Episode 133 – The Art Of Marketing Your Book with D’vorah Lansky

Dvorah: Okay, I'd be happy to. Well, I studied to be a teacher at a Master's Degree in Education and taught in the school district for about a dozen of years and then I had my son and wanted to stay at home with him. So I started working online and that was 1994 or so. From there, fast forward when about 2006 when social media was starting to become an everyday buzz word, the Local Chamber of Commerce and Local Business Networking groups asked me to come and speak.

So from there, long story short, I ended up writing my first book about online relationship marketing and then I decided, “Well, I'll apply my online knowledge of marketing to my book.” And that led to my writing my second book, which is all about online book marketing and something very interesting happened that I didn't plan on – people started asking me, authors started asking me if I would please teach them more about what I talk about my books. That, Brian, in the last 10 years at that time 10 years ago turned into a full-time business within the year and I'm really, really excited because who knows how we find our niche and find where we really are to be unless we go on life's curves?

So I'm really excited to be here, really grateful and love what I do.

Brian: Awesome.

Let's talk about book marketing. One of the things I've learned and I've heard this from a lot of people is they write their book and then they say, “Okay, now I got to market it.” And that's not necessarily the right order. Is that correct?

Dvorah: Well, there are two things in that question that I'll answer. Actually I'll answer the second one first and that is a lot of times authors write their book and then they think that people are going to write it and people are going to come. They're going to knock on their door and want to buy their book and they go on to write the next book without really marketing the first book. So one thing is that you need to market the book ongoing. Even once you've written additional books, little things, could be social media, blog post, etcetera, but your point to marketing before the book is so important because you're laying the foundation, you're building the community, you're developing your tribe so that when your book is published, you already have raving fans who are going to help you promote it and you have a solid foundation and a solid online platform to build from.

Brian: Absolutely.

So what are some of the things that people need to think about before their book is launched? What kind of things or activity should they be doing, or connection should they be making technology-wise, so on and so forth? What do you normally recommend?

Dvorah: Well, I recommend they first of all have a home online. So I recommend a WordPress blog, an author book blog, or a blog, or a WordPress website which are synonymous that represents their message or their topic area. So people can have a blog about fishing, and boating, and quilting, and tomatoes and their book; however, they're not going to sell many books. So they want to have a dedicated online platform, if you will, where they can represent their book, write about the topics related to their book, invite people to come over to their “online home” and when people get there, the next step is to have a way that people can continue the relationship with them; to offer some type of gift where the people who are interested in the topic area can subscribe to get a checklist, or hot tips, or access to interviews and then the author can build an ongoing relationship with the exact people who are really interested in what they have to say.

So from there, I would say the third thing is to really get involved with sharing your message online through blogging, writing on your own blog, writing on other people's blogs and focusing on blogs that attract your target audience so that your time is well-spent and you're providing content on a topic you are knowledgeable in and also get involved with online speaking because when people hear your voice, they connect with you and during the blogging, during the online interviews, the online discussions, like this conversation here today, you can invite people to your website and when they go there, they can subscribe to your list. That's the foundation of where I would start and when you have that really solid, you have people that you're in touch with so you write regularly to your list, maybe a weekly blog post and you write your email list and let them know about the blog post and invite them to come over and comment.

So you're creating community and instead of doing it in your local town, you're doing it virtually through the internet.

Brian: So what are some of the most common mistakes you see authors making when it comes to marketing their book or not marketing their book?

Dvorah: I would say the first thing is that they're too sale-sy. Like that person at the Chamber of Commerce who walks around that hands out the business card and doesn't even stop to say hello, just, “Here is my website. Come and buy stuff for me.” Well, a lot of authors, they just spend time promoting their book, “Here is my book. It's up on Amazon. Go and buy it.” Instead, what they should be doing is finding ways to build relationships. So the first mistake would be being too self-promotional and not focused enough on building relationships.

Then to address what you said about things that they're not doing is they aren't doing things to build the credibility and the best way to build your credibility is to get featured on podcast, on radio shows over on Blog Talk Radio and as a guest speaker on telesummits on your topic area so that people who your listeners respect endorse you having you as a guest on their show or on their telesummit and you get a chance to let people know about you, let people know about your knowledge-level on specific topics. The people who are thirsty and eager to learn more on that topic, they're going to want to know more about you. It's all under the umbrella of relationship-building and adding value to the community.

Brian: Absolutely.

We've got a book, we're starting to market it, we're marketing it – what are some of the other opportunities that authors are missing that they could be doing with their marketing, their books and things like that?

Dvorah: Oh, I just got chills when you said that. Well, this is a big one, Brian. Still, many of us are under the myth of we write a book, we're going to get rich. Well, there are authors that can write a book and get rich off for their book sales, but for the most part, this is a wake up call. Most authors earn $1- $3 per book for a $14-$15 book once sold of the – even self-published authors can earn maybe $4 on their own books. So it's not a get-rich-quick scheme, however, your book can be the foundation for teaching online courses. Your book could be the foundation for a coaching program where you can build a full-time very successful business generating income off the content, off the topic of your book in addition to the actual book sales.

That is something that people aren't aware of, but once you realize that, it's so powerful because how many people buy books and really read them? Brian, you're probably a very prolific reader, you probably read every book that you've purchased, but there are a lot of people out there who buy books and it takes them years if they ever get to the books. Well, when you teach a course to someone, you lift that knowledge off the pages of the book and help them with something that they're struggling with, or teach them something that they want to know about. So you're really doing a service, at the same time as being able to make a good living as an author.

Brian: So Dvorah, the traditional way to write a book – this is the way that I look at is, most people sit down in front of their computer, they do their outline, they go into Word, they type it in, but I'm kind of an avant-garde kind of person. I write my books actually as part of doing a program first and then writing the book out of the program and I like to speak at it. I'm a professional speaker, I'm a podcaster, I love doing it that way and that's the way I get my ideas on paper better than most ways I could possibly do. Let's put it this way, I speak a lot faster than I can type. That helps.

So what are some of the other creative ways that you've seen people create and market their books that is not just the common sit-down in front of a typewriter and go.

Dvorah: Oh, that's such a great question and you're going to help so many of our listeners. For the folks for you listening in, you don't have to take a year or three years to write a book. You can write a book in the next week or the next month. I'm going to start off on piggy-backing on something you said, speak your book. So what you can do is make a list of let's say 10 questions that your ideal audience would love to know about your area of expertise. You jump on a podcast or you jump on a conference call. You can use a free service such as free conference calling, some place where you can record the call. You get on the phone with someone who you know, and you trust, that you know that they have a gift for gab, that they can be conversational because you don't want it just to be dry.

You record this and you have them ask you the question one at a time and then your job – this is the hard part – nobody is listening, but you and the person who's interviewing you though, if you wanted to, you could have people listening in and that would inspire you further and prevent you from saying, “Oh, wait a minute, that sounded stupid. Ask me again.” Whether you have people on the line or just the person interviewing you and your job is to answer the question in as much detail as possible, go on and on, and on, as much detail as possible as you can for each question and 10 questions should last you about an hour if you'd really go into depth, and then have that call transcribed and you're going to have 30 or 40 8 ½ x 11 pages. That's the foundation of the book right there. That's speaking your book and that is a really exciting way.

The other thing that's interesting that you said is that you create the course and then you create the book to a company at the course. I do something similar, but I'd create the book and the course together. What it does is it helps me make a better book and helps me make a better course and I have beta students go through the course with me so that I can fine-tune, find things that I haven't thought of that my readers would want to know about and I create my books these days in journal format. So they're like workbooks with action guides and I've been creating action guides for years as I've created courses, but I've never published them. To create a workbook action guide for publication, at the same time as creating a course, it creates rich materials for the course and the students give great feedback for what needs to go on the book. I'm in love with that method and I've used both of those methods and those are my favorite ways to write books, as well as the traditional ways, but the traditional way usually takes a lot of time, like it could take years.

Brian: So what are some of the unique success stories that you've seen from some of the people that you've worked with and what have they gained at it? Or what are some of the unique things that you've seen happen?

Dvorah: Okay. Well, there's one gal, she came to me. She was a real estate agent and she wanted to learn how to speak online. So I taught her how to conduct a teleseminar as a host and start to interview people and then I taught her how to conduct a teleseminar as a guest and how to be a great guest and how to get asked to be on people's shows, and podcast, and telesummits, teleseminars. Well, then I gave her a challenge. Not everybody takes a challenge and runs with it, but you know someone is serious about their goals when they take action.

So I gave her the challenge that every week, she was to either be interviewed or interview someone else and to do that for three months. Well Brian, the exciting thing is that she took it even further. Every week for a year, she both was interviewed. Every week for a year she was interviewed by someone and every week for a year she interviewed someone. So she really took it further. And what happened within six months of doing that, is she was starting to receive invitations to be on very high-powered telesummits that attracted her target audience and her book has nothing to do with real estate. It's a completely different topic. She happens to be an author who's very passionate about her topic and she happens to be a realtor.

Well, her work as an author then turned into developing courses, offering coaching services and turning into a wonderful business for her and really helping people who are struggling with the topic that she has expertise in. That was so inspiring to see that someone would take it, run with it, see the value and then be acknowledged. Then last I saw, she's producing her own telesummits and her guest are really high-powered leaders in the field. So that's an exciting story that I would share.

I have one more story if there's time.

Brian: Yes, there is.

Dvorah: This was about an author, someone I know very well. She has been taking courses from me for quite a while and we're also friends outside of our connection on the internet and she wrote a book and put it in a drawer in her desk and four years went by. She used to live locally to me. Four years went by and she moved out in the mid-west and she contact me one day and she said, “I'm tired of having my book just sitting in a drawer. What do I do?” So we basically – again, someone who's determined to take action and this is the take away I'll share with your audience is to take your action steps and break them down into manageable bite-size chunks and then everyday or every however many times a week that you schedule and that's the other key, scheduling time to market, scheduling time to write and then keeping that appointment as you would your best-paying client and over a period of time you will accomplish so much.

So within six weeks, actually, she had a book published because she had gotten that far which is that final step that she needed to take. But scheduling the time and then holding those appointments and being determined to reach your goals, I think those would be the takeaways there.

Brian: So is there any difference between self-publishing a book or having a – I call them half-published book to a full-published book. What I mean by half-published is like you're paying to get it published kind of thing where a true publishing company actually gives you an advance and those kind of thing.

Is there anything different between those three ways of publishing a book that you need to look at marketing your book differently?

Dvorah: That you need to look at marketing your book differently? Okay, because publishing your book in each of those ways is completely different. That's a topic among onto itself where with the self-publishing you have the most control over things. When you're paying a vanity publisher, you have to carefully read the fine print because typically you have to pay them $5,000 to $15,000 plus $5,000 worth of books and you get paid once or twice a year if you've made a certain amount. Those are tricky, though you get a book published. And then there are traditional publishers and the traditional publishers and the vanity publishers today, very rarely will they market your book. You're paying them to publish your book, not market your book. They may have marketing packages, but those are separate.

So the thing to be aware of depending on how you're published is what rights you have for your book and to know that before you sign a contract, that all contracts are negotiable. So the first book I published was with a traditional publisher and I didn't like the fact that he had the rights to my digital assets of my book because I wanted to turn them into courses and audios, so I just changed that. I wrote that I had the digital assets, writes the digital asset. So you have to carefully read the contract and negotiate for what you want.

Then when you start marketing your book, as long as you're aware of what you can and can't do will determine what you can do to market your book. So if you are self-published, obviously you can do whatever you want because you own everything. I published with a different publisher for a different topic. They wrote a series of books and wanted me to write one of the books in their series which I'm honored and excited about. I was not able to negotiate the digital rights and I was only allowed to use 20% of the content in the book in any place online. So I couldn't teach a whole course on the book and I found that very limiting.

So self-publishing gives you the most freedom and it's so easy to self-publish today in a way that is very professional. If you decide to go a traditional route or a vanity publisher route, just be really aware of what it is that they require, what your limitations are and what the restrictions are.

Brian: Great advice and an excellent explanation.

Dvorah, you have a system that's going to help people better-understand how to utilize the assets that they've created with their book. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Dvorah: Absolutely, Brian. As I mentioned, when I wrote my book on book marketing, people started approaching me and asking me if I could please teach them what was in my book, like bring it to life and help them take it further. That turned into my first online course, that was 2006-2007 and from that time forward, turning into taking the words off the page and teaching others how to do the same. So we have a system and it's how to create an online course with your book or your expertise.

So I pull our students regularly and 50% have a book and 50% do not yet have a book and some of those don't plan on having a book, but they have knowledge that their audience is interested in. And how to take their knowledge and turn it into an online course that people will pay for. So then as authors not only are we earning the $1-$4 or $5 that we're earning for our $15-$20 books, but we are also potentially earning a full-time income based on sharing the knowledge of our books in courses, in coaching programs and through other methods. That's the basic foundation of it. I call it the “30-day Course Creation Challenge.”

Brian: Hey, Dvorah, that's some great stuff.

Now, if people wanted to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Dvorah: The best way to get a hold of me is through my website over at Reachmorereaders.com.

Brian: Awesome. Do me a favor so people can get to know your name. Spell out your name as you use it if they wanted to find you on social media.

Dvorah: Sure. In fact I'll give my Facebook link if that's okay. I will spell my name as well and they'll find me on Facebook. That's Facebook.com/Dvorah.Lansky.

Brian: Perfect. Well, Dvorah, this has been great. You've laid out some really awesome great knowledge bombs and some sizzling hot ideas. I really appreciate you and I know my audience is going to get a whole bunch out of this, so thanks for joining us.

Dvorah: Thank you, Brian.

» Close View More - Click Here