Turn Influence Into Income

Speaker 1: [Music] ideas influence and income is the framework that I had been using for many years at Greenley book group to take my non-fiction authors through how to think about bringing their book to Market hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from having the current to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in thank you for joining us Tanya you are the CEO of the leading hybrid publisher Green Leaf book group share with us what you do and what it means to work with green leaf as a hybrid publisher sure so as o my job is to Foster our culture of stewardship we very much take seriously giving an author a white glove experience all the way through the publishing process because it's really overwhelming for a lot of them and most of my authors are I I don't call them first-time authors I call them debut authors so most of them are debut authors although I have a lot of repeat authors now and there's more to this than you might expect by just looking at a book you might not think about all that goes into producing it but that's a lot of what I do is creating that culture and then I've always had a heavy hand in growing the business I've been there for uh almost 20 years and that's what I get really excited about is finding new opportunities to serve our authors and expand the business at the same time and then how green leaf works with authors we are a hybrid publisher which means that we sit in between self-publishing and traditional publishing we are also a distributor and what that means is we draw the best things from self-publishing like creative control speed to Market higher share of royalties on the back end and then we pair those with the best elements out of the traditional publishing model which would be distribution muscle access to a team of experts and a reputation in the industry that stands for Quality a lot of our authors are willing to invest in the production of their books in exchange for those benefits and they also maintain their rights and that's so important for somebody who's using the book to build something bigger than the book itself like a brand or a business I had someone say to me recently if you don't write your first book you will not move on to write your second one and she says I look back at my first one and I think of the things I would have done or should have done differently but she said if I didn't write that book I wouldn't have gone on to write my second one what advice can you give working with first-time authors to get their first book out into the world that's good to hear frankly because I've been getting nudged to do a second book and for me even the first one was awfully hard the advice that I would give I'll tell you a couple of the mistakes I made that might be the easiest way to go here I think anybody who is a deep subject matter expert can fall into a trap of too much and it's a little bit difficult to step outside your own sphere of knowledge and Think Through The Eyes of your reader that's really what an editor is critically important for they're a proxy for that reader I resisted working with an editor in the beginning and I thought I'll use them on the back end to clean things up and they said sure Tanya go on your Merry way and then I realized really quickly oh gosh don't know where to stop is the problem it wasn't a matter of knowing what to put in it was what to leave out and it was getting me stuck and so then I reached back out to my editor and I said about that coaching and we decided to do a very detailed outline and that gave me a road map where I could pop in and write bits and parts as the Muse visited if you will that was so much more effective for me than just sitting down and thinking that I could tackle the whole thing myself getting an editor involved early is definitely really important and the other mistake that I made I wanted the book to be super actionable I wanted anybody who picked it up and read a section to be like okay now I have the information I need to go do this and that meant that I had to actually go do a lot of research and Shore up my recommendations in some areas and that's hard work I put off all the hard stuff until the end and then I kept pushing it back right I kept delaying I was like oh I got to do these hard things I can put it off another week I am no different than many of my authors and that I created my own delays in the publishing process because I did that and going forward with a second book I would be more disciplined about sprinkling those throughout the entire writing process so that I wasn't faced with that big heavy lift at the end how does an author know which path is the best path forward for them first of all read my book ideas influence and income because it really does set forth the the pros and cons of each and obviously I'm biased in that I run a hybrid publishing company but I tried really hard to present that as unbiased because I don't believe there's a right or wrong way to publish your book there may be a couple wrong ways but for the most part it's really a matter of fit right it's like choosing a business model for any entrepreneurial venture that you decide to undertake for the self-publishing folks people who really want to have handson creative control they like to feel like the the general contractor they need to get it up quickly they maybe don't have as much skin in the game writing on the book it's just a hobby self-publishing can be fine for that traditional publishing you know fiction is still really heavy on the traditional publishing side if you look at the best sellers list almost all of that is coming out of the New York houses because they've got such great relationships with various places that promote not that we don't but there's are older and stronger and sometimes when you hear me talking to a fiction author it'll sound like I'm trying to talk them out of it because it's so competitive and having that traditional house behind you sometimes can make a big difference but some of my fiction authors are like you know what the creative control and the ability to maintain my voice across a series is more important to me and that's why I choose hybrid publishing what are some of the common misconceptions of hybrid publishing for a long time it was considered that if you went with the hybrid route or anything other than the traditional New York Route it was because you didn't have a choice and you couldn't get a deal at the New York houses and then we started to see some very high-profile authors including Seth Goden and others who walked away from the New York houses because they were like what are you actually bringing to the equation here I'm the one with the audience I'm the one with the content I'd rather invest in my own work knowing that I can better benefit from it on the back end in that way and that started hybrid model and people becoming more accepting that we can have more than one business model in this industry and it doesn't mean it's not legitimate it's so interesting and everything is changing so quickly ideas influence and income is the title of your book it is also the approach that you use to successfully publish one share with us why ideas influence and income is the framework that I had been using for many years at greenlea book group to take my non-fiction authors through how to think about bringing their book to Market over time my staff was like d you can't be talking to people about using a book to plan a flag as a thought leader when you haven't done it yourself and that's what led me to finally write it it was peer pressure but the way that the three-legged stool sort of fits together is that ideas first of all that's the fundamental meat of any project launch it doesn't have to be a book it could be anything the influence part is the audience building and the brand development piece making sure that there's actually a platform of people as that's a word we like to use in the publishing business who are primed and ready to buy the book when it comes out not expecting the book to do that for you it doesn't work that way and then income is everybody's favorite piece of it that's how you monetize this whole operation and Book Sales is just one piece of it when you're a non-fiction author because there's so much other stuff you can do between speaking and Consulting and online learning programs and workshops and train the trainers the book talks about all of that with the intent of making authors think more strategically on the front end so they can get the most out of this difficult Journey that is writing a book you believe Business Leaders should own their ideas share with us how you help your clients do this yes so that's one of the pillars of our business model the authors in our business model invest in the production of their books but that means that they own the rights for my business people I say it's bootstrapping versus venture capital and not not that either is right or wrong or Better or Worse they're just different so for my authors who are Consultants their whole world is that idea they're making money off of that intellectual property in some traditional models when you have business content like that the publisher is the one that has the right to create workshops and things like that a derivative of that intellectual property which robs you of the opportunity to monetize it in that way every deal is different they're not all like that but it is a risky run and regardless of what rights they have you probably have to jump through some hoops to try to get permission to do anything and who wants to do that when you're trying to rapidly expand your business for the business authors who value that a priority the hybrid publishing model is a very neat fit for them yeah and I see that because you'd want to be able to expand on your ideas and the businesses that you've work so hard to create definitely especially if you start getting some momentum and there's nothing more frustrating for those of us who love building things like you start to get the flywheel turning and then something comes along throws a block in your flywheel wait and it's so difficult to get back to where you were nobody wants that type of road walk and takes a while to write a book to begin with once you're through that and you're gaining momentum you're right you want to be able to keep that momentum going absolutely tell us about the publishing Journey after a client turns in their manuscript and their book is published I'm sorry to say that's when the real work starts because writing a book is hard enough and I get that now having done it myself I can sympathize not just empathize but promoting a book is so much work and that's why I keep harping on be strategic on the front end so that it doesn't have to be so overwhelming when launch day comes you can have especially if you own your content you can have bits and pieces of it parsed out and ready to use as tweets on social media and Standalone blog posts and social media Graphics there's definitely an advantage to thinking through that on the front end doing some heavy lifting to be strategic but yes once the book comes out it's a really competitive Marketplace everything in media is there's always an over supply of content and an under supply of eyeballs whether it's television film books whatever it may be but self-publishing really brought a lot of volume into the marketplace because it's so easy for anyone to publish a book now that's why authors have to work so hard to make sure that their brand is on point that their message and the problem they're solving is very clear and that they've done some work to build a platform before the book comes out so that they can start to benefit from the word of mouth those people will create when they love and review the book so true and that leads me to my next question Green Leaf has successfully grown over 25 years what do you see next for the company I love listening to my authors and hearing what they need as people who are typically thought leaders and experts in their own spaces and they're really leaning on us like a creative agency to say well I love for everything to be Under One Roof I want a totally TurnKey approach because I don't have time to be the general contractor dealing with all these different firms and there's some brand risk when you do that it starts to get deluded across all these different partners for us it's leaning into that and continuing to understand how we can better serve our authors as they strive to bring their message and their impact into the world because that's what's so rewarding for us of course to be a part of that team that helps them make that change or grow that business or entertain people whatever it is the more ways we can partner with them and all of it revolve around this world of content the more powerful we all become in that regard how has green leaf navigated the publishing industry after covid and most recently with AI those are two good ones Co was an interesting time for us because we are very heavy in airports because we do so many business books we have a lot of strong relationships with airport accounts and always have a lot of books in the airports of course all the airports closed down and books are sold returnable it was the first time I actually saw negative sales in in one of our channels because everything got returned and that was odd because that had always been such a differentiator for us and to see your differentiator become a liability was jarring we tried a couple little pivots as any business leaders should now things have really stabilized we had a slight shift in the makeup of our list because during quarantine everybody decided to check write a book off their bucket list and we had this influx of Memoirs that we had just never seen that many before we had more Memoirs then we had prescriptive non-fiction which is what we call Business book self-help parenting but now back to where it was and then AI that is something that we're always talking about because it's ever changing and there's implications across the board for us number one we have to make sure that our authors assure us or disclose to us where they've used AI in the creation of their manuscripts because there are copyright implications and we try to stay away from it from our side of things for that same reason simply because the holding the rights to the work is so important for our authors we want to make sure that whatever we create for them is fully copyrightable and it gets really complicated and quickly and down in the weeds but people often ask me do you think AI will replace ghost writing and I always tell them to spend some time trying to get chat GPT to write something of quality and tell me what you think right I can see it as an ideas based outl yes and with Co with Memoirs so you publish Memoirs and is that mostly for someone well known where someone would want to read their book or someone not well known that just wants a memoir it depends if it's a household name that's definitely one that I want because that's what the bookstores want that being said some very compelling personal stories that are not written by somebody with a household name that are still impactful and worth sharing one of my personal favorite books it's not one that we published but there's a beautiful Memoir called Educated by Tara Westover that is just powerful and I often think if I just across the board said we're not doing Memoirs we would miss opportunities to be a part of beautiful works like that the once that we do publish have that really compelling personal story some unique angle that will help it stand out in the marketplace and most importantly an author behind it who is willing to get out there and hustle and promote magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy each day and it doesn't have to be business for ated honestly it is business related because I love what I do I run a book publishing company and I tell that to people and they're like what that's so cool and when I was a kid I thought I'd be running a recording studio or something but I've always been a media person right I didn't land far from that because it's something new every day I'm surrounded by people who love The Power of Words the authors that I work with they come to me with these amazing life experiences with their subject matter experts that incredibly generous most of the time they say if you ever need help with whatever they're an expert in strategy or marketing or SEO just call me for the longest time I I thought they're just saying that and then I started doing it and every single one of them was like I'd love to help you being surrounded by that is uplifting it's really a magical part of the industry to work in so great thank you for joining us today Tanya and telling us all about the publishing industry can you please share with us how and where we can find you certainly our website for Greenleaf book group is Greenleaf book group.com the book is ideas influence and income.com and you can find us on Instagram Twitter and Linkedin and all those fun places as well thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheed website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave