Episode 101: Welcome to the Best of Book Marketing!
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron introduce our new book marketing podcast, talk about setting realistic expectations when building an author platform, and how to avoid the biggest book marketing mistakes.
Common mistakes that authors make when building a book marketing plan include misunderstanding the role of social media, not defining goals, and lacking a clear target reader.
They also chat about the dangers of comparing to others and share a free resource for download - Lainey’s book marketing framework.
Plus, they solicit ideas for future guests and topics! Send us your ideas (or submit as a potential guest)!
Join our newsletter and you'll always hear about new episodes and resources!
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a quick rating or review!
Episode Resources
Download Lainey’s Book Marketing Framework
Avoid These 14 Self-Publishing Mistakes
Books Mentioned
Soul Dancing by Gail Priest
What Eyes Can’t See by Paulette Stout
The Exit Strategy by Lainey Cameron
Episode Sponsors
12 Weeks to Book Launch Success - Lainey’s program to help authors successfully launch their book
Program Info - 12 Weeks to Book Launch Success.
Join the wait list for 12 Weeks to Book Launch Success
Join Lainey’s list for free book marketing tips and webinars
Paulette’s Indie author coaching - schedule time here or email her at info@paulettestout.com
Women Writers Women’s Books - Contact Barbara Bos - email barbarabos@booksbywomen.org - for info on sponsorship of the sites, group and social media
Note: next sections are mostly created by AI for your convenience - so please forgive any typos or inaccuracies!
Summary
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discussed the importance of understanding the target reader, avoiding ineffective marketing strategies, and prioritizing sustainable marketing efforts.
They emphasized the need to prioritize joy and energy when promoting one's work, and to tailor marketing approaches to different publishing models and author stages.
They also stressed the importance of setting realistic expectations when building an author platform, creating a strong community, and defining personal success in writing. Both speakers emphasized the value of creating unique opportunities for readers and building a community beyond one's own book to expand one's reach and grow one's platform.
Book marketing strategies and resources for authors
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron introduced themselves as marketing professionals and authors.
Lainey Cameron has a background in marketing and writing women's fiction, with experience in startups and big companies like IBM.
She started a podcast called The Best of Women's Fiction and an author community to help authors with marketing, leveraging her marketing expertise and author experience.
Lainey Cameron and Paulette Stout discuss marketing strategies for authors, covering various publishing models and providing valuable resources.
The hosts share their perspectives on building a good book marketing plan, including a free five-page PDF download on the topic.
Marketing books with a focus on social proof and reason to act
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss marketing strategies for authors, emphasizing the importance of starting with a clear "why" and prioritizing a small number of foundational tactics.
Focus on social proof (reviews, endorsements, influencers) to build credibility for your book.
Lainey’s review of Paulette’s book is more credible than Paulette’s own praise.
The speaker discusses the importance of a multi-faceted marketing plan for authors, including awareness, social proof, and a reason to act.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of giving readers a reason to buy a book immediately, rather than waiting for a discount or promotion.
Writing and marketing books, with a focus on women's fiction
Paulette Stout emphasizes the importance of writing a good book and focusing on the reader's experience.
Lainey Cameron discusses the challenges of marketing books that cross genres and the importance of describing the emotional impact of a book.
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss the importance of considering market expectations while writing, but also prioritizing passion and creative expression.
Authors should write what brings them joy and fulfillment, even if it means deviating from market trends or genre conventions.
Writing and marketing books with a focus on joy and sustainability.
Paulette Stout emphasizes the importance of joy in writing and marketing books.
The hosts discuss various marketing topics for authors, including getting reviews and identifying target readers.
Lainey Cameron: Prioritize joy and energy conservation in marketing efforts.
Paulette Stout: Health and personal priorities should take precedence over promotional tasks.
Book marketing strategies for authors.
Paulette Stout shares her experience of writing and publishing books, including the challenges and mistakes she's made.
Lainey Cameron discusses the importance of marketing for authors, and how they help authors with marketing strategies.
Sponsor Segment
Lainey Cameron is offering a 12-week program to help authors launch their books successfully, with a waitlist available for the next session.
Providing free marketing tips and webinars on various book marketing topics, with sign-up available on her website.
Paulette Stout offers author coaching with limited availability.
Barbara Boss offers sponsorships for women writers and readers through her Facebook page and group.
Book marketing mistakes, focusing on spending too much on awareness without creating reason to act.
Authors often make the mistake of spending all their money on awareness without creating reason to act or social proof.
Paulette Stout advises against relying solely on publicists for marketing, as they only provide one element of a marketing plan.
Authors should have realistic expectations about the impact of publicity efforts on book sales.
Paulette Stout: Building an author platform takes time, and having more books to sell attracts more readers.
Economics of selling multiple books are better than selling one, as costs remain the same to acquire readers.
Paulette Stout emphasizes the importance of building a platform and community beyond just one book.
Stout suggests authors should feature other authors' books in their platform to expand the selection and attract new readers.
Common mistakes authors make when publishing books, including misunderstanding social media, not defining goals, and lacking a clear target reader.
Paulette Stout co-authored an anthology to address the lack of women's fiction anthologies and help others in the community.
Authors often misunderstand the purpose of social media, thinking it's solely for selling books, when it's actually for building community.
Paulette Stout advises authors to define their "why" and set goals to help process emotions and make decisions.
Authors should write down their "why" to have a personalized framework for understanding success and managing mindset.
Setting realistic goals and avoiding comparison to others in the writing industry.
Paulette Stout advises against comparing oneself to others, especially when it comes to writing goals and progress.
Writing down goals and comparing to one's own progress, rather than comparing to someone else's, can help with motivation and productivity.
Paulette Stout and guest discuss setting personal goals in writing, avoiding comparisons to others.
Women's fiction writing, marketing strategies, and upcoming webinars.
Lainey Cameron invites listeners to suggest podcast topics, including marketing a standalone vs. series, and will prioritize based on usefulness and add resources to the website.
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron plan to live stream and release audio episodes once a month, focusing on topics chosen by listeners.
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss podcasting and marketing strategies for authors.
They encourage listeners to join their newsletter for updates and resources, and to subscribe to the podcast for easy access to future episodes.
Transcript
(Created with AI assistance, so please forgive any typos!)
Lainey Cameron 0:01
Hi, I'm Lainey Cameron.
Paulette Stout 0:04
And I am Paulette Stout.
Lainey Cameron 0:06
And we are so jazzed to be here for the very first episode of the Best of Book Marketing, which is going to be both a video podcast and audio. We'll talk more about that. And we are broadcasting live, you can find us right now on YouTube on Women Writers Women's Books page, hopefully you can also see us in the group, which is a phenomenal group of writers, almost 20,000 writers. And we're gonna start by introducing ourselves telling you a little bit about this new podcast and why we're doing it. And we're gonna get into some fun content, we're going to talk about some of the biggest mistakes that writers make. So
Paulette Stout 0:44
You know, you do you know, you do it.
Lainey Cameron 0:48
And we've made some of them ourselves. So yeah.
Paulette Stout 0:50
Yes. A few too many.
Lainey Cameron 0:54
So, hey, we wanted to start with a little bit of a personal introduction, because not everybody watching here knows you and me Paulette. Some people do, some people don't. So we're gonna start by kind of introducing ourselves. So you want to go first?
Paulette Stout 1:06
Sure. I am Paulette Stout. I am a lifelong marketer over 30 years, working in the corporate and nonprofit space in marketing. I'm currently the Director of Brand Marketing for a NASDAQ listed public software company. And I am the author of three novels, I write contemporary women's fiction / contemporary fiction, spicy all. So hopefully, you'll check them out. And I do offer coaching too. So lots going on. How about you Lainey?
Lainey Cameron 1:40
I am very similar to you in that I come from a marketing background. So I'm not terrified of marketing, like many writers, I mean, you have every right to be terrified of marketing, mostly because it ends up wasting your time sometimes. And I hate that, we'll talk more about that. But I have a marketing background. So I did like, gosh, I started out my career before I was an author, I started my career with startups. And then I ended up with really big companies like IBM, I managed multibillion dollar divisions of IBM creating all their marketing plans and strategies. And then I ended with 10 years in startups. And it's always fun getting businesses off the ground, because you start with nothing, right? You don't even have a name for the company, you don't have a name, you don't have a brand, kind of like starting your author career where you're starting from scratch, right? Yeah. And you have to work out, like who's your target customer, or in our case, who's your target reader. And so I come from this background of understanding marketing. And then I came to this as an author, and was so surprised by how much garbage we were telling authors. Here's the list of 500 things you must do to market your book, by the way, 499 aren't worth your time and don't actually work. But you should do them anyway. Because someone told you, you should. And so that's kind of what got me into wanting to help authors with marketing, because I just got so frustrated coming from that background myself with all the garbage we were telling writers to do. And I don't know how many hours in the day, I don't know, but the rest of you, but I don't tend to waste on stuff that doesn't work. And so that's kind of what brought me into this. And we'll talk a little bit more about what I do for people in the marketing space. But that's my background. And I'm a writer of women's fiction. I have one book in the world a second one that I have no rewritten for the third time. If anyone's wondering what happened to my second book, I'm still working on it. I promise, I promise. And my first one one, a lot of words like yours. Polat. Right. We both one.
Paulette Stout 3:27
thing? Yes. Yeah. And
Lainey Cameron 3:29
I have another podcast called The Best of Women's fiction that I started during my debut year, which is a reader facing podcast. And I'll have some fun news on that soon, I hope. But that's been an interesting experience again, and it became an award winning podcast a couple of times. So I reckoned why not take all of those things, my marketing expertise, the fact that I'm an author, the fact that I know amazing people like you, and do something to help authors with marketing.
Paulette Stout 3:52
Yeah, it's for sure Lainey, because I think like me, like we are in author groups, we're answering questions. And it just felt like this made sense to have a bigger platform to answer questions that can help way more people than we could ever do, like in a Facebook group.
Lainey Cameron 4:08
Exactly. And so that's kind of us and why we're here. And we're going to be we'll talk more about this. But we're going to be broadcasting live once a month on the second Friday of the month, which is right now at 1pm. Eastern, and then we'll be turning this into an audio podcast episode. So if you're more of the kind of person that likes to like clean your house, or drive around listening to things, you'll be able to get the audio version on all the platforms. And people are already asking me, How do I find it? Where is it? It's going to be on Spotify, it's going to be on Apple, two Fridays from now. So I think that's Friday 24th. And you'll find it first thing in the morning, give us a couple of weeks to get it all sorted up. But you can do either you can watch us live on Women Writers Women's Books or on our YouTube channel, or you can listen to the audio.
Paulette Stout 4:49
It's kind of like listen your way just like the philosophy of marketing, right how people can take all the information in it. And then use what works for that. So we're all about being flexible, be all.
Lainey Cameron 5:04
Yeah. And we had, Paulette and I had some great conversations for this, like, are we going to only focus on indie books? For example, should we only do indie marketing because indie authors own their own marketing. And then I said, Well, Paulette, I came from a small publisher, and I had to do all my own marketing, too. So I think everybody needs marketing help, but it does differ. And so you'll hear us as we do this podcast, try and say, you know, this is really relevant if you're with a big publisher, or this might be different. If you're an indie author, we'll try and remember to say that, because we are going to talk to all the publishing models here, not just one particular publishing model, right.
Paulette Stout 5:36
And I think the beauty of marketing in general, the fundamentals of whether you're marketing software companies, or breakfast cereals, or technology, the fundamentals are all the same. It's, you have something you are marketing to someone, and there's something in the someone changes, but the principles of marketing really are very the same for everyone.
Lainey Cameron 5:58
Yeah, exactly. And actually, we were going to talk about that a little. So one of the things we'll do in this podcast is when we can, we will give you great resources, whether it's someone else's resources, or something we can make available. polet already has some great blog articles out there. And so the first thing I want you to know is if you go to our website, which is best of book marketing.com, you will find a page called tips and resources. And you will already have a ton of where we recommend to go polet blog articles, and I'm giving you something I've never given out before, I'm gonna give you my book marketing framework for free. So this is the framework that my entire program that I teach for authors is based off. And it's a four part framework, and it's how I see the question of what should be in a book marketing plan. And so I can talk a little bit more about that, no, but I want you to know that you have a download on the website, which is actually a five page PDF that I put together, explaining my perspective on how you build a good book marketing plan.
Paulette Stout 6:51
It's a really great resource, you also go check it out. She's way nicer than me, I have some resources thing, but you know what, you kind of pay for me to get that, y'all. So that's not there. But go check out Lenny's list, it's gonna really be a great place to start.
Lainey Cameron 7:04
So Paulette, what is your philosophy of like, how do you think about marketing a book and you're coming at it? Especially from an indie perspective, you've had several successful indie books? Like how do you think about this whole question of what does marketing book look like?
Paulette Stout 7:17
I think it's all about you know, start, like knowing your why for sure. You know, what are you trying to accomplish with your book, and just, there's so much information out there, just to remember, you don't have to do all the things, you know, you read so much. And you'll read one blog, it'll say one thing and read another blog, that's another thing, you'll sign up for a free webinar. And they'll say one thing, and then you take a course and they'll say something else, and you talk to your friends, they say, and you just get really overwhelmed by all of it. So just though, you don't have to do everything. And you can do different strategies and tactics at different stages of your author life. So don't feel overwhelmed, like you're falling behind, if you're not doing something that you see another offer doing.
Paulette Stout 8:05
I like that, yeah, like I said, I hate these lists of like, here's 400 things you must do, or even 50, like, how many of us can do that many things. So like my framework, I have four parts to it. And my theory is you need to do something in each of the four. But it can be a small number of things, it doesn't need to be, you know, a huge list. And so the way I think about it, you've got some foundational stuff that you have to get right in order to market your book. So the most important thing in the foundations is your target reader. We're going to talk more about this, but understanding the person who will adore your book. And I really mean that not the person who might kind of sort of like it will adore will fall in love with it and will tell all their friends how much they fell in love with it. And so that's kind of the most important element of your foundation. But your foundation also includes like what are your Amazon categories, your keywords, all the basics, your author brand, your platform, you're often newsletter, all the basics you want to have in place. And so that's what I think of as kind of like we start there, and there's what I teach in my class. And then from there, from there, I really recommend people look at social proof and social proof. That's the idea of other people talking about the experience of reading your book. So yeah, obviously the most recent obvious one is like reviews right people doing reviews, but like author endorsements, influencers reaching out to influencers, those are all in the category of social proof. So it's word of mouth when someone else is talking about your book and what I like about focusing there first is you know, you can say whatever you want about how awesome your book is, but is it more credible? If I say my book results is awesome, or Polat says my book is awesome. Vice versa.
Paulette Stout 9:36
Your book is awesome, you know your gold and thanks everyone for commenting in the chat. Thank you. Oh oop she's holding my book!
Lainey Cameron 9:45
I have Paulette's book in my hand, the most recent one, which I wrote a review of and it is awesome, just in case anyone is wondering.
Paulette Stout 9:51
I love it. It's also available in hardcover. Y'all see that when Where's the camera, there it is.
Lainey Cameron 9:58
So my point is,
Paulette Stout 9:59
Always be marketing.
Lainey Cameron 10:02
It's much more credible when I tell you how fabulous Paulette's book is than what she tells you, right? When I tell you, it's dealing with issues of racism. And it really took me on this journey where I was like with the main character, and she was this really strong woman, and I really related to her, like, it's so much more credible, if I say it, versus when Paulette says it. And so that's why you want to focus on social proof. It's other people talking about your book. And also the good news is that isn't terribly expensive, okay, compared to awareness, which is where you're at trying to make people aware that your book exists. And that can be insanely expensive, right? That's where people hire a publicist, for example, and they might spend a boatload of money on a publicist, some people spend 1520 $25,000, and up on a publicist. Yeah. And awareness alone doesn't sell books. And that's one of the points I make in my class, like, I'm fine. Let's go do some things on awareness. But let's just remember that awareness alone without social proof won't sell your book. Okay, you can think about it. If you hear about a book, and you go read the blurb. And the blurb is kind of interesting as a reader. But there's no other proof. There's no reviews, it has three reviews in total. And there's no author endorsements, and there's no information on what anyone else thought of that book, you're going to buy that book, are you going to wait and see until you hear more, you're going to wait and see. And so that's the challenge with just awareness stuff. And then the last part of my framework is reason to act. And that is give people a reason to buy your book No versus next week. And there are lots of different ways to do that. Not just discounting the price, I think people like to think discount the price is the only way to give people a reason to buy now. But I'll tell you, one of the best reasons to buy now is if you're opposite an author at a table and an author is signing books, why would you then go home and order the same book on Amazon and get it next week, when you get a real human author talking to you who's willing to sign it with your name. And so that's a brilliant reason to act, which is not discounted pricing. So I like to also say, don't just think giving people a reason to act as just about discounting the price of the book. Sure, that can be a very effective marketing tactic, especially when combined with some other things like promo stacking. But it's not the only way to give people a reason to act, you can have special access to the author's special downloads that you only get if you buy in a certain period. Lots of things you can do. But that's the last part of the framework. And if you want to have a good, good marketing plan, from my perspective, you need all of these right? You need a little bit and awareness, you need your social proof, and you want to give people a reason to act. But you can have one or two things in each category. And that's a very solid plan. And total itself.
Paulette Stout 12:28
And exactly and you don't, you know, there's things that you need to do right away. And there's things that you kind of roll out. And then it's also how you execute all of that. Are you doing it in a professional way? Are there typos in your book description? Are you following best practices for cover design? Well, we'll get into an episode of cover design when working on that. So it's all about what you need to do, and then how you execute it that together can lead you to a successful place.
Lainey Cameron 12:57
Exactly, exactly. And I'm also loving, we're seeing some of the comments on the life hear someone I know who's in my class right now is saying she really likes the framework. That's really nice to hear. And Gail priest whose book I actually just read soul dancing, which is absolutely phenomenal. That's in the category of books. I've been talking to everybody about like, like, every time I meet someone right now, I'm like, have you read this one?
Paulette Stout 13:20
People, if you have not read Soul Dancing, just just go get it people because I want to give you tell you something I didn't tell anybody. Like it was my husband's birthday. And I was sitting there reading the girl's book because sorry, honey, I was just it was really juicy. And I wanted to get back to it. So that's a good, the best thing you can do in marketing is write a good book. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. We love you.
Lainey Cameron 13:50
And and yeah, and I love it's actually a great example of sometimes it gets tricky marketing a book when it crosses genres. So Soul Dancing is very imaginative. And it deals with the afterlife and a character being in different bodies in the afterlife. I don't think I've given a spoiler here. And so it's really hard to describe right talk about a book that's, like difficult to describe. But I find that when you focus on the experience of how it made you feel, and it made me feel like love is possible. And it made me feel hopeful. And it made me feel like refreshed reading it. And I find that sometimes it's easier for other people to describe the experience of your book and to describe the content and the plot.
Paulette Stout 14:26
Yeah, for sure. And then it also touched on like different themes that might be taboo and some things touched a little bit on religion a little bit you know, on you know, some has a few triggers in there that but it's handled it also beautiful, you never got overwhelmed. You were really engaged with the story in your present. So I think that's another beautiful way of as a as artists as creators that we can write what we want, but then be mindful of what the marketplace is expecting and put it in that context. So I think that that's a great way to Think about marketing, because you shouldn't be thinking about marketing as you're writing the book as well, you know, as much as you can just to if you have to go this direction or that direction. Another check for you is what's right for your genre or for your reader, your ideal reader, or what are they looking for?
Lainey Cameron 15:19
Oh, interesting. So one of the things, this is perfect, one of the things we agreed on upfront is polet. And I will disagree sometimes. And that's why they're hosting the podcast because we don't want to always agree because things differ, right? They differ by publishing model, they differ by type of book. So this is really interesting, because I think Gail, while she was writing this book, she's probably cringing here like that. We're talking about her book as an example, so much. This was not planned at all. This is live. So happened that Platt and I both read and adored this book, okay. But you know, if they were writing this book, and she was thinking too much about the reader, she might say, Oh, no, this book crosses genres, I should change it to only be in one genre, and it would be easier to sell if it didn't cross genres. And it wasn't like across multiple, like, you got a lot of supernatural a little bit, a big bit of a love story. You got women's fiction, like, she might say, if she put her head in her head as she was writing her best white market and sell this, I think it might have stalled, arrived. We could ask her later, but like,
Paulette Stout 16:14
No, but my only point was, I think we're on the same page. It's basically like, if you're at a place and you're trying to make a choice, I'm not sure which way to go. And like all, like the playing field is equal, you could use as a reference point, what are sheltering expectations? What would my ideal reader or prefer be do in this case, you know, it's more of that neutral playing field that like you're trying to write to mark that originally cap, because I certainly don't do that. And
Lainey Cameron 16:43
Right, some people write to market some people believe very strongly in writing to market, I probably I'm not doing it I'm writing for passion for like love of the art. As a way to say it. That sounds weird. It sounds pretentious, but like, you know, I wouldn't be writing what I'm writing. If I was trying to sell those copies, I'd be writing romance, I'm probably writing erotic steamy romance, because that is where the market is where a lot of people are buying those books, and they love them to death, right. But I'm writing these difficult books for me to write, which are women's fiction that are all emotion like, and it's way harder to get that on the page. And I probably could write other things faster. So sometimes there's also the element of just like, What are you passionate about what's going to bring you joy, and you only write so many books in your lifetime? So break what's going to bring you that joy as well.
Paulette Stout 17:25
Yeah, it'll have to, you have to have some, you have to have the joy, you need to focus on the joy. Because if you don't like or when you're reading people pick up on that in the page, like in my last book that I just wrote. But I can see, that was my first book that I wrote that I never got sick of editing, because I just loved it. And I feel like the response is showing that so you have to keep the joy in your writing. And if you don't like it, then it's really hard for you to advocate it in a marketing space, trying to get other people to read it too.
Lainey Cameron 17:51
And so some of the topics I know we're going to talk about will probably need to do an episode on writing to market and the pros and cons. Right.
Paulette Stout 17:59
Right. To my There
Lainey Cameron 18:02
There we go. And we've had some great suggestions. And we'll we'll talk more about we'd love some more ideas. But some of the topics we already have on our list for episodes, here is how to get reviews. I've heard that's a big one, how to identify your target reader the right way. Certainly some things around, add some things around. I think our next episode is going to be how to market your book after it comes out. And that one we're very excited about because we all talk about launches. But how do you actually market after it's out the door? And we're inviting you we'll show you specifically how at the end of the episode, we're inviting you to tell us we're very interested in what topics you would like and what experts you'd like us to bring in.
Paulette Stout 18:38
For sure. Yeah, definitely. I'm hoping for us. And I think we both agree, honestly, any is we don't we don't want to tell you the what we want to tell you the why. Because so much of what you read out there in terms of marketing advice centers on, you should do this. But then it doesn't really tell you why then you can decide if that's the right choice for you. Because you know, publishing path genre, where you are in your career, what your priorities are all of that plays into whether that's a good choice for you. And so we'll hopefully be able to give you the context, behind a lot of advice so that you can decide whether, yeah, that's up for me, oh my god, I have to get on that right away.
Lainey Cameron 19:18
You know, when I advise my class on awareness activities, and the thing with awareness activities for your book is there are like hundreds of things you could do, right. And most of them you won't even know the results. And it's kind of frustrating, but, but awareness, you could do hundreds of things. And one of the things I say to the class, in addition to only do things that hit on your target reader, one of the things I say to them is do the stuff that brings you joy, if something is entirely draining for you, and going to sit face to face at a book fair will require you to have a week of recovery time and to hide under the table. Maybe just don't do it like do something else instead, like I'm a big believer and don't do the stuff that's going to drain all your energy and make you feel like crap.
Paulette Stout 19:54
Yeah, for sure. And that because all of this stuff takes effort and energy and there's only so much of the day. I mean, we We all have other things going on in our lives, we have family obligations, we may work or whatever, you know, we just want to have time to, you know, watch TV. Like, yeah, I know read books Exactly. It's so funny because we get sometimes get so hyper focused on executing that we we drain ourselves and then halfway through, like hit a wall and recover. So we like to build a sustainable way of being so that we can enjoy all facets of our life at the same time. And
Lainey Cameron 20:33
We're all dealing with different things like me, I have a chronic health condition. And people think of me as this really high energy person than I am 80% of the time. And then there's that five 10% of the time where I'm just a mess, and I can't do anything that week. And you have to be able to be able to roll with that. And so I have empathy for anyone who doesn't have complete control of their own situation, because it feels that way to me, and I have to kind of build a plan that allows me to not have complete control of my own health at all times.
Paulette Stout 20:58
Yeah, for sure. Health is important. And then sometimes we just have to give ourselves grace that there's other priorities in life and other stuff has to come first, and not beat ourselves up about not running your promo because you had something serious going on. And you just didn't have the brain space to match a ball.
Lainey Cameron 21:13
That was this week. For me. That was this week. For me a lot of personal stuff going on. My mom broke her shoulder, she's been in and out of the ER, it's like life sometimes just gets in the way of the stuff you had planned. And I think I've been trying to take the longer term view as well. Like, it doesn't really matter in this particular 24 hours, whether you do those things to market your book, you're in this as a career author, you probably don't have one chance one book one day, right? Like you, you know this right, you're getting so much traction now on the third book in your series. But the first one probably felt like it was make or break. But look at this. The third one is the one taking off like crazy.
Paulette Stout 21:48
Yeah, it's kind of hilarious. The first book took me like 17 years to write and so many eras. You know that when I did query and then I decided to Self Publish, and it became a whole thing. And but this one you just, I just wrote I think it was Linda ladders. substack. She interviewed me for that. And it was like I wrote for her, like your first book will be your worst. And I just I kinda feel that way. Like, you know, anything you do over and over again, you get better and better. And, you know, I think books are just the same way but you feel so invested in it, you want to make sure it gets its time in the sun.
Lainey Cameron 22:22
Right. So one of the things we're gonna have in each of our episodes is a little sponsored segment. And when I say sponsored segment, don't worry when I'd like to play you some recording to buy Coca Cola. In this episode Polat and I are actually going to talk about what we offer. And I want to just say quick thing about a sponsorship for women writers, women's books. And then we're gonna talk about the biggest mistakes that authors make and a few minutes about what are those mistakes that we've seen that most or many authors make that you might want to avoid? But before that, let's do a little sponsor segment. And basically, what we're just going to do is Colette and I are going to talk about what we offer and why we are experts in Book Marketing. And do you want me to go first Paulette?
Paulette Stout 23:00
Yes, please.
Lainey Cameron 23:02
Okay, so Paulette is also juggling a lot right now as well. So um, so like I said, I got into helping authors with marketing, because I saw all of this stuff out there that I started to really do what Becky same calls question the premise. Anytime someone would say to me, like, you must do this one thing to market your book, I would say tell me why show me the results, show me the data behind that. And the deeper I got into things, the more I was able to go. Okay, so this works. But that doesn't this works in some situations. But that definitely isn't worth your time. And I wanted to package all of that and put it in a consumable way for authors who were especially new in their career trying to launch their first book or launch their first second third book. And so what I offer is a 12 week program. It's called 12 weeks to book launch success, where I walk a small group of authors generally about 10. Through building their book launch plan, one week at a time we go through each topic starting with the foundation's going to social proof going to awareness going to reason to act. And by the end of the 12 weeks, they have a complete plan to launch their books successfully. And so that's my kind of flagship program. I love it, it has sold out both of the times that I've offered it within a couple three days of opening. So if you might be interested, my recommendation is just get on the waitlist, I'll put the link for that. In the episode notes on the website. I often turn people away also if I don't think I can help them. So for example, I'm not an expert in kidlet I'm not gonna bring someone in who does kidlit I don't feel like I know how to help you in that. On the other hand if you're doing a thriller or women's fiction or memoir that I can solidly help you with so if you have questions, feel free to email me I will never try and hard sell you on joining the program quite the opposite. I turn people away all the time. But if you're interested get on the waitlist is my message because I'll probably open it back up in the fall. And I expect it'll fill again in a few days after I open it. And then the other thing I offer is I have a free list where you can sign up for marketing tips and webinars. We just did a webinar last night all around book blurbs which was phenomenal with Jessica Who is from book blurb magic. And I do these about every two months on different topics on different book marketing topics, kind of classes, online free classes. So join my list and I will get you all the information each time I have a class so you can join those. So polet I know you've been doing a lot to help indie authors in particular.
Paulette Stout 25:16
Yeah, I do. And it's funny because some of it crosses paths. But I do offer coaching and it started off just for needs, and then it opened up for others, because what I kept finding was people were surfing the web and trying to self service, a lot of information to find their way. But they had questions that were specific to their use case, what should I do out of all of these things. And so it's really a time when we just sit and we talk, I had one author, where I just we opened up her Amazon dashboard, and I helped her upload her books, click here, don't go, don't click that, you know. So it's sometimes it's that hand holding that you don't get when you were self publishing, because you are everything is on you to decide on your own. And when we're all starting, it's like drinking from a firehose, there's just so much to know. So it's a little bit of that one on one attention. But because I just started back at work full time, as Director of Marketing, I have limited time. So if you go on my website and my author coaching page, you can click over to the Calendly. And if there's openings, you can grab those up. And if you are really desperate and need a time, you know, you can email me at info@poets.com. And, you know, we can see what we can do but very limited coaching right now. But you know, it is out there, and I try to post blogs, you check out my blog, too, to for just some self service information, too. So that's kind of the offering for authors right now.
Lainey Cameron 26:47
And I so appreciate you keeping the time to do this after you went back to work full time, because I know you're juggling a lot. And I was like, don't give up because I want you on this podcast with me. And it's gonna be so much better with the two of us. So I'm glad you're able to make this type. And then the last thing I want to mention, we are broadcasting live into Women Writers Women's Books, Facebook page and group. And that is a phenomenal group full of writers and also has a Facebook page and a big Twitter account that talks to readers. And I just want to mention that Barbara boss who runs that site does offer sponsorships. And that can be an interesting awareness activity, especially if you're writing fiction that is relevant to women. That can be an interesting way to get the word out. And she offers one and two months sponsorships for that. So given that she is helping us out by letting us reach her audience, I wanted to mention that I did that sponsorship and several people in my class have done that. I think you did it at one point.
Paulette Stout 27:38
The last -I've done too. Yeah, I've done two, they're great. So for each book launch, I've done one. So for sure. It's a great resource. And it just phenomenal reach for a very targeted audience.
Lainey Cameron 27:49
And Barbara is also the loveliest and the biggest supporter of writers. And that's I like to support people who support other writers. So okay, so let's get to the piece we promised on book marketing mistakes. I referred to a little bit of this earlier, my biggest thing I see authors do, which is a huge mistake is they go spend all their money on awareness. And the easiest way to do this is you get let's go with the traditional model. Let's talk about a big a big publisher model. Because this is where I see this happen very often, you get an advance. And let's say it's your average events. I think it's like $10,000 these days. So let's say it's a 10 $20,000 advance up go you you're one of the very few. And then you put all of that into a publisher into a publicist, a PR person a publish a book publicist, right, you take that and you put that 1015 $20,000 into a bit publicist, and that is all of your money. And you're feeling happy because someone else's got the problem of marketing your book? No, not my problem off my hands. But what you've effectively done is spent all your money on awareness and not on reason to act, not on social proof, necessarily, and you're not going to sell any books as a result.
Paulette Stout 28:57
Nope, nope, nope. Nope, no.
Lainey Cameron 29:00
And so that is probably the biggest mistake I make. I see. And I think it's because authors are so excited at the idea that someone else can own this stuff for them. And so they're just like, here you go, here's all my money, you own the problem. And it doesn't work because publicists will be the first to tell you that they are not building you a complete marketing plan. They are focusing on PR, which is only one element of a marketing plan. And so it doesn't work. You don't sell books as a result of just doing PR.
Paulette Stout 29:26
Yeah, and the thing to remember about a publicist in PR in general, is that you're paying for the effort. You are not paying for the outcome. So they will send lots of queries out to publications to podcast, you know, newspapers, television stations, whatever trying to get you interviews, trying to get you articles. They are doing a lot of work. That is good work. But as an author, you can think on that because you can never tell if magazine x is going to run anything about your book or they're going to put you in the review 10 book They're reviewing and as a, you know, smaller earlier author, they're looking for newsworthy. Author stories. And you know, frankly, you know, we're not that yet. So the number of pickups you're gonna get is not going to be a ton.
Lainey Cameron 30:17
Yeah. And so we're not saying don't get us wrong, don't quote us as lenient plants and never hire a publicist, we're not saying that we are saying, Don't put all your money only in awareness and nothing else. And you don't really have a complete marketing plan. In that case, you just have one element of a marketing plan, which does not work alone. So I know Polat, one of the things you wanted to talk about was unrealistic expectations. Yes. One of the things.
Paulette Stout 30:40
Yeah. And that dovetails really nicely with the publicist conversation, because I feel like when you hire a publicist, and again, we're not telling you not to. But if you do, and even if you don't, it's important to have realistic expectations. As you begin your author journey, or as you advance along your author journey, because the reality is, there are 20 or 30,000 books that get published every month. And while we have our book babies, and we love them, and we put our heart and soul into them for years or decades, to make bring them to life. No one's sitting around, waiting for the buck to come. So we just need to be realistic that sometimes, there are for the most cases, unless you're a unicorn, you know, building an author platform and following takes time. And it won't happen with one book. There's that this the the metaphor on the magic bakery, have you heard that one lady, it's like, if you go into a, a bakery, and you look at the case, and display case has lots of items, cakes, and cookies, and doughnuts, or croissant, and bread and whatever, when you are starting out, your bakery case has one item, and the rest is empty. And there's it's much easier for people to find you and to engage with you, when you have more stuff, when you have more items in your case to sell. And in our case, that's books or short stories, or, you know, even on substack or whatever, you know, you need more stuff to sell. And the more stuff you have, the more people you'll be able to attract to you. So having those realistic expectations of what to expect that you know, a beginning or wherever you are in your careers, probably you don't have a full bakery case just yet.
Lainey Cameron 32:23
And the economics are so different, right when someone can walk into your bakery and buy three items versus one, because the cost of getting them to walk in the door to the bakery, let's go with the bakery analogy. Maybe you've got an advert in a local newspaper, maybe you got some posters over town, the cost of running that advertising, getting that getting that awareness is the same whether they walk into the bakery and buy one item, or walk into the bakery and buy three cakes and buy an extra big kick to kick on mom, like it's the same cost to you. And so that's why the economics also when you have three, four or five books, you're spending the same to acquire the reader, but they might read their way through your catalog. So the economics of that are so quantumly better than when you only have one book.
Paulette Stout 33:04
Yeah, and that's That's exactly true. I mean, I just think of myself, like tonight, I'm gonna be at a bookstore, you know, and that one opportunity was free. But sometimes you pay for tables, most of the time you pay for tables. And if you have more items they can buy, then you can get to your breakeven much quickly, much more quickly, because you have more stuff to sell.
Lainey Cameron 33:22
And you hear this said again, that the best thing you can do to sell but one is write book 234 and get them into the world. I'm just gonna give you an alternate perspective, which is that I was pretty conscious as a marketing person that it was going to take me a while to get my second book mistaken even longer than I thought, right? Like my first book came out in 2020. So this is year four, oh, my goodness. But I have kept growing my platform and kept growing my community and my readers, in part, because let's think about what I did. I created a podcast or a show clip case, other authors, I create an Instagram where I talked about other books that I enjoy. So I wasn't always talking about my own book. I wasn't saying like, you know, imagine I spent the last four years saying buy my book from four years ago, how bad and annoying would that have been? Right? But I'm still bringing new and unique opportunities to my base, right? Whether it's writers, whether it's other authors, or whether it's my readers, I'm bringing them things every every newsletter I send out has an interesting book I have enjoyed and I'm featuring other authors. So you can keep building your platform, even if you don't have a second book to talk about. And I'm maybe an example of how to do that. But you can't, you can't do it based on only your own one book, right? You can't do it based on bringing people into the bakery and saying buy my book five times instead of what's really gonna work. And so yeah, but you can't put other people's books in the bakery with your book to expand the selection. And so I just want to get people thinking that you know, when you help an uplift other authors, it also helps you because it actually gives you something to talk to your readers about.
Paulette Stout 34:46
No, for sure. I think that's another reason why last year, I guess it was 2020 to the end. You know, I organize an anthology because I wasn't finding women fictions anthology. So I co authored I'm partnered with with an amazing author to bring it together. And then we ended up pulling together 12 authors, and that's 12 authors, and then that's getting yourselves, you're not only helping yourself, you're helping others, I think the community of authors is a very giving place. So if you are someone who is open to helping and elevating and amplifying others, it's only going to rebound on you when your work does really.
Lainey Cameron 35:24
Yeah, and one of the other mistakes I see authors make is around social media. So social media can be a huge time drag, right, you can end up spending your life on social media if you're not careful. And let's say you decide that you're going to write post once per day on Instagram, or once every two days, the energy involved in that if you actually add it up is quite large, right? And you know, you're talking to the person who does spend a lot of time on social media here. So, you know, you're allowed to question my sanity at this point. But what I see is authors misunderstanding what social media is for, they think, some authors think social media is to sell books. And I want to tell you right now, social media is not for selling books, social media is for building community. And yes, when you build community, and you get closer to people that might ultimately lead to them feeling good about buying your book. But if you're on social media, because you think it's a sales channel, and you're just gonna keep posting about your book every day, you're wasting your time, your energy, your creative, creative energy, most importantly, and you don't have to do it. Social media is optional. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes I think I see people make is they're told they have to be on Instagram, or Tiktok, or whatever, the platform, and they're doing it because someone told them, they needed to do it not because they really understand why they're there and why they're putting so much energy into it.
Paulette Stout 36:38
Yeah, that's I definitely, and I just want to clarify also, that we're, you think you're talking about organic social here, this is just when you go on and post on your profile, versus running ads on social networks that way, and we'll cover that in other episodes, but for sure, and especially people who force themselves into it, and they don't like it. And it's just, it's just a bad luck for everybody. Because no one wants sad social posts, they people smell that out really quick. So do again, what brings you joy.
Lainey Cameron 37:08
And then the last one I had noted down that we wanted to talk about and mistakes was this idea of not understanding your own goals and what you're trying to accomplish. And then I also wrote down and we want to talk a little bit about our target reader. That was that was one that was caught for us.
Paulette Stout 37:22
Right, right. So just quickly for me, in terms of, I think that sometimes one of the mistakes authors make is, you know, they, they're doing all the things, and then the book comes out and stuff happens or stuff doesn't happen and they start feeling all the emotions start up. It's better than they thought it's worse than they thought or however it is. But they have no context to kind of process the information and emotions because most haven't sat down to say what does success look like? For me? Why am I writing? What is my why? And if you do that, and even if you write it down, I really encourage you to write it on a piece of paper, why am I writing? What do I hope to accomplish with this book release? What do I hope to accomplish with my writing life. Because if you do that, then you have a easier way to process the information, what happens, the book sells, it doesn't sell people like it, they don't like it, you know, you basically have a way to frame that, in accordance to what it means for you and everyone's Why is different. So that's why you can't look at what someone else's book is selling or doing or whatever. And make that your own. Because they may have a very different way than you have. So they're going about their marketing life and their book life in a different way than you are because you are writing so yourself, you kind of don't care how many books you sell, or don't want too many, because you're just trying to get it out there. Because it's, that's your y. So writing down your y will help you make so many decisions in your life and will also help you kind of manage your mindset and your mental health around what happens after you publish. I
Lainey Cameron 38:52
love that. In fact, I taught the last week of 12 this weeks for my second round of the program that I have the book marketing program, and one of the things I recommended to them. So this is the last week we're finishing they've got their complete plan together was to write their goals on a post it note and put it on their computer. And whenever you feel that pang of jealousy that you're comparing to another author, go back and look at your goals on your post it note because that's what you should be comparing to, not to some other author, which by the way, you're not seeing the real version of what's going on in that off. There's life you're seeing the post social media exterior. But you know, like for me right now, the example of that is some of the authors who brought up books the same year as me and my debut year, they've brought out like three or four books since and you know, I could make myself feel terrible by going Gosh, I'm the slowest rider in the universe, which Hey, it's possible, but I'm the slowest rider in the universe. But you know, I don't know whether they wrote those books before the first book came out. For all I know, over 20 years, they wrote all of these books that came out in the last three years. And then they finally were able to get published and they had this huge back catalogue of books and they brought them out once a year. So I don't know that I write any slower or faster than them just from seeing the external social media view and So my point is, it's a, it's a contorted compare. You're not comparing to the reality. And it's not helpful, right? I don't know who said it is that comparison is the thief of joy. And I think that's a good.
Paulette Stout 40:13
That is good.
Lainey Cameron 40:14
Yeah. So I was talking to my class about this very topic of write your note, you write your goals on a post it note when you feel yourself comparing, trying to get yourself back to comparing to that instead of comparing to the bigger someone else, the New York Times bestseller, whatever it is, you don't know their journey, you don't know what it took to get there. And it's really easy to compare your journey, which is very different. And you're at a different stage with somebody else's journey that isn't even a picture of reality. It's a lovely, pretty social media tie a bow on it version.
Paulette Stout 40:42
Yeah, for sure. And it's, I love that I love that. And the other piece about the importance of writing it down. So everyone on my knees course, please listen to your homework, because you can then not move the goalposts on yourself. I do that all the time. I say this will make me happy. And then I get this, and I'm like, oh, but it's not as good as that. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I wrote this. Like, when I first wrote my first book, I was just so happy when person read it, I wouldn't be so happy. If just one person read my book. I'm like, review. So I have, you know, so we we move the goalposts on ourself, and I'm writing it down helps us avoid doing that.
Lainey Cameron 41:21
That is so true. I'd like for me when my debut came out. My goal was I wanted to be established as a credible author, like that was part of what I wanted, I wasn't necessarily measuring it in number of sales, or, you know, these New York Times bestseller, USHL bestseller or any of those things I wanted to I saw it as the beginning of my author career. It's just my personal goals, right? And so when I compare it back, like, Why did I do things like apply for a bunch of awards, because I wanted to establish my own credibility for the next few books. And so I have my moments where I'm comparing to other authors, and I'm like, Oh, my goodness, that person got, you know, whatever it was, you know, they sold way more copies than me. And then I have to take myself back and go, Wait a minute, they're a traditional author, they're in bookstores, you're not, you know, like, like, you're not comparing a tall to the same thing. And so I just think it's really helpful to go back, I agree with you 100%. This was Polat suggestion, this idea of like, really defining what you're trying to accomplish. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes, we make that and changing the benchmark goalposts along the way, like you say,
Paulette Stout 42:18
yes, yes, yes.
Lainey Cameron 42:20
So I think we're reaching the end of our time. Yeah.
Paulette Stout 42:23
Yeah we're a little long.
Lainey Cameron 42:26
That's okay. That's okay. they'll forgive it. Our friends will forgive us here. And I do already see in the comments that we're getting some great ideas for future episodes, which is what we wanted to wrap up with is inviting you to tell us what are the hot topics you would like to hear about. And for example, Beth, who's watching us suggested the difference between marketing a standalone and a series, that is a great topic, and we could bring some guests who've got personal experience. And that's one of the things we want to do is it's not just going to be me and Polat, we're actually bringing in guests who we think have done a nice job, nobody's perfect. But if someone has some experience, because they did something that worked for them, we'd love to bring them in and to have them share that experience. And so I think bringing in some series writers, in addition to you, Paulette will be a great one. That would be a great episode.
Paulette Stout 43:09
yep. Yep. I like that.
Lainey Cameron 43:12
And so how do you how do you tell us? How do you tell us, I'm gonna give you a couple of options. So the first is, if you're watching this on Facebook, on YouTube, you can just put it in the comments, just make a comment and say, I'd love to see an episode about, we already actually got some great comments from the women, women's fiction writers group. This week, I have a whole bunch of 20 suggested topics, which is amazing. The other thing is, you can go to the website and tell us our website is best of book marketing.com. And if you go to the contact page, there's actually a forum there. And on that forum, you can submit an idea, you can suggest a guest speaker, if there's someone you think is an expert that will be valuable to have on the podcast, you can even suggest yourself if you think you have some valuable expertise to share. So you can do that from the contact page on our website, or just comment on any of our social media posts. And we will find it because we're compiling a big list right now.
Paulette Stout 44:04
We do we have more, probably years worth of topics. There's so much to say on this. Yes.
Lainey Cameron 44:11
And talking of managing our energy, pull it and I decided that we're going to do this once a month. So every second Friday of the month, you'll see us live at 1pm. Eastern like we are right now, two weeks later, we'll bring it the audio podcast episode. And then the next month we'll have another episode. So every month, we could go faster, but we decided we want to keep our own sanity. So we will be prioritizing topics based on what you say is most useful to you. But also keep an eye on the website because we're adding so many cool resources, starting with that book marketing framework, a reference that you can go get right now on the episode page of the website. Right?
Paulette Stout 44:45
And then and I think that's a nice cadence because every two week phobias thought that if there's things we talked about in the episode you want to listen to again, you can pop onto your podcast, platform of choice and listen to it there again and then two weeks later, it will be live so it's just felt like our decent cadence for where we are in our lives and everything that's going on. So right balance and grace, everybody. So that's where we are. Yes,
Lainey Cameron 45:09
I see a comment from Beth. She says, Yes, keep that sanity, absolutely. try our best. But the best way to know what's happening because we all know that on social media, you don't see everything all the time. That's one of the problems with it. The best way if you want to make sure as we're putting out all these great freebies and resources and helpful stuff, is join our newsletter, I think we already have 30 people on it. And I just opened it up yesterday for people to join.
Paulette Stout 45:35
clap for you.
Lainey Cameron 45:36
So that is the easiest way you'll get, we're not going to inundate you or spam you, you'll get maximum two newsletters a month, probably one. And so join our newsletter, go to the website, bestofbookmarketing.com/newsletter, you can get it from the front page. And that is how you won't miss anything. As we put new resources out. If you don't happen to see it pop up in your podcast platform or your social media, sign up for the newsletter. And that way you'll know whenever we're offering great new stuff.
Paulette Stout 46:02
Right?.And when you when you do listen, subscribe to the show, because that way, it'll automatically populate in your library on so you'll you won't miss show, because we're just so awesome. Like who wants to miss out, right?
Lainey Cameron 46:14
And I'll just add, if you're listening to this on the audio podcast, please give us some stars and a rating. Even if it's just go go pull it and let it keep going. It really helps to get some reviews when we have a new podcast that is going to be literally fresh. No reviews starting from scratch. So yeah, especially for Apple podcasts. The more you can give it some stars and some reviews, the more it helps and actually get visibility in the podcast platform, just like a book, just like a book.
Paulette Stout 46:38
Yes.
Lainey Cameron 46:41
Okay. Well, I think that's us unless you have anything you wanted to say before we wrap up?
Paulette Stout 46:46
No. I mean, one quick thing is I will be in Worcester, tonight. If you're listening live, Worcester, Massachusetts, at Route and press bookstore on Tabeling. So if you're in the area and want to pop by please do so. Yay.
Lainey Cameron 47:01
Thanks. And I'm working on also the next series of webinars that I'm going to do for free. So if you join my list, which you will if you download my framework, but if you join my book marketing tips list, you'll hear about all my future webinars that are coming up.
Paulette Stout 47:15
Cool. Cool. Thank you very much, Lainey Cameron.
Lainey Cameron 47:19
Thanks Paulette. I am so excited that we're doing this together. Take care.
Paulette Stout 47:23
Bye bye, everybody.