Creator Interviews: Matt Briel; A book is one of the best lead magnets on the planet

Hello, you're listening to the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help creators and digital thought leaders like you turn your knowledge and experience into rock-solid recurring revenue. And we are so glad you're here. Welcome. Today, my guest, Matt Briel, and I are going to talk about why and how you as a creator and thought leader can publish your own book. And spoiler alert, it's simpler than you think. And we're going to debunk some old school myths about the publishing process as well. But first, a little bit about our special guest, Matt Briel. Matt has led sales and marketing teams in the media and publishing space for over 15 years and has a tremendous passion for helping creators and authorpreneurs leverage their own books to serve as a catalyst for opening new doors and creating a new sustainable revenue stream. His friends describe him as equal parts loud music, Disney culture, tattoos, and book nerd, and he loves spending time with his family and traveling the world. Welcome, Matt.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I am super pumped to have this conversation with you. As I was telling you before I hit record, Um, I started a conversation in Creator School about this interview to see what Creator School members or students wanted me to ask you. And so I've incorporated those questions in here, but there is a significant appetite for the information that you are going to share today. So I hope people really listen up and hear what you have to say because you have a lot of experience in this area, don't you?

Yeah, that's great too. Thank you. I appreciate you putting it out there ahead of time.

Yeah, for sure. All right, but before we start diving in talking about writing books, as I'm reading through your bio, I'm sure I'm not the only one who maybe found myself thinking about that children's game, which one of these doesn't belong, as I read off loud music, Disney culture, tattoos, and book nerd. Now I can get on board with book nerd going with loud music and tattoos, but please indulge us and tell me about your love of Disney.

I'd also just want to hop backwards and just correct real quick. Not only a children's game, like we actually play that here sometimes at Lulu when we have new people come on board or things like that. So, you know, 2 truths and a lie, I guess essentially is the grown-up version of it. But

yeah,

anyways, so I was I was born and raised in Florida and, you know, very close to Orlando Disney World. And even though I didn't have a lot of exposure to the parks themselves as a kid, you know, other than a few visits here and there, the movies really resonated with me when I was younger. Those old school Disney movies, the way they were animated, the storylines, even though some of them were, you know, taken from older stories. But I really resonated or really sort of related to a lot of those movies as a kid. I loved them. Again, the artwork, the animation, all that just really spoke to me. And when I got a little bit older in my early 20s, you know, college, things like that, I found myself in Orlando and I got a job at Disney and started working at one of the hotels there and absolutely loved it and just fully drank the Kool-Aid, like just jumped into the pool of Kool-Aid there for Disney. And even after leaving, obviously just, you know, remained extremely fond of the organization, everything they did. And as I got older and learned more about, you know, the early days of Disney, the history, the early days of Disney Studios, and even Walt Disney's approach to everything and how he was so experience-focused, like everything was about the experience. You just get more and more intrigued about sort of what they do and how they do it and how they've been able to sustain it for all these years. I'm also a huge fan of when somebody can really shape and create a valuable human experience for somebody. Creating a good, valuable digital experience, I personally don't think is that hard these days. Some people would disagree, that's fine. But when you can shape a human experience like what you experience at a Disney World park or something, to me, that's the pinnacle. So I've just kept that bond and now I'm just Pretty fanatical about it.

I believe you. I've never spoken with anyone who's worked at Disney who was not drinking the Kool-Aid and was not all in on the mission, vision, values. And there's probably not a company, a better company in the world to get your chops in customer experience, right?

Agreed. Literally 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And, but they fully prepare you for that too, though. So it's not like, you know, when you talk about cutting your teeth on something customer service focused or relationship-based sort of experience building. They don't just throw you in like if you went to work, you know, somewhere else. Like there is, there is quite a bit of sort of training and just sort of awareness that goes into everything they do. So yeah, couldn't agree more.

I love that. It's like no stone is left unturned. No detail has not been considered. It's just such an incredibly well thought out and I'm sure constantly iterated upon experience, which is a great lesson that can be taken to any That's right. Company, even creator businesses like we're talking about today, right? Thinking about how the human on the other side of the screen is experiencing you and what you're delivering on, um, which is a great segue to talking about books. So let's, let's do that. Let's turn back the clock a little bit. Um, you just talked about your, your experience with Disney, obviously, but how did you get into this line of work in the first place? And then in more recent years, how did you come to love helping creators and thought leaders. I mean, you've really chosen a very specific niche and you could have helped literally any business. So how did you get here?

It's probably less of a fun story, but that's all right. We'll go there anyways. Um, like a lot of people who got a degree in English creative writing literature, you kind of graduate and sort of realize maybe that wasn't the best choice. You start wondering, what am I going to do with this degree? Because, uh, at least in Florida, you know, teaching is not something you really want to do even back then. But I did identify with writers and authors. I loved reading. I absolutely love books. When I say I'm a book nerd, it's not just that I'm a fan of books or readers or writers, excuse me. I am a book nerd in the sense that I love— I'm one of those people that loves the smell of a good book. I love to hold a book in my hand. I love to look at the quality of a book. I love owning books that are of great quality. So I always had that in me and that sort of creative drive. After college, like, it just didn't— I don't know, I couldn't really make sense of the degree itself. And so, you know, I kind of worked around a series of different jobs. I was just trying to figure out, you know, trying to understand what my passion was and what my place in life really was. You know, it probably took me longer than some other people, but nonetheless. So I did a number of different jobs and many of them were focused on more relationship and customer experience type stuff, things that I had taken kind of away from my Disney experience. And, but, you know, fast forward a little bit through all that boring stuff. In 2016, I was working for a company leading their marketing and sales teams and it was being acquired. It was being acquired by an offshore company. So out of the country, most of us were going to be laid off. It wasn't looking really good. And we did end up getting laid off. And at the time, my wife was working for Lulu. She ran our Lulu Junior division, which is like a kids' retail division we have for bookmaking kits. And she was just like, hey, you know, they've posted this marketing job, this role they have, you should apply for it. At first, I wasn't going to. It was sort of a step backwards for me, but I was like, you know what, it sounds kind of cool. I'm just going to do it. And I did, and I got the job. After a few years here, like, I really realized like that was, that was the right move because I was, I felt like I'd found my place and my passion. And I really started leaning into like the in-person event side of things and really meeting authors and creators and going to these events and, you know, through trying to create relationships with them and understanding like sort of where their pain points were. We come back and then try to mitigate those and make things easier for them. And for me, it went back to, you know, sort of freeing up that creative process for people. If I couldn't be creating things myself, I wanted to be part of other people's creative process. And that's to this day what fuels and drives me. So being at the genesis of something, being at the creation point of something really excites me. And I don't think there are people that do it more often than authors and creators, you know, in this space right now. And so it's really exciting for me. And that's kind of how I gravitated towards not only, you know, landing this role at a publishing company, a self-publishing company, but really honing in and working with creators and entrepreneurs, people who really treat it like a business because it just gets more exciting when you have that element there. So that's the boring backstory.

No, I like that. We, we talk a lot on this podcast about sort of the nonlinear journey that pretty much everyone ends up taking. I never would have guessed that 20 years beforehand they would be Yeah. Sort of a thing, and that the twists and turns and chutes and ladders that have kind of been put in their way and kind of the decision points that you make at forks in the road that get you to where you are now. I think it's really fascinating. I think it's really important for people to hear that as well, that you can have a really successful career and still take a very winding journey with like fits and starts and unexpected things like layoffs that you can then turn into something else, like making the lemonade out of lemons sort of situation, right?

Yeah. And I think some of that really shaped again where I landed because prior to a lot of that career work I was doing, I never had a penchant for any sort of business avenue in general. Again, I really related as a creative type person and I grew to love the various different aspects of running a business. I would manage retail stores, things like that. I'd done a number of different things and I kind of grew to really love the idea of marrying something creative with, with an actual business and the excitement that that generated where you could, you could actually make money and build something from a creative endeavor. So yeah, all of that stuff worked out in the end. I know as you're going through it, like you alluded to, you're just kind of like, what am I doing? But, you know, when you finally do get to that place, you realize like, okay, you know, there was a reason for all of that. You took some good things from it, hopefully, and it hopefully kind of informed and landed where you are now. Yeah.

Right. I mean, I can see it just as you were describing. I was thinking about this is sort of the perfect marriage of the, and the culmination of everything that you've done before and seems like you're in a role that you really love that feels probably very purposeful for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, speaking of purpose, I'm really big on helping people understand and define why they're doing something and writing a book is a serious commitment, right? So I want to dig into that just a little bit. Um, so as you know, Matt, Level Up Creators, we're in the business of helping creators and thought leaders build and grow sustainable businesses based on their knowledge. Our focus is on digital products and specifically like those that create recurring revenue. That's our jam. But in what ways can a creator or thought leader leverage a book or books to grow their business and their brand? Help us understand why writing a book is so important.

Yeah. And so I'll just preface this real quick by saying, even though I'm a print book lover, you know, I believe print books are the only books that should exist. Any of this is applicable to ebooks. And, you know, and when I say ebook, I mean a real ebook. I don't mean when you get that email in your inbox from some salesperson that wants to give you an ebook and it's really just a crappy PDF download. I think an actual book, whether it's an ebook in digital format, if that's where, you know, somebody in your audience wants to stay because they're more comfortable in the digital landscape, or if they want to cross over and create a print book. In general, a book is a legacy-type product first and foremost. The things that it can do for you and your brand and your business are amazing. But at its core, it's a legacy-type product. It's not just some downloadable 5-page PDF that you're calling an ebook. It's a real living, breathing thing that can do a number of different things for you. And the creators that we've been talking to over the years, thought leaders, people who are really leaning into this concept, They're finding that you can take a book and you can use it for a number of things. And some of the most important things, depending on where you are in your journey as a creator or a thought leader, or maybe you're the VP of finance at some company and you really want to start establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field because later on you might not want to be strapped to that cubicle and do your own thing. Regardless of what your drive or your motivation is, a book can do a number of things. So, You know, some of the easiest low-hanging fruit is, you know, expanding reach and audience. Every creator wants to grow their audience, expand their reach. A book is a whole new avenue for that. Books have their own distribution channels and networks. They create new opportunities beyond just a screen. So digital products are great. You know, digital content is great, but it is limited to that screen and the distribution channels that that comes with, right? Which often means Social media, which we won't get into that nightmare, but that's not owned land. That's rented land.

That's right.

Books carry a completely different distribution network and possibilities that go beyond the screen. So, you know, when you talk about growing an audience and reach, that's a great way to do it. Getting physical books into the hands of people that might not otherwise ever know who you are, hear your message, take advantage of what you offer as a service or a product. That's a good way to do it. Another one is we hear from creators all the time, like, I'm just starting out. I don't have a very large audience. I'm not even sure how to grow that audience or get people to even trust me. A book has always been— I'm sorry, a book has always been a great way to establish some authority and credibility. You know, there's the old pun or the joke, like, this guy literally wrote the book on the topic, or, you know, Yeah. She literally just published the number one book on this particular subject. It's true. Nobody's going to come up to you and say, like, who is your publisher? Or, you know, was that self-published? If you have a book in your hand on a particular topic, whether that's, you know, how to become a better freelance writer, or how to, you know, better incorporate change management into your organization, if you wrote a book on the topic, as you said, that is a commitment. Anybody in their right mind, even subconsciously, if they don't verbalize that, is going to be like, wow, okay, I mean, maybe they actually know what they're talking about. So it is a good way to establish authority and credibility, which positions you as somebody that, you know, your audience and your growing audience can rely on for expert advice and opinions. Another way we see this working a lot, you mentioned that you'll be going to an event soon. We're working with somebody that's going to be keynoting at the event, and we see this happen all the time. Use a book as a lead magnet. So, and many of your audience have probably been to a conference where they got a book for free, like it was handed out by a speaker or it was, you know, in the swag bag that they got when they checked in. That's a lead magnet. You know what I mean? It's like any other lead magnet. It's not the downloadable ebook PDF lead magnet, which everybody knows these days is not what it is, but literally handing somebody a book, you know, and we'll get into the costs associated with that later if you want, but Literally handing somebody a book is one of the best lead magnets on the planet. And when you talk about using that book to draw them in for a higher price ticket item, maybe it's a consulting package that you offer or some other product that you offer that carries a much higher ticket and maybe a repeat business attached to it. A book is a great way to bring that business in. And then one of the last sort of largest things, I won't go into all the The reasons a book can help grow your business. But one of the last and probably most important ones, it is kind of tied to the whole establishing authority and credibility. But, you know, when we talk about marketing, which is an important aspect of what every one of your audience does to a degree, these days it's all trust-based, right? And he's in a— well, forget about marketing. Let's just say as a human, as a consumer, everything is trust-based these days. We're very distrustful of reviews. We're very distrustful of, you know, anything that might be AI created. There's a real lack of trust right now when it comes to who you can trust for purchases, services, any of those things, even a restaurant. So when you can build any amount of trust through something like that and then turn that into a relationship, which then, you know, in most cases will turn into some sort of long-term loyalty and repeat business. You know, that in and of itself is one of the most important sort of aspects of what a book can do for your business or your brand.

Yeah, really, really strong positioning move, major stamp of approval. It's a major social signal and it can open up a lot of doors. And I like what you said kind of at the beginning of your answer about what you're explaining is like writing a book helps you retain optionality for the future. Like if you want to leave your corporate gig, you've got this Yeah, you got this book positioning yourself, um, that will open doors. It will open the door to speaking engagements in particular. That's kind of, you know, like legacy model in terms of like monetization of a personal brand, but that still holds true today. Now we have the digital product side to like layer on top of that and build a really sustainable business, um, without having to travel 200 days a year. But, um, yeah, writing a book, it opens up all kinds of doors. And I think that's, that's a great, that's a great thought. Um, but there are, you know, a number of barriers to entry. So let's get into that a little bit. And you did mention costs. We should come back to that if we have time. But like I regularly have conversations with creators and, and thought leaders where we talk through the question of like, should I write a book or not? And the question I get most often is, how do I know if I'm ready to write my first book? And to clarify, I don't mean if they're ready from a logistical standpoint, like these steps, but moreover, if that person thinks they have the breadth and depth of knowledge to write at least 30,000 words. Yeah. So how do you respond to that question when you're speaking with, you know, these types of creators and thought leaders and like, let's get as Let's get pretty specific. Like, we're looking for some tactical, like, litmus tests of sort, if they're like questions you ask or prompts that you give that help people sort of know if they're ready or not. But what's your answer to that?

Yeah, it ties back a little bit to what I said a little bit earlier where I was referencing, you know, what are people's individual motivations or goals, not only for a book necessarily, but just in general. Like, you know, every person that we speak to, whether they're self-identifying as an author and that's just what they do and they want a career as a writer or they self-identify as a solopreneur or a C-suite executive. It doesn't matter. Everybody has their own motivations and goals. And so some of that is gonna vary based on what those are. But in general, every conversation I have with a creator, it's less about are there questions that I might ask that are prompts or prompts I might give them to signal whether or not they're ready or even about benchmarks. And it's more about, I would say, volume and value of content. So, you know, most creators are creating some sort of content to a degree, and depending on where they are in that journey, they could have, you know, an abundance of it. I talked to a young woman about a week ago. She said we were talking about how to turn her content into a book. It's all— she's a podcaster. She's— and she's She was overwhelmed. She said, I have over 830-something podcast episodes. How do I choose which ones would be great to turn into a book? You know what I mean? It just depends on where you are with volume and value of content. And what I say to that every time, because I personally also don't believe like there's this one sort of set of benchmarks or criteria that means somebody's ready to write a book or they should write a book. But I do think that The best way to tell outside of, you know, what is your level of content buildup, the one thing that I would say is, are you getting signals from your audience that they value your content and they want more of it? If you are, it's a good time to think about expanding your reach with a book. Conversely, though, we did talk about people who are just starting out and they're trying to build a bigger audience. They're trying to get more people to engage with their content. So a book is also a really good tool for that, you know, through increasing trust and authority and things. So the answer isn't quite as cut and dry as you probably hoped I would, I would give you. But I would say the one black and white thing is, again, are you getting any signals from your audience that they value the content that you're producing? They're asking for more of it. And I don't mean physically raising their hand and saying, hey, Can I have more of it? Although that happens, right? And we hope it happens often. But, you know, some of those are, again, just looking at your analytics and things. And, you know, are there specific topics that you might be touching on where you're noticing way more engagement on those particular blog articles or podcasts or YouTube videos? That's where you would want to push into and explore the possibility of writing a book. Because of the time commitment that you alluded to, I will, you know, sort of counter what I said earlier. You do need to think about the timing of it, but only as it relates to how that might take away time from any other major projects you're working on. Otherwise, I would say honestly, the one benchmark or litmus is, are you getting those signals? And if you are and you're hoping to grow, write the book. And then it's just a matter of culling the content. Do you have enough content that you can cull through and turn that into a book, or do you need to create more content For the book. Either way is fine. Either way has its pros and cons and its challenges. But nonetheless, the only thing I tell people to look for is, are you getting those signals? Do they want more of your content? Are you getting good engagement, whether it's from an audience of 100 or an audience of 100,000?

Yeah, I like that. Definitely looking at the quantitative data side. And I would add to that a yes and. Are there commonalities amongst your most popular pieces of content? Are you providing a solution or, you know, pain Pill for a very specific thing that your corner of the internet really, really enjoys. So yeah, okay, that's that's a really good that's a good question. All right, let's talk about you know self-publishing wasn't an option in the not too distant past, right? And so now the big question is should I self-publish or try to pursue working with an actual publisher? A lot of people that I talk to still kind of have that mental hurdle of they think they really need to work with a gigantic legacy publishing house. because it feels quote unquote more legitimate. But what have you found to work well for creators and thought leaders?

Yeah. And, you know, the idea that self-publishing wasn't available, I think really is more a statement again about that legitimacy that was attached to it. Self-publishing has been around for a little while. We were started in 2002. So, you know, it's been around for a while, but I think you hit the nail on the head. The keyword there is Is legitimacy. What did the general public and/or, you know, everybody else, your peers, what did they consider legitimate? And you're right, the traditional model was always the path that carried the most legitimacy or authority. So, you know, there's a big difference 10 years ago, 15, 20, 30 years ago, when you said, hey, you know, I'm publishing a book and it's going to be out next year. And somebody said, Who's your publisher? You know, and you said Macmillan or Simon and Schuster, or you said self-publish it. I'm going to self-publish it. There was a big difference there, and the response you got from that person was going to be wholly different based on what your answer was. What's great about what's going on right now, and I think that you know this this sort of surgence of of creators and the whole sort of I hate to use the term but creator economy. You know, just this whole idea that. You know, wait a second, I can make a business out of what I do like that, that really kicked off 5, 8 years ago. But the catalyst was 2020, right? When you had everybody who was, you know, getting laid off or finding more time on their hands, you know, they were looking for more ways to bring passive income into their home, whatever that might be. Mm-hmm. That's when we really saw just, you know, a hockey stick in terms of usage, growth, all those things. Anyways, the point there is that legitimacy ties back to the technology that exists now and the way people look at delivering content out into the world. The traditional publishing model, you know, is dead, for lack of a better term. It's just not viable for most people and most creators, regardless of where you are in your journey. The amount of manuscripts that get accepted by the traditional publishing houses is about 1%. So they reject pretty much 99% of the manuscripts that come their way from the agents that shop them around, which, by the way, to go traditional, you have to get an agent, you've got to jump through all these hoops. And then they've got to get publishing houses to want to buy your manuscript from them. That's just the way that it works. It's not easy. You will see, obviously, if you are, you know, again, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, people like this, like if you've been in the game, or if you carry, if your name carries a particular amount of weight, obviously, you know, celebrity status or things like that, then the traditional publishing houses, they're going to come to you. But there's obvious reasons for that. Otherwise, the most viable path really is self-publishing. And for creators, especially now with all the technology exists, everybody that's probably listening to your podcast works with some sort of, you know, tech stack at home. You know, they've got different platforms they're using on their laptop, different types of AI, whatever that is. Everybody has their little tech stack they work with. But the point is, the technology that exists now didn't exist 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 8 years ago, 10 years ago. What you have now at your disposal as a creator, thought leader, author is completely different. So you can publish so much more easily, and it, it's legitimate. Like, when we talk to people who have self-published and they have a beautiful book and it's about change management, for example, Nobody's asking her, you know, who published that book. They're looking at her book and going, this is a beautiful book. The information here really helped me and my company out. We really appreciate, you know, what you did for us. So that question almost doesn't exist anymore. And for creators, creators need ownership and flexibility the most. I mean, those are the 2 most important aspects of your business. You're already dealing with platforms where you don't have ownership. Social media is where you're farming Your, your followers, right? That's how you're building your audience on social media. But we all know you don't own any of that, even the content you post. If you wake up tomorrow and your, you know, Instagram account was shut down for any number of reasons— maybe Zuckerberg woke up and decided he hates Instagram and he fires Adam Mosseri and it's just shut down— everything you had there is gone. Every bit of your content, anybody that was following you, whether it was 5 people or 5 million people, that is all gone. You don't have ownership of that. So creators need ownership and flexibility. Self-publishing is the only model that offers that. And given the technological advances and the quality of printing that exists now for digital printing, it's a no-brainer. So when you couple on top of that the last bit of technology that is really a lot more recent, which is, you know, these plugins and things that allow you to sell directly to your readers and fans using, you know, e-commerce like Shopify, That gives you full control over that entire journey, right? So from the time that you create a follower or a fan, you get them to come over to your platform and sign up for your email newsletter or whatever it is you're doing, your program or whatever that might be, to the point where you're able to offer and sell them your book or even give it to them directly and you capture that customer data, which you don't get when you use third-party retailers. And then you use that to accelerate sales and growth of your business. So it's really the technology that has come a long way that is allowing people to publish books and use those books for growth more than ever. And the stigma now, thanks to that technology and just the growth of the industry itself, has fallen by the wayside. So at the end of the day, you know, we view people who sort of publish traditionally, it's kind of flipped, right? We view people who publish traditionally more of like, oh, Mm-hmm. That's cool that, you know, you don't care about controlling your content or, you know, sustained profits, but good for that publishing deal if you actually got one versus somebody who is taking control. They're publishing that content on their own and they're the ones that are dictating, not dictating, but they're crafting that experience like we talked about earlier from start to finish, what it looks like to come into your ecosystem. Be a fan or a follower, purchase products and services from you, and continue that relationship directly. So, you know, self-publishing versus large publishing houses, it's less of an argument or even an issue these days because again, one, to get traditionally published is damn near impossible, you know, to be honest with you. And 2, the technology that now exists for creators and authors to self-publish, sell direct, and control that entire experience has just come light years in the last 3 to 5 years.

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, what percentage of books now are published through a traditional publisher? Do you know offhand?

It's almost impossible to calculate that. And here's why. There are so many ways to self-publish a book. And when you self-publish a book, you don't have to register an ISBN number to it,

right?

ISBNs are the way that the book business is monitored and tracked or has been up until recently. There are organizations including ours that are working to provide ways to track books that don't have ISBNs. A lot of times when you're selling your book direct, you don't have to have an ISBN. It's not a necessary thing. ISBNs are really for retail. So again, going back to that old traditional model where retailers, they controlled everything, even the traditional publishing houses themselves, they didn't control the final 1/3 of the journey of that book. into the hands of the reader. So finding better ways to track that, but self-publishing statistics as a whole, you're looking at several billions each year of books published and sold through the self-publishing model. As far as percentages go, nobody can give you an accurate run right now. And anything that does exist is heavily inflated because of Amazon.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. We've talked about what a book can do for you, why it might be important, how to overcome the mental barrier of, you know, am I ready for this or not? The nitty gritty of this. Let's talk about logistics. I'm talking about writing, editing, cover design, printing, warehousing, distribution, refunds, returns. Yeah. These are big things, right? Not only from a time standpoint, but from an industry knowledge and logistics standpoint, right? Like, that's, that's a huge list of stuff that the vast majority of regular folks, even creators and thought leaders, are not familiar with. Um, and that list alone, again, often enough to overwhelm people to the point where they're like, never mind, or maybe next year, next year, and it never actually happens. So share with me how all the pieces are put together to make a book happen soup to nuts in a self-publishing model without burning out Or losing your mind. So if you can kind of walk us through the steps and sort of mix in information about costs associated, I think that would be very, very helpful for everyone listening.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say that if you think about it in terms of how you might approach another product or product launch for your business. So if you're somebody who creates online courses or things like that, the approach is similar and you're going to break it down. I tell people to equate it to something like If you're building a new home or doing a remodeling job on your home or, you know, something like that, you're essentially going to act as a general contractor for your book when you're self-publishing, when you're doing it yourself. And hopefully, you know, if you have the financial means and the ability, you're going to work with subcontractors just like you would if you're building a home. Somebody's going to come in and do the concrete and the framing and then tile work. And so you have these subcontractors that help sort of build the final product. And the same is true for self-publishing. So if you have the means and you have the abilities, I would preface all of this by saying there are a couple of routes you could take where you can avoid some of this work on your own. And just like you do with a lot of other things, you could farm that out. There are book coaches that you can find, lots of great ones out there, where not only will they help you get to the finish line with your manuscript, You know what I mean? They'll help you work through sort of some of the developmental things, issues you might be facing with how to structure your book to, to have it make sense from start to finish. But they will also, you know, in most cases do the editing for you. That's typically included in the cost of what, what a book coach might do, as well as final proofreads and things. So you could knock out, you know, the, the heaviest lifting of your book by hiring a really good book coach. Again, if you have the money and you have the time to find one, it's, it's not too hard to find a good one. Secondarily, if the book coach route is not your path, or if your manuscript's actually already done and that's not your problem, you just need to really get into the nuts and bolts, like you said, of getting it published. You can also work with what's called a hybrid publishing company. Hybrid publishing companies are just what they sound like. They're a mix of traditional and self-publishing, and the way that they'll do the services piece for you, for a fee obviously, so you might pay For a hybrid publishing company, anywhere from $4,000 all the way up to ridiculous amounts of like $100,000. It just depends on who you're working with and what you're doing. But on the low end, you would, you would pay a hybrid publisher and they would take on the heavy lifting of— they would get all the editing done for you, they would get your cover design done for you, they'd get the interior formatting done for you, and essentially turn over to you finished book files that you could then take and do whatever you wanted with. Like come to a platform like ours and upload it and publish it or somewhere like, you know, Amazon or anywhere else for that matter. So hybrid publishing can be a good way to kind of circumvent some of what we're about to go through logistics-wise and just, you know, exchange some money for somebody to take care of that. Lastly, doing it all yourself, right? Again, like I said, you can sort of line this up with being a general contractor. Mm-hmm. If you can, you want to get people to help you. You want to have somebody help you with the editing. If you, if you can't really afford an editor, and, and for copy editing, you're probably looking at— and I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, let's say it's a 70,000-word manuscript. And for, for everybody out there listening, that equates to probably somewhere in the ballpark of 250 pages. And, you know, maybe around the average for a business-type book. For 70,000 words, you could expect to pay for a good copy editor anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500. And they would go through and they would copy it— your copy edit your entire manuscript. And some of them might even do a final proofreading for that cost. So again, finding somebody, if you can, to help with the editing is extremely encouraged. And again, you're looking at on the low end $1,500 or so. And editing can get upwards for copy editing, which is standard editing, $2,000, $3,000. If your manuscript's in real rough shape and you want to have a developmental editor come in who's going to take more of a higher level view and look at the structure of everything, they're going to look at, you know, the themes that you have running throughout your book, the way that everything is set up, and really kind of do some of that more front-end work that some people might struggle with a little bit. That's a separate cost. You're probably looking at anywhere from, again, $2,000 to $4,000 depending on word count there. We always encourage people to work with editors. They say good covers sell books, and that's, that's true to a degree. But the last thing you want if you're trying to build credibility, authority, or even just some revenue is for them to open that book after seeing a beautiful cover and the inside is just hot garbage. It's a dumpster fire. So, you know, if you can, try to work with an editor, even if you think you're a great editor yourself. Now, a hack there, or I don't want to say a hack, but what we've seen work for a lot of people who either don't have the money to pay an editor or just don't want to, send out beta reader copies or advanced reader copies to friends and colleagues who volunteer to read your manuscript. And I would recommend sending out 5 to 10 of them at least, and then get those back, look at all their feedback, and use that as your editing. Again, if you can't afford to hire an editor or you just don't want to, that's also a good way to get a pretty good handle on your manuscript and understand whether or not it's going to resonate and land well with your readers. Next, or in conjunction with all of that, you've got a cover that has to be designed. No matter what people say, the old adage is not true. You can judge a book by its cover, and most people do. So unless you are a designer by trade or you've worked with book design or book covers, again, you should try to find a designer to help you with that cover. You can find them on freelance sites, that's fine. There are artists and designers that are on, you know, Fiverr and 99designs that specialize in book covers, but you can also find them in, in some of the author workplace sites. And then we also have a resources tab on our site where you can find designers Um, this is also a great opportunity though if maybe you met somebody, another creator, uh, who is a designer and you're looking for an opportunity to collaborate with them or trade. You know, we've seen lots of this happen and people love to do that— trade some cover design for maybe, you know, something you do that you're really good at, like copywriting or social media work or something like that. Um, so maybe you know somebody or met somebody or, or, you know, run into them at a conference and they could do the COVID design work for you. And covers, you can get the specifications, any designer can get those from whatever site you're going to publish with. So that's interior file, your manuscript, that's cover. And then next, once the interior manuscript or the interior file is something you're happy with, it needs to be proofread and formatted. Proofread is just the final run-through, all your periods exist where they need to, Oxford commas are used or not used, things like that. And then the interior gets formatted. And that's where they do all the pretty things like putting in the chapter headings and picking the fonts you're going to use, adding the page numbers, and all that kind of finalization of that interior file happens. Oftentimes you might find a designer who does your cover that can also do the interior formatting. That's great. Sometimes you might just have to find somebody that does strictly that. At that point, you're pretty much done with the mechanics of creating a book. You would have your interior file and you would have your cover file. At that point, leading up to this, you should have already figured out what's your marketing and sales strategy. How are you going to market with this? Are you going to just throw it up on a third-party retailer site like Amazon? And in that case, you're pretty much done. You just upload the files there into your Amazon account and cross your fingers and do the best you can to market it. Or we talked about there are ways where you can connect your book to your site, whether you're using Shopify or WordPress or any of these other sites and sell it directly to your fans and followers and readers and potential customers. That's obvious the way we push everybody. We want you to control that experience. We want you to get that customer data. I would always sort of recommend, especially for first-time writers or publishers, to put it everywhere. So sell it directly to your audience. If you took the time to build an audience, it just doesn't make sense to tell them to go somewhere else to buy your book. You've already secured them as a follower or an audience member. Sell it directly to them. Don't send them somewhere else. But, you know, use those other channels for what they may be able to offer you. Some discoverability still exists on Amazon. There's still some discoverability opportunities like on barnesandnoble.com or some of those other areas. If you're an ebook creator and reader, obviously there are some ebook outlets where some discoverability Could happen. You know, somebody's on there searching for, you know, best marketing books. And if you're lucky, yours might pop up in there based on the algorithm that day or whatever that might be. So it never hurts to go wide, as they say, to put it everywhere, especially if it's not going to cost you anything. Most of those channels, it doesn't cost anything to get your book up there. And they only charge when you sell a book. Some will charge a monthly fee. But that carries you through to sort of your publishing and go-to-market strategy. The rest really is all sales and marketing. And, you know, most of your audience is probably familiar with sales and marketing, but it is the most important piece. And it's the piece that people take for granted, I think, especially post-launch. If you set a launch date of, you know, I don't know, let's say you're going to publish a book, Amanda, and you say November 10th, my book's coming out, it's dropping, everybody go get it. November 10th, you make a lot of noise, friends and family make noise, colleagues make noise, everybody's getting Amanda's book and everybody's happy about it. Stoked. A week later, you're not talking about it anymore. You know what I mean? You're on to whatever the next thing is. Well, if you're not talking about it, nobody else is going to talk about it. And so people tend to have this thing, right, where they're afraid to ask people to buy something from them sometimes if it's not on like a dedicated sales page. But one of the best and easiest things you could do as somebody who just published a book and is trying to sell it or get it into the hands of people for free as a lead magnet Is put it in your bio on your social media accounts. Make sure it's in your email footer. Make sure you reference it at least once a week for the next six months. Like it's okay. Nobody's gonna go. Ugh! I wish Amanda would stop talking about this book. It's driving me crazy. Nobody's gonna say that, and if they do, hit the unfollow button. It's okay. You have a goal for that book. You really need to to keep your foot on the gas. You can't stop a week later and expect that some invisible machine is just going to keep pushing. That momentum forward for you. So at a high level, those are the mechanics of kind of how you sort of navigate and work as a general contractor to bring all those individual components together. The manuscript, the editing of it, the COVID design, and then the formatting. Those are the main components. And when you break those down, it is a little less daunting. And if you're lucky enough to be able to work with a book coach or hire a bunch of freelancers to do some of that work for you, It goes even faster and it's even easier. And if not, you know, you can always reach out to people like us. We have tons of resources and things that we can help you with. So just break it down. It's not that bad. And once you've established your timeline and you're able to sort of plug in each of those things as they fall on that timeline, it's pretty easy to hit that launch date unless things just go wildly off the rails.

Yeah, it sounds like getting the structure right of your book from the beginning and I mean, I talk a lot about like the best products and services in the world are simply well-packaged solutions. And those solutions can be packaged in any number of digital and/or physical ways, a book, of course, being included. And there is typically going to be in like a businessy type book, right? Um, a nonfiction book, like a clear from-to transformation. You're taking someone on a journey of transformation that solves a specific problem, uh, that they're experiencing. And so, um, Okay, that was very helpful. That was really, really in-depth explanation.

I never know if I'm giving too much or not enough, and it's just, you know, it can be overwhelming. But when you break it down like that, it's not terribly bad.

Yeah, I think the only piece that was missing for me there— I know we're, we're short on time here, but, um, I know I've been asked this question multiple times— what about print runs? Is this a print-on-demand situation? Does the author have to pay for 10,000 copies up front, and then where do those go, and who ships them? And like How is that dealt with?

Sorry, that's a great question. I tend to gloss over that. That is actually at the core of what we do. Again, so real quickly, print runs, absolutely. With self-publishing, there's no minimums, right, for the most part, because everything is print on demand. And that technology I talked about is to the point now where you wouldn't know one of our books, you know, a self-published print on demand book, from any other book on the shelf at Barnes& Noble. Quality, it's not even an argument anymore. So that's really good. And we're talking about book of one. So when, when Amanda wants to sell a book on her site, and somebody buys, you know, that book, it's one book that's getting transmitted to be printed and shipped, printed that one book, and the quality is just as good as if we did 10,000 copies. So the barrier to entry from a financial standpoint almost disappears for people. Back in the day, even with self-publishing, yeah, you would have to purchase at least a couple thousand copies up front. They would be printed on an offset printer, typically in China, but sometimes in the States. And then you would have to take care of like, you know, they're all in your garage. And then every Friday night, you have a bunch of friends come over and you bribe them with pizza to help you pack your book orders and ship them out. And then you go to the post office on Monday and they all see you coming and they hate you and they're rolling their eyes. And now you don't have to do that. We have these automated tools. Where from your site the order gets transmitted, it's printed, shipped, all white-labeled by the way with your own logo and name, and it's all taken care of and you don't have to worry about that. You know, but if you're going to an event or something and you want to take 300 copies, you can just as easily hop into your account, order 300 copies. There's typically a discount involved. Those get printed and shipped right to wherever the event might be or however you want that to happen. And You know, same thing. Uh, the, the printing and logistics of it, um, is actually these days the easiest part once you kind of understand, you know, again, how that works. But yeah, I'm sorry. That's a great question. I completely glossed over that, but that is, that, that's kind of at the core of what we do.

That's, uh, the irony of ironies that that's at the core of what you do, but my gosh, you talk about like a done-for-you simple solution. That's freaking awesome. And it's going to be music to, that's music to my ears. Um, and I was telling you before we hit record that I have 2 book ideas, um, at least, but 2 for sure. And like that, I mean, significantly reduces the barrier to entry and like these mental hurdles we've been talking about this whole hour. So, um, that is so fascinating and that's so cool.

It's like magic. That's the beauty of technology and what we're doing right now. And then forget about, you know, start adding AI into all of this and the stuff we're doing with AI and what things are going to look like. 6 months from now, you know, this might get even easier. Who knows? Yeah, we could reconvene 6 months from now and your book could already be done and in the hands of 10,000 people. Who knows?

That is so cool. I love you bringing your Disney magic to the printing process.

Caveat, I'm not affiliated with Disney, just in case anybody's listening from Disney.

Right, right. Yeah, I don't know if I can say Disney magic or not, but I'm not affiliated with them either. So, um, Okay, let's land this plane, Matt. So if our listeners took away just 3 pieces of advice, key takeaways, what are those?

I would say, you know, again, in line with everything we've talked about, first one, think of a book as another tool to build your business with, right? I know that people use books for other things. They want to write their memoir, they want to write a children's book, or they'll do a cookbook. That's all fine and good. That's great. But think of it as just another tool, and it becomes less of an intimidating sort of thing. It's just another tool to build your business with, build your brand with, or establish yourself as a thought leader in your field or industry. The second one is try to never work in a silo. So we talked about, you know, getting help and collaborating with other creators or freelancers. You know, if you want to follow suit with the digital content you're creating, which I'm assuming is adding the most value you can, do the same with a book. And to do that, you need to work with other people if you can. And then lastly, I would say, you know, we touched on this a little bit, but again, I can't, I can't harp on it enough. Maintaining control and ownership of the experience for your customers. And I mean the total experience from the time that they find you on social media or wherever to the time that they become one of your best customers. They're buying everything you, you put out. They're using any service you offer. Control that, that experience, own that experience. Every bit of ownership and control you give up to a third-party retailer or a third-party, you know, channel like, you know, a social media site or something like that, you're losing, you know, a little bit of your brand, a little bit of your experience. So as much of that control and ownership as you can take back, you know, do that. So maintain that control and ownership.

Awesome. Great advice. Thank you so much. You were very generous with your sharing your knowledge and expertise and wisdom with us, which I really appreciate. Thank you again. Where can listeners find you online?

Oh, you can find me on LinkedIn, Matt Briel. Pretty easy. I think I'm the only one on there that has a bunch of tattoos, but you can find us at lulu.com, very easy. And then we just recently launched something called Tilt Publishing, which is a hybrid publishing company. So you can find us there as well. And we love to work with creators. So let us know if we can help.

Awesome. And we will of course link all of those URLs up. And we know that your time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. We help creators like you at levelupcreatorschool.com, where our team becomes your full-stack team of advisors and also includes no-fluff creator courses, including funny ones like Sales for Creators Who Hate Sales, which I was thinking as you were talking earlier, Matt, a vibrant creator community and more, all on a subscription basis. See the show notes for more information and a suite of high-value free resources, and we'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators Podcast.