Discoverability is a true challenge for authors in today's publishing landscape. The Internet is a crowded place and it’s getting increasingly difficult for authors to get their work seen.
Jim Kukral is an Internet Marketing veteran who has helped companies like Fedex and Ernst & Young to understand how to use the Internet to grow their businesses.
He is also a bestselling author of non-fiction books and an international professional speaker. On top of that, he is the co-host of the Sel...
Discoverability is a true challenge for authors in today's publishing landscape. The Internet is a crowded place and it’s getting increasingly difficult for authors to get their work seen.
Jim Kukral is an Internet Marketing veteran who has helped companies like Fedex and Ernst & Young to understand how to use the Internet to grow their businesses.
He is also a bestselling author of non-fiction books and an international professional speaker. On top of that, he is the co-host of the Sell More Book Show podcast.
In this episode, he visits the Am Writing Fantasy podcast to discuss how to conquer the “visibility issue”.
Jim's most recent book, “Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable" can be found here: www.beunskippable.com
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Read the full transcript below.
(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).
Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.
Jesper (31s): Hello, I am Jesper and this is episode 38 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to talk about how to conquer the visibility issue in today's world. And the internet is a crowded place nowadays and it's getting increasingly difficult for authors to get their work seen. So today I actually brought on a guest who will help me understand how to navigate the issue of visibility. And that guest is Jim Kukral, who is also an internet marketing veteran who has helped companies like FedEx and Ernst and young to understand how to use the internet to grow their business.
He's also a bestselling author of nonfiction books and an international professional speaker. On top of that. He also hosts the sell more books show podcast. So that was quite a bio there. Jay, welcome to the amwritingfantasy podcast.
Jim (1m 24s): I am happy to be here. You have a wonderful podcast here and I've heard lots of great things about it and I know that's people who listened to it, so congratulations.
Jesper (1m 32s): Oh, thank you very much. We actually only recently shifted onto a 100% podcast focus because beforehand we had the Brown, I primary source was actually YouTube videos and then we just sort of uploaded a podcast version of it, but recently we shifted it around. So it is now a podcast where we only just uploading a YouTube podcast so to speak. So, so that's great. I'm, I'm glad you liked it.
Jim (2m 0s): I do.
Jesper (2m 2s): Anything else? Uh, you could tell us about yourself other than what I just mentioned in the intro? Jim
Jim (2m 8s): um, I'm uh, from Cleveland, Ohio and I have a family and I have been publishing content online for over 20 years before even blogs started. I started my first blog, uh, two months before nine 11. I am have written books before. They were called, you know, eBooks and just give you apps online. You know, so I've been doing this a long time. I am definitely not Seth Goden or Malcolm Gladwell, but I would like to be, uh, so, uh, I, I love, uh, producing content that helps people.
Jesper (2m 47s): Yeah. And, uh, I'm also a regular listener of the sell more books show myself and I really liked that. So, uh, since this is also a podcast, I might be listeners who are not familiar with your other shoulder. So perhaps before we dive into today's topic, maybe you could just share a bit about what you and Brian are doing over on the sell more books. Show
Jim (3m 6s): yeah, about five years ago, if you can believe it. I think it's five years. I'm bad at math. If you listen to the show, you'll see that we're bad at it.
Jesper (3m 13s): Yeah, I know.
Jim (3m 15s): We started a podcast called the sell more books show me and Brian Cohen and we did recorded the 282nd or 83rd episode yesterday. So we've done it once a week for all of these years. We're approaching our 300 episode and it's all about the news of what's happening in the world of publishing and self-publishing. It's really for indie authors of any genre who want to learn about the latest tools, tips, tactics, strategies involved in self publishing.
It's a fast paced format, 35, 45 minutes show of news and tips where we offer a little bit of commentary.
Jesper (3m 57s): Yeah, no, I, I re I really enjoyed also because you know, between you and the creative Penn podcast, you sort of get most of all the news you'd need. So you don't have to sit there and read tons of articles yourself. You can just sort of, you know, tune in once a week and listening to your podcast and then, uh, at least you sort of get the main picture of what's moving into publishing world. So that's, that's really good.
Jim (4m 19s): Yeah, that's the point. The point is to quickly give the indie author the information they may not have found on their own and then just offer a little commentary as well on how to help them sell more books. That's the whole why of the show.
Jesper (4m 36s): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the 300 or five years that, that's a ton of episodes that you have released. I was almost about to say $300. I don't know why that, that number popped up in my mind, but, uh, it's a lot of episodes you have guys have released every week. Uh, that must have been quite a journey.
Jim (4m 56s): Yeah. You know, it's the longest podcast I've ever done. I've been doing podcasts before Heath Dube and you know, all kinds of stuff and this is the longest one I've ever participated in. The key to having a long podcast and doing it is just doing it consistently and having a consistent format. Um, if you're starting a podcast, definitely just have it be consistent every single week, release it at the same time and also have a very consistent format so that your listeners can get accustomed to it and used to listening to it.
Jesper (5m 31s): Yeah, yeah, exactly. That, that's also something we've tried to be mindful of now that we shifted to a a hundred percent a podcast instead of YouTube videos too, to try to build in some consistency. And you know, regular sections so that indeed, as you say, people can get used to the format. So that's good. But, uh, we wanted to talk a bit because you just released a book, a Jim called your journey to become, and, uh, we wanted to, I guess, use status as a bit of a springboard into a conversation about visibility and perhaps how, I guess that's self published authors, worst enemy now nowadays.
So, uh, I hope we can yeah. Get, get a bit around and look at this from different angles and so forth during our conversation here.
Jim (6m 20s): Well, yeah, I mean it's, the book just came out this summer and I'm very proud of it. It's the best book I've ever written. And you know, I make the argument in the book that the world has become skippable. Um, VR is allow us to fast forward through the commercials. When you're watching a show on Netflix, the very first thing that pops up when the show is over is the little button in the bottom right corner. It says, skip to the next show. Uh, people can't wait five seconds to watch the next show, right?
Uh, we become a skippable society. We, we have the technology to fast forward through the content that we want to consume and the content that we don't want to consume. And that comes all the way down to your brand as well. Um, it's not that attention spans are decreasing. We can still pay attention that the thing is we've just become really good at focusing and deciding what content we want to pay attention to.
So in your brain, there's a thing called the reticular activating system and it's the little thing in your brain that decides what information you're going to pay attention to and what information you're going to skip. It's a a great example of if you were in a very crowded room with 300 people and your a brother or your spouse is at the other side of the room and they a yell your name, there's a reason you hear it, number one, you hear it because it's your name, your condition.
Your brain is conditioned to be open to that sound. And it's coming from a familiar tone of voice of person that you are used to hearing and that's what your reticular activating system does. So I guess my point is that in this very skippable world that we're living in as authors, we have to find ways beyond just creating great content to get people to want to pay attention to us.
Jesper (8m 26s): Yeah, and that's definitely the hotline. I also noticed, uh, I think the, you know, Netflix apps, uh, I think they are a bit different in different places of the world, but at least here in my part of the world, I noticed it, it's probably only like maybe two months ago. But, uh, whenever you start a show, normally they run this sort of, uh, what happened last time on blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that sort of thing. And then, uh, about two months ago, this option appear every time on the screen. Now we can just click like a skip intro. So, so I think that goes very hand in hand with what you were just saying.
You know, that we are very much skipping over everything nowadays and just want to get to the, to the main gist of things
Jim (9m 6s): we do. And we, we, we want to skip things. We've become a society of people who literally are just so busy. Uh, and we just don't have, we have so many things being thrown at us more than ever. More adds more content, marketing, more books. Um, and our brains are looking for reasons to skip things. And as an author you have to find ways to become unskippable. Um, and that's what the book's about.
Jesper (9m 38s): Yeah. And, and I, I think since you've written this book, I think I'm not going out on a limb in saying that, um, you probably share my view that, you know, discoverability in today's busy world is one of the most difficult things for us authors to deal with. But I'm curious what your view is on, on this topic, or maybe I should put a different, you know, since there was so much content on the internet, as you just said, and I guess in that way, consumer behavior has also changed quite significantly.
Maybe over the last, I don't know, decade or so. But what is it that we need, we authors need to understand about the modern reader because I guess it's the readers that we are, we're sort of after here.
Jim (10m 21s): The first thing you need to understand is that, uh, everyone's using their phone, right? So all you have to do is get on a bus or go to a waiting room or a doctor's waiting line or, or anywhere. And I want you to be very conscious of what people are doing when they are not distracted by anything. There was a report I wrote about my book that Microsoft did that said, when people said, when they're not distracted by anything, 77% of them picked up their phone as their first reaction.
And they looked at, we spend an average of three hours a day looking at our phones, not talking on them, okay? They beans spend an average of nine hours a day looking at our phones. All right? So the first thing that an author needs to realize is that we are living in a mobile world and people are staring at their phones, uh, hours and hours and hours per day. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about how somebody might come across your book, they probably found it on a recommendation on Twitter or Facebook or they were browsing the Amazon app or Kobo app on their phone.
And that kind of leads into the line of thinking then, well, does your cover pop? Does your title, uh, make sense? Does, um, does your cover look like the other covers in the science fiction or fantasy categories? Right. Cause people buy what they're used to. You know, if, if I'm a big, I'm a big science fiction, I'm a reader, you know, I'm looking for, I made that consciously be doing it, but I'm subconsciously looking for books that look like the other books that I liked.
Does that make sense?
Jesper (12m 22s): Yup. Yup. Absolutely.
Jim (12m 23s): This is why the romance industry has what I call the shirtless Cowboys on it. Um, there's a reason there's a, you know, really six pack abs, a shirtless man on the front of 90% of all romance novels because that's what people are used to and that's what people want to buy. And that's what makes the books on skippable. So I cover to market strategy as long as uh, as well as a right to market strategy definitely helps make you unskippable.
Jesper (12m 59s): Yeah, and I think, I mean that there's 100% true in, in what you're saying around the, you really need to hit young our expectations and that's both entitling covers because otherwise you'd just in a came, especially today. And, and maybe just to use the Netflix example again here for a second, because I also noticed, you know, sometimes my wife and I have your we might be watching the same series but on on at different times. So she might have it in her watch list and I have it in my watch list. But it's quite interesting when you then go into your watch list.
The image that is displayed is different. So, so the same series, but the image that they show in the thumbnail for me is different than the one that show for her. It probably, because you know, they know why male and she's female. So they are showing us different things that they believe or they probably know through a statistical whatever that tha that that's something we like. More right. So, so, and I, I know I've heard you and a pen speak about this in the past as well, how she would love to be able to do different covers for different territories in the market.
So, so there's something about that too, you know, that, that our culture also dictates some of what we like and don't like.
Jim (14m 7s): Uh, yeah. I mean the companies like Netflix and Amazon especially are doing all kinds of, uh, testing. You know, Joanna is right. The AI part of this is becoming a big part of how it works behind the scenes. There are programs that are starting to be developed that will, uh, automatically right, uh, advertisements for you headlines. Interesting, right? So there's one coming out that I saw that will automatically do Facebook split ad testing for you and um, and it will write headlines.
It will write copy right and it will run a massive amounts of ads and determine which one is highest click. I mean we're eventually going to reach the point where a program like that you could just hit a button and it will put in a budget and it will run ads and create them all for you and just return the results later and say, well this one performed at the highest level, um, all written by AI. Um, now we're not completely there yet, but it's definitely coming.
Jesper (15m 18s): Hmm, that's interesting. And I wonder what they will charge for such a service, but that is certainly interesting.
Jim (15m 25s): Well, they will charge for it for sure. Um, but the beautiful part about it is, is that it is run by an, you know, a computer. It's an AI. So you know, the, there is no human labor involved so hopefully the service will be cheaper. Here's the problem though, when if you make it cheap enough, you've got a lot of authors using it and then all of a sudden the AI is, you know, producing all of these ads for all these different, you know, if you get, you know, 10,000 science fiction authors using it, you know, then I'll, the marketplace gets flooded.
You know, one of the reasons that, uh, if you find the time to learn how to do ads and learn how to market your book and put the time and effort and you could stand out, um, because you know, when you push that Boulder up over the Hill, you, you, you learn how to do it. You spent the time and effort and you spent the money and you could definitely a stand out above other authors. When the technology gets to the point where everyone can do it, uh, and the cost is low enough, then the playing field gets leveled a little bit.
Jesper (16m 37s): Yeah. And that's both good and bad. I mean, it's good that everybody can, can get to play, so to speak. But on the other hand, I mean we, we've seen it at least also with Facebook ads or especially with a Amazon ads that, you know, the, if you really want to hit those top keywords, you have to pay a lot per click nowadays. So it's, it's just been almost become impossible unless you're like selling box sets and whatnot, so you can afford to spend more. But, uh, on a single book it's almost impossible to at least for the good clicks, you know, the high profile words.
Very true. So that's, that's sort of the world we live in. Uh, and, and that all plays into why visibility is such a problem for us. But I think also, I quite liked how I picked up in the beginning of a your unskippable book where you are, you are sharing sort of your epiphany and you're, you're talking about how many defined success as being money. And basically we just talked about that too. You know, we, we, we just had the angle of how do we sell more books and, uh, I have also set before that, you know, getting rich might not be the best of success criteria is it's great if it happens, but it might not be the best to strive for.
But, but that's sort of what I picked up in the beginning of your book a bit capita. But perhaps you can elaborate on your line of thinking.
Jim (17m 57s): Yeah, I mean, uh, my book is a business inspirational book and I tell some personal stories in the book and one of the themes as you mentioned is, you know, why are we always shooting for as a human race, you know, how rich we can get and how successful we can get. Um, I personally personally believe that, you know, money being filthy rich and having a ton of money and losing my life because I spent so much time working to reach that goal is not the most appropriate thing for me.
There are some people who that's what they're into. They want to have a lot of money and that's fine. That's totally fine. If that's what you want to do. Um, I will say this, you know, it's a short life and the dream of, you know, being the next, you know, Andy Weir and the Martian is is a great dream to have, but you know, are you going to, uh, spend so much time and so much effort going after that dream that you miss everything else happening in your life? Um, and so there's a lot in the book about, you know, just mindset and trying to be in the moment.
You know, I think it comes from the fact that I'm in my late forties now, you know, I felt when I was younger and that's natural, but everybody goes through their own journey, especially authors, you know. However, I will say this, that you do need to have a business mindset when you are writing books. Uh, we talk about this on the summer book show all the time. Uh, the authors that are successful are the ones that, number one, right? A lot of books, a number to treat it as a business.
You know, the romantic dream of writing your first novel and the publisher comes and sends a limousine with champagne and writes you a huge check and you know, then you're on, you know, the tonight show after like that doesn't exist. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a dream and the reality is, uh, the people who are having success are writing a lot of books and who are, who are doing all the cover to market and cover two and write to market strategies and who are, you know, learning how to do ads and who are learning how to turn it into a business.
And that is the reality of the, uh, of the, uh, writing business today.
Jesper (20m 25s): Yeah, 100%. Uh, I mean the days where you could just write something and put it up on Amazon and then, you know, here we go. Those days are long gone. So yeah, I fully agree. You have to be really professional in, in getting good cover design and of course not forgetting professional editing of the books and, and those things that any like professional publishing company would do anyway. Even though you're just one author with your one-man company, you still need to do all those things, otherwise it's certainly not going to be successful and, and well, that's especially where you become skippable instead of unskippable.
Right. Because then it's just, ah, this was another pile of rubbish and people would just move on.
Jim (21m 4s): Well, you know, I'm, I write nonfiction books. However, I just started a project with a fiction author. We're going to co-write a science fiction adventure book together, which should, yeah. And I announced it on the show this week. So, you know, this is going to be my first attempt at writing a fiction book and I'm not a very good fiction writer, so that's why I teamed up with somebody else. Am right. One of the things I'm very cognizant about is right to market strategy.
Um, I read scifi books and I know what I like about scifi books and my, and I know what scifi book covers look like that sell well, I've done the research. Um, so one of the things I'm really worried about when writing the book is writing it to market writing putting the cover to market. So, um, I am, while writing it is going to be a fun thing to do. Uh, the reason I'm writing it is cause I want it to be successful. So I'm using it all of the knowledge and information I've learned over the years from fiction authors and doing the summer book show podcast to uh, make a really good attempt to try and write it like a business.
And does that take some of the fun out of it? Yeah, it does. Right. Um, I'll give you an example. Uh, my coauthor and I were doing some character development and some of our first meetings the other day and the antagonist. Uh, you know, we needed like a, a good name for the antagonist and you know, I wanted to pivot and kind of give the antagonist kind of like a funny, uh, you know, light light name, you know, something, you know, really kind of, you know, against the grain.
And my coauthor said our readers would hate us for that. Why that? Because they don't want, you know, you do a play on the name for the antagonist, they want it to sound evil. And so in my brain, I wanted, I wanted to do something that I thought would be fun, but then the marketplace would reject that. So I said, fine, let's keep it, you know, the trope that it currently is. And that's kind of a, that's kind of like a decision that I needed help to be made and I want the book to be successful more than I want to use some counter intuitive name.
Does that make sense?
Jesper (23m 33s): Yeah, completely. And, and, and I think it ties, we'll back to what we just talked about. You know, what, what the goal is. Because of course if, if one wants a book to be successful in terms monetary value, then obviously you need to play into to some degree at least to to the, to the market tropes and what we does I expecting and then you know, tweak it and twisted a bit so that it's not exactly what they've seen before. But at the same time they do recognize it. And I think when we're talking about, you know, a goal of monetary value then then I think a lot of this is also something that is something that we are just, uh, I don't want to use the word society, but we sort of brought up by thinking that you're only successful if you are a financial successful.
And I like to think that, you know, we need to take a bit deeper. And actually I, I also find a quote here, I could just drop them from your own book here where it says being unskippable, it's about mindset and the specific actions you take to achieve your goals and dreams. So there's a lot of accountability in that quote and, and it's talking about your goals, meaning that you need to decide for yourself what you find successful. And that could of course be, I want to earn a lot of money from this book, but I still think that if you have something underneath the need to sell more books, it could be, for example, I want to sell a lot of books because I want to be free of my day job.
I want to have more freedom or whatever. However you wanna phrase that, that is probably a better driver or what do you think?
Jim (25m 6s): Yeah, I agree. Um, there's, you know, I think, you know, in America there are definitely, uh, different ways that people think about these things. You know, one of the things I wrote about in the book was, you know, these America Americans consider the sign of a stagnant career if you're only working 40 hours a week. Yeah.
Jesper (25m 29s): Oh, Jesus.
Jim (25m 32s): Which is kind of really where the state of mind, you know, we have people here working, you know, and then there was another thing I just read about how um, you know, 30% of Americans are working a job but then also trying to figure out some kind of side hustle job like driving an Uber am. So we are very work focused here and that's a rental thing. And I, and frankly I don't think it's healthy, um, but it is where we are the rest of the world, you know, does it seem to have that mindset?
But nevertheless, that's where we are and everybody needs to make a decision of how they want to move forward with their life. Um, financial circumstances are a big driver of that. You know, people having to work multiple jobs to get by. I will say this, it's very important for you to set a goal and the goal should be, you can make it a financial goal because that's usually what sets people free from doing the things they want to do.
So write down how much money that you need to make per year to replace your current financial situation and then break it down into months. So if it's $100,000 a year divided by 12 months, that's how much you need to bring in every single month. So you can finally break free and quit your job if that's what you want to do and replace it with writing income. But know this, the way you're going to get there is going to be a ton of hard work.
It's going to be, instead of watching, uh, eight hours of a new show on Netflix, it's going to be, I'm going to write for eight hours instead. Uh, it's going to be, I'm not going to, uh, spend time on Facebook. I'm going to shut my phone off and I'm going to write for three hours instead. Um, it's, it's all about how high your pain level is and what you really want and uh, how bad you want it.
And that's what's going to make the difference of you having success. Cause again, go look at the top authors in your genre right now. There are V I guarantee you there's very few of them that have just written one or two books. Of course they're going to outliers. The people who are making big time money and who are being very successful are writing lots and lots and lots of books, you know, and look, use publisher rocket and look to see who these people are and see how they're doing it and how they're doing cover to market and how, you know, find ways to write more books.
If that means you have to come and find ways to collaborate with other authors, then you need to find a collaboration partner and start writing books. But that is the key right now.
Jesper (28m 26s): Yeah, I agree. And, and of course there is a, there was a challenge embedded here as well because I asked you just said, uh, some people work several jobs in the U S just to get by on a, on a daily day, day to day basis. Right. So, so there is, for them at least the question also becomes, well, how can I write if I also need some, some money to live? So, so yeah, I guess that, well, the point about how bad do you want it still applies, but, but, uh, it, I, I just want to acknowledge that it, it's probably difficult for some people even though they would really want it.
Jim (29m 1s): Is it really that difficult though? You know, I'll be the, I'll be the bad guy here. You know, I want you to examine how much time you spent on social media today. I want you to think about how much time you watched Netflix or Amazon prime or some show, right? So like, you gotta make a decision. How bad do you want to do this? How bad do you want this to happen? And examine the choices you're making in your life and decide and, and again, if you don't want it that bad, then that's fine.
That's totally fine. Some people don't want it that bad. I have a friend who is probably one of the most talented writers I've ever met, and he could be writing sitcoms and comedy specials. He's the one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. But he had zero interest in moving to Hollywood. And having a career in it. He just likes to do it for fun. And that's frustrating as all you know what for me, because to see that kind of talent not apply itself, but guess what?
That's his decision. He has zero interest in, in using that to build a career and do that. And I had to learn how to deal with that. Uh, I have another friend who's one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. He's Jim Carrey times 10. Am. Every time I meet him he makes me laugh so hard. I wanna pee my pants, but he is, he is so funny, but he has zero interest in starting a YouTube channel. He has zero interest in becoming a comedian. Um, it's just how some people are.
You have to decide what you want to do and if, if that's what you truly want, if you truly want to be the next Mark Dawson or Joanna Penn, um, then you're going to have to go ahead and put the effort in to get there. And that's the sad truth of it. There is work involved.
Jesper (30m 52s): Yeah. I mean, there is no shortcuts to success, no matter how you twist and turn it. You know, you'll have to put in the hours.
Jim (30m 57s): Nobody wants to hear that.
Jesper (31m 0s): No, no, maybe not. But at the end of the day, that's how it is. I mean, nobody got to the place where they are if they are successful by watching Netflix shows and the in the couch. Right. I mean, that's not how it works.
Jim (31m 11s): Yeah. I know. And I hate to bring that stuff up because like I said, nobody wants to hear that. But it is the truth.
Jesper (31m 19s): Yeah. Yeah, indeed. But I'm also wondering sort of if we're looking ahead Jim because, okay. Looking backwards for a second first maybe, you know, we came, I don't know what, maybe 10 years ago, you know more than this than I do because you were very much involved in the internet business like 10 15 years ago, but, but at least we came from a place where there wasn't as much content on the internet. Uh, of course you didn't have as many tools as you have today to, to help you to easily do things.
But it at least you didn't have the crowded space on the internet back then. And then nowadays we S we are in a place where it is pretty crowded. If you're smart about it, you can still become visible. And we talked about some of those things that you could do already here in this episode, but if you're looking ahead Jim like, like I dunno, 10 years ahead of something, where do you think that the future of marketing is going on the internet?
Jim (32m 16s): Well, I've seen all the shifts. I've been doing this for over 20 years. Um, technology plays a big part in it. Uh, you know, how, how people react. It always comes back down to one thing, which is authenticity, uh, and great content. Um, so, you know, there was a tie, we went through this shift where everything became automated. You know, everybody talking about chat bots and you know, automated sales funnels and those things are, those are good tactics and they still do work.
But I think the biggest thing I want to point as this, you know, there's never been a greater time in the history of the world to build a brand and to get your name known and to sell a product or a book right. In that then right now there never has been and just because there's more competition doesn't mean that it's harder. It's actually easier than ever if you and I wanted to, right now it's like we wanted to meet in a room for the next seven days and write a book together.
We could have a cover designs, we could write a book together, we can edit it, we can put it up on Amazon and you and I could then go on Facebook and Twitter and tick tock or wherever else, Instagram, and we put it out in front of millions of people with a click of a button and have the opportunity to sell that right away. Right. That is a game changer. Before the internet, before all these social media channels, it didn't have that you, you couldn't just instantly create a brand and a business overnight.
You can do that now. Um, and that is a huge opportunity. That's still a lot of people. I just don't think, I think everyone takes it for granted how simple it is. I could develop a course. I could get off this podcast with you and go, you know what? They gave me a great idea for a course on how to help authors. I could sit in my office for the next 24 hours, create the course, put a website up for it, and start selling it a day later and making money. That's an opportunity.
Um, it's just, again, how bad do you want to do it? But it all comes down to the core basic principles, which I write a lot. You know, there are two reasons people use the internet. Number one is to have a problem solved. And number two is to be entertained. Now, when you put that into the book conversation, uh, to be entertained as fiction and to have a problem solve this nonfiction. So when you start thinking about things in that term, all your, if you're writing fiction, you need to entertain people.
If you're writing nonfiction, you need to solve problems for people. And that's just the basic core of business and how you approach writing as a business, solve problems for people or entertain them at the highest level and then just go out and start putting it out there. You don't have to be salesy, but you do have to go out there and be authentic. You know, um, authors that are really working on social media to share parts of their, their lives are authors that are telling stories and bringing in people.
Uh, I would highly recommend that everybody do a Google search for something called 1000 true fans. Um, it is an amazing piece that was written years and years ago, probably 10 years ago now. And it basically makes the argument that any artist, whether it's a musician, a writer, uh, anyone who creates content or any type of business can survive and build a successful business off of 1000 true fans. Because if you have a thousand people who are true fans of you, you will sustain a career.
Um, because a true fan is somebody who, uh, will drive four hours in a snow storm to come to your next book signing because they love you so much. On top of that, they will advocate for you and evangelize about you and create bog blog posts and do videos about you without you asking. Um, that's a person who will buy the, you know, six box set of your book, even though they've already bought all of your six individual books are ready because they just needed to have the box set.
So if you can cultivate a true fan in today's world, then you can build an entire career off a thousand those thousand people. And that's the only way you're going to do that is build trust and be authentic with who you really are to your audience. And they will reward you for that. Um, if you are, uh, the days of being stand offish and known not answering your emails, I still get frustrated at this. Like there's some very big time authors who have come onto the scene in the last year and one of them I've been trying to reach for six months and I've tried Facebook, Twitter, email, uh, tried to go through networks to find phone numbers.
This author is a complete ghost. They, they, they cannot be contacted. And you know what? I'm annoyed. I'm completely annoyed by it. You can't, you can't respond to me on Facebook. You can't, you can't send me an email back. You can't, you know, just say hello, right? I, I'm not asking you for anything. I wanted you to be on my podcast, but at least tell me know, you know, that annoys the heck out of me. I'm not gonna say who it is and their content of their book is great, but you know what? I have a bad taste in my mouth from that author and I, it's not somebody that I respect because they just can't even talk.
I respond to every single email. I give people out. My cell phone numbers say texts me in my book, in the book I gave, here's my cell phone number, text me, tell me if you're enjoying the book. That's just how I operate.
Jesper (38m 4s): Yeah. And, and the, and I think that is important. I think it's important to be approachable. And I also just want to acknowledge that a 1000 true fan, uh, input you gave there. If, uh, if the listener is looking for it, you can also go onto YouTube and actually just search for 1000 true fans. And there isn't, there's an interview with the, with the guy who wrote that article and I think indeed it is like 10 years ago, but it still holds so much true today and it's, it's really good. And it's funny because it was just sort of a thought that he had and he, he didn't know if it was true or not, but at the point when he says in the interview, when he wrote that article, it was more like, I think that it might be like this.
And then he published that article and it just resonated so much with especially people in the creative community like authors and, and stuff like that. So, uh, so I, I really think that that is, uh, if you haven't seen that one yet, deal isn't it? And go and check that one out because it's really good. The other thing I was just thinking based on what you said Jim was, uh, I also think that we need to be careful not to always focus on the negative, right? I mean, probably like 10 years ago, people were complaining that, well, well there was also those people who thought that the internet would go away tomorrow affect them.
But, but I guess there was also complaints about how, you know, you needed to know a lot of coding and it was not easy to make content on the internet and so forth. And as time went by, now it is actually pretty easy to, uh, produce content. But now people are now complaining that, well, what we're talking about here today, that discoverability is an issue. And I got, I don't know, in five years from now it'll be something else people are complaining about, but I think sometimes we, we also need to take a step back and just acknowledge what you said before Jim in the sense that it is a, it's a very good time to actually be selling books now and because we have all these tools, yes, maybe there is a discoverability issue, but it's also a matter of trying to find the opportunities and how to, how to stand out of the crowd, which is definitely not easy, but I mean it's still better than what it used to be in today's market.
Jim (40m 12s): You like to go back? Let's go back in time. Okay. Let's go back in time to before Amazon, before the internet to be discovered, you had to go through a gatekeeper as a publisher or an agent and they had to determine if your content was worthy enough to be given to the masses. Okay. The select few who were chosen to have good content enough where then a distributed out to bookstores and popped about and New York times bestseller list and things like that.
So a couple people in the entire world, we're controlling all of the content distributed to the rest of the world. Would you like to go back to that? Cause I wouldn't, there was an absolutely terrible time to be a content creator, to be an artist, to be somebody you had to spend 20, 30 years building a brand, creating content or would you rather have it now where everybody has an equal opportunity and I don't buy the argument that discoverability is harder than ever.
You are just not using all of your best effort to get there. Um, there are, uh, there is the very easy ability to go out and learn how to use Amazon ads and create ads and start getting your book out and start selling immediately. There is a very ability to start using Facebook ads. There is a very easy ability to start your own podcast or create a video or create some type of content that will help people find your book.
You just maybe just don't want to do it and that's because you are still in that romantic dream of that. I'm just going to write a book and everybody's just going to come and read it. But the world has changed. You have to treat this like a business, right? A lot of books, right? Covered a Mark, right? Right, right to market, covered a market, have amazing book descriptions. Make sure you price it the right way and for and here's really what you're asking me here. There is a lot of people who still are in the artist's mentality.
Um, and the art mentality is I am doing this for the art of it and I just loved to do it and I'm upset that I have to treat this like a business. And unfortunately that's exactly what we're where we're at. If you do not want to treat writing books like a business, the odds that you are going to have success diminish by you know, 99% and again, people are like dang it Jim why are you telling me this? Well, it's just the truth and I think everyone listening to this knows that but sometimes they need to hear it again.
Jesper (42m 55s): Yeah. We were back to the fact that you have to put in the work right at the end of the day that that's what it is.
Jim (43m 1s): Very preachy thing by me. I wasn't my intention to do this at all.
Jesper (43m 9s): No, but, but uh, at the end of the day it is true. Right? I mean, and I, I certainly think that there is an, I'm also speaking to myself here. I mean making like visibility, your worst enemy is also something that you choose to do. I mean we can focus differently. We could try to focus on, okay, maybe my covers are actually not sugar specific enough. Maybe my titles is not selling what this younger is to do. Rita, maybe I didn't do enough editing or I skipped something along the process there.
And then, yeah, of course you do suffer discoverability consequences of those choices. But on the other hand, things are so easy today with, with, with online stuff. Did you, you can still go back and change it and it doesn't, it doesn't require too much. Like you don't have to go to your major publishing company and say, can you please take change my cover? And then they tell you no, and you can just do it first. So maybe we need to focus on the post attention
Jim (44m 5s): that came out almost 10 years ago was published through Wiley as my only traditionally published book. And, uh, I didn't like the cover that they did for me. Of course they wouldn't let me do my own cover. Um, I didn't like the title of the book. Um, that ultimately they decided, um, I didn't like any of it and I would like to go back now if I had the rights to it and redo the book with the cover and the title, but I can't do it because they own it. Right. So, you know, that's, you know, that's a problem for me and which is why I self published now because, uh, I just want to have that control.
I want to be able to change. Like if I, you know, book cover designs change, you know, there's two years from now we might be seeing a totally different trend of covers might be more illustrated covers in a specific genre. We don't know. You need to be.
Jesper (44m 56s): Hmm. Yup. Exactly. And uh, I can also see that we're coming up on time here. Am GM. So I want to make sure to thank you very much for that. You took the time out to come and talk to me here today and uh, maybe you can share, where do you prefer people to pick up your book from if they interested? Is that just Amazon or how do I do about that?
Jim (45m 19s): You get a copy of, I will say this, the um, people who were the arc readers of the book, we're all authors and I have gotten since 84 positive reviews of the book in about less than two months. So if you are an author and you're thinking, this book is not for you, you would be wrong because all of my arc readers were authors in fiction, authors and nonfiction authors and they really enjoyed the book. So if you go to be unskippable.com that just takes you to my website, it's much easier to spell than my name.
So be unskippable.com you can find my book there and check it out. I think you'll really enjoy it. I think it'll will inspire you.
Jesper (46m 3s): Excellent. I'll put the link in the show notes as well. So, uh, for you listeners out there, if you're interested, just check out the show notes and click through debt and you don't even have to make a note if you're out on the move at as you listening to this. So, uh, thanks you. Thank you very much. Jim for for talking to me today. And um, and thank you for your focus on motivating people on a daily basis. I know you guys do that over on the sell more books show as well. So I think we need more people like you.
Jim (46m 31s): Well, I think we need more people like you who will consistently produce content in a great format and continue to do shows like this. So thank you so much for doing the show and thank you so much for having me on.
Jesper (46m 44s): All right. Thank you very much. And uh, thank you for tuning in again this weekend, your listener, and uh, yeah, just come back next weekend. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't done so already.
Narrator (46m 58s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.
