D2D & Smashwords PLUS Podcast Promotion Tips for Authors

All right. Hello. Hello. Happy Tuesday. So today's topic is going to be about leveraging podcast interviews for book promotion. But there was some huge, huge news in the indie author world today that I think caught a lot of us by surprise and has me excited because so I have to have to start off by talking about Draft 2 Digital acquiring Smashwords. And then we will dive into some tips that I've got for you doing podcast interviews in order to promote your book. So as you drop in, whether you're watching the replay or joining me live, do say hello. I'm flying solo today and it's Angela's birthday, so join me in saying, happy birthday, Angela. So she. At Book Launchers, when it is your birthday, you get the day off because you should not have to work on your birthday. So she is not working today. So it's just me. So say hello, and I'll do my best to handle questions and do all the things Angela does so well during these live streams. Kat, hello. Thank you for joining in. So, before we get to today's topic, let's talk about the big news. So Draft 2 Digital has announced that they are acquiring Smash Words. And this is really, really exciting news for a few reasons. So it's so exciting that a rack that I have sitting over there just fell on the ground. And so there's a couple of things that I want to touch on with this, because Draft 2 Digital is the aggregator that we use with all our authors that want to go wide with their ebooks at Book Launchers. And we like Draft 2 Digital for quite a few reasons. But one of the big. One of the big things that we like Draft 2 Digital for is its access to OverDrive, the library system. And they're just really. They're just really in support of indie authors. And I won't dive into what an aggregator is. I have great videos on the YouTube channel that are all about, like, what an aggregator is, but essentially it's your way of distributing to subscription services and ebook platforms, basically all the places that you want to reach that are not Kindle. Generally speaking, I think you can actually go to Kindle that way. But. But it is. It is the platform we use to go wide outside of Amazon for our authors when it comes to ebook platforms. Now, Smashwords is something that I haven't personally used, but there's a few things that are really exciting about Smashwords that I think are really cool that they're bringing to the table into this. Into this merger. And Smashwords has its own storefront, which is something that is really cool. Draft2Digital doesn't have a storefront. Draft2Digital just pushes your book out to distribution elsewhere. Smashwords does that, but it also has this storefront that gets its own traffic and they run promotions to it. And they also have basically coupons or promotional, yeah, I think you'd call them coupons. So you can run promotions and drive traffic to the Smashwords site and give people coupons, which is kind of a cool thing to see, especially if you're like me. I do. I like. I set up my book on Lulu. We've talked about this before, but I set it up on Lulu because I'm running ads to it and in order to track the conversions, I, you know, kind of needed to set up this whole funnel. Now coupons allow you to see what promotions you're running out in the world and what results they're getting too, because you would see the coupons getting applied in the sale. So there's lots of cool things about that. Again, I haven't used Smashwords. I was checking out other bloggers. I watched self publishing. Dale, he did a great breaking news story on this today. But yeah, it's exciting to see what's going to happen. I think it all goes official March 1st, but ultimately these are two platforms that have done a lot for indie authors and I'm really excited to see what is going to come out of this merger. I think there's some really great features from both platforms that can come together and create a super powered platform. So that's very cool. Hello, Mike, how's it going? Exotic expressions. Hello, Mythic lore. And so I don't know if I want to dive into that right now. Mythic saying why them versus Publish Drive? Ultimately, Draft 2 Digital has a bigger reach than Publish Drive and Overdrive. Being the library system is one of the big appeals and I don't think Publish Drive has that off the top of my head. It's been a while since we dove into as a company choosing PublishDrive over Draft 2 Digital, but there was a few reasons why we went with Draft 2 Digital versus PublishDrive and we're not talking about that today. I just had to touch on this breaking news before we get into today's subject, which is using podcasts to promote your book. Because a lot of, a lot of authors now are using a lot of podcast interviews. It's something our team, when we pitch our clients for media wins, we're sending them out to a lot of podcast interviews. It's a big chunk of what we're doing. And some companies will set up virtual book tours, which are essentially podcast tours. And so being on podcast, podcasts can be a really, really wonderful tool as an author, but I see a lot of common mistakes. And I thought that today we could talk about kind of seven things that a lot of authors do that are a misstep in using podcasts as a promotional tool for the book. And we'll talk about what to do instead. So that's today's topic. And let's see. Martha, hello. Great. Great to see you here. And Kat said, talk about perfect timing. I was just asked if I would do a podcast today. That is perfect timing. Oh, Efren, sorry I missed you in there. I was just telling everyone that I am without Angela today. So I am going to do my best to take great care of all of you and catch your questions as they're coming in and do all the things that Angela does so well to support me. But it is her birthday today, so she is off, as it should be. Okay, so diving into this topic, first of all. So I have seven mistakes that I've written down for you, and one of the first mistakes is probably going to surprise you a little bit, and that is expecting podcast interviews to lead to book sales directly. And we see this because, like I said, we end up getting a lot of our clients on quite a few podcasts. And I myself have done. I don't know, I should have done the number, but I would say if I was to guess it's more than 125 podcast interviews. I'm probably more than 150 over the course of three or four years that I. Maybe five years now, 2016, goodness gracious, that's almost six years. I started doing podcast interviews in 2016. And so in the course of that, I can tell you that it's very rare that podcast interviews directly lead to a lot of book sales. So you're not seeing thousands of book sales as a result of being on a hundred podcasts. But podcast interviews do add a lot of value to your author platform if you're going into it with the right expectation and, you know, avoiding some of these mistakes that we're going to talk about, especially if you're building a brand around your book. This doesn't just apply for nonfiction, because fiction authors can build brands as well. But if you're building a brand and if you're building a business around this as well, it provides tremendous brand building. It also provides link building. So if you're sending people to your website from the podcast that link is you're building those, those inbound links to your website, which is really important for search engine ranking and telling Google your site has valuable information and people want to go there. It also gives you a really, not a low, not a low risk. But podcast interviews give you a great opportunity to practice your messaging, see what works, see what people are taking as clips for the post launch show notes and things like that. And most podcast interviews, I say they're an easy way to practice your messaging because most of the time if you say something and you're like, wait a minute, I want to do that over again, they're not live. Like I would say, I don't know, probably 10 to 20% of the podcasts I'm on are what I would call live. Most of them are pre recorded. So you can say, hey, I really want to do that one again. And they are usually quite amenable to that kind of thing. So it does. If you're newer to speaking about your topic, this is a great opportunity for you to get better and comfortable and find those things that are resonating and that are hitting their mark with what you're talking about. And if you do dozens and dozens of podcast interviews, so you're doing this on a consistent basis, you're, and you're always giving your best content. You're going to uncover people who are going to buy your books. You're going to uncover people who are going to ask to do business with you. You're going to be invited to speak or to connect with people for other purposes. And you know, I've, I've said this before, but I know I, I was on a podcast where he actually shared an example of his book, his book leading to a podcast interview that led to the sale of his business. I know many people who gained five figure consulting gigs as a result of being on a podcast to promote their book. They've gotten bulk orders to sell larger quantities of their book. And really those are the kind of opportunities. But you have to go into it with an open mind and not be thinking this podcast is going to sell hundreds of books. Because rarely does a podcast sell hundreds of books. And also you won't know. Like that's the thing. The reality that you really have to accept here is you're not going to know when a podcast has led to book sales. You will find out the podcasts that are doing more things for you because you will get people contacting you saying, hey, I heard you on such and such podcast and here's what I'M reaching out to you about. So you will. You will get a sense of what podcasts are generating some momentum for you. But you just, there's not enough data that you get as an author that will tell you when a podcast leads to a book sale. So that's why I say consistency over time will generate results, will generate opportunities. But you got to go into it with that mindset of there's lots of reasons to do a podcast interview. And using your book to get the podcast interviews is effective. And the podcast interviews do ultimately lead to benefits to you as an authority. But it's not a straight line. Do podcast, get book sales. It's like, do podcast, get another podcast, get an invitation to speak, sell books, build, get clients, all of those things. So it is not a straight line. So if you do one podcast and you're expecting that one podcast interview to do something for you, it's unlikely. It will. It's possible, but it's unlikely. So you really want to focus on not making all of these mistakes that I'm going to talk about and doing your best to leverage every podcast interview into things that will be meaningful and can lead to book sales down the road. Okay, let's see what you guys are talking about. Let's see. Deborah says happy birthday. Angela Mythic says Public Drive does distribute to Overdrive as well as Overdrive Audio. Yeah, thanks. I wasn't mentally prepared to go down that road today, so I have to go back to revisit why we made that decision. So I'll have to revisit. But we love Draft 2 Digital, so there has been no reason to leave that platform as a company. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Publish Drive at all. But I am excited. And now with the Smashwords, there's some new things I'm really excited about coming into play. Any sort of earned media doesn't translate well into direct sales. Sometimes it does, but rarely. So usually, like we've seen it. We've even had authors on major, major shows like 2020, Good Morning America. I can't remember some of the other big ones. And some of those did translate into a blip in sales and sometimes we've also seen it from print media. So I had just as an example, I had an article that was syndicated across 130 newspapers and that had a very direct blip. Like you could actually see it for the day. The major I was the front cover of the Vancouver Vancouver Sun. I believe it's thank you, son business page was my article with with talking about my book. And that day there was a, a big lift in sales. And then for the next three days, as it was syndicated to other, other news newspapers across Canada, there was more sales from that. So there certainly can be book sales from media. But I always recommend you have other, other plans. You're, you know, there's reasons to do all of this media from a brand, building a link, building an authority standpoint. But there needs to be a bigger picture plan in place to get book sales but also, you know, to benefit from these media outlook outreach. Yeah. And, and Kat says, isn't the idea to get yourself known? Yes, it is. And, and Kat. And then Mythic replied, many people think too short term and don't understand understand the long term value of building connections with people in their. And they look, look at direct roi, which is a really, really important point, which is why I'm leading this whole conversation off talking about expecting the podcast to lead to sales because it really is that consistency over time. And a lot of people will judge the success of their book solely by launch numbers and solely by sales. And you know, that is really a tiny portion. It's a metric you can use to judge your, your book sales or your book, your book from. But for me, it's, it's not, it's not anywhere near the most important thing for myself or for the vast majority of authors. So that's great. Thank you so much. Mythic. Dolores, you made it. That's awesome. And I saw Efren said something about accumulative efforts to success. Exactly, exactly. And Martha said smaller podcasts lead to bigger podcasts and more exposure, which leads to great opportunities. Yeah, thanks, Martha. Okay, and then Mythic has. I have published Drive as my plan distribution service, but if you do a video dive comparing them in the next three to four months, I will do that. It's been a while since I dove into it and I don't even know when I talked about aggregator services in the past. I'm not even certain if I did a D2D versus public drive publish drive. So put it on my list. Mythic. And I think it's a good time to revisit that, especially once we find out what the Smash Words merger does for their service. Hello, Linda. Welcome. And we Photogal. Hello, Mindful Eats. Thank you. Okay, so back to my things. Back to my mistakes that authors make sometimes when promoting their book on podcast. The second mistake I see a lot is prejudging a podcast before you've been on the podcast. Now, this is not to say that you shouldn't research and that you shouldn't make sure a podcast has your audience in it and that it's a good fit for you and your topic. That's assuming that it is. What I find, at least some of our clients do, is they judge a podcast on whether they know the name of the person hosting it or not, or they'll judge it on some other factor. And you should judge it based on the audience and whether you're a great fit to offer value to that audience. Absolutely. But expecting to only be on the big name podcasts and also expecting that the big name podcasts are actually where you have to be or need to be is not really accurate. And it's interesting because I've done a wide variety. I mean, I haven't been on a super, super famous podcast that everybody would know, but I've been on some of the top podcasts in different categories. And it's interesting because I've actually seen stronger results from smaller podcasts that have a devout and dedicated following of people. And so that's why I say, you want to be careful not to judge them. And then also we placed a client on a podcast that actually is a top category podcast. And I see the podcast host at Podcast Movement on a regular basis because they're always a speaker at Podcast Movement because they are a pretty well known podcaster in the podcast podcasting space. But our author didn't know their name and showed up and had prejudged and did not give a good interview. And this podcaster ended up not airing that interview. And what he said to me was, you know, he actually felt bad telling me because we've sent him a lot of wonderful guests. But he said, you know, she showed up. And he said, I could tell from the minute that she got on the phone that she had decided this wasn't worth her time. And he said, she gave me very short answers. She took my questions and didn't help me get to a good place. And he said, ultimately we cut the interview short and we're not going to air it. And so you don't want to do that because not only has this author damaged her reputation amongst this person, it was a great fit. This is a big podcast and he's part of a huge podcasting network. So she could have got referrals to other podcasts from this person. He has actually three podcasts and she would have potentially been a fit for two of the other two or one of the two anyways. So be careful. About judging them and like I said, for me in particular. But we've also seen this with our authors. You know, one podcast that was a fairly little, you know, somewhat. Very niche, so somewhat obscure podcast. It led to a really powerful partnership that has actually brought in four or five authors to the Book Launchers family. Another podcast interview that I did led to a speaking opportunity which did sell books and has brought in a client and a cool partnership that we explored and, you know, essentially did end up doing a handful of podcast interviews. Have. Sorry, a handful of the podcast interviews. Interviewers have also purchased my book, and some of the interviewers have become clients as well. So it's not always about the audience. It's often about the podcast interviewer themselves, because a lot of interviewers, a lot of podcast hosts will bring you on because they're personally interested in what you do. And that's what I've found is a lot of podcast hosts have me on their podcast, and at the end they go, oh, that was great. You know, I've been wanting to write a book, and I. Or I'm working on a book and I've got questions, and I've been looking for a service just like yours. So I wanted to have you on the podcast to hear what you had to say. And now let's talk about my book. And so you'll find that as a. As an author as well, that people are going to have you on their podcast for personal reasons. And those personal reasons may not show themselves until you've done the interview and you've showed up and delivered value and been a great guest. So number three, I'm feeding right into that. So I'm just going to sail right through, and then we'll do a draw is delivering value. So some people show up, you know, nervous, or they show up focused on selling their book, trying to get that ROI that we talked about. And so there is an art to this. You do want to seed your book a little bit, but you don't want to be selling your book. And you also really want to show up as comfortable as you possibly can. And for me, that means I show up and I'm like, how can I make your day? Great. What can I do to bring value to your podcast, to your audience right now? And that's kind of the mindset that I go into every podcast interview. So I'm not nervous. I'm not worried about what I say. I'm thinking about, okay, what am I going to say that's going to matter to the people listening what am I going to say that's going to help this host do a good job today or do a great job in their podcast? And we had client training at Book Launchers and we had a guest, somebody who helps people with their podcast, you know, with their podcast interviewing and, you know, being a great guest. And her name is Christine McAllister. And she shared with her clients that at the start of every podcast, before you start the interview, almost always you have a few minutes chat before you go live or before you hit record, and the podcaster will usually say, you know, do you have any questions for me? For me, this is where I always get audience clarity. You know, even having done a bit of research before I hop on, I always say, like, who's in your audience that you want me to speak to? And then her question, which I've now started to ask, is, how can I make this your best podcast interview this month, this year, or ever, whatever kind of ambitious goal you want to set. And it's just a great framing because the podcast interviewer is now going to know that you're in this as a partner. You want to make this great for them and for their audience. And then she also added a secondary tip, which you can ask the host if they're promoting anything or if anything is important that you'd like to have brought up in the conversation if it's natural to do so. So they might have a new product coming out, they might have a new service, they might have a book themselves. And so now you can ask, and now you know, and you might be able to work that into your conversation. And you're creating this partnership right from the beginning, which is going to help you deliver value. It's going to make the host feel more confident and comfortable in this, and it'll probably create a much better interview that's going to get better results over time. Now, seeding the book is a little bit of an art and a science. You don't want to do this very often or repeatedly or make it too, too big. But I do recommend you do it where it's natural. So as an example, if somebody were to ask me, like a common question I get is, you know, what kind of help should I expect to hire to create a professionally published book that's kind of a version of a question I might get. And I would go, you know, well, you know, everybody should hire an editor and a professional book cover designer. But there's a lot to hiring those people. And in fact, in my book, self Publish and Succeed, I have an entire chapter on hiring the wrong editors or the problem with book editors. But, you know, one tip that I will give you today is, and I go into the fact that, you know, most people hire editors not realizing there's content editors and copy editors and you should get a content editor first. That would be my tip. But I'm addressing the fact that this is a huge subject and there's so much to talk about when it comes to hiring professionals for your book. And I have chapters in my book dedicated to this. But let me give you some value today. That's kind of the framework of how I would do this. And if you can get good at doing this, you'll. You're delivering value and seeding your book. And nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna mind because in fact, you're saying where they can go and get a lot more information and get more. So support. Some hosts will say, don't promote yourself at all. I will take care of that. What do you want me to promote? Be respectful of that. But there's still places where it's like, look, I have six, six chapters in my book to teach you this. But here's two things to know right now. You know, that really just says, like, I can't. There's not enough time to give you all of this. So you can do it in a respectful way. But if somebody does say no promotion, then, you know, do your best to adhere to that. All right, let's do a draw. So for those of you who are new, I know there's a few folks who've just tuned in today, I am going to my. Where is it? There it is. My random name. So every Tuesday and Friday, when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some sweet book launcher swag. Right now, I don't have Angela, so we're going to give away. If you haven't already got a copy of Self Publish and Succeed, we've got that. And I've got a copy of Lizzie Kangro's book. I did an author spotlight with her last week. It's called Reclaim the Rebel. And I will drop a link to it in the Description post as well. Or you can check out Friday's video from last week with our Author Spotlight with Lizzie Cangrow. So we've got her book Reclaim the Rebel and Self Publish and Succeed. And then we've also got our fabulous magnets, which I always awkwardly reach over to my filing cabinet and grab them. This is one of them. The greatest gift you can give an author is a review on Amazon. So Those are the three prizes and if you're the winner, you email teamoklaunchers.com say Happy Birthday Angela, and let her know your mailing address and what prize you would like. So drumroll please. And Brian Atnosin. Hopefully I'm saying your last name right. So thank you so much for your comment on the day a video is released. You are one of our two winners for today, so thank you so much. I don't know if you're here live. Let me just check to see if you are. I haven't seen you. Say hello. Daniel Latour, delator is in the house. Mindful Eats. Hello Steve L. Hello. I'm glad you stopped by. I just love to listen and I just love to listen Said watching your videos truly helped me publish my book in December 2021. Thank you so much for sharing valuable information. Thank you for being here and thank you, Deborah, reminding everyone to click like because it just makes it more fun for everyone. Cartoon climax. Hello. Great to see you here. We do lives every other Tuesday, so every Tuesday and Friday there's always a video. But every other Tuesday we go live and hang out and have some fun together. And you get chances to win swag, which is what we're going to do first today. So I'm actually going to give the swag of today to Mythic Lore just for the contributions and questions right from the outset today. Thank you for that. So if you. I'll just type it in here. Email teamoklaunchers.com and forgive me for operating without Angela today and email that with your mailing address and what your prize choice is if you are outside. And I think we're getting mugs back, my friends. We finally found they were out of stock everywhere we turned to try to get our no Boringbook mug. But I believe they are back in stock and we're getting them again soon. And so maybe in two weeks time you will have another chance to win another hashtag noboreringbooks mug. But we've got magnets. We've got Lizzie Kangro's book Reclaim the Rebel and Self Publish and Succeed if you don't already have those too. You won. That's what's happening. Mythic. You won. So email teamoklaunchers.com and let Angela know where to send you your prize for being here today. That's right, cats like you won swag or book. Whatever you would like. Okay, so heading on back to my list here. So I remember where I was the Other one, I don't actually think I have it here because I have a home office and here. And sorry for turning my back on all of you. I was looking for it. I don't have it. It's Reclaim the Rebel by Lizzie Kangro. My Friday video that I just did last week was with Lizzie, and it's a really cool book on. She's a nutritionist, and her book is really about kicking your inner mean girl. So you can tell who the target audience is for that. Kicking your inner mean girl to the side and really getting healthy and feeling fit and feeling good about your body and being confident. It's a really cool book. And Lizzie's fantastic. If you haven't seen that video, check it out because she's got a few cool tips for you. And let me go back to my list. Here we go. Okay, so number. Let me recap where we're at. So number one is expecting book. Sorry, expecting a podcast interview to lead directly to sales. It's not a one like do interview, get book sales. It is an important part, but that's not the ROI or the immediate roi. Number two is not judging a podcast. Prejudging a podcast is looking at the audience, making sure it's an audience you can deliver value to. And then three, showing up and delivering that value. That's what you want to do. The mistake is some people show up and just talk about their book, and that's not focusing on the audience and delivering value. Number four is. And I've said this one before, but I'm going to say it over and over until nobody does it. When the podcast host is wrapping up the podcast interview and they say, where can people find you? What should you not do? Go ahead. This is our next prize for today. What should you not do when a podcast host says, where can people find out more about you? Where can people connect with you? Those are both questions that you get asked at the end of a podcast. And I want to know, what should you not do? Or conversely, what should you do when you get asked that question? Let's see what you guys have to say about that. And I will. Let me see here. Oh, sorry, I just saw it. I just saw a post from somebody saying, oh, all books available for free these days on the web. So where's your industry heading? You know, I hope my book's not available for free on the web right now. And if it is, that means somebody has violated copyright and published it out there. So ultimately, I do believe there's always going to be A market for books and content that is published and created because a book is so much more than just blog posts and it's thoughtful content. It takes a lot of effort. And there's many authors here. Martha's here, Efren's here. They have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into curating a really high quality book that is worth thousands and thousands of dollars in expert advice. And you know, to me, people recognize that value in a book and they're going to go and buy it. There's some good responses here. I'll come back to that. I'm going to do one more draw while I'm giving you guys a chance for the Tuesday commenters. Okay, draw again. Here we go. Oh, Stephen won last week, and I don't think Steven's here. But Stephen, you won and I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to let somebody else win because you won in the last livestream. Patricia, Dana. So congratulations. Email at Teen Book Launchers and collect your winnings. If you're watching the replay, that's totally fine. Go to teamoklaunchers.com and email Angela and let her know if you want Lizzie Kangro's book re Killing the Rebel, Self publish and succeed. Or we've got a collection of fabulous fridge magnets, which doesn't sound cool when you say fridge magnet, but they're really cool magnets. I love them. Okay, so I'm heading back over to see who my winner is. Okay, so let's see. Kat says tell them Facebook with a question mark. Don't give a hundred different places. Only one somebody's been studying. Don't say my telephone number is. That's kind of fun. Don't say I don't know. Definitely don't say I don't know. Super typist. Great to have you here. Or don't say I forgot Coach Deb's in the house. Hello. Yes. So, and Kat said you should provide your website or social accounts but not provide direct email. So, Efren, you nailed it. I think you've won all the prizes, but let us know what you have not won or designate someone to take your prize for you either is totally fine with me. Email Angela and let her know what we can send you. So Efren said, don't give 100 places, only one. My recommendation is to send people to a lead magnet, something that is valuable, that ties into the conversation that you've just had so that you are collecting email addresses. When they download your freebie, they can then get an email from you that says, now you've got this, now go get my book. Like this book is going to expand on what you're getting. So a reader magnet would be something like a checklist, it would be a roadmap, it would be a workbook or a worksheet, something that ties to your conversation. And I've talked about this before, but examples of mine. And I'm just looking down here to send you to a couple as examples. So here's my game plan, which is how to sell books without spending money. And then there's this, which is how to write a business book. So a lot of my podcasts are either talking about how to write a book or how to promote a book. So I would at the end, instead of saying go to all the places, I usually just say I've got a great resource for you. Head to book launchers.com business book and you can download a book, a workbook that will help you plan out who your target audience is, what your book out what your book hook is, and how that outline will go through and deliver on that hook. Something like that. That was kind of clunky, but I would say something like that, talking about the value of or if you just want to learn how to write a book that is set up to grow your business and grow your brand, go to book launchers.com businessbook download that. And when you do that, you'll also get my email. So you can just hit reply and chat with me and. And I'm happy to help. So that's kind of what I do. And by the way, I'm not afraid to put my email address out there in the world like that because a lot less people will contact you than you think. And ultimately you want people to access you and come to you with opportunities, questions. If you get too many, then you might want to have a VA that helps you with your email or some sort of an assistant. But in the beginning, I would not worry about having email addresses get out there in the world like that because you are probably not going to get the volume of email that you would that you really want even, or the volume that will come from that. So cool. I'm just reading what you guys have got. Patrick Kelly says I've done a poor man's copyright by currying a hard copy of my manuscript to myself and keeping it sealed. As soon as you put words on paper, it has copyright protections, Patrick. So I don't know as though you have to courier a hard copy to yourself. As soon as it was on page. It's copyright. Let's see. And Deb is encouraging people. It's like a Deborah thing because Deborah Lloyd was telling everybody, hit the like button too. And Coach Deb is too. So thank you. And Kat, Efren has designated you as the prize winner today. So let us know what we can send your way. Thank you, Efren. That was very kind. Okay, so let's head back to my list here and okay. At the end. So that was the closing cult action. So you don't want to send people to. Okay, you can connect with me at Instagram, @JulieBrod and Facebook @JulieBrod or Twitter heJulieBrod, you know, and go to my website, bookcrunchers.com and you can also check out my book@selfpublishandcceed.com. you don't want to do that. Give them one specific place to go to and ideally create an email list from this. So build that relationship and do that by sending them somewhere that they're going to download something of value to give you their email address and start building that relationship with them. Number five, at the end of the podcast, when the podcaster offers to help you, this is your chance to get a quick win. And a lot of them will do this. Some won't. If the podcast interview went really well, after you set the intention at the beginning of the how can I make this your best podcast interview ever? What can I help you with? How can I seed something that you're working on now? They're your partner and they often are going to ask you at the end, is there anything I can do to help you? And this is your chance to say, hey, if you know any other podcasters who you know, I would be a good fit for their podcast, I would love that connection. I'd be very grateful for that connection. And this is how you leverage one podcast into many. Now, some podcasters naturally do this, but I always recommend that you put that out there and see that and you can leverage that one interview into many, many others versus just saying, yeah, thank you, I'll let you know and reach out. You know, that's an easy, easy thing that you can do on the spot. And a lot of podcasters know many other podcasters and they will connect you very quickly. Number six, send a thank you or a follow up after. Yes, you've showed up and you've delivered massive amounts of value, but they've created the audience, they're getting this podcast edited, and they're doing a lot of work to make you look good. In many cases, if a podcaster has gone in my view over and above, they've, you know, sometimes they buy my book and they've actually read it and I can tell I will send a physical thank you. And that physical thank you isn't usually swag. Sometimes it is just because I, I'm passionate about our swag that we give away. But, you know, I have, I've received from other people, like a little tea bag, a little gift set tea bag. Sometimes it's a journal, sometimes it's something else. But a simple handwritten thank you card can go a long way. So I highly recommend, at a minimum, you thank them via email and you share the podcast interview when it's out. But if it was great and they went out of their way to do things for you, or they really, you know, it was just a really great interview or you had a great connection, do that extra thing to stay top of mind. Because these kind of things over time are what going to, are what going to give you those results. Because next time they're talking to somebody, and by the way, podcasters are talking to people almost every day, and somebody goes, oh, you know, I'm really looking for somebody who does this. They can go, oh, hey, check out episode number 45 of my podcast. And, you know, if you want to, if you want, I can actually connect you to that person who does that. So staying top of mind can really, really help because, you know, after somebody's done 300 episodes, they'll forget half of them, but they'll remember the ones that said thank yous and sent gifts and were thoughtful and, you know, partnered with them right from the beginning. My last tip for you is, or last tip or last mistake to not do is to do the podcast and then move on once that podcast is out. Or you can even, depending on how great that interview was, how many you're doing. You can even say, hey, I just had a great interview with so and so. I'll let you know when it's out. So you can put that out there on your socials, you can put it in your email newsletter, and then when it comes out, share it, pull clips from it. Some hosts make this really easy. Some send me a whole kit. And they're like, hey, here's some images you can use to share on your socials. Here's an audio clip you can use. Here's a video clip you can use. And they make it super easy. Other hosts don't do that. And you might have to do it yourself. But either way, don't just do the interview. And that's it. You now have content that you can share across all your platforms, that you can leverage, you can put on your website. This is credibility, this is brand building. This is showcasing your expertise. And somebody has done the work of editing and sometimes creating images and other files for you. So now all you have to do is is use them. And again, it's these consistent efforts over time that will yield results. It's not that one to one, like, do the interview, get the sale, but it is do the interview, get another interview, get introduced to somebody. Somebody is a door opener that gets you into a group that suddenly you find all these people who want to buy your book or they want to hire you, they want you to come and speak. And so over time, if you're playing this game, if you want to call it that, this game of consistency, and you're doing podcast interviews and you're doing all these things to make the most of every opportunity you're given, and you're delivering value. When you are given these opportunities, I promise good things are going to come your way. It is really, really powerful to approach it in this way, and I hope that that helps and helps you sell a lot of books, too, but also opens the doors to cool opportunities in the future. Okay, checking out what you guys have to say. If I've missed a question, please repost it now, because now is the time. I will do questions. And Kat and Efren are flattering each other and having a little party on the side, so that's great. Deborah. The name means industrious and willing. I love that. I didn't know that. Okay. Kat says it's very true. I've done patient advocacy for a lot of years, and after going to a DC event and meeting with senators and congressmen, sending a physical thank you card always keeps you in mind. Yes, it's that extra step. And actually, you know, people don't get a lot of mail now, and they certainly. Most of the mail we get are bills or junk. So when you get something that is a card, especially if it has handwriting, like it's personal thought, it really does go a long way. It's very meaningful and mythic. Says, do what others don't. Absolutely. And Efren added, authenticity equals value all around. Agreed. And mindful eats. When they first asked me to add their mobile number for their viewers to call them, I'll admit I was a little nervous. Yeah. Again, you'd be surprised at how few people actually do reach out and ask things of you Mindful Eats. Do you ever send a copy to podcasters or of your book in a pitch maybe? Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't pitch myself, but I do sometimes send the book, and sometimes the podcaster asks for the book in advance most of the time. So when I say I don't pitch myself, you know, at Book Launchers, we have a team of people who are pitching, and also I work with an outside agency called Interview Connections because my. This went places I didn't expect it to, but here we go. You know, I don't hold anything back. So I hired Interview Interview Connections because when I'm on the podcast, at the end of the podcast, when they say, is there anything that I can do to help you? Which they almost always do. I don't ask for a referral to podcasts. I say, hey, are you interested in having awesome authors on your podcast? So I'm out there basically uncovering great podcasts for our clients, and so that gives me another place to get other podcast connections. And of course, at the same time, I'm connecting with podcast hosts who are potential clients that might work with book Launchers, and it might sell some books and it might. It's open some speaking opportunities, like I said. So my team pitches me for podcasts and Interview Connections. Interview Connections never sends a book. They have a podcast speaker, one sheet, basically. And my team sometimes sends books. So it really does vary. And. And, you know, first thing with a pitch, and I actually have a video coming out probably in two weeks on how to pitch yourself, and it talks about how to hook them. So you would never send the book to begin with. You would send a very clear and concise pitch first and then offer the book. And sometimes they ask for an ebook version or physical version. Often if they're doing videos, they like to have that physical version sent to them so they can hold it in a video and share it and things like that. So it really does vary. But I wouldn't send it at the beginning. I would send it after you've got interest from your pitch to begin with. Should podcast promotion be limited to podcasts that are rated clean and not promoting on podcasts that are rated explicit? That's a personal choice. Depends on your audience. It depends on. I mean, it depends on you and your tastes and your comfort level with that. I've never. I mean, most of the podcasts that I'm on, there's a couple where there's been a few swear words, but it's really rare. I think most people are conscious of the fact that a lot of people listen to podcasts in their home and in their car. And so a lot of people aren't explicit, but others are. So I think that's a personal taste for you and, and your audience and what your comfort level is with that. The good old fashioned Canadian politeness. This works great on social media as well. People seriously undervalue the power of organic one to one communication. Absolutely. All right, friends, so I think we did our prizes. Yeah, I did both prizes and I did both participation prizes. And yes, this is yet another reason why you need to know your book summary pitch in a very concise way. Clear way. Yeah. So if you're not already subscribed and having the notifications turned on, do that. Because in, I think it is in two weeks I've got the, the video coming out on how to pre. How to prepare your own pitch and send your email pitch. And I think that will be really useful. That was people on my team helped me prep that video. The people on our team that do the podcast pitching and the media pitching and the speaker outreach pitching, they helped me prep the content for that video. So I know you'll find it tremendously valuable. But because that's one thing I don't do, I haven't really done a lot of pitching myself. I've always leveraged my network and kind of leveraged relationships that I've built over the long term when I've done it. Oh, one more question here. Any tips for people who aren't personally into podcasts? I've been on some big radio shows in a previous life, but I don't listen to many podcasts. Whatever time I have is taken up by audiobooks. So I mean, if podcast interviews are going to be a broadcast book launch strategy for you, I would generally just recommend listening to the podcast that you're going to be on before I listen to them in two x or. Or if you don't like listening to Chipmunks, you can listen at 1.5 just to get a sense of what they talk about, what the style is of the interviewer. I don't think you have to be a, an avid podcast listener in order to get benefits from it. I look at it as relationship building. If you want another perspective on this, it is not so much about podcasts or promotions, it's relationship building and it's giving value to others. And that's for me, what podcast interviews are. But if you're not familiar with a lot of podcasts, you know, having a listen to one of the podcast episodes before you pitch them or if you're invited on, then before you say yes or, you know, if it kind of comes about and you've said yes already before you're on the show. So I highly recommend listening to at least one episode. All right, cool. So lots of exciting news. I think you're going to see lots of content coming out in the next couple weeks on Draft two Digital and Smashwords Mythic. I've written it down. I will do a DD published drive comparison in the coming months. And thank you all for being here. It was an absolute pleasure. And if you're watching the replay, thank you for tuning in then. And I'll see you guys in two weeks live again. And of course, oh, we do have a deep dive on the 19th. This is going to be about live event marketing and book launch marketing. So you can make sure you're registered for that. I'll just drop that in the links right here. It's book launchers.com deep dive. And that will get you registered for that training. I think at least one person from my book marketing team, if not two, are going to be here talking about the book launchers roadmap. So how prepping clients for this, what we're doing to kind of start up with live events again because more and more of our authors are doing live events to promote their books again and just talk about book launch marketing in general. So it's going to be a really, really great training session. I hope you all can make it. So we'll see you there. That's Saturday, I believe it's February 19th at 10:00am Pacific Standard Time. Otherwise, we'll be back here, same time, same place, in two weeks live for another live stream. All right, take care. Thank you everybody. Bye.