Self-Publishing in 2020 - 5 Predictions for Authors

All right. Hello and welcome to 2020, everyone. I'm really, really excited. Not just because this is the year of vision and a new decade, but I'm excited to be with all of you again. And today we've got a really cool show. I did something similar to this at the start of 2019, and it was quite popular, so I thought we would do it again for the start of 2020. But I'm going to be attacking this from a slightly different angle. I'm going to be going from it, going at it more like questions because, you know, my crystal ball broke. I don't know if yours is working, but my crystal ball broke. And honestly, I couldn't have even predicted where I live today or what I'm doing in my life, you know, how as far back as just a few years ago. So I'm certainly not going to pretend to be able to predict things that are really out of my control. But I decided to go at this with a different lens. I thought, let's ask, let me share the questions that I'm asking to try and make sure that Book Launchers is on the right path, that my team is learning the things they need to learn, and that we're serving our clients in the best possible way for what's working today and what is most likely to be working beyond 2020 as authors who are. So these are the five questions and some of my thoughts around the answers this year as we roll into this new year and this new decade. Now, as always, you're here live, so please be sure to say hello and of course, hit the thumbs up button just, just for fun. I don't actually know if it does anything for YouTube, but, you know, it makes me feel better. But do say you're here because those folks here joining us live will be entered to win some prizes. Angela was the first to say hello and Happy New Year, and she'll be the one doling out those prizes and shipping them off to you too. So do say hello, and as I'm sharing these thoughts, do share yours because again, my crystal ball doesn't work. So my opinion is not the only one. You guys are into this space as well and will have some insights and ideas and perspectives that I don't have. So let's share, let's have some fun. And as always, I'll also be doing the draw for the YouTube commenters. So if you don't already know, if you comment the day a video is released, which is every Tuesday and Friday, you'll be entered to win Some super sweet book launcher swag like this fabulous book launcher's mug noboringbooks and of course the oh so soft journal. Yay. Here it is. Here we go. Hello. There it is. The lovely journal. Yeah, so why don't we just dive right in. Oh wait, let me say hello. Yay. Hey. Brian K. Morris. Margaret Craig. Hello. And the Legend of Rune. Welcome, Robert Egan. Hey. Haven't seen you a while. Haven't seen you around in a while. There we go. And S.M. dotson, strange tales Computer convenience. Hello everyone. It's so wonderful to have you here for the first live stream of 2020. Okay, so as I said, I'm going to kind of roll this up into questions instead of predictions, but predictions are kind of built into the questions, as you will see. So my first question is how will your books be found online in 2020 and beyond? So this question is one not enough authors ask. A lot of people still are of the mindset that they can write a book and put it on Amazon and it's going to sell. You know, I have so many people who come to me and say I have this incredible story and their story is incredible and they're going to put it online and think that that's going to work. And that didn't work five years ago. Well, I mean really that kind of thing stopped working really intensively three years ago, but it really didn't even work five years ago. Amazon did a lot more to show your books to people if you showed that it was going sell. But these days that's not enough. And so you really have to think about what is going to allow your book to be found online. And really, you know, right now it's keywords, it's ads, it's compelling descriptions, the right cover. And that's all important for Amazon, but a lot of online search. But I don't know how much you guys have paid attention to the search algorithms and what has changed in 2019. But a really big change happened for Google and they rolled out something called Bert. And I'm not a technology person. It's kind of a joke in our company that I am head of it. However, I would be the first one to put a hammer through my computer some days. So I don't proclaim to be any sort of computer expert, but I do follow these things again for our clients and for our business. And Bert, if you're not familiar with it, spelled B E R T Bert really is, in Google's words, their next greatest kind of evolution in search. And it's a neural network based technology for natural language processing. And really, I know you're going, what the heck is that? And in Google's exact words here, I wrote it down. Actually, rather I printed it out. They said that BERT helps understand the nuances and context of words in searches and match better those queries with the more relevant search results. And it's also used for feature snippets. So really, if that also didn't make sense to you, BERT is context based searching relevance. They're trying to create relevance for those searches and they're trying to fix things like how a little word like the word to or the phrasing can actually change your intent of your search. So they're actually giving you relevant search results. So why, why am I even talking about this when we're talking about. When we're talking about books? Well, a couple of things. How you write is different than how you speak. So people are using voice search more and more. I don't know about you guys, but if you've got that a device in your home, you're probably more and more saying, hey, A, can you tell me about the latest happenings in Los Angeles? Or hey, A, what is. What is the top movie on the box office right now? Or if you've got your phone handy, you might be using the S word and asking s Siri. Or I think you can say it with a. It's a little bit easier to say that and get away with it versus Alexa. Sorry. If you have an Alexa device now Alexa's listening to us. Anyways, I was trying hard not to say it. I really was. Anyway, you're probably using that more and more and so are your potential readers. So. So you want to be thinking about how people are searching using their voice as well as write, as well as the typing search. Because both of that's going to matter. And thinking about that when you're creating your descriptions, creating marketing materials, creating content that might go online, that really is going to matter. One of the best podcasts that I heard on this subject actually was an interview with one of our clients, Todd Tresiter, on Pat Flynn's podcast, Smart Passive Income. So. So if you search for this, I'll try and link to it later because I didn't prep Angela for this. I should have prepped her to have a link on this. If you can, Angela, search Smart Passive Income podcast and look for Todd Tresiter's interview this year. I think it might have been October or September. It was an excellent breakdown explaining how to reverse Engineer your website and even your books thinking about this kind of content creation. So it was brilliant. Really, really smart. Todd's an incredibly analytical, smart thinker in business and in content creation. So great, great interviews. We'll try to get that linked for you guys. But for your book, when you're crafting that, your Amazon description and other materials for search sites, you want to be considering not just those keywords, but how you're going to be searched. And they're not usually searching it in the way that you're writing it because they're searching for a problem to solve in many cases. So you want to be thinking about the problem problem you solve less than the solution, which is how a lot of people will approach this. They'll give you the solution to the problem, but somebody's actually searching. The actual search term is, you know, looking for how. How do I solve my problem? Right. How do I. How do I get my kid to go to sleep at night? How do I lose, you know, the. How do I lose the fat I gained over Christmas? Those kind of things. So, yeah, so it's. It's a cool, interesting world. And I think probably the best website redesign I've seen happen is actually Pat Flynn as well. He's redesigned his website to have deep, high quality content. And that's really what this is coming back to, is you don't have to worry about, you know, understanding these algorithms. What you need to create is incredible content that considers your readers, your searchers very carefully, and you go deep onto a subject because relevance. And, you know, relevance is the word, right? Relevance. I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon move towards this kind of a search algorithm in the future as well. It just makes a lot of sense because the more relevant a search result is, the more likely you're going to get a sale. So pretty, pretty cool stuff. And that's kind of somewhere I'm going right now. All right. Hey, Dale joined us. Welcome, Dale. Just checking in with everybody. Hey, Robert Cooper. Hey, Dave, you made it, too. Welcome. I.J. king, Mike. Hey, you made it. Thanks for staying up. All right, Derek Sutsky and Kevin McGuire also. Oh, merry Christmas for the Ukraine. See, I was telling Dave the other day somebody still has their Christmas stuff up. One of the people near us and he said, why haven't they taken it down yet? And I said, maybe they're celebrating Ukrainian Christmas. So there you go. Derek Stillman, Welcome. Hey, hey, hey. All right, so search algorithm talk is over, you guys. If anybody else has any things to mention or add to that I'm all ears. I'd love to hear your perspective. All right, so my question number two, and again, for those of you joining now that missed my preamble at the start, rather than do predictions, because I suck at predicting my own life and I have a lot of say and control in that realm. So you can't expect me to predict with accuracy the future of the publishing industry, which I have very little control over. So rather than that, I'm giving you guys questions that I'm asking to try to stay ahead of or at least on par with the current trends and things that are really going to matter for our clients and for my company, book Launchers. So number two is how are readers reading books? Or you could look at this from another perspective of what formats matter. And print is still incredibly important for nonfiction. I mean, I don't have the specific stats in front of me, but we're seeing what's happening with our authors. Forget the overall macro trends in the publishing space, which still show that print is very strong and ebooks haven't gained ground. In fact, they've lost some market share. But from our clients, I mean, some of the launches we've seen in the last six months, the initial sales were 80% print. 80% of the books were selling in print. Sometimes it was a little lower, like 70 or 60, but you know, digital, it was not anywhere near what print was. Now over time, you know, as some of our clients are still with us, you know, more than a year after their book is launched, so we can see over time that does level off a bit. So the initial rush of people who are most excited about your book, it seems, tend to steer towards print. And over time, some people will just purchase the lower cost ebook version. A lot of people are getting audio, but it's still not making up a huge percentage of a pie with majority of the authors that we're working with. Again, we only work with NonFiction. You're seeing 10 to 20% of their sales are coming from audio overall right now. But I do think that's going to grow. And for a couple of our authors, it is the part that's growing for them, which makes sense because the audiobook market is increasing. But where I'm going with this is digital is important. It's still a big part of what you need to publish. But audiobooks is where the growth is at. But you really need to pay close attention to print because people are buying those print books. I mean, even my example, I think if you guys saw me before Christmas, I have a stack and you might be able to see it off the side here. I think you probably can a stack of books over there. You know, a lot of those are our client books, but I think six of them are books that I've been reading myself on Amazon ads, ad descriptions, book blurbs, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. And I bought them in print because I have, I have some on my phone and Kindle and I scroll through them, but I still like to read them in print. And I am not alone. Does anyone else eat books? Oh, we're going there again. It's Void Comics in the house, my friends. Sorry. Always distracts me when that happens. Hey, Benjamin. Welcome to the live stream. All right, so my recommendation these days, if you can afford to do it, publish an audiobook. And if you are tight on budget, Book Funnel announced in 2019 that they have audiobook delivery so they you can get away with a lower quality audiobook. That's a choice quality, you know, choosing to not go quality or to not invest in high production. It has positives and negatives, of course, but if, if budget really is a concern, Book Funnel will allow you to create an audiobook and deliver it direct to your audience, which is super cool because it eliminates that ACX middleman, that middleman that is going to take a cut of your book and all that kind of stuff. So check that out. Actually, I'll drop the link. I've got it in front of me here. Just pull it. It just happened to be on my screen. So I will drop that link in there for you guys and you can check that out. If you want to look for a lower cost way to get your audiobook out into the world. Now you aren't distributing through the guns like Book Funnel or sorry, that is Book Funnel. You're not distributing through the library system or any of the higher quality options like Apple Books and Audible going through Book Funnel. But Kevin says not choosing a high quality audiobook, not on my watch. It's not something I'm particularly a big fan of either. But I do think there's a challenge with how costly audiobook production is. And there is a need for, I think almost all authors to create an audiobook version of their book to serve the entire market of people who want to read their book. And I do recognize the fact that audiobooks are expensive. There is another thing I'll mention quickly on this findaway Voices came out with voice share. So shout out to Dale Roberts for this because I didn't even notice this announcement, if it weren't for his videos, I would have missed this. So thank you, Dale. But voice share is really cool because they have an option of splitting the cost 50, 50 with your narrator versus ACX, where you know, you can do it with no cost to you, but you're stuck in this contract with them forever with, with Findaway Voices, you can do the. You can spit, you can pay 50% up front, and then you can actually buy it out later at 1.5. Your initial. Your initial option. So you're not tied to that narrator for the rest of your life. You can actually do a buyout option, which I thought was really, really cool. And you, you know, then you don't. You're not tied to sharing royalties with them forever either. So that's really, really cool. I think I have a troll. Yes, indeed. You don't mean my husband, do you? All right, moving on. Okay, question number three. What moves books? What sells books? This is always, always top of my mind, top of my team's mind. We're always testing. We're always looking for new opportunities to get books in hands. And again, I'm not about what looks good, okay? I'm not trying to stroke an author's ego by getting them that fancy orange author, you know, bestseller tag off Amazon, which makes you feel good for about two hours until you realize you only sold like 15 books and you got that orange tag. You know, that's really. And sometimes it's more than 15, but a lot of times it's not even 15. So I really focus on things that are going to sell books or if they're not selling books, they're doing something great for your name as an author, your credibility. But if I was to, you know, right now, tell you what, is selling books for the majority, again, this is all nonfiction. I'm focused on here. It's different for every author. But in general, the best way to sell books is through your own platform, your newsletter list. Ideally, but social media can help a lot. I'm hoping you guys are going to help me this year because I have a book coming out for our, you know, really, it's all about our noboringbooks way. So how to create a book that is not boring. It is going to coming out in 2020. I'm going to be hoping that my beloved YouTube besties are there to support me in that regard. So, you know, in that, in that space, I'm looking to YouTube, but also my newsletter list. So author platform number two, the platform of others. So you Know, this can be different for everybody. This can be associations, your colleagues, your peers that have newsletters, clients, social media of others. You can get creative here. This can also be, you know, if you went to a university, it might be the alumni network. So there's, there' there's a whole bunch of things that can fall under the platform of others, but it comes back to you networking, and it's really just your platform one step removed. So that really sells a lot of books. And number three right now is Amazon ads. We're seeing some really great volume of books moved through Amazon ads for our clients. It's working really, really well. The fourth thing, and again, this is where it varies because for some of our clients, this is number one by a mile. But it's live events, speaking engagements in particular. But live events can move a lot of books, too. So just being a participant of some capacity, having some sort of a partnership with a live event, but speaking engagements, you know, we handle the bulk orders for some of our clients and their speaking engagements. And we're seeing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books going out the door, going into the hands of the audiences. Because not only are they negotiating speaking fees, or sometimes they aren't getting speaking fees, they're just getting their book purchased to go into the hands of everybody attending the conference. And, you know, if you get a conference with 500 people or conference with 1800 people and everybody's getting a copy of your book, that has two benefits. One, you're getting paid for every book sold. But also you're getting your book into so many people's hands. If it's a great book, they're going to tell other people and your book will build natural momentum from there. So, you know, it's number four on here, but I mean, for a couple of our clients, it's hands down, number one. Number five is book reviews. Getting book reviews, I know it's hard. I know it's a pain asking people, nagging them, chasing them, begging them. But book reviews are so, so important. You can lose media opportunities, you can lose speaking engagements, and you're going to lose book sales if you don't have a substantial number of book reviews. And I don't have a magical number, But I can tell you that you really need to be shooting for 50 or 100 review if you're really trying to make big waves with your book. Anything over 20 I think is solid. But, you know, 50 to 100 really makes it look like you're a big deal or a bigger deal or a name to watch or something like that. But it's super, super important. And just a side note, another fun article I'll drop into the stream if I can pull it up here. Sorry, I can't get it right now. I don't have it. Sarah on our team, she runs our book marketing department. She sent a note around from Book Riot. York Times bestseller and how it continues to be purchased. Number one and. But if you didn't know this against the charts on New York Times, some, some people or some of the books, they have this little symbol. It's kind of. It's supposed to be an asterisk, but it kind of looks. They call it a dagger. And that is an indicator that while that book is on the chart, they think that it's a result of a lot of bulk book sales, which in many cases is orchestrated or purchased by the author. So it's a very interesting article and I'll post it below. I don't think Angela has access to that. Or you could just go to Book Riot, the website Book Riot. And I think it's their most recent article on the top there. Pink Motivation. Hello and welcome. Hey. Self Publishing with Walter Wayburn. Welcome, Phelps Strategies. Yay. Hello, you guys. So good to see you here. Just, I'm sorry I get distracted by some of the comments in here. I'm just looking to see if anybody has anything to add to the conversation about. Yes, Derek Silke said there's a lot of audiophiles out there who will appreciate the effort and quality. I completely agree. And truthfully, I mean, if you're publishing on Audible, you really do need to make sure your book is of high quality because it's actually one of the things you're going to be rated on. So you're going to be rated on your narration, which shouldn't scare you too much. As the author. You might need a little bit of voice coaching. But, you know, all of our authors who have narrated their own book have done a great job with just a little bit of coaching on how to manage it, when to breathe, what words to emphasize and all that kind of thing. But fiction's a different story because you really kind of need to be able to bring the emotion and a little bit more acting into it. So it is a different world. But nonfiction, it's your voice, it's your story, it's your message. You know what's happening important. And you should be able to bring the right emotions into it to make it work. But yeah, the production and mastering of audiobooks you know, on audible especially, you're going to be judged. You're going to be judged if it sucks. So you got to put the quality into it, I think. All right, so if you are here and you haven't said hello, do make sure you say hello because Angela is going to do a draw and the first draw is going to be. Actually, I'm going to have Angela pick something for the second draw. The first draw is going to reward the people who were here early. So what was my first question? What is the first question I asked or that I am asking to kind of help make sure we're on track and predicting the future for 2020. So this rewards those of you who are here hanging out with me from the start. So the first one to get the right answer to number one will be able to choose whether they get the fabulous hashtag no boringbooks mug or. Or the journal. So I'll give you guys a minute to work on that. And in the meantime, let's dive into. Hey, Bonnie Phillips. Welcome, welcome. Author Nina Stewart. So happy to have you here. Don't worry, you will absolutely be able to be eligible for the next prize. But I thought we'd do something fun and reward. What do I think about pre orders? I'll come back to that one. We're going to finish up with my 2020 prediction questions first. Okay. And pardon me, I need a quick sip. I'm sorry. I know this microphone makes that like vividly. So you feel like you were drinking the water with me. What can you do? Number four, what platforms matter for authors? So I just finished saying that, you know, what moves books, Number one is author platform. So I'm always looking at what is helping people build platforms. I'm also looking at this, of course, for book launchers as well. You know, the more people that we're connecting with, you know, the more opportunities we have to help people with their books, you know, as part of our free content and of course as part of our paid services. So the question is always what's working to build a platform? Now, a platform, I have a couple of actually have a whole playlist on author platform, building on YouTube, but for just a quick kind of definition, Author platform is really whatever it is that you are using to communicate with the people in your audience. For me, the ideal piece of a platform is an email newsletter. While open rates are at all time lows for the majority of us, it is still the best way to get people to take action for a specific call to action. The numbers are still really low for the vast majority of social media. And, you know, social media is getting harder and harder to get attention. I mean, you know, my friends and family, I don't even see a lot of their stuff on Facebook. When I do pop in and peruse it really quickly, I'm not seeing a lot of the material there. So somebody else, or a bot rather, is curating what I see. So it's challenging to get attention and to build audiences there. So you can. And if you love it, then do it. But you know, really what I see working for a lot of people, and I know some of you are going to hate this, but video, video is fantastic. And I'm seeing people grow audiences on YouTube quite quickly. I'm seeing people grow audiences on social media, but they use video, they use live streams, they're using regular video, posting of content. They're not posting to YouTube and then reposting, by the way. They're posting organically or natively, whatever you want to say on those sites. So video is working. It's working. It's been working for a while. It's. It's still working. I think it is the best way to grow a platform in 2020 and beyond. And video is here to stay. And in a video that I released where Dale and I did an interview together, one of his tips was even video related for driving traffic to your Amazon page. So video, my friends, get out those iPhones. And that's the really cool part is technology wise, you've got everything you probably need in your iPhone and maybe you need to buy a mic, but really you've got what you need to shoot videos and start building your audience, whatever platform you like and whatever platform you think your audience is hanging out on. The big thing is that you're going to be consistent, you're going to be a little creative, and you're going to do things that will add to your credibility in that topic, in that space, towards that audience. And what I mean by creative is really just being yourself, bringing your personality, not being stoic or trying to worry about being perfect. You know, most of you have been watching me long enough to know that I am far from perfect. But the more people get to know you and see your expertise and you're consistently there when you say you're going to be there, you will eventually grow an audience. And you just got to keep trying things and tweaking it and see what's working and learn from it and go from there. So, I mean, number one for me is newsletter. Number two is Whatever platform you are comfortable and like and want to spend time on. But the caveat to that is your audience needs to be there. So if you're targeting people in their 20s, Facebook is probably, you know, in the teens or their twenties, Facebook's probably not the place for you. Those people generally are not on Facebook very much. You know, you might be wanting to look at Instagram. You might want to look at TikTok, YouTube. So you got to figure out where your audience is hanging out, you know, to solve their problems, to get their content and be there. But hope that part helps you. And I'm gonna go back and see into these comments. Where we go. Was it about how to have your book found? I think, let me tell you, keywords and relevance. Everybody's guessing. All right, Number one was, in fact, about how will your books be found in 2020 and beyond. So the first person I'm seeing is Brian K. Morris. I think that was the first one. So, Brian K. Morris, I think you are our winner. So give us a shout out@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know what you want. I think you've won something before. Maybe it was the hoodie. You might have won the hoodie before. So let us know if you want the mug or the journal and give us your. And Angela will get that out to you. So congratulations. Thanks for being here and remembering what number one was. Legend of Rune, you are backup. So if for some reason Brian doesn't want it. Oh, it's your first win. Yay. You've earned it. Brian, you've been around here for a while, so thank you so much for all your support. Okay, so the Angela, it's not Legend of Rune. Brian's above it. Oh, now I feel bad. Legend of Rue might have to have be the secondary winner there. I might have to have a backup winner because Angela got. Angela missed it. Oops. All right, we got two winners. Congratulations, you guys. Okay, I'm gonna move on. While I'm on this one, Angela, think of how you want to make the next draw. Whether it be a number, we'll probably do a number. So you pick the number between 1 and 40, and then I'll tell you what we're doing with it. Okay. My wife says, I want the journal. All right, so email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know your address and just remind us in there that you want the journal, and Angela will get that mailed out to you. So congratulations, and same for you, Legend of Rune, you are also A winner. It's only fair. Okay, she picked 13. I'm gonna do number five and then we'll do the final draw. Alright, the fifth question, what technology do we need to pay attention to? And I use the word technology loosely like I'm kind of covering anything that is tech related. Amazon is going to remain the powerhouse in the book space for quite some time, I think. Again, crystal ball doesn't work, but I see it being very difficult to shake their hold on this. But, but, but, but I think the more we do as the author community to support the other platforms, the other places that are working so hard to give us other options, the better we are all going to be in the long run. So I'm super excited about the things that Draft 2 Digital even publish, drive and Find a Way Voices have done lately to provide us with access to libraries, to more spaces internationally, getting our books out into the hands of readers, wherever they're reading books or listening books. They're doing amazing things for us. And again, I've talked about this all on my YouTube channel. You can search for aggregators, you can search for Findaway Voices or Draft two Digital. You know, Draft two Digital and Findaway Voices are the companies we recommend to our clients. I think Findaway Voices is hands down the best choice. Draft two Digital versus Published Drive. I mean there's, I'm not as like Draft two Digital is better in every way, but I'm. We're very happy with Drive2Digital. Access to bookstores too is opening up more and more for independent authors and self publishers. And you know, that has been enabled by technology in a lot of regards, but also the opportunities to sell through our own website, which I mentioned already with Book Funnel and not having to handle things, having a service that handles it for us. So there's lots of technology I think we want to watch and take advantage of and the more we support these other services, the more opportunities we're going to see supporting us back as authors. Which is why I am so rarely an advocate for people going exclusive to Amazon in any way because when you do that, you really give them all the power and you're limiting all of your options for today and for the future. A couple other things. Voice to Text is getting better and better and it's making it easier and, and easier to write a book and have it just right from your words. AI translation services are making it easier and easier to get your book translated. Of course it still needs to be edited once it's been translated. And there's challenges if you don't speak the language. So a side note on that, I typically recommend to our clients that they pursue a license option in a different country. If they want their book in another language and it's a language they don't speak or read, that's usually better. But it is becoming easier and easier to get your book translated. And I hope AI provides more and more opportunities for us to produce good quality audiobooks in the future. Computer read audiobooks. You know, you can get Alexa to read to you if you want. Sorry, I just said her name again. You can get her. Your device at home can read it to you, but if you can listen to it, more power to you. The robot voice reading to me, it annoys me after a very short period of time. But it could be in the future that that is a more human, like voice and that it's reading to you and it puts emotion in the right places. And, you know, that could be a development that we see. But really where I'm most excited and I don't think 2020 is going to be the year we really see it, but I've talked about it before. But blockchain, I think blockchain's ability to support authors with micropayments, to support authors supporting other authors and getting paid for those referrals and the. The opportunity for this technology to really support us as authors and our businesses and support the whole community, I think are tremendous. And I'm really excited about it. I think it's the thing that I think has the most potential to change and to, again, not disrupt Amazon per se, but to really change a lot of the things we do in this industry and in this business. But I don't see 2020 being the year. But I'm still watching it. I'm keeping a close eye on it. All right, so what did I miss? Let me know if you guys have questions that we should be asking as we go into 2020. If you're here to take away core recommendations, it's really nothing that should be new if you've been watching my videos for a little while. But number one, create amazing book. Create an amazing book that people want to read, they want to share, they want to tell others about, and this book has to connect to that core audience or a core audience and really, really hit home for them. But if you do that, all of the other pieces are going to be easier. You still have to do all the other pieces, but they're going to be easier. Number two is build a platform. Fiction, nonfiction. It doesn't matter. Everything gets easier for you if you have your own platform connecting to your audience. And the only exception to this is if you're just writing one book and you're never going to write another and you don't really care about speaking or doing anything else, maybe you don't need a platform. But for most authors, there's usually a second book. There's a business plan, there's other things. So build that platform. Learn Amazon ads. It is working. It's hard work. They're pain in the butt, but learn them because they do move books. And the more you're moving books on Amazon, the more Amazon does show you to other potential readers. So it's really important. And number four, this is tried and true, but test and try again. You know, even when we have experience with something, we think something's going to work. It doesn't always. There's no guarantees, and something that worked last year might not work this year. So you have to be willing to reinvent, relaunch, rebuild, and try again to actually get something that gets results and gets you where you want to go. And finally invest in creating your book in as many formats as you possibly can. You know, and I'm talking digital, but not just Kindle. I'm talking create it in a couple of different formats. So in MOBI and epub for those of you who know what I'm talking about, so that it can go wide, create large print. If it's in your market that you're going to want large print, create that soft cover, create that audiobook, get that wide reach hardcover and then on. But there's reasons to do it. There's benefits to doing it. But the more formats you can put your book into, the better. And of course, distribute them wide. There you go. That's 2020. That's all you need to know. And I guess everybody got my predictions and they were like, okay, I'm out. We have a whole bunch of people left. But you guys who stuck around, you're in it for the prizes, right? All right, so Angela picked number 13. I'm going to go back to. Let's see. Okay, let's go back to where we just won. So, Brian K. Morris, answer to the last question and go ahead, 13 from there. So go ahead, jump forward and hopefully your chat doesn't mess up for you. And Dale is. No prize is necessary. Well, thank you, Dale. I think you've got everything anyways. Oh, no, there was something you didn't have yet. Can't remember what that was. Anyways. And Kevin. Yeah? Thanks. I'm out of things to give you. You've got everything too. I use speech when editing, but chapter by chapter. That's cool. Do you have recommendations? Oh yeah, there was a question before. I have to answer too. Do you have recommendations for publishing a read along children's ebook? I have zero experience there, Stefan. I'm sorry. Somebody else here might. Dale, do you have anything to add on that? You might have some input on that. I don't know. Let's see. I know. I think it was Chut Spa. There we are. Chut Spa said. What do you think about pre order? I actually have a video on YouTube specifically about the pre order period and that's probably the best place for me to direct you to get a really good answer on it. Pre orders have a lot of value if you're going to use that time period well. For me it's less about getting the pre orders as it is about teaching Amazon and the other distributors that you're going to be selling books so they need to stock your books. Where we've seen pre orders or not having pre orders be a problem is two places. One, if you do pre orders but nobody buys your book online and then on launch you do a lot of stuff to drive traffic and sell books, you're going to be out of stock really fast. And that's problematic obviously because if you're out of stock, Amazon in particular will show, you know, reordering could be four to six weeks, which will deter a lot of buyers. They won't place the order. So you really want to try to avoid that. And the best way to avoid it is by having really strong pre orders so that they are buying and producing the books to meet that demand and that they have extra in stock so they can be doing their prime next day delivery and they're ready for it. And the same thing goes for bookstores or anywhere else that you're trying to drive sales. If you have strong pre orders that will help you there. Beyond that, pre orders, I'm like, you know, really at the end of the day you're going to be selling books for a long, long time. So it doesn't really matter if you're selling them prior to or after launch. But to me that's the real value in a pre order. Now the pre order period or the pre sale period is really, really important for getting book reviews. And a lot of people don't realize how many high quality book want to be the first ones out reviewing your book. I mean Amazon actually rewards this and there's programs there where people want to be the first one because the first one tends to get the highest, you know, the most number of reactions and that keeps their rank up higher. So they want to get their book six to eight weeks in advance and often they want the finished book. They don't want. They'll take an E version in many cases, but they want the completed book. They don't want a draft manuscript or a, you know, a really rough arc copy, an advanced reader copy. So that's kind of the pre sale version. But hopefully, hopefully I answered your question. Brian said I get a lot of attention using my Facebook live shows and I'm moving to YouTube with some original content. Yeah, see that goes back to my point about video being the place or the way to build an audience, you know, in 2020 and beyond. And let's see, what else do we have here? See if I missed anybody else. Okay. Oh, Dale wants a red hoodie. I think we only have one. That was a limited edition hoodie and we only have one left and it's extra large. Not sure if that's your size. Writer lock in today. Three hours. Yay. Whoops. I missed the question. Dale wasn't paying attention. The question was do you have recommendations for publishing a read along children's ebook? That was the question then. SM dots and strange. Where do you purchase your own ISBN to stay independent from Amazon, Bowker or Boker if you are in the us So B o w K e R. I don't know how you folks say it. Canadians would probably say Bowker so you guys probably say Boker. I don't know. I really don't know. But, but you purchase it there, there's going to be an opt in for copyright and for getting in a barcode. You don't need those things from them, just buy ISBN from them. But that's the best place to get it in the US. Let's see. I love the pre order period. It pains me to see other writers of my acquaintance look down their noses at it. I think it's just one thinking it's just one more thing to do. Yeah. Do you handle speaking engagements in Europe? I'm currently writing a make money online book. We have not booked anybody for anything outside of North America to date. Kevin. I mean it's a lot of networking and I think because we're physically in the U.S. that's why we have a lot of success getting our clients speaking engagements in the U.S. but Europe, no speakers agents, speakers associations that's probably where I would start for that. How many drafts do you usually do before getting an ARC to re edit it? So. Sorry, Bonnie. I'm just trying to make sure I understand your question. I mean, for us, we don't. Our clients. The arc copies, I mean, in the. I actually have a video coming out about this. It's kind of funny. So I did a video on arc ARC books and our for our business. So for self publishing, the arc copy, an advanced reader copy, is typically the final version an actual book. So there's no re editing after that. Occasionally there's some proof, there's some typos that we find or somebody finds and then get edited before they go, which is the beauty of print on demand. There hasn't been thousands of copies printed, so. Yeah. So I'm not totally sure I understand your question. Okay, just double checking. I'm going to be wrapping up here in about two minutes anyway. So we got to do the YouTube comments. Just making sure I didn't miss anybody. If you have an ISBN, can you still sell on Amazon? Absolutely. I've got a video for you. ISBN vs Asin A S I N on YouTube. That should help you with that one. All right. So speaking of YouTube, my fabulous YouTube friends, let me do the draws for everyone who comments the day a video is released, and we'll get this done and then we'll say goodbye. Oh, also, I need to tell you I will not be here for the next live. I'm afraid so. Our next live will be one month from today. But don't worry, I'll still be keeping track of everybody who comments every Tuesday and Friday. And everybody will be in that draw. And we'll draw for four prizes. We're not going to miss out on any prizes. Okay? So drumroll, please. And I'll point these over to you so you can see that I'm not. We have some long ones and some short ones. I didn't do a very good job cutting, so I'm going to try to pick from the bottom. And our first winner today is here. Get one. That's one. Okay. Margaret. Craig. Hey. Congratulations. Awesome. All right, well, I think we've got your mailing address. So you just need to know whether you want a journal or a mug. Hey. Congratulations. I'm so excited for you. Okay. And I don't know why you just said what Dale. I don't know if that was just something I just said. Was it Bowker or Bowker? My jokes about that. And then Stephanie asked, how would you say A children's book. Children's. How would you say a children's book marketing would differ from a novel or something else more targeted for adults? Again, that's not a great question for me. I'm nonfiction all day long. That is my jam. That's my specialty. But like I said, there's a few folks here that do do fiction. Kevin, Dale. So I am certain you're gonna get some great advice from them. All right. Oh, and Bonnie. Yeah? I mean, a printed version, a lot of people do catch final typos in a printed version. So you could get your copy printed through whatever print on demand publisher you want and then still do a quick, like, proofread edit. But once your book is line or sorry, is laid out by a designer, you don't really want to be doing major edits. It is expensive and a pain in the butt to go back and redesign the layout of your book. So I would not recommend it for actual editing. But catching final typos, you know, those kind of things. Totally. All right. Oh, Dale said what? To me not being here next time. Yeah, I'll be back in Canada, you guys freezing my buns off. All right, my final draw, and then I'm gonna say goodbye is. And I'm having trouble getting these out. I'm trying to go from the bottom, but it's not working very well. Okay, we're switch hands. I am right handed. That might be my challenge here. Okay, here we go. I'm looking you guys in the eye to make sure I don't cheat. There we go. Who's next? Lily White. I don't think Lily is here live, but Lily, when you're catching the replay, email us@teamoklaunchers.com with your preference of whether you're getting a mug or a journal. Thank you so much for being here today, you guys. It was such a pleasure. Happy 2020. And you know, if you're watching the replay, do go ahead, comment. Tell me what I missed, tell me what your predictions are, ask your questions, and I will. I will not be here in two weeks. I will be here in four. But I will have videos for you every Tuesday and Friday in the meantime. All right, see you next time. Thanks so. Much.