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the four mistakes that new authors absolutely must avoid. They want to achieve amazing success with today's special guests. Derek Decker on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Convert Kit To find out how Conferred Kid can help you grow your business, save money and increase your relationship with your email list. Head over to serve no master dot com Backslash Convert kit Right now, Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams Now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. Yes, So I'm really excited. Thio, find the connect with you. Actually, it's cool that Jesse was able to connect us in him been friends for almost 10 years now, so I'd love to really hear how you transitioned from doing a lot of direct marketing stuff. I know you're doing a lot of stuff, I think, in the fitness space. If I remember right and then you move really into teaching a lot about how people can become successful in Amazon, and how did you kind of go through that transition? So for me, I mean health and fitness started out more as ultimately. I kind of see the big picture thing was a way to create financial freedom for myself to do music, which was originally my intention was to become a rock star. So it's been it's been a number of stepping stones toe ultimately get to the authorship. So the health and fitness was to create the online business. And what ended up just working well for me after a lot of failed attempts at different things affiliate marketing, blogging, YouTube videos, even my first couple books didn't really go anywhere. My Kindle book 50 Fitness Tips, You wish you knew it took off, become a number one best seller. And the success of that I looked at it and I was like, I really wish someone had taught me certain things that I didn't learn in the different courses and things that I had studied for Kendall Publishing and self publishing. And so I think it was my own desire to sort of, ah, teach others. What? What I wish I knew just like the book 50 Fitness Tips You wish you knew was teaching people the fitness information. I wish I knew. So that's how I I started to transition into also doing authorship Training's several months after that book became a number one bestseller and us for the next year. So over 2013 I kind of straddled of both health and fitness and authorship. And now more and more, I'm doing authorship and I'd say more just general personal development in success type of training. Okay, well, you know, I'm a big I'm a big fan of your training. I went there a couple of your courses before, get together on this phone call and have to stab in. Very impressed. What would you say is the biggest mistake that new people on Amazon make that new independent authors and people moving into that space make? Yeah, it's hard to say the biggest mistake. I have to really go big picture and say that it's not treating it like a business. They treat it like a hobby, and then they wonder why they're not successful. And I can appreciate where my background being a musician, I can see certain things I can relate to of what I'd call it, say the creative types, which is I just want to do what I love. I wantto do what I think looks cool or sounds good. Or, you know, people are like an idiot if they don't get how good this this book is or whatever, even though it's got a crappy cover, even though the title isn't captivating all these different things, so really understanding the business side of things in marketing. And so I'm grateful that I had a background in, you know, studying online marketing in the marketing world. That gave me an appreciation for where I was able to combine that also with my creative sensibilities. And it's not either be creative and do something cool and, you know, valuable or just be a total rip off and knock off. You actually have this this balance of both where you model what works, and he sort of imitate what works, and at the same time you had your own creativity to it so that's ultimately about understanding. Business in the role of business is to go on, provide value, deliver to people what they want, give people what they also are looking for and, at the same time, be able to stand out and be creative in that process. So it's not just, ah, carbon copy of O R another me to book that's out there, which is this delicate yin yang type of balance and dance that takes place, which is actually a business principle. So creativity in the creative expression that I have, ah, great appreciation for us. Ah, music composer actually goes hand in hand with business, and I used to think they were kind about odds. And it's not the case at all. You mentioned something that I was find fascinating and said, so many independent authors they have. We just I always see these terrible covers that I wonder, especially with creative people, like people can identify a bad cover unless it's their own. Why do so many in an office come up with just like brutal covers? Well, there could be there could be a number of reasons that I guess one is maybe looking at it from a purely functional standpoint and maybe a should mentality. Will. People shouldn't judge a book by its cover. They should judge it by its value. And you know, we could play the Should game all day long At the end of the day is what do people actually d'oh! And people actually judge a book by its cover. So I know for myself I get kind of frustrating like, Oh, it shouldn't matter or whatever. But I learned, you know, results speak for themselves. So one thing is just a mentality that it shouldn't matter. Another thing is, and you mentioned it, being able to identify and others and not, you know, oneself. And that is that is really the big thing that we all deal with this human beings and that we have our blind spots, and it's why I have coaches or mentors where I get feedback, whether it's on covers, I run surveys, whether it's on book titles, on book descriptions. I mean, it's it's just something about human nature is that when we're so in to something, it's kind of it can be harder to be objective about it as much as I can train my mind and take a step back and distance myself from my own work. It's typically gonna be a lot easier for someone else to give me honest outside feedback. And that's just the way it is. You know, there's nothing wrong if a doctor can't operate on themselves, that's just kind of the way it is. So we we need other people outsiders to do certain types of jobs and functions for us, Which is why I am a big fan of getting outside feedback on a lot of different forms. Some people really struggle with the thought of writing their first book or with the daunting task. They get kind of into the middle of the book and they can't find a way out. What do you recommend, or how do you help authors that it kind of stuck in the writing face? Well, I mean, they could depend on what their particular let's say, issue or challenge is. Summit could be structural some. It could be a more of a psychological locker barrier. Another thing. So one general principle here is that it's typically better to prevent it than to try to fix something. You know, that's true with health, and that's certainly true with business and book writing challenges. So I was actually just last night talking to ah woman who had a traditional publishing deal. She wrote her own book and she had a traditional publishing deal, and I was asking her about the difference. And she mentioned that with a traditional publisher she would have to basically give them all of the chapter titles in advance. All of that. This is what the heading is gonna be. The paragraph, the first paragraph, second paragraph like break everything down and then go fill that in. And if she wanted to change any of it, she had to run it back by them for approval. And on one him, she felt a little bit kind of restricted by that kid. She would start to get into it and then have to, you know, like, Oh, man, I want to change this or whatever. However, she was also freed up because by the time that was all set in, approved, all it was then at that point was basically like fill in the blanks in the whole book came together much quicker. Could she set up the structure ahead of time had it planned out ahead of time compared to her own book, where, she said, it took like a couple of years because she'd get in the middle of it. And she's like, No, I want to change this or I don't like this any more And all that. And so there's an element of having the discipline to structure something that could be useful while also having some freedom and flexibility to make some some adjustments. And once again, it's a balancing act. So the more an author can do to get something structured ahead of time, great. If it's too structured, it doesn't allow for the natural organic flow. If there's no structure, though, that's when it's just like this, never ending, always changing work that never seems to get done. So, finding what the author needs in that case do they need more freedom? Do they need to kind of maybe break out of some of the boxes that they put on themselves to move forward? Or did they need toe, put on some more constraints and actually discipline themselves to work more within a structure? And for some authors, that's gonna help them move forward. So all I come back, Thio, you know, physical fitness analogies. It's kind of like sometimes what people need is rest in recovery and some stretching in order to move forward. Some people might need Maur resistance training and strengthening and contraction to move forward, and ultimately, we kind of want this balance of both. So there's not going to be a one size fits all answer. It's understanding that there's kind of a balancing act between these two different components off structure as well as flexibility and figuring out what's gonna best serve an author in that moment. How can people transition? How can someone who's a new author transition from just being someone who wrote a book to someone who's starting or building a business? So this is one thing is, if a person has written a book, I would say they've already created their business. And so getting in the in the mentality that it's kind of like even with a book writer wants to writing a book, you're an author or you're an aspiring author, you're a writer. Once you have a book, you you have your business. Your book is your business. So if he's talking about building a bigger business on the back end, one thing that I would say is that something to really consider some of these things ahead of time. And what do I want my book to accomplish for me, too? I wanted to give you more exposure to I want to sell something on the back end. Do I want to sell other books in a series? These are all things to start considering, ideally, before you even write the book because the book is set up in positioned to then support those other things. And at the same time, for some, it's going to be a learning process of figuring out. I'm gonna put out books and see what resonates with people. And then I might once I have enough readers, see what they want and then build a business or a product or more, you know, give my readers just basically more of what they want or what they asked for. So that's build the audience first and then create the product or service for that audience that's built these air kind of big picture answers because it's definitely going to be something That's an individual approach for what a person's goals are, and I've seen so many different things work. That that's the beautiful thing, slash overwhelming thing is that there's there's a lot of different ways to do it, and part of it is modeling what works and then part of us also realizing that would just cause It's another person's path that might not be my path. What advice do you have for people that are trying to find the topic that should write about or they know they want to write something, But they have no idea what type of audience they confined or what topic they should write about. So there's traditionally to kind of schools of thought or approaches to this one is, you do research on what is what is popular and you go right for that war. What is popular in less competition in and you write for that and there's ways through various keyword research, in doing category research in software and lots of lots of tools on that. So that is one approach, and I know some people are successful that since it's not the approach that I have personally taken or taught as much. It's something that I would say, You know, that's an option. And if you want to know more than know how, you know, find the people that are doing that and they're certainly a number of trainers out there. My approach is another way of going about doing. And that's really asking yourself. What am I personally passionate about? What do I have knowledge on what I'm What am I an expert on? And it comes more from within and for that number of others and myself included. Take the basic approach of you know what, what I teach myself, you know, myself that was five years younger than where I'm at right now, or even a year younger or 10 years younger. So I think about Derek five years ago. What do what would I have taught myself about book publishing or Derek when I first started out, or about health and fitness or about, you know, whatever. For some people, it would be, you know, in a relationship after number of broken relationships, and they finally, you know, figure it out. What would I have told my younger self? That would have saved me a lot of Ah, lot of headache, a lot of struggle or would have really helped me out. And so that's That's another approach, which is really looking at your own knowledge and expertise, or another variation of that is looking at the people who maybe already come to you. Are there people who come to you? And this is speaking more for the advice, how to type of books for advice? You know, what are they asking you advice on? And that's when I learned that even though I was aspiring musician and a broke valet Parker, when I first got started, I still had people coming to me for health and fitness advice and that first I was like, Well, there's so many other people who are like, actually established, like big name people like, Yeah, I know a lot about health and fitness that this is just a hobby for me, and what I realize is that people weren't buying, you know, the knowledge of the information, which they could have found anywhere. They were buying my perspective, and they were buying the trust that they were buying into the idea that they had trust in me. They knew me. They saw my results. They trusted me as a friend, and that's why they came to me for advice. And so when I started seeing how many people came to me for advice on that topic, that's when it empowered being gave me the confidence to say that you know what people are coming to me. They want to hear for me. So I'm gonna start to share what I know about this topic. So that's that's the other overall approach. Is looking at your own knowledge, your own background, your own passions for whatever you like to talk about, whatever gets you fired up and whatever, We'll just sort of come out of you. Naturally, What do you see as the future of the bookmark it? There have been a lot of, you know, big changes of the last 10 and 20 years from all paperback toe these digital platforms, kindles and nooks and all these devices. How do you see things moving forward over the next 35 10 years? Well, for me personally, one area that I've seen growing in my own business and for a number of other authors is the audio book market. So I believe that's going to continue to grow and get bigger and bigger, like a podcast, for instance, right? It's audio and just the fact that if you're listening to listening to this listeningto other podcasts goes to show you that even though they've been around for a number of years, they're continuing to grow in popularity. So that's one trend that I see increasing, which is why I've gotten almost all of my books now on audiobook format. So I believe that's gonna be a big thing. As faras the other marketplaces. It seems like Amazon is really starting to dominate the E book market place with Kendall, and also the brick and mortar stores do not seem to be doing as well. That being said, you know, I really don't I really don't have too many predictions of the future. Things can change so rapidly with technology. I believe, though, that the audio market will continue to grow. What happens for someone? They write their first book. They spend two or three years writing at blood, sweat and tears. They finally relieve some the Amazon, and nobody's buying it. Nobody's leaving reviews. They're not getting any traction. What advice do you have for someone who's in that situation? And they're just feeling like they put it all this work for nothing. They're starting to feel really down. Well, it's something that I can I can definitely relate to. When I first wrote A, my first book was about 350 pages, and it was It wasn't originally on Amazon. It was, Ah, really PdF And it was a video training course and audio training, and I spent months and months and months putting this together. And ours, uh, can't even keep track of how many hours of work. And that's not even counting in almost 10 years of my life to even accumulate the knowledge to put into it. That's just the time it took to put it together. And so when I launched that, I actually had a name your own price, where friends and family they could pay as little as a dollar to get access to this this book into these audios and videos. And, you know, I sold only a small handful of copies to basically like my mom and my like my sister and a few close friends like that was it. And so it was so frustrating. And then I launched my first candle book, and it's so probably about three copies of that in the first few months, and it felt like it's wasted so much time and money, and I know that when that happened for me, it could also be discouraging thinking, What's the point? You know, I even keep going forward or this was all such a waste. What I found, though, is that when I kept going and when I took that experience and learned the lessons from it, I was eventually able to take what I needed to learn from that and grow to the point where my second ultimately my third book, 1/3 book, became a number one bestseller. And a lot of the information in that third book was drawing upon content that I put in that original book and some of the books that have failed launches, eventually with more knowledge, took off and became successful. And so even though it felt like a failure at the time, you know what felt like a setback was really a set up for a breakthrough that came down the road and so if I take the context and change it to college, there are many people who will spend four years to get a college degree, will spend tens of thousands of dollars to get this degree. And there's not even a guarantee when they get out of college that they're gonna have a job or make any money. And yet they'll do it because it's like I'm investing in the future of making income Well. I wrote a lot of papers in college that never made me any money, but I wasn't worried about it because it wasn't about making money with that paper. It was about getting the education, so I would I would be successful later. Well, those early books, the failed launches, the books that didn't sell. That was an investment in my education that allow me to later on, become a best selling author and release multiple bestselling books. And ultimately, what's a couple months and even a few $1000 invested in order to have financial freedom in order to be able to publish a best selling book after best selling book in order to establish myself as an author, I'm like that's ultimately a relatively small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. So for the author who has gone through that frustration, it is frustrating like it's just straight up its socks. It's not fun. And when you take a step back and go now, what is this book? If it doesn't do well now? The beautiful thing is, that doesn't mean can't you? Couldn't do a re launch in three months doesn't mean that with a little bit more learning, you know, two weeks from now you could learn something or put some pieces together that all of a sudden the book takes all some books. It's just like you put a new cover on it and it takes off for you re title it or for other authors, it might be OK. I just build up my fan base over the next couple months, and then I go back and promote that book again, and then it takes off. So think aboutthe long term. Think about the next year, two or several years and realize that that's just like like oh, okay, I figured out something that didn't work. Let me adjust and continue and go on, and that very same book could become a huge seller in the in the near future. When you get the lessons from the experience, that's amazing. I think that so many people they right, that first book and they have put so much hope in it. They think, Oh, once I release this book on Amazon, I'll be rich forever. I could retire. Yeah, And so they set themselves up like they're putting it all on this book or this one outcome. And really, it's like for me, it's the thing that helped me a lot, was what I wrote my first book and published it. Not so much the very first book, but the first Kindle book that I did. I had someone of the mentality that was a little bit of an experiment. Now the downside of that is, maybe I didn't put in his much effort to it. I was kind of testing the waters. The upside, though, is that I wasn't attached to the outcome. I was just going What do I learned from this? Okay, the next book, everything has almost a bit of a feel of an experiment to it. Or a case study of I'm gonna figure out what works, what doesn't work and what I'm going to do differently next time or do differently. Going forward. And with that mentality, you're always learning. So the failed book, you know, quote unquote failed books you learn from. But here's the thing. Even a successful book can. Success can be dangerous when it leads to complacency. So the author who launches a book that's really successful if they don't ask themselves why it was successful or how they could be even more successful going forward than it's possible that they'll just go. Okay, well, that worked. I can keep doing that and then, you know, a year or two later it's not working so well anymore. If they don't continuously stay on top of their learning in, continue to grow. Some authors that I talked to her. Some like new writers there on the other end of the spectrum, where all they want to do is write 20 different books on 20 different topics. They wanted a Children's book, a romance novel, a book about motor homes and then a book about spending time with their grandparents. What kind of ice you have for people that want to write on so many disparate topics. So first of all, like I said, there's no one size fits all approach. So for the person who does this and realizes that it's an experiment and doesn't put in the expectations that that is in itself gonna lead to huge results, then okay, you know, if it's like I'm gonna write on a bunch of different topics to see what does well and then when I see something that's doing well, then I'm going to go all in there or I'm gonna write on these different topics because it's just kind of fun for me or whatever. Just understand, manage the expectations accordingly, and that spreading oneself out into all these different topics limits the moment. Um, that could be generated compared to really going in and diving a deep into one particular area. So it's not right or wrong. It's just a certain approach with a certain outcome, and I would really ask for what purpose is this person doing it? What are their goals? What is this a short term thing to kind of figure out what they want to do, and then they can going deeper or is that their overall business strategy what you know, how is that gonna work for them? You know, So there's ways to make it work. And what I would say is that ultimately you can if you're gonna launch a rocket if you try to launch 20 different rockets and you only put, you know, a small amount of fuel into each one. So each one goes up, you know, 100 feet, and then it comes crashing back to the ground. Well, is that it's effective. Is putting all the fuel in the one rocket and getting it actually out of the atmosphere to, you know, break the Earth's gravity so you actually accomplish something with it. So book launches in a business. A lot of times, it kind of isn't all or nothing thing. If it doesn't hit a certain threshold or a certain amount of momentum, just not going to see the kind of results that you can expect. And so that's not a book by book basis with the launch that's also on an overall business basis. So that doesn't have to be done right away, though, with the first book. So once again, if it's testing out different things. Or if it's just what a person enjoys doing or certain genres lend themselves to, sort of like the one off type of book, then, Okay, great. But if the person's going, why am I not seeing much mo mentum? Why am I not getting a lot of traction? Why is nothing really building up or going anywhere? That I would say? Well, obviously it's because it's it might be because it spread out so thin. Thank you so much for spending some of your precious time with us. I know that your time is so valuable. I know my audience is gonna love hearing about this. Now we have a special gift for everyone that they can grab it served a master dot com backslash Derek, which is D E R E K. You tell people a little bit about your special book. I believe it's called why authors fail. Yeah, So this book is what I wrote after not only my own experiences, but working. I've had ah well over 1000 students by the time I wrote this book going through my original training course. And so I looked at what a lot of authors and self published authors in particular were doing that. We're keeping them from being successful, and it was partly born out of frustration. I would see so published authors doing so many things right, but they'd have one or two little like missing links and their plan. And then I'd look at it and be like, Okay, there's no way they're Book is going to sell And all they got to do is its tweak, you know, maybe just a couple of different things. And so they were frustrated because they didn't know why they weren't successful. And I was frustrated because I I didn't want to see other authors failing or struggling needlessly. So I wrote the book Why Authors Fail. And it's the 17 biggest mistakes I see. So published authors make that sabotage their success. So I cover the mistakes. And, of course, I cover how to fix them in the book, which you can get for free at that link. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm definitely gonna put a link to that in the show. Notes A swell. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Derek, It's awesome to have you on this episode. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve. No, Master. Make sure you subscribe. So you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. We owe you. Just listened to another amazing episode of the serve. No master podcast. Make sure to subscribe, and we're back tomorrow with another amazing episode.