by: AskPat 509 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Welcome to Episode 509 and also welcome to 2016. Man, I can’t believe it’s already 2016. I appreciate you spending a little bit of your time with me at the beginning here of this year, with me.
I definitely am excited for a lot of the questions that we have coming up here on the show, and also, everything that I'm doing on Smart Passive Income. I think to enhance your experience through the brand, but more importantly to help you with your online business. Which is why I'm here, and again for those of you who are just joining me for the first time, what I do here is I answer voicemail questions from people like you five days a week. If you have a question that you'd like asked on show or to have your voicemail question featured, here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.
Today's question is from Dennis over in the U.K. It's a great question and why don't we hear it right now?
Dennis: Hi, thanks, really fantastic podcast and website. I listen to them every day and absolutely love them. My name is Dennis Thompson, I'm from the U.K. Last year I wrote, illustrated, and published a children's book I made for my daughter Heidi, who's three years. The book is called, The Tale of The Greedy Fish. It was originally through Kickstarter. I've had great success selling the books in school visits, where I read the book to children, ask me questions, and then sat in the store to sell the books afterwards. The kids genuinely love the books as do the parents and teachers. I've got a website TheGreedyFish.co.uk and have about 300 fans on The Greedy Fish Facebook page, but I'm only selling occasional copies on the website and the same again for Amazon, where I've got almost 70 five-star reviews now.
So I need to make a few more regular sales. These Facebook posts are targeting moms and parents groups and also started using Google Ad Words Express. So, concerning increasing traffic, but again, very few conversions. I give away the book as an ebook version, this mean's handy from time to time. I've also started a blog so all my social media accounts link back and forth to each other. Any advice at all on how to get the sales going would be greatly appreciated, it's really wearing me out now. So many, many thanks. Keep up the good work and I hope to hear from you. Cheers, bye-bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up Dennis? Thank you so much for the question today, I really appreciate it. I looked up your book on Kickstarter and on Amazon. I get the U.S. version because I'm in the U.S. And, of course, you mentioned 75 reviews, I see four on here, in the U.S. store, and so I know you that you're targeting the U.K. and all that stuff, which is great. I think you've done something well here with creating this book. I think Kickstarter is a great way to start it, but again, Kickstarter is just the start of it. That's why it's called a kick start. You need to keep things going and so, hopefully, my answer to your question here will help with that.
Now if there's one thing I know more than anything that helps people who have books on Amazon, or just books in general, sell more books, it is really more books. So if this has gone well for you I feel like adding more to your collection, if possible in your time constraints, if you have the juice for it, to do that. I mean it sounds like a wonderful thing that you've done here for your three-year-old. I think doing more can be an amazing process, for you and your child, to go through at the same time. And also, you'll have more books to sell. So when you go to these places you'll not only be selling one of your books but perhaps multiple or you can use books to cross-promote each other.
I know a lot of successful children's authors who do very, very well. Katie Davis, for example, and I know she has a number of books, I've seen them. She sent me a few, to my kids and I, and we've read them and they're amazing. So kids books are cool like that. So I would recommend you check out Katie Davis, you could look her up on Google. Just look up children's books, Katie Davis. She has a plethora of information for those of you who are doing children's books and she has a lot of great stuff to help you market your books too. She also has a course, I believe, on creating your book videos and all those sorts of things, a lot of great stuff.
Books will help sell more books, so that's the first thing. Now if that's not possible at this very moment, there's other things you can do. So the second thing I would say is, you want to get connected with other influencers out there in the space. You know, you say, that you target moms and all these things with your Facebook posts, which I think is great, but are any of those moms also on social media with a large following? Do any of those moms have a blog or podcast, for example? Maybe you could do some giveaways. I mean you said you ebook giveaways, which is, I think is a fantastic idea because it's at no extra cost to you. But you could potentially earn a lot more as a result of doing promotions with other people and that sort of thing. So connecting with other influencers.
Who are the mum blogs in the UK? Yes, I said mum. The mom blogs in the UK who you could connect with. I'm sure there's a bunch of them that would do very well. I think you should also try and work with other children's authors to see if you can get into that network and connect with them, look them up on LinkedIn, try to go to events, and try to make connections with those people. You're just going to find out a ton of information to help you promote your stuff in all different kinds of ways. That's how I've been able to earn the most of the knowledge that I know about what I use is by talking to people, by getting to know people, and seeing what they do. So I would definitely recommend seeing who else is out there especially influencers, but also people in your space also writing children's books to see how they're doing it and so you could do those things too.
I don't believe paid advertising is a great way to go about it. I think it's all about relationships, really. And where you're going to get the most bang for your buck is through the recommendations from other people. As Mark Zuckerberg says, “There's no better recommendation than one from a trusted friend.” If you can befriend somebody who has a big following, with a lot of trust with that person, then it's going to be a lot easier for you to, even through these promotions and things like that, giveaways, and maybe even a contest around it depending on what the content is in the book.
Maybe have some contests related to the theme of the book. To have parents get involved with their kids. I'm just spitballing here. There's a lot of things that you could do, you can be creative. I think that was one thing that Jeff Goins told me when we first started talking about book marketing back in 2013. Just try and be creative too. I think there's some other things that you could do, that I can't even think of right now. That you probably know, that you could probably do to enhance the exposure, to get people involved, to get your community, who is already reading this book, to help spread it and share it with their friends and family too. I think that could help out as well.
The third thing I would say is you can do promotions on Amazon, specifically, that can help you get more exposure too. So if you're, for example, on KDB Select, excuse me, KDP Select. You are able to, within a 90-day period, run a promotion where you could have your book be listed for free for five days, up to five days. Some people do three, whatever it is. It gives you a boost, because it gives you exposure. There's a lot of web sites out there that trigger, looking for these kinds of promotions when books that were on sale go for free. They just go buck wild, you get a lot of downloads, and again you could see how, by having more books in the system this can help you out.
Because then, you can run KDP Select promotions on the other books too, to help cross-promote and whatnot. Pus people are going to visit your other page, people will see all the other books that you have to offer there are too, people that buy this book also buy this book, And the more opportunities there are for that. It's going to help you exponentially over time. But like I said these promotions, on the KDP, they do help. And then when you get back to the paid price, after these promotions are over, you can definitely see a bump in sales.
I would also check out BuckBooks.net. You can run promotions through that particular website too. Again, that's BuckBooks.net. I remember connecting with the owner of that site, which he connects with other offer authors who have books. Like I ran a promotion for Let Go on there, my other book on Amazon. I have another book coming out in February, but the one I am talking about is called Let Go and he does a promotion where he just bundles books together. Authors just get together that do $.99 promotions for a certain time and he has this huge list, so that's a great way to get some exposure too. So, I don't know if he does children's books, or fictional books, I know he does non-fiction, but you might want to check it out, again, that's BuckBooks.com.
The last thing I want to mention, Dennis, before I finish up here. So that, like I said earlier, I went to the US page to check out the book. I love the cover, it's very colorful, The Tale of the Greedy Fish, love it. But then it says it's not available, it's out of print, or limited availability. At least in the U.S., it is. So you might be losing out on potential sales, in the U.S., because I don't see it. It lists paper back but then there's no price, no new from what price, or used from what price. It says, literally, out of print, limited availability. So you could be missing sales on there too, and I know this was here at some point because there's an ISBN number, it even says April 4th, 2015, published by you. (cough) Excuse me. And there are four reviews and they're all five stars. So, you know, I think you're losing out on opportunities to get in front of a U.S. market too. And, of course, that opens up a whole new realm of potentially selling it through mom blogs, and running promotions, in the same way that I had mentioned earlier with the other mom blogs on the in the U.K.
So, Dennis, I hope this at least gives you a starting point and things to think about moving forward. I wish you the best of luck here in 2016 and, you know, I hope The Tale of the Greedy Fish becomes a success for you, and all of the other books that you have coming out with too. And best of luck to you and your child for, you know, your journey here. I think it's really cool. It's kind of inspiring, because I think a children's book would be a lot of fun to do. And again, connect with my good friend Katie Davis. She'll definitely help you out there.
Yeah, thank you so much for the question. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt, for having your question featured here on the show. And for everybody else out there, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank you, all of you, who've been telling me how excited you are about my upcoming book called
I also want to thank you, all of you, who've been telling me how excited you are about my upcoming book called Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money. It's about validating your ideas, this business ideas that you have. You know it's a brand new year. You've had this idea in mind, you've wanted to start a business, or maybe you have a business already but it's just not going the way you want it to, and you're looking to make a change, and you want to validate an idea before you actually move forward with it. Well, this is the book for you and it walks you through the validation process step by step.
I mean, one of my pet peeves with books is really that they tell you why you should do things, and what to do, but not how to do it, and the walk through, the step by step and that's what my book does. I include a lot of personal stories, the Book Launch Team, thank you. Big shout out to the Book Launch Team, has been giving me a ton of praise, and they're very excited for the launch, and they're definitely going to be there, on February 1st, to help out and I help people too. If you want to get first notice of when this book becomes available, just head on over to WillItFlyBook.com, again that's WillItFlyBook.com, and more information on that coming very soon. Including some pre-bundled bonuses for the hardcover version, or the paperback version, because we're definitely going to be pushing out there, and incentivizing people to buy some bundles, and stuff. So you'll see what's all available. But again check it out at WillItFlyBook.com.
Thanks so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day. This is by Tyler Kent White he says, “Never apologize for burning too brightly or collapsing into yourself every night. That's how galaxies are made.” I think it's very appropriate because in the journey that I had writing this book, you know it's like, it was a struggle, you know? I knew that like sometimes I literally just collapsed into bed and was just shriveled up because I had just expended all my energy. But you know what, like, that is how galaxies are made, you know? That's what they do, they burn bright and collapse into themselves, and then pow.
So, hopefully, we can all come up with that big bonus for us, and our businesses, and I wish you all the best. Again, ask your questions at AskPat.com, I'll be here for you five days a week. Until I talk to you next week, thank you so much, I wish you all the best of luck and here's to a great year. Cheers guys, bye.
