Surprises When You Write a Non-Fiction Book | Live Stream Replay

All right. Hello and welcome. So if you were wondering where I was, funny story. I'll come back to that in a second. Oh, goodness. Technical. Technical fun. All right, so welcome, take two. I don't want anybody to miss out on what I just did, so just hang on. I'm going to tell you what happened. Hey, fitness, you're in your house. Hello, Efren. Mike. Hey, great to see you guys. So glad you stuck around for the extra couple of minutes. So, yes, I'll tell you what happened in a second because for those people watching the replay, they won't realize that there was an issue. So let's just start it off strong. Hello and welcome. It's September and the kids are coming back to school. It's snowing in Colorado and Alberta had a snowfall yesterday and ashes falling in the sky in California. Today's a bit of a hot mess everywhere. So it's a great day for us to hang out on a live stream, I think. Good day to be indoors hanging out and I'm really pleased to spend a bit of time with you. So thank you for joining in. And for those of you saying hello already, today's topic is things that will surprise you when you write a book. And we're talking nonfiction books. Of course, I haven't written a fiction book or worked with fiction authors, so I can't speak to whether these surprise you when you write a fiction book or not. But I know there's some fabulous fiction friends in the house, so they can probably provide the fiction side of things as we go through these. But whether you've written a book or you're working on one, I think this will be a fun discussion with lots of things to talk about. And now that the live stream is working properly, I'll tell you what I did in a second. My team is also here and they should be able to answer questions if you have other questions today or we'll save them to the end and I will answer them then. Whatever you do do, make sure you've said hello and that is included if you're watching the replay because replays are more fun when people are chatting. And I always reply to your comments even when it's on the replay. So please do say hello. So thank you so much for joining. So, funny story, I started this live Stream right at 2pm as always, every other Tuesday at 2pm Central Standard or Pacific standard time, but I have the setting to private, so I was wondering, two or three minutes into it, I'm thinking maybe. I know it's September, and maybe there's not going to be as many people as normal, but there should be somebody. Even Angela from my team, maybe Jacqueline from my team. I'm like, nobody is on my live stream. And then I realized I had not said it to public. So I'm so glad you all are here now. Poetry from the heart. Derek Silksky. Mike. Ilsi, Aubrey. Mike. I think I already said hello. He's saying hello to Angela. Rachel, Carrie. Hey, great to see you. Theresa, Taylor. Hola. Okay, guys, it's great to have you here and thank you for saying hello and for sticking it out for those extra couple of minutes while I talk to myself. It was like a rehearsal time for me. I got to say hello to everybody, introduce the topic, and then I got to do it all over again. Right? So, so. And actually, Angela, just so you know, Angela texted me. She goes, I don't see the live stream. I had already figured it out by then, but I'm so glad you texted in case I had not yet figured it out. Okay, so also, mark your calendars. Our deep dive trainings are back. September 19th, we're going to be doing the next one, and we're going to be doing one every single month. So if you were not part of the Book Launchers family in March, April, May, and June, when the pandemic hit and we all got locked down, we started doing deep dive training. Every other Saturday, it would be two, two and a half hours of peer training. We did some sessions where we were writing our books. We did sessions where different people from my team came on and we talked about book marketing and writing a book and all kinds of topics. And we took a break in July and August. But a lot of people said that these were great. They wanted them back. They loved watching my team in action because most of the time, you guys just get to see me. I have some really amazing, brilliant, passionate people working at Book Launchers that you guys don't get to meet very often. And a lot of people mentioned they really loved watching and learning from other people at Book Launchers. So we're going to bring that back for you. So instead of doing every other week, because that's a lot, we're going to do one per month. So our next one, September 19th, we're going to be talking about writing a book with marketing in mind. And it'll be a great subject if you're working on a book, even if your book is done, because we're going to talk about everything from title to table of contents to making chapters Interesting. Just really our approach at Book Launchers, how we think about marketing before you even write a word. I'm going to walk you through that. And there'll be some opportunities, of course, for questions, but hot seats and things like that, too. So guaranteed good time. If you're not getting the Book Launchers newsletter, then you'll want to make sure you go to book launchers.com and get signed up so you can get notified for these. I may post replays, but generally our intent is that you have to be there live to learn, so it makes it more fun if we can all hang out. It'll be Saturdays, a Saturday each month, and we'll be letting you know. And I'll also post it on the community section in the YouTube channel. Okay. And I'm going to dive into surprise number one, and then I'm going to come back to a couple more announcements. So surprise number one, when you set out to write a nonfiction book, starting, you might start writing one book and then find out you actually want to write a different book. Surprise. We've seen this happen with quite a few Book Launchers authors. You start writing a book that you feel like you should write, whether you know it's the one people have told you to write or you feel like it's what you should write to grow your business. But as you start writing that book, you really uncover the book that is really inside of you and needs to come out. And it can feel frustrating when this happens. You've written a lot of stuff that you know you're not going to use, and it can also be tiring when you've done this. But sometimes that's just the process that you have to go through to get to the book that you really, really need to or want to write. And ultimately it ends up being a much, much better book, one that you're much more connected to, one that has a bigger impact. But sometimes you just have to get through that surface stuff and get to the good stuff. And for some authors that just seems to be stor starting one book and ending up taking a turn and writing the actual book that they really, really should write. So that's the first surprise. I have six other surprises for you coming right up. But I wanted to tell you also that we also have prizes for our YouTube commenters, and I usually make you wait, but I'm going to dive right in and give a prize today. So if you're new here, every Tuesday and Friday we have new videos coming out. So even for the replay for this that counts too. When you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our sweet book launcher swag. Like our noboringbooks mug. Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate have all been verified to taste better in this mug. And also our oh so soft book launchers journal for writing down all your fantastic book ideas and research and notes when you're watching the book launchers, livestreams and videos. So our first prize winner for the day. I'm going to go open up my. My handy dandy. My handy dandy list, which in my technical drama of the day. One moment, please. I have to pull my list back up. The random name jar. Okay, so while I'm doing that, let's see if there's any questions. Let's see. Random name generator. There it is. Okay, and quickly. Okay, we need a drum roll. So let's get the fake drum roll. And our first YouTube comment of the day is gonna scroll down. It didn't pop up there. Oh, there it is. Okay, the winner is. Teresa Bruni. So, Teresa, I don't know if you're here. I haven't seen. I don't think I've seen your name. Hey, Molly, you're here. I saw your name a ton in the draw. Thanks so much for all your comments. It's great to have you, Chris. Hey, it's great to have you, Chris. There's plenty of opportunities for. We have prizes for those of you who are here. Usually there's a skill testing question, so that's a hint. And today there's also a funny question. Okay, so Mike is verifying that it does taste better. And I'm just looking to see if Theresa's here. Okay. So, Theresa. Oh, Scully's house of Thrillers. Hey, it's great to have you here too. So, Teresa, if you're watching the replay, send us an email@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. And we will get that to you. Make sure you include your mailing address. Some people forget that that's a very important detail for us to get you your prizes. All right, so thank you so much to everyone who comments and of course, those of you who let me know about how much you love our swag and post it on social media, too. We love that. And also speaking of swag, I just ordered some new hoodies and we have our super secret swag that we have all lined up. Angela, who's here, she's worked really hard to come up with this swag. For us for our 25,000 subscriber party, which I think will happen in November unless you guys share this channel like crazy and we have a rapid growth spurt. I think we'll hit 25,000 subscribers in November and we'll have a great big party with our new super fantastic swag. I think you guys are going to be really excited about what this new swag is just for our 25,000 celebration. Okay, so surprise number two. Writing a book takes longer than you think it will and certainly longer than you want it to. Guaranteed. We see it a lot. If you rush the process, you end up with a book that you're not as happy with. Or worse, you write the book, go through editing really fast, and then when it's laid out so you've already paid the editors and you've paid that person to lay it out, or you've painstakingly done it yourself, then you realize you want to make a bunch of changes. And people think it's expensive to take a little bit of time, especially when you're working with book launchers because we're a monthly fee. And so you may feel like six months, nine months is a long time to spend writing your book when you're paying us. But it's way cheaper than getting to the end of your book when you've already paid editors and layout people and then realizing you need to redo your book. So it's going to take a while to write a great book and some sure, there's authors that can write a book in 30 days or 60 days, but there's also sprinters who can run a mile in under four minutes. And that is not the average person. Just like the average author is not going to write a great book in 30 to 60 days. It happens, but it's not the average person. It's not even common. So set yourself up for success and just mentally prepare for the fact that writing a book is a journey and it's a marathon. It's actually even like a giant adventure race. If you guys have been watching the world, if you've seen the world's toughest race on Amazon prime, it is something that you have to pace yourself and expect it's going to take longer than you want it to and longer than you think. Because writing a great book does take time. You know, the fastest we see it happen is about three months. But really, honestly, more commonly, we're looking at six to nine months for people to write a great book that doesn't include editing or layout or design or marketing, that's the actual writing part. But it's worth it. I think it's worth it to spend a little bit of time. And it's worth it because surprise number three, there are benefits that you will experience long before your book launches. And these benefits come as a result of what you basically have to do to write a great book. And that is think. You have to think. And it sounds funny, but when you're busy running a practice, being a professional, running a business, whatever it is that you do, you probably don't take a lot of strategic thinking time. And so writing a book really forces you to take that strategic thinking time. And it has benefits. One of my favorite examples that I've seen, one of our clients, Eric Brotman, he's launching a book really soon called Don't Retire, Graduate. And I saw him speak@fincon last year. And he was early in the book process at that point, but already the work he had done to develop the concepts around this book were playing into the talk that he gave. He was launching a podcast. And he's also really changed how they talk in their business, all around the concepts they've developed around Don't Retire, Graduate. And that is valuable. That's feeding everything he does. And now he's able to communicate clearly and succinctly and he has cool stories and concepts that he had to develop and work on and think through how to explain them as part of has massive, massive benefits. And I've seen this many times how people, they develop acronyms for their book or they develop a five step process to explain it for their book. And now suddenly that's everywhere in their marketing materials, their talks that they're giving, when they do interviews. This is hard work, but it's work that you benefit from before your book launches and then long after, not just because of your book. And I think that often surprises people. But if you're not used to doing that deep thinking work and coming up with great ways to explain the things you're good at and explain the things that you know, then this is something that benefits you deeply for a long, long time. Nobody can ever, ever take it away. All right, so let's do a prize. Now this is kind of funny. So normally I reward the folks that join the live stream early and say hello and we pick a number and we draw that way. But today we're going to do something a little different. We're going to have a funny question for you. So today, not a funny question, but just a question. So if you've tuned into our livestreams before. You know, I've had some Internet problems, and, you know, the screen, I either freeze up or I get booted out. And I'm testing different locations and trying different ways to get better Internet. And so today, I'm in a different location in the house, and I want the first person who guesses what room of the house I'm in. You will be the prize winner. So go ahead. It's been a struggle, you know, this. This semi permanent or temporary, whatever Covid setup that I'm working through here. It's been a struggle for me to get great Internet for a variety of reasons. So I'm testing it out. I'm in a different room in the house. What room of the house am I in? The first person to get it right will win a prize today. All right, just checking the comments while you guys are guessing. So it's pretty obvious, huh? Oh, my goodness. That's awesome. Everybody was pretty much guessing right to begin with. I'm trying to find the first person. Here we go. Okay, let's see. So, Aubry, I think you're the first one. Yes, my friends, I am coming at you live from the bathroom, but so far, the Internet is, in fact, better. Okay, so Aubrey. Got it. Let's see. Movie review. Mom, I think there's probably more echo in here, so that's going to be one of the challenges if this becomes my new live stream spot. Anyways, you guys are funny. All right, Aubry, so email us@teamoklaunchers.com and let us know if you want the mug or the journal. And you'll need to, of course, include your mailing address that acoustics gave you away. Yeah, I was a little worried. We have some mats that we've laid down around the room to try to improve the sound. But what are you gonna do? I mean, life is a challenge these days, isn't it? I figure you just. You try things and you gotta have fun. Okay. So, yeah, the acoustics. So it is echoey. Next time, let's see if I do it again in here. I'll probably have to hang curtains. There's no curtains on this window. But anyways, nice bathroom. Thank you. All right, so carrying on with our surprises. Okay, so surprise number four. And I'm curious, you guys, have you, as have those of you who finished a book. Have you felt these surprises? Have you had these surprises? I definitely want to hear what surprises you have experienced when you've written your nonfiction book, because I know some folks here have written books. Surprise number four, you will feel some level of dislike bordering on hate towards your book before you're done. This is separate from the roller coaster of emotions that I've talked about before. So generally speaking, I think most authors, not all, but most authors go through this cycle of oh my goodness, my book is the greatest. Nobody's ever written something like this. It's amazing all the way down to the oh my goodness, my book sucks. Nobody's going to read it. And almost every author I've talked to has gone through some, you know, extreme to smaller levels of that. But what you may not realize is that as you go through a rigorous editing process. So the process we put our clients through is at minimum one developmental edit, which is one of those edits where everybody questions everything you say, asks you to add stories, restructures your book. It's the deep edit and then we go through the copy edit twice and that's the line by line, word choice, sentence structure, grammar kind of editing. And then we do a proofread. And then when it's in layout, either you or one of our proofreaders, depending on your level of service with us, we'll go through it again. So at some point during all of that, you typically feel this like, I can't read this book again. I don't want to read this book again. I don't want to see this book ever again. And that can take you by surprise. My first book, I tell you, I absolutely loathed it by the time it launched and it was probably six months post launch before I reread it. Which may sound like, why would you need to reread your book? But you'll forget what you've written and then you're doing media and interviews and talks and things like that and they're referencing things, you're going, oh goodness, did I put that in my book? And you don't remember. So you do need to periodically reread your book, but you probably will need a break from it. It's tiring. You really go over your material over and over again and I think it surprises most first time authors. And then as you get used to it, you kind of expect that you're going to have some level of strong dislike for your book at some point. I'm hoping this time I have a book that I've been working on for all of you on our no boring books writing process and our marketing first. And I'm hoping I won't get to the hating point because I'm Leaning heavily on my team this time. I'm writing the book, but. And I'm going to be going through the edits and everything. We've already gone through first round of edits, but because I'm going to lean more heavily on my team than normal in the past, I'm hoping I won't get to the level of hate. I already had a level of strong dislike, and I'm through that. So fingers crossed. All right, so surprise number five. Done. Well. You will always feel a significant level of accomplishment when you write a book. A book is a big deal, especially when you go to the effort of making it the greatest book you possibly can. And I equate it to. And for many people in many books, it's as good as a degree as far as the level of expertise you get into. If you've done research, even the level of credibility you're going to get in many cases is it's better than a degree because, you know, thousands and thousands of people will have the same degree as you. But this is the only. Your book is the only one of its kind because it's your expertise, your perspective, you know, your subject matter through your lens. But if you take the time to do a great book, you're always, always going to be proud of it. I think that it's one of those things where if you have a book burning or several books burning inside of you and you don't write them, it's something you will always regret. If you do it well, it's something you'll always be proud of. So it's, you know, if somebody's sitting there going, I don't know if I should write my book. If you know in your heart you'll regret it if you don't, then you really should write your book. Yeah, I think that's all I'll say about that. Surprise. And I'll just check in to see what you guys are saying. All right, let's see. The lighting is excellent. Well, I actually have a light here, so. Thank you, Kevin. Actually, I could probably show you guys. It'll change the lighting maybe at the end. I don't want to mess with it yet. I've had enough technical troubles. But I'll show you the light at the end. It's a really slick little light, which, because I knew I was going to be testing different locations to try to get the best. The best Internet. And I picked this one, by the way, because the router in this situation, the router is actually in the garage, which is not attached to the house and so I haven't been able to easily hardwire in. So I'm testing different locations. We're going to try hard wiring through the windows and all kinds of fun stuff. I'm doing my best to get the best quality live streams for this and for podcast interviews and things like that. Business zoom from the small room. I like that, Mike. I had to give you a shout out for that. Okay, Andrew, thank you. I appreciate it and I will keep up the videos every Tuesday and Friday. They are my creative outlet. I love doing them. So I'm glad you guys enjoy them and thank you for watching. It would be hard to justify continuing to do them if you guys weren't watching and commenting. Okay, so is that a time? Oh, Rachel had a question. Is that timeline three months plus writing it every day? Is it bad if it takes a book year more? Okay, yeah, this is a great question. So in tip number three, I was explaining to expect your book to take longer than you wanted to write it and also to expect your book to take longer than you think it will take to write it. Especially if you're really trying to develop a great book. Three months is pretty much the fastest I've seen it done for a typical first time author. Generally speaking, most of our clients will take six months to nine months to up to a year. The odd person takes longer than a year or two to write it and that's with working with our team. So you've got a story expert that helps you develop the hook and the concept and then you've got a writing coach that is working with you every week for accountability, writing skills, support and guidance. If you don't have that, I think it's quite common for a book to take 16 months to two years to write and that's working on it. In my timelines I'm giving you that's working on it up to five hours a week most weeks, not every week. My first book took me 15 months to write, I think, but I didn't have help. I created the company that I would have hired and I would hire in order to do this process. So having that writing coach who's supporting you, guiding you, keeping you on track, and really holding you accountable does make the process go faster. But yeah, everybody's different. There really is no set timeframe. It's just like using my runner analogy, right? There's some people who can run that mile in under four minutes. There's some of us who take eight, nine minutes and then a lot of us who take more than 10 and some will never run it right, but they'll still get to the finish line. They'll just walk. So there's a different speed for every person. Will this stream be on replay? Here's hoping. Millie Comics. Usually, you know, technology and I are not best friends, so occasionally things go wrong. But the intention is that this will be on replay. For Carrie. She said it took her a year and a half. Again, totally normal. Especially when you change concepts or you're not sure. You're not, you're not, you know, and I'm not saying this was Carrie. I'm just saying that, you know, you change your concepts or you're not sure how to explain certain things. You know, when you go through. Everybody goes through self doubt. Not everybody. Most people go through self doubt and that can slow you down and me included. So when my book came back in January from the content editor, I really, you know, just, it was just off for me. I didn't feel good about the book and I wasn't connected with it and so I actually didn't pick it up again for quite a while. Took me a long time to get back on the content edit and really pick it back up and get, you know, get steam behind it again. And that happens, you know, you can kind of fall off of it for whatever reason. And, you know, like I said, my first book took me, I think 12 to 15 months to write and I had a ton of content. I had been writing articles forever, so I wasn't starting from scratch. But it still took a long, long time. Let's see. Okay, I'll come back and check that. Let's. Angela will let me know the questions that we don't answer and I'm just going to finish up our support. All right, so surprise number six, you're going to be seen as an expert when you write your book. Now, of course, this kind of seems like a funny surprise, I know, but because you wrote the book to build your expertise in most cases, right? You wrote it to share your story, to become known as the expert, to develop credibility. But there's still a surprise that happens to most of us. The first time someone says, all right, as the expert on the subject, what do you think? You will probably feel a little thrown off guard me, the expert. But when you write the book on the subject, you become the expert. People look at you as the expert. And again, writing a great book is respected by many, far more than a degree. Because again, thousands and thousands and thousands of people will have the exact degree that you have, but nobody will have written this book. And Even if there's 100 books on your subject out there, this is still your book that has your unique hook and done right. It is still the only one that exists. And there's only, you know, less than 1% of the population has written a book. So, you know, and some people say, oh, everybody's written a book. I just say, no, maybe all of your friends have, because you're traveling in that, you know, expert influencer circle. But not everybody has written a book. It is a rare, rare accomplishment, which is, you know, why I think it is something to be very, very proud of. And, you know, it's also why I often say it's better than a degree, you know, because it's going to. You're going to be up against a lot of people in different situations that have the same degree, but have they written the book? And so you will be seen as the expert. And we have a really cool author spotlight coming out in a few weeks with one of our clients, Robert Bell. His topic is on how to book yourself for podcast interviews, because he's been booking a lot of podcast interviews. So, you know, if you haven't already subscribed to our channel, make sure you subscribe to book launchers, because we've got lots of cool stuff coming out. But one of the things Robert said was really kind of tossed. It kind of threw him for a loop when somebody on a podcast interview referred to him as the expert on creativity, and he kind of went, and he had to regain composure and carry on from there. So you will be seen as the expert when you write a book, which is really, really cool. All right, I'm going to do another YouTube prize. So for all of you folks that are here that have commented on a video in the last four videos, I think. I think it's four, then you've been entered to win a prize. When you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win a prize. So here we go. Give me my fake drum roll, my fake bathroom, my fake bathroom toilet roll. Okay, we won't make bathroom jokes. That's not appropriate. Okay, random name picker has pulled up Aaron Crowley. I think Aaron won two weeks ago, actually, but he does comment on every single video. So that's how you get entered to win and gives you a good, good odds of winning. All right, so, Aaron, I don't think I saw you on here live, but if you're here live or you're just catching the replay, make sure you email teamoklaunchers.com to get your mug or your journal. So awesome. Thank you so much, Erin. It's awesome to have your comments. Every single video. I really, really appreciate you. All right, so let's just see. Let's see. Just checking in on your drums would sound loud in there. Yeah. So the echo's pretty bad. Sorry. We'll get things figured out. Thanks for staying, staying with me. I think we've had good Internet though. You guys haven't had me freeze or anything, so that's an improvement. Right? So Angela's gonna post the three questions that I need to answer and we will in the meantime, see. Okay, so I'll come back to those in a second. Angela, I got one more surprise and then we can do Q and A. And we got one more prize too, for all of you folks here. It's going to be a skill testing question. Hope you've been paying attention. Okay, so number seven. Surprise. Number seven. I almost feel bad saying this one. I feel a little guilty, but it's true. You are going to uncover who your true supporters are. Yeah. So, friends, this is really interesting and we could probably do an entire session on this. But when my first book came out in particular, it was really interesting to see not only what friends read the book, which was very few, by the way, what friends bought it, what friends reviewed it, what friends told other friends about it. A few friends really stood out to me. They were extraordinary. They bought it, they read it, they reviewed it, they told other people bought copies, they came to my book signings. It was really, really special to me to see the people who did support me. And then there was some surprises. Some friends that like, I thought were my go to friends who were, you know, all I heard was crickets. They didn't buy a book, they didn't review it, they didn't read it, they didn't do anything except, you know, comment on social media. Hey, congrats. Way to go. And that was it. And then family was always fun. One of my, we always kind of joked because one of my aunts asked my dad to send him a copy. Like my dad's like, maybe you should buy a copy and support your niece. So it is interesting and it's a way to find out who actually is supporting you in this journey, who's just paying lip service and who downright doesn't support support you because they're there too. So again, I feel kind of bad, but this is one of those things that will surprise you. I truly was surprised. And I've heard from other people that they're surprised at who steps up and they're surprised at who doesn't. So let me know what you think. Has that happened to you? All right, so we got one more prize skill testing question for you. Let's see who's been paying attention, who was here early. Let me know what surprise number two was. Surprise number two. What was surprise number two of these seven. And if you get the first one to get that right, will be entered to win. Hey, self publishing with Dale is here. He has a book on Amazon, keywords. Can't remember the exact title. I think it's Amazon keywords for authors. It is on pre sale right now. Am I allowed to tell people, Dale, it's too late. I just did. I think it is. I think I saw it on social media. Anyways, Dale is a keyword expert and this is a book that will be going to multiple people in my team. I've got my copy already. Because I am part of the pre reading launch team. I've started reading it just a few days ago, actually. Dale, by the way, it starts off with the most engaging story. I was so proud. It is really like hashtag no boring books. It's kind of like a book on keywords. This isn't going to be very exciting. And that story that you kick it off with, fantastic. It was really, really great. So I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Okay, so let's see. I gotta see who number who got this right the first time. And then Angela, I'm coming back to your question. I know where it is. Let's see. Oh, Efren says that number seven is a lot what my nonfiction is about. So it's about people who will support you or don't support you and how it surprises you. It's kind of a cool topic. Okay. Fitness says, oh, I had a bunch of friends ghost me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It's eye opening. I've heard that from other people too. Okay, let's see. Number two. Oh, Efren, I think you got it. Angela confirmed this for me, but I think Efren was the first one. Number two is that it will take longer than you expect than you hope and certainly longer than you want. So I think Efren is our winner. And you're gonna hate your book was one of them. I think it was number three. Dale says his book title is Amazon keywords for books, not for authors. Perfect. Thank you very much. Okay. And the cat is out of the Bag. I thought it was, but as soon as I said it I was like, oh, was I supposed to say that? Okay, Mike, in fun fact, Julie, that was the vidsummit you and I first met. Oh, that's very cool. Okay, backing up. Let's go back. I know Angela had posted a couple questions. So is it realistic for a self published author to become a bestseller? And for that matter, does it really matter? Ryan, I have a YouTube video all about bestsellers because you have to first define what bestseller means. If you're talking New York Times bestseller, it's not very realistic as a self published author to think you're going to become a New York Times bestseller. It's happened. But New York Times bestseller is a curated list. So they really ultimately decide whether you're going to be on that list or not. Even if you have a lot of sales. Wall Street Journal, there's a lot of, not lots, but I can name quite a few self published authors that have made that list. So it's possible. But it does take coordination and organization. So check out my YouTube video. I explain that you're talking to Amazon Bestseller list. You're going to make bestseller if you do any sort of coordinated launch efforts. If you want to be a new, a best new release and get that little flag, it's super easy. It takes less than 25 books sold in a day, in an hour, in a period, like a short period of time for most categories because it's like a sub, sub, subcategory. Amazon actually orchestrates it in many cases. So you do make that bestseller. Now if you don't coordinate any sort of launch effort at all, then maybe you won't hit it. But does it matter? No. What really matters on Amazon is that you have consistent sales over time and that you've done your keywords. So you've read Dale's book, so you know how to do your keywords and that you are doing things that consistently sell your book. So Amazon helps you market your book for you. That's really what matters. Getting reviews matters a lot. So if there's one thing you do, it's get book reviews. Get book reviews. Get book reviews. Ask everybody that has read your book to write a review for your book. You even need bad book reviews because if you have too many five stars, nobody's writing anything critical. People won't believe all the five stars. So you need lots and lots of book reviews. Okay, so let's see. Okay, I'm just trying to find Angela's. What other comments were here? For me to answer from Angela. Hey, Shelly, great to see you. Okay. Okay, Angela. Oh, here we go. Sleepy bookworm. If you're struggling to get an arc team together, what other tips do you have for a success, a successful launch? So an arc team would be advanced readers, people to be in your book army. Like I said, I got a copy of Dale's book in advance. He'll be getting a copy of my book in advance. Many of you will be able to get a copy of my book in advance, really, in exchange for reviews and early support, you know, early hype, you know, to get people telling other people that your book is coming out and that they should go buy it, even on pre sale. So really, if you don't have a bunch of people who will support you in that regard, then really from the advanced reader perspective, I would start reaching out to people who review books in your category, trying to get podcast interviews, talk to bloggers. I would really just amp up the promotional efforts. If you're not able to get a really supportive arc team in place, but you know, try and connect with people on Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, and really just see if you have some like minded folks around you that may support you. And you haven't realized it yet. And I know somebody on here was asking, you know, hey, I'm having trouble getting reviews for my book. And Mike, I think offered, hey, maybe we could review it. And that's, you know, you can't exchange reviews. Like Mike couldn't say to day, I'll review your book if you review mine. But in a group setting like this, if a bunch of people say, hey, I need somebody to review my book. And you know, somebody else goes, oh, I like that book, I'll review that and then I'll review somebody else's book. And we support each other as an author community. That can happen. And that's a great approach. So you may want to just start connecting with people and see if there's ways you can support them. And if they ask you for, you know, hey, how can I support you? Then you could say, hey, I need an art team, I need reviews. You know, that kind of thing. But generally, if you're not getting an arc team, then you need to be all over getting promotions, getting reviewers, book reviewers, you're going to probably want to pay to run a Goodreads giveaway. Depending on the genre of your book, you're probably going to want to look at NetGalley book sirens. There's a bunch of different review services and you got to figure out if they're a good fit for your book. But you may want to go those routes in order to get reviewers so that people are reviewing and sharing your book. Okay, let's see. Catherine, I have sent out my book to a few readers and I'm starting to get a lot of feedback and feeling overwhelmed. It's my first book and I don't feel like I'm clear enough on my reader. Any advice. That's a big topic. So. And actually that's gonna be something we're talking about in our deep dive on September 19, Saturday, September 19. So for those of you who weren't here at the beginning, on September 19th, we're doing our deep dive trainings. They're back. We're not gonna do do them every other Saturday, but we're going to do one every month. So on September 19, the next the topic will be how to write a book with marketing in mind. And that is going to be something we talk about is your audience and getting all that feedback and handling that early feedback just to give you something of value. I would say it really depends on the feedback and how you're getting it. And this is also the danger by the way of sending and getting beta readers. I have a video out on beta readers. I'm not a huge fan of it. I much prefer to rely on the advice of professional readers. Now, if you've written a book that is for colleagues in a certain space. So let's say you're a psychiatrist and rather than writing a book to the general audience, you've written it for other psychiatrists. Well, I could see you sending it to some psychiatrists to get input, but generally speaking, I'm not a fan of getting feedback from readers because they can send you in five different directions and you really won't know which way to go versus working with a book coach and then working with selected professional editors to really guide you and help you develop it, I think that is a better approach. But if you're not clear on who your reader is from the beginning, that's a problem. So the best thing I can suggest is if you can't picture where your reader is hanging out, you don't have a clear enough picture of them. And so if you're. And what I mean by that is your, your reader isn't a 40 year old woman, a 40 to 55 year old woman, because we're like, you can't picture that. But your reader might be a 40 to 55 year old woman who has teenage kids, who is tired of her job. Who wants to get fit? I don't know. I'm really just making things up as I go. But the more you really understand who they are, and then you go, okay, she wants to get fit, but she doesn't want to give up her ice cream. I'm starting to, I think I'm starting to describe somebody kind of like me. But I don't have teenage kids. I have a little one. So you've really got to start to picture where are they hanging out, what problems are they googling already, what are they buying already, what have they tried to solve the problem that you can help them with. And as you get clearer, you're gonna be able to picture exactly where they're hanging out. And, and that's going to help you so much in everything that you do. And you will write a book that is clearly for them and that readers should be giving you great feedback because they're going to go, this is exactly what I needed. Okay, let's see. One more question and then we got to wrap up for the day. Does the quality of the review have an impact? Some people aren't very coherent. So in terms of Amazon, the number of reviews, if you have a whole bunch and one review isn't very coherent, it on depends. It doesn't matter. You only have three reviews and one of them isn't very coherent. It's going to matter a lot. But I really think your goal should be to have 25 plus plus reviews of your book and just keep going. I mean, I tell people if there's only one thing you do to support what we do as a company on the marketing side is to get reviews. It'll make everything better. Because if you don't have reviews, your Amazon ads aren't going to perform as well. When we pitch you to a podcast or when you pitch yourself to a podcast and they check your book out and you only have two reviews, reviews, you just don't look as legit. So the more reviews you get, then an incoherent one won't matter. We had somebody looking into working with us and he eventually signed up with us and he said he was trying to find reviews. And I guess on Glassdoor, which is like an employment site, there's one review from a contractor that actually plagiarized, totally plagiarized, and we had to let him go. But he posted, posted a really bad review of us, but somebody, and he was reading the reviews and he goes, oh, well, there was one really bad review. But it was clear that you know it was him and not you. And that's what people will think. If there's one incoherent review, they're going to be like, that's the reviewer, not you. So you want to have volume, and then one incoherent review doesn't matter. Okay. What would you say is a realistic monthly sales target for a KDP publisher? It's impossible for me to say because every category is different. Every book type is. Is different. Yeah, it's that. That number is just impossible for me to guess. And if you want to drill down, I highly recommend publisher Rocket. KDP Spy. We use a bunch of different tools to really assess sales volume and get a sense of what a category could or how a category could perform. But yeah, it's a challenge. Hey, Molly, great to have you back, but we're almost done. We're just about to wrap up. Okay, Angela, Am I missing anything? Otherwise, we're gonna say goodbye, and I think that's it. Drawing technical. I was writing a book during lockdown, but after I got back into work, I stopped. I wonder if it will ever be finished. Do you know what? You have control over whether it's finished or not. You can get back to it if you choose to. All right, so, yeah, Dale, I can't keep up with all the streams either. It's okay. It's great you popped in. And yeah, I hope people check out your book. I'll be talking more about it in the future, so I think that's all the questions. All right, thanks so much, everybody. It was great to have you here. Thanks for hanging out in the bathroom with me. We'll see you again. I think our next livestream is actually in three weeks, but I'll confirm the dates for you soon. But the deep dive Training is happening September 19th. Would love to see you there. It'll be a two hour training session. We're going to do some great. We're going to cover some great content then. All right, until then, every Tuesday, Friday, make sure you comment on the video to be entered to win, and I'll see you there.