Covid-19 Challenges and Opportunities for Authors | Live Stream Replay

All right. Hello, hello, hello and welcome. I'm just going to make sure my mic is plugged in here. All right, so we are coming at you with a special Saturday stream talking about the challenges and the opportunities in the current environment. And I don't know about you guys but one of my big challenges is that I am filming and working in my bedroom of my two bedroom apartment with my three year old Adam full time right now. So that for me is one of the biggest challenges. I'm sure you guys all have your own challenges and we're touch on those when it comes to specifically being an author. But first, welcome, welcome. Thank you for spending your Saturday with me. I'm sure you had so many other things to do. Yeah, I mean you do have other things to do for sure. Probably not other places to be though, right? Okay. So yeah. So please say hello when you're here and as always I will have some prizes for being here, sharing live, all of that kind of thing. So definitely make sure you say hello and let us know that you're here and I'll just dive right in. And I've got a couple things, a couple questions, a couple things I want you guys to be posting. So I'll just get right into that. I mean, a week ago today I was on a beach in Mexico and already things had changed completely from when I had left a few days before you know, the schools closed and you know, everything was really accelerating. They were telling, you know, telling people to come home. Borders were closing in Canada in particular and in Europe, of course, borders had closed and yesterday the entire city of Los Angeles closed except for essential services. So things are just wild. And I'm, I'm personally not going to pretend that I am not shaken up because I am. And like I said, the start of this being locked in a two bedroom apartment with a three year old and my husband and a dog as I try to run my business. That for me is probably the hardest part of this particular situation. I still have one package of toilet paper left, so I'm feeling okay about that for at least another week or so. But yeah, as unsettled and concerned as I am about everything, I've also been through 2008 and I didn't go through 2008. You know, my situation was I was a full time real estate investor and I was starting a training, a real estate training and education company. So 2008 for me with the real estate crash and banks not lending, etc. It was a really, really challenging time. And you know we ended up moving back in with my parents to make that work, and ultimately we did. And I know what I'm made of because of that. So I'm far from excited, I'm far from comfortable with what's happening right now. But I also know that it's those of us who can look at what's happening and find the opportunities and rise up to those opportunities and support each other as we do it. We're going to come out of this stronger and better for it. So that was part of the reason why I wanted to have this live stream, because I know a lot of our author clients are concerned and things are changing very fast. So the concern is, of course, warranted. But a lot of the things that they're concerned about or that they believe, I don't think are necessarily true. So things have changed. There are some things that you can't do right now. There's some things that aren't going to work, but there's a lot of things that you can be doing. And I'm seeing authors doing some really, really great things out there. And we'll touch on those things. But check in and see who's here and please say hello. And just really short, what are you grateful for right now? Because there is so much to be grateful for. Me personally, besides my health and the health of my family, I'm incredibly grateful for my fantastic team at Book Launchers and the fact that we're already a remote company. I'm the only one that goes into an office normally, and so I'm kind of head office and everybody else works from home. So we're already set up to have daily meetings through Zoom. So that daily foundation for me has been huge. So I'm curious, what are you guys grateful for? So say hello that you're. Let us know that you're here and say hello. And let's share some gratitude because there is always so much to be grateful for. So yay. Sarah Bean is in the house. Every time I say Sarah Stevens, I think of our client, Sarah Stevens. So Sarah Bean's in the house. Hello. Welcome. Sarah is our book marketing manager and she'll be chiming in on a few things today and then next Saturday, she and I are going to hold an in depth training on marketing your book. So while we'll definitely focus on marketing strategies that you can do right now, while we can't have in person stuff, we're going to dive into how we strategize for our clients and what we do and probably do a couple Hot seats. So if you are an author that's writing a book right now, we'll be looking for volunteers for a hot seat there and we'll also be looking for volunteers for somebody who already has a book out that's looking for our input and support on that. So that's going to be a free training. We're doing it next Saturday. I'll have links and details later for you on that. So yeah, thanks for being here, Sarah. And Melissa's here too. She's on our team. She supports the clients in our client care team. So yeah, thanks Melissa. My team's got Angela's here too. Everybody had a busy Saturday so they joined in. Awesome. Thanks guys. Hey Andy W. Brian K. Morris, Castle Rock Sprinkler Services. Hey Seth. Hey. I'm so glad you're here. I saw your comment, I think on yesterday's video. So it's great to have you in the community. Woohoo. Derek Silksky. Yay. Thank you. Marcus Black. Yay. Awesome. Thanks for being here. TP the new currency, right. Is mind boggling. But yeah, you know, it's one of those things where I look at that package with. With way more like whew, I'm glad I've got that extra package and bending guy 47 first livestream. Welcome. You guys see this already is an upside. So many more of us are able to get together today live and that doesn't happen most of the time because we all have so many other places to be. All right, Kevin McGuire, you're almost finished with your nonfiction. Great. That's awesome. Todd. Did I miss Todd up above? Oh Todd, you're here. Yay. I skipped a whole bunch of people. Eva. Yay. First time live as well. Sade or Sadie. Great. Let me see. Julie, I can tell you I know how to survive when growing a business. Thank you so much John. I can tell you know how to survive when growing a business. Thank you so very much, John. You are welcome. Yes. Like I said, going through that thing in 2008, starting a new business, being a full time real estate investor, I gotta tell you guys, I've got grit. I will get through this. My team is phenomenal. They've got grit. We're gonna get through this and I want to help you guys get through this too. So let's get through it together. Okay. And yeah, Sarah says marketing is still in full swing. There's so much to when you're at home. So that's great. And yes, Todd's book just launched on Thursday. We'll Definitely be showing that when we can show covers next weekend when we're doing our live training. But yeah, Sarah, if you want to put a little pitch in here for Todd's book, I will read it because you're going to do a way better job of it than if I do it. Kevin, number two. Yay. Welcome. I want to talk to you about that title. I saw your email. Haven't got to it yet, but you are on my mind. All right. Pamela. Hey. Welcome from Fredericton. Okay. Vending guy. I'm grateful for having hours even though they've been temporarily cut. I've been moved by my travel company to work at home. And I'm grateful for this because it allows me to be with family. Yeah, something great to be grateful for. For those of you just joining, we're just saying hello, letting everybody know that you're here and also sharing something you're grateful for because there is so much to be grateful for right now. Hey, Ben, thanks so much for joining us. Marlena and Alan West. And thanks for the soft notebook. It arrived the other day. Yay. Derek says I work in healthcare, so I'm still out there. But I'm extremely, extremely grateful for the way my organization and the community we serve is coming together. That's great, Derek. And thank you so much for doing what you do. All right, let's see. Rachel, Yay. Welcome. It's so good to see you here. I am so grateful for all your comments. You always make me smile. Wan Lee, welcome. Hey, it's so good to have you here, too. All right. Andy W. Fist bump for fellow 2008 real estate investor. Yeah, my portfolio was quite good until we moved to Los Angeles to start this business and to move down here. And then we've shrunk it a lot. All right, so I'm grateful. Spring is here on time as usual. All right. Okay. I'm going to keep going. Keep sharing your gratitude with each other. I'll pop back in. I'll pop back over there and see, but I can't. I could just spend all day reading your comments and I want to make sure I do deliver some value here. So one thing I do want to mention, and I'm going to ask Sarah to actually. I should have actually done a live with Sarah, but this is where our training next week will be really fun. So she was Sarah again, for those of you just joining, she's our book marketing manager and she's here. She's in the chat box. But she mentioned that some of our clients have done A really good pivot already and are getting a lot of attention as a result. Linnae St John, who has written a book called Read Me, she's a sexologist and her book is really about how to talk to your kids about sex. And you think that, well, what's that have to do with today's market? But she's been getting some good coverage and some good articles and I think media even. So, Sarah, if you want to kind of just put a little link in there, not a link, you could put a link, but just a blurb about what she's done to pivot. And then you also mentioned something about Carol Sanford, what she's done. And it's kind of slipped my mind of what she did. But I remember when you were sharing the pitches that she's working on or that you're working on with her now to pivot her stuff, to really address the issues right now. So that's the thing. If you have a book out right now, in a lot of cases, there are very, very pertinent angles that you can take to talk about what's going on and help. I mean, you think about it, the emotional stress that we're all under, I mean, forget about the fact that we're struggling to make sure we have the necessities right now in a lot of cases. I mean, we went for a walk this morning and you're waiting an hour just to get into the grocery store. So still. So there's certain things, but so how are people coping with this? How are we handling the closeness of our families? You know, we love them but sometimes you need space. Right? So there's so many angles, finance and on. And one of the people, for those of you who are on our launch letter, you would have seen this, but Deb Meyer, who wrote Redefining Family wealth, she put her book free this week and she emailed me this morning and she said, and she said that she was able to talk wealth management and Christian stewardship. And you know, for her she just saw, you know, an opportunity to share what an opportunity to share this message with other people and of course get her book into more readers hands. And you know, that's a, you know, it's a book about finance for the family and it's, she also top number one in Christian stewardship. Stewardship. So she's got that, that, that part of the book as well for Christian families, Christian beliefs. So it's, you know, a tremendous opportunity to be getting your book into the hands of people that need it or your message and getting out there in different ways. So yeah, there's, there's so, so many cool things that you can do right now that will help people and that will also expand your reach. So I'm just going to catch up over here on the side here. So Sarah is grateful for family during this time that I work for company like book launchers. That means we get to help people right now. Yeah. Awesome. And Lenae has a book giveaway going on with sex Positive. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Linnae is doing wonderful daily insta stories, live interviews and book giveaways. Perfect timing. People want digital content right now more than ever. And Carol Sanford is our legend business educator. So true. And her business is usually working with CEOs and she does bulk sales of her book. She just launched her latest title two weeks ago or even maybe just a week ago. But now she's pivoted to coach her clients on how to make their employees resilient. What a cool topic. That's what it was. Thank you. That was such a cool topic. For right now, for a book purchase, they're going to get a 90 minute session with her on how to coach their employees through this time, which is absolutely brilliant because she's not going to be doing any sort of other corporate training, but employee resilience, resiliency through this is really, really powerful. So they buy a bunch of books and she's going to do a 90 minute session. So that's great. And let's see. Jim huddle. Welcome. Yay. Hey. I miss Jim in there, so thanks for giving her a shout out. Angela. Hey, Jim. Welcome. Great to see you here too. Rob Berger, retired before mom and dad has been doing live streams on what people need to know about the financial landscape and the changes. Awesome example. That's great. Right now I'm drawing from the experience my state had during the 2012 Dreux. I'm not sure what that is. I'm Canadian. That's my default whenever. I don't know something. Hey, Jill, Welcome. So much venom. 10. Yay. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. Margaret, Craig, welcome. That's so great. Okay, so I'm going to carry on with these things first, first, let's get the things off the table. Right? So let's get the stuff we can't do off the table. Okay. Immediately speaking events, right? Those are all gone. Bookstore events. Those are gone for us because bookstores have actually closed. We're not even able to pitch library distribution or bookstore distribution. So live appearances, conferences and conventions, those things are completely off the table right now. What else is off the table? Go ahead, put it out there. Specific to authors, you guys. Specific to writing books, publishing books. So on marketing books, what's off the table? Let's get that out of the way so we can all be like, okay, we can't do any of that. And then we're going to refocus the rest of this session on all the things that we can do. Because as you'll see, I was making a list myself when I was prepping for this, and I was blown away at how much we actually can do. There are so many things that we can do without ever leaving our house to the point where a lot of introverts are probably never going to leave their house again. So what else is off the table? Go ahead and tell me. And you know what? I think we should give a couple books away. So since we've already mentioned them. Well, actually, let me ask Sarah. What three books do you think we should give away right now? And Angela's on here, which is awesome. Thanks for being here, Angela. So she can record the go to the third person who put what they're grateful for as my first winner. That's gonna be it. So Angela, third person who put what they were grateful for, they're gonna get. They can choose from the three books that Sarah thinks we should give away right now. And yeah, actually, you know, we've got Todd on the line here. That's great. So we definitely should give one of his books away. Scott McMillan's book and Robert Bell. Sarah says they're all ones she has in stock too, so she can mail them right out to you. All right, so check out the chat. Sarah's going to telling you what those titles are, and then Angela will tell us who's the winner and then we will announce and then you can tell us which book you want. They're all very different. Rachel said it froze. It might be freezing on your side. We've all found that the Internet has been a little funky. I think so many people are at home and are on the Internet, so it's testing the circuit, so to speak. And say, by the way, if you're here, do hit that thumbs up button. If for no other reason, it just makes sense. Me feel better. I think YouTube kind of likes it, but, you know, I just. It just makes me feel better. So if you can, you know, give me that little thumbs up boost, that would be wonderful. Okay. Oh, it did. Angela said it did freeze, but that's okay. So, yeah, other Things off the table. We can't. We are unable to deliver our books in person. And let's see. See, you guys don't have a big, long list, right? I'm not seeing. Library pitches are off. Yep. I feel like being optimistic is moving to the edge of the table. See, I'm not there. Brick and mortar stores, that is. Online bookstores are gearing up. Yeah, totally. Book festivals are off the table. Conventions, bookstores, bookstore buying, new inventory, bookstore signings. Yeah, see, there's not. I mean, really, there is not that much that is off the table. Right. You guys aren't saying too much more than what I was saying. Hitting. So. So with all that. Hold on. I think there's a prize winner here. Froze up. Let's see. Okay, I don't see. I don't see Angela announcing. Yeah, so sorry, you guys lost me. I don't know if that. That must be YouTube, maybe my Internet. So I apologize. Okay, so once we find out our winners, where did we. Like I said, we're gonna. You're gonna be choosing through three books. Todd Nyholm's. Ah, food. Why do you trouble me so much? Robert Bell, blow the lid off. And Scott McMillan, be the hero of your life. 3:00am thank you, Sarah. So you'll be choosing from those three books, and Angela will have our winner here in a moment. So, Angela, in case you froze up, I was saying pick the third person who said something they were grateful for, and that would be our winner. Okay. Okay. So here we go. So all those things are off the table. It really wasn't that many things. But what is on the table right now? You. You have time to write now. Even if you have kids at home, which I know is going to strain you, there's still more time to write because you're not commuting anywhere. You know, there's a lot of things you're probably. You're not going to the gym, you're not going out for dinner. You know, those things are all off the table. So you now have time to write so you can get your book done. You also can be creating online content. As Sarah has been saying in the chat box, people are consuming content like crazy. And the media content. Everybody's sitting at home checking the news, so they need more content. And they don't want to be 24 7. Covid ID. Right? COVID 19. They want other stories. They want the inspirational stories. They want to talk about, you know, what's happening in the stock market because there's so many other things that are happening Right now that can be talked about. And of course, there's all the other things that happen that nobody is talking about. So there's a lot of things that could be covered so you can be creating content for that. I also am seeing a lot of people, you know, like what we're doing today, that we're creating content and trying to create opportunities for all of us to connect. And you can be taking advantage of that. So if there's something you want to learn, there's a very good chance that you can learn it for free. Right now, a lot of things are being given for free to support all of the people that are kind of sitting at home doing nothing. Maybe their work is up in the air or they've been cut, their hours cut back. So you could be taking advantage of all that, learning things along with your book, learning to write, learning to design, learning to market, all of those kind of things. Like I said, next weekend on Saturday, Sarah and I are going to do a more in depth session on marketing. And you'll actually get to see Sarah. It's going to be a zoom meeting. I hope you attended video so we can see you so we can all feel a little bit more connected. But all the things that you need to do to actually put a book out into the world have probably, you've probably already been doing from the comfort of your home. So, I mean, we don't meet most of our clients face to face unless we happen to be at the same events or I happen actually live in the neighborhood of at least one of our clients, so I bump into him sometimes. But all of the things that you need to write and polish and publish and then market your book, so much of that is done from home anyways, or can be done virtually without you ever meeting your editors and on and on. So there's really no excuse for not getting a book done right now. To me, this is a tremendous opportunity for people to actually create amazing content and putting their books out that they've been planning to work on for a long, long time now. Book promotion is changing a bit as we've taken those things off the table. Those were all things specific to book promotion that we can't do. And you know, the one that makes me the most sad is that, you know, kind of the live appearance piece, the speaking engagement piece is off the table because that was one that would move bulk amounts of books. However, as Sarah noted, Carol Sanford is doing that in exchange for webinars now. So it's actually a cheaper, easier way to Deliver content, and you can still negotiate a bulk purchase of your book. So there's other ways to tackle this. So, I mean, to me, I'm seeing so many, and I'd love for you guys to chime in. There's some great authors here and Dale's on the line. Dale has some phenomenal ideas around marketing, too. So to me, there's so many things you can be doing and that are working and people want right now. So video, social networking, corporate partnerships, especially looking for win wins in this environment, like the Carol Sanford pitch on employee resiliency, handling relationships, financial stuff. All of these things are things employees are going to need. So corporate partnerships are totally possible. They're suffering, too. Everybody's looking for a way to stay in business to keep things going and to serve their client base. So there could be a really great win Win opportunity there. Of course, your author platform, if you're. If you don't have one, get working on it. And if you have one, why not do a few things for your audience to support them, but also help you sell some books? The platform of others. Book catalogs. Those might not be as easy to do right now, but you can. A lot of times I mentioned it because you are purchasing a space in the book catalog or organizing the space in the book catalog or the other announcement now, but it actually doesn't go out until later. So you can be investigating those things. Podcast interviews, book clubs. There's lots of book clubs that were in person that are going virtual now. I've seen a lot of my friends posting about their first virtual book club meeting, but there was already virtual book clubs before that, too. Book review sites, influencer outreach. There's so many things to do to market a book right now. And the beauty of this is we have a captive audience. We have a lot of people who are sitting on their butt at home going, what do I do now? And so they're looking for these kind of. They're looking for new things to consume. So it's quite likely you'll be found. Now, if you're due, check back in over here. Reading should be up. You know, I believe it is. It's hard to ever get a stat on that until later, but we did get a Nielsen stat. Oh, shoot. I meant to have that here, too. Sarah, or I think Sarah was on that. That feed with me. There was a Nielsen stat that content consumption, which was all like various kinds of media, but they were either expecting or already seeing a big jump in content consumption. Okay, Okay. My Facebook ad launch was Supposed to start this month, but I'm not sure. I wanted to launch my self published book in June. Should I wait? So we had this topic come up a few times and you know, I think I have two feelings about this. The one is June is still far away. Like things have changed so much and it's not like I believe things are going to change right back to, to quote unquote normal after this. I, I think we're going to create a new normal after this and it's going to take a while, but June and lunch are still not going to change with the current environment. Where things do change is pitching for speaking engagements and live appearances and bookstore distribution. But here's the other piece is that when you're self publishing, if you want speaking engagements, bookstore distribution and live appearances, you're not going to pitch for that until you have some reviews, you have your book out and you've got that piece kind of because you need that credibility of reviews and really just having all the pieces in place. So even a June launch, you're probably not pitching for bookstore distribution or any of these other things until probably July or August at that time. I think, I hope that all of these things are ramping back up and people are looking for, they're really planning their 2021 events or they're rescheduled late 2020 events and there's going to be enormous opportunities. So I feel pretty darn good about June launches because I think that there's a lot to do in pre launch that involves getting reviewers, which by the way, people are looking for content. So if you want people to read your book and get a review ready, now is a great time to get those pre launch readers reading your book for that June launch. So I'm feeling really good about June launches and I'm not even feeling badly about any launches happening right now. But the challenge of course is that you are faced with the reduction of ability of getting it into physical places. But I still think smart strategies around online content creation and really creating incentives for people to participate with you and buy your book, I think you're still going to do okay because there's fewer people launching. And think about it, there's no movies and there's no sporting events. Like there's all that stuff that used to occupy people's minds that you'd have to compete with. If you are a book launch that's in their face right now, they're going to have to pay attention to you. So me personally, I would be going at it and Going hard and splashing it and really putting the angle of how your book is going to help. And that's where a hook is going to make all the difference for you is who is your book for and how are they going to benefit or what are they going to gain from reading your book? That's really, really, really important. Important. And Again, next Saturday, 10:00am Pacific, so 1:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Sarah, our book manager, book marketing manager, myself, and I think even Zach, our book marketing assistant, we're all going to be doing a zoom training, and we're going to go in depth on a lot of strategies. Today. We're just kind of chatting. I'm going to give you guys some ideas. I'm trying to get your input, but it's actually going to be a training session that we'll be doing next Saturday. So I'll get a link in here at one point and then. And then we'll make sure that you guys can register. It's totally free. We're really just doing it to try to serve you. And if you're in the middle of writing a book, it's still appropriate because we're going to talk about the things that you need to have in place in your book to make sure it's marketable. So if you're working with someone else or you're working with us, you understand what Sarah in particular is going to be looking for and what's going to help her succeed when she's out there pitching you and trying to get your book out into the world. Okay, see, I got to catch up over here. I don't know. I know. I never found the winner. So, Angela, let's see. She got our winner here. We could do podcast interviews still. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if I mentioned podcast interviews. I meant to. Time to write is definitely a gift, especially when my wife is playing Xbox. Okay. If you do have a perspective on COVID 19 or the lockdowns, now's a great time to get your voice out there. Absolutely. I've been writing content for social media and putting my oh so soft journal to use. Yes. I don't even. My oh so soft journal is missing. Is it here? No. I did a video shoot this week, so I'm probably in my backpack still. Okay. I'm just checking in. Joanna82. The first step is always the hardest. Yes, yes. We can flood the world with positive, helpful, practical information and energy. You betcha. I've been cautious about voicing my views with the market crash. Some love it, some hate it. Either way, this is a great time to be alive. Yeah, for sure. Okay, I'm still looking for Angela's. I don't remember what I asked you, Dale, so it's all good. Linnae St. John. So, Angela, I don't know if you posted the winner or not. If you did, can you text it to me? Because there's a lot of comments here and I can't. I can't. Oh, my Kurd, you made it. Welcome. Web domain squatters may be more flexible on price now, so any tips on driving a hard burger on the bot domain if you want. No, I wish I did. I have never had success getting a great deal on domains, so that has not been my area of success. I don't know if anybody else here has. Okay, let me see. Sarah bought three books this week because authors were sending me email newsletters with previews. Yes, totally. I have bought a lot of books this week, partly because of promotion and partly because I was looking for some solutions and material and inspiration to share with others. Let's see. Okay. You guys are answering each other's questions, which is great. Okay. I still haven't found the winner, so. Yeah, Angela, if you can just text me the winner of the book so we can make sure I announce it, that would be awesome. Okay, there we go. Oh, you can't find the winner. It's the third. Oh, you lost your chats. Okay, hold on. I'll have to find the winner. The third. Grateful. You guys lost your chats. Okay, let me see if I can fix this. All right. This is hard to do. Wow. Typing is a burden for me. Do you typewrite for your client? Yeah, we have ghostwriters. We have ghostwriters that will do your typing for you, so you can absolutely do that. Okay, so, Angela, what I am doing right now is I just copied all the chat because I can't possibly read it all and keep this conversation going. So I am just sending you the chat in an email and hopefully you can sort through it. Okay. And that should do the trick. Okay, so back to my list. So number one, one of the things you can be doing from home that I love is video. So YouTube is obviously my favorite. Thank you all for being here. But if you haven't built your audience yet, what I recommend is you go live stream on your favorite platform. So Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. LinkedIn has live video, but I'm on a wait list for the beta testing, so you can't actually go live unless you get approved by LinkedIn right now. So you can go live on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube though. So pick your favorite platform and just start going live every day. And you'll build. It's a live video is given priority by all of these platforms. So you will build your audience there. And, you know, if you already have your hook of your book, use that as the conversation. So what is the hook of your book? What's kind of your brand hook if you aren't, if you don't have that and just talk about things that are related to that and really try to support people. The big thing I want to give you as a tip is that every video you do needs to add value and ideally create some sort of entertainment or emotional feeling. It's really not about just, you know, going, okay, here's my three steps to, you know, sell your stocks in a market crash or whatever it is. It's really not about that. Only you want to have that concept of what is the benefit to the viewer for that live stream. But then you really want to have fun, create engagement or create some sort of an emotional experience for the people there. You know, I've heard people call it edutainment and that's really going to work. So let your personality shine. You're not looking at anybody in the eye, so you don't know their crazy looks when they see what you're doing or saying. And yeah, just start doing it because you're locked in your house anyways. And if you really hate how the live stream went afterwards, you can delete it. So it's all good. And when you first start doing it, you won't have very many people that are watching you. So it's okay. So just start live streaming every day. Video is a phenomenal way to build a platform, engage your audience, and ultimately sell books. And, you know, if you create, if you have a book, I would just take a tip from every chapter or a couple tips from every chapter. And you know, that's each day just talk about one of those tips. And I actually have on my YouTube channel there's a couple of videos specific to marketing your book using YouTube videos. So definitely check those out. But going live, I think is a very simple way to start this and start it now because you're at home anyways, so just get it done. Another thing, social networking, I think right now is really, really powerful. I've talked about this many times. You know, the math on social media, selling books isn't great. Every once in a while we have clients who launch a book, you know, that have A strong following. The one that's coming to mind, he has a very strong Instagram following. And, you know, really, that was his main. He only made a couple posts about his book, but that's all it took to sell a decent number of books through that. But really, genuinely, social media really doesn't sell a ton of books. But social networking is connecting with other people and building relationships on social media and then asking for support in various ways, and that will lead to helping you sell books. So one thought that I had is if you're part of a Facebook group or LinkedIn group, you should be going in there daily right now and adding value. So not selling anything, just going and trying to answer people's questions. So that the day that you decide to go in there and say, hey, listen, I'm looking to connect with people who have this problem that they need to solve. In other words, the problem that your book solves, or the, you know, they're looking to be inspired by story like this. Where can I find them? When you ask that question, you'll be much more likely to get a lot of responses and support. You'll also potentially make friends with people who have those people in the audience, and they'll be like, hey, I'd love to support you when you do that. So I really think social networking works. Dale self publishing with Dale. He and I connected just by commenting on each other's videos on YouTube to begin with. And, you know, now we support each other in a lot of things. You know, Dale is, you know, such a phenomenal supporter to me, so thank you. And I know you're only partially listening, so it's okay. I'm only saying good things. All right, so, Alan west, congratulations. You are the winner of our first prize, which was a choice of one of three books. And those are way back in the chat, if you still have access to them. But it was Rob, sorry, I'm going back. I don't know if I can find it. Anyways, there was three books. Maybe Sarah or Angela can post them again so you can see which ones to choose from. And I'm gonna do one other prize right now. It will be one of our fabulous no Boring Books mugs, which, embarrassingly, I have a coffee here, but I'm not drinking out of my own mug. Oops. Yeah, it was Robert Bell, Scott McMillan or Todd Nyhum's books, but we need the titles, so. Yeah, because they're not going to know. They're not going to go, I want Todd's book. Right. Even though they should want Todd's book because it's all about food and your relationship with food. It's really, really great. And it's, you know, one of. One of our team's favorite covers of the month. So. Yeah. So anyways, I am going to do another prize. So my question though, if this is going to reward the people who have been watching my videos, what is my favorite flavor of ice cream? Somebody's going to get this. I know, because there were so many people who said it was also their favorite. Okay, so I'm just going to check quickly in on the comments before I keep going. Let's see. Here we go. Okay, so I'm trying to write and publish my first coffee table design theme book. So excited. Definitely a time to get writing. Yeah, you bet. Books are the best. Escapism. Typing's a burden for me. Yeah, I already talked about that. And unable to connect to chat. Please try again later. So I have now lost chat. Oh, no. You can use a tape recorder and talk into it and then it's easy to get it transcribed. Yeah, that's very true too. And actually, oh, I didn't put out the video yet. It's coming out soon. But I did a great interview with Lynae St. John, the author of README. And you know, one of the things I really commended her on was her ability to get a great voice in her book. One that when you're done reading her book, you feel really, really connected to her. And I asked her how she did it, and she said she thinks a lot of it is because not only is she very connected to herself, she's done a lot of self work, but also she spoke out a lot of her book on her Mac and then got it transcribed and it went from there. So that's a great way. So I've lost my chat. So now this is my problem now, too. Hopefully you guys are still hearing me. I don't know how to try again later. It's telling me to try again later. So now I'm sad. I. I am not getting your messages. This is not good. So, Angela, if you're there, if you can tell me if people are still able to hear me, that would be fantastic. And then I'll tell you my favorite ice cream afterwards. So chat's still working for you guys. I don't know if I can close chat while I'm in it and then see and you're hearing me fine. Okay, good. That's all good. Oh, if I pop it out. Okay, here we go. I found A restore chat. Here we go. That was really weird. No, even if I do that, it doesn't work. Okay, hold on. Pop out chat. Wow, technology. So fun. Okay, all right. I see a couple of the. I got. If I pop out chat, it works. Okay, so I might be missing some of your guys's messages. I got Ron's. It starts at Ron's, shaming me for not using the best mug ever, which is our hashtag. NoBorneBooksMug. Like I said, I did a video shoot a couple days ago, or yesterday, actually, for our YouTube, and I left my oh so soft journal and my mug in my bag. Rachel Robertson, you got it. Congratulations. You are the proud winner of the noboringbooks mug. So what you need to do. And Alan, by the way, you need to do this too. Alan west, who won the book. Alan, you'll need to let us know which book you want. And Rachel, you guys need to email us at team t e a mooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and your prize. And Angela or Sarah, I think Sarah's gonna mail out the books because she's got them, but Angela and Sarah will make sure you get your prizes. All right, so carrying on here. Let's see. Okay, I got some of the chat here. I did definitely miss some of them. Food's calling, Mike. I totally understand. Thank you so much for being here. It was awesome to have you. Okay, so if you guys have other ideas of things you could be doing from home to market your book, go ahead and chime them in. I'm going to cover a few more, and then, like I said, I'll actually go ahead and put the link in there right now for next weekend. Maybe I will. For attending next weekend's marketing session. It'll be two. Two to two and a half hours. We're really going to try to keep it to two hours, but the content that we currently have planned, I'm guessing it might take a little bit more than two hours because we're going to try and do a hot seat and a few. And a few other things. So that'll be happening next week, and we'll go into a lot of detail on a lot of strategies for that. So let me just try and get this link in here. I don't know. Angela, did you. Angela, I posted it in Slack this morning. The registration for next Saturday. If you can just post that zoom. The zoom registration in the YouTube comments, that would be fantastic, because then I don't have to try to keep talking while I look for it. So thank you for doing that. So corporate sponsorships, this is, this is a really cool one. And it's not something that I have a bunch of examples for. Maybe Sarah has a few ideas on a topic that would be a good fit for pursuing them other than the Carol Sanford example. But why I do go back to these is one of the things I did with my first book, More than Cash Flow, was I ended up having a lot of different relationships with different companies that helped me sell a lot of books. One of the ones that I did that I thought was really cool was Canadian Real Estate wealth magazine. They gave incentives to people who subscribed to their magazine. And so if they subscribed for two or three years, they would get something in exchange for that subscription. So I gave them. And I don't remember the exact numbers. I think it was 200, it might have been 300. It was in the hundreds. So they got several hundred copies of my book and in exchange I got a bunch of things. But the, the most valuable thing was I got advertising space inside of their magazine. And I didn't use the advertising space to promote my book. I used the advertising space to promote my business. But that advertising space was worth two times the retail value, the retail value of my books, not even what the books cost me to give them. And so that was a really, really powerful sponsorship. And it also led to us, led to me in particular getting some, some major kind of relationship things with, with Canadian Real Estate Wealth. I was in their magazine almost every month, right. With an article I'd written. I spoke on their major stages. And so, yeah, there was a lot that went on largely as a result of that partnership. So if you can find those kind of situations where in another one that, you know, I made relationships with some brokers, mortgage brokers, and real estate agents who bought my book and gave to their clients. So if you have a book that could be a great fit for people right now, there might be a win, win. And maybe you're giving it to them free, but you're getting something of massive value back or maybe you're selling it to them. Just get creative. Because I think there's opportunities in this market that you could be taking advantage of. Webinars, we already talked about those. Running webinars in lieu of live training, I think is a great way to keep things going. I mean, I'm doing my gym classes from CrossFit is which anybody who follows me on Instagram, my gym is doing something really cool. They're doing a Quarantine challenge. So over the next 18 days, we are getting points for participating in their Zoom classes. They've lent out their equipment. So, you know, we were able to go and borrow some dumbbells and borrow a few things so that we have some equipment to work with at home for these workouts. And we get points for doing the workouts and we get points for posting on social media that we did it. And so you could do something through webinars or Zoom or something and offer copies of books in exchange for that like Carol Sanford is. So I think there's huge opportunity there and people are looking for that connection, that training, that offer right now. So there's something there for you. Your author platform, like I said, if you're not already building it, you should be building it. This is a great time. You've got time to dedicate to this. And the video I put out yesterday explains that even a small audience can be very powerful. So it's worth it. Gillian Gertzen's audience, the video I put out on YouTube yesterday, if you haven't seen it, watch it. She has some really powerful lessons for everybody on engaging your audience and really getting their buy in and support because I think she had less than a thousand people on her newsletter list and was able to rally them to really massive, massive results and a lot of success for her. So, yeah, putting time and effort into your platform and if you have a platform, what can you offer them today that is of value and gives them an incentive to buy your book? Why not give them an incentive? Or if you're like Deb Meyer and you just really want to, you want to serve, why not make your book free right now and let everybody on your, on your newsletter list or your social media know that your book is available for free right now to support others. So yeah, there's so many things you could be doing and also platform of others. If you're doing something cool right now that will benefit people. And maybe you're giving your book away for free because it's something people could use. It's inspirational, it's got tips or suggestions or strategies. You know, I saw somebody putting out a menu plan for eating from your pantry. You know, like there's so many things that we could be talking about. They'll probably be how to make your own toilet paper videos soon. I wish I wasn't kidding, but there probably already are. So if you've got, if you've got a kind of a cool angle that can serve others right now there's Other people that have your audience in their audience and reaching out to them and saying, hey, here's some content that might serve them. This is a great time to do that. If you have. If you have those relationships already, that's ideal. But, you know, you might be able to build those relationships now if you have a really cool pitch and really cool offering. All right, I'm checking into my chat. I've lost you guys. I'm. Let me see if I can get it back again. Okay, Will you please link us to yesterday's YouTube video? Maybe Angela or Sarah can do that. That would be awesome. I see something exciting. I've been invited to do a show on writing on another channel, so that's great. Soon I'll be doing so much broadcasting, I won't have time to write. Oh, that's great. Okay, let's see. The best thing for video right now is don't try to sell books. Give a form for people to feel connected, to vent, to know you care. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. That's so true. Yeah, so it's. And that's true. And I think, I mean, I think that all the time. I really, as most of you know, because you're, you know, regular viewers of a lot of our content, I don't, I don't hard sell anything. I'm really about delivering massive value because I really do do this in, you know, with a service heart and really trying to support people. So I think ultimately we all have to make money and be profitable in order to sustain business, ustain our lives, etc. But, you know, going into that with the service first, which is why I recommend with video, you focus on what you're going to, the tip, the value. Same with your book. Right. You know, even if you're built, if you're writing your book to grow your business, you're not writing a big, long sales letter because that's a huge turn off. And ultimately, you know, that really doesn't offer value to people. There's nothing that makes you feel worse than reading a book. And at the end of it you go, huh? Like you got nothing out of it. It was a good read, but there wasn't anything to take action on or to actually, you know, feel different that makes you feel different or want to do something different or that you've really learned anything of value. So I think that's why we're always emphasizing the hook of your book and making sure that that hook has a benefit in it for the Reader. So creating curiosity or giving them something so that after they've read your book, they go, wow, I now know how to do this right. I didn't know that before or now I'm looking at this differently. So, okay, I've lost this. I don't know why my YouTube is angry at me today. It looks like Sarah's taking great care of you guys in the chat, so that's wonderful. Thank you, Sarah. Let's see. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to do one more prize, cover a couple more things and I don't know, hopefully Angela was able to get the link out there for the Zoom. If not, I will post it in the comments on this YouTube video as soon as the live is over. And if you are on the launch letter, if you're not already getting our newsletter, you go to book launchers.com and at the bottom of the page there's a newsletter sign up. You can just grab our newsletter there and that will make sure that you get the email I'll send out with the Zoom registration link for next Saturday. I'll also put it on the community channel in YouTube. So be lots of ways for you guys to get it if you weren't able to get the link in here. And yes, Sarah really does rock. I'm always, I mean, I am so grateful for everybody on my team and Sarah takes amazing care of our clients and I'm always telling everybody how fortunate they are. You should see her in action when she's pitching. It is, is. It is really amazing. She's read the, she's read the books. She knows the books, she knows the authors and she listens to what people say and she's like, oh, this is what you need to know about this book. My favorite was she pulled a book up. We were at a convention and she pulled the book off the shelf and she goes, oh, page 63 will be of interest to you. She's like, here, look at this. This is really cool. And the person was really, was sold. I think we ended up giving them that book because they went, oh, I'm going to have to have this person on my podcast. So anyways, so yes, she does walk and she's here on a Saturday, as are many of my, you know, Melissa. I saw Melissa, I saw Angela. So we are very, very lucky. Yeah, so the link, yeah, I don't think the zoom links are coming through on the chat or probably the YouTube links either. I'm not seeing links, so it must be blocking the links. So we'll have to put them in the description after. So Sarah's hiding from her toddler. Yeah, I get it. I so get it. Okay. Okay, let's cover a couple more things. And the last prize we'll do because the chat's not working super well for me. I'm hoping, Angela, you're gonna have better luck with this one. So let's just do. What are we gonna do? What can we do? I like the skill testing question. It's fun that Rachel knew the answer. That was good. It would have been sad for me if nobody knew the answer. Let's see what can we do? Okay. The first person to. No, let's do from. Let's go from the comments. We'll do a numbered one that's. That's usually pretty good. So we'll go from the last comment that I can see here, which is. Okay, bending guy 47. He said I don't see the links. Can't wait for the link. So I'll put them in the description after the video is done. And we're gonna go. Let's go. What's the date today? We are the 21st of March. So Angela, count 21 up from vendingguy47. And of course, if it is somebody on our team, then just go to the next one above and the next one above until we get to a winner. 21st. Yeah. Thanks, Rachel. So, yeah, go 21 up off of vending guy 47's comment. I don't see the links. Can't wait for the links because that's a great comment. And then we'll do that and I'll give you guys a couple more ideas and then we'll wrap up for the day. And if you want to go deep, deeper onto marketing, come join Sarah on INext Saturday from 10pm or 10am Pacific Standard Time. You guys don't want to see me at 10pm I'm a basket case. I am a morning person, not a night person. So yeah, 10:00am Pacific Standard Time to roughly noon 12:30. We'll be doing a deep dive. We won't be doing a replay. So you will need to be there to get your. To get the tips, to take notes. You know, it's kind of a one time thing that we really wanted to do just to further support everybody and help you sell more books during this time or help you write a book that will be more marketable if you're in the writing phase. So, okay, a couple more tips. Podcast interviews. Somebody already mentioned that I'm actually, I just filmed A video. Although my 3 year old got extremely involved in that video. So I'm not sure how coherent my thoughts will be on that one. Yeah, it's, it's, it's that time. It's that time of this weird, weird world. But I do have some videos coming out on getting podcast interviews, prepping for podcast interviews, and the one that I just filmed yesterday was on Do Podcasts Sell Books? Ultimately, I think podcast interviews are tremendously worth it, especially when you're staying at home. I think it's a great time to be pitching. They're still podcasts. Podcasts are still recording their podcasts. There's only, I mean, some of them record live. They'll probably adapt and not record live for a period of time. But you know, we're not running into people saying their podcasts aren't operating right now. So you can still be booking podcast interviews and getting that done and doing that from home. Another one that you could be doing is making sure your metadata is good. So I have a video that's coming out on Tuesday, I think it's Tuesday is on metadata and Fridays on keywords, I think. So you'll get more information on this in the coming weeks with the YouTube channel. So if you're not already subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the channel. But I think that you could be doing research, updating your descriptions, updating your categories, even checking your pricing, and really working on your SEO right now because people are searching for more content. So if you make sure that your book is more discoverable, then that's going to be a big advantage. And hey, you've probably got a little bit of time right now, so you could be doing that for those of you who already have books out right now. And the final idea I have for you is something that we're really starting to shift to now is focusing on book club pitches. So really trying to connect with people who are part of a book club and maybe sending them a copy of your book to see if it's a fit. And there's more research into this and in the coming month or so, as we do a lot more of this, it was something that was already on our agenda, but we're accelerating our timeline for doing it, obviously, because we're switching, we're switching some of the manpower from live event pitching to book club pitching. But, you know, this is a really cool opportunity. And a lot of, like I said, a lot of book, book clubs have gone virtual. So they're still operating. So there's still opportunities to sell books that way and get your book into those book clubs. So that was a lot. So hopefully you guys see that there's. There's still so much to do and so many opportunities, and there really are people that need your message, that need what you have to offer right now. And whether your book is done or not, I hope that you see that there's value in what you're doing and sharing your story and sharing your expertise. And the needs of what's happening today are not going away anytime soon. So I think we're all going to need to support each other for quite some time. And it was just a pleasure to have all of you spending time with me today. So I. Yeah. And thank you, Sarah, for answering all those questions in the chat, especially since I really lost it. And so let's see. Did we get. Oh, SEO. Yeah, Search engine optimization. Thank you. Did we get a winner? Did we get a winner? Angela, did you find a winner on that last one? Because I'm going to let them pick a book. I want to give away another book. So let's see. Rachel Robertson won again. Oh, did Sarah say it's Joanna 82? Is there a tie? All right, so Joanna 82, if you're still here, I haven't seen a comment from you in a minute. I'll give it to both of you. Okay, so Rachel, we're already sending you a mug. Let us know which of those three books you'd like. And Joanna82, let us know which of those three books you'd like and you guys can win. Both of you and the book titles. Let's. So let's see. They were. Yeah, thinking. Thinking on the spot is like math on the spot. It was. Oh, food. Oh, you're still here. Yay. So, yeah, can somebody post those book titles again? And then you guys can choose. And then you email teamoklaunchers.com and then as soon as this live stream ends, I will post the links to the YouTube video from yesterday and the marketing training happening next Saturday so that you guys can get registered and join in on those things as well. And I will just wait one minute here. Alan West, I have, but we can send him another one, so it's okay, Sarah. Sarah's just saying Allen west already picked Todd nine Holmes book. But that's okay. Todd's here, too. So if we can give away three copies of Todd's book, why not? We'll just get more. We'll buy a couple more copies of Todd's book and send them out okay. So, yeah, it's okay. Okay. I'm fine. Angela can just buy a copy and send it or I've got two copies of Todd's book in my office already. So although I'm not going to my office, I'm not allowed to go there, so forget that. I'll have to give Todd's books away another time, but we'll just get more. That's okay. So, yeah, Sarah has more, too. It's all good. Hey, Dave Chesson's in the house. Yeah, so I came. I came at you live from my bedroom and probably going to be coming at you live from my bedroom for a little while longer. So thank you so much for joining me today. I don't have the titles again, so Sarah posted the names, but we'll need the titles of those books again. But I'll post them below and you guys can email us@teamooklaunchers.com I'll post the links to the Amazon pages for Scott, Robert and Todd's books as well. So you guys can all check them out. If you didn't win, you may want to buy them because they are all really, really fantastic books that you will enjoy. So thank you so much. Please, please take of the opportunities that are on the table for us. Focus on the things that we can do and, you know, really try to support each other with, with kindness and book reviews and everything right now. And I hope to see many of you next Saturday in our free marketing training with Sarah. And thank you. A big shout out to Sarah, Melissa and Angela for being here today to help support this chat and all of the whole session. So, yeah, thanks so much, everybody. It was great to spend a little time with you and I hope to see you on video ch Saturday. So it's not just my face that we're seeing. All right, take care. Bye, everybody.