Brand Architect

My today's guest is Mark Schaefer. Mark is a college educator, marketing consultant, and author of four social media marketing books including Social Media Explained.

In this interview we talk about personal brand. We discuss why is it so important and Mark provides valuable advice on how to create a personal brand as an author. I encourage you to listen to the interview, because I think it was really a good one.

3 big advantage of the traditional publishing

BUT...

People are mostly buying online anyway, so the distribution does not impact so much.

One can get corporate sponsors for his/her book. That is even better than the advance, because you don't have to pay them back.

You get total control when you self-publish (what to write, how to write, how to market, etc.)

Taylor Swift recently said that in the past you would get a record contract to grow your audience and in the future you have to grow your audience in order to get a contract. The same goes for all artists and writers.

With tools like social media we have the opportunity to make connections and build relationships with anyone in the world.

Successful are the people who have the courage to show themselves, to bring their personal stories and who are human.

Everything we say and everything we don't say on social media accumulates and becomes part of our brand.

Relax, have fun and be yourself. It's the only choice you have to stand out. You have to be original. You have to have the courage to show yourself and be yourself, because there is only 1 you. YOU have no competition.

If you share your personality (even a little bit) it i usually rewarded.

Establish connection through social media. Establish presence and find the people who will be interested in you.

Connect with those people, create value, give away your books for free.

Take the time, do the work, build the audience, build your trust and be patient on building your brand!

Blog + social media is the best way to build a brand for an author today.

Brand = the image people have about you in their brain.

You can't sell books without an audience.

You can't wait for the people to come to you.

Please feel free to join me and other Write 2B Read podcast listeners at our Facebook group.

My today's guest is Jesse Krieger and he am a guy who loves traveling the world, learning languages and cultures, making friends along the way and starting businesses.

Jesse love it so much that he wrote a book called Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions, and Run Your Business from Anywhere In The World, which became a bestseller.

In this interview we talk about the different opportunities that books may bring with them and discuss what it takes to have a full time author career and become lifestyle entrepreneur.

You have to grow a lot as a person in order to grow your business.

The book became the doorway to all the possibilities to make money that are related to the book.

Your book is your hook.

There is no excuse to not have a success with your book if you're willing to put in the work and show up consistently and put in effort.

If you are published author you still have to promote your book as a publisher's job isn't to market it.

If you wanna be author as full time career you have to realize that a large part of it is doing marketing.

Nobody loves being sold but everybody loves to buy.

It's probably 20-30% writing and 80-70% marketing to make career out of it.

Embrace the marketing and don't think of it as marketing, think of it as sharing the ideas of your book with different people in different ways.

Create experience that people want to be part of.

Jesse's website

Lifestyle Entrepreneur (the book)

Bestseller Campaign Blueprint (online training that will help you Become a #1 Best-Selling Author and Build a 6-Figure Book-Based Business and Brand!)

Please feel free to join me and other Write 2B Read podcast listeners at our Facebook group.

I did more than 60 interviews already and you may have already noticed that there are several things that keep being repeated. Many guests justly keep giving the same advice.

But there are also cases, when guests tell things that contradict each other. Today I would like to draw your attention on one of those cases. Many guests firmly believe that one should build an audience first and only after growing it to a sufficient size one should go ahead and publish a book. On the other side I had guests, who told that one should not wait until there is a large audience in place and it is good to simply go ahead and publish the book while starting building the audience.

I don't think that there is right or wrong opinion on this. Both seem justified. So today I will simply share what I did back when I was starting from scratch. That does not mean that you should do the same of course, but by describing my journey I hope to provide you with a real life example.

First of all, I think all of us agree that having large audience in place is the ideal situation. That fact itself makes things much easier. The book launch has higher chances for success. In that case you are in a situation where you can sell more books to your already existing readers. You can rely on your audience to spread the word about your book too.

So now, the question is what if there is no audience yet?

Spend time - and yes it takes a long time - to build it and only then publish the book you have written, or publish it right away?

Here is what I did.

When I was researching about self-publishing and started writing my very first novel Highfall I had no audience, no one, no e mail list, no following on social media. No one even knew thatI existed. So I decided that it is the perfect time to experiment. I learn best when I do the things myself, so I thought that it would be nice to put what I was learning into practice with something small. Learn on the mistakes of that pilot project and only later publish the novel, when it's completed.

So I took my flash fiction very short stories from the past and put those together. And self published my very first book on Amazon. It was the collection of short stories called Emotional Moments (Short Stories About Life).

Now let me tell you that you are in a way better position than I was back then. If you have been listening to my podcast you already know about the common mistakes newbie writers make and can avoid those straightaway.

What about me? Well I made all those mistakes and learnt from them.

I did the cover of the Emotional Moments myself and believe me everyone could tell that it was not a professional cover. I also received bad reviews because the book was not edited. I did not do a KDP Select free promo, so it was the first book with no audience in place, quite short and prices at $2.99. I guess you already guessed that the experiment did not go well.

But then I started corrected all those mistakes one by one. I got a new cover. I had the book edited. I took Cathy Presland's online course on Udemy called How to Publish an eBook on Kindle - eBook Publishing course  and it was totally worth the money. Just few weeks after the course I tried few things and Emotional Moments (Short Stories About Life) with the help of the free days promotion because #1 Amazon bestseller with over 8k downloads in just 3 days. Needless to say how happy I was.

Btw you can listen to my interview with Cathy Presland here.

So looking back I can confirm that it is possible to gain bestselling author status without having audience in place. But that will be done through different promotions - free or with discounted 0.99 cent pricing. Which means that you will be able to put your book in front of many people who never heard of you, but you will not be able to make much money.

In fact I think that making money should not be the primary goal for your first book. The primary goal should be tapping into potential audience of readers.

Which brings me to the thought that having a first book which you are willing to "sacrifice" may be part of your audience building strategy.

But what I want you to realize is that there is no such thing as right or wrong approach. What is right for someone might not be for you. What worked in the past might not anymore. Things change and these days they change very fast. You simply have to experiment and see which is the best strategy for you. You may even need to change strategies depending on the book.

There is no magic button. There is no path that leads directly to success. There will be obstacles on your way. You will sometimes have to change the initial plan in order to get where you want to be.

It's a long process. Sometimes it is extremely tough process. But believe me, as soon as you receive your very first fan e mail or 5 star review you will feel that it was absolutely worth it.

So keep writing build your audience and don't be afraid to experiment.

And if you need help, please check out our sponsor's message below:

Are you struggling trying to figure out how to sell copies of your book? Especially the first 100 copies? The Author Marketing Institute is offering access to their latest free video course called "Selling the first 100 copies of your book".This is the course everyone should have when they started publishing. It goes through all the basics from starting a mailing list to experimenting with different prices. If you follow the instructions in this course, you should be primed and ready to sell your first 100 copies, if not many more. Sign up for free at www.authormarketinginstitute.com

Simon Denman is founder of British web start-up, Readers in the Know, the first global book promotion website for Amazon-listed books. He is also the author of CONNECTED, a speculative science novel published in 2012, which reached number one in Amazon's bestseller ranks for both thrillers and science fiction within five days of release. Prior to this he spent 26 years in a variety of senior roles within the IT networking and security industry.

In this interview we talk about

My today's interview is with Toby Downton. First time author Toby Downton has written Solarversia, a novel about a game played in Virtual Reality by 100 million people. He hopes to make the game in the book in real life and has devised what he thinks is an original marketing plan.

In this interview Toby shares his unique marketing plan and also tells where and how is he finding potential readers for his novel.

Toby has very interesting approach and I am sure that many things he has done so far can be applied to any book. Listen and see how thinking outside the box can lead to a well-developed and potentially successful marketing plan.

If you sign up to the newsletter you'll get a free advance copy of the book and a chance to play the promotional game Toby mentioned in the interview.

Solarversia novel website

Toby's Twitter 

Today my guest is Derek Murphy. Derek is a book cover designer and author who blogs about self-publishing and book marketing.

In this interview we concentrate on the topic of book covers and hopefully it will help you understand the topic better, know what makes a good book cover and understand what important role does it play.

If you have a good book and you have a good book cover and you put it in front if readers, than you shouldn't do other marketing.

The problem with great cover is that it raises readers' expectations really high and people expect much more based on the cover.

The kind of reviews you're receiving are related to the cover.

You need a cover that matches your book.

The book cover still has to work for those and attract those, who have not read the book yet.

It doesn't really matter if the cover matched the details of your book precisely because the readers have not read the book yet so they don't know the details and by the time they finish reading the book they won't care about the cover anymore.

You should stick to typical standard genre covers.

Readers are not looking for original book covers. You want your book to look like it's into the genre. It kind of has to look like the top 25 books in your genre but it should look better.

Most of the pre-made covers are mediocre but they are better than what indie authors make themselves.

You gotta give the designer freedom rather than make him listen to you and do what you want.

Good book cover should be:

The cover has to be pass/fail test. No one is gonna grade it. It either works or it doesn't. It has to get the click.

Creativindie (Derek Murphy's blog)

CreativeindieCovers 

DYI Book Covers (for free templates, DIY tools, and coming soon - videos about book design)

Where to Get Professional and Affordable Book Covers (podcast interview)

Steven Aitchison is a personal development writer and product creator and he has been writing personal development products for his blog at www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog for the last 8 years. He also has several personal development products helping thousands of people around the world:

more recently, due to the overwhelming success of his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ChangeYourThoughtsToday he was almost forced to produce a Facebook course showing others how to utilise the power of Facebook for marketing, promotion and engaging more with readers and fans at www.yourfbchallenge.com

That is why in today's episode we will be talking about Facebook and more specifically, how can authors use Facebook to build and grow their audience, sell more books and make money!

Below, I have included several tips that we have covered, but I encourage you to listen to the interview, because it includes so much more...

Set up a Facebook page specific for the book you will be writing. Do that as soon as you get the idea for the book. The marketing should start before you even start writing.

Through the Facebook page you will be able to disseminate information to your fans and your readers.

Master 1 social platform before moving to the others.

Post image quotes 3-4 times per day. You can schedule that up to 6 months in advance.

To get likes for your Facebook page you can start by advertising by $2 a day and target your readers. You may get only 20 likes per day at first, but it will build up as a snowball later on. To get readers you can target the readers of Facebook author pages similar to yours.

You can also collect the information of people, who have visited your site and target those people through Facebook ads too.

Go through successful Facebook pages in your niche and see what their popular content is.

Also go through your page insights and see who your audience is.

When people comment, reply to their comments or at least like their comment. The momentum will build quicker that way. Besides, you'll get ahead of the game cause most of the authors don't do it on Facebook.

See what's working best and do more of that.

Put links to the posts that have gone viral. Link those to your income streams to make money.

Potential income streams may be: Google Adsense on your website, affiliate links + sales of your products.

You may also send people from Facebook to your free product page in order to grow your e mail list. Bigger your e mail list - more products you will be able to sell to them.

www.99positiveaffirmations.com/products

www.guidedmind.com/Products

www.mindalchemy.net/free-gift

www.advancedearlyriser.com

I am really happy to announce that last week my podcast passed 50k downloads. This may not sound too much for some, but for me it is very special. The reason is – when I was launching Write 2B Read the biggest fear I had was that no one will listen. That’s what I was scared of most. So reaching 50k downloads is huge!

To celebrate that (+ my birthday this month) I created a giveaway for writers, which you can see here. The winner will get Scrivener + 2 books, which will help become successful self-published author. Please check it out and share with those, who might be interested.

A while ago I told you the story of how I started writing. I still can’t explain why and how exactly that happened. But after the first poem, which I wrote I’ve been writing on and off for 20 years already.

Just like most of you I did not share my writings with the world and kept them to myself. I did not even read most of what I’d written, because I loved and enjoyed the process of writing more than the result itself.

After a while though I decided to show it to my mum to get opinion. I handed her the piece of paper with my hand written poem on it and asked to tell what she thought. Mum took it, read it and told only two words - “not bad”. Although the feedback was not negative, I took it exactly that way. The expression of her face and the way she pronounced those two words sort of showed that she meant just the opposite of what she said. And although, maybe I have let it go, I have not forgotten that moment. That was my very first experience facing criticism.

Was I upset? Yes, I was.

Did I stop writing? No, I didn’t.

I kept on writing in the evenings in my room while listening to music through my earphones and drinking beer straight from the bottle. I was aware of the fact that most 16 year old girls spent their evenings differently, but honestly I did not care.

Then one day I saw announcement about a poetry competition in the UK. Back then they were asking for real hard copy letters. So the next day I was at the post office sending the poem I had shown to mum to the competition. I thought that the jury might know things better…

I sent the letter and completely forgot about it. That is until I received a reply.

I held the closed envelope and took some time to collect courage and open it. When I finally did and read the letter I absolutely had to show it to my mum. There were two main messages I wanted her to read from there. The first one said that according to the jury I had talent (which I did not believe btw) and the second message said that I was among the semi-finalists of the competition.

So what happened next?

Well it appears that after jury’s letter and acknowledgment mum took my writings more seriously. I can’t tell she liked them - she still probably didn’t, but she accepted the fact and believed this time that my writings were “not bad”.

Those who have heard me tell that you as a writer don’t need anyone’s permission and acknowledgment to write and be a writer might think that I contradict myself. But I don’t.

Let me explain.

The thing is… that letter did not change much in how I saw my writings. It did boost my ego a bit, I admit… but I still did not think I had talent, I still enjoyed the process more than the result and I still did not consider what I did as something more serious than a hobby and escape from the reality.

What the acknowledgement did was impress others and bring in credibility to what I wrote in other people’s eyes, not mine. Somehow it seems like others need that acknowledgement more than yourself. It impresses people and makes them look at you with different eyes. But does that acknowledgement change the way you write? Does it make you a better writer? Does it change you as a writer at all?

I think the reason it did not change much in me was that I was writing for myself at that stage. I did not need to share my writing, I did not aim to publish my poems and I was not looking for a fame. I knew I could write, I loved doing it and I wrote to either cope with the reality or escape it altogether.

I wrote regardless of whether mum or others liked what I’d written or not. I wrote regardless if the jury thought I was good or not. I did not need the permission to continue writing. And the acknowledgement I received simply meant that maybe what I wrote was “not bad”. 

You think you need many people to like your books, in order to consider yourself a successful writer? You think you need to become a bestselling author in order to prove yourself and others that you’re good? You think good reviews will make you a good writer? You think 1,000 true fans is a proof of your talent?

Maybe…

Although I think that none of the above will happen until YOU accept your writing, until YOU believe that you are good and until YOU make the decision to collect the courage and become vulnerable by putting your writing out there. And just after you put it out there - make the decision that  if you get “not bad” as a feedback you will not give up and continue writing anyway!

I am really happy to announce that last week my podcast passed 50k downloads. This may not sound too much for some, but for me it is very special. The reason is – when I was launching Write 2B Read the biggest fear I had was that no one will listen. That’s what I was scared of most. So reaching 50k downloads is huge!

To celebrate that (+ my birthday this month) I created a giveaway for writers, which you can see here. The winner will get Scrivener + 2 books, which will help become successful self-published author. Please check it out and share with those, who might be interested.

As you already know the podcast is sponsored by the Author Marketing Institute. AMI wanted me to let you know that their next event for authors is coming up at the end of Jan. It’s called Author Marketing Live and it’s a virtual conference. That means you can attend from your home or office and see all the presentations via your computer or tablet. Grab a seat today to learn from best sellers like Steve Scott, Joel Comm, Lewis Howes and Peter Shankman, and more. You can grab a ticket to the event for only $99 if you use the coupon code “ani” during checkout. That’s $49 off the regular ticket price. Just visithttp://www.authormarketinglive.com to register.

Giveaway Celebration

I am really happy to announce that last week my podcast passed 50k downloads. This may not sound too much for some, but for me it is very special. The reason is - when I was launching Write 2B Read the biggest fear I had was that no one will listen. That's what I was scared of most. So reaching 50k downloads is huge!

To celebrate that (+ my birthday this month) I created a giveaway for writers, which you can see here. The winner will get Scrivener + 2 books, which will help become successful self-published author. Please check it out and share with those, who might be interested.

My today's guest is Bryan Cohen. Bryan is an actor, freelance writer, author and an occasional game show contestant. He has written over 30 books, which have sold more than 30,000 copies. His newest book is Ted Saves the World, the first book in a new YA paranormal/fantasy series. 

With Jim Kukral from Author Marketing Club, Bryan co-hosts The Sell More Books Show.

He’s also been keeping a blog to help creative writers find new inspiration for the last five years. Check out Build Creative Writing Ideas here.

Bryan’s writing has appeared on over 100 blogs, including The Creative Penn, Helping Writers Become Authors, HughHowey.com and RachelleGardner.com.

In this interview we discuss how to deal with 2 separate audiences, how to manage time,sell more books and prepare book launches.

How to deal with different audiences?

Different audience should be approached differently. Bryan has 2 separate audience building approaches (blog fir non-fiction and videos for fiction), 2 separate websites and different e mail lists.

How to Sell More Books?

In order to sell more books, you need the three things mentioned below:

1. Get the fundamentals right (strong book cover, professionally edited text, catchy title, etc.)

Everything about your book listing page online has to be indistinguishable from the traditionally published and professionally .... book.

[spp-tweet "If your book looks like a self-published book it's unlikely that people will buy it. "

2. Mailing List

3. Building Relationships

How to Launch a Book?

From the first day you're writing your book, you're considering your marketing and planning your book launch. You need to plan everything way in advance.

Food for Thought

[spp-tweet "It is better to be rejected and sell more books, than it is to not be rejected and never try."]

As you already know the podcast is sponsored by the Author Marketing Institute. AMI wanted me to let you know that their next event for authors is coming up at the end of Jan. It's called Author Marketing Live and it's a virtual conference. That means you can attend from your home or office and see all the presentations via your computer or tablet. Grab a seat today to learn from best sellers like Steve Scott, Joel Comm, Lewis Howes and Peter Shankman, and more. You can grab a ticket to the event for only $99 if you use the coupon code "ani" during checkout. That's $49 off the regular ticket price. Just visit http://www.authormarketinglive.com to register.

Celebrate with a Giveaway

I am really happy to announce that last week my podcast passed 50k downloads. This may not sound too much for some, but for me it is very special. The reason is - when I was launching Write 2B Read the biggest fear I had was that no one will listen. That's what I was scared of most. So reaching 50k downloads is huge!

To celebrate that (+ my birthday this month) I created a giveaway for writers, which you can see here. The winner will get Scrivener + 2 books, which will help become successful self-published author. Please check it out and share with those, who might be interested.

As you already know the podcast is sponsored by the Author Marketing Institute. AMI wanted me to let you know that their next event for authors is coming up at the end of Jan. It's called Author Marketing Live and it's a virtual conference. That means you can attend from your home or office and see all the presentations via your computer or tablet. Grab a seat today to learn from best sellers like Steve Scott, Joel Comm, Lewis Howes and Peter Shankman, and more. You can grab a ticket to the event for only $99 if you use the coupon code "ani" during checkout. That's $49 off the regular ticket price. Just visit http://www.authormarketinglive.com to register.

Now let's get to my today's guest - David Nihill

David was born in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating with a Master’s Degree in Business in 2003, he moved to San Francisco where he worked for the Irish government helping startups expand rapidly. He has been involved with startup companies ever since. David is the Founder of FunnyBizz Conferences, a community conference series helping content creators tap into the power of storytelling, comedy and improv to create better content. He has performed standup comedy at California’s leading clubs including Cobbs, the Comedy Store, the Improv and the Punchline even though he strongly denies being a comedian and is well aware most people don’t understand his accent. His learning, taken from one year's intensive experiments in comedy, performed on someone from the business community with a huge initial fear of public speaking (i.e. him!) have been featured in Inc. and Forbes amongst others. He loves sharks, still dislikes public speaking, and calls San Francisco home when immigration officials permit.

In this interview we discuss how David wrote and launched his book Do You Talk Funny?, which you can get for free in the coming 2 days.

So what did David do?

David had the original idea for that was creating an online course on Udemy called Become a Better and Funnier Speaker. By clicking on the link you can get the course for $18 (with 70% discount).

What were the benefits of that strategy?

Food for Thought

The passive income is not as passive as you think it is!