#169: Are You Prepared to Sell More Books During the Biggest Book Buying Season of the Year, Christmas?

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelley Hitz.

Are you prepared to sell more books during the biggest book buying season of the year, Christmas? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz, I'm an author coach and I'm the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. In this training, going to talk about how to prepare for this big book buying season of the year and one of the ways that I'm equipping you to do that. So last year we did something where we focused for 90 days inside authoraudienceacademy.com My members and I, we choose to focus in 90 day increments of time, set a 90 day goal. I walk you through how to do that and then really focus on, on reaching that goal in those 90 days. Now last year we focused in this time of the year, September, October, November, we focused on publishing our books before Christmas so they would be ready and published before the biggest book buying season of the year. And it was a great success. Many authors published their books and it was just the momentum, the accountability and everything just really, really was successful. And this year we're going to focus our 90 day accountability group in Sept, October and November of 2017 on selling more books. It's going to be all about book marketing. And so if you are still in the process of writing and publishing your book, focus on that, finish that. You can still go through the publish module, inside Author Audience Academy. You can still focus on that and that can be your goal. But as a group, we're going to focus on the marketing side of things. And what happens often is we put so much attention, we put so much energy into the writing and the publishing that sometimes the marketing then gets neglected because to be honest, we may be a little bit tired. Anyone, anyone ever felt that way? After you finished writing and self editing and editing and formatting and publishing your book, you're just kind of like, oh, I need a little break.

But it takes consistent effort over time to really see your book begin to sell in a consistent way. Long term, what we want to do is we want to provide resources for you to do that. What we're going to do is September, October and November. It's going to be a push, a 90 day goal to really set up your marketing for success so that you have all of the pieces in place for the biggest book Buying success season of the year, Christmas. Now, if you're not yet a member of Author Audience Academy, we'd love to have you join@authoraudienceacademy.com however, you can do this on your own as well. You can set your own 90 day goal and you can really decide that this is my season. This is the time I'm going to focus on marketing my book. I have tons of free training also available for you@shellyhits.com free. And you can just simply take in that training and really focus over the next 90 days. So what we're going to do is we'll have this accountability group. My education coordinator, Kim Steadman, she's amazing. She'll be leading weekly calls in our private Facebook group. So what this means is every Wednesday she's going to meet with us and that way you can review your goals. What went well, what maybe didn't go so well, where you're stuck, get help, get encouragement, get prayers. Because we pray for each other. Inside Author Audience Academy. It's primarily Christian nonfiction authors, although you're welcome if you're a fiction author, you're welcome if you're not a Christian. But just know we will be praying for you. That's what we do. And so you'll get the support, the accountability. And you know what research has shown, whether it's weight loss, paying off debt and even writing or publishing a book, accountability works. It just simply works. So we'll be doing that every week inside of our group. And then also in addition to that, we have a brand new thing that is launching September. I am so excited about this. I've thought about this for a long time and we're finally going to implement it. And it's called the Marketing Minute training. So what we are doing is we are going to compile every week. Kim Steadman, my education coordinator, again, she's going to take training that's bite sized, so that's easy to implement, it's quick to do. And every week you will get a five minute video from her and then you will get instructions on how to implement that marketing task. We plan on having the video be no longer than five minutes and then it being no longer than 10 minutes to implement it. So literally just by 15 minutes a week, you will be moving the marketing engine forward with very specific marketing tasks that I personally have chosen and I've picked out and I've given that list to Kim. And then we're going to help you to be able to do it in the time that you have. The honest truth is we are all busy. Can I get an amen? We're all busy and we all have a lot of things on our plate. But do you have 15 minutes? Do you have 15 minutes that you can invest your book? You have written the book, you've published the book, you've invested in it, you have invested time and money. Now it's time to really reach more people with your message. And what I find is that having things in bite sized training modules is going to, I really believe it's going to help you actually do it and actually see results. So I'm really excited. And what we're going to do is this fall, each week those marketing minute trainings will correspond with a brand new. I just wrote it, I just added it to the member area today. A brand new 90 day book marketing map. So I did this last year for the publish module when we were going through this, I created a 90 day publish map that's still in the member for you. It's still valid, it still works. Members are still publishing their books using it. This year I created a 90 day book marketing map and I really laid out to you what I believe you need to do each step of the way in that first 90 days and then beyond. So it's going to go even beyond that 90 days because let's face it, marketing is like raising a child. You don't give birth to a child, raise them for 18 years and then say bye bye, you're part of their life forever. And your book is part of your life forever. So marketing is an ongoing process. But I'm going to really help you decide, decide through this 90 day book marketing map where to focus, what to do first, what to do next. And you can choose. You can choose what works best for you. You can ask questions, author, audience, academy members can ask questions. Every day. I'm in the group every day you can ask questions, say, Shelly, this is my situation. What should I do? And I will help you. We will talk about it, we'll discuss it. But that's brand new. The 90 day book marketing map. So what we're going to do is we're going to correlate this fall the marketing minute training with the 90 day book marketing Map. That's a mouthful. So every week the new training you get is going to correspond with where you typically should be in that book marketing map. Oh, awesome. Right? We're giving you the plan. All you have to do is set aside a little bit of time and do it. So I Would love for you to join us. Authoraudienceacademy.com I just added a quarterly option for those of you that the yearly option maybe is just too much right now. There's a quarterly option now and so you can get signed up for that and basically you'll sign up and you'll be with us through that entire 90 day process when you sign up for the quarterly option. And I hope you stay longer, but at least three months. That's what I find. If you're there at least three months, you really get the most benefit out of it. The big bonus and all of you who are already Author Audience Academy members, the big bonus is that next week, August 31st. So to kick off this 90 days focusing on book marketing, I am going to be with you live for an entire day of marketing training. I call this a VIP day. Typically you pay $3,000 to do a VIP day one on one with me and this exact training I will be giving in Canada next month. And Authors are paying $199 to attend this training which is but as a member of Author Audience Academy or if you sign up Today or before August 31st, you will get access to this entire day with me all about marketing and I'm going to be covering my Author Automation system. It's the primary marketing system I now recommend for all authors. Next week I will be sending out a link to my overview video of what that is, what you'll learn and to know even if you, you know, would be interested in it. So if you're not on my list yet, my email list, make sure to sign up@shellyhits.com free choose any of my free trainings. Make sure to get on my list because that will be coming to you next week and then also next week on Tuesday for all of my email subscribers. Again, make sure you're on my list. I will be hosting a live webinar. I have not done a live webinar for a long time and it's going to be all about narrowing and really knowing who your target reader is. This is so important and this is different than any training I've done in the past. Like you are going to get, I think it's like a seven or eight page workbook. Like it is in depth. You're getting the entire workbook and this is not just getting more information. I'm actually going to walk you through the steps of how to identify each of these things. I'm going to set a timer. We're going to do it together. You're not going to leave the webinar and think, okay, now I have to find time to do this. No, that's not the way I want it to work. It's going to be workshop style. So you're going to actually leave that webinar with like a whole bunch of information that then you can take into this 90 days of marketing. Once you, oh, you know, I get excited. Once you know who your target reader is, you can now get laser focused on your marketing. Your marketing is going to be so much more effective. You're going to know how to speak to your audience. You're going to know the types of tweets to write. You're going to know whether or not you should even be on Twitter. Amen. Because we don't need to be everywhere. Your target audience, you're going to find that out. We're going to do some research on the webinar. Where is your target audience? Are they on Twitter? Are they on Pinterest? Are they on Facebook? You're going to know better how to write your book description. You're going to know all of that is going to come easier and it's going to even help you as you implement the marketing training that we give you this fall when you know your target reader. So that target audience webinar is free for everyone. Next week it's time limited so you'll have to be on my email list. I'm not having a separate sign up for it. It's just anyone who's on my email list will get the invite and then once it's over there will be a replay a couple days but then the recording will be in authoraudienceacademy.com so if you're listening to this and it's already past the date, then just know that the recording is available inside Author Audience Academy. So that webinar is going to be, let's see, August 29th at 1:00pm Eastern 11:00am Mountain Time. So, so mark that on your calendars and then if you're an Author Audience Academy member or if you want to join us, you can join us today and take advantage the full VIP day live. It's not recorded videos. We will be interacting. I am going to be live with you is next Thursday on August 31st all day 199 real world value. This is a bonus. So this month Author Audience Academy members, instead of the Clarity call we normally have, which is one hour together, we're going to have this entire VIP day together in place of the Clarity call and we'll be together for seven hours. It's a seven hour day and you'll have breaks. We'll have breaks throughout the day. But it's going to be so fun to see you put together your marketing blueprint. One of the sessions in that day we will actually be filling out your author automation blueprint that's specific to you, specific to your audience because you'll already have taken that webinar, the target audience webinar. You'll already know who you're focusing in on, who that person is. You'll be in that mindset. We'll fill out the blueprint and again, this is going to be workshop style. So we'll get a lot of stuff done in that one day. Now there are for sure things that we cannot finish just in that seven hours together. But who's excited? I am so excited. We have so much planned for you this fall. Let me just recap. Let me know in the comments if you're excited about this and if you've been on the fence for joining Author Audience Academy and you have a book that's already published, now's the time. Right now is the time to join. You get a $199 bonus right away. If you join quarterly, it's $177. You've already more than paid that back. Plus you get all my training. You get our amazing community. Somebody just recently said, Shelly, this is just an incredible community. It is. It's an incredible community. Plus the 90 day accountability group for Book Marketing, the Marketing Minute training, the brand new 90 day book marketing map. We are going to help you sell more books and I'm so excited to really walk you through this. So step by step and again, if you need to, you can go through this on your own. You can choose your 90 day goal. You can use my free training@shellyhits.com free. But if you're able, ask for a membership for Christmas early, an early Christmas gift, $177 for quarterly ask for an early Christmas gift or have a garage sale, sell some things on Craigslist, do something and join us. I would love for you to join us because more than anything, I just want to help you get results. I want to help you reach more people with your message. Your message matters, your story matters, your book matters. And by ignoring it, by not marketing it, by not taking those consistent actions, in a way your actions are saying that it doesn't matter. But it does. And I know many of you are overwhelmed. You're just simply in information overwhelmed. You're simply overwhelmed because that's why we have the accountability. That's why I've broken it down step by step in the 90 day book marketing map. That's why we are including now the marketing minute training. Five minutes to watch the video, 10 minutes to implement. That's why we have a Facebook group. So it's interactive. You can ask questions when you're stuck, you can say, shelly, I feel overwhelmed. What should I start with first? We can help you. That's why we have Author Audience Academy, is to help you. And so I would love to serve you. Let me just pray for you. Lord, I just thank you for every author that is listening to this training right now. I just thank you for them. I thank you for the books and the messages you have put in their hearts. And I just pray, Lord, that you would just do amazing things in and through them this next three months. I just pray that whether or not they join Author Audience Academy or they're doing it on their own, Lord, I just pray for an increase. I pray for wisdom. I pray for clarity. I pray for ideas. God, ideas for marketing. I pray that each person would get really crystal clear on who their target audience is and be able to speak to them in ways that connect with that audience and really they're able to find their audience online. And truly, Lord, that each of us can sell more books. And it's not about the money. It's not about making a name for ourselves. It's about glorifying you. It's about allowing that message, our testimonies or whatever it is that we message, we have in our books to reach more people and to be a light. To be a light. So, Lord, I just thank you that we can rest in the name that you have already given us as daughter, as son, as. As princess, as prince of the almighty king. We can rest in the name we already have. We don't have to strive to make a name for ourselves. That's not what it's about. It is about resting in the name we already have. Resting in what you have given us and yet doing the things that you lead us to do. Listening, Lord, listening to you. I pray that we would be listening to you even more clearly and hearing what you have for us. And then that we would do it. Lord, I thank you. I thank you that your sheep hear your voice. And if we are a follower of Christ, then we can hear your voice. Lord, I thank you for that. I thank you for that promise and that each one of us are able to hear your voice. In very specific ways and very specific strategies for our books. And I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

So I was just reading in Genesis the other day this story about Jacob. And Jacob had worked for his father in law, Laban, and you know, Laban had tricked him and you know, he had to work twice as long in order to marry Rachel. Well, you can go back and read this story in Genesis, but there was a chapter in there where it talked about how Jacob went to his father in law, Laban, and said, any spotted, speckled or, you know, splotched animal, whatever words it uses in your translation, those will be mine. And you'll know if I've stolen any animals because they'll have to have spots or speckles on them and all the rest will be yours. And then I can work and that will be my pay. And Laban agreed. And you know what? The Lord blessed that strategy. And as I was looking at that, I was thinking, you know, the Lord, I really believe the Lord gave him that strategy. And then he blessed it. He blessed it. And you know, Laban kept changing it. He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, it's only the spotted ones now or it's only the speckled ones now. And those would be the ones that would flourish. So sometimes what God asks us to do, the strategies he gives us do not make sense. The spotted and speckled and what? Sometimes it might not make sense, but what we need to be doing as authors is being connected with the creative flow from God. Be connected to listening, to hearing from him. Be connected to really like hearing, what is it that you have for me? What are the strategies you have for me? And then.

Everyone is going to be different. Sometimes the Lord will just completely bless it. And sometimes even when he asks us to do something, it will still be hard or we won't get the results we think we should. But please, please hear me. The Lord wants to give you a book marketing strategy. He wants to. He wants to. So I just encourage you to press in to listen and let's finish 2017 with a bang. If you're with me. If you're in, just type I'm in in the comments. Thank you so much for joining me. Again, my name is Shelli Hitz. If you are not yet on my email list, make sure to sign up to one of my free trainings@shellyhits.com free choose whatever, free training you can choose a webinar, free training, whatever is most interesting to you. That way you're on my list and you'll get all of the information when it comes out next week and I will see you next time. Buh. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.