Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Secret Formula To Write A Best-Selling Book | Emily Liebert - 7-Time Bestselling Author

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Lessons - The Secret Formula To Write A Best-Selling Book | Emily Liebert - 7-Time Bestselling Author · Success Story with Scott Clary

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You have six novels out. And have all six hit the best seller list.
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They have hit best seller list. So what is the formula for a best seller? What what do you need to write?
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I could tell you that I would have to kill you. I don't know how it happened. I know it happened
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through sampled. But you have to be you can't just be someone who writes the book. You have to know how
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to promote yourself. Do PR and marketing. My publishing house does that for me. But I also do it
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for myself. And I hire a public that's outside of my publishing house. You know, I mean, hard work is
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amazing. And I work really hard to make sure that everyone knows about my book post on social media.
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I do giveaways. I send out e-mail. I actually partner with a brand for each of my books, which
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I don't know any authors outside for myself that do this. So I've partnered with nail polished
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brands, lipstick brands. I've partnered with general makeup brands. I partnered with Canyon Ranch
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with perfectly famous. I partnered with Waffle, which is an infinite brand,
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bras and underwares. And we launched a campaign called the perfect fit, which is your perfect fit book
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and your perfect fit. That's smart. That's very smart. Very smart. And I saw your Instagram. It's
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really, like, it's really well done. It's very well done. Yes, for the brand about, you know,
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being fitted for a bra, and what kind of bra you wear when you're working out and you're getting
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dressed up. We did one very interesting thing, didn't you, where I was posing in my Waffle
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brand underwear on my porch at a fun ride with no makeup on. We said, um, my very talented friend
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Jenny Goldberg with the top of her, she has a private portrait part of her company, which is sort
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of the duar of the top of her band during the pandemic. She was doing front porch photos at
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a fun ride. And we decided it would be great to bring this into the Waffle partnership.
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And so I posed for her series in my Waffle brand underwear. After that, I noticed that a lot
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of people that were posing for how we're enrolled and nightgowns and pajamas. I told you we're supposed
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to be on your ride under a competitor. Just how you woke up. No, since I was one of the
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forever, it was your, you were honest, true self. That's all that matters, right? That is
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first there. And this is my honest, true self, too. This is zero makeup. This is exactly how I woke
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up this morning with messy hair and no makeup. So, um, this is me. Take it or leave it.
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It's, no, it's good. That's, that's how you got to be. And I think that, you know, I've seen
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every time I speak about just marketing, obviously not just marketing books, but just marketing in
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general. It's always about being authentic. Lots of people get like, how do you buy into it? It's just
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real, real, you know? This girl right here who's also me, but that's me with hair and makeup.
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And, and how did you, I guess, I guess my question is,
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this is a funny. Okay. So the reason why I'm asking is because I see a lot of people that
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that sell books or sell products and they, and they don't quite get everything you just mentioned
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about how to market, how to be personal, how to be authentic, partnerships and all this stuff.
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And, and you do see it obviously at the upper echelons, but it takes a lot to get there,
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but you're just sort of taking this on on your own. Where did you learn to do this? Where
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did you learn to market? How did you sort of understand that this is how you bring a book
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or product to, and you're doing I, like you're doing Instagram lives, like you're doing everything.
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Like you're killing it. I think you, I think it's all a progression. It doesn't all come at once,
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but when I wrote this book, Fairytale, I had a lot of luck getting the blessedity because it was
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about Facebook. Facebook was exploding in the media. It was sort of this chicken soup for the
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soul and kind of bucking amazing stories and people affected. We loved hearing about that.
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And so I, as you read before, I was on the stage show. I was on Rachel Ray Anderson Cooper,
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and I got so much attention for that book. And when I wrote a novel, I was told immediately,
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do not expect this kind of publicity for a novel. And I thought to myself, well, that makes
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sense. You know, there aren't these sort of aspects to it like the Facebook assets. The
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one was over a bar of gas that did amazing story of that. It's just a blow off that came from
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my mind. And there are a lot of authors with a lot of novels. So I knew I had to do something to
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spend myself apart. And somewhere on his brain of mine, I came up with the idea of approaching a
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nail polish company and seeing if they would make a nail polish grant named after the book and
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after my characters that we could send to everybody in the press and do giveaways with and I could
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bring to my event. And it just really worked amazingly. And I got, I worked with a company called
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Doya, which makes amazing nail polish. And it got the book so much publicity outside of book websites
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or, you know, in magazines that right out of the gym, like in style magazine and on refinery 29
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and in pop sugar and all these places where something just a book might not get attention,
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but all the fun. There was this nail polish set and the policies are named for my characters. There's
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cute sort of Italian. So that worked really well. I also knew to hire a publicist outside of my
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publishing house, because while the publicists at the publishing house are amazing, they have
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10, 15 God knows how many books they're working on at the same time. So I stuck with the
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partnerships after that, the Grand Partnership. And I just knew I had to be really good on social
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media. I knew that creating good, interesting content was really important because you have to
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think about what you like to see in other people's content. And I think people want to see
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the real you and they want to see you talking. And what are you wearing? And what are you eating?
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And what is your life like outside of writing books? You know, what do you do with your kids? And
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also like that you're not perfect and you're not that girl on the book, like your hair blown out
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and your perfect makeup and I don't know the problems with the way I bring those to. Some like, you know,
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photos of shopping that they do with those pictures. And specifically when I realized which I
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fortunately realized it very early on during the pandemic that I was not going to be able to do a
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physical book tour, which I did already have set up. I pivoted and this was, I mean, I knew
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I knew in April. I think so many people were holding out saying, June's going to be fine. It's
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still two months away. You're going to be fine. And my husband and I were sitting there saying,
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there is no way I'm going on book tour in June. And I pivoted and I set up probably,
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probably close to like 30 of them for myself, different, anything from Zoom events to Instagram
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live. And I also really tried to mix it up. Like I tried to do summer lives with books to
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branches. I did some celebrities. I kicked it off with Melissa Jumphart, which was great and we did
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it pre-publication. I did one with Lindsey Zarnia, who's a sportscaster. And I did some
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with people who do beauty and books. There were just a lot of interesting, I did one with one of
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the real housewives, Margaret Joseph. There were a lot of interesting personalities, interesting
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people. I've done a bunch of podcasts, interviews, magazines, newspapers. You have to
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factory. You have to make sure people are just seeing the book over and over because as I'm sure
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you know, in marketing, people don't always buy the book the first time they see it. For the
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tenth time they see it. They're wondering why I've seen this book ten times. Yeah, it takes quite
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a bit, it takes quite a bit of exposure before somebody actually makes it. And it obviously depends
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on what the dollar value of the item is. But for even for something that's only like how much is
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the book like 20 bucks, 30 bucks at the most? I think the minor 15. No, 15, so even 15. It's going
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to be, you know, you're so oversaturated. Yeah, you'll have to see that book a few times before
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you're like, oh wait, who is this? Who is this woman? I see her everywhere. I see this book
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everywhere. And then eventually. I do not give a way to get more people to follow me,
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the more people to follow you, the more people you can reach. Yeah. Yeah, that's very, very smart.
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I post sometimes so that I can reach wider groups of people and cast the net wider.
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No, but it's very smart. I just, I noticed that I didn't realize that you were doing a lot of
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the stuff yourself. So just, you know, it's even more impressive because it's really well done.
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Like I, it's really, really well done. And I think that you're, you're, you're nailing it. And like,
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I think that's a differentiator that a lot of people that do their own thing could be writing a book,
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it could be any side hustle. Like the ability to access people through social and being personal
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and being human and being your authentic self and marketing that can, can drive massive traffic.
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Even if you aren't, you don't have like a million dollar ad budget, right? And I think that's what
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you're sort of showcasing here. It's, you're, you're, and you're not a million dollar ad.
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Well, you do it. You're doing a good job.
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My money is bigger. It is safe with no makeup.
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I have, I have just, I have one more question just about about the book and publishing and writing.
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And then I just have some rapid fire just about insights that you've learned from your life.
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Just one, one sort of round up question. What's, what's something, or is there something
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that I should have asked you about writing or publishing that I don't know enough about
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topic to ask you that you would say people should sort of take note of?
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I think one thing that people who are looking to write a book need to know about is rejection.
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I hate to say that there's a lot of rejection in this industry. I think the coming and author
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is almost like saying, I'm going to become an actress or I'm going to become, I don't know a chef
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or something where there are a lot of talented people competing and doing the same thing.
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And I think that you have to develop a tough skin and
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look at my dog making noises and that. Doesn't matter. This is the new reality.
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This is the new home. It's not a big thing. I think you have to develop a thick skin and you have
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to know how to be in a film and rush yourself off and take yourself back up.
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Another thing is sometimes look, get turned into TV shows or movies.
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And pretty revenge came out last July with option for a television series.
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And some fabulous writers were hired. So that is in the work now.
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Congratulations. That's amazing.
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Until it is on the air, I don't believe it. But it's always fun to have some
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and we think that your book could be a television show.
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Yeah. So that just shows you just do. And then as you're saying with your marketing,
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you're pivoting and you're learning but you're also opening yourself up to other opportunities
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that weren't initially presented. So those are two great lessons. And especially the rejection
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when I think that's very important not from a, you know, like not to not try but just be realistic
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about expectations.