In this episode of Don’t Write That Book, Mike and AJ continue to discuss the book launch process, with a focus on the week leading up to, the week of, and the week just after a book is released to the public, and everything an author should know.
In this episode of Don’t Write That Book, Mike and AJ continue to discuss the book launch process, with a focus on the week leading up to, the week of, and the week just after a book is released to the public, and everything an author should know.
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Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://a.co/d/ivufoOl
The Long Game by Dorie Clark: https://a.co/d/h4dcevB
Tough, by Laura Belgray: https://a.co/d/gu6CF26
TCK Publishing Calculator: https://www.tckpublishing.com/amazon-book-sales-calculator/
AJ Harper: https://ajharper.com
Write A Must-Read: https://a.co/d/4H0xQ7G
Free resources: https://writeamustread.com
Socials:
FB: https://www.facebook.com/AJHarperAuthors
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjanetteharper/
Mike Michalowicz: https://mikemichalowicz.com
All books: https://mikemichalowicz.com/books/
Socials:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/mikemichalowicz/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/MikeMichalowiczFanPage/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemichalowicz/
DWTB Ep 14 _“Marketing Launch”_TRANSCRIPT
Mike Michalowicz (00:00:01):
Welcome back to the Don't Write That book podcast where you can learn how to write your bestseller and own your authorship. Follow along with us as we give you an insider's view of the book industry. Now, here are your hosts, myself, Mike Michalowicz and AJ Harper. So I'm looking, we're recording, and I'm gonna use this as an introduction. I'm looking at the picture you sent me, so, uh, I didn't cry. Yeah, I'm a crier.
AJ Harper (00:00:26):
I mean, it's pretty basic looking.
Mike Michalowicz (00:00:27):
I don't, is it, are you kidding me? This is not basic, AJ. So, what I'm looking at, so our listener knows, is a picture of your garage.
AJ Harper (00:00:35):
A garage.
Mike Michalowicz (00:00:37):
Yeah. With a, uh, uh, what was that called? The, the, the lifted windows. There's a turn.
AJ Harper (00:00:42):
Well, there's an apartment up there. That's why.
Mike Michalowicz (00:00:44):
So you have a separate door and an apartment above it. It's a beautiful gray, and the doors are a perfect offset to it. Almost like a mud gray, or even a little bit hint of brown. It's beautifully shingled. But what's beautiful behind it, and you can't see it completely, is the sky and these magnificent evergreens. And why I am so proud of this picture and why it gets me emotional is this is your dream. Yeah. And I, I know about this dream for the longest time, and what this proves is being an author, being a writer makes massive dreams come true.
AJ Harper (00:01:18):
Yeah. I paid for that with that writer. Money.
Mike Michalowicz (00:01:22):
And it, it, that, maybe this in part AJ, is the inception of why we're doing this show. There are so many naysayers. There's so many naysayers saying you're, you're an author. Like, you'll never make a penny. Like that's the worst thing you could do. I've heard them, I've met them.
AJ Harper (00:01:36):
Well, it's really hard. Fair. But everything's really hard. Life. It's full of life and gatekeepers. Sure. And disappointments. But actually it's also full of wonderful, awesome, amazing rewards. Including, including financial rewards. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:01:55):
You're, you're building your dream vacation home, which will become your permanent home.
AJ Harper (00:01:59):
Yeah. It's, uh, that's building number one that you just, you just were looking at the garage on the Great lake on a, on Lake Superior. The greatest lake of all time. The
Mike Michalowicz (00:02:07):
Great, the greatest lake of all time. The goat.
AJ Harper (00:02:08):
The GOAT.
Mike Michalowicz (00:02:08):
Goat. Yeah. I just drove by, uh, lake Erie. I was, when I go up to Toronto, I told you that story in, in a different episode. It's like, it's an ocean. It is an ocean lake.
AJ Harper (00:02:18):
And you were talking about Lake Erie. Yeah. It's Lake er, it's an city. So Lake Superior can hold all the great lakes within it. And I think a couple times over.
Mike Michalowicz (00:02:27):
It's, it's baffling how big.
AJ Harper (00:02:29):
And the, and our place is just right there, 270 feet of lake shore,
Mike Michalowicz (00:02:35):
And then an eternity of water view.
AJ Harper (00:02:37):
And, and endless, endless sky.
Mike Michalowicz (00:02:40):
And so big. I didn't really have, this is the first time I remember seeing a great lake was when I drove by Erie recently. I didn't realize you can start seeing the curvature of the earth. Like you can't see the other side. There's a horizon. When I was driving, oh yeah. At least the angle I had, I was driving from Buffalo into Toronto. So I'm looking maybe Eastwardly into Lake area. I hope I'm not missing this up. I couldn't see the other side.
AJ Harper (00:03:02):
Yes, that's right. And I do want to point out, I come from humble beginnings when my wife and I got that dream when we first had hatched that dream, which was about 26 years ago, broker than broke. Yeah. Cheeseburger Tuesdays is what I always tell people because on Tuesdays at McDonald's, you can get cheese. Well, you used to be able to get cheeseburgers for 29 cents.
Mike Michalowicz (00:03:23):
Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:03:24):
And then you can put them in the freezer.
Mike Michalowicz (00:03:26):
Oh, smart.
AJ Harper (00:03:29):
Yep. Super healthy.
Mike Michalowicz (00:03:30):
I never thought about that.
AJ Harper (00:03:31):
Yeah. Just load up on the 29 cents. I mean, that was me. Yeah. And it's through authorship and the work that I do, supporting authors, but also writing royalties from our work together. Yep. Royalties from my own book that I now have. Um, we have building number one. Yeah. My wife and I building number one.
Mike Michalowicz (00:03:50):
And we are two months and two weeks away from the next royalties.
AJ Harper (00:04:14):
Did you see the, uh, recently on the news, the gentleman who wrote a middle grade? Um, or maybe it was young adult, I think middle grade or young adult mystery novel. No. Okay. I'm gonna send you a link to this. The gentleman in, uh, down in Texas, he wrote, he's in his I don't sixties, late sixties, uh, retired. I think he was laid off and he was always wanting to be a writer. And he wrote this book, traditionally published by a very small publisher, I think it's called Black Rose Publishing. And he was sitting in a Kroger grocery store with a little fold up table and his books, and he was sitting by himself and a tic-tac influencer happened to be in Kroger and felt really genuinely bad for this guy. because he looked so defeated. Nobody was coming up to the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he went up to the table and they were, he and his friend just started asking questions. Oh, what's the book about? Oh, that's really cool. Just wanted to give him some attention. Yeah. And then they said, do you mind if I put this on TikTok? Can I get a picture of your book? No joke.
Mike Michalowicz (00:05:38):
My God, are you kidding me?
AJ Harper (00:05:39):
Like four or five days.
Mike Michalowicz (00:05:41):
Unbelievable.
AJ Harper (00:05:42):
Yeah. I haven't checked it today. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Yeah. He had no idea. But if he was just sitting in a Kroger.
Mike Michalowicz (00:05:50):
So it's funny, I would say like, how do you not launch a book? Don't go to a Kroger's.
AJ Harper (00:05:55):
Don't expect to be, you know, discovered by a TikTok influencer. Yeah, yeah. Who's buying, who's buying toilet paper that day?
Mike Michalowicz (00:06:00):
No. No. But um, but I will tell you from that story, that guy got out there and did something. He at least did something.
AJ Harper (00:06:06):
He was at the, did you know that Kroger has an authors in Kroger program? That's how he was in it. Oh. So Kroger has authors come into their grocery store
Mike Michalowicz (00:06:19):
And you know what? I don't know.
AJ Harper (00:06:20):
So he went and did it. That takes guts to sit in a grocery store.
Mike Michalowicz (00:06:23):
It takes guts. It takes guts. I once, uh, just a quick side story. Saw Pete Rose, famous baseball player, and it said, uh, as in Las Vegas for a speaking engagement, walking by and said, meet Pete Rose. And I looked into, he was like a sports store. And there Pete Rose was sitting there with no one, with no one. I'm like, oh, it's so humbling that, you know, he's a famous name. Um, but kind of an expired or retired name. And there was no one there.
AJ Harper (00:06:49):
I've seen authors give readings where there's one person in the audience.
Mike Michalowicz (00:06:54):
Ohhhh.
AJ Harper (00:06:54):
I think, I mean, and, and it was me.
Mike Michalowicz (00:06:57):
That's why you saw that one person. Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:06:59):
Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:07:00):
It, so, yeah. Okay. So listen, it, it's a tough job, but, but everything's that way. Anything that's easy will be saturated and it'll become tough. Anyway, there's a point where you could run Facebook ads and you, you could run the dumbest ad 10, 10 years ago or whatever, and you'd start getting business. That doesn't work that way anymore. Everything that's easy gets hard pretty quick. So yeah, authorship is hard. But if it's your calling and you stick with it, and you do it right, and you listen to this podcast, you can get, you can get your dream vacation home.
AJ Harper (00:07:31):
26 years old. Yeah. Well, look at what you're, look at your life.
Mike Michalowicz (00:07:33):
Oh, it's transformed my life. I was in my orchard. I have an orchard, AJ. It's a small one.
AJ Harper (00:07:38):
I was gonna say, we're gonna do, we haven't done the intros yet, but I like to think about what I'm gonna say. Okay. Okay. This is Mike Michalowicz. Yeah. Author of beloved business books, ten business books and a children's book. My Money Bunnies. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, incredible gardener. This is this thing you've been doing that I've noticed. Yeah. You're obsessed. I'm obsessed. You are obsessed. Obsessed. If you didn't write what you think, you would just garden.
Mike Michalowicz (00:08:09):
If, if I had No, no, I wouldn't. No. I, I, I mean,
AJ Harper (00:08:13):
You seem very knowledgeable now. I remember when you were first starting and you're like, what's this? What's this, what's this insect? What do we do with this?
Mike Michalowicz (00:08:20):
Yeah. I know Japanese beetles. How to maintain them. I, I know. Um, yeah. How to cultivate the ground. I, I'm learning.
AJ Harper (00:08:27):
I also don't think when I first met you, you would ever take the time to do that. No. You were too on the grind.
Mike Michalowicz (00:08:33):
No. So, uh, you know, I don't work Fridays pretty much at all, unless there's a speaking engagement. Um, I'll, I'll write in the morning, but that's it. And then I'm in the orchard.
AJ Harper (00:08:44):
What’s In the orchard?
Mike Michalowicz (00:08:45):
Uh, the best plums I've ever had in my life. Oh. So I just had a plum this morning. There's nothing more, I don't know, cathartic. I don't know. Then walking into the, for me, the orchard, just walking out to my own property, grabbing a thing off a tree and just eating it because there's no pesticides, no nothing. It's just natural. And it's, it's delicious. It's delicious. It's like when I, I remember cracking an egg once and the yolk came out orange. I was like, oh, there's something wrong with this. They said, no, no. There's something wrong with everything else you've been eating.
AJ Harper (00:09:37):
I know. I cannot wait. You move the retreats there. But I think we have this in common that we will stick it out for the long game. Yeah. We will stick it out. Yeah. You also didn't sell any copies of your first book on the first day. This is a much, much storied tale. Yeah. But you also hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Yeah. And the, the fruits of these labors, we are, what, 15 years into our… I'm about 18 years into publishing. So it's not overnight, but it does, when it does hit, it hits, it hits.
Mike Michalowicz (00:10:11):
And it's kind of like a flywheel too, I suspect. But I would never do this if we just went cold Turkey and said, ah, we're done. Let's just ride this out. Now. I don't think that tomorrow everything dries up. I think there's years of residual momentum with the existing books. But I'm not gonna, I'm never gonna test that one out. I'm gonna hustle and hustle and hustle. because I get joy out of that. because it's the greatest way to serve people.
AJ Harper (00:10:37):
I think it's good that you started this way, because I don't think you should compromise on a book launch
Mike Michalowicz (00:11:21):
So yeah, let's dig into the topic of today. Today's is, so it, we'll see how we sequence this, but the prior episode, uh, was likely the pre-launch that you listened to. There's three phases of launches. There's pre-launch, that's the preamble or the preparation for the launch period. The launch period. I consider a two week period. And then there's the post-launch after the book is out there. This two week period, we want massive momentum. And the reason we want massive momentum is it triggers the most important part of book marketing, which is word of mouth marketing. People fall in love with a book and they start sharing with others.
AJ Harper (00:11:53):
So when you say two weeks, you mean the week before the, the release date and the week after?
Mike Michalowicz (00:11:58):
Oh, actually then I'll say three weeks. I meant the, the day of for two consecutive weeks. I consider pre-launch up until the day it launches.
AJ Harper (00:12:06):
Oh. Okay. Yeah. No, that's, I wanted you to clarify that.
Mike Michalowicz (00:12:11):
Yeah. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So that's just how I see it. Um, so obviously these are not industry defined.
AJ Harper (00:12:17):
No.
Mike Michalowicz (00:12:18):
I mean, they're, they're, they're industry common terms, but they're not defined. There's not a law around it. Book launches for most published books through traditional publishers launch on a Tuesday. And I think you, you even were sharing once why that's the case.
AJ Harper (00:12:35):
Well, my understanding is, and feel free to send us the correction.
Mike Michalowicz (00:12:40):
Yeah. If you're listening, which our readers do, we get, A launch is actually for one week,
AJ Harper (00:12:46):
Mike. I, we get those emails to see, you know, that's not true.
Mike Michalowicz (00:13:01):
That's, and that's cool. We want That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, absolutely. We have no problem with that. Yeah. Uh, that is because of the way that the lists calculate sales. So when they start actually calculating sales for, say, the New York Times. Okay. So that's the official trigger. And, um, of all the launches we've had of books, the most successful two week period was get different. Most books sold, individual copies was get different. Uh, that is, of all the books we've written, not the least successful, but one of the lower in demand, uh, evergreen books or, or, or backlist books. It sells right now about a hundred copies a week. And, uh, comparatively, uh, I'm just, I can't, I can't think of the other books, but, uh, clockwork, for example, sells about 300 books a week. Uh, Profit First right now is moving well with, with the TikTok about 1400 a week. So just because it was the most successful book launch get different doesn't mean that it built into a good back list. And, and when we talk about backless sales and, and post-launch, um, I want to talk about get different and, and why I think it's struggling.
Mike Michalowicz (00:14:09):
Because I think it's a great book. I think there's been some strategic mistakes made, but why to get different launch. Well, and, and, and comparatively, I just want to give some numbers, Get Different. Moved in the first two weeks, uh, 10,000 units, uh, Fix This Next, which was prior to that, moved about 7,000. Clockwork: Revised, Expanded, moved, uh, or Clockwork. And then the revising expanded addition two moved maybe same thing, about 7,000, 8,000 Profit First. Interesting. When we, we launched that revised, expanded during the launch, moved about 2,500 bucks. And that's the bestseller. But, you know, just to give some context, what happens during the launch is all that pre-launch work. And if, if you haven't listened to that episode, please maybe put this one on pause. because you, you got to get all that material in place. But it's the culmination of all this preparation triggered in this wave. Sno tsunami. Tsunami. Tsunami. Like it is a tsunami wave. It's the big push. There was a, an app, I don't even know it still exists, called Thunder Clap. Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:15:15):
Mike Michalowicz (00:15:18):
I love that name. But it was like the antithesis of it. It was like more of a deflating balloon.
AJ Harper (00:15:23):
I remember was so excited about Thunder Clap when it came.
Mike Michalowicz (00:15:26):
I'm gonna thunder clap the shit out of it.
Mike Michalowicz (00:15:28):
So Thunderclap was the idea of a, of a launch, if you will, around social media, but not for books, for anything, any messaging you wanted to get out. And the concept was, if you get out a singular, unified message on all the platforms in a short, abbreviated time, and have many people, not just your platform, but others on that platform speaking about it, that there's a sudden awareness and there's truth to that. Just the thunderclap wasn't of a size that was big enough because I would post, maybe I want to say, “Hey, it's my birthday is the thunderclap I want on in September.” And I get people in a community to sign up for this and say, I'm gonna thunder clap you as long as you thunder clap me back. So I'll set announce it's my birthday. And, and person I don't know has it scheduled to announce, “Hey, it's Mike's birthday” and I agree to do something in response.
Mike Michalowicz (00:16:20):
And that's how you build this kind of thunderclap. But the thing is, Thunderclap was spoken… speaking to a disparate community. See people I don't know are talking about someone that they don't know to people that don't know me. And so it was just this very convoluted sudden message. And so it was ignorable, A proper launch is where a concentrated community, your ideal reader is hearing about your book, uh, at a, a elevated frequency. So it's noticeable in multiple ways from multiple sources where there's enough awareness that they make a decision. Do I want to inspect this book and maybe make a purchase? But it's the same community, it's concentrated. So if, if my circle of friends all shared with my circle of friends, Hey, Mike has a, a birthday today, then there's an awareness. because it's, it's hitting the same small, concentrated group multiple times. That is the objective of a launch. You want the world to discover your book. You want your consumer to hear about the book a lot of times, and they'll think the whole world's hearing about it. So that's what a good launch is. Um, why don't we talk about some strategies? Is that…?
AJ Harper (00:17:36):
Yeah. I mean, I, I want to just before you get into this, say, I think you need to decide what is going to be a value. Like, first of all, you say, where is your person? Where's your reader? Yeah. Are they actually gonna see the marketing efforts or hear is it something that will provide value to them? And then
Mike Michalowicz (00:18:43):
Yeah. I know. You've, you've invited me to speak to some of your students. Yeah. And I just give them ideas and ideas, and I see these smiles in the beginning like, oh, that's so novel. Oh, that's so interesting. And then by the end, it's like, terror.
AJ Harper (00:18:55):
Terror.
Mike Michalowicz (00:18:56):
Like, I can't do all this. And that's never my intent. I, I have to put that disclaimer in more often. I'm just sharing all these things that I have done, but it doesn’t mean you have to.
AJ Harper (00:19:04):
Yeah. That's gonna work for you, but you don't have to do all the things. And just because every author's doing it doesn't mean you should. In fact, it means you probably shouldn't.
Mike Michalowicz (00:19:15):
Step one I think of a good launch is you need to list out all the assets that you have. You’ve got to know what you can market. One asset every author likely has when you have your book coming out is you have, uh, your listings on the selling platforms, the retailers, so Barnes & Noble or, uh, Books-a-Million or Amazon. You got to know what these sites are and you better have their links recorded because that's ultimately where you want to send people to buy your book through retailers or, or maybe you're selling it directly. Um, so know those assets. The, the other thing is your own, uh, website where your book is listed. Um, your book site, if you have a decade website, all those things, um, list them out. One of the components that I think you should have ready that moves a large quantity of books, and I shared in the pre-launch episode, why you want to move large quantity books.
Mike Michalowicz (00:20:09):
So make sure you listen to that. I have this 1%, 1% theory or 1%. Yeah, 1%. 1% theory, um, is a multi-book purchase package, uh, which is something I didn't share in the pre-launch, but during the launch period, you want to have this. And what it is, is a listing of, um, ways people can buy your book and the benefits they'll get if they buy in quantity. And we've tested the shiitake out of this, uh, from like offers, you know, someone to buy one book and get these bonuses, get three, you get these additional bonuses. Buy 17, get this. We went all the way up to a thousand bucks or 2,000 books. Buy this. And, and, and Mike will, you know, go traveling around the world with you for 10 days or something. Um, I think the best example, the most successful we have out there is still with get different.
Mike Michalowicz (00:21:06):
So if you go to get different, I think it was get different book.com, just Google get different and look for the book page and then put, go to that page and put slash-multi, you'll see the listing there. That is my most tested webpage on a multi-book offer. And, uh, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but if you go there, you'll see it. What I found was, interestingly, most authors were launching with a singular book option. If you buy one book, here's a bonus. If you buy, uh, three books and so forth. We found the best starting point is actually three books in all our testing. And what I think the magic was, at least for my books that were listed under $30 MSRP, three times that MSRP was $90, it was less than a hundred. And it's very consumable, you know, making a decision for many people, not all people, but many people is if it's a hundred dollars, they can decide in the moment if that's something they can spend or not. Then we went up in increments, and I think we have four, maybe five levels. And the highest, I think was about 75 books. That was really impactful in the number of books sold just through the multi-book page for Get Different. We moved in the lower mid-thousands, maybe 3,000 books or purchased that way.
AJ Harper (00:22:20):
And then did you just have a proof of purchase?
Mike Michalowicz (00:22:23):
Yeah. Then, then once you buy the book, if you scroll down the page at the bottom it says, email us the receipt. So you prove that you bought the books by emailing us. And that is a manual process. But what's interesting is to move that number of books, it only was like 150 , 200 people that did it. 200 people buying three books or 600 books. And, and a lot of people bought the 75 books. It was very compelling. Oh dude, this is one of the stories. I was in
Mike Michalowicz (00:23:12):
That's the bonus. And one way to structure your bonuses is what do you already do that you can include your audience in that won't cost you money? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, oh, this is a no brainer. And it's kind of fun. Like, how many times have you been backstage before an event and stuff like that? And you see the curtain go up. It's kind of cool. This guy Trevor, uh, saw, bought 75 bucks, did it? He came to St. Louis and he couldn't make it to the event he was traveling with his family. So he goes, um, how about this? When you're done at the event, how the timing works, I can pick you up in my car and I'll drive you to your hotel. And we, which was about a half hour away, like we'd just chitchat in the car and we did.
Mike Michalowicz (00:23:51):
And then afterwards, we'll chitchat afterwards and hang out. And he was just telling me about his business. He, uh, he's a physical therapist for children, zero to five years old. Interesting story. Just why he got into this industry. And then I asked him, I said, “Hey, I'm so honored you bought these 75 books and, and you bought this. I hope that it was worth it. I know we didn't do the backstage.” We hung out. He's like, oh, I didn't buy it for that. I'm like, oh, you just bought. So we hung out. I said, no, no, no. He goes, I owed you. I'm like, you owed me. He goes, uh, Profit First transformed my life. He's like, you saved my business. Aw. He's like, I I bought these 75 books. Not knowing what Get Different was just because I owed you. I was like, oh my gosh.
Mike Michalowicz (00:24:30):
If you serve your community, there is a sense of reciprocity that kicks in. Yes. I, I had, yeah. It was so cool to experience that. So do the multi-book offer and offer bonuses, um, other ways to get bonuses. As we talked about in pre-launch, you're building a network of other influencers, other authors, maybe they can include their materials so they get some exposure. It's a benefit to your audience if their, their content compliments what you're doing. It's a great way for them to get exposure. And they may be able to include that for free. I was speaking with James Clear, he's the author of Atomic Habits, and we employ this, uh, I think with Fix This Next, or even the book prior, he said in his research, the the most compelling bonus was anything that gave the reader this kind of voyeuristic standpoint.
Mike Michalowicz (00:25:22):
So he said, deleted content from a book is super compelling for an audience because they see something behind the scenes that no one else gets to see. And he says, the irony is, this is stuff that was deleted because it didn't make the final cut. But if you ever watch like a movie and you see the deleted scenes, like I was watching, uh, “Young Frankenstein,” and I love that movie. My wife and I are crazy about it. And so we saw all these deleted scenes and it's just awesome. You feel more part of the movie in some capacity, your readers will go crazy over this lost, we call it the lost content, like The Lost Continent. And we do it for every single book. Uh, we actually need to get this stuff for all
AJ Harper (00:26:03):
Not only that, you just dump it in there. It, this is the part that makes me nuts. I want to edit it.
Mike Michalowicz (00:26:11):
Oh no, no.
AJ Harper (00:26:12):
Just pulling it from the cut file with without any edits. And people love that? I'm, I'm nervous about it. I I'm over it now, but the first time you did it, I said, “Wait a minute.”
Mike Michalowicz (00:26:24):
They love it. Yeah. They love it. And so we put it into a nice PDF and they get it. So that multi-book page offer. The other thing is, you can, during the launch period, generate income selling things that aren't the book, but move books. It's a little convoluted, but let me explain. When I asked people to buy like 400 books or 500 books, or even 75 books, the most common resistance wasn't the co resistance wasn't the cost of the book. the most common resistance was what do I, what the hell do I do with all these books? Like now that they felt like they were stocking inventory, and I'm like, give them to your friends. Just give them out his gifts. And, and even that was too confounding for people. Like, I don't know what to do with this many books. So instead of saying, buy 75 books for what's, what's 72,000, 25, $500?
Mike Michalowicz (00:27:17):
We'll say, instead of saying Buy $2,500 a books, I simply said, are you willing to pay 2,500 books, $2,500 for something else, and I'll take care of the book distribution? And people are like, hell yeah. It's fun. It's the exact same dollar amount. But I took the responsibility of managing the book distribution. So what we did is we said, uh, in one event is that you could, uh, we did a donation campaign. We identified all these outlets that needed books, uh, different entrepreneurial, like there's these urban entrepreneurial groups that were helping the community and stuff. And they said, we would love to have Profit First, and we have 500 participants in our Urban… Urban Development program. Urban Entrepreneurial Development program. And we said, well, if we supply the books, would you want that? And they're like, absolutely. So we told people, here's programs we've identified. Do you want to donate money? So, and we explained selfishly that helps us move books and circulate it to a community that would never get it. But it helps me circulate books and people contributed. And that was,
AJ Harper (00:28:13):
We did the same thing for my book launch for Write a Must-Read. We donate. What I did was I made sure that every multiple was a case. So you can find out how many books come in your case.
Mike Michalowicz (00:28:25):
That's smart.
AJ Harper (00:28:26):
Uh, because, so 24 hardcovers come in a case. Okay. So then I would do,
Mike Michalowicz (00:28:32):
And that's, that's just in your case?
AJ Harper (00:28:34):
Every book is different. You have to find out from the printer what's going to be in there, and it changes anyway. But it's helpful because then if you're self-publishing, now, I didn't self-publish, but if you're self-publishing and you've got a bunch, you're managing some of this, yeah. It's so much easier if it's just in the case. Or of course, if you have a publisher and they, and you have access to say what's in the warehouse, it's so much easier if they can just send one case. Then you just, just do the multiples of whatever is in the case. And what we did was we donate those who didn't want the case we donated to rural or underserved libraries.
Mike Michalowicz (00:29:10):
Oh, I love that. Yeah. I love that. Um, so I put on workshops, I would say, Hey, I have a workshop that's $500 or something. Do you want attend this, uh, workshop? So, and there's certain instances where we didn't even talk about the book, but then when we said in the workshop is if you, like, we are gonna dis distribute books. You can give us a list of people you want us to mail books to. And we used a company called Book Pal, it's book pal.com, who then did the distribution of the book. So setting up for multiple books during the launch, multiple book purchases is important. The other don't just try to sell one book.
AJ Harper (00:29:49):
The other reason to do, uh, book Pal, or also Porchlight is another company that does it, uh, is they report their sales to book scan.
Mike Michalowicz (00:29:59):
Oh, right, right. Which then helps you with lists. It helps your publisher recognize the momentum of the book. Uh, they can sometimes do it as individual sales as opposed to bulk orders. If it's registered properly, a bulk order is, uh, lots of books going to one destination. But if you have lots of books that were distributed legitimately to individuals, that would be, could be registered as individual sales. So I didn't know Porch does that book. Book Pal does. Uh, so multi-book order is a big thing. The next thing is the street team needs to be activated during the launch. And we actually do that about 24 hours in advance. So the book's launching on a Tuesday with your publisher. By the way, if you're self-publishing, don't launch on a Tuesday. Why, why don't you do it on a Monday? Because everyone that's with a mainstream publisher is launching on a Tuesday. That's when all these crazy email campaigns are going out.
AJ Harper (00:30:57):
I still can't believe it.
Mike Michalowicz (00:30:59):
Are you kidding me? It's the best day ever because no one is doing it.
AJ Harper (00:31:02):
That's why I can't believe it. It's a dead zone. It’s a dead zone.
Mike Michalowicz (00:31:05):
And that's why it's the most lively zone. It's blue ocean. It's a blue ocean.
AJ Harper (00:31:10):
Of course you're doing it. That's a, that's a Michalowicz move.
Mike Michalowicz (00:31:11):
But listen, say it flops and say like, no one checks email on January 2nd. I know you will. I know you will.
AJ Harper (00:31:18):
Of course.
Mike Michalowicz (00:31:18):
I know I will. People just do. But people say, I'm not on email. You're on email more than ever because you're at home probably with family.
AJ Harper (00:31:25):
Well, social for sure. You're on social like crazy.
Mike Michalowicz (00:31:27):
Yeah. You're scrolling through what's going on. So there's actually more eyeballs
AJ Harper (00:31:30):
Posting, posting your posting your holiday, Christmas, New Year's Eve pics. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:31:34):
Yeah. And your resolutions. Here's what I commit to. I'm gonna be a better leader, you know,
AJ Harper (00:32:02):
You could just lean into that. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:32:04):
You, yeah, exactly. I'm hung over.
AJ Harper (00:32:06):
Hangover cure.
Mike Michalowicz (00:32:06):
What's, yeah. What's the, the drink with the vodka? The, uh, and the celery stick.
AJ Harper (00:32:11):
Bloody Mary
Mike Michalowicz (00:32:11):
Bloody Mary's. Yeah. I'll send Bloody Mary's to everybody. Just do it. Wake up and go,
AJ Harper (00:32:15):
Let's go, let's go. People go hair, hair, hair. The dog, hair of the dog.
Mike Michalowicz (00:32:18):
Uh, so activate your street team, and this is where you, you give them explicit direction and make it simple, but I need you to do this, or I expect you to do this, this, and that. There needs to be a currency exchange. And what we do when we activate street teams is we give people a pre-release copy of the book. So four or six weeks prior, we say, join the street team. Um, we want you to make a purchase of the book just because we can get those pre-orders. And we're gonna send you a PDF version of it immediately. So you can see this before anyone else does. Also by join the street team, we have expectations that you'll promote it on social media, but we tell detailed, we need you to go on Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok and Instagram and do these, these two things. Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:33:03):
And you give them swipe copy, swipe imagery, give them everything. All that stuff is done in the pre-launch period. Everybody, you're not creating that the day before.
Mike Michalowicz (00:33:10):
Yeah, yeah. But, but it activates the day before. Yeah. The best tip I got, it was from Dory Clark. I, she wrote, uh,
AJ Harper (00:33:18):
Her most recent book is The Long Game.
Mike Michalowicz (00:33:20):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The long Game on the title. It's a lot of o's It's, that is a, a great book. Uh, she wrote, uh, the Entrepreneur book, I want to say it's Reinventing, reinventing You, but also the Entrepreneurial You, ah, it skips my mind, the exact title. But Dory shared a great strategy when she activated her street team, and she sent them the PDF, the book. She said, I'd like you to post a review of the book, but here's how she did it. She didn't say Post it on Amazon. She said, put it in this Google form, because Amazon and Barnes know, but you can't review books until they're available. She collected all the reviews in her Google form. Then the day the book activated, she wrote back to each person individually with their review and said, would you now post this on Amazon? And because she already had the reviews, it was just a copy and paste. Everyone did it. I remember the long game came out as I was monitoring her book launch. She was going, well, I, I was buying, I bought multiple books that day. I staggered some. And then, um, I'm like, wow, she's getting a lot of reviews coming in. And then by the end of the day, it was hundreds, maybe three, 400 reviews. I'm like, how, how does she do it? And she shared that strategy. So use that.
AJ Harper (00:34:24):
It's reinventing you.
Mike Michalowicz (00:34:26):
Yeah. Reinventing you. But it, the entrepreneurial one, I think it's the entrepreneurial you. So it's reinventing you. There's a long game, but I think it was The Entrepreneurial You by Dory Clark.
AJ Harper (00:34:35):
Oh,
Mike Michalowicz (00:34:36):
Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:34:37):
Oh yeah. Entrepreneurial You.
Mike Michalowicz (00:34:38):
Entrepreneurial You. That's what I thought. Okay. So, um, activate your Street team. You do this multi-book order. How do you get people to have multi-book page? This is where your list comes into play. Announce to your list, the book's available, and have them go to that multi-book, purchase page. Also tell people, if you want to get, you know, one book, I encourage you to do it. Now, here's something I've learned over time. Some people have bought your book during the pre-order, and now you're doing the launch. And this is something I effed up. So don't, don't do what I did. And I've, I've now resolved this. I would say, you’ve got to buy three books today to get these bonuses. And people would say, well, I already bought a copy of your book, so I need to buy two more. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's, it's three today.
Mike Michalowicz (00:35:18):
I'm trying to invoke the launch. And people like, I already bought a copy. It didn't compute. So I've realized I'm the fool here. If you've bought any books, um, it's a cumulative effect. And so we just ask for the receipt, show us the, any of the orders you've made over time. And collectively they accumulate to getting to these different levels. You’ve got to make sure you do that. Otherwise, it really gets people disappointed and disgruntled. That is a good tip. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a big learning experience. So the new multi look book launch page for All In says that, that your collective orders get you to these different levels. The next thing is, this is when you activate the influencer announcements. I'm not saying this is when you ask your influencers to, to announce about your book, the, the, the community you've built. But these are the, this is the period you want to do it, because this is where you get the multi-touch.
Mike Michalowicz (00:36:11):
So we launch, when we launched Profit First, one of the people that we mutually know is Michael Port. He's a, a wonderful friend. And he, along with my email, along with about 15 other influencers, were all emailing out. Don Miller emailed out. Well, the chances are a reader has read Don Miller's work, and possibly My work and possibly Michael Port's work is, is high. There's a, there's a possibility they know of multiple authors or someone in that consortium of authors. So now they're getting touched by multiple people saying, new book coming out from Mike Michalowicz. And if you did your pre-orders, right, there's another perhaps best influencer who's always on your side. It's Amazon itself. Amazon sends out an email to its constituency of subscribers, which is probably a billion people. It doesn't mail it out to full billion. It, it, it modified, curated, curated, its curated list.
Mike Michalowicz (00:37:05):
This morning, I, I walked in, I'm like, Hey, Profit First. The new audiobook came out today, uh, because I rerecorded the audio because of licensing issues and stuff. I did a Taylor Swift, you know, I had Taylor Swift, like rerecorded her songs,
Mike Michalowicz (00:37:51):
And that's where the multiple pings, it's likely. Now you have that avatar. You define that, that common community, that a person during a one or two day period, here's your book more than one time. And that's when it becomes noticeable. It's that high level of frequency. So you activate those influencers, you email your list, send everyone to your multi-book page. That's where I'd start. And give them the option saying, if you want to buy one copy, maybe I don't have bonuses for it, but you, they allow them and encourage them to buy one copy. Uh, so talk about the street team, talk about the influencers, podcasts, uh, all that speaking and stuff. This happened during the pre-launch, usually three months prior to launching the book. Most podcasters that I've worked with are willing to hold back that episode for up to about three months before they launch it.
Mike Michalowicz (00:38:39):
So usually three months prior, I'm recording episode after episode about the new book and ask the podcasters, please hold it until, in this case, January 2nd for All In. And then you get this Cascade Effect. Now all the podcasts are talking about it, um, recordings on YouTube. I've prerecorded videos on YouTube. They come out, uh, endorsements. There's another way to use blurbs and endorsements, not just for the back of the book. You can make a social media graphic of it. And so that during the day of the launch at 8:00 AM look what Simon Sinek said about clockwork. Look what Dan Pink said about he endorsed, uh, Profit First. You know, look what, uh, so-and-so Jenny Blake said about Clockwork and all these names start hitting. So it's just this constant momentum. Uh, and the last thing is then we also activate the, that Wild campaign during that first day or two, the, the, the outlying campaign, something new and fresh.
Mike Michalowicz (00:39:37):
It was to pay it forward. Now it's this webinar series. So we'll do a webinar that day, uh, and get, uh, people buying the book on the spot. So Joey Coleman, myself, Michael Bungay Stan… Stanier, I always mix it up. Stanier, uh, we'll be doing a webinar that we're gonna release on that day to get momentum. Now I want to share a little story about this. The all coming to this, the culmination, the first time we really nailed a launch was probably The Pumpkin Plan. This is our second book together and maybe our best book. And, uh, I'm so proud of that book. And of all the books, including Profit First, it is still on a percentage basis, the fastest growing back list book we have every month. It sells us a little bit more and a little bit more Profit First has taken a leap because of TikTok, but it was selling about 1200, 1200. That book
AJ Harper (00:40:33):
Is 12 years old, isn't it?
Mike Michalowicz (00:40:34):
Yeah. Yeah. Is that insane?
AJ Harper (00:40:38):
That's insane.
Mike Michalowicz (00:40:38):
Yeah. And it sounds more, it sold more in the last six months than it has ever in any six month period.
AJ Harper (00:40:45):
I love that so much.
Mike Michalowicz (00:40:46):
So that, uh, another translation just got purchased like Israeli, I think, uh, I just redid a video recording of The Pumpkin Plan three, four weeks ago for, uh, Lit Books, which is video that launched, we launched the street team activated a multi-book page offer. Uh, I can't remember what the outlier was. I I did something crazy, you know, unquote crazy. Uh, something that no one did back then. And, and by the way, podcasts I think were really effective 10 years ago. They're still effective today, but not like, maybe the new things. And I think these webinars are the new things for now. It's, it's an accepted social standard ever since Covid. And I think that's the big mover. Prior to podcasts, it was blogs because on as many blogs as possible, I don't, there's still value there, but it's not like it used to be.
Mike Michalowicz (00:41:32):
So it is a moving target. Here's how the launch plays out. Uh, don't sleep the night before
Mike Michalowicz (00:42:23):
It's not geographically targeted. So if I did an announcement at say, 8:00 AM East Coast time, uh, that means it's hitting the West Coast at 5:00 AM And when the people are waking up and checking email, which is three hours later, perhaps there may be all these emails buried on top of it. I I want to be at the top of the inbox. So that's another little tip for you. So 10:00 AM things kick off. So what happens is I immediately rush to Amazon because that's the hour by hour or three hour by three hour tracker. And I'm just watching the ranking. So, Pumpkin Plan.
AJ Harper (00:42:53):
So you want the baseline?
Mike Michalowicz (00:42:55):
Yep. Is there a military helicopter flying over us?
AJ Harper (00:43:07):
Going to West Point. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:43:08):
Oh, probably
AJ Harper (00:43:08):
It's gonna West Point. Yeah. It's going that direction.
Mike Michalowicz (00:43:10):
So, um, I'm sitting there and say it was ranked around a hundred thousand. I'm picking, because this is pre-launch a few days before it actually quiets down a little bit. So a hundred thousand means you're maybe moving a book every couple days. So it's sitting there quietly. I'm like, this is gonna drop into the twenties. And then the teens, and then the hundreds. That's my thought. 11 o'clock a check, still a hundred thousand, 12 o'clock. It now I check it. It's, it's uh, maybe one o'clock in the afternoon. I click it refreshes and here comes the number and it's 120,000. I'm like, it got worse. What the hell? Like, all these announcements are going out. And some people even emailed me, bought your book. So at first the tears start welling up and like, I'm a failure. It's Toilet Paper Entrepreneur all over again. I suck.
AJ Harper (00:43:52):
And you're talking about the Amazon overall ranking, the BS all just for, just, just for so people know.
Mike Michalowicz (00:43:57):
Yeah. Thanks. Clarity. So this is the bestseller ranking on Amazon. Well, it doesn't, it may refresh every, uh, three hours, but there may be also a laggard effect, I'm pretty sure of it. So it's really about six to eight hours before you start seeing the impact of what's happening. Um, and it then it might refreshed the next time. Then I saw the first drop and it would drop from a hundred thousand down into the teens. I was like, ah, here we go. There's a website from TCK publishing. I always forget, but it's TCK publishing Amazon Calculator. So this dude, whoever owns this website, um, made this really cool tool. So check it out and you can enter in your BSR bestseller ranking from Amazon, the current number, and it'll tell you how many books are actively selling in that moment for that day. So I type it in, I'm like, oh, wow, we moved 50 books so far, 45 books. Then the book then dropped down to a thousand. It's like, okay. Then dropped into the hundreds. Now it's like 200 or 300, 200. That's when my hope starts going like, oh, can we get the number one in the world? Just like your friend from Kroger's, can we get the number?
AJ Harper (00:44:59):
My friend.
Mike Michalowicz (00:45:00):
Your buddy, the Black Roseman. And, um, the best ever ranking of all books on a launch day was in the fifties. And I think it was, uh, Get Different.
AJ Harper (00:45:17):
So just so everybody knows, it's not the individual category rankings that Mike's talking about. It's the overall number, overall.
Mike Michalowicz (00:45:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And we hit number one, all these different categories. There's also a tip around that For your launch day, go to Author Central you, and if you don't have an Author Central account through Amazon, you're in trouble. So get that account set up. Uh, I don't want to walk through the, the step-by-step details, but link your books to your name. Then, um, use, there's a, it's hidden away in the very bottom of one of the pages. They'll say, contact us. They, they intentionally bury it. Click on this, it'll bring up another page and navigate to where you can identify the categories your book is listed in and put yourself in categories that are representative of your book. But also you can pick multiple categories. And by default, I think many books will only have like two or three categories. You can pick up to seven. Yes. So, so you can get a number one, you can, you can start winning in categories by expanding your categories. So, so do that. Best rankings 50. And I'm, that's when my ego kicks saying like, oh, I have number one in the world. Like, oh, Stephen King, I'm taking you down. Uh, didn't happen. That was the best launch ever. I was up till probably midnight or two o'clock in the morning. Like refresh.
AJ Harper (00:46:28):
Yeah, that's what you do. I refresh that. Here's what happens because your launch starts in the morning. Yeah. Many times your highest rank happens about three o'clock in the morning.
Mike Michalowicz (00:46:38):
Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:46:38):
So you have to be up. So when I used to be, uh, I used to work with a small publisher in California that did a lot of book collections. Yeah. Like for Lisa Nichols, Les Brown, et cetera. And so they would hit these big, big bestseller ranking numbers, but not until like three o'clock in the morning. So someone had to be up. So you can do the screen capture. Yep. Yep. Um, just saying, it's very often when you hit your biggest number is in the middle of the night.
Mike Michalowicz (00:47:03):
It really is.
AJ Harper (00:47:04):
If you, if it matters to you, you want the screenshot, someone's got to be awake.
Mike Michalowicz (00:47:07):
Yeah. And I'd argue do screenshot that because that's part of the launch. The next morning is about reporting momentum, because nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. So we would then send out more announcements and saying, yesterday was a fantastic day, and here's the data to prove it. That screenshot the reviews that have come in nice comments and compliments of people that download the book. And some people dig in fast. They start reading the audio in the moment. And that then is a reason, a justified reason to reach out to your community again and continue the momentum. So we would do that. Um, we'd also announce the people that bought multiple books, the higher packages, with their permission, if we could share their name, we'd say, Hey, Joanne Smith bought 75 books. Uh, and we would reserve quantity. because at the higher numbers, at 75, the bonuses, like going on stage or going to an event with me, we'd reserve the quantity of, of those available.
Mike Michalowicz (00:48:05):
because I, I can't do a thousand events like that. There's about 15 a year and maybe 15 will allow it. So we would do 30 over two years. It's about 30. So we'd say there's only four slots left. So there's a great, you know, there's scarcity and people start taking action upon it. So start reporting. What's interesting about a launch is there's two spikes. There's the day of, that's the big one. Then there's this kind of lull period, but we're announcing, and there's still continued sales. And then near the end of the launch period, which we usually do two weeks later, is when we say, we're shutting everything down and you better shut down. What say is the multi-book page offers going away? Bonuses are going away, everything's going away. We want to share it one last time. And there's a second spike that happens. And maybe it's because the, it's the ultimate form of scarcity, but things are being removed.
Mike Michalowicz (00:48:50):
And we do a big push two weeks after the initial day and that gets the final momentum all in, get different, we moved about 10,000 books. Uh, our best launch, uh, our worst using this method was maybe 5,000. I, I don't count. Um, we did a revising, expand edition of profit. First was 2000. We didn't do this kind of campaign, this aggressive campaign. Um, so five to 10,000 books. Now that's with a big list we built over time. It's with a lot of working influencers, it's with a lot of work. So at the end of the day, I think some authors come to me and say, only 5,000 books. Only 10,000 books.
AJ Harper (00:49:30):
That’s a lot.
Mike Michalowicz (00:49:31):
Yeah, it's a lot. And here's the perspective that wakes people up. They're like, that's, that's so few books. Like there's millions of people that could use this. And you only sold that few and you did all this effort. No, that's, that's, that's five or 10,000 individual sales
AJ Harper (00:49:47):
Yeah. Can we just talk a little bit more about launch day? So for me, it was different. I chose to do a launch event. I, it, I wanted to do something that was, would provide value to readers. Yeah. But also showcase the authors I work with. And that just made sense for me. I, I had this whole list of things I was gonna do and pulling. I didn't even ask you to help me with that day. And do anything for my event. I didn't pull in any influencers to help me with that event because it was, it just felt like I just want to be of service today. That's authentic to me. That's gonna sound fun to me. I'm gonna do, let me do that. So I think my event was three hours long, maybe a little longer. And I did get a team to back me up to run it so that I'm not handing the technology and organizing the different guests.
AJ Harper (00:50:40):
And I picked topics that would, they were from my book that would be of service to people. And I was live on Facebook, YouTube, um, LinkedIn. And, uh, we moved it really quickly to just 10 minute segments, 15 minute segments. And I brought in authors to talk about different aspects of authorship and showcased their stuff. Did some laser coaching. Mm. And that was really, I loved it. That was fun for me, rather than just, I'm uncomfortable when people talk about me and praise me. Mm. So for that, that was actually super valuable. And then all that content can then be cut up later, by the way, to used in shorter bits and promos down, down the line. But I think it's important to think about what's really important to you, how you want to spend that day. Yeah. You're gonna do that webinar for All In, you've done other stuff in the past.
AJ Harper (00:51:34):
Do some sort of event, either virtually or in person that makes you feel good because you have to celebrate that accomplishment. And it can be, it could be a launch party if that's your jam, as long as you have somebody there that's taking video or pictures, so you get some buzz for it. Maybe it's a reading. Maybe that's your jam. Maybe it's what I did or what Mike's doing. But it has to be something that you feel, this is me. This is how I like to do things. And I think getting other people involved in say, panel discussions or conversations is actually an easy get. That's easier than getting people to overtly promote you, but getting people to come and talk about issues that are important to them, that are relevant to your book. Anytime you get other people to come and be of service, it's pretty easy for them to say Yes.
Mike Michalowicz (00:52:21):
Yeah. I, I totally agree. I totally agree. Uh, I've been talking a lot about Joey Coleman and Michael, uh, Bunge, which by the way, MBS, he also goes by M-B-S. M-B-S. And, uh, Joey did a launch party in person in Toronto, and I spoke with Michael afterwards. I was like, dude, does anyone do launch parties anymore? And he goes, we had 200 people show up. Yeah. Uh, and I've never done a launch party, like in, in person. And he goes, we sat there and said, um, we're trying to move a lot of books right now, and we are so honored by your support, and we hope you're having a great time. Would you be willing to buy bulk books right now to support our movement? Yeah. And of those 200 people, I think people on average, were buying 10 books A pop that's 2000 books that they moved through their party.
AJ Harper (00:53:08):
Yeah. And, uh, there was just a recent really successful live event that I, I, I didn't attend it, but I, I watched it happen. Laura Belgray, she wrote Tough. She's a--
Mike Michalowicz (00:53:18):
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. What a great title.
AJ Harper (00:53:20):
Yes. Yeah. So she's hilarious. And, and she, uh, she's a very famous and super successful copywriter. So she's, she's your email copywriting queen. Mm. Um, connected with Marie Forleo. Well, she had a lot of relationships where she could bring, get people to show up. It was at Barnes & Noble, the big one. At—
Mike Michalowicz (00:53:41):
New York?
AJ Harper (00:53:42):
Yeah. No, but the big one in New York that's on, um,
Mike Michalowicz (00:53:45):
Near Central Park, I think.
AJ Harper (00:53:47):
No, it's on 16th. What is, why can't I think of where I used to live there? What am I
Mike Michalowicz (00:53:53):
That's, it's, uh, 16th is, um, the Union Soho Union Square. It's, yeah. Union Square. Union Square. Yeah. Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:53:58):
That was my Barnes & Noble used to write at. And I just slipped. Slipped. That's not so, no, it's not SoHo.
Mike Michalowicz (00:54:02):
That's NoHo.
AJ Harper (00:54:04):
In Union Square. The big Barnes & Nobles. Multiple levels. That's the, that's the big kahuna on Barnes &Noble. Okay. Um, and, you know, sometimes people say live events don't move books. But I think if you decide how are you going to use this live event to move books, it could. But there's nothing wrong with having a party to celebrate this major accomplishment and to thank the people. I think this is another thing I want you to talk about. Part of your two week launch is gratitude.
Mike Michalowicz (00:54:34):
Yeah. That is a massive part of it. And, uh, it, it starts with the acknowledgements in the book to me, is there is a team around the author, and I consider it like a band, uh, that the author is the front man, front person of the band. It's the singer and gets mostly accolades. But there is a drummer and there is a guitarist and a bass. But there's also, uh, the, the people who are assembling the stage, uh, set design, it ends up, there are hundreds of people, uh, in many cases that, that have some degree of impact, small or big. And it's during the launch process, I think that we start acknowledging these people. One technique and technique, this sounds almost manipulative, but one thing we do, and it's authentic, is every story that gets featured in the book, we write a framed image with a cover of the book, uh, a section that they're in.
Mike Michalowicz (00:55:35):
And then we put a, a plaque on it saying, you're featured in the book. So, Clockwork, as an example, when we launched Clockwork, uh, one of the key stories is there is Chris Winfield and Chris, I met with him to talk about business efficiency stuff, and was just expecting this guy who was concentrating at the time, his efforts on productivity, he was the productivity master. And I said, Chris, how do you make a business that crushes it? He goes, well, productivity. And I'm like, dude, this, this is what you do for a profession,
AJ Harper (00:56:36):
Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (00:56:38):
The, it was true, authentic gratitude. But when people see that they're proud of that, they're, he was proud of his contribution. Yeah. I'm proud. And so that became a really cool, sticky thing. Uh, he happens to be highly influential. Me. He has a, he has a community around him, and, uh, he knowingly or not is, is helping expose clockwork. So that's a big deal.
AJ Harper (00:57:01):
I think, you know, just time-wise, it's important to note that you're gonna spend time doing a lot of thank you. Yeah. And then you're also, I spent from my launch, which was a tiny fraction of your launch, I think when I sat down to apply to everything on social media, I think it was hours.
Mike Michalowicz (00:57:18):
Yeah.
AJ Harper (00:57:20):
So you, maybe you need someone to do it, help you do it,
Mike Michalowicz (00:57:22):
Maybe.
AJ Harper (00:57:23):
But you just have to plan for, for it. You have to do it. And don't you think, I always tell my students, and they're shocked when I tell them this, I say, take the week off that you are launching your book.
Mike Michalowicz (00:57:33):
Oh yeah. You’ve got to.
AJ Harper (00:57:34):
You have to take it. So if you have a job or you're running a business…
Mike Michalowicz (00:57:37):
You have to be available for the book.
AJ Harper (00:57:38):
You have to block it off. Because what happens is all the stuff you planned yields other stuff that you didn't know was gonna happen. All these people that you have inbound requests. Yep. Can you talk to this? Can you come on this podcast? Can you, you show up for this? Can I talk, can I help you in this way? Now you're fielding all that stuff left and right. You have people coming out to say thank you. You have people posting stuff, you have people doing stuff you never thought that would do it. Yep. It's a lot to keep track of. And you're also super emotional. And exhausted. So you have to do yourself a solid and block that week off, at least the first week.
Mike Michalowicz (00:58:16):
Yeah, true to all the above. I, um, oh, I had a, a profound thought I wanted to share, but, but it, it's, it just slipped my mind. So, um, uh, now, now I'm a little bit confused in my own head. Uh, so yeah. So block off and prepare for the time, uh, prepare for the unexpected things to happen. Oh, this is what it was. And to your point, be super engaged with the readers. This is to the point where it goes from the one to many, to the one-to-one for me during the launch. The one to many is, how do I have other influencers talk about the book? What are the podcasts that I can get on and the webinars I can do? And it is all one to large groups. It's at this stage that people start buying your book and you will get emails, uh, especially if you encourage people to email you.
Mike Michalowicz (00:59:07):
I take the time during the launch to respond to every single person with a video. Because you're right. You can get an assistant to type on social media or respond an email. You can't. Well, now with a, with open ai, maybe you can start using some fake, you, you can deep fake yourself by sending out a video to each person. And it could be hundreds and hundreds of emails I get. And so it'll take me days. But I'll speak until I'm horse sending videos saying, AJ Harper, you just put a book of mine. It's a big deal to me. Thank you for having the impact. I'm wishing huge success in your business. And if I can personalize it further, I will. And I send that out. Do that one time is easy. Do that a hundred times in a row. It gets really freaking hard. But I have a duty to that. What's so interesting, too, another story, I don't remember the face, and, but it's happened multiple times and it's happened even recently that someone comes up and says, I'll never forget the video you sent eight years ago.
AJ Harper (01:00:03):
Mm-Hmm.
Mike Michalowicz (01:00:04):
Right. They said, you took the time to send me a personal video thanking me. And I remember one person I met in an audience, and she said, I, I couldn't believe it was true. I watched the video over and over again, and she goes by number six. I'm like, how did he know my name? My business? How did he do all this stuff? Automatically? He, he couldn't. This is a real video. Holy crap. This is the real guy. And she's like, that's the day. She goes, you are my, you're my author. We talk about psychological ownership. You're my author. And she goes, I'm here at this event. There was a dude who traveled across Calgary. I thought I had a hard journey. I shared that in the last episode, getting to Calgary. There was a dude who drove, I think it was 20 hours to get to this conference because he loves the books, uh, and the work that we've done together.
AJ Harper (01:00:53):
So that's what a good launch can do. It can start that off. You have this great analogy that I'm hoping that you can share. I know we're long on time, but maybe before we close you can share this. Do you remember, you remember this analogy you share about how you start a fire? So you say a good a book launch. You've got to get the big come– Okay. It's really good. Oh, you say the book launch is you want to get a good fire going. So, you know, the pre-launch would be getting the, it all set up with the kindling and stuff. And then the launch is the big roaring fire. And then pre-launch or post-launch is just keeping those embers aliveBut that's where you need a good launch to start to get that big waring fire started. Yeah. So, and then keeping it going is much easier. You don't remember that you said that?
Mike Michalowicz (01:01:43):
No, because now I use wave. I'm like, it's the, the tsunami. Yeah. It's, it might analogy change, but
AJ Harper (01:01:48):
I think that's a great analogy to say why, why does a launch matter? Yeah. Because you have to get it, the fire going.
Mike Michalowicz (01:01:55):
Correct. And once those embers are burning, to me, it's the one-on-ones I spend, and we'll talk about this probably a, a lot when we talk about the post-launch. The one-on-one relationship, I think is the most overlooked opportunity for authors to sustain book sales. Most authors, most authors actually just give up. They don't launch and then they don't post. There's nothing. Just like they put the book out there and they're like, why is no one coming? Um, successful authors will, uh, will launch a book, uh, and, and continue that one to many. The greatest authors I know start one-to-one marketing, meaning they engage with individual, uh, readers. And that the risk is what's the impact? It's, it is very time consuming to build one-on-one relationships with readers. And how do you know if that reader is gonna be of impact in moving books? And is this wasted time? And the things you don't know. So you just got to keep doing it. But I found by having all these one-to-one relationships with readers, they are the ultimate influencers. And one day, one person somehow will get the word out. That woman on TikTok, Michelle, I found out and after the fact, I had her on a podcast. I interviewed her.
AJ Harper (01:03:13):
This is a person who, uh, talked about Profit First. Yeah. Not the first person on TikTok to talk about Profit First. Yeah. But a person who had some enough influence to start a big surge of purchases.
Mike Michalowicz (01:03:26):
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Massive surge. She said, uh, oh, you responded with a video once I, I committed the Profit First because in the book you can commit to me. She goes, you responded to me. You sent me a video. And she goes, and then I came to a conference and, and I don't know if you remember, but we shook hands out there and we talked briefly, uh, and she goes, I emailed you once and you actually emailed me back. Lemme under word. Underline the word, actually email me back. because that also means she's reached out to other people who've not. And that's common. I make an extraordinary effort to respond to everyone. And I'm not great at it. And it's because it's me. It takes time. But I do an extraordinary effort to do that. And then one day, somehow, some way, uh, a situation like that's gonna happen. So I think that's the greatest thing that, that happens during this launch period. Is this transition, this great opportunity opens itself. No longer are you, are you talking about what's to come? It's arrived. And now you have an opportunity to engage with the people that are consuming it. Yes.
Mike Michalowicz (01:04:25):
Whew. I don't even know if we covered everything.
AJ Harper (01:04:27):
Well, there's so much to cover, but I think ultimately you did cover, you know, these are what is your launch like? And I think that's of, that's of value and what are the key components of a launch, but it's really up to the individual and how, who are their readers? What, you know, what's gonna make sense for that specific book? And then what do you feel like doing? Yeah, yeah. But, but mostly to just understand that you've got to have all that stuff in place and have a support system in place so that you'll actually do it. Because I've seen it with authors too many times. I, I say this, I'll, I'll keep saying it. I'm gonna say it a million times. Authors who busted their butts to write something remarkable who absolutely have a whimper of a launch. And I always know what's happened there. They have just, uh, collapsed under the pressure of an exhaustion. Yeah. So it, you can get in front of that by making sure that you have a strategy in place. Yeah. And you have some people backing you up to help you actually implement it.
Mike Michalowicz (01:05:26):
And, and it's never too late to start. Even if, even if you feel it's too late, you can still get the book out there. You can still hit Kroger's and start talking about it. You can still just keep the effort because a launch while ideally it happens when the book gets published. Uh, you can do it years later too.
AJ Harper (01:05:42):
You can relaunch. Yeah, you can, you can, you don't even need a reason.
Mike Michalowicz (01:05:45):
You can call it a late launch.
AJ Harper (01:05:47):
Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (01:05:48):
Um, I went to Annapolis with my wife for our anniversary, or 26 year anniversary. It was amazing. It was amazing. Um, and we walked the, uh, the university there, the, the university, the school, the Navy was there. Um, and so they allow public in, you have to, you know, you go through security and there's lots of people and say, but you can, you can walk the entire campus. So we're walking around. There was one building, regretfully, I don't recall the name of the building. It was, it was magnificent structure. There was, uh, midshipmen being trained, you know, they're marching and stuff, and you could observe that. But I looked in the building and it had this massive open door, and there was a flag hanging on the wall from the distance. And, uh, it was far enough away. I couldn't see it. But it wasn't a US flag. It was just had words on it. So I walked closer. It said, don't give up the ship. And then there was a story of this admiral who passed away on a ship. He was a fatal, uh, injury that he experienced from an attack. Uh, and he told the, the sea men, don't give up the ship. And it became the, the line or the, the tagline for the military, for the navy.
AJ Harper (01:07:02):
Their guiding force. Their motto. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz (01:07:03):
Their motto. That's it. Their motto, don't give up your book. Like, don't give up the book. You must never stop. You're putting out a message that's so important to the world. And what a shame, what a shame if they don't discover that, what a shame if, if it's a fiction book and they're not entertained by it. What a shame all that effort. And you, you give up the book, don't give up the book. Alright. Uh, we got to get out of here. We did. Now it depends how people listen to this, but we did two long episodes. We, we usually try to do three in one sitting. Uh, it's almost quitting in time here. And we got two episodes done. So we dug in deeply. We hope you got tons of value. We also have free materials that compliment this. So go to our website. It's DWTB podcast. That's don't write that book podcast.com. We also would love for you to give us your feedback, your experiences, uh, your criticisms. I got some of those emails saying, oh, Mike, the launch is really one week. So, uh, whatever other feedback you have, we want it. And if we can share it, we will. Let's know, by e emailing me and AJ at hello@dwtbpodcast.com. Again, that's hello@dwtbpodcast.com. Thanks for joining us today. As a reminder, don't write that book. Write this one.