Mark Lefebvre, Dan Wood, and Kevin Tumlinson talk all things author-marketing in this Q&A from July 19th, 2019. You’ll hear D2D’s three wise guys discuss libraries, audiobooks, and best practices for marketing your books to audiences far and wide.
Tune in to the video, and you can read along with the transcript below
TRANSCRIPT
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:00:02 | Hey everybody and welcome to the July, 2019 ask us anything with Draft2Digital. My name is Mark Lefebvre and I’m the director of, what am I the director of? I’m the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital and these two very good looking people with me today are, we’ll start with Dan. |
| Dan Wood: | Dan Wood, I’m the Director of Author Relations. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:00:19 | Uh, I am Kevin Tumlinson and I’m the Director of Marketing. Should fit in real nice with this episode. |
| Dan Wood: | Yeah you’re answering everything | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:00:23 | So, uh, we do have some, live questions, but I wanted to start with, uh, one of the many questions. I’m just, just to let you guys know, thank you guys so much. Uh, when you registered for it, uh, in for a previous a Webinar, we have close to 300 questions from authors. We are not going to get to all 300 questions, although fortunately many of them overlap. So what we did is we dug through all of the questions that came in and we hope to, uh, address as many of them as possible. But what we’ve done in a case like this, and I’m going to toss this first question out right now, guys, is, uh, we sort of amalgamated some of the questions together. So the very first question is, what are some strategies that an author can use as a beginning author to find an audience for their specific book? For example, a children’s picture book maybe, or perhaps it’s contemporary fiction, maybe it’s a niche genre book. What about poetry? So basically thinking about those types of examples, what are some strategies that are beginning author can use to find … |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | To find those first readers? Yeah, first group of readers. Um, one, one useful thing to do is to get involved in a little communities, organizations and groups, uh, that are focused on that topic. So for example, in Facebook there are tons of little groups and communities that you can be a part of that are aimed at, uh, your type of book. So like I, I’m a thriller writer. There are tons of groups on Facebook that are aimed at, uh, thriller readers. Um, so you’d join those groups. Now you don’t go in and start spamming them and saying, buy my book or even I have a book, you become an active part of the communities and, and become someone that these people trust. Um, as a, as one of them, you know, you participate in conversations. You participate in— If they have, like, surveys and group activities and you know, whatever is going on, you become an active member of this. And then, uh, over time people will start talking to you and you can organically and casually start to mention that you write picture books that you write, thriller novels, just like, you know, the ones that we talk about and love. So being an active part of a community is a real good place to start, it’s, it’s not instantaneous, which is why a lot of authors get turned off by the idea. But, uh, it’s good long tail growth we’ll say. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:00:29 | Okay. Oh, that’s fantastic. Thanks Kevin. Dan, anything to add to that? |
| Dan Wood: | I totally agree. Um, know, know exactly what reader base you’re aiming for and where they hang out. Um, the other part of it would be to get involved in the community of authors who write similar things to you, uh, because they’re going to know where those readers are. Um, we’ve seen a lot of authors do things like email swaps, um, like to their, their different lists. And so that’s a way to find some of those readers as well. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:00:30 | So just to clarify by an email swap you mean, so if I write thrillers and Kevin writes thrillers, um, my audience may like Kevin’s books. So that means I’m going to be recommending his book to my readers. Right? That’s the kind of swap you mean? Not ‘Hey! I’m going to give you all my email addresses.’ ‘Cause that’s kinda not very … |
| Dan Wood: | Yeah, exactly. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:01:35 | That’s technically illegal, I think. |
| Dan Wood: | But yeah, what you would do in general is you can either recommend their book to your readers if you just like them and you love their book and then your readers appreciate that cause they’re always looking for something new and great. Or um, you two can swap. Like, if he thinks his readers will like your books and vice versa, then you can send out a blast, about his book and he could send out a blast about your book. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:02:55 | Okay. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | By the way. And then I’ll throw a third one in there and then we can we jump into something else. But this is a real handy thing. Um, don’t underestimate the power of content. Uh, and by that I mean things like blogs, youtube videos, podcasts, that sort of thing. Um, if you can create some content, uh, that is attractive to your potential reader, you stand a much better chance of drawing them in and maybe getting them interested in your, your work. So a blog is, is particularly good for this, especially if you like sorta simulcast it in places like Medium where you get a broader reach. But if you regularly write on a topic related to your books, if it’s like children’s picture books, um, you might do something like review other authors, picture books, talk about the process of developing them, talk about the art, you know, there’s lots of topics you could explore that would allow you to connect with that reader. And then if on that blog you have, you know, you there, it’s perfectly acceptable to put things like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a book, uh, that fits in this genre.’ You might want to check it out and put a little thumbnail of the cover and a little blurb about the book and a link, a Universal Book Link from books2read.com to go buy that book. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:03:00 | Okay, then, cool. So I want to jump into one of the questions that was asked in the question and answer sort of the live Q and a that we have here. And this is a question from Benjamin and he says, “When I create, a Facebook account for my brand— I’m assuming for his book brand or author brand— should it be a personal account or a business page? If business, should I select business, or brand, or public figure?” What do you guys recommend? |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Yeah, so I would, uh, I just, I’m pausing because I, I have a tendency to jump in and talk about this stuff and let everyone just kind of sit. | |
| New Speaker: | 00:03:25 | You director of marketing, you. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | So I would just establish yourself. You, since Facebook lets you choose a brand as your, uh, you know, persona, uh, with that, I would go with that. Uh, you could do public figure. It really doesn’t matter all that much. That’s not gonna change much. Uh, for you. There’s no additional options per choice or whatever. But if you a select brand, uh, it kind of fits a little better. It’s too bad they don’t offer author or, uh, something along those lines. You would think they would by this point because there are plenty of authors out there that do that if you want. Um, if you, if it would make you feel more comfortable, you might check out other authors and look at what they chose. I believe you can actually see that. Um, and you can always hit them up if you can’t see it on Facebook, but you know, you’re developing yourself as a brand anyway. Uh, if you happen to be using your own name, uh, that’s fine. If you have to be using a pen name, you’re trying to build up a, a personality around that author name. So the choosing brand and going that way, it’s probably the best choice. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:03:41 | Okay, cool. Uh, anything to add to that, Dan? |
| Dan Wood: | Uh, not really. Uh, I would say heard that organic reach is pretty low. Like when people follow you through those brand pages. Facebook wants you to spend money to promote those posts. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:03:43 | Yeah. |
| Dan Wood: | Um, and so one work around I’ve seen authors doing is starting their own groups and you know, maintaining an actual conversation, uh, over time with people because then you know, they’re going to see it. Whereas if you just post it on your Facebook page, a very small percentage of them are gonna ever gonna see it. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:03:43 | Yeah. That’s true. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | I may also share a personal— I actually manage a bunch of different Facebook pages for some of my books. So I do ghost stories set in particular cities and towns. And so one of my most engaging ones is for spooky Sudbury. So Sudbury is a town in mid northern Ontario and again it’s a book of ghost stories about Sudbury. The page itself, I, for every 10 posts I share maybe one or two posts is actually about the book or about me if I’m, you know, appearing somewhere or or whatever just for, for potential fans. But most of the posts that I share there are related to the town and the city. So maybe there’s a local musician who’s being featured in a local paper or maybe there’s an interesting news item. For example, Moose walks through Tim Horton’s drive-through. Anything that’s sort of fun and engaging with the community for people who are very passionate about that town. And I find that kind of thing works and it kind of strings back to what Kevin said about content marketing. Most of the things that I share there are things that are interesting and fascinating to the community. And the only thing that they have to do with my book is my book is also set there. So you know, there’s so many different ways you can approach Facebook and the brand and the, and the, and the, and the targets. And in that particular case, the brand is the book that loves the town or the city. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:04:08 | Um, I want to jump back to one of the pre-submitted questions from the giant batch and it kind of relates to when we talked about that target audience, but how, what are some of the ways for an author to figure out who their ideal audience is or who their target audience is no matter what their genre. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Tarot. | |
| New Speaker: | 00:04:09 | Okay, perfect. Okay. BESIDES tarot or magic. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Oh, I think I just had power cut off here. I’m sorry. I may have a limited time because everything is on backup ups, so, well, we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see how it works. Stay tuned everyone. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:05:24 | Why don’t you start with your answer Kevin? |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | So, uh, Oh God, I forgot the question, now. Repeat the question. | |
| New Speaker: | 00:05:49 | How do you, how do you find out your ideal audiences if you don’t know? |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Okay. Again, I mean that, that’s the same sort of, uh, answer as we gave earlier about, uh, you know, how do you start building that reader list and you go to where those folks hang out. If you’re trying to identify who that should be. Um, that, I mean, that’s where I would start actually. But you, you know, you know who’s going to be the type of reader that’s going to be enjoying your books. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:05:58 | You’re going to have a pretty good idea of them. Uh, it’s, it might be good to start by just jotting down on a piece of paper or a digital file, all the sort of characteristics of this person that you’re trying to reach. Maybe they’re a lot like you, or maybe you have a spouse, uh, that, that you write for. Um, start looking at who you want to pick the book up. And then that’ll tell you, um, who your ideal reader is. You could start kinda creating a persona, uh, that you can use that will help with marketing and everything else. |
| New Speaker: | Like constant reader that Stephen King uses and his wife? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:06:01 | The constant reader. Right. Yeah. None, this is new by the way. I was stealing all this from Stephen King and everyone else. Will you still very impressed by my setup is still running by the way. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | That’s good though. Then we hope to keep you hanging in there. Okay, jump back to some of the questions that were submitted in the live Q and. A. So a, I can see the both Libby and Joan have asked about print distribution. So the question is, “Can you let us know where D2D is distributing our books?” Um, “Will it say D2D as the publisher?” And the, a similar question is, “Can I do paperbacks with D2D as well? I want more than ebooks.” So there are kind of covered two of those questions covered in one. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:07:05 | Uh, we talked a little bit in the last chat about paperback. Um, but we’re still working. We’ve got that in Beta. Um … if I remember correctly, it shows whatever publisher name you gave us a just about everywhere. Uh, so it’d be your publisher name. It wouldn’t show Draft2Digital. Um. As far as where your book goes, we don’t really have, we can’t tell you exactly everywhere it goes cause it just goes into the general, a wholesale channel for books. And so they’re adding and subtracting retailers. All the time. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And the wholesale channel as I understand, is very similar to what you would get from Ingram spark. For the most part. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:07:11 | It’s identical from what, from what we’re told. Um, and we’re partnering with IPG, which is the same printer to the handles, uh, brands you’ve heard of like Random House and Harlequin and others. Um, and every, the whole setup that we have is identical to what Ingram offers you, but we don’t charge you any money for it. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Okay. Um, and, and as some of you may know, we’ve been in, uh, D2D Print Beta for a while on early Beta and we’re going to be expanding that soon. Uh, Alexis, I should mention, is a, in the backend. So she’s monitoring our Facebook group for us and looking for questions that she can share through an internal channel to us as well. So, Hey Alexis, thanks for uh, thanks for supporting us in that way. Uh, and she reminded us that we will be opening the print Beta very, very soon. We can either try to drop a link in here in the, in the comments or on the, on the Facebook feed as well to let people know how they can get into that next level print Beta so they can experiment with that as well. Does that make sense? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:07:19 | And the beta’s fun. I mean, at this, it’s a great program. I can’t wait until it’s fully live where I can just give people an easy URL. But all my print books go through D2D Print right now and it’s, it’s been fantastic. |
| New Speaker: | Okay. So, uh, here’s a question that came up, oh, maybe 50, 60, or 70 or 80 times, uh, in the pre-submitted questions. And I bet you that someone’s already asked it in the live Q and. A. But, uh, so in a nutshell, “What are the best methods for selling books to the Non-Amazon retailers? How does an author get traction at places like Kobo, like Apple or Nook? And can it be done through D2D or, or do they have to go direct?” | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:07:19 | So I finding traction is a great question. It takes a while sometimes. Uh, when I get this question at conferences like where I started is A) you can’t just dip your toe and you can’t just have one book available and expect that people are gonna read it. There’s a large number of readers that don’t really buy a book from a new author until they have a number of books published. And so I would say getting the three or four books a minimum available wide a is going to be something you’re gonna want to do before you’re really gonna want to push on marketing. Um. |
| Dan Wood: | So the steps that we go through as we’re talking with people and some of the one-on-ones, that we’ve been doing is A) first we check your website to see are you even linking to the other retailers? That’s your social media, when you’re, and when you have any release, are you sending readers everywhere or are you sending them just to Amazon? Um, the retailers look at that when we nominate books for promotions. Uh, they look they, see if you are linking to them. And if you’re not, odds are they’re not going to choose your book. Um, we were just in a, a meeting with a retailer that shall not be named, but they stress again to us the importance of making sure you have links to your books on their websites. Those can be universal book links. So something we offer that lets you, uh, post a link that would get your readers to whatever platform that they prefer to buy on. But you want to make sure that you’re not just mentioning Amazon over and over. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:07:39 | Um, take part in different promotional sites. Uh, BookBub is probably the most effective. So applying for the BookBub, uh, daily deals for featured daily deals. Uh, whenever, uh, you’re eligible is really, really a great way to kickstart your success, uh, at the wider platforms. Uh, take part in those international BookBub deals because we’re seeing a big growth in international sales. Um, in this last year, international sales moved from being about 30% of Draft2Digital’s overall sales to about 62% or to 38%. So it’s a, uh, a pretty big growth and we’re, we’re starting to see other markets, uh, move over or move towards digital a lot more lately. Uh, what other information would you share with them Mark? |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Again, I would also let them know that it takes a long, long time. I mean, Amazon is the world’s biggest bookstore. I mean, Prime Days was just a few days ago. And even the streets where we live here in Canada are just filled with people like shipping companies going back and forth, dropping things off. And that wasn’t even books, right? It’s all the things they sell. So they have millions and millions of more customers than just readers. Whereas a place like Kobo is just readers. Uh, Apple has obviously a lot more customers, but not in that same engagement that Amazon does. Nook is only in the US but it’s still the US as a big population. | |
| New Speaker: | 00:07:40 | But it takes a long time to develop a relationship or just develop a following on a platform. The thing that I would advise authors don’t do is you don’t pull your books out of exclusive to Amazon or you know, publish them wide and then wait 30 days and go “well, nothing happened, I give up.” Because every time you start, you know, at Kobo or Apple or Nook or any other places, you’re starting from scratch. When you delist that book and remove it from that platform and then bring it back 90 days later for a short tour of duty and then give up again, you’re starting from scratch every single time. And I’ve met authors over the years at conferences who I remember, you know, I even, I was on stage once at Superstars Writing Seminars in Colorado Springs. And I remember somebody kind of heckling me for the fact that they didn’t have any sales on Kobo yet, but back when I was working at Kobo and then two years later they actually put up their hand, to apologize for heckling me and said, you’re right, I started to get sales nine months later and now my sales on Kobo are higher than the other two. It’s second to Amazon. So again, a lot of patience is really, really important. You can’t just dip in and out. Like Dan said, you can’t just dip in with one book and, and test the waters. You really need to give readers, um, give to readers that the ability to purchase and find you on those other platforms. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Yeah. You, uh, I’m going to give the advice that, uh, you probably get from everybody, uh, but you should really pay attention to it, which is, uh, focus on building your mailing list and that will help you crack, uh, wide markets. And then what, what you want to do is set up ah, if you’re going to do Facebook advertising for example, uh, set up a series of ads, a whole campaign of ads that target the different readers, the different e-readers, um, and devices so that you can start getting people to get a Freebie on your site, you know, free short story or novella, something like that. Ah, to sign up for your list. Now, that’s what that’s going to do is help you grow your wide base so that when you do have books released, you are advertising to a captive audience. You’re, you’re advertising to a vetted audience, um, that will help you grow that a little faster. So I tell people, uh, pretty often to not really bother focusing on trying to sell through Facebook ads and, and elsewhere, but to focus instead on trying to build up that audience as much as possible. Build your platform as wide and deep as possible, as quickly as you can. And that will help. It is a long game though. It’s not going to be an overnight thing. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:08:59 | Build- Building your email list really is building your own BookBub. And so, um, Kevin for you, where all do you ask people to join your email list? And you mentioned that you, you might give away a Freebie too- |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Right. And I give, I give away a free, um, ebook. It’s a short story, but it’s a true, I treated it exactly like a book. It’s got a cover, it’s edited. Everything is exactly as I would do to release a book, ah, it’s exclusive on my website. I advertise it through all my social channels. Uh, I advertise it. We have our D2D Author Page. So there’s a way to sign up for the mailing list on the author page. Uh, I have business cards, I have cards, I have like six different types of cards and almost all of them have some way to find my, uh, my freebie. Uh, it’s in my email signature. I mean, w-what you want to do is that that thing needs to be everywhere. Um, and every time you talk to somebody when I’m out ask my wife, she, she has stopped rolling her eyes from all the eyestrain. But, um, every time we’re out we meet people. Uh, I introduced myself and some way, somehow I end up slipping in there that I’m an author and ah, as soon as they, they get interested about it, I hand them one of those cards and say, you know, you can get a free book if you go to this website. So you just want to constantly try to build that. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:09:14 | Thank you. I want to go back to something Dan said, because I’m positive people ask the question. Dan said, “When we nominate titles for promotions…” Could you please elaborate on what that is? |
| Dan Wood: | Oh yeah. So, uh, we work with all the retailers, the library systems, ah, subscription services to help them find books to promote to their readers that their readers might like. Um, right now we do it mostly through email and so we send out an email, as we learn of opportunities from the retailers. Each of the opportunities has conditions or um, you know, they’re looking for a certain genre, they’re looking for a certain type of book. Um, they want it to have like beaches on the cover or things of that nature. And so we, um, go through our list. Uh, basically we look and see who on that retailer has been selling this year and we send out emails to those people and let them know, uh, if they have eligible books, if they would like to for us to nominate their book. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:09:16 | Um, with some of those it requires a price reduction and so they expect you to have it on sale, uh, you know, over a weekend or over a week period, um, where you actually have to change the price. Uh, with libraries they generally will ask you to offer a percentage discount and that one’s really easy. We just let them know, you know, this book will be, you know, 30% off of the library of list price for this period of time. Uh, and so we are nominating books for those. The best way. Uh, with Draft2Digital to be a part of this is just to keep an eye on your emails because we do email out those opportunities, uh, to our users. Uh, and you want to make sure you have, um, as many books that are eligible as you can. Um, so preorders are a very important thing. Like, uh, Apple runs a lot of uh, their promotions are centered around preorder numbers and so have a preorder, um, that will make you eligible for more types of promotion, promotions, uh, have a box set because some of the different, uh, promotions are just for box sets and bundles. |
| New Speaker: | Okay. Thank you. Now, um, uh, Holly I believe, asked the question sort of as a followup to something Kevin said related to your free books, “How do you, how do you distribute those free books?” | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:09:21 | So I use, um, Bookfunnel to do, to distribute those and our good friend Damon Courtney who happens to live like a few miles from me, um, but he, it’s a fantastic service. You haven’t heard of it bookfunnel.com is the site and what that allows you to do, and there is a, there is a cost to using the site, I think it’s $20. I don’t even remember what it costs, but um, what that allows you to do is collect email addresses. Uh, you’ll get an a file with all those or you can have them sent straight to your email management system. Ah MailChimp is one of those, I know a lot of people kind of migrating from MailChimp right now, but there are several that you can choose. And um, if you have like an ad or link or something on your site or your email or social media, it’ll send them to that form where they see a picture of the cover, a description of the book, and then you can actually just sign up right there and it actually takes care of all the customer support of helping them get that book on their, their various e-readers. So great tool Bookfunnel. I’m going to go collect a $25 from Damon for mentioning it. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Excellent. Uh, so I want to go into a little bit more about marketing and we’re talking about marketing to retailers, but a lot of folks have asked questions about what are some methods that authors can use to sell their books to library systems. You know, so for through Draft2Digital you can get your books and Overdrive, Baker & Taylor and other library systems. And is there a difference in how you promote your ebooks available to libraries or your print books available to libraries? So how do you sell your books into the library systems? | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:09:34 | So with libraries, um, kind of understanding how libraries acquire books is very handy. Um, for the most part I say like the number one, like the cheap solution is let your readers know that your books are all available in the library systems now and let them know that they can request your books. So if they want to read your books to the library system or if they think people in your town would enjoy your books, um, making sure that they know that they can request library books at libraries is the best way to, uh, start getting your name out there to the librarians. Um, librarians go to a number of, of trusted sources that help them acquire new content. Uh, library journals, one of them. Uh, within specific genres. There are magazines that they follow. I know within a romance, a lot of librarians use follow Romantic Times. |
| Dan Wood: | Um, within science fiction and fantasy. You might look at some of the different, uh, magazines that are very popular there. That might be a good way to find the librarians or doing the acquiring. Um, but you know, I would start off making sure you’re checking out what your local library provides and how they provide it, cause that’ll help you understand how libraries work with digital. Um, it is going to be a little bit different for print. Um, we really don’t have a lot of data or experience yet. Uh, I, I don’t feel like I’ve got good advice to tell you how to get print books in the libraries. Uh, the library systems will not buy a print on demand book, uh, with a Amazon, ISBN. Uh, and so having it available through D2D Print or through Ingram is going to be the number one step to making sure the libraries might acquire your book is just having it available in those systems. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:09:36 | Okay. Thank you. Uh, I want to add a little bit about that because I’ve recently moved from one city to another and what I’ve done is I’ve gone to the local um, library and I’ve sent them links. I’ve introduced myself, I’ve sent them links to my books and, and, and, and you can go to overdrive.com and search for your name or your titles or whatever. You can come up with a list of all the, the ebooks and audio books that may be available under your name or your single book or whoever it is. And I have sent them a link to there, I’ve also given them the ISBNs of my books that I know are available through Ingram. Some of them are available directly through Ingram, some of them are available through the Draft2Digital Print, uh, Beta as well. I’ve been around for a long time, so I have them available many, many different ways. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | But at the end of the day, all they care about is where they’re going to order it from. And Ingram is the world’s largest wholesaler. And I send them the ISBNs and say, I’m a local author. Here’s some of my books I’d be interested in. You know, because I write ghost stories I could come in and do a free, you know, ghost talk, share some ghost stories this time of year. I also know a lot about the book industry. I’m happy to do a free workshop. So again, when you’re talking to libraries, you can provide them links to the books. I would, I would recommend places like Overdrive and there are other library distributors, Baker & Taylor, et cetera. Um, uh, Ingram provide them as much information as possible to make it easy and attractive for them to want to bring in your book. And then maybe is there something you can offer for the community, uh, that basically allows you to network and connect with the library? And, and again, it’s not fast. It’s not easy. Like the mailing lists, like selling them on the non-Amazon platforms, it takes time and effort. All right? It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to be curation, uh, over the long period. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:09:40 | Yeah, it’s not something they keep in mind by the way is, uh, libraries are just like any other market. If you want, if you want to get into that market, you have to tailor marketing for it. So, um, you were talking to librarians instead of the patrons at that point. Um, Dan’s plan is the, to me, the, the most exciting and best way to go about it because it’s always good to have customers, quote unquote, come in and request something. Uh, but you might also consider befriending librarians on, uh, Twitter and elsewhere, um, following the American Library Association, uh, engaging in conversations, uh, that are important to these people. And then as you become, again, this is sort of the insert yourself into the community idea. I mean, as you become more recognized and um, um, you’re known as a friend of the libraries, it will be a lot easier to interject that you, you too have books that libraries might be interested in. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Thank you gentlemen. Thank you both. So I’m going to take a question Alexis has punted over to us from the Facebook. A Dorothy asked, “How is promoting nonfiction different from promoting fiction or is it different?” | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:09:45 | It is different. Um, in some ways, uh, a lot of the same tricks will work. You know, the, the ideas of getting involved in, uh, with the communities and all that stuff, that all of that stuff still works. Your mailing list is still always a good idea. One of the advantages that nonfiction tends to have over fiction, uh, is that people go looking for answers and can come across your nonfiction a lot easier. Uh, on Amazon in particular is true cause Amazon is really just a glorified search engine. So if you tailor your, uh, book description to answer a specific question that is tied to your topic, um, that will help a great deal, tailor your keywords and that sort of thing so that when people are looking for in a specific answer on a specific topic, uh, there’s a better chance that they’ll stumble across your book. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | With fiction, um, it’s all about the experience. So, uh, this is a little harder in the organic search stuff doesn’t work quite as easy, but it can, but it’s not, uh, it’s not quite as fine tuned as it is with nonfiction. Uh, but in that case, everything you write about and produce regarding your fiction book, you want to parlay the experience that the reader will have, uh, when they read it. So if they’re going to have a romantic adventure, uh, you want to make sure you put that in the book description. Uh, you use it in marketing language and uh, you know, everywhere that the book gets mentioned. Um, so those are the sort of the two major differences between those two. But otherwise, uh, the, the standard marketing techniques are going to be the same across both. So you don’t have to get too wild about it. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:10:07 | I would say with nonfiction, a content marketing is a little bit more effective. And so blogging, um, being active on social media because people are looking for those answers in different places. Uh, maybe youtube, um, podcasts, like there’s so many podcasts dedicated to subjects. And so I would really look at, I know for us as a company, um, we’ve really worked with a lot of the podcasters out there within the publishing and the indie publishing community cause that’s been very effective for us. Um, with fiction, uh, the secret, and you want to like write this down, just write series. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | A lot easier. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:10:39 | It’s by far going to save you so many headaches. If you’re writing individual standalone stories, they’re so hard to market, um, without a big budget like a traditional publisher might have. And so, um, if you’re not running series, the, the secret juice to 99% of the, the really famous, uh, blockbuster indie Authors is writing in series. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | And by the way, if you’ve already written a number of bo- of fiction books and you didn’t write them as a series, um, you can, you can find a way to brand those as if they are individual books within a series or within a universe or something. Um, there are, you know, I’m, I’m about to do this actually with quite a few of my books. Thankfully. One thing I did do was I always put little Easter eggs in each of my books to tie them together in one way or another. They’re all in the same omniverse you will say a, but you could even if it’s something like, um, create a label, create a brand, you know, uh, if you’re a romance author and you’ve written, you know, four standalone romance books, uh, maybe you come up with, you know, um, it’s something along the lines of like the, what was it Sweet Valley High and you know, those are juvenile, but I’m a brand that can encompass the books themselves and then you market the brand and that way you can write whatever you want at that point as long as you’re able to fit it within the, uh, this constructed universe that you’ve built. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:10:44 | The books don’t have to lead one to the other, but the reader needs to be able to know that they’re going to get a similar experience with each book. |
| Dan Wood: | It’s a very Stephen King of you. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:10:52 | Yes. I only steal from the best. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Now I want to go back to something you guys talked about because it was a question that Michael asked live in the chat. And it’s a question that was asked repeatedly in the, in the previous set of questions is, so when you’re writing a series a, what do you recommend a, so let’s say you’ve, you’ve already written three books in this series. Should I released them all now? Should I do a time to release for I wait a certain amount of time? Should I just, once the book is ready and edited and good to go, should I just release it now rather than wait six months for per a bunch of them? Like what? There’s so much conflicting advice out there… | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:11:22 | Man, if you can, if you are pa can be patient and release books on a schedule, it’s going to benefit you a lot more than releasing them all at once or as soon as they’re ready. Um, I am not that patient, but, uh, I do give this advice. So, but if you can, right, you know, three to five books ahead of time and then release them one at a time. Uh, what, what’s interesting is people get kind of excited with, they liked that book and they want the next one and they, they see that it’s gonna, it’s available for preorder. They’ll go ahead and preorder. Um, and then you, because you’re producing regularly, some sales channels, uh, will, you can get a benefit for that. I know Amazon does. I think others do as well. Mark, you could tell us if Kobo does, but they like to see that read through and they’ll help you promote basically. Uh, so it’s really a good idea to go ahead and time it out |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And the metadata can help you, right. So Draft2Digital, you put in your series and make sure you number them. Cause I know retailers like Kobo take that data and try to up sell it. You’ll actually get emails from retailers that say, Hey, did you know book two is out? We know you have book one. That kind of thing. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:11:53 | That’s what I mean. Like the, the sales channels themselves will give you a hand, especially if a, if a book does very well. So, um, and you might also, by the way, trying to make each book, uh, capable of standing on its own, even if it is part of a series a because that gives, it makes it a lot easier for readers to jump in on a series that at any given point. Um, and uh, you know, it doesn’t, you don’t have to— you don’t have to wrap every storyline up with each book in order to do this. By the way, you can have a through line, uh, but as long as the, the book itself feels like a complete story, a reader will be satisfied with it. And if they find out there are three books ahead of it, then they’re far more likely to go buy those three books. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Okay. Thanks. And uh, we just have a question via Facebook from Carol. Hey Carol, we know you. Uh, and and its related to D2D print and it’s related to Amazon extended distribution. So the question is, “Does D2D print get us into the extended distribution via Amazon? ie. Canada Amazon, hey Canada, store fits under that? I believe. So. If I leave extended distribution unchecked in my Amazon print and use D2D Print does D2D print, fill the extended distribution market?” Mr Dan, you were gonna answer that one. I think | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:12:00 | Yes, it is completely separate from uh, what Amazon considers their extended distribution. Uh, but it has the same reach as the extended distribution and gets you to the international— |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Probably better reach because people don’t, other bookstores don’t want to buy from Amazon. They want to buy from Ingram. Right? They want to buy from a wholesale or not from the person trying to put them out of business. Right? Was that mean to say? | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:12:22 | No, I think, yeah, I think you’re right on. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Yes, but that’s why I like it. | |
| New Speaker: | 00:13:00 | Okay. |
| Dan Wood: | We can’t get really mean next week or the next month we’re going to ask … | |
| New Speaker: | 00:13:15 | I want to, I want to post this question from Jenny, who’s had any other recommended sites besides, so everyone knows BookBub. “Any other recommended sites besides BookBub? I’ve had two featured deals in a smaller category, but it’s a shot in the dark for the more competitive ones. What other, what other sites have been working for authors for those kinds of promos?” |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Well, there’s been a Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy are two popular ones. Uh, Fussy Librarian is another, uh, another one that works well there. There are a ton of them out there. Um, you can, you could probably just do a quick Google of something along the lines of, uh, “services like BookBub” and, and click through a, they, you want to make sure they’re reputable. I, I’ve been playing around with a few new ones. I’m not ready to announce live yet. Um, but hopefully they work- they pan out. Uh, and I may do a blog post down the road that, that ah lists a whole bunch of these pro uh, promotion sites for authors. I think that would probably be a good one. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:13:42 | I think it also varies a little bit by, um, genre. So even a BookBub, they have different sizes of lists for different genres. Um, so I would ask within your peer group, like finding your peer group in social media or like Facebook groups or a forum, uh, other people writing what you write and asking them what’s been effective for them. Because I’ve seen people say, oh, this particular email blast was not at all good for me. I didn’t make my money back. And then other people, uh, where, they sold way more than that. You know, they’ve got a really good return on their investment. So I think it does vary a little bit. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Thank you. Uh, want to take a twist over to audio books? There were many, many questions about audio books because we do partner with, Findaway Voices. Some of the questions were, you know, does D2D-? Will you distribute audio for me? And I know we have the answer to that one though. So I’ll let you do that one. But then, uh, how, how do you promote audio books? Should I sign a seven year exclusivity deal with ACX? Or should I use someone like Findaway Voices? Um, and then the last one is will you be including, uh, audio book links in Books2Read? So that’s, that’s sort of a audio book blast that I’m sending out. Who wants to, who wants to start with, start with that? | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:14:17 | I’ll start with the, the general part of it. Uh, Draft2Digital does not directly distribute audio books, but we’ve partnered with Findaway, ah, Findaway can both help you with production. So if you don’t already have the audio book, they can help you find a narrator and, you know, make an awesome, awesome, uh, audio book. Um, with distribution. If you’ve already got one and you for whatever reason, you can’t, uh, distribute it, uh, yourself directly. Uh, for instance, if you’re in a country where you can’t go direct to ACX, so you get direct to some of the places, uh, they have a huge distribution network worked out and so they can help you with distribution as well. Um, if you go in through Draft2Digital, they will waive the $49 uh fee. Uh, they normally charge to start project for production. So that’s a little, uh, thing you get if you go through Draft2Digital with that. |
| Dan Wood: | Um, we are working on audio book links for Universal Book Links, so we’re very excited about that. We’ll be having that fairly soon, I believe. Um, there was another part… | |
| New Speaker: | 00:15:09 | That last one was seven years with Amazon. Or, or do I go wide on my audio book? |
| Dan Wood: | We think that’s one of the most important choices you have to make right now, uh, with going exclusive with your ebook. It’s a 90 day deal. That’s not a long time. So I don’t think you can really make the wrong choice there. Uh, was seven years. It’s hard to say what the audio book market’s gonna look like in seven years. If you think about seven years ago, uh, Barnes & Noble was a much, uh, larger part of the book industry than it is now. A lot of things have changed and so seven years from now we anticipate that will happen as well. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:15:57 | One of the really exciting things that’s opening up in the past year is that, um, say with Apple Books, uh, you’re no longer a, they’re no longer exclusively working with Audible. So you can now put your audio books into the Apple system through someone else other than Audible. Uh, the neat thing about that is you have pricing control and you have that pricing control at, uh, the Kobo audio book site you’ve got pricing control at Barnes & Noble. Uh, you’ve got, uh, companies like BookBub. They’re starting to uh, their own services like Chirp, uh, which is designed around how to promote and market a audio book. And you can start playing around with pricing promotions, which is something Audible is always force you into uh, their pricing guidelines and then into that single credit system where someone purchases a credit and then they can trade that in for any audio book regardless of what costs it was originally. So that kind of made an artificial market for longer books. A shorter books didn’t get picked up as much because if I’m going to spend a credit from Audible and I could get a book for 20 hours or I can get a book for five hours, I’m going to go with the 20 hours nearly all the time. So all these things are going to lead to a better audio book market in the future. And so I would encourage you not to sign exclusive with Audible. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And Dan, you made me think of something I thought I would share. Um, my very first audio book that I produced before Findaway was available and it cost me close to $3,000 to produce. I still haven’t made my money back off of that and that’s been, you know, three plus years ago that I created it. But what I did do when Findaway launched is I took some shorter works, um, you know, did the digital chapbooks or like three short stories that are themed together or at 10,000 words short story. And I’ve, and you know, through Draft2Digital to Findaway, you know, so it didn’t cost me the additional $49 setup fee that waived that. I was able to find professional narrators to help me produce. And again, for just a few hundred dollars, I was able to create audio books that were shorter, may, you know, an hour long, an hour and a half long. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:16:30 | And I haven’t sold them through audible or Kobo or Google or Apple or any of the larger players, but I’ve made my money back selling them through the library market, through, through the various library markets Bibliotheca and um, and Hoopla and High Books and a whole bunch of other places that we never really talk about, uh, as indie authors. So it may be a way for people to experiment with getting into audio, just they can feel what it’s like if they’ve never done it before without having to spend thousands of dollars, uh, on, on the process as well. I thought I’d share that one. I thought it might be useful. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | I like to spend tens of dollars on processes. Um, I just want to throw in that you shouldn’t— if anybody ever asks you for a seven year commitment and unless they are a spouse, a you should say no. Uh, there’s just no, there’s no, I can’t see anything valuable in that. Um, especially now. I mean, I understand why that happened. I fell for it too. Uh, and wish I hadn’t— | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:17:46 | You fell for a spouse!? |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | I fell for a spouse. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:19:00 | I met her, she’s really nice. |
| Dan Wood: | She is really nice. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:19:12 | You would all fall for my spouse. Um, so the, uh, the other thing I would kind of want to add onto what, uh, Dan was saying. Uh, what’s interesting now with Findaway and the in the reach that they have and the way they, they’ve set up that program, I mean they’ll, I believe they’ll let you even price down to free. Um, if you, so if you ha-if you happen to record your own audio book or you were fine with paying someone or whatever, uh, you can use some of the same strategies that used to work for us in ebooks in this sort of emerging market. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Um, and because it is, uh, you can actually now sell shorter works. Uh, when you sort of breakout of this credit, um, model, um, you can start to converting, uh, short stories and novellas and things like that and bundle series together as a whole lot of options you get for this now that you did not have with Audible’s system, we really want to break the whole credit model and it’s just a bad, it’s a bad model for everybody. It’s a bad model for the readers. They don’t get to experience shorter books as often. They don’t get to discover new authors as often, uh, and is a terrible model for uh, the authors. So | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:20:20 | Thank you. So, uh, this question came up a lot. Uh, people get frustrated because, you know, and the only way to sell books is I have to get a BookBub and when I get a BookBub I have to log into five different websites and change my price. If only I could schedule my price promotion somehow. I wish there was an answer there. Um, is that possible? So that’s part of the question, uh, which I know, um, we have a good answer for. But, uh, the other one is, are there ways to promote books without changing your price, without having to do those kinds of promotions? |
| Dan Wood: | I’ll handle the first part. I would say, um, some of the retailers will let you schedule, uh, price promotions in advance. Um, not all of the retailers have that support. Um, at Draft2Digital, we handle it like we’ve built code to both handle it at the retailers that can do it, uh, and then to send it at certain times to the retailers that can’t. And so that is something you send us the price change. You tell us when you want the price to change and we handle that all on the back end for you. Just, you tell us once. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:20:32 | And as far as, can you do promotions without price changes? You absolutely can. Um, you can participate in one— One thing that I, I do often, although we do tend to lower prices for this, uh, but you could do it without lowering your price and that is to get involved with a bunch of other authors and do a cross promotion. Uh, maybe for like books. I’ve been talking to a handful of thriller writers about doing in Atlantis themed uh promotion for example. We don’t necessarily have to lower our price to do that. We’re just going to send out to our mutual lists, a list of all all of us who are participating and the books that are all themed under- under Atlantis. So if your readers happen to like that topic, they might check that out so you don’t necessarily have to change your prices. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Uh, but you can take heart in knowing that if you do lower your price and you get involved in a successful promotion, uh, you’ll probably end up making more overall. Um, you, you can always change your price back. You know, immediately after that promotion and a lot of times you’ll have this sort of a momentum going, uh, because as you sort of rise in the ranks on various sites, people discover your books a lot easier. Um, and so you’ll start, you’ll probably make back what you quote lost where you really aren’t losing anything by lowering your price. You, you, you’re just gaining new readers who might buy more of your stuff. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:21:19 | And want to add to that as well. Thanks Kevin. Um, I saw a stat at a, at a conference from BookBub that said that something like 70% of their most active customers buy books at full price. Yeah. And with BookBubs, if you can’t get a feature deal, which is kind of like, you know, the, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that winning ticket to get you into the factory, you can always, um, uh, there’s ways to buy ads and target specific readerships. And from my own experience and from authors that I’ve heard from based on this step on BookBub, you can advertise, I know that uh, Kobo and Apple customers for example, are willing to pay full value for a good book that matches their, their, their target demographics. Their, a lot of times people are signed up to BookBub as readers just to find a good book to read. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And chances are your full price book at $5.99 or $4.99 is still probably, uh, you know, 80% cheaper than the, the similar book from a larger publisher. So it’s still a good deal to that customer. So that’s something to consider. Now. Um, the question came up on Facebook from Daniel, uh, and he says, uh, “Is there any chance that D2D could do with reviews what you’ve done with UBLs? I have a place where readers can post review that puts it out to all the D2D vendors. Uh, I realized this is computer and coding with websites, but it’d be great to have a single place where reviews could be” -and I imagine he’s saying rather than always sending people to Amazon for the reviews. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:22:25 | So w-we get this question online, so we wanted to address it. Unfortunately uh, those reviews are generally copyrighted. Uh, Amazon for instance, all the Amazon ones, you can’t post them anywhere. Um, and so unless you can get the reader to go post that review again somewhere else, um, you can’t just copy a review and post it somewhere else. Um, again, we get that all the time. That would be awesome if the, if there was a, a way to get all the reviews in one place, that would be incredible. Unfortunately, it’s a legally—probably never going to be feasible. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Basically allowing people to copy and paste reviews from other sites. But what about, uh, I’m, I’m wondering if he’s asking what about a, me as a reader, I go to books2read to find books to read, but if I want to leave reviews on a site like that, um, so that I can, so when you’re looking at the book, you see all the retailers you can buy it from, and then you see generic reviews not on Amazon or goodreads | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:22:38 | That’s what he’s talking about is we, there’s no way to do that legally right now because the, those sites own the copyright to those reviews. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | No, I mean, I as a reader submit my review. Oh yeah. Your reader books2read, not copying it from Amazon or anywhere else. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:23:53 | I mean, that, that was originally what Goodreads kind of was. Um, there are other sites out there like that. Um, it’s just that generally people want to see the review on the site that they’re buying the item at. Um, I think adding reviews on the books2read is something we’ve definitely looked at, but hard to say how effective it would be. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Uh, another question along those lines comes up that says, “What about coupons and having a buy page through Draft2Digital? Like why can’t I just buy the books off of Books2Read?” | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:24:22 | Building a store is expensive and competing with Amazon, uh, with a bookstore is doubly, uh, expensive. It’s a, we’re not thinking of looking at it right now. Um, we have seen some of our authors, they’re starting to do stuff like, um, direct sales, uh, working with partners like BookFunnel or we’re directly working with some of the different platforms to let you sell directly. Um, right now we’re not looking at doing it on our end. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Okay. Now going back to reviews again, this is a generic question that came in a lot prior to the seminar seminars. How does a beginning author, and you know, I’ve got my one book up, how do I get reviews? How do I get people to review it on Amazon, on GoodReads, on Kobo and Apple on Nook, et Cetera? Where does not their start? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:25:13 | You know, it’s, I just did an entire podcast episode about this and it’s the stupidest, simplest thing: you ask. Because authors forget to ask. So I’m put, you know, you want to put something in the back of your book, a call to action. It says, if you liked this book, please review it. Uh, you can, uh, use the Universal Book Links to let, allow them to find where they can review it. That way you’re not violating terms of service. Uh, by the way, uh, by mentioning certain retailers, um, ask your mailing list regularly. Hey, if you’ve read any of my books, I’d really, it would really help me out. Uh, it, it, it’s very effective to give people a reason, especially if it’s something that allows them to sort of be a hero and help someone out and do a good deed. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Um, if you read it, there’s a book called Influence. You should read that, that talks about this, but people are more likely to, to carry something. I carry out a task you’ve asked them to do if you give them just even just any reason to do it. Uh, so make sure that you are regularly asking the people on your platform. That’s your mailing list, your social media sites. Uh, even when, uh, if you happen to meet readers in person, uh, you know, hey, did you review the book on Amazon or elsewhere? You know, I appreciate that. Um, and uh, that’s pretty much the gist of it. I mean, you know, there’s no, there’s no other way. There’s no other magic way, uh, to convince people to start leaving reviews. You just gotta make sure you’re asking them every chance you get. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:26:04 | A lot of times readers don’t realize how important a reviews are to a creator. Um, I am the type, I hate writing reviews. It’s just not something I enjoy doing. However, I go out of my way and for the creators, I really love to make sure I leave a review. And then I’m the type that also posts, I review multiple platforms just because I don’t want one platform to dominate everyone. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Yeah. I have a call to action in the back of every single book that says, um, here are three things you could do that that would really help me out. And the first of those is to leave a review on the of the book. And then I also ask him to get on my mailing list and to tell everyone they know, uh, who might enjoy the book, uh, to go out and get the book. And if you, if you’re consistently asking those three questions, that’s the best marketing you’re going to get. It doesn’t cost anything. People, someone I think was asking about ways to promote that won’t cost anything that doesn’t cost you anything more than the effort to type it on the page. Uh, and they are the three most important questions you can, or three more, most important favors you can ask of your readers. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:26:47 | Well, speaking of that, that’s a perfect tie in because we’re getting close to the very end of this. I want to thank everyone. I want to thank Kevin and Dan and Alexis, uh, for this, uh, wonderful conversation. Want to thank all of you participants watching live as well as those of you who submitted questions in advance. No, we didn’t get to all of them, but of course we’ll be doing this every month. We already have one scheduled for next month. We’re going to be sharing with you. And also I wanted to say if you found value in this Webinar, please feel free to share it. So Kevin will be posting it to our blog in just a few days. Feel free to share it —A Facebook page, let people know how awesome Draft2Digital is at building tools for authors because the more authors we have a giving us feedback on how to improve, how to make things better, the better off the tools can be for everyone. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Uh, in order to sell what their finding, everyone prospers. So, so like Kevin said, we’re not asking for a review, we’re just asking for you to share this over there. Cause Hey, you gotta if you don’t, if you don’t ask you man get it right. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:27:47 | We would take her of you. I if you want to like us or leave a review on Facebook. Ah, that helps us too. Yeah. It never, it never harms. |
| New Speaker: | Now speaking of which now a live attendees are going to get an opportunity to have a one one-half-hour session completely for free with one of us wonderful people. Um, and that’s something we’re going to be, how are we going to be sharing that with folks? Kevin? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:28:47 | That’s a good question. I … |
| Dan Wood: | Did, we set up the link in advance this time? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:29:03 | I did not set up the link in advance. So what we’re going to be, give me two seconds if set something up, it’s going to set that like you had forgotten something guys. I am so, yeah. |
| New Speaker: | Well that’s okay. Um, but in the meantime, uh, take advantage of that. Yeah. You know what, the last time we did the um, the half hour sessions, they were fantastic. We all had chat, chance, a chance to chat and ask very specific questions about you and your personal needs. Cause I know a lot of the questions that I’m even seeing coming up live are, you know, I have a book in the series and this is what’s going on and that’s what’s going on. Well, it’s really difficult for us to answer that as part of a large group because we want to provide answers that people can adapt into their own settings. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:29:55 | But when we’re doing one on one with you, we’ll let you know, we’ll sit there and look at your synopsis with you and, and, and, and offer advice or your book cover or, or whatever, or say, well, here’s how I use Twitter to sell. Or here’s what I’ve heard. Um, as well, we’ll also be providing links in the Facebook page because that’ll still be there and we’ll be providing links to some amazing content that Kevin has already written on the blog. There’s some great youtube videos because some people are visual learners, some people want to hear it. And some people also want to just read articles, which is why the last Webinar we have the transcript of the, of, of what we said, including all the “uhms,” uh, as well as, as the video, depending on how you want to do that. So you can kind of do a find search, say, Hey, I’m looking for tips on how to sell an Apple. Did they talk about Apple? And then you can do that sort of find a as well. And uh, there’s lots of funny comments coming in the backend and so— |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | I got this, I got this sewn up by the way, and it’s back. You can, you can sign up for the free console’s by going to bitly, bit dot ly slash D2D consult and we will put that in all the little comments sections, uh, and it is going to be open for what we do 24 hours last time, | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:30:44 | Something like that, 24 hours. So yeah, book it, uh, we’ve made our calendars completely wide open. We’ve told our families we’re not going to see them for days at a time. We’re wearing diapers at our desks. We’re basically trying to get like a whatever liquid |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | I think this time I’ve actually fixed it. Last time I forgot to hit the little button that evenly distributes them through everybody. And out of like sixty consults, I think I did like 50. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:31:21 | Uh, and I liked it that way. Yeah. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | That really worked out well for Dan and I. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:31:21 | I wanted to say real quick, uh, if any of you will be at the, uh, RWA Conference for the US in New York next week, I’ll be there. Uh, so, uh, hit me up, uh, I’d love to meet some of you. Um, or if you just in the New York City area, let me know. I’ll be there from a Wednesday until Sunday. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | We got people asking me to repeat the link. It’s bitly, b-i-t dot l-y slash D2Dconsult and I’ve been dropping it in the chat so you can, you might be able to find it there if you’re not seeing it. Uh, one more thing we want to mention is that we are going to be doing this again. Do you guys have mentioned this while I wasn’t paying attention where you, uh, | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:31:46 | We didn’t specify when and where and how. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | We are going to be doing this again August 29th. Uh, and we’re going to actually be all together in one room, uh, for that one room. | |
| Mark Lefebvre: | 00:32:52 | Same background for all three of us? Awesome! |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | We’re going to just, we’re going to just carry all these backgrounds with us and set them up behind us on little stands and, uh, we’re working on getting a special guest for that one. So, um, we haven’t landed specifically on topic yet or did we, did we land on a topic? | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:32:59 | No topic yet. I think, we didn’t say it’s going to be a meaner one? Yeah. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And chances are we’ll talk about marketing cause we never not talk about marketing. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:33:01 | We will talk about marketing. So if you didn’t get your question to answer this time, uh, pop in there. Say Hello. Uh, and we’re gonna, we’re all gonna be at WriterCon in Oklahoma City, uh, on that, the day following that Webinar, so a August 30th through the rest of that weekend. So if you are in Oklahoma City and you’re going to WriterCon or if you’re not yet go sign up. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | And David Gaughran is going to be there as well. Right? So all the way from overseas. | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:33:05 | Yeah, we brought him in along with his beard and uh, |
| Mark Lefebvre: | We each got a seat on the plane, right? | |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | 00:33:37 | He’s got his own a seat. His beard’s in first class coach. Uh, we’re going to, we’re going to all be on panels. Uh, well some of us are going to be on panels. I don’t know who’s on a panel. We’re going to be talking to all kinds of folks at that conference, so you might want to check it out. Right. |
| Mark Lefebvre: | Thank you guys so much. Thank you for attending and asking some brilliant questions and thanks for, uh, thanks for being an author and putting your words out into the world. Guys, we’ll chat with you later. Calling-Now we’re going to call this meeting to a close. | |
| Dan Wood: | 00:34:35 | Thank you. |
| Kevin Tumlinson: | Farewell. |