Rise Of The Reader & How To Market Bestselling Books with Nick Hutchison

Well, when I was growing up, I was not much of a reader. Listening to the same music, the same playlist, the same radio station for the 1,000th time, it's not going to get you closer to where you want to be in life, but the right podcast might. We know that our target reader is on social media, right? What I tried to do was go too big, too fast, and I would burn out and I would stop working on the project. I recommend getting as early in the process as you can. You don't even have to have a finished book yet. Just start those conversations. Have conversations about the book. So many podcasters are willing to do it. Read books like yours.

What's happening, y'all? Chandler Bolt here, and welcome to the Self-Publishing School Podcast. Today I'm joined by Nick Hutchison. So we were just chatting beforehand. I've actually been on his podcast, the Book Thinkers Podcast. And we were talking about Publish and now it's fun full circle having him on this podcast talking about his new book that at the time of recording this episode literally just launched yesterday. So if you don't know Nick, over the past few years he's built BookThinkers into a thriving 7-figure marketing agency that connects authors with readers. He's dedicated to helping readers take action on what they learn. And that's actually what inspired his book. And if you're watching the YouTube version, you see it on his hat. It's the first time I've ever seen a book title on a hat. Look at that, I love it. So the book's called Rise of the Reader, and he shares strategies in that book on mastering reading habits and applying lessons from books. So you can see, again, if you're watching here on the YouTube version, you can see he just held up a copy of the book. It's a good-looking cover. So we're gonna dive into— there it is, look at that thing, beautiful. Come on now. We're gonna dive into what's he learned from both sides of the aisle, right? So from launching big-time successful books But then also from now, oh my gosh, this is fancy.

How about that? Look at that.

How about that? That's cool, I like it. But then also now launching his own book. So Nick, welcome, great to have you here.

Yeah, Chandler, excited to be here, man. As I was sharing with you before we press record, I was on a flight recently and they said, hey, no Wi-Fi. And I said, I have no work to do. Let me download a couple of podcasts. And it was this show. So it's fun to be featured here and to chat with you and share some of the things that I did to make this book successful. But yeah, man, grateful.

That's cool. That's cool. I appreciate you sharing that. Let's go back to the inception of BookThinkers, right? So what inspired you to start this business serving authors and helping authors sell more books?

Well, when I was growing up, I was not much of a reader, which would surprise anybody that can see the YouTube version of this. I've got like 1,000 books behind me. I was more of the athlete stereotype, not much of the academic. But all of that changed for me when I was going into my senior year of college. I took an internship at a local software company. It was a sales position, and my boss at the time Kyle, I think he recognized some unfulfilled potential in me, right? I was like a young 20-year-old kind of cocky sales guy. You couldn't teach me anything and I would never read a book. But he said, hey, listen, man, you commute about an hour each way every day, 5 days a week. That's 10 hours in the car. He's like listening to the same music, the same playlist, the same radio station for the 1,000th time. It's not going to get you closer to where you want to be in life, but the right podcast might. So he recommended some business shows. And as I'm commuting back and forth day after day, I'm crushing these business podcasts, and so many of the successful people being interviewed gave at least some credit for their success to the books that they were reading. And so I sort of sucked up my ego a little bit, went to my local Barnes& Noble, bought a bunch of books, and the rest is history. I went from like non-reader to mega-time reader. I mean, it's my entire personality now, almost overnight. So that's sort of the origin story.

That's cool. I like that. And I recognize myself in that story as well. It seems like we have similar backgrounds, minus I, you know, I don't really know that I would say I was the jock. I'm like, I don't know that I was that good at sports. I was mediocre at tennis. Let's talk about, so obviously you've been behind the scenes launching books for a while now. What do you feel like are some of the, you know, maybe 2 or 3 of the key strategies or things that you guys teach and implement for your authors to launch more successfully?

We live at the intersection of social media, podcasting, and personal development style books. So a lot of the things that I focus on and that my agency focus on, they're related to those sort of subjects. So one thing that we do, for instance, is we have a podcast booking arm of our agency and we can guarantee authors on either 4, 8, or 12 shows a month. Now, for my launch, I decided to put this system to the test and I 5x'd it pretty much. So I had over 100 interviews in the last couple of months leading up to November 1st, my launch day, and I asked every single one of those podcast hosts to wait, to not release the show until the week of November 1st. So over the last couple of days and including today and the next couple of weeks, I have like anywhere from 5 to 10 shows going live per day. And again, that's just not something that a lot of authors do. They don't want to start that process 4 or 5 months prior to their book launch. They don't want to ask podcast hosts to hold the episode until the release. But I found it was a pretty easy process, you know, and it made it more manageable, sort of spacing it out and starting the process a little bit earlier.

Cool. So that's the big thing that you guys do at the agency and the big things that you focus on is the podcast booking. How long out did you start? Like how long ago?

Yeah, so that's one of the things that we kind of have 3 buckets. That's one of them is the podcast booking. I think I started 4 or 5 months ago and I told my team, I said, hey, see how many shows you can get me on in the next week. And it was something like 50 podcasters said yes in a week. So it was a lot of fun. But yeah, I recommend getting as early in the process as you can. You don't even have to have a finished book yet, as many of us self-published authors wouldn't have. 4 or 5 months out. But just start those conversations, have conversations about the book. So many podcasters are willing to do it.

So, you would say start sooner than later, and in your case, 4 to 5 months out. Did you— it sounds like if you're going to miss one way or the other, miss on the early side of things and record the interview and then just ask them to hold it. Is that better than waiting too late or too close and then it comes out A decent time after the launch or does it much matter?

Yeah, sometimes podcasters will tell you, hey, we've got a backlog of 3 months or 4 months of interviews and we can't really skip the line. That's not how we operate. So you just want to avoid some of those discussions. Most of the time they have a backlog of 2 to 3 weeks, maybe a month. So for you to say, hey, can you hold this? It's always an easier conversation than can you accelerate this? Sometimes that gets to be a little bit tougher.

Yeah, that's a really great point. I mean, as a podcaster myself, it is It is way easier. It's like someone's like, hey, can you bump me up? It's like, ah man, we kind of got other people. But if someone's like, hey, can you just hold that? It's— that's a good point. It's a lot easier. Yeah, it's no problem. That's cool. Um, so what, what are like maybe the top 2 or 3 things that, uh, you, you recommend for people, uh, to actually get booked on podcasts?

I recommend, uh, reaching out and offering to get on a call with each podcaster. So as a host, we get 10 inquiries a week, um, for people trying to be on our show from publicists, PR companies, agencies of all sorts, independent authors, and it's always just via email. Like maybe they'll cut and paste and put my name at the top or the name of my show, but it's just 15 paragraphs of book summary info, credentials, and there's no personality. It feels like a transaction. So one of the things that we recommend and that we do in our agency is offer to get on a call with the podcaster. Reach out, say, hey, I just checked out XYZ episode, a recent episode, show that you put in a little bit of effort. I think I'd be a great fit for this show. I have a book coming out in November. I'd love to jump on a quick call and learn a little bit more about why you started your show and who your ideal guest is to see if I'm a fit. What podcaster is gonna say no to an opportunity to jump on a call and just get to know you for a few minutes? It feels like the start of a relationship instead of the start of a transaction. And so I think that's probably one thing that everybody in the audience today can do to start booking themselves on more shows.

That's good. I like that. So obviously you said you enter, your agency really lives at the intersection of Podcasts, social media, and what was the other one?

And books. So as far as like other services that we have, most of our revenue today at Book Thinkers actually comes from short-form video production. So we will help an author turn their physical book into 50 to 100 pieces of short-form video content for Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and some of the other socials. And so that's, it's a little bit higher ticket, but we actually fly out to the author with the cameras, the lighting, the equipment, we map out the entire book. And then each video is 30 to 60 seconds. And it has a strong hook or a powerful opinion to kind of grab attention. It has value. So they're genuinely providing value to anybody that's consuming their content. And then in the right circumstance, we have a call to action at the end of each video. And then when we fly back, we do all the editing, we add captions, B-roll, animations, music, the whole nine yards. So for me, for my book launch, we started that process. Like I actually had my team fly out to me, And I went through the process as if I was just an author client, you know, so I could kind of like see what it felt like. And it's tough. Uh, I have a lot— I give a lot of credit to everybody that, that gets in front of a camera like that.

Yeah, it's, you know, not, not quite the same. I, I used to have this, uh, but similar-ish. I used to have these, uh, well, I guess it still exists, I just don't record the videos anymore. It's called the 7 Figure Principles Show, and it's basically you know, core business principles and stuff that I learned scaling a company. And so I'd have kind of like this backlog on my phone or on a Google Doc, or where if somebody would ask me something, an entrepreneur friend would ask me a question, or maybe one of my employees would ask me something in a one-on-one. It's just like kind of that doc. It's like, all right, how do you run offsites? How do you hire? It's like all these questions. And similarly, it's like, all right, I compile this big doc and then I bring in a film crew and would knock out— we do like 50 videos in And, you know, 2 days or a day and a half or something like that. And it was a lot of work, kind of like you said, now experiencing that on the other side. It's a lot of work, yeah, but it's also such an incredible feeling knowing, hey, I just spent a day and a half and I've got enough content for the next however long, like a really long time, right? So that's gotta feel good for both for you and for the authors that you work with to just know that, all right, sure, I'm gonna block out a full day or a day and a half or however long it takes, but now I've got 30, 50 videos that I can use in the promotion. And I've knocked it out. And I then I can focus the rest of the time on all the other stuff that I need to do to actually get this book sold.

Yeah, absolutely. We know that our target reader is on social media, right? Each one of these platforms, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, they have billions of monthly active users. So if you're not producing content and posting consistently, that attention is going elsewhere and you wish it was on you as an author, right? Because you can sell books. And so I've been on that, that, that end of the spectrum where I wake up every day and have to produce a piece of content and that stinks. It's disruptive, it's stressful. But if you can just time block like one day every couple of months and film 50 or 60 pieces of content, that's where the magic happens. You know, you're sort of batching it, you know, right? That's the term, probably batching it into one instance rather than kind of chopping it up into a daily activity.

Yep, that makes sense. How are you guys deciding what's video worthy from a book and what, you know, I imagine every video has to have some kind of hook, but how, like, how are you going through and saying, all right, These are the video-worthy kind of highlights from the book. What does that process look like?

Yeah, when we go through a book, we're either filming 50 or 100 pieces of content with the author. So we're either looking for 50 or 100 pieces of standalone value. Like those could be definitions, those could be formulas, those could be powerful opinions, those could be all sorts of things, things that if they were to stand alone, they provide value, they're educating the audience, they're entertaining, they're exciting, whatever it is, maybe it's a story, And so we create a book map in advance of going out and filming with the author. And then when we meet up with them in person, like they already, they're already excited about all the things that we've mapped out for them to talk about. It's their material. Like that's their thing for their brand and their niche. We're just kind of pulling out the pieces that we think could make a good video, you know, piece of video. And then while we're with them in person, we match each one to a hook. So I'll say, hey Chandler, I really like the idea of a launch team. That's pretty cool. Let's create a video about that. And then we'll match up with a hook like, here's something I wish I knew when I launched my first book, launch teams, here's how you build one or whatever. And then you kind of drag it through the process. 30 seconds later, boom, here's your call to action. Hey, if you're interested in doing a deep dive on this subject, I wrote about it and published, and you can grab a copy by clicking the link in my bio, you know, free plus shipping, whatever. So that's kind of what it would look like.

Boom. Love it. Love it. I hope you're loving this episode so far. So if you're If you're serious about writing and publishing your book, we would love to chat with you and help create a custom plan. All right, so all you need to do right now is go to selfpublishing.com/schedule, schedule a 45-minute consultation with one of the experts on my team. All right, let's implement what you're learning in this episode and let's see how we can help with your book. Go to selfpublishing.com/schedule. Man, we gotta splice that up. That's fine. Let's switch gears a little bit and go author side of things. Obviously, you've been behind the scenes and with agency and helping launch really successful books. Now you're in the author seat. What motivated you to write this book specifically? And what was kind of the nudge for you to get into the author seat?

On social media, we post a book review every single day, which is another service that we offer. We can review books for our community. And over the years of building that community, which now has about 150,000 followers on Instagram, I've received received hundreds of the same questions about the reading process. So people will ask me, how do I choose the right book? How do I take notes? How do I read more efficiently? How do I implement what I'm reading in these nonfiction personal development, self-help style books? And I'm of service to everybody, right? Like I'm answering every single question as it comes in, but there's no leverage to that. I wish I could just send them a resource every single time that they ask the question. So eventually I realized like, I've got to write the book on this. I mean, I can read and implement books very efficiently. I've built my entire business and my entire lifestyle around doing that. So I want to help other people implement books efficiently as well. So I decided to start that writing process a few years ago. And I'll tell you what, I think even though I was working in the author space, I underestimated how difficult it was to sort of get what's inside of your head onto paper and then formulate it in a way that other people could digest and implement it. It's not easy. It's so cool that companies like yours help people do that.

Yeah, that's the part nobody wants to touch. There's a lot of companies that are like, all right, show up when the book's done, because the part was really, really difficult. I mean, and for good reason, honestly, because it's a messy, tough part of the process. What would you say were the toughest parts of that process for you, and what were your biggest lessons learned in kind of the writing and creation part?

I'm somebody who loves to think through the lens of action. So one of my favorite quotes, it's from Napoleon Hill. It says, action is the real measure of intelligence. And so a book like yours is very actionable. You're providing instructions to the reader on exactly what to do. If they follow your instructions and implement, boom, they have a book. Most personal development books are not so actionable. So I think what was really tough for me was taking my process and making it actionable for the reader. Like, I can do, right? I can execute, but I'm not a great teacher. At least I wasn't when I started this process. So I think that was probably the hardest part for me was like, what the heck does Nick Hutchison even do to read and implement books efficiently? Like, I didn't even know, I was just doing it. So I think I had to almost observe my own behavior from a third-party perspective for a little while. That was uncomfortable. It was strange, and I just like, it was clunky. It didn't come easily to me. So that was the hardest part of the process for me. And then as far as what I learned about myself, I learned that I have a lot more to teach that person that's started the journey 10 years ago, like that younger version of myself, I have a lot more to teach that person than I originally thought I did. Once I started writing the book, I'm like, I am so wildly different than I was 10 years ago, and I can't wait to help that younger version of myself out there in the reading space.

Yeah, for sure. That's, that's, I mean, I feel like that's the fun thing about crystallizing what you know in the book, but also self-publishing and being able to do an updated and revised version. Yeah, yeah. Because I, I remember going back and reading the first version of Publish Years after it was published. And, you know, we had published thousands of books since then. We had, you know, learned so much. All of our curriculum got better, all this stuff. And I went back and read that book and I'm like, man, this sucks. This could be so much better. And that's the beautiful thing is I said, all right, well, I guess I'm going to rewrite it. And you get to do that. And so, as you learn and evolve, I think it's a really fun thing to be able to go back and do an updated and revised version.

Yeah.

And if it makes sense for you, your book, and your goals. I want to ask, Nick, what, what have been maybe some of the biggest lessons learned so far being in the author seat? Like, how is it— how has it been? You kind of alluded to this earlier, but I was just curious to learn more. How's it been different being on the side of the promoter, like, as in, like, through your agency and your company versus the author?

Yeah, you know, I, I think I realized it was much more difficult for the author to keep things organized than I anticipated. I mean, you have everything from your list of friends and family that you're reaching out to, the people in your community, right? The raving fans that you want to activate and get involved in your launch. You have to reach out to all of these people individually and ask for preorders once the book's available for preorder or for them to order once it's live, for them to review the book once they've received it. That's a tough process. There's a lot of manual labor that goes into that that I didn't realize. I spent a lot of time Over the last few weeks, just reaching out to every single person via email, text, DM, you know that kind of thing. Recording all the podcasts—it's a lot of work. I mean, like I said, I recorded over 100 shows in anticipation of my launch, and kind of keeping the energy up, keeping things spicy, you know, having fun with every single conversation, making sure that they're all different. I think that was that was a lot. You know, it consumed a lot of my time creating the video content again. It was just tough. So keeping all these things organized and the momentum flowing, I think that I just realized. it was more logistically complex than I originally gave it credit for, especially if you want to make a big splash.

Yeah. And how, I guess, being on that side of the aisle, how, how do you see that affecting, if at all, um, some of the services and stuff that you guys offer for authors? Like, is there anything that you learned that was like, oh cool, that's good to know, we'll change this, we'll tweak this? Like, anything from that standpoint?

Yeah, absolutely. I think each one of our 3 main services— podcast booking, short-form video production, and then the book reviews that we do our community. We've made improvements to all 3 now that I've gone through the process from the other perspective. So for podcast booking, we now have an interactive shareable tracker where the podcast guest, the author, has the opportunity to update further into the process to make sure that things are recorded and booked. I mean, that was kind of missing before. For the video production, we're focusing more on powerful opinions as compared to just traditional That was something that I realized, like, I'm not super comfortable every single video being, you know, here are the 3 things you're missing and the 3rd one might surprise you. So ways to spice that up a little bit. And then for book reviews, you know, I'm over here checking data every 5 minutes behind the scenes and authors can't see our data. So we would send them an update maybe once a week on how their posts were performing and we're increasing that frequency. So just a couple of the things that we're modifying after having gone through it myself.

That's cool. I like that. What, um, so I want to pull in one Hmm. Well, actually, one more question, then I'll ask an audience question. Where do you see the future of publishing and book marketing going? Like any predictions, trends, things you see on the horizon that you feel like authors should be aware of?

It's a great question. Well, you would probably know a little bit more about this than I do. But I've interviewed a few authors recently for my show that have leveraged ChatGPT. So generative artificial intelligence for their books. And that's a really interesting sort of ethics battle. And it's really interesting, like, what is okay? 5%, 10%, 100%? Like, so I think AI will continue to get more involved in this process. I don't think it will ever replace sort of an author sitting down and writing their own book. I'm a big fan of people putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard and doing their own work. But I'm starting to see more and more books come to life, especially in the self-publishing world that are built with artificial And I don't know how I feel about it. I guess I have some mixed emotions. What do you think?

Probably similarly. Yeah, I think probably similar emotions. I mean, one of the ways that we've tried to look at it up into this point is where are the parts of the creative process that this can help create better books? And so is that in the outlining phase? Is that in the book title creation phase? Is that in writing book descriptions? Is that in editing? Like, where are those parts where, okay, you still have the human element, but it's actually helping create a better book. And so I think that's like the current Venn diagram that I feel really good about because it's, it's, it's like, okay, well, this is saving time and saving the author money and is creating a better book. That really feels like a win-win-win to me. But that's kind of how we're currently looking at it. And especially on the— like, we created this book title generator on our site on selfpublication.com, and it is unreal. I mean, this thing— and it's just one of the big problems, right, that a lot of our authors have is, hey, how do I come up with a book title? And they'll just go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And it's for good reason. It's really important, right, to have a good book title. But, uh, it was interesting. One of the guys on our staff is writing a book about using golf as like a tool to like spark conversations and, and, uh, and forgive people, but also have deep meaningful conversations and all this stuff. And he just typed in a couple sentences about that, and then this title generator spits out Fair Ways to Forgiveness. And then like using— it was— I forget what the subtitle is, but I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so good. And just— and so it's fun to see those type moments where AI is just really, really helpful to create a better book. So I think we'll just— we're going to see more and more and more of that in the future. And I think we're also going to see it in the audiobook narration space. There's already really good tools that are pretty dang close. I mean, depending on your, your, your in your quality level, there's some tools that will make, you know, audiobook creation cheaper, faster. I don't know if I would say better yet. I don't know if the end— I don't think it's to a point where the end product is actually better 'cause you're having AI do it, but it's pretty interesting and compelling. And yeah, I think there's a ton of use cases.

Yeah, I think so too. One of the authors that I interviewed was dyslexic and had some learning disabilities, and he said, I wouldn't have been able to write a book without leveraging artificial intelligence. So he's able to share something that's unique to him for the first time, right? It's not even a question of better, it's a question of it exists or doesn't. And the audiobook thing's interesting too. My audiobook's not available quite yet, but I did finish the recording of it and man, that is a hard process. So imagine being able to just record the first 2 chapters and have AI replicate your voice for the rest of it. I mean, I can't wait for that to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's that's going to be pretty fascinating. A couple final questions and we'll wrap up. I want to ask we're pulling in a question from listeners. This is kind of a fun new segment that we're testing out. So we've got a question from Cameron says Nick is someone who successfully built an author platform marketing agency. What advice would you give authors who are just starting out and trying to find their initial readers? And so kind of a two-part question here: Is it better to focus more on organic marketing like social media? or paid advertising and Amazon? What first steps would you recommend that new authors take?

Being the social media guy, I will go with the organic approach on social media. I think if you can show up every single day and provide value within a specific niche, and then you can go out into the Instagram universe, let's just say, and interact with people who are also in your niche, not necessarily, hey, follow me, but just comment on their stuff and Get, get used to the space a little bit. I think a stronger organic following will result from that activity than paid advertising.

Cool. Love it. Well guys, if you want us to answer your questions live in the future, or you want to be nominated, drop a comment on this interview on YouTube and with a question that you want answered in the future, or just leave a question in a review on the podcast. Either way, we'll be sourcing from those 2 areas. We're going to test this out for a few weeks. If you like it, we'll keep it. If you don't, we'll throw it out. All right. So Nick, last question, or I guess 2 final questions. I feel like I've said that 5 times now. First one would be knowing what you know now, what's your advice to the Nick from, you know, a couple years ago before you, you wrote and published this book, and all the other Nicks out there who haven't published yet?

I would say read books like yours. Is that a cheap answer?

Yeah.

Because that would've saved me a little bit of time. I, I just show up every single day. Don't try to eat the elephant in one bite. Try to eat the elephant one bite at a time. No matter how many times you read Aesop's fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise always wins. What I tried to do was go too big, too fast, huge chunks out of the elephant, and I would burn out and I would stop working on the project. And I would've been more consistent if I just approached it in maybe 30-minute or 1-hour increments instead of just like, here's one day a week where I'm gonna write the So, slow and steady wins the race. That's what I'd tell that guy.

Cool. Love it. Well, where can people go to find— to buy the book, Rise of the Reader, and to find out more about you and what you're up to?

Book Thinkers on Instagram. That's the best spot for me. And in the bio or the link in the bio, you can find links to the book and everything else you'll need.

Cool. Book Thinkers on Instagram. And check out the new book called Rise of the Reader.

Yes, sir.

Appreciate it, man. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you, Chandler. I appreciate your time, man.

Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of the Self-Publishing School podcast. I know there's so many places that you could be spending your time. There's other podcasts that you could be listening to, YouTube channels that you'd be watching. So thank you so much. It means the world. Now I want you to do 3 things right now. If you found this episode helpful, I don't know if you know this, but we've got a YouTube channel. It's a companion channel to this podcast. All the video versions of the episode are on the YouTube channel. So number one, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Number two, if you're listening to this podcast wherever, whether this is Spotify, Apple Podcasts, number two, I want you to subscribe to this podcast right now so you don't miss a future episode. And then number three, this is probably the most important, leave a review on the podcast. All right, reviews are super important and help this podcast get discovered by other people. So number three, leave a review on the podcast. Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next episode.