The Writers Chair - Rodney Washington

How to Sell Your Book Before You Even Write a Single Word – With Rodney Washington

Are you locking yourself away for months to finish your book, only to realize no one knows it exists? In this episode of In the Writer’s Chair, host Lana McAra welcomes Rodney Washington, founder of Published and Thriving, to explain why waiting until your book is on Amazon to start marketing is a "Simba moment" that often leads to zero sales.

Rodney breaks down the essential shift from being "just an author" to becoming an authorpreneur—an identity that focuses on building relationships, community, and revenue streams long before the physical book is finished.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The "Simba" Fallacy: Why simply being on Amazon isn't enough to drive sales.
• Building on Rented Land: The danger of relying solely on social media and how to move your audience to an email list you own.
• The Interest Post Strategy: How to test your book idea and find "early adopters" with a simple social media post.
• Monetizing the Journey: How one client made over $5,000 and established recurring income for a book that is still in development.
• The $15 to $15k Story: Why the book is often just the "tangible" piece of a much larger, more profitable "product suite".
• Identity vs. Mindset: Why you need an "identity shift" to see yourself as a business owner who happens to write books.

About Our Guest:

Rodney Washington is the creator of the Authorpreneur Decision workshop series and the Published and Thriving incubator. With over 30 years of experience, he helps entrepreneurial-minded creators transform their expertise into thriving brands and profitable books.

Connect with Rodney Washington:

• Download the Blueprint: Access a preview chapter of his upcoming book, The Authorpreneur Decision, featuring in-depth case studies.
• Join the Community: Connect with the Published Creator School Community for weekly monetization mapping sessions.
• Visit his Website: http://authordecision.com/

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Vandela Publishing, a traditional publisher with an untraditional model that lets you keep your rights and royalties while providing a full year of marketing support. Visit vendelapublishing.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In the Writer's Chair. Candid conversations about the writing life with Lana McCara and Vandela Publishing.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to In the Writer's Chair, where we pull up a chair to talk about writing craft, the writing life, and what's possible for writers right now. I'm your host, Lana McCara, and today I'm delighted to welcome Rodney Washington to In the Writer's Chair. Rodney is the founder of Published and Thriving, a boutique platform designed to help content creators transform their expertise into profitable books and thriving brands. Think of Published Drive, I'm sorry. Think of Published and Thriving as part book incubator, part business builder, crafted specifically for entrepreneurial-minded authors, coaches, and creator. Welcome, Rodney.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Welcome. Thank you, Lena. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I use Published Drive for checking manuscripts. So I apologize. Published and Thriving is your proper name. Why do so many authors think they have to finish the book before they can make any money from it?

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Lena, thank you for that. That's a great question. And it is a common assumption. Let's look at it. A book is a product, and we assume that we can't sell something as exchange money for something that does not quote unquote exist. So it's a common, understandable assumption that we all, many authors, have. But what I learned in my experience, having been at this game now for honestly over 30 years myself, is, and even more so now than 30 years ago when I first got started, is we are living in a time more so than ever because of social media, usually prompted by social media, but even before social media, we do business with each other, not just what we're quote unquote selling. So think about if you go to a restaurant, you are always gonna take the opinion of someone's recommendation over maybe an ad that you see or what have you. Someone says, oh, they've got a great stake there. You're gonna go there because that person, rather you even really know them all that well, but because someone else is endorsing it, it makes it sound like it's more legit, more valuable, more valid. But with authors, we will lock ourselves away for weeks, months, sometimes even years, working diligently on our product that we've told no one about, or hardly anyone about. We've done nothing to even let anyone know, we're even writing a book. We go through all of the work to put it all together, whether you're self-publishing or what have you. And then you come out with a book one day, and I was I go back to the Lion King scenario where, you know, the Lion King, he holds up baby Simba and shows to the world like it's all here. But no one was, no one even knew that Simba was on the way, let alone that Simba's here. For many authors, that's Amazon. Once the book is up on Amazon, that's the Simba moment. And because it's on this global international platform, that because it exists, people are gonna just find it and they're gonna just buy it. And you may get a few organic sales within the platform, but typically all sales, even on Amazon, are gonna be driven by what the author or the author's publisher did to let people know that the book exists on the platform. Where I, the approach I like to take is how are we building connections and relationships? How are we meeting our future readers, if you will, where they are now? How are we solving problems for them now? How are we giving them what they want now? How are we connecting with them one-on-one or in a group scenario now? Because they feel the connection to us as the person, if you will, the personal brand. And then from those experiences, whether they're courses, workshops, you know, what have you, a podcast, whatever, if they feel a connection to you now, then they are the book that you actually do end up publishing is the piece of you they get to walk away with after the relationship that you've built and nurtured over time leading up to the book itself. So if we take that what I call authorpreneur role as opposed to just being quote unquote an author, we take that role. What it really just means is I'm building relationships, community, if you will. I'm doing that, I'm nurturing that now. They're feeling a connection to me. And of course, if it's an authentic connection, guess what? They want to support us. And that includes them then buying our book. But we don't have to wait until the book is done to actually have that happen. As quite frankly, if you are doing it that way, I always say actually stop and start building up that relationships, those connections, that community. Start doing that now so that they feel like they're a part of your journey in the creation of this product in this context, a book.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Such good advice to begin building your audience now, no matter if you haven't even started the book yet. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, I say the minute that you decide that you're going to create the book, the minute you decide, even if you just got a loose conception of what the book is about, start building up that audience, start making those connections, start doing that now, immediately like immediately, like in your current network. I have a strategy I always say to my members of my programs is I call it, if it's on social media, I call it the interest post. The interest post is basically, hey, I'm thinking about blah, blah, blah. I'm thinking about writing a book on this. I'm thinking about doing that. And then put that out there and then see what people respond. You can comment back. If you'd like to know more, just shoot me a little, say me or a raised hand emoji on pretty much any platform, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Those are the first early adopters. And then you can contact them and then invite them to have a conversation with you or be in a community. If you want to create a school community, or if you want to them connect with you in a Facebook group. But those are your, I've always done that, I've always done that strategy. I recommend that constantly. And it doesn't commit you. You're just saying, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book about this. I'm thinking about creating a course about this. And see who raises your hands, because a lot of times the people that you're serving are already in your world.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, I love that. I love that because you're going into your sphere of influence now and you're you're calling out these few that resonate with this particular subject or topic that you're talking about. Yeah. What is the authorpreneur decision?

SPEAKER_02 7:56

I've already talked about it a bit. The authorpreneur decision to me means that I am no longer relying solely on just being an author, which means I publish, I've I'm there's authoring a book, and then there's selling a book. Those are not the same things. There are many people who have authored a book of all different genres. And like I said, for many, the it starts and stops, the holy grail starts and stops with Amazon. What I'm grateful for myself and my in my background, my story, my history is that I was self-publishing, when self-publishing, really the only option you really had to self-publish was to go to find a company that you would pay several thousand dollars to and you would commit to a print run. Sometimes up a thousand copies of a book, and I used to hear this horror story that I have a garage full of books that I couldn't give away, that I can't even give away. And that was your only option. Now, with print-on-demand companies, Amazon being one of them, Lulu is another one that I use a lot. We don't have to go and commit to a large print run. We can just go print one copy of our book. And that's it. Now, what I love about that, and actually it's a strategy that I want to share more with your listeners in a moment, Lana, that I'm doing is that one-off strategy is actually one of the most exciting marketing vehicle options that we have right now. Because we can literally have tangibility in our hand, like the physicality of something, even before we even write a single word of it. Just ties back to the interest post strategy that I just shared a moment ago. But anyway, to think like that, all these things I'm talking about, this is what I mean by being an entrepreneur. And if you're just focused on writing a book, authoring a book, that's what you're gonna do. You're just gonna lock yourself away. You're gonna write the book, you're not gonna talk about it, you're not gonna do anything with it other than put it up on a platform for someone to buy. As an entrepreneur, again, just any business. I was on a call with, not a call, but a post with another colleague of mine in the book publishing space who is sold. I think last time I checked with him, he's now at $300,000 of sales on a self-published book that he did.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And he was writing a post on LinkedIn just a few days ago about how this particular author that he was working with as a client has invested $10,000 in the development of his book. And he came to my colleague for support with marketing. Now, again, everything I've been talking about, he's invested $10,000, he's done all the things to put the physical product together. He's done nothing in regards to marketing the book. The book is now published. He comes to my colleague because my colleague is really experienced in using Facebook ads. He invested, the author invested $100 in ads and said ads don't work and kill the campaign.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So let that settle.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

$10,000 and Lord only knows how much time to develop that product, and you only invest $100 in advertising, and you say it doesn't work, and then you just basically stop. And my comment back to that when I saw that, because this is common, this is so common, and I said he didn't see the value in advertising. And my comment back was McDonald's and Coke spend millions of dollars every year, every day on advertising. If McDonald's and Coke stop running ads, do you think that people would not know about McDonald's and Coke? But they keep investing in their keeping their brand out there globally because they understand the power of being top of mind. They don't need to spend a dime on advertising, and everyone's gonna know about McDonald's and Coke until this world no longer spins. So why do we think that we don't have to advertise or promote? If multi-billion dollar companies still invest in advertising, why do we think we don't have to do that? So that's what I mean by being you can you're an author who's focusing on creating a product, you're an entrepreneur, and I just fuse the two by looking at how is this a piece of my brand? How is this is the tangible that someone gets to walk away with as a part of being a part of my brand. And I always one last thing I'll say on this, Atlanta, is you're we're always going to pay.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

We're either gonna pay with sweat or cash. But you're gonna pay one way or another.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Have a plan for it, have a strategy for it, have the mindset for it, and understand that there's a cost to doing business. Either our time is gonna be time either way you go, even if you're running ads, you gotta still have time to come up with the ads on what you're gonna say. Which you have to we have to think that way, because each of us are individual business owners. We're not quote unquote just authors. The book is a part of our product suite. It's not the whole thing. If you look at the crime genre or the mystery genre or the romance genre, publishers only want to take those products on if they know there's gonna be a series of books. They're not looking at one-hit wonders. So again, it's a mindset shift that we have to. What I really honestly is not a mindset shift, it's really an identity shift. When you think of yourself that way, your actions will reflect how you identify. So that's what I mean. Mindset shift, people use that word a lot. I don't really care for the mindset shift, like it's an identity shift. And when you think of yourself as an entrepreneur who happens to be the author of a book, and a book is a part of my product suite, I'm gonna make different decisions. And so to me, that's the core definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur. It's how you believe you are about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

And your is all roots rooted in that.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

That's such good advice. How we see ourselves makes all the difference in in everything we do, but especially in this. Well, I'm gonna take 30 seconds to thank our sponsor, Mandela Publishing. Mandela Publishing is an is a traditional publisher with an untraditional model where you keep all your rights and all your royalties, and we give you our part of our program is a guided year. A guided year of marketing help and support and encouragement and networking and so much. So check out our website.com. Honey, you're singing my tune today. I love what you're talking about. Can you give us a case study and kind of walk us through how it would work to sell the book before it's done and all that you were talking about?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Yeah, I have a couple of them. What I'll one I'll share is one that I did recently for a client that came to me. She was in the process of writing her book, working with the publisher already. And one of the first things we did was when she came to me, she already had the thing that a lot of times, to be fair, to many of the listeners that may not have the depth of audience size that she had. When she came to me, she already had 20 something thousand followers on TikTok. Uh maybe three or four or five thousand on YouTube. That has, since we started working together, has I think doubled on both, tripled on YouTube and then doubled on TikTok. So she already had the audience share and the voracious desire for what she was talking about with her social media. And I understand. So going into context, I want to I just want to set that up because I know everyone's not going to always have that. But I when I share the second part of this story, then I'll just preface it, size doesn't always matter. But the first thing that I noticed immediately was her email list, which was basically non-existent. She had about a hundred subscribers on her email list. She hadn't emailed anybody, but she had this really voracious following on social media. So the first thing, being a marketing consultant and what I do with authors, is I'm like, we've gotta, we've got to get some of that share off of this borrowed platform, which could be taken from us at any time. And subsequently, since I think the last time we spoke about this particular client that I have, Lana, her YouTube channel was actually hacked and was down for over a month. So this just goes to preface what I'm saying is that you can have the most prolific social media platform that you spend all this equity and time into. But thus rented, you it's again that term building a business on rented land, that's what that is. So it's so I'm it makes it even it solidifies what I'm gonna say. It's why the first thing that we did was we started to try to drive some of that. We didn't try to, we did we drove a lot of that traffic over from this social media platform into a container that we owned and controlled, which in this case was her email list. So we basically were able to 10x that email list to over a thousand plus people on there. Now, if you look at 25,000 on TikTok and a thousand, that doesn't sound like a lot if you look at the numbers, but let's be clear. Is actually gonna filter down to be the people who really want to know more about what we're doing. So the number's not she only got a thousand people. I'm like, but those were a thousand people that raised their hand and said, yes, I want to now be in a some kind of a communication with you beyond just a random thing I find on social media. That's the first thing we did. The second thing I did was I said, I love the school platform. I have a school platform myself. I said, let's set up a school platform for you where now you can have a two-way conversation as opposed to you just talking at them via social and commenting, but you actually can get on calls like this and actually communicate with them back and forth. So it can be a two-way conversation. And she's like, I don't really know anything about that much, but if you think that's what I should do, let's go for it. So we did. We got our first hundred subscribers like within days of offering that. So we built the email list and we set up the school platform. We got our first hundred people, and then I said, okay, now let's start charging. So the idea that came to me was let's do an annual plan. And if they buy the annual plan, we will give them a copy of the book when the book comes out. We did that and we made the first thousand dollars within a week.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Great.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Within a week. So subsequently, since we started that campaign, she's made over $5,000. And because of issues that have nothing to do with me directly, but issues with the publisher, unfortunately, the book still is not fully ready to go. But she has made over $5,000 in sales, plus she has monthly recurring income of over $500 a month for a book that still is in development. That proved and confirmed my hypothesis about everything I said in the first question you asked me. They're investing in themselves through her because of the connection to her. The book is the piece they get to walk away with. My feeling about it, and so it confirmed that if I can't, if I don't have anything that can help you get more out of what the book is about before the book exists, then okay, yes, I got the book on Amazon and I make maybe three or five bucks per copy, maybe five or six copies. How many copies per month am I gonna have to sell to make $5,000 plus recurring income? Amazon doesn't have a recurring model for authors. That's the first thing. Second thing is those aren't your customers. If someone goes to Amazon and buys your book, that's Amazon's customer. I always say Who holds the whose customer is who holds the credit card information. So again, when we're driving traffic to Amazon directly, whether it's pre-order or once the book is done, if you don't have a way to contact them to let them know about other offers and opportunities that you have, you're building up Amazon's business, not yours. That goes back to the identity. That goes back to being an entrepreneur. Everything that I'm talking about, it all ties together. So again, I it proved what my hypothesis was that if they felt connection to her, which I knew they did because of social, and she provided an opportunity for which they could work with her and yes, compensate her, that they would. And they have, and they do. And they do. I'll share it with myself. When I did my second book, I built up the community. I built up, I built up a blog, I built up a connection. I want them to feel connected to me. I even started pre-selling my book before my book existed. When the book was ready to go live, I sent the email out that morning and I had my, I remember seeing those first sales come through on PayPal. I was so excited. And one of those, I call it my 15 to 15 story. Someone purchased my book for $15 on Facebook, went through it and said, How much would you charge me to implement this? What you wrote in the book. And I was bold, I guess, just whatever, and I said $15,000, and the person said yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

So again, it's it is about the book and it's not.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

That would not have happened had that person already had a connection and a trust in me. The book was the piece they got to walk away with, but what they really wanted was a deeper experience. That's the word I want everyone to listen to, really hear that word, because this is the core of all of this. How can I create an experience around what I do? Experience now more than ever is what people want. They just don't want words printed on paper. They want to know that you're in it with them. And the more that you can be in it with them, they'll pay for that as long as they feel a connection and trust to you.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yes. Wow, what a great concept this is. That thinking about the contents of the book instead of focusing on the physical copy of the book makes all the difference because we pour ourselves into these books. We give our wisdom, we dig deep, we try to deliver, over deliver, and there's so much richness there. But so many times, and this is my experience as an editor, a ghostwriter, working with authors. We're so focused, we're hyper focused on this little thing that's only gonna make us three dollars.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Instead of the 15k.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Exactly. And I'll say, and I'll add that on to that. I know for a fact that I never would have made $15,000 from selling those copies of that book by itself. I know I wouldn't have. I know I wouldn't have. And even if I did, it would have been years before that would have happened, as opposed to one person that was already in my world and my ecosystem that had seen my development, because I shared my process. It took me a year to put that book together. And I kept sharing my process of me developing that book. They were a part of the journey with me. So they felt buy-in into what I was doing. They were just waiting for it to come of to be available for them to purchase. And so I know that sale happened because it really wasn't about the book. But again, I go back to identity. It's who I had to become. I always say it's not about the book, it's about who we become as a process of creating the book. And there's literally thousands of dollars that we leave on the table because we want to hide behind the book. And I tell everyone I work with the money will come when you get in front of it, not behind it. When you're behind it, you're competing with every other book on Amazon. Whoever has the prettier cover is who wins. And you wait to get, what, three or four or five books? And you have to wait, what, 60 to 90 days before Amazon pays you out?

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Who has time for that? Eggs are what, $5 a dozen? And I want eggs now, not two months from now.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Yeah. The numbers just don't work. I mean, from thinking about a business standpoint, um, any entrepreneur that is in a different field, except for books, would look at the numbers that we deal with and go, are you kidding me? This is not even making any sense. And yet, we as authors, we're focused. We're so focused on that. Yeah, I love this conversation. Ronnie, where can we get more from you?

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Thank you for asking. So I have been, as you well know, I have been doing a what I call a masterclass slash webinar. I've ran it now three times called The Authorpreneur Decision, where I started breaking down pretty much everything I've been talking about today. And I've been wanting to write another book for years. And I just never found that thing that really hooked me. But I love to teach. I love, love to teach. That's like my passion to teach. So I developed this, taking all of my experience, my years of experience in the self-publishing game, working with authors. I've helped many people get their books out there. I am more passionate, quite frankly, about marketing and sales than I am about the actual development of the book. That's why I have wonderful people like you that can work on that part of it. And but I've just found it's quite frankly, it's such my frustration that many of even some of the clients I worked with, they have a hard time wrapping their head around it because it just feels so foreign to them to market, to sell, to do things like that. So I try to take a lot of that sting away, which is hence why I started the Authorpreneur Decision Workshop series. And in that presentation, I talk about the 10 identity shifts that need to happen. Because again, if I change the way you think about yourself, if I can help, and I shouldn't change, if I can help impact the way you think about yourself, your actions must be in congruence, congruency with how you feel about yourself. Once your identity shifts, your behavior shifts. So I started that series and I said, oh, that's what my next book is going to be about. And I don't even know if you know about this last time we spoke. But what I've done is I've created.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Oh, wow. How great.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Now I've turned it into a book. Now, here is something I want to share with all the listeners. This is the mock-up of the book that I have made. This is the back cover copy. But if you look on the inside of it, it's just line pages. There's nothing yet.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

What I'm doing is I am sharing this now on my socials and in my marketing. Because I want to prove in real time that a book is not written and a business is not written, it's built. So actually, what I'm looking to do is to invite people into my ecosystem to show them in real time how I'm building this book out in real time with people that I may even be able to feature inside the book. So I'm not leading with the book, but I am showing a strategy on how you can use the physicality of a book in order to grab people's attention. Now I'll still keep doing my masterclass and my workshops. I'll still keep doing that. But inviting people into an experience with me that I can then directly support what they're doing by literally, like, I'm basically making myself my own case study. And then I'm developing that content, which will then go into the book, which may come out possibly in the fall. To answer the question that you asked about how people can get in contact with me, I have a link, which I think you'll have in the show notes, to what I call a blueprint. Excuse me. Of it's like the first sort of preview chapter from the book. I go in depth into the case studies about the client that I have.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

So sorry, give me a sip of water here real quick.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

I featured two case studies in that preview chapter. One is for the client that I have where I share the story about the book waiting on the book to come out. We made the school community. She started monetizing right away. I give more in-depth on that case study inside of the inside the preview chapter. I also have more in-depth about my 15 to 15, my $15 or 15K story inside that. I also have some links in there to join my post creator school community, where I do a weekly complimentaries, 10, 15-minute session called monetization mapping, where basically I want to hear about your book or book idea. I want to hear about who it is that you're creating the book for and what questions or what how do you search. And essentially what I do is I help you start to shape a map of how you can take what I've talked about in this interview and get your first monetization map going where you can start generating income. I like to say, up to your first, my goal is if I can help you get to your first thousand dollars, plus if you have a mock-up of your book ahead of you, guess what? Now you're not talking about from theory. You're actually like looking at this every day, and you're developing income now, which is going to help you create a much better book. Guess what? Depending upon what the subject matter is. Now, if it's fiction, so this is a different conversation. But if it's nonfiction, guess who gets to get featured inside your book? The people who are coming into your initial, your initial ecosystem. I'm really excited about that. As I keep working this out, I get further layers of clarity, which is what I'm also recommending to all of you listening is that you don't build, you don't write a book. You build the book. You build the book and the business around it. And you can't do that effectively, in my opinion, in isolation or a bubble. You need to be, you need to have this back and forth. That is what I know for a fact is what generates sales. And you can't do it beforehand. You're not gonna do it after it's done. You won't.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

You won't do it after so well, such good material. And I'm urging everyone who's listening, listen to this one again. You want to listen to it a second time, and you're gonna hear more things that you didn't hear the first time. This is golden information tonight. Yeah. Great, great. Thank you, Rodney. Thank you so much for being with us.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Oh, my pleasure, Lena. Thank you so much for inviting me and having me on. I know you've been on one of my masterclasses, and I'm gonna be doing more in the future. And uh, yeah, this has really helped to shape how I really want to support us as author creators, published creators. I I'm in a KDP group, Amazon KDP group, and I can't tell you how many posts that I see that actually just breaks my heart of people who have, well, I put my book up on Amazon and I've only and I've made no money, or I've only sold one or two copies, or I see it over and over. And it's not my group, so I can't go in there and start hijacking with my two cents. But I see it over and over again, and I know how hard it can be to do this. And it's so much easier now than it was when I first got started back in the early 90s. It is like light years easier than it was back then because there was no Amazon, there was none of this stuff. There was no print on demand back in 1993, 94 when I did my first book. It's so much easier now. And I believe because it's easier now, it also leans people to that assumption that I don't have to do anything else but produce the product. And that is the biggest disservice that you're not only doing for yourself, for your creativity, for your spirit, but all the people out there that actually can benefit from what you have put together that will never find it or will take forever to find it because you're just not out there talking about it. And so I really am on a mission to change, again, not about just sales, but to change the way that people who are creating books, because I love books since I was a kid. I'm the nerd. The library was my church. And I say it all the time because it's true. And I know how powerful they are and how valuable they are, but they're only as valuable as the persons or the people who consume them. So I'm on a serious mission to help change that because I don't want your book just languishing on Amazon. Amazon's great, but that's a fulfillment center. They collect the cash and they ship the book. That's what their job is.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Their job is not to sell your book. They're not.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

So if you leave nothing away from this conversation, partner with them, but don't rely on them. That's our job. But that will happen when you change the way you think and the way you feel about yourself and your role in this. Make the decision, hence the title of the book, The Authorpreneur Decision. Make the decision that you're going to go, as I say in the subtitle, stop chasing single copy sales and start building a book brand that pays for life.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

When you do that, you're gonna be in a much better position than many who have tons of content on the platform, but they're making no money from it.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

I don't want that for anyone because I know how hard this can be.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

And thank you for being with us today. Thanks for calling up a chair.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Absolutely. I'm glad to be in the chair at any time. I'm always happy to come back.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

See you next time.