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The Seductive Appeal of Writing a Business Book
45 Plays4 years ago
For people who spend a lot of time focused on a particular topic or area of interest, the idea of writing a book is appealing.
It's a great way to demonstrate thought leadership, attract a bigger audience, and get speaking gigs.
But Juliet Clark says writing a business book isn't for everyone, particularly if you don't have a large audience.
Clark, who helps authors self-publish their books, says writing a book isn't for everyone. It takes a lot of work, not only to write a book but, as important, promote it.
From personal experience, writing a book is a labor of love. The ROI is being able to differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi,
Introduction to Marketing Spark Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
it's Mark Evans, and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight from marketers and entrepreneurs in 20 minutes or less. On
Establishing Authors as Thought Leaders
00:00:09
Speaker
today's show, I'm talking with Juliette Dylan Clark, the founder of Superbrand Publishing, which helps authors establish their brand across multiple marketing channels and positions them as go-to thought leaders. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Juliette.
00:00:23
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I love this format because I can actually see like our little voice quigley. Okay, that's great. I
Challenges in Writing and Self-Publishing
00:00:30
Speaker
wanted to have you on the show for a few reasons. One is that I have written three business books along the way, two of them self-published, and I know the challenges that go into not only writing a book but publishing it and promoting it.
00:00:45
Speaker
And the second was that I run into a lot of marketers these days who wanna write a book. They think that from the outside looking in that's very sexy and there's no reason why they shouldn't do it. So I wanted to get some insight and perspective from you. And when I run across your profile on LinkedIn, I thought this is a person I need to talk to. So my first question is, from the outside looking in,
00:01:05
Speaker
writing
The Role of Storytelling in Writing
00:01:06
Speaker
a book, a business book seems straightforward, but maybe you can provide people with some context into what's really involved because I know from personal experience, it's not easy, but you deal with authors all the time and perhaps you can provide us with some behind the scenes look of what it's like to write a book.
00:01:22
Speaker
It's hard. There are several things that we don't anticipate when we write a book and that's why I really encourage if you really, really want to do this, work with a writing coach.
00:01:38
Speaker
One of the things that's really hard is that many of us are not used to storytelling. And in order to really connect in a book, you have to be a storyteller. And so not only do you have to be able to tell a little bit of the story of who you are and how you got here and your credibility,
00:01:58
Speaker
But whatever it is that you're teaching inside that book, you have to be able to have stories around that as well. Because if you're just telling people how to do things, and you'll know this mark from writing a book, we have this concept in writing called show not tell.
00:02:13
Speaker
And it's one of the hardest things that writers have to get in the process of writing a book or telling a story is if I tell you how to do something, it's not very engaging. If I can show you how to do it, then you're much more open to the conversation.
Should Everyone Write a Book?
00:02:32
Speaker
So a lot of digital marketers see writing a book as a good way to drive their personal brand. When we're allowed to speak again at conferences, it's a great way to do public speaking. In fact, some people have this dream of actually getting paid to speak. But here's the question, should they explore writing a book? And if not, why not? Well, there's this common wisdom out there that you will not be taken on as a speaker unless you have a book.
00:03:02
Speaker
Now, I'm going to say that there are some speakers and there's some people who should not write a book. Let me give you some examples. I know I'm a great publisher, right? I totally know how to sell. Don't write the book. No, but seriously, we have a lot of business raw rows out there where we go and we share with the guru in the room, hey, my products and services aren't selling. And their answer is, oh, you need a book.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, the problem with that is, is using the book the way people have talked for years about, it's my business card. It's not really your business card. It's a lost leader, an accessory to bringing in that low barrier audience. And if your products and services that are your big tickets are not selling, then the book is not the answer. Because what people are looking for inside the book
00:03:51
Speaker
is a proven process that you have that works. And if you're writing a book in order to become an expert, you should be an expert first with a proven track record and then write the book. Does that make sense? Yeah, essentially what you're saying is that if you're gonna talk the talk, you need to walk the walk as well.
00:04:12
Speaker
Exactly. And we've had a lot of people come into our company who have come from these business ventures. And when I ask them why they've written the book, they'll tell me it's because I'm not driving the traffic I want. I'm not getting the business I want. And that's a big red flag because you need to have that audience built before the book. Hopefully your audience is already people who love you and have bought your programs.
00:04:38
Speaker
Or there are people who have seen you out in the world or taken your quizzes when your audience building quizzes and they're just waiting for that that low barrier product to really see what you're all about. It's not a business calling card. And I've actually had people say, you know, I can walk into a job interview and say, I'm the person who wrote the book on XYZ. I have to tell you as an employer, I'm not impressed. You sound like a know it all.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things I found from writing a book and having a fairly good brand is that when I talk to customers or I meet with prospects, what I'll do at the end is that I'll put the book down and say, hey, by the way, wrote this book. I think it's a way to impress people because I have credibility going in. I'm not looking to build credibly right away with a book. And I think you make a good point is that you have to have a track record and then layer a book on top of it.
00:05:29
Speaker
Absolutely. I'll give you an example.
Insights from 'Pitch Slap': Serve Over Sell
00:05:31
Speaker
I released my first nonfiction because I used to be a mystery writer. I released it this summer. It's called Pitch Slap. But it took me about three years to get to the point where I said, okay, I have a proven track record. I have testimonials. I have proof that the process works.
00:05:50
Speaker
And that's when I wrote the book. And it was for those people who had been following me who just, you know, they didn't know if they wanted to spend what, you know, what is this all about that she's talking about without spending a great deal of money. So I think, I think that's what you really have to do with it. Just out of curiosity, what is Pitch Lap all about?
00:06:08
Speaker
Pitch Slapped is the art of serving, not selling. So I really talk about the bootstrap your way to bankruptcy business model that the coaching industry has and how the quiz platform helps validate your product. Because for most coaches, we're not like normal businesses where we go out and we seek financing. We bootstrap our own businesses. And a lot of times if we don't validate that product first, we bootstrap our way right into bankruptcy.
00:06:38
Speaker
So a little bit of a segue from you deciding to write a book into other people deciding that they want to take the plunge as well. So how do they pick a topic that will resonate? That's where our quiz process comes in because if you have that validation and people are saying to you,
00:06:56
Speaker
You know, these are the gaps I have, this is the success I want, and you're able to fill that gap between where they are today and where they wanna be, or at least start filling that gap. That's the kind of book people wanna read. So being able to validate it and build an audience first ensures that you will have a book that sells. Okay,
Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing
00:07:14
Speaker
let's take a step back here, because you mentioned the quiz process, which I believe is a core part of your offering. How does that work?
00:07:21
Speaker
So what we like to do is many people come to us with their books and I'm going to say probably 70% come to us with their book and they haven't really built an audience. Now we do have people, we're releasing a book next month that's by Jane Fonda's personal trainer. Of course she has an audience.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, but most people when they come to us, they've written this book and they haven't really built the kind of audience they need to make it a bestseller or really get out there and promote it in a meaningful way. So what we use the quiz process for, it's actually the first part of our publishing, if we can catch you early.
00:08:01
Speaker
Is we take the success principles of what you'd like to teach or write the book about and we put this lead generation lead qualification research based quiz out to audiences. So if you're speaking, you have your audience take out their phone and take this quiz. It's a three minute experience right in the room.
00:08:21
Speaker
what we're offering to those people taking it cuz it is the lead magnet is i'm defining success for you let's see where you are in the process of success let's let you self evaluate where you're at.
00:08:32
Speaker
So what we're doing is it's that lead capture and lead qualification point is we're starting to talk to more and more people. And the more and more people we have that we can validate our product with, the better we're going to be able to hone in on that product. And that's what we like to do with that book is it's an audience builder and market research. What's the right book that these people need?
00:08:55
Speaker
So there are two schools at camp when it comes to writing a book. Either you find a publisher and I consider that to be almost like winning the lottery these days or you self-publish and that's extremely easy to do given that there's many services out there that will actually help produce your book and you can just put on Amazon to sell it. So where do you fall? What are your thoughts about on self-publishing? So such an interesting question because I actually had someone come to me and say I could easily sell your book to a traditional publisher.
00:09:23
Speaker
And she read it for me in beta and she works with the big publishers. And I struggled with that because how can I be a self-publisher and then tell people, ah, don't go to traditional publishers. So I sort of went back and forth and ended up publishing my own book. But here's the deal. If you have a really big audience,
00:09:45
Speaker
A traditional publisher is more likely to take you because they are a business. You have to prove that you have the audience that will at least make that book break even and hopefully make them a profit. With the self-publishers, you have to hire one that is really integrated and involved in your process. And let me explain that. My first self-publisher, even though I came from traditional publishing, my first book was self-published.
00:10:13
Speaker
And i noticed along the way that they just took my manuscript they developed it into that you know format into the book. Slapped it up on amazon and that was all they did there was no interaction there was no coaching there was no anything and a lot of stuff publishing companies are like that. So if you really really want to make this a great experience you need to engage one that will meet with you.
00:10:39
Speaker
And tell you all the things that are gonna make this professional send you out to get those things i'm talking about endorsements testimonials all the things that make your book look professional on amazon. But also how are you going to run that best seller campaign.
00:10:55
Speaker
How are you going to integrate that book back into your business so that book is leading people to products and services? So there's a lot more to it. You have to have the book integrated from day one because most people use it as their loss leader in the business.
00:11:13
Speaker
Either way is good. The thing about self-publishing is that you 100% own your own rights and you can do other things with your book. If a traditional publisher takes it, chances are you can't do much with your book other than just let them have it because they have the rights to it.
00:11:31
Speaker
Now this may sound strange, but from my own experience, I find that writing the book is relatively easy. Promoting the book is the hard part because there are so many books being published these days and everyone thinks they've got a best seller or at least a book that's going to resonate with people. And you spend an awful lot of time trying to capture the spotlight. So any thoughts about or any tricks for how to effectively promote a book when there's so many books out there?
00:11:57
Speaker
Yes,
Integrating Books into Business Strategy
00:11:58
Speaker
so that's why we put the, that's one of the reasons we put the quiz in place is we can actually pre-sell your book inside the quiz because it's a self-contained funnel. But what really makes this work is that pre-marketing or that pre-writing or during your writing period, gathering that audience for the book. You have to do it. You can't just slap your book up on Amazon and say, buy me.
00:12:23
Speaker
So when we actually work with authors, we work with that quiz platform first. We're building the platform. We're building whatever's next while we're writing the book. When we're publishing, we're running the Amazon ads. We are running the best seller campaign, which requires you to have partners who will promote your book as well.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then from there after the after the initial launch has happened, most people never sell another book again or rare or they sell very few. So that's when we have the free shipping book funnel, which we integrate back in.
00:13:00
Speaker
so that from there you are able to upsell into lower cost products as well. So you're taking people from your book into your products. So when you integrate that all together and I know it sounds like a lot and it is a lot, when you write a book don't think of it as I'm going to release it in 30 days and all it's going to be good. You need to start like probably
00:13:22
Speaker
minimum six months out with a plan and putting all the pieces together and knowing when you're going to do what and really having that marketing plan out there.
00:13:34
Speaker
So if I understand you correctly, one of the things that you need to do is actually promote the book even before it's finished. So you're giving people updates on what you're doing, what you're writing about, the kind of stories that you're gonna tell. You're almost giving them an insider's look at the book writing process. Is that an accurate depiction?
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you can do that. One of the other things that we do really well with the quiz is we send people to a pre-marketing page. So right after you contract us, we do your book cover. So you have a page to send people to. We put it inside the quiz and people can actually pre-buy your book. So imagine while you're writing your book,
00:14:16
Speaker
You're out on a stage or in a summit and you're having people take the quiz and the landing page at the end goes to a page where they can free buy your book. That's the kind of thing we do where you know where we're in the moment we've got people excited about it and we're actually getting people to buy it in pre-sale.
00:14:37
Speaker
So like a lot of people in the last six months, I think you and I have done a lot of interesting things and met a lot of interesting people on LinkedIn. That's how we connected. Why has LinkedIn worked for you? Or
Building Relationships on LinkedIn
00:14:48
Speaker
maybe I should take a step back and maybe talk about the approach that you've taken to LinkedIn and some of the things that have worked for you along the way.
00:14:57
Speaker
So I'm almost exclusively on LinkedIn now. 2016 election I got off Twitter because it was really toxic and it used to be the place authors were. 2020 is about getting off Facebook. So LinkedIn has worked for me because I have used some tools
00:15:15
Speaker
that have allowed me to connect and start conversations and what i mean you and i that's how we met is in the result of that is that i have a particular ask i've done it in a way that's really not sales it's geared towards relationship building and i actually have a little worksheet and we're on radio so i can't really show it to you but i have to have ten contacts ten conversations we.
00:15:42
Speaker
either referrals or from LinkedIn. So I make sure that I jump back in every day and I have those conversations. And that has really, really worked for me.
00:15:52
Speaker
First, maybe you can share the worksheet with me and I'll share it in the show notes after this thing is published. And second is, how do you define a conversation? I define a conversation as we jump on Zoom. So what that means, and I don't ask for Zoom calls, what it means is I use my automation tool, I introduce myself, there's nothing salesy in it. This is not about sales at all.
00:16:18
Speaker
and i have an ask in it and then people will get back to me probably out of the i probably send sixty invites today and probably ten percent of those will come back and write a note in some form some of them we just you know type back and forth hey great connecting others will say you know what
00:16:36
Speaker
Let's jump on a call and talk and see what see how we can collaborate see, you know what we can do and so every week I have to have at least I usually get about five from LinkedIn and then I have referrals from other people that come in other past clients and stuff but I have to actually make time to jump on zoom and have those conversations and get to know people a couple questions one is would you
00:17:01
Speaker
disclose the tool that you're using. And what are the ways that you can create the perception that it's just some, not some, another automated tool that's going out in mass to invite people. I mean, I think it's one of the things about LinkedIn these days is that people are getting inundated by connection requests and it's really hard to tell increasingly which one of them, which are real. Can you provide a little bit of concepts behind the scenes context about what you're doing?
00:17:26
Speaker
Yes, so I use Octopus CRM and inside of my message, I have a very short video. It's
Tools for Authentic LinkedIn Engagement
00:17:33
Speaker
about like a minute, a minute, 20 seconds. And I just introduced myself. And this is not something that's like professional. I literally opened up Zoom. Hey, this is Juliet Clark. It's so great to connect with you. I'm the CEO of Superbrand Publishing. This is what we do. And I think I even say in mind that I'm looking for pod swaps.
00:17:52
Speaker
and guests for my podcast and I just put it in there with a very short note and send it out. So here's what I see inside of my LinkedIn mark is I get several messages a day from other people who want to connect.
00:18:09
Speaker
I can tell which LinkedIn expert they're working with. And I can tell because of their message. They have a really canned message. So that's why when I do this, I do it in a very different way. It doesn't come off as canned. It's just, hey, here I am. Here's a very short message. And, you know, hello. And if it seems like something that, you know, you'd love to connect, let's connect. And so I usually end up with about
00:18:34
Speaker
10% of those that go out a day or conversation starters. I give out my calendar link a couple times a week if someone comes back and says, you know, hey, we might be good collaboration partners. Let's talk about this. So I just meet a lot of people that way. And some of them become clients, some of them become partners, some of them
00:18:53
Speaker
I will never speak to you. Yeah i think i think people get a little distracted by the views in the comments and it really comes out of conversations to me the ultimate metric when it comes to link in his conversations how many people can i actually talk to as you say some of them lead to business suddenly friendship some of the partnerships but that's where the action is a final question for you.
00:19:16
Speaker
Aside from your own podcast, do you have a podcast or a book that you would recommend? Is there a book that you've read recently that you would recommend? I like Ryan Levesque's Choose. I've liked that. That's the only business book I've read lately. I don't know. With all of us on Zoom all day, I've kind of gone back to mystery novels. I don't want to engage in business at the end of the day lately.
00:19:40
Speaker
Well, thanks Juliette for your insight about publishing and LinkedIn. And thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it. For show notes on today's conversation and information about Juliette, visit marketingspark.co.blog.
00:20:01
Speaker
If you have questions, feedback, or would like to suggest a guest, I want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO, consultant, and advisor. Send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. Talk to you next time.