything easier. When you have great people who love what they're doing, who are experts at their job. The whole process just is smoother and it goes better. So there you go. We are pretty much always hiring, so if you are interested in working with us, we have two job openings right now. One's contract one's an in house position. But yeah, for the foreseeable future we expect to be hiring pretty much every month. So if you're interested there is a link on our site or if you know somebody who might be interested. You know, we have a sales job open a book consultant. It's not hardcore sales by any means. It's really problem solving if anything and seeing if we can for a fit to help you with your book. But then we are always looking for writers, editors and proofreaders and some, some designers. We have a really phenomenal cover design artist that's now in house and and then we have a few other cover designers that we work with outside. So that's our team. So. Okay, so the awesome dozen. Yes, the awesome dozen. Okay Angela, if you want to let me know. Oh, thanks for dropping the link. Angela. Put the link in there. So if you know anybody who is looking and they want to work at a, you know, really awesome company, if I do say so myself. And truthfully I created a company as somebody who I kind of think is somewhat unemployable. I think I would be hard pressed to work for somebody else now. But I created a company that I would want to work for. You know, one where I value everybody's opinions. I really, I mostly leave everyone on my team alone to do their job but I make sure they have the support they need to succeed. And they're everybody's remote. So we all work from home, but we meet every single day. So I see everyone's face four days a week. And on Mondays because it's Monday. Who wants to be on video on Mondays? We don't show, we don't do a video call. But we do do an hour long meeting on Mondays and then a shorter meeting every other day of the week. So it's a pretty fun team. So if you do know anybody, we are really looking for more awes people. Okay, cool. Any questions that I missed here? Angela, let's see. Unemployable. Yes. Mike says he's also unemployable. And Angela, the other Angela is not even in college yet. Yeah. That's fantastic. You're writing. I mean how many of us who are a little older than college age wish we'd written our started writing our books before we were even in college. That's pretty awesome. Way to go. Okay, thank you. Alright, let's see. I'm just looking. Anything else here? Okay, we're going to do another YouTube. We have another or we're going to do another YouTube draw. While Angela, she says we have seven. I think we have seven questions I have to answer. So I'm going to wait for Angela to put the questions up here. So we'll do another YouTube draw. And yeah, this is spinning. Spin this crazy wheel again. I should film this while I'm doing it. It's pretty wild. Okay, and our winner today. Oh, I was hoping you would win XJP 1998. That's really, really cool. I don't think XJP 1998 has won before, but I'm pretty sure they're watching every single video these days. So congratulations. Email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. So, so, okay, we've got a question. G. Michael Price asked, what is typesetting setting? I have a video and I'm going to cheat today. And I'm just going to say, Angela, can you please put the video in there on what is typeset setting? Typesetting is actually really old school. The word typesetting came from when the boxes there was like little letters and they literally had to set the type by hand. Could you imagine how painful it's hard enough to write a book. Imagine having to set it that way. Which also in the live stream I did many, many moons ago. It seems I shared a funny fact with you, which is the fact that do you know that they're called upper and lowercase letters because the lowercase were in the lowercase before they put them up and the upper were in the uppercase. So there you go, a little trivia fact for you. So, yeah, I'm going to get Angela to just put the typesetting video there to kind of go through it because it's pretty detailed and yeah, I kind of just don't feel like it. I did such a great job of that video. I just highly recommend it. Okay. Is there a chance you can publish a book and afterwards put it in a library? 100%. There's also two or three different videos on the YouTube channel talking about that. There's two things. There's two easy ways to get your book in the library. Number one is use Draft 2 Digital to distribute your ebook. And it will go through a system called hoopla and it will go into the libraries. That's easy way number one. And then people through the hoopla system, they. Which is in most libraries, I believe they can then request your ebook and read your ebook through the library. There's another system also. There's one other library system that will do that too. The other way is usually doing events at your library. There's the third way, which is selling a whole bunch of books, and there's just demand for it, and it's on the sales rankings, and it gets your book into libraries that way. But the other way is doing events at libraries. And so I did do a handful of events at libraries, and they always asked to buy one or two copies of my book. Just FYI, when your book gets into the library, you get paid once. You know, 100 people might read that book, but they buy your book once. So the lovely part for me was that I would physically sell them my book that cost me $4.50. I would sell it to them for $20. And so, you know, I made $40, because most of the time, they bought too, but that's it. So just FYI. But I love libraries, so I'm a big fan of that. But events get them in there and then demand. So getting people to go in and request it is a great way. And, you know, you do have to be listed so they can buy it. So if you're only available on Amazon, it may not. There's some hurdles. It may not get in there. There's some other steps that you have to take. So there is a video that will help you with that. Ah, Scully's House of Thrillers. Welcome. Hello. Okay. Okay, so I asked. I answered the music method question already. And Efren. I know it sounds like a spy code name, right? XJP 1998. I'm kind of excited that XJP 1998 won, because now I'm gonna learn some details about our secret person, Efren Delgado, thoughts on techniques to keep up with bibliographies as we write. But I am not good at that. And we have a fact checker on our team now who organized me in a great way. So, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, some of my answers to questions, I have always hired out certain parts of the process because I am not good. I have never in my life done my own taxes, just to give you a sense. I have. Even when I was young, 18, I still worked with an accountant because I'm just not a detailed person like those finer, finer details. Now, I still catch mistakes by my accountant, so we don't want to talk about that right now. But, yeah, so I've never, like, things like bibliographies. Excuse me. I've never really been great at it. What I do personally is whenever there's something that I'm referencing in any way, even if it's just like I know I'm talking about something. I got an idea from somewhere. I just make a footnote. So I just, in my Word document, I just put a footnote and I put a note about the book title or the website or whatever it is, wherever it came from. And then I have someone else build the bibliography after. I know that's probably not the answer you're looking for, but that's how I do it. There's probably other folks here who have a much better process for it than me. Yeah. Okay. Erin Crawley, is your story about doing your book better than traditional publishers going to be in your new book? That hooked me and was really encouraging for me as I go through self publishing. Yes. I didn't go deep into it though, because I actually had put it into my second book, the New Brand you'd so I told the full story there, but I definitely draw from it in my new book. My new book is called Self Publish and Succeed. It's coming out February 23, 2021. And you folks will be invited to be on my book army, my early launch team. So I'll be counting on you to help me get a lot of reviews because, because let's face it, the person who has a book launch company needs to have book reviews, right? So I'm going to be counting on all of you for some support so you'll be able to get your books early. And of course we'll have lots of thank you celebrations and live streams and different things to thank you for any and all early support of the book. But yeah, so I do touch on that story, of course, and have lots of other fun stories for you in that book too, because it wouldn't be a noboringbooks book if I do just did how to and didn't give you some great stories. But yeah, thank you. I'm glad to know this story hooked you in because I, you know, this happens with your own stories. You tell your story over and over and you start to think your story either doesn't matter or everybody's heard it already. And even though I know that's not true, it's still, I've still said it many, many times. So it's great to hear every once in a while that it's still a valuable story to continue to share. So that Cool. Let's see. Typesetting video link is up there. Oh, Katie. Hey, it's great to see you. There was some other Toronto folks here. Katie. Okay, so let's See, Mary Lynn had a question. My target group is 17 to 25 year olds, probably without college. I'd like to include cartoons by a graphic novel artist to keep it light. Has book launchers dealt with illustrations like that? Not really. We have some more graphically intense books, but not when they start to veer to the cartoon side. We have some that have kind of chapter, like graphical chapter starts but not on a. Yeah, like we're really your typical. I don't even know if I have any. Not being in my regular office, I don't have my full collection of books to pull out and show you some of the different examples. Dave. I think Dave Frost is one. Kaboom. Have I. He has some illustrations to describe different exercises that he's talking about. His book is all about, you know, thriving and striving into your 90s. So he, he talks about, you know, different exercises for people kind of over 60 to keep their balance. Because one of the big things that happen for people as you age is you fall and you hurt yourself and you fall because you've lost your balance. So you don't have some of those stabilizer muscles as engaged as they used to be. So he's got some cool exercises and there's some graph, like some imagery in there, but that's kind of the closest that we've done. We're definitely not experts in what you're talking about. Free falling into grace. I got it. How much time should we allow for collecting reviews? Is there a sweet number of reviews to get before launching? I mean, you don't know how many reviews you've got before you launch because they can't actually start posting them until your book is launched. So my general rule of thumb is to ask about five times as many people as you think. So let's say you want, you want to get 25 reviews, which is kind of a good start. Like 50 and up is ideal. 25 is a solid start. 25 is where we can usually see a good success rate from Amazon, ads, media, live appearance, pitching, anything under that and it can impact. We don't ever know specifically if it's the reviews or something else. But 25 and above is kind of a sweet spot to try to hit hit. So if you want to get 25 reviews, I highly recommend you get commitments from at least 100 people. So starting early is important, but don't start too early because the other thing is if you start too early, you can lose that attention and that excitement. So for me, just to give you a sense the February 23rd is my launch date. I'm going to start sending my book out and asking all of you for early review support in mid January. That's four to six weeks out from launch. That gives you time to read the book. Book. That gives me time to send you emails and then it also gives me. It's not so long of a time that we're going to lose excitement and lose momentum. So generally speaking, that's my approach. We. There's a book or. Sorry, there's a video on Book Army. Sorry, I'm Angela's just sitting there on the YouTube channel looking for all of these videos to give you guys links. But we do have a video on Book army that explains some of this stuff. So that should help. Help. Okay, let's see. I think we've almost got it, you guys. So just a reminder, November 21st at 10:00am Pacific Standard Time, myself and Sarah Bean, who is our book marketing manager, we're going to be talking all about launch and pre launch strategies which getting reviews will be one of those topics that we're talking about because it is so essential to that pre launch period and that launch day and kind of post launch timeframe. So that's what we'll be diving into on the 21st. We may see if we can coerce some of our other team members and we have a new media coordinator on the team and a few other folks too that may join in. But I know Sarah and I will be there to spend two hours with you on that Saturday and really dive into that subject. So Mike, I really, really appreciate it and I am counting on it. Mike just said we will be or will be 100% behind you on launching. So I really, really appreciate it and I am absolutely counting on my YouTube besties and all of you for so many support. I really, really mean it. How many on Goodreads? Oh well, Goodreads too. I don't know. We don't analyze Goodreads as closely largely because Amazon tends to be the go to place for it. But I. And so I know the numbers there. So I'd be making something up if I told you, But I think 25 is another good number there. Some of the reviews don't have comments. So on Goodreads you can get more like people will just do the stars and not post a review. So that can be easy for people to get, you know, to do that. I'll look into it. You know, maybe I can dive into another video on that. I did do a video on Goodreads Giveaways. But I don't think I dove into the research on, you know, how many reviews make sense on that. So, sorry, it's a good question. I'll write it down for the video list and maybe you'll see a new one come out. And that will be a 2021 video if I do it. But. Okay, let's see. Okay, one last question and then I'm going to call it partly because I'm losing my voice and also because I have a call in nine minutes. Okay, Angela. For giving reviews, should the author give free books or let the reviewers buy them and then review? If you're talking Amazon, the ideal scenario is that it's a verified review, which means they have to buy it. So what I'll be doing is during the pre launch period, once I've got folks like Mike who say, I'm 100% behind, you, just tell me what to do. I'm going to say, okay, my book's going to be 99 cents for these three days. Go buy my book and then I'll send you a free copy of it. But you'll get that 99 cent purchase so that when the book launches and you can write reviews, you are a verified reviewer. But I'm ultimately going to send free copies out. But I really want the verified reviews. So my ideal scenario is that, you know, you buy it for 99 cents, but I'm also sending you a free copy of the book and then when it launches, you're writing that review. But you know, Amazon will allow you to write reviews even if you haven't purchased the book, so you can send free copies. Generally speaking, the reviewer is supposed to say they received a complimentary copy from the author in their review so that it doesn't, it doesn't detract from it. But you don't want a bunch of reviews that aren't verified. You do want the majority of your reviews to be, be to be verified because they just have more weight. Whether Amazon gives them more weight or not has been inconclusive by most people. But I know as a buyer on Amazon, and it's not just me, verified reviews just carry more weight. So. Phew. All right, well, thank you so much for being here, everyone. It was fantastic. I thought this was going to be a short show, but it wasn't. We had a lot to cover today, today. So I hope to see so many of you on November 21st. There's no replays of our deep dive training, so if you miss it, you miss it. But we will cover a lot of the great material on our YouTube channel over the next few months as well. And we'll be back here in two weeks. And in four weeks, I think we're going to be celebrating 25,000 subscribers and you guys will finally get to see our brand new swag. So have a fantastic week and thank you again. Take care. Bye.