3 Reasons You Should Make Your Book Interactive

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, Shelly Hitz.

Three reasons you should make your book interactive. That's what I'm going to cover in today's video training. Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm an author coach@shellyhitz.com I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. One reason I believe you should make your book interactive is to make it more marketable. One of the things I hear over and over and over from authors is they want to sell more books. And if you think about this as you're writing your book, as you're publishing your book, you can actually make your book more marketable so you can sell more books later on. What I mean is when you have interactive pieces to your book, let's say whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you can have discussion questions in the back of your book with a leader's guide, and it can be used for a book study. That is something any of you can do, fiction or nonfiction. Now, I specialize in nonfiction, so most nonfiction books can do this. You can have some sort of discussion guide, some sort of leader's guide in the back. But you can do this for fiction, too, for book clubs, book studies, things like that. And groups will buy books in bulk. My very first book, Mirror, Mirror and My Beautiful, has a Bible study in it. It has a leader's guide. It has discussion questions. And when I sell that book, I tend to sell it in multiple, multiple copies because people are buying for their entire group. So the first reason to make your book interactive is to make it more marketable. The second reason is to serve your audience in a deeper way. So another way you can have interactive content in your book is by having corresponding video teaching. In my latest book project, I've been talking about it a lot because it's what I'm doing and I share what I'm doing. It's broken crayons, still color. And in that book port project, every chapter has a corresponding video teaching. It's around 35 minutes long, but it's really meaty, it's really content rich, and it's designed to be used as a book study. So you read the chapter, then you come and you watch the video, you have some discussion and, you know, end in prayer. So I'm not calling it a Bible study because it's more of a topical study. But when you have interactive content in your book, whether it's discussion questions, video content, reflection questions, other things like in this book, I have a coloring page for each chapter as well. That's interactive as well. You're able to serve your audience in a deeper way because they're able then to apply what you're teaching them. In my book Marketing youg Book on Amazon, I include as a bonus to all of my customers who buy that book a video training walking you step by step. What I do post publication of a book to optimize my book on Amazon. That is a very valuable bonus and it sets me apart. And so that's number three. The third reason to have interactive content is to set yourself apart from the competition. There are hundreds if not thousands of books being published on Amazon every single day. So how can you serve your audience and stand out from your competition? Do something different. Add some interactive parts to your book. If it makes sense, include video teachings for free. For those customers who buy your book, you just have to put a link inside your book. For my marketing yearbook on Amazon, I just simply put a link to an unlisted YouTube video. Simple. For my current project, I'm going to have a page on my website. So it brings them back to my website. I'm going to have information on there. I still have to put together those pages and what they'll look like, but you're able to set yourself apart. So what are some ways you can make your book project interactive? What are some things you can do? And if you've self published or independently published like I recommend, guess what? You can update your manuscript at any time. So if you wanted to right now, you could sit down and record a 30 minute teaching video. Quality content, meaty content, a valuable bonus. Add that link into your book or have your formatter added into your book, re upload it and voila, you have just differentiated yourself from your competition. Or if you want to add a discussion guide and our leader's guide and discussion questions, then you can start reaching out to book clubs. You can start reaching out to Bible studies or groups of people that meet together that would be interested in your book. It makes it more marketable and it gives you more opportunities to market your book. So what do you think? Are you in? Is this something that you would be willing to do for your book? I have thought about this a lot and that's why my latest project, which is kind of like my life project, it has so much interactivity in it. I want it to be valuable. I want it to serve my audience. But I also wanted to set myself apart from my competition, make it more marketable and have a quality product that, that I'm proud of. So thank you guys so much for joining me for this training. As a recap, there are many, many ways you can make your book interactive. I'll share with you four ways I'm doing it. For my current book project, I'm having a discussion guide and it includes a leader's guide that walks them through how. I recommend using my book and video series. You can have reflection questions, so I also include personal reflection questions within the book. You can have video content. And for my book, I actually also have a viewer's guide in the book so they can fill it out as they're watching the videos. The videos will be available free online, but it's just another way that makes my book interactive. And then fourth, I have actually coloring pages for each chapter. Not everyone will want to use those coloring pages, and that's okay. I'll also have them available as downloads people can download and print off. But the three reasons to consider adding interactive content to your book is to make it more marketable. You can then sell to groups and to book studies, and you sell multiple versions of your book in one transaction. The second thing is to set serve your audience in a deeper way. Help them to truly apply what they're learning when they're reading something. If you're teaching them a skill like on Excel and you're telling them this and showing them screenshots and adding a bonus video is super, super valuable because they can see it in action. My teaching videos, they teach something completely different than what I've shared in my chapters. And it's in an interactive, visual way. Everyone learns differently so you can serve your audience in a deeper way. And then third, it adds value and it helps you to stand out amongst all the competition. There are so many, many books on Amazon. How are you going to stand out? How are you going to add value? How are you going to serve your audience? These are just a few easy ways you can do this and I hope that you implement some of these strategies in your book publishing. Again, my name is Shelly Hitz and I'm so excited to serve you. I have a free webinar all about publishing that that if you haven't watched it yet, you can join@shellyhits.com formulas. It's three book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. So I hope you'll join me for that. And I'll see you next time. Bye Bye.

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