H.J. Chammas – How to Use a Book to Build Authority, Get Clients & Grow Your Coaching Business

H.J. Chammas is the founder of Authority Publishing, a full-service publishing, promotion, and monetization platform for coaches, consultants, and experts who want to use a book to build their authority and grow their business. After leaving a successful corporate career and becoming financially independent through real estate, H.J. invested $65,000 in a traditional publishing deal that flopped — and used that painful experience to reverse-engineer what actually works. He has since helped authors across the Middle East and beyond turn their books into platforms, leads, and high-ticket client pipelines.

In this episode:

• H.J.'s $65,000 publishing mistake — and the mindset shift that turned everything around

• Why chasing royalties is the wrong goal, and what to chase instead

• How to research your audience, competitors, and keywords before writing a single word

• The tools H.J. uses for Amazon research: SEMrush, KDP Rocket, and Helium 10

• What separates an authority book from a generic collection of ideas

• Three approaches to writing your book: ready manuscript, interview-based transcription, or ghost writing

• Why AI-written books are getting flagged on Amazon — and what to use AI for instead

• The right way to launch a book: why big spike launches are vanity publishing in disguise

• How Amazon ads work as a long-term strategy, not a short-term sales tool

• Why social media rarely works for nonfiction authors — and what LinkedIn outreach actually delivers

• The publish, promote, monetize framework: how Authority Publishing works with authors from manuscript to ongoing client acquisition

• What to bring to your first conversation with H.J. — and why clarity on your niche comes before everything else

Resources mentioned:

• Authority Publishing: https://authority-publishing.com/

• SEMrush (keyword research): semrush.com

• KDP Rocket / Publisher Rocket: publisherrocket.com

• Helium 10 (Amazon research): helium10.com

• LinkedIn (recommended platform for nonfiction authors): linkedin.com

Connect with H.J. Chammas:

• Website: authority-publishing.com

• LinkedIn: H.J. Chammas

• Free book: 

Connect with Teddy Smith:
@teddyagsmith
Website: https://publishingperformance.com/?ref=ywm3mtc
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/publishingperformance/
Pinterest - https://nz.pinterest.com/publishingperformance/
Instagram - https://instagram.com/publishingperformanceinsta
Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHV6ltaUB4SULkU6JEMhFSw
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Welcome to The Publishing Performance Show, the podcast that helps self-published authors turn their passion into a profit. Now, I'm your host, Teddy Smith, and if you're serious about building a sustainable business, then you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with successful authors, industry experts, and publishing professionals who share their exact strategies they use right now to how they've grown their business, grow their readership, increase their book sales, and essentially, to make a bit more money.

[00:00:29] Teddy Smith: Now, whether you're just starting out or you're looking to scale your existing publishing business, you'll walk away from every episode with actionable insights you can implement immediately. Now, if you're new here, it would really, really help me out if you could subscribe either on Apple or Spotify or YouTube or wherever you are.

[00:00:44] Teddy Smith: Just simply hit the subscribe button. It really helps the show to get more reach, which means we can get better guests for you, and we can help you out in, in more ways. All right. Let's dive into this episode

[00:00:54] Teddy Smith: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm delighted to be joined by H.J.

[00:00:58] Teddy Smith: Shammas, who is the founder of Authority Publishing. So thanks for joining us, H- H.J. 

[00:01:02] H.J Chammas: Hey, good morning, Teddy. Thanks for having me on the show. Really looking forward for our conversation. Let's have fun with that. 

[00:01:08] Teddy Smith: Yeah, no problem. Well, why don't you tell us a bit about your story and how did you go to starting Authority Publishing in the first place?

[00:01:15] H.J Chammas: Yeah. So basically, like, I was one of those immigrants who left his country about more than 20 years ago and joined the corporate world, climbed the corporate ladder. I've been moving here and there between, uh, Dubai, Saudi and East Asia for, for mo- the most part of my life. And in 2017, I managed to leave my job, quit my job because I became financially dependent through real estate.

[00:01:38] H.J Chammas: And at that time, I thought I was the next Robert Kiyosaki or so. So I was, I was that naive, yeah, but I w- I had dreams, let's say. Let's put it in that way. So having that naivety with that big dream, what happened here, I approached... I wanted to share my message with the world. So I, I wrote a book and I wanted to publish that.

[00:02:01] H.J Chammas: So, uh, I approached many publishing companies and I wanted to go with the big ones. I wanted the penguin on my, on my book in a way, and they told me, "You're a new author, you don't have millions of followers, blah, blah, blah, so you need to invest in your book." And invest I did. I invested $65,000 over a period of six to 12 months, and after that it was a big failure.

[00:02:23] H.J Chammas: It was a flop. So I felt really I was conned. I felt like I made the most stupid mistake in my life, and I couldn't digest on that. Even though at that time I could afford that, but still it, it felt bad in a way. So what I've done here, I studied the whole publishing industry, but one thing became an aha moment for me is that when I first started, I was chasing royalties, I was chasing selling more books.

[00:02:50] H.J Chammas: Yeah. When I understood how it all works, I understood that the book became the mean and I, I should chase more as building my authority, my personal brand, and the book beca- becomes a, a great vehicle for that. So im- imagine I republish the same book that failed on my own as a self-published author. It became a success.

[00:03:10] H.J Chammas: It got media attention. Imagine I was invited to the me- to, to appear on TV, even the States, flying from Dubai to the States, a guy who's no- no- nobody knows him in the States. So imagine that. So, uh, I thought that it was luck, and of course, that grew my business, my coaching business and stuff. I thought it was luck.

[00:03:28] H.J Chammas: So I wanted to see if that was a model or it was simply like, well, I was lucky at one time, that, uh, one time off. So I republished c- couple of other books. Every book I published became a suc- success, and actually the last two even became much more successful than the first and the second one. So I knew that I was perfecting the process after each book I published.

[00:03:50] H.J Chammas: But still, I wasn't really into authority publishing until 2022. A lady approached me on LinkedIn. She told me, "HJ, I love what you're doing. Can you help me?" And of course, I helped her without anything in return. I just wanted to help people because I know what if you fail and you get conned, I know how it feels.

[00:04:09] H.J Chammas: I didn't want anyone to feel like that and go to the, to the rabbit hole in a way. I helped her. She started to become a TEDx speaker, appear on stages, become a, a trainer in, in corporate, uh, in, in the, in the Middle East, let's say, between Dubai and Saudi and Qatar. So-- And the way she paid me, she told me, "HJ," a lot of authors out there like her, like me They need help of a person like you.

[00:04:37] H.J Chammas: And this is how I started Authority Publishing, with a mission to really help every author out there, and we do it really as a mission. We don't charge anything. We do a lot of strategic calls. We, we help them free stuff, articles, free books, free workbooks, you name it. Free courses sometimes, and webinars and stuff.

[00:04:54] H.J Chammas: We only charge them if they tell us, "Hey, I don't have time for that. I cannot do it on my own. Can you help me?" So when we start doing the job for them, this is when it becomes a business. Otherwise, it's a mission, and I'm so passionate about it. 

[00:05:07] Teddy Smith: With your, with your first book, I think you kind of struggled a bit with the sales, but then the books you've released since then have actually done much better.

[00:05:15] Teddy Smith: What were the lessons you learned from the first book that you've moved on to the second ones to may help them grow? 

[00:05:20] H.J Chammas: Yes. In the first book, I wrote what I knew about best. I disregarded what the audience wanted. In my next books, I realized that no, need to research my audience, my target reader, and be- and eventually my target clients if I wanna co- become a coach or a consultant or expert.

[00:05:39] H.J Chammas: Understand their pain points. So what wakes them up at 2:00 AM in the morning? If you could answer that question, and now you start offering solutions, real solutions from your experience, from what you know about best, to real problems from your research. But on top of the end user or the reader research, I started to research my competitors.

[00:06:00] H.J Chammas: So I don't want to become another me book who's, who's just, uh, vomiting the same stuff and nothing new on the table. So when you map out your competitors, you figure out what they're offering. Maybe you wanna, you wanna, you wanna cover some of the topics of course. You don't want to appear like rocking the boat, uh, like 180 degrees, you know, of, of, of, uh, of guard here, no.

[00:06:22] H.J Chammas: But you wanna add your bit on the table, your own experience, that's something you own, and this is how you set up a book for success even before you publish it, because you understood the market, you understood the audience, you understood your competitors, and you, you have a launch plan. 

[00:06:38] Teddy Smith: So when it comes to that part about understanding your audience and, like, the positioning of your book, how do you approach trying to find that exact positioning that your audience wants?

[00:06:48] H.J Chammas: So basically now with the, with the, uh, with a lot of tools available at, at our disposition, y- there is a lot of Google tools and, um, Amazon tools. So basically, you know, Amazon is a search engine like Google, actually. So they have a search bar, and people search for something they wanna purchase on Amazon.

[00:07:05] H.J Chammas: So there are some tools out there that could help you when you identify your niche, your category, or even your competitors, you could kind of reverse engineer them. So what made their audience purchase their books? Those audience typed in some keywords, and those keywords technically are basically pain points or solutions or n-normal phrases that human beings use.

[00:07:27] H.J Chammas: So let's make, let's make it technical here. If you could really analyze those, and with the help of those tools, they help you understand that this kind of search phrase, let's call it Has been searched on Amazon for 6,000 times a, a month, whereas other one could be less than 100 times. So of course, you wanna...

[00:07:46] H.J Chammas: You understand that if it has that kind of search volume, it's a really important pain point, and this is when you take note and you start to say, "This is what I wanna talk about." So you keep on doing the same for every competitor, for every category that you, you believe you wanna be in. With all those tools, it's become so easy.

[00:08:05] H.J Chammas: It takes some time, yeah, but you're, you're not guessing anymore. You have data, and you, you drive your decisions through data and not through opinions. 

[00:08:14] Teddy Smith: Wh- which tools do you use to try and dig into that data? 

[00:08:17] H.J Chammas: So we use SEMrush for Google. We use KDP Rocket for, uh, for, uh, Amazon. We use Helium 10 also for Amazon.

[00:08:24] H.J Chammas: We have a couple of tools because there's no tool that can give you everything, actually. Mm. So we use th- those three tools predominantly to really understand the target audience. Then for the competitors, what we do is actually we download their books. We don't need to read it all. We could download a sample, as a Kindle sample for free.

[00:08:43] H.J Chammas: So imagine you're downloading all your competitor's book. You start mapping on a spreadsheet all their content. And with the help of those tools that I spoke about, you check the content, you check the keywords they used, the topics they're covering, and you start doing your own research. So you develop your own list of keywords or topics you wanna cover, and you do the mapping.

[00:09:03] H.J Chammas: So it, it's a, it's a bit of an art and a science in a way, but all those tools help you make informed decisions out of data. 

[00:09:11] Teddy Smith: Yeah. I really like Helium 10. I, I find, um, a lot of authors try to use the tools like Publisher Rocket that are, that are great but just quite limited. And then Helium 10, although it's more expensive, it does give you quite a lot of data on books you wouldn't see otherwise.

[00:09:24] Teddy Smith: I think it's really good. Um- 

[00:09:25] H.J Chammas: Exactly. And your Helium 10, like, say, let's say, and maybe some other tools, they become expensive if you're a single author for a single book. Yeah. But if you're having many authors and you purchase, or you have many books actually as an author, it could make financial sense.

[00:09:37] H.J Chammas: Okay, I could purchase those tools because they are subscription model. Sometimes you... Some of them, you purchase them once, some of them are a subscription model, and you need to, to do, to do the math in a way. 

[00:09:47] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. Now, when you... Well, 'cause your, obviously, your business is called Authority Publishing, like, what...

[00:09:52] Teddy Smith: You, you talked about the tools about, you know, looking at your competitors and bringing all those ideas together. Mm-hmm. What is it that makes your book into an authority book rather than just a collection of ideas? 

[00:10:01] H.J Chammas: So basically, if we go back to square zero, the moment we understand the audience, the moment we, we offer them solutions to problems, the moment we actually show the process in what we've written about...

[00:10:13] H.J Chammas: Remember, that's a nonfiction book, it's a business book, or it, it's about a certain topic. If you demonstrate that you understand them, you're offering a process, you're offering case studies even inside of the book, like real clients, maybe you could change their name because of the copyrights, intellectual property, but you show real, real stuff there.

[00:10:31] H.J Chammas: Then what happens here, the book alone is not sufficient to place you as an authority. You need to be showing up. So a book is one medium. Another medium is podcast, like we're doing now. So imagine yourself appearing on, uh, five, six podcast a month, and you do that over a year. That, that becomes like 60, 70 podcasts or 80 podcasts.

[00:10:51] H.J Chammas: So they add up. So you have... So when somebody searches your name, you have kind of omnipresence. Oh, I found the guy on Google. I found him on, on, on, on, on podcast, and not only one podcast here and there. Also the guy is, is, uh, uh, is, has, has a blog or a newsletter. So imagine you're always adding content on LinkedIn, uh, uh, you, 'cause LinkedIn allows you to have newsletter.

[00:11:13] H.J Chammas: So you demonstrate that you have deep thoughts about a certain topic, about a certain niche. You're not like everything to anyone. No. For a specific topic you went that deep, you demonstrated authority. Maybe you do webinars, and those webinars are recorded on YouTube, and these people start to, when they search your name, they start to see them.

[00:11:32] H.J Chammas: So you, you do all of those stuff, but at the end of the day, it's the same message dispensed in a, in different formats, be it a podcast, a book, a article or, or a webinar. 

[00:11:43] Teddy Smith: When, when it, when it, when it comes to actually writing the book itself, like I think a lot of people have the knowledge, but they're not that comfortable doing the writing.

[00:11:50] Teddy Smith: Do you usually get people to ghostwrite it, or do you use other d- other tools, or how do you approach that when you're working with 

[00:11:56] H.J Chammas: clients? Yeah. Actually, we, we have three... I, we, we, we, we have, we have three levels for that A lot of authors, because you know when you're a business consultant or you're a, you're an expert on certain idea, you tend to s- you tend to write well a-as a business language, and, and you need to be that conversational.

[00:12:12] H.J Chammas: Nobody now write like Shakes-Shakespeare. So we call that a ready manuscript. But a lot of people tell us, "Hey, I'm not a writer, I'm an author. That means I have the information in there in my environment, but I don't have the passion or the tools or the, the gift to, to, to write all of that." And that's where we invite them after we conduct the research, and we agree on the table of content, like I, I showed you, like I said a while ago.

[00:12:37] H.J Chammas: What we do here is for each chapter that we agreed on, we start to raise some questions. We, we, we draft some questions because we understand that how the readers would like to unfold the chapters and keep on start, you know, for, you know, uh, turning pages, let's say. So what we do is we record those calls with the, with the authors.

[00:12:58] H.J Chammas: They answer them, and that's it. They don't need to write any single word. We take that, those, those, uh, recordings, and now with the use of technology, it's easy to transcribe any call. In the past, imagine it would just be manual work. Nowadays, you only transcribe that, and once you transcribe that, here comes the ghostwriter.

[00:13:15] H.J Chammas: They watch the videos because they need to understand the, the tone of language, the personality of the author, because it has to sound like them in a way. And but they start to write on their own, and those ghostwriters have experience because they've written books for best-selling authors, and nobody know about them.

[00:13:30] H.J Chammas: They're ghosts. So whenever you publish a book, it's the name of the author. Nobody mentions the ghostwriter. This is how it works. And then so we've written for them, but it's all their own ideas. Now, what I've realized lately with the, with the development of AI, a lot of authors are going to... are using AI.

[00:13:51] H.J Chammas: And I tell them, "Please use that cautiously." Why? Because Amazon, Barnes & Noble, actually all the book retailers They don't tell you we don't like that, but they tell you, you have to disclose if you used AI in your content. And if you used AI, it's not orig- so it appears not like an original content, so they don't like that.

[00:14:13] H.J Chammas: So AI is great to be used for research purposes. We use it for research, of course, on top of whatever I search, because imagine you have all the keywords and all those books. We use AI to help us really do the research, give us a summary of everything. But when we start to write, no, it's used, it, it's used...

[00:14:29] H.J Chammas: It have to be a human, a ghostwriter or a writer doing this stuff, and then an editor jumping in to make sure the book flows perfectly. 

[00:14:38] Teddy Smith: So, so you don't actually recommend people write the books with AI? You think it's better to transcribe it- Yes ... and then write that? 

[00:14:42] H.J Chammas: Yes, because you have to disclose that, and actually it looks robotic.

[00:14:45] H.J Chammas: An AI could never tell your story. An AI could never tell your, your failures, your background, your context, your fun, whatever. So it, this looks robotic, and still it's not original content. So basically- Yeah ... I believe at one day a book written through AI will have lower visibility, even if they don't disclose that at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

[00:15:05] H.J Chammas: But I've seen that for a lot of authors. They come to us, they used AI, and they get no visibility. When we help them to republish by actually rewriting the book even though they are their ideas and we do all the stuff we do, actually the book gets repositioned in, in a better way. 

[00:15:21] Teddy Smith: Yeah. You mentioned on your website that a lot of authors get caught by expensive publishing companies that charge a lot.

[00:15:27] Teddy Smith: Um, are there any things that you should try and look out for there? 

[00:15:31] H.J Chammas: So basically, most of the publishing companies that I've seen is they wanna publish your book, and they make money, and a lot of money by the way, just for publishing your book. I've rarely seen a company that the book is not the end, it's only the beginning.

[00:15:48] H.J Chammas: That they hold your hand, they help you publish your book, they help you promote your personal brand, they help you promote your book, they help you monetize all of that. Because remember, if you're a coach, expert or consultant, where you make money is in the b- backend services, which is your services, your consultancy or your coaching services.

[00:16:05] H.J Chammas: So you need, you need someone who understand all of that, how they work together in tandem, and, and walk you through the whole journey and w- and do it with you and for you so that you need to worry about, as an author, about doing those strategic calls, appearing on you know, on, on the calls, facing clients, rather than doing all the technical stuff.

[00:16:26] H.J Chammas: So, so what I recommend here is look for those who can take you through the whole journey, and not only publishing a book. 

[00:16:32] Teddy Smith: Perfect. And, and when it comes to you've written all the book and you want to actually get it out there, what does that book launch process look like when you're going through 

[00:16:41] H.J Chammas: it? So I, so, uh, I go a bit counter-, uh, intuitive here or counter-

[00:16:47] H.J Chammas: traffic here. M- everyone out, uh, there, what they do is a big launch. So what you d- what you see, and I've seen that a lot, they launch the book, there's a spike in sales, they get 50 reviews, and they get, uh, hundreds of sales for a week, for two weeks, give it a month sometimes, and then vroom, like really a r- rollercoaster drop, and they plateau, and they don't sell anything after that.

[00:17:14] H.J Chammas: This is, for me, is failure. It's vanity publishing, that's, by the way. That's really vanity publishing because you're not doing it the right way. The way we do it is we do it org-- So it's a combination of paid media and organic and own media. So you need to w- work on both. So while paid media will help you in the beginning to show up, so imagine you did the keywords, and you did all the stuff and the categories and w- spoke about.

[00:17:38] H.J Chammas: Now it's time to ad- to, to, to... So, uh, Amazon actually, on top of being a search engine, it's an ad. And so they help you advertise your book on Amazon and also, uh, some other platforms do the same, by the way. So y- now you'd start bidding for those keywords that you used in your indexing, that you used in your metadata when you published the book, and there's a higher relevance if you use those with the ads.

[00:17:59] H.J Chammas: If you know what you're doing when you're running ads, you're started to get sales. But guess what? The first couple of months It's all about teaching the algorithm, educating the algorithm about the relevance of those keywords to your book, and demonstrating to the algorithm that you're converting. So you're not gonna see a lot of sales.

[00:18:16] H.J Chammas: You're not gonna see a lot of traction. You're just building the, the foundation. But once you st- keep on optimizing those this thing, because the more data you get from those ads, you're gonna get data, what's working, what's not working, et cetera, et cetera. So whatever is not working, you remove that.

[00:18:31] H.J Chammas: Whatever is working, you optimize that, you do more of that. Even you change the description using the keywords that have been converting to you, for you. So imagine this optimization process is never ending, by the way. For each book we publish, it's at least in the beginning two to three times a month, and then once a month we do those kind of op- optimizations.

[00:18:50] H.J Chammas: So once you, once you're fully optimized, you're ready to scale. And this is where when you scale now, you scale profitably on using the ads, so it takes a couple of months to get that in. But once you're there, it becomes really profitable. But it's not about making money as a profitably on ads or, or because of royalties.

[00:19:07] H.J Chammas: Even if you lose some money, that's okay 'cause remember, the more books you sell, and the more you demonstrate your authority and your knowledge, the more leads you get in. Because if you really crafted, crafted manuscripts in a way that are some links that get people to connect with you to book a call or download something that's a lead magnet, we call it a free workbook or a free cheat sheet or whatever, you build that email list, you nurture the relationship with them, so once they're ready and to take a decision on publishing a book or on whatever business they're in, actually y- you're top of mind because they've read your book.

[00:19:44] H.J Chammas: They always seen you here and there because you have them on your email list, and you are retargeting them 'cause when you have an email list, by the way, you could retarget them on social media. So they're always seeing more of you wherever they go. But in reality, you are, you are kind of maestro. You are really architecting all of that, but they're not aware of that.

[00:20:02] H.J Chammas: They just think, "I'm seeing the guy. I'm seeing that person," or whatever I'm doing, they look like an authority. Let me work with them. 

[00:20:10] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. And wh- when it comes to doing advertising, do you focus mostly on doing Amazon ads or doing like other types? 

[00:20:16] H.J Chammas: No, not only Amazon. So on advertising, so w- on our promote strategy, because it's publish, promote, monetize, when we promote, we focus on two pillars, promoting the author first- And then promoting the book.

[00:20:31] H.J Chammas: And the more the book gets promoted and gets sold, it's gonna promote the, the author again. And the more the author gets promoted as a personal brand, the more they're gonna sell more books. It's like a ladder. So how would you do the book promotion? Amazon ads, of course. We do have bec-- there are s-- h-hundreds, if not thousands, of book promotion sites.

[00:20:49] H.J Chammas: We really downstream them to three. We know those three always deliver, and we have some kind of, of contractual agreement with them, so we use them as well. But also we use our own email list, which is growing very fast. But also we rent email list because depending on our author's niche, we know other people who own email list who are specifically to that niche.

[00:21:11] H.J Chammas: So we rent them in a way, and they start to promote that book or that author to their email list. So it's email marketing, book promotion sites, Amazon ads, for some authors, Google ads, so it depends on, on, on how willing, how, how much they're willing to invest. But now also on promoting the, the author is basically promoting them through podcasts.

[00:21:33] H.J Chammas: So how can we do is to partner with some companies that get them on podcasts. That's one. Some of them, they want to be-- to have their own TEDx talk, and we do that for them. So we could land them a TED Talk through some, some PR agencies we work with. Some of them they want more above-the-line visibility, like magazines or TV and stuff.

[00:21:52] H.J Chammas: We could also do that. So it's, it's, it, it depends on your objectives, your budget, but the key thing is don't promote the book alone Promote yourself as a personal brand. And if you've realized, I've never used social media in all what I've told you. I've never seen it really doing any favor to any person unless you are famous.

[00:22:13] H.J Chammas: You have a lot of followers, it works. For everyone out there who's starting out, they shout on social media. I've rarely seen things happening, except maybe LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the only platform for non- non-fiction world authors, uh, who are coaches, consultants, and experts, that this platform could work for them.

[00:22:31] Teddy Smith: Do you-- W- you said social media doesn't work. That's quite interesting. So what, what do you recommend authors do after the launch to keep that sort of book alive and to keep it moving forward? 

[00:22:41] H.J Chammas: So let's, let's take it, let's, uh, drill down on that. So I mentioned the podcast. So they need to appear on podcast.

[00:22:48] H.J Chammas: They need to write a lot of newsletter and articles, and this, they write them on LinkedIn. They write them on their own website, but also they could write on third-party magazines and blogs. They become like a guest writer. And actually they are leveraging the traffic of other people's blogs, the traffic of other people podcast as a host, let's say, yeah.

[00:23:05] H.J Chammas: You do the book promotion sites, you do the, the Amazon ads. When it comes to social media, specifically Meta, Facebook and Instagram, remember you have a high-ticket service. If you're selling a $30 course or whatever, maybe it works because it's a numbers game. You know what I mean? But I don't think this is what we're after now.

[00:23:25] H.J Chammas: If you're selling high-ticket services, I'd-- I've never seen any social ad that will help you. So what works on LinkedIn, and, and that's a very important strategy, is content creation through newsletters And actually, uh, outreach. So you could, you could have a third-party company doing an outreach for you on your LinkedIn account, on your team's LinkedIn account to really scale up in a way.

[00:23:48] H.J Chammas: When you do outreach, what I've learned a lesson is the money is in the inbox and in the money is in your network. So the, the larger your network is, the more net worth you will have, which is more p- more potential leads coming in. And the more... So outreach is good, is, is good to, to connect with people, tell them about what you do, about not selling them.

[00:24:08] H.J Chammas: I've seen that mistake happening, you know, when people do an outreach to me, they wanna sell me something. No, it's about just having conversation, just really helping out, adding value to them. That's it. Because when they're ready, that's the best sale process. So give value and give value and keep on giving value and give some more until they're ready.

[00:24:26] H.J Chammas: And once they're ready, they're gonna come back, back to you and ask for your services. So outreach, it's great to connect, but having content, long-form content like a book, articles, podcast, it's great for inbound. So you need to work on those two things. Outreach and inbound for me are the two basic advertising or promotion that work.

[00:24:47] Teddy Smith: Do you do, like, direct outreach to people individually that you think would be good in your network? 

[00:24:51] H.J Chammas: Actually, actually, this is, was the bread and butter of how we grew. So and the way we grew, actually, we never advertised a penny on social media, never. No Meta, no whatever, et cetera. What we do is, I started with an outreach when I first started using my own account, and boom, it started to get me one client after the other.

[00:25:14] H.J Chammas: Now we have five, six accounts as an outreach with the same agency helping with that. So they use our own, our own account. Imagine, so the agency uses my account. They, they, they appear as if it's me because I agreed to them on what they need to s- to talk about. However, I personally and my team personally reply to every message we receive.

[00:25:34] H.J Chammas: So for outreach, it's, it's kind of using an agency, but for whenever somebody replies and we need to have a conversation, no, it's really one-on-one. Otherwise, it becomes sort of robotic. 

[00:25:45] Teddy Smith: If someone's th-thinking about writing their book for the first time, what are the first three or four steps they should be taking, you know, before maybe even speaking to you?

[00:25:52] H.J Chammas: So usually, I think they need to be clear about Derniche And what I tell them is, "Your niche basically is you've got a couple of, couple of years back." Because at one year o- at one point of time, you were in a, in a, in a certain hole. You went through some challenges, and you were ab- you were able to overcome them.

[00:26:15] H.J Chammas: So now you could help the old version of you. So this is your niche. If you could understand you a couple of years back, you have your niche. Do that research. So you need to understand your niche, first of all. You need to understand your, uh, your services, what you want to offer them. Okay? You need to understand, uh, your process.

[00:26:35] H.J Chammas: What are you offering them? Your solution. And really it should be a solution, not like, "I wanna sell something." Because when, when you solve problems and people transform through your pr- through your, through those, uh, through your, your solutions, what actually happens, the needle gets... The, the needle moves, and when the needle moves, they feel that they're gonna make the right choice when talking to you.

[00:26:57] H.J Chammas: So before people coming to us, they need to have clarity on their niche, about themselves, about their offerings, and then we could talk about how we could take that forward. 

[00:27:08] Teddy Smith: Perfect. So that's, uh, uh, that was exactly the answer I was hoping for, 'cause a lot of people come to see me and they say, "You know, I just wanna make some money."

[00:27:14] Teddy Smith: And I think, "Well, you've got to be clear on what it is you're trying to do first." 

[00:27:18] H.J Chammas: Exactly. 

[00:27:19] Teddy Smith: When it comes to working with you, like how long does that process sort of take? So if someone comes to you with their niche and their idea, like what, how long does it take to write the book and get their book out there?

[00:27:26] Teddy Smith: What's the typical? 

[00:27:28] H.J Chammas: So if, if the wr- if the manuscript is ready, and it requires, it requires only editing, so and, and we ordinary search that, we're gonna read that. The moment we read the book and we sign off that, yes, we're gonna proceed with the book... Because by the way, we select the, the, the, the people we work with.

[00:27:42] H.J Chammas: So when they send, send us the manuscript and we understand they're clear on what they want, we work with them because that's fun. But when we see a confused person, we know it's gonna become a ni- nightmare. We don't work with them. Or if they're written something wishy-washy or superficial, you know, we don't want that.

[00:27:58] H.J Chammas: So once we're sure about they have solid material, from the day we receive that material and we're starting editing it until it, it, it, it, it pa- it becomes published, is six to eight weeks if the manuscript is ready. If they don't have anything ready, they only have their thoughts and experience, that could go up to eight months, by the way.

[00:28:16] H.J Chammas: Okay. Because of the research, because of the ghostwriting, of the editing, the back and forth, so it's not an easy task. It's a long journey. But this is only for publish. When we starting to promote and monetize, actually it, it, it's endless because we're working with them month in, month out. The more we deliver value and we're helping them get clients, guess what?

[00:28:36] H.J Chammas: They're gonna stick with us and they're gonna remain with us for the long run. So our aim for promote and monetize is infinity. We really want, uh, them to be with us infinitely. 

[00:28:45] Teddy Smith: So it, it sounds like you've got sort of different levels of service when you're working with authors. What, what are those levels ex- what do they look like?

[00:28:51] H.J Chammas: So on the publish, as I mentioned earlier, we have three levels, like, uh, ready manuscript or you want them, what you want us to, uh, to write for you Or actually you've written, you've published a book that failed, you'd only want us to optimize the listing for you and, and, and get the, the needle moving. So that's for publish.

[00:29:10] H.J Chammas: For promote, it depends here on your budget and your objectives. We start with the basic. Basically, the basic is get that traction, build that momentum, get the social proof. That means the more books you sell a month, the more social proof you will get. And they build up slowly, like four months and five months, but they add up and add up and add up until it becomes...

[00:29:31] H.J Chammas: Uh, the, the growth actually becomes larger the more you go with time, yeah? For some of them, they o- they need more than that, so what we do is on top of promoting the book, we do the personal branding promotion, as I mentioned earlier. Of course, that's a higher package. Basically, not only the Amazon ads and the book promotion sites and stuff, but also the personal branding stuff.

[00:29:50] H.J Chammas: So we work with them on perfecting their message, who they are, what the, what they're gonna communicate and, and, and their communication plan on all of that, so that we, we're able to build with them the third level, the next level, which is their ecosystem, their funnels, their websites, their CRM, their email marketing, their WhatsApp marketing.

[00:30:09] H.J Chammas: But you cannot do that before doing this, the first two steps, and that's actually I see always a mistake. People jump to the website without knowing what, who they are, who they dedicate it for, and why do they do that. 

[00:30:20] Teddy Smith: Yeah. That's great. It's, I... Yeah, and it's very impressive, like all the different ways you can go from just taking your manuscript all the way up to having just completely, like, almost like a PR management service.

[00:30:29] Teddy Smith: It's, uh, it's really... The power of a book is amazing when it comes to building that authority out. I think it's one of the best ways you can get your name out there, because it's just, you know, people start looking you up and already they see you're an author. It's, it's a real big tick in the box, I think.

[00:30:43] H.J Chammas: Yes. I think, uh, the way I see them, like, uh, if you're an author, auto- auto- automatically you, you c- you have kind of authority. But if you become an award-winning author, imagine you win award, literally awards, not like the one stage you go and go on stage and you pay for it. No. Real literary awards. It's a competition.

[00:31:02] H.J Chammas: An award-winning author adds more trust, more credibility. If you become a best-selling author, not because as a best-selling author, I think it's vanity a bit, but also it helps. Like, an award-winning, best-selling author, it gives you even more trust. Then imagine you start to have your own talks, your own TED Talk, your own podcast, so you're appearing here and there, and all of that is like you're filling that cup with trust.

[00:31:23] H.J Chammas: When all that cup is filled up, people trust you enough, guess what? You're gonna become their, their choice whenever they're ready to get a service that you sell. 

[00:31:32] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. And one, one last question was, we've talked to us about, you know, having clarity in what you want trying to achieve. If there's any authors out there who are thinking, "Okay, I'm...

[00:31:41] Teddy Smith: You know, I'm thinking I know roughly where I am and what I wanna be doing, but I don't have exact clarity about how I want to be positioning myself and where I want to move forward," what advice would you give to people like that? 

[00:31:51] H.J Chammas: That actually we receive a lot of those authors. Actually, I think they are the majority, not the minority.

[00:31:56] H.J Chammas: Yeah. A lot of them, they wanna write about What they know best. That's it. That's my experience. They wanna self-promote for the wrong reasons in a way. They're not-- They don't wanna leave an impact. They don't want to really offer solutions. So, so what we make sure is before they join us on board, if they're willing to unlearn why they wanted to publish the book and align with us, that that's the best model, is to understand their audience, research their audience or the competitors, and build their, their, their author platform and, and their authority platform that...

[00:32:30] H.J Chammas: and the book becomes a vehicle. If they don't make that mindset shift, it's tough to work with them. So, uh, uh, and I think it's tough for them because they're gonna always feel deceived. When we started out, actually three, three years ago, we used to entertain those kind of authors, and we felt miserable with them because they don't know what they want and it's a, it's a, it's like it's a yo-yo conversation, you know?

[00:32:54] H.J Chammas: You, you never align on one thing until one day we took a decision that we have this dialogue, this conversation, that we cannot go on like that. If you're not willing to go in that direction, we explain to them, of course, all the ins and outs. We-- I think it was better for us to stop that relationship, and I don't think very good fit.

[00:33:14] H.J Chammas: Now, after learning from those mistakes in the past, now we make all that as kind of pre-qualification. So we pre-- we pre-pre-qualify them before they join. We need to make sure they're perfectly aligned with that process and that vision. Otherwise, it's not fun. 

[00:33:29] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. Well, it's been great chatting.

[00:33:31] Teddy Smith: What-- If people wanna get in touch and to find out more about your services, how can they get in touch? And also, what do they need to bring to be prepared for that meeting? 

[00:33:39] H.J Chammas: So, so basically, if they go to authority-publishing.com, so authority hyphen publishing or dash publishing.com, two words. So, uh, what the...

[00:33:48] H.J Chammas: There's on top of the, of the page a Book a call. When they, when they go there, there is... they go to a questionnaire because we need to understand couple of stuff before they go on a call. So they fill up, fill up, like, few, few, uh, few answers. Takes them three to five minutes, not more than that. But this helps us because when we jump on the call, what's gonna happen?

[00:34:08] H.J Chammas: We're gonna be researching them. We're gonna check their profile. We're gonna check if they have a book. They're gonna-- We're gonna do a book-- We call that a book posture review. A book posture review helps us help the author identify if they're a good fit to become an author. So if they have a book, published book, we help them identify the gaps in their current book through a...

[00:34:26] H.J Chammas: that book posture report, not review now, because they have already a book. If they don't have a book, we call the-- we make the book posture review. And when we do the basic research for them, when we jump on the call, it becomes an interesting conversation. Actually, it's a wake-up moment for them. They-- Although they could feel that something is wrong or they need this in their life, when they see things from a data perspective and research perspective, it becomes visible for them, very, very transparent that they need to go on that journey, and people appreciate that.

[00:34:57] H.J Chammas: From there, we tell them That's a gift from us. We don't charge for that, by the way. So we, we ema- so we walk them through that, we email them that, and we tell them, "Once you're ready, you believe that you want to go that journey, we're here to help. If you don't want our help, we're, we're, we're also gonna offer you a free book," which is my book, which I would like also to offer to your audience, by the way.

[00:35:18] H.J Chammas: Now we can share the link at the, at the end of the conversation now. And what happens here is we tell them, "You don't need us. If you follow the steps in the book, you don't need an agency like us. You could do it on your own." Only become, uh, a... You might only need us if you don't have time for that, because you're running your business and you have your own established business.

[00:35:39] H.J Chammas: We understand that, and this is where of course we can work together. Other than that, it's our mission, it's our passion, and we wanna help. 

[00:35:45] Teddy Smith: Perfect. Sounds great. Well, thanks so much for the call, HJ. We'll put a link to that free book into the chat so everyone can get ahold of it. And, um, yeah, thanks for coming on and we'll speak again soon.

[00:35:54] H.J Chammas: Great. I'm gonna email you the link to the book. I think I send it in the bio, I'm not sure. But I will email you that and, and please, yeah, share it. It's, it's great to help people out there because it has everything, everything we do in house, actually. 

[00:36:07] Teddy Smith: Perfect. Sounds good. All right. Good 

[00:36:09] H.J Chammas: luck. 

[00:36:09] Teddy Smith: Awesome. We'll speak again soon.

[00:36:10] H.J Chammas: Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

[00:36:13] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning into The Publishing Performance Show. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I absolutely love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, I want to tell you about our Publishing Performance starter packs.

[00:36:25] Teddy Smith: These are curated episodes and collections organized by topic that makes it super easy to find the exact content you're looking for. So whether you're wanting to deep dive into marketing strategies, explore productivity techniques, or focus on any specific area of publishing, we've organized our episodes into targeted playlists just for you, and you can find these all at teddyagsmith.com.

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