[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 book. 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.hybridauthor.com au. Let's crack on with the episode.
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 Jody J. Sperling, and we chat secrets from his book the seven Figure Marketing Mindset for novelists. Marketing campaigns, marketing wins and fails Kickstarter being authentic and honest with your book, marketing, Jodie's marketing advice to authors, and so much more.
So in my author adventure this week, I submitted my women's fiction book into the Australian Society of Authors Asa HQ Harlequin Fiction Prize. The shortlist gets announced May 1. I think the winner is May 15. For those of you regular followers of the podcast, you know this work was intended for self publishing. I've had it professionally edited. I had a book cover design all chosen out, but it just so happens that I've seen this competition. My book fits the brief exactly. It's ready to go. And it was. Yeah, it just all felt right. I'm a massive fan of HarperCollins as a publisher. The books they publish, they're quite quirky. Definitely me. So I'm not letting this business opportunity go by. In the meantime, though, I'll still prepare for self publishing by doing my research. First up is what size will suit the book. This is done by browsing the women's fiction genre in bookstores and in libraries and checking the styles that are out there, the sizes, how they look on the shelf, and what would fit best for my book. Because that's one thing I don't have done at this point, the publishing of it. So that needs to be done. I'll also be getting in touch with local printers in Western Australia to get quotes for printing. In the past for my non fiction books, I have gone through Ingram Spark, which is over eastern Australia, and that's been fantastic. Nothing wrong with Ingram Spark. I've had really good experience there, and I do sell regularly on Ingram Spark. And definitely, however this work turns out, if it does end up going the self publishing route. I will still hopefully sell on Ingram Spark and sell on that platform too. But I just wanted to try something different as well for this book and see what would be different. Because if I do go local to Western Australia, that kind of cuts out the shipping costs and would be nice to get a relationship going with a local printer as well. But I'm just not sure about how much things are or anything like that. So that is also part of the research plan and that's what the hybrid author podcast, the hybrid author Persona is all about. It's not just one way of doing things. I think I will continue to self publish my work and I think that I'll probably try all different ways to see what fits best or what works better, or there's no one way of doing something. Try them all, see what happens. So I'll get everything lined up and when the shortlist announces in May, if my submission has gone no further, then I'll be ready to revert back to the original plan, which was putting it out there myself. Either way, I'm just super excited in whatever way that this book comes out, I'm going to celebrate it in every manner because I'm really, really proud of it. And yeah, I've had some good feedback so far. I'm also speaking at an event that's coming up in March through the it's at the Shire of Harvey's Literacy festival this year, 2024. My session is an evening session on discovering roadblocks in writing. So if you're in Australand, come and see me, come say hi or book in for the session. Even better. It's March 7, Thursday evening, 530 until 630 like I said at the Australian Library, there'll be cheese and wine and really great tips. And I share my experiences in discovering Roblox and writing. So I'm hoping I'm just beyond excited to share my expertise with the local authors of their community. It will just be loads of fun and get to network and meet other people and it will just be really exciting. So the event also has a fab, not just not my event, but the actual literacy festival itself has a fab lineup of WA authors. So details will be in the show notes if you fancy coming along, or also just checking out this wonderful event. So this week I've been busy podcasting, as I said, getting my submission ready for that competition as well. That's taken up the time, but yeah, busy podcasting. I've had some super interesting conversations lately with industry professionals in the book industry, from publishers, marketing, experts who truly take a different spin on the aspects of the business, from marketing to publishing. So I pose this question to you. What are you doing differently for marketing and publishing your books to get the results you want? If you aren't happy with the way things are going in your author career or with your writing, why don't you try a new tact, a different method of publishing, a different company? Think outside the box.
What could you do differently to revive all the time and effort and works that you've already put out there?
[00:05:50] Speaker C: Thorn Creative, where beautiful websites for authors are brought to life. No matter what stage you're at with your writing, your stories deserve a dedicated space to shine. Whether you're just starting out or have a bookshelf full of bestsellers, your website is the hub of your author business. Finding everything you and your books offer together, thorn creative can nurture all aspects of redesigning your old site or start afresh from the initial design. They can provide ongoing hosting and maintenance to marketing your books online, saving you time, money, and stress trying to wrangle your site yourself. An author website built by Thorn Creative can easily direct readers to your favorite retailers, your publisher, or simply set you up to sell to them direct. The options are endless. Thorn creative have worked with many authors across all genres and know what goes into good, functional working author websites to sell books, head on over to thorncreative.com au slash websites for authors to read author and publisher testimonials and to see what they offer and some of the sites they've created.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Jody J. Sperling is a novelist, podcaster, husband, and father. He's obsessed with writing the best books and showing other authors how to make the best books bestsellers. Welcome back to the Hybrid Author podcast, Jody.
[00:07:31] Speaker D: Hey, thanks for having me again.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: We're so excited to have you back on. You did appear on the show in, I think it was like October 2022 now. So we're into 2024. But for those who didn't catch that episode or haven't quite heard of you, can you tell us or I'll tell them how you got into writing and publishing.
[00:07:50] Speaker D: Yeah, so as far as writing goes, I had the very sappy, normal story that many people do is that I fell in love with a girl and thought that it would be really impressive if I was a writer. And so I started doing that. I ended up not getting with her, but I kept the writing habit and that has been the most nourishing thing in my life and become my purpose. And then as far as publishing goes, I went through the traditional education system, got my master of fine arts in fiction, thought that was going to be the golden ticket, that I was going to meet some kind of editor publisher from one of the big five. Like, I was going to be with Pengrin Random House and get a six figure advance and just ride off into the sunset. That also did not happen. And so I have published a little bit traditionally, but mostly I focus now on self publishing, and that's just because I see that now as the most viable path to a robust career. And then I'll stop getting on my soapbox after I say that eventually, I would like to publish traditionally with the right book, but for the time being, self publishing seems to be the right way for me.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Oh, amazing. So you're obviously pumping out books with the aim to self publish, but is there works that you're working on, that this is for traditional publishing houses that's still happening in the background, or that's on the back burner?
[00:09:10] Speaker D: Yeah, no, that definitely is. I have a book called kidnapping George Clooney. It's a novel, and I will not self publish it. It feels like a perfect fit for the traditional world, and so I will start to market that once I have it ready and in shape, and it won't settle until it gets a traditional publisher. But for everything else, it feels like self publishing is a good fit.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because I've got aspirations, same as you, to do both. And you know that this work is best suited this way and this work is best suited that way. It's quite a fine line. It's quite funny. That book sounds extremely intriguing. I'll definitely be running out to buy that. Is it anything to do with George Clooney at all, or. No. Is that.
[00:09:51] Speaker D: No, it does. So the format of that book is. And the reason I think it's good for traditional publishing is that it has a little bit more of a literary spin to it. You have a young woman who has this fixation on the idea that mustard is the greatest condiment and that it's not getting its day in the sun. And so she sees the nespresso ads that George Clooney does. I think that they run more in England than anywhere else, but he is, like, the point person for this coffee brand called Nespresso. So she sees these ads and decides that if he would be the ad campaign head for mustard, he could give mustard its due. And so she wants to go and convince him that this is what he needs to do. Takes a hitchhiking trip to Hollywood to try to convince him to do it. And it's kind of all the exploits.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Along the way that's amazing. With George Clooney, he's like, copyright and stuff. He allowed to use his name.
[00:10:45] Speaker D: I know. I did a lot of research into it. I do, thankfully, have a friend who's a lawyer. And basically the idea is that you say this is a work of fiction, and so there's nothing in it that will reflect poorly on George Clooney. But I was a little bit scared of that at first, and I thought if I had to call a late audible for any reason, I could make it somebody else. But it feels like it loses some of the punch if it's not actually George Clooney. And so if you've ever heard of that movie being John Malkovich, it's kind of like that. It's the idea that you can use a person's name, but not necessarily tie yourself to it being like that. Real.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Oh, well, it sounds amazing. And obviously, you are an absolute fiction buff, but you do have some nonfiction, and that's what we're going to talk about today. Your book, the seven figure marketing mindset for novelists. So if you can tell us, in your opinion, why mindset and marketing and writing, why do you think it's so important?
[00:11:40] Speaker D: Okay, so, first off, I want to say mindset is the really big thing, and I want to differentiate that, because one thing that I think I've been rightfully asked along the way is, have you made seven figures on your writing? If not, why are you talking about this? So, my answer to that is, in my life, marketing, I have made seven figures, and that encompasses different business adventures that I've been on and bringing that mindset to the writing world. I have not made seven figures on my writing, and I'm fairly far away from that at this point. So it's about the mindset. And to borrow from what a lot of other people have said before, if you don't quit, you can't lose. And so that's really the cornerstone of my mindset, is keep that tenacity. Keep trying, keep pushing, keep pressing. When something doesn't work, don't give up immediately, but learn how to pivot quickly when something is not a fit for you. And the longer that you endure and persist, the better you'll get at this. So that is why I think marketing mindset is so important, is people do not get to the level of success that they dream of for themselves unless they're willing to endure a lot of failure, like feelings. You haven't failed, you haven't lost, but it feels like it until you're an overnight success ten years in the making. Right.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I must be on my way. Definitely having those feelings.
[00:13:01] Speaker D: Me, too.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: But no, that's really well said there. And I loved the book.
I love short form. Anyway, I just think that in this crazy busy world, some of the big books on stuff is a bit much. So I love that yours is sort of packs a punch. It's to the point. Are you able to share what some of the mindset secrets are that you put in the book?
[00:13:21] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, too, that I see this book as being kind of an evolution. I really do plan on going back in and doing a little bit, tightening up some of just like, grammatical things. I think that I knew when I published it as a nonfiction that I didn't need it to look like my fiction, where it was perfect. So the wording is probably clunky in some places, and I wanted that actually to speak to this process of, like, let's not be perfectionist. Let's be getting our work out there. To a degree, I have some complex feelings about that. But I'm okay saying, in general, it's okay to get your work out into the world before you feel like it is the perfect statue of David or something like that. And I apologize if you have the dog in the background. Can't be helped.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: No, that's all good. Yeah. We like a bit of background noise, and I think it sets the ambience, the visualness of the person.
[00:14:10] Speaker D: Yeah. To your question, I think right now, in my mind, the cornerstone and most important thing that I put in the book, there are many things you said it's small and it is small, but there's a section that talks about knocking on somebody's door. This can be a little bit metaphorical in some cases, but I think it is the cornerstone of the book, because if you are not willing to get out of your comfort zone and do something frightening, scary, uncomfortable, loathsome, then you probably are not going to find the success that you want. And I'll tell a little anecdote that is actually breaking the fourth wall of the book. So when I published the book, I really wanted to sell a lot of copies. And one thing that I thought would work well is starting a kickstarter. I think that Kickstarter is across the world. Right. Your audience will be familiar with Kickstarter, I assume.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah, the term. Yeah, absolutely. It's mentioned. I certainly am. It's not something I've done myself, but, yeah. Something that I'm looking to do this year.
[00:15:07] Speaker D: Yeah. And I probably at some point will write something small on Kickstarter as well because I have learned some invaluable lessons. So I started a Kickstarter and I did everything wrong, but I wanted to basically partner with local businesses and businesses, even across the country, if possible, to basically get my book in the hands of college students. That was the dream for this, is that the american college education system for fine arts and writers has zero training in marketing. So you get these students who learn to write better, and some of them are really talented, but by the time they're done with a four year education or a six year education, they have zero idea how to market. So I created this Kickstarter, thinking, I will go to the local businesses, they can do this as a tax write off. They can buy five copies that will be sent to a college of their choice. And I thought that that was a really great idea. I thought that it was thinking outside the box and it was going to work. I still think it was a clever idea. I think it was too clever.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds out. Yeah, it's different.
[00:16:01] Speaker D: But what ended up happening is that I was picking up the phone and I was calling local businesses and I was getting hung up on, I was getting chewed out, I was getting cursed at, I was walking into businesses with my pitch and getting stonewalled, and people didn't want to see me, wouldn't speak to me. I got to the point, and just to give you a little bit of background, I spent the majority of my working life outside of publishing on the phone, doing sales type things, or in person sales. So I'm very used to this. And it was shocking what happened because as I would get these rejections, they piled up so hard and so fast that I felt punch drunk. And I got scared to make sales calls. And it was a horrible failure. My Kickstarter was a miserable, horrible failure. There got to be a point along the process where I asked my wife, like, hey, we've raised 35 of the 10,000 that I thought, 3500 of the 10,000 that I had aimed as my goal. I guess if we funded the rest ourselves, at least we would get a small amount of money and sell a small amount of books. But for one, I didn't think it was ethical. And two, it was just like, no, you know what? This is the universe, God, whatever you think of saying, great, try, but this one is dead. And so I killed the project. And that was an amazing learning experience. But it was, like I said, very meta. Breaking the fourth wall. I failed. But my mindset was still like, this isn't over. And I will say with that caveat, I didn't pick up the phone to make any kind of sales call related to my writing for another eight months. I was terrified. And the first time I did pick up the phone to make a sales call was like I was trembling. I was so, so scared.
Yeah, the process is tough, but I do believe that is the cornerstone, is knock on a door. And the idea of knocking on the door that I put in the seven figure marketing mindset for novelists is you have your book ready to go now, actually go to your neighbor, knock on their door, and ask them if they're willing to buy a copy. And the reason that I say to do that is because when you put yourself in that position to ask someone to buy your book, something really different starts to happen inside of you. It changes your mindset and makes you realize this is not just a piece of art. This is also an asset. It's an object that has value. And asking someone to buy it reminds you that it has value. And there's nothing wrong with your book having value. Imagine if Stephen King said, you know, I wrote these books to enrich the world. I never thought about making any.
Just, it shouldn't work that way. You can create art and still profit from the art that you create.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Absolutely. And, yeah, I mean, got into this as well because I am passionate about what I do and writing and book form, for me, that's it. But, yeah, I want to do this as a job and a career. So, yes, I do want to make money from it, and people do. Gone are the days where there's still that negative stigma around places, but people are making money on it. I went to my first self publishing online conference through the alliance of Independent Authors. And besides that, here in Australia, I'm very much a part of a traditional publishing crowd. So to meet these authors online, and everybody was, most of them, that's what they were doing as a job, and they're all earning money and stuff like that. So it was really, really refreshing to see, because a lot of the traditional publishing people here are a bit, yeah, unhappy, I guess, with the money they're making, or it's quite quiet. But then you've got the other end of the spectrum, and people are making a living from it. And just off what you were saying, what I really love about this profession as soul destroying as it can feel sometimes. And then we keep sort of, I don't know if we're sadistic or something going back for more to keep getting drilled on until we sort of make it. But it's that determination, I think, that you've got to have that will get you to succeed. But I like that there is a challenge in this job too. Yeah. Like every day is not the same, or it's putting yourself out there for learning new skills and just something different all the time. Because to think of a normal, I don't know, nine to five desk job or whatever just airs me up inside. Even if you've got to do that to pursue your book marketing or writing until you the living you need to, that's fine. But as much as all these other aspects of marketing scares me because especially like public speaking and all sorts of stuff, this is my happy medium, where I'm sort of hidden behind lots of screens and things like that. But actually going out this year, I'm going to a few more in person stuff and awesome. Yeah, people will see me and I'm just like, oh, goodness. But I'll probably enjoy it a lot more than what I'm scared of. But I like that it forces you to go out and out of your comfort zone.
[00:20:34] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. It's really surprising to me when you're talking about in person, the relationships that you can build are so much different, so much quicker too. It's something about that physical connection that deepens your connection, your relationship with a reader, that it can't be under or overvalued, I guess.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I like talking to people, so it's fine. And I like going to in person events and I'm quite a social person. But what I think I need to get comfortable with is just people looking at me.
I don't like really, I guess people looking at me. And that's when you feel probably most raw and judged almost, because that's when they're making the opinion, I suppose, over.
[00:21:16] Speaker D: Mannerisms, not to get like psychological on your own podcast. But why do you think that is? Has that been like a lifelong thing for you? Or is there a moment where you feel like that happened?
[00:21:27] Speaker A: No, not really. I think that's just been the usual going through school and everybody, there's like a generation that was scared of sort of public speaking. Whereas I'm not sure what they teach in the US now, but my kids in Australia, it's like mandatory that every child has to get up through each years and they all have to be doing public speaking, it's like they've ingrained it now into the system. So when they emerge now, there's not going to be that sort of fear like what there was. But I've actually had positive experiences through uni having to get up, and I did a whole presentations unit. You were forced to get up pretty much every single week. It was so uncomfortable, but I had to get up. And I had self published a children's fiction book in my first year at uni, and I got up and spoke about that, and I was quite nervous. But rather than the fear that I sort of felt, what happened? Like, at the end, there was connection. People came up and they were like, oh, really excited. And I write as well, and it was like, oh, cool.
I keep it in my mind because it was a positive experience in the end, rather than a negative one.
[00:22:27] Speaker D: But I'm curious. This happens for me, is that anytime I've done any formal public speaking, I get such a dose of adrenaline that when I'm finished, I don't remember anything that I said. I've practiced the speech. Does that happen to you at all, or do you feel like not quite as adrenaline hyped as that?
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, not yet. And I don't think I've had as much practice. We'll have to touch base again another year as this year is me putting myself out there a bit more with chatting and all that sort of stuff. More so than behind the screen, but, yeah, well, if it's a terrible experience and I get adrenaline, I can just blank out the experience.
[00:23:04] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Anyway, yeah. Back to your marketing mindset novelist book. So how did you sit down and sort of come up with the bits that you wanted to put in?
[00:23:14] Speaker D: So I wrote and wrote and wrote a lot, and then I went back over the material, and I cut and cut and cut until I thought that everything that was in there, at least as a raw idea, had a lot of value. You mentioned early on that shorter can be better. And I couldn't agree more, especially with a book like this. I think when you're talking about any kind of skills acquisition type of book, shorter is better. And this book probably could go from, if I were grading myself right now, I would say it's like a c plus. I think I could get it to an a with another 500 hours of work. And that's probably something that I envision doing with the book. I see it as sort of a living document evolving over time, but I wrote it with as much as I knew at the time. I wrote it to the best of my ability. What I knew, I worried less about the sentencing, which is sort of like the complete opposite of how I feel about fiction. Fiction. Every single word is belabored, and it breaks my heart if someone's like, hey, there's a typo on page 19. I'm like, oh, my gosh.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: So you're remembered from it.
[00:24:17] Speaker D: Yes, exactly. I know this book. It was less like that. It was more, judge me on the concepts that I have. Have you encountered this kind of information before? Have you encountered it in this way? And I really wanted to pair every lesson that I tried to teach with a personal anecdote from my own life that illustrated the lesson. I thought that that was of utmost importance, and I think that that's what gives a book a little bit more life is if you know that the person writing it has experienced what they're telling you to do, because you don't want to learn from somebody who's theoretical pie in the sky. And I think, unfortunately, I do encounter a lot of podcasts out in the world right now where you can tell that people are not acting in good faith. In fact, a small little anecdote that bothered me to no end is there was a gentleman who was advertising on Instagram that his email system had generated ten figure income for him, and it was $7 to buy his intro email. And I was like, what's $7? I don't even think about spending $7. And so if it's a scam, at least I'll learn, but I'll buy it. I'll check it out. It was a template, basically, so that you could sort of personalize it, but it would give you this format for drawing customers into your funnel, which, these are words. I kind of hate funnel anyways, but I bought it. And as I'm reading the intro email, there was a typo in the first sentence and then a typo in the third sentence. And I think, all told, there were, like, 15 typos in this thing that he sent. And it was. I mean, they were embarrassing typos. And so I just sent a thing to him, and I said, hey, after the first typo, I thought, okay, we all make mistakes. But by the time I got to the end of this, there were so many typos. Like, I circled it, I sent him a screenshot of it, and I was like, hey, you might want to think about at least fixing this before you continue to sell it to people. And he was belligerent with me. He was so angry. I didn't even ask for a refund, but he gave me a refund. He was so belligerent and it was awful. And I just thought, there are a lot of people out there right now who understand how to market, but don't have something valuable to market to other people. They haven't taken the time to really distill that. And so I wanted this book at least to be an antidote to that.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't really think about that, do you? Hey. Like the other end, like someone can excel in that field, marketing, but then what they are, marketing is not any good. Yeah.
[00:26:42] Speaker D: Has no value.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Scary. I know. Yeah. There is sharks out there, which is sad. It is sad that people can sort of get roped in. There is a lot of podcasts popping up as well, isn't there? I know, at least from talking to people last year, at least three people I know are starting podcasts. So it's really a big saturation is going to come into that for marketing in the future. I've got to say, with your book, what I liked as well is how you had all the reviews and stuff on the back that kind of, I felt like the book was a good marketing for yourself anyway, and also how you had the QR codes and was just different, like the way it was packaged as well. I thought that was pretty clever.
[00:27:20] Speaker D: Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to leave some resources at the back of the book that were easy to use and give you kind of more story. One of the ones in the back that I really like is Becky Robinson. Her book reach had a really big impact on me. I love what she said. It kind of felt like in some sense, like traditional marketing and an approach. But I also felt that she distilled some ideas in some really cool, easy to remember ways. So there are a lot of resources at the back of the book as well that I hope can help people take the adventure a little bit further.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: No, that's fantastic. And I mean, you've already shared a lot of advice, but think of an author at the very beginning of their novel marketing adventure. What advice would you give them at.
[00:28:04] Speaker D: The very beginning of their marketing adventure?
[00:28:07] Speaker A: They've made no mistakes, they've come up against no failures or know what works or nothing like that. They're wet behind the ears. What would you say? Good luck.
[00:28:17] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. Good luck. Do something, probably, actually, that's true. Do something would be my basic advice, because I think that a lot of us get stuck. We have the book, it's finished, and then we hope, like posting will organically drive readers to our books almost never works. And if it does work, it rarely works well enough for you to have a meaningful impact in your community or let alone the world. But let me say it would be a little bit different depending on the kind of person. So if you're a person who has a little bit of money, then actually my advice for someone who's even wet behind the ears is spend $5 a day for one week to run a Facebook ad. And if you don't know how to run a Facebook ad, just go online and YouTube is a wonderful resource type. How to create a Facebook ad, and you can learn how to do all of the little things you need to know how to do. The reason I say that one is because next to knocking on the door, which would be another piece of advice for someone who has no money but wants to get out there, spending money to advertise your book instantaneously changes your relationship with the book. Because every day that you lose $5, even though for most people that's not a huge big deal, it still hurts. It's like, okay, I could have bought a cheeseburger or something along those lines, but instead I just flushed that money down the Facebook drain. And it helps you to be more tenacious and to realize that it's difficult. And I think what happens in your brain when you accept that you're not going to magically rub a genie lamp and just be famous is that you start to create a resilience mindset. And that is the number one key to success in this is building resilience.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Absolutely. Do you feel like there's. How long do you think someone should sort of plug at something before they're like, nah, this is not working for me, and pivot onto the next thing, do you think? Six months, depending on what year?
[00:30:08] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a great question. So my Facebook advertising journey will be one year in February, and I've certainly lost more money than I have made. It's significant amount, actually. At different points, I've been a bit more aggressive with my budget, trying to experiment with things. I will say the caveat again. I talked about this in the seven figure marketing mindset for novelists. I've talked about it on my podcast plenty, maybe even mention it the first time that you and I chatted. But I have disposable income to a degree, and so I was able to be a bit more aggressive with my budget. Not everybody can, I understand that.
But I say go until the pain makes you. Absolutely. Until you have to quit. And at the moment you feel like, I have to quit, then go ahead and quit that thing to salvage the whole, if that makes sense.
It's like the analogy I think of in the health world is the best way to have the best physical health is to do things until exhaustion. So if you're going to do push ups, do push ups until you literally can't complete another push up. And that is physiologically the most beneficial way to go about exercise. That gives you the biggest benefits in health, and I would say have that same approach to this. So you set a budget and you say, right now I am able to spend $100 a month on advertising. So then the first thing you do is if you say, I'm able to spend $100 a month, then up that by 10%, so be willing to spend $110. And then if you get to the end of the month and you literally don't have anything left in the bank account, and you're like, I'm going to go broke if I keep doing this. Then stop advertising and pivot until you can go back to it and try again. There are some cases where it's just a clear sign to quit, and I think that's a little more difficult to decide when that exact moment is. I wish that I had a really clean cut way to say, like, quit. But generally speaking, unless you are loathe to wake up, it's probably worth continuing.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I like that. It's hard as well, isn't it? Because it's sort of just that it's that mindset as well. Oh, but it could be the next one, right?
[00:32:12] Speaker D: I mean, you're almost a gambling addict at some point, right? It feels like it. At least. You're like, if I just pulled this slot one more time.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah, scary. Think of it that way. But, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I think this industry, and it's something that I do anyway, is all a gut feeling.
I talked about before, that children's fiction book that I self published in my first year of uni, before I knew sort of anything and kind of put it out without having it edited. And I had a gut feeling there.
I was rushing or whatever, and I did it anyway, and I was just like, crippled by self doubt once I put it out there, and that was a big lesson in itself, but it's like an antenna now. I sort of read through things and I more consult the gut to being like, how does that feel? If there's any sort of tingling or anything, I'm just like, that's fine with that.
Are you going to add any more books to this series with the marketing mindset novelist book, or are you going to just keep updating this as you grow and learn and things like that?
[00:33:19] Speaker D: I definitely will update it. I will try to keep it roughly the same length. I may completely dispatch certain parts of the book if I feel like they don't age well. But yeah, what I would like to do is I would like to write a volume of about the same size once I've actually hit the seven figure income piece of it and say, this is how you do it, and really try to be as vulnerable as possible about all of the mistakes I've made along the way because I've shared the Kickstarter story, I've made some boneheaded mistakes that have cost me a lot of money and a lot of pride. So I'd love to share that with the world because one thing I think is lacking right now is the vulnerability to actually talk about failure in a real raw and honest way. I love Joanna Penn. I love what she does. I feel like she doesn't talk enough about her own failure. You feel like she was born a success. And I love Mark Dawson, again, similar. He does talk a little bit about being a failure, but it doesn't feel very raw. I think that it's one of the human characteristics that we don't want people to laugh at, don't. We don't tend to be vulnerable about the mistakes that we made and how silly we were. So I want to do that because I think that that's important. And there's somebody out there right now who's listening to this. There's somebody out there who will listen to this, will come across my book, that this will save them from quitting because they'll be like, oh, if that guy could be so stupid and look at where he's at now, then I can do this, too. And I think that's really important and missing in the field right now.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, again, a really good mindset to have, I think, in terms of, say, joanna Penn and Mark Dawson. Joanna Penn, I absolutely love her podcast. She's been on mine a couple of times, and she's like an unbespoke mentor of mine across the way. But I've got to say her nonfiction stuff that she's putting out now that she's doing through Kickstarter is. It's more, I'm not going to say authentic, but it's more personalized. So she actually does inject a lot more of how she's feeling, like, more in a negative light, really open. And honestly, more so than our how to books. Yeah. So she's kind of pivoted there. And I remember one of her podcasts, she was saying that she had wished, I think, in the beginning of her podcast, that she had been a bit more open about the failures and stuff like that. And I think probably from, like, a business standing, you kind of feel like, especially what they do, you kind of feel like you have to be seen to be the beacon that is succeeding in every aspect. Because why then would people come to do what you're doing? I guess if you're showing any sort of signs of failure, but I'm the same as you.
It's not all coming together immediately for me. And to me, this as well. It's the real life for most of us. It might work for everybody. Well, that's the thing, though, which is so hard, because not one person I have met in the writing field, every single person is different. Like, every single person's story, the way they publish, the way they write, it's all different. So it kind of feels like there's definitely not one way, but there's one way for everyone or a couple of different ways or whatever. So, yeah, it's a mind boggle.
[00:36:31] Speaker D: It is. Yeah, you're right. There's not a perfect format for everybody. You can't have a single book where anybody who reads it is then, like, oh, now I know how to succeed.
I just heard this recently. You probably know of this, but colognes and perfumes interact with the pheromones of the person who sprays them. I don't actually wear cologne. I don't much like it. But I just thought this was really interesting and applicable in a lot of ways. But apparently when you spray cologne on yourself, your own pheromones change the scent. So no one person ever smells the same wearing the same cologne.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: Wow. That is cool.
I like that. Should become a metaphor for you for.
No, that's interesting. Well, thank you so much, Jodie. You've shared such good insights and expertise. Again, thank you. And, yeah, can you tell our listeners where they can know the seven figure marketing mindset and all your fiction and just generally you and your podcast on and offline?
[00:37:33] Speaker D: Absolutely. So the seven figure marketing mindset you can find on Facebook. Jody J. Sperling. If you even get close to spelling it right, you'll find it on Amazon. I've gone to Payne's to make sure I'm very findable there so that's the easiest way to find that book. To find my fiction, go directly to my website, jodyjsperling.com. It's J-O-D-Y-J-S-P as in Paul, E-R-L-I-N as in Nancy, g dot where you can get all of my fiction the cheaper than you can get it anywhere else. And if it's physical, I'll sign it and ship it to you anywhere in the world, no problem. And I also want to take just a quick moment to let any authors who are listening know if you are semi successful, where you have enough reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or anywhere else, and you're interested in getting into bookstores in the United States. I have a business called the self published author cooperative where we have relationships with bookstores across the states, and I'm always looking to add more authors to my stable who want their books and bookstores. This is specifically for self published authors and you have to have the inventory on hand so that you can ship it yourself. So it's not for everybody. But if you're that author who wants that, you can reach out to me at
[email protected]. And Joanne, it's probably easiest if I just send you the email address because create collaborate is spelled stupidly.
Anybody can reach out to me if they're interested to learn more about that.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really interesting.
When you said enough reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, what's enough?
[00:39:02] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a good question. So I'm working with a guy right now who has a fantastic book. I think it's really marketable. He has 111 reviews on Amazon. So that's probably round the bottom of where I would look at if somebody had a great book and 50 reviews. Yes. Anything less than 50 is probably going to be a tough sell.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. No, interesting. Good to know. Well, thanks again, Jody. That was fantastic.
[00:39:26] Speaker D: Yeah, thank you.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: So there you have it, folks. The always super smooth Jody J. Sperling. Love Jodie. Love his work and all that he does and stands for in the author community. If you haven't, go and check out his books. And the epic. What was the reluctant book marketing podcast? It's now called TRBM podcast. And when we did this interviews, we did sort of back to back. So I actually appear on Jodie's podcast talking about marketing in libraries, australian libraries, and just marketing and book marketing in general. So links to the show notes for that episode. Also, next time on the hybrid author podcast, we have Joe McKero sharing his wisdom on writing graphic novels for children. A fantastic interview with Joe, not to be missed. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it for me. Bye for now. That's the end for now. Authors, I you are 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.
