From Manuscript To Mic Drop: Mastering The Publishing Game

Publishing a book is not simply about writing something, printing it out, and selling it to everyone. It is so much more complicated than that, and it starts even before you actually write something. Juliet Clark is here to talk about the life cycle of a publishing package and when author platform building should come into the picture. She reveals the right time to do marketing promotion and why you need to sell big-ticket items alongside your book. Juliet also discusses the different approaches to take whether you are going for traditional publishing, self-publishing, or a hybrid process.

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From Manuscript To Mic Drop: Mastering The Publishing Game

It’s all me on this episode. We’re going to talk a little bit about the life cycle of a publishing package and when author platform building should come into the picture. Before we get started, I want to send you over to PlatformPlanning.com. We are doing our Platform Planning Palooza, which is usually a $1,500 course. We’re doing it for free this year on November 1, 2024. It’ll be at 09:00 to 10:30 Mountain Time. Mark it on your calendar. Go over to PlatformPlanning.com and grab your materials, sign up, and save your spot.

There will be materials that we will be working with. There’s a workbook. There are several worksheets that you’ll be able to work on a little bit with us and some on their own. I’ll probably make an offer at the time as well if you want help with yours on a one-on-one basis. We’re not selling anything that’ll make you feel pressure. It’s a little bit of help on it. PlatformPlanning.com. Go grab your spot. Get yourself registered.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the life cycle of a book because I was reading an article this weekend, and it had author platform building as the very last thing to do. I disagree with that so vehemently because if you do that, you don’t have an audience to sell the book to. You guys have heard me over and over talk about how it’s not just about the book. Most of the time in a publishing package, you are not going to get ROI directly from book sales. If you put out $10,000 to $20,000 to publish your book, whether it’s standard, hybrid, or whatever you’re doing, this is going to be a big problem that you put out all this money and you have no way to recoup it.

It is important to have that next step there that you can sell people to as well. It is all part of a process and that’s what I want to talk about. One of the things that you begin with is that idea. I have an idea for a book and I’m applying this to nonfiction authors because fiction is much more difficult to promote.

You get that idea. You think, “I’m an expert at X, Y, and Z, and I’m going to write a book on it.” You’d like to write that book not only to put your ideas out in the world but also to attract people to bigger products and services. In a sense, it’s a little bit of a loss leader, but we want to recoup that money. It’s not a loss leader like I spent $25,100 creating a lead magnet. It’s not that kind. This is an ongoing business.

That ideation part is not only where you get the idea for the book, but now you start thinking about, “I need to research the market. Is my business not doing as well as I want because I haven’t narrowed down my audience?” This is the time when you’re spending time on your book to do that research. What does that research include?

Four Pillars

When we have our Build Your Author Avatar course, we have four pillars that we work with. The first is demographic and psychographics. Those are basic things that most people when they’re researching a business or a book, are doing, but it stops there. Now remember, if you’ve been following the show for a while, before I got into publishing, I was in advertising. I went from college right into publishing, then I went to advertising, then I went to real estate, and then I started my own business.

There were little pieces I picked up from each along the way that made this a successful business. In that research, getting back to it, you don’t stop with the demographics and the psychographics. You need to get in and look at, “Who are my competitors? What are they selling? Where are they on social media? What are the topics they’re talking about?”

You never want to copy what they’re doing, but you want to get insight about what is selling, and what works best for me. Is it a group program? Is it one-on-one? Is it a combination? A lot of authors want to do downloadable programs as part of their business. Downloadable programs, believe it or not, usually require a person to sell them.

What I mean by that is when you put them up on your site, most of the time, people don’t just jump in, click, and buy them. When I sell those courses on my site, normally, I’m having a conversation. The conversation comes down to two things, “Can you afford the “do it with you” where we build your assets and work with you, or do you need to do the DIY?” Here’s the DIY. It’s significantly less money. Those are the kinds of things you’re looking at, what works for you, and what doesn’t work for you.

The third is pressing websites. Go over to your competitors’ websites. Go over to the websites that your audience frequents. A lot of times, you can get that insight from following your ideal clients or readers on social media. Start looking at what are they selling. What does their site look like? What is their branding? What is their point of view? How can I spin the same information with a different point of view? The reason I say that is there are tons of psychologists and life coaches out there who are writing books. Psychologists tend to niche. The life coaches don’t. We did a study back in 2018 and people did not have very good impressions of life coaches, which means that it’s more important for you to niche down. We’ve worked with some tremendous life coaches on this. Gretchen Hydo teaches coaches how to monetize. Her book, Break Free From Your Dirty Little Secrets, is a niche-down piece for life coaches.

The fourth part of that website and press is also looking at the press. What does your audience consume press-wise? We live in a very divided universe right now. It’s crazy. Sometimes, the language and how you speak to males or females, male and female cop

y is always different because different things interest women than interest men. Look at that audience. What are they consuming? Are they a little bit more liberal? A little bit more conservative? I’m not saying talk politics. Please don’t do that, but be aware of where these people get their news sources, and where they get their learning sources because that will help you as well create copy when you’re doing this.

That’s the very first part of this. This part is important because not only will it help you write your book with that point of view, but it’s also where you start with social media. This ideation and the research is where your author platform starts before you even write a single word. That’s where that starts. You’re doing the research in the audience and then through your author platform building, you’re validating.

Remember, marketing is, for the most part, a guess. Now, you’ve done your research. You’re putting your marketing into a guess. You’re putting social media out there. You’re putting your idea out there in the form of social media posts, videos, blogs, or whatever it is that you’re creating content with, and you’re looking at the feedback. Are people telling you it’s great? Are they following you? Are they getting into your list? Do you have a lead magnet? These are all things that need to be done upfront to collect that audience, and then you start writing your manuscript.

Starting Your Manuscript

I know for a lot of you, you’re like, “I’m halfway through my book and now I’m starting on the audience.” A lot of times, we get the audience building at the very end. We can’t help people with their book sales because they don’t realize how hard that $20 book is to sell or $30 with the way the economy is. That’s where you want to get into author platform building early. You started writing your manuscript. You’re setting aside some time every day for platform building. This is where people get a little bit overwhelmed because remember, for a lot of you guys, you’re the rainmaker in your business too. You have to make money. You’re building assets. You’re writing a book.

Figure out how you can time block every day. If it’s an hour a day you’re going to spend on the book, that’s fantastic. Maybe that’s your first thing in the morning. Social media, maybe that’s around lunchtime where you’re developing those assets. You’re making sure you have a lead magnet. You’re looking at the list. You’re deciding what emails you’re going to send out for your content next week. Hopefully, you’ve developed a content calendar at this point as well so that you’re always a couple of months ahead because you never know what’s going to come up.

I used to do that a lot. I would have it one month ahead, but then I had a death in my family in 2016. I realized, “I need to be further ahead than this.” I got on it and started creating content. Now my content calendar is two months ahead. Always do that because you never know what life is going to throw at you. It is important to do that.

Now, when you’re writing, remember I said time block? Get that time every morning. Are you creating your outline? Have you worked with a book developer on developing that outline before you start writing? What are your keywords? That’s another key point too because you want to infuse your book with the keywords.

Keyword stuffing with Google does not work anymore. Get them infused in your book because you’ll notice when you go to do an Amazon advertising, you’re going to have to put keywords in. A lot of times, they scan that book. All the time, Amazon scans that book, so they’re pulling out keywords as well to put it in front of people with the algorithm.

You need to make sure that whatever your keywords are, they are in that book and the description. That comes off there as well. That’s when you take that time every day, you start structuring your chapters, and you start writing. The reason I set an hour a day is you need to set some realistic goals with this. I used to sit down when I wrote fiction novels and it was 2,000 words plus a day.

That doesn’t sound like a whole lot and there were days when I was in the mood, I came right up to 2,000. There were other days when I had more time and I was inspired. I would do 4,000 or 5,000. Just have a minimum word count and time blocked to do it every day. Here’s the other tip. Write even when you’re not inspired because remember, you have to get that whole book out before the process begins.

You’d be surprised at how many people I talk to who tell me, “I’m writing a book.” I’ll say, “How far along are you?” “I’m on chapter one.” “You just started.” “Five years ago. I keep rewriting chapter one.” My friend Chris Johnson calls it the vomit draft. Get that draft out. If you’re having an uninspired day, you’re going to do rewrites so you can go back and rewrite the information.

I know there were times that I thought I had a brilliant writing day and I would go back and rewrite. I’d be like, “My god. Brain fart day” I would spell synonyms. I would spell the wrong version, like pair and pare. I know the difference, but I got into type, type, type, and get it out. Remember that you’re doing this to get that entire book out. Don’t go back and keep trying to edit it in real-time. That’s what rewrites are for.

Editing And Revising

The next step in this is editing and revising. This is where you start your rewrites. One thing I hear from editors over and over is they’ll get a manuscript and they’ll say, “I don’t think these people rewrote. I don’t think this author rewrote it. I think they gave me the wrong manuscript.” That’s not what you want to do. You want to rewrite it a couple of times.

Believe me, when I tell you, by the time you do all this and you get to promote the book, you’re going to hate that book because you’re so sick of the material. I used to do that when I wrote fiction novels. I would be writing one book, a new book. I would have another book that was over at the publisher being published, and here I was promoting a third book and I’d be confused. Most of all, I’m so bored with this book. I’ve talked about it too much. Keep that in mind too.

One of the things is when you start your rewrites, that is when I would start looking at publishing. If you’re looking for traditional publishing, your author platform better be built already, and that proposal should be written before you write the book. If you are going to hybrid or self-publishing, then this is the point where you want to get serious about where you are going to publish this. Those publishers will probably ask you about your platform too, so you better have been doing this all along and getting it up.

That’s where you decide it’s probably a little late for traditional at this point because that requires a proposal. That also requires a tremendous audience because remember, these publishers are in the business to make money, which means you have to have an audience. They don’t do the promotion anymore.

Exploring hybrid. Do I want to go hybrid? Do I want to be in bookstores? Do I want massive distribution? Self-publishing. Am I going to publish it myself? I’m on a budget. I’m going to go to Amazon. That’s where you need to make those decisions and talk to an expert about the pros and cons of each. I know you can read a lot on it, but there are pros and cons as far as your author platform as well as what you should do.

Marketing Promotion

Once you decide that you’re doing the publishing and you’ve decided what to publish, that’s when you should start looking at marketing promotion as well. Am I going to run a bestseller campaign? Do I need a press release? How many followers do I have? Do I need to get myself booked on the podcast? What do I need to do to get all this out there? You don’t wait until the book is released. You do this at least 3, 4, or 5 months in advance. That way, it’s already booked.

We have someone who we put into our podcast and radio tour back in May 2024. Their book is coming out in January 2025. We’ve already got bookings for when the book comes out. The book will be on presale in November 2024. You can see now that they’re starting to get these bookings in place. Don’t feel like you need to do all the promotion in pre-promotion because that’s what people do. They blow their whole budget in preproduction. What happens usually is you sell books as soon as it released, maybe in presale as well, and then everything levels off. You have to be able to figure out how you’re going to do that when it levels off.

Selling More Items

One of the things I did skip here, and I did it purposely because I want to talk a little bit more about it separately, is back when you get that audience formed and you get these ideas in, this is a good time to start writing down what is the course I’m going to sell? Remember, you’re not going to get ROI from that publishing package. More than likely, you will not get it from that publishing package. You can’t sell enough books to cover the cost of that package.

What big-ticket items are you going to sell on the other end? What that might look like is you’re selling books in presale. You’re selling books that just released. Maybe you get a month out and you start running a campaign that is, “Buy the book, get this course at a one-time-only price.” That’s where you start introducing your bigger ticket items to cover the ROI that you’re not going to get from that publishing package. It is very important to have that.

We were on a call the other day, and I mentioned this. One of my authors told the other authors on the call, “That was the key, you guys. Once I got the courses out there and started selling them and talking to people, I completely covered everything I spent.” She probably spent about $20,000 in the publishing promotion process. It was good to hear that that’s how she recouped that. The more people you have in your course, the snowballs into the next time you sell the course.

The other part of it that comes in is when you give the course and you record the course, now you have different ways to deliver the course. Maybe I want to promote it and I’ve recorded it. I recorded the first round and I gave the course to a live audience. Maybe now I make it into an evergreen at a much-discounted price. That’s easy money. You don’t have to show up except to maybe sell it on a call like we do. If someone comes to a call and says, “I need help with the author platform building. I can’t afford what it costs right now for me to have you build, copy landing pages, email drip, and all that.”

They can then go to that low-cost course and at least get the gist of it. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to do it all on their own. Many of those people come back and have us do the assets because they try on their own, and don’t have their messaging down. A lot is going on there, but that’s where you start to get traction on your book, “How can I incorporate it?”

One of our clients, Dorothy Beasley, has ranch retreats up in Canada. Her book is part of it. She has a vision board course. You can take the vision board course. You can get a free download, which is Create Your Own Vision Board, or you can go to the next level to an online group course where she goes through that. She goes through the book. She talks about ranch life which, believe it or not, is a popular topic right now because many people are moving out of the cities. The next phase of that is one-on-one coaching. Let’s get you to that dream. You did the vision board. Now, let’s get you at a ranch retreat living that board. There’s a progression there that you can do and sell the same course at many levels, but you have to get out and execute first.

Episode Wrap-up

I hope that helped you guys with what you need. I know it all sounds very busy and very complicated, but I’m telling you this now to set expectations because I find that the biggest thing is that authors don’t have realistic goals. They start building the book and get excited, but then they realize, “I don’t have anybody to sell this to.” I can tell you, nobody is going to find you organically on those book sites, the book distribution sites. You’re going to have to direct people on where to go. The answer is not going on social media saying, “Buy my book.” You’ll look silly and desperate. I hope to see you guys soon at PlatformPlanning.com. I hope to see everybody there on November 1, 2024.

Important Links

• Break Free From Your Dirty Little Secrets
• Platform Planning