Book Publishing Trends and Challenges Ahead for Authors

Hello. Happy Tuesday, my friends. It is a fabulous, fabulously hot day here in Las Vegas as we've actually cooled down a little bit from our excessive heat warning. But today we're talking about the trends and challenges that are hitting the publishing industry right now, and really, ultimately why. I think that the current economic challenges are going to create a tremendous opportunity for authors and people who want to invest in themselves and create, really position themselves as the expert, the person who can help people through this challenging time that we are in and facing ahead. So I kind of did a deep, a deep dive into a bunch of research and have a bunch of somewhat random facts that I will share. And then I'll wrap it all up for you at the end with five recommendations for what I really recommend authors do as they look at the landscape ahead in this year, 2022, but going ahead into 2023, 2024. So welcome. Say hello when you arrive. If you're watching the replay, you know the drill. Say replay. You can still play along. And of course, when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous hashtag, no boring book. Today I actually have our fabulous mug and fun fact for you. We're working on redoing the logo. Not an overhaul, but just a slight refresh update to go along with some website redesign work that we're doing. So these are all going to become, I think, collector's items in the future because once we redo the logo, we'll be updating all our swag. And then all of you folks who've already won everything, well, you're going to want to win again because you're going to want to get the new version of the swag. So should be, should be lots of fun. And it won't, it won't happen instantly. We will phase out the old logo and bring in the just slightly refreshed version of the logo. All right, awesome. So Angela's in the house. Hello. Thank you for being here, Angela. If you are joining in, do say hello. And I'm just going to dive right in and I'll come check on your comments in a minute. But one of the things that I always think of and, you know, as I watch the headlines and I see a lot of doom and gloom, of course, media headlines are almost always doom and gloom because they want you to click, they want to scare you so that you feel like you have to read what they're saying. And so that definitely impacts people as well. But ultimately, you know, we are facing an economic Challenge at the moment. You know, if you drive a gas. A gas car, then you definitely know what I'm talking about. But I always go back to the words somebody told me. I think both in Japanese and in Chinese, the word crisis actually breaks up into danger and opportunity, or I think it is danger and opportunity. And so I always think of that because, yes, there is danger when there's economic challenges, but there's also massive, massive opportunity. And maybe it's because I've been through this quite a few times now, but I don't want to say I love a good. I don't love a good challenge, but the reality is that I have seen the massive growth, the massive opportunity, the. The opportunity for people who aren't known right now to step in, create companies, create brands, and become that voice people need. I've seen it several times now, and so I find it a very exciting time whenever there's turmoil. And I kind of said this at this, you know, in 2020, when everything was changing too, I was like, this is an opportunity. And I'm saying that even louder and even stronger now. And maybe it's because I graduated in from my MBA in 2001 and. And all the job offers we expected to get that we were promised when we started our. Our MBAs in 99. You know, all the job offers and all the big paychecks that we were promised weren't there because of all of the crisis that was happening in 2001. And it was challenging, but ultimately I found myself taking a path I wouldn't have actually taken and probably ending up in a better situation, even though I found it frustrating to be graduating with an MBA and being offered a salary that was lower than the salary I had after only 18 months in a job with an undergrad degree. But it's just one of those things where usually the things that you end up doing as a result of a big challenge or crisis aren't necessarily the things you would have done if things were smooth sailing or booming. And that is often the gift in this whole situation. So it's exciting. And the other thing I got to warn you, though, is that the one thing that makes me the kind of person that is ready to embrace challenge is also because I'm a massive action taker, I'm not the kind of person to make a decision and then question it. I make a decision and then I go do it. And in fact, I do this so much that we have built an entire process and system in our company to protect my people, to protect my team from the fact that I can make a decision and then wreak havoc with people's lives as a result. But in challenging times, this is a gift. So. So being able to make a decision and take action and, you know, face anything that kind of looks scary and just go for it is. Is ultimately a big gift. So. So that's one thing I'll say is that I know that's not every personality type. And so while I'm here telling you to embrace the challenges ahead because it creates an opportunity, I know that's not everyone's comfort zone. But every time I have done it, I can promise you I have been rewarded. And it was challenging, it was stressful, it was hard at the time. But years later, I can tell you, every single time that something major has challenged me or the economic environment or whatever it is, the world around us has presented an incredible challenge. It's always, always ended up being the greatest gift. So you may not be the kind of person who can look adversity in the eye and charge straight at it, but if you can find the courage to do so, whether you publish a book or not, you know, I promise the moves that you make today, if you do that, will be something that you are grateful that you did. 24, 36, 48 months from now, now we're going to talk about books. So obviously, I think that is a great move. It is a tremendous opportunity. But there's also some challenges in the publishing industry at the moment, and as we go into the next 24, 36 months. So I'm going to be focusing on that as we chat today. And I'm going to share some trends that are already emerging and some things to watch out for. And then I'm going to share five tips that will help you kind of make the most of the opportunities ahead. So Rachel's in the house. Hello, Rachel. Great to have you here. Jeremy Butler. Great to have you here, too, Jillian. If I'm saying that right, please correct me if I'm not. Poetry from the heart. Always a pleasure. Jennifer Hawkins Beamer. Hello. From Texas. I don't know if you've been on a live stream before. Welcome, Bill. Always a pleasure to have you here. We Photogal and Michael W. Cook, thank you so much for joining in. And as always, we have prizes for participation. So I'm going to kick this off right now with a prize. We are in June. That's the sixth month. So, Angela, let's give the sixth commenter a prize today. And as I said, this is going to be like the vintage stuff. So mug, journal or a copy of Self Publish and Succeed are your choices today. So whoever number six was. One, two, three, four. I'm not counting. Yeah, so that would be Jennifer, I believe, but Angela will confirm for me. So that would be awesome because Jennifer, I think is one of our newcomers. So. But I'll leave that to Angela because counting while talking and broadcasting live is not my strength. So I'll leave that to Angela. Oh, she confirmed. Yay. I did it. Hey, me. All right, welcome, Jennifer, and congratulations. You get a prize. So you'll need to email Angela@teamoklaunchers.com with your mailing address as well as your choice. If you are outside of North America, then we will be sending you a copy of Self Publish and Succeed. The duties, the challenges, the, the everything with sending swag has just, you know, too big. But congratulations and welcome. Okay, so heading back, let's talk about a few trends. So an interesting trend that Jacqueline Kyle, who is our production manager here, she flagged this for me after we did our monthly marketing reports last month. And she kind of did a deep dive because she's been seeing, she's been flagging this for me for a while, but she's been seeing more and more of our clients that have audiobooks selling the most or selling almost half of their books in audio version, which is a trend we have never seen before. Typically in the past, we have seen audiobooks selling. You know, if somebody has an, a soft cover, an ebook and an audiobook, the audiobook in most markets would sell like 25%. The ebook would sell maybe 20, 25% and then print would be the rest. So the majority would be print. We're actually seeing, for certain clients, audio is the majority, the, the format that's selling the majority of copies. And so she, she was seeing this trend again as we were doing our monthly marketing reports for all of our clients that are in marketing. And she dove into the categories and dove into some research. And one of the things she noted for me was that audit. If you look at the business category on Amazon of the top 150, one of those 100 best selling books were audio versions. So in the business category, that was a, it's a really, really big thing to have an audiobook. And she did also note for me, keep in mind, this is her exact words. I'm just reading it straight from her note to me, keep in mind, technical topics like accounting and tax, taxation lean away from audiobooks, which also means the importance for other subtopics are leaning that much harder for that to be hitting so hard in the business category. So if you're writing a book that's detailed on taxation, detailed on accounting stuff, you're not going to see as many people buying audiobooks, which makes sense. I know for me, when I'm reading any kind of business book that has numbers in it, I need to see it more than I want to hear it because I need to process it, I need to sometimes take notes, I need to highlight. I have to get tactically involved in that book. But if I'm listening to a leadership book or a memoir story or even a self help, audiobook is a great version. And anecdotally I said that. Right. I've seen this in my entrepreneur groups as well. I've been at a couple of events lately where it's been really interesting. You're standing around, people start talking about a book and this just happened. I was at a lunch on Tuesday of last week and there was five of us and one of them mentioned a book and three people immediately pulled out their phone and opened up Audible and were like, what's, what's the name? And they downloaded it right on the spot, like no hesitation. And I saw this before at an event and it was a very interesting observation, you know, and same thing happened is anybody that was going to get the audiobook, they immediately pulled out their phone, opened up Audible and downloaded the book on the spot. That's something a you can't do with Amazon, the Amazon app on your phone. You know, if I want to buy an ebook on my phone, I can't do it. So the darn thing won't let you make that purchase. So you have to kind of remember to do it or go into the web app and try to do it that way, or not the web app, but go into the browser and do it that way. But yeah, so audiobook trend, really, really heavy. And this, we see this, we've seen this for a while. But if you've got a podcast where you do speaking, you can or you have an audience that is very business, entrepreneur, professional focus. So they're commuting, they're busy, they're always doing something else. Then you can almost expect the demand to be heavy in your audio version of your book. The next thing, next trend that I want to highlight is that print costs continue to be a real challenge and print costs are going up continuously. And yet the cost of a book is not going up. We're still seeing a print book. Again, this is average okay, so we're talking generically, categorically, things do get different. There's nuances in categories, but generally speaking, nonfiction books, print books are selling for an average of $15 a book for print, and yet costs are going up. So this is going to end up squeezing author royalties in the end. I mean, realistically, the, the print on demand companies, they're not going to eat it so that you make money. They're going to pass that loss or that decreased profit onto you. And we're already seeing that. And this is something I've talked about a little bit before and sorry to anybody who's new because some of these things I've talked about before with regards to self publish and Succeed, so Angela can drop the link down in the chat, but self publishand succeed.com is where I sell Self Publish and Succeed Direct. And so you can buy it there. You get some bonuses for purchasing it directly. In exchange for that, I get your contact information, you join my newsletter list and all of that. So I run Google Ads and YouTube ads to that page directly. We have a video sales letter performs really well. But Lulu Direct, which is who has been doing the fulfillment for us so that Angela doesn't have to go to the post office every time somebody buys a book, they have raised their price by 30%. And that increase in price combined with Shopify fees and PayPal fees, means that my book, which I'm currently selling for $18 on that page, is, is barely breaking even. And that doesn't account for any ad costs. So it's become completely cost prohibitive to sell it direct. And now we are looking at other providers, other print on demand companies and other ways to fulfill that book that way, because that's just gotten absolutely ridiculous. But that is a challenge. Going ahead is print costs are going up and services that used to work really well for things like that are not viable anymore. So we're, we're looking for alternatives. We have had some calls and we. The cool part is we're getting out to a lot of conferences and events and we're making a lot of, building a lot of relationships with other companies that are trying to fill these, these gaps and solve these problems. But yeah, so selling direct is still something I'm doing, but we're losing money on that at the moment, which isn't very fun. But we do have the, the, the benefit of, you know, building that relationship and, and you know, that person joining our community after they buy the book that way versus through Amazon. I never get the contact information and I am making a few dollars when they buy the book, or book Launchers is making a few dollars when they buy the book that way. But, but it's, we don't know that. We don't know who bought it. So. Okay, I'll come back to your comments in a second. I see they're racking up, but I want to touch on a couple more trends. And then, and then I'm going to kind of switch this over to the positive and be like, okay, here's how you can really, really rock the next couple of years. So one of the things I subscribe to which is invaluable, is called the Hot Sheet from Jane Friedman, and it's a publishing newsletter update that covers traditional self publishing. You know, all the companies, the service providers, conferences and all those things. And, and so twice a month she reports on kind of all the things going on. And there was an event held by Publishers Weekly in May that she put a great summary in. And these publishers, mostly the big five publishing houses, are forecasting a 10% decline in book sales this year. Now headline, of course, if you're reading the newspaper, is going to be book sales expected to be down 10%. And you know, they probably would even put a big number beside that with how many millions of books that means less being sold in the coming years versus what's been selling. What I want you to know is that a 10% decline year over year actually just puts book sales back to 2019, 2020, before things, you know, before everything changed, changed in 2020. So really it just means that people are going back to old patterns, which doesn't mean they're stopping reading. It doesn't mean it's a new trend, that books are going out of style and nobody's reading. All it means is that the lift that staying at home, homeschooling, seeking entertainment that doesn't have social, that isn't social, all of those things have just gone back to what they were before. So it's not dire in any stretch. It just means the boom time of the last couple of years is gone and we're back to normal. The final thing kind of trend piece I want to highlight is we're still facing supply chain issues. And it's not just self publishers. Many publishers are reporting that they're spending hours and hours dealing with production and printing issues and production issues where they didn't have to spend hours and hours every week dealing with these things. There's also been some funky things going on. Like on Amazon, there's ISBN numbers that start with, I think it was 979 that are being issued that the system can't handle. And so there's some weird things that are causing system glitches that are, you know, taking time to sort out. Both for us, but for publishers it's not just an indie publisher situation, but there are some, some things that just continue to take more time. So my message on that is the one that I've been saying for a while, especially with print shortages and supply chain challenges, is give yourself more time, especially in that pre launch period when your book is uploaded and you're trying to get your print book, print proof to make sure everything is okay and you want to make changes. People always, once you see your print proof, you're going to want to make changes. In many cases you want to limit the amount of changes you're making before your book is published because that window of time is becoming more and more precious where there could be an unexpected issue that pops up. And if you try to make changes or you do too much too close to your launch date, you could end up having to go live with a book that isn't quite right. So give yourself more time in the process so you can solve any issues and you know, if nothing comes up, great. You've just got a little bit of extra time in that pre launch period. But we've seen a lot of really interesting unexpected issues crop up. And it's not just us, it's a lot of it's system issues, production issues, supply chain issues. So. So time is your friend. All right, so I see lots of comments. So before I dive into taking advantage of the things ahead, I just want to check in with what is going on over here. Okay, let's see. So checking out what you guys are talking about lifelong learner adversity shows, shows its strength later. We always wonder how we made it through. But we did. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So much. Yes. Mike said I wasn't aware of the significance of a business book as audio. I'll keep number, keep numbers out of mine. Yeah, Again, this is just a new thing and it's something that we've been diving into because we're seeing it with our authors and then looking at it on Amazon and I started talking about it a little while ago because Amazon, often when you search a book title, many times you're going to see the audiobook is the first version they're showing you. And I've often guessed that that is because that's the version that's converting best or that they suspect is the version that's going to convert best to. To you. I don't know how tailored or customized it is. Conversely, it could also be that Amazon's trying to push audiobooks more, and so they're showing you the audiobook version first. Just knowing that Amazon is an algorithm machine, the one thing I have been saying is that it's not an accident, right? It's not an accident that the first version you're being presented with for a lot of books is that audiobook version. If you don't have that version, you are missing out on that, that piece. But in some categories, it's probably not a huge difference maker if you don't have that audio version. But we are seeing in the business category in particular, the very, very strong importance of having that audiobook, making that investment in that. In that version for your book. Alyssa asks, and I'll ask, answer this question. And normally Angela collects all the questions for me at the end. But this is. Since I'm talking about audiobook anyways, I'll answer it. How much should you pay to create an audio book for Audible? It's an interesting question. So how much should you pay? It depends. If you want to try to do it all yourself, it is possible, but Audible has very particular high standards. And so I do recommend that you, if you can, narrate the book yourself, if you can, do it in a studio, if you can't, you can do it at home. I've done both. I've done it at home and I've done it in the studio. I can tell you the studio was a much more seamless, pleasant, efficient experience than doing it at home. But both worked. But in both cases I had an engineer who. An audiobook editor. Sorry, not an engineer in the studio. I had an engineer on site helping me made it. That's what made it more efficient. But in both cases, I had somebody produce, edit and master the files for Audible Standards. And that at Book launchers, we charge 3,500 for that. If you work with other companies, I've seen it as high as $6,000. So it really varies. And you can hire editors, I think. I think a standard rate is like 300 to $400 per finished minute. I think is the number that comes finished hour. I should say not minute, but off the top of my head, I can't remember. But I do have videos on audiobooks and how much it costs. So you could check that out on YouTube and get the actual numbers right there. It does. Again, it varies But I would highly recommend, unless you are really proficient at editing audio, I would highly recommend working with an editor and even somebody to coach you, give you some voice coaching before you do the narration. But I do recommend most nonfiction authors narrate their own book. Fiction is a different game. You want to have some voice acting and bring some life into your stories. But as the author of a nonfiction book, you can bring your emotion and your enthusiasm to your own story, usually. So there you go. All right, so let's dive back in. I see Robert, hopefully I'm saying that right. Hello. Welcome. Good to have you here, too. And Kimini, it's not that the ISBN with 979 is bad. There's just a system glitch. And if I have time at the end, I'll actually pull up the summary on the issue with that and I'll talk about it in a little bit more detail. It's not a. It's not bad. It's just. There's just like a system glitch thing. And. And so it's posing some challenges. And so I'll touch on that at the end. So, Angela, if you can remind me. Yeah. And. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my. Thanks. I do have to end at exactly quarter two today, so usually I can go straight to the top of the hour, but I have a meeting that is in person today, so I have to be ready for that. But thankfully it's here at my office, so I don't have to drive anywhere. But I'm hosting. So I do have to close out a little early, but I will try to get to all these questions. Okay, so what does this mean for authors, and where are the opportunities? Well, ultimately, the big thing I hope you're taking away from this is that whenever there's challenges, it's like. It's like a clearing. Right. It's like if you imagine the earth is shaking and it's clearing out all the dust and all the dirt and kind of all the extra stuff, and. And you're going to see what's underneath. That's kind of how I view this. Right. Like, a lot of us have relatively unknown names, you know, myself included. And what happens in an economic crisis or in a challenging time is the earth is shaking. It's shaking off the dust that kind of kept us hidden before. And it's giving us the opportunity to really burst through whatever's left and stand out. And that's because, you know, companies go out of business and things change and markets shift, and that's what creates this opportunity. And that's why I say, like, you have to be able to take action and face adversity and be willing to stand out and have a voice. You have to be willing to say stuff that other people aren't saying. You know, that maybe they're keeping quiet or they're afraid or whatever it is. But you do have to be willing to stand out, step up and take action. But if you do, things are loose and people are looking for those emerging voices and those, those other things and other solutions to new problems, but also just a different way to tackle something that's coming up for them. So look at your industry. Number one is, look at your industry. Where do you have expertise and how do you help people in a tough time? And I am not an expert in all the industries and all the trends that are happening all around. So you just have to look at your own industry and what problems do you see coming up and how can you help people solve them? I mean, right now, inflation is a massive challenge. This is a headline I'm seeing everywhere. You know, gas prices are just going crazy and grocery prices, the stock market volatility is bonkers. Interest rates are climbing. The forecast for where interest rates are going is pretty big. And so looking at those things, like, do you have a way to help people take advantage of this or mitigate their costs or solve a problem that people are facing? And again, this is where you got to know your reader, your market, your audience, your client. But what are they facing and what's the opportunity or how can you help them through this? Medical costs, those keep going up. We have a great book, actually, Angela, if you can drop a link to Virgie's book Crush Medical Debt. I mean, and there's a couple books that we have that aren't out yet, I can't talk about, but there's some really cool stuff that I'm like, oh, my goodness, people are going to need this Instagram such a big way. They already do. You know, if you are in the States, you know what a challenge medical debt is. And this book is incredible. Anybody? I think, you know, everybody on my team is like, oh, I got some great tips for how to handle medical bills and save money on them, let alone, you know, if you're under massive debt, if something major happens. So definitely check that book out. But also the other thing to remember is that, you know, and we've seen this already, like Tesla, Disney, I can't even remember all the companies, but major companies are getting out ahead of the challenges ahead. And they're doing layoffs. And so whenever there's layoffs, you know, there's always a lot of people who decide not to try to find a new job. And they just create something. They start their own small business. They create a freelancing job. And so if you help those kind of people create businesses, create, create, you know, become a freelancer, make, you know, the gig economy really came out of the 2008 crisis, right? So what can you do? What's the trend that's going to emerge now? And what can you do to help people through this? Mental health is always a challenge in these times. Debt, you know, those are just some of the things, right? And then you look at some of the other trends that are already happening. Crypto, electric vehicles, solar power, anything that doesn't need gas, any. So look, in your industry, you're the expert at your industry. Look at your audience, look at your reader and really try to figure out how you can help them. And get specific. Again, I say this all the time, but I can't emphasize it enough that being specific is so, so important to helping stand out in a market. Because if you're trying to be that general answer to a general problem, it's hard to stand out in that noise. But if you are that specific person solving a very, very, very specific problem for somebody, that is going to be a solution that people want to tell other people about. They're going to want to, you know, get to know you, read your books, get your courses, you know, hear you talk, get your consulting, all those things. I had an example the other day, somebody. He looks at thumbnails. That's his entire business is he looks at YouTube thumbnails and does thumbnail consultations and talks about thumbnails. And that's all he does. And I paid him for a thumbnail consult, and it was several hundred dollars and it was very valuable because that's all he does all day long, is look at thumbnails, analyze trends and teach people on that. It's a very specific thing, but it's very valuable to be the person who does this one thing. Right? All right, Number two is book sales are going down. I know you're. Now you're going, what? I thought we were talking about opportunities, but book sales are going down, so make your book discoverable. It's always been important to be discovered, but it's going to be even more important when there's less books being sold and there's a really great report. If you're into Diving into data and information. Angela, you can grab the link that I just posted in the Strategy Channel today with that Ingram content report. It's huge. It's a really long report, but lots of great Data. They analyze 150,000 books over the course of three years on Amazon. But one of the things they emphasize, I think it's like 0.9. And I'm going off memory, sorry, but I think it's 0.9 in their chart is that metadata. Metadata is so important. And I had somebody talking to me about working with us the other day, and they're like, I don't understand why, like, keywords and all this stuff you're talking about, why it's so important. Why do I need to pay you guys to do this stuff? And I said, well, you don't have to pay us, but you do need to get it done because it's so important to discoverability. And they found that, you know, having a great cover image included that look inside preview, having a great book description that's 175 words long and well formatted with a great headline that's 350 characters or less, and using HTML, these were all things that were vital to the success of your book page. And so that was one of the things, is making sure your metadata is on point, making sure that sales page is as refined and polished as it possibly could be. All right, let's take a break and do some prizes for people who commented on the videos in the last, actually, four weeks, because I didn't do it two weeks ago. And let me just go over to my random name picker, where I have everybody in there from the last four weeks, and let me hit Pick a random name. So, of course, if you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous hashtag no boringbook swag. And our first winner today is Caitlin Duncan. So I don't know if Caitlin is live today or not, but hopefully she catches the replay and she can email us@teamoklaunchers.com and. And let us know if you want our oh so soft journal, our hashtag, no boring books mug or a copy of Self publish and succeed. So congratulations, Caitlin. Thank you for your comments, likes and of course, shares. And our second winner of the day is SD Houston. So same thing. I'll just go. Ditto. All right, Congratulations, sd. Thank you so much. Okay, and let me go back to you guys now, and Michael Cook is saying all the SEO stuff is critical. It is so important. And I see some Questions, which I will get to in a moment, and I think that's it. So, okay, so if you've got questions, make sure you put them in there. I have 10 more minutes, so I'm going to give you guys the last couple of tips, and then I will power through whatever questions that you have for me today. Okay, now, tip number three. Can you guess any guesses? Let's make this our next prize. What do you think tip number three is going to be? I've already talked about it several times. I'm going to tell you that this is something that you should do. What do you think? Any guesses? I'll give you guys a sec to guess, and that'll be my prize. See if anybody can guess what tip number three is. I'll start giving hints in a second. We've talked about it several times. I have said that this format is trending. Now. That's going to be a race of who can type faster because that's going to be a giveaway. Right. I'm telling you to create what version of your book. There we go. Rachel, congratulations. You are the winner. Yes. Create an audio version of your book. If you can at all afford to do so. I highly recommend you get your book onto Audible if you are in the business category in particular, but in any nonfiction category now, especially if you have any sort of audience that is audio, like a podcasting audience or speaking audience, I highly, highly recommend to create an audiobook. So congratulations, Rachel, and thank you to everyone else who played along. Lots of you got the right answer as I led you along to that answer. Okay, tip four is build a funnel. With a community funnel just being your platform, but in particular your email audience. But, you know, basically build that community and. And plan to monetize your book outside of just making money from book sales. Again, you're seeing the trend is going to be you're going to make less money per book sold and we're going to see a decline in overall book sales. That doesn't mean books aren't going to be the thing that you can still use to get speaking engagements, media attention, consulting opportunities, clients, and leads. It still is a magnificent, a magnificent thing to position yourself as an expert and leverage into so many other income streams. And it is really only going to work extremely well for you. If you are building a community, your riches are likely not going to come from those book sales. So you want to use that book to create that community, create that platform, and diversify into other streams of income, whether it be turning the Book into a course, into a talk, into a consulting stream, you know, feeding it into clients, into your business, or all of the above. I highly, highly recommend you think through the funnel. The book might be one of the leads into that funnel as it is at Book Launchers, but that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal for Book Launchers is in book sales. The ultimate goal is I have impact. I help all of you whether you're working with book launchers or not. And the right people who Book launchers can help and is a perfect fit to help. But step forward after reading the book, after joining us on these live streams, after joining us on our Deep Dive, which by the way, is on Saturday, I have to, I have to mention that. So, Jacqueline, sorry, I keep wanting to call you Jacqueline today. Angela, if you can put the Deep Dive link in the chat right now and I'll talk about that in a minute. But all of those things, you know, the right people will step forward and work with us is, you know, the ultimate goal. But I want to help people along the way too, and build a phenomenal community with great folks like you that join us when we have content to share. Number five. Ultimately, this is my pep talk to you, but the missing piece is always action. That's my own saying. I've been saying that for since 2008 when I quit my job and went full time into real estate investing and starting a real estate training and education company. I have epically great timing for when to go all in on things. Actually, 2009, 2010 were really phenomenal years to buy property. The prices were low and it was challenging to get capital. But once we figured out the capital sources, you know, it was a really, really great time for us to have bought so much property. But it was a challenge. And that's kind of why I say, like, the missing piece is always action. It was tough to be going all in on real estate when the market was crashing and everybody was exiting. And, you know, there was challenges all around us, but it was also the greatest gift and the greatest thing we could have done in many ways. So for you, in the publishing market right now, expect to sell fewer books and for it to be harder to sell them and plan accordingly, whether that means you're going to work harder, you're going to dig deeper to make your message as sticky as possible, you're going to reach out to more people to find your ideal audience, or you're going to work that much harder to create the funnel around your book. Basically, my recommendation is just not to think you're going to put your book on Amazon and have it sell. That's never been. Well, maybe not never, but that has not been the case in a long, long time. You have to work to sell it and you can expect that it's going to take a little bit more in the coming years and it's going to take a little bit more to make a profit and make this a positive ROI for you. But what I do know is that I haven't met an author who has done their book well that regrets it in any way. And I know that's going to be the case. And I also know that if you think this through and you think through the opportunities and the trends ahead, that stepping up, whether you write a book or you do something else to have an impact and to help people in the next 24, 36 months, that is something that is going to have tremendous, tremendous return financially, emotionally, fulfillment wise, impact wise for you in the coming years ahead. So I'm not saying throw caution to the wind, but I am saying there's an opportunity in this shakeup in the times ahead and you can emerge stronger and more impactful and helping others through this time and into the next boom which is coming right every, you know, it's a cycle. It's been a cycle forever. We're going to see, you know, harder times followed by great times and you know, taking action now positions you for those great times. So those are my tips. I have five minutes for questions. Plus I want to tell you about the deep dive that is happening on Saturday because I'm really excited about the deep dive. We have four of our authors, I believe, joining us and they will be giving you the raw, the real, the, the things that have gone well, the challenges, you know, everything. I don't script it. I let them share whatever they want to share with you. And it is always, always a viewer favorite. And we have some really, really cool topics that these authors are really going to be able to share a lot on. We have one author who sells a ton of books in bulk and she's also done traditional and self published so she can talk to both. We have somebody who is an expert on giving presentations so he'll talk about that specific to his book but also probably give you some presentation tips. We have another author who's gone through the book proposal process as well as she sold a lot of books. And then we have another author couple who can talk about narration, audiobook narration, selling audiobooks, selling books in general. So it's Going to be a fantastic deep dive session on Saturday at 10am it's two hours long, so please, please join us. We probably, probably. I'm not promising. If the authors give the approval afterwards, we will post the replay in the summer. But we don't always post deep dive replays. But if the authors agree to it, I will post that replay probably in July. All right, questions? Angela, we got. Oh yeah, I'll do the reminder on the ISBN. Let me pull that up right now. And then again, I'm sorry to have to rush away from all you fabulous folks today, but I have people that are in the waiting room waiting for me. Okay, so the ISBN thing, let me pull that up right here. Okay, so gotta find. I found the article. I'm just trying to find the point that summarizes it for me to make it easy. Okay, let's see. 9, 9, 7, 9. Okay. In the mid 2000s, the publishing industry transitioned from a 10 digit ISBN number to a 13 digit ISBN number with all 13 digit ISBNs using the prefix of 978. As part of that transition, it remained possible to convert a 13 digit ISBN to a 10 digit and vice versa. However, if you buy ISBNs today, they likely start with 979. And because all of the 978s have been exhausted, but the 979 prefix does not have an equivalent 10 digit ISBN. Which means only a 13 digit ISBN can be used to identify a 979 ISBN book. Why does this matter? Well, Amazon still uses the 10 digit ISBN to order books from Ingram. So anybody that is selling books via Ingram has a problem. And that's why I'm saying it's not a bad thing. They will sort this out. This is not a problem that's going away, but we've seen this having some glitches and it's kind of like I don't know how to. It's causing hiccups. That's probably the best way to explain that. So that's that situation on the ISBN. So there's no action you can take at this point because that's what they're selling, that's what you're getting. They will sort it out. But again, this is where giving yourself time I think is really important because the hiccups take a little bit to sort out, but they are getting sorted. Okay, Angela, any other. Okay, question one. I'm working on someone else's book launch. Do you have suggestions from today? I mean, that's really general, but I do have a couple of YouTube videos. One is on book launch strategies. There's four book launch strategies so you can look at those and Angela is going to frantically try to find these links but you can search it for book launch strategies. There's also videos on planning your book launch and pre sales. So those are things I would look at for videos and you can go through the details on there. Let's see. The price of paper is up with my book which relies on colorful photos. The paper had to be better quality which is way more money. Yeah we photo gal I feel for anybody trying to print in color these days is getting so cost prohibitive. Amazon have you used Amazon's acx? Yes, ACX is what we use to upload to Audible for almost everybody. We do also use Findaway Voices but you know, if you are wanting to make more money on every book sold and your audience is primarily in North America, it makes the most sense to be with acx. We haven't used any of their narrators. We have somebody who will source a narrator for clients if necessary. But I do like Findaway Voices has some really good rev shares with narrators and I think Authors Republic has also gone down that road. But ACX does have an they do let you out of your exclusive agreements in some cases where you can have a buyout option if you have their narrator. But I don't have experience working with ACX's narrators. Robette, do you think that audiobooks will replace the hard and softback books or is that just another option? I don't think that they will be replaced. There is still going to be a market for that physical book. Certain books I still buy in print because I want to have them. I like to feel them. And this is something I hear over and over, that tactical feeling of a book. Maybe someday we will only have digital books, but I think we're a long ways away from that. We still see print books consistently outselling ebooks, and so they're still stronger than ebooks. We're just seeing in some categories audiobooks are becoming strong and some people still buy that print or that ebook and that audiobook together because they like that whisper sync. They like to drive and listen to the book and get home and switch over to that ebook. And then question 4 Do you think that having an audiobook sales will increase for a new writer? I'm assuming that you can connect with your reader on a deeper, deeper level. Audio, I mean, I've talked about this many times. Audio is that voice in the head that creates trust. If you can be. And that's why I'm a big fan of nonfiction books being narrated by the author. Because your voice in somebody's head creates an intimacy, a deep level of trust and connection that you won't get in other ways. And so I think it's very powerful, and it's a new way to be discovered. Like I said, audio is being shown first by Amazon. They're pushing it. This is what people are looking for. In many cases, there still are. You know, there's still not a very big backlist on audiobooks compared to ebooks and. And print books. So it is still easier to be discovered as an audiobook. But again, it's an investment. And it's hard. Even with all the things I've said, it's still hard to get a straight ROI on just an audiobook because, you know, you're making maybe four bucks a copy on your audiobook. It's going to cost you 3,500, $4,000. You have to sell a thousand audiobooks for that to be a direct roi. Again, why I emphasize focusing on a bigger picture with your book and having it be an important tool that you're using to create a lot of income, a diversified income in other ways, and your audiobook is just another tool you're using to be discovered. I don't know if I have time for the rest of these questions. I'm sorry. Yellow, orange. Yeah, I don't know what that is. Yellow, orange, anchored or. Oh, yellow, orange, red. That's what that says. I was told that my lack of a social platform was a problem for traditional publishers. Yes, absolutely. Publishers want platform. That's how you get a book deal. In, like, 95% of the cases, they see a direct channel to sell books. Can your service compensate for that lack? We're still going to recommend you build a platform, but we are set up to help you build that platform. We have. We will pitch you to podcasts, live appearances, speaking engagements, media. We have a team that will guide you through building your newsletter funnel. Building that funnel, but it takes time. There's no magic button. Like, working with us doesn't go boom all of a sudden. We're going to help you sell thousands and thousands of books. It is still going to be a process. It's still going to be a journey. There's still effort involved. But it's nice to have a team surrounding you, lifting you up, carrying you, giving you guidance and giving you support. And I have to end there. I'm sorry, my friends. It has been a blast thank you so much for your engagement today. Angela, after this is posted, if you can put that last question or Michael, if you want to come back and post the comment and if anybody else is here, then that would be great. You can comment after the fact and I will respond after the live is over and I'll come back tomorrow and take care of you all. Okay. So any comments I missed, let me know and I will answer tomorrow. I hope to see you on Saturday, 10am deep dive, you register book launchers.com deep dive. And we'll see you back here again in two weeks for our final livestream before our July summer break. All right. Take care, everybody. Thank you.