Book Marketing and Book Publishing Market Updates for 2021 | LiveStream Replay

All right. Hello. Happy Tuesday, my friends. As Jackson, my son, likes to say, we are nine days away from Christmas. That's not true. But in his mind, his last day of school is the start of Christmas, so he's really excited about that. All right, so we got a lot to cover. I've got some really exciting news. Can't wait to get to it. I'm just making sure that everything is working on this side. If you can confirm that, that you can hear me and see me, we're good. All right. Kevin is in the house. Poetry from the heart, right? You guys are hearing me, so we can just dive right in. So first, you guys, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm so excited. We have finally hit 25,000 subscribers this week. It happened yesterday, officially. I think it happened kind of overnight. So I'm really excited. And our big celebration is happening on December 22, same time, same place. And that's going to be our official 25,000 subscriber celebration. And it also happens to be the same time as our end of year wrap up. So really excited. If you haven't been here for other subscriber celebrations, let me tell you what is going to happen because you are going to want to make sure that you have those 30 minutes carved out. First of all, we have some super secret swag that we are going to unveil on our December 19th holiday extravaganza, which I'll tell you about in a second. So we will be giving that away and there's going to be two different prize pools for that. We're going to have one for our besties. So everybody who's been given a shout out that you're one of my YouTube besties, you're going into a separate draw for this super secret swag. And of course, those of you who join us will also have the opportunity to win this super secret swag. This is not a sticker, my friend. This is high value stick stuff. I'm so excited for you to see it. We also have hoodies, mugs, journals, and books that we'll be giving away because it's 25,000 subscribers and I have to say a huge thank you. And the best way we know how to say thank you is to give and give and give a little more. And it's also the end of the year wrap up. So it works out perfectly. It's like I meant it to be that way. So great. Thank you for confirming you've got you can hear me Altcoin analysis. Hello. Great to see you Here, Joyce, thanks for being here. Matt, Ben, Efren, Vessie, Mary Lynn, it's so great to see all of you here. Alicia, it's great. Aubry. Okay. And Martha's here, too. And Jill. Yay. And that's the secret, you guys. If you haven't been here before, make sure you say hello, because if you lurk, then you don't have a chance of winning the live prizes today. So definitely say hello. So that's happening December 22nd at 2pm Pacific Standard Time right here. So that's our 25,000 subscriber party. No content that day, just prizes and fun. On December 19, we are having our end of year holiday extravaganza deep dive. So these are the trainings that happen one Saturday every month. It's happening at 10am Pacific Standard Time on Saturday, December 19th. This is one where we don't have a specific training format. You bring our questions, my team is going to bring their answers. I think there's five people from my team that are going to be there that day. So it's going to be a really, really fun time. And it wouldn't be a holiday extravaganza without books, prizes and other swag to give away. So we're going to answer all your questions, have some fun and give some prizes away, too. So that's happening December 19th. You need a link to join. That's a zoom meeting. It's a private meeting. You can join by being on our subscriber. So getting our launch letter newsletter, which comes out every two weeks, you can, you can get that@book launchers.com or go to the community tab on the YouTube channel page and you can get your registration link there. All right, so today we're going to take a look at the publishing industry, what happened in 2020. There's only a couple things I'm really going to note for you because we're not going to relive the pandemic problems. But I do want to flag a couple of things that have happened. I'm going to give you a couple things to ponder and then I'm going to give you two things to really focus on for 2021, that, that are really going to matter for you as an author. So I'm going to dive right in and then we'll take a little break, we'll do some prizes and then we'll keep going. At any time, you can ask questions. If it's specific to what I'm talking about, I'll try to answer it. Otherwise, Angela is In the house. Thank you, Angela. And she will be collecting the questions so that I can answer them all at the end. So do hang on till the end if you have a question because I will get to it. All right, so number one, the first thing I thought I would start with is, is something that happened in November. Amazon Author central got an update. And just for those of you who's all who have already kind of flagged this for me, I am going to shoot a new video with the update to cover the new features and kind of show you where everything is. So that's on deck. I'll actually be filming that before the holidays and then it'll be edited for you in January. So you'll get that. Not a lot that's really super noteworthy. But what's a couple of things that I do like is that you can now manage your author page and you can manage it from the author central. You can claim your books and view your reports for multiple marketplaces. So it, it simplifies things for you a little bit as an author to manage your profile and to really kind of get feedback on your books in terms of sales and reports. And it's now mobile friendly where it was not before. So I'll give you a new update on that. For those of you going, what's Amazon Author Central? There is a video. It is a great place and an underutilized place for you as an author to create a profile on Amazon and connect with your readers. You can post videos, you can post extra pictures you can post, you can link to social media or link to blog posts. That's the word I was looking for. And events that you're doing. You can treat it almost like an author website. Of course I still recommend you have a separate author website, but there's search engine love that can go there. It's a place where readers may find you. Another place, it's Amazon trying to help you sell your book. So you should take advantage of what is there and keep that profile up to date and really, really maintain it as much as you possibly can because it will help you. So just checking. I see someone new here. Lynn Hu Tran. Thank you. Welcome. Great to see you here. And Mike's here. Yay. Okay, so and logos are US branding. Hello, Mars dlt. It's great to have you here. And Kimberly, great to see you too. Okay, so, so that was number one, the Amazon Author central change. Like I said, I'm not really highlighting. There was a lot that happened in 2020 for those of you just joining I'm highlighting things that happened in 2020 in the publishing industry. Some things to ponder and some things to really focus on for 2021, 2020. I'm not going to relive all the pandemic problems. We don't need to relive those. So I'm really just focusing on changes that are going to matter and impact you going forward. The second change really just rolled out a couple weeks ago and you may not even known that this was a problem. A lot of authors didn't, but 20, sorry, 2020 just focused on 2020. At the moment, Audible changed their return policy. So this actually happened because of a tech glitch. Authors didn't realize. So Audible hasn't been very transparent and they still aren't being very transparent, but they weren't very transparent with regards to the returns. And they had this loosey goosey policy where you could return books up to 365 days post purchase. Yeah, you had a whole year. And authors didn't know what the returns were because they were rolled into the sales report until this glitch. And what happened with this glitch was three works, three works, three weeks worth of returns all got rolled into one single day, which was rather alarming for authors that are selling a decent amount of Audible books. And it caused some investigation into what was going on. So as you can imagine, with a policy that's essentially no questions asked return after anywhere up to 365 days, they had really high returns. Some authors who have, you know, decently reviewed like four and above stars on Audible reviewed books were estimating their returns were as high as 50%. And why not? Audible wasn't paying for it. It was coming right back out of the author's pocket. So Audible has now changed this because of the outcry from authors. And their new payment policy is effective January 1, 2021. And they're going to pay royalties for any title returned more than seven days following the purchase. So as long as the return, as long as your audiobook is not returned within seven days, you will be paid your royalties for it and there won't be backed out afterwards. Which was what was happening. Now, a lot of authors still aren't happy with this because they point to the, their prime. The prime video and they say, look like people can return their prime video Only up until 48 hours and only if they haven't started watching it. So. So they're saying you shouldn't be able to return your audiobook if you've started listening to it. You know, it's substantially better than what it was, which really allowed anyone in that Audible Premium plus plan, which is the plan where they get one book a month as part of that plan, they were allowed to return it for up to a year. So it's substantially better. But the lack of transparency for me is really what people should be complaining about. I don't. I'm not as concerned about the fact that it's seven day return policy because, I mean, if, if I listen to an audiobook and the quality is not good, I hate the voice of the narrator. I want to be able to return that book still. So I'm okay with that return part, but I'm not okay with them just rolling it into your sales report. So you never really know what percentage of your sales end up being returned because on the print side, we do get that information. As an author, you do see the returns on your statement in, in, you know, every month when you're getting those statements. So. All right, so I'm just checking out to see what you guys are talking about over here. Oh, so the Amazon author page for Canada, it is updated so you can see data from multiple markets now. I haven't played around with it myself. It's something I'm going to do as I prep for the video that I'm going to shoot in a week. So I'll have more comments on that. But my understanding is that this is building out for more markets. So. So it does address some of those international issues that were lacking before. I don't know who said that. I just kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye. All right, so just checking. Aaron's here. Yay. Great to see you here. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to get Angela to collect. Collect these questions. And I see a question though, from. I think it's Iker. I hope I'm saying your name right. Findaway Voices. I did a video comparing Findaway Voices to Authors Republic. I like them. They're a really good service. Check out that video. Angela might be able to drop the link in here to give you full rundown. We use them for our clients who want wide distribution. What I would recommend, if you're okay setting yourself up with a couple of accounts, I would still set yourself up with Audible ACX for Audible and Apple and then set up Findaway Voices for everything else. I think you can. I think you can exclude it. I can't remember. There's a way to. I think there's a way to exclude it so you don't have to use Find A Way for Everything. But Find a Way is a really, really good company. And if you need, if you're one of those people who really needs a narrator, they have this really cool feature called Voice Share. So you can pay a narrator 50% and they can. And then you have the option to buy out the, the book from them in the future or pay it off through royalties. And that allows you to get a narrator for a little bit more affordable price and also avoid some of their other contracts which can be very prohibitive and, and, and harder to get now where the narrator would have royalties or shares and things like that. So I typically recommend that you read your own audiobook, but for some people there's a reason why they can't. So. Okay, so I'm going to carry on to the next point here and let's talk about, let's see, 2021. Um, so really this is kind of some things to ponder. I have two points to ponder now and the first is watch for what happens. And it's all around bookstores. I'm curious to see what 2021 is going to look like for bookstores. We've all discovered the convenience of delivery for almost everything in 2020. And heading into 2021, the. The question mark for me and a lot of people in the industry is book bookstores. What's going to happen with them? What's it going to look like? For what it's worth, I took my. So we're hiding in Canada still. For those of you listening to this, we live in Los Angeles normally, but we came up to be with family in May because of the virus and thought we'd be here for three months. And now we're going to be celebrating Christmas here and likely staying January, February. We're really hoping to return in March. All our stuff is sitting in storage waiting for us in Los Angeles. But I took my son into the local chapter store here and, and it was hopping. It was a weekday, but it was like later in the weekday, like 4:00 clock or 4:30. But it was so busy. It was so busy I could not believe how busy it was. So you know, that gives me hope. But I don't know if my one store here locally is just an exception to it. People were starting that holiday buying. This was kind of mid November when that happened. And this was pre second wave shutdown, which happened for a lot of us. But I also can tell you I bought three books in the store that day. But for every book that I bought in store. I've ordered at least 10 online and I'm sure I'm not alone, so it will be interesting. And the thing that has me also wondering is a lot of bookstores that barely hung on this year, the Christmas season is essential for them. And a lot of us in marketplaces all over North America and even the world are experiencing a second wave shutdown. And so we're now being told to stay at home. So it's, you know, it's one of those things where stores are still open, so stay at home, but you can still shop in the store to get your Christmas presents. But some things don't make sense to me, but it's really, it's really going to be interesting to see what happens for these stores. As an author, there's some light, if you will, in all of this because with the Barnes and Noble leadership change already, we're seeing buy and go more locally. And I think that what we'll shake out of this is, is stores become even more local focused because the more they can cater to their local audience, the more likely they're going to succeed in times like this because people are really focusing. One of the trends is buying local. And so if you can cater to that local community, build a relationship with that local community, you're more likely to succeed and even thrive in situations like this. So I think there's going to be an even bigger drive towards that local market. So building that relationship with your local booksellers, I think will be really, really important, important for you as an author and also an opportunity. So there's that, that side of it. And I have a video that's going to come out soon talking about some of the things you need to be aware of if you do try to pursue widespread bookstore distribution. It's something that I did with my first book and I've talked pretty openly about the fact that I ended up having a twelve hundred dollar bill because of returns. And they all happened at once. I had made a ton of money that year, but it's still, is still stung to have a $1200 bill for returns. And it's something a lot of authors don't pay attention to. And now I think I've opened a can of worms. So I better quickly explain this. If a bookstore doesn't sell your book, whether, whether it's because the store goes out of business because of a pandemic or they just ordered a lot, which happened in my case, a lot of the stores would open or order a case of my books, which was 26 copies and they would only sell five, six, maybe 10 copies. And then they would shift some of them around between different stores, but there would still be some left. And they don't have space to store these. So what would happen is they would return them. Now the part that you may not realize is that you probably made about $4, maybe 6 at the most when it got sold to the store. But the bookstore, they probably paid like 9 or $10. And you're not just getting your, you're not just giving them $4 back or $6 back that you made. You're paying them back for that book. So you're actually paying more than you got when there's a return. So it stings. So yeah, I'll just say that again. You're not paying the bookstore back for what you made when you sold that book to them. You have to pay them back for the amount that they paid. So it's kind of a rip off. It's a little bit painful. So bookstore distribution I think is something you should target on a local basis and really try to drive sales, drive business. And widespread bookstore distribution may not be something you focus on regardless of what's happened this past year. But I do think this local trend is here to stay and it's a really, really good thing for indie authors. Yep. Aaron says we're in lockdown in LA again. Yeah, I miss, I miss Los Angeles. I mean, I'm sitting here socked in 40 degree weather and it's raining. But we do have a lot more open space and freedom here, Aaron. So I'm happy we made this choice, but I am anxious to get back. Yeah, Lynn Hughes in lockdown too. So Mike Hurd says, I think bookstores will survive and thrive soon still. I do too. I do. I really think bookstores will survive. Some of them won't. I think Barnes and Noble is going to make some sweeping changes. They're already starting, but a lot of their changes already are going to be local curation of the content, which is a good thing for us as indie authors. It loosens the traditional publishers have in that funnel into the stores and it really opens the opportunity for you to get your book into stores where the ideal reader that you have written your book for is buying in those stores. So I think also ultimately this is a really good thing. And yes, I agree, there's a very special thing about bookstores. There's nothing. Even though you're not going to sell that many books through bookstores, there's just this special thing about going into a bookstore and seeing your book on the shelf of the bookstore. That was the fun thing. When I went in to the store with my son the other day, I still popped over to the real estate section and there was my book there. Six years later, they still carry my book. So that's pretty epic. I love that it doesn't get old. Just so you know. You don't get tired of seeing your book on the bookstore shelf. Okay, so now that I took a little tangent, let me take you back to publishing. Things to ponder. So one more thing to ponder for 2021, the pre sale period. I saw a couple questions in there. The ARC advance reader copy. I do have a video on BookArmy. So Angela, Angela's frantic researching my YouTube channel for all these videos. Book army and ARC A R C team or the ARC readers, ARC copies, that kind of stuff. There's two videos that I will put in there to address that topic for you. Besides the fact that you get to keep all your rights and your royalties and make the decision on your book, one of the key differences between self publishing and traditional publishing is that the traditional publisher tends to have a very long timeline. Forget about the fact that typically you're going to go through an agent and that's going to have a six month to a year period as it is. But there's also going to be a really long time where your book is done and not available to the marketplace yet. And that's the pre sale period. People can buy it but they don't get a copy. And most self published authors are kind of in the opposite spectrum. They rush, the book is done and they sell it. And so there's this huge difference between the two, right? Self published authors will have 6 to 12 months of pre sale to build up momentum to that launch. Whereas self published authors, I mean some of our authors, we're. We have to push people to give us four weeks in pre sale. Our recommendation is you spend eight weeks in pre sale depending on your goals. If you have the goal to be one of the newspaper bestseller lists, you really should be spending 12 weeks in pre sale to generate those pre sales so that you're more likely to have a big sale boost in that launch week. But really again, I just kind of want to highlight the fact that self published authors finish their book and they're so excited, they want to get it into the hands of the readers and probably start making money from it. So they rush the pre sale. Whereas traditionally published authors have to sit there anxious to share Their book waiting for the publisher actually release it. And I'm flagging this because I was reading Jane Friedman has this industry newsletter called the Hot Sheet. It's excellent. It's a paid newsletter service. I rely on it heavily to keep up to date on everything that's happening. And she'd flagged this from a virtual summit that had happened with Publishers Weekly. And she said, publishers break up. And this is what I'm saying, publishers, I'm talking about the traditional, you know, Penguin House, those kind of publishers, they break up their marketing dollars and their marketing kind of phases into three phases, which we also do for our clients. But here's how they break it down. Pre launch, they put their money towards driving awareness to booksellers, influencers and ARC readers in the launch period. Phase two, they focus on putting their money towards driving media attention. And number three, post launch, they put the money towards conversion ads like Amazon ads and Facebook. And so that's how they kind of allocate the dollars for marketing for some of their titles. I say some of their titles because a lot of titles don't get this kind of stuff. You guys, a lot. That's one of the big things. People think that if you get a traditional deal, they're going to do the marketing for you. That's only if you're in their top echelon of authors. Most of the time you're getting a book deal because they think you're going to sell the book for them. But what I want to focus on here was a comment from Kristin Fassler, I think is her name. She's one of the people from marketing in Penguin Random House who was speaking at this summit. And she emphasized that she's always relied on a really long period of time for book marketing in that pre sale period. And she's finding it hard now to balance that long planning window with being responsive to all the changing markets, market conditions. Because the only thing that happened this year was change. Nothing was kind of as anyone expected at any point in time between, you know, there was shortages of paper. Amazon stopped shipping books because they weren't an essential serve, they weren't part of their essential services. So all kinds of challenges this year. And so she really felt lost without that traditional pre publication push. And she at one point in this talk actually said, and I have the quote right here, I'm just going to bring it up, we need to start even earlier because the window for discoverability needs to get longer and longer to get reader attention. So she said the higher a book starts off in its first week of sales, the longer it's going to sustain sales. So they're really relying on pre launch momentum to get strong sales in launch week because they feel that's what actually creates sales in the long run. So I want to emphasize that because a lot of people in the self publishing space rush that presale. Now, I'm not advocating for a 6 month, a 9 month or a 12 month pre sale period, but I am strongly, I am strongly advocating for you to push for eight weeks. So your book is done, it's available for sale, people can't get a copy yet, and you do that for eight weeks. Now there's some, there's sometimes, and there was one genre expert in that panel that disagreed because they sell series fiction. And so if you've got a romance series and people are hot to trot on what happens next in that series, they're not going to wait and they'll get impatient and move on to another series. So you do want to keep releasing quickly. But in nonfiction, where your goal is often to get credibility, to use it as a tool to open doors, that pre sale period is really important. And we're also finding, for what it's worth, anybody who goes less than six weeks, there's always an issue with the book that doesn't get resolved until after that six week period. Catalogs take time to populate and if you try to rush it and you push that pre sale period, there's going to be little issues that will impact the success of your launch. We've had so many clients push us and push us and push us, we launch faster and then they're unhappy and disappointed with the results for whatever reason. There's often different reasons. So I highly recommend you give yourself that eight weeks. And just to give you a sense, my next book is coming out February 23rd, self published and succeed. The hashtag no boring books. Way to write a book that will sell. So I'm really excited to share that with all of you. I am going to be activating my book army on our first live stream together because you guys are going to be my book army. I already know so many of you have already put up your hand and said, I will support you. So I'm going to be giving you the opportunity to join my early reader team and to be the ones that are, you know, kind of give me that early momentum. So you'll be able to get a copy free and then you'll be able to buy a copy for 99 cents. So we can get that verified review. And then hopefully you'll all be writing reviews the launch week to help me build momentum. So you're gonna be able to see what I do and I'll be explaining what I'm doing and then I'll be explaining the things that didn't work. Because we're also going to be using my book to test a whole bunch of things. Just had a meeting with my marketing, my book marketing team today and we're talking about all the sites we're going to test, all the things we're going to test. Because when it's my book, we can put money towards it and see what happens. It's a lot harder to do that for a lot some of our author books because we don't get the same sort of, you know, back end kind of control over what's going on. So it's going to be really, really fun. But I'm going to be very transparent so you guys can learn from what I'm doing and see what works and what doesn't. But that's what I'm going to do. So my pre launch is going to start the first week of January. My launch is February 23rd. My first two weeks are going to be really focused on connecting with you, finding out who is watching this, that wants to be that early review, early reader, part of that team. I know, Mike, you've put up your hand like five times. I'm so excited. Thank you. I appreciate that. I need that kind of enthusiasm. And then I'm going to focus on content, reaching out to my influencers, building that, that launch week incentive package so that you're all excited to buy three copies. So you're already think, thinking about who you can give two copies to. And, and then really we're going to be shifting our focus to pitching reviewers. My team will be pitching reviewers, I'm going to be starting podcast interviews and we're going to be sending it to paid review sites and setting up new release promotions. All of that's going to happen in that pre release period. The book needs to be done for most of that to happen. And then in the two weeks before launch, that's when I'm really going to start promoting it more to the public that it's coming out. You can buy it now or you can wait for launch week. It's going to be laying the foundation there. So ultimately I'm just putting it out there to kind of really think about that pre launch period because the, I think for a lot of us to succeed we want to look at what traditional publishers are doing that actually works for them and then really learn from that and apply it to what we're doing in our own way. And one of the things that has worked for them is a longer pre launch period. It's why they still do it. However, I think they take too long. So we can do it better and faster and we really have the flexibility because we are more agile as self published authors, we are able to make decisions and do things quicker. But I do think you don't want to do it too quick because there is a reason for taking that time. All right, let's do a prize. It's been a little bit. And poetry from the heart. I'm so excited you're looking forward to reading my book. I appreciate it. And Rachel's excited too. So you guys are all. Thank you. I am counting on my YouTube besties and my YouTube family to really support and help launch this book. So next in the live stream in January, that's when we're talking about this. So I can't wait. Okay. Prize. So we're going to do two prizes right now. One for those of you who are here. And. And so today, let's see, today is the. What have we got here? It's the 8th. I had to look at my calendar. I really had no idea what day it was. All right, so we are gonna go 8 comments from. Let me pick one up here. Okay. I went up to. I'm trying to find one that's easy for Angela. Oh, okay. So Lynn Hu Tran put a funny little emoji that I don't think I've ever seen. It's got pink hair and almost looks like WI fi coming out of its head. So let's go eight down from that comment. And that's our participation winner for today. So let me know who that is. And then I'm also going to do a prize from the YouTube commenters. So if you're new here, you may not know that every Tuesday and Friday we have a new YouTube video coming out. This counts. So if you're watching the replay, you can comment today and still get entered. So if you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some swag. And I have the journal. To be totally honest with you, I've stacked the journals up behind my computer to put a light up here because because it's so dark outside, I had to put a light in front of me today instead of the window. And so the journals are in use and my mug is also in use right now. Using every little bit of space at the moment. Got lots going on. But let me turn that around. This is the mug. So you can get a mug or a journal and, and you'll be entered to win that if you comment every Tuesday and Friday. And I'm going to draw from those names right now. So. And my commitment to you is I'll be using a service to stream in January and you'll be able to see these winners as they get drawn. So that'll be pretty fun. And the winner is Mary Lynn Turner. Yay. I don't know if you've won before, but I know you have been commenting all the time. So thank you so much for your comments, likes and shares. So what you need to do is email Team T E A M book launchers.com Angela will probably drop that email address in the comments for you and you need to let us know your mailing address and what you want to win. I have to emphasize the mailing address because the number of times people say I'd like the mug, please and expect us to know where to send it is really great. That's how good of a relationship I think we have is that you think we know where you live, but we aren't like that. We haven't stalked you to know where you live yet. So. So do send us your mailing address and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. So thank you, Mary Lynn. Congratulations. And let me see who our winner is here. And Angela says Purple Sky, I think is our other winner. So thank you so much for being here. Congratulations. Let us know if you want the mug or the journal. All right. Okay. I'm just checking all your comments. Okay, so that's great. Now onto the two things that, that I think are worth focusing on for 2021. What matters more than ever. And I feel like a broken record, but it matters more than ever. It's always mattered, but it matters more is your online brand. And I talked about this in the holiday sales video. So if you haven't seen that, check that out. I talked about the ways to sell your book during the holidays this year and I really talked about the fact that you need to get your book in front of of the reader on the screen. As a result, your online brand as an author matters more now than it ever has before. I had a chapter in my second book, the new brand you'd called you are who Google says you are. And this chapter has landed me speaking engagements. It's one of the reasons I really emphasize creating chapter titles that could be talk titles that create engagement and offer a benefit because those, you know, that title sold, sold quite a few books and landed me some really cool speaking opportunities. And that whole chapter was really about having what is found when they search your name, be the brand that you want showcased for, for whatever it is you're doing in your business at the time. Your book also needs to have a great search engine strategy. People are going to be shopping and finding and discovering your book online. So what is your brand strategy? What's your search strateg to be found with your book? And this is where I spend a lot of time with our team and with our, you know, clients and potential clients talking about, okay, your title, it sounds great. However, nobody's going to find it when they search for it. So we're either going to have to lean really heavily on the metadata and hope that works and the reviewers and hope that works, or we really want to rework that subtitle in particular and get some keywords in there. So there's a lot of pieces to this and I'm not going to dive too deep into that today because that can be an entire session on its own. We'll probably do a deep dive, a training that in 2021. But I just want you to be thinking about the fact that you need to really focus on search engine. You need a cover that is clickable. You need a title that is selling your book both to the reader and to the search engine. And you need to optimize that description, your author bio and even your reviews for what people are searching for. You got to think about searching. And I had, well, I can't actually, never mind, I can't tell you that. So I was about to tell you about a book that a client that just signed up and I can't actually tell you it without specifically giving away details of the book. So I'll come up with a new example. So ultimately you want to think about what are they trying to like, what problem are they actually searching to solve. And so keyword research really helps you see what people are actually typing into the search engine so you can meet them where they already are, where they're already searching. And I want to note here too, I'm talking author brand, I'm talking book searchability. For those of you still thinking that you need a traditional book deal to succeed here, nobody's searching for I wonder what HarperCollins latest release is. People don't search like that. They think they Think about author names, if they like them or they know them, or they've heard a recommendation or they're searching to solve a problem or learn information about a certain subject. So that's where you really want to meet them. And as an independent author, nobody is looking to see who published your book. They're really just looking to see what the reviews are, what the quality is, what the content is, and that's what's going to sell your book in 2021. Finally, number six is monetizing, marketing, monetizing and marketing your book in 2021. I mean, video and audio. Again, this isn't anything new, but if 2020 taught us anything and really opened the door to anything, it is that we want to be connecting with each other. And we're going to read things, of course, but discoverability through video and audio. So podcasts, YouTube, live streaming, these are all really, really great ways that I encourage you to find one thing and adopt it and do it regularly and consistently because that's going to help you monetize and market your book in 2021. Now, speaking in live conferences, that's going to make a comeback. Of course, I can tell you having been a part of three or four virtual conferences in the last three months, they didn't even come close to the live conference. The networking, you know, there was networking, the booth, there was some booth engagement, the speak, the talks were good. But ultimately like it was 40% of what a live event is, is. It's not the same. Now we do do, I'm part of a business coaching program and they do a summit every three months. I can tell you that I, I still miss the in person one a lot. I miss the focus of it. I do miss the engagement. But I would say that that approach is 60%, 70% of what it is in lot in live. But the conferences where you go to different sessions and you network and those are going to come back because the virtual thing doesn't come close, not even close. So that's going to come back, but how strongly? Early 2021, it's not going to come back very quickly. Later in 2021 into 2022, they're planning events again. So we'll see that as an opportunity to market and monetize books again. But webinars have come up and they're strong, they're great, they're really, really powerful with the right audience and the right marketing behind them. Hint your hook of your book. Live appearances in your local market. It local is going to be here to Stay for a while. There's going to be less travel and people are supporting their local community. It's an opportunity. Online courses, they've really skyrocketed. And that's also not going to go away. It is an opportunity for you to further monetize your book and also just deeper help your reader in a deeper way. Membership groups, consulting, and of course, writing your next book. Those are all great ways to market and monetize the book that you've just written or that you're writing right now and build that relationship even further with your audience. So that's, I mean, it's not new. I mean, I kind of feel I looked and I was like, what's new? But I mean, really, those are tried and true and more important than ever after what we've gone through this year and what I see emerging in 2021. Of course, if you guys see other things I haven't touched on, please go ahead and put them in the comments. And we're going to do a couple more prizes. And one of the prizes I've got for you today is kind of a fun one. So I'm going to tell you that one while I go and do the other YouTube prize and then wrap it all up with questions. So Booknet Canada released their most loaned books of 2020 from the libraries. And I thought it was kind of fun to, to see if anybody can guess one of the top 10 nonfiction books that was on their top 10 most loaned out book of 2020. I'll give you guys hints if I need to, but I'm thinking, I mean, a couple of them were actually kind of surprising to me, but I think that you guys should be able to pull at least one of these out of there. So guess for, for a prize, I want you to guess what one of the top 10 most loan books of 2020 was. And while you do that, I'm going to head on over to my little name random name drawer for the drum roll of somebody who has comment on the video every Tuesday and Friday. So here we go. Okay. And Congratulations to Erica McCall. I don't know if Erica's here today, but congratulations. I hope you're catching the replay. Email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. All right, so let's see if anybody guessed one of these books. Okay. Oh, sorry. I should have been more specific. The nonfiction. This is specifically the top ten nonfiction books that were borrowed out. So let's. So let's see. Gotta Be specific. So Joyce is saying gardening. So this is from the library. It is different than sales. The library market is a different market than the bookstore market. And I will give a hint if I have to. Just trying to think of what my hint should be. So the number. Oh, I think I just saw a winner. I think I just saw one. See, let's see, let's see. Yes. Jordan B. Peterson. 12 Rules for Life was number three on the loaned most loaned out for libraries in Canada. So congratulations to who saw that. Who said that? Lynn Hu Tran. Congratulations. Yep. Jordan B. Peterson. So you got that? I'll tell you guys the other ones. So let's see. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell, from the Ashes by Jesse Thistle. Truth Be told by Beverly McLaughlin and the vagina Bible by Dr. Jen Gunter. Those were the top five. I'm going to save myself from reading the other five, but congratulations. You got it. That's great. Okay, so yeah, email us@teamoklaunchers.com so Angela, if you want to share the questions that we have to answer, that would be great. I'll tackle those and I'll just give everyone else a little reminder that on the 22nd we're having our 25, 000 subscriber party. So thank you again for your support and helping us get there. And it's going to be basically 30 minutes of us giving away prizes. So it will be fun. And I can't wait for my YouTube besties to to hopefully win this new super secret swag. We're also going to have some hoodies. This is our older hoodie. We have thicker winter winterized hoodies that we'll be giving away as well. And on December 19th. Oh, that's happening in the usual time and place. So 2 o' clock Pacific Standard Time right here on December 19th at 10am Pacific Standard. That's a Saturday. We're doing our final deep dive of the year and it's our holiday extravaganza Q and A. And there'll be five people from my team and we're going to get lots of prizes. I will unveil the super secret swag that day and we'll be giving away hoodies and books and mugs and journals that day. Angela, who sends all this stuff out, has turned her house into a storage facility for book launcher swag. So we should all give Angela a huge shout out. Yes. Since the book launcher's office is vacant, just nothing but books and a plant that somebody waters once a week is in my office right now. So Angela has graciously become our storage facility for swag. Okay, so question number one here. What's the best website to use for printing? I need high quality paper covers. I have vibrant colors in my book. I've heard nothing great about ingramspark. I recommend Lulu for print printing. Color books depends on. It depends on a lot more than I can really dive into today. But I did do a video with Lulu so you can check that out. And they do beautiful printing for color specifically. I don't know their variety of covers, what the options are there. Vervant is another one that does printing. Depends on how you want your distribution. But Vervant is a. Is one that people use for journals and creating some really beautiful covers with journals. I don't know about color interiors with them. And then Iker says, could you share some tips about building an ARC team? So I. And that was fiction and I'm not a fiction person. Keith Wheeler books. Dale Roberts. There's. And there's some other fiction folks here. And then Bill just said Angela should post a picture of all the swag. That's a great idea for our social media. We're planning to do a lot better with book launcher social media in 2021. We've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on that because right now we really just kind of post our recent launches and some client wins and we don't do a lot. So you guys get to know us and that's something that we should do. So add that to our social media channel idea, Angela, and post and take some pictures of you sending out all these, all the swag. I think that would be great. So thank you, Bill. So, yeah, back to that question about arc. I think the videos will help you the most with that versus me diving deep into that right now. And I think Angela already posted those links for you. Logos are US branding. Is there a free way to create an audiobook with AI voice so you can create. I don't know about free with the AI voice. I've seen. I've heard some. They're getting better. They're getting. They're getting more realistic. I still personally can't listen to it. Even having Alexa. Sorry, I won't say the name for anybody who has one Listening. Even having that device read things to me, I find annoying. But some people like it and the technology is coming. It's getting better. They can actually even have you talk and have it imitate your voice in a lot of ways. Doing it for free, I don't know about. And you won't be able to upload it to places like Audible. They do not accept AI voices at all. So there's some limitations to it. I think there's going to be a hybrid in the future that's going to allow us to have a AI voice where we read some of it and the AI voice can read the rest of it and kind of pick up our voice and we might have to do some pickups where the AI didn't do well. I think that's coming in the future and I frankly welcome it because it should also reduce the cost of production, which I've talked about before, being one of the stumbling blocks and one of the big hurdles with creating great quality audiobooks. Let me see. I think that was on that and ingramspark. So I don't know exactly what is this related to, but IngramSpark is the main company that we use and their print quality is better than Amazon. We rely on them very heavily. They have a great catalog program to get distribution. We the only reason we will generally go to KDP for Amazon printing is to send to sell books through Amazon.com because you'll make more money that way. Also your printing costs will be a little bit cheaper, but you know, trade offs quality is better typically with Ingram as well. Kevin's mostly fiction thank you Kevin. You always talk about your nonfiction with us, of course, but yes, Kevin, you might be able to answer that fiction for us as well. Kevin McGuire is one of our original YouTube besties here in the house. He also helps administer comments in case we have somebody saying rude things which has happened in the past. So thank you Kevin. Huge shout out to you. What's one of the better sites to reach those interested in historical fiction? We are nonfiction and I barely even read fiction anymore because all I do is read nonfiction. I love nonfiction anyways, so unfortunately I'm not a great resource for that. But as Kevin noted, he might have some suggestions and there's also some really great YouTubers out there that do do fiction that might be able to answer those kind of specific questions. Special Video Days 12:19 Deep Dive the The other one was December 22nd is our final YouTube live of the year. And then it'll be, I'm not sure actually when we'll be resuming in the new year. But if you're not on the launch letter, the Community tab, I'll keep you up to date on the YouTube channel with the Community tab. Yes, Purple sky asks, do you find podcasts as a successful way to promote and get book Sales? Yes and no. I love podcast interviews for a few reasons. One is that they can open the door for you in a way you didn't expect. So sometimes podcast interviews lead to really cool things and they can lead to book sales and they have a long, long shelf life and they get backlinks back to your website. Tons of reasons to do podcast interviews. They're fun. It gets you comfortable and familiar and experienced talking about your book and. And it also is a great way to make connections. They. It's rare that you're going to do a podcast and find suddenly you have a hundred book sales. What more commonly happens for us and for our clients? They'll do a podcast. Somebody will hear it. They'll say, hey, I heard you on the podcast. I have an event. Will you come speak? I have a podcast of my own. Will you come talk on my podcast? I'm interested in having you do a webinar for my audience. Hey, I'm interested in hiring you for your services. That's the more common outcome from podcast interviews. Lots of reasons to do it, but there. If book sales is the only thing you want from it, it may not get you the kind of results you want. But. But I'm a huge fan of them. But just not for the one to one. Like do a podcast, sell a ton of books. It just rarely happens. Okay, let's see. Rachel, thank you for answering that. And ingramspark does not have great customer service. This is true. And you know there is an opportunity in that marketplace for things to be handled better for sure. Which day is the new merch giveaway? That's going to happen on December 22nd. Second. And Kevin missed the question on fiction. Marcus is asking you questions now so you can check that out. Kevin and Rob. This is Rob. I want to say hello and thank you for ignoring me to write and publish and market my book. Okay. I'm sorry if we did ignore you. Usually we answer all the questions. So if we did ignore you, maybe we didn't get your message. So I'm sorry for that. That. Oh, and Angela just explained. They're all bouncing. So we have been writing you because we are really good. Angela and I are a great team and we do really respond to everybody. If you've ever emailed us and you think we haven't replied, check your spam, your promotion or your junk folder because you're probably going to find multiple emails from us hiding in that spot for whatever reason. We struggle with that with some people. So sorry for that. If it's happened to you. All right, I think we've covered everything, so thank you. I cannot wait. I am so, so excited for you guys to see. And just to get you thinking, one of the prizes that I'm going to give is going to be if you can guess what our super secret swag is. We opened this up to our team and nobody on our team guessed what the super secret swag is. So I think Angela have. Angela and I have done a really good job of creating something that's going to surprise and delight. But if you can guess what that is, then I will give you a prize. I don't know if I'll give you the prize, but I will give you a prize if you can guess what our super secret swag is. So start thinking. Start thinking about that. And I will be asking that on the 19th before we unveil what the super secret swag is. So hopefully see you on the 19th at 10:00am Pacific Standard Time. I may post that as a replay on Christmas Day. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to do. So if you can't come, you won't be able to win the prizes, but you will be able to watch all the fun and see the unveiling if you miss it all. Because I think I'll post that on Christmas Day. I don't have a video to release on Christmas Day, so that will be replayed. And then on the 22nd, we're going to have our holiday, our kind of 25,000 subscriber celebration and wrap up. So hope to see you guys all there. Thank you so much for being here and thank you, Angela and Kevin for being here to support in the chat and the comments. You guys are awesome and I'm really excited for the next two sessions and for January when I get to share my new book with you. So lots to look forward to. All right, take care.