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Welcome to podcast #47! Today we are talking about how you can become known as an expert in your field and publish your own book – it’s easier than you may think! We’ve written a couple of books ourselves in the last year and were surprised by how quickly we could deliver the whole thing from concept to delivery. You don’t have to spend $1000s on a publisher to have your book up on Amazon and getting your name out there…
What did Andrew & Heather Learn this week?
Andrew was looking at Facebook ads; he discovered there is now the ability to have real-time or live-streaming ads. For example, if you want to introduce a special price on a product currently running an ad, you can update the details on your website and Facebook will automatically grab those details and put them into your ad. This means you don’t have to go to the hassle of re-doing your Facebook ad and waiting for it to go through the approval process – nice!
Heather took an event this week teaching people how to publish their own magazine. She learnt that people are really starting to grasp the concept of the need to embrace mobile as a medium. Some people even mentioned that they thought they would start their own magazine before developing a website.
Write Your Book This Month?
One of the reasons we decided it was timely to look at book publishing is that this month is National Novel Writers Month. There is a movement going to challenge you to write your book this month – check it out here if you are keen! They have a bunch of resources available to help you out…
How to develop your book
For our first book that we did; The Online Treasure Map for Motivational Speakers: 21 Industry Insider Tips to get you Booked as a Speaker Faster, we decided to go with publishing on Kindle as we wanted to get onto Amazon, given that it is one of the main platforms out there. We were at a seminar in LA which was about publishing on Kindle and were literally able to deliver our book through spending an evening brainstorming it. We wrote out topics for each chapter, bullet pointed the content that could be included then recorded ourselves talking on each bullet point. We then gave the audio to one of our team members to transcribe, took the transcription and edited it, then turned it into a book.
We then created summary videos for the ends of each chapter to show people how to use the tools we had talked about. This means that when people are reading on Kindle, they can view the video as it is embedded into the book. (BTW you can download Kindle software for almost any device and read Kindle books).
Have a sexy title!
You want to attract people to your book, but don’t wait to have the perfect title before starting your book! Many people get writer’s block over a title, but if you wait until you’ve developed the content itself the title will often come more easily. There are also a couple of sites you can use for inspiration if you get stuck for titles; one of those is the New York Times seller list in an area called ‘viewed’ to get title ideas. This section tells you which titles have been viewed the most, so you can see which ones are the most appealing to viewers and how they are constructed.
As part of a great title, it’s a good idea to have a ‘hook’; something that grabs people and entices them to look further at your book. We learnt with our book to use the hook as the main title (ie make a promise, stir an emotion, create a new policy or standard, create a movement, polarize your audience (controversy sells!)), then have an explanation as the subtitle. Just don’t be bland or generalized in your title!
Pricing
Kindle allows you to alter the pricing pretty much any time you like. You can go into your account, update the price and it should take effect almost immediately. There is also the Kindle Direct Publishing program, which allows you to offer your book free for five days, every 90 days. Why would you do that? Well, the KDP program is designed for people who want to get their information out to as many people as possible. If you are able to offer your book free this is a great way to get out there.
Here is one of our most important tips…
Amazon will not give you the email addresses of people who purchase your book, not great for you if you are wanting to build your list! We recommend you use the ‘teaser’ part on Amazon to entice people over to your website. This means that you need an opt-in to show within the section that will come up as a ‘preview’. For example, we had to make sure that within the first 4 pages of our book (the first 10%), there was an opt-in that both browsers and purchasers could see. We used the audio of us creating the book as a bonus giveaway and got people to sign up through a basic landing page. We are still continuing to grow our list from this simple technique! You could even do different opt-ins for buyers that appear throughout your book. (Check out an example from our book Automate Your Marketing: Quick Tips & Real Life Examples To Get Leads & Promote Yourself on Autopilot – just click on the ‘look inside’ option at the left of the screen)
Showcase yourself
Use the introduction to really let people know why they need your book and what they will learn. Detail your credentials for covering that topic and convince people as to why they should listen to you!