How to Best Build Credibility With the Power of Compilations - BM381

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 mentors, then grab a coffee or tea and listen to your host, international best-selling authors Susan Friedman.

Susan Friedmann [00:00:31]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the Wiki podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. every week, introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is Andrew Dupe. Andrew is a true professional. He's the host of the popular leaders talk podcast and the chief relationship officer for Leader's Press. With 15-plus years of experience in the publishing industry, Andrew has honed his skills in customer service sales, support management, and executive leadership.

Andrew, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Andrew Dupy [00:01:18]:

Thank you so much, Susan. It's a real pleasure being here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:24]:

So, Andrew, as we were talking before the show, you and I've got something in common. And, well, we've got lots of things in common, but the one thing in terms of what we want to talk about today is this whole idea of anthologies that have become so popular. And I know they're called anthologies or compilations, Either way, whichever word we use, what is it exactly so our listeners know exactly what we're talking about here.

Andrew Dupy [00:01:53]:

Yeah. Oh, anthology is a book in which many different authors combine on a typical single theme. you've seen them probably in fiction if you see, like, a short story collection in which many authors are together That is an anthology. If you watch a television show like Black Mirror from the UK in which each episode is written individually, but it's the same theme that's an anthology. Twilight Zone is another great example in America of an anthology television series. So in nonfiction, we have the same thing. You have a a theme and you had many different authors, generally professionals that are in that theme. that both all give their own ideas. And just like in a fiction anthology, the reason that you do that is to have different ideas and to have different stories that come together.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:45]:

Yeah. So it's fabulous. Or as you said, a theme, and I know that you guys specialize at leaders press in nonfiction, So you're picking a theme, and I've been in one of the books that the anthologies that you've produced many years ago, made the USA today and the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. So we're gonna talk about that in a little while sort of put that in your back pocket because I know that that's really important in terms of these books. Let's talk about Why would an author think about being in one of these anthologies?

Andrew Dupy [00:03:22]:

In a lot of ways, being in an anthology is a way to break into book marketing. It's harder if you want to actually hit some of those major best seller lists. I mean, you mentioned the USA today Wall Street Journal it's harder to hit those lists when you start out with a brand new book that you write yourself that no one knows about you or no one knows about your expertise. No one really knows much at all that you can't really propel those books as easily to the best seller lists as you can't you're participating with many other authors, an advantage of working in anthology is that you're with people that perhaps are more established than you that may have been authors on previous books, that may have already hit major list before. So in many ways, you're kind of democratizing the book marketing aspects by having many people participate and which also defers the cost.

Susan Friedmann [00:04:18]:

So it defers the cost and the brilliant side of this too is that each one of those authors has a different list that he or she would be marketing to. So then you've got the combination of all these different lists of people that the book's going out to so you get far more exposure than you ever would doing this.

Andrew Dupy [00:04:41]:

by yourself. That's really the important part. We've done some number crunching back in when we were actually doing some of our first anthologies, and we looked at, you know, the requirements to get on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, which is currently the main one that we target because USA Today is currently on hiatus. So the numbers that are required to hit that list would be a mailing list. If you're just doing solo mailing,

Narrator [00:05:06]:

600,000

Andrew Dupy [00:05:08]:

would be that the number of people you would have to have to reliably be able to market your book to have the kind of sales to hit that list. We didn't have that number, and we didn't know many people that did. But when you bring in multiple authors together, you know, each author that may have 10 or 20,000 people on their list, that's a way in which you can begin to shrink that number down. And that's how we marketed right and grow rich, we thought about if we have many people that mail to their list and promote to their list multiple times, That's better than just one shout out to 600,000

Susan Friedmann [00:05:45]:

or even a 1,000,000. That was amazing. And that's the book that I was in of the Wright and Grow rich, and Yes. As he said, it hit the charts, and we really pushed it. I know a linker who runs the company there for you she really said, okay. Come on. Let's push it. Let's push it. And we did. You know, she really was a cheerleader to get that going, and we made that list, and it was incredible to see it on the list when those came out. So how would an author Andrew decide what would be a right fit for them to be in one of these because we get I don't know how many times people ask, oh, would you like to be in it? You know, I think you'd be a good fit, but is it really? How do we know it would be a good fit or not?

Andrew Dupy [00:06:36]:

You wanna find an anthology, first of all, as we said, that has a theme that has some kind of a unifying theme that brings everything together. but you wanna also find one that doesn't necessarily do something too specific. Like, you don't want to get into automotive marketing, a book on that. If you're not in that kind of an area of expertise, that book's not going to be for you. It's not gonna be something you connect with. you wanna find someone that has an anthology they're putting together that has a theme that is wide enough that many different entrepreneur could speak on it. Right and Growrich was a great example because it was about how you can actually use writing to open up new revenue streams. Another example, one of the ones that I have, just behind me, quitless. quitless was the idea of, you know, what is the power of your persistence? How important is it to not have quit when you are someone as a leader in business? If you're a successful entrepreneur, I don't think anyone doesn't have that kind story. So at that point, you now have a theme in which you have many people that can write on and many people that can share with their ideas and each individual ideas going to be very different because we all had different obstacles.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:52]:

I know that it's a pay to play way of getting your book out there. What is the expectation from an author's standpoint to be involved in one of these?

Andrew Dupy [00:08:06]:

Their expectation is to hit one of those lists, to hit USA Today Wall Street Journal primarily because they're the ones that are actual aggregates of sales. Many people ask why not New York Times because New York Times is an editorial list. It's a popularity contest that usually only will list old school New York traditional publishers authors as members of that list. The reason you want to be on one of those lists is I mean, it should be very obvious. It is the utmost achievement that you can have to actually be on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, especially if you're writing in business fiction, and that opens up a lot of doors to you. Being able to say, I have achieved this list immediately brings attention. It brings attention for assaulting. It brings attention for speaking engagements. It builds trust with someone. If you are in some kind of a coaching business, because they already know that you're someone that's established enough that you were in anthology that was able to hit one of these lists. that immediately starts to build something together with your potential clients. So you can unlock a lot of marketing right away just by being on those lists and they're great support for future books because You can then say on a future book, well, I was in a Wall Street Journal best selling anthology previously, and this is now my own book that I'm writing 50,000 words of just my thoughts. And we've seen great success, one right behind again, Steve Ferreira, the CEO of Ocean Audit. His book navigating B2B was that way. He started with an anthology. He hit the USA Today, Wall Street Journal bestseller list and then navigating B2B was also its own Wall Street Journal bestseller on its own. So that is a perfect way to just get your foot in the door and begin to build that kind of credibility that you need to get those lists regularly. and build credibility with your audience.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:06]:

I can relate to that because we had one author in one of the anthology she's that we compiled, she was never able to get to speak at a certain type of conference in her industry. And it was only when she had this chapter in the book that all of a sudden, doors opened for her. And then she went on to do exactly as, you know, one of your authors or several of your authors have done to write her own book. She built her expertise and the credibility through that just starting off with that one chapter in the book. So it's an easy way to start on that path of building credibility as an expert in a certain area. Would you agree?

Andrew Dupy [00:10:57]:

Absolutely. I mean, I think it's absolutely invaluable. And one of the things that continue, I I use that keyword trust that comes up in my podcast. is the importance of building trust with an audience. And the way that you build trust with an audience and the way that you build credibility with an is by showing that people are frankly interested in what you have to say in when you're invited into an anthology because that's just it. Typically, you know, when you're coming to actually talk about being in 1, it's usually by invite. It should be by invite. At that point, whoever is doing the anthology should be doing their homework on bringing and knowing who their audience is. Your very first step is just to put yourself out there. Say, I would like to do this and see who's going to invite you. That's a great beginning it to building that credibility because if you have something that's a successful business, you're going to get invited.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:49]:

Yes. Now along with that, our pitfalls, let's -- Yes. -- look at some of those pitfalls with regard to these anthologies Where should you be? Where shouldn't you be? What are some of the pitfalls that authors need to be aware of?

Andrew Dupy [00:12:06]:

When you're participating in one of these pathologies, you need to really be sure that the person that you're working with is absolutely committed. You brought up a great point about Alenka. She was a cheerleader. she worked all day every day to make this happen, and you have to be working with someone that's going to do that because from your perspective is someone that's writing a chapter, you're just sitting down and writing 2000 words that's going to go into the scene. That person that's on the other end that is the editor that is the person that's putting the book together, they're managing 30 other authors. the phrase herding cats comes in to play there. And she's not just doing that. She's also interfacing with Amazon and dealing with the issues that they may have. and she's dealing with making sure that the mailings go out, making sure that all of the marketing is paid for in in the advertising is done. You want to make sure that you're working with someone that you know is absolutely committed. And you also wanna make sure that you're working with someone that knows how to hit those lists. because I've run into many people in my personal coaching business that have tried the new anthologies that were not ones that leaders press and were in colleges where they participated with a 100, 200 people in massive books that didn't hit any lists. and they didn't understand because internationally, they sold x number of books and, like, international doesn't count for the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. US sales probably counts. So how many sales did you make in the United States? And they didn't know the answer because the person who put together the anthology wasn't tracking that. Also, knowing what kind of platforms to launch on. People wonder why did I hit the list when I sold so many books on Amazon is because the lists are not just aggregates of Amazon sales. You have to actually sell on other platforms. which means you need to work with someone that has distribution platforms that reach farther than Amazon. Ideally, you'll wanna work with someone like us that has brick and mortar distribution through our partner Simon and Shuster, which puts us pretty much everywhere. You need to actually study who you're working with. when you begin in anthology, you want to be absolutely certain that they know what they're doing, that they understand how to hit those lists and that they've done it in the past in many cases. When you were working with the link, you were taking the leap of faith because we were learning at that time how to do it. we succeeded on our first try, which to us, it was phenomenal. But if you are an author, you want to actually look for someone that has a track record.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:46]:

Now you tell me that you didn't have a tracker.

Andrew Dupy [00:14:49]:

She was very open about that. Yes. This was a great experiment. And in fact, I'll give you even a little secret. We had no idea that we were going to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list with Rhett and Growerich, and we were targeting the US a to date bestseller list We knew the metrics of how to reach that because we had studied that through their services that exist that say if you pay us x amount of money will make you hit the lists. We learned what they were doing by working with them behind seen. So we knew what USA Today's requirements were. We had no idea that the requirements for Walter Journal were so similar. So we very much lucked into that in our first try. So we've already been there and made some of the pitfalls and and gotten over some of the odd objectives that you might run into.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:39]:

So one of the things that you mentioned, as you were talking about pitfalls, was this idea of being in one of these anthologies that has hundreds of other authors Yes. And I know that often an incentive is that, oh, I don't know that Les Brown or Jack Canfield or one of the famous people out there is in the book. And that's like, oh, I want to be on the cover. I want to be with one of these people. And you see the cover, and there's this big picture of, let's say, Les Brown, than all these tiny little pictures of everybody else, and it looks so busy and so unappealing to me personally -- Yeah. -- to read something like that.

Andrew Dupy [00:16:29]:

What are your thoughts on that? I could tell you even from kind of working at an ancillary way with Jack Anckel, they hate it when that kind of thing happens. If they are roped into that, they do not actually enjoy that they've been part of the ontologies to do that. That's the first thing that you kinda wanna be careful of if someone starts to put out really huge names and say you're just going to be in a book with them. Yeah. You can be very heavily overwhelmed by them. And in many cases, those authors might not even really be happy that they're being used in that way. You want to actually have something in which Yeah. You'll have a few anchor authors and we do that ourselves. We will typically in our books have a few of our internal authors that want to write a chapter that come in. but they're not the specific goal of the book. They're not the actual reason that you're coming in to be part of it. You want to have many different voices that are spread out and that each one is given its own import. It's really the theme that you should be looking at. And a theme that resonates with you is what you should be looking for. Not necessarily that it has some kind of big name that's attached to it that might overwhelm you.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:42]:

This begs the question. Is there an optimum number of authors who should be in one of these anthologies?

Andrew Dupy [00:17:50]:

We think the number is around 30, and that's just because at that point, your voice doesn't really get lost in the crowd. you can write about a 2 1025100 word chapter, which is enough to talk about the theme and to talk a little bit about yourself. We will help you with that if you want to. There's actually that's part of the pay for play is that you're working with us and our professional writers and professional writers and project directors that have a lot of experience putting together both ontologies and solo books. But, yeah, 30, I think, is a very solid number that you should be look for. Be very wary of anything that's going to say a 150, 200. You'll see them on Amazon a lot and you see a lot of promotions for them. But when you're in with that many different authors, I mean, I'll be frank. The Reader is not even probably going to complete that book, let alone get to your chapter.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:44]:

Yeah. It's just so unattractive. And as I said, you know, we've published half a dozen through Aviva publishing of these anthologies. And the first one we started was, literally, I I was in the trade show industry, and I thought, oh, this would be great to get suppliers in the industry to all come together right chapter, and then they can give this book out to their clients and give it out at trade shows. And in theory, that was a really good idea, except when I started to pitch the idea to people. They're like, what what is this? I don't understand. They just could not understand the concept of what this was eventually we got one out. And then once they saw this, then getting the next two out was obviously far easier because people could see what we had produced and it was a quality piece. They were really proud to be in the books. So -- Yeah. Yes.

Andrew Dupy [00:19:43]:

I think that first of all, yeah, there's the education part you have to work really hard at at educating your authors about what an anthology is and why it's something they wanna be a part of. I mean, for us, that is something that we do every single day, every single week. Every other week, I run a webinar that does nothing but talk directly about what an anthology is, how we did them and why they're valuable. But there's a lot of noise out there that's very anti anthology as well. you will hear it if you begin to actually do heavy research into it because there are the old traditional publishing models and there are people that work in the old traditional publishing model but absolutely hate it. And they think that it's a cheat and that if you're going to be in an anthology that hits the Wall Street Journalist, then that's not correct. You shouldn't do it that way. And don't listen to that. Not just because that's part of our business, but because if you are actually a part of something that is a good quality product that has a theme, there's absolutely no reason that your voice should be silenced just because you didn't do it the way that someone else did or just because you didn't do it the way that the traditional publishing models wanted you to. And think very hard as well that there's reasons why traditional publishing doesn't like this kind of model and it has very little to do with them trying to protect the integrity of the lists and more to do with them trying to protect the integrity of their bottom line and their former monopoly on publishing.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:14]:

So and I think it also goes back to what we talked about earlier that this is an easy way for an expert, a professional who would like to get the credibility in their marketplace to at least start because, yes, you know, lots of people say, oh, I want to write a book. I want to write a book, but, you know, this isn't an overnight thing you can do necessarily. maybe with chat GBT these days, but and then you wanna be careful. You know, writing 2000 words, we had 25100 words It's like a long article. It's a feature article. It's so much easier. And I know that one of the things that you do well and we learned over the years that it was a good plan after making several mistakes, like you did as well, is that if you have a format like a template to follow that each author knows that they need to answer this question as it relates to their topic. And it sort of and helps the whole book flow much better. And -- Right. -- that was what we did through a linker with, write and grow rich.

Andrew Dupy [00:22:25]:

Right. Yeah. You wanna be answering a question for the reader, and that's really the important thing is how did you overcome something What is your secret to success? Those are the things that resonate with your audience. So, absolutely, you want to have theme that is going to be directed and you're going to be always in every single chapter. You're gonna be answering that question. that is plaguing the reader that's bothering the reader that they're trying to seek a solution for. And in every single chapter, part of that solution can be working with someone like yourself. And that is where you begin to segue that into other avenues because that's where you can say, you know, whether you're in IT or whether you are in just direct one on one coaching about business making yourself stand out as someone that has a great idea will resonate with the reader that's looking for the answer to their pain on that idea. And then in anything you do further from that, whether you just leave the anthology alone, so that's what I've had, and that's what I did, and that's going to be my lead generator. or if you then go and make your own books or segue that into a public speaking engagements or a coaching business, Answer to that pain point is really just something that you can continue to use.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:42]:

Our oath is, I'm sure, will want to know Sort of a ballpark of what kind of investment they would be making in something like this.

Andrew Dupy [00:23:52]:

In general, you're going to be looking for an anthology that's going to be charging around 5 to 7000. If it's a lot less than that, you've gotta actually ask yourself are they going to have the financial wherewithal to do the proper marketing for this book? Are they going able to actually use enough funds to hit the list reliably the way that someone that's gonna be offering, you know, 5 to 7000 offered. offer is gonna be doing. If it's significantly more than that, the question then becomes, well, why are they gonna need that much more? why am I going to invest in this one particular thing in what I could actually probably have my own book that I could reach for significantly more than that? So that's the sweet spot that we found for us was in that area. And I think that if you're looking for an anthology for a buy in, that's a very solid number to be looking for, especially because I think that's a number that you could very easily make whole just through the ways that you can actually deploy that anthology to help you in your marketing.

Susan Friedmann [00:24:56]:

Yeah. That's good. And one other thing that listeners might not be aware of, but at the end of your chapter, there's an opportunity to have your bio And then we always did an opportunity to advertise your services. Yep. So that's always an added bonus because you've got your chapter, but then who are you? So people want to know, and then how can they get hold of you? Exactly.

Andrew Dupy [00:25:25]:

that's the thing. a book isn't necessarily going to give everyone all the answers they're looking for. The whole idea is that it is engaging them enough that they're then going to engage you further. When you're writing a nonfiction business book, there's all kinds of tricks to the trade of how you do that. the calls to action within your individual chapter to say, here's who I am and here's how to reach me. The ways that you can build with a book just adding a few landing pages or a few QR codes at the very beginning. Like, it even be scanned off of an Amazon page and take them right away to lakes for the individual authors. There's many, many different ways that you can bring attention to yourself just through a very small chapter, 25100 boards.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:10]:

Now this is a beautiful segue, Andrew, for you to share more about leaders press and what you do and how people can get hold of you. Absolutely. Well, I mean, leaders press. We are a hybrid publisher. We serve

Andrew Dupy [00:26:23]:

the business community primarily in non-fiction books. We write legacy pieces and lead generators or help write legacy pieces and lead generators for CEOs, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, business people around the world. We've been doing it since 2017 was when we actually launched our first book pocket mentor. And since then, we've gone from doing four books a year to, at this point, almost 100 a year. And with the way that we work is by working directly with our authors to help them basically answer the question. How do I get a book out? Whether it's through participating in anthology or whether it's through needing ghostwriting support and editorial support publishing marketing support or whether you even have your own manuscript that are looking for just someone that can publish edit and market it. We offer solutions for all of those things. You can find us at leaderspress.com. We have the domain. And if you wanna hear more from me, you can find me on the Leaders Talk podcast, which can be found at leaderspress.com. We are live every single Wednesday with either supporting our authors or bringing in outside experts to talk about business and books.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:32]:

Beautiful. And we always have our guests leave with a golden nugget. So, Andrew, what is your golden nugget?

Andrew Dupy [00:27:42]:

I will cheat, and I will say as a podcaster myself, I get to pick so many brains. And the one answer that I get when I ask for something like this is just go ahead and do it. the more that you spend time thinking about writing a book or participating in something like this or thinking, I'm gonna wait for my exit or I'm gonna wait till I have more experience in business or I'm gonna wait for, you know, whatever is that thing that's holding you back every single day that you are taking doing that is taking away from days that you would be building your Anna that you would be marketing these books that would actually be getting you closer to being whole on them and then at that point having just absolute gravy in your revenue streams. I really feel that they just do it. You know, well, I'll steal from Phil Knight there. It's a fantastic mono to have if you are even remotely interested in getting into the writing place.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:43]:

Yes. So much wisdom there is, yeah, literally. Just do it. I mean, I'm very good at trying to think this through. And, yes, let's wait, and I'm not quite ready,

Andrew Dupy [00:28:55]:

but that day will never come. So -- Everyone I ask Every author, what is your main regret? Their answer is I didn't do it earlier.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:04]:

Yeah. So it's that fire. What is it?

Andrew Dupy [00:29:08]:

Ready aim fire, but fine. -- aim. Yes. That is the motto, and, she'll laugh at this when she hears that.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:17]:

I love it. Excellent. Thank you, Andrew, so much for sharing your wisdom. This is something special near and dear to my heart because you know, we've been involved for many years with doing these anthologies. And I know that you guys know exactly how to do it. You've got the formula right. And, yes, I would, definitely recommend people who are interested in that to check you out.

By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you want it or expected it 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, you know, what it's time that you got the return that you were hoping for. So go to BrainstormWithSusan.com to schedule a free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

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