News from the Publishing Industry

Oh, hello. Happy Tuesday to you. I am excited to share a little bit of a random session with you in that we're just gonna go over a bunch of my favorite kind of notes and takeaways that I got from IBPA University, that's in the Independent Book Publishers Association University, their annual event that they held this year in San Diego. I was there last weekend, I think not this past weekend, the weekend before. And then I got sick. Somebody there got me sick. But anyways, I go to a lot of events and I have a really wonderful immune system. So getting sick once every year, 18 months, two years, whatever it's been since I got leveled, leveled down in a while, I guess is not so bad. But besides the fact that I caught a bug, I also caught some cool little tidbits, ideas, you know. So it's a little bit of a random smorgasbord of things that I thought I would share with you today from my time there. If this is your first live stream, most of the time we have a set topic and I dive into, you know, how to turn your book into a course, how to market the difference between copy edit and content edit. But sometimes I do publishing industry or other kind of related updates and I thought now would be a good time to do that, so. Hello, Efren. Hello Bonnie from Dublin, California. We've got Bill in the house. Angela's here. Thank you. A couple weeks ago I had to do this without Angela and my YouTube besties were very kind. They didn't ask to many questions, but definitely say hello and chat away today because I have Angela to help and support me. Also fun fact, today I'm in our office. The book launcher's head office, if you will, is in Las Vegas. But the team is all remote. We're all spread out all over the US and some of us have met in person, but some of us have not. And so yesterday, today and tomorrow I have Sarah Bean, who is our book marketing manager, and Shane Vigent. Actually, I don't even know Angela. Is that how he pronounced his last name, Shane? Gonna have to confirm. I just realized I don't say his last name out loud very often, but he is kind of our online marketing guru. He builds websites, runs Amazon ads, kind of does the Internet side of book marketing for our team. And so he's here. And then Jacqueline Kyle, who used to be our production manager and is now, she's now started her own business because she has gotten so good at building out things in process, street and airtable and making them talk to each other. Now, she is basically that tech coordinator as a business, but we are one of her main clients at the moment. And so we're all here working on a few little cool things for our clients. And one thing that will be for people who aren't just clients for us. So they're all here and I accidentally starved them. I thought I ordered lunch and then I guess I didn't hit the last button. And they're all sitting there going, julie, where's lunch? And I looked and I was, oh, sorry. So they just got their lunch right now. But anyways, all that aside, I'm excited to share with you today some tips and things. And of course, if you are watching the replay, do say hello. Because commenting the day a video is released, including these live stream replays, gets you entered to win some of our fabulous no boring books swag. And I did actually order some new swag. So, Angela, get, get ready. I've got a new box coming your way. Another super secret swag thing. Because guess what? We are about to celebrate our six year anniversary here at Book Launcher. So I had to order some new swag that we've never had before. And it will be hitting Angela's. Angela's house soon. And of course we'll be sharing that with you all when we do celebrate. So all of that aside, let's just dive in. We've got Alvin here. I know Alvin. So good to see you. And Vijiant. Thank you, Angela. And. And anybody who has questions. I see a couple, at least one question coming in already, then you can go ahead and post them and Angela collects them for me and we share them at the end. So I'm just going to dive in. Like I said, it's a little bit random. I have my. My notebook, which is actually a notebook from one of our clients, Leslie ke, who wrote a book called Legacy. And she sent our whole team notebooks and things like that that had her. These are her swag. So I used her swag at the IBPA University and filled it and then I went through and I highlighted things that I thought you would all find interesting or useful or, you know, just. Just tidbits that I took away from different sessions, meeting different vendors, meeting different people that we've worked with, that we work with. And so first up, I thought this was a cool takeaway. So for a lot of authors that we work with, or even just authors in general in the nonfiction space, they're writing a book to help an audience that is not necessarily the audience that would actually be buying the book. So this can be an example of if you're trying to reach teens or you're trying to reach people in, you know, I'm trying to think like communities that don't have the economic resources, and you're trying to provide them with resources and support. So often the buyer is not the person that you're actually writing the book for. And so the. The way they put this, they said the people you want to serve are not the same as your customer. And that is really something to. To really think about when you're writing a book for somebody who's not able to afford the book. And then you're thinking about the business plan around the book as to how you're going to get it into the hands of the customer so that it ultimately gets in the hands of the people that you want to support. And that means that when you're writing the book, you're not just thinking about the person that you want to read the book and that you're trying to help. You're thinking about the channel that's going to get. Get it there. So maybe you're going to use community outreach programs, or maybe you're going to be, you know, in the case of teens or troubled teens or, you know, that kind of audience who's working with them now. And how can you position your book so that it's a good tool and resource for them? Because those are the people, those are the groups, those are the associations that are actually going to be buying your book. This is something that we've talked about, and I think it's a really, really cool insight. I just liked. So it's something that we've talked about. It's not necessarily news, but I like the positioning of the people you want to serve are not the same as your customer when it's that case. And then there was a lot of talk about branding and standing out. And one of the things, again, it was kind of reinforcing, I guess, something that I share a lot, but it was. It's not hard to stand out if you're doing something new, doing something you care about and you're talking about it. And this was specifically in a conversation of some publishers that were at the front because the Independent Book Publishers association, who puts this on, is a lot of smaller publishers. So they're, they're niche publishers. They will work with, you know, say, a children's book in a very specific arm. You know, one of the people that was on stage in this case, they focus on, I'M trying to remember how she positioned it. I think she said she publishes books by marginalized groups. And so that's her kind of publishing arm and what they do. But there's also a few kind of self publishers, so people authors and things like that. There weren't a lot of people like book launchers in the room as far as we're self publishing services. But we very much fit in in that audience because, you know, we are helping all of you to be your own independent publisher. And so a lot of the takeaways fit and, and we're, you know, we always benefit from interacting and being a part of that community. But some of the context of some of these things is kind of from that business angle, not an author angle. So just kind of giving you that as context. So trying to publish a book that is commercial creates mediocrity. Oh, yeah. So I was talking about the standing out piece. And so back to the publisher. I'll go back to this piece in a second. So back to the publishing piece. You know, one of the things I'm always talking about is you have to stand out. And it may feel uncomfortable, but you need to have that opinion or that slightly even controversial, but it doesn't have to be controversial, but you need that angle or that thing that's going to make you stand out. And I just put out a video last week on, you know, unexpected ways to build, to use your book, to build your brand. And I talked about when I was at the National Speakers association how those folks, the speakers in that group, and especially the successful ones, they stand out. They sparkle. They wear sparkles, they wear bright colors. They have tailored suits. They, they have ways of branding themselves. And as I talked about in that video, I'm not the kind of person who's going to wear sparkles and bright colors. I am going to support my Knights, though. Yay. Go Vegas Golden Knights. That's hockey. For those of you not following hockey. But they're on. They're on to the conference final. I'm so excited. And they built. They beat the Oilers. As a side note, and I am Canadian. I grew up supporting the Flames. The Flames and the Oilers are arch rivals. And so even though I'm now cheering very enthusiastically for the Golden Knights, I was even more enthusiastic because they built. They beat my childhood arch enemies, the Oilers. All right, sorry. Had to take a little tangent over there to support. Support my local hockey team. So. And in that tangent, of course, I've lost the complete thread of whereas. Oh, yes, now I remember so I'm not going to wear bright colors, you know, so finding that unique thing isn't always about bright colors and standing out, but it is about understanding what makes you slightly unique. And so for me, you know, it's my passion for having that marketing angle for your book. Understanding from day one how you're going, how you're defining success, who you're writing the book for, and how your book is just that little bit different than everybody else's, and layering that into the entire process. And then of course, I put my branding on here, Julie of the book broad. So those are some things I do to stand out. And you have to be okay with that uncomfortable feeling of standing out a little bit, doing those things that are different because that's the only way you're going to be known. And that quote that I just shared, they said, you know, it's not hard to stand out if you're doing something new, which, or you have that angle, that unique angle, that slightly controversial spin on things and you care about it. So you're passionate about it. And I am very passionate about helping you write a book that is going to be set up to succeed. And, and then you're talking about it. You know, that is a really, really great combination. You consistently do that. I would add consistency to that as a, as a really great formula. Just smiling. I see Angela going hot surprise to me because I didn't tell Angela that I ordered this swag. I'm also looking for one other thing. I want to have two new cool swag pieces for our six year anniversary. But anyways, I love surprising Angela with boxes at her door. Okay, next tidbit. And if you're new here, Angela, Angela is our operations manager and she's the one that sends you prizes. So when you comment today, you participate in the live stream, you're saying hello, that gets you entered to win some prizes. And Angela is the one that sends those to you. So that's why I send all the swag to her house. Okay, so this was a cool kind of thought as well. Again, it really reinforces something I'm already sharing. But it was talking about how a lot of people, authors and publishers, they're trying to publish a book that is commercial for. Right. They're looking at, okay, can I make sure my book is going to sell? And I have conversations with authors too where they're like, okay, is that, how am I going to know if this book is going to sell? And in doing that, you're looking at the commercialization of your book, how is this going to be commercial? And one of the pieces that really popped out for me in a couple of the sessions was really focusing on that powerful, important, different and unique angle. So is actually what's going to make your book commercial. And this is really a slightly different way of saying what I'm often saying, which is go niche, find that audience and figure out how you're serving that audience with your book, with your story, with your experience, and how you're doing it in a slightly unique or different way that they're going to benefit from. And a lot of people kind of resist this. They go, oh, I don't want, I want my book to have a bigger audience than that. And, and I am always suggesting to people that unless you are quite famous, like you're really well known in your space, it is so much better to be the person that solves this tiny little thing than the person who just speaks about the overall topic. And I pick on leadership all the time, so I'll just stick with, stick with that theme. But it's really hard to sell a leadership book. You are up against some major heavy hitters in that leadership category. Names that almost everybody knows. But if you pick a little subset of, okay, here's how you're going to lead the people on your team who are brand new moms and they're tired, they still want to do their job, but they're, they're spread thin. I'm just making this up. But you've got like this way to kind of lead them, guide them, support them and turn them into your powerhouse team members that, you know, you can't live without something like that. Now you've got a really clear audience. Or you could also turn it around and kind of focus on that mom. You know, one of the things they talked about at the event was one of the publishers had a book that was about, it was for hearts. Like it was something to do with, I don't know, heart health. And the author wanted to position the book. It was like, everybody's my audience because everybody has a heart. And the publisher said, look, like this is, this is not like it's not an urgent need. Nobody actually thinks about their heart being something they need to focus on unless there's something wrong. So let's position the book for people who've just been diagnosed with heart disease. And the book was wildly successful for that publisher and they're certain that had they allowed it to be for anyone with a heart, that it never would have found its audience. But because it was very specific. Like this is for somebody who was just diagnosed with heart disease. And this is what you need to know. This is how you're going to help your heart get healthier again. It did really, really well. Okay, so let's see. Jupiter Vision. Camrose is near Edmonton. Yes, Camrose is near Edmonton. If that's where you live. I'm sorry, my, my mom went to Camrose Lutheran College. So it's not that I'm, you know, I can't help it. It's like when you're born in Southern Alberta and you cheer for the Flames, you have to be anti Oilers. Especially in my era where the Oilers were winning the cups and we weren't. But anyways, we won't go down the hockey rabbit hole today. I'll try not to. Okay. So I attended this really fantastic session on international rights. It was my favorite session that I went to and it was the folks at Drop Cap, you can check them out@dropcap.com I believe is their website. They are an agent and an international rights agent. So they do agency work to help you get foreign rights. This can be translation. It can be the English language version of your book in a different country. There's a variety of things that they will help you do. And there was a few things about the session that I really, I really liked getting a deeper understanding of the entire rights process and also understanding how agents work and represent you. But a couple things that I thought really stood out to me that they shared. One was that foreign buyers love to see authors actively promoting their books on social media. So if foreign rights, whether that's a translation deal or you just want a publisher to get the rights to your book in a specific country, even if it's in English, you need to be active on social media. This was pretty much a non negotiable as far as they were concerned. It sounded like the majority of deals that they have done for authors have had this as a criteria that got ticked off off of a box. They talked about one example called don't believe everything you think it's a self published book. James McEwen was the author, is the author I should say and he self published and he has sold it into sold 40 language, 40 different languages. And so that was all I believe something they facilitated for him. But they said that four factors that really helped him succeed was number one, a very relevant topic. And this was something that I thought also was cool from this session was they talked about how you didn't have to have the book, like it didn't need to be just out. They, it's more. What was more important was the relevancy of the conversation in that particular country. And they used the example of autism as one of the, as a book example because they had an author that they shopped to a very specific publisher, I believe in Germany. I don't, I don't know that for sure. But they said, we'll just go with Germany as the example. And they tried to get this one publisher to pick it up. They felt it was a good fit. And the publisher said, no, nobody's talking about autism in our country. And then three years later they are talking to the publisher and the publisher said, do you have anything on, on, on, on parenting autistic children? Because you know this, everybody is dealing with this issue or, you know, kind of talking about this topic right now. And so they said, yes, we do. Just so happens we have this book. And so then they were able to sell the rights. And they said it didn't matter that it was three years old. What mattered was that the publisher was finding that there was demand for that topic in their country. So the rel. The recency of your book being published is not as important for international deals as is the relevancy and the, you know, the current trend of that particular topic. Which is great news because a lot of times a book can come out in the States as an example or in other countries too, but there can be a place where something is kind of leading the way. And then over time other countries want to talk about the same, you know, topic, issue, situation, those kind of things. So, okay, so, so that was it. So relevant topic, an eye catching COVID design, even though interestingly the COVID will almost always be changed for the other country. It has to have that eye catching design for a publisher to kind of see it. The universal message, obviously you're not going to be writing about how to get into colleges in the United States. Well, actually that might be a relevant issue for some people, but if it's very American, it is not going to be of international interest. So a universal message like don't believe everything you think you know is relevant because it's not. It has nothing to do with the country you're in. And then impressive sales. But interestingly, when a lot of the publishers are looking at impressive sales, you know, to me impressive sales is like 5, 10, 15,000 units have sold. They said for a lot of the publishers that it could be as little as a thousand sales in a year or so. And that's impressive enough sales, especially if they, if it meets all those other criteria and it's a relevant topic that they're looking for in their country. So I thought that was pretty cool. I don't know, you guys can tell me if you think it's cool or not, but. All right, so let's just see here. That's interesting. Okay, let's do a prize for being here and participating today. Let's go with. What is the date today? I don't even. It's the 16th, isn't it? I believe it's May 16th. So Angela, let's go with comments number 16 from the beginning because Efren was first in the house to comment. So let's go number 16 from there. And then I will. Oh, Tony's here. Hello. Yay, Tony. Okay. Oh, and one more thing on the international rights thing. So if you're kind of wondering what cut they take, what their, how they make their money. So an age these agents, I, I don't know if all international rights agents are like this, but in a lot of cases they end up with a co agent. So. So an agent in that particular country and so the co agent takes 10% and they take 20%. And so they'll usually. And this is not of your royalties, this is of the advanced. So you're getting some sort of an advance. They said the advances varied wildly from you know, a thousand to mid mid five figures. They didn't see a lot of six figure type advances typically for self published books in other countries. But you know, it's kind of to me, at least how I would be looking at this unless I know I have massive demand in certain countries, I would be looking at any deals they brought to me as kind of icing on a cake. And so if they're taking 20% and 10% for another agent of $10,000, I'm still making $7,000 plus royalties in a country that I probably was not going to do anything with myself. So I thought that was a pretty good deal. And there is a lot of paperwork that is involved that the agents will do. That's really the value they're bringing to the table after they have made the connection. And they know, you know, because they're, they're traveling around to all of the publishing events all around the world and they're making those connections and kind of investing in those relationships that get these deals done. But then the value they're bringing after the fact is they're going to chase down your royalties for you. So they do the paperwork and then they're also going to be doing all the contract piece for you. So it's pretty cool. Oh, and Tony won. Yay. That's fantastic. So Tony, I think you've won before but you, you can choose from the mug, the journal or a copy of Self published and succeed. And if you've got it all or for some reason you don't want it, then you can choose somebody else to win. And so shenanigans they say so they take 20% and, and then if there is a co agent the co agent would take 10% so it would be 30% of the advance. They don't take anything from the royalties. This is just the advance was my understanding. And of course if you were to go with them or any other agent, you would absolutely want to pour over the details of the contract of their representation of you. But I'm just sharing to give people a sense of what these deals can look like based on, based on this and other things that I've heard. And Tony's excited to get a mug so you'll need to email Angela at Team T e a m booklaunchers.com with your mailing address. Although I think we have it unless you're still RV in it out there in the world. But just email her your mailing address and, and just remind her that you want the mug and she'll send it off to you. Okay, next up, let's see what else do I have in pink for you? Okay, so there was a whole session on marketing and well there's lots of sessions on marketing actually but one of the sessions that I attended was from a bunch of publicists and one of the things they talked about that I thought was really, you know, insightful and kind of reassuring was that the launch model and I've talked about this before, but they talked about how the launch model of books is completely a traditional publishing driven thing and it's largely because the publisher's trying to recoup the investment in the book as quick as possible and also because they're going to cut bait on this book pretty fast if it's not getting a lot of pre sales and launch sales. And so any, any resources they are putting towards a book will be cut off completely if they aren't getting the numbers that they had planned for, for that book. And the, the publicists were really talking about how with self publishing and smaller publishers this model doesn't make sense. You know, and I've, and I've talked about this before too is really, it's a marathon plan to promote your book for a long, long time. And yes, go for that splashy launch if you want to, but it's more important that you're building momentum and consistently using that book as the beautiful, wonderful tool that it is for growing your business, growing your brand and you know, ultimately supplementing and income in a variety of ways, not necessarily from book sales. And they said that a lot of campaign timing that is built into the industry is driven by this old antiquated publishing model. And in fact, that model doesn't even work that well anymore. And the example they were talking about was the six month lead up to launch. And the six month lead up to launch was something that traditional publishers did to try to get their books on the New York Times bestseller, the Wall Street Journal bestseller. And what has happened is that by the time books launch now, the audience is like, what? Like, I thought your book came out months ago. And so this like six month campaign of talking about the book and trying to get pre sales to get that bestseller list has backfired. And they're not getting the big numbers on launch like they used to because people are tired and they don't think like they've grown tired of the book and they're either not paying attention or they think it's old news, even though it hasn't even launched yet. So publishers are having to change their model. And this for me was somewhat reassuring that what we do at Book Launchers works really well, which is we don't start talking about the book generally until six weeks out, six weeks out from launch. We hit that pre sale period and that's when we're trying to get the buzz. Now you may still be teasing to your audience that hey, I have a book coming, but it's not, hey, my book's going to be available, it's on pre sale, you can buy it and you'll get it later. It's that six week push kind of now you're going to go and get your media attention. Now you're going to get your reviewers and you're going to tell your friends and family and colleagues and clients and all those people. And you have a shorter window, but enough of a window that you're getting things going. So you're building momentum into launch and you've got momentum carrying you past launch and beyond. And so this is something to consider because what they said was that they were finding books were expiring, that was the phrase they were using. And so talking about your book Coming out too much can make it. Make people feel like, oh, didn't it already come out? Like, why it's just launching now? What. What happened? So I thought that was fun and interesting. The other piece they talked about, which they. You can kind of feel it when you think about it, but is really more authors are thinking too big, too fast. And to start local and to start small and kind of build that groundswell momentum is a much smarter way to build momentum for your book project. So they were using the example of your local. You might have a local magazine, a local TV show, a local radio show. Look around your local market and build that groundswell support and momentum. It's also easier if you're in a suburban neighborhood or a bedroom community or a smaller market to get on that local TV or that local show, that local paper. And then if you have a publicist, the publicist can then contact the bigger outlets and go from there. Or if you're doing it yourself, you can then do the outlets because now you've got something to say like, oh, the local Fox or the local. I can only think of Canadian news stations. I'm like the local ctv, the local global they featured. And now you can kind of open the door to future and feature places at the bigger outlets. And a lot of authors are immediately going big. And a lot of times you're not ready. You're not used to that kind of exposure and appearances. But also it can be a lot harder to get that and you don't have the momentum behind you that makes it easier to get those kind of features. So a lot of the publicists really focus the first three months on that local momentum. And then when they get a good hit locally, they use that to expand it wider. Okay, let's see, what else do we have here? That was a lot of the points that I think I wanted to talk about. There was one more. Okay, here. So there was one special, one session that I went to that was on bulk and special sales. And I wish I'd written the speaker down. I don't have who it was that said this, but it was kind of a cool angle, more for business type books. Like, he used the example of a floor, a book that talked about installing floor and flooring and choosing flooring and how they approached the home show. So they looked at the sponsors of the home show and they said, hey, look like instead of handing out swag that people throw out as soon as they walk through the door, why not buy a book and we'll customize the Book as like gifted to you from, I'm just gonna say Home Depot. But you know, if Home Depot had a booth and they could give this book away so gifted to you from Home Depot, and then they could custom and, you know, if Home Depot agreed to buy 5,000 copies of the book for the show, they could then custom the customize the first page as a promotion for Home Depot. And you know, this book sponsored by Home Depot, they had quite a bit of success doing that. Because if you are familiar with a lot of these big conferences, they usually have swag to give away. They're usually buying swag that's going to be a dollar or so per piece. And so books for in some cases are going to be more expensive. But if you get an order far enough in advance for a large enough quantity, you can be getting them offset printed for, you know, $2, maybe even less. You know, I've seen it, I've seen it quite commonly, if you're ordering 5, 10,000 copies, you can get it for 2,000 overseas, or $2, I should say, per book overseas. And so you can get it much cheaper with a longer lead time and a larger order. So it can make a lot of sense for these kind of things. So I just thought it was neat. I'm just giving you the seed if there's something you want to do with it. There's obviously lots more logistics to this piece, but I thought it was interesting for some books. If you look at conferences where they're going to be handing out a lot of swag, is there an opportunity for a company to get your book instead and use your book as their swag? Because if there's a fit between your book and their ideal client, there could be high value there. Because the reality is a lot of swag hits the trash. The brochures for sure hit the trash. And so having a book that can have a long lifetime, a longer lifetime and get passed around, that could be a really, really cool opportunity for some of these conference sponsors. And Mike said maybe a soft folded and stapled book rather than a regular spine book, maybe, but you are going for that long lifetime. And they, and he said they had quite a bit of success with this, but he said you're pitching a year out like you're pitching. You're kind of looking at conference sponsors. The minute a conference is announced and their sponsorships kind of lined up. You're, you're, you're, you're looking at them. So this would be for the big, big conference events, but it could Be a really cool idea for certain types of books. It's not going to work for everybody's book. But you know, if you have a pro, if you talk about something like in this example, the installing flooring, they weren't necessarily focused on a specific product and they may or may not have even mentioned specific products in it, but that could be a good fit for a home show as an example. And so having those kind of tie ins could be really, really cool. They also talked about doing that, that kind of an approach with schools as well, almost a sponsored model with schools. So you could go to your local dentist as an example. And if you want your book in schools, you could approach the local groups that probably want their, their name, like the pediatricians or the, the dentistry that focuses on kids. They, they probably are already trying to market to that group. And now you can say, okay, well the school, it would give a copy of this book to every kid in their classroom. If you'll sponsor it. And I'll just put your information on the front as sponsored by, you know, Joe's Dentistry. And then on the first page, same thing, you can, if there's a large enough quantity involved, you can give them an actual special page on the inside. And you know, if it's buying a thousand copies and you're able to sell it to them for $5, well, you might want more. But you know, just thinking about how you get it into those places, maybe you sell it for 10 and it's $10,000 sponsorship. But again, it's that thing that doesn't get thrown away, right? If some, if somebody's investing in junk mail, you know, they're spending quite a bit of money to put that in the mailbox, knowing that 99% of it is getting tossed in the trash without even being seen. And so a book is something that will have a much longer lifetime value. Much, much longer lifetime. And it will have a lot a bigger value to people because you're not giving them trash. You're giving them something that they want to read or share and pass along. So I thought those were really cool ideas. I haven't personally approached things like that. That's something that I'll actually meet with my team and we'll talk about kind of angles and ways that we could use that information. And I'm actually, there's, there's a few other things from that session, but those were kind of the things I wanted to share. Okay, let's do the YouTube prizes. So when you comment the day a video is released, you get your name into a draw and I am going to go pop over and I will tell you I've got my little random name picker and it's going to spin around. And our first person is JP And I think I saw JP here. Let me just check. Jp, thank you for commenting on the day a video was released and I'm trying to find. I've lost. I've lost you guys. There you are. So jp, I don't know if you're still here, but you won. So you can choose between the mug. Oh, I do have the journal here too. Our oh so soft journal and. Or a copy of Self publish and Succeed. So congratulations jp. Okay, and our next winner. Let me go back to my random name picker over here and see who comes up. Sorry, one moment please. I have a little notification box in front of my random name picker that is making it so it won't spin. Okay, here we go. Now we're spinning. And my next winner is. Okay, Standard Keeper. All right. Congratulations, Standard Keeper. Sorry, just laughing because I'm like it's. I don't know what that name actually means, but I am thrilled that you are the winner. So same thing with JP. Email Angela@teamoklaunchers.com and let her know which prize you want and where to send it. And thank you for commenting the day a video was released. Okay, last thing I'll talk about is actually, you know, I met with the folks at Ingram. Several of them, oops, I've lost you guys. Again. Where are you? There you are, friends. Okay. And so no sooner did I put out the. Well actually let me rephrase that. No sooner did I film my video talking about the differences between KDP and Ingramspark, did they announce their 10 year anniversary and change the fact that there is no more upload fee and there's no revision fee for the first 60 days. This is also great for us, I got to tell you, because a lot of our clients make multiple revisions after their book comes out and so it can get a little pricey on our side paying for revisions and things like that. That said, the. The video did talk about how there's revision and upload fees and then they went ahead and removed it. But the video still talked a lot about, you know, why we use KDP, why we use KDP and IngramSpark in conjunction with each other for the vast majority of the books that we are working on. And those, all of that was still there. They also had a few other pieces of news. So I'M just pulling up my screen here because I pulled up the screen so the free title set up. So print and ebook titles no longer have a charge fee as of May 1st. So that's pretty cool. Also effective May 1st was the fact that uploads for revised files will be free for the first 60 days after the title has been approved. After 60 days revision fees do then apply and then. Oh, and then if you're wondering what so that's the date a book goes into production. You click on the title available link and it opens the title status details page and then that's the available for printing download status and that will tell you the date. So. So you've got your 60 day marker from there. Another cool thing for us addresses only is they have moved to a flat rate shipping fee. So if you are placing an order for your books, which I do quite frequently, this upcoming weekend I'm speaking at epi, the Exit Planning Institute's annual event in Phoenix. And then in June I'm going to the Limitless Expo. And in the past we've done a lot of other kind of conferences. Sarah is going to. Sarah, our book marketing manager and Nicole on our team, they're going to the American Library association in Chicago. So we do a lot of events where we're shipping a lot of books. Sometimes it's our author books, but a lot of times it's my book self publish and succeed. And so they have made this cheaper. So it's 299 order fee plus, plus $0.50 per unit for shipping the units, which is kind of cool. That's cheaper than it was. I believe I'd have to do. I shouldn't say I believe I know it's cheaper than it was. It's media mail, so that's a better kind of. And then a better kind of shipping rate for shipping larger quantities. There are also if you are somebody who's a speaker and you're doing a lot of bulk orders, so so some of our clients will, you know, have an order for 500 books or 800 books and if you're doing enough of those over the course of a year, their print costs, their print charge to you is going to go down. So the more that you're ordering bulk orders from them, the cheaper it will get for you. So that's kind of cool too. They also have a couple of new print options. So they have an ultra premium color option that is going to help you if you're somebody that's probably printing, you know, like a coffee table A picture book. And so it's, it's really geared towards, I think it was called the ocha. I don't know if I wrote it down. OCHA Premium, something like that. It's going to create really vibrant books. They also have a new paper type coming out. It's a lightweight but thicker paper. It would be more for mass market kind of fiction books, but. But I think it'll be a little bit. A lower cost. I think it's a lower cost, higher quality, but it's lightweight. So I don't, I don't know my paper, but it's groundwood paper, so that's coming out too. So the, the one thing that is changing that if you're selling a lot of books, may not be, may not be great, but it's not, you're probably not going to notice is that they have a 1% fee being added to the global distribution network. So they're 40,000 plus bookstores, retailers, libraries, schools that they, that they sell to. There'll be a 1% of the list price of the title sold will go to that. So if your book's 10 bucks, it's 10 cents. So it's not going to be, I think, super painful for most of us. But you'll see it on your compensation report from Ingram, listed as the global distribution fee. All right, so those were kind of my pink highlights from my travel there. And there was lots of other things, but those were the ones that I thought that you would all find the most interesting. So now maybe we'll take questions. So let's see what we have here, Angela, if you want to let me know what questions we have. And then our final, our final skill testing question for the day will be what was your favorite kind of random takeaway that I shared today? That will be the prize for today. So let me know what it looks like. My Internet slow. Sorry if I've been wobbly. Yeah. So let me know what your favorite random takeaway that I got from IBPA's university session was for you today. All right, I'll just wait. Wait. I'm waiting for questions. Oh, here we go. Maybe one popped in now. All right, we have lots of questions. Okay, I'm ready for you, Dabby Doson. What is the most interesting book marketing gimmick you've seen? Gimmick? I don't know about gimmick, but I thought that approaching conference sponsors was pretty cool. I wouldn't call that a gimmick, but I hadn't actually thought of even looking at who's on a sponsor and thinking about maybe they would be, you know, if they're just going to be giving away widgets, then maybe they'd be better off to give away books. I thought that was pretty smart. So I wouldn't call it a gimmick, but I did think that was pretty interesting. Okay, well, I don't see Angela's usually organizing them, but I'll go to Tony's question next. What's the best way to approach a local bookstore to do an event like a book signing or a reading? I have a couple of really great videos on that. And so once Angela's done collecting questions for me, she can maybe go on the YouTube channel and find the book signing. Preparing for a book signing. And I think there's like a book signing event kind of video. How to. The short answer is just to go there, like physically go into your local bookstore and talk to them, find out who the manager is and just have a conversation with them. What I did when I did some bookstores, actually, I've done it a couple ways. My, my publicist in my. With my first book, she actually booked me for some local bookstores because she had, she had relationships with a lot of the bookstores. So she, she actually booked me for some, but others I watched. I kind of went on their website and I went into the store and I looked at posters, I looked at the website and I assessed, okay, this, this store actually has a regular event every month. So, so then I went and talked to the manager about how they book that event, what they're looking for in an event. And in one of the cases, I said, oh. I said, well, you know, I have a book and I'm thinking that we could potentially do something together. And I talked them through, I asked them some questions and I understood. In, in one of the bookstores cases, I was like, oh, this isn't going to work. They were really looking on for fiction and they had some specific criteria. And so it wasn't a good fit. But the other bookstore that I booked for myself, you know, they, they did regular nonfiction type educational things and they had authors come in and do it. I will tell you that bookstore events are. They look cooler than they are. I found the three, the three things I got asked the most when I did any sort of book signing or event was where's the cookbook section? Where's the bathroom? And is there a Starbucks in here? Yeah. Anyways, that's, that's all I'll say on that. You know, it does get your book listed in the store can be fun. And if you've got, if it's local and you've got a lot of friends and family, it's a great way to kind of celebrate becoming an author. Efren's question, what are your thoughts on getting a table at 20 Books in November for $50 to sell? Promote my nonfiction book do it. I heard from most of the authors that did it last year that they sold, you know, they, most of them sold at least 20 copies of their book there. And you know, as you know, because you attended it last year, I think it's a great event. There's lots of good learning, there's lots of good networking. And for 50 bucks, I mean, why not do it? You might meet some other authors where you can cross promote and yeah, I think, I think a lot of authors found it successful. I won't be doing it because it's not really a great market for me to sell a book on how to self publish when everybody there has already published at least one book. They wouldn't want to buy that book. They might buy the book marketing book. So possibly. But I would do it. Efren. I think that's cool. Tony said, oh, I would say, well, there's Starbucks here. Take this book with you. I know it was funny. It was, it was kind of, I don't, I don't want to say it was anticlimactic, but the first bookstore signing I ever did was so exciting, although I only had four or five people come out. And then I went to another one in a different city where I didn't actually know very many people. And I met, I met a handful of people. I did a radio spot the day before, which did actually seem to really help because several of the people mentioned they heard me on the radio. But my husband Dave was there and he was so bored that he refused to come to any other book signing. It was, it was funny, but not funny. They aren't, they aren't as great as you would hope they would be, but they, it, like I said, it can be really cool for your local area if you know, you've got that community sport, that support that's going to come out and, you know, buy your books and just have fun with you. That can make it really fun. Okay, sorry. Question three. Dabby Dose and analytics. Or analytics. How can I measure the success of my marketing dollars through the various books I selling platforms? I'm trying to think if I have a good answer for you, that won't take a long Time to. It's going to depend on what kind of marketing you're doing and how you're doing it. But there isn't one way to do this and it's going to depend on what matters to you. And you know, with Amazon ads even, we've talked about that. But, you know, if you're running Amazon ads measuring your performance, you have to go deeper than even what Amazon's giving you in your dashboard. Bookbub, it's improved a little bit, but BookBub doesn't even have conversion tracking because you're selling through different platforms that they're not able to kind of connect to. So it's not that easy. And then for Ingram, as an example, you don't actually know where you've sold the books. They don't give you any granular information about your sales. So you could be selling them online, you could be selling them into physical stores, you could be selling them through libraries or books or schools, and you'll never know, which is disappointing because if you knew it was working somewhere, you could start targeting and focusing on other like outlets. But you don't get that kind of data. So I personally focus the money I spend on things that I can track. So, so we do as far as promoting self publish and succeed, you know, I do, I use them for conferences and those you can track in some ways verbally, if you're using it to, you know, get people to talk to you about your business. As an example, because I am getting people's email addresses, tracking that email when I. Sorry, back up at a conference, for example, when I'm giving out books, we're giving them in exchange for an email address. And then we're tracking on our system that we met them at X event. And so then in the future, if they contact me and they say, hey, I want to write a book with you guys, and then I search them, I'm like, oh, great, we met at the NSA event in 2022. And they'll say, yeah, that's where I got your book. Fantastic. Now I know that book that I gave away and I paid for that booth or whatever happened at that event, whether I spoke or whatever, that event led to a new author joining with us and working with us to publish their book. So there's that side of the business kind of tracking Amazon ads tracks itself. Any other money I'm spending on promoting the book is going to self publishandsucceed.com, which is a page with Google tracking, Facebook tracking and other kind of conversion Tracking. And you're buying the book direct from me when you buy it from there. Beyond that, it's a rabbit hole. Okay, next question. How do you monitor international sales? You get a bit of data on that from your, your dashboards, your KDP dashboard, your Ingram dashboard. Your draft to digital, I believe, also kind of gives you some insights as to what countries are buying from you, what currencies you're. You'll also get a whole bunch of deposits like it, you know, every month or not every month, every 60 days, I think from KDP I get, I don't know, eight different deposits. So it's sold, you know, one copy in the UK and one copy in another country. And so it's all different deposits from those places. So that's how you'll see your international sales. To a point. Effort. Is IngramSpark expanding their paper operation? I like the torn edge look, but assuming it's rare. Yes, to a point. They are, they're, they are expanding certain things, but those really kind of custom looks aren't going to be available. It's just not financially viable for them to do those kind of things they had. I'm trying to think if there was anything else worth noting, but they are, they are getting some more cover designs that were kind of cool. There are more printers that can do some of those custom looks. But then you're getting into having to kind of wholesale the book, having to create, create that FBA type account with Amazon and sell it that way, which starts to get to be a pain. But you can have that cool look. If you want to order a thousand copies for yourself or 500 copies and use it for some custom kind of use, that would work. Okay, I'm almost done, guys. Maybe the questions aren't done, but I'm almost done. Okay, question six. Debbie Docent. Will books in the future come with a series seal of authenticity to verify that they were written by humans instead of being generated by AI? Ultimately, here's the answer to that. If you're doing a great book, whether AI was involved or not, people aren't going to necessarily know. So my, my, my comment on that is maybe that will happen. I think in a lot of cases, people aren't going to necessarily need to, or want to disclose it. And what I mean by that is if you just straight up have AI write your book, people are going to know. Maybe not in the future, maybe it will get good enough. But you know, we're, we're playing with ChatGPT a lot. We've put, we've paid to have our team go through various types of training. Part of what my team is here in town working on is a little bit of open source AI connection into the whole book marketing and even research. And there's just lots of cool applications. We're not really using it to write the books per se. Great outlining tool, great ideation, you know, lots of value there. The books that we've had submitted to us that have been written by AI are being rewritten by humans now. So I think there could be something. There's certainly a lot of copyright things to figure out. And I am, I am not an expert. I am, I am learning this right along with a lot of you and. But I don't know because I don't know how they can. I don't know how they can really do that because again, if you're using AI to start and then you're working the material from there, the end product isn't going to be AI generated, it's going to be human generated. So do you need to. I don't know. It's a whole. I think in a lot of ways it's a philosophical question which I am not one to go and philosophize there. Is that the word philosophize? I. I'm not going to go down that, that place. I'm just such a practical application person that I'm going to look at how I'm going to use it, you know, what's the risks, what's the rewards, and, and kind of go down that road. So. Last question, good thing. How important is it to have an audiobook? I feel like I went pretty, pretty hard on that question in a video sometime this year. But the answer is it's more important than ever before. And we are seeing some books in, you know, and we're only doing nonfiction, so Book Launchers only does nonfiction. So the vast majority of what I talk about comes from that fiction nonfiction place. But for some books especially, I think those targeting entrepreneurs. Um, I'm trying to think of the one that I'm. That the one that actually was more than 50% of their sales was in audio month over month, but definitely that entrepreneurial space, they're buying audiobooks. So if you have an audience like that and you're targeting them and you don't have an audiobook, you're missing out. And I think this is, it's going to be one of those things more and more in the future where you need to have all formats. I do think there's some really exciting AI technology coming with voice cloning that I'm playing with for my first book because my first book doesn't have an audiobook. So I'm working on cloning my voice and producing an audiobook for my first book just for kicks, to see if you can do it. And we're getting close to cloning my voice. And I've heard a few other people who have been successful in cloning their voice. Also freaky, don't you know, as excited as I am about the fact that I might not have to sit in a studio and record record an audiobook, and it still sounds like me, I'm simultaneously freaked out about how you can use this for evil and not just for good. That aside, you know, I think that the costs of producing an audiobook and the ability for all authors to have it are going to change dramatically over the next few years. And so I think it will not be a should you. It's just going to be, you will have it and you absolutely must have it. But right now, I would say if you can afford it for the majority of books, you should. If your book is really technical, people aren't going to listen to it in audiobook. So I would say you don't necessarily need it. But I think for a lot of books these days, you're going to see a lot of sales in audio that you wouldn't have seen if you didn't have it. I freaked a few of you out. All right, that's it for me, you guys. That was a full hour of fun. I'm so glad you joined me today. And Deep dive Saturday. Alyssa, our production manager, she is passionate and very talented at editing. She is going to be hosting you for the deep dive on Saturday. 10am Pacific Standard Time. Two hour session if you can make it. And book launchers.com deep dive to get registered. She will take amazing care of you. And of course, we don't have, we don't share the replays. Uh, so if you want to ask her anything about editing or anything else, book production, you have to be there live to get it. So book launchers.com forward slash, deep dive and oh, prize. Thank you, thank you. There's still the prize. What is the prize? The tip. That's right. Okay, did anybody actually share the tips? I didn't see them come in. What? And how to use that. That to make money. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Why does the value and increase the books increase when bad things happen to me? I don't know. Nobody gave Me. Nobody gave me any tips. So what prize should I give Angela? I need a prize. I think everybody was too. Was too busy listening to all of my stuff. That's what I'm gonna say. You guys were so engaged in what I was saying. You didn't have a favorite takeaway. Velocisaurus rex. I like that. Gotta scroll back. Okay, just give me one. Angela. Give me one. I don't know. I don't see any of them. I'm gonna go with Dabby Dosan because I know you asked several questions. So I'm just gonna give the prize to you because my team is waiting for me over in the boardroom. I gotta get back to them. So. Dabby Doson, congratulations. You're my final winner for the day. Email Angela teamklaunchers.com and let her know what prize you would like. If you are in the States, it's mug, journal, or book. If you are outside of the States, it is journal or I believe our book because the international stuff is a big pain in our but duties. So that's your choices. So email her@teamokonshores.com and you'll get your prize. Alvin shared a takeaway. Sorry, Alvin. I'll back up and hear it. I could give. I could give you a prize too, my friend. Where is it? There it is. Random takeaway. It's not hard to stand out as a brand if you're doing something new. Okay, you can have a prize too. All right, Angela. We'll send one to Alvin as well. So, Alvin, email Angela and let her know what. What you'd like as far as your prize and. And she'll get that shipped off to you. So team@book launchers.com. all right, everybody, thank you so much for being here. I'll see you back here again in two weeks and hope you are able to join Alyssa on Saturday for the deep dive. All right, take care.