Ep. 45: Maximizing Your Book’s Potential with Foreign Rights

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey.

Hello everyone. I think we had a little bit of a technical difficulty there. That's on me. It's Friday and I want to just say happy Friday to everyone. I'm feeling the FOMO. Jen, are you feeling the FOMO today?

I am feeling— I'm feeling the FOMO because I'm not coming home from London. I'm just sitting here. My office where I've been all week while everybody else in the book world has been in London having fun at the London Book Fair.

Yeah, it's— womp womp. It's— so this is— we're going to talk about the London Book Fair, what it is, why it's important, and why even indie book authors should know about it.

Yes, because it involves something very important to all authors, which is selling rights, particularly foreign rights.

So before I fade away into the distance again here, I have to say, you guys won another award. You're just gonna jump— you're just gonna gloss right over that, to use another book publishing term, gloss right over it here.

We're being modest.

Tell us what happened. This wonderful book, Street Pricing, that we talked about from time to time, it's coming out soon. Uh, you guys want a book design— oh, you won one before, now you want another one?

Yes. So thank you, Paul.

So you just happen to have a copy right there.

Happen to have a little, um, it's a little winner award. So earlier it won the PubWest Book Design Award, but this week, uh, we were, oh, we were alerted, I was alerted that, um, the book design was so great from the Eric Hoffa Awards that it's won. It was first nominated. I'm like, okay, cool, whatever. But it was first nominated for a Da Vinci Eye finalist position, and it officially won the Da Vinci Eye finalist for design from Eric Hoffer.

Now, what I find so amazing is not just how casual you are about this, but how shocked you are. Like, oh, did you not know? I mean, I would assume all of you guys have to submit these things with the expectation that you're going to win something. And do they just find you and nominate you, or do you send in the nomination, go, nah, that's a long shot?

Well, to be fair, you know, there are so many books out there that we do have to submit to nominate. And that book, amongst all of our other books, that one just kind of stood out to us. All of our books are book babies and they're all beautiful, but this one stood out. All the book babies are beautiful. So we, you know, we submitted it. You know, a lot of books get submitted. So we were just like, well, maybe. And it did. It stood out in a few different places and We're just very, very proud of the work that Andrew did and the COVID concept that was brought to us and how he just made it to what it is today.

And the importance, again, why people can't just publish their books themselves. This whole self-publishing thing has gotten so out of whack. Everybody just goes and pays somebody to print. There's all these print-on-demand things and any cover will do and no editing. Whatever. It shows again, if you put a little thought, effort, maybe spend a little money, you can really get your book to stand out amongst the sea of millions of endless titles that are just flooding the market these days, particularly with self-published books. There is a point to doing this right.

Right, exactly.

Absolutely, and we are so very lucky to work with amazing designers and who whom we worked with for several years on all kinds of projects. And I think that's the best part about the, the COVID designers that we work with. They just, they know their stuff. They know what helps sell a book and make it look beautiful.

So it looks better than your, your cousin, uh, Sue, who, uh, is in high school and draws really good, and she'll do the COVID for me here.

Yep.

Or somebody that just takes some generic thing you go on I don't know, one of these sites online, and you— and they give you the generic kind of version of something. That looks so cool. That looks like every other book. You don't want to look like every other book.

No, you don't. You want to stand out. You want to win the, the Da Vinci Eye finalist position and then win the award. You know, you want to go out there and win design.

So is there a celebration? Do you fly to Manhattan? Do you go to this big ballroom at the Park Plaza Hotel or something? I don't know, whatever is fancy back then.

A lot of them do have that, you know, if you win the top award, they they will do this big award ceremony and what have you. With the pandemic, it's been a little iffy for me, so I'm not going anywhere. I will take that award.

I will take it. And does it come as a giant trophy? Does it shape like Leonardo da Vinci here, and it's a big giant 10-foot, 2-foot Oscar-looking kind of thing?

I wish. I think it's really just a title, a title, and it's recognition, and it goes out to— and the other importance of making sure that your book is being noticed by the trade are these awards.

Does it help distribution? Do people say, oh, I gotta have that book? I have an indie bookstore somewhere and I never heard of this book, but they won an award, I better put that in.

Yeah, it brings that awareness, you know.

It—

there's media that all of these different award companies will go ahead and do. They'll push out a list, a press, a press release, all of these things. But it also adds to the, um, I guess the list of reasons why you would want to put your book at the London Book Fair.

Ah, so this all ties together somehow.

It all ties back together.

So, the London Book Fair— I'm going to fade away in a moment, but you're going to explain this. It's like, I picture a giant convention center with little tables of books, and everybody goes from one publisher to the next, or one writer to the next, and there are the buyers, and there are the people looking to acquire books for chains, or for movies, or for other things. Foreign rights. Nobody's going to buy the foreign rights to my book. That sounds like if I got some blockbuster, maybe. They're not going to buy the movie rights, they're not going to buy the foreign rights, they're not going to buy the rights in Brazil to my book. Be surprised, brother. Be surprised. I didn't think you guys were going to win an award, but apparently it's very casual. Happens so many times you don't even mention it. Oh, we got another one of those, don't we?

We got another one.

Second award. First one's exciting. Second award, huh?

Okay, we want to be like the Barbra Streisand of book publishers where, you know, like, we just— we have so many, they even have to like go in the bathroom. Like, yeah, that's what we—

where do we— where can I put this next trophy here?

I don't know, just casually by the fireplace.

Yeah, exactly. Use it to prop open the door or something here.

Yeah, on top of the toilet and just like a little inspiration.

There you go, there you go. All right, well, I just had to shout that out. That's why I stayed on this, the cast here today, because I suspected you guys would just gloss that over. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. And I think it does lead into your topic. So tell me more. The London Book Fair, is this one of the biggies?

It is the biggie for foreign rights.

Have you been to London Book Fair?

Not me. I've never been there. I've never been to London.

It's— I know, right? It's on my wish list. And I was actually talking to, uh, to my friend and I was like, you know what, it's happening right now. I'm feeling the FOMO. We're in our London, we're in our book fair era, you know, for all you Swifties out there. And we're just like, we want to make it happen. We want to make it happen. So I think Jen, 2024 is going to be our year for London Book Fair.

We'll go.

And there's also another one in—

And you just wander the aisles with your trophies and stuff here and say, oh, this, I just brought this along.

Oh, this, I just carry this. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer takes the award.

Yeah, exactly, right? Just wander the halls here with this thing. Oh, this? Oh yeah, I just carry this everywhere. I'm sorry.

Yeah, right, this whole thing, this whole thing.

Well, so yeah, let's talk about London Book Fair. All right, so we haven't been—

I'll drop out here and you guys can go talk.

All right, well, if you have any questions— so while we haven't been, we have been, you know, we've worked with, uh, foreign rights agents, subsidiary rights agents in the past that have gone out to London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair. We'll talk about that a different episode. To represent the books that we've been working on. So usually it's— we pitch the books to our rep and she'll go out. We've worked with Linda Biagi in the past.

I'd love to work with her again.

But she'll basically take all of our material and representing the books, and she goes out there and she knows the publishers. She knows publishers there. Who are, you know, working in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, the Romanian languages, uh, all the languages, all the languages. And she knows what's going to sell where, right? Let's take it a step back. What is London Book Fair?

Yeah, let's, let's define for, for our listeners who don't know. So London Book Fair happens each year. Obviously during COVID it didn't, but it's back and better than ever, uh, for the first time this year. I don't think they did last year. I think this— I think it was a truncated version of it last year, but back in full force this year. So this is not a place where you go buy physical books. It's not for consumers. It is for people in the industry. So it's for publishers, it's for rights agents, um, it's for agents of all kinds who represent not only foreign rights but other kinds of subsidiary rights. And by that, I— that's a very fancy inside baseball term to mean rights for just about any way you can slice and dice your book content. So, you know, film, TV, translation, all kinds of serialization. So all kinds of rights agents are there, and it's really an opportunity in the global publishing community, um, one, for one thing, just to get together and to network. But a lot of deals go down at this particular show for foreign rights. It's really what it's known for, even though it does a lot of other things too. So very great opportunity for books— not for booksellers, but for publishers to get out there and shop their content. So when you publish a book, you have what we see when we go to a Barnes Noble or to our local indie bookstore, whether we're getting online to buy a book, we see the book, right? But it can be translated into other languages, and then it looks different in different countries. So you usually, um, either the author or the publisher retains the right to go out and sell those rights, and that's what happens in London. Right.

So what happens? Let's give people a little bit more insight, basically, because I feel like— and I've had a lot of these conversations over the last few weeks and getting some of the authors to be open to the idea of having their book represented at London Book Fair, and it's always like, well, what happens? How does this work? You'll work with a, uh, a licensing agency or a group that will represent your book. And, you know, especially as a publisher, they usually have, you know, teams of people that are out there. So the Big Five or have teams of people that will go out and sell to other countries, etc. But, um, really what it comes down to is that you work with a foreign rights or subsidiary rights agent. They will then go ahead and sell your rights to another book. Or sell your books to another book publisher in another country. In another country, right? So what does that look like? Let's get into the nitty-gritty. That person, let's call her Linda, goes out, talks to somebody in India to do translation rights, or to do, uh, rights to publish the book in a region or worldwide, etc., depending. But She'll come back with an agreement, right? The agreement— what does this agreement hold?

Look exactly like a publishing agreement that you may have done here in the US, but it will be similar. So there will most likely be an advance of some kind, authored, an upfront payment in other words. Then there will be royalties which are baked into the deal, and like a lot of publishers here, most of those royalty deals are going to be split over how many books you sell. So let's just take an example. Let's say You know, I'm gonna go and sell my foreign rights— excuse me— to a French publisher to publish in France. Let's say that they offer me a $3,000 advance. And let's preface too by saying that advances for these typically, unless you are a huge, huge name, aren't often big, right? They're, they're relatively small. They're very modest. Usually you get your little advance and then Maybe they will offer you 5% of the net sales for the first 5,000 copies sold. And then after that, maybe they offer you 10%. Those are crap, just by the way.

Don't ever—

don't sign on for that. I'm just doing it for the simplicity of math. There's also what's called a term involved in these kinds of deals. And that's, again, a fancy way of saying, here's how long we're going to be in this agreement. Usually the term for a foreign rights book deal is anywhere from 5 to 7 years. That's about the average. I've seen them shorter, I've seen them longer, but that's kind of the ballpark for what at least I've seen in my career. At the end of that term, then you can either renegotiate it and do it again, or you can be done and say, "Thank you, French publisher, I'm done with you. I'm going to go find another French publisher." There'll usually be some mechanism though within that contract that tells you how that's going to go down, whether it's an automatic renewal or you have to actually reach out to the publisher to to renew. It just depends on the publisher. Those are the, the 3 big basic things that you want to look for or have your foreign rights agent look for in an agreement. And of course, there are a million other legalese things in the contract too, but those are top-line items.

So say that you— let's go with the publisher in France— say that the publisher in France wants to translate your book. Do they then keep the rights to translate in French for all formats?

Ah, that's something that your agent would negotiate for you. So it depends too on, on the parameters of your US or whatever country you have originated your book in, that agreement. So I would say that this is almost a process that you need to be paying attention to before it happens. So, you know, when you're making your deal with your US publisher, make sure you read the fine print as to what happens with foreign rights. Do you own the right to go and sell those foreign rights? Does your US publisher license that out on your behalf? That's probably what's going to happen because let's be honest, you're a very smart person, you're a subject matter expert, you're not a foreign rights agent. So I wouldn't hesitate to make sure that, A, make sure that that topic is covered, but also I would be okay with the fact that your publisher probably wants to hang on to the ability to do that. They want to hang on to the right to go out and license foreign if they don't have someone in-house, they're going to have someone like a sub rights agent who knows what they're doing, right?

Okay, so say that— this is actually really, really exciting— when we would work with foreign rights, um, foreign rights publishers and get the, the whole ball rolling, and then, you know, 18 months later we see a book coming to our door. And as publishers, we, we got to like geek out on like, oh my God, this cover is like really amazing, and the paper used in quality, and the trim and format, the way that it looks, do we get a say in terms of how the publisher in the other country who's, you know, basically bought the rights to do it, how they decide to promote and market it and publish?

We really don't. I'm not speaking for people who are very, very big and fancy and very well known. They, they probably are able to negotiate that. But for those of us who are kind of living more midlist book lives, I would say that no, you're probably not going to, to be involved. Once you sign off on the foreign rights agreement, it's really their baby. And so, you know, you're not going to get a say in what the COVID looks like. The foreign rights publisher, no matter what country they're in, is probably not going to be having meetings with you. You're really hands-off here. That's kind of the point, because you, A, can't control it, B, the publishing atmosphere in other countries is very different oftentimes from what it is here in the U.S.. And so just for everybody's sanity, no, the author is typically not involved, you know. And sometimes authors aren't even involved when the actual contracts are signed, because if your US publisher retained the foreign rights, then really they are signing on as your proxy, almost, for lack of a better phrase. So oftentimes authors don't even sign those agreements.

Do I at least get a copy of that foreign rights book?

You do, and you do get the money, which is really what people—

the money—

really what you should care about. Yeah. Um, so yes, I mean, it's, it's a very hands-off process for the author, uh, unless again you are the one selling it, which unless you're an expert in this field, you probably shouldn't be.

Okay, so let's say you're an author out there and you, you've, you've got an amazing self-published book. You decided to do it yourself, you set yourself up the right way on IngramSpark as, you know, your own publisher, your, your, you set up your publishing company, in essence, to fold into your business, because your product is your book, and your book is your product. And that's your name card. And you're like, okay, I've got some, you know, you're checking the backend of IngramSpark, because they have this really wonderful reporting where you could see all the countries that your book has sold into. And you're like, alright, I'm seeing a lot of international book sales, I think we can make a, you know, a sell or position ourselves to another publisher. As a self-published author, can we go into London Book Fair? Is it exclusive to just the trade publishing experts and gurus?

Well, I think going back to that, the thing you always say, Vanessa Campos, which is think like a publisher, right? And so if that's you, um, if you've just got a onesie-twosie book that you, you know slapped an ISBN and printed at Kinko's? Um, probably not. Um, but if you are thinking like, like a publisher, you do have a platform, you do have a brand, the book is a part of your content ecosystem, then yeah, you can operate like a publisher in this sense. Um, you know, go on, get a badge, say that you're out there representing yourself as— not yourself, but you're, you're representing your publishing company, even if that's a one-book publishing company. And then yes, you can go out and, and talk to people and make those deals. But what I would say is, if you're going to do that, you need to do your homework like anything else in publishing. Um, you know, spend some time on the London Book Fair site from previous years. Usually they will have a listing of who all attends. Um, get a feel for what publishers, what foreign publishers might be a right fit for your book. Because what you don't want to do is go in and act like a complete novice and, you know, pitch your book to children's book publishers or people who only publish calendars or, you know, something like that. That's not the kind of book that you do. As with all things in publishing, do the legwork, do the homework, have a plan, know who you're gonna go out and try to speak with. And I would try to make appointments ahead of time, so I would reach out to people before London even happens, because just speaking from experience, that's how meetings typically go down here, you, you go ahead and get on someone's schedule. Can you wander the floor and meet and greet on the fly? Yeah, you can absolutely do that. But for it to feel purposeful and for everyone to feel like their time is not being wasted, I would reach out before.

That's a really good idea. And you know, a lot of these publishers that will— you can go on to the London Book Fair's website, you can see who's going to be exhibiting. They have an exhibitors list. Go to their websites, find their catalogs, study their catalogs. Are they publishing books like yours? Are they looking? And then, you know, you can dig even deeper and find the editors that are acquiring that might be at the London Book Fair, might not be, but you can connect with them ahead of schedule and be like, hey, this is the book I have. So that's just kind of a little tidbit there. So let's say London Book Fair sounds amazing, but it's expensive. You gotta think about the badge, the travel, the accommodation. I mean, it's, it's an investment. It really is. Is there a way to get your book represented at the London Book Fair without you having to go there?

Yes, ma'am. In fact, I think this is a better long-term strategy for small publishers and for people who are publishing within their own small imprint or brand, I really advocate for hiring a foreign rights agent. I do, because as cool as London Book Fair sounds, it is a very industry event. And so even if you think you know what you're doing, I, I don't know that— I mean, London Book Fair is a little bit more like the NFL, right? Yeah, like it's the big players. And so, I mean, not to say there aren't small publishers there, there are, but that's people who really know the business and, and who are really deeply ingrained in the culture. Of how our business works. So if it's, if it's you and it's just you and you're a solo show, that's swimming in some pretty deep waters. And so while we have just talked about how to do it, I'm not saying that you shouldn't. You probably will get more traction if you hire, um, or at least enter into partnership with a foreign rights agent. And that, I think, is a much stronger position for folks who, who don't have the industry knowledge to go out there and pitch. So when you work with a foreign rights agent, what happens is you'll, you'll sign a representation agreement with them. They will go out and they won't only go to London Book Fair, they'll go to all the other book fairs, and they are working all year long too. They don't just work at those types of events, so they're out there constantly, you know, making contact with the publishers with whom they work to represent your book. And they really know their stuff. They know who to contact Foreign rights agents will get a percentage just like any other agent. It's typically around 10%. To me, that's probably worth it as opposed to going out there and trying to do it yourself.

Oh heck yeah. I mean, honestly, it saves you time, it saves your brain energy, and just like our friend Kim Wash Phillips says, you gotta spend time in your zone of genius, and chances are foreign rights and subsidiaries, I mean, while it's fun, it's probably not your zone of genius. And it's a good, it's a good thing to hire out.

Can I jump in and ask a quick question here as we come to the conclusion of the show here?

Yeah.

What realistically should I expect? You've got this book street pricing. Is that something Marcos, is this just found money and you get a couple thousand dollars and you get the thrill that the book's got wider distribution or is it really make money? And does it cost money? Do I have to pay? I gotta pay this foreign right agent maybe something. I gotta pay for them to promote it or display it. I gotta pay for them to create a new cover that's in French. It's a street, a, uh, price, a, uh, something. I don't know how to say street pricing in French, but—

That was Pig Latin.

Exactly. I think that's what it was. Is this just an ego stroke? Is this a promotional tool, or is this really a good business and I should invest in it?

I think it's a promotional thing. And with anything promotional, you should invest in it. And specifically speaking for business authors, when you're a business, a business owner, and you've got your website, you're starting to work with companies that aren't just in the US and Canada, you're going to start seeing traction coming in. Like I was looking at our our podcast downloads, and they're coming in from the UK, they're coming in from, you know, Germany, etc. So as you're looking at your website statistics and you're seeing traction, you could do the same thing with your IngramSpark if you're a self-publisher. You can do the same thing and looking at your, um, looking at your stats. It's also an opportunity to get your name in the language that is comfortable for that extra audience. Even though they might actually still hire you to do a speaking engagement in English, and they'll have a translator there if it's like— if English isn't the first language or isn't a common language in that.

So if this book is promoting you and your expertise and your speaking gig or your consulting gig or something else like that, then there's just another market that you might open up. It's just another promotional tool. So I shouldn't necessarily start thinking, wow, that money's going to start rolling in from Lithuania, you know, Romania.

Italy buys a lot of business books.

I know, I know, it's wild. Well, and you know, and I think you might be surprised at what sells. We have constantly, I think, in all the years we work with business authors, been surprised at what has sold in different foreign markets. And it's really interesting stuff that you would think, oh, that's only a US thing. It's not necessarily, you know, business principles apply across the board. And so I would say that's definitely the case. For example, we've worked with an author in the past who does franchise books. And those franchise titles do very, very well in like in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE and in areas like that. So you, you just never know. But the one caveat I will put on the conversation is yes, you should invest in this venture, but please do not pay any agent up. That's a red flag for me.

That's what I was gonna ask. In, in the entertainment industry, it's always a red flag if somebody says, I will represent your kid, but you gotta gimme $5,000 or something. No, then you're not an agent.

I pass.

Don't do that. Any reputable agent is going to take their percentage off of what they actually sell. You should never pay anyone upfront to go out and represent your book. And if they say, well, you have to pay for my travel to London or to Frankfurt, no, that's no flag. That's part of their job. So yes, invest in it, but please be careful.

And do you have to pay for them to redo the COVID and all that stuff, or do you just send them the artwork and then they turn it into— Lithuanian.

That's all on the publisher, right, Jen?

Correct. Yes.

Okay.

Right. In the show notes, we can drop a couple of links to reputable associations that, you know, kind of manage different subsidiary rights.

That's what I was going to say. I wouldn't know how to find these people or anything about them, but you know, you're going into a whole strange kettle of fish here. But you're saying books will actually sell. I'll tell you an interesting fact. We did, uh, we had somebody in years ago, um, I don't know how we got ahold of this person, but they were listening to some of our OC Talk Radio shows. I don't remember exactly, maybe it was just we were communicating with them, but they were in like, I wanna say Nigeria or Lithuania, someplace totally in the third, to my mind, way off the planet here, and they've said that in these countries they value American expertise in business, so they look, if I'm gonna do business in Lithuania, I'm not just gonna look at local Lithuanian business leaders, mentors, whatever. I'm gonna say, of course I'm gonna see what's Bill Gates doing, what does Elon Musk do? But I might go down the food chain and say, what is somebody who really knows about street pricing, about how to price software as a service or something? I might look for that kind of expertise, and where I'm gonna look is to America.

Right, right.

That's the assumption, that these guys know what they're doing over there.

I think most of us know, right?

I think one of the craziest things I've ever seen is a book about how to run a food truck sold rights in— what was it, Vanessa? Korea? I don't know.

It was in South Korea.

See, there you go, right?

It was.

And did people buy the book there? Did they ever get anything from it? Who knows, huh?

Well, and that's the thing is that you're not going to be out left out in the dark. You're going to get, um, book statements. I think it's every 6 months. So, you're going to see how many books were printed, how many books were sold, if it was in paperback and, you know, they know their market so they'll know what kind of formats are appropriate for their audience, but you will get those statements. You'll get them from your literary agent or your publisher.

I would love to have you guys find somebody who has been successful in a business book like the food truck in South Korea and have them come on and say, "What was it like?" Did you expect anything? Did you get anything? Did you make anything? Did it lead to anything? Or was it just kind of a cool thing? I put it on my shelf. I've got the Korean version as well as the English version here of my book. I'd love to hear some author talk about that, if you know any that you've worked with or anything like that. What a fascinating story. That's my challenge to you.

All right. All right. I'll go find someone.

They're looking around like, do we know anybody like that?

We do. We do. It's just like— I think that would be a very interesting conversation because it's always like, as a book publisher, helping authors market the book, I was always looking at like, okay, where do we have, you know, our little tentacles in different countries? And do your tentacles as an author in regards— I mean, look at your email list. How many people are just US-based and how many people are actually coming from abroad? Thinking like, hey, this person is kind of cool, I'm gonna sign up for their newsletter.

And in today's world, like you're saying, the podcast, I agree, I've seen your numbers. You're getting people not just from Southern California or the US even here. We're a Southern California-based outlet, so most of our audience was here, but always amazed we get people listening around the world. I'm thinking, how, who, why, where? How?

Yeah, good metadata.

Yeah, that's right. Right.

But that's the world we live in. If you put it out there, people can find it and often do if you set it up right and promote it right and direct it right and everything, and that is really an art unto itself. I don't know how to sell a book in South Korea or Lithuania, but you're saying there's a market for it, and it might lead to an opportunity to do a speaking gig there or get hired by somebody there.

Absolutely.

Or a little found money, or it's just a— another little testimonial to my book. Hey, I'm in 4 countries or 20 countries or something here. Yeah.

I mean, especially if you're already as an author going around speaking. I was talking to somebody yesterday where they're like, this person speaks at like the, the World— God, what is it? The World Something Organization. I'm like, well, that's cool. Where is that? Oh, it's in such and such country. I was like, well, how come their book isn't, you know, represented in that country? There's an opportunity there. So it's You know, you got to look at it from every different angle.

Yeah. How cool. Okay. All right. That's it.

Well, actually, before we leave, can we end on a very good note?

Let's do it.

Yeah.

Jen, I just want to end on a really great note. I was talking to a potential Broad Book Press author who I said, hey, you, you really need to put together your book proposal. So I sent her to the Write Your Book Proposal course on our website. And I connected with her yesterday just to see if she had any questions. And she said, "You know what? I love listening to Jen teach." She was like, "She has such a calming voice. I'm thinking about just playing the recordings over and over in the background." When I'm stressed, I just listen to Jen's voice here, right?

I do the same thing. I didn't want to admit that, but yeah. Things go rough in my life, I put Jen's voice on in the background. Everything gets better.

You know, in addition to that, she's like, great information, kept her like, you know, um, really focused on what needed to happen. So thank you to Jen for your soothing voice and helping people in a very stressful situation.

Oh, thank you. I love to do it, and that's part of my life as a recovering academic. You know, every, every now and then I still want to teach something, so these courses are a great way to scratch that.

How do they find them? Because I again don't think you guys promote this enough. I don't think people realize that you have courses like this on your site that people— that will help them put together simple things like a book proposal? A basic thing, maybe not a simple thing, a basic thing.

Yeah, well, you know, if, if you haven't already visited our website broadbookgroup.com, it's right up there in the top of the website. It's the Write Your Book Proposal course. It's next to our podcast and About Us. You can schedule a call.

And what is it, about $10,000? It's not cheap, right?

It's actually really inexpensive right now because we are We're feeling the FOMO. We want more books out there. So the course itself is only $49 for a limited time.

We're going to double. That's going to go up soon here. Now that we've promoted it.

It probably will by the end of the year, but we really wanted to make it as affordable as possible to as many people as possible for as long as possible. And it really is Jen very calmly telling you what you need to do.

Are there waves in the background? Are there, is there like peaceful beach sounds or something here? Hi. You're at the beach.

We should make a product like that, like just positive book writing affirmation.

Positive.

You can do it today.

You can do it.

You can do it.

One step leads to the journey of a thousand miles.

Yeah, right, right.

That book, well, it is 8 course, 8 modules. So there's, you know, 8 videos of Jen talking to you, and there's downloads and everything, and it walks you through everything you need to know about writing the book proposal. So even if you are And this is really important if you're planning on doing a pitch to an agent, which you should do, or if you're planning on pitching a book, uh, publisher, you've connected with an editor, etc., they're going to want to see this.

Yeah.

And even if you've made up your mind about, you know, self-publishing and being your own publisher, you should probably do a book proposal anyway because I'm starting to think that it's the roadmap to making sure—

yeah, focus your whole effort, think of it as a product, not just a story. Yeah, right.

The business plan for the book, right? Exactly.

All right, good stuff today here. Wow, from awards to, uh, to accolades here. That's just a— it's just a love fest here today.

It is, it really is. Well, peace out now. All right, well, thanks, Paul. Thank you for always being our amazing producer, and thanks to Vanessa Campos for all the, all the wonderful content that she always brings to the table, and We want to thank our executive producer Emily Carpenter-Pulskamp of Little Red Communications. We will see you next time. We hope that you gained some valuable insights into the world of book publishing. Head over to broadbookgroup.com to learn more about us and all our services, and be sure to check out all our social media @BroadBookGroup. Until then, keep Publishing.