From Podcast Booth To Bookshelf: The Podcaster's Book Launch Blueprint With Juliet Clark

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found, and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazard and I have Juliet Clark here. And for those of you who know and who have listened to feed your brand many times, she's been a coaching crasher. I don't know, maybe seven, eight times, something like that, over the years. And Juliet and I used to do a live stream on Monday nights. We used to do it, and we had cocktails and topics on marketing. So we used to have. What is it called? The Monday marketing mixer or some like, mmm thing that we had. So Juliet Clark has Superbrand Publishing. It is a hybrid publisher. She can go into great detail about all the things that it does, but her experience helping authors launch their books is just tremendous. There are so many pitfalls. Content issues, there are contract issues, There are marketing issues. Marketing is the number one. And she has something fabulous called traffic school. And traffic school for authors is really about getting traffic to your book. It kind of sounds like exactly what we need for our podcasts too. And Juliet talks about that and interviews great authors in promote, profit and publish, which is her podcast that. I don't know. How many episodes are you in on that one?

I just went over 300. I think I'm at, like, 305. You guys were my guests for 300. That's right.

That's right. We did the 300th. I forgot about that. And so, yeah, it was only like a month ago. You know, it feels like. Anyway, that's amazing. So congratulations. 300 episodes. Fantastic. And it works, right? It's been working for you. It serves your authors and it gives you lots of content and it's moving things through to get attention and audience, but it's not enough.

Yeah, mostly I use it for content I'm not really big on. I don't consider, like, that a hub of ROI is what I get from. From it. That is my roi, which is just like a book.

So let's talk about this, because today what we really wanted to talk about is the podcaster's book launch print. Right? Like, so we're really talking about this idea of if I already have all these episodes and all this content. Do I already have a book?

You probably do. Books, I would say, for podcasters, are about solving problems. And if you have a lot of episodes, you probably have a key point that you coach or is your message that you have done in several different ways that you can take eight or 10 of those podcasts, especially if they're using you guys, where they're transcribed. You have a book, you can take that transcription and sort of finesse it, add more information if you want to, or take some out and you have a smaller book most of the time.

Well, and when I did my first book that never got published, it was exactly that, right? You were speaking into a microphone, you were speaking your way to your book. So it's not all that different. But now you've just done it over time instead of sort of sat down in that. I don't know, I felt like it was contrived when I was doing it for. In that way. But when I do my podcast, it doesn't feel contrived at all. It. It flows.

It does. And I think it flows because it's just your natural. You're being yourself. When people sit down and write, they're worried about grammar, they're worried about spelling. And I will be really transparent. I'm not a great writer. I'm a good storyteller. And so when I wrote my fiction novels, I didn't care about grammar and spelling. I would just have a rock star 3000 word day. I will admit that later when I went through editing and went back, I would think I had a great writing day and I'd go, oh, my God, what the hell were you thinking? Because, like, pair two people would be P, E, A, R, which I know better. But in that moment, you're just writing away. So I think that's okay.

The AI translate does that anyway.

We didn't have AI back then. But I think the reason that it comes out so much better from the transcription is because you're being yourself. So the way you speak comes through, the way your personality comes through. And a lot of times when we're just writing from a, like an outline, we try to be too formal and the real us doesn't come out.

That's what I was going to say. I think it's an energy issue, because what I do is I've seen, like, people who are great speakers, and then I go to read their book and I think this is the most boring thing I've ever read. Like, it's so awful. It's too, I'm going to say, like too static.

Yeah. Not only that I won't mention who the authors are, but you and I have had discussions about boring and I've heard that story so many times I could tell it myself now.

That's right, yeah. Like it's a story and it's exactly the same way. So. But I also think that even with ghostwriters, I find that same thing. So, like someone who did that speak to it, but spoke to a ghostwriter and then the ghostwriter wrote it, it loses the energy somewhere in that translation.

Yeah, it definitely does. And I will be the first to tell you, I ghostwrote one book. I would never do it again. And it was because of that, because the author didn't help me. The quote author didn't help me much with it. And it came out sounding more like my research than it did her personality.

Interesting. Well, how can we avoid that? By using our podcast. What are ways that we can use it to create this sort of blueprint for the book?

So I would say first thing, what is the problem that you want to solve with the book? And then go back through your episodes and choose, I would say up to 10. Because you don't want to make a book too long. These days. People don't have the attention span for a 300 page book anymore.

So we're not choosing 24 chapters.

Exactly, exactly. So go through and then start organizing what that topic is, what podcast you have. If you don't already have them transcribed, you can easily send them over to someplace like Fiverr the whole recording and have it transcribed and then put those together and start writing from there. Were there things maybe you left out in an episode that you'd like to add? Have things changed since then? I mean, with me with 300 episodes, I would say probably a lot of the material from 2018 when I started may not be relevant anymore. And you do want to keep it relevant, so it's much easier. So anybody who's written a book, you can just sit there and you can stare at that blank page. And you can stare and you can stare. That's why they have writing prompts. But if you actually have the material in front of you, you already have it mostly written. It's just a matter of, of finessing and cleaning up some grammar and making it a more organized and flow. So you may need to do some segues between one podcast episode and the next one for a chapter. So it really cuts down the time to create a book as well, to.

Write One, Yeah, I think that those segues are really important because I think that that's what I found was sometimes it doesn't flow in the way that you want it from chapter to chapter. If you don't, like, write a new introduction and write a new clothes, that kind of leads you into what's next. So if you're laying it out and really looking at it from that perspective and then filling in those gaps, that's going to really help you. But for me, I found that if I wrote those, they were bad. And so I instead treated it like I was going to do a new introduction to the podcast or a new close, because I always do my intro and close separately. Except here on Feed your Brand I do, because we do it live, so I have to do it at once. But I always do it on the binge factor that way. And so I would sit down and I would do those like bookends to the chapter and then have that transcribed and then rewrite from there because otherwise it didn't feel like the same energy.

One of the nice things now too is you can take, and we teach this in our AR book marketing class, is you can actually take those transcribed and put them into something like perplexity and say, write me a segue or write me a conclusion or write me this. And when you do that, it will actually read that whole manuscript that you just put in and write some pretty good stuff that you can start even with that.

That's great. Save some shortcuts here. I love it. So what are some things, though, that people do wrong when they're sort of laying out their book?

Well, I'm not a book developer, but here's what I will tell you that my book developers tell me too much detail, especially with the spiritual books. People want to know about your journey, but they don't want to know every darn detail about your journey. Like telling people that you threw up from Ayahuasca is probably not going to be something that people want to read if they're eating and reading. So too much information, not being vulnerable enough. That's another thing too, because your book, when you're writing that book and it's about your journey, I've had many authors that'll tell me a story, but they'll say, oh, I didn't put it in my book because I'd be embarrassed. And when we actually have them put it in the book, people write reviews and say, that was the best tidbit. Like, I just felt like I've been there. I Know her. I know what's going on.

That's the one thing I want to mention here, is that a lot of times we do that in our podcast a lot better. Which is why I think that you, using your podcast episode, you are a little bit more vulnerable on the air. You're a little more in that storytelling mode that is a little more dynamic and energetic. And you're not censoring yourself because it's just, like, coming out of your mouth. Right. And so that's why you don't want to edit those things out. Keep them in. That's what Juliet's encouraging you to do.

Yeah. And if you listen to my podcast tmi, I probably tell you guys way too much. Okay, we can turn it off now. The other thing is jargon. This is the thing I hear from every single book developer, is you're writing about a particular topic and you come in with jargon related to the industry that you're writing the book about and those people that are there to learn. Unless you're writing a book that's like a train the trainer, and they're already indoctrinated into that language, you're going right over the heads of these people. And you really have to meet people where they're at, which requires you to know that audience inside and out. And if you have a podcast already, you probably have a really good idea who your listeners are. And that is the hardest part when we work with authors who don't have content and don't have a podcast, is that they don't really know their audience inside now. And that's why most of their businesses are struggling as well.

So what about if somebody has a podcast that's all interviews? What is some best plans or best practices and things that they might want to try and do to create a good book?

So I would say have people who are influencers that others will be interested in hearing their viewers. What is that book? Something Titans. The book was like this thick. And I would never buy an interview book, and I can't remember who wrote it, but I actually read that because there were influencers. They had great business tips. So make sure that people know who the people are you're interviewing because you're going to be highlighting.

And that's okay if they're in an industry and people know them.

Right, Right. So you and I have talked about real estate in the past, and if you're someone who's listening to real estate, pot. Thank you. Titles of Titan, Tim Ferriss. Thanks, Nazan. If you're like in the real estate industry, people know who the podcasters are, people know who the big guys are, the coaching programs, the Tom Ferries, the Mike Ferries, the Duncan, Todd Duncan programs, if they're mortgage brokers. So if it's people like that, then your audience is going to automatically know who they are, and they're going to be interested in seeing what these big players have to say.

Yeah. So that's really important. So you want to choose someone who's not only going to do a good job of sharing your book later, because you definitely want that to happen.

Right.

But you also need to make sure that their name is actually getting someone to read it and listen to. And hopefully you'll also do the audible version, so listen to it as well.

Right? Yeah. And that's another good point about if you're going to do your own book as a podcaster, people have an expectation, because they hear your voice, that you're going to record that book. And that can be a monumental task, recording your own book. Because a lot of times you don't realize that you may speak on a podcast all the time, but when you're actually reading a book, you may be huffing a lot. The microphones are really sensitive. So reading your own book can be a challenge sometimes.

Absolutely. It can completely be. I think another challenge with interview shows and interview models of chapters is like, how do I translate that? And I think the ones that do, like the Q and A don't work as well as ones that turn it into prose. And that does require some actual writing, maybe some AI assistance, the ghostwriter if you need it. But it's like, take that interview and distill it down to. And almost what would be like an article.

Yes. But also you have some great promotional materials for your book in that as well. So if you say, I'm interviewing Tracy, it's probably going to be an hour and a half interview, and then I've got all the clips to promote with as well. So you need to think about how are you going to build that audience and how are you going to promote the book when you're done? Because what happens most of the time is you launch your book, you have great book sales, and then it's no man's land.

Yeah, absolutely. But I also that I'm going to call it the compilation model as well. Like the idea of doing a chapter within another book. So often people forget that it would be so great to use one of my podcast episodes, as long as I turn it into a real chapter and don't just to the Q and A style, because now you have something to like, send them to. You want to hear the whole story? You want to hear me talk about it? Here's the podcast. Right. And you could put that right in the chapter. It's not as heavy a lift as then go buy my book or go buy my program or go buy my thing. It's like, listen to this whole story.

The thing with compilation books, though, is that I see out there is you need to have a book that solves a big problem for people. A lot of them will say will be like that ass women in Boss Babes or whatever. That has nothing for me. Like, I'm going to listen to other women entrepreneurs who I don't know. It just, it holds no value. But if you have a book, a compilation book where I can look at different ways of approaching a problem that maybe I haven't thought of before, and you're an expert, that's a really helpful book.

Yeah. Because the idea that all of these minds are putting it to solving this problem, there's bound to be one in there that's going to work for my business, work for me.

Yeah. Yeah, there definitely is.

What are some other things like, I mean, I think a compilation book is actually a really good starter for people because you still have to do the problem of how am I going to market it? And you could solve it at a smaller level because you do have the other people helping you market it. So it's not all the heavy lift is on you.

Yes and no. So here's where I in the past have not been a big fan of compilation books is it's to the benefit of the publisher or the person that puts it together. If you're someone who's doing a chapter in a book because you want more of an audience, then you have to look at a publisher who's going to give you a landing page, who does the copyright in a way that you still own the ip, the intellectual property on it. And I see that a lot that, yes, I have all of your chapters. Now I'm going to go file the copyright. It's just me now. I own your stuff. You're welcome to promote it, but now I'm going to take all your royalties too. So I think if you can come up with a compilation model that provides promotion and audience for each individual, it is a much stronger promotional tool for people.

Yeah. Juliet and I have been debating this for quite some time and we actually came up with a little program that we're going to announce really soon, probably by the time this podcast airs, but not for this live stream that we're doing right now. But we have a little program. So if you're in the real estate industry, you're going to want to seek, you're going to want to come check it out and stay tuned. And go back to the episode@podcasters united.org to check out the link to what we're doing in this compilation model, because we think it's really broken. And so we're doing our first test to see if we can resolve it and fix it in a really interesting way. So we're going to have some fun with that. Juliet. I can't wait for that to come out and kind of push the rest of the industry to correct the problems that are going on over there.

Yeah, I hope so. We have a compilation book right now called Voices from the Prairie that we're handling in a very similar way. And I think people are really going to like it because they're going towards ranch women. It's basically Canadian ranch women talking about the ranching life. I know it sounds weird, but gardening, cooking, animal husbandry. And while that may sound like is that something I really want, There are a lot of people right now moving from the cities out to the country. And so I think it'll be a really helpful book in that sense. So you have better expectations of, but.

It'S so narrowly focused. That's the great part about it, and that's what we're trying to get you to do here. Stop doing so many general books and use your podcast to really narrow in on one particular niche area. We have a great podcaster, John Livesay, who has been with us for probably the whole time we've been in business here, and he has done five books. He does like one every year, and he does it from his podcast and it's always got a different angle. So one year he did it on selling, another he did it on storytelling. Like, it's just. He's always doing it. So then it's his sort of new marketing message for the year as well. So the book, the podcast. Yeah. And the guests that he has on. And it helps him continue to move through what he's doing personally, but he keeps it rarely narrow.

Yeah. Well, the other thing is too, when you're out there getting speaking gigs, a book has always been a more powerful get the gig than a podcast is. So if you have both of them now, you have a really strong platform that people. It's hard to say no that's right.

That's so, so true. We have a lot of podcasters who came to us because they were like, the book isn't enough. So I got to have the podcast too. But now that I have both, it's like I'm getting a gigs all the time, right? I'm on the news all the time. I'm on this talk show all the time. So it is working. What are some other tips that you have? I mean, you've been doing this a long time, Juliet. You're really good at this. You have all kinds of diverse books for coaches and you've got this, this wonderful niche in the Woo Woo space. So it's always different all over and you're always working on something fun and new. But what are you seeing that is really working today?

One of the things that we're doing is. Well, first of all, one of the biggest mistakes. Let me go there first. The negative side. Build your platform. Get your audience out there. So many people think they have a terrific book. They send it, they write a proposal, they send it to an agent. The agents tell us that unless you have 100,000 followers that they can verify it's going straight in the garbage can. So get those followers in place. Start at least, and I would say a year minimum, building that email list, watching the opens and really building on your content and what's out there. If you don't do that and get those followers, those engaged followers, you're really going to have a difficult time. I'm just going to share a story about why that's important. Someone who started at the same time I did with her fiction novels, she gives a free book away about every three months. And she also goes through her list, and if you haven't opened in the last 30 days, she writes a nice little note. If we don't hear from you, we're deleting you. What that led up to over the years was she is now a New York Times bestseller because she had a list of opens. I believe her list is up to about 25,000, but she has an incredible open rate because she leaves that so clean. And I know for a lot of people it's really scary because list building is hard, there's no doubt about it. And to sit there and say, oh, my God, I'm going to delete 100 people is pretty scary. But if you're going to be an author, you want to be able to prove that you have this engaged audience. So platform building is super important. What we're seeing with the books is right now, when they go out on tours. If you get with a good book, a booker that can get you on podcast, radio, tv, that are appropriate and that's the key word there, appropriate and in alignment, you're going to sell some books. And we've seen that more and more. There's so many companies out there who are booking podcast tours, who, hey, Tracy, will you take this guest? And it's not in alignment.

It does.

They don't get anything from it. So we're seeing that that's a really good way to get books sold afterwards, because that's the big problem. Up until through your launch, you'll sell books from that existing audience, but once you get past there, chances are you're not going to continue selling books at the rate you did before.

That's a problem.

Absolutely. And you always, you always want to keep building that audience, too.

Tell us a little bit about traffic school. Why is that so special? You have author traffic school and I hear so many good things from the authors who are on our platform too, who've been through it. But why is that so critical to understanding and platform and all the other pieces and parts to growing that audience?

One of the things that authors don't understand is that if you're an author, you need a brand, you need content, you need an audience, you need a website.

Content beyond the book.

Right. Like content beyond the book, you need an audience, you need a website. Like, you need that place where people can see how amazing you are, but you also need something to sell. And that's where. When authors come into traffic school, a lot of them, they don't have landing pages, they don't have a list, they don't have a YouTube channel, so they have no visual, which everybody wants that visual now. And a lot of them don't have a website that is digitally compliant. So a lot of our woo woo people are psychologists and they use Squarespace. You can't do digital marketing on Squarespace. It's an impossibility.

For those of you listening, you've heard Melanie Gorman on here, you've heard Tom on here. We beat that one. Like, to help on it. Yeah, absolutely. Like get a real website. Get it on WordPress and there's a reason for it, and this is it. Because it's not going to drive you outside traffic.

Yeah, because there are a lot of really great promotions. You can do the buy this book and pay for shipping. It doesn't work anymore because book printing has become so expensive. But there's no reason why you can't do a buy the book. And here's a one time only offer a course, maybe at a reduced discount. You can't do that on Squarespace. We tried it, we tried it. We even got Squarespace involved. You can't do it. So you do need that WordPress. But that's why traffic school is so important. Because a lot of these people come into this and their goals are, I'm going to sell a lot of books. If you go to an agent right now, they'll tell you that whatever your list is and whatever your following is, 5% of those people will buy.

I'm surprised it's that high. I was thinking you were going to say 1 or 2%, right? So I'm surprised it's that high. But that's if you already have a decent list, right? You're screened your list.

That's if you have a decent list. So think about it for a minute. You're putting out a major investment and you have a list of a thousand people. That means what, five people will buy? No, 50.

But still that's not enough, right? It's not.

No. One thing that's really helpful is celebrity endorsements. We have someone right now who, the book's coming out next month, who as a Gwyneth Paltrow endorsement, probably our biggest selling seller ever had, Jane Fonda.

I don't think it's enough, and I'm just gonna say this for you to qualify that it's not enough to just have a celebrity testimonial. They have to be willing to promote you.

Oh, it's your book. Yes, yes. And I can actually tell that one of my big endorsers did something at the beginning of the year because all of a sudden book book sales for her kicked up again. So, yeah, it's not just the celebrity endorsement. They have to be willing to be out there and promote you a little bit too.

So we just did an episode and we were just talking about the social media push for launching a new podcast, right. And so we were talking about that last week and one of the things that I said that got a little controversy because I've gotten a lot of messages back on it was that I said that not to launch your marketing or your show without actually having your show out yet. And I did say that in book marketing it's different, but in what we're finding is that if you try to market a podcast and you don't have a subscribe link. Right. Because you can't subscribe to it, nobody goes to a landing page to fill out their information for a podcast listening, it's too passive and so it just isn't working like that. How is it? Is it though on decline a little bit from getting people on your list ahead of time? Is that getting harder and harder to do to get them to in the pre launch phase or is it still okay?

It's still okay, but you have to be out speaking. You have to remember nobody's just going to arrive on your site, find the landing page. It has to be a place where you're out there speaking and directing. We actually have a guy right now who's out on a tour, a radio and podcast tour. He has a landing page and that's where he drives people. His book isn't even written yet. The outline's done, he's starting to write. He has a new concept that he's very invested in and that's building the audience right then and there is him out talking about the concept and saying, my book is coming out January 2025. Go over here and subscribe and we'll send you updates. And then I tell those people, send updates every week because you don't want people. That's where you lose them, is when they sign up and then six months later you send them their first email. So you need to be giving them little tidbits about what's in the book and don't. One of the things I think authors hesitate is sharing. People of courses too. They hesitate sharing the information in the book because they think people won't read it. The truth is when you share a methodology or a how to or something like that, 95% of the people, they're going to read it and they're never going to do it. It's that 5% that's intrigued enough or needs the information enough to say, okay, I'm going to buy that book. I'm going to sign up for the course. I'm going to do X, Y and Z because I'm intrigued. So you can't over share when it.

Comes to share freely. Like I agree. I can't tell you how many authors I've had on just be so stingy with their information. Oh, it's in the book. Please don't do that. When you do a podcast interview, it is not going to work with the audience. They will never buy the book at that point.

Yes, I actually sent you one of those that did it and I was shocked because she actually had a really good publicist who should have told her that.

Right? Exactly. Well, is there anything else we should know before we go about launching a book from our podcast?

So, no, I think it's just the problem solving. Make sure that the book is solving a problem that people are telling you they have. So maybe a little bit of market research there. Make sure that the problem is actually a problem before you go and write the book.

Well, and that's my tip. On the other side of it, on the podcasting side of it, is that you have some information. Use it. You have statistics in your podcast portal. Wherever you're publishing your show from.

There's.

You can see the episodes that are flying. You can see the guests that are doing a good job of sharing because their episodes have more listens than other episodes. You can see what's happening in the chat on social media. Are they getting comments? This is a good way for you to tell whether or not this episode is working for you or this topic area is working for you. And do some resharing. Say, hey, if I wrote a book on this, what do you think? Why not check it with your audience? Do some work at the beginning before. You really do a lot of work afterwards. And then it doesn't resonate.

Yeah, exactly. And check out, here's something else too. Check out the competition when you're writing a book. I think that is probably the biggest thing is that people who write books, they don't do the market research. They have an idea, they think their idea is amazing. But I would encourage you to look at your competition, figure out what they're doing, and make sure that you have a different spin on whatever that problem is. And I would actually say if you have something out of the box, people are going to buy the book because there are too many books out there that say the same thing over and over. And to give you an example, I have had three people bring me the exact same book that they got from a coaching program where they said, here's, here's a book, here's some materials. This is how you sell it. And they bring me the already written book and say, can you publish this? And I will show them that three or four other people have already published this book and it's exactly the same thing. So make sure that you're writing your own content, your own original material, but also research and make sure that what you're putting out there is different and exciting and that people actually wanted.

Well, Juliet, thank you so much for being here, everyone. Juliet Clark, Super Brand publishing. Promote profit, publish in that order. Keep that in mind as you listen to our podcast and as always, Juliet is a coaching crasher here and a high level partner so we refer all of our clients to her and she's a resource for you as well. So you can go to podcasters united.org and you can connect up to all her things. And as we get a little more sophisticated in our Podcasters United nonprofit growth, Juliet is one of the main partners and sponsors here. So she will be all of anything that she's offering and available to podcasting community will appear on the website. So everyone, thank you for being here with us. We're going to pop off and end feed your brand and we're going to pop off and take questions from our potatoes community.

Thank you.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled and free promotion opportunities. While you're there. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting testing.