Seven Different Ways an Author Can Make Money | Jyotsna Ramachandran

   Today on the show we have on Jyotsna R.  We talk about the different income streams for authors, marketing potentials, and membership-based income.  The conversation is a more author-focused sales funnel.
Website: https://happyselfpublishing.co

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Transcript

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Hi, today we have a awesome guests. Julissa, I might have just butchered that she told me to call her either j or Jr. During the interview, she does say her proper name. Oh, I 1420 minutes in. So, yeah, today, it was just it was so nice to talk to Joel, about books self publishing, how it can distinguish you and make you an authority and then also the different incomes. It was quite fascinating and looking forward to sharing this with you. So here we go, our guests and wonderful chat and interview. Welcome to the Josh Bolton show where he died interesting and inspiring conversation. And now your host, Josh Bolton. So can you tell me a little bit yourself of how you got into writing and all that? Yeah, sure. So I actually started this journey about seven years ago. So that's when I became a mom and I wanted to run a business from home. So it gives me the flexibility of time and all of that. So I was looking for opportunities to start an online business, so I can have that freedom. And I just came across this concept of publishing books, I did not consider myself to be a writer, at any point of time before that, so I thought, Why take that risk. So I hired writers, I would just pay them for one project, they would write a short ebook for me, and I would publish them on Amazon. So that's how I started it. And after publishing, about 50, books, it started giving me a lot of revenue in terms of the royalty that I earned from these books. So that kind of gave me the, you know, option to shut down my previous business in staff recruitment and fully focus on my online business. At one point of time, Josh, I felt I was not really connected with those books, because it was not written by me. And I had no idea what the topics were all about. So I really wanted to share my journey with my, with some people who could benefit out of it. So I wrote a book called job escape plan. That was mainly to help people who are struggling in a job that they don't like, and they did not know how to quit it. So I thought that was one thing, which I did well, in my life, I quit my uninspiring job, and I started businesses. So I wanted to share that. And I wrote my first book, after that book became a success. And people started noticing my work, they would reach out to me and asked me how I published my book. That's when I realized there were so many people who actually had messages to share, they had important life experiences to share in the form of a book, but they didn't know how to get it published. So I thought, instead of publishing more ghostwritten books, which I was not really connected with, let me actually help these real authors who have a story who have a message to share through their books. So that's how I started happy self publishing five years ago. That's awesome. So then I do have a question on the ghost writing part. How did you you just pay them a lump sum? Like let's say it was $1,000. And it's just like, I want to whatever amount of page and just, you would go pay someone else check. It was plagiarized kind of thing. Yeah, so I want to actually bring out an important difference between ghost riding and Angel writing. What I did back then was ghost writing, what we do right now at Happy self publishing is Angel writing. So here's the difference, what we did what I used to do at that time, I wasn't that worried about the quality I I was not really looking at it as a business. Also, I just wanted to earn some quick bucks at that time to see if this really works, right. So I would just find topics that were in trend at that point of time. And I would find a writer on freelance websites like Upwork, back then it was called Elance. So we would just hire these writers and I would not pay more than $200 per book. So can you imagine the quality, so they would just find some articles on Google, they would put, they would read probably 10 or 20 articles, and they would collect some information from here and there and put together a book within a week. So that's how it was. And it finally those books used to sell. I don't know how maybe people found it convenient to just quickly buy a book which has all the information rather than Google themselves. But after a point of time, once I started getting a few one star reviews for the book, that's when I noticed that he the quality is not as good as how a book is supposed to be. So but today, what we do at Happy self publishing is very different. So we have some authors who come to us and say that See, I am an entrepreneur, I'm a coach, I have all this expertise, but either I don't have the time or I don't have the expertise to write. So could you help us with writing the manuscript? So what our Angel writers do is they don't go look out for information, but we interview the authors We help the authors choose the topic, create the outline, and then we interview them over a period of a few weeks. And we collect all the information that has come from the author, or listen to the recording, and the writers would write it for them. So that's the difference. That's very interesting. Yeah, I've been told that you more want to Angel writer, but it's one of those. I didn't know what that meant kind of thing. That's a perfect clarification. Thank you so much. Um, so you mostly were Amazon, right? Yeah, mainly because Amazon is the number one marketplace for books, although even my books are in all the other marketplaces. 98% of the money comes from Amazon, because they are really huge. And also, as authors, we do more marketing on Amazon than other places. Because they are very good with authors. Their reports are very transparent, fair payments are on time. It's really nice to work with Amazon. I bet. Yeah. And especially with housing originally started as like a bookstore. Now they've become pretty much everything. But yeah, it would make sense that they would still take care of their authors. Absolutely. So then, let's go into a little bit of healthy self publishing, you see, you offer Angel writing, what else do you do? Do you help with like the cover art, etc? Yeah, actually, we started out as doing these small little services, like cover design, and editing and formatting. This is how we started five years ago. But today, I don't look at our services as just a book publishing agency services. When I speak to the clients that we've worked with in the past, they come and talk to me about how their life has transformed after they became an author, both internally as well as how the world looks at them, everything has changed. As a result, they're getting more clients, they are having a more balanced life. So I realized that it's not just about a cover design, or anything that we do. So right now we have more holistic packages. And it all depends on at what stage the author is in. Like, if somebody comes to us with no manuscript, they just have a rough idea. Then we either support them with Angel writer to write the book, or if they choose to write the book themselves, we assign a book coach, who would get on calls every week, coach them, guide them, critique whatever they've written, and help them to finish the manuscript. Now, after somebody finishes the manuscript, we have a whole suite of services for publishing and marketing the book. So it includes all of this the cover the editing, the formatting, getting bestseller status on Amazon, and getting booked on podcast shows, and also doing some PR campaign and all of that. But for me, the end product is not just the book, but how the book is going to support the entrepreneurs overall business. So that's what we coach our clients on. So we are motorcycle, a marketing agency helping people to market their businesses through their book. So we talk about the overall strategy of how this book is going to fit into their business. How is it going to act as a lead magnet? And how can they build the whole funnel? So that's what we call chatlines. That's awesome. Yeah. The especially the marketing part for a book, people don't realize that it is much harder nowadays, to market your books than it was even like seven years ago. Yeah, seven years ago, anything would sell, because people were just getting started with platforms like Amazon. But now I think even the readers have become pretty smart. They can easily differentiate between a book that has just been put together over a weekend, and a book where the author has taken months and years of effort to create the book. So the readers have become intelligent. So it's really important that the author takes the extra effort to market it. Yes, in that sense, the extra part. So you, you mentioned a suite of packages earlier of different stuff. So let's say like a person he he or she knows how to write. It's just maybe their grammar is terrible. What would be without like giving all the prizes away would be something for like an editorial and maybe like a cover art kind of thing. You mean the pricing? Yeah. Yeah. So again, you will find people doing services at different price points on the internet, you will find cover designers who can design a cover for $5 on fiverr.com, you'll find designers who charge $2,000 on 99 designs.com. So we I would say we are somewhere in the middle of cover cover designs, which is like a holistic that is the ebook, the paperback, the audio book, all the covers put together, our rates would be$750. And for the editing, we charge by the number of words. So it's at five, five cents per word. So let's say for a 10,000 word book, it would be $500. So works that way. And we do four rounds of comprehensive editing which is all included in this five cents per word. Oh, that's very fair, because yeah, there's some editors I've talked to where their flat rates, like let's say three cents. But if they have to redo it again, they charge you three cents again, for the safety. So I think our job is to just make sure that the book is super polished and ready for publishing. So obviously, we take a look at the manuscript first. And there are there are some clients who are who don't have English as their first language. And an editor is not a writer, that's also really important. So they cannot be rewriting every sentence for the author, right. So if the manuscript comes at that stage, we just recommend them to work with a writing assistant or, or an engine writer to rewrite the full book. But if it comes to us at a stage where it needs, just the editing, then we have three rounds. So it starts with developmental editing, where the content is reviewed, and we give a lot of inputs on what needs to be added, what can be removed, whether it makes sense whether the flow is good. So all the content level feedback is given in the first round. So that lets the author to go back and rewrite portions of the book and send it back to us. And then we begin with copy editing. Now, this is where the editor would give inputs on the sentence structure and the vocabulary. And they will suggest a lot of improvements. And all those suggestions are highlighted in a different color using track changes as a feature on Word document. So the the author can easily go through all the highlighted changes. And finally, it's the author's call to decide if they want to retain those changes, or they can also decline certain changes if they have a valid point to explain that. And then we move to the third round, which is proofreading. A lot of companies actually stopped with proofreading because proofreading is where you actually check whatever has got missed out so far, like the typos, the grammar, all of that the punctuation and stuff like that. But what we've noticed is after even after doing this, we have a polished manuscript. But when it gets formatted, there could be a lot of accidents at that time. And you know, the manuscript can go all over the place. So after the book is formatted, we do one more round of proofreading, just to ensure that it all looks good. It's very interesting. And I said, You're very thorough for the price that you offer for your customers. Because that's a lot of work. Yeah, it is. But actually, the people who love doing it, they just love it. So we that's why we have a very passionate team of people. So Ours is a very global organization. I live in India, okay. But most of our clients are from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, we have clients from 35 different countries, but predominantly from these countries. And my team is also very global, we have more than 25 team members. And we have our editors and writers mainly from America. We have our designers from Asian countries from Europe. And we have our video guy from Africa. So it's it's like a nice mix. I think. Other than Antarctica, we have people from every continent, Antarctica, that's awesome. Other than that we have from everywhere else. Yeah. That's awesome. So then, um, can we go into a little bit of your books, what you've written about, and maybe some of the topics? Yeah, so I am not really a passionate writer. Okay. This is where I say that writer and an author of two different people, writer loves writing, you know, that's their job. That's their passion. I've never been that way. But I really put that extra effort and force myself to write my book because I really want to get that message out. And after I wrote job escape plan, I shifted my focus in helping other authors to write their books. So that's why in the last five years, we've helped more than 500 authors. But my second book is still in the making. I'm yet to publish that. Yeah, it's, it's um, it's one of those when you're writing, people don't realize how much Labor has to go into making the book itself. They just think, oh, you just you have an all nighter for the weekend, you can write out like 1000 pages, and you're good to go kind of thing. It's not that easy. Right? It all depends on what is the quality that you set as your standard for yourself. Some people were like how I was seven years ago, I was just okay with just getting a book done in a week's time. And I will publish it. And I would not say that is wrong. But if you're writing a book, that's going to reflect your personal brand, you don't want to take it very carelessly. You want to put that extra effort in working with professionals who can elevate the quality of your book. So then I'm curious, are you specifically more just business publishing? Or do you do like fantasy? Like sci fi, etc? Yeah, so we used to do all kinds of books before right now our focus is because most of our clients are from the business world, and coaches. That's why we focus mainly on self help books, and business books. But every once in a while for fun, we take up a thriller novel or a children's book, but that's not our business focus. We just do it just to break the monotony once in a while, but otherwise this is what is our focus. Yeah, you got to do some some phone projects while you're going through the grind of everything else. Yeah, right. So, can we go into a little bit of? Well, actually, we went right into the interview. How? What's your name again? Jyotsna. juicenet. What a wonderful. Yeah, I was sitting there like, we just went right in and like, Whoa, dude. I didn't even realize that we were recording because we just started off. Yeah, just the way you were talking about y'all. I got to hit the record button now. You can call me Joe or Jr. Whatever is easy for you. Jr. Works for me. Okay. So can we can we go a little bit of where are you at like, well, what city you live in? And maybe some stuff in the culturally around that good, like good food places. Yeah, I live in India, in the south of India, there is a city called Chennai. It's one of the top four largest cities in the country. So that's where I live in. And during the pandemic, we have gone to a second phase of lockdowns, but it's only at night. So we are still kind of leading a normal life during the day. But most of the things happen online, the kids continue with their online classes and stuff like that. And you asked about food right. So India is like this, you know, this amalgamation of different cuisines because we have so many different states. And each state is like a separate country in the sense, our languages are different, our culture is different. And the food is also different. So that way, we are lucky because we get to experiment with a lot of different types of food. What would be your your favorite dish? Just in general of just within your province. Okay, globally, my favorite cuisine is Italian and followed by Mexican. In India, there is this street food called chart Okay, chart. It literally means you can lick your finger and eat. So that's it's very tanky. And very spicy. And that's the street food that I love eating. Oh, that sounds so good. I might make a trip out just to get some. Yes, hopefully the world becomes normal. And we can travel without any worries like before, and you must make like a nice one month trip to India, because there is so much to see, you know, from the north to the south east to the west, there is a lot to explore. Absolutely. Just any country you go to, to fully explore you need at least a month, that's still not enough time. Right? That's kind of the difference between a tourist and a traveler, right? Yeah, a tourist only wants to quick flash and the traveler wants to see everything. Um, so for you being we mentioned COVID earlier is because your business predominately online as COVID itself affected you, good or bad, is affected us positively, I would say wonderful. Because I feel from last year onwards, a lot of people got to spend a lot more time at home, reflecting upon their lives. And for many people writing a book has been on their bucket list. And finally, they got the time to unwind and actually sit down and write their books. So that way, we got more inquiries or for publishing last year, and this year compared to before, and even internally as a team. We were always online. But we really did not felt the need to have more team bonding and connection. Because we had a lot of other things to do right outside. But since most of the time now we are restricted to our computers, I might, me and my team felt that we need to be stronger and together as a team. So now we have some very good systems and processes in place. For team building, we have our daily meetings and hurdles. And we have weekly training sessions. And we we haven't missed even a single thing since last August. Because I think thanks to COVID we realize the importance of people to people connection before we would just have audio calls. Now all our calls or video calls because we really want to see each other. So I think it has really helped my team positively. And so far, Josh, all my team members used to be freelancers. But now other than the few people who want to work on project basis, I have eight of them who are full time employees. So that's been a transition during the COVID times because I felt that without a strong team. I cannot grow the company to the next level. And there is a lot of difference between working with freelancers and your own employees. So I made that transition during this year. That's Yeah, that's that It's a huge thing. I'm not many realizes, like, if it's an employee, they'll actually care. Can you think for freelancers? Like, I'm just getting in? I'm getting out? There you go. Here's the project kind of thing. Exactly. So you mentioned in your stuff to talk about, what's an author funnel? You Yeah, so an auto funnel is something to be considered, especially if you're writing a book that's related to your expertise in your business. So a lot of times authors have a business, which is great, and a book that is great, but there is no connection between the two. So for you to use your book as a way to generate leads, you need to develop an author funnel. And the funnel is basically a four step funnel, it starts with the book right on top. So you can imagine a funnel or an inverted triangle. The book is right on top, a lot of people who read your book, but some people, at least half of the people who read your book, if you've done a good job will want to follow you and see what else do you have to offer. So you can move them to the next level, which is the free value level, where you can continue giving them more value in the form of a podcast in the form of a blog, or videos on YouTube. So that way you continue the conversation with your readers, the next level after the free value level is the paid value level. Now, a smaller portion of the people we're following, you will now want to probably invest in something that you have to sell, which they can implement as a step by step process to get some results. So these people will not they will not mind investing in an online course, or a membership site, something that's not too expensive. It's on the price point is low, but it's a paid product or a service. That's the next level. And finally comes the premium value level, where you offer your one on one coaching, you offer the group coaching program you have or done for you services. So these are for people who immediately want results and who are willing to pay for that one on one time with you. So I think that's a great way to design your author funnel, because you're it's actually not taking making people buy more and more, but it's actually about giving more and more value. And obviously, as a byproduct, you will earn more and more. So if you design it this way, then what happens is an author is not just dependent on the book sales to generate money, because a lot of people think that the only ROI from the book is the number of books you sell. But if you have this clearly defined author funnel, then what would happen is 100, people would buy your book, but maybe 30 of them will start following you online. And out of that maybe five of them will pay for your online course. But one person will convert from there and become your one on one coaching client. And that is a very good way to use the book as the front end for the business that you have in the backend. That's interesting. So it's essentially a sales funnel just redesigned for an author. Exactly. That's Yeah, that's actually a really nice way of explaining because everyone else has explained it to me. It's just kind of like throw a lot of stuff out and hope for the best. And I'm like, what's what's layers like you just gave me why. So then you mentioned income, being just for books, will you What's the seven different incomes an author could have? Alright, the first thing I would say is the book itself. But by the book, I just don't mean the ebook. And author should have different types and different formats available. So anyway, you're putting the effort to write the book, so why not make it available as the ebook, the paperback, the hardcover, if you want, and also the audio book, so that becomes the first source of income for artists have multiple streams of multiple formats of the book. The second thing, the second stream of income could be your online course or the membership site that you have. Because you can take whatever is the book's content, the book is all about what to do. But if you want to teach your readers how to do it, just convert the book into an online course and walk them through the whole process of how to implement it. So it could be the online course or a membership site. The third way to generate money from the book could be physical products related to what you're teaching in the book. Like if you're teaching, let's say something related to fitness, then if you're having some health supplement, you can recommend those products as affiliate products. And over a period of time, you can also create your own products. So both physics of your own products and affiliate products can be another source of generating income. Then comes your events that you can put together. Now, back in the day, the only kind of events used to be physical events, you go to a hotel, attend a seminar, but now a lot of authors are putting together virtual summits, online events, where you collaborate with other people in your industry. Interview a bunch of them and give free access to all your audiences. But if they want lifetime access, you can just charge them $97 or something in that range. Okay, that's the fourth stream. The first would be the higher price points, like what we said in the author funnel, it could be your coaching programs like one on one coaching or group coaching. So this could be priced higher, the sixth could be speaking. So as a, as an author, a lot of people get speaking opportunities. Like for me, it opened up so many opportunities, I got to speak on TEDx stages, because of my book. So people could actually use the book to get into the professional speaking circuit where they actually get paid. And the seventh one, which is what I do now, is done for you services, let's say you have written a book on Instagram marketing, then you people will learn from it, but not everybody will do it. So your final offer could be Don't worry, now that you know the concepts, give it to my agency, we will do the Instagram marketing for your company. So you could do these kind of done for you services for your readers as well. So I think not just restricting yourself to the book, if you're able to, you may not come up with all the seven streams. But even if you can start with two or three, gradually over a period of time, you will see a lot of authors building this entire ecosystem around their book, everything is interrelated. And one thing leads to the other. So a person who buys one service or product will end up buying a lot more over a period of time. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's the the conversion, but it's not like treat him like a number. It's the you're very valued listener or follower. Here's everything like you said, like 5090 bucks a month, like you have unlimited access to my email Can I think, or whatever, it's just it brings such great value to them that money doesn't even matter. Exactly. Um, so then, like, I have to refer to this because you put so much down the different topics how to come up with it when you have multiple idea one. Yeah, this is one question that a lot of authors ask because they get stuck at this point, if you don't have clarity on the topic of your book, you will not be able to progress. And I see authors who end up writing half of their book, and they completely scrap it saying that I did not want to write on this topic, but I ended up writing it for six months. So people should not make such mistakes. So I actually have a kind of matrix, it's called the topic selection matrix. And if you let me to walk you through it, I'll actually tell you the way to generate multiple ideas and then select one out of that. Now, the first step, thanks to the first step is to actually come up with ideas for which you can decide who your target reader is in the first place. And once you're able to define your target reader, ask yourself, what are their challenges? What are their pain points, what are their goals and aspirations. So based on what the reader needs, you can make a list of a lot of different topic ideas. And then pick a few from them, like at least three or four ideas, where you have the expertise to solve that problem. Like if my target reader is a new mom, she may have problems like insomnia, she may have some, you know, weight gain problems, she may have productivity problems, but I have to see where can I really play a role in solving her problem and pick those topic ideas. So that way, you kind of narrow down and limit yourself to three or four ideas. Now within those three or four ideas, you may want to write a book on all and a lot of authors end up writing books simultaneously. But please don't do that, it's important to focus on one, and write and finish one and publish it and then think about the next book. So for that, you need to actually create like a matrix, where on right on top, the first top row, you make the name, you list down the names topic, one topic to topic three, then in the first column, you you put five different parameters. And you want to evaluate these topics on all these five parameters. So the first one is expertise. Now, you may not have the same level of expertise in all these three topics. So based on what you think you are the best at, give yourself a score from one to five. So the best one gets five, something where your top expertise is not that much will get a lower score. So that's the first thing that you need to measure. The second one is the uniqueness. Now it's really important that your book stands out as compared to the other books that are already available. So see if you can make this a little different from the other books. The way to do that is to see if you can use your life experiences and create a kind of a unique system, a step by step process that has worked for you. So whenever you put a formula or a system or a method, it people will look at it as something different. So that's one way of making it unique, or you can really narrow down and make that book for a very small niche. So instead of having a general productivity book, you may want to write a productivity book for a startup. or something like that. So that way becomes a smaller topic. And it can be unique. So rate all these three books based on the uniqueness that you can bring to that book. The third thing that you can talk about is the effort that you need to put. Now there could be some topics where you will have to go and do a lot of research before writing. And that takes a lot more effort. But there will be some topics where you can just go on and on because you know so much about it. And you know, for a fact that you can finish writing that in a month's time. So if when when if the effort is less, you give it a higher score, if the effort is more you give it a lower score, then the fourth point to measure is the profitability. Not every topic is profitable. So go into Amazon and look at other books in that same topic and see the Amazon score the book with a smaller number as the score is selling more, the book with a very big Amazon rank is not selling that much. So you know, which topic has a higher potential to sell, and you can rank your topics based on the profitability, then the fifth one, the last one is alignment. This is really, really important. The book should be in alignment with your life and what you believe in. Otherwise, it's like, not being in integrity, right, a lot of authors choose a topic like what I used to do just to choose a topic based on profitability. But if you're not really practicing it, if you're not living by those principles that you're preaching in your book, then it is not in alignment with you. So it has to be in alignment with what you're doing in your life and in alignment with your future vision. Because once you write a book, for the next five years, and even 10 years, people are going to keep interviewing you on that topic. So it should be fun for you. And you shouldn't feel bored after a while. So keeping all these things in mind, you can give rating for the alignment as well, then just add up the score on all these five parameters. So I'll just repeat them again for the listeners, expertise, uniqueness, effort, profitability and alignment. And finally, the book that gets the topic that gets the highest score should be the topic for your next book. So would mind mapping be also included in that? Because that is the type of Mind Mapping just more columns than branches? Would you? Yeah, for someone trying to, let's say, they're not an expert in idea, let's say business, and but the person is versed enough that like they can hold a conversation with a business person. So would they be? Maybe let's say the person gives himself a five out of five, because I know business, I can talk to CEO. But maybe I need the person perceiving around how would you also introduce the honor system to that to? You're talking about it's mind mapping would help in this process? Yes, but also the expertise, like I'm saying, let's say someone thinks they are an expert, but really they're not kind of thing. Right? This Self Realization happens only over a period of time, because some people know what they know. And they know what they don't know. But a lot of people, as you said, do not really know. So a good way to ask, if you are really an expert in something is not just ask yourself, but also see if other people are coming to you for advice on that topic. If a lot of people ask me about how I, I'm parenting my kids, then maybe I'm really good at it. And I haven't realized that, right. So it's not just enough, if I feel I'm great at it, people around me should also acknowledge it and come to me for advice. If they do. If I have some paying clients for whatever I'm wanting to write, that's a great indication that I'm good at it. Otherwise, I will not have people paying me for that. But if you're just starting out and you don't have paying clients, then at least see if you're, if you want to teach some something for to somebody for free up people getting results out of it. So the results really speak a lot about your expertise. So that way, you know if you're really good at it or not. So it is the the free model, like you were mentioning earlier, where you just you hand it out for free just to see what the odd Yeah, just to see what they think. Yeah, and just to talk about mind mapping, I love mind maps, but I recommend authors to use mind maps during the outlining stage. So once you decide on the topic, and let's say out of the three topics, I've chosen the one where I want to teach productivity for new moms, then I need to take a mind map or a piece of paper and draw the mind map or use a software tool and write down everything I know about that topic without filtering. So that way, it will not be a neat, Chapter wise table of contents. But we are going to arrive at that by creating the outline by creating this mind map first of all the stories and case studies and theories that I want to cover around that topic. So that is the stage where the mind map is really useful. Yeah. So you mentioned paper and software. Which one do you prefer more like the classic paper mind mapping or like an app on your phone kind of thing. So for my book, Use a paper, it's like it has a different connection. I don't know, it really works for me. But nowadays, I use mind maps every other day, if I have trained my team on a topic tomorrow, I would use a mind map. And since most of my trainings are on zoom, it's easier for me to share my screen and actually show them the mind map. So that's why I started using the software called mind node on my Mac. So that's a great mind mapping software. And it's the next best to using pen and paper. That's awesome. Yeah, that was my biggest problem. When I was in general, just trying to get an idea. I didn't know mind mapping. And then randomly one of my teachers just like you should do this, and just gave me the basic outlines like this, it seems like your ideas are everywhere. This can help focus it and it's been one of those, it's been great. It's really, really, it helps you take out all the clutter from your head and put it on paper. It does. So with the second part, now, you said topic, expertise, uniqueness, how would you because you were mentioning your own formula? Let's see. How would that work in general? Because maybe my formula might be like yours, but I have one extra step kind of thing is that? How would I make sure it's unique? Yeah, firstly, I don't think that anything can be completely unique and original, okay. Because whatever we know, today, is an outcome of whatever we've learned from other people. And of course, adding to our own life experiences. But I mean, nobody can claim that whatever you're talking in your book is completely yours, right? It's very, very difficult. So we need to first accept that. But in spite of that, we need to make the content look fresh, for the readers so that they find this book, different and useful. So a lot of people feel that I'm just sharing my life experience. So how can I make it look different. So that's where the story has to be combined with the strategy that you're teaching, have a lot of stories about your life, nothing wrong with that, but try to join those dots in your story and create a step by step process. So basically, most business books or self help books are taking your reader from point A where they are in, in misery, they're struggling, they are unhappy, and you're taking them to point B, which is their ideal life, where something about their life has changed. You know, it could be in any area of their life, but it has changed. So that's, that's where you're ideally taking your clients. And as an author, you've already done that in your life, which gives you the authority to share that in your book. So in that case, there could be a lot of books talking about whatever you want to talk, but your journey must be unique. So if you're able to track those steps backwards, and actually create that kind of a step by step process, it will mean it will be unique. And it's also important that you give a name to your system. And if you can actually visually show it like a pyramid or some like a Venn Venn diagram, or, like, you know, something like a funnel or something of that sort, then people believe that, wow, it is a system. And people love systems because they believe it will work for them. So that's why it's not just important that you share stories. But if you can also visually represent it and call your system and name it because it becomes your unique trademark solution. And if you use that in your book automatically, the book also looks different. That's interesting. So that plays into your instant author authority, right? Okay, so you're asking about the instant authority method, right? Okay, this is something that is very easy, but a lot of people don't do it. So instant authority is all about getting that instant authority. Now, the reason why a lot of people are writing books is so that they can be considered as the authority in their subject. Okay, but people think that I need to wait for six months or a year for my book to get published. Before I can be called an authority, but that's not true. From my experience, what I tell my clients, which I also did for my book is, even before you start writing your book, create the cover design for your book, hire a cover designer, give them the title or the subtitle of your book, and let them create your books design, choose the best concept and try to create that design and announce to the world that you're writing a book by posting that cover everywhere, on your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, to your email list. Just let the world know that you're coming up with a book, tell them about your mission. Why are you writing this book? And by when are they When is it going to be available for them to buy? So this is you announcing your upcoming book months before the actual launch. So what happens is it has a lot of benefits. Firstly, it's a great way to hold you accountable to finish the book. Otherwise, you know when you don't In the world, that you're writing it now, this is not such an urgent project. And people know that it's important, but they know that it's, I mean, nobody is going to kill you if you don't write your book, right. So people take it very lightly. And if other distractions come into their life, the book is not a priority anymore. So to avoid that, if you actually can announce to the world about your upcoming launch, subconsciously, you will be held accountable by all the people who have liked and commented and shared that post. So that's one great advantage. The other real advantage, I would say is, you will, people will instantly start looking up to you as an expert, because then they know that you're an upcoming author. They don't really care if your book is published yet. But just by announcing, instantly, in their mind, you're positioning yourself as an expert, the perception of the world to a zoo changes. And I have seen a lot of my clients, get interview opportunities, speaking opportunities, and even new clients by just that one announcement that they have made about their book. So I think we should make use of this and not, you know, postpone our success to after the book launch by just announcing it. But if you just say that I'm writing a book, people may not believe you. So it's really important that you actually create your books cover, and then make this announcement. So that's the install authority method. That's interesting. It's something I've noticed as I've been podcasting is just just seeing it. Like you consciously, you know, like, okay, I can't mess around anymore. I have to do this kind of thing. Exactly. That's been wonderful. I like to cut it there. Is there anything you'd like to actually know I want to add to going out question. So you've been very busy with writing and all that in your editing. But what have you been doing in your free time during these COVID lockdowns, Netflix, Amazon podcasts, etc. Yeah, that's anywhere become a part of our life. But other than that, one major thing that that I've started doing differently, is decluttering. My home before I never focused on what's happening around me. But during this lockdown as a family, we started looking around at things and giving importance to the physical space we live in. So we, you know, took out a lot of unused stuff, which was just lying around, and all the different rooms, we papac did. And in India, you have a lot of opportunities to give to people who are not as fortunate. So we actually distributed a lot of stuff. And that way, we were able to see a lot of positivity inside our homes. So now it's it's become my Saturday ritual, to declutter both my physical space as well as my digital spaces like my laptop and my phone and all that. So that's been a new habit that has come as a result of COVID. That's, that's such a good habit ally. I think a lot of people have picked it up in general, though. So what is some words for an aspiring author, but also like someone that wants to maybe be you where they were an author, but they also now want to help authors? What are some inspirational insights you would give them? I believe that a book, other than all the amazing things it can do for you, it's also the legacy that you can leave behind, before people would wait till they retire and really grow old to think about their legacy. But today, in the times that we are living in, anything can happen to anybody, right. So if you're able to write a book, then even while you're still around, you can enjoy the benefits. But even after you're gone, people are going to remember you, they're going to read your book and benefit. So look at the book as your way to give back. And if you think about your reader and genuinely have them through your book, it will come back to you in 100 times in so many ways that you can't imagine. So please do not think that you're not yet an expert to write a book. Because I feel that at whatever stage you are, there will be people who are a couple of steps behind you. And the role of your book is only to help them and not necessarily make you the number one expert in your subject before you write your book. So don't wait to become the number one because that number one is like a method can never be achieved. There will always be people who are ahead of us in whatever we do. So just look at your book as a way to help the readers who aspire to reach the place that you are at already. So that doesn't have to wait for another five years or 10 years do it now. Yeah, that's just like Nike Just do it. Yeah. That's wonderful. Is there any websites or social media you want to talk about on the way out? Yes, so I have created something really special for your audience. We have created a boot camp. It's a five day live boot camp, it's going to be it's called author success boot camp. And it's going to be happening inside our Facebook group called Happy authors tribe. So if you want to be a part of that, just head over to our Be self publishing.com forward slash tribe and it will directly take you to our Facebook page. join the group and you will be notified as soon as we announce our next upcoming bootcamp. That's wonderful. Yeah. That just the boot camp, people think it's all money grab. It's it actually helps people live. Exactly. And it's something about being a part of a community. Because you're not alone. There are other people doing it, you want to you get inspired by others. You want to compete and just get things done in a nice spirit when you do it along with others who are also in the same journey. And that's why boot camps are really powerful in helping you get started. Absolutely. Thank you for coming on. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much, Josh. This was really fun. It was a blast. I appreciate you have a good one. Stay safe and stay well. Thank you.