The Publishing Performance Show

Ready, Set, Launch: A Live Panel on Taking Your Book to the World with Craig Martelle, Dale L Roberts, Julie Broad and Alexa Bigwarfe

• Teddy Smith • Episode 92

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I had the pleasure of hosting this special panel edition of The Publishing Performance Show, bringing together four brilliant publishing industry experts to discuss book launch strategies. The conversation covered everything from hard vs. soft launches to advertising strategies, review acquisition, and genre-specific approaches. 


Our incredible panel featured:

Craig Martelle - A publishing veteran with over 200 books published who runs some of the largest indie conferences in the world. Craig shared his unique approach of soft-launching a 10-book series in just 9 months, selling a quarter million dollars worth of books with minimal marketing.

Dale L. Roberts - YouTube expert and author who specializes in Amazon ads and book marketing strategies.

Alexa Bigwarfe - USA Today bestselling author and founder of Write. Publish. Sell, who offered insights into both children's books and romance marketing.

Julie Broad - Amazon bestselling author and founder of Book Launchers, who specializes in non-fiction book marketing.


In this panel:

  • Hard launches vs. soft launches and when to use each approach
  • Pre-order strategies and series launch considerations
  • Building and managing ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) teams
  • Generating book reviews without giving away free copies
  • Genre-specific launch strategies for fiction, non-fiction, and children's books
  • Amazon ads vs. Facebook ads for different book types
  • The importance of email lists over social media followers
  • Traditional vs. indie publishing distribution considerations
  • Common launch advice myths and misconceptions
  • Current and upcoming book projects from each panelist


Resources Mentioned:


Connect with our panelists:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: So, hi everyone. So welcome to this live panel show called Get Set Launch. My name's Teddy, I'm the host of the Publishing Performance Show. I've got an unbelievable panel here today, that we're gonna be going through today. I'm sorry that I'm sa in the dark. I'm in Portugal today and there's been a bit of a, a power cut, which means I've had no internet or anything today, which means I'm sat in the dark and with, you'll just have to look at this kind of like renaissance painting version of me rather than a, a good version of me. 

[00:00:32] But we've got unbelievable lineup of guests today. So let me just give you a quick introduction to who everyone is. So firstly we've got Alexa Bigwarfe, who is USA Today, bestselling author, and she's also founder of Right, and she's helped countless authors to navigate the complexities of publishing and marketing their books. 

[00:00:49] She's also the co-creator of the Women in Publishing Summit. We've also got Dale L. Roberts. I'm sure you'll know him from his YouTube channel. He's an award-winning author. He's a YouTuber self-publishing expert. He's got 50 books and he is all about helping people master books on Amazon with his brand new book, and also why publishing his brand new book. 

[00:01:07] Craig Martelle, who's I, I've put him down as a publishing legend. He tried to edit that part out, but I'm afraid I'm gonna keep it in. And he is written over 200 books and he is run the largest indie conferences in the whole world. And he is helped thousands of authors build their full-time writing career. 

[00:01:20] He's an absolute expert in launching books quickly, and that's why he's been so profic, and that's what we're going to be talking about with him today. And lastly, we've got Julie Broad, who is the num Amazon number one bestselling author, and she's also the founder of book launches, which is a service to help people launch their books, especially non-fiction authors. 

[00:01:36] Now, Julie's mission is to really help non-fiction authors to write and promote their books that really promote and boost their brand and business. So welcome everybody. as I mentioned before, I'm your host. I'm Teddy Smith. So I'm the host of the Publishing Performance show, and I'm also the partnership manager for Publishing Performance, which is an AI ads management tool, which we can touch on a little bit today. 

[00:01:57] So I thought we'd start with a bit more of an open question, just to go through each guest and to get 'em to give a background about what their approach is to launching books. And the first question is, when you think about launching a book, what is the number one thing you believe authors must get? 

[00:02:12] Right. And we'll start with Craig. 

[00:02:15] Craig Martelle: Holy cow. We're, we're talking launching books. Okay. Yeah, the, The first thing you have to decide is, is what you're gonna do. Are you gonna launch a series or standalone? And that significantly changes how you, how you, conduct a launch campaign. Are you gonna do a hard launch where you build up to it or are you gonna do a soft launch? 

[00:02:35] I wouldn't recommend a soft launch unless you already have an established readership. So pretty much a hard launch. You're gonna prepare for it, you're gonna advertise, you're gonna promote. And one of the key things is if you're gonna write a series, you must have that second book's link when you publish that first book so people can get that instant gratification and order that second book when they read and enjoy your first book. 

[00:02:58] So you have to decide hard launch, is it a series? And make sure you got the second book in that series up for pre-order, even if it's a year down the road when you publish the first book. 

[00:03:11] Teddy Smith: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Craig. and then we'll move on to Dale. 

[00:03:16] Dale L. Roberts: You know, I think Greg touched on a lot of really good things, so I don't want to repeat anything he said. 

[00:03:21] So I'd say trying to lock in, how are you gonna get some reviews upon launch that are gonna be consistently trickling in on a regular basis? That third party credibility really goes a long way in converting into book sales. So how are you gonna get that? And it's not just a simple thing of like, well, I'm just gonna ask people like, okay, what does that look like? 

[00:03:39] What are the action items that you're going to do in order to get X amount of reviews? Maybe could be 15, could be 20. But it's understanding like, how am I going to load up this book as soon as humanly possible so that way I could grease a little bit of the wheels here of readers buying your books. 

[00:04:00] Teddy Smith: Brilliant. Thank you very much. And Alexa, let's go to you next. 

[00:04:06] Alexa Bigwarfe: Yeah, I think, perfectly stated by these two gentlemen, but, really building the readership, building your, word of mouth marketing. I think it's just, it's, I don't think people really realize how much, especially for a first time author, how much creating buzz around their book, because nobody knows who you are. 

[00:04:26] nobody knows who some of us are after lots and lots of books. So you've gotta be out there building that momentum, building the buzz, making sure people are seeing the book everywhere. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. and a lot of approaches to take. But I, I really wanna reiterate one thing that, that Craig said, and that is the, the building up of, you know, deciding whether you're doing a hard launch or a soft launch. 

[00:04:49] And really in the beginning, as a first time author, making sure that you're taking the time to build an email list, to get advanced reader reviews, to get your name out there. Because it's really, I think it's really hard to stop for, to, to build that after, after the fact, unless your plan is. Just publishing more books to build that readership along the way. 

[00:05:08] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. And Julie, let's go to you, just for the quick intro question, then we'll go dive a dippy bit deeper into some of the answers we had. 

[00:05:17] Julie Broad: Yeah, I think the, the big key, I mean, they covered so many good things. I don't wanna go last again, thanks, but, but, but I think it comes down to really knowing your positioning before you even start writing the book. 

[00:05:30] Because a lot of people write a really good book, but it's poorly positioned, so they don't know how they're going to appeal to their specific reader or even how they're going to achieve their goals. Kind of going back to, you know, I'm all nonfiction, but going back to Craig's, you know, is this a series or, you know, what are we doing with the book is knowing that before you start writing so that you can position it so you are set up to succeed, but you're also set up to appeal to a specific reader and actually sell books at the end of this. 

[00:05:56] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Perfect. That's really good answers. Thank you very much. Now, Craig, you mentioned when you were chatting about the difference between the hard launch and the soft launch. Could you go into a bit more detail about what you mean about the two different types of launches there? 

[00:06:10] Craig Martelle: You bet. in 2017, we launched 10 books in nine months, in a 10 book series. 

[00:06:17] and that was, we only did soft launches because we were delivering a book every 28 days. I was writing, all I was doing was writing. I wasn't really doing any conferences, I wasn't doing anything else. No secondary efforts, just writing books. So I'd write a book and we had the process dialed down. Where I'd send half the book to the editor when I finished the second half, I'd hit, the end and I'd send that to her. 

[00:06:42] I'd have it back within two days, no more than three proofreaders would get it for two days and then it would get, go up to be published. And this was the era of only one month pre-orders from Amazon. So we didn't bother with pre-orders and we were just, we published them when we had them. We sold a quarter of a million dollars worth of those 10 books in 2017 doing nothing but soft launches. 

[00:07:04] That means publishing as soon as the book is ready. And that was it, just because we told our readers keep watching and we built up our Amazon followers hugely. So they got that notification, Hey, the next book in this series is out and one after another. We did, like I said, we did 10 books in nine months, so the ready for soon, soon. 

[00:07:26] A huge, huge, readership, following and picking up the next book. Now, hard launches, that was pretty much every book after, 2017 when we had this following and wrote 10 books in a 10 book series, all in that one short timeframe. Otherwise, it's hard launch. You have to prep the readers, you have to tell 'em it's coming. 

[00:07:47] You have to keep, keep at it, build up those pre-orders. And now that you can do a year long, pre-order period, I do that on most books, even if I know it's gonna be ready in three months. That, so I'll put a year on it just to start building the, the momentum, get those pre-order sales because that makes launch day big. 

[00:08:04] And you get that nice, paycheck on launch day. It's almost like a Kickstarter where you get paid for the book before the book comes out. advertising, I would say a minimum of that. You don't wanna do too much and spend too much money because we are in the world of instant gratification. People. 

[00:08:22] When people see the book, they want the book. And. getting the word out is a big thing. I do not do, arc. I do not do advance reader copies. I simply ask my readership, just like Dale said not to do. and I've got, a hundred thousand reviews on Amazon, so it works okay for me. building, building that readership and telling them you're not gonna get an advance copy 'cause I don't do that, but you will get, the book when it comes out. 

[00:08:49] Please, review it. Kindle Unlimited. So most of my readers are older and I get 'em for, for, at no additional cost. It's not like they have to pay 6 99 for the book and then, and then please leave a review. And I put that in all the things and I ask my readers. I, I get, follow up with all of the even numbers. 

[00:09:07] If I have 48 reviews, I'll say, Hey, I only need two more reviews. And of course, 10 people jump reviews. I have 98, I have 39 and and like that. And, readership. We'll answer the mail. If they like your books and they like you as an author, they'll answer the mail and they'll step up and, and give you those reviews. 

[00:09:26] Social proof is good for post facto and leading into the book. It's all you saying, Hey, this, given little snippets doing, memes with quotes from your book, some artwork that you can get for your book. when you have your cover, take those elements out. All different kinds of things to build up momentum and energy and interest in your book before it releases, is what makes a difference with a hard launch as opposed to soft launch. 

[00:09:54] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's amazing. And you, you've got an approach of like releasing books as quickly as possible. Does that have an impact on whether you do like a hard launch or a soft launch with your book releases? 

[00:10:05] Craig Martelle: I, I've slowed down. those were the heyday of, but I've gotten older. I've had heart surgery since then, and so yes, I, there's, there's a high stress to. 

[00:10:17] Read it, releasing books quickly. 'cause I, and also maintaining the quality. I always have, have, a good quality on my books. I don't compromise that. Even if I am writing it in a month, it's still read the book, edit as I go. I'll be in the chair for 10 hours to get 2000 words. And anybody, any professional authors out there, they know, hey, you can write 2000 words in an hour or maybe two. 

[00:10:40] And I spend a long time looking at those words, making sure they're the right words. But I get 'em every day. releasing fast now it's, slower. I, yeah, slower, like 10 books a year, nine to 10 books a year and more intentionality behind them. I try to do a hard launch with each book now. 

[00:10:59] Teddy Smith: Yeah. That's amazing. 

[00:11:02] so Julie, when you are. We we're gonna talk a little bit about how you do different releases for different genres. Now I know, 'cause obviously you focus nearly entirely on nonfiction books. Let's go through how that nonfiction launch strategy looks compared to some of the things that Craig was talking about and also just generally how you approach that nonfiction book release launch. 

[00:11:22] Julie Broad: Yeah, that's gonna go differently for authors whose goals are like, I'm going for the big launch because it's gonna feed into, you know, my bigger picture goals. Whereas some people actually are writing a book to grow their platform, right? So they are going to launch the book with not an audience yet, and then they're going to build momentum after the launch. 

[00:11:42] Those are kind of the two big ones. And so if you're going for that big, you know, USA today bestseller list or you know, just a big slashy launch with, you know, high Amazon rankings, you need more time, right? You need to do a lot more things to nurture whatever audience you have, you know, work your connections. 

[00:11:59] you know, one of the things I always tell people is my first book. It topped Amazon like number one in print books. But it wasn't because of my audience, but it was because of my network. I had a lot of people in my network that supported that launch that had good, you know, a good volume of people in their audience that were a perfect fit for the book. 

[00:12:16] But that took time, right? You know, making sure everybody knew about the launch and were ready to promote it, and all of those things. So spending time in pre-launch to get the word out so that you're generating sales and buzz so that the launch is big. That's important, but not everybody has an audience or a network already. 

[00:12:31] A lot of non-fiction authors are writing the book to establish themselves as an expert, and in that case, you know, however long you spend in pre-launch doesn't really change what's happening that much on your launch day. You can run some promotions and do a few things, but really what you're going to do is use that book after launch. 

[00:12:48] To get yourself on podcasts and media and find partnerships and, you know, grow, grow that, almost use the book like a lead magnet in order to start building that platform. So two, two very different approaches, for very different goals. 

[00:13:02] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's one of the things about nonfiction authors I noticed a lot is a lot of people use them often just as a lead magnet rather, rather than just as a way of making sales in the first place. 

[00:13:12] but if you don't have that email list at first tactics that people can use to maybe start building that email list up or to use other people's email lists to get their book out in front of people as quickly as possible. 

[00:13:26] Julie Broad: Yeah, I mean, one of the big things I always tell people is, please don't offer a free chapter. 

[00:13:30] Nobody wants your free chapter. Let, even if you, even if it really is a free chapter, you know, name it something else, right? Let's give it a good curiosity, benefit driven name, and call it that instead of a free chapter, and then drive people to sign up for it. That not the free chapter, because that will read will really, really help. 

[00:13:51] I never 

[00:13:52] Teddy Smith: read chapter in the books, 

[00:13:53] Julie Broad: right? Nobody, nobody does. But if you give it something that, you know, gives it value, right? Like I have a chapter called, how to Save 1,418 Hours Writing your book, right? So just call it the, you know, time saving Guide to writing your book or something like that. At least not the free chapter. 

[00:14:10] But I mean, that's, that's one thing is how you position whatever it is that you're giving away for free, whether it is your full book or part of your book or something like that, and getting that simple landing page set up and ready to go so that when you do start talking about the book on social media or when you're doing podcast interviews or. 

[00:14:28] If you get some small speaking engagements, you're driving people to sign up for that list and giving them a reason to do so. Right. And that's why I joke that it can't be a free chapter 'cause nobody wants the free chapter, but they want the outcome that you can offer on the other side of it, which is why you wanna label it with something that creates curiosity or, or promises a benefit. 

[00:14:47] So at the end of the day, if you don't have an audience, your your game is getting in front of other people's audiences. So you have to start doing research and figure out what's gonna add value to other people's audiences and start offering it. 

[00:15:01] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you very much for that ques answer. 

[00:15:03] Now, Alexa and Dale, I know you have books in like multiple different genres. So do you have, do you change your approach to launching the book based on the genre or do you have a standard, procedure that you follow for each one? should we go over Alexa first? 

[00:15:17] Alexa Bigwarfe: Yeah, totally different strategies. we do, I have a children's book picture company. 

[00:15:22] That one is worlds different from anything else. 'cause trying to establish that base, you're really trying to get into schools, you're trying to get into libraries, you're trying to do things where you need a lot of things that a lot of self-published authors don't need, like CIP blocks and, official trade reviews and things like that to really make a big difference in some of those areas. 

[00:15:43] So we spend, we spend every launch is a hard launch and I mean that in all the ways, like there's a lot of time spent finding teachers and, librarians and influencers and, building the list and creating, resources for teachers and all those kinds of things. Then on the non-fiction side, Julie's the master. 

[00:16:03] Everything she said. I agree with a hundred percent. When I launched my original one, it was to build my email list and to build my business and have that there. So, Well, my original one was grief and loss, but the original writing one was meant to build the, the, the, the list. And then with fiction, I really like the, the whole idea of, influencers and arc teams and, and promos and all the things that you can do to really create a lot of excitement. 

[00:16:33] And I write in rom-com and fiction and the rom-com world is just a blast to be in because so many of the authors in there are just having so much fun doing co-author things, like not just only sharing each other and promoting each other's books, but by literally writing series together where, you know, eight authors will come together and each one of them will write and promote a book in the series. 

[00:16:56] We're about to go, we're about in next July we're gonna do a cruise with writers and readers. And I mean, we're, we are just having the time of our lives over in the ro and so if that's where, you know, come, come hang out with the romcom writers, it's a good, it's a good time. But yeah, I think the approach is, is. 

[00:17:12] It's different wherever you're coming at it from and whatever you have to have as a base and whether or not you are focusing primarily on being able to publish through Kindle Unlimited or whether you need to be in other places. For me, on the children's book side, there's, we almost to really, really see the results we want. 

[00:17:31] We have to be traditionally distributed because we need to get into Follette and Baker and Taylor and other places that are a lot harder for, for self-published authors. So it it that, that's one of the biggest thing that author authors have to learn. And it was mentioned earlier about knowing, knowing your audience, knowing the things, knowing, but knowing the genre and knowing the norms of the genre all the way across the expectations, not just of readers, but the expectations of buyers at a higher level as well. 

[00:18:03] Whatever, whatever that's going to be. So, yeah. 

[00:18:07] Teddy Smith: Perfect. It sounds like you spend a lot of time trying to understand exactly where your audience would be expecting to see your books rather than just having that same process for each one. Mm-hmm. For the children's book launches, you, you, you sort of touched on a couple of things there, which I thought sounded quite different. 

[00:18:20] What, what, what, what are the ways you do those children's book launches, but I think by getting them into libraries and schools and things like that, how does that work? 

[00:18:28] Alexa Bigwarfe: Well, we do, because we do, distribute, traditionally our launches are very long. They are a minimum of six months out. We order print runs. 

[00:18:38] So we have physical copies of the book, three to six, well, six to nine months usually in advance. So we're doing a lot of outreach to, we do, we submit all of them for at least three trade reviews because those are really important when librarians and, are in particular are looking for books. they'll look to see if they have trade reviews associated with them, all of those types of things. 

[00:19:02] So it's really just, it, it's a, it's a matter of spending the time, getting the book into, advanced reader places like Net Galley, getting it out into, we built a tremendous list of, teachers, li school librarians and, public librarians that we put them to. We, we spend a lot of my budget goes into like. 

[00:19:23] The American Library Association market and marketing to them and doing things of that nature. So, you know, it's a lot easier to launch every other genre. I would say Children's book is, is quite challenging if you're trying to be super competitive. But it's also a lot of fun and there's a lot of joy because they get to go into the classroom and read their books to kids and have a good time and, and do all sorts of fun things like that. 

[00:19:47] But it's just, it's a much, it's a much, it, it's an involved process, I would say. 

[00:19:54] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you very much. And Dale let's you, you've got a couple of different genres as well. You write in, so how do you approach the write the different genres when you are looking at launching a book? 

[00:20:04] Dale L. Roberts: I, I, it's just have a similar system and process for most everything that I've put out. 

[00:20:08] I mean. Been doing it for over a decade now. So now it's a, a process of just tweaking and iterating and trying to improve with each one of those book launches, finding what's going to work for a specific genre and then doubling down on it in future, publications and such. So it's a lot of trial and error. 

[00:20:28] but ultimately I usually don't change it much. But then again, I'm not crossing very much genres. A lot of it's primarily nonfiction and I'll be delving a little further into fiction here, later on this year. 

[00:20:41] Teddy Smith: Oh, nice. Do you have a ARC team that you use to for protein in your books when they launch? 

[00:20:47] Dale L. Roberts: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I, I usually try to gather those together at least two to four weeks before the launch so that way I can have those reviews ready to rock and roll as soon as the launch date comes along. it's just a case of trying to communicate that with, my readership and getting it out there. 

[00:21:05] 'cause a lot of times they don't know. You could say it a million times and some people are like, oh, I didn't know you had an advanced reader copy out there. So you have to just continually communicate, communicate, communicate. yeah. So that way you can really build that ARC team up. And something I hadn't touched on before when it was coming to reviews was thinking about the fact that you're not gonna have a hundred percent of your ARC team leaving review. 

[00:21:28] It would be nice. I would love that to happen for each and every single one of you watching this. But the reality is only a percentage of those people are going to leave a review. And unless you have a ARC team of like three people and they're like your mom, dad, and sister, of course they're gonna leave a review. 

[00:21:44] But all joking aside, you're gonna find that there's going to be a percentage. Generally speaking, I tell people you're gonna see about 33% of people, a third of people leaving a review on launch date and eventually starts to trickle out. It'd be great if it's closer to 50, 70%. Please make me wrong. I want you to prove me wrong. 

[00:22:03] If you've got an ARC team that can bring in more than a third of them leaving a review, then you've done a good job. Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:10] Teddy Smith: Yeah. I mean, now you've got obviously a, a huge YouTube channel, and I'm guessing you've got that quite a big ARC team already. But if you think back to when you were maybe getting started, you're a bit smaller, you didn't have all of tho those processes in place. 

[00:22:22] What was, what would be some good advice you'd give to people to start getting that ARC team in place and to really, building that team that's gonna promote your work for you? 

[00:22:30] Dale L. Roberts: Email, email, email, email 10 times over. that was all I had prior to YouTube was an email system. Getting that email newsletter and communicating with my readership on a regular basis and not just, well, I've got all these emails, I. 

[00:22:46] I don't know what I'm gonna talk about. I know what I'm gonna talk about and it's pretty easy because I'm gonna talk about the things that they come to expect from me. So that way they open those emails and then as I'm building that know, like, and trust factor between myself and my reader, they're going to be more apt to want to become part of an advanced reader copy team. 

[00:23:05] When I offer something like that. If you want to go ninja level, you can always just segment your email subscriber list down to the people that are the most active, who are the ones that are most often opening your emails. You're the ones that are clicking on some of those things. I would focus on them, segment on them, and see if you can be able to pull some ARC readers from there before you give it out to the more general audience of your email newsletter. 

[00:23:31] Teddy Smith: Oh, that's really interesting. So actually what you're saying is you're just building your email list and you're building your subscribers through that way, and then you're trying to get 'em to become your ARC team. Rather than saying A, this is my ARC team, can you guys just go promote work for me? 

[00:23:43] Dale L. Roberts: It's, yep. 

[00:23:44] Kind of like a different type of a funnel, but not a sales funnel. You're, you're, it's review funnel. 

[00:23:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah, exactly. Now, Craig, I, before you mentioned you didn't, you don't really focus on having an ARC team, so do you do anything to, try and get the, your books in front of the audience at first, or is it just a case of using your email lists to get 'em to read your books as well? 

[00:24:07] Craig Martelle: I'm sorry, you, I, you kind of broke up there. Could you say that again? 

[00:24:11] Teddy Smith: sorry, Craig, you, so you, you mentioned before about you not really having an ARC team that you use for your books, and you actually just focus more on getting your readers to, read your books when it comes out, as one of your launch processes. 

[00:24:23] Was there any reason why you didn't want to have that ARC team in, in place, or, or do you just, is it the same approach but just under a different name? 

[00:24:30] Craig Martelle: Yes. As Dale said, if you get a third or a half, you're doing well. Well, that would irk me 100000000%. So, just like when I first started writing after I retired a second time and I said, I'm not gonna go tra because I absolutely am not gonna get a rejection letter. 

[00:24:50] I'm not putting up with that crap. I've been a, I'm a retired Marine major, I'm a retired lawyer and I'm not gonna get a rejection letter and I'm not gonna send somebody a free copy of a book and get a rejection letter by them not leaving a review. So hell no, not playing that game. I put it out there if they pay for it, well, they've earned the right to leave a review or not, and I ask them, and I'm pleasant. 

[00:25:13] I share pictures of Stanley and, I talk about Alaska. So on my newsletter, I've got like 17,000 on my newsletter list and I get good engagement there. But, if they wanna, they're paying for the privilege to either leave a review or not leave a review. I'm not gonna give 'em a free copy and have, and get no review. 

[00:25:31] Just homey ain't playing that game. 

[00:25:34] Teddy Smith: Do you do anything to try and get people to leave reviews, field books? do you have, and if you, obviously you've got that big email list already. Do you have any advice for people who are maybe lesser reviews and less, less of a list? 

[00:25:49] Craig Martelle: be be sincere. Be yourself. The best thing you can do is be a good person. 

[00:25:55] And if you're a good person, if somebody sends you an email, answer 'em, send 'em a note back saying, Hey, thanks for reading the book. appreciate it, appreciate the kind words. A, anything like that. it just be good and people will be good to you. I, I get great reviews. I had one book that, oh geez, I only sold like 200 copies, but I got, I got like 120 reviews and those were all sold. 

[00:26:19] And so. I mean, usually when I first started it was if you got one review outta a hundred book sales, you were doing well. That was standard. And now I, I probably get one review outta every 10 sales. Wow, 

[00:26:32] Teddy Smith: that's amazing. Julie, with the, with the nonfiction books and trying to get your advanced reader copies and to get people to review your books as, as quickly as possible, do you have any tactics that you use for trying to get those reviews in the first place? 

[00:26:46] Julie Broad: I, I mean, not much different than what's been said. The one thing, I, I don't give away free copies very often either. It's usually to very strategic people. I. Somebody, somebody's got some loud stuff going on there, it's not me. yeah, so I usually will let my ARC team know the book is available for 99 cents, right on Kindle. 

[00:27:10] If they wanna go grab a copy and, and buy it. I'm typically not giving away free copies myself, unless it's to our existing clients or kind of people in my, like Dale. I'll give Dale a free copy. but you know, beyond that, it's not, I'm usually doing a 99 cent, you know, notification. Hey, it's on sale for nine, 9 cents, you can grab it now. 

[00:27:31] on pre-sale for a lot of our authors though, you know, we are encouraging them to, to give our copies and, you know, there's so many great platforms now versus when I started, you kind of had to, you, you had to send a PDF of your book, but now you can use story, origin or book funnel, like, you know, there's so many great book Sprout. 

[00:27:49] There's so many great platforms that you can send a secure copy out and. You know, do those art copies, which, which wasn't available before, which is, and they help manage the list too, and help you kind of know who's posting reviews and follow up. But, yeah, I, I, I'm a little lazy on that regard. I don't, I don't pester people. 

[00:28:08] I'll just, I, I think I don't like rejection either. Now, after hearing Craig say that, I don't wanna deal with the rejection either, so I'll get them to buy the book and then I don't know who's bought the book and, you know, I'll encourage people to post reviews after. Yeah. 

[00:28:23] Teddy Smith: Yeah. It'd be nice to be in position to not worry about rejection, but, yeah. 

[00:28:28] So, Alexa, this question was actually came in from, from one of your audience originally, so I thought I'd let you answer it as well. So the question mainly is, is an ARC team a must have or a nice to have in your opinion? 

[00:28:40] Alexa Bigwarfe: Oh, well, I think we've just established that it's not a must have because clearly we've got some very, very successful authors who don't have, an ARC team and are doing just fine. 

[00:28:50] I think it really depends on, back to what Julie originally said, of what you're trying to achieve with the launch. If you're trying to launch and then grow from that, which you can do from any genre. You, you do your first book and then you continue on and you build your audience as you go, or whether you're trying to go all in and get something really big. 

[00:29:11] Obviously, what makes people buy more books is word of mouth marketing first and foremost. So that's what an ARC team does. It gives you that word of mouth marketing. But there are lots of other ways that you can do that without actually having to do your own ARC team. There's, there's book review tours that you can hire that will get your book and distribute it out to people who are gonna go out and, and talk about your book or, or do that. 

[00:29:35] There's, the, all the tools that Julie mentioned, the book funnels, story, origin, all of those that help you get the book out and, and do things the most, it, it's, it's not, I like an ARC team because if you can collect email addresses, if you are truly trying to make sure that people are taking action, when you are getting people to sign up on your email list to get a copy of the book, the thing is you have to direct them. 

[00:29:59] You have to tell them, I'm not just giving you this book. I wanna just give it to you. I expect you to do something either post review on, Goodreads or your social media, or a blog or Yes, please, to Amazon. 'cause that one really makes a difference for so many indie authors. But you give them tools and, and, and kind of direct them along the way to post this picture. 

[00:30:22] Use this hashtag, tag me, do this, do that. with the goal of, of growing that, Word of mouth marketing for you. Sorry, my brain just kind of shut down for a second there. Well, you know, you wanna create buzz. You, you want to get people talking about your book, and nobody can talk about it if nobody's ever read it. 

[00:30:42] So if you're a first time author and you've never written a book and nobody's ever read anything, it's really hard to have people talking about your books. So, from my perspective, you know, you, I, I think they're very important. But when I'm in Craig's position with 200 books under my belt and however many thousands of reviews, I'm not doing an ARC team anymore. 

[00:31:02] So maybe, maybe long before then, but, 

[00:31:08] Teddy Smith: what, how important do you find reviews like not on Amazon as well? So if you take, if you're talking about reviews on other places, like for example, Goodreads or even, more editorial reviews, how, how impactful do you find those compared to Amazon reviews? Alexa. 

[00:31:22] Alexa Bigwarfe: They can be critical, they can be absolutely game changing. I mean, good reads, if you get enough people behind you on good Reads, there's all these lists. There's awards, there's good reads. If you're not familiar with it as an author, it is the social media platform just for books. People just go there to talk about books and share about books. 

[00:31:40] And whenever someone takes an action, it shows up in your friend's feed. So, so people can see that. And I've, I've seen case studies of no name authors who have done a tremendous job of growing a lot of, activity on, on good reads and just having phenomenal launches because of that trade. And editorial reviews really, depend, I think editorial reviews are, are best for nonfiction authors and, specific types of books until you're at a higher level. 

[00:32:10] trade reviews obviously are good for anyone because those high level trade reviews are. Well, I shouldn't say good for anyone. They can be good if you're being, promoted by a large, trade company. But people ask all the time, is it worth it to pay for carcass? And it's, it's hard to say. There are really good things that come from that. 

[00:32:30] But if you're a first time author and, and you're trying to decide whether you should be spending $500 on, you know, sending out books to book talkers or doing a carcass review. You might wanna go with the influencers, but, but that's the other thing is that influencer marketing book talk has changed the world for, for, for everybody. 

[00:32:53] But, but especially for authors, you can't go into a, a bookstore anymore without finding a table that is book talk, featured books and as seen on book talk and marketed here and there. so, so it's, it's important, but the route that you take to get there can vary tremendously, and it, it will, it will just matter, or will vary based on goals, budget opportunities and those types of things. 

[00:33:21] Teddy Smith: Yeah. No, thank you very much for that answer, Craig. You're nodding, nodding along to a lot of the, the answers there. What, what's your opinions on focusing on getting those non-Amazon reviews, the outside reviews as well? 

[00:33:31] Craig Martelle: The, the, the, the important differentiation is new authors. You, you probably will have to give some books out for free. 

[00:33:41] To folks who read your genre. it's nice to collaborate with authors of your genre and like Julie had said, right up front, write with intentionality, write with the reader in mind. What is your perfect reader? Write for that person. And then build that, readership from that visibility from that, individual, the ARC team. 

[00:34:06] Getting that, buzz going is important. I mean, after you've been established, I mean the rules are different for me 'cause I'm established. The rules for new authors are you have to, discoverability is really, really freaking hard. You can advertise, you can market, you can get the word out there. And that's why collaborating with authors at your level, in your genre is so important. 

[00:34:30] like I started, we just came back from Aruba. I called it the Davos of Indies. We had some $50 million worth of book sales from the 50 authors in that room. So collaborating and understanding and talking with authors. 'cause what got you there won't keep you there. And so everybody is looking at what is a different thing? 

[00:34:50] What am I not doing that I should be? What am I doing that is wasting time? Where can I get the biggest bang for the buck? Where am I gonna leverage my money? And I also consider time as money. How can you, you invest what time you have and what money you have to deliver the best launch and the best book experience for your readership? 

[00:35:12] I just canvassed my readership. A couple months ago. 'cause I love my thriller series, but sales are tapering off and it's not paying its own way now. So I asked my readership just a, a blanket question, what would you like to see more of? And I gave 'em the, the an and four to one. They want more of my military sci-fi, so, okay. 

[00:35:32] Hey, I can see why my thriller readers are, are falling out and they want that more. So guess what? I just wrote the first in a new series in a military sci-fi because give the readers what they want. That's what Julie was talking about. And when you're a first time author, you don't know how to write to that yet, but you know how you, you know how you learn it. 

[00:35:52] You write and you keep writing. And then you, you work with that readership, the first people who like your books, Hey, have a conversation because, hey, you're my first readers. What, what did you like about the book? What didn't you like? And that will help make you a better writer for the next launch. And then you feed them what they're hungry for and what they, what they like. 

[00:36:12] So that's how, that's how you improve your launch from launch to launch your very first launch. Just like your very first book. It's gonna suck. Just accept that. And then it's, if you start up here and you sell a hundred thousand books with your first launch, your first month, guess what? You're not gonna be able to replicate that 'cause you didn't know what you did. 

[00:36:32] Right? I like people who have bad launches and then you build from there. my first book, I sold like 53 copies and I think 50 was my man. So learn the hard way. You the wisdom through experience and experiences, bad lessons that you learn from. Don't make the same mistake twice. That's, that's as an author, that's all you need to do, and you'll be fine. 

[00:36:57] Keep writing, keep learning. So keep track, keep a, like a, a journal or a spreadsheet on here's what I did for the, here's what I did for the launch, and then improve upon it each time. Cut out what didn't work. Add what did what might work. Try something new until you're getting the launch that you want, which means a pre-order of X, which means a launch ranking of X. 

[00:37:21] Even though the rank is relative, it's, it's against other books, but how many page reads are you gonna get that first day? How many reviews do you get that first week? What do you have to do to get more and, and leverage What's gonna give you that 20% of your effort is gonna deliver 80% of your revenue? 

[00:37:37] That's a Pareto rule. Find what that 20% is to get that 80% and leverage more of that. 

[00:37:46] Teddy Smith: I think a lot of people forget that launching a book especially is a bit like starting a business and you've got to have those processes in place so you just know exactly what you can do. 'cause a lot of people are just stuck in the weeds of, you know, writing, being creative, doing that fun stuff without thinking about how they can get their book in front of as many people as possible. 

[00:38:01] And I think that's probably one of the key mistakes we see people make most of the time. Now when it comes to doing the marketing during your launch. So obviously my background is in Amazon ads and I do a lot of work with people using AI for their Amazon ads and how they can, do that, how they can basically run it without having to do it themselves. 

[00:38:19] But to what extent do ads feature in your launch process and how important is it to make sure you're getting those right? So we'll start with Dale. yeah, so with Dale, what, how, how, how do ads feature in the launch process for your book? 

[00:38:34] Dale L. Roberts: It's, it's integral. It's integral. There's not, I, I don't know who's dispensing the information of, don't advertise a book after you've published it, but I'm going to advertise a book if it's on a marketplace, give me an ad, I'm gonna run with it. 

[00:38:48] it is absolutely critical. And when I go to launch a book, I'm running various different types of ads through Amazon ads. Now, I don't venture too far off of Amazon ads. It's what I'm very familiar with. I don't try to attack Facebook ads, BookBub ads, none that I'm just real good at Amazon ads. So I think if anybody's trying to find some type of message of like, oh, what can I do? 

[00:39:11] figure out that advertising system that you want to go with. Study it. Learn from the best tweak, test, iterate on it, and you'll be able to improve in do time. But Amazon ads absolutely critical for my, my launches. 

[00:39:26] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. I think with nonfiction books as well, it's, it's a bit more straightforward. 

[00:39:30] 'cause I always say to people when I, when I speak to 'em about Amazon ads, with nonfiction books, you're usually trying to solve a problem or answer a question that someone's got. So that, that keyword research is, is quite straightforward, I think often. and some people try to overcomplicate it by having, you know, a hundred different keywords trying to rank all these different things when really they should be focusing on the, the one or two, that they really want to be on page one for. 

[00:39:51] Is that the same sort of approach that you follow 

[00:39:55] Dale L. Roberts: now? Is this for placing keywords as targets or are you talking about keywords in the backend? 

[00:40:00] Teddy Smith: Yeah. No, no. So, specifically towards, with ads, I mean, not in the backend keywords. 

[00:40:05] Dale L. Roberts: For targets. I don't try to go too crazy. There was a day when we used to be like, yeah, let's put a thousand targets in there. 

[00:40:11] But less is more these days. You wanna definitely get really, really dialed in to exactly the keywords and the targets that your audience is going to resonate when you have that ad served out in front of them. So be very, very calculated about the keywords and targets that you use if you want to see a good return on your investment, because otherwise just throwing out. 

[00:40:34] Any old terms or even allowing automated targeting, which there's a place for automatic ads, that's fine. but you are going to find a lot more better results when you can get that dialed into the keywords that your customers are ideally looking for, and not some vague, ambiguous keyword like, ah, that seems like a popular keyword. 

[00:40:54] Now, don't waste it. Get yourself super targeted when you're running your ads so that way you're not losing a ton of money on a bunch of irrelevant terms, products, categories. 

[00:41:07] Teddy Smith: Or super generic ones, like, unless you're James Clear, don't target the keyword habits. right. Yes, 

[00:41:13] Dale L. Roberts: yes. Or, or book, book books. 

[00:41:15] There's a, there's a good one. Yeah, exactly. There's an old school one. 

[00:41:18] Teddy Smith: Now, Julie, I know you do a lot of ads in part of your launch process with book launches, so could you talk us through how ads feature into the launch process that you follow book launches? 

[00:41:28] Julie Broad: Yeah, it does depend Author by author in general. 

[00:41:31] We don't run Amazon ads until post-launch. but we do run 99 cent ebook sales for launch and we'll use promo stacking through, you know, programs like what written word media has. Some of those, you know, we'll run a five day 99 cent sale, and each day we have a different promo that we're running for those. 

[00:41:51] and then we typically will use Amazon ads after the fact. and, and you know, there's lots of reasons behind it. We do find the Amazon ads start to perform better once there's reviews and there's momentum, which is why we don't, I. Generally start with Amazon ads. We start with kind of getting everything going and then we add Amazon ads after. 

[00:42:09] We also find that one of the benefits with Amazon ads is that, you know, it continues that sales continues to feed the algorithm. So we add the ads in after, when you start, when, when everything else you're doing starts to die. We, we add the ads on after to keep feeding that algorithm to keep getting the book, sales and momentum. 

[00:42:29] So yeah, that's, that's our approach. 

[00:42:32] Teddy Smith: I think there's kind of two schools of thoughts with those running the Amazon ads. So, when, when I launched my books, the nonfiction books, especially on Amazon, I, I, I kind of want to get these ads running straight away just so I can say, you know, it's kind of like me saying to Amazon, Hey, I'm a serious book. 

[00:42:45] I'm gonna be putting some investment into this even whilst it's on free. I just wanna get it out there into the world so as many people can see it as possible. But you're right, I think it can convert not as well. So if, if you don't have as many views at first and your book's free, sometimes people get a bit disheartened 'cause their book's not. 

[00:43:00] Converting, but I think it's important to just get it out there into the world as fast as possible. what, what do you think about that? 

[00:43:08] Julie Broad: Yeah, I agree. I think the, the challenge with, for me running my ads and having my team run my ads like all day long, go for it. I'm not worried that it's not converting on day one, but when you're doing it for other people, as you'll know, Teddy, they get anxious and they're like, I, you know, we've spent money and nothing's happening, and you gotta explain that we have to train the algorithm and you know, it's gonna take more than two days before you start to see some sales as a result of this. 

[00:43:33] So we have to hone the keyword. So that's generally the honest answer as to why we wait as a company to start running ads for other people on their books is because it does do better after we have reviews and after Amazon's seen who the book is going to perform better for, the ads just do better. And so it's an easier conversation for us as a company. 

[00:43:53] Yeah. 

[00:43:56] Teddy Smith: Now, Craig and Alexa, when you are, when you're doing more fiction books and you've got children's books, well Alexa, what, how do, how do ads feature into your, launch process? Should we start with Alexa? 

[00:44:06] Alexa Bigwarfe: So, with the children's books, actually we do not run Amazon ads. I, I, I've got a couple that are really low budget Amazon ads on there. 

[00:44:16] I'm actually running Facebook ads. And the reason for that is that, the, the books, children's books, if you think about the, the most famous children's books today, the bestselling books are still the ones that we grew up with, right? It's very, very hard to break to the top of those lists. So for me, I, I don't see as much from the Amazon ads, but what we are seeing is really good results on directing people to the Amazon page through Facebook ads, especially since we put the eBooks on ku. 

[00:44:46] And so we've seen an increase of sales on our paperback and hardcover books through that. through that tactic, they get a chance to kind of check it out, see it, oh, yep, this looks good, and we're gonna go ahead and buy it. But yeah, so that's been our, I I like, I really like, Facebook ads for, for the children's books for our nonfiction and fiction. 

[00:45:05] We tend to use Amazon in the same, that Julie just mentioned. Where, we'll, we'll start them after 50 reviews or so. We'll start looking at, at ads. Actually, I'm gonna have to contact you, Teddy 'cause I could, I could use some help on my Amazon ads. 

[00:45:21] Teddy Smith: Yeah, we can chat through it. I, I always wondered how Children's Book authors do their advertising because I, I've got a children's book and the main character is a giraffe and the other one is a a a Frog and they're friends and I was thinking, are people really gonna search giraffe and frog's friends children's book? 

[00:45:35] probably not. So I was always wondering how best would be to advertise that. And I was thinking maybe it'd be through some of the lessons that you learned in the book or, like, keywords could be. Maybe the, the, the, the lesson for the children or the, the outcome or something like that. Right. 

[00:45:50] but I need to work on that one a bit. 

[00:45:53] Alexa Bigwarfe: Let me know what you find out. 

[00:45:54] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. And Craig, how, what, how do ads feature into your launch process? 

[00:46:01] Craig Martelle: Well, how do ads feature, we just spent a lot of time in Aruba talking about that between the, the million dollar authors and you learn a lot of things. Amazon ads, people go to Amazon to buy stuff. 

[00:46:14] Amazon ads, I think, are a foundational element for any business owner, and especially as a, as a writer and publisher. Now the best thing you can do for your Amazon ad has had a great conversion rate. So your blurb has to work. What got the reader there has to sell them on buying it. Now, in order to juice that algo, Facebook ads can better target and send people to Amazon. 

[00:46:40] So. The people with the highest performing Amazon ads use Facebook ads to drive the traffic there. And then the conversion rate is lower because the people are going specifically to this product page and they're there. And that lowers the, improves the conversion rate, and people are getting four to one somebody, four people show up and one person's doing a buy. 

[00:47:00] And that is a, that means everything is aligned. You're getting the right readership, which that tells Amazon and it gets smarter. And so when you run an automatic ads, which is almost all I, all, all I do, standard, standard ads, which means no text, which means the ebook and the paperback, that is critical. 

[00:47:21] you put both of those together and Amazon knows who buys what. So I get, I took my paperback sales from 5% to about 40% of my sales because of automatic ads where I clump, where the ebook and the paperback together. Also, the question on are the rollouts different? You gotta tell the readers, Hey, the audiobook is now available. 

[00:47:44] The ebook and paperback are both available when on the launch. So when you notify your newsletter or you, you post on social media, you wanna tell 'em both the ebook and the paperback. 'cause you'll have different buyers for each and satisfy the ones. I also have a direct store. I have way too many paperback copies in my garage, so I'll use Shopify and put sales. 

[00:48:07] like I've got my, at my one thriller, I've got four, the first four books for $25 plus shipping. Whereas you go to Amazon, they're 1299 each. So, and, and that's, that earns me about $2 on those four books. But they're in my garage. And, that money has already spent, that was a failed effort to get into bookstores. 

[00:48:29] And so I've got 200 copies of the first four books in that series. 200 copies each. So yes, yes. you do what you have to do to Monet and also that's good for cash flow 'cause that cash is gone two years ago. But now if I can get 25 bucks, that's great. I'll take it. So I. 

[00:48:51] Get 'em on their way to the new owners and build that readership, because there's eight books in that series and there's paperbacks for all of them. 

[00:48:57] Teddy Smith: And I think 800 books is, is more, is a, it's a bigger space in your garage than people think. I imagine. 

[00:49:04] Craig Martelle: I, well, I, I actually have a 1300 square foot garage. 

[00:49:09] it's a, I have, I have room for my tractor in between the two cars, and then still I have room for probably about a thousand books there. It's ridiculous, how much space we have in our garage. And you don't wanna use it like that because you would think there's not that much space, because I've got all of these boxes of books. 

[00:49:26] Those need to go away, find a new home. 

[00:49:29] Teddy Smith: You've basically got a book hanger. now one of the things you talked about just then was you, you send Facebook ads traffic directly to Amazon rather than going via a landing page. do you, do you use any tips or tricks to try and track the conversion rate of how those Facebook ads are doing? 

[00:49:45] Because I know that was quite hard, but that's recently become a bit more straightforward. 

[00:49:50] Craig Martelle: Facebook knows a lot more about its users than you ever will. So the big name authors, and you hear here first, they're using very, very broad targeting. Like we're talking 250 million, all of the us, 18 to 65 plus as as the target, and no other restrictions. 

[00:50:13] And then putting the book on there, but making a custom graphic that has, that, this is a book, like a Kindle Unlimited logo on it, so it's very clear what people are getting and that will, that Amazon will, will look at that and say, or Facebook will look at that and say, yes, here, here's a person who buys books. 

[00:50:33] Buy books and Kindle Unlimited. When you try to restrict it and say, Kindle, Kindle owners. Now Facebook screws you. I, I mean I had my, ad, my ads rejected over the past few days and so I cut all that crap out and just went us only, and that's fine. I published a book in French. I just did France only, and no other limitations. 

[00:50:55] And guess what? Working great. So trust that these people know more about their targets. They're not gonna show your ad to people who aren't gonna buy it. And Facebook is not spending all of my money also an oddity. they're, they're usually prone to that. But when you've got things set up in that way with the right graphic, and I can't emphasize that enough, you've gotta have the right image with the right little info on there to make it very, very clear that this is a book, that's a cool image and a Kindle Unlimited logo on there. 

[00:51:27] If somebody clicks that, you've already got about a 90% solution. So that goes to your conversion. It goes right to the landing page, the product page on Amazon. Everybody wins. They get a book they wanna read. I make money. Life is good. 

[00:51:43] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for that answer. that was, there's some great tidbits in there about doing the Facebook ads. 

[00:51:47] I've, I've, I'm, I'm, I usually try and target it much more than that, so that's great to know that you can just let Facebook kind of run with it sometimes. Now, a bit of a controversial question to sort of round up at, towards the end is, what's a common piece of advice, launch advice that you disagree with? 

[00:52:02] So this is something that you often hear people talk about, but maybe you don't think is quite right. So, Julie, let's start with you. 

[00:52:10] Julie Broad: Oh, a lot of people say you have to have social media and they're, you know, they, they really emphasize social media. But I think, I think a lot of people treat social media like a magic bullet, and it's a tool. 

[00:52:23] It is one of many tools in your toolbox, and you don't have to have social media to succeed as an author. It helps, but, you know, it also takes a really long time to build up a good following and, and platform. So I wouldn't wait to create a social media following before you launch your book. I would find other, other tools and, and strategies that are a better fit for you. 

[00:52:46] Teddy Smith: Brilliant. That's, that's good advice. Yeah. I, I, really don't like social media very much, so I, I find it a bit of a chore to just like, make sure I'm getting down and writing my, writing my post down. Alexa, how about you? What's a piece of advice that you kind of disagree with? 

[00:53:00] Alexa Bigwarfe: gosh, that's hard. I probably would've said the social media too. 

[00:53:04] I had something. Sorry, it's late. I'm getting tired. Let's, I, I would say that you, can just launch a book and then, you know, build it after you come. that's possible in certain scenarios of, as we've said, but for our first time authors, really trying to, to, to get out there, you know, not taking the time to really go through the process, I guess not spending money. 

[00:53:32] You hear a lot of people say, just write the book and then just publish it. Well, I mean, when you write that book and you publish it and you haven't done the work to do it well, that you've just put that work out there in the world forever and, you know, it's, it's hard to come back from that. If your first book out there gets a lot of bad reviews and you've built this, this. 

[00:53:54] You have a reputation now, so that's harder to overcome too. So do it right. Don't rush it. Don't, I'm not a big fan of the write a book in a weekend and publish it on Monday, kind of kind of thing. That's, that's, that would be my thing. I would say don't rush the process. Take the time to do it. Right. 

[00:54:12] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:54:12] Brilliant. That's really advice there. And Dale, how about you? What's some advice that you disagree with? 

[00:54:18] Dale L. Roberts: you know, I, if I ever hear bad advice, I typically forget it as soon as I hear it. So, what I would recommend, I, I, I just only have so much memory and so much time in my day, so I don't try to remember bad things. 

[00:54:31] But what I would say is you've, everybody's heard varying viewpoints from all the panelists, and including of course, our host here in Teddy. And you probably noticed that. It's varied, it changes. It's wildly different from one person to the next. And so you have to understand that this business is not just a one size fits all. 

[00:54:51] You have to find out what truly fits you, your genre, your niche, and your reading audience. And it's gonna take some time and it's gonna take some experimentation, and it's gonna require some blunders and mistakes along the way. Lord knows I've made quite a few of those, but it's okay because as long as you learn from those mistakes and improve on it, you'll be good to go. 

[00:55:10] So that's just my one take is I don't remember any bad advice necessarily. I usually just try to tune out the hype beasts over on YouTube. They're like, Hey, write a book in the weekend with only $2. Shut up. Just shut up. No, I, I'm good on that. I, I'll just tell you, the best advice I can give you is learn from everybody. 

[00:55:29] Mm-hmm. Try to implement what you learn from all these experts in some capacity test, iterate, improve, and grow as an author. 

[00:55:37] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. I think the main, the main advice I, I see, I can see the main trend coming from what everyone's saying is each genre is slightly different. And so you do do need to make sure that you are understanding what's working right for your books and how you can learn from that and build on that in future so that you can make sure you are treating your book business as a business and not just putting stuff out there and just hoping it's gonna sell. 

[00:55:56] I think that's probably the biggest takeaway for me so far, when you're doing a launch. And Craig, last same question to you just before you go. 

[00:56:05] Craig Martelle: I, I think, my, I, I, the advice I give is pick one social media platform and become an expert in it as opposed to trying to spread, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep. 

[00:56:17] And Facebook is my platform and I see, because I'm an author, I have a lot of author friends, I get a lot of ads for the write a book in a weekend here. We will publish your book for you. We'll do all of this. We'll get you on a list. If it sounds too good to be true. Well, it's, it's mostly all bullshit. It is. 

[00:56:38] You have to do the work and to get better at it, do the work. So, like Alexis said, don't write a book in a weekend. Just publish it. No, I mean, you really need to get it edited. And even if it's a friend, it's, it is still, the better you can get it edited, the more professional, the quality of the book, the better you are. 

[00:56:57] So don't fall for any get rich quick schemes. Don't fall for any, I can make you a bestselling author, just pay me $10,000. I mean, I stopped consulting. I used to charge, $250 for an hour of my time, two Zoom calls, half hour each. And I would review some stuff in between. And I stopped doing that because I saw that the people were counting on me too much to, to carry them, to make them successful. 

[00:57:23] And that was, that was way too much pressure for me because I, I don't wanna, I'm not gonna take responsibility for your success, so you have to do the work. That's anybody who says there's a shortcut, now you could trade money for time. Like, I'm a big fan of the Learn Self-Publishing, ads for authors course. 

[00:57:42] It's like $850. Oh, that's a lot of money. But you learn a lot of stuff that you could spend a long time with and a lot of money, trial and error. You could take that shortcut of learning through their lessons. So those kinds of things. But you gotta trust other people. Don't do it just because you saw a Facebook ad on it. 

[00:58:02] Teddy Smith: Perfect. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you very much. Basically, some of those gurus, you don't wanna be just trusting them 'cause they, you know, I've, I've seen some of the content in those courses and they're not too good. A lot of them, 

[00:58:12] Craig Martelle: they're not too good. Yeah. 

[00:58:14] Teddy Smith: Now a lot of the, now, just to wrap up just for the last one. 

[00:58:17] So I'd like to get a bit of an idea about what the book you are currently writing is and what's, or the one that you've just released, and give us one tip that you could give, to each of the people watching about how you've launched that book and how they can use that in launching their next book as well. 

[00:58:32] So it's chance you to talk about the projects you've just been working on or you're about to release as well. So, Alexa, let's start with you first, let's go through what's your next project or what's the project you've just done and give us one tip for how you launched it successfully. 

[00:58:45] Alexa Bigwarfe: Well, I'm, I am actually working on two books right now. 

[00:58:48] I'm working on a, kind of a workbook to go along with the course that I run on, launching a book. And then I'm working on my third rom, romcom in my series of fun little light fall in love in France novels. So, Neither of them have launched yet, so I can't tell you about the launch success of that one. 

[00:59:09] But, of those. But I had a blast, by taking my book over to Paris, the first one, 'cause it's called Four Days in Paris. And like getting a, now this is one time where I really did enjoy social media. I was taking pictures of me and my book in front of the Eiffel Tower and getting other people to hold the book and do pictures of the book with, with fun France stuff. 

[00:59:29] And, and that was, that was, that was a lot. That was a blast. So I, I, I've been having come with that. Have I seen huge, huge, crazy sales? No, but I'm, I'm really happy where I'm at in terms of the sales and, and as a first book in a, in a series and my first romcom series, I'm, I'm pretty happy where it's going and where it's growing. 

[00:59:50] And I know it'll, it'll get there if I keep putting in the work and having fun with it and publishing good books. 

[00:59:56] Teddy Smith: Perfect. I love a holiday that also counts as a little tax write off as well, so that's, that's perfect, isn't it? 

[01:00:01] Alexa Bigwarfe: Yes, exactly. Why do you think I write my book set in France? Because I have to go research, you know, 

[01:00:10] Teddy Smith: why was Joanna Penn's last novel set in, just outside Las Vegas? 

[01:00:17] so Dale, yeah, what's the projects that you are working on or that you've just released and what's one tip for the launch for how you can, how you made it successful that other people can learn from? 

[01:00:26] Dale L. Roberts: my most recent release was the bestseller book launch plan. Essentially just guiding people through my entire process from ideation to publication and beyond. 

[01:00:35] And, I just wrapped up last night, the first draft for YouTube for authors, and I plan on having that coming out in the next month or two. Just gotta make sure I get everything dialed in first before I start to tell people it's gonna be coming out. But for the most part, yeah, I'm not sure if that covered all the question there. 

[01:00:55] Teddy Smith: I'll have to do one of your ARC team for that YouTube one, I think. There you go. Yeah. And Julie, what's the project you're working on Moment or that you've just released, and what was a good launch tip you've got from that project? 

[01:01:08] Julie Broad: We're working on a second edition of Self-Publish and Succeed. 'cause when it came out, you know, we weren't really using AI for anything, so I felt like we needed to go back over the book and, you know, really hit some of those points of, you know, how to think about AI on your author journey as your self-publishing. 

[01:01:27] So, so, we're in the middle of the edits on that and, and I don't know when we'll be launching it, but my, my one tip is, is persistence. You know, I think ultimately, you know, and it's a generic tip, not necessarily for this launch, but, you know, you'll, you might get tired about talking about your books. 

[01:01:46] I do. and, and at the end of the day you feel like I've said this a thousand times, and yet there's always people who haven't heard you, or even if they have, they weren't listening or they've forgotten. And so I think it's really important to keep going and always go back to that original reader that you wrote the book for. 

[01:02:02] And, you know, realize that it's your job to make sure that reader knows about your book so that you can start, you know, connecting with them and supporting them. And in our case, most of our authors are writing their book for impact and, and income purposes. So, you know, persistence, I think is, is the big, the big tip for that. 

[01:02:17] And, I'm super excited for your book, Dale. I forgot you were writing that. You mentioned that before. So YouTube for others. Yay. Yeah, no kidding. You've got your ARC team here. We're ready. 

[01:02:29] Dale L. Roberts: Hold you to it. Alexa, 

[01:02:31] Alexa Bigwarfe: I'd love to 

[01:02:34] Teddy Smith: thank you very much, Julie. And lastly, Craig, what's the, what's project you're working on moment and what's one tip you can give for how you're going to launch that book? 

[01:02:42] Craig Martelle: Well, I got the, I got the sequel to this book, defiant, back yesterday from the editor, 146 K words, just a beast. And that I ended that series at two books because, the first book did not sell anywhere near as much as well as I wanted, but I wrote it as a testimonial to my old man. And the second book, same, same. 

[01:03:03] But I wrapped up that series of two books, write with the reader in mind. And that's why the new book that I just finished and sent to my editor today, which is 65,000 words, is all I sent that one on. And that was, with the reader in mind. Canvas, what do you want more of? Yes, here you go. You're getting more of it. 

[01:03:23] Some stompy robots and some, soldier things and issues and concerns and small team, dynamics. So right with the reader in mind, it makes your launch a whole lot easier because you know the reader, you can target the readership. I don't have them on pre-order yet because I have the first two covers. 

[01:03:45] I just need the third cover and then I'll put all three on, on, at the same time and I'll start running ads for the first three eBooks, on, on Amazon using auto. I. Sponsored ad. So I can put three books in one ad, a standard ad I should say, and, and let Amazon start figuring out what are the right readers. 

[01:04:05] I'll tag in in the blurb, if you liked this book, this book, this book, then you should like this book. That kind of, approach helps train the, the algo. 

[01:04:15] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Well, I love about this conversation we've had today is that basically everyone's talking about the tactics that everyone knows about, but it's basically just saying, you've just got to use them. 

[01:04:23] You've got to iterate them and you've got to learn if they're working for you. And you've gotta try and just put that effort into making sure you are running things in processes and making sure you are just doing the work rather than just, you know, listening about these things and, trying to think too much about what could be working rather than just doing the work and saying, this is actually now working, and we can learn from that in future. 

[01:04:42] And I feel like that's the biggest takeaway from today. 

[01:04:45] Alexa Bigwarfe: There's best practices for a reason. 

[01:04:48] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it's what Craig said, you just gotta do the work. Well thank you very much everyone for joining today. I really appreciate your time in coming. It is been amazing to get so many great people once the panel show. 

[01:05:03] And thank you so much for everyone who's come to listen. A recording of this will be saved on YouTube and I'll email it to everyone who signed up as well, so you can watch it again later. And just by magic, my powers come on in the last sort of 10 minutes. I thought you were in the light 

[01:05:16] Alexa Bigwarfe: all of a sudden. 

[01:05:17] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Yeah. So Portugal is back on the grid, so Whoa. That 

[01:05:22] Craig Martelle: is funny. That is funny. You're gonna 

[01:05:24] Teddy Smith: see if people watching this replay, you're gonna see me go from like a little weird black and white thing in the corner, like a little goblet into a suddenly looking exactly like Dale Roberts again. 

[01:05:34] Dale L. Roberts: Where is your orange shirt? 

[01:05:35] Where's your orange shirt? Man? 

[01:05:37] Teddy Smith: I wore an orange shirt and a YouTube, shorts about last last week and someone was like, is that Dale? 

[01:05:45] So, yeah. Thank you so much everyone. It's been, great chatting to you. Hope you've all got 

[01:05:53] Craig Martelle: Great. Sorry for boing time. you guys are really smart about this stuff and it was good to hear what your thoughts were and what you did for your success. Thank you. 

[01:06:03] Teddy Smith: Great panel. Thanks very much. Really appreciate it. 

[01:06:06] See you later everyone. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing performance podcast. 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. 

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