How to Best Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters - BM379

Narrator [00:00:07]:

If you're an author or plan to be one, get excited because this podcast is for you. Book Marketing Mentors is the only podcast dedicated to helping you successfully market and sell your book. If you're ready for empowering conversations with successful marketing mavens, then grab a coffee or tea and listen in to your host, international bestselling author, Susan Friedman.

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the experts. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today. My special guest is Josh Bernoff. Josh is renowned author and ghostwriter who's penned eight successful business books. With his experience, he's played a crucial role in 50 book projects, resulting in a staggering $20 million in revenue for the authors involved. Now Josh presents his latest masterpiece, build a Better Business Book how to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters a comprehensive guide for authors. But Josh's impact doesn't stop there. He generously shares his knowledge and insights with aspiring authors through his daily blog posts on Burnoff.com. With an astounding 4 million views, his blog has become a treasure trove of invaluable information, and I'm one of those 4 million views. So, Josh, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Josh Bernoff [00:01:51]:

Thanks for that great introduction. I think I'm going to fire my publicist and use you instead. You make me sound really great, so I love that. Thanks.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:00]:

Well, you are really great. Now, don't underestimate how great you are. I mean, those articles that you put out every day, wow. I'm like, how does he come up with these subjects every day that are so inspiring? And I know you're very controversial as well, which I really like. I love this idea of being that contrarian. So good for you. Keep it up. Okay, josh, in your latest book, Build a Better Business Book how to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters, you mentioned focusing on the story rather than piling up words. The question is, how can authors effectively integrate storytelling into business books?

Josh Bernoff [00:02:47]:

While storytelling is essential for any book to succeed, and we're all used to the idea that a novel is a story, but these business books that are just sort of tomes, people don't read them, people don't share them, they don't remember them, they don't enjoy them. For business authors, you really need to answer the question, what is the story that I'm telling that's sort of at the macro level? Your story generally should be something like, there's people like this, they have this problem. Here's an idea you haven't thought about to solve the problem, and here are the elements of that solution. At a more micro level, throughout the book, you need to have stories about people and their experiences. That's what keeps people reading, and that's what they believe. I think it was the author, Chip Heath, who did an experiment and found out that people were ten times more likely to remember a story than a statistic when they were hearing about something in nonfiction. So really, I do this all the time when I work with authors. The question is, where will your stories come from? Where will your case studies come from? Will they come from your own experience, your client's experience, things that you found online, or vendor case studies that you've read about? And unless you have those stories in there, it becomes very difficult to retain people's attention and hard to get them to believe what you're saying.

Susan Friedmann [00:04:09]:

Yeah, I mean, the question too is how do you research these stories? Yes, you say your own case studies, but let's say you don't necessarily have the right story to fit a certain challenge that you want to highlight in a book.

Josh Bernoff [00:04:27]:

Any author who's writing a book and is worthy of that title of author has a solution to a problem. And that problem should be something they have experience with. You're helping people to integrate artificial intelligence into their software programming, or you're helping people to do marketing without spending money on advertising or whatever it happens to be. Well, if you or your company are doing this, then you're likely interacting with people who have these problems. And often those people are willing to be showcased, sometimes by name, sometimes not. There's also the stories, and I don't want people to discount this, the stories of people who failed. Often those people won't go on the record with you, but you can still tell a pseudonymous story where you're like, okay, there once was this person who tried this, and this is how it didn't work, and here's why it didn't work. And here's what you can learn from that. And we don't absolutely have to know that person's name. We just need to know that they were a senior executive in a financial services company or something like that. The other thing is that authors really need to keep their ears open all of the time for stories that they can use. You look in the newspaper and you say, oh, look, here is an article that quotes mathematicians talking about AI and whether it will take their jobs. Well, I'm writing a book on AI, so why don't I quote from that article and maybe I'll actually contact one of these mathematicians and get their story. The other thing people can do, and this is totally free and really easy, is vendors in your space, people who sell technology, they are often collecting and publicizing case studies. You go on their website and you read about how Wells Fargo Bank used this software to streamline the way that they do customer service, whatever it happens to be. Well, those case studies have people in them, and the people have already gone on the record so you can then call up the organization, say, I'd like to interview this person that I read about, and turn that into your own research and your own story in your book.

Susan Friedmann [00:06:42]:

Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. I love that idea. I also love the idea of highlighting mistakes because I know people love reading about mistakes and obviously learning about them. And in fact, I'm going to just bring that in now as a transition because we love highlighting mistakes that authors make in writing, marketing. Let's just put you on the spot here with regard to some mistakes. I don't mean to put you on the spot. I know that you know about lots of mistakes because you write about them all the time. What are some of the common mistakes when it comes to, let's say, first of all, writing a business book, and I think you've highlighted something already, but let's hear what you have to say.

Josh Bernoff [00:07:29]:

This is a good time to at least repeat that. One of the biggest mistakes is the failure to collect enough stories. And I'm always having that conversation. But putting that aside, one of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that the job of a writer is to write. They're like, oh, I'm going to write this book. I'm going to write something every day. And I think they sit down and they write every day. I can't resist sharing the story of a very smart, best selling author that I know was working on her second book, and she posted in an author's group that I'm in and said, Help me, help me. I'm 76,000 words into my 60,000 word book. It's just like, I know how that happened and I know where you are and I know why you're in pain. It's because you wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And the job of the author starts with research and then organizing the content. And then when the time comes to write a chapter, you have all of the material you need. You can organize that well. And then you know that the stuff that you're writing, where it fits in, how that chapter is going to work. And you don't find yourself 76,000 words into a 60,000 word book. So spend three quarters of your time on planning and then the writing goes much easier. I guess that's the lesson from that story.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:48]:

I love that. And it's funny because I've written a couple of four dummies books for Wiley. Their process is that you actually really write the whole table of contents in very thoroughly. What are you going to cover in each chapter? And then you actually write. So what you're doing is you're creating the skeleton and then you're putting the meat on the bones, but they approve the skeleton before you even start putting those meat on the bones. I think that sort of is a way of what you're saying is that research has to be outlined so that you know exactly what you're going to put where before you actually start putting it in place.

Josh Bernoff [00:09:33]:

Exactly. Right. And it's effective for regular books, too, not just dummies books.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:38]:

Yeah.

Josh Bernoff [00:09:39]:

It also helps prevent writer's block, because if you think your job is to write, you sit down to write, and you're like, oh, what am I supposed to write? Oh, I'm a total failure now. You're not. You just didn't do the work ahead of time. And if you assemble the content for a chapter and organize it into what I call a fat outline, which is basically a collection of indicators, what content is going to go where and in what order so that it makes a nice story. Now, when you go and sit down to write, writer's block is not an issue because you're like, oh, here's a complete plan. All I have to do is write the stuff that fits the plan. I know what all the pieces are, and it goes much more smoothly and with less pain.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:16]:

I love that expression, fat outline. And I know you've highlighted that in your book and you talk about it in length, but it's a great expression. I think I'm going to start using that. That's really nice. Thank you. Let's transition Josh into the marketing promotion of the book because so many of our listeners have actually written their book, and however, it is, now is the time to get it out there to the marketplace. You've been very thorough in terms of how you're marketing your new book. What are some of the highlights and again, maybe some of the mistakes that you're coming across? What's effective? Let's talk about, first of all, what's effective.

Josh Bernoff [00:11:02]:

Okay. Anybody who tells you that there is a formula for how to successfully market your business book is wrong because every business book has different strengths. Every author has different assets. I mean, I worked with an author who was really good friends with Thomas L. Friedman, a famous New York Times editorialist, and I'm like, wow, we can take advantage of that. But there is no other plan that has that in it because no one else is friends with him the way that guy was. You need to understand what all of the potential assets are that you have. Actually, let me sort of back up a step. The biggest mistake people make is to not promote their books, to just say, oh, everybody will find this because it's so great. No. Okay. The second biggest mistake is to count on your publisher. No, your publisher is not going to do the marketing for you. If we got time to get into it, I'll just talk about the five elements of book promotion that I ask people to do to sort of assess how they are going to go forward.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:01]:

Absolutely. Let's do it. We've got time.

Josh Bernoff [00:12:04]:

So quickly, the way to remember this is PQRST. The P and the Q have to do with the sort of plan, the Positioning and the Question, and then the rest is the tactics that go with that. So the P is positioning, what kind of book is it and for what audience? This is a business strategy book for financial services companies, or this is a big idea book for voters. So you have what kind of book it is and what group is for the Q is what Question does it answer? Because every book that's worth publishing answers a question for this group. And the R, S and T have to do with the tactics. R is Reach. How are you going to tap into the resources? You've got to get as many people as possible to hear about the book. S is spread. What kind of things are you going to create that people will share and spread? Like bits of video, audio infographics, blog posts, that kind of thing. And the T is Timing, and this is crucial. The timing has to be hitting the promotion should be hitting a month before and two months after the book publishes, because that repeated awareness that you create is what gets people to say, oh, wait, I heard about that before. I guess it's time for me to buy it. And that promotion continues after two months, but you want to concentrate as many of your efforts as you can in a short time period.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:32]:

I love that. That's beautiful. It really sort of hits the main points in terms of how to market the book. And as you rightly say, positioning first and foremost. Who's this book for? What question does it answer? What's it going to serve? What problem is it going to solve that is so crucial? I love how you started off, first of all, relying on the publisher. Not anymore. In the olden days, maybe, but we're beyond that now. Publishers want to know your marketing plan and your platform. They're not interested unless you've got a very robust marketing platform relying on somebody to find you. I mean, yes, I get so many authors who say, oh, yeah, I posted it on Amazon and I put it in a few bookstores, but it's not selling. What else are you doing?

Josh Bernoff [00:14:30]:

Well, in what has to be a coincidence, my daily blog post today, which is July 7, is actually about this PQRST. And among the things I have in there is from the survey of authors that I did, I asked, what marketing tactics did you use and how effective were they? And in the whole list, the one that was rated as least effective is counting on my publisher's marketing. So what does that tell you?

Susan Friedmann [00:14:58]:

Yeah, I mean, really, you've got to do it. It's your baby. Nobody else can sell the book the way you can. People say to me, well, will you sell it for me? No, I won't sell it for you. Who do you know who will be able to sell it for me and promote it. You're the best person to do this. Nobody else has got that emotional attachment to your book the way you do.

Josh Bernoff [00:15:20]:

Look, it's time-consuming and it is possible to hire people to help publicists, and that is absolutely a worthwhile investment. In that author survey, I found among hybrid published authors, and traditionally published authors, the median spending on book promotion was $10,000, and a significant number of them spent more than $50,000. But the fact that you're hiring somebody to help you with strategy and on outreach and to contact 45 podcasters because you don't have the time to do, that doesn't change the fact that you personally are going to be the one doing most of the actual publicity work. That's just the way it is when you're an author.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:01]:

Yeah, and I believe that strategic podcast guesting now is very high on the promotional marketing list. And I know that you're on a lot of podcasts now to help promote your book and to talk about it. Talk to us a little bit about that experience.

Josh Bernoff [00:16:22]:

Well, I will, and it's interesting. This is a good example where I can talk about my own successes and failures. So there were two kinds of podcast outreach that I did. First of all, because of the fact that I started, my first book was about social media. I'm very well-connected in the social media influencer world. A lot of the outreach was from me to people that I know and said, hey, Chris, can I get on your podcast? That was not a very sophisticated pitch. They're like, oh, Josh, we'd love to have you on the podcast, and then we're off and running. The second thing I did was to tap into a public relations firm that would help me with outreach, and they selected a bunch of podcasts that they were going to go out to. And I had two rules. One was don't reach out to anyone I already have a connection with. Well, their interns or violated that. And I was like, oh, this is so embarrassing. You're sending a generic pitch to somebody I'm friends with. The second is don't pitch any irrelevant podcasts. But they went and they did that as well. So I got a significant number of connections with people that I did not know about. Some of them were really effective, really interesting people, but there's a huge amount of waste in that process. I think that's part of the deal is you're much better off reaching out to the people that are the best positioned, as opposed to sending out spray and pray, a whole bunch of requests.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:52]:

And I get a lot of those agencies. Oh, our client has just written a book. I'm sure you'd love to interview them. Well, that's not necessarily the purpose of my podcast. I say listen to my podcast. Yes, the fact they've written a book gives them credibility, but they don't have to have had a book published in order to be a guest on my show. I want to tap into their marketing expertise so that they can share that with my listeners. If they've got a book, obviously, they relate better sometimes to my audience, but that's not a must for me. Yeah, I know some of those pitches very well. Get them at least once a week, if not more.

Josh Bernoff [00:18:38]:

I'd love to share. Here is one tactic that worked for me that was really effective.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:41]:

Absolutely. Go for it.

Josh Bernoff [00:18:43]:

Remember that I'm trying to reach out to authors. Well, there's a woman named Jane Friedman who has a really well-respected and popular newsletter that she puts out called "The Hot Sheet." And she has a blog as well. And I know that she focuses or has featured guest posts from other people who have interesting things to say. I reached out to her to get a blurb, and she was like, no, I don't do that, but come back to me when you're launching the book because she was pleased with some of the data I'd collected. And, yeah, I wrote a post for her, and contributed a post about how to write a book chapter, which got a huge amount of interaction because of the size of her audience, but because it was extremely relevant. I was not choosing her because of the size of the audience. I was choosing her because they were the people I was trying to reach. And now her newsletter will often feature little nuggets from my blog post. I don't even have to reach out to her. She reads what I'm writing and then decides to feature it. Making friends of that kind is really valuable. If you're about fraud in financial services, then there are reporters and bloggers who are experts in that. Whoever it is, those people should be your friends and sources, and you want to take time to cultivate them.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:03]:

We've had Jane as a guest on the show. It's funny. You mentioned Tom Friedman. You mentioned Jane Friedman. No relations. But, hey, the Friedman family, I don't mind. It's all good for us.

Josh Bernoff [00:20:14]:

I'm sorry. Those are the only two Friedmans that are worth reaching out to, from my perspective.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:18]:

Oh, please start adding Susan Friedmann to your list. I'd appreciate it.

Josh Bernoff [00:20:23]:

What a stupid mistake I just made. Of course. You're number three on the list, the whole Friedman Mafia here. There we go.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:31]:

The freedman Mafia. I love it. Hey, your promotion. You're promoting. You're looking for ways. And, hey, if it's the Freedman Mafia who can help you, let's go for it. Let our listeners know how they can find out more about you. The book. Give us your spiel.

Josh Bernoff [00:20:50]:

So everything you need to know about me starts@burnout.com the book is@burnoff.com books. If you want to read about that, if you want to see my blog post, it's at burnoff.com blog. I have a huge number of Twitter followers, and I really don't recommend going there anymore. What a waste. Now, if you want to connect with me, LinkedIn is probably the best place to do that. And I'm the only Josh Burnout that you'll find, as opposed to the overabundance of Friedman's on that platform, but not with two ends. That's what sets you apart, makes sure.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:23]:

It does, but nobody sees that second end. It's really very interesting. That's a whole other conversation. Yes, I will put that all in the Show Notes, Josh, so people can link to your blog post. If nothing else, listeners, this is invaluable. Josh posts every day, at least on weekdays. And I'm sorry I haven't read today's because I haven't opened my email yet, but I know that I will now that you've pointed out the PQRST. I love that little formula there. Josh, we always ask our guests to end with a golden nugget. What words of wisdom would you like to leave our listeners with?

Josh Bernoff [00:22:09]:

What I want these potential authors to know is that if you are passionate about sharing the knowledge and insight that you have with a group of people, then a book is the right thing for you to do. And if you are passionate about everyone knowing how great you are and how awesome you are, then please don't do a book, because we don't need any more books like that. Nobody wants to read that. In the author survey I did, the number one reason that people said that they did a book was to share the knowledge that they had. And 87% of the authors of my author survey said that they were happy that they'd written a book at having that experience. So that's the thing I'd like to leave people with, is if you really want to help people, that's a good reason to do a book.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:51]:

Fabulous. And those are incredible words of wisdom, because, yes, let's write something that's impactful, that's going to make a difference in this world rather than, as you said, as an ego boost, because we don't need any more ego boosts on the shelves. Josh, I really appreciate you sharing your incredible wisdom. And listeners, remember, go and look at Josh's blog Bernoff.com. I'll put that in the Show Notes as well. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a copy of the new book, and all of those links will be in the show notes.

And by the way, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales, because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy, and it's time you got the return that you were hoping for. Go to BrainstormwithSusan.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters. A Comprehensive Guide for Authors

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