In this podcast you will learn about:
- Launching books
- Validating books
- Facebook Ads
- Audience insights
- Ad optimization
- Morning routines
- Success: It's a Process that anyone can master!!!
Ever since I started my podcasts this year, I have had nothing but top notch industry experts on my show.
From Simon Whistler, Mike Shreeve, and Dave Chesson, and now Tyler Wagner, I have noticed a connection:
They are all extremely down to earth! And I love it!
It's like Mike Shreeve said about writing and being a successful author, "It's not magic"!
And that is what you will notice about Tyler in this interview:
There is no magic to being a successful PROFITABLE author. It's a PROCESS -- period! [click to tweet]Tyler has launched over 150 authors to Bestseller status.
Take a listen and delve into his morning routine, launch techniques, Facebook Ads techniques, and more importantly: his book VALIDATION techniques!
I hope this podcast is interesting and brings value to your authoring process, PLEASE do the survey afterward and let me know if you agree!
If you are a loyal reader of my blog, you know I am one stingy b*tard. My whole platform rests on doing it yourself, this way you are instantly profitable on launch day, no middle men to pay off first!
I am also a beginning author (I started seriously publishing in 2015) so I look at my pennies 5 times and turn them over in my hand 100 times before I spend them.
After looking at the prices of other platforms and publishing coaches I can confidently say his VALUE PROPOSITION is the best out there. I personally vouch for his system, not only because of the value provided but because VALIDATION is the first step of his process (it's the process - remember!?). If you want the most bang for your buck - go straight to Tyler!
Want more evidence? See one of his graduates, Lise Cartwright, 1,2.
And now the transcript for those of you who can't stand my voice (ha!):
Eric Z: Welcome to the fourth ever Zbooks podcast. Last week, I had Dave Chesson, a master of SEO and nonfiction. Today, we have an absolute master of book marketing and book launching. His name is Tyler Wagner, and to date, he has helped over one hundred and fifty people hit the number one Bestseller status. Enough of me talking. Let's say hi to Tyler. Hi, Tyler. How are you doing?
Tyler Wagner: Awesome, man. I'm really excited to be on the podcast, and answer all the questions that we have here, so thanks for having me on, man.
Eric Z: Oh, definitely, definitely, and these are some burning questions that my readers, and probably everybody out there, is just really into. How do you launch a book? How do you be successful? I've been really researching you on the net, and it looks like you're going to be the next Tony Robbins.
Tyler Wagner: I appreciate it. That's actually one of my biggest idols. Motivational speaking is something that I love, and that's actually why I wrote my first book in the first place, was to actually use it as a kick board for my speaking platform. Yeah, good call on that. You've definitely done your research.
Eric Z: Oh, yeah. Conference-crushing number one bestseller, so that was your kickoff? Tell us about that.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so basically, the reason ... That was my first book that hit number one, and actually sold over thirty-seven hundred copies within the first two and a half days of it launching, so it was pretty ... Yeah, it was pretty big, and that's when I realized that, for me, with my first launch, I would say it's almost lucky, in a sense, but not really. What I had was a really good network, and they really helped support me in my first launch. I did two more afterward, and they hit number one as well. I was like, "Okay. There's definitely a formula to this that I can help people sell more books, hit number one, whatever their goals may be with their books and book launches. I can definitely provide a service that can help them."
That's when I created Authors Unite, and yeah. Basically, for some people, back to your question, for me, the first reason why I wrote the book is because I was friends with a lot of public speakers, professional speakers that were making really good money public speaking. For me, that's always been a natural thing, getting up on stage, motivating people, and speaking on topics. I don't really get nervous when it comes to those type of things, so I asked these people, "What's the first step to becoming a pretty well-paid public speaker?" They said, "The first thing that you should do is write a book, and then use that as a glorified business card, and that'll help you get speaking gigs." That was my number one reason for writing.
Eric Z: That's interesting, because a lot of people start out writing books to get into the public speaking, and your main deal was public speaking, and you used the book to augment that.
Tyler Wagner: Yes, exactly. Yup.
Eric Z: Interesting. The super simple six step system, discovered by college dropouts, that shows you exactly how to go from no book idea to bestseller on Amazon in less than three months. Is that still valid?
Tyler Wagner: It's actually seven steps now, and yeah. That was from the bestselling book system before, which was a company that I used to own. It was actually with two other guys and we decided to part ways, so now I do Authors Unite. Now it's actually seven steps, and the only step that I decided to add, because I felt like it was really missing from a lot of programs, and I was noticing that all of the clients that we had helped, they would do really good on their launch, and then some of their books, what would end up happening is, they would drop off the charts. I was like, "You know what? There's one thing that this program's missing. It's missing how to maintain book sales, how to really grow yourself as an author for the long-term, and not just focus on a week long launch."
I added a seventh step, which is really, it's called really, "Next Steps for Authors." After the launch, after you hit number one, make a ton of sales in the first couple months or so, what do you do next to make sure that you can maintain this success? I've added a step to it.
Eric Z: Let's get onto that, because, okay, we're going out of sequence right now, that dovetails just right with last week, because Dave Chesson, the SEO master from Kindlepreneur, that was one of the techniques of SEOs, was to maintain your sales. Can you tell us about that seventh step, without revealing ... Yeah. Reveal us some juicy secrets.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, for sure. I think what happens is a lot of people, especially when we talk about bestseller and things of that nature, a lot of people think once you hit bestseller status, then you don't really need to do anything anymore, right? Then you can just go to Hawaii, or whatever, and kick your feet up, and you don't have to do anything after that. Truth be told is, because the gatekeepers are gone, anybody can become an author now with self-publishing, which is a beautiful thing for all of us, but it also does create more competition. Because of that, if you launch your book and hit number one, your book's going to stay up there for maybe in a couple months or so, but then after that, if you stop promoting, if you stop marketing, it's going to fall.
That's ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. Unless you're somebody like Seth Godin, or some of these other people that already have huge tribes or following, that they can do a launch now and then it just takes care of itself, forever after that. For most people, with self-publishing, they're not at that point quite yet. It's an everyday thing. Becoming a successful, self-published author isn't just about one time launch, and then you're set for life. It's really about an everyday, it's a job, but I think a very fulfilling job, and very entrepreneurial, and you can work from anywhere, which is something I love about it. You got to make sure that it's an everyday habit, and you're doing things every day to get better at your writing, get better at marketing, and make sure that you don't stop when things are just getting heated up, basically.
Eric Z: Okay, so it's a process, it's not one killer technique or something, in the seventh step.
Tyler Wagner: No, no. There is techniques for everything, like one way to keep sales going, and you'd have to still go in there and check with weekly, or monthly, or you can hire somebody to do it, but paid advertising. You can go in there, and you have a book. Let's say, one of my clients right now, we're launching a book for yoga. It's called Yoga Business Essentials. He's launching it on December first, and so I am going to help him with his Facebook ads. What we're going to do is, I'm going to test like twenty five different ads that will be sent to his book, and we'll see which ones are performing the best, and then I'll narrow it down to like five, and we'll see which ones are performing the best. We'll narrow it down to three, and the one, or whatever, and once we get down to the one that is converting the best, you can pretty much guarantee ...
It'll go like this. If I put in five to ten dollars into this Facebook ad, I'm going to get five to ten book sales from it, and you know that from testing all these different variations. You find which ones are working the best, and then you can just keep putting in about five dollars a day, into these ads, and then you know that you're selling more books, and that's one traffic area that you can keep going, and that will help you maintain sales. It does take some time up front to set it up, and to also test, and that's a big thing with Facebook ads, is a lot of people here about people's successes, and then they try it out. They don't hit success right away, and then they give up. Sorry, go ahead.
Eric Z: That's right up my alley, because you know I just made a Facebook ads crash course. What is the first thing you test with all of those ads? Sorry.
Tyler Wagner: Oh, okay, so you test a lot of different things. It depends. I offer coaching packages, so if it's for somebody that isn't using me to write their copy, if I'm not writing their copy, then I suggest that they test a lot of headlines, and then you also got to test different audiences in Facebook. You have interests. You can narrow it down to the smallest detail, and you obviously know this. When I do it, because I'll test different headlines, and different copy, but I'm pretty comfortable with my copy writing, so what I more test in there is the audiences. Which audience or which interest is engaging most with the ads, and then once I know that with audience insights, then I'll create another ad with same copy, and I'll target deep down.
For this yoga one, we'll target interests, yoga, meditation, and obviously, I got to do the market research to come up with other interests, but we'll target each of those, see which interests are working the best, and then I'll go into audience insights, and it'll say, "Okay, so yoga, seventy percent is women, thirty percent is men." Maybe I'll try an ad that is women interested in yoga that also are business owners, because this is called Yoga Business Essentials. It's basically how to grow your yoga business. I'll dial down as close as possible to figure out what is truly his number one target customer, and then once I know that, then I'll start to test the headlines on his main customer. [crosstalk 00:10:25]
Eric Z: Okay, so this is gold, because you're ... I'm sorry. I interrupted you again, huh?
Tyler Wagner: No, you're good. Yeah, no, you're fine.
Eric Z: That's perfect, because like I said, I just made a Facebook course. What you're doing is you're running the ads, and then you're looking at your audience insights to dial down, scope it down, and get more to the core audience that converts even higher, right?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, exactly, and usually you sell ... To give even a little more context around it, I'll usually start out with an audience set that's five hundred thousand to a million. I've gone up as far as two million, but higher than two million, I think that's a little too high, so I go as high as two million. From there, you can really get a good idea of which audience out of that two million is really converting, and then you dial down, and it usually ends up to be your actual end game targeted audience that you keep running the ads to consistently. Those end up usually being below a hundred thousand. They're usually maybe in the tens of thousands, and you get it really figured out, which person is exactly the person that is most likely to buy this book.
Eric Z: Those are some good metrics. You go for around two million and dial it down to one hundred thousand.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, and as you know, that's very averaging, and it depends on the niche. Yoga, I'd say that that's pretty accurate, because I'd say there's a ton of people that do yoga. If we're talking about something extremely niche, I feel, like how to knit a t-shirt, or something. You know what I mean? Something like that, a book written on that, it may sound funny, could actually be really successful if it's put in front of the correct audience. Yeah, and that audience, knitting, I think, it's not as popular as it used to be, probably, but there still are knitters out there. That audience probably isn't going to be two million people though. It's going to be less than that.
Eric Z: This is exactly what I'm always talking about to my beginner authors and readers, is that you got to validate your book. A lot of people call that something else, and there's direct and indirect validation techniques, but what I see you're doing is, you're going through these constant iterations to find the audience, and also if they like the book.
Tyler Wagner: Yes, exactly. Yup.
Eric Z: Yeah. How do you validate your books? How many iterations of Facebook ads do you go through? Sixty? Do you change the ad cover, the book cover?
Tyler Wagner: We're actually talking about a different part of the process now. To validate a book, this is actually within the first step of my program, which is just called first thing's first, basically. The first steps, there's a lot that go into it, but I ask questions along the line of, "What do you most enjoy?" Let's start with, what do you like, because writing a book ... This is before the book's even written. You actually validate the book before it's written, and there's different ways to validate, so an upgrade, I'd say, from my previous business bestselling book system to Authors Unite is, we used to only validate for profitability, but here's the thing. Even if the book can be profitable, if the author solely picks to write a book on something that is just profitable but they don't really enjoy the topic. They're only writing it because they know that it has potential to become profitable.
The success rate for that just isn't as high, because writing a book takes time. It takes effort, so to do something that you don't like, every single day, like writing about something you don't enjoy, it just doesn't make sense to me.
Eric Z: Those are those, "Escape your desk job and get rich quick" type.
Tyler Wagner: Exactly, so it's not just profitability that we test. We test an actual, we gauge, is this going to be something you're going to enjoy? It is fun? This is part of the process. It would be, list ten things that you think you could write about every day, that you enjoy, so they list ten things, and then they list next to that, ten more things. It's, how can you create value with each of these ten things that you enjoy? For me, I'll run you through the process of conference crushing.
Eric Z: Yes, let's go.
Tyler Wagner: For conference crushing, one of the things, I love talking with people, which is why I have a coaching program, and all these other things, because I really, really love and excel at just speaking in general, communication skills. One of my ten things on the list was going to conferences, and networking. I was like, "How can I provide value with this thing that I enjoy, such as networking?" I was like, "Okay, I could write a book on how to maximize your ROI for going to these networking events, basically a step-by-step guide on what to do before, during, and after networking events." That's how I can create value.
The third part is, can it be profitable? The profitability thing is actually the last question, and for some people, it doesn't even matter to them. I've had some women that have come through my program. They're in their sixties. They don't care about making money; they just want to become an author because it's been a dream of theirs for a long time. We don't even get to the profitability question, but for me, if it passes all three of those tests, then it's a green light. It's something I enjoy, it can create value for others, and yes, there is other books, How to Win Friends and Influence People. There's other networking books that are or have been profitable, so yes, that is also a profitable niche. Boom. Three yeses, and we have a green light. Now we can begin the actual outline and mind map, and the structure of writing it.
Eric Z: Okay, let's go through the sequence, then. What's your launch sequence, or book building sequence? That was number one, that was the very beginning?
Tyler Wagner: That's basically first thing's first, and like I said, we're definitely missing a lot of parts, but for first thing's first, that is part of it, on how we validate to decide if it's a good book for them to start to pursue. Let's say they go through yes, plus the other material that is in first thing's first. The second thing is writing, or rather, it's the writing section, but the first thing that's first is actually a mind map. This really relieves a lot of stress for people, because what I notice is, once they have their book idea, then they're like, "Okay. Holy crap. Where do I start?"
Eric Z: I love mind maps. Yeah.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so a mind map works amazing, and what you do is just, you have your topic. I think we were talking about this previously, for the guy who is writing a book on yoga. For him, we would get a big poster board, or a whiteboard, just put "yoga." We didn't have the title yet. We don't do the title until the end, so it was just "yoga" in the middle. Basically it's a web, so you put out webs, and then in each circle that extends from the main point, each circle is a possible chapter topic. One is how to start your first yoga class, or something, and then another one's like, the top ten yoga poses, or whatever. Whatever he wants to put in his book. He does all those lines that come out, and then that's his full mind map.
What I say is, don't hold back, because a big, limiting belief that people have is, they think that they are going to miss something in their book, and that stops them, because it's just like, "There's no way that I can get everything I want to say into this book," and they get, I don't know, anxiety kicks in or something. From that, what I'd say is just get everything out of your mind. Get every single possible little thing that you think could be in this book. I want to see it on the mind map, and then once it's out of your head and you can look at it, then you can't miss anything at that point, because it's already on paper.
From there, we go through all these chapter topics and we're like, "Okay. Which ones can be grouped together? Which ones are unnecessary? Which ones can we write five hundred to ... Can you write five hundred to fifteen hundred words, at least, for this chapter?" It depends on each book. It's very customized, but then we would pick the top chapters that they're going to use, and then write out each chapter, a rough draft for each chapter separately. Again, keeping in mind that order and organization right now do not matter. Don't get caught up on trying to perfect anything. Just get the whole story out of your mind, and on paper. That's the first thing you need to do.
You get all of that out, so it's a rough draft, and you have every chapter written for the first time, roughly. That's the first draft. Then you can do your rough draft of your intro and conclusion. They'll come at the end, and then after you have that, then you organize the chapters, actually, into an order that you see best fit. You add transitions and such. After that, you have your full first draft, and then we do two rounds of self-editing, and also passing it off to friends, family, and other people in your network. We call this a pre-release list, so it's like, "Get a signed copy of my book when it launches, if you're willing to read a pre-order copy, or a pre-release copy now, and give constructive feedback." This leads into the marketing. I know we're covering a lot here, but this leads into the marketing.
One point I really want to hone on in, and I'm sure that you've probably discussed this with the people that ready your website and stuff, is that it's not about marketing at people. It's about marketing with them. You really start this marketing at a point before this book is even finished, and you can build a Facebook group of basically test readers, and people that want to be a part of the process. Yeah, beta readers. These people, then, once your book launches, all the people that are your beta readers, they're going to help you market it. You say, "Why?" The answer is because they actually feel like they're a part of the book. They have literally given you feedback. You've taken your feedback, and whether you've implemented it or not, it's definitely crossed your mind, and it's definitely impacted the final copy of the book.
You go from there, and then you have basically a book launch team at the end that you can use, before they were your beta readers.
Eric Z: Yeah, I love this stuff, because ... We're talking fiction or nonfiction, right?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, you can use this for either. For fiction, what I say is, I've done more nonfiction. We probably, at Authors Unite, I'd say out of the hundred and fifty plus fifty plus, fiction have probably only been about twenty five to thirty people, so we're definitely, a majority have been nonfiction. From the fiction, I'd say the only differentiation in the process, in the beginning at least, is really getting rid of, "Is it profitable?" The reason that I say that is because I think it's a lot harder for a fiction writer to get profits, or gain profit, however you want to word it, in the beginning, before they're known. It can be a really good story, and if it is really good marketing, that's great, but it's not anybody's ... It's no immediate pain reliever, which is what nonfiction does.
Nonfiction, you put together a book, you know that these people have a pain. For my instance, these people are spending thousands of dollars on networking events, and they're not getting their return on their investment, and they think it's because the event isn't good, but in reality, it's because they actually aren't that good at networking. My book fixes that problem, whereas a fiction book really doesn't fix any problem. It just is a pleasure. It helps with pleasure, so I think you need to build an audience, as a fiction writer, a lot more.
Eric Z: That's why I asked the question, because in the interview with Mike Shrive, he doesn't validate at all, at least not like that. He just gets a profitable niche and nails it, and that's the modus operandi of a lot of Kindle authors, regardless of fiction or nonfiction. They just think, "Oh, okay. Choose a profitable niche and go for it," but yeah, okay. If you're good at it already, sure, but not in the beginning. You got to get, like you just said, either the reputation or the marketing down first.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. Yup.
Eric Z: Okay, so I interrupted you again, so okay. Where were we? Let's go through the sequence. You were at the mind mapping, and chapters, and then ... Okay, we start at the marketing.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so we did ... We definitely skipped some things, obviously, so then after you have your, I call it a final rough draft, so that would be after two self-edits, and having beta readers take it. After that, and by the way, just one thing is, when you do this self-edit, one of them, you need to read your book out loud. You will be very surprised as to how many silly mistakes you've made that you don't catch when you read it in your mind, but when you read it out loud, you realize that it just doesn't sound right. Some things don't sound right, so read it out loud. That's one of the self-edits.
Once you're done fully self-editing it, and your beta readers, then you want to hire a professional editor. Some of these, we have editors at Authors Unite, so some of these, they can be very expensive. They're also very good. Some are not very expensive, but they're also good, so depending on your budget, and how big you want to go with this, which is why we go over your goals the first thing, and we go over your budget, then you ... No matter what, though, you need an editor. I highly believe in this, because I know my first book, Conference Crushing, if it did not have an editor, it wasn't that well written, to be honest. It needed editing, for sure.
Eric Z: What do you suggest for paying for an editor, for beginning authors?
Tyler Wagner: It really, really depends on your goals, and on your budget. That's really the best advice I can say, but for instance, my book ... Again, I had a relationship. A girl, actually, she edited my book. I only ended up paying her two hundred and fifty dollars, which is very, very cheap, actually. My first book was only twelve thousand words, so not that long. I think it's like sixty-nine pages on Kindle, so two hundred fifty bucks for that. Normally, I'd say if you wanted to get an editor to edit a book that length ... Say your budget is not that big. It's just your first book. You're just testing the waters. I'd say only spend about around five hundred dollars for editing.
If you're going all in, say you're the CEO of a company. This is your big book that you want to use to grow your business, then you can spend upwards to like three to five thousand dollars on editing, and that, I would still advise to do, if this is going to be your big book.
Eric Z: Your benchmark.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. It really depends on your goals, and what you're using it for.
Eric Z: You hook the people up with the editors, or you go to E-Lance, or O-Desk, or what do you do?
Tyler Wagner: I've actually been through enough that we actually have a team of editors now, at Authors Unite. We have about ten that we consistently use, and if by chance, any of them are all busy, which has actually happened in the past, then they can usually refer to one of their friends or something. I only like to use editors now that we've used in the past, and that I know are going to do a really good job, because with E-Lance, although they have ratings and things like that, you still never a hundred percent know what you're going to get. Yeah. Now that I've tested the waters enough with so many different editors, I've narrowed it down to our top ten, and those ones, yeah. I get them a lot of work.
Eric Z: Okay. What's the next step, now?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so while the editing is going on, you can actually then be looking for a design, and again, at Authors Unite, we have a team of designers, because I've gone through tons of book covers, and stuff like that. You would hire to get a book cover, and then, again, if you're going to do only Kindle or print, these are different format, so you'd have to make sure that you verbalize this to whatever designer you use. The next step is designing, so you want to design book cover, and then interior design as well. I think both are important, and then after design, then you're kind of taking care of design and editing at the same time. You can let those happen at the same time. Then you have your final design, your final copy, then the next step is publishing.
Eric Z: I'm sorry. What do you consider interior design, because we know for e-books, the reader can set his own fonts, and font sizes, on his device. Tell me a little about the interior design.
Tyler Wagner: Really, it's really the formatting, and it can be designed for Kindle, if you want. If you want to have your designer do some extra cool pictures in there, which I think is cool, but you got to make sure you don't do too many, because if you make the Kindle file size too large, then it can mess with your pricing barriers that you have.
Eric Z: I've heard there's a penalty.
Tyler Wagner: Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't heard of the penalty. I just know that, for instance, one launch that we were doing, that I was doing with a woman, she had added pictures in there and I didn't know about it. We were going to do a launch for ninety-nine cents, and we found out later that they wouldn't allow her to change her price below one dollar, ninety-nine cents, due to her file size being too large.
Eric Z: Exactly, yeah.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so we had a whole Facebook group of hundreds of people, everything set up, and everybody thought it was coming at ninety-nine cents, and then we actually had to launch it at a dollar ninety-nine. Luckily, it didn't actually mess things up too bad, but it definitely affected it, so that's something that you got to be aware of, for sure.
Eric Z: Yeah. I have that linked in my book template. I'm the how-to guy. I make the tools. I'm way, what do you call it? Upstream of you? I let the big guns like you take care of the marketing, but I make all of these templates and stuff, and I have a link in all of my templates to the download penalty in Amazon. Yeah, what you have to do is, you have to re-size your pics all the way down to six hundred by eight hundred pixels, or, at the most, 1024 by 768. If you're doing a lot of pics, you can get away with it. Otherwise, you have to be really careful, because there is a download penalty, and that sounds what she hit with that.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, for sure.
Eric Z: Yeah. Where were we? What's next?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so then, after the editing and design, then the next part is self-publishing and that would be basically ... In my program, I just run you through exactly how to set up your book on Kindle. If you want to do a print copy, I run you through how to set it up on print. If you want to do an audio copy, I run you through how to set it up on ACX.
Eric Z: Wow, there's a lot behind all of that.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, there's a lot for all three, and again, I'd find this out very in the beginning, which is why every person that comes through Authors Unite, yes, we do have our formulas, our templates, and things like that, but at the same time, every person has different goals, and every person's coming in from a different point. It's very customizable, so the next part is really just publishing whatever you'd want to be published, whether that's Kindle, print, audio, or all three. I teach you how do that, and then the next part's the marketing, and then the last part is the, how to maintain and grow everything.
Eric Z: How do you ace the launch? What's the most important part?
Tyler Wagner: There's a lot that goes into it.
Eric Z: Oh, yeah, I know. I'm sorry.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, no, it's okay. There's a ton that goes into it, but what I'll say is, it's just like any other bestseller list. Let's say one of your goals is to his bestseller on Amazon. Let's say, actually, that's your only goal. You don't care about anything else. If that's your only goal, is to hit bestseller on Amazon, basically, Amazon's algorithms ... Actually, I think they recently just changed, and I have to a hundred percent validate this, but from what I've heard and from what I've seen now, from doing some recent launches, it used to be the algorithm was just within one hour. If you got the most downloads in that category within one hour of time ... Every hour, they recalculated the downloads, so if you got the most within one hour, then you'd shoot up to number one, so there you go. It's that simple.
Now it seems to be, it is that, but it's on top of that, it seems to be an average of sales, for how long you've been in the bookstore as well. How I started to realize that is that I launched a book recently, and it did end up hitting number one, but it took a lot more than I had anticipated, because I check out the ranks, and each of the categories, then I purposely place the book into a category that I know we can hit number one. Then I place it into a different category that is really, really competitive, where I think we can get a lot of eyeballs and traffic to. What I found is that this book, we were actually relaunching it. It had been on the Amazon store for two years, and what I should've done is taken it off, and then put it back on again, and then it would have been new.
Instead, I didn't know that they changed their algorithm, so what I did is launch it as it was. It was just a re-launch, and I did all the marketing stuff that I would normally do. It ended up working, but we did discover that it took way more downloads to hit number one in that simple category, and we think that was because it was also taking into consideration, or calculating, that this book had been there for two years, and hey, for two years, it was only like one copy every month, and now it suddenly sells a thousand copies in a day.
Eric Z: How do you relaunch a book? how would you do that now, knowing this?
Tyler Wagner: Basically, and again, I'd have to test this, because I don't know if it would go against Amazon's terms, but what I would want to do, if we could, is just completely delete it. Really, just take it down and relaunch it, especially if the person really hadn't gotten much traction.
Eric Z: If you change the title, or something in the title, it should work, right?
Tyler Wagner: I think so, and you also, if I can get into their Kindle direct publishing account, you can just delete the whole thing, you know what I mean? I would just delete the whole thing, and then wait a week, and then I would just re-upload it again, and then it would be brand-new.
Eric Z: Interesting, indeed. Okay. Yeah, let's get back into that. How do you choose the niche, the right niche, or the profitable niche?
Tyler Wagner: I'd say for a lot of nonfiction books that come through, I'll put them in, I call them parents' categories, and then child categories. There's the big categories, and then the smaller ones that are underneath them. You can put your book into two categories when you sign up, so usually with nonfiction, what I'll end up doing is put them in ... Again, this depends on the topic, but what usually ends up happening is I'll put it in one business category, and then one self-help category, and-
Eric Z: At the same level, or child level?
Tyler Wagner: Those are the top ones, but then I put them in smaller child ones within them. Let's say it starts out with business. You go into business, and then a child category of child category of business is job hunting and careers. You can put it in that one. That one's not that competitive, if I remember correctly, so you put it in that one, and then you can go to self-help, and this is actually from one of my previous clients. It was a book, it was about spirituality, so then you go to self-help, spirituality, and that one was very competitive. That had things like The Alchemist, and things like that in it. That one was really competitive, so basically I put it in both, and the reason why you, too, you'd want to re-upload the book is, if your book gets number one, or a certain amount of downloads within the first thirty days, it can hit the Hot New Releases as well.
What happened with this girl that I helped her launch, her book hit number one in both categories, so it was above The Alchemist, The Four Hour Work Week. It was above these huge books, and then it also hit Hot New Releases as well, and that helped with a lot of organic traffic.
Eric Z: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, and that's what all of the authors are always talking about. Once you reach that threshold, then Amazon does the rest.
Tyler Wagner: Somewhat. For the launch, then yeah, they'll do the rest, but then a week later, they're not still [crosstalk 00:36:53] doing something. Maybe for a couple days.
Eric Z: Yeah, yeah. Most beginning authors are a bit lazy, and they think, "Okay, all I have to do is put a book in there, and Amazon does the rest." This is a pretty big "rest," right?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Eric Z: Yeah. Okay. What was the rundown of that? You validate the book idea, and if it works for the person.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so first thing's first, that's validating the idea and making sure that we have a full plan that is all the way from we discover what you're going to write about. Once that's discovered, then we build a customized plan for you that will take you through the whole process, so then after that, then you begin the mind mapping and the writing. Then it's the editing, then designing, then the self-publishing, then the marketing, and then maintaining of the marketing and how to grow it into whatever you'd like. Those are the seven steps right there.
Eric Z: Okay. Cool. What was your biggest win or challenge?
Tyler Wagner: Biggest win or challenge. Huh. That's a good question. I'd say luckily with this, we've had a lot more wins than challenges, and the reason really, is because when I first did my first three books and they did well, before I started to charge people for anything, I actually helped a lot of my friends do it, a dozen or so. We really validated everything before we started the actual business, so because of that, we didn't really have ... Obviously, there's challenges, like for instance, right now, one of my even challenges right now is scaling the business, so that's why we're working on software products, and we're working on Evergreen product right now, because my coaching ...
Basically, my coaching funnel is very high-converting. Me and you were talking about this before we actually got on the call. It works really well. I run Facebook ads to it, and then people put in an application, then I hop on a call with them, and then if it's a good fit, I'll usually be able to close a lot of these people as clients, because we add that value. They always get their ROI when they work with us, so it's not too hard to close people when it comes to that. Here's the thing, they do take a lot of my time. We're actually at a point right now where I can't even really take much more coaching clients at this very moment, because we're swamped. We actually have three book launches going on right now. One's coming out the seventeenth and two are coming out on December first, and these are very high-level coaching clients of mine, that I've put a lot of time and energy into.
I'd say the biggest challenge right now is just getting all of the Evergreen and software products set up, so that this can be more streamlined. Overall, it's definitely been a lot more rewards, and really what that is is just seeing people's lives actually change directly after working with us. That's because they hit number one, or whatever goals they had, and then they took their book, and then they used it to grow a business, or to become a public speaker, or to write a series of books to create more passive income. Whatever their goal may be, we've been able to get them to a point where it's very easy for them to see what the next steps are, to make sure that they continuously succeed.
Eric Z: That's awesome. What do you do when you're unmotivated or down?
Tyler Wagner: I go running.
Eric Z: Yeah? That simple.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. What I try to do is, and I feel very lucky for this, in a sense that I dove into personal development before I had any business success, so I was very ... This is an everyday practice. It's not to say, "Oh, I have everything figured out when it comes to personal development." I think it's an everyday thing, but I have become very self-aware, and I'm a pretty spiritual person. Because of that, I just know what works for me, and if I'm ever feeling stressed or overwhelmed by work, I know what I need to do, and what I need to do is go workout, whether it's running, or lifting. I do actually run every day, between six to ten miles every morning, so I'm a big runner.
Eric Z: You choose your moods.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, exactly. There you go. That's the best way to put it, because I really believe, even if you're really sick and obviously you can get really, really sick and then maybe it's a lot more difficult. If you're feeling a cold, or just down, or unmotivated, I know for me, I just have to eat healthy and I have to go running. After I do that, I feel much better, so it's just a really simple fix.
Eric Z: Was that Og Mandino, or was that you that had this quote. "A great man masters his mood, and doesn't let his moods master him," or something like that? Does that ring a bell?
Tyler Wagner: I've heard definitely something like it. I don't think it was my quote, but I've heard something like it.
Eric Z: That's cool. Yeah. I have some more quotes from you. "As a writer, trust the process."
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: "Don't perfect the process. Complete the process." Tell us about that.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so that really has to a lot with the whole process, but mostly with the writing, because again, like I said, we have people come into our programs, some of them have a book already, and they just want help with the marketing. They've already figured out the writing part. They just need help with the marketing. We have other people that come in and have no idea how to even begin to write a book. What I mean by that, and I think this actually goes with anything in life, and actually, I'll give a really simple example. With running, when I first started to run, I was going around this track that's six miles long. It's around this lake near the house that I live in, and I would run around it, but what I would do is, I would run and walk. My goal wasn't to run the whole thing. My goal was just to complete it, just to finish it.
Now, I can run the whole thing, but when I first started, I was probably walking three quarters of it, and that's what I mean. With writing, too, how this relates back is that, don't try to perfect and keep going back and forth when you're writing your first draft. What I want you to do is just finish it. Just get one draft a hundred percent done. It's not going to be perfect. It never is. Just get it a hundred percent done, and then start over and edit, and then start over and edit a second time, and then give it to an editor. You need to complete the process to learn from it, and that's the only way. For your first book, unless you want to hire somebody like me, just don't get too crazy about making it perfect. Just launch it, learn from it, and then start over. Do another book. You know what I mean?
That's the only way you're going to get better, and a lot of people get messed up, or they stop when they are at a point, they don't know what to do next. They're like, "Oh, okay. I can't do anything now, because I don't know what to do next." They stop, and then they never learn. My biggest thing is just make sure to complete the process, and don't try to perfect it. Just complete it, learn from it, and then keep doing it again, over and over.
Eric Z: That kind of answers my other question. What is the one thing you wish you knew back then, when you got started?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, I'd say that failure only comes from not doing. For me, because I actually went through somewhat of a lot, because I was in school, and I actually ended up dropping out of school to pursue what I actually liked. Where I'm from in the United States, if you drop out of school, a lot of people, at least in the area that I grew up in, will look at you like you're kind of nuts. That means you can't be successful, because you don't have a diploma, or something. I needed to trust what was in my heart, what I wanted to do, and I'm grateful that I did that. That's what I'd say.
Eric Z: Yeah. Okay, so besides the running, do you have a morning routine?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so my morning routine has changed as I've grown my business and everything. It always changes, but before, when I was only focused on the book, a recent dropout. I was like, "I need to get this book done. This is gonna be my kick board." I basically wrote every day for one hour, and I did it in the morning. A lot of people try to do it at night, and things work different for different people, but at night, I realized that when I was trying to do it at night time, I would always put it off. I would just put it off, because I would be tired by that time.
Eric Z: Yeah, I do that, too.
Tyler Wagner: Exactly, yeah, and that's the same thing with working out. Before, it used to be an hour every morning I would write, and then I'd journal affirmations, gratitude, and do things like that. Now, I've made it a lot simpler, just because I have a business, it's well-established, and it's growing, and things are going well. For me now, I know what I need to do business-wise, and I'm very grateful for everything. Not to say that you should ever stop practicing gratitude, it's just for me, right now, it's not my number one priority. What I do is, I literally just wake up, I run. That is the first thing before I do any work, or anything. I run. I come back, eat breakfast, and then I plan out the night before what my day is going to look like, so then as soon as I'm done with my breakfast, usually I'll ... I actually don't start work, usually, until I'd say probably about eleven AM, probably.
Eric Z: What time do you get up?
Tyler Wagner: I usually actually get up about seven. Usually I get up at seven. Yeah, I guess before I work out, the first thing I actually have is a cup of coffee, but with the coffee, I put coconut oil in it. Coconut oil has a lot of health benefit. It is-
Eric Z: Does that taste good?
Tyler Wagner: I love it. Yeah.
Eric Z: Drinking coffee. Huh. I'll try that.
Tyler Wagner: Black coffee with coconut oil in it. Yeah, it's very good.
Eric Z: Yeah, sounds exotic. I'm going to try that.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, try it out. Let me know what you think.
Eric Z: Yeah.
Tyler Wagner: Sorry, go ahead.
Eric Z: You said you write in the morning? Do you get writer's block any time?
Tyler Wagner: I wouldn't say I do much anymore, because of ... I don't really even believe in writer's block fully, because what it is is, I now know the environment I need to be in to effectively write, and what that environment looks like is, my door locked. I have a window where I can see. Right now, I'm in Philadelphia, as we're doing this. I'm visiting some family, but I actually live in San Diego, right near the beach.
Eric Z: Ah, yes. Navy SEALS.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. Yup. I live there, so I'll make sure that wherever I'm writing is just in a place that is very positive, and there's no distractions. Usually, we all have that feeling when we look at that blank screen. It sucks. Nobody likes looking at a blank screen. You look at it. My first five to ten minutes probably are not that fluent. My writing isn't the best, and I'm just kind of getting into the zone, but then after about ten minutes go by, then I really hit writer's flow, and as long as no distractions come, I can keep going for about an hour, pretty fluently.
Eric Z: Yeah. I love that. I'm doing science fiction now, for the first time, and I don't know if it's because I've been doing nonfiction for so long, or because science fiction is cool, but it's just so fun hitting that flow in that book. I've been-
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: Are you a Mac Air and Scrivener writer?
Tyler Wagner: I just have a MacBook Pro, and I actually just use Word. I do have Scrivener, and I used it for a little bit, and I know, again, I think it's just because what I need to really do, what I think I should do next, is take a month off. I may actually do it, once I close up these last coaching clients that I have right now. Take a month off, and then really just focus on building more structure into the business, because Scrivener, again, I used it for a while. I see the benefits, but I haven't had the time to really, really check out everything that it has to offer. Yeah. I'm really sticking to Word right now, just because I don't have time to learn Scrivener.
Eric Z: See, this is exactly why I asked the question, because I've got the free copy of Scrivener too, and I use Chrome Books and everything possible, and I couldn't imagine making my writing dependent on one tool. If I have to learn a tool that takes that long to learn it, then I'd rather be writing.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: I've heard of the awesome benefits of Scrivener, but you got to set it up right, so you know what? I use Google Docs. Anywhere I am. I'm at the same point as you, with Scrivener. Okay, heard it's great, but I couldn't imagine making my writing dependent on one single tool.
Tyler Wagner: No, no.
Eric Z: What's up next for you? Structuring the business, and what else?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, I guess just more, and this is all in the works right now, just more automation, because the business, a lot of the revenue really comes from my coaching, which is great. My coaching ranges, it's definitely a high ticket price, so this works out really well, but at the same time, you can only take on so many coaching clients. We're just opening up more revenue streams, and really just trying to be able to help as many people as we can, even if they don't have the budget to hire me as a coach, basically.
Eric Z: Yeah, okay, but you get what you pay for, right? You said high ticket price, but you get launched to the top of any category.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, right. What I mean, not to say that it's too high, but I just mean by coaching standard, it's at that price point that a lot of people ... That's why I use Facebook ads. When I do Facebook ads, part of my targeting is to people that make a hundred and fifty thousand a year or more, just because I know chances are, they make less than that, they probably can't afford my coaching.
Eric Z: Yeah. Paying clients.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, right. You can open up your market a lot more if you offer a three hundred dollar information product, as well.
Eric Z: Yeah. What do you call that? Price tiers. Whatever.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, exactly, the ladder.
Eric Z: We're jumping around a little bit, but I have to ask you. What do you think about email drops, like Book Bub, Buck Books, stuff like that?
Tyler Wagner: Book Bub, I've heard good things. I don't have as much experience with it, and I always actually mess up the word. Is it Buck Books, or Books Bucks? What is it?
Eric Z: Buck's Books. I think it's Buck's Books.
Tyler Wagner: I actually use them for every promotion, and I've seen really, really good results. With them, usually their promotions now cost like thirty-two bucks, I think.
Eric Z: I went to them a couple weeks ago, and they were closed. They said, not taking anybody on.
Tyler Wagner: Oh, really.
Eric Z: Did you see that? Their website was, they said, "Right now, due to volume or whatever, we're frozen, or just not taking any new requests."
Tyler Wagner: Interesting.
Eric Z: Too many people like you are putting around the good word, and they're being overflowed with requests.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that. I'm actually using them for a launch in six days. I've already paid, so I hope their website unfreezes.
Eric Z: Have you heard of Lisa Cartwright?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, she was actually one of my clients, actually.
Eric Z: Exactly, and she put a big, really big, nice guest post on, what is his name? Ogilvy's? She put Buck's Books in there. I don't know. Was it three weeks ago or six weeks ago? I read that, and then I went to Buck's Books, and yeah. Frozen up, man. Probably too much traffic from Lisa's post.
Tyler Wagner: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. Lisa, she was one of my clients about a year and a half ago, so I'm glad to see her and Steve. I think Steve's her partner, Steve Windsor. Yeah. They were both clients of mine, about a year and a half ago. Yeah.
Eric Z: See, that's perfect advertising, isn't it?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: She's got these benchmark articles, on her website and the guest post on, I think his name is David Ogilvy. I'm not sure. They're the kind of posts that a guy like me would take, and then make a product out of. That's how good they are. Matter of fact, I think I will do that. I think I'm going to have to call her up or something. Yeah. That's how good the posts are. Yeah. She outlines your process, I think, really good, so ... Man, what is that website? Sean Ogil, something one eighty.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, I'm not sure.
Eric Z: Okay. My favorite question is, if you could eat dinner anyone, past, present, or future, living or not, who would it be?
Tyler Wagner: Ooh. That is a very good question. I'd have to say, okay, right now if I were to eat dinner with anyone, I don't know if you'd know this guy. His name is Alan Watts. Have you ever heard of him?
Eric Z: W-A-T-T-S?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, W-A-T-T-S.
Eric Z: No.
Tyler Wagner: First name's Alan, A-L-A-N.
Eric Z: Nope.
Tyler Wagner: He died in the seventies, but he's a big self-help guru, and he teaches a lot about meditation and philosophy, and I've just learned so much about this guy, and about his teachings. I've read so many of his books, and it's like one of my mentors, he always said this. It's like, "You learn from as many people as you can, and then find the people that you believe are helping you the most, and then narrow it down." For me, it's Alan Watts, Seth Godin.
Eric Z: Oh, yeah. I've heard of him.
Tyler Wagner: Those are my top two writers that I really follow, and Tim Ferriss. He would be in the third. There's three that I really, really follow, and that I don't steal their stuff at all, but I learned how to write by reading a lot of their writing. I was like, "Okay. I really enjoy reading this type of writing. I think that I can write similar to this," so I learned a lot from those three guys.
Eric Z: I think Seth Godin coined the term, "permission marketing."
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. Yup.
Eric Z: Yeah.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, Seth Godin, because he'd probably be right next to Alan Watts for the top two people, and I actually got to meet Tim Ferriss at a conference about a year and a half ago.
Eric Z: Oh, yeah. He's from San Jose. My dad lives there, so I'm trying to meet Tim Ferriss too, but I'll probably [crosstalk 00:56:57].
Tyler Wagner: Nice.
Eric Z: You said you meditate?
Tyler Wagner: Yes, I meditate. Excuse me. I used to do it daily. Now I do it whenever I need to do it.
Eric Z: What method do you use?
Tyler Wagner: Alan Watts, if you were to type in ... I use a guided meditation, so it's called Alan Watts Guided Meditation. It's fifteen minutes. If you go to YouTube and just type that in, then you can find it, and for anybody who is just starting out, I highly recommend starting with this video. Having somebody guide you through it at first has really helped me a ton, because doing it in complete silence is a lot more difficult, at least at first. I do a mixture of both now, because I've been really able to train my mind. It's not turning your mind off, it's just letting your mind be free, and why a lot of people have trouble with meditating is they try to control their thoughts. If you're trying to control things in your mind, then there's no possible way to meditate effectively, because meditating is really a process of letting go of control.
It's just a very debatable topic, because a lot of people will say to meditate, you have to think about nothing, but then people try to think about nothing, so they're thinking about thinking about nothing. That makes it very confusing, so when you have a guided meditation at first, it's a lot easier, because then you can just listen to the guided meditation, and then just keep doing it every day. Eventually, after a couple months, you should be a lot better at it.
Eric Z: Yeah, I dig that stuff. Thanks for the tip. I've tried that before, and it's really fun. What I did was I started Tai Chi, moving meditation.
Tyler Wagner: Oh, wow. That's cool.
Eric Z: It has replaced my meditation, but I really still dig that guided stuff. Guided imagery is another one, and so I'm going to check that out. Alan Watts. Yeah.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, you'll like it.
Eric Z: You meditate every morning, or noon, or night, or what?
Tyler Wagner: I used to do it every morning, and like I said, now I actually, I'd say I almost still do it daily. I'll do it in the middle of my day, so if I start working at like eleven, usually I'll meditate around two or three PM, just a midday break from work. From there, maybe at night before I go to bed, I'll actually meditate, because sometimes, it'll put me right to sleep. I'll lay down, listen to the Alan Watts tape, it'll put me in a meditative state, and then I'll wake up in the morning, and be like, "Oh. That was good."
Eric Z: You've mentioned Seth Godin, and Alan Watts, and Tim Ferris, but who is your favorite author?
Tyler Wagner: Favorite author. Huh. Wow. It's probably them. They're all three authors, so it would be ... Okay, so the book that changed my life the most, business wise, was Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week. Yeah. When I first read that book, that's what prompted me to drop out of school, and that's what really made me realize, "What am I doing? Why am I in school learning stuff that I don't really care about?" That book really had a big impact on me.
Eric Z: That's cool. We have a commonality there, because Tim Ferriss, through his blog and book, I found about Noah Kagan, and Noah Kagan's business course is the one that finally made me profitable. Okay, I'm not a millionaire yet, or whatever, but I'm on the path, and it feels good.
Tyler Wagner: For sure.
Eric Z: I really like this question. What is the future of e-books?
Tyler Wagner: I'd say the future of e-books, anybody in the self-publishing space, I think, is in a very good place right now. Why I say that is because I think the future is that it's going to become almost a requirement in the next maybe ten years. It could take a little bit longer, but I think it'll become almost a requirement to actually publish a book ... Just as it is, you need a diploma to get a corporate job, so I think the next thing is going to be, because publishing a book is actually so ... It's not easy to write the book, but it's easy to publish a book now, so there's nothing stopping anybody from writing a book besides themselves, or publishing a book. I think that basically in business, if your competitor is an author and you aren't, chances are, your competitor is probably doing a little bit better than you.
Eric Z: The question's going to be, "What? You don't have a book?"
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, I think it'll be like that soon, whereas right now, it's still like, "Oh, my gosh. You're an author. That's amazing. That's crazy." Soon, five to ten years from now, it'll be like, "Dude. You've never written a book? Everybody has it." You know what I mean? I think it's still good, but then after that happens, then after that, I'm not sure what's going to happen. Once it becomes that everybody writes a book, then it will take away from how special it is, in a sense. Yeah. I don't know. After about ten years, I'm not quite sure of the future of self-publishing [crosstalk 01:02:22].
Eric Z: I'd say five.
Tyler Wagner: You think five?
Eric Z: Yeah, but I just started in 2014, seriously in 2015, but I would say five.
Tyler Wagner: Okay.
Eric Z: We could write that down, then see if we're right.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, no, the way things progress, I think you're right. It could be five, but what I'd say is, I think that there's only over a billion people on the internet, right? There's like eight billion in the world, so I think that within five years, maybe half of the world will be on the internet. Maybe it'll be all the people; I'm not sure. I think that needs to happen before, and then self ... You know what I mean? Maybe it'll be, in five years, I think you could be correct, that maybe it will be that way in the United States, Australia, and parts of Europe, maybe. Africa, and other countries that-
Eric Z: That's what I was just going to say. Africa, and India's already, they already opened. Africa is the next one. That's the hottest tip of all. M-Pesa and their payment systems, with handies. Cell phones. We call them handies in Germany. That's the hot stock tip, actually, is the handies, cell phones, are exploding. The market is exploding in Africa, and those guys are all going online now.
Tyler Wagner: Wow. Yeah.
Eric Z: You said it. Africa, man. That's the next market, I think, so that's why I said five years, because I've been reading about that. I'm getting more Indians, or people from India, on my list, and more questions, and really active community. It's really great, and yeah. Those are, what do you call it? Burgeoning markets.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, for sure.
Eric Z: I'm thinking about astrology books now, because India, astrology's still really big.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, no. I think it's really limitless. Ultimately, as long as the book is written well, and marketed well, if it's both of those. Sure, there's profitable niches, but there's somebody out there for everybody, and if you can craft a book that is well written, and then put a message around that book that's going to impact people, and get their emotions going, then it's going to become very spreadable, like Seth Godin, like Purple Cow. Is it remarkable? If you write a book that's remarkable, then you're going to be in a good place.
Eric Z: You said marketing again, and that was going to be my next question. Tell us some of your best-kept marketing secrets. That was it, right?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, no. It really depends on your goals. There's a lot, but I'd say Facebook ads, if you can learn those, you're going to be in a good place. Right now, I'm getting twenty cents a click on those, and really, I think the next one would be is thinking about the long term. There's so many platforms right now online that you can build and grow your audience on, and you need to be consistent. Consistency is key. Another one would be a book series. On Amazon, you know how they can do like, "Customers who bought this also bought that?" If you have a book series, then you can actually have it so basically every time somebody hits your book page, it'll auto-populate with all of your other books, and then you can get a lot more. It's like a chain reaction. If you have a book series, they'll buy your first book, and then they'll continue to buy all your books that are in the series.
Using it to grow your business, so you can actually have an opt-in within the first couple pages of your book. Use it as lead generation tool. Yeah. I'd say those are the top ones, but it's really about how to create a system is the biggest thing. How do you create a traffic system that is converting to not only book sales, but also to business growth? If you can master that, then you just basically press "go," and it's automated for you.
Eric Z: I can tell everybody who is listening, too, go to YouTube. I've seen a lot of your videos, and you talk about some of that. What was the last one? Was it on your Facebook page, where you did seven minutes to better-
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, I did. It's How to Sell More Books in Less Than Seven Minutes.
Eric Z: Excellent video. You went through everything in seven minutes.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. It was six minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Yeah, I did it and it was basically thirty-seven ways, or ways that you can sell more books, things that you can do. I just went through all thirty-seven in under seven minutes, yeah. It was a pretty fun video to make.
Eric Z: Everybody out there, go to YouTube and it's a great video. It's worth every seven minutes. What do they have to type in YouTube to find it?
Tyler Wagner: I think it's actually just called, yeah, "How to Sell More Books in Less Than Seven Minutes," and then it should come up.
Eric Z: Yeah. You brought up something else that I forgot to ask. Do you do KDP Select, or do you go Smashwords, and all the other platforms?
Tyler Wagner: As of right now, I only use Amazon, so I use only KDP Select. I've actually never personally even tried Smashwords, but from other people, I've just heard results outside of Amazon have never ... They're just not as good. I think the stats, eighty percent of books bought are on Amazon. It could be even higher than that. Yeah. Especially for people that are first-time authors, I just try to keep it really simple for them, and I know that most of their results are going to come from Amazon [crosstalk 01:08:21].
Eric Z: Oh, yeah. For sure.
Tyler Wagner: I don't even waste my time with the other ones, but who knows? I could be missing out.
Eric Z: Because you mentioned previously, Amazon changed their algorithms, so a lot of authors are pissed off, and going wide. There was a recent article by Dave Chesson in Kindlepreneur, but he is established. He's got a really good flow going there, and so he put some of his books on the platforms, and it's a big chunk of change, and made eight hundred bucks. He said, "Man, you're leaving your money on the table if you don't go wide." Different systems, of course.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, definitely.
Eric Z: You can always switch back. You can go KDP Select for three months, or try another platform, or if you don't like it, go back.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, definitely. I think everything is definitely worth trying. I just know for how many different moving parts there are with somebody who is a first-time author, I just want to get them successful on one platform. I just want to get their success to happen on Amazon, and then afterward, if they want to continue down the process, and they enjoy self-publishing, then expand from there. To start out, I just know, I feel like that would complicate the process for a lot of people, so I like to keep it simple, and I just want people to see the results. From there, they can choose to grow it or not.
Eric Z: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Tyler. We've been talking for over an hour now, and what about Authors Unite?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, so basically, Authors Unite, I created it, and it's a community of ... It's a really amazing community. We have over five hundred people in the Facebook group now, and there's got to be over a hundred business owners. There's public speakers, coaches, and marketers. It's really an awesome community to be in, and the reason that I created it is because I noticed one thing that I feel like was missing from my previous business, and from a lot of other ones that I noticed, is that there was no accountability. There wasn't as much support as a lot of people need when they're writing their first book and marketing their first book. The overall goal of Author Unite, our tagline is actually, "Authors supporting authors." It's really just a community for people to learn from each other, and help each other through the process, and then obviously, it is also a business, where if people want some extra help or one-on-one time, that I offer products and coaching as well.
Eric Z: That's awesome. Can we just go to the group, or we sign up at your site, and then you send us a link, or how does that work?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah, basically to check everything out that we offer at the moment, you can go to authorsunite.com. If you are interested in a one-on-one thing, and you want to apply to the program, you can go to authorsunite.com\coaching, and that's where you'll see basically the coaching things that we offer at Authors Unite.
Eric Z: Yeah, that and I think your poster child is Lisa Cartwright there?
Tyler Wagner: Yeah. Within a year after she came through our program, she wrote like fifteen books.
Eric Z: Yeah, she's burning up the blogosphere. Nick Loper, and then Sean Ogil, and yeah. Awesome.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: It's much more than a Side Hustle.
Tyler Wagner: Yeah.
Eric Z: Yeah.
Tyler Wagner: For sure.
Eric Z: Cool. Tyler, thanks so much for talking to us.
Tyler Wagner: Of course.
Eric Z: I've been to Authors Unite. I've been to your Facebook page. I've seen all this stuff, and you can launch anybody to the top of any category. That's fricken magic. Everybody out there, go to authorsunite.com, and get on his list, and check out his Facebook page, and give Tyler your likes and love. Tyler, what else do you want to say?
Tyler Wagner: No, that's really it. I've really enjoyed the conversation, and for anybody out there who is thinking about writing a book, or has any motivation to do it, I highly recommend doing it, and now is definitely the time to take action on it. Just like me and Eric were saying, in five to ten years, it's going to become something that a lot more people are doing, so if you can get ahead of the game now and do it, you'll be very ahead of the game. I highly recommend taking action on it.
Eric Z: Thanks, Tyler, so much. I look forward to talking to you again, working with you, and this is just great stuff. Thanks again.
Tyler Wagner: Sounds great. Thanks for having me on.
Eric Z: Okay.
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