[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the hybrid Author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free author pass over at the hybrid author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www. Dot.
Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in. Today's interview is with smart author media book marketing expert Chris Panetti, and we're chatting about ways authors wrongly market and sell their books, identifying the target market of your book, converting readers into clients actionable strategies authors can take to market and sell their books, AI tools, creating book marketing assets, business book collaboration, and much more.
So, in my author adventure this week, I am pre recording this intro outro and pre recording this author adventure, which usually I record on the day I release a podcast. But I am going away to a caravan trip with my family in Lancelin. I'm going with a girlfriend and some of her friends and obviously with my kids. And as this podcast goes out, I will have been there for a few days and probably enjoying myself. So yeah, I had to pre record this while I was away. So yeah, I don't plan on probably doing much writing while I'm away on this family trip. I'm taking books with me, so hopefully lots of reading and if I get any inspiration then I will do some writing or at least make a note. Anyway, leading up to this trip I obviously was getting my work in order, so pre making sure the podcast would be ready to go and upload. I have got many podcast episodes next week. I think I'm doing about batching about eleven or twelve over three days, so I've had to get questions prepared for that and generally I send a week beforehand. So I've had to get that all in order. And when I come back it's gonna be absolute mayhem just into stuck into my YA fiction novel, which as I said, I've got a deadline of April 30 to be getting that done. So it's all go, go, go. And you know, it's definitely how I work best. I've always found that when things need to be done, it's a case of I just get them done. I'm noticing I don't really work well to structure. If you're an avid listener of the podcast, you'll probably laugh and think, oh, she's just realising that again, structure in terms of. I wanted to do morning writing five til seven in the morning and whilst I have gotten achieved this goal on various days, I haven't achieved it consecutively all the time. And that's okay, you know, that's okay. I was up at 04:00 this morning and did some writing and then I tend to sort of crash out. I'm quite wide awake at 04:00. Four seems to be a good time to kind of wake up, write for a bit, maybe even till five or six, and then sort of go back to sleep for an hour. But I definitely am a night person as well and some nights not and some whatever, but when things need to be done, they get done and it doesn't matter what time of day, what hours, how long I spend or putting down a rigid writing schedule or work schedule or whatever, and what needs to be done will get done and that's just the way it is. So I had a really, really inspiring weekend and I went to a book launch. Which fellow squibbie member? Callum Greenall, and I must apologise. I keep saying that he's a fellow Scot, he's not, he's from England, but I think that maybe he lived in Scotland or something like that, that I'm trying to claim him in Scottish. I can't remember, but, yeah, and it was done at the State Library in Perth and as I said, writing WA are putting on these book launches for their members and it's fantastic. Callum had the theatre that is there and very young picture books, so there was lots of little, little kids and he had like a big presentation on there and, I mean, something like that normally would cost an absolute fortune. So I was speaking to the head of writing Wa will Yemen, and, yeah, he was just saying it was going really well and that's something that they could give back to their members and, yeah, so it was, it was good to go. And Callum is an indie author. He collaborates with an illustrator over in Britain and the books that they've made are just fantastic. Really, really good quality, nice bright pictures and the words are obviously all rhyming and very quirky and nice and the characters are cute and it's just a really well made product. So, yeah, it was very good to go and support a new, newish author and new Squibbie member. From there, I wanted to go to Fremantle and check out the second hand bookstores. But I ended up finding, as you know, I'm the Squibbie west newsletter editor and social media person. And whilst I was conducting, like, the newsletter for this month, I was looking at other industry events. And on the writing WA website, I found this event. Now, this is a global podcast. So anybody listening in different countries, what are your writing bodies? What are your writing organizations? So for where I live in Perth, Western Australia, we have writing waiting WA, which puts up all events, writing events, industry events in the local area, we have the Australian Society of Authors. Again, they have good things that happen in your country. What writing organisations do you have? And do they put up industry events and whatnot? And I'm talking book launches, just other events that you can go to because it's really worthwhile getting yourself out there. So I found this event that was being held at. It was called the backlot studio. Now it's in West Perth, in the city, and it was book to film, and the film was the village of the Damned. And it was a 1960s black and white film. Now, I've seen children of the Damned, which was an american remake with Kirsty Alley and Christopher Reeves both dead now. And, you know, it's a horror Sci-Fi movie, these demon like children with, like, freaky eyes that take over a village. And so I was right up my street. I thought, I would love to go and see this. And this place I didn't even know existed. And it's like one of a kind. It was so cool. It was. It's like a screening room, but they had obviously, presentation after it, so. And they had a big massive mural of Heath Ledger as the Joker as well, which I forgot to take a picture of. But it was really for myself, who has an interest in writing tv and film scripts and adapting my work for film and tv. And this is something that I learned at uni also. These are the kind of events that I want to start getting myself along to because I'm very well known in the book industry. I've been around in an active literary scene for many years now. This is where I want to sort of venture off to. So I met a guy. Again, I'm not the best with names. There was lots of people who sort of the organizer, and he was a writer for neighbors, you know, the soap opera, for like 20 years. So even then, it's such a great networking event and was chatting away, and basically we just. There was a bar, so I grabbed a beer, and then we went through to the screening room, which is obviously like a cinema and very lovely and comfortable. And we watched the movie, the black and white village of the Dam movie from 1960, which was set in Britain and it was actually really well done for that era. And yeah, it was good. And then after I'd finished, the two presenters, unfortunately, again, their names evade me and I should have all these notes in front of me, but I just wing these author intros and all this sort of stuff. They did a discussion about the book. So the book was based on John Wyndham's the Midwitch Cuckoos. So they talked about. So they talked about the difference between the book to the film and other versions and things like that. And it was super interesting and then obviously opened it up to the audience to have question time and answers. And prior to that, so obviously I went to that book launch, Callum's book launch initially, and then I had some time to kill. So I actually just went to some bookstores in town that I hadn't visited before. And so if you ever in Perth City, Planet Books is just along from the state library in Northbridge and quirky little bookstore, really more novelty stuff in there. I had quite a laugh at their cards. They had all these funny sort of cards that were kind of Perth related, which is super funny. And so I got a bit of a laugh there. What annoyed me about planet books and I don't know if you've ever been at a bookstore before where you go in and you know, it's shelves and shelves of books but nothing's labeled and you, you figure it out for yourself, this, this section, this is that. But it kind of really annoyed me. I don't know why I need to have labels. So that was a really great place. And then I walked, which it was pretty hot here over the weekend. It's meant to be autumn, but it was like 35 and I had this blooming dress on and boots and sweat was like trickling down my back walking. It was about twelve minutes to the next bookshop, which was, I think it was on Beaufort street, but it was mainly books. It was called m a I n l y books and a second hand bookstore. And this place, oh my, I just opened it. And again it was just, it was like corridors, wall to wall shelfing of books. And this guy had a label machine and he'd gone for his life. So, you know, they were all in order, poetry. But then he had the books that he had actually labeled ask for this person. These books were similar to this person. So not only were these books like, categorized properly. They were all in sort of recommended you like this? This will suit this. And all these old editions. And the smell of the place reminded me of, like, this just sounds gross, but, like, smells from my childhood, libraries, books, my family's homes, things like that. I just brought back memories. Smell is so. Such an evoking sense. It is for me, anyway. And it's definitely something I use in my writing as a sensory thing a lot, you know, probably more so than any of the other things. And what I loved is you sort of walked along this corridor and then it turned off into another kind of out, out the back room corridor thing. And he had little seats everywhere that you could just sit down and read if you wanted. Almost matched. And all the books were. Some books were all piling up off the floor. And of course, the ones that I wanted were at the very bottom of these piles. So I had to use my bum excuse, for want of a better word, to, like, and my elbow hold the pile while I was grabbing the book out the bottom. So. And I found. I was really excited because I found, like, an old copy of Peyton place. So it's about.
My daughter is called Peyton, and sort of older generation. Every time I said that her name was Peyton, they were like, oh, Peyton Place. And it was actually a television series, american drama, small town, that kind of thing. And I love small towns. And I'd heard a pet in place. And this book is a very well known classic in America about small town living and life and dramas and things like that. And there's a picture on the back of the author sitting at home writing it on her typewriter. And she just looks like, you know, your average mum. And she done it with kids at home. And I've so excited that this book is. I think this is the book that's coming with me to Lancelin, so I'll let you know. And I left with other books as well. And the guy just had such a great collection. I was in there for ages. I could have stayed there all day. I was really happy.
But then I was like, gosh, I've got to run to this book. To film screening. So very, very inspiring day that I had, as I said, celebrating the launch of a fellow author's book on the quest, looking for other books. I was also looking, which went out the window when I went to that. Mainly books, but in planet books, I was looking at the women's fiction sizes, what stood out on the shelf, what covers got me, that sort of thing. Definitely seen a size that would be good because we're in April now. My women's fiction book is in this competition with the Australian Society of Authors. It gets drawn on the 1 May, so we will find out whether it has placed or one even better on the shortlist. And if it has not, then I will be reverting back to the original plan, which was to self publish this book. So I now need to get into place what the product's going to be like and I really need to get my finger out, I guess, with that. So that is looking at size where I'm going to print. I wanted to get some local printing costs done this time rather than going through Ingramspark, which is over east, which again might still be the way that I go, but I just don't know yet. So yeah, I did all that too. And then obviously just to a different kind of industry event, still book orientated, but also film. Because I want to see the reasons why things come from the book or they don't come from the book and how I'm going to adapt my work otherwise, because this women's fiction book and this possibly this YA book, so the women's fiction, I'd be more inclined to make that into a tv series, whereas the ya maybe a movie style script. So definitely would like to do two scripts at the end of the year. And this is me sort of moving into that scene, I think. So from watching that village of the damned film, I've now got the book it was based on. I'll read that. And I'm also going to read the screenplay that was for the original 1960s village of the Damned because there was such visuals, expressions and how they wrote that. I'm quite intrigued. Script writing is completely different from narrative prose writing. You're pretty much just writing what you see. And yeah, it's like in novel writing that says show don't tell. In script writing, it's a lot of telling, you know, so very different mediums, but both that I love and hope to join together.
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[00:14:31] Speaker A: Chris Bennetti owns smart author Media and is an expert in book marketing. To date, Chris has helped his clients collectively generate over 20 million in sales from their books and digital offers, and in 2023, Chris sold over 19,000 books for his clients. Chris's mission is to make marketing and selling books. Easy to understand for business owners by educating them on fundamental marketing strategies with a no b's approach, which we appreciate. Welcome to the Hybrid Author podcast, Chris.
[00:15:00] Speaker D: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: We're thrilled to have you. So we'll just jump right in. How is it you came to join the publishing industry?
[00:15:07] Speaker D: Well, I kind of noticed there was a bit of a gap in the markets. Ultimately, I had a funnel and marketing agency previously, but wanted to transition to be a little bit more niche and. Yeah, so I did some market research and just noticed that authors and business owners were being kind of under serviced in the ongoing marketing aspects of their book. You know, there's a lot of writers out there, there's a lot of publishers, there's a lot of people who help with launch campaigns and bestseller campaigns, but no one really who offers your recurring services to help authors consistently sell books. And so that's kind of where I came in, just finding that gap in the market.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really cool. I myself, as an author, haven't ever heard of many services that way. So that's. Yeah, no, that's really good. What are some of the services that you offer to authors that you've sort of found that isn't there?
[00:15:57] Speaker D: Yeah. So primarily it's two things. It's book funnels, sales funnels, or, you know, lead funnels for books and paid advertising. So, you know, paid advertising with social media ads like Facebook and Instagram or Amazon ads as well.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Fantastic. So with authors marketing efforts and you've obviously, as you said, you've noticed there's a gap in the market for services that you're offering and that you've taken on for authors. Did you notice when you notice that as well, the way that authors go about sort of marketing and selling their books and promoting themselves, have you noticed that they, have you noticed things that authors can get wrong trying to market and sell their books? Because it's quite hard. As an author myself, there's so many sides to it. And marketing is what a lot of authors hate the most, I guess, because they're writers at the end of the day and not marketers. But then especially, I guess we're talking about the self published market here because I would imagine traditional published authors, they can promote themselves and market their books, but I don't think they actively go out and spend money on trying to promote it because they've got that traditional publishing house behind them. Is that right? Do you work with, do you work.
[00:17:06] Speaker D: With books self published or hybrid published where, you know, they are technically self published. But yeah, certainly I don't think anything's necessarily wrong. Just think that there's, there's leveraged approaches and there's not leveraged approaches. There's things that take your time and there's things that take your money. So, you know, I don't think anything is done wrong and I don't think people should really have that lens. I just think that there's things that take more energy and effort and there's things that are a little bit more leverage, which is less energy, effort and time, but do cost money in exchange. So for me, you know, like traditional methods, there's a lot of like pray and spray efforts where people go out and they just like share their book as much as they can in all the communities that they can. And that's obviously manual and, you know, questionable how effective that is. There's obviously doing, you know, speaking tours and getting your books out in that way. There's doing podcast tours and getting your book out in that way which are all fantastic opportunities and can create some leverage for you because you're leveraging other people's audiences, but they obviously do come down to your time being used. And then, you know, there's the like the social organic hustle that you can do as well. You can create YouTube channels for your book. You can, you know, have a page and share that kind of stuff as well on your personal page or your business page around your book, you know, as an author. But again, that's sometimes questionable how effective that is. And it does take a lot of energy and effort, you know, to kind of do that approach as well. So for me, you know, I just looked at it from a different perspective. You know, how do we, instead of spending so much time and energy, how do we, how do we use money and do some really effective advertising to get in front of the potential, right readers for us to get our books sold or give our book away. And that's, that's kind of the approach that I have taken because it ultimately is leveraged and you can kind of turn a dial up and down just based on how much you want to spend. So you can, you can sell more books if you want to spend some more money to get those people to buy the books. And, you know, the side benefits of what that means for you and if you have a business is pretty tremendous.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And so I guess that come down to like the paid advertising. Like if you're going to pay more for advertising, then you're maybe going to reap more rewards because it's hitting the right people who want to buy the book. Is that what you mean?
[00:19:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, well, certainly people can start with smaller budgets, you know, whatever they can kind of afford and sell books. It's not like you need to spend more to make sure that you're getting in front of the right people. It's, you know, initially, you might need to spend some money to do testing and validation, like when people work with us on a done for you basis. The whole month of first month of advertising is all testing and validation. You know, testing different targeting, testing different creatives, different ad copy, even split testing the funnel that we're running ads to and all of that kind of stuff to just figure out what works for the client and then basically scaling what works. So you do need to start in the beginning and do investor money to start with to find what works for you. But once you do find what works, it's easy for you to kind of put more money into what does work or just keep it at an maintenance level if that's where you're at.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: So do you think, like, authors have to. There's quite a few things that come to mind. Like, as you're speaking, I suppose, from an authorship perspective, I feel like a lot of authors are, they're reluctant to spend money, I guess, on book marketing initially. Do you think you have to spend money on marketing to get results?
[00:20:24] Speaker D: No. And that's why. That's why, you know, I kind of outlined that there's a little bit less leveraged opportunities that you can create for yourself, but they just require more time. So, you know, certainly if you don't have the money, you got to spend the time. And I think that's true with almost everything, you know, even writing a book, you could have a ghostwriter help you out, which is less of your time but costs money. Or you could have someone help you with publishing, which is less time, and you don't need to necessarily know all the steps, but it costs money, you know? And so it's just, it's just looking at that approach of, you know, what do you have right now? And whatever resource you spend, you know, is kind of the. It will determine what actions you can take, if that makes sense.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it does. Do you guys sit down with authors and then obviously hear about their books? Do you guys assess the target audience for the book, or do you expect the authors to know exactly who they're targeting from the get go?
[00:21:16] Speaker D: Well, a bit of both, Joanne, I would say, that's a lot of the authors do know their target market and who they wrote the book for, but there's definitely people who aren't super duper clear on that. Most of our clients and people that I do sit down with and work out some marketing strategies with, essentially they have businesses as well. So their book is like a lead into their business. Usually the book has the same avatar as their business and they're pretty clear on who they serve in their business. So it is a little bit easier. But then obviously we have to kind of take that target market and relate it to. All right, cool. What targeting are we going to use in the ads, whether it's Amazon or Facebook ads, and just determine what that means and what tests we're going to run initially as we work together. And obviously, if I'm doing a consulting session or something with someone, I would, you know, give them some recommendations to start with and test initially.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Oh, this is a bit of a random question I've gave you, but have you ever done like a, I don't know what the word is. So say I have a non fiction book which is freelance writing quick tips for fast success. And so that is like, it's like a quick tips book that you just flip ahead and it talks about, like, business values and stuff like that. But I no longer have a freelance writing business. And this book is really just for anybody who is looking to freelance writing startup. Have you ever done, like a cross, I don't think it would be like a cross promotion, but, like, help authors to get their books to businesses to make like a collaborative exchange. Do you know what I mean? Or not really like, so I have a book and there's a business. Who hasn't got a book? Have you, have you guys ever, like, is that something you guys would maybe ever do, like, merge a book with a business?
[00:22:56] Speaker D: Oh, I see. So, like, as like a, like a joint venture kind of thing?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Something like that, yeah.
[00:23:00] Speaker D: You bring someone else's book to a business, that they can use it, like, as a lead tool.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: And they don't like that. So they haven't necessarily written the book. But my book might serve their business for whatever reason.
[00:23:14] Speaker D: I haven't. But that's an interesting perspective. It's not really too different to licensing. So actually, you know, it's funny you say that because. Do you know Mike Michalowicz?
[00:23:24] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:24] Speaker D: Okay. So he's written some pretty popular business books. One's called profit first, as an example. And he actually license licenses the profit first system and strategy, and people can pay him, like, 25 grand or something to license his book name and, and, and the process that profit first outlines, and they can kind of tweak it for their own business. And so they ultimately, you know, there's one out there for trades businesses in Australia. Like tradies. I mean, so it's, like, literally called profit first for tradies. And they literally licensed that from Mike so that they have the rights to use it. And then now they've got a custom book that is with Mike's strategy or, you know, methodologies. Um, but they've tweaked it around this specific niche and they can market it. So, yeah, certainly I think there's an opportunity for licensing, if it makes sense, but even just going and going to a business that you think might be able to beneficially use this books are the best legion asset in the world to me. So it would make sense to kind of put it out and put it in front of a business that could utilize it.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, it makes sense. It's something that I've been just while I've got you and just wanted to ask something I've sort of been thinking about, because I'm no longer kind of running a freelance writing business, but I have this book, and I know it's really helpful, and I just thought, oh, you know, like, thinking of bulk sales and selling it on a bigger scale, maybe to a business to be able to do some sort of cross collaboration thing that would help it sell whatever they're selling and vice versa. So. Yeah.
[00:24:56] Speaker C: Well, anyway, what, you know, what are.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Some of these actionable strategies authors can take to market and sell their books that you guys talk about?
[00:25:04] Speaker D: There's lots. I think, first and foremost, you definitely have to determine what the outcome is you want to achieve from your book. Are you trying to sell books for the sake of selling books, or, you know, do you want it to be an asset that creates leads and opportunities in your business, if you have one? You know, I just determine that first and then, you know, second. I would also look at, like, if it is a lead generation tool for you, then what's the kind of method of. Of selling or giving away or getting the book out there? I should say that you should take, you know, from, from my perspective, there's a lot of coaches and people who are, like, kind of newer to business or, like, smaller revenue numbers. Let's just say in the $20,000 a month range, and they have a book already. Someone who's in that range might not have much money to spend on ads, and so they kind of want to get the best bang for their buck. And the, the way that they sell their coaching program is, is on a sales call or a strategy call after someone does something with them. So from my perspective, that kind of person should maybe consider giving their book away for free just as a digital download, which, you know, I know it's hard for some people to hear because they're like, oh, I spent all this time and energy and whatnot on the book. Um, and you just want me to give it away? Well, again, it just comes down to, like, what, what the outcome is that you want to achieve from the book. Do you want to get clients from the book? And is it just like a lead gen thing for you? Then I would just suggest, like, don't worry too much about selling the book. And so in this kind of strategy, you can literally run an ad to give your book away for free in exchange for a name and an email address. And then on the thank you page, the page after they opt in to get the book, you can offer a strategy call session with yourself. And you just got to correlate the strategy session to what the book is about. So if your book is about helping authors write their own book or creating a freelance writing agency, then you can say, I've outlined all of the strategies, the tips and the tricks that you can use to build your own book writing agency. But if you want my help to customize a, a plan for you to get that up and running in the next 14 to 30 days, then book a strategy session with me below and we can talk through what that means for you and how we can implement that for you starting today. So that you don't have to do everything yourself from the book, that you have to go through the book, you don't have to read all the things and then figure it out yourself. Like, I'm here to give you that resource right now. And then that obviously creates an opportunity for you with that sort of business to sell them on a service or an offer around that right away, instead of them having to go through the book, realize that need Joanne's help and all of that kind of stuff potentially. So that's kind of the approach I would take if someone has, like, a smaller business and doesn't have much money on ads, because what we've seen is when we give a book away for free in that manner, it's actually about ten times the volume of leads that come through, which is essentially ten times more opportunity for people seeing your strategy offer, which is really what we want at the end of the day, because that getting as many people on those and converting those people into clients on a coaching basis or a done for you basis is really what's going to create the most opportunity for you. But definitely, you know, if, if there's other modalities and it's not strategy call, if you've got like other super duper high ticket things, if you, you've already got a pretty established business and you're okay spending a little bit more on the front end to get someone to buy your book, then definitely we, we do a lot of paid book funnel offers as well, um, in our agency. And I think that it just comes down to, yeah, first and foremost, what's your strategy and how do we best get the best use out of bubble?
[00:28:36] Speaker A: No, that's, that all makes perfect sense there. And it's something that I know you're talking about it from a sense of businesses and bringing in lead generation from the book through having other services for sale and stuff. But that's actually like a strategy that fictional authors use as well, that they put the first in series for free. Like they call it like a permanent free, perma free one to get people obviously reading that first one and then hooked on the rest of the series. And it's quite, it's really effective as far as I know. I haven't written that many books to do it yet, but that's the plan. So. Yeah, now that, that does make sense. Completely. So one of the questions I was going to ask you, which I guess feels more in terms of, say, authorship than, say, instead of businesses looking to generate leads from their books, do you have tips for authors who want to convert readers into client?
[00:29:27] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Would you like to?
[00:29:30] Speaker D: So if you want to convert readers into clients, I think, again, it just comes back to like, what's the next step? What's the actual mechanism for getting people to become clients? So is it a strategy session? Is it a webinar, is it a video sales letter? Is it some sort of selling process? What you know, and identifying what that is? And then conversion happens with follow up. So if someone doesn't, doesn't book in a strategy with you right away, doesn't watch a webinar right away, then the follow up should be essentially giving them more social proof and opportunities to reach out for help in those follow up mechanisms. So for me, it's, it's always about getting people back to the strategy sessions, the webinars and so on. Through follow up email or through follow up SMS, or even picking up the phone and calling them, you know, um, through different softwares that are available these days. But essentially it's like the more you can kind of be front of mind and increase the touch points with people who do get your book to get them back on the next step opportunities with you, the higher conversion you'll have with getting people to become clients with you. And then to further on this, you can also run ads alongside this. So anyone who does get your book, you can do what's called retargeting ads. And so we can essentially set up some parameters to send ads to people who only people who have gotten your book. Not everyone, just people who have gotten your book. And then just remind them that, hey, there's a strategy offer, there's a webinar to watch a trial of my membership available and so on. So they can kind of just be top of mind on what you have available for them so that they, you know, they can reach out and get help. And then lastly, obviously your book should have called actions, if it is that type of book, to let someone know what the next steps are to working with you. And so, like, at towards the end of the book, you would have, like, if you want more help with XYZ, then, you know, go to this URL or scan this QR code and book a strategy session with me or watch this free training or whatever it is, which is again, the mechanism to get someone to create an opportunity with you and then become a client, potentially cool.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: And can you have more, would you say you can have more than one book working for you as lead generation? Or does that just get a bit messy with the different types of people coming through? I suppose it depends on the type.
[00:31:44] Speaker D: Of business I. Yeah, no, I think it is fine. Like, as long as they all are congruent with the business. The issue that comes up is like, if someone starts writing a book to, you know, attract different types of audiences and things like that, and then they don't focus on making sure that the book aligns with the business offerings, then even if you do get leads on a strategy session and whatnot, then you're going to have a potential issue where the, the readers aren't feeling the congruency and, like, the offer doesn't align well with the book. So I would just say, like, each, each book that you do write, if you have multiple, it might be a different audience slightly, but more so it should align with different offers that you have in your business. So one book might be like, around a specific process for one specific offer you have. Another book might be around another offer that you have, kind of thing just having the alignment that way. Otherwise you'll just find that there's a misalignment and you'll sell a lot of books, or you give a lot of books away, and then all your follow up and all your outreach to get people to do the next thing with you doesn't align and ultimately doesn't convert. And we've unfortunately experienced this with some of our clients. Like, you know, we've marketed books and given away or sold thousands of copies of books, and then there's just not an alignment piece, and so no one really converts and becomes clients. And so it's a, it's a little bit of a wasted dollars, essentially, in these campaigns. But, you know, the benefit is that it does still build your authority in the marketplace as well. So, you know, whilst it didn't necessarily have a direct impact, you know, there was still some side benefits to the campaigns.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you think comes first for most people? Is it like the business and then the book, or do people write books and then build their business off that book?
[00:33:24] Speaker D: I think, um.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Or is it both?
[00:33:25] Speaker D: More. Yeah, it's. Well, I like the people who have businesses first approach, but definitely people launch books to build businesses. Um, and this, there's, there's probably hundreds, if not thousands of case studies of that being effective. It's just I would rather, um, the opposite approach because to me, I don't know, I'm just a very, I'm a very tactical person, so I want to like, like really prove my expertise in a specific avenue and then write a book around my methodologies, not like, just kind of come out with something and then have the business built off of that, if that makes sense.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it does. I suppose when people start a business, they know what they're doing and the services they're offering and what they stand for. And then I guess the book is the extension of that. Whereas I guess, yeah, starting off with a book, you might be a bit unsure or unclear of which path you're going down, I suppose.
[00:34:16] Speaker D: Yeah. Like with smart author media, when we started, I had to figure out so much stuff, you know, and I didn't really know what was going to be effective to advertise books, but now I do. So, like, after a year and a half or so, nearly two years, I could probably write a book around what we do quite well, but certainly a year ago or a year and a half ago or two years ago when I started, like, I definitely couldn't have done that.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, my two non fiction books came out from experience and from doing, and I didn't ever, ever plan to write nonfiction. I started out in children's fiction, and I'm a fiction writer at heart. But the, the freelance writing one came out from setting up shop as a freelance writer and thinking that I could do that business. Oh, you know, I'll just freelance writing, earn an income that way while I built a book business on the side. Because books is my passion. That's what I want to do. But then that's effectively I realized right away, geez, well, I'm trying to run two businesses, and it's, you know, it's really hard to even just put all your time and effort into one. So I didn't bother with, I sort of stopped the freelance writing and went out and got, like, a commercial job that, you know, script writing job that pays me. And I have to think about where the work's coming in. But that book just, I just had learned so much by going out and to set up freelance writing and had all these little tips that you wouldn't otherwise know unless you sort of did. So I did that book, but freelance writing, it's not really part of my business model, I suppose. And I always, and my other book in the series is, like, author fears and how to overcome them. So that's more about the emotional aspects of authorship that I've gone through from writing books and putting myself out there and my work, you know, like, self doubt, all sorts of things. So the two books are sort of completely different experience. Well, from, like, lived experiences. And I almost sort of struggle, like, how am I gonna put them out there together? Because it feels like it's exactly what you're talking about. It's like a mismatched. The audiences are not the same. And I almost feel like, yeah, I feel like I shouldn't bother focusing on that freelance writing one and just continue on with the other ones and be.
[00:36:18] Speaker C: Like, my message is probably a bit.
[00:36:19] Speaker D: All over the shot, but it's okay. Like, it's all a part of learning, and you're obviously passionate about writing. So, you know, if you just use your passion and do that, like, I think that the thing is, like, again, like, nothing's wrong. You know, it's all a bit of a lesson and a game of figuring out what works and doesn't work. And even, even in advertising, like, we test so much stuff, but nothing's wrong to test, if that makes sense.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker D: You know, and you don't find what's right and unless you do the testing, you go through the hard yards of figuring out what, what works and doesn't work.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:54] Speaker D: And I just think that's the beauty about, about everything, you know, in this space. You know, even, even books. Like you can just write another book if the one, the first one you wrote, you know, didn't work in this, in the way that you expected, you can just write another book to the series or whatever to expand upon something, or you can even just start again and try something else. Like there's no harm, no failure.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. That's why I like the term hybrid, because to me it sort of means not one way of doing things and it's just, you know, try, try all sorts of different things and incorporate all different things. There's not one way of doing something. So, no, I absolutely agree with you there. And yes, it certainly is just our approach is write the next book, keep writing, write the next book, and I'm sure something will stick. Do you think in terms of marketing, you, as we've said, you sort of need to know what your message is and to a point, know your target market. And then when it comes to, I mean, it's obviously different when you're working with a company like yourselves, but knowing where this target market audience hangs out and what your approach is, it's best to go down that marketing avenue, obviously. I feel like I'm answering my own question rather than like what we're saying. Try all these different things to see what sticks.
[00:38:06] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's 100% going to be hunches of what is going to be the best opportunity for you to start. From an advertising perspective, I, you know, I think it comes down to what they, what you want. But if you want to sell books like Amazon, ads are great for selling books. I've just found that certain markets, like Australia, is almost too small to sell books with ads and we've tried and not really been very successful. So, you know, if your audience is potentially in America, then running Amazon ads in the american marketplace can be quite lucrative for you to sell a lot of books for a pretty decent cost per book sold price. But yeah, like, you'll definitely have the hunches. And for the most part, like, I'd pretty much just stick to two platforms. It's Amazon ads for a decent volume and low cost and primarily the US marketplace and then Facebook and Instagram, because that pretty much everyone else hangs out on Facebook and Instagram. It is just a different style of marketing. It's disruptive, meaning where, you know, we're putting ads in front of people in the newsfeed or, or, you know, as they're looking at marketplace or in messenger or stories or whatever, whereas Amazon is more search based. So if someone's like searching for a keyword or they're looking at a specific product, we show, you know, our ads as relevant products or another product that you could potentially buy or that is a competitor for the one that you're currently looking at. And so it's not disruptive. It's more like in a line with searching, which is kind of like how Google Ads work as well.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And you guys must be pretty excited with all these new AI tools that are on the market, are you?
[00:39:44] Speaker D: Yeah, we, we don't use AI too much. We definitely do use AI in certain aspects for creating some book marketing assets. So, you know, we use chat GPT as an example and we'll kind of create book Personas, which essentially is just like giving chat GPT information about the book and then asking it marketing related questions so it can help us with the content around that. And it's definitely just like a starting point, something that needs to be refined quite heavily because AI, and I'm sure you've seen how AI writes, you know, it's a little bit questionable. So we do use it as a starting point. But there's definitely other really awesome things like the platform eleven labs, which essentially can do replication of voice. So you can like essentially upload a PDF of your book and have it read a of audio version in your voice of your book. So you can kind of create audiobooks using eleven labs as an example. I think it struggles with accents besides the american accent. So it's maybe a little bit of a work in progress at the moment. But there's, there's certainly a lot of new, interesting tools out in the marketplace that can help you stay leveraged as an author.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Yeah, but what you guys are doing sounds great as well, Chris, and congrats on all your success to date. Can you share with us where, you know, our listeners can look at everything you guys do and.
[00:41:04] Speaker D: Absolutely. Smartauthor media.com is the best place. We also run a podcast called Smart author podcast, and you'll find that on the website. But essentially there's a lot of expanded thoughts and tips around all different types of advertising marketing. I have quite a few guests on the show that talk from different angles as well. So it's not just my, like one sided book ads and book funnel approach. Thoughts to marketing books. So, yeah, certainly I, I think there'll be a lot of, if you're interested in book marketing and everything that goes along with it, there'll be a lot of good things to find on the podcast.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Well, that's amazing, Chris. Thank you so much for your time and expertise.
[00:41:44] Speaker D: Thanks for having me, Joanne.
[00:41:51] Speaker C: So there you have it, folks. Some actionable marketing strategies from marketing guru Chris Bennetti. As you know, marketing for authors can be a fickle function. So if you're looking for a third party to help sell and market your books, you can go and check out Chris and his team. Next time on the Hybrid author podcast. We have children's author and autistic ADHD or psychologist Chelsea Luker on using your experiences to connect with your audience. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: That's the end for now, authors. I hope you're further forward in your author adventure after listening, and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the hybrid author
[email protected] dot au to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
