The traditional publishing industry might have a hard time breathing but is still alive. For many authors, the ultimate goal is to see their book on the shelves, maybe take a picture with it. Of course, this also means a pleasant income stream and an even better position to grow your business.
If you chose to have a traditional publisher, it's good to know that it is their job to take care of the printing, warehousing, shipping, and all the hassle that comes with it. In a sense, it seems like they do everything for you, but sell your book...what is your job then?
Self-publishing vs independent publishing
Your job is to find the audience for your book. It might seem logical to write the book, have it distributed to a bookstore or the airport and then gather your fan base, but this entire process would be far easier if you build your platform beforehand. Twitter and a decent email list is the way to go.
If you're wondering should I self publish, learn more on how to self-publish a book in today's episode.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM187: Inside independent publishing industry with Jesse Krieger appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
The traditional publishing industry might have a hard time breathing but is still alive. For many authors, the ultimate goal is to see their book on the shelves, maybe take a picture with it. Of course, this also means a pleasant income stream and an even better position to grow your business.
If you chose to have a traditional publisher, it's good to know that it is their job to take care of the printing, warehousing, shipping, and all the hassle that comes with it. In a sense, it seems like they do everything for you, but sell your book...what is your job then?
Self-publishing vs independent publishing
Your job is to find the audience for your book. It might seem logical to write the book, have it distributed to a bookstore or the airport and then gather your fan base, but this entire process would be far easier if you build your platform beforehand. Twitter and a decent email list is the way to go.
If you're wondering should I self publish, learn more on how to self-publish a book in today's episode.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM187: Inside independent publishing industry with Jesse Krieger appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
Is traditional publishing truly dead - with special guest Jesse Krieger on today's episode!
[00:00:05] Today's episode is brought to you by Design Pickle. Every custom drawing on my website came from the most affordable designers in the world at servenomaster.com/pickle.
[00:00:13] 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 bestselling author, Jonathan Green. [00:00:39] Now here's your host! [00:00:42] Today I have someone very special for you. Jesse and I have known each other for more than 13 years. We both started out in different industries. We met socially, not through business, and I never would've thought we'd both end up in the authorship or publishing space, but it just goes to show that life is full of surprises. [00:00:56] Now, Jesse runs a publishing business and what he has to talk about a lot is the traditional publishing market. And he really revealed some secrets, things I didn't know about, like - how to get your book into the airport, and other amazing things that have to do with the physical world. [00:01:08] I don't really sell books in bookstores, so Jesse was teaching me and I decided to share what he taught me with the world. He's going to teach you some critical differences in how to choose if you want to pursue a traditional publisher, a hybrid publisher, or to go the self-publishing route, the pros and cons of traditional publishers, what they do and what they no longer do, and his process of working as a publisher.
[00:01:24] So he really breaks down what he does, and if you've ever been interested in the traditional publishing world - he opens some amazing doors that have been kept secret for so long. Almost everything he said on this interview was new to me, and that's what I want to share with you right now. [00:01:38] Okay guys, we've got a really special session here now. The legend himself, Jesse Krieger is here, and someone I've known for a very long time. And he sits squarely at the intersection of publishing and promotion, having signed two publishing deals on two different continents and navigated the world of becoming a bestselling author - twice. That's how you know his favorite number is 2! [00:01:58] It's been his honor to publish over a hundred different books over the six years since he became the founder and publisher of Lifestyle Entrepreneur Press. They like to call themselves - the publisher for the passionate. Jesse is also the publishing director for publishizer.com where authors can crowdfund a book publishing deal and be supported through the publishing process. In addition to being featured on 50 media outlets first bestselling book, Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Jesse's been an entrepreneur his entire adult life and holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as National Taiwan University, and Beijing Normal university. [00:02:29] Jessie, thank you so much for joining us. I'm really excited to have you here today to talk about something that most people don't. Most people think that if you're an independent author, that means you're selling books on Amazon for Kindle devices and you're making like 50 cents a sale. So, I know you're in a whole different world, so let's talk about that. How did you first kind of get interested in the physical type of world of books you can touch? Because most people think that world is dying, but obviously you're finding big opportunity there.
[00:02:56] The reality is that the print book sales industry has been the same for a decade. The market share changes, different publishers, different books sell more or less. But the industry is not dying. It's also not growing super rapidly either, but it's there. It's a billion-dollar industry, and anybody that publishes a book can get a part of it. [00:03:18] You know, for me, when I got into this, it was really about helping people do an Amazon launch, to become a bestseller and to really support and help them through the launch process, but also the publishing. As I went forward with that business, the one thing that almost every author wanted, the second one was a far distant second, number one thing was distribution. Can you get my books in stores? And related - airports and libraries and everywhere else. [00:03:43] And as cool as Kindle is, there's that final mile of having a physical book and physical locations. That definitely changes the economics and everything, for publishing relative to Kindle or Amazon publishing, but it has the potential to reach people you've never met in places you've never been. And if you have the right publishing partner and set up, it can be a good income stream. It can also be an even better positioning tool to grow your business, which we can get into here perhaps in a bit. [00:04:15] Okay, that's very interesting. I guess what I'm really curious about is - what's the upside to being in physical bookstores? Does it make a difference? Is there a big revenue there? Because it feels like every time I look at the physical thing, there's all these different layers too: you have to pay money to the publishers, the distributor, the bookstores want like a 55% discount... you have all these different pieces and it feels like you get nickel and dimed until you're still making like 10 cents a book. [00:04:40] Yeah, that's not far from the truth. But that's the reality of the publisher. And what we do is - shield the author from a lot of that logistics and just, you know, the mundane things that are involved with printing and shipping and warehousing and handling inventory and returns for thousands, if not tens of thousands of books. But the author - all that's basically invisible if you have a publishing partner. And just so we're clear - you can't self-publish and have distribution in stores. [00:05:12] So that's basically the difference between self-publishing and any kind of publishing that doesn't have distribution, versus when we hear a traditional publisher or a hybrid. [00:05:22] Okay, so let's say... [00:05:24] You asked if there is an opportunity. I was telling you all the things that you pointed out that are wrong with it. You know, there is an opportunity if you're somebody who speaks if you want to be doing in-store signings if you want your book to be featured in airports or other places, then with distribution, a part of their promotional focus is - what are you going to do as the author and what is the publisher going to do and possibly a publicist to help take advantage of that distribution. [00:05:53] So who's the right type of author for that space? Because you know, there's a wide spectrum of people that are self-publishing, everything from poetry to local painters who are trying to get some marketing, and everything in between. Who's the right person? Who's someone that's the ideal person for you to work with? Who is the ideal person to think about this process? [00:06:13] That's a good question. I'll say it generally, instead of who's the right person to work with us, but if you're an author who has these things in place, then distributing and traditional publishing - that could be the right avenue for you. If you have an existing platform in the 10,000 plus, let's say, but closer to 50,000 is probably what most people that have like a nationwide release, the store distribution and all that stuff, is actually having an existing platform. [00:06:43] Having distribution is not, contrary to popular belief, the way to build your platform - it's the way to monetize it and to have something that you can share with a wide audience that's different than a one-to-one coaching offer or a live event. It's something for everybody. So if you've got like the middle of the funnel or top of the funnel, high end offers, a hundred dollar or a thousand dollar plus offer, and that's your business - then a book could be the perfect thing at the top of that funnel or at the bottom of the pyramid, however you're thinking about it, to really expand the reach and/or bring in a whole bunch of new people into your business and to raise the awareness of what you're doing in general. [00:07:25] Okay, so this is more for someone who has an existing following or business. And when you said that they should have a following, do you mean like an email list or like a Twitter following, an Instagram following of around at least 10,000 or 50,000, even better? [00:07:36] Let's say 10,000 is like a starting point. And again, I'm just saying that this is where you should be if you really want a book that's going to be distributed in your own country, let alone internationally. A publisher is looking at - okay, if we take on the cost of printing, shipping, marketing, all the other stuff to bring it to market, what is this author going to do to raise the awareness and drive sales? [00:08:00] And so sometimes people think, 'Oh, if I just get a good publisher, I'll sell a ton of books'. Yeah, that might be true. But a publisher is only going to sell. As an author, it's your name on the book, it's your message, right? The publisher, in the best-case scenario, is invisible. And look, this may be counter to other advice you hear out there. Who knows, maybe Jonathan won't even share my interview as part of this summit. I can already see him deleting me. No, I'm just kidding. But it's just a little bit of a different perspective and I want to, perhaps, save somebody the agony of spending six months trying to get a traditional publisher or pitching and getting rejected. [00:08:41] If you don't have something to bring to the table for that type of publishing relationship, then just focus on building your audience, building your platform, and building your business. And at a certain point, it will make sense. Or self-publish. Skip the whole line. Get it straight out there. [00:09:00] You've been doing this for a while now and you definitely have a different perspective than most of the people that I know because, you know, I come from the far 'publish it yourself, traditional publishing is dead' end of the spectrum. But I know you have carved out a niche for yourself and you've done quite well. And so you have found that there is opportunity there. And I think that's kind of what people are seeing - that it's just another way to chip at the big ones that kind of aren't adapting. It's like they move so slow because they're such big companies. [00:09:23] One of the things I learned when I was approached by traditional publishers is that some of their publishing cycles are 18 months or 36 months. So it's like - finish the book now and in three to five years it will be in bookstores, and that means that they're always late. If there's a trend that's hot for six months, the traditional publisher's book will come out a year after that trend has died. Is that one of the places where you see opportunity as your ability to be more agile? [00:09:48] That's a really great point, Jonathan. I'm so glad you brought that up. I look at it this way - it's true in books, it's also true in news. It's like, if you're in investment or in finance, once a story's in the headlines the trading opportunities open because now the whole world knows about it. The same way as once a book's on a shelf - that's the culmination of probably a few years cycle, at least 12 to 18 months from when somebody was like, 'I think I'm going to write a book'.
[00:10:16] And so you just have to take that into account in your thought process in terms of - if you're going traditional or if you're going hybrid that does distribution, think about the timeline. Because at the point where you're done with your book, that could start a 6, 9, 12 month sales cycle into retail that will eventually culminate in your book coming out. Is it still going to be timely? Is it still a message that's on point, are you trying to like chase a trend? If you are something like that, then a faster route to market is more for you. In our case, we can move faster than traditional publishers and that's a big part of why a number of authors work with us, it's because we have the distribution and all of that capability, but we can move very fast. [00:11:01] And I'm the one saying that, and so it's true. Trying to get the publisher of another larger publishing company directly involved in the books that they're publishing - I'd be surprised if it's really the case. [00:11:15] That's what I wonder - why is it such a slow cycle? It feels like the traditional publishing hasn't adapted to the way the world's changed. Now, some of the top authors, like I read a lot of science fiction, and some of them are putting out a book a week. And they use the profits of the last month to fund this month. There's no way they would be able to do such a fast, prolific cycle if they're waiting 18 months for the money from their first book. So, I can see why that agility is really valuable in certain spaces where you're just putting out a lot of content, but what I wonder is - why are traditional publishers still so slow? [00:11:51] And I know there's a thing, I don't know what it's called in books, but in TV it's called the 'upfronts', where you show everyone the pilot of a TV show, and they decide if it's good or not, and if the advertisers want to advertise, and then there's the thing where movies have product placements, like, 'Oh, there's a Pepsi machine right next to the door we're going to kick in'. And I wonder, I know there's something like that in publishing, maybe you could explain that part of the world? I think that affects the cycle of books, right?
[00:12:16] I'll gladly explain our cycle. I'm going to use this coming season as an example. So, as we're recording this right now, it's the beginning of March. I'm getting ready to present our fall 2020 titles, and so five, six months in advance, we're presenting the book, the marketing plan, sharing some, if not all of the book - all of the assets are in place. [00:12:44] The book doesn't need to be a hundred percent done when we're doing that presentation, but that's called 'pre sales conference' and then 'sales conference', where we first present to a subsection of our whole sales team and then to the entire sales team. And after that entire sales team presentation, then about six months later - books start winding up and shelves. [00:13:05] But after they find out from me and other publishers what we have coming in fall, they take all that information and then they go and have months of meetings and conversations with all their retailers, accounts and everywhere that they service. Actually, literally everywhere that sells books. And then those retailers choose based on the guidance we give the sales team and the sales team gives to the retailers - what should we stock? How many? What's the marketing plan? What's this person doing? Are they going to be on national TV? Are they a columnist in Forbes? Those are the conversations that lead to stocking decisions, but ultimately sell through to the final customer, because let's call a spade a spade - distribution is glorified consignment. [00:13:48] Sure, we could spend a lot of money to print books and convince retailers to order them and stock them and even put them on the shelf, but if nobody comes in and picks that up, pays for it, and walks out, and then doesn't return it later - that's not a sale until that happens. So, I think that's an important thing to point out too, in the sense that not only is it a longer time to market, it's also a longer time to get paid. So we're collecting on the sales that actually do take place months in arrears.
[00:14:17] So when you add it all up, book publishing is not a sexy industry financially. In fact, it blows my mind that anybody can run a publishing company only on book sales. Our model has always been - we provide publishing services and author services on the front end, or else there's no way we'd be in business. Anyways, I'll just leave it at that. [00:14:41] That's something that I think a lot of authors don't think about is - the stores experience. And maybe that's because it seems like most stores have turned into Amazon, all the airport bookstores, I think are owned by one big company. It seems like it's all... so that's what I'm wondering - what percentage is big chains Mail, or a different one where it was like the big bookstore and the local bookstore in New York, and I'm wondering, does the look local bookstore exist anymore?
[00:15:16] Yeah, the local bookstores do well if they're a community hub. You just kind of think about as a bookstore and then books in general - what experience can't go online and then that's your opportunity. Someone wants a book, they're going to order it wherever they're going to order it. Maybe it's Amazon, probably it is if you're in the US. But maybe you want to have a coffee and sit down and meet a friend, or browse, or see an author do a talk, or maybe there's a wine and cheese happy hour at your bookstore. [00:15:46] The ones that are succeeding are bringing together people in their community and really responsive to what sells locally, perhaps even hyper locally, like books about the city that you're in, or the state. So I can go on more, but tell me if that's helpful. [00:16:03] No, that's good. So, let's say, that's where I really want to dial into, let's say you're trying to get into a local bookstore, right? And you think, 'Oh, I'm from this area. They should carry my book'. But to them, the only thing that matters is they need to just sell X number of books, make X number of dollars every month to pay their rent, to pay their staff. So what they're looking for, how they're making their buying decisions beyond the big ones, like everyone's going to carry the new Harry Potter book, or everyone's going to carry a new Dan Brown book or something like that, right? But when you're up and coming, I mean, I can't go to a local bookstore and say, 'Hey, look, I've got an email list of X number of thousand people.' Because they won't understand that language.
[00:16:42] So I think that's one of the problems - that I'm speaking a different language because I'm saying, 'Look man, I want you to carry my book because I want to take some pictures next to it on the shelf', right? We're not even thinking about selling it. We just want it to be in the bookstore. That's a different thing, right? You're talking about sell through. Most authors are thinking, 'I just want it in there.' And I didn't even know that one of my books was in a bookstore, because someone had saw it once and told me and I was like, 'Oh, I didn't even know'. I don't know how it happened, but Amazon, it probably dropped it off at the book store or something like that. [00:17:07] But he was like, 'I'm so jealous. How did you do that?' I was like, 'Why didn't you take a picture?' I didn't know. But that's what you want, right? You want a picture of you next to like a stack of books at a bookstore having a line. But how can you go into a bookstore and say, 'I'm going to help you sell more books'? What can I do? Because look, if you do a signing and no one knows who you are, it's not going to sell any books. But are there other things that are really important to local bookstores? I know there's a thing showing the spied versus showing the cover, right? If you want them to show your book cover out, you have to pay more money, right? [00:17:43] Not necessarily, but I'll put it this way. Airports - it's all pay to play. You are going to pay money if you want your book, it first has to be approved and then you have to pay, and then you have to wait, and then they place an order and they stock it. And if it sells through - great, they place another order. If it doesn't - they still got paid. [00:18:04] So that's airports. But for normal bookstores, it's not necessarily the same. It's not all pay to play. There are many passionate people that want to learn about new books. Anybody that works in a bookstore or runs one - loves books. You'd have to be a total idiot to start a bookstore if you didn't really, really love books and authors.
[00:18:24] So they're passionate people. If you can tap into that, or find the angle, and it's not hard if you just get a little intentional about it, if you want to do a signing at three different stores - look at their event calendar. Look at what's been going on there the last three months and where do you fit in. You could say, 'Hey, I saw so and so and this person did a talk last month. I have the forthcoming book on X and it would be a great fit for people that love those authors. Plus, I'll bring some people up to the store. Can we set something up?' There you go. That's just like a straw man, but that's a better approach than just thinking like, 'Oh, I'm going to go and talk to a bookstore and I want them to order my book, and help me sell it to! Not just order and stock it. I want them to sell my book so that I can just show up and get the picture next to it on the self.' But that's kind of a myth. [00:19:16] Let me ask you question about that because that was cool. How many people do you need to get from your following to show at a bookstore? Because I think the other thing is that the bookstore doesn't just want people to come to your signing. They want people to come in and buy your book from the store. If 50 will show, but they've already bought a copy of your book, that doesn't benefit the store, right? [00:19:33] Correct. The whole point of doing a signing would be for you to bring at least some people into the store. The bookstore agrees to order and stock X number of books, or if you don't have distribution, then you can do a consignment deal where you can display them and then you'll collect afterward if they sell through. [00:19:52] But yeah, a bookstore wants people coming into their store. So maybe they'll buy your book and maybe that's why they're there, but maybe they'll buy something else too. So as a retailer, they're getting money on every sale, so they want people in the store. So that's our job as the author and as the publisher is to create that event in that context and bring some people, maybe not everybody, but the less you leave up to chance, like there's not really too many parts in writing and publishing a book and promoting it, where you just put it out there and then some other force takes care of everything else. It does require some intention and some push, but it is worth it, obviously, if you go through with at all for many of the reasons, you're probably watching this now. [00:20:41] How many people do you need to bring to the store? Like if I'm going to a small local bookstore, like not New York, but like a smaller town, do I need to say 10? Do I need to say a hundred? Is it somewhere in between? Like what type of numbers do I need to guarantee where I'm going to start getting their attention? [00:20:57] Well, there's two ways to look at this. One, if you have distribution, it's a much easier conversation because you go in the bookstore, say you want to do an event and tell them that who your publisher is, and that that's the distribution. That means they can go into their computer, click a couple of buttons, and order your book to stock in their store. [00:21:17] Now, if you don't have distribution, you have to have a different conversation. 'Hey, I'm a local author. I want to do an event. Here's my book. I'll bring X number of people. Can we work something out?' If you bring 15 to 20, that's going to be a win for most stores. Sure, I mean, 15, 20 buyers coming in the door, they're not going to say no to that. I mean, maybe someone, but that's a small win that pretty much anybody could create if they want to go this route. [00:21:50] So you don't need an unreasonable number of people. Most of us could probably get 20 people to show up. That's why I'm interested in what that actual number was, because I always thought it needs to be like a thousand, like it has to be a line outside the door or they don't want to do it. So that's interesting to learn - that 20 is going to get their attention. Because that's something that most of us could probably do. [00:22:11] It is. It totally is. Now maybe the Barnes & Noble may not be as open to that approach, but they very well might. Especially under their new leadership, just an FYI, Barnes & Noble just got bought out. They put in the CEO of Waterstones and they're pushing decision making down to the store level. So, Barnes & Noble is reinventing itself. There's your new old neighborhood bookstore instead of the big box corporate behemoth. [00:22:40] So that's an opportunity for authors and for publishers to be honest. But smaller independent stores - you're making their day. Think of it - you’re coming in saying, 'I'm going to bring you business. I'm going to give you an activity and bring customers in the door.' Just keep that in mind as the author, that you're bringing somebody a win instead of asking for a favor. [00:23:03] And if that's true, and if that's your approach, you're going to have a ton more success, instead of going in and saying, 'Hey, will you give my book a chance?' Like, 'Okay, like how many books is it?' Anyways, we don't have to go down that path.
[00:23:18] No, that's really good because I think that something that I've never thought about before, so I've actually learned something now, which is cool, is that if you approach the bookstore and say, 'Here's what I'm going to bring to you: I'm going to bring a number of people, they're going to buy my book, they're going to buy other books, I'm going to give you money. All I want is for you to let me use this location for like an hour', or however long the book reading is. I mean, are there other logistics? This is some question, because I don't know. I thought it's like - you have to bring wine and cheese or snacks... is any of that actually a part of it or is that just my imagination? [00:23:48] Sounds like a romantic picnic at the bookstore. No, the honest answer is, if they have a cafe or anything - it's way better that you don't bring food and stuff, and you just direct people or just let them buy food and stuff there. Because that's margin for the bookstore, right? [00:24:06] As an author, we're thinking, 'How many people are getting no buy my book', as the bookstore owner, they're thinking, 'How many new customers in the door and how much are they going to spend?' It doesn't matter if they buy your book, it's great if they buy your book. It's just as great if they buy the one next to it. So just think about that mindset. [00:24:22] Okay. That's really good. So, what is some other advice you have for people that are in the process of writing their first book and they've never even thought about what to do afterwards? A lot of people, they don't know anything about publishing. And I know it's the same for TV shows and movies - you don't write the whole script until someone's bought it. I'm really interested in the TV script writing process because I'm learning that process now to expand my skillset. And I know that you have a pitch, and then the studio buys the pitch, then you write the whole pilot, and then they might go, 'You know what? We don't like this'. And so you never actually make the pilot. And that happens to like 95%. They buy 300 scripts and then they only make like 20 pilots. And then out of those 20 pilots, they keep like four shows. 00:25:08] one twist - the option. They don't buy the scripts - they option. It's way cheaper. [00:25:14] Right. And so, I'm wondering if that's how publishing is for most traditionally published authors? You don't write the whole book and send it in. You start with the pitch and that if a publisher likes it... because I had a friend, I think we both met the same guy the same time, who had a pitch and he went to like 20 publishers until one said 'yes', and then he wrote the book. So I'm wondering if that's... [00:25:35] That's the traditional approach, yeah. So, I'll just break it down really quick. Traditional, hybrid, and then over here - self publishing. Only because you're not dealing with distribution. Not saying it's better or worse, it's just different. So with traditional, yes - you want to write a book proposal, maybe get a literary agent, start pitching. You want to convince someone to believe in you and your idea without necessarily even having written the book. And then they...
[00:26:02] Wait, that's really cool. Let's dial in. Because you said something there but you went past it. How do you find a literary agent? Don't they all just live in Manhattan and wear big glasses? I very rarely meet offers. I've never met a literary agent. So I'm wondering about that part of the process - how do you get someone to believe in you? How do you meet someone? Because it seems, I know for movies and TVs, it's like you have to know somebody who knows somebody, or you've got to write a script that's like blowing everyone's mind. So how do you do that in the book world? [00:26:32] The truth is, I'm probably not the best person to answer that, and I'll tell you why. You know where I was going was with a hybrid, I've never signed an author that came in through a literary agent or a lawyer. But that's me. And that's completely different than a traditional publisher. For hybrid, the difference is you can have a smaller company on more hands-on staff, but still the access to the distribution. So that's kind of the, the difference there, right? With a hybrid, you could expect to pay some money up front, but yes, your book will be professionally produced and published. With traditional, you want someone to believe in you and give you money, and then you actually write the book and then you wait 14 months for it to come out. [00:27:20] So that's sort of the two different routes there. I mean, literary agents - this is more for fiction, I'd say. If you have nonfiction, you might as well just write the book. But for fiction, you have to describe it. You have to give comparables. You have to get someone invested in the story because it's not realistic for someone to read an entire book to make a decision if they want to publish it. And that's the case for fiction. So, I'll just leave it there. 00:27:53] Okay, so let's say someone has written their first book. They started publishing and stuff, and they're not getting the traction they were expecting, which is basically something that happens to almost every independent author. Every author is starting out and it feels like, a catch 22. It's like, 'which do I do first? I can't get a following because I can't sell the books. I can't sell any books if I don't have a following'. How would you recommend someone who's just starting out to build some traction? [00:28:19] I got your answer. But it's play the ground game. This following, it's not this amorphous group of people, it's a collection of individuals that each one likes you and wants your book or wants to learn more or follow you for their own individual reasons. So if you could add one person to your following each day, if you have one conversation with one person about the topics that you're writing about, it doesn't have to be 'buy my book'. [00:28:50] I was having a conversation earlier today. Someone was asking about our publishing. I say, 'We do healthy lifestyles books', and I gave a few examples. One was Live Healthy With Hashimoto's Disease. The person said, 'Oh my, God, my wife has been struggling with Hashimoto's disease!' I'll send you an advanced copy of the book. There's a product market fit, but I didn't know that. I didn't know that when I was talking. So, it's having the conversation about what you're writing about, whatever that is, and doing it publicly, and then inviting people to engage or ask questions if you've touched on something that's of interest to them. You get it? [00:29:31] So if you're just starting, it's not, 'Hey, believe in me. Hey, buy my book'. It's, 'Here's what I'm working on. Here's the experience I have. Here's what I want to share. Does that fit in with what you're doing?' Or even better - getting them, getting somebody else to share what they're going through or dealing with, and if yours is the right fit, then just talk about it. [00:29:54] So I would say - lean into having more conversations with more people about the ideas in your book. It doesn't even have to be about your book, but just the ideas. And if people get engaged in that, then just have an easy way. One way is fine to start where they can become a part of your audience. Maybe that's just a Facebook friend or a LinkedIn connection or maybe it's something more developed than that. [00:30:21] That was wonderful. What a great note to end on. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Jesse. We appreciate you being here. [00:30:27] Thank you guys for listening to today's episode with Jesse Krieger. You can find more about him on his website jessekrieger.com. That's J e S S E K R I E G E R dot com. Jesse has been an amazing friend for a long time, so I encourage you to check out what he's doing. It's very fascinating. You can learn about his publishing lifestyle, his system, and this different, hybrid, traditional publisher type approach. And if you're passionate about getting into bookstores, he's the person that I reach out to every time I want to learn about that part of the market. [00:30:54] 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 next Tuesday with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. [00:31:07] Head over to servenomaster.com/podcast 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 Tuesday. [00:31:22] Ready to turn your book into a bestseller? Find out what other authors don't want you to know at servenomaster.com/secrets.