Laura Gale - A Step-By-Step Blueprint To Write And Publish Your Book

You really don't want to start working on a book until you're pretty established in your business is not a smart move if you're really early just because you've got to get that clear audience, really get to know them and what they want and need. You need to have really solid systems because obviously scaling your business is great, but inefficiency tends to scale in kind of lockstep with the growth. So if your systems can't handle a massive influx of leads or people wanting to work with you, then you're gonna squander a lot of the goodwill and interest that you've generated by promoting this book.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

It's very official. Announcer voice of you, was it? Not really.

Not really.

I'd like to give you sass, Matt.

You're a sassy mofo.

We haven't been sassy to each other today. Too much. We've been.

Well, it's early, usually.

Well, no, I take that back. You greeted me at the door with some sass. But you've used that joke before.

I know. I use it every time you come to the door.

Yeah, it's kind of lame. You got to switch it up, man. I'm expecting it too much. What's your joke, Matt?

All right. Every time joke.

Knock, knock, who's there? You don't say, who's there? That's part of the joke. Knock, knock. This is me at Matt's door.

I don't need solar panels. I already have solar panels.

Great joke.

That's my joke. Well, it's. It's not a funny joke to you. It's a funny joke to me and Alana because people come to our door all the time and try to sell us solar panels, and I literally point to my roof and go, you mean like the ones that are right there? And I point to my.

From the front.

Yes.

They're just not doing their homework.

So, like, they don't look at the roof to see I have solar panels before knocking on the door and trying to sell these solar panels. So it's funny for me.

This is why I live on the top of a hill. And no one goes door to door at my house. Not even trick or treaters. Definitely not this year. I don't know what's going to happen with that. All right, on to the topic at hand. Today we're talking about Matt.

We are talking about Matt.

We're not talking about Matt.

We're talking book publishing. This is probably the most deep dive, step by step, fleshed out process for creating your book that I think we've ever talked about. Now, we've had other people on the podcast in the past talk about publish. This is like, this is a masterclass.

Well, we went down a whole different route, I think, than the others, but yeah. So we're talking to Laura Gale today and she is from lauraiswriting.com.

Yeah. And she's actually got a book. What's the name of her book?

It's great. How to write this book. Write, publish and market your business Bestseller. But yeah, it's called how to write this Book. I love it. So you can get a free copy. If you go to lauraiswriting.com there's a little pop up that pops up and you can get it that way. So Laura is freaking awesome Laura Gale. And like Matt said, she. So she's a ghostwriter, she's an author. She's a reader from, like a ferocious reader. But at the end of the day. Yeah. What she breaks down is her process for writing books as a ghost writer for her clients. But at the same time, she gives you her process for writing a book like her book actually does as well. And that's why you should get her book if you're interested. And she maps it all out in this episode.

Yeah. So you can listen to this episode and follow along and do it for yourself. You can grab her book, go even deeper on the topic, or you can hire her and her company to write it for you. But either way, you're going to learn the whole process in this episode.

Yeah. So I think we should just get into it.

Yeah, let's do it. So we got the notes for this episode. Hustleandflowchart.com comp or you can text the word comp to 38470. We'll send you the notes that way too. And this one, like, it's a step by step process. So these notes are gonna be frickin gold. I'm gonna get the notes. I always get the notes.

Because I always get the notes, man. You know, we get them in the mail.

It's our company.

We can't get rid of our notes.

But yeah, you should get the notes.

If you don't have those notes and not just one digital copy of notes is all you need. That's fine.

Yeah.

Don't be like us. You don't have to be swarmed by notes everywhere.

No. Hustleandflowchart.com comp grab the notes for this one. Let's go talk to Laura.

All right, Laura, we're live. How you doing?

Very well. How are you guys?

Great. Starting the day out with a conversation about ghost writing and books and all that stuff while it's ending your day. You were saying Portugal.

Well, it's good at either end of the day.

Heck, yeah. That's right. That's true. That's a good way to end or start anything. Yeah.

Thanks for staying up late with us.

That's all right.

So I think it was Molly Pittman that connected us, so I always want to give a shout out there.

Yeah, Molly's great.

She is, yeah. She was on the show a long time ago now. I was thinking about. I was like, when was Molly on? It was like, two years ago, maybe at this point. Too many episodes. I can't remember anything. Yeah, it's getting a little fuzzy now, all the people on here. And you have a podcast, too. I know. It's the Business of Writing podcast.

Yeah, it's called the Business of Writing. I co host it with Rachel Mazza, who's a direct response copywriter. And we are about a year in. We interview all kinds of different writers. So there's copywriters, other ghostwri. There are journalists and editors, publication agents, publishers. There's all kinds of folks over there.

Nice. So if you want to know all about writing and what, some copywriting, Basically anything writing, that's the place to go then, right? For business?

Yeah. We specifically talk a lot about the business side of writing as a career, because there's this myth that writing doesn't pay as a career, and it's just not true. If you actually know how to market yourself, which is true of any skill set, of course. But, yeah, a lot of writers are struggling when they don't need to be. So we're trying to unpack that myth and help people get a little bit further along.

It's kind of like podcasting, too. Yeah, it's like very similar. Most common days, like, I don't make any money in my pocket. Well, let's talk about that. There's some strategies.

Well, cool. Let's dive in a little bit and we'll get around to how people can make money off of a book and how to produce the book and all of that fun stuff. But before we do, let's chat a bit about your story. So what were you doing before? You're doing what you do now and kind of how did you get into the publishing and all of the stuff you're doing now?

So I was very fortunate to grow up in a family full of readers. You're much more likely to find us all curled up with a book than in front of the TV or doing anything else. So I had sort of been in that mindset ever since childhood. But I went to university to study writing and publishing and straight out of the gate got an internship at one of the big publishing houses called Hachette. They're one of the big four publishers globally and they offered me a role at the end of my internship. So I got really lucky. Basically, I was just in the right place at the right time. And.

That gave me the opportunity to work with some really amazing authors at the publicity end of the process. So publicity is sort of right at the end where the book has been acquired and edited and it's gone through sales and marketing and everything, and now it's out in the world. And the publicist's role is to make it really get in front of as many people as possible. So I was in charge of getting reviews and throwing parties and getting the authors on festival circuits and that kind of thing. So it was a very social job. It was very fun and I got to just hang out with authors a lot. So I learned a lot about their process and just getting to sort of understand the mindset of a writer and kind of what it's like for them experientially. So that was super valuable experience early on.

Sorry, go ahead.

I'm curious, how do authors party?

As hard as you might expect, they're generally pretty introverted. They spend a lot of time sort of alone. So most of them psych themselves up that this like their festival tour is going to be the one big event of the year and so they come out guns blazing. It's pretty fun.

That's cool.

For you though, it's probably another parallel with podcasters. It's probably the same way podcasters party.

Podcasters are definitely talking a lot, but it doesn't mean they're extroverts.

Yeah, most of the podcasters we know actually are introverts when you meet them in person.

That's right.

Yeah, totally. And writers are exactly the same. So yeah, it takes a lot of self awareness, I think, to kind of come out of your shell and push yourself to publish something and to go through the publicity process. It's really public facing and so it's definitely. It takes a lot of energy for people, but it's a fun process. But yeah, I finished up working there in 2012. There had been sort of a big change in industry when Amazon came along and ebooks were sort of taking over and a huge amount of the industry was just getting laid off left and right. And I just thought, like, I've got a job right now, but how long is that going to last? So I decided that I wanted to kind of get organized and start carving my own path a little bit. So quit my job and did the digital Nomad thing for a while. Just taking on content marketing clients and learning copywriting and just basically like writing anything that would pay me. And one of my clients after about a year said, you used to work in a publishing house, right? And I was like, yeah, but not really like publishing the actual books. You know, it's at the end of the process, it doesn't matter. You could help me write a book. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I could.

I'll Google the outline of how to write a book.

Yeah, exactly. But that project went really well and he told a bunch of people about the project and they wanted to do books and. And within a year it had sort of become this whole thing that. That was all I was doing. So that was quite some time ago. Now I'm up to about 25 books at this point. So, yeah, it's been a bit of a whirlwind, but it's, you know, I love it and I get to work with super interesting people and, you know, I spend most of my time talking to entrepreneurs. So there's always plenty of energy and lots of cool innovation and interesting things going on.

Yeah, and I'm just looking at some notes back to the publishing house you used to work for. I don't know if this is correct or not, but were you working on with J.K. rowling and some other pretty big names it looks like here. Tina Fey.

Yeah. So I got to be on the publicity team for Bossypants, Tina Fey's book and all of the books that J.K. rowling released after Harry Potter. So she wrote some crime fiction and she wrote some sort of social satire stuff. She's, I mean, obviously very prolific. So working on her books was really interesting.

The biography of Nelson Mandela was obviously a big one to work on. And, you know, there's quite a few very well known authors that I got to promote and tour with. And yeah, it was just an amazing experience.

Well, that's what's. Maybe it's a blessing for you that you got to work on the publicity Side, which is all the marketing and the business side of it. So I guess what are some things because actually I'm not super aware from the self published authors and some of the. We've had New York Times bestsellers on here and they always kind of say, yeah, it's up to the author and their team, their marketing savviness to kind of push the book. But sounds like the publisher does do some stuff to kind of kick it off and get it going. I'm kind of curious like what you learned and took away from the publishing house where you can apply now with self publishers and people like that.

I think what a lot of people don't really know is that most publishers are putting out dozens if not hundreds of books every month. And so if I'm working on. So publishers are split into what they call imprints, which is basically sections that publish different genres of books. So if I was working on a particular imprint and we were publishing say 50 books in a month, there's only so much time that I can spend promoting each one. So it does really come down to what the author is willing to do. If you're in a traditional publishing situation, obviously the publisher is going to do as much as they can, but you just have to be aware that that might not be that much.

Yeah, I mean there's like 30, 30 days in a month and they can't even do a single blog post or like a social media post for a book.

Right, right. So it's a lot. Honestly, there are as many ways as a self publisher to market your book as you can possibly imagine. You can do so many different things with it and it sort of does depend what you want the book to do as a project and within your business. So if you're using the book as a way to acquire customers, which I think is probably the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs who write a book. They want to either get in front of a bigger audience or they want to start that kind of sales process with an existing audience.

You can, I always think it's best to sort of fit it into what you're doing already that you're really good at. Like don't try and reinvent the wheel to promote this thing. It's just like any other product launch you would do. So if you're really great at Facebook ads, find a way to work it into your Facebook ads. If you're really awesome on Instagram, then promote it all over Instagram. You know, if you're really good at live events, which obviously during COVID is a little bit difficult. But you know, if you're having live events, then you can promote it live. Like there's a lot of different things you can do and people forget also to take it offline. So there's still a whole world of media that has nothing to do with the Internet. And a lot of those platforms are really starved because people have forgotten about them. Local.

What kind of examples of that? Because obviously there's bookstores, but what other outside of the Internet platforms would you identify there?

So things like your local newspaper, your local radio station or TV station. If there's a story of hometown kid made good who doesn't want to run that story.

It'S a great way as well to trade up the chain where if you get coverage on a small station, you can go to maybe a statewide station and say, hey, I've been featured here. Would you also like to run this story? Then you can trade it up that way so you can get a lot of coverage fairly quickly by focusing on this low competition environment.

Bookstores, as you mentioned, are another great opportunity. A lot of bookstores will be happy for you to go and do a book signing or an event, a launch party.

There's lots of fun things that you can do in a bookstore and most bookstores are struggling so they're pretty happy for any kind of event that will get people in the door.

And they're mainly independent bookstore. Well, I mean there's not a lot of them, but obviously there's the big chains out there. Would you say Target kind of the smaller stores first?

If you're self publishing, then yeah, I would go just introduce yourself, take a copy of your book, show them what you're about, ask them if they'd be interested in stocking it. A lot of independents have the kind of power to make a decision for themselves, whereas a big chain store has to go through a buying department. And so there's a lot of intricacy that goes into that acquisition process. So if you can establish a relationship with some local booksellers, then that's a really good asset to have as well. But obviously, I mean most of us are spending the bulk of our time online. So definitely things like, you know, you can do a zoom party launch. You can. There's obviously email marketing is a huge factor in how you can promote. I think if you've got an existing email list, then do a pre launch campaign.

Make the book available for pre order so that the day that it orders you're probably likely to hit number one in your category. On Amazon and then you can kind of leverage that into more publicity.

A little bit of hand outreach also goes a really long way. People don't really think about this because it's very manual and it's time consuming, but emailing people individually to say, hey, I've got this book out, I think it would be great for your audience. Maybe you'd like to share it. Yeah, can go a really long way. And some of the best results I've had from projects have come from that very high touch kind of interaction with people.

I feel like that's the case with everything though. Right? Like, it's like the stuff that's not scalable is typically going to give you the best quality and probably open up a shit ton more opportunities for you as well, rather than trying to pay for ads and do that whole thing.

Yeah, for sure.

You get guys like Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss and Lewis Howes and some of them. And one of the promotions I've seen them do pretty much every time they put out a book is they try to get people to buy in bulk. They'll try to get people to buy 50 books all at one time to give away to their audience and things like that. Have you experimented with that strategy at all? Have you seen results doing anything like that?

Yeah. So a lot of people I've worked with have partnered with peers, people in the network who have big audiences and do cross promotions. And it's definitely effective because you're already vetted, you know, you're a known quantity to this audience if somebody is recommending you. So it's definitely one of the fastest ways to kind of boost your sales velocity. It's definitely something that I really encourage people to focus on. And same with podcasts. You know, if you can promote the book on a podcast and the hosts can give away, you know, a bunch of copies, then like, that's just so much value added to the audience. It kind of is a win win for both parties.

Yeah, no, I like that there's a lot of cool. I think my favorite idea out of all that was the zoom party.

Yeah, that's cool.

I've never heard of that. It's just cool and unique and perfect for now. You mentioned some before. We got in the podcast and we started recording and it kind of came up in my mind, but that writing a book or getting a book done for you through someone else, like a ghostwriter, isn't really a good use of time for every person out there. Can you talk about that? Because you Talked about the benefits, of course. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs that think that they need more leads through a book or whatever it is, positioning. Can you speak into that a bit? And who is good and who's probably not right for staking out a bunch of time or money into writing a book?

Yeah, I think you really don't want to start working on a book until you're pretty established in your business is not a smart move. If you're really early, just because you've got to get that clear audience fit, really get to know them and what they want and need. You need to have really solid systems because obviously scaling your business is great, but inefficiency tends to scale in kind of lockstep with the growth. So if your systems can't handle a massive influx of leads or people wanting to work with you, then you're going to squander a lot of the goodwill and interest that you've generated by promoting this book.

That's actually a really good point.

You got to be ready, you know.

So this is something that I really look for is like, are you established? Do you know what you're doing? Can you see clearly where this book is going to fit into your marketing ecosystem? How are you going to handle it if you get suddenly, like three times more leads next month than you had today? Are you ready? Basically, so that's kind of the primary thing that I think most people need to look out for. But you know, for entrepreneurs, like, people get kind of stuck on the idea of whether or not they should write their own book. And honestly, if you love writing and you feel like you're good at it, then go for it. I think that's great for a lot of people, it's not the highest and best use of their time to write their own book. Entrepreneurs are good at a particular thing, and a lot of the time that's a kind of critical part of the business, you know, generating revenue and handling a team and everything. So to take you out of that and divert your attention for a few months into writing is not necessarily the best option. So if you're in a position where your business is stable and proven, then that's a good moment to think about a ghostwriter. But until that point, I would say just focus on the fundamentals.

I think it's super smart. I've never thought about it that way. But if you're not ready to scale, because a book is going to be basically your message on scale, especially when you pump some marketing behind there and do these Zoom parties and all that cool stuff. Like, you better have your emails dialed in your sequences. You're maybe retargeting all ads to kind of show your branding. And Yeah, I mean, I think that just filter alone will probably be like, a lot of people like, oh, okay, I got to dial in my foundation stuff first and then add this in there.

Yeah.

But I know books, like, because we've. We actually saw some books of ours that. And we did not ghostwrite or anything. We kind of repurpose a lot of our stuff and put it into a book for people to follow. But we saw, I think it was Digital Marketer actually yesterday. You noticed, like, they're running a promo and then one of the giveaways was our book, or I think multiple of our books were like, oh, that's cool. And we're like, oh, well, that's a power of having a book.

Right. They can kind of take on a life of their own. You don't know who's going to pick it up and what they're going to do with it. And so you do have to sort of be robust enough to handle that.

Right. Like, so that was interesting. Yeah, Matt, you caught that yesterday.

Well, it was just. It was. It was interesting to me because we didn't know it was going to happen.

Right, right.

Well, that's the. That's kind of the proving the point is, like, you never know when someone's gonna pick up your book and be like, oh, my God, everyone needs this. Oh, I just found myself with like a thousand new leads and people. My phone's ringing like crazy.

Like, yeah, my business wasn't ready for this. No.

Yeah, no, really, luckily we were ready. But yeah, it's. That's a cool filter. So that's a good one, Laura.

Yeah. I almost feel like this is like, we started at the end and now we're working backwards. But I want to talk about how you actually write the books. Like what? Because I feel like most people think of the task of putting out a book as just this monument is task that's going to take them a year. And then there's a publishing process that, you know, takes another half a year. And then they got to do the press tour. And, you know, I think in most people's minds, the process that people go through to publish and promote a book is just this monumental thing. So let's sort of dive in a little bit and break down the process that you follow to get these books out there.

Sure. So, I mean, again, writing a book can be a Very condensed process, or it can be a very protracted process. You know, it can take a couple months or it can take a few years. And it sort of, again, it depends on how you want to do it. But the process that I use with clients is generally takes about six months, kind of depending on what the demands on their time are. But basically, first, I want to start with a North Star idea. So we want to define the strategic intent for the book. What's the key message of this? What do we want readers to take away? My role in this whole process is to be an advocate for the reader to ask the questions that they want answers to, to ask questions that they don't think to ask, to ask the stupid questions that they wouldn't ask but want the answers to. And so, you know, I really want to have a clear sense of. Of what the end transformation is going to be for them. So I really want to understand what the entrepreneur is trying to achieve with this. So that gives me a filter that I can sort information through. So, you know, there's so much information that every client brings and so much experience that they bring to each project that you sort of have to be able to focus on what's most relevant because, you know, you could write hundreds and hundreds of pages, but maybe only a third of that is going to be actually useful information. I need a way to say that's good information, but it doesn't belong in this book. That guiding principle is really critical. Once we've got that, then we start building an outline where I want 10 to 15 big ideas that will become the basis for chapters, where we're talking about the big things that people really need to understand about this topic and that are foundational to whatever that transformation is going to be. Once we've got the outline done, then we can niche down even further and go into the particular stories you want to tell, the specific examples that need to be given, any research that we need to do. Then once we've got that, we just get into interviewing. I spend probably a third of each project just talking to the client. We just do tons of interviews, and I just ask every question that I can think of. I want to know everything about everything that we've decided to talk about. So it's often a surprise to clients to realize how personal some of that stuff can get, just because for every entrepreneur, there's a personal story behind the business story. You get very good at telling your business story in a very polished way. You've told it a hundred times. You can reel it off in your sleep. But that's not an interesting story because it's so polished. It's hard for people to relate to you. There's no struggle in it. It's hard. You're telling the neat version of the story for brevity and clarity and often for a laugh. But the really interesting stuff and the stuff that really bonds your reader to you and is going to make them want to take that next step with you is the hard stuff. And what led you to being successful. It's very rare that anybody has built a great business without a few things going wrong.

Those stories are really important. And so, yeah, we do get into the weeds of, you know, how that was. So that's, that's for me, a really interesting part of the process. And there's so much to learn there, I would think.

Like, I'm just. It's almost like a podcast. It's like you, you are like an investigative journalist in a way. You know, just asking every single possible question around North Star, but also those big ideas and stories and stuff like that.

Yeah. And just getting into the why of things, you know, because I think it's very easy to give a succinct answer or, you know, a neat answer, but to have somebody push back on you a little bit and say, well, why is that? Why did you make that decision? You know, why did you think that was the right course of action? Those can lead to some very interesting answers, and that's the stuff that I really want to find. So once we've been through all of the interviews, then I go into drafting. I take all of those recordings and turn it into a complete draft, which I then take to the client. We go through some rounds of editing, and then I get the book ready for publication and launch.

So when you're doing these interviews, how many hours of audio do you record during this interview process?

It depends a lot on how much detail the client wants to get into, but most it would be around the 20 to 30 hour mark.

20 to. Dang. So then, so when somebody's coming back to write a rough draft, they're basically going through between 20 and 30 hours of transcripts and figuring out what points from these transcripts are worth turning into the book. Or is it like the transcripts are the sort of bones of it and then you start removing stuff? How does that work?

Yeah, I mean, people will cry foul over this. But I do my own transcript work because I've sent it off to.

Many different services and I get very frustrated with what comes Back. What happens in conversation is not what makes for good reading. To listen to a transcript verbatim, there's lots of switching back and forth and interruptions and forgetting where you're at. There's a lot that happens verbally that you don't want in a book. I listen and write as I go, basically. So it sort of is like the transcript is I'm listening to the audio and transcribing, but having the audio more as a narration, and I'm sort of taking down the heart of what's being said.

Ah, that's interesting. So you're like, cutting out the transcript, but you're making your own version of what you're hearing in a more cohesive manner, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. So I sort of edit and transcribe as I go.

That makes sense.

And then it's much. I mean, it's still very much a messy draft at the end of that process. It needs a lot more work after that, but it's in a much better state than if it was just plain transcript.

Okay, I'm kind of curious about this, and this is a new thing that Matt's been nerding over. I'm about to dig in. There's some new tech. I don't want to say the name yet, but I'm curious about. What kind of tech do you use for writing the transcript and the drafts? Do you have any interesting apps to help you out, to connect the dots or anything like that? Or is it just Google Docs, plain and dry?

No, I use Google Docs. I mean, I've tried, like, machine transcription, and I've also used human transcription. Both of them have their upsides and downsides.

Yeah, the.

You know, the process that I use is just. I just type. Type it all out in Google Docs, because that way as well I can. It's very easy to sort the information. You know, you can just create kind of a table of contents as you're going, and then it's very easy to find stuff and leave notes. And I will often have an idea while I'm taking transcription that I want to come back to, but I don't want to lose the flow of what I'm doing. So Google Docs makes it very easy to just make a note for myself and keep going.

Gotcha. Yeah. And this app that I was going to bring up, it's called Roam Research. Yeah. And to have a peek at that, because the reason I brought that up, I was thinking like, okay, so you're going to have all these different chapters and references to different things throughout the course of all these interviews you do with the author. And this roam research tool essentially allows you to do what you're doing, but it finds these connections for you and kind of maps it out for you in a visual state as well.

Oh, interesting.

So everything's in one spot and you don't have to. And it's all exactly what you said. It's like in pure flow. You don't have to jump around all these different buckets or whatever.

It's based on the German Zettelkasten system.

Yeah, it's very interesting. I think it's a newer tool that's using AI. But a lot of what you're saying, I'm just like. I think. Think this might save you a lot of time.

Awesome.

Yeah, check it out.

Yeah, I mean, it's more of a tool to like, store research so that you can pool research together. I don't know if it would work.

Very well for research. I mean. Yeah, I don't know about transcripts itself, but I'm thinking research and connections. I'm like, well, that's like what you're doing with a book. So, like, maybe that'll help. So that's cool. Good pro. I mean, that's a very clear process. So you do this. Well, it takes about six months, you said, for that process, for a client, that.

Right, yeah.

Okay. And that's to publish and launch, essentially.

Yeah. At the end of that six months, they should be on sale.

Gotcha. Nice.

So then you've got the draft ready. What happens after the draft? Do you go back and do your own edits or do you pass it to somebody else with fresh eyes or what's the next step in the process?

So there are multiple types of editing that have to happen. There's a structural edit where you're looking at. Do these big chunks of information flow correctly. So I'm looking for information hierarchy there. What does the reader need to know before we move on to the next thing? So are there gaps here? Is it out of order? Is it confusing? I'm always looking to make sure that everything just flows as smoothly as possible. I don't want the reader to ever run into a chunk of text where they can put the book down, where it's confusing or difficult to read, and so they put it down and don't pick it up again. So that's the structural edit. It's just moving big pieces around. The next round of editing is copy editing. So that's where you're going and making sure. Everything is very more polished and making sure that there's no kind of cosmetic mistakes. And then you sort of get into proofreading, which is going line by line to make sure all of the punctuation is perfect. There's no double spaces. You know, it's all very detailed.

Some of those processes can be repeated. Most books in a traditional publisher would go through one round of structural edits, probably two or three rounds of copy editing, and then another two or three rounds of proofreading. So it's a pretty involved process. I will do most of that myself, but I always want to hand it off to somebody because you do lose sight of it. You're just so close to the document that you stop seeing the problems. So once I've done four rounds, five rounds of editing myself, then I'll hand it off to somebody to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Yeah, that makes sense. Do you ever add visuals to the books? Do you ever come back and add images and graphs? Do you ever have authors that are teaching a technical concept that requires visuals to explain or anything like that?

Yeah, yeah. It happens quite a lot. A lot of people want to include photos or, as you say, graphs, sort of illustrations of things. It's pretty common and pretty easy to do.

So that's something typically that the person that you're helping, they would provide that stuff, and then you would kind of figure out where that fits in the book.

Yeah, or sometimes I'll go back to them and say, I think an illustration would be great here. This is maybe a convoluted concept, or there's lots of data or whatever that needs to be kind of visually represented. So this would be a good place to. I had one client who had a designer on his team, and I'd say, I would like a graph of this market development over this many years, and the designer will go and visualize that. And we put that in the book. So that was a really cool collaboration, actually.

Nice. Yeah. I have a question about. It's something in your process. You have a phase. I think it was the third phase, about stories and research. And I was thinking, do you have a process around creating engaging stories that suck the reader in and keep them turning that page? Because I know that's a huge part of the book. There are these really crucial stories, but do you have a way of structuring these stories that you can share here?

I think there are a couple of things that make for really compelling stories, and people discount how interesting their own stories are all the time. We Think it's got to be this big thing, totally transformational, really, really unusual thing that happened. But actually there is a lot of interest just in the day to day of each of our lives. And giving people a bit of a peek behind the scenes can be just as engaging as some big crazy thing that happens. I think what I'm looking for most often is a specific moment in time. It's not so engaging to say over a period of years this and that happened. But if you can pinpoint it to, you know, one specific moment where you had, like a really strong emotion or something surprised you, or there was something unexpected, then those moments are really interesting. Like the book I'm working on at the moment. The client is a filmmaker, and he had been in business for eight years and was really struggling, like, just couldn't work out how to make money with the films he was making. And a client called him the morning his car got repossessed and said, I made a million dollars with the film we made. And so that is a really, like, very engaging story. Right. But it's very easy to say, well, I was really struggling, my car was getting repossessed. You know, I was having all these financial difficulties and whatever, and then I learned that my clients were making all this money. That's a very generalized way of telling the story. But if you say I was sitting on my bed, my phone rang, I was watching the tow truck pull my car away, and here was the voice down the line. It's a very different way of telling the story. You want to make it as immediate as possible and as kind of inescapable as you can make it.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Joe and I are actually both reading the same book right now, which is actually fairly rare, but we are. We're reading David Goggins book, the Can't Hurt Me book. And one of the things that I noticed about that book is when he tells stories, it's literally like he's telling a story that's like an hour window. Like, this is what happened over the course of an hour. And he's like breaking down in detail of like, this is the thing. It's never, I did this, and then a few days later I did this, and then a month later this happened, and then two weeks later, it's like he zooms in, puts a microscope on, like, a single day of his life, and then explains in detail that day of his life. And it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying. Do you ever follow, like, the sort of monomyth, hero's journey kind of stuff at all, or is that part of your process or is not really?

Honestly, I think story structure and story template is a little bit. Has become a bit of an obsession culturally. I mean, storytelling is as old as humanity. Right. It's sort of how we have become what we are.

And so I think we're over complicating it a lot of the time. But the. I mean, the monomyth and the hero's journey are very strong structures. If you're stuck for a way to tell a story, that's a really good template. But the Hero's journey has 17 steps in it or something.

It's very detailed. And so if you're forcing yourself through that template every time you have a story to tell, it can take a lot of the dynamism out of it. It takes a lot of the organic energy out of it because you're trying to force it to fit. And not every story is going to have all 17 components. So it's a useful structure if you're starting out and you're sort of looking for some guidance. But I think the more you can rely on emotion and specific, immediate moments, the stronger the stories will be.

Yeah.

We could all thank Russell Brunson for bringing that back to the forefront for everybody recently.

That's a good point. Forgot about that. But I like that with the stories. That makes a lot of sense, because I think a lot of us, I know myself, is like, I try to cover way too much in a span of time. It's not just one single moment, but it's like, hey, I want to cover these last five years for you really quick. Whoa, hold on. That's probably even when you're. Because I know you didn't go on and on with your podcast, your story here on the podcast, and some people will go on for a long time with their story, but you chose points in times like the publishing house and some of these cool parties you did. And then you jumped to, you know, kind of another phase. Oh, yeah.

It's probably so ingrained in you now that you just. That's the default mode.

Yeah. Whereas, like, these people trying to cover everything, it's like, whoa, now I'm not going to remember anything. And it's not as impactful.

Right. You lose the important moments in all of the detail. Otherwise.

Yeah, for sure. And just kind of wrapping up this ghostwriting process. I know we're chatting again before we recorded, but there's sometimes shame for the folks who are thinking about writing a book, but then they see the option as a ghostwriter and they're like, wait, is that a cop out? Is that not true to me being an author? Now talk a little bit about that. And some of those feelings that pop up.

I mean, for a long time ghost writing was sort of seen as cheating and really like a low brow form of literature and not really worth people's attention. But I just don't see it. I can't see it that way, you know, because if you're, if you're an entrepreneur, you're not doing your own taxes, right? You're not like, you know, if you're, if you've got kids and they're in school and stuff and you're trying to run a business, you're not trying to teach your kid math. And you know, maybe while we're all quarantining, that's not the case.

That might change now.

Yeah, you want to have other people with expertise taking care of the stuff that you're not best at. Right. And it just doesn't make sense to me for most people to write their own books because writing is a skill set that takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of reps to get, you know, good at a level where most people would be happy with the final result. So, you know, I've been writing since I was 18 and you know, that's a long time and reading for a.

Long, long time before.

Right, exactly. And you know, as I read, I'm reading as a writer and I'm looking for what the writer is doing. So I'm constantly, you know, gleaning little bits of expertise from everything that I read. I think the thing, the idea that it's not really your book if you don't write it yourself doesn't ring true to me because we spend so much time getting your information and your voice. Like the whole point of the, of the interview process is that I am not present at all in the end result of the book. I want it to be entirely the client. You know, it's got to be entirely their voice, entirely their stories. Like, I will do lots of stitching together and smoothing things out, but it's all them. Like, I'm not adding stuff that's, you know, my, my ideas or whatever. I'll add research to support stuff that they've said, but it's all them. And you know, I. Part of the editing process as well is getting rid of anything that's crept in that Sounds like me, right? So, you know, I'm Australian, my partner is British. And so I use words like cheeky, but most Americans wouldn't use a word like cheeky. So you know, thinking like, is that going to sound like this. This person? And so I really think all of the material is generated by the client. All of the style of the book is generated by the client. The, you know, the information that has been filtered in and out, that's all the client. So to my mind, I'm just sort of a vessel or getting it from the client to the reader and just making that transition much easier and making sure that they get to tell the story in as clear and engaging a way as they want to.

Yeah. And I don't think most people realize how many books are actually ghost written.

Oh, I'm sure there's so like what.

Like almost every celebrity that you can think of who's published a book was most likely ghost written written. And then you even have people like, like Tom Clancy and I think I heard like John Grisham. I don't know. But some of these like really famous authors, like towards the later end of like their, their storytelling, they started to have ghostwriters help them along with it too.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean. Yeah. And it's. I'd be curious to know the percentage of books out there of like the big books that are, you know, like Michelle Obama. Yeah. Like these massive books that are amazing books and that's what I love. I think they, I mean, for the most part I would assume they're better books because they're engaging, they have that nice structure to the whole thing. But then you have those authors that are to the craft and that's amazing as well. But like you said, Laura, so much time, so many reps and dedication as a business owner. Come on. Yeah.

I'm fairly certain the book we're reading right now, the David Goggins book, was ghostwritten too because the dude's a Navy seal. He's not a writer.

He's too busy doing other stuff. He wants to wake up at three in the morning. Morning and run in the snow with no. I don't know, got better at things to do for him. But that's. Yeah, like personally I've had a. I still have a pull to write a book of my own, but it would more be for just to get it out of my brain as like I see it but as like our business, like for Matt and I, we have a few books in mind. Definitely don't want to write Those. Sorry. Oh, yeah. So you could do both, I guess, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And I often will say to people, like, for your business, it probably makes more sense to have somebody else help you with it. But if it's a personal story, definitely do it yourself. You know, there's going to be a lot of catharsis in that. There's going to be a lot of satisfaction in having done it. You know, especially if there's going to be, you know, people from your life involved in that process. You know, there's a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from doing a book yourself, for sure. But, you know, it's something that you can work on as sort of a passion project or, you know, and that's not to say that it won't be a great book in the end and that, you know, that you won't sell it. Like, there's. There's heaps of opportunity for, you know, that. I think, like, people feel like they have to write something really unusual or really different. But all the genres have so many books, right? And there's. There's an audience for all of them. And I sort of think whether you are writing a business book or you're writing a personal memoir or whatever, there's a readership for that. And what you want the readership to do with the book kind of determines who is the best person to write it.

That makes sense. You could be like my wife and how she wrote some children's books for the wedding space. She wrote them in a few hours. I'm just like, hey, now you can call. I don't know, these little rhymes and stuff flow out or. Obviously different style of book. But it's just kind of funny. It's like, yeah, it could be like just a kid's book, 10 pages long.

It doesn't have to be complicated.

Exactly. Yeah. Keep it simple if you want to get that author title. But, yeah, obviously not for business, probably.

Yeah. Well, so I think the last topic that I really want to dive into is once somebody has a book, how do they make money from the book? How do they roi. How do they make sure that all that time that was put into producing this book, how do they actually make something of it? How do they grow their business off the back of a book? How do they, you know, are people actually making money off the book or is the money coming on the back end? You know, how.

What.

What's your philosophy towards actually monetizing off this book?

So my view is that most entrepreneurs are not going to make roi on the front end sales of their book. There will be some revenue generated by that, but mostly they're going to see the ROI happen on the back end. And so I always advise people that it's best to use the book as an acquisition tool. You know, it's a front end offering.

The reason also that I say that it's a good option to be pretty established in your business and be very, you know, be a few years into the business is that mostly those companies have already got a high ticket offer. So if you're going to make significant amounts of revenue, you want the book to be leading to your high ticket purchase. So, you know, ideally when I talk to a client, I'd say, you know, how many copies of the book or how many of your high ticket items do you need to sell for the investment on the book to be worth it? And if their answer is one to five, perfect, that's great. That's a no brainer, right? Exactly, exactly. So it makes it really easy for them to see how it's going to become valuable. So yeah, that's, that's kind of my major focus is like set it up from the beginning that it's going to lead people to that high ticket purchase. You know, it's a very low cost acquisition funnel. You know, to run ads to a book is pretty cheap and it's very easy to do, it's very easy to nurture them, you know, through an email funnel and then into, you know, whatever your sales process is. Because once people have read your book, they know you, they like you, they trust you, they get what you're saying and what you're about. And if they have a physical copy of the book, then you've been in their house with them. It's a really personal, kind of intimate relationship that you've started with somebody. And so it's not uncomfortable for them to look at a high ticket item and say, yeah, that sounds like a good fit for me. So it also sort of positions you top of mind constantly because if they're looking at your name on their bookshelf all the time, there's nobody else that they're going to work with. Right. So making sure that you've got your high ticket item set up and ready, I think that's kind of your primary focus. But there's a lot of other ways that you can leverage it for a return as well. And I think obviously going on podcast is a great way to get publicity and to sort of start generating more of that qualified lead flow and a Book is a really great way to open a conversation with hosts to get yourself onto podcasts. It's also a really good way to start getting speaking engagements to, you know, get that TEDx talk that everybody wants to do. You know, it really positions you as an expert. And so you can start charging for speaking events, you can start charging for appearances, and it means that you open up this whole other revenue stream. And there's also a lot of joint venture opportunities that can come out of a book partnering with people who have complementary products or offerings. It just means that you have a greater reach and a greater choice of what you focus on.

Yeah, that makes sense. Going back real quick to getting a return on investment. I'm sure there's like a range dependent on a whole bunch of factors, but what sort of investment does a typical person put into getting a book created?

So I mean, obviously, as you say, there is a range. And I think.

If you're starting with somebody who's pretty new and it's one of their first projects, you can sort of expect to pay in the 10 to 15,000 range. If you're working with a Pulitzer Prize winner who has ghostwritten for, you know, every celebrity you can think of, then it's probably more like 100,000. I'm pretty squarely in the middle of those. But, you know, it's, there's, there's not that many ghostwriters out there. There are a couple of big services that do it, and it really just sort of depends on what kind of experience you want to have. Some people want to just work very closely with one person. Other people are comfortable kind of working with a team and working with multiple people. So yeah, it really, it does come down to sort of how you want to do it and how much experience the writer has.

Yeah, and that makes a lot more sense with the whole high ticket sales on the back end. You know, it makes all these. Because we've chatted with some other, you know, ghostwriters and I think you've laid it out probably clearer than, you know, most here. And you know that the, the investment into this, if it's a good fit, should be a no brainer. Like that was my feeling when you described, oh, how many is two to five on the back? Oh, okay. Do it because think about the scale of what you can then, you know, create in that funnel. However you promote the book, it's kind of like a podcast. I hear so many relations to.

Relatable things from a book to having a podcast, similar things like you're Top of mind. It's very intimate. It's usually like a one to one thing, but you do it at scale and they get to know you, they like you, they trust you. It's kind of like that can be your entry way into more that happens after the fact.

Yeah. Well, also, a lot of the digital marketer world has this, this sort of need to feel legitimized by being in, like, traditional media too. They, they want to be seen on TV and radio and in magazines and, you know, the inc.com and you see the digital marketers trying to be on the Inc 500 list and all that kind of stuff. And I feel like a book is that sort of bridge over that gap between digital marketer and traditional media, if that's a path that you want to take to grow your brand?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, culturally, we. We look at authors as kind of the ultimate expert. You know, you can't write a book unless you're an expert about something. Right. So it definitely does bridge that gap and it gives you a legitimacy in the eyes of traditional media as well. So they do take you more seriously and are much more interested when you've got something tangible to hand them to prove it.

Yeah, I could see that opening so many doors, even just getting on podcasts. Like, we get pitches all the time and I mean, we are seeing a lot of people who have books. It's like our filters are pretty strong. But I could see if you had a book and, you know, if you're comparing this person to this person and they're kind of like, maybe they're both salespeople, like, oh, this one wrote a book and actually looks like really good. And this one, what do they have? Oh, they're just pitching themselves, like, cool. I'm probably going to take the person with the book.

Right. And I mean, it carries to pitching yourself to anybody. Right. Like, if you're trying to get, you know, that one dream client, you just can't get hold of them because their secretary is like, you know, a hydra. You can send them a physical copy of your book with a personalized note and say, like, chapter three, I think is going to be super relevant to you. I'd love to chat with you about it. I'll call you next week. No secretary is going to throw that book in the, in the trash and.

Then put a big. Then you've got confidential sticker on the front of the package.

You've suddenly got a direct line to this person that you didn't have before. And it's because people take books really seriously.

That's a very good point. Yeah. And I like that strategy. Like actually calling out specifically like, hey, read this chapter or this section.

For this reason, not everyone's going to have time to read the whole thing. So point them to the thing that's most important.

Well, see, that's another thing that as a podcaster, we get a lot of books in the mail and some people kind of guilt you a little bit because they follow up. Seriously. I have one in our support right now and it's very interesting. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. But I like the fact that, hey, here's a little bit for you and here's where you can focus, here's why, how it gives value to you. I think using it as a tool, but being strategic with that tool is smart. Don't just scattershot and expect everyone to consume your stuff. So it's interesting. Yeah, I guess there's always a balance there. So you got to think through how you're presenting this thing.

So I have a quick question. This might be kind of a dumb question, actually, but I'd still love your opinion on it. Do you have a philosophy behind what goes into a book cover? Like the design of a book cover, what it should look like, if you wanted to get attention on store shelves or on Amazon listings or things like that. Is there any sort of process that you have for actually designing a cover?

So this is an age old debate. Everybody's got an opinion in the industry. Honestly, there are trends in book covers like there are trends in just about everything else.

Some years you'll see tons of text driven covers, a very stark white background with big block letters or a yellow background with big black letters. And every other book will have that cover for a year. Or you'll get something that's got like a kind of an animation style illustration, you know, a cool little figure or whatever that's kind of demonstrating what the book is about and, you know, a smaller text element. Other years it'll be very photographic. So, you know, it really sort of depends on what's trending at the moment, which I hate to say, but one thing I like to do with clients is have them run a 99 design competition for their book covers. So we write a brief for what the book is about and, you know, kind of who the audience is and the key elements that it needs to have. And then we put out a competition on 99 designs. You'll get say, 100, 200 cover designs back and then you pick 10 or 15, and then you can turn it into a contest so you can put the contest out to your audience. So people who are likely to be your readers, you know, put it on your Facebook, send it to your email list. It's just, it's a really simple poll. Basically, people can rate the covers and leave comments. So if you have an engaged audience, this is a really good way to test what people are going to respond to. You know, it's often not the COVID you think is going to win, but often one or two will take it by a landslide. So it's a really useful way to make sure that what you think the book should be is in line with what. With what readers think the COVID should be.

I like that. Yeah, it's crowdsourcing the design and then you're crowdsourcing the selection of the design with your community that you're most likely going to have, because you're going to have your audience built and infrastructure and all that stuff before you ever write a book.

Right. And I think being in the marketing space, testing is really important. Everybody thinks of books as this very creative pursuit and everything, but it's like everything else. You can test every part of it. You can test the title, you can test the COVID you can test the length. You know, you can test with pictures, without pictures. There's a lot that you can get a sense of, even just from sending it to early readers. You know, pick a handful of your audience or some people who really know you and your business and send different versions to people and see what kind of reactions you get. You know, you don't have to just do one kind of boilerplate version of everything. It can be a bit dynamic. And I think, you know, some of the best successes have come from when we've gone to early readers and said, you know, what do you think about this chapter? Or, you know, does this section make sense to you? And some will come back and say, I really needed an illustration for that. Like, I don't quite get it. I need like a visual representation. And. Okay, so that. That's going to help keep that person really engaged past maybe a difficult section of the book. And, you know, I think there's just no such thing as too much information when you're trying to put this kind of thing together.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like this whole session that we've just had with you made way more sense than I've like, of the ghost writing process and the why behind a book. And even what happens after the book. And you actually made it fun too. So I think that says a lot.

About this is another just real quick random question. Do self published books, do they ever really make like the New York Times bestsellers list or the big list that people try to get on or is that still kind of reserved for traditional publishing?

It's very difficult to get on those lists. As a self publisher it is possible, but you have to sell. I think it's something like 50,000 copies in your first week. It's a very high bar.

And.

A lot of those lists are actually editorial products. So there was a quite famous case in the 80s where the author of the Exorcist took the New York Times to court because he had sold so many copies of the book that he should have been number one for weeks and weeks. And they didn't list him at all because they didn't consider it highbrow enough. And the Times won because the list is a product, like a curated product as part of their brand. And so there is an element where they want you to kind of be. To have the cachet of a traditional publisher and to have gone through bookstores. There's still quite a lot of tension around Amazon with a lot of the other big media platforms. And so yeah, it's a little bit fraught. It can happen, but you've got to really get everything on your side.

You got to lean into their business model because it's their model. It's not like they're not obligated to list you. So I could see why they won that. Even though it sucks for the Exorcist guy. I mean, did a great job, but obviously it did.

I'm sure it worked out well for him in the end.

Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. All right, Laura, so I know you have a book and I love the title of the book because it's how to Write this book. Can't really get more obvious than that. Tell us about that and how people can get their hands on a copy of it.

That book details the entire process that I work through with clients. So everything from start to finish, everything we've talked about here in great detail. If you, if you want to grab a copy of that, you'll certainly be able to replicate that process for yourself. Should you want to do it yourself, you can go over to my website, which is lauraiswriting.com and a little pop up will show on the page and you can just pop your email in and I'll email it straight to you.

That's awesome, Lauraiswriting. Dot com. Perfect.

And if they want to check out your podcast, where can they go for that?

That is the business of writing. And you can get that either@thebusinessofwritingpodcast.com or you can go to Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, all of the big platforms and find it over there.

I like how you started with Spotify on that before Apple, because that's how the world is.

I'm a diehard, die hard Spotify fan.

Same. Well, you're on the good side of the fence because. Or whatever this is because, like, they're basically taking over. Yeah.

We try to push people to Spotify to listen to our show now more than itunes.

Yeah, right, right. I just want to be able to listen on double speed.

Right. Yeah. I mean that and soon to be video and all that stuff. Watch out. All right, Laura, this has been great. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.

Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that. And Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did because he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. And I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time. And Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of Easy Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zieman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars as well. And right now, Easy Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, Soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, that's H U S T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can go grab a free trial. And if you Easy Webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing. With webinars, I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics, what's working, what's not during your webinar. Based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're going to make more money and you're going to work less with this thing and you're going to create better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle. That's easywebinar.com hustole. Alrighty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did, if you lasted this long. And go check out Easy Webinar when you get the chance. And we will talk to you next time. Bye bye.

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