Using Personal Interest Marketing to Sell Books | Author Spotlight with Dave Frost

Connecting your interests to your book is a great way to gain more support for your book and sell some extra copies. It's not something a lot of nonfiction authors do though. So if you're wondering what to do and what it might look like to connect your book to your non book interests, then this video with special guest Dave Frost is absolutely for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge, huge impact on your readers and done right will help you grow your brand, build your business and make you money. The best part? You keep all rights and royalties. One of the most memorable things I did with my book launch for the new Brand you was to have an event at the local CrossFit gym I'd been a member of for four years. We did an event called Burpees for Books and every book purchased caused me to do a certain number of burpees. We live streamed it for those that didn't come to the gym and we sold, I don't know, I think about 4:45 books and I did a few hundred burpees and fun was had by all. But that's just one example of how you compare your interests with your book promotions. One of our authors, Dave Frost, has done a lovely job with this and has kindly agreed to share his approach with you in this Author Spotlight video. Please meet Dave Frost, the author of Thriving and striving into youo 90s. His book is packed with tips that will help you with strength training, stamina activities, and really things that will help you party into your 90s, not just live. You will age slower and enjoy each day more, which is pretty cool. And Dave, as you might guess, is a vibrant fellow with a lot of interests. So I asked him to share what he's been doing to cross promote his book with his activities and interests.

Please meet Dave I am blessed to have been credentialed in my personal training as a master fitness trainer. I was credentialed with lots of continuing education from the National Federation of Professional Trainers and the folks there saw that I had done a lot of writing that had some depth, that had some credibility, was crap tested, that's current, relative, authoritative, accurate and published. And I was asked to be a contributing blog editor for the National Federation of Professional Trainers. I may also be able to write a continuing education course, a specialty course for trainers who want to work with older folks, whether they're able bodied or have medical or physical challenges. Most of us do.

So this is just one example of how he's leveraged the relationships he's built in his career into opportunities to promote the book. That's why he's labeled it as professional. He also mentioned that he put his books into the little community library boxes with a note saying he'd be happy to chat about how he can help them thrive into their older years or handle the challenges of the body aging. And while that's not necessarily specific to his interests, it's leveraging your neighborhood for finding opportunities. So I definitely wanted to mention that he gave that tip as well. But really, the tip here is to look at whatever memberships or associations you're a part of professionally. Chamber of commerce, local professional group, Toastmasters. Make a list. There are opportunities here that can lead to book promotions. Now here's an example of the way Dave has been able to leverage his personal relationships.

I'm honored to be a member of two pretty astounding alumni organizations, the US Naval Academy and the University of Southern California Fight on. So with the right hooks and links, alumni associations certainly can be a great repository of influencers. And Sarah would call them your book Army. I prefer as a retired Navy guy to call it my book Navy. On the personal front, I used well past 40 as a sponsor for my 45th college reunion. Unfortunately canceled like so many things because of COVID And yet the word is getting out that a classmate from the Great Class of 1975 is an author and gladly helping people thrive and strive. If I hear of a classmate or a relative of a classmate who has been stricken with COVID on the mend, hopefully I send a copy to say, hey, here's a little light reading for you. Or if you'd like to listen to Dave Frost rate hours, you can listen to the audiobook. So that's the personal side you have shared in your training for your book launchers. Authors. There's nothing like going to your clients. Honored to have book reviews from quite a number of my clients. But then you think about, and this is a mix of personal and professional. You think about your house of worship. You think about the volunteer organizations that you support, and for those outfits where you've donated your time and talent, then maybe, maybe people will get excited about joining the movement. The Kaboobma movement.

Wow. He packed a lot into that. And if you want more, I do have a video on Book army which he mentioned and who to ask to get reviews, which I'll link to at the end. But just like professional associations. Think about all the people and places you've been an active member or a participant or volunteer for many years and think about how there could be a hook or a reason for that group to support your book. As far as alumni associations go, an alum doing something cool is pretty much a reason for many of them to at least mention that you've written a book. But the added benefit of what they are doing being something that will apply to the base of alumni as a benefit to them learning. Well, that's a bonus. And his alumni are getting to the age where Dave's tips and messages will be of vital importance. So what can you offer your alumni group as a value add to your fellow alums? Of course, an alumni doing well is always cause for celebration, but if you can add value to their audience in some way, you may get a feature or a lot more attention. Now, one of the questions you've all asked me to ask our Book Launchers clients is for their feedback on what it's like to work with Book Launchers. So I asked Kaboomer Dave well, first.

Impressions are lasting impressions. I did pretty thorough market survey to try to find an outfit which would support this first time indie author in his journey to publish a specialty nonfiction book. I was blessed on I believe it was a February day to book some time with some lady named Julie Brod and have a great chat with her. Which made Book Launchers stand out from some of the other outfits which I had petitioned. I was so honored to have the three C's creative first content and I got two passes of content to tighten and make it more readable and pleasing to the listeners. So kudos to my two wonderful creative editors and then the copy team that turned it into from the manuscript into something that looks like what's behind you. Likewise, I was blessed to have a marvelous audio team recording team to get eight hours of Kaboomer onto what I think is world class recordings, a whole package of speaker sheets and bios, and of course, let's never forget the ops team with Jacqueline for keeping us on track. Any project like building a book is cost, scheduled performance, cost schedule performance. So the Book Launcher team was, I would say, darned extraordinary. Which is kind of nice because Kaboomer is about a little bit extra and I think Book Launchers offers a lot extra for people like me. Months into my journey, let's call it mid journey because we're not done yet. I would like to share that it's been an excellent adventure, possibly like Mr. Toad's wild ride because that's the way it is. I mean, who wants to launch a book around Father's Day in the middle of a Covid crisis? Well, I guess I did. But thanks to Book Launchers for making it all possible. Wonderful experience and reach out to me if you need more details. Thanks.

Woo hoo. It's been such a pleasure bringing Kaboomer to life with you Dave. Thank you so much. Now for my personal favorite question I like to ask all authors, what was the biggest surprise for you when you became an author?

It's wonderful to have folks say, well, I'm not a boomer but I bought a copy for my mom or dad, my aunt or uncle because they needed what you're talking about. That's rewarding.

He also mentioned that he just felt like writing the book was a eureka moment. He says we did it. That's pretty cool. And with his rowing background, I love how he refers repeatedly to the book launcher's team as his crew. So if you want to connect with Dave and join the movement, check him out and buy his book@wellpast40.com I'll link that below in the description. Thank you for sharing those marketing ideas with us, Dave. We appreciate you. And please show Dave that you appreciate him by smashing that thumbs up button. But maybe not so hard you hurt yourself. Right Stephen? And let's chat about the professional and personal groups you're a part of that could be great opportunities for you to promote your book. Let's share them below. We can start your list here and keep it going offline. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooks swag like our Noboring Books mug or our oh so Soft Journal. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Dave's not only been a fabulous client, he's been a student of my teachings. And two of the videos that will teach you what he talked about today are are right here. This one on who to Ask to get Amazon reviews or this one right here on your Book army are both really important to set yourself up for success doing cross promotions like Dave has. Both are fabulous. And selfishly, I just want to hang out with you a little longer so I do hope you choose one of them because I'll be waiting over there for you.