Why an author needs to be able to summarise their book in 1 minute, and take 3 months to promote it.

Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today, I'm delighted to have Harshit Bhardwaj, who's joining me from just outside New Delhi and goes by the name of Hersh, a name given to him when he was studying Liverpool. Hersh, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot, Jim. Pleasure.

Now, Hersh, you're on the show because you're a literary agent, also an ad man, but we're going to talk about how you can help the unnoticed entrepreneur with their publishing because Let's face it, if you write a book, that's only just part of the project. So tell us about how the unnoticed entrepreneur can use books and publishing and what normally goes wrong when they launch a book.

That's a big one, Jim.

Yeah, let's break it down into smaller bits. But I mean, you're an expert. You publish books, you've written your own book and had great sales. And I know from my own book that writing it and getting it onto Amazon Really is just the start, right? It doesn't mean that people are gonna buy it.

That's right. That's the, that's the big problem. Even today when we get manuscripts and go through the entire 360 of publishing a book, what most annoys me is that authors still feel that that's it. That's the job done. We've written a great book. I've given it to you. Now it's your job to get it out there. Not so. Right now with social media's influence, Everyone needs to see who the hell the author is, right? And when I, when I came out with my book, I thought everyone knows me. I have a platform of 10,000, 20,000 people. The book will fly off the shelf and things are going to happen. So I did not really get out and promote it. Being a literary person, I was a little, you know, I didn't believe in shameless promotion of your own product. So I felt just going out, trying to sell my book to my friends and families, hey, my book is out, come on, buy it. I didn't do it. I didn't feel like it, which is right. So now I'll break it down into what one should do. I'll focus on your specific book because every book is different. Every author's target audience is different. So your book, F50 Entrepreneurs, you put together a kind of a brilliant case study of how to get noticed. So they are, these are experiential professional advice from people who have done it successfully. So your target audience is more such people who want to get noticed. What you can learn from that book, right? If you wanna reach out to people who are trying to make it happen, trying to get noticed, and not everyone can afford the kind of advertising and marketing that it, that is needed. So how do you hustle? How do you get the word out? So your book I've told you this before. So your book, for you, of course it's a brilliant credibility to all your experience and it puts it all together and it's a great thought. It's just a glorified business card. Please don't be offended if I'm—

No, no, no. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's, that's why many people write books is to give that credibility. Absolutely.

So how do you make it, you know, how do you leverage the most out of it? You're not You're not trying to sell a million copies. What you're trying to do is you're trying to reach probably a million people. Now, book is a brilliant way to get in, in the hands of million people and they'll, they'll get to see your name. Your book is in their hands. They trust you, they trust your credibility, and they would want to know more about you. Now, this is where we start. So as soon as a book comes out, even months before the book is coming out, that's where the preparation starts. We need to bring the author out in front of people. So people don't buy products, as you know, people buy people. So gone are the days when you could bring out a book and the author sits somewhere in the shadows, comes out for the book signings. That's it. They need to see the author, you know, as much as they can because everyone else is doing it. All the brands have understood this. They're on social media, they're tweeting like 24 times a day. So they need to see who the author is. So I want to know who Jim James is and the boundaries are really thin. I mean, from personal to professional. The boundaries are thin. I really want to know who you are. So ₹300 book or ₹400 book, money is irrelevant. This is probably the only product where people really don't look at the pricing of the book. If they like the author, it's okay. They won't worry about $2, $3, $5 here and there. So for example, when I, why do I want to read your book? I've been in touch with you on LinkedIn for a few months. I've read your posts. I know enough about you that there is an intrigue to see what you've done in the book. That's the intrigue you need to create in your potential readers. And you need to be getting in touch, being out there, producing content to show the 360 of your personality. So it'll be good if you, one, in one post, you're talking about your dog. It's fine. Everything, everything goes. So we want to know as potential readers, Who are you? What's your thought? Because a book is a collection of thought. It's a tangible form of your thought process, and I want to know everything about you. So that's where the content production side and the social media side of the books, of the authors, is really most crucial, more than the book. So book, they haven't read the book before they've bought it. So before they buy the book, they need to buy you.

So how do you go about that then? Let's just talk us through. What should an author do, or what should I have done 6 months before the book coming out?

Yeah, that's, it's a good question to ask 6 months before the book is coming out, and it's always too late. The window of opportunity for selling your book is really very small. Even on Amazon, they have a list called Hot New Releases that stays for about 4 weeks. So if you don't make it into that list, In the first 4 weeks, that list is gone. Then they have the movers and shakers. That is again, even the first 4 weeks, the book is moving. So you, you make it to that second list. Then of course they have the bestsellers list, the top 100 list. So they only show top 100. So if you're not in the top 100 in any category, you, you, you don't make that list as well. And Amazon, I, I know it for a fact that they promote all these lists. Really well. So they do a lot of work for you. If you make into one of these 3 lists that I know, there must be a lot more lists that they curate. So if you make into those lists, so that window of opportunity is about 4 to 6 weeks. So you can't start the day your book has come out. So as you said, you need to start early. You need to start 6 months or 3 months before that. That's the first thing. And we are talking about nonfiction business books. Not literary fiction, not fiction. So that's a different model for that. Nonfiction business books, primarily building an author platform, which everyone talks about. But what do you do in that author platform? That's the thing. I mean, what can you do? You've been in the PR for so many years, and I can definitely say that you'll run out of ideas if I'll say that, Jim, you have to post at least 10 times a day. I can bet you won't be able to post as much content, but that is needed. You're going to have to post enough number of times consistently long enough to get people on board, to algorithmically build your reach and engagement and all that. I found you on LinkedIn because you're posting at least once a day. So if you multiply that by 10 or 5 or 6 a day, the engagement will definitely reach. That's the first thing, the consistency of creating Producing content and bringing it out there. Number 2, what do you post? How do you— the logistics of this. Now, even though we're talking about publishing, I'm talking about marketing and promotion because I'm not— I'm drifting away because the publishing part, I'm assuming it's already done. You've already self-published a book via Amazon or any other publisher. So the book is in the making. It's coming out in 3 months. And you planned it so that it's, you have 3 months to build your platform and you can wait. You're gonna have to wait because once the book is ready, there is a rush to just get it out there and see what happens. So if you're not prepared, nothing's gonna happen. Being in the publishing business, I know that the books dud like anything. 9 out of 10 books don't sell beyond 200, 300 copies because of this. This is a major reason that they rush into getting it out there without any preparation. Without any promotion, they don't have any platform, or they think they have, but it's not there. It's not quantifiable. So plan it. You're gonna have to do it. Now, the logistics of it is you won't be able to do it yourself. That's something you have to accept. You need a backup team. You need people behind you who'll do the dirty work for you. For example, you can shoot. 10 random videos during the day with your smartphone, but to bring them to a postable quality, you need somebody to do it. You know that well. You do a lot of that work yourself.

The time taken for production and post-production and publishing and promotion is overwhelming. In fact, it could take more time than the job you're trying to do, right? So that's why you need a team like you have.

Yeah. So as I said, 3 months, I go by the rule. 5, 8 to 10 posts a day times 30 times 3. So that's the kind of content you should have on the table before you start in an ideal world. For that, you need a backend team. For that, you need to plan your narrative. Now we'll come to the third part. The second part is you need somebody to do the logistics for you. You will need a backup team. You will need somebody who can produce audio and video and text and who understands the 3, 4 major platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And some video. The logistics part is number 2. Third is what kind of content do you bring down? Being a student of literature who started working in marketing, and I understood the narratives of brands over decades like Apple and Google, how it takes them years and decades to build that narrative. You are really not trying to sell your book. That's the first thing. You're trying to sell that idea. That your book is based around, the gist and the core of it. And you have to break down that idea into 1,000 stories. Like my book is based around 1,001 Arabian Nights. So there is this queen who marries this king who's slaughtering queens every night. The condition is, if you can entertain me throughout the night, you'll live. Otherwise, you'll be slaughtered in the morning. So I use that metaphor as a client and customer Relationship. So you have a finite amount of time, right? Only a finite amount of time which the client has given you. After that, you'll be slaughtered. You're just a click away. It's 8-second rule, or you know what, you have a finite amount of time. So this girl marries the king and she has a plan of action. She starts telling stories and the story is so enthralling and it's so engaging that, and she deliberately does not end it. By it, by by the morning, by dawn. So the king is really curious to know what happens next, and she gets a pardon—the first pardon—and then the next night the story continues, and the stories are forking out. One story never ends; the story always continues. So she's always forking the stories out from the same stories, and it goes on for one thousand and one nights. At that at that moment, he really falls in love, and. The big story ends, the big narrative ends. So for us, we need to continually fork out those little bits from one story to another. So that 3-month narrative is not really a 3-month narrative. It's going to be a long-term narrative. It's a never-ending narrative. The gist of it is your book's idea or your idea. That's where most people struggle. They really don't know. I mean, even I've seen authors who've written great books. But if I ask them to sum it up in 10 seconds, they struggle. It's often too complicated. A lot of books are just a compilation of different various ideas of other people. Your book is a compilation of various different ideas, but the idea is simple as far as I understand, that how do you get noticed? What works for you? There are 50 examples. There is an absolute need for you to get noticed. Right? And I'm giving you 50 different ideas that have worked. Once I read the book, I can summarize it in 1 minute. All those 50 ideas will have something common, will have a common running thread. The routes might be different, but the idea will be similar. The idea is similar. The storytelling. How do you entice your customer long enough to stay with you, to start believing in you? And once they start believing in you, they'll stand up in the lines at 4:00 AM for Apple stores for the next iPhone once they start believing in you. So the content part is the most difficult part, and that's where the real offers and the not real offers are differentiated.

How interesting. Yeah, as you say, I mean, mine's based around this idea of thymos and the fundamental need of people to get noticed because actually it stimulates chemical release because at a primal level, we need the support of others in order to survive, right? And that's how we get either social needs, but in business, that's how we get our value transferred to others, right? So thymos is the essential ingredient in getting noticed. So yeah, so that's wonderful. So how does it work then for a publisher like me? Is it too late? I launched the book. in August, for example, and now it's October. Have I lost the window, Hrush? Are there remedies that an author can take post-event or do they have to sort of throw that one away and get on with another one?

Yeah, I think in terms of that Amazon marketplace, I told you that window is gone even in UK because you can't get into the hot new releases list anymore. After 4 weeks. And you can get into the bestsellers list whenever the book starts to sell. For that to happen, the book consistently needs to sell X number of copies based on your category. You can get into that list anytime. So that's something always open. But yes, that window is there, but now that's gone. Let's say the book is— I work with books that, that were published 2 years ago. Are we working with a, the famous US physiotherapist, a world-renowned physiotherapist. He wrote a book, I think 3 years ago, and I'm trying to get it to publish in India. So in India, in India, we'll start afresh on Amazon India. It'll start afresh. So it'll be a new listing.

Nice.

The best marketing advice that I can give to you as an author, and this is not my advice, this is Stephen King's. Who's probably the most prolific author alive today and the amount of work that he's done and he's still doing despite he doesn't, doesn't need to. His advice is the best marketing advice is to write the next book because every time you're writing and bringing out a new book, your reader base increases. It does increase. So as opposed to a one-book person, like my book came out in 2019 and nothing else has come out. Ideally, I should be bringing out one book in a year. So the best promotional advice is that you continue to write books, bringing them out so that after, let's say, 5 years, you have 5 books, the reader base increases incrementally.

Okay. Now what about India though, Hersh? You've mentioned about publishing in India. Does one need to then have a separate strategy for India? If I launch globally on Amazon, is India not being taken care of then?

No, technically Amazon sells the Amazon POD that you operate. It sells in multiple locations. I think US, Canada, Japan, Australia, England, some parts of Europe. It doesn't, it doesn't work. The POD doesn't work in India. So if you, if you need to sell your book in India and if you need to get access to the Indian audience, somebody local must print it and publish it on Amazon. You can do it from wherever you are. But let's say you are in UK, so sending inventory to a UK publisher will be a lot more costly as opposed to printing it locally in India. Now the quality and everything is not an issue anymore. Same or better quality can be printed at 1/5th, 1/6th of the cost. So somebody local must be here. That's where, that's where somebody like me comes in that we'll take your book and we'll print it locally. We'll acquire the rights first of publishing, printing, and selling in Indian subcontinent. We'll promote it and then market it. Technically, we'll list it on Amazon as our book published first in UK. It'll have your name and then published by James Hemingway. Then coming to the, in terms of promotion and launching your book in Indian market. Now this is the logistics sorted. The book is available on Amazon at a local price. As opposed to the price that we get to, if you were to import your book, it's around ₹2,000. If it's coming from Amazon UK, if we make it available in India for ₹399, which is the right price. So the logistics is sorted. You need a local partner or a publisher, and there are many models to work around it. You can send the inventory at your own cost. You can print the inventory at your own cost and ask them to sell it. Or the publisher acquires the rights and then bears all the cost, right? These are the 2 standard models that work. I work on both. So if the book is really unknown and I don't think it's— I think it's a big risk, then I'll ask the author to contribute towards the printing cost in India or send us the inventory. So we'll take a percentage and we'll try and sell it. If I think there is a chance and it's something that the Indian audience would appreciate, like for your book. So we'll take the, we'll print and sell based on whatever we, whatever print run we feel would be fine. That's the logistics. So you need a local player, right? Now, Jim James, I don't know how many people know about you in India, about LinkedIn. Of course you have, you have, you have a global presence. Of course you have followers. You must have followers from India. We'll, as we are talking about, we'll produce an Indian edition of the book. Maybe the foreword or introduction would be written by somebody from India. So give it, give it an Indian edition feel. We'll interview more with the Indian entrepreneurs, Indian people, Indian players, so that you get more interaction with the, with the Indian audience over a period of time. About 25% of your content strategy should be focused on the Indian audience.

Yeah. Well, look, Harsh, that is something I'm really excited about doing, but I also Share with the audience, the unnoticed entrepreneur out there who might like to talk to you as well. How can they get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is a good way to get in touch with me because it's in my phone. My Gmail, I'll share with you. You can share in the short notes. And I really love, really would love to work with international consultants, coaches, trainers, anyone who would like to tap into the Indian audience. And because there is a market here, start with the book, bringing your book to the Indian market, and then the promotion and marketing follows. So you will have access to 1.5 billion people, around 75-80% of them speak English, understand English, and do their business in English. So I'm trying to make that happen. Great voices, international voices into India, and it helps them both. It's a win-win.

Bhattacharjee, thank you so much for sharing and taking interest in my book, and I'm really looking forward to working with you and introducing you to other unnoticed entrepreneurs. Thanks for joining me today from New Delhi.

Thanks a lot, Jim. Thank you.