Marketers Unleashed

Behind the Scenes of Scaling Success

• Kathryn • Season 1 • Episode 17

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In this episode of Marketers Unleashed, Kathryn Strachan speaks with Karen Strauss, publishing expert and founder of Hybrid Global Publishing, to decode the realities of the book publishing world. Whether you’re a first-time author or a seasoned entrepreneur, this is your ultimate guide to choosing the right publishing path.

Explore the pros and cons of traditional vs. hybrid vs. self-publishing, and discover why hybrid publishing is becoming the go-to choice for thought leaders. Karen outlines the full book journey—from idea development to marketing—and shares how to position your book as a powerful business asset.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understanding the three main publishing models
  • How hybrid publishing empowers authors
  • Steps to go from manuscript to market-ready book
  • Using your book to boost business visibility and credibility
  • Keeping your book relevant post-launch

Perfect for: Entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and professionals seeking to build authority and grow their brand through publishing.

Resources & Mentions:

Welcome to Marketers Unleashed, the podcast where marketers break free from the noise and dive deep into the raw truths of the marketing world. We're here to go beyond best practices and uncover the bold ideas, untold stories, and hard lessons that shape real marketing success. From dissecting daring campaigns to confronting the challenges keeping us awake at night. We're unleashing honest, unfiltered conversations to inspire, educate, and challenge you to think differently. Get ready to conquer the untamed side of marketing. I'm your host, Kathryn Strachan, and this is Marketers Unleashed. Where we're not just talking marketing, we're redefining it. For anyone who doesn't know me yet. I'm Kathryn Strachan, author of Scaling Success Building Brands that Break Barriers, international keynote speaker, and fractional CMO for cutting edge brands. I have spent years navigating the ever-changing world of marketing and have seen it all. As your podcast host, I bring my expertise and curiosity to the table. Diving deep into honest conversations with industry leaders to uncover the insights, challenges, and bold ideas shaping our industry. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to Marketers Unleashed. Today I'm here with Karen Strauss, who's going to be telling me a bit about publishing. So I use Karen to bring my book, "Scaling Success" to life, but she's gonna be answering some questions about what it's like behind the scenes when it comes to publishing, and what you should be thinking about if you're thinking about publishing a book. Karen, thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure, Kathryn. Thanks for inviting me. So many people have asked me questions about the book and about how I made it possible. So I'm really keen to talk to you because you're the mastermind behind all of it. But for anybody who doesn't know, can you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and your background and your very impressive career in publishing? Sure. So I like to say that I've been in the publishing world since the Gutenberg Bible was invented. So it's a long history, about 38 years. I worked at some of the major traditional publishing houses, Random, McMillan, Crown, and Avon. I worked in sales, I worked in marketing, I worked in publicity. So that gave me a very solid background for when I decided to leave corporate and start my own business. I started working with medium, independent, publishing houses. Working to get their books into the big guys, Barnes & Noble, and Borders, Books a Million. Then in 2011 decided that I should start my own publishing company. So that's what I did, and I started working with entrepreneurs and coaches, speakers who really wanted to write a book, publish a book, get out on speaking stages so they can amplify their message. So what is the difference between traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing, and what perhaps most importantly is hybrid publishing? So most of us know about traditional publishing, the Random House, McMillan, Hachette, Simon and Schuster. Those are the big ones. You need an agent. They buy the rights to your book and the royalties are less than what a hybrid or self-publishing company would give you. The important thing is your book may not be published for 18 months. So, that's a long, long stretch of time. Self-publishing, most of us know from Amazon. The bulk of self-publishing, people write the book, they put their books on Amazon, they might do a Kindle, but it's pretty limited to that. You still have to find an editor. The right editor, the copy editor. Is it a type setter? Is it a ghost writer? So you have to figure out that. You have to find a cover designer. You have to find maybe someone to help you in marketing. You're really in control, but you have to hire the whole team to help you get the book done. And then hybrid is a cross between traditional and self-publishing. What I like to do is refer people who are interested in hybrid publishing to the independent book publishers association ibpa.org, because they have a list of criteria for what makes up a valid hybrid publisher, and we check off all those boxes. We give you a royalty of 80% of our net revenue. We have distribution through Ingram, to 40,000 retailers, wholesalers, libraries, all over the world. And then we have a team of people. So a hybrid publisher takes the guesswork out of who you're gonna work with. So we have a project manager who steers you through the whole process. You start with a developmental editor. If you haven't written the book yet, you work with a developmental editor to help you get the outline to get the book done. And then you go on to copy editing for spelling and grammar. We work with you on the cover. We like to work on the cover very early in the game so that you have something to promote. Very early. So people, your fans, your social media, people who follow you will know that you're coming out with a book. And then it's working with you on the marketing plan, and that's very, very important. Some hybrid publishers are better than others at the marketing aspect of it, so if that's someplace where you need some help, you wanna go with a hybrid publisher that's strong with marketing. We work with a lot of partners in marketing, in audio books, in video, in social media. We do Amazon bestseller campaigns, Barnes and Noble bestseller campaigns, and review campaigns. So we work a lot with you to create the launch. We talk to you about who your ideal reader is. What problem you solve if you're an entrepreneur and doing nonfiction. So there's a lot of conversation back and forth with the author and with us as a publisher to determine, you know, your launch team, what we're gonna do on launch day, and then the activities you're gonna be doing afterwards. So the hybrid is really a cross between traditional, self, I think we supply a little bit more activities than even a traditional publisher. But you do pay for your service, the hybrid publishing, you're paying for all of the services. Most of us give you a package, which includes everything, My advice is to read the contract very carefully about what it does include. So I think those are the main differences. So I know with hybrid you obviously have more control over it. It remains your book. You have more of the rights, you get more, more of the share. How can you decide between them if you're somebody who like hasn't decided what route you wanna go down? I mean, what are some of the things you should be thinking about to determine whether or not hybrid might be right for you? So first of all, I think you need to do your research. Self-publishing requires a do it yourself kind of person, but it's a lot of exploration. It's a lot of talking to people, and it's a lot of research on your part to find the exact editor that you might need. So talk to people, right? And I would say go to IBPA, have that list, have your questions in mind. Talk to other people who've been through the hybrid process, and then talk to a bunch of hybrid publishers because we're all a little bit different. The range of costs are even a little bit different. We might range anywhere between seven and 10,000 US dollars, sometimes a little more, depending on if you need more help with a developmental editor or ghostwriter. Other people start at $30,000. You know, the, the range is huge, and so you need to figure out very carefully what it is you need. To get your book out into the world. Also, in the end, I think it's who you like, right? And then just ask how the process works, get everything in writing, and then just compare the packages and ask a lot of questions. Are there certain types of books that lend themselves more to hybrid publishing than say traditional publishing? Yes! I would say books like yours are definitely more geared for hybrid, and the reason is, you know, your book contains timely information, and a message that you wanna get out like now, right? And so you don't wanna wait 18 months to two years to talk about it because chances are the information that you have now might be not as relevant in two years, You certainly wanna get it out sooner rather than later. Also, traditional publishers are really looking for influencers. They're looking for celebrities. They're looking for people with a huge media following. Whatever it is, they want a hundred thousand followers, and it's a lot harder for people, even if you are a CEO, you know, you're somebody who's very accomplished such as yourself, it's very hard to get a traditional book publishing contract. And even so, you have to look at the benefits. What are they really offering you? A lot of hybrids are a little bit more savvy in what's happening now in digital marketing, in Facebook ads, in producing video, all of those things that you need to create visibility for yourself, and many traditional and legacy publishers are not equipped to actually do that. I mean for me it came down to a couple of things when I made the decision between hybrid and whether or not I would try to go get traditional, or whether I'd do it myself. So I decided not to do it myself because I didn't actually want to know how it all worked. I wanted to work with somebody like yourself who was super professional, knew exactly what needed to happen and could take that off my load. So for me, I knew that I didn't know how to publish a book and I wanted somebody who did and who had the experience that you had. I then also decided not to go or pursue the traditional route because I wasn't doing it to be the next JK Rowling, like I wasn't writing a book because I wanted to sell 10 million copies. I just wanted to have a book so that I could elevate my thought leadership and I could like, pursue more speaking opportunities. So I wanted to retain control over it. So I know a lot of people who've done the traditional publishing, they don't even get to really pick the name of their book. It's really down to the publisher. They get... really complete control over your book. So like, if you want a certain name or you wanna do it a certain way, those ideas may not be accommodated. The cover design is really important. You get no say, you know, with a traditional publisher. They've got the sales, and the marketing, and the design team, and even the editorial, but the authors rarely ever involved. You were extremely involved in the whole process. Probably drove you nuts a little bit. You knew what you wanted and I respected that. Yeah, and that's very much like me. I found it incredibly helpful to work with Hybrid to get the book published. So, I mean, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that process of have an idea that you'd like to turn into a book. What do you do next? So we then connect you with one of our developmental editors, and they work with you on creating the outline. They write a synopsis for each chapter. Essentially, they're your accountability partner. So they're saying to you, all right now we've created the outline and the synopsis where we're gonna add stories. They try and pull the stories out of you and to determine which stories would make the most sense. Particularly if you're writing nonfiction, you still need to tell a story.'Cause that's really, really important to the, the whole credibility of the book. And that's what people are, are really interested in. So they pull that out of you and then they might say to you, Go take two weeks, come back to me with the first two chapters. Let's see if we're on track. And then you're gonna continue to write the next two chapters. So everybody's a little different, but you get on the calendar of the developmental editor. We start normally with 10 hours to work with the developmental editor. That's included in our package. But many times you might need more, and that's okay because you can get more hours. So that's where you start. And then once you finish with the developmental editor, you are gonna have your manuscripts, and then your manuscript goes to copy editing, and that's when we clean up the spelling and the grammar and the syntax. You might work back and forth with copy editors. Sometimes the copy editor just works her magic, and then it goes back to you and you accept or reject those changes. Which is awesome in traditional publishing, that's not gonna happen. Then while that's happening is when we work on the cover, and so you meet with the cover designer, determine kind of the look and the feel of the book, who your audience is, and then, uh, we like to ask you to give us some idea of what covers you like so we can get your aesthetic. So you have a lot of conversations with the cover designer, and then they come back with various designs. And then the process goes back and forth, sometimes, you know, you get it right away. Sometimes you're tweaking. Sometimes it takes a while, but it usually takes about three weeks or so before we get a good cover. Then we work on getting testimonials, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, the copy editing is happening. That gets done. Once that's done, that then goes to an interior designer, we call it type setting. The types setter sends you some samples of an interior design to make sure it matches where we're going with the color as well as the interior aesthetic. So do you want call outs, right? Do you want, various bells and whistles in the interior? What kind of font do you want? So it's not just a Word document. There's a lot of thought and design that actually goes into this, and you as the author, are intricately involved in this process. So once that's done, then the book gets sent to a proofreader, and the proof reader's job is to not only pick out the straggling grammatical errors. But to find these little spacing issues, right? And the orphans and the wheels, blah, blah, blah. Once that's done and those changes are made, it gets sent back to you as the author. You then look at it. You have to look at it as a whole. You're not rewriting the book at that point, but you may find, they misspelled X, Y, Z, or I wanna keep the British spelling for this particular phrase, or this word or the slang word, I wanna keep that in and you missed that. You know, whatever it is, there are important changes that needs to be made and the little spacing issues. So once that's done, and the cover's done, and the back cover's done, we're ready to upload it to the printer, and then we get a proof. We sent that to you, a digital proof, which means you know, we're not mailing anything to you. And then you look at it as a whole, and that's kind of the last time you see it before we go to print, and then kind of a away we go. We're now talking about the marketing launch of the book, and doing a pre-launch, building a launch team, amazon bestseller campaign. Do you wanna do a Barnes and Noble bestseller campaign? A review campaign. And so, there are various things that you can do that we can offer. You know, you are very savvy in marketing. Not a lot of our authors are as savvy as you are in terms of putting together, big launches or campaigns for their books. So, that's been the process. It's a massive process. Like I had no idea what I was getting into before I really got into it. I worked with a developmental editor before to like create that outline, and I found that outline so essential because it kept me on track. You know, I didn't need the accountability part as much, because I'm one of these people that if I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. But I did need that structure, and like mapping that structure out throughout the whole process made it so much easier'cause then all I really needed to do was go back and sit down and fill in the blanks. So that outline became so essential for creating the whole book. And that like allowed me to really write the book very quickly in about two months. And then having that dedicated headspace where I could just sit down and write, made it so much easier. I never published a book before, but I was very surprised at how much work actually needs to go into doing that. And that was why I was like so happy that I didn't do self-publishing. I don't even know if my book would've ever made it out of the door if I had done self-publishing,'cause I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. It's true. There's so much detail. ISPN getting, copyright registration, library of congress number, all those little things... I think I probably have 12 months of activations, and marketing, and things that need to be happen around the book to, you know, really make it a success. So, I mean, it's really, whole lot more than just writing the book. It's everything that goes into it, and then everything that happens after that makes it successful. I know it was overwhelming for me before I just like sat down and did it. What advice would you have to somebody who's thinking about publishing but overwhelmed by that massive process that we're talking about? Yeah, it is a massive process, so I would just recommend talking to either a book coach, or talking to hybrid. I mean, you know, call someone like me. I'm happy to talk you through the process and kind of what it takes and we can assess together. Are you really ready to do this now? Right? We have a two day workshop called the Big Leap Retreat. People who are thinking about writing a book or they have an idea for a book, come it's two full days. And we work on their outline. We work on their big idea. We will even work on a two minute pitch. Then they speak to a panel of people, they actually present it to that panel of people, and by the end of the process, you pretty much know if this is something that is really important to you, that you wanna finish this, right? And so we found that a great way. There are some people that wanna forge ahead and they know now I'm really excited because I can see it, I can see the vision, and I can see the end line and other people go, this is not for me. I'm not ready to do this. Maybe at another time, you know, but the statistics are Kathryn, 80% of people when asked, say they wanna do a book, they wanna write a book someday. But the truth is only 3% actually get the book done, and only 2% actually get the book published. So that's a small percentage of people. So congratulations to you. You are the 2%. Thanks, I didn't know that. Yeah. You know, it's not for the faint of heart. I'll be honest. Writing the book, as you said, it's kind of like the beginning of it. I feel that if you are an entrepreneur or coach or business person, you know, that wants to get on speaking stages, and wants to elevate, and amplify your message, and not be the best kept in secret in your niche, absolutely. There's nothing like writing a book that helps elevate your status in your feild. But again, you gotta be willing to put in that work. What do you think makes the biggest difference between the 80% who want to and the 2% who actually do it? Is it just mindset and like being in it for the long slog and like not quitting, not giving up, and you know, being incredibly determined and very stubborn like myself to get it across at the finish line? It is about mindset, but it's also about making a decision to work with a professional. I believe that most people can't do it themselves, and particularly with nonfiction, and when you are so busy as an entrepreneur, as a business person. If you're writing fiction, It might be a whole different story, particularly if you're writing romance and mystery. If it's nonfiction and you're doing it for amplifying your, business and your marketing, then I believe to work with a professional certainly speeds up the process. It elevates your chances of success, there's no doubt about it, because then you've got a safe container with people around you who know what they're doing, who have already vetted all of these people, the editors, the type setters, the cover designers. So you never have to look for a person. You know, that person is embedded in the team. And now, as you know, as a CEO having a team behind you is really critical to your success. If you don't have a team, if you are a one man band, chances are you're gonna let a lot of things slip. And I would also really recommend, think about what you wanna write about. Keep a journal. You know, just write something every day. It doesn't have to even make sense. Yeah, I mean I can second that it makes it a lot easier if you are writing regularly. So one of the reasons why I found it so easy to write the actual book was because I was already telling these stories. So I was already doing podcasts, I was already writing on social, I was already doing a lot of this storytelling. So then all I really had to do was put it into one place and to write down the stories that I was already telling. And so if you're constantly creating content, whether it's in your own journal, or whether it's online, or whether it's, you know, more in a speaking format via podcast or via conferences, it makes it a lot easier when it comes time to write the book, to kind of pull it all together and sit down and write it. Working with hybrid publishing makes it a lot easier as well, so you're not stumbling around blindly in the dark like you would be if you're trying to self-publish. That's absolutely true, and I love what you said, that if you're already speaking, look at all the speeches that you've made, right? And so take from there, what is the recurring theme that you're talking about? If you've done a course already, that's a perfect opportunity to take those modules and make that chapters of your book. So, you don't always have to reinvent the wheel if you're already have content wherever. You know, if you've done a lot of podcasts, for instance, have those videos or the podcast transcribed for you, and then you can go through it and see the recurring themes and do that outline from there. What are some of the results that you can expect from writing a book? That's a very big question. You're not gonna sell 50,000 copies of your book. So if your main goal is just selling books, then, then chances are you won't be successful. The best goal is, is something like what you are doing and to the idea of having that book really elevates your credibility and your authority. And so people who are booking speaking gigs, the first thing they're gonna ask you is if you've written a book.'Cause it makes it so much easier for them to flip through the book and say, okay, this person aligns with our values and this person aligns with what we wanna teach, so yeah. And if you don't have a book, then they have to, you know, search. The last thing you want to have happen is if you're asking somebody to be on their podcast, or radio show, or speaking gig, they don't wanna search. So the best thing you can do is have that book. And the other statistic that I love to share is that being on Amazon, actually it's 56% of the search engine, 56. Like it's overtaken Google for people who are searching for, I have a problem to solve. They wanna see, you know, what comes up on the first page of Amazon. So if your book comes up in the first page of Amazon, the person they're gonna check out, Yeah, absolutly. I mean, and I find it to be a really good conversation starter. So if you don't have a book, like you're just reaching out and maybe asking for coffee or networking, but if you have a book, you know, you can reach out and be like, oh I have a book. Can I send it to you? You know, I'm interested in collaborating with you further, and you know, that makes a really big impact on people and it gives you a way to anchor your positioning yourself as a thought leader and something to kind of promote it. You know, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day how many copies you sell, but it's a way to constantly talk about your thought leadership, your expertise, and use it as a soft opener for people that you want to connect with or build relationships with. I'm quite early in that journey and early in seeing those results. But you know, I'm already having conversations with universities about doing more guest lecturing for them. I did a podcast episode with Peter Winnick, who is an expert in thought leadership, and he did a whole report on publishing, and it showed that actually people were more satisfied with the results that they got when they did hybrid publishing. Then when they self-published or did traditional, that the results that they saw and the financial impact that they saw as a result of that, often not directly from the book sales, but from speaking or, consulting, or gigs that were booked off the back of it were far greater and far more impactful with hybrid. So that's a really interesting episode to check out for anybody who's listening. We'll also put the link to that report in the show notes, and I can send it Good. I want, I'm wanna read that report. That's awesome. Um, and the other thing I wanna say, it's not with hybrid, it's not necessarily about how many copies of the book you sell. How many new clients can you get just from the result of this book, right? And for most people it's, I just need two more clients to actually break even with how much I spent with hybrid publishing this book. You mentioned, you have all these opportunities to speak and look at you, you're gonna do a course, NYU I'm sure is gonna help you. What they're gonna wanna carry your books. And so that's a credential that is priceless when you go out and promote your book to other places. Yeah, well most of the time with B2B sales, you know, you're not looking for hundreds of thousands of sales, you're looking for one or two very high quality sales, and those one or two sales could be worth multimillion. So I think, as you said, for business owners, it's a really, really good thing to do. I wanna ask you about what happens after you've published a book, so, okay, ta-da. Yay, your books on Amazon, but tell me about some of the things you have to think about after you publish a book and some of the things you have to do, because a journey does not stop when you get it on Amazon or into Barnes and Nobles. Well, I think that you always have to be promoting, for instance, you go to a conference where you have the audience that might be aligned or might be interested in what your topic is, and so you can use your book as a lead magnet, or use a chapter, and so maybe you buy 30 minutes on stage and you give away a chapter or two of your book. Now, it's for lead generation so that you have people sign up, they give you their email, they give you their phone number, they download a chapter or two of the book, and then you follow up with them and make an appointment, right? And so now you get them into your world, and so you have a conversation with them and maybe they sign up for one of your courses or maybe they sign up to work with you in a group program, right? So you do a lot of those and you use your book as what we call that lead magnet, because if they're gonna take the time to download that book or those chapters, they're very interested in you, and they're interested in the topic. Now you are capturing names that you can start mailing to. So now you're doing a masterclass, like a one day event. Right? Now you're doing a three day event. Now you're doing what, whatever it is, they're gonna follow you. They're on your list. And so you know, that's how you utilize and monetize your book. You can also think about connecting it to a course. You can use the chapters in your book to create a 10 module course based on your chapters, and then you can sell the book and the workbook, have the course together, maybe do a membership program. Use the content. You're always repurposing the content of your book. It's the ebook, it's the audiobook, it's you know, writing on LinkedIn for instance, engage with your audience. And so you can use your book or parts of your book to really feed information. And the whole point is to gather more names for lead generation to have people follow you. How long is a shelf life on a book? So after you publish it, I mean, how long are we talking about doing promotions for? Is it one year? Is it five years? I mean, how long can you do these sorts of campaigns and you know, get leverage from it? So that's a great question because it really depends. I would say on average it's six to nine months. Some people, if you're really keeping it up in, in a year. You know, and then you might want to tweak the book a little bit after a year, and you don't even have to do a lot. Maybe change a chapter or two. Some things have changed. Maybe change up the cover a little bit. Change the ISPN. You don't have to do a lot to keep your information fresh, but in, in the end, it's the core that doesn't change. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not too difficult to update it, to refresh it and you know, be able to go back to market with it. Exactly, And then it's a whole new ball game. Then you can market it again and your stats on Amazon, you know, will go up because it's a new product and so you can repromote it there. So yeah, if you just keep it fresh without having to do a lot, you'd be surprised how much promotion you can get from that. It makes it a lot easier if you already have some momentum going to keep the momentum going, or to repurpose it into a book, but it's definitely worth doing and I'm super excited to now have a book which is available on Amazon and will also be in the show notes. But if you are thinking about doing a book, I can definitely recommend Karen and her team at Hybrid Global. Reach out to them, they're gonna be able to help you get that to market and make you part of that 2%. Thank you, Kathryn. Yeah. Thank you for joining me today. It's been a pleasure. That's a wrap for this episode of Marketers Unleashed. Thank you for tuning in and diving deep with us into the unleashed world of marketing. We hope you're leaving with fresh insights, new ideas, and maybe even a few aha moments to fuel your next big move. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new episode. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a review, or connect with us on LinkedIn to share your thoughts, and join in the conversation. Until next time, keep thinking bold, challenging the norms, and unleashing your inner marketer. After all, what's the worst that'll happen? I'm your host, Kathryn Strachan, over n' out.