California Self Publishing Retreat, Book Review & More - LIVE

Alright, so welcome to Book Launchers. I'm Julie Broad. For those of you who don't know, we help entrepreneurs, professionals and really write, publish and sell a nonfiction book. And this every two weeks, we're going to be going live. And as soon as YouTube lets me stream live again, we'll be going live from YouTube. Until then, Facebook likes me and Facebook has said yes. Go ahead, go live. So that's what we're doing today. Okay, so a few things today. If you've got questions, you can go ahead and type them in and we'll answer them. And of course, we're going to be doing the draw for the book review. So if you have submitted your book into the draw, we're going to be doing that. We've got all the names inside of the mug right here. This is the WeWork or the building. I'm in the official mug full of Amazon books looking for book reviews. And. And also I have a couple questions for you guys. A few things that we're working on that I'd love your input. Whether you're watching this video live or watching it later, I'd love to hear what you guys think of these ideas and what you guys would like to see. Cause we're doing these things for you. All right, so just double checking. Can you hear me? I just wanna make sure, thumbs up if you can hear me. Something just to indicate that the audio is working. A okay. On your side, that would be great. I'm just gonna double over here, make sure everything's looking good. All right. Okay. So in addition to my weekly release of video tips on YouTube, we'll be going live every other Tuesday. So not every Tuesday, it'll be every other Tuesday. It will always be at 2pm Pacific Standard, which is 5pm for those of you on the east coast. And hopefully the rest of you in between can figure out the schedule for yourself. And my first question, what do you guys think of the name? So we're gonna call this something every. Every two weeks when we go live, we're gonna call it something my team has suggested we call it the First Look Book Reviews by the Book Broad. Because that's what we nickname me, the book Broad. So what do you think? The First Look Book reviews. Wherever you're watching this, whether it's a replay in YouTube or here in Facebook, go ahead, let us know what you think of that as a name. Because most of we're going to do a Q and A, but we'll be doing a book review. It will be one that we'll be drawing all nonfiction. So everything we do is nonfiction. And we'll be talking nonfiction books, nonfiction Amazon pages, all of those kind of things in this first look book review episode that will come out every two weeks. So let us know what you think of that name. And as for the book reviews, you might be wondering, how do I get into that? Which will probably be something fancier than a mug, but how do I get my book there to do the book review? And what does the book review entail? Well, first of all, to get your book into the book review, what you need to do is this will happen on YouTube. So to get into the draw, you're going to first subscribe to the book launchers YouTube channel. And then you're going to post a comment in the most recent video with the name of your book and ideally a link to its where it lives on Amazon. Ideally it's on Amazon. If it's not on Amazon, you'll have to send me a PDF copy. If you win. If it's on Amazon and you win, I will head on over to Amazon and buy a Kindle copy, assuming it's in Kindle version, and read it. And we'll be doing the reviews every month. So the book that I draw today, I'll do a review, not the next episode, but the one after that. So that's how it'll work. A couple of caveats. It has to be a nonfiction book. We won't be doing fiction reviews as much as there's some fiction that I love. Book Launchers helps people with nonfiction. Nonfiction is my area of expertise and generally what I read the most of anyway. So that's what we'll be doing there also. Let's just see if I missed anything. Oh, and then if I think that I can honestly give it a four or a five star review, I will post a written review on Amazon as well. And that way, if I've purchased it and it's a Kindle copy, it will be an Amazon verified review, which authors already probably know and even non authors know. A verified review is worth way more than an Amazon review is worth way more verified review than a regular review because it actually says some. The person who wrote this review actually bought your book. So you want those. As an author, you want as many of those as possible. So if I can genuinely give your book a four or five star review, I will also do that for you. So welcome to those of you who just joined us. We just started. I was just explaining how you can get your book entered into the future, the next Amazon book review. And I was asking for your opinion on what to call this that will be going live every two weeks. So hopefully you can catch up, watch the video again later and find out. Okay. And of course, let's see. So YouTube book launchers TV is a quick link to get there and sorry, I just got distracted by a message coming up on my screen here. All right. Okay. So. And YouTube, just the message was, why aren't you live on YouTube? So why am I not live on YouTube? YouTube, for some reason has decided that there's something in my account that makes them think it's not. I'm trying to remember the exact words that they use. Inappropriate content, I believe is what they said. So I think my stuff is pretty much as far from inappropriate as you can get. But for some reason, YouTube, every time I try to go live, there's some glitch in the system that says, oh, inappropriate content. And shuts me down. So for now, I'll be going live on Facebook. But as soon as I can go live on YouTube, we'll be back over there for those. But all of the contest. The entry requirements do specify. You have to post. You have to subscribe to the book launchers YouTube channel and then post in the comments. Okay, got it. Cool. Now let's see. Next up. All right. Welcome, Dave. Hello. I don't know why it tells me only a couple people. Maybe it's just if you're my friends that tells me if you're watching. But I see there's others here. So hello and welcome. Okay, so I want to give a huge shout out to Dale who's actually watching too. So thank you, Dale. But Dale Roberts has a great YouTube channel too and is very supportive of my channel. So I just want to give him a shout out. You can check out his YouTube channel. It's self publishing with Dale. Also some folks that have been great commenters. I just want to say hello and thank you for your comments on the YouTube channel. Ann Jacobson, Robert Hewson, Mickey or Mikey Ram. Sorry if I don't say your name right. W W M Aslam author is his handle on YouTube. So thank you guys for your comments. I really, really appreciate your engagement and participation in the YouTube channel. Okay, so the question I have for you, so whether you're watching live or you're checking this out later, you can post in comments or dm, email me, whatever. We're going to start doing quarterly retreats, writers retreats, and so what I wanted to know what I Want input from you guys on these will be nonfiction books. Again, that's what we do. But what we're trying to do is really build a community of authors supporting other authors in the nonfiction, mostly business, how to type space. And so if you were to attend something like this, what would you want to see? We're thinking kind of two and a half days, so kind of an evening and then two full days with half of the time being writing time, where you can access some of the fantastic people that work for book launchers. You know, ghostwriter, our writing coach, our marketing specialist, those kind of people. So you'd have time to ask them questions or work on your book and just kind of have them read through and give you input. So there'd be designated writing working time, but then there'd be another part of it. And I've kind of got a few themes that I'm thinking, you know, I'll give you a couple hints, but I don't want to. I don't want to lead you too far. So one of them would be branding. One of them would be storytelling. One of them would be marketing your business inside of your book or book market business, marketing around your book. So you want to. I want to know what you guys want from this. If we were to do this and you were to come to the retreat, probably it would be in winter and we'd do it in California, at least the first couple, because it's a pretty fantastic place to be in California. Welcome, Chris. Good to see you. You're probably on a boat in some exotic location living the ideal writer's life, really. And so I want to know. So either post it in the comments or send me an email. Let us know what you would like to see from a retreat, because we'd be doing this for you just to build a stronger community of authors hanging out and supporting other authors. And really try to give you also some concentrated space to work on your book, which I know a lot of us running our businesses and being professionals trying to write a book is also a challenge. So would love to hear from you on that. And if it wasn't in California, in a cool location in California, or warm, rather, location in California, where would you like to have some sort of a retreat or in California, what type of the location would you like to see? That's what we would love to know. That kind of. We already have ideas, but we want to know what you guys would want. Okay. So I read seven books while on vacation recently. Some of the books were, I've got the titles here. 15 days to a Nonfiction Ebook. Best Selling Ebook. What was it called? Best Selling Nonfiction ebook ideas TED Talks, the official guide to public speaking 61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books Make Money from Nonfiction Kindle Books Give and the Prosperous Writer's Guide to Finding Readers. So those were the seven nonfiction books that I read on our vacation. Some people are like, wow, you read a lot of books on your vacation? We have a one year old and he naps and so there's two hours at least every day that you're sitting in the dark in a cabin on a cruise ship. There's a lot of time to read. So I got through a lot of books. I wasn't truthfully super excited by most of those books, but a couple things I'll say. TED Talks, the Official Guide to Public Speaking was interesting for writers to check out or even business people because he explained this was written by Chris Anderson, who bought ted. He kind of oversees and I think owns the rights to ted. And he has watched pretty much every TED Talk given, not necessarily every TEDx talk, but every TED Talk. And he, he said, he kind of explained how people will take a complex idea, right. So some of these innovations in science and technology, how he, how you would take that and turn it into a story that can be told from stage that anybody can understand. And I think that some of those examples and some of those case studies are really useful if you're writing a book or trying to tell the story of your business. So for those reasons, I'd definitely check it out. The book I wanted to give you the, as we're calling it right now, the first look book review on today is the Guide to Prosper. Sorry, the Prosperous Writer's Guide to Finding Readers by honorary, honorary coder Brian Meeks. I think I'm saying that name wrong, but it's a pretty solid read. And so what I liked about it, first of all, there's a great PDF download to go with the book and that makes it easy to skim the book. You can download the PDF and then just read that and see which sections you really want to dive deeper into or read the book and then go back and you've got this resource that, that they've created for you. So I do, I did like it for a lot of reasons, but that made it really easy to digest and then have an action plan for after you read it, which if you're reading this book to find readers for your books, you're gonna want to take action after you Read it, because reading it's gonna do nothing for you. In terms of book marketing, a lot of the ideas to get your book out into the world, though, are going to cost money or a lot of time, which isn't unusual in terms of time. Book marketing takes time. That's the painful reality of it. But some of the ideas that they shared, I really felt like they could have expanded on the reasons, you know, the drawbacks as much as, you know, do this, do this, do this. It's kind of a laundry list of a bazillion things that you could do to market your book. And some of the ideas that they shared that are, you won't hear everywhere is print bookmarks and include those in giveaways or copies that you sell. Purchase postage stamps. So apparently, Zazzle.com you can put your book cover on a stamp. Postage stamp, probably more in the US I haven't heard of this being available in Canada, but maybe it is. So you could get your book cover on a stamp, which is kind of cool. If somebody actually looks at that. It's just kind of a fun thing. I'm not sure how many books that would sell, but it's kind of fun. Book swag. So creating some swag that your supporters, friends and family can wear and share with others. Leaving a copy of your book everywhere you go. So this was one of the suggestions. Every Starbucks you go to, every dentist, doctor's office, hair salon, basically anywhere where there's a waiting room, leave a copy of your book. Leave a copy of your book in bookstores. I've heard of other authors doing this too. I personally haven't done it, but this was in. In the list of things. If you've done it, would love to hear from you, see what happened, if anything ever happened from you. Leaving your book in bookstores, bookstores that aren't already selling your book, that is. They also covered the tradition or the typical stuff, you know, good reads, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. And they covered them not in a how to, but kind of in a strategic fashion. The only, the only part of the book that I didn't really care for, they handled the issue of two authors well. When you write with two authors, it can be really tricky because you've got two different voices, two different opinions. They did a good job of making it clear, and I think it helps that Honore is a nonfiction and Brian is a fiction writer. So they kind of covered both fiction and nonfiction and handle those two opinions very well. What I didn't like Though is they keep patting each other on the back saying like, oh, yeah, Brian's fantastic. You know, oh, that was great advice from Honore. You know, I'm drinking from my Cult of Honore mug right now, so there's a lot of that. This is a little distracting from the book, but overall, solid read. Who it's for. If you're just starting to think book marketing, pick this book up. It's an entire laundry list of ideas. You're going to want to not try to implement them all at once because it'll be incredibly overwhelming, but definitely worth checking out to give yourself some ideas. Okay, so I haven't seen any comments or questions come through. I know you guys are there. I can see there's people. So, hello, if you guys have comments, questions, you just want to give me a thumbs up or a heart, something to float across my screen to make me happy. That's totally cool with me. So now we've got the draw. So if you've entered, if you're one of those. I think there's nine or I think there's nine different books in here. I'm going to do the draw in just a second. If there's no questions, I'm just going to double check over here because I'm not seeing anything coming through. So I just want to make sure. Apparently there's a cat that's watching me and can't take the cat. The cat can't take his eyes off me. All right, so. Oh, there we go. Okay, cool. Oh, there are people commenting, so I'm just not seeing it over here. So. Wonderful. You sold me at winter in California. See, I knew that would get some people. Oh, hi, Ron. Excellent. Hello. Okay, so sorry to those of you who I didn't see your comments earlier. Wonderful. So thank you. I'm glad you're here. Okay, so here we go. I need a drum roll. This is where I need the sound effects. So drum roll, please. Okay, so just so you can see, I'm not looking as I draw from this mug. Gotta make sure I get one name because I can only read one extra book in the next month. Okay. All right, so Katie Weiser and her book is Answers to the top 20 interview questions. I think I'll have to look at the Amazon link. Please add my nonfiction book. Okay. Yeah, I've just got the Amazon link. I think it says answers in the top 20 interview questions by Katie Weiser. So I have to check it out, post a link. But I will be doing this review in a month. The Next live video will be on April 17th, but then this book review will be on May 1st. So, Katie, you can look forward to the book review on May 1st. And that was that. Okay, so cool. I'm just double checking now that I see that I'm not getting the comments on my screen here and they're coming in over here. So I'm just going to take a peek over here to make sure I'm not missing anybody else. I'm not trying to ignore you. I am just making sure that I am answering anything that comes up. Okay. Somebody said, hey, this isn't YouTube. Yeah, Dave, it's not YouTube. YouTube doesn't like me, even though I have worked really hard to put a lot of great videos on YouTube. For some reason, YouTube doesn't want me to live stream. Yeah, I mentioned that at the start, but yeah. So we'll be on Facebook until YouTube decides that book Launchers and Julie are welcome to live stream on YouTube. And then at that time, we'll move the show over there. Okay, so we're almost done. Unless you guys have more to say, in which case we can keep talking. But my neighbors around here probably be good if I go quiet. We're in these. The walls are glass here so they can hear what I'm saying. Okay. So we're gonna have a special gift starting soon. So every Friday, a new video comes out from Book Launchers. It's a new tip. Right now we're doing a series on ghostwriting. So last week was what does a ghostwriter do? This week is where to find great ghostwriters. So if you haven't checked that out, go to Book Launchers TV and check it out. But from now on, whenever we post a video, anybody who makes a comment on that video that day will be entered to win a draw for a very special prize. I won't tell you what the prize is yet. Gotta have something to say. Save for next time when I'll announce the winners of the recent videos and share that prize. But so anybody comments that day, your name is going to go into a draw for this prize. And if you comment within the first hour of the video coming out, then your name is going to go in twice. So bonus points for being live. So you want to make sure you turn on the notifications for the videos in YouTube. That's that little bell beside the subscribe so that you can be one of the first comments so you can get this really, really cool prize. I'm really excited, but I don't have them yet, so you'll have to wait to see what those are. So that's the other piece of exciting news. I thought I had another question for you guys. I asked you guys about the retreat. Oh, and the name of the show. So that's it for me today. I'm just going to double check over here. Thank you guys for joining us. And again, we're going to be going live again April 17th at 2pm it's going to be another book review. Not the free book review yet. It'll be another book that I'm in the process of reading right now. And then I will draw for the people who've been participating in the YouTube channel on the day that the video comes out. Of course, your comments are always welcome on my YouTube videos. Your questions are always welcome, but the prizes will be for the folks who participate the very first day the video comes out. So hopefully I see you again here or YouTube on April 17th. And congratulations to Katie. And of course, if you want to enter your book in, you subscribe to my book launcher's YouTube channel and go ahead in one of the most recent videos. Put your book title and a link to it on Amazon and I'll put you in the draw for the next for the next book review. All right, thanks, guys. I'm just gonna check for comments to make sure I'm not ignoring anybody again. How big is your staff? How much time does that leave them to work with us? I have a huge team. Not a huge team, but I think they're pretty big. We have three employees that are with us and 12 contractors. So we've got a pretty. Oops. I think I just muted you guys somehow. There we go. Somehow. Somehow I hit something and it went to mute. So, yeah, we've got a pretty solid team. We've got writing coach, editor. We've got a couple people, writing coaches, content editors, copy editors, two ghostwriters, and marketing book marketing specialists. So we've got a pretty solid team of people. And if you're referring to the retreat, Ron, I'm not sure if you were. I'm not sure how many people I would be bringing. That will be dependent on how many of you want to come to the retreat and what our capacities are. I certainly wouldn't bring my whole team out to a writer's retreat just for the sole reason that somebody's got to be back at the office working on books, because we've got a lot of client books that we're working on too. But I'm not sure if that's what you were asking. Or if you're just curious how many people are working with my Book Launchers team right now? Let's see. What's your YouTube channel? Book launchers.com or sorry, you can get to it from Book Launchers. TV is a quick link to get there, Kris. Or you can just go on YouTube and search book Launchers. You should find it that way. Oh, thanks, Dale. Dale already posted it, so you were ahead of me on that. And let's see if there's any other questions in here. Okay. Facebook is the new YouTube. What part of the California. What part of California would the retreat be in? What part of California do you want it to be in? I'm in Los Angeles, so the closer to Los Angeles it is, the easier it will be for me to coordinate, organize, and probably have more of my team attend. Most, most of my team is in and around. I shouldn't say most of my team. Half of my team is in and around the Los Angeles area. The rest is kind of spread out all over the place. But some of the core people are definitely in and around the Los Angeles area, which would make it easier for me to have more of my team participate in the retreat if people were interested in working directly with the writing coach or our marketing specialist, etc. So I think for the first one, I probably would want to do it somewhere near Los Angeles, but after that I'd be open to a lot of places. There's so many beautiful places in California and a retreat would be a great reason for me to get out and explore some other places. But I'm open to your suggestions and requests, so let us know. And yeah, LA is great. Like it's when we moved here, people said, oh, LA traffic. But it's pretty, it's pretty fantastic. So I think it would be a great spot. There's so many, you know, Malibu, Santa Monica. There's so many great places for a retreat and for, you know, to have an event of all kinds. Okay, I think that's. I think that's the works for the day. So thanks again, you guys. We'll be going live again on April 17th at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Chris, great to see you here again. Thanks for stopping by, Ron, Dale, and yeah, Chris is on a boat. On a boat somewhere in the world. You're probably somewhere exotic right now. It seems like all your videos come from somewhere exotic. So thank you everyone for joining in and I'll see you next time. Bye.