These are all thoughts that many of our clients have before they finally decide to make their publishing dreams a reality. The publishing world is riddled with misconceptions, fears, and uncertainties for those who are new to it. One of these misconceptions that scares many people away from their goals is the idea that publishing takes forever. The kind of forever where you picture Mr. Tortoise crawling along, painfully slow. Two years have passed and he is just now picking up his pen to start writing.
In this episode of “The Personal Branding Podcast”, podcast host Bernard Clive sits down with publisher and CEO of GracePoint Publishing, Michelle Vandepas, to debunk this very myth. Michelle shares with listeners that, not only do you not have to wait two years to pick up your pen, but that with the right guidance, you can actually publish your book in just 60 days. This podcast is a great place to start if you’re looking to get some of your questions answered and begin the publishing process, but remember you can also sign up for a no-obligation call with Michelle for individualized and directed guidance.
Bernard Clive is an author, speaker, trainer, and lecturer, as well as Ghana’s foremost authority on Personal Branding and Digital Publishing. He has offered consulting services to hundreds of writers, poets, authors locally and internationally, and now shares advice and resources on his podcast. Make sure to join him and Michelle and listen to the episode here, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And don’t forget to follow Bernard Clive and GracePoint Publishing on the social media listed below to stay connected.
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Full Transcript:
When you write the back cover, you are getting very specific about what your reader is going to get out of this book.
Welcome to your personal branding podcast with Bernard Kelvin Clive, your number one career and business podcast in Ghana, bringing you expert interviews and insights into personal branding, personal development and publishing. Now, here’s your host Bernard Kelvin Clive.
Hello, listeners, welcome to another edition of a personal branding podcast. This is Bernard Kelvin Cline and this is a special interview edition. And this particular podcast episode we’re going to look at how we can help young entrepreneurs, established entrepreneurs to write a book using their book to position themselves to establish their expertise and their brand. What do you need to do to get started? If you’re starting to get stuck on the way, what do you must do? I’m talking to the expert in the publishing industry, who has been in business for 20 years. No other than the author and CEO of GracePoint Publishing, Michelle Vanderpas. Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Great to be here from across the pond, as they say, as a pleasure I treasure let’s let’s delve dry right away into the subjects of today. Young Entrepreneurs established intrapreneurs listen to us now want to pursue their brands, their businesses, they desire to write a book, they don’t know what to do the demand track them. But today, we want to walk them through the process how to get published. Firstly, why is it necessary for an author for an entrepreneur to write or publish a book.
So these days, having a book really leads to credibility. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur, you can set yourself apart in the marketplace to really show that you have some specific expertise. You have maybe a specific niche that you market to, or just that you want to share your knowledge, writing and publishing a book can be your business card these days, people give away books out they use them when they speak to give away at speaking of, or an entrepreneur, it’s a really great regeneration tool.
So you can see in some of the book establishes your credibility and authority in your field. And it’s also serve as maybe your what I call your your, your business card as an as a to to do business with advertising package, something we may see.
Yeah, absolutely. I was looking to hire a PA, a PR agent not too long ago. And we had one phone conversation. And then a few days later, I got her book in the mail. And it was amazing. Because in the book, it just laid out why you need a PR agent, what they do for you, and then how she was different. And it was a really great marketing tool from her perspective. And I did hire her. So it worked. And it does work because there is so much noise, so much competition, it’s helpful to just have something that sets you apart.
It’s helpful to have something that sets you apart. And the book is definitely one of the things we’ll choose for brand positioning setting you apart from the pile. And like I said, the the talking for the PR persons your book and do the talk in it. I tell entrepreneurs it can become the icing on the cake for you can be can be the door opener for you.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great way to put it.
And I’m sure having been working with authors in publishing for 20 years now. Now, what has been the challenges for people getting started in new writing or publishing their books? The biggest mistake or the biggest challenge I see with people is they just don’t know how to get started. They don’t know how to write. They don’t know how to take what’s inside their head and get it down on paper. That’s the first step and you think it would be easy. But for so many entrepreneurs that are like I know what I want to say, but I just can’t get it down. And so here’s a couple of tips. Can I just dive into this. So here’s a couple of tips. If someone works with me, I’ll interview them and get it out of your head. But maybe you want to go to a friend and have them interview you. Maybe you just want to talk out loud as though you were talking to prospective clients about what you do. Have somebody record you next time you’re on a sales call, where you are explaining why you’re better and why someone should hire you. Those are all the things that should go in your book. And entrepreneurs often think quickly. They’re great multitaskers, they have a lot of things on their plate. And to sit down and go through, whoa, process of writing is always a skill that comes easily to many entrepreneurs. So talking it out is often one way to break through that awkward about how do I get it out of my head onto paper. The other tip that I like to give is, write your back cover first. So imagine that you’re holding your what is on the back cover, when you write the back cover, you are getting very specific about what your reader is going to get out of this book. Right? When you pick up a back cover, you’re reading about why I should buy the book, what’s in the book, what’s in it for me, and maybe in. And that will help you really focus about what this book is about, we’ll help you collect your thoughts in one paragraph about what you want your reader to get from this book. And so if you’re an entrepreneur, you might have meters of expertise and experience. We are not looking to get all of that into a book, we’re looking to get in the books, specifically the message that you want to share right now to help as a lead generation tool for you as an entrepreneur.
You start with the end in mind, look at the back matter of the book, what should be what should be your book lab, what what is the main subject matter you want to share with your readers or would be clients, then once you write that it can help you get started. And the other thing is that you can just talk out or record your thoughts, your your ideas first, and that will be a good starting point. Exactly. Walk us through how to get a book published.
Yes. So there’s a lot of ways to publish. Right? I like to talk about three different models, great first model that everybody knows about is traditional book publishing, you write a proposal, you send it off to a publisher, and you may get a small advance is pretty rare these days. And then you get a while. And they take care of everything from edit, book covers, publishing it, getting it libraries, and so forth. That’s pretty difficult to get these days, you can still get those and at my company Gracepoint publishing, we offer just a handful of those deals every year. Very, very small. We look for and what publishers are, is an author and entrepreneur who has a way to market the book, who already has an audience. Maybe the coaching, maybe they have a podcast like you do, but there’s a way to sell a book, because the publisher doesn’t know you, they’re taking big risk investing all the time and money published. That’s that’s the most common one that people know about. The second one is self publishing, which we all know has hit, you know, Amazon, right? Everybody self publishes a great Bible option, you put in all the money, and you do your own research, create your own covers, publish your book, and you may or may not buy an ISBN for your book. And then you collect 100% of royalties, you don’t have a partner, the that’s a great way to go as long as you’re not skipping steps that to make sure you work with a professional editor. We want a great book cover or won’t sell. You want to make sure your spine is aligned correctly. It a lot of entrepreneurs like that because they are entrepreneurs. And like I said they they can do a lot. Things are usually interested in learning new things. And so that’s a good option. I always recommend that you work with a publishing coach, so you don’t skip steps. The third option is my favorite, where author and the publisher both best and this is a new poll that has come on the scene in the last five years or so, where it’s called hybrid publishing. And it’s a combination of those two, the author will work with a publisher invest time and money. Publisher also invest time and money. You both have skin in the game you work together as a collective project. Get your book published. And then that publisher will help you market it, get it into libraries. And then there’s a royalty split. I like that because it usually will personally I like working collaboratively with authors. But everybody’s got some skin in the game, as I said, and so the book tends to either one or the other two options.
Amazing. So there are three options available for authors or would be authors to publish their book, The under the traditional trade publishers that we all knew about. But it’s quite difficult to get through to get the book Publish. And the second one is to become problem with the past decade is a self publishing puzzle you mentioned, but the new only the hybrid method, which you believe is one of the best route to go because there’s there’s because investment and both parties in the project, and royalties are split.
Yeah, I like that. But you know, we work with all the all three models. Because you have to find the right model for the author. Different authors have different, you know, goals, different intentions, different things, they want to do a book. And so I always like to hop on a call and really dig into what the author wants to achieve what the purpose of the book is. And then together, we usually choose the right model for them.
Okay, so you walk, you walk the attack through the processes and realize that a specific need of the all time which of the models are best fits for the altar of ABA, let’s let’s put this scenario that an entrepreneur wants to get a book published, he has no platform. He has no specific platform, no audience, but I desire to have a good experience. And I think I need to publish a book, how would you help such a person?
So I think the first thing we do is we talk through, what do you want the book to do for you. So we’re presuming because these are entrepreneurs, it’s lead generation. But I have published lots of books for entrepreneurs that are not lead generation books, they are m wars or passion project or just something else that they want to do in their life, right. And so first thing we do is discern that, because if it’s a passion project, you don’t need a big platform, you’re putting it out, because it’s something on your bucket list, as they say, let that’s different reason and totally valid reason. If, however, it’s lead generation, you don’t have a platform, then we need to talk about how you’re wanting to build your business. That kind of platform might work for you. And is it online or offline. So some people like to go network locally and do lunch, and speak at breakfast meetings and get out in the community and trade shows. That’s building a platform, you don’t have to do it online. But if you’re an entrepreneur, you know that you need lead generation or or your sales are going to draw. I think these days are we talk about building platform, we presume it’s online. And that’s not true. There’s lots of businesses out there that platform, but it’s offline, and that’s still valid. So we’ve started is it for lead gen, you will need a platform. Let’s determine whether it’s online offline or a combination of both. Let’s determine if you feel like YouTube would be good for you or podcasting or podcast guesting, whether you like, if you’d like writing, maybe it’s blogging, or writing blogs for other people, or just writing long articles for LinkedIn, there’s a lot of ways to go, we want to find the right way that’s going to work for you as an author that you’ll stick with. Right? Because we don’t want to put you in something that you’re rolling 10 days later going, this doesn’t work for me. We want it to be fun.
So that said and it means that we picked Simon’s next phrase that you always need to start with your why then that will determine what kind of book project you need to go through the type of publishing process that you might be best fit for you and also like I’m sure based on your budget as well. Because you come in there.
Yeah, so it’s always comes back to your why right. And entrepreneurship and writing a book and you know, moving across the country, whatever it is, is always your why budgeting if I can just a charm that is important consideration because you can self publish your book. If you’re really tenacious and do it all yourself. Have or really almost no money, right? Is it may look like it’s a self published book? Yeah, so you’re talking about it you can handle by your backyard, your PR person to help in process you can handle it yourself, or not much money. Did you hear that part of it, whether you can do all the steps yourself, you just want to be careful, it doesn’t look like a self published book, then, and someone like my company to just handle the whole thing, turn over your manuscript, we’ll take it all the way through editing, publishing, building your platform, best seller launches, everything. And those programs can be quite expensive. If the 1000 into six figures and USA dollars, right, most would say should have a budget of between five and 15,000 US dollars to get a really great book that’s going to work as a lead generation tool.
So with your experience in the publishing industry, what will be your billion dollar tips in the area of publishing, either use the book as a lead generation to as a passion project, or what what would be your billion dollar advice to authors, upcoming authors globally.
So what I would say is, number one, speak with an expert, all schedule a call with me, it’s it’s a no obligation call, I love sharing this knowledge, obviously, I give it away for free on pod with time. Beyond that, make sure you edit your book. There’s nothing like a bad review on Amazon because your book hasn’t been edited to really take your book. So that’s the number one thing that I see mistake made is they don’t go through a editing process.
So you mentioned that the most important thing that you need to get your book edited properly. How can alter the listeners get in touch with you and your services in the area of getting their books published, they have desires to do that. Thank you for asking, if you go to Gracepointpublishing.com I have free gifts there for you I have a report you can download is to schedule a call with me. Lots of gifts. So go to Grace point publishing.com.
Gracepointpublishing.com is the place to get hooked to Michelle Ling and get the global gift she’s got for you and get your book started. Perfect. Thank you, them, how can they connect with you personally, there’s a schedule call there. And if you click on the schedule, that will go straight to my calendar. And anyone can schedule a call with me. So Gracepoint publishing is still the place to find me. That’s where I hang out on all the Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram. Find me everywhere.
All right, thanks Michelle. So listeners if you desire to write a book user because lead generation to a passion project meaning form we mentioned there are three main ways a traditional route that hybrid or you want to go self publishing route any of them is fine. But based on the your why your reason why you want good publishing. And once you need to speak to an expert in directing guiding the process you’re good to go.
That’s correct. Perfect.
Okay, so Michelle, thanks for your time and I thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
It’s a pleasure, I treasure,