Media Attention that Moves Non Fiction Books | Livestream REPLAY

All right. Hey, guys, I'm just gonna check my sound to make sure you've got the good sound because I forgot to confirm. Yep, there looks like. Yep, we're both on the headset. Awesome. Hello, and welcome to our regularly scheduled every other Tuesday live broadcast. And of course, if you don't know, I'm Julie Broad with Book Launchers. So today we're talking about getting, well, not so much getting media for your book promotion, but more what media actually matters when it comes to promoting your book. And I'm going to dive into. I've got a bunch of notes, a bunch of ideas and thoughts to help you with this. And of course, as always, I will take your questions now or afterwards in the replay. If you're watching this in the replay on Facebook, sometimes the questions get buried. So if you're watching the replay, I recommend you head on over to YouTube where I can more easily interact with you, because I will respond to every single comment and question that gets posted over on YouTube. The book launchers channel on YouTube, which the Easy link to get there is Book Launchers tv. So that's what we're going to talk about today, is media. As always, I have prizes to give away. Specifically, let me just pull out this beauty right here. We have the very popular Book Launchers, the hashtag noboringbooks mug. You can see it's full of names. I should have folded them because there's actually, like, I don't know, almost a hundred, maybe 75 names in there. And so how you get your name in there, all you have to do is comment the day a video is released on our YouTube channel, and that gets your name in there for a mug. We also have our journals back, which. This is my loved journal. So you can see it's got notes and everything in it, but they're very soft. So these are back. So you can also be entered to win one of these lovely journals for writing your notes. Taking. Taking notes when you're watching my videos, when you're watching these live streams, the journals can come in handy for that. Of course, writing notes for your next book idea, all those kind of things. All right, so let's just dive in and talk about media for your book. And to kind of set the context, I'll let you know that. Any. Hey, Sarah, this is a good topic for you. We're talking media for your book. And just to set the context for people, a lot of clients, when they think media, they think. When we tell them that we're going to pitch as part of our services, we're going to pitch you to 10 different media or places where we can get your book in front of other audiences every single month. A lot of them immediately think, okay, like Good Morning America or the Late show or some sort of big media. And where we place our focus is really on things that will move the needle in terms of getting you to your goal and ultimately selling your book. And surprisingly to some, that isn't always the media that you think of when you think of media. And just from my own personal experience, I did a ton of TV media in Canada, but still, I've heard this same, same feedback from other authors. And the interesting thing was the TV media was great for social media, great for credibility, but the needle didn't move. On the days that I appeared on TV shows, the sales needle on my dashboard didn't change. There was no change in book sales on those days. And I think it's just people aren't in the mode of buying when they're watching. Now, that doesn't mean there's no value. And so we'll touch on that. But I wanted to kind of kick it off by sharing an article that it's an old one from the observer, but it's about the book, what Every Man Thinks About, Apart from Sex by Shed Simov. And it was actually a blank book. Right. So what Every Man Thinks About Besides sex. And it's a blank book. And the reason I bring this up is in this article, there was something that stood out to me and that was the fact that he said when I first published my blank book, it took me over a week to get it produced, blah, blah, blah. He said, then I had a tiny budget, just enough to hire a PR firm for half a day. The amazing team at London PR Agency landed him some great coverage in a British national newspaper. He said it was really just more of a tabloid one. This one then got spotted by a TV producer and the TV producer featured the book on the morning show. So newspaper article, TV show, okay, some pretty good media, he said. Interestingly, those two bits of media coverage didn't affect the sales of the book. Okay, that's my point of what I'm trying to say is I was on tv, never saw a change in the book sales. So he's kind of reiterating that point. But when the newspaper article turned into an online article, all hell broke loose and sales rocketed. The online article allowed bloggers and journalists to do three vital things. Cut and paste the original article so they could easily update it in their own voice, copy some simple images that I'd shot on my phone, and find a very basic video that I shot for the book, too. And, and it gave the journalists what they call the holy trinity of online marketing, story images and video. So I thought there was a lot of really good information, really good points in that. And kind of hitting the point of, first of all, you don't know what media is going to have an impact. So generally speaking, all media is good. Even if there's a negative press, a lot of people will still check out the book, even if it's negative press. So it's not a bad thing to get some attention in the media. And you never know where it's going to lead. That said, if you have a limited budget or a limited amount of time, I recommend starting where you're going to achieve your. Where you're most likely to achieve your goals. And, you know, again, TV has its place, but for most people, TV really doesn't. You know, short of probably if you ever got on Oprah or Ellen or those kind of shows. And a lot of times I think they even buy or give away books to go along with it. Generally speaking, TV looks great and can be a great segue into more speaking opportunities, into other media where you might be able to sell books, but I wouldn't focus my energy and attention on getting on those kind of shows, at least in the beginning. Initially, if you're trying to sell books or you're trying to grow your audience, you know, build your newsletter platform, focus on people who have your exact audience in their audience. Because think about it just going with the Good Morning America example, that's a really mass market audience. And if you've done a good job of writing your book, you've written it for a very specific ideal reader. And that means your ideal reader is just a tiny segment of their audience that has to be paying attention on that day, has to be in the right mindset to want to go pick up your book. So it's much better to get in front of the ideal audience. And I've talked about this before, but the things that really move the needle for our clients and for myself on my books was when I had other people feature my book and talk about it in their own newsletter campaigns. So when you're thinking media, you don't have to just be thinking about tv, radio, newspaper, magazine, which is your traditional media. Think about media as any kind of place, any kind of platform, any kind of place where you can get in front of somebody else's audience and other people's newsletter lists. If they've done the hard work of developing a great list making, building relationships, then this is a fantastic place to get yourself in front and get some media coverage. And I'm just going to check in. Nobody else is saying hello. Hey guys. I know there's people popping in, so please say hello when you join us. So I know who's here so I can welcome you. Hi Ann, thank you so much for joining us. And if you want to make me laugh, if you're not like one of my viewers, recent YouTubers who says I giggle too much, I have a YouTube commenter who one person told me to drink decaf, so apparently I'm too energetic. Go figure. And another one said that my videos were great but the constant chuckling was annoying. Sorry, I'm having fun. See, that's the Canadian in me. I just apologized for having fun. Anyways, it makes me super happy when you give it a thumbs up. So please, please do that because it will make me smile. And you're here, I'm sure, because you don't mind my Chuck, Robert. Hey, Brian. Welcome you guys. So good to have you here. Okay, so. And see you guys. You guys want to see me smile and chuckle? I love it. I appreciate you guys. Actually, I appreciate those other guys comments because they actually made me laugh. I thought, why would you want me to be boring and like monotone? Would that make you happy if I did a monotone video for you? Really? Anyways, we'll just move back to our topic. So yeah, back to the media. So newsletter lists are one thing that I don't think a lot of people think about when they're thinking media. But a well placed mention in somebody else's newsletter list can actually perform incredibly well for selling books. And that's really truly why my first book went to number one overall on Amazon is because I had a couple of key people with great newsletter lists who promoted my book into their newsletter list. And if you think about it, even a poor newsletter list is going to get 10 to 20% open rates. Maybe that's not poor, but an average, let's go average is probably going to get 10 to 20% open rates with a 2% click rate that's pretty high for connecting with your audience and likely getting book sales. So a newsletter list is great media to pursue. Also, local media can be great and again, it may not sell a lot of books, but it's a more targeted audience in that it could also help grow your business, grow your audience Spread just kind of awareness and word of mouth for you. And if you haven't done any media before, it's often better to start local and then spread out. Because if you are trying to hit some of these big shows eventually or bigger places, they may say, what else have you been on? Can you send us some links of something you've done before? So it's a great way to kind of start. Also, you're gonna need practice, and I'll touch on that in a minute, but you're going to need practice before you do big shows. It is crazy chaos. So media, I just want to, before I kind of dive into that, I want to make sure you guys are clear on what we're talking about when I say media. So it's magazines, online, online, blogs, online, websites, newsletter lists, podcasts, tv, radio, newspaper. And the other thing I will mention is for me, and I've seen this for other clients and actually that article in the observer that I mentioned, which was called Meet the Man who Sold Hundreds and of Thousands, Hundreds of thousands of books, blank pages in them. He even says this. So what happens is you get one article that gets syndicated across many platforms, which isn't quite what happened to his, but I had one in the Vancouver sun in Canada and that got syndicated, I think across 120 different media outlets. And while it was in the physical papers, what I think really helped was the fact that online there was links in it and that led people to buy my book. So when I said TV didn't make sense move the needle at all, the article in the paper that got syndicated did. And interestingly, I wouldn't have got that article if any other newspaper had already run a story on my book first. One of the criteria, when I had a PR company pitching me, I didn't do my own pitching for that book. But one of the criteria was has this book, has this story been told in any other newspapers? Because if it hasn't, we will pick it up. So, you know, it can be. You kind of need some people who can navigate the major media to help you with this local. You can pitch yourself and you can even pitch national yourself. It's just going to be a lot harder to get their attention and to kind of know these things. And we won't get into all of the how to's, but I've got some other thoughts. If you guys have questions, you can ask. Robert says, just yesterday I stumbled across a list of Bacon's media source list, Dallas forthwith, media names, phone numbers and email addresses for Their publications. Do you guys have this? Oh, I don't know. What book launchers. I assume that's Sarah. Sarah says, I don't think you can do that, Julie. I don't know. Oh, maybe drink decaf. I can't drink decaf. There's no point. Or be monotone. That's probably what you're talking about. Even when I was sick, coming off the flu, I still wasn't monotone. Okay, so Robert, I think that's a great. I mean Sarah, if you're still watching, if you want to respond directly to Robert's question, that's great. That would be Sarah's department. Yeah, that sounds kind of cool. I think Sarah has some lists like that. And Ann, thank you. You're great, dear. Keep smiling. Oh, I see. Robert, it was from a firm. Yeah. So I'll let Sarah kind of handle that directly if she's still watching. And if she's not, I'll flag it for her afterwards. I know she has a meeting coming up shortly. Okay, just see here. Oh, one thing I'll say is, so again, you don't know which media is actually going to do it. So all media is good. But you should focus your efforts on what is most important to you. If you are trying to build a platform as a speaker, you're probably going for as much awareness and as much exposure as you possibly can. If you're trying to build your platform or if you're trying to actually sell books, then you're going to go for more specific media people with your ideal audience in mind. So association newsletters can be great. You know other, other people that do target the same reader or. Sorry, yeah, target the same reader. Have them in your audience as who you want. So you know the real estate book that I wrote, Realtors, Mortgage brokers, I was a real estate investor targeting real estate investors. So they have those kind of people in their audiences. So you want to think of who else has your ideal reader in your audience and ideally isn't competitor. But you know what? I'm totally comfortable contacting somebody who shares the same space as you too because they're going to need content and why not cooperate? I think everybody's always better off for cooperation than competition. And especially in the book business, if you know an author who's written a book that competes with yours, why not be friends? You're going to. A lot of times the book buyer wants to read more than one book in this space. So you guys could cross promote for each other. There could be a lot of synergies there. TV is a lot of fun to do if you like that kind of thing. But if you're uncomfortable on video right now and you want to do tv, you should practice doing a lot of video. And I've actually shot a couple videos talking about how hairy it can be and how crazy it can be. There's literally cameras coming at you, like they physically move towards you and sometimes there's no person behind it because they've got little remote controls. And so the cameras move in and out. There's multiple cameras, there's multiple screens. And the part that threw me off the most the first time was the host doesn't look at you while you're talking. So the host asks you a question and then the camera goes to you. So now the host just does whatever the heck they need to do to get ready for your next question, which can be looking at the teleprompter, looking at their notes. Rarely are they looking at you. So it's really uncomfortable and awkward because you are engaging with a host that isn't engaging back with you. Really good hosts don't do this, but a lot of the news shows, they're just firing guests in. Like there's no time for them to prep the producers, prep the show. They just are like, next guest, three minute segment, Next guest, three minute segment. So they're just flying by the seat of their pants. And as a result, they're not looking at you because they're trying to figure out what they're going to ask you next. So it's a really hairy situation. I loved it. I didn't love the fact that I only got on morning shows for whatever reason, nobody ever brought me on to the evening news. So I always had to get up at the butt crack of dawn. And sometimes it was in complete snowstorms and I'd have to drive at 5 in the morning in a snowstorm to get to these news stations to sit in their green room for 45 minutes to go on set for three minutes. But I still loved it. Super fun, but you want to be ready for it. And so I'll talk to you guys. I have a few tips on how to get ready. Let's see, is there a difference if you write fiction? Yeah. And I mean, I would assume not, Brian, but I don't sell fiction, so I can never speak for certain. But I would. I mean, the same principles apply. Like you should be building your newsletter list and I would expect that the similar results are going to happen. You know, getting cross promoting with Authors who have the same readers. That's going to make the most, I think, impact for you. And finding people who target this media is interesting. For fiction, you've got to be clever. Nonfiction is a little bit easier because typical news shows, magazines, podcasts, a lot of times they're looking for experts to talk about certain subjects. And all you have to do is tie into something local, something current, something topical, and it's easier to get in front of them. With fiction, you're going to have to find an interesting spin on your subject to get attention. So you might have to tie it into a holiday event or. Or if you have something funny. I'm trying to think of an example. Maybe for Valentine's Day, maybe you have a romance book. Right. You could talk about how romance books will make even singles feel like they're in a great relationship. I'm making stuff up on the fly, but you'll have to be more creative. But I still think the same will apply in terms of a lot of media. Certain media will sell books, others won't. But no media is bad media. So hopefully that. Hopefully that helps. Hey, Dave. Welcome. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I've covered all that. So two other things I thought I would touch on. And if you guys have more questions, please fire away. I'm good with that. And, oh, Robert, you and Sarah have a call. Great. Okay. How to prep. So I have another video on YouTube about this that I think it's called the 10 Things to Do to prepare for your Media Interviews. So, you know, if you're prepping for something, I highly recommend you go check out that video as well. But I will cover a couple things. One is make sure you've watched or listened to the show. If you're going to be on any sort of show. If you're doing an article for a magazine or an interview for any sort of publication, read some of the articles. If they've published anything similar to what you're talking about, check that out. And what you're looking for is you don't want to be radically different than what they're already doing, because they probably have a tone and a line that they like to stick to. But you want to make sure that you're not repeating the same thing they've already talked about. So give them something a little different and stay within the range that they seem to like to be within. Trying to think of how to better explain that in case you don't know what I mean. So let's. You just don't want to be. I mean, if politics, right, if you're thinking politics, you know, you've got your left wing and your right wing and you've got your Canadians. Anyways, if you're on a, you know, if you, if you're, if you've got a subject and somebody's on the left side of the subject on every conversation that they have about it, you're not going to introduce the right side and try to argue you for it. Generally speaking, you can offer some perspective from the right side through a left side lens. And that's the safest way to do it. If you want to get repeat media and, you know, build relationships with these outlets, which by the way, can happen really fast. They're always looking for experts, they're always looking for people. And if you do a great job when you are with them, whatever format it is, and you promote it and you thank them and you're a great guest, it's quite likely you'll be asking back over and over and over again. I've heard it over, I mean, it happened to me and I've heard it from many, many people. So prepare. It takes effort, but watch the show, read what they put out. Check the Twitter. Most media hosts are on Twitter. Check their Twitter. Get to know them a little bit so you know who they are. You know, if they have dogs, if they have kids. Even if you have 20 seconds before you go live, if you have some kind of commonality, mention it because they'll be warmer to you. And the warmer the host is to you, the warmer the audience will be to you. Always prep some key points, and this is largely if you're doing any sort of interview. So podcasts, radio, tv, but prep some key points so that you have sound bites, ideally nothing longer than 60 to 90 seconds, and time it. Make sure you've got these stories down so you're hitting an even shorter 30 seconds, 60 second, 90 second story. Podcasts, you can go a little bit longer, but if you're on any sort of news or radio, you need to have sound bites. So an interesting story with a key point and be able to deliver it really quickly. So practice a few of them for the key kind of questions that you're going to get asked. And don't worry about questions you can't answer. So the reality is that, you know, rarely is the host going to throw you a curveball again, they don't have much time to prepare. So the questions that you've given the producer, but probably the questions you're going to get, sometimes they even send you the questions in advance that they're going to ask you. But if they ask you a question that you're not comfortable or it's out of your realm of expertise, all they want is a good show. They really don't care if that specific question is answered. So do like the politicians do and redirect to something you can talk about rather than saying, I don't know or I'm not sure. You can just say. If they ask you, what's the best selling motorbike in your space? I don't know. And you don't know, you could say, well, I think a lot of people like this, I know a lot of people like this kind of bike for the open road. But what we're talking about here is this kind of concept. And when you understand this concept, you're going to know 1, 2, 3, and just redirect over to whatever it is you do know about, and that is going to be interesting to the audience. Again, all they care about is having a great show. And if you're prepared with some great key points, you can just redirect it over to whatever it is you do want to talk about or you can talk about, and they really won't care, I promise. They only care about getting a great show. And if it's a question that you can't answer, then they would rather you do that than stumble and fall apart. Okay, mirror the host's tone. So again, if you've prepped, you will already have a good sense of whether the host is bubbly and, you know, overly energetic and giggly, or if they're monotone and serious and really looking for the, you know, lean in and oh, tell me more kind of thing. Right, so you want to meet, but if you haven't done it or you're just not sure, then mirror their tone. So, you know, you know, smile, be warm, and then lean in and kind of listen to what they're saying and how they're delivering it and just try to do the same. And it will just help rapport. And it will also help, you know, the audience like you, but the host to like you too. And again, that will just make the interview go smoother. And this applies for podcasts as well. Although truthfully, I've had some really bad podcast interviews where the host is, I think, boring and terrible. And so I have actually stayed or, you know, I definitely have not changed my energy level to mimic that host in the case of a podcast interview, because I just think they're, well, maybe their audience does like that, but they got me instead. Okay, if you guys have questions, let me know. If you're watching the replay, make sure that you say hello during the replay and post your questions and comments as well. I will respond to every single comment and question posted on YouTube afterwards. And I'll try if you're on Facebook, but they get buried in there. Hey, Talita. Welcome. Okay, last thing I wanted to touch on is how to prep. Sorry, not how to prep. I just talked about that is a media list. So if you're doing this yourself, it is a great idea. So if you're doing this by pitching yourself, it is a great idea for you to keep a media list and just create a spreadsheet. Open up a simple spreadsheet. You don't need any fancy software or anything like that, but track who you're talking to. Track the shows you've been on, tracked, even track details about the host and stay in touch. Again, they're always looking for experts. And if you stay top of mind, if you do a good job and you're polite, you follow up with thank yous. There is a very good chance that you'll get repeat coverage from the same media list. And also, you know, you'll need to follow up and you want to keep track of how often you're contacting different outlets. So here's just kind of a basic list. Again, time for your pen and paper. Good place for your journals, right? I'm going to draw for a journal here pretty quick. Okay, so here's just a spreadsheet. You want to have the outlet. So, you know, magazine, whatever the name is of the outlet, probably the link, the website link, the name of the contact. So sometimes it's the producer, sometimes it's the host of the show, sometimes there's a coordinator. So whoever that is that you found is the person to contact, what they cover. So just because you're in Health magazine, it doesn't mean that the person that you're contacting is the, you know, is going to take every pitch. There'll be people who do equipment, there'll be people who, who do diet. There'll be people who specialize. So what kind of beat, I think that's the term they call it is what beat are they on? Their email, their phone number, their social media, any links to coverage that you've already had with them. And then your last point of contact and what you discussed, put that in there. So create a media list so you can keep track of this, so you can wrap your arms around all of it. All right, so that was all I thought we would touch on today. Hopefully answers some of your questions. You guys haven't asked a lot of questions so hopefully that just covered a lot. But if you do have questions after the fact, you know what to do. Okay, so this is the draw for, folks. If you are posting comments the day a video is released on YouTube, you're getting entered to win a draw. So here it is. This is the almost famous I'm trying to. Oops. This might be the almost famous noboringbooks mug. Okay, so inside here we have. I don't know, it's getting, getting pretty competitive out there, folks. It's about 75 names in here and today I'm actually not drawing for a mug. I am drawing for the equally as fabulous but slightly less famous book Launcher's journal. It's very soft, it's very nice, I love it. And I won't show you all my notes, but you can see a little bit of the inside and it's got thing here. And it also comes with its very own book Launcher's pen, which I don't have one in front of me. Alright, so drumroll please. And here is today's winner. Just so you guys know, I'm not cheating as I try to find one out of here. Okay, here we go. Let's see who is the new proud? They're all stuck together. I didn't take the time to fold them all. That was too much work. Okay, the new proud owner of a journal is. Oh, and I think she's even here today. It's Karma Ann Davis, if you're still here, congratulations. All you have to do to claim your journal is email me@teamteamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and we're going to get you a brand new journal. Congratulations and thank you so much for your regular support. And thank you to everybody who tuned in to today's live broadcast. We'll see you again in two weeks. And if you have a request for what subject you want us to cover, let me know. I will work on it and see if we can't create a video for you. All right, take care, guys. Bye.