Do NOT Pay To Be An Award Winning Author

If you've seen the promises that you can be a best selling, award winning author if you work with X, Y or Z company, then you must stick around. Plus, I've got a bit of a confession. Hey, I'm Julie Broad, award winning author and founder of Book Launchers, a fabulous company that will help you write, publish and sell a nonfiction book to boost your business or grow your brand. Sounds cool to say you're an award winning author. And in my case, it's kind of true. I'll explain why it's kind of true in a minute. First, I want to celebrate. I want to celebrate you for being here every Friday A new video comes out. And when it does, if you comment on the day it comes out, you can be entered to win one of these fabulous no Boring books mugs. Yep. For real. I want to thank the people who support Book Launchers and I don't know, these are cool no boring books. So all you have to do is put a comment on any video when it comes out on Fridays. So make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turn on those notifications so you get a reminder. And then when we go live twice a month, we're gonna draw for these fabulous mugs. Now back to the award winning author. Let me say that any company guaranteeing you bestseller status or that you'll become an award winning author if you work with them is running some sort of a gimmick period. There are no guarantees. Nobody knows what will ultimately be a big seller. And you certainly can't guarantee an award be one. Seriously, think about it from the perspective of movies. There are things that are more likely to do well at the box office. And that's why we have a million movies about Spider Man. I don't care if you put Spider man against James Bond at this point, I am not going to another freaking Spider man movie. But that's a topic for another day. Somebody's going to these movies or they'd stop making the darn things. Even when it's likely a movie will do well, there still are no guarantees. And nobody can say they'll win an Oscar or an Emmy. It's impossible to know. There are always surprises. The same thing happens in books. So how can a publishing course or a company guarantee you will become an award winning author? Simple. They give you the award. And the award for the blondest person in the room goes to this guy because he paid us for it. Someone I was in a mastermind group with a few years ago paid $20,000 to become an award winning author. I'm not sure of everything included in this package, but I do know the big selling features for her were that a famous person was her co author and and she flew to a city where they had this swanky red carpet event and was presented with an award. They had professional photographers take pictures and she posted them everywhere. She got an Oscar like looking award and boom boom, boom. She's now an award winning author. True story. Authors everywhere are hungry for exposure, validation and credibility. So the author award business is huge. Not realizing this, I entered my books into a lot of awards. My first book, More than Cash Flow won an international book award. My second, the the New Brand. You won the Beverly Hills Book Award for best sales book and a couple other accolades. These awards aren't as hokey as paying someone to give you an award, but it is a for profit business which is a little bit sketchy. You pay to enter, which I get because there's processing fees. But many don't give an actual monetary prize for winning. So what does the money really go towards? Well you might think it goes towards judging, but as I researched them I found out very few actually disclose who the judges are. They does anybody even read these books? In some cases it's highly likely nobody does. Almost none will tell you how many books were in your category. So you could be a winner in a category of one. And many of them have dozens and dozens and dozens of categories because they want to encourage everyone to enter. Some sell merchandise if you win. So you want to present to the world that you won, buy this sticker, buy this plaque, non prize prizes, press releases, media announcement database and website listings were all prizes. And some offer little more than than the supposed honor of winning the award. Which is truthfully all I got for being the Beverly Hills winner of the best sales book. Knowing this, will I be submitting my next book to award companies? Only if it's an award that honors authors and the community and is doing it for the good of the community. With a list of the judges they disclose who even may comment and give you feedback on the book directly. But mostly I'm going to focus on finding actual humans to read my book and share the word about my book. And I'll save my entry fees for thank you gifts for for those who go over and above to support me in my ventures. So tell me, have you entered any book author awards? What do you think? And if you like this tip, smash that like button. You make my day when you do that. And make sure you subscribe to the channel and turn those notifications on so we can hang out here again soon. Thanks for watching.