Book Publishing Industry Update and Q&A

Hello, Hello. Happy Tuesday, my long lost friends. I saw some notes here that Caitlin is going to miss the live, but saying hello, and Mike is not feeling well. So I really, really hope that you recover and we see you again here soon. And Bill's also not going to be here live, but that's okay. All good. But Bonnie is going to be here. Can't wait for the live show. So hopefully you are here. This is my first time using our new streaming system. So Angela says hello. So I'm thinking we are good to go as far as sound and everything is working. So welcome and. Yeah, hello. It's been a beat since I was here, so today I didn't pick an official topic. I thought that I would do a little bit of an industry update and then answer questions. So, first of all, industry update, I mean, I was off for a little bit over three months, and it feels like AI took over the world. I'm like, all of a sudden, we're living in a Tom Cruise movie and AI is everywhere and doing everything. But. But I do. I thought that's kind of where we would start. We would kick it off talking a little bit about AI and the potential. The possibility is, I think, quite exciting because there's some things that AI can do that take some of the tactical grunt work out of being an author, but AI, I mean, AI can write your book for you. But what I'm excited about, you know, when you look at our hashtag no boring books approach and philosophy to writing a book, what I think is the standard that we should all be asking ourselves and holding ourselves to when you're writing is, could a bot have written what I just wrote? And if the answer is yes, then that means you need to go back and find a way to add value, to tell a story, to engage that reader so that you are writing something that AI can't write. And of course, AI isn't perfectly accurate. Anybody who's been playing around with it and tested its knowledge will quickly discover that AI is maybe 70%, 80%, but it is not accurate. I did a fun little video, which I think has been posted now, where I played with Jasper, and I got Jasper to write a video on the ABCs of writing a nonfiction book. It was like, write an outline, put the content on the page, and publish. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jasper, you missed a bit. I saw Efren is here. And Efren would say, yes, you. You've missed, like, you know, the gigantic process that is editing and fact checking. Right. Efren so anyways, but I do think so. So I think for as far as the standard goes, I think, you know, the more you inject your, your personal lens, your voice, your story into what you're writing, the more interesting it is. So it moves you further away from that boring book philosophy anyways. And what it does is make your book something that AI can't write because AI is only as good as the inputs. And right now it's just mostly scraping stuff off of the Internet and going from prompts. And if all you care about is putting your name on the COVID of a book, that's one thing, you know, AI can get you there. But if you care about having a book that people are going to read and love and engage and connect with you as a result of reading that book, well, that is now the standard, I would say, is look at what you just wrote. Could an AI system have written it? And if the answer is yes, let's go back and bring you back into that book. And I think that's kind of an exciting, exciting turn of events. And you know, AI also can help you with a lot of the research pieces and prompts to get you started. You know, I was just writing out videos to create some new content which by the way, if you have a question or an idea, go ahead and post it. I don't have a lot of prepared content for you today given that it's the first time I've seen you all in so long. But so I'm here for you really. I just, you know, prepped a few ideas to talk about to kick us off, but. But I am going to be doing a new video shoot on Friday. And so if you have some a topic or question that you want me to address, I'll either shoot it for that video shoot or my next one. So I welcome all those. But I was, you know, playing around with chat GPT and I was like, what, what should I do? My what videos should I do? And I got some ideas because I was starting to run low. I made notes from questions and comments that I had seen, but nothing else. So Mindful Eats is here. Hello. Hello. Lakeisha. Great to have you. Ben Preston, hello is in the house. And this is a good point too. AI doesn't have an opinion. Totally agree. AI is only as good as the input. So thank you. I do hope you. I do hope you're well. Ben. It's been a while. So great to, great to have you here. All right, so let's just see here. Looking at the notes to see what you guys are chatting about, and nothing there. This is. This is a cool little system. I like, I like. I like what I'm seeing. As far as the comments, it's neat. Okay, so the other thing I was going to mention with regards to AI is audiobooks. So I actually know somebody and I don't think they're publicly sharing that their book was created by AI narration, but they got it through this system. So it's published and available on Audible, it's selling on Amazon and it has some very good reviews. I don't think people can tell that it is AI narrated. So the exciting thing there is that will dramatically reduce our costs for audiobook production. And so that's a really good thing. I'm also kind of a little sad because I love narrating and I find myself as an author, I get a lot out of actually reading my book out loud. So I probably will still do it for my book that is coming out this year on book marketing. But I am going to do a test run of More Than Cash Flow, my first book, because I didn't produce an audiobook for that. And I'm going to play with this narration and see how it turns out. And the interesting thing about this one book that I read, it was a fix or not read, but I heard and my friends were all kind of, you know, sending it to me saying, hey, did you know that this is, you know, he. They know him. And they said, do you know that he used this one kind of narration system? And, and what he did was he used his voice. So he put. He gave this system input inputs from his own voice and. And then the, the AI system produced it. Now, I would of course be curious if it could handle a Canadian accent, because you know that if I am narrating a book, I am not going to pronounce it process. It is going to be process and it is not going to be pro progress. It is going to. So I wonder if the AI would capture that kind of nuance. But. But that the recording was incredible and you really could not tell that it was a robot doing it and not a human. So it's exciting. It's also going to mean that pretty much every book going forward and probably historically, with publishers behind them that are still selling, they're probably all going to very quickly get audio versions, which means the advantage of being a part of that, you know, having the, the smaller backlist that is going to likely erode a little bit if the cost of producing it is so much so much smaller. And then we've got Stella here. Hello. And Patrice. Welcome. And. And then Efren says, so glad you're back, by the way. Thank you. Thank you so much. I. It's good to be back. I don't want to go into a deep dive of where I've been and what I've been through, but the short version is that, you know, as you know, I am Canadian and I am living in the United States on a visa, and the visa expired last year and a lot of things, not a lot, just a couple of things went wrong. And it took a while to be allowed to work again because the visa expired and then the work authorization expired. And when the work authorization expired, that meant I couldn't talk to you guys, so. So I'm back now. All of that is sorted and. And I am fully, fully valid once again, which is great. So the software. I did not mention the name of the software on purpose, Ben, because I don't have permission to be sharing what this person did and how they did it. And the software is not publicly available yet. It's in beta. But as soon as all of this is public knowledge, I will absolutely share it. Okay. And Marna says, depends on the sample you give to the AI. And that's what I'm guessing. I haven't played with the audio side of AI at all yet, Marna. That was on my to do list. Prior to. It was actually something we triggered prior to my having to leave. And we haven't. We haven't touched the project until I was able to be back. So. So it's now back on the list. Okay, So I think that was it. Let me just check my notes. Oh, and then I put this in the book launchers.com newsletter, so hopefully you guys are getting it. If you're not, you can go to book launchers.com forward/newsletter or forward/seven steps. Angela will drop both those links for you. But I was talking about how the publisher Publishers Weekly finally had a. An update on. Well, not Publishers Weekly finally, but there was an update in Publishers Weekly and I'm just going to put the link to that article here for you as well. Just talking about the latest self publishing stats and it's been a while since we've had any sort of stats and updates. Here is the article. Hopefully that works. But yeah, I updated in the, in the launch letter on Monday. So yesterday, the challenge with being back, I've only been back a week officially, and there's a lot going on and I don't even really know what day it is. And I was at a conference, the nsa, the National Speakers Conference. I was at the conference and I just got back yesterday. So, so a lot going on. So forgive me that I don't know what day it is. I know it's March, that I could say for sure. Anyway, so in the, in the newsletter yesterday, I was talking about how we, we got some stats on the ISBNs that have been requested for self published books and a sense of the market of self published books now and for ebooks. Bookstat, I believe was the company that is kind of estimating that 51% of the ebook market is from self published books and self published book sales. And I see this continuing, I see the strength of the self published market continuing to grow. And the cool part is it's not a pie that is getting, you know, divvied up. The pie is getting bigger too. The pie of overall book sales has gotten bigger. And of course the number of books getting published has also gotten bigger. But it is a really, really exciting time to be an author because you have the choice. You can choose to, you know, keep your rights, to keep your royalties and to even get most of the distribution that a traditionally published author is getting. But then you have the freedom to, if you want to give away your book for free, you can. If you want to run ads to it, you are able to make an ROI on that versus if you're running ads to it, but the publisher is only paying you 80 cents per book sold, you better have a really, really compelling backend in order to make that work. So, so yeah, so it's really interesting. The nonfiction space is, is still growing as a self published space, but the dominance of self published books that are selling and selling in volumes and kind of creating that ebook market in particular is fiction. And you'll read some of that in that article. Yes. Thank you. So thank you Bonnie. I appreciate it. Bonnie said, sorry that you went through that and yeah, it was stressful but you know, sometimes that's what I look at everything as opportunities. That's really how I always, you know, I always tell people if you're having a really hard time, it's going to make a great chapter in your book. It's never particularly fun to learn lessons or to have setbacks, but I do believe if you are able to find the right view for all of these things, there is a way to learn and gain from everything that you go through. So if nothing else, I will have some interesting stories for future books. All right, so does anybody have questions? What do you guys want to chat about while you're writing? While you're thinking of that, let's give a couple prizes away. So let's see, what is the date today? We are the seventh. So let's go with the seventh comment. After Angela said that I'm perfect. So really, that is absolutely not true, but thank you. I think she just meant the sound was perfect. But anyway, it's funny. So from Angela, from there, let's go with the seventh comment. And that will be our first prize winner of the day. And then, you guys, I think I can actually share my screen with you now and show you my little spinning tool that I always use to. Let's see, what do I press here? Bear with me for one moment while I figure out if I can do this Share screen. Sharing screen is easiest with two monitors. It says, well, yeah, let's see. Use Chrome if you'd like to share audio with your screen. Well, I am not in Chrome. I am in Firefox. So that might be a risk that I shouldn't take today. But I will test this for you all for the next session and I will do it because I was going to show you my spinning screen with my prize winners because you all know that if you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win a copy of Self Publish and Succeed or some of our fabulous hashtag no boring books mugs or our oh so soft journal. So you get entered to win some of that wonderful stuff. Now I'm just going to head over and do the spinning thing for fear that I do something that messes the system up. But I'm going to test this between now and my next live and make sure that you guys can watch this random name picker as it spins around in a circle and gives us our first winner today. Post Poetry from the Heart. It's been a while, I think, since Poetry from the Heart won, but I believe they have everything we have to give. But let us know. You can email angelaeamaambookcaunchers.com and being international, I think your choices are going to be limited to a new journal or a copy of the book. And then while I'm here, let's just do another one. We're spinning again and still spinning. It's still spinning. It looks like Naomi Green. Congratulations. I think that's a new name, so I think you're a new winner. So what you need to do, Naomi, is you need to email teamoklaunchers.com. and that's Angela and I gotta find you guys again and let her know if you would like a copy of self publish and succeed or the mug or the journal. So congratulations and thank you for commenting on the day a video was released. All right, so let's see who our winners are now. Going down. Okay, book launchers. Oh, there we go. It should still work without dual monitors. Okay. But chrome, it might not have worked being that I'm in Firefox. Okay, so Efren, you were the seventh comment and lakeisha, you have been nominated from Efren to be the winner. So thank you, Efren, and congratulations. Lakisha. Yay. Thank you. So Efren says, does the dramatic increase in ISBNs sold mean more competition or is it more so a benefit for self publishers? I mean, ultimately I think it's going to mean, quote, unquote, more competition. But again, the pie, the pie is getting bigger. So number of books getting published is getting bigger. And so yes, that does mean there's going to be more competition, there's more books getting published. But also keep in mind you need an ISBN for every format. And with audiobook getting stronger, it's not. It is going to be more books, I believe. But it's also keeping in mind that more and more people are doing more formats. They are doing the print, they are doing the ebook, they are doing the audiobook. And then a lot of them are also doing hardcover soft cover because it's become easier to do both with all the print on demand systems. And then some folks are doing large print books as well. So you can use five ISBNs for a single book, which also means you have to buy more ISBNs, which in the past a lot of people were not doing all those formats. And of course hardcover wasn't as easy or affordable to produce. That's really something that's just come on in the last couple of years, in particular the last year now that KDP is doing them as well as Ingram. So I think that that's all kind of a factor at play. But I think ultimately more and more people are publishing books because it is getting easier. The technology is making it more and more affordable. The opportunity for everyone though, is to create a great book, and that is what is going to make you stand out. And I was listening to James Altucher's podcast and he was talking about how he has lost a few friends even because they've wanted to be on his podcast. And he reads their book and he doesn't think it's good enough. And so he doesn't have them on their show. And it's cost him some friendships. But he was saying, I don't want to read a book that has the same material in it. And he referenced Ryan Holiday and how Ryan Holiday is taking an old concept, stoicism, and making it new again by basically taking each of these principle principles of stoicism, or being a stoic. And he's sharing stories and examples of how this is applied to different situations and. And famous or semi famous people and how they were stoics and what they did that applied. And so it's not a book that's been written before. He's taking an old concept and making it new. And I mean, that's kind of the standard that I think we all want to look at is, is that AI is not going to do that, and AI isn't going to take an old concept and bring a new lens to it. It's kind of like Ben said, you know, AI doesn't have an opinion. So bringing that lens and your experience and your thoughts and your ideas together, I think is where you're really going to see opportunities in the book market versus the person who just writes the book on how to make money with AI. I mean, AI can write that book, but, you know, taking it to another level and being like, okay, how AI intersects with sports and telling stories of how AI has helped different sports teams and how they've analyzed the different data and, you know, all of those pieces and bringing those stories in, that is a cool way to kind of take it. And that's like another thing that James mentioned in that podcast was talking about the intersection of. And we saw that with. And I don't think I have her book here because I think I just gave it at. No, I don't have it. I've talked about it. Here before is Kathy Joseph's book, the Lightning Tamers, and how she's. She wrote a book about these stories of the people behind electricity. But what she did that hasn't been done before is she took science, like, the accurate science behind those discoveries and, and told the stories typically in the past. It's either scientifically accurate or it's a story. And she really spoke to the scientists who want the story, but also want to have the information presented accurately to show not just, like, how they made the discovery, but what the science behind that discovery was. So those are some really cool angles that I think are really important, and it'll. It'll help you create a book that people read and talk about. And I'll give you another kind of example of what just happened when I was at the nsa, which speaks to this need to write books that people read and love and how that's going to take time in your marketing. So I emphasize this a lot in the book that is eventually coming out. It's off to its own fact check now. The copy edit is done and. Or the first round of copy edit is done. We're sending it to the fact checker now. But I emphasized this repeatedly, is that book marketing is not about launch. I mean, yes, having a great launch is wonderful. It feels great, but really it's about having people read your book, tell others, and really spread the word, and using that book as a beautiful tool to get where you want to go in your brand, in your business, and beyond. And a perfect example is at the National Speakers Association. I had this woman come up to me early on the first day, and her name was Anne. What a wonderful woman. And she said, oh, my goodness, your book has saved me. She said, I was just about to hire a ghostwriter. And I read, and I was feeling a little uncertain. I picked your book off my shelf and I read it almost in one sitting. And she said that it saved her a large sum of money because as she read the book, she realized she was about to hire the ghostwriter to write a book that didn't have a hook. And she needed to know that before she hired the ghostwriter. So she was just so thrilled, and she loved on me and that book. And she went around that conference. And I tell you, half of the traffic at my booth for the three days of the conference was as a direct result of Ann telling everyone to go see me because my book was exceptional. Grab a copy, talk to her. She's going to help you. And so that's the power of a great book. An AI is not going to do that. All right, so let's see what you guys are talking about here. Okay, so Mindful Eats says, what was the podcast you just mentioned? I was that when I said I went on a bit of a roll there, James Altucher was the one I mentioned. I don't know what I think. It's just called the James Altucher Podcast. And it's a business. A business podcast. But what I like about his podcast, why I always listen to it, is because he reads the books of every person he's on there, sometimes twice. And he asks them the questions behind the story so he doesn't ask them to regurgitate what's in the book. He asks them kind of the why behind what they've said in the book. And I find that incredibly fascinating. I think he's. He's a really, really great interviewer. Okay. I don't know how to say your name. Daba Dosen, maybe. Dabi Doson. Have you heard anything about an AI voice during an audiobook of a completed novel, especially for those who may not be able to afford a professional voice actor? I was just talking about that earlier in the live stream, so you should go back. But I, I didn't. I didn't share the person. The book that I know was AI nor did I share the company that he used because I don't think any of it's public yet. I'm in a. I'm in a mastermind group where it was shared with me. Confidential. Confidential. Confidentially. There we go. And. But it's coming and it's coming fast. And I believe that it is going to be very soon that Findaway Voices and Audible change their policies and allow AI books. But they probably have to meet a certain standard so that they aren't getting bad reviews as a result. Because I know I certainly wouldn't want a L E X A or S I R a S I R I to be reading me a book. Their voices drive me bonkers. But this book that I listened to the sample of, I couldn't tell that it was an AI voice. Okay. Ben, do you think AI chat bots will have any plagiarism of copyright issues? Absolutely. It's already coming up. Sag, AFTRA and a couple other. I think that's the main union. But also Findaway Voices in a couple other places are already talking about how there's some plagiarism concerns. We're talking about how we're going to be screening it. And you know, as soon as you come up with a tool to screen for AI like some of the magazines, that's where I was, where the conversation went. So some of the magazines are screening their articles for AI because of the plagiarism concerns, because they're just scraping it off the Internet. And I joked, but it wasn't really a full joke, that the video that I had Jasper draft for me a while ago, it sounded like some of the points, I'm like, that was almost word for word what I would say. So it felt like some of it was coming straight from something I had already said or written. Um, and so there are some concerns there and some of these magazines are trying to screen for it. But as fast as they try to come up with these screening tools, the. The ways to get around it are coming up just as fast. So this is where, again, I think, you know, when it comes to books in particular, we really want to make sure that we're dotting our I's and crossing our T's, so to speak, and doing those fact checks. And if you have used AI for anything, you're making sure that you have sources and you've kind of gone back and double checked things. The image thing is really interesting because it, again, it comes to the inputs, and if the inputs belong to somebody else, but then it's a new creation of work, you know, it's going to be a little while before all of that gets sorted out. I have discomfort with it for. For those reasons, but, you know, it's coming. It. I shouldn't say it's coming. It's here. And it's going to be a matter of the kind of the legal system to sort it out. And there already are cases in play, so there'll be a little bit more clarity on that, I think, probably quite quickly as to what is okay and what AI generated images are okay and not copyright violations. I saw. Awesome story. Oh, thanks, Anne. Yes, thank you, Ann. She was an absolute delight. I was. It was glorious. She was lovely. Lakisha said you should start a podcast. You give great information, advice. Well, that's what Book Launchers TV is for. I. I thought about starting a podcast, but I got enough things to do and I like hanging out with you guys, so that's what we're going to do. But thank you. I appreciate it. And Victoria says I always appreciate when podcast hosts have clearly read my book. It is so rare. I have done so many podcast interviews and I would say 10% if that have read the book. And you're right, it is. It makes for a much better conversation when they have read the book. Antonio, welcome and congratulations on your newly completed book. Way to go. So excited for you. And Efren says AI must be regulated to enforce citations at a minimum. I agree. The bots and Mindful Eats said I asked Chat GPT as a joke. If I publish what it wrote for me, could I publish. If I. Yeah, if I published what I it wrote for me, could I publish it? And it said no. Yes, it is. Very clearly. You know, it's. Where does it get its information from? It's getting it from the Internet, which is copying it from other people. It is plagiarism. And again, that's why I've emphasized using it for research, for prompts, but not using it to actually be your content creator. There are some really cool. My friend Deb has sent me a couple of tools that are coming out now that are going to. You can drop your video in there. So say, like this live stream where I don't do anything with it. You know, I've started to do a lot more with reels, and, you know, I've done some shorts and things like that and it. But I don't do anything with these lives. And you can drop it in and the bot will actually create all that content from your video. I think that kind of use is really cool because it's your creation. And then the bot is going to take it and use it in, you know, put it into different formats, which we previously would have had to pay editors or other people to do for you. They can do it. So we'll see how that works. I would like it if you had a fan on the show with you. Oh, that would be cute, wouldn't it, Lakisha? We actually kind of do that a little bit when we have done some of our deep dive trainings where we've had some of our past authors on. Maybe not the same as having an Ann who was literally introducing everyone at the conference to. To me and to my booth and making sure they got a copy of my book. And she would come by and say, I got another person to give your book to. And it was great. So that would be really fun. Somebody who's. Who's that enthusiastic to have them on the show could be Efren. No pressure, Efren. But, you know, let's see. And Ben says my reels are amazing. Thank you, Ben. I'm so excited to have you here. I want. I want to bring you on and be like, hey, Ben, what's new? So Ben published a book, and I don't think I have your book here anymore. Let's see. I've given it away many times over and replenished it. But, Ben, you should drop your link in the chat for everyone and your YouTube channel too, because you've put a lot of effort into building your YouTube channel. Yeah, sorry, I don't have a copy of it anymore. I have many other books here, but not yours anymore. But yeah, so Ben wrote a book a little while ago and built a business around it and did. Has had a grand adventure all around that. So, yeah, anyways, so do drop your link. You have my full permission to do some promotion of your own here. Ben, please go ahead. Anybody else have questions? I do have one more prize to give away. And Antonio, same with you. His book is recently out and effort would love that. I think that would be fun. And Dabby Doson, again, sorry if I'm saying it wrong. I attended a writing class at my local library and I made sure to give a shout out to book Launchers to all the patrons. I sure hope they all subscribe. So thank you. I do, I do so, so appreciate that. Okay, so I'll do the next prize. Let's see, give me topic ideas for the next live stream or videos and. And I'll pick one from the list that I will do and that will be our prize winner. So no pressure. You guys are going to be my chat GPT here you guys are my live prompts for what I'm going to create next. So I'll give you a minute to create that while I just hang out and. And watch the comments come in. Oh, and Jacqueline's here. Harness your butterflies. Love your book. Ben did Ben dropped the link. Maybe I was waiting for his link to come in here. Ben is killing it. Yeah. Thank you. I don't see the link in there. Did it stop? Sometimes the links get blocked. So we might actually have to be the one to drop the link for your book. Yeah, sorry, I'm reading all of you People GPT. Yes, we're doing the people GPT to give me a topic. So I do have one topic idea from today and that is to have our fans on the show, which I think actually with Streamyard, I might actually even be able to kind of bring you into the presentation because it says invite. So. But I wouldn't want to do that to you guys on the spot without warning. So maybe we'll plan that for a future live stream because now that I'm getting all fancy and using Streamyard to stream to you all, I can share screen and we can maybe bring in some people to say hello. Okay. Would love some info on producing a great cover. Well, Elizabeth, there was a phenomenal deep dive training session that my team did while I was off and it was all about covers. And what I am doing this week when I do my live stream is I've taken two sections from that training and I'll be putting them into YouTube videos for you. So hopefully you're subscribed and you'll see it. Probably early April would be my guess, maybe late March, those videos will come out. So I'm taking some of it and then hopefully you're also Getting our newsletter because then you'll know when we're doing another deep dive and you won't miss it. Okay, great. Thank you for posting that, Angela. So this is Ben's book, harness your butterflies, the professionals Metamorphosis. I love how that link puts it all in there. Ran out of characters. It was too long. Okay, all good. Angela took care of it for you, Ben, so thank you. And then Victoria said, I'd like to hear more about how to capitalize on speaking opportunities. Yes, I think that that is a topic I should do again and do another one on. So thank you for that. I will put that down. And another topic is best email list tips and etiquette. Yes, that's always a good one. And oh, and Jacqueline actually pulled the link. Oh, yeah. And Ben, what's your YouTube? Share your YouTube, please, my friend. Okay, so that's good. I think. I think I definitely. I'm going to write down the capitalize on speaking opportunities. I did do a video on how to leverage speaking opportunities a while ago, but I think I can add to it, especially after this last national speakers association conference. So leverage speaking opportunities. You might be our winner, Victoria, for today. Here we go. Wrote that down. Tips on marketing your book, Lakisha. I have an entire book coming out on that, and I don't know if you. You've heard me talk about how my biggest problem with this book is the size. So I would need to narrow that down to a smaller subject. But yes, absolutely, I will continue to have more videos on tips on marketing your book. But yeah, it was. It was a real challenge and I'm still struggling a little bit because I feel like there's so much more I need to add to the book, but it is already a beast. And if Jacqueline is still on here, she's going, no, no more. It's too big. It's too big because it is over 80,000 words and that is a substantially substantial sized book. And my last. All my last books were kind of in that 62,000 to 66,000 word range. So this is quite a big book. But there will absolutely be more tips on marketing your book coming up. I promise that. And a topic. Here we go. From standard keeper marketing to international audience. I know you did a video on selling on the different international sites. Yeah, I just, I touched on this a little bit. You know, we're not specialists in marketing to international markets. You know, it's one thing I'm always, you know, very clear with people is that we focus on the North American market. And there are things to consider, which is what I touched on in that recent video. But we really haven't done a lot to market to international people. We focus on marketing in the North American market. And the good news that I have seen happen over and over again is if you are successful in the US in particular, the international markets tend to be much easier to reach. And then if you really want to go hard in a certain market, I highly recommend you get some local representation so that you can market specifically in that market. And that may be a publisher or that might just be having local publicity or other things that will help you in that market. Yeah, Jacqueline's going to break out the hedge clippers for this book. Oh, yeah. Good times. Good times. Okay, so I think I'm going to give it to. I liked all your topic ideas. I've made a lot of notes. So thank you, everyone. And I am going to. Sorry, I'm just seeing what else is coming in. Oh, there's more questions, but that's fine. So I am going to give the prize to Victoria. So thank you so much for your idea, Victoria. Email, Email. I'm staring at Jacqueline's name right now and Jacqueline is going, no, do not email me. Please email teamoklaunchers.com with the prize that you would like. Of course, we have self publish and Succeed, which I'm pretty sure you already have. And we probably have a mug, which I'm pretty sure you already have as well. So I don't know, Angela, if we have anything else that you could give or give? Victoria, I think we may have some residual T shirts, probably weird sizes. So mug, journal, or self publish and succeed are probably your choices. So let's see. I saw a question. Where did the question go? Oh, that's cool to know. Angela said if you click the three dots. Yeah, that's a good tip. So if you're looking for Ben's channel, if you click the three dots beside his name, that will open up a page to his channel. So you can check out Ben, subscribe, comment on his videos. That helps a lot for everybody that has a YouTube channel. Okay, let me scroll back down and see. I know I saw a question come in. One last question. Is there a book format that is underutilized due to cost or technical difficulties, but could be made easier with AI? Well, that's out of my. That's out of my realm of expertise because I don't exactly know how AI is going to help with book formatting just yet. There's already kind of AI elements in some of the tools that you're using or that you can use for layout, but I don't know if that it's interesting. I like that. I like where you're thinking with that, but I don't have the answer to that and I don't Jacqueline's on She may have seen something on that as well, but I'm not sure. Mary's suggestion how to grow your email list. We'll definitely be touching on that again. Probably a deep dive subject coming up soon too will be on emails again because we haven't talked about that as much lately. And will your greatly anticipated book be restricted to nonfiction or can be generalized? Nope. This is going to be nonfiction effrontery. I don't really know. After your fiction book comes out you can come on and you can share all of your best fiction tips to everyone. But yeah, I don't I have not done anything with publishing or marketing fiction books. There's certainly going to be some fundamental principles that I apply to thinking about book marketing that you can use in fiction. But some of the tactics that we're talking about, you know, once we get through that higher level piece and even some of the goals and the strategy that you're going to apply to achieve those goals, it's all going to be specific to non fiction and using your book, you know, either to sell the book or to get speaking engagements or consulting or something like that and make two volumes. Yeah, I, I'm. I think what I'm going to do is future books will drill down into certain concepts from the book versus having splitting it into two volumes. But it was starting to get close on there. Nick said, any suggestions on AI audiobook production? I talked about it a little bit at the beginning. I'm just going to start playing with that. So I don't have something specific to offer that is that I can say directly. But I have seen some really interesting things that I talked about at the beginning of the and Victoria said she's happy to give my prize to another participant. So usually she has all the gifts and enjoy them. So thank you Victoria. Usually we just have you nominate someone so that you pick somebody that's been commenting or participating. Team vision. Do you do just do cover design? No, we are full service self publishing so we help you write. We have writers and writing coaches. We also have a course that's starting on March 13th, self publish and Succeed live that I teach. Although I'm going to have to tap somebody to help me with a couple of the sessions but it's a 12 week course where it's a very small group and we work together to craft the hook of your book, we identify the reader and then we also are going to do writing time. So every week over the 12 weeks we have a little bit of training on different elements of writing your book and then the process and even marketing and then we have writing time. And our last class we had 100% of the paid participants because we had some, some of our full service clients also took part in the course. But everybody who paid to be participant in that course submitted their book for a content review. So we had a hundred percent success in getting manuscripts written in the 12 week. Plus they had a little bit of extra time after the class was over to get to the content edit delivery deadline. So yeah, so we'll help you with writing the book there. And then of course we have content editors, copy editors, fact checkers, proofreaders, and a whole fabulous team of marketing professionals that will be working with you while we're going through editing. And then when your book is coming out and launched, they'll be marketing you by pitching you to podcasts, live appearances, media associations and groups. And book awards. We just had some really exciting wins from Reader Views Book Awards. We had one of our authors, one bronze in the nonfiction category and her book also this was Emily Citrian's book, Make Me the Boss I think is her title. And she, she also won gold in the business book category. So some huge wins. I don't remember all that. We had other authors winning in their categories too, so that was huge. So we submit you to book awards. Libraries. We do, we're starting to do a lot more with libraries and bookstore distribution and bookstore catalog submissions as well. So we do a lot. Cover designs are a passion of ours, so we talk about them quite often. We have a brilliant in house designer that oversees everything. But no, we don't just do covers. Can you tell you touched on something I'm passionate and excited about? Ben, another question topic about substack or building a newsletter on a blog site like that. Okay, I can look into that. Thank you, Ben. I'll write that down. Okay. Marketing on Facebook is a good topic for me. Yeah. So that would be something I'd have to look for a guest expert on me and Facebook have I always have said I've done a great job of donating to Facebook. I have very rarely found techniques for myself that have been effective. We've had some authors do some things on Facebook that worked and I think I could get an expert or two to talk about that. So that's probably what I would do to cover that. So thank you for that. And looks like Lakeisha, you were. You were designated as the prize winner, so congratulations. And TikTok marketing. Do I just hold the novel in front of the camera while I dance my arthritic knees away? And Angela thinks that you should add a cute puppy or a kitten in there. I agree. I don't do anything on TikTok. That doesn't mean it's not a place that is a good place to be, especially fiction authors there. Some of them are doing incredibly well with TikTok. I only have so many hours, and I try to really focus on the places where I think my audience is going to find me and hang out, which is here and LinkedIn and a few other places. So that's where I spend my time. But I think you should do that. And next time you do it, after you've done it, come back here and share a link with all of us. So. So we can all watch and cheer you on. Okay. And Antonia said, I published 600 books in Colombia through a small printing company. Besides, I've been learning a lot, but it's been a wonderful, difficult journey. So, yes. Yay. Congratulations. Okay, so I think that's it for me. I do believe I hit every question, hopefully. And thank you so much for being here. I. We are back. Let me just check my calendar here. We're back in two weeks, and that is going to be March 21st. We'll be back here and I may pick one of the topics that you guys shared for the live or we'll talk about something else. But no matter what we're talking about, I can't wait to see you there. And in the meantime, there'll be some other great videos coming out. So make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turn the notifications on so you can comment and take home some of the fabulous prizes. All right, thanks, everybody. Take care.