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Julie Broad, nicknamed “Julie-the-book-broad,” is the bestselling author of Self-Publish and Succeed, the No Boring Books way to Writing a Nonfiction Book that Sells. She heads up publishing company, Book Launchers, and is well known for her popular YouTube channel, where she posts self-publishing tips and tools twice a week and extols the importance of writing and publishing and non-boring nonfiction book.
https://booklaunchers.com/7steps

Julie Broad is one of the featured contributors in The Inner Path of Writing, Make Love not War to the Writer Within, collated by Caryl Westmore where you can read some of the “golden nuggets” distilled from this interview.

In this interview with Caryl Westmore on the Write The Book Inside You Podcast, she talks about how to:

  • Overcome your “inner monsters” by befriending them because they will always pop up during the writing process
  • Outline your book as the key to writing faster and not waste time (which she learned the hard way by having 30 000 cut from one of her first books)
  • Write “#noboringbooks
  • Pay attention to a hooky title, subtitle and chapter headings (which should sparkle and sell a benefit )
  • Reveal some of your own vulnerabilities in a nonfiction book—which she does admirably in her own books, showing how she made mistakes and learned from them
  • Think all things marketing when you write a book. Too many writers write, publish and then think, “now what?”
  • Don’t just deliver content in a nonfiction book—tell stories and have a story arc
  • Pick a title that is memorable—and easy to say (on podcasts)
  • Make sure the subtitle tells who this is for and why they need to read the book
  • Get the url/domain for your book title if you can
  • Turn rejection and setbacks into fuel to succeed better
  • Finish your book. Some people spend five years rewriting their first chapter. Her attitude is—hand it to the professional copy editors and get on with finishing it.

On a personal level, Julie shares why, as an introvert, making YouTube videos suits her perfectly; and some of her best habits and routines for staying healthy and fit for the long game.

TRANSCRIPT

Julie Broad

You have to get to know your monsters and know what triggers them and bring them along for the ride, because they’re going to be there if you’re going to create a great book, you’re going to have these monsters that pop up but put your focus back on the reader and how you’re going to impact them how their life is going to be better after they read your book. And the monsters get quieter and they kind of just ride along in the backseat.

 

Caryl Westmore  

Our guest today, Julie Broad, nicknamed “Julie-the-book-broad,” is best known for her brilliant YouTube channel, where she posts self-publishing tips and tools twice a week and extols the importance of writing and publishing and non-boring nonfiction book. So welcome, Julie. We want to hear all about that today.

Oh, thank you so much. It’s one of my favourite subjects so I’m excited to chat with you.

Caryl Westmore  

Hello, and welcome to the right the book inside you podcast, tips, tools and interviews for coaches and healers like you want to write a nonfiction book to boost your visibility clients and cash flow while making a difference

Sponsoring the show today is Caryl Westmore’s book The Inner Path of Writing, Make Love Not War to the Writer Within, launched as a bestseller February 21 2023. This book is collated by Caryl Westmore, who interviewed 20 world class experts in the fields of publishing, authorship and transformation. They share how to break through your inner blocks and access your genius as a writer or creative. People are saying it’s like Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul. Buy this treasure trove of wisdom and get the accompanying bonuses at www.IPWBOOK.COM. And now let’s dive into today’s interview.

Caryl Westmore  

Give us a 30,000 foot overview of your life from real estate investing in Canada to Amazon overall number one bestselling author to running a company that helps other authors, professionals and entrepreneurs called Book Launchers.

CARYL – Our guest today, Julie Broad, has been nicknamed ‘Julie,the Book Broad,’ best known for her brilliant YouTube channel, where she posts self-publishing Tips and Tools twice a week, and extols the importance of writing and publishing a NON-BORING nonfiction book.

So welcome, Julie, we want to hear all about that today.

JULIE – Thank you so much. It’s one of my favorite subjects. So I’m excited to chat with you.

 

CARYL – So Julie, give us a 30,000-foot overview of your life from real estate investor in Canada, to Amazon number one best-selling author, to running a company that helps other authors, professionals and entrepreneurs called Book Launchers.

JULIE – It’s always funny when people go ‘you’re in real estate, but you run a book publishing company?’ But for me, real estate was never supposed to be the full-time thing. It was there when I decided I needed to quit my job. Tenants and toilets and all that fun stuff were always meant to be a backup, it wasn’t supposed to be the thing. When my book went to number one on Amazon a lot of people started to approach me looking for support. I contributed to a lot of traditionally published books, I was a content editor on one and I wrote chapters for others.

Then I started to coach some of my real estate clients with their books, which was way more fun. It was far more exciting than helping somebody pick up a property. So bit by bit I started to get this idea for a company that I felt was needed in creating books that were as good or better than a traditionally published book, but that were set up with marketing in mind from the beginning.

What I saw over and over was that the traditionally published books had a marketing plan before the author even got a book deal, versus most people who self-publish write the book first. Sometimes they even load it onto Amazon and then they go, ‘Okay, now, how do I sell it?’ which doesn’t set you up for success.

 

I saw a lot of people getting ripped off, which always breaks my heart. People who have great intentions want to have an impact. Then they hire the wrong people, or they go to one of these companies that promises you a best seller. It’s such a gimmick and it ends up hurting you and your book in the long run. Because of that I dreamed up a company that I would want to hire. Likewise if I was going to work, I wanted to have a company that I wanted to work in. So I built Book Launchers.

CARYL – When did you publish the first book, and how many authors have you helped?

JULIE – That was 2013, when my first book ‘More Than Cashflow’ came out. It was number one on Amazon in print books. Then I had another book that came out in 2016. That was as I was starting to pivot, I was just starting to picture my company Book Launchers. I wasn’t going as hard with that book because I was already kind of shifting in my mind. Then I started Book Launchers in 2017. I think it’s about 323/330 authors that we’ve worked with.

CARYL – ‘Self-Publish and Succeed’ is your latest book. It’s where the hashtag #NoBoringBooks comes from. What I like is that in that book you reveal some of your own challenges and things that you did wrong with your first two books. I think that helps to get you to a place where you can say, ‘Yes, this is why I don’t do that.’ One of them is the title of a book. Your second book is ‘The New Brand You.’ Tell us about that title which you confess doesn’t really work for publicity such as going on podcasts.

JULIE – It’s such a good example. I think even in real estate a lot of the things that were ‘mistakes’ I turned into things I could help others avoid. That’s how I look at everything that goes wrong. Like, ‘okay, great – now I can help other people.’ But I did a lot of work naming book two, it wasn’t like I just pulled the name out of the hat.

I called it the ‘New Brand You’ and if had I only gone a step further and done the test I now recommend,  which is tell somebody the title and then ask them later what the title was, I would have discovered that almost everybody calls it the Brand New You. It’s the most bizarre thing because people will be sitting there looking right at the book and they will say the ‘Brand New You’ probably 85% of the time.

This is why we always tell our authors that you might love your title, but you have to do some tests. You want to make sure you’re not competing with a major book in the same industry or same category with the same title – because two books can have the same title unless it’s trademarked. For example, Freakonomics is a trademarked title. But generally speaking 20 books can all have the same title. You can’t copyright a title.

If you can get the URL, that’s a bonus. If it’s three words or less, that’s a bonus. If it’s easy to say, that’s a bonus. But let’s make sure it’s easy to remember. Because you don’t want people saying the wrong book title. The real kicker is that the Brand New You is a book by Dorie Clark, who is a really popular branding person. So I do all this promotion for the New Brand You and the Brand New You gets all this publicity.

CARYL – That’s a very good tip. How does playing the inner game affect you?  Do you beat up on yourself and then put on this bright and breezy outlook that we see on the YouTube channel? Do you sometimes cry some ugly tears?

JULIE – I cry all the time. That’s how I survive life. Everybody has monsters. I call them your monsters because I picture mine as kind of cute and cuddly. It takes their power away. We can cuddle monsters, like from the Monsters, Inc, if anybody watches those movies. Not every author we’ve worked with that has a level of success has these monsters or lets them control them.

These monsters are valuable because they actually force you to take a different perspective and to work a little harder to make your book better. The common monsters are fear of judgment, fear of failure, or fear of success. Most people have a couple of them that are quite strong. Part of mine was always fear of judgment. I wanted people to like me, and it’s still there.

I’m very mission driven, I want to help people in this world and if I’m constantly afraid of being judged then I will not be able to have an impact. So the monster comes along with me, he’s big and green, and has a purple eye. It’s cool. Like we’re buddies now. You have to get to know your monsters and know what triggers them and bring them along for the ride, because they’re going to be there.

If you’re going to create a great book you’re going to have these monsters. They just pop up and when they do, put your focus back on the reader, how you’re going to impact them – how their life is going to be better after they read your book. Then the monsters get quieter and they ride along in the backseat.

CARYL – I thought one interesting so-called failure was that you were turned down by a traditional publisher for your real estate book, because you didn’t have a big enough social media platform. That rejection sent you on a journey to do what you’re doing today. Tell us a few stories of people who’ve got huge platforms, but only sell a few books.

JULIE – I want to touch on one piece you mentioned, which is basically every time something, quote unquote bad has happened in my life, it’s turned out to be one of the greatest gifts. I think part of the cheery attitude that you see out there is knowing that whatever is hard is actually a gift. It’s just that I don’t know what the gift is yet.

That doesn’t mean my life’s miserable right now. Or that it’s wonderful. That’s not what I mean. It’s knowing for every big challenge, every obstacle you encounter, that later on you’ll see it will be a gift. Like the rejection from traditional hybrid publishers Wiley. It was devastating at the time and it took me months to recover because I had friends that got book deals that didn’t have bigger platforms than me.

In the end they didn’t sell as many books as I did but they didn’t have the rejection that fueled me. Because that rejection was a gift. It forced me into self-publishing which I think for most authors is superior to traditional publishing. It also fueled me to work harder than I would have worked because I was terrified that nobody would buy or read my book.

As for the other side of it, at Book Launchers we haven’t seen a situation where an author has a good platform and they don’t sell books. But in the news lately, I’ve seen articles about some celebrity authors with a million plus social media followers, they get a big book deal, they get a big book signing, but they’re not translating into book sales.

Publishers are starting to rethink what they need in order to make a profitable book deal. So change does happen. What we recommend to people is if you are aligning the book with your audience and you’re clearly offering a solution to a problem that your audience has, then you’re going to sell books to them. Like my book Self Publish and Succeed is how to write a book that’s going to sell. People go ‘oh, I need that book.’ So if you make that alignment I think you can sell if you have an audience.

 

CARYL – One of your book description bullet points is: ‘Why aren’t we finishing our books?’

 

JULIE – Everybody’s different. There’s a variety of things I often see. One is this feeling of making it perfect, which again, it’s those monsters coming out of the closet that are stopping you. A lot of people are going for perfection so they’re either re editing to end up with a really beautiful first chapter, because every time they sit down to write, they’re re-reading, and editing that first chapter over and over and over again. Or it’s just never good enough. Like, it’s not quite ready. I’ve met so many people who’ve been working on a book for five years. I say, ‘Come on, just give it to us – give it to the editors, let’s get some professional feedback and start moving it forward.’

JULIE – Until you get the professionals in there you aren’t going to know what it needs. All day long your brain is going to show you the same things over and over again. So I say ‘get your bad first draft down, get all the content, you can possibly think of – all the stories, all the ideas, get it down on paper, read through it once and then bring in the professionals. You’ll get your book done in a year or a year and a half instead of five.

CARYL – Okay, not a book in a weekend – but maybe a first draft in a weekend, correct?

JULIE – You could. I’ve never done a first draft in a weekend. I’m so busy. I relate to people who have kids and a busy business. There’s not a lot of time. If I can carve out four or five hours a week to write my book, then I’m thrilled. You’re not going to write a book in five hours a week. So people who have the luxury of taking a whole weekend might be able to get a shorter book. But again, I’m going for GREAT. With our books, we want greatness. This is a book you want to be proud of 10 years from now. So you might get some good content down in a weekend but I think you’re probably going to take a few months to get that first draft done.

CARYL – One of the things I have learned from your book, Self Publish and Succeed is the importance of having an outline before you sit down to write. So tell us your views on that.

JULIE – I wrote my first book More than Cashflow without an outline and it turned out okay. I’m very proud of that book. But when I sent it to the editor I think they cut out 30,000 words, so I wrote a lot of stuff that I didn’t need to write and I obviously wasted a lot of time, which was inefficient.

With an outline – which is how I wrote Self Publish and Succeed – I worked with one of our writing coaches. Throughout the process it was so much easier because when you sit down and you’ve only got half an hour, you know exactly what section you need to write next. If you’re struggling on one section you can go to your outline and say, ‘okay, okay, this is the section I know I can write today.’ And you can make use of smaller periods of time.

JULIE – I also recommend people do writing sprints. Sometimes I do these on my channel at weekends.  People get 1000 to 2000 words done in 12 minutes – you’re burning up that keyboard writing. When you get focused like that you can write a lot, but you need an outline to do that.

You need to know the hook line of your book and you need to know the elements that you have to cover in order to achieve that hook for your reader. That’s what your outline needs to be and that’s the content that you need to focus on getting out.

CARYL – I love that word, ‘hook.’ I’ve used it in my own giveaway. I’m fascinated by something that you wrote about having a juicy hook – not only in the title and subtitle of your book,  but also in the chapter titles. Tell us about your view on this – the hooky chapters themselves.

JULIE – First of all, I’ll touch on the subtitle, because a lot of people don’t spend enough time on it. The subtitle has to really showcase who this is for and why they need to read your book. A lot of subtitles are way too generic. So spend time on those. Crafting the chapter titles is my favorite thing because I’ve landed speaking gigs off of chapter titles, and our clients have landed speaking and media gigs off of great chapter titles.

You want to brainstorm every chapter title, maybe not quite as rigorously as you brainstorm your title, but you want to make sure every chapter title sells a benefit, creates curiosity or delivers on some sort of value. If you look at another book in your category and you have one chapter title that’s the same as theirs, change that chapter. Because what you don’t want is to have a reader open up and click into the look inside feature or open up to that table of contents in the bookshop and go, ‘Oh, I’ve read this before.’

JULIE – I use the example of real estate books because I’d read probably 75 before I wrote mine. Every one of them had how to calculate cash flow and how to find a good area to invest in, so I made sure my book did not have those chapter titles. I knew after reading so many repetitive chapter titles the power of being original and sparking curiosity or selling a benefit. That way people booking speaking engagements will often ask, ‘Can you do a talk on that chapter title?’ Which is what happened in the New Brand You.

Why it DID sell some copies is because I had a chapter called ‘You are Who Google says you are.’ And I got invited to do quite a few talks on that subject, and they bought books. So if you can do that well, you can move copies just from one chapter title.

 

CARYL – In Self Publish and Succeed you’ve got a chapter title about how to save somebody 1419 hours of their time. Tell us more about that.

JULIE – That’s a good example of a chapter title where I’m selling a benefit. It talks about writing with an outline, that’s what that whole chapter is about. I think I touched on writing sprints in that chapter. I also acknowledged later on that I made up that number for the purpose of when somebody is looking at the table of contents, it’s going to make them curious, and it sells a benefit. People asked why 1419, why such a specific number? It made the point and you remembered it.

CARYL – The other thing I remembered for no boring chapters is KNOW YOUR WHY. Now if I write a chapter that is ‘Know your Why’ and I’m one of your clients, what are you going to say to me?

JULIE – That – and the SMART Goal Framework! If you put that in any of your chapters I’d say ‘ Take that out.’ It’s such a common thing. Like I haven’t seen it in a while. People have seen my videos complaining about it.  For a while I was looking at one or two books a week that had that as a chapter heading and I was like, no, in your specific genre, your specific style, whatever you’re talking about, go to that place, don’t go to ‘know your why.’ Rather sell the outcome of knowing your why instead, because know your why is such a common chapter title. It’s, as common as ‘Conclusion,’ which is another one I tell people not to do.

CARYL – Give us an example, I think I can remember one you gave as an alternative, like Dance with your Dream.

JULIE – Knowing your why is important. But you want to hook the reader with the outcome itself. It’s what happens for your reader – make that the outcome-based chapter. For me, with real estate, I talked about why are you investing in real estate? Well, when you know your why with real estate, you’ll choose the right properties. So I would probably make a chapter title like ‘The secret of buying the right properties for your lifestyle.’ Or ‘How to create the lifestyle you’re dreaming of with property.’

That is Know your Why, because so many people did what I did, which was buy these other people’s problem properties, which did not create the life I wanted to live, it created a lot of stress. Knowing your why shifted me to buying properties that were much lower stress. So that’s what Know your Why does.  I didn’t put this example in the book because I was talking about a specific client’s book at the time. But for anybody out there that has Know your Why – go to the outcome of that, knowing your why, and create a hooky title from that.

CARYL – I think that’s a very good example because we’re going to see now what makes a ‘no boring book.

JULIE – There’s so many. First of all, the story. A lot of people in nonfiction just deliver material or deliver content, which is okay, but it doesn’t make for something that people feel like they have to read, nor want to read. We want to create books that you want to read, creating a story arc. Even if you’re delivering a financial book that’s going to be fairly intense on the numbers, you can still have a story arc throughout that book that makes somebody keep turning the pages. It doesn’t mean you’re creating a fictitious story, but you want to create kind of an enemy in the beginning that you’re overcoming.

You’re going to take them through the journey of overcoming that enemy. So they get to this outcome at the end. That’s part of it. The other part of it is writing styles. One thing I’ll mention when it comes to nonfiction, a lot of people use really big words or jargon. They do that because of these monsters, because they’re worried about the judgment from their peers, they want to sound smart.

I had to reprogram myself after I did an MBA. I was really good at using words that didn’t really mean much but that sounded really smart. That was what I felt the MBA trained me to do. I was really good at fluff writing but it doesn’t connect with your reader. You want to dial it down to a grade six to grade eight level on the Flesch Kincaid score. You want to speak to the reader emotionally.

Let’s ditch the henceforth /therefore, all that kind of stuff. Just be real with the people that you’re writing for. That alone will help make it more interesting.

The final tip I’ll give, because I could give tips on this all day long, is that you need to share. You don’t have to open up and pour your heart out in emotional detail, but there does need to be a point of vulnerability. You need to be sharing something in the book that makes you feel a little exposed, because that’s what’s going to connect with a reader.

That’s what’s going to make somebody remember your story. When you feel a little bit exposed, that  tells you that you’ve been vulnerable enough to create that connection. If you feel totally fine with everything that’s in the book and you don’t care if anybody in the world reads it – then probably you haven’t gone deep enough, and it’s probably going to fall flat.

CARYL – So it’s about some obstacle you overcame, for instance, being rejected by a traditional publisher. You mentioned a book that changed your life – one of your motivators. Tell us that story.

JULIE – A coworker told me to go and buy the book that changed my life. I had just graduated from university and it changed how I looked at money, which is ultimately what got me into real estate investing. Most people are probably going,‘oh, that must have been Rich Dad, Poor Dad.’ That book did change a lot of people’s mindsets. For me it just started me thinking how I wanted to create something where my money is working for me. That was my big takeaway.

 

JULIE – My parents were always business owners, but they had what Rich Dad would call a job. They were self-employed people with jobs. They had to work – if they didn’t show up to work, their business did not run. They ran a motel, and then they eventually ran a B&B. We lived off the side of the highway and people would come in at two in the morning to get a room because they’re tired from driving on the highway, and my dad would put on his house coat, get out of bed, go downstairs, and rent them a room.

That was one of the memories I had. It was something that always stuck in my mind and that got me into real estate. My first company was a real estate training and education company that was remote.Book Launchers is also remote. I don’t have to be available at two in the morning. And I don’t have to be in one location.

CARYL – We’ve done the topic of nonfiction book for a professional entrepreneur. Let’s look at memoir which can be a legacy book. Does it also have to have a story arc and an editor? Or can it just be someone telling their life story?

JULIE – It depends on your goal. There’s a rule in publishing – do not tell how you have to do it. A memoir is a great example of a choice and an option. We have a client who’s hired us to help him write the book, and he has no intention of publishing it. He’ll probably put it through one round of editing and that’ll be it – because it’s for his family, it is a pure legacy story.

Then we have others that are in the middle where they do want to publish it, and we are editing it. But they say ‘I’m not worried about selling it – it’s for my kids and grandkids.’

JULIE – Then we have people who want their book to sell – it might be about you, but it’s not for you. It’s for the reader and you have to create a storyline that the reader is going to care about. You have to detach yourself from the details because the challenge that we find with memoirs is if you’re not famous a memoir is tricky to sell. You’re competing with celebrity names that don’t have to have a storyline their name and the cover sells the book.

You have to think, what is it about my story that somebody is going to care about? What’s going to be better or different in their life after they read my book? A lot of people go, ‘Oh, well, my story is inspirational or will create hope.’ That’s too generic. We have to go deeper than that. We have to find who specifically – like what type of person in what type of situation is going to be inspired, and when they’re inspired what’s going to happen?

Are they now going to finally find that love of their life, or now are they finally going to leave the job that makes them miserable and set out on something that they’re passionate about? You’ve got to go deep in order to create that and then only give the material that matters to that storyline and that outcome.

We have an example. I’ll blur it because I don’t want to reveal the client but this person was really attached to a story about her uncle. The uncle story took up a whole chapter and it did not fit with the hook and when it came out what do you think the reviewers said? The story about the uncle was really weird, but the rest of the book was great. 

You’ve got to just focus on the storyline and the hook and take the advice of people who aren’t emotionally attached to your story, because it’s very hard for you to objectively see what’s really going to matter to the reader.

CARYL – Are there any physical and emotional tools that you use to stay focused?  Are you a natural extrovert in going out twice a week on YouTube? I believe you’ve got a little son and a husband who has another career? How do you stay focused and aligned with who you want to be?

JULIE – I’m an introvert, a very high introvert. In fact it’s always funny when people think I’m an extrovert. But YouTube and speaking are actually wonderful gifts to introverts like me because people come to me. The hardest thing for me as an introvert is meeting people because I don’t naturally go out and say, ‘Hey, hello, let’s be friends.’ I’m usually the person standing against the wall going, ‘Okay how long till I can actually make my exit?’ That’s more accurate.

But YouTube and speaking allows people to come forward to me and I genuinely enjoy the connection. It’s just not something I’m naturally pursuing myself.

JULIE – As far as taking care of myself, I haven’t had alcohol in16 years. I’m a vegetarian, I sleep eight hours a night, I do cold plunges, therapy, meditation, breathing. If you run a business with a lot of employees and contractors – there’s almost 80 people on my team right now – and you’re writing books, and you’ve got a family, you have to take care of yourself.

You can show up and be there for the people in your life and not be reactive to all the crazy things. Especially these days. If people are thinking ‘I can’t do all that,’ there’s two tips I can offer. One is to take a walk. Walking is incredibly powerful – and getting outdoors in the middle of the day, every day, especially when things are stressful and you feel like you can’t take a break. That’s the most important time to take a 20-minute walk, get outside, get some fresh air.

JULIE – The other thing I would say is layering things on. This month you wake up and the first thing you do is drink a big tall glass of water, because you’re most dehydrated when you wake up in the morning. So that could be the first thing you do this month, that’s all you do. That’s your new habit. Then next month, maybe you say, ‘Okay, now I’m going to wake up, have that tall glass of water and go for a 20-minute walk first thing.’

Gradually build on it. That’s how I built up my protocols. I didn’t one day say, ‘Okay, these are all the things I’m going to do to take care of myself. Last year I added cold plunging. You add the things on and then all of a sudden you look at them and you’re like, ‘wow, I’ve got this huge list of things I do to take care of myself so that I can show up for the world.’

CARYL – You’ve given two very practical tips there. I believe to read your book you also get up an hour earlier which sounds like you must go to bed early to get your sleep.

JULIE – Most of the time I would get up at about five to write – to get the hour in before my son would wake up. I do go to bed early.  I often put my son to bed at eight and then tidy up the house and then go to bed myself. So at nine o’clock I go to bed, because sleep is vital. You need it to fight off all the germs, you need it to handle stress, your brain needs it to organize everything that you’ve gone through in the day. And I’m just a nicer person when I’ve slept. So sleep is important.

CARYL – It’s why I put on the Summit – to show people that you need to look after yourself as a writer, as a creative, and wanting to make profit. I’ve learned that over the years. That’s one of my passions. And so thank you for sharing yours. Is there anything else I haven’t asked that you’d like to mention?

JULIE – I think book writing and publishing is a team sport. So no matter what your resources are I think that if you have limited resources you can’t necessarily hire a full-service company, like Book Launchers. So look at your resources and figure out what you CAN do with them. Because books are a business, even if it’s a side gig. When you write a book you’ve created a business. You need to look at the tax write off opportunities – the resource allocation. You’re the CEO of this business, you’ve got to make decisions about your resources.

JULIE – I don’t think anybody can or should release a book without at least one professional editor. Then there’s the book cover, that’s everything, right? If you have a bad book cover it’s going to kill your book. If you have limited resources I would say make sure you’ve got enough for an editor and for a book cover.

You can DIY the rest if you need to, to get your first book out there. I think a lot of people try to do it all themselves and you want to have something you’re not ashamed of in the future. It’s really hard to unpublish books. We’ve had to help clients try to unpublish books. eBooks are not so hard. You can’t  pull them off of people’s e-readers so they’re still out there in the world. Print books are really hard to unpublish because there’s all these resellers out there in the world.

The only way to get all of them off the market is to buy them and then you still can’t stop them from popping up again in the future. I always tell people that you want to put something out there that you’re going to be proud of 10 years from now.

CARYL – But you can update and change the cover, can’t you? I mean, my book from 10 years ago, had a picture of me then and I’ve now changed it.

JULIE – You can never get back the copies that are out there in the world.  It’s one thing to update and revise and have a new edition. I meet a lot of people who go, ‘Oh, I’m embarrassed by that book.’ They put something out really fast, they didn’t have an editor on it. It’s full of typos. They sold a couple 100 copies and they can’t get those back.

They don’t know where they are, you never know when they’ll resurface. That’s why we say it doesn’t have to be a perfectly polished thing if you’re low on resources. Do your best to make it as good as possible so that you’re not regretting it when you build your platform and 10s of 1000s people know who you are, and then they pull out this thing that you put out into the world. You’re like, ‘oh, no, pretend that didn’t exist.’

CARYL – So Julie, I believe you have a free gift for our audience. Tell us about that.

JULIE – I’ve got a download that will help you plan your book so that you’ve got that outline, you’ve got your audience – all the important things we talked about including the hook. So you can get that at

www.booklaunchers.com/7steps

You can download that to help you plan a book that will sell.

CARYL – That’s a great gift. If you had a quote or something to tell your younger self in the world of book writing, what would you say?

JULIE – I always tell people, the missing piece is always action. You know, the lights are never all green. You’ve got to just take a step. You will never see how you’re going to get perfectly to the end destination. So figure out your end goal and then just take a step and just keep taking steps.

CARYL – Thank you. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you today telling us how to succeed with the inner game of writing – but also how to profit when we market the book. Thank you, Julie.

JULIE – Thanks for having me.