415: How and Why To Self-Publish a Cookbook with Matt Briel from Lulu

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This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week. On the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Matt Brielle from Lulu. Matt is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Lulu, which is a print on demand, self publishing and distribution platform. In this interview, Bjork and Matt chat about the differences between traditional publishing and self publishing or print on demand and and why you might want to consider self publishing a cookbook. Matt talks a lot about what it takes to be successful when self publishing a cookbook. Like hiring a team, promoting your book and other things you'll want to consider if you've ever dreamed about self publishing your own cookbook or publishing your cookbook any other route. This is a super informative listen and we know you'll get a lot out of it. Just a quick reminder here that next week's podcast episode will be coming out on July 5, which is a Wednesday, even though we normally release episodes on Tuesday because of 4th of July holiday here in the US we will be releasing the episode a day late. So keep an eye out for that wonderful episode next Wednesday in your podcast feeds. And with that, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks. Good to be here. I appreciate it. Bjork.

Yeah, we're going to start by. I'm actually going to pull a little line here in about you, which I really appreciated. It says I'm a combination of equal parts loud music, Disney culture, tattoos, and book nerds, which it kind of feels like those are. If you're playing a game of, like, build a Person, those would be, like, the foremost kind of random cards that you could pull, but all really awesome. So the two that I'm specifically interested in, loud music. Like, when you say loud music, in what category? What is that?

Oh, gosh. Okay. You're about to lose most of your listeners right now. No, I grew up on a lot of, like, punk rock and metal.

Okay.

And then as I got older, you would think that that would have softened, but it actually leaned even harder into a lot of stuff that's more labeled, like, what they would call, like, hardcore and death core.

Sure.

But a lot of it's also kind of silly. But, yeah, the loud music refers to that.

That's awesome. Loud music, both in, like, what it. The general feel of it, but also probably the volume at which you listen.

It's best listened to both of them.

But then Disney culture coming right after that. Are you a Disney fanatic?

I am absolutely a Disney fanatic, yes. I was born and raised in Florida.

Okay.

And so around Disney, obviously. And then in college, I worked at Disney for a while, and that kind of sort of solidified my love of Disney and Disney culture. And just, I think back then I didn't realize it, but I really, I think, latched onto a lot of the culture that was their. Their employment and hiring practices and the way they treated their employees.

Sure.

And I think maybe that's what resonated with me beyond just the whole sort of lore of Disney. But I always kind of gravitated towards Walt Disney as well. And just some of the stuff that he did. And then later in life, especially as I could afford it, I start going back all the time. And especially now that I don't live in Florida anymore, I go even more so.

Yeah. That's awesome. My really good friend has a podcast with, I think it's three other dads, maybe two other dads in his neighborhood called Disney World is awesome.

Oh, wow.

Just get together once a week and they're like, let's. Let's talk about the three best rides to go on with kids. And like, they'll all go around and like, debate and. Or they're like, let's do a virtual walkthrough of Epcot. Like. Or something like that. Like, yeah, all of these different. I love that kind of nostalgia. Like trying to access the magic of Disney. So a little shout out to the Disney World is awesome podcast.

I have to find that. Yeah, yeah.

But also have a huge expertise in sales and marketing. You've been working in that world a really long time and most recently and what we're going to be talking about today in the world of publishing books. Self publishing books.

That's right.

You work for Lulu and. Which is a company that helps people do that. So how did that come about? How did you get into the world of self publishing as we use that as a transition into talking about how publishers can. Digital publishers can publish physical books?

Yeah. I'd like to say it was pure luck, but it wasn't. I went to school. My degree was in English and creative writing, and I always thought I'd work for a publisher. And after college, I realized that was not the path for me, at least not initially, because they didn't pay very well and there was a lot of red tape and not enough loud music, honestly. But later in life, about seven years ago, my wife was working for Lulu at the time in a completely different department, and I was looking to transition away from where I was at, and they just happened to be hiring for a growth hacker and marketing. So I interviewed and got the job and never looked back since. So always had an affinity for books and reading and writing. And again, early on in college, I always thought I would work for a publisher. Yeah, I just kind of came full circle in a. In a stroke of either luck or just because I have an awesome wife one way or the other.

Probably both. Yeah. So my guess is in that position of growth, hacker marketer, you know, the intent is Lulu's bringing you on to think strategically about growing and building the business for Lulu. But a piece of that also, I would imagine with a company like yours, you want. Any success that you find in getting more books sold is also success for the publisher that you're working or the. The creator that you're working with. Like, their success is your success. So how much of what you're doing is thinking about how do you sell more books? Because then you benefit from that. Lulu benefits from that versus, like, growth in general as a marketing engine for Lulu.

Yeah, you're 100% right. In fact, you already know more at this point than I did when I first came to Lulu, what we do and what my job would be. Absolutely. So the business model that Lulu has and some other self publishers is that we actually only make money when books are sold because we don't charge any fees up front or anything like that. So yeah, it's in our best interest to help our customers sell more books. So I'd say a good 70 to 80% of my time and my marketing team's time is spent on finding ways to help our users sell more books. So whether that's exploring new technology that we then take to our development team and say, hey, can we build this in or can we create this? Or whether that's just understanding what the latest trends and marketing and sales are. That is the focus of most of the time that we, we spend on what we do is educating and helping users sell more books. The other, you know, 30 to 40% of our time is really spent on some of the normal marketing activities around any brand or business. You know, whether it's PR related things or stuff like that. But you're right, the bulk of it is really helping people sell more books.

Yeah. Can we talk about the mechanics of what it would look like? And let's use the cookbook publishing world as an example. You know, I think people have generally a good idea of what it looks like if you're going the traditional publishing route where you get an advance and that money, you know, is kind of this upfront payment that you have to pay back over time. If the book does well, eventually you'll get into a point where you'll collect royalties or you'll collect an additional kind of percentage. Yeah, you do. Fingers crossed for anybody who's not watching. Point being, like a lot of times that doesn't happen depending on what the deal is. So the advance really is what you're getting unless it sells really well. The other world is self publishing where you're not getting an advance, but everything that you do sell is or potentially is just profit in your pocket. So can you talk about maybe some of the mechanics of what it looks like to sell a self published book? And my understanding it would be print on demand. Is that always true or is that specifically what Lulu's doing?

It's not always true. These days you will find that more and more self publishers utilize print on demand versus the other way, which is offset printing. It's just more cost effective for both parties involved in the long term.

And you talk about the difference between those two.

Sure, those are unfamiliar and it's much better for the environment. So you have print on demand and you have offset printing. Offset printing is what most books in bookstores are using to print. And it's the process of printing 5,000 copies of one book at one time. So the machines, you don't have to switch out rolls of paper or anything quite as frequently. And it's a little more cost effective to do it that way. And most of the inexpensive printers that are located in China, that's offset printing. So you can go and get 5,000 copies of a pretty standard book printed in China for relatively cheaply and then shipped back over here. And then you figure out how to fulfill them. Right. To ship them out for every order that comes in, versus print on demand, which utilizes pretty much the same kind of printers, although more on the digital end and a lot more, I think, innovative these days. And that digital printers that are set up for print on demand, they're able to print one book at a time. So, and when, I mean one specific book, one after the other, different types of books. So you could load up on one machine, 57 different books, and print one copy of each of those 57 books in a single roll of paper within minutes of a time. So it's much more ecologically friendly and it's much better for somebody who is maybe only selling 10 copies a day of their book, or 2 copies a day, or even 500 copies a day. It's just a little bit more economic and ecologically friendly. Offset printing requires a large upfront investment as well as you can imagine. So if you're going to order a couple thousand copies of your book upfront and have them offset printed to save some money, you still have to pay all that upfront. Then they'll get printed and shipped over, usually from, from China or India. And then you have to store them and then, you know, ship them out. Whereas with print on demand, there's no upfront fees. So again, as a book sells, it's then printed and shipped and it's paid for at that time. So it also helps to offset the costs upfront for anybody who's looking to get into it in a low cost way.

Yeah, that makes sense. Can you, it's, you know, you talked about it being ecologically friendly. Is the reason that's true because you're not potentially having a bunch of inventory that doesn't sell, or is it more of the shipping that's happening when you purchase Overseas, and it has to be shipped over and everything that goes into that.

It's both. I was going to go into that when I went back to your original question of the difference between or the mechanics of the two, but that's a great, great question. And it's both so ecologically friendly. We're referring to, again, let's say a traditional publisher, Simon and Schuster, wants to do your cookbook. The initial run is probably going to be something like 10,000 copies, and they'll stock a bunch of Barnes and Noble with it and other stores. And so their offset print facilities in China will print the 10,000 copies and ship them over to the States and anywhere else that they're going to be sold. And then what happens is, if those books don't sell, there's a number of different things that could happen, but almost always it results in waste. There are some recycling possibilities, but these days, what they do with pulping books and recycling books really isn't that much more friendly for the environment. And then on top of that. Yes. So when you talk about shipping items to the United States from other countries, there's the obvious carbon footprint there of, again, you're loading them into containers, they're put on ships that are crossing the ocean and all the trucks and everything else to deliver those books from the different ports to the stores. So again, with Print on Demand, you're eliminating a lot of that, but especially the upfront waste that can happen, too. That's a great question.

And in the case of, let's say you're printing on demand, can you talk through what that looks like, start to finish? So somebody comes on, they buy, they. They say, I want to buy one of these books. Here's my address, here's my credit card. What happens on the back end?

Absolutely, yeah. So in the situation where somebody is selling their book directly from their website, which is what we always push, and, and you go on and you buy, let's say, my cookbook from my website, what happens if they're using us? What'll happen is because of the direct integration, you'll click buy, you'll put in your credit card info right there, make the purchase, that order data is transmitted behind the scenes from my website to lulu's print facility, and that book will be printed and shipped directly to you. And so most of it happens seamlessly behind the scenes. What has happened on the front side, if I'm the creator of that cookbook, is I've created that book and I've loaded my files into Lulu and inside of my Lulu user interface. I've connected to my, you know, if I'm using Shopify, I've connected to my Shopify store if I'm using, you know, WooCommerce for WordPress or any of those other things. So it's actually pretty easy and seamless. Once the connection is made, that data is just transmitted automatically for every transaction. The really cool thing is that if I'm the seller of that book, if it's my cookbook that you just bought, I'm collecting all that money up front immediately. And then when the book is printed and shipped from Lulu, I just pay whatever the small manufacturing shipping cost is. That's different than any other retail model. So that's really cool, too.

Point being, the transaction happens. Lulu takes a significant cut because it has to because of the. The book being printed. That's the most expensive part. But then you, as the creator, get your percentage of that. Is it in, like, in the case of Lulu, is it in, like a Lulu account that then you can, like, transfer into your bank account or does it directly go into your bank account? How does that.

No, that works. That's the beauty of it. So what you're. What you're kind of describing is a mix of selling direct and the old way of, you know, if you're self publishing, a lot of times maybe you did it through Amazon or one of the others, and they take a huge cut. If you're selling direct from Lulu, we're not actually taking a huge cut. So if you set the retail price of your cookbook at, let's say, you know, 25.99, and it costs us, let's say, $8 and 50 cents to print it, that's what you're getting charged. So you're keeping every last bit of that, whereas in a different model. So, like, if you're using Amazon and you're selling through Amazon, they're going to take the manufacturing costs, but then they're also going to take a percentage of the royalties.

Like you said, marketplace cost.

That's right, yeah. And then when it comes to the actual receiving the funds, because you're the one facilitating the transaction on your website using Shopify or whatever it is you're using, it's actually super easy. You have that money immediately. You're not waiting for it from Lulu, and in fact, you just have a payment on file with Lulu, so you might keep a credit card on file with Lulu.

Got it. It's the other way around. I get all the money and then.

That'S makes sense 100% the other way around. That's the way it should be, to be honest with you.

Sure, yeah. So you, you sell a book for $25, somebody buys it, there's a, whatever 3% credit card fee that goes into it like there would be with any other transaction. And then it triggers the process on Lulu's side to print the book.

That's right.

And then you have some automatic payment set up to say, okay, you printed this book, shipped it, we're going to cover the cost of the printing and the shipping. But one of the things that, in my mind one of the things that exists is like, oh, it's usually if you're self publishing or just in general, if you're selling a book or cookbook, it's like single digit dollars that you're getting. But you're saying that doesn't always have to be the case. My guess is one of the biggest variables is like what type of cookbook or what type of book you're publishing. Like is it every page color and hardcover book? That's the biggest equation that you're working with from a cost perspective.

That's right, 100%. And so with taking on the, the process of selling direct, you also take on a little bit of the responsibility to understand what type of book you're going to create. Right. So if you create, you know, top of the line, 8 and a half by 11, full premium color on the inside. Right. Like full beautiful photographic color, everything. Yes. The cost to manufacture that book is going to be a little bit more so and you may have to sell it for more. And quite frankly, I was at Barnes and Noble the other day, like really high end cookbooks that are full color, they're not cheap, but they're also not cheap to produce. So you know, something like that, let's say 150 to 200 pages, you're probably going to sell that for between 30 and $40 and it's probably going to cost you about a third of that to produce it.

Sure.

But you're keeping all of the rest of that. Whereas you go again with anybody else, you probably are bringing home single digit dollar numbers. I think the most important thing here is that understanding with what technology exists now versus three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, you are able to obviously keep a lot more of your profit and handle all of that stuff up front. And so tools like Shopify or some of the others on the front end, you can spin up a website in a day that looks beautiful and Shopify's tools, they're going to handle all the processing fees for the credit cards, the taxes, all of that stuff. And it's, it's become really easy to be your own store. And so for people who have built up a blog following or a lot of traffic or anything like that, you've got that audience already. And so the last step there in your journey really is to just sell the products directly instead of letting the retailer take a cut. The other side to that though, the real benefit I think, and what people really need to start paying attention to is that when you do something like that, when you take that on, you are keeping all of the customer data and that's something new that nobody really gives you. And so when you sell through a third party retailer, you don't get any of that. You have no idea who bought your book, which means you also can't really remarket to them. And even if you have a hundred thousand followers and you say, hey, my cookbook's coming out tomorrow, please everybody go buy it, I'll put a link up or whatever that might be and you send them to a third party retailer, you really have no idea how many of them actually bought it or who bought it. And so when you come out with the next version or some other product or an online course about how to make the perfect dumpling or something, you don't have that built in database and that's the real benefit. So if you're interested in building a long term following and a long term business from your content, it's imperative that you, you start collecting data as soon as possible if you're not already.

Yeah, that's great, love that. And it's interesting, you know, in the world of publishing you would know this better than I would, but it seems like there's really been a shift where 15 years ago, 20 years ago, what would have happened is you would have been relying on the power behind the marketing engine. With a publishing house where, and I think this probably still exists, they're going to be able to get you in front of people in certain ways and have connections. And that's all still very real. But what also is true and has shifted is that individuals now have an immense amount of power to be marketers. They have a following on social, they have an email list, they have, you know, obviously a blog. And I've heard we haven't experienced it because we haven't gone through the process ourselves, but I've heard a lot of people talk about the expectation in their relationship with publishing a book was that they are going to be the ones that are promoting it, marketing it, selling it. Like they kind of take on the role of not only creator of a cookbook, but also then marketer of that cookbook to their audience. Which makes sense. Like you have an audience, you have a following. It's the best place to go for that. But I can see how in certain situations it would make sense to say, you know what, I'm going to go through the process of doing this on my own and place the bet that this is going to do well and that I'm going to capture more of that. Can you talk about the difference between, you know, you talk about going into Barnes and Noble and looking at one of those hardcover books, it's maybe 30, $40. Are you able to produce a similar type of product on demand or are there limitations in terms of the type of product that you can get in on demand versus you know, printing 5,000 copies?

Yeah, no, that's great. And what you said leading up to that question was also pretty spot on. I mean, the differences between what you might have got 15 years ago being traditionally published and now there's a huge delta there. And in fact, most traditional publishers these days don't want to take anybody on unless they have a massive following already. They don't. The marketing budgets for traditional publishers is tiny these days. They don't want to do any of that. And so you're right. I mean, they're looking for people who have a following already because that's the easiest place to start. So when you talk about, you know, traditional versus self publishing and the quality of the books, it's actually in many cases better on the self publishing side when you're using digital print on demand because of how advanced the technology has gotten. You can imagine if I say offset printing press, exactly what you're thinking about in your head is very similar to what's going on. And so when you think about digital printing presses or digital printing machines and book creation machines, also, what you're thinking about is pretty much what it looks like. And so all the innovation is happening there and the quality happens there. So we have examples of people who created amazing beautiful cookbooks, photo books, art books, using all of the premium color presets that we have. And you could set that next to a book on a bookshelf in any bookstore and you would not be able to tell the difference. And in some cases the self published one that was print on demand might look better actually. And so that quality component has come a really long way, which honestly I think has been a big part of what's helped self publishing kind of take advantage of the shift that's been happening that you just talked about. If the quality hadn't caught up to some of the other technology that's made it easier to self publish, then we still wouldn't be experiencing what we're doing, what we're seeing right now. So the quality keeping sort of pace with the technology on the other side of publishing, I think is what's made for that perfect storm. So the quality is no longer a question. Any self publisher that can't show you an example of a quality book is definitely one that you don't want to go with, but amazing, beautiful books. Absolutely.

And I think probably what exists in my mind is one of the realities of what you have to deal with in self publishing is there is no gatekeeper. And that's why it's wonderful. And so anybody can self publish a cookbook, whereas in the traditional publishing world there are lots of gatekeepers.

That's right.

But what ends up happening then is there's a natural selection process for who can eventually do a traditional publishing. And they probably have, you know, graphic design departments and support and all these different. So there's all of these filters that something has to pass through before it gets published. Traditionally, with self publishing, what you're saying and what we're talking about is the actual product, like the color quality, the, the how do the pages look, how is it put together? But it's like you could come in and use like clipart from the 90s and technically still self publish something. There's nobody that's going to stop you from doing that. So then what has to happen is if you want something that is to the standard of traditional publishing, you have to have the product that you're creating, like the digital pieces of that that eventually get printed, the design, the writing, the quality of the pictures, like all of that stuff has to be up to a certain standard.

That's right.

So what do you see in the finished products that are at that traditional publishing level but are actually self published? Like, are you able to identify any commonalities or themes for people who get an end product that is just excellent? Like what are they doing to get to that level?

Yeah, the commonality there is that they paid somebody to help them. It's plain and simple. So self publishing is what it says. Right? You literally, like you said, there's no gatekeeper. So you can step up to the plate and publish a cookbook. Or any other book for that matter, in any way that you want. You can use Microsoft Paint from 10 years ago and put out something that is arguably subpar. And if that's your brand and you're comfortable doing that, you can do that. The really high quality stuff that we see coming through right now, they are utilizing freelance help or they have friends that are designers or editors or the point is they're getting help. So the files, by the time they're getting uploaded into Lulu, the COVID file was done usually in a pretty top notch program like Adobe or Affinity or our cover tool, we just released a new version. It's actually pretty advanced. You can create a really nice cover on Lulu now, which is great because up until about a year ago our cover tool was pretty garbage as well. But yeah, the commonalities, you get some help, you don't go it alone. Even though it is self publishing and it's not as expensive as you would think these days there's a lot of great designers and editors and layout people who are on Fiverr 99 designs. You probably know somebody and maybe you don't even realize it and it gives you another opportunity to connect with other creators in the process. But again, you could design or have designed and composed a really nice book, whether it's a cookbook or not, for less than 700, $500.

Sure. Yep.

It's not hard, but I would recommend it. And that is the common theme to any book you see coming through a self publishing platform that looks like it was produced by Simon and Schuster.

Yep. Is that you are working with somebody who's really good at what they do.

That's right.

You can probably find those people, like you said, in those marketplaces. My guess is also in as is often the case with freelancers, contractors, anybody that you're working with, like as the their history, reliability, skill level. As you get more of that better skill level, better history, the price also probably goes up. Like somebody with a lot of history who's had repeated success with it definitely can find those people for 250 bucks. You know, on up, not upwork. What is it now? Elance?

No, I don't know what the new name is.

I think it's upwork. But point being, and I think this is a good takeaway, you're building a team. Whereas if you go the traditional publishing route, they probably have those people, they have those recommendations, but they're maybe expensive like so that's coming out of either coming out of your advance or you know, built in, in a way where you're not getting paid as much because it's a part of the budget. So I think what's, what's great about it is like for those who are hungry and ambitious and are used to working with a team or have some specific skills and abilities in a certain area, it's a way to do that same behavior that you're doing online, but creating a physical product and using some, you know, instead of a somebody doing a web design, they're doing book design and somebody doing blog copy, they're doing book copy. And so you can see for people in the publishing space, digital publishing space, I can imagine a lot of that crossing over in terms of skills and abilities.

Yeah. And there's not, there's not a lot of difference either though these days. So again, if you're, let's say, you know, like you just alluded to, if you're just a graphic designer by trade and you're used to doing mostly web design or you know, working on some other types of graphics for other clients, designing a book cover is not much different than a homepage on a website these days. You're literally working with certain templates and size parameters. And so these days you're not seeing that it's that far of a stretch. And there's a lot more designers that are adding that to their services offered and so it is easier to find it. And you're right, the level of expertise and quality will probably change at each price point. Break. Um, but we've definitely, you know, on a pretty regular basis seen quite a few coming through where it did not cost an arm and a leg at all. Yeah. So, you know, you're, you're right there.

What are the book specific experts that you should have on your team? Because I've never published a book. I wouldn't know, but I would imagine similar to running a website or building an Instagram following, once you really understand the industry, there's a lot of nuanced insights or advice or tips that you can have even. I'm thinking of like, how do you best structure table contents? Like, what does the flow of a book look like? Are there like experts or advisors that you could hire to kind of in, in traditional publishing, they'd maybe have that. They'd say, here are the steps. Is there somebody who would do that in the self publishing world that can come alongside you and help fill those different positions or the unique positions that maybe exist that we don't think about?

Yes, absolutely. So again, another great question and point is that again, if you go with a traditional publisher, if you're lucky enough, they do have a team that does a lot of that. If you're self publishing and you want to do it right, you do need to find some of that guidance and some of that help. And so there are people out there that specifically operate in the world of book layout and book design. That's all they do. So that stuff is just second nature to them. You know, table of contents, where the copyright page go, metadata, all those things. We actually have templates and things like that on our site for all that as well. So, again, if you're overly ambitious and you really want to go at this yourself and give it a shot, you can do it. That's the beauty of a lot of this, too, is that for so long, the gatekeepers did a really good job of not only gatekeeping, but also making people think that this was just too hard to do on your own. And, yeah, it really isn't. I promise you, if somebody like me could figure it out, Anybody in your audience could figure this out. It's not. It's not complicated. But there are people that specialize in it. They are easy to find. You won't have trouble finding somebody to help you with that. And some of this stuff sounds a little daunting, like, oh, table of contents and metadata. What is he talking about? And those are all things that are oftentimes already packaged in a template you'll find for free online, either with us or somewhere else. But you can find book layout and other people who specialize in those types of things. And again, they're all pretty good at what they do. We've not really seen anything come through where somebody utilized freelance help in the way of editing and layout and design. And it just threw us like, whoa, what in the hell? Most of the ones that we've seen, they're really well done. And so I think that if somebody goes out there and says, yeah, I specialize in this, it's pretty safe to say that they do. And honestly, you would know pretty quickly if they didn't, because what you would get back you even you would understand, like, this is not a table of contents.

Yeah.

And this is not what a glossary or, you know, resources or footnotes look like. So I'm gonna hard pass on this one.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But, yeah, there are people that specialize in that.

Yeah. How about some success stories that you've had? I'm guessing that you've had a lot of exposure to different publishers. A lot of exposure. I would guess even to like people who are publishing cookbooks. Can you talk about some of the people who have found success and maybe why you think they did find success, whether sharing specifically who they are or not, just in general, I think it's helpful to hear stories that people have had around successful self publishing.

Yeah. So I'm going to start from the back side of that question because I think that's important to define the success stories, is why they, they found success. And so we've talked a lot so far. We've crammed a lot in so far about publishing, traditional versus self publishing and some of those things. I think what's important to understand is that especially with this new wave of creators that have come on in the last three years or so, as people really start to understand just how, how fulfilling this can be, right. To make a go of this as a, as a career, whatever that might be, treating it like a business is something different than just doing it as a hobby, Right. So when you flip that switch and you have that business mindset and you say, okay, I want to productize what I do, or I want to monetize my content, or I want to create a book for whatever purpose that might be, or any other product for that matter, it doesn't necessarily have to be a book. But the point is, when you make that decision to turn it into a business, some of these things that we've just talked about, they become arbitrary, they sort of fall away. So whether or not some of the old tried and true romantic notions about publishing still remain, it's not important. When you're treating like a business, you could treat self publishing as merely a manufacturing goalpost. That's it. Right. So if I have again, a food blog or website or some other business that's, that's parallel to food, for that matter. And I've worked hard to build an audience and I'm ready to monetize or productize what I do because I have an audience that's ready for it as well. I'm merely looking for a manufacturer or, you know, a company, a business that can, that can make this product for me. So really what you're looking at are the things that we most recently touched on, which is quality and delivery. So getting it into market, and those are the things that matter. So looking at how fast I can get my product into market and at the quality that people should come to expect from me as a creator and as a brand, so some of that other stuff really, at the end of the day becomes a little Bit arbitrary.

When you say the other stuff, what do you mean?

Yeah, so when we talk about things like advances or having a team at your disposal and working with a traditional publisher, things like that, that's less of a concern. When you're approaching your product that's based on the content that you've created, you really want to stay in control of all of that. You don't want to give that control to anybody else, similar to anybody else that's just started the business, Whether that's productized or whether it's something that's not necessarily monetized just yet, you don't want to give any of that control over. So in self publishing, you keep total control over that. And so you decide who your team is going to be. You're going to find a freelance designer. If you're not a designer, or if you don't want to go at it yourself, you're going to find an editor. You're going to find the right person to help you lay it out. But at the end of the day, you're going to make the final decision about how that book looks, what paperweight it's on and what stores you'll sell it at and how it will look on your site when you deliver it to market, and all of those things. Whereas with a traditional publisher, you're really relegating yourself to the world of publishing and you're saying, okay, I'm just an author. I'm going to give this book to Simon and Schuster now, and they're going to do with it whatever they do with it. I'm just the author of that book. I don't actually own it. It's not my business. It's their business now. And oftentimes what will happen is what goes to market is not the COVID that you chose. It might not even be the title you chose. And in fact, they might cut out 20% of the recipes you had in there, but you. You don't have any control over that anymore. You lost that. So.

Well, and they can also decide to stop publishing it, right? That's right.

100%. So again, in that scenario, you're an author. You're not a creator or a business owner. In this scenario, you're a business owner. You're a creator. This is, this is yours. And so again, some of those other things, they're not as important anymore because you're not doing this to be an author and be published by a big traditional publishing company. You're doing this because it's, it's what you want to do. And if it's a long term game, the things that you really should focus on are what we're about to talk about, which again are, you know, quality money delivery to market, logistics, those kind of things. So when we see these success stories, and I've got a few here for sure, those are the things that they have sort of focused on. They work to build an audience around what they were doing. All of the ones are the few that I'm going to talk about here. They, they were bloggers, still are. And again got to a point where they realized it's time to monetize or productize what I do. I have an audience that's asking for it and you know, I'm going to make a go of it. These three specifically, they went the route of selling direct. So they all use Lulu, but only as a manufacturer.

Sure.

When, when one of their customers gets one of their books, it comes from them. So we white label it. It doesn't come from Lulu, it comes from them. And they've all spent time to get a really nice finished product.

When you mean it comes from them just real quick, like even on the return, on the return address it says whatever the name of the brand is.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So one of the first ones I was going to talk about real briefly, this is Peachy Spoon. So she has a great blog, obviously food related and she talks a lot about blood sugar, blood sugar balance and things like that. So again, beautiful book. She did a lot of full color on the inside, but she did a great job of building her audience first. She created the book, she worked with some people to help her create the book. Connected it directly to her website, which is the Peachy Spoon. You can find the book there. And she offers it in two different formats. Sorry. And that's really important for her because she wanted to be able to offer it in a lower cost option which is a coil bound so it can lay flat on the counter while you're cooking or making these recipes. Sure. And then there's a hardcover option which is a little nicer and costs a little bit more and obviously doesn't lay flat quite as nicely on the counter when you're cooking. But she did a wonderful job of creating these products, taking them to market, did a great job of hyping them up to her audience and very quickly, you know, over 1500 copies sold so far, did a great job and is continuing to push that book again though, really treated it like a business and thought about, okay, what's the best way to take this to market to my audience and grow beyond my audience. Another one is Lauren Levy. She, she does Lauren Fit Foodie, another really cool one. We like to use her as an example a lot also pretty much the same story. Did a pretty good job of building an audience first and then realized, you know, this is a great opportunity for me to look at how to monetize my content. The obvious step for her was a book, but she decided to do a meal planner instead of just a traditional recipe book. Again, she's at about over 2000 copies sold so far. This is all direct to people who are already her audience. Great looking book. And then one of our favorites are, this is a couple that they're local to where we're based out of which is Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham area. And this is Tiny home, big flavor Justin and Juby. So when they created this book, which is all plant based recipes, they kind of see it on the COVID for those of you who are watching the video. But if not, it's them on the COVID and they, they live, I believe, still do, out of a converted school bus. And that's where they, they cooked all of their meals and they basically put together 50 of their favorite recipes, all plant based, into a beautiful book. I promise you, this thing probably looks better than any book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. And again, you know, when it was time to push this out, they told their audience, hey, we appreciate all the support. We've got a book coming out, we'd love for you to buy it directly from us. And again, wonderful sales numbers for them. But that business mindset, it wasn't that they were going to create a book and then find a traditional publisher to take it off their hands. And they're just cookbook authors. Yeah, they wanted to completely own that business and make a better life through some of those, those choices they made. So a lot of this also, like we said, just revolves around how much control do you want of your content, what are your goals? There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I want to be famous for my recipes. I want to be the next, you know, I don't know, Joanna Gaines or whoever's you know, really out there on TV all day, every day right now. That's fine if that's your goal. And then if that's the case, you should shop that around the traditional publishers and look for the best deal. But if this is something you want to do long term and you enjoy creating content and you want ways to monetize it, I Think this is the best route for creators these days? For sure.

That's awesome. One of the things we talk about occasionally is this concept of an egg carton method for diversification of income. And it's, it's not that you have to have like 12 sources of income, but it's just a visual for people to think about. Okay, if your goal is to get to a certain amount, whatever that dollar amount is, one of the ways you could think about it is like, okay, I'm going to get this much money from advertising, and it's all going to come from advertising on my blog or this much from sponsor content. But another way you could approach it is you could say, I'm going to try and make thousand dollars a month from publishing a cookbook. I'm going to try and make thousand dollars from ads. And you can start to, you know, fill those different spots in the egg carton with different income sources. And this, to me feels like a really tangible way to do that, where you can say, okay, what would it take for me? And you can break it down. If I'm going to make $10 per published cookbook or whatever that number might be, and I want to make an additional, you know, $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year from it, how do I do the math on that to say, okay, I need to get to sell, selling one a day or two a day or whatever it might be. And you can play the numbers game with that in a way that's maybe a little bit difficult in the world of traditional publishing, where you can't play the numbers game in the same way because it's more obscured. And maybe even if you are selling really well, maybe you haven't earned your advance back yet.

Well, that's the other part of it too, right? So when you, when you publish, traditionally, if you're lucky enough, by the way, so we talked about those gatekeepers, that's literally what they're paid to do, is to make sure that they filter out 99.5% of the manuscripts they get. But if you're lucky enough and they do give you a decent advance, it will take you a while to advance out and to pay off that advance. And then once you do, you're going to get a very small royalty per book sold after that. But these days, most people aren't advancing out. It's not common. It's really hard to do. So I like that egg carton approach. That's pretty cool. And we tell people all the time, like, yeah, absolutely, there are Lots of ways to diversify and monetize your content, and you should explore whichever ones make sense for you. Never have all your eggs in one basket, I guess, to follow the same pun. And the more reliant you are on one particular platform, the more danger you're in of disrupting your financial flows. So having something like a book or, I don't know, your own line of cookware where it's not dependent upon whether or not some billionaire wakes up in the morning and decided he wants to buy YouTube or Twitter and make it go crazy, you're better off if you've got some more stability in your product lineup. And with books you literally could earn while you sleep, because once you set it up, they're just buying it right off your website, as long as you're telling them where to get it and reminding them that it's there. And like you said, maybe you've got that goal set to sell 100 books a month because you have a fixed amount you want to make. You just make sure you're pushing that book at every opportunity you get.

Yeah. Can you talk about, you know, as we close out, some additional questions that I think would be interesting. One of them is can you talk about the benefits of a book that are non financial? Because I know that that's a huge component of it too.

Yes.

Even in the world of search, like you see that where it can be a variable in authority. Like you have more authority and so the potential to be looked at differently in the world of search that exists or I know people talk about that, but also I know a lot of like people who have published a book for the sake of being known as an expert in that field. You think it'd be the other way around where you have to become this massive expert and then you publish a book. But I think a lot of times people have that expertise but aren't viewed as an expert yet, but want to solidify that with a book. Can you talk about that a little bit or other angles that you can think about that are non financial?

Yeah, those are my favorite parts of publishing a book, by the way. You can make any amount of money you want, but that's all going to be up to you and how, how hard you push it. So the financial aspects aside of publishing a book, I'm much more excited about the other opportunities having a book or a book creates for you. One of those is. Yes. So it's almost instant authority and credibility and whatever field you're in. And so we all see it, you Might see somebody on social media or LinkedIn or at an event or somewhere like that, you know, next to their name, it'll say, you know, published author or best selling author, or, you know, literally wrote the book on the subject subconsciously. We can't help it. We immediately think, oh, I'm going to listen to this person and see what they have to say because they know what they're talking about. And the beauty of what's going on right now is that nobody cares if you were traditionally published or self published, if you have published author next to your name or the fact that you have a book. And you, you appear in search results because somebody searched for, you know, whatever best plant based recipes for blood sugar and your book comes up, you know, that's, that's a win right there. Having that book creates those opportunities for credibility and authority where you might not have those otherwise. We like to joke, you know, it's better than a business card these days is having a book.

Sure.

Handing somebody a business card happens probably every 20 seconds or more. Handing somebody a book and showing them that, you know, I took the time to do this, I am an authority on this, there is a lot that I have to offer is a whole new ballgame. There are other opportunities that come with books as well. We see this all the time with people who are really trying to grow their audience and establish a community around what they do. Having that physical touch point for people to interact with each other as well as the creator, and it creates that sort of source of conversation. And another reason to communicate with each other is great, especially in the food world where recipes can become such a touch point for people and a communication point. And then another way is obviously with the amount of creators that are entering the creator economy, whether it's in food or any other vertical, there are times where you probably feel like, oh, why would I do a book or anything else? I'm just another food blogger or I'm just another art blogger or whatever. But one of the best ways to stand out and differentiate yourself amongst a lot of that white noise is to have something like a book. Because again, it shows authority, credibility. It shows that you took the time and felt that your content was valuable enough to put it into a book. And people will really recognize that and respect that. You'd be surprised how many people will pay, you know, what you want for that book just based on the hard work that you put into it, especially if they were already followers, followers of yours to begin with.

So yeah, that's great. And I Think that's a great note to end on this technically last question. My guess is coming out of this there'll be a lot of people who will have additional questions curiosities or will just want to learn more. What's the best way for people to take the next step? Like if they're not at the point where they're like, I know I'm going to do this, but they're like, if they're like self publishing curious, what does that look like for them to dig into that a little bit more? Is it reaching out to you? Is that exploring on Lulu the different resources Would be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Any and all of those ways will work, but I'd say the easiest way for people to really sort of take a deep dive into what we just talked about because it can be a little bit overwhelming. We're cramming it all into whatever, 30, 40 minutes here. But. And when I talk about it, I take for granted. I tend to make it all sound so easy and a good part of it is, but some of it's not. So I would go to lulu.com and at the top there's a tab for resources. And in that tab you'll find all kinds of great things to help. The biggest source of help will probably be our blog, but you'll also find a link for hiring a pro or I think maybe it says partners page now. But that's where we've listed a lot of people that we've worked with that we know are good freelancers and things like that. But if you're more of a visual learner, we have an amazing library of videos on YouTube so you can just go to YouTube and look for Lulu.com and we have our Lulu University series which literally breaks down every aspect of of self publishing. We have cookbook specific videos, videos to help you learn how to sell, direct and set up your stores, all of that stuff. So again, if you're Visual, hit up YouTube. Uh, if you prefer good old fashioned blogs, just go to lulu.com and pull down the resources tab. But always feel free to email me or anybody else you can get your hands on at Lulu as well. We're always happy to help.

Email is. Are you okay to give it out on the podcast?

Absolutely. Yep.

Okay. Yep.

It's M B R I e l mbrielulu.com and I'm sure Bjork will probably put it in the show notes.

Yeah, that's great. Hey Matt, super fun to talk to you about this. I think it'll open the door for a lot of people to step into the world of publishing in a really great way. And so thanks for coming on and sharing your insights.

Awesome. I appreciate it. Bjork.

Hey there, Alexa here. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks for tuning in this week. I wanted to let you know that we actually recently launched something called the Member Directory. So all Food Blogger Pro members have access to it, and they can access it by going to foodbloggerpro.com directory. And it's there that you can see and connect with all of your fellow Food Blogger Pro members and industry experts and those of us on the Food Blogger Pro team. So you'll see different things like social links and blog links and bios and just ways to connect. And it's just such a fun place to go if you're looking to kind of build your own community on a social media platform or just be able to connect with other people and see what they're up to on their blogs. So again, that URL is foodbloggerpro.com directory and if you are a Food Blogger Pro member and you're interested in filling out your profile, you can do that over in the edit profile area of your membership. And then once you fill out that information and you're kind of of exploring the member directory, you can filter by cuisines. So if you're blogging about vegan recipes and you want to connect with other vegan bloggers, it's very easy to do that on the directory. It's very fun, very cool, and just a really awesome place to connect with one another. So if you're a member, be sure to check that out@foodbloggerpro.com directory. And if you're not a member, all good. If you're interested in joining, you can learn more@foodbloggerpro.com membership. Um, but otherwise, we'll see you here on the podcast next time, and until then, make it a great week.