Writing your first book can seem like a daunting task. However, you might be feeling a nudge to bite the bullet and get started anyways. This might be because writing a book has always been on your bucket list or you just have a story that needs to be shared. More so than that, although, writing a book can help your business hugely.
On this week’s podcast, Michelle Vandepas joins Nikki Nash as a guest on the Market Your Genius Podcast! Nikki’s podcast is a place for female entrepreneurs from all walks of life to gather together to learn and grow. In this episode, Michelle shares some tips regarding how writing a book can allow entrepreneurs to gain leverage in their professional worlds. Making sure that your book aligns with and supports your business goals is a process that requires expert insight. Luckily, you can listen to the podcast to learn a lot of this information! Michelle and Nikki discuss how to write your first book, how to generate leads from your book, marketing, and using your book as leverage to create clients. And so much more!
Nikki Nash is a serial entrepreneur who helps women turn their zone of genius into a seven-figure source of income. She founded Market Your Genius after leaving her job at 26, after reaching her goal of earning six figures. Now, she uses her podcast and platform to inspire female entrepreneurs and bring together authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, influencers, entrepreneurs, and all types of creators to speak out and change the world together. Make sure to follow her on social media to keep connecting. You can find links to Nikki and GracePoint’s social media down below!
You can listen to the podcast episode by clicking here, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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Full Transcript
Nikki
You are listening to Episode 57 of the Market Your Genius podcast. And in this episode, I’m interviewing Michelle Vandepas who is an author, TEDx speaker, and visibility coach. And she’s also the co-founder of GracePoint Publishing. If you are on a mission to share your experiences and your expertise with the world, then I really encourage you to listen to this episode, because it’s all about how you turn your experiences and your expertise into a book that you market and sell and use for lead generation not only to grow your business, but to make a bigger impact in this world. So if you have a mission, or a message that you really want to communicate, I really encourage you to listen to this episode, so that you can get even more information on how to turn your story, your skills, all into a book that you can share with others. So without further ado, let’s turn it into this episode.
Hello, and welcome to the Market Your Genius podcast, helping women entrepreneurs just like you market and monetize your experiences and expertise. Each week, we bring you interviews, mini trainings and strategies to help you stand out think differently, and shatter industry statistics. Let’s get started with serial entrepreneur, Hay House author and your host, Nikki Nash.
Nikki
Hi, Michelle, how are you?
Michelle
I’m great. Thanks so much for having me here.
Nikki
Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to have you. And to kick us off, I’d love for you to just tell the listener a little bit about you and how you became an entrepreneur?
Michelle
So it’s a great question, because I think some people are just sort of born with the entrepreneurial gene. Like some people are born with a creative gene. Everybody’s creative, everybody’s entrepreneurial. But it comes more naturally to some of us than others, right. And so I had entrepreneurial tendencies and qualities since I was like eight years old, probably earlier. But I had some small businesses as a teenager, and was just figuring out how to make money. But really, in my 20s, I went out on my own and started an office supply company was funny, I hardly ever mentioned that. And it was just all entrepreneurial ventures. Since then, I’ve had to learn a lot along the way. And so just because I have an entrepreneurial, bent, doesn’t mean it all came easily. There’s a lot of trial and error a lot of and still it’s a lot to learn. And I love the journey. I really enjoy being an entrepreneur.
Nikki
Amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about the business you have today and what your kind of most recent entrepreneurial venture is?
Michelle
Yes, I own a publishing company. I’m co owner of a publishing company. And I publish. Just like a traditional publishing company, we have Library of Congress, we have imprints we pull ISBN, all the things that a traditional publishing company does. The difference with us and some other traditional publishing companies is myself and our other founder and some of our high level team members have all been in the online space for a decade or more. And so we really understand how to market books, how to leverage things like social media, and podcasting, and so forth to help actually sell books. And some of the more traditional publishing companies don’t do those, they’ve relied on distributors. And in the past book tours and those kinds of things, which are also very valuable, we just bring that added component to it. And I started the company, after I self published my own book 21 years ago. Now, what had been quite a while ago, I self published a book. And then I started being a consultant to help other people learn how to publish their own books and how to write their books. And that has just morphed over the last 20 years into this full fledged publishing company that I run now.
Nikki
That’s so cool. You were like an original self publishing author.
Michelle
I was. That was one of the one of the ones back in the day, as they say before Amazon.
Nikki
Well, so many people want to write a book, but they just don’t know where to start. And can you share with us a bit about what your processes for writing a book?
Michelle
Absolutely. So it’s different for every person, and it’s different for the type of book you’re writing. So let’s talk first about women in business who are entrepreneurs may be service based professionals because I think that is its own niche. And then you can ask me if you want to talk about other genres or other types of people, but those specific types of people and as women, we off doesn’t have a lot going on, we’re usually multitaskers, we might have other people we’re helping to care give for or we have families, or we have creative endeavors that we want to follow, right women have a usually an extra component to their personal life, their inner life, that makes writing a book, more creative, and sometimes more challenging, because you have to find the time. The good news is, if you’re an entrepreneur or service based business, you’re probably writing a book that’s going to help your lead generation that’s going to help set you up as an expert in the marketplace, that’s going to be part of your legacy, your mission, your purpose, your foundation for building your business even more. And so for these people, it’s actually much easier to write a book than you think, because you’ve most of these women, and men to have the knowledge in their brain already. And it’s just about getting it down on paper. And every person has a different process that works for them. So with some people, I’ll get on the phone will outline their book in a couple of hours, just by me asking the right questions about what is it that you want your reader to know when they finish the book, and then we work backwards from there. So that’s one way as you bullet point, everything in your brain, you write an outline, and then you flush it out, just like you’re flushing out, sales, copy a course write some sort of service you’re going to offer another way, as you talk into your phone, or somebody interviews you or you just talk to somebody else, and they take notes, talking out loud, works really well for a lot of people to get their knowledge out of their brain. So those are the two ways that I really work with people to help get books out. There’s plenty more. But those are the two most common ways.
Nikki
That’s awesome. And you mentioned that people can use books for lead generation, especially if they’re entrepreneurs. Can you share a little bit about the strategy or the methodology behind creating a book and then using it for lead? Gen.
Michelle
Yeah, so when you’re an entrepreneur, a book has an amazing opportunity to act as your long form sales page or a business card. It is a way to highlight your expertise, and show that you’re a leader in your industry. So just by writing the book, it gives you credibility, even if nobody reads it. You can say yes, I’ve written a book on, you know, the best way to hire a coach, I’ve written a book on the best way to get podcast interviews, I’ve written a book on the easiest three steps to live a Keto lifestyle, right, whatever it is, you become the expert in your industry, just having written the book, then if you sell high end products or services, you can give away your book as a lead gen say, Here’s my book love to work with you for you, you can put an opt in in your book. And what that means is if someone’s reading a chapter in your book, and then you have add on material, like a PDF or video or something that explains or shows what you’re writing about in more depth, they can go to your website into their email, and get adjunct material that’s mentioned in your book. And that gives you emails, which is lead generation, you can use it as giveaways. If you’re a speaker, you can give away your book to everyone in the audience, or you can do drawings. So there’s lots of different ways to use a book is lead gen. And if you’re writing a book in your business owner, you really have to think about that upfront. What is it that you’re going to use the book for and how is it going to help you build your business?
Nikki
I think that’s so smart, especially around the notion of work backwards, like what is the intention and the purpose of this book so that you can make sure you’re writing it with intention?
Michelle
Yeah, one of the tips I give who, for people that are really stuck, either, especially entrepreneurs, you know, we are creative people. And we usually have 10, or 20, or 100, business ideas, and lots of different ways we could go and it’s what is the message per this book? You might have other books, but what is the message for this book? What’s the book you really want to write today? So there’s two things that I work with clients on and authors on. One is dialogue with a book, go for a walk, do some journaling, ask the book, what is it you want for me? What would you like to express Through me, so pretend like your book is another person or its own energy or its own entity and have a conversation with it, you’ll be amazed the information you get back. Because you have that in your subconscious, you just need to access that information. Then the second tip that I give people, and I think this is really helpful is write your book description in the back cover of your book before you ever start writing your book. You may end up tweaking it or not using it, or changing it. However, if you write your book description, first, you will get really clear about who this book is for and what is in the book. That’s awesome,
Nikki
especially because a lot of people that I speak with have so much content have so much knowledge, and they try to put it all in the book and it ends up being too much or not being easy to digest. And so I think just starting off by asking, What does this book need for me? What does it want for me, and really understanding what the description of the book is set out to entail by writing that first, it helps people kind of hone in on this is what I’m actually writing with this book.
Michelle
And you lead, you lead me into the next thing, which by May, I’m going to bypass your question and just say, that really leads to the next step, which is really be open to the editing process. So sometimes people have to just put it all out on paper, or type it all out, get it out of their head. And they don’t really know which concept they want to focus in on the book. And that’s okay. So if you end up putting all these ideas down, and it is unfocused, that’s okay, because you want to work with a really top notch editor, because that changes your book from being okay. Good enough to really polished, professional and ready to publish.
Nikki
And can you share with the listener, what editors do and the different types of editors, because I’m sure a lot of people go, Oh, I write this book. And then the editor comes in and make sure I’m grammatically correct. But it’s so much more than that. And I’d love for you to just share about the different types of editors and what they do.
Michelle
There are so many different types of editors. And these days are also things like book coaches, and book shepherds and publishers and all these other terms that you’ll come in contact with, if you’re a new author that you may not be familiar with. I’m not going to go over all the types of editors, but the most common, the first one would be a developmental editor, that may also be a book coach, what is it you want in the book? And what is the order that the items should be in the book? So let’s pretend you’re going to talk about going on a vegetarian diet. Maybe you would have the focus of the book, just going meat free one meal a week to start, someone else may say you have to go cold turkey, go vegetarian, right off, right? But let’s just pretend for this book, meat free one meal, that’s the focus of the book. And then are you going to put recipes in what else needs to go in the book? Do you need to have emotional pieces in there? Are you going to talk about weight loss? So the first type of editor or book coach would be what actually goes in the books, it takes people through the premise and guides them? How much of your personal story are you going to put in there? And how do you go from the beginning to the end of the book, what is flow to bring people through so by the end, they’re willing to go meet free one day a week. That is one type of editor. Another type of editor is after the book is written or partially written, an editor will come in and say we need to move these sections around. That’s also developmental editing, but it’s a little bit later in the process. And then you have editors that can help you with your voice, which may be the same editor or a different editor. Just making sure that you have a clear, strong voice that sounds like you doesn’t just isn’t just dry. This easy to read is fun to read. Then, of course, you do have the editors that are grammatical editors, those might be copy editors, checking with things like punctuation and spelling, or you may have an editor before that, that helps with sentence structure. Some of the editors do all of it. Some of the editors specialize in certain pieces. And so I always recommend you get a good editor that’s going to look at the content. How the book develops from beginning to end, and sentence structure. You can if you do that, your book won’t be much better off than if you don’t hire for that type of editing. And that’s one of the biggest mistakes new authors make. They say, Well, I had some people read it, they say it’s good. Or I had my friend do it. And she majored in English, and she says it’s good. But there’s a specific skill that comes with editing that will help make sure the book really flows.
Nikki
What are some other common mistakes that new authors make?
Michelle
So an ISBN is a place where authors get really confused, and who owns the ISBN, should they get an ISBN do they need an ISBN, what is an ISBN, and if you look at the back of any book, you’ll see a number that is on the barcode. And if you open up the copyright page, you’ll see a number on the copyright page. And ISBN is something that you pull that it’s kind of like a social security number for a book, it shows who owns the copyright, and who publishes the book. And if a publisher pulls the ISBN, then they own the copyright for the package of the book, not your particular content. But how the book is packaged together with the cover the layout, design, the title, and the all the text and the words inside, and any images or diagrams inside that book. So the most common mistake people make so go to a publisher, who might be what’s called the hybrid publisher, where you pay some money, they publish the book, they give you an ISBN. And then you want to come back a year later and republish the book, because it hasn’t done what you want, or you want to change the cover. And actually, if they have the ISBN, you may not contractually be able to do that they have to release the book back to you. And so the most common mistake I see is people who have gone elsewhere, don’t own their ISBN, and think that they own their ISBN only because they don’t understand the contractual obligations. There’s no right or wrong. There’s just different methods. And you need to understand which method you’re buying you to.
Nikki
So outside of hiring an editor and in the right type of editor, somebody who can actually help with the structure of the book, as well as the content, and making sure that they have the ISBN number and understand who owns it, whether it’s them, or if they’ve used a hybrid method, or have a traditional book deal. What are just some other common questions that your clients typically come to you for?
Michelle
Well, the obvious one is, how am I going to sell the book? How do I get it out into bookstores, that’s a whole marketing piece. And these days, you’ve got to sort of do everything and see what works. If you’re a speaker, you want to make sure that your books are in your contract for speaking. So you can either have the person who’s hiring you, as a speaker, by a book for every member of the audience, or you’re going to give every member of the audience one of your books, as part of your speaking agreement. If you are, let’s say a massage therapist, you want to make sure that you have your books for sale at your office, you want to do obviously, Amazon, but that is not the only place you want to be everywhere books are sold. So you want to have good distribution. And then you want to build social media, you may blog, you may do podcasting, you may have tick tock or Instagram, there’s no one bullet proof, right answer it is finding the way that’s going to work for you. And then sticking with it long term. And keep relaunching your book, don’t do it once and then walk away, you want to keep putting it out there, at least for a couple of years. And just keep mentioning your book and making sure people know about it. Because it is kind of a long haul. To sell a lot of books for most people, you’re gonna have a rush in the first week or two, and then sales are gonna go flat. And that’s when most people get discouraged. And you just gotta keep at it. It’s like building a business. You just have to keep at it. And it’s a new product that you’re adding to your business line. And so think of it like your product, and you just keep offering it and keep marketing it. That’s probably the number one question I get. Yeah.
Nikki
And what’s amazing about how you just laid that out is when people think of their book as a product, you can start thinking about the different campaigns that you may be want to put out there to promote your book, whether depending on your industry, it’s Mother’s Day, Father’s day back to school, you know, New Years new you like those sorts of things so that people are constantly thinking, how can I position my book a little bit differently? You Given what’s timely for their business in their industry?
Michelle
Absolutely, and partner with other people, see if you can have someone endorse your book that’s really big. And then email for your has a big list or is in your industry or well known in your industry? Absolutely. It’s just like a product, whatever you would do for any of your other products, you have to think about for your book as well.
Nikki
And do you have insight into what’s normal for the average person marketing and selling books? I think a lot of people when I speak to them, they’re like, Yes, I’m going to write this book. And it’s going to be a best seller. And a million bajillion people I’m over exaggerating on purpose are going to buy this book. Can you bring us back down to a little bit of like, reality and ground us a little bit in terms of what’s normal for Okay,
Michelle
so I want to preface this by saying, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re gonna make your money off the lead gen, you’re not going to necessarily make all the money back on the book. So if you write a book on how to go keto, or be vegetarian, or how to be a better massage therapist, or how to sell more widgets, or have it be a great podcast, guest, whatever it is, you want to really think about lead gen, because you can make a lot of money if you get one good client from your book, right. So if you sell a $3,000 coaching package, and the right person buys your book, and you sell one coaching package, that’s worth a lot of book sales, if you think someone buys a Kindle, I’m making $1, or two off my Kindle $3,000 sale is a lot rather than a couple of bucks off my Kindle book. So you got to have that mindset. Then, when we talk about for best seller, if you’re going for Amazon Best Seller, I have hit with clients bestseller status with less than 100 books sold. So it’s not necessarily the amount of books sold to get to bestseller status. It is timing, it’s a good book description. It’s Seo on Amazon, which is a search parameters. It is what categories are you in who else is launching books the same day, you don’t want to launch the same day, Michelle Obama launches a book, right? And you want to get noticed. And so all of those things come into play. It is out there on the internet that the average person sells 200 books. I don’t know if that’s true, we tend to sell a lot more books than that. But I’ve read that statistic. And if you go with that statistic, it is not very many books. And if you sell 200 books, and 20 of those people are buying $3,000 packages from you, you’re doing just fine on your book sales. So I think you have to look at metrics in a slightly different way when you’re an entrepreneur. The second thing I’ll say about that is second books always do better than first books. And most authors. First time authors don’t realize what an excruciating process getting a book out can be. It is like anything worthwhile starting your business, raising your family, you know, running a 10k or a marathon or it’s it, the process is some work. But the rewards are so great once you get through it, and you can be so proud of yourself. And then what happens is you get a little bit of that amnesia, forgetting how tough the process was, you want to dive back in and do it again, right, just like running a marathon or whatever. And so second books, authors usually know a lot more, they’re better writers, they’re more concise, they understand how the process works. And the audience is usually waiting for the second book. And so second, books always do a little better than first books, usually, in my experience. And so I would say again, you don’t have to be an author or writer, you don’t have to think of yourself like that. But if you’ve written one book, you’ll probably come out with a second book and a couple of years. And the second one will be much faster, much smoother, and you’ll make more money on the second book.
Nikki
That’s so true. And just from a credibility standpoint, when you see that somebody has not only taken the time to write one book, but as written the second or third and so forth. It just adds to that credibility.
Michelle
Absolutely. And you know, Brene Brown is written how many books now on vulnerability, and Brendon Bouchard, writes about the same thing. Julia Cameron, who’s one of my favorite, favorite artists ever has written more 26 books or something on how to be creative. You don’t have to have you topics you just go deeper into the topic, you know.
Nikki
Absolutely. And you mentioned earlier there that, you know, you’ve helped clients become Amazon Best Sellers. And you mentioned a number of things like timing and the description and SEO, could you break that down a little bit more for people who are thinking, all right, I would like to become an Amazon Best Seller, what are some of the things that I should either consider doing or that I should absolutely do in order to get to that goal, or at least become really close to achieving that goal.
Michelle
So first thing is you got to have a really great book cover. And so what I recommend is you go look at other book covers on Amazon, in your genre, and really look and see what’s going to work for a cover because people have in their heads, what a book cover should look like. And if you’re scrolling through Amazon, go look and see what you would click on busy book covers are not easily found on Amazon. So that would be the first thing is that’s going to make a big difference if you become a best seller. Second thing is that we need a really good clear book description. That is nothing about you, but everything about what is in it for the reader. So if your your listeners or any type of business owner or service professional or entrepreneur, they understand that you’ve got to sell with what’s in it for the client, right? And so same thing, what’s in it for the reader? What is my reader going to get from this book, and that needs to be in the book description. Then we look at categories, we do a lot of research, you want to be in a category that represents who you are, and what your book is, and a category that’s not overly crowded. So we do a lot of research on categories. And you got to have a decent book got to have some reviews, before you do a bestseller launch, and can’t have spelling errors in it. Obviously, things slip through the cracks all the time. I’ve read books from major major authors with spelling errors and punctuation errors because things slip through. But you want to get it proved, have people read it and make sure it’s a good quality product when it’s up. And then you got a good chance, you got to take care of the basics. And the rest is just going through the motions doing some marketing and promoting your book.
Nikki
Can you talk a little bit more about having a great book cover? Because I think I’ve seen a lot of self published authors go I’m writing this book, and they put like themselves on the cover. And in the reality. Like in reality, not many people know who they are in the first place. So can you talk a little bit about should you put yourself in the cover should you not what makes a good cover? I’d love to hear your perspective on that.
Michelle
Simple is better. People love to have lots of pictures on the back. They say I want no mountains and a sunrise and the waterfall in the background and my subtitle and all these key words and a picture of me and right it’s too much we can’t take it all in. Simple, very simple background or simple photo on the back, easy to read title. This to the point that the subtitle that explains a little more about what the books about, Don’t get cute. You want to be really clear with your book title that’s on the cover in easy to read letters. And then usually don’t put the author on the front cover. Because unless you are Michelle Obama or Brendon Bouchard, most people don’t recognize you. And in fact, I’m not sure I’d recognize Brendon Burchard if I saw him, right. So it is very tricky, because a lot of authors do want to put themselves on the cover. But I always recommend putting the author on the back cover with a good headshot and a short bio, and the front cover should highlight the book and the back cover can highlight the author more. If you put up a picture of you on your cover, and people don’t know who you are, rarely do they stop to think Oh, I wonder who this person is if I’m supposed to know them or not. What they will do is click on a title that looks interesting to read more about that book.
Nikki
And thank you so much. We’re bumping up on time. So I just want to ask you like a quick question that will help our listeners really get started with writing their book and bring it out into the world. And my first quick question is, can somebody really write a book in 90 days or less?
Michelle
Yeah, so if you work with a coach, or developmental editor, or if you have a course already written, if you have blog posts already written, you can take all that and write a really great book. And editing may take longer than 90 days. It depends it depends when you work with your editor, how deep you get into the editing process and how much editing it needs. and how good of a writer you are that absolutely I’ve personally written a book in six weeks. I’ve known lots of other people with because they’re content, heavy books, these are not creative novels where you have to go and duck out do a lot of research about old England in the 1600s, or whatever, right? And it’s not a story. So when their content rich books, absolutely you can you can write a book in 90 days, especially if you have some content already. You’re going to take that and flush it out.
Nikki
And now I’m just curious, what book did you write in six weeks and tell us a little bit about that process.
Michelle
So that was my first marketing book. It was marketing for holistic practitioners. It was the book I published 21 years ago. Basically, what I did was I sat down and wrote and just hand wrote out everything I knew about marketing that massage therapists needed to know because that’s who I was doing a lot of my work with, at the time, massage therapists and all kinds of holistic practitioners. And I just bullet pointed at all, everything they need to know. And back then it wasn’t online. It was things like how to create good flyers how to network, how to get an elevator speech, it was all those kinds of ideas. And I just bullet pointed it out, and then wrote a paragraph about each bullet point and then wrote the segues. So it moved from paragraph to paragraph and wrote the book in six weeks.
Nikki
That’s awesome. And for our listener, that’s thinking, Man, I would love to write a book, I’m pumped, I’m ready to go. What is one homework assignment you’d give them so that they can start turning their intellectual property into a book, like one thing they could do after listening to this episode?
Michelle
Nice. I would really go into some self reflection. So whatever you own practices, walking, yoga, meditating, journaling, whatever practice you have that works for you go into that quiet space, and might even be the bathtub, right? And just think about what is it that I can really be of service to right now in the world? If I wrote a book about my expertise, how could I most help? How can I most be of service? What can I teach? Or what knowledge can I impart that’s going to help the most right now, for my prospective audience, reader client? And then ask and what is it that I really know? Well, what is it that I have high expertise in? And then ask him what does my client my prospective client really need right now? And when those three things come together, you’ve got a place to write a book.
Nikki
Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that. And can you share with us how the listener can get to know you? Where can they find you online?
Michelle
Thank you. So my publishing company is GracePointPublishing.com. And I’ve got all kinds of resources there, you can opt in for a PDF about 10 things to know before you publish your book, and other resources there, they can also hook up a time to connect with me or one of the other book coaches to find out if you have a good book idea or find out more about publishing Gracepoint publishing.com.
Nikki
Perfect. And just out of curiosity, do you publish? Like do people submit to be published by your company? Or are they your clients? How does that kind of work?
Michelle
It’s both we get submissions all the time. And we have a team of people that reads through submissions, we don’t need a whole manuscript, we can have a table of contents, and a writing sample, in order to submit and we do only take nonfiction, mostly entrepreneurs and the kinds of books that we’ve been talking about. I have helped people and done consulting with people who write fiction or other types of books, historical novels, those kinds of things that we wouldn’t publish, but we still do consulting around that.
Nikki
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Michelle, this has been so valuable.
Michelle
Thank you. I love talking with you today, Nikki.
Nikki
Likewise, I hope that in listening to this episode, you’re able to share your message to share your mission with the world. And as you grow and build your audience in your platform, one of the things that I encourage you to do is to connect with what you stand for, connect with what you stand against, and be a voice for your values and for the vision that you have for this world. Because so many people have large platforms. And that’s amazing and one of the best things you can do is use it to change the world. So in our next episode, we’re gonna dive deep into the conversation around how do you share your message with the world? How do you stand up for what you believe in? And how do you do it in a way that feels Right and organic and natural for you so that you are building a community around people who have the same values and beliefs and want the same world and the same things on this planet as you do. So I really can’t wait for that episode. It’ll come out in just a few days. So stay tuned. And until next time, keep crushing it.
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the market your genius podcast. We want to see you succeed. So if you have any questions about today’s content, text with Nikki directly at 646-603-1324. And before you go, don’t forget to rate and review the show so that we can continue to bring you the best content each week. See you on the next episode.