SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Matt Briel: For most people, you’re not going to get rich writing a book, especially in the nonfiction business world. but what it will allow you to do is add an extra zero or two to your hourly rate as a consultant. And so That really was another way of just saying books aren’t necessarily going to directly impact your revenue in some massive way.

[00:00:18] especially if that’s not your goal, but what it will do in an indirect way is allow you to increase your rates, increase the level and caliber of the clientele that you’re bringing in. And so in those indirect ways, as a lead magnet or something along those lines, an authority builder, you are actually going to positively impact your business and your revenue streams.

[00:00:37] Jeff Sieh: Hello, folks. Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff See. And you’re not.

[00:00:41] Conor Brown: And I’m Connor Brown, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of social media and more.

[00:00:46] Jeff Sieh: You ever considered how publishing a book could open doors you never imagined? Are you curious about the strategies behind turning your expertise into a sustainable revenue stream? Or maybe you’re wondering how to use books to build your brand to connect directly with your audience. If any of those resonate, you are in.

[00:01:05] The right place today. This week, I’m really excited to talk with a guest who knows exactly how to make this happen. Matt is VP of marketing at Lulu press, and he has helped countless creators and entrepreneurs use books to grow their businesses and expand their reach. So he’ll be sharing his story, practical advice, and game changing tools you can use to start.

[00:01:27] So sit back, clear your schedule, clear your mind, and get ready for this week’s episode of Social Media News Live. Matt, how are you doing today?

[00:01:34] Matt Briel: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. That was a very, um, complimentary intro.

[00:01:39] Thank you.

[00:01:39] Jeff Sieh: yeah, I was impressed, so we’re going to talk about some more of this stuff. So, Connor, I

[00:01:43] know, you were impressed

[00:01:44] Conor Brown: yeah, the compliments just keep coming because if you don’t know who Matt Braille is, you should, because Matt is commonly described as equal parts Disney culture, tattoos, 80s movies, and a book nerd. Matt is an entrepreneur and the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Lulu.

[00:01:59] com. After 18 years of leading sales and marketing teams in the media and publishing spaces, he’s developed a unique passion for helping creators and entrepreneurs. Become more successful at leveraging books as a catalyst for new opportunities and sustainable revenue. When he’s not obsessing over marketing content, you can find him spending time with his family, traveling as much as possible, but you will never find him wearing a blazer or a tie, cool personified.

[00:02:29] Matt, thanks again for being here.

[00:02:31] Matt Briel: Thank you. We probably should shorten that by the way.

[00:02:34] Jeff Sieh: No, I, I’m, I love that you don’t wear a suit and tie, because I am the same way. I had to wear a tux for my son’s wedding, in October, and I about died. I’m just like, this is, why does

[00:02:45] Matt Briel: Well, maybe I’ll just keep that last line as my bio and drop all the rest.

[00:02:48] Jeff Sieh: That’s right, that’s

[00:02:48] Matt Briel: That’s, that’s the important part anyways, right?

[00:02:50] Jeff Sieh: That’s right. so I wanna also, before we get started too much into the show, I wanted to do a big shout out to our sponsors, Ecamm.

[00:02:57] You can find out more about them at ecamm.com/jeff. You can save 15% by using the code, Jeff 15 on checkout.

[00:03:04] All right, let’s get right into the show.

[00:03:06] We’re talking about publishing, and this is something that, like I mentioned before, I’d always thought about, but I never had really, you know, I always thought it was out of reach for, I guess, solopreneurs or small businesses. And, Matt, you kind of, at momentum, really kind of changed my mind about this whole thing.

[00:03:25] But, uh, kind of give us the basics. We had our friend, Amy Keyes is, was in our, in our mastermind. She asked, like, I don’t even know where to start. I know I have a book in me, but I just don’t know where to start. Can you kind of give the broad overview of book publishing in 2025?

[00:03:40] Matt Briel: Yeah. I mean, it’s a, it’s a big question, but I think to keep it relevant to, to your audience and the people that we talk to most of the time, solopreneurs, individual creators, small business owners, where you would want to start really is, is kind of determining what’s best for your business and why you would want to even publish that book.

[00:03:58] So whether it’s to, to, to establish credibility or authority or build your brand or something like that, where you want to. To go with that book will probably determine where you start, but the first thing we always tell people is, is find a really good resource for understanding the different types of publishing.

[00:04:14] there’s basically three for the most part, but they can be broken down into smaller, more confusing chunks. But essentially there’s traditional publishing, which is like, You know, the top five, Simon and Schuster, Penguin Random House. And you have to have an agent and your agent shops your, your manuscript around.

[00:04:30] Then there’s what we call self publishing or that’s what Lulu is. you’re pretty much doing everything yourself. and there is a learning curve there, but we’ve, we’ve greatly reduced that curve, and then there’s somewhere in between, which is called hybrid publishing. And so what that means is, it’s kind of, been dubbed like a pay to play scenario where you, you would.

[00:04:49] Link up with a hybrid publisher. You’d show them your manuscript. In most cases, they’re going to take it because you’re going to pay for that book to be produced. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of us have more money than we do time or understanding of the process. So if you can afford to pay a hybrid publisher to do all that work.

[00:05:07] And then also help put, get your book into distribution channels. it’s not a bad thing. It’s in fact, a good thing. So you have basically three choices there, but I think on the creator side, in the individual, like small business owner side, what we’re seeing right now is an emergence of people using self publishing because your timelines are your own.

[00:05:26] You have more control over everything that’s happening. and at the end of the day, you know what the goals are for that content and how that’s supposed to help propel your business. So being able to work within your own time constructs is a really beneficial thing. So I think starting at really understanding the types of publishing and then which one’s going to most benefit you and your goals for that content.

[00:05:49] that’s typically where I have people start. Like sometimes I’ll even tell them, just go do a Google search. You know what I mean? And. These days, it’s a little dicey because you’re gonna get, um, some AI interpretations of some of those things. But at the end of the day, if you just have an understanding that those three basic models exist in the publishing world, one is probably out of your grasp, traditional publishing.

[00:06:11] They reject 99. 8 percent of the manuscripts they get. and again, you have to have an agent to get in with a traditional publisher anyways, which costs a You know, money. They’re going to take, you know, some of your, your advanced, hybrid publishing, there is a cost, but it can be a very good route for creators and small business owners.

[00:06:28] If you have the budget up front, the capital, and then self publishing. So, you know, in the creator world, we all like to have control over what we’re doing. so. Oftentimes I think that’s the best model.

[00:06:38] Conor Brown: what are some of the, would you say the biggest changes you’ve seen that have recently occurred in the publishing industry,as we enter into 2025?

[00:06:49] Matt Briel: The, the, the biggest and coolest things we’ve seen are, you know, authors leaning into the business side, authors and creators leaning into the business side of publishing and understanding like, you know, for, for most people, the average person, when you talk about publishing, you naturally think about.

[00:07:05] Fiction books or children’s books or things like that. But there’s actually a whole world that exists out there publishing for the business sector specifically to help you grow your business and your persona. So, a lot of people have been leaning into that over the last 12 to 18 months and really getting a better understanding of the business side, what you can do with it, taking more control over that business side.

[00:07:26] Increases your profit margins greatly, by the way, when you’re not dealing with a massive third party retailer platform, who’s taken a huge cut of your book sales, the, the profit margins can be very sizable and can actually add a really nice passive stream of revenue to your business or an active stream of, of revenue.

[00:07:43] the other thing that’s, that’s really big right now and the biggest changes we’re seeing obviously are coming in the form of a lot of the AI tools and machine learning that’s been happening over the last roughly two years, I guess, since. ChatGPT was made kind of commercial. so, you know, again, people embracing that business side and then, you know, AI.

[00:08:01] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s dive into a little bit of AI stuff because, you know, I were talking a little bit before the show about, a lot of people are up in arms. I mean, it’s, you know, when it came out, there was a lot of slop publishing that jumped over, I know, on Amazon, on Kindle. And then people were like, oh, you can’t use it.

[00:08:19] Or people are like, oh, write a whole book in five minutes. we have those, you know, ads you see on Facebook. So let’s talk about AI and how, you know, how it’s kind of. Impacted traditional, publishing models, but how we can use it as a tool for those of us who really do want to get a book out this year.

[00:08:37] Matt Briel: Yeah. You also kind of just described the life cycle of the, the, the commercialization of AI within the, the writing and publishing world. So it came out, you know, and when I say it came out, again, we’re talking about when, when ChatGPT was kind of, introduced to the world on an open commercial level. Everybody was afraid of it in the creative communities, whether you were a writer, a graphic designer, didn’t matter.

[00:09:00] Everybody was, you know, a musician. Everybody was like, Oh my God, this is it. We’re done. AI is going to take our jobs. People are not going to read my books anymore. They’re going to read AI generated books. They’re not going to listen to my music. They’re going to listen to music generated by an AI bot.

[00:09:15] Like everybody hated it. They didn’t want to talk about it. And even most of the industry heavies at first were like, I don’t know about this, especially in the world of publishing and writing. but I think very quickly we started to see like, wait a second, there’s a lot of other tools and platforms being built on the backs of these AI models and tools.

[00:09:34] And, what started to happen is, is early adopters, you know, started taking these tools and going, well, wait a second, this doesn’t, I’m not going to use this to write my book, but this is going to save me three hours a day because now, you know, as a creator, author, designer, whatever. for my business, I would normally spend, let’s say an hour, two hours a day on the marketing side of what I do, right?

[00:09:55] Cause as creators, the amount of time you actually spend creating something versus marketing, selling it and trying to build an audience like that’s night and day, right? So now all of a sudden you have these tools where if you sit down and get over the fear of what the tool can create, that could possibly replace you, which is also not going to happen, but really look at how can this tool save me time in my day.

[00:10:16] And maybe take care of those business things that I don’t want to do, right? Like a lot of creative people, they don’t want to mess with the business side of it and sitting down and scheduling out social media posts for the next week and, and dealing with creating content for LinkedIn and all these other things, or maybe lead sourcing, you know, designing these campaigns to go out.

[00:10:33] So using AI to do that stuff has really been where we’ve been trying to shine the light and show people, especially creators and authors like. It’s not going to take your job. It’s not going to write your books for you. It can, it shouldn’t, but use it to really impact how you spend your time in a day, a week and a month, and how you can better use that time saved to either create more or find other ways to grow your business or Spend time with your dog or your family or at Disney world, which is what I would want to do.

[00:11:01] All three of those things. that’s really the, the, the life cycle we’ve seen so far, what’s been happening. Again, you know, you talked about when it was introduced, it was just like this complete chaos, really. any author you even brought it up around, like they immediately got mad at you. You were, you were automatically an op or the enemy.

[00:11:18] and now I think people are really starting to settle in with it and understand like, These are tools, nothing more. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there, bad actors, I call them bad actors, but you know, using AI to do just what you said, like there are, you know, even on Lulu, we’ve found accounts where we’ve realized, wait a second.

[00:11:35] There’s 37 titles in this account. They are all AI generated. Like, you know, you can go on Amazon and find it all day long. there was a guy that hit the news last year because I don’t know, he created some crazy amount, tens of thousands of books with AI and was generating though a pretty decent stream of revenue off of them.

[00:11:53] Now, obviously his reviews and his fan base was, was very upset, but with anything, we’re going to have bad actors that come through and they go, I’m going to use this for this. I’m going to get one over on, on the general public. But I think as true creators, as true entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and authors and people who, who have a genuine interest in adding value to others lives through our content or our services or whatever it is we produce, these tools are only going to help you get better and provide more value.

[00:12:21] Jeff Sieh: So you mentioned at the beginning, you know, self publishing is, it’s kind of on the rise and a lot of entrepreneurs have done that. Our friend who’s been on the show multiple times, Katie Brinkley is a great example of this. one of the things that I was thinking when you’re talking about AI is. Now, because self publishers, well, even regular publishers, I know some friends of mine who are published by, you know, like Penguin and all the, some of the big houses, they’re still in charge of all the marketing, even though they, I mean, the companies and those big publishers say they’re going to help, but a lot of times, they look at how many social media following you have to see if you’re worth investing in, and so, it’s a lot of pressure on authors, and I think AI is one of these ways, Like you were saying, Matt, where you can do those things like come up with social posts and excerpts from your book and, you know, landing pages and all that kind of stuff that AI can help you with that a lot of authors, I think, struggled with at the beginning.

[00:13:13] So I think it’s when you look at it as a tool, it can be a real boon for self publishing. Do you agree or not?

[00:13:18] Matt Briel: you’re 100 percent right. and even beyond self publishing, but again, you hit the nail on the head. There’s so many things that, you know, even if you are traditionally published, you are on the hook to do. And these days in the world of traditional publishing, even some of the big name, you know, You know, writers, authors, and stars and people who are producing books.

[00:13:38] the, the traditional publishers rely on them and their audiences to sell the books. oftentimes they might get a manuscript shopped to them from an agent. and they’ll take a look at the manuscript, but really what they’re interested in also is the author. How sizable is their social media following?

[00:13:53] what does their presence look like? What’s their capabilities of marketing and selling their own book before they’ll take a risk? On buying that manuscript and then going to market with it. Because you’re right, they’re going to rely more heavily on the author these days than they ever have. Most traditional publishing, firms have cut their marketing departments, by significant amounts over the last five years, and we’re just gonna see more of that.

[00:14:15] and so. I think what you’re seeing is a lot of creators and, and, and, authors in general, they’re realizing this, they’re seeing this happening in their industry and they’re saying to themselves, well, I’ve spent all this time building my audience. If they’re just going to have me do the marketing to my audience anyways, but they’re going to take a huge cut.

[00:14:33] Why don’t I just do all this myself? You know, why don’t I subcontract it out to some talented people? but yeah, you’re a hundred percent correct. I think the, the impacts would not only just AI, but in general with some of the other technologies that have really come to come up to speed with, I think the rest of what’s going on in the publishing industry have allowed for that to happen.

[00:14:54] And I think that’s where we’re seeing this, this convergence of, you know, creators really owning their content in the publishing world. And also being able to make use of these tools to sustain not only a livable wage, but in many cases, I would say flourish financially.

[00:15:12] Jeff Sieh: That’s cool.

[00:15:13] Conor Brown: yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, Lulu helps big direct consumer sales channels. So, Matt, what kind of benefits does that direct to consumer approach,

[00:15:25] Matt Briel: So, you broke up a little bit there. I don’t know if that was me or you, but the gist of the question I think is, You know, the, the benefits and differences between direct sales and the emerging technology that’s there versus the traditional methods of getting your books into the hands of the general public.

[00:15:41] and so that is the second piece here that, that really helps individual creators and businesses, and authors be able to attain the things we’re talking about is you, you have to have that direct sales component. so what direct sales?

[00:16:01] Regardless of how you published is that you sell your books through third party retailer platforms. And that can be Amazon. That could be barnesandnoble. com that could be getting your books into bookstores, all of those things, but they require distribution connections. And it’s a, it’s a, it’s a file share type of deal.

[00:16:17] So direct sales allows you to literally, Spin up your Shopify page or whatever it is you’re using. You can use any of the e-commerce platforms that are out there right now, but then connect your books directly to your website and sell them directly to your readers and fans. and so when you combine that technology and how far we’ve come there.

[00:16:35] With print on demand technology, which is really where Lulu specializes, and then again, a lot of the other things that are happening with these AI tool sets, what you get are these creators and authors who have very robust platforms of their own, where they’re not relying solely on other platforms for traffic, And or conversions and what that does for you?

[00:16:57] The biggest or single most important thing it does as somebody who’s trying to establish a brand or business is it allows you to own that transaction and keep that customer data. And so what most creators and authors don’t really think about because Until, you know, I’d say the last four or five years, it really wasn’t something you could put a lot of time and energy into.

[00:17:17] Thinking about was that customer data and how that impacts you, and how in a normal transaction, you don’t get any of that. So if you sell anything on a third party retail platform, all you get is your share of the revenue, and you’ll get some rudimentary metrics around number of units sold. If you’re lucky, you’ll get some demographic information, but that’s it.

[00:17:36] You don’t get any email addresses, shipping addresses, phone numbers, none of those pieces of data that would allow you to remarket. To people who spent money on your content, which is extremely valuable in building a business. So when you sell direct, you’re facilitating that transaction on your site, through your Shopify store, your WooCommerce store.

[00:17:54] You’re keeping all of that data, you’re building, and in some cases, if you’re already utilizing email lists, great. You get to add this into your email marketing program. You now have segments of people who have spent their hard earned dollars on your content. And you have their contact information. You know what they spent, you know what they bought.

[00:18:12] And so that next time you put out a new piece of content or a new online course or whatever that is, You’ve already got a built in base of people who’ve spent that money. You can go remarket to them first and, and even use it as a testing ground sometimes. So that customer data I think is the largest thing.

[00:18:27] And it’s a, it’s a game changer for all small businesses, all individual creators and solopreneurs, early stage startups, anybody who’s looking to, to do some of the things they need to do. Having that customer data is key. The other I think really big thing is, is just giving you, you know, that total control and flexibility over your content when you publish with a traditional publisher or even through some third party platforms, you lose some of that control.

[00:18:53] and you lose some of those decision making opportunities around that. Things like price and how you go to certain markets and foreign rights and things like that. when you sell direct, you keep all of that control and you control the buyer experience from start to finish, which is also really important if you’re trying to establish a brand, and how you think that journey should happen for your customers, buyers, and readers.

[00:19:16] So those are some really big things that are different. Now, and they only come with direct sales or utilizing a direct sales approach.

[00:19:25] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. so I, one of the things I did, before the actual, show today is I went to Katie because I know her and I know she published with you guys. And I said, what’s some things that you didn’t realize that was really important about this? And a couple of things she said, she goes, What you just said, the benefit of knowing who bought your book is huge, right?

[00:19:44] And she didn’t, she said, I didn’t realize how beneficial that really was. And then finding out what the goal is, the book is another revenue stream or is building out your thought leadership. And, she said, having the book helped me get higher caliber clients, for sure. So that’s, I think is really, really cool.

[00:19:59] Especially from Katie, who is, I think one of your, you know, I see her on your, on your ads and stuff like that. One of your kind of. cover models, I guess, for book publishing. Um,

[00:20:09] Matt Briel: it right.

[00:20:09] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. I mean, she really, she really did it right. And you’re right. I think a lot of those benefits that she’s recognizing are the exact benefits we’re talking about. And if you’re in the consulting space, like she is, for the most part, right. you want that higher caliber of client.

[00:20:24] Matt Briel: And sometimes, you know, in that space, you struggle for a good lead magnet. A way to bring in those, those more qualified potential clients. And if I’m on the other side of that transaction, if I’m looking for, you know, somebody that does what Katie does, and she does it really well, but I’m also evaluating maybe three others.

[00:20:42] Who’ve handed me their business card at some conference, but Katie’s got a book on it. She wrote, she literally wrote the book on it. I mean, who do you think I’m going to look at first? Who do you think I’m going to prioritize in those four choices, you know, for what I might need to grow my business. And so, you know, again, she’s really tapped in and honed in on that benefit there of using that book as a lead magnet to not only grow her authority and her reach, But again, increase the, the, the caliber of clients she’ll bring in.

[00:21:10] There’s a guy named Robert Rose in the marketing world. You may know who he is, you may not, but one of the things he always says, which I used to find fault in it, until I realized what he was saying. And it makes a lot of sense, but you know, for most people, you’re not going to get rich writing a book, especially in the nonfiction business world.

[00:21:28] So it’s not gonna, Your book sales aren’t going to contain multiple zeros, but what it will allow you to do is add an extra zero or two to your hourly rate as a consultant. You know what I mean? And so That really was another way of just saying books aren’t necessarily going to directly impact your revenue in some massive way.

[00:21:45] If that’s, you know, especially if that’s not your goal, but what it will do in an indirect way is allow you to increase your rates, increase the level and caliber of the clientele that you’re bringing in. And so in those indirect ways, as a lead magnet or something along those lines, an authority builder, you are actually going to positively impact your business and your revenue streams.

[00:22:05] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. So, one of the things, I, I understand, you know, having it on your own site, being in control of all the data, getting those emails, does it still make sense for a publisher to have that on his websites where he controls all that, but also put it to these third party places like Amazon and all that stuff?

[00:22:21] Do you recommend that kind of as a best, practice as well?

[00:22:24] Matt Briel: It would depend on what your goal is for that content and again, for your business. So in the world of fiction, yes, we call that going wide, put it everywhere. You know what I mean? you, you still, in any case, in every case. Every bit of traffic that you generate, that you spend time and money on, send that to your site to buy it directly from you because you want that customer data.

[00:22:46] But yes, you can also rely on those third party sites, especially where you don’t have to put any money or capital up front. You can literally just list it and let it go. rely on them for what they may be able to offer in the way of revenue and some exposure. we always recommend to people somewhere in the back of your book, You’ve got to put multiple ways for people to get in contact with you to view the rest of your content and services.

[00:23:07] And so that if you do sell it somewhere where you don’t have control over that customer data, at least they have multiple ways to get in contact with you and still come into your network in some way or another. So. Yeah, I mean, in the fiction world, it’s very common, and it’s a smart thing to do, because in the fiction world, you’re just trying to get as many books out there as you can, and to many, as many readers hands as you can.

[00:23:27] In the world of, of, you know, business, and, and potentially the creator economy, you’re oftentimes trying to be a little more, selective. But sometimes your goal literally is just to establish your authority. You’re, nobody knows who you are, right? And, and the fastest way to do that is to produce some content on a particular niche topic where you can, I think it was you that said the niches are in the riches, but, or the riches are in the niches.

[00:23:51] You know, and, and sometimes that might mean you, you do need to get it out there in as many hands as possible. So yeah, throw it up there on Amazon, throw it on barnesandnoble. com through Ingram, you know, be very selective with your keyword choices so that you are getting it into the right hands and then do everything you can to get them into your owned network, your site, your email lists.

[00:24:11] That’s, that’s the key, right? Is, is making sure that you own that data because otherwise you don’t. You don’t own any of your social media followers. Everything you post on social media belongs to the channels, not you. And so we all know this concept of rented land, and that’s just another part of it.

[00:24:26] Your distribution channels, your sales channels, making sure you’re still trying to funnel everything back to your main hub.

[00:24:32] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. speaking of filtering, Connor is not being filtered. He,I guess Florida lost Internet. So, he’s not being rude. He’s just, not here. So we got some great questions that I wanted to bring up because, Rich Watts in our mastermind, Talked about like, he’d like to learn more about, workbooks.

[00:24:48] And then we have a tech troublemaker saying, Hey, I wrote a textbook. Nope. I’m not rich yet. Uh huh. Yeah. what are your thoughts on using like services like Lulu for textbooks? Does that make sense? Is it something that like, if you’re a speaker, this is a great way to have a workbook that goes along with your session.

[00:25:06] What are your thoughts on workbooks coming from a self publishing, venue?

[00:25:10] Matt Briel: So a big difference between workbook and textbooks, but we’ll start with workbooks because that is one of the faster growing products that we’ve been seeing over the last, probably almost two years at this point with the onset of online courses. So, you know. COVID hits, everybody’s at home. You’ve got a lot of people creating content or had been creating content previously, but maybe they were disseminating it in a different way.

[00:25:32] You know, online courses became hugely popular. and it started to get to the point where there was a lot of white noise in the world of online courses, whether they were online courses for marketing or it didn’t matter, right? There was just a lot of people doing it. So now you find people trying to find ways to differentiate themselves or their courses from everybody else’s.

[00:25:51] and so. When we realized that we went to market with some campaigns around creating supplemental workbooks for your online courses, and that took off like crazy. you guys saw it at Momentum, right? Like, Any type of, in person or virtual conference, online course, you know, masterclass, anytime you can add like a, a, a physical supplemental component to that.

[00:26:13] I, I, I’ve never heard where somebody went, yeah, I don’t like that. Get that away from me. You can, you can have this back. I don’t need it. And in most cases, they’ll pay extra for it, to be honest with you. having that as an asset that you can use, these workbooks are, are, wildly popular. They’ll actually earn you a lot of money because they’re very inexpensive to create and produce with a workbook.

[00:26:35] Nobody’s expecting you to design like some beautiful, like gallery edition type, like it’s a workbook. It’s, it, it just has to be, you know, it has to work. Like there just has to be space there. There has to be concepts and value in there. So they’re a really great way to also test. The market for, for providing a book.

[00:26:54] And so if you do a course, if you do, uh, an event in person or online or something like that, workbooks are awesome. We even have some, some templates you can download and make it your own if you’re not sure where to start. Lindsay, who was also at,momentum, she created one for her, her women’s entrepreneurial group, a really cool workbook.

[00:27:13] so workbooks are awesome. They’re very easy to create. They’re very inexpensive to do. Lulu is one of the only places that does coil bound for those things. So that, that gives us a little bit of an edge too, but, we love workbooks. and they’re a great legacy product too, right? textbooks are another story.

[00:27:28] When you start talking about the academic world, proper. I’m, I’m assuming he’s alluding to an actual textbook. Maybe he teaches a class or something. We have a lot of academics that use Lulu for their textbooks because it allows them to get textbooks into the hands of their students for about one 10th of the price.

[00:27:47] So when I was in college, the worst part was buying my books.

[00:27:51] You know, they’re so expensive and back then you really didn’t have a choice. And then, and the textbooks, The professors didn’t have much of a choice. Even a used pile of garbage that I would pick up and the pages would fall out was like $300.

[00:28:04] You know what I mean? And then you get to sell it back at the end of the semester for 50 bucks if you’re lucky. So lately we’ve seen an emergence of, especially at Some of the lower levels, you know, so community college, trade schools, adjunct professors, where they have a little more control over the content they use in their courses, they are creating textbooks on, on sites like Lulu so that they can offer it to their students at a cheaper way.

[00:28:26] And the professor still makes a little bit of extra money, but like anything, You know, it comes down to what’s your goal. If you’re creating a textbook specifically to add value to a course or students, there’s a limited sort of revenue funnel there. But if you’re creating something that’s more like a reference book, and maybe it’s being mislabeled as a textbook, but we have somebody on Lulu that created a reference book around coding Python.

[00:28:49] Right. he did a great job of marketing it. Everybody on the planet that wants to code Python, that’s not going to school for it, has probably read this manual. Like he just did a really good job. I can’t remember the name of it. It might be something simple like Python for beginners. I can’t remember.

[00:29:03] But, so, you know, there’s a difference there of what your goal is for that content. I don’t know what the context is around that, but if he created truly a textbook for a, a college or. You know, high school level course or something like that, a trade school. Yeah.

[00:29:18] Your revenue pool is going to be limited, especially based on your marketing efforts. but workbooks, those things are, are great that you just print money with those things,

[00:29:27] Jeff Sieh: That’s cool. That’s cool. so let’s get real practical and really transparent. And once again, I loved in the show, cause it’s basically free consulting for me. So for example, I am going, I’m speaking at social media marketing world, right? It’s not, it’s a, you know, they cover expenses, but it’s not a paid gig

[00:29:44] Matt Briel: right?

[00:29:44] Jeff Sieh: to say.

[00:29:45] A lot of those conferences are that way you get opportunities to speak, but there’s not any kind of financial incentive later on. You can, a lot of times you can get gigs from that, but that’s beside the point. So would it be a good idea for Social Media Marketing World, if they allow it, would be for me to create a workbook?

[00:30:00] I’m speaking about AI image generation, like I did at Momentum. Would it make sense for somebody who’s speaking like at that sort of conference to put the money into creating a workbook that they could sell or even maybe give away, and I love your thoughts about that, at a, one of those conferences where they’ve been asked to speak?

[00:30:17] Matt Briel: Yeah. So there’s a couple of things there,

[00:30:19] Jeff Sieh: and I’m glad you brought this up. what we’ve seen happen. And so you talked about Katie Brinkley. Katie Brinkley actually, participated in a, a,hybrid Publishing imprint that we also have called Till Publishing. So, that’s where we helped her create her book and get it to market.

[00:30:35] Matt Briel: And there’s a number of other people that participated in that, that program and still do. We have another gentleman, his name is Brian Piper. He is in academic higher education. he also created a book, content marketing for higher education. What he’s been doing is where he’s being asked to speak at these conferences and trade shows and things.

[00:30:54] oftentimes, You’re correct. There’s no pay for that. They just assume you’re, you’re wanting the exposure because you’ve got something you’re trying to sell a service or something like that. And so you’ll do it for free, which most people do. But sometimes you can negotiate that and say, Hey, I know you don’t pay, but.

[00:31:10] For the, you know, the amount of people that show up to my session, would you cover the cost to my publisher for me to be able to bring my book there and give it away to each of the attendees to my session? And so if your session holds a hundred people, and the, the wholesale cost from, from let’s say Lulu on your book is 3 per book, that’s 300 bucks.

[00:31:30] And in many cases, what’ll happen is the, the, the event organizer will say, and I’m also saying this as somebody who has an event, okay, I can get this guy to come speak. Okay. And I can also add value to the session attendees by way of they get a free book that he wrote and I got to pay 300 bucks. Okay.

[00:31:48] Seems like a win win. So in many cases, if you’re working closely with your publisher or printer, you can negotiate something like that with the event. Sometimes they’ll offer it on their own. We actually had other events reach out and say, Hey, we’re having so and so speak at our event. We’d like to have 300 copies of their latest book.

[00:32:05] You know, what can we negotiate for a wholesale price? We’ll work through that. And then lastly, if you can’t sort of arrange any of that, like if they’re not willing to negotiate any of that or whatever, but you still really want to provide a really good lead magnet because, you might go to Social Media Marketing World, you might get, you know, 50, 100 people in your session, which is great.

[00:32:24] they’re going to listen to you. They’re going to get some really good, cause I’ve sat through one of your sessions, you’re gonna get some really good helpful stuff, but you also know the scope and the size of that event and how many other sessions they’ll be in. So by the time they get home, hopefully they took good notes and maybe they remember a few things that you said, and hopefully more.

[00:32:42] But at the day, if they were able to bring your book home with them, your session now all of a sudden has a much longer staying power and provides a lot longer long tail value to them. Then let’s say one sheet of notes they took on, you know, let’s pick on Katie Brinkley, Katie Brinkley’s session, right.

[00:32:58] on podcasting and social media and the convergence of the two. I just made that up. She’s.

[00:33:02] Jeff Sieh: Right.

[00:33:03] Matt Briel: So yeah, if you can, if you can negotiate with your printer or publisher like Lulu and say, Hey, I’m going to be at this event, could you ship, you know, 150 copies of my book to the event? And could we do it for, you know, a negotiated rate?

[00:33:18] Most times the answer is yes. So I do think it can be a good thing depending on what you’re using that book for. Right? So again, if it’s lead magnet, if it’s solely for you to be able to book, let’s say your goal is to come away from social media marketing world with, 10 new clients. If that’s your goal, a book’s not a bad way to try and do that.

[00:33:37] You know what I mean? and nobody says you have to have a 300 page book. And in fact, don’t, don’t do that. write like a nice 80 to a hundred page book on a very niche topic and yes, give it away to your attendees at the event or Tell them that it’s free, but they need to come see you afterwards, you know, or something like that.

[00:33:56] Again, use it as a lead magnet. And then you’ll get truly qualified people because not everybody in your session might come and get that book from you, but a lot of them will. Either way, it’s totally up to you and what your financial sort of limitations are, your budget constraints, but you can do it for relatively inexpensive.

[00:34:11] If you use somebody like Lulu, they ship the books right to the event for you or to your hotel, whatever that might be. So yeah, it is a great idea and we do see a lot of people do that.

[00:34:21] Jeff Sieh: That’s really cool. I took a class on public speaking from Mark Schaefer, who’s, you know, he does professionals keynotes and they pay him.

[00:34:27] Matt Briel: He’s going to be at CEX this year

[00:34:29] Jeff Sieh: Oh, cool. Awesome. One of the things he said was, what’s really cool is a lot of times if they can’t make your speaking rate. You can say, Hey, okay, I’ll reduce it, but can you buy, you know, this amount of books for everybody?

[00:34:41] And he said that a lot of times the budget comes out of a different thing than the speaker’s fee. And so you’ll basically get what you asked for and sell a bunch of books, which I thought was really a great, kind of strategy if you’re negotiating that, Oh, I didn’t know that it came out of a separate, you know, line item on your budget.

[00:34:59] Then they’ll say, Oh yeah, we can take money from that and put it there. So I thought that was a really good

[00:35:03] Matt Briel: Yeah, in most cases, that is true. Again, we have an event. So I do understand the mechanics and logistics of how that works. and Mark, Mark is very good at that as well. And, and he has a new book coming out, which is why he’ll be at CEX.

[00:35:15] So,

[00:35:15] if there’s anybody that’s going to give you really good guidance on speaking and, or things like that, how to negotiate with event organizers and things like books, he is a great resource for that.

[00:35:25] We love Mark.

[00:35:25] Jeff Sieh: he’s a great guy. So we got some real practical, questions that I wanted to pull up. And this is from my friend Paul Gower, who’s also, he’s gonna be, I’m gonna see him at podcast in a week or so, and he goes, so if we publish now on KDP, which is the Kindle, is it developer direct platform?

[00:35:41] so what’s the advantage of using a hybrid publisher?

[00:35:45] Matt Briel: Hey, Paul. Um, so it’s actually two different things, two different types of publishing. KDP is full on self publishing, 100%. a hybrid publisher is a slightly different model. So the benefits to using a hybrid publisher.

[00:36:04] ! Professional editing done. and maybe you wanted to have a, a cover designer actually do your cover instead of yourself or, you know, some of the other things. So, proofreader, a lot of the things that go into actually producing a book, that oftentimes get overlooked in self-publishing or when you’re using something like KDP, that’s the benefit to using a hybrid publisher is being able to produce a higher caliber.

[00:36:35] product and in turn, depending again on what you’re using that product for, what your goals are, that may or may not be so important. I believe Paul creates a lot of content, that is intended to be a lead magnet of sorts. some of it’s low content, meaning. Not a lot of pages. and so in that instance, I don’t, I don’t think I would recommend using a hybrid publisher, especially knowing the goals of that content.

[00:36:58] But again, if Paul was looking to create a bigger piece of content around the larger concept of what he does,or his processes and workflows or whatever that might be that he’s looking to do, it may be beneficial to look into a hybrid publisher to, to get a little bit of a higher caliber of book created, which might, yielda bigger return on the number of qualified clients that you’re bringing in similar to how Katie Brinkley explained it to you, Jeff.

[00:37:25] you know, again, hybrid publishing is think of hybrid publishing as the difference between, a general contractor. Right. Like if you’re doing a home remodel and you being the general contractor, self publishing, like full on KDP, you’re the contractor, it’s, it’s your remodeling job. So you’re responsible for the editing, the cover design, every facet of your book, you’re responsible for it.

[00:37:49] You’re uploading the final product in the KDP or, or even on Lulu. There’s a. There’s a facet of Lulu that operates just like KDP. You’re responsible for all of that. And in the end of the day, if there’s any issues that’s on you and, and, so forth, but if you’re using a hybrid publisher, they’re like a general contractor, you’re paying, they’re handling all that for you.

[00:38:08] They’ve got great editors that work for them. Developmental editors and copy editors. They’ve got great cover designers. This is what they do all day long. They’ve got proofreaders. They’ve got people who will format and lay out the book for you. And in the end, what you’re handed over. is a really nice book and the files to that book to do whatever you want with.

[00:38:25] By the way, just like when you’re done with that remodeling job, the general contractor is going to hand you the keys to your new, you know, kitchen or a room addition or whatever that might be. So sometimes that’s an easier way to look at it. But again, for Paul, it’s just going to boil down to what content is he specifically, you know, creating what’s the goal for that content and is it worth.

[00:38:45] Having it treated by professional editors, cover designers, formatters and layout, stuff like that.

[00:38:51] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. I know Paul, his big thing, you know, Paul’s all about email and he says, yes, I would love to have all the emails from people that are purchasing my books from Amazon. so that’s, I mean, Paul’s got huge email list, but he’s also got a million plus Facebook group. So, he’s got people, I know that’s, he’s wanting to get them on his platform, so I think that is smart.

[00:39:10] And he says he just sent you a email, about how to talk about converting his books to the platform. He needs those emails.

[00:39:17] Matt Briel: So he, he actually doesn’t need a hybrid publisher. And, and I’ll wrap this up real quick though. really what he needs to do is just, figure out how to get his existing content. onto his site for direct sale. Cause that’s how he’s going to collect those email addresses. and that’s actually fairly easy.

[00:39:32] And so Paul offline, please get in touch with me and we’ll sort this out. but you don’t need a hybrid publisher for any of what you’re trying to do there. I going after those email addresses is extremely smart, but you don’t need a hybrid publisher for that hybrid publisher. The benefit there again, is if you want to create a book.

[00:39:48] You don’t have the time to do it or the experience of the resources. You’ve got to pay somebody to do it because at the end of the day, they’re just going to hand you those files anyways to do whatever you want with, or if it’s in your contract, they’ll also help you get it into distribution. as far as I know, Tilt Publishing, which is our hybrid imprint is the only one that will help you connect them to sell direct.

[00:40:08] But nonetheless, you get those files at the end of the process. You can do it yourself anyways. but Paul, reach out to me. I’m happy to walk through that with you, man.

[00:40:16] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. And then another question from a pal, Jim Fuse says, is there a way to integrate Lulu with LaunchCart yet? LaunchCart is a Shopify competitor. Do you know about integrations?

[00:40:27] Matt Briel: Yep. We don’t have an app or plugin for LaunchCart. as well as several other of the, the up and coming e commerce platforms, right? There’s Thrivecart, there’s Cartra, there’s a bunch of them. We only have plugins right now for the major platforms. However, if you are technically inclined, if you’re a developer or you have access to a developer or somebody who understands APIs, we have a print API.

[00:40:49] So you can basically use that print API on any platform or website. It doesn’t matter. and that print API plugs right into our, our print network on the backend. So using the, what he’s using right now, he could technically, if he was able to do it or knew somebody, you could also hire a developer to do it.

[00:41:07] It probably costs you, you know, an hour or two of their time at whatever their hourly rate is, 500 bucks or less, probably, to, to get them to integrate that API into your site. But it allows that direct connection again to our print network. So every time somebody buys a book from your site, whether you’re using Shopify or a print API or whatever, that order gets transmitted to us on the backend.

[00:41:27] We print it and ship it directly to your customer. It’s white labeled under your branding, whatever you want. And so you, you never have to touch any of that. We take care of all of that. And so while we don’t have plugins for a lot of those other Ecomm platforms, the print API works for that, or you can create a Zap through Zapier.

[00:41:44] Jeff Sieh: Oh, yeah. Okay. I know Paul’s done that before in the past. So I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been, this is super exciting, like, to think about that I could actually maybe have a book in 2025. So, we got about 15 minutes left, so make sure to ask your questions of Matt. I’m going to try to pull up some more comments.

[00:41:59] Uh, here in a minute, but what else that makes me excited is our pals over at Ecamm, yes, that’s right, ecamm. com forward slash jeff, you can find out more and save 15 percent of your first purchase by using the code jeff15, ecamm.

[00:42:12] com forward slash jeff15. So a couple things that I wanted to cover before, you know, we, we kind of moved on is, one, Jim actually used, Lulu and I know he did this for his wife. He actually created a coil bound quarter portal journal that he sells, that his wife does that type of stuff. And he did that with Lulu.

[00:42:31] So that’s really cool.

[00:42:32] To, to hear about, a question from Rich about kind of going back to the workbooks. should a workbook for a digital course, contain the full course content or just the complimentary content like exercises, et cetera, that support that digital content? I think that’s a great question.

[00:42:50] Matt Briel: it is. It’s a really good question. And we do get asked this question often. So there’s two answers to that. And again, it’s going to boil down to what your goals are for that particular course and the workbook that goes with it. So there’s two ways to approach a workbook or supplemental workbook to a course.

[00:43:07] One is you’re just building that cost into the course. So you’re not charging a separate fee for it. And really that, that, Workbook is designed to deliver maximum value because it truly is a complimentary piece to your, your course. And so in that instance, I would say. I would put as much in there as you can.

[00:43:25] So a lot of the overarching concepts of what you teach in the course, as well as actual exercises to make them think and understand the concepts, I would put as much as I could in there because what you want is maximum retention of that information when they leave your online course. And that, that workbook is always there on their desk or their bookshelf in their home office or in their regular office.

[00:43:47] Right. so, you know, again, if you’re not going to be charging separately for it, I would oftentimes put as much as I can in there. if you’re going to charge separately for the workbook and there’s potential for people to get their hands on that workbook and not necessarily take the full course, you may want to throttle back some of the content you put in there and kind of not leave them hanging, but right, generate more of that curiosity.

[00:44:13] So give them enough to where they’re like, Oh, This is actually really helpful, you know, and maybe omit the last few chapters. Right. So that they’re like, Oh, I do need the rest of this. I’m going to go watch the rest of the course, or I’m going to go pay for the other videos in this course or whatever that might be.

[00:44:29] so there’s two ways to approach it. And then we have seen where some people back to the first way I said, because they were, you know, You know, going to, to give the book with the course and not charge extra for the book. and when I say charge extra, I mean like when they sign up for your course, you know, they can check the box to, to get a supplemental workbook for an extra $25 or whatever.

[00:44:50] Right? A lot of people just fold it into the cost. Some take the opposite approach and have found some success with it. Where they don’t put as much in the workbook because they’re technically offering it for free with the course and just kind of folding the cost in or footing the cost so that it does make them want to come back for more courses from you.

[00:45:09] It’s really just going to boil down to your content, what you’re talking about and again, your goals. But I’m a big fan of providing maximum value because I think that’ll keep people coming back regardless. Some people are always a little concerned or trepidatious about, essentially giving away the cow instead of just the milk, right?

[00:45:26] So, I don’t know. I like, like, you know, again, let’s go back to momentum for a second. I, I love what Lou did with the, With his workbooks. and we helped him create those, for, for this past year. And I thought it was really cool that he let every speaker, you know, send in whatever they wanted. you could put as much as you wanted of your presentation in there or as little.

[00:45:45] but I just, I still have that workbook on my desk, by the

[00:45:47] Jeff Sieh: I do too.

[00:45:48] Matt Briel: because there’s so much good stuff in there. Right. And so for, for me, like I said about Katie Brinkley earlier. If I’m wanting to, to maybe contract, cause I use some agencies and I contract some stuff here at Lulu when we don’t have the time or the bandwidth, if I’ve got, you know, an email project, I know, like I can go back in the book and I was like, man, who was that?

[00:46:07] Oh, it was Paul. Paul has all this really cool stuff about email. Let me reach out to Paul and see if maybe, you know, or I could go in there and if it’s something to do with podcasting, or we just recently signed on with Ecamm, by the way, you know, so the Lulu podcast now runs on Ecamm. That honestly was a direct result of not only.

[00:46:23] You know, having that relationship with Katie Fox and Ecamm through events and momentum, but I was able to go back in that workbook and look at some of the stuff that Katie had in there. And so when we were developing out our podcast at Lulu and looking at providers, we, we went with one at first and we were like, wait a second, Ecamm does all these other things and I have this information here.

[00:46:42] Let me reach out, let’s figure this out. So, I think it’s going to depend on the content, but you know, I’m a general fan of putting as much value in there as you can, because I think in the long run, people will appreciate that and they’ll come back to you for it.

[00:46:53] Jeff Sieh: Yes. In fact, the funny thing is I have like all of my Momentum workbooks right here on my bookshelf. And I went back actually for this session because you had like five pages in the workbook about, you know, writing a book. And I was like, okay, this is great stuff. I need to go over this stuff before I have this interview.

[00:47:11] So I’m totally like, I can see that value of having a workbook, especially for you, Rich, because he does PR for, especially dirt racing is what he

[00:47:20] Matt Briel: I remember

[00:47:21] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, yeah. And so having something like that where you could have your clients, they’re going to keep that. They’re going to throw it on the bookshelf.

[00:47:27] It’s probably going to be smeared with grease and oil and everything. But they’re going to keep that because of the value that you provide, Rich. So I thought that, that’s really, really good to know. So very, very cool.

[00:47:37] Matt Briel: Yeah, and the thing with Rich is too, I know a little bit about car racing. So they’re going to use his books, and they’re going to get through the basics of how to do PR for their team, or their organization, or their sport, whatever it is, but there’s going to come a point where they go, man, we need to take this to the next level, and who do you think they’re going to reach out to?

[00:47:54] Jeff Sieh: Right. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:47:56] Matt Briel: guy who wrote the book that they’ve been using so far, you

[00:47:58] Jeff Sieh: Right. Right. Yeah. So it’s super smart. we mentioned Katie Brinkley a couple of times and she did a great job with this. But I want you to talk a little bit, okay, like, okay, Jeff finally got his book done. He’s going to maybe do the hybrid or the self publishing model. How do, what’s the best way for me to market my self published book?

[00:48:18] Matt Briel: Yeah, so that this is the one area where you would think that, you know, creators, small business owners, entrepreneurs would really have. a leg up on like your traditional fiction authors or people who are writing books for hobbies. And sometimes they do, but we tend to get lazy with our own stuff and that’s what I’ve found.

[00:48:35] And so, what I would say is start talking about your book early. That’s, that’s the first thing you really have to understand is that a lot of people go into writing a book and they think they don’t start marketing it until the book is published. like, they think the book launch is when you start marketing the book.

[00:48:51] And if that’s the case, you are already way behind the eight ball. You’re not going to have a good launch. You’re not going to have a successful sales cycle. None of those things are going to pan out the way you want them to. You’ve got to start talking about that book early, for some people, it’s They’re uncomfortable talking about the book if they haven’t started writing it.

[00:49:08] So that’s totally fine. Some people use that as actually, an accountability buddy. So writing in public, going out there and telling your audience, guys, I’m doing it. I’m, this is the year I’m writing a book. I need you to hold me accountable. I’m starting next week and even sharing. Some of those writings every week with your audience or every month or whatever that is, a lot of people have had good success with that.

[00:49:29] If that’s not your thing, what I would say is when you’re about 50 percent of the way done with your book, start talking about it, right? You’re 50 percent of the way done. You’re going to finish that thing. If you start talking about it publicly, you will be motivated to finish it. You will be held accountable.

[00:49:45] Your fans and audience will be like, Hey, Two months ago you said like, where’s this? Where are we at? How’s it going? But it also gives you more things to talk about, right? Like we talked about earlier, generating social media content to keep people interested and build your audience. Sometimes we struggle with coming up with something new or unique or original.

[00:50:01] If you could talk about your own book that you’re writing. You know, most of your fans and followers would be interested in that. And it would give you something different to talk about each week. So start talking about your book early. You got to build the hype around that and then set up a pre sale. So a lot of people, they don’t do a pre sale and that really hurts you when you launch your book and you’re going into the market.

[00:50:21] Pre sales are also a great way to gauge interest ahead of time. Right. And so understanding as these orders are coming in on a pre sale fashion, you’re, you’re seeing just how many people are interested and it’s a good way to test a price point and other things. So pre sales are awesome because it also gives you that little gust of wind in your sales on launch day, right?

[00:50:40] You already got, it’s launch day. So now you’ve got to fulfill the 300 pre order copies, right? So you send that through immediately through Lulu. We print and ship all 300 of those. But now you go out to the word and you’re like, just ship 300 copies. You got yours yet? Launch day is a breeze after that.

[00:50:55] And so you start talking about it early. You really initiate a pre sales plan and then lean heavily on friends, family, colleagues, and a street team. A lot of people, they make the mistake of feeling like it’s a burden to involve their friends or their colleagues, or even their family, or maybe they’re a little bit embarrassed and they don’t want anybody to see it until it’s out there in the world.

[00:51:16] But that is actually the wrong approach to take because nobody’s going to advocate for you more than your friends, family, and colleagues and fans. And so leaning on them to not only help you, through like maybe some beta reading, right? So having them read it ahead of time and give you feedback and things like that, but also having them be part of your street team so that at launch, it’s not just you telling the world about your book, it’s friends, family, colleagues, expanding that network.

[00:51:42] And now you’ve got 20 people talking about your book and you know better than I do, that the algorithms love that, you know, 20 people talking about your book launch versus just you talking about it. You know, again, it’s, it’s the law of numbers. So I would say those are the three really big things that people, they don’t do it.

[00:52:00] They forget to do it. They don’t think about it, or they just like, nah, this feels weird. I’m not going to do it. I would do it. And that’s going to give you a successful launch. And it’s really going to give you that momentum. You need to keep that sales cycle going. A lot of people, their sales fall flat as does their momentum.

[00:52:15] And if within three months, 60 to 90 days, but. If you’re not talking about it, nobody else is going to talk about it. You know what I mean? Treat it like a product. For those of you who are used to dealing with product launches or product marketing, develop a GTM, a go to market strategy for your book.

[00:52:31] Treat it like a product launch. Do the same things. You would never launch a product on day one without pre marketing it, pre selling it, pre hyping it, you know?

[00:52:40] Jeff Sieh: so one of my friends, Ramon Ray, he, he has a book called Celebrity, CEO, and he hawks that everywhere and he’s great at it. We’ve had a, he, he was on a couple, weeks ago, and if you wanna look at an example of somebody who’s always constantly using his book, I think it’s, he does a great job with it and it does get him in rooms where he wasn’t able to get to before.

[00:52:58] and, our friend Deal Billy, Billy Thorpe says pre sales is magic for a lot of products. Hot tip, that is very true. One of the things when you were talking, Matt, was that you mentioned, like, maybe giving some stuff away or writing in public. Do you recommend, like, giving a chapter, like, for people to read?

[00:53:15] Or how much do you give away versus you save for the, the launch? Mm hmm.

[00:53:20] Matt Briel: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of ways you can do it. And there’s some people who are really good at it right now. and being very clever. And what I would say is it depends on your comfort level. I’ve talked to people who are a little. Trepidatious or scared to put a bunch of their content out there because they’re afraid nobody will come and buy the rest of it.

[00:53:39] I don’t think that’s generally true. I think if you have something of value, whether it’s at the conceptual level or the, you know, down to the application level, people will recognize that and they’ll come back for more. What I would say is if you could take, let’s say, I don’t know, the first chapter of your book, which really should be the hook anyways, right?

[00:53:57] Take that first chapter, drop it in a chat GPT and say, Hey, Give me three sentences from this chapter of my book. That you think would hook an audience and really make them wanna buy or read the rest of my book, it will give you that. Then take that and go, okay, I wanna make sure this is not just clickbait, right?

[00:54:18] I wanna make sure that I can give them something valuable in this one little string of words, but it’s enough to where they’ll also want to come and get the rest.

[00:54:27] So it’s about hooking them with a piece of value. But also showing them there’s a much larger amount of value to be had. Kind of like the iceberg sort of metaphor, right?

[00:54:38] You only see the tippy top. What’s lying underneath is really what can either do the damage or show you the amount of value there. But I’ve never seen an instance where somebody came to me and said, Hey, I gave a chapter out for free. I shared it online and then nobody wanted to buy the book. If that is truly the case, your book sucks.

[00:54:56] You should probably go back and take a look at that first chapter, man, You know, but in all seriousness. You’re not going to get people to come to the front door if there’s nothing that’s that’s their value. So you do have to share something with them. You control what you share, which again is the beauty of self publishing.

[00:55:13] And you know, just take a look at that, that little nugget of value. Don’t give it all away. No, but give them a decent amount of it where they realize, yeah, this, this person knows what they’re talking about. Katie Brinkley knows what she’s talking about. I need to read the rest of this book and then I’m going to put some of this into practice.

[00:55:29] And then I’m going to realize, This is still above my pay grade. So I’m going to email Katie and I’m going to see how much it would cost to have Katie’s team do this for me because they clearly know what they’re doing. You know what I mean? It’s all about incremental ways of securing more and more revenue and or brand awareness.

[00:55:45] Yeah,

[00:55:45] Jeff Sieh: Very cool. so this has been awesome, Matt. I have, do you have a time to stay for a little bit? I have one more question I want

[00:55:51] Matt Briel: I do.

[00:55:51] Jeff Sieh: Okay. Um,

[00:55:53] Matt Briel: It doesn’t look like this was hit yet, so we’re, we’re good.

[00:55:56] Jeff Sieh: so one of the questions I wanted to ask is like, our friend Lou Mangiello, one of his books that he did was he took all his best interviews and condensed them into a book from the, all his content that he has from his podcast.

[00:56:08] I’ve been doing this for three years. I’ve got tons of interviews and, and, you know, Transcripts from the show. A lot of the people who are watching are the same. They’re creators who’ve got, you know, years of content behind them. Do you recommend that they should start writing a book, kind of like from scratch and maybe like crowdsourcing it or use their existing content and repackage it for their first book?

[00:56:29] Matt Briel: I always push the ladder and I’ll tell you why. Everybody loves to give me crap about that, right? They’re like, Oh, they’ve, they’ve heard me talk about this already. They heard this interview. They’ve listened to every one of my shows. They’ve told me that they’ve, they’ve read every one of my blog articles.

[00:56:44] Why would they buy it from me in book format? Because they like you, they would. And because if I have a book, so there’s a guy named Lenny Raczynski. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he’s also, you know, he’s got a podcast and he deals a lot with project management in the, in the corporate and technical world, but nonetheless, he’s also a good example.

[00:57:02] Just like Lou is. Lenny does these, these podcasts. They’re very in depth. They’re very technical. They’re great. He has good, good guests on there. but. If I wanted to, to put something into practice that I heard on one of Lenny’s podcasts, let’s say a couple months ago, I’ve got to go back, I’ve got to find that podcast, I’ve got to queue it back up, I’ve got to listen to it, I’ve got to find the value there, maybe make some notes, do, I’ve got to do all these things, right?

[00:57:24] If I’ve got Lenny’s book on my desk, I literally flipped open to the chapter that was that podcast interview, and it’s all right there. That’s it. It’s one action for me versus five, six, seven, eight actions. I would buy that book. If I’m a fan of Lenny Ruchitsky and his interviews and the people that he talks to and the concepts they talk about, I would buy that book.

[00:57:45] And he did. He said, listen, I’m going to put the last year’s worth of interviews out in volume one. I’m only going to sell 4, 000 copies of it. He sold through them in one week. That’s it. One week. The value is there. So just like with Lou, when he compiled all his best interviews, People bought the book because it’s that legacy thing.

[00:58:03] It’s there. You can go to it whenever you want. the same for, for you, for example, we love talking to podcasters and YouTubers and people, you know, people who’ve been blogging for 10 plus years and they have all this content, you know what I mean? They don’t want to search back through your blog for the last five years to find that one article that they remembered you wrote.

[00:58:21] But they don’t remember all the specifics and it would really help them like having that book where they could flip right to it because it’s all broken out by topic and the outline. You know what I mean? So there is value in repackaging that content and putting it out into the world in a different format.

[00:58:35] Not only is that valuable to your existing, you know, user base and fan base, but think about when you write a book, you’re now opening up a new audience that you never had access to. You know, there’s a, there’s a large portion of people, believe it or not, that read books that don’t listen to podcasts. I didn’t listen to podcasts until recently.

[00:58:52] And now I have a podcast and I love podcasts, but I’ve been reading books since I could read, you know what I mean? Like, so if you’ve got a book now, all of a sudden you’ve got a new audience too, maybe they’ve never listened to podcasts. But they pick your book up and they’re like, holy , holy crap.

[00:59:05] This guy’s interviewed, you know, a ton of great people. You know, he’s got this Katie Brinkley girl in here talking about all this really cool stuff and this Paul Gowder guy and all these other people like, man. And now it’s sitting on their desk and it’s a reference tool for them.

[00:59:17] Jeff Sieh: Oh, that’s such a good piece of advice. I hope you guys felt how encouraging this was and I hope you, I know a lot of you have a book in you that I would love to read. So, make sure you guys follow Matt everywhere. Go to lulu. com. Matt, I’m going to give you a couple of minutes here at the end to talk about Lulu, Ludirect, CX, whatever you want.

[00:59:36] The floor is yours. just whatever you want to share with our audience.

[00:59:40] Matt Briel: Yeah. First of all, you guys can find me on LinkedIn. it’s, you know, I forgot the URL, but it’s just Matt Briel. I’m more than happy to talk to anybody about these things or put you in touch with somebody on my team that can help you work through these things. We love to, to ideate and brainstorm things like this.

[00:59:55] If you think you have a tricky business where you’re not sure if you can trust me, we love these challenges. We’ll figure it out. so you can find me on LinkedIn. you can also email me. M B R I E L at lulu. com. or if it’s easier for you, you can email me at podcast at lulu. com. We have a podcast called Publish and Prosper.

[01:00:14] we talk mostly about using publishing, to advance your business and your brand and things like that. We don’t do a lot of fiction specific podcasting, so you may find some value there too, for those of you that prefer that format or that medium. and then obviously lulu. com. what we do primarily, uh, Lulu is a self publishing print on demand is our, our big thing.

[01:00:35] So we have a global print network and that means that you could use Lulu to spin up your book, and print it and ship it all over the world. and you never have to touch a book. You never have to pack an envelope. You never have to deal with those things. Lulu takes care of all of that for you. If you’re not ready to sell direct yet, or maybe you’re still working on your website, you can actually sell through the Lulu online bookstore.

[01:00:56] we still have the largest royalty split of anybody. And that means you just share that link to your book on Lulu and the Lulu bookstore, on your website or wherever you want. And every time your book sells, we print it and ship it. You get 80 percent of the profit. We keep 20%.so that’s a good way to get started while you’re building out your own website or your Shopify store or whatever it is you’re going to use.

[01:01:15] But once you have that link. That method of direct sales in place, which we can help you as well. We have an onboarding team here for that. then you can start selling direct and that’s where you really get into, you know, like the stuff Paul was talking about, getting your hands on those email addresses, those contacts for people who are buying your content so that you have that ability to remarket to them.

[01:01:33] That’s really what Lulu has been working on for the last couple of years. And that’s why we really focus on the entrepreneurial and creator audiences, because everybody in these audiences, all of your listeners, you all understand the true value. of that data of that content.yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can check out our podcast, publish and prosper. lulu. com is the website. and, and love to have these conversations around how to grow your business with books. I’m a huge book nerd, so I love to solve these problems and help people make money.

[01:02:03] Jeff Sieh: Awesome, awesome. Matt, thank you so much for this. even with all the tech challenges we’ve had today, this was just fire, like, our friend, Billy Thorpe says, uh, yeah, this fire, live selling books coming soon. He’s a big live seller. So, this is awesome. Thank you guys so much. If you have enjoyed this show, would you do me a favor and share it with your friends, especially if you have people that you know who are really Thinking about, I’ve always wanted to write a book.

[01:02:25] I just don’t know where to start. This is a perfect episode for them to go watch or listen to the replay. You can find all that stuff at socialmedianewslive. com. And with that, we thank you so much. Thank you, Billy Thorpe. Thank you, Jim Fuse, Tech Troublemaker, Rich, everybody who watched today and asked questions.

[01:02:41] I appreciate you. Wouldn’t be able to do this show without you. And with that, we’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.