Welcome to the Book Brand Business Podcast! In today's episode, we dive into the intriguing topic of "Naughty Book Secrets that Most Publishers Don't Want You To Know." I'm your host, Ben Gioia, and I'm here to empower you with smart and strategic insights into the world of publishing. Whether you're a seasoned author or just starting out, it's important to avoid the costly mistakes that many authors make. Join me as we unveil these secret truths and learn how to navigate the publishing landscape with confidence. Get ready to unlock the potential of your book and discover how it can transform your brand and business. Let's dive in!

Hey. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. It's been Joya from influence with a heart .com. Thank you for stopping in today, to talk a little bit or hear a little bit about, the naughty book secrets that most publishers don't want you to know. Right? And what I wanna do is help you out here to be smart and strategic and empowered in terms of your book, in terms of publishing your book. Right? There's a lot of the mistakes that folks make with their books, because it's a bit of the Wild West out there for a great many people, a hand. You may or may not have published a book already. You may or may not have overpaid a ton of money and not gotten very much value you from that book.

So I wanna make sure that you know some really really important things, right, about these naughty book secrets that most publishers don't want you to know. And Hunt. As people are joining us today, as you're all joining, Mike, hey, Jacqueline, welcome. Barak, good to see you. Bill, welcome, as more and more people are coming in the door, you know, give people a moment to transition here. Her. So I'm gonna introduce myself real fast, and again, thank you for being here. So if we haven't met before, it's been Joya, a, 4 time or almost 4 time best selling author, podcast, and international radio show host.

My teachings are used by more than 80,000 people around the world. These are leaders and game changers. And for me, my superpower and my joy is to help folks write great books in as little as 5 weeks, and then them. Connect those books to things like 5 figure speaking fees and 6 figure consulting, and that's even before their book is done. So I've a worked with some wonderful authors. Anne Marie Schroeder, for example, wrote her book and got a speaking a in gig at Google. Right? Because they found her book that was super duper cool. Monica Jenkins got a 5 figure speaking fee at an organization before her book was done, and and somebody else who I can't name because of confidentiality reasons, got a 6 figure consulting gig also before the book was done.

So your book is super powerful. Your next book is super powerful. And remember from your book, right, if you've if you've ever seen a champagne champagne glass pyramid, right, whether it's at a wedding or even on video. You know, here's this pyramid of champagne glasses and to fill up the champagne glasses, us is you open the bottle of champagne, you pour from the top. Right? You pour into that top glass. That top glass is essentially your book, and a from there, all the other things happen, all the other content, the offerings, all the different ways you can leverage the book whether you're turning it into a course, a podcast, us to training, you know, you repurposing your book for marketing, you know, all the the myriad ways you can move forward with your book. Right? Starting a from your book, and making sure you do do the book right. And doing the book right is an important part of the mix also, and then publishing it right is an important part of the mix.

And a lot of folks wonder, well, you know, do I go with a publisher. Do I do self publishing? Do I do hybrid? I think the answer will reveal itself. Right? You know, as I explain what I'm I'm talking about today. And part of the reason why I'm so, jazzed about this and so excited is because, you know, my book totally changed my business. Right? You may or may not know my story, but I was asked to do a speaking gig or a training gig at Stanford University several years ago. And what I did was I promised a that I would show up with autographed copies of my brand new book for everybody in the audience. So I promised to bring a 130 copies of my brand new book. But the event planner did not know that I had not written that book yet.

Right? So I promised books that I hadn't written the event was 6 and a half weeks after the promise. So I wrote the book in about 3 weeks, got it produced in 3 weeks, and I showed up to the event with autographed books. The event planning company hired me for several more gigs. The folks in the audience who were all from 1 company hired me to come do 2 days of training at their headquarters in Sydney, Australia the following year. And then in and among all of that excitement, somebody reached out to me from a fortune 100 company and invited me, and the book was still not done, but they had seen the book cover. Right? I had design the book cover or had somebody design the book cover before the book was finished. Put it up on LinkedIn. I said, hey, look, I'm writing this book.

Hooray. You know, our look at look at my book and somebody reached out and they said, hey, we're creating this mindfulness and empathy video game with a Fortune 100 company in conjunction with IT. It's gonna be played by 20,000 people. Would you be really willing to write the curriculum? Right. And I said, of course, I would. Now a I had never written a curriculum before. Right? So I just want you want you to all all to understand the idea of leveraging your book before it's published, before or it's even written is really, really powerful. So if you're thinking of writing a book, or writing your next book, or you're somewhere in the process, start talking about yourself as the author of this forthcoming book, even if you don't have the title yet.

Right? Start positioning yourself as an expert with your book even before it's done. Okay? So that's all the stuff about the book, and now let's get into the the the naughty secrets about the publishing. And, the things if how should I say this? I couldn't because I knew this us. These secrets, I was able to make certain choices about my book and be able to do everything that I just described. Right? If I had, if I had succumb to the naughty secrets. Right? I wouldn't have been able to leverage the book in the way that I did, and also at the speed that I did. So these naughty secrets mostly apply to traditional publishers. Us.

Right? So when I say traditional publisher, you know, this is someone who usually, you know, a person company that you have to get potentially get an agent for, right, to bring your book to the publisher. A you may have to write a book proposal. You know, so there's already a couple of hoops. Right? So already your book is potentially us taking longer than it could. Right? So, you know, really want to encourage you to think to think and remember and understand that traditional publishing for most folks like us. Right? Speakers, coaches, consultants, leaders, small business owners, entrepreneurs, ours, and especially those of us who wanna make an impact with our message and our business. Right? Traditional publishing is not the way to go for us. Let me say that again, traditional publishing is not the way to go.

Right? Because us. It's if you publish your book on your own terms, and I'll talk about it in a moment, you have so much more a freedom and flexibility, whereas with the traditional publisher, right, it's like you're you're essentially asking for permission. Us. Right? So like I said, you know, you you most of the time have to find an agent. The agent is gonna take a percentage of your royalties, these, and when I say royalties, you know, how much money you're receiving per book that you sell. Okay? So when you do work with a traditional publisher between the publisher, the agent. You're often giving up something like 90% of your royalties. Right? Heights.

So if you think about that for a moment, you know, if you wanna if you wanna make $100,000 from selling books, right, you probably have to sell like a 100,000 books. Okay. Now for most of us, that is not time efficient, energy efficient, or investment efficient. Right? And hunt. There's no guarantee that somebody's gonna read your whole book. Right? And there's no guarantee that somebody's gonna take a next step from reading your book. Right? Us. So for me, I think of how to use the book as leverage instead, which I'll talk more about that in a moment.

But first and foremost, just keep in mind us that if you work with a traditional publisher, they're gonna take most of your money, and they're gonna own your intellectual property. Us. Right? So you're literally signing over your intellectual property to this company. You're signing away the rights us to the book that you've worked on, to your story, to your message. Right? You're giving up creative control, you're giving up flexibility in terms of how and when when you wanna bring forth the book. They might not even let you put a link in your book, a call to action in your book. They might not let all. You do that.

Right? You want to have a call to action in your book. Right? You wanna give the reader an opportunity to take a next step with you. Us, right, to get on to your email list. Right. To be able to continue to develop a relationship with them, continue to serve them, and invite them into, you, you know, a deeper more comprehensive step with you. Right? Because if you think about it absolutely, you're gonna give people value with your book. Right? You're gonna give them transformation, you're gonna give them insight, and the deepest long lasting stuff is gonna happen when people hang out with you for a longer. Right? So sure, you can do great things in the pages of your book, but you can even do more great things if you have somebody come become a coaching client.

Right? Or to come attend a a longer training of yours or come to work with you for x amount of months. Right? That's when you can provide the deeper, longer lasting, you know, hopefully, life off and business changing transformation for the people that you serve. Right? So like I was saying, you with the traditional publisher, you sign away the rights to the book, you're giving up creative control, you're giving up choice about us when you get the book out the door. A lot of times people think about, oh, well, what if a isn't a traditional publisher maybe gonna give me an advance because they think my book is really cool. A they might, right, but chances are they're not going to unless you have a really big following or or something that really makes it worthwhile to them to give you an advance. Right? And I'm not saying this doesn't happen, I know plenty of people who've gotten advances, but, you know, remember that a traditional publisher, they're in business to sell books, and that's totally fine, nothing wrong with that. Right? But they wanna make sure that you are in a good, good investment for them. Right? They wanna make sure that your book is gonna sell a bunch.

Right? So only then will give will they give you an advance. So most of us, us. Most of the time, we're not gonna get that advance. No offense to you. No offense to me. Right? And then the other part of that, going back Octo the the book sales, is that most publishers don't most traditional publishers, a hard me. Don't provide marketing. Right? They might send an email out to their list.

Right? They might do a press release about your a hook, but chances are they don't have your ideal clients, your audience on their list or on on their YouTube channel or whatever it is. Right? So you're the one who's gonna have to do the marketing. Us. Right? So keep this in mind. If you remember that movie, where was it? Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner. Us. Right? If you build it, they will come absolutely not true. Right? There's so much more that you have to do with your book beyond just writing it.

It's great to write it, really important to write it, and what are you gonna do next with the book? How are you gonna leverage it? Right? Publishing companies, especially traditional publishers. Don't provide that marketing for you. Okay? So you're doing the work anyway. Right. Keep that creative control for yourself. Really, really important, you know, don't give up your intellectual property and don't give up the freedom and the flexibility. Right? If we go back to my story about writing the book, you know, in a short amount of the Haim for Stanford University. Right? I could have never done that with a traditional publisher.

Right? I would have had to go out, find the agent, do their book proposal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You know, and in this case, I was able to, you know, have a book in hands in 6 weeks, and art. You don't have to do it, you know, breaking that crazy like I did, but to understand that you can do so much more with your book. Right? By being in control of your book. Right? You can make different versions, you can make specialized versions, you know, if you're, for example, doing a a gig with a consulting company. A right. You can make a special version of your book for that company or for that team that you're working us directly. Right? I mean, what a unique thing to be able to say, hey, I can make a specialized version of my book to help deliver, you know, these, this set of services, this transformation to you at a higher level.

And let me swing back around to book sales again. Right? I said a little bit earlier in this call that if you're with a traditional publisher and dealing with an agent and all those things, you know, you might only be getting like a buck or a little bit more $1 US dollar per book as a royalty. The right. So doing the math, you wanna make a $100,000, you have to sell a $100,000 books. Right? If you're going for book sales. So here's us. Here's the fantastic, understanding in all of this. Right? Please remember this.

You can try to sell a bunch of books. But again, the book isn't necessarily the thing that's gonna provide the deepest transformation, the deepest impact, or the greatest amount of income. Us. So instead, I recommend, you know, you do the magic math. Right? And make yourself a $100,000 Luxe by selling 0 books. Right? Let me say that again. You know, you can make yourself a 100,000 book bucks or whatever that number others for you. It could be $1,000,000.

Right? Whatever that is, you can literally do by do that by selling 0 books. Right? Because instead of hustling and investing all that time, money, and energy in trying to sell individual books. You use your book to develop relationships with those host 1 to 10 to 20 people, whatever that number is based on your business model to get you to that goal of a 100,000 books so much faster, us so much easier and so much more effectively. Right? I mean, instead of trying to get a 100,000 yeses, right, get those those 10 yeses instead from your book. And the beautiful thing about publishing today, and when I say publishing for people like us, a professional self publishing is the way to go. Okay. So let me say that again, professional self publishing is the way to a go. So yes, it is self publishing.

Right? But this means that, you know, with a professional, they can take care of all the things as far as the cover design, the editing, the interior design, the keyword research which which is really, really important for your book. The category research, which helps you become a best seller and helps people be able to find the a book and the distribution. Right? Because we have the beautiful opportunity today, you know, thanks to the Internet and thanks to working with, you know, professionals of integrity. Right? That you and me. We can get our books doing self publishing or professional self publishing into not only Amazon, but Barnes and Noble chapters, Koba, and 40,000 more places around the world. Right? Again, 40,000 more places us around the world. It doesn't cost extra money to do that. Right? Just making sure that your book is set up right.

Right? Our end. The other beautiful part about all of this, you may or may not have heard the term professional. A, pardon me, print on demand. Right? Whether you have or haven't, I'll just tell you what it is. So print on demand means that when somebody he goes to buy your book. Right? They click to buy, and then the book gets printed. Us. Right? This is really, really fantastic because, you know, ecologically, it's wonderful.

It's also wonderful because you don't have to buy a 1,000 books ahead of time or whatever our have them sitting around in your garage. Right? And my favorite part of all of this, and this is where we go back to the naughty secrets of, you know, traditional publishers most of the time is that there are many situations with traditional publishers. Us. Right? You start working with them. You sign a contract, and they establish in the contract that, hey, you author. You have a minimum number of books that you are responsible to sell, you know, within x amount of months. Us. Okay.

So simple example. This is a real example from somebody that I know. They signed with a certain big name original publishing company. I'm not gonna name them specifically. They were required by contract to sell 4,000 books, us. Right? Within the 1st 2 months, 4,000 books within the 1st 2 months, they were able to sell 2,000 books. Us. The other 2,000 books, they were contractually obligate obligated to buy back at retail.

Right? They had to buy the books, the unsold books back from the publisher at retail $20 the pop. So suddenly, this author owed the publisher $40,000. A right? Does this sound like good business business to you? Does this sound like a good relationship to you? To me, absolutely not. Right? So coming back to this place of for most of us, speakers, coaches, leaders, consultants, entrepreneurs, small business owners. Us. Right? We wanna stand out as an expert or a thought leader with our books. Right? Wanna share our story, have our message reach more people. Us.

I just talked about a few of them in my own experience, and I'm sure you recognize a few of them for yourself. You you can attract more income them and make a bigger impact from using your book to develop relationships with people. Right? And let them get you get you to that goal. I have a colleague. Her name is Susan. She did a consulting gig with a certain big global company. They asked to her by her books as part of the consulting package. They bought 500,000 books from her.

Us. Right? 1 or 2 decision makers were responsible for 500,000 books from her. Now some results may vary, of course, us. Right? Like, I can't promise that that's gonna happen for you. But if you think about it, imagine if even a 100 of your books us. Our bought from a company that is having you come in whether it's for consulting a training, a workshop, a keynote, or, you know, take it a next take it to a next step and do something other than I did. Right? Offer your books as part of your speaking fee, as part of your consulting fee, and whether you're charging them, you know, on paper and showing them that you're charging them or just including it in your fee, as a way to expand the impact that you're making with this company, with this organization, with this audience, and also having a physical token of who you are and what you're about sitting on people's desks. Right? Because I don't know about you, but, you know, if I put something in a folder on my electronic desktop, I don't always remember that it's there for quite a little while at least.

Her. Right? But the people have sent me books over the years. Right? And if or the books that I've bought and are sitting on my desk, I know that I'm gonna go back to that book. I'm gonna think about that person, and potentially at some point sooner or later, take a next step with them. So us. I invite you to think in those terms, do professional self publishing. Right? Avoid traditional publishing most of the time. A and if there's anything I can help you with directly, please do reach out to me whether messaging me directly.

You can a email me ben@influencewithaheart.com. And you can also just, hop on a call with me, influence with a heart .com/chat. So thank you all again so much for being here. Really appreciate the fact that you a care about your book, about your business, and your message to empower your thinking, honor, and a pleasure to support you. Once again, Ben Joya influence with a heart you again soon. K. Take good care, everybody. Cheers.

Bye.