Book Publishing Mistakes to Avoid in 2024

Do you like to make mistakes? It's not fun, but lucky for you I am a professional mistake maker and I like to help others avoid the rocky roads I travel on. So if you want to avoid some big mistakes with your author journey in 2024, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Jelita Book Broad. I'm founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. It. If you want to save time and not watch this video and not make a bunch of mistakes, just hire us. We'll save you the pain you'll feel if you make one of these mistakes. Just go ahead bookclaunchoise.com application and schedule a call with us. It's that easy. But of course this wouldn't be a good video worthy of your attention, your comment below, or your subscribe. So I'm not stopping there. I'll tell you the mistakes to avoid. The first mistake to avoid in 2024 is focusing on a periodical bestseller list and a self published author. My book Self Promote and Succeed was made out of date twice in very short time period. Once right before I launched so I quickly updated it and then right after launch, thanks to these lists being so dang flaky, it got out to update again. First the USA Today list was gone, then it came back. So we updated the book and then we launched the book and the Wall Street Journal list just sort of faded away. And meanwhile the USA Today list is sketchy with things like flashcards showing up on the list. Whoa. And we've talked about it here before, but the New York Times Bestseller List is a curated list that almost never puts on books that aren't published by a big publisher, let alone a self published book. So why waste time, money and energy pursuing these lists now? You're so much better off putting your energy into your bigger picture goals. See my video on creating an Alex Hormozy launch if you want some inspiration and ideas of what I'm talking about here. The second mistake is to not factor FaceTime networking into your plans for book marketing in the next 12 months. Many authors are introverts. Me too. And you know I like to keep the walls warm at events myself. Unless I befriend an extrovert who drags me around to meet people. But there is absolutely no replacing in person networking for creating opportunities for you and your book. I can share all my own examples, but let me share one from YouTube bestie and book launchers author Efren Delgado. He's the author of the opposite is True and this guy has been working the in person events. He took time, money and energy out of his busy schedule to fly to Ohio for the book Thinkers eventually and the Lewis Howes event that followed it. From that, he booked, I don't even know, four podcast interviews on pretty substantial podcasts that are a great fit for him and his book. He networked with people and got a bunch of people to write reviews too. Then I saw him at the 20 books to 50k event where he landed an interview on a rather large author podcast and sold a bunch of books in the process. He is working hard, but the reason that what he's doing is working is well, partly because he hired book launchers to make his book look awesome, but it's really how smart he is. He's very savvy and he's put the time and effort and energy in to meet people so he can make progress and build momentum as an author. So get out there, pick a couple of events that you're interested in and go and meet people. If you're a speaker, check out nsa, the National Speakers Association. If you're a podcaster, check out PodFest or Podcast Movement. If you own a business, consider EO or Speakeasy. Get active locally and at major national events and it is a game changer. 3. Realize that just because your book is written and some friends have told you it's good, that doesn't mean it's ready to publish. Way too many authors come to us after struggling to finish their book for a year or two. They've had a couple of people read the book and those people said it was good. So the authors think it should be ready to launch in a couple of months. Now you can publish it that quickly if you don't care about getting something that's great and well positioned for success in the market. Sometimes speed really is all that matters to an author, and that is one way to do it. That's not our way. We want to produce a book that is as good or better than a traditionally published book. And traditionally published books aren't editing, designing, launching the book in 60 days because it takes time to have professional editors revise and refine the book. So it will be great. If you want a book people are reading 5, 10, or 15 years from now, you need to invest time, energy and money into making it great and then positioning it for success. And realistically, if you haven't had a professional editor, specifically a developmental or content editor, then a copy editor go through it, it probably does need at least two months of editing before you can design and lay it out. More likely three or four months, but that's okay. Then you want time to secure reviews, plan your launch and get that book distributed so you can succeed. You're not years away, but you're also not a few months away just because you have a first draft done and rushing it will feel, well, rushed and it will not have the launch you will likely want it to have. Mistake 4 Not having a clear plan about what your book is going to do for you. So see the video I did on why my second book didn't sell. The book had some problems, but one of the biggest ones is something I can't fix with a title or a cover change. It had a positioning problem because I did not have a clear goal of what I wanted to use the book for. I was transitioning and kind of looking for the next thing. I found that thankfully hello Book Launchers. My beloved company with an awesome team and a great crew of clients. But the new brand you'd is great content with no clear audience and no clear objective. Don't do that. Have a book that is set up to create success for you, understand who you want the book to reach and why, and just think strategically about the whole thing. How will you get that into the hands of the reader and what do you want them to do when it does get in their hand? Do you want them to hire you? Get your email newsletter, buy more books, bring you in as a speaker, buy your product, write your review about your book and tell someone else. Have a plan. Again, the Alex Hormozi launch was brilliantly executed example of someone with a really long range plan using a book to get there. Mistake 5 this was on my list last year, but oh boy oh boy. This has never been more true than it is in 2024 with the Amazon issues and so much more. And that is expecting the process to go smoothly and not factoring hiccups into your timeline. We encounter this with clients sometimes who push to hit a specific launch date. We'll do it, but we warn them that there could be potential repercussions. And sure enough, what books do you think are the ones that encounter those never before seen kickback errors? Oh yeah, it's always the ones that pushed hard to hit a date and we work 247 to hit that date and then wow, we hit some new snag. Oh it's fun, isn't it? Well, ultimately go into it with the mindset that setbacks are often gifts and that are in ugly wrapping paper. I believe they are all setups, not setbacks. But not every author is ready to roll with the punches. But I recommend you plan to roll with the punches and find that setup in any setback. Whether it's the beta, reader feedback, the title feedback, publishing hiccups, Amazon, removing reviews post launch, getting bad reviews, or something not hitting the way you'd hoped. There's always a lesson to be learned and you can look at it that way or you can cry. Or do both. All right, mistake number six not going direct or having a direct sales plan for your author business. This is taking it a step beyond not being exclusive to Amazon, which this is also part of that. But this is focusing on building a direct relationship to your readers. This is also a step beyond building a platform. But if you're not starting with a great reader magnet and trying to build your platform with an email list, that is in fact step one before you build the direct sales funnel. Once you have that reader magnet in place, I highly recommend you set up some sort of a direct sales funnel for your book. This could look like self publishandsucceed.com, you can check this out where I sell Self Publish and Succeed Direct. It could be something like my audiobook, which I give away, but you could set up something like this to sell your audiobook as well. You can check that out at Self Promote and Succeed Audio, or maybe it's a Shopify store or just a way you sell your ebook on your website. But ultimately, the value and power of selling direct has never been more important. The distributors and retailers are squeezing the margins on authors and you never find out exactly what work to create the sales you're having. Selling direct gives you decision making data, customer information, and the ability to build a relationship with the people who buy your book. Want more on direct? We're going deep that in 2024, so make sure you are subscribed to the channel with notifications on subscribe. You catch all that? Mistake number seven not doing an audiobook. This is another repeat from last year for the majority of nonfiction books these days. Audiobooks are still the fastest growing format of books in some categories. For some books we have, we're seeing 50 or 40% of sales in audiobook. Readers, or rather listeners are on the move and wanting your content in their ears. Now access and distribution is also growing, and I've talked about this a lot at Book Launchers tv, but Spotify has come on strong. Also, Synthetic voice is going to lower the cost of production and there are a lot of readers who aren't going to consume your book without being able to listen to it. So not publishing an audiobook in 2024 is a mistake unless your book is technical, which doesn't make for a great audiobook. But if it's not technical, you're excluding a big chunk of your audience because they're not sitting down to read, but they would have listened to it. So I highly recommend you go wide with your audiobook and and don't give too much power to audible to squeeze authors more than they already have, but definitely consider producing an audiobook now. This is the video right here on the Alex Hormozi launch. Go watch this. It's going to be a great watch for thinking about your strategy. And this video is on the Reasons My Second Book Didn't Sell. Wanna know something funny? It's titled the five Reasons why My Book Didn't Sell that video. But go watch it and tell me. Cause I think there's actually only four reasons I'll never claim to be perfect. So go ahead, head on over, tell me if you find five reasons and post in the comments below. So click on over to these videos, watch them and say hello.