AP 0875: What Strategies Can I Use to Source Feedback for My Ebook?

AskPat 875 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 875 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have an amazing question for you today from Andrew, but before we get to Andrew's question, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks. FreshBooks is an awesome company that helps businesses—millions of them actually, including my own—with managing our business finances from the income that comes in, to the expenses that go out, and even the invoicing, and that's really cool because you can send a professional-looking invoice in less than thirty seconds. Plus, not only that, it'll help you keep track of who owes you what and also who has yet to even open those invoices—so really cool, very handy, and a great tool to have in your corner for your business. So, if you want to check them out for free for thirty days, all you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat, freshbooks.com/askpat and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section. All right, now here is today's question from Andrew.

Andrew: Hi Pat. This is Andrew. I'm trying to write an ebook. I think it was in your Will It Fly? book, but you had reached out ahead of time to some people, I think through forums, to be involved in the book preparation and give you feedback. I can't seem to find it in the book, but I was hoping that you would expand a little bit in AskPat to talk about how you got those people involved, what exactly that you said to them, and the strategies that got them to give you feedback. Again, you can reach me at ww4me on Twitter. Thanks again; appreciate the response.

Pat Flynn: Hey Andrew, what's up? Thank you so much for the question. There's a great podcast episode I recorded with the community manager that I had to help bring that community together, and that is Episode 198 of The Smart Passive Income Podcast. So, if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session198, that'll take you to that episode, and the title of that episode is “Building a Book Launch Street Team.”

What's really cool about building a sort of street team—which is essentially what you were asking about—is how I brought a number of people in my community together. We used a Facebook group to manage that community and the communication. We gave them access to the manuscript before it was completely finished. That way, we were able to have them read through it. It was a fun thing for them to do, because they got early access to it beforehand. We had them go through an application process just to make them realize how serious we were about this and to also let them know to not share it and all those kinds of things.

We kind of just vetted those people really quick, but also, getting access to it made them really happy and made them really excited, made them feel like they were an important part of the team, which they were. In doing so, I was able to collect a lot of great feedback for the book, feedback on what was great, and feedback on what potentially I needed help with, or needed to redo, or what didn't make sense. A lot of that feedback was really helpful. Keeping them up to date on what's happening next or what the next steps are—again, just showing them and letting them know more about where we're at, the behind the scenes—it gets them really, really interested. So that's providing value. You're giving them early access to the manuscript. You're giving them a behind-the-scenes look, and you're getting them involved in the process. By the time the book comes out, they're going to be invested in it and they're going to want to share it.

They're going to be ones who are more likely to leave a review. I never require that, but it just comes with what this thing is, which is really cool. There were other moments where we got them involved, for example in choosing the different book covers. We offered a different number of samples and had them help decide on which one kind of made the most sense. They gave a little bit of creative description as well, which is really cool, that my designer paid attention to, and again, it just became this amazing community to build some buzz with before the launch of the book. I'm not going to go too much into the details of it, because it's all laid out by Daniel and I in Episode 198, so again that link for you to go to to listen to that episode is SmartPassiveIncome.com/session198. That'll give you some good insight into how you can get your community together. So yeah, in terms of just getting people in there, Facebook, Twitter, on the blog, sending an email out, whichever way you can have access to your community is where you can find people who are going to rise up and help you in that way.

There you go. So, Andrew, best of luck to you in your new book, and I want to wish you all the best, and also offer you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show, so my assistant Jessica will reach out to you in the next two to four weeks, and we'll send that to you free of charge, because that's what we do here. So, for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. Just hit the record button, ask away, and I'll be there to answer as many questions as I can, plus I answer questions live on Fridays at AskPatLIVE, which you can find on Facebook if you go to Facebook.com/smartpassiveincome. Just like my page there, that way you'll get notifications and access to AskPatLIVE every Friday at 1:30 p.m. Pacific, which is really fun.

Finally, just want to thank FreshBooks one more time for being awesome and offering a thirty-day free trial to all the AskPat listeners. If you go to FreshBooks.com/askpat, you can get hooked up with that. Just make sure you put “Ask Pat” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.

Here's a quote to finish off the day like always, and this one comes from Bliss Carman. “Whether it be to failure or success, the first need of being is endurance, to endure with gladness if we can, with fortitude in any event.” All right guys. Take care, and I will see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.