Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:06): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This contest was created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged. We provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or are new to it, I thank you very much.

We are here today in Portland, Oregon, at the Independent Book Publishers Association conference. And today’s guest is Sarah Bean. I met Sarah at this conference and I was very excited. Actually, Emily went to one of the panels that you were talking at, and she said, “You’ve got to talk to Sarah. She’s the marketing manager at Book Launchers.” And we’re gonna talk about the importance of publicity and the role a publicist can play, especially in these days with over four million books in 2024 and last year over two over five million books published. What do you do to get your voice heard? And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about Sarah’s past experience, and success she’s had, and also incidents where the lack of a publicist has actually gone very much south for the author. So welcome Sarah.

Sarah Stephens Bean (01:27): Thank you so much, John. First off, really appreciate you having me on and chatting with me today. It’s been a pleasure to meet you and Emily and learn about what you guys do and your contest and amazing awards. So yeah, great to be here. So I mean, basically what I do is I work with authors from varying degrees that are looking for that support when they’re self-publishing specifically.

So I focus now on self-publishing, but I started my career in traditional publishing and working with authors that were trying to get to the traditional publishers, and then went on to work with individual authors that were New York Times bestsellers, and really learned from sort of the ground up what the intricacies are. And along the way, I was also an entertainment journalist. So I worked on red carpets and Hollywood, I did features, visited sets, talked with a lot of people, and really saw an interesting side to publicity about what people are interested in versus what maybe media companies think you should be interested in. Right. You know? And so all of that has given me a pretty well-rounded view, I think, of the publishing industry and what it takes to succeed there. Now, specifically, what does it take for an author to break through in that media crowd? Like how do they get that voice heard?

And frankly, in these days, I think it’s really quantity. It is quality of the outlets that they’re going to speak with, right? They have to have a trust value. but we are no longer in the age where it’s one and done. You don’t just get one interview and then suddenly your sales take off, you know? There’s just far too many channels now for people to consume content. And so for an author to break through, they really have to be thinking very strategically about how do I get in front of each of those audiences? How are people consuming that media?

John Goodwin (03:25): Yeah, so like with Writers of the Future this year, volume forty-two, which the book released in April, and then it releases in in May, internationally in the rest of the countries. So I’ve already gotten over two hundred different media, radio, TV, and print on our winners, and I’ll probably be doubling that by the time the whole show’s over with on this. So I find it’s very important to…, you talk about the quantity. I promise everybody you’ll get at least three pieces of media, and sometimes when they’re, depending on what country they’re from, it’s sometimes it’s easier than not. You know. but one thing I’m also pretty careful to do, ’cause these new authors are babies, you know. They don’t know what to say. So we do a whole thing where we drill them on the last day in Los Angeles at the workshop.

But I also will pre-qualify media. I go after it and I’ll make sure are these guys are they nasty? Are they good? Do they help? I found that help that helps a lot ’cause before I did that, sometimes these guys fancy themselves, I’m a baby investigative reporter and I’m gonna dig in and find what’s underneath this thing. When we don’t have anything. So is there any advice you have on that in terms of like when you, you know, so you’ve got either: you go after it for yourself or you get, like yourself, a publicist that helps you a little bit how to navigate that.

Sarah Stephens Bean (05:00): You mean how to navigate between someone who’s negative in their approach and how to…

John Goodwin (05:04): How you get yourself say, you need quantity is important. But all it takes is especially for somebody who’s not experienced at one person being a total jerk with you, and then all of a sudden it’s like pulling in your flippers.

Sarah Stephens Bean (05:22): Yeah. I mean, and negative press is, it’s gonna happen, whether it’s in a negative review of your book or your content, or if you just sit down from an interviewer who is hostile for reasons that have nothing to do with you as the interviewee. I think it’s just like anything else. You have to learn to roll with the punches and keep your eye on the prize, right? Why are you doing this in the first place? When you’re dealing with those negative reviews, you wanna take a look at, okay, is this a general consensus? Am I getting a lot of this feedback? Or was this one off that was potentially, like I said, had nothing to do with you as the artist or the writer? I’ve dealt with on the press side, I have dealt with very negative interviewees, people who did not want to be interviewed, people who just were very negative, and it can just sort of ruin the whole experience as to why you’re there.

I think one of the things that you need to remember as you are going through and being interviewed is that every single one of them is a learning experience. Even the smallest little baby reporter who maybe has 200 followers on their Instagram is an experience that you’re gonna learn something from. So you have to go into each of them with that open mind. And if you do have that negative experience, the thing that you can control is your reaction afterwards, right? So I worked with an author once who got a very negative review in quite a big publication. I mean, it was for some, it could have been considered, I mean a negative review is probably a very strong, their reaction to it was a very negative. They didn’t like the critique that they received. They wanted to go after that interviewer, they’re like, I want to take this down. What can we do? What’s the recourse? And frankly, there isn’t one. You can’t go after them. You have to kind of take it as it is and then look to the future and look to the next one as it possibly being the next positive one. One thing to remember, if you as an author get a negative review, there are actually great ways to look at that as a positive step.

For example, if you get a negative review on say Amazon or as a consumer review, those negative reviews can count in your favor because Amazon starts to look at it as a critical review, meaning not just your best friends reviewing your book, right? So that can actually work in your favor. It can actually give people a more well-rounded look at who you are in your content. So when you have those negative reviews, you just have to, I don’t wanna say just take it on the chin and, you know, learn from it, but you can definitely take it for what it is. Try and look at the scenario and then learn from it a little bit, you know?

John Goodwin (08:23): Yeah. So when working with authors, do you have a coaching drill that you go through with them when you start? And if so, how does that work?

Sarah Stephens Bean (08:32): Yeah, we do a media training with all of our authors where we’re gonna take them through what to expect from the process. Because when you start in that media cycle where you’re being pitched by a publicist, or even if you’re doing the pitching yourself, you need to understand the flow of how what interviewers are looking for, what they’re gonna expect in advance, and then what happens afterwards. So we coach them through those steps.

Nowadays, we also do quite a bit of coaching on how to improve podcast interviews, which are a huge part of the industry now, huge part. I’ve had authors who freeze on camera. I have had authors that have forgotten why they’re there and they start and getting all floppy and too relaxed. And you’re like, wait, no, this is consumable content. You need to remember that. So we go through quite a bit of media training with each of them.

The biggest piece of it that I always work with them on is how to distill their content into sound bites. How to deliver those interesting pieces of advice that can be memorable, can be lifted and used as an article header or used as a pull quote. Those are the pieces that make you really easy to come back and be interviewed again. Those are the things that make people want to engage with you further. So we work quite a bit on how do you distill maybe a seventy thousand word nonfiction into a three to five minute interview. You’re not gonna get all of it in there. So you have to get the most important parts. So I always encourage authors to work on that, refine those sound bites so that they can deliver the most effective interview.

John Goodwin (10:11): I’ve done a lot of interviews and I’ve interviewed a lot of people and if you have a really good host, they’ll make you feel very relaxed, very comfortable. And then all of a sudden, like you’re saying, you forget why you’re there. And so well, thank you very much. And you didn’t mention your story. You didn’t mention why your book is better than somebody else’s, or you forgot to say, Yeah, I’m gonna be at Barnes and Noble at Blah Mall, Saturday, come see me.

So it’s important that you actually have these things. What I do is I make sure they take the book and the Writers the Future book in the back of it has some really good pull quotes. So they say, if they go totally brain dead, I list all the judges, writer judges, and illustrator judges. What are are some key sound bites for the contest and for the book? And then famouswriters and artists what they’ve said about so they kinda say, “This is my book and they can say my favorite is this or this,” so it helps them to get over that brain freeze which can very much happen with a with a newbie.

Sarah Stephens Bean (11:22): Absolutely. I usually recommend to most of my authors, before they sit down to an interview, just write down on a note card next to them what’s the show you’re on, what’s the host name, what’s the topic of that show, because you’re gonna be on a lot of different ones talking about different topics. I encourage them to listen to episodes ahead of time so they understand the flow.

I had an author once, they were on a podcast and it was a great podcast, but it had a very specific format where the host asked every single guest the exact same five questions. Well, the guest did not do their homework ahead of time, even though I had informed them that’s what the format was. And they went in and were completely thrown. And then afterwards they were like, Well, they didn’t mention my book, they didn’t talk to me. And I was like, Did you listen to what it was ahead of time? You need to go in and be prepared on those things.

So I do encourage write things down, take a listen to whatever it is ahead of time, whether it’s a TV or a radio or if it’s a print article, read some other articles by that journalist so that you understand what you’re going into, and you know, look at every single one of them as an opportunity to reach that potential new reader. You never know who’s going to be listening in the audience.

John Goodwin (12:36): One thing I found too, they say to be in the studio ten, fifteen minutes before. But I always go and I’ll say be there half hour before. Cause then you can actually see, get a feel like who’s gonna be interviewing you. But sometimes they got the breaks every like 10, 15 minutes where they go to commercial. And so I’ll go up to them and I’ll say, ‘Cause I do a lot of stuff with science fiction and fantasy, So do you enjoy science fiction and fantasyAnd so then they’ll say, yeah, I love Star Trek or I love Star Wars. That to them is science fiction or fantasy. And then I know how to how to couch my answers because if I start going very much into a nerd response, it’s gonna go right over the head and the potential three, four, five minute interview is now one and a half minutes. And so to me I find that’s important too, to get who’s gonna be interviewing you. And one time I went with one person that was in Atlanta. And so are you familiar with, this is Writers in Illustrators of the Future, and one of the people I named who’s there at the convention was Larry Elmore. Larry Elmore, he’s the guy that created all the artwork for Dungeons and Dragons and Dragonlance. (Host said) I used to model for him. And so that interview just went all of a sudden out the roof.

In that direction there and she was totally enamored with the whole thing because if he was a judge and he was this and he was that then it made a big difference. Also being on the ground, who’s interviewing and see what the reality for artists if they’re like you know, it’s like what type of art, you know. Yeah, I like pretty pictures. Then you’re not gonna go into I do this style of painting and using this type of brush. It’s like it’s gonna be over their head.

One thing I’ve gone over and I’m sure how much this is a fact that you have too is like your show host is also an audience. You know, not just the people that you’re speaking to out there, but you have to get through your show host. They’re the gatekeeper that’s going to appreciate you and cheer you on or say, Well, great, I wish you well.

Sarah Stephens Bean (14:48): Right. And you have to also remember that a host, whether it’s a producer or a podcast host or a writer, their goal is to bring valuable content to their audience. You are one of many that they are going to be speaking with. So it is important to remember that goal as you go into it. One thing I always instruct my authors on is to have the conversation what’s gonna be the most valuable for you? What does your audience need to learn from me? What do they like to hear? What do you see best reactions? Have that conversation with that person ahead of time so that they understand that you’re invested in the success of that interview. That’s how you get the good conversations flowing because you’re bringing to the table what they need. So, it’s really helpful. Some of the interviews that I see go awry are the ones where the guest goes off into their own world and they’re not tuning in to what the purpose of the interview is.

John Goodwin (15:44): Yeah. Now, if a host asks you a question, what does that imply you need to do? So sometimes you gotta show this. You have a book signing this weekend. Uh-huh. And you got a science fiction book. Yes. So what are what are the parameters, like it’s not necessarily a direct just a one-word answer. It’s an invitation. So talk about that a bit, please.

Sarah Stephens Bean (16:14): Absolutely. I think part of it is listening in to that other person, actively listening. What are they implying with that statement? What do they want to see happen? And in all cases, it’s they want to see value and they want to see information. So if you are sitting down to an interview with someone and you’re there to promote a signing or the launch of a new product or an art show or anything of the like this is your chance to speak directly to that person that you hope is going to be there. That you’re going to speak directly to that end listener. So you want to make sure you are furthering the conversation with those details. You know, one thing we work with all of our authors on when it comes to their books is how to seed in the name of their book and what it’s about naturally into the conversation. You don’t want to derail what the question was, but if there’s an opportunity to drop that title, do it. Drop that title. and this is something we do with my company book launchers. We work with the authors on how to seed that naturally into a conversation. I think the other thing to remember is that you are having a two-way conversation with someone. It is not just the one-word answers is not something that is not a conversation tactic that you would use in regular life. So I like to go into interviews with how can I explore more with this host? How can I learn more about them? And you know, sometimes we even ask questions back and forth. So it becomes more of a conversation.

John Goodwin (17:50): Good. Now there’s all kinds of media. You’ve got the short form, like you got your morning news, type thing where you’ve got normally it’s one and a half to two and a half minutes, you know. Sometimes if you’re, we were fortunate in, we were in Salt Lake City last fall in the morning segment we ended up with a seven and a half minute morning news. It was just like my gosh. But it was also recently after the Charlie Kirk fiasco in Utah, which was like a disaster. So they were desperate for some good news. And so our whole premise was, because we also did our homework for we’re in Utah. So Utah’s got more winners per capita of any other state in the United States. So they were fascinated. What is it about it and what about this? And our winners and you know, Brandon Sanderson’s from there and Orson Scott Card and all these big names who were associated with the contest and so they were fascinated with that. And so it just kept on going. The producer was going (slashing across nick to end segment) and these guys, the hosts, were like, No, we’re sticking with this one here. This is good news for Utah.

Sarah Stephens Bean (18:56): We like this.

John Goodwin (18:58): So it’s also, seeing an opportunity and running with it, that’s not necessarily a person’s first show is gonna see that and do it. But you’ve got short format and long format. So you got your podcast, your which can go for an hour, sometimes only half hour, sometimes they’re two hours, and then the two and a half minutes, three minutes. So how do you coach somebody on those different types of formats, like on a short thing, how many times you wanna be able to get your message in on that thing there versus a long format?

Sarah Stephens Bean (19:32): Well, we work with them specifically on first the talking points. What are the most important things that they need to get across in an interview, whether it’s two minutes or you know, 60 minutes. Once you hone in on that main idea, this is the most important thing for me to get across, you can then start to refine messages that are a one-minute answer where you’re doing almost a log line, you’re just sort of dropping in the most main idea.

And then when you go into that 60-minute one, you have the opportunity to spread it out and take your time and engage with the content. So I tell my authors to write it out. Write out those most important points. We also work with them on how to identify what are the five questions that you were most likely to be asked. Now, if it’s an author, you’re most likely to be asked questions like, why did you write this book? What was the inspiration for it? You know, who do you hope it helps? Those are some of the standards.

And so if you know and can kind of expect some of the most important questions that will be asked, it’s easier to prepare those answers. But I think again, it goes back to ensuring that you do your homework and listen to those podcasts or watch those broadcast TV and radio, listen to those radio shows before you do the interview so that you know the host’s style.

You know what they engage with. You know what makes them excited.

John Goodwin (20:56): That’s like the best and most sound advice there. So I think it’s a good opportunity now to drop in some of your best success stories as a publicist and some of the train wrecks that happened that could have been avoided if they would have had you as a publicist. Because now I don’t need a publicist, I’m gonna go ahead and do this thing and then I was like I told you.

Sarah Stephens Bean (21:20): So here’s some of the interesting stories. I get a lot of authors or speak with a lot of, you know, hope to be authors. They want to get their book out there, but they don’t want to do the legwork ahead of time. They want to shoot straight for the Good m

Morning Americas, right? They don’t want to waste their time on the smaller stuff. And the problem with that thinking is that the smaller stuff is actually where you’re going to see some sales. I sat across from a woman yesterday here at the conference who was telling me, yes, we had a segment on Good Morning America, and it didn’t move the needle in sales at all. The smaller channels can be some of the most advantageous because you’re talking directly to target readers. So, I think some of the horror stories come in when you have someone who’s not willing to do those, won’t listen to your coaching on it, and then they go, Well, why aren’t I getting any interviews? Well, because you have no track record, you have no trust, you have no visibility yet. So that’s where a good publicist can help direct someone to understand the strategy. Now, in terms of success stories, I have some favorite ones.

We had an author a number of years ago who had a book topic around bookkeeping for small businesses. Now keeping in mind, I know that we talk sci-fi and fantasy on this show, but I’m a nonfiction girl. This is in general.

John Goodwin (22:51): It applies for no matter what you’re writing. Absolutely.

Sarah Stephens Bean (23:11): Yeah, this is in general. Absolutely. So he had a book on bookkeeping for small businesses, which doesn’t sound like a page turner, but perfect for a certain audience. And he did a podcast. Because of that podcast, someone picked up their book. And because of someone picked up their book, he got a six-figure consulting contract out of it, right? So that more than made up for what he had invested in putting the book together in the first place. You know, so that’s one of my favorite stories.

Another interesting story is that we had an author a number of years ago who had a topic. The topic of the book, he was very close to a national true crime case. This case was coming up. The particular perpetrator was about to be sentenced. And the book dropped right around the same time about that topic. We were flooded with interview requests, flooded with interview requests. Every major news outlet wanted to talk to him, wanted to get him out there. But for him, for that particular author, media was not part of what he wanted to do. He just was not interested. And I had to respect that. As a publicist, I had to go, okay.

If that’s not what you want out of this scenario, then I’m not gonna push you to do something you don’t want to do. But also on the flip side, as a publicist, you’re like, my gosh, 2020 is calling me. How do you not want to do this? But I understood because the material for him was too personal. He didn’t want, he wanted to get the book out, and his goal was different than national acclaim. And so it became a situation where I had to sit there and field calls from producers. I’m on vacation with my family on the phone with New York and LA and all of these things, trying to field all of these requests. And he just was like, Nope, I’m not interested. Let’s not do it. And so I had to do some quick thinking about other avenues where they could still run the story, still feature the book without including the author in that. And that was tricky. That was really tricky. you know, and so I think for any author that’s going into it, what you have to pull from it is what’s your goal? What do you really want to see happen? And then be willing to do the press or do the media that goes with it, because it can be a huge ally. But if it’s not part of your strategy, then maybe you choose different ways.

John Goodwin (25:21): Okay. So now you’re with a company called Book Launchers. So tell me a bit about the company and how it came to be and how you became to be.

Sarah Stephens Bean (25:34): Absolutely. So I’ve been with Book Launchers for over eight years. I’m the head of marketing and partnerships with them. We’re a full-service self-publishing company where we help nonfiction authors bring their books to market. People come to us as early as, “I have an idea. I need help with the writing, all the way through distribution and marketing.”  All of our authors are indie author publishers, meaning they keep 100% of their rights, royalties, and IP. We don’t take any piece of that.

We just guide them through the process with a series of publishing professionals. The company is founded by Julie Broad. And if you’ve ever checked out our YouTube channel, booklaunchers.tv, we have over a thousand videos there about self-publishing. So everybody’s very familiar with, “Hi, I’m Julie the Book Broad.” She’s fantastic. She started the company back in 2017 after self-publishing some of her own titles and those titles, due to her marketing efforts, hitting number one on Amazon overall. Because she developed certain partnerships and she was able to use channels within her network to sell those, the books did extremely well. And so she was constantly having people come up to her and say, How do you do it? How do I self-publish my book? And so Book Launchers was born. I will say that it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my publishing career. I’ve been in publishing for over 20 years.

And being able to work with authors who have so much value to give. They have incredible insights and perspectives. And to be able to help them break through that ceiling of obscurity to have a valuable product out on the marketplace is just such a great journey for me. I got connected with Book Launchers because of a high school friend. It’s actually a funny story. I was at my 20-year high school reunion.

I was ending a job with an author and she told me, I work for this great company that’s based right where you are. My boss is new to town, you know. And I said, well, if she’s in publishing and I’m in publishing and she’s new to Los Angeles, why don’t I take her out to coffee? Just meet her and maybe I can make some contacts for her. And so Julie and I met and had a wonderful time just talking. And at the end of it she said, “Well, I can’t hire you now.” I was at the time about seven months pregnant. She said, “I can’t hire you now, but can I hire you in about six months?” Absolutely. And so I walked out of there with a lead on a job, and I’ve been with them ever since. And it was a future job you know, and it’s one of those great scenarios where if you walk into a situation with an open mind, without expectation, but with a heart for I just want to get to know another person, you never know what can come out of it. And I think the same thing applies to media interviews. If you go into a media interview with an open mind, wanting to make a connection and provide value, you never know the benefits that can come from that.

John Goodwin (28:37): Exactly. All right, so now again, ’cause these listeners here are primarily aspiring writers and artists. And so we talk about writers, but do you ever work with other types of creatives like illustrators, artists? Is that something that when they do their art books or photographic books and that type of thing?

Sarah Stephens Bean (28:58): You know, at Book Launchers I haven’t worked with illustrators or artists because we do adult nonfiction, but everything except cookbooks and art books, simply because for print on demand it’s so pricey and it’s quite a difficult process. It’s quite more expensive for when you’re doing it that way. But in some of my previous roles, I have worked with some phenomenal artists. I was very lucky to come up within a global booking agency that worked with phenomenal talent worldwide and the VP of our literary department that I came up under had an incredible eye for just really cool artists. And I got to know some amazing ones. And it’s always interesting to me the sort of niche followings that some of these artists get. And when you’re selling properties to sort of the big traditional publishers, what they’re looking for is market viability. They want to see who follows this person and what ability do we have to sell books.

That’s their bottom line. Can we sell books? And it is the artists that have somewhat done it on their own and started to develop very devout followings, however, small those devout followings may be, that publishers love. They love to see little off-the-beaten path artists that have done cool and interesting things on their own and then give them that opportunity to reach a broader stage.

So, for artists and illustrators, I encourage you to do as much as you can on your own before you start saying things like, well, I need an agent to go to the next level, or I need someone else to pave the path for me. there’s a fun old adage. It’s, they don’t want you until you don’t need them. Meaning, you know, whoever is going to be that advocate for you, that agent or manager, whomever it might be that sells the property to a big distributor, they’re looking for what you’ve been able to do on your own and then they will help you that next step.

John Goodwin (31:00): Yeah, that’s one thing that I think is important because I’ve talked to a lot of authors and “I wanna go traditional.” “I’m gonna go traditional.” “I just wanna write the book, and let them do it.” And I keep on trying to, like you know, that’s not the way it works anymore.

Sarah Stephens Bean (31:20): Even just the keynote that we were listening to here at the IBPA conference, there was an amazing animator, Matt Braylee, who just did a great Q&A with the CEO from IBPA. And this was someone who has had all of the traditional help, you know, worked with Disney and Pixar and DreamWorks, and still had to crowdsource a passion project. So the traditional channels are no longer the only channels. There are a lot of avenues to get there.

John Goodwin (31:52): Yeah. And one thing too I try to impress upon writers that I want to do traditional is that there are so many wannabe authors sending their stuff to these, once you have an agent, so you have an agent and there’s they got somebody that can then pitch to the big five or whatever type thing. If they’ve got a choice between, here’s a great manuscript, and he’s got twenty-five thousand followers and here’s a great manuscript and he’s not really into social media. Who do you think they’re going to take? A hundred percent. You know? And then obviously if you get more than twenty-five thousand, ’cause at least you’ve got some people like you’re saying that’s dedicated that you got people that follow you and are interested in what you’ve got.

Sarah Stephens Bean (32:39): Absolutely. And I think that traditional publishing, there is still this idea, this romanticized idea of what the traditional publishing route is. And this is true regardless if you’re in illustration and art or if you are a writer. There is this idea that traditional publishing is sort of the yellow brick road to success and fame. And there are some really scary statistics out there that show just how not true that is. There are so many avenues to being published now. And so when someone does say to me, I really want to be traditionally published, the first thing I ask them is, “Why? What’s your ultimate goal? Is your ultimate goal fame? Is your ultimate goal sales? Is your ultimate goal impact? What are you looking to do?” Because traditional publishing may not be the best strategy. There are so many other avenues to being published now. And especially with hybrid publishers, you know, indie presses self-publishing that give you so much more autonomy and control over your career. So I encourage everyone to look very closely at what their goal is before they just make up their mind that traditional publishing is the way to go.

John Goodwin (33:52): Right. So now, you know, you use the term self-publishing, which I know various people here will argue it’s more called author publishing because you need to have your publicists or your artist, you need to have your editorial, your proofreading, all these things you still need to have to have a final good product that exchanges with potential consumers. So with what you do with your company, so you’re like an indie press, is that how you fall into it, or you’re that takes them all the way through that?

Sarah Stephens Bean (34:29): We are considered a publishing partner. We’re a service provider. So we are someone that is able to take someone who is self-publishing and provide the services that they need to be able to publish effectively. So if you’re a self-publisher and you’re gonna write a story or write a book and you wanna get it out there into the world, you still need to find all the pieces: the editors, the designers, you need to find lawyers that are gonna help you with the legalities, you need to find marketing teams, you need to find publicists. And so a company like Book Launchers helps those individuals by providing all of those services in-house and providing publishing know-how and understanding.

One of the things I hear from authors at the beginning of the journey is I don’t know what I don’t know. Exactly. You don’t know what you don’t know. So you need to, even as a self-publisher, still engage with professionals that do know what to do. So that you’re not just putting a book on Amazon and watching it drop to the bottom of the four million books on Amazon.

Or whatever your sales channel is, you still need to engage with teams. And one of the comments that was made today was self-publishers are not actually self-publishers because you cannot publish without others helping you.

John Goodwin (35:43): Yeah, absolutely. So you’re obviously nonfiction, do you ever take on fiction?

Sarah Stephens Bean (35:49): We don’t at Book Launchers, but I did work with fiction during my days at the agency. I worked with some horror writers, I worked with some YA writers. One of the first properties I ever sold was a genre horror. a lovely gentleman who was writing as his second career. He had had a successful career before that and then started writing and I just fell in love with his very spooky story, Purgatory’s Gate. I still remember the title.

And so working with fiction authors has always been a soft spot for me, even though my expertise is in nonfiction. I read a lot of genre fiction. That’s one of the main things I like to consume. And it’s purely escapism. You get to a point sometimes where reading nonfiction feels a little bit like you’re doing homework as opposed to what reading is meant to be, which is for pleasure. But I think all areas and all authors have something to provide. They have value to give.

John Goodwin (36:47): ‘Cause I’ve interviewed a lot of nonfiction authors as well in this podcast. I’m not trying to just, you’re listening to what she has to say, but it doesn’t apply to fiction. It does. That’s the point, is like these steps that we’re talking about here and things to do, it’s a lot easier to book nonfiction media than it is to book fiction media. Because I’m getting someone to talk about a made-up world with made-up characters in a made-up scenario. And so getting somebody to talk about is like, okay, that’s when I used to work with…

Sarah Stephens Bean (36:58): I think it applies universally.

John Goodwin (37:23): Bridge Publications, which published all the nonfiction works of L. Ron Hubbard, like Dianetics. It was so easy to book media for that because you have, like when Sonny Bono, when he had an accident, he skied into a tree. I was able to book so much media with Bob Salerno on the effect of that and what causes people to lose that type of stuff. And there were a couple of different major ski accidents at that time period.

So it was just like talking heads. It’s like, well, you’re talking about the one incident there, like it’s just talking heads with that trial. That’s easy to do. You know, it’s great. That’s one of the beautiful things about nonfiction. Fiction. Do you want to talk about Boogeyman of the night and zombies and so it’s a whole different thing, but it’s all it’s the same steps you have to go through to be successful with doing the media interviews. It is. Being on the market stuff. So from your experience, what are some of the biggest false datums or things that people assume is well, this is everybody knows that really isn’t a true thing that isn’t known. Like, well, we already talked about if you go traditional, then you got it made. That’s Yellow Brick Road. That’s false, but things like that.

Or I don’t need to do media. I don’t need to do social media. I don’t have to have all that stuff there, like there’s just an unreality to that some people are holding on to this thing, “No, I’m just gonna be an author” and I’ve got some people I work with that they’ve been grandfathered in. They’re like sixty years old, seventy-five years old and they’ve been writing for forty, fifty years. So they’ve got their base already, so they don’t need to get into that.

Sarah Stephens Bean (39:17): So, I think some of the false-isms are that or myths or you know, just sort of false ideas that people have are that number one, because you wrote a book, people are gonna care about it. That’s the first: Yeah, I wrote a book. So of course the talk shows are gonna come calling. No, that’s not that’s not exactly what they’re looking for. I think that some of the things that people need to be prepared about is that if you are gonna do media and you’re a fiction writer, the interesting story is gonna be coming from first who you are as the author. Why would a news interview or a TV show or a podcast want to talk to you as the author? And that’s gonna come from your background and your experiences in your CV. Maybe something has happened to you that spurred this fiction career. I think that some of the other things that Fiction authors can focus on when it’s coming to why would someone want to interview me about the book, it has to come down to the universal themes that come within that fiction book. You know, whether your character is in space or in a fantasy world or fighting, interesting monsters, it’s the human experience that people grab onto. It is the emotion, it is the trials and tribulations. And so, if you can relate that to something that is happening in the real world.

The book becomes almost the byproduct, right? We’re not interviewing the character, we’re interviewing the author. And so I think there is a lot of avenues for fiction authors to get out there and get media that don’t involve Reese or Oprah’s book clubs. I think there’s a lot of avenues there where you can focus on the human aspect and the universal experience and what people are going to experience when they read your book.

That’s what connects people and hooks people and gets them interested and inspires that curiosity. I think a few of the other false-isms is that books are discovered on their own. They’re not. They’re not, unfortunately. I did a whole talk yesterday here at IBPA about discoverability in the age of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). What does that mean? What does AI mean when it’s impacting how readers are?

Generative engine optimization, you know, we’ve heard about SEO for decades, but now it’s GEO and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), they’re all the rage. but they are the things that are driving how AI is recommending people. This is a fact. Regardless of how much you may push back about AI, and I completely understand why people do, it is here. It’s not going anywhere. You might as well start to learn how to adapt to it in an ethical way.

And understanding GEO is a way to do that. But it does require those things: website, social media presence, thought leadership, interest, engaging with your audience. Gone are the days when you could go on a book tour and then suddenly everything takes off and your book is just gonna be flying off the shelves in all the regions. It doesn’t work like that anymore in publishing. So I do encourage authors to educate themselves and learn how these things work.

There are so many amazing resources out there.

John Goodwin (42:32) Website?

Sarah Stephens Bean (42:34): YouTube channel is a fantastic place to go for this, booklaunchers.tv where we do education for self-publishing authors. And, you know, like we spoke about earlier, nonfiction and fiction are different mediums, but the universal principles are the same.

John Goodwin (42:50): A lot of people listening to this are also writing nonfiction. They’ve got “I got my story I want to be able to tell,” whether it’s an autobiography or a biography of my mom or my dad, or here’s my, you know. my ancestry. Or it’s just, I’ve done stuff and I’ve been a scientist. I’ve been this, a lot of people listening to this podcast are that category as well. So what you’re saying is very germane.

Sarah Stephens Bean (43:14): So I had an author, I have quite a few authors that do both nonfiction and fiction., and I was working with one of them and she had written an amazing fiction novel. But then she was also writing a book about empathy and leadership in the IT field. Now, what we were able to determine from a branding perspective as an author brand was that the sort of overlap between the two audiences was empathy. Her brand was about empathy, whether it was her characters or it was the instruction she was giving in a self-help memoir. So she was able to build a brand around that concept. And nonfiction and fiction authors, if you’re doing both, I get this question a lot. How do I market when I have two different audiences? And I always encourage them to sit down, create a Venn diagram. One circle is your nonfiction audience, the other circle is your fiction audience. What are the unifiers? What are the same things between them? You exist in the middle.

You exist between those two circles and you build your brand there. And that is I think circling back around to those ideas of myths, that is the biggest piece that I can impart upon anybody is that if you are an author, you are a brand. You are building a business, you have a product that is in the market.

No matter how creative you are, and there is this romantic idea of being this amazing artist, and then everybody else does the business pieces. But unfortunately, because there are so many barriers to reaching target audiences now, there’s so much noise overcrowding that you have to develop a brand that is authentic to who you are, and you have to advocate for that and understand that you are making business decisions.

That what is coming from your soul that you are putting out into the world is a product for others to consume. It sounds terribly cynical.

John Goodwin (45:11): It’s that, but it’s a business. You say it’s a brand, it’s a business. If you’re looking at writing a book so I have an idea, I wanna write a book so I can have a book and I wanna give it to my kids when they grow up. Okay, that’s different.

Sarah Stephens Bean (45:25): That’s phenomenal and there are avenues to do that that don’t require getting ISBN.

John Goodwin (45:29): We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about, you know, whether it’s a second career is something an adjunct career. So like you’re, daytime you’re a police officer, but you love, you need something to decompress, and so now all of a sudden you write your fantasy. Or we have a lot of times I’ve interviewed a lot of ex-military who are writing cozy fantasy military to help deal with the stresses of what happened when they were in Iraq or Iran and these different places there and with the experience, there’s all types of reasons why people will do it. And so you can go with that and it’s something that needs to be dealt with. But there are certain basic things that you gotta be able to deal with and reckon with.

Sarah Stephens Bean (46:14): Yeah. And it goes back to goals. It goes back to your goals. Those that want to put together a book that they can just share with their family so that they have a legacy item are gonna choose different options for producing that book than someone who is writing a book because they want to become an Amazon bestseller or they want to, you know, be on certain stages. an ex-military who is writing a fantasy to cope with PTSD or whatever their experiences are, maybe that’s as far as it goes.

Or if they want to share that with the world so that it can help others, they’re gonna make different marketing decisions. And so I encourage every author or illustrator or artist or whatever you are putting together, it doesn’t have to have a goal when you start. Maybe you start just because you feel compelled to start. But once you’ve finished it and you know you want to do something with it, choose what those goals are, and that’s gonna help shape your next steps. I will also say that I think quite a few authors, whether it’s an artist or an illustrator or an author, someone who’s coming up with a story, the idea of a business is so intimidating. I’m not a business person. I’m not a, you know, a brand.

There are so many tools that are out there now that can make it so much easier for you. It’s why companies like Book Launchers exist. So that there are others that you can trust that have experience in this field that can help you. There are a lot of them that are out there. It’s just you give yourself some limiting beliefs when you say, I’m not a business person. Okay, you’re not a business person, so hire someone who is.

John Goodwin (47:56): Talk about that now, because I’ve talked to so many authors, like I can’t afford this, I can’t afford that. I just I have my book. They don’t realize they don’t have I mean they they’ve got a PDF or they’ve got a word file, but a book has gotta have a cover, it’s gotta have proper editing done so that’s right. It’s gotta be clean so there’s not full of typos and things like that. And it needs to have some caressing so it can get out there into the world. You know, so talk about that just that concerning people have, well, I can’t afford it, you know. And a lot of times I would submit that you can’t afford not to do these things here if you really believe in your book.

Sarah Stephens Bean (48:44): Absolutely. Your book isn’t helping anybody sitting on a Word doc on your computer. It’s not gonna help.

John Goodwin (48:48): Release full of typos or where you know it’s a fiction book and the book doesn’t actually start ’til chapter four and nobody was able to tell them to start the book at chapter four and lose chapters one to three.

Sarah Stephens Bean (49:01): Absolutely. You need that outside perspective. It drives me crazy when I have authors that come in and say, well, it doesn’t need any more editing. I already edited it. No, you didn’t. No, what you did is a second draft. You didn’t edit it. for those, the financial aspect is a big challenge. It really is, because all of these pieces, if you’re gonna hire an attorney, you’re gonna hire editors, you’re gonna hire you know, your designers and everything.

It costs money. You are investing, especially if you’re going the self-publishing route. But what I encourage authors to do, number one, start small. You can start with things like starting a substack that is going to start to build a little bit of a following. You can monetize a substack.

You can attend local events and start to make connections. You can go to author events and start to learn the business of it. And you can do all of that with relatively low investment. I think that you can also be, if you choose to go the traditional publishing route. And I don’t want anybody to think that I’m shooing them away from a traditional route. It is perfect in some situations. Submitting to agents, free. Submitting to indie presses that might publish your novel, free.

So you can do some of those things, take the steps, gather the feedback from those steps, make adjustments, and then try again. You have to keep going. You have to just take the next small step. I tell my kids this all the time. We’re big Frozen fans in our house. And we watch Frozen 2 all the time. And Anna always says, you have to just do the next right thing. You just have to take that next step, see where it leads, and then go from there. Don’t look at, it’s gonna cost me 40,000 to, produce my book and do it right. I’m just not gonna do it. Take the next small step, build the community, build the following, get the work out there. Start submitting to magazines, start creating a podcast from your content. Start getting it out there because the more followers that come, the more the money will come.

John Goodwin (51:09): Yeah. And one thing too that I don’t think that a lot of people realize the timeline from being author published or self-published versus traditional published and in between Indy published. We’re talking years.

Sarah Stephens Bean (51:14): Right. It can be years. Overnight success is a misnomer. It’s a complete misconception. Every overnight success that is out there has ten to fifteen years of grunt work before it.

John Goodwin (51:34): So even if you get someone the moment that you sell your manuscript to a traditional, minimum is two years. And more likely three or four years for it to actually make it out the other end as a book on the bookshelves. And so that’s something that people like they’ll do the cover my eyes and like ’cause their fear of doing all the work themselves makes them blind to the fact that you’re waiting three or four years before you’re gonna actually see it public.

Sarah Stephens Bean (52:08): It comes together. Yes, absolutely. I mean, the submission process, it can take you six months, a year, maybe even longer to get an agent. That agent’s then gonna have to pitch that book out to publishers. That process can take a while. Once you get a publisher that, or an editor, that advocates for it, they have to take it to their editorial teams to even get that approved. That can take several months. Then once, let’s say the editorial team approves it, you’re gonna get your book deal. They tell you it’s gonna be 18 months before the book hits the shelves, before we even start marketing it. It’s 18 months. All right, already you’ve just invested three years of your time. On the self-publishing side, it can go faster. It can go faster, but you have to ensure that you are not skipping any steps. You’re not skipping the vital editing step, which can take several months. Editing is going to take three to six months depending on the type of content and the type of editors you work with. Design is going to take time. Layout is going to take four to six weeks. and then the publicity that goes with it, you have to give tons of time for publicity. It’s not just, okay, I’m gonna pitch a podcast and be on 15 tomorrow. That all takes four to six months.

John Goodwin (53:24): Some of that stuff can overlap.

Sarah Stephens Bean (53:26): Absolutely overlaps, but you have to you can go faster with self-publishing, but you have to ensure that you don’t skip any of the vital steps to make sure you have a great product at the end that gets to the market.

John Goodwin (53:39): Especially with nonfiction ’cause you got other things. You don’t have to worry about fact checking a fiction. But with nonfiction, you better have your facts straight.

Sarah Stephens Bean (53:48.854): Absolutely, that’s a step we build into it is we do content edit, we do two rounds of copy edit, and between the two copy edits we do a fact check and then it goes to proofread.

John Goodwin (53:58): Good. So now you’re saying all these different things. So do you have like a package or a software or things like that?

Sarah Stephens Bean (54:07): Absolutely. Yeah. So Book Launchers has multiple ways that we work with nonfiction authors. We have what’s called our authority amplified package, which is a membership model where we take people through all of these steps and we include the marketing integrated. That’s a monthly membership fee. We also have packages where it’s just a flat rate and you get your book at the end on the market, available globally.

We have a very active nonfiction author community on the school platforms called Nonfiction Author Lab, and that’s free to join. People can come engage with other authors, get that community. All of the time our authors on there are supporting each other, cheering each other on, helping answer challenges. We do trainings and webinars through there.

John Goodwin (54:53): Really cool thing I really just tried, because we have a similar thing with Writers of the Future, we’ve got a forum which every year we win the best science fiction forum in in the US. But it’s so important there because an author usually is introverted, they’re usually in the room by themselves and so they’re very insular. They look to find other people like themselves. They find a team they find you know…

Sarah Stephens Bean (55:18): Cheerleaders, people that are in your corner, they want to see you as succeed and they want to share in your challenges and they want to share in your triumphs.

John Goodwin (55:27): And they can also give you tips and keep like, Okay, look, don’t get discouraged with it. I went through it too. It happened ten times with me before I finally did it. Absolutely. And you can like, really? Because you don’t know. You have no datum of comparable magnitude to like, okay, this just happened to me. Is this good or bad?

Sarah Stephens Bean (55:44): Right, absolutely. And so our nonfiction author lab, we’ve got about nine hundred authors in there right now, and we’re in there daily. Our whole team from book launchers pops in, answers questions, gives advice, strategies. I’ve had several people at IBPA come up and say, Hey, we’re in your community. It’s so great to meet you in person. And it’s like you’re greeting an old friend. It’s like, hey, yes.

And on top of that, we have our author launch kit, which is our nonfiction author software for marketing. It’s a step by step format. We really started to identify that people are looking for the marketing support, but they don’t know what to do next. They maybe want to do it on their own, as they did with the self publishing process, but they don’t know do I do this first or that first, or how do I reach people? And so we have author launch kit that helps answer all those questions. It’s like getting marketing agency support.

Without that price tag. It’s incredibly affordable. I encourage everybody to go to authorlaunchkit.com and check it out. I like to say it’s like you get me in AI form because I’m sitting there. And, you know, our whole team had a very, very active hand in developing exactly how Author Launch Kit helps authors market everything from creating your copy and your social media and email content calendars to identifying podcasts, influencers, bookstores, helps you write your pitch, gives you AI discoverability scores. It does all of the things that you need so that you can market effectively and you know that you haven’t left anything on the table.

John Goodwin (57:16): Right. Yeah. So has that also become like an a la carte?

Sarah Stephens Bean (57:21): Author Launch Kit is its own product. It’s something that anybody can go and grab. It’s geared towards nonfiction, but we’ve had some fiction authors use it and really enjoy it.

John Goodwin (57:31): A person comes in like I’ve got this down but I’m just totally swimming when it comes to XYZ. Right. So can they go after those specific things? And then maybe once they do that XYZ they realize, my gosh, I was totally oblivious to all the rest of the stuff that comes

Sarah Stephens Bean (57:48): Right. Yeah. So people can go to authorlaunchkit.com, check it out free for seven days. They can go explore it, and it can give them everything that they need to be able to market. It generates tons of content based on their book, their background, and what their goals are. But if at the end of the day they they’re looking through Author Launch Kit and they say, you know what? This is fantastic stuff, but I really don’t have the time or the energy or the ability to do this myself. I need a dedicated team. Then they can reach out to book launchers right from Author Launch Kit.

They can also join our community right from Author Launch Kit and get that support. And they can reach out to me directly and say, Sarah, you know what? Author launch kit was fantastic, but I need that extra guidance and then we will work with.

John Goodwin (58:31): That sounds great. Well, this has been great having this chance to chat with you and I said a lot of the listeners are nonfiction as well as fiction, so I’m not totally like that myopic.

Sarah Stephens Bean (58:41): Well, I’m a big sci fi fantasy fan myself, so it is no problem. I am talking with my people.

John Goodwin (58:46): Good. All right, well thank you, and thank you for listening. Writers of Future and Illustrates the Future are contest created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network and can be heard in over 150 countries. Visit Writers of the Future dot com to listen to past episodes of this podcast, to sign up for the free online writer workshop and enter either contest and see the past volumes and winners.

Again, thank you very much, Sarah.

Sarah Stephens Bean (59:18): John, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me, and I encourage everyone to check out booklaunchers.com. Reach out to there. I’m happy to answer your questions.

John Goodwin (59:24): Awesome. Thank you.