This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 109 / Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write A Book With Anna David

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Books are my happy place and for as long as I can remember it’s been on my bucket list to write one. And now I’ve officially checked that off my list with Validation Is For Parking. One thing I’ve come to realize is that a book isn’t just a book. It’s so much more, and if you’re building a business you might want to consider writing one. Chief among the many reasons to do it is that your story matters. And, that we need more books (especially in business) to be authored by women. Here to help us think bigger about that is Anna David - New York Times bestseller of eight books, founder of Legacy Launchpad Publishing and three time Tedx speaker. Anna’s first novel, Party Girl, is in development as a feature film and she hosts the hit podcast, Entrepreneur Publishing Academy. And while I’d encourage everyone with the desire to write their book to do it, I will share that it’s hard. So when the women around us do brave and bold things it gives us the opportunity to support and celebrate it. We must. Because doing brave and bold things? Well, that is woman’s work. “If you’re an entrepreneur who hasn’t published a book, you’re allowing your competitors to take your clients” - Anna David You can learn more about Anna David by going to: bookelevatorpitch.com or follow her on IG @annabdavid To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com. Get your copy of Validation Is For Parking.

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Get your first month of any crate line for free at KiwiCo.com forward slash WW30. That's your first month free at K-I-W-I-C-O dot com slash WW30. I am Nicole Kalil, and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast, where together we're redefining what it means to be doing woman's work. The answer, by the way, is whatever lights you up from the inside, whatever feels right and true for you. One of those things for me is reading. Books are my happy place. And for as long as I can remember, it's been on my bucket list to write one. And yes, I've now officially checked that off the list with validation is for parking. And I think it's important that I share that I waited, delayed and procrastinated four years, probably more like a decade before writing

it. I used excuses like I'm so busy or I don't know where to start. And I have so much respect for books that it makes it really hard. Like, what does that even mean? What's been interesting as I've gone through this experience is how different it is than I thought it would be. I thought writing it would be the hardest part, not so much. I thought the reason to do it was to impact readers. Yes, it's absolutely about that, but it's also so much more. And I thought writing a book as a business owner was about building credibility and having a more evergreen offering at a lower price point so there'd be less barrier to entry. And it is about that, at least for me it is,

but that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've come to realize that a book isn't just a book. And if you're building a business, you should really consider writing one. Here to help us think bigger about launching a book is Anna David, New York Times bestseller of eight books, founder of Legacy Launchpad Publishing, and three times TEDx speaker. Anna's first novel, Party Girl, is in development as a feature film, and she hosts the hit podcast, Entrepreneur Publishing Academy. Anna, thank you so much for being here to share why every entrepreneur should write a book. Thank you for having me. That was a brilliant intro. I loved it. Yay. Okay, good. So talk to us a little bit about how to decide what

to write a book about. Like I actually, for about six months, thought I was going to write a book about something entirely different than I ended up writing a book about. And it was actually kind of a dumb thing in hindsight. Like I talk about confidence all the time. That's my jam. That's my passion. And I was going to write a book about something entirely different. And so I ended up going back to the obvious. Right. But how do you know when you have a good idea for a book and where do you start? You start, it's a great question. You know, arguably the most important. You start with, you know, it's sort of like you're what, why, who. So, and that's why we have this book elevator pitch template that's on our site, because

it's like, you can't do anything until you can fill in these blanks of my book is for blank, who want blank so they can blank. Because if you don't have that, you might be writing a journal. And I love journals. I just published a journal. But if you're going to write a book, you want people to read it. And so, you know, it's so obvious and let, it took me seven books to understand this. It's a good idea if there's an audience, who's going to read it. I had somebody on my podcast who she's traditionally published and she did this book. She got her first book. She got an offer to do a book about the Mickey mouse club. And she wasn't that interested, but it was like a book offer. Wow. She did it. She couldn't find the audience. So then on the second book with that publisher, I think it was a different publisher, they went in and they go, what's a book where the audience reads? And they settled on Seinfeld. And then she wrote this book, Seinfeldia, that was the New York Times bestseller, its first week of release. So we're not mind readers. We can't tell if we have an audience

that reads, but we can guess. So it requires, I think people think, oh, I just go like sit in a cabin and I let them use. Like that is definitely not what you do. Again, if you want your book to succeed. The book I'm writing right now is all about this. It's basically how to prepare for, promote and profit from your how-to book. It's not going to be out for a long time because I'm writing right now. But so you look to what's your, what does your audience want

and what do you know? What's the golden thread between those two? And people will say, well, I don't have an audience. Well, you got some, like, even if you've got 100 followers on all collective platforms, go ask them if you don't know, go join groups that they're in. Amazon is the third largest search engine, go to Amazon and put your topic in and see how it auto populates the rest of the search bar, read the books that are in your genre, the top 20 books, or, you know, just look at the positive and negative reviews. So you've got to figure out who your audience is. And then while you're writing your book, I think you should be very focused on how you're going to reach that audience. Okay. So really great tips there. Some I'm going to do

myself real quick after we get off. What mistakes do you see first time authors make, or that maybe you made yourself or, you know, if your work just, I'm sure there are a few things I'm catching myself on a lot of them already. Yeah. Well, you know, I was smiling because the episode I released yesterday is the seven mistakes of first time authors. Um, so there's a lot, I've made them all. Um, and I would say not knowing, not knowing your, your why, your raison d'etre, what you want people to do when they're done reading is, big one. I think, of course, can't remember what was in the episode yesterday, but I can tell you, I can give you a list of 50 mistakes. You know, skimping on cover design, you know, you can get a cover on Fiverr. We actually

have a course where we walk you through how to make that into a paperback cover. But again, it's about your intention. Invest in a cover that's going to work. And also, you know, we have clients who will give them covers and we believe one is better. They'll pick one and go, I like that cover. It doesn't matter what you like. What is your audience going to like? This is not, this is not about you. This is about your audience. And I think not focusing, not understanding that, you know, writing is rewriting. The editor is everything. You need

multiple edits. You know, you need a developmental editor who's going to take the book apart. Then you need a copy editor. Then you need a proofreader. Then there's still going to be out and upload it and no one's the wiser. I recommend listening to your book, having some sort of software read it to you because the eye misses things. We fill in words and so listening helps a lot. And then not emphasizing the reviews enough. Reviews are currency. I would say anecdotally, most anything on Amazon that has less than 25 reviews, people don't consider.

And contrary to what people think, you don't really want all five-star reviews. That doesn't look real. I love it when I get a three-star review. That's somebody who read my book and felt strongly enough about it to express their negative opinion. They're not a fan and they read it anyway. So glad that you said that. I've been thinking a lot. A lot of people have asked me and I've been thinking a lot about, you know, what's the purpose, what's the outcome. And I have zero goals around income or profitability whatsoever. That's not even on my radar, but my goal is about the experience for the reader. And the best way I can quantify that is through reviews. Right. And what you just said

was exactly what I think. I'm like, I'm looking forward to the one star or the three star. At least somebody read it and had an experience or a thought. And you're right. When I see all five stars, I'm like, that's just a little too, I don't know. It feels a little scary for me. Okay. So I had a speaker's agent tell me once, you need to write a book. It doesn't even need to be a good book.

And that was like crushing to me, you know, like it was like a stab to the heart because I love books so much, but it sent a bigger message, which is, you know, got to write the book. Um, why is it so important? Why should every entrepreneur write a book? Well, first I'd love to speak to what the speaker's agent said to you, because as I see it, there are three reasons entrepreneurs write books. One, they want a free lead magnet. Two, they want to just have a book that they kind of hope nobody reads. They don't care. And three, they want a legacy book. And the legacy book will do the things of the first two, which will bring in perspective clients and also establish their authority as an

author. Increasingly, our world is one where we all have our own 24-7, we're our own TV stations, we're our own radio stations, we're our own publishers. And oftentimes I find people look at that as such a negative, oh, we're on this content treadmill, there's so much pressure, this is, and obviously there's terrible aspects to that. I think it's amazing. I think the gatekeepers have been taken away, and anybody today can declare themselves an expert, experiential expertise. So it's like if you are an entrepreneur with a successful business, you know, something that people want to know you have been able to do something that people want to do. And the difference between, I know lots of terribly successful entrepreneurs and nobody knows who they are. And I know ones who are not as successful and everybody knows who they are.

And often the difference is that the second group has, has a book. So talk to us about ways that entrepreneurs are leveraging their book besides just book sales. I mean, I'm learning that book sales really isn't the big income generator, or I mean, I guess it can be for some very small percent of the population. What are other ways that books create leverage? Yeah, I mean, I think book sales create income for, you know, 0.0001% of the authors out there, which I don't know the statistics, they're very low. You know, it can really do anything. Certainly a speaking agent or speaking booker is if it's not that having a book means you automatically get called by everybody, you certainly don't.

But it's like if a booker is looking at one person over another, the one and they look the same, the one with the book is going to get it. You become the person that quote wrote the book on the topic. So oftentimes, you know, what will happen is somebody is interested in a topic. They read the book. They say, I want to know more, or I want to know what to do next. Who should I ask? Well, the person who wrote the book, let me ask them. And oftentimes the answer, it can be hire me. For me, the goal of any sort of how-to book, somebody who doesn't have the resources can read it and go do it. Somebody who does have the resources can read it and hire you to do it. And that's really what a how-to book should do.

Okay. So you mentioned the sort of lifting of the old barriers that used to exist. In that, there's a lot of good things, but it can be a little confusing as a potential author or author. Can you talk to us about the differences, maybe the pros and cons of the different publishing routes or like really how to get your book out there? Yeah. I mean, there are three. There's traditional publishing, self-publishing, and hybrid publishing, as far as I know. Maybe there? Yeah. I mean, there, there are three, there's, you know, traditional publishing, self-publishing and hybrid publishing. As far as I know, maybe there's more. Traditional publishing is the world I come from between 2007 and 2012. I published seven books, you know, six with Harper Collins and one with Simon and Schuster. And it was an intensely demoralizing experience. And I kept, I'm such a slow learner. I kept not understanding, A, that my publisher wasn't going to do anything, and B, that for the tiniest segment of the population. And

that tiny segment is usually a celebrity or somebody with a ridiculous following. Increasingly, that doesn't even make a difference because, you know, there was this New York Times story about how Billie Eilish has, you know, however many million followers and her books sold 300,000 copies or something like that, which is a ton of copies, but not for Billy Eilish. I used to think, oh, these publishers are evil. Oh, they're terrible. No, they're business people. They don't want to give a bunch of money to somebody who they don't know that will earn that money back. And what authors, aspiring authors don't realize is if nobody knows who you are, nobody's going to buy your book. So first of all, it's such a

limited group of people that it's possible for. And I speak to, and so many people who've been on my podcast speak to, it's an abysmal experience. I'm sure it's not for Glennon Doyle. I'm sure it's absolutely delightful for her. For 99% of us, you know, publishers, they look at us as a loss leader. They know the way I see book success is, you know, it's the least democratic thing ever. doesn't read. So when a book gets to be so successful that non-readers are going to feel stupid not having heard of it or read it, that's when it goes through the roof. And those people are multimillionaires and can do whatever they want. So publishers know that every year there's going to be someone like that. And everyone else is a loss leader leader and they treat you like a loss leader. And I always say, it's like, it's like if you were making a movie and you had a producer, uh, who's funding it, but you're the director, you're the star, you're the screenwriter and the producer's giving you money. And you're like, this is so awesome. And then the movie comes out and you don't hear from

them and you call them and you're like, the movie came out and they don't call you back. And that is really what the experience is. So I personally can't imagine why anybody would do it. You also have no control over your cover, no control over your title. I've had titles and covers that I've hated and it hasn't mattered. I can say that till I'm blue in the face. Some people just have ideas and they don't listen. And they're like, no, I'm going to go sell traditionally. And then nine times out of 10, what happens is they can't sell it. And then they're too discouraged and they never pursue their book. So, and then there's hybrid, which is, yeah, sorry. I was just going to say, not that you need my reinforcement, but I talked to several

authors, you know, as I was going through the process and heard the exact same thing from anyone, which was few and far between, but anybody who had gone the traditional publishing route. So, yeah, I mean, and, and people say a lot less than they think, because they don't want to trash their publisher. I don't care. I have an agent, a literary agent still, and she supports me, even though all I do is rail against this, this business. Cause by the way, if that business wanted to pay me a couple hundred thousand dollars to do a book, I wouldn't say no. I'm just not a fan of volunteer work. And for many, I am, but not in my career. You know, for many years I was making like 30, $40,000 a year, killing myself on these books.

And I just thought, thought oh nobody values writers they actually do it's just not the publisher that value the writers um and so and so hybrid publishing is where you hire a company I mean there's two definitions for hybrid hybrid can be you you hire a company um and you split the proceeds and then um which I don't recommend because you probably aren't going to make much proceeds. And then there's the kind that my company does, which is you hire a company, you pay them, you keep the rights, you have the full byline, you get to do what you want, you own the copyright, and you have you know, writing your book, maybe writing half our books we write and half we just straight up publish.

But editing, laying out, publishing, launching, cover, all of that stuff. Yeah. So that was the route that I went. And then talk to us a little bit about self-publishing. That just freaked me out. Like that to me was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I need a guide in this. Yeah. I mean, I, I have seen like two people really master it. People who came to me,

talked to me, said, we can't afford your services. I'm going to go self-publish. And they had the unique ability to figure it all out. The rough statistic, uh, for a, a non-writer. And I don't know, um, I don't know how long it took you to write your book or how much help you got, but for a non-writer to write a book, they say it'll take 300 hours to write a book. And so I always say, what do you get an hour? Multiply that times 300. If you make 300 an hour, that's 90 grand you're in the the hole and you don't even still know how to get it published. So, and I'm talking about a book at the highest level, which frankly, some people are not going to be able to tell the difference, you know, but customers can. So yeah, self-publishing is doing it, just figuring it out. It can be done. Anybody listening to this could have a book upload, a self-published book uploaded by the end of this interview. Is it going to do anything for you? No. So I always say it's like, if you're

going to do it, do it at the highest level, have it be a legacy. You know, I always say, it's like, if you're gonna do it, do it at the highest level, have it be a legacy. You know, I always say Amazon forgives, but it doesn't forget. You can unpublish a book, but it will still, the trace of it will still be there. It'll just say out of print. Right, right. And it's a good point.

And I thank you so much for your advice. I will personally benefit from it. And if you're listening, if you're an entrepreneur and you want to learn more about Anna and her work, especially if you want to go from a wish, a hope of writing a book to actually writing a book, definitely connect with Anna book, elevator pitch.com is her website. I go out and buy any one of eight of Anna's eight books, including her most buzzed about party girl. And you can follow her on Instagram at Anna B. David. We'll put all of this in show notes. Anna, thank you so much. Thank you so much. They were great questions. Oh, good. Okay.

I appreciate that. All right, friends, there are so many reasons to write a book, chief among them, that your story, whatever it may be, matters. And that we need more books, especially in business, to be authored by women. And as a side note, please make sure you're supporting the women who are releasing books. I can say from personal experience that it's the most rewarding, exhausting, exciting, nerve-wracking, joy-filled, frustrating experience, and the hardest I've ever worked. So buy the book, make the time, create the three minutes to write a review, share with a friend or colleague, tell someone about it, gift it, post about it, any and all of the above, however we can be supporting women authors. When the women around us do brave and bold things, we get to celebrate it. We must. Because that is woman's work.