How to Promote Your Book with Anne Janzer

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, people, amazon, reviews, audiobook, physical copy, podcasts, kindle, author, read, podcast, print, write, promotion, alastair, paperback, kindle version, nonfiction, find, copy

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Anne Janzer

Alastair McDermott 00:02
Hello, and welcome to The Recognized Authority Podcast. I’m here with Anne Janzer, who is a former guest, and also one of my fellow authors in the 33 Way Series. So, um, we’re going to talk today about book promotion. Right? And we’re gonna record this as a regular conversation. And maybe we’ll put it out as a podcast episode, and maybe not? That okay?

Anne Janzer 00:26
Okay, that sounds great. Let’s try it.

Alastair McDermott 00:29
Cool. Okay, now, you are a sixth time author. Is that right?

Anne Janzer 00:33
Yes, yes. Yep.

Alastair McDermott 00:34
So do you have your process down pat now? Or motion? Or have you heard the motion? Are you are you kind of figuring it out on the fly every time?

Anne Janzer 00:46
So I’m always figuring it out on the fly. And here’s the really interesting thing. So I have six different books. And they all need different things work for different ones, which really is the sort of the core of my message is that there is no one formula. Anybody who says this is the answer for book promotion, right now is probably misguided, and maybe their answer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s yours. So it’s something really to keep in mind is that, you know, if you have a book, and this probably applies to stuff besides books, so we know you can think about this in a larger framework. But there’s so much advice about what you should be doing. And books, especially authors are just bombarded with stuff about what they should be doing, plus all their ideas about what it is to be an author and have a book right, the things you see in the movies and all of those things. And we just have to set most of that aside and think both creatively and strategically about how this is going to work in our lives. So that’s, that’s, you know, I would love to just do sort of a live conversation about your book. Aleister.

Alastair McDermott 01:52
Okay. So I can take notes,

Anne Janzer 01:54
take notes. Oh, you know, I think I think you’re recording it too. So I think

Alastair McDermott 02:01
I find that taking notes actually helps me to, to process the information. So. But yeah, so Okay, so I have this new book, it’s called “33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Podcast”. And I haven’t really got any kind of promotion plan. Because I kind of wrote it by accident. I wasn’t really intending to write that book.

Anne Janzer 02:21
Oh, no, I wrote a book by accident. Oops.

Alastair McDermott 02:24
It was it kind of was like that, because I only did it because I was talking to you. And then Daniel was talking to Melissa. And I was like, geez, Claire, write a book like that. Yeah, let’s see. And so I kind of I wrote it the 33 points. Um, but it’s not I wrote those out. I kind of have it half written at this point, you know, I just need to fill in the blanks. So it was actually a very easy book to write. For, in that sense. So. So yeah, so I hadn’t really, and I’ve realized as well that this kind of makes me the podcasting guy, even though I hadn’t really intended to position myself that way. But I like I am doing that. So. So I’m adapting some of my offerings in terms of my services to kind of embrace that.

Anne Janzer 03:07
That’s so interesting. Yeah. When you when you write a book on a topic, you you know, it’s kind of you write a book on it, you own it, you know, whether or not you intended to, which is such a great story, too. But there’s so you’re not in, you know, the way you the way you wrote your book was perhaps accidental. But the situation you’re in is pretty common, where people like, put all their efforts just into writing the book, because

Alastair McDermott 03:28
Oh, yeah.

Anne Janzer 03:29
Right. And then they come out and they publish. And they’re like, well, now what, you know, now, how am I going to promote this thing? And this is where people really quickly become either discouraged or overwhelmed or something. Something?

Alastair McDermott 03:41
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 03:43
So so so your situation is common. So let’s let’s talk through your situation, and everyone can pull from it, what might be useful for them? So first is I hope I’ve already you know, sweep away a lot of your current existing thoughts. Oh, my God, I have to get a publicist and be on Oprah or something. I’m sure that was not probably,

Alastair McDermott 04:02
with Oprah with this book.

Anne Janzer 04:04
No, it’s not an Oprah book is not. Right, right.

Alastair McDermott 04:08
If you’re listening, it’s okay. I’ll come on.

Anne Janzer 04:10
Yeah. You know, not to say you’re

Alastair McDermott 04:14
podcasting. Fine. Yeah, you’re right.

Anne Janzer 04:17
You never know. You never know. But so much of what you’re going to do is going to depend obviously, on your book, your subject and your readers and where they hang out, right.

Alastair McDermott 04:27
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 04:27
So that’s something to always keep in mind, always think about your readers. But the other thing that you need to think about are to start from a place of strength. Start from what it is that you do well, or that you find easy or that you enjoy. So So Alastair, what are some of your your strengths that might relate to sharing this message and finding your readers?

Alastair McDermott 04:54
Well, I guess podcasting? Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. Um, And, you know, creating that kind of contents. And I’m, I’m fairly good. But I’m not actually extroverted, I know I might appear to be an extrovert. I’m actually an introvert. But I just have kind of faked the extrovert, so. But I, like I’m happy to go on and talk to people. So I can imagine that reaching out in some way to podcasters. Although, even then I wonder if the topic is to metaphor them. You know?

Anne Janzer 05:27
Yeah. Yeah, no, but there’s something there that but there’s a core of it, that relationships you’re pretty good at, at reaching out and having conversations with people and, and in fact, I think maybe introverts in some ways, might be even not good at the reaching out part, but have good conversations, then one to one conversations. So that is something to bring into bear as we think about ways for you to market your book.

Alastair McDermott 05:52
So So where do you hide your particular individual’s unique strengths, like?

Anne Janzer 05:58
your unique strengths and the things that you enjoy doing, too, I mean, and then there’s a secondary thing, and we’ll get to this next, which is, what might you be interested in? Interested in learning or curious or interested in playing with, right, so it’s, it’s good to use book promotion, as a growth as personal growth, you, you might say, I want to find I want to explore this one that you mean, you might be, I want to do a little bit more with video, for example, I don’t know, I’m not trying to put that in your mouth. But, you know, maybe I will explore I would add, that is something to explore. But, but that’s, you know, that’s about all that you have, I mean, it’s better to do a few things very well, in your book promotion, than to scatter yourself really thin, and, and just be lost in the sea. And I think too many people go for that second option, which is, I’m going to be on every social media platform. And I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that it’s like I, you know, start simple. Start with your strengths. Something that I know from having read your book that you’re good at is also process and and streamlining your processes and automating. So that’s going to hold you in very good stead as you do this too. Because the whole point is that the book rush needs to be something that fits into your life and fits into your business. It shouldn’t, it can’t take all your time. If it becomes this huge time sink, you are just not going to do it. And, you know, so you’ve got to find something that fits really well like a comfortable sweatshirt, you know, that you’re willing to wear a lot.

Alastair McDermott 07:37
So okay, let me see. Some of the questions that I have. Are, do I need to mail physical copies of the book out to people? Or who should I be doing that to? Should I be spending money anywhere? How do I get reviews? So I don’t know.

Anne Janzer 07:56
Yep, yep. Yep. Okay, good. So the first thing I would say is, I feel strongly that the best marketing for a good book is the book itself. Right? If you’ve written a good book, and you have Aleister, because I’ve read it. So I know this is that, yes, sending that a copy a physical copy of it to someone who is in a position to recommend it to others makes a heck of a lot of sense. And this is like, you know, the simplest. Are you gonna spend 1000s on a book publicist? Are you going to spend 100 bucks on a carton of books and you know, four bucks a pop to mail it to people with a personal note, I mean, which, which is, you know, you could take your whole marketing budget and putting into shipping books strategically to people with a note. And you will probably outperform people with huge budgets, spending it on ads and places, you know, I mean, I just because you can target specifically, people who influence your potential buyers. And because your book is, I mean, so your situation, your book is about starting running a business podcast. So you were potential buyers are more most likely listening to podcasts. I mean, I just so so it’s, it’s obviously, you know, talking about it on your own podcast, reaching out to other podcast hosts, as guests as a guest speaker. And then, you know, forming the relationships, you send them the book, all of that this just, to me, that would be the obvious sweet spot, it fits in what you’re already doing. You have the processes, you have the expertise, you can fit that into your life without going nuts, right.

Alastair McDermott 08:51
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 09:33
So early on in the book, though, and you did mention reviews, so although I’m telling you to disregard most of what people are telling you, you have to worry about. I do think every author, especially every indie or hybrid author, really, really needs to take advantage of everything that to to optimize the relationship with Amazon. Okay, because and one of the ways that you do that is by getting a lot of reviews is kind of Social Proof, you want reviews on every platform, of course, not just Amazon, wherever your book is selling, but Amazon it feeds or algorithmic whatever. So you have to get comfortable asking for people to leave reviews. I will put the PDF of my book up in a service like book funnel. And I’ll ask people are you willing to leave a review, I will share you a link to review copy. So they don’t have to buy it if they don’t want to. Because you’re asking quite a bit, when you ask someone to leave review, you can also send them a physical copy, if you’d like to do that, whichever, whichever they prefer need. But it takes a concerted effort to get the first chunk of reviews and I have to confess, you know, sometimes I don’t follow through on that effort enough. And I need to return to it. And you can return to it at any time, which is the beautiful thing is there’s no you know, Amazon is never gonna say, Oh, you take the book back, I’m not going to sell it anymore. I mean, you know, yeah, you do have some time. So you should take the pressure off. But you also want to make sure that your Amazon homepage is as strong and compelling as it can be, you can add some A plus content, which is a little way to just get more shirt advertising space, on your page, what’s already your own book, A plus content on Amazon, you can put a few graphical images up, it’s basically it shows up you see it on some books is from the publisher. And it’s more like ads for the book itself. So that if you want to, in your case, I would hit like certain little nuggets buried in certain chapters that people might get them curious. Or think, Oh, this is good. This is this is going to be what I need. And you really want to match the book to the buyer, you want people to see and expect. When they get it, it meets their expectations and exceeds them. But they’re not like, Oh, this isn’t what I thought it was right? So you want to the more insights you can give to what’s in the book is good. And when you take advantage of that real estate on the Amazon page, you’re owning more of that, in less of it is ads for other people’s books. That’s a lot going on. So things like that. We can also there’s some things you can do, it’s a little too complicated for this podcast, but to encourage Amazon to put your book in the great on Kindle category, which gives people discounts if they read it on Kindle. I’ve done this thing for all of my books, and only two of my books have earned the grade on Kindle badge. So I’m not sure exactly what makes it happen. But it’s worth it’s worth trying.

Alastair McDermott 12:39
Right. How do you prioritize in terms of the Kindle version versus print version.

Anne Janzer 12:49
So the Kindle version gives me as a marketer, a lot of control over that, I can set the price down, I can set the price up because there’s no physical thing to to put limitations on the price. So I do a lot of my monkeying around on the Kindle version. But the you know, obviously, a lot of people want the prints. It really varies with my books. It’s just, there’s almost slightly different buyers. I can’t I don’t know, I read both. So I’m not sure that I see that diversion, but you’re just going to have to see where your purchase patterns come out.

Alastair McDermott 13:26
But I personally as a reader, I read an awful lot. I read about a book a week in terms of fiction. I buy always ebooks on fiction. But then for nonfiction I always buy hardback or paperback print.

Anne Janzer 13:40
Isn’t that interesting? Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s split for me along different genres around different types of writing. Sometimes I buy more fiction, because if it’s something I know, I really might like, I might want to pass it on to my daughter or my sister. And so send them a book.

Alastair McDermott 13:54
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 13:55
There’s that. You know, I do just a whole mix of things. But I know that a lot of people, right have very segmented patterns. It’s just that everybody’s different. And so that’s why I think we need to be, you know, everywhere, as much as possible with our books and as many formats as we can. So, you know, what I would say is for you looking at, you know, here you are right now, there’s some things to do. Now, because it’s early in your book, really spend some time asking for reviews. You know, do the uncomfortable ask for reviews. Anyone, anyone, anytime anyone say Hey, I saw your book and that looks great, you know, Hey, would you be willing to relieve that and an Amazon review? Anytime you get a compliment? The first thing you say is thank you would you be willing to write that sentence in an Amazon?

Alastair McDermott 14:47
Yeah, I can imagine that gets awkward. After the 100th time you’ve asked but

Anne Janzer 14:52
Yeah, but this is this is this is your life now. And then give them a reason. When you asked for review. Here’s the Well, you know, that little psychological trick you say, because it really helps, it really helps people find the book because it helps Amazon, you know, match the book to the readers because whatever, because people are much more likely to take the action, if you give them reason which, you know.

Alastair McDermott 15:15
That’s straight from Cialdini.

Anne Janzer 15:17
Yes, exactly. Yeah. That the copy the photocopy experiment, right. So any reason, you know, because I want it is almost one, but we won’t go there. So but but always give people a reason to do it. And, you know, eventually they will. It’s just a slow kind of process. I think you also need to let people know. And your case, you can say it’s maybe an hour, an hour and a half to read, you know, and just a sentence or two of what you found useful is all would be great. In the review. You don’t you know, people get this. If they’re not used to writing reviews, they think they have to write like a book report or something from college or something. And that’s not what you’re asking for it all.

Alastair McDermott 15:54
Right. Oh, yeah.

Anne Janzer 15:56
So spend a little time asking for reviews, start doing podcast, outreach, things like that. And then spend a little

Alastair McDermott 16:09
When you’re trying to do podcast outreach, so one of the first things we talked about was strategically shipping a physical copy of the book to certain target people that you think might be influencers? I’m assuming the podcasters are in there. So for those who, like, there’s a lot of podcasts out there.

Anne Janzer 16:32
Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 16:33
For those who we don’t want to ship a physical copy to because it just gets too expensive to that, you know, infinitely? Do we send them an E Cup, the B version, I was like a PDF or something or what we do?

Anne Janzer 16:45
Yeah, I think so again, I use this little service called Book funnel. And I think the most basic level is, I don’t know, 80 bucks a year, 100 a year, I don’t know, maybe there’s a more basic, there’s a free one, but it creates a really nice landing page. And it goes through, you can put your actually your ebook file as well as the PDF there. So they can choose what format they want to, they can get it delivered to their Kindle, I mean, they can do these things. So they can read it in whatever way is comfortable for them. So that’s one nice way, rather than fussing with shipping files around, you know, here’s a link to the book, you can download the review copy, to take a look at what’s involved. And that is a really nice way to handle and offload you from all the what format do you want, you know how to get this on your Kindle, you know, all of that stuff. Just no longer is your problem. So that’s a nice professional way to, to offer people. And you can say, you know, here’s the link. And if you’d like a paper copy, that means send me your shipping address or something. You know, that would be one way to do it. Not most most people won’t, but a few will. Yeah, that saves you a lot of time.

Alastair McDermott 17:51
Okay, cool. So so you create your book funnel page, for your book, and then you send that with your podcast pitch, basically.

Anne Janzer 18:01
Yes, yeah. Then you send it with your pitch for the podcast to say, you know, yeah, here’s a link to the book. If you want to take a look at it. It is super quick read, you know, love your Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 18:13
Yeah. Okay.

Anne Janzer 18:14
And I think in your case, the book will do a lot. You know, let people know, I think that the size of the read, because the time commitment is not huge. What you’re asking you, you can skim to pretty quickly take a look at the chapters. You know,

Alastair McDermott 18:29
Yeah. Cool. Okay. All right. So to summarize everything so far. In terms of promotion, you’re talking about, first of all, doing a few things really well. The things that you like doing, yes, strategically shipping the book to people who you have targeted as people, ideally, with audiences, that’s what you’re looking for. We’re willing to promote your book to the audience. And some of those may be podcasters. And for those who you don’t want to send a physical copy to you can send an E version of it using something like book funnel.

Anne Janzer 19:15
Right.

Alastair McDermott 19:17
And then in terms of getting reviews, asking people asking everybody, anybody complements the book, ask them

Anne Janzer 19:26
Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 19:26
Right. Okay. Is that that everything so far?

Anne Janzer 19:29
Yep. Yeah, I think that’s a good, you know, a good foundation, a good grounding of what you want us to be doing.

Alastair McDermott 19:37
Plus putting the a plus content you called it is that is that an Amazon thing?

Anne Janzer 19:41
It’s an Amazon thing. So if you go onto your KDP Dashboard, and we can talk through at some point, but it’s, yeah, take a look. I can send you a link to some or look for some books that have these different links. So you can see

Alastair McDermott 19:52
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 19:52
It’s on most of my books have a plus content as well. Okay,

Alastair McDermott 19:55
well, you definitely want to check that out. And then having a good you call it right was on homepage is that the author page? Is that were you doing Ultra Author Central? Is that it?

Anne Janzer 20:04
Well, that’s good. But I was actually talking about just the the Books page on Amazon.

Alastair McDermott 20:09
Oh, yeah,

Anne Janzer 20:09
page for the Kindle and all that, because that’s where the a plus stuff shows up. Right? You get editorial reviews, you add them there, he basically you want to control as much of that real estate as you can. So that’s, that’s what I’m talking about, and making sure you have a nice sharp book description, which I’m sure you do.

Alastair McDermott 20:25
Right? I think it’s okay. I’d love to get your feedback. If you think it’s good, or

Anne Janzer 20:30
Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 20:30
I think needs work.

Anne Janzer 20:32
I keep tweaking mine, to be honest, you know, I mean, I let it go for a while. And it’s like, I think I need to refresh it. And I think that’s because we really want to be looking at, you know, we really want Amazon to understand who to put this book in front of I mean, so I’ve all this tinkering. I’ve done with my oldest book. And right now, Amazon picked it for this Amazon Big Deal thing for a week, it’s discounting it is promoting it for a week. Now, don’t you want Amazon marketing your book for you? Yes, this is the dream. This is the writer’s dream. So and I think that’s because of all this kind of work. Now I’ve done, you know, so those are the baseline I’ve done. Like I said, there’s this other category of things you’re willing to experiment with, or you’re curious about. So I’ve done a lot of work with discount book promotions. And that’s worked really, really well for some of my books, again, discounting the Kindle version, because that’s the easiest one to get handle on, right. So that’s a whole area of expertise I developed, I decided I was interested in it, it kind of let me play with my marketing pricing, Amazon algorithm interests. And

Alastair McDermott 21:42
In order to do that, you have to have KDP, select right

Anne Janzer 21:46
No, you could do it without being in KDP Select, it’s just that you’re not going to get as nice a royalty. So it’s harder to make it pay off immediately. But I think it still does pay off over time. So even if you’re not in KDP Select, you can you can just you just go on to physically change the price of your book to something and whenever you’re done, you go physically change it back, and know that Amazon has a little bit of a time lag on on setting those prices. So

Alastair McDermott 22:13
I’ve noticed that Amazon has a time lag with pretty much any change that you make. And that could be from two minutes to three weeks, depending on the changes.

Anne Janzer 22:24
So never be three weeks. They do say three days is the outer limit, usually about a day is what I found.

Alastair McDermott 22:31
Well, what I found there was that it took three weeks for my paperbacks to become available after

Anne Janzer 22:38
so crazy. That’s That’s so weird. Yeah, on some

Alastair McDermott 22:41
of on some of the Amazon stores, it was available quicker on some of the other ones. But although it was available for order, the shipping date was still two weeks out. So okay, so that had to do with my friend was was frustrating because it was waiting for the book because I wanted to get a copy of the book. And I couldn’t get it until January 20. Even after after publishing on December 31. So

Anne Janzer 23:10
were there print on demand printers broken in the UK or something. I’m not sure that’s it. Yeah,

Alastair McDermott 23:15
yeah. You just don’t know. Like, what is what is like, could order us on lots of the European sites, the Poland side, the French side, the Italian side. But when I got my shipping address and said we don’t ship to this address, which was incredibly frustrating. That’s because I’m in Ireland. So the UK side, so yeah, oh boy, that happens, but it’s just one of those kind of weird things. So So So be it.

Anne Janzer 23:44
Yeah, it is. It’s the paperback that’s, that’s why when I monkey around with pricing stuff, it’s all on the Kindle because it’s all virtual is digital don’t have the leg of the the print world. So, yeah, yeah.

Alastair McDermott 24:02
Okay, interesting. So, I need to go buy some padded envelopes. Yes, read some notes, ship some some books to people. Yeah, I need to sign up on book farm will send those links to a list of podcasters that I will create. And then I need to ask everybody who I talk to you about the book.

Anne Janzer 24:25
And that’s right, as you’re listening to this, go get Alastair’s book and then leave a nice review or just leave an honest review. Ask for an honest review. We want honest Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Alastair McDermott 24:35
Yeah, so Okay. So what else what else I need to do?

Anne Janzer 24:43
You know, I think that’s plenty right now, not to overwhelm your energy within because obviously you still have a life but the only you know, just feel creative about it. You don’t have to do the things people say you should be doing thing, be experimental, see what works and what doesn’t what feels good? What’s interesting, what isn’t? It’s really easy to just get yourself like I said, in a sense of anxiety or overwhelm or something or despair, something about books. And just let that all go is just solve the puzzle. Keep working on it. That’s that’s how it goes.

Alastair McDermott 25:25
Yeah. Okay, cool. So

Anne Janzer 25:30
yeah, one other thing, I’m just going to put this out there. And one other thing, which I’m not as good at, look for those points of leverage. So for example, you might send the book to different people in business development for the service, various services that host podcasts, or services that support podcasters. So you send them a few copies of the book, see if they’re interested in some sort of using it as some sort of marketing or something, you know. So I mean, look for leverage points where instead of trying to chase single sales you’re chasing, or you’re looking for situations where you can expand your reach far beyond what is easy for you to do yourself.

Alastair McDermott 26:08
Yeah, I like that. That’s very smart. Because I was thinking about the book, the book sales. I’m wondering, because I know that a lot of nonfiction business authors will look for book sales somewhere. And I was wondering where those might come from. For me.

Anne Janzer 26:24
book sales. Yeah, take the greatest crate. greatest amount of productivity. But yeah, I think for you, there’s a whole ecosystem of podcasts, even, you know, microphone manufacturing, whatever it may be, just think creatively about all the people who serve and are speaking to in various ways your audience. And that’s that they should get some of your books. So

Alastair McDermott 26:43
I have some other resources that I’ve created. For example, I have a podcasting equipment list, which is a free download, which has all my equipment recommendations. So I’m wondering, what should I be doing with those? Is there? Is there a way to use those? How would you recommend?

Anne Janzer 27:01
Well, the since that is something that is a valuable resource in and of itself? You are collecting email addresses, so you can send it to them? Is that right?

Alastair McDermott 27:13
Because I also have it available to I have it I have it available on my guest FAQ page. So if people go to, to potentially sign up as a guest, they can go download for free, you know, yeah, that’s what we you know, no opt in, because I want my guests to have good equipment when they come on my show.

Anne Janzer 27:30
I agree. I don’t think you really want to lock down these things. But I think most people are perfectly willing to, like always, I’m willing to give this guy my my email address. Because, you know, ultimately, you know, your email list is is going to be your best friend. That’s where you’re going to find the communities of people who are interested in what you’re writing about what you’re sharing. And so to use those to, you know, generate email, signups is good. I, again, I’m preaching stuff, I don’t do terribly well myself. So I take that all with a grain of salt. But um, but yeah, share the resources. I mean, I here’s my philosophy, Alastair, find ways to be generous and strategic. Find that balance, always be generous. But if you’re Be generous with a dose of strategy, if you’re generous without strategy, you’re just going to burn yourself out. If you’re strategic, and never generous, nobody’s gonna want to talk to you. So be generous and strategic. As the foundation of your book marketing. How can I help? How can I serve this community? People? How can I serve people who want to start podcasts or we’re doing business podcasts? And and the more you do that, the more you become part of that community and build people who appreciate that.

Alastair McDermott 28:48
Cool. Okay, I have one more question, which is kind of unrelated, but it’s, it’s the audiobook. What, what, where does the recording of the audio book lie for you in terms of priority? Do you try and get it out as quickly as possible? Or do you start promoting the print book first, and work on that and get the audiobook whenever you can?

Anne Janzer 29:13
So I do the second partly because, again, I’m recording my own audiobooks. And I have to get through the writing and publishing parts, though there’s a strong argument to be made for recording it as you’re releasing, because boy, you will find those last typos when you are reading it aloud.

Alastair McDermott 29:35
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. Yeah,

Anne Janzer 29:38
you will find those typos. Or the things like you know, record

Alastair McDermott 29:42
and found a pretty big typo well, by the typo, a missing piece of text in the book. So thank you.

Anne Janzer 29:50
It happens. You know, perfection is not our friend here. So, so you know if you can do it all at once again, I’m worried more about the The motional, cognitive whatever, though trying to do it all at once, just might kill me. So let’s like, okay, yeah, my first priority is always sanity. So and then I feel like there’s a benefit of a comes out a few months later might have been more delayed for various reasons having to do with figuring out production and quiet spaces we’ve moved in, anyhow. It gives you a reason to come back to the audience and say, Hey, remember that book. Now the audiobooks, it’s so there’s an advantage to having a low res after. I do feel the audiobook drives print sales. But I also just think we need to be doing audiobooks. People are listening. We need

Alastair McDermott 30:42
There’s a lot of people love audiobooks. Yep.

Anne Janzer 30:45
Yep, yep. So and some of them will reach out to you when you announce your print and say this is great. But when the audio book coming out,

Alastair McDermott 30:52
so So you had somebody today who said that to me?

Anne Janzer 30:55
Yeah, exactly. So especially so yeah,

Alastair McDermott 30:58
I’m terribly dyslexic. I love reading. But if you can give me an audiobook, that’s the way to go.

Anne Janzer 31:03
Yeah, yeah. So if you can do it without too much delay after you should definitely do that. But it does give you a reason to sort of extend the launch of your book and refreshed the launch.

Alastair McDermott 31:14
Yeah, I like that. I like that. Okay, so that makes me feel a little bit better about delaying the audiobook a bit. So thank you for giving me an excuse to procrastinate.

Anne Janzer 31:24
Not too long, though.

Alastair McDermott 31:27
Okay, cool. Let’s say I do all of those things. I put it up in book funnel, I ship out some copies. I asked everybody for reviews. And I’m sitting there twiddling my thumbs. What’s next?

Anne Janzer 31:41
What’s next. So I keep a track it once a month, I go and I look at the sales on each platform, I look at the revenues, I try to see how it’s tracking to what I’m doing to get some sense, because we need to, we don’t always know what’s working. And that’s the point at which I’d say okay, you know, let’s say you’ve hit a steady state of mind, what am I going to do? Am I going to? Do I want to focus on one thing, do I want to focus on Book Sales for a while? Or do I want to focus or I want to experiment with casting a wider net. So I’m going to do a discount book promotion. So I’ll knock the price down for a week. And I’ll just blast everybody about it and, and use some services to reach people I wouldn’t have otherwise reach. You know, I think I try to take sort of a rotating look through my, through my book marketing and say, well, this books kind of sit and quiet. What can I do for this one that I haven’t been doing? So I’m experimental, I try to be creative with it. Talk to other authors, you, you should listen to what other people are doing without feeling like you shouldn’t need to do at all, but just to find the gems that might make sense for you.

Alastair McDermott 32:46
Yeah. Okay. One thing I have heard, said in the world of fiction authors, is that one of the best way to sell your your book is to write another book. Is that true for for nonfiction for business books,

Anne Janzer 33:02
Not as much, not as much I mean, unless they’re linked. So so often fiction authors, because with fiction, we tend to say, I like this author, I’m going to read everything they write.

Alastair McDermott 33:11
Yeah.

Anne Janzer 33:11
And that happens with some nonfiction authors. I mean, clearly, there are some people, Michael Lewis writes a book about anything, I’ll read it, you know, I mean, that’s just how it works. But it also fiction writers often, like, like to work in a series series is much many things make more sense when you have a series. So when you hear about, you know, elaborate advertising schemes. It’s harder with a lot of one off nonfiction books, nonfiction, readers don’t tend to read the cycle of everything, what someone’s written, they tend to look for a very specific niche. So especially as you’re listening to fiction, authors talk pay attention, but But recognize that their business model and their readership model is fundamentally very different than yours. Unless you unless you want to do you know, Alastair, a series related to thought leadership, or a series related to podcasting or something, in which case, you know, there’s more of an argument, I did a, I did a workbook to accompany an older book of mine, the writer’s process, which came out a long time ago, and then this past year, I thought, well, I could create a workbook riffing on that and creating a bunch of creative exercises and assessments based on that. So I did that. And that is sold very well on that’s a case where they support each other the books supports the workbook. The workbook supports the book so you can find things that support each other. But for most part when we have sort of one off topics, it’s writing more books doesn’t necessarily it does a bit, but it doesn’t drive up the way that fiction writers are talking about.

Alastair McDermott 34:50
Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. I think that’s all the questions I had pre planned. Is there anything else I should ask you?

Anne Janzer 34:59
Yeah, We could talk book promotion and book marketing, you know, till the cows come home. I mean, that’s the point is there’s so much isn’t nearly an infinity of things that we could be doing.

Alastair McDermott 35:09
Yeah, and I feel we’re all on to what’s what’s realistic and achievable.

Anne Janzer 35:14
That’s the key. That’s the key. And it’s just giving yourself permission to not, I tend to over tried to over optimize or over stress about what I should be doing. And so for me that, and for many of the authors I talked with, it’s the same thing. It’s like, okay, let’s just find, you know, David Meerman. Scott, he’s a well known marketing writer, bunches of books. For one of his books, he decided his whole book launch plan was going to be 100 podcast interviews. So I just love that. It’s like, he picked one thing. Did it really well. And, you know, if anyone who’s listening this, you know, is you want to try to do everything, just remember this kind of do one or maybe two things really, really well. Yeah, that’s probably going to serve you. Well.

Alastair McDermott 36:01
Cool. Okay. Now that that I can do because podcast guesting is part of my overall strategy anyway. So tweaking it and just making it thinking about it in terms of book promotion. Is, is fairly, it’s not it’s not a stretch.

Anne Janzer 36:21
Yes, yes. it dovetails nicely with what you’re doing. And that’s, that’s it, find the sweet spots like that.

Alastair McDermott 36:26
Yeah. Cool. Okay, well, um, thank you so much. This has been really useful for me personally, I hope it’s useful for the listener as well. Where can people find you if they’re interested in finding you and your books?

Anne Janzer 36:42
Sure. My website and answer.com That’s A-N-N-E-J-A-N-Z-E-R dot com.

Alastair McDermott 36:49
Cool. And I will put a link to that in the show notes. My book is called 23 ways not to screw up your business podcast. And that is available now on Amazon. In Kindle, paperback and hardcopy or hardback, I really love the hardback, I have to say, I’m really happy with the job that that Amazon have done with the print on that. And if you like it, please leave an honest review. So thank you for listening. And see you in the next episode.