How To Use Your Book To Sell Products, Services For Greater ROI
Writing a book isn’t a solution. It’s just part of the journey to business growth and opportunities to make a lot of money.
Tyler Wagner, Founder of Authors Unite, is a book marketing expert, and knows all the tactics entrepreneur-authors can use to grow their income on the back of a book.
BECOMING AN AUTHOR LET’S YOU LAND SPEAKING GIGS, SELL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
“If you want to become a paid public speaker, one of the ways to do that, is to first write a book and become an author. And better yet, a bestselling author,” Tyler tells host Josh Steimle in the latest episode of the Published Author Podcast.
Tyler launched Authors Unite almost seven years ago to help authors write and publish their books. The business also markets books, and the only service it doesn’t provide is coaching.
A number of the authors the company has worked with have achieved bestseller status with the Wall Street Journal. They’ve also maximized revenue, with their book opening doors to the sale of products and services and speaking gigs.
Tyler’s company worked with Dr John Jacquish, author of Weight Lifting Is A Waste of Time. Author Unite got the book onto the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for two weeks.
“We built Dr Jacquish a nice foundation to then really scale it,” says Tyler, who adds that Dr Jacquish sells the well-known X3 Bar and supplements. “Dr Jacquish’s book has just been crushing it with almost 1000 reviews in three months.
“I don't take credit for Dr Jacquish’s success. He was very successful before he even got to us.”
Another client—Dan Henry—wrote Digital Millionaire Secrets, and has done extremely well on the back of his book, with a program called Sold Out Courses. Tyler says that for Dan the thinking was that if he could sell five courses, from the investment made in his book, then he has already made his money back. Dan also secured new clients through his book.
Tyler says that entrepreneurs are free to decide how they handle the “accolade” of writing a book. It could be from speaking or sales of products and services. “We have seen people multiply their money,” he says.
ALLOW YOUR FIRST DRAFT TO BE TERRIBLE
Tyler wrote his first book not long after dropping out of university. He left, in part, because he wanted real-world experience of being an entrepreneur. With student loans to pay off, he volunteered at conferences and got amazing experience with some famous entrepreneurs, including Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Work Week.
Tyler’s book Conference Crushing taught him that writing is about completing the process, not perfecting the process. “What I mean by that is you have to allow your rough draft to just be as terrible as it wants to be.
“I'll speak for myself, mine was terrible. And then I hired a very good editor. And it's cool if you know this going in - that an editor can really take your book from a two out of 10 to a 10 out of 10.”
A lot of Tyler’s clients have had similar experiences and in his view writers have to accept that you just have to get your book out of your mind, and write it down.
“It can be sloppy. Read it out loud, fix it up a little, then give it to an editor and just let it be what it's meant to be.”
On writing, Tyler says: “I could only do it for an hour in the morning. Some people can do it for like 12 hours in a day and they sprint. For me it was exercise in the morning, my mind's clear then, and then I can write. But I could never do the writing at night.”
He adds that writing gets easier after the first book. “The first book is when you have all the doubts, the limiting beliefs like: ‘People are going to hate this’. But once you do it and you realize nobody's making fun of you online or anything like that, it gets easier.”
BEFORE YOU WRITE, START MARKETING
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneur-authors make is that they don’t begin marketing soon enough.
“The marketing begins before the writing. And that's where I see a lot of first-time authors mess that up. And rightly so, because the writing of the book is just so intense already. So it's like: ‘Let me just focus on that’.”
But Tyler learned from Gary Vee that the number one lesson is: Document, Don’t Create. In other words, document your writing process, and use this to kick-start your marketing.
“Documenting that process publicly is a great marketing tool.” explains Tyler. “If you just document the journey of writing and publishing your book, a lot of people will follow just for that alone. It doesn't take much time to just take a selfie in the morning and say where you are, working, struggling, something like that. Show those raw emotions of it.”
Tyler says some clients have started Facebook groups that within six months have 1000s of followers. He encourages writers to do book cover votes, or share vlogs of progress to make things really personal and intense.
LINKS
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Tyler Wagner
Today, our guest is Tyler Wagner. Tyler is an author, speaker, entrepreneur-investor and the founder of Authors Unite, which helps you become a profitable author and maximize your impact. Tyler, welcome to the show. Thank you, pumped to be here. Thanks for having me.
Josh Steimle
So tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where did you come from? And what do you do?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, so I err . . . a small town an hour north of Philadelphia is where I grew up. And basically how I got to where I am today is I went to college at the University of South Carolina. And I read a book called The Four Hour Workweek, which just changed my entire mindset. I know that that's happened for a lot of people that I've read that.
Josh Steimle
That book has changed the lives of a lot of us.
Tyler Wagner
Yes, yeah. And then what happened, after I read it, I actually decided to drop out of school. There were some other reasons as well. Another reason that might be of interest is that my major was entrepreneurship. And I asked my professor, like, just out of curiosity, I wasn't being like a wise guy or anything. I was just like, Can you share some of the businesses that you had run. And he literally said that he had never run a business. But his major was also . . . I was like, this is a vicious cycle. So either way, I decided to leave. And then I wanted to do public speaking, I just love interacting with people, I have a podcast as well. And what I came to realize from a bunch of my mentors was that if you want to become a paid public speaker, one of the ways to do that, is to first write a book and become an author. And better yet, you know, a best selling author. So, you know, I'm 20 just dropped out, 80 grand in debt. And I'm like, you know, why would anybody pay me to speak on their stage. They should probably pay me to, like, not speak on their stage. So I wrote the book. And then, you know, I wake up to hitting Amazon bestseller, this was nine years ago now. And it just completely changed my life at that time. Because, you know, being from a small town, when you drop out of college, a bunch of people . . . .it's one of those towns where everybody kind of talks to everybody. So people thought I was going down this bad path. And then they wake up like four to six months later in that range. And they're like, he's a bestselling author. Like this makes no sense.
Josh Steimle
And what was that first book? What was it about?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, it was called Conference Crushing. So how it came to be actually is when I dropped out, the way I decided to learn is I would just go to all these conferences, and I read books as well. But I was like, Okay, I'm not going to learn in a college setting, that I need to figure out another way. And actually even deeper into that what it was, is I would reach out to conference coordinators. And I would ask them, basically, if I could help with anything in exchange for letting me come for free because I had no money. And surprisingly, the first one that I asked said, Yes, and then I just went like, just completely all in on it. Because the first one Tim Ferriss was the keynote speaker.
Josh Steimle
Oh, wow. Awesome.
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, it was called Mastermind Talks, a guy named Jason Gaignard, he puts it on. And I reached out, he said, Yes. And next thing I know, I'm backstage with Tim Ferriss. I was like, Alright, first one that works. I'll keep doing that. And then, but what happened, though, that took off quicker than my public speaking hence that how we got to where we are now is people started reaching out to me asking me how I did what I did with the writing of the book publishing and the best seller. So what I did is I just tried it with a few of my friends to see if they would get the same results, because I didn't know about the whole Amazon algorithm right away, obviously. And it worked for them. And then I was like, Okay, I think I'm onto something here. Like I am able to help people through the whole process. And now nine years later I;ve worked with over 1500 authors, and I run Authors Unite now. So that's the story.
Josh Steimle
That's fantastic. So tell us about Authors Unite, then. I mean, you gave us the background story, then a bit, but what exactly do you do with Authors Unite to help authors?
Tyler Wagner
Yes. So we are two things. We are the complete done-for-you system, essentially. So we're a service publisher. So if somebody wants to publish with us, we just charge up front, and then they keep all the royalties and the rights, so pretty much the opposite of a traditional publisher. And then what we've really mastered though, is the marketing and that's where most of our business comes from. So we help people hit the list of Amazon, bn, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and we're actually working on a few new york times right now. keep you posted on that. And yeah, that's it just seems in the industry, Amazon, a lot of people do but the USA Today, Wall Street, not a lot. So a lot of our business comes from that. And then lastly is helping authors actually, like grow a business on the back end. So we have a team that builds sales funnels. Does the advertising. So pretty much, you know from book idea all the way to like successful online business from start to finish.
Josh Steimle
So of course, what everybody listening to this wants to know is, how do you actually do this? How do you get people on to Wall Street Journal? Hopefully New York Times in the future? How do you get them onto these lists? How do you get that marketing done?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, for sure. So Wall Street, USA Today, BN and Amazon, they're all based on sales alone, NYT, there's a lot of other variables, I can get into some of them. But basically, Amazon's like an hourly algorithm. So you know, if you want to get an Amazon bestseller, the right category, a bunch of sales in one day, you got it. BN is more about hitting like top 10 in their entire store. And it's a similar algorithm, though, you want all the sales to really hit in one day. USA Today, and Wall Street, are weekly lists. So that happens from Sunday to Saturday. And for Wall Street you want diversification of sales. So like, you don't want just all your sales to come from Amazon, you want like, depending on competitiveness of the week, let's say 7000 sales on Amazon, 1000 on Barnes and Noble, and then a couple in some other stores like Kobo or something. And how we do it is, this actually kind of cool how this all came to be is, you know, all the ebooks sites, like, I don't know, to name one, like bookbub is one? And there's like 1000s of them. Honestly, what I did is in the beginning, when I figured out the Amazon bestseller, I basically wasted a bunch of money and tested like all these sites out to see which ones would get me results. And then after years of doing that, it came to my realization that like 12 to 15 of them, depending on genre, would consistently get me results, anywhere from like a couple 100 sales to like over 1000 sales. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. And then I figured out how the major lists work . . . Wall Street in USA Today. And then I was like, I think if I can bring them all under my roof, and we focus on one book in a week, then we can hit it. So we . . I think we did our first one like five years ago. And it hit number eight Wall Street Journal. And it actually missed USA Today, the first one that we did. And then since then we've done over 150 of them, and we haven't missed. So it's pretty crazy. And it just came from testing. And then we do some other advertising. But the real meat of it is the email lists.
Josh Steimle
So you've got the formula figured out it sounds like?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, yeah, for those and I have I can talk about in my I have some partners that I work with now on NYT is that I've had success with NYT, but I've kind of just been behind the scenes on it. So I can't say like, I can't say I know everything about NYT, it's trickier.
Josh Steimle
So now, this isn't necessarily something that any author can just go and do. And everybody listening to this, of course, says, Oh, I want that. And if I can just plunk down some bills, and I can get that and buy it. That would be awesome. But you've got to have a good book to start with, how do you screen out people who are able to get onto these lists and take advantage of your services, versus the vehicle that you look at? And you're like, you know what, we'd love to help you, but there's no way we can do it with this book that you've brought to us.
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a couple different answers there. So for NYT, the screening process is way more, right? Because for instance, like if you don't have a traditional publisher, your chances are almost zero. So that's like the first question that will ask, which we are not, right. So they published under us, we probably can't get them on NYT. For wall street, USA today and the other two because they're solely based on sales-and this is just me being completely honest with your audience-even if the book isn't good, we can still get you there. Just the truth. So as far as the way that we do this is if somebody wants to publish under us, and we're doing a campaign, obviously, we're screening that book, like very much, so our editing team goes through it because our brand is on it. But a lot of the business we get is actually from partnering with publishers, and they'll refer the author to us and then we just handle the marketing side. So in that case, really the screening process is kind of just making sure the cover's good. There's no like curse words on there. And kind of things like that. But the actual interior of the book is almost irrelevant, which is sad to hear, but it is true. But what is relevant is like what I tell people all the time is what we'll either do is we'll help your book dramatically grow into the future. Or if your book is not good, then we can kill it really fast. Right, because I'm going to get it in front of a lot of people's hands. And it's going to go up for a week. And then it's got to, you know, come down so . . . .and then it would fall. I think that's where we left off.
Josh Steimle
Yeah. So around . . . for these different publications, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, how many sales? Do you have to get to have a shot at getting on there? And is it relative to what everybody else is doing?
Tyler Wagner
It is relative. So it completely depends on the competition for that week. But what I can tell you is the summer months seem to be less competitive. We've gotten people an example of last summer, we did a book called The Bezos Letters, and we got that number to Wall Street. And I think in total, it's sold 6500 around in one week. Whereas we actually got one person number one wall street, and that was in mid-January. And that one had to get over 10,000 sales. So you . . . yeah, January's obviously, when all the big business self-help books are coming out. So depending on your goal, if you want to be next to the biggest, January's your best bet, but if you're trying to get the highest on the list, with the least amount of sales, then summer is best to release.
Josh Steimle
And so in the summertime, about how many sales do you have to have? How many do you have to have just to get on the list? And you can say, Hey, we're a Wall Street Journal bestseller?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, I'd say, minimum you'd want to . . . I'd like to have 5000 just to feel safe. You know, because when we do the campaigns, right, like, we're actually guaranteeing or it's, you know, not a good situation. So we always, like really go all out to make sure it definitely clears. But yeah, I think 5000 like our first one that we did years ago had 4800 sales, and it hit number eight. So I would imagine maybe number 10 had 4500 sales around there.
Josh Steimle
And so what are some of the things that you're doing to get those sales? I mean, you said funnels and things, but can you get a little bit more specific and technical about exactly what you do?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah. So actually, for the sales, we don't use any like funnels for the book sales. That's just for a backend thing if they hire us to handle that, for the USA Today, Wall Street, and then I'll go into NYT a little bit because that's where funnels are actually involved. For USA Today and Wall Street, we discount the ebook to 99 cents for one week. And then I pay all my email list partners to only promote that book for that week. And then they'll blast it out to all their lists. We do some Facebook retargeting ads, too. So it is kind of like scarcity, right? So it's like, it's only discounted for this week. Anybody who clicks in the email, it's a lander page with the Amazon link, BN link and Kobo link. So they go to the page, they get pixeled, and then retargeted for that week. And then we'll also do some Kindle and Nook advertisements if necessary. And like all that comes together, and essentially, typically, our clients now are getting at least 7000 sales. But yeah, that's that's really how it works for us.
Josh Steimle
Yeah. And anybody can come to you, right, whether they're self-published, traditionally published, they can come and say, I want to do that marketing push, I want to get on these bestseller lists, and you can work with them.
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, for those first four. Yeah, NYT is totally different. But yeah.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, Yeah. So what does your ideal customer or author look like? What's the type of author that comes to you and you say, wow, this is the perfect fit. This is exactly the type of author we want to be working with? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's probably your audience, honestly, based on what you said earlier on, but it seems to me we get two types of people, maybe three. So one, and again, I'm just always shooting you guys straight, one is just straight up ego, right? Like, they don't care at all. And they're just like, I just want to tell people on the Wall Street. So I always set the expectations like, you got to think about just logically right? So we get you 7000 99 cent sales, and you paid us 50 grand to run the campaign . . . You're not you know, you're not making much money off that direct sales. How you leverage the accolade later for PR speaking and other things . . . we have seen people make like multiple on their money, but it's not just from the 99 cent sales. So it's that. Another is like very . . . just impact driven, they could care less, really about the money. They just really believe that this book is you know, their book, so they're willing to really invest in getting it into as many hands as possible. And then the last one is, you know, the straight up like, I guess more like business analytical, and they're just like, okay, let's crunch the numbers, how many speaking gigs do I need to get? How many coaching clients? What do I need to get for this to be worth it? So those are the three types. Sometimes they come in combinations. But that's and they would be speakers, coaches, consultants, you know, entrepreneurs, people like that. Mostly nonfiction. And you threw out 50 grand, is that what you're charging? Or do you have different packages, different levels?
Tyler Wagner
different levels. So our USA Today, Wall Street campaign is 50 grand, that's what we charge. Our Amazon launch is $7500. And then our Brand Amazon launch is 15 grand. And then, you know, we have like typical sales that happen during those launches as well.
Josh Steimle
Cool. So now you're helping people with more of the writing process as well, too. I mean, we've been talking marketing here, but about all the stuff that comes before that, if somebody comes to you, and they say, I've just got an idea, what's your process? How do you work with them from that stage?
Tyler Wagner
So we actually . . . what's funny is I started out with coaching and consulting. And then I quickly realized that, at least in the model I had built, I hit a ceiling pretty quickly, just because the support necessary it was, I don't, I think the most I handled at one time is like 20 clients, and then I just was like, Okay, I'm burnt out, this is crazy. So we are done-for-you or courses. So we don't actually offer writing assistance, I'd say it's more like we have a couple courses that can help you with the writing without our help involved. Or we do ghostwriting, or editing, you know, so you come to us with a rough draft, we can handle it or just an idea, I would connect you with one of my ghostwriters.
Josh Steimle
Perfect. So I want to go back a little bit to more of your personal experience, because you've written a bunch of books. And some of these, I'm guessing might have been tests for your own service to kind of figure things out. I saw that you have some ebooks that are ebooks only. Yeah, in your quiver and such. But tell us a little bit more about your own author experience after that first book that you already told us about?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, so well, everything, in my opinion, everything gets easier after the first book. Because you know, the first book is when you have all just like, at least for me the doubts, the limiting beliefs like is our people gonna hate this. And that was the experience I had it was it was rough writing that first book. But once you do it and you realize, like, you know, nobody's really making fun of you online or anything like that. It got easier. So after that, like Conference Crushing my first book, I do consider my main book, that's the one that's done the best. And then I have those little ebooks that I put together. But then the other ones that I'm really proud of are the better business books, and those are compilation books. So what we did is we would have 100 authors in each one. And they each write one chapter on their top business lesson. And then we compiled it all into one book, kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul model. And those ones had done pretty well. And just, you know, the experience of writing a book with 100 other people is pretty cool. So that was good. But I guess to answer your question a little differently, like, because my first book is the one I really think of as my book, the writing experience was like, every morning, I just, I could only do it an hour every morning, some people can do it for like 12 hours in a day and they sprint, for me it was exercise in the morning, my mind's clear then, and then I can get it done then and then I would go into like my calls and whatever else I had to do that day, but I could never do the writing at night. And another thing that I came to realize was that you . . . it's not about perfecting the process. It's about completing the process. And what I mean by that is you have to like allow your rough draft to just be like, as terrible as it wants to be I know my or I'll speak for myself, mine was terrible. And then I hired a very good editor. And it's cool. If you know this going in that an editor can really take your book from like a two out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. That's just that was the experience I had, and a lot of my clients. So as long as you can just get it out of your mind. It can be sloppy, read it out loud, fix it up a little, then give it to an editor and just let it be what it's meant to be. So that's my experience.
Josh Steimle
Cool. Yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about the brain power, how it fades throughout the day, I've had the same experience myself in the mornings, it's easy for me to churn out a bunch of content. But as the day goes on, especially once I hit four or 5pm It's like I'm at like 10% capacity. I'll sit there and it's just so hard to get that material out whereas In the morning, it's just so much easier for me. I know everybody's different. Some people are night owls, that's when their best work is done, other people, it's morning. But for sure, everybody says that they do run out of steam eventually. And you've got to recharge those batteries.
Tyler Wagner
Definitely Yeah, I'm a morning person I get up at like 4am sometimes. And that's, that's when I can focus. Typically, though, like five, but the night owls, I cannot relate to that. Not at all. So yeah, we're all different.
Josh Steimle
So can you take us through some of the success stories that you've had? Do you have any case studies that you can tell about? Tell us about specific authors and for our audience, perhaps entrepreneurs and how they've gotten a book launched through you, done the marketing, how it's helped them grow their business?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, for sure. So there's, we have I think we feature like 25, Wall Street's on our site. So I'll just pick a couple that are coming to mind. One that we did that was referred to us from Scribe Media, if you're familiar with Scribe Media . . . we did probably three months ago, I think it was August, this last August. It's called Weightlifting Is A Waste Of Time. And the author's John, Dr. John Jaquish. So we did his book and got it to number two, Wall Street. And just to be clear, I don't take credit for his success after that guy's actually very successful before he even got to us. But we got him to number two, and I, you know, we built him a nice foundation to then really scale it from there. And his book has just been crushing it. Like it almost has 1000 reviews in like three months, which, you know, you know, hard Amazon reviews are.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, that's crazy.
Tyler Wagner
Yeah. So it's, and it's been number one, and like all of its categories on Amazon the entire time, which you know, to just have a pop up for a day is pretty easy. But to keep it up there for that long, it's pretty hard. And he actually hit Wall Street for two weeks in a row. So you know that that's a pretty cool success story. And he's got, he sells this thing called an x three bar. It's like a workout thing. And then he has like, I think, like protein powder supplements. And the book, you know, leads into that business. So I don't know the numbers, but I can say, I think it's going very well as well. You know, another one, actually, that we just did. Last week, we did this one for Benbella Books is the publisher. And her name is Grace Smith, and she wrote a book called Close Your Eyes, Lose Weight. So she's a, like, she does hypnosis for people and helps them lose weight. I think she does hypnosis in other ways as well. That one hit number two, Wall Street, that was pretty cool. It was like Obama, Obama's memoirs number one, and then ours was number two. So she was very happy. She sent back and she was like, if there's anybody that I'd want to be number two next to it'd be Obama. So I was like, alright, that's cool. That's one and I'm trying to think . . . I'm trying to think in my mind, cuz some of these publishers like white label us, so I can't actually say who they are.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, but it's interesting the case studies you're sharing, because what you're pointing out, which you said earlier, is that the investment in your service, you're not going to make that back on the book sales. I mean, you sell 7000 . . . 7000 books at $1 apiece, Amazon's taking their chunk, obviously, you're not making 50 grand off of that. But if you have a health bar, or you have a service or some product that you're selling through that book, then it doesn't take that many sales of that other product to then get the ROI on your service.
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, and actually one of the best examples, and they have, and when I say lower ticket items that they're selling, right. Like I think is exercise equipment, like 500 bucks, and then she has like an app, that's a monthly subscription. So their back end stuff was lower ticket. But you know, I believe it's still worked out from an ROI perspective. One that we did, his name is Dan Henry. And we did that one as well a few months ago. And for him, the decision was like, pretty easy, because he's got a program that the book leads directly into. And I think the program is actually higher now. But when we work together, it's $10,000 . . . erm I think it's called Sold Out Courses. And that it . . ., you know, he has a mastermind, it all builds from there. So in his mind, he basically was like, if I can sell five courses, you know, from this investment than I already made my money back and you're telling me that’s probably going to get at least 7000 sales. Obviously, not every sale reads the entire book, but let's just say let's just even say it's like 20% I don't know. You know, it's still over 1000 people reading the book. And if five of them become a client, then we're good. So for people that have a good back end in place, I think it's a pretty easy decision from that front.
Josh Steimle
Got it. So now do you only work with the authors of a book that's recently been published? Or can somebody come to you with a book that was published three years ago? And would you be able to work with them still?
Tyler Wagner
We can still do that . . . it's it's really strange. The one that we got number one was actually, and that was, I can't remember it was in January, I think it was early. It was this January, that one was published 2016 I believe. So that was like four, you know, four years ago. So we can work no matter when it's published. I think it's kind of cooler to do when it releases. Um, but yeah, we can, we can do that.
Josh Steimle
So you brought up Scribe Media. So for those who don't know, scribe helps people get books written just like Published Author does, just like you do the kind of like we're all kind of overlapping here. So what is it that you bring to the table that scribe doesn't provide through their own marketing programs that they would refer somebody to you?
Tyler Wagner
Um, I think from you know, the experience thus far, I think it's mostly there's the major list best sellers. So the Wall Street, they do provide some marketing stuff, and I think they're still building it out. But for Wall Street and USA Today, I don't believe they're providing that so that really the only thing that they're referring over to us.
Josh Steimle
So for the authors that are looking at your service, how can they get the most out of it? What can they be doing now with their book, beyond just saying, well write a great book that has a great title and a great cover? Of course, yeah. But what can authors specifically be doing so that when they come to you, they're really ready for it, and they're set up for success.
Tyler Wagner
So there's two things there. One is, you know, obviously, if you don't really want to put any time into the marketing, then you know, you obviously can just pay us and we just handle it all for you. But I would suggest a hybrid. Because I think there's low hanging fruit there. Meaning one thing I would do is, you know, the marketing really starts before the writing. And that's where I see a lot of first time authors mess that up. And rightly so because the writing of the book is just so intense already. So it's like, let me just focus on that. And then I'll figure out the marketing later. And I learned this from Gary Vee, he says, document over create. And I don't think it should be necessarily either it's one or one or the other, both, both are fine. But as you're writing the book, creating the book, documenting that process publicly is a great marketing tool. And for me that it was pretty profound, because I always thought about marketing pieces as having to be profound, like a lot of effort put into it. But if you just document the journey of writing and publishing your book, a lot of people will follow just for that alone. And it doesn't take much time to just take a selfie in the morning and be like, on page 17 and still struggling, you know, something like that. And like just showing those raw emotions of it. And then what you can do is like, have a Facebook group that you invite people to, to join, and then that becomes kind of your launch group. And they basically are with you the entire time. Do things like a book cover vote, I'm sure a lot of your audience has seen stuff like that. And it just comes to be . . . . I've had people that have started that in the beginning. And six months later, they have 1000s of people on a Facebook group, and that becomes your launch group, didn't cost them any money, you have some time. So you do that. And then I'd say having that backend solidified and ideally tested. Right. So like, you know, if you know of Dan Henry, he's obviously done very well with sales funnels. So, you know, his back end was definitely tested before you know, the book, you know, before we did our whole launch. So if you can have that dialed in and know what your conversion rates are, and everything, then you'll know from the sales and eyeballs that we get you kind of what the monetary outcome will be. So I'd say those two things.
Josh Steimle
What are some of the common regrets? You kind of alluded to some there, but what are some of the other regrets that authors come up with after your program where they say, Oh, this program was so great, but if I had known what I was doing, I would have done this other stuff too, at the same time. I mean, they're starting, there's building that audience, are there other things that authors could be doing now before they work with you or in alignment with the work that they do with you?
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, it's the backend thing is probably the biggest. And really, because so there's two things there. The back end thing is the biggest but what happens is because tey they don't plan far ahead enough. They don't have that time to test it and they've already had it in their mind and have normally already told a lot of people when it's going to launch so they don't want to push the launch out six months. So That, and then there's a decision to be had of like, do I want to wait six months to get my back end? Right? Or do I just want to launch and most people choose to get it out right away? Because it's, it's been a year of their life. So they want to get it out. So I'd say that and then secondly is PR, right. So like the best thing, what I tell authors, you can do, like as soon as we do a huge launch for you, and you hit one of these major lists, leveraging the the accolade for like interviews, podcast, TV, blogs, whatever it might be, have a good PR, agency or person in place to really ride that wave with, you know, right after?
Josh Steimle
from your personal.
Tyler Wagner
Oh, I think you're muted. Yeah, so I just want to make sure I heard the question.
Josh Steimle
No, thanks. My keyboard is having some issues. I'm using my keyboard to mute on mute. And then there's like a delay with my bluetooth keyboard. So I'm blaming it on that . . . work it out later. So having worked with so many authors published, self published, do you see any difference from your standpoint with the authors that go through a traditional publisher versus self-publishing in terms of the success that they have with your program?
Tyler Wagner
Oh, wow, that's a good question. Um, hmm. I so I'd have to add in there, like hybrid publishers. So like Morgan James, is somebody we work with a lot as well, that's who published The Bezos Letters. And like, you know, Morgan James is a hybrid publisher, but they are . . . their whole system is incredible. Like, I just think the way that they have everything set up, and the success that they get for their authors is amazing. So I don't really think one type of publisher is better than the other. I think actually, what it comes down to is like what the author's goals are, and really what the author kind of brings to it as well. Right? So I, you know, traditional to me is like, if you already have a huge audience, and you want to try to go traditional and just have them take care of everything for you and maybe get an advance, which is . . . . advances are seeing less and less, you know, as time goes on . . . then I say go for it. But the the stories that I've heard of people that don't have that big audience to begin with, and then they try to get a traditional, it takes him like a year to just get a no, you know, and like, I don't know, so to me, and it's not worth it then. So yeah, I feel like it depends on the author, honestly, it's it's hard to say, because I've had really good success with hybrids, really good success with traditionals, and really good success with self publish. The only thing I'll say is when we do self publish, and we do a, and this will be cool for your audience. A lot of people don't know about this, there's a website called myidentifiers, which you obviously probably know about. And you can set up your own publishing company there, right? So I always recommend doing that. And maybe I'm a little nitpicky with it. But I just don't think that the people that are in the know when it says independently published, it's sometimes frowned upon. So a quick way to get around that is just set up your own publishing company by your own ISBN for 125 bucks. And then on all the sites, it'll say, your publishing company. I don't know. I think that's better. So,
Josh Steimle
Yeah, I learned about this, when I . . . . so my first book was traditionally published. My next book, I went to self publish it through Ingram Spark, and it said, Do you have an imprint? And I thought, well, no, but what's keeping me from setting one up? I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, I've started businesses, like, why not start my own imprint? And then I looked into it and I realized, this is super easy. I mean, it's basically coming up with a name, a logo and a little bit of, yeah, starting a business sort of, but then you've got your own imprint. And people in the know, and the publishing industry, I mean, they might look at an imprint and be like, what's this imprint? I've never heard of this before. But everybody else, nobody else is going to have a clue, because I look at I mean, there are a lot of imprints from that are under Penguin or Simon and Schuster, that I've never heard of, and I'm in this industry. So
Tyler Wagner
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And it is, it's one of those things that's like, it's kind of funny, because if you think about just, Is it like the question? Is it hard to start a publishing company? The answer that most people would think is yes, but what I mean, yes, like be able to do all the backend stuff that does take a while to learn all that. But to just set it up like that is actually you could do it in like an hour.
Josh Steimle
Yeah, that's about what it took me. So yeah, it was literally I was on Ingram Spark, and it said, What's your input and I was like, I maybe . . . I'll look into starting one and then like an hour later I'm setting up my imprint in Ingram spark and saying, okay, here's my imprint. Here's my logo. Here's my name, everything there. Was that easy!
Tyler Wagner
I love to hear that. That's awesome.
Josh Steimle
So, thank you so much for spending time with us here today, Tyler, what . . . are there any other things . . . Because you do a service that I'm not super familiar with? Are there any other questions I should be asking that I haven't asked yet.
Tyler Wagner
No, I mean, I'd say like, you know, a lot of as you know, a lot of people want to write a book. And I think, and I kind of talked about this a little earlier, but I think one of the biggest things that holds authors back is that they're, they're trying to write that first draft and make it perfect. And it's just never going to be that way. So I think if anything comes from this, I would just hope that more people that want to write books, they just let go of that perfection, and just allow that first draft to be awful. And then just like let it let it grow from there, and then go through the process. And if you decide to do it on your own, great, and if you decide to hire somebody like yourself or me, that's great, too. But yeah, I would just say do it because it's one of those things that people put off forever. And then I think they regret how long they ended up putting it off for.
Josh Steimle
perfect, great advice. So of course you're at authorsunite.com Is there anywhere else online that people can find you track you down.
Tyler Wagner
You can do Instagram, Tyler B. Wagner.
Josh Steimle
Perfect. Well, thanks so much for being with us here today, Tyler, and in telling us more about your service and what you do for authors.
Tyler Wagner
Of course, thanks for having me.
