The Publishing Profits Podcast Show | Writing | Marketing | Books | eBooks | Audiobooks | Authors | Entrepreneurs

Shoshanna Evers is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author. She’s written several novels, novellas and short stories including The Man Who Holds the Whip. She has written in several genres including contemporary romance, romance, and erotica. In today’s show, Shoshanna shares a glimpse into her creative process and some of her top tips for creativity, writing, rewriting and editing, and marketing. Shoshanna began writing books in 1999 and submitting them to romance publishers. The books weren’t very good and she got a couple of rejection letters. She’s glad that self-publishing wasn’t an option at the time. After two rejections she decided to only write for herself. Keep Working At It It wasn’t until 2010 that she decided to submit some of her work again. The book she sent out in 2010 was being traditionally published. She credits her decade of practice for leveling up her skills to the point where her stories were able to be sold. Shoshanna published a couple romance novels and several short stories traditionally, all before she got an agent. After Shoshanna got representation, she did a series with Simon & Schuster. Shoshanna finally self published in 2011, and she credits self-publishing with allowing her to work as a full-time writer. She wrote a 5,000 word short story and distributed it on all the major online booksellers. It quickly sold 25,000 copies. That was a real eye-opening moment for Shoshanna. She realized that this is how she should share things with her audience. That’s when she decided to become a hybrid author. She has several self published titles and several traditionally published titles. There are real benefits to being traditionally published and being self published. Having your book traditionally published means that you get an advance. That gives you money to live on while you’re writing your book. One thing to be aware of, if you don’t deliver the book at some point, you have to give back the advance. Her Self-Publishing Success There were several things in play that led to Shoshanna’s short story’s massive sales when she self published it. She already had a platform when she self published her short story. She published several books traditionally and she had a fan base eager to read her next book. She priced the book at $0.99 in 2011. That was near the beginning of the online self-publishing marketplace. Self-publishing still had a stigma associated with it. So she entered the market with less competition than there is now. Back in 2011, there weren’t too many things priced at $0.99. Today, many books are $0.99 or free. In 2011 pricing your fiction at $0.99 was a novelty. She had a provocative cover. (It had a sexy cowboy.) It was in a unique Amazon category that was in demand. Writing Erotic Romance Almost all of Shoshanna’s books are erotic romances. That means that the book is about two people falling in love, and there are sex scenes in the story. Shoshanna also has two nonfiction books: How to Write Hot Sex which is a nonfiction anthology she compiled and published in 2011. She got a group of authors she knew write great sex scenes, and she paid them for the nonexclusive right to use their essays in the book. It ended up being great publicity for them, on top of being some really good writing advice. Shoshanna published an updated version of the anthology in 2014, because she had to update her chapter on how to get published. All of the authors of the original anthology made updates to their essays and bios. Writing the First Draft Usually when Shoshanna comes up with an idea for a story, she’s nowhere near her computer. Shoshanna uses Siri to email herself her story ideas when she has them. Shoshanna uses a digital recorder to talk out her initial ideas about the book. She also likes to have at least a working title in place. From that point, she’ll start brainstorming and free writing. Shoshanna sells her traditionally published books based on a book proposal. A proposal is the synopsis and the first few chapters. Shoshanna is a pantser, she learned how to outline her books to help her avoid wasting time on dead ends. Outlining also really helps when you’re writing a series, because it allows you to spot snags, plot holes, and plot twists that won’t work before you’d invested massive amounts of time writing your story. You can fix plot problems on a few sheets of paper in an outline, when it could potentially take you hundreds of pages in a manuscript. Shoshanna has become a fan of outlining for these reasons. She’s recently been experimenting with dictation, and Shoshanna makes a point to write at least 2,000 words a day. She often writes considerably more than that using dictation. Shoshanna has a blog where she talks about writing at least 1,000 words a day. Now that she’s under contract she has to write 2,000 words a day to meet her deadlines. She&

Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of The Lincoln Myth and several other books. Steve has sold more than 19 million books and is a modern-day success story in the publishing industry. After Dan Brown’s novels took off in the early 2000’s, Steve was finally able to land a traditional publishing deal for his books which are also in the international thriller / mystery genre. In today’s show, Steve shares the story of his journey from an unknown, unpublished writer to becoming one of the world’s top novelists. He’ll also share his magic number for how many times he edits his novels, and how you should think about the editing process before you seek to get your book published. Steve Berry practiced law for 30 years before becoming a professional author. He always had a voice inside him telling him to write. In 1990 he decided to listen to that voice and start writing. Over the next year he discovered that writing is hard. Over the next 12 years Steve taught himself the craft of writing. During that 12 year period Steve submitted eight manuscripts to different publishing houses. Five of those manuscripts were rejected a total of 85 times. He actually walked away from writing three times in that 12 year period, but the voice in his head wouldn’t let him give up. He finally became a published novelist in 2003 with his book, The Amber Room. Since 2003, Steve has sold over 19 million books in more than 50 countries. Listen to the Voice inside Your Head If you have a voice inside your head telling you to write a book, listen to it. If you’re going to be a commercial fiction writer you’re going to hear a whole lot more negativity than you do encouragement. You’re going to get one-star reviews. You’re going to get readers telling you your work is crap. The only way Steve has gotten through all the negativity is by listening to the persistent voice inside his head telling him to write. Learning the Writing Craft The number one thing you have to have is a good story. You can’t build an author platform until you have a story that people want to read and tell their friends about. Steve took a systematic approach to learning the craft of fiction writing. He wrote 1,000 new words of fiction every day. He went to a writer’s group every week for six years. Consistent repetition is what it takes to learn the craft of writing. “There’s no such thing as a writing teacher. There are people who can teach you how to teach yourself how to write, and those are the folks you need to find.” – Steve Berry How to Become a Successful Fiction Writer Read your genre. Study your genre. Write new original words every day. Writing is an acquired skill, and anybody can acquire it, all you have to do is put in the work. There are no shortcuts when it comes to being a successful writer. You just have to do the work. Write every day. Submit your manuscripts, and keep going until you catch a break. “If you’ve got a manuscript that you’ve gone over 60 to 70 times, and you feel comfortable you have the best manuscript you can write, it’s time to find an agent.” – Steve Berry You can browse our list of literary agents to find the ones that might be a good fit for you. The only way to be a successful author is to be persistent. You have to keep going after you get rejected. Steve learned how to get an agent, how to sell a manuscript, and how to market books by trial and error. The problem with people today is that people aren’t patient. Everyone wants success right now. That’s not how success works. “You make your own luck by hanging in there. I caught a break in 2002 when the world caught up to the type of book I was writing. You have to stick with it.” – Steve Berry What Steve Has Learned about the Craft of Writing Don’t bore the reader. Don’t confuse the reader. Shorter is always better. How Steve Researches His Novels Steve writes thrillers set in the modern day that are connected to history in some way. For every novel, he goes through these steps: Goes through 300 to 400 written sources. He takes extensive notes on the history he’s referencing. He usually takes 1 to 2 trips researching the locations in his novel. He organizes all of his research, and then begins the process of writing his first draft. He will only use 20% to 25% of his research in any book he writes. He’s writing fiction. His job is to entertain you. Choosing Your Genre “Don’t write what you know. Write what you love.” – Steve Berry Steve enjoys writing contemporary thrillers with a connection to the past. He enjoys conspiracies and mysteries. So that’s what he writes. He’d like to branch out someday, but he’s going to stick with his genre for the foreseeable future. He likes those books and that’s what his audience expects from him. Editing and Rewriting Steve&#821

Grant Cardone is the New York Times bestselling author of If You’re Not First, You’re Last and three other books. Grant is a foremost sales expert and businessman, often appearing as a contributor on Fox, CNN and all the other big TV and radio media outlets. He’s also a superstar social media marketer on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more with over half a million followers on both Facebook and Twitter alone. In today’s show, Grant shares the secrets to his success. If this show doesn’t wake you up and get you fired up, you’re probably dead! Grant began seriously building his Internet presence after the 2008 financial collapse in the United States. That collapse showed him that he needed to go horizontal as well as vertical in his business dealings. Early in his business career he was taught and believed that it was enough to be very good in one vertical sector of the economy. While that works well during normal economic times, and in times of expansion, being dominant in one sector of the economy during a time of economic contraction is not enough to provide abundance. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, Grant understood that he needed to write a book. The power of a book is that it can create horizontal lines of expansion for you. It can get you known beyond your ZIP Code. A book can get you known outside your city and your sector of expertise. A book opens you up to a much wider audience. Before Lehman’s collapse in 2008, Grant was an expert speaker on the subject of sales. He spoke to companies for a fee. After Lehman collapsed Grant realized that his business model was broken. He wrote his first book, Sell or Be Sold, for himself because he’d gone from being the CEO of three companies back to being a salesman again. Grant needed to sell himself and his expertise to raise the capital that disappeared after the economic contraction of 2008. Grant’s Social Media Marketing Strategy Most people aren’t using their social media channels. They’re being used by them. Most people go to their social media channels and just look at them. They’re being bombarded by information. This isn’t a new problem, it’s been around since the invention of the television. “In the media, I don’t want to watch the news, I want to make the news. If you’re a writer, your job every day is not to write. Your job is to be in the news. Your job is to be at the forefront. You want to be the celebrity people are talking about. You’ve got to think in terms of how do people know you? What are you talking about?” – Grant Cardone As an author you need to figure out how to use Twitter to promote your books and your brand. Tweeting twice a day isn’t going to do anything to sell your books. Grant has his phone set up with links to: Twitter Facebook YouTube Google plus LinkedIn Instagram He makes a point to use his phone and his social media channels to communicate with the world. If you want to write a decent book and have it be successful, you have to push it in the marketplace. Social media is a free and easy way to do that. Social media allows you to broadcast your message worldwide without having to travel yourself. Using social media to broadcast your message is the same thing PT Barnum did early in the 20th century. He traveled to different towns across America and advertised his circus, and people showed up. Now you can advertise yourself from the comfort of your home. The key to being successful on social media is to do it a lot. Grant has seen many authors give away chapters of their book on Facebook. For Grant, it makes much more sense to give away lines from your book, and do it more often. The key to getting noticed on social media is to break through the noise by posting as often as possible. If you want to be successful as an author you can’t just write one great book. You have to write a number of books. The same thing is true of social media. You have to post on social media consistently to get the attention of your audience. And you have to do it much more than you think you do. “You need to become a dependable author of good ideas during the day, not just one book you put a cover on.” – Grant Cardone Most people don’t make money on books. If you want to lose a lot of money write a lot of books. If you want to make a lot of money, you have to get known for something. And that’s where the book comes in. The book establishes you as an expert who knows something important. How Grant Rebuilt His Business after The 2008 Financial Collapse After the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, Grant decided to rebuild his business by committing to use the new lines of communication open to him through the Internet and social media. He decided to create his own reality show and broadcast it online. He decided to create his own radio show and distribute it online. Get Your Message out There “We live in a world where you can be the

Adam Kosloff is one of the fastest writers on earth. He owns and operates a booming ghostwriting business for high-end clients like attorneys and doctors who want high quality books written quickly. He’s also a bestselling author published with TCK Publishing and a freelance writer for various businesses. In today’s show, Adam shares his top tips for increasing your writing speed, productivity, and quality at the same time. Adam says writing is like a business, and he’s applied business best practices to his writing work to become a writer on fire. Adam took a spontaneous, seemingly random path to becoming a prolific writer. He went to Yale and studied geophysics. He was part of a comedy improv group at Yale, and after he graduated he decided to move to Los Angeles and become a screenwriter. He needed a way to pay the bills while he pursued his dream of becoming a screenwriter, so he decided to start writing for websites as a way to make extra money while he pursued his dream of becoming a screenwriter. He has done screenwriting work for Mel Brooks, and he wrote for the Woody Woodpecker Show. Over the years, Adam has written for more than 36,000 websites. He’s written on every topic imaginable, from dating, to low carbohydrate diet science, to the law, and everything in between. Adam developed the skill to write authoritatively on any topic by writing one article at a time. Adam also writes books for professionals who want to expand their business. He’s developed a ghostwriting system that makes writing these books quickly a simple process. Adam taught himself the process of writing quickly. He credits his second grade teacher and ninth grade teacher with giving him the foundational skills he needed to become a successful writer. One of the challenges Adam deals with is carving out time to work on his own stuff instead of writing for other people. People pay him well to write quickly for them, so it’s a balancing act on a daily basis. Staying Productive as a Writer Adam dictates the majority of his copy. He has it transcribed by a freelancer in India, and then he goes back to edit the copy. He got into writing this way because he developed severe carpal tunnel syndrome from the massive amount of work he was producing at his keyboard. Dictating his work and having it transcribed saved his health and business. Develop Your Writing System Adam read The Entrepreneurial Emergency by Rich Schefren. He’s also taken Rich’s course on entrepreneurship. Rich says that every business has an output, and when you’re developing your system you have to think of the constraints that will be the bottleneck to your output. You have to design your business around your constraints to maximize your output. Let’s say your business is making shoes, and the slowest part of your business is the guy who puts the heels on the shoes. When that guy gets backed up, the whole system goes down. So if you hire a second person to put the heels on your shoes, your productivity will skyrocket. What you want to do is define your constraints and then look at ways to improve your business by working on your constraints. If you try to make improvements in your business that don’t deal with your constraints, you aren’t actually improving your output. Focus on Your Constraints “As a writer, if you want to write really fast, you have to figure out what is slowing you down. Don’t just look at your process. Look at yourself. A lot of time your constraint is psychological.” – Adam Kosloff If your constraint is, “I’m not inspired.” You have to figure out how to get yourself inspired. If your constraint is, “I don’t have enough time in the day to write.” Figure out how much time you have in your day. See if you can carve out more writing time. You aren’t going to solve this problem until you track your time and look at it objectively. If you can figure out your bottlenecks and work on those, you’ll make much more progress faster. “I have regular thinking time where I think about my business. One of the questions I always ask myself is, ‘What’s holding me back?'” – Tom Corson Knowles Ask yourself, “What’s my constraint?” Or “What’s holding me back?” and paying attention to those answers so you can develop a system that will maximize your productivity. It’s really easy to see what your challenges are when you pay attention to them, rather than going through your habitual daily activity without paying attention to what’s really going on in your life. Treat Your Writing like a Business “Your writing is a business, and if you’re not thinking of it like that, you’re just writing for fun and that’s dangerous.” – Adam Kosloff Spend time thinking about what kind of writer you are. Spend time thinking about the kind of writer you want to be.

Teresa Rhyne is a #1 NY Times, #1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author. Her first book, The Dog Lived (and So Will I) was traditionally published by Sourcebooks, Inc. In today’s show, Teresa shares her inspiring story of how she went from an unknown author to a #1 NYT bestseller in a very competitive market, as well as her inspiring personal journey that sparked the bestselling book. Teresa always loved to write. She wrote from the time she was a child through high school and college. She never had anything published but she loved creative writing. Then she went to law school. Teresa didn’t have any free time for creative writing during her law school years. Later in life she was going through divorce, and she returned to creative writing because it was something she enjoyed in her past. She began taking a writing extension course through UCLA. She started writing fiction because that’s what she was reading and that’s what she loved. She only switched over to nonfiction when a life experience happened that needed to be written about. How Her Memoir Became a Bestseller Teresa decided to write a memoir when she and her dog both got cancer within three years of each other. Her friends and family all said she needed to write a memoir about it, and so she did. She found that her classes in fiction writing were helpful in composing her memoir. Teresa started a blog to keep her friends and family up to date about how she was doing through her breast cancer treatment. The blog also began to grow a fan base. She turned her blog into a memoir. She opted to go the traditional publishing path, because that was the route that she knew and understood. Teresa didn’t consider self-publishing because she didn’t know much about it. Honestly, it didn’t even occur to her. The traditional process of sending query letters to get an agent, and then having your agent sell the book was what she knew and was used to. Teresa got very lucky. She had three agents who were interested in her memoir very quickly. She chose an agent and went from there. She created a book proposal, wrote sample chapters, and submitted them to publishers until her memoir was picked up by Sourcebooks. Sourcebooks is a medium-sized publisher that’s growing. They did a lot to promote Teresa’s book and they were real partners in the marketing process. Amazon selected Teresa’s memoir as a Kindle daily deal, and that launched her to bestseller status. She was the number one best-selling book on Amazon the day her book became a Kindle daily deal, and her book was on the New York Times bestseller list the following week. Surviving Cancer Teresa was divorced from her husband for a year when she found out that her dog Shamus had cancer. The doctors told her that with surgery and chemo Shamus would live about a year. Shamus was a big part of Teresa’s support system after she divorced her husband. So she was particularly upset that Shamus would only live a year after treatment. As it turned out, the doctors were wrong, and Shamus lived nine years after his year of cancer treatment. Three years later Teresa confronted her own breast cancer diagnosis. She used a lot of what she learned from helping Shamus through his cancer treatment, to cope with her own cancer treatment. Both Shamus and Teresa had relatively young and inexperienced cancer doctors. They even had some of the same cancer treatments. And going through the ordeal with Shamus prepared Teresa to cope with her own situation. Dealing with Shamus’s cancer treatment was Teresa’s first personal experience with cancer. None of her family or friends ever had cancer. Having been through these challenges with Shamus, Teresa was much more upbeat and optimistic than she would have been without having that experience with her dog. The story of going through cancer after nursing her dog through it was inspiring to Teresa herself, so she felt like she should share her story with the world. The Biggest Life Lesson from Cancer Going through cancer twice, once with Shamus and once by herself, Teresa learned that you always have to have hope. Teresa is a lawyer by training and the natural pessimist. But being a pessimist wasn’t going to help her survive her cancer treatment. Only hope and optimism could help her navigate her intense medical treatments. “They say your attitude counts, and you’re supposed to be upbeat and all this, but that’s hard to do when you’re going through cancer and chemotherapy, but as long as you’ve got some hope and you’re doing it your way, that’s important. And that’s the message I wanted to share with my book.” – Teresa Rhyne Teresa’s Experience Writing Fiction Earlier in her life Teresa wrote fiction. She enjoyed writing it because that’s what she enjoyed reading. She had an almost finished novel sitting in her drawer, and she has high hopes

Derek Doepker is the #1 Amazon Bestselling author of 50 Fitness Tips You Wish You Knew, Why You’re Stuck, and several others. Derek is a pro when it comes to positioning and marketing books, and coming up with brilliant titles and marketing campaigns that actually work (and don’t cost a ton of money). In today’s show, Derek shares his secrets to positioning, branding and marketing books online, and how just a few simple, small changes can make a HUGE difference in your book sales. Derek has a unique author journey. He got a degree in music and then became a writer to support himself while he was trying to break into the music business. Derek started his fitness blog in 2012 because he has a passion for sharing health and fitness advice. He had some success with the blog, but he wasn’t generating any income. Discovering Self Publishing In the middle of 2012, Derek discovered Kindle books. Derek read Tom’s book The Kindle Publishing Bible and that really opened his eyes to what was possible with Kindle. Derek saw Kindle books as an opportunity to monetize the information that was on his blog, and bring more traffic to his blog. He saw Kindle publishing as a low entry way to get his name out in the marketplace, and as a supplement to what he was doing with blogging and online marketing. Derek published his first book, How to Stick to a Diet and that book did alright. It pulled in $100 its first month, after running a KDP free promotion. That gave Derek a little victory and validation. It proved to him that people were finding his information and buying it. After studying how to succeed with Kindle marketing, Derek launched his second book 50 Fitness Tips You Wish You Knew and that became a number one bestseller in weight loss over the Christmas season of 2012. Ever since then, Derek has built upon what he learned and discovered consistent patterns, and what it takes to become a bestseller. Today Derek coaches indie authors how to sell more books and get visibility on Amazon. “When we’re looking at books and deciding what to buy it’s not something we’re doing a lot of critical thinking [about.] It’s an impulse thing, where something either grabs our attention, or doesn’t.” – Derek Doepker Hooks for Books Derek’s program Hooks for Books is all about creating captivating titles for nonfiction books. He developed this program after he realized people quickly decide whether or not they’re going to buy a book. When a customer is browsing Amazon for a new book title, they’re simply scanning the website, looking for a book that might interest them. They’re not taking a deep dive and analyzing the description page. They are quickly glancing at each book to decide if it’s something they might be interested in. People make split-second decisions when looking for a new book. They ask themselves two questions: Does this book grab my attention? Does it look interesting to me? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then the customer moves on to the next book. A big key to Derek’s success is he makes sure before he even writes a book that he has a title that will make people want to know more about what’s inside the book. If you don’t have a hook in your nonfiction book title that grabs a reader’s attention, nothing else matters. Use Curiosity to Get Attention If you want to have success as an author every title you create needs to have a “hook” element. One emotional hook element that works well is curiosity. People buy things for emotional reasons. And you want to give them a book title that provokes an emotional response. If you give them a title that makes them curious they’re likely to take an in-depth look at your book. “Add an element to the cover that triggers curiosity. Example: with my book, ’50 Fitness Tips You Wish You Knew;’ the hook there is the ‘You Wish You Knew,’ that’s making people curious about the content.” – Derek Doepker If Derek had called his book 50 Fitness Tips, or 50 Fitness Tips to Get in Great Shape, it would not have stood out from the crowd. Another example of a book title that sparks curiosity is Derek’s Why You’re Stuck. The title why you’re stuck implies the book is going to be able to tell customers why their stuck and unable to achieve their goals. If you are someone who’s struggling to achieve some goal, and you come across that book in the self-help section of Amazon, you’re more than likely going to take a closer look at it. Notice how the title Why You’re Stuck triggers a different emotional response than the title Get Unstuck. There’s nothing wrong with the second title. It just doesn’t provoke the same level of curiosity. Title Variations That Create Curiosity Any title with the word “secret” in it. 50 Secrets of the World’s Oldest Living Peop

Michael J. Sullivan is one of the few authors who has successfully published his books all three ways—with a traditional Big Five publisher, with a small independent publisher, and as a self publisher. Michael is the bestselling author of the Riyria series and several other novels. In today’s show, he shares some inspiring stories and tips for new and established authors. Michael took a long and circuitous route to becoming a successful writer. He wrote 13 novels that no one had an interest in buying and decided to give up on the idea of becoming a published novelist. Michael worked in advertising for 12 years before deciding to write again. He wrote a series of books for his daughter because she was having trouble reading. He wanted to write something that would be fun to read with her. He ended up with a six book series, and he made them available on the Internet for free. Several of his readers said these books should be published, so he tried to sell the series to a traditional publisher. Again, there wasn’t very much interest. Michael’s wife got involved and got him an agent. They were finally able to sell the Riyria Revelations series to a small publisher in Minnesota. The small publisher had economic problems because of the crash of 2008, so Michael bought back the rights to his series and began to self publish them. The first three books sold modestly well. The fourth book caught on like wildfire. Michael was selling 10,000 books a month. That’s when he and his wife decided they should try to sell the series to one of the big six traditional publishers. Orbit bought the series, repackaged, and redistributed it. The Riyria Revelations series was supposed to be a six book series, but Michael’s customers wanted more, so he decided to write some prequels. Michael didn’t realize that you aren’t supposed to let a series end. He also didn’t realize prequels don’t generally sell well. The prequels for his series seem to do just fine. Michael has found success going against conventional wisdom. After the success of his Riyria Revelations series, Michael decided to write a science fiction novel. He showed the novel to the people at Orbit, and they passed on the book because they didn’t think it would sell in the current marketplace. Michael’s Experience with Kickstarter Michael decided to run a Kickstarter to fund publication of his sci fi book. He figured it would cost him $6,000 to publish the book, he asked for $3,000 on Kickstarter thinking he’d put up the other $3,000 himself to get it done. Michael’s Kickstarter campaign ended up funding at over $30,000 which was a big surprise to him. He credits the success of the Kickstarter campaign to the Kickstarter community. His campaign got a lot of visibility because it funded so quickly. That allowed a lot of traffic from the Kickstarter community itself to see the project. After the success of Michael’s Kickstarter campaign he decided to sell the print rights to his sci-fi novel Hollow World to Tachyon publications. Tachyon publications handles printing and distribution for the print version of Hollow World. Michael retains the e-book rights, and he still gets 100% of his e-book commissions. The Journey to Bestselling Writer Michael began writing his first novel when he was in eighth grade. Michael wrote three fantasy novels in three years starting in eighth grade. He drifted away from fantasy after that. He began exploring other genres, notably science-fiction and horror. His writing habits mirrored his reading habits. He went from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien to Dune by Frank Herbert, and finally to the works of Stephen King. He imitated the authors that he liked. Michael had no formal training as a writer. He simply read books and imitated the authors who caught his imagination. Michael wrote 13 novels before he came up with a novel he felt was publishable. Authors You Should Study John Steinbeck has fantastic descriptions of setting. Ernest Hemingway will teach you how to write concisely. Stephen King has a fantastic ability to get in the minds of his characters. John Updike has the ability to describe things without naming them. Somehow his descriptions are more vivid because he describes things without naming them. Michael’s first artistic outlet was as a painter and illustrator. He learned to paint and draw by mimicking other artists and learning their techniques through the practice of copying their work. He took the same approach to writing. That allowed him to get a lot of practice. It also led him to have gaps in his knowledge. When Michael’s first agent told him that he had a “show and tell problem,” he didn’t have any idea what they meant. Once his agent explained what “show, don’t tell” means, Michael immediately understood how the concept could make his work better. Show, Don’t Tell Many beginning writer

Penny Sansevieri is the bestselling author of Red Hot Internet Publicity and founder of Author Marketing Experts. She has been preaching the importance of online marketing, blogging, PR, and internet-savvy marketing tactics to authors for over a decade and is a true pioneer in the world of online marketing for authors. Penny started her author journey 14 years ago. She was working in corporate America when she got laid off. Her first thought was to get another corporate job. When that company closed as well, she saw it as a sign that she should be working for herself. Penny began consulting using her marketing knowledge. She also began to publish more books and produce more content. She decided she wanted to dedicate herself to working with self-published authors. Fourteen years ago, the self-publishing marketplace wasn’t a popular space to be in. Now, many people decide to self-publish without ever considering a traditional publishing contract. But back then, self-publishing was what you did when you couldn’t do anything else. This is a great interview. We talk about how both fiction and nonfiction authors can market and get publicity for their books. We talk about how to create superfans. We talk about the importance of reviews and how to get them. Finally, we discuss making sure each book you write is a marketing tool. “Create superfans: one true fan can be more valuable than a $50,000 marketing budget. You never know where your superfan is gonna come from. Make readers feel special, invite them to be a part of an early review list, and thank readers for their reviews.” – Penny Sansevieri Self-Publishing Marketing Strategies that Work Today One of the great advantages of self-publishing is that you can test different marketing strategies yourself. You aren’t relying on a publishing company to do your marketing for you. The biggest thing that helps self-published authors sell more books is to concentrate on reader engagement. One thing that works really well is putting a letter at the end of the book inviting people to leave a review and connect on whatever social media platforms make sense for the author. In Penny’s experience, adding a letter inviting people to review the book increased reviews and reader engagement by 80%. 1. Do What Your Readers Want Penny tested a number of different tweaks to keywords and description pages on Amazon. All of that information is in her new book How To Sell Your Books By The Truckload On Amazon.com. Penny was surprised to find that shorter books are selling better than longer books on Amazon right now. The Power of Writing Shorter Nonfiction Books How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon.com was originally 58 pages…and it regularly outsells Red Hot Internet Publicity – Fourth Edition: The Insider’s Guide to Marketing Online! which is almost four times as long. Penny attributes its success to the fact that people are looking for shorter books focused on a specific problem with solutions that are easy to understand and implement. “We live in the age of Twitter, where we want that micro-byte of information.” – Penny Sansevieri There are three major benefits to writing shorter nonfiction books. Shorter nonfiction books are easier to write because they allow you to focus on a specific problem. It limits the scope of your research and the information you need to share. People want shorter nonfiction books. They are interested in finding a book that gives them a specific solution for their problem. They don’t want to wade through a larger book and distill the information from it. Dividing a larger nonfiction book into smaller books allows you to create titles that are keyword-specific so that your audience can find your information easier. It also gives your audience more entry points to find out about you and the information you have to share. Writing shorter books also works for fiction. Penny has been hearing from publishers that 20,000 to 30,000 words is the new sweet spot for fiction. Shorter books aren’t as big a commitment for the reader, so they’re more likely to pick them up. But remember: it’s important to draw readers in at the beginning of your story so that they’re primed to read to the end. 2. Create Superfans Penny was at the Daytime Emmy awards in Las Vegas one year working with Days of Our Lives, and she had their 45-year anniversary book with her. A fan who thought she worked on the show came up to her and started talking to her in detail about the decor and setting of the show. Actors on soap operas put a lot of effort into creating superfans. They do lunches, charity events, and giveaways, interacting with their fans and cultivating their interest. Creating a superfan as an author is no different. You have to engage with your audience and give them the opportunity to see behind the scenes. You want to make your superfans feel like VIPs. You want to engage with them on yo

Stephanie Cobian is a top project manager of TVGuestpert, a media company specializing in helping authors, experts and thought leaders get booked on national media like TV, radio, podcasts and more. Stephanie helps everyday authors and experts turn their knowledge, ideas and stories into life-changing publicity and exposure by getting laser-focused on who your audience is and how to reach them. In this interview, Stephanie shares several powerful ideas and strategies any author, entrepreneur, artist or creator can use to get booked on the biggest TV shows, radio programs and podcasts in your market. Stephanie graduated from Cal State Northridge. She works at TVGuestpert with Jacquie Jordan. Jacquie Jordan has been a producer for over 20 years. Jacquie started TVGuestpert because a lot of TV experts needed help honing their message on television. She wanted to help TV experts get more value out of their TV appearances than just the initial appearance itself. Getting Your Book on TV Jacquie wrote her first book about getting access to television. It’s called Get on TV. The book explains how to find TV outlets, how to hone your TV message, and how to become a recurring expert on TV. TVguestpert teaches people who want to be on TV how to hone their message and establish themself as an expert on TV. They also help experts publish their books, because publishing a book on your field of expertise establishes you as an expert. The other benefit of writing and publishing a book is that books are really easy to sell to audiences. Television producers also love to talk to authors. So writing a book is a very easy way to build your brand. TVguestpert is a one-stop shop that helps experts build their platform. How to Get Media Coverage Demo reels are very important. When you shoot your demo reel, you want to talk about a number of different topics, so the producer can see your content and understand what you’re going to talk about. Producers want to see how you’re going to be on camera, and they want to know where you’re coming from. Anything where the producer gets to see you, and get an idea of what you’re going to talk about. You’re going to talk about your book, but national shows aren’t going to invite you on just to talk about your book. You need a topic to talk about that ties into your book. You want to connect your subject matter to hot topics in the news. That’s the fastest way to become valuable to new shows that will invite you on as an expert. You can also tie your book into evergreen topics. It all depends on what type of shows you’re trying to get booked on. You want to know who your audience is, and craft your talking points to speak to that audience about the specific subject you’re targeting. How to Do Research to Get Booked on TV You need to watch the shows you want to get booked on. This is the only way you’re going to know what talking points will work best for each venue. You need to get a sense of the type of things that are discussed on these shows, and the tone of the discussion on these shows. If you’re aiming for a show that isn’t on your local television you can go online and watch excerpts from these shows. What to Do When Your Topic Doesn’t Fit Well with the Media Write a new topic. This isn’t a case of making your topic fit the venue. TV programs and producers talk about certain things. You need to have talking points that address those topics. TVguestpert has clients who have more than 50 topics they can talk about. The key to solving this problem is to simply create more content in the topics that are being talked about on the TV shows you want to be a guest on. Look for the angles in your content. Examples of Show Ideas If you are a nutritionist there are several things you can talk about that can get you on a variety of shows. You can talk about: The best nutrition for your child going back to school – a back-to-school topic. Healthy recipes for two – a relationship topic. Why is chocolate an aphrodisiac? – A relationship topic. The best fruits for summer – a seasonal food show topic. It’s all things like this. Finding an angle that allows you to talk about your area of expertise that connects to the topic being discussed. It’s best to come up with at least 20 unique topic ideas that you can talk about. You want to pitch an idea that fits the show you’re trying to be booked on. Get on TV You have to do research. Go over to the website of the show that you want to be on and look for the email address of the producer. Most TV shows have an email address where you can pitch story ideas. In your email you want to include: Your headshot. A brief bio that highlights key things such as your area of expertise, and the topics you can discuss. If you have a demo reel you definitely want to include a link to that. The demo reel is the most important piece of the puzzle. This is what gives p

Jackie Lapin is the CEO of Conscious Media Relations, a public relations company that helps authors, entrepreneurs and artists in the fields of mind, body, and spirit get booked on national and international media. Jackie is revered for her skill at getting authors, speakers, and coaches booked through her network of contacts with over 2,000 radio hosts and leaders in the personal development industry. In this interview, Jackie freely shares an absolute wealth of wisdom on how to create a successful media and publicity campaign and how to generate massive buzz for your next book launch. Jackie was one of the first women’s sportswriters in America. She segued into the PR industry after being published in the Detroit Free Press at the age of 20, in the Associated Press and LA times at the age of 21, and at the Washington Post at the age 22. She pivoted away from sportswriting because she saw a greater opportunity in the PR industry and she didn’t want to spend her career in locker rooms working late nights on weekends. She started her own PR firm, and had offices in LA and New York. She had big clients like The Golf Channel and Toyota, and major cable networks. She commuted between New York and LA for 15 years. She also helped launch the World Poker Tour. A few years ago she decided to scale her business back in part because she wrote two books in personal growth and self development. Writing those books reminded her that her heart was in supporting people who want to change the world. How to Get Booked on Radio Jackie has these tips to share with authors who want to know how to get booked on radio or other media outlets for interviews. Build Your Media Kit “Plan ahead. You don’t start marketing your book the day it’s published. Put things in play, build your book marketing plan. Put it on paper. Get your social media marketing all ready to go, your site set up, your media kit. It’s a process that needs to be well thought out before you even get to the starting line.”– Jackie Lapin Every author should have a media kit if you want to get PR. Your media kit should include: A press release about the book you’re promoting. Your author bio. A four or five paragraph introduction that the interviewer will read on the air. You never want to leave your introduction up to the person interviewing you. 20 questions you want them to ask leading them down the path you want to take their audience. Lastly you want to include a bulleted list of things the host should mention at the end of the interview. That bulleted list should include: Where to buy your book If your website has an opt in form Whatever your upsell is (whether it’s coaching, a tele-seminar, or an information product) A media kit doesn’t have to be long, but it does need to be complete. A media kit simply makes it easier for interviewers to promote your work. The interviewers that work at traditional media outlets often don’t have time to read your book. Giving them questions in advance takes all the pressure off the interviewer to come up with things to ask. The key to the 20 questions in your media kit is they should start a conversation that makes your ideal reader want to read your book. These questions should be insightful. You want these questions to draw out the information that will make people want to read your book. Think about your audience. What kind of information does your ideal reader want to know? You should put your media kit on your website. You should also send your media kit to your interviewer every time you book an interview. Write a Pitch Letter A pitch letter. Your subject line is critical. It has to be something that will get the person you’re pitching to open the letter, but it can’t sound like an advertisement. Jackie always puts “guest for your show” at the beginning of her subject lines The lead paragraph of the pitch letter has to be very interesting. It has to tell them why they want to do this interview. It’s got to catch their attention and make them want to know more. In the pitch letter you’re going to want to explain what you’re going to share with their audience that will benefit the lives of those listening. You want to offer value. You also want to establish your credentials. Explain what makes you an expert. The good thing about writing a book is as soon as you say you’re the author of a book it gives you instant credibility, because you wrote a book on the topic. You can easily establish yourself as an expert by pointing them towards the book you’re promoting, especially if it’s clear from the title of your book what the subject matter is. Be sure your contact information is in the pitch letter. And keep your pitch letter to one page single-spaced. Other PR Tools Put downloadable photos on your website. That way you don’t have to keep sending people pictures. You can send them a link and th

Aubrey Rose is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several books including Heartbitten, and she’s only been writing for two years! And, she’s done it all while maintaining a full-time job and social life. Who said it was impossible to become a bestselling author and keep a full-time job at the same time? Aubrey started writing when she lived in Mexico two years ago. She had a lot of free time on her hands. She was mostly teaching students over Skype. She decided to take a stab at creative writing. How She Became a Best-Selling Author in 2 Years Aubrey credits the majority of her success to the communities that she belonged to as an indie author. She became a New York Times bestseller when she included her book in a box set with other New Adult Romance authors. Aubrey and her other author friends were surprised and excited that the box set did so well. They were hoping that it would sell more books but they never imagined that the box set would make it on to the New York Times list. How Box Sets Work Aubrey is part of a community that talks about the craft of writing and marketing as an indie author. They watched the Indie Voice put together their box set and have success. So Aubrey’s author community put together a box set of their own focused on new adult romance readers, and it took off very well. The box set is a collection of e-books all in the same genre by different authors. Each of the authors promotes the entire box set to their audience. Aubrey and her collaborators wanted to do a Print on Demand version of the boxset. They couldn’t because the page count for the final manuscript of all four books was too long for Amazon’s print on demand service. The box sets Aubrey launches usually start at $.99 for promotional purposes. When the rank begins to stall, the price is increased to around $4.99 for a while, then they drop the price to $.99 again to reinvigorate the sales. Most of Aubrey’s box sets have used backlist books to fill up the box set. Occasionally, Aubrey will write a new story for a box set to better hit the theme of the box set. Her werewolf romance series began as a story she wrote for a box set that she thought was going to be a standalone book. She found that she really enjoyed writing werewolf romance stories so she decided to write a series, which currently has four books out, and is selling very well. Find Your Community The best way you can market your work as an indie author is to become part of indie author communities and promote each other’s work to your mailing list. One of the easiest ways to do this is through a box set where each author contributes a book to the box set, and then they all promote it. Sharing fans and cross promoting books with authors of the same genre leads to everybody in the author community doing better. Aubrey writes a lot of shifter romance novels. When a fellow author she has promoted with, who also writes shifter romance novels, releases a new book that does well, Aubrey’s books will appear on the also bought section of the new books product page. When the new book does well her books will also do better because they’re getting more exposure from the also bought section of the new book’s product page. Breaking in to a New Genre A friend of Aubrey’s told her she could make a lot of money writing erotic short stories. Erotic short stories were the first type of story Aubrey put on the market. After she wrote a ton of them she was invited to join a private author community. In the beginning the community wrote erotica exclusively. Over time several of the authors have branched out to do different types of romance stories. Benefits of Collaboration One of the greatest benefits of author communities, beyond the marketing opportunities, is the information that’s shared. In today’s world as an indie author, you have to be aware of changes in the marketplace as quickly as possible. The author forms and communities are a great place to keep up with changes in the marketplace as they occur. Aubrey is actually working on building her own community where indie authors can talk about craft and marketing. One of the problems she sees with new author communities is that authors aren’t comfortable talking about marketing. The truth is marketing is essential for an artist to succeed in this new world. Find Your Word Count Aubrey writes stories anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 words in length. Her full-length novels are between 40,000 and 80,000 words. This is the typical length most romance publishers look for. She also writes novellas that are between 20,000 and 30,000 words. She generally writes novellas as shorter stories in a series and then releases the entire series as a box set when it’s done. If you go a month in between novellas, your readers will just forget about it. No one wants to start reading a series that might not end. Aubrey’s Writing Process Aubrey

Lindsay Buroker is the bestselling author of Balanced on the Blade’s Edge and more than 20 other novels, novellas, and short stories. Today, Lindsay is ranked as one of the Top #100 bestselling Science Fiction authors on Amazon Kindle, and she’s earning a full-time income as an author. She works from home and loves it. In this interview, Lindsay lets us in on her best tips for writing books that readers love, how to build your author platform, how to promote your book like a pro, how to become a master at marketing, and much more. Lindsay has been writing stories since she was a little kid. Like most people, she was told, “You can’t make money as an author.” She joined the Army out of high school and when she got out of the Army she studied computer science before becoming an indie author. Lindsay always loved fantasy and she always wanted to write her own stuff. She started writing seriously after she couldn’t find enough of the types of books she wanted to read. That’s when she knew she had to write and publish a fantasy novel. Her first novel took about seven years to finish. When she finished it in 2009 she put the book aside because she felt like she wouldn’t be able to find an agent for it. Lindsay decided to write another novel and try to find an agent. About the time she finished her second novel Lindsay discovered JA Konrath’s blog. In that same month (late 2010) Lindsay got her first Kindle. That’s when she decided to try self-publishing. She felt like self-publishing would be a lot better for her temperament because she’s not a very patient person. So the idea of sending out query letters and possibly getting rejected really didn’t appeal to her. The idea of skipping all that time waiting to see whether or not she would be accepted as an author was very exciting to Lindsay. Making a Living Full-Time from Fiction Lindsay didn’t make a lot of money in the beginning. In her first month Lindsay thinks she might have made $50. But she kept tinkering with it, because writing was exciting to her. She was a professional blogger before she took the dive into self-publishing, so she wasn’t scared of the technical stuff. In the beginning Lindsay tried advertising and book blog tours. She also had enough interest from readers and sales in the beginning to keep her going. Right now Lindsay has 20 books available on Amazon. Some of those books are novels, some of them are novellas, and some of them are short stories. The benefit to publishing so many titles quickly is that it keeps you in the front of readers minds every time you publish a new book. Writing novellas and short stories allows Lindsay to publish material while she’s working on longer books. Every time you publish a new book your income increases. Every new book you publish is an entry point into your inventory for a new customer. That’s why publishing regularly is so important. Lindsay was already making money from blogging when she decided to become a full-time self published author. Essentially she focused entirely on her fiction writing to the exclusion of everything else for about a year before she started seeing an income that replaced her old job. When she started writing fiction she had a source of income from blogging that slowly diminished over time while she was concentrating on writing fiction. Lindsay was poor for about a year while she worked on building her author platform. She was able to make a full-time income from fiction when she had four novels out as well as some novellas and short stories. Self-Publishing in Ebook, Print, and Audio Lindsay has e-books, paperback books, and audiobooks in her inventory on Amazon. Selling Paperbacks as an Indie Author Lindsay admits that she should have paperback copies for all of her novels on Amazon. She doesn’t because formatting a book for paperback takes a lot more time, and the profit margin on paperbacks is a lot smaller than e-books. Lindsay doesn’t feel like she can charge $20 for a paperback book. She tries to make her paperback pricing is competitive as possible. That means she doesn’t make very much profit on every paperback sale. Paperback books are mostly nice for book signings, and for people who email and ask if they can buy a paperback copy. Lindsay tends to sell a lot of paperback books at Christmas because people like to give paperback books as gifts at Christmas time. Audiobook Publishing Lindsay got into audiobooks because she was looking for ways to get noticed by new fans. She heard a podcast with Nick Lowell who does a space opera series, and he explained how he built a fan base with audiobooks. That’s when Lindsay decided she should get into audiobooks as well. She started by recording some of her books on audio for distribution as podiobooks. Podiobooks are audiobooks that are distributed through iTunes as podcasts. Generally, each episode of the podcast is a cha

Montina Portis is the bestselling author of YouTube Video Marketing Secrets Revealed and several other books. Her YouTube Channel SparkWisdom has over 20,000 subscribers and over 2 Million video views. In this interview, Montina shares her best tips for marketing your books, products and services using online video and especially YouTube. Whether you’ve never recorded a video in your life or you’re already a YouTube star, Montina can show you how to create an online video empire without spending a lot of money or breaking your marketing budget. Montina became an author after she heard Tom on the Internet Business Mastery podcast. It was hearing Tom talk about self-publishing on that podcast, along with meeting another successful indie author at a networking event in Texas, that caused Montina to take the plunge and become an indie author. Montina has a unique story. Her mother did not want a child and abandoned her when Montina was 18 months old. Montina’s grandmother raised her until the age of 12. Montina met her father when she was 18. He was in prison. He died after serving 19 years of a 20 year sentence. Montina has been on her own since the age of 16. At the age of 19 she was a single mother living in a homeless shelter with her nine month old child. She went from a GED to a Masters degree. Montina has been online and on YouTube since 2009. Once she realized people were making money self-publishing their books on Amazon she decided to try it out. Her first intention was to write a 20 page free report on making YouTube videos. When she got to 20 pages she realized she had a full book inside her. That’s when she contacted her friend from the Texas networking event and made a plan to publish her first book on Kindle. About 75% of Montina’s first book came from dictating into her MacBook. Monetizing Your Online Platform Montina just retired as an information security specialist with one of the top firms in America. Montina teaches part time entrepreneurs how to turn their passion into profits and make their first $1000 online. There are a number of ways that you can make money online easily. You can: Publish your book through KDP direct publishing. Teach courses online. Create a membership site and have people pay you on a regular basis to share your knowledge. You can also offer creative guides to teach people a specific skill they want to learn. How Montina Got Started on YouTube Montina started her YouTube channel SparkWISDOM because she wanted to connect to other single mothers and share her experience. The name for channel comes from her nonprofit organization. Spark stands for: Single Parent Assistance Resources Knowledge And activating self-confidence and inspiring wisdom in the single parent family. Montina just connected the dots to come up with SparkWISDOM. She started with a $14 Logitech WebCam from Walmart. She put it on top of her laptop and hit record. And she’s been hitting record ever since. The one element that Montina credits for her success is her consistency in creating engaging content on YouTube. The power of the YouTube platform is your ability to create a community without having to pay to play. Montina’s first YouTube video is horrible. The audio and video don’t sync up. The video quality is poor. The video is under a minute long. The reason Montina is successful is she kept recording videos. Montina is nervous every time she hits record and posts a video on YouTube. Even now with over 20,000 followers she still gets a little bit nervous when she posts a video. What makes Montina’s book on YouTube unique is she specifically designed the book to help beginners learn how to make the most out of YouTube. YouTube is a place where you can preserve your memories. With YouTube you can build an amazing community by putting out great videos and interact with your fans through conversations in your video’s comment section. You want to put out content that relates to keywords and phrases that people are searching for. You want to make sure that your title is optimized for whatever keywords your audience is searching for. “It’s not about how good your first video is, but how good is your 50th video?” – Tom Corson Knowles Just like practice makes you better at making YouTube videos, practice makes you better at writing books. The first book you write and finish is going to be both, the best book you could write at the time, and the worst book you’ll ever write (assuming you write more books.) Anything you do improves with deliberate practice. One thing Tom did to help him overcome his fear of posting on YouTube was to complete a challenge to do one video a day for 30 days. A lot of those videos were sixty-second videos. A lot of those videos Tom didn’t even post on YouTube because they were so bad. The experience of getting used to being on camera, and getting used to the platform was invaluable. Montina hosts a 30 d

Joanna Penn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several books including Business for Authors: How to be an Authorpreneur. Joanna writes and publishes both fiction and non-fiction. She is a sought-after speaker and lecturer at writers conferences, publishing industry events and online educational workshops. Joanna has been a full-time “author-entrepreneur” for more than 4 years, and shares her best ideas, tips and more on her blog The Creative Penn. Joanna started her professional career as a business consultant. For 13 years she worked with large corporations dealing with banking issues. Her college degree was in theology. She started a number of businesses including a scuba diving business, a travel agency, and a property investment business. Those businesses taught Joanna that she shouldn’t sell physical products because she wanted to have an income that wasn’t dependent upon her location. That’s why she focused on creating digital products to sell. Joanna started blogging and writing nonfiction before she transitioned into writing fiction, and primarily thrillers. Today Joanna writes fiction, some nonfiction, and she speaks at author conferences. Those are her income streams right now. Joanna’s first book Career Change was a book she wrote when she was going through her own career change. She wrote that book because she hated her job and she wanted to write down the process of figuring out what you want to do with your life. Joanna also has a book on public speaking for authors, and book marketing for authors as well. She always wanted to write fiction but she thought literary fiction was the only fiction you were allowed to write because her mother was a teacher of English literature. Joanna does like some literary books, but she really loves thrillers. Getting over the idea that she had to write literary fiction is what really launched Joanna’s fiction career. Now she writes thrillers with a theological element. Joanna describes her arcane series as Dan Brown meets Laura Croft. Write What You Love Joanna’s writing a new London crime thriller series. The first book in the series is Desecration, which she published last year. In the book she explores the theme of what we do with our physical body when we’re alive and after we’re dead. She’s currently writing the sequel, Delirium, another crime thriller. There’s a murder that takes place in the mental institution Bedlam in London. “With nonfiction you write what you know. With fiction you write about what you want to know. You write what you want to learn.” – Joanna Penn After Joanna is done with delirium she will return to her Arcane Series with a story about the Spanish Inquisition brought forward into modern days. She writes her books based on where she wants to travel next. Design Your Life When Joanna first started looking seriously at becoming a career fiction author, she designed her life based on the things that were most important to her. She wanted: A location independent life. The freedom to travel. An income that supported her lifestyle. She achieved her goals by getting rid of most of her possessions. She doesn’t own any furniture. She doesn’t own a house or a car. She can run her business from anywhere in the world, with a laptop. Build Your Network “There’s no direct return on investment when it comes to podcast interviews, or being active on social media, or with blogging, or with my podcast, or YouTube. Unless you embed code everywhere to track links you’re never going to have a direct relationship between chatting with somebody and somebody buying a book. But by taking consistent actions on social media every day, you can build a platform.” – Joanna Penn When Joanna started she didn’t have an email list, or a community of people interested in her writing. She wasn’t on twitter, and she didn’t have a ton of followers on Facebook. Joanna built her platform one follower at a time by taking consistent action on social media over the last five years. Joanna has built her following by being helpful and interesting. Some people can build a following because they’re funny. Joanna doesn’t have that arrow in her quiver. But she has been successful by sharing good, useful content with her audience. If you share content that helps other people they will share your content as well. Another way Joanna has built her platform is through her podcast. She interviews the successful writers to see what they’re doing. The act of interviewing someone builds a tangible connection with them. Interviewing writers has helped Joanna build her network faster because the writers Joanna has interviewed tell their audiences about her. Another important element of her social media strategy is consistency. She has shared every day on twitter for over five years. She blogs every 2 to 3 days. It’s

Dan Janal is the author of Reporters Are Looking for You! and is a pro when it comes to getting exposure in the media. Dan has been involved in the public relations industry for decades, and he’s one of the earliest entrepreneurs to use the internet for marketing back in the 1990’s (he even wrote a book back then about online marketing). Dan’s first career was as a daily news reporter. He won several awards for his newspaper articles in Florida, West Virginia, and New York. He was a business news editor for a paper just outside of New York City when he interviewed a guy who was an expert on every scientific advance since World War II. As it turns out, the man Dan interviewed was looking for someone to hire, and Dan was hired by his interview subject to do public relations for computer technology. Dan did PR for K Pro and Commodore. He was also a member of the PR team that launched America Online. He introduced the CD-ROM with Grolier’s Encyclopedia, the first software for the CD-ROM product. He was also on the PR team that developed a strategy to introduce the first commercially available GPS. The majority of his professional life has been spent working online. Dan works with coaches, speakers, and online entrepreneurs to help get them publicity on and off the net. How the Internet Changed Public Relations The Internet is the world’s largest printing press. In the old days, you would hire a PR firm, give them a lot of money, and their job would be to get your message printed in a major newspaper or on television. At the time, major newspapers and television were the only way to reach a mass audience. It’s easy to reach audiences today 20 years later because rather than having two or three mass audiences, we have a bunch of micro audiences thanks to the internet. How Modern Press Releases Work Dan has a client who sells seats on corporate jets. His client will write a press release (or have Dan write one), and Dan’s company will submit that press release through various media distribution channels. After the press release goes live on the various channels, people have news alerts set up on Google and other sites to pick up any news story on a corporate travel, and those news alerts will be triggered by the press release Dan’s company submits. It would be great if reporters wrote about Dan’s client’s service. But in the Internet age you don’t have to rely on reporters to get your message out. You can communicate directly with your market through publicity or social media channels. It’s really a different world than it was 20 years ago. It’s nice to have coverage in newspaper and television, but it’s expensive, and although it’s valuable, traditional media coverage is not strictly necessary today. Now you can reach your audience without going to traditional media. A press release is a good strategy for most authors. Press releases don’t work as well for novels because novels are always hard to get publicity forth—they’re not really newsworthy unless they’re selling millions of copies. But search engines have revolutionized the value of press releases. In the past, press releases used to have a shelf life. Now they exist forever. When Dan was a newspaper editor he and his staff couldn’t even read all the press releases they were sent. Now because of the Internet there are a number of newspapers, newspaper syndicates, and websites that will publish press releases. Google indexes all of these websites and when somebody searches for information on a topic, if you have a press release related to that topic, it’s likely that the person searching for information will find your press release. That’s part of the secret sauce when it comes to press releases. If you use a legitimate press release source like PRnewswire.com newspapers will print the information. If you use some of the free press release submission websites, your press release will simply be ignored by the major outlets. How to Distribute a Press Release If you need a refresher, be sure to check out Dan’s article on how to write a press release, which defines and explains in depth this important PR tool. When you distribute your press release, these days it’s printed online where it becomes a searchable document. That allows search engines to connect people looking for information about your topic with you. In the past, press releases used to be printed in newspapers and then forgotten the next day. The real benefit of press releases today is that they are searchable on the Internet forever, so they can help with your search engine optimization (SEO). Publicity leads to more publicity. Recently one of Dan’s clients was contacted by a Boston Fox News affiliate after they searched for a Boston Elder Care Expert. Dan submitted a press release for his client that got picked up by the Wall Street Journal. When the Fox News producer

Ameer Rosic is the bestselling author of Diagnostic Testing And Functional Medicine. He’s a functional medicine expert focusing on helping people get more energy, better health, and incredible performance. Ameer’s journey to becoming a successful indie published bestseller starts when he began to seriously research in the field of functional medicine with the idea of writing a book the majority of people can understand. There’s so much confusion in the marketplace about what functional medicine is, how to utilize it, and where to begin. There are plenty of dense books about functional medicine out there written by experts. A lot of these books are confusing to a person who wants to know about functional medicine, but doesn’t have the scientific background to understand the books that have been written. “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” – Albert Einstein Keep It Simple Ameer decided to fill the gap in the marketplace and write a book that would be accessible to everyone. Three years ago Ameer began seeking out and interviewing top experts in the field of functional medicine. After Ameer interviewed the 15 experts in his book he had the interviews transcribed, and he went over the interviews himself slowly digesting the information, and reframing it for a mass audience. A year and a half later Diagnostic Testing And Functional Medicine is available for purchase. Ameer focuses on practical advice people can use, rather than filling the pages of his book with personal stories that don’t apply to his audience. Ameer prefers raw data and raw information to anecdotes. The audience for Diagnostic Testing And Functional Medicine is made up mostly of people between the ages of 35 and 55. If you give people real information without trying to sell them something, they will like and trust you more. And they’ll be empowered to take action on the new information they have. “It doesn’t matter if you’re writing fiction or nonfiction. If you’re writing in a way that connects with other people, and they’re nodding their head along with you, it’s a win-win for everybody.” – Ameer Rosic Ameer’s Writing Process Ameer spent a year and a half writing this book. He really wanted to help a lot of people. He wanted the book to be truly successful. One of the reasons the book took so long to write is that it was hard to get certain doctors he wanted to interview to agree to be in the book. When he got three doctors from Dr. Oz to agree to be in the book, that went a long way to getting the other doctors to agree to interviews as well. The hardest part of the process for Ameer was setting up all the interviews, and then having to go through the transcriptions and edit them himself. He had to edit the book himself first because the interview transcripts were very scientific and technical, and unless you know what you’re looking for as an editor, there’s no way you know how to edit the scientific jargon. As an indie author it’s important to do as much of the work yourself as you can. If you try to outsource everything, you’re not going to get the quality product that reflects well on you. “It doesn’t matter if you hire a ghostwriter; it’s always YOUR book.” – Tom Corson Knowles The Importance of Staying True to Yourself Pro tip: If you’re not the best writer you can dictate your book into a digital recorder and have some really affordable services transcribe your words. This is a really easy way to write your book. After you have your words transcribed, make sure to edit yourself so that what you’re publishing is in your voice. You’ll notice that your transcribed words won’t sound exactly like the words you would write on the page. There are a lot of books in the marketplace on similar topics. People don’t buy your book; they buy you. You have to be sure to write in your own consistent author voice. If you don’t, when readers interact with you they’re not going to trust you because the voice of your book doesn’t match your voice when you talk to them. It’s important that you maintain a consistent author voice throughout your career. Just be yourself. Anything you want to be successful at in life has its foundations in consistency. You can’t just expect to be successful after one book launch. You have to build an inventory of products and a foundation of trust with your audience in order to ensure your success. What do you want to achieve as an author? Do you want to be a #1 bestseller? Do you want to sell backend products? It’s important that you have your and result in mind as you begin to create your author career. Share Your Story Ameer sees authorship as a medium for telling his story. “We’re living in a day and age where you can have the information, knowledge, and

Nina Amir is the bestselling author of How to Blog a Book and several other books. She is a successful author, bloger, and speaker. In this interview, Nina will show you how to literally blog your book. It’s a quick, easy and much more fun way to create your first book in bite-size chunks one blog post at a time (and build your audience and platform at the same time). Nina always wanted to be a writer. She started seriously working at the craft of writing in high school. Her mother always told her that she shouldn’t become a novelist. She was a voracious reader and writer from early childhood. Nina’s mother told her that only great writers become novelists and make a living at it. When she took a class in journalism, her high school journalism instructor really inspired her and she decided to study journalism in college. Becoming a Professional Writer Nina learned how to edit her work and the work of others in college. She decided to work for regional magazines where she could write and edit columns after college. All of the big New York magazines would have required her to be a receptionist first, and that’s not the career path she was interested in pursuing. Some years later while she was working as a regional magazine editor, Nina was asked if she could edit a nonfiction book. She said she thought she could because a nonfiction book is simply a string of articles on the same topic. As it turns out she was right. The second self published book she edited was picked up by Simon & Schuster with no changes, and has since sold over 300,000 copies. After editing a bunch of books for other people, she started thinking about writing her own book. She began to investigate what it would really take to become a published author. So she wrote a proposal for her first book idea and got an agent who was interested enough to call her back. The agent gave her all sorts of complements about what a good writer was and then Nina was told, “But you don’t have an author platform.” That’s when she began investigating what it takes to build an author platform and become a successful published author. Building Your Platform Through Blogging “An author platform is a built-in readership for your book. It’s created by everything you do that gets you known in your market.” —Nina Amir There are three elements to every author platform. Visibility – the amount of people who see what you’re doing Reach – the number of people you connect with Authority – how many people believe what you’re saying because of your credentials, your experience, your trustworthiness, and your accepted status as a leader in the marketplace All three of these areas help build and reinforce one another. Today there are several channels you can use to create visibility: Do speaking gigs. Write articles for magazines. Write a blog. Do videos on YouTube. Guest blog. Use social media. Host a podcast, or do a podcast tour where you are interviewed on several podcast. Basically, anything you do that helps you build an audience that will buy the book because you wrote it, is creating visibility and building an author platform. The beginning of building your author platform is all about making yourself visible in the marketplace. Building your author platform increases the number of people you can reach directly with your message. Reach More People Imagine you’re speaking at a writing conference and members of the audience are tweeting about your talk. Your author reach includes everyone who is hearing your words directly and everyone who’s being exposed to your ideas through the tweets of the people in the audience. That’s why people retweeting your tweets is a good thing. It increases your reach. Also, on twitter the more people who retweet your tweets, the more likely your message will be seen by a wider audience. Like Facebook, Twitter gives more power to status updates that have social interaction. Visibility leads to an expanded author reach, which leads to greater authority. Greater authority leads to larger visibility and author reach. How Nina Built Her Author Platform “I started blogging immediately. Blogging was the main focus. Then I began speaking because I felt speaking was important. Blogging, social networking, writing short books, those were the main things I did to build my platform.” – Nina Amir Nina used 4 tactics to build her author platform. Blogging Speaking Writing short books Social media Nina built her author platform slowly from 2002 to 2012. She started blogging almost immediately. She added speaking gigs because she had a mentor who encouraged her to do speaking engagements. She wrote short books on the topic she was speaking about so she could sell them at speaking gigs. What she’d do is take the introduction from the unpublished manuscript of her longer book and write short books that included all the steps to achieving th

Dan Hollings is an online marketing legend, having worked in the industry for more than 20 years. He’s one of the “original” online marketers, having started when the internet was in its infancy. Dan has masterminded hundreds of successful book launches and marketing campaigns. He helped create the strategy and tools for the launch of The Secret which brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Today, Dan is a marketing consultant for entrepreneurs, authors, and thought leaders. He helps train authors and business owners on how to grow a business and brand online without spending a lot of cash on advertising or promotion. Dan is a huge fan of free marketing because the ROI on free marketing is the best you can possibly get! Dan has no traditional education in marketing or computers. He can hardly type. His career is proof that you don’t need an expert level knowledge of technology, and you don’t need to take a million marketing courses to be successful online. You just have to know how to do a few things really well. Starting Out in Marketing Dan got started in Internet marketing at the very dawn of the Internet age when AOL use to send out floppy disks of their software. When Dan got his AOL floppy disk he had to go out and buy a computer. From that point on he set about experimenting. He taught himself how to program. He taught himself how to design webpages and a few other skills. The good news is if you want to learn those skills today you don’t have to learn by experiment. You can seek out someone successful who’s already learned by trial and learn their shortcuts to success, or take a free course online. Dan’s marketing journey was always one where he was looking for an inexpensive way to be successful. Dan Hollings has been referred to as The Czar of Zero because many of his marketing strategies cost no money. The Best Marketing is Free Don’t operate under the illusion that you have to spend money to promote your product, service, or book. That’s just not true. There are times when spending money can make a difference for sure, but there are always ways to do things at low cost or at absolutely zero cost. “The thing about business is it’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much profit you make. It’s about how much money you get to keep.” – Tom Corson Knowles Whether it’s a product or a book a lot of what you have to do in the beginning is experiment with the product—your title, your topic, your chapters and sections, and how you organize the material to affect the most people. One of the nice things about the Internet is that it allows you to get data before you finish and publish your book. You can do surveys and polls. You can use social media to figure out what the best title will be for your book. The Four Hour Work Week is a great example of a book that had its title chosen through relatively inexpensive market research on the Internet. You can use marketing strategies to help you figure out how to create products, services and books. “Your book title is marketing. Your book cover is marketing. Who you are as an author is marketing. Everything you do is marketing. When you respond to a fans email that’s marketing. It’s way more than just buying advertisements, or getting an article in the Wall Street Journal” – Tom Corson Knowles How to Build a Marketing System First, you have to master how to build an email list because it’s the most powerful way to connect with your customers and increase sales long-term. You have to be able to get people to give you their name and email address. Your email list will become the foundation of all your future marketing efforts. You have to have an autoresponder. 1. Build Your Email List Popular autoresponders that are free or cheap include: Mail chimp – free for up to 2000 subscribers. Constant contact – you can sign up for constant contact and get a 60 day free trial. AWeber – you can sign up and get a 30 day free trial. Mailerlite – Mailerlite is free for the first 1000 subscribers. www.benchmarkemail.com/FreeEdition – is a high quality auto responder offered free for life. The catch is that you can’t import a list from another autoresponder. 2. Build a Website Free WordPress is a free software that will allow you to build websites with a minimum of technical knowledge. Most website host providers give you the ability to install WordPress directly with one or two clicks of the mouse. www.247zilla.com is a free cloud-based website host, and here are some other web hosts we recommend. Here’s a step-by-step guide to building your website with WordPress. 3. Create Your Free Offer Now that you have your autoresponder, opt in box, and website set up, you have to decide what you’re going to give the visitor to entice them to give you their email address. Your free opt-in offer needs to be something of great value (in th

David Kazzie is the author of Jackpot. He’s the creator of the viral videos So You Want to Go to Law School and So You Want to Write a Novel which led to a lot of attention from the publishing industry, and helped David land his first literary agent. In the interview, David shares his unique story along with some insights and tips on writing fiction, self publishing, traditional publishing and how to succeed as an author. David got serious about writing in 2001 when he took his first stab at writing a manuscript. He tried to write a thriller, his favorite genre to read. The book is terrible but it has a beginning, middle, and end and it was a big accomplishment for David. Writing your first book is a test of endurance. You really find out whether writing is something you want to do when you make the effort to write a novel. The first 50 pages of a novel are fun because you’re telling your story and getting your characters out there. After that, you’re out there alone in the wilderness. And nothing is going to get you to the finish line except for you. At the end of the day, nobody cares if you finish your book except you. You may have friends and family encouraging you but in terms of sitting down and finishing your book, it’s 100% up to you. David sent query letters to literary agents about his first book while he wrote his second. His second book got a little bit more interest than his first, but neither book got anywhere in the traditional publishing process. Looking For a Literary Agent David wrote his third book between 2007 and 2008. He queried a lot more heavily for this book because email queries were now an accepted practice. Two agents actually called him about his third book, but neither was interested in taking him on as a client. He self published his third book, The Jackpot in 2011. He decided to self publish it because he thought it was good enough to get published, even though no agent wanted to represent him. He chose to self publish rather than remain unpublished and give up his dream of being a published fiction writer. David was further encouraged to self publish his work because of JA Konrath’s blog. David realized that self-publishing was an important part of the publishing business. It wasn’t going to be something people could ignore anymore. How David Ended up Signing with an Agent At the time David started thinking about self-publishing his book The Jackpot, he was very discouraged about his prospects of getting an agent. He wasn’t willing to start another manuscript without knowing that it was going to be published. At that point in his life David had a wife and two children, and writing a manuscript with no prospect of a future to it was a huge time commitment with no payoff. That’s when David decided to start writing his blog in June 2010. A lot of writers were doing it at the time, and blogging actually got him a decent sized audience beyond friends and family. At some point, David’s audience growth flatlined and he was deciding whether or not to shut down his blog so he could focus more time on writing fiction. Around this time David stumbled upon the iPhone4 vs HTC Evo. He thought he could make a similar video with a conversation between an idealistic law student and a jaded lawyer. David experienced both sides of that coin because he’s been a lawyer for 15 years. He was the idealistic law student, and he saw what actually happens after law school. Within two weeks of posting that video on YouTube, David had over 300,000 hits on his video. A few months later he posted another video about the writing and publishing process. That video didn’t do quite as well, but it got over 200,000 views, and it was being shared among authors, publishers, and literary agents. Ann Rittenberg, the literary agent for Dennis Lehane, shared his video about writing and publishing a book on her Facebook page. That led to them connecting on facebook and a phone conversation, which led to Ann signing David as a client. Why David Decided to Self Publish He decided to self publish The Jackpot because he thought the viral videos gave him enough exposure that it made sense to self publish. He thought he would be able to leverage the exposure his videos gave him to get a large number of book sales. Unfortunately that didn’t work very well. David made the commitment to self publish The Jackpot in March 2011. He talked to his agent Ann about it, and gave his reasons why he thought it would work as a self published project. She agreed. From there, David spent around 200 hours: Editing the manuscript Finding a book cover designer Finding a formatter And making sure the book looked good in all formats. It was a much more time intensive project than David originally thought. “The second lesson I learned from self-publishing is if you’re going to compete in the marketplace, self-publishing your book takes a lot more t

Michelle Booth, aka Michelle Campbell-Scott, is the author of Goodreads for Authors and several other books. She is an expert on marketing and promotional strategies for self published and independent authors. In today’s show, she shares some great tips on marketing and increasing your income as a self published author, including publishing your book in paperback and audiobook format, as well as some great free and low-cost marketing strategies for authors. Michelle began writing when she was 4 years old. She was an only child and her family didn’t live close to many people, so she entertained herself by writing stories. She wrote a play that her classmates put on, and that convinced her not to go into acting or directing. She loves writing. But Michelle is a people person and doesn’t like the idea of locking herself in a room for 12 hours a day. She started working in public relations out of college before the personal computer was invented. She learned about computers, trained on them, and then began teaching people how to use computers. She also did IT training for businesses. That morphed into social media training for businesses. Eventually she began writing things down and creating courses for other people. She got fed up making money for other people. That’s when she decided to try writing because she loves it so much. She published her first book on Amazon in 2012. Now she’s a full-time author. She helps some famous authors with the technical side of publishing, but the majority of her income comes from her own books. Self-Publishing the First Book The first book Michelle published was on aquaponics. She and her fiancé took up the hobby together when they met. When her first book started doing well, she resurrected a story for children that she hadn’t finished and put that up on Amazon. When her second book didn’t do as well as her first she started looking into ways to make books sell better. She read Tom’s book on ninja marketing strategies for authors and started looking into alternate marketing strategies. Michelle discovered Goodreads and at first couldn’t make sense of it, because Goodreads isn’t easy for authors to use. Last Christmas Michelle and her daughter researched Goodreads and Michelle produced her book Goodreads For Authors: How To Use Goodreads To Promote Your Books. A week after Michelle’s book came out Amazon announced they bought Goodreads. The sales of her book skyrocketed after the announcement. Since then Michelle has done a lot of podcasts, and been on a lot of discussion panels about Goodreads and marketing for indie authors. That naturally led to her working with Nancy Hendrickson. Nancy started as a traditionally published author. She decided to get out of her traditional publishing contract because she realized how much money the publishing company was making, and how little work they actually put into promoting her work. Michelle and Nancy wrote Make Your Book Work Harder: How to Use Multiple Platforms to Make More Money. You really should consider publishing your work on multiple platforms because it allows you to make multiple streams of income from one book. How to Generate Additional Income from Your Books “If you own the copyright to your work, there are so many different ways you can monetize it. There’s licensing deals. There’s international book deals. There’s translation rights, just to name a few.” – Tom Corson Knowles Getting on multiple platforms is something you can do right away, as soon as you self publish. The first thing you want to do is put your book on CreateSpace so you can sell your book in print. Here’s a checklist for self-publishing your book on CreateSpace. Getting Distribution for Your Book There are three platforms you should distribute on to maximize your market penetration. Those are: E-book through Amazon and other digital bookstores. Paperback through CreateSpace or Lightning Source. And audiobooks through Audible. Most books will convert well to print unless they’re very short. Likewise, most books convert well to audio, unless they have lots of pictures and diagrams. Even if they do have lots of pictures and diagrams, you can use the audiobook as a way to get traffic to your website by creating a PDF of all the charts and graphs in your book. Audiobooks can be expensive to produce. Producing the e-book only costs you time if you follow the eBook formatting checklist, and producing the Print on Demand paperback can be very inexpensive (all you have to do is pay for a proof copy to be sent to you, and authors generally pay half of the cover price.) Every new marketplace you put your book into opens your business to a new audience. So as soon as you can you should have books in all three formats: eBook, print, and audio. Michelle’s CreateSpace sales make up about 20% of her Kindle sales. So she’s increased her audience by 20% ju

Jason Brick always wanted to be a writer. Some of his earliest memories come from when he was four years old, pretending to write words on a piece of paper. He would imagine stories in his head and make marks as if he were writing, draw pictures to help convey the stories in his mind, and dictate his stories to his parents. The first story he wrote was about a Tyrannosaurus rex fighting a Triceratops—the T-Rex bit the Triceratops’s head off and then died after getting sick because of the Triceratops’s horns. He wrote some of his first published stories in high school and college. Jason’s first career, however, was in the martial arts. He worked in the industry for 10 years. When his son reached grade school, Jason realized that having a job that required him to work from 2 pm–10pm was getting in the way of quality time with his son. He’d written a number of articles for local magazines about health and business. So when he sold his karate studio, he had a large enough portfolio that he was able to transition directly into writing for a living. Learning The Business of Writing Jason will write what somebody pays him to write. His unique selling proposition is that the project will be done on time and the process will be as low-stress as possible. He treats his writing like a business product—his writing isn’t precious to him. He writes what the client wants him to write in the way they want him to write it. He wants to do a good job for his client, and he’s not emotionally attached to his vision of how the writing should be. How to Develop a Thick Skin as a Writer Jason attributes his thick skin as a writer to his background in sports and martial arts. When a coach or martial arts instructor told him he was doing something wrong, he never felt like a failure or a bad person. He was just a person who didn’t correctly execute the task at hand. That’s why Jason never takes critiques of his writing personally—everybody is different, and he wants to have happy clients. Another benefit of his upbringing is that if Jason feels strongly that the client is wrong about the changes they want to make, he is confident that he’s looking at his work product objectively and not just responding emotionally to an attack on his character. As far as how others can develop a thicker skin when it comes to their writing, it’s all a matter of practice. “Submit your work to an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend. After you hear your ex tear your work to shreds, the polite requests of your clients to make changes don’t sting as bad.” – Jason Brick Read Your Reviews Jason has an indie author friend who only reads three-star reviews. He believes that four-star and five-star reviews are people who like or know the author, or like the book enough already anyway. The one-star and two-star reviews are usually people who are just having a bad day. The three-star reviews are the audience that you need to convince to buy your next book. They aren’t raving fans, and they aren’t trolls. These are the people who, if you improve, are likely to tell others about your book. You can learn a lot from feedback and criticism if you keep an open mind. Learn From Your Readers Jason contacted a woman who had given him a two-star review of 9 Habits of Highly Profitable Writing. Her critique was that she couldn’t understand how to put his strategies into practice. He emailed her, and they’ve been corresponding for two months. She even became a coaching client. People who give you constructive feedback could be a business opportunity waiting to happen. Ignore Toxic People There are people who write reviews just to prove to themselves that they’re clever. Or, they write reviews maliciously to make your book lose credibility. There’s very little you can do about this type of reviewer, and you shouldn’t allow them to affect the way that you go about producing your work. Rules for Being a Highly Paid Freelance Writer Always bill by the project. Jason gets paid by a financial firm to ghost blog for their website. They pay $500 per post. One 300-word blog post takes Jason about twenty minutes to write. He can write about it quickly because he knows the subject matter. If he went to that financial firm and asked for $1500 an hour, they would laugh him out of the room. But $500 per blog post is only slightly above market rate. They don’t care how long it takes him, as long as he’s on time and produces results. “A lot of the work a writer does is the hours and hours we spend honing our craft before we even know about the writing job.” – Jason Brick Clients pay for results. They’re paying for the finished product. How long the finished product takes to produce doesn’t matter, as long as you meet the deadline. Billing by the project makes everything clear for the freelancer and the client. Plan your work. Make a writing

Jason worked in the nonprofit space for 20 years. In 2008 he helped his wife set up a small home-based business. She designed and produced clothing for dolls and sold them on eBay. They got really good at selling on eBay for ultra premium prices ($200 for a doll outfit.) After 18 months she burned out on the business model. They had to figure out a different way to make money. They realized they could sell her patterns as PDF files. They started the business in 2009 when they sold 11 patterns their first month. By 2014 they’d created a marketplace for doll clothing patterns, and they sell 10,000 patterns a month at www.pixiefaire.com Jason got involved in the publishing space because of the affiliate team he set up for pixiefaire.com. Getting a Traditional Book Deal When Pinterest came along he decided to write a blog post for his affiliate team of 1,300 people. Rather than email them information in their private newsletter as he usually did, he decided to make the blog public. He created marketingonpinterest.com in December 2011. He set up the site as an $11 WordPress blog (here’s how to setup your own WordPress blog). In the first 3 weeks he published 24 articles about marketing on Pinterest. Karen Lacey found his blog. She contacted him and said, “I’m an author and I’d like to write a book on Pinterest, but I don’t know enough about it. You seem to be the expert. Would you like to co-author a book together?” After he agreed, Karen said the next step would be to contact her agent, Marilyn Allen, and get a deal together. That’s when he knew she meant serious business. After the first publishing deal went south, Marilyn marketed the book that would become Pinterest Power to her contacts in the publishing industry. They put a book deal together in a few weeks. After Pinterest Power was published Jason realized he had a lot of online content in the email newsletter that he was sending to his pixiefaire affiliate team. Jason decided to rework some of his email newsletter content into How-To content that he could self publish on Kindle before Pinterest Power came out. That’s exactly what he did. He published EBay Auction Power, Email Marketing Power, and Craft Business Power (his best-selling self published title) all before Pinterest Power came out. “There are trends. There are waves of how the economy goes. If you can become an expert in something that’s just starting to peak in interest with the public, then when you write a book or blog post on the topic you can get noticed really quickly.” – Tom Corson Knowles Jason experienced gurus like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, and Joel Comm writing their own books about social media platforms. He saw it as a model to follow, never expecting that it would lead to a book deal with a traditional publisher. He chose blogging because he wasn’t an industry leader in any way shape or form, but he knew he had information to share that could help people with their business. In the traditional publishing space, acquisitions editors are out there searching for authors writing about subjects that are in the public consciousness that they think will sell well. When a topic that captures the public’s imagination like Pinterest comes along, there’s a real arms race among the big five publishers. It’s a race to get the right author and the right book out there first because first mover advantage is huge in traditional publishing. When Jason pitched his publisher on Instagram Power they were very excited about it because it was a new and popular social media platform. It was also the first traditionally published book on Instagram. When he pitched YouTube Power the publishing company was much less interested but they accepted the two-book proposal. Jason’s publisher was less excited about YouTube Power because it didn’t have the fresh market appeal of Instagram Power Working with Traditional Publishers and Agents One thing Jason didn’t understand before he started working with his agent is different agents work in different ways. Jason’s agent Marilyn used to be a vice president at a traditional publishing company before she struck out on her own to create her agency representing authors. Now she functions as a sort of talent scout looking for authors who can write about particular subjects. You don’t always have to write dozens of query letters to form a business partnership with an agent. Delivering The Book Once The Deal Was Done Karen’s agent Marilyn already had a template she wanted Karen and Jason to use when writing their book. She told them she needed the book written and back to her within three or four days. Using the template that’s what Jason and Karen delivered. Jason says that because of the template they were given, the hardest part of writing that book was writing the table of contents. Beyond writing a good book, the other thing th

Rob Archangel is a co-founder of Archangel Ink, an independent publishing services company. Rob has done the production, mixing and editing of audiobooks for clients and bestselling author Matt Stone. In this show, Rob shares how audiobooks can help you increase your income from your books by 10% or more, and how the future is only getting better for audiobook authors. You’ll also learn step-by-step how to find a production company to produce your audiobooks for you. For those of you who just want to do it yourself, you’ll find some great tips and strategies on how to make the whole process easier as well. Rob started working with his partner Matt Stone in 2012. He was really interested in what Matt had to say about health and wellness. After Rob reached out to start a conversation with Matt, Matt invited Rob to join his team. Rob started researching self-publishing and convinced Matt he could go that route. (Prior to putting his books up on Amazon, Matt was simply selling copies of his books directly from his website.) After successfully entering the ebook market with his material, Matt and Rob expanded formats. They began selling print-on-demand versions of Matt’s work in 2013, and broke into the audiobook market after that. The audiobook market has been very good to them. After their initial success with Matt’s work, Rob and Matt decided to start a publishing company to help authors navigate self-publishing. They offer services for producing ebooks, print on demand, and audiobooks. Who Is Matt Stone? Matt Stone went to school for creative writing and found that he preferred creative nonfiction. After he graduated college, Matt decided to write in the health and wellness field because it was a passion of his. Before publishing his books on Amazon, he built a following by being a renegade in the health and wellness space. A Look at the Business after Expanding Distribution Their Kindle books have been selling steadily enough that Rob and Matt decided to switch to KDP Select and sell exclusively on Amazon. Amazon is the big player in the publishing world, so the economics and the ease of publishing exclusively through Amazon just make sense. The sales of Matt’s books have dramatically increased since they made the switch from wide distribution to exclusive distribution through KDP Select. That accounts for all sales channels, including print on demand and audiobooks. The Audiobook Explosion If you are a self-published author, you can produce three versions of your book to sell to the public. Each version of your book is an income stream that you can earn royalties from. Listed in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest, they are: 1. The ebook This is the easiest form of your book to create. It also has the highest profit margin. All you have to do is create a properly formatted Word document and upload it to Amazon to create an ebook. You also need a properly formatted image for your cover. 2. The paperback This version of your book is slightly more difficult to produce, and has a smaller profit margin. Formatting a file for print on demand is slightly more complicated, and hiring help is more expensive because of the higher degree of difficulty. 3. The audiobook The audiobook is the most expensive form of your book you can produce. It has the highest profit margin, though, because audiobooks cost the most for the customer. However, producing an audiobook of your indie work isn’t the right choice for everyone. Generally speaking, audiobooks sell at a rate of 10% to 15% of your ebook sales, so if you’re making $1,000 a month on ebook sales, it’s not unreasonable to expect that you would make another $100-$150 per month on your audiobook sales. Of course, an audiobook can explode in popularity and create more interest, driving traffic to the book itself. But you shouldn’t count on this in a business planning sense. Once an audiobook is produced, it will be a passive income stream for as long as people are interested in the content of the book itself. Once you produce the file, you don’t ever have to touch it again. It will keep making you money month after month. Another benefit of producing audiobooks right now is that you’re getting in on the ground floor of a new marketplace. Right now, in 2013, there might be 200,000 books in the health and wellness category on Amazon. In contrast, there might be 2,000 books in Audible‘s health and wellness category. Getting in on the ground floor of a smaller market means that you have the possibility of gaining greater visibility because competition isn’t as fierce as it is on Amazon. Plus, you’re getting a higher commission per sale of your audiobook, and once you produce the audiobook, it will give you passive income for years to come All of this adds up to an opportunity you should seriously consider. Making your books available on Audible opens you up to an entirely new market. There a

Rick started his career as a producer in New York for WOR radio. From there he joined a company called the Planned TV Arts and he’s just started his 38th year in the publishing industry. He built that company up to the biggest publicity company for authors and experts in America and sold it to Ruder Finn, a big PR firm. At one point in the early 90s Rick’s firm had 50 employees making 500 calls a day. He and his team helped launch the careers of people like Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and T. Harv Ecker. He also worked with fiction authors like John Grisham, Barbara Taylor Bradford, and Barbara DeAngelis. Rick has also helped speakers such as Nelson DeMille and Harvey Mackay and he’s worked with major publishers such as Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, and Hyperion. Rick decided he wanted to be an author while working in the PR field. He’s never been a good writer so he works with ghost writers to get his books produced. His first book Guerrilla Marketing for Writers came out in 2000. That’s when he learned that you don’t need to be a great writer to be an author. You just need to know a great writer to be an author. Rick dictates his books and has a team of good ghostwriters convert the audio into a book that is readable for customers. He spent his career promoting and working with authors. He is a best-selling author and a publisher as well. Rick’s company, Morgan James Publishing, gets about 5,000 manuscript submissions a year and publishes 130 of them. Recently he published Brendon Burchard’s book The Millionaire Messenger. How to Get Started as an Author There are a few things you need to do as an author to set yourself up for success. The first thing you need to do is to build your author website (here’s a step-by-step article on how to setup your website). Rick has 15 nonfiction books. He has a website for each one. He also has a main hub site rickfrishman.com When you go to that site you will see: Pictures of Rick with famous people. Video of Rick speaking at different events. Video of Rick speaking on the news. Video of Rick being interviewed. Testimonials. Newspaper stories. Links to buy Rick’s books. Links to articles about Rick’s topics of expertise. Go to http://rickfrishman.com/ and see what you can model from his site. Rick and his team update the site continuously. Give Readers a Reason to Sign Up for Your Email List One major element that Rick has on his website is an opt in box that allows him to collect email addresses from visitors. Typically, website visitors who are interested in Rick and what he does will trade their email address for some sort of ethical bribe. The ethical bribe should tie in with the topic that you’re an expert on. When Rick is on radio or television, he tells the audience to go to his website to get his free million-dollar Rolodex. Getting a visitor’s email address is far more important than getting one sale. When you have someone’s email address they become a member of your audience. You can market to them for as long as you have their email address. Buy the Right Domain Name One of the most important things you can do is buy the right domain name. The first thing you want to do is buy your proper name if you can. The next thing you want to do is buy domain names with easy words or phrases so that your audience can easily find you on the Internet. Pro tip: If you have children buy their domain names as well. How to Come Up with the Right Title for Your Book When you’re thinking about a book title consider the following: Your title should be between one and five words. Where’s your wow factor? You want a title that is unique, easy to search for and is going to make a customer click on your book when they see you on Amazon. For nonfiction books your subtitle is the benefit that the reader will get from reading your book. “You need to own the URL for the title of your book. If you don’t own the URL for the title of your book then it’s not the title of your book.” – Rick Frishman Write a Book Proposal You need to write a book proposal even if your book is already written if you want to find a traditional publisher. There are several good books on how to write a good book proposal. Rick has a whole book series on how to publish books called Author 101. The first book in that series is Author 101: The Insider’s Guide to Publishing From Proposal to Bestseller. One of Rick’s students created a software to help you generate a book proposal that will get you published. That free software is available at bpwiz.biz The software is plug and play. It simply guides you through the steps of creating a book proposal that will sell your book. A good book proposal has: Your title. Your subtitle. 1 to 2 chapters written out. 15 chapter titles. (The chapter titles can change but you need to have something in the book proposal.) The most impor

Hugh Howey is the New York Times best-selling author of the Wool series. Hugh has self published all of his books except his first book. He has sold more than 2 million copies of his books as a self published author. Here is his story. Hugh took an unlikely path to becoming a best-selling author. He always wanted to write but he could never summon the fortitude to get to the end of the manuscript. After college he became a computer technician, and then switched careers to become a yacht captain for 10 years. He spent that decade working and living on boats. It was hard work. He was on call 24 hours a day and spent most of his time away from his family. Writing His First Book When Hugh met his wife it was a good excuse to get out of the industry. He finally had time to sit down and write. He finished his first manuscript when he was 33. Hugh’s only goal was to write so that he could say that he had written a book. He never thought that he would be able to pay his bills with his writing. Hugh sent his first manuscript around to family and friends after he finished it. His first impulse was simply to put it up on a blog for people to read. Hugh always had very low self-esteem when it came to his writing and he was very afraid to share his writing with an audience. It was because of the tremendous response and encouragement of his family and friends that he tried to get it published. Hugh went online and figured out the process of querying agents. Very early on he had offers to buy his first book from two small publishers. He decided to go with the first offer because he had a good feeling about the editor. Although he enjoyed the process of publishing his first book with a traditional publisher, Hugh noticed that the publisher was simply using tools available to anybody. So when they offered him a contract for his second book he opted to try self publishing. He published his own work for the next two years before Wool took off. Ever since then his life has been crazy as sales skyrocketed for the Wool series. The Story Behind Wool’s Success Wool is a 40 page short story that took off in 2011 and allowed Hugh to quit his day job. Hugh wrote Wool and it started doing really well on the Amazon charts. All the feedback that he was getting through reviews and emails asked for more of the series. Before the fifth installment of the series was complete Hugh gave notice at his day job, because he was making more money from sales of the series then he was at his job working in a bookstore. How Self Published Authors Can Work with Traditional Publishing Companies Hugh considers himself a self published author because he always publishes his work directly to readers first. He has had publishers buy his books after he self publishes them if they do well enough sales wise and the contract makes sense. But selling to a publisher is not the reason he writes stories. He does better for himself self-publishing than he ever would with a publisher in the United States. Overseas it makes complete sense to partner with publishers because he can’t handle translation rights and marketing in 30 different countries. Hugh does individual publishing deals overseas and he considers them his publishing partners. Why Self Published Authors Make More Money Than Traditionally Published Authors There are two reasons why self published authors make more money than traditionally published authors. Self published authors get paid a much higher royalty for every copy of their book sold then do traditional authors. Self published authors control their own visibility. Traditionally published authors have a minimal ability to break through the noise in the marketplace. When you sell your book to New York you have almost no ability to affect the marketing of that book. Publishers will push your book to bookstores, and unless you break out the most you will make is your advance. Working at a bookstore really opened Hugh’s eyes. He saw how many new authors fail to break out in the traditional publishing marketplace. He also saw very successful authors come to his bookstore and talk about writing. Every one of them had a day job. No traditionally published author Hugh talked to was able to write exclusively to pay the bills. That included many New York Times best-selling authors. The Advantages of Being a Self Published Author Conversely Hugh has met hundreds of indie published author acquaintances who are making a living with their writing. Indie published authors are able to make a living because they can publish more books faster than the traditional publishing apparatus will let them, and online bookstores have unlimited shelf space. Nobody is taking their books off the shelves because they aren’t selling well right now. With indie authors who publish on online bookstores, a book never ages. The book is new when a new reader finds it. In short, as a self published author you have: The same visibility as every other autho

Tom started writing poetry around age 10 and his high school English teacher encouraged him to pursue writing because of his talent. He didn’t think anything of it and chose to pursue a business school degree instead. During Tom’s college years he began to study personal development extensively. That’s when he came across Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad. Before reading Rich Dad Poor Dad Tom believed that money was a bad thing because of how he saw it being used by rich people. After reading the book he realized that money is a tool and it can be used well or poorly just like any other tool. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, he wrote his own manifesto about what it meant to be rich, successful, and have a happy life. He wrote it for himself, but when he showed it to family and friends they encouraged him to try and get it published. He began contacting agents and publishers with no success. After six years of trying to get his book published, a friend suggested that he self publish his book on Kindle. Before that suggestion he didn’t even know it was possible to self publish. Tom looked into it and began to study the process of how to self publish his book. It took him a few weeks of research to figure out the process. He published his first book on Kindle and didn’t tell anyone it was published. He was embarrassed that he had to self publish his first book. A month later Tom was amazed to find that he had sold over 10 copies of his book without any promotion whatsoever. From that point on Tom knew self-publishing was his future. He loves reading, learning and teaching and his books are his way of giving back to the world. Seeing the potential for success, he wrote and published more than 20 books in a few years and had his first month of more than $12,000 in Kindle royalties alone just 12 months after he published that first book. In today’s show, Michael Mackintosh interviews Tom as he shares his story, tips for new and experienced authors, and a new way to get your book published through TCK Publishing. Step 1: How to Decide What to Write about The idea of self-publishing and earning a living from your writing is very exciting. The first thing you have to do is decide what book you’re going to write. Tom has a very simple process for deciding what book to write. He goes into his room, shuts his door, and removes all distractions. He shuts off his phone and Internet. And he writes down one question on a piece of paper: “If I had 30 days left to live, and I could only write one book what message would I have to share?” Then he simply brainstorms the answer and writes down every single book that he could write in the next 30 days. After he comes up with that list he narrows it down to one book. Tom uses that question to help him focus his mind on one book. As creative people, we have many ideas and it can be hard to narrow them down to one. Asking a question which specifically limits the time you have to finish the book helps you focus on what’s most important to you. When Tom focuses on how to make money, the results haven’t been very good. But when he focuses on how he can help the most people the money follows. “You can ask your friends, coaches, and colleagues but at the end of the day you’ve got to be excited and passionate about what you’re writing. Readers won’t be attracted to your writing unless you’re passionate about it.” — Tom Corson Knowles The Four Keys to Writing a Successful Nonfiction Book Find out what inspires you. Create your book outline. Keep your book focused on the result you want for your reader. Keep in mind your customer’s perspective. Step 2: The Process of Writing Your Book Once you have your mission statement, once you’re inspired and motivated to share your message with the world it’s very easy to write your book. How to Outline Your Book Using One Simple Question The first thing you have to do is outline your book. Tom asked this question to outline all of his successful books. “If this book could only have 10 chapters what would they be?” This is another question designed to limit the scope of what you’re trying to write. A lot of new authors make the mistake of trying to write everything they know in their first book. This is a mistake for several reasons. It makes the book unwieldy and unfocused. It’s difficult to organize. It decreases the likelihood it will actually help someone who’s reading it. It decreases the likelihood you’ll actually finish and publish the book. In the Internet age people are looking for specific answers to their problems. Shorter, more focused books that solve a specific problem sell better than longer books with more general information about a topic. It’s important when you write a book to always be thinking about the information you have to share in terms of your customer&

Steve Scott started out as a regular guy who just wanted to stay home with his family and work from home. He started his blog several years ago and was supporting his family on the income from his site with affiliate marketing and ads. A few years ago, Steve figured out how to self-publish his own books on Kindle, and he’s now published more than 16 books in his own name and dozens more under pen names. Steve has become one of the Top 100 Business & Investing authors on Amazon (appearing at #1 in all of Kindle for Business & Investing Authors numerous times) and he’s also commonly listed as a Top 100 Self-Help author on Amazon Kindle as well. In today’s show, Steve shares his story along with tips for how authors like you can successfully self-publish and become a bestselling author. I think you’ll love Steve’s incredibly humble attitude and clear, concise, and insightful advice. Two Factors in Steve Scott’s Rapid Success Steve self-published his first book in 2013. He published his second book shortly thereafter and promoted it heavily using the KDP Select program. He got his books to the point where they were making him $10 a day. A lightbulb went off for Steve when he realized that. His next thought was: “I wonder what would happen if I applied myself and released a book every 3 to 4 weeks.” Releasing 16 books from 2013 to 2014 is the biggest reason Steve has achieved such tremendous success. Two months after Steve published his third book, he started seeing revenue of about $2,000 a month. He’s tried replicating that in other markets but hasn’t quite seen those numbers. Steve thinks a big factor in his rapid rise through the ranks at Amazon is the built-in audience he had for his books, because of the blog that he’d been writing for years before that. Moving forward, as Amazon begins to fine-tune its sales algorithm and diminish the power of KDP Select, it will be more important to have your own audience through a blog or social media channels so that you can push traffic to Amazon to sell your books. Steve’s blog gets 15,000 visitors a month, and his email list has an average of 2,000 people on it at any given time. Steve started out by just letting his email list know that he was releasing a book on Amazon. Through KDP Select he was able to make that book free on Amazon for five days, and the people on his email list who downloaded the book for free helped to push his book higher in the rankings. That exact strategy doesn’t work quite as well today and Steve’s sales strategies have evolved somewhat. Check out episode 127: How Amazon Science Can Help You Sell More Books with Chris Fox to learn the strategies that are working in 2017.  A Simple List Building Strategy You should have a free lead magnet in every book you sell. A lead magnet is something you give away for free to people who give you their email address. Having your own email list is very important. It allows you to have direct contact with your best customers, irrespective of what happens to the platforms you currently sell your books on. You should have a channel that you devote to giving out free content to your audience that’s not Kindle related. This can be: A blog A podcast A YouTube channel The “Secret ” to Being an Expert The secret to being an expert in anything is simply learn as much as you can about it. Steve never considered himself an expert. But he’s been making a full-time income from affiliate marketing since 2005. So when he started writing Kindle books, he was confident that he knew enough about affiliate marketing to add real value for people who are interested in learning about it. You can decide to become an expert and begin studying a topic. But the truth is, you’re already an expert in a number of areas. You’ve lived a life. You are interested in certain things. What types of things are you interested in? What do your friends and family ask you questions about? What types of things do you already know quite a bit about? What are you passionate about? (If you don’t know the answer to this question, ask your friends and family. They’ll be able to tell you what you’re passionate about.) The Importance of Being “Authentic” It’s important to be authentic, genuine, and real with your readers. People respond better to honesty and vulnerability than they do to authors trying to tell them how awesome they are.  How to Come up with Book Ideas that Sell Start with what you’re passionate about. Why did you want to become an author in the first place? What books do you want to write? The next step is to do the appropriate market research to make sure there are enough people interested in your topic to make it worth your time to write a book about it. Listen to Episode 142: Six Simple Steps to Effective Book Market Research to hear me explain my systematic approach to market research

Barbara Rogan has worked in almost every area of the publishing industry over the last 30 years. She’s published nine novels, founded a literary agency, and a highly esteemed professional editor. Barbara has taught fiction writing at SUNY Farmingdale and Hofstra and also teaches online courses for writers. Barbara knew that she wanted to be a published author from a very early age. She remembers reading a lot of books when she was young. One of the books that stands out to her is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Realizing that authors have day jobs, Barbara quickly got a job with a publishing company after college. When she moved to Israel, she also worked in the publishing industry there. In today’s episode, we talk about the best practices for becoming a better writer, mastering the editing process, and choosing the right editor for you. Whether you’re a brand-new novelist, a nonfiction writer, or an experienced bestselling author, Barbara’s wealth of information and experience in the publishing industry can help you become even better. Note: I’m sorry the sound quality is pretty poor in this episode! There was a problem with Barbara’s mic. But trust me, this interview is a gem, so hang in there because there’s a lot of wisdom shared by this wonderful woman!   How the Publishing Industry Has Changed since 2004 In 2004, very few authors had websites. Facebook had just come online for non-students and there was no way for authors to directly connect with their fans through Facebook. At that time, there was no easy way to have direct contact between authors and fans. Back then, if someone read your book and liked it, they’d have to write a letter to the publisher, who would then forward that letter on to you as the author. There were also book signings as there have been for decades, but the kind of direct intimate contact that authors and fans can have today wasn’t possible back in 2004. It was much more difficult to be a writer back in 2004 because after a book was published, you could go weeks without getting any sort of feedback from readers. Today, you can get immediate feedback from your fans, which makes being an author much less lonely. How Authors Can Take Advantage of the Changes in the Publishing Industry in 2014 and Beyond There are three paths an author can take in this new world. Self-publish. Barbara recommends this path to people who just want to get their book out there so people can buy it. She says: “If you’re okay publishing a book and just having your family and friends read it, self-publishing your book is probably the way to go.” – Barbara Rogan Work on your book and submit it to agents. Once an agent accepts your book, they will try to sell it to publishers. This is the path Barbara recommends if you want to have a career as a writer. The main advantage of selling your book to a publisher is that they do the work to get your books into bookstores and libraries. Unfortunately, bookstore owners typically won’t put your books on their shelves unless they’re working with a publisher. Listen to our interview with Amy Collins about how to get your books into bookstores and libraries for ways to get around this problem. Pursue a contract with a small press. Small presses generally give small advances, if there’s an advance at all, but they have the advantage of being a publisher that bookstores and libraries will deal with. After You Finish Your First Draft, the Real Work Begins There’s a tendency for beginning writers to feel like when they’ve finished the first draft, they’re done with the book. If you finish a first draft of your story or novel, you’ve probably gotten further than 98% of people who say they want to write fiction, start a story, and never finish. When you finish the first draft of your story, your words often feel like they’re carved in stone because you’ve read them at least 70 times in the process of creating your art. The problem is, if all you do is write one draft of your story without going back to edit it, your story will probably never be published. And if you self-publish, it won’t sell many copies. Your first draft is an important first step in the process. You have a finished story. You’ve written a story down. It’s out of you and it’s not going anywhere. Now you have to be willing to shape the story into something better than it currently is. A story is like a sculpture. You have to be willing to smooth out the edges to make it the best story you can. What You Need to Do after You Finish the First Draft What you want to do after you finish your first draft is to look at your book with a much more analytical eye than you did when you were writing your draft. Ideally, when you’re writing your first draft, you’re writing in creative voice, and you should feel comfortable taking chances and going crazy pla

Robin Colucci is a successful entrepreneur, author, and writing coach. Robin and I know that creating a bestselling book isn’t about marketing—it’s about the entire writing, publishing, and marketing process. And it all starts with your first book idea. Robin has studied some of the best-selling books in the world, the ones that have sold hundreds of thousands and even millions of copies. She discovered there are only four bestseller blueprints or book structures that these bestsellers use. This is a great interview. We talk about those four book structures and how you can use any of them to create a bestselling book. Robin began her publishing career in the 1980s while she studied journalism at George Washington University. She had several jobs during her college years. She was a freelance writer and news aide for The Washington Post. She worked for the George Washington University school newspaper, the GW Hatchet. She also was an editor on the school’s poetry magazine. When Robin graduated, the chairman of her department recommended her for a job as David Wise’s research assistant. She worked with him over the next three years on three books, a novel, a political science textbook, and a nonfiction exposé about a spy who sold secrets to the Russians while working for the CIA. The spy was able to evade FBI surveillance to escape to Moscow. It was while working as David Wise’s research assistant that Robin learned how to develop a concept to sell to publishers. She also learned the process of pitching, working with the publisher, and how national publicity campaigns work. Robin started a fitness business after her job with David Wise ended. She decided to go to graduate school and get an advanced degree in spiritual psychology with the aim of helping entrepreneurs in the fitness space become better at running their businesses. She got her graduate degree in spiritual psychology and learned a lot of useful skills. Primarily she learned the importance of listening to the essence of what people are saying. After graduate school, she got several clients, and to her surprise, most of them wanted to write a book. She was able to combine her knowledge of publishing with her knowledge of being a business owner, as well as her newly acquired skills in listening and asking questions, to help her clients navigate the process of traditional publishing. That’s how Robin’s book coaching business formed. She helps coaches and consultants write books to build their credibility, increase their income, and magnify their impact. What It Takes to Become a New York Times Bestseller “’Bestseller’ is an interesting term. Book sales is one piece of it. It’s also writing a book that helps sell you and your expertise and your message. It is about communicating effectively with your audience.” – Robin Colucci There are a number of factors that go into a book making it to the New York Times bestseller list. How well-known is the author? How well is the book promoted? Is there a confluence of events that makes the book “catch on?” None of these factors is directly in the author’s control. While you can put yourself in a good position to become a New York Times bestseller, nothing is certain. So Robin decided to ask a question that would lead to results her clients could control: What common elements do New York Times Bestsellers have that can be replicated by anyone who wants to be on the list? The Four Basic Blueprints of New York Times Bestsellers There are a few common features of many NYT bestsellers. Let’s look at them. Blueprint #1: The Organized List Organized list books are books that contain related ideas that have been organized into a list. Organized list books tend to be on the New York Times bestseller list so often because the structure is easy to understand and very accessible to readers. Organized list books can be read in any order. The organized list blueprint is used for two types of books. A compilation book is a collection of essays, interviews, or articles that all appear in one book. The self-help book is a collection of resources or articles with a specific aim: improvement. The Chicken Soup for the Soul series is the best example of an organized list book that’s a self-help book. In the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, there is an overriding theme and several different contributors—and various authors can contribute. Those books can also be read in no particular order. Listen to episode 119 with Amy Newmark to learn how to contribute stories to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Another way you see this template applied is in books with list titles, like 1001 Ways to Be Romantic, or 1000 Ways to Promote Your Book, or 101 Ways to (you fill in the blank). Usually these self-help books have shorter chapters, and more of them. These attributes make the book easier to consume. This isn’t always the case, however. The Four Agreemen