Your First 1000 Copies Book Review, Writing Faster and Amazon Reviews [LIVE Replay]

All right. Hey, folks, sorry for the slight delay. For those of you who are writing me going, you're not live. Where are you? Well, here I am. A few technical glitches on my side. Not really sure what was happening, but we're here now, so. Hello and welcome to the first look book review. Just gonna adjust the camera here. Yeah. So I'm Julie the book broad. And for those of you who are saying hello for the first time. Welcome, welcome. So excited to have you here. So we have a pretty fantastic little show planned for you today. So really, really excited to have you here. Welcome, Dale. Hello. We had a little bit of a technical challenge at the start. I need this. I need your expertise here, Dale. Pretty much I need you to be here every time I'm trying to go live because, you know, as you know, YouTube doesn't like me going live. And Facebook today was really resisting me going live too. Anyways, I'm here, you're here. Welcome all to the first look book review with book bride being me. All right, so we have lots to cover today. I'm going to do the first look book review. But I've got a twist for you. It's not what you expect. Then you're gonna find out how to enter your nonfiction book into be reviewed. And I've got some notes on Amazon reviews. And because the brilliant Dale Roberts is here, he probably has some things to chime in on Amazon reviews. But then I'm gonna talk about how to write faster. I've got some really, really cool tips and insights for you coming off of our California, our Los Angeles based writer's retreat that we just had this past weekend. We had basically, I think the number was an average of 8,500 words. So 8,500 words per attendee were written in a two and a half day. But really we were only writing on two days and that was in between learning some marketing, planning out some marketing for their books, refining the hook and the theme of. So yeah, a ton was accomplished by far more than any of them had done in months was accomplished in two days. So I've got some pretty cool tips for you to take that back to your home and yeah, and just go ahead and say hello, wave to all the people walking by, coming back from their lunch break or whatever it is they're doing right now. All right, so that's the writer's retreat recap. So how to write faster. And we're of course going to do a draw. And I gotta tell you, this mug is full because you guys have been phenomenal. So for those of you who don't know, every Friday a new video comes out on YouTube book launchers TV. And when that video comes out on Friday, the people who comment the day the video is released get entered to win a prize. And lately, that's been a whole lot of you. So thank you. Thank you, thank you. That is one full mug. All right, so let's dive into this and today's first look book review. All right, so a little bit of. I don't know if it's a confession. It's just what happened. So every month, I do book reviews of viewers. And so we drew last month, after we reviewed J. Law's book, I did a draw for one of the YouTube viewers books, and I made a note of what it was, and then I went to buy it, couldn't find it, and I direct messaged the person who submitted the book for review and. And didn't get any response. No copies of the book. So I'm not going to work that hard to buy your book to then do a free review. So bottom line, I picked a different book to do a review of. So what I chose to review for all of you is your first 1000 copies by Tim Grohl. And I actually have this book on Kindle and in print because I didn't know I had. I didn't know I'd already bought it. Has anybody done that? You order it on Kindle and then you turn around and you look on your bookshelf and you find out you have it. All right, this blonde is. Well, it's highlighted, but it's still blonde. It's real. Okay, so your first 1000 copies by Tim Grohl. I thought I would do a review because there's some great stuff in here for all of you authors and aspiring authors, and thank you. I'm glad. That's understandable. Dale. I kind of thought, listen, it's a free book review. Don't make me work too hard to review your book and give you exposure. Okay, so who this book is for? Well, obviously it's for authors. If you have a book or you're planning on having a book, then your first 1,000 copies is all about selling those first 1,000 copies. Now, this book, it's actually published in 2013, so it's not on the latest marketing tactics. It's kind of those tried and true fundamental basics, and it's timeless strategies that sell books. So bad news for every author looking for the easy button. This book is not full of easy Button solutions. As I've said repeatedly, though, in my videos and articles, the stuff that actually really sells or sells videos, the stuff that actually really sells books, a lot of it isn't that gimmicky, easy stuff. It's the consistent things you put in effort in over time. So this book is one of those fundamental concept books. It kicks you in the butt and tells you maybe stuff that you already know, but it lays it out in a very, very digestible way for you to take action on it. So some really cool stuff. There's two parts that I'm going to highlight for you guys for. You want a refund. I know. Well, I need a refund on two books because I bought this book twice. Seriously, there's some good stuff in here. I do recommend it. So the first one I wanted to highlight, he has a section, this is on page 52 of the book, that says sharing too much. And this is a question I get all the time because we're helping authors write and publish and sell nonfiction books. So is it possible to give too much content away in my book? And you know, to me the answer is almost always no. You could have way too big of a book. That is definitely the truth. But to give away your best stuff in your book is okay because people are always going to want it in another format in another way. They want you to do it for them. So you're still better off, I think, to give your best stuff away in your book, to give people an intro. So here's his take on it. He said, although this fear is legitimate, it's small and pales in comparison to the more important concern, releasing a book that nobody knows exists. So I thought that was a pretty fantastic point. You're really, you're worrying about the wrong thing. If you're worried about putting your best stuff into your book and nobody hiring you, nobody buying your product, nobody buying your service, because the best stuff's in your book. You're worrying about the wrong thing. So let's focus on making sure your book gets out there and that people know about your book and they read it. Okay? So that was the one thing I want to share. The other thing I want to share was he. At the end of every chapter, he does something that I highly recommend everybody do, and that is to chapter takeaways and inside of the chapter takeaways for this chapter, which is chapter. I don't even know which chapter this is. Anyways, he says, you know, err on the side of sharing too much obscurity is the most dangerous thing for authors. So kind of summarizing the point I just gave you, but he also says, learn to reimagine what you've created and turn it into other content. So I think one of the smartest things, and I actually put a video out on the YouTube channel recently on the 7 Reasons to Write a book Beyond Money. And a lot of that is because the content that you taking the time to think about the content, create those steps, create those acronyms, create those marketable things for your book that can then be repurposed into paid, you know, paid talks that you now can become a paid professional speaker, could be put into courses and all those kind of the content can be repurposed for so many things. So learn to reimagine your content into different forms and reuse it. For my book, one of the things is every little section, not even a chapter, but every little section can be a blog post, which can also be a video. And then that's all marketing for your company. So you create that book once you get it edited so it's in its best possible format. And then that can be content for a long time. It can be magazine articles, newspaper articles, blog posts for other people. There's thousands of ways. So you want to get creative and remember that, that your book content can be used for so many things. The other thing is, he says, keep track of the right analytics about your content so you can see how it's working. And so some of the analytics that he talks about, and I just want to flag these for you and then check out the book so you can get all the details. He says, number of visitors, number of page views, popular pages and referrer. Referers. Referrers, Right. So hopefully you that basically where's your traffic coming from? So popular pages, which pages are being visited the most, that tells you what your fans are most interested in. So dive into this. Me also, I highly recommend you track conversions. So by conversions, I mean who's signing up for your author newsletter. And if you want more on author newsletter, I actually have three videos that I've put up on Book Launchers TV to talk about that. But to me that's your most important. And he emphasizes your own newsletter list as your one of your main marketing sources too. But I think that's one of the best ways for you to sell your book. And of course, you'll probably do more than one book. Almost everybody, when they start writing their first book, they realize there's more than one book in there. And so if you have an author marketing list. You can sell your book to them too. Hey. Hey, Kevin. Yeah, you know what? I had a technical glitch, so thank you for finding us. Yeah, Facebook and I had a fight and I'm actually getting lots of messages on text and email from people that are trying to log on and join in. And so something went wrong. It actually looked like my live had been playing for like 145 hours or something when I went to the page where I had preset it. So anyways, you found me. Welcome. Hello. Hopefully more folks can tune in and you know, in the meantime, I'm gonna get a tutorial from the brilliant Dale Roberts to figure out how to do these lives with a few less technical glitches because I'm having trouble. Yeah. So anyways, welcome, welcome, welcome. And I know there's more people on here than what's showing, so do say hello and let me know that you're here so I can say hello as well. Okay, so that was the first look. Book review. A thousand copies. And I do recommend it. And I do have a little Amazon referral link for you. So of course I get a whopping like, you know, what do you get? 80 cents if you buy the book through this link. But it just makes it easy for you. Book launchers.com 1000 copies. I believe Jaclyn is here online and can post that in the comments for you. And if you're watching the replay on YouTube, I'll make sure it's in the summary notes underneath. Okay, so how to enter your book to be reviewed. So number one, subscribe to the YouTube channel at Book Launchers TV. Number two, post your book, include your name, the book title and an Amazon link. Because I'm going to go to Amazon and buy it if it's there and make that all very, very EAS for me. Do that on one of the recent videos and in a month I'll do another draw for another reader or viewer, as it were. Book review. And if I have trouble and I can't get a hold of you, I will not do the review. So make it easy for me. But I do want to buy it because if it's really good and I can genuinely give it a four or a five star review on Amazon, I will. And we all know how important those Amazon reviews are. Which leads me to something else I'm going to talk about today, which is disappearing Amazon reviews. It's happening again. It's been happening for the last month. I keep seeing it on forums where people's reviews are disappearing. So I'm going to talk about that briefly and I suspect Dale's got some insights onto this into this too. Oh, but before thank you. I know you guys are here on Facebook and for those of you who've been watching since we started the first look, book reviews show YouTube and I had a differing opinion about what was legitimate, what wasn't for live videos. So, so I'm doing live from Facebook and then I post the replay on YouTube. But I'm really, really trying to encourage my community to grow on YouTube because that's where I have the most fun. And so I just want to say thank you because we broke 4,500 subscribers. I have a goal of hitting 10,000 subscribers this year on YouTube and I think we're going to do it. So thanks to your support and if you haven't already subscribed, please go ahead and subscribe and the notifications so you know when a new video comes out and you can be the first to comment and win a prize in one of these awesome livestreams. And why 10,000? Just in case you're wondering, just down the street from me there's a YouTube, I don't know what they call it. It's like a YouTube place where you can film videos and attend courses and get get support from YouTube directly once you hit 10,000. Now they want you to hit 50,000 and 100,000. But 10,000 was my first goal and they're just down the street. So I can't wait to get access and be able to create even better content for you guys with the support of YouTube. So there you go. Facebook now and started uploading video. Okay, there we go. Cool. Awesome. Just reading some of the comments from Dale here and he does have some insights on Amazon which I suspected he would and they're coming to see us in October so they're coming to la. So I will get to meet Dale and Kelly live which by the way I do believe they have a live twitch after this. So if you are tuned into this live stream and you're looking for more self publishing content, you can go to their Twitch stream which I'm sure Dale will post in here for you. Okay. So moving right along. Oh and if you want notifications so you don't miss these assuming Technology Cooperates, book launchers.com gameplan and also game Plan will get you our report on how to sell 1000 books for under $100. And it's eight ways very co tips. It's the all the ways that I've used to sell a ton of books. Okay, yeah, there we go. Twitch tv, Self publish. Brilliant link. So if you want to check that out with Dale and I think Kelly at 6 o' clock Eastern. So right after this. Okay. Amazon reviews vanishing. So this has happened. You know, it seems like every year this kind of comes up, but it's been coming up a lot in the last month, like with massive amounts of reviews disappearing from people's Amazon book pages. And they were talking about it on the Sell More Books show podcast, which is one of the few self publishing podcasts that I listen to almost every week. They talked about it and so it just keeps coming up. So I wanted to mention it. And in some cases it's legit views being pulled out. In some cases it's legit views that get pulled out and then Amazon reviews it and puts them back in. And in many cases, I think it's people who had those things that were on the other side of what Amazon wants, they pulled the reviews out. So it's very important, I think, to review the Amazon policy on this. I'll make sure that Jacqueline puts a link in the Facebook comments for you as well as for those of you watching YouTube. We'll make sure it's in the show notes. But I want to highlight a few things. Amazon does think friends and family are biased reviewers. So here's the thing, and this is one of the things that a lot of people are shocked by. But you got to think this logic through. If you have friends and family that you're connected with on Facebook and then they write a review of your book, Amazon quite likely could pull that review. It's happened to a lot of people. So how does Amazon know that you're friends with certain people on Facebook? They own Goodreads. And when you go to log in with Goodreads, you can choose to log in with Amazon or so you can log in with Goodreads, or you can log in direct with Facebook. So by doing that, by giving them your data, that way, you're connecting your social media accounts. And inside of Goodreads, you also have the option of connecting your social media accounts direct to your Goodreads account. If you've done this, I highly recommend you disconnect it. And I highly recommend you tell your friends and followers to disconnect it. Not because we want, you know, we want to break the Amazon rules, but because a lot of our friends, sorry, a lot of our fans are also connected with us on social media. So it's not really fair. You know, of course our friends and family are connected with us on social media, but our fans are, too. And so for them to make this direct connection, it's really kind of making it difficult. So I would disconnect it, make it a little more difficult for them to draw the lines there. So that's one thing. And again, Dale. Yeah, and that's why my reviews stick to Kevin. I'm always leery of having too many sites having my information, so I tend to go to the trouble of creating new usernames and passwords for all these sites. I use 1Password, a great system to track all the thousands of passwords that I have. And I'm not kidding. Well, maybe not a thousand, but I have well over 400 usernames and passwords. And I would rather that than the ease of connecting through Facebook or Google just because, you know, I do worry about some of these things. So, yeah, that's something to watch out for and chime in at any point. Dale, love your insights and ideas on this because I know you've got them. Okay, so a couple points. Eligibility, of course, to contribute. If you're asking people to give reviews, they have to have spent $50 on Amazon in the last year. So that's not the cause of any reviews being removed. But some people find people can't do reviews. That's often the reason. But if you're one of those people who can actually live life and not have spent $50 on Amazon in the last year, I'd like to know how you live. Because, I mean, seriously, a week doesn' by where there's not an Amazon delivery in my household, let alone a Kindle purchase. So, anyway, topic for another day. Maybe we need an Amazon Amazon support group for those of us who probably spend too much money on Amazon. Okay. The reviews also have to be helpful and relevant. So there are cases of vague reviews being removed off Amazon. So definitely an issue there. And, you know, that's just encouraging people to, you know, they don't have to write a novel, but give some value in the review. Also very, very important. So something else that's come up, and this has come up a lot in the past, is any kind of incentive or if there's any sign that people received a discounted copy because you're allowed to give, or, sorry, a gift card because you're allowed to give people free books for reviews. But something with the gift card situation seems to trigger reviews to be in question. And in reading up on it, some people think that it's probably because you're not allowed to compensate or incentivize people to review your books at all. The only thing you can do is give a free book in exchange for an honest review period. So the gift cards seem to be in question because there could be an opportunity to buy the book for less and therefore you are being paid something. Not really sure. That came up quite a bit. So yeah, again, chime in Dale, I know you've got something to say. Also, if your review is removed or rejected, you can resubmit a new review. So and this is all on the Amazon page, so you can always look this up. But you can resubmit another review. Multiple people in the same household cannot submit reviews for the same product. Also IP address. So if a bunch of people at the same office are submitting reviews for your book, for example, you get all your co workers to rally behind you, suggest they do it from home so that it can be different IP addresses. Because if you get a bunch of reviews off in the same IP address, it looks like those will get pulled. What else if there's unusual reviewing behavior. So some authors complained that they had a bunch of pre review copies go out so that when their book actually launched they had a whole bunch of reviews and a lot of those reviews got pulled. Many cases out was the kind of reviews that eventually got put back in, but just all those kind of things. You kind of want to have things happen organically. You need reviews 100%. The last thing I'll mention is that other authors reviewing books has been called into question and they say explicitly on Amazon that authors can review other authors books. It says yes, authors are welcome to submit customer reviews unless the reviewing author has a personal relationship with the author. In other words, they were involved in the creation process. So. So co author, editor, illustrator and that makes you ineligible. But authors can review other authors books despite what some people are saying. But again, the challenge can be that you're connected on social media and they're seeing that and they don't like it. So you have to find a way to distance yourself to be the best possible supporter of these authors as possible. So hopefully that helps. If you have questions or other insights, post them in the comments. Whenever you're watching this, wherever you're watching this and I'd love to have a chat about what's happened to you or what you've heard and we can dig into it further. Okay, just a couple little things on the writer's retreat. So it was a fantastic event. We're definitely doing it again. We're going to do it. We're going to start doing it quarterly. So one more time this year, and then in 2019, we'll aim to do it four times. And hopefully you can attend one of them. Because every single person in the room said they were blown away. They couldn't believe how much they got done in two, two and a half days. And they all walked out with better books than they walked in with. Because one of the things we really focused on is making your book marketable. So we had our marketing. We had two different marketing geniuses in the room to help them with some marketing ideas which helped them write a better, more marketable book. We also had our writing coach in the room to help brainstorm things, make sure the outline was solid so that the stuff that people were writing was going to be good content for their book. So just one really cool thing. We had long stretches of more concentrated writing followed by little writing sprints. And so the writing sprints. I want to kind of just give you a quick pointer on this and I'll tell you the fundamental key to everyone's success. No phones, no Internet. Yes. I even took their Internet away on the one writing day. So no phone, no Internet. So they had to come with their research, printed out, any kind of reference materials printed out, and they couldn't go online, which I know is challenging. And it is kind of an, you know, it scared people. There was panic. There was people, you know, freaking out when I took their phones away. And there was people truly freaking out that they weren't going to have Internet access. But every one of them thanked me for it. And the thing is, yeah, you're going to need Internet at some point. I get that. Like, I pull stuff off of my blogs, off of, you know, my transcripts, which are all stored on the cloud, and blah, blah, blah. So I get the need for Internet. But sometimes turn your phone off, turn off of the Internet, and just write and you'll get so much more done. And these writing sprints were phenomenal. So we did usually 12 minute sprints. And the point was, you imagine that Pac man is coming. And so if you pause for more than a couple seconds, Pac man is going to start eating all of your words, right? So there goes Pac Man. Right? Pac Man, Pac Man. There goes your words. So you can't stop. And it forces you to just stream of consciousness go. And I told them, like, you know, even if you're like, okay, I'm not sure what to write, type that. And then the next Set will come to you. The next flow. The key to doing this is to know what you're going to write about before the sprint starts. Even have your first sentence down. And that was the key to even our longer term, you know, before we wrapped up the sessions. I would say, okay, now think about what the first sentence of your next writing session is going to be. And so my two takeaways for you are, number one, feel free to do some writing sprints. If you've only got 20 minutes, give yourself 15, give yourself five minutes to figure out what you're gonna write about. Turn on your Timer and for 15 minutes, write. No distractions, no stopping, just write. That's one thing. The other thing is when you know you're going to be broken away from your writing for a little while, write the first sentence of where you're going to start when you pick up. That way you're not going to waste a bunch of time reading what you last wrote. You can open it up, see that sentence, and just write. So let me know how that goes. And Kevin says, I can't do reviews. I live in the Ukraine, so I don't spend money with Amazon. Well, that trick is not going to work for me, but thanks. And Dale said, yes, authors can review other books. Books. It's when direct relationship comes into question. Hence author review swaps are a big no, no. Yes. And Dale said he got burned by that. And so, yeah, that's the tricky part is you build relationships with people. You review a book and then later on, you know, you review somebody else's book. There's questionable things for that. You have to be very careful with these relationships. And they are watching it. They do have algorithms in place to protect them. And it's because they want the reviews matter a lot. And protecting the integrity of the reviews matter. And we as authors want that. So it's just a balancing act. But yeah, it would suck if you worked hard to get a bunch of legitimate reviews and they get pulled for different reasons. But stick to the rules, you know, and to me asking friends and family, there's a side thing with this, and I hadn't planned on talking about this, but friends and family probably aren't your ideal readers. If they are, then this is tricky. But if you, your friends and family probably aren't your ideal readers, and why that is a bad thing for you to get reviews from people who aren't your ideal readers, besides the fact that the reviews might be deemed illegitimate is the also bots. So on Amazon, of course, they have this section which is great advertising for us is the also Bot. So it's going to show when somebody buys a book like ours. It hopefully will show our book in the also bots. What happens if your friends and family. So if my mom, who probably would never buy a business book, she's retired, she only, you know, maybe she buys books on cooking and gardening, which I don't know what she buys. But let's say. Let's just say that she buys my book. Now, people who bought who are looking at my book are going to see, you know, people who bought this book also bought books on gardening and books on. Right. So it impacts your also bots to not have your ideal readers buying it. And the reverse is true. Now. So when somebody goes to buy, say, you know, okay, we'll use this book as an example. So let's say Tim had a bunch of his friends and family buying it. Now they're gonna get weird recommendations. But if he sticks to his ideal reader, when you go to buy this book or you go to buy, say, honorary, Honorary, Honorary corridor. Oh, her name's a mouthful for me. Or Joanna Penn's books. You know, Steve Scott, there's a whole bunch of authors. When you go to buy those books, you're probably gonna see his book. And they're also bots because his ideal reader is also buying those other books. So hopefully that also bots and often bought together very important. And Dale just kind of confirmed that. So asking friends and family for reviews and to buy your book has that drawback. And it's a very, very, very important drawback to pay attention to because I've seen a lot of people who do those bestseller, you know, come to this event for a weekend, and we're going to make. We promise we'll make your book a bestseller. I have friends that two years later, they still can't fix the also bots because that was such a powerful weekend for their book. But now they've got. You know, when I've given talks, I've given the example of this guy with a financial planning book who has relationship books, how to Beat Cancer, and like, a law of attraction book as the also Bots. And he's wondering why his book isn't selling on Amazon. You gotta fix that. And ideally, not mess with it in the beginning. Okay. All right. Yay. Now, so just a reminder, if you comment on my videos on the Friday when they come out, you get entered to win a prize. And we're gonna do the draw. So drumroll. We're Doing the prize draw. And like I said, this mug is full. So thank you, everyone, for stopping in on Fridays and saying hello and commenting on my videos. And as an extra, thank you, whoever wins today, I'm also going to give you the audio version of my book, the New Brand New, assuming you use Audible, because I've got a few Audible credits, and it is applicable for authors 100%, because it's all about building a personal brand. And as an author, a personal brand is going to go a long ways to helping you market your book and your business. So today, it's a double prize. You get one of these fantastic book launchers. Mugs right there. No boring books. And. Oh, drum roll. Sweet. And also my audiobook, the new brand you'd. Okay, so here we go. Who is it? Who is it? Who's gonna win today? It is. We're throwing people out. Okay. It's the Timiya Noemi. So you're the winner. I don't have your contact information. You are a YouTube viewer, so you're going to have to reach out to us@teamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and email so that we can get in touch with you and you can start enjoying book Launchers with your morning brew or tea or whatever it is that you like to drink. And yes, this is also a good reason not to give your book away on Amazon because you're also Bots are the other books that were free that day. That can also happen. So it can really mess up your algorithms that way. So lots of stuff. Of course, if you're a book Launchers client will coach you through all this, walk you through it for your launch and beyond. So don't stress it. But everyone else, it's stuff you really, really want to pay attention to. Dale says it's his preferred mug. I've seen lots of social media posts with Dale reading, reading with his mug, drinking from his Book Launchers mug. So thank you for that. And if you win a mug, do post and tag me. I want to see it. It makes my day. All right, so thank you, everybody. Our next livestream is happening on July 10, and I tried to get Dale to join us, but it sounds like we're gonna have to do it another time. But Dale's got so much information, I just want to draw some of it out. But make sure you're tuning into their live streams and his channel in the meantime. And, yeah, Kevin gets his next week. So we can look forward to some posts from Kevin drinking from his book Launchers. Mug. So see you guys next time. July 10, 2pm Pacific Standard Time, 5pm Eastern Standard Time. And hopefully by then I'll have it figured out. Whatever the weird glitch was that kind of caused some of you to miss out or to be late today, we don't want that to happen next time. So anyway, thank you so much for being here and have a fantastic week.