Let’s talk book launching Welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. Rory Vaden is your man. I’m here going solo tonight. AJ is not with us, but this makes sense for me to talk about because, Oh my gosh, I have been living In book launch world the last Several months. We actually have 2 Clients who are on the New York times bestseller list right now. I can’t I won’t tell you who they are, but we have been working in book launch mode and it’s a really apropos time to talk about this because just this year we have had so many friends launching books. So Donald Miller, I don’t, I don’t have his book in my hand right now, business made simple it’s actually up on my nightstand. And then You Do You, Erin Hatzikostas, Luvvie Ajayi Jones the professional troublemaker, John Lee Dumas, common path, the uncommon success, Mike Michalowitz this next, Jamie Kern Lima with a believe it David Horsager with the trusted leader and Victoria Labalme with risk forward are just a few of our, our friends, our clients, our colleagues, the people that we know really well, who are doing book launches right now. And so as always, we’re living in this world of book launches. And so you know, technically this, this episode is a recap of my good friend honoree Corder that interview. And she’s just wonderful. I love her. I’m so glad that she is in Tennessee. We’re actually going over to her place for a crawfish bowl party that I’ve never been to one of those. My CE invited us to go, so we’re going to check it out. And I mean, she’s one of these you know, just like one of the Queens of writing and content and, and, you know, specifically like self published strategy and just orchestrating the whole thing at a, at a high level, a very advanced level. I think you know, like we had Chandler bolt on here, they’ve got you know, Chandler stuff is, is very much a process of, of kind of like teaching you how to do it. And then Honoree’s is, is really more of one. If you want to just pay the money to have it done for you and done, right. That’s a big part of what her team does, both with the writing and the promotion of the book, which, you know, is a, is a big investment, but it’s worth a lot. I mean, it’s not uncommon that to start any company, any legitimate company, you, you typically have to invest, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars. I think one of the things that’s amazing about a personal brand is that you can get out of the gate for a lot less than that. I mean, even a few hundred thousand bucks would be a, a very large investment into starting this, you know, this as a business, if it’s even separate from whatever your current business is. And the book is a big part of that. I mean, a book is a, is a business. A book is a business you’re launching, it’s not launching a book, it’s launching a business when we tell people. So we have an event on this. One of our courses is called bestseller launch plan. That’s specifically around launching books. And we, in that course, we talk about how to construct a book proposal and what should be in a book proposal. And what’s the timeline of getting a book deal and who were the players and how does the money work and how do you negotiate? And then how do you actually launch the book? But one of the biggest things is to know that a book proposal, isn’t an outline for a book. It is a business plan for how you’re going to sell that book. And that was a big mindset shift and mental mistake that a lot of people make that you got, you got to know. And anyways, so we just been living in the world of book launches here. And although, you know, Honoree was talking both how to write the book and, and things you can do for promotions. I just think this is all been all been, been, been coming up a lot recently. So anyways, I want to break down that interview. I wanted to give a shout out to all these amazing friends and clients and colleagues who are launching books right now. It’s a wild ride. And I, I’m actually not jealous so many people are doing it. It’s, it’s a, it’s an emotional thing. If you do a book launch, right? I mean, it’s a big deal and you need to prepare for it. Unfortunately, a lot of people call us when they’re like, I have a book coming out in 60 days, what can I do? And it’s not bad. Like it’s not wrong to get that phone call. But I would say you’re very, very late to the party. I mean, especially if you’re, you know, to do a New York times bestselling book, y’all, it’s not something that you plan in a few weeks. It, it is, it is a few years legitimately in almost every case. It is at least a year. And it is typically two years, that’s just a plan to launch and you gotta have a lot of the relationships already in place before that. Right. So anyways, wanted to, to, to make sure that y’all know that. So let’s talk about just three quick takeaways from honorary as it relates to book launches. And the first one is about writing the book, and this is important. So many of us struggle with imposter syndrome. We think, well, I’m not going to write this book because someone else wrote a book like this, or someone already wrote a book on that topic. And the biggest thing that, that really sunk in with me and I got clarity about, and it wasn’t exactly what Honoree said, but it, something she said, lock this down for me in my mind, which is, it’s not that what you will say is different from what somebody else has said. It’s how you say it. That is different. And that is why you should write it anyway. It’s not that what you say will be different, but how you say it will be different. Your stories are different. Your your case studies, your anecdotes, your illustrations, your frameworks, the whole context and wrapper for how you put it together is different. And that is what makes it beautiful. I mean, take the stairs is basically hard work. I mean, there’s not a more on original message or but, but we, we, we put it through the lens of our uniqueness of, of procrastination and discipline, and we have this great metaphor of take the stairs. And anyways, I just, I think that’s really important because some people will only be able to hear it from you. They won’t be able to hear it. Like even if we wrote the exact same book, they wouldn’t be able to hear it from me. They would only be able to hear it from you because of your style, because of the way you look because of your age, because of your stories, because of your background. And that is reason enough in and of itself for why you should write it. You don’t have to write the book for the million people. You have to write it for the one person like for the one person who will get it because of the way you said it, versus the way that Tony Robbins or Brittany Brown Senate. Right? And it’s not that there one is better or worse being a best-selling author is just surely about reach it often is, is not even that much about necessarily the quality of the book. I mean, in the long tail, that certainly plays a part, but most of the books that hit the best seller list hit it in the first few weeks, because there’s this huge launch. And that’s because the person has a lot of either direct reach or indirect reach, but whether or not you can hit a bestseller list should not dictate whether or not you write the book, what should dictate whether or not you write the book as if you have something meaningful to say, if you have a message on your heart, if it can help one person’s life. And if you have that inside of you that have, and you have that calling, remember we, we believe that that calling on your heart is the result of a signal being sent out by someone else. So write the book for the one, even if it’s not for the 1 million. And even if what you say would be similar, how you say it will be different, and that is a reason to write it. So that’s the first takeaway. The second takeaway is super short and tactical, but Honoree mentioned this, you know, she said you have to have an advanced reader team. And I couldn’t agree with this more. This is such an important tactical thing that anyone can do is to have an advanced reader team of people who buy your book in advance and they read it. And then they’re able to give you reviews. Now I’m going to change this language a little bit, and I’m going to call it the street team, which I’m not sure who coined that term. Originally. I think of Michael Hyatt when I hear that term, because I feel like he was the first person that I heard talk about this in detail, but a street team or, or an advanced reader team is basically an excuse to justify selling your book before it comes out. Right? Like a lot of people don’t want to hear about your book like six months before it comes out. But if you, if you, if you wrap it, if you change the positioning from, Hey, buy my book, which people want to do, like if I buy your book, I want the book to be here, like within a, you know, a few days or a week or two. And so usually the buy my book positioning has to sort of wait until, you know, a couple of weeks before launch, even your fans, you know, you try to get them to pre-order the book in advance. That’s really going to happen like one month in advance of the launch, but to build a street team and advance reader team, you know, an early access team, however you want to position it. Those are people that could buy the, buy the book two, three months in advance and read it and go through it. And so it’s a reason to sell books in advance, which shows you, you know, the industry, they start clocking those sales. Now all those sales will count on week one. And that’s why most books that hit the New York times bestseller list or any of them, it happened in week one because all of the pre-sales queue up. They all count on that first week, but this gives you a reason to start generating sales, you know, a month, two months, maybe even three months in advance. Like as soon as that book is up for pre-order on Amazon, and you basically make the requirement for joining the advanced reader team, ordering the book in advance. Now they’re not going to get it from Amazon. So you got to give it to them digitally. And you gotta work that out with your, you know, your publisher, but most publishers are happy to do it. If you’re self publishing, it’s not a big deal at all. It’s your decision. You know, you get them, you get them the manuscript in advance. So you develop this, this groundswell, this, this warmup act, this, this group of, of advocates, ambassadors that when your book comes out or the week before, like the first couple of weeks, they’re out there championing and like, you know, pushing it. And so you get the advantage of generating the pre-sales. You got legitimate people who are verified purchasers to leave reviews on Amazon, which is really huge and important. Then you can get a lot of reviews early on. And you have this whole group of ambassadors that are there to help you launch the book in the first week or two. It comes out like, you know, you know, the prelaunch week and then the launch week. And then, you know, usually like the first couple of weeks after like the big, heavy weeks. So you got it, you got to do this. And it’s, it’s not that hard to do. Like you can figure it out. I mean, we, we of course talk about the details in best seller launch plan, but most of it is just knowing, Oh, I need to have this. And I need to build this as a part of my launch strategy. So that you have, you have, you have more than just you, which leads me to the last thing. And this is so important. And, and again, it’s a mindset thing and becoming a bestselling author is much more about it’s about a mindset first, like so many things. And you don’t have to be a best selling author, like, but if you want to be, then you got to pay attention to the stuff. And what I would say is what, what I would recommend is that even if you don’t care to become a bestselling author, you should want as many people to buy your book as possible. You should want to activate as much of your audience as possible. That really is important. And you know, so this is, this is, this was the takeaway. This is what Honoree said in the interview. She said, there’s no such thing as self publish. There is only team publish. There is no such thing as self published. There is only team publish. And that, you know, inspired me to remind you this, this, this something that we say in bestseller launch plan, which is this there’s the, there is a total fallacy of a bestselling author, right? Like they’re there, like the author is one person. And, and there it’s an important person, right? A lot of the ideas stem from that person and a lot, they’re the catalyst for the movement, but you cannot launch a best-selling book by yourself. It is about a team. You need a team of people you need, you know, PR people and social media people, and copywriters and web developers and, and, and ad specialists and marketing automation specialists and SEO people, and a publisher and a literary agent, you know, and editors and printers and distributors. And, and like, no matter, even if it’s super small scale, it’s, it’s a people, it’s a team. You fans, you need fans. Like it’s a team. And so thinking about it as it’s just, you, it’s the, it’s the, it’s the wrong way to think about it. You’re, it’s, it’s, it’s not even like you’re an author. You have to think of it as you’re a leader, you’re the leader of a movement. You’re the leader of a message. Your you’re trying to create and cultivate an army of people to rally behind this message that you’re passionate about in this problem that you want to solve in the solution that you want to advance in the world. And it, and the book has to become bigger than just you. And it doesn’t mean your face can’t be on it. It doesn’t mean your title, your name shouldn’t be on it. It can be, but, but the mentality is I need to recruit an army of people to help me because none of us know how to do all these things. No one, none of us can, can write the book and edit the book and do the graphic design and do the printing and do the layout and get it, get it up on Amazon and, and drive the ads for it and send the emails and build the funnels and create the graphic, you know, ads for social media and do the posting and research the hashtags. And it’s like, and that’s what being a best selling author is, is it’s, it’s a thought doing a thousand little things, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not one big secret that like, somehow they know that you don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s activating a community of people who trust you and who buy in to what you’re doing. There is no such thing as a best-selling author, there is only a best-selling team. So build a team activated team and, and pull together a team to advance your movement. And that is a team that we want to be a part of. We want to be on your team. We want to be, we want to be part of the people who set the strategy for your team. And that’s why we work with so many of you. One-On-One every month in our coaching program. That’s why we’re here with the podcast every single week. It’s why we bring you these episodes and all the work that our team of brand builders group is all about. So thanks for allowing us to be a part of your team. Please continue to allow us to be a part of it. Listen to the interview for Monterey and come back next week, right here on the influential personal brand. Bye-Bye.