Uncovering the Mysteries of Author Ownership: Who Really Holds Your E-Book Rights?

Foreign hello and Happy Tuesday. We have a lot to get into today. We're going to be talking about ebook rights. Do you own the rights to your ebook? And for some folks, the answers may surprise you. And also related, but not entirely related to that, I want to touch on the Taylor Swift decision to self publish and all the commentary that's been going on around that. So say hello. I see the Green Wizard, Ron Neitzel is in the house. Ron, great to see you. As you are watching the replay or joining in live, do say hello. And of course, when you say hello and you're live or posting the day a video is released, you do get entered to win a prize. And we'll be giving those prizes away halfway through and at the end. So definitely say hello like Kevin has also done. Hello, Kevin Hall. And I'm just going to dive right in because I actually have a lot to cover. So if you have questions as I'm going through this, feel free to post them. Angela is also here and she will be keeping track of your questions so that we can make sure that we get through those as well. And I'm going to start with something that isn't exactly related to rights, but it sort of is. And it's not bigger than rights. But I want to warn you about companies that don't give you access to your sales data. So you know, for example, when you work with a hybrid company or some other kind of self publishing company that isn't book launchers, sometimes they don't give you, I mean, sometimes they don't give you your source files, which is a whole different issue. But the issue that's come up twice just this week is not having access to your sales data. So you don't really have control over what's going on with your book. And so if you are in the stages where you're looking for a company and you know you're fiction, so you can't work with book launchers or for some unknown reason you've decided not to work with book launchers on your nonfiction book. I suggest you look at this really carefully and request, slash, demand that you only work with said company if you are going to have access to your sales dashboard. Not a report that they have control over, but immediate access and ability to log in somewhere and see how many books are selling. It's your book, right? That's why I'm talking to, talking about this in relation to ebook rights. It is your book. But if you don't have real time access to this data, you are In a bit of a pickle. And like I said, we've had two clients just this week who are in pickles. One of them has put his book marketing on hold because he's working with Balboa, who by the way, just do a search for Balboa in any watchdog list and you will see them as high on the list of many companies or sorry, of many watchdog lists as a company to watch out for. And you know, his, his situation is not uncommon and is part of the reason why they are on this watchdog list. But he's months into working with, months into law being launched and he was trying to work with us on the book marketing, but he has zero information and has had no response from them in months to help him get clarity on how many books he's selling. So you don't want to be investing in a marketing service like ours or paying for ads or doing your own marketing if you can't get data back because you won't know did that work to sell books? And you know, even bigger than that for some of these companies is if you don't know how many books are selling, you don't know how much money they're supposed to pay you. So you know, that becomes a bigger issue when the da, when it's not only the dashboard, but it's the distribution and the money is going from those accounts into the account of the company and now the company has to distribute it to you. And if there isn't clarity as to how much money has flowed to this entity, then there's no clarity as to how much money is supposed to flow to you, which means you don't know how much to reinvest or that whether that investment that you've made has actually paid off. So there's a lot of challenges with that. So I, I, you know, I don't know, I don't, I won't beg you. Look, it's your book. But I would like to advise you to make sure that you are going to have real time data as to what is, what is selling as far as your book, how many ebooks are selling, how many physical books are selling, how many audiobooks are selling. And if you're just going to be getting a report, you know, that is not going to, that's not really going to give you the information that you need to make better decisions. So again, I'm not going to emphasize, I'm not going to harp on this too much. But you know, this also happened with a client who has access to their ebook data. But because of the path that they've taken, they, you know, they didn't work with us. They've come to us just for marketing support again. And, and there's a few other things that we're doing for them. But they're, they can access their KDP information, they have that. But their physical book distribution has happened through kind of a lack of a better word, a publishing arm. So it is still self published, but this company kind of maintains a catalog that they, you know, distribute through different bookstores and things like that. The challenge is the only data she gets is the KDP data. So she is unable to make really great decisions and say that this is working and this isn't working. You know, she also only gets paid a very tiny amount per physical book sold. So it's very difficult from a marketing perspective. But the big thing here is they still own the rights. Right? And that is one thing to understand the difference. And it's going to come up a couple times today as we're talking about ebook rights. They still own the rights to their book, but they don't have full control. And one of the things that I think is the appeal of self publishing is to have both, to have both the rights to my book and my intellectual property, but also have the control over it. And so when you're choosing what path you take on this journey, I highly recommend that you make sure that you have both because that is really one of the core advantages of being a self published author. I'm going to talk about that more in relation to Taylor Swift here in a second. And again, this is not more important than rights because owning your rights and being able to repurpose it and sell it, sell publishing rights to international markets if you want, turn it into, you know, a course and have, if somebody's interested in turning it into something on a screen or in an app, you have the ability to negotiate those things because you do have full rights. But control is something to take really seriously. And I, I am again emphasizing this because I actually had a call with somebody who was interested in working with us and I thought he was going to work with us, but in the end he came back to me and he said, well, you know what, I'm going to work with this hybrid company because I can't be bothered to have the worry over my accounts after my service is done with you. And I mean, he's obviously not our ideal client because he's somebody who really just wants to passively put the book into the world and see what happens. And you know, our ideal client is somebody who's wanting to have an impact and make an income through and around their book. But I was a little stunned at this because, you know, again, he's decided to go with a hybrid company that is going to control that aspect and so he will not have transparency. But that is his preference in this situation because he wishes to essentially passively publish and not have to worry about any of those details. So he's going to turn them over to somebody else. You know, I hope that he never wants to do anything actively with his book in the future. Okay, but speaking of this, so do you, do you know who really does understand control and that and the power of owning your IP and being in full control of all aspects of the process? And that is Taylor Swift. And I bring this up because you may or may not know, I didn't know until my team mentioned it last week. But she has decided to self publish and distribute her book exclusively through Target. At least in the beginning, like with some of her albums. I think she starts off and distributes exclusive through Target and then expands it out after that may be what she does with her book as well. But a lot of I've seen a lot of posts from ghostwriters and other kind of self publishing services companies basically saying like, hurrah, this is validating the power of self publishing. And, and because Taylor Swift is doing it, you know, it makes sense for you too. And I kind of laugh at that because as much as hopefully, you know, I'm a massive, massive fan and advocate for self publishing. Comparing all self publishing authors to Taylor Swift and her self publishing choice as now, it's good enough for her, so it's good enough for you. That's a load of crap. Because Taylor Swift, what she's doing compared to what the average independent author is doing to self publish, that's not comparing apples to apples. That's like comparing a raisin to a watermelon. Sorry I'm laughing, but it makes me smile when people are, you know, wave the, wave the self publishing flag over celebrity choices like this. But I do want to highlight a couple of things because I think it is important, especially as we talk about ebook rights and rights and control there. The decision is worth paying attention to, but not for the reason that if self publishing is good enough for her, it's good enough for you. But I think it's important to pay attention because Taylor Swift, you know, whether you are a fan or not, I'm kind of neutral you know, if it's on the radio, I'm not going to turn the radio off. But, you know, I'm certainly not a fan. I wouldn't be classified as a swiftie. But I think she's incredibly smart and savvy and I think she has built a powerhouse of a business with her intellectual property and her creative assets. And this is no different. And so paying attention to what smart people do is smart business. And what she does with everything, not just her book, is she has creative control. And by self publishing, Swift retains complete creative control over the content, the design, the presentation. And this allows her to ensure that that final product is perfectly aligned with her vision and of course, her brand, which is an incredibly powerful and strong brand. She's also going to get a whole lot more money. Self publishing enables her to keep a significantly larger portion of the book's sales revenue compared to any traditional publishing deal that she might have got. And of course, she would have been able to negotiate a killer deal, but this will still be far, far more lucrative for her. And this is especially true for anybody to pay attention to who has a significant fan base, because you, when you have an audience of fans, people who can't wait for whatever it is you're about to create, you will make more money self publishing, generally speaking, because you have that immediate funnel and you're going to be able to get more per thing sold. That doesn't mean there aren't some advantages to going a traditional route. But you know, I know, I know a lot of people who went traditional because they, and they got decent deals because they had a good fan base and they wish, not wish, that's not, that's not fair. The statement is, more accurately, don't do the math on what you would have made if you sold those books to your audience yourself without having the publisher, because it's exponentially different. And when you have an existing audience that's going to buy your book and you know they're going to spend support you, you know, it can be a much stronger pathway to self publish, which is, you know, an important thing is she has that direct fan engagement. So she can maintain that. She, and she does actively maintain that direct connection, which is what we talk about all the time, building and maintaining your author platform. But she also knows what will be kind of the personal and authentic feel of what she does that her fans are going to want. She's also able to leverage an existing partnership, which is something I highly recommend you do. Maybe you don't have a partnership with Target, but you might have a partnership with a local organization or your alumni or the university or where you work or where you used to work. And that when you find that partnership and kind of focus on that as a distribution or promotional angle, that can be really, really powerful. Now, you know, she's distributing through Target and that's a long established relationship that she has with that retailer. And she'll probably offer some exclusive versions of her book like she has of her album with them. But, you know, look at your own world and see what you have as a trusted and efficient distribution channel. And then of course, the smart thing that Taylor Swift does with everything is brand extensions. So she's not just making money from her music, right? She has extended this into everything and now she's gone into the literary world and she's doing it in her own way and she's just, she's just continuously looking at her creative property and her intellectual property and what she's creating and how she can keep adding to the assets and the income streams. But why I say this is different, okay? So that, those are reasons why I would pay attention to what she's doing and in my own little fishbowl figure out how can I replicate what, what she's doing on a grander scale. Because again, she's smart and she does things in a really, really calculated, careful, intelligent way. But it's not the same. It is not the same as the average self publishing author because a, she has a massive, massive dedicated fan base that are eager to purchase whatever she's going to sell. I mean, yes, it's a book. There's going to be a lot of people who want to buy the book. But it doesn't matter what she's selling, right? Whatever she's selling. $50 t shirt. Yeah, people are buying it, right? They're lining up down the street to buy whatever it is she's selling. So she has a very, not only established audience, but engaged and almost rabid audience that can't wait to grab whatever she is handing out or selling. She also has financial resources and this is enormous. She has capital to invest in high quality production and massive marketing. She can tag it in with all of the other marketing efforts. And this is something most indie authors do not have, which is why I call it Raisins to Watermelons. But also, you know, she's got that distribution right. She is not just relying on the channels that we rely on as authors. She's got a massive distribution agreement with Target that provides a level of visibility and Reach that, you know, we just can't get as self published authors. And that brand power is not to be anything underestimated. So she's got that massive celebrity status that we don't have as everyday authors. And so while technically she's self publishing, I mean really, she's a global superstar. That sets her apart from typical self publishing. She's got a massive team, she's got financial resources, she's got the reach, she's got the distribution and the massively engaged fan. So that's why I don't think it's the same. But paying attention to what smart people do, I think that's smart business as an author. All right, so I'm going to get into some points on ebook rights in a sec, but I kind of want to stop and just see what you guys are talking about over there. I know some of you are talking about Author Nation and Rave. I don't know if anybody here is in Las Vegas, but if you are and you want to come out to the signing or not signing the book smoke signing, book sale and signing on Friday, just let us know. I have free, I have a link for you to come for free. You don't have to pay. If you go to the website. There's I think it's like a 25 ticket, but we can get you in for free. So if you are in Vegas on Friday of next week, that's November 15th, you can come to rave and myself, I know Efren will be there. We have, I think we have a book launchers booth. So we have a nice big chunky booth or chunky as my son likes to call things. He calls like sees a big fat cat, he's like, oh, look at that chonky cat. Anyways, we have a nice big booth where we're going to have going to have six or seven book lectures, authors signing and then Efren and Linda, two of our clients as well. They are in their own little table off to the side and so they'll be there as well. So come on out if you are in or around Las Vegas and just shoot us an email if you need a link to get a ticket. But lots of people here so it's good to see you. Dash Cam, I already said hi to Ron. Efren's here. Hey Amy. Scotland Scorpion. Stella is in the house as well and Jack is here. Hello Jack. Great to see you. And oh Ron, you're so sweet. I'm gonna put this on the screen. Bring your book to Book Launchers and I'll sing praises even five years after publishing. It's the only way to go. Thanks, Ron. It's always great to see you here. And Efren says he cannot sing and dance. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why that's relevant, but there you go, folks. Efren cannot sing or dance, but he can write. And he can write a gigantic book that everyone should check out. The opposite is true. And do I still have your book here? Oh, yes, I do. Here is the green wizard in the house. Here you go. If you want to grow anything, this is your guide. Green Wizard's guide. So there we go. We got Ron's book here, too. All right, let's see. Take lots of pictures. I'm not allowed out without supervision, so we won't see Ron at Author Nation. All right, so I am going to. Before I go back over to do ebook rights, let's do the prize. The prizes for our Tuesday and Friday posts. So every Tuesday and Friday, a new video comes out. And if you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous hashtag, no boring book swag, which includes our beautiful oh so soft journal, which, I don't know what's on it, our oh so soft journal, and also our hashtag no boring books mug like this, which is a fabulous mug. I've been told. Hot chocolate, coffee, tea, all tastes better in that mug. And let's just pop onto the stage here. And we're using a little bit of a different little ring here today. I changed it up just for fun. And I put everybody's names in there who commented on the Tuesday Friday videos. And let's see. See who it pulls up. And there's more names on the side here. It's not just those. KJ ZR2KO. Is that Kevin Hall? And it's just coming up weird. I don't know. Is that you, Kevin? And now I'm going to remove all instances because you can only win once today. And let's see who is our next winner. There's actually a sound, but I don't think you guys can hear it. This one actually has, like a ticker sound. And Darla, Darla, you have won the other prize. So what you need to do is email Team T A M T E a m book launchers.com and let. Oh, that's KJ. Okay. Not you. Yeah, KJ. Sorry, I didn't know who's who. Oh, did my screen just go out? Oh, that's weird. It's I got a black screen for a minute. I thought that was very strange. I've never seen that before. Angela says it's okay. Okay, so where was I? Oh, yeah, teamoklaunchers.com that's Angela. And let her know which of the prizes you can have self publish and succeed. You can have self promote and succeed. You can have the oh so soft journal or our hashtag, no boring books mug as long as you are in the United States. We. We don't ship the mugs overseas. And yeah, let her know which prize and where to mail it because she does not know where you live, so she needs your address so she knows where to mail it. All right, thanks, Efren. I don't know why that did not work. That was very strange or why that went black. But we're good now, so all good. All right, let me go back, Let me go back to my notes and let's talk about ebook rights, because this is something that comes up a lot and I want to make sure that everybody is clear. So first of all, I think it's important to just understand that as soon as you create your book in a tangible form, so you take it out of your brain and you put it on paper, whether you hand write it or you type it or even, I think if you talk it and turn it into a voice note, it's a tangible form. And even if you have not published it, you have the copyright to it. However, registration with the U.S. copyright Office does provide additional legal protections, but it's not required. So you have copyright ownership whether you have filed or not filed. Okay, so that's important to know. But in the US in particular, I highly recommend you file for a multitude of reasons. You know, again, you probably never want to litigate if somebody does does infringe on your copyright. But even just one of the things we, we do now is we get our clients to file early on, because when we are uploading the book to KDP in particular, we have found the need to provide that copyright letter from, from the copyright office to verify that they own the rights to their manuscript. So it can be very helpful to have quick resolution of any issues that come up through kdp because they are cracking down and really, really making sure that people own what they are posting. And so we've had an increase in need for those letters. But, you know, again, if you want to protect yourself, that is an extra step to take. It just helps establish your ownership and, and just there's an outline of permitted uses. But the copyright this is another thing that does come up. The copyright for your ebook and basically all works lasts for your lifetime plus 70 years in most countries. It's not universal, but in most countries that is the, the standard for the copyright. After that it, it becomes something that can be used by other people. Now when you publish on platforms like Amazon kdp, this is where people get confused. They you're giving them distribution rights onto the, so you're giving that platform distribution lights. You're not transferring copyright ownership, you remain the copyright holder in that case. Now where it gets confusing is if you enroll in KDP select, you are not allowed to sell, giveaway, distribute or do anything with that ebook outside of Amazon. So you can't give it away on your website. You can't sell it direct to your audience. You can only distribute it through Amazon kdp. That doesn't mean they own the rights to it. You're giving them exclusive digital distribution rights. And this is for a 90 day period. So during that 90 day period you can't distribute it elsewhere. If you cancel after that, then you can start distributing it somewhere else. But again, they do not own your content. They have distribution rights. And in that case of going in KDP select, they have exclusive rights. All right, when you sign a contract with a publisher, pay close attention. So this is outside of self publishing, but I want to point it out because I mentioned it recently with audiobooks. You know, I think with audiobooks I would pay really close attention to any clauses you sign because they might extend the audiobook rights and do AI, a voice clone, or maybe not even a voice clone. They may just do straight up AI narration for it. You may or may not be okay with that. But when it comes to ebook rights, they are usually licensed as part of the primary rights in a publishing contract. So this goes alongside with your print rights. And just be careful about overly broad rights. If you don't have a lawyer or an agent on your side kind of pouring through every detail of these contracts. Just watch out for really broad terms here. And, and, and if you can, I mean keep as many rights as you possibly can in your contract, you may not have enough platform, you may not have enough, you know, on your side to negotiate with. But my favorite example of why and how this can matter comes. You know, the biggest example possible was J.K. rowling and the Harry Potter series because rights retention made, made her a ton of money because they retained the digital publishing rights for the Harry Potter books. And as a result she, of course she was able to launch Pottermore where she sold ebooks direct to consumers and made a bucket of money. And I think through Pottermore she was also able to not only, I mean, demonstrate the massive profitability of digital rights, but I think she then was able to enhance her brand by doing some of the brand extensions that came off of it. And she owned all of it under Pottermore because the publishers only had print rights. So all of the characters and all of the other kind of things that came as offshoots are owned under her. Potter More not under the publisher. Because if the publisher owns really broad rights on your book, beyond ebooks, but just broad rights, you know, if somebody wants to turn it into a movie and then license action figures and posters and other things, that often all falls under the publisher. So it's more applicable to fiction authors than nonfiction. But, you know, I have, I met somebody at Author Nation. Well, it wasn't Author Nation. It was 20 books to 50k a few years ago. And I remember her talking about how she had in an, in a deal for an app, she had given away too many rights. Like she just signed a pretty blanket contract to get this app deal done and she missed out on movie deal. And I don't know what, I don't know actually know what happened with this movie deal negotiation that that came in. But the app basically had bought all rights in this contract to basically every form that wasn't ebook or print book, which she retained the rights to. So you got to be careful what you sign. One thing is that is always true is that once you self publish an ebook, you, you do lose what's called first publication. Right. Which could make it difficult to traditionally publish. So if that is your bigger picture goal and it's really, really important to you, you know, that is something that does happen when you publish an ebook. But you know, there's, there's ways publishers, if they really want your book, that they'll go around it. But there is something called first publication rights that you know goes away when you do publish your ebook. Now one other thing I want to touch on and then we'll take questions. So if you have questions, you can go ahead and put it in the box. I'm not a lawyer, so please don't ask me questions that require legal expertise. But, and Angela has some links that she can drop in there as far as, like, where to file for copyrights and an article that I found on Publish Drive about, you know, Taylor Swift, if you want to learn more about her decision. It was, it was an interesting article that I thought Published Drive did a good job on it. But one question people do get confused about is where they can publish their ebook and what ISBN they need. So you do need a separate ISBN for every format, but not every distribution channel. So your ebook should have its own ISBN as your print book should have its own ISBN, and your audiobook should have its own ISBN. And if you have a hardcover and a soft cover, each format needs its own ISBN. So in that scenario that you have a soft cover, a hardcover, an ebook, and an audiobook, you need four ISBNs. Now, you might publish that ebook as an example on, you know, Publish Drive or draft to digital and KDP. You do not need two separate ISBNs. You should be using the same ISBN for both of those channels. I know it gets funky and confusing, but I just wanted you to kind of know. And you can sell your ebook on multiple platforms simultaneously, again, with a few important considerations being that you're not exclusive with KDP select, but you can, you know, if you want, if you want to, you can upload to kdp, Kobo and Apple, and all at the same time, or you can publish with an aggregator like PublishDrive or not authors Republic. I mean, that's an aggregator for audiobooks, but Draft two Digital and Publish Drive will allow you to reach a lot of these places by uploading to one place. We typically still set up with KDP and an aggregator, KDP being for the Amazon distribution piece, the Kindle piece, and then the aggregator for access to everywhere else. But again, if you use KDP select, you are exclusive to Amazon for 90 days until you cancel and you cannot distribute that e book elsewhere. Okay. There's a lot of details that I threw at you pretty quickly, so if you have questions, let me know. But yeah. So, Angela, is there any questions? Otherwise, we also have prizes for today. So what I'll do while Angela is bringing up any questions, I will pop in and I will draw from today's comments and then we'll do one more at the end. So if you haven't said hello yet, it's still. You still have time to get your name in to today's draw. But let me. Wow, Angela's looking for any questions. I will go ahead and pull up our giveaway tool for today. And it's all working again. I do not know why it did not work before Angela, but we are working again. So I don't have to drag you in and surprise you, because if you guys were here a couple weeks ago, Angela had to come on and do all these draws. Because for some reason, Let me see. For some reason, it was not working. So here. Where are we ebook writes? Here we go. Okay, 11 people have said hello today, so there's a lot of you lurking. But of those 11, let's see who our fabulous winner is today for Self publish and succeed. Self promote and succeed. Our mug or our. Our journal. So, Dash Cam. Dash Cam, congratulations. I think you are a new winner unless you have a new username. But you are our first winner today. So email AngelaEMook launchers.com and let her know what you want and where to send it. So congratulations and thank you for being here. All right, do we have any. Here we go. Oh, will the copyright go to a grandchild? So that gets into a state law. And so depending on how you set your book up in your estate, then yes. And that is something that we see being an issue when we're trying to track down, you know, copyright permissions for certain things. And that's more with images and things like that. But yes, it goes. It typically would go through an estate, but, you know, that is definitely beyond my expertise. I have everything set up inside of an estate myself. But. And I think there's actually a new book out by Craig Martel. I haven't read it yet, but I bought it. And I think he covers a lot of these kind of details for authors to set up and kind of understand. So if you just want to search Craig Martel, actually Angela might be able to search and see. Yeah, so Angela just said, I read that a person should add the grandchild in a will to receive the copyright. That's what I mean by estate, like setting it up in your estate or wills and all that kind of thing. So, yeah, so the book by Craig Martell, I think is. Is probably going to be a really good resource for this. I don't know if it's on Amazon or not, Angela, if you can find it, but maybe we drop a link in here if you find Craig Martel's book. Any other questions? And yay. Dash Cam says it's a blessed day and you're welcome. Thank you for being here. No other questions. Okay, I'm going to do the other draw. And I mean, I never mind having extra time in my day, but if other people have questions, go ahead. Terry said hello. Terry was lurking. All right, let me go ahead and share my screen again. And if you do have a question that's come up while I'm doing this final draw, then you can still post it. Otherwise, I'll give you A few heads up on a couple things dates. Our next here we go. Our next Deep Dive training is going to be fantastic. We have a special guest coming in. She is the founder co founder of Speaker Slam which is a huge event that happens in Toronto. They have sub events and they are about to have their Grand Slam event on Saturday. And Terry app look hey, it pays to lurk and then say hello. What do you know. Congratulations. So let Angela know@teams.com what prize you would like and where to send it. So yeah, so on November 16th right here on YouTube we are doing our our November Deep dive. It's happening at 10am Pacific and it is Rena Rovinelli from Speaker Slam. She's going to be talking about becoming an award winning speaker and they have a great program for speakers. They have these fantastic events and like I said and so yeah, she couldn't find the Craig Martel book. So I don't know, I think it might have just been pre release and he is launching it and sharing it at Author Nation this week. So it'll probably be available later. So yeah, sorry I have multiple thoughts happening all at once. So let me get organized for you. So November 16th is the deep dive at 10am it's happening here on YouTube. But also if you want to make sure you've got our calendar and you want to be a part of our new community so talking about self publishing, come on over to school. You can go to book launchers.com school and it's s K O O L. Angela will drop the link in here for you. We have, it's a free community and it's only really for up to marketing. When we get to marketing questions, we have a paid group where we're supporting authors through paid marketing questions. It's $150 a month to join that and we have office hours, training and a community place where we're answering questions like hey we, what's going on with my author page? Does this look right? Can I improve it? We had a question yesterday about, you know, what do I say to this big author that I'm now connected to to you know, create a partnership. You know, I have one shot at this. What do I say? So we're answering questions like that and supporting authors in that group for marketing. But this other one has a direct calendar so you can see what's going on in Book Launchers. It has training that you can unlock by participating in the forum. And and we have different people on the Book Launchers team who are popping in every Day to answer questions, provide tips and resources. And over the next six months, we'll be uploading more and more content into the classroom for you to enjoy. So you can go ahead and grab that link here. Now, let's see here. I saw, I saw one question come in, so I'll grab this one. Angela, what are your thoughts on AI covers? Is there a good resource for cover cover artists? Non AI. So let me see, how do I collect my thoughts on this? We use AI to create some of the images that go into a cover. So what our lead designer does is so somebody has a very specific question or not question request of what they want on their cover. She might go and find stock art, but it never quite gets there. So she generates it using. She uses mid journey. So she'll generate it and then manipulate it in Adobe to get it to what she wants. But she's still designing the COVID herself. So we're not going to an AI tool and going, hey, design this cover. I don't. I've yet to see a cover solely generated by AI that I think is really great for nonfiction. I think in the fiction world, AI kind of, a lot of fiction kind of looks like AI looked like AI before. But in nonfiction, I feel like it's a big reach. And a lot of nonfiction cover comes down to great font choices. I mean, I mean, I just picked up this, this book just arrived. One of our clients, Vince Peeler, the Intelligent Pyramid. A lot of this cover is, you know, you're. It's the font, it's the colors of the font. And AI is terrible with fonts in images. You know, we. I just posted on Facebook and LinkedIn, if anybody follows me there, I posted, I had, I had chat GPT generate an image. You know, I basically said, based on our conversations, generate an image of what you think my life looks like. And it was, it was frequently accurate. I am surrounded. I don't know if you guys can see me move this way. Oops. This way. I don't know. There's a whole stack of books I can't show you. They're like underneath there, there's a stack of books to my right. There's four bookshelves behind me. And this is just one of my offices. So I have books everywhere. So it was very accurate. But the words, it doesn't do text very well. So, yeah, I think we'll get there to a point. But in today's day and age, I don't think we're quite at the point where AI covers are good. Enough. Your cover is vital to the success of your book. Now, let's see, for people outside the US can they get ISBNs from the US or should they get them from your own country? You should. I don't know the answer to this. For every country I could speak to Canada, you can get the ISBN for free. And it's an international standard book number. I think that's what it stands for. I don't know. Anyways, and you can get it for free. And it's going to be the same all over the world because it's an international number. So you might have a government subsidy program that subsidizes it like you do in Canada. You can only get it if you are a Canadian resident. And if you're in Canada, so from your country, there might be a source. If not, you can probably buy it from Bowker B O W K. Or actually you go to my identifiers.com or.ca whatever or not ca.org I don't know what the exact. It's my identifiers. Angela can probably find it and drop it because she's a whiz at searching all things in seconds. But, you know, you buy your ice bands from there and I believe you can get them as an international person. But I would check into your local agencies first and see if you can't get it for a lower price than what you pay in the U.S. let's see. I see the next question while Angela's searching. So do you offer editing on that site? Oh, that's a group. So what I was offering is a community. It's a free community. The one that's book launchers.com school as our full service for nonfiction authors, we have editing. But you can't just hire us for. For just an edit because we're fully integrated. So when we're editing your book, we're also meeting with you about your social media and your website. We're talking to you about launch strategy. We're doing keyword category pricing research. We're brainstorming titles and subtitles. So we don't just do editing. If you want just editing, I would head on over to Urban Writers. And we do have an affiliate relationship with them with their platform. So Angela can drop that link here. Book launchers.com forward slash. I think Urban Writer is our affiliate link. But you can check it out there. But there they have the option or the ability there to check out that check out and see what reviews and find the right editor for your project. If you just want an editor. But yeah, the school is totally free and it's a community to get you support and you know, to ask a question like, hey, I'm about to hire an editor. Should I hire this editor or this editor? You know, I find a lot of people pay for an editor knowing their book needs editing, but they get the wrong editor and they hire. What often happens is they hire a copy editor who goes through for sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and word choice when they really needed a content editor. Because the content editor is going to go through it for structure, flow, readability, credibility, like making that book a better read before somebody goes in and makes it grammatically correct. It's really important to have one and then the other. And it's a rare editor that can do a great job of both. And I say that because they're two very different skill sets. What we find is the person who is a phenomenal content editor tends to be somebody who has a journalist background or a ghostwriter background because they go through and they kind of sniff out the things that are weak or that could be better or that don't quote, unquote, smell. Right. And. And they're the ones that will make the book better versus a great copy editor is phenomenal at capturing a voice and making it grammatically correct and following rules. Those are not the same people in most cases. And a book really, really needs both to be a great book. All right, all right, we got the urban writers link there and I think that's it. And Susan was guilty of lurking, busy working on editions of a series, but loving the content. Content as always. So thank you. And Bell says looking forward to the speaking video. Come on out if you can on the when it's live, Bell, because you'll be able to ask Reena questions and join in live. And it's a two hour deep dive, so we have prizes and. And Angela's normally there, but she will be on holidays that day, so it'll be just me. But then Angela will send you the prizes when you win. All right, so I'm just reading all the last comments to see and I think that's it. So thank you everybody for being here today. And if you're watching on the replay, let me know what your favorite part of today was and I'll see you back here in two weeks. We're going to talk about self publishing and what it looks like in 2025. Can't wait to see you here for that and for the deep dive on the 16th. All right, and if you're coming to Author Nation, make sure you come by. I'll be at the vendor table and the Friday book signing, and I'm speaking Tuesday at, I don't know, 4:15pm so come on out. And make sure you say hello to me, to Efren, to anybody else that is waving the book launchers flag. All right, thanks, everybody. Take care.