She Wrote & Published Her Book In Two Weeks. Here's How
Sarah Weise is living proof you can write and publish a successful business book in just a few weeks.
Of course, years of research and thinking led to the point where the CEO of the marketing research agency BIXA was ready to write. But the resulting bestselling book, InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, just flowed onto the page.
“It actually was not a lot of work for me,” says Sarah, who lectures at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business on marketing strategy for the next generation and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide.
“Granted it was a ton of research that went into this. But because I’d done the research already, when I actually sat down, I only wrote for two weeks,” she tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
YOU CAN WRITE YOUR BOOKS IN TWO WEEKS
Sara has been doing market research for leading companies for more than 15 years. An important way to solicit business, she figured, was to write a book. “It was absolutely a business decision.”
The idea for the book arose from research Sarah’s firm did for Google on the digital trends of Generation Z and how to market to those young people. This research led to similar work for other companies, helping build an expertise that could be shared in a book.
“I had this wealth of data and trends I was able to translate into this book,” she says. “A lot of the organization in my head was done because I was already presenting on this material at conferences. I already had a lot of the format in place in a PowerPoint. All I had to do was build on that structure and tell lots of stories. So, it was a lot of writing in two weeks, but it didn’t feel like a huge lift for me. And then on the third week, it was published.”
InstaBrain leans heavily on stories, many of them based on video recordings with Generation Z participants. “Following teenagers as they shopped and searched online for things helped prove my points and made them stick a little better,” Sarah says. “It’s interesting how people really cling to the stories.”
BOOK BOOSTS BUSINESS
Sarah’s book, InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, has opened doors to a wide range of business opportunities. Many were unexpected.
“There are constantly new opportunities coming my way because somebody is reading the book or talking about it. It’s a lot of exposure for my business,” she says. “I get a ton of interviews for podcasts now that I wouldn’t have gotten before.”
For example, executives at the American Chemical Society read the book and heard Sarah speak. That resulted in a big contract with the society, which is trying to attract Generation Z undergraduate and graduate students.
To promote the book, Sarah sent signed copies to 50 potential clients, landing work with Ogilvy. It helped that she sent physical books, “which are so much rarer than an email these days.”
The book also allowed her to develop courses for LinkedIn Learning. “I was able to say I’m a published author, a thought leader. I’d like to do a course on X. I don’t think my pitch would have gone anywhere without the book. I am now building a lot of business from the course.”
“I’m definitely getting more paid, better quality speaking invitations now that I have the book. For example, Facebook reached out to me last week to keynote an event. I don’t think that would have happened if I didn’t have the book.”
USING AMAZON ADS ON SIMILAR BOOKS
Sarah has been promoting the book by placing Amazon ads on other, related titles. “Quite a few people who are looking at (related) titles click through to my book and end up buying it,” she says. “I’m only spending a couple of $100 a month on Amazon ads, but it’s enough to attract a constant stream of people.”
She’s also steadily increasing her profile on Instagram and YouTube. “I can take clips of a talk and post them on those sites, reusing the content that I’m already creating.”
FREE CHAPTER OF INSTABRAIN
To get a free chapter of InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, go to bixaresearch.com/freechapter or text the word hi to 66866.
LINKS
Get free chapter of her book InstaBrain: The New Rules to Marketing for Generation Z
View the LinkedIn Learning courses Market Research Fundamentals, Generational Design, and Storytelling.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Josh Steimle
Welcome to the Published Author Podcast where we help entrepreneurs learn how to write a book and leverage it to grow their business and make an impact. I'm your host, Josh Steimle. Today, our guest is Sarah Weiss. Sarah is the CEO of the marketing research agency BIXA and the bestselling author of Instant Brain: The New Rules For Marketing to Generation Z. For 15 years, Sarah has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands, including Google, IBM, Capital One Mikimoto, PBS and Real Warriors. She lectures at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business on Marketing Strategy for the Next Generation and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide. Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sarah Weise
Thanks so much for having me, Josh.
Josh Steimle
And we were just talking before we started recording that because of the pandemic, one of the few good things that has come out of the pandemic is that it's a lot easier to talk to people these days. Sarah did a virtual summit today. And now, she's doing this podcast, and she doesn't have to travel all over the place and take time out of her schedule. And so, you, dear listener, are the beneficiary of the technological revolutions that have happened because of this pandemic. So, Sarah, give us a little bit of background on who you are, and what you do and who you do it for.
Sarah Weise
So, I run a market research firm, like you've just mentioned in that lovely introduction. And I have been doing that . . . market research for over 15 years. And then a couple years ago, started my own firm. And one of the ways in order to get business . . . I wrote the book. And I think that's what we're going to be talking about today, from what I understand about your podcast.
Josh Steimle
Yep. Primarily, that's what we'll be diving into. Now, give us a little more background? Most I mean, writing a book is a ton of work. Is this something you had thought about for a long time? Is this something that sometimes I interview people and they're like, I've always wanted to write a book, even when I was a little kid? Was it that type of thing that you always wanted to be an author? Or was it more like a business decision where you were like, you know, what our business needs a book, I should write a book.
Sarah Weise
It was absolutely a business decision. And it actually was not a lot of work for me. So, I had all the . . . I mean, granted, it was a ton of research that went into this, it was years of research on my part. But the actual writing part, I had all the research already. And I. Yeah, well, and just the research, especially on Gen Z was about a year and a half in the making, where we were specifically doing research. We actually were on this amazing project with Google where they called us in, and they were like, kids aren't searching anymore, go find out what they're doing on their phones all day if they're not searching. And so, it was this wonderful exploratory research, where we were figuring out digital trends of what this new generation was doing. And even without the, you know, the proprietary information that was, of course Google's, we were able to share some of the common trends and themes that we were seeing about how to market to this generation. And after, you know, after Google, we then of course, worked with other companies doing the same thing. And I had just this wealth of data and trends that I was able to translate into, into the brain, into this book. And, when I actually sat down to write it, I only wrote for two weeks.
Josh Steimle
Really, just now
Sarah Weise
I did nothing else. I like blocked out all other distractions . . . And I called our friend John Lubin who you know, and it was probably two days into writing. And I said, Hey John, I know you edit books. Can you be my editor? And he was like, sure. How many words do you have? And I probably had 3000 words at that point. I mean, nothing, nothing to speak of. And I went through about 30,000. And he said, Okay, great, just send it over. And at that point, I sent a Google Doc link to him and he was editing the first half as I was writing the second half.
Josh Steimle
And you were scrambling to keep ahead of him so that you only had 3000 words done?
Sarah Weise
Well, and I did . . . add some more before I actually sent him the Google Docs, but that was . . . it was a two week process of actually putting . . . the actual words on the page. See, this is fascinating because so many authors think, Oh, I have to write a book. And I'm going to have to write this whole book from scratch. But if you really know your material, and you've already done the research, because it's part of your business, it's part of who you are, then most of the work might already be done. And a lot of the organization in my head was done, because I was already presenting on this material. So, I had presentations at content marketing conference. I'd already done presentations, or at the digital marketing collective in Utah . . . there were several conferences that I had done where I had put the information out there. I'd created presentations and created a structure of Okay, here's the background behind Generation Z. Here are five trends, and some conclusion, you know, somehow to actionable steps. So, I had already had that format in place in a PowerPoint. And all I had to do was really take that structure and build it out and tell lots of stories and use the transcripts that were from my research, and everything like that. So, it was really, it wasn't, it didn't feel I mean, it was a lot of writing in two weeks, but it didn't feel like a huge lift for me. And then on the third week, it was published.
Josh Steimle
Wow, that's amazing. So, did you go the self-publishing route then, I assume? It was that fast. It was that way you work with a traditional publisher then?
Sarah Weise
Yes. No, definitely not. I literally did the cover art myself in Canva . . . I think I was pretty good here. I'll show . . . Can you see the video?
Josh Steimle
Yep. So, it does look good. It doesn't look self-published. In fact, when I was looking at it ahead of time, I was like, Oh, this looks good. She must have had a traditional publisher. But here we are.
Sarah Weise
And I think when I gave you a copy at content marketing conference, was it, it must have been, what, it wasn't this year or the year before?
Josh Steimle
Yeah.
Sarah Weise
So, when I gave you that copy, I think it was our first run. And I realized that the typesetter that I had hired on Upwork for $200 had spelled my name incorrectly on the copyright page. And that was the only page that wasn't edited. So, you probably have one of the original ones, as my name is spelled incorrectly.
Josh Steimle
But that'll be a collector's item someday, right? Say I have a first edition with her name spelled incorrectly.
Sarah Weise
First edition . . . published. Yes.
Josh Steimle
So, you already had all these slide decks and presentations and all this stuff. So, did you even create an outline? Or were you just sitting down and just writing?
Sarah Weise
I had . . . in a way. I created an outline where I knew I was going to give background on who Gen Z was, some of the, the background information about how they were raised, new types of parenting that influenced how they behave today, how they shop, how they buy, how they transact differently than other generations. I knew that the background stuff was going to come first. I knew that I was then going to present a series of trends that would kind of build on each other. And then I knew that at the end of each chapter, I was going to provide some sort of actionable takeaways about what you as a marketer need to know right now, because those are my favorite things to read . . . the ones that actually have step by step, here's what you can do. So, I knew in my head. I also read a lot. So, I knew in my head, what types of books I liked. And I knew the themes that were going to be the different chapters. For example, I knew that I needed a chapter on finances and how they perceive money, how this generation perceives money differently, and how that impacts your business. So, I knew I needed a chapter on that. I knew I needed a chapter on, you know, just different . . . types of things that go on . . . in the minds, in the world of this, this new generation.
Josh Steimle
And again, you could do this easily because you had all this information in your head, and you had practice presenting it, and you had researched it so much. So, you mentioned stories and weaving stories into your book. What's your philosophy on what's the right mix of those practical takeaways versus stories to illustrate the takeaways?
Sarah Weise
I mean, I think it's heavily storied. I mean, my book is heavily story-based. And a lot of the stories are actual transcripts that came from interviews from video recordings that teenagers did for us. So that in that sense, it was more theirs, here's a story, okay, let's analyze it and pick it apart. Look at the word choice here. Because of this word choice, you know x, y, z. So, it kind of proved the point through following teenagers as they shopped and bought and searched online for things, and proved each one of the points, and it just made it stick a little bit better. And even when I talked to people who have read the book, or people who email me, because they've read the book, they said, Oh, I really like that. I really love that theme in your book where Garrett was doing this. And they tend to not remember or be able to label the theme. But they know what it is based on, the name of the participants, which of course, I've changed. These are not the real participant names. But it's interesting that people, how people really cling to the stories.
Josh Steimle
Yeah . . . There's something about the human brain that we remember even complicated stories. And yet, if you give somebody just a little bit of information, they, I mean, it's hard to remember a 10-digit phone number. But somebody can tell you this huge story. And you can remember most of it, and a lot of the details, and tell it to somebody else. It's amazing how the brain does that.
Sarah Weise
Yeah. And after I wrote this, LinkedIn invited me to do a do a course on storytelling on LinkedIn Learning. So, I've got that, that course there, if anyone wants to go and check out some of the details on storytelling. It's in their storytelling for your business.
Josh Steimle
And I'm glad that you brought up this course, because part of what we're doing through Published Author is, it's not just about helping people set up their book or write their book, but we want to help them set up a thought leadership system. So, we talk a lot about the platform, and you've got your book, you've got your business, you've got this course . . .
Sarah Weise
I actually have three courses.
Josh Steimle
There's three courses?
Sarah Weise
. . . . with LinkedIn Learning, and I just signed a contract for three more. So, LinkedIn learning . . . I would never have had the connections at LinkedIn Learning or had the credibility to go to LinkedIn Learning and say, I am a published author, that I'm a thought leader, I'd like to do a course on X, I don't think my pitch would have gotten anywhere without the book.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, so that's a great point there. Tell us a little bit more about LinkedIn Learning, because a lot of people don’t know about it. They've heard about it, but they don't really know the details. All they know is, oh, this is a bunch of courses that are on LinkedIn. But how does it work? How do you get, how did you get involved in it? And then how does doing these courses work? And what's the benefit to you?
Sarah Weise
It's a monetary benefit. But it's also more than that. It's a benefit of really connecting with a lot of people who have watched your course, who either want to work with you, as a lead generation tool, or who want to work for you, as a recruiting tool for your business, or who are just really interested . . . Other marketers, for me, it is other marketers, usually that take my courses and want to become a part of my network. So, there are so many benefits of authoring and being in one of those LinkedIn Learning courses. So, LinkedIn Learning used to be Lynda.com . . . and then LinkedIn bought Lynda. And so now it is a platform, it's a paid platform where people can go and buy a monthly subscription, and then take one of the 1000s, you know, any of the 1000s of courses in the library. So that's just the basics of what LinkedIn Learning is. A lot of times they sell it, they sell enterprise licenses to companies. So, I know when I was working at, I worked at Booz Allen Hamilton for 13 years, and when I was there, we all had password logins to Lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn Learning. But we all had logins so that we could go and take a whole suite of whatever training we needed at whatever point.
Josh Steimle
Now as a course creator, what's the benefit of doing a LinkedIn Learning course versus just doing your own course?
Sarah Weise
You get paid royalties. It's kind of like a book, but the royalties are much better than book royalties. So, for my market research foundations course, I ended up getting an advance, it was, I guess, we can go into numbers. It was a $5,000 advance, and then after the advance was paid off, then you get paid royalties based on how many people view your course. So once the advance was paid off, I started making between $700 - 800 a month, just on royalties from that one course.
Josh Steimle
And so how much do you get per view of your course?
Sarah Weise
So, it's different based on what kind of license the person has. So, I'm not exactly sure what the calculation is. So, if another author views your course, I think you get much less than if somebody who is on an enterprise license, I'm not exactly sure the details of how that works. But I do know that I make between $700 - $800 a month based on the 1000s of people that are viewing the course each month. And as . . . I do no advertising, I do no marketing of that course, it is all based on the LinkedIn Learning catalog.
Josh Steimle
Is the $700 - $800 that you're making, is that from the three courses, or is that one course or . . .?
Sarah Weise
That's from my first course, the other two launched in March, so I haven't paid off the advance yet . . .
Josh Steimle
Got it.
Sarah Weise
So as soon as the advances are paid off, they might make a little bit less than the first one because they're not foundations courses, they're a little more niche. So, I don't know exactly how much those are going to make yet. But that's the benefit of LinkedIn Learning in terms of the monetary benefits, but not to mention you meet so many other people and make so many connections from your affiliation with them.
Josh Steimle
And it's not just anybody who can set up one of these courses . . . you have to pitch yourself or be recruited by LinkedIn to do it. It's not like anybody can just go and launch a course on online learning?
Sarah Weise
Exactly right, you can apply to be an author, I think you can send in a pitch. The way I did it is I knew another author. So, she ended up making an introduction between me and one of the producers. And then that producer got me to the right . . . you know, the right business producer who was creating the market research course. And they just happened to have a market research course, where they told me, hey, we've got this 15-year-old course that we're replacing, can you do an updated version of that? So, that’s just how it happened to be really good timing.
Josh Steimle
That's great.
Sarah Weise
But the other, the others, I pitched myself. The others . . . Well, they had asked for the storytelling one, but the generational design, I pitched that one. And then I pitched qualitative research as a follow up or as a secondary course after you finished market research foundations, what kind of things would be recommended afterwards. So, I'm doing one on qualitative research that I'm actually recording this week . . . it'll be out in a few months, and then one on journey mapping, which I pitched also, and then one on mobile video diaries.
Josh Steimle
This was a little bit different focus than I was expecting to get into on this podcast. But I'm curious about the LinkedIn Learning details now. But you were mentioning before we started recording how you're in Virginia, they're in the Bay Area, they were controlling your camera and filming you and everything?
Sarah Weise
It was amazing . . . It was amazing how they can do that.
Josh Steimle
So how does setting up a course for LinkedIn Learning work? Do you work with them to come up with the content? And, then, sounds like you'd have to schedule time, and, so you're working together to film it? Do they have a certain template that they want you to follow as you're creating your course? Or how does it all work?
Sarah Weise
So, there are different formats to courses. My previous courses were all live action, meaning . . . I went to Santa Barbara into their studio, and I stood on a set. And there were videographers and audio people, audio engineers and producer. There was a teleprompter, and I went into the studio for a full week to get, what, two hours of content. So, it was, it was definitely a process. And then for each one of the courses, about 120 people are involved on the LinkedIn side for editing those courses and putting graphics over top of it. So, when I say a list, like hey, here are the top three ways to do whatever, they would have a graphic with number one, as I'm saying it number two, as I'm saying it number three. And their graphics move in and out over the top of the video.
Josh Steimle
So, there's a lot of value there. I mean, when you talk about the value LinkedIn is providing, if you went to go do all this for your own course, you might be paying $30,000 to $40,000 grand to have people come in and do all this editing and graphics and everything, but they're taking care of that. Plus, they're giving you the advance. Plus, they do all the marketing. So, you're starting to convince me on the benefits of doing a LinkedIn Learning course . . .
Sarah Weise
. . . and it doesn't prevent you in any way . . . like I didn't sign anything that said I can't do my own courses. So, they don't want you to work for competitors to LinkedIn Learning, like Pluralsight or one of those. But it's totally fine if you want to have another course that you've done yourself.
Josh Steimle
Interesting.
Sarah Weise
And they actually encouraged blogging. They encourage you to get on camera and build your audience because then that leads back to people taking the course on LinkedIn.
Josh Steimle
That's great. And like you said at the beginning, if it weren't for the book, you might not have had the credibility to get in with LinkedIn Learning to land this deal.
Sarah Weise
Yeah, they do other courses, course types. To getting back to your question about how it works. So, mine were live action ones. And that's why when I recorded this week, I had this microphone here that was plugged in and recording. They were controlling my camera. I gave them remote access to control my camera, and my camera was hooked up with a wire to my computer. So they were controlling everything related to my camera, how it looked, other than me having to like, tilt it this way or that way a little bit for them or replace the battery when it died after a few hours . . . they were doing all of the technical stuff. So that was the live action courses. But they also have ones where if you're talking about a certain software or something like that you can narrate it.
Josh Steimle
Hmm, interesting. This is great. So, with the LinkedIn Learning course, have you noticed any reciprocal benefit where you're getting attention from the course and this is turning into people buying the book after they take the course? And then they're coming . . . hiring you? And they're saying, Hey, I came in through the LinkedIn course, then I read your book, then I decided we need to hire you or your firm to work with us.
Sarah Weise
Absolutely. That happens all the time. And I am building a lot of business from the course.
Josh Steimle
That's great. So, tell us more about your platform. Where else have you focused your attention? I know you have your personal brand website, of course, you're on LinkedIn. Are there any other parts of your platform that have been helpful for you?
Sarah Weise
I've started growing Instagram this year, and that has grown a lot. I think I'm at about seven, I mean . . . . I'm at about 7000 followers. So, it's not a huge amount. But I do think that doing short little videos on Instagram is really helpful. And often, what I found is that if I'm giving a talk or something like that, I can clip a part, especially with these virtual talks where it's all over Zoom anyway. And it's being recorded. I can take clips of a talk, post it to YouTube, post it to Instagram and build my content that way with kind of reusing the content that I'm already creating.
Josh Steimle
Now you're also a speaker, and you're a speaker before you became an author. How has . . . what is it like being a speaker before the book and being a speaker after the book? Did you notice a difference?
Sarah Weise
I definitely get more paid speaking invitations now that I have the book. I do get better invitations as well, for example, better quality.
Josh Steimle
And?
Sarah Weise
Like Facebook reached out to me last week. I've been keynoted at an event at Facebook. And I don't think that that would have happened if I didn't have a book.
Josh Steimle
Perfect. So, tell us a little bit more about the publishing process that you went through because you did everything so quick. And yet you have a great book. It looks great. And you did it so fast. This actually beats the record I was sharing about my wife's book, because she was able to get it done from start to finish in about six weeks. But you've blown that out of the water. So, I'm going to start telling people Hey, you can write a book in two weeks, if you have it altogether.
Sarah Weise
If yeah, if you've got the content, especially if you're an expert, and you're just trying to have a thought leadership piece to represent the work that you've been doing, it's absolutely possible.
Josh Steimle
So, did you publish through Amazon KDP, or Ingram Spark, or how exactly did you go?
Sarah Weise
I published on KDP originally. So, I hired my typesetter, I hired on Upwork . . . It was a couple $100 he got everything in the right format. This was, he was a dairy farmer in Virginia who just did this on the side because he liked it, interesting, it's just such a random . . .
Josh Steimle
I thought you were going to say dairy farmer overseas, you know, in like India or Bangladesh or something, but then you're like . . .
Sarah Weise
What . . . local isn't a few hours away. I'm more on like the DC line. But yeah, so he did all the typesetting and got it into KDP for me for a couple $100 and then I did hire . . . on Upwork as well. I hired a firm that I ended up really liking. They're called Pristinely and they ended, I ended up hiring them to do book PR for a month, and what they did is kind of fix everything that I did wrong in KDP. And they put it into Ingram Spark, they were like, don't do the KDP Select, make sure to go to Ingram Spark, you want your book to be everywhere. So, I was really relieved that I hired them for that first month at least, to fix all the little things . . . that I didn't even know that I needed to do, like applying for a library of congress number and, and all that, all those little things that I would not have known to do.
Josh Steimle
Yeah. So then they also helped out with PR? What did the PR campaign that they did for you look like?
Sarah Weise
So it wasn't, it wasn't a ton of PR. It was really just a press release. And that, you know, would get it recognized in all the big networks. So a press release, and then they managed my social media for a couple of months, where I paid them to manage my social media. And they were putting book stuff on it and kind of marketing to the audience that I already had. And but because of their involvement . . . constant, constantly paying attention to the social media during that, that first month, it hit, in about a month . . . hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list. And so now I can say I'm a bestselling author.
Josh Steimle
That's great. So, so your goal, like many of the listeners of this podcast, is not to sell a ton of books and make a bunch of money off of book sales. This was for your business. This was to help you grow your business. So, in terms of the things that you did to get the book out there, and get it into the right hands of the people who would come back and say, Hey, we want to give you a six-figure contract to do marketing research work for us, what has worked the best? What has been . . . has there been any silver bullet or anything that you've been able to do to get the book out there that you can point to and say: This is what has really provided the big ROI for me?
Sarah Weise
The Amazon ads worked really well I put the . . . . I advertise the book on specific titles that are related. So like Seth Godin, This Is Marketing, tends to be one that's related to my book, and quite a few people who are looking at Seth Godin's book, then click through to my book and end up buying it. So I certainly use Amazon ads and that that really drives a lot of a lot of traffic to the book. I mean, I don't use them substantially. I'm only spending a couple $100 a month on Amazon ads. But it's enough to keep a constant stream of people. I'm getting new signups on my list sort of every day. It's enough to keep that going.
Josh Steimle
Mm hmm. Now, what about audio? Have you done the audio version yet?
Sarah Weise
So I'm a third of the way through. And I'm only a third because I have noisy kids in the house. And I need a quiet space so that I can do that. But the audio studio ended up being in a tiny closet in my bedroom. I literally moved an Ottoman in there, it's only the size of the Ottoman. So, I'm literally sitting in a closet, and I'm like, hello wardrobe. And I put a dog bed on one side to insulate. The audio engineer who's going do all the editing told me my computer fan was too loud. And so, I'm running a line or wire under the door, the computer sits outside of the door. And on the inside of the closet, I'm on an iPad, just reading it. And I've got just this Yeti mic clipped to the shelf and right in front of my face, and I'm just reading on the iPad.
Josh Steimle
I love that you're giving us all this detail.
Sarah Weise
That's my super professional audio studio.
Josh Steimle
I want your husband to take a photo of you while you're reading with this whole setup.
Sarah Weise
He can't, it's so small!
Josh Steimle
They say closets are one of the best places acoustically though, so for those listening, seriously, if you don't want to set up a whole Sound Studio, just go in your closet. I've talked to people who have recorded podcasts, I mean hosts hosting podcasts, and they go in the closet and they literally stick their head in between the clothes hanging down, and they are like it's great. It sounds awesome. So . . . .
Sarah Weise
Yeah, I feel like with the dog bed up against the bed, it gives me that extra padding and audio insulation. I'm sure you could buy the professional foam insulation, but I think a dog bed works well.
Josh Steimle
Yeah. So, what are some of the biggest benefits that have come to you so far from the book in terms of contracts or deals or people reaching out to you? Can you give us any examples?
Sarah Weise
Huge deals. For example, one of the companies that read the book, and then went to see me speak, and then . . . and now we're doing business together is American Chemical Society. Where they are . . . one of their key audiences that they're marketing to for membership and programming are students. And so they're right in that Generation Z. They're trying to get undergraduate and graduate students to join their association. And that led to a huge contract for business. I mean, there's so many, there's so many. I just feel like there are constantly new opportunities that are coming my way because somebody is reading the book, or somebody talking about the book. I get a ton of interviews for podcasts now that I would not have gotten before. It's a lot of exposure for my business.
Josh Steimle
That's great. So . . .now that you're on this side of the book, you've already published it and everything, what are some of the other lessons you've learned about book publishing, about book writing, that when you write the next book, I'm just assuming the deal here that you're going to write another book someday . . . But when you write your next book, what are some of the lessons that you're going to take with you and say, I'm definitely doing this, or I'm definitely not doing this?
Sarah Weise
I would definitely give time . . . more time to the editor then a week. I would definitely do that. Because when the book was published, and even the book right now, there are grammatical errors that drive me crazy, and I have not been able to go in there and fix it quite yet. So, as I'm reading the audio book doing, you know, recording the audio book, as I'm reading through, I'm catching all these grammatical errors. And I'm like, oh, if I'd given the editor the chance to do two read throughs instead of one, it would be so much better with without, you know, these little grammatical things . . . yeah . .
Josh Steimle
Look at all the benefits you're getting anyway.
Sarah Weise
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Josh Steimle
Do people really care that much?
Sarah Weise
I would definitely do it again, indie publish in a heartbeat. It was so easy to do. And I know people who have gone, gone through the traditional publisher, and I'm sure, you know, a ton of people have been talking to everyone . . . Was your book traditionally? was . . .
Josh Steimle
My first one was traditionally published. And, based on that experience, I decided to self-publish the next one. So I'm kind of in that camp . . . and especially when it comes to speed, because if you had gone after a traditional publisher, your book might still not be out, it might still be in the process.
Sarah Weise
Yeah. And I also know people who went through a traditional publisher, and they changed the title of the book, or they said that the cover has to look a certain way. And I didn't . . . I wanted to have full control over all of that. I wanted to be able to go, Hey, I'm going to do a promotion on Kindle and drop it down, drop the Kindle version down to 99 cents for the day. I wanted the ability to make those kinds of adjustments. And I haven't done that in a while. Maybe I should try that again. But when the book was, first out, I did a number of those types of promotions to get more exposure to it. And that helped a lot, too. Yeah, I think the other thing I learned, and I don't know if other authors are struggling with this, is that the Amazon reviews, they run some sort of algorithm to see if you're connected with the person, and they take down the review, if you're connected on social media. So I have had a ton of reviews stripped from my Amazon account, because there's someone who . . . and they may not even be people who know me, but they read the book, and they connected with me on social media, I accepted it. And so the algorithm thinks it's a biased review. And so I think there's something wrong with the Amazon algorithms. And I get their intention that they don't want your friends to all go in there and review the book for you. But it's not a great system. And a lot of my reviews were taken down probably a good 80% of my reviews were taken down.
Josh Steimle
Yeah . . . I mean, it's one thing to be connected to somebody on Facebook or something. But I mean, LinkedIn, I know authors who have 100s of . . . I mean, you can only have 30,000 connections, but you can have hundreds of 1000s of followers and I wonder if Amazon knows the difference?
Sarah Weise
I don't know what's going on, but I had a ton of reviews taken down. That's it. That that was an eye opener and I, a lot of my early marketing was to my own following. I think a lot of people do that.
Josh Steimle
Well, I mean . . .
Sarah Weise
You start with the people you know, and who know . . . and trust you already, and who will buy your book . . . or your email list. A lot of those people are connected with you on social . . . I think I might have done some something different. I don't know what that would be. But I might have done something different to get at the very beginning to get the reviews up. I probably would have had, if I had had the time and the foresight to think about it, I probably would have created a list of beta readers who would pre-review as well, I didn't do any of that.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, have somebody, people all ready to go so that the week you get the book out there, you get reviews quickly, and all that.
Sarah Weise
Right, right. I didn't do any of that. I didn't. I really had no marketing strategy because it wasn't intended to make me money. I really thought this was just going to be a way to get more speaking engagements and more business.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, and you weren't looking to get to . . . Yeah, and it worked, right? And that's one of the things I want listeners to take away from this, is that you don't have to do everything that every other author out there has ever done. You might want to do one or two or three things and focus on those marketing or promotion tactics. And that might be good enough. Or maybe you don't need to do any marketing, because maybe you just send out the book to 50 of your potential clients, and then they've got it. And that's all you need to get the results you're looking for.
Sarah Weise
And then actually, that is something that I did do when I initially bought 50, I bought as you know, a big box of 50 books. I personally signed all of them with little notes to all of my potential clients and I sent them all out. And that got a lot of responses.
Josh Steimle
That's great. That's fantastic.
Sarah Weise
That landed me some additional work at Ogilvy because they hadn't, I hadn't talked to them in a while. And because I sent them . . . a physical gift . . . so much rarer than just an email today. So just to get something in the mail. And I had sent them like three or four books to distribute in their office, the Denver office that I'd worked with in the past, and they were all reading them, and then ended up putting me on a bunch of proposals because I was top of mind.
Josh Steimle
That's fantastic. Well, Sarah, thank you for being with us here today. Now, at the beginning of this podcast, you teased us with this question that Google asked you about why Gen Z is not using search anymore? And what are they doing instead? Can you give us the answer to that question? Because I bet some people listening to this are like, she never answered the question. I want to know what the answer was!
Sarah Weise
I think if you boiled it down to one thing . . . there's so many, there's so many things that go into answering that question. But if you boiled it . . . I have a whole book written about it. But if you boil it down to one thing, it's that the question in the minds of Gen Z's has shifted. So, what people our age or anybody over 25 or 30 would say, what do I want to know? And then you'd go to Google. And you'd search it, and you'd go down a rabbit hole. Maybe you watch some videos, maybe read some articles, but you would type it into some sort of search engine to find out whatever it is you want to know. Instead of what do I want to know, Gen Z is asking themselves, what should I want to know. And so they're relying on the creators they follow. They're relying on the algorithms and the recommended feeds that they're spending hours a day scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through, to tell them what they should be interested in. And so that's why, that's why your 12 year old daughter . . . does she have an iPhone?
Josh Steimle
Err . . . she has more access to screens than I would prefer.
Sarah Weise
So that's why you will see her bored, scrolling for hours and hours and hours, because she's waiting for inspiration to strike. She's saying,” What should I be interested?” and just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh, I'm interested in that. But this generation, they have this superpower that millennials do not have. En masse . . . Gen Z . . . once they're interested in something, they will deep dive into it. And they will hyper-focus, this hyper focus superpower, where they will for weeks, hours, days, weeks at a time just look at all videos about that one thing, on all different apps, all different social media platforms, looking for little bits and pieces of nuggets of content on that one topic that they've become interested in.
Josh Steimle
You know, this is interesting because as you know, I lived in China for a few years. China kind of societally . . . came into the internet later than we did. And so they have Baidu where we have Google. Google's prohibited in China. And so they have Baidu. But I was surprised when I moved to China that they don't use Baidu the way that we use Google. I mean, we rely on Google first so much, and we use it all the time. And Baidu is kind of like, yeah, I mean, it's a very big popular website. But it's nothing like Google is to the Western society.
Sarah Weise
But they have about 20 different social media platforms. They have 20, 30, 50, there's so many of them in China.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, there are so many of these social media platforms. And we actually adopted a daughter from China a year ago. And she's 15. And yeah, she just sits there, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, non-stop going through Douyin, which is TikTok in China, and she just spends all this time on it. So what you're saying just clicks with me . . . it seems like in China, they kind of skipped that whole search phase and just went straight to the social media. And it's everybody. It's not just millennials, or Gen Z. I mean, it's the old people too. They're not searching, either. Everybody is using social media over there. And anyway, it'd be interesting to see some more research into that and how their use of it compares to Western audiences.
Sarah Weise
Yeah, and my book is certainly America . . . focused on American shoppers . . . and because that's where the bulk of my research was done. And there is another lesson I learned too . . . that if I had had beta readers read this book and give me honest feedback, somebody would have said, this is very Western focus, just write that on in, just tell people . . . they're getting research in the US. I have gotten a couple of reviews on Goodreads where somebody blasted me because it is not worldwide research, which it was never intended to be. Right. If I had had that feedback ahead of time, I just would have written the . . . the summary of the book a little bit differently.
Josh Steimle
Great insights. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for being with us here today on the Published Author Podcast. Where's the best place for people to connect with you online?
Sarah Weise
They can certainly connect with me on LinkedIn at Sarah Weise, W e i s e. They can also check me out at bixaresearch.com, if you're looking for market research, or for anything I can do to help you or support you in any way. And, if you want a free chapter of the book, you can just go to bixaresearch.com/free chapter or just take out your phone right now and text the word Hi to 66866.
Josh Steimle
All right authors. You notice what she just did right there. That's what you need to be prepared to do when you are a guest on podcasts too, to get that short code and the text thing. That's the way to do it. Thanks so much, Sarah, for being with us here today.
Sarah Weise
Thanks so much for having me.
Josh Steimle
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