Everybody is saying, “Write a book and publish your own book, and everything you do will sell because now people know you.” The reality is that most of those books become failed products for these people. You’ll find that you’re the main event and that book is just icing on the cake. You’re probably wondering what this is all about, and why you would want to promote and profit before you ever publish. Juliet Clark, founder of Super Brand Publishing, talks about her journey into self- publishing and platform building. She explains why this is so important to the industry in both book and marketing and getting your products and services out there.
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What You Need To Know About Self-Publishing And Platform Building
You’re probably wondering what this is all about and why you would want to promote and profit before you ever publish. I’m going to talk a little bit about who I am and how I got here in this episode. In the next episode, I’m going to talk about why this is so important to the industry in both book and marketing and getting your products and services out there. My name is Juliet Clark. Many years ago, I started out in the traditional publishing business. I worked at Price Stern Sloan and HP Books. It was the beginning of a journey that I couldn’t have anticipated would bring me to where I am now. I’m a mother of two wonderful college kids. I’ve had a career of my own working for other people and working for myself as well. I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2001.
My journey began with traditional publishing. I loved it. I always wanted to write a book and I got to see the inner workings of how a publishing company works. What the processes were to get a book off the ground, going through all of those potential people who wanted to be published and what the criteria was. From there, I moved on to the advertising world. I worked at Chiat\Day on the Nissan account on Nissan Regional. It was a nationwide account with eleven regions across the United States. That was a great experience as well because I got to use some of my marketing backgrounds. For the most part, the publishing faded into the background. I got to travel the country. I gained some valuable insight into a lot of different accounts, working with people and public speaking. We had to speak to our clients and make presentations as we were going across the country. It’s a great amount of experience there as well.
You're the main event, and that book is just icing on the cake. Click To TweetWhile I was at Chiat\Day, I met my future husband and we got married. I left Chiat\Day shortly after that because there was no way to balance all that traveling with a home life. I started over at Mattel Toys, I worked on Barbie and Hot Wheels. That was another formative experience because I went from working outside of an account back into working in the internal processes of an account. I had this diverse but when I look back on it, a rounded background. There was no rhyme or reason to where I was going at the time. In 2001, I started my own real estate business. I had two children. We had moved from Manhattan Beach to Santa Clarita, California.
My husband at the time had gotten a job there and was tired of driving every day. If you’ve ever experienced LA traffic, you can completely validate. Even back then, I don’t think the traffic when we moved in 1999 was as rigorous as it is now. We moved out to Santa Clarita, California. We moved out to Sand Canyon and we loved it. We moved from Manhattan Beach where we had a big house, a little yard and little postage stamp. You could literally hear our neighbors next door burping. When we moved to Santa Clarita, it gave us the opportunity to live on a half-acre and we didn’t hear everything that went on in our neighbors’ homes. While I was there, I decided since I had told Mattel that I was going to become a stay-at-home mom and for someone like me with a type-A personality, that didn’t last long.
About two or three weeks in, I was like, “This is hard. I can’t do this. I have to have other people to talk to.” I started my own real estate business. I got a real estate license and my intent with that was that I would be a stay-at-home mom. I would get out of the house a couple days a week and show houses. Then that type-A personality kicked in and suddenly I was one of the top producers in an office of 400 agents with realty executives. I had a full-blown career again. What was really key about that was for the first time I wasn’t working for someone else. I was an entrepreneur. I had to do my own marketing. I had a great marketing background so that was easy and it was a big contributor to my success in real estate.
Self Publishing And Platform Building: The reality is that most self-published books will never make it into a brick and mortar bookstore unless you go and you get it in there yourself.
While most of the top producers and people who go into real estate don’t have a marketing background and don’t understand how to promote themselves and get out, and the importance of all the elements that come together. I truly did and it was the backbone of getting me where I am now. Back in 2007, 2008, the real estate market crashed all over the place. I was going through a divorce at the same time. I was working for banks. I was going through this soul-sucking period where I was taking people’s homes away at the same time that I was going through this divorce. Unfortunately, it was a contentious, bad divorce. What I did get out of that was that I didn’t have the kids half the time.
I began writing and I’d always wanted to write a book. I sat down and I started penning my first mystery novel. I’m a poor writer. I have to say that upfront. I’m a great storyteller, a poor writer. What happened with my first mystery novel was that I was able to heal a lot of pent-up anger that was going on with the divorce. I actually killed my ex-husband in the book. It was cathartic because there were a lot of things going on that were not serving our family. I felt like it was the best way to release the anger without going to jail. Because of that first book, I went to my first self-publishing company. I found out quickly that the self-publishing world had a dark side to it. A lot of the big publishing companies were owned by traditional companies. Back in 2007, 2008, traditional publishing companies were trying their darnedest to bastardize the self-publishing companies and delegitimize those authors. A lot of the things that they sold as part of their marketing tools didn’t serve authors at all. In fact, they work almost anti-author.
Here’s a great one that if you ever shop that world, you probably noticed that you can buy for a significant amount of money, the right to have your book promoted on the Self-Publishers List and let’s be clear, you’re paying a whole lot of money for this. The Self-Publishers List isn’t targeted towards people who want to buy your book. It’s targeted towards people who want to write and publish a book. Paying a huge amount of money to be promoted to these people was a farce. I saw that very quickly. Another one was I was paying back then $1,000 fee to have your book put in bookstores. The reality is that most self-published books will never make it into a brick and mortar bookstore unless you go and you get it in there yourself.
There were a lot of things that were being served up as, “You need this to be successful,” that were money-makers for the self-publisher but didn’t serve the authors in any way. I was very committed to my second book that I was going to change that. That was something that had to disappear and authors had to be able to build platforms and learn how to do this right. My second book, I opened my own publishing company, which is Winsome Entertainment Group is our parent company. You have probably seen Winsome Media Group around and possibly Super Brand Publishing. That was the beginning of a journey that has served me for the last ten years. My company has morphed throughout the years as part of our journey. We found that self-published people were going to a lot of rah-rah writers’ groups especially probably in 2011 to 2015 where everybody was saying, “Write a book, publish your own book and everything you do will sell because now people know you.”
In order for people to understand, know, like, and trust you, they need to get to know you. Click To TweetThe reality was that most of those books became more failed products for these people. I can tell you as an entrepreneur, I hope you will enjoy this podcast. My journey as an entrepreneur has been up and down and figuring out how to get all this done. I’ve been blessed to have my strong marketing background. I’ve been blessed to have traditional publishing experience that I’ve been able to blend to help authors be able to expand their platform and become well-known. The reality of all this, if you go over to my Super Brand Publishing pages, you’ll find that you’re the main event and that book is just icing on the cake.
That’s what we’re striving for in Promote, Profit, Publish, the podcast and everything we do as a company is making you aware that you are why people buy your products and services. You are why people go buy that book. In order for people to understand, know, like and trust you, they need to get to know you. They need to get to know that what you do is quality and how you will serve them is an equality, compassionate, kind way and not be all about the money. Let’s face it, it isn’t all about money. For most of us that are entrepreneurs, the money is secondary and sure it helps but truly, most of us are passionate about something that we’re on a mission to share. I hope I’ll see you in episode two. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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