How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins that Murder 1 st Time Author Royalty Checks

Transcription

1 How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins that Murder 1 st Time Author Royalty Checks With John S. Rhodes Real Fast Results

2 Copyright 2017 Daniel Hall. All Rights Reserved. This guide may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Every effort has been made to make this guide as complete and accurate as possible. Although the author and publisher have prepared this guide with the greatest of care, and have made every effort to ensure the accuracy, we assume no responsibility or liability for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Before you begin, check with the appropriate authorities to insure compliance with all laws and regulations. Every effort has been made to make this report as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes in typography or content. Also, this report contains information on online marketing and technology only up to the publishing date. Therefore, this report should be used as a guide not as the ultimate source of Internet marketing information. The purpose of this report is to educate. The author and publisher does not warrant that the information contained in this report is fully complete and shall not be responsible for any errors or omissions. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this report, nor do we make any claims or promises of your ability to generate income by using any of this information.

3 Free Subscribe to the Real Fast Results Podcast The Real Fast Results is a business podcast for people who want to see real results in their business fast. The show provides actionable, implementable steps in each episode. The focus is definitely on marketing strategies and list building with an emphasis on little-known but effective tactics. We also will cover passive and recurring income opportunities as well as productivity and time efficiency strategies for the busy and often distracted entrepreneur or content creator. The time you invest listening to the Real Fast Results podcast will be both enjoyable and practical. If you're an online business person or entrepreneur who realizes that it s about working smart then you're going to LOVE this show! Visit for more information and go to to subscribe through itunes for the latest value-packed training and content all for free. Go. Subscribe. Enjoy! As you enjoy the podcasts and see the immediate value and Real Fast Results, of course, reviews are always appreciated. ~ Daniel Hall, host of the Real Fast Results Podcast

4 Table of Contents Free Subscribe to the Real Fast Results Podcast... 3 Introduction... 5 Why Should I Bother Learning About This?... 5 What s the 1 st Deadly Sin?... 5 What s the 2 nd Deadly Sin?... 6 What s the 3 rd Deadly Sin?... 6 What s Deadly Sin #4?... 7 What s Deadly Sin #5?... 7 What s Deadly Sin #6?... 9 What s the 7 th Deadly Sin?... 9 What s the Bonus Deadly Sin? How Can I Learn More? Real Fast Results Community... 12

5 Introduction Welcome to this episode of the Real Fast Results podcast! Today s guest is John S. Rhodes. He is a successful entrepreneur and bestselling author. In fact, John has published over 140 books, and he s had multiple best sellers in many different markets. He had to figure out how to accomplish all of this the hard way, but he s going to share some of his secrets with you today so that you don t have to. Specifically, during this interview, John is going to reveal 7 deadly sins that can murder a first-time author s royalty check. Why Should I Bother Learning About This? If I would have known these things ahead of time, I could have saved a tremendous amount of time, frustration, and pain. Knowing these things as a first-time author, or a first-time writer who is going to be an author and is going to publish a book, this is money in the bank. This is going to reduce your frustration tremendously and do some great things. What s the 1 st Deadly Sin? The very first deadly sin is one that I see quite frequently with brand new authors. They think about the text in the book. They think about typing and writing. They think about working with editors and publishers. But, they tend to forget about the cover, and just point blank, the old saw that s very much a truism, is that people do judge a book by its cover. If you do not have a cover that is appealing to the eye, you are basically spitting in the eye of a potential buyer. So, people really do judge a book by its cover, and it s very important to make this extra subtle point about the deadly sin, and that is all things being equal, one book versus another book, the one with a better cover simply is going to sell better. Right along with that, the best content, even if it s the world s most wonderful content, is only going to be sold with a great cover. If your cover is ugly, and horrible, and terrible, you have put yourself at a real disadvantage. You ve got to think ahead about your cover. If you expire to be a financially successful, bestselling author, then you must emulate other financially successful, bestselling books and their covers. If you look at the New York Times bestsellers list, and compare and contrast books that are in your same category, your same genre, and your book doesn t look like it should be on the bestseller list, just by looking at the cover and other competitors, it is likely that it will not be a bestselling book. And, that s probably just because of the cover. Therefore, I strongly suggest that you emulate the New York Times bestselling covers in your niche. I d like to also remind people that different markets, and different niches, as it relates to your cover, use different colors, or color schemes, that match up with different markets. For example, when it comes to the paranormal romance genre We ll use Twilight as an example. In the paranormal romance market, you re going to see gray, and you re going to see, like, a foggy white. You re also going to see red, and you re going to see black. That s the palette of paranormal romance. You ll see that. That s a little ninja trick for you as well, and that means money in the bank.

6 What s the 2 nd Deadly Sin? The second is all about editing. You know, many, many authors that I know like to write, and almost give birth to their book, but they don t spend the time nor the money, although it doesn t have to be expensive, to edit a book. Here is why this is possibly detrimental to you and your future royalties. What it comes down to is that the number one reason for getting poor reviews Let me say this again. The number one reason for getting poor reviews isn t the content of your book. It isn t, like, the subject matter, or the story and how it flows. It s not even the cover. It s poor editing. Grammar and spelling issues. This is especially true if you aren t working with a publisher, number one, and number two, if you are a selfpublished author. So, if you are doing this on your own, you better darn-well make sure that you edit your book properly. Not just proofread it, but truly edit it, if you want to avoid the possibility of getting some pretty nasty reviews. There s something very similar, related to this, with Kindle. There s definitely a relation between your formatting and getting bad reviews on Kindle. I strongly recommend that first time authors have their book in a Kindle version, but many times, if that Kindle version is not properly formatted The cover can be great, and the content can be great, but if your formatting is poor, you re still going to get a bad review. At least you will with your Kindle book. So, again, take the time to actually get your Kindle version formatted so that it looks good. In fact, you want it to look better than good. It needs to look great. One of the big marks on self-published authors, especially, is that they don t take the same time that a traditional publisher would take in vetting the book. Your book should look and sound like other really well-done books. That, of course, includes the editing of your book, including your grammar, syntax, style, and all of that. It s got to be right, and it s going to reflect on you in a very, very positive light. Also, if you are going to make a Kindle version, that s got to be really pretty and well-formatted all the way through, which brings us to our next deadly sin What s the 3 rd Deadly Sin? You ve got to make sure, with your book, that you ve got keywords in the title of your book. I ve seen so many books that are very, very high-quality, with wonderful content I mean, they are just some of the best stories I ve ever seen, and yet, no one is ever going to be able to find these books if the author didn t put keywords in the title. Let me give you an analogy. You go to Google, and you do a search using a word or a phrase. You re typing a keyword or a keyword phrase. The same thing is happening elsewhere online, especially on Amazon. I d like to remind authors, first-time or otherwise, that Amazon is a giant buyers search engine. It s a search engine at the end of the day. Yes, it is also and ecommerce platform, and there are products for sale, but it s a search engine that s used by people with money. So you have to make sure that keywords are in the title of your book. Obviously, I don t have time to go into how to determine what the best keywords are, but at least have that on your mind. You need to have some keywords, and they need to be keywords that people would actually use to find a book like yours. Regarding the title, you should know that many books are sold by and through Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com, and to a lesser extent, the Apple bookstore. The one thing that s true, across each of those platforms, is that people may well be browsing for a title like yours, with the same type of title and content, and your title must be visible from the thumbnail. In other words, when you go to Amazon, you don t search for a specific title, unless you already know what book you re looking for. If you were looking for a mystery novel, for instance, and you re looking through the search results that come up for the keyword mystery novel You want your potential readers to be able to see the title of your book on that little thumbnail cover as they scroll through. Books that have their covers designed this way are more likely to be

7 clicked on, and that s the next step in getting your book prepared to be actually considered for purchase. You have to attract the attention; that s really what I m saying here. You have to attract the attention and call out to your prospective buyers, and a great way to do that is to not only have a great design for your cover, but also to have the title of your book readable on the thumbnail. That s a very important point, and typically, it would have to be much larger than what you would expect. You know what books look like in your mind. You know what they look like on your shelf. That text has to be very large. That gives you, in essence, an unfair advantage. What s Deadly Sin #4? Speaking of an unfair advantage, Deadly Sin #4 is This is tough. This is a really tough one. It s focusing too much on the content of your book. We ve been talking about content and the cover, and that s nice, that s good, and that s important, but too much focus on content versus marketing can just wipe out, it can kill, it can murder your royalties. The real reason for that is because books do not sell themselves. We like to think of them that way because we are putting ourselves into the book. We are putting our heart, soul, emotion, and even our humanity into the book. It s not just words on a page. It s not just typing words, it s getting a vision in your mind, and the ideas, and the passion. Whether it s fiction or nonfiction, it really doesn t matter. You re putting a real piece of yourself into the book. I m being dramatic on purpose because that s what authors do. Now, smart, rich, wealthy authors do something a little bit different. Not much different, but a little different, and that is they plan ahead, and they do so specifically with their marketing. They think about their platform, which is how they reach and distribute, and they think about their message about their book, not the book itself, but the message about their book, like why it s great and why it s wonderful. We can go on about this, but that is the key idea. Bestselling Author, Jack Canfield, was once on the Real Fast Results podcast, and he was talking about the mindset necessary for a bestseller. He and Mark Victor Hansen sold over 500 million books in that series, and what he said that they did is one marketing task every day to market that book until it became a New York Times bestselling book, and I hope to see you emulate this as well. They did this for months. It was one task a day, and they each did one thing to market the book. So, it became a ritual. It became a habit, and that s really what it takes. It doesn t have to be much. You don t have to spend hours doing this every day. Just do a little something each day. Get yourself booked on a podcast. Do a guest blog post. There are so many different things that you can do to market your book. Just set that time aside and decide, commit, to actually doing that each and every day. If you will do that, then you will not commit this huge deadly sin that I see so many authors do. In fact, the vast majority of poor authors will never do this. They will never take the time to market their books. They give birth to their book and then they walk away. It s like giving birth to a child and then expecting it to raise itself, and find its own food, and change its own pampers. It doesn t work that way. You ve got to bring it up. You ve got to nurture it. You ve got to market it! That s really what I m saying here, and that is really what separates the wheat from the chaff between poor authors and rich authors. What s Deadly Sin #5? I love this. I don t love that it s a sin and that people do this. What I love is that we are exposing these sins and getting this message out there. We have to think of ourselves as more than just writers. We are authors, we are

8 promoters, and we are marketers to one degree or another. Deadly Sin #5 is not capturing leads. Not getting in touch with, or not having a mechanism to get in touch with, our readers, with our audience. We cannot reach people a second time easily without going through a marketplace again. In other words, if we don t control, or don t have our hands on the leads, on the customers and so forth If we don t have that, then we cannot easily reach out to them. Imagine that you had a great book and you put it out on the marketplace only to hear crickets chirping, but eventually your audience grew. Now, think about the very next book that you launch. Wouldn t you want all of the people who bought your first book to be aware of your second book? You can also link between books in a variety of ways. I do want to point out something that s very important about not capturing leads. This is really key advice that I give my students. Okay? This is very important, and these are $1,000/hour clients of mine. High-dollar clients. I ask, Where is your call to action, and what is your call to action? What do you want people to do, and when they do it, what do you expect from that? Why are you doing it? So I ask the investigative reporter questions about the call to action. Who? Who are you targeting? Is it every single buyer of the book? Is it the people that are browsing? You know, why, when, and so on Ask questions about the call to action, and by God, get the call to action in there at the beginning and the end of your book. It could be a digital book, for example a Kindle book for sale on Amazon, or it could be a dead tree physical book. In either case, you can still have a call to action, like Go Here and Buy Now. By the way, you can be very commanding. You don t just have to be descriptive, and you don t have to just come to folks with hat in hand. You can command them to do something, like Go Here Now. It s good to have an ethical bribe too. It s good to give them a reason why they should take action. But, like I said, by God, make sure that you have something in there, and tell them what to do, and give them a reason why. There s a reason why it is so important to capture leads. Have a call to action, capture leads, and you can do some great things. Let s talk about that. Here s the deal. I want folks to understand that their book, in many ways, is a business card. It s a calling card for whatever it is that they are doing in their day to day business, even if you are a romance writer or some other type of fiction writer. That s your business, to write romance books or whatever it may be. The thing about taking this kind of paradigm shift that I am suggesting to you is that your book can be a bonding and relationship-building tool. One of the cool things that goes on is Imagine that you pick up a book and you start reading it, and as you are going through the book, you re like, Man, this author is great! They really understand where I am and the solutions that I need in my life. In other words, you start identifying with the author. More importantly, you start identifying with how the author puts his/her solutions. You resonate with it, and you can see yourself using their content in your life. The fact of the matter is that, if it s a good book, this happens with many, many readers. And, going back to this particular deadly sin, if you ve built this bond, which by the way is gold as an author But, if you ve built it, and you haven t given them another option to reach out and connect with you, to get onto your list, and to get some other things that you offer in your business, not only are you doing yourself a disservice, but you re doing your reader a disservice. That s why this is such a crucial, crucial thing to do with all of your books. You must capture the leads. That s the primary reason. They already know you. They already like you. They already love you. By the time they actually do reach out and connect with you, and maybe ask to hire you as a coach, or a speaker, or a consultant, they re already red hot prospects because they already resonate with you. So give them a way to reach out and connect with you.

9 What s Deadly Sin #6? This one is very interesting, and very few people talk about this, but it s extremely important, especially as you think about the launch of your book and what happens after the launch of your book. So, there s the initial surge of sales, and then there s what happens after that. You either enjoy the royalty checks, or you don t. The deadly sin is the poor pricing of your book, or the inappropriate pricing of your book. It s kind of interesting because people almost always say, Oh, do I need to drop the price down? They always think that they need to drop the price and that the price has to be low. I need to get people to read the book and to buy the book. That s, sort of, the dominant thinking. I do have some clients that try to price the book to the moon when it doesn t make any sense for them to do so. It can be too high, or it can be too low. So, we have to take a step back for a moment. What matters with the pricing of your book is knowing the purpose of the price. You do not want to just slap a price on it. You don t want to just say, I think $0.99 sounds about right. By having the price low, I ll get more buyers. This is unbelievably important. Raising the price will very often increase demand. It won t just increase your royalties. You will actually sell more units. More people will buy your book as you raise the price, in certain circumstances. Again, the point is to know what the purpose is. You might have a lost leader. You know, books are often used as lost leaders, especially if you have a series of books, and the first book within that series is low-priced. Why would you do that? It s kind of like having a grocery store and selling milk, right? You can lose money on the milk if they are filling their shopping carts with chips, and soda, and beer, and everything else. You can do this by pricing one of your books low too. The point is, however, that you don t want to just slap the price on. Know the purpose of it in relation to the book. One really interesting thing that I ve learned about studying your price is that, first off, your price can change, and it is primarily determined by your demand. So, when you first have a book come out into the marketplace, and you haven t yet launched it so no one knows that it exists, it has very low demand, obviously. As you go, and you start using some of the strategies that have been discussed, such as the marketing rituals that will allow you to create more demand for your book, you can actually raise the price incrementally. In other words, as demand increases, you can raise the price, and you should because, if you don t, you re leaving money on the table. That s what this is all about. I want you to be able to overcome, or circumvent, this particular deadly sin by incrementally increasing the price of your book as you create demand for your book. And, you ll get a certain push-back at a price point where your sales will, sort of, come back down. If your price goes too high, you ll see the drop in sales. It s not necessarily sales either, it s also profits. That s the other thing that we re talking about here. If you sell 50 books at a higher price point, that might be better than selling 75 at a lower one. That s because it can actually result in higher royalties. This is particularly true with Kindle because at $0.99 you have a 30% royalty, but it kicks up to 70% at $ $9.99. That s a heck of a bump. Again, you ll want to keep these things in mind as you mark your price, and also, remember that just because you price it at one price point today, that doesn t mean you have to keep that price all the way through. You can absolutely test your price. It s going to be dynamic. The market is dynamic, so your pricing, ultimately, over time, ought to be dynamic as well. Now, let s move on to the seventh deadly sin What s the 7 th Deadly Sin? This is simple. It s very straightforward. I know that many authors struggle with this. It is reviews. The deadly sin is really not fully understanding reviews and what the game of reviews is all about. As I ve mentioned previously, planning ahead, from a marketing and selling point of view, and from a relationship point of view

10 Looking forward in time, and thinking about your book as an asset that can pay you again and again, and leveraging that asset again and again, this object that you have now, this book, this thing Really, it s an information product, if you are a nonfiction author, but even if you are a fiction author, you ought to understand that you have an information product. And, products need to be marketed in a certain way. That being said, as you plan ahead, here s my number one, key piece of advice related to reviews. The first review is the most important review. So many people get caught up in getting reviews. You ll hear that language. I need to get reviews. How can I get more reviews? They talk about reviews in the plural, and they don t think about individuals, first of all. A single human being, right? A single individual who is buying the book and establishing a relationship with you. Yes, they bond. They cling right on. So, you ve got to think about the individual. Then, second of all, the other side of that is the very first review and the effort that you put in for it, carry that to second review and the third. The tenacity. How persistent are you going to be in Review #4 and #5? Be as persistent in #5 as you were for #1. That all being said, and leveling that playing field, that very first review is critical. Until you have that first review, plan for it. Know ahead of time, when your book launches, exactly how you re going to get that very first review. Have a plan for that, just as much as what the cover is going to look like and what the title of the book is, or even what the author s name is (you). You have to have a plan in mind for your very first review, and you can go get em after that. Yee-haw! I would also say that the true power of your marketing You start to feel the true power of your marketing, I would say at Review #10. Between Review #10 and Review #20 is really the sweet spot for hitting your marketing hard. Additionally, I d like to say that until you get reviews, I would focus on your reviews before you turn your attention to other marketing efforts. Just to be clear, the reason why you d want to is because if a potential buyer, a potential reader of your book, is considering buying your book, and there is some doubt in their mind about whether or not your book is going to be appropriate for them, or whether they are going to like your book, they are always going to read the reviews. They are going to see what other people have to say about your book, and then they are going to make a decision, most likely, on what they read in those reviews. In many, many cases, you want your reviews, obviously, to be as good as possible. That goes without saying. But, the other thing, that I think is super-important, is that You know, consumers are not stupid. Consumers are not dumb people. If they see just a bunch of five-star reviews, and it s only five-star reviews, and they are only 1-2 sentences long Like, Yeah, great book! and it has five stars, and they see it over and over again, many people are going to know something s up, and they aren t going to know whether or not to really believe the reviews. So, if you happen to get a four-star review here and there, that s cool. That s alright. Also, as you work on getting these reviews, you ask for honest reviews. If someone has agreed to do a review for you, then you tell them, I want an honest review that gives a considered analysis, or approach, to the book. In other words, pros and cons because those are the reviews that are much more believable. So, really, really, truly important. Get those reviews, especially the first They are the most important, and have a plan to get that. It s critical to plan ahead and know how you re going to get the reviews. The beautiful thing is that after 20 then it just starts to I like to say, Stack em deep. Stack em high. Then, it s just a matter of numbers. We are going to give you a bonus. We re going to give you an eighth deadly sin. What I think is fun about this one is that, in a lot of ways, it encapsulates some of the key points that I ve already made. It s about the Amazon listing itself, or your book listing, but Amazon in particular, since so many folks are listing their books there.

11 What s the Bonus Deadly Sin? The Amazon listing, the associated bullets, and the description of your book are so important. What I d like to remind people of Because, what happens is we start talking about certain elements of your book, like the title, and even you, if you have a pen name, and in some cases, the pricing. People will take, maybe, the back matter or the inside cover matter and just throw it on. They ll just, kind of, write something up, and not think much about it. Listen, at the end of the day, as someone is scanning that page and looking at it, and as they are trying to make a buying decision You need to be talking about, and thinking about, and typing up the benefits, not the story or the plot itself. Not even elements from within the book, unless you are talking about the benefits of those elements. Again, this does apply to fiction and nonfiction writers, okay? You don t need to retell the story. You don t need to do that, at least not in the description. You might tease a little bit, but that s a benefit in a way. You can, kind of, think of it that way. If you are a nonfiction author explaining everything, or trying to compress the entire book into the description, that doesn t make sense. What are they going to get out of that book? Are they going to be entertained? How are they going to feel? What are other people saying? And, this goes back to the reviews. What are people saying about the book? You can always go back and make adjustments to the description, especially on Amazon, and you can base your changes on things that you see in the reviews. If you see that everyone is talking about the wonderful language being used making people feel a certain way, like beautiful, wondering, awe inspiring, or whatever, incorporate that language back into the description. I could go on and on about this, but it really comes down to focusing on the benefits, and specifically on the human element related to that. It could be entertainment, it could be knowledge, it could be a better job, right? I could be making more money. It could be getting healthier. There s only so many needs and wants in this world, and we re all the same. We care about being the alpha dog. We care about our egos. We care about security and safety. These are benefits to people. This is why we do what we do. This is why we buy books. I want to leave that with you because it s about the human piece, and it s about the benefits. I also want to loop back to an earlier idea, as it relates to the listings and the bullets. While it s true that you are talking to people, usually this buyer s search engine that we call Amazon, or for that matter, Google, is a computer, right? It s a software application that people use to find your book and your listing. Therefore, you have to keep in mind what the buyer keywords are for your particular title, and for your specific genre or category. You know, if you have great language, but no one is finding your listing because you don t have proper keywords in your bullets, your description on Amazon, for example, well guess what? It will definitely kill your royalties. It will! Again, buyer keywords are so, so important, and when I say buyer keywords, I m talking about keywords that people use when they are searching for products they want to buy. Whatever keywords are going to lead people to buy your book, those are buyer keywords. Again, there s no time to chat about exactly how to find those keywords, other than to say I ll give you a hint here. Look at your competitors. Look at the bestselling books in your category that are selling much better than yours, and look at, from title to title, what keywords are repeated over and over again in each one of those titles. You should know, at that point, Ah! Maybe I should use this particular phrase, or these particular two or three words put together, in maybe my title, maybe my description, or maybe my bullet points, because there is a reason why those books are bestselling and doing very, very well, and a big part of that is they are found in the search engine more frequently. And, that s how they are found. It s kind of interesting, speaking of ego, which I mentioned earlier, get your ego out of the way. It s tough, and this might be the 9 th deadly sin. It s not about you, and it s really not even about your book. It s about the wants, needs, desires, and beyond, of the folks, the prospects, the readers, and ultimately, really your customers. Long-

12 term, it s about the loyal customers of yours. What words and phrases are they using? You just got that big hint. The best sellers in your market and niche clearly resonate with the same people that you want to connect with. So that was an absolutely golden tip. There are diamonds just laying there for you to pick up. How Can I Learn More? We do have a little bit more information for you. This does, indeed, wrap up the seven, perhaps eight, deadly sins that murder first-time author royalty checks. However, I do have a little bit more for you. It s the simple threestep process of knowing what to do with the rest of your life, with John S. Rhodes. Real Fast Results has a delightful podcast in which I was interviewed and provided some really great training that I know applies to you. If you have enjoyed what you learned today, you are definitely going to love that episode. You can access it by heading over to RealFastResults.com/58. Again, this is John S. Rhodes. I appreciate you, and I appreciate your time. Congratulations on spending time on getting the Real Fast Results you want and need. We know you are going to take action on this information and you are going to take action on our advice. I m so happy and excited for you, whether you are a first-time author or a second or third time author. You ve just learned how to avoid these deadly sins and improve your financial future. It isn t that hard. It just takes a little bit of extra work and a little knowledge. That s inside knowledge as well as exposure and experience, which you can get by taking action on what you learn throughout these episodes. Real Fast Results Community If you are diggin on this stuff and really love what we re doing here at Real Fast Results, would you please do me a favor? Head on over to itunes, and make sure that you subscribe to this show, download it, and rate & review it. That would be an awesome thing. Of course, we also want to know your results. Please share those results with us at As always, go make results happen!