Your Book Doesn't Need to Be a Bestseller to Make $1M

Have you ever felt like there's a book inside you just waiting to be written?

A book is the ultimate long-form content flex. Is it going to sell 50,000 copies? No, but it might sell 10,000 copies and it results in their business going up, you know, 25% in the next year.

Some leaders even triple, quadruple their speaking fees after publishing, and it's not because their book is a bestseller. It's simply because their book exists.

More keynote speaking opportunities, higher fees, more consulting opportunities. And that's where we see ROI time and time again. The ultimate win for these and all is not necessarily just the book sale. It's about branding. It's about monetization.

What's the very first step? How long should a book be? How do you get it onto Amazon? Have you ever felt like there's a book inside you just waiting to be written? For many executives and experts, that book isn't just a legacy of ideas. It's a powerful brand-building tool. Some leaders even triple, quadruple their speaking fees after publishing, and it's not because their book is a bestseller, it's simply because their book exists. In this episode, I'm joined by Naren Arayal. He's the CEO of Amplify Publishing Group, and he's helped hundreds of leaders bring that book to life. And today he's gonna share how executives turn what's inside their head into influence, Credibility and Revenue Through a Book. Let's dive in. Narin, welcome.

Raj, good to see you. Happy to be here.

Good to see you too. You know, book publishing is something that so many people have thought about. It's something that leaders do feel like that they have inside them. How do they get it out? So what's the very first step that you recommend to turn that feeling into a real project?

You gotta have a roadmap. That's the first thing I would say. And it need not be an elaborate, long outline. One of the things that I suggest is start with what we call a one-pager. And one-pager— and by the way, we'll make this available to your listeners, but it just has a few things and they are a proposed title and subtitle, who you are and why you're the right person to write the book. A few sentences describing your big idea, the target market. Who's your target market? And we can dive into each one of these specifically. Who's your target market? Yes. And if you know of any comparable titles, Jot them down. And what I tell folks all the time is this is your first point in terms of starting the book writing and publishing journey, and it should all fit on a single piece of paper. And so those are the 5 things.

Thanks for clarifying that. So, you know, real quick breakdown of what to do next. Sometimes I think when you think about writing a book, there's so much to say and you really need to narrow it down to a focus area because if it's your first book or even your second book, you might want to try to be boiling the egg the ocean and talking about all kinds of things you could be talking about. How does an executive trim it down into one thing that's timely, that's got the potential? How would they know that that book's got potential? What do they do to trim it down?

Well, think about the last book that, uh, you or any of your listeners have read, right? It might have been 250 pages, but if the author was successful, the author left you with 2, maybe 3 takeaways from that book. So as you decide what your book is going to be, get some real clarity on what the big idea is that, A, you're qualified, you've got a work history and a bio that supports what you're talking about and what you're introducing in the market is, as you said, timely and additive to the conversation of the day in your little lane. And that's another key in your lane.

How do you identify the right audience for your book?

This is critical. You have to, as a nonfiction writer, and you know, we're, we're talking about nonfiction here for the most part, you have to understand who's gonna care about your book. And the truth of the matter is most people, if you're doing this correctly, if you're conceptualizing your book correctly, won't care about your book. That's okay. Don't lose sleep over that. What you really wanna focus on is the sliver of the population that cares about fill in the blank, AI, AI in a specific industry, financial services. You're really laser focused on what they care about and you want to write something that you're qualified to write about in that little sliver. That's the key.

Is there a way to do research, for example, to figure out, oh, I think something like this is gonna sell better than something else?

Yeah, sure. You know, I'm a publishing nerd, so I spend a lot of time on Amazon going through the genres, subgenres. I don't know that I recommend that for everybody. It's a wild place.

Okay.

And a lot, not a lot of fun, although I think it's fun. It's a question of ROI. You said something that we should really dig deep into, something that's gonna sell better. Is that the goal or is the goal to present your thought leadership and have your ROI come back to you in however you monetize your thought leadership, be it keynote speaking, consulting, seminars, courses, right? And so when you're having a, when we're having a ROI discussion, I just wanna make it clear, the ROI is multifaceted. Yes, everybody wants to sell as many books as possible. Everybody wants to become a New York Times bestseller, but there are many, many ways to monetize and be successful as an author that doesn't rely on selling a lot of books.

That's such a good point because there's this myth that a book has to be a bestseller for it to really either change leader's career, maybe make a dent in their personal brand influence, their company's influence, but that's not true. What makes a book so powerful just by existing?

I love this question. And so let's think about somebody who is a thought leader in the world of innovation, and I'm just sort of making this up. There are thousands of people that will write a LinkedIn post on the topic of innovation. There are fewer that can write a really good op-ed on the topic of innovation. There are 10 to 15 to 20 that can write a full-blown book, 300 pages on, on the topic of innovation. Again, again, as an example, a book is the ultimate long-form content flex. And, you know, 15 years ago, and especially now today, people are wondering if there's a space in the world of content for this long form that we're talking about, the book. And I'm here to tell you, just as I told everybody back 10, 15 years ago, that the book isn't going anywhere. The book is still not going anywhere.

Yeah, and that's a really good point because, you know, you go on a beach vacation with your family, what do you take with you? A book. Not always a fiction book, that could be nonfiction. That's what I tend to read most. So that's a really good point too. Let's go into the outlining section that you'd mentioned as one of the starting points, because that sounds like a very critical step when you put together a book. What does an outline look like? How detailed should it be? And what kind of research should you be doing to create that outline?

Yeah, and so even before you start the outline, it's the conceptualization process, right? You know, A, you think you've got an idea that would be well suited for the book format, and then you gotta conceptualize what this book is gonna be. Now, if you decide you want to try to pitch a literary agent and get a big deal from a major house, you have to do what's called a book proposal. And a book proposal is a 30-page document, and it includes a couple sample chapters that you would then send to a literary agent. Now, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is something a lot easier, a lot simpler. It is, again, you know, the who, what, where, why, when of your project. Talk about the book with enough specificity to allow any reader to read what you sent and have an understanding of what the book project promises to be. And then once you— and I'd encourage people to sort of volley this back and forth with some folks that you trust in your network. And then once you land on a concept, then you take that one-pager with the 5 things that we talked about earlier, and you can expand it to an outline. And the reason why it's so critical is, you know, writing a book is hard and, you know, there are tools these days and I'm sure we'll get into talking about them. But staying focused and staying true to your roadmap is critical. It's more efficient. It'll result in a better product.

There's multiple models to create the book because executives oftentimes, well, they don't have the time, and that's a challenge to actually get that book created. So they may hire a writer to help them articulate some of those thoughts. I've seen several people with false starts. They want to get started with a book. They want to get started with a writer. It just doesn't work out for whatever reason, the quality, the authenticity, that like, this doesn't sound like me, those kind of things. So what are some good models that an executive can use to actually get what's in here out on proverbial paper? Because we don't use paper anymore.

That's right.

Yes.

So the first thing is you got to be objective. How much time do you really have? Do you want to, in any free time that you might have, do you want to spend it on on your laptop writing a book. If it's your first book, is it the most efficient use of your time? So about 35% of the projects we work on, we'll bring in a ghostwriter. Now, these are folks that have experience in the subject matter that you're contemplating writing your book on. These are professional writers, and part of being a good ghostwriter is to emulate the voice of your client, the author, right? And so yes, that should be a concern. Will this writer capture my voice? Um, but if you get the right writer, um, you know, that should not be a problem. So that's one approach. Another approach is to get a writing coach. A writing coach, uh, is somebody that's with you every step of the way, will review chapter by chapter as it's written, will make sure that you stick to the timetable, will give you some accountability, some homework. You'll go off and write. and then the writing coach will review, um, chapter by chapter until you have a full manuscript. So those are the two options. And then the third is you go write, and then when you're done, you submit, and we'll bring in an editor that's qualified to tear apart what you write. Now, the, the last option, um, is, is the lower cost option, um, but it's also an option that requires you to spend a lot of time with yourself and not really knowing until the very end if there's some wholesale changes that are required. Things to consider. There's no right or wrong answer, but these are your options. And of course, the fourth option that we'll get into is AI support. And, you know, there's a lot to say about that.

Yeah. In fact, I remember looking at one candidate who had applied for a position that we had open, and he said, oh yeah, I wrote a book. And I looked at the book because Amazon produces the first couple of pages of it. And it started with the words, in today's digital landscape. And the first thought in my head was, oh my goodness, he didn't write this. This is ChatGPT because that's the famous way it writes. And so you knew right away it was not original content. We discarded his resume very fast.

I call it Wikipedia-level ChatGPT writing is what, you know, that I can spot it a mile away as well. And so that's what you're talking about as well, I think.

Yes, exactly. So I know that, you know, like one of the reasons we built Make Media was to make sure that we retain an author's thoughts, authenticity, voice, and stories. And so the content that our tool actually helps produce is significantly, like, significantly better, much, much less editing to do. Let's go into executives that are constantly under brand scrutiny, because that's something that these large companies' executives have to deal with all the time. How do you help them keep that genuine tone throughout their book?

That's the great question and sometimes can be a challenge, right? And so it's really understanding. Taking inventory of everything that they put out there and making sure that the book and the manuscript matches that. And, you know, there's no formula that works across the board, but, uh, uh, when you don't see it, it becomes clear.

Okay. And so, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier, which is executives having too many ideas. So is that what the, the, the writing coach will help them do is like stay, stay tuned into that main idea? Uh, and what happens if they decide that they're going to do it all themselves, submit something, and the editor goes through with their red pen and it's like, oh my gosh, I've got to completely rewrite everything. And then they just feel like I'm going to abandon the project. You may have had stories like this before. Can you talk to that?

Yeah, it really underscores the importance of having a roadmap, an outline that everybody on the front end decides this is the book that we're writing and this is the book writing because we know that this is what our readers want. We know that this is my expertise that I want to showcase and anything anything that deviates from that outline should be left on the cutting room floor, as they say, right? And so sometimes, um, you know, we'll get a manuscript that, uh, that is— just requires a lot of work. And then the author has, has got to decide at that point, hey, am I going to put in— am I in a position to put in the work to get it to where I need it to be? And if not, um, you know, it has, it has happened on, on occasion where projects will go abandoned. That's why I really encourage authors and would-be authors to, you know, try to get some expertise earlier in the process. It'll save you a lot of heartache.

How long should a book be?

Great question. You'll often hear the writer say something like, hey, you know, I want to write a book that somebody can read on a flight, right? And so my first question is, are we talking about a flight from Newark to New Delhi? Or are we talking about Newark to Ellis Airport, right? By the way, there is a trend. There was a trend for a super short book. And as publishers, we always talk about word count, right? 30,000-word book, and as opposed to the 70,000-word book that was popular, call it a decade ago. And the balancing act here is simply this. On one hand, nobody wants to read a 400-page book. On the other hand, you want to make sure you're getting value out of it. There's, there's some, there's a sweet spot in the middle because you don't want to pay full price for what looks like a brochure. Right. And what I tell my folks, the people that we work with, is like, you know, get to 40, 50, 55,000 words. That's plenty.

How many pages does that translate into?

It depends. Like, how many charts and graphs do we have? How many, how much spacing do we have between lines? I mean, there's all sorts of stuff. There's stuff we can do to impact that. But like, generally speaking, you would be at right around 200 pages.

200 pages. That seems like a reasonable read, right? Now, here's the one thing though. I've read several 200-page books and I've ended up finding myself flipping through them so fast because they could have covered all of their main points in a white paper, in an ebook, in a newsletter. And so how do you make sure that you're including enough meaty content that makes writing it as a book worthwhile, that the reader feels like they're actually getting value out of it?

We've all read those books, right? That you read the intro in the first chapter, you're like, okay, I get it. And then it's a lot of regurgitation of this.

Yeah.

And that doesn't feel good as a reader, right? You feel like you got a little cheated. And so really pushing the author to dig deeper, provide more examples, provide case studies, something that's unique to their, to their set of experiences, right? Something that you just can't find out there in the world. And so it's just a matter of really pushing them to fill in the book to make sure that delivers value to the reader.

Can you share a story, a couple of stories on how somebody who's written a book, a CEO, where they— the book not necessarily led to a whole bunch of money from book sales, but it led to measurable opportunities, perhaps speaking engagements, major deals, more clients. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, there's, there's many. And so we'll go back to the conversation we had a few minutes ago about ROI, right? Everyone that we work with, particularly in the prescriptive nonfiction business thought leadership space, will see an ROI in a book project. And so the question is, how do we, how do we calculate that ROI? Are we talking about just book sales, you know, cost to produce, time value of money? Versus book sales. Chances are you're not going to see an ROI with just that accounting. The ROI comes in is a combination of book sales, more keynote speaking opportunities, higher fees, more consulting opportunities. Are you launching a course? Right. It's the 360-degree view of how an author monetizes. And that's where we see ROI time and time again. And I'll give you a few examples. We wrote a book, we published a book for a woman named Melissa Agnes, and her book is called Crisis Ready. It has been out now, you know, it's been several years, and it catapulted her from a crisis management communication expert to having the go-to book in crisis management. And it's led to a course at Harvard picking it up. It's led to numerous clients that have hired her for crisis management right now. That's an example of where a book makes sense. Another one we were just launching this past month and it's top of mind is something— is a book called The Customer Experience Imperative, the CX Imperative, right? And Marc Fithian and Jeff Rosenberg are practitioners in customer experience. And this is again aiming to be the go-to book in this little space that they operate in. And so, you know, is it going to sell 50,000 copies? No, but it might sell 10,000 copies and it might, result in their business going up, you know, 25% in the next year. So those are two examples that I think would be interesting to your listeners. And then I'll leave you with one other here. We just published last month a book that landed on the New York Times bestseller list, which again, we talk about like, you know, that's not your goal for most people. And this will be particularly of interest to the entrepreneurs that I know that you and I know really well. It's called Shoveling Shit: A Love Story About Entrepreneurship's Messy Path. And these guys talk about entrepreneurship in full candor and they were really successful. They sold their company to Salesforce and it's a husband and wife team. And what it spawned is now they're doing an internet series where they content where they go in and look at businesses and critique businesses and, you know, hopefully that'll get picked up to, you know, streaming or some sort of broader television platform. So, you know, these are examples. And you'll notice that the ultimate win for these and others is not necessarily just the book sale. It's about branding. It's about monetization in however they monetize.

So this brings me to a question about distribution. So you've got the book, you've spent some time either with a ghostwriter coach or you've written it, gotten editing back, and now what's the next step? How do you actually get it from this thing that's in either a Word doc or whatever format you've got it in and to make it an actual thing.

Yeah, an actual book, a widget.

Yes. Okay. A widget will do it all for you. Take it from Word and put it into formats that you need.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so what we do is, you know, then, then we get into things like cover design. You can cover a book.

Okay.

You can, you can assess a book by its cover. Right. And so if you look at our website, You know, you'll see some incredibly gorgeous book covers. I'm really proud of that. And there's a lot of back and forth that goes on because it's very important. And then once we get the COVID design done, we'll work on the interior design. You know, how many charts and graphs do we have? You want to make— you want to make it readable for the reader. And then there's things like testimonials and forewords and editing and proofreading. And so from the time we get a manuscript to the time we upload it to print is typically 4 months. And we publish in physical, ebook, and audiobook formats.

Is it advisable to have a hard copy as well as a paperback, uh, and audio and, and ebooks? Or like, what are the formats? And can you just get by with only doing, uh, a paperback these days?

Yeah. And so I, you know, most of the people that we work with will sell, believe it or not, more physical copies than ebooks and audiobooks initially, because their network is going to want to get the physical copy, right? And then as the book gets out into the wild, you'll see the ebook percentage increase as a percentage of sales, overall percentage of sales. You'll see the audiobook increase as an overall percentage of sales. And so what we typically see is physical book, be it paperback or hardcover, ebook and audiobook. Audiobooks continue to gain popularity. Uh, ebooks actually have leveled off and believe it or not, physical books are increasing ever so slightly.

Interesting. I know I like listening to audiobooks when I go for my daily walks. It's my, it's my go-to thing between podcasts and audiobooks. So how would one go about creating that audiobook? Do you need to be inside a studio?

Yeah.

Can you record it from a nice mic at your laptop? What's the way?

Yeah, so we offer 2, now 3 solutions. The first is hiring a narrator. By the way, by the way, narrating your book is way more personal, but it's a real chore. It's like you got to dedicate, you know, 10 hours of your life to doing this. And it's not easy if you've never, if you've never done it before. So you could hire a narrator. Option 1. Option number 2 is we'll send you— we have a partner that virtually guides our authors so they can narrate their own audiobook in the comfort of their home. It's amazing. The technology is great. ACX, Audible, which is Amazon's audiobook vendor, the quality is always good. It just works. And then now, as you probably know, AI is disrupting the audiobook industry. There's companies out there like, I think it's ElevenLabs, where you give them a voice sample and they will spin up Raj, you talking about all sorts of things that, you know, whether you want to be talking about or not.

That's very true. And I was actually headed in that direction. Is there a way that you can create that audio sample and then just give it the book and next thing you know, you have an audiobook really quickly? You know, I've heard these audio samples that come back from things and it sounds to me, at least in my voice, very monotone, doesn't sound like me. I tend to be a little bit more dynamic in my conversations. So do you think audio, the AI tools are ready? Do you think they're going to be ready really soon? Where do you think we stand on that?

So I'm with you. I think they're about 85% spot on right now. And okay. And so a little flat, right? I mean, you know, you probably see I move my hands a lot when I speak and I'm animated as well. It's about 85%, right? And as time goes on, it's probably gonna end up being 99%, right? And so the question is, are you okay as an author having something that is 85%? Most people are gonna say yes because it saves you a lot of time and energy. But I think that, you know, for international bestsellers, you know, people still wanna know that it's the author reading the book because as authors, we're, We're connecting with our audience, right? And so I think it's gonna be a selling— I truly think it's gonna be a selling point for audiobooks if the author lets people know, hey, this is my voice. I read it from start to finish.

I know that I personally feel much more connected to the author when I listen to them on the book versus a narrator. It just doesn't feel as personal. I've actually returned books that I was like, ah, it's not the person speaking. And I return it back to Audible like within a day because I don't know, I just don't enjoy the experience as much. Do you see that? Do you see that? Making a difference in terms of the impact that a book can actually have, not so much on sales, but if you're looking to get more speaking engagements, if that's on your radar, or perhaps you're a COO and you want to be a CEO of a larger organization and the book is one step in the ladder. Do you feel that the self-narration is important?

I sure do. I sure do. And again, it is you revealing yourself to the audience in a more personal and authentic way. And, you know, some, some people are just really good at reading and their voices are great. And I'll give you a good example. Mel Robbins, who everyone knows now, is on our board. And I still maintain, I mean, she's incredible. She's, she's super focused on her target market. But like, there's something about her voice that just draws you in. And so it's no wonder that her audiobooks just kill it.

Yeah. Yeah. I know my kids talk about her all the time and so reference things that she's saying. And so it's kind of funny. You and I both have kids that are, I guess, now entering adulthood and they don't always listen. And so sometimes they say, well, what did Mel Robbins say about it? That makes them connect. So it's always a little fun thing to add. So we talked about getting that book finalized. So how do you get it onto Amazon? How do you get it into Barnes Noble and these other places where you can actually have the distribution?

Yeah. So, you know, our books are sold everywhere books are sold, right? And so we use the same distributors that Simon Schuster or the big houses might use. And so it's a process of— and keep in mind, the number of bookstores, chains, is not what it used to be. Right now we have Barnes Noble. They're doing really well right now, but it's just the only really big chain right now. So we know, you know, we'll pitch the appropriate buyers at Barnes Noble. But most of the books that we work on are leadership, thought leadership, business. 70% of those will be purchased on Amazon. It's just the way of the world. And think about where, you know, when you purchased the last 5 or 6 books, I'm gonna guess you're gonna say Amazon. Am I right?

That's right. Every now and then, if I am leaving tomorrow and I need a book today, I'll go to Barnes Noble. But for the most part, it's Amazon.

So I love them as a consumer. As a publisher and author, we don't love them as much, right? And they've really upended, is probably the right word, the world of books and retailing of books. But they're, you know, necessary. And so a lot of our authors will, again, will sell 70% of their books there. They'll sell other books in conjunction with a keynote event or a conference. You know, then the others will be spread out through, you know, maybe Hudson News in the airport market or independent bookstores. You know, here in the D.C. area, we've got two of the really well-known ones in Politics and Prose and Kramer Books and others. And so, you know, that's the distribution, not just for us, but just for about everybody right now.

How many books should someone print?

Yeah, that is a good question. And so what you should do is what I tell people is, you know, let's print an initial printing that we know that we're going to get to a reprint. Right. And so most of our print runs are, call it, you know, 1,500 to 4,000 books, at least initially. Now, there could be other situations where an author has a track record of selling 50,000 books. And then obviously we're going to start out with a higher number there. Sometimes we're surprised at books that just gain momentum that we didn't necessarily think that they would. And sometimes we're surprised where, you know, books we thought would sell faster out of the gate just don't for whatever reason. So it is— it's alchemy.

So how much of the distribution is on the writer, on the executive? To get it out versus what happens either organically or a company like yours could help with?

Yeah, I would say that if you're self-publishing, you know, the onus is on you to get it set up with Amazon or IngramSpark, and then you're done. If you're working with a company like ours, you know, that's something— that's the value that we bring in addition to all the other things on the production side. You know, we manage the distribution, we have a warehouse facility, we ship books out, we invoice, we collect. Where I would say that the author really must be involved is the marketing of her book. I don't care if you're publishing with Harper Business, Amplify Publishing, or you're doing it yourself on Amazon. The author must be engaged because you're the thought leader, you're the expert, and the people, your potential readers and the audience, they want to hear from you.

What, so what have you found as success tips for authors? So they've got a book, it's out wherever it's out, and, you know, they've probably got a couple of boxes in their basement, you know, that they use when they go out to events and autograph them and give them to people. So what's the step there?

Yeah, I think the step is well before that point in time. It is when you're writing a book, you should start generating content from the book. So act like you got a book to sell before you got a book to sell. Because in the year before the book's publishing, your one and one job only aside from writing the book is to grow your audience. And how you do that is through content. And that content should be specifically tilted toward the book and what's in the book. And so, The number one tool that an author has is her email list. So as you're generating all this content, people that are enjoying the content or invested in your content get their email list. When it's time to launch your book, that email newsletter is gold. It's better than social media. It's better than your Substack. It's better than you know, fill in the blank.

So you mentioned building up that audience over the course of a year. Is that a good approach? Let's say, you know, you're advising a senior leader who's thinking about writing their first book, uh, create the roadmap, create the outline, the premise of the book, and then do you just say, hmm, I'm gonna stick to this outline and I'm gonna just start writing LinkedIn posts about that, which actually helps them through the thought process of what should go in the book and just use that almost like a forcing function to create the book? Is that Is that an approach that people could take?

Yeah, it is. And I'll, I'll flip it a little bit. Take that book, the manuscript. There are 300 pieces of content in there that you can pull out and make that your post. Add a visual.

Interesting.

Add a visual. Add, add a case study. Tag some people that are particularly relevant to this little, you know, subsection of a chapter. Right. That's how you want to do it. So I would say flip it. Have the manuscript, have the book, and then start picking out individual content pieces.

Very good. You'd mentioned Mel Robbins is on your board. You've got other people that are on your board as well that really have some, some very significant experience. Could you just talk about that for a minute?

Sure, sure. Back in 2022, we took a, we took a round of venture funding from Mudita, and the head of that fund is a guy named Josh Linkner. He joined my company as chairman. He also happens to be one of the most successful keynote speakers in America. So we'd known each other being in the industry, got to know each other a little bit better, liked each other. He liked what we're doing here, how we're sort of upending the world of books. He had access to an incredible network of keynote speakers. So, you know, it just made sense. And so through his venture fund, he invested in Amplify and he brought his network with him that included people like Eric Schoenberg, who's our current editor-in-chief who was formerly CEO of Inc. and Fast Company. Again, business journalist, really well plugged in, into the thought leadership space. And Josh also was one of the folks that worked with Mel Robbins as she ascended to incredible heights. And, and so he introduced us to Mel, and Mel is a champion of authors owning their intellectual property. And really being mindful and having a plan with their content. And so there was just a nice synergy there, as they say. And she joined our board and has been an incredible asset. And we're fortunate to have the board that we do.

That's pretty good insight. And you mentioned something here that I want to touch on before we close out, and that is maintaining your intellectual property.

Yeah.

And so how is that different from publishing yourself? Obviously, if you do it yourself, you own everything, or publishing it through a publisher that does hybrid book publishing, kind of like yourself, versus a big publishing house like Wiley.

Yeah. So the traditional houses, you have to read their contracts very carefully because they will have— they'll reserve a lot of rights. And, you know, whether it's, whether it's you know, documentary or film or reserving the right to, you know, content, book content being turned into courses. You know, every, every standard, every contract is a little bit different, but there you've got to be really mindful of what you're signing when you work with a large traditional publishing house. Now, when you work with, when you do it yourself, obviously you own everything. And our model as a hybrid publishing company is more analogous to self-publishing where we take no ownership our authors own all intellectual property, ancillary rights, foreign rights, subrights, all rights. And so that's, that's one of the things that the value that we provide is, you know, you're hiring us to create the best darn book possible, work for hire, and you own all the intellectual property. And in some cases, it's a non-negotiable, right? If, if your book is, is the basis for IP related to your business or IP related to, you know, something, something else, it's a non-negotiable. You have to, you have to maintain it.

Yeah, right. Especially with your brand and so on. So, Lorin, this very insightful conversation. What would be the 3 most important tips that you would have for an executive who's got that book inside them? What's the first 3 things they should start doing?

Yeah, so the first thing is conceptualize, right? What is it about this idea, this book that will not only showcase your thought leadership, but will deliver value to the reader? Very important. Then the second thing is to think about the target market, right? Make sure you've got a fine understanding of the target market and be objective when you land there. And then the last thing is figure out how realistically it's going to get done and get done at a high quality. And, you know, whether that's you write the book yourself or you work with a ghostwriter or use the many other tools that are out there these days. So, those 3 things I would say, you know, at some point or another, you're going to have to answer those 3 questions.

Excellent. Wow, what a masterclass in how to get a book out there, especially if you're a leader because the whole process is very different than if you're, writing a fiction book. So I think big difference. Naren, thank you so much for your time today, and I hope everybody listening got a lot out of that conversation. How can they reach you if they needed to connect?

Just go to our website, AmplifyPublishingGroup.com. You learn a lot about us there and, you know, just reach out. There's a, there's a form. All right.

Excellent. Thanks again. We'll see you next time on Executive Signal.

Thanks, Raj.