Book Marketing with Live Events - Deep Dive Training Workshop

Before I do that, just welcome to this month's Deep Dive training. We are talking all about live event marketing. So that can be for your book launch, but it can be at any time. And we have people on the team, which I'll introduce, that are going to be here to give you lots of fabulous insights on how to find those events, what to consider when you're doing them and pitching them, and then we'll talk about preparation for when you're doing that live event and all the things. Plus, we always have time for Q and A at the end, and so we will be taking time to answer questions. If you have specific questions about live event marketing while we're going through it, you post those. And we'll all be keeping an eye on the chat. So we'll either be responding to you or if it's a great question for us to discuss as a group, we'll be sharing that as well. I know there's a lot of familiar faces, so lots of folks here have been to our Deep Dive trainings before. But if you're new, it's casual, but we do try and share a ton of information. So we hopefully you have a pen and paper available. And like I said, we don't post a replay. I will probably take some excerpts from this and create YouTube videos from it, but the thing in its entirety. To get the benefit, you have to be here live. So thank you for joining us. All right, so more people have joined in. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and we will kick things off. Looks like we have more people. We've got somebody from Sicily. We've got somebody from Tulsa. Thanks, Jack. Welcome, Elizabeth and Marna. Hello, Marna from Houston. Yay. It's great to see. We've got some wonderful clients in the room, too. So that's really fun for us to see some familiar faces. Okay, so let me just share my screen one moment, please, and then we'll do some introductions and dive right in. All right, so you should be seeing my screen. If you are, I'd love a nod. Okay, cool. That's great. And now let's do slideshow. All right, so as I said, welcome to live Event Marketing, and here's who's in the house today. I'm actually going to turn it to each of them to say a quick hello in a second. But we have Sarah Bean, who is our book marketing manager. She has been on the Book Launchers team for pretty much, I think, just over four years now. And then Angela Jones, she's Our operations manager. She's been with us for a few years now. Myself, well, I've been with it since the beginning. And Nicole Larson, who has been with us almost a year now. Year? Well, not quite. Not quite.

Six months?

Seven.

I don't know.

Over seven months.

Yeah.

Right. Because of Henry. Yep. Yes, ma'. Am.

Your expertise is so deep, it feels like a year. Thank you. All right, so I'm just going to let them give you a quick introduction on their background and what they do at the company. So, Sarah, do you want to take it away?

Yeah, absolutely. So great to see some familiar faces and great to meet all the new people. Like Julie said, I'm our book marketing manager. I've been with Book Launchers almost four years now. Prior to joining Book Launchers, I worked quite a bit in the publishing and live events field. So I worked at a major booking agency for a number of years, both on the literary and the speaking side. So I actually represented speakers that were going out into the market. Um, I went on to manage, you know, New York Times bestselling authors and handled their speaking careers and all their live events. I produced events like TEDx and I've been on production teams for things with the dga, the PGA in la, you know, various nonprofits throughout the years. So I do love live events. I think it's one of the best ways to connect with people. So I'm really excited to talk about this today.

Awesome. Thanks, Sarah, Angela.

Hello, everyone.

So I. Oh, let me let a few people in with a lot of people here today. This is very exciting. So I'm the operations manager here and I do a lot of things back of house. So one of the biggest things I do is I really help support Julie because running a company is not an easy feat. So just doing a lot of the different things back of house, screening people when they are first interested in working with us as well, whether it's as an author or someone who's interested in working with us on our team doing a lot of that. You guys are probably most going to know me and be excited to see me because I am the bearer of all the Book Launchers swag. So that's why I'm so special.

Yes.

That's one of my biggest things that you'll. You'll see for me is communicating with that as well. Whether it's on YouTube, deep dives, anything like that, where there's prizes involved, I am involved.

How do we get that into your title? Because I really feel like Error of Swag requires.

Yes, like, like a, like a crown, maybe like a swag crown.

Yeah, I agree. Let's make it happen. Julie.

Okay, you're in charge of swag, so you can order whatever you want. Awesome. Thank you. And Nicole.

So as, hello, I'm Nicole. I am your book launch coordinator. I am the goofball that of our clients talk to on a frequent basis as we were marketing your book throughout the whole process, setting up your author platform through getting used through pre launch, pre sale and then in post and getting all the excitement. So as Julie and Sarah said, I've.

Been with the company probably for about.

Eight months and I have to tell you, I fell out of my seat when I saw this job because it was like all of the things Nicole can do wrapped into one. I started my right out of college. I had my own wedding and event planning business. So not only did I plan intimate events or really large scale multi person events, so I know how to get things up and off the ground, not to mention having my own business. I became a branding and social media and email marketing expert. So all wrapped into one. Here you go. I'm going to get your book launched.

Awesome. Thank you. So you can see we've got a fantastic lineup for you today to learn all about live event marketing for your book. So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to kind of lead the way and I will help monitor chat. If you have questions for all the people that have joined in, they missed the beginning, say hello, let us know where you're from and if you have questions, you can ask them. Angela will save the ones for us for the end that aren't specific to what we're talking about right now, which is live event marketing and kind of what's on the slide. But so ask any question at any time. So we'll put it in the queue so that we cover it at the end because we will have time for open Q and A at the end. Otherwise we will just kick back and take notes because Sarah is going to take it away.

Okay, so we're talking about live events today and this is actually a really huge topic. So we're going to try and drill it down to a couple of the majors that affect authors the most. And so when we're talking about live events and specifically what we're covering today is, you know, your standard live events where an author is going to be meeting their audience, meeting their readers, and potentially selling as many books as they can at a time. So this can include bookstore signings, readings at local libraries, it can include your book launch party. A lot of the steps that you're going to follow on how to set up these events, they're all very similar. It could mean speaking engagements at conferences or expos Conventions, and it can also mean workshops that you might do for an audience or for a crowd. So those are kind of the ones that we're going to touch on today. But, you know, live events take a lot of different forms. So just, you know, kind of keep that in mind. The one differentiator between these is that they're all going to have different audiences where a bookstore signing or a book launch party, that's your audience coming to see you. Whereas if you're at a library, it's going to be community patrons that are interested in your topic. And if you're at a conference or a live event, those audiences have the goals to learn a lot of different things at a small amount of time. But your goal is always going to be, how am I going to be able to sell books to this audience? And how am I going to build up my email marketing list at the same time? Those are your two biggest takeaways coming from. Any live event is going to be building up that email list so you have people to market to in the future and then selling as many books as you can in a short amount of time. I don't know how, but someone is drawing on my screen.

It's Charles Holt.

Oh, no, I've never seen that.

I've never seen that before. I was wondering that, too. I thought, is that me or is that just on my side?

But someone's drawing. I hope you're taking notes while you're doing it.

It's always a new adventure. Yeah.

Okay, so, Julie, if you want to, go ahead and advance for me. So right off the bat, let's start talking about how you're going to be booking these events. You've done all the marketing. You've got your book ready to go, you've got your launch date, and now it's time to set up that event that is really going to kick off all of your marketing and kind of become the big birth of your book. So some of the things that people are like, you know, how do bookstores find authors? How do they. How do they get all connected? Well, you know what, a lot of times it comes from the author side or from the marketing side. If you know, for example, our marketing team would help you do some of those things. Step one, you got to figure out where you want to have it. Okay. It can be a bookstore. It could be one that's in your area, but it doesn't have to be. It could be a shop. It could be somewhere in your community, community center. It could be a business, art galleries, anywhere. That's kind of fitting for your audience. We had an author, Robert Workman, who had his book launch at a major art gallery. We had another one set up a signing at a local. At a local restaurant because his book was really relevant to the community. And I actually just attended a book launch last year that was for a financial book. And so they held it at a business that does debt management in their conference room. You know, so really think about your book and then also where you have connections. So you can set it at a bookstore. And that's actually fairly easy. But you can also get creative with where you want to have a signing or a launch. You want to set these things up well in advance. A lot of venues get booked out several months out, so you want to start at least four to eight weeks in advance, maybe even further, if you know when your dates are and you have to talk with the venue about what's in it for them. You know, are they going to be able to sell more books because it's a bookstore and they had. They're going to. You're going to be bringing people in. Are they going to be able to market to your audience in some way, hand out cards or give out some kind of marketing promotion? You know, is your event going to help their brand awareness in some way? If it's a library, are you setting up a type of event that they've never had before, that they've been wanting to get into? So you want to look at kind of what's in it for that venue and use that as. When you approach them to set this up. And you do want to have an idea of a budget in place. There are places that require rental fees. Bookstores and libraries generally do not. But if it's going to be a business or some other venue, they may have a rental fee or require you to bring in catering, cover insurance, some of those things. So just be prepared. And this is a budget that's going to be on top of the items you need for your actual signing, which will go through a little checklist of what you should have, but just, you know, have a budget in place just in case.

And. Yeah, so a couple things. So, I mean, I. I got creative with my second book launch and I hosted my launch, one of my launch events at the local CrossFit gym I was a very active member. And they, you know, I know the owner well. And she said, hey, why don't you host an event here? She said, you know, you'll be live streaming it to a lot of people. That's good exposure for the gym. And then we also, she had a charity that she was doing fundraising for. And so what we did was we did this event called Burpees for Books. So we tied in the CrossFit theme. And so every time somebody bought a book, I had to do X number of burpees. So it gave and then I live streamed all the burpees. And so it was one of those things where we, you know, kind of tied in the CrossFit theme. And then all the money that was earned from the book sales that day went to the charity that the gym cared about. And I sold books and we got exposure, the gym got exposure. We had some fun. So some of the gym members came and supported live, and then other people watched on, on Facebook and, and Instagram and YouTube so you can get, get creative. Like that's, you know, it doesn't have to be bookstores. And in fact, I had way more fun with that than all the bookstore events that I've done. Some people will have wonderful experiences at bookstores, but I did, I think I've done about 15 bookstore events. And unless it's in an area where, you know, you can kind of rally a lot of people to come and see you, what you can expect is sitting at a table feeling a little lonely, and then the odd person comes up and you get all excited and they go, do you know where the bathroom is? Or they go, do you know where the cookbook section is? And then you're like, hey, but don't you want to talk about my book? And so, so bookstore events are great to get your book into the bookstore in your local area. If you've got lots of friends and family and, you know, clients and whatnot that would come to see it or to come see you and just support you, then I think it can be great. But a lot of people, like envision book launch. I'm going to go to all these bookstores and do all these book signings across the country. Well, you might be able to do that, but it's probably not the same as what picture in your mind.

Yeah, it just doesn't exist that same way anymore. Even major publishers don't do those kind of like book tours the way that they did that was really relevant in the, like, you know, 80s and 90s where they would do 25 city tours. That just doesn't happen anymore. So, so, you know, the, the whole point though is that when you were setting up your signing as a self published author, it's going to fall to you to create what you want that launch to look like. And so think about the venues, think about places where your topic is really relevant. So for example, I mentioned an author, he wrote a book about the Malibu fires and he was a Malibu resident. And so he chose for one of his signings to be at a restaurant that was within Malibu that catered mainly to the local community. And so it was a great way for him to be able to support a local business, bring in a book that a lot of the people there were going to care about and then end up selling a lot of copies because of that. Because people coming through who are also loyal to the community just thought it was really a fantastic place to learn about the book. So, you know, you can definitely think about your topic and think about where it might be most relevant.

And Dinah has a question about, I keep hearing in local, in your local venue, does it have to be in your local area or can it be elsewhere?

That's a great question. And I would say that really is going to depend on your existing platform. It can definitely be elsewhere. But if you are just starting to, to, if you're just starting to build your platform and start to gain followers and create your brand, starting local is a good way to get the most support because they want to help those who are in their community. So I would start local and then as you're building, you can definitely do more. Now an exception to this might be if your book's content is relevant to a different region. So we did have an author recently who even though he lives up in D.C. his book was set in South Carolina and so he did a lot of events down in South Carolina to support the book and they went really, really well. But I would look at your platform first and then look at where you want to reach.

The other thing is if you're doing events in other areas, you can tie it into that, which is what I've done in the past. So if I'm speaking in a city, then I might try to line up PR and other events or connect with any influencers that I might have a relationship within that area and then plan the event around that. What I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing is, you know, planning a cross country tour unless you have that platform and you can send emails to your email list and Go, hey, you know, hey, D.C. you know, hey, New York, hey, Jacksonville, you know, wherever you're going, and go, hey, I'm going to be in your local area. Otherwise, I would say tie it in. And we've done that for a client in the past. I don't remember who it was, but we had a client who said, here's my speaking schedule. Can you line things up in my local area according to my speaking schedule? And that can work quite well, and it doesn't have to be local. And some people actually don't want to promote their book locally. They're like, I don't really want the people that know me in this town to see what I've written. And so they prefer to go outside. And that's totally fine, too. So, yeah, yeah.

For Scott Bradley, for example, one of our clients, he has a podcast, and so he does have email subscribers that.

Are across the country.

And when he's in New York or he's on the east coast, we'll set up small things for him. So he has done some New York events because he has a fan base there. And so he had people to invite because that is one thing to think about. And we'll talk about this on the slides, is how you're going to be marketing. This event is important as well. So if you don't have anyone in that area to market to, it gets a lot harder to get people to come out. So if you are going to be setting up events in different areas, make sure you've got an audience there that are going to attend.

Awesome.

At the end of the day, it always, always comes for pretty much everything in marketing. It always comes back to your audience. Where are they? What are they asking? They going to enjoy. Ask that first and then you can decide where.

Awesome. And I'm sorry, I said your name wrong.

I have a couple questions that came in that seem more relevant to this as opposed to at the end.

Yeah, please.

And sorry, I'm not looking at the questions. So please.

No, no, that's fine. So Linda asked if the event is in a bookstore, do I supply the books for the sale for sale at the event, or does the bookstore.

That is a great question. And it actually varies depending on the bookstore.

Most.

Most bookstores to want to set up what's called a consignment deal, which means that they set up a pricing agreement with you where they will sell your book. And they're not ordering it from Ingram or another distributor, they're buying them directly from you. So you will have to supply the stock, but then the bookstore would then sell the book and then you would make up a part of the proceeds. And the split varies from store to store. In, in those cases, the store will maybe. Maybe they'll agree to sell 20 books or 30 books. And then at your event, if they see how well your book does, they maybe will keep another 5 to 10 on stock. For those store. It's always going to be, do we have the ability to sell this? Do we have the ability to see it go off the shelf? So I would say most opportunities for book signings, you are going to see some sort of consignment deal where you're selling directly to the store and then they'll. They'll sell on your behalf. I have heard of occasions where a bookstore will just ask the author to bring in stock and then not stock it afterwards. But it's pretty rare. It really depends on the store. I can say that Barnes and Noble, which are great for setting up local events. Barnes and Nobles, they really do enjoy supporting their local authors. They will usually buy from Ingram if you are going to do a signing or something in their store. So that's another way to go about it.

So long as your percentage is set up right. Like for the in Engram, it has to be set up to the proper wholesale discount. And some bookstores will only do consignment with authors who are unknown to them. But I'm trying to think of any. I had two bookstores do consignment. Everybody else bought them. If you're doing an event in their store, they're usually seeing the potential for clients to come in. And then I did have one store, you know, some stores, independents. The one store had leftover stock. They bought 26 books and we only sold 12 at my book event. And so what I did was I gave them. I started promoting to the local area to drive traffic for people to come into the store to buy those books so that they didn't return them. Because paying for a little bit of advertising was cheaper for me than having that bookstore return those books to Ingram. So that's something else to be aware of is if they do order, commit to helping them get sell through.

Yeah, I mean, I know dark delicacies in Burbank, which is a big one, that a huge in the horror industry. They did a consignment deal with Scott Bradley for 30 books and then sold Books Inc. Which is down in Miami. And they're kind of huge all over Florida. One of the biggest independent bookstores in the country. They also do consignment deals, but they have a requirement that you, that they have to sell all of your books within a six month period otherwise they won't do a deal with you in the future. So you also want to look at, when you look at it like a book sync, they have massive, massive competition. You've got huge publishers coming through and you've got, you know, a lot, a lot of different chapters. So they have major competition. When you get smaller bookstores, they might be more lenient because they can set the rules a little bit more. So it just, it'll depend on the store.

Was there another question, Angela?

Yes, I mean there's, we've already got like four or five other questions so far. I'll go back to the oldest one then. So this would be pretty niche. Veena, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, said, my book is for university faculty. Where can this be read? The library. And then how much should one budget for marketing an academic book?

Well, okay, so for university, for university faculty, your best shot is to develop a relationship with the university bookstore. So there are, almost every campus has a university bookstore that is going to cater to their students. For faculty gets a little bit tricky, but I would reach out to the university bookstore and see about setting up a signing so that the faculty are then notified that there's something there that might be, you know, appealing to them. As far as a budget, I mean asking how big of a budget for an entire like book is kind of hard to say. What you want to be looking at is where you want to market it. So you wouldn't, if it's specifically for academic, and it's only going to be appealing to faculty, you're not going to be marketing it on the normal channels, but you would want to look at where the faculty getting information about new content for them. So, so I would be looking at periodicals and journals and industry things that are very specific to your niche and look at marketing there. But it's hard to gauge what the full budget looks like. Okay, so and we'll definitely, I know I'm sure there were more questions, but we'll definitely address as many of those as we can at the end. So you've got your venue, you know where you're going to have it, you've got the date. So and some of this actually this kind of goes, it can either go before or it can go after. Some stores are going to want to know this before they book with you. Others are going to be willing to give you the date and then you kind of plan this out afterwards. But either way you need to get an event plan together. So you want to look at like an outline of what this event is and then include a summary because some stores will ask what kind of event are you putting together and you want to be able to give them a log align of. I'm doing a reading from my new book that appeals to this customer and I'm going to do a signing afterwards or I'm pairing up with another author and we're doing a panel discussion on why cats climb trees. And it's appealing to this audience because of this. I obviously made that up. Everybody knows why cats climb trees. But in any case, you want to have an idea of what that event is and then things like is it going to. You know, most times author events are going to be free, but depending on the venue might need to be a ticketed event. But you also need to know what your cost is going to be, how much you're going to pay for the supplies, how much you're going to pay for marketing, how much you're going to pay for rental fees and insurance and anything else. So you want to have that idea in mind. You're going to need to get together some supplies and we're going to go through a checklist of all the things that you should bring, know how long you want this event to be and kind of how it's going to run. You don't want something that's going to be a three or four hour event and you don't want a half hour event because nobody arrives on time to this stuff. So you know, a good length is anywhere from an hour to two hours depending on how much content you have and the number of people you expect to attend. And that number is going to be gauged by how much marketing you're doing to your audience. Stores will market for you to a degree, but not a lot. So it's really going to be on you to bring in the numbers and then you're going to let the store know about the marketing plans. Where are you going to promote this? It's going to be in your email list, your website, you're going to send step on social media. If you're going to put things out in local newspapers or radio, I mean there's a lot of different places. So it's always good to let the store know what you're planning on doing to market because that's going to bring in business for them. So that's Part of that what's in it for them angle.

Sorry, I couldn't. I couldn't unmute. So I'm just going to pause here. We're going to do a prize. So if we. If you haven't been to our deep dive trainings before, you got to know, we'd love to share our swag. And so. So first up, we have a choice of my book self publish and succeed, which I can awkwardly reach over here and grab if you haven't.

I have some.

There we go. I found it. So there you go. So if you haven't already got a copy of this, you can choose between that or our hashtag noboringbooks mug. We have them back in stock again. Yay. We couldn't get them for a long time, so we have that. And so what I did was I asked Angela to go and pick out our 19th commenter because today is February 19th, and she said that was Megan Sellers. So, Megan, if you are in the US you have a choice between the bug or the book. If you're outside of the U.S. you get the book. We've had all kinds of fun trying to send swag.

Hey, Michigan.

Megan.

There we go. All right, Congratulations. So you need to email Angela or direct message her your mailing address and what you would like to get for your prize. So thank you for being here. And there'll be more prizes, so stay tuned. All right, do you want the next slide, Sarah? And it looks like our artist is back. I closed out. There's a little red mark there. I closed out and came back in and it got rid of it because it was bugging me, but it's back.

I can try to go into your settings, Julie in zoom, but I'm not sure it'll affect this since we're live.

Yeah, let's not. Let's not play with it. I'll escape out of this in a minute and we'll remove.

We'll remove the mark.

The artist is not me. Yeah, Alan actually is an artist.

But it's not him.

Using our screen as a canvas today.

So a lot of people always ask the question, like, how should my event run? Like, what. What should I do if a store is going to come to me and say, yeah, go ahead. You want to be able to think in your mind how you want things to flow. And so a good way to this a very simple sample. It does not have to follow this schedule, but this is just a very loose one that I see a lot of events and you're usually going to Start with an introduction. You maybe have someone that is going to introduce you as the author. And this could be a colleague, it could be the store owner, it could be a connection within the community. It could be someone that's tied to your book. And you know, you don't just want your mom to get up, introduce you, although some people do. But I'm just saying you want someone that's maybe going to be connected either to the venue or the topic or something introduced you. And then, you know, some people, they like to start off with a brief reading. They talk about what the book is and pull a section that is going to be really compelling and grab attention because the idea is you want them to go and then buy the rest of the book. So grab a part that's going to get some attention and a part that might be meaningful, but keep it brief. Once you get into readings that are longer than say 10 minutes, maybe even less, people start to. Their attention wanders and plus, who wants to just be reading from your book for 10 or 15 minutes or longer?

That's.

Yeah, that's not gonna be fun.

I like, I like the special number seven. Aim for seven minutes.

Seven minutes. That's a good one.

Golden seven.

Yeah, it is. And then you wanna have a little discussion about why you wrote the book. What, what inspired you? What is it about this book that people are going to learn? You want a discussion around the important points of the book and this, a lot of people can set this up as maybe a Q and A where you have another person that's asking you questions. And so you can have more of a back and forth conversation, but just a little bit of a discussion point to let people into this and why you wrote it. And then an open Q and A because people in the audience always love to ask their questions. And then afterwards you can do a little bit of a signing and networking. You can have a little reception with, you know, appetizers or something. But doing that signing is a great opportunity to meet every person that came. You can have little conversations. And this is also the opportunity to get people to sign up for your email list. So that signing and networking afterwards is really important. I would budget maybe even half the time that you've allotted for just that signing and networking piece. So. But like I said, it doesn't have to follow this exact schedule. Keep in mind what your audience interests are and how the venue might already have a flow for how they like their events to go. So be flexible with it.

In general, things that people really like to Hear are why you wrote the book. And if it's something that it's kind of you're like teaching them or educating them how to do something, giving them maybe like even a quick win. Like here's my number one tip to do X, Y and Z. Yeah, yeah.

That'S what I was gonna say. So when I've done libraries, they look for that quick win, like that teaching point. They kind of, they, you know, the discussion about why you wrote the book in a reading is part of it. But they always really. Most of the ones I've done three I've done, I've done four libraries and three of the four wanted that teaching point. Like that five minute. Here's tips on this versus bookstores. Like none of this usually happens in a bookstore. They sometimes have like specific readings and things like that. But rarely. It's usually like a one hour block where you're there to talk to people who come in. You know, every place does it differently. So I'm generalizing just to kind of give you guys an idea. But a lot of times a bookstore event really is just you meeting the people as they come in. People don't arrive at one o', clock, so. So just differences. Yeah, yeah.

There are signings and Barnes and Noble do this quite a bit actually where you don't have the opportunity to address the audience. They just give you a table and they set up your books and you just sit there so you're not actually talking to anybody. But then there are other bookstores where they will make it like an evening thing. Okay. At seven o' clock we have Fireside chat with, you know, Julie Broad and it's an actual curated, you know, evening. It's really depends on the store. Again, just like with the bike, you have to find out from them the way that they like their events to go. And a good way to do this is to if you know there's a venue that you're interested in, attend some of the events in advance. Just, you know, to see how they're. Just to see how they're.

They're laid out. Exactly. Okay. Sorry, were you done that slide?

Yeah, yeah, done. Julie, you want to take take us through the live event checklist since you've been. She is our live events queen.

Yes. So I put together this and it's also actually in a YouTube video that came out a little while ago. I also talked about this too and have those links. I'm going to put them in chat. Okay, great. So some of this are things that are nice to have and some are things that I highly recommend you have. And the first consideration of what you should have is kind of how many live events do you see yourself doing? Because if this is, if you're going to be, if you're a speaker and you're going to be doing a lot of live events, it makes sense to invest in the things on the right hand side of this. If you are somebody who's, you know, going to do a launch event, like a one time thing, you know, keep it simple. You don't need to invest in a bunch of extra things like banners and tablecloths and things like that. You know, at least not a branded tablecloth because it's a one time thing, but things that you do want to make sure you always have. I showed up to my first signing without having a tool to sign with. I know that seems like how could you do that? But you're thinking about books, you're thinking about, you know, what am I talking about, all those things. So black Sharpie, it depends on your preference, but that's kind of the standard, is a thin Sharpie is what you would use to sign books. Not the super thin, like this kind of, I don't know how this will turn out, but like that or, or the one below it, not super thick. But a Sharpie is kind of the standard. But you can also, if you have a favorite pen, you can certainly sign with pens. But make sure you bring that and bring backups because inevitably you will have have one that fails. I promise. The next most important thing here is that newsletter sign up sheet. Have that call to action so that people can stay in touch with you. Have them fill it out. Usually what I recommend is putting at the top of that what they're signing up for. So if they're getting a reader magnet, that free downloadable, high value thing, that checklist, that worksheet, whatever it is that you're offering, tell them you're getting that plus you'll be added to my frequency newsletter. So in our case it's our bi weekly launch letter that you would get. So put that there and then all you need is name and email address underneath and click collect them there. You can have a QR code as well where people can sign up on your website. So they click the QR code, it brings up your website. I do find that people don't sign up through QR codes as well. My guess is, because this happens to me, is they go up, they scan the QR code and then they're talking to you or talking to other people and then they walk away. Rather than sitting there on their phone entering name and email address, they walk away and then they get home and they have a bunch of things open on their phone that were, you know, that they never finished and they just close them all and you don't get the newsletter sign up. So. So I am still finding old school pen and paper works. Best QR codes though, for ebooks and audiobooks. Some people want in particular your audiobook. Most people who are ebook readers will be happy to grab a physical copy of your book and get it signed while they're there. But some people are going to go, do you have an audiobook? And if you do have a QR code right there so they can buy your audiobook while you guys are standing there. Because once they walk away they'll forget. So really try to encourage them to grab it while you're there. You can even give them a copy of your physical book if they show you the receipt of the audiobook. Why not give them an incentive to make it happen on the spot And I'll show you a picture on the next slide of some of these things. But a sign for putting that newsletter sign up. That can go a long way to getting people's attention to come stand to come see you a book stand. You know, this can be. I've seen all kinds of displays people have for books. I just go for the simple plastic shelf that, that you can see through and you can see the books. But you know, other people have fancier kind of bookends or you know, display cases that'll stand up and draw your eye in. So have something to have your books on display on your table. Table cover. If you go to Barnes and Noble or library, they probably are going to give you one of those plastic gray tables that fold and that's not so pretty. So even if you just buy or bring from home a white or a black tablecloth to cover it, if you're doing a lot of these, you might want to have a branded one. I'll show you on the next page a banner. It's for the book launchers. But just so you see what I mean and I'll kind of give you some examples of what I've seen other authors do. Swag is totally optional. We had Leslie Quince comes to mind. Her book, she had all, she sent us a big box of swag. But she had this huge launch event and so she had water bottles and journals and all kinds of swag for everybody who came out and Supported her book. So you could do that. I do recommend you have your media kit, your speakers, one sheet. We can talk about that today, maybe even show you guys some examples of what these look like. But I highly recommend you have that on hand because you never know who's going to be coming up to your booth and talking to you. And finally, if you're not at a bookstore, you want to have a way to accept payment, like a cashbox square payment, however that however you're going to accept payment, you want to have a way to accept payment so that you can sell books while you're there. It also helps if you're taking cash to have a receipt book. Some people will ask for a receipt. So having those little things on hand, like at libraries, whenever I've done libraries, the library actually, actually purchases. The libraries I've been to, they purchase your book on spot. They're like, hey, the library wants to carry your book, so they purchase it, but they need a receipt. And then other people attending the library event, you know, they'll be buying from you versus a bookstore. They would go to the cash register and buy the book. Okay, so I'm going to.

I have one more. I have one more to add that I didn't want to add yesterday because it would have thrown off the really even pretty columns. This is what I used to tell all of my clients back in the event days. Add a swagger bag is what I like to call them. So honestly, like just a little bag for yourself. Because in these situations, especially if you're throwing your first event or even if it's a small one, things like mints, deodorant, makeup, your favorite playlist already hooked up on your phone. That gives you, I don't know, was it Beyonce? That gets you all excited for it, you know, Coldplay, Viva la vida. Let's do it. I've had clients bring pictures. Just something when as they're about to get started or in the middle of it, you can go back, take like a second, amp yourself up, and then get your swagger on when you go back out or to get the event started. Swagger bag. You heard it here first.

Love it. I love it. I do.

That is great.

And I also recommend bringing a friend.

Yeah, yeah, put him in the swagger bag.

There you go. Here's my friend. This is my friend right there. He looks grumpy in this picture. Actually, really grumpy. But that is my friend. So I put this up here because, first of all, to show you why I bought a new booth because I could not get these wrinkles out. So I finally just bought a new booth. I tried steaming it, I tried everything. I could not get the wrinkles out of this booth. So we have a new booth now. But I wanted you to see what I'm talking about. So this is an example of a branded tablecloth. I see this with some of the authors that are serial authors. It's more common in fiction than in nonfiction when I've gone to some of the book fairs and book events. But if you're doing a lot of events, get a branded tablecloth. They're cheap, like 50 bucks. And you don't have to get a fancy banner at the back like this. But this is the sign right here that I was talking about. So the plastic sign, you can get them at Staples or Office Depot for five bucks. Nice plastic sign with your call to action. You can get somebody on Fiverr or you can even design your own on Canva just so you've got something that draws the eye in. And then over here is the plastic container that our plastic bookstand that I, you know, for me, when I'm traveling to these events, I'm not going to bring something really elaborate. So I just get the plastic stand and then you can see the covers and it draws your eye in over there. You can get way fancier than this. And I've seen some people that are really creative do beautiful, beautiful setups, but you can keep it simple. And then this is a stand up standalone banner. You can't tell because this is just the graphic. I'm just showing you another example. So you could have, it's not that you can get them for 100 bucks at different banner stores. And it just stands up, it just pulls out of a case, stands up. And you could have your book on here and a call to action to your reader magnet. Or if you have a great endorsement, you could put that on the banner as well. And just having that, if you're doing, if you're doing a lot of speaking, I would highly recommend having that for the back of the room. If you're able to sell books or even just for when people are done after your talk. If you want to have a place, if they're giving you a place where you can have people come to talk to you. I think having a banner that is branded or a tablecloth that's branded, that will just help people know they're in the right place to talk to you. And again, you know, these aren't must have things. So you have to kind of assess where you're going with the big picture with your book, what kind of things you're going to do overall and whether it makes sense. But these banners are, you know, besides the design portion, like I said, you can get them for $100. Vistaprint has a sale twice a year. So you can watch Vistaprint and just wait for their sale because it's usually 50% off. So that can be a huge, huge win on there if you can catch their sale for ordering just about everything that you might need design wise as well. All right, so I'm just going to stop here so we can get rid of the red, the red mark and take a moment to see any questions that are relevant to kind of what we're talking about at the moment.

Yes, let me pull them up. So I haven't seen any questions come in specifically about how to prep for the live events, but okay. So Jack actually asked, are there book conventions or trade shows?

Yes.

Yes, sir.

I don't know if you were wanting something more specific, Jack. I copied and pasted it, but, you.

Know, so are there book conventions and trade shows? Yes, they're generally going to be run by certain associations. So for example, aba, which is American Bookseller association, they have a big one every year. There's. Do they still have bea Book Expo America, which is Publishers Weekly? I mean, these are huge ones. And really what you're looking at instead of. I don't know that necessarily book conventions are the right place for an author to sell their book because that is more about the publishing industry as opposed to people who are looking for books. Granted, the publishers are going to have books there, but it's. You're really going to be looking more, let's say, let's use the example of Scott Bradley, who's one of our horror writers. His book is an anthology on the horror film industry and books. And it's all about. He's a cinephile. It's all about his love for horror and, you know, all of these things. I wouldn't put him at a book convention. I would put him at a horror film festival. I would put him at a horror convention, fan fest, anywhere. That's going to be like where those people that love the same thing are going to be there. So you want to look, if you do want to go the convention route and get a booth at conventions, which I see authors do this really well at things like, you know, Comic Con and other places for that topic. So you want to be looking at where is my buying Audience going to be. So, I mean, like, book conventions are for people like me who are in the industry, who need to learn more things that are happening within the industry.

The tables are also quite expensive at a lot of those book fairs. Like, it doesn't make financial sense. If you really did. If there was one that's local to you and you really wanted a presence, I would say find other authors in your area and you guys team up. Because, like, I haven't seen a table for less than $1,000. You got to be moving a lot of books or have a bigger game plan as to why you're there to be investing in a table for that.

Yeah, I mean, book conventions are one thing. Book fairs are something different. Book fairs are an opportunity for a lot of authors to come in one place and for them to meet new audiences. But I agree with Julie, sometimes it is better to team up with a couple people that have similar topics to you. So you guys share the cost, because it is. It is quite expensive, depending on how big you want to go to.

Piggyback on that point, too. You know, if you've got in your budget to go to some events, right. Especially as a new author, you know, I would even consider looking into or making it part of the plan to go to author conferences specifically, just even for the networking, you know, especially if it's local, then you can even down the line, create those types of connections where you can have, you know, local partner. Partner ups. Is that a word?

Partner ups?

Local partnerships with some of those authors. So, you know, a lot of people get really centered on, like, where is their audience, where are their readers? Which is 100% what you should be doing. But there is something to be said about also thinking about where are your collaborators and seeing if you can get into there.

100%, absolutely. Because the more people that you get to know that are doing similar things to you, you don't want to look at it as competition. You want to look at it as collaboration. You guys are sharing audiences, and they. Other authors that you might meet up with might know about things that you have not known about before. They might have been to conferences before that would be a good fit for you. They might have presented that places that maybe they'll introduce you. So definitely look at other people who are within your niche as your collaborators.

All right, I'll go back to the slides, but I want to do another prize. So so far, we're just about at the halfway mark, so the next one's going to be a participation prize. What's your favorite tip? What's your favorite takeaway that you've got so far? So go ahead and post that in your comments and Angela will be monitoring them and she'll let us know what her favorites are and then we'll pick a winner. And I will share the screen again.

Can I jump in really quickly so I have everyone's questions put on here? I will be saving some of the ones that are just more broad questions or aren't specifically to what has been talked about at the moment for the end. I did have a couple questions that came in that might be more specific to what you're chatting about now than what's upcoming. Do you want me to go over them now?

Yeah, that's fine. While the, while the answers are coming in for sure.

Yeah. Okay. So on a similar note, like Tricia Campbell and Christine Potter both asked about, you know, certain things that would apply to them. So Tricia had asked, you know, she's her book is consigned to a local book bookstore. Should I ask if they ever do signings? Barnes and Noble is also near me. So should I approach them to co sign and do a signing? And then on that same note, Christine asked, I write are these the same question?

Okay.

No, they're, they're different. But you, if you want to go ahead and answer Trisha's, go ahead.

Yeah, I was going to say absolutely, you should be reaching out. And I think I saw the other, the one about Christian fiction. I saw that question as well. Yes, absolutely. Reach out to your local church. If you're within a Christian community, go to your church, talk to the leadership staff about events that they might have. How can it be worked into something that they're already offering? Can it be part of a Bible study? Can it be part of one of the other events that they have going on? And definitely talk to your Barnes and Noble or any of the bookstores that are in your area. But here's the caveat. When you do have a niche topic, you want to make sure that the bookstore you approach actually carries those types of books within their store. So you want to make sure, especially if you're writing with whether it's Christian fiction or Christian nonfiction, that they have a Christian section and that is something that they, that they do sell. So you do want to look at those factors. You would also want to look at any Christian bookstores that are in your area. There are Christian specific books bookstores. The other things that you can be looking at, yeah, local churches, local non profits are a good One for something like that, you can look and maybe even, maybe even co sponsor an event with like a fundraiser. If it's a non profit, you can, you can talk to ones that are in your area that maybe your church supports and, and see if you can set something up that way. Did I miss part of the question or was that the whole.

Oh, no, you got it, you're good.

Okay, great.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So I just want to add, Tricia was just saying, you know, I was just trying to figure out what you do at the signings. And that's kind of, and it does depend on where, where the signing is. Like for a traditional bookstore signing, usually you're going to just walk in, find the person who set up the event, they'll show you where your table is. You'll, like I said, you might lay out the tablecloth, you might put up, up a sign on your table. They'll have a poster already up outside and probably at the front that the signing is happening. And then you're going to be sitting like basically you just sit there and wait for people to come to you. Like if in the, in a bookstore signing where there's no, there's not a talk, it's not really an event, it's a book signing event. That is really all you do. Which is why I say bring a friend because you're going to sit there with books and you're going to, or I recommend you stand actually, because you kind of, you look more alive than if you're sitting there just waiting for people to come to you. But that is really all that happens. And then people come up to you and I find that it helps if you have a question that you're ready to ask them because curious people, you know, you'll, you'll know who's there to see you because they're going to walk straight to your table like, okay, there it is. But other people will wander up to you. And so for those to engage them, I would say have a question on hand that you can ask them that will bring them into the topic of your book, you know, so just kind of think about what that is like. For me, if I'm standing there promoting self publish and succeed, I would say, oh, are you thinking of writing a page? You know, something like that. So just have a question to engage them because if they're curious, they aren't there to see you. So, but really that's all the book signings are. And like I said, I'm not really joking because every book signing I did they asked me where the cookbooks are, so I would probably ask where the cookbook section is. So you know where it is. So you can direct the people and the bathroom. But, you know, so hopefully that helps. Was there a second question that we were answering or are we going to just do the takeaway and go back to the slide?

The other ones are more broad, so let's keep going.

Okay. Have you had a chance to read people's tips?

I'm still reading through some of them. I've got some that I will just have to say. Someone put. They called it a diaper bag instead of a.

Bag.

That was pretty, pretty good. I'm still reading them, so I'll be done in just a minute.

Okay, well, when there's a moment, jump in and share diaper bag. All the moms are cringing like, no diaper bags. No diaper bags, please. Okay, let me bring the slides back up.

Okay, so. Oh, yes. Thank you for adding Linny's thing on there. So you've got your date. Now what you really got to do is make sure you have people that are going to attend. So we're going to talk a little bit about event promotion, and here's what you need to expect. A venue is going to promote, but they're going to do it in the same way that they do every other event, which means they're probably going to put it on their events list on their website. They might put a poster up in the store and maybe they'll share it on their social media. Okay. They're not sending out huge invites. They're not broadcasting it. So it's really going to be on you in order to bring people into the event. So the first thing is you should be adding it to your author website. Anytime you're doing anything live where your audience has the ability to meet, you put it on your website. Next, you want to promote this on your social media so you can create some graphics to go with this. You want posts, and they all should include the date, the location, maybe a little teaser about what they're going to do. Like, for example, if you're going to give out prizes or if you're going to, I don't know, do an hour signing. I mean, whatever the little thing is about your event that's going to be special. Put that on all those posts. You do want to ask the venue, like, hey, will you share it in case they don't? It depends. And then you want to invite your network through email blasts, through social media posts, creating event pages on social media. I mean, who still uses Facebook events? I do. You know, still you want to create events and just let everybody know what's happening. And then you want to make sure that it's very clear for them. How do they get to the venue, where to park, what time they should be there, anything that they can expect. I mean, you just want to make sure, hey, I'm going to be back by the cookbooks. You know, you want to make sure that everyone is very clear as to.

Where you're going to be.

So when you are promoting all of this, just treat it like any other event that you might put together. If you were having a birthday party for yourself and you expected people to show up, how are you going to invite them? So just keep that in mind. It's really going to be on you to talk to your network and you want at least a couple of reminders. I would do one, maybe a month in advance, maybe two weeks in advance, and then maybe one or two the week of and the day of. You want to. People forget, but we're all busy. Even in the times of COVID we're all super busy. So you want to make sure that you remind people.

Have you got addresses, too? Send something physical always goes a really long way in this day and age when we've got nothing but bills and weird newsletter coupon things. I don't know.

And you know, with the venue, one thing that they're going to love is if you ask them for their logo, their branding that you can put on the event, they're going to love that they want to be able to promote as well. So make sure you ask for any of their marketing materials so that you can help promote them. Anything I missed there, Julie or Nicole?

No, I got.

You got.

I was.

The last thing I was going to say is the logos, but then you.

Grabbed it and I'm going to jump in just really quickly. So there were a lot of really great takeaways from everyone. But I think my favorite, besides the comedic of the diaper bag, that was pretty good. But I think my actual favorite is from Margaret. Margaret Greason. I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly. And she had said hooking up with other authors within her niche, which, as Julie had said, that's so good because it's not a competition, it's collaboration. Or maybe Sarah, you said that. Either way, it's not competition, it's collaboration. So, Margaret, if you will email me, I'll message you in the chat directly if you'll email me then. If you're within the U.S. you can either get a prize of Julie's book, self publish and succeed or a hashtag no boringbooks mug. And if you're outside the US then you for sure get Julie's book. But I will message you with my email address so I can get your mailing address. So yay. Congrats Margaret. And I think we are ready for the next slide.

Yes.

All right. So you know, we've kind of covered the basics on author author signings as far as if you were going to do it at a bookstore or some other type of venue. Libraries are a little bit different game, although it does have very similar, you know, goals. You're mainly looking how can I sell books and how can I get more people on my site, my email list? Pardon me. The one thing to keep in mind about libraries is they're all about community, right? They're going to be booking events that they think people from their community are going to want to take part in. So they love to support local authors and creating opportunities for the community to come together around interesting ideas. So when you are approaching a library, you want to make sure that you are keeping that in mind. How is your topic relevant to the community? Are you teaching something? Are you talking about something that is happening currently? Are you presenting some concepts or ideas that can really benefit your community? So for example, we had a personal finance authority who wrote books about how you can do value based wealth building. And for her community she was able to do a workshop in one of her libraries about how to save on your taxes. So we have another author who I've mentioned before, Scott Bradley, our horror writer. Libraries love to book him throughout October. I think we get an event for him every October because of that. So just keep in mind what's relevant, what's happening, and libraries are going to be looking to bring the community together. Libraries do book very far in advance, more than likely. Libraries now are probably booking their summer and fall events. You know why? Because they print out their catalogs of what's happening in their store in your community. You've probably seen this, what's happening at my library, and they do it quarterly and so they have to have all of that done far in advance. So do keep in mind for libraries that you need to put book far in advance, tie into what's happening awareness, days and months, holidays, seasons, you know, for for example, International Women's Day is next month. If you have topics around women's interests back in October or November, you should be pitching your library. Here's my International Women's Day event. Okay, so be tying it into awareness things. And that's a great way to kind of open the door with your library. And then it's also a really good opportunity. Again, we're talking about that collaboration feature. It's a great opportunity to pair up with other authors, excluding ones that are in your area or any figures within your community. If you have written a book that is really relevant to something that's happening in your community, you can also invite business owners or you can invite local government. You can invite educators. I mean, people that are with the figures within your community that are related to your topic. You can also propose something like a panel discussion with them. And libraries will really bite onto that kind of content as well. Anything I'm missing there as far as what to consider when sitting up library events?

I don't think so. I think the community piece and looking at their programming, libraries now are really good about posting all their programming online, so you can see what kind of events they have. The only thing I guess I do have, one thing is you can be creative. Some libraries have a really wide variety of topics that they will have and some even host book clubs. So checking out what's going on, I think can be really, really useful and seeing what, what kind of events they already host. And again, this is also, you know, where you may. If you have other authors in your area, you guys might be able to have a panel or do something else just, just other than just a signing or your own kind of single event. It can be great to have other people because they'll promote as well. So you can kind of engage multiple audiences. But so, yeah, I think getting creative, like, rather than just sticking to one vision, you might be able to do something different in your library, depending on what they do. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely attend some library events, get to know your library, and that'll help you when pitching.

And a lot of them are doing virtual events now too, as an ar, and I don't see that going away. Like, I think they've had a lot of success with virtual events. So I think live and in person is easier to sell books, but I think virtual is. There's still virtual options as well. Yeah.

So then when we talk about. Actually, you know what? I'm sorry, I'm going to pause real quick. So I just saw Megan's question pop up. How would you suggest we connect with our local libraries? Call or email the library program manager? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Look through the staff, go into your local library. Ask who books their events, have a conversation with them, email them. And you're going to take a similar approach that you would to bookstores where you want to have a proposed plan in place, you want to have what's in it for them in place. You are going to have competition, but you also want to open with. You know, I always like to lead with curiosity. I ask first, hey, what type of events are you looking to book this year? What do you have in mind? What, what, what holes do you have in your programming? And they'll tell you, hey, I really need someone for the spring because we don't have any events around this. Okay, so can you tie into that? So lead with curiosity. And then you're looking at it as a partnership. As an author, you definitely want the.

Support of your library.

So look for any opportunity you can to connect with them. Go in, have conversations with the librarians and just see how they like to like set things up.

The legwork here is, I can't stress it enough that you do beforehand to get used to, or not used to, but to get to know your library, your bookstores, or any of these events really that you want to be approaching. Because that way, when you are learning who the person is, like, it goes a long way saying, you know, asking for somebody's first name, you know, and to being very familiar with the types of events that they put on. It shows that when you do that initial reach out to say, hey, I noticed that you've been doing these types of events. I have something that I can perhaps provide for you. What kind? And then go with leading with the curiosity. How can I help you kind of lead with that factor. How can I be of assistance to you? Make your job easier?

Yeah, absolutely.

So switching a little bit to large scale events, because this is one of the number one goals I always hear from authors is I want to be a speaker, I want to go out and speak on my topic. You know, I want to go to conferences, I want to speak for corporate groups, all of those things. And this is, you know, obviously a goal that's going to help with your branding. It's going to help, you know, attract new readers for you. It definitely helps sell books. So some of these large scale events are going to be conferences, expos, conventions, anywhere where you're going to have a lot of vendors and a lot of exhibitors all competing for the audience, audience's attention. In this case, it's not just you. The audience is there to see a lot of people and so you are going to still want to be selling books, still gaining email subscribers, but your approach is going to be slightly different because you are competing against so many others. So just, you know, sort of keep that in mind.

Julia can get in. I was just thinking is now do we want to show like an example of a speakers one sheet now or do we want to talk about that and the media kits later?

I would do it after. I think my, I think it's my next slide where I'm talking about like what you should be doing there.

Okay, great. Yeah.

So how to get into these large scale events, like this is one of the hardest things to do. But if you do your due diligence, it is possible.

It's 100% possible.

People do it all the time. Number one, know your industry. What are the groups, what are the organizations, what are the associations? Companies that host events that have your buying audience in, you know that they are also catering and how do they take place? Do they do these events monthly, do they do them annually? Where do they have them? Get to know the industry. If you are in education, what is the association that has your similar goals, you know and do? Because education events, they have a lot of education events all over the country. You know, if you're in business, if you're in personal finance, if you're in parenting, you know, what are the groups that are catering to the same audience? Because you want to know who the players are and you want to attend the events before you pitch yourself as a speaker. Attend some of the events, get to know how they flow, get to know the organizers while you're there, meet some of the staff and it's a great opportunity to network with the other vendors. Okay, the other vendors. Again we're looking collaboration, not competition. So if you go to these events and you see who the other vendors are and they have similar audiences to you, get to know them, find out where some of the other events they go to are. Just make sure to make some connections. Plan your budget very well. Because for conferences, booths get very pricey and even more so than they do for some of the things we were talking about before. I mean we see events where booths are anywhere from 5 to 10,000 just to have a booth in the expo hall. So and you cannot assume that you're always going to bring in a speaker honorarium or that they're going to give you a booth for, for free. So you definitely want to plan that in advance and you're going to have to weigh the like pros and cons Are you going to have to travel across the country or is this something that's in your area? What is, what's the, are you going to have 5,000 people worth of foot traffic that can potentially you could be selling your book to. Or Maybe there's only 100 people and it's not going to be worth it, you know, so really have to, to plan that out. Have speaking topics ready. Very often these events will put out an open call for speakers where you can submit yourself as a speaker. And in order to do that you have to have things like your title, an abstract, usually 100, 150 word abstract about what your presentation is going to be about. You have to have three to five key takeaways that the audience is going to walk away with with. So having all of those topics ready will make submitting yourself as a speaker even easier. And by the way, if you have done what I put number two on this list of getting to know the organizers and getting to know the other vendors, you want to have those speaking topics ready in case it comes up and you're like, hey, maybe I, you know, next year's event I think I could present a great topic on X, Y and Z and have that ready to go. You want all of your marketing materials ready for consideration. The media key kits, the speaker one pagers, and if you are looking to be a speaker, it is very important that you get video of you speaking. Have reels ready, have those speaking.

Speakers.

Reel, essentially one to two page video or excuse me, one to two minute video clip of you presenting for different audiences. That really helps buyers, especially if they don't know you, they want to look at that video content to see what kind of speaker you are in advance.

Advance.

And then you'll need all of the other supplies that we've already talked about. And especially for conferences and large scale events, you really do want to invest in that branded equipment because you know you're going to be selling a lot more books and it's a lot more opportunity. You're going to go from an author event which maybe has 30, 40 people, you could be catering to 3, 4000, you don't know, depending on the type of event. So just kind of keep those things in mind. And so yeah, now would be a great time and I can show you. Do you want me to bring up a sample?

Julie? I can, yeah, I mean if you want, if you want to pull one up, we could do that. And I'll answer a couple questions that came in while you find one.

Nicole, who we have recently, that would be a good one to show.

Let's see.

So while they're finding one, I saw Valerie's question about, do authors ever do book signings at personal homes? When I was in Los Angeles, I attended two different book signings at homes. They were celebrity homes, so they're probably used to, like, not a list. Like, I wasn't at, you know, wasn't that a super celebrity home? But they were, you know, they were celebrities. They're used to hosting events. They had it catered. They had it so that you didn't have to go into their main part of their house in order to attend the event. There was bathroom facilities and things, like in a kind of a. The one had a guest house that people used for the bathroom. The other one had kind of. Of hallway that you walk down to access it. So it is. I mean, it would depend on who's invited. That would be my answer to that. Like, think about whose house you're hosting it at and what the goal is and who you're inviting and the comfort level of having these people in your home or in somebody else's home. So it really does, I think, vary, but it's certainly a totally fine way to have to celebrate, like friends, family, and people who've supported, maybe people who are in the book, that kind of thing. I could certainly see that working as an event of some kind. Okay, still keep going. You don't have them up yet?

Okay, I got it.

No, we're grabbing.

Sorry.

We're grabbing. I can't open my files. I have a new computer and it won't let me open anything.

And so. And then this one is as a speaker at an event. How important is it for the event to be clear close to the book release date. Will it work years after it's released? Yes. I mean, unless your book is, like, really specific, like a software release program that's only relevant for a single year, you can do events and you can market your book for as long as you can contain enthusiasm for marketing it. But, I mean, I know one author who. His book is 20 years old now, and he. He still does speaking engagements and workshops off of that book. It's a mindset book. It's timeless. And he still does speaking engagements, sees no need to update his book. He's very, very happy. And he still sells thousands and thousands of copies every year and uses it to get speaking engagements and vice versa. So, yeah, there's no time limit on it. It's more like, how long can you Talk about the same thing. Because some people not naming. Naming get bored of talking the same thing over and over again. So it depends. Okay, you're ready to go, Nicole?

Yep, I got it.

You should be able to share your screen. Okay, let's do.

I'm going to show you a couple of them. All right, so here is one of our more recent launches, one of my authors. Hang on, here we go. So this is Becca. This is her media kit here, her book, harness your inner CEO.

So what we.

What you want to be doing first is nice, beautiful, big picture of the book itself, the book cover. We opted to have an endorsement right up here at the top. And as you can see, she got a pretty decent endorsement here from Howard Bear. And then down below, a couple of, you know, where people can find her, who to contact in our. She's obviously she's still current clients. So our media contact is Lauren, our media coordinator. But of course, you can put your own information there, main topics covered, and then what you want are just some general or just the. Basically the data about your book. What's it called? Publisher. A metadata. Yeah. How many pages, publication date. This is the description of the book so people can get a good sense of what the book is about, where the book is available, about the author here with a beautiful picture. And then one of the more important pieces for the media kit specifically are the sample topics. So this is going out to places like, you know, book bloggers, reviewers, podcasters, people with YouTube shows. So when they're looking for topics to talk about and if it's relevant enough to their audience, picking anywhere between, let's say we go for like, between what, five, six, seven, somewhere in there.

Five. Yeah, I mean, we go for about five. You can have as many top. You know, I wouldn't do too many more than that generally, because media tends to not take these exactly, but they'll. They'll look at it to see if it's very similar to something that they can write about.

Exactly. For some of our books, we'll do questions versus topics. And it depends. It depends a bit on the book. Like, this is a business book. So usually the media is going to have a specific topic and then generate questions. And often they'll still ask you for questions. So for each of these topics, you probably still want to have a sense of questions you want to be asked. But yeah, I mean, do you want to touch. I think it's usually memoirs we do questions for, isn't it?

Yeah, for memoirs, we try to do questions because that's what the interviews are going to be more like. Whereas in, you know, a business topic or something that's a little bit more, you know, cat character. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have a discussion about the topic, whereas if it's a memoir, they're asking questions about your life. So yeah, it can go either way.

Yeah, she's been featured in several places, so you could definitely put something like that on yours. As kind of a social proof, we also include in all of our media kits a way for people, people being the, the media outlet, the person you're reaching out to to grab high resolution photos or book images because they will need that type of marketing materials for their own promotion. So what we do for our clients is we just put together a really simple Dropbox folder that has their words are hard, that has their book covers, their headshots, the media kit again, and their speaker reel in it. And I mean that's a simple thing to do on Dropbox that you can just very easily link within a PDF. Here we take a book excerpt to get entice people and give them a little bit more of a sense of the book. And for some authors we even have. Yep. More reviews down at the bottom. If you, if people, if you're, if you are starting to get some really amazing endorsements, this is a really great place to sprinkle them in into your media kit to add more to that social proof.

Media kits. This is a longer one. This one looks like it was about six pages. Generally you want to keep it to three to four pages depending on how much there are some people that are fastidious about. It has to be like one or two pages. But if for a book media kit it can be a little bit longer because you want that book excerpt in there to give them a flavor of what the book, how it reads, what it's like. You definitely want to try and get all your endorsements and your accolades in there. So if you've won awards for your work, if you've been recognized by certain organizations, if you're a member of an organization that gives a lot of credit to your expertise, you know you want all of that information in there because this media kit is helping establish your authority. So that's, the media kit is very useful.

And the media kit also is something you can use when you're approaching bookstores and libraries for your events. Having that media kit just shows that you're a professional and you know if you're that together that you've got a beautiful media kit like that it just gives you so much more credibility when you approach some of these venues for carrying your book, for having you at an event and all of those kind of things. It gives them essential information like the metadata, as well as information they're going to need. But there's a video we have on from Robert Workman on getting into airport bookstores, and he talks about how the media kit was a big part of his approach when he was doing media books, or sorry, when he was doing the airport bookstore outreach. He also had cookies. But that's.

Basically real talk. A good media kit makes you come off more legit. People do pay attention to that kind of thing. So here is one of our other authors. This is his speaker sheet. So as opposed to the media kit, which you saw was several pages long, we want to do a quicker one sheet for speakers.

So.

So you have a lot of the same key pieces here, right? You know, the COVID of the book, the speaking topics, where you can find the author, picture of the author here, early reviews as part, like Julie, there you are. Early reviews or early endorsements. And then we like to do three. Usually three is our gold standard for the speaking topics to include. So. So one of the biggest differences between the media kit topics and then the speaker topics are think about with the media kit topics, what you can have conversations on, because that's ultimately where you're going to be doing. Whereas this is a little bit different. You want to think about what you can stand on a soapbox for and go for it for like an hour. What can you bring to the table? What keynote speeches can you, you know, what are your signature. That's the word I was looking for. What are your signature talks? You know, you get me on a soapbox for email marketing for days or you know, the swagger bag, that's not an hour long. That would be really boring. But you could see that the differences of you're having a conversation with somebody versus you are standing up and giving people education, giving them stories where it's a one to many.

Yeah.

And from the speaking topics, you know, you come up with like a main headline and then a subtitle and you want to be able to portray in that topic who the audience is for this. By reading it, you should know who they're speaking to and you should know what they're going to walk away with. So, you know, for example, in for Michael Dominguez here, armchair real estate, you're three properties away from millionaire status. Okay. That is for people who are obviously interested in real estate. Investment and are looking to make money from it. So it's, you know, you want to be able to pull something away from that and know who the audience is. So having a speaking one sheet like this is very helpful for you when you're trying to go for those large scale events because it's something quick and easy that you can pass to an event organizer. You can email it over to them. And again, it shows that you are prepared to be their presenter. You are prepared to teach their audience something that they're not going to get anywhere else. So, you know, the speaker topic one sheet here is really just another extension of, of that being prepared and hashtag.

Make you more legit. Yes, I'm going to make that go viral. Hashtag, make you more legit.

I think we have a couple slides left. Do we want to actually, no, we don't. Do we? Was that it?

Was that the last one?

I believe.

I believe that was it. Let me just pull it back up here for everyone. But I believe that might have been the last slide so we can start doing questions.

I think you're right.

I think it was my really long way of giving Angela a moment to collect the questions. Yeah, I think that was the last one. Here we go. And then. Oh, yep, there. We're back to the beginning. Okay. Okay, so we are done that. Let me stop. Share. Okay. All right. So Angela, what do we have in the question bank?

Yes, and I'm glad we have plenty of time because there are a lot of questions. And I did just post if anyone didn't see if you were wanting examples of things about the media kits or how to create them. I did just post a link to a YouTube video in the chat so you can check out Julie's video there. Okay, so let's see. Let me go back to one of the questions closer to the beginning. So Kat's been very patient. So this is when y' all were talking about niches and so she was saying this is where I get stuck because her niche audience is rather narrow and defined. So how do you find the appropriate venue when you aren't promoting a book that will be of interest to any others other than in that small niche?

I think it depends on what the niche is because. So the best thing I can think of is Julie who.

Her book is about child loss. I believe that's what she said.

Oh, oh.

And that's actually a very big topic. Yeah, yeah, that's actually a very big audience. It's not maybe widely talked about, but that's actually A very huge audience. I would go to a regular bookstore with something like that. If I was talking about child loss, I'd also look at perhaps women's charities or women's support groups. I would look at. I would also look at probably mental health and wellness events, things that are going to be helping people cope with trauma, cope with grief, cope with sorrow. So I would be looking at, you know, are there local therapy collectives or are there you know, even. Maybe even something when you're looking more specifically women's interest, you can be looking at yoga and wellness centers, or you're looking at, you know, what are the things that are. Someone that is dealing with a loss, what are the things that they are doing? I would go to those places.

Another thing that you can think about is, I mean, I. And the amount of, let's say, Facebook groups on these topics. Right. If your potential readers or you yourself are in these groups, a lot of times, not only is there support and networking happening within the groups, but a lot of times the hosts of the groups tend to have events, maybe virtual or even something local for them. So participating in networking within the groups on the social media fronts, and I know specifically Facebook groups, there are several of them for this topic. Then you can get some ideas or some opportunities for events or collaborations there.

And, Kat, I would challenge you to actually rethink how you're thinking about your topic. It's actually not that niche. I think virtually every person, you know, has probably been affected by a child loss in some shape or form. I think it's widely.

And what's the stat? It's like one in every four women, I think.

Yeah.

So I. I think it's thinner than you think. I think that would also be good for libraries. There's probably some libraries that would actually do really well with that as well. So, yeah, I think you've got some good places to go with it. I was thinking when we were talking about niche. Julie, who was it that had the book that was about the home. Buying the homes. Oh, gosh, Kevin.

I need more information.

He had the very niche book about buying homes. The tax credit you could get for buying homes when you were.

Oh, he didn't publish, so we can't. Oh, I apologize.

I apologize. But we had someone who had a very, very niche topic that for him there was only going to be one or two places he could go where it was going to be applicable. But I think with what Kat's talking about, it's going to be much, much bigger. Yeah.

Next question. Angela and then we're going to do. We're going to do another prize. I'm just cooking in my brain what we're going to do the prize for. So hint is if you haven't said hello or asked a question, now would be a great time.

Okay, so Alan, our Allen west in.

Japan, or Alan west, he is, you.

Know, writing his book to the US Market. So he's quote, I'm trying to think of finding ways to find venues there. So I'm guessing it would be better to do remote instead of dealing with the expensive travel.

And Alan is overseas.

Correct.

And you're saying he's marketing his book to the US and how to do events here, here. Virtual.

Virtual.

Virtual. It's harder to still virtual. But there are absolutely. It is a great way to build.

Up your email list.

Yeah, yeah, they're here to. I mean, you know, Covid pushed us.

Pushed.

They always, they were always there. Covid pushed it over the edge. But I think a lot of people are realizing that they're going to be here to stay. So don't you do virtual.

And then the type of.

Sorry, I was just going to say, I mean, a lot of Alan's book is also geared towards having people come and see his studio in Japan. So thinking about those places where even tour companies, anybody that's kind of Japan.

Oriented, Helen just got very excited about that idea. And so anybody who's talking like tour.

Companies, anything for Japan, like art lovers too. But I think there's lots of different angles that you can lean into to generate not just the book sales, because that's the thing, like a lot of these events we're talking about, you won't have thousands of book sales for a lot of them. You know, the odd speaking engagement may put you in a position to sell bulk. And so you might have some big, big sales that way. But look at the bigger picture. Like, what's the end goal that you really want? Like, not just sell books, but after you've sold the book or in using that book, what are you trying to get to? And so I know Alan and I know where he's trying to go with this. And I know it's like, come see my beautiful art studio and my work in my studio and get me to do a great piece for you. And so that's where I'm going. Okay, maybe they don't buy your book, but maybe they actually come and get to your end goal.

So sometimes, Alan, I have some viral ideas for you. When we get to marketing your book, I Need to write them down now. Some good ideas for you.

Awesome. Okay. Do you want me to go on to the next question, Julie, or did you want to.

Yeah, we want to go through. Because I know we have a lot of questions, so. And then I'm going to stop after the next question and we'll do one prize. Then we've got one more prize. But. But yeah, I want to make sure we get. As if we can, all the questions done. So we'll try and go through.

I think. I think we'll be able to with the rate we're going. So, ironically, Jacqueline's not here, but Jennifer asks, how do you decide the price for your book?

So I'll start on that. So, first of all, what we do. So we have. There's actually a researcher, and we're now hiring somebody else to help on research because we do so much research, not just on your metadata, but also for all these marketing things that we're talking about. Because we do have so many ideas. We're finding that we need people that can research to find all these places that we're like, hey, let's market to this place. So. So if anybody knows anybody that's really good at research, you can send them our way because we're starting to hire more people for that. But all of that is back to. So pricing. We want to start first of all by understanding the category and your competition. And that's where we start with the research. So we use tools, we've talked about it before, like publisher Rocket, but you don't have to have that tool. It just makes it a little easier. You can go onto Barnes and no. And Amazon and, you know, different, different places and look at some of the books that you're going to be competing against and start to get a sense of a range. And so you want to look at not just the book, but also the size of the book and the promise of the book, and just really see how you're stacking up to it. Because if you're pricing your book at $30, but everybody you're competing with is pricing at $15.99 or $14.99 or $13.99, your book has to have a really, really good reason for being $30. And conversely, if you're pricing it at 99 cents and everybody's pricing it at $15, you really should have a good reason for that, too, because too cheap also has a thing, you know, that can be a problem in people's minds, too. So you want to start with Looking at your competition, build a range, look at the size, look at the promise of the book, and then look at that range and decide where you want to go. And this is going to be for each format. So you want to do that for your ebook format, your print format. Unfortunately, for audiobooks, Audible doesn't let you choose the price, but if you are listing it elsewhere, then you would want to do that research for the audiobook. And hardcover and soft cover are also very different. If you are doing an ebook and you're going on Amazon, you probably are going to go 9.99 or less just because of the way they structure their royalties. There's not. There's no benefit in going 11.99 versus $9.99. You actually make more money going 9.99 on Amazon with how they do it. So if you're working with Book Launchers, they'll walk you through all of this. If you're not, there is at least one video on Book Launchers tv, kind of breaking down how you can put it into an Excel spreadsheet and figure it out. Ladies, anything you want to quickly add to that?

No, just know your competition, know your, know your market.

And I'll try to find that video Julie to add. Okay, so this is a very broad question, so, Andrew, prepare yourself. We might need some extra info in the chat, but he said, any tips specifically for business books. And then later on, he did mention that he has been getting invited for speaking events before his book launches. So how much is too much?

Is there overexposure? So those are two different questions. When it says tips about business books, does it mean, like, tips on where to do live events for business books?

All it says is any tips.

Okay, well, Andrew, do you want to.

Unmute and give us a little more context?

Yeah, let me.

Okay, well, while you guys are doing that, the next prize is going to be. So I want you to tell me one thing or not one thing. Name one of the authors that we showed today. So if you're paying attention on the speaker sheet or the. The media kit. So I want to see who is paying attention. That's going to be your prize.

I was.

Yeah. No, you can't win. Sorry. I love.

Very close. It was Michael.

Marta.

Got it. So Sheila and Marna, we'll give it to both of them because they each got different ones in a different order. So congratulations, you two. Let us know, book or mug. And email Angela your mailing address so she knows where to send them. Nice.

Good one.

Oh, Angela, Andrew, should Be unmuted. Yeah.

Yep, I'm ready. So thank you.

So, yeah, my question, I know we.

Talked about, about libraries or clubs or churches.

I just wondered if you guys had specific tips of places that you could go to do an event or business book. What's your book? A little bit. Can you give us a little bit more detail? Because that would direct even more specific. My book's about IT leadership, and it's for people that are up and coming in the technology field.

Nice.

Okay.

Julie, do you have ideas off the.

That maybe. Well, if they're up and coming, I mean, you could look into specific. Almost every industry has their own conventions that, you know, and a lot of the same tips that we, we mentioned, you know, even just going there to network is, you know, even just a great start to maybe some colleges wondering.

If they're looking at. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say one of the places to start that we haven't talked about yet, yet is looking at anybody you've mentioned inside of your book. So any companies, any products, any services, any people that you're, you know, saying something favorable. Favorable about. If you're saying something not so nice, then you know, this doesn't necessarily apply. Yeah, Just, you know, don't highlight that to them. But that can be a great place to start in terms of events. You know, we have Ryan Berman, and he wrote a book not in it, but some of his first speaking engagements from his book were companies that he did case studies on inside of his book. He reached out to them, sent them a copy of the book, and then that landed speaking engagements that kind of went from there. So that's one place that we haven't talked about is anybody you're talking about inside of your book could be a good place to start. Yeah.

The other thing I was going to suggest is any of the associations that cater to IT professionals, because almost all of them have something where they're trying to bring up more membership. Right. So they're going to be looking for younger professionals that are coming up into that audience. So I would be looking at who are the associations that provide education events and networking opportunities for that, for that field. And then I would, number one, as an author, as the expert in it, you should be a member. And number two, you can be approaching them about events.

Yeah. And just watch who. Who in this piggybacking off of what, you know, kind of what Julie's saying too. This goes for any, like, pay attention to who are the leaders and. Or even just under like the leaders of your industry, especially if they have a pretty decent social media and email marketing following. You know, if they're, what they're doing is they are probably teaching something in alignment with what you are teaching. And very often they will have events. You know, if it's in a social media space, then most likely the event is going to be virtual. But again, in 2022, virtual events do definitely have to still be on the table and a part of your marketing plan as well. So getting to know who they are and then participating on their channels goes a really long way as well.

Andrew, I just want to address the part of the question about overexposure. I mean, honestly, there's so many authors that are sitting here going, that's a dream come true. Could you please have me facing the problem of feeling like I'm going to be overexposed? But I know like when you have a full time job, it can feel like there might be a lot going on. But my recommendation to you is ride that momentum as hard and as long as you can. So you know, I hate to say it, but stretch yourself because if people are interested in it now, you see where that takes you because it is hard to get that momentum. And if you try to slow it down, you could find yourself now in the opposite problem with the problem of like, okay, I have nothing going on, how do I get things going again? So I would say it's a problem most people wish they had and so do as much as you possibly can but do filter things. So what I mean by that is look at the audience and make sure it is your ideal audience and that you are, are going to give great value to that audience because sometimes it's a so so audience and that maybe it isn't great for you and so you can kind of, you know, gauge your time value in that regard. But yeah, that's. I just wanted to mention that.

Oh, sorry. Oh, I was just gonna say if that question too is coming from a, like whether it's yours question specifically, Andrew, or anybody else thinking that's like the overexposure as a spam. Like a lot, I know a lot of authors are really worried, like, I don't want to spam people just to give you a general idea. Most people need seven touches from somebody from whether it be an author or a product before they actually pull the trigger to buy. So the more that you're on relevant podcasts and they hear you on a couple different podcasts and they start to see, oh man, this guy or this gal really knows what they're talking about. The more that you are consistent on social media and email marketing, the more that you show up in network, in virtual events, or in person events, the more that your brand awareness spreads, the more that you will kind of insert yourself in their psyche so that when the time comes that they need. They have an answer or they have a question that your book can answer, they're coming to you and they're clicking by.

Yeah, you want that feeling of you're everywhere. That is the goal. Because then you have almost an automatic trust level with people. All right, Angela, what's our next question?

So I didn't hear if you guys specifically spoke to this part of that. Matt asked, would you recommend speaking before release?

Yeah, if you have the opportunity, why not? I would. I would look at it. And it depends on the opportunity. There are some instances where it might. Might be more beneficial to wait until after books coming out. For example, if you want to have the book available to sell to the audience, you know, and you want that book, you want to have that physical book there. But I wouldn't turn down a speaking gig just for that. It just depends on what the gig is.

Yeah, let.

I was going to say email list. Email list. And I also wouldn't rush a launch in order for an event because we've got authors.

Yeah, I'd rather you.

Email list.

Yeah, if you don't have your book available, it's the perfect spot to capture.

Leads for your email list.

So if the opportunity presents itself, I wouldn't turn it down. Now, we tend to not push for speaking engagements until after the book is out, just because when we're doing our marketing, we're focusing on the book. We're trying to get book reviews, we're trying to get podcasts and media. So we don't focus on the speaking aspect until afterwards. But I think if you have that chance to speak and, you know, the book is still in production, I would still do it. Julie, what do you. What do you think on that?

Yeah, exactly. I was just gonna say I would just focus. I mean, a lot of what I do anyways is focus on email, like getting people on my email list to connect and build a relationship versus the book sale. So even when I'm speaking my first. Even if I have a book, I'm going, you know, get on my email list. And by the way, here's my book if you. You want to buy a copy.

So.

So yeah, drive people to that email list as much as humanly possible. Because that's going to, in many cases it's better than, you know, just trying to sell books because you'll, you'll get that long term relationship. Yeah, I don't think I'll add anything else because I see some other questions. I think some of my other points are going to come up with the other questions.

Okay, Virgie asked. Can we go over virtual launches?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I mean it's, it is a factor now, right? Virtual launches and virtual events are a thing that are here to say. As we've said, I think one thing that was discovered during COVID was that organizations that used to do live events have now found they've been able to cut their overhead in half or more just because now they've moved their events online and they're reaching up to bigger audience because they can get people from all over instead of people that were just in their area. So there are definitely some benefits that, you know, live events are coming back as well. So I think we're going to see more and more hybrid models of conferences and I mean, Julie, how many conferences do we have lined up this year where that's both a live and a virtual portion?

Yeah, they're all doing both. Five, I think. Five or six.

Yeah, yeah, they're all doing both. So that being said, for a virtual book launch, that is something actually that you can do. And it can be really fun to have like a virtual launch party where you essentially set up something where you're going to live stream your launch, you do it on YouTube, you can use Streamyard so that it goes on Instagram and Facebook. And actually we have a great video with one of our authors, Imani Roberts, who launched in, in April 2020, right when Covid had first hit. And he did a phenomenal virtual book launch where he had people from all over and he's a dj, so he did a DJ set. He had guest people come in and co live with him and it went really well. He had a lot of attendees. Michael Dominguez, who we showed you his speaker one pager earlier, also did a virtual launch. His book came out May. May 2021, right? Yeah, yep, May 2021. And he did a virtual launch and he had over 100 people on his live feed and they gave away prizes and he had an entertainer. Was it the magician? He had a magician come in and do like a whole virtual thing. So it's a really good, it's a really good way to connect with people from afar. So I do. Did you have a Specific question about virtual events, Virgie, that you wanted to ask. Ask us.

I don't know.

You can put it in the chat or unmute.

If.

Or unmute.

Angela has to let you.

There you go, Virgie. I'll let you unmute if you'd like to voice it. Hey guys, thanks.

Yeah, my question really is of the format sounds like it's very similar and I did an in person book event.

Back in the day before times, but it sounds like from that I think.

I saw the same virtual launch on.

YouTube that you guys are referring to that sounds like the format is similar. But I kind of am kind of afraid of like the tech issues.

Like Michael Dominguez, you said had like.

100 people attend his.

Did he have a email list prior? So the whole, you know, just like a blurb of, you know, marketing it.

And then getting the tech hosting for.

An event, a virtual event.

I mean, I would say that tech issues are guaranteed to happen at some point in your event life. Whether it's live or virtual checks, they're gonna happen. If it's live, it's gonna be your microphone doesn't work or your slides aren't working or like, you know, whatever. And if it's virtual, maybe things are slow or. I mean, look, we're on Zoom right now. Julie's Hosting, you know, 60 plus people and we had someone drawing on the screen.

I don't mean like a problem, I.

Meant like how to like how to do it.

Just like I've been researching, like I was researching.

I spent a lot of too much.

Time researching event or organizations, event hosting companies to see if they would be.

Willing to do for a reasonable price online, you know, an online event.

And you know, they're used to doing it for like huge mega corporations. So yeah, the virtual event producers are.

Very expensive and you definitely don't even need to get that, that big, that extreme. And in the digital world like today you can do something as simple as, you know, you. Whether you have to decide first, do you want to keep this event private or do you want to have it live stream to everybody? You want a public. So for example, you could host something where you invite everybody via a Zoom link, right? You're having a specific event at this time. You know, it could be something like come get access to you. I'm going to be teaching X, Y and Z on this on my topic. So you can start gathering emails first as they quote, unquote, register for the event just with a simple opt in page and then via the Email, you just send them the information about. Actually just very similar to what we did here. You know, Julie sent out an email. Don't forget to register you guys and then put everybody puts their information in at a certain time and date to show up. That being said, you could do something slightly different. You can make this available publicly. One of the things that I work with our authors a lot is deciding when and where to go live on your social media account channels, for example, few, few ways you could do it. You could say, all right, I'm going to go live on my, in my Facebook group or I'm going to go live on my Instagram feed three separate times today, you guys, it's a big, you know, launch day extravaganza. At 10am I'm going to go live and talk about this. I'm going to teach you how to do this. At 1pm it's an ask me anything, come on over. I'm going to talk about why I wrote this book. You can give little teasers about, you know, like my mom or I was walking out with my dog and I something hit me in the face and I decided to write this book. Let me come, come tell you why. And at 4pm I'm going to be teaching you X, Y and Z. Another thing you could do is kind of that hybrid feel. So we just had a author launch back in January. She was having a launch party at a bar in San Francisco and what she did is she did live stream of it via, you know, just via her phone. She had some friends, you know, help her out with this. But you could go live on Instagram to say this is where we're at. Show everybody around. People love that. Behind the scenes of, you know, hey you guys, look, I'm putting together my event today and this goes to these plans can go for not just launch day, but any event that you might be having. You know, those behind the scenes glimpses of you getting ready for your event, preparing for your event, setting up.

Like people love that kind of stuff.

So. So next time you and I chat, Virgie specifically, we'll get more specific. But so many ways that you can do it. And in this digital age, you don't have to spend gobs of money and time in order to do it. There's simple ways to make it happen.

Well, that's a great segue into the next question because someone asked about money, Zuzana said, what do you think of these marketers who want to market your book for $5,000 dollars?

So that specific number I have seen tied to Amazon Bestseller, I don't know, like there's lots of packages out there in the world, but that specific number has tied to the Amazon Bestseller. And I've talked about this a lot, so I won't, I won't talk too deeply about this. But you know, an Amazon Bestseller, anybody who's charging you, first of all, charging you $5,000 to make you an Amazon Bestseller, when if you do most things right on a launch and you have any sort of pre existing audience, you're almost always going to get that Amazon Bestseller or at least the Amazon Best new release flag. So that's number one is you really like $5,000 is an extraordinary price to pay for that. The second thing is they're guaranteeing it by gaming the system. And Amazon is an algorithm machine. And you want to teach Amazon on who your ideal buyers are. And I just posted on Instagram our story on the book launcher story yesterday. There's a new button on the Amazon page now underneath the author on the left side that says, you know, other books like this or something like that. And that might be them testing to replace also bots or that might be just in addition to also bots. And so again, it's another example of the importance of teaching Amazon who your ideal buyer is and not gaming the system. So please do not pay anybody to make you a guaranteed bestseller unless the strategies are what we've talked about today. Where are your ideal readers hanging out? How are you going to get in front of them? What are you going to do to incent them to get your book? Get them on your email list so you build a relationship so that when you offer your book and tell them about it, they want to buy it and they're your ideal people because that's the only people you really want buying and reviewing your book on Amazon because if Amazon will sell your book for you, you. My first book, More Than Cash Flow still sells. I do nothing to promote it. It is selling because Amazon is showing it to people who have bought other real estate books, primarily in Canada, and they keep buying it. And, and so it keeps selling because Amazon's algorithm is on point there. So anything you guys want to add.

I would just be looking at specifically what it is that they're promising. If it's not the bestseller thing, what is it specifically that they're promising that they're going to do for you? And because a lot of times some of these organizations will, unfortunately there are a lot of not so reputable ones that are out there and they will be promising, we're going to promote it to this network or this network and really that just involves promoting it to their own social media. So you want to look at what are they investing in, what are they going to be providing you and which of those pieces are things that you can't be doing yourself or working with a partner that's less expensive and providing higher value.

And some of the things to watch out for. Press releases. A lot of organizations promise a press release that's going to hit 5,000 outlets. It will hit 5,000 outlets, but nobody looks at it. That is going to do zero for you. Some of the packages I've seen out there give you printed bookmarks, they give you printed postcards, they give you all of these things that sound like a lot of great things, but they really don't sell books or get you exposure. And so you want to evaluate everything in terms of is this going to get me more book reviews, is this going to get me book sales, or is this going to grow my author platform? And you want to make sure it's doing one of those three things, if not two out of three, because otherwise it's not worth the money.

Okay. Okay. Next question is also about budgeting. What a good budget for events small to large?

Well, the annoying answer is that it depends because it's going to, it all comes back to, you know, where you want to try to have an event. You know, having it at a library is going to be a very different budget than having it at the, you know, hotel ballroom. Who's having a X, Y and Z something, you know, are you trying to feed people? Are you trying to, you know, buy a whole bunch of books to have on hand, obviously, which you would want to do anyway. But point being is what I, what I would try to do, what I would do, and this is what I, what I would try to do is list your. List all of your dream places that you would love to have, list what you think you would be able to do budget wise, what you think would be a good one, and then honestly just go and do some research on how much each of those places would charge. I'm sure, Julian, you know, having done a bunch, you might have a better average number. But the annoying one is that it kind of depends on. You shouldn't have to break the bank in order to have an event. There are ways to make an event work for you within the budget that you have.

Yeah. So we only have five minutes left. So we're gonna, we're gonna do lightning question answer for the last couple questions that we have. But what I want to tell you is a mindset thing. So be the CEO of your book. And so what that means is look at how you're going to invest any of your resources, your time, your energy and your money. So if you're going to spend five grand on an event for your launch, what is that doing for your book business? That might feel great and maybe that's enough for you. But me as a business owner, I'm looking at, okay, what is the ROI that's going to drive me to my bigger picture goal? Where am I putting my money that is going to ultimately not just sell my book? Again, that's not for most of us, that's not the end goal isn't the selling of the book. It's the growing of the business. It's getting the speaking, it's building the brand. It's being known in your industry. So what's going to get me there? Is that $5,000 going to go towards that event? Or can I put that somewhere else? Is the hundreds of hours I'm going to put towards this event going to get me to my big goal or is it just, you know, money? That's maybe it's going to be a fun party and that's enough. But be the CEO with every decision that you make, think of that big picture and is this moving you closer to that big picture goal? All right, so really quick, Angela, we're going to do lightning round for four minutes. Any questions that remain, you're muted though. We do need to hear you.

Okay, sorry.

Yes.

People are sneaking in. They're whipping me questions. So I'm not sure we're going to get to all of them. So someone said, I have a niche book related to adults and marriage. Do you think selling the book for a discounted price on Amazon is wise? I know we touched briefly on really inexpensive pricing for your books, but did you want to expound?

I mean, if you're selling it at a discounted price, I mean, you want to be looking at what the other books in your in your market are priced at. And then you want to look at what your existing platform is. If you are starting from scratch, it does make and you have no platform. You, meaning you don't have an email list or anything like that, then you might want to sell it at a lower price because that becomes an incentive to buy. But you are going to be looking at. My goal is not so much selling the book as it is building my platform. If you have an existing, you know, existing list and you've already done a lot of work in this field, then I don't see why you would need to discount it. Because you can always run certain sales and promotions at certain times and give that market marketing push behind it. So you could have an ebook sale like, you know, every 90 days or so and, you know, kind of drive traffic that way. But I wouldn't say right out of the gate you need to be discounted in order to do well.

Okay.

Dan asked. Tips for landing podcast guest spots.

Okay, I'll take it.

You go ahead.

Okay. Tips for landing podcast guest spots. Know the podcast, listen to it, see what kind of guests they have on, see if they have similar or different types of topics. As you have your media kit ready and create a pitch that is going to show why you're relevant, what how you're the expert, and then some ideas on what you can discuss. And contact, contact, contact. So just do out reach.

Podcasts are personal content.

Yeah. Be personal, but the important thing is to personalize it and know the podcast that you're reaching out to and what they cover so you can make sure your topic is relevant.

I just posted, I had some messages that I didn't get to about our, like our services. Will you help me market my book? You know, all those kind of things. We ran out of time. We don't have time to talk about book closures today. So I posted.

We're awesome.

Lots of our clients are here. They've talked, they've been commenting, but I posted links in the chat. So if anybody does want to check that out and reach out, you know, happy to talk about that and talk about our services. But yeah, we had teachers.

Thanks, Fergie.

Okay, one, one last question and then we're gonna. Yeah, we do. We love.

Yeah. So, Jack, I have your question and I'm actually going to message it to Nicole and Sarah so that they can chat with you directly about it. Marna asked if you're on Amazon and doing a book signing, do you buy the books from Amazon or how does that work?

So when you are depends on where you're distributing. But if you're distributing through kdp, you can get author copies from Amazon. But if you are going to be distributing wider, so you want your books and Barnes and Noble and all the other retail channels, you're going to be Publishing through IngramSpark, which is Ingram self publishing arm. And you can also order author copies from there where you're paying a wholesale Rate, you don't have to pay the full retail on those books. So the Ingrams, the distributor, so you can then distribute those books however you like. Julie, are there any things that. Anything that I missed there, I oversimplified it.

But yeah, one. One quick nuance. If you were only published with Amazon and you want to do book signings at bookstores where they're going to sell it, you have to have your own ISBN because they have to be able to. They can't sell with Amazon's free application. But you can buy them from Amazon. If you have your own ISBN, you can buy them and then sell them to the bookstore on consignment. If that bookstore does consignment, that is one option. But bookstores won't buy from Amazon. There's like the odd exception, but it's very rare because Amazon is most bookstores.

And yeah, they do not look at it as collaboration. That is competition.

All right, so I know lots of people are asking lots of questions about price and services, so I put those, those links in there. Sorry, we didn't get to that. It was one of those things where we just had tons of great stuff to share with you. But we do have to wrap. I do have a YouTube live on Tuesday at 2pm so any questions that did not get answered today, feel free to bring that to me on Tuesday at 2pm over at Book Launchers TV. I will get to them then. It is pretty much an open format. On Tuesday. I'm doing Q and A and frequently asked questions, so. So it's a great day for that. So join me at Book Launchers tv. Huge thanks to Sarah, Nicole and Angela for taking time on a Saturday to hang out with you. And an extra big thanks to all of you for joining us. This has been our best attended deep dive in quite a while, so it's fantastic. I know you want more marketing, so that means I'll be bringing Sarah and Nicole back, I'm sure again soon.

I'm gonna need a mug then. Angela.

I need a crown.

So we'll get it.

All right. We've got a month until the next deep dive for you to get that sorted, Angela.

All right, thank you, everyone.

Thank you so much. Take care. Have a fantastic day.

Bye bye.