Your Book is Your Business Webinar

So welcome to Your Book Is Your Business. This is public publishing strategies for nonfiction authors. So I'm guessing most of you are either wanting to start a book, have started a book, or somewhere in the book process, or maybe thinking about your second or third or fourth book and what publishing routes you want to take this time around. So I hope there's going to be something for everyone in this presentation. I'm going to start from the beginning of writing the book to the end of publishing the book. So a whole buffet of options I'm going to be presenting you tonight. I hope it's not too much information, but like I said, we can dig deeper into the things that you want to discuss the most at the end. So here's what we're going to be— here's the kind of our roadmap for this evening. I'm going to be discussing, first of all, do you have a book? And what the why is behind your book. The benefits of having a nonfiction book, which type of book is best for you, the format for nonfiction books, and then we'll look at— we'll move to traditional versus self-publishing options, and then which publishing model is best for you, and then your next steps. Okay, so that's, that's everything we're going to hit. And so let's get going. For those who don't know me, Many of you know me and have followed me throughout the years, and some of you are new. My first career is, is, or was as an attorney, a practicing attorney for many years. I took a hard left turn into the self-help industry and became a feng shui decluttering expert. That turn has some interesting stories, but that's for another day or webinar and perhaps memoir. But I, during my feng shui decluttering, I published several books. Here are, here's a snapshot of them. They're all traditionally published, although Mind Body Home, I got the rights back for that and self-published it myself. And so now I, my, my mission, my goal is to help you write, write books and become an author. I, I'm still writing books and, and I'm going to be publishing more books, but there's no reason I can't help you do the same thing. So that's, that's really what my business is all about now. I'm a, I have a self-publishing service called The Publishing Portal to help, to help you self-publish. I also am a literary agent to represent you for traditional publishing. So I have a dog in all races. I don't have a, I love both, both routes to publishing. And really the point of today is to help you make the determination for yourself of which route is best for you. And it really depends on each book, each author, but even within each author, which even each book, what makes sense to publish traditionally or self-help. So let me just, okay. Alright, so first of all, do you have a book? You know, you hear the word, do I have a book in me? You know, in fact, there's a percentage of 81% of Americans want to write a book. So most, most all of us have a book in us. But actually finishing book is— finishing a book is a whole nother, another percentage that I will look at here in a minute. But do you have a book? And if not, should you? Or if you do, should you? And the reason why I pose this question is because writing a book is an arduous and long process. There is nothing quick or easy about it. It can be simple but not easy, all right. And so it's important for you to know your why. Knowing your why is really gonna, is gonna, what's, is what's gonna take you from, well, I'll just, I'll cheat real quick, oops, and show you the only 3% of people actually finish writing their book. OK, so I want to help you get— I want to help you become one of the 3%. OK, and so to do that, knowing your why is so important. And that why, that why can be— it doesn't necessarily have to be like, I want to change the world. It could be I want to leverage my business. I want to be seen as an expert. I want to, you know, I want to find a way to, you know, to promote my podcast. You know, your why could be very monetary, monetarily based, and that's okay. But it could also be something very, you know, heart-driven of I feel strongly that my message and my method could change, could change people's lives. Or there's just this gnawing feeling I have to get this out into the world. Like you can't sleep at night kind of feeling. And so those are all really good whys, all right? Because the truth of the matter is there's no, no short-term money in writing a book. And so I have here short-term versus long-term money. And if you're a nonfiction author, you're most likely an entrepreneur of some sort. And so making money is a part of, of writing your book in some way for your business, unless you're just a blogger who, you know, wants to your voice to be heard with, you know, current affairs or whatnot. But most of us are business people to some degree and making, you know, we're working our business and the time it takes to write a book takes away from those short-term money projects, whether that's clients or, you know, making a course or creating products. Writing a book, you have to find that balance. You know, you can, you can cheat and find weekends and late nights, and certainly that's a lot of times what it takes to finish a book. But know that there is a trade-off between short-term money versus the long-term money. A book is a long-term money thing that pays off over time. Even once the book releases, You're still looking at— it's, it's, it's not, uh, until and when— until and if, um, I'll say when because I believe in you guys, um, that one day you will become a big name, and only then can you really make a lot of money off of the actual book. All right, so we're going to look at this, um, here in a minute of reasons why you would want to write a book, and they're, they're, um, not the immediate money that comes from a book but the byproduct of it. All right, so I want to get you guys in the 3% of finishing your book. And here's the next, the other numbers that are— I'm giving you all the bad news and I'm going to give you all the good news first, or second. Only 2% of published books sell more than 5,000 copies. Okay. Now, can you guess how many, what's the average number of books sold a published book sold, 500, okay. So these numbers scare the crap out of publishers, all right. And this is why with traditional publishers there's such a gatekeeping— gatekeep— they're such a gatekeeper because these numbers are not, are not that great, okay. And if the average number of copies sold is 500, that's not going to make a publisher money, right? So these are the numbers that a publisher is veering away from. All right. And, and so you do too. Okay. So regardless of which route you take, self-publishing or traditional publishing, you, you want to stay away from these numbers too. So the big point of today's webinar is you starting to think like a publisher. Whether, regardless of what route of publishing you take. All right. Because if you self-publish, you are the publisher. If you're traditionally published, you got to sell the publisher on you selling books. So it's all the same questions. All right. So we'll come back to the analysis. The benefits to having a nonfiction book. All right. So Again, this is mainly geared toward nonfiction, nonfiction writers. Of course, if you're a fiction writer, your book is still your business. You still got to sell books. You know, the only time these, these inquiries don't really matter is if you're writing perhaps a memoir for your family or just a historical account of your life for your own, for your own, for your own sake or for your family. And not going into it from a monetary perspective. So your, your nonfiction book is basically your business card, okay? It's a really, really good business card. So it's better than a business card, but it's still like a business card because it's your, your ticket in. It's your— it opens doors for you, all right? And these doors can be speaking, could be podcast interviews. It could be seen as an expert. It can reach new clients in a way that other avenues can't. It can create spinoff for course materials. It can be a way of packaging your methodology. It can be an affordable entry to your other offerings. Okay, so $15 book is a lot easier for someone to try out than a $1,500 package or program, right? And so it is a great way for people to get to know you, to people to hear your, your voice through writing, to, to see if they resonate with your, you know, with what you have to say. My books have been an amazing entry point for people to take my courses. And that really, as a nonfiction author, is the biggest benefit of your book as far as for your business. People understand books, you know, so even at a party, a social event, when people are like, you know, you know, what have you been up to? Oh, I just wrote a book. Like, "Oh, what's it about?" "Well, it's about how, you know, what herbs to take, you know, when you have the flu." Like everyone knows what a book is, right? So it's an easy conversation starter in social situations and networking opportunities. And so, you know, when I have a book that I'm, you know, that has recently come out, I'm in promotion mode, I'll always have a copy on me. Of course, this is back when we could go in public places. And you never know where conversation might go, and I just happen to have a copy in my, in my, in my bag or whatever, and not that I'm trying to sell books off myself, but it's, it's a, it's a tangible item that people understand. And it can be a launching pad for speaking career, again, for, for programs, courses, reaching new clients that otherwise wouldn't find you. So if your, if your book, if you get a nice cover, if it's got good content, it's got good marketing, social media marketing, people will find you that wouldn't otherwise find you nationally or even internationally. Then, I mean, I've, I've had so many people from all over the world, English speaking, although some of my books are in other languages, but mainly English-speaking, from other countries that have become my clients. And the only way that's happened, it's certainly not from a local talk I gave at a bookstore. It was from through my book being available all over the world. So those are some of the main benefits. I'm sure there's others that I haven't even thought of. But know that it's, it's not— your book is— you're not going to make a lot of money off the book itself. It's the, it's the byproducts that, that the book brings you. All right. So I want to look at the different types of books that, um, for nonfiction authors, and I have a little list here. Um, so prescriptive nonfiction is the, is the most common nonfiction book. Okay, and this is the how-tos, the self-help And all my books are prescriptive nonfiction. In this little photo collage here, You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Yourself, that would be prescriptive nonfiction done in a very clever branding way to where it's not so how-to and boring. And then narrative nonfiction, that would be kind of more personal essay-ish, or even, um, here's my thoughts on current affairs, the going on in the world right now. I would put Untamed in that category. Um, you know, all of these categories, these are all— they all kind of blur together, all right? So it doesn't have to be exactly one of these. They, they all kind of, um— the teaching memoir, I would put Broken Open. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that book, it's a little bit dated now, but that's a great teaching memoir by Elizabeth Lesser. You know, you can tell by the subtitle, How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. So there's a teaching element to it, although the whole book is about her story, her experience going through a divorce. And yet there's these takeaways, there's these lessons, there's these, you know, nuggets for the reader. And then a plain memoir, that would be very story-heavy. I'd say Eat, Pray, Love is a classic example of just a plain memoir. And in that memoir, she doesn't, you know, hit you over the head with these teaching moments. She embeds them within the storytelling, right? There's probably some Inheritance by Danny Shapiro, if you've read that. That's just a great memoir where it's a kind of a page-turner. It's like, what happens next? What happens next? What happened next? The overall theme being that love is, you know, thicker than blood, you know, blood doesn't matter, it's all about love, kind of being the takeaway from it. And she doesn't have to, you know, hit us over the head with that. It's It's how she tells the story. And so, you know, that is a real craft to be able to do that. Okay, so like I said, prescriptive nonfiction is the most common. It's your how-tos. But let me— oops— go a little bit deeper into this. On the left here is So this is a spectrum, okay? The spectrum going from extreme memoir— we'll call it extreme— to extreme prescriptive nonfiction, all right? And the point being that on the spectrum is story. Story is— story and prescription, and the percentage is really going to be that— that where I said the lines are blurred in these genres, this is the blurred, the blurry lines right here. A pure memoir like Eat, Pray, Love is going to be more on this extreme left side here. On the extreme right is going to be like a reference, like extreme reference book, like very, very clinical, sterile kind of book. Most likely, and better, and the best approach would be to stay in the green, okay. The point being that even your prescriptive nonfiction is going to have elements of story in it, all right? And the stories could be your stories, your experiences. It could be client stories or experiences. It could be made-up stories based on client stories. But using story is part of the teaching. And then with memoir, adding a little bit of like, here's what I learned, and so therefore you can too kind of energy. In a memoir. All right, so that's kind of a spectrum. I often get questions about what kind of— what— how the format— how should you format a nonfiction book? The easiest way is just to, you know, look on your shelf and some of your favorite nonfiction books and just go in the table of contents and see how they did it. I have here just extremely basic You know, the part 1, part 2, part 3 is a common way to structure a book. You know, it gets kind of loosely based on the 3-act structure in story. Part 1 with the call to action, part 2 being the climax, and part 3 being the resolution. You can kind of see that in nonfiction as well. The introductory, introductory material, then you really go into the method, and then part 3 would be you know, how you can apply it to your, you know, practical everyday life. So very similar, or just straight-on chapters. Okay, so again, very basic, and there's no, there's no right or wrong in how to structure a book, a nonfiction book that is. Like I said, I would pull off some of your favorites off your bookshelf and see and look at their table of contents. A lot of times there's some clever ways you can name part 1, 2, and 3 that kind of go with the, you know, overall context of your book. And then here on the right I have some general ideas of how to structure a chapter within, within the book. So with prescriptive nonfiction, you know, usually starts out with you know, here's your lesson for this chapter, which herbs to take, you know, for the common cold, and then a story. Once I was, you know, lost in the woods and almost got frostbit but came across such and such herb. I don't know, like your story, and obviously if you don't have one, then a client story or make up a story. I mean, not make it up like in a misleading way, but, you know, give an example story. And then the application, here's how to do it yourself. And then exercise, journaling points, or, you know, some kind of interactive thing is an option as well. And then for a memoir, And of course, this would be repeated for each chapter, for each, each chapter being kind of a lesson, so to speak, or prescription that you are communicating to the reader. In memoir, you, um, memoir reads much more like fiction, okay? So any fiction techniques, um, are, should be used in memoir. Uh, each chapter is more like a scene. Think of it as like a movie scene. It can have more than one scene in each chapter, but you need to have— think of it like a scene. So for example, if the scene where you tell your husband you want a divorce and it's very dramatic and, you know, things come out or whatever, that would be a scene. And then you, if it's— you would have perhaps a something to kind of wrap it up, wrap up that chapter, a little takeaway. Unless you're in the throes of some action, then you could continue on to the the next chapter. But, you know, at some point kind of throwing in, you know, your takeaways along the way. Okay, so again, very basic, but I just, you know, a lot of people sometimes it's, um, you know, keeping it simple is helpful. I pref— you know, I call this on the left, I call the, this, this structure your, you know, outline, chapter outline. Table of Contents. I call it my roadmap, and I personally need a roadmap, or much prefer, and have always had a roadmap when writing my books, coming up with the structure, the outline, and before I really dig in and take off into the book. That is how I do it, and it's, it's, it could be different for, for you. With nonfiction, I find that you need, you know, to have a good idea of your structure before you before you jump in. With memoir or fiction writing, it could be a little bit more of an adventure where you take off into the woods without a map and see where things go, and just the process of itself is an adventure. With nonfiction, prescriptive nonfiction, I find— I feel like it'd be really challenging to do it that way because usually prescriptive nonfiction, there's a method or there's a there's a, if there's a how-to, then there's a way to do it, you know. And so that should be communicated really well early on. All right. And so I, you know, you can mix the chapters around or even the parts as you move along to see, oh, that makes more sense to have that before that, and so on. But, but having a, having a general, generally good, I mean, you might have to make some detours and some pit stops, but having a map I find is very helpful. Okay, so that's a snapshot of the writing process. Now I'm gonna segue putting the writing with the publishing. Here's the big picture. And so the first step, as I just mentioned, creating your concept, your theme, your outline, and then start writing. All right. Um, And then when you get to a certain point, by that certain point meaning a strong chapter outline, you've gotten some chapters, you, you got the gist, you got the full gist of this book, then you start to consider the publishing, your publishing options, okay. Because if you're gonna, if you want to go the traditional publishing route, you need to start thinking about a book proposal, okay. A book proposal is essential for nonfiction books. And it can be very time-consuming, and it's, it's, it's not needed for self-publishing because you are your publi— if you yourself, your publisher, requires a book proposal, then I would give yourself one. Otherwise, you don't. It can be very helpful though in getting clear on, on how to sell the book. We'll look at some other ways that you need a book proposal in a minute. Within the book proposal, you, you need at least two well, well-developed, well-edited chapters. So you need to be far— in addition to the chapter outline and chapter summary of the book. So you need to get far enough along to craft a really good book proposal. But once you get to that point, you, you know, you don't have to finish the book, all right. Memoir is kind of, kind of, kind of a little bit more like fiction where you want to have it, you know, more written. But for prescriptive nonfiction, prescriptive nonfiction is a little bit like putting together furniture. So I've been putting together a lot of furniture lately and, you know, like it partly, partway through the instructions it tells you to keep the bolts loose, you know, while everything's still shifting and getting in place. That's kind of how step 2 is. All right. And it's not until, and the why is because if you, if you sign with a traditional publisher, they might love your concept, but they might want some tweaks or to focus more on this part or change this around. So you want to keep it a little bit, those bolts a little bit loose, um, to where, um, for later on to tighten them for, for the finishing the book process. All right, so step 3 would be put your, excuse me, pitch your book proposal, um, to agent or publisher. And then, um, you know, while you're in the pitch, while you're pitching, um, you can keep writing And then of course at some point you have to finish the book. So that's generally, you know, a big picture process of writing and publishing. Now let's go into the different publishing options. All right. So on the left here we have traditional publishing, and that's— you consist of the big five publishers, your Simon Schuster, Penguin, and so forth. And there's medium-sized houses. And then small publishers. All right, I would also throw in small publishers as university presses. All right. And then you have what's called hybrid publishing. And then I'll come back to that in a second. And then self-publishing is obviously self-publishing on your own, where you become the publisher using print-on-demand services. And you can DIY it where you're doing it all yourself, or you can hire a service such as the Publishing Portal to do all of the, all the steps for you, for, for obviously a fee. And so we're going to look in more detail at the traditional and self-publishing models. I'm not going to spend any more time than what I'm about to spend on for hybrid publishing. Hybrid publishing is exactly what it sounds, part traditional and part self-publishing. There, I don't want to talk bad about hybrid publishing because there's some great hybrid publishers out there. However, there's also a lot of not honest hybrid publishers out there, okay? And so the point of hybrid pub, the concept is really good. It's like they take care of, well, you pay them some money and they take care of the costs of the self, that you'd otherwise pay for self-publishing, but they also take some of your royalties that you would otherwise be getting with self-publishing. So it's like you, you know, you're paying not as much money as you would with self-publishing to a self-publishing service, but it's not free either. And in exchange you're giving away some of your royalties. And so you can, you can see how there would be a wide spectrum there of, of things that go fishy. All right, of what, how much your royalties are, how much you're paying them, you know, how is the distribution different from self-publishing? Is it any different from self-publishing? Are you just self-publishing and then also getting your royalties? So there's lots of, lots of ways to take advantage of people that are not, that this industry can be very confusing. If hybrid publishers also can kind of lure you into a contest or some way to think that your book is special, when really just going to make money off of, off of basically self-publishing it for you. If you find yourself being attracted to that route, I would have someone such as myself read over the contract to make sure you're— that it's fair. Okay. So that's all I'm going to say about hybrids. So let's look in more detail about traditional— the traditional publishing route. You will need a book proposal, all right. And your book proposal is a business plan. And there's, there's, um, I, I'm probably going to have a class later on at some point, maybe next month or coming down the road, of, um, doing a book proposal. There's some great resources out there. I mean, there's obviously books, there's a million, uh, really resources, uh, how to do a book proposal. And there's not any one way to do a proposal, but there are certain elements to that you definitely want in your book proposal. And then you want about 2 chapter, sample chapters. And your book proposal needs to be really well edited. It, you know, shouldn't be any typos. I mean, it's, it ends up being, you know, with those sample chap— well, without the sample chapters, you're looking at about a 25-page document, um, around in there, in addition to the sample chapters. And you need this book proposal whether you're going to try to get an agent or whether you're going to go directly to a publisher to get it, represent yourself basically. So either way you will need a book proposal. And the query letter, also called pitch letter, accompanies the book proposal. In most cases an agent or publisher is going to want the query letter in an email, and then they will let you know if they want your book proposal based on your query letter. That's the general format, okay. As far as working, going directly to a publisher, there are— most all small presses will allow you to go directly to the publisher. Some, about 50/50 of the mid-sized houses will as well, but the Big Five you cannot they will not let you submit without an agent. All right, once you get your deal, the publishing contract is where it sets out your advance, your royalties, and deadlines. All right, so that's all in a nice publishing contract. Of course, that's negotiated with— between the agent and your publisher, or if you're representing yourself, between you and the publisher. Okay, let's look at self-publishing, how to do that, really quick. I don't know who Laurie Lesko is, but this quote is brilliant. "The good news about self-publishing is you get to do everything yourself. The bad news is you get to do everything yourself." And that could not be more true. Any of you who have self-published, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So here's everything that makes a, makes a book. All right, these are all the aspects that the traditional publishing house will do in-house and takes care of. If you're self-publishing, then you, you are in charge of each of these steps, or paying a service to take care of these steps for you. All right, so editing. This is probably the number one thing that separates a a typical self-published book from a traditionally self-help, uh, self, excuse me, a self-published book from a traditionally published book. Editing the actual content of the book. Um, we just really underestimate how much our books need to be edited. Even if you're a good writer, it doesn't matter. Um, there are a myriad of editors. There's content, also called developmental editor. There's copy editor, copy editing, line editing, and proofreading. I would say if you just had to pick one, I mean, you definitely need it proofread because typos, I mean, do I need to say anything else? But copy editing is, you know, helping your sentences get structured right. This is communicating well to the reader. That kind of thing. So those two are the most important. Now, how does the book get from your Word document to a nice pretty 6x9 book with chapter headings and, you know, nice fonts and chapter table of contents that make sense? That's all the Dentier Designer does. Typesetting, formatting, different names for the same thing. Also converting that to an ebook form, format, would also be, also include that. And then your cover design. Now your cover design is more than just a cover. It's the full jacket. It's the COVID the spine, and the back of the book. So it's a full, full jacket. And that, you know, your cover is going to make or break your book. Again, probably up there with editing as far as what makes the difference between a self-published book and a traditional published book. The details such as your ISBN registration, your barcode, US copyright registration, all of that needs to be taken care of. And then the distribution, which is your, the print-on-demand services. This is how the book gets to, gets on Amazon, gets to Walmart, gets to Apple Books.. And there's 3 services that are the big ones to do that: Lulu, Amazon, IngramSpark. I work with all of those in, in the publishing portal, my publishing portal business. I use all 3 of those for different reasons, and we can talk more about those if anyone wants to. But these, you know, these services are the best thing that's happened for self-publishing, where you don't have to have a bunch of you know, 1,000 books in your closet and mail them out yourself. These services can now allow your book to get into bookstores and libraries. You have to do a little bit, a little bit of legwork to do that, but it's doable. All right, and of course getting on Amazon, Barnes Noble, any online outlet. All three of these can get you on, okay. There's advantages and disadvantages of each, which I'm happy to discuss. But know that those options are there for, for self-publishing, okay. So you can compete with the, with the big, with the big leagues, with the big houses when it comes to online. All right. So let's look at this a little bit more closely, the, the comparison between traditional and self. In traditional publishing, no out-of-pocket costs unless you need to hire like an editor or someone for your book proposal to, in order to get the publisher. But, you know, this is really the, the best part of it—no out-of-pocket cost. In fact, you might and probably will get it in advance, you know. So you're actually not— not only do you not have to pay for it, but they actually give you money up front. So that for sure is, you know, what's luring about traditional publishing. Now the advance could vary from zero to six figures, literally that, that kind of range, depending on, depending on, well, I'll show you in a minute what, what it depends on. And then for self-publishing, you pay out-of-pocket costs. So you become the publisher. You're paying for the things that the publisher pays for. All right. But the benefit is you get all royalties available. All right. Whereas in traditional publishing, you're only getting— 10% was kind of, I would say, the average. All right. And then ebooks, a little bit more. And of course, foreign rights and all that's going to vary. But the royalty structure is definitely— so it's like, um, it's a trade-off. You're not paying anything up front, but you're getting less down the road, whereas self-publishing, you're paying a lot up front and you get more down the road. All right. Um, now when I say all royalties go available, go to you, uh, that doesn't mean you're getting 100% of what the sticker prices, you have to deduct how much it costs to print the book, or for the print-on-demand service to print your book. A typical, you know, typical paperback about this size, with this is about what, 350 pages paperback, black and white interior, you're going to pay about $4 printing costs on that. So you're going to deduct that from your, from the price, and then you're also going to need to deduct, so any third-party seller— Amazon, Walmart, Barnes Noble— these are online, you know, online third-party sellers, which most of your sales are probably going to come from. They all are going to take commission from that as being the, the kind of like, so that's probably about 30% of your sticker. So, you know, there are those, those costs that are going to be deducting from. Now, over here in traditional publishing, you know, if your book— let's say you have 10% royalty commissions. Say the book is, you know, $15 book. That means you're getting about $1.50 royalty per book, more or less. Okay. So like I said, trade-offs. Self-publishing, you also don't have any agent commissions, so you're, you're keeping that as well. Traditional publisher makes all the creative decisions. Self-publishing, you make the creative decisions. In traditional publishing, they own the rights that include, or could include, subsidiary rights such as movie, film, podcasts, merchandise. That's all negotiable. That's one of the reasons why you want an agent representing you. Whereas self-publishing, you own all the IP. Now traditional publishing is better for brick and mortar, being like your physical stores, getting your book in physical stores, aka bookstores. Of course that's arguable these days. How much does that matter right now? Not much. In the future, that's unknown. So right now, you know, self-publishers kind of have a level playing field. With traditional publishers. Especially with ebook, ebooks being on the rise since COVID Again, there's a, it's evening the playing field there as well. Let's see, oh, if you self-publish then you control the price, how much you want to charge. You can run a Christmas special, you can run a, you know, St. Patrick's Day special, if it's about beer or whatever, you know, you can plan these things, change the price. You can run sponsored ads on Amazon. If it's under the— if it's through the traditional publisher, it's up to them to do what they want to and when. And then of course time is the biggest, one of the biggest differences. Traditional publishing, we're looking at a 1 to 2 year process from the time you sign the contract. Okay. And so, whereas in self-publishing, we're looking at a 6 to 10 week process, that variable really being how much editing it needs. So, you know, if your book is timely, if it's, you know, if you have the answer to COVID, then self-publishing is probably the way to go, you know, or like you need a book about the election results or something, you know, that you have the secret of who's going to win the election and you want it out tomorrow, then, you know, you need to go self-publishing route. All right, how am I doing on time? Oh, sorry. Okay, um, who's going to buy your book? So this is, this is where, again, you got to start thinking like the publisher. And again, whether you're going to be proposing, doing a book proposal to pitch your book, or whether you're going to be your publisher, these are all questions you need to know. And the clear you are on these answers, if you're going the traditional route, the better your advance is gonna be, okay? Who is gonna buy your book? Who's your target audience? What is your platform? I'm sure all of you have heard the word platform. Well, why? Because why do you want a good platform? Because you're gonna get a better advance because that's how you're gonna sell your book. The publisher is gonna wanna know how you're gonna sell this book. They might, say they're going to do all these things to help you, to help sell your book. And I'm sure there's things that they are going to do. But at the end of the day, they want to know how you're going to sell this book. Do you have in-person events? Are you a speaker or do other in-person events? By the way, if you're self-publishing and have in-person events, then you will get the total profit minus the print costs of your book because there's no third party involved. Okay. So if you're going to a big keynote lecture in the back room, you get 200 copies that you're going to sell, that's pure profit. Online sales. How are you going to convert online sales? So these are all questions that the publisher is going to think about and base their profit and loss statement. And that's what determines if they're going to give you a deal, and if so, how much the advance is going to be. They actually do a P&L sheet to determine that based on your book proposal, how many books do they think you can sell. If you have a track record of a previous book, they're going to obviously consider that. At the end of the day, this is a business to them and it's about the numbers. And if you're self-publishing, it's the same thing for you. It's a business and you need to do the numbers. Now, if you're not really care to make money off the book, which I've mentioned is not, probably isn't the goal, then there's other questions to consider. Number 1, do I have the money to pay for self-publishing? In other words, does it make sense for me to absorb this marketing expense? You know, do I see it paying off? Do I have other products that this can boost? Will this help launch my speaking career? All right. Do I already have a built-in market? With— will my existing tribe support the sale of this book without the need for wider distribution? So this is the question you need to ask. Why? Because this is also the question the publisher is going to be asking, and you are the publisher. If I were a publisher, would I invest $5,000 into my book? Because really, between the after the COVID design, the editor, you know, even if it's in-house, the marketing. The publisher is investing money into this book and they need a payoff. If I can't get an agent or publisher, do I have the conviction to self-publish? In other words, how much do I believe in this book? How much do I think this message needs to get out in the world? That goes back to your why. And then how much do I believe this book can help grow my business? So if you're not, if you're okay not making money, how, how much do I think this can help launch my, my business, my career? These are all questions for you to think about. Okay, just really quick, self-publishing is not just for new authors. It's for accomplished authors too. I just finished publishing the trilogy to Like Water for Chocolate. So Laura Escobar, her Like Water for Chocolate sold over 6 million copies, and she has chosen to self-publish, all right? So that's what I mean, like every author, which with each book, that's an inquiry of whether it makes sense to self-publish or traditionally publish. For her, it was about creative control. Tita's Diary is a It's a diary, it looks like a diary. I actually have a copy here. The whole book is a diary with exquisite art throughout. And then the third of the trilogy that comes out probably this week, The Clothes I Pass, has a whole soundtrack with it with QR codes throughout. So for her, it was about the artistry. You know, she could have gotten her— her former book was with Pingouin. Penguin Random House, but she knew that they would, they would make it just a regular book, and that's not what she wanted. So that's what I mean, there's considerations. Here's some of the other authors that I've helped publish. Well, the first one's my book, and I put that there to make the point that that book was first traditionally published. I never liked the COVID that they chose, and so when I got the rights back, I took creative control over it, and I now love Love my cover. Tom's book, Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams, this is his third self-published book. So he has his own platform, his own tribe around relationships with making the royalties that he wants to be making. I put this third one here for example. This is an organization. They already have a built-in tribe. They already have their built-in events. And so no need for a publisher. Their book, even though it's kind of stretched in this image, their cover looks— you would definitely think it's a traditionally published book. It's been fully edited. It is the quality of a traditionally published book, which is really the goal of my business, The Publishing Portal. So just to wrap up, here is contact information if anyone's interested in my services. I do book coaching and write other writing services. My self-publishing service is thepublishingportal.com, and then I do literary representation as well to help pitch to traditional publishers. MorrisLiterary.com is where to go for submission information there. Okay, whoo! All right, I hope I did not completely overwhelm you guys. So let me look at the Q&A. Okay, all right. Emmanuel says, "Do you have to pitch a book when self-publishing? If so, do I have to finish a book once published? For the most part, no. That being said, for my, for my self-publishing service, you know, I want my portfolio, my books, to be of really good quality. So, you know, there are a lot of self-published inquiries that I have passed on, but generally speaking, the answer is no. Um, there's other, you know, other, um, more, um, less boutique, uh, self-publishing services, uh, that will kind of just take anything. Um, but I'm sure your book is of a great quality, so I'm sure that's not an issue. Um, Amanda says, how long can you expect to spend writing a prescriptive nonfiction from the moment you have a first outline? Oh, great question. Well, obviously that's going to depend on your schedule, your life, what you've got going on. Do you have a full-time job? Or, you know, is it, you know, during COVID people have had more time. You know, how, gosh, I, you know, my, I've written all my books from, from that point, from the first outline and after, well, from my book proposal stage and getting a contract, I've written all my books within 3 months. They're like purely prescriptive. They're about, you know, 60,000 words or so. So, you know, but that's, that was, I cleared my schedule, didn't take clients, and just really focused for those 3 months. I've heard other, other nonfiction authors say something similar. And so, you know, with, with nonfiction, it's stuff you kind of, you know, it's stuff you've practiced and have a lot of experience with that's kind of at your fingertips, unless it's like a research-heavy book. I feel like nonfiction is a lot— well, this is why I teach nonfiction, is because it comes easy to me, whereas fiction— there's a reason I'm not teaching fiction. It does not come easy to me. So I could crank out a nonfiction book much quicker than a fiction book. Okay. Rachel says, curious if you do marketing consulting, setting up a platform and organizing steps prior to publishing or releasing a book. Um, I don't right now, Rachel. Um, I do have some marketing services that, um, that I attach to, um, to the self-publishing, um, service, but it's more of I can get strategic ads in strategic places for you. But the brand building is not my, not my zone of genius. Cynthia says, how to find the best publisher for your book? Is there an online list of publishers such as Self-Help, DIY Garden Design? Yeah, so of course there's the Writer's Market book that has a list of all the publishers You know, it can— even if you get the 2020 version, it can still be a little outdated. Publishers Marketplace, publishersmarketplace.com, is the best resource. It's— you have to— it's free to a certain extent, and then to get behind the curtain is a $25 a month fee. And you can spend a lot of— you can spend many days researching those questions. These, of course, are things that a literary agent does for you and can kind of hone in on the best publishers to help narrow that down. But, you know, another great way to do is just, you know, finding books that are similar genre as yours and seeing who published it and looking at the— particularly the, you know, all— most publishers have imprints underneath them. So, like all the Big Five publishers have multiple imprints underneath them. So even if it says Tartu Perigi, that's Random House, for example. So it can get kind of confusing. But you can really quickly find the imprint and the publisher's name in any book in the copyright page. Or even on the Amazon listing. Pet books. If you can ask that question more specifically, Cynthia. I have had a lot of people pitch me pet books lately. All right, Jess, Jesse says, I'm sorry if I might have missed this during your presentation. However, do you typically deal with first-time authors or people on their second or third books. I assume you're referring to as a literary agent. I'm open to, I'm open to, if it's good content, I'm open to it. A good, it's a good hook and good content, I'm open to, to anyone. Patty says, what are the programs you're offering right now to help people with this stuff? Well, part of me, my webinar today is seeing what stuff you need help with, and so if there are certain areas that kind of veer off from today's webinar, I'd love to hear what those things are so that I can bring you guys some content, more content down the road. I do have some courses I'm developing, they're in the works right now, of the writing process. I have another one on book proposals, but I'm, yeah, today I intentionally kind of gave you a buffet because I want to hear what you guys are needing from here, so. I'd love to hear what that is, Patty. Um, all right, Angela says, which came first for you, the books you wrote or the courses that you offered to teach on the topics you wrote about? Oh, great question. Um, I'd say both. I mean, that's a great, that's a great point because that's, again, that's one of the The benefits of a book for nonfiction authors is that you can repurpose things. And obviously a course is a more applicable or, you know, hands-on approach, how to do things, like, you know, how to do things for yourself in a very linear course-like way that can go deeper than the book. And so you can repurpose things. It's not that you're, you know, cheating and you're carrying— it's like you're presenting it in a different way but using the same content. Content. So it's very smart to repurpose material. I've had my book Clutter Intervention started as a blog post. And it was like, you know, I don't remember what it was called, but for 4 things that you something, something, something. And those 4 things became 4 chapters, and then I added more from there. So, and as far as courses, I'd say most of my courses came from my books. And with courses, again, with Clutter Intervention, I did a 9-day decluttering course that accompanied the book that, you know, if you bought the book, then you got the free course kind of thing. And then after the book came out, I did a course now that's, that's actually you can download for free on my website right now, Clutter Intervention Course, that goes deeper. Or at least accompanies the book and can kind of take you deeper into a hands-on type of way. But I would say for the most part, the courses come out of the books. Oh, thank you, Jean. Appreciate that. And Rachel. Let's see, Linda says, "You mentioned $4 printing cost for a book that's probably 360 pages. Is this a real number?" It's an approximation. You can, if you, if anyone wants to know how much a book would cost, you can just go to lulu.com and fill in their, and go to, they have your printing, you just plug in, you know, paperback, white paper, 250 pages, 6x9, and it'll right there give you the actual number it would cost to print the book. And that's for whether you order 1 book or 5,000 books, is the great thing about the print-on-demand services now. Okay, what other— I think I hit all of the current questions. Thank you, Des. Any, any other questions about anything I covered or any requests on going things I didn't cover or to expand on things that, that you'd like more information on? Patti says, I want to be in a live step-by-step group coaching program, 3 months Zero to Launch. Okay. All right. So, uh, see what I can do there. So yeah, hope this gave you guys a lot of things to think about. Weekly accountability. I do have a writing group that is, that is, it's all about accountability, just as a place for us to gather. That information is, if you go to tishamorris.com and go to writing, you'll see the writing group option there. Marina says, what do you personally enjoy most or find most fulfilling about writing prescriptive nonfiction books? I am a how-to, like, I'm a self-help junkie. I love how-to books. I, and so therefore I love writing and sharing information with people. I like putting, I like taking kind of complex topics and presenting them in an easy articulable, articulable. See, this is why I write, because I don't talk as well as I write. Take concepts that could otherwise be very difficult into accessible bite-size formats for folks. So that's what I most enjoy about prescriptive nonfiction. Tricia says, what data does your publishing site provide self-publishers? Is there buyer information gathered and given to the author? Oh, um, so once everything's uploaded and everything, it's out into the world, the account goes in your name. So you're, um, So I don't, I don't take any royalties. The accounts turn over to you and you get the, all the statements, everything from the royalties go into your bank account and all that good stuff. So the, you know, IngramSpark, they, they give you monthly statements from every country in the world, monthly situs Amazon. So yeah, that's usually a monthly printout PDF that they send you. Emmanuel says, what advice can you give a new writer like myself developing writing style? That's a good question. You know, we don't think of nonfiction writing as very crafty, but it really, it really, my writing has, has really evolved greatly. When I look at my first book, I kind of cringe when I read it. Each book I've written just got better and better and better, and still lots of room for growth for sure. And so writing, just, just writing, and as you write, it's, you're, your best writing style is your speaking. And your personality coming through your writing. So if you were, let's say, you're an Ayurvedic specialist and you're at a social event telling your friends or your people you met about, you know, how you help people with Ayurvedic techniques, and you're telling them about it, that's your best writing style. Talking to your audience as if they're your best friend and you're sharing the information with them. On a more technical aspect, you know, finding other authors, the books that you really resonate with, that you like their voice, so to speak, I find really helpful. But yeah, your best writing style is you, and finding that and getting more comfortable with with doing that, and it's not easy. I, for me, I came from an attorney background, so my legal writing was what I started out writing at. And so, um, this is why my trajectory— eventually I do want to be a fiction writer, uh, or publishing fiction, um, because that's such a huge trajectory from the legal writing. Legal writing is obviously very technical. Your personality means nothing. You know, you're citing case law and giving reasons for it, and your personality is inconsequential, in fact distracting. And so even just writing nonfiction where I'm, you know, sharing some experience of my own experiences in the book was a huge leap for me. And so it's taken a lot of practice and my own vulnerability to even do that. Okay, Monica says, does one have more reach than, or just depends on the amount of work involved? So traditional publishing definitely has a, has a broader reach for brick-and-mortar stores, like bookstores, actually the Barnes Noble store and so forth. For sure. And that being said, you know, even a bookstore is a limited size and they can't carry every single book out in the world, obviously. And so even that's limited, but as far as the online world, it is an evil— excuse me, an evil— an even playing field. So, you know, all of my all of my Mind Body Home book, my traditionally published books, they all show up at the same places online, okay. Bookshop.org is one of my favorite now online places to order books from. They support local bookstores, as opposed to ordering everything from Amazon. And so through the— through Lulu or Amazon, IngramSpark. IngramSpark's actually my favorite. They all get your book to these, all these same online third-party places. So in that way, it is a, it is a, an even playing field. Now whether they do more marketing on your behalf or not, that's going to depend on the publisher. The big, the big fives are going to do, going to do more marketing for you than a small press. And these are some considerations in whether to sign with a particular publisher or not. So I would do some, some research on the publisher and see what their track records are. Brooke says, do you feel about limiting content as a publisher/writer, does that lower the 2%? Have a business partner who doesn't want any kind of sexual content content in any books. Completely disagree. Not 100% sure about your question, Brooke. Yeah, I'm not sure about— I'm not sure your question exactly. It sounds like a genre, a genre issue of what genre that would fall into. And getting on the same page as the business partner. Were your book sales ever discouraging, or did you always have faith? Wow, that's a, that's a good question. You know, there's a very well-known experience that all authors have of postpartum depression when your book comes out. And every author experiences it. And my first book, like my first baby, was the hardest, was the biggest depression. Because you— it's something you've looked forward to all your life, and you wake up the next day that it's been published and nothing's changed in your life whatsoever. And so in the beginning there, I think, I could, I would say yes. As each book came out that I didn't really care so much about the book sales. By then I understood a lot of what I've been telling you guys in today's webinar, that it's really the business card. And until unless you become a big breakout hit, which usually a breakout hit's not really a breakout, it's kind of like you know, the musician's album that hits it big and they're like a new artist, but then they've had 3 albums before that that no one has ever heard of, and they're not really new, they've just been doing it a long time, and finally one of their albums broke out. That's kind of like what authors and writers are like as well. So I think as the years gone by and the realities, the known realities are more known for me, that's become less and less and less of an issue, and now just, you know, celebrating the book coming out and information getting out. All right, Brooke says like Christian book versus— yeah, I think that's probably a genre question, Brooke. If it's traditional publisher publishing, you're going to find the publisher for your genre, whether it's, you know, Harlequin with sex scenes or the Christian market. If it's self-publishing, then it doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want. You can mix the two. Very exciting. All right, so Patty's got to run. I think we can, uh, we'll use that as our cue to wrap things up. Um, are there some— let's see here, did I miss something? I think I got it all. Oh, um, oh, Ashley says, for memoir, do you have any upcoming webinars on the topic of preventing defamation? Yes, uh, nobody writes a memoir because— yeah, um, yes, actually I do. I have a, um, on my crowded desktop, I would show you, I have a webinar that I've been working on called Legal Red Flags in Memoir Writing for that exact topic. So yes, I do. So your comment, question is helping me move forward with that now. Yeah, yeah, that's a really big issue, yeah, of, of, of, well, legal red flags in memoir writing. Yep. All right, thank you guys so much for being here and talking about my favorite topics. What could be more fun than that? So I really appreciate you being here, and thanks for your wonderful questions and your participation. And I hope to see you and perhaps work with some of you down the road, or read your books. So everyone have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your evening or day, and I really appreciate it. All right, take care.