271: Specific Road-Tested Tips for Book Sales and Marketing with Todd Sattersten (Part Two)

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Long time no talk since I paused the show in February, but I'm back with a few special drops here on this feed. I hope you appreciate them and I hope to be able to do this from time to time, even if I'm not back to my full swing of 14 episodes a month between Pivot and free time. Just a quick note to say I miss you. I'm grateful if you're still here, subscribed and listening to this. Today's episode is a follow up to episode 268, which was talking through strategies for surpassing the magic number of book sales with Todd Satterston, who is the publisher of BardPress. He had so many specific brilliant strategies for building in feedback to those early launch days, weeks and months. Even if you're not launching a book, these could work for any program that you're really trying to figure out and hone those marketing dials. I released that to my substack feed for paid subscribers, but I also want to put it out here for you. That is going to be today's conversation on specific road tested tips for book sales and marketing. We're going to follow up where we left off in 268 and you'll just hear even more of Todd's brilliance even now as I record this intro. We just celebrated a big win, which is that I spent spotted free time in a bookstore for the first time in two and a half years. I wrote about this on Rolling in Dough in an article called Spotted Hope that after my friend Dory and Alexis, her fiance, texted me to say that they spotted free time at Barnes and Noble Fifth Avenue, I went a few days later and, well, let's just say serendipity came into play once again and the person I tapped to see if I could sign the book happened to be exactly the right person to ask for a whole special series of events that unfolded as Dorie even talks about playing the long game. It took me two and a half years to see Free Time with my own two eyes in a bookstore on the shelf, but I'm so happy that I did and to have that patience. And as one of my friend tourists, Michael Bungay Stanier says, a book launch.

Is really a five year experience. So don't give up too soon on.

Whatever it is that you're working on. Then stay tuned next week because I am so excited to be in conversation with Seth Godin for his latest book this Is Strategy. If you enjoyed Free Time, you are going to love this book. Every single page I underlined so many things that has so many overlaps with all the systems and mindset and ways of thinking about your business at a really high level. And it's like every system that I researched that went into writing Free Time to help with operational efficiency and setting your time free. Seth has gone even deeper and covered.

Of course, as he always does, even.

More of the Waterfront. So that'll be dropping next week. Can't wait. For now onto my conversation with Todd Satterston. And again, if you haven't already, go back and listen to 268 first.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the FreeTime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Welcome back everybody. Free Time is paused at the moment, but we're so lucky to have this bonus session with Todd Saturston to check in on the book brainstorm that he was so generous to do with me in October of 2023. We're recording this in March actually two weeks prior to the two year bookiversary for free time. And I did take action on a bunch of the things we talked. So we'll do an update on the reader survey that I launched. Before we do that. Todd is the publisher and owner of BardPress, a publisher that works with authors to create best selling books in business, personal development and technology. Before that he served as general manager of IT Revolution and president of the business book retailer 800 CEO Read, now renamed Porchlight. He's the author of Every book as a startup and the co author of the Hundred Best Business Books of All Time podcast, which incidentally was one of the very first business books I added to my library. So to go Meta Todd lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Amy and their three awesome kids. And the famous blog post and research that he did was around the magic number. How much do launches matter? Does it matter how many you sell in the first week, the first month, the first year? And Todd came to that last conversation with some answers. So if you haven't heard that yet, I'll link to it in the show notes. Todd, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Jenny, before we talk about free time, you mentioned something interesting offline before we officially started that because BardPress only works with one author on one book a year. And in fact you say that you start the launch process one year out from pub date. Can you tell us more about that and how do you structure that year of planning and executing the launch?

What happens for us is that, you know, the development process for us is usually two plus years to do a book. So usually that first year is us spending an enormous amount of time in the development of the book, thinking about what the book should look like. And then there's, I always think that we kind of do a pivot where once that manuscript is done, we kind of have a good sense for what the book is going to be like. That that's the time that we want to sort of switch our efforts towards the promotion side. And I say that we spend a year doing, preparing for that launch because, well, as you said, we only do one book a year. So we want to put an awful lot of effort into engaging as many people as we can and making the book successful. But I also think we spend that period of time because there are different kinds of buyers that we're trying to engage that have different buying cycles. Some, you know, we're very used to, we see the, we see the podcast, we see the, the, the, the blip of, of an ad potentially maybe when we're, when we're doing a search on Amazon and we say, oh my gosh, I need that book. And there's that sort of impulse purchase. And so we don't need very long normally to, you know, talk to those people because we could just talk to them in the moment that they have that need. But there are a lot of buyers where, like, let's say more of a corporate buyer, someone who might buy a bulk set of books. So think 20, 50, 100, a thousand copies of a book. You know, they probably need more time to think about it. We want to make sure we get them a copy of the book. We wanted to maybe connect the book with something else that they have going on. Maybe it's a training activity, maybe it's a sales conference, maybe, maybe it's a kickoff to match a new strategy of what's going on for them. So we tend to work on long lead time, leads very far out from the book coming out. And then as we move closer and closer, we work on those people that we start talking to, those people who have a shorter window in terms of them being able to make a decision to buy the book. So we just like having that much time because people have different buying windows.

You have an interesting process with advanced copies too, or at least you're open to experimenting. Because some publishers got cranky logistically during the pandemic and beyond where they stopped printing paper galleys altogether. Sometimes they would rather send the finished book, but sometimes those arrive late. So there's all kinds of interesting questions around how early in the manuscript process do you even send an advanced copy out? What if the manuscript isn't done yet? How do you think about advanced copies?

For us, it's a, it's a multi stage process. We actually, in that window, even before the book's done, we have an early reader phase in our cycle where we share some version of the manuscript. Sometimes it's the, you know, it could be a word doc that we just let the early readers check into. It could be that we'll actually lay out the book and send as close to a finished version as possible to someone, get their feedback and get that last little bit of potential to improve the manuscript. That's what I would say there. So sometimes that's just electronic thing. Sometimes we'll go as far as actually sending the book because we think that someone's seeing the book as it's going to exist in real life changes our perception of it. So we like trying to make that thing be as close as possible to what's going to exist in the world after the manuscript is done. Yeah, I'm a pretty big fan of galleys. I was just as you alluded to before we started, I was just in New York last week and I was doing, doing my rounds, talking to a lot of my publishing colleagues there who work in the same space. And I had a publisher tell me that they don't do print galleys period anymore. Zero. So it's not like, hey, they don't even think about it, it's. We don't do them at all. And I think that there's. I feel pretty strongly that there's a missed opportunity there. And in particular, what I'm interested in when I'm thinking about, do I send someone an actual physical galley of the book is will that do something that'll impact their decision towards whatever next thing I might want from them in connection with the launch. So when I think about those bulk sales that we were just talking about, where I want to try to engage somebody to say, hey, I'd love for you to buy 250 copies for your event or 500 copies for your organization. I think the importance of giving them the thing that they would then share with everybody is a pretty critical component. I would also say that the authors that we tend to work with are the kinds of authors that have some other activity that's connected to their book. And so, like, in most case, he has a training and consulting company. And so what's great about that is he's not only thinking, hey, is this the potential to sell books? But, hey, is this potential to drive other activity in connection with my business? So where, yes, it might cost $10 or $15 maybe to send a physical galley to someone. I mean, it's not cheap. If I'm connecting it to the right economic outcome, then I think it's something that still makes sense in a lot of cases.

I'll add that even as a podcaster, it's a huge difference when a digital copy comes goes to die in my Kindle because it gets pushed down and down and down, versus when the physical galley is sitting around the house. Sometimes it's sitting on my desk or on my bookshelf and it's in my eyeline and then I might actually look at it again, pick it up again, whereas the digital copy, it's just gone. It just might as well not exist. And so there's. There have been many guests where only after I could hold the book, flip through it, see it on my desk, see it on the shelf, even pick it up and start reading it because it's there, not because I had to remember to go look and retrieve. Does make a big difference and to the point on cost. I know Mo is creative and generous. Those are some of my values, too. I had so much fun packaging the advanced copies for free time. Where they came with green, you got a box, Todd. Where they came with green shred and pins and pens because I wanted the experience of encountering the book to spark joy for my VIPs who are the podcast hosts and the speaking clients and people who are honestly my favorite people, the ones I know best. I want them to have the best experience with the early copy so that the good things can follow versus sending them all some PDF. What kind of experience is that for the people that I want to take action? Like you said, I think you're just.

Saying this is an act of marketing, this is an act of sales. If we're not engaging all our senses in the pursuit of that towards our end goal, whatever our end goal is for the book, I think we're missing an opportunity there.

Abby asks do you have ways to think about building an audience for a pre book launch top tactics or does it depend so when you need to help an author get there in terms of platform?

My answer there is kind of twofold what my first hope would be and we really spend a lot of time with authors as we're thinking about if they're a good fit for us at bard presses. I'm really thinking I'm hoping you're writing a book that matches to an audience that you're already talking to. I hope that there's folks that are really excited about what you're already doing. I'm going to make a general statement to authors not specific to anybody here, but sometimes it takes some work to convince authors to feel that comfort level to do that outreach to all those people who can be helped. And so a lot of our work is who are those people? What's important to them? How might we talk to them? Who else do they know? Because chances are if they have the problem, my guess is that there's other people around them that have a similar problem. And if you've done this amazingly good job to help those folks, they're going to be more than welcome to share with others. So the first question is just do the work of literally and I think it's a spreadsheet of like literally every person and what is my action going to be in the way I'm going to try to engage with them. I always think of two categories of people that can usually be the most helpful. We've we talked about one of them a lot already, which is the bulk buyer. So that's like the first b. Is there someone out there who could buy a box of books? And I think sometimes this one people want to turn this one off really fast because they think, oh, I don't know, anybody owns an organization who matches to the topic of my book. That's probably true or could be True, but what if there was someone who would host a book club who would extend out from what you're doing, who would, gosh, like I was at an event about a month ago and. And it was the yearly event for independent bookstore owners. And as Jenny said, we do business books. Indie bookstores and business books don't tend to match up particularly well. We don't tend to go to independent bookstores to go buy our business books. And so that could be a tough audience for us to go talk to. But what was fascinating is I had a store owner come up who was a children's bookstore owner and they said, I stopped because we do an enormous amount of activity on the weekends in our children's bookstore for as you'd expect kids to draw them in. But we found we needed something for parents. We needed some way to engage them. And guess what? What we found was that having a book club around business and self help in particular, to a lot of times independent kind of business owners, entrepreneurs, was an amazing way to activate those folks. We never thought we'd have this children's bookstore where we'd also be working with folks that are. So I'm always trying to think about bulk sale piece because. And that's one you want to start very early on. So. And get very unconventional. Like I said, who someone. I always think of it as a leader. Like a leader is someone who runs a team. It's someone who runs a book club. It's someone who runs an association. There could be lots of people and it could be that maybe they would directly buy those books or there's someone who could influence the purchase of those books. So go back to the book club example. It isn't that that book club organizer has to buy a dozen books. It's just they have to convince the other 12 people, hey, this is the book we're going to do. So bulk buyers. Think about it. Because what's easier, selling 100 people one book at a time or selling one person 100 books? It's the latter. The other one is broadcasters. That's the other B that I always think about. So when I'm making this list, I'm thinking, who are the people who, big or small, that have some sort of audience around them? And I mean, I mean, 10 people, like that's an audience for me. 50, 100, a thousand, 200, 50,000, like whatever the case might be, both of those things are the list that I'm making very early in the process. And I'm figuring out some way to reach out to every one of those people. The last thing I'll just say is, like, that activity that you're doing when you're launching the book is activity that doesn't scale. Like, we're not trying to like, write one email to all that entire list of people and say, hey, will you support my book? Here's some ideas. This and this and this. This. No, what it's probably actually going to require is an email to every one of those people with a personal note at the front saying, hey, listen, you've helped with this. You've been amazing. I've got this new booking on my out. Can we just hop on the phone and talk about it and then bring the offer to the next thing? So when I say it doesn't scale, that's. There's a lot of people who want to find the way of can I buy the online ad that I could serve to 200,000 people because. And spend $1,000 and have it be magical? Sure, you could do that. But my guess is the activities that I just talked about are going to actually bring more benefit, in particular early on in the book. Because the benefit that you have early on in the book is that people care about you and the fact that you wrote the book. You are the beacon for them to find the book. Giving that up and making it be something else. Where it's like, here's a book. You might like it. You have this power to be the. The to what I would. What I call the felt need. How do I generate as much felt need as possible? And early on, the felt need is the fact that you wrote the book. How do I connect as many people to that felt need? I think it's really important. Okay, that was a lot, Jenny. I'm sorry.

I love everything I like.

I'm taking notes. If you see me looking down and thank you. Every word is gold. I wanted to add my tiny 2 cents to something you said a little bit earlier, which is that I also sometimes from the early drafts of the manuscript or even getting the book deal, I create an advanced copy survey. It's amazing how many people you interact with day over day, week over week, month over month, while writing the book, let alone when it comes time to launch. And so would always just send them that link. I would say I'm working on a book. Click here if you want an early copy once they're ready. And of course you don't want it too early. Maybe people's addresses change, but the point is having a link to collect those advanced Copy recipients. And I love connecting it to the two Bs and beyond comes in so handy because you're not trying to scramble to create that list when it comes time for the launch. You've been slowly connecting it and collecting those the whole time that you're working on the book. So that's been a game changer for me because there's tons of people I would have forgotten to include had I not sent that link in the moment when I had was interacting with them.

And let me add one more piece to that.

Sure.

Because it goes back to the galley question and it's like, oh, publishers don't do galleys. They're like, they treat them like gold bricks that are valuable and they don't want to like release themselves from. Do the math and figure out if it's not galleys or they don't do galleys or they're only going to give you 20 galleys or like whatever it is. Do the math and figure out does it make sense for you to buy a couple boxes of books and do it yourself? Because usually the connection of that, sometimes your publisher will let you buy books at a discounted rate. You know, sometimes you could buy them just as inexpensively on Amazon. You got to kind of do that math. But if I've got this thing that I can give someone that's $10, maybe $15, like I said, maybe it's a galley. Maybe it's actually the finished book. You just wait to do some of this till the, the book actually comes out. The power of that book to then leverage into a coaching, engaging, a speaking engagement, like whatever that other stuff that you're trying to have happen is really powerful. So take some of that marketing budget and think about how do I make sure I have some copies that I can then turn into the thing because of the power of what you were just talking about, Jenny, of like, the book still works better. It still works way better than the anything that you're going to send them digitally.

Yeah. And I'm, I'm all for that too, especially. I guess this is why you work with mostly business authors, if not exclusively business, because for business books and business authors, it is a marketing expense. You can usually find a way to fold this into the budget. I don't know. For me, there's nothing else in my life, career and business that I would rather spend money on than a book. Like, it's taken so much effort that I don't really scrimp. By the time I get toward the finish line, it's like, I hate marketing. Just myself. The only thing that gets me to market my business is when a book comes out every five years and then I go all in and all out for it because I can't stand just doing it for me independently of an actual product that I can hold in my hands.

Yes. And. And in exchange for that book, what you're getting is four to eight hours of that person's time deeply engaged in the topic. That's super, that that's precious to you. And if you make a connection with them in the right way, it turns into all the other stuff that you want to have happen.

Yes. So speaking of making that connection, one of the big things I wanted to follow up with you on from the last conversation is that I did create the reader survey. It was linked in the show notes from part one and it will be for this part two. So if anyone wants to copy my homework based on all the complex branching that Todd so generously explained in the last conversation, you can. So I created it. It had all the branching. I did make a major faux pas, which is that the people who said they wouldn't mind me checking in, they had the book and they wouldn't mind me checking in to say, have you finished it? Forgot to collect their email addresses. So that was a real forehead smack. The survey has since been fixed, but one of the most important reasons for the survey was to understand the net promoter score. So on a scale of 1 to 10, would you recommend free time to a friend if you have it and you read it? And Todd's advice, just to recap, catch everybody up, was that the top net promoters, the people who are your top people, they're going to rate it a 9 or a 10. Those are the ones really generating word of mouth. And then six to eight. I forget what you said about those. I categorized both separately, but, you know, a handful of those came in too. So I remember that part of my homework was to understand how did the nine and tension describe the book and would we use that as potential revised marketing copy for the book at this point? Just about two years post launch.

And so what did you find? And like we're all like, like we're all like, we're sitting at edge of our seats. Like, what happened?

Okay, well, I'm sharing my screen, which won't be in the recording, but it was really cool to see the nines and tens and to see the patterns. So a joyful book about setting priorities. The best book on business I have ever read. The business book you didn't realize you needed tremendous time saver. You know, it was really cool to see how other people describe it because I've been so close to this project.

And I think one of our takeaways, Todd, from what you told me, but also from now, what readers have shared is probably I need to emphasize the systems element more tools, systems. It's a way to systematize your business so you have more time. Whereas the language on the Amazon and other retailer description page was more like time is not money, time is lifeforce. A little more high level, a little more self helpy, which makes me cringe. And so I think some of these nines and tens on the NPS score helped affirm.

The tool element resource. It's very action oriented. The phrases that came in a treasure chest full of principles, examples and actionable ideas. A business bestie sitting next to you, keeping it real. It's smart, practical and intuitive. Most business books are all brains and no guts. I appreciate the blend of both. So it's like the readers, the nines and tens for sure saw what I was trying to do, but I probably have not done the best job I can. So that's kind of one of my takeaways.

How about you, Todd? Do you have any take?

Yeah, I mean, so there's a couple things that I would, that I would think about. The first one I would think about is this. I would take all of these. Like it sounds like you did the work that I always do, which is read everyone. And you're like kind of, what's the intuition that I'm getting from what I'm seeing in these, in these descriptions? Again, these are nines and tens. If someone I. The, the description I think I used in the original episode was I was like, this is the kind of people that if you said to them, have they read a book lately? They would say, oh my gosh, yes, I read free time. It was amazing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they give whatever description that they're talking about. So these are folks that are like literally going out of their way to, to share the news of your book, right?

Yes. One of our second friends said he's bought 22 copies for his whole team. You know, things like that. Those are the NPS pens.

Right? Okay. And so, you know, the second thing I would do is you have enough comments here is I would throw them into Chat GPT and see what chat GPT says. And it's. I'm not saying it's a magic bullet, but my experience now When I have that much stuff is there's another data point potentially in someone in a model like that looking at the language and being able to bring up sort of what they. What an. How do I want to say it? It's just another viewpoint on the data.

What would you ask GPT?

Oh, what are the prompts? Absolutely. So what are great props? Ask them. Even among the promoters, what you will find is what do they use? What's the word for it? Valence. Right. So how many were positive, how many were neutral, how many were negative? Right. I think the way you just had it, what are the key themes in these results? And you might even tell it, this is for a book that I, you know, these are people talking about a book that I read. What are the key things? This is great. If you're listening, we're literally doing this live.

You hear me typing?

We are.

Because. Let's just see. So I copy pasted all the qualitative responses for the 9 and 10 NPS survey respondents and we asked what are the key themes in the NPS survey responses below. Please analyze and summarize this data. They are responding to a book I wrote on free time. Okay. So it is now coming up with key themes. Actionable advice and practical tips. Entrepreneurial focus, time management and efficiency. Inspiration and conviction, Enjoyment and life balance, Writing style and accessibility. Comprehensive framework and anti hustle culture. Now, Todd, do you find this helpful or do you think we're still skimming the surface with AI so far? Because I know it's all about what we ask.

Of course. Right. So I would say that I don't know chat GPT well enough to know if they're good at giving us if they are. These really ordered like, is actionable advice really the top thing you know? Yeah. Can you reorder this list based on frequency? And I was just gonna say that the, the actionable advice was the top thing. It was the number one thing. And so I'm just interested to see that if we asked it to reorder the list based on frequency, if it would still say the same thing. So first thing it's doing is. It's confirming your intuition, Jenny. Right. It's confirming that, hey, I should really, I should lean into that a little bit more.

Yeah. And we didn't read it out loud, but within the theme of actionable advice and practical tips, it says the prominence of actionable, directly applicable advice on systems process and efficiency is a standout aspect in the feedback. Again, systems process efficiency. That was in my head when I wrote the book, but that doesn't mean that I conveyed that accurately enough in the book's marketing materials. And that's where Todd comes in. And that's why we had my. My morale was so low in October when we spoke. And I. I mean, I'm not. I'm gonna say it ticked up after that thanks to Todd, but I'm still not on the other side of that hurdle of just. It can be so hard to know what to do and have the energy to do it two years after the launch, even though that's not even that much time. Like, of course I want to dedicate more, but yeah, it's just, it's helpful to do this work. And I love that you suggested throwing it into Chat GPT, Todd, because why not when you have any kind of data set like this?

So do our next question if we have enough time, like, just do the other question of like is there. Ask them about. What's the word? Valence isn't quite the right word. But like, you know, what percentage of contents are positive, neutral or negative? In the ones that we. And the ones I know, we put nines and tens in there.

Yeah.

So it's probably going to say 100% loved it, but it'd be interesting to see what.

And I'll also ask what are the top five most enthusiastic.

Responses?

Yeah.

Yeah. Sentiment. That's what I wanted.

Oh, sentiment. Yes.

So it recognizes that.

Yeah. Given the nature of the comments, it appears they're overwhelmingly positive, reflecting satisfaction and endorsement of your book. There are no explicitly neutral or negative comments in the list provided now. We only copied and pasted again. I didn't even copy paste the number. I could have uploaded a CSV file directly from a Typeform export that would have the number and the comments. How would you describe this book to a friend? But in this case, we're only taking respondents where they answered a 9 or a 10. And then the next question, per Todd's input, was how would you describe free time to a friend? So that is separate from just an NPS rating scale of 1 to 10. And NPS is common across the industry. It was Todd's input to ask that next qualitative question. That's what we've now fed into GPT. So now we're asking it to also pull the top five most enthusiastic responses. Let's just look at the top five. This is one of the best books I've read on managing our time as entrepreneurs. Jenny's writing style is so enticing and easy to read. It's hard to put down. It's packed with tips, exercises and thought provoking reflections. I highly recommend you not only get a physical or digital copy, but also listen to the audio version. And now GPT is saying why they chose that one. And this is cool because I actually hadn't read that comment yet. And that is something that I could even throw onto the website@itsfreetime.com book like the book's landing page. There's no reason I couldn't even create canva images with some of these. And they don't have to go on the retailer's website necessarily. But these could easily become little quote cards or even a gallery on the book page where people can click through feedback.

The other thing I think is interesting in this set of responses that I would really try to lean into Ginny is I don't know if we talked about this a ton in the first episode, but what I'm always looking for in the books that we're developing and as we're trying to come up with like titles and subtitles and what the book descriptions are and how we framing it up for the reader is I want to, I want to show the biggest change that could possibly happen in their lives as a result of reading the book.

What's the change? What's the thing that they're going to get? So the title should always be a change function. The title should always be a change function. So like free time. Free time is like, like on a. There's a continuum probably of like, you know, super obvious Good to Great. Like good to great is like the best like change title of all time. Good to great. Who doesn't want, who doesn't think they're the B plus student that wants to be the A minus student? I mean, come on, everybody on the call and everybody listening to this podcast, like, and on the other end of the spectrum, it's something along the lines of like, it's an implied change. Like, like, I'm a big fan of my. Probably my second favorite title of all time is. Well, there's three. I always, I always say good to Great. I'm a big fan of Never Eat Alone.

Mm.

You're like, oh, because it's both. Do this thing that you're probably.

Doing wrong. But what does that mean? Like, what does it mean when he says Navigate Alone? My favorite fiction title of all time is just the title of the book was called if I Stay. You're just like, what do you mean if I stay? Like, you can't like help yourself to be like, oh, but what's going to happen? So I think your title, Free Time is this thing that people want, right? Like, especially an entrepreneur. Like, I would want to know from the start, like, gosh, how can I get life back? Because I am an entrepreneur and I'm your core audience. Like, I'm trying to figure out all the time how to claw back time for what I'm doing. So what I would be looking for in those.

Descriptions and in that further analysis from ChatGPT is what are the change functions that people are pointing out? Because there were a few, and I forgot to look real quick to what they were actually saying, but there were some of.

I love that you were saying, hey, the book has this. It has the frameworks and the practicality. So that's interesting. And I could say that a lot of books probably have that, but what's the change that I get in deploying those in my life? What's going to happen? What's going to be better? Like, if I were to try to build a new book description for you, I would have, like, statement number one would be, you don't have enough time, right? This is true of every entrepreneur that I've ever talked to, right? You don't have enough time to do the things you want to do, blah, blah, blah, blah. So state the truth. That should always be paragraph one of a book description. State the truth and so that the person goes, you are absolutely right. That is undeniable truth. Paragraph two is always, okay, well, if that's true, then what's the thing I have to know that I don't know? Like, what's the surprise? What's the unexpected thing? And in your book is your time. Your time is far more precious than your money. That's your. That's the bet that you're making. And so someone might go, yeah, that's true. Or is there an even better way to say that based on the feedback.

That you got right? Even more accurate, I always cite my favorite agile development line. Each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it. That's long. I'm not saying I would use that, but I actually think what freetime teaches is freeing. Time is a verb. You can get better at it. It's a systems mindset. No piece of information should live in your head or anyone else's in the business. It's things like that, some of these core operating principles. And it also reminds me of the McSweeney's piece that just came out. Oh my gosh my friend Alyssa sent it to me. It's titled My comments are in the Google Doc, linked in the Dropbox. I sent in the Slack. It's like that's the problem statement that these small teams have of just complete communication overwhelm and redundancy.

So let me give you one other quick example on this one because I think as, as you're thinking about either if you're launching a book or you're relaunching a book, this is a key component to getting even closer to describing the book in a way that the customer and the reader really identify with. Mo and I, I think we're on book description number five now for the book. And they're, they were full on like it's going to be this and then it was going to be this and then. So we literally wrote the fifth version of the book description this week because we were in New York last week pitching the book and it got clearer to us that we could be even clearer in how we describe this to people when. So Mo's book is called Give to Grow. And here's the three step line that we move people through. Relationships are the most important thing in your long term success, in particular your business success. Like, can anybody argue with that? No, absolutely not. Like the relationships we have are the absolute foundation, but there's all sorts of things get in the way of us maintaining those relationships. Right. I don't have time, I don't have anything to say. I wish I knew more. I don't know what to do. We tell ourselves all these stories. And so the second point is that our the antidote and the supercharger that makes business relationships develop even faster is when we're giving and when we're generous, that's how it changes. So that's paragraph two. That's like the giving is the answer. It's always the answer. So we're going to show you a bunch of ways that you can give and be generous. Most importantly, and this is the last part to it is it's always your move. There's always an ability for you at any point in time to be generous in any relationship. And we're, and we think, and we know it in our personal relationships, why don't we know it in our business relationships? Right? And I see everybody going like this. So I'm like, I know I'm on the right track because like that's true. Oh my gosh, you're right. Why didn't I think of that? Oh, every moment it's available to me every moment. So, Jenny, that's what I would be looking for. I'd be looking for what are my what could I take from all this feedback to turn it into this. What's true? What's. What's the unexpected twist? And then what's the like. What's the second unexpected twist that just like drives the point? Home systems will save you and entrepreneurs like because I think it's somewhat. You have to address that Entrepreneurs hate systems. I hate systems.

Yeah, the one people love that I've said for a decade, long before free time is stress is a systems problem. At least business stress. I mean let's not talk about like tragic world events, but even those are kind of sometimes a systems problem. But business stress is a systems problem. Like anything going wrong can be fixed with your systems. And even what you're describing here are systems for thinking about book packaging and launching and everything in between. This is so helpful. Okay, we have a question from Michelle.

You had mentioned in the last podcast, Todd, about the Look Inside feature from Amazon. So I figured you might know the answer to this question because I haven't been able to find anyone who can help me with it. When they have the Look Inside feature, you could choose what parts of the books were included and that's a great way to market the book. The Read Sample feature is the new version of the Look Inside feature, and I can't find anyone who can tell me where you can choose what's inside the book. And fewer and fewer books have anything but the first 20% or the first 10%. But I know it's still possible to choose specific parts because there are a few books who come out with things like the index. Do you know where this little nugget can be found? So I could let authors know that they can still do this and how to do it.

Yeah. So I think it's actually getting harder to. Your point is that Amazon's getting a little bit more restrictive on what you do. Our answer around that has been to if control happens in that if you upload the Kindle version of the book, they're just going to use the Kindle version of the book. But there are options for you to be able to upload a PDF version of your book. So like literally the pages as they are so that the reader can actually see it as it is in the print edition, not just like text on the page. And you'll see the differences as you go through different books. So my answer to that has always been upload a modified version of the PDF with the stuff that I want at the front of the book, not necessarily exactly the book as it appears in the print edition. And so then you have that ability to be able to have a little bit more control over what appears there. Do I want all those opening pages? Do I want the table of contents? Do I want someone to just start reading? Could I put the index in the front? Yeah, you could do all that. Because really, they just care about the number of pages they're showing you, not what they're showing you. So it's the upload the PDF version. Don't depend on the Kindle version.

Perfect. Thank you. And by the way, I loved how you did the one thing with the copyright page in the back. That was lovely. That was perfect. And the way that book is just laid out is just absolutely beautiful. So kudos to you.

Well, thank you. And I think we treat it like, you know, when I was growing up and you were watching sitcoms, you'd watch the first two minutes of the sitcom would be like, you know, the credits, and the person would walk in the door and they'd be like, oh, this is, you know, John Ritter and here comes Suzanne Summers. And like.

People don't do that anymore. We don't do that. We don't do that in television anymore. Why would we do it in books anymore? So to your point, every one of our books always starts with, you open the page and I'm showing you content from the. From page one. And yes, we have. Yes, I want to credit people. Yes, I want to acknowledge the rights. Yes, I want to do all those things. There's pages in the back of the book, too. I don't know if anybody knew that, but there's more pages in the back of the book and you can actually put those things back there.

Yes.

And that's fabulous. And the copyright page is still so accessible because it's right at the back, so it's just as easy to flip through to. So beautiful design. I love that. And thank you so much for your explanation.

I second that. On the design of the one thing, you inspired my table of contents, because it was so easy to navigate that I remember just thinking, oh, those big fat numbers. Different parts.

Right.

And building on.

Because the table of contents is marketing copy.

Yeah.

Maybe we said this last time, the table of. I'm going to say one more time, like, just to hit this. The title is Marketing Copy. The subtitles Marketing Copy. Treat the book description as Marketing Copy. This isn't your book. It should read like Sales Copy. It should read like, like break the rules. Like, I don't care if commas are in the wrong spot or if you want to capitalize stuff that you normally wouldn't. This is marketed copy. You're trying to get people to buy the book. When I get to the table of contents, same thing you, you're trying to draw people into that book. And I would even argue chapter one is sales copy two, so that building that whole through line so that one leads to the next, leads to the next, leads the next is super important to get people excited about your books.

I second that as well. I try to make the table of contents very actionable, use a lot of verbs. I imagine a manager xeroxing it and that's old school. Now you just take a photo with your phone. But I imagine the table of contents being this very active, helpful document. Like if they just handed that to their team member, the team member would learn something and know what to do. And I love having a detailed table of contents. So when I've had people say, oh, we need to cut for space. No, you're not, you're not going to cut the table of contents for space because that's really vital. And I did the same thing. I really fought for the index. The shout out to Michelle Giuliano who's here, we'll put her link in the show notes, she's a professional indexer. I fought hard for the index too because people are going to learn if they look at the index and use that to navigate the book. And I also have heard many authors talk about how it is true that sadly even a majority won't finish the book. So put something, a quick win in the first chapter. Make sure that if they only read one chapter of the book, they accomplish something. They build momentum. Don't make them wait to finish till they start seeing real impact in their life or their business. Because most of them aren't going to get that far.

Sadly, short chapters. Oh yeah, short chapters is also an answer to another.

Potential antidote to the problem that you just talked about is If I've got 25 pages to get through, to get through through my first chapter, you are setting the reader up essentially for failure. Like what the reader wants is they want progress. They want to know like 8 to 10 page, 12 page chapters. That's all we do in bar press books. So we don't do eight chapter books or 10 chapter books. We do 24 chapter books that have four sections or three sections. Give the reader payoffs. Like I feel the reason I'M saying this is, I'm trying to tie to what you just said, Jenny, is like, you're like, give them something that they'll get in the first chapter. You know what a sure chapter is a is a get. I already finished chapter one. I'm into chapter two. This book's great. I love it. Progress, progress, progress, progress. I don't ever have to feel like bad that I put down the book because I couldn't finish it on the 10 minutes I had during lunch to just get through the next thing.

Yes, I took inspiration from pulpy paperbacks, thrillers. Nick Bilton is a tech writer who I read American Kingpin, just could not put it down.

Why?

The chapters were super short and they always ended with this compelling question. And same with free time. I think I have, well, 23 by three by three anyway, something like 27 core chapters. And those core chapters are three pages. And people did comment that they liked that because they could sit with their coffee and finish a chapter, get a little dopamine, hit one by one. Because I find it so super boring to read these business books with like 10 fat chapters. You can just feel like you're slogging through by the middle of the chapter. Right.

Because a lot of times you're, let's be honest, if you give some people, someone that many pages, the idea can slosh around a lot. I can do a lot of things in that spot. When I'm like giving someone 12 pages, I've got to be concise and the idea is going to be crisp, like I know what I'm reading as I go through that piece. Give yourself as a writer the advantage of a smaller container to write into.

Any last questions for Todd before we wrap up? Go ahead, Kathy. I loved hearing the being realistic about.

Marketing a book doesn't necessarily scale and that it takes these personal connections and it confirms something that I had a hypothesis about. But it was nice to hear that and to also think about those two.

Core buyers that you talked about, the.

Bulk buyer and the broadcaster.

But I'm taking away a lot.

So thank you, Todd. And it's really nice to see book publishing from a different angle. And I like that. And I love your idea of short chapters. So they can't flush around in there because unfortunately I've seen that a lot. And you're just like, oh, please, just get to the point. You know, so that's, that's a fabulous container to give your authors. So keep giving them that advice. It works.

I love the reminder to make sure the early pages in the book are sizzling. And to not Forget to leverage ChatGPT for analyzing data, we don't have to do it alone, especially because I used to cry in stats class in college. So I love the idea of leaning on our new AI friend. Todd. The last question, which you probably remember from last time, if you could give authors a permission slip to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

I would say thinking that their Launch day is 24 hours matches a little bit to some things we've talked about today that, you know, we're still talking about Yearbook 2. Two years later, we're still running marketing campaigns for the one thing and it's going into its 11th year and we're still finding audiences and new audiences for it. And so I'm a big fan of Tim Grohl's first thousand copies. And Tim just says one thing a week. Can I do a podcast? Can I send another email? Like, one of the things that I'm always surprised about is I think that a launch plan needs to be a whole year long because people are going to run into your problem at it might be a seasonal problem, it might be that a life event, it might be. It could be any number of things. So if I just think that on October 15th when the book comes out that all the people who could possibly read my book have the heightened felt need to go buy the book, I'm missing the other 364 days where something else might happen. And so I would just say give yourself permission and the ability to find the time to stay with it that long. You mentioned the magic number research. That was research that said how many copies, not the number of copies you sell on the day the book launches, it's the number of copies that you sell in the year. The job is to get to 10,000. Take the whole year. Frankly, you could probably take a little bit longer. But that is going to how you're going to find, I think success is if you can use the HBO model of a little bit every week, not the Netflix. I'm going to do everything and binge watch. I'm going to binge release my book and think that, that I'm going to have the success that I want. How do you do it so that it's a time release capsule that people can find over time.

I love that. Thank you so so much for being here, Todd, and big thanks to everyone who is here live while we recorded. You've all made it so rich. Just with the follow up questions, we'll put Mo's book in the chat because the best thing we can do for Todd this year is go buy Mo's book. Give to Grow thanks so much. Thanks so much. Thank you everybody. Thank you Todd.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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