Turning Your Book into a Business - Tips and Tactics

Foreign. Hello and welcome. We are going to talk about building your business from a book today. And before we get into that, there's big news in the publishing world today. I don't know if you've seen the headlines, but Draft 2 Digital has now created a partnership with Fable. And I am just looking. There it is, the press release that I had up in front of me. So they have retail distribution with Fable, which is a social reading app. And if you aren't familiar with them, they have a ton of book clubs. And so it's a really, really cool opportunity for authors to get access to so many book clubs. And specifically I'm going to read right from the press release here because I haven't had a chance to play with Fable to do much of anything because this announcement just happened today. But Fable has 650,000 members and 25,000 book clubs. Cool, right? They have influencers from YouTube and TikTok Instagram and those folks operate their book clubs through Fable. So this gives you access to a whole bunch of avid readers. And, and book clubs are a really cool platform for authors because obviously you can sell your book into that club and you become the book that they're reading for that month. They also have other things like dedicated indie author merchandising. Not totally sure what that means, but they have a lot of promotional opportunities and this is where I will dig in. And you can expect a video here on Book Launchers TV about this really soon. But you can initiate your own book club. Maybe Book Launchers should have their own book club. We do have a reviewer list, so if you're ever interested in being an early reader on our books, you can just shoot us an email@teamoklaunchers.com and we do have a reviewer list and a reviewer club if you will. But you know, maybe we should expand that and call it a book club and put it onto a Fable book club. That actually might be a really cool idea. Angela. We should talk to Sarah about that because this would give them secure arcs, which, you know, we've been doing anyways, but it would give them secure arcs. It allows them to build buzz and pre order sales prior to the new book release. It also allows you to have publishing day, like launch day club celebrations. It also says it facilitates sponsored book selections with its 200+ affiliate book club hosted by key influencers. So there's some pretty cool stuff and they have insights, so they'll report sentence level insights back to Draft 2 Digital about how readers are engaging with your book. So that's pretty cool stuff. I love data. I love information. You know, one of the features we've talked about before is how once somebody's reading your book on Kindle, you can see what sections are getting highlighted. That can be some great, great pull quotes for you to start using in your media kits, but also on your social media, in your newsletters and all of that. So it sounds like you're going to get some of those insights from Fable passed on to Draft2Digital too. And then it says how Draft2Digital authors can distribute books to Fable. Well, it's going to be available. So if you are a Draft 2 digital customer already, you'll log in and just like whenever they add something, you're going to get a pop up message and you basically agree or disagree to list it there. If you are a smash words author, which most nonfiction authors aren't or weren't, but if you are and you haven't switched over to Draft 2 Digital yet, you're going to want to do that because you won't be able to access this partnership through the Smashwords platform. They are doing a show or a live stream, if you will, on April 18, a joint Fable and Draft 2 Digital live stream. I think it's happening at their YouTube channel, the Draft 2 Digital. It's happening April 18 at 12 noon Central, which would be 10am Pacific Time. So that's cool. As you know, I'm always excited when a new distribution opportunity, a new way for authors, indie authors in particular, to access their readers comes up. And so this just came up today, so I had to celebrate it and share it with you, even though it's fresh and I haven't had a time to haven't had a chance to really dig into it. All right, so hey Stella, Kevin, welcome. Efren Sith. Lord, Billy, welcome. Odiaka Fox. Let's see Warrior Class Media. Renee's in the house and Jennifer, welcome. And she's been working doubles. That's tough. But thank you for joining us. And Amanda, welcome. Welcome. If you are new here, saying hello is the first step to get yourself entered for some prizes while we're live. So thank you for doing that. And there's Bill. Bill's just tucked in too. All right, so, so that's the big hot news off the press. So that's kind of exciting. But today we're talking about how to build your business off of your book. And, and if you have other questions, as always, you can go ahead and post them in the comments. Angela's here, She's Going to organize your comments and make sure that they don't get lost in the chat. And I will answer any not related questions to what we're talking about at the end. Okay, so the first thing, as we talk about building a business from your book, the first thing is to acknowledge, accept whatever you need to do. You have a business, you're an author, you have a business that's full stop. It's not create a business from your book. You are an author, you have a business. So as such, I think it's really important to start putting your mindset around that because I think a lot of people think of, you know, author, the author world as a creative outlet. It's a hobby, it's a legacy, whatever, whatever that might be. They haven't necessarily thought of it as a business, but the IRS thinks of it as a business, which means they're going to tax you on the money you make. So you might as well write off the expenses that you incur and make strategic decisions that allow this business to grow. And so that's the first thing is to just like I said, acknowledge or if you need to accept that you have a business when you have written and published a book. And so the good news with this is there are some advantages. And always consult your accountant. You know, I always like to tell people that if they ever ask me for accounting or legal advice, not only am I not an accountant, nor am I a lawyer, but I'm also a Canadian. So I, you know, there are some similarities between the Canadian and American legal system, but they are also vastly, vastly different. And then state by state in the U.S. it is also incredibly different. So, um, so I have no, no place giving anybody advice. But I can tell you that universally there are opportunities to write off expenses that relate to your author business. That might be your home office or where you write, that might be some of those things. It could be office office supplies, like pens, printer ink, you know, those kind of things. It also absolutely is going to be things that are directly related to book marketing. So if you run ads for your book marketing, if you pay for services around your book editing, design, book launchers, marketing, you're paying for anything around that. Those are more than likely going to be a write off. But also just like those things should be treated like a business, you have to think about this as a business and have a plan and a strategic direction. Which is why whenever we talk to an author about working with us at Book Launchers, we. One of the very first questions I ask or if it's somebody on my team taking the call. Is what does success look like for you? Like what? What's big picture? What are you trying to do? Sorry, I just got a notification, Angela. So it finally came through. Okay, I gotta turn off my notifications. So your book. So thinking about your business and thinking about the bigger picture strategy and having a plan for where you want to take it, because that's the first thing. And so if your success goal is, hey, I want to have massive impact with this book, then maybe your goals aren't necessarily financial, but you'll want to have financial resources to get there and a plan to get there. And I had a video last week, on Friday come out that is book buyer versus reader. And I think this is a great example because I talk to quite a few people who are impact driven. They're also, you know, looking for the financial side of this too. But there, and I mentioned the impact driven side because they're often. And I talked to a really cool guy. I don't know if it was yesterday or last week. All the days blur together. But his book will help people in the education system and so he wants to support them and in order to reach them he has to go through the school administrators. And so, you know, for him it's less about selling the books and more about changing how certain things are done in the education system. So ultimately the student benefits and, and you know, in the long run this is going to help him. You know, he's already acknowledged that even just writing some, some papers on the subject has already kind of changed where he's at and where he's perceived in his, in his industry. He's already been invited to a conference and things like that as a result of the paper. So he feels very confident that a book will also help kind of elevate where he far as. Again though, this isn't necessarily about financial. This is about being able to reach and impact more people. And so knowing that helps him make strategic decisions along the way to help get where he wants to go. Conversely, I mean, not even conversely, but you know, as an alternative idea. If you're a speaker or you want to grow a speaking business, you are looking at what's going to get you on those stages and using your book as part of, of the bigger plan. Because it's not just going to be book to stage, it's going to be book. Okay, now I need a speaker's reel. Now I need, I need to have a keynote talk, I need to have workshops, I need to have, you know, what's my outreach plan? How am I going to get in front of these places? What are the tools I'm going to use in order to get myself onto those stages? What are the smaller stages I'm going to be on? So all of that is what I mean by having a plan and a strategic picture. And I am never going to be somebody who says you need to have all of that perfectly in place before you take action. Because. Because I'm also a believer that you have to start taking steps in order for the path to actually appear in front of you. Because a lot of times it's not clear. Right. You kind of just have to know your next step and have faith and take that next step and know that, you know, you're going this direction and these steps move you closer. But, you know, it's not always a clear path and nor is it a straight path to where you want to go. But that's the first thing. Accept or acknowledge that you are a business owner as an author and start thinking about it strategically. Very, very important. Okay. Renee's watching. Watching from the side of a deserted road in Oregon. I love your dedication. That's awesome. Okay. Just looking to see if anybody. Hello from Mississauga. Oh, fantastic. My very first kind of adult job always took me to Mississauga because the company's head office was in Mississauga. All right. And Angela dropped the video for the YouTube video that I mentioned that was book buyer versus reader. So thinking strategically about who you're getting the book into the hands of, it might not be the reader of the book. And considering that. So thank you for dropping that in. And Carrie's here too. So. Hello and welcome. Okay, so the next thing is, what's your business model going to be? So, of course, part of your business model is selling books. And even that I say, like, oh, it's simple. You sell books, but it's not that simple, is it? You can sell books so many ways. You can sell books direct. You can sell your audiobook direct, your print book direct, your ebook direct. By direct, I mean on your own website. You know, as I've. I've shared several examples of what we do. But self publishand succeed.com is a page where you can go and buy, you know, self publish and succeed. If you go to juliebrod.com you can buy either of my books in print format. And I had somebody comment on One of my YouTube videos, the story origin video that I did on ebooks. Selling your ebook direct with storyorigin so Angela's frantically typing, finding that video for you now as well. But they commented, well, how come you're not selling your ebook direct? And so this is part of making choices and making strategic decisions. And for me, we don't sell my ebook or my audiobook direct. I give the audiobook version of Self Promote and Succeed. I give that away for free. You go to self promoteand succeed.com audio, you can download it and, and then I often will gift the ebook versions of these books as well to people, you know, if they contact us for help and support, I'll just give them the ebook versions that they can go ahead and download. But they're available for sale on the normal channels, right? Barnes and Noble, Chapters, Indigo, Amazon, of course, and those kind of places. You can buy the books too. So for me, it's not about having everything available direct and in stores. There's kind of a strategic, like, okay, if you want it free, you're going to download it over here. If you want to pay for it, you can pay for it here. But, you know, what's your business model beyond book sales going to be? So you could, you know, there's lots of ways to think about business models. One of the coolest books I've read in a long time that I think gives you a lot of ways to think about different models that'll work off of a book is the Hundred Million Dollar Offers by Alex Hormozi. And Angela can look that one up and drop you a link for that one too. But he's got a, it's a trilogy that he's got coming out. He's got the second book out, which is $100 million leads, I think is the next one. I can't. Yeah, I think it's leads and, and he's the next, I think the final one. I don't know what the third one is, but it's. He's building and the third one's not out yet. But, but it's, it gives you a really good breakdown and, and it lays out different business models and kind of how to think about an offer so that somebody will work with you. But you can do consulting, you can do courses, you can do service, you could do a software you can do, you can do a product, you can do affiliate type sales. So, you know, I have a couple of, you know, really good friends that primarily make their business off of one kind of coaching slash membership program plus affiliate. They constantly either sell their program to other people's groups and pay them 50% or 40% and vice versa. They will offer, you know, strategic things that make sense. So an affiliate example that we have is, and it's not a high paying one, but it is Publisher Rocket. You know, and for me, a good affiliate is a product or service that I use all the time that I can strongly recommend. But you know, you can go to book launchers.com forward/rocket and that is our affiliate link. And we do get paid a small amount, but we get paid whenever you sign up through that link. But it is a product that I use darn near every day and we use darn near every day at Book Launchers. And they're also really cool in that it's a one time fee and they update it and you access this software forever. We're also affiliates with, you know, Draft 2 Digital. So if somebody signs up for Draft 2 Digital through our link, you know, we get paid, but we only get paid when people sell books and we get paid pennies when they sell books. So it's not a super lucrative affiliate relationship, but a lot of affiliate relationships can be more lucrative. So like if, you know, some of our partners that we have, if they refer somebody to us, then we typically will pay. I mean, usually we don't have a huge margin, so we don't pay tons of money. But it's hundreds of dol. And if a client refers somebody, we usually give them a free month of service for their referral as well, just as a thank you for us. We never really want somebody to refer people to us just to make the money because we want the fit, we want great people coming our way. So most of the time people are referring us not. Not because we have a payout, but you know, the payout is always a nice thing at the other side of it. So what's your business model going to be and how does that align back to your book and your bigger picture goals? Sometimes your business model will somewhat organically appear. And what I mean by that is when your book comes out, if you're doing podcasts or you're doing speaking or you're doing, you know, any sort of book marketing, you may find that you start getting requests for certain things. So you may find that people are like, do you have a course on this or do you, do you give talks? I'd love to have you come speak at my group or my association. So your model may start to appear organically, but I wouldn't wait for that personally. I would start to kind of build and construct and start to find it Even just doing some one on one kind of coaching or consulting at the beginning can be really useful because that can give you the problems that people have and also gives you frameworks for how you can solve them. It gives you the language that you can use to promote whatever you're doing and of course gives you testimonials as well, which are all things to think about when you start offering any sort of business offering off of your book. All right, let's, let's see how we're doing. I think we'll do a prize here and Angela's been posting links like crazy, so thank you, Angela for that. And of course, if you haven't already said hello, make sure you have said hello. But I'm just going to pop on over to my random name picker. So every Tuesday and Friday we have a brand new video that comes out for you, including this live stream. So if you're watching the replay, you can still comment. And it does get entered to win our next prize, which by the way, we'll be back here in two weeks. So whatever that date is, don't know it off the top of my head. And it will be Chad Zamborn, our pen to paper pro. And I believe, but I'm not certain, but I believe his topic is going to be on writing a memoir. So if you have a memoir or you've been working on a memoir, then he is going to be here taking my place because I am going to be at the AI Bot summit just learning more about AI all the things so I can further answer your questions and support you all. But so Chad will be here and, and he will talk about, I think memoir writing. But regardless, Chad is always a popular stand in for us and he loves his favorite part, I think is giving away prizes. So he'll be here for that. Angela's probably already put the date in the side, but I'm busy picking prizes. So Darla, congratulations and thank you for commenting the day a video was released. So every Tuesday and Friday we have a new video that comes out and if you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win. And we have, we don't have any of these old hoodies, but we need to get more because I was just thinking this thing's hanging on by a thread. I don't even know if you guys can see my, my hoodie here, but it's, it's hanging on. It's got my hashtag no boringbooks. And it's just hanging on. But regardless, we have mugs the this is the vintage version, as I always say. The stapler and my blue blocker glasses are not included, but we have our hashtag NoBoringBooks mug. And Angela finally sent me our new oh so soft journal, which is also one of them. And then, of course, you can get copies of Self Publish and Succeed and Self Promote and Succeed. Angela also has copies of Earl of Early Tries, of Rise of the Reader from Nick Hutcheson. He's one of our clients. We have. We had a. I had a decent number of his books on hand, so I sent them to Angela. So lots of books, Darla, I'm sure there's something there that you haven't. And Angela says, let's get tank tops or sleeveless for those of us in warmer climates. Says the gal in. Says the gal in Florida. Okay, so let me do one more prize here, and then we'll carry on with our building a book from Business Strategies. Okay. Spinning around. And we'll do the comments for people who are live shortly as well. So, Beeline Bill, Bill, I don't know. I think you've also won everything, but there might be something like Rise of the Reader if you haven't gotten that. So there might be something in there. And if not, you can always gift it to somebody else. But it's been a while since I think you've won and I saw you here today, so congratulations and thank you for commenting. Okay. Oh, by the way, if you win, you have to email teamoklaunchers.com and let Angela know what your prize, what your chosen prize is and where she should mail it. Oh, and Bill says gift it to someone new. So when I do the next round of prizes, the Streamyard prizes, I'll choose somebody that's here. So thank you, Bill. So kind. Okay, so back to the business. And by the way, if you've got a business question, Bill is your guy. It should be not Beeline Bill, but it should be Business Bill because he's got a business book and he's got lots of great advice for business owners and leaders. So. Okay, let's see here. And speaking of that, so you know, as, as we talked about in the beginning, it's okay, A, you've got a business if you have a book. B, you know, what is the business model besides selling books that you want to focus on? 3, and I'm not going to dive too deep into this because, again, I am not an accountant or lawyer, but I do think it's important, because you do have a business, is to get somewhat Familiar with legal and financial requirements. So you know, getting, you know, paying for a consult with an accountant I think is really important to understand what can I write off, how, you know, what do I need to do on my side so that I can maximize the benefits of this business that I'm running. Also legal structure, legal issues, you know, all of those kind of things. If you are selling books directly, when you talk to your accountant, understand what kind of tax liabilities you might have. Basically it's based on a per state where your books are sold. So if you're selling them online and you sell X amount in X state at a certain threshold, you'll have to pay state taxes, state sales tax. So it's kind of getting familiar with those things. I don't want that to paralyze you or freak you out, but I think it's important, especially when you start out. But wherever you are now, if you haven't already. Yeah, it's. It sucks paying somebody a couple hundred bucks first for some of their time. I get it. But that is really important and in information that I think you need. I also like the book Martin Holland, he's one of our clients, but his book the Profit Problem just kicked myself there. The profit problem. They say I make money, so why don't I have any? I think that book distills a lot of financial concepts. So if you're new to this whole business thing, you know, a book like that can really help just lay the foundation in a non intimidating way for you. So that would be a book I would recommend picking up. The next thing is to really think about your building your platform, which is something we talk about all the time here. So platform being, you know, in my view primarily your email list, but also your community. So things like a live stream on YouTube every other week like we do. But you know, if you're, if your jam is to do this on Facebook or Instagram or some other platform, wherever you do it, always encourage people to head on over to your website to sign up for your newsletter list as well. You know, which is one of the things when I'm saying go to go download self promote and succeed.com audio, get that audiobook for free. That is joining my newsletter list. So those kind of things are platform building activities and doing things that grow your brand. And you may choose to grow your author brand, but you may choose to grow your business brand. Either way, your book gives you a phenomenal tool to do that and you should always, always be building that platform. So using the book to get newsletter subscribers to grow your audience in whatever way makes sense for your business goals and your business model. I also highly recommend a book called storybrand. I believe it's called storybrand Might be Building a story Brand. Donald Miller. It's a great book for just kind of understanding brand building and telling stories and building that platform around it. And it'll just help align your book and your business with a unified brand and narrative. So that's really important. And I think anybody in business has to be thinking about these things. And if you rely too heavily on somebody else's platform, then you set yourself up to potentially, you know, just rely too heavily on somebody else that you're dependent on. In other words, if Facebook were to stop, you got your profile deleted, which I've heard from so many people, and that was your only means of connecting and communicating with your audience. You're. You're in big trouble. So I like to have it a platform that I largely control, which is my email newsletters, and then on top of that, having other places where you can connect with some people. Okay, now let's see one more thing. I think I had one more note to think about here. Yes. Okay, so then the final thing around your business, which is something that I think is a game changer for every person, every author, every business. And we've talked about this a lot, which is network, build relationships and always be learning. And this will help you set yourself up for success no matter how you approach this building a business from your book. And I mean, if anybody wants to go in future discussions, more tactical around, okay, this is my book. What does my book into my course. I'm going to look like we can do that. I kind of want to. I know this was the number one requested topic, and there's so many ways I could take this topic and share strategies and thoughts on it. So happy to kind of take it. Other directions if you have specific questions, you know, it might be a good topic for a future session, but for this, you know what I'm. What I want to point out is that a lot of the big launches that you hear about and a lot of the successful businesses and products, they happen because somebody built a network. They keep building relationships, and they're always learning new things. And so, you know, I get it. As an author, you probably thought you were going to write a book, hide behind your screen, and everything was going to happen without you having to come out from behind that screen. However, the true magic really lies in getting out there and attending your industry conferences. You know, going to some of those social networking events in your area and then traveling for other events. One event that I recommend everyone watching this come and come and attend is Author Nation. I am not affiliated or benefiting in any way from you coming to Vegas for that event. However, I will be there, so we'd get to meet. But I love, I love events like Author Nation as an opportunity for you to meet other authors, to attend sessions where you can learn, you know, meet vendors. Maybe you can solve a problem. Like, one of the vendors that I met at it was 20 books to 50k last year. It's now Author Nation. But I met, you know, somebody who has a software program for authors who have co authors, and they all split royalties and split expenses. So it makes it seamless because none of the platforms except Draft 2 Digital really support co authors and payments for that. So you might find a solution to some of these problems at these events. So, you know, attending some sort of an author event can be great, but then it makes sure. Making sure you're attending some of the other events, like if there's an event where you really want to be a speaker and you haven't been invited to speak yet, go as an attendee. Because you, if you do the right kind of networking and you have a book, you can potentially land yourself a spot on that stage for the next year. And even if you can't, it might allow you to submit a more informed and more appealing speaker submission so that you can be chosen next year to speak. But, you know, one of the things I always, I always go back to is, you know, think about Tim Ferriss. And when his first book came out, you know, it almost seemed like an overnight success. I mean, besides all the rejections before he finally got a publishing deal, you meet people who met him at, at different events. And he was networking with everyone for years before his book came out a couple years. And he was very strategically building relationships so that when. And, you know, providing value to other people so that when his book was coming out, he called in favors from everyone. And that is why the Four Hour Workweek sold so many copies at the beginning, because he spent a long time investing in that network and those relationships. And I think a lot of authors underestimate the power of doing that. And you miss out on fun, but you miss out on opportunities. And I've shared this before, but sometimes you don't get necessarily what you were hoping for when you, when you try to network, but sometimes you get a new friend, which can be even better. And sometimes you can find a new opportunity you never even thought of. I went to. I went to an event. I'm part of a group called Speakeasy. It's a mastermind type group here. It's actually got chapters all over the place. And I went to the march. Yeah, it was the march evening. They're always in at night. And I went to the march event and I met two really interesting people that night. And it's only a room of 14 people. There's not a lot of people. But one of the people I did, I went to his place and I did an interview with him for his podcast and his YouTube channel. Andrew Cartwright. He's got 565,000 subscribers on YouTube, so a couple more than me. And I met him at the event and he took one look at me and he goes, oh, my gosh, I love your YouTube channel. And so that was really cool. But then he said, you know what? I need you to come on my show. And. And so I was on his. I was on his podcast and I'll be on his YouTube as well. And so that just happened because I was showing up for a networking event. And then there was another conversation I had that I think is going to lead to me being on a. On a. On a show on NBC. Just like a short little segment, but still. And that was from one night of just going out and networking. So if you're sitting at home, I know the coach is comfy, but that isn't where you grow businesses as effectively as getting out there and meeting people and building relationships. So that's part of that book to business mindset that I think a lot of people overlook. They're thinking more about, okay, I need a website, I need business cards, I need those kind of things. And yet these are the steps that will get you your business growth a lot faster. Okay, I'm ready for questions, but while Angela's queuing up questions, I'm going to go ahead and give away our Streamyard. Our Streamyard. I got the Streamyard giveaway thing queued up, so I'm going to go ahead and put that on here. And if you haven't already said hello, now is your chance. Because this little tool here will choose you if you've said hello. Okay? And while that's waiting, our next Deep Dive is an author showcase. It is happening on Saturday at April. Saturday, April 20, at 10am Pacific Standard Time. Bill, that's hysterical. You're meant to win today, my friend. I hope, I hope you have a lottery ticket or something like that, because it is your day. All right, we're gonna draw again because Bill already wanted us to draw again for him. Watch him win again. I think it automatically pulls you out after you've won, Efren. All right, Efren, same thing as Bill. It feels like you've won everything. But you are welcome to choose a winner from the attendees today. Or I could just draw again. I'm gonna draw again for Bill from earlier and see if somebody else can win. Let's see. Music. N plus fold. Now, that's a name that I know we haven't seen before. So N plus fold or N positive. I'm not sure what you call yourself there. Congratulations. If you're still here. Yep. I think you just got here. I think you just got here and said hello. So your father prize choices are a copy of Self Publish and Succeed, Self Promote and Succeed, and a hashtag, no boring book mug or our oh so soft journal. I also have Rise of the Reader, I believe. Angela. I sent her a box of Rise of the Reader. So you are emailing angelaeambooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and what you'd like. If you are outside of the U.S. i believe we only will send you books just because of duties. Duty and all that fun stuff. So. So thank you, Bill. You can thank Bill for that one. That was re gifting Bill's prize from earlier. And there's still one more chance to win. So if you didn't win yet, it's okay. You can still say hello, and I will potentially be able to give you a prize again shortly. So, Angela, what questions do we have, if we have any. Oh, here we go. I see one. Okay, question one. Odiaka Fox. How can we sell Amazon KDP books directly from our own website? Okay, so Amazon KDP is not selling direct. That would just be putting a link to your website. And if you're doing that, I would recommend using a universal book link. And so a universal book link. Well, let me just add this to the stage here. I will go over here and show you right now what a universal book link is. So a universal book link looks like this. So this is my universal book link. When somebody goes to this book link, they can choose, you know, which of my four books they want to buy. And then when they click on it, they will be asked to choose their preferred format and then their preferred store. And so this is a really. If you are just looking for a link to sell your book on your website, getting a universal book Link I think is fantastic because it simplifies everything and it's very reader focused. To get it, you go to Draft to Digital. They have. There's other Universal booklink tools out there, but the one that we primarily use, I believe is the Universal booklink tour tool from Draft 2 Digital. It's free. I'm just gonna do digital. Pretty sure that is it right there. Yeah. Books to Read. So you just go to Bookstore Read, which is a draft to digital system and. And that will allow you to set it up for your book. So that's how I would sell it from your website, if you're okay with just going kdp. But selling direct from your website for me means not using the intermediary and just selling the ebook so that you get the contact information and you then are responsible for fulfillment. That's where I did the. The video on Story Origin. So using selling your ebook using Story Origin because they have a really slick system. But you can also do something similar using Book Funnel. So you can sell your. You can set your book up on Book Funnel. And Book Funnel is what I use to give away my audiobook for free. And actually when I give away my ebook version of Self Promote and To Succeed and Self Publish and Succeed, I also use Book Funnel for those. So there's different ways to set that up. So that's one way. And some people set it all up in Shopify. So you can also just set up an entire store in Shopify. But if you only have one ebook, I would probably just keep it simple and use a system like Story Origin or Book Funnel and sell it that way. So hopefully that answered your question, maybe even more detail than you hoped for. All right, so, oh, is Efren's giving his. His prize to Renee in Oregon, I believe is what he's saying. So Renee, congratulations, Efren has gifted you his prize. So thank you, Efren. Okay, scrolling on down and Angela. Okay, is there another question? Angela, I see you are commenting. If you already have a Draft 2 digital account, you can create claim a Books to Read account by using that same username and password that you use on Draft 2 digital. Yeah, thank you for that extra context. Oh, you did win something, I think, Renee. I'm not sure if that was the Renee that Efren gifted you the prize. So Renee might be saying to gift it to someone else, Efren. So go ahead and gift it to someone else. And is there any other questions? Oh, Odiacus Fox says, what if I don't have an ebook? I Only have a hard copy. I'd create an ebook if you have hard copies. So if you have a print book that you have created, then you should be able to, you know, take those original files that you had for the hardcover or the hard copy and get them converted into a. A reflowable file for your ebook distribution. So you might have to hire somebody to help you with that, depending on what. What format your book is in. But that's what I would do. You should create. I would create the ebook version as well. Okay, next question. I have a business. This is C. Williamson. I have a business, and I'm using the book I am finishing now to help promote the business. Do you have a place I can review book platforms with ebook and hard copy options? Like for distribution? Not sort of. It's not that easy to just say, here's a chart. Go. Here's where you go. Publish them. So I kind of need more context as to what you mean, because I'm not sure I could take this a lot of places with review book platforms with ebook and hard copy options. So do you mean for distribution? Do you mean like a publisher or like a services company, like Book Launchers? Because we will design it for ebook as well as print, and then we'll. We can support you through audiobook production as well. So I'm not sure if that's what you mean. We also help you with the upload and distribution setup. You know, you keep all rights and proceeds, and it's set up in your name, but we will help you do all of those pieces so that you don't have to figure out how to upload and how to have the right files and all of those things. We take care of all that for you because Efren has gifted the prize to Kerry Scharf. So, Carrie, congratulations. You can choose your prize, courtesy of Efren, who has won everything and some things twice. So he has kindly gifted you the prize for the day. So if you want to win it, you can email Angela@teamoklaunchers.com and I just saw this question come in, so I'll answer it. I don't know, Angela, if you have Q3 yet, but Pepper Fly says, are there any writers conferences in the Greater Toronto area that you're aware of? There is. I think it's even called the Greater Toronto or Toronto Writers association or Toronto Writers Conference. There's also something that I think CBC puts on that is not necessarily indie driven, it's more publisher driven, but there's a bit of an event that happens there. I can't remember. I was just going to quickly look up the Toronto one that I know of. There's one for sure in Toronto. Writers. There's Toronto Writers Collective. I haven't been to it, but there's. There is one annual event that happens in Toronto. Sorry, I'm just trying to. Trying to find it. I'm not finding it off the top of my head, but there's one that's put on by, like, libraries and publishers in the Toronto area, and it's usually fairly good, and I can't find it right now. It might be. It might be. I swear it was the Toronto Writers Workshop, but when I just googled that, I couldn't find them. It's a lot of traditional publishing. I don't know about one that's like, indie oriented per se, but, you know, there's a few good ones that do happen there. And that's the last question queued. Whew. All right, so April 20th is the next deep dive, so I do hope to see you all there. It will be at 10am Pacific Standard Time. It is streamed from here, so you can catch the replay, but live is where the fun is at. Speaking of that, I do have one more prize to give, so let me do that before I run away from you all. And like I said, Chad will be here for you in two weeks, same time, same place, because I will be attending the AI Bot summit, learning more AI things that I will come back and share with you. And I lost my giveaway screen. Where did it go? Who knew? Oh, here it's. It's disguised as the Universal book link screen right now. So that's where it went. Now let's go back on over here, and we're going to draw again and see who our final winner of the day is. I still think it should have music. Oh, Carrie. What a funny day. Carrie, if you don't mind. Obviously, Efron, she was meant to win, but I'm gonna draw again because you already won once today, so excellent choice, Efren. You. You also must have been seeing into the future and just knowing that it was her turn to win. And sith Lord Billy, if you're still here, congratulations. And if you're catching the last half on replay, also congratulations. You can let Angela know which prize you would like. All right. That was funny. What a funny day. Courtesy of. The opposite is true. Book bestseller among my friends. Yeah, I don't have it here. It's at my. It's at my home where I do Shoot, do my video shoots. But you can see the opposite is true in a lot of my latest video shoots because it's so thick. It is the perfect book to hold up all the other books on my shelf. Oh, here's a question. Is the business process ebook to course to coaching? Is that the best way to utilize a book from your business? There's no one way. So there is, you know, and I wouldn't necessarily say ebook to course, I would say book. I would never publish. I would never go to the effort these days to publish only an ebook. Because if you go to the effort to create a fantastic ebook and we're not just talking like a PDF that you're giving away for free, I'm talking about a book, you know. So like I just thought, I love this. These books just came in the mail today. I got Bruce Hassler's Moving to Tax Free. So anybody who wants to get their get tax free retirement income and income for your children that book. So that one just came and skidding into heaven. Suzanne Murray's Defying Death, divorce and Disease with unwavering faith. Fantastic, fantastic story. And I distracted myself with this. Oh yeah. So, so if you're going to all the effort to create a book, so you've gone, you know, you've got a decent amount of content like this isn't an enormous book. You can see how Suzanne's book is much smaller than say Bruce's book. But if you've gone to all the effort to create that and you've designed it, you might as well take the extra step and not a huge investment to create a print book. I would highly recommend an audiobook as well. But of course that is a more substantial investment than just creating the print. But regardless, you know what your book format from there you may some people go straight to course. Some people might do one on one coaching or consulting first. If you're brand new, so you've been in corporate or you've done something else and you've got expertise, but now you, and you've written a book but you've never actually taught this material before, I would highly recommend doing some one on one coaching and consulting. And the reason is as I mentioned in the early, you know, in the start of this is when you do one on one, you, there's so many benefits but one thing is you really nail down what gets results for people. So that's highly, highly valuable. The next thing is you'll get testimonials from people which you're going to need when you Go to sell a course. And then the third thing is you also get the language that people will use when they come to you. And you can also identify a problem that you can solve that people will find highly valuable. So the thing that you think you might be able to offer and sell may not be the thing people actually want. And, you know, this is an example from my early real estate investing days. But I, one of my, one of my failures, one of my lessons that I got to learn, I had partnered with a company that had a whole bunch of digital contracts and paperwork and resources for, you know, property management. And because I worked with real estate investors and I had started to sell courses and things like that to real estate investors, I thought this was a natural fit. And so I built an entire membership and it was only $49 a month, but I built this entire membership platform to support people with property management, you know, questions, problems, and all of these resources and documents and things like that. And so I put a lot into building this, only to discover two months in that I had only been able to attract three paid members into this. And the reality is nobody wanted this stuff. They needed it, but they didn't really want it. But what they wanted me, wanted to pay me for, was to learn how to raise money. Because I had had a lot of success in attracting capital into our real estate investing business. And so nobody wanted to hear about how to deal with tenant problems or find the right tenants or, you know, how to handle a tenant that is, you know, pre eviction. But they sure wanted to know how to raise money. And so I had to, I had to lick my wounds, refund those three people paying me $49 a month, shut down that membership. But my course that I created from there, that was hands down the most successful course we ever sold. You know, we created a JV partner program which was basically teaching people how to raise capital for their real estate business. What if I was not coaching people one on one, I might not have found out that that's what people really, really wanted to know from me. So coaching people one on one, if you haven't done it already, will help you figure out what the next step is for your business. If you're not already speaking. You know, finding yourself some meetup groups that can also start to open up the door to potentially workshops and online courses. You know, building an online course can be a natural fit, but I think a lot of people go, book, build the online course, and then they don't understand why the online course isn't selling. And online courses don't sell themselves for the. For the very rare human, an online course sitting on your website will sell itself. Most of us will have to do something to sell that course. And that can be having a start date, you know, having incentives for. For starting now, or running it with a live component. You know, those kind of things. But you can also create something where it doesn't quite hit the mark. Which is why I'm like, if you don't already know your people really well and what they're going to pay for, I would probably take a moment to spend some time with your ideal readers and figure out what it is that they are looking to solve. What problems are they looking to solve that they're willing to invest in the solution for? And then that might be coaching or consulting or a course. I hope that helps. I know it was a long answer. Okay, I think that's it. I think we got it all. It's not a paperweight. It's a fantastic. It's a fantastic book, Efren, but it's very useful for me in my videos, so you'll keep seeing it. All right, thank you so much for joining in. I hope to see you all On Saturday the 20th for our author, Deep Dive. And I hope you all come back and hang out with Chad in two weeks for his session on writing a memoir. All right, have a great week, everybody. Take care. Of.