Let’s get real for a second and talk about how to write a book for today's market and what it really means to do so.
The book publishing industry tells people to make dreams meet paper.
How? Write a book. They’ll tell you, “Publish that book! It’s your ticket to authority, uniqueness, and that indescribable je ne sais quoi that an expert needs to stand out.
But here’s the tea…
Peeling Back the Curtain on Publishing
Every single day, the U.S. greets 2,700 new titles. Yet, catching those 100,000+ sales is like finding a unicorn in a haystack.
The average self-published author?
They’re looking at 250 sales. But before you toss your manuscript out the window, hold up – because this is where it gets interesting.
The Mighty Power of 250
Imagine those 250 sales not as numbers, but as people – each one an individual connecting deeply with your message. This select audience could be the very people you’ve been aiming to reach, ready to champion your cause.
This isn’t just about numbers; it’s about impact. Just think what those 250 people will accomplish by taking action in their lives, in their businesses, in their communities – because of what they learned as a result of your book.
True Influence vs. Follower Count
In our digital era, it’s easy to get caught up in the follower frenzy. But here’s the kicker: real influence isn’t about how many, but about how much – the depth of connection, the conversations sparked, the actions taken. Authors like Brene Brown and Malcolm Gladwell didn’t just gather an audience; they built communities moved to action by their words.
Their books came first.
Nonfiction: A Catalyst for Change
Nonfiction books have this incredible capacity to not just share knowledge but to inspire action.
Think Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique – these weren’t just books; they were movements that continue to shape our world today, many decades after they were published.
Your book could be the next catalyst for change, reaching those who are ready to listen and act.
How to WriteaBook in the Digital Age
While the digital world whirls with tweets and snaps, nonfiction books stand as islands of depth and reflection. They offer a pause, a chance to dive deep, and a platform for authors to share their most potent thoughts.
The advent of digital media has revolutionized the way knowledge is consumed, giving rise to questions about the relevance of traditional books in a fast-paced world. Yet, despite the proliferation of social media, short videos, and online courses, books remain unparalleled in their impact. Here's why:
Depth of Engagement: Books offer a depth of thought and analysis that short-form content simply cannot match. They allow authors to explore ideas comprehensively, fostering a deeper connection and understanding with their audience.
Perceived Authority: Publishing a book establishes an author's credibility in a way that transient digital content cannot. It is a tangible testament to an author's expertise and commitment to their field.
Longevity: Unlike social media posts or videos that quickly fade into the background, books have a lasting presence. They continue to be cited, referenced, and read years, if not decades, after their publication. Simply put, books endure.
Market Reach: Books open up opportunities to reach audiences beyond digital boundaries, including speaking engagements, workshops, and academic citations.
To Write, or Not to Write?
So, we circle back to the big question: Should you write and publish that book? If you’re looking to do more than just win a popularity contest – if you’re aiming to truly resonate and make a lasting impact – then yes, a thousand times yes.
This journey is about tapping into the unique power of books to connect, to inspire, and to mobilize. It’s about embracing the opportunity to share your voice, your vision, and your message with the world – and maybe, just maybe, change it for the better.
Writing and publishing a book isn’t just an item on a to-do list; it’s a path to creating ripples of change, fostering a community of engaged readers, and contributing something timeless to the global conversation. So, are you in? Because the world’s waiting for what you have to say.
What most surprised you, or what do you still want to know? Let us know your thoughts below!
About Tina Dietz:
Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert whose work and shows have been featured on media outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune, Inc.com, and Forbes. She’s been named one of the top podcasters for entrepreneurs by INC.com, and Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, re-imagines thought leadership through podcasting and audiobooks for experts, executives, and founders.
So many writers dream of publishing their books, but if you don’t know where to start, the process of actually publishing a book can seem daunting! The process of publishing a book can seem like it’s shrouded in secrecy.
In particular, writers who have never published a book before often are filled with questions about how to publish, what their publishing options are, when to contact a publisher, what marketing will look like, and much more.
Here’s some good news: even though you might be overwhelmed, you can publish a book—even if you’ve never published anything before! There are so many amazing first-time authors whose stories have changed readers’ lives, and your story deserves to be told, too!
To make the concept of publishing a little more approachable, we’re going to share five things writers who want to publish their first book should know about the world of publishing!
1. There are a variety of ways you can publish your book.
When writers think about publishing their books, they often think about one of two things: working with big-name publishers (also known as traditional publishing) or self-publishing. And while these are both options, there’s a third option as well—working with a hybrid publisher.
Let’s break down the three most common ways books are published:
Traditional publishing: you typically submit your manuscript or pitch your manuscript to a publisher, often through an agent; the publisher in these cases often has more control of your manuscript, the layout of the book, etc., and the royalties you receive can vary from publisher to publisher.
Hybrid publishing: this is sometimes considered an option that’s in between traditional publishing and self-publishing. You still maintain a good amount of control over your book, but you’ll also work with editors and publishers who can do much of the technical work that’s involved in publishing a book (such as ensuring your book makes it to wholesalers, formatting your book, etc.).
Self-publishing: you have ultimate control over your book, and while you have the potential to keep more of the money you make, you also have to pay for editors, illustrators, marketing, etc., directly, and you will need to research the ins and outs of what’s needed to publish your book on particular platforms (obtaining your ISBN, creating and formatting your documents, etc.).
So, what’s the best option for you? It depends on your timeline, budget, patience, and goals. If you want to publish and retain total control over the process, want to keep the bulk of what you make off your book, are okay with doing some research, and you’re willing to independently hire editors and/or illustrators, self-publishing might be a good option. Hybrid publishing is a great option for writers who want to maintain control over their books but need some help with formatting, editing, and other behind-the-scenes things involved in publishing. Traditional publishing can be time-consuming, especially for first-time authors who don’t have an agent, but pitching your manuscript to a traditional publisher can lead to your book being picked up in some cases (though it’s not always guaranteed, of course).
Ultimately, none of these options are “better” or “worse” than the others—it all depends on what you want!
2. You can contact a publisher before your book is complete.
If you want to work with a traditional or hybrid publisher, you don’t have to wait until your book is complete to reach out. In fact, it can be useful to start working with a publisher well before you plan to publish your book!
Though every book will vary (and some publishers will have a preference as to when you submit your manuscript), manuscripts often go through several iterations. After a first draft is written, editors who work with your publisher (if you choose to work with a hybrid publisher or traditional publisher) will review your manuscript to look for any grammatical, technical, or developmental issues that may need to be corrected.
For authors who want to self-publish, it’s often a good idea to contact an editor (or several editors, depending on the length of your manuscript and the genre you’re writing in) soon after you’ve finished your first draft. Being open to revisions and suggestions from experts can help you create a more polished book, which translates to giving readers a better reading experience.
3. You don't worry too much about formatting if you're using a hybrid publisher or a traditional publisher.
Often, people worry about making their manuscript look a particular way before sending it off to a publisher, and while you do want your work to be legible, the format you send your book in is likely not the way your book will ultimately look if you work with a traditional or hybrid publisher!
That doesn't mean you want your formatting to be a total mess, of course—after all, being organized as you write will make the process of publishing less time-consuming!—but you don't necessarily have to spend hours or lots of money on trying to format your book yourself.
Most publishers are familiar with taking manuscripts written in Google Docs or Microsoft Word and formatting them as needed. Formatting is a part of the publishing process that publishers often take care of, so you don't need to buy pricey software that may not be needed on your end, to begin with.
If you're self-publishing, depending on the platform(s) you're using, you still likely won't have to spend too much on formatting; many platforms, such as Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), offer templates that can be used for formatting.
Of course, if you're self-publishing and are struggling to get your format to look just right, don't hesitate to reach out to an expert who can help! You can find experienced individuals willing to help you format your book on sites like Upwork or Fiverr, for example.
4. It’s never too soon to start marketing.
Regardless of what method you choose to use when publishing your book, it’s never too early to begin your marketing efforts.
When working with a hybrid or traditional publisher, some (if not most, in some cases) of the marketing efforts will be done for you. With a hybrid publisher, you may be offered marketing packages that you can use when marketing your book, or you can choose to go solo if you’re a marketing whiz.
And when you self-publish, you’ll be the one who’s responsible for your marketing; in some cases, you might want to hire a professional, but some authors prefer to do the marketing on their own.
There are several great ways to market yourself and your book well before it’s published, including by creating a mailing list, talking about the publishing and writing processes on a blog or social media platform, creating a website for your book, paying for ads, appearing on podcasts…the list goes on!
By marketing your book before it’s published, you can build up an audience. An audience that knows you (aka a warm market) is generally more likely to purchase something of yours than an audience that doesn’t know you (aka a cold market). Plus, building an audience early ensures you can continue to share about future projects beyond your first book!
Of course, you can also market your book well after it’s been published, too, especially if your book is coming out in new formats, such as an audiobook, after the first printed edition of your book has been published.
5. You define what success looks like when it comes to your book!
Every writer has a different reason for publishing their book. Some writers want to entertain readers, some want to educate and advocate for a particular group of individuals, and others just want to share a story that’s important to them.
If you’re working with a hybrid or traditional publisher, spend some time talking to them about what your expectations are for your book. They can help you figure out what’s realistic and manageable, and what steps you need to take to meet your goals.
And if you choose to go the self-publishing route, it’s still important to clearly define your goals for your book—and do a bit of research to learn the best ways to meet them. You don’t have to wait until you’ve finished your book to start this process!
Just because you’ve never published a book before doesn’t mean the process has to be overly complex or difficult!
Whether you choose to self-publish, work with a hybrid publisher, or work with a traditional publisher, you can create and share your story with the world—it just takes some time, patience, and a willingness to learn and accept some outside help when needed.
What most surprised you, or what do you still want to know? Let us know your thoughts below!
More About Kim Eley
Specializing in personal development books and thoughtful children's books is the mission of Kim Wells Eley’s company, KWE Publishing; the common thread of both is to help people see what's possible and shift to a more enjoyable, fulfilled life. she says. As a writing coach and publishing consultant, Kim gives clients six steps to make their books a reality.
Kim is happily married to her BFF and has been for over 20 years. She’s a speaker; an author; a resident of Prince George, Virginia; a cat lover; a collector of orchids; and she gets all of her news from comedy shows.
Have you ever considered that your voice is an instrument and your thoughts and beliefs are the music you’re playing? If you want to learn how to “tune” your voice, take a listen to my guest appearance on the new episode of the More than a Few Words podcast, hosted by Lorraine Ball.(More Than a Few Words Podcast with Lorraine Ball, September 2021)
Recently, Tina joined Lorraine Ball on the More than a Few Words podcast to talk about how to use your voice to deepen your connection with others, enhance your credibility, and strengthen your leadership.
In this episode:
You'll discover the 5-7 different vocal qualities that are highly associated with credibility, trustworthiness, and perceptions of leadership
How these elements impact your career and income
Techniques to sound more professional, confident, and knowledgable
Lorraine BallHave you ever thought about what an amazing instrument your voice is? How the tone, the pitch and the tempo of your speaking voice can change how people view you? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay, here's the show. Welcome to More Than a Few Words – a marketing conversation for business owners. MTFW is part of your digital toolbox and this is your host, Lorraine Ball. I grew up in New York. I have a slightly nasal New York accent. That's part of my voice. But over the years, I've certainly worked to try to moderate that. And it is important that you do, because you can create an impression with your voice. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I couldn't think of a better person to have this conversation with than Tina Dietz. Tina's an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. She has been featured on media outlets, including ABC, INC.com, Huffington Post, and Forbes.Tina's first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC Magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of brands and leaders through high ROI audiobook and podcasting solutions. Tina, welcome to the show!
Tina DietzThanks, Lorraine. I really appreciate you having me on.
I am so excited to have you here, because this is something I've worked on a lot over the years and I think it's really important. But why don't we start with the question: What are the important qualities of someone's voice that makes them an effective leadership voice?
There’s about seven different qualities that are highly associated with someone's credibility, trustworthiness, and perception of leadership when it comes to vocal qualities. And the research around this is a little bit astounding. For example, Duke University did a study of almost 1000 CEOs, and found that on the topic of pitch alone, CEOs who had a lower pitch to their voice, had more tenure, commanded larger companies, had more perception of credibility and leadership, and made more money to the tune on average of an additional $180,000 per year.
And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.
And, you know, I know a lot of women like myself are like, “Crap!” You know, that's not necessarily a good statistic for us. But it's not that alone. The most highly, highly, highly associated vocal characteristic with credibility, leadership, trustworthiness is tempo. And this isn’t a particular tempo, it's your natural tempo. And this has to do with how we perceive somebody's breathing and their natural rhythm—the rhythm of their voice. So if you're, if you're talking a little bit too fast, and you're kind of gasping a little bit and all of that, that shows that you're maybe a little more anxious or nervous or not present. If you're talking slow, and a lot of pauses, then that may show that, again, you're not present and not confident or not sure of what you're saying. So those are two aspects of vocal qualities that really have been shown in research to make a difference. Other ones are sonority, which is the pleasantness of one's voice, articulation, as well as flow. And flow and tempo and articulation all kind of go together, as well.
So that's really reassuring to someone like me, because as soon as you started talking about it, I heard the deeper bass tone, having come out of a corporate environment, lots of men, I'm like, “Of course that sounds better to their ears.” And that's something that's really hard for me to change. But I can work on the flow, the pacing, some of those other qualities that make me sound more confident.
Exactly. But you know, and the good news is, is that everybody's voice is like a fingerprint. It's unique to us. So if you have an unusual voice, it doesn't mean that you have to fit into a cookie-cutter situation to be unique. You just need to be more of yourself. And the more that you work your voice out like a muscle, like you would take care of your body—it's a very complex musculature in there and your lungs and your throat and your neck and your shoulders, your face, everything combined—you know this, this beautiful orchestra happening inside of your body to get your voice out into the world. If you pay attention to it and work it out, it'll do wonderful things for you.
As a business owner, I'm thinking, “Okay, I'm not going to be doing big presentations, I'm not going to be standing in front of a room of 100 people. Does my voice really matter?”
Yes, yes, it does. It absolutely does. Because business is all about relationships. And every relationship you form, whether it's with a prospective client, it's with colleagues, it's at a networking group, it's on a phone call, it doesn't matter, you bring your voice with you everywhere you go. And you owe it to yourself, and you owe it to the growth of your business, your company, to bring your voice with you and to have it be a representation of who you are as a leader, and who you are as a brand.
Do you think that you have a different voice when you're at home or at work? Is it one voice? Or does it change based on the situation? And those are obviously the two extremes, but does your voice change in different situations?
Yeah, yeah, I think it does. Because we have a range, right? Just like you have a vocal range low to high, we also have a range of expression. And sometimes the expression that you use in business is not necessarily going to be the same expression you use with your kids.
That being said, I think most people draw two strong boundaries between what's in business, and what's really in your heart. And the more integrated we become from the inside and the outside, the more effective we become as leaders. So vocal leadership isn't really all about the external voice, it's about the dance between your internal voice and your external voice. It's analogous to a virtuoso musician. So, if you imagine your external voice is the instrument you're playing, and your internal voice—your thoughts, your beliefs, your message, all the things that make you who you are—that's the music that you're playing. So if you can learn how to create the arrangement of the music that you're playing, and pay attention to the external instrument, that's when you become a virtuoso.
Wow, I love the comparison between your voice and an instrument, because it really, to me, it makes a lot of sense. I can see that whole tuning and being pleasant to the ear. And even jazz sometimes is appealing to a certain audience. So I like that analogy, because it can be… your voice needs to fit the situation, it also needs to be kind of true to who you are. Are there things that we do with our voice that really work against us? That send the wrong message?
We could do it pretty easily. There's two in particular that in a business setting, and we're talking specifically about leadership and credibility, that are credibility killers. One is vocal fry. Now, if you don't know what vocal fry is, you can think about the Kardashians. So it basically makes you sound uninterested. And you actually will hear a lot of this in advertising when they're advertising to millennials and younger. Generally, when they're advertising to Gen X and older, you won't hear near as much vocal fry as you would, because it's more typical to hear in the younger generations, and they don't react to it as much as older generations do. So I do think we'll see this changing, but it's at the end of the sentences and it gets dropped down really low. And in the research that's been done—Gonzaga University did a huge study on this—regardless of who was evaluating the interviewees, anyone who was being interviewed that used vocal fry in their voice across the board categorically—age, race, gender didn't matter—they were rated as less credible and less desirable, less trustworthy to take a job. So it's a huge thing in career development: don't have vocal fry in your voice. That's a really big one.
And the other one that is similar—same thing, but different—is up talking the end of your sentences. And up talking the end of your sentences kind of makes you sound not credible, and then people think you don't know what you're doing, because your sentences sound like a question. A lot of times you can't hear it when you're doing it yourself, so you have to have other people listen to you. This happens a lot in networking situations when somebody is introducing themselves and they feel uncertain on the inside and that gets reflected to the outside. So a good thing to take note of.
Awesome. So as we're wrapping this up, I really want to encourage people to check out Twin Flames Studios—lots of S's in there for me to practice. But I really want to encourage people to check out all the wonderful information you've got to learn more about this subject, because I think being able to communicate and communicate with confidence is such an important first step for everyone and especially for business owners.
It sure is. We actually have a vocal leadership workout. If anyone is interested. And we don't have a landing page for it, but if you connect with me on LinkedIn, or through our website. We're happy to send you a copy.
Awesome. Well, we will make sure that we include all those links. Thank you so much for being a part of the show.
Thank you, Lorraine. This is wonderful. I appreciate you.
If you've enjoyed today's conversation and you'd like to find more resources for your business, be sure to check out the Digital Toolbox at DigitalToolbox.Club. Look for MTFW wherever you listen to podcasts. This is another episode of More Than a Few Words. Thanks for listening.
Did you know that the first audiobook was created in 1929? Today, audiobooks are a billion dollar per year industry in the US alone! If you want to discover more about the power of audiobooks, check out my guest appearance on the new episode of the VIP Access Podcast, hosted by Michelle Herschorn.(VIP Access Podcast with Michelle Herschorn, November 2021)
Melanie HerschornHi again. I'm Melanie Herschorn, the digital content creator and marketing strategist and coach for women business owners, and welcome back to another episode of VIP Access. VIP stands for Visibility, Impact, Profit, and this podcast will get you inspired and fired up about content creation and marketing yourself and your brand. Each week you'll get marketing and mindset strategies, actionable tips, and the motivation you need to land more clients, nurture your leads, and position yourself as an expert in your industry. We also go behind the scenes with powerful women in business to discuss strategies, messaging and more. My mission is to empower you to stop spinning your wheels and to make your mark with your marketing. Ready to wow your ideal client and create a community of raving fans? Let's dive into today's episode!
Hi, and welcome back to VIP Access. I'm Melanie Herschorn. Today, my guest is an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed speaker and audiobook publisher and corporate podcast producer and vocal leadership expert. Her name is Tina Dietz, and she has been featured on media outlets from ABC to Huffington Post to Forbes and more. Her first podcast The StartSomething Show was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs and Tina's company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the influence of brands and leaders through high ROI audiobook and podcasting solutions. And you will hear from her mic how great she is with sound. So welcome, Tina. Thanks so much for being here.
Tina DietzThanks, Melody, I appreciate that.
I just, I have a background in radio, so when I hear a good mic, I get really excited. Totally geeking out on that.
We end up being like radio voice nerds and all of that. It's like, “Oh, listen to the sound quality.”
Love it. So okay, I don't even know where to start, because I'm just so excited to have you on today. Because not only are you a podcasting expert, but really audiobooks are so important. And I think that that's something that people who have written a book don't even necessarily think about, you know, in terms of a way to get more ears or eyes on their book, and to amplify their mission and their influence in the world. And so, I would love to know some statistics about audiobooks.
Oh, statistics about audiobooks? Well, it's a funny world. When I first started working with audiobooks, they'd been around since about 1930. This is not a new format.
You mean like book on tape, okay.
Book on tape. Before that, it was book on album, you know. Or I'll date myself and talk about, you know, when I was a little kid, we had those book and album combinations where it was, “When Tinker Bell rings her little bell, it's time to turn the page.” Or we used to get books on tape out of the library, which you can still do. Mostly they're CDs sometimes have these all in one little players, which are really interesting and cool.
A lot of people don't know that the military uses a lot of those books. A lot of audiobooks are consumed by our servicemen and women overseas. It's one of the ways that they stay in touch and they don't have to use the internet. So audiobooks reach into some really remote places in the world.
But what really happened, oh, let's go back about 10 years ago, audiobooks became truly digital. Audible, which is the largest audiobook distributor in the world–they handle about 60% of the market share worldwide–combined themselves with Amazon. For whatever you think about Amazon or your opinions about Amazon as a global company, one way or another, what they have done is made things more accessible for everyday people. And when everything went digital, audiobooks went digital, the cost of production for audiobooks dropped about 50%. That has continued to be the case.
So when, back in 2009 or so and earlier, to get an audiobook produced you were talking about at least $10,000 minimum. Now an audiobook can still cost that much, if you get a lot of bells and whistles: you've got a full cast, you're recording in a New York studio, you got Tinkerbell in there full costume makeup, ringing bells. But that is generally not the case. Now you can get your audiobook fully produced by a company like ours, or another high quality studio, generally for $3,000-$5,000. And that's full production, author-narration, professional-narration, really high quality work.
It can be done remotely without our having to go into a studio. And audiobooks, you mentioned statistics, audiobooks outsell eBooks about three to one. And they're a $1 billion plus industry just in the US alone. And there are new markets opening up overseas every single day with audiobooks, so it is a growing market. It's been double digit growth year on year for the last eight years. So it is crazy pants what is happening with audiobooks and it's just a really reliable, familiar way too to get books into more ears and reach more hearts with your message. And that's what we're out to do.
I love all of that. So I want to just break it down a little bit more. Let's say somebody wrote a book a couple years ago, they launched it, it didn't do great, because they didn't have the marketing in place. And now they're starting to work on the marketing, because I always say you wrote the book, it's still published, so let's keep going and try to get some excitement about it.
Totally with you on that.
Can you also couple that with an audiobook and make that an exciting launch?
Why yes, Melanie, you can. I'll go into my commercial voice there. Yeah, no, it's a great application for an audiobook. We call it a “Second Chance Launch,” and it is something that happens frequently. As you know, in the book world, particularly with first books and authors, you get very excited. It's almost like having a child. You do all this stuff to get the book ready and to get it out there, and then by the time you get it out, you're exhausted.
Right when you need to be at your best is when you want to be taking a break. The marketing falls down or the budget isn't there, or just the persistence and the will isn't there to keep going with that particular book, because it's taken everything you've got as an author just to get the book out on the market. Launching an audiobook six months, a year longer, two years, three years down the road, is a way to revitalize that title and get it back out there again. Some folks also do a second edition with their audiobook, but more than likely, if the material really is evergreen, like many of our authors it is, then just getting the audiobook out there is enough to revitalize and get things going again.
What if you hate the sound of your own voice?
Ah, yeah, I hear that a lot. Even in a room full of speakers, if I'm on a stage and I survey a room, and I say, “Who here doesn't like the sound of their own voice?” about half the room, even in a room full of speakers and podcasters will still raise their hand. And if it's a roomful of executives or entrepreneurs, more in the general space, about 80% of people will raise their hand to say they don't like their voice. A very common thing. It's a very human thing. You have to get used to it.
There's two pathways through that. One is to basically suck it up and get used to it. Seriously, that, that's kind of the way it works. And to rely on professionals like myself, like my team, who are going to be honest with you and say, “Really, your voice is going to be fine for this book. And this is how we're going to work with you on it.” Or we'll be honest with you and say, “You know what, your voice is great for a podcast. It's great for a keynote. But it's going to be challenging to listen to you for four or five, six hours straight. And here's why.” That really just depends on the voice. But a lot of times, it's for reasons you don't expect. People have unique voices. I have this wonderful colleague who is totally Jersey–totally New Jersey–she has the most amazing, gorgeous New Jersey accent. I've been trying to talk her into doing her audiobook. She's got a great podcast, and she's like, “No, no, no, I have to have a professional do it.” I said, “Don't you dare,” because her voice is part of her brand.
Exactly what I was gonna say. It's part of her brand. And so she's taking people away from her brand, if she doesn't own that. That's part of who she is.
That's part of her voice. And her articulation is great. She's fun to listen to. Her voice is musical. All the things that are engaging about a voice. She has her accent, which she worries about, is not going to be a problem. She's very engaging to listen to.
Now, this is something even though I've worked in radio, I've been trained how to have a radio voice so to speak. I worked in classical music, which is like, “And now we are going to play Bach” and like, you really have to be like “The Sonata in B Minor played by…
The Philharmonic Orchestra. We hope you enjoy it.
Yes, exactly! Exactly. And then the people are dozing off while listening, which is fine. And news, which is also a different way to talk. But when people are gonna stand there and talk for four hours, five hours, how do they keep up momentum?
Well, you don't talk for four or five hours. That's really the key. Even professional narrators don't tend to record for longer than two hours at a shot. It is vocal fatigue across the board. Even for our really, really experienced speakers, our speakers always come in and say, “Oh, no, I do 20, you know, gigs a week.” And you know, we work with great people who do amazing things out in the world, and then they get into the audiobook process, and afterwards are like, “Oh, that was different.” Not that it was bad, it gave them a whole new skill set, because we record our authors remotely from wherever they are in the world and we fully direct them through the entire process.
Just as if you were to go into a New York studio and you were to have a director right there live in your ear, we are live in the ears of our authors, usually from their home office. So we're catching their mistakes, we're making sure that their energy is good, making sure that they're getting across the message and the intention that they want to get.
When you're reading and delivering material at the same time, it's different than a rehearsed keynote, or even in the format where we are now, which is really casual. I'm not as worried about my articulation. I'm not delivering a particular set script. You know, when you're going through an audiobook, it's a certain type of breathing. It's much slower than most people are used to speaking at and it's usually a little bit more articulated. There's a couple of things that come into play and that's what we help with. But we work with authors, you know, if their energy level can't support speaking for two hours and getting a great performance, then we do it for one hour. We have another author, we're working on her second audiobook, Jennifer Brown, she's an amazing DEI consultant. She has opera training, and tons of vocal training, and she has vocal stamina like crazy, so she can go for three or four hours. But she is an outlier, so it works across the board.
I mean, I can only imagine how exhausting that would be. You're not just talking, you're “on.” I'm one of those people that after a full day of work, I need to just shut down and have complete silence. Because when you're “on,” it just takes so much out of you. Do you find that people falter in the middle? And you're just like, “Okay, we'll come back to this tomorrow.”
It depends on the day that they're having. We do a lot of prep work with folks. We have a whole document we deliver to help people understand the mindset, to prepare to do their audiobook, and that can move into the rest of their lives as well. You know, when any of us who have been in business for a while, as you're developing your leadership, you know, you have to maintain your energy management and your energy hygiene, I'll even call it. And that has to do with you know, introversion/extroversion. Do you need to be around people? Do you need to shut down, as you mentioned? I need to go out tonight and go to an open mic comedy night to recharge myself. I'm an extrovert. That's going to charge me up. That would be a nightmare for you, probably at the end of a long workday, if you needed to recharge your energy after so many things coming at you.
Not necessarily. I'm one of those people, I could just have like five minutes, put on more makeup, and go out and feel totally returned.
We'll have to keep that in mind when we meet in person.
Oh, I can't wait for that!
But the point is that, you know, you have to manage your energy. And that's a big part of what our directors and what we listen for, watch for, and talk with our authors about because it's a very personal journey.
For me, I, even though I've worked in radio, as I said, I am a visual learner. I think it's two-thirds of the population are visual learners. But audiobooks, they don't really go against that, I find. Like I can listen to a book on a long drive and take it in, take all of it in. And so do you find that there's ever any pushback about people who are like, “Well, I'm a visual learner, so I don't need an audiobook?”
It's an interesting world, because we're so wired for storytelling. It comes into a different part of the brain entirely, so the best thing about an audiobook is the intimacy that it creates between the narrator and the listener. And there's a neurological connection, even when you're in the car. Actually, 80% of audiobooks are listened to through earbuds. That's what the research says.
You know, we're not in our cars quite as much as we used to be on long commutes, especially in the last two years. But at the same time, even if you are listening through, you know, your car speakers, or your earbuds, which are going to be the two most common areas, there's a relationship that forms you know? You almost find yourself or maybe you do find yourself, responding in the case of fiction, a character, just like you're watching TV, and you want to say, “Don't open the door!” Or if you're listening to a book on personal development or leadership development, you may find yourself pausing just to have a conversation with yourself about, “Do I really believe that? I think they are full of crap. I don't know about that.” Or, “Oh, I never thought of that!” And you kind of have to process through it. Because it is, to one extent or another, a conversation, just based on the way that we're wired neurologically. So it is an intimate experience. And that's why the quality of narration is so very important. That is what sells audiobooks. It's the quality of narration.
Okay, I love that we got to that point because it is true. It's like, if you have grainy video or pretty terrible photos that's not going to excite your audience and grow your audience, but you need to have quality sound. And what people might not realize is you can hear lights. You can hear a dog barking in the distance, and that ambient sound can throw off so much other than just the sound of your own voice reading your book. So how do you account for that in somebody's house, if they don't have their own studio?
Well, I’ll tell you a little secret: about 85% of our authors record from a walk-in closet. And this is a very common thing, even in the professional narration world. It's very cozy. The atmosphere of a walk-in closet with the clothing around you very specifically buffers the sound. And usually there's a spot where you can set up a little portable desk, or a table and a chair and your microphone and record your audiobook with a director in your ear taking care of the recording for you. And that's where a lot of voice acting happens is in those small spaces. You absolutely can create things on your desk, as well. The other thing we recommend a lot that's a really easy setup for people is to take a plastic storage box, the kind that you would put a bunch of, you know, Christmas decorations and things like that. The Rubbermaid, Sterilite kind of containers, you'd get.
A giant Tupperware
A giant Tupperware container and then you take a piece of foam that you would put on top of a bed. Bed topper. Get it at Walmart or Target for $20, put it on the inside, stand it on end, and toss your microphone in it, and then you've basically got a little portable sound booth. I actually had one of those when I was living in Costa Rica that I did some professional voice acting from and the sound quality–it was great.
That's amazing. Yeah, and you got to live in Costa Rica, which is even more amazing.
It's a whole other story.
That's great. Okay, so I love how you're bringing this to more people. You know, where I sit as somebody who's currently working on writing a book and I work with authors, sometimes we feel like audiobooks are a little bit out of reach. You figure out whether you're going to be self-publishing, working with a hybrid publisher, or going the traditional publishing route, and then you're so focused on the launch, and “Am I going to be an Amazon bestseller? I don't know” and all that stuff. And then you're like, “Okay, well, now nobody knows about it. So I need to do the marketing. But wouldn't it be great if people could listen in their AirPods to me?” It almost feels like it's, it's just high up on this pedestal that we can't reach. So I love that you're bringing it to more people. So what you're saying is, pretty much everybody should do this.
I think if it's something that you can carve out, the budget for and the time for in the great scheme of things and also survey your audience. Do they listen to audiobooks? A lot of our authors come to us because they launched their book and the number one question they got was, “When are you doing the audiobook?” I hear this over and over again. We have lots of conversations with authors every single week, and it's either, “My publisher said I needed one,” “I have to have one because I love audiobooks,” or “I've launched my book and everyone's asking me for the audiobook. How quickly can we get it done?” So those are the things that we hear on a daily basis from authors, which is good news for everybody.
That's great. So how long does it take from start to finish? Because I've heard there are delays and it can be like a really long time before Audible says, “Okay, here you go.”
Audible, particularly on the self-publishing side of Audible, there can be glitches. There can be some issues. We produce a very pristine level. We do not get rejected by Audible. We [have] t's crossed, i's dotted. But there's very, very specific technical specs that your audio files have to meet for Audible. It is not like podcasting. It is not like doing any other kind of audio. The audio that I'm recording right now for this podcast would definitely not meet Audible standards. There would be background noise, there would be a noise floor issue, all kinds of stuff. And even the, the amount of space at the beginning and the end of the file and what's included–so many technical details. But we do this every day. We meet all those technical standards, so our books go through in generally about 10-15 business days through their system, which is average. It can take up to 30 business days to make it through Audible's system, if there's no mistakes in your files. So what happens is if there are mistakes in your files it gets bounced back to you. They'll tell you what the issues are, you have to fix it, and then you got to start back at the beginning of the queue again. And that's usually where the problems come into play because somebody has worked with someone that tried to do it themselves, or they worked with someone who isn't highly experienced. The author can't tell. They can't test it. They don't have the, the technical skills to do that, and then it becomes a problem. That's where people run into the most issues. And they come to us and say, “Can you fix these files?”
“Help us!” I get that. Now, is there ever a book that doesn't make sense to become an audiobook?
There's some that do better than others. Books that tend to be at least 35,000 words tend to do better in audio. Most audio platforms like Audible, our audiobooks are sold on a membership basis. So longer books have a higher perceived value, because you get a credit every month and you can buy any audiobook. Are you going to look for an audio book that's eight hours long, or two hours long? So there becomes a perceived value issue.
Okay.
Also, audiobook pricing is different than other book pricing. Audiobooks are priced on length, which irritates a lot of authors, and I completely understand that it is an issue in the industry. Having a book that's a little bit longer–30-35,000 words, at least–gets your pricing up into a range that you're going to be much happier with. That's one issue. Another one is books that are highly technical, highly visual. They're going to need an audio edit to make an audio version of and when we evaluate books, we go over that if there tends to be more of a technical guide.
Cookbooks and poetry–it really just depends on the market that you're in. We don't work with fiction. We are a nonfiction house, but we do often get people asking us for poetry. And we don't tend to work with those because you're better off working and getting that done kind of on your own in terms of price points, and things like that, because those poetry books are shorter books. And I almost think that you're better off releasing those as an album, like almost as music, so that you can control the pricing more, rather than as an audiobook. And that's not something a lot of people think of. Go get it audio designed and really make that book juicy and worth your while to do if you're working with poetry. But technical guides, cookbooks are another one that require some changes if you're going to do an audio version. And that's more from an accessibility standpoint. Most cookbooks are not going to be listened to as a traditional audiobook, but if you're looking to reach an audience of say, folks who have visual impairment, then that's another animal. So accessibility is a whole other part of the audio industry.
There is so much that we have unpacked today. And I feel like we just scratched the surface, truly.
It’s true.
But I love that when I asked you about statistics, you rattled off a number of them. So I really appreciate that. Because so often we hear about things and it's like, “Oh, is this the next shiny object that I need to go after?” And, you know, as entrepreneurs, as authors, it's often like, “Well, what if I don't get it? If I don't do this, as I going to miss out?” And so this really sounds like something that is worth investing in because of just the sheer number of people that you can reach in a way that is going to help them better because maybe they really want to read your book, but they just don't have time to sit and read their Kindle app, or they just don't have time to sit and leaf through the pages.
Now well, and the one beautiful thing I'll tell you is that a lot of times what happens with audiobooks, particularly in nonfiction, people get a nice case of “mightas-well-itis.” They'll get the audiobook to listen to so they can make it through the material and then they'll buy the paperback, so that they can go back and make notes and the salient points. We've had it happen all the time. So, many times if you are selling your audiobook and then giving away a Kindle version that can be annotated for free, it's nice to bundle those together. Or you'll see an uptick in your paperback or hardcover sales when you release your audiobook because people are buying both versions. There's all kinds of things on the marketing side of things we don't have time to get into today. But maybe another time. There's there's lots of cool stuff.
I love it. Alright, so how can people find out more about you and Twin Flames Studios?
But a worthwhile one. Well, Tina, thank you so much for being here today.
No, thank you, Melanie. This is great. I really appreciate it!
You've written a book. Now what? If you're ready to implement a simple content marketing strategy to create buzz around your book and your brand, schedule your free Sparkles and Strategy Call with me, Melanie Herschorn. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of VIP Access. We can't let the fun end here. To find out how engaging your content is, take the content quiz at MyContentQuiz.com. Plus, you're invited to join our private Facebook group at VIPDigital.live/community where you'll get live trainings and other great tips all about digital marketing. And if you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and review. This tells iTunes that you found the show helpful and they'll share it with more women business owners just like you. Thank you so much for listening.
Not sure if an audiobook is the right investment for you and your brand? Listen to my guest appearance on The Book Marketing Action Podcast with Becky Robinson and learn more!
Tina talks to Becky Robinson about the benefits and process of investing in an audiobook.
In this episode:
If Tina’s noticed a trend of people buying audiobooks vs. other formats
Reasons an author would consider investing in an audiobook
Why an author might choose to narrate their own book (author narrated vs. professionally narrated)
The best time for an author to release their audiobook
What the process looks like and the average length of an audiobook
The range of investment that an author should expect if they want to create an audiobook
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Listen to the podcast here:
Welcome to Season 2 of The Book Marketing Action Podcast with Becky Robinson, where we give you information that you can immediately implement to increase your influence and market your books more successfully. In this episode, we are joined by Tina Dietz—CEO and co-founder of Twin Flames Studios, award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert.
ABOUT TINA
Becky: I am so thrilled today to be interviewing Tina Dietz. Tina is a friend I made, actually, as a result of this podcast. A previous guest, Jenn T. Grace, introduced us, and I’m so glad she did, because I’ve already learned so much from you, Tina. So before we dive in, I hope you’ll take a moment and tell our listeners about your work in the world.
Tina: Well, my company Twin Flames Studios focuses on getting more great voices out to the world. So really the mission behind the company is that audiobooks and podcasts are some of the lowest hanging fruit for people to start to change their lives. So particularly with audiobooks, and certainly with podcasts, they tend to be low cost or free. They’re available in multiple countries, a lot of them can be in multiple languages, and their stories are what keep us all connected as human beings. So the more that we can help leaders, subject matter experts, and people who have lived extraordinary lives in the nonfiction space, which is our specialty, tell their stories and get it out to the world, the more we can make a difference and leave our own legacy, as well as help with the legacies of all these authors that we work with. So what we’re talking about today is mostly our audiobook division, which is strictly nonfiction audiobooks. And we do full, done-for-you production, publishing, and distribution, both for professional narration as well as author narration, which is something we’re known for.
HAVE YOU NOTICED A TREND OF PEOPLE BUYING AUDIOBOOKS VS. OTHER FORMATS?
Becky: Tina, that’s really intriguing and I look forward to hearing more about that author voice narration. But let’s talk for a moment, first, about audiobooks as a genre. I’m curious to see what you’ve noticed about the trend of people buying audiobooks rather than other formats.
Tina: It’s been an interesting art because audiobooks are certainly not new. The first audiobook was produced during the Great Depression, and I believe it was a Christmas story. They’ve always been around. Those of us who are a little bit older will remember books on tape and getting them out at the library, things like that. But up until the shift in the market about six, eight years ago, where audiobooks became digital, the production of audiobooks was generally relegated to traditional publishing. It was very expensive to do and very expensive to distribute, because everything was in a hardcopy, and first on tape, well, first an album, then on tape, and God forbid, on 8-track, and then ultimately on CDs. So when everything went digital, and Amazon and Audible became the same company, when voice acting and narrators became available more online, we had the rise of the gig economy, all of these things kind of created a perfect storm for the rise and the renaissance of the audiobook. So audiobooks have risen in sales year upon year, in double digits for the last eight years. And some of those years, it’s been a 20% to even 25% rise in the sales of audiobooks. So it’s a billion dollar industry in the US alone, and the accessibility of it is largely what makes them so so so popular.
WHAT ARE SOME REASONS AN AUTHOR WOULD CONSIDER INVESTING IN AN AUDIOBOOK?
Becky: Well, as the wife of a man who only consumes books via audio, I know that there are many people who really are drawn in a big way to that ease of being able to listen while you drive, or listen while you get something else done. And I think in a way, you already answered this question, Tina, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. What are some reasons an author would consider investing in an audiobook?
Tina: Well, you definitely have to look at what your purpose is, and I’m really glad you asked this question. So on the nonfiction side of the equation—fiction is going to have a different answer, and I can touch on it if you’d like—but on the nonfiction side of things, an author wants to look at doing an audiobook to access a wider audience, first of all. A lot of executives, C-suite folks, people who are decision makers or at high levels in their career, often listen to audio, or listen to audio and buy a copy of the book so that they can switch formats because they can multitask, and also because audiobooks you can listen to at faster speeds. So I know lots of people, including myself, who might put an audiobook up to one and a half time speed, in order to be able to consume the information and get what they need, and then maybe have a hard copy of the book to reference back or make notes in as they go, using it as a learning tool. And they use it to keep your brain juicy as you go. So having an audiobook does open up those markets. An audiobook is also a marketing tool and it is an evergreen marketing tool, just like your book is. So using snippets of your book, in audiograms, in book trailers, in different parts of your material, or even potentially as material to create a course or modules in the backend membership site that you might have, you can use your audiobook in all of these different ways as an asset, not just distributed on Audible.
WHY MIGHT AN AUTHOR CHOOSE TO NARRATE THEIR OWN BOOK?
Becky: So Tina, this might be a good time to talk about this idea of an author narrated audiobook. Why might an author choose to narrate their own book?
Tina: Well, speaking as an entrepreneur myself, I would say that we all have egos, so that’s really the first truth. You have to know that it feels, if you’ve gone through all of the process of writing a book that is part of your soul on paper, and it is in your voice and of course, you want to have the experience. And I hear this all the time, “I’m the only person that could narrate this book.” Now, that’s not actually true, but an author may actually feel very strongly about that. We should probably also, if we have time, talk about why an author wouldn’t narrate their own book, because most of our authors come to us assuming that they are going to narrate their own book. But for those who do want to have that, if you are going after speaking gigs, if you want to have your voice known in a particular industry, or if your voice is already highly associated with your work, you have a popular podcast, you’re a TED speaker, so on and so forth, there may be some congruency to having your voice on the book. At least in part, not every author narrates their entire audio book, sometimes we do what I lovingly call a Tony Robbins sandwich, which is a hybrid version of the book where the author introduces the material, does the introduction or the first chapter, and then kind of hands it off to a professional narrator who shares similar vocal qualities as the author, and certainly has similar energy as the author, and then the author comes back at the end of the book to wrap things up. Sometimes there’s a happy middle ground between the two, given how busy most of our authors are.
WHAT ARE OTHER REASONS AN AUTHOR MAY NOT CHOOSE TO NARRATE THEIR OWN AUDIOBOOK?
Becky: Well, that’s an amazing idea. And so in addition to being maybe too busy to narrate your own audiobook, Tina, what are some other reasons an author may not choose to narrate their own audiobook?
Tina: Well, not every expert has, first of all, a great voice. Not every expert has the desire to do it. That has a lot to do with it, because it feels like a slog behind the microphone. Because narrating an audiobook is no joke. It takes time. It takes discipline. We fully produce and direct our authors through the process. We remote into their home offices, make sure that we get great sound quality, all kinds of great stuff to support them. But ultimately, if you aren’t feeling it, you’re not going to have a good audiobook. And so not everybody is a verbal communicator. They might be really strong in writing, but not really enjoy a lot of speaking, particularly in long form narration like an audiobook requires. So there’s a really important cocktail of desire, skill, experience, and time that go into whether we determine it’s a best path forward for an author to have their own voice on the book, versus a professional narrator on the book. And not for nothing, but some authors may actually have either physical or other issues happening, that it’s not a good fit for them, depending on what they have going on in their lives or their abilities.
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME FOR AN AUTHOR TO RELEASE THEIR AUDIOBOOK?
Becky: That’s really helpful. So when do you find is the best time for an author to release their audiobook?
Tina: We tend to have authors come to us in one of two areas, or one or two timeframes, I should say. One is that they’re getting ready to launch a new book. And if it’s an author narrated book and they’re planning on doing preorders for their book, there are some technical caveats to when you can actually get your audiobook launched, particularly on Audible. Audible is the 500 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to audiobook distribution. They do own about 60% of the market share in audiobook sales. So not being on Audible is going to be a problem for you if you’re not there. So they have some rules about when you can get your audiobook out. But generally we can get pretty close, with an author narrated audiobook, to your launch date. And that’s kind of one scenario, you’re launching a new book and you end up putting the audiobook out, either at the same time as the other versions of it, or it’s a staggered launch anytime generally, within the first six months of the launch, there’s a lot of advantages to doing it that way, because it extends the life of the launch and you can get the same audience excited about a new format, or reach people that you haven’t reached before. So it’s a nice marketing technique to stagger your audiobook launch after the hardcover or ebook versions of the book that might come out first.
The other version of audiobook launches comes into play when we have a book that could use a second life. Many authors come to us and they say, “I wish I could relaunch my book, knowing what I know now.” They may have had a difficult relationship with their original publisher, or they didn’t have the chops that they have now in marketing. So an audiobook is a way to give your book a second chance, and basically have a second launch, and that’s really valuable as well. Some folks even want to do a second edition of their book or add new material to it, so that comes into play as well.
Becky: That’s all really great advice and aligns to what I’ve coached authors to do. So I’m glad that we’re on the same page. It’s encouraging to hear.
WHAT DOES THE PROCESS LOOK LIKE?
Becky: Tina, I’d love for you to explain to our listeners about the steps that you take, as you coach authors through this process. Obviously, you mentioned that it’s done for you. So you’re creating the audiobook for and with them. Tell me about those steps and about the timelines, so that if our listeners are considering investing in an audiobook, they know what to expect.
Tina: Yeah, let me talk about timelines first. So generally, we’re looking at about 90 days in either case, whether it’s author narrated, or professionally narrated. Some of this highly depends on the availability of the author, certainly in the case of the author narrated, but also in the case of professionally narrated, because there are key times that the author is needed to make choices. So for example, in the professionally narrated case, we have an audition process that is very robust, and we get about 150 auditions, per book, on average. We curate all of those auditions, first for sound and goodness of fit, and also the energy. Can we actually believe that this narrator is delivering this material? All of that gets done on the first round.
The second round is professional vetting. Can they meet the timeline? Can they meet the budget? How are they to work with? So we do all of that, before we present our authors with a list. Generally, we have about eight to twelve choices of our top picks, with their auditions in our notes on why we think they’re great. But we need the author to have a little time to listen through those things, and make a choice. So depending on how busy the author is, we can throw timelines off based on how much time they take, or God forbid, if they decide to make decisions by committee, which could happen. But the author is one of the couple of key things that we do that are important, because the author has creative choices, we’re not taking over the process like a traditional publisher would. We also don’t take any rights or royalties. So we keep our authors involved in the creative process, one way or another.
So in the case of professional narration, once we have a narrator selected, and we’ve produced kind of the first 15 minutes or so with the book, and everybody’s on board with the tone and the pacing, the characterization that the narrator is using, the process goes quite quickly. And we, of course, handle all of this, not just the narration and the direction, but the proofing, the editing, the mastering, and after the author has had a chance to sign off on everything and it’s all good to go, it goes into a quality control process. Quality control on Audible can take up to 30 business days, so that’s all part of that 90 day period that I’m talking about.
Similarly, on the author narrated side of things, I mentioned before we do sound checks, we do all of that. And then it’s a matter of scheduling the recording times, and you cannot bang out an audio book in a day. Most professional narrators don’t record for longer than two to three hours a day. So a non professional—like even a professional speaker—very, very rarely do we run into authors who can narrate for longer than two hours at a time. More likely it’s 90 minutes without losing gas, without their energy dropping into their feet, and that’s okay. But you do have to account for that in the schedule.
WHAT IS THE AVERAGE LENGTH OF AN AUDIOBOOK?
Becky: What would be the average length of an audiobook, in this nonfiction kind of thought leadership experts space?
Tina: A lot of our books are right around the 30,000 to 50,000 word mark. When you get into really short books, 20,000 words or less, they don’t tend to do as well in sales for audiobooks. There are some exceptions, of course, simply because audiobooks are generally sold on a membership basis. So when you are an audiobook member of Audible, and you have a credit that you can use on an audiobook that is an hour and a half or two hours long, versus eight or 10 hours long, the perceived value is higher on the longer book. Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t do an audiobook version of a shorter book, but we might tweak the distribution strategy, and talk with you further about how that audio is going to be used to the best advantage.
Becky: Wow, I am learning so much today! I am sure our listeners are as well.
WHAT’S THE RANGE OF INVESTMENT THAT AN AUTHOR SHOULD EXPECT IF THEY WANT TO CREATE AN AUDIOBOOK?
Becky: So my final question as it relates to audiobooks, Tina, is what’s the range of investment that an author should expect if they want to create an audiobook with the type of support that your organization provides?
Tina: Sure, absolutely. I think that for most books, on average, we look at somewhere in the $3,000 to $5,000 range. Sometimes less for shorter books. Sometimes more if somebody wants multiple narrators and they want music added. We’ve had a few specialty books that we’ve done that have even incorporated the audio from video clips and things like that, that have happened from major events, and whatnot. The average kind of cost of an audiobook with everything included, including the distribution, is definitely going to be in that three to five range.
Becky: I appreciate that transparency, because I think it really sets people up to consider whether this is an investment that they’re prepared to make.
ACTION STEPS
Becky: So, Tina, our listeners are used to us always giving them action steps at the end of every podcast, because this is the book marketing action podcast. I know you have a couple of action steps that you’d like people to take today.
Tina: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Read your book out loud. The first thing is, have you ever read your book out loud? Take a couple of chapters of your book and just try reading it out loud. See how it feels. See how you like the material. Most of our authors, when they read their book out loud, which we have them do before they step into any kind of recording situation, they have a series of reactions to their own work. We all do. You also have a series of reactions to the sound of your own voice, and that’s okay too. But try it on, try it out and see what that’s like for you. If you’re in the process of writing a book, definitely read the book out loud before you finalize your editing, you will find all kinds of things there to make the book more narrative, maybe to shorten up sentences a little bit. And you’ll even catch errors that you didn’t catch when you were just doing it visually. So that’s really the first thing go read your book out loud.
Download the step-by-step guide. The second thing is, is that a lot of the things that I talked about today, we’ve put into a guide. And we also have frequently asked questions and all kinds of good information, best practices, and a full kind of step-by-step guide on how to get your audiobook done. And you can find that at Launchyouraudiobook.com.
RESOURCES
Learn more about Tina Dietz’s company, Twin Flames Studios, here.
If you want to learn more about how successful authors leverage their books, download Tina’s free guide here.
If you found value in today’s episode, we hope you’ll take a moment to share it with someone else who might benefit from it. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover, please email Becky Robinson here.
Yes, thank you for joining us.So please tell us a story of how Twin Flames Studios came to be.
Well, Twin Flames Studios is a high ROI Influence and Marketing company where we use audio to amplify the voices and messages of trusted leaders and companies all over the world. It's really our mission to help these people help these organizations get their word out to a larger audience in the very intimate form of audio, whether that is nonfiction audiobook publishing, or that is podcasting strategically for your business.
And it's important that we note that in these times of great change, these powerful voices are needed now more than ever.
My background, and my story, is a little bit more like the twisty journey of a lot of entrepreneurs.I grew up as an entrepreneur—my parents’ business—the super sexy world of wood burning stoves and fireplaces.
Wow.
Yeah, very exciting. But I never wanted to have my own business because I didn't want to be tied down to a brick and mortar like my parents were. And I'm an only child, so that business was my annoying younger sibling when I was growing up.
Right, the baby.
The baby, yeah.
So, I became a therapist, and I tried to be conventional. And that didn't work out so well for me—
Okay—
As many entrepreneurs—
The entrepreneurial spirit was still—
That’s right, within the blood.
Yes.
So, after working in higher education, starting a nonprofit, and also building a family—another family business with my father, the Nayada Institute of Massage—I stepped off into a full-time business coaching practice. And through the jigs and the reels over the years grew that practice.
It was wonderful, had young children at the time, we lived a mobile lifestyle, we sold our stuff moved to Costa Rica. And at one point because I was… had my own, like personal expression—I grew up a little bit of a theater kid—drama kid—and was looking for some outlets, creative outlets—I became a voice actor as a paid hobby. And through that process, and learning the audiobook industry as a narrator—I was exploring that—I had this epiphany “Well, wait a minute, I'm coaching all these people from all over the world who owned businesses—20 different industries, eight different countries—why aren't these folks who are publishing their own books doing bestseller campaigns? Why aren't they doing audiobooks?”
And it was that curiosity that led me down the rabbit hole first for audiobooks—I already had my own podcast at the time—had fallen in love with that world. And that is what led to developing this niche in podcasting and audiobooks for business owners, thought leaders and companies.
And so what would you say the difference is versus something that's on paper, versus really hearing a tone? What does that do for an audience to really hear a voice?
Well, you know, a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of being the lead interviewer on a documentary about podcasting called The Messengers, you can find it I think it's on Amazon Prime. And that was developed by Chris Krimitsos and his team at the Podfest Multimedia Expo. And that was, that organization was younger at the time and wanted to really explore what is this industry of podcasting from an independent podcaster’s point of view, rather than monopoly, or NPR or the, you know, the big professional gigs.
So, I interviewed about 40, different podcasters from all different walks of life, different countries, different places, most of them didn't know each other. And the word that came up in every single interview independently was the word intimacy. Podcasting being this intimate format, you know, directly into your ears—becoming a voice in somebody's head, it's such a privilege. And that and then also the ability to do active storytelling when we're so wired to tell stories as human beings. So that's, you know, the audio format has a lot of advantages in that way. And it's also the most accessible form of media, you know, you can listen—as I'm assuming some people are right now listening to this podcast—when you can't read, you can listen when you can't watch. So, you can take it anywhere.
And as a coaching also involved in telling… teaching people how to speak as well as I'm sure some people aren't necessarily natural storytellers. Is that something you sometimes have to teach certain clients as well?
Yeah, actually, the body of work that I've been developing over time and will continue to do so is around what I call Vocal Leadership. And that's really about the instrument that your external voice is and learning how to tune that and play it beautifully to another level. And also, the internal voices that we have, which is really… if the external voice is the instrument, then the internal voice is the music, the sheet music that we're playing.
So those two things really need to be congruent in order to have a presence, and in order to move people the way we want to move them through stories. And then, of course, there's also the actual storytelling, and microphone techniques, and all of that good stuff as well.
The little details.
Yeah, exactly.So, our hosts… One of the things we do as a company as we get our podcast hosts together into a mastermind about quarterly, to connect them with each other, and also to provide additional support and training.
Okay
And that's, in addition to meeting with them one-on-one to help them with the strategy, you know, as their podcast is, you know, being aired.
Okay, and so that kind of goes to my next question—you mentioned Voice Leadership, and then how you can kind of take an extra step to really connect with the audience. So then, what does being a conscious business leader mean to you?
I think that the word conscious has… has not become overplayed, but it's important to take a step back and look at “Well, what does that really mean?” I'm so glad you asked the question.
And being conscious in your business means taking not just your business into account, it's taking the impact that you're making, or that you can make into account. And that has to do not just with the people that you serve, but it also has to do with how your business is set up. How the impact… How it impacts the people that work inside the company? Is it a win for them? Is it a good culture? Is it healthy? Is it helping people develop their dreams and goals? And is it good also for the people who are, you know, the founders? So, sometimes it's really easy as a C suite or business owner to get on this hamster wheel where you will—you burn out, right?
So, you really need to bring a conscious view… You know, taking these things into consideration. What are the deeper values that you have? And how do those infuse everything that you're doing, everything that you're saying, and the practices that you have? You know, unfortunately, being in the entrepreneur world, speaking world, as long as I have, sometimes you run into people who preach these incredible positive messages from the stage, but then don't treat people well behind the curtain. And being conscious means that you're congruent.
And that also comes back around to the—you know—the vocal leadership, or embodied leadership that we all strive to develop. When you are conscious to make sure that, you know, you're reflecting and having the… your internal conversations match what's coming out of your face.
Wow, that's the first time I've heard that sort of response as far as how it can be one way for the show, but behind the scenes things aren't matching, and how it needs to.So, would you say then, in order for things to be congruent, it has to start with the internal of the founder, of the person who's kind of setting the culture from the beginning?
Yeah, I would completely agree with that. You set the tone. The buck stops here, as the old saying goes.
And I think one of the important things about being a leader is being open enough to seek the coaching on that or to seek the feedback on that, not just from other experts, but also from your team, also from the people around you, from your, from your clients. And it can really take something to hear feedback about that. I remember years ago—I'll go in all the way back to my 20s—I used to get this piece of feedback all the time, because I'm a pretty intense person, you know, I—
I understand, yes.
There's this intensity, and there's this fervor, and there's this passion. And it's… they would say, “Well, could you tone it down a little bit?” Or “Could you soften your edges?” And—oh, my god—that was so offensive, that pissed me off 18 different ways. Because I thought, I just thought they meant that they wanted it, “You go be quiet, put in a box, and smile and do what you're told.” And sometimes that was the case. But what I came to understand later, is that it wasn't really about me, it was about them being intimidated by me. But where I can be kind, and I can be compassionate is learning how to read the room.
Right
And learning how to not, you know, quell or shut off my integrity or my passion, but to manage it in order to express it in a way that people can really receive. Because that's what's important to me, can you receive the message that I'm giving?
Right, right. I guess that’s one of the hardest lessons to learn—different people receive things in different ways.
Right.
I’m just passionate, I just want you to do great, I want us to do great. And just certain ways… it doesn't sit with people like that. And it's learning how to do that extra communication.
Yeah, I remember one of the most important conversations I ever had was in a leadership course really kind of intense one year-long course. And one of my fellow, very successful executive woman, she said—I was getting all ramped up about something—she said, “Why is this so important to you?” I said, “Well, the question is, why isn't it important to you?” And we had a really fascinating discussion about how different people have different capacities to feel. And certain ones of us are very highly sensitive and other people are not. And just, it really opened my eyes, because I really kind of just thought that everybody was like me, and turns out, nope—
No—
Not so much.
I had to make those adjustments. And so, where do you see your business going then in the next three to five years? And I'm sure… We're seeing that people are doing more audio both receiving and giving, than actual reading, and literature, and everything. So where do you see your business going?
Well, it's been a… we've doubled the company four years in a row, time on time. And I don't expect that that will happen forever, certainly—
But it's nice.
It's great so far. And so, we're in a big scaling phase right now. And also, in a position, you know, earlier, in 2020, when the pandemic really was affecting a lot of our colleagues, our clients, our customers, former clients—things like that—I was grateful that we were in a position because we've always been a fully mobile company. And of course, audio is much easier to do remote—that we offered, you know, a lot of—a complement just for free. We went out and said, “What… how can we help?” and offered teleclasses, and consultations, and things like that, to help different companies make use of this online space, make use of audio, both for internal communications, and external communications and marketing. And so, we've had… 2020 was really a banner year for us.
And going into 2021 and beyond we're just looking to really serve more companies to have more intimate relationships with their current clients, with their future clients, with their colleagues, and even for their internal culture, because podcasting in particular, can help with all of that. And then on the author side of things, of course, a lot of people with time that they had, are finishing their books and getting things out on audio—and you know, audiobooks, outsell eBooks three to one across genres. So, it's… It's a beautiful thing to be able to help people get their voice out like that.
Yeah, absolutely, so you're kind of in a nice little sweet spot where it's like you get to of course, help people build their businesses and kind of make some pivots, but of course, it helps your business as well having more clients.
Exactly. You know, it's weird to say it felt like being in the right place at the right time after 20 years. So, worth the wait, worth the wait.
Absolutely. So, you have a few services offered through your website, such as links to your podcast and audiobooks. Tell us about any other services that you might offer, your business offers?
Well, you know, the done-for-you audiobook side of things, one of our… the key things that we're able to do with folks, to the best of my knowledge, we're the only audiobook house—and we do specialize in nonfiction exclusively—who is able to remote into wherever an author is in the world and record their audio book with them, live, full direction, from their home studio or office without them having to go into a studio.
And we can coach them on very easily getting good sound having a high-quality audiobook, and it keeps the cost down. And it's also very comforting to be in your own space while you're do that. So… And we also can do really fun things like insert music, and even other audio clips, and things like that. We're producing a memoir for a family right now on the Holocaust. And there are some fascinating video clips that we're converting to audio that we're going to be inserting in the narrative to help tell the story. So, there's some really cool stuff we do on that side.
Same thing with podcasting. Podcasting is so creative and such a beautiful format to get your message out there. So, whether it is internal podcasting—like we do with enterprise level companies—, external podcasting—that we do with companies and organizations to help get the word out about who they are, what they do and develop their influence—, or the vocal leadership—that I do one-on-one, to help people become more effective in the messages that they have. We're just happy to do all of it—
Yeah, sounds like, yeah, cover a lot of different things that a lot of different people could use especially right now with how things have changed. And so, for anyone who's interested in using any of those services or just even wants to connect with you, where are the best places, and platforms to go to?
You can definitely find me on any social media platform. We have a social media following about 280,000 so we're out there and so you can find me, Tina Dietz. You can also look up Twin Flames Studios, although my name is probably going to get you a better result there on LinkedIn, certainly Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And you can also just come over to us at TwinFlamesStudios—it's a lot of ss—.com, and come and hang out with us find out some more information, and grab a cup of coffee.
Love it. I love coffee, and I'm sure others do too and would love to share with you.
Me too.
Perfect.
Tina Dietz, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure learning about you and your company today.
Well, it's been a pleasure being here. Thanks so much, Gabby.
Learn more about the intimacy and power of our voice,
Here are five steps you, as a content generator, can take to find your book inside your blog (and inside your other content, too.)
“We all have a book inside us,” as Dana Micheli, fellow ghostwriter points out. I agree with her, but I also believe that content generators, who are practically manifesting material in their sleep, already have a book outside of them. They just don’t know it…yet.
I consider a content generator a business owner or entrepreneur with an abundant blog, LinkedIn articles for days, keynote addresses and speeches filling up digital file folders, transcripts of every interview they’ve ever done (podcast or otherwise), and copies of any free eBook, presentation, or article they’ve ever written. Whether they’ve generated all this content themselves, or benefited from the support and talent from content writers, copywriters, and/or ghostwriters, the fact is this: They are sitting on a content gold mine, each piece a precious gem, and part of a book just waiting to be produced.
I’m fortunate to work with clients who believe in the power of content and who leverage me to help grow and nurture their mines. Most of them want to produce their first book (or next) but struggle with repurposing their content or searching for the parts and pieces to produce a book—a book that is focused, well-written, showcases their expertise, offers value to their audience, and boosts their business credibility and brand.
Here are five steps a content generator can take to find a book inside their blog (and any of their other content, too).
STEP 1: Identify Topical or Thematic Threads and Trends
List all the places where content exists and visit these locations. Review headings (and subheadings) and scan your content. Note keywords and other recurring ideas that you notice.
Rank your discovered themes/topics and choose the one that speaks to you the most, or aligns with your brand and vision for your business. By going through this process, you’ve found the focus of your book. (You’ll also likely find the most precious gems: the stuff you once wrote that really shined above the rest. Hopefully, those pieces make it into your final work.)
STEP 2: Define Your Reader and Relevance
Now that you’ve identified your topic, pull together copies of each piece of related content. Scan the content and ask yourself: who is my ideal audience? Why is this topic relevant to them? What will they get in reading this information? How is it different and new from what already exists? To take this one step further, envision all this content in its final version (a beautiful book with your name on it) and reflect on what your intended goals / hopes / outcomes are for this book.
STEP 3: Outline Your Table of Contents
Determine where you believe you want your reader to begin and to end. Mark the beginning as A on a piece of paper, and write B on the other side. You’ll fill in the outline of A to B as you read your content again, and this will become your table of contents. Now, this time, you’re not going to just look at content online. Print everything relevant to your topic. Read each piece then set it aside (temporarily). Yes, this may take you some time. You’re mining for the gold here. What are the relevant pieces that really stand out? How do you see these pieces creating an arc of the work? Organize your content based on how to get the reader from point A to B. List the titles of each individual piece in your outline according to how you think they should be ordered.
STEP 4: Investigate Gaps and Goodness
Pinpoint what’s missing and what’s already kicking butt. Read your content from start to finish in the order you outlined. Record what is working (‘goodness’) about what isn’t (‘gaps’). Make a plan for addressing the gaps. This may mean reading it out loud to yourself, taking some time away from the draft, running it through spell check, asking a friend to proofread, etc.
STEP 5: Polish Before Your Publish
Polish your work so it’s crystal clear and shines like a diamond. It’s time to fine-tune things before you publish—no matter what publication route you go. When you’ve finished addressing the gaps, read the full manuscript for clarity, cohesion, and flow. Mark the text where adjustments need to be made. Proofread with an eye for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., and review for formatting and styling consistency. Solicit the feedback of others you trust to give you a professional and critical eye, and assess if you achieved your goals.
You have now finished mining a book out of your voluminous mountain of content.
If you need some extra support with these five steps, you can snatch up my free gift, Finding Your Book Inside Your Blog: A Content Master’s Scavenger Hunt & Field Guide to Find the Pieces to Produce Your Book.
Alyssa Berthiaume is a native Vermonter, professional (and creative) writer, practicing feminist, recovering middle child, wannabe superhero, and a mom who’s pretty sure she’s “winging it” most of the time. She’s the leading Lady (Boss) and ghostwriter at The Write Place, Right Time – her virtual boutique of writing services for badass coaches, trainers, and speakers, and other badass entrepreneurs who don't “do words” but know they need them. To know more about how she can “do words” for you, visit her website.
Alyssa Berthiaume– Copywriting, Ghostwriting, Lady Boss and Owner of The Write Place, Right Time
How would you know if it’s the right time for you to start publishing a book? Tune in to this Pod to Publish Book and Audiobook Masterclass and find the answers.(Masterclass on Free Your Brand Podcast, July, 2020)
For many reasons, podcasters are uniquely suited to publish books and audiobooks about topics that are of interest to their existing audiences. Not the least among these is that they already have an audience in place—it’s just a matter of channeling them to another medium. Not every podcaster is cut out for this, however. How would you know if it’s the right time for you to start publishing a book? In this masterclass, Tracy Hazzard is joined by Juliet Clark, the Founder of Super Brand Publishing, who gives tips on writing a book as a podcaster; and Tina Dietz, the CEO of Twin Flames Studios, who follows up with some of the basics of audiobook production and publishing. Each an expert in their own spheres, these powerful women are partnering up on a venture that seeks to put creative power back in the hands of creators. Listen in and let them help you amplify your message even further.
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Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Pod to Publish Book and Audiobook Masterclass for Authors and Podcasters with Juliet Clark And Tina Dietz
I’ve got Tina and Juliet here. Our subject on this episode is Pod to Publish. I want to cover a couple of things first for you. First, why Pod to Publish? Podcasters have a distinct advantage that published authors don’t—speakers and authors have the same problem I’ve come to find over time. We sustain our audience over here. We do week after week. We’re in the ear of our audience and that has a powerful effect. We want to use that to our advantage. That’s the angle of how we’re going to talk about going from Pod to Publish and what you can take from your show to create a wonderful, bestselling book and an audiobook, because there’s a match in our audience there.
When you command your brand and your audience, you get that audience focus and attention week after week. You also see the topics that are of interest, the ones that increase engagement, the ones that are controversial, people are highly interested in and want to learn more about. You can see that because you're supposed to see that and how your episodes are ranking, but you can also see that in the engagement that they’re getting on social after you air them. If we pair that with our website—we’re driving traffic back to our website—we have a distinct advantage over authors and speakers who don’t own their audience.
When you go out there and speak, you’re speaking in front of somebody else’s audience. They own the audience and very few of them share their audience with you. Very few events give you the email list of everybody who’s there. You have to pull, grab and try and get everyone in that audience to connect with you, but that’s not the case on your own show. Your own show, that audience belongs to you or they wouldn’t be subscribed. You still have to get them off of there and that’s why I talk about the website strategy because if we add in our website strategy, we’ve got a place to capture emails to get people.
We've got to get them off of Amazon if we’re already on there as an author. We have a lot more command over that audience connection so we know what to write about. We know what interests people, and we also know how to engage them and get them further through the process. For most of you putting out a book has a business purpose, and that’s what Juliet Clark is going to talk about. Making sure that we write the right book. I’m going to be honest with you: The very first one is completely the wrong book. I followed one of those models, hired one of those companies doing “speak to book.”
It felt all wrong the whole time I was doing it. It felt like totally introspective. It felt like all it was about me. I was like, “Is this what people want to read about? Are they going to be interested in this?” The questions were going through my mind the whole time that we were doing it, the whole time that we were recording this book. Plus, I didn’t love the whole record-to-book process because it felt contrived. It didn’t feel like it flowed, it didn’t feel organic for me. It didn’t feel like it was, “let’s explore these different topics and then assemble it together.” That was my process.
It didn’t work for me—I never published that. That has been sitting on my credenza for years. Of course, I didn’t need it, because I had a show and I was given an Inc. column. I was asked to write an Inc. column almost within 6 or 7 months of having my show. I thought, “I should be an author because I have a column. I should go out there. I’m a writer so there should be a connection between my audience who wants to read something—I should have a book.” Hence book number two, which got as far as getting a cover. It’s pretty edited and it has all of the relevant articles. I was starting to hit onto something that was working for me. It has all of the articles that were highly ranked and trafficked within my Inc. articles. There were lots of great connections and things going on here. The problem is that the longer it took me to do this, because of the way the writing happens? There’d be new articles and I felt like the book was constantly out of date.
Instead, I just started a second show on this and that’s how Product Launch Hazzards come about. That was my fast way of doing that, and also because it didn’t have a good business strategy. That was the number one reason I didn’t launch that book. I could have still launched that book, which would have been a great lead generator for audiences to my show, but I didn’t want to run a business. I wasn’t operating a business model that did anything but want to attract audiences. I didn’t want to sell them anything. I didn’t want to do any services. For us, it was an older business model. We were sharing our information to give it away and make sure people had it. That book didn’t make a lot of sense for me to put money into something that didn’t have a business purpose for me at the end of the day when the articles and all the other things were already out there. If it was my primary goal, this would have been the ideal book to write. It just wasn’t for me in terms of business purposes.
I’m onto my third book. This one is on its way to being published. I already paid Juliet for it—we’re on our way to doing that, and it is going to be our book for podcasters—for new and aspiring podcasters, not for existing ones. That’s going to be a whole other book that will come out and that will be the second book that we’re working on. We’re working on that from my show, The Binge Factor. These are the kinds of things—I’ve done it wrong, but lucky for me, I didn’t spend all the money. I stopped when I realized how hard it was going to be to market or that the business plan wasn’t there because I have a bigger view of the marketing programs. Also, the business plans, the things that we want to do, the flow and the lead generation that goes through my business and what’s happening here. I stopped myself before I spent the money to find out that the book did nothing for me and it wasn’t going to do anything for me.
I had great advisors and two of them are here. That’s where we’re going to lead into having Juliet Clark, who is an expert in profitable book launching. She’s a bestselling author herself. She knows what it takes. She advises authors, speakers, and experts who have a business, who want to promote, profit, and publish—which happens to be your podcast name—their book. They want to profit before they publish. They want to make sure they have a platform. They want to make sure they have an audience. She’s the Founder of Super Brand Publishing. She’s going to cover why you should or shouldn’t be a published author.
Following Juliet is going to be Tina Dietz, who is an audiobooks expert. She has a full-service audiobook recording studio called Twin Flames Studios. She’s going to talk about the audiobook opportunity and the match to us as podcasters. I love this. The thing about Juliet and Tina, and the reason they are both here on our Masterclass, is because like us here, we all believe in retaining your rights and doing the things that have a business return on investment. Returning new leads, returning your business, ultimately returning your profits. That’s why I’ve asked them to do a masterclass with you. First up is going to be Juliet. Let’s go on and have you give us your first segment on authors.
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Juliet:
I’m going to talk a little bit about authority books, but I’m going to talk about first, why you need to have authority before you write this book. We’re going to be pulling the curtain back on, are books still relevant? For the most part, a lot of us think they aren’t. What are the big book mistakes we’ve seen and why podcasters are great people to put books together, especially audiobooks. It’s about repurposing content with meaning, and having a plan to monetize all of this.
Books do matter. They are still relevant, but only when they’re done right. The one thing that Tina and I talked and laughed about all the time are all the bad books out there and that’s because people have written them for the wrong reasons. They didn’t have a plan, and they didn’t move forward in a way that was profitable for anybody. The first question you need to ask is, “to book or not to book?” This is where I proved to you that I’m the worst salesman on the planet because not everyone should write a book. We don’t take every book that’s brought to us.
There has to be a plan and a reason behind it, and I’m going to talk about some of those things we see that are reasons to not write a book because I want you to identify yourself in this. One of the things that happened for me on my journey to book writing— for those of you who don’t know, I wrote my first book in 2010, it was a mystery novel. I killed my ex-husband in it. I was going through a divorce. It was not only a fun and cathartic experience, but it was also the wakeup call—I had been in traditional publishing—to how bad the self-publishing model was, and how they were ripping people off. Those types of companies will take your book no questions asked, but that’s not always a good thing. Here are some of the things we’ve seen throughout the years of self-publishing.
We’ve seen a lot of life stories and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but for most of you, your life is not exciting enough to write a life story. You want to leave a legacy book for your family—that’s fantastic—but most of you, it’s just not worthy. Poorly written books—there are a lot of people out there that we have encountered that have not written great books. Not just grammar and all of those types of things, but the way the book is structured, it doesn’t make sense, it ends up being what I call a “barfa book.”
Some of the big mistakes we’ve seen throughout the years are experts who were writing books to make themselves experts. These are people who went to a business “ra-ra,” they indicated that they were online, marketers, their products and services weren’t selling and the guru in the room saw a moneymaking opportunity and said, “You need a book. You need to be the person that wrote a book on this topic.” That book, if you don’t have an author platform built—that meaning an audience—it’s going to be another failed product. We’ve seen a lot of that going on out there, and just writing it doesn’t make you an expert.
Another one we’ve seen a lot of is what I call the Life Story, but it’s people who wanted to talk about their journey, and instead of talking about their journey, they put out a “barfa book.” It wasn’t interesting. It had things in there that were too much information. Especially if you have a business, you don’t want people to know every little thing about you. These didn’t sell either. They were poorly written, and it wasn’t enough substance about the expert, and it was too much about the individual who was writing the book. I always call these “big ego books” too.
The other mistake we saw was: no structure, focus, or professional input. You started writing a book on your own one day and the structure was not where it should be. You didn’t have endorsements. You didn’t have an intro written by somebody who could help you sell the book. We see a lot of that. Probably the biggest mistake I see is someone who comes in with a book and when I ask who edited it, they’ll say, “My Aunt Peggy is an English teacher.” That’s not a professional editor. If you want to bust out in a professional way, your book has to look like a book that a traditional publisher would have taken on. Another big mistake is experts that are in search of an audience. Anytime you have a product, service, or book where you wrote it without feedback from your audience, you’re going to fail with that product. That’s what’s happened with a lot of these experts that are in search of an audience. You need to have that audience first.
I know all of you are podcasters—you’ve already done that. That’s what makes you an excellent prospect for this, because you have a built-in audience. Another big mistake is people who write books too soon. If your business is brand new or you haven’t monetized yet, it's too soon to write a book. That’s the perfect kind of book that we like to send on its way.
Back in 2015, I had a woman who came to us, who wrote a book. She worked with our writing coach on a “six figures to six months” book. When she got to chapter eight, which was Joint Ventures, she just got stuck. The writing coach came to me and said, “I don’t understand why she stopped.” I picked up the phone and called her and said, “What’s going on with this chapter? I met you at a joint venture event.” She admitted that she had never actually done joint ventures. She was writing this book without tried and true products and services that she had tried herself and been successful with. If you’re not successful with what you’re monetizing yet, it’s too soon to write a book.
The result of all this is that most independent authors will sell less than 100 copies of their book. You’re not going to get the ROI you’re looking for at all. The other result of this has been a lot of publishing on Amazon and if you only knew what the backside of Amazon provided you, you wouldn’t spend the $200 to do it. Amazon does not have true publishing services that are legitimate in the worldwide distribution or worldwide royalty capture. There’s a lot going on back there that because you don’t know what you’re doing as a first time or second-time author, you don’t understand what you’re getting into. The result is also what I like to call The Invisible Author. You write the book, you get it out there and guess what? People still don’t know who you are because you didn’t build that audience in advance. Why is this such a great platform for podcasters? First of all, you’re experts. You have episodes out there. You’re talking about what you do. Most of you have this monetized in some way. Your show is not your only monetization point. You have multiple streams of income through your company you are in a perfect position to drive traffic from your podcast into the book, and into other products and services.
Also, because you’re bingeable. It’s easy to take a thematic group of episodes and make them into a book that’ll be bingeable. Sometimes people don’t have the time to listen to every single podcast on a particular topic, but you can group a topic together and make it into a how-to guide. You can make it into an informational piece about, to give you an example, Seven Ways To Capture Expert And Expert Audience. You can put this all together in a thematic book that is helpful. Because you have the audience you need, you’ve already built what I would call an author platform through your expert podcasting. This also is because you have content. If you’re like me, I’m about to hit my 100th episode. I have more content than I ever envisioned I would have in my life. I can write a ton of books and be happy about it. You also have the credibility at this point. People already are listening. They understand that you are the go-to person in the area that they’re looking for help in. Also, you can create, easily, a thematic help book.
Another thing that a lot of people don’t think about is the learning styles. There are three different kinds of learning styles out there. The visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. With your podcast, you have the auditory covered and for most of you, if you’re using the Hazzards, you have your YouTube channel, you have the video. There are people who learn and enjoy content kinesthetically. The book provides that for people. They like to hold the book in their hands. I hear all the time that many people don’t look at it. They don’t use Kindle because they liked the feel of the pages and the book and Tracy’s one of those. She tells me that all the time because I tell her to do more Kindle and audio. You can reach a little bit different audience with that actual physical book.
This also adds to your brand. You’re bringing brand awareness. You’re expanding the awareness of your brand, not only from the show, but a lot of times we will use the free book funnels in conjunction with our book products. That brings you into a place where you can communicate with your actual audience that wants that book. You can send out the free book, you can upgrade them or have them pay for an additional product or service to get to know you a little bit better. If you have big programs like I do, sometimes people don’t know you, like you and trust you enough to take that big bite right off the bat. You’re able to give them small pieces that build trust. Also, clarity about what you teach. I know when we have 100 episodes or I know some of you out there I’m seeing some people that are on here, some of you have 500, 600 episodes.
Narrowing that down into those thematic books about what you teach, and driving your audience into a thematic workshop—also, why books? Books are a low-barrier product to get into your funnels. When you go out and you have a $20 book, that’s a low barrier product that people can hold in their hand and they can understand who you are and what you do. It doesn’t cost $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 to buy a book and find out more about you. The free shipping book funnels that lead into workshops, that lead into those bigger products you sell. This is the way to do it and have a direct connection with your audience. You not only have their email address, but they’ve been willing to pull out a credit card and buy something. That’s always a good sign.
I’m going to segue into what Tina’s doing here. Why audiobooks? Audiobooks have become the top way that people consume books. We are in a busy world. I know myself, I use audiobooks when I’m out running and I’m an avid runner. I consume easily 10 to 15 hours of audiobooks every week, car time as well. Audiobooks are becoming the new way to consume books.
People are used to hearing your voice already, but of course, you need that book to get to the audiobook. They’re more professional. One of the things that happen when you are with a traditional publisher is many of them will automatically sign into an audiobook contract. There are pros and cons with that. One of the cons is that they can choose the talent. When you write a book and you self-publish it and then go on to produce an audiobook, it’s in your own voice that your audience is already used to hearing. When you’re on Audible, people don’t think of you as a self-published author because you’ve taken that extra step to go into a prestige product like the traditional publishers would. Okay! Tina, I’m going to let you go.
Tina:
Let’s dive in a little bit deeper to the audiobook experience. As Tracy mentioned, I’m the CEO of Twin Flame Studios but I’ve been building businesses internationally much longer than I’ve been in the audio world. An opportunity like this excites me to see the different worlds coming together in this entrepreneurial milange that is super exciting. I got into audiobooks and I became a podcaster because books and podcasting are low hanging fruit for people to start to change their lives. That’s what gets me up in the morning and had me deciding to expand my company out in the directions that it did. It’s specifically talking about audiobooks.
The audiobook opportunity is threefold. It is imagination, it is intimacy and it is income. I’d be willing to bet if I turn this back over to Tracy, she would agree with me that podcasting is also very much those three things, and that’s one of the things we have to delve into. How do podcasting and audiobooks fit together as an opportunity while you as podcasters have a much better advantage than somebody starting from scratch?
Let’s do a little history lesson first. There has been an audiobook renaissance. Audiobooks have been around since about 1930. They were produced during the depression on albums and records. I believe the very first audiobook was a series of Christmas stories. They’re a familiar format for people and that is one of the major reasons why they are incredibly popular. If you’re like me, and you remember growing up with audiobooks—maybe you had an album when you were a kid where it was when Tinkerbell rings her little bell, it’s time to turn the page, or maybe you had books on tape. I remember my first one was Deepak Chopra’s Magical Mind, Magical Body and there were fifteen cassette tapes that you had to manage. Later on, there were 5 or 6 CDs that you had to manage. They were always freaking expensive. When audiobooks went digital and in particular, when Audible and Amazon became under the same umbrella, there was a massive explosion.
Back in the day when we first started having the iPod and we could have a thousand songs in your pocket, which was the slogan, then you could have a thousand books in your pocket with the Kindle and now you can have a thousand audiobooks in your pocket with apps like Audible. We have this library that we carry around with us that feeds and nurtures who we are, and we get to be a part of that, feeding and nurturing other people.
What happened in conjunction with audiobooks going digital was that it lowered the production cost. No more jewel cases, no more pressing of tapes or CDs, none of that. With the advent of home studios, that lowered the cost of production even more. Unlike most things on the planet, in the last ten years the cost of producing audiobooks has dropped about 50%. Therefore, it makes it much more accessible for people on the retail side of things to consume audiobooks. It used to be $30 to $50 to buy an audiobook. Now it’s pretty much a flat $12 to $18 to get an audiobook, depending on the length of the book. Sometimes it’s longer.
But it’s available now to everybody. You don’t have to go to a store. You don’t have to have a lot of money to buy and the reach is much bigger. As a result, audiobooks are a $4 billion industry. Year-on-year for the last six years, the audiobook industry has experienced double-digit growth every single year, sometimes as high as up into the 20%, 25%. In one year, it hit 30% growth. Those numbers are outrageous when you think about how businesses tend to grow, 3% to 5% growth for a large industry is more average, not 15% to 25%. However, there is and has been for many years, an issue with the industry. Juliet mentioned the issues with the self-publishing industry. I would say even we take it a step further and say the publishing industry, in general, is a broken model. Taking your rights, taking your royalties for traditional publishing, the predatory practices, self-publishing houses, or experts—all of these things, you have to think about, what is your goal? What’s going to benefit you the most?
Years ago, when I was looking into audio, it was because I’d been building businesses for decades and I’d worked with more than twenty different industries, 9, 10 different countries and at the time I was doing some paid hobby. I’m an entrepreneur. We can’t have a hobby. We have to monetize our hobbies. That’s what we do, and I was voice acting. I was taking some masterclasses by one of the premier audiobook trainers in the world because I was thinking, “It’s a side hustle. This might be cool.” Pat Fraley, who is still teaching and an amazing man, introduced me and the other people in my course, not only to the narration side of audiobooks but to the industry. That all of a sudden created what I call my chocolate and peanut butter moment, which was, “Why aren’t all of the authors I know, all my clients, all of my colleagues, who are doing bestseller campaigns, why not with audiobooks?” That curiosity led me to discover that nobody knew that audiobooks were even an issue and that the audiobook industry was broken. I secret shopped 30 different audiobook publishers, and all of them did the same thing: They took away your control creatively, they made you pay for it, and they controlled your files and your intellectual property at the end. Being a creator myself, I got incredibly offended and said, “We can do this better.” That’s why we started doing what we were doing to make sure that we are advocates for our authors to have a high-quality product, to get out there and do what we need to do to reach a bigger audience.
That brings me to the connection between podcasts and audiobooks. How Tracy and I met was actually, we were both shared some similar podcasting stages. She has Podfest and some other ones; I speak to a podcast audience as well and I’m a podcaster myself. I love the medium and I love the pairing of podcasts and audiobooks together—because you’re already recording. You already have an audio setup. You already clearly, at least in some form or fashion, can handle the sound of your own voice—which a lot of people can’t—and you are in a situation where you’re producing regular content as Tracy and Juliet mentioned. Now what? There’s the opportunity to get out there and create upon your creation.
You create the book from your podcast and then you create the audiobook from your book and this is what we call media matching from marketing. People who listen to podcast are more likely to be audiobook listeners because they’re already audio learners. They already have a leaning in that direction. They like audio and it becomes very fluid and interesting to be able to medium match and be able to market your audiobook, which we’re going to talk about on your show. Market your podcast through your audiobook and use both your audiobook and your podcast as assets to gain you more loyal followers, more leads, get your voice out to a bigger audience. When we create an audiobook, the other beautiful thing about it is that all of your formats on Amazon, in particular, show up on the same page. When you go to Amazon and you go to your book page, you can see the Kindle version, the paperback, the hardcover, and the audio version and this creates what I like to call “might-as-well-itis.”
A lot of times what we find is that people will download the Kindle, particularly if you’re running a free Kindle campaign or a 99¢ campaign. They’ll see the audiobook version and they’ll say, “I have Audible credits. I want to download that book as my first book on Audible.” Why not? Might as well. They get both versions of the book. Your audiobook is never going to hurt your sales on your other versions of your book. It’s always going to be on top of it. Particularly with nonfiction books, what we find is that folks want to have either a Kindle version or a hard copy to make notes. To get the book done, to read it all the way through, they listen to the audio because audio, as podcasters is the most portable, easy to access form of media. That’s why we do it. We can reach more people. Dovetailing your audiobook marketing with podcasting, and this gets very exciting. When you create an audiobook, you create what’s called a Five-Minute Retail Sample. That five-minute retail sample is a little a taster of your audiobook. You can use up to fifteen minutes of your audiobook in your marketing. Fifteen minutes of audio is a pretty long chunk of time. Guess how many different ways you can slice and dice that audio? You can turn it into a video book trailer. You can turn it into audiograms, and you may already be using audiograms as a podcaster.
They're those little video snippets that you can share on social media that are closed captioned. Maybe they have a little sound wave on them. It entices people who are on the video side of things who are just looking for a little snippet of information, “Maybe I need to go listen to more of that.” You can pair the marketing you’re already hopefully doing with your podcast, with your audiobook, to share on social media. Audiobooks also come with two lovely features when you publish them, and these are bounties and gift codes. When you publish through Audible’s self-publishing platform called ACX, you will get 100 gift codes. They give them to you in batches of about 20, 25 at a time. You can use those to promote your audiobook. You can use them as giveaways. You can print them onto a postcard and sell them as upgrades to your physical book if you’re in a live event.
You can also use them to give to trusted colleagues and friends, or clients to give yourself—as review copies. You don’t get galley copies of your audiobook necessarily, but you can give away gift codes for your audiobook that will allow people to leave you reviews on Audible. Because unlike on Amazon, in order to leave a review for Audible, you have to have that specific audiobook in your audiobook library. If you want to gain additional reviews—which of course reviews are always great—you can use the gift codes to help you do that, and you get a hundred of those. It’s a lot to work with.
The other program that Audible has is called the Bounty Program. This is a bonus for you finding Audible a new customer. How this works is that you get special URLs for the US, the UK, France, and Germany. You use those URLs to share your audiobook. Post them in your newsletters, send it out in emails, use it in social media. If that person downloads your book as the first book that they do on Audible, they’re a new audible customer.
They’ll get your audiobook for free. However, if they stay an audiobook customer with Audible for two months, then Audible rewards you for your sacrifice on your royalties by giving you $75 for finding them a new customer and that, of course, is way more than you’d get on the royalty of a book. I know authors who push those bounty codes on the chance that people are not yet an Audible customer because they’re out there even though it’s a popular format. That is a little bit about bounties, gift codes and audiobook marketing in general and how that’s going to dovetail with your podcast.
What do we do at Twin Flames? We are advocates for our authors. We want to make this easy for you, because the definition of an entrepreneur or somebody who podcasts for business, is somebody who won’t work 40 hours for somebody else, but you’ll work 80 hours a week for yourself. I know that—I’m the same way. What we all need are people who are going to take good care of us, the way we want to take care of other people. That’s why I’m partnering with Tracy and Juliet because we are all likeminded in how we work with the people that we make a difference with. We are here to care and advocate for people and create quality so that your message can get out into the world in a way that’s powerful in multiple ways. We need to be reaching more people to make this world a better place and make a great living doing it at the same time. It’s doing well, and doing good.
We don’t take your royalties and rights. You retain creative control and we make sure that your audiobook is both a marketing asset and an income stream for you. It needs to be both of these things, and much like Juliet mentioned before, we don’t take all the books that come to us. Some of them simply aren’t going to work. We also don’t let everybody narrate their own book because narrating an audiobook is not the same thing as recording a podcast. I will say that there is a 95% chance that because you’re an experienced podcaster and you’ve got some audio setup already going in, and you already have been working with your voice, you will be able to narrate your own audiobook, but we will let you know if it’s not feasible for you to do that and work another way through it.
A lot of our authors do narrate their own audiobooks, but a number of them don’t and they opt for other reasons to have a professional narrator do their audiobook. If you’re curious about that, please reach out and I’ll explain to you the process and the difference. For most podcasters, narrating your own audiobook isn’t an option. It is different than recording your podcast. I would never narrate an audiobook speaking this quickly. I would never use the type of breathing that I’m using and I certainly wouldn’t have my audio set up this way. It is a different animal and it is a different form and feel. This is why we do it the way we do it. We offer our author narrators the option of not having to go into a studio, not having to learn any technology or equipment. What we do is we have professional audiobook directors who are narrators and sound engineers themselves and we remote into your audio setup.
We make sure that your audio is perfect for audiobooks and then we live-direct and record you doing your book. You don’t have to hit a button except to get on the recording. You don’t have to worry about editing, stopping, or starting. You don’t have to worry about, do you sound okay? Are you breathing? Are you making any mistakes? We fully live direct you and record through the entire process, and if any of you out there are familiar with any kind of voice acting—we do what’s called punch and roll recording, which is the industry standard for recording an audiobook. This ensures that your audiobook does not sound like somebody who just sat down and read their book into a microphone. It’s going to be high quality audio. It’s going to be performance quality, and then we can make sure that it’s edited, proofed, mastered—perfect—before anything goes to publishing and distribution.
There are a tremendous number of technical details that go into an audiobook that you’ve got a lot more wiggle room with podcasting than you do with audiobooks. You get to tick off all of those particular details. If you want your audiobook to pass the quality control process to get onto Audible or other platforms. We make sure that all of that gets handled for you and you have all the information you need to maximize your audiobook experience and your audiobook as a process—as an asset—for everything that you do. I am super excited about this entire program that we’re all doing together. I’m going to bring Tracy back in and she can share with you and we can all talk together and make sure that we have enough time to go through our Q&A together.
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Thanks much, Tina and Juliet. I appreciate you guys coming and sharing with us. What I want to do is just wrap up with a little thought on how you might structure this. Now that you’re thinking, “This audiobook thing sounds pretty cool. I could write the right book. I have some ideas. I’m getting some traction with my podcast already. I’ve got some great guest interviews, great people who would be associated with my book if I had stories about them.” As you’re starting to think about that, what does that book look like? What does that audiobook sound like? As you’re starting to think about this, I’ve got a couple of strategies I’m going to throw out to you, just for you to think about and see if this might be something that would interest you.
Let’s say you have a show that has a lot of guest interviews. It’s similar to the model I did with my Inc. articles. I was writing out great brands, great companies, great entrepreneurs and I’ve got all that going. I do the same thing on my show. If I’ve got a lot of great guest interviews—or that’s the only thing that I have in my show—it doesn’t make for the best book. Juliet will tell you that because there’s a lot of those out there where it’s like all the different chapters in that and all the different things are all these different stories from all the different people. It does help promote and market the book, because you’ve got all these people who are willing to share your book because they’re featured in it. It’s a great strategy from a marketing and outreach standpoint, like the same thing that you do on your show, where you invite these great guests on, and then they share your show because they were on it. You want the same thing to go on with your book. However, what we found over time is that we want to frame it just like we like you to frame your guest interviews and we likd you to frame your show with some content that’s about what you’re teaching, what your business is about. Giving it context and giving it transition. That’s always a good idea.
Here are a couple of ideas of things that we’ve helped build for people we’ve done for ourselves and we worked through these processes and we know that they turn out great books that are easy to read, but well-written in the same process because they are structured.
One of the things you can do is frame all of the interviews by theme. Let’s say you have different themes that you talk about. Maybe you’re doing health and wellness and you have a fitness theme, a food theme, and you want to frame them by themes so you could organize the best interviews that you’ve done based on those themes. You could also do it based on topics. I have a show that is the Five Things That Make You Bingeable, it’s on The Binge Factor. We talk about those five things and it’s one is get great guests. The other thing is, it increases your audiences, produce professionally. If I could take each one of those and create sections of some of the best tips, the best stories, the best information out based on those topics and subjects where I know those five topics are already of great interest because we receive a lot of engagement back and people are very interested in that already. I know that those topics are playing on my show, to begin with.
The other processes similar to what I did with Product Launch Hazzards: I have a seven-step process for how we design and develop products. What I did was I grouped and did my seven-step process and then built the stories that reinforced some great practices in each one of the different steps. Sometimes you don’t have those seven steps outlined out or on their own, or you just mention it casually on some shows—you may not need to go back in and fill in the gaps. When I’ve got all these great guest interviews and I’ve got some of the topics but I don’t have all of them, you may need to go back and rerecord or record some new ones and fill in the gaps of those. From there, I like to use a ghostwriter. That’s my personal viewpoint on how to do it—someone who’s more suited to writing in a style that is best for a book. I think I’m more suited to that casual online writing model, so I like to use someone to help me. While I record it, all of it is in my voice, I like to have someone write that concise chapter, that transition, that set up for the section of all the interviews.
You might want to write it yourself, but at least you’ve got the audio that you recorded in the transcript to start from. You can start from there. That’s one of the ways that you can go about doing it. You can do transitional intros to each of the guest interviews that you’ve done. You do new introductions, not the ones that were originally on your podcast, but you’re transitioning from one story to the next or one interview to the next.
My next recommendation to you is heavily edit it. No one wants to read your entire transcript, or the entire thing of your interview with the guests. They want the best three questions and answers. Heavily edit those interview sections down to the heart and the meat of it. Also, make sure you do a proper introduction for the person. You’ve got a proper bio going on there and all of that. Make sure that that’s in there. These are some strategies and some thoughts.
If you’re at the stage where you’re thinking about strategically, “How do I want to write a book?” I want you to contact Juliet first and I want you to have Juliet walk you through and talk to you about what this book looks like, from your podcast—how you might structure it. Is your podcast ready yet? Is it too soon? If you already have a book that doesn’t have an audiobook yet, I want you to go first to Tina. If you are sitting back going, “I wish I restructured my show. I wish I recorded my podcast with this in mind,” you can talk to Juliet, but you can also book a call with Tom at Podetize. He’d be happy to help you coach you through how you might restructure your show so you can prep it for doing a great book model in the future.
Irene says, “I have a book but no podcast yet in the works. I do need to put it in as an audiobook.” The $4 billion industry is just calling to all of us podcasters here. On Facebook, we’ve got Dorsey and she says, “I’ve coauthored three books and want to do my own.” Dorsey, it’s time. Do your own thing. It’s time for you. Ladies, I thank you much for bringing much great information on. I appreciate that. Another question is, “Juliet, what did you mean by paying $200 for Amazon publishing? I have a Kindle and paperback and did not pay anything.”
Juliet:
I don’t think you have to pay now, but you used to have to pay for that paperback to upload it. There are some problems with Kindle but the actual paperback publishing with Amazon has a lot of drawbacks, and I don’t know if you noticed, if you went for international royalties, you lost a chunk and there was no reason for you to lose a chunk of it. There are a lot of things that happen with Amazon that don’t truly make it a legitimate publishing company. The self-publishing and the hybrid and the others out there.
Barrett Matthew says, “What type of podcasts that should not be books?” I think the ones that are a little bit infomercially, those books aren’t doing well. If your podcast is infomercially, it’s not teaching something, it’s not educating in some way, or the interviews are like, phone in the same thing again and again. If you’re doing interviews where you ask the same five questions every time, and they’re the same thing over and over again and they’re too generic. When I do my five questions on how you get great audience increases, how you get great guests and increased audiences, it’s a tiny segment in my show. The rest of the show we’re exploring, what makes their show bingeable? Why they started it? There’s still story there and people still want story. They want something interesting in their books. That’s the kind that don’t lend itself well. Juliet and Tina, your thoughts?
Tina:
We’re wired for stories and what we want is stories. When I was the lead interviewer for a documentary called The Messengers, which was about independent podcasting, I interviewed about 40 different podcasters—all different topics. None of them knew each other for the most part, and what came up in every single interview was the word intimacy. Podcasting provides tremendous intimacy and building your book, your platform, and your audiobook on the back of intimacy is always going to serve you better. We create intimacy through the human experience and that is where we share stories.
Thank you so much for making that clear, Tina, and I think when you’re speaking, it’s even more important to be in that storytelling mode. That’s where the audiobooks can come in handy to have that. If you’re doing where you do wrap in some of these interviews in there, you’re likely not to use the audio from your original interview. You’re going to use some like a supplement. They’re going to be the supplementary chapter. It will be you speaking the audiobook throughout the whole thing. If you’re narrating it or you’re a narrator, and those things will become the supplementary and they’ll go to the whole podcast. Where your book when it’s written out, it has a question, answer and it’s in a different style. The audiobook will be structured differently. Keep that in mind and that’s where you’re going to have to have some good storytelling, good transition, and good information in there, or it’s not going to be worth it to pull it all the way through that process as well.
Paul mentions, “No audience.” Here’s the thing. That’s a very common thing with authors—a lot of times they don’t have an audience. That’s the number one thing that Juliet highlighted at the beginning. They’re going to publish a book thinking it’s going to drive an audience. It doesn’t work like that. There are cases where your guests are your audience. We had that happen very frequently where many of our clients have a guesting strategy, which is that they don’t care how many audiences they have. It’s about making those guests feel important, making them feel highlighted, making them feel special in the process. In doing that through a book and through all of that, you’re creating a richer authority value for them. While it’s an expense for you, it’s in building up those guests as important to you and bringing them out to the world.
It’s not necessarily going to drive more listens to your audiobook, more traffic to downloading the book on Amazon or wherever you might be selling it. That can be a strategy. Don’t worry about that. That’s one where you want to talk to Juliet and let’s make sure though you have a good book at the end of the day so it doesn’t feel like an embarrassment to put it out. Especially if its purpose is to drive an authority. Paul, if you don’t have a podcast yet, maybe this is time to think about one. Think about how you want to write your book and then structure a podcast so it supports it too. It always can go strategically every way.
Melanie Parish says, “I have a book, no audiobook yet. I used a hybrid publisher who told me audiobooks are expensive to produce.” I think you should have a chat with Tina because that may not be the case. You’d be surprised at the return on investment for that.
Tina:
I spent a surprising amount of time educating publishers on audiobooks. It’s just not in their expertise, It’s not in your wheelhouse. Juliet knows more about publishing than I will ever know. I like it that way. I like getting into the weeds and being a deep expert in one area and then having colleagues that I can share back and forth with because your brain explodes after a while. Before you believe anything a publisher or anybody else in the book industry tells you about audiobooks, confirm that bias in the actual audiobook industry. I can promise you, they’ve had one, maybe two experiences, and they don’t know the actual industry.
This is true that many of those publishers and whatever their model is, whether it’s a hybrid or a traditional publisher, all that they know is their own model of how they operate. They don’t have a broad industry experience in it. That’s where someone like Juliet and Tina who seek people who come from all different publishers and who come from all different models of book creation, programs and other things out there. They have a broader view on what’s working and what’s not working.
Juliet:
I took on a client who’s publishing with a hybrid because she wants to get her book into institutions. The publisher she’s using doesn’t use the free shipping model. There are a lot of things that a hybrid publisher is not great at. They’re good at getting things in bookstores, the shelf life is three weeks. That’s a tough one too. They’re good in some particular areas, but not great in other ones. If you’re an entrepreneur, you need to explore some other avenues. The great part about hybrid is that most of the time you own your own rights with it; you’re free to go to someone else to do the audiobook. You’re free to do the free book funnel as well.
Anytime if you have any questions, Melanie Parish is asking you to reach out to her, Tina, and I’ll connect the two of you on Facebook you can make sure that that happens. Juliet, I connected you up with Dorsey on Facebook, you guys should be connecting there. Also I wanted to remind you, Juliet and Tina have a podcast. You can also follow because you’ll learn a lot from us talking about these things and how people are utilizing them and what’s working successfully for authors, what’s working successfully for entrepreneurs—so you’ll be able to catch and follow us there in case you’re just not ready yet, this is a little thought in the back of your mind.
We invite you to connect up with all of us and find out more and decide if this is right for you. One of the things and the reasons why I partnered up with Juliet and Tina to bring them here to you is because I know they won’t take someone who’s not ready yet and that’s an important thing for us. They will turn away people before they will sell them when you’re not ready yet.
We don’t have a fully formalized offer here. There is nothing because we know it might not be right for all of you and there may be only portions that are right, like doing just the audiobook with Tina or taking a pre-strategy session with Juliet. Making this occur over your podcast over time. We want to give you an open-ended opportunity to be able to discuss what this looks like for you. Reach out to any one of the three of us. Thank you for joining us. It will also be posted in the Podetize resource area. We’re getting a brand-new dashboard. You can go to Podetize.com/masterclasses, and you’ll be able to access all of them at any given time. You’ll be getting an email reminder on all of that for those of you who are looking for the past episodes. That’s also another place in which you can find them at any given time. You’re like, “I can’t find it on Facebook. It was months ago, but now I’m ready.” Thank you all.
Hi. I’m Juliet Dillon Clark, Founder of Super Brand Publishing.
Over the years I brought my expertise to corporate clients like Mattel, Nissan, Price Stern Sloan Publishing, and HP Books. While I enjoyed the work, and was good at it, I felt like something was missing. I realized that what I really wanted to be doing was helping individuals, not corporations, further their success and find fulfillment.
Since then, I have helped more than 600 entrepreneurs and authors share their work with the world and have published more than 60 books, turning more than 190 authors/entrepreneurs into best-selling experts! Let’s cut through the clutter and get your message across so that you can cultivate your fan base, increase sales, and reach a level of success beyond what you thought possible.
About Tina Dietz
Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert who has been featured on media outlets including ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs.
In 2016, Tina was the recipient of the Evolutionary Business Council MORE award and in 2017 she received the award for Outstanding Audio Company from The Winner’s Circle. She is also a member of the EBC leadership body and a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Tina was also the lead interviewer in the podcasting documentary “The Messengers” and featured in the film.
Tina splits her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of the leadership team building a community of conscious leaders called Vista Mundo.
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You might have a book inside you, waiting to be written, yet lack the time, desire or discipline to sit down and put pen to page. Dana Micheli explains that’s where a ghostwriter comes in.
There is a saying that everyone has at least one book in them; however, not everyone has the time, desire or discipline to sit down and write it. That’s where a ghostwriter comes in. Here are some tips for finding the right person to get that story out of your head and onto the page.
As with any investment, you want to engage in some due diligence before beginning your search for a ghostwriter. Research the average length of the sort of book you want to write, typical ghostwriting rates, and what is included (for example, additional research or a book proposal). You should learn enough to prepare a list of questions before meeting with someone to discuss your project.
Choosing a writer
Ghostwriting is a highly collaborative process, one that requires trust and compatibility. You’ll likely be providing this person with deeply personal or proprietary information, so you want to make sure you have a rapport with them. Healthy communication is key. You always have final say over what goes into your book and what’s “off the record”; this means that while a good ghostwriter will offer you their opinion, they should never push you into including something you’re not comfortable with. Also keep in mind that some details may be problematic from a legal standpoint. A ghostwriter is not a lawyer and should not be relied upon as such; however, they should be able to point out red flags with regard to certain names or facts and advise you to exclude them, change them, or consult an attorney.
Some things to discuss when interviewing a ghostwriter
What does their process look like? I interview someone at least twice at the beginning so I can get enough information to create the book outline and, more importantly, get a sense of their voice. Once the outline has been finalized, I let the client decide whether they would like to deliver the rest of the content/messaging through interviews, material they have written, or audio files they record on their iPhone when they feel inspired. They must also be available to answer any questions I have about the subject matter, and review the material as I send it. Asking about the process will give you a good idea of your time commitment to the project.
Writing samples and references: While it certainly makes sense to ask for writing samples, it’s important to understand that they may not be on point with your subject matter. This is okay. What you really need to know is whether the person can write in an engaging, intelligent fashion, as well as in different voices and for various audiences.
Does their contract have clear terms? This includes things like confidentiality, copyright ownership, whether they receive credit of authorship (some ghostwriters do and some do not), the payment schedule, and overall timeframe for the project.
The manuscript is complete. Now what?
Actually, I like to have this discussion before the writing begins. Authors have a few different options with regard to publishing – for example, they can self-publish, engage a small publishing house, or seek a literary agent who will pitch the manuscript for them. There are pros and cons to each, and your choice will depend on several factors such as budget and marketing goals. You'll also want to consider different formats such as e-books and audiobooks. You don’t have to have all the answers from the outset, but it is prudent to get all the facts so that by the time the book is finished you have a clear plan on how to get it to market.
It can be challenging to find the right ghostwriter, but the rewards – a highly productive partnership and a top quality book – are well worth it!
Dana Micheli is a ghostwriter, copy editor, book doctor, and owner of Writers In The Sky (WITS). She has written and edited numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including novels, memoirs, and news articles, as well as résumés and business/marketing documents. While she works with a wide variety of genres, she most often takes projects of a spiritual nature, including books by and about mediums, Reiki masters, empaths, lightworkers and starseeds.
Before pursuing her writing career full-time, Dana worked as a Systems Advocate for the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, where she lobbied state and federal politicians on behalf of victims of abuse. She also served as the Manager of PR/Communications for The New York Women's Foundation, where she was responsible for writing press releases and articles for the website, organizing events, and liaising with the media. In addition, she has worked for several media outlets, writing and researching legal, political and human interest stories for print, online and television. In late 2010, she began working for WITS founder Yvonne Perry.
Dana has a B.A. in English from Southern Connecticut State University and a Juris Doctor from New York Law School. She lives in New York City.
Dana Micheli– Ghostwriter, Copy Editor, Book Doctor, and Owner of Writers In The Sky
We are ready to help you through the audiobook process
Wondering how to safely promote your book? Simple! Do a virtual book tour. Check out this article where Jackie Lapin shows you how to launch yours
If you are an author or leader with a mission or message, then the pandemic may have actually handed you an unexpectedly positive gift!
While the number of podcasts has been growing exponentially all on its own (now reaching more than 1 million), the number of listeners for podcasts AND radio shows during this shelter-at-home period has skyrocketed.
Even when people begin returning to work, many will still maintain their new “podcast habits” because of their allegiance to new hosts and the vital information they offer. A whole new world has opened up for the listener.
Now, couple that with a figure I just saw that book sales are up 777% since the shut-in began!
While this is a misfortune for so many, for the book marketer it is a perfect storm. And you can stay home and be safe, while still reaching millions of ears.
Virtual Book Tours are supplanting the old notion of a physical in-person book tour…and with the fact that fewer and fewer people are actually buying in brick-and-mortar bookstores, a radio/podcast tour is an ideal opportunity to reach people not only across state lines, but internationally as well.
A Virtual Book Tour is best launched once your book is available for readers to purchase online, and podcast and radio hosts can be sent a physical copy of the book. Believe it or not, in this era of everything digital, show hosts want a real, old fashioned book to read. They don’t want to read it online or on a digital device.
This isn’t a good strategy for pre-orders, as hosts can get annoyed if their listeners are stuck waiting a month or two to get the book they ordered during or after the show.
But that doesn’t mean you should wait till the last minute to execute. You need to be planning well in advance, selecting the dates you want to be on the air, and then reverse engineer. Figure that if you want the hosts to read the book before interviewing you, you must allow one week for the book to arrive in the mail (preferably using the lower cost “media mail”) and then allow the host two weeks to read the book. So start soliciting the hosts at least a month or so before you want to be doing the interviews.
Now many hosts will be booking for months ahead, as they have already filled up the interviews closer in time. Assume that your interviews can be scattered out as far as five months in advance—which actually gives you plenty of time to work them into your schedule without being overwhelmed. Unlike the “old days,” when everything was crammed into the first 90 days because bookstores would start returning books to the publisher if they didn’t see sales movement, today a book campaign is a marathon, not a sprint. And the radio/podcast shows welcome self-published authors, not just the traditionally published. Only national TV shows and the biggest NPR shows will snub self-published authors today.
To get booked on your Virtual Book Tour you should have three things ready to go:
A compelling pitch letter that answers the host’s question of “Why you?”—What are you bringing to the table that is distinctive, helpful, newsworthy or unique?
A comprehensive media kit with a release on the book, your extended bio, a short on-air introduction, the 20 questions you want to be asked (20 because most interviews are now one hour), your website and your social media links
And, if your book is a gateway to other products and services, a free offer that you can also promote on the show that gets people to give you their email. This should have a simple and easy to remember URL. Buy a domain that is memorable to make this easy for folks to remember and for you to deliver.
So don’t lament that the virus crashed your original book tour plans. This is a great opportunity to build momentum without leaving your home. A Virtual Book Tour is a great way to launch a book, revitalize an older book, continue to sell your products using your book as the hook for the interview, or build your movement.
Jackie Lapin is a leader in helping entrepreneurs, authors, practitioners, speakers, leaders and messengers connect with their next followers around the globe. For the past 10 years, her internationally acclaimed Conscious Media Relations has been providing radio/podcast tours and speaking engagements to support leaders and authors. Conscious Media Relations offers authors to 9000 podcasts and radio shows, guaranteeing 30 interviews. Learn more at Conscious Media Relations and Speaker Tunity Cities
Jackie Lapin– founder of Conscious Media Relations, and accomplished Book Marketing Coach to help emerging authors navigate the marketing of their books
