Kindle vs Print

Guest: Foreign.

Stuart: Here with Betsy. Betsy Vaughan. How's it going?

Guest: Very good. Great to be here.

Stuart: Good to be here, too. I had the first. Having been back in the US for about three weeks now, I had the first encounter where someone was really picking up on the accent. So I've kind of forgotten about it already. But just yesterday, someone was really diving into the Britishness. I must have said something. I think I said cheers instead of thank you.

Guest: Cheers.

Stuart: So slowly, advertising.

Guest: I said wonky to somebody the other day and they're like, what? Which is one of those things I picked up from you. Wonky.

Stuart: I am slowly, slowly trying to increase that sphere of influence to bring back British words.

Guest: Well, really, I mean, you know, it's. It's everything you say, it doesn't matter what you say sounds so sophisticated.

Stuart: And see, that's why I had to. That's why I had to move countries, because it really doesn't work like that back in the uk.

Guest: Yeah. And we're so like. Yeah. Yep. You know, so maybe that'll. Maybe some of that will rub off on.

Stuart: It might. Yeah, yeah. Balance out.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: So today we are going to talk about Kindles versus printed books. I was going to say traditional books, but I guess there's more and more of a tradition of Kindles being traditional or a generation of people coming behind us. They're perhaps more used to that than. Than a traditional print book. So I think there's a couple of.

Guest: Yeah, that's true. How do you feel about the Kindle versus the traditional print book? Are you.

Stuart: I have a Kindle. I've got a Kindle app on the iPad. The Kindle I've got is actually super old. I mean, it must be 10 years old by now. It's one of the old ones with a keyboard, but I just don't use it enough to justify updating it. So maybe 60 or maybe even more like 80% of the books I've read recently have been not physical. Probably a bit more than that, thinking about it. But the one thing, and this is kind of jumping to the chase on the. On the bones of the call, I guess. But the one thing that is different, it's. That is different is if you buy a book and it's physically sat on your shelf, there's a physical reminder that at some point you wanted to read it, whereas the digital versions of things disappear into the digital void and there's nothing to ever remind you that that book's there. So as a consumer, as a reader, I notice that quite a lot. But as an author, as someone who wants our books to be read, super conscious of that and that kind of effectiveness issue around print versus versus digital. So we're going to dive. That's going to be one of the main points that we get to shortly. How to make the most of that platform given the constraints around kind of visibility.

Guest: I think it is like one of you said, that generation coming up behind us is, I think they're all about that, about the Kindle, the electronic version of a book versus the print book. You know, the, the print book. I personally am not. I, I want the book, I want to turn the pages, I want to smell the pages. I wanna, you know, that's, I'm old school that way, you know, so I still order books, I still go to.

Stuart: Yeah, Lucy's the same. Yeah, yeah, very much so. The convenience trumps it for me. It's definitely, I really don't want to be flying with half a bag full of paper

Guest: and I fly with three or four books at a time, you know, in my back. You know, that's probably an educator thing. Lucy and I both, with our education background, maybe that's, we just, maybe there's something there. We like that, that physical book and like to see children with books in their hands and. Yeah, yeah. My son, who's only 22, he loves a book. He's not into the electronic version at all. So he orders a lot of books, physical books done and likes to see them on his shelf and, and reread things over and over again.

Stuart: So he has an appreciation, collector. Is it more of the collector element of it, of physically owning it?

Guest: He does because he, he's into, I mean he, listen, he's, he's, he's, he's a very old soul. He is into classical literature and things like that. So he, you know, he, he wants old books and first edition books and those are kind of things that people give him as gifts now, you know, so he loves, he loves to have, he will have at some point probably a huge lover, you know, that's surrounded by the books and that you can just pick anytime he has opportunity to be surrounded by books. That's where he prefers to go. So. And I'm that way too. So I know, you know, even my 70 something year old mother has her Kindle and that's how she prefers to, she, you know, she doesn't want books anymore. She doesn't want, she calls it clutter. So she doesn't want the clutter.

Stuart: I must admit, some of the books that I have Bought recently for one reason or another, or been given. Actually a lot of the ones more recently have just been given by one person or another. And having recently gone through the rigmarole of shipping stuff to the US deciding which books to give away and then the challenge of giving them away or which books to bring, because at some point there's some value in reading them again. A lot of them. A lot of them. Probably not. Not fiction, it's more reference material, but actually just the cost of shipping them across. Now that looking back on it, particularly having been kind of like three or four weeks detached from the physical things, the connection with them has kind of drifted somewhat, as opposed to being there in the room as I was packing and saying, well, I can't really part with that. So actually it's probably some expense for shipping books that I'm. Realistically, even I know that I'm probably never going to read again. And even if I did want that information I was looking for, I probably Google in two minutes,

Guest: download it, you have it. You can have the whole book in just like 35 seconds.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But the other interesting challenge was giving them, Trying to give them away because this is. There was a lot of textbooks and from like past careers and jobs, a lot of, A lot of business related books and there was just zero market for anyone wanting those. Kind of. Traditionally it would be like charity shops or libraries or dentist waiting rooms, all of those types of places. No one wanted them at all. In fact, the charity shops were saying, to be honest, unless it's kind of trashy fiction that someone's just going to read you on the beach and then leave at the, at the Airbnb place, there's just no market for it because no one wants it. So.

Guest: That's funny.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, it was really interesting. So I mean, there was probably hundreds, if not probably not quite thousands, but hundreds of dollars worth of books that just got recycled in the end because there was no recycled, slashed, dumped on my parents when I was kind of flying out the door because I was running late. So they'll probably still be in the garage at my parents when I go back next time.

Guest: Right?

Stuart: Yeah, so. So that being said, let's kind of circle that back into what we're talking about here, make it a little bit more relevant. So a couple of key points that have come up from just that discussion. One is the. We've said it before, to be honest, but just the reading rates generally are, are going down over time, not going up over time. So fewer people are reading things whether it's digital or in print because the average attention span is falling across the board. And then that staying front of mind element of a book does take up physical space and it there are visual cues. It's sat on a shelf somewhere. That means that it can be referred to later. The digital equivalent of that is infinitesimally smaller the likelihood that it's ever going to get read again because it's just never going to get passed over again. I don't have that many books on my Kindle. Maybe 30 if that over the last however many years be even those. I think the default library view is chronological with newest first. So there's no circumstance that I can think of that I really scroll past the first page of a book in that library even when it's on an iPad version. So you've got kind of like a visual representation of the shelf. The likelihood of scrolling further down the list is super small. And then to actually stop, take the time to read it, get to a call to action so that there's a follow on step which again for we're not talking about fiction books, we're talking about books to engage a conversation and get a call to action. So there's definitely that element of staying front of mind and keeping that conversation going. So as with everything that we talk about, it really comes down to what's the job of work, what's the intent, what's the funnel. How do you anticipate these things being made being used? Rather it's not just a kind of build it and they will come type thing. This isn't fiction where you're talking about or even books for entertainment to a certain degree. Although hopefully they are entertaining in such as they're providing value. But it's not really an entertainment thing where I'm going to write this book. I'm going to build it and they will come. It's going to be so engaging that it will go viral and get attention from there. The likelihood of all of that or the serendipity that you're expecting for all of that to turn around is just very unlikely. So we've got to think of better ways of making sure that that conversation moves forward as soon as possible.

Guest: Right. Okay.

Stuart: The build it and they will come type thing. We've been talking to a couple of people recently who have kind of not kind of fallen in that camp of I knew this was a good thing to do, I should just do it and when I do it then magic things will happen because it will be done. That kind of logical fallacy we've talked before about really starting with the end in mind and working backwards. So in that case where you do think about the use case, where you do think about how the funnel all sticks together, then a digital version of the book, whether it's Kindle or PDF, might make sense. So there might well be value in structuring it or delivering it digitally because it fits into the overall funnel that you're trying to do a little bit more. There might be a lot of background noise here today because for some reason there must be some construction work going on down the road from the house because this road outside is usually relatively quiet. But there's like trucks hammering up and down here every other. Well, every few minutes at the moment. So.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Apologies for any big background noise. Okay, completely distracted then. What are we talking about? Oh, the use case. So the difference in the physical and the. Well, let's talk about the differences in the physical ones and the digital ones. And then the digital ones. There's two cases to talk about. There's kind of the PDF version and the Kindle version, because both digital, but they've both got slightly different benefits and constraints. So the main difference is that ability for it to sit on the shelf and have a slightly longer life than a digital version. There's also the thumb ability of it, for want of a more realistic actual word, but that kind of flick through ness. So we've said on previous shows that everyone reads the front page. The title, the COVID is the thing that captures people's attentions. Everyone reads the back cover because people flick over and look at it. And that's a great place for the call to action because it kind of bypasses that. It's the second most important real estate. It bypasses that need for people to read the entire content in order to get to the call to action. And it kind of anchors the call to action for the people who do sit down and read it because they know the destination, they know where they're leading towards. So there's the thumb ability of it and even the thumb ability of the content itself of the chapters. The content structure, the chapter titles being kind of, if you only looked at the table of contents telling that story of how to get to the problem on the COVID to the answer on the back cover. Those chapters being the very obvious kind of waypoints on the journey as you're thumbing through and you're clearly seeing those chapter titles pop out as you just flick from page to page. Again, that's almost enough to create that narrative. It's almost like people like a cartoon of someone speed reading and just kind of flicking through the book. I'm not sure how that noise will come out in the transcript, but that kind of flicking with thumb page to page, like a flick book. But seeing the chapter titles pass by, it's almost like you're giving yourself a get out of jail free card to allow yourself to take the next step without actually having read it. Because you've done. Do you know what I'm trying to say? You've kind of done some steps in terms of reading something. I've physically had the book in my hand and I've done something. Therefore the next logical step is to do the next stage rather than actually reading each word on the page. So those are all of the benefits of. Well, those are a good number of the benefits of physical, that kind of longevity. Almost. The downside of physical is the cost overhead and the delivery overhead. You've actually physically got to get it in someone's hands, which requires you either need to be in the same place at the same time as them, or the book needs to be at the same place at the same time, or you need to get their address. And in theory, particularly for starting newer relationships, all of these additional steps are barriers to entry. They're kind of confounding factors or elements to slow down that speed that you want in taking things from that velocity of the thought. Someone's had the thought that they've got the problem, they've had the thought that they want to fix it. And how can you, with the most velocity momentum, get from A to B? And a physical book in a lot of ways does slow all of that down. So the upside on the digital front then is exactly that speed. You can deliver something to someone immediately with the minimum number of steps. I mean, in theory, if you could run a AdWords ad or Facebook ad to a download page that just offered the download there straight away with no opt in whatsoever. If you were confident about the journey that you were taking them on in the book, if you were confident about the minimum viable commitment, call to action, the clear next step, that obviously adds value, then you can give the first step away for zero cost. Typically that's not what we recommend. We typically recommend that it is behind at least an email opt in just to start that conversation and allow it to continue over email. But there are definitely use cases where you might want to speed it through. And from a velocity point of view that is absolutely the fastest when you're at an event. We were talking to Focus, maybe the beginning of last month and talking about the people at her event. She separately had a way of collecting their names and email addresses because it was provided by the event vendor. So just put in one of the slides up on screen. As you're talking through having this perfect relationship with people, what you really want to do is look at the second chapter in the book because we dive deep into this particular point. So up on the screen behind me, here's the URL. Just go and download it straight away, grab that copy and then you can see the checklist that we're talking about to do whatever again, think about what the use case is and then have the delivery to match, not, not vice versa. So the upside is speed, really. The downside is you don't have that thumb ability. And the kind of the half life of the book, the attention duration that you've got is a lot shorter than it is in the physical world. Everything moves a lot faster and equally the person moves on to the next thought a lot faster. So in that scenario, you want to really make sure that you've got the opportunity to keep that velocity going and move on to the next step as quick as possible. So you might need to be more aggressive with the call to action suggestions. You might need to be more aggressive with the go here for the next step. Or if you want more information about this, here's another link to follow. Here's another piece of information to follow which in the physical world. Sorry, go for it.

Guest: Yeah, I think that's a great. That's a, that's. I just had that conversation with somebody this week about. They were concerned, you know, that by having a Kindle version or putting it on Amazon, that whole process, that they were going to miss out. And my recommendation was, you know, we weren't going to head that direction yet with this person. But, but I said we'll just have to focus on that stronger call to action, you know, really have to. It's going to have to be really compelling and, and it's going to have to be really in your face, you know, in order to, you know, because someone buying, excuse me, on Amazon, a Kindle version, you know, you're not capturing that. You have no idea who they are. Joe Schmo from Michigan, you know, you're, you're really missing the opportunity to, to engage that person. So we were just sort of try, you know, from our recommendation, yeah, we'll do it. But I always try to push it off in the beginning, you know, to.

Stuart: I think definitely. Exactly. And I think just as you said, it definitely shouldn't be the primary focus. So those constraints or benefits we were talking about a moment ago primarily apply to the PDF version of it, the digital version of it, because then you do have slightly more control about what elements are included, excluded. The Kindle version of it is more restricted than that. But it does have one big potential upside if you can find a way to capitalize on it. So the restrictions are exactly around that you've got zero visibility or zero access to who the customer is, because Amazon doesn't pass that information at all. There's no way of making a connection with an individual with that product at the point of sale. So you very much need to have additional stuff in it to bring people back. And I mean again, going back to thinking the job of work and the funnel that you're actually putting in place, that's the most important part. If you're looking at the Kindle funnel, whether it's a solely a Kindle play or whether Kindle just enters the mix as one of many channels, then you can't use exactly the same funnel for the PDF version that you can for the Kindle version. Because the PDF version, assume for the sake of argument that it's behind a, gives you email address and will send you a copy of the book type download. So you have their email, the Kindle version, you don't have any of that. So making sure that that funnel is set up in a way that has more opportunities to capture people's attention, to push them off to other resources, more so than you would do if you have already got their email address in the PDF version. So let's try and think of a realistic example. So it might be that, think about a financial advisor just because I can think of a lot of a lot of kind of sub assets within there. So Financial Advisor, you might have a checklist around financial planning or financial stability or life changes or goal planning or product tables, best buys, latest rates, all of these individual things that are assets that with your knowledge or expertise you can bring together in the PDF sense where you've collected their name and email address details. You can forward that information to people as part of a follow up funnel. So we talked a couple of shows ago about beyond the book and how to kind of engage in that follow up sequence to enhance the relationship and move people towards that direction, including. So I move people towards that next step, including all of these things in a relevant kind of funnel of continuing education you can push all that to people because you've got their email address up front. The Kindle version of exactly the same book, rather than just referring to the latest rate table or the goal setting worksheet, rather than just referring to it, because you know you're going to push that information to them at a later date in the book. In the Kindle version, you need to be putting a way for people to pull that information for people to get that themselves. So a link to the rate table, a link to the goal setting sheet, a link in a way that's easy for them to click as well, because depending on what Kindle device it is and how the product's set up, you might not be able to direct link from it. So URLs that are easy to type out. That might be another big concern, because in a PDF, typically links will hyperlink themselves. So you can link straight off. And if it's an ugly URL or a long URL, it doesn't make any difference. Kindle version, that might not be the case. We quite often see and we try and catch it, but I saw one the other day that had sneaked through. I need to remind the editor guys to be a bit hotter on it. But we'll sometimes see long URLs with HTTPs www and then this huge long email that someone's just copy and pasted and dumped in because it is the actual link. But if there's any concept that anyone's going to type that, I mean, even I couldn't even bother to finish that sentence of talking it, let alone actually typing it out. So if you are on your website, you've got all of these assets, but they're actually hidden on long URL. So it's YourDomain.com subsection 1, form 37698. HTML if you're expecting people to go there and that's the link that you've got in the book, whether it's a print version or a Kindle version that isn't linked, or PDF that isn't linked. Thinking about the use case, thinking about how the reader is actually going to interact with that. Obviously you just need to buy a short URL and then redirect it so it's easy for someone to type.

Guest: That's great advice.

Stuart: Yeah. And I do need to jump on the editors and remind them a little bit because I saw one sneak through the other day. So that kind of setup of that kind of technical setup makes a difference. And the use case. But really jumping back to Kindle the big thing is that you don't have the opportunity to capture any details. So that's the downside. The upside is the Amazon marketplace as a, a credibility play, which I'll come back to in a second, but B the access to the audience. So if you have a book with an engaging, relevant title that does what it says on the tin, it's not obscure, you're not trying to be clever. The subtitle amplifies the title. So this is all stuff that we talk about in a book Blueprint Scorecard. So as you're listening to this, if you haven't completed your book Blueprint Scorecard yet to position yourself on the eight mindsets of writing the best lead generation book, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and you can. We've got that set up to elaborate on each of these eight points. But that element of a relevant title uses language in the way that people are looking for, that people have articulated in the problem themselves. So it's a problem statement that they'll recognize in the title. It's not random or clever. The subtitle amplifies it and builds on it. Again, rather than being random, the description of your book that you've got in there in the. In the store entry, in the Kindle store entry builds on it a little bit more. It uses relevant terms to describe the situation that you're talking about. All of this means that the searchability or the discovery of your book is likely to be more. Because as people are searching for certain things, hopefully your book will come up as part of the result. The only element to add in there. Just from a realistic search perspective, if it's like our organic search in Google 20 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, although maybe not now because time is marching on and 10 years ago isn't actually that long ago, but 15 years ago, 20 years ago, having a website that talked about a relatively specific problem in detailed ways, that had lots of words that described the problem, just by virtue of the fact that there were fewer websites around, meant that you had stood more of a chance of coming up in a search result. Nowadays, because there are so many sites and there's just, it's just such a competitive marketplace, the likelihood of getting organic results with no other elements contributing to that is pretty slim. The same with the book in the Kindle. In the Kindle store, particularly because of the low barrier to entry, but even in the physical store, just expecting to get such traffic from there, whilst it does happen. It's a far more competitive environment now than it was a number of years ago then that varies depending on your niche. If you're a financial advisor or a life coach, you. It's going to be tough because there's a lot of competition there. If you're. What's an example? A. I'm trying to think of a smaller language. I was going to say French or Italian maybe Italian. Your books are written in Italian. Talking about a specific problem to a region in Italy, the likelihood of someone else having written that is a lot slimmer. So therefore you've got a lot more chance. So again, just traditional competitive advantage or disadvantage, that kind of SWOT analysis type approach to looking at it. I just took a breath and realized I've been talking a lot and I'm not sure whether that was coherently following one.

Guest: It's all good stuff

Stuart: because it's come up a couple of times. This happens quite a lot in the shows actually. We don't necessarily have a big forward schedule of things that we want to talk about. There's a couple of things that we do. But generally speaking we talk about what's happened in the previous weeks and where quite a few things of quite a few people have asked similar questions. Then all of this kind of pent up knowledge, you want to dump it out on the call and it turns into a call like this. So where did we get to? We were talking about the benefits of each and the challenges with the Kindle platform and the benefits of the Kindle platform. I think we've touched on the main points and the main point being again, go back to the thing that we always end up saying. Think about the funnel first, think about the job of work and then come back to how best to achieve that. And the fact that the same funnel is unlikely to work as effectively, at least across multiple different ways, multiple different channels. It's having the same funnel for everything. So people who walk into your storefront and pick up a copy of the book, working with complementary non competing business, complementary non completing partners and other businesses where they can support it, working with charities or community groups. The digital funnel that you've got, the social funnel that you've got, the Amazon funnel that you've got, having exactly the same follow up sequence as much as possible is better than nothing. But tailoring each of those to be as relevant to the platform as possible, as relevant to the way that people are interacting with it as possible is going to provide more bang for the buck. But having said that though, I definitely would start with the same funnel right across the board in as much as you can, because then at least it's done, rather than the alternative that we see a few times with people going into that kind of analysis, paralysis stage and not really wanting to pull a plug or, sorry, pull the trigger on anything until everything's perfect. And that's a fallacy as well, because you kind of fall into this trap of it never quite being there, never quite being there, and then two years goes by and you've still lost all of those leads. We were talking earlier in the week, I can't remember who we were talking about, but saying that someone had come back after two or three or maybe even four years now, and they were just kind of picking up their book and we're now going to do something with it. Whereas the original version, although it wasn't, they did make some changes. So there was obviously some improvements that could have been made. But just imagine how many leads have kind of fallen through the net and disappeared and moved on to other things and worked with other people in that intervening period. I mean, it's great that people are coming.

Guest: Exactly. We say that all the time. Even with people who are having the conversation of, you know, holding a book because they're doing edits to it and they want it to be, quote, unquote, perfect, you know, all the leads that they're missing or even getting started on a book. I have conversations with people and then we have more conversations. We have several conversations throughout the year and we kind of joke about it. And some people are not as quick to move as others. But, you know, when you've had a conversation, you know, six or seven conversations with someone, and a year later they finally come on board, I think that's the first thing that I think about, like, wow, if you had done this book last year, you'd have. You could potentially have a whole bunch of new business, you know, particularly if

Stuart: there's not a strong reason of not doing it. I mean, if there's. If it's an active decision not to do it, then fair enough. I mean, that's perfectly fine if it's just because, I mean, even to a certain degree, the people who kind of pass through the radar, and as you're listening to this, you can have guys in exactly the same situation, people who pass through the radar, but it's only kind of a touch point once, and it doesn't really get into their psyche. They're not quite ready yet. And then it just falls out of people who. People's heads and they move on. Which is why we go on so much about having that follow on sequence because it does stay front and center longer. But I've got a certain amount of sympathy for where it just kind of the thought comes in and then it goes out again because I forget about stuff all the time. But for those people who have that ongoing conversation and they make the. They take that first step repeatedly or even worse or even more so. The guys who have actually done the book, the first version's done, it's. It's kind of 80% of the way there. But then it's just kind of failure to pull the trigger either through not getting around to it or this kind of analysis. Paralysis of wanting it to be perfect. That's almost the worst situation because all of that effort is just wasted. It's not like that first group of people, the people where it pops in and pops out, there's kind of virtually zero effort there. So that's just life. That's just what happens. Yeah, people who put any effort in, like the repeated, yeah, I want to get started people, but then actually don't get started. Or the people who've done it but just not quite finished it. That's. That just seems like such a huge missed opportunity for people because so much of the work has been done already or so much of the thought process has been kind of started. A thought popped in my mind before that's just come back to me, so I'll mention it now before it moves on. There's a book that I think I've mentioned before called the wombat method by Dr. Michael Gleason. I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned this on the show before and I'm pretty sure that I've said I'll put a link to anything that I can find.

Guest: Can you say that again? What was it? 1.

Stuart: The wombat. The wombat method, or wombat selling. Sorry, called wombat selling. Like the Australian animal. A wombat.

Guest: Yeah, wombat.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, Wombat selling. I can't for the life of me remember why it's called wombat selling. But the. One of the big thoughts in there is around this thing called check moves. I'm sure that I've talked about this on the show before and the check move is he works a lot with sales teams and saying that you can't close a sale. The only person that can close the sale is the customer. Because the ultimate decision is theirs. You can put a lot of pressure on people for them to close, but they're the only ones that can close because the cash is in their hand. And to a certain degree you don't necessarily want to be that organization that's really putting strong arm on people to close because that's not necessarily the best type of organisation either. You want to present people with as many opportunities and as much evidence so that they can close themselves as provide the evidence so that they can close themselves rather than doing the hard sell on them. And this check moves theory is kind of that you can only put people in check. Using the chess analogy, you can only put people in check, you can't cause checkmate. So instead of concentrating on trying to close the sale, close the sale instead concentrate on how many times can you get these people in to check. And check is the opportunity for a sale to happen. So that's the same with the things that we've been talking about, both in terms of the physical book or the PDF where you've got their details already and you follow up by email causing those check moves or in the Kindle version in the copy itself. You'd need to include more of those check moves in the copy because that's the only exposure you've got to people. So one of the classic examples that we talk about a lot is this kind of concept of a three stage approach on the call to action on the back of the book. So the next steps for people, as much as possible, give them a zero commitment option, a minimal commitment option and, and the opportunity of actually pull the plug, pull up. I keep saying pull the plug, pull the trigger and start working with you. So the zero commitment option is that's just head over to the website or head over to wherever and there's a lot more information on this that we provide for free just because we want to educate people. The second step, knowing that they've got the book already, is the follow on action. It's if they were sat in the office in front of you and you were talking to them, what would you want them to do next? So sticking with the financial example from, from earlier on, that might be something around the due diligence questions as someone comes in the office. Not sure if it's a legal requirement here in the UK it's a legal requirement. You need to go through some due diligence steps to find out the person's financial, where they are on the kind of financial spectrum, whether they're a sophisticated investor or whether they're a consumer and what their risk tolerance is and all of that type of thing. So some of Those questions are going to be things that you can find to people as a checklist. I've talked a lot obviously with the my situation of moving across. We've talked a lot about Jim hacking and the bring your spouse here book that Jim wrote and the call to action. That second step, that minimum commitment call to action is to download a copy of the Visa checklist so that you can go through step by step and see where you are. So all of those things and then the third step is the best way to get started is to work with us and to work with us jump on board and follow whatever these steps are. But that second step that. Well in fact the first and second step that go here and find out more for free and the best next step you can take is get a copy of the assessment or the scorecard or whatever it is. But those things in the Kindle sense need to be in the copy of the book. And in theory you need to start introducing them relatively early because we know the, the amount read tails off with the number of pages. So everyone reads the COVID most people read the first page, far lower people number of people read the back page. So that introducing that call to action a little bit different in the Kindle model, start introducing those options, those check moves, those way of allowing people to engage outside of the confines of the book, all need to start be introduced a little bit earlier because there's, there's them reading the book is the only option you've got to communicate with them because you don't get their email address, you don't get the way of following up with them as you would do in outside of the Kindle environment. Yeah, there we go.

Guest: Very good. Yeah.

Stuart: I think I've got to the stage where my voice is about, is about giving up that whole Kindle model. The we didn't even touch on the kind of bestseller things which. And the credibility thing which we don't really get into at all. It's, it's not a scam. But what's a nice way of saying that it's maybe manipulating the system.

Guest: I think that's a fair way to say it, you know.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: Manipulating the manipulation of the system.

Stuart: Yeah. You know, the problem with saying that something is a bestseller or saying that you're a number one best selling author is that that badge has with it a certain amount of expectation. And whether that expectation or not is based on reality. So the fact that you can get a book to a bestseller in a subcategory of a Kindle bookstore, the fact that technically you can do it. Still, if you ask the average person on the street what their expectation of a number one bestseller was, it will be very different from what you were actually delivering.

Guest: Delivering.

Stuart: Unless of course, that is what you're delivering. So if your focus is on the, on the book, you want to make it into a best seller, you want to put all of that time and effort into making it a substantial volume that stands on its own as a definitive source of information that people would happily and willingly pay 10, 15, $20 for. Then this little bit that I'm talking about now doesn't apply because that's typically not what we're talking about. We're talking about a book that engages. And the majority of people who are out there talking about becoming a best seller in order to get more business, they're not also talking about investing tens of thousands of dollars and months and months worth of time. However, as always, depends on what the use case is, depending on what the funnel is, depending on what the end product is. If that is what you're doing, then ignore this next few minutes because you are taking those steps. But for people, when they hear bestseller, there's an expectation around it. It's the same. We've talked about in the shows before, about charging for the books on am, and there's a minimum price that you have to charge. But some people want to charge 10, 15, $20 for the physical book. And the problem is when you look at the competitive landscape of what other books are being sold for that, you'll typically see best selling authors with books of 150, 250, 300 pages selling for that same price. And unless you're going in at that level, which isn't what we're talking about, if that is what you're doing, you, this podcast isn't probably going to give you all the answers. It will point you in the right direction. But you then also got a lot of work to do. On top of that, our process isn't going to get you to that. That's not what we do. So the downside of the credibility play in the Kindle or even the Amazon Store is there's the risk of this expectation gap. And it's definitely not all the time because there are plenty of very concise books that absolutely deliver value. And certainly that's what we do talk about. We do talk about delivering value in the content. Answer the one question as deeply and as comprehensively as possible. Give people the opportunity then to learn more and to take their understanding to the next Step. But it's just where it's coming from. It's like the positioning behind it. If people are trying to. If they just want to get to a bestseller label and then aren't really bothered about the content, then there's a disconnect. If they want to get to a best selling label and there is concern for the content, there is a kind of willingness to put behind the content, then that's fine because it's kind of congruent. Ask the average person on the street, is this a bestseller? Then they might say yes, if it meets those criteria. So the social proof side of things, I would think about that as a benefit of a secondary or tertiary benefit of doing this rather than the primary reason for doing it. The primary reason should be engaging and starting the conversation and then moving forward. And if you do the work necessary to make it a best seller or if it happens to become a best seller, that's great. It's an added bonus. Rather than doing it in the point of view of I'm going to game the system to get that and then I've got to follow up with something that kind of meets that criteria.

Guest: Very. Some very good points there that you made. Definitely. Well, hopefully it's hard for me whenever, because that's when I speak to people, oh, I want this to be an Amazon bestseller. And that just. That's. It's from my perspective, you know, I never want to promise anything, you know, and it's not something that we do and it's not, you know. Well, obviously we'll put the book on Amazon and we'll help you set it up and stuff, but it's not the right process, you know, for you.

Stuart: Yeah. And what's the reason for doing it as well? Exactly. I think there is a little bit. We started off the conversation, so it closes out nicely by saying the build it and they will come type model isn't really realistic because if it ever was realistic to a certain degree, it was a coincidence of a gap in the market and the supply and demand mix. So if you're the only Kindle book in town, then you're going to be a best seller because there's no other competition. If there's 10 million competitive books out there now, that's more of a difficult thing, but it's the intent behind it. If you just want to be a bestseller because you think it will magically make things happen, then that's probably not the case. If you want to be a bestseller because it's actively supporting other things, because you know that within your environment you want to get on the speaking circuit and looking at all the other speakers out there, they all have this best selling label that they can apply to themselves. So therefore it ticks that box and moves it forward, then that's more of a valid case than oh yeah, I just want it because someone said it was a good idea.

Guest: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: So with all of that being said, let's, let's wrap up, I think a couple of actions then for people. Really. The best thing you can do if you haven't yet completed your book Blueprint Scorecard is head over to BookBlueprint Score and go through the steps that allow you to assess yourself on the eight mindsets. If being a best selling author within a an Amazon category is important to you, we've not, like we said, we don't. That's not really something we focus on. But these eight mindsets will definitely help you assess where you are across the board and put you in the best possible place to get to that stage, even if that stage is outside of something that we particularly talk about. So, top point is head over to bookblueprintscore.com I'm going to try and remember I've written on a bit of paper here to put a link to Michael Gleason's book, the one by selling book in the show Notes. So show notes are going to be this is episode 64. So head over to 90minutebooks.com forward slash podcast and episode 64. I'm going to put a link to that. But if something happens that I don't or if you just want to search for it, then it's. I'm pretty sure the book is called Wombat Selling. I'm pretty sure it's by an Australian academic called Dr. Michael Gleason. Historic or previously. The book did go out of print. It wasn't available, but you could find some PDFs on some like archive sites here and there. I don't know whether it's still in print, whether you can still get a copy of it. If I can find a link, I'll put a link in the show notes. So 90minutebooks.com

Guest: Michael Hewitt Gleason.

Stuart: Yeah, that's it.

Guest: Yes, that's it.

Stuart: Perfect.

Guest: It's on Amazon. Yeah.

Stuart: Okay, excellent. Oh, perfect. So maybe it's only available on Amazon. I used to be able to find a PDF download of it. Maybe that's what's not now available. So we'll put some links in but feel free to Google it a bit more if you want. So last but not least, if you want to be a guest on the show, we've got some guest slots lined up now. We've recorded a couple that will get out over the summer. So head over to 90minutebooks.com guest and if you want to brainstorm any of your book ideas, go through your scorecards, talk about your idea of either a new book that you want to do or your existing book and how to best put it into a funnel, then definitely jump on that guest, fill out that guest form and we're gonna get some more. Or we've got some slots to schedule over the next couple of weeks and it'll be great to really practically go through your funnel and get that dialed in.

Guest: Awesome. Very good.

Stuart: Perfect. A last thoughts or anything that we've missed as we were going through there?

Guest: No, I think we got it. Like you said, if anybody has any questions, just reach out.

Stuart: Perfect. Well, on that note, thanks again for your time listening, Betsy. Thanks again for your time and we'll catch everyone in the next one.

Guest: Always. Very good. Thanks so much.

Stuart: Thanks, guys. Bye Bye. It.