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Why You Should be Selling Books Directly to Your Readers with Dave Sheets · If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion

• 0:11
  Joel: Hi, everybody.
• 0:12
  Joel: My name is Joel Pitney, the host of If I'm Being Honest, Straight Talk About Book Publishing and Promotion.
• 0:17
  Joel: I'm also the founder of Launch My Book, and I am very excited to be speaking today with Dave Sheets.
• 0:22
  Joel: Dave, welcome to the show.
• 0:24
  Joel: Thank you.
• 0:25
  Joel: Dave and I met at the uh at the I forget the name of the conference, Writer MBA conference in New Orleans, which was uh, we had a really good time because it's it was New Orleans, and we struck up a bit of a friendship and uh learned a lot about Dave.
• 0:41
  Joel: He's been in the book industry for 30 years and has has a company called Indie Author Book Services.
• 0:48
  Joel: Um, he's worked in all dimensions of the industry on the traditional side, traditional publishing side, self-publishing side.
• 0:54
  Joel: And his company really specializes in book distribution and book printing, um, uh, which is a very exciting topic, even though it might not sound that way to people outside of this uh little world.
• 1:05
  Joel: I definitely love it.
• 1:06
  Joel: And so I I really wanted to talk to Dave today about um, you know, kind of what he's seen as in the shifting industry as we've kind of moved, as the industry keeps changing, um, different models that are popping up.
• 1:19
  Joel: Um, and in particular, I really want to talk a lot about the value in the value in um direct sales and and bulk printing, which is kind of a specialty, the sweet side of his business.
• 1:29
  Joel: So, Dave, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add about yourself or your company or anything.
• 1:34
  Dave: No, that's great.
• 1:35
  Dave: I mean, we we do uh a lot of work with a lot of authors on the print side of things, and so I'm I'm happy to share what uh what bit of an experience I've got with everyone.
• 1:44
  Joel: Awesome.
• 1:45
  Joel: Well, so I'm just gonna dive in.
• 1:46
  Joel: I got some questions, and I kind of want to go straight to the issue, you, which is, you know, um self-publishing has really exploded, uh, I think in the last five years in particular, but you know, it's been moving that direction about over the last 10.
• 1:58
  Joel: And part of the reason for that is is the evolution of print-on-demand technology.
• 2:04
  Joel: You know, it's very easy now for anybody to uh, you know, do put some files up through an Amazon KVP or Ingram Spark account and have a book that's available for anyone anywhere in the world to buy.
• 2:15
  Joel: Um, and so one question I'm I'm curious about is in that environment, you know, if you've chosen to go the self-publishing route, what is the value of offset printing?
• 2:24
  Joel: Why why why do it still?
• 2:27
  Joel: And by offset printing, um we're talking about large batches of books that are printed at one time in the way that traditional publishing does.
• 2:35
  Dave: Yeah, and let me let me uh uh maybe define a few things first.
• 2:40
  Dave: Number one is print on demand, is what everybody talks about, and that's the digital printing.
• 2:44
  Dave: But print on demand truly is one book at a time.
• 2:47
  Dave: Um the the next category is what we call short run printing, and that's still using the exact same equipment, digital equipment, as print on demand.
• 2:56
  Dave: So it's instead of printing one, you might be printing five, 10, 50, 100, but it's the same equipment.
• 3:01
  Dave: Uh, what we call offset printing or long run printing tends to be everything over 500 units.
• 3:07
  Dave: Um, and the the reason why uh offset can be really, really important to an author is number one, uh you get a you get better pricing.
• 3:16
  Dave: Uh so as typically as your cot your your unit quantity goes up, your cost comes down per unit.
• 3:23
  Dave: Uh and that's a really good thing because you have more margin available to you as an author for for every book sale that you make.
• 3:30
  Dave: Uh the second thing is that um with offset printing, your your quality goes up.
• 3:35
  Dave: So for any of the the listeners uh out there who have printed a book with some of the big box, well, what I'll call the big box uh print on demand uh services, it's it's hit and miss in terms of quality.
• 3:49
  Dave: Sometimes the quality can be really, really high and a book comes in.
• 3:52
  Dave: Sometimes that quality is a little bit suspect because they're having to farm out that printing to other people who may or may not be doing a great job with it.
• 4:01
  Dave: So I don't know if that's been your experience.
• 4:04
  Dave: I've certainly seen it.
• 4:05
  Dave: I hear that from a lot of clients who come in and want to work with us, even on the short run print side, because our quality is higher.
• 4:12
  Dave: So uh offset is really important because uh, you know, the of the margin typically, because of the quality.
• 4:20
  Dave: Um, and you know, there's nothing wrong with print on demand.
• 4:24
  Dave: It's a great place to start.
• 4:25
  Dave: Every author's gonna start there, but there are other other options.
• 4:30
  Joel: So when you when you're talking about quality, you know, because uh one thing I'll often tell people, especially if they have a very simple book, you know, a novel, um, you know, it doesn't have a lot of graphical elements on the inside, no, you know, no photos, no color.
• 4:43
  Joel: Um, what I'll often tell people is that the biggest factor in the quality of your book is going to be the design, right?
• 4:49
  Joel: You want it to be designed well.
• 4:50
  Joel: And then the printing costs, the printing is a little bit different, right?
• 4:54
  Joel: Is is less important.
• 4:55
  Joel: Where do you, I mean, first of all, I guess would you agree with that statement?
• 4:59
  Joel: And second of all, um, with uh where do you see the quality differences specifically with uh within the book?
• 5:07
  Dave: Yeah.
• 5:07
  Dave: Well, a couple things.
• 5:09
  Dave: Um, I I agree that design is number one, but print quality is pretty uh pretty close behind that because if somebody picks up a book and they like the design, they pick it up and and and the pages fall out, you've got a bad experience.
• 5:22
  Dave: I mean, so there there's there's an issue.
• 5:24
  Dave: Um, you know, uh the the other thing is you may have two uh of the same books sitting on the shelf, and what I'm talking about quality is the quality of the reproduction of that.
• 5:34
  Dave: So you may have one that it has a a whole different shade of red than the other, and it's the exact same book.
• 5:40
  Dave: And people will look at that and go, wow, where did these where did these come from?
• 5:44
  Dave: Um and so there's there's quality in the color, there's quality in the paper.
• 5:49
  Dave: Uh I've seen books that fall apart because they're not bound correctly.
• 5:54
  Dave: I've seen books where you've had signatures or uh groups of pages that are bound upside down.
• 6:00
  Dave: I mean, all sorts of things is where, you know, if you don't have that sort of quality control at the front end, that's that becomes an issue.
• 6:08
  Dave: And and a lot of these uh meat grinder type uh print on demand organizations, they don't have that same quality control that you you would like to see.
• 6:18
  Joel: That's no, that's interesting.
• 6:20
  Joel: And it reminds me of one of my pet peeves uh in when it comes to the quality, um, is on the on the spine of the book.
• 6:28
  Joel: Yeah, is what I always show people.
• 6:30
  Joel: Yeah.
• 6:30
  Joel: This right here, there's there's a 32nd of an inch variation.
• 6:34
  Joel: And so if you're if your design, if the way you've designed your book has this solid spine and then a different color on the front cover, every single batch of a of a print-on-demand book could be printed with this line, you know, falling, it is not always gonna fall right on the crease.
• 6:52
  Dave: Yeah, and that's an example of where your your the designer of that particular book could have been f more friendly to his client.
• 6:59
  Dave: Uh you know, if you if you can produce books that don't have those sorts of hard edges, then then the manufacturing process, which is going to have some role, you know, is uh is is you know, you're gonna have issues uh throughout that process.
• 7:15
  Joel: Oh, that's cool.
• 7:16
  Joel: So that that's great, Dave.
• 7:19
  Joel: And one thing I so you know, you're an author, you work with lots of clients, um, you know, different people.
• 7:25
  Joel: And my guess is you're probably in support of this, but you know, you've you can do your print on demand setup, which might be easier for online fulfillment, right?
• 7:35
  Joel: Um, because it it just is pretty easy when you're selling books online, it's pretty easy to use print on demand.
• 7:41
  Joel: Um, and then you've got kind of your your cache of um offset books.
• 7:46
  Joel: How do you how do you see people selling those?
• 7:51
  Joel: You know, what do you do with your offset books?
• 7:54
  Dave: Yeah, well, first of all, um you know, print on demand works really well for let's call it, I mean Amazon.
• 8:00
  Dave: Amazon is the the 800-pound gorilla, they're selling a lot of books, and having inventory go through their system makes the most sense as print on demand.
• 8:08
  Dave: The interesting thing is those quality, the quality of the books that they're sending out to clients tends to be a little bit higher than author uh copies, which is really interesting.
• 8:18
  Dave: Um, so I you know I I trust what they do from a consumer standpoint, that's their bread and butter.
• 8:24
  Dave: Um but your to your question, what do you do with offset?
• 8:28
  Dave: How does it work?
• 8:29
  Dave: Why would an author want to use offset?
• 8:32
  Dave: Well, number one, um, if you want to be in this business long term as an author, uh you you want to build a customer base.
• 8:40
  Dave: You want to build a reader base.
• 8:42
  Dave: And if you send everybody that you have through Amazon, you will never know who your reader is.
• 8:48
  Dave: And so what we do, what we talk a lot about with authors, is creating that direct-to-consumer sales channel through your own website or some other methodology so that you can capture who those uh who those readers are.
• 9:02
  Dave: Because let's say, as most authors want to do, they want to publish a second book and a third book and a fourth book.
• 9:08
  Dave: If you start to build that readership uh and that that mailing list, so to speak, uh, you now have something that you can go back to and talk to those people about with your second book, your third book.
• 9:20
  Dave: Um, you can't rely on retail to make that happen for you.
• 9:24
  Dave: So, you know, that that's really, really important.
• 9:27
  Dave: Um, most of the clients that I I work with are, you know, speakers, they're coaches, consultants, they're building something else.
• 9:36
  Dave: So uh the book becomes a really important tool in their toolkit to help them do that, but they're not relying on just the book itself to do it.
• 9:46
  Dave: But they have to have avenues to get that book into people's hands, whether it's at a speaking engagement or uh, you know, uh where they're handing it out almost like a business card to people to get them to come back and maybe work with them on the consulting side.
• 10:03
  Dave: So that those are some really important direct to consumer uh type of models.
• 10:11
  Joel: No, that's really interesting.
• 10:12
  Joel: And so, you know, to me, what I'm hearing is kind of two different models.
• 10:15
  Joel: So there's one where you actually build, you know, you have a direct sales base where, you know, in a in someone who's a frequent speaker or presenter or someone who has workshops, that kind of thing, they're gonna be direct in person with clients or, you know, with potential book buyers.
• 10:30
  Joel: And in that case, you know, it makes sense to have this big stock of books that you can take to your conference or take to your workshop or take to your local book signing kind of thing.
• 10:39
  Joel: And then and then there's the other piece, which is can you build a direct-to-consumer online sales business where you're selling direct to your website and then fulfilling those orders?
• 10:48
  Joel: That's the one I'm very curious about.
• 10:50
  Joel: Um because, you know, what are the what are the pros and from one hand, you could say, well, print on demand still makes that easy, right?
• 10:57
  Joel: Because the fulfillment, the shipping, the e-commerce, all that stuff is just taken care of directly through Amazon.
• 11:03
  Joel: They take their cut, they take 40% of the retail costs, right?
• 11:06
  Dave: Right.
• 11:06
  Joel: Um what have you seen in your experience when people are working, when people are selling books directly through their website, how do they solve that problem logistically?
• 11:16
  Dave: Well, it's it's a challenge.
• 11:18
  Dave: It's it is.
• 11:18
  Dave: I mean, but this is 2025.
• 11:20
  Dave: I mean, if you're gonna be an independent author in 2025, you have to be able to sell online to directly to consumers and capture that consumer data.
• 11:29
  Dave: You have to.
• 11:29
  Dave: It's it's it's the lifeblood of who you are as an author.
• 11:33
  Dave: Um, and so what I I always I'm a big proponent of crawl, walk, run.
• 11:36
  Dave: The crawl step is you bring in some inventory, you start to sell on your website.
• 11:41
  Dave: Yes, you you you stuff the books into envelopes and you put you know the proverbial stamp on the outside and you send it out.
• 11:49
  Dave: And you do that until you feel like you can't do that anymore.
• 11:52
  Dave: And so that then you just you you go to the the you know, the walk step, which is now, or that you've you've you've hit that you know tipping point, so to speak, where you now find somebody else that can help you do that.
• 12:04
  Dave: So it could be a third-party logistics organization that does pick, pack, and chip.
• 12:09
  Dave: It could be that you bring in somebody who's you know working for you five, 10 hours a week to do that for you.
• 12:15
  Dave: But you you have to engage in it and learn the process.
• 12:19
  Dave: It's really important to do that until you hit a point where now you've got to have somebody else do that for you.
• 12:25
  Dave: Um, yeah, and the challenge I hear from people is I don't want to do that.
• 12:29
  Dave: It's just too much work.
• 12:30
  Dave: Well, yeah, it's a lot of work.
• 12:31
  Dave: But that the lifeblood of that that list is incredibly important.
• 12:36
  Dave: And to just throw that out means that you're you're really throwing out future opportunity.
• 12:42
  Joel: That's great.
• 12:43
  Joel: Uh, and I I love the crawl walk-run metaphor because that makes it feel less overwhelming.
• 12:48
  Joel: Um I never quite thought of it that way, but I can imagine someone they're, you know, they're launching their debut novel.
• 12:54
  Joel: They've got their book set up on Amazon for print on demand and they're running promotions that way, but they've got a website and they say, you can buy it direct from me, support me, maybe even give people a discount.
• 13:03
  Joel: Yeah.
• 13:03
  Joel: And they could have a stock of 100, 200 books hanging out in their garage.
• 13:07
  Joel: The volume is not going to be significant up fr up front.
• 13:10
  Joel: No one who's self-publishing starts off with a huge volume of sales.
• 13:14
  Joel: But um, you could be fulfilling those on Saturdays at not too much of a cost, taking payment through the website.
• 13:21
  Joel: And then you start to build that, you know, you've got real customer data in a way you're not gonna get through Amazon.
• 13:26
  Joel: And I want to emphasize that for people who don't realize this.
• 13:29
  Joel: When you sell books through Amazon, you will not get customer data.
• 13:33
  Joel: They control it.
• 13:34
  Joel: You'll never know who they are.
• 13:36
  Joel: You'll never get their email address unless you've figured out another way to send them to your website through the book.
• 13:41
  Joel: So um, that's a really valuable thing that you're talking about.
• 13:45
  Dave: Yeah, and you and as an author, you can provide so much um uh so many different ancillary things to get people to come and buy from you, whether it's free downloads or it's the access to a free audio book or a free e-book, you know, if you buy the paper book, all of those types of things where you you can incentivize the reader to come directly to you rather than going to Amazon.
• 14:10
  Dave: And I think, you know, but the the important thing is if you if you don't build that list, you will have no way to market to people when your second book comes out.
• 14:18
  Dave: If you do build the list, you you have that built in.
• 14:21
  Joel: That's awesome.
• 14:23
  Joel: Very cool.
• 14:24
  Joel: Um, so just a another question, you know, uh this is a bit of a pivot, but um AI, topic of AI.
• 14:31
  Joel: Everyone's talking about AI.
• 14:33
  Joel: You know, I I I spent about a year being a Luddite and just ignoring AI myself.
• 14:40
  Joel: And then, you know, my my colleague Sadie uh uh, you know, had been exploring with Chat GPT because she's a little more innovative than me.
• 14:48
  Joel: And I finally started using it.
• 14:50
  Joel: So like I've spent the last four to six months actually using Chat GPT from everything from you know helping me write an article to figuring out the best strategy for my fantasy football league, right?
• 15:01
  Joel: Um and it's you know, I I have my own opinion about it, but I'm I'm curious, where are you seeing AI having impact in book publishing and writing?
• 15:12
  Joel: Where is that are you seeing that?
• 15:13
  Joel: What do you see?
• 15:15
  Dave: Yeah, a little bit.
• 15:15
  Dave: Um, I you know, I think number one, um, you know, there are authors.
• 15:20
  Dave: I mean, the the the elephant in the room is that there are authors out there who are trying to write books, just the AI and sending them out the door.
• 15:27
  Dave: Um, and there are authors who have done that.
• 15:30
  Dave: Um, I I I have never heard of an author who's been successful at it, though, because AI still is not at a level where it can produce a long-form book that's good, that's readable.
• 15:43
  Dave: Um, and and so, you know, and there's probably people who are gonna want to argue with me on that that topic, but it's just not there yet.
• 15:50
  Dave: Will it get there?
• 15:51
  Dave: Maybe.
• 15:52
  Dave: Um, it's really difficult difficult for AI to produce the right sort of feeling and empathy and all of those things.
• 16:00
  Dave: It can spit out facts all day long.
• 16:02
  Dave: Uh, but but it but that connection that a a true author has with the reader, that's still not there by any stretch.
• 16:11
  Dave: Uh so what where we're seeing AI really affecting us is that there are authors who think they can do that, and so they may be bypassing maybe some of the services that we can offer them.
• 16:22
  Dave: Uh, but ultimately they're not going to be successful at that because no, I haven't heard of anybody that is.
• 16:27
  Dave: Second thing is that the tools that I AI is creating for authors and publishers and you know, so forth are fantastic.
• 16:36
  Dave: You just mentioned uh Chat GPT.
• 16:39
  Dave: I mean, we we utilize that as a tool to help us, it's but it's not the end-all be-all to create the product.
• 16:47
  Dave: So it may help us generate ideas, it may help us generate some short form things as we dump in other content that we've already created.
• 16:56
  Dave: And it's just it's helping us reorganize that or rewrite something.
• 17:00
  Dave: Uh, that's where it can be really, really good.
• 17:02
  Dave: Spelling, I mean, you know, and and and punctuation and some of those types of things.
• 17:07
  Dave: I mean, some of the services out there that can do that, like Grammarly, um, they're they're fantastic.
• 17:12
  Dave: I mean, they're a great first run to help pick off uh things that we don't have to look at later.
• 17:19
  Dave: Um, and so from a tool standpoint, it's fantastic.
• 17:22
  Dave: But from a writing standpoint, uh for a writing finished product, it's not there yet.
• 17:29
  Joel: That's really that that's that's interesting.
• 17:31
  Joel: I mean, that's been my experience as well.
• 17:33
  Joel: I it almost feels like AI is a good sort of idea generator.
• 17:38
  Joel: You know, whether you're working on the cover, you need to come up with some ideas for how a cover might look, or you need to play around with some subject lines for an email, or if you're writing if you're writing a book, you know, I I was working with someone the other day because uh one of the things I do is I'm a ghostwriter, and they were interested in figuring out how the law of attraction uh translated into principles that were usable in a specific field of retail business.
• 18:08
  Dave: Okay.
• 18:09
  Joel: And they they threw that in.
• 18:10
  Joel: They said, Hey, how does the law of attraction, you know, how can I use the law of attraction in my retail business?
• 18:16
  Joel: Right.
• 18:17
  Joel: Right.
• 18:17
  Joel: And it spat out some interesting ideas that we then took and then add it added, you know, it was like some skeleton ideas that we could then fill in with flesh and bone and tone and narrative and real stories and everything.
• 18:30
  Joel: And it was very useful.
• 18:32
  Dave: Right.
• 18:32
  Dave: Um I think I think one of the things is what you just said reminded me, one of the things that's been challenging for us is that we will have um authors who are independently publishing that need a cover design that will go out and they'll use AI to create a cover design that they like, and then they come in and say, Would you build this cover design for me?
• 18:53
  Dave: And and and we've we've gotten to the point where we're like, no, we will not copy that.
• 18:57
  Dave: Number one, you you used AI to create it, and for us to recreate it is actually way more expensive than it is to create a different cover for you that that makes more sense for you.
• 19:11
  Dave: Because now we're going out and we're having to like uh almost illustrate things that you've already illustrated.
• 19:17
  Dave: Um and and we can't recreate that with AI, even, you know, to what you just did.
• 19:24
  Dave: So it it it's I think it's it's it is making things harder on the design standpoint when uh somebody goes out and has a very specific thing that they've played with and they're asking us to recreate it.
• 19:42
  Dave: And and and my design team is like, no, we're not doing that.
• 19:45
  Dave: I mean, uh, or if we're gonna do that, it's like 3x the cost.
• 19:50
  Dave: Yep.
• 19:50
  Joel: So we we run into similar issues, and and one thing we found, I mean, we've been able to successfully reproduce a few covers um that were sent to us, and that actually kind of worked pretty well.
• 20:01
  Joel: But what we've found uh when it comes to AI cover generation is when the client generates some covers with AI, they get this anchoring bias thing in their head.
• 20:12
  Joel: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:12
  Joel: They they just get really locked in on one idea.
• 20:15
  Joel: Um, and it it makes it very difficult for us to generate new ideas, which are usually better, you know, because a good cover designer is gonna do is gonna outperform AI every day of the week.
• 20:26
  Joel: But they get so locked into the idea that they were able to generate so quickly with Chat GPT that they can't see these new ideas with an open mind.
• 20:35
  Joel: And it, you know, it's a cognitive bias issue.
• 20:37
  Dave: Um you're exactly right.
• 20:39
  Dave: I mean, and it does, it creates real issues because our our design teams, your design teams are, I mean, they're professional, they know what works, they know where things need to be.
• 20:48
  Dave: Uh, there's an art to it as well.
• 20:51
  Dave: But there's a sci- I mean there's certain things you have to do if you're gonna attract somebody to pick that book up.
• 20:57
  Dave: And just because it looks nice doesn't mean that it's gonna be effective.
• 21:01
  Joel: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Joel: No, that's interesting.
• 21:03
  Joel: Well, you know, it's a brave new world.
• 21:05
  Joel: It's it's interesting we kind of keep our eye on it, you know.
• 21:08
  Joel: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Joel: Um, so I kind of want, you know, big picture, thing, taking a big a bit of a step back here, because you know, one of the themes of this uh this show is being honest, right?
• 21:17
  Joel: The straight talk.
• 21:18
  Joel: Yeah.
• 21:19
  Joel: And as as you know, there's a lot of myths in the book industry.
• 21:23
  Joel: You know, I I I confront them every day.
• 21:25
  Joel: You know, I talk to clients on the phone, potential clients on the phone every day, and almost everybody has heard something from somewhere or from someone about something that they should be doing when it comes to book publishing or promotion.
• 21:38
  Joel: And and I find that a lot of it is is misleading or straight up false.
• 21:43
  Joel: So what would you what what's what's one of the biggest myths that you encounter or have encountered recently in the book world?
• 21:53
  Dave: There's a couple.
• 21:54
  Dave: Uh number one, the big one is uh for new authors coming in who have this grand Vision of being traditionally published, that the myth is that the traditional publisher is always going to be more successful than an indie author independent author.
• 22:10
  Dave: And I categorically say that's false.
• 22:14
  Dave: Can a traditionally published author have more success?
• 22:18
  Dave: Yes, maybe.
• 22:19
  Dave: Can an indie author have just as much success?
• 22:22
  Dave: Absolutely.
• 22:22
  Dave: I've seen it.
• 22:23
  Dave: And so that's it, that's a huge myth.
• 22:25
  Dave: And so to throw out the options of independently publishing, just because and I actually use this terminology, you in the in the industry we hear of things called vanity press.
• 22:36
  Dave: Yeah.
• 22:36
  Dave: You know, vanity press is somebody, you know, that you you're going and you're paying lots of money for for it and it all of these things, and then you're sp there's there's we we get it you probably get accused of that.
• 22:48
  Dave: I get accused of that sometimes of being a vanity press.
• 22:51
  Dave: Um, but I think the true definition of vanity presses are where you hold out to have Simon and Schuster's name or HarperCollins' name on the spine of your book.
• 23:01
  Dave: And the only reason that you want it there is because that that's the name.
• 23:05
  Dave: Uh when in fact you could have more success as an indie author.
• 23:08
  Dave: So that's the first thing.
• 23:10
  Dave: Um, and I'm not calling out those two publishers, by the way, that they're they're great publishers, but I think for the the concept that the author is holding out for that is true vanity.
• 23:21
  Dave: I mean, yeah, that's the definition of it right there.
• 23:24
  Dave: So uh the second thing is um that that I see in the industry is where authors come in and say uh retail, traditional retail is the holy grail.
• 23:35
  Dave: If I don't get that, I'm not successful.
• 23:37
  Dave: And and I I would categorically say that's false as well.
• 23:41
  Dave: Um we work with, you work with a lot of people who are industry leaders or speakers or coaches or consultants.
• 23:50
  Dave: We just mentioned that uh a few minutes ago, who have a core business and they're producing a book to be a part of that or a tool, a tool in their toolkit.
• 24:00
  Dave: Uh, I, you know, it doesn't come down to numbers anymore.
• 24:04
  Dave: I mean, the success metric is not necessarily how many books have you sold.
• 24:09
  Dave: Uh the success metric comes by by do you fully understand your target audience, number one, and what and do you have very specific goals for your book, number two.
• 24:18
  Dave: And if you if your goal for your book is, I don't care how many I sell, but I'm trying to land three six-figure clients next year.
• 24:26
  Dave: And you do, then your book is a wild success.
• 24:30
  Dave: And and I have seen art as, you know, I have one client in particular who's probably sold 500 books.
• 24:36
  Dave: And if you look at the number, you're like, well, that's not a success.
• 24:40
  Dave: Uh, but he landed three six-figure clients um in the first year after the book came out, and that was his success metric.
• 24:48
  Dave: And so we we call that a huge success.
• 24:51
  Dave: Um, and so it just comes down to making sure you understand what your your goals are.
• 24:56
  Dave: Traditional retail is very difficult, difficult.
• 24:59
  Dave: Um, you have to work through distributors, you you typically have to have some sort of sales mechanism to make sure that the retailers know what your where your book is coming from or what it is that it's even available.
• 25:11
  Dave: Um, and they're then they're gonna trickle in here, there, and everywhere.
• 25:15
  Dave: Um, and and and you know, there's a ton of effort that has to go into that side of the industry for really little gain, to be honest with you.
• 25:25
  Dave: Um, and we could talk about some of the special markets opportunities and other direct uh direct sales type things uh you know later, but the retail side of things is not the holy grail.
• 25:37
  Dave: So that's the second thing.
• 25:38
  Dave: Um, and I I I had a third thing too, is really hey, as an author, my book is gonna allow me to quit my full-time job and write full-time.
• 25:47
  Dave: Uh huge myth.
• 25:49
  Dave: Um, it doesn't happen that way.
• 25:51
  Dave: It can happen that way, but it doesn't happen that way very often.
• 25:54
  Dave: Um, so I I you know, my my encouragement is write, keep writing, keep publishing.
• 26:01
  Dave: And then you at some point in time you're gonna get this this critical mass of content that may allow you to do that, but it may, it's probably gonna be you're gonna have to have 10, 15, 20 books before you get to that level.
• 26:18
  Joel: Now I'm and I I'm so glad you said that.
• 26:19
  Joel: I'm so glad you said that.
• 26:20
  Joel: It's one of my favorite myths, that last one.
• 26:23
  Joel: Um, is that if if somehow I'm not making money on these books, A, to like make my money back on all the money I put in, and B, making so much profit that I can quit my day job, right?
• 26:36
  Joel: And I'm and I'm measuring the success through royalties, yeah, then then no one will make it.
• 26:42
  Joel: I mean, ever even traditional publishers, I think, I think the latest stat I heard was uh 20% of advan of authors make their advance back when they're getting an advance against royalties.
• 26:53
  Joel: And it may even be lower than that.
• 26:56
  Joel: Right, exactly, because who knows, who knows what kind of who knows how honest those numbers are, right?
• 27:01
  Joel: So um it takes many books.
• 27:03
  Joel: I mean, you're taking you're talking 10 or 15, that's a big deal.
• 27:07
  Joel: But you know, and so I always want to let people know, hey, look, if you're not in this for the long haul, um, then you need to figure out another way to determine the success of this book, right?
• 27:18
  Joel: Yeah.
• 27:19
  Dave: Like, like going back to, you know, hey, this book is gonna generate additional business for me or it's gonna help sell my services, or you know, that's where, or speak, you know, hey, if this book allows me to get on bigger and bigger stages where I'm getting, you know, two, three, four, five thousand dollars of speaking gig, you know, that now needs to go against your ROI on your book.
• 27:39
  Dave: Yep.
• 27:39
  Dave: Um, and and it's super important that you that an author looks at it from that perspective.
• 27:44
  Joel: That's right.
• 27:45
  Joel: Particularly in the nonfiction space, right?
• 27:48
  Joel: I mean, there's so much value to having a book beyond the sales, right?
• 27:52
  Joel: There's prestige, you know, it builds your authority as a speaker or a consultant or a thought leader to have a book.
• 27:57
  Joel: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Joel: It also, it's a place, you know, I always I always find this really interesting because I do a lot of nonfiction ghostwriting.
• 28:04
  Joel: And a lot of the people I'm working with, this is the first place where they've really articulated their philosophy.
• 28:09
  Joel: They've taken the time, they go, they dive in really deep to take their story or their philosophy or their key insight and really build it out for someone.
• 28:19
  Joel: And there's tremendous value in that too, because then you have a book, you can hand it to someone.
• 28:23
  Joel: You can say, This is what I believe, this is what I think.
• 28:25
  Joel: If you want to get a consulting gig with a company, you can hand that to the HR person, or you can hand it to the CEO, and you can say, Look, this is this is my philosophy, this is my track record, this is how I can.
• 28:35
  Joel: It's like a big old fat resume, you know, that's that should be entertaining, more entertaining than a resume, right?
• 28:42
  Joel: Hopefully so.
• 28:43
  Joel: Yeah.
• 28:44
  Joel: Yep.
• 28:45
  Joel: Oh, that's interesting.
• 28:46
  Joel: Cool.
• 28:47
  Joel: So um, you know, that's great.
• 28:50
  Joel: I I love I love myth busting.
• 28:51
  Joel: I feel like, you know, yeah, uh that's one of that's you know, you can endlessly bust myths in this world.
• 28:58
  Joel: Um I'm I'm just curious, you know, what um is there anything else that you want to talk about?
• 29:04
  Joel: Anything else you want to share?
• 29:05
  Joel: Any questions you have for me?
• 29:07
  Joel: I mean, I've kind of gotten through my list of big things I wanted to talk about with you.
• 29:11
  Dave: Yeah, I I think um I I want to jump back to that that I kind of glossed over uh just a minute ago, and that was the you know, the opportunities to go out and sell books.
• 29:23
  Dave: Yes.
• 29:23
  Dave: Um, because retail is one one chan.
• 29:26
  Dave: Um when when I'm talking with a uh a client about direct sales or what we used to in the in the traditional publishing industry, we called it special markets.
• 29:35
  Dave: It's really everything outside of retail.
• 29:39
  Dave: So, and and a lot of times authors are like they're retail, retail.
• 29:43
  Dave: I see Barnes and Noble on the corner, I see the local mom and pop bookstore on the corner, that's where I want my book, and they're there, that's where 100% of the focus is at.
• 29:50
  Dave: Uh or Amazon.
• 29:52
  Dave: Um and and really there's a huge monster world of other opportunity out there beyond that.
• 29:58
  Dave: Number one, so I tell my clients, um, hey, uh, build three lists.
• 30:03
  Dave: Number one, build the top 100 podcast list.
• 30:06
  Dave: You know, what are the podcasts that you they are working with and talking about your topic or your who are targeting your target audience and all that?
• 30:14
  Dave: The second one is top 100 nonprofits uh doing the same thing.
• 30:19
  Dave: You know, so if you're writing a book on, you know, adoption, for example, and you know, what what are those organizations out there that deal with adoption?
• 30:30
  Dave: And how do you how do you get your book in front of the right people there so that they may go, oh my gosh, this is the best book I've ever read on this particular topic.
• 30:39
  Dave: We we've got you know a list of 5,000 donors to our organization, and and we, you know, we would like to, you know, have a special edition of your book with, you know, our executive directors, you know, forward in it, and we're gonna buy, you know, 5,000 units and give it to everybody that uh that donates to us.
• 30:56
  Dave: I mean, 5,000 units?
• 30:58
  Dave: Come on.
• 30:59
  Dave: We were just talking about, you know, uh traditional publishers uh not even earning out on some of these things and to have an independent author be able to sell 5,000 units to one organization.
• 31:09
  Dave: I mean, that those are the things that happen and can happen all the time if the author is looking for those things.
• 31:15
  Dave: Yep.
• 31:15
  Dave: I even remember an example of a for-profit company.
• 31:19
  Dave: So that would be the third lift.
• 31:20
  Dave: What list?
• 31:21
  Dave: What is uh the top 100 for-profit companies, maybe in your area or outside your area, that again deal with something that has to do with your topic, your expertise, uh, they're targeting your audience, et cetera.
• 31:34
  Dave: Um, I had a book uh a long time ago with the traditional publisher where it became so big that, and and and and people liked the message so much that I there were car dealerships that bought those books and put one copy in every glove box of a car that they sold.
• 31:51
  Dave: Who could have imagined that?
• 31:54
  Dave: Who could have even thought about that as an opportunity?
• 31:57
  Dave: But again, it's just how creative can you get about getting your book in front of the right decision makers at a for-profit, a nonprofit, a civic group, uh whatever it might be, where they may want to use your book for something that they're doing.
• 32:12
  Dave: And how many books can then you can you sell then?
• 32:15
  Dave: Uh the numbers are the the the opportunity is huge.
• 32:18
  Dave: And and I think so.
• 32:19
  Dave: This is this is just one of those ideas where authors need to hey take a look at and expand on this and and and how creative can you get uh to get those books in front of the right people.
• 32:32
  Joel: I love that.
• 32:32
  Joel: I love that, Dave.
• 32:33
  Joel: I mean, that that's one thing we really advocate with people as well when we're doing, especially with their nonfiction books, when you're when you're building a marketing campaign, is to, you know, we kind of call it very grassroots-y, right?
• 32:43
  Joel: You just got to go out after every organization, uh, every nonprofit, every every group that you think could be interested.
• 32:50
  Joel: You know, and two two examples come to mind.
• 32:53
  Joel: We had, we did uh, we did uh a Christian book by a guy.
• 32:58
  Joel: Um basically he had been leading a Bible study group for 30 years.
• 33:02
  Joel: And he had he had like a little men's group at his church and he kind of took his philosophy and he turned it into a book.
• 33:08
  Joel: And what he started to do, this was this was actually during COVID, it was kind of interesting.
• 33:13
  Joel: He started going out after he he went contacting churches and men's groups and Bible study groups all around the country.
• 33:22
  Joel: He was based in Wisconsin, and he said, Okay, if you're within one state and if you want to do a Bible study with my book, yeah, right, and that'll be your next thing that you read for the next month.
• 33:33
  Joel: If you're within one state, I'll drive to you and give you and give a talk.
• 33:36
  Joel: If you're beyond another state, I'll call in via Zoom and I'll do, I'll do a little thing for you.
• 33:42
  Joel: And that was a really creative way.
• 33:43
  Joel: It wasn't, it didn't lead, there wasn't like a big, gigantic sale there, but you know, we're talking like 20, 30, 20, 30, and they add up, right?
• 33:52
  Joel: And then you never know who in that group is going to talk to who else.
• 33:56
  Joel: And maybe it spreads, and then maybe eventually you hit you you connect to you know a national organization where it it gets spread, you know, at a big level, right?
• 34:05
  Dave: Yeah.
• 34:06
  Dave: Well, and sometimes the organizations don't even know they that they have the opportunity exists.
• 34:11
  Dave: I mean, if you if if you walked into using the adoption example, again, you walked into a particular adoption organization locally in your town and said, Hey, we got this book.
• 34:22
  Dave: I'd love to partner with you on this book.
• 34:24
  Dave: I'd love to have, you know, make a special edition of this book for you.
• 34:28
  Dave: And this is this can now bring it full circle back to printing, is that it's really easy to put a little call out on the cover, you know, a new cover design, uh, put a put a uh a forward or a message from an executive director or from uh you know whoever it is in the front of a book, it's really easy to recreate those special files and then get that into the printing system and print those copies and drop ship them directly to whoever's buying them from you.
• 34:58
  Dave: Um that's it, that's the easy part of it.
• 35:01
  Dave: So, but sometimes, you know, the the organization doesn't even know that that opportunity exists.
• 35:06
  Dave: And but if you present it to them and say, hey, this is super easy, you know, I'm gonna give you a special discount on buying bulk books and and we'll we'll create a special cover for you for you.
• 35:16
  Dave: They're like, oh my gosh, really?
• 35:17
  Dave: This is incredible.
• 35:18
  Dave: Uh and so yeah, it really opens up some opportunities for uh for authors that are way outside of traditional retail.
• 35:26
  Joel: Love it.
• 35:27
  Dave: That's great.
• 35:29
  Joel: Um what else, Dave?
• 35:31
  Joel: Anything else you wanted to cover?
• 35:33
  Joel: Any other questions, thoughts?
• 35:34
  Joel: Anything that you feel like we haven't uh talked about?
• 35:37
  Joel: I don't, you know, I I don't think so.
• 35:39
  Dave: I I think um it maybe the the the the I'll leave you with this, and that is that printing it can be a very important but overlooked um area of the publishing process.
• 35:54
  Dave: I mean, everybody's concerned obviously with the content and the editing and the design and all of those types of things, uh, the marketing.
• 36:02
  Dave: Um, but you know, not every printer is created equal.
• 36:08
  Dave: And we we started talking about that.
• 36:10
  Dave: Uh, print on demand is not the same thing as offset printing.
• 36:14
  Dave: Um a softcover printer may be able to print a hardcover printer, but they may take it out the back door and go down the street and then somebody else is working on it.
• 36:24
  Dave: So working with an organization, working with and finding out if the person you're talking to actually is qualified to do the work is really, really important.
• 36:35
  Dave: Uh there are some really, I mean, you can do all of the other things right and then have a really crappy print job and it ruins everything.
• 36:44
  Dave: Um, and so making sure that that is part of your quality control, making sure it's a it's an important part of your process.
• 36:51
  Dave: Don't just throw your printing out to anybody, make sure that they can do the job right is um is a is, I believe, a real key but overlooked factor in the publishing process.
• 37:04
  Joel: That's awesome.
• 37:05
  Joel: Amen to that, Dave.
• 37:06
  Joel: Um so yeah, thank you for being with us today.
• 37:10
  Joel: If people want to hear about Dave's business or check him out, Indie Author Book Services is the place to go.
• 37:17
  Joel: Um, Dave is uh he's a partner of my company.
• 37:19
  Joel: When we do offset printing for any of our clients, we go, we go to him to to get the job done.
• 37:25
  Joel: And I can I can vouch for uh his professionalism and quality and and honesty.
• 37:29
  Joel: So um Yeah, thank you.
• 37:31
  Joel: Thank you for joining us today.
• 37:33
  Joel: Absolutely.
• 37:33
  Joel: My pleasure.