how to Profit by Publishing a Book

0:00PR Connections Radio presents This episode of the PR Connections Podcast is brought to you by Classic Communications PR and advertising. Classic Communications provides public relations and marketing solutions for businesses, professionals, and nonprofit organizations. It can deliver the true meaning of your business with pressure-laces, social media marketing, web development, email marketing, book publishing, and much more. Wherever your potential clients are, they can help you connect with them. Visit Classiccommunications.net to learn more about their suite of services that can help your business stand out for the rest. Classic Communications is your solution for business success. Today, I want to talk to all of you about an element of business that I have been

1:07associated with for a very, very long time. As many of you know, the PR Connections Radio Network is sponsored by the Public Relations and Advertising Company that I have founded and been running since 2008 called Classic Communications. And we are a full-service public relations and advertising company. We do everything that we can to get the word out about what you do through a variety of platforms, but one of the platforms that we have been deeply engaged in, really essentially since the very beginning of the founding of our company is book publishing. And today, I wanted to talk to all of you about the value of book publishing, some of the experiences that I have had throughout the years working with authors. I have worked with people who have taken their published books and used them as tools

2:07to prominently position them to succeed in whatever business they are a part of. Books are just wonderful. I have been an avid reader every since I was a little kid. I remember at age 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, I was the kind of kid that would just devour books. Just always enjoyed reading, the information, and I guess my love of books is something that has been really helpful as I have had these opportunities, like I said, over the past 18 years, I can truthfully say that as a public relations and advertising company, there's never been a time that we weren't working on a book in some form, either coaching people on writing their books, public relations and marketing for books, editing, helping people to proofread just every, every imaginable element, book signings we've done pretty much

3:10all of the elements of what would be called book publishing throughout these years. It really surprised me when I initially got into the promotion of books, how much people wanted to create them and write them, and of course over the last few years we've gotten into another element. I personally am ghost writing to books right now and I have a couple of others in the works, so it's also been a real pleasure to watch the evolution of the way that people write books, publish them, how they use them as tools for different things, legacy books. That's another thing that has become really popular over the last 18 years. It was an element of book publishing that I had heard about early on, but it seems to have really evolved and grown throughout the years, and as long as books have been around

4:11there, of course an important part of many people's lives, but as far as being a tool to help you to grow in your business, or if you personal brand, I just think that they are marvelous tools to enable you to improve any entrepreneurial endeavor that you're involved in. I'm going to touch on some basic points of book publishing, how you can utilize them, and once again how I've seen many people out there take advantage of books as a way to create front of mind awareness and grow their brands. By the way for all of you, you can check out this podcast on all of the social media sites, of course Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitch, and others also on YouTube. I know there's many of you out there who are going to be watching this podcast on YouTube. We were greatly appreciate a thumbs up on YouTube and click that notification button so that you will be notified when we host these live podcasts.

5:13Of course, you can always listen to these podcasts on our streaming platforms, audio streaming platforms, which have continued to grow and evolve. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify and Amazon Music are two of the platforms. For all the shows on our network, please go to those audio streaming platforms if you want to listen to them. As I had touched on before, the way that I got into publishing books and really understanding the way that they work was basically just being a publicist around 2010. I started to have a lot of people inquire about help with their books in one form or another. For some people, they wanted me to write press releases for them so that they could get the word out through the media about the fact that they had been published author. They would come to me and have me write a press release and distribute it with the hopes that they could connect with media in order to bring greater recognition to the book

6:18that they had just published. There were other people that reached out to me for different reasons. They would connect and want to know if I could help them with a media kit. In public relations or media, media kits are really valuable tools. A media kit is basically a brochure of what your capabilities are for whatever it is that you want to be promoted for. Within a media kit, there are things such as your bio, of course, there's always a press release in the media kit and FAQ, lots of pictures and things. Basically, a media kit is designed to be able to assist people who want to potentially write a story about you to be able to gather their story pretty quickly to get a good overview of what it is that you represent or what you do. We had lots of people that would reach out to us for help with media kits.

7:22As I had mentioned before, book signings through the early years, helping people to go into bookstores, coordinating that with the bookstore, and then being there with the author who would do the signing, taking lots of pictures, creating a great environment. These book signings are fantastic, really, to fantastic ways to get the word out within your local community about the fact that you're an author. For a lot of authors out there, of course, with the internet now, we have access to the whole world, like there are people all over the world who are watching this podcast or maybe listening to it in other countries, but when you're an author, I think one of the main things that you should consider early on is taking advantage of your local community. A lot of that can be done through book signings. If you can find independent bookstores out there and even Barnes and Noble, I know at times

8:23we'll also host in larger chain bookstores, although there aren't nearly as many bookstores now as there were back in 2009 and 2010 when I started helping people get booked for these signings. But book signings are great because yes, you capture that local audience. Having that appeal from the people who are in your community really sets you up for a lot of other additional opportunities. I know that through these book signings, people that I would work with would be able to book maybe local speaking engagements. So someone sees you at a bookstore and then they invite you, say they're a member of a civic organization. I personally am a member of an organization called Lions. Lions is an international service organization that does a very meaningful work all over the world. When you go to a book signing, when you are exposed to the people in your local community,

9:23where they can actually meet with you and you're someone who they can reach out and touch, as you might say, there are tremendous advantages to that in terms of, yes, being able to potentially do a speaking engagement at a Lions club or a rotary club or a toast master club, a community oriented event or a local business oriented event. When you go to these book signings, you meet great people. And so that was the very beginning of my exposure to books. And as I mentioned, it just always surprised me that at one point or another, there was always someone approaching me or people within our company about wanting to do something related to books. And so I started to do a lot of studying not only about the public relations and advertising and marketing aspect or public relations and advertising. I really started getting more into the marketing aspect of books because one of the things

10:24that I consistently was seeing with people who would approach me with books that either they had written or they were in the process of writing is that getting the manuscript done was relatively easy for them. The challenge that many of them had, though, was actually publishing the book was one aspect of it, but also marketing the book. And so I started to do quite a bit of research into the elements of publishing. Of course, self-publishing was already getting pretty big back at that time now. It's really become a monumental part of this particular niche within the industry, self-publishing. And of course, then there were also opportunities, traditional publishing opportunities. If you've got a book and people are, it's valuable, you can approach a true publisher. Generally, that's done through a literary agent. And you could see if a company would be willing to publish a book.

11:25So I had authors like that as well. Their intention was to go to a large publishing company and potentially get a publishing deal. In the most part, the people who I've worked with throughout the years in this niche have wanted to do independent publishing or maybe go through a smaller publishing company. So through the study that I did and working with clients on different aspects, after a few years that I got more knowledgeable about how the book publishing industry works, I started to take on clients from the coaching perspective. And when I say coaching, it would be that I would be approached by a person who was interested in writing a book, but maybe they were stuck in the concept phase. Yes, they just needed someone to inspire them to give them a little bit of a push to help them get their concepts organized enough to actually create a book that they could

12:28publish eventually. And I took on several clients that needed help in that area and the things that I was learning through book marketing, I applied when I started working with them. What I would see with the authors that needed coaching to actually get their books done was they needed a format, they needed a structure. So we would sit down and I do this today, this very day when I work with people and we start writing books, we would figure out what the chapters were, we would figure out what their intentions were. That's a really important aspect when it comes to publishing as well as it's really understanding what it is that you want to do with the book. Some of the challenges that I've seen with people through the years, again as I mentioned is maybe they get the manuscript done but they really don't have, well they'll say things like, I just want this to be a famous book and I want to make a lot of money off of it. Which I can applaud that, I recognize probably anybody that writes a book and invest their

13:32time and energy in writing a book, they want to make money off of the publishing of the book in one way or another but through the research that I did when it came to marketing, it's about being very specific about how you're going to make that money. And so working with those authors who would have completed books and now they wanted to figure out how to market them. There were a few things that I discovered that worked better with the brand new ones. I discovered that yes, I continue to, until this very day, if someone out there, by the way, if you want to reach out to me with help with your book and some of the different aspects that I'm going to be talking to all of you about today, you can reach me at Guy Dawson at classiccommunications.net and we can have conversations about ways that I could help you write your book if you've already written the book. And that were clients and I still have clients to this very day write books and I helped them to get the word out about those books. But for, I discovered that I really enjoyed working with the people who were starting

14:38from scratch when we were literally outlying, doing outlines of their chapters, just taking the concepts that they had floating around in their heads, getting them on paper and then eventually it's a published book that's sitting in your hands. And so after doing that, what I discovered was a book is so much more than just a book through the research and working with all these authors through the years, even early online like that, maybe five or six years into helping people, I began to look at books as platforms, rather than just a book. When I say platform, it kind of takes me back to what I was just talking about a second ago is the intention of what it is that you want to do with the book. So with the book, it is really a tool to get you where you want to go, not just because

15:40yes, you hope that people will write, you write your book, you invest a lot into it and you hope that people out there are going to read it and some people will read it. But there are a lot of people I discovered who didn't necessarily feel the need to read your book. They're just impressed by the fact that you had one and that you had written a book designed to provide information that they specifically needed, especially when it came to things related to different aspects of business. And then you had other people that I worked with who they would write these inspirational books. Sometimes they were religiously focused, sometimes purely spiritually focused. They were motivational. They wanted to inspire people with their books and there are certainly a lot of people out there who enjoy inspiration and they read books to get their inspiration. But understanding how to use that book to really guide you on your entrepreneurial journey,

16:43I discovered that the way that we laid everything out in the first place had a lot to do with the success that that person was able to have later on as they were. Had the book in their hand and then you go out in the real world and you start to be using it as a tool to generally is drumming up business in some way. And it's one of the greatest experiences I have is when I get a chance to go to maybe the opening of what I've had authors where I've been invited to their book launch. So there's a great experience for me personally because especially when I was there when the person wrote the very first words, we came up with the title of the book together. I know the challenges that they face because writing a book is not only is it a it is a great tool as I keep talking about for business, absolutely, but it is also a tremendous emotional

17:46spiritual and mental challenge in a lot of ways because it requires a person to really kind of dig. You have to really dig to get a book written. And I just I could share all types of stories of people who I've helped write books and some of the life journey that they've gone through in the process of getting their books written. It's really fascinating when you're working with an author and you as someone who has done a lot of things intimately with authors, you sort of become their therapist or I have become their therapist. And so that's why I have a lot of insight. Getting the book done, writing it, especially some of these books that relate directly to people's lives, experiences that they've had, them wanting to inspire other through those experiences, they go through as an author, you go through a lot mentally and psychologically as you're trying to put the book together, but it's just so gratifying when you see that person

18:46on stage, at least for me, when everything that we've worked on together, it all is on full display, they've got the book in their hand and they are able to share their thoughts with the world. Then it's all contained inside of a book. But as far as a tool using the book as a tool for business, it's sort of like a giant credit card. I think that that's the phrase I've been using or not, not giant credit card, giant business card, excuse me. Yes, although I guess it could become a credit card because there's books can become enormously lucrative, but it's really like a giant business card. It gives you a tremendous amount of credibility, the fact that you have this book written in, you are seen as an expert in your industry because you've taken the time to write a book. That takes it from beyond the stage of just the fact that you've written this book

19:47and you want people to read it. You go to a whole other level because you are establishing yourself as that expert within your industry and there is tremendous value that a person can get by being seen as that expert in your industry. Just handing people the books through the years through my experience in networking communities and attending lots of events. I've had a lot of people hand me books through the years. I'm always really impressed at the fact that the person has written a book and that they have the courage to present their deepest thoughts or their knowledge in the form of a book. There's a lot of other people out there who really will appreciate that knowledge, but positioning yourself through that book to be able to reach audiences that you wouldn't necessarily be able to reach if you didn't have a book is just extremely impactful.

20:48As I've gone along, yes, partnering with people on pretty much every aspect of book writing and publishing, teaching people how to connect with the right publishing companies or printing companies. Back in the early 2000s or earlier in the 2000s, as I mentioned around 2009 and 10, print on demand was not as prominent as it is today. What is print on demand? Generally, when you buy a book through Amazon, you say a person tells you, hey, I've written a book here, go to this site and you can get my book shipped to you. What Amazon does is they print a certain amount of books on demand or they have a certain amount of books that they are holding for you and what they do is rather than you having to bear the brunt of the printing costs, essentially, they just send you out of book as needed. Rather than you showing up at an event with a big stack of

21:52books, you show up at an event with a QR code and then people can order books as needed. Back in those days, when I was actually working with printing companies, I had printing houses in New York and other cities where I would work with them and I would send my clients their way to help them to get their books printed. For a lot of people, the cost of printing books has just become astronomical, especially since COVID and so there's not as many people that I work with nowadays that are actually wanting to go that route, self-publishing their book and then actually printing them, but those opportunities are still available. I tell you, there's a lot to be said for printing your own books from the perspective of if you feel like making that kind of investment, the one of the great things about publishing your own books is, yes, it is expensive to do that for yourself, but the return on investment when you really break down, and again, this is the

22:56math. These are the things that you have to do when you're making decisions of the route that you want to go. The cost of printing a book, while they have, as I mentioned before, the cost of printing books has really, really gone up, but weighing out the cost of printing your book and then the actual price that you charge to people to purchase that book, that's one of the great parts about having that level of control when you've printed, or excuse me, when you've printed your own books is that you basically concept a price. And what I've seen through the years is, even with the elevated prices of printing books in our current economy, there is still a pretty good spread on the amount of profit that you can make on printing and distributing your own book. So this, I guess, is one of my, this is me praising the self-publishing world. And there are print-on-demand deals that you can cut with independent self-publishing companies as well. There are great ones out

24:00there. I would say buyer beware, though, and it comes to publishing companies. One of the things that I've been offering to a lot of prospects lately is, me accompanying them, when they reach out to these self-publishing companies to see what kind of deal they're going to get, because it can be very, very, it can be a jungle out there. When it comes to self-publishing, there's a lot of companies. Again, there's strong, reputable ones out there, but you've also got some that I don't think do a very good job of representing the people that they work with. Yes, so I would say if you're going to consider a self-publishing deal that you're going to cut with some, some companies that you do a lot of research, look at the reviews about them, because you may not know exactly what you're getting in yourself into the, you'll have self-publishing companies out there that will promise you the world, but when it comes time to actually deliver on what they've promised, there will be a lot more height to it than actual substance. So anyway, so printing, yes,

25:07printing and being your own publisher, that means when you, so one of the great things also about being able to walk into an event, let's say that you're participating in, where you're promoting your business or promoting yourself as an author, is that if you walk into the event and you've got a stack full of books, one thing you have to understand about people is that we're all very impulse, or most of us are, we're impulse buyers. So if you've got a book there, physically, for them to purchase, as soon as they touch it, maybe they've listened to you speak at this event, and after the event is over and you're, you know, you're doing a book signing or whatever, and a personal locks up to you, and the book is physically there. Number one, they want to get it signed right away. So if you're sending them off to a QR code, then they have to wait for the book to arrive, and they're not going to get it signed from you. So that's part of the value, the impact of having physical books at your disposal, because people will just, they meet the author,

26:12they want you to sign it, and they'll pay you right there. And so yes, these are things that I know we live in this print on demand world, and that they're very popular, but I just, there's something about having books at your disposal, when after you've created them that I think is extremely appealing. And so again, but printing on demand, that's another way to potentially minimize costs. I know a lot of people when they are writing a book, they want to make money, off of the book. So they don't want to come in with a lot of money, investing in printing costs, and design, and there is a lot that goes into that. There's a lot of effort that goes into designing your own book, but yeah, I would say research is so important. And again, this is my forte. So if you ever want more information than you're getting today during this podcast about how to write your own book or the whole process, literally I can take you from start to finish in the publishing

27:15process. So there's another aspect of this business that has become really prominent as I mentioned a little bit earlier in the podcast, and that is legacy books. So legacy books are books that people will write. Sometimes it's not about them wanting to make a profit. They're not really looking to create a platform with their book. They just want to leave a legacy for members of their family related to their life. And so they write a legacy book. And so I've had the opportunity to work with people on these legacy books a lot of times. They don't want to write the books themselves, so they'll approach me and have maybe the ghostwriter. So what does a ghostwriter do? A ghostwriter is essentially in the background helping you to write your book. There are a lot of people out there who aren't writers. And so working with a ghostwriter is very appealing to them because

28:15they can tell their story and have someone else craft the story. And so again, in terms of the value that my company can provide is actually being a ghostwriter for you, sitting down with you and having you share the elements of your life. And then we put it together in an organized platform and get it published. And then you've got this legacy book that you're able to pass on to your family. I see a lot of the people that I work with on these legacy books are seniors, older people. They want their stories to live beyond their life. They want their kids and grandkids and family members to remember them through these books. And so they tell their stories. Memoirs or books. And I really enjoy working with people of legacy projects. I get to learn a lot about their backgrounds and the stories that they have to tell. And as I had mentioned before, the connections that I make with authors, especially with these legacy books, are just so impactful.

29:19Connecting, you know, you become, yeah, you're almost a part of their family because you, you know, you learn their deepest-darkest secrets. People will tell you a lot of things about their lives, things that they would never tell anyone else, but they want to get it hashed out in the book. And so that's very rewarding for me is the therapeutic value that I bring to people when I go strike books. Of course, my ability to be able to write the book and help them get it published is what it's really all about. So legacy books are huge. And that's another project, or that's another platform that we will help you with at Classic Communications. If you just want to share your legacy with people, we will take you from start to finish every aspect from the title of the book to the words themselves, the editing, the proofreading, and then ultimately the design of the cover, whatever it is that you want to do, we can help you with that within the scope of services that we provide. So one of the things, the last things I wanted to touch on, yeah, so yes,

30:24books are absolutely magic. They can help you to become a leader in your field. They can help you to become notable in your field. They create tremendous media opportunities with all the blog platforms we have now, video blogs or otherwise. Lots of podcasts out there. You go on people's podcasts and they interview you about your book. So there's just so many opportunities to get the word out with this new media, which I am just such a tremendous fan of has created great opportunities for authors. We're not limited to just newspapers or local TV nowadays. You've got just thousands and thousands of podcasters out there who are looking for content. And your story is content for them. So if you've written a book, I would encourage you highly to approach some of these podcast platforms because you get you come on the air, you share the story behind your book. Number one, people could just be watching the podcast and want to buy the book directly or maybe

31:24they want to hire you for a service that you provide. But artificial intelligence in books, that's the last thing that I want to talk about before I close out this podcast today is that through through AI, which I think is a great tool for writing, although I personally don't write books with AI. I when I sit down and I work with a person as their ghost rider, I just take their story and I and I just write the story. But artificial intelligence for people out there who are not riders, I think could be a great tool to support you as you write your book. Not everyone out there is, that's not their forte is being a rider. And if you could leverage artificial intelligence to help you to get it done, I would highly recommend it. I would say that there, you know, one of the elements of artificial intelligence that's really challenging is the fact it really doesn't have the punch that you as a person have. And that's why I'm saying I wouldn't

32:30rely on artificial intelligence to write a book because it takes the human element out. Yes, it does work things in a way that it's helpful for you for a lot of people because that's just not your thing. You're not a rider. But I would be very careful about relying too much on the artificial intelligence because when you're riding a book, you really want to give it who you are. What makes the book distinct is your presence, you're the way that you say things. People, they get a lot of the the gist of your personality by reading a book. They learn a lot about you. But if artificial intelligence writes the entire book, then they're getting artificial intelligence is a version of who you are. And that doesn't necessarily lead to an effective book. And again, I do believe that artificial intelligence is an excellent tool to utilize, along with your own writing, when it comes to books, but I wouldn't overly rely on artificial intelligence when

33:32you're writing a book. I think people can tell when they read a book that's been completely written by artificial intelligence. You know, ethically, I have some issues with that as well. And again, I'm a believer in artificial intelligence. I think it's a great tool. I utilize it a lot in my own business. But in terms of letting artificial intelligence write your whole book, I would, I don't think that that's necessarily an effective thing. I think that people are going to see through the artificial intelligence and know that they're not getting you in that book. So you might want to consider that. Well, I hope this tutelage that I gave you all about the publishing industry will be helpful for you. And as I mentioned before, our company classic communications, I can help you with any aspect of books that you could possibly imagine, even literary agent. If you're, again, you want to go to a big publishing house, and you are interested in presenting your book, I act as a literary agent as well as you're representative. Because if you go to a publishing

34:36house, one of the larger ones, they aren't going to take your manuscript directly from you. They're going to want to go through a literary agent. So if you're very ambitious and you really want to take your book to the next level by having someone else publish it, I mean, there are. So maybe that'll be my part two. I'll do a part two. And I will talk about the advantages of self-publishing versus finding a publisher. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to come back and do a part two on this subject very soon. Lay that out for you. But yes, there are distinctive advantages to publishing. And there are distinctive advantages to self-publishing. And it just depends on what your goals are. But anyway, pretty much anything related to books we can help you with. Again, if you want more information about how you can connect with me to learn more about the services that we provide related to the lucrative book publishing industry, just reach out to me, guide Dawson at

35:37classiccommunications.net. And I will answer the questions that you have related to publishing. And maybe we can do some business together. So again, I hope you all enjoyed this podcast today. And please leave a review if you're listening to us on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Please leave us a review. We greatly appreciate your feedback because all we want to do here at PR Connections is create great content that you enjoy and that educates you. So have a fantastic day. And if you're an author out there, hey, I wish you all the best. And if you need some help, reach out to me. I feel like I can help you a lot to get your book published and to show you how to get everything that you deserve to get out of your book. Take care.