How to Know If You’re Ready to Publish — Or Just Rushing It

All right. Hello. Happy Tuesday. Today we are talking about how to know if you're ready to publish or maybe you're just rushing it because you're tired of staring at that manuscript. So, I mean, this all came up for me because we were assessing an author's manuscript recently, and the draft was solid, but it was a draft. I mean, the ideas was interesting, you know, the writing was decent. And, you know, this person was, you know, close to engaging with us to, you know, edit design, set up the book for publishing, marketed, etc. But then this person said, you know what? I think I'll just put it on the market and see what happens. And then if it's getting a good response, then I'll come back and invest in making the book better. And, you know, we were all like, okay, but readers who they're really readers, are not your test audience. Now, I'm not talking about advanced readers and beta readers. I'm talking about putting it on Amazon, selling the book, and then using that as your test audience. Because once you publish, that version is out there forever. And yeah, if it doesn't sell any copies, well, now you have the question of, did it not sell any copies because it was a bad book and people figured that out right off the hop because you didn't invest in making it the best possible product? Or is it not selling because it's not interesting to readers? Now then if it does sell and it's crap, how are you actually going to determine if there's interest to go back and invest in it? So there was some flawed logic to this, and I think I understand the hesitation to invest thousands and thousands of dollars in making a book the best it can be without knowing if there is going to be any interest in what you have to say. But I think, you know, we live in a phenomenal period of time where you can test the response to your ideas using things like social media. So, for example, you could go live on YouTube and go, hey, guys, like, is this of interest? Like, from my own data? Now, of course, I have an established channel. I can tell you right now anytime I'm doing a video on KDP stuff. So uploading and dealing with Amazon and AI related topics, those things you guys want to know more about, because they are getting views and comments and questions and likes and so I'm getting a test response right there. So maybe you don't have an existing channel, but you can go ahead and start posting questions and topics on Reddit. You can use Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. LinkedIn, you can start sharing some of your ideas and find out there if people want to talk about it. And if there's nothing happening, then maybe, maybe that's a sign that your ideas are not quite hitting the mark yet. But putting a book on the market to see if anybody's going to be interested in it, it's flawed logic for so many reasons. And you know, there's, it's just not a way to test the market because if your book isn't set up to succeed, you're not going to get any data to actually find out. And then even if you do sell books, books, unless the reviewers immediately tell you this was garbage. And then again, is it because the ideas were garbage or because the book wasn't invested in. So this is why I chose this topic for today. Now I see people are here. So Keith Wheeler's in the house. Bill Miller, Jordan S. And Kevin Hall, Stella Golf. Antoine Lincoln, thank you so much for tuning in and saying hello. And you guys, most of you are established authors already, so you're going to have some thoughts and opinions to share. So thank you. Chime on in. By the way, Keith, it's been a while. It's great to see you here again. Okay, so you know, of course, if you're new, I'm Julie the book broad. I'm founder of Book Launchers and today we're going to talk about what ready really looks like because good enough doesn't really cut it if you really want to test the market and use your book to open doors, not close them. Right. So first I'm going to I kind of touched on already. But why this let the market decide doesn't work for books because publishing before you're ready is like claunching. Let me see. It's like launching a half built airplane to see if it's gonna fly. Me personally, I don't want to hop in that plane and find out. Now it's not as dramatic because this is books and as I tell my team and our clients, especially over the holidays, when we close for the holidays, you know nobody's gonna die in books, right? So versus if you build a half built airplane and try and fly in it, know that could be problematic but you know the usual process of I'll fix it later. Well here's, here's those options that I kind of touched on. A bad impression is going to stick, right? So people will remember that and your Amazon review. Well, guess what? That unpolished, unedited version of your book that gets those Bad reviews, that's going to be tough to get rid of. Readers don't give second chances in general. Now they may forget that your first book ever existed and if they don't see it read when they search for you later on. When you do put a good book out there, you know that is potentially going to help you. But again, it can be really hard. Anybody who's tried to delete a book off of Amazon will tell you because there's third party sellers out there that will keep selling a book, it can be hard to completely remove your book from Amazon. We have tried for some of our clients and there's only so far you can get some of our clients that really wanted their book gone. They even tried buying every copy off, off of Amazon off the sites to try to get it eliminated. But again, there's those third party sellers that can come up and sell your book used. And so that can be an issue. Now, of course you had to sell copies in the first place. But just letting you know that it isn't as easy as you may think or hope to get your book off of the market once you've put it on there. And you know, maybe you probably, if you're just testing the market by putting a book out there, you're probably not investing marketing dollars on it. But if you do, what's the chances that your dollars are going to convert? Right. You probably will not convert or it might convert at the beginning and then it immediately dies because the book isn't good. And of course you're not going to get the media or influencers or any of these kind of other people's audiences kind of lift that will help your book succeed. So I think, you know, I understand budget constraints, but publishing as well as you possibly can the first time gives your book the best chance to really find out, really test the market. And then it also gives you the opportunity to build your author business, grow your credibility and open the door to bigger, better opportunities in the future. So what does that mean? What, how do you know if you are ready to go to market? Well, this should be no surprise to any of the besties that are here. But a hook, a clear hook is vital from the beginning because your hook is what sells your book before anybody reads a word. And one of my favorite stories, if you've ever seen me give a talk, I have, you've probably heard this story. But Michael Brenner came to us with a book, it was called the Empathy Formula. So it was fully drafted. So the hook, generally we like to have the hook before we start writing, but sometimes you don't have it. And he brought us this empathy formula and he had a couple people tell him very bluntly that it should just go in the trash because nobody's going to buy the empathy formula because the people who need it are never going to buy a book on empathy. And we read it and he was talking to one of the coaches on our team about why he wrote it and some of his background, and he was talking about the 21 jobs that he'd held. And he kind of just blurted out at one point, like, so many people feel like they have to be mean to get the job done and mean people suck. And it was kind of this light bulb moment for him and the coach, and they went, oh, my gosh, that's what this book is. Mean people suck. How empathy leads to bigger profits and a Better life, or something like that. And that became the hook. Right? So mean people suck and how you using empathy can actually make more money and have a better life while you're doing it. So that was the hook, basically. Same book, right? It's still the empathy formula, but it's wrapped in this juicy hook that makes the book so much more salable. And he did. He did talks, he did keynotes on it, and he was on the media with this book. So much stronger. Why should your reader care about this book? You have to get that right. Especially now more than ever, because there's so many books coming on the market thanks to our robots. The AI, The AI generated books are flooding the market. And it means that now more than ever, you want to have the best possible book with a hook that clearly tells your reader why they care and what changes for them, what's the transformation that you're offering after they read it. And if you can't put that into a subtitle or a one sentence, you your book, and you aren't quite ready to publish your book. So that's number one in this. Is that hook so, so, so important. All right, let's see. Here we go. You only get one chance to make a first impression. That's right. Thanks, Keith and Stella. Quality is not optional. I agree. All right, you guys, I'm going to do a prize for those of you who are here. And then we'll go back to 2, 3, 4, and 5. The other four things that you need to know if you published, if you're ready to publish. I should say Angela's not here, in case you haven't figured that out. So I'M flying solo today. She is on holidays in Texas right now having hopefully a good old time. But she has left me to man this all by myself. So everybody who has commented, you are entered to win. And that also means when you email Angela and say, hey, I won today, she won't reply till next week. All right, so I'm talking for a second to give you a chance to get yourself in the draw. Otherwise we'll do one more near the end so you'll still have another chance. All right, here we go. And oh, there's only seven of you. There's more than that here. But seven of you have said hello. So guess what? You guys are the ones that are in the draw right now. And of course, if you don't know what your prizes are, you get a hashtag noboringbooks mug. We have our oh so soft journal. Or you get Keith. See, this is what you get for showing up, Keith. Or you get a copy of Self Promote and Succeed. Self Publish and Succeed is coming out with its second edition. So if you are, even if you have the old copy, you may want to get the new copy over@self publishand succeed.com and with that, it's launching on November 13th. You'll also get a ticket to our three day summit, which we are going to be walking you through. How to write a book with a great hook, who your readers are, how to set your marketing strategy up while you're writing your book. So all of that is at self publishandsucceed.com you can get your tickets now. And when you do that, we'll also ship you out a brand new spanking copy of self publishandsucceed.com self publishand succeed.com putting that in the comments for you guys. So Keith, email Angela@Teechers.com and let her know what prize you need these days. What? What can we freshen up for you? And of course give her your mailing address as well so that she can ship out the books, the, the mug, the journal, whatever it is. Okay, so next up. So number one was the hook. Number two, this is something that I think actually I just saw a comment come in about this, but has your book been edited by humans? Yes, humans. AI tools can absolutely tighten sentences and fix grammar. But there and I've actually heard this from so many people. Just today I was talking to a lovely gentleman who said that he ran his book through AI and felt like he lost it, lost all of his humanity when he did that. The reality is that there that I Can really help you tighten a sentence here and a sentence there. But it doesn't think critically or ask questions like a human would. And it doesn't challenge your logic. And it's not going to say, hey, I got bored here. It's not going to say, hey, you know, I think you could have made me cry here. But like the story fell flat. You really need editors. But also we don't want the editors that are related to us because the people who know our stories can fill in the blanks or they may be personally attached to us, telling it in a certain way. So professional editors are vital. I would love to see everyone use at least two editors. A developmental editor or content editor and a copy editor. We at book launchers have three, sometimes four. You have that first round, that developmental edit, that 30,000 foot view, look at your book for reading ability, credibility, structure, flow. And then you have that copy editor, different person, because this person, the developmental editor. Usually we find their reporters or ghostwriters, they're really good at that overall structure and hooking the reader in and keeping them reading. And then the copy editor is really good at following rules and understanding sentence structure. You know, think English high school teacher kind of style, right? They're great at reading through and seeing where a sentence could be better, where the punctuation is off, where the grammar's off. And then we actually put things through a fact checker because especially self publishing. But now more than ever, I think we want to make sure that the claims that we state, we can back them up and we have sources. And so we put them through fact check and then a final proofread, which is another set of eyes because even a great copy editor will miss things. Everybody will miss things. Even with all of that, they'll still be a typo or two. Just happens they're in there. But ultimately I think you can produce a cleaner manuscript by using Grammarly or ProWritingAid or some other AI tool along the way to help you. But that emotional thing you're writing for humans, so I think humans need to edit it and they're going to care, you know, in about things that a bot just doesn't care about. Right? So ultimately I think you need multiple editors. But editors rightfully are pricey because they're great. They make your book go from okay to good to great if you get the right editors. So it can be a pricey part of it. Um, you know, for me, I would generally say you absolutely want a copy editor no matter what. But often a copy editor is the very thing that people go, my book is grammatically correct, but it didn't get better. And that's because they didn't do that content edit. So that's step two is having human editors go through the book to make it the best it possibly can be. Step three is, do you have a marketing plan? Amazon is not a marketing plan. And still, you know, I feel like I can't say this enough because I've asked so many people, they put their book out and they come to me and they go, my book's not selling. And like, okay, what have you done? I put it on Amazon and. And they just look at me blankly like, I put it on Amazon, it's not selling, but I put it on Amazon. Uploading your book to KDP and selling it on Amazon and waiting is like opening a restaurant in the middle of a field and just hoping people drive by. Okay, you need a strategy. And this strategy ideally is something you're working on while you're writing the book, which is what we're talking about a lot at that summit that's coming up. The summit that's going to cost you a whole $20 and we're going to ship you a physical book. But it's celebrating the relaunch, the second edition of Self Publish and Succeed. But we're going to talk about that a lot in this summit and we're going to cover, you know, who's your ideal reader. But not just that. Where are they hanging out? Like, where are you going to get in front of them so that they're going to know you exist? They're going to be interested in learning more and possibly purchasing your book. Do you have an email list? Have you started a podcast? Do you have a YouTube channel? What's your social media like? Do you have relationships with people so you could reach out to them and say, hey, I'm doing this book. Would you mind telling your audience about it? Do you have a plan for getting reviews, bulk sales? What's your visibility plan after you have launched ebook sales, book awards, like all of those kind of things. And if you're saying, I'm going to figure that out after I publish, well, you're not ready to hit publish yet. And now more than ever, we're seeing, and we talked about this, oh gosh, I think it was a live stream I did with Alyssa or the one I said about Amazon KDP changes. But now more than ever we're seeing this kind of three month window around launch where if you don't get momentum and get some consistent sales in that window. Amazon basically decides you don't exist. So you have a lot of work to do to uncover yourself to the Amazon algorithm. If you launch and do nothing for quite a period of time, you're going to have. You know, I always tell authors, it's like there's a boulder stuck in mud and if you have a launch plan and you get momentum, your boulder starts rolling and then it'll keep rolling and you just have to do a little bit, a little bit, a little bit all the time and it'll keep rolling. If you do nothing, that boulder is getting stuck deeper and deeper and deeper in the mud. And the longer you leave it and do nothing, the harder it is to get it rolling and to get it out of the mud. So it's so important that you know whether your plan is Amazon or beyond. We're creating momentum around launch and then we're going to be doing something almost every day to help you with getting your book into readers hands now, of course, because I'm going to plug it all day long. I'm so proud of what we've built and we're rebuilding it right now and it's going to be so good. Our author Launch kit is a vital tool to helping make this so much easier for authors. Author Launch Kit AI. If you haven't checked it out and again we're actually Shane on my team is in the middle of the rebuilding it. We're rebuilding it from the ground up and it's still going to have all the functionality that's there, but then some. We're going to multi book functionality and so much more. I'm very, very excited with where it's going. So if you haven't already grabbed your lifetime license for it, you're probably going to want to do that because once we have multi, multi book functionality in there, we'll be, we'll be probably having to raise the price but for now it is there and it's already great, but it's going to be even better. But that helps you with knowing what to do and being able to do something every day to keep that momentum going. All right, so let's see here. We've got okay, so Emotionally Fit Yoga. I'm going to mark your question. We'll come to that at the end. And then Kevin, nothing beats having a human editor review your book. Most AIs I've seen want to give a response that pleases, right? Oh my gosh. I have. I have to ask my AI. I usually use Chatty. I'm like, can you please not be such a cheerleader for me? Like, I appreciate that you think every idea I have is great, but let's be real. Like, my ideas are not all good. So even prepping for this live stream, it's like, oh, this is going to be a killer live stream. I'm like, really? Like, these ideas stink. Like, I'm. I'm here because I need a couple more ideas. So, Yes, I agree. AIs are really trying to. They're really veering towards the positive, and you have to talk to it and demand it be very critical. And that can be hard if you're not used to doing it. Bill Miller says, need Alk or Julie's book Self Promote and Succeed for marketing plan. Absolutely. Thank you. See, author launch kit and my book Self, Promote and Succeed are great companions. They go really, really well. And hand in hand for this, I recently copyrighted my unpolished, unedited manuscript. And you're seeking a professional editor. Got it, Jordan? Well, we do have editors, but we don't piecemeal. So we at Book Launchers don't do just editing. We are. We do it all under one roof. So editing, design and distribution, and then with marketing kind of built in along the way in different levels depending on what kind of service is and price point you want. But if you're interested in the full service, you can reach out to us@book launchers.com forward, slash, apply, and then we can check things out and, and schedule a call with you for that. But we are. We do it all together for multiple reasons, but one is that when you piecemeal things out, you can lose your objectives or have to make sure you're retraining every person along the way. And not everyone is thinking marketing, but we always are, so that's very, very important. All right, so number four, are you personally ready for the spotlight? So, before you hit publish, of course, we've talked about making sure the hook is there, making sure it's been edited by professionals and that you have a marketing plan. But the next piece is you being ready. And this isn't to put pressure on you, but it is to get you thinking about the fact that in order for you to succeed, you want to be ready, not scrambling. And what does ready mean? Well, you have a professional author website. It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to be big or complicated. But you do need a home where people can find you, learn more about you, buy your book, and ideally even learn A little bit more about your media topics, speaking topics, you know, that sort of thing. Speaking of media, do you have a media kit that is ready to go? And some people, if you're going to be selling to libraries or bookstores or doing any sort of corporate sales, you may want to have a sell sheet as well that has more of the metadata and ordering instructions. But then also I think media or sorry, being ready means you're media trained. You've had some practice runs, whether it's some practice podcast interviews or you've practiced your sound bites, but you're media ready because when you launch your book, you're also launching your author brand and your author business. And this means that you look like a packaged deal. And this is so important and what we've seen, one of our clients, Kasha Dodd, she had early in the process, my team got her a live stream interview and she knew her messaging, she had her presentations ready and she did such a great job on this live stream that that turned into a year long, I think she started writing for the magazine, she got consulting with this company and I think she became their keynote speaker at a big major event. If I remember the details, my marketing, if Sarah was here, she would know the exact precise, like what happened. But that doesn't happen because we did all this stuff. It happens because she was ready. And, and when this door opened to this live stream that we booked her on, she was ready and did phenomenal. Same thing with Jonathan Stanley. We've talked about his hyperviral success story this year and I just saw that he's doing a keynote somewhere this week and how he's prepping for the keynote. His life has completely changed after he went hyper viral, but he was ready when that happened and he was ready. So when all the Good Morning America and he was interviewed for People magazine, when all of these major media came calling, he was media ready. He had the media kit, his website was ready, his book was great. And when everybody started reading his book, the five star reviews started pouring in and didn't stop. So he was ready. And I think that that's really important because a lot of people want, you know, Oprah or Reese's Book Club or you know, these, these big name people to get their book in hand. But they're not ready when. For the big time, right. If the big time hits, they haven't done all the work that's going to set them up for major success when that door opens. And I think that's important again, not to put pressure on you and say, you got to be Oprah ready when your book launches. But I do think you want to think about what you're striving for. And if that is a goal, you're going to want to make sure you have a plan to be ready so that as those doors open, you can step in, shine, and be ready for that next big door to open. Because that's how it happens for most people, right? It's not book launches and suddenly, you know, Ellen wants to dance with you. It is book launches. You do a bunch of media that does nothing. You do a podcast that all of a sudden opens the door to meet this person who runs this big national event. They want to talk to you. Now, maybe they say no, but they say, you know what you're perfect for. It's this other thing, right? It's not a straight line. But if you're not ready to shine as each door opens, then those doors aren't going to keep opening, right? You might get the first door, maybe even the second door, but they stop opening. So being ready is important, but you can get ready as you go. But make sure you got a plan to be ready and get ready. All right? The last thing is, of course, this should not surprise anybody, but is your book designed with your reader in mind? Have you made choices coming down to title, cover, description, so that, you know, everything from your title to your table of contents is ready for your reader? Because all of those things are marketing. And a lot of people think, oh, the COVID is my branding. No, the COVID is designed to appeal to your reader. You know, and I, I have this battle with some people who have gone to a branding company, and the branding company tells them your face needs to be on the COVID And I'm like, it's not a bus bench ad for a realtor. Like, this is a book that's going to go in this category where there's not a single other book in this category in the top 10 where a face is on the COVID especially a face of a non celebrity. So it's really important that you're thinking about how do I sell this book as the best possible book and how do I get it to appeal to that ideal reader? And that's every choice that you make, you know, from that acknowledgement or not, the acknowledgment, the dedication to the beginning and that table of contents, your book title, your book cover, all of those things need to appeal to that ideal reader so that they're not only willing to part with the $20, but also so that they are ready to spend time with you. Because for me, that's my hesitation with books, because I have so many books that are unread, partially read. I don't need another book because I don't have time to consume all the books. So if something really hops out at me, I have to be ready and excited about spending time with that authority. So you want to make sure that your book is set up to sell stop the scroll, right? That's a question that always comes up, is, is it ready to stop the scroll? Does your subtitle, you know, clearly say who it's for and what they're going to get? Like, what's that Hook? And of course, that inside experience. Is the book ready for a reader to look at it and go, oh my gosh, this book is for me. So. All right, we'll take questions here in a second. Do I have a clear benefit driven hook? Has my book been edited by real humans as opposed to the fake humans? Do I have a marketing plan that goes beyond Amazon, right? Do I have a marketing plan, period? Number four, am I ready for visibility and media opportunities? Do I have that professionally packaged look as far as my branding, my media kit, all those things. And of course, is my book ready to appeal to the reader that I am targeting? And we want a five out of five here. We don't want to launch until we have five out of five on this. And once you have five out of five, you are setting yourself up for the best chance of success. And I think you're ready to hit publish. And then maybe you might want to launch a second edition later on, like I am for self publish and succeed. You may find that things have changed or there's things inside of the book that you want to write differently for whatever reason, then you can do it. But you've given your book the best chance of success from the beginning. So. All right, let's see if anybody has questions and I will answer your questions and then we'll do another draw for another prize from everybody who has said hello except for Keith. I think it automatically eliminates the person who already won. So, Keith, I. You can't win twice in a day, but you. I feel like I won because you're here, which is great. Okay, so emotionally fit yogi. I know your question was first. So what are the differences between the new edition and first edition? Oh, you're talking about self publish and succeed. So the main thing is what I did well, why? I think answering the why question is important. We didn't talk about AI at all in Self publish and Succeed. And as you can see, oh, it's kind of hidden behind this. I launched the original in February of 2021, so that means I wrote it in 2020. So things have changed a lot in the last five years with regards to AI, but also the distribution channels, audio books. And also since that time we've worked with almost 500 more authors. So our process, the examples I could share, all of those things are different. So I would say I changed probably 20% of the book. The heart of it is still the noboringbooks process. So if you've read the first one, you know you probably don't need to read the new version. But grab it and join our summit because the summit is going to be fantastic. It is going to be November 13th, 14th and 15th from 9am to 1pm Pacific. And our grand prize during the summit because if you've ever been to our live streams like today, you know we love to give things away. Our grand prize is a month of working with one of our professional writing coaches to create a book plan. So you'll create your hook, you'll create kind of your reader profile, your outline, and then even start writing your first couple of chapters with the coach. So that is our grand prize for the summit. And again, you can get your ticket at self published and succeed dot com. All right, so thank you for asking. And let's see, here we go, we've got mra. Mara, I don't know if that's how you say it, but that person is here from New Mexico. Great to have you here. All right, just scrolling down to see if I have any other questions. Bill says copyright office is shut down with our government. So if you have applied or want to apply, it's going to be held up. Yes, there is delays with that. So thank you. You do get. Oh, and then Kevin makes a good point too. He said yes, but you'll get a timestamped as to the application date and time, which is important should there ever be a situation that arises in the future. That is very, very good point. Thank you. And Gary says I have to learn to speak in sound bites and not be so long winded. It may also help if I stop cussing all the time. Both very true. One thing for sound bites is to just write them down. And this is where I think ChatGPT can be really useful. You could type them up, put them in and just say, okay, these are my ideas. Here's my paragraph. How do I turn this into a 15 second sound bite that's media ready and, and start practicing them. And you know, it's something that when I'm going to be interviewed on a panel, I take some time and start thinking about these things and try to get some sound bites and then I pay attention to what, what gets reactions and what people remember and tell me later that they remember I said that. That's when you know, you, you've started to hit on something worth leaning into. The book's formatting is not an afterthought. Yes, I agree. This also helps sell the book and can even add to the reader's interest. I completely agree. And you know what's really interesting because I've done a lot of tables at different events over the years and people pick it up, pick up the book immediately. I just have this one here. I was using this one as an example today. And so they'll pick it up and then the next thing they usually do, sometimes they'll just open it to a random page and see what it looks like. And you can tell, even if you're not an experienced design person, you can immediately tell if something is professionally designed or not. And you'll also get that tactile like do I like the layout? That sort of thing. But a lot of people also go to the table of contents immediately and then they scan it to see if there's anything interesting or catches their eye. When people pick up books, they often don't even flip over to the back on the tables that I'm at. Depends. So it's an interesting thing. But I agree. We create the COVID first and then using elements from the COVID our design team creates the interior for print as well as for ebook. Because again, it's an experience and touches like that you may not consciously notice, but the, but it does create a better experience for the reader. Okay, let's see. Emotionally fit Yogi. I want to invite people to buy my book as a pre sale before I launch. Please suggest who I should invite to do this besides friends and family. So this depends. This is a great question and I think it depends on your audience and who your readers are and how you can find them. So I mean for me, my, this, my book, my second edition is on pre sale technically, so you could go buy it from anywhere. I'm encouraging you to go buy it direct from us because that's going to give you the ticket to the summit. But you can get it anywhere. The print might not be on pre sale yet, but the ebook is on pre Sale. I'm doing fun things with the audiobook, but I'm not going to tell you just yet. But I'm excited for the. The audio version that we're going to be creating for this. It's new. It's a new thing. I've been alluding to this, this program for a while and we met with them a couple weeks ago and we're going to be able to be part of the beta. So sorry, I didn't mean to tease that. Now you're going to be sitting there going, what is she talking about? It's an interactive audiobook. Yeah. Not video. Not video. It's interactive. But anyways, all that's to say. Let me get back to the question. So pre sale, you know, posting on your social media, of course, telling friends and family. But for me, you know, I would say if there are, again, it depends on your network, but if there's people in your network who have your ideal reader in their audience, you can offer to, you know, do something in exchange for them promoting the book. This might be you doing an early podcast, interview, a live stream, giving them some content. It really depends. This is where we'd have to kind of deep dive into a strategy and talk about it, which is something we do in our author business accelerator. So, you know, that is an option. We can get on office hours and start to learn more about your book and your goals and your audience and then brainstorm how to get it out there. Gary? Hello. Would utilizing a web hosting company that specializes in author sites be better than hiring a webmaster? You know, Shane just did a live stream with a company that I think is pretty cool. I'm going to try. Sorry, I have to pretend to be Angela for a minute and try to pull it up. The, you know the options for us as authors to create great sites. Now, this is the link to that site or that live that he did. You know, you can create a website in about 10 minutes and it's pretty solid with this program. So I don't really think you have to invest if you are. If you need something that's fancy for whatever reason, like you're going to have a robust shopping cart system or you want to sell other things on your website beyond just promote your book and have a basic author website webpage, you may want to go through a hosting company that specializes in author sites, but you may want to hire somebody to design your website. But if you really just need a basic author website, there's tools like this one Tertullia or something I think is what it's called that Shane talks about in the live. So I just put the video there that are more than adequate for achieving those kind of objectives. Now, Gary says, do you find the trim size for nonfiction books makes a difference in buyer appreciation? No. If you're going for bookshelves, I think it matters a little bit more than in general. But that was actually why I had this book out, was I was showing somebody today, and these were just random books that I pulled out as examples, but I was showing them today. You know, the difference in sizes in this. This book in the front is not one of ours. The other ones are ones that we did, but obviously this first one is Steven Pressfield, and we didn't. We didn't do Steven Pressfield's book. But I was showing, you know, how this still looks like a pretty legit book, but, you know, they took. You know, there's actually not that many words. Right. There's a lot of white space in this book. So there's a lot of ways to produce a really high value, incredible book if you have less content versus, you know, this one, which has a lot of words. Right. So. So no. I think it's going to come down to your reader. And ultimately, I think the trim size. Me personally, I don't like holding a big book like the Alex Hermosis books, which I don't have here in front of me. They chose a unique trim size. I don't like those. They. They fit weirdly in my backpack when I want to carry them around, but they're. They're. I like the design on the inside. It's easy reading. It's great for following along while listening to the audiobook. But I don't like that size personally. But you never know. All right. Antwan this morning had a wonderful consult with Nicole Johnson. She was an amazing guest on your show. Our conversation centered around a lot of what has been shared. Oh, that's great. I'm so happy to hear that. Yes. She was on last week with Sarah, right? That one. That's great. Oh, that's so good to hear. Yes. She's a wonderful human being. And this is one of the things I do love, is I got to meet her in real life and get a great big hug from her when we go to some of these events. I love meeting people in real life. By the way, are any of you going to be. I think Kevin's going to be there, but at Author Nation, because I will be there. I will probably just ride on Dale's coattails. I think he's going to Dale Roberts. He's probably going to have a meetup and I'll probably just crash that meet up. I don't think we're going to do anything special this year because our summit is the following week. But if you're going to be at Author Nation, let me know. I would definitely love to meet you and give you a big hug in real life. All right, let me do the last prize of the day and if there's any last questions that come in while I'm doing it. Great. Otherwise, we have next week our topic. I will find out what that topic is for you for next week's live because I know we've got something fun planned for you next week as well. Oh, you're going to be there too, Antoine. Great. That's exciting. I can't wait. Make sure we say hello. Okay, so next entry is our next winner. I should say. Gary. Yay. All right, Gary, I think you know the drill. Email Angela@teamoklaunchers.com and let her know what prize you would like. And of course, that's the mug. The journal Self publish and succeed. The old edition, we gotta clear out. We gotta clear out the old edition, make room for the new edition, and self promote and succeed. So thank you for being here live and participating because this would be really boring if nobody was here. So I'm grateful to each of you that come out to the lives and of course, everybody watching the replay. Thank you for watching the replay and all your comments after the fact as well. I do my best to reply to each and every one, but thank you so much for being here. Oh, next week I was going to tell you what the topic is. Uno momento, por favor. Well, I grab that topic for you. We do have a special guest next week and it is. Where is it? Here it is. Using data to make your book stand out. And we have a special guest expert that's going to come in and help you guys understand how to use your data because we've been talking about that a lot. How the future belongs to the indie authors who have the data and take action on their data. So what the heck does that mean? You're going to find out next week and then I hope to see all of you at our summit on November 13th, 14th, 15th. And of course you can get your tickets@selfpublishand succeed.com and you'll also get a mailed copy of the new print version of Self Publish and Succeed second edition. All right, thanks everybody. Have a fantastic rest of your day.