Latest / Repossible / re567: Does YouTube Actually Sell Books? J.D. Barker Isn’t Convinced

Transcript

re567: Does YouTube Actually Sell Books? J.D. Barker Isn’t Convinced · Repossible

• 0:00
  Speaker A: So I think a lot of authors are kind of in that same position, though. Like they know they should be doing something. And is that something YouTube? I don't think anybody could actually answer that question. I've had a couple of seven figure deals on books, and the first question out of their mouth when I walk into those meetings with a publisher is, what's your social media profile? And they want to know what you've got out there. But to this day, none of them can tell me whether or not it actually sells books.
• 0:30
  Speaker B: And we're live. Bradley. Hi, I'm Bradley Schrabano. We're here today with J.D. barker. Clearly, from the gigantic poster behind him, author of the First Scarlet Door. I noticed that giant.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: Well, it's, it's funny, we were talking before you started recording and, you know, like when I first started, I guess about 2019 or so, you know, videos or like video interviews really started to pick up, you know, Covid just kind of blew it up completely. But at the beginning, like, it was me with a blank white wall behind me, you know, nothing else going on. And we've, I think we've all seen that transition, even on tv, you, all the talking heads started with the white wall, and now all of a sudden they've all got this crazy backdrop. So I built some bookcases. I used to have, like, right here. I had a little shelf that was like a floating shelf. And whatever my latest title was, I had like four or five of them stacked on it, but they were super tiny. Especially when I did television because I do a lot of TV and they go all widescreen so you couldn't read what it was. And I don't remember who it was, but somebody suggested putting a movie poster up, which is what that is. So it actually, it lights up and digitally, like I can send an image of it to the TV station. So if they want to superimpose it, they can. Yeah, I don't know where I did with the remote. It looks better when it's not lit up than when it is.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: Wait a minute. It's a poster or it's a screen?
• 1:44
  Speaker A: No, no, it's a movie poster. It's a physical thing back here.
• 1:49
  Speaker B: You know, it's funny, it's so perfect and you never know anymore. Like, is that a fake backdrop? Like a fake background image? But it's not. It's real.
• 1:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, it's. It's real. And that's how they do it on the, the actual sets. Like when I've been on, you know, Local television and major networks and stuff like that. When they sit you down on the couc, see it behind them a lot of times, like it is a physical thing and sometimes they'll superimpose over that. But there's always something physically there, I think. I think our eyes in general just like to see a lot of moving parts. And normally I'm very conscious of, you know, like you can see my desk behind me. Normally I don't leave anything on my desk. I want to focus on, you know, what I want people to see. Not necessarily the other things, but you know, it's all, you know, Covid and video calls I think have just blown that up. Like we're all just really self conscious of it.
• 2:33
  Speaker B: You're right. You're right. I love it. I love that big poster. It's such a cool idea. That's really cool. Okay, awesome. I'd love to in a second that you give a little intro of yourself. But what I want to talk about today is mostly YouTube and for the, for the viewers. It is currently summer 2026 and in November of 2026. JD and I are both. You can also tell me what you're doing in November at Author Nation. I am, I'm presenting on, surprise, surprise, YouTube for authors and what authors, what authors are doing nonfiction and fiction, what authors are doing or not doing with YouTube. And that's why JD and I are talking today, because I want to see what you're doing or what you're not doing or what you wish you were doing or what you don't care about doing on YouTube and your fiction business. So welcome JD could you give us a little background of what you're doing and short version.
• 3:30
  Speaker A: So I've been been a full time author for 11 years. I published the first novel in November of 2014. So almost 12 years now. So if you google me, you're gonna see pretty much everything. I've done a lot of crazy stuff. I've had a wild career. I've wrote a prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker's family. I write books with James Patterson all the time. I've got my own publishing imprint over at Simon and Schuster. I've self published, I've traditionally published. I've done, I've done it all. But the reason I bring up the 11 years mark because years, you know, when I put out that first book, I had zero people on the mailing list. You know, I had nothing published. Nobody knew who I was. So I was in that same boat that every other author is. And at that point trying to figure out how do I get people to notice me. So 11 years in, I think I figured out some of it. I haven't figured out all of it. YouTube is kind of my Achilles heel, which is why I'm talking to you today. Because, you know, I've got stuff on YouTube, I've got a podcast that I do every week called Writers Inc. We take clips from that, we chop it up, we use the, you know, the chopped up pieces for TikTok and reels and all those other things. We post the full thing to my YouTube channel. But that's kind of the extent of what I do. You know, I just, anytime I have any type of video object that's created, if I can repurpose it to YouTube, I send it over there to my channel. But it's never been something that I focus on developing. And a lot of that honestly just comes down to time. There's just, you know, there's only what, 28 hours in the day and I've already spoken for all of them.
• 4:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. How many hours in the day did you just say? 28.
• 4:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just messing with you.
• 5:00
  Speaker B: That's fun. It's like, wait a minute.
• 5:03
  Speaker A: So I think a lot of authors are kind of in that same position though. Like they know they should be doing something.
• 5:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:10
  Speaker A: You know, and you know, is that something YouTube? I don't think anybody could actually answer that question. I've had a couple of seven figure deals on books and like the first question out of their mouth when I walk into those meetings when we, you know, with a publisher is, you know, what's your social media profile? And they want to know what you've got out there. But to this day, you know, none of them can tell me whether or not it actually sells books. And I think YouTube kind of falls into that. And it's very easy as an author to get caught up in that thing where you're posting on this channel three or four times a day and you're doing this and you're doing that and you don't know if any of it's actually working.
• 5:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That is one thing interesting I find about YouTube is that I've interviewed a few authors now for the past few months and with a wide variety of. I do absolutely nothing to. I've got a bunch of audiobooks there actually making money, actually making revenue on YouTube directly and you can see it and everywhere in between. And so, and, and again for the record here, I'm mostly non fiction author and I Do do a lot of YouTube work and stuff, but I'm also more of a creator and a video and audio guy, so. But what I'm interested in is more of the traditional author and what they're doing on YouTube. So. So you said you've got a podcast and you're putting to this a little bit inventory of what you, what you are doing currently on YouTube. You've got a podcast. And then second, I'm going to share it. Okay. If I'm going to share my screen.
• 6:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:31
  Speaker B: So I'll go to.
• 6:32
  Speaker A: Is called Writers Inc. And we've interviewed pretty much every big name celebrity author out there, you know, over the last. I think we're coming up on episode 400 now. We've been doing this for a while. So we record that, we record video as we, as we go. Our editor, our producer, they put it all together and they create a file that is then put up on YouTube. That file automatically gets put. I can't talk this morning. Pulled into, I think it's opus clips. And then opus clips will go out and grab, you know, certain segments of that conversation and it'll, you know, it creates these short form videos and it's very good at it. Now it wasn't at the beginning, but they've dialed it in. It creates, you know, a little 20 second video or whatever it puts, you know, type on the screen so you've got, your text is right there and it gives these little things that you can, you can upload. So I've got that whole process basically automated. You know, the YouTube video goes up for the podcast once a week. Opus clips goes in there and it grabs, you know, a bunch of them and makes them. I go in and check off four or five of the ones that I actually like and then those get out sourced out to TikTok and to Reels and any place where I can, I can host video. And that's literally the extent of what I do, you know, because I'm just not sure what to put on, on there. I think the audiobooks thing is a great idea. My problem though is I've got to deal with recorded books. They do all my audio books. So I don't have control over that audio and I can't do it. One of the mistakes I see a lot of authors do and this is silly because I'm kind of doing it too. But we tend to create content for other authors, you know, and authors don't necessarily buy books. We really should be creating content for the readers, you know, the people that are actually hitting the bookstores, hitting the audio bookstores, and that's who we should be chasing, but we don't tend to do that. And you know, Writers Inc. We're geared mainly towards writers, you know, so I'm doing that same thing.
• 8:20
  Speaker B: So you can see my screen, right? I'm sharing your. Yeah, yeah. So here we got. Are these, the Opus clips? Are these examples of shorts that you took from the podcast?
• 8:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, so I just go through every week. And you know, Opus Clips is great because not only does it create them, it gives, gives you about 15 or 20 of them and then rate some based on the content, you know, which ones it thinks would be successful as short clips. So I grabbed the top four or five and then I upload those to all the different platforms.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: Okay, okay.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: And these do get traction. I mean, my main. Yeah, like, I look at this as, you know, in general, I look at my author business as a business. You know, I'm selling products, I'm selling widget. So when you have any kind of business, it becomes, you know, your most important factor is brand awareness. You know, like, so I try to get my name out there in front of people as much as possible, you know, in every different format. So, you know, like, I do this. I write for Forbes, I write for Rolling Stone, I write for Fast Company. Like a lot of different websites, everything that gets, you know, any kind of high profile outlet, if I can get my name on it, I'll do it. And what I found over the years, you know, which is no surprise to anybody who's worked in business, if I do enough of that, you know, if some random person sees my name four or five, six different times when they walk down the book aisle at Walmart, you know, one of my titles might be up there and it's going to jump out at them a little bit because my name seems familiar. They don't necessarily know why, but they know my name. And that's kind of how I wrote the, the clients in. I call them clients instead of, you know, readers half the time. So I just like tend to think of it all from a business standpoint.
• 9:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, the Opus Clip, it is, it is amazing. And I agree with you because I've been using Opus Clip for about a year and it, it used to do much clunkier, junkier job of chopping it up. And, and I think you said TikTok and Instagram or whatever, but in Opus Clip. And, and I'm just saying this, maybe you know this, but if you're watching this and you don't know this Opus clip. You can take your long video, 20 minute an hour or whatever it is and it'll chop it up into little shorts. But then one super cool feature and this has just been updated kind of recently is. Okay, I got. Yeah, here's the 20 clips and either you can go through manually like you just said, and I like number two, number seven, number 14. Great. Then you can say bulk schedule and then put it out. Oh, I'm going to put this out every two days for the next. Oh, there's five videos every two days for the next 10 days. Great. Then you can also say. Where do you want to post this? Well, I want to post it to Instagram and my Facebook group or page and TikTok and my YouTube channel itself. And what else? I got Twitter and I mentioned Instagram, like six social media sites where just from Opus clip and then you can put them all on these places. Does that sound like what you do roughly, or you or your team?
• 11:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, I do it manually and I only post everything one time because I don't want to create clutter. And I feel like social media in a lot of ways is heading towards an environment where it's 100% clutter. We've got automated systems creating the content. We've got automated systems out there actually liking the content. At some point there's not even going to be a need for a human in there. So I try to keep four. Four or five of these I think is worthwhile if somebody's actually following me on one of these platforms, you know, they see four or five new things and it doesn't come back to them again. I think that that's worth it. But I wouldn't want to put it the same one out there over and over because as a consumer I would get frustrated.
• 11:47
  Speaker B: Sorry, I don't. I don't mean put the same clip. I meant you choose your five clips and. And you spread them out over a day or two. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely not repeating the same one. Yeah, okay. Yeah, here I gotta. I. So I can't help myself because I know so much about YouTube. But I'm going to give you a tip here. So if I click on this right and then down here on the left it I can. And so this is similar. I'm on a computer here, but if I'm on my phone I can tap or click and I can go to your main channel or I can subscribe or I think if I click on this I get the title yeah. Then I get some information over here. So here's a, here's a pro tip for you inside of. And you're editing a short and only in a short you can. There's another box that only comes up on shorts and it'll say related video. And so then you go in and you say, what's the related video to this short? And the best way thing to do, it's the main video then, right? So here's a short, here's a 15 second, whatever, 15 second clip from this longer video. But I don't know that as a viewer and I can't get to it. Well, yeah, I could go to your channel and I could go find it. But if you say in the short, you then go choose related video and then choose the long version where the short came from. There will be another link down here that will then go to the long version. And that is the number one way to get people using shorts. Using shorts to get them to the longer version.
• 13:23
  Speaker A: So this is why you're the expert and I'm just a fumbling author you're trying to use. I'm wondering if that's like a function in opus clips, you know, like literally something I just have to toggle on and I'll just start doing it.
• 13:34
  Speaker B: I wish, I wish it were. In fact, this is sort of a pet peeve of mine to do this. It's kind of. It's a manual operation. And if anybody out there knows of a more automated operation to do this, please let me know because currently I have to go through my shorts in the YouTube studio. Edit related video, find related video, add save. So it's a few little steps for each short. But frankly, I find it worth it because the shorts are great, right, for the views and for the likes and for the maybe comments. But I. What we want, or ideally what we want in YouTube is for the longer videos to get more watch hours. That's sort of what YouTube appreciates or rewards. So how can we get them to the longer videos? Well, the shorts will bring him in the door and then the easiest way to get them to the long version is that trick. So there you have it. See, I can't help myself when I see things, I'm like, oh, this? You could do this.
• 14:32
  Speaker A: No, by. By all means. You know, I learned half this stuff from talking to guys like you.
• 14:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah.
• 14:39
  Speaker A: I stumble into something, you know, and give it a try. If it works, then I double down on it. My assistants hate me because this will get tasked to one of Them now they're gonna have to do this on every one of these videos. Moving forward, just to see if it does anything.
• 14:52
  Speaker B: You're gonna go say, go watch, you know, minute seven. And Bradley's gonna say, you gotta do a related video or something.
• 14:58
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 14:59
  Speaker B: And then. Okay, while I'm on tip mode, and this is again, and if anybody knows a better solution for this one, you can please tell me. Oh, you know what? In Opus Clip, I think you can do this. That the, like, the thumbnail here we got this guy. I guess this is Wayne Brady. And then down here, we've got Christy or someone else. And so it's kind of a pain to make a thumbnail for a short. You can do it in the YouTube sort of app itself. It's a little tricky. But that's one thing for Opus Clip, too. But as you can see here, like, here, there's four of this, this one woman, the four of the same. So at first glance. And again, this is from the, you know, Goldfish memory capacity of attention span on. On anything online. And I see four of the same images. I'm like, okay, well, what's the difference? So then what's left? Well, if I look at the highlighted text, I think might need to spend a year a woman in public life. And I've had so many. Okay, the middle two give me a little bit of context. So that's a thought. So another thing you can choose in Opus Clip or in the YouTube app. And again, this is kind of manual. It's a little bit of a pain, but I. But it makes a big difference. Just like in the book world. I mean, here we are authors. Just like in the book world, you have this hierarchy of, you know, thumbnail on a posted stamp size. Right. Tiny thumbnail, whether it's clickable or not to the next stage. And then take your pick of what happens next. Is it title, title. And then if they like the title, they'll move down to the description. And then eventually they might do a sample or they might read a little bit, or they'll put it to buy it later, or they'll buy it right now, and then finally, maybe they'll leave a review. So there's this hierarchy of actions. And very similar. Here I see a thumbnail, and do I want to click? Is there a reason why I want to tap into this here? And you have then. And of course, Opus does such a great job because Opus makes these titles as well. And then I don't know if Opus chooses which frame gets the thumbnail that'd be an interesting question.
• 17:15
  Speaker A: Anyway, I'm not sure, but to me, just hearing all of this stuff, these are all opportunities for Opus because authors are less likely to go in and do all these manual tweaks.
• 17:27
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 17:28
  Speaker A: Because it is time consuming. If you're doing five manual tweaks and then you learn three more, now you're doing eight, and then you're doing 12 and you're doing 15, and before you know it, you've got an hour being spent on something that was supposed to be an automated process. But Opus Clips could do the link to the long form video for sure, because that's where they're pulling these from. So they've got that. They could use whatever they want for the image. They could generate one from scratch. They could pull something else from the show. So these are all opportunities, I think, for them. Because Opus Clips isn't alone in this world. There are a lot of companies that do this, so they're competing for the business. So these are things I think they should implement just simply to be that much better than the other guy.
• 18:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because here's a perfect opportunity here. Laurie Foster. So instead of just episode 347 and Laurie Foster. Okay, Laurie Foster's good information. Oh, who are you interviewing this week? Laurie Foster. Okay, now I know that. And if I'm interested in Laurie Foster, great. I already want to click, but now I think, okay, well, which one of the six do I want?
• 18:28
  Speaker A: Well, what's interesting is the Laurie Foster image there with the episode number and Writers Inc. Down in the corner. That's our default image. So the one like right next to it with that guy, Opus Clips at some point is zooming in on that default image and just grabbing a corner of it rather than showing the full. Full thing.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Cool. This is good. This is fun to see. I love seeing other people's content and what's. What's going on. Okay, so it's pretty consistent. Oh, here we go. There's another example episode, this. And this person, Evelyn Clark. And okay, great. And here it shows one. Okay, so maybe you did a video for this one, right? Because there's you and.
• 19:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, so I've got. I've got three other co hosts, sometimes four or five, but we always talk at the beginning of each show and then we have our interview in the middle, and then we all regroup at the end to kind of talk about the. The interview itself. So occasionally I'll grab, you know, snippets from. From that, but I try to keep it more Guest oriented unless we, you know, talk about something that's just mind blowing, which doesn't happen very often. So it's usually better to focus on the guest.
• 19:31
  Speaker B: Right. This is fun. I'm looking. Oh, okay. I'm just curious, but because here we're sort of jumping up in views here for, for, for some reason. Here we go. 1.1 800. 800.
• 19:45
  Speaker A: That could be. So one of them is Steve Barry, who's got a really big following, which it's hard to say. I mean, some of these videos, like they, they shouldn't get any views and they end up with, you know, ridiculous number. And then the ones that I think are going to get a lot of views, they, you know, come, they fall flat. Like I just, I don't understand how that, you know. Yeah, a lot of its visibility, a lot of its algorithms, there's a lot of different things at play there.
• 20:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. So here's a, again a tip. So here if you're interested or if you had any reason to promote this or whatever. So like this one, you're, we're seeing here that this one's getting more views than another one. You can also retroactively go in and edit and say, what's the long version of this short? It's this longer video and go pick. So if you had a reason, like, wow, this seems really popular. Well, let's benefit from that popularity because it's going to potentially keep going and continuing to be popular. You can still go in later and choose a related video.
• 20:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Right now for somebody else to do it for me.
• 20:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, we should, we'll ask, we'll ask the summary of this video to say, okay, Bradley said a bunch of stuff. Let's make a task list.
• 20:57
  Speaker A: Make a task list.
• 20:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Wow, that's cool. Okay, so you put up your. Can we, I know you mentioned, you mentioned audiobooks and you have not put them up here in any shape or form because you have a contract. Is that correct?
• 21:19
  Speaker A: Correct. So my very first book was self published and I put that up to ACX on my own. But every book that I've done since then has been either traditional. And then at one point I signed a deal with Recorded Books and they handle all of my audiobooks. You know that I do. So I just have that one book that actually have any kind of control over, but that one right now, like we're negotiating, bringing that into the recorded books fold too. So that's going to probably go away. But I have heard of authors doing that and getting traction. You Know, you can create visual elements to go along with the audiobook now pretty easily. All of those things I think are worthwhile. Yeah, I run into the same kind of problem on other platforms. Like Substack is a good example I've been trying to figure out. You know, I know I have to have a presence on Substack, or I should. I couldn't figure out an angle that would basically create something that I could do on a weekly basis to just stay in front of people. Recently, I started writing up stories about a thousand words or so on Unsolved Murders. There's plenty of those all over the country. So I just pick one at random and I write up a thousand words and I put it up on Substack. And that seems to be working really well. People like to read them because they're fun, they're real. So you can go out there and you can research the actual case behind it if you want to. So I need some. Something like that, you know, I need that version or something like it for YouTube, you know, something that I can, you know, create on a weekly basis that's not super time consuming, but create some kind of content.
• 22:44
  Speaker B: Okay. So speaking of which, remember, I'm not the guy who knows absolutely everything and especially don't know everything about fiction authors and YouTube. Right. And how to make that work best. But from what I've learned in recent months is, for example, the audiobook. So what some people are doing that that's working especially for the longer audiobooks, is they will put up the entire book, you know, six hours or 27 hours or whatever, the entire book. And if you want. And if you want to keep it super boring, it has maybe, you know, an image of the COVID and that's it. So no moving anything. Just the COVID and the audio and. And for the record, I brilliantly thought, no, no, no, no, no. We should have a playlist. Just like an audiobook with a playlist and chapters for every chapter. And everybody except me said, that's a terrible idea and it won't work. And I have proof that it doesn't work. I'm like, oh, oh, really? That just seemed more logical to me. But apparently that is absolutely not the way to do it. And you should just have one big old giant file with the entire book. And that's what people want. And then speaking of back to watch hours, then you get the watch hours because the people just, like, hit play and they're driving or walking or listening, and they just want that one big file and that one audio file and just hit play and never have to do it again. And most of the feedback has been, I don't care what's on the screen. I don't care if you have the boring cover or you've got a little bit of animation or. Because what. I think it would be kind of interesting. And again, if you're open to AI, then what I think would be fun would be to have some kind of related or relevant content to the context of the book. Like chapter four is about ficus plants and fans. Sorry. Looking around my space here, Ficus plants, clearly the highlight of the book, the Ficus plants and fans chapter. And, and have some. Something happening there, like with, with animated something or other. But then my question is again, does anybody even. Would anybody even care about that? Are they even watching? It seems that most people are just listening. Do you have any thoughts on this audiobook?
• 25:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think you have to look at it from a, From a consumer standpoint. Yeah. These people are getting their audiobooks from YouTube so that, that's all they want. They don't care about the images, just like you said, because they're in the car, they're out on a run, they're walking, they're doing housework. You know, they're, they're. This is just where they happen to get their, their audiobooks from. Because they don't want to create an Audible subscription or they don't want to deal with Spotify.
• 25:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker A: So they're getting them from here. So I don't think there's any reason to go above and beyond what they're looking for, you know, for that particular platform. You're not going to be able to create a movie version of your book in any, you know, realistic way. Right. Where it's going to be able to compete with a real feature film that they could watch on Netflix or something. So, like, there's no point in chasing that. So just double down on what works. And that. That is the audiobook. That's. That's the one thing you can provide.
• 25:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. And with that. That's a good point. Yeah. Because you're. That's interesting. You say compete with Netflix. You're right. I mean, what am, what, what am I thinking here? Am I trying to compete with Netflix and I'm going to complete some. To create some feature film based on my. Honestly, my book?
• 26:02
  Speaker A: It's. That's the same reason I don't do book trailers. You know, I think it's, it's silly because people mentally expect to see a Hollywood film trailer when they, when they open a file like that, unless you're spending big dollars, you're not going to be able to compete with that world, which means you're always going to come up short, which means in their head, your book is coming up short. So you got to, you got to figure out the best way to do it. I do a ton of television commercials for my books. I write books with James Patterson. So, like, he's taught me a ton of things that are just outside the norm that work really well for him. And television happens to be one of them because very few people actually advertise their books on television. So the first book that I did, I actually created a. There's actually a commercial right there for one of them. It says non stop action caller's game. So that was a commercial spot that I created. I did a couple of those and then I started creating very expensive produced commercials for each of my books. And on a whim, I took just a TikTok review against an influencer that reviewed one of my books on TikTok. And I took her video and I just blurred out the two sides next to her video video, put her right down the center, you know, with her channel up at the top, and just played that for 30 seconds. And the traction that we get on that far exceeds the actual, you know, highly, you know, produced videos. People prefer, prefer that. And I think it's because it feels real to them, you know, like they, I can't compete on the, you know, big Hollywood blockbuster movie side. But, you know, an influencer telling you, holding up a book saying, this is a great book and this is why, you know, comes across as authentic and that, you know, people respond to that. Most of my commercials now, that's what I do. I just, I see, see a cool TikTok video of one of my books. I reach out to the person who created it and said, hey, do you mind if we edit this and, and put it on tv?
• 27:44
  Speaker B: Wow, that is super interesting. I also, I'm still a little on the whole idea of I'm competing with. Why should we compete with Netflix? You're right. It's just going to be worse. It's not going to be as good.
• 27:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, one, one day they might get it. You know, like with AI, there's a lot of stuff you can do now that you couldn't do a year ago, so at some point they might dial it in, but today it's just not there.
• 28:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I, I used to get a lot of comments because I, I live in the woods, sort of, and I will do a lot of videos, literally walking with my dog. And often if I don't feel like being on camera, I will just hold their phone and video my dog while I'm talking. Right. And some people say, oh, they're quality. Oh, they're doing the sound recording. Oh, a few years ago, Right. And now it's almost come full circle where they say, oh, real dog, not perfect execution of the greatest video skills of all time. The audio is okay. Clearly it's talking into his phone. Authentic, real human. Yes. Thumbs up. Love it. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 28:49
  Speaker A: I think we all need to double down on that in today's world. I mean, I. And it's so many companies out there that are creating this highly produced stuff, you know, using AI and using other sources. Blair Witch, in a weird way, is what opened all that up. You know, like that was, that was the first movie kind of shot that way. And I think now we've gotten conditioned to it. You know, we could watch the, you know, one of the 24 hour news channels and if they throw up an iPhone video, we're perfectly fine with it.
• 29:12
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:13
  Speaker A: If somebody's broadcasting live from somewhere and they're, they're holding their phone out on a selfie stick, we're okay with that too because we been seeing it for so many years. It's become the norm.
• 29:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's interesting because we talked earlier about who your audience is, right. And then is it, is it other writers? Because these here, this, these are for other writers, Right?
• 29:33
  Speaker A: Writers think primarily as we get, you know, like a lot of. Because we have big name authors on, we get a lot of their fans. So we try to steer the conversation in a way that appeals to both. We try to pull back the curtain on their career. You know, if we've got somebody like we had Dean Koontz on, like, when we get somebody like Dean Koontz on, people really want to hear where that person started, you know, what they did to become a writer. They want to hear the, you know, behind the curtain stuff. So we try to get as much of that as possible. But the show itself is geared towards writers. I honestly started doing it because we haven't talked about this, but I'm autistic. I've got a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome. And when I first started getting attention as an author, like, I hated being in front of cameras, having to talk to other people. So rather than, you know, go back in my office and Kind of hide from it. I figured it's better to force myself to be out there at least on a weekly basis, you know, with the podcast and have to do it and try to, you know, get myself to just basically get used to it. And that, that's kind of what's been going on. And the show's been, I think we're four years now that we've been doing this. Wow. You know, congratulations. You know, it's kind of, it's kind of helped me get out of my shell a little bit and, you know, it's fun, know, talking to other people.
• 30:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. You know, so on that, it's interesting you mentioned that because what I have found, especially in YouTube, like right now we're just having a conversation. We're just having a chat, right. And because if, if I'm gonna host something, like I host summits or a conference or whatever, and I say, hey, J.D. could you make me a. Could you make me a 20 minute presentation on your experience with YouTube and what you're doing and what you're not doing? What? So now I am asking quite a bit of you. I'm saying put together a presentation, get in front of the camera, have, I don't know, a script or an outline or who knows what, get some. I don't. Do you want slides? What am I doing? And so what I've really enjoyed about YouTube is the easiest invitation that I offer is hey, let's hop on YouTube and hop on Zoom and record it and have a chat. And you don't need to prepare anything. I would ask you, you know, because I'm asking you stuff you already know and it's really welcoming and friendly and easy. I found.
• 31:39
  Speaker A: It's funny how that works because if you told me I needed to create a PowerPoint presentation, I would have said no immediately. You know, but I've got no trouble talking to you for a half hour.
• 31:47
  Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. That's really cool. Okay, you know what? This conversation is kind of fun because it's getting me thinking of all these ideas. And also I'm aware that we have our note taking services or whatever. We can read the transcript and, and you're going to go through it and you're going to say, hey, need to do this and we need to do that. So here's my little shout out question. And that is so you have contracts for your audiobooks and so you do not have the rights to go upload that thing up here and just see what happens. But I'm curious, and this is sort of a question to the company that has the rights to your audiobooks. I would love to know. And I don't know the answers, which is why I'm asking, but would it be interesting at all to put up snippets or highlights super short or maybe a chapter or maybe a few chapters or maybe some length of time and then. But of course, what's the goal? Okay, Bradley, that sounds great. We're getting a lot of views. What's the goal? And then the goal being it's a place for a teaser, Right. We've got, you know, five minutes of, of a great chapter and then at the end it says, you know, now you can go buy the audiobook on XYZ.com I'm curious if. If that's interesting. And then you could even take that five minute, as you now, as you know, from Opus clip. You could take that five minute chapter or whatever, 20 minute chapter, I don't know. And, and then go put it into Opus. And then I can see that process or the funnel going from short of audiobook read by narrator, I suppose, going to long form, going to purchase lingq to go buy the audiobook. And again, I'm asking this without knowing the answer, but I'm curious if that is at all interesting for the audiobook company. Who holds the rights to do that and any thoughts on that or.
• 33:41
  Speaker A: I'm honestly not sure if it's something that they would do or whether they're already doing it. It. I mean, you're on YouTube right now. Maybe just key in JD Barker audiobook and just see what comes up.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:50
  Speaker A: Because I really don't know. I could see somebody like recorded books doing that. I'm trying to. In my head, I'm going through the legalities of it, like who owns what.
• 33:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:59
  Speaker A: So there are some here. So full thriller.
• 34:02
  Speaker B: Okay, so what is also interesting, by the way, and YouTube, they do their best, but the pirated versions, right?
• 34:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which may very well be what we're looking at.
• 34:12
  Speaker B: That is that. So that's your book, right? The fifth to Die.
• 34:16
  Speaker A: These. Yeah, these are all. All books of.
• 34:17
  Speaker B: Okay, so what do we got here?
• 34:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's 15 hours. Right, so that's. That's got some. Some. Somebody's basically profiting from your idea and it's not the audiobook, you know, company.
• 34:29
  Speaker B: Okay, so Clue and Quill, that's not your audiobook company, right?
• 34:34
  Speaker A: No, no, I'm with recorded books.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Okay. 10.
• 34:39
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 34:39
  Speaker B: Wow. How long is this thing for? 15 hours with this weird cat image and a What is that, like a bar graph? Oh, it's like the audio.
• 34:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's just an EQ.
• 34:57
  Speaker B: Okay, so they've got the 15 hour audiobook here, fifth to die, audio by you, full thriller, audiobooks from Clue and Quill, whatever that is. And it doesn't ring a bell. You don't sound like you know, you've ever heard of that.
• 35:11
  Speaker A: I have no idea who these people are.
• 35:13
  Speaker B: Okay. 10,000 views, which is a ton, especially for such a long video. Not. Remember I was talking about watch hours. Watch hours are the hardest thing to do on YouTube. A longer video watched many times. That's money for these guys. Dive into J.D. barker, okay? In the best selling series. Sit back, relax and enjoy this full audiobook experience. Hello? Yeah. Pirated and illegal.
• 35:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's getting comments. Please upload the third book.
• 35:50
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 35:53
  Speaker A: I mean, I see this kind of thing all around the world, so I gave up on trying to chase it down and stop it.
• 35:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Speaker A: The bottom line is the people that are getting my audiobooks through sources like this, they're not going to go out and buy the book if I take it down. But at the same time, you know, even pirated stuff like this is creating exposure for me. It's drawing more people into my readership one way or the other. But I will notify recorded books and let them know this stuff is out there.
• 36:17
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 36:18
  Speaker A: Somebody should be sending a takedown notice.
• 36:19
  Speaker B: So Clue and Quill, they're loving you. They've got three right here. Right. And these views, this is not 22,000. 8,000. And they're recent, right? What? Three months. Three months. Two months.
• 36:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. They just did this a couple months ago.
• 36:38
  Speaker B: Okay. Then we got some legit stuff.
• 36:40
  Speaker A: Somebody else.
• 36:41
  Speaker B: And then we got another one.
• 36:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, somebody else who did the same thing. No, Part two. Okay. So they broke it up.
• 36:51
  Speaker B: Wow. Okay, Then we got some legit.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: All right, so that one's real. Is recorded books. Yeah.
• 37:00
  Speaker B: Okay, so that was real.
• 37:03
  Speaker A: So that's a trailer. So that's, that's, that's basically doing what you were saying. They're creating a teaser to try and draw people in.
• 37:09
  Speaker B: Okay. The sad part is this one only has 20 views. Oh, because maybe because it's a trailer. No, I thought it was very interesting what you said. If your trailer is not top of the line Hollywood blockbuster, they might think, oh, well, the book might. Is probably not that. That either. That's really interesting, your take on that. Because then you think, well, then I just shouldn't make. I shouldn't do Anything?
• 37:36
  Speaker A: Yeah,
• 37:40
  Speaker B: there's Thriller, James Patterson. Okay. This is one of the co written books, right?
• 37:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's one of our.
• 37:47
  Speaker B: Does this one look legit? Full audiobook. Interesting.
• 37:55
  Speaker A: I don't know who did the actual audiobook for this, this one. I'm not sure which company did, so I don't know.
• 38:00
  Speaker B: Okay, here, listen to this. Audiobook info for free on audiobook.com. yeah, that sounds legit. Sorry. Maybe they are legit. Here I am.
• 38:12
  Speaker A: They may be, but that's, that's doubtful.
• 38:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah, but you're right. I mean the YouTube is pretty good. I mean they're better than other like some hacker site or whatever. And. But I think it's, it'd be worth it to, you know, have, have your company contact Clue and Quill. I mean clearly they're. That's what they're doing. Oh, here. Okay, here's the site. They only have 25 videos and you can usually see like it's.
• 38:46
  Speaker A: It looks like it's all stolen material though.
• 38:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. So can usually see like when the, when the channel started. Here. Oh, okay. What? That's weird. They've been around since 2018.
• 39:07
  Speaker A: Well, it's not just open. Could very well be somebody who's just been trying, you know, random ideas, trying to figure out how to make a profit center.
• 39:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, with a hundred thousand views. Yeah. For 25 videos. Interesting. Okay. I know that's the sad reality of it, but, but yeah, also an element. Right. Because I think one of the authors I talked to, she said, well, my book's up there illegally pirated anyway, why don't I put it up? Her logic was, why don't I put it up and then I get the, the payment from YouTube instead of Packer site. Interesting.
• 39:47
  Speaker A: I, I wouldn't do that to the company that actually licensed it from me.
• 39:50
  Speaker B: Of course not. Of course not. In your case, with the contract with the, the legit company who owns the rights together with you. Of course not. But I think in her case it was. She had the rights and so she thought, well, Acer site or me. Then she, she did it.
• 40:06
  Speaker A: Interesting. There's no reason. I think every indie author, if you've got your audiobook rights, it should be up on YouTube. I think that's, that's a no brainer. There's, there's plenty of people out there listening to their audiobooks on YouTube. You don't want to miss out on a market that you can populate for free.
• 40:20
  Speaker B: Oh, interesting. So you're saying if you have the rights and your, your audiobook is, is distributed wide probably.
• 40:29
  Speaker A: Then yeah, there's, I think you always have to take a step back and look at this from the consumer standpoint. And you know, where do people get their audiobooks from? There's Audible, there's Spotify, there's a few other smaller sites, but YouTube is one of those places. You know, a lot of people pay for YouTube to go commercial free. They stream their audiobooks from there. So, you know, why not be part of that if you can? I think you should put your books in every possible venue, every source that you, you can, you know, like legally where you can get it out.
• 40:57
  Speaker B: Okay, Interesting. Cool. Okay, I want to, I want to show you one last thing here. Oh, okay. It's not there on down here under playlists. If here I'm going to say this because I'm going to offer you this. So there's another. Is an interesting feature of YouTube. It's called collaborations. It's relatively new, like last year. And so I'm, I'll, I will publish this video on my YouTube channel and then I will invite you, JD to this, to, to collaborate, quote, unquote, to this video. And then what happens if you accept? Then it will show up down here. It'll be a new section called Collaborations. And this is kind of cool. And you can offer this to anybody you collaborate with on a video because the bonus of it is that we both get the views, we both get the traffic, and then if we're monetized, you even both get the money, the monetization. And it's not split up. You both get it. It's sort, it's really like a win, win, win. So, and I'm also just saying this also for authors watching to do that if any, like, if you, if you're, you're interviewing here, James, Elroy and Dennis, then if they have YouTube channels, just invite them, send them a collaboration link and then it's on their channel and your channel and it's just a, it's really a win, win situation. So I will do that when I'm, when we're done with this and I'll show you what it means because then what's also kind of fun is that I can even send collaboration invites on shorts. And so then it shows up there, it shows up here. You get views, I get views. We all share. Big kumbaya of view sharing. And it's sort of an interesting feature, so.
• 42:49
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 42:50
  Speaker B: Okay. Wow. This, this has been. I'm always learning something and it's and it's really fun to talk with you, you New York Times best selling author and you have so many books in so many places and with your contracts with the audiobooks and your co writing opportunities, I'm interested to. This has been really helpful for me as well to learn what you've been doing and hopefully I've been helpful with some of my little tips here and there, what you could do. And this is, this has been really great. Do you have any, anything else comes to mind that are YouTube related or not necessarily YouTube related that we did not talk about, that you'd like to talk about? J.D. anything?
• 43:28
  Speaker A: No, this, this has been fantastic. I'm sure I'll think of 10 things after we hang up, but it's very, very, very informative. Okay, my next phone call is to my audiobook company to ask them if they're aware of this stuff up on YouTube.
• 43:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm really curious. I'd love to hear back from you kind of what they say. Maybe they have some, some clear reasons. Nope, we don't do that. We don't do that because of this or we tried that and it's a disaster. Who knows, right? Yeah, who knows? So we'll find out. And I'd love to hear from them what they think or what they do or audiobooks or as a podcast or on YouTube or anything. And I'm also open, if you have some questions, feel free just to reach out and ask me because I'm always, I'm always learning. YouTube is always evolving and growing and it's always new features. For example, like the related video and like the collaboration stuff. There's always new things that are kind of cool. So, and then. But also with your audience, I think that's a key win for you. Is your audience, are they the readers or are they the fellow authors? And can you do both? And is that the idea or not, or does it matter?
• 44:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
• 44:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and hopefully this has been helpful for everyone. And if you have any more questions, you can reach out to me or comment on this video when it goes live. And let us know if you have any questions or if you're an author who has done some of these things we're talking about, let us know and we will all learn together. Great. Thank you. J.D. thank you for your time and I'll be in touch.
• 45:03
  Speaker A: All right, talk soon.
• 45:04
  Speaker B: Take care. Great. Bye.
• 45:05
  Speaker A: Bye.