In this “cover-to-cover” interview, book coach Ameesha Green and author Sam Sanders discuss Your Next Big Idea, his multi-award-winning book on improving creativity and coming up with innovative ideas through a kaleidoscope of fun and practical exercises.
Join book coach Ameesha Green and author Sam Sanders as they discuss his multi-award-winning book Your Next Big Idea, which teaches readers to be more creative, come up with innovative ideas, and improve their problem-solving skills.
Sam is an entrepreneur and leader who has put his ideas into practice at a Fortune 500 company, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company, and his own company Wundershirt. His book is a blueprint for creative thinking and practical action to develop game-changing ideas.
Turn the page on this podcast to experience Sam’ self-publishing journey, with top tips on book marketing and PR strategies, as well as the importance of letting your creative mind run wild.
Turn the page (the time-stamp!)
[02:08] So, what made you want to decide to write a book in the first place?
[03:23] How did you get an idea for your book?
[04:45] What is the creative process behind writing a book?
[07:18] How long did it take to write the book?
[09:58] What’s the editing process behind publishing a book?
[12:34] What’s the design process behind publishing a book?
[17:01] How did you market his book? What was the process like?
[31:36] How did you form a launch team for your book?
[34:35] Amazon as a publishing marketplace
[37:57] Would you publish another book? Did you enjoy the process?
[38:40] How have you used to book to propel your business?
Buy the book: Your Next Big Idea: Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving by Sam Sanders
Sign up to The Book Shelf newsletter for monthly bonus tips, quotes, and book recommendations and exclusive insights into nonfiction.
Instagram: @thebookshelf.ltd
Twitter: @thebookshelfltd
Hive: @thebookshelf
Email: hello@thebookshelf.ltd
TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE INCLUDE:
Nonfiction
Self-publishing
The self-publishing process
Writing your first book
Creativity
Problem solving
Entrepreneurs
Book marketing
Book PR
Book publicity
Book awards
Ameesha:
Welcome to Better Shelves, the podcast from The Book Shelf Ltd. We help aspiring authors to create life-changing nonfiction books. We’re based in Birmingham but we work with authors across the globe and our mission is to make the world a better place through books.
Hi Sam, thanks so much for coming to speak to us today about your book. We're super excited to have you with us! What have you been up to today?
Sam:
Ameesha, it's great to talk to you again! For listeners, we worked together, probably a few years ago, so it's really great to just reconnect... ah man, and just get back together! I've just launched my book Your Next Big Idea, which is a book on creativity and problem solving, helping entrepreneurs—or people who want to be entrepreneurs—come up with their own idea to start a business. I’d love to dive in and talk about all the marketing and stuff behind it!
Ameesha:
Awesome! So I think the first thing to say is your book just won an award so that is absolutely incredible! Massive congratulations to you!
Sam:
Thank you!
Ameesha:
How did that feel, to be an award-winning author?
Sam:
Yeah, so it won the 2021 Indie Reader Discovery Awards’ Business Book of the Year so it was—it was weird, you know? I've worked so hard on it and it's just like I'm constantly pushing to try and get myself out there. And to see that feedback loop come back and somebody else really loving the book, that feels great so, yeah!
Ameesha:
I'm so glad, it was so cool to see that.
Sam:
Yeah, book awards are something that, for authors, if you can get that it really helps with everything. It just kind-of trickles out into all aspects of the writing process: the editing, publishing, marketing. All that stuff. Yeah, it's been great!
Ameesha:
Ah that's cool, did you get to go to an awards ceremony? Or were they online or something?
Sam:
Well, yeah because of Covid, the awards ceremony was cancelled and so they had online videos where you do a little—basically thank you speech. And you thank everyone, and they put them all online and then do a press release. Hopefully maybe some of the 2022 awards will be in person? But we'll have to see how everything goes.
Ameesha:
You don't wanna miss out on your red carpet experience!
Sam:
Yeah! Maybe one day! Maybe one day.
Ameesha:
Awesome. So, what made you want to decide to write a book in the first place?
Sam:
So, I'm a nonfiction author and a lot of writing a book was to build my own credibility. As a nonfiction author, you have to decide why you're writing the book, because that's going to change a lot of the strategy on the book itself. If you're looking to try to make money as an author, that's a very different strategy than looking to try to build credibility around a brand. For me personally, I run a gov[ernment] tech[nology] company that helps local leaders connect with citizens and bring out really innovative ideas in the community. So writing a book about ideation and how people come up with those ideas is building my brand and the complete picture. But if I was trying to become an author and maybe publish more nonfiction regularly, I'm gonna use different strategies. Because where the money is being made is gonna look different depending on what kind of author you're trying to be. So, if you're trying to be someone that publishes a lot of books and makes money as an author, you're going to have to have more repeated content out there versus somebody who's using the book as a credibility build that you can start making money through talking, or you could start making money through your business. So, yeah, for me, that's part of the reason that I wrote the book, to build my credibility and share what I know. Hopefully, some people who have that big—or are looking for that big idea or wanna start a business, maybe I can inspire them.
Ameesha:
So what gave you the idea to write a book about ideas?
Sam:
Yeah, so when I was looking at what to write about, I ended up just starting so wrong. I was like, "I'm gonna write about how Gen Z is gonna impact the economy!" And I was familiar with that kind of stuff, but it's not really my home base. It's not what I knew well. So if you're gonna write something, you're gonna have to write something that's high quality if you want it to work, so it really has to be something that you know or that you're willing to put the time to extensively research. So, I decided to take a step back and be like, "Okay, what do I know? What do I really feel like I understand?" And it is the start-up creation process. I've started a couple of companies in the past, and I really get how to find that idea. I have a lot of my own thoughts and opinions related to that, so it's something that's kind of new and unique, but also building on a lot of things out there that I could really own. So yeah, that's why I decided to write about ideas.
Ameesha:
That's so cool! Yeah, one of the things I say to authors when they're thinking of writing a nonfiction book is write about what you know. Because—especially if you want to build that authority, credibility—it should be an area that you're already kind-of on your way to being an expert in. It has to be something that you know really well. Like, enough to be able to talk about it and to tell people something that they want to know. People look to the experts in the field–don’t they–to find out about these areas so there's no point picking a topic you know hardly anything about.
Sam:
Yeah, I was so wrong. But that's part of the learning process. And, I think if you're with the creation process of the book, there are a couple of things that really need to happen. You need to write about something that you know, and it needs to be really professionally edited. If you have a book that has editing mistakes or something like that, that's really gonna hold you back. It needs to look like it came from one of the big press companies that had all these editors look at it. The last thing it really needs is, it needs a beautiful cover. I think that's something a lot of people sometimes skimp on, and I highly advise against that because with a beautiful cover, when you're pitching to the media and when you're pitching to try to get awards, the first thing they're gonna look at is the cover. If it doesn't look like something that is typical industry standard, or it doesn't look as high quality... First impressions unfortunately do matter and having a cover that's not just good, but a wow—where a lot of people are like, "Wow I love this!" Can really just go such a long way. Yeah, and even in social media sharing, the cover is important as well. Definitely get the high quality editing, write about something you know, and really make sure you have a high quality cover.
Ameesha:
The cover thing, I tell people all the time. Technically, as an author, you can design your own cover. I guess one of the good things about self-publishing is that it's so accessible that you don't need any money to do it. But equally, if you're going to make your own cover, you have to really know what you're doing. You have to spend a lot of time researching and understanding the specifics of each genre, because a slightly different genre has slightly a different type of cover and different standards. Modern design looks very different to books that were out like ten years ago. So, I think if you're gonna pay for anything, as you said, editing definitely, and the cover design. I would say having a professional cover designer work on your book makes such a big difference. It just gives it that professional finish, whereas like you said, the person can't tell: is this from one of the big five or is it self-published? That's ideal.
Sam:
Yeah, and what I tell people when they're looking for covers, it's like, "Okay look at the big five, look at this past year. [Look at] all of the books that came out in your specific genre and then try to use those themes, but then also try to give your own little twist to it, because it is yours and you don't wanna just mimic it." So it needs to be—if it's stood in there, it would fit in, but also stands out a little bit because it's exciting and has your own little spin to it. And it is—you know you can do it on your own if you put in the appropriate research–but you really need to understand, because if you skimp on the cover, people aren't gonna open the book. Even if it's really great quality, they might not even see it.
Ameesha:
Ah, we're totally on the same page with that. Obviously you had a team of people working on your book, so how long did it take from start to finish?
Sam:
Yeah, so I started back in August 2017 was when I first started and my book came out in May of 2021. So I was slowly rolling along the process. There were a couple of reasons for that. A lot of people—it's one thing with my strategy where I'm building credibility as a non-fiction contributor and it didn't really need the ‘now’ type of thing. Like, some people need to publish books more regularly to turn a profit. It's more important that you hit all those deadlines. For me, I wanted to create something that I was really proud of. I went through an extensive editing process, extensive design process and it was really important for me because I was always a really math-brained person. So, jumping into the writing field was something that I found challenging and I wanted to make sure that when I put something out there, it was really high quality and something I could be really proud of. So, yeah, it took me a long time, and it's also hard when you're working jobs at the same time to find time to work. So, it's just, you try to do a little bit every day, as much as you can. Five, fifteen minutes, something like that to get something on paper or get some work done. But not the full eight-hour work days that a lot of people have the luxury of doing.
Ameesha:
Yeah, I think it is really challenging balancing it with a full-time job. It's about finding that right thing for you, and for some people that is writing everyday, and for some people it's just, "I'm gonna book a weekend off and go to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and have no distractions." But I think it's really important that authors figure out what's the best way for them to balance it with their other responsibilities, like if they're got a family or they have a job as well.
Sam:
I completely agree. Everybody needs to look at how it works for them. As long as you—what you don't want is the process to stop. As long as you still see where and when it's gonna move forward, you don't keep putting off those dates, then what works for you, works for you. You just gotta keep it rolling.
Ameesha:
It sounds like you did a good job of that, and actually, that's not the longest amount of time it's taken for an author to get a book out there! No, definitely not. There was one author I worked with a few years back and the book had been going through his processes for 40 years!
Sam:
Four-zero?! Oh my goodness!
Ameesha:
Four-zero. Yeah! It was also the shortest book I've ever worked on, I think it's less than 50 pages. It's a really condensed philosophy book.
Sam:
Interesting. I think it's one of those things, as a first time author, it's really hard to really understand all the ins and outs. There's a lot of learning. When I came in, I didn't even know there were different types of editing, so I was really really far back with my—on the learning curve. I really had to learn a tonne throughout the process, and that definitely slowed it down a bit. But, over time you learn, you figure it out, you keep pushing through. So yeah, it can be a little intimidating but it's exciting at the same time.
Ameesha:
Yeah, one of the things I often talk about is the different types of editing because I think—like when I tell people I'm a book editor, they automatically assume, "Oh you just deal with grammar and you move commas around." Nooo, that's a type of editing, but actually it's much more about, especially in the early stages of editing, it's about the bigger picture and are you actually adding value to your reader? Are you talking to them in the way they want to be spoken to? Is it in the right order, are you giving them a journey through the book? Actually, that side of editing I think can be more challenging for authors because once they've written the book, they might not want to actually go back and look at, "Oh, have I just not structured this very well? Or am I not speaking in the right way to my readers?" That's quite a difficult part I think.
Sam:
Yeah, I remember when we first worked on my book together, it was—the whole back half of my book just needed work. I got the front half and I was really excited about it, and the back half I think I was just a little weaker on and this is an important thing as well, just get it on paper and just get the draft done. And even though I knew it wasn't necessarily the most elite writing, I just wanted to get all my thoughts on paper, get it out there, and then work on it after that. Once you get it, I mean, that's a really exciting feeling once you've completed drafts on paper and it's full, then you can work from there. It's a big accomplishment to get there, so I wouldn't get too held up. The editing process, you know, can be as extensive as you need it to be.
Ameesha:
I literally say that, just write it down, edit later. Don't be tempted to edit as you go because you just spend the whole time refining stuff. And actually, it doesn't really become clear until you've got a whole draft anyway, and then you can see: does it fit together properly? And definitely you can hire an editor to help with that, of course, and just to do a critique and tell you, "No, this doesn't quite work but you can rearrange it or you can change it in this way." I think the good thing is that you were really receptive to that as well. It's difficult for authors when an editor comes in and they're like, "This is not great, this needs to be fixed." It's quite difficult because your book is your baby at the end of the day, and you've spent a lot of time formulating it and writing it. I'm sure it must be difficult to have someone say it's not quite good enough.
Sam:
Yeah. Well, the thing about it is, as a nonfiction author—I guess unless you're physically writing about book writing itself—you're the expert on the topic you're writing about, but you have to remember that if you're working with really good people, they're the expert on how to format a book, how to tell the story. So the story, when you're changing the story, that's something that you can harp on and be careful about. But if it's changing the structure or telling you how to take a reader on a journey, the language used to help get that across, it's really more of an editor's expertise and it's important to trust them.
Ameesha:
Well, I'm glad you trusted me with it.
Sam:
There you go!
Ameesha:
I'm glad you were pleased with how it turned out.
Sam:
Yeah. But as we were saying, the second part of the book, after I went through the editing process, the second part of my team was the design process. So we talked a little bit about the cover, but there are other parts of design that people don't really talk about as much, and that's interior design. So interior design can really change the look of the book I think. Not just the look, but the quality of the book. My book was on creativity and innovation so I really wanted the interior design to be something that is creative, something that really jumps out. You don't necessarily need to have a, you know, a next level interior design if it doesn't really match your topic, or if your reader's not really expecting that. Part of the thing about writing about creativity or innovation is that that's something that would be more expected. How I wrote it feels like the interior design is important. But I still feel like even if it's not something you harp on, it's still important to make the inside of the book look really nice, look really approachable, encouraging the reader to keep turning. And then the other thing that people don't realise is there's the conversion into e-books, which takes a lot of process as well. Depending on how complicated your interior design is, that's also something that needs to be done and there's slightly different rules for each e-book retailer. Amazon needs different things than Barnes & Noble needs, than Kobo needs or than Apple needs. There's a couple of groups of types of files but you need to make sure that it works on all of these devices as well, especially with how much e-books are taking over.
Ameesha:
Oh definitely, and I think when you have that really cool design inside it can be quite disappointing when you see the e-book and you realise you can't have all the fancy illustrations and everything. They're just not supported in e-readers and I think it can be a bit sad then when you've got this beautiful printed book and the e-book just looks like text with the occasional image. But we don't get a lot of control over what appears in e-readers, what they support and what they don't, so it's kind of like making the best out of the e-book as you can and I think readers understand that.
Sam:
I think they do, and I think the e-book market is changing. So maybe in like five years from now, the technology will come where we can do this. It's not really quite there yet, as you've mentioned but I think over time we'll get there, where interior design can feel like it's more a part of the e-book process. But e-book readers expect things a certain way. They're reading Kindle books all the time, they know what a Kindle book looks like, they know what to expect and so it's nice to cater to those expectations as well. It can feel like we've put so much work into this beautiful design and now nobody's gonna see it if they're reading the e-book. But I was able to work with the designer and really get—almost think of the e-book as a different book and think how can we maximise this beauty and maximise the enjoyment for the reader.
Ameesha:
I think there's always ways around it, obviously with your book there are things that you can draw and be creative with. So I guess you can encourage them to have their own notebook or maybe give them free downloads they can print out and use at home. So you can get around it, there are ways.
Sam:
Yeah, and I actually should mention that about my book because I think that's important when I'm talking about the interior design. So when I wrote my book, there is a lot of text and teaching, but there's also exercises. So there's areas where I encourage the reader to write something in there or solve a problem. I think that helps, one with the creative process, it also helps attract new types of readers who don't necessarily always learn by reading the best way, they need to learn by practice. So that's really great. But it also adds to the importance of the design even more if you're gonna try to include something that's unique and not just text. It was definitely a long process getting all of those things to work on all of the different devices, so yeah.
Ameesha:
I love that you can write in your book because there's that whole thing that you get taught never writing a book. I think it's cool that you're telling people to break the rules, write in it, draw in it.
Sam:
I think you have to understand who your reader is. So the book I'm writing is for someone who wants to start a business or is looking to improve their creativity skills but if I'm writing a book on mathematics, my reader just not gonna be the same type of person, they're gonna want something different and yeah, I personally love the pages. Stop here, write in the book, but it's definitely keying in on that reader.
Ameesha:
Yeah I think so much of the process starts with understanding who you're talking to and I think it's really easy to underestimate how important that is. If there's one thing I find myself saying as an editor time and time again is that you can't speak to everybody. The amount of times an author will approach me and be like, "I wanna speak to everyone!" and I'm like, not only is that not possible, but actually it's not that helpful because everyone wants different things from the book. The more focused you are on the people who will benefit from it, the better you can make that experience for them.
Sam:
It actually plays off in the marketing perspective too. If I have a book and I'm very keyed in on who my reader is, then I'm gonna be able to cater to those needs and they'll really like the book. But if I start going more general and I hit the wrong readers, what's gonna happen is you're gonna get reviews that aren't as positive. That's gonna bring down your rating on either GoodReads, or Amazon and it's actually gonna hurt you, so you really need to be keyed in to who's the person that would really like this book? Who are they? Where are they online or where are they in bookstores? How do I get in front of them? Because it's important, especially towards the beginning, to build that positive momentum and you really wanna make sure you're keyed in to who you're talking to. Definitely can hurt you if you talk to too many people.
Ameesha:
Yeah. You obviously did an amazing job, since you just mentioned it. What kind of—did you have a strategy from the beginning? What point did you start your marketing before you launched?
Sam:
I spent probably—this was my first book so I spent probably a full month studying book marketing before I went about and did my marketing process. There's a lot to it and I wanna try and dive in and give some really concrete tips to different people but I started learning about marketing some time in December of 2020. So, I took the month of December, which is great because there's a lot of vacation and holidays and you're travelling so you have time to take a look at that type of stuff. I guess not so much during Covid but a little bit of travel with family. And then from January to May, when the book came out at the beginning of May, I had a four-month marketing period. The other thing is I think the book world is actually changing because everything used to be all about the launch, and in nonfiction it's changing a little bit and backlist books are starting to do really well, especially during the pandemic. So, you have the ability to—instead the launch is a trend and it's over. But now you have the ability even after the book is out to use it to get more press, still get people interested and really drive longer term sales. I think it's important to set expectations for authors. I know there was a New York Times article this past year, and even with the pandemic when readership went up, if you can move five thousand copies of a book, that's gonna put you in the top 2% of books sold. There are very heavy influencers, like when Barack Obama writes a book, obviously he's gonna sell tons and tons of copies, or when Malcolm Gladwell writes a book. But in reality, if you can hit that mark, that's gonna put you in a really good place and I'd love to dive in and talk a little more about some of the marketing stuff! Is that okay?
Ameesha:
Yeah definitely! I think marketing is one of the most challenging things for authors and most of the people I work with. They love the writing side and they might enjoy the editing or they might not, but when it comes to marketing, I think it's an area that authors really struggle with. Knowing some of those strategies and even having a marketing plan I think is probably quite alien to a lot of people unless it's something you do as part of your job. It's not something we do on a day-to-day basis, so definitely jump in!
Sam:
Yeah, so, in terms of marketing and also PR—because I wanna talk a little bit about both of them—there's two types of it. There's book marketing and book PR. So that's getting your book featured by someone like Apple, Bookshop, GoodReads, stuff like that. And then there's more general PR, which is getting your book featured by ABC or Business Insider, general PR, not book-related media. Everything is built on the foundations. So we talked about having a really good cover. If you don't have a really good cover, people are gonna look at it and they're gonna be like, "Nope. I don't think so." We talked about writing something you really know, and we also talked about high quality editing. The two first parts, the high quality editing, instantly you really know, are important for the first step of getting your book out there, because what you need to do first, especially if you're nobody, is get reviews. There are four different types of reviews you can get. So you can get professional reviews. This is something like Kirkus or BlueInk reviews, Indie Reader reviews. You can take a look, there are a lot of them out there. they cost money, but what they're gonna do is they're credible to the book media, so they'll take a look and they'll view that with credibility. So if IndieReader says something good about your book, people like that. If Kirkus says something good about your book, people are gonna look at that. I say Kirkus specifically is really tough on writers, so if you do go to Kirkus, don't be discouraged if you get an okay or a bad review. Most of their—I very rarely see reviews that are just glowing from them. What you do is you take quotes from those reviews, and then you have review quotes about the book. So that's the first type of reviews, and for book media, that's really important because you wanna be able to build credibility. To be honest, everybody starts as a nobody, so you need people saying, "Hey, this is good!" You can just pull whatever quote from their review that makes the book sound really good.
Sam:
The second type of review is professional or other author reviews. You can go after that if you're connected in an industry, maybe it's the CEO of this company said something about the book, or an author in my field said something similar about the book. Those also provide a set of credibility and those work for book media and also readers as well if they're familiar with the genre. [Professional] book reviews also work for the readers as well, but sometimes if you have an influencer in your industry talking about your book, that's gonna help. So that's another type of review. If you need to go the cheaper route then that's another good option to still build credibility. The next type of review is influencer reviews. So this is Instagram, TikTok, booktok, all that kind of stuff. That doesn't really help with the media pitching as much, it might a little bit but that's really more reader pitching. The last is reader reviews. You need people reading your book, getting reviews up there, advance copies out there. I know it's a lot for an author to put all of that work in and then give the book out for free to people to read, but it's really important because if you're trying to build that PR and build that marketing, you need the groundwork. It works like, sort of like a pyramid where it's like, "Okay, I wrote about something I really know, I have this high quality editing." And on top it's like, "I have a really good book cover." And now it's just, "I have these great reviews that people are talking about this book and it's really great." So that's an overall foundation, and then you can use that from there. I'm just going to give some examples here. So some of the different book media I was able to get. So, one of the things I was able to get was being featured by Apple Books. What ended up happening with that is I went to Apple Books and it was— I was like, "We've had these reviews, we've received these accolades"—which I'll talk about in a second as well—"and this is what the book is about. Would you consider featuring? I think it's going to be something your readers will really enjoy." At the end you're always thinking about who's on Apple Books, will they enjoy this? That was able to get out there. Another bookshop which is big in the U.S.—I pitched to them and this time included my theme in something that they could use. I talked about the book, said it was great for graduation and I got it in front of them to see if they'd like it and get the book out there. The book media will build on itself. If you have really great reviews, from these initial reviews that you go out and get-these book reviews-they'll build. One thing that, for example, I got in Booklist magazine was working with BlueInk reviews, who liked my book. And then BlueInk has a spot in Booklist magazine so they featured my book in Booklist magazine. So it all goes back to these reviews and building that credibility on top of it.
Sam:
So then there's also general PR, and that's more of the general media like getting on Good Morning whatever, Today Show, types like that. Or Business Insider like I mentioned. There are a bunch of different ways to go about that. The first is writing byline articles. I don't know whether authors know this as much, but all of these media websites are looking for people to write articles and you can go and pitch yourself to write an article for free and usually it's anywhere from 400 to 1000 words, sometimes maybe 2000 words. You type that up, you let them know, you get it in front of the editor and all of these different websites have contributor opportunities. That's a great way to start to get press.
Ameesha:
I think that all sounds really cool! Did you just kind of Google and reach out to people via their websites? Or did you email them directly? How do you actually find these people to contact them?
Sam:
For news websites, you're looking at reporters, producers if you're looking for TV, or producers also if you're looking for podcasts. Those are the type of people you're looking for. You do the research for what makes sense for your industry and then you pitch them. And actually, I wanna share an important thing about pitching. The first thing you have to realise is that no one cares that you've published a book. It's really harsh, and it's just not newsworthy to just publish a book because there are just so many books coming out. So the way to pitch yourself to the media is to capture topics of your book and yourself in a bigger news story. So for example, a recent pitch I've done that had success is the pandemic had just happened. There was a boom in startups which seemed like a 24% increase in startup creation in the U.S., I talk a lot about innovation, creativity, I can explain why that is. That's what the pitch looks like. It doesn't look like, "Hey I have a book, I published it. It's on this!" You really have to newsjack and get yourself in there. That's gonna lead to a lot more success and that's a real insider tip that people don't realise. You need to create the story that you're a part of.
Ameesha:
That's a really good tip! Thank you!
Sam:
Between that and the byline articles, which [involves] reaching out to different heads of news sites saying you'll write articles for them, you can start to build this mountain of credibility. It's like, "I wrote this article here!" Or, "Hey, I've been featured here, here, and here," and then, all of a sudden, it can start to build on itself more and more until the point you can get on TV or you can get on really big podcasts. So that's the PR high-level look, from both book media and from business media as well.
Ameesha:
That all sounds amazing, did you find that scary, just reaching out to people? I know that traditional PR can seem scary to authors, how did you find it?
Sam:
I started the PR process on my own, and then I did start to work with a traditional PR firm and then went on and started to do PR on my own. So, just disclosing that. That was good because I really didn't know what I was doing. When you work with experts, you work with them and you start to understand how this process works, how the ins and outs of the media work and getting in there. I think it was a little intimidating, but then I have to remember that when you pitch people, you're trying to ultimately give something of value to the reader. So if I'm pitching a story about creativity or how people are lighting their creative sparks recently, especially in changing times, that's something that the reader would find of value. So even if they don't respond, and most of the time you won't get a response, or sometimes you get responses months later, you've just got to remember that it's a part of the process. There are a lot of ‘no’s there.
Ameesha:
On that note, what do you feel like your biggest challenge was in the whole process? Writing, or publishing?
Sam:
God, there were so many. There were a lot of mistakes I made. So, one of the mistakes I made is that, as a nonfiction author, to really get yourself on those bestseller lists—which I did not do—you have to get bulk sales, especially in business. I tried to go about doing that, but what I realised is I didn't really have the credibility built yet to be able to do that. Maybe if I was Jeff Bezos writing a book I would be able to do that, but I don't, I'm someone new. So you really need to build that foundation first, and that wasted a lot of time. I think also in the book writing process, it was just such a learning curve and I overanalysed it a little bit. I needed to step back and say, "This is done, it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be really high quality." If you shoot for perfection you'll never finish and that's definitely something that I feel hurt me in the process. Shout out to those authors that are looking for perfection, I get it! But, we gotta step back a little bit.
Ameesha:
I think that's so true. I try to say to authors, when you're 95% happy with it, put it out there because you'll never be 100% happy with it and it's really difficult to have a book that's 100% free from typos too. Even if you've had four or five proofreaders go through your book, we're human beings and we do miss stuff. The proofreading programs are even worse than human beings, so the chances are that your book will have some typos. But worst case, you just send it to the printer and they fix it or you upload a new version to Amazon and put the e-book out there again. These things are fixable and it's much better than spending months and months and months being like, "I need to check it," again and again and not actually putting it out there.
Sam:
I totally agree, it's really challenging because you want your work to be perfect but nothing is perfect, so you just have to accept that. That definitely slowed down my process a lot. If I go back to it again, I definitely would not harp as heavily on it to make sure everything is perfect perfect.
Ameesha:
On the other hand, what was your happiest moment?
Sam:
Oh man, I think one of the happiest moments I had was when the book was just done. It wasn't even that it was launched yet, but it was like, "Wow, I have finished this really amazing work!" And I'm biased, but I felt like it was an amazing work and it's something I'm really proud of. I was working on it at that point for over three years, so it was a long process and I think that was probably one of the happiest moments. To be honest, the launch process is exciting but it's pretty stressful. If you're doing a launch right, you're really taking at least—a lot of times they suggest—three to six months, somewhere in there to really prepare, get your launch team together—which we haven't talked about but that's also really important—and get everything all together to get it out there. It can be a little high stress and high intensity, and you're trying to really push the launch. I wouldn't say that was me really stepping back and really enjoying it, it was definitely when I finished the book. Now, when I get messages from readers like, "Hi, I really love this!" I'm looking for problems in the everyday world and I didn't really think about seeing things like this so that definitely gives me a lot of joy.
Ameesha:
That's so cool; seeing reviews. I think when it's your friends and family at the beginning, that's nice but of course they're gonna like it because they're my friends and family. But when it's people you've never met before and they're on the other side of the world, it's like, wow! You had an impact on that person's life, and I guess that's why we're in this business and why we writing nonfiction books is to help people, to make their lives better. It's so cool to know you're actually doing that.
Sam:
It does feel really good. That's one of the best parts about writing, seeing people really enjoy your work.
Ameesha:
You mentioned your launch team. How did you get them together and what did you get them to do?
Sam:
A launch team is really important, and I link this with GoodReads because the launch team is the individuals that buy the book as well as GoodReads. I went to so many—almost all of my connections [asking], "Hey, I'm publishing a book, would you be willing to buy a copy? Would you be willing to share it on social media and write a review?" Those are the three things I asked for. I had a lot of people say yes, and I would say maybe a third of the people are gonna follow through on all three steps. A lot of people are more likely to buy a book, because if you price your book—for the launch I did a lot of deal emails and stuff like that, so the e-book was priced pretty cheaply at $2.99. So you can get a lot of people to just click and buy, but writing the review and the social media takes a little extra work. So you just reach out to people and see what they say. A lot of people like being part of a team; you can give them exclusive content, you can give them other stuff like that to incentivise it, but that's definitely part of the launch team. What I would say about GoodReads is you can—for those who don't know, GoodReads is like Facebook for books basically—what you can do there is run a giveaway and that'll help to start getting some readers there. One of the tricks with GoodReads is they actually have the top 200 books coming out, but if you run a giveaway early and you get your book on early, then there's a good chance that you could hit their list of top 200 books coming out in December. Right now, if you take a look, I think to be in the top 200 you need only a hundred people adding the book to their shelf. When you run a giveaway, you may be able to get 500 people, so if you plan early, that can start the momentum, alongside those byline articles. Yeah, so getting those individual readers excited, getting those GoodReads reviews and getting even the launch team reviews are all really important.
Ameesha:
How soon would you recommend people do that? Is there ever a point that's too early to start their marketing and start getting the word out there?
Sam:
I think there is a point that is a little bit too early. Okay so there's a difference. If you're a famous author, you can build momentum for a really long time because you have your fan base and you have people excited. If you're not a famous author yet, you don't wanna get someone excited a year in advance because they'll forget by the time the book comes out. I think my four-month window was pretty good. I could've maybe done three or two months, but I could've also done six months. I think that's the sweet spot, in that range, to start getting it out there. Getting your book on GoodReads and getting a cover, getting your book up on Kobo, Apple, all of those, can happen beforehand just to make sure everything moves smoothly. If you're going to individual book stores you can go to one of the book distributors to get your book out there. Or if you're just doing it through Amazon, you can get that set up. So yeah, all of that in advance is fine, although one of the things you have to watch out for is to make sure that they accept pre-orders if you're doing it in advance, otherwise you go through the accidental publish process, and that's no fun. I think that's really the sweet spot.
Ameesha:
The pre-order thing as well, especially on Amazon, if you don't upload your book by the day you say you will, they'll cancel all of your pre-orders. So that's something to be super careful of, because if you do get pre-orders you don't wanna lose out on them by missing the date you need to upload the book by.
Sam:
Actually, an interesting thing as we're talking about Amazon: one of the things you can do with Amazon, especially with the Kindle, is try and move your way up in the Amazon store. Amazon, when you scroll down, has different categories and so, first off you should try to look at all the different categories and see how competitive they are, how popular those books are. You can see by looking at the ranking at the bottom. What you can do is if you build up a lot of momentum for launch, you can push your book into the top rankings. Typically, it changes because it depends on the current book landscape, but when I was launching [my] book, to get in the top thousand books, you needed about 300 to 500 sales in the first two days on the Kindle version and that'll put you in the top 1000 books on Amazon. And then you take a screenshot of that, use it to build credibility more. Really understanding that Amazon stuff, it can really go a long way.
Ameesha:
I think Amazon's it's own beast, isn't it? Even people from normal, more traditional marketing backgrounds are a bit like, "Wow, Amazon has so many different things," and you really have to understand it. So we offer some Amazon marketing services to authors. We can run advertising campaigns for them if they want paid ads. We also offer a service to get the book added to more categories and we did this the other day. An author got a number one bestseller in six categories just from us adding it to different ones. Then you can see it moves up to the next category, so it appears in more places. I think there is so much to learn about Amazon, so if you can find people who already know stuff about it, it's much easier than trying to understand it all yourself.
Sam:
Amazon is great in that sense. There's a lot of opportunity. The categories thing is key because you can hit bestseller or new release and the media views that very positively. The book media I will say, does not care about Amazon as much, they're more high level. They care more about the New York Times' bestseller list, they care more about Wall Street Journal's bestseller list, stuff like that. To do that, you need to move between five and ten thousand books in a week, through multiple different channels, spread out. That's very different, but the general person? If you hit Amazon bestseller, that's huge! You should be really proud of that.
Ameesha:
I think it is like Amazon has opened the floodgates for people who don't have access to things like the New York Times' bestseller list because they're self-publishing. It's really challenging for people to reach those spots and get those accolades, but it's nice that getting an Amazon bestseller is a thing. It's a cool thing to say you have to your name. I think that's personally why I love self-publishing, because it took that gatekeeper element out, where with traditional publishing there are definitely some really good benefits of it, but you have to be writing what they want at the time they want it, in the way they want it. Otherwise, you're not going to get a traditional publisher. But with self-publishing, you can publish anything.
Sam:
I agree with you completely. There are a lot of gatekeepers in the traditional industry and in reality, that takes away a lot of really great voices. That's why I think self-publishing is so, so great, and all of the categories on Amazon for people to find their niche and what they like, it's also so great. There are categories around—for my book—creativity, but there are categories for all different types of things and people have different niches. To be able to discover new authors—the author landscape is changing a lot, so I think it's really important to have a diverse group of voices being able to put themselves out there.
Ameesha:
I totally agree. On that note, are you going to be writing more books? Have you found it an enjoyable enough experience to have another go?
Sam:
You know, I think it's like—jumping back to the very beginning—it's gotta be something I feel really confident in and knowledgeable on. I think I do have some ideas for the future that I'm toying around with in my head, but I really wanna make sure I feel like I have that concrete understanding, that I'm an expert on it. In the meantime I'm gonna work on the continued marketing of Your Next Big Idea, putting that out there and trying to gain more press, gain more credibility and ultimately convert that to the business I'm working on. I think that's the plan. But I just need to really make sure that if I go down that path, I really know what I'm doing.
Ameesha:
Well I think you should, because your first book is awesome. It would be really cool if you did!
Sam:
Aww, thank you!
Ameesha:
How have you used to book to propel your business? It obviously has that connection to your day-to-day work as well.
Sam:
One thing that I found challenging is that, when you're an entrepreneur jumping into a new industry, it's really hard to have that credibility. And when I talk to people and go into sales meetings, use the book itself as a marketing method and compound it. It definitely adds to your credibility and makes you seem more legit, basically. Having an authorship, there's some psychological studies that say it's similar to having a PhD, it's viewed very similarly. So if you're able to write about something you really know, it's going to boost your credibility a lot, and as a younger entrepreneur, it's definitely challenging to get yourself out there. The average age of a successful entrepreneur is about 45. I'm not 45 yet, so getting the credibility from the book really helped with that and really helped propel my business.
Ameesha:
I'm glad to hear that, and I hope it continues to do so.
Sam:
Thank you! Same with you and your business!
Ameesha:
Thank you! Definitely. So, with everything you learned during the process, what skill do you think is the most important for an aspiring author to have?
Sam:
I think it's persistence. It's a grind. It is really tough and there are gonna be a lot of moments where you wanna take your computer and throw it at the wall. You just gotta stick with it, not only in the moments where it's frustrating, but the moments where you feel utterly confused, where you're like, "What do I even do? Who is someone who has done this?" You just gotta keep a little bit of the time and keep moving forward. As soon as it becomes a backburner type thing, where it's not something that you're passionate to persist and keep working on, that's where you might get in trouble. Just being consistent with whatever strategy your strategy is, that's really gonna help.
Ameesha:
That's definitely a good skill. There are times you'll feel like, "Yeah, I don't wanna do this." Like maybe when you get that first bit of feedback from your editor and you feel like you're just gonna bin it. Taking that time—whenever I send critiques to an author I always say to take a few days to process it or be annoyed or be upset or whatever, and then come back to me and we'll have a chat about which bits of the feedback you wanna take forward. I think sometimes you just have to accept that you're not gonna love every part of the process, nothing's completely fun. Being an author is definitely a cool thing, but there are parts of it that you're not gonna enjoy and you kind of have to find small things to enjoy in every part of the process. Or find someone to do it for you! If you know that you don't like the editing and the design part of things, just hire someone because you can spend a lot of time learning and trying to figure out these complex things. Actually it's sometimes not a great use of your time if you're spending a whole month just researching how Amazon works, when you could be propelling your business forward in other ways, or spending time with your loved ones. For the amount of time it takes you, you could've just hired someone. It almost becomes a false economy to think I'm gonna learn this part myself, when actually, it's probably cheaper for you to hire someone and use your time for something that's more important to you.
Sam:
I think if you're passionate about it, then go for it, if it's just an annoyance then by all means, you're not going to like it, it's gonna slow the process. I'm with you.
Ameesha:
Luckily, you can hire people who will manage the whole thing for you. So, one of the things we do is the project management side of—if you just come to us with your book, we can get everything done and you don't even have to speak to the other people. You don't have to talk to the designer if you don't want to. We can do that and I definitely think it's about knowing, as an author, how much of the process do you want to have control over and input in? How much are you just sick of it and just want to send it off to someone? See it when it's printed and it lands on your doorstep.
Sam:
For me personally, you guys were a huge help, so I'm very appreciative of that.
Ameesha:
Ah, I'm glad. So, do you have your top tip for authors?
Sam:
I feel like I'm someone that can just rant about all of the different tips I've learned over time, because I did not know anything about being an author and jumped into all of this. But the number one tip, I would say, is most people get caught up not finishing. There are a lot of people out there, they have the idea, they maybe even have an outline, maybe they even wrote the whole thing! But they don't get to the finish line. And I think that's the persistence thing as well. You really have to finish and it's actually sad because there are so many great works out there that aren't out there because they just didn't get to the finish line. So if anyone's telling me they wanna be an author: get it on paper, get to the finish line. A lot of people's first book is not that good, and that's okay, especially if you wanna continue to be an author long term, you're just learning and growing. So yeah, I think that's the number one tip.
Ameesha:
I think that's a great tip. Definitely, people learn and grow with every book. You can see people getting better. One of the really cool things for me is that most authors come back with their second book, third book, fourth book and I can see them improving and learning over time. That's such a big thing for me, empowering and upskilling authors so that eventually, I hope they don't need me anymore. They don't need an editor because they know everything I'm gonna tell them. They're like, "She's gonna tell me about my structure." So they fix it before they send it to me. So, it's really nice to see that progression over time and to see that they learn the process and they don't need as much help because they just understand how the book world works.
Sam:
I think it's great, especially working with editors. It might feel frustrating to get that feedback, but those are learning opportunities, how to structure better, how to learn and grow, so I'm with you on that.
Ameesha:
Also, just for fun, what nonfiction book changed your life? And you can't say your own. That's the caveat.
Sam:
No, of course. So, there's this book, How to Get a Meeting With Anyone by Stu Heinecke and it inspired me to actually write a book, that's why I decided to write a book. It's on contact marketing, and contact marketing is about very individualised and personalised marketing tactics. So if I'm trying to get a meeting with someone, I'm going to research them and then try to do something that's very personalised for them. But they talk a lot about book writing and the credibility of book writing. And then also jump started me on the path of how to build my own credibility, so that was a really impactful book for me, personally. Contact marketing, as a business person, is something that's interesting as well.
Ameesha:
Oh, that’s cool. If you could have dinner with three authors, who would you pick?
Sam:
Okay, it's so hard because there are so many great authors. But I wanna take, I think, Malcolm Gladwell with George R.R. Martin, just to have his psychoanalysis of the crazy world that is Game of Thrones. And then I'm a huge Adam Grant fan, so, I feel like I would love having him at the table as well, for more personal reasons. But I would love to see that interaction between this nonfiction, psychology historian, telling his story, and then the way that Game of Thrones is totally, absolutely crazy. So that kind of combo would entertain me all dinner.
Ameesha:
Yeah, so you're not even gonna be doing the talking, you're just gonna be watching them chat.
Sam:
I'm here for the show! I just wanna listen and see how that goes down.
Ameesha:
That's a cool answer! I like that. What's happening with your business now? What're you up to?
Sam:
If you're a local business or constituency that is interested in trying to bring out more innovation or bring out big ideas in your community, improve your community, you can go to heardllc.com and that will tell you all about my business. With the book, I'm growing the brand with the book as well. If you're interested in the book as well, you can check out yournextbigideabook.com and learn more about your next big idea. If you're a company looking for, maybe, HR resources and stuff like that, that's becoming really popular for me internally and that's a great tool. So yeah, that's what I'm working on.
Ameesha:
I hope that goes well, we'll add some links for people so they can connect with you and the services you offer.
Sam:
That sounds great, thank you so much.
Ameesha:
I'm so glad to hear it's all gone well with your business and obviously with the book. It's awesome to see you doing so well and seeing all these amazing reviews that you're getting and the amount of press coverage you had for the book is just next level.
Sam:
If anybody has any questions, they can go to the website and contact me, or contact you and you can reach out, we can stay in touch. There you go!
Ameesha:
That's really nice, thanks so much for speaking to us today! It's been so interesting and I feel like I've learned a lot as well, especially around the PR side of things, so thank you. I think our listeners will really enjoy that!
Sam:
Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it. As someone who's gone through this process I wanna share as much as I can so other people don't make the same mistakes I did.
Ameesha:
That's what it's all about, isn't it? Finding out from people who have done it. What did they do wrong? What should I avoid in the future? Well, thank you so much Sam, it's been really good talking to you today.
Sam:
You as well, this has been great! Thank you!
Ameesha:
We can’t wait for you to join us as we talk more about writing, publishing, and self-improvement on this podcast. And we’d love to hear from you! What tips would you find useful? What questions do you need answered? You can find us on our website, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter @thebookshelf.ltd. Send us your questions via social media! We’d love to hear from you.
In the next chapter, we’ll be speaking to Carly Peacock, author of A Pocketful of Porn, a shocking exposé of the porn industry, so don’t miss out!
The music featured in today’s episode is ‘Set Free’ by Katie Gray, which you can find on Apple Music and Spotify.
Thanks for listening to the Better Shelves podcast, we’ll see you in the next chapter!