Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
The Power of Community for Writers with Hussein Al-Baiaty
In this episode, I sit down with the marketing strategist and author of The Art of Resilience: The Refugee State of Mind—Hussein Al-Baiaty, to explore the power of writing communities and the evolving world of indie publishing.
We discuss how building connections, honing communication, and embracing community can shape an author’s journey—whether you're considering traditional publishing, self-publishing, or growing your presence as a writer.
What We Cover in This Episode:
- The impact of writing communities and why they matter
- The shift from traditional publishing to self-publishing and what it means for authors today
- Understanding your deeper purpose as a writer beyond just publishing a book
- How platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube can help authors build visibility
- The role of community engagement in opening doors and creating opportunities
- Effective marketing strategies for indie authors looking to stand out
If you found this episode valuable, please take a moment to leave a review, subscribe, and share it with fellow book lovers and aspiring authors. Your support helps more writers discover these conversations.
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For me personally, I love independent publishing just because you know you have a lot more freedom, you have a lot more creative control, you have a lot more opportunity, all these things. But that's just me. Some people go no way. Traditional publishing is the only way, and that's fine too. There's no right or wrong.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. Today I have with me Hussain Al-Bayati, who is the author of the Art of Resilience, the Refugee State of Mind. Hossain is also the founder of the writing community Rising Authors, and he's a marketing expert for authors. So, hossain, nice to meet you and nice to see you again, because we've been connecting online for a while and I'm a big fan of your work and I'm so happy that you accepted my invitation to come to the podcast and I'm really looking forward to learning from you today. So welcome to the podcast, hussain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for having me, Natasha. It's been a pleasure just getting to know you in the past few months and being able to work together and learn from each other. It's a privilege of mine to come on your show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, appreciate it All right. So, hussein, I think the first thing I want to ask you about is your writing community, which is the Rising Authors, which I'm a member of, and if you can tell the viewers or the listeners about building community and the importance of building community. So, just if you can tell me about your community and why do we need to be part of a community or why do we need to build our own community?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know I'm a believer personally. I just I love people. I think no matter what business you're in, no matter what, whatever it is you're doing, it's a people game. So a lot of people think, oh, you're in the publishing industry. I say no, you're in the people industry. If you are in the selling car industry, you're in the people community.
Speaker 1:Like everything is really comes down to people and how we interact with one another, and hasn't changed for since the beginning of time. Whether you call it tribes and hasn't changed since the beginning of time, whether you call it tribes, community neighborhoods, yelp, facebook, myspace, linkedin, whatever you call it, it's really about gathering people with familiar state of minds. And so I used to think about building community. But I think now it's more like really it. It's like how can you lead a community? How can you? I mean because the community exists right, like it's not like I'm building writers. There's already writers, there's already authors and there's already experts and there's already designers and there's already this industry of publishing already exists. So then I say, like what can I contribute to this already existing community? And then I would invite them to this space If I were to think about my rising author community as a party. It's an invite to this party that you can meet and mingle and figure out new ways to dance and all these kinds of things right. So I look at it as like, what can I offer people that are like-minded in this space and that would make me different, and then I would have the ability to be able to connect people right? So a lot of people think you need to lead the community.
Speaker 1:I said no, be a connector in your community, and so what that means for me, you know I learned a lot of these things from my father and the way we grew up, you know, as Muslim Arabs in America. Whatever you know, it could be just Arabs, not necessarily Muslims, right, but we're very community oriented in general, like we love our gatherings, we love our, you know, eids and the Ramadan, you know all of these things and I just I love that about my culture and I I feel like that was kind of missing when I grew up in America. Was that like anything was? It was always sport related or bar related or something like that, and I just, you know, for me personally, when I started Rising Authors, it was actually after I got laid off and I knew there was just this missing element of it felt like there was competition between a bunch of different, you know, people in the industry, and then all these people who needed help, who didn't care about the competition. So I figured, look, if you don't care about the competition and want to collaborate, and then make room for each other to work together because there's something I'm good at that someone else is not good at, and then vice versa, because there's something I'm good at that someone else is not good at, and then vice versa. So I said, you know what? Let's put everyone together. So this community has authors, business authors and nonfiction authors and some fiction authors as well, and then experts who can help those authors, so designers, whatever you know. So it's kind of like a, if you will, a miniature version of Upwork, but just for authors, right, it's more specified, and so people can go on there, and I'm sure you've seen this too.
Speaker 1:On the community, we can share about our books. We can share things that do work and don't work. We can share that we need help with something specific, and when we share those things, then other people in that community don't like oh, I know exactly what you're struggling with. Here's how I did it right, or here's how I can help you, and this is how much I charge.
Speaker 1:And everybody in that community is obviously taking their craft very serious, right? They're obviously experts in their own field, and so it's not like you have to go around the internet to go look for someone that has you know that is validated. You come to this community and you get the support and build the trust, and then you can ask that person for help. You can ask that person for work or whatever it may be. So that's really what I wanted to build a community for, and, of course, I get the benefit out of it, right? I get the benefit of being able to connect people, which is what I love. I love being a connector, facilitator, and then, if work comes my way for marketing or anything like that, fantastic. But I build trust first and I give first and then I try to reap the benefits later.
Speaker 2:You know, whatever they are, so what are the themes that they mostly discuss in your community?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we discuss all kinds of things. You know everything from editing a book to marketing a book or marketing an author, or you know how to structure your book layouts, all these kinds of things. We've invited guests that have talked about a variety of different things. There's guests who help ghostwriters and editors. There's guests who help authors with specific things. So it really ranges, which is kind of cool because there's not one space that I felt that I found on the internet.
Speaker 1:There are communities on LinkedIn, but it's predominantly just writing and it's just people promoting their service or product, but here is really more like collaborative and informative and creating resources. So there's a whole resource area where, oh, you know, I use this email template. You guys should use it too, I use. You know what I'm saying. So it's like sometimes it's about you know, talking about LinkedIn and how to optimize your, your LinkedIn profile. Sometimes it's about how to post on LinkedIn and how you know, for authors who don't have they don't have time to go, look for this kind of stuff everywhere. They want to come to one place and learn from experts.
Speaker 1:And you know again, whether we invite experts, whether we have podcast episodes, whether we have whatever. You know, this is something that I want to really start encouraging authors and experts like yourself, like there's a lot of people who have a podcast show and I'm like post it to the community. Let us all learn from this opportunity, right, it's for everyone, it's not just for me, it's not just for me, it's not just for experts, it's not just for authors. But if we can kind of pool our resources, we can all learn from each other and you will stand out as an expert. So when something does come up, I can contact you. I can easily contact you, connect with you and reach out to you. That's my whole. Thing is like people will go where the money is and I always tell people like you know, if you are, you know, sharing your expertise, there's trust, and trust can lead to an opportunity where you can earn so much.
Speaker 2:So how many members do you have in this community?
Speaker 1:We have roughly like 250.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's, I mean, that's a lot. And how did you get these members? It's really not easy to you know, make people commit to an online community, especially when there's a lot of other distractions. How you know, how did you convince them? I guess?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll be honest with you. There's about half of them are authors of. The other half are experts, the other the other thing is how do you convince them? I didn't need to convince them, right? So I had said like when I, when the whole situation with my old job dissolved, I was already sort of known doing a lot of podcasts with a lot of different authors in the expert community. Now a lot of them lost their jobs and I said you know what, let's come together. I just sent an invite and I said, if you know someone that wants to join this community who needs help and support, send them the invite. And it was free, and it still is, and and really I just I started a Patreon. I said, hey, if you're in the community and you want to support the podcast, you want to support the community, you can sign up to the Patreon, but you don't have to.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's kind of what made it attractive was that like I wasn't after people's money, I was more really just like here's a place to connect and if there's money exchange, great. But I don't. You know, it's not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is to get the information you need to publish your book or edit your book or whatever. It is Right. So why is it? Why was it so attractive? It was attractive because at the time and still today, really there isn't anything like it.
Speaker 1:Right Is that most organizations, companies, most in the hybrid publishing companies, things like that they kind of put a barrier between the author and their work and their expertise so that, like, they can charge whatever they can say. Right, there's all these reasons, right, but for me I remove the veil and to some people that's very attractive because that creates transparency. Right, I can choose who I want to work with. I can choose the designer, the publisher, whatever it is, and choose it for me. And so for some people that's attractive and for some people it's not, and that's fine. And there's still people that need some handholding and there's still people that want to do everything on their own. So it's just another option if you will. And so you know how is it attractive? I think it's attractive because it gets passed on, if people find value in it, which people have. But, like the idea of it is, if this is valuable enough for you and it's basically costing you nothing, and if you want to support, great then, and I'm getting enough value that I think it's valuable enough to share with a friend. That's how it spreads.
Speaker 1:So when we first built the community, like overnight, over a hundred people joined and then since then, which has been about a year this is very difficult for about a year We've been we built the next 150. And I think in the next year, two years, three years, it's probably going to grow to, let's say, it'll just compound. You know, that's the hope, right, because more people will come back and write more books and want to be introduced to more people and so on. So you know, I think it's also longevity. I don't I'm not going anywhere, I'm building this community. I'm offering something of value to a community. I don't want to say I'm building a community and if it's valuable enough, people will show up and I'm not going to stress about it.
Speaker 2:Valuable enough people will show up, and I'm not going to stress about it, you know. So, in addition to the forums where people can discuss issues, I also saw that you provide weekly calls correct With experts. If you could also give us an idea of how do you find these experts? How do you organize this?
Speaker 1:organize this yeah, they're all in the community, right? Um, they're already there, it's. I don't have to go go too far outside of what's already in my realm. I find me somebody interesting if I say, hey, man, I think you would make an awesome, you know, interview for my podcast, or I think you would make a great if. Do you have a class? Do you have a deck? Do you have a thing you want to teach? Come to the weekly call and honestly, in the last few months there hasn't been too many of that.
Speaker 1:But, like I've been doing what I call Q and A calls, or master, micro masterclasses, right, and they're all recorded. A lot of people can't show up, but a lot of people watch the watch the recordings right as support. So they just like to have a community where they can share. We all sometimes don't want to help all the time, but we want it when it's the right time for us and I go to I don't know about you I always like to call my friend or something and say, hey, who's a plumber you have, I'm struggling with something, or who's an electrician you have, because we want to base it on trust and if they did something good for someone else, they might do something good for us based on that person. So that's how I view the community. It's like, hey, I need help publishing and getting my stuff on Amazon. I say, well, there's four people. They say who do you recommend? Well, I recommend this person and this person, but go see who's busy, go see who's not busy and maybe they can help you out.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so you're also a marketing expert for authors. What does that mean? How do you help authors and what kind of services do you provide for them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what I do is very simple. I tell people marketing is not social media, marketing is not your website, marketing is not advertising. It's none of those things. Actually, all marketing is is clear communication.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And consistently putting it out into the world. So putting it out into the world can come in various different ways. Right, okay, and consistently putting it out into the world. So putting it out into the world can come in various different ways right Okay.
Speaker 1:But if you're not clear about what you want and who it's for, you don't have a marketing plan period and most authors want to do one thing I want to share my book with the world. That's not clear. That's not true. Old that's not clear. That's not true. What they're actually saying is I want to sell as many books as I can so that I can earn passive income in my sleep.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Right, that's what they're actually saying. So to me, I think it's all bogus with this idea of, like, I want to help as many people as I can. That's great. I know you want to help people, right, but you can help people in a variety of different ways. Getting people to read a book and expecting them to change is a high standard, right, and it's a high expectation. In fact, it's a lot of pressure on a book.
Speaker 1:However, most books that you and I have read have been given to us or have been suggested to us, or we took it out of a book that we're currently reading. Yeah, and it's based on reputation and based on you know. That's why, like all these number one bestsellers, all the games, all the games are rigged, right, so all the number one bestseller lists, all the different things, they're all technically rigged. So what that means is you can buy them, okay. So if that's the case, it doesn't matter if it's a good book or bad. It's only good. If I'm reading a book because somebody else told me it's good, that means I trust their word, yeah, so then it becomes about who's trustworthy word am I trusting? So I take a step back and I say, well, what are you actually trying to get out of your book? Like, really, be honest, I'm very brutal, like brutally honest, because I don't want to work with someone that says I want to sell a million books and I'm like it's not going to happen. I'm sorry If you, especially if you don't have a huge following, it's just not going to happen, right, unless you have, you know, a million dollars to put into the marketing, which is like getting it in front of people. Right and clearly, community, like that's why people want big publishing deals, which don't really happen anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that's what the publishing industry used to have. They used to be the gatekeepers, right, and then they will tell you what book to read and then disseminate that right. So, like, really, only 20%, maybe 15%, of America reads on a regular basis. Yeah, so all of us authors, everybody is like betting on this 20% to read our book, right, yeah, what we should actually be, um, what we should actually be doing, is trying to get the 80% to read, um, so that's, you know, I feel like that's kind of a problem we have. Right Is right, it's figuring out exactly what an author wants to do, and in my case, it's like, if you want consulting, coaching, speaking opportunities, then we have to figure out ways to market you and clearly articulate that through these different things, such as a website, such as LinkedIn profile, whatever it is. But if you don't have that first thing locked, which is alignment with what you want, then we can't go forward.
Speaker 2:So you're saying that authors are not being honest on what they want from their books. They think they're not being honest, that their main goal is passive income and they're not saying it because they're afraid of judgment.
Speaker 1:Yes, 100% Right. Why? Because I was, I'm an author. What do I want? I want to sell more books, of course, right.
Speaker 1:But when I got real with myself, I said you know, if this book can bring me more speaking opportunities, right Cause my speaking is between seven to $10,000 for an opportunity seven to $10,000 for an opportunity Okay, then I'll bring you free books. Then it became about my book is a gift. I'm going to share it with who wants to read it, who I think can read it and who I think can bring me an opportunity. So I started thinking about my book to market me, not me marketing my book, right, and that's that twist. That's the twist.
Speaker 1:And because I got clear about what I want and I got real about what I want, then I said, okay, the best way to spread that, because at a speaking event there's 150, 200 people, yeah, I'll give you my $5 book. Those 200 people, only 20% of them are actually going to read the book. I know that, right. And then they're going to spread it. I can't tell you how many people reach out to me email, whatever and they say, oh my God, random people. Oh my God, I just read your book, I got it from so-and-so. It's helped me so much through this thing or whatever, right, and that's great. And it was given to them for free, that's fine. The ultimately, what I want is five speaking engagements a year, right, like I'm very clear about what I want from it and to help me with my credibility to work with authors.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, because I know how to get the speaking engagements. I've rejected speaking engagements, so if I'm able to do that, then I can teach someone else, right.
Speaker 2:So, since you're like a book expert and a book marketing expert expert and you've been in the publishing field or the book marketing field for a while, what are the trends now when it comes to book publishing versus because you mentioned the big publishers versus the small publishers, versus the self-publishing? Where are we headed when it comes to publishing and selling books?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the number one thing I would say is, if you have an audience as you grow an audience, and an audience is built around something they want, so like, for example, there's a lot of people interested in many different topics, in many different genres. Right, look at Orion Holiday, for example. He just chose stoicism and he writes and preaches and all he talks about is stoicism. Right. The same thing can do about Islam, buddhism, whatever. You can literally do the same thing about any kind of genre. Right, the same thing can do about Islam, buddhism, whatever. You can literally do the same thing about any kind of genre. Right. But if you do enough content, right, which content? You're putting out this content about this topic, and it just so happens to be that you write about this, that you have a sub stack about it, that your LinkedIn profile is all about it and it's really what people are interested in, and you will garner an audience as you grow an audience.
Speaker 1:The publishing industry the old traditional will take notice. So if I have millions of people following me on YouTube, I promise you the traditional publishers will come to me and say, hey, do you want to publish a book with us or a series of books with us. We'll give you this kind of money, we'll do this for you, we'll do that for you and you'll write a book Great. What they're betting on actually is not me. They're betting on my audience. That will pay for it. Right, so they have already pre-existent buyers. So traditional publishing is really all about book sales. Like, even the spine of a book used to be bigger. Right, the spine of a book used to be bigger and books used to be filled with fluff. This is because it was how it looks on a shelf and does it stand out on a shelf, right? So, like that was part of marketing. Today, the face of the book matters more. Right, because where do we see books Online?
Speaker 2:Online.
Speaker 1:yeah, we see them from people is where do we see books Online? Online, yeah, we see them from people. It's very, I would say, granular, community-based, niche-based, right, and the best books do really well, based on if the book is good, if it's really good, it will get passed on. But then it's backed up by content, supportive content and everything like that. It's one piece of media. It's not all of media, right.
Speaker 1:Today, video is king. It used to be that books are king, because that's how we digested information. Today, we don't digest information just through books. We digest it through TikTok, instagram, youtube, linkedin. Right, we get bite-sized content. That will lead me to the bigger piece of content, which is your book, your website, your blog, your sub stack. Right, so I tell people all the time, before you do any of that what do you want? That's the key, right? So now it's like okay, I want to sell a million books. That's fantastic, that's a good goal, that's not like bad or anything, right, great, you're going to have to build a huge community. You're going to have to gather these people and get them interested in this topic, and so people like James Clear, whatever, they do it through newsletters, they do it through blogs, they do it through different YouTube videos. Like, ali Abdaal built a whole YouTube channel right, and then he was offered a big deal to write a book right. Why? Because they knew people were going to buy it, right.
Speaker 2:I bought it Exactly. I bought it.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But what did it tell you? Oh, it says every like all these. They're not necessarily writers, right? They're like they are communicating an idea. It's just so that writing is the way to get it there. So he was communicating an idea through video, gained enough popularity. Now he's communicating the same idea through a book, and then he does the same idea through his courses. It's the same thing, it's the same formula, but it just kind of depends on where you start. James Clear did it through a blog, the other I forget his name now. Anyways, you see, what I'm trying to say Is that, like, it's basically the same formula. It's just where you want to start in the formula, but you're going to have to fill out the rest of the formula before you get that big deal traditionally. Or you can go and write a book, publish a book, like I did, without any community, and then sort of build a community from there, around this idea of resilience, around this idea of how to take something from nothing and build it into something.
Speaker 2:Okay, so where do you stand in terms of self-publishing versus traditional publishing?
Speaker 1:You know, I think I personally I don't think either of them matter. I think if you can get a traditional publishing deal and it works for you, great. But you're probably not. Like you know, it's great and it works for you, that's awesome. If you want to do hybrid publishing or just independent publishing and that's what works for you, great. But it just comes back to your goals, like what do you want to do? You know ultimately what it is that you're going to take to build XYZ community that can sustain what you want ultimately.
Speaker 1:And so you know, some people just want to write a book and get their story out and they don't care if 10 people read it, right? Some people do it for ego, some people do it for money, some people do it for opportunities. Everybody has different values and different things that they want to do, and they're all fine. You know, for me personally, I love independent publishing just because you know you have a lot more freedom, you have a lot more creative control, you have a lot more opportunity, all these things. But that's just me. Some people go no way. Traditional publishing is the only way, and that's fine too. There's no right or wrong, there's really. It's all about what you want For me. I wanted to own my story. I don't want to give any of the piece of the pie. You can call me selfish, you can call me whatever, but in 10 years, if I do a good job of promoting myself and marketing myself and becoming an expert and all these things, that book will sell more and people will come back to it.
Speaker 1:Because look at the alchemist, look at all your favorite books were written 10, 15, 20, if not 500 years ago. Right, and those books are still doing really well. Why? Why? Because classic things are actually built on the backs of authors. Right, we read Ryan Holiday, because we see Ryan Holiday everywhere and I want a piece of his knowledge and I want to associate with his knowledge. Therefore, I read his books and consume his content, but content, that's all it is. A book is a piece of content. Your videos are a piece of content, all that.
Speaker 1:So, where I stand is, honestly, it doesn't matter where I stand. I stand on what makes sense for you and for me, it makes sense to do something independently, uh, and build it around what I want. However, you know, if, if a, uh, if a publisher came to me with a great deal in the future. It's not like I would refuse that. I would never say never, right. So that's the thing. It's like I'm open to both, but I'm also very reliant on myself and know that I'm an author marketer, not a book marketer.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So now we talked about the community, we talked about the marketing. There is one platform that authors have to be on, and they only have the capacity to be on one platform. Where do you think they should be?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question If there was one platform. I mean, again, it depends on what kind of author are you. For me, specifically, I work with business authors. Business authors means you know they're building a personal brand around coaching, consulting, speaking, some sort of business that they have, and a book can help them attract those opportunities. The number one place I would start is LinkedIn. The second place is YouTube, if anything. If you like more video than writing, then I would switch them, put them on YouTube and then put them on LinkedIn, and the reason for that is simple you just reach more people. You reach more B2B business to business people.
Speaker 1:I would absolutely delete and get rid of Facebook, instagram, everything off of my phone, because none of those things unless you're actually building a legit brand on them great, but you're not going to get $100,000 consulting opportunity from Instagram. I mean, maybe you could there's a few people that have and have done that but that's if you have a huge. You have to have an enormous following for that to be trustworthy Because, like I said, every game is rigged. Everybody could buy subscribers, followers, whatever. But where you can shine and be different on LinkedIn is that this is a place not very many people go to because it's still a very professional network. Right, it's still very like the BS will not fly there. Right, you will get unfollowed, you get whatever, especially if it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:So yeah sharing your expertise, because a lot of these people are experts with people and attracting people and connecting with people and engaging with people on LinkedIn is very powerful. And then YouTube is video kingdom, right. It's like if you can do videos, you can do podcasts, you can do shows, you can do that kind of stuff, then it will resonate with somebody. So those are the two areas that I would put people in. But yeah, I would say, because it's worked for me, that's what I would share. Is that LinkedIn? So I'm not going to BS you, I'm on LinkedIn every day. I get business from LinkedIn every day, so I teach that and yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 2:I found you on LinkedIn there you go?
Speaker 1:You found me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Our connection, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, this has been great Hussein. So how can people connect with you? Where can they find you? How can they reach you? How can they buy your book, which is about resilience? We didn't have enough time to discuss it, but how can they reach you?
Speaker 1:LinkedIn Okay Hussein Al reach you LinkedIn. Okay Hussein Al-Bayati on LinkedIn. They can reach me there. Or they can reach me through my website, which is rising-authorscom. You can reach out to me if you need like an assessment for your online presence. I'm happy to do one, anything like that. Or if you just have questions or whatever, you can reach out to me via email.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to do one Anything like that, or if you just have questions or whatever, you can reach out to me via email. I'm happy to connect. Sounds great. Thank you very much for joining me today. As always, I always learn a lot from you and this was very inspiring and an interview filled with very useful information. So thank you again and, for anyone who's listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha, and until we meet again.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Natasha.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.
