The Plus One Theory

Episode 30: From Idea to Bookshelf: The Tech Secrets You Need to Know

• Pam Dwyer • Season 1 • Episode 30

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We wrap up our three-part series on becoming an author by focusing on the essential tools and technologies that can make your writing journey more efficient and effective. Packed with practical recommendations from recording software to email marketing solutions, this episode gives you the exact tech stack you need to succeed.

• Author Media podcast (authormedia.com) - Longest-running book marketing podcast hosted by Thomas Umstott Jr
• Hindenburg Pro - Professional audio recording software ideal for audiobooks and podcasts
• Filmora 14 - User-friendly video editing tool for creating promotional content
• Buzzsprout - Podcast hosting platform with AI-powered features for distribution
• KingSumo - Platform for running book giveaways to grow your email list
• WordPress - Recommended website platform with extensive plugin options
• KIT - Email system for building and managing your author community
• Genius Link - Creates universal smart links that work across all book selling platforms
Join my email list for updates on my upcoming book, "The Plus One Theory," plus early access for pre-orders. While you're there, check out the Book of the Month giveaway and catch up on the Piney Woods short stories. 

Be a Guest on The Plus One Theory Podcast!

Are you someone who believes in the power of kindness, resilience, and intentional growth? Do you have a story about how small, meaningful steps have made a difference in your life or career?

I’d love to invite you to share your journey on The Plus One Theory Podcast!

This podcast is all about exploring how we can apply the Plus One Theory to create ripples of positivity and purpose in our personal and professional lives. I’m especially excited to feature guests who work in heart-centered careers—nurses, teachers, counselors, nonprofit leaders, caregivers, or anyone who dedicates their energy to helping others.

Your story could inspire listeners who are navigating their own challenges and looking for ways to take that next small step forward. Whether you’ve used kindness to overcome adversity, found strength in vulnerability, or applied intentional action to make an impact in your community, I want to hear from you!

Interested? Here’s How to Reach Out:

  • Email me with a brief introduction about yourself and your story.
  • Let me know how the Plus One Theory has played a role in your life or career.

Order "From the Piney Woods" 2nd Edition today!

Speaker 1:

Hey friends, welcome back to the Plus One Theory Podcast. I'm your host, pam Dwyer, and today, well, it's the big one. First because we've made it to 30 episodes and thank you all for being a part of it, and secondly, because today wraps up our three-part series. So Ya Wanna Be an Author? If you haven't listened to the first two parts yet, I would go back and check them out. They'll give you the heart and the mindset work behind writing a book. Today we're diving into the tools and the tech that make it all possible. Plus, I'm sharing a few powerful stories about why your voice matters and how storytelling can change lives.

Speaker 1:

But before we jump in, I want to give you a quick disclaimer and introduce something I call the plus one theory. The plus one theory is simple. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to be one step ahead of where you were yesterday, or one step ahead of the person you are helping. That's it. You bring what you've got, you share what you've learned and you keep showing up. That's how we grow. That's how we make a difference.

Speaker 1:

Now from the disclaimer. I'm not a tech guru and I'm not claiming these tools are the only way to go. I'm just sharing what has worked for me and what I've tried, what I've learned and what I believe can help you if you're on this journey to becoming an author. So let's talk tools, let's talk storytelling and let's talk about becoming the kind of writer and human who moves people. Just so you know, before we talk about these tools, for each one that I discuss today, just know that I probably tried 10 more different types of the same tool and a lot of trial and error, learning the hard way, sort of thing, and then I ended up here, so maybe I can save you some time and trouble. So the first thing is you need to educate yourself. Right and the best way.

Speaker 1:

I've listened to so many podcasts, you know just trying to educate myself and become wiser about speaking, writing, you know, and all that, even entrepreneurship I mean my business. I still have my business, tpkk concepts, so I'm always willing to learn. But the best of the best podcasts that I've ever ever found and I still listen to every single day, I won't dare miss an episode. It's called authormediacom and Thomas Umstott Jr hosts the longest running book marketing podcast in the world. His episodes have taught me more than some high ticket coaching programs and, yes, I invested in those too. If you want to know how to publish well, market smart and make impact well, market smart and make impact, you need to start there. Because, number one, his podcasts are free. He does have paid programs that go deeper, but, man, he's just a plethora of knowledge, this guy, and he's such a genuine caring soul so you can tell he really cares about the success of people that want to share their story. So I would highly advise listening to author media and you can find all the podcasts and other information, his website and social medias. He's got a great YouTube channel, so listen to him for a while and you can even go back and check out all the other episodes you know, especially focused on topics you're wanting to know about, because he probably has about 10 episodes on each topic. But he's really sweet and he's really very knowledgeable.

Speaker 1:

Number two I am first of all working on an audible of my book from the Piney Woods and everyone kept telling me Pam, it's so easy to record an audible and then you just upload it to Amazon. Well, I've learned my lesson with my book right. I wrote my story, did not have it professionally edited or anything, and I simply uploaded it to Amazon and it was easy to do. But that doesn't mean that my book was ready to upload. It was awful. So I ended up, you know, paying an editor and a publisher to have it done right. Because guess what, if you have a badly edited book published, they're not going to hear your story. They're not going to hear your story, they're just going to see all the oopsies. And so, after I had it edited and republished it as a second edition. So anyone looking for my book From the Piney Woods by PJ Hamilton, make sure it says second edition, because the other one is still rowing around out there in cyberspace. I can't get rid of it, darn, it Can't hide my boo-boo. But if you want the correct version, I would definitely look for second edition. Or you can just go to pamdwirespeakercom and click on the link. It's a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, I'm working on the audible, the recording of my book, and I have software that I use for my podcasting and stuff. But it wasn't the quality that I thought it needed to be, and so listening to author media or novel marketing. He called it before. He recommended Hindenburg Pro, and so I went online. He recommended Hindenburg Pro and so I went online, I looked at it and it looked fairly simple to use. So I went ahead and tried the free trial and guess what? Amazing. I would highly recommend it.

Speaker 1:

Even if you're just doing a podcast recording or you work with video audio. It's amazing and it's easy to use and it's great Hindenburg Pro, and that's what I use to edit this podcast actually. So it is. I think it's made for storytellers, okay, thirdly, all right, so Filmora 14, this is my video tool. I use it for promos, clips, socials, anything visual, and it's easy, fast and it gets the job done and it's so user-friendly. So even if you don't know what you're doing, you can play around with it. But they have online tutorials, people. You just watch those tutorials and you'll be an expert in no time and you'll have amazing looking videos.

Speaker 1:

Okay, number four is, uh, is the tool that I use for my podcast, for publishing it actually, and it's called buzz sprout, buzzsproutcom. And oh and just in case folks, I'm going to have all of these listed in the show notes, so as a link so you can click on them. It'll be easier, so I don't have to worry about spelling it out for you. You don't have to say. What did she say? Anyway, buzzsprout it allows you to upload recorded audio. It doesn't do video visual, it just does the audio piece and so you upload it, and it even has all these cool tools that you can pay a little extra for, but it does all the editing and it gives you a summarized notes, it makes all your chapter notes, it does it all, folks, and it's all ai driven. Yes, so you should check that out. And it also just it splatters it out to the world, to to all the different platforms.

Speaker 1:

Next, number five Okay, this is the coolest thing I found out recently and this is what powers my book of the month giveaway. Because, folks, first of all, my biggest advice to you as an author would be to grow that email list. So, everything you do for your book, you should be collecting email addresses, because that's your lifeline, that's how you're going to communicate with your readers and grow a community, grow a tribe. So I need to collect email addresses. So how do I do that? Well, you have to offer someone something before they'll give it up, because, let's face it, none of us like to give our email address, because we don't want one more piece of spam in our box right.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, I have a book of the month giveaway and I use a program. It's called King Sumo and it's so cool. It does everything for you. You just have to put the book and the link and then it does the rest for you. And what you do is you put the link out there for people to click on it and enter. So they have to give you their name and their email address to enter the contest, the giveaway for the free book. So every month I have a book giveaway, the giveaway for the free book. So every month I have a book giveaway.

Speaker 1:

And it also allows me to do a second thing, because the next and most important thing as an author is for you to network, for you to meet and befriend. I mean just be friends with other people that think like you, and that is other authors. I've met so many and they're amazing people. I'm so thankful that they're in my life. But we can help each other out, and that's what we need to do. And so the book that I feature, I try to reach out to the author and say, hey, you know I'm going to be showing off your book for the whole month, so why don't you share this link on your network, so they know that it helps me grow my list and they're very thankful for me marketing their book. It's a twofer you get two things for the act of one. And what are those? Let me just remind you, I'm going to be the teacher now, so it allows you to grow your email list, which is very important, and then it also helps other authors market their books.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, number six I don't know a lot of you may not know what I did in a previous life, but I used to be a web designer, believe it or not, and so I do know a little bit more about this topic than you know just the average person that doesn't know how to do web design, and so I've used a lot of different platforms. But WordPress is by far the way to go, and I'm going to tell you, from a techie point of view, is that there's these plugins that allows you to do specific things on your website and as an author, if you haven't, you need to have an author website. It's important, it represents very well and it can be like the landing spot for all the things that you're doing. If you have a website and it's done by WordPress, then you can use all these great plugins. Well, I, in one of my coaching escapades, they provided a free website for your speaking business and they would only do it through Wix. And I thought, well, I've never worked with Wix before, so I'll, and they're going to design and create it. And so I let them do it. And so now my author website is is actually on a Wix platform, and I've never been more unhappy in my life. My suggestion is to always, if you get a website designed, make sure it's done in WordPress. You'll be happy that you did, and so will the designer. All right.

Speaker 1:

Number seven is KIT K-I-T. If you go to kitcom, you will see that this is an email system. It's smooth, it's powerful and it's totally worth it, because guess what? You're going to collect all these email addresses. Where are they going to live? They have to live in some form of database, right, that you can easily reference, where you just click a button to email all of them at one time, because you're building your tribe, your community, and so you're going to be emailing them regularly. And it also makes sure that your subscriber is opting in. It's very important. If they don't opt in, it's going to get spammed. It doesn't like it at all because there's a lot of compliance laws and things that we have to abide by, and it gets more strict every year because, well, all those spammers out there are taking advantage. But anyway, there's ways around that and that is how you do it Go to kitcom, set up your account and then invite everyone you can, using a link, to join your email list.

Speaker 1:

All right, number eight and this is the final one, is called Genius Link. It's the most incredible thing. It's the most incredible thing. You can paste your Amazon book link into the program and then it gives you a smart, universal link, one that works everywhere your book is sold. I mean, it goes out there and it searches, it finds all the places that your book is for sale and then it will, you know, attach that to the one link. So whenever you are trying to sell your book online, you put the Genius link in and when people click on it, it pulls out all their options, because, guess what people Not everybody shops Amazon. Some people shop at Barnes and Noble, some people shop at Target or Walmart, you know, to get their books or their e-books. So, anyway, it lists all the available outlets for your book, which is smart. You can sell more books that way. So now I'm going to share a little story with you.

Speaker 1:

So last week I was able to meet with one of my friends and I haven't seen her in a while. So we planned ahead and scheduled a cookie decorating class. And the woman running it well, she was amazing. She helped everyone, even non-artistic people like me make these beautiful cookies for the 4th of July. Well, actually it wasn't the 4th of July, it was more like the watermelon dump in Luling, texas. You can look that up, google it. So anyway, we were making really cute cookies shaped like watermelons and sunglasses and summer sandals, the sun, all those things. But we had to decorate it with icing. My friend and I took this class and we were trying our best to make straight lines with the piping of the icing and it was hard. You don't think about how hard that is. They didn't just look great, they tasted amazing. And the lady told us that if you see little black specks in the icing that's because I use real vanilla beans. It was such a small detail, but it said everything about her care and her craft.

Speaker 1:

And then, after the class, I heard her story. She learned. She started baking cookies, of course, with her family, and loved it, and it just carried on from there. She was very passionate about it and loved it. So she started building a business and everything she does she gives back through nonprofits, you know, and to her community. And that's when I knew that her story belonged on the Plus One Theory podcast, because not in everything she does she adds an additional step. So she doesn't just bake cookies and sell them, she has a class to teach other people how to decorate cookies. She reaches out and helps the community and nonprofits and she just it just goes on and on. I loved her story. I invited her as a guest and she said yes. So hopefully that will be soon. I think you all will really love her story. So, remember, everyone has a story and part of being an author is learning how to see it, hear it and help others tell it.

Speaker 1:

Also, this past Tuesday I gave my second talk for the Seeger Circle Support Group and it went so well. Why? Because well, I've been doing the work. Every day. I am practicing how to speak, how to write, how to communicate in a way that people can feel. That's the foundation of my message Doing one small, intentional step, additional step, each and every day to improve on what I'm passionate about. So let's talk about that, what I'm passionate about.

Speaker 1:

I guess the slogan of a business that I used to have and that did not survive was inspire, motivate, educate. And it wasn't just a tagline, it was my why, why I do what I do. So, back when I worked with small business clients, I noticed something they all started with passion, but as the weight of the daily operations piled up, the energy fades, you know, and the reality of owning a business sets in, when I would meet with them, we would talk about website design because that's why I was meeting with them and marketing, but by the end of every meeting I would end up giving them a pep talk, reminding them why they started in the first place, reminding them that their team reflected their energy. I realized that's where I always landed lifting people up. Now I get to do it through writing and speaking. But let me be real. Passion isn't enough. You have to educate yourself, invest in growth, and for me, lived experience has been the best teacher of all.

Speaker 1:

So everything I do this podcast, my writing, the giveaways comes from the heart. Every Tuesday, I post a new story in my series. Every Tuesday, I post a new story in my series, stories from the Heart of the Piney Woods. These are personal, powerful and filled with the kind of truth that sticks with you. Here's what I'd love for you to do. Number one join my email list. You'll get updates on my upcoming book, the Plus One Theory, plus early access for pre-orders. And while you're there, check out the Book of the Month giveaway and catch up on the Piney Woods short stories.

Speaker 1:

And if this episode helped you, share it. Post it, tag me, send it to someone who needs a nudge. That is the best fuel in the world for me, and my creativity is to get input from you, to hear from you how my stories are making an impact in your life, how this podcast affects you. Are you enjoying it? Does it help you? Have you shared it with your friends? I just I want to get to know you, and so the only way we can do that is if we respond back and forth. Yes, and I do. I respond to each and every email or text that I receive. I make sure that I make a personal connection with you, one-on-one.

Speaker 1:

Let me leave you with this when my son, kyle, was in second grade. His teacher asked the class how do we learn? And Kyle raised his hand and he said by messing up. His teacher was so impressed she told me congratulations, that's a powerful lesson to teach your child. And she was right. We don't learn by being perfect. We learn by trying, failing, fixing and growing. You know messing up. Next week we'll go even deeper into that truth with a new episode called we Learn by Messing Up. I'll be telling the story of my first ever company called Empower Plus One, and I built it and then I stumbled and then I learned the hard way. You know what happens when you don't educate yourself and learn how to thrive and remember your why. So until then, keep writing, keep showing up. You just need one more small, intentional step.