Own Your Book Marketing

You can hire help for book promotion, but you cannot outsource the one thing that actually sells books: an author who shows up, believes in the work, and leads the marketing. We see the same trap over and over, across self-publishing and traditional publishing. Writers assume a publisher, a PR firm, or a marketing company will take it from here, and then they feel stuck when nothing moves. We break that myth down and replace it with a simple, realistic approach you can run yourself.

We start with the most overlooked lever in book marketing: your existing network. Friends, family, coworkers, and community connections are not “beneath” a serious launch, they are how serious launches begin. We talk about building early traction, asking for reviews, and using one opportunity to create the next by ending conversations with a powerful question: “Who else should I talk to?” That grassroots momentum is often what makes later media, partnerships, and bigger visibility possible.

From there, we dig into author platform building in a way that does not require you to become someone you are not. “Platform” can be a newsletter, Substack, blog, podcast, or video, as long as it is consistent content for a clear target audience and it is something you can sustain. We also cover why you should start slow, stop comparing your first posts to someone else’s fifth year, and avoid giving up before the compounding effect has time to kick in.

Finally, we get honest about spending money on marketing. Ads and promotions work best after you have soil, not before: a basic platform, some proof like reviews, and a next step for readers. That might be a second book, a series, a course, consulting, or a clear way to stay connected. If you want a smarter book launch strategy and a long-term plan for book sales, hit play, then subscribe, share this with an author friend, and leave us a review.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook

Learn more about Launch My Book

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Argument

Joel 0:10

Hey everybody, welcome to If I'm Being Honest, Straight Talk about Book Publishing and Promotion. My name is Joel Pitney.

Sayde 0:18

And I'm Sadie Walker.

Joel 0:19

And today we are going to be talking about a topic that we are both very passionate, which is why all authors, regardless of your marketing expertise, need to engage with your own marketing at least to some degree.

Sayde 0:35

Yeah, it's something that we run into with every single author that we work with is that they need to take the helm, right, of their marketing ship. And that doesn't mean that you have to know how to do every single thing because you won't, nobody does, but you need to be in the driver's seat.

Joel 0:56

Awesome. So we're going to dive into this topic. We're going to unpack it and we're going to also talk about some things that you can do to actually become a marketer yourself. But before we do that, if you enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to like and rate and subscribe to us on any platform where you get your content. All right. So,

The “I Pay You” Marketing Myth

Joel 1:17

like so many of these topics, Sadie, the reason that we wanted to talk about this is because we're in the field every day working with authors. And we have started to notice that there's a mindset that a lot of people have coming into their author journey. And this is consistent between authors who are traditionally published, authors who are self-published, authors who consider themselves to be pretty, you know, have some experience doing marketing, all the way down to authors who feel like they're a total neophyte when it comes to book marketing. And the mindset that we've noticed a lot is that we we like to call it, we like to call it, uh, I pay you, you sell books. And it's this thing that uh a lot of the people we've that we work with will all they'll call me up and they'll say, Hey, Joel, um, I heard that you're a company that does marketing um for books. Um, I've got this book uh and I just want to be able to write. I want to write my novel, I want to write my memoir, I want to write my, you know, business book, and I need someone who can sell it for me because I don't know anything about selling, or I don't have any time to do marketing, or um, I can barely use a computer. So all this social media and digital marketing stuff is overwhelming. So you, the marketing company, can you guys come on board and just help us? Right.

Sayde 2:42

Yeah, absolutely. We, I mean, that's that's such a common situation that a lot of authors are in. And I think we have a lot of sympathy and empathy for people in that situation. You just wrote a book. You are an expert in whatever that topic was, or you just have a passion for creative writing and you love to write thrillers or romance novels or fantasy. You don't know how to sell that book. That's not, you didn't go to marketing college. You're not a, you know, an expert in any regard. And so they're looking for someone that they can just pay some money and that person will sell their books or that company will sell their books. And unfortunately, there's a lot of companies out there that will take advantage of that mindset and be like, yeah, we can, we'll sell books for you. And it costs, you know, X amount of dollars. And one of the things that we're always trying to do at Launch My Book and through this podcast is make sure that authors are making educated, informed decisions. And with that, we, you know, feel inclined to let people know marketing is really hard and there is no one size fits all solution. There's no, you throw money at it and you'll sell books. That is not how it works. And so it's much more complicated than that. And the authors who are successful, whether they're self-published, traditional published, gone through some sort of hybrid situation, are the ones that are invested in their marketing to some degree.

Joel 4:09

Yep, that's absolutely right. And I just want to emphasize this as well. This is also the same with traditionally published authors, right? And I've worked with a lot of people as a ghostwriter, as a marketer, et cetera, who are on the traditional side of the fence. And they think that once you get a traditional publishing deal, you've made it. That publisher is going to step in and just sell that book for you. And anybody who's ever been in that situation uh probably knows that that is not the truth.

Sayde 4:33

Right.

Joel 4:35

So, um, so what we, as Sadie referred, you know, sort of hinted at, um, we've discovered over the years, working with authors of all stripes, um, all genres, you know, different publishing pathways, the ones who succeed are the ones who become hustlers. And some of those people were hustlers by nature, right? Um, they they're already knew how to market, loved to market, loved to figure out how to sell their books to people. And some people were felt like fish out of water. But in either case, the authors who succeed are the ones who roll up their sleeves and basically own the marketing side of their work. And granted, these are people who've even hired us to do different marketing services, right? Um, but the ones who succeed are the ones who are in charge of their marketing campaign and hiring experts or services within that larger context.

Belief First Lorraine’s Hustle Story

Sayde 5:28

I remember talking with one of our authors many years ago, Lorraine Brodick, who wrote a fabulous memoir on growing up in Hollywood. And uh she we we've done marketing services for her. She's paid us to run some promotions and do some things. But I remember I was chatting with her and I share this with almost every single client that we work with. And Lorraine said to me, she said, if you don't believe in your book, no one else will. And when you talk about hustling, even though Lorraine did invest money and and uh time into marketing campaigns, her success and the reason that that book did so well was because she was constantly talking about it to anyone who would listen. And she sat on boards at her hospital and she knew the principal at the school, and she just would say, Hey, I wrote a book, and she would talk about it, and she was really excited to talk about it and tell them about this book that she wrote. She was proud of it, and that opened so many doors for her. She was on the, she wasn't on the cover, but she was in Phoenix magazine. It's their like top 40 people of the year or something. And so those doors and those opportunities will kind of open in unexpected places. And if you are only seeking outside validation for how great your book is, which totally get, we all are, uh, you you are gonna miss out on some of those, those opportunities. And so, you know, Lorraine's advice was to talk about your book with everyone and be excited about it. Hey, I wrote a book. Did you know I wrote a book and see where that leads to? Because for her, it led to speaking engagements. She read at schools, she was on the she was in Phoenix magazine, she was featured on TV. She got a lot of local publicity in her area that then led to bigger things. And we were coming along beside her and running some marketing campaigns for her that also gave her a nice boost. But the majority of her success was because of the work that she did herself.

Joel 7:29

And a lot of people, I mean, this is this is part of the equation. A lot of people uh overlook the details. They overlook the small stuff that Lorraine was advocating, right? They think that there's some magic formula, some PR firm that they can hire, some national media tour that they can go on, or some kind of big influencer that they can connect with, who's gonna, who's gonna sort of magically take their book and go from zero to 60 overnight. And that's often why people will hire companies, because a lot of companies say, oh, well, we're gonna bring this to you. Or why a lot of people they just never get over the failure to launch because they're they're so intimidated and they feel like the only way that they can do marketing well is to hit these highfalutin, big, sophisticated, savvy, you know, perceptions of what marketing a book actually looks like. When there's all these little things that just start right at home. They start with what you already have, the people you know. I mean, or or as Lorraine said, loving and believing in your own book and then being willing to just talk about it. It's like a snowball effect, right? It starts small, it grows, it grows, it grows. If you ever want the big, the big people or the big media outlets to ever take you seriously, you have to start small.

Sayde 8:45

Yep.

Joel 8:45

That's kind of how the game works. And um starting small is almost always gonna be up to you. It's not gonna be anything anyone else can do for you.

Sayde 8:54

Right. Yeah, we were just working on a campaign for an author she's traditionally published, uh, and her book launched earlier in May, and she'd been working on it for many years. And again, we had helped with some of that. Uh, we did some platform building for her, helped her with an author website, things like that. And on launch day, we had helped come up with a strategy for her to reach out to her friends, her family, her colleagues, people she used to work with in Washington, D.C., former professors that she worked with. And, you know, we just crafted some messaging and she started sending out emails to her, her network. These were not, you know, people that we would have known or any PR firm would have been able to connect her to. These were, these were people within her own circle and letting them know that her book was out and, you know, that they could go buy a copy, buy a copy for a friend, leave a review. And the response was astronomical. She, you know, she had such a warm welcome on launch day. She sold so many books on launch day, and and it was all just from that network of people that, like you said earlier, we often overlook. We want to straight, we want to shoot for national media or at least, you know, regional media influencers, other authors, and we're not thinking about the people that we know in our own circles that also have connections that can help champion your book and are excited to help champion your book. And they want, they want something to do and they want to to show that they're proud of you. And that is step one for everyone. Do not discount your friends and your family and your coworkers and you know, people that you've stayed connected with over the course of your life and career.

Joel 10:45

That's awesome.

Use Your Existing Network First

Joel 10:46

And Sadie has just naturally and organically jumped us into the solutions part of the podcast, which is awesome. Um, we often like to talk about a myth in publishing or book promotion um and talk about why it's not true. And so, in this, we've been talking about this sort of myth of how uh you can't you can just hire someone or outsource your marketing to someone else. And so we wanted to talk about solutions as well. And we identified four of them. And the first one is the one that Sadie just talked about. So um, just to add a little bit of just so, you know, for the note takers and the bullet readers out there, I want to make sure that you know we're we're gonna talk about four different ways that you can actually take control of your marketing in the way that we're suggesting. And the first one is don't overlook what you already have. Um, I have an interesting case study from a book that um, a book that I ghostwrote. And this was a higher level book. We had a big publisher, uh, an advance, uh, you know, agents involved, all that kind of stuff. And we hired a really, really fancy uh PR firm from New York that was very, very good and spent lots of money on it. Um and I remember during the during the campaign saying, okay, we can do all this, we can hire these companies, we can have the publisher do this and that. But at the end of the day, the thing that's really going to move the needle is the grassroots network of connections that this author had. You know, the people, the activists and and professors and um thought leaders and business connections that um the author had developed throughout their career. And I remember having to spend a lot of time saying, no, no, you really need to reach out to this group. And the author was often saying, Well, no, I don't really have time for that. That feels a little beneath me. Aren't I gonna sound a little thirsty reaching out to people and desperate saying, hey, go do me this favor, do me this favor, that, blah, blah, blah. Can't we just hire this firm to get me on Good Morning America and in the New York Times Review of Books, right? And even though the PR firm did a good job getting some coverage, at the end of the day, the thing that really moved the needle was this grassroots stuff that I was finally able to convince the author to take on. Those are the people in your networks. And there's this weird thing in human psychology, which I think Sadie alluded to earlier, that um we tend to sort of focus on what we don't have, the new audience. We sort of consider, we take for granted what we already have and assume that, you know, that that's the less sexy aspect of the marketing. And yet, that's the group that's really going to get the snowball rolling for you.

Sayde 13:27

Yeah. And that's, I think, absolutely. And the more that we tell these stories and the more that we talk about these case studies and we talk about them, you know, when we're talking with authors who may or may not hire us for for a variety of reasons, you know, it's important that that this mindset become widely talked about and normalized, that starting with what you have. And I and I want to emphasize that because there exists in all of us sort of a a need or a want for validation, um, in especially when we're writing a book, right? Like you want to win an award, or you want to get an amazing Kirkus Review, or you want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, or whatever the thing is that you're like, you want to be on Stephen Colbert, you know, talking about your book. Like whatever the thing is that you're like, that would just really, I would feel then as if I've arrived. Uh we all understand that mindset, but it's easy to take advantage of that mindset. And so if if that's what you're after, you might find yourself engaging with a company to do book marketing uh that can't, that says they can give you those things and they can't. And not in any way trying to bash anyone, just being uh keeping your feet on the ground when you are going to spend money marketing your book that you're not being taken advantage of and that you're someone there's not someone out there who's getting your hopes up really high, like, oh yes, we can we can do these things for you. Because just like you said, even even the expensive PR firms that have connections and do amazing work still can't do the work that you, the author, can do. You are the only one that can that can uh drive that grassroots marketing, which is actually where the value is.

Joel 15:18

Yep. So what does that look like, right? I mean, I can imagine some people listening say, oh, and and and still imagining someone else who has great networks and they're the ones who can really do this, but I can't. I don't know anyone. I'm just a school teacher, I I'm a beautician, or you know, I'm not famous, I don't know anyone important. Well, let's talk about it, right? So, how do you do that, right? How do you actually start to uh what what do you do for your own networks? Well, um we all have friends and we all have family, right? That is a good place to start. If if you can't get them excited about your book, it's gonna be hard to get a stranger excited about your book, right? And often the friends and family you have, you're often gonna share interests and values and tastes. So they're probably gonna like the kind of things you're writing about, right? And uh if you can get them excited, then uh starting off as sort of a favor to you, really, because they know you, all kinds of cool things can start to happen, right? Uh, first of all, they're gonna buy books. And if they they'll often buy books for friends um as gifts to support you. Um these are the group, these are the folks who can get you your first 25 Amazon customer reviews, which is a great milestone for the Amazon algorithms. Can you get to 25 customer reviews? You can often find enough family and friends to get you there, right? You can also ask them for connections. It's amazing, you know. Everybody talks about the what is it, the how many degrees of separation we are from Kevin Bacon, right? Everybody's like an average of three or four. I forget exactly what it is. You're the one who owns a movie theater, say.

Sayde 16:50

Yeah, I think it's seven.

Joel 16:51

Seven, okay.

Sayde 16:52

Seven degrees of capability.

Joel 16:53

Seven degrees. So everybody, that means we're all connected in some way to somebody through somebody else. And uh, if you're willing to look through your network and and think optimistically and not just quickly dismiss, quickly say, Oh, I couldn't ask this person or I this person couldn't possibly introduce me to that, you never know what's going to start happening. So as you get people excited about your book and ask them, hey, do you know anyone else? Right. We often will do this. Uh um we've got a client right now who's doing who who's who's starting to get um gigs booked at uh different hospitals to speak to their staff about the the subject of their book. And once you get one, right? Right. You can ask the people who helped organize that one if they could connect you to other people at other hospitals or whatever it is, or teachers' associations or book groups or to connect you with other ones.

Sayde 17:50

Yep.

Joel 17:50

And it's this little snowball effect. You just you you find these little opportunities and then you leverage them into the next thing.

Sayde 17:57

Right.

Joel 17:57

You can never get to the next thing unless you start with what you already have. There's literally nowhere to skip first base. You have to start there and then see what comes, and you have to be willing for it to be really small and seemingly insignificant in the beginning.

Sayde 18:11

And you have to be willing to not actually know where it's gonna go because some of this you can't plan out. You can just be talking with a friend of yours about your books and you're really excited, and they're coming out in October. And, you know, maybe your friend knows so-and-so who runs a nonprofit organization that has a tie in with one of the themes of your books, and they would love to figure out how to sell some of your books during their resource fairs or whatever. There are going to be opportunities that you can't even fathom that are only going to get to you if you are talking about your book and if you're excited about talking about your book. And uh, and certainly some of it you might, you know, as you're looking at your own network, you might be like, okay, I'm I definitely need to talk to my friends over here because they they run a hospital and I used to work with them, and so they're gonna be the first person I go to, you know, to talk about my book. And then when you when you start that conversation or you land your first speaking gig, or you know, the local newspaper interviews you and the reporter comes out and he's talking to you about, you know, the themes of your book or how we got here, you follow that up with who else should I talk to? You know, like great, is do you know anyone else who might be interested in this? That is an easy, low-hanging, thank you so much for having me. Is there anyone else that you think I should talk to about this? And it puts, you know, it it puts the question on them to to think about, like, oh yeah, okay, who else might be interested in in having you as a speaker, or who else might be interested in doing a an expo on on your book? And and sometimes there will be nothing, but I used to work as a journalist, and that was my favorite last question to ask people was who else should I talk to? There was always someone. And so you just you take the opportunity and you be grateful for the opportunity to talk to someone, speak, you know, whatever the the thing is, and then and then you leverage it and you say, Who who else? Where else should I go? And what other book clubs do you know of that might be interested in in this book? You know, whatever the situation is, and something will happen.

Joel 20:14

It always does. So um, so this is this has been our our first point, which is to don't overlook the networks you already have. And we actually have a video on our website called Three Ways to Mobilize Your Tribe to Launch Your Book or something along those lines. We'll put a link in in the show notes. Um we go into you know much greater depth on this topic and give a lot of tactics and tools for how to do this kind of thing. Um but I want to move on to our next point. Uh, but before we do, if you're enjoying this episode, um, we're trying to reach lots and lots and lots of people, writers, authors out there who need who need this kind of advice and kind of help to publish, write, and promote their books. Um, so and a great way for to do that is to share this episode or like it or subscribe to it or comment to it, comment on it um on whatever your platform is. So um

Build A Platform You Can Sustain

Joel 21:04

point number two in how to take command of your own marketing, even if you feel a little nervous about it, is to start some kind of a platform. And that can be intimidating for people, you know, because what is platform? When people hear platform, a lot of people just think, oh, TikTok. I can't do TikTok. What are you talking about? Or I don't know anything about that, right? Um, platform, we like to define platform very loosely. Platform um is some kind of consistent content that you are generating that will appeal to your target audience.

Sayde 21:41

Mm-hmm.

Joel 21:42

Now, that content can take many forms. And one of Sadie and I's golden rules of platform building is you have to figure out the platforms and the forms of content that you're actually comfortable with.

Sayde 21:55

Right.

Joel 21:56

You can't try to be a square peg in a round hole.

unknown 21:59

No.

Joel 22:00

So just because your just because your son or your granddaughter has told you TikTok or Book Talk is the place to be, if you have no idea what TikTok or Book Talk is, you're uncomfortable with it and you do not want to learn about it and you do not want to be on video, don't worry. Don't do that. It's not gonna work. Right.

Sayde 22:19

Right. Yeah. You can't and and it won't be sustainable. You know, it'll be if if your marketing, if your platform building is something that you're dreading every single day, and you're like, oh my God, I have to make another video for TikTok and I don't know what to say, then it's not gonna be sustainable, and therefore it's not gonna work in the long run because platform building is slow and steady. And so you have to find the thing that you enjoy. And for authors, oftentimes the thing that they enjoy is writing because they just wrote a book, right? And there's ways to, you know, you Substack or having a blog on your website. There's ways to make writing be your platform. But I've known a lot of authors who like to get on video and like to just kind of riff, you know, camera to face to camera type videos or have someone else there lobbying questions at them so that they can answer questions and talk through some of their ideas, some of their, some of their thoughts. And so you have to find what you enjoy doing, and you and it's probably gonna take some experimenting to see what that is.

Joel 23:19

You don't, exactly. You do not have to figure this out in advance. You can start early and you can experiment and see what see what works, see what you like, see what you don't like. I mean, Sadie and I have learned we like this. This is we've got all kinds of different content that we and we just we like to talk about these different points and we like to talk about them with each other because we do this all the time.

Sayde 23:42

All the time.

Joel 23:43

And we also like to talk to other people in the book industry, professionals, um, other authors who have succeeded. We like to just explore things together. We also like writing, but there's something really cool about the chemistry of getting on the camera and recording an audio and a video uh conversation about these really cool topics.

Sayde 24:01

And so we've we've had authors who have started podcasts.

Joel 24:05

Yep.

Sayde 24:05

You know, as they're they're moving through the publishing process, they've have started a podcast, launched a podcast so that they can talk about their expertise, their themes in the book, and as a way to just get some of those initial ideas out before the book even launches. And so that, you know, that's an option too. You don't have to spend all your time pitching yourself as a guest on someone else's podcast, although that's a great tactic as well. You can, you know, start your own and just go, you know, and for and for in the beginning, you're gonna be talking into the void. That's just natural, but it's good because you can practice that way and you can start to kind of get a feel for the kind of content that you're creating and what you're enjoying and and what you're good at, how long it takes you, and then eventually, you know, it it will start to, it will, you'll start to get some listeners or you'll start to get some followers. You'll start to, once again, though, you start with the people that you know. You know, you you start your Facebook page for your author business, for your new author kind of uh career, and you share it with all of your friends and family and say, please go like my my new Facebook page and follow along on this journey with me. It would mean a lot. And what are they gonna do? They're gonna go follow it and they're gonna start liking your posts and encouraging you. And that is gonna help more people find you.

Joel 25:22

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's the platform piece of this, right? And again, there's a lot more to doing platforms, but it's the kind of thing there's also a ton of information out there that you can start engaging with. We've got a lot on our website. Um, you can go to Jane Friedman's website, she's got all kinds of great resources on that. And, you know, Google and ChatGPT are your friend here. Um, but at the end of the day, you have to remember that you're the one who is gonna figure out what your platform's gonna be. You can get expert feedback, you can get expert input, but you're gonna have to experiment stuff and you're gonna with with the different things, and you're gonna have to make those decisions at the end of the day about what works for you. And it's gotta feel right. It really does have to feel right. So um that leads us to our next point.

Start Slow And Do Not Quit

Joel 26:09

So we've we've covered uh don't overlook the network that you have, starting some kind of a platform. Then the third point is start slow. And this is honestly related to the first two points in a lot of ways. Um, but a lot of people want to just jump right into right into it, right? Or or want they they need that the they need their marketing efforts uh to be yielding fruit immediately. Right. And as we've been talking about, it just isn't that way. Right? You're not gonna just because you didn't get a million followers on your account that you just launched, or because your book didn't vault up to number one ranking the first week that it was launched, doesn't mean that it's not succeeding or it can't be successful. It doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong, that the experiment has failed.

Sayde 27:01

Absolutely. And and with that, don't give up too soon. You know, I think that's the, you know, I think we can all kind of uh uh recognize that maybe we're we're watching someone else do this on, you know, maybe we're following their platform or we listen to their podcasts, or we are we were a fan of their writing and we bought all their books, and you're kind of seeing these other people out there who are doing this thing that you're like, yes, I want to do that. And so then your measure of whether or not you're successful might look like that other author and how many followers they have and how often they're posting to YouTube or whatever the thing is. And but they started somewhere also. And what I tell authors who uh often will come to me with a, you know, uh with like almost an author crush, right? They're like, well, so-and-so over here on TikTok, and and I'll say, that's great. Go back as far as you can and look at their first TikTok videos. Look at the first posts that they did on Instagram and see how many likes they got and how many comments they got. Everybody starts at square one. It does not matter who you are. And so it's it is a it's a slow build, it's a sustainable, it has to be a sustainable build. And you, it's good to have those goals in mind of where you want to be, but don't give up too fast because this kind of thing can take years. It can, it can take years. And sometimes, you know, your first book doesn't take off until you write a second book. Like this is not an overnight, I think we harp on this all the time, but book marketing and and author success doesn't it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in the first week, it doesn't happen on launch day.

Joel 28:43

Amen to that. Um, and I think, you know, I think uh I think we've covered that point pretty well, Sadie. Um and I I'd like to move into the last point, before one. And by the way, these four are by no means exhaustive. There are probably 17 to 97 points on this topic. Um, how do you actually take over and take command? But we're what we wanted to do is kind of distill some of you know four of the more salient points that people can use to to kind of get over the hump and really, really start being their own marketer. So

Spend Money Later Make The Math Work

Joel 29:18

the last one is uh has to do with um when you should spend money and how much should you spend, right? Because a lot of people think they can just solve the problem with money. And as a company that people pay to do marketing, one of the first things I often tell them is you're probably not ready to spend a lot of money yet on this. You shouldn't hire us yet. I don't like people to throw money at us to solve their marketing for them unless they already have some other things in place. Right. Um, that doesn't mean that it's okay, you know, some people have some money to invest in their book and they can go ahead and just spend it on marketing services, et cetera, and that's fine. Um, but if you really want to build something successful long term, you really want to be frugal in the beginning with your money. You can't expect to you're not gonna get a great ROI right out of the gates. Right. Um, and there's there's kind of two big reasons for that. So the first one is um you need to experiment, as we've been talking about. You need some time to kind of figure out well, who is your target audience, really? What is your key selling point? What's working with the market? Uh, what is your platform? What is the thing that you like to do that you can sustain and that people are engaging with, right? Um, you also need to gain a little momentum, right? Like uh wouldn't it be you want to get those first 25 to 50 customer reviews before you start pushing a bunch of other people to your site? Because guess what? If someone shows up on your Amazon page and they see that you have no customer reviews, they're gonna be less likely to make a purchase than if they have 38 customer reviews. And so you don't want to be throwing good money um uh at your book too early.

Sayde 31:02

Amen to that. Yeah. And it's, you know, I d I mean, again, this just kind of comes back to the whole point of our podcast and of our platform and and what we are trying to accomplish is in the education space, is, you know, of course, yeah, you can you can pay us to do marketing. There's all kinds of companies that you can pay us to do marketing, but should you or should you wait? And sometimes, almost always, the the better option is just is just to wait, to take it slow, do some of this initial work yourself, get the book off the ground yourself through your networks, through building your own platform, and then maybe invest in invest some dollars in marketing. So when do you think, Joel, an author would be ready to spend some money marketing?

Joel 31:50

Well, you know, that that's a relative question, of course. Um uh to me, you can spend some money to get to build some of the things that we've talked about, right? Um, like your platform, getting, you know, getting getting the basics of your platform together. But you should be doing most of the work. You shouldn't be hiring someone to build a platform for you. You could hire someone to build a website that'll support your platform. But don't hire companies to go out there and create a bunch of social media content, all that kind of stuff for you. That doesn't make sense. Um, you gotta figure out how to do it yourself. You might get an assistant who can help you publish some of that content, but it's got to be generated yourself. So the time that you want to start spending money, there's there's got to be a few things in place. So the first thing is you need to have a platform, right? I think of the platform as the soil of your garden, right? You can't just throw fertilizer on a bad soil. You need good soil first, and then you can add some, you know, nice organic fertilizer to that really awesome soil. It's gonna do better. So you want to make sure that you've at least established some semblance of a platform. And that means that the, you know, when you do when you do start spending money to promote yourself through advertisements or different times of things, people are gonna see that you're more legit. And also they're gonna have a way to stick with you besides just buying your book. They're gonna have a blog they could subscribe to or a TikTok channel that they could watch or or whatever, right? So you want to have that infrastructure in place. Um, that's kind of the minimum, I think. You know, having your book out there, having that platform established, and then, and then what's ideal, the the ideal to place to start really investing more money is having multiple books or having a way to monetize the sale of a single book into something more. And uh this is a really common thing in the book industry. And everybody that I talk to, when they're being honest, agrees on this, right? Uh if you're a fiction, if you're a fiction author, you need to have that next book ready. Yeah. Right. Um, before you start spending big money. Because uh when you're doing advertisements or promotions or different types of things, you're not gonna make your money back on a single book, right? You're gonna spend more, you're gonna spend more money to get someone to buy a book than you're gonna make in royalties, even if you're self-publishing.

Sayde 34:05

Right.

Joel 34:05

That's just the way that that's just the way the math works. And I'm confident in that math. I've talked to hundreds of people and they tend to agree. Right. Very successful authors.

Sayde 34:14

Absolutely.

Joel 34:14

Where you start to make your money is when that person reads that first book that you've kind of paid them to read in a way and love it so much that they want to do the next thing. Whether, and if that's nonfiction, maybe it means signing up for your course, right? Or booking you as a consultant, depending on what your model is. If you're a fiction author, it might be reading the book two in the series. Or if you don't write series, maybe it's like, oh, I love this, you know, sci-fi book about robot spiders. Uh I I want to read the other sci-fi book about, you know, um, I don't know, demon dolphins or something. I sorry, I'm I'm not very good with sci-fi. Um so uh you you want to have that second product and that that's free.

Sayde 34:58

Right.

Joel 34:58

Right? So you you lose money to get them interested, but then once they like it, they're gonna buy your other books and you're gonna pay zero dollars for that.

Sayde 35:06

In a way, you're you're investing in readership, right? Your marketing dollars are not so much about selling your book and recouping that through royalties. You're investing in finding a reader who then is gonna want to read the rest of your collection. And I'm a I'm an avid fiction reader. I also read nonfiction, but I love I love fiction. And um, I uh last summer was given, sent an advertisement through Amazon based on other books that I had read that said, Hey, you know, you might like Southern Book Club's Guide for Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendricks. And I'm in, I'm in publishing and book marketing, and I said to myself, that's the greatest title of a book I think I've ever. And I bought it because I loved the title. Took me a couple months, it was a thick, hefty book, took me a couple months to sit down and actually read through it. And then I immediately gave it to my sister and I said, You have to read this book. And then from there, we spent our entire summer reading through Grady Hendricks's entire collection of books, all based on one Amazon ad for one book. Wasn't his first, it was kind of more in the middle of his collection, and then we read all of his books. And if you, you know, if you can find your readers, they will read through your collection. If the book is good and if it appeals to the audience that you're, you know, targeting, then it that's you know, that's that's all the all the social capital and proof that you need uh to invest in that first book. So I I do, I just want to drive that point home that that having more than one book can can make all of the difference, especially like you said, if you are monetizing that first book uh to to you know grab readers into, and it doesn't even have to be a series, it can just be like this is these are the kinds of books that I love to write and I publish and and finding finding the readers for those.

Joel 37:01

Yep. And you know, look, the theme running through all this is that readers need to have a way to continue to engage with you.

Sayde 37:08

Yeah.

Joel 37:09

Right. That's this, that's the, you know, whether it's a platform that they can go subscribe to after they read your book or another book they can read or something, they there needs to be something established. And I otherwise the math just doesn't work out.

Sayde 37:22

And I think we're seeing that trend more and more with a lot of the authors that we're working with. You know, it's becoming more standard at the end of the book to have some sort of call to action page. You know, some way, whether it goes to your website or your Substack or your podcast, some way that readers, when they finish your book, can stay connected with you so that you can stay stay connected with them and let them know when book two is coming out. Or, you know, we we have some authors right now who we're in the middle of publishing book one and they they're already thinking about and working on and planning the launch for book two, recognizing that you have to have multiple books to build a community.

Final Takeaways And How To Reach Us

Joel 38:01

There you go. So I think Sadie and I could go on and on about this, and we probably will, you know, uh tomorrow, uh, because it's one of our favorite topics. But I hope uh that's all the time we have on this episode, I believe. And I hope that everybody's found this useful. If you have, please like, share, subscribe, all the good things. Um, if you ever have any questions about any of this, you can reach out to either of us, Joel at launchmybook.com and Sadie at launchmybook.com. Uh, you can check out our company as well. Check out all our other content on the podcast, on our website. We're out here to try and help people. That's what we're doing. So um, we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear any questions you might have. Um, and I hope that uh this will inspire you and empower you to be your own, be your own marketing boss and kind of step up to the plate and figure out how to do this.