Why “Just Publishing the Book” Is the Most Expensive Mistake Authors Make

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Hello, Happy Tuesday. We're gonna dive right in. Most authors, or many of them, think that getting the book published is the hard part. Well, actually, it kind of depends where you are in the process, because if you haven't written the book yet, getting it written probably feels like the hardest part. And a lot of authors come to us and, and say, okay, the book's written. It should be published next month. Right? So it does depend on where you are in the process. But once it's finished writing, a lot of people think the next goal is get it published. And when you hit that point, you think that getting it published is the hardest part. And then, of course, once you get it published, you think, now marketing it is the hardest part. Well, the publishing part isn't actually the most difficult part. There can be glitches, and, you know, there's sometimes things you have to figure out. But honestly, it's not even specifically the marketing, but it is that piece that comes after the book has been published that really, really hit as to whether the whole process was worth it or not. And so today's topic is a little spin on something that I share quite often about building around a book. But we're going to talk about why publishing the book and focusing on just getting the book published is the most expensive mistake that an author can make and how smart authors avoid making that mistake. Now, I know lots of people have arrived, and hopefully, you know, but I am Julie the book broad. I'm founder of Book Launchers, and of course, your host here at Book Launchers tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things related to writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book. And we also are the creators of Author Launch Kit, which is a fantastic book marketing tool that will help you with a lot of the things we're going to talk about today when it comes to finding your influencers, finding your podcasters, making sure that you've created great content that will help you get out there in the world. All right, I see lots of people are here. So let's say hello. We've got Bruce in the house. Ancient Egypt in the Bible. Gary Anderson, I. Let's see. Bruce is talking. Eric is here, too, and Kevin hall and Renee. Welcome, welcome. And then Jennifer is here, too. And you can't see her, but I can. Angela is here as well, behind the scenes. And Amy from Wisconsin. And let's see. I thought I saw somebody. I'm sitting outside on the computer when it's 82 degrees outside. Bruce, I think you're going to make Some people jealous, talking like that. I'm thrilled. We've been having amazing weather here in Las Vegas, too. No complaints from me whatsoever. It has been warm and sunny. I love it. All right, and. And Angela's complaining that it's cold in Miami. Pretty sure nobody's gonna feel sorry for you, Angela in Miami. All right, so let's just dive right into it, shall we? Let's just see. Where did my. Where did my notes go? Go somewhere. I have notes. All right, so success is a system. And I think that when we start to really think about it and hopefully. Sorry, somebody's walking past my hall in front of me talking on the phone. It's a little distracting. I know you guys can't see him. Maybe you can hear him. But, yeah, I'm hopeful he sits down soon because pacing in front of me is distracting me. So if you see my eyes going like this, it's me watching this guy pacing in. In front of my office. All right, so publishing answers. Where can readers find and buy the book? So when you're thinking, okay, I gotta get the book published, you're thinking, where am I going to put this book so readers can find and buy the book? When we start thinking about success and what we're building around the book, we think about first, who's the book for and how is that reader going to change after they read it? That's the outcome of the outcome that we talk about. When you're creating that positioning h for your book. So who's the book for? And how is their life going to change after they read this book? Then you want to think about, how does this book enter conversations? When is somebody recommending you or your book to somebody? Because you want to think about that, right? And, you know, you're too general. This is something, you know, I. If, if you know me, I pick on leadership books all the time because leadership books can be really hard to sell because you. You are up against people who have been in and talking about leadership for decades. I mean, the list of people who speak about leadership that people can name or know who their names are is huge. So how do you and your book get recommended? Right. So how does it enter the conversation? Well, especially in leadership, but in a lot of things, it's because it's a very specific problem for a very specific. Or. Sorry, it's the answer to a very specific problem for a very specific person. So think about that. Right? So success, answers versus publishing is where and how do I find my reader so they can buy it? This Is success really thinks about how is the reader's life going to change as a result of this? And if you can answer that, you know your reader really well, how does it enter conversations like, when does somebody recommend you in your book? And the big one, what business or impact goal that I have is this book going to fit fuel? When you have the answers to those questions, you have the formula for positioning your book for success. And this is why so many authors are told you should write a book. They sit down, they write a book, and the book is good, but it doesn't actually build anything after. And it's because, you know, focusing on getting the book published without that strategy is kind of like opening a store that you don't put signage out, you don't have anything to sell once you get people inside, and you don't even have a way to take payment, right? You've. You've built the store, but there's nothing inside. There's nowhere to go once somebody gets inside that. And that's a little bit like a book without strategy. So I think that this is actually why I'm so excited that we have a workshop this year called Author's Empire Workshop. But it's why I am really focused on helping authors not just write a no boring book. Right? That is part one. Because again, if you get that book into a reader's hands and they start reading it and the book sucks, nothing is going to happen, Nothing is going to get built off of this book. But if you write a book that is a hashtag no boring book, and somebody gets your book and they actually pick it up and start looking at it, they start reading it, now you have the opportunity to build from this book. And if it's not boring and it's interesting to them, it's a good read. They might even finish it. And then they can recommend it, they can review it, they can recommend it, and you can build an empire around this book. And that's why I want you to think about empire building right from the start. Because when you start to think that your book is going to be used as part of an empire, you aren't looking at the book as the endpoint anymore. You're not looking at publishing the book as the endpoint. You're looking at the things that are going to be built after the book. And if you don't, you can suffer a lot of expenses and costs. We'll say costs. I think that's a better word than expenses, because it's not. Expenses is kind of money. Out of your pocket. These things aren't actually money out of your pocket in a lot of cases when you're just thinking about publishing the book. One of the things that, and I see this all the time is a lost time cost. And it's not lost time. One of the lost times, of course, is people who think, I'll publish, I'll write a book when I'm ready, I'll write a book later, I need to finish XYZ first. There's lost time there. But one of the things that I see a lot is authors who say, I'm going to publish and see what happens. And that wait and see instead of engineering outcomes from day one is a challenge because really, I mean, we've had so many authors where their best success story comes 8, 9, 10, 15 months after the book has come out. And not because it was wait and see, but because they were doing things every single day. Right. Our favorite story of 2025 was the Jonathan Stanley Story. You know, his book, he was out there still doing book signings at Barnes and Nobles eight months after his book came out. And, and that was the day that somebody filmed him and it went viral. And Then hyperviral on TikTok. Major media covered him. Right. That only that happened because he had a great foundation, a really fantastic book. Once people started reading it, they could post genuine five star reviews and he got hundreds of them. But it was, it was eight months after his book was out. Loria Martinez, she was one of the authors we had at our summit in November and she talked about how, you know, it took a little bit, but she eventually sold a bulk purchase to some school, a school district of her books. And then that led to another school district and another school district. And now kind of year over year, she's been selling bulk books to school districts in the summer. She sells books in between. But, you know, the bulk of what she's been doing has been the school districts in the summer. And then she's built stuff around it so much that she's now working on another book. So people, you know, the, the instantaneousness that people think published book things happen, it rarely comes true. And part of that is because, I mean, how many books, I mean, I don't even want to point to all the books I have behind me that I haven't read yet. But you know, people need time to read a book. And then I have a book sitting on my counter, on my kitchen counter and whenever I have a minute, I sit down and I start reading it now that's how I do it. And if a book grabs me, great, I get into it. And if the book has not grabbed me by chapter two, I abandon ship. Right? I'm not going to keep going, but people need time to read a book because some of the books that have been sitting on my counter I've had for months and months, and it's still going to take me another month probably to finish the book. So people need time to read your book, then they need time to recommend it to others. Because unless a book is extraordinary, I don't immediately go out and shout it from the rooftops. But if I happen to be in a conversation with somebody and they're talking about something, I might go, oh, my gosh, I read a book that would be great for you. That stuff takes time, and so there's lots of foundation. But that wait and see approach versus that engineered outcome from day one, wait and see. If you're not doing things, nothing is going to happen. You're going to wait and waste time. That's what's going to happen. So waiting, letting months go by, your energy will fade. The book's going to feel like old news to you when you could have been growing an audience. So like a snowball, you know, when you start building a snowball, you start with like a little bit, little bit, and then you roll it, and then you roll it and roll it. And then it, you know, turns into. You can turn it into a snowman. You can do it again and, you know, build the pieces. But it doesn't start like that. It takes a while to build it up and build it up and build it up. And then, you know, if you've ever built a snowman, all of a sudden you get something that's so big you can't even. You can't even move that base piece right. It's so big. And that's what can happen. As an authority. All right, the second cost that comes up is, I believe, invisibility. A quiet launch. And this is a challenge we see with a lot of our authors is they don't have a platform, they don't have an existing audience. They're shifting from, say, being a medical doctor to now running a consulting practice. Or they're shifting. They've left their career or they've exited a business and now they are building this new thing. So they don't have a big platform. Some of them have a bit of a network, but they don't have a big platform. And so they have a quiet launch. Well, a Quiet launch doesn't mean your book is going to bomb. And it doesn't even mean you lack credibility. It just means you don't have an audience yet. And that's okay. The problem is when authors assume the launch was the big thing, right? Publishing the book was the goal, and then they see nothing really big is happening and they quit. And if your book disappears after launch day, it's not because it was bad or people rejected it. It's because you didn't give the world enough time and opportunities to notice you. That is so important. And I think also as we head into 2026, it's really important to understand how authority is established. Large language models don't reward those one day, you know, things like a big launch with some media that day and then nothing else. Consistent messaging, consistent presence, consistent positioning, consistent third party signal saying, this person is an expert in this. They talk about this. This is what they do. That is what it is. So authority is not something people can declare. It's collected, right? It's collected from a series of actions. And so it doesn't happen in a single day. And so instead of kind of worrying about publish, you know, getting published, and even your launch day, you know, and if you have a quiet launch, that's okay. You're. Your job now is momentum. Take daily actions after you launch to build it. Pitch yourself to podcasts, reference your book in relevant conversations. Build relationships where people have trust with an audience and they can promote you, talk about you, refer you show up in rooms where your reader is there. That is really, really important in real life. Repeat the same message over and over and over and it will feel boring to you, but that's when you know you're doing the right thing. And this is how humans and algorithms decide you're worth recommending. And I think a lot of authors lose so much time and become invisible because they think the launch was the it and the launch didn't go big. And so then they kind of fade into the background. All right, let's see what you guys are talking about. All right. Oh, snap. Social's here. Hello. Oh, it's great to have you here. All right, let's see, we've got another Texas and everybody's comparing temperatures. That's funny. And then we've got Pamela from Arizona. All right, sounds. It's great to have all of you here. And if you haven't figured it out yet, we're talking about the mistake of focusing on published only. Right? Publishing is just a stop on this wonderful road trip. Of building an author business. And it is just one destination, one little. One little stop on your road trip. And it is important, of course, to enjoy the whole road trip, but also to remember that it is just one of the stops along the way. All right, the third mistake that I see, a lot or cost, I should say, it's not a mistake per se, but it's not giving the book a job. And this happens when we haven't answered those questions from the very beginning, which is, you know, what is this book going to build as far as business or income or impact? What is success? For this book? Again, the goal is not published. The goal is whatever the book leads to and what you use it for. An opportunity cost is the quiet cost, quietest cost, because nothing's really going wrong. Nothing breaks, you know, nothing's failed. The book is there, but it hasn't positioned you for anything. And this is where the. Those kind of books go to die. And it happens because authors wrote a good book or wrote a book. Maybe it's not good, but a lot of times the book can be really good. But there wasn't that forethought before the book was written, that positioning, that oh so important positioning and thoughtfulness that goes into, okay, I want this book to lead to speaking. Well, event organizers don't book people based on a book alone. They book people based on the outcome that this person can generate. And the book is proof that that outcome can be created, that they're an expert in this topic, that they're interesting. And so if the book doesn't clearly show who you help, what kind of problem you solve and what kind of room you belong in, and even better, what kind of room you belong at the front of, then it's not likely to open doors. And I've shared this story before, but, you know, it was kind of the most dramatic example I've ever encountered of this. I had a person who wanted to be a paid professional keynote speaker. We talked about it before, but there's different kinds of speakers, right? I'm not typically your keynote speaker. The keynote speaker is, you know, they offer some sort of transformational journey as far as, like a mental transformational journey. So you come in feeling one way and you leave feeling another. You're amped up, you're motivated, you have a new mindset, you have a new kind of thought process. I'm more of your breakout room workshop style speaker. I like to get in there and get you working on something so that you can, you know, derive a very specific outcome. Good news, there's a lot of workshop talks that you can give. Bad news, they don't pay very well. The keynote is where the money's at. But ultimately, understanding what kind of speaker you want to be will what you're creating, that will help. And so this woman, she wanted to be a paid keynote speaker. So in order to do that again, you have to have that transformational outcome that people are going to pay 10, 20, $30,000 to put you on the in front of their audience for. And her topic was estrangement. She had a very sad, dramatic story of estrangement from her family, and that was the book she wanted to write. And I pushed back pretty hard going, okay, great, if you write about that, who's hiring you to speak? And she started naming corporations that she knew had events that would pay money. And I was like, why? Just as an example, why is Kodak, or why is, you know, Apple going to put you in front of their employee base to talk about estrangement? Right. The disconnect was very big in my mind, and I said, look, you can use the idea and your story and to tell something else, but we have to have a different message for that audience in order to get where you want to go. In the end, she disagreed with me and wanted to write the book on estrangement. And I didn't think we should work with her, given the glaring gap. So I don't know if she actually wrote that book, but I'm pretty sure she's not doing keynote talks on estrangement. So it's really important to understand what the positioning is so that your book will stand out to the people who put you on stage. If that is your goal, if your goal is clients you want to again, understand or communicate in this book, what do you do? Who's it for? What's the next step? And it's not that you turn your book into a giant sales page, but if you don't tell some stories of people you worked with and how they came in and how they left, showing what you do for people, then they won't know that that's even an option for them. So you want your book to talk about how you're the solution, because if you don't, somebody else is going to. And of course, we also want to think about, is this going to be a funnel, or am I building up my audience from this? Like, is there another book in the future or is there some other game plan on the other side? I think everybody should always be thinking about how do I attract people to give me their email address and connect with me, build a relationship. Because books don't build businesses on their own. But being able to connect and build that relationship is what's going on, going to build that impact income, you know, the next pieces. So build in some sort of list building mechanism, some sort of bonus, some sort of reason for somebody to get connected. Because if somebody gets your book but they don't connect with you, you probably have lost them, right? It's unlikely. Some, occasionally your book is so compelling that people will seek you out. But usually, you know, they'll think, oh yeah, I'll go download, I'll go to check out their website later. And then they just don't. But if you give them a reason like I need to go download that checklist or I need to go get that video that she talked about, now they have a reason to go and connect with you. The other kind of cost that comes up is that the book doesn't build partnerships or leverage. Again, this goes back to your own goals and positioning and planning what you want. But you want people to look at the book and go, am I aligned with this? Are there opportunities for us to build from this? Because people aren't going to look at your book and go, is this book good? Right? A partner isn't. They're going to look at who are you collaborating with, what you stand for, how do you amplify others around you? And the book can't travel beyond you if you haven't made all your messaging clear. So you want anybody who reads the book to understand very quickly. You know, is, is this person in alignment for me? And are there opportunities for us to have further discussions? Your book is either positioning you while you sleep and somebody else is reading it, or it's just going to sit there. And the positioning again has nothing to do with being published. That positioning starts the moment you decide that you're going to put this book into existence. It is the why this book exists. And so many authors miss opportunities because they didn't design for them. So those costs are significant. There's also an emotional cost to this, by the way. We see authors all the time that have written again, good books and they've invested in professionally doing it. The book goes live and not much happens. They don't even get one star reviews. They don't get rejections or backlash. It's just silence. And that's worse, I think, than having activity that's negative because now people sit there and go, maybe nobody cares about this. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, right. They start kind of going down this doubt spiral. And again, if you start from the beginning with positioning, you can kind of look at it and go, okay, that didn't work. How can I change what did work? What, what can I do more of? What's kind of getting some signal that this is a good thing? You know, again, asking yourself, what's that strategic move you need to take is a lot more productive than going what's wrong with me? Or what's wrong with my book? And a lot of times there's nothing wrong. It's just that there wasn't that post publish or that pre published plan which is so, so important. They treated publishing like the ending instead of the beginning. And it's an expensive mistake to make. Silence is not the end. It's just a signal that you need to do other things and you maybe need to even go back and reposition the book. All right, if you guys got questions, go ahead and type them in. You know, the next thought you're thinking is, okay, well that's all the things that are going to cost me if I focus on publishing. Ultimately, you know, decide the goal of this book before it's published. Even better, decide what it is before you start writing it, because then you can make sure you're baking in who this reader is and how their life changes after the book comes out. But also, you know, what success look like for you with this book because then you can really think strategically about what you need to communicate in this book successfully that that actually happens. And of course, write a hashtag no boring book so that when people start reading it, they actually finish it and then review it and recommend it. Build distribution paths that actually align with your goals. A lot of people build a distribution path that makes sense for becoming a bestseller, that makes sense for what traditional published authors would do. And yet they're probably going to benefit more from just giving their book away and promoting it that way in some cases and selling it, you know, through certain channels, but creating ease there so they can use the focus on driving people to get their book for free so that they can then join their email newsletter list. We do a lot of that. You can get self publish and succeed at self publish and succeed or sorry, not at self publish and succeed at book launchers.com forward/free audio. That is one of the places that we encourage people to sign up for our newsletter. You can go and download my book self publish and succeed for free. And that is One path. So if you design for that from the beginning, you make smart, strategic choices, then you can set yourself up for success. Of course. Talk about your book. Talk about your book before it comes out. After it comes out, keep talking about it and use it to start those conversations. And again, if you answer those questions, what do you want the book to do for you? Where do you think authors or where do you think your reader, I should say, is getting stuck? And how does this solve that problem? I think that you are going to set your book up not to be the finish line, but to be the thing that is the start of that empire building that you want to do. So that was our topic for the day. What questions do we have? I see there's quite a few. And of course, we have prizes for everyone who's been saying, hello, I'll pop over and do prizes after we do a few questions.

Yeah, there's been a couple questions, but there was a comment that came in from. I believe this is Larea that says the keynote.

Awesome. We were just talking about her.

Yeah, I'm like, oh, how perfect. The key difference between being a keynote speaker and a workshop presenter, they also require authors to pull from different parts of the book.

Yep. Yeah, I think that's great for sure. And that's a really good point because when you can show in your book, you know, kind of the content that you would put in a workshop, that makes it a really easy sell for a lot of the. The, the companies that are booking you.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so first question came in. Looks like we're getting a couple more, but this one's from Bruce Wayne. All right.

My book will be connected to my website, but getting traffic to them both is my main problem. So my book will be connected. The word connected is an interesting word in this. That could mean a lot of things. Some people connect it, but by just linking to Amazon. So I think I need a little more information on what that is, but also what the outcome is. What's your goal? So when you get traffic to them, is your goal to sell the book? Is your goal to get email addresses? Is your goal for something else? That would help too. All right. As a new self publisher. Yeah. Thinking about the brand and what it will do is a big step. Maybe when you wrote a book and you find you have written nine more. Sorry, I don't understand.

I think what they're asking is like when you start writing a book and then you realize that you have so much content, that you have so many more books written or that you can write.

Okay, friend, sorry, I'm still not sure. So I guess I'm not sure what the question is for this. Ultimately, my answer is build a platform. So be collecting email addresses. Because whatever else you build after book one, whether it be future books, workshops, you know, products, services, having that email list allows you to have people who are ready for whatever it is you build next. But I'm not totally sure what your question is.

Yeah, Jennifer and Bruce, like, if you guys will both add in a little extra context, we'll bring this back up. Last one from Mr. Gunpilot.

How do you know what to charge for doing a speaking event? I'm doing one next week and the organization asked how much I charge and I don't know how to answer that. I would do some research on this because this does vary and some of it varies by the organization and some of it varies by the topic and the people in the audience and what you're bringing to the table, your experience, your expertise. So it's a hard question to answer generically. So for example, for eo, for Entrepreneur Organization, when I was booking speakers for our chapter, there was a couple factors that would play in. Now first of all, you know, it's a nonprofit and so there's not, it's not a company. So there's not endless revenue streams that you have to draw from. You have membership and you know, membership fees and a small allocation. So even somebody like a big name speaker, like I booked, um, I've got Mike Michalowicz that's coming in. I've booked Benjamin Hardy. Some of those people that, you know, for some of their talks, they're getting 30, 40, $50,000 for a talk. There's, you know, that would be the entire year's speaker budget for an organization like that. So you'd never ever pay that. But you come in and you try to, you get creative and you find a way, you know, for them to agree to, to come in for a lot less. So while they may be doing a keynote at like some big corporation for 40,000, an organization like EO, they're never going to get that 40,000 for a chapter, for a chapter presentation. So some of it's organization dependent. So you got to know who you're talking to. And then other times, you know, it might be somewhere where they only have like a $500 kind of thing that they can offer a speaker. So like again, if you're speaking at a church or an association or something like that, they, they usually just have kind of A nominal thing that they'll pay you. And then if there's only 25 people in the room, you're probably not. Unless they're CEOs or C level executives. You're not going to get a big fee for speaking to a smaller group either. So it really does vary. So do some research. Chatgpt, Grok, Perplexity, all of them. Tell them your topic, tell them your experience, tell them the organization, who's in the room. You're going to get some ranges. They won't be perfect, but it's a good starting point.

Sorry, I didn't mean to remove myself from the stage. I don't know that this next one.

Is.

A question per se. I tried to do email marketing for three years and it flopped massively. So I decided to turn my newsletter into a Viewsletter on YouTube and now I double my subscribers. He has a second part on YouTube in less than a third of the time and it doesn't feel like so much work. Okay, so that wasn't a question.

I wasn't sure, but I will comment on this. So. So building on anybody else's platform is good. Like, it's great to have an audience growing somewhere. I would still encourage you to try to build email subscribers because it happens all the time that platforms fall out of favor or they stop showing your materials for some reason, or they just boot you off of the platform. So I think it's really important to know that you are, you know, this is kind of like being a squatter in somebody else's house. And at some point they can come in and say, you don't get to. You don't get to stay here anymore. And it's great. I love YouTube. Huge fan. But at the end of the day, I still encourage people to come on over and sign up for my newsletter because I can't directly contact people on YouTube and YouTube can decide who sees my videos and who doesn't at any point. Right Face or anybody who was on Facebook in the early days knows the good old days where everybody who was friends with you actually saw your content. And now, if you're lucky, 10% of your friend base actually sees your content.

Exactly. Okay, we have a few more coming in. Osnapsocial asks, could you build in a book, offer to your speaker fee if they can't pay your normal rate and is there a name for working in a book? Bulk order for that?

Yeah, this is great. And I have a video, I have a couple videos on speaking and how to get paid for Speaking for free or something. I don't know the exact title. Angela, you can do your fancy hunting and see if you can find it. I think it might be how to be Paid to Speak or there's a couple videos on the channel on speaking, so you could probably just find a couple of them and drop them because it addresses this. Yes. So there's a couple things here. One of them is a. If you're Normally getting paid $2,500 to speak, you can offer. You can usually. Or 5,000. You know, those are kind of the lower, lower end fees that most people would be charging. So 2500 and you can have two offers, 2500 or 3500. And 3500 includes books for everybody in the audience or something like that. A lot of places will take that $3,500 offer. In the past, I haven't done it with self publish and succeed, but I did it a lot with more than cash flow because I spoke at a lot of real estate associations where they had a marketing budget, but they didn't have a speaker budget. Their marketing budget would allow them to give a book to anybody who registered by X Date or anybody who came to the event. So they could buy books from me for $20 a book and that would be my payment. So, you know, it wasn't a huge payday, but if they had, you know, 100 people in the room, I would get paid $2,000 minus my book costs. So it would be like getting paid $1,500 for the speaking engagement. And I just sat there and signed books for a long time afterwards usually. But. But that would be a way to get paid is selling the book for 20 bucks because they had a marketing budget, but they didn't have a speaker budget. There's also the opportunity at a lot of events if they're not paying you, where you can not only collect email addresses, you can also have a table at the back of the room and sell books. And you can bundle them sometimes. Right. You could bundle the book with a call or bundle the book with a course. They'll let you sell things from the back of the room because they're not paying you. All right, looks like Angela found the videos. I'm going to pop over and do our prizes. And so if there's any last questions, we do have a couple minutes for those, but let's do the prizes. So everybody who has said hello so far, you are entered to win. And here we go. You should see it. And let's see. See who is our first winner. And the prizes we have today. Oh, I think this was. Was this Pamela, who is this? So pgp. I know. So I think it was somebody from Arizona. Yeah. Okay, so our prizes are for anybody that's in the U.S. we have mugs, we have journals, we have books. So we've got our hashtag no boring book mug. We've got our oh so soft journal, which I don't have within reach. We have self publish and succeed, Self promote and succeed and some other books too. So if you want something great to read, Angela has a list. You need to email angelaeamooklaunchers.com and we'll draw again for the other prize. Michael Anthony, official. Congratulations. I don't know if you've ever won before. Yeah. So again, if you are in the U.S. those are your prize selections. If you are outside of the US we have digital prizes that we can send you. So email Angela@teamoklaunchers.com so you guys can coordinate the prizes. She will need to know where you live or where you would like us to ship stuff so that she can find you to send it as well as what your prize choice is. But thank you for being here here and being live. And of course you're always welcome to share pictures after you win something. I think. Was it Kevin? I can't remember. I think Kevin sent it, posted a really fabulous picture with his. I think. Was it this mug, our seven year anniversary mug that he had?

Yes, it was. Right, Kevin? He's here. Yeah, he's. He emailed that to us. I don't, I don't remember seeing it posted.

He might have it in our school. So we do have a free author lab community, folks, if you are not part of it, I do encourage you to come on over because we end writing sessions real soon as well. So come on over as well. All right. Any other questions?

Pamela actually wants to offer her prize. She said she's won a lot, so she'd like to share with another.

Oh, well, that's very kind of you, Pamela. Let's see. I think we will. Why not. Why not do that today? So thank you for passing along your prize.

So Jess, or Jess, was it Jess Allen? Someone who said I haven't. I didn't get my quote in in time. Maybe you did now.

Now you might have another shot at it. You can thank Pamela for that. All right, let's see. We need music.

I see your name in the, in the roll through.

It's Gary. Gary, do you. Before I go off this Screen. Gary, do you want one of our prizes? Because Gary's also. I even gave him a toque. I hand delivered him a toque recently. So, Gary, is there anything you haven't won yet? Mug journal books, Let us know. Otherwise we can. We can spin one more time. Otherwise I'm stopping for the day.

Oh, he said spin again.

I had a feeling. No pressure. Of course, whenever I say that there's zero pressure, you can always claim a prize. There's no pressure whatsoever. And I actually, I should have wore the shirt. I wore the shirt on the weekend. Gary and my son loved it. He said every time he came around the corner, it kind of freaked him out. All right, Lloyd, I know you're in Jamaica, so you'll have to choose a digital prize. At least I think. Is that Lloyd in Jamaica? Yes, that's the right one. Okay, good. So you'll have to choose a digital prize, but congratulations, you've won a prize. So Angela will coordinate with you. Email her@teamoklaunchers.com. so, yeah, Gary, Gary gave me a shirt and it has a robot kind of woman on the front and on the back. And I wore it on the weekend. And every time my son came around the corner, he'd go because the robot startled him. But I love, I love it. It's great. Okay, so do we have any other questions?

Yes, this one and maybe one other. I'm trying to search.

Okay. And I see. Oh, yeah. Oh, snap. Social will be here in Las Vegas. So come on out to Authors Empire workshop to hang out with us. Have you dropped that link in. In the chat yet for anybody who's interested in joining us for our workshop?

Oh, no, but I can. I'll grab it.

Okay. When developing an email list, should you have set goals in mind from the beginning, such as discount for first number of signers for when book does eventually come out. So this all comes back to your bigger picture goals and what you're trying to build. Should you have set goals from the beginning? Yes, but it's hard to, you know, as. As Angela and I discussed on. On her on our meeting today with her monthly review, it's hard to arbitrarily assign a number goal to something. Right. It's much, you know, in her case it was hours applied to something. But, but you know, it's hard to arbitrarily assign. So it's hard to say, I'm going to get 100 subscribers. It's a lot easier to say I am going to do X, Y and Z. And my hope is that leads to a hundred subscribers. So I'm going to do five podcast or I'm going to pitch myself to five podcasts. I'm going to write a newsletter for X Outlet. I'm going to run this ad. I'm going to, you know, like those kind of things that hopefully lead to that outcome. You're more likely to see momentum than just to say I'm going to have a hundred subscribers. But again, I'm not sure about the discount for first number of signers or, you know, what that, what, what all that is. I'm not 100% sure.

Okay. There are a couple others and actually, let me hide this one. Bruce added some additional context to his. So I'll go back to the first one, which was my book will be connected to the website, but getting traffic to them both is my main problem. So in addition, he said my website is a change from selling my movie, TV Biz memorabilia on eBay for 25 years. The book is about my years in the biz. And so it's a landing page. So there is a landing page.

Okay. Yeah, I feel like this is going to be a better discussion if you want to post it in the school platform and we can talk about it further. So I can ask some questions and we can go back and forth. But some of this always goes back to the goal. So if I'm driving traffic to a website, my first goal is usually to capture an email subscriber. That's usually my first goal. Now, sometimes you may be driving people to a landing page where your goal is sign up for Author's Empire workshop or sign up for, or join my free community. But generally speaking, if I'm sending people to a website, I will have a section on the top that's like books or speaking, you know, those kind of things. But my first invitation is usually going to be something to encourage you to give me my, give me your email address so we can build a relationship and start to get to know each other. But yeah, I'm pretty sure, Bruce, that you're in our school community. So come on over and post this and we can, you know, carry this conversation on so I can learn more.

Yeah, I, I'm like 99 sure.

Yes, I'm pretty sure.

Okay. And then I think this is the last one. Mr. Gunpilot says, how do I get with a promoter or something like that that's sets up these speaking events for me?

So there's agents that do this. They're, they're usually, you know, when they book you, they get paid. They're so, so there's, you know, it's, it's hard to be an agent these days. They're going to put a lot of effort behind their kind of bigger name speakers typically. And then everybody else gets listed on a website. You, there's so many tools and paths to kind of build your own speaking and pitch yourself that you'll probably find a lot more success booking your own speaking engagements. And you know, there's a whole, it's a whole conversation. I mean, this is something we've talked about before. Angela posted some of the videos, but we can do another live or even have some expert people coming in. I know we have at Authors Empire Workshop, we have a couple of people that are doing sessions on speaking. One is on, you know, creating your own events and, and you know, getting paid to speak that way. And then the other one is actually there's three. The other one is going to talk about how to get yourself into the right rooms. He ended up getting himself into getting paid to speak across like all the Red Cross organization, so all the kind of different locations with that. And then, you know, speaking business took off from there and then another person is going to talk about, you know, speaking, I think from a. Getting yourself booked into TedX and kind of building a speaking business from there. So.

Yeah, cool. All right, that's the last question and I'm just about to drop the school link for our community. If anyone's not in there, we would love to have you in there.

And the whole team. It's not just me. My almost the entire Book Launchers team pops into school and provides insights and commentary. So it's really fun to see everybody interacting there. And like I said, we've got some big plans coming up. We're going to be doing by the way, we'll be back here next week with another live. But then the week after we're doing a state of publishing kind of a publishing news update and that will be inside of school. So we won't be live on YouTube that week. It'll only be inside of the school platform. All right, thanks for all your awesome questions today. Fantastic to have you all here. Make sure those of you who won prizes. Yes, that was you, Lloyd. Email, email, email. Angelaeamook launchers.com and we'll see you back here in a week. Thanks, Angela. Bye.