0:00 Costs and margins
4:07 Types of publishing
20:22 Ebooks versus printed books
36:20 Why self-publish?
52:57 Kindle
58:24 Self-publishing
1:03:22 Audiobooks

Costs and margins

[Music] The Education Lounge podcast I don’t know about you but I think publishing is a pretty hellish industry yeah from like from our experience so Far yeah it’s uh I think it’s difficult no matter where in the chain you are I think it’s difficult from the publisher side distributor side books on the side right to the side I think there’s no yeah well you said You used to work in where was it the charity shop or something bernardo’s wasn’t it what was it oxfam oxfam oxfam books then you said that there was what’s the margin on a book for the seller well for for experiments a bit different

Because yeah like obviously you’ve got massive advantage that because you’re you’re accepting donations they don’t need to spend on bringing the stock in and then they have like things like business rate discounts and or I don’t know exempt exemptions Um probably exempt I would assume anyway it’s a charity so so they’ve got they haven’t distinct advantages over a traditional bookseller so say for example for waterstones or foils or something like that what would Well the more for for waterstones or like a big big bookseller wouldn’t be so bad because they they order in such quantities that

They’re able to you know get get better margins but then for a small bookseller it’s very low you’re talking like 10 20 percent yeah and and that’s with all of that stock that you’re bringing in I never thought it was slightly higher than that no you saw what you’ve seen from when we’ve brought stuff in yeah when I all doing books it’s it you unless you have like for instance I’d I’ve talked to publishers before and upset like so What does it take to sort of bring our margins up when it comes to the book and that um and and they say you need to order like about 2 000 books and that’s a lot of books right yeah where would we put them yeah exactly I

Presume that’s to do with the print runs because the print runs are cheaper yeah with uh yeah delivery that’s always the thing I’m kind of going on about I was like I need books to like if I make this order Then in order to make an actual margin on the order then you need enough books to put in the shop and um take off the delivery fees and that kind of thing and reduce them because if you if you if you were to Order in a book or from a gardeners or bertrams or something like that then you’re cut cutting into your margin instantly and you won’t mate you’ll make a loss on the the book if you order one book or two books or three yes

But in terms of margin like we’ve bought from publishers direct because when I’m up in yorkshire I used to pass on a major publisher and I used to go in and have a chat with us the head of sales there um And we used to pass that discount on but the discount was no better than if we bought from bertram’s office oh yeah no it wouldn’t be unless you ordered a lot like that’s why I said um when you chat to the actual publisher it They they’ve said like you need to order like 2 000 books doesn’t matter I’m like I’ll never shift that many books so it’ll take several years the benefit of using a publisher is that

Types of publishing

They have direct access to a lot of consumers yes so so the marketing side of it is kind of almost distributing because they they have the connections that can What surprises me is how closed how much of a close shop it is because you really you’ve only got two major distributors that I’m aware of anyway unless obviously you go directly to the publisher or you go online Well yeah online’s a different thing um well that’s where most of these yeah books are bought yeah well that’s been a slow transition but I mean I do think if you’ve got I don’t know if you go into a bookstore

I feel like I’m I’m more likely to buy book going into a bookstore than I finding it online but because it’s simply because I’m there so I invested the time to go into the shop so that’s true um so you’re more likely to and also if you do see it You’re more likely to buy elsewhere as well so you see a book in store and you’re like okay well that looked interesting I might buy it so there is there’s a thing there’s something to be said for it being tactile and being able to flick through the pages and Yeah I must admit I recently I’ve just switched to to audible and I’m listening a lot more but yeah uh I resisted that for a long long time because I like the hardcore audible is even worse for the publisher

And the author because the the return policy on the audible you know you for audible you buy credits whatever hmm now you’d think that the writer would get a royalty for Selling the book even it’s via credit but that’s not true they don’t get anything and a lot of people are obviously buying books using credits not buying the book directly and then there’s a lot more cost that goes into Producing you’ve got to read it all out and yeah so yeah so if you were writing a book which obviously we’ve done here and you’ve just you’ve just done yourself as well what would

What would be the the pros and cons for doing it yourself or using one of these big publishers I’ll tell you like the writer for me I feel like the the true writer Might not really care as much about the financial rewards of writing it’s like a sort of inbuilt desire to write and as a writer your main goal I think is to reach as many people as possible now the trouble is with Self-publishing you’re pretty much leaving it all to you to to every single to market yeah to market uh promote potentially advertise your book but again you

Um you may have to do so you have to make calculated bets on on advertising and then you need to you you might need to do things like um something that a lot of people do is they’ll have their own website and they’ll obviously Sell a lot of free material on the website yeah the boat the more you give away for free the more and then afterwards you’d have to probably do like blogs and things to seo and yeah there’s so much stuff that goes into that and to be honest I’ve I’m I’m just happy to have written something like yeah because it that’s that in in of itself is difficult and I feel like if a few people can get benefit from it then [Music] it’s actually a lot harder to write than people realize like I I’ve started

My book for five times now this legendary book this legendary book that’s never gonna come out I’ve started it five times and I get to a certain point and I just can’t go any further And I even though I’ve got like a skeleton and a structure in place and I know what I want to say in each chapter I get to a certain point and it I just never seem to get beyond that point I used to get up at like Five in the morning to write my books yeah like like as in for me it’s not about the time like I would set aside the time and it would be fine it’s about translating it from my head onto paper you can only get good at that by

Doing it a lot yeah I think I think the only way the only way to learn how to write is to actually write like you can’t there’s no simple ways there’s also good things you can do to motivate yourself so something I did Was there’s something called national novel writing month yes so nanowrimo and you just write a novel in a month and I I did mine in a month so you but you need to have a schedule I was well apart from the schedule did you Have your book planned out before the month started uh in my head yeah yeah but I don’t I don’t have a very I I have a you’re quite pretty I have a quite quite

Fluid idea of where it’s going but then I’ve I’ve got a structure yeah in my head like a basic structure you need a structure in order to write something that’s it you can’t do it without for sure well you can do I’d say like the writing itself is always the writing Process is always organic so but things logically follow so I’ve had a lot of writers say this you know we I know what my characters are I know exactly I know the ins and outs of my characters um and I’ll start writing and see where the Character takes me yeah I mean we’ve seen it when you know when you work with kids you tell them plan but you really don’t like it but then the the point is is that they’re all planned differently yes so so they’ve got to

Find a way that suits them and some of them will have really in-depth plans some of them will have very very loose plans but then somehow it will work and I think also like children it’s good practice them for them to Write a story because um it’s quite difficult for a child to logically sequence things so work out what should follow from like sometimes you just have like random events happening And a lot of the time when you read it um say year four or year five piece of writing or something you can see there there’s there’s a very very very very loose structure but it’s too loose as in it doesn’t doesn’t logically flow but then

As they get older and they practice more then their stories will flow more and more so they need to write a lot of stories it’s just a constant thing they need to do how much of that is do you think um how they’re taught like almost every single Piece of story writing that I’ve seen always starts with along the lines of on a bright sunny day you know they’re taught this prescriptive way of yeah and you have I I don’t know about You but I have to break that down first and say no we’re not going to write like that or if they’re younger it’s once upon a time there’s like two well there’s two sort of well I think you need to know the rules to break them

And that’s like the the thing is is that that is a set formula for a story and I think that’s that’s a good thing for them to have at the start because they need some scaffolding especially when they’re quite young But then when they transition to becoming or like try to write an actual novel or something like that then I think then that’s when they start need to start breaking the rules because unless you break the rules you won’t progress the problem is they’re not taught from One from my experience they’re very often not taught beyond that yeah well I think the rest the rest of it is actually um they literally stop reading when they leave primary school that’s that’s the big part of it is there’s not enough reading

Um that goes on so they they don’t know how to break the rules even if they could um so so they’re used to the it’s obviously the simpler the story the more it will follow that kind of structure but if they read something more Complicated then it will usually break the rules of of form and structure and maybe we should publish some of the stories that the little ones have written I’ve got several yeah that are actually really good some of Them are insanely good like especially you know five six year olds that have written stories that 11 12 year olds will struggle with I think we should publish yeah and the thing is is that you can lose that I think if you like some of them have

Obviously a lot of talent when they’re younger but then it doesn’t persist throughout their lives they don’t reach the point of being but in terms of publishing in terms of publishing so what made you Not look for a publisher what made you go over self-publishing so it’s faster okay are you talking about his personal stuff well yeah I mean yeah we can talk about here as well [Music] yeah so so what’s the book about investment oh yeah so the amateur investors path to wealth um we’ll leave a leave a link uh feel free it’s only 99p

So yeah all those hours invested for 99b but it’s not about the money no so like like I think and I think the thing is is that um the self publisher needs to take a different route to reach Success than the one who goes through them that’s all mainstream route which is actually probably harder so you’ve heard like jk rowling got turned down seven or eight times and I think it was more than that like I said it was like tons Um but it’s not uncommon for people to get turned down hundreds of times I mean but it’s true of everything isn’t it you look at walt disney how many times he was turned down and um colonel sanders as well yeah how was the kfc how many times was that

Yeah a lot but you need to take rejection and then sort of move on from that and persist if you’re going down that route but to be honest the vast majority of people won’t make it Um you need to the thing is as well is that a traditional publisher um they’ve got an acquisitions department so they have someone who whose job it is to look for Works of literature or whatever so they might do some scouting yeah it usually happens when you register for your isbns they can pick it up from there and they end up getting in contact with you but the

The problem is is um first of all like there’s so many works written like there’s there’s so many I wrote down 200 something wasn’t it it’s on there 200 is it Yeah that’s how many books were published and I think we’re only talking uk here I’m I’m not sure well yeah so that shows you what what you’re competing against um and then obviously they’re competitive and priced they’re competitive in so Many different ways there’s different ways to compete yeah um well in terms of you’re the the name that goes on the book as well yeah because we had this didn’t we with a big when we when we when we went to

Publish and make our very first book yeah the non-non-verbal books yeah so we had a really one of the biggest worldwide education publishers I think I got in touch with them to say I thought they or maybe they go I can’t Remember I think they got in touch with us didn’t they they I don’t remember like I said they probably found the isbns and then I genuinely don’t it was a while ago now but but you know I had long conversations with the head of publishing and in the end we decided Not to go with them but the reason was they wanted to basically take our logos and our name they wanted to white label that’s fine but I think the other issue was that was the main reason well for me anyway no it was more than

That I I think there was a clause in there that said we couldn’t then publish anything similar oh I can’t remember that I’ll be honest you’re right yeah I remember that and and for me that was more of an issue because if we’re if because we’re constantly writing Material we may not publish it in terms of books but john and I particularly are constantly writing well we’ve got currently we’ve got 10 10 books that we’ve done I’m in the middle of designing another three And there’s probably another written by like one’s been written by you one my one’s done who else that’s the science book there’s another other verbal reasoning book yeah the closed book yeah so we have another three more in the works the

Vocab book yeah three science books science science vocabulary and uh any verbal yeah and I’ve got at least four in my head that that are going to be the next that I’m sort of putting together and these are all Um so we couldn’t have done a lot of this really without if we’d said yes to them yeah true no we couldn’t we could have done other things Yeah there’s always other things to do but yeah so but I think that was our main reason really for saying no and and you know it was the royalties we were being offered were single single-digit figures the thing is

Yeah with a small amount of a big point yeah of course yeah the that’s the thing with royalties is even though they might seem under generous and obviously you can make a lot more margin if yourself publish like yeah I pretty much did every single part Of my books I did I did the writing I did all the formatting for the ebook I did all the um cover design yeah it looked quite good actually thank you yeah it literally took me two Minutes what did you use for your cover design well amazon has like this uh cover design thing like did it I haven’t seen this yeah it’s got it’s got a thing like when you actually go through the process and you can like upload covers and that kind

Of thing so so what made you what made you go with um ebook rather than traditional because I know that you probably like us prefer physical books I went through a phase of preferring having everything on one like ipad or

Ebooks versus printed books

Something but now I’d literally just buy physical so what made you go with um ebooks speed so the ability to reach people um overheads That’s the really big big thing I mean obviously you can self publish um through like printed books through ingramspark and amazon as well do their printing service yeah um but they Print is a lot more complicated in terms of like you’ve seen I mean you know the stuff that you do for for the designing and yeah putting in a book together like it takes a lot of time oh yeah and then I’m like yeah I don’t I don’t really want to

Spend all that time doing that I guess you don’t have to design each page like you do in printing yeah the hard thing with kindle I think if you’ve got like images which is obviously like I have images in my book and that kind of thing and that can be quite Like formatting them for the book the the issue is with kindle is that the size of the device could be a phone or it could be like a 13-inch ipad or it could be a laptop so where your page turns would be yeah vary depending on where you’ve downloaded it to Whereas physical physical books the page turn is like it’s here so if there’s a if there’s a long word at the end you can put it on the next page to not have a hyphen but on kindle it does if you look there’s hyphens all the time because the page turn is in a different place that makes perfect sense because I

You know I I’m I I wasn’t very good with it this year in terms of contacting them but um I’ve I’ve been part of the business one I’m one of the judges at the business book awards every year Um and this is what we have to do we’re given um we spend a day shortlisting books that have that you know that have published for the first time yeah now the auth they don’t need to be First-time authors but they need to be business books and we shortlist them and then there’s criteria that we have to use to judge yeah that’s another I remember seeing one of these and um so in the middle where you’ve got

Your spine I think I think I can remember like back in doing graphic designer uni I think it’s called a is it called a river or a stream or something like that down down the middle so um you need there needs to be space there also needs to be space Yeah you hold a book for your thumbs on on there yes and there was one book where the text literally went all the way into the spine they hadn’t left a bleed or anything or something something like you instantly can’t I think it’s like one you can’t read it I think it’s like one centimeter or something yeah It might be two but it’s even you know it’s even something like that yeah it’s even just the font so so things like and and this is my take on it things like um using

A cursive font for a business book in my head it’s just a headache well it doesn’t work because you just can’t take it seriously enough so there’s a lot that goes in oh yeah like you’ve got a this target audience And all that stuff like all the stuff that we teach the kids about like yeah what you’re who you’re addressing matters well if you go back if you go about this ebook and uh traditional thing you don’t have that problem with ebooks because they they know this stuff Yeah so they give you a choice of like georgia times and some sans-serif font they give you a choice it’s usually some sort of sensor you can actually change like you know you can change you can’t change you to anything you have a choice of three

Yeah I think it’s two series publishing I think you can change you’re talking about yeah on the kindle you can change it on the readers until something the reader can that’s what I’m saying yeah yes you can the reader can choose and obviously by doing that again it changes where the page turns and stuff In traditional books you don’t have that in traditional books they can you can choose whatever you like yes and not everyone knows what to choose exactly and sometimes particularly when you’re self-publishing they they can be a bit of a disaster yeah yeah yeah I mean that’s that’s something that I’ve noticed when people have done their ebooks and stuff like that like if you look through the ebook there’s loads of issues with it like and and I had to like go through it quite thoroughly and check

Whether there might be issues and financial I think but even even then like it’s it’s not I don’t think it’s pos with something that’s so fluid I think it’s impossible to make it like perfect no matter but I think that you’ve got an unfair advantage because we between us have proofed but so many Books yeah that’s true yeah and we’re constantly proofing our packs etc you know that it almost becomes second nature that you you begin to spot things very quickly yeah but even even then with such a fluid structure it becomes more Difficult I think it becomes more difficult in that way this is the thing it goes it goes back to like where you get design brief or you give a child like a title if you say write about this with this in this location

Or or if you give them like a title like the key which one’s easier when you get narrowed down yeah and you have more things to like hear it’s actually easier so with the whole kindle thing you have a specific Thing to hit and that’s easier than being like here’s a blank piece of paper put whatever you want on it yeah you’ve got to make all of those choices yeah yourself and that’s you might not be aware of that that’s very very difficult yeah so if you’ve sort of pre-requisited A lot of that stuff it then becomes easier to write in a month yeah well you know you know what amazon are like they’re going to want you to have the easiest transition to get stuff onto their site to make the money so why wouldn’t they do it that way yeah

And well the whole business I think the business book thing was interesting because that’s another big part of self-publishing that I don’t really I’m not really going to go for or anything like that but you can if you enter a book in a competition Of some kind then it wins that competition it gives um like anything isn’t it you’ve won the award um first of all awareness to the book and also Helps sell it because um it’s got some social proof yeah you bring awareness to the book you bring it then you bring awareness to the author the author becomes a key person of influence and then once you’re famous enough

Whatever you release after that people will look into the same with music like all of it it’s just people trusting you in that industry isn’t it which takes the ones that we really hear about are The equivalent of like unicorn companies they just yes they they they just pop up whereas other ones have to work for yeah they think about like mark mark manson like wherever he writes now people will Will pick up like he helped write will smith’s book did he yeah it’s really thought is by both of them oh I didn’t know that um but he he did blogs for for years before his first book

He did I guess we don’t really see that once it’s on people’s radars and you have that that social proof yeah but whatever he writes now like people will pick up and yeah it’s like amazingly difficult to get that well to get a book to that level Yeah yeah well yeah it’s one in 200 it’s so it’s so easy to it’s so easy to write a book but to actually make a success of it because it goes back to marketing yeah I was just getting usually our issue isn’t it with getting these sort Of things marketing marketing is very just like advertising wildly is it drucker was it drucker that said there is only innovation and marketing I don’t know probably I’m guessing I think it was

Drucker I might be um but I mean it probably is probably the case because I if you think like many of the great many I mean think about like van van gogh like he van gogh yeah it’s like he uh Died penniless yeah so he was and if you think about like most of the great artists they had patrons that kind of thing well that’s the only way they could do it patronage system sort of disappeared Or it’s more or less disappeared and now it’s pretty much impossible to just make I I watch I can’t I’m so my memory is so bad I was watching something or other and they had um

A pop group who became really famous in the 80s it must have been wasn’t like as big as the who or anything like that but you know it’s a fairly well-known name whose name I can’t remember which is Ironic it wasn’t it I can’t remember um no england no spanish no it wasn’t spend our valley no they weren’t that famous but they were like so you know if I said to you oh I don’t know there’s loads of fans with songs that they have like one song and then that’s it yeah but then they can live off of that yeah um yeah you make something but they a lot of them were saying well you know we could innovate because we didn’t have

To worry about money because we were basically on the dole yeah you see this with so it’s like it’s like life when you’re when you’re young you have all of this you potential you can do whatever you have all these different choices you Then narrow down on specific things and then when you get older you re-take up your old interests again horseshoe effect well hourglass hourglass is similar to um similar to That if you think of them like musicians and things when they first start out they can be as creative as they want because there’s no like label or anything holding them back they then get signed to something or people like like a specific thing that they’re doing

And they have to do that for a while but then when they get more famous they go back into their creative so and they try new things and people say I like the old stuff and yeah it’s ew it’s played out everywhere it’s the same thing in everything but I think even That’s changing like if you look at um oh my head’s name’s got george michael and his fight with sony you know he he the interview he did he said there was you know I just lost two people I loved The most in the space of whatever it was two three years there was no way I could be creative and and he was tied in so tightly that you just couldn’t be creative so you know I think it’s changed a

Little bit but it’s sort of what you’re saying makes sense it’s like I was I was saying to project that writing is was much easier in lockdown because I was at home yeah and you haven’t got the logistics yeah Yeah so like when you’re sort of more relaxed yes then you’re able to write a bit it’s kind of kind of why one of the reasons why I find that I write better like either really late at night or early in The morning so like it’s quite common you know so like for instance I finished my recent by investing book at about five in the morning because I just rode from like one to five yeah I couldn’t do that where is like I’d pass out and be asleep yeah so so

Like I find that I’m my brain my creative juices sort of go out about between one o’clock in the morning to like six which is kind of unfortunate but that’s when that’s when I find my most creative I must admit I think I it makes sense because when I haven’t done it for a couple of years now but when I when I do write um it does tend to be late at night because it’s everything’s done there’s no distractions yeah And your mind can focus yeah it’s really quiet whereas in in the mornings my head is do I get out of bed and if I do manage to get out of bed early which I’m an early riser anyway but if I get out of bed early it’s really I should be going to the gym

Or really I should be doing something sorting the laundry hours or whatever rather than sitting down and writing I found my creativity creativity like disappeared for quite a long time yeah what are you saying It’s only come back recently when I got like two or three days off during easter um yeah it’s just difficult because when my mind is on it’s all of this and that sort of stuff and then when I get back from from from work I just You too I do my brain doesn’t work yeah because you’re spent cook eat clean and then by that time it’s like 10 o’clock yeah it’s because you’re spent yeah this is the problem with working saturdays I think and having fridays off it would be so much easier if we could well they’re

Talking about bringing in a four day week aren’t they well we do that anyway we don’t we work seven days it’s four days plus one yeah but we’ll have to work saturdays anyway yeah so yeah for me it’s different I’m not I’m not I’ve never really been much of a writer So my creative stuff goes on to other things like that but some of the music you’ve created is really good music video photography that sort of stuff yeah and even your photography is really good I still yeah I’ve always fancied that I Could be like van gogh if I could actually draw I think that goes for anyone isn’t crazy things going on in my mind I’ve got like the vision but I just I just can’t do it so I’m just like no I can

Write it but I can’t yeah I’ve never been much of a writer so in terms of like publishing for me I’ve written and published books but they’ve been like the 3d non-verbal workbooks like they haven’t been playing yeah they’ve been visual stuff So for me I like I know how to put a book together like how it supposed to be laid out covers multiples of four double-sided like all that sort of thing um in terms of why we chose to self-publish for

Why self-publish?

Here I think the reason was between us we had everything we needed so between us we could write questions well we thought we did well we do well we’re almost there the most important Thing is the advertising marketing yeah but I’m talking about to start with we have like you’re both good at writing uh we can all write questions and things um I can like put it together and get it Bound and designed and then maybe that’s what we should have done we’re quite good at proofing so yeah that’s that’s kind of why we chose to go ahead well I guess that’s not why we chose to self-publish that’s why we

Chose to um start stop publishing start a publishing company yeah yeah but in terms of why we chose to self-publish do you think it just goes back to the same reasons that you had for me for me I just didn’t want to be Usual I don’t want to be controlled by what a bigger company at least like with with because you’ve got the tuition business the publishing sort of makes sense because you’ve got You’ve got access to well we write anyway so you can distribute them yes yeah but then when you and also like the thing is is obviously um there’s like a sort of method that of

Of teaching that we’ve got yeah that we wanna if you want to get that across then having the materials that correspond to that make sense so that that that’s all makes sense the issue is is obviously like in Your wide up pushing things wider than that um to be honest we’ve not really looked at it very seriously I think if we looked at publishing it properly and very seriously we could I think it would be Quite successful we’re just doing a lot yeah so there’s a lot of folk there’s yeah like because you need you need quite a single-minded attention on something yeah especially with like marketing a product well we did put our books on amazon and it was on fba

Which is fulfilled by amazon so we send them a load of our books they store them in our warehouse and charge us for it but the problem was we got some a few orders the problem was that amazon just like Google and everything else needs a proper seo plan a marketing plan yes what images are you gonna use what text are you gonna put on the amazon page how are you going to get it to rank above other people’s who are already well established you go join your next project that was our issue I don’t think we’re going to do fba again because they charge quite a lot for the warehouse I would rather they bought it and we just posted it out from here but then there’s I think there’s ways I believe there’s ways around it with the woocommerce thing and I think you can

Because I think amazon’s aiming to basically um they I think I think they’re wanting to fulfill orders even like when they don’t originate from amazon so Yes I think that’s so uh long-term it is a lot easier it is a lot easier to do it even from our end to just send them like all the books and then let them fulfill the order but the problem is because obviously we Didn’t have all of our seo and everything in place they get they get to a point where they say right we need to send some of them back to you and they’ll charge you for that and they’ll charge you for storage oh yeah that’s one of the keys is targeting key and and also like because

Obviously like algorithms were all amazon um the way it works is if obviously if you’re a well-known author then more people are likely to buy your book right so if someone buys A well-known author’s book then that pushes that well-known author further up yeah like results now if you’re not a well-known author then your issue will be very few people will take the chance on reading what you’ve written yes And that’s all the big that’s the biggest issue so for fiction but the stuff we do is non-functional it’s just the same for everything yeah the only way to get around that is well there’s two ways you undercut prices to start with yeah

And or you pay for sponsored adverts so when someone searches for somebody else’s book that you know is well known you are paid to go above it and that’s why like amazon is going to be the biggest advertising company Right it will overtake google and facebook in that regard that’s where all the money well they’re going to make they may obviously make money from aws so the amazon web server yeah but they they’ll make a lot of from their advertising because it’s the Fastest growing ad space I remember they started well they started with books didn’t they and it’s easy in some ways I think it’s easier to use than google’s and um it’s so sleek and and and facebook’s

Like so sleek not not not the shopper the the actual advertising bit because obviously I I took a brief look just to see what it was not that well because I just like that there may be a return But I I doubt they will like just just because like if I if I go just by history people don’t make a return on their books really they they tend to be like they’re kind of vanity projects I’ve noticed they’re advertising low Content publishing low content on kindle quite a lot at the minute yeah I’ve I’ve got very short because you know project was complaining about like whenever he reads a book he’s like by the second chapter I’ve kind of understood that I get what they’re talking about and there’s no point

Reading further and I was like I was desperate to avoid that from my book so like everything is like tailored for me bye-bye yeah something from every page essentially That’s the thing with me is I I I feel like I have to finish it once I’ve started it I feel cheated if it’s too short yeah unless it’s something like animal farm would you it’s 99p I mean yeah I would I’d still feel cheated really yeah it has to have some decent substance in it oh yeah I mean that’s just like any book like no no but as in it can’t just be on the it has to have a deep dive of some sort

I’ve I’ve read quite a few of those like really really short books and like um as I uh how to improve like public speaking or something like that or how to improve this relationship the most famous short book is Oh it’s gone out my head I don’t know what’s wrong with me you’ll never find out what it is you know the guy that wrote how to win friends and influence dale carnegie that what was the book What was the book called how to win friends an influencer no no there was another one he wrote oh I didn’t he we wrote some pamphlet thing or something like that and then they became

Here we go I’m sure it was him he’s going to bug me unless I yeah so yeah it’s a really difficult in industry I don’t know how because I I I don’t un like I don’t understand how you get to that point of even though like intellectually I understand it I understand how you get to the point of yeah yeah I’ve been a massive bestseller and stuff like that but I think like the the sheer number of things that need To go correctly and in your favor it’s pretty pretty good yeah what do you think about um finding like a niche because if you’re writing something that somebody else has already covered and

They’re really well known for it yeah um would you compete in in that or like this there’s no obviously there’s obviously a lot of investment books yeah I guess you’re what we always say right write about what you know about yeah I mean yeah like uh like I’m I’m interested in like aquascapes so like uh like arranging so like aquariums and stuff like that with uh in beautiful ways and that kind of thing that’s quite a niche topic Um and if you were to there’s they’ve also got different forms within that and that kind of thing so if you were to like pick a certain form and then write a book on aquascapes and that’s really really specific and some people will be looking for that who are interested in

That thing so that I I think always right to a niche maybe that’s too niche I got it because more visual as well smaller than a small small bud focus market dedicated that is a massively niche market though yeah no no but I mean that’s thing some things Are massively niche but they do people are actually looking for that kind of stuff I’ve got that book completely wrong it’s napoleon hill think and grow rich oh yeah oh yeah I don’t think that’s that shortly it’s not it’s not always negatively yeah You could get through it quite quickly yeah it’s I don’t really like it that much there’s a lot of repetition in it I find it really always I I kind of hate that book because even though I mean you could say it gives you confidence to

When you read it or something like that but boy it seems inspiring but I just think it’s kind of like it’s nothing special it’s a bit airy fairy whereas like I prefer books which I actually tell you like this is this this I tell you what which book I thought was like that was the secret everybody was raving about the secret and I picked it up and I thought this is saying nothing I couldn’t I actually couldn’t read the entire was good though because I’m immediately thinking what huh yeah What’s the secret [Music] it’s to do with um law of attraction yeah but then yeah I I don’t tend to like those books that much because I just find okay well I I kind of knew that

You know yeah it doesn’t actually tell you anything and it’s like what what does that book have over how to win finding friends and influence people would you have never read it so that you really need to read it of all people it’s like her thanks I’ve got plenty of friends no but it’s a it’s a really it’s hard It’s no influence whatsoever this is it’s really like but to be honest you don’t need to read any other book on like you know that topic if you read that book but how to win friends like there’s no point like I’ve got a copy of it somewhere somebody gave it to me I’ve got it on on audible and I’ve done a review of it you can just watch that okay I think I did didn’t get much out of it no I genuinely haven’t I’m just winding you up I know I would believe it

So I’ve just typed in goodreads uh best business books and the first one is how to win friends and influence people the second one which I think you should both read and I’ve read three times is the seven habits of highly effective people Have I done that one it might be on my audible you’ve got atomic and more diatomic habits yeah yeah I’ve yeah so also nothing interesting so like the me depends on the type of book what medium You use you use because it’s like when it’s a really like I’ve got the intelligent investor on audible and I find it quite dense to listen to but then other books

I’m kind of okay like like they’re okay in audible form because they’re there’s less less complicated for my mind to take in it’s difficult it’s difficult for an audible book that has graphs yeah yeah yeah exactly like graphs and figures like if you tried to listen to listen to That yeah yeah the blue ocean one I found quite difficult to listen to I think business books are better that one was like you can’t live I think business books are better in in physical form although like on our trip to uh your non-verbal book would be Really boring it’s a hexagon next to a square next to a triangle with a dot next to it and you’ve got to be really really specific about that option [Laughter]

Business books are better when they are physical but if you think back to when we were driving to newcastle over easter yeah and I played you from wherever I was in that in the netflix book the mark randall yeah you Liked that didn’t you yeah no I thought I thought it was quite good really interesting it was the the thing is which book did we listen to the netflix book oh I’ve only just finished that that will never work Yeah I’ll leave a link again I I don’t has he got has he got two books out no he hasn’t it’s the same one I’ve only just finished it like yesterday or day before yeah the thing that I liked about how did you forget it was yesterday yeah because I didn’t look at

The title it’s just on my audible and it just plays automatically when I get in the car yeah well that was so business day is a technically a business book but it’s still like a novelty the thing is it’s got an emotional storyline yeah story yeah that I I find That it’s quite difficult because it’s semi-autobiographical yeah that’s why it’s not a pure business book and I think that yeah that works really well for the listening medium but I find like a lot of dense investing books like Actual things with like like there’s graphs and stuff like that and there’s a lot of details and equations and like I I can’t possibly I’ve tried to listen to like maths books before how did you do maths I don’t know like like I know I was I was and then

They described the equations and I I’m I’m like you trying to get into my head you definitely need to see that written down yeah I know I realized that afterwards how do you not realize that before you know I don’t know I thought my brain can handle this it’s not not too hard But like it is quite difficult when there’s a lot of stuff going on like that so we’re saying audible for like storyline types of books yeah some business books most business books need to be written on like done physically Or apart from anything else with the business books it’s nice to be able to make notes you know I really don’t like I don’t like dog earring or marking in my mind I can’t I like keeping them no I won’t have them pristine so I like them doggies books on like the thing is the

Interesting thing is some books are like they’re about the information that you get from the book but then some books are about the journey that you take through them yeah so this this one that we will listen to and also shoe dog Listen to that okay the same thing it was the journey yeah the journey but you still get business ideas from it yeah yes you do but but like I think there’s no graphs yeah there’s no cross so I wanted to ask you because I was trying

Kindle

To figure this out for a while about a while ago about how to get your book onto uh the kindle store or on amazon took me like an hour or so two hours how is it done Um well the way I did it was I wrote it I obviously wrote it on google docs like I just went yeah yeah yeah if I’d written it then I copied it over to um the thing called there’s kindle Create kindle create how long has I been around for because I don’t remember seeing that when I tried I think they’ve I think I think it wasn’t there before because I mean I tried like maybe like six to eight years maybe you you might have tried to download it as an epub on

Like google docs or something like that and and like it it it just won’t work as well yeah right I don’t think they like yeah so I think I think they’ve they brought this in because because I think that that’s a real probably a recurring Problem with yeah gutenberg’s stuff is on epub yes but um Yeah so after you’ve got it what was it called again kendall yeah the one so what is that so it’s just a program you download them to you can download it into mac or windows and then you you just uh well epub is a program no kindle creator kindle creates

And then and then you you upload your document onto that I just I just um put it through as a doc really and then it converts it to oh there yeah so you don’t need to choose like where page starts and all that sort of thing it Because just like the thing is writing you’re going to write it in chapters aren’t you yeah when it starts already will it start new chapters on new pages automatically I’d already done I think it’s got some way of detecting I did um I did put chapters in though anyway Um onto my channel and said chapter 1 oh you hear the content facebook and it just pulls that information out automatically yes I did it’s relatively intelligent although like the

Then I started doing subheadings because I because subheadings I think I think they they look slightly nicer so I put loads of subheadings into my book side so I spent some time going through the document my biggest problem was images Because a lot of my images didn’t work so I needed to do them did they tell you that it just won’t appear right it won’t appear so if you go through it then where did you pull your images from I would drew them all oh okay so then I To redraw them which was great and I I read through all the graphs and stuff out and did they appear in on kindle crafting them that sort of stuff yeah when I I needed to obviously like the the important thing

Is if you’re reading on kindle you you need enough contrast in your colors to for it to show up effectively in black and white but they do have quite a wide contrast range kindle there’s like 16 shades so that’s pretty good Um and yeah essentially I had to go and reformat all of them like change the sizes download them all as jpegs pngs did they give you a choice of fonts or things or they’re just yeah it Gives you a choice for fonts yeah oh on the on the upload side yeah so I think there’s like a default font but I think people can you can adjust it on the other side people can yeah people can choose what they want it’s really weird because I saw one that was designed for

People with like dyslexia and it looked really weird to me well you must be right I had no idea what it was but like to me it looks really hard to read but for them it might be easier So once you’ve got everything onto kindle yeah um sorry can I just ask one question on that on on kindle is there like a minimum word count no it’s not a minimum word count that I mean There’s nothing there’s there’s a few limits there’s a few limits in terms of what you cannot close I don’t know I don’t think there’s a minimum I mean you probably should upload something like is it well in that case you could upload like a 20 page yeah that’s where you can upload a one-page worksheet with 20

Questions on it for like 10p you can you can do that but like interesting what’s the the thing is as well is it’s shown on the other side how many pages your document has yeah yeah you’ve got to provide enough value like I said I just did like to be honest mine’s My book is not long it’s like 76 pages or something like that quite sure well that’s not too bad but it’s the the idea is that it’s condensed but I didn’t I didn’t want to like drone on for hours about those things and I find that a lot of books do That so yeah okay so um in terms of self-publishing should we explain how how we self-publish so did you get where do you did you get your isbn did you need one for a kindle book do you know nope

Self-publishing

That’s one advantage well that’s that’s something yeah I didn’t know that yeah because ice be ends are not cheap they’re they’re relatives they’re not bad they’re they’re relatively cheap I think it’s just because we bought so many we’ve just bought 10 yeah recently or 10 10. Nonetheless writer they are are expensive as far as like if if you’re like expecting a return then there there’s something to consider so when you’re publishing for like a physical copy you need an isbn Which is your barcode and you register that you need you need someone to design a front cover potentially an illustrator as well uh and someone to design

Like the inside of the book yeah I think you then need a printer to print and a distributor to distribute when you say a printer you mean a printing company you don’t mean a printer As in I mean I mean a printer isn’t a person not a machine yeah exactly yeah yeah the printing company uh and then you need someone to distribute and you need to market and you’ve got decisions like Do I have stitching in it or do I have well that depends on the thickness of the work so if you if you do you have a choice of hardback and paperback and then depending on the thickness you can have staple bound or stitch bound

Usually they’re stitched yes with with yeah uh so that’s the like list of things for how to self-publish physical books how to self-publish uh ebooks It seems to be a lot less you just need me you just need you need the content you need you probably might need you’ll probably still need a designer illustrator for the front cover well you need um you’ll still need markets you still need a marketer The hardest part is the marketing but the distributing is handled by amazon isn’t it so that’s the distributor but the thing is yeah is how do you market you need an seo marketer that’s not really what you need like yeah and you need um

You need to mark in different ways it’s like if you’re an influencer so if you use instagram if you’re on YouTube a lot then you’ve got you’ve got access to a market and you can sell and promote your book on that On that platform but if you haven’t got that then you need to build that that’s the difficult thing so that’s that’s a bit I’m just kind of like I don’t really want to be then I don’t really want to be that well known but that’s my that’s on my aim That’s never been mine that’s never been my goal I don’t want to be a celebrity I don’t want fame I just want to like be I just want to write something of value that’s that’s it so so I’ve just literally typed in book

Publishing and on the first page it’s come up with uk self publishing from 175 pound books and amazon kindle ebooks Well like I think there’s you can reach out to people to obviously like help you with with that but you are gonna have to do a lot of stuff yourself it’s not yeah yeah I think it’s a lot of hard work um like I said a lot of people they’ll They’ll offer free content and then they’ll be like oh by the way I’ve got this book yeah that’s in paperback or whatever the more you give for free the more you get back also kindle books can obviously people will go okay I’ll pay

Like 99p for the kindle book if I really like it then I’ll invest in the physical copy and sometimes that does that also push yourselves because but that means you have to do both yeah but again like because you’ve written the content It is more work but but maybe you just do a run of a hundred bucks or something and start increasing it increases your chance of success if you’ve got multiple ways multiple formats of your book because you’ve got let’s say if you’ve Got a paperback or hub and hardback and kindle you’ve got even an audio book then you’ve got multiple ways to reach people with the same content so for a writer I think it’s quite attractive having

Multiple formats that’s something I want to do I want to do an audio book yeah exactly there’s a guy called steve parker that does has done a lot of the george orwell books

Audiobooks

And um there are free to listen to on YouTube yeah and obviously he’s got himself that’s what I was thinking like doing it very unusually yeah and and I listened to his version of 1984. it was so good So good really brought it to life yeah like that that’s the that’s the hard thing as well is because um that’s another one of the big costs if you if you did go down the audio book route then You need someone who’s effectively an actor especially if it’s if it’s a fiction book it’s especially odd because they need to do the different voices characterization show emotion we have a tutor who’s an actor you could use him

It’s true okay I think that’s it for today yep anything to add no not the minute thank you okay thanks for watching again and we’ll see you next time see you next time [Music] You