How to Effectively Publish and Monetize Your Book | Michelle Gladieux | 501

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today my guest is Michelle Gladio. She wears multiple hats, as do most. She is the author of Communicate with Courage. She's a coach, she's a speaker, she's a trainer. She's got a consultancy in the Midwest that's got about 10 people on it. And we're going to dive right in. So the book is fairly recent, came out about 6, 8 months ago. Welcome aboard.

Thanks. Nice to see you again.

Now, this was your first book, correct?

Yes, and maybe my last.

Yeah, hopefully, right? So yeah, let's start there. Hopefully. Start there with— let's talk a little bit about sort of the behind the scenes because now that you're on the other side of it, it's a little bit different. It's like the concept of being a parent versus being one, right?

Wow.

Give me a spoiler. That I don't know about, but I did birth a book. And I don't mean to be sassy by saying maybe my last, but I, you know, I think I made a couple neophyte, new person, novice errors. I spent about 4 years writing it, trying to make sure it was short and tight and ready for publication. And then I was hoping for timely and timeless. And I sent the full manuscript to my first choice publisher, Farrukh Taylor. And happily they were interested in it, but they were interested in having me rewrite it. Fair enough, because what I had done is taken 10 topics that I'd built some thought leadership and subject matter expertise in and wrote to each of those topics one chapter, because that's of course good for business as well and use in business later. They pushed back and wonderful editor Jeevan, uh, pushed me to figure out a greater overarching message, something from 30,000 feet that would resonate more fully and draw readers in. And through, through several conversations about that, he got me talking about these hidden challenges that our coaching clients run up against and how I wish they could just see a little bit further out. Their peripheral vision was just missing these challenges that have to do with facing fears as communicators, no matter how successful or how old or what gender or what industry. And once we got going down that, yes, there are 4 main Usually Hidden Challenges, I rewrote the book. Then it came out in 2022. And I'm learning now about getting legs under the book and making the time to try to let others know about it. And I think I had not thought enough about that while I was writing.

Well, and that's where I wanted to go because most sort of authors and author communities focus a lot of their time and energy and conversations around the process, the writing of the book. And not to— diminish that by in any way, shape, or form, because people writing a book, it's typically the hardest thing they do until— drum roll, please— they try to market the book, which isn't something people talk about enough, particularly early on, possibly because it would scare away a lot of people. But now that you're on the other side of this, you've done a lot of the things that you're supposed to do, working really hard, get out, work social, et cetera, et cetera. But give a sense or an honest sort of appraisal of how difficult maybe it's been to actually really get a book out into the hands of the people that you want to get it into?

Sure. Right around the release date, I was sending individual emails because I think that's more powerful. Yes, I had some scripted paragraphs in there. But, you know, just remember a few weekends where I didn't look up and Friday— from Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday morning, it was all about letting people who could support the book know about the book and photography for the book and finding a publicist to help me reach, you know, audiences that otherwise I could not reach. And the cost that comes with getting some expert help, as well as asking my employees to help at their hourly rate. So I don't think anyone should go into writing a book with the goal of making money. I think it's possible, and I hope to.

Let's underline that again. Underline that again is like That can't be the main driver. But, but let me just push on that. So if you were to define that statement by hours in, energy in, number of units sold times some marginal dollar amount per book, you're 1,000% right. The flip side of that, a book could be the most profitable thing you ever do in your life. If you amortize that over 5 to 7 years and look at the impact it could have on your business, it's not about number of units sold. For 90%.

Good to know.

Yeah.

Yes. And, and you could obviously be a great guide to— you are a great guide to me and to new authors and to people who have opened up a space for themselves where they might be seen as a thought leader, and now how to monetize that and draw other readers in and other interested parties in. That's your area of subject matter expertise, and I would absolutely defer to you on that. So maybe I'll ask you, like, what's important for an author to do they have a good book and they're proud of the work and they have folks interested, but it's only 6 months into the book's birth. What's important then?

Yeah, so I think it's a great question because the way, at least in my experience, sort of the publishing industrial complex is designed, and that includes publishers, publishers, whatever, all good people, all wanting you to be successful, all working hard, is around this weird period between, I don't know, call it 60 days before, maybe 90 days before release date and 3, 4 months after. After that, they're typically onto the next thing. So they focus on like, boom, opening day, right? Like, get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out.

Launch day.

Yeah. It's all launch. And the reality is like, listen, you know, I'm sitting in my office surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of books. A pub date is the most ridiculous date in the world. Like, it means nothing to anybody other than working backwards off of a production schedule and a printing schedule. And it's just like, after it's out in the universe, who cares? And I think, you know, authors and thought leaders really need to be thinking at least in terms of a 5 to 7 year cycle of this book is just as valuable the day after it came out, a year later, 3 years later, 5 years later, to the specific type of avatar I was writing it to. So it's not like It's not like it gets stale because it's a, oh, that was a brilliant idea in 2018. Now, certain things, if you, if you're in technology or, or, you know, things do get dated, but I would argue in your space, like most spaces, yours is an evergreen book. I've read your book. It's an evergreen book, which means someone should be just as comfortable and you as the business owner could get just as much value from it a year, 3, 5 from now as you would today.

Oh, that's great to hear. And I remember you talking about avatars. Who's the avatar you're trying to reach? Picture that. Sketch it out, write about it. And that's the first— and you did this just last month at the BK Authors Conference. It was a wonderful workshop. And that's the first time I had thought about that because it's easy to fall into the trap of, let's see, communicating with courage. Doesn't everybody need that? Doesn't the 19-year-old going to college, doesn't the 85-year-old sticking up for himself or herself, doesn't the middle-aged parent?

And I would say yes, but then I would say Michelle, the CEO, couldn't possibly afford to effectively market to a 19-year-old, an 80-year-old. The question is, who is most valuable to you and your business? You're in the leadership development business, training business, executive coaching business. So through that lens, you have to say, I don't care about the 19-year-old. Now, someone could buy the book, give it to their kid, whatever, but you can't put resources against that if it's not aligned with your business growth objectives. Now, down the road, yeah, maybe there's other derivatives that you can do, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that's a lot of the— struggle that authors have is they're so in love with their work, as they should be. They're so proud of their work, as they should be. And they know that it could be beneficial to so many people, but we have to say, yeah, but who—

Start somewhere.

What's the reciprocity? Who could be most beneficial to you? Which feels like a selfish act, but it's actually a focused act that as a CEO with limited resources, time, energy, and money, you have to have that discipline.

My opinion. Makes me think of building a fire. You've got to start the fire somewhere. It was, I just found the title of your workshop. It was How to Scale and Leverage Your Thought Leadership Beyond the Book. And then I have these notes based on what you said. One of the things you said was, we're irrelevant to 99.999% of the world. So let's come to terms with that and aim well to the appropriate audience. So you're sort of a straight talk guy also.

Yeah. A little bit.

I know that I'm a straight talk gal and you were telling us It's going to be a small subset of the 8 billion people on the planet that can pick up the ideas. And then maybe from there, you'll see some more exponential growth.

Yeah.

And I think what happens when people sort of process that at first is it's a big blow to the ego, but it's actually a gift, right? Because 0.01%, and it's probably not even that, quite frankly, of 8 billion people is a lot of people.

It's a lot of people.

And the trick is to be so relevant to so few that when you're interacting with them, right, that they feel like you wrote that book just for them, right? If, if it feels like, you know, we all know when we go to certain, you know, certain products, certain marketing, whatever, that's everything for everyone. Like a paper towel is a paper towel, you know, a bespoke piece of clothing or something that was made just for, for you. That's a different game.

Bespoke. Okay. You also said, um, look at— align your predictive indicators. Look at what you're trying to achieve to the business model you like, and then recognize that 70 to 80% of the work is going to be sales, marketing, and distribution. Many authors struggle with that, but you cannot ignore it and be successful. Yeah.

Yeah. It's hard to argue.

Not ignoring it, but I'm surprised at how much of my day it could take. It would be nice. It would be nice if I could not be working full-time. I'm blessed to be getting to promote a book, but it, it is something to think about. You're probably gonna need to talk to your family and look at your calendar.

Yeah.

And be prepared for the long haul.

If you're enjoying this episode of Thought Leadership Leverage, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. I don't think I've ever done a podcast where I'm defending or—

Not defending.

—quoting back, or I'm being quoted and then like, so that's kind of okay. I think that's right. And I actually think, and I got asked to leave a meeting at a big New York publishing house who shall remain nameless, but their headquarters is on 6th Avenue. You can do the math on that because they were putting stuff in front of a client. And I said, you know, you need to put a disclaimer on this. Like if you go to Disney World, there's the sign at Space Mountain that says, if you have a back problem, you're pregnant, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you shouldn't get on this ride. There needs to be a— I think there should be a disclaimer when, when someone publishes it said, please realize that 70, 80% of the effort's gonna be on marketing and you still have a day job and you still have plenty of other things to do. And unless you're willing to accept that responsibility, you probably shouldn't write the book.

I made an error in judgment with my publisher and I'm really proud to be part of their author team. I thought marketing might be handled by somebody at the publisher.

Yeah, that person doesn't work there anymore.

That's how it looks on TV. Yeah. And in movies. Yeah. Well, that person does work there, but they have 50 books a year to promote. So the books that succeed are those with legs under them and people with teams or willing to hire help or, or put in the work themselves.

Yes. And publishers, I mean, publishers will help, but I think you need to think of them as a, it's a bonus resource. It's the prize inside. It's not the Cracker Jack. You need to be the Cracker Jack. And if you don't understand what that entails, great. The other thing is don't just do what everybody else did. I mean, I've seen a lot of really smart people do silly things by replicating a model that, oh, this is what, whatever Brené Brown did. It's like, guess what? You're not Brené Brown. Right. With all due respect, like what has someone like you done? And I like one of the things that you did that was really unique that I loved, and you and I talked about this, is those not sending canned emails to everyone in your newsletter. Not that that's a horrible marketing tactic. It's an effective marketing tactic, but you went about in a very personalized way so that when people got that from you, people know when something is mass, you know, and that's okay most of the time. But it also signals to me when you send something like that, like, wow, she sent me something. Like she spent that extra time. That's right.

I did mention, I did mention, haven't seen you since the seminar 2 years ago, but I'm hoping you're following through with those goals. And it was a great time in Omaha. And yes, and good news, I have something going on. I have a book coming out. I think it'd be great for your team.

Yeah, that stands out. I think it's also, you know, what is it that you can do to signal to people that there's reciprocity as well? And I think that, you know, one of the things that I love about sort of the author community— BK has its own author community, but if the author community at large is— there's not a quid pro quo, but they want to help each other. So So only an author can understand what it means. Like, oh, where are you? Oh, you're 5 weeks into launch. And they're like, oh, I remember. What can I do to like send me this and I can do that?

Or, you know, like, yeah, I'll do a review. I'll take a picture with my face. Yeah. And put it up on my social media.

But I think the other thing is, is to do that consistently and build that equity in those relationships. Because the bad way to do that is to be really lovely for like 60 days before you're gonna ask me for something before your book comes out. Right. And a lot of people do that. And the right way to do that is just constantly— how long does it take to just send an email, put a post on LinkedIn, promote somebody, whatever? It will come back to you times 10.

That's great advice. Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. When you said, you know, also realize who you are if you don't have a name yet. One of the things I wanted to do with this book was not have a title and a subtitle. Of course, I ended up with a title and a subtitle, Communicate with Courage. Taking Risks to Overcome the Forehead Challenges. But I wanted something like Blink. And they said, you're not Malcolm Gladwell. You don't know. You know, you're going to have to use more words to describe what your subject matter expertise is. And if you ever develop a following like that, then you can start writing books that have one-word titles. And I was like, OK. It's a very humbling process. Right.

Prince had to be Prince before he became that little graphic book, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

Hi, Miss Prince.

I know, don't we all miss Prince?

There we go. I'm so jealous that you're in New York City or near New York City. And now I have a, now I know someone if I'm coming out that I could say, you wanna get a drink or you wanna get lunch? I'm looking you up. There you go. Hey, but keynotes have started and they're going well and we've developed kind of a bifold that allows an audience member to jot some notes about what's happening in each chapter and then the key, key components on the back cover. So now I'm experimenting with how to put ideas about what risks to take as a communicator and how to get past your fear when you are afraid to communicate, but you have a passion about something you wanna say or write, how to translate that into a 45-minute to 90-minute keynote. And that's been pretty, really going pretty well. Yeah. The more I do, the better, of course. And I have seen, you know, some grown executive men like wiping tears a little bit in the back. And I've seen a lot of people grabbing grabbing pens and writing things down. So I'm hopeful that this, that these exercises and pro moves, people will go try something in real life. Yeah, because it's all an experiment anyway.

You said something that I think was really important, is that I'm experimenting. To me, that's a mindset, right? So the thing that you just held up to— you just held up this really cool piece of collateral to me, and you showed me what you're doing, and it's like, that looks really cool. It's well thought out. It's visually designed. It's beautiful. We might look back on that in 6 months ago, that was the stupidest thing I ever did. Or it may look like—

No, no, no, I don't know.

I'm not saying it is, but I'm saying— Yeah, we might. Or you might look back on it and say, oh my God, that was brilliant. That changed the trajectory of my business. But if you don't have the courage to think of it as an experiment, which means what are experiments? They're things that we do to see if something succeeds or fails, right?

Here's another, just a little book flyer, a little bit about the gal who wrote it, where you can find it. And we were down with Penguin and BK and I— Yep. I figured, well, I send a lot of letters and I pay bills and I— Good. Yeah, so I thought this would be a nice, a little envelope-sized insert. And you know, I'm lucky enough to work with graphic and visual designers that can take an idea and make it look good after we do edits.

And none of those experiments are A, bet the house in terms of financial. They're not like, oh, I'm gonna buy a Super Bowl ad. Like, yeah, probably don't do that. Yeah. Or something that's so out there, potentially offensive or whatever to the brand that if it doesn't— No, never. You know, so there's like, The downside is time, energy, effort, a little bit of money. The upside is who knows? Because it's really hard to predict what's going to succeed with any form of consistency or accuracy. So you got to just keep throwing it out there. And I love that you do things in your own way, in your own style. You had sent me a whole bunch of collateral and things that you do. And even though they were all different, you can tell that there's a unified brand. It's well thought out. It's aligned from a communication standpoint. So—

Yeah, we try to keep a little soul in it. And there's usually a little rock and roll undercurrent. Yeah. Something you said about how some of the costs or some of maybe the downsides of experimenting to get your thought leadership out there, you named money as one of those things, like time, money, headaches, or whatever. I would, as an executive coach, I would offer another perspective, and that is I love to see people decide to spend money on themselves or invest in their business, invest in themselves because it does something with self-esteem that nothing else can. Yeah. The best investment is an investment in yourself, I believe. Totally. So I don't sweat it, right? Yeah. I mean, I keep, I keep hoping that more coaching clients and training clients will keep coming. And so far in the last 20 years, they keep coming. So there you go. We're not big time. We're probably a small time. We're pretty, pretty small time for some of the folks you've maybe interviewed and worked with. But I think we have a unique angle. I have a unique angle and certainly have dedicated my life to the study of communication. And I don't think there's anything that makes life go better or makes it less complicated than polishing up how you communicate.

Yeah, totally.

100%. Less complicated life.

This has been fun. I appreciate your time and sharing the story, and I don't think I've ever quoted back to you on this, but that's been fun too. So you got my ego got inflated, which is always fun.

Oh, well, no, that's sincere. I take notes so I can learn. No, I appreciate that.

Okay. It's been great. Thank you for sharing and thanks for spending some time with us today. Thanks, Michelle. Yeah.

Keep up the good work.

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