TCK Publishing

Carmen Simon, PhD, is the author of Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions. A cognitive scientist, she has helped some of the world’s most visible brands craft memorable messages by focusing on how the brain works. Her sought-after keynote speeches unveil science-based techniques for getting others to see your way, remember your way, and go your way. Doctor Simon began researching the bookImpossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions. because of an experiment that she did about two years ago. She showed a group of 1500 people a 20 slide PowerPoint presentation and then asked them two days later how much they remember. What surprised her was that about 1/3 of the participants didn’t even remember that they had been to a PowerPoint presentation. We had a fascinating conversation about memory, marketing and how the brain works. Towards the end of the episode we discussed neuroscience, why it’s important and what we know about how the brain works on a macro level. Here are just some of the highlights of our conversation. * People forget their lives almost as quickly as they live them. * You only live in business to the extent that your audience remembers you. * Unsurprisingly, paying attention improves memory retention. * There are 15 variables we can use to improve other people’s memory. * Repetition, emotion, distinctiveness, and familiarity are four factors that improve your audiences memory. * Familiarity is important. The brain prefers to conserve energy when possible. So if you can start by giving the brain something it’s familiar with, that allows you to bypass the brain’s filter and help people remember what you have to say. * A particularly effective tactic is to start a presentation or story in a way that is familiar to your audience and then gives them something distinctive to jar their expectations. If you surprise people in a familiar setting they are likely to remember it. * People remember things in many ways. * The brain likes habits because habits reduce the amount of thinking that you have to do. * If you appeal to people’s existing habits it’s much easier for you to sell them because they don’t have to learn new routines. * When doing a PowerPoint presentation consider what your audience expects. Every audience is different and you want to tailor your PowerPoint presentation to the expectations of your individual audience. Give your audience what they expect. * Less is not more when it comes to memory. To create a strong memory you need a maximum amount of stimulation and sensation. * Don’t simplify complexity, manage complexity better. * You have to earn the right to tell a story in presentations. * It’s important to have a good mix of what people expect and the novelty. If you give people too much of what they expect the brain will tune out and think about other things. If you give people too many surprises the brain will be overloaded from stimulation and start thinking about more familiar things. * The importance of disrupting the brain’s pattern in order to get more attention. * A disruption is an interruption of a pattern the brain has habituated to. * Allow the brain to form a pattern first and then disrupt it. * Attracting someone’s attention is not that difficult. Keeping attention for a sustained period of time is much more difficult. * The brain is capable of paying attention for extended periods of time. Everyone is different and it’s impossible to judge anyone’s individual limit of sustained attention. * The brain habituates (or zones out) very quickly to a stimulus that does not change. Two Reasons the Brain Zones out 1. The degree of variation within a particular stimulus.

Bo Bennett is the bestselling author of Logically Fallacious and seven other books. He is also an avid entrepreneur and founder of ebookit.com, a company that formats and distributes eBooks, print on demand, and digital audio books. Bo wrote his first book Year to Success in 2004. Back then the indie publishing landscape wasn’t what it is today. He spent $30,000 to print 3000 hardcover books and another $500 a month to store those books at his printers warehouse. He sold some of those books through a traditional book tour, but he didn’t sell enough copies to make it a viable option going forward. He started looking into self-publishing and different ways of distributing his books. After three years of research (from 2006 to 2009) Bo decided to start his own company helping authors publish their books. That’s how ebookit.com was born. Our conversation covered several topics including how to tie your nonfiction book into an online course and the importance of pricing an e-book appropriately. Here are some of the takeaways. * How promotion and self-publishing has changed over the last 12 years. * How to sell more books at your book signing. * It’s important to create an individual marketing strategy for every book you write. * How to create a website with free information that sells your book. * How to convert your website into a book that won’t have a duplicate information problem on Amazon. * Nonfiction authors can create an online course that covers the material may have in their book. You can sell this course for a higher price point than you can the e-book, and it also has the added benefit of promoting the e-book. * Never delete anything. If you delete a chapter from a book put it in a file somewhere. You may be able to repurpose the content later elsewhere. * The biggest mistake authors can make is submitting a book to online retailers with a crappy cover design. It’s important to have a decent looking cover because book buyers associate the quality of the cover with the quality of the book itself. * Another mistake authors make is pricing their e-book. Generally speaking you want your e-book to be priced between $2.99 and $9.99. If you price your book under $2.99 you get a smaller percentage of each sale. If you price it over $9.99 you’ll get fewer customers. Between $2.99 and $9.99 is the sweet spot. * The money/time the equation and how it relates to selling indy books. In order to sell your book you need both money and time. If you don’t have a lot of money you need a lot of time. If you don’t have a lot of time you need a lot of money. It’s best to have at least some of both. Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview Logically Fallacious – Bo Bennett’s book about logical fallacies. Logically fallacious website – the website that Bo turned into a book. Year to success – Bo’s first book Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition – the book Tom bought for $70. It looks like you can buy used copies for a little bit less. www.bobennett.com – Bo’s personal website. www.ebookit.com – Bo’s service where he and his team will convert to and distribute your...

Bestselling Author Mark Goulston started as a clinical interventional psychiatrist and UCLA professor of psychiatry. He learned to “hack” into the minds of suicidal and potentially violent individuals to prevent acts of destruction to others or themselves. He next went on to train FBI and police hostage negotiators. Mark has written several books on effective communication that teach you how to get your message heard using a powerful communications secret – listening. Mark began his career as a psychiatrist with a specialty in crisis intervention. There are many instances where a patient will be admitted to a mental hospital because they’re suicidal and then in order to get discharged a psychiatrist on the outside needs to agree to see them because they still require treatment outside the hospital setting. Mark helped many patients abandon their suicidal tendencies. It was while seeing these patients that Mark developed the skill of “listening into” somebody. He drew from these experiences to write his first book, Just Listen. Our conversation was fascinating and covered many topics including: psychology, how to develop a book title that grabs your audience, and techniques for communicating. Here are a few of the takeaways: * The power of listening into somebody. Listening into somebody means looking at the conversation from their point of view. * The difference between listening and listening into. * The power of listening and how it delights us. * The key to listening is to care about what the person is saying when they’re talking to you. If you care about what people are saying and you are truly present with them in that moment, they will let you take them anywhere. * It’s important that you don’t do a bait and switch. If you’re listening to a customer simply to try and sell them something and you don’t genuinely care about them itwill show through. * The importance of staying true to your values. * Use the Think like Steve Jobs Formula to come up with great book titles. * Writing thoughtful reviews can be a great way to network with authors. * How to network using LinkedIn discussions. * How to be truly present in a conversation. * Be a first-class noticer. * The purest form of listening is listening without memory or desire. * The importance of letting go of your own personal agenda when you’re listening to people. * The value of Purposeful Agendaless Listening * When networking get the person you are networking with to talk about something that is important to them. If you can have a conversation with someone that helps them be a clear on something important to them they will be grateful to you and you will form a strong connection. * Be more interested than interesting. Be more fascinated than fascinating. * Boredom occurs when I fail to make the other person interesting. * Write what it is you would like to read. Whenever you get stuck staring at the screen just ask yourself, “what would I like to say here” or, “what would I like my character to say here?” Even if it’s not exactly right at least he gives you a jumping off point to make it better. * The difference between should and want and why it’s important. How to Calm Down Irrational People with the FUDN Approach The FUDN approach stands for: Frustrated Upset Disappointed Now What It works like this. Imagine you are talking to someone who is very angry. When they take a break from ranting you say, “you sound frustrated what’s that about?” And then you listen to what they have to say. When you’re listening you need to listen for four things: hyperbole (exaggerated statements or claims,

Laura Morton has written over 40 books and a staggering 19 New York Times Bestsellers, with a wide range of celebrities, including Al Roker, Justin Beiber, Joan Lunden, and Danica Patrick—just to name a few. She has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 25 years as a writer, producer, speaker and entrepreneur, and continues to pursue projects in publishing, production and electronic media through her company, Laura Morton Management. Her first career was as a television producer. She got frustrated because she would spend a lot of money to hire script writers and have to rewrite them. That’s how she discovered she had a talent for storytelling. The first person she cowrote a book with was Joan Lunden, Joan Lunden’s Healthy Cooking . Laura met Joan when she produced Joan’s workout video. When Joan and Laura pitched the idea of a cookbook/weight-loss memoir to Joan’s agent he said it was a terrible idea. The book went on to become a New York Times bestseller, and the rest is history. We had an interesting conversation about celebrity, storytelling, and what it takes to be an author. Here are some of the takeaways: * The difference between being a ghostwriter and a co-author. * When you would want a ghostwriter vs a co-author. * The difference between writing in a male voice and writing in a female voice. * How to suppress your own voice and write in the voice of your character/collaborator. * The importance of having ownership of what you write. * The process of recording someone else’s life story. * The importance of trust in a collaborative relationship. * The importance of liking who you’re working with. * 4 hour work sessions and the point of diminishing returns. * How long it takes to record someone’s life story. * The power of creation and how books take on a life of their own. * Writing a book is a good way to become recognized as a thought leader. * A moment of transition is probably the number one reason why someone decides to write a book. * The number one rule in writing is: write what you know * People love to read celebrity experiences. * People love a great victory. * The importance of context in relation to content. * Content is the information we see. Context is the lens we see it through. So if you’re having a bad day and your friend isn’t, and they text you a sarcastic joke you could take itthe wrong way because of your emotional state. That is context. * The importance of being concise and to the point in your writing. * The difference between writing and giving speeches. * The importance of “killing your babies.” * You don’t have to be famous to have your story told. There is value in everyone’s life experience. * How shorter attention spans today have influenced publishing. * Write what you love. Write what you know. Write what you have a passion to write. * Write everyday. * If you’re not connected to the material it won’t work. Writing a book is hard enough. You have to have a real passion for what you’re doing in order to power through the obstacles and challenges that will pop up. * Know where you want to land and work backwards. What do you want to get out of this book? * You can’t jump into something if you can’t go all in. * If writing isn’t your passion, don’t choose it as a career because it will be a frustrating career. * Making a book a success is all on you. If you self publish you’re the one that has to find a way to promote your book. If you get a book deal with a traditional publisher, you still have to be the one to promote your book. Even with big name authors traditional publishing companies don’t really do active campaigns.

Derek Doepker is the #1 Amazon Bestselling author of Why Authors Fail, and several other books. Derek leads hands-on training workshops, courses and retreats to teach authors how to turn their passion for writing into a sustainable business. Derek began his self-publishing journey as a serial entrepreneur trying to turn his passion for health and fitness into an income he could live on. He tried blogging and YouTube videos before turning to Kindle publishing. Derek gained success with his third book 50 Fitness Tips You Wish You Knew . Derek says that book was successful because he shifted his intention for the book. Rather than just wanting the book to be an Amazon bestseller, he focused on writing a book that he would be proud of. “If I died in 30 days… I wanted to leave something behind that would be great.” That book went on to do almost $6000 of royalties in 11 days (in December of 2012). At that point Derek realized he turned a corner. He knew he had to share his experience with others so they could avoid making the same mistakes he did. Derek created Kindle Bestseller Secrets and has published several best-selling Kindle books since he started. Our conversation covered several topics all around author mindset. Here are some of the takeaways. * The things you might classify as failures are simply steps on your journey. * You only fail if you give up and stop trying. * “Overnight Successes” usually take longer than we see. * Most people don’t need more information, they need more implementation. * In order to succeed you actually have to act on what you know. Just reading books and gathering information isn’t going to help you. * The only way to learn how to write books is to try writing, and learn what works and doesn’t work for you. * Another mistake authors make is to only go half way in their efforts. For instance, they spend all their time writing, editing and polishing manuscript and then they don’t want to spend the money on getting a good cover. * Having a good cover is one of the most important things you can do to help your book be a success. * Be yourself. Don’t try to please everybody. Who you are and how you write is what makes you different from everyone else. That’s how you find the audience who wants to hear from you. * The principles of success are timeless. Study success principles to future proof yourself. * In order to be a success you have to be willing to fail. Our failures teaches us the most valuable lessons. * The Key to Success: Always do the best you can and learn from the results, whatever they are. Then move forward. * Professional authors are persistent. They keep going until they get the book right. * in order to get good at something you have to be willing to be back first. No one is going to see your first draft except you. * When you’re writing just write. You can edit and be critical after you get your first attempt down. * Have the willingness to do something that’s below your potential. That way you have created something. Then go through the process of perfecting it. * Never compare your first draft to someone else’s final draft. And never compare your first draft to the final draft of your last book. * Readers aren’t buying what you say as an author, they’re buying how you say it. * Readers are buying your perspective, not your information. * The first step to getting over a fear of rejection is to acknowledge that you care what other people think. After you acknowledge it,the next step to getting over a fear of rejection is to answer the question: what do I care about more than my fear of rejection? * You can choose what you focus on. Rather than focusing on people who don’t like your work,

Jesse Lakes left Apple to launch a series of websites that utilized the iTunes and Amazon affiliate programs, but realized they had an issue with monetizing geo-fragmented audiences because of the country-specific affiliate programs. They came up with a solution, and as the project became a success, it was clear that they had built a tool that other authors, entrepreneurs and marketers would benefit from using. Jesse knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur starting early in his college years. He did several entrepreneurial projects in college before getting the opportunity to work for Apple and manage their affiliate program. When Jesse realized he was only making the problem of geo-fragmentation worse working for Apple he decided to create a tool to solve the problem. That’s when we got together with his team and created geniuslink. Geniuslink is a link management tool that allows you to create a link that will function over all the Amazon storefronts. A geniuslink figures out where in the world a click came from and directs the clicker to your product in the appropriate Amazon store. This leads to a better customer experience, more sales for you, and potentially more affiliate income. In this podcast we talk affiliate marketing, international business and the two link management tools that Jesse and his team operate: the subscription service geniuslink and their free alternative BookLinker.net Here are some of the takeaways: * Companies like Apple and Amazon have different affiliate programs in different countries because it’s easier to create different business entities in different countries for tax reasons, rather than create tools that work worldwide. * One reason Amazon doesn’t redirect customers to the appropriate store is that it’s technically complicated to do. * Another reason is there are digital rights issues when you cross country lines. * Generally speaking, the country your credit card is registered in is the country that you can legally buy digital products from. Geniuslink Benefits * With geniuslink is that you can make money from a number of affiliate programs with just one link. All you have to do is sign up for the individual affiliate programs on the various Amazon storefronts, and wherever your product is bought you will get affiliate credit for that sale. * geniuslink allows you to track where your clicks are coming from so that you can determine where your marketing efforts are doing the most good. Getting started with geniuslink 1. First, decide if you want to focus more on being an author than on marketing. If that’s the case you want to go to BookLinker.net. This is a free tool that has similar functionality to genius link. It has a simpler interface and it’s free. 2. If you’re interested in the marketing side, sign up for Amazon’s associate program. (Please note: some states are ineligible for the Amazon associate program. Please read the terms and conditions.) 3. If marketing really excites you, consider signing up for two or three of Amazon’s Associates programs in different territories. The Top 4 Amazon Associates Programs 1. Amazon.com Affiliate Program — America’s affiliate program 2. Amazon.co.uk Affiliate Program — Amazon’s affiliate program for their UK store. 3. Amazon.ca affiliate program — the affiliate program for Amazon Canada. 4. Amazon.de affiliate program — Amazon’s affiliate program for their German store. geniuslink Advanced Features

Barbara Cave Henricks is the author of Mastering the New Media Landscape: Embrace the Micromedia Mindset. She has worked as a publicist in the publishing industry for more than two decades, and now runs her own publicity firm that’s been very successful called Cave Henricks Communications. She started her career as a stringer for NBC news. After working for them for about six months she moved to Washington DC and produced several things including the Larry King radio show. As a producer of the Larry King show, Barbara went through hundreds of books a week trying to find guests for the program. Going through these books Barbara saw the vast majority of them shouldn’t have been submitted by their PR firms for consideration, because they so clearly weren’t right for Larry’s show. That’s when she decided she wanted to work the other side of the equation. She got a job at Workman Publishing and eventually decided to strike out on her own. This podcast is filled with tons of insight into the mindset of PR firms as well as how to make the best use of social media. One thing Barbara kept coming back to in the interview is the three types of media channels that exist today and how they all fit each other. Three Types of Media Channels 1. Earned Media — any media that has a gatekeeper, including traditional media and podcasts. 2. Rented Media — social media channels such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. These are referred to as “rented media” because if the website goes away then your community on that website goes away with it. 3. Owned Media — any media channel you own and control yourself, including your own website and email list. Here are some of the takeaways: * There are three types of media channels and they all feed one another. * Authors now have the ability to communicate directly with their audience. We no longer have to rely on gatekeepers to give us access. * PR firms today help you access traditional media channels. They can also train authors on how to use social media, personal websites, and blogs to reach an audience. * Traditional media is more valuable today because there are fewer traditional media channels than there were before. * PR firms can be content creators for your website. * Everyone is a layman journalist. * PR firms help you come up with a strategy to promote your book on all fronts. * It’s important to focus on multiple media channels and not rely on just one. The more channels you’re a part of, the greater your reach and the larger your audience. * While it’s important to have multiple media channels, it’s equally important to have a strategy in place. Consistent posts to your social media platforms is a must. Don’t sign up for a social media account if you’re not going to update the account regularly. * Make sure to update your social media bios to reflect the book that you are currently promoting. * You can’t create a twitter account, or any social media account is 100% self-promotional. * The best way to use twitter to promote your book: find bloggers, reporters, and reviewers who work in your genre. Follow 20 – 100 of them. Listen in on their conversations and respond when it seems appropriate. Twitter is like a big cocktail party. * If you ignore social media today you’re missing an opportunity. * Social media is one way you can get past the gatekeepers. * Social media is a place where you can be in control of the message. * Social media provides societal proof that things are trending. Traditional media likes to cover trends. * Growing an audience in owned media is very valuable. If you only rely on social media and those channels shut down you’ve lost the connection to your audience.

Debbie Drum is a best-selling author, blogger, and marketing expert. She is also the creator of Book Review Targeter a very powerful tool that helps authors get more reviews for their books. Debbie’s journey got started when she googled the words “how to make money online” in 2010. She made her first money publishing books in 2011 and never looked back. She grew her audience with a simple strategy. She published a book a week in several different marketplaces and gained traction as people discovered her through her work. Debbie currently has 50 products that you can buy related to Internet marketing and marketing videos. During our conversation which covered online marketing, and how to get book reviews Debbie emphasized the importance of having multiple streams of income and selling products in your books when possible. Here are some of the other takeaways: * The importance of people seeing you as a real person. * The power of video marketing in today’s world. * The importance of honesty and transparency in marketing. * The importance of creating content to build an audience. * Make a plan before you start writing. * What is your intention for the book you’re writing? What does success look like? * Make sure every piece of content leads the customer to where they can get more from you. * Make sure every piece of content leads to a way for you to make money now or in the future. * Have a marketing plan for your books. * Have sources of income beyond the books you publish. * Use your books to drive customers to those sources of income. * Growing an e-mail list is a necessity. You need to have some way for your audience to opt in to your email list with every piece of content you publish. * Practice what you want to get better at. * In order to get good at something you have to be willing to do it badly at first. * When you write a book or shoot a video for YouTube you’re putting yourself out there in a very raw way. It’s going to be uncomfortable at first. It’s important to do what is uncomfortable so that you can get better at what you’re doing and accomplish your goals. * Ignore negative people and just do your thing. * The importance of being passionate in the work you do. * You should wake up excited in the morning. And if you aren’t excited to go to work you’re doing the wrong type of work. * There are no real rules for self published authors. * The power of individual creativity in Internet marketing. * People can tell if you’re not being authentic. Just be honestly yourself and you will go far. * Don’t be overly negative about yourself. You want to be humble without being a downer. * The power of one-on-one communication in today’s world. * Long term success in business is all about long-term relationships. Affiliate Marketing Tips 1. It’s important to test out everything you recommend. 2. If you’re going to link from your book to an affiliate product, it’s better to link to a video review on that product, then have a link from that video to the product in question. In the video you can tell your audience about your experience with the product. Tell them about your challenges and successes with the product. It comes off as more genuine and less spammy. How to Get Book Reviews for Your Books 1. Find a book like your book on Amazon. 2. Right next to the star rating there will be a live link to the reviews of that product. It will have the number of reviews of that product. Click on that link. 3. When you read the review, at the top you’ll see: “by” and then the Amazon reviewer username that this person has chosen. The Amazon reviewer username is clickable.

Tucker Max is the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell and several other books. He is the CEO and co-founder of Book In A Box, a company that turns book writing and publishing into a service. Tucker was also nominated to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List in 2009. Tucker’s unique journey to becoming an author started in 2001 when he began emailing his friends short stories he wrote as a way to distract himself from the job he hated. His friends found the stories so entertaining that they forwarded them around to their circles and Tucker began to build a following. After he was fired from his job Tucker was encouraged to pursue writing as a career. When he couldn’t get a publisher to buy his material he decided to put it online for free in late 2002, before the word “blog” even existed. Because of the popularity of his blog, traditional publishers came back to him. Now they wanted to publish his work. That deal gave the world I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. In this podcast we talk about how to get a distribution deal with traditional publishers so you can get your book into brick and mortar bookstores and keep more money in your pocket. We also talk about the three things that you should do before you sit down to write your book. It was a truly fascinating conversation. Here are some of the takeaways you’ll learn in today’s interview with Tucker Max: * Why you shouldn’t just copy and paste your blog to make a book. * How to become your own publishing company and use a traditional publisher as a distribution channel to get into brick and mortar bookstores. * Why you have to sell at least 100,000 copies of a book as a self published author before brick and mortar bookstores will be interested in carrying your book. * How being a publishing company as well as the author of the book creates more work for you. * Why it’s important to hire an interior design firm if you’re going to sell your books in bookstores. * What you have to do to prepare for a meeting with “C-level executives” at a traditional publishing company. * Why you should always have a publishing attorney look over your contracts. * The deal terms that must be negotiated in a print-only publishing/distribution deal. * How much it costs to get your book into wide distribution in brick and mortar bookstores. * Your book is your business card. It’s a way to show the world what you know and what you can do. * In-store sales for books only account for 25% to 30% of all book sales. * The problem almost all new authors have with marketing and how to solve it. * Start writing your book with the reader in mind and selling your book becomes easy. * Podcasts are an easy way to reach your audience. * Do guest post on blogs geared to your audience. * The importance of narrowing your audience. 3 Questions That Will Determine Your Marketing Strategy 1. What result do you want from this book? What result, if you achieved it, would cause you to label this book a success? 2. What audience do you have to reach in order to get that result? As much as you can determine your “ideal reader.” It’s as much about who is in your audience as the size of your audience. 3. What do I know that is interesting and valuable to that audience? After you answer these questions marketing becomes much easier. All you have to do to market your book at that point is get it in front of the audience you’ve defined. The more specifically you can define your audience the easier it is to find channels to market directly to them. Tucker’s Books 1.

Joel Friedlander is the author several books including The Self-Publisher’s Quick & Easy Guides, a series of ebooks that help to solve key challenges for self-publishers. He has won the AIGA “50 Books of the Year Award” for his work at Aperture Publishing, and the Printing Industries of America Gold Award for his book design and production. He is the owner of Marin Bookworks of San Rafael, California and runs the very popular site for self publishing information TheBookDesigner.com Joel is the son of a printer. So he’s been around publishing most of his life. He opted to go into design because it was more interesting to him than standing next to a printing press. He started Marin Bookworks in the 1980s after working for Aperture publishing because he wrote a book he knew no other publisher would want to take on. Marin Bookworks serves small and medium-sized publishing houses as well as independent authors. We had a fascinating discussion that covered a range of topics including: went to use an offset printer rather than on demand printing, the future of publishing, and the advantages and disadvantages of being a self published author.. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation. * How to self publish print books and how to determine which printing options are best for you based on your book, the market and your budget. * Self publishers can produce many different types of books profitably, if they have the right market and know how to produce those books. * The state of self-publishing today and how author responsibilities have multiplied. * The need for education in the self-publishing space. * Self-Publishing a book the right way can cost anywhere from $120 to $20,000 depending on the kind of book you’re doing, the market you are selling to, and what you want to do with it. * $20,000 is the budget you should have if you’re trying to publish a front list book with a national book tour. * If you want to do a high quality print book and ebook you’re probably going to spend $3000 and $6000. * The process of self-publishing a coffee table book. * The key to being successful with print on demand is finding the right market for your print book. * Here’s a tip: one thing you might want to do as a new author is publish the e-book first, and only publish a print book after your audience asks you for one. This way you know there are people out there who want to buy it. * The importance of connecting your production and your marketing. * People have a price ceiling on what they’ll pay for entertainment. It’s important to tailor your book length to your market. * If you have a long book consider splitting it up into shorter books. * When it’s a good idea to go with offset printing versus print on demand. * The advantages of offset printing. * The process you go through from finding a short run printer to distributing your book. * If you want to sell books in bookstores you almost have to use the offset printing. Print on demand books have a bad rap because they weren’t good quality in the beginning. * It’s very hard for self published authors to to sell books in brick and mortar bookstores simply because of the volume of books that need to be produced in order to have that strategy be successful. * The only major disadvantage for a self published author is how difficult it is to get in to the traditional supply chain of distributors and bookstores. * Traditional publishers only advertise books they think are going to sell well already. * Book buyers don’t generally buy a book based on who published it. If your book is the quality they expect they will be happy to buy it. * A book that would take a traditional publisher a year and a half to two years to publish can be published in...

Christian A. Brown is the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed Feast of Fates (the first book in the genre bending Four Feasts until Darkness series.) It received a Kirkus Star Review in 2014. He’s appeared on AM 640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with LeGrande Green. He actively writes a blog about his mother’s journey with cancer and gender issues in the media. Originally, Christian was a personal trainer. When his mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2010 he became her primary caregiver. Being a long-term caregiver gave Christian an abundance of free time and nothing to do with it. So he dug out the manuscript that he’d been working on for about a decade and decided to actually finish the thing. That manuscript eventually became Feast of Fates. Christian’s self-publishing journey is fascinating. In this podcast we talk about working with an editor, getting a publicist, and some of the mistakes he has made on his journey. Here are some of the takeaways: * Create a schedule for writing and do it every day. * Even if you only have a little bit of time be consistent and committed to your writing. * When in doubt just sit down and do the work. * Writing isn’t always creative and inspired. Sometimes you just have to force the prose out. * The importance of finding an editor. * As a professional writer, you need to get over your sensitivity to criticism. * You only have one chance to make a good first impression. * You have to believe in yourself. * When you self publish you have control over every aspect of your product. * It’s important to think of your novel as a product because that’s what it is. * Don’t run an advertising campaign unless you have more than one book, or you have money to burn. Advertising campaigns can get expensive really fast. * Build your platform. Have an email list. Choose your social media channels and attack them. * Every author should have a primary editor. * Another place to spend some money is to hire a visual artist. * If you’re not a web designer you should hire one to build your website. * It’s best to run an ad campaign when you’re book is selling well. Then your advertising will magnify its success. * The Kirkus review was a wise investment. * When you write a good book you’re going to get some bad reviews. * When you blog aim for consistency. You never know when people discover you. Over time your blog readership will increase. * Encourage other artists. * Every author is fighting for visibility. Try different things and see what works. * Try engaging on Facebook with images rather than just plain text. * Bookbub will probably reject you at least once before you get accepted. Keep trying. They are an extremely valuable resource to expand your audience. * Once you develop your brand a publicist can be valuable for getting you into media that you wouldn’t be able to get into yourself. * BookBub can help you outsell massively popular traditionally published authors. * Believe in yourself. * There’s enough success in the world for everyone. Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview Get Bold Today — a wellness podcast with LeGrande Green. Stephen King’s On Writing — a memoir with some important nuggets of writing advice from one of the most successful authors of all time. Christian’s website ...

Daniel Hall is a bestselling author, speaker and consultant. He is also a coach, a lawyer, a nurse, a blogger and an entrepreneur. Daniel is the creator of the popular “Real Fast” training programs designed to help authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, trainers, Internet marketers and entrepreneurs effectively grow their businesses faster and profit more effortlessly. He is also the CEO of the brands Playtime Gadgets and the Backseat Nanny. Daniel’s journey began with self-publishing his first book, Speak On Cruise Ships: 8 Easy Steps To A Lifetime Of Free Luxury Cruises, in 2008. When Daniel graduated high school he went into nursing school. From nursing school Daniel went right into law school. During his law school years he wrote for the law review and that helped him refine his communication style. Daniel went on to practice law for several years and, as he says he, “fell into a job of trading my public speaking skill for rides on cruiseships.” He did this for several years and people kept asking him, “How do you do this and how can I dothe same thing?” It dawned on him that he should write a book and make it digitally available. That’s what he did. He offered the book for $97 on Amazon. The book went on to sell over 2500 copies grossing over a quarter million dollars, and it’s still available on Amazon today! We covered a lot of topics in this podcast including the importance of building a relationship with your audience and how to quickly write books and record webinars. Here are just a few of the takeaways: * The importance of building an email list. * The importance of building a community. * You have to have a way to reach out and touch people when you want to. * Your email list is the most important asset you’ll ever have. * The importance of serving your list. * One way to serve your list is to promote your customers to people you know. * Using Google hangouts as a free way to start doing webinars. * Good marketing is simply about education. All you have to do is teach your customer that you have the solution they need. * The importance of breaking big goals into smaller tasks. * Quick Writing Tip: record a conversation and have it transcribed. From here you can do some light editing to make it readable, then publish it. * Another variation: Create a PowerPoint presentation. Teach your PowerPoint presentation. Record and transcribe that. * People like shorter nonfiction Kindle books * People by nonfiction books for the solution they present. When you’re writing nonfiction get to the solution fast. That’s what the audience wants. * Your book needs to be long enough to solve your reader’s problem. No more. No less. * Every book title makes a promise to the reader, either explicitly or implicitly. Your job is to over deliver on that promise. * Best-selling books are those books that are the most complete, not necessarily the longest. * One new idea is all you need to set your part from the competition. * Every business owner should be an author building their platform. * How the industry has changed since 2008. When Teaching or Hosting a Webinar it’s best to: * Make sure the audience gets immediate actionable information they can apply right now. * When you are going to pitch a product at the end of your webinar make sure the audience gets value whether or not they buy from you. * Answer every question the audience has, whether or not you go over time. * Every person’s favorite word is their own name. * You can never give too much to your audience. * Answer questions as they occur in the presentation. When you do this make sure to call out by name the person who asked the question. This does 3 things:.

No matter how long you have been in the entrepreneurial space there is no question that you want to have an even greater level of success than you’ve experienced to this point. Today’s guest, Kelly Roach, is an author and business coach who specializes in helping entrepreneurs increase their sales and success through practical strategies that get results. On this episode of the podcast you are going to learn how to amplify your business no matter who you are or what you do by learning the key strategies for success in sales, and much, much more. One of the main benefits of being an entrepreneur: time freedom. Kelly Roach was living the dream in corporate America. She was very successful, getting promotions every year, and at the top of her game in her career field. But the sacrifices she had to make in order to attain those levels of success were not something she could sustain for very long. She didn’t like having to work long hours, missing key family events, or being mentally absent even when she was at home. Becoming an entrepreneur was the key to her building a lifestyle she desired with the kind of success that can create real time freedom. On this episode you’ll get to hear Kelly’s story and get a taste for what it could be like to build a business that provides exactly what you need for your life. Why you need to think differently about sales. What do you think of when you hear the term “sales?” Is it a pushy approach? Is it a used car salesman at the corner lot? Is it cold calling or door to door interactions? Kelly Roach has learned and coaches her clients to understand that sales is nothing more than serving. Your job as a salesperson is to ask enough questions that you are truly able to understand your potential customers’ needs. Then you will know how to serve them best, or whether you can serve them at all with the products you have available. There are some keen insights into sales and the sales process on this episode, so make sure you take great notes! The main things that hold entrepreneurs back from selling more products and services. The advent of social media and social media advertising has been a wonderful thing for the business community. However, many people have come to believe that the use of social media makes the need for face-to-face conversations less important. Kelly Roach believes that the lack of sales success that most entrepreneurs experience is directly related to that mistaken belief. One of her favorite sayings is, “conversations are cash,” which essentially means that face-to-face interaction is the best way to close sales and actually grow your business. Kelly’s insights are valuable, and you’ll get more than you can implement on this episode of the podcast. Success in sales is a matter of understanding the sales cycle and sticking with it. Selling your product or service can be a very discouraging thing. The “no” answers can demoralize you and cause you to give up. But when you understand how sales happen and the numbers of sales “touches” you need to make to create a sale, you’re able to have a broader perspective and keep going when things are hard. Kelly Roach is a business coach who has a great deal of experience helping entrepreneurs get past those obstacles and increase the level of success in their business. If you want to get on board that kind of business fast track you need to hear what Kelly has to say. Outline of this great episode [0:14] Introduction of Kelly Roach, author and coach. [1:45] How Kelly got the entrepreneurial bug. [3:09] Kelly’s use of time freedom to amplify the quality of her life. [3:59] Monitoring the disconnect between who you are and what you do. [5:06] Why Kelly wrote her book, “Unstoppable.”

Mike Matthews is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books including Bigger Leaner Stronger for men and Thinner Leaner Stronger for women. He blogs at MuscleforLife.com and LegionAthletics.com with over 1 Million visitors every month. Mike always thought, “Why isn’t there a book out there that actually teaches you what you really need to know to eat right and build muscle without all the BS and garbage?” That’s why he wrote and published his first book Bigger Leaner Stronger in 2012 on the side while he was working full-time writing employee training manuals. It all started as an experiment to see if people even cared about what Mike had to say. They did! Mike’s book sales started to take off in just a few months. Book sales became so impressive, he decided to quit his job and recruit his friend Jeremy to work together on growing his budding fitness business. Together, they launched MuscleforLife.com in March, 2013 which now gets more than a million visitors every month. They also started Legion Athletics to bring super high-quality supplements to the marketplace. Here’s a few gold nuggets you’ll learn in this interview with Mike: * Why you should focus on creating the highest quality, most amazing book, product or service you possibly can. Mediocrity won’t take you to the top. Go way above and beyond what your competition is doing. * Why it’s crucial to create a product, book or service that fills a gap in the marketplace. Do something that no one else is doing so your customers can make an easy choice to go with something different. * Why most body building supplements in retail stores are almost worthless. * You can grow a very profitable business and still do the right thing, create great products and keep your integrity intact. Conscious capitalism does exist, and it can be an incredibly fulfilling journey to pick. * Why “me too” fitness books don’t sell well. * Why you should be enthusiastic and interested in what you’re writing. Your emotions will come across to your reader! * How to craft a book title, book cover and description that will help you sell more books. * Mike’s “survey system” for selecting great brand names, book titles, headlines and more. * Why spending your time and money on writing great content and writing more * Why Mike still answers every email he gets personally (which is pretty shocking given how big his business is and how many people read his books). * Every blog post or book you publish is a part of your body of work. Are you happy with your body of work? * Why having tons of writers on one website with disjointed messages and contradictory advice only confuses readers and doesn’t actually help anyone. Mike also talked about The Stockdale Paradox where prisoners of war who say to themselves “I’m going to get free by Christmas!” year after year are the ones who don’t last. Mike believes a lot of entrepreneurs are tricking themselves into failure by constantly chasing short-term goals and retirement instead of focusing on doing great work and adding value to people’s lives. When they don’t hit those goals, they lose hope and give up while people like Mike are still chugging away and focusing on adding value. A Great Question to Ask Yourself What is something unique I can create that will add real value to people? Links and Resources from the Show Bigger Leaner Stronger for men on Amazon Thinner Leaner Stronger for women on Amazon

Heather Ann Havenwood is the bestselling author of several books including Sexy Boss. She started with internet marketing back in 1999 and has helped create several multi-million dollar businesses. Here’s a few highlights of the things you’ll learn from our interview with Heather: * How a late night infomercial for a $3,000 seminar about owning your own business changed her life (and how she was recruited to work for that same seminar company) * How Heather became an information marketing expert (and why educating your audience can be your most powerful marketing tool for any business) * Heather’s book writing process that involves lots of talking and no writing (for her) * Why attracting the right team members to help with your book project can make it so much faster, easier and more fun * Why you should definitely get your books in audiobook format as well (and how to hire someone to produce your audiobook for you even with little or no budget) * Why you should focus on the long-term success of your book and your message instead of only focusing on short-term launches and promotions * Why you should write an “evergreen” book that will remain relevant for a very long time and continue to be in demand from readers and produce sales for you * How publishing your book can help you easily get booked on podcast shows and media interviews * How to leverage your book to meet the top influencers in your industry and create valuable business and personal relationships with them * How to start your own seminar program from your book * Why it’s so important to get out and speak publicly whether for free or not so that you can meet your readers and learn more about them, who they are, what they want and how you can help serve them even better * A powerful question to ask yourself when you’re feeling stuck: “Does this fuel my confusion or strengthen my clarity?” Heather highly recommends reading The Game of Life and How to Play It Learn more about Heather and connect with her at heatherhavenwood.com