The Publishing Performance Show

Rodney Miles - The Three Pillars of Self-Publishing Success: Product, Platform, and Publicity

• Teddy Smith • Episode 68

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Rodney Miles is the author of "The Book Dude's Guide to Self-Publishing" series and a self-publishing consultant with over 14 years of experience in the industry. Having worked on more than 300 book projects, Rodney has developed systematic approaches to help authors navigate their publishing journey. His background as a writer, ghostwriter, and editor evolved into a comprehensive consulting business where he helps authors through custom publishing projects while sharing his expertise through his books.


In this episode:

  • Rodney's journey from real estate to writing and publishing
  • The evolution of self-publishing over the past 15 years
  • Understanding the "ignorance gap" in the publishing industry
  • The three key stages of self-publishing: product, platform, and publicity
  • The 10 stages of book creation from planning to post-launch
  • Why the pre-launch phase is crucial but often neglected
  • The value of beta readers and how to use them effectively
  • How to increase your chances of a "lightning strike" success
  • The importance of treating your book as both an art and a business


Resources mentioned:

  • The Modern Author (Book 1 in The Book Dude's Guide series)
  • Publishizer.com - Platform for crowdfunding and publisher connections
  • Short-form book proposals as an alternative to traditional 50-page proposals


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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Informant Show. I'm here with Rodney Miles who is the author of the Book Dude series and he's also a self publishing consultant and he's worked on over 300 book projects so he really knows his stuff. So thanks for joining us Rodney. 

[00:00:20] Rodney Miles: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me here.

[00:00:22] Rodney Miles: I'm grateful. 

[00:00:23] Teddy Smith: No problem. Well, tell me a bit about your background and What inspired you to create the book dude's guide to self publishing series? 

[00:00:31] Rodney Miles: Sure In a nutshell, I think I always wanted to be a writer. I had a and talk about this in my book as a little background. I've had a love affair with books.

[00:00:41] Rodney Miles: All my life, uh, even as a kid, I often say, when I was little, my mom would read books at red lights and every opportunity she had and, later found it was a ready resource for really anything I wanted to find out about. So that continued throughout. In fact, I gave books my own of my own choosing more of a priority through school than the ones they.

[00:01:04] Rodney Miles: try to force on you and then go back after school and revisit the ones that were recommended to see why. But, I got sort of discouraged along the way. I think anyone, looking at a career in the arts, there's a fragility to that sometimes. not necessarily encouraged unless you're from a family of, professional artists perhaps.

[00:01:27] Rodney Miles: So I ended up, I just really wanted my own business coming out of school and did that up until about the age of 40 where the real estate market in Florida collapsed. So I had to make a decision and, My father encouraged me to sideline as a writer. Back then, this is about 15 years ago now, 14 years ago there was a platform called Elance, which is now Upwork.

[00:01:53] Rodney Miles: There were two platforms back then, Freelancer. com and Elance. com. And I just started writing at a penny a word. It was, very, you know, you remember those times just as much as the successes and the struggle and the learning and trying to juggle things. And, but I loved it. I loved it. I really gravitated to it.

[00:02:13] Rodney Miles: I took to it. I think within six months or so, I had a couple very regular clients. One in particular in Australia, where I was ghostwriting. And then I, they asked me to edit some of the other works. And then they asked me to run their little writing department. So I got to learn self publishing very hard and fast.

[00:02:34] Rodney Miles: And I just, I just loved it. I wanted to, you know, once I mastered, eBooks and paperbacks, I was very excited about making hardcovers and, and it just kept, even to this day get a lot of joy out of watching, you know, current news and things are happening. So that developed over 14 or 15 years to where.

[00:02:56] Rodney Miles: I now am I handle what I call custom projects, so I'll meet with someone who has a book in mind and find out their goals their budget, their timeline, and then get back with them in 24 hours with a custom project. I no longer do just flat fee projects. But more than that, I'm now also very interested in my book, the modern author, because that I think get you to ground, get you to level zero where you're on a level playing field, even with the big five publishers in terms of what's possible for you and your book.

[00:03:33] Rodney Miles: And it can save you lots of headache and lots of money. And sometimes be the difference between publishing or, or not publishing. And I think even more basic than that is I have an underlying belief that everyone has a story. And everyone should write a book. Actually, that's not to get more services or anything.

[00:03:59] Rodney Miles: That's because you're contributing to what I call the great library. So, and I often say, well, just imagine, you know, if your great grandfather had written a memoir, how amazing that would be for you to read today or so all that information helps the civilization. I think, 

[00:04:15] Teddy Smith: yeah, definitely. Everyone's got a book in them.

[00:04:17] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Now the book's called the book dude's guide. So really cool name. And I think it kind of sums you up a little bit. The book dude. It's called the modern author and there are, it is a series of books. So there's got three books in there in the series, but the first one is the modern author. Now what's that, what's that book about and who, it's aimed at beginners or people who are just starting out, isn't it?

[00:04:41] Rodney Miles: Yeah. Yeah. I found in my last 14, 15 years that a lot of, People I met, first time authors in particular, would have questions that were in common. They would, run into things. Not so much anymore, although it still exists, but if you go back five or ten years, there was a, there were a lot of cases where I found people were being taken advantage of.

[00:05:05] Rodney Miles: and this, is what I call in the book the, the ignorance gap. So, a perfect example would be, let's say the word publishing. If, when I was a kid, a publishing deal meant one thing. It meant, uh, you go back 20, 30, 40 years, it was quite hard. To get a publishing deal, right? There was no self publishing.

[00:05:28] Rodney Miles: There was a gatekeepers. You had the large publishers, you had some independent publishers perhaps, but they all kind of operated the same way. You could self publish at great expense. It generally meant back then that you'd have to come up with many thousands of dollars just to do a print run, for example.

[00:05:47] Rodney Miles: So you would print books in advance of the run. It's funny. Um, I think Hemingway's first book, for example. the publisher agreed to a small print run, and then for his next book, they agreed to like 50, 000 copies, you know, in advance, because that's an investment, cash layout for the publisher. So, publishing deal used to mean an advance of thousands of dollars.

[00:06:09] Rodney Miles: You, you, you get handholding through the process. There's generally a developmental editor on staff marketing department. And they would guide you through and you'd end up on, uh, planes and hotels, book signings and drinking champagne and making all kinds of money and bragging at your high school reunion, right?

[00:06:28] Rodney Miles: So, uh, it's changed drastically with self publishing. But I found particularly five years ago, it still exists a little bit and it still is meaningful today because I think when you get into this and I encourage everybody to. publish, you should understand, what a traditional publisher is, what a, what self publishing means.

[00:06:49] Rodney Miles: And then there's other types of publishers. There's hybrid publishing, service publishing. It's all a matter of how the arrangement, is put together. And you can see, you know, if you, for example, a client came to me and said, I, I, publisher's interested in my book. I, and I gently asked how much cash do they want in front, you know, cause that, that question alone will kind of tell you not that they're a ripoff artist necessarily or anything like that, but it just, it will tell you what kind of publisher, you're probably dealing with and what you should be aware of.

[00:07:25] Rodney Miles: You imagine the, generally the more, unless they have a vet, unless the publisher has a vested interest. In your book where they're sharing rights and royalties to some degree, uh, they may not have a deep interest in the success of your book once it's launched. Which is again, not necessarily good or bad.

[00:07:42] Rodney Miles: It can be, but, people should be aware of it. And that's a good example of, preparedness. And I think in my book you know, it's probably a three, four hour read, can really bring you up to speed so that you're safe. 

[00:07:57] Teddy Smith: So you talk about that ignorance gap with. Where people are maybe just starting out writing a book and they don't know some of those terms that you've just talked about.

[00:08:05] Teddy Smith: I, I see that all the time, you know, publishing is quite a murky world. I was just speaking to an expert who does book proposals. And there are so much things, so many things in book proposals that I didn't know about. And obviously when it comes to self publishing, that's not even needed. So are there one or two of the key gaps in people's ignorance or that they don't know about the self publishing that you think that they should be aware of before getting started?

[00:08:31] Rodney Miles: Sure, absolutely. Well, we mentioned publishing. You mentioned book proposals, and that's a, that's a good one, actually. in the, for your, uh, listeners, if they don't know, in the traditional publishing world, a book proposal, could be, as much as 50, 000 words, 50 pages. They could be quite lengthy. And it would include certain things, like a sample chapter or two.

[00:08:54] Rodney Miles: It includes a bit of a market analysis. It includes plans for marketing. It's kind of a, it's basically a business plan for your book. And it's very interesting, one of my favorite, if not my favorite current modern traditionally published authors, A guy named Eric Larson, who wrote Dead Wake, he wrote, uh, The Devil in the White City, which I think is his best book.

[00:09:18] Rodney Miles: But, he still does, according to, uh, caught him on a video saying he still does a full. Book proposal with every book, which I thought was very interesting. That's a lot of effort. Yeah, he does it himself. He may be assisted him. I'm sure he's traditionally set up. So he's, I'm sure he's got a literary agent, an editor that he keeps close, uh, and a publishing deal.

[00:09:41] Rodney Miles: at least, one publishing deal. I thought that was interesting. He still goes through the effort. Of that large full form book proposal. So today, a lot, what's really fabulous is there are some things that have evolved into self publishing that came out of best practices of traditional publishing.

[00:10:02] Rodney Miles: one of those is the book proposal I found, and I got to give credit to, uh, Publishizer. com with a Z. Many years ago, I found their site. I got to know Lee Constantine a little bit from there, and they have a kind of a crowdfunding format for finding a publisher. It's very innovative, platform.

[00:10:23] Rodney Miles: And one of the steps they recommend is the book proposal. Now, but they recommend a short form of it. And I recommend this with every title as well, because for instead of 50, 000 words in about 1500 words, and if you go to their site and follow their recommended recipe for what I call a short form book proposal, it's really, it's really critical.

[00:10:45] Rodney Miles: In fact, it might be, If, self published authors primary mistakes are generally cover, editing, and marketing marketing would be the really big one. The short form book proposal for about two or three hours of work will enlighten you so much as to what your book and where it fits in the market, what comparable books are.

[00:11:07] Rodney Miles: It even starts to inform you. As to, uh, pricing strategies and things like that. So that's a good example. I think Teddy of how some things have evolved. And really for the better in many ways. 

[00:11:21] Teddy Smith: So in your book, you've got the, in the modern author, the first book, it goes through like some of the main concepts of self publishing and the things you need to know in order to get started.

[00:11:33] Teddy Smith: So could you sort of step by step go through those sort of the summary of what those steps are that people need to know? 

[00:11:40] Rodney Miles: Yeah, sure. I learned, in my, uh, professional life, I guess I'm 54 now and I wasn't necessarily a fabulous CEO. I wasn't necessarily great at certain things, but I did find that, one thing I was very good at.

[00:11:57] Rodney Miles: Systemizing things. So it made me a very good number two man, for example, in a brokerage or whatever I happen to be doing. Maybe a little bit of leadership and, understanding the objectives of, that translated when I got into my business to help me as a self-publishing consultant, as a book collaborator.

[00:12:17] Rodney Miles: I really wanted to learn the process and systemize. The publishing process. Well, for the first part of my career, and by the way, today, I would encapsulate that as three stages in this self publishing process, I would call it, I call it product, platform, and publicity. And the product is the book. The platform is your author business with your infrastructure and some getting your book selling reader by reader.

[00:12:43] Rodney Miles: The publicity isn't just, it's a bit of a. Misnomer because in, in my view, it includes some strategic growth strategies, but it's basically jumpstarting a temporary spurts of activity to, to, uh, give your career and book sales, uh, your goodwill your list growth, all those fundamental things boost. But in the first stage in the product, that's what I specialized in for many years.

[00:13:09] Rodney Miles: And I broke that into 10. I want to say stages, but it's probably more, they're not, they're not necessarily linear stages. They, a lot of these things occur at the same time. 10 was probably a mistake. Um, and that's fascinating. You know, when you write a book, you really, it makes you reevaluate your own expertise.

[00:13:27] Rodney Miles: And I've watched it happen in business books. It's amazing. It's fabulous. I've watched it happen in memoir where people have sort of a psychological catharsis, you know, they, they, they have these epiphanies about their own existence, which is really beautiful. And if the process goes well, that's one of the benefits.

[00:13:46] Rodney Miles: So one of those benefits for me was codifying this process and the 10 stages I have in there are planning, writing, editing, design, marketing, production. Distribution, pre launch, launch, and post launch. So, before you give up, Uh, it's not as bad as it sounds. Production, for example, there's some pre planning that goes into how that stage is going to take place.

[00:14:18] Rodney Miles: It's basically preparing your files and your book description. Everything you'll need so when you do log in and upload your book, it's all ready. And it's professional, versus, you know, that can be half a day. That could be several days pre launch could be a lot of authors don't do a pre launch at all.

[00:14:35] Rodney Miles: And, again, not good or bad. It's all a matter of what your. Objectives are what your goals are. What do you 

[00:14:40] Teddy Smith: mean by the prelaunch? What happens in it? 

[00:14:43] Rodney Miles: That's when, uh, ideally, your book is ready and a book should follow. This is another thing that can go really wrong. If you, a lot of authors will start out the right of chapter and they'll start sharing it.

[00:14:54] Rodney Miles: I say, don't do that. write it for yourself. In a perfect world, you'd write a whole draft, even if it's sloppy. As one editor said, I can't edit a blank page, but I can edit a page of crap. So, uh, you don't have your first draft is just that it's a first draft. It can get corrected, developed and polished.

[00:15:15] Rodney Miles: That's part of the process. So, when you get to a point where you've got a first draft and it's fairly polished, and let's say you're working with an editor and a designer and you're kind of happy with it, a lot of authors go right to launch right there, or they'll do what is what's called a soft launch.

[00:15:32] Rodney Miles: They might not necessarily be looking to build a career as an author. They might want to publish a book to jumpstart a career as a speaker, you know, or, or, or add to their authority in their field so they can charge better rates or. As a, as a, a book is a, a, a miraculous, catalyst to finding media opportunities and, and finding new clients and engaging with people in a way that you can't really engage with them.

[00:16:00] Rodney Miles: Otherwise, can also become the hub of your marketing. So, but if you are doing a sort of a launch and you can't afford the time, I always recommend a pre launch period, of say, I think three months is probably I would say six months is ideal, but for most people, one to three months, you can accomplish a whole lot.

[00:16:20] Rodney Miles: That'll make a big difference. In your book and a lot, it's it's neat, Teddy, you ask about the prelaunch cause that's probably the most neglected of those 10 stages. 

[00:16:29] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:16:30] Rodney Miles: So 

[00:16:31] Teddy Smith: what, what, what the activities you do in the prelaunch? Cause it sounds like you're saying the book's live, but you're not launching it.

[00:16:36] Rodney Miles: Right. Well, it may or may not be live. We may set it up as a preorder through the prelaunch. So people can preorder that depends. That's a strategic decision. but some of the things you can do in the prelaunch include beta readers. Fantastic opportunity to have beta for a number of reasons. Uh, advanced reviews from friends and colleagues, editorial reviews, gives you time to send it out to bloggers and newspapers.

[00:17:03] Rodney Miles: It's also a period if you're going to seek a forward. I mean, imagine most people, if they're invited to write a forward boost to enhance your book or forward should. sorry, I don't mean to speak like Yoda there's a lot that can go on even to the point where you can start, marketing and you can start, split testing your marketing.

[00:17:21] Rodney Miles: So by the end of one, three, six months, when your book actually launches, you know what marketing works, you've split tested ads, you've got some traction. So it's really. That's clearly to me the most neglected, very often, sometimes I meet an author and they had no idea pre launch or post launch for that matter, which is less of a stage, but, that you could do a pre, actually the beta readers is another one of those things that sort of evolved out of a traditional publishing best practice.

[00:17:53] Rodney Miles: Of, the on staff developmental editor. If you don't have that, let's say you can't afford that because editing can be expensive. But if if it's well chosen, it's more than worth it. In fact, it's vital. You can do a beta reader period even with friends and, get invaluable, feedback, particularly from a 30, 000 foot view as to problems, confusions, and the strengths as well of your book.

[00:18:19] Rodney Miles: And when you come out of a successful pre launch period, I only found this out in practice. You know, all those things we mentioned, the results are fairly obvious. Reviews and marketing and, you know, a forward. One of the things I found in practice that you get out of a good prelaunch period is author confidence.

[00:18:36] Rodney Miles: So by the time your book is released, there's no, there's no hesitate. You kind of have an idea of how it's going to be received. And one for one, I've seen that follow through. So you have an opportunity rather than throw it out there and be embarrassed or upset about something. It's an opportunity to perfect it.

[00:18:56] Teddy Smith: Yeah, for sure. That's interesting that you group those things into pre launch because I, I kind of just think of. A lot of those activities as things during, I call it my launch process, but I guess you're right. It needs to be done before you got that book live, certainly before you do advertising and things like that.

[00:19:11] Teddy Smith: Sure. So the main steps you're thinking about that pre launch are getting editorial reviews. That's very interesting. Getting, uh, advanced reviews as well. And basically building that conversation and the buzz around the book a little bit. I think that's. Kind of what you're saying with the pre launch, do you have any particular tactics you use during that pre launch that you think, are the, you have to be doing and you shouldn't really be neglecting.

[00:19:34] Rodney Miles: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I think it goes back to my view is every author, every book has specific goals. They have specific ideas and reasons why they're publishing. So everything is catered to that, for some, a prelaunch period might not be recommended, I suppose. But as far as what you do during that period.

[00:19:56] Rodney Miles: And your terminology, my terminology, this is all valid, you know, you've found a process I've found this process that helps me organize a project and it makes it very handy to share, but I'm sure there are other you know, authors like yourself who found a process that works for them. And that's the nice thing, you know, once I work with someone very often, they don't need me for the second book, or they'll need me much less, you know, you get through this sort of the hump of that first book and everything really clears up.

[00:20:26] Rodney Miles: And my wish for people then is that they keep publishing. So, but, as far as, remind me that the question that as far as vital ingredients in the prelaunch. 

[00:20:36] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So in the, in the prelaunch, there are any things that you think. People just need to do like, are there any activities that people maybe neglect a little bit, but they definitely have to be doing.

[00:20:47] Rodney Miles: Yeah. Well, I think the most basic part of it is the, the beta readers is getting a full, at least first edited. And if you're on a budget, you might not do a proofread before your pre launch, for example. In fact, if you find, what's called an advanced review copy or an arc or in the business, it's called a galley.

[00:21:06] Rodney Miles: I found one at a from time to time you find them. I found one in a thrift store or used bookstore for the tipping point. By Malcolm Gladwell, and it had the cover that they ended up going with. But when you open the book, and this is what I do, what we do, we prepare a copy like this. With self publishing, it's most often digital that you're going to share, PDF generally.

[00:21:27] Rodney Miles: But you can print a book and share it in print if you're doing a little more extended pre launch. But getting beta feedback, I would say if you had to choose one thing from a pre launch period. It would be that. That's where you get the confidence, that's where you get the little road corrections. and it's not complicated.

[00:21:48] Rodney Miles: You're, you're asking people. I, I generally ask a dichotomy of, basically three questions, which as a dichotomy turns into six. what's the, uh, What'd you like the best? What'd you like the least? What was, uh, what made a lot of sense? What was confusing? You know, how could it be better? Some very basic overview questions.

[00:22:09] Rodney Miles: Inevitably, your beta readers will get back with you with spelling and grammar. Suggestions as well, which isn't really what you're looking for, but it's handy when they come up. So I mentioned the proofread. You can do that before your prelaunch. I like to do it after the beta reader, right after the prelaunch.

[00:22:30] Rodney Miles: And proofreaders are gifted people, frankly, so you want to find somebody with sort of that eagle eye. For finding things. And I know a couple of them now but they're invaluable. Otherwise, uh, things can slip through. So I would say the beta reader thing, but there's, there are many, many, I mean, it could go as far as.

[00:22:50] Rodney Miles: If you have a national bestseller strategy, which is different than an Amazon bestseller strategy, much different, actually diametrically opposed different then your prelaunch period becomes very crucial and it should be probably at least six months, at least three. In the old days, I talked to an old time publicist when I got into the business, I guess.

[00:23:12] Rodney Miles: Uh, he was in his eighties or so and loved his career and it was a publicist. The old time publicists really wanted your book for a year once it was done. They wanted a year for the marketing and the publicity and so on. And then very often it would come out in hardcover alone for specific, for reasons.

[00:23:33] Rodney Miles: I don't know. It's a, it's a fascinating industry. 

[00:23:35] Teddy Smith: It sounds like it's changed quite a lot in the 15 years or so since you, uh, you started talking about this. 

[00:23:41] Rodney Miles: Yeah. You know, it's fascinating. Like I was a real estate broker in another life and, the, internet listings, it was all threatening to change things in very large and disruptive ways.

[00:23:54] Rodney Miles: And I, uh, really believed that everything was going to change. I was younger. I really believed everything was going to fundamentally change what I found out. If I look back now, some of the basics didn't change at all. but some of the tactics have changed wildly. So it's like that in publishing.

[00:24:13] Rodney Miles: Traditional publishers are still around. I think they always will be. I think they serve a vital role. Actually. The, um, 15 years ago, there was a real contentiousness between tradition. I think traditional publishers at the time regarded self publishing as a threat. 

[00:24:30] Teddy Smith: You 

[00:24:31] Rodney Miles: know, and, there was a real something to contend with.

[00:24:34] Rodney Miles: You almost, it was almost an embarrassment to be self published 15 years ago, but that is, that is completely turned on its head. There are, there are very successful, traditionally published author. Mark Dawson's a great example. Others who, um, had very lucrative traditional deals. I worked with a New York Times bestselling author on a sideline self published project, which was very interesting.

[00:24:59] Rodney Miles: It didn't interfere with her traditional deal. This was a different genre and so on. So they really have self publishing has really risen to a profession and done right of a prestigious profession with a whole host of advantages over. I actually, I owe you a 99 percent of the time, anyone with their first book, I recommend you self publish.

[00:25:22] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So in your book dude series, you split it into three books. So what, what do each of the books cover and why have you split it into three? 

[00:25:32] Rodney Miles: Sure. it may turn into four, probably now in retrospect and looking back, but the, the idea was, I mentioned that three stage process.

[00:25:42] Rodney Miles: So after 10, 12 years, I started managing a little more for some of my author clients. And for myself, got into platform development and, realized probably the biggest mistake authors make is not dividing the the activity into the art and the business and treating it like a business. And if you are a pure artist and don't want to treat it like a business, that's fine too, but find someone who will handle that for you.

[00:26:10] Rodney Miles: And you can, you can cost effectively do that, for free on the cheap or, or with, prominent, assistants, you know. but, I've come now to understand it as a, well, I liken it to three stages, the product, the platform, the publicity, and that would basically be the main subject matter of books two, three, and four, for example, book one, the modern author, which is the one that's out now does go into the book creation cycle that I call it with this 10 stages and has a bit on each one.

[00:26:41] Rodney Miles: So you can. completely publish your own book with confidence and in a, and professionally just with that book. But I, I would almost call it book zero because it, it brings you up to date, you know, on these terms and so on. 

[00:26:56] Teddy Smith: So who's the sort of person that should be buying that book? That'd be someone who hasn't, who wants to write a book.

[00:27:01] Teddy Smith: They've got an idea, but they don't know exactly the steps they should be doing to self publish. Is that right? 

[00:27:06] Rodney Miles: Yes, I would say every, uh, certainly every, I would say every author, and that's not like a sales pitch particularly first time authors, of course. 

[00:27:18] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:27:18] Rodney Miles: But I do meet people. When you get into, when you talk about published authors, it's not a heartbreak out there.

[00:27:26] Rodney Miles: I think people, you know, they're very, very sexy idea, right? To publish a book. very exciting. probably the gut punch that sometimes comes is, you find out it's, it's still gotta be marketed. It's you're basically at zero you're, you're, you're a drop in the ocean. frankly, there are a couple million books published each year.

[00:27:47] Rodney Miles: So it's gotten to where, and more people are reading. I just read an article today by Ricardo Lafayette, that one of the founders of read, see, 

[00:27:55] Teddy Smith: right. 

[00:27:55] Rodney Miles: I hadn't, uh, great book on author marketing, but, he pointed out and I never considered, I was aware that more and more people were reading.

[00:28:05] Rodney Miles: I was aware that a couple million books now, I remember when we passed the 1 million mark. Published books in a year, he pointed out the demand for reading is increasing even faster than the supply of books. So that's good news for us, but you still have to differentiate it. My favorite, analogy is, met a guy selling hot sauce at a.

[00:28:25] Rodney Miles: Trade show at a county fair or something and areas with his wife is overalls. He's got hot sauce and, he had gotten his sauce, professionally produced, labeled and on the shelves at Publix, which is our main grocery chain here in Florida, Georgia and, He quickly found out. It was one thing to get into Publix, but he found out he still had to market.

[00:28:47] Rodney Miles: It wasn't as lucrative as he had hoped. So, the way I try to, uh, help with that, that aspect of your release and so on, is you're a drop in the ocean, you get on the shelf, yes, you're on Amazon, for example, or in Barnes Noble. Now, a couple of things can happen. It generally goes one of two ways. One is the slow boat.

[00:29:11] Rodney Miles: Sort of where you've got to build a platform and you, you, you create a business around, it's a product. The other one is the lightning strike. And this is where, you know, Oprah has you on and, midnight, your phone's blowing up and there's people in your house and your life is forever changed, right?

[00:29:28] Rodney Miles: That happens. It's called a lightning strike. Well, we can't necessarily dictate where lightning strikes, but we can promote getting struck by lightning. So you can walk, you can walk around with a metal suit and a kite. and there are things you can do by that metaphor. To increase your chances of the lightning strike.

[00:29:49] Rodney Miles: But I would put those things in the publicity category where you're not relying on them. You rely on your marketing and your platform growth. And you provide for possibilities of getting struck by lightning in a good way. 

[00:30:03] Teddy Smith: I like that. That should be a quote. I can't make you get struck by lightning, but we can provide the possibilities for you to get struck by lightning.

[00:30:11] Rodney Miles: Raise your rods. 

[00:30:12] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Well, great. I mean, this has been a good chat. I mean, I've, I've already read some of the books, so it's for people who are especially new authors who don't know what they're doing and want to really learn those basic concepts about self publishing. It's a great place to start and it will tell you everything you need to know and how the markets change.

[00:30:29] Teddy Smith: And, yeah, it will really get you up to speed before you start the work of actually writing and doing all that marketing and things like that. So it was a great book. So thank you for sharing it with me. 

[00:30:39] Rodney Miles: Thank you very much and it's a great platform you have here. I really appreciate being a guest. And, yeah, and then I, I feel compelled to mention like with your, with your Amazon ads platform.

[00:30:52] Rodney Miles: I think it's kind of vital 'cause a lot of people get involved and they try to promote and they get frustrated. That's the other, that's the other segment I think could benefit from my book and from your service. Because as self published authors, a lot of it's very hands on and sometimes some assistance with that is warranted.

[00:31:09] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's the reason we created that software in the first place was because people are struggling with their ads and didn't know where to start. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that. I tend not to speak about it on this podcast too much because I want to focus on other people's learnings. But if you're going to speak about it, then I won't stop you.

[00:31:24] Rodney Miles: Oh, yeah, no, it fits perfectly. It's the kind of service that, because I've been through that with Amazon ads and. You tend to give up if it gets too, you know, you don't see rewards. Results are the best motivator. So, it'll help you get there quicker. That's for sure. 

[00:31:41] Teddy Smith: Definitely. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us.

[00:31:43] Teddy Smith: If people want to get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to do that? 

[00:31:46] Rodney Miles: My website www. rodneymiles. com 

[00:31:50] Teddy Smith: Great. Well, thanks. We'll put links on the show notes, but it was great to chat to you. And we'll speak again soon. 

[00:31:55] Rodney Miles: Thanks so much. Thanks, Teddy. 

[00:31:57] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning into the publishing performance podcast.

[00:32:00] Teddy Smith: I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about. Publishing Performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start.

[00:32:16] Teddy Smith: Now this show is all about helping you to sell more books and if you're looking to boost your publishing game and to maximize your book's potential on Amazon, then Publishing Performance is designed to help authors just like you to grow your readership and to reach a much wider audience. Now I know that Amazon ads can be slightly complicated, which is why Publishing Performance It's like having a personalized ad account manager to create your ad campaigns, to choose your best keywords, and to make adjustments in real time.

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