How to Avoid the Most Common Author Publishing Mistakes

Foreign. Hello and happy last Tuesday of January. That's kind of freaking me out. All right, so we're talking about the pre published mistakes that can kill a good book. Most books do not fail at launch. They fail before the author even hits publish or if they're working with a company like Book Launchers before the book is published. Today we're going to go through some things that I collected from my team as to the things that they see repeatedly that are mistakes that set authors up for pain and struggle. These are mistakes that very smart, capable authors make. So if you see yourself in one of these stories, just know that you are in very, very good company. And also knowing about these mistakes now and kind of paying attention, especially if you're in that pre publish, you can avoid making a mistake that can be very expensive to fix later on. So that's what we're covering today. Should be a fun little session that could save you a lot of pain, money, heartache, all of those things as you go. If you don't know who I am. Hey, I'm Julie the book broad. I'm the founder of Book Launchers and of course, of course your host here. All right, so I saw lots of people saying hello. I think the snow has brought some of you to the live early. So welcome. Bruce wayne was here 15 minutes early. Gary was in the house. Of course, ancient Egypt and the Bible was here as well. So hello, hello, welcome, welcome. Pamela from Arizona is here and some of us are hiding under snowstorms. Some of us have been enjoying 60 to 70 degree weather. So, yep, Bruce Wayne's with me, 72 and clear here. So I don't know if it's quite 72. I haven't been outside since this morning, but it was 60ish when I got indoors. So pretty lovely. For those of us on the southwest side of the country, we're doing okay. All right, so before everybody hates me, let me get into the mistakes. Now actually, before I do that, let me just put a little caveat on this. I'm going to be telling client secrets and I want to be clear. These mistakes don't mean someone is a bad writer or they're not cut out for this. Usually it's because somebody's tired or they're excited or they're just trying to be done. And I was just talking to a client a couple days ago who admitted that the rush that he put on his book for a deadline, looking back now kind of feels like an arbitrary deadline. Like, like the date that he set mattered a lot to him. And now that he looks back, he's kind of like, I shouldn't have pushed and rushed as much for that date because it didn't really matter as much as I thought it did. And so sometimes we can learn from the wisdom of others. Now, if you see yourself in this, good, know that you're not alone. If you're one of our clients and you're going, oh, my God, she's talking about me. I might be, but also, possibly I'm not. Because again, I collated and collected this from our team, and they mostly did not share names. They were just going from past experiences. So, again, if you see yourself in this, it may be about you, but it's many other people that have done this too. Fair enough. Okay. So the first mistake I just alluded to, which is rushing to print to be done with the book. And many authors do this for a variety of reasons. They might be just tired of their book. And I was hosting the Self Published and Succeed live class. Chad on our team is the main teacher, but I had the privilege of filling in for him. Yesterday was when he was off and we were talking. Actually, it was on Saturday because we did a writing session and Q and A on Saturday. And they were asking. They were kind of saying that they have monsters, right? I talk about the monsters in my book, Self Publish and succeed, the fear of success, the fear of failure, imposter syndrome. These are some of the monsters. And we were talking about those monsters and. And one of those. And I just told them when we were talking about the monsters, at some point, I. I hate every book I've ever worked on. And it was kind of funny when I was working on the second edition, when I was doing the second edition of this book, I hadn't read it in forever. And I was going through it. And I remember sending a note to Alyssa on Slack. Alyssa runs our books, Hub. She oversees everything. And I was like, oh, my God, Alyssa, this book's actually really good. And she was laughing at my surprise that my book was actually good. But my last memory of the book was at a point when I was so tired of it, I didn't think it was any good anymore. So the tendency to just be done with it comes up in a variety of forms and for a variety of reasons. But I think it's really important. And you might want to write this down and put it on a sticky note. Being published is not the same as being finished because a lot of us get anxious to get published. But you might not really be finished. So let's focus on being finished before we publish. I think it's really, really important. And the last minute rush means there's missed errors, there can be formatting issues, there can be metadata problems. And some of these things are quick and easy to fix after it's published. But some things can be really, really expensive. One of the things that we try so hard with our authors is to get the book really polished and before it goes into layout. Because once it's in layout, if you start adding sentences and paragraphs and moving things around, every page has to be redesigned. I mean, if you look at this, since I just had it in my hand, I don't have a lot of charts and things in here, but let's just see, how do I find an example? Don't really have it. Yeah, I don't have charts and graphs in this book, but let's just go by this page, right? So you can see that there is formatting and, you know, just a variety of kind of things. Right. So let's say all of a sudden I add a big section over here. I like add a paragraph or I want to put a boxed out section. Well, now it's not just that page that changes. Every page after it changes, and now the page numbers change and now your table of contents changes. So a change once you're in layout is not just a change. A lot of people kind of think of it as a word document. It's all going to flow and adjust. And that isn't the case once you're in layout. And so we really try to encourage authors to take a little bit of time, work through those edits, even have an extra editor. Like for us, we have a developmental editor, a fact checker, a copy editor, and a proofreader. Four different people typically. Sometimes the copy editor and the fact checker are the same, Go through it and. And then we also are encouraging the author to review it in between every time to try to get it as close to that final version. So we're only making tiny changes once you're in layout because that does make a huge difference in your whole journey. All right, so let me go back to my notes. I clicked away from it. There we go. Okay. So the authors who do best assume that something's going to go wrong. This is kind of what we do. We kind of assume something's going to go wrong and we try to build extra time into the process for that something. And it's not something at every stage, but almost every project hits at least One snag along the way. So having a little extra time in your path is very beneficial to the overall success of your book and helping you actually publish something that is, in fact, finished. All right, second change or second change. Second mistake is changing things that don't improve the book. Now, some of this going back to the monsters that we already talked about. I believe we often run into this with authors who are actually dealing with a monster. But what happens is that monster comes out in. They just can't stop wordsmithing the book. And they're thinking they're making their book better, but they're actually burning time and money without improving the reader experience. Because the challenge is. And we see this sometimes internally, we kind of call this the author freakout moment. But we'll see it in endless cover revisions. We'll see it in someone who just can't turn the manuscript back in or. And we're experiencing it right now, an author who is endlessly editing the book in layout. And again, layout's the worst place to be. Endlessly editing. But because this is the final step before we hit publish, it is the place where some people freak out and they start. They start saying, oh, this needs to be changed. This needs to be changed. And. And it usually is not something that needs to be changed again. We've put it through four rounds of editing. Your book isn't getting that much better with endless revisions at that stage. So there is a balance. Like, your book is never going to be perfect. There's always going to be something that could be a little better, could be different. And I mean, one of the stories I've told before, self promote and succeed. No sooner did I publish it, and I was talking about Twitter, Twitter became X. And there was something else that changed almost instantaneously when you know. And so those things, like your book, you could endlessly change it forever and ever, depending on what it is. You may stop using one word and think another word is better. At some point, you have to know when you're actually improving the book or you're just afraid. And smart authors and successful authors, they know when to stop touching things. Because there does come a point where you've hit that dim. The law of diminishing returns. And those little tweaks are just costing you more than you're benefiting from. And it's a challenge. But usually what the thing that I think can help is to understand when you're endlessly verbalizing, it's a monster, right? Like if you look internally, look yourself in the Mirror. You'll probably find you're actually feeling some fear, whether that's imposter syndrome, you know, you're afraid of failing. Those things can rear their ugly head in some other form. And usually it is that thing like that color is just not right on my cover or something like that. All right, Mike. Mike's in the house from windy England. And I saw Jerry Hane, I think it is. And I found people on Mars 2004 designed Mars rovers. Wow. As Star Trek, Ghost Rider. Wow. Unknown in Delaware. That's pretty cool. And then Darla's here from Southern California, also enjoying non snowy weather. So that is lovely. And we will be doing prizes in a few minutes. So if you haven't said hello, do say hello. And. And yeah, we're going to keep going on. We're talking about mistakes and somebody just said, oh, no, it's about me. There we go. So mistake number three, I believe not everyone will agree with this. So this is an opinion, but it's an opinion that my team also has is focusing only on Amazon. If I win on Amazon, I win is kind of some people's thoughts, like they need to get that bestseller flag. They need to rank high in the store. And I think that that can work. And I understand why some people go go for that appeal. But a lot of times what you're doing is designing your whole publishing path and career and business for one channel. And in the long run, that doesn't serve your goals. And I think this is a mistake because people are mixing up channel with strategy. And I talked about this a bit last week when I was showing audio, the audiobook, the interactive audiobook version of Self Publish and Succeed, the second edition I was talking about. And I did this, I did a whole presentation at PodFest a couple weeks ago on interactive audiobooks and kind of using an audiobook to fuel your podcast growth and things like that. And one of the things I talked about was how the format of audiobook isn't a strategy. Right. How you're going to use this format is the strategy. And it's the same thing here is Amazon is not a strategy, it's a channel. And how does that channel fit in to your goals and what you're building and creating? And I think that a lot of people focus really heavily on it and then they don't realize that they're actually missing out on some of the biggest stuff, which is bulk sales, you know, selling at the back of the room when you speak, or selling it as part of your speaking contract. Direct sales to customers, which maybe aren't as voluminous as Amazon sales, but they're more valuable because now you're building a direct relationship with that customer because you've got their contact information. And then of course, partnerships, right. We've, we've been working really hard at developing a lot of really, really high value partnerships at book Launchers to support our authors, but also, you know, to help us get the word out about some of the things that we're doing. Especially because we have Author Launch Kit now, our book marketing software and we have our Author's Empire workshop, which I know Darla's coming to. Yay. It's in Vegas in March, March 5th and 6th. Angela can drop the link in there. It is. For anybody who wants to build around their book. It's ideally your early stage with your book, but if you've got a book out already, that's okay too. But it's all about building that empire. So the decisions that go into building and developing a book as the foundation of this great big empire that you're going to build. And the empire might be just impact driven, it might be income driven or if you're like me, I am impact and income driven. So that because I find if I'm making income, I can actually make a bigger impact. So it all feeds together. But yes, please do come join us in Las Vegas March 5th and 6th if you can, because this is going to be a fantastic event. Our speaker lineup. I am so, so, so excited about our speaker lineup. One of our speakers is a dear friend of mine who has worked on dozens of New York Times best selling campaigns. You won't hear her speak anywhere else. She's coming to Vegas because she is my friend. You also will meet somebody who has spoken all over the world and I think even spoke on a lot of stages with Tony Robbins. He was one of the folks from the Hudson, the, the plane that crashed on the Hudson. He was one of those people who have stayed back and helped everybody get off the plane and has an incredible story to tell about that plus making money from stage and so much more. So I am pumped. It is going to be so good. So hopefully you can join us. And we do have discount codes still. They're running for the rest of the month. So if you want to save $300 on a ticket, we still do have a couple of codes left for that. All right, mistake number four, working with non specialists. Now this comes up and one of our, one of our beloved clients, we love her. She's Fantastic. And her book was a USA Today best bestseller for multiple weeks in a row. She had a designer work on her book that was not a book designer and it was beautiful. Her book was so beautifully designed, but it didn't work for the whole platform publishing it and had to be completely redesigned. And what we see this with COVID designers too. Somebody might be a phenomenal graphics designer. They don't understand some of the intricacies and issues with book covers. So there's a lot of things that need to be done to adapt it to actually perform as a book cover. And the same thing with interior book designing. We've even tried to hire some graphics designers that were like we tried at one point, somebody who designed album covers. And while they were an incredible designer, it was not what you need. Like, it is a specialized skill. And I find that people who think their spouse who is a great editor, hey, my spouse teaches English. This person can edit a book. It is not the same thing grading an English paper as it is capturing your voice, editing it, and helping it really polish and speak to that reader. Because it requires that you understand storytelling techniques, the ability to not only, you know, manage the Chicago Manual of Style, but also be able to bring words to life on a page so a reader does not get bored. Okay. All right, let's see. Okay, I was reading your guys's comments. Sorry, I got distracted. Okay, the fifth mistake. And then we're going to do some prizes and we'll do a wrap up of, you know, the opposite of mistakes is what to do. Right. So mistake number five is treating pre sale passively. So your book is done. It's. It's on sale, but it's not live. So this is the period of time. Usually we like it to be about six weeks. So your book's been uploaded, people can buy it, but they're not getting a copy yet. And there's a lot of things to do in pre sale. Now some people hit pre sale and they're exhausted and they kind of feel like this is the chill zone before the book comes out. But your pre sale period is a very important period of time and you want to use it to build momentum. And if you happen to create a long pre sale, you want to be active the whole time because a long pre sale doesn't help if nothing is happening during it. And so successful authors are going to maximize whatever time they have leading up to build momentum and to build activities. So some of the things. And there's videos, we have videos on the channel about what to do in pre sale. But getting reviews, getting your advanced reader team activated, lining up whatever you're going to do for a launch event, getting podcast interviews, lining up media. One of the things when we have a longer pre sale, one of the things that we do is we line up a bunch of things to happen around launch. So one of our authors is actually might even be launching right around now. Had a fairly long pre sale and did a bunch of interviews in advance. And all of them are starting to drop now that the book has launched. And that took a lot of time and effort and coordination to have everything kind of happen in advance but then launch. But all of that is what creates this massive momentum and that feeling of, oh my gosh, this person is everywhere. And that is really, really good. All right, let's do a prize. So I have two different prizes that I'm going to be doing right now. The first prize is for everybody who has commented on the videos. So new videos come out every Tuesday and Friday. And when you comment on the day a video is released, you get entered to win the prizes. And I have this. I'm gonna. I gotta find a new name picker. These ones. I should go back to my chat GBT1 actually. But I like this, this version of this screen. I just don't like the other screen. So your selection of prizes. Angela's here. She can tell you what is there, but I do believe it is the usual. Oh, and it's Kevin hall. So I know I'm redrawing. Please allow me to redraw because Kevin is inevitably going to say redraw. Now where is my redraw button? See? Oh, there it is. Here we go. All right, thank you, Kevin. Thank you for being here. And our next one is Billy Aleri. I think I'm saying that right. 929. So what you need to do is email Angela@teambookclunchers.com she has copies of the second edition. She has Self promote and Succeed. She has our hashtag no boring books mug as well as our oh so soft journal which is in my backpack so I won't grab it yet. So thank you, thank you and thank you for your comments and likes as you watch. And by the way, thank you. If you are not subscribed, please go ahead and take a moment to do that. Right now I am going for the play button this year. I never worried about it wasn't on my goals or priorities. But I decided that this is the year we hit 100,000 subscribers and we get the play Button. So please do subscribe. And if you have other channels, go ahead, subscribe with those too. Help me get that play button. And you know what? This, the side benefit of the play button is that I am going to be the coolest mom in my mom in my son's class because they are all YouTube obsessed. And if I have a play button, that's going to make me number one. So, you know, in addition to getting notified whenever videos come out, you can help me be a super cool mom. Okay, now for everybody who has said hello today, this prize is for you. And if you haven't said hello and you're missing out, we'll do one more of these near the end. So. So you still have a shot at it. PGP N3E Was that Pamela? I think that was Pamela. So congratulations. What you need to do is, is I can't seem to stop sharing. Here we go. Is you need to email Angela@teambooklaunchers.com and Mike says we're all subscribed. Who is mad enough not to, Right? Thank you, Mike. I agree. And of course I try to deliver as much value as possible so that it's worth you subscribing. But if you need another benefit, you can make me super cool to, to my son and all of his friends in his class. All right, thank you. Let's go to. Oh yes. And Angela reminded you, please include your first last name and when you're claiming the prize and your mailing address so that she knows where to ship it. Because there are so many people that write and say, I would love a mug. Angela. That's it. And she's like, great, I will put it on my front porch and you can come get it. Which means you don't know where she lives and she doesn't know where you live. So this is not going to work out. So you got to tell her where to send it. Okay, now what do successful authors do differently? So we've told you what, five of the mistakes that authors make that cost the money, time, success on their author journey. So what do the authors do that we see and then we're only talking pre published stuff. What do they do consistently that we see helping them set up for success? And I already told you one of these things that is they build in buffer time so they don't set a date. Now I'm going to just talk about, I'm going to take a little side tour here for a second. Launch dates, they can be very important. So sometimes people attach it to a day because it's their birthday or it's their child's birthday or there's something like that. It's kind of an arbitrary deadline. And generally speaking, if pushing for that deadline is very, very important to you, go for it. However, if it looks like you're going to have to make compromises, as in skip and edit, not take as much time working through some edits to make the book, at best it can be just to hit that arbitrary date. I would encourage you to rethink that date. Okay, maybe, maybe it's the date you go on pre sale and then you still give yourself 90 days afterwards before you launch. Pushing for an arbitrary date like that is not going to be worth it if you have to sacrifice anything to do with the quality. Now we had somebody who I actually had to turn away. If only he had signed up with us the first conversation I'd had with him when we would have been able to do the book in time. However, he did not decide to engage with us until this situation was a sure thing. But in this case it's not an arbitrary date. You know, he had a company that was going to purchase 5,000 books from him for this specific event and he had a very specific date that the book had to be done. That's not an arbitrary deadline. And I can. And that in that situation, you may want to, I don't want to say cut corners, but you may want to make some choices that speed the book through the process in order to hit that. Generally speaking though, it's very rare that somebody has a 5,000 book order. That is the reason they're going to push. And if they don't get it by that date, then that order goes away. Now I've seen this with a hundred book order, I don't know as though it's worth it to push it. The time, money, expense and energy that has to go in to hit 100 book order, I don't know if it would be worth it. But in his case, it was a major, you know, Fortune 100 company that was going to order 5,000 copies for this particular event. Unfortunately, we had talked in September and he didn't sign up. And then he called at the end of December, early January and was like, can we make this happen by March? If only. Anyways, all that's to say that there are times where the deadline. I understand and I think it's worth, you know, trying to find the most streamlined approach possible. But generally speaking, you know, give yourself some buffer time, give yourself some room so that your book can be the absolute best it possibly can be. And so you do have time for things to go wrong. Because I think I even saw Mike, somebody had commented that, you know, things do go wrong or something. You know, you kind of expect the unexpected at some point. That doesn't mean something's going to go wrong at every place, but expect something to put a kink in your plans. And if you have a little bit of time in your buffer for the date that you're going for, you will feel a lot better and more confident and more calm. And you can make better decisions when you're calm. The next thing is to use the time that you do have very intentionally. So one of the things that we encourage our authors to do is that while we're editing the book, while we're doing work, is that they're actively building some of the foundational pieces that they will need. So that would be an author website, possibly an author platform, being some social media or some other kind of pieces. Whether they're doing a YouTube channel, maybe they are reaching out to their network, they're building their advanced reader community, their book army. There's lots of things that you can do this far out that will lay a lot of foundation for your success. And sometimes that time should intentionally be used just to rest and take a break from your book. Because again, this is. We're going for the long run here. And so one of the challenges we do see, and if you were at our summit in November, the author spoke very candidly about the feeling of burnout when they pushed really, really hard for big, big launches. And, you know, a couple of them were. Were USA Today bestsellers. And so that, you know, they're hooray, they hit the milestone, but then they were like spent, right? And they're not able to capitalize on the momentum as well. So sometimes one of the things to do intentionally is to give yourself some space and rest and mental break from your book. But otherwise, I think building that platform, developing your network, reaching out to people, laying that foundation for your book is really, really important. The next thing is to not chase perfect, but to chase that minimum. Effective, maybe not even minimum, but that effective level of quality that, that you really want to have for your book, because perfect isn't a reasonable expectation of a book. But I think having something that is very professional and is set up to. To achieve your goals, that is something we do want to strive for. And it takes a little bit of extra effort and polish. And then finally they prioritize their real end Goal. So this is where you can feel where the monsters are pulling at you, AKA the ego things, versus the real goal. And, you know, this is. This is where they're driving towards. Okay, listen, I'm using this book as part of this foundation to build my empire. So I know these pieces are just as important. And having a book that's well positioned and professional quality is more important than rushing or more important than, you know, xyz. And so I guess if I had to summarize this, I would say we want to go for long term alignment, and that's going to pay off so much more because short term wins. They do feel good. And I never, you know, if somebody comes to me and they're like, I really want to be a bestseller, great, like, let's go for it if it's really, really important to you. But ultimately, what we want to hit are those milestone moments along the way that show that you've made massive progress. Somebody read your book and they're calling you up and they're going, hey, I. I want you to come speak at my event. Hey, I want to introduce you to somebody because I think you guys would be great partners or there might be some strategic alliance or I read your book, I want to give a copy to every one of my employees. You know, those kind of things start happening when you're doing one thing at a time. You've positioned a book that is great because one of the things that drives me crazy, it drove me crazy before, AI but now it's even more important, is people are like, my book's just a business card. Well, your business card book that you spent 10, $15,000 or tons of hours on, it's just going to go in the trash. What we want is when you finally do get your book in somebody's hand, they open it up, they read that first chapter, and then they can't put it down. And when you have that book six months from now, because nobody gets a book and instantly reads it. Shouldn't say nobody. But, you know, how many of you buy a book and instantly read it? Every single book you buy, you instantly read it. Doesn't happen very often, so you may get to it. I'm reading a book now. I'm in the middle of reading a book that I bought in early December, right? So I am just reading it now. And I bought it with the intent of reading it before, but I had other books ahead of it in the queue. So ultimately, you want. When they pick it up, they can't put it down. And when that happens, you know you're succeeding when six months from now, eight months from now, a year from now, people are reading your book and recommending it, calling you interested in more. All right, that's it. That's what I got for you today. So if you've got questions, go ahead, put them in the chat. We're going to do one more prize and other than that, come on over, hang out with us in our school community book launchers.com school sk o o l what I did. I surprised. I know I surprised because nobody knew I was doing this. I pre recorded. I did a rehearsal of my Podfest presentation and the top 10 contributors inside of the school community. I sent them a link so they could watch the PodFest presentation that you'd otherwise have to have attended PodFest or bought their replays to see. So not only do we have a great community over there hanging out, there's training inside of our classroom that you can get for free. I also like to reward our participating community members with little surprises now and again. We're also going to be, starting in February, the state of the publishing industry address that will be only delivered inside of the school community. So lots of cool stuff hanging on. Hang. Hanging on happening over there. Okay. And. And yes, Mike says, how's Jax? He's growing up. He sure is. He is a gigantic child turning into. Turning into a man. Yeah, he's. He's almost nine. We're about to celebrate his ninth birthday. So. Yeah, it's pretty wild how fast it goes. Okay, let's do a prize. Oh, I'll come back to that. Okay, let's do it. Angela really wants to put on the screen here, so let's do it. Mike says, I've got a mistake for you planning too long and therefore not starting soon enough. Hand up. I'm guilty. However, my delay is worth it. Book launchers prevented me from making a disaster. Well, that's good to hear. And yeah, there can be trade offs with this and I've told the story many times. Um, so forgive me if you've heard it, but it sticks out in my head so, so strongly. Many, many years ago, one of my conferences I went to early days was fincon and, and his Financial Bloggers and Content Creators Conference. And I met this doctor who had an idea for kind of a book and he said, you know, but that guy over there, he's just put out a book. It's kind of on the same lines. Mine would be a little different, but it's very similar. And I thought it was fantastic. And I was like, yeah, this is great. Like, I can see this, this, this, and this happening as a result of that book. And he was all up in his head analyzing it and being like, yeah, but his book is already out, and it's similar, and he's doing kind of what I want to do. And I just said, is there anybody else? He's like, no, it's him. Like, great. Like, he's proven there's a market for this. Go do it. Well, he just kept down. We had a call after. He just kept analyzing it. Two years later, I saw him at that conference again. First of all, guess who was the key one of the keynote speakers for that conference. Yep. That guy. The other guy that he had pointed to that said he's already got a book out. And this guy. I said, well. And he goes, yeah, you know that book I talked to you about? I was like, yeah, won't forget it. He goes, yeah, now there's, like, 10 of them on the market. And, like, how are they doing? He goes, some of them are doing really well. So needless to say, he never did the book. And it's one of those things that always stuck out in my head that if only he had taken action, and maybe that book wouldn't have been the thing, but I guarantee it would have led him to the thing that was because he was on a track that made sense for his goals. It was a need in the marketplace. It was already proven to be something people wanted and needed because this other guy had fast success. So anyways, you don't want to get all up in your head and miss out. And I think the book that you regret the most is the one that you don't do. I really do believe that. Okay, somebody says, I would like a prize. Okay, I'm gonna spin the wheel. Let's see if you get one. One moment, and then we'll see if there's any other questions, and then we'll call it a day. Where is my. There it is. All right, our next and final prize of the day is going to. Mike. Do you want the prize, Mike? Let's just check before I close out, because sometimes. Sometimes.

Mike, Pamela actually would like to give her prize away. She said she's won a bunch of things recently, so she would like for you to draw again.

Okay, we'll do. We'll do another prize draw. Thank you, Pamela. That's very kind of you. Appreciate you.

And.

Okay. Oh, other. Other questions. Yeah, Mike says, yes, please. I had a feeling Mike, it was not pressure for you to draw again. I just know that you have won quite a few things and along with Kevin, often suggests that we draw again. So we are going twice again. So those of you who have not put your name in, you got a second? Okay, let's see. And Darla. Yay, Darla. Congratulations. Thank you. And let's do one more. See who it is. And you're emailing team@book launchers.com with your prize selection. Jennifer Henry, 9161. Congratulations and thank you for being here and for commenting and playing along. So Angela has mugs, journals and books, and some of them aren't just my books. I think she's got Dale Roberts. We still have a few of Dale Roberts books. Yeah, Dale Roberts.

I've got Nick Hutchison's book. And I've even got. Which one of yours? Not the new.

Brand new.

It was the other one. More than Cash Flow.

Right? Yeah. OG Real estate book.

Yeah.

Okay, so even if you've won quite a few, like Darla, she might have won a few by now. You can email Angela and she'll find something cool for you. Okay. All right, we got a couple questions. Let's do them quick and then we'll call it a day. What is your view of so much rubbish being published? Information overwhelm. Do you ever suggest to an author that you shouldn't publish? I feel like I just put out a video on this, which is, you know, that I believe very strongly that AI has only just raised the bar, which means if you want to, and I'm assuming that's kind of what you mean by about rubbish, whether it's AI or just, you know, people pumping out books, I believe that in order for your book to have a lasting legacy and generate income and impact, you need to produce the absolute best possible book. It needs to be something people want to read. So it's not enough to put your name on a cover. The book has to be something that when people pick it up, and I say people, I really mean your ideal reader, they pick it up and they don't put it down. And then when they're done reading, they can't wait to tell their friends about this book. And when that happens, you will find that six months a year, two years, three years down the road, your name is well known. People are talking about you, referring you and all the work that you put in for several years onto that book. And building your platform is paying off. The rubbish books are here and gone, in here and gone. And it just raised the requirement that you cannot put out an average book. It has to be a great book. Or. Or you can expect nothing to happen. Information overwhelm has been the case for a long, long time. Ultimately, I think what everybody is going to find is they are seeking connection and they want those stories that you can tell and they want to connect with people. Which is why we are encouraging everybody to join our community. And if you can come live, meet us in person in Vegas at the Authors Empire workshop. So come to our community. It's free. And you can connect with some of the amazing folks that are here right now and others that are active in the community. And I do believe that that community, the connection and the stories that we tell are more important now than ever before. Yes, Sorry.

She just posted that. That it was actually about low quality, not AI. What was the name of that video? I was trying to find it.

Was it.

The publishing is changing fast. Yeah.

I mean, I think I talked about it in this. In this. It could be in the trends video. It could be the six trends. I believe that that's where I was talking about it. It could. Yeah, I think that's the one.

That one. That's the one that makes. Yeah. Okay, I'll grab that link and then I'll post the other question.

Saleability of their work. Yeah, absolutely. All the time. And people actually get really mad at us when we tell them their book isn't good enough. And that's. I'm sorry, you might have thought your book was fantastic. And we will tell you when it is not. It's not always the most fun conversation we have to have. But we get a lot of books that we turn away. We get a lot of books that we recommend. Even if you've paid for an editor, you still need to have a lot of work on that book. And that's the reality of it. We only produce the best possible quality. And people come to us because they want that. And if your book isn't good enough, we will tell you. So careful what you ask for. Options for ordering and shipping books other than Amazon, it's endless. There are so many. I guess it depends on goals and what you're trying to achieve with the books. Direct sales versus Are you just looking for books like Ingram you can use. We have. I have a book on or a book. I have a video. Angela, where I did Print Nation, I talked about 48 hour books. I talked about like other printers that are options. You know, there's Book Vault you can order through Lulu Yeah, we use 48 hour books a lot. If it's short, short run. We haven't been using Print Nation as much. Their quality was great. Their customer service was really slow to respond. So, yeah, I guess it depends on the goal and what you're trying to do.

That's it as far as questions go that I've seen.

All right, we'll be back here again same time next week. And in the meantime, I hope to see you inside of our school community. And I know some of you are already coming to Vegas, but I hope to see many others join us. We still have some spaces in our Vegas workshop as well, so hope to see you then. Thanks, Angela. Bye. Bye.