Book Marketing Mistakes Most Authors Make—And How to Avoid Them - BM489

Think your book is ready for the world?
Not so fast. Before you publish, you need a plan. And this week's guest, Naren Aryal, CEO, Amplify Publishing Group helps you build one that actually works.

You’ll get the inside track on today’s publishing options: traditional, self, and hybrid. More important, you’ll learn how to pick the path that fits your goals, and how to turn your book into something bigger.

Find out why the smartest authors start marketing long before launch, how a clear target audience changes everything, and why your book might be your best tool for landing speaking gigs, consulting clients, and global deals.

In this episode you'll discover how to...

• Pick your path: The real-world pros and cons of each publishing model
• Avoid the launch trap: Why most books flop—and what to do instead
• Make your book work harder: Get more than sales—get leads, stages, and deals
• Grow before you go live: Build your audience early and connect like a pro

If you want your book to do more than sit on a shelf, hit the play button now!

Here's how to connect with Naren:

Website

Email

LinkedIn - Naren
LinkedIn - Amplify Publishing
Instagram

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Transcript

Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Naren Aryal. Naren is CEO of Amplify Publishing Group, a leading independent hybrid publisher for over 20 years. He advises industry experts and thought leaders on the opportunities and challenges that exist in the ever-evolving world of publishing. Naren's visionary leadership has spearheaded a critical disruption of the publishing industry and has legitimized the fastest-growing sector of the market to date. At each turn, he's created more opportunities for deserving authors across genres to not only publish their work, but to publish their work well. 

Naren, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's expert and mentor.

Naren Aryal [00:01:08]:
Susan, it is wonderful to be here. I've followed your podcast, your show, and here I am on it. And so it's just a real thrill for me.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:17]:
Wow, I love that you didn't tell me that earlier. Well, your credibility now goes through the roof. You realize that, don't you?

Naren Aryal [00:01:25]:
I just call it like I see it or hear it.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:27]:
I should say I love it. So, Naren, you talk about opportunities and challenges that exist in this publishing world. You've been in it for many years. I've been it for many years. You've seen it change. What are the major things that you feel our listeners should know about?

Naren Aryal [00:01:50]:
Well, this is a great time to be a content creator and specifically as related to books. If I think back about 10 years ago, there were a lot of predictions that the book as a form of content would be less and less relevant. I'm here to tell everybody that that prediction has proven to be false. And I say that with a lot of glee. As it turns out, the book is still the ultimate piece of long form. Content that still gets noticed, is still a moment in time where other people will take interest in the author's work and the author's. And because of that, and I think the stats bear this out, book sales have actually increased slightly over the last decade or so. That tells me there continues to be opportunities in the world of publishing, number one, at the highest level.

Naren Aryal [00:02:43]:
And number two, there has become a real diversification of publishing pathways, which you're all too familiar with, and your listeners are as well, in that there are different pathways that are right for different authors. And I'm not here to tell you one pathway is better than the other. But I am here to tell you, if you have good content, there is a way to get the content out. And for that content to do all the things that you as an author are imagining it will do for your platform and your business. And of course, selling books as well. So I'm bullish on where we are as an industry today and I'm even more bullish about what the next 10 years holds for us.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:25]:
That's so exciting. I love to hear that. Because, yes, I think we're in an industry that is changing dramatically. It was sort of like a sleeping giant for so many years and now all of a sudden, boom. There are opportunities galore for everyone. However, when authors start thinking about these different pathways, what should they be considering before choosing the path that they go with the publishing? How should they consider hybrid versus traditional?

Naren Aryal [00:03:58]:
Let's talk about traditional as a starting point. Those opportunities and those channels continue to shrink, right? At one point there was seven or eight big houses, now there's the big five and they continue to be more and more selective and they're looking for people with massive platforms and a track record of selling books. And if you are dead set on getting a book deal from Simon and Schuster, and for example, I encourage everybody to absolutely understand exactly what is required and the time commitment and the likelihood that that is going to happen for you, given your circumstances, before moving in that direction. What does that mean? Of course, you know, you have to put together a great proposal and find the right agent and, and have that agent sell the book, the work to the house. Now, just from a pure statistical perspective, the odds are against the average author of getting that. Just understand what you're up against. And then on the other hand is self publishing. And when I started, Amazon just had opened the floodgates for self publishing, which I found to be a fantastic thing.

Naren Aryal [00:05:04]:
And it's still a great thing, regardless of the size of potential readership. Actually, regardless of the size, the quality of the work, there is a pathway to publishing that is fast, that is cheap, and more and more people are meeting publishing success going the self publishing route. That is great news. But I will say as a caveat, more and more people are self publishing. I think last year or 2023, there were 3 million published books. I'm going to say about 70% of those were self published. So there's just a lot more work out in the world, even though more and more people are succeeding self publishing. So that's just a consideration, something for your listeners just to be aware of.

Naren Aryal [00:05:44]:
And what we Found when we started, now we're 21 years in is there was this opportunity in the middle and at the time we started, it wasn't even called hybrid publishing. It was just this opportunity where companies like us and others, and I know you're a hybrid publisher as well, with your company, there's a real opportunity for high quality content that is the same in terms of distribution that the large houses provide and in many cases better, more targeted and more focused marketing efforts. And so there's been this new class of publishing company that has sort of emerged to service a new class of authors. And these new class of authors, or many of your listeners, again, these are folks that the value selling in as many books as possible. But if you ask them, they'll tell you in addition to selling many books as possible, they want to A help people, they want to B increase their visibility. They want to have this content, particularly if it's well done, be a lead gen magnet for however they monetize in. Regardless of whether that's keynote speaking or consulting or seminars or webinars or bringing new clients onto their consultancy. Whatever the case may be, the book can still serve as a central piece of a platform that will allow that and so amplify other hybrid publishing companies.

Naren Aryal [00:07:09]:
That's our aim, is to provide a high quality book that will ultimately help the author achieve their project goals.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:18]:
Yes, and I love the fact that you emphasize that because so often, and I'm sure you've heard it as well, people are hoping that the book itself is going to help them get rich. You and I know that that's not the case. And I probably say this almost on every episode that it's gotta be more than that. It's the speaking, the training, the coaching, the consulting. The book is that testament that you're an expert in the field, but not necessarily one that's going to be selling millions of books, although it's not unheard of. But however often it's the celebrity status that allows you to sell high numbers. Let's look at the book as that you call it that legion, that lead magnet possibility. Talk to us about how you help your authors use that book to sort of emphasize their expertise in their area.

Naren Aryal [00:08:21]:
Well, I think it starts with target market, even before target market or along with target market, a really understanding of why this book is important. You have to have clarity in terms of who's going to care about your book. And of course I've said this before, if you think everybody's going to care about your book, that actually Means nobody's going to care about your book. And you have not done a good job of really drilling down on target market. And so when you understand who the target market is, and I'll just throw out an example, maybe you think it's C level HR people. That's just an example. We encourage people to think about who that target market is. C suite level HR people in this example, from the time they're conceptualizing the book to the time they're writing their book, to the time they're, they're coming up with a distribution game plan for the book and definitely when they're marketing the book.

Naren Aryal [00:09:08]:
So having clear visibility on who can benefit from this book, number one. And more times than not, that person is going to be somebody that can help the author, not today, but in some period of time, monetize the publishing project. It all starts with the target market.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:27]:
It starts with the target market. You and I have had this discussion before we came on the air, the idea of niche marketing, which is very much something that I focus on in terms of encouraging authors to go deeper into the marketplace because I feel that there are a lot more opportunities there than if they're following what everybody else is doing now saying that what are some of the mistakes that you find that your authors are making in once they have the book?

Naren Aryal [00:10:02]:
Well, the work really starts once the book is sent off to print. And actually the biggest mistake, I would say is not really thinking about the marketing program, the plan far enough in advance. And you've seen this many times, Susan, there's a, an exhale when the book is sent off to print and there could be a lull and that is the wrong time to have a lull in the activity in terms of book marketing. And so really have a thought out plan. There are a hundred things that an author can do to market her book. Now you better know what those hundred things are and you better understand that maybe 25 of them, 25% are going to work for this specific project. Almost think of it as a checklist. And you know, there are best practices that you can find on the Internet.

Naren Aryal [00:10:48]:
There's resources like you offer, Susan, and we offer, but really understanding the broad list of things that one should be trying with an understanding that maybe only 25% of them work.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:00]:
Now audiobooks are so big and the trend is growing for them. Talk to us about encouraging your authors to have an audiobook. Is that something that's part of what you offer? Is it something that you recommend?

Naren Aryal [00:11:18]:
Yes, I would say about 75% of our authors have an audiobook. And this is just a matter of more people are consuming audio, period. Post pandemic, through the pandemic, that was the one format that increased. The greatest physical books, as we talked earlier in the show, have continued to grow slightly and ebooks during that time actually plateaued and maybe went down one or two points. And that came at the expense of an audiobook. It's a reality. Audio is a format that is consumed more and more. You gotta be there in most cases.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:53]:
How about foreign rights?

Naren Aryal [00:11:55]:
Yeah, foreign rights. We're seeing an uptick for us. We partner with Drop Cap, which is a global foreign rights agent. I'm gonna say probably about 20, 25% of our books get foreign rights deals within the first three, four months.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:11]:
And how does that work? Talk to us a little bit more about that because I think that's something that many authors miss in terms of an opportunity. What are some of the things that they should know and how did they get compensated for foreign rights?

Naren Aryal [00:12:26]:
Great question. And so for the US based audience, the world is interested in content that comes from the U.S. it's just a fact. What we typically see is authors will be given, call it a, a small advance. And when I say small, you know, most of all the deals that we work with are in the $2,000 to $5,000 range. Right. And then they'll get a royalty on sales, call it 8% for some fixed period of time, five years. The author does not have to pay any production related costs.

Naren Aryal [00:13:00]:
So whoever acquires the rights will do the following. They will translate the work if needed. They will print books, they will create a new ebook, perhaps a new audiobook, and they will take of all the distribution. What happens is the author gets a little an advance on the front end. We'll just say 2500 and then we'll get 8% over the next four or five years. I will say that for our authors, we encourage them to get as much as you can up front, even if it's a modest amount, because it's really hard to track sales overseas. And we're just sort of at the mercy of foreign publishing houses and their reporting and their royalties. And I'm not saying that anybody's doing anything nefarious, but it's not something that you're necessarily going to be able to enforce.

Naren Aryal [00:13:43]:
But I will say one last thing on foreign rights. It is so fun to get your book cover in a different language.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:51]:
It is. I have to tell you, I went crazy when I saw mine. It was In Korean and it was in Polish. I was like, I can't read it. But hey, it looks great.

Naren Aryal [00:14:03]:
That's right.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:04]:
It's the funniest thing when you get that. But it's fun. As you say, you don't have the same control. But do you still own the rights or are you selling the rights?

Naren Aryal [00:14:14]:
No, no, no, no, no. You're just licensing the rights for a period of time. You're still the copyright owner. You should be. And that's something that I'm sure there are some folks that try to acquire copyrights, but that's not something that you should be doing. You're just licensing the translation and distribution rights for a fixed period of time. Typically.

Susan Friedmann [00:14:33]:
Excellent. Once a book is out there. Naren, what are some of the first marketing steps you recommend your authors take to gain traction?

Naren Aryal [00:14:44]:
There's so many. But one of the things that I, that I tell our authors all the time, an author's best friend, is their email list. You gotta let your crew, your team, your launch team know about the forthcoming launch. And you got to be clear with your specific asks of the launch team. You can't just say, hey, my new book is coming out, please support me. No, you got to send a newsletter and the more emails you can get pre launch, the better. And then you got to have specific asks. Number one, go buy my book.

Naren Aryal [00:15:18]:
If you want to send them to your website to buy the book, make it clear you want them to buy the book on your website. If you want to send them to Amazon, make it clear that you want them to buy the book on Amazon. And then of course, leaving a review and sharing with the network. This is the one thing that you have control over. This is an asset that you own your email list and this is a great way to launch the book and gain momentum for the book marketing phase.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:47]:
I love that you emphasize that email list because I call it like gold dust. That's right, because the reliance on Amazon and I'd like you to just touch if you could, on some of the pros and cons of Amazon because I think that so many authors have their rose colored glasses when it comes to Amazon and they think it's going to do wonders for them. Give us some of the behind the scenes if you could.

Naren Aryal [00:16:16]:
Yeah. So Amazon's tricky. Perhaps I could best say that I've got a love hate relationship and as time goes on it's skewing more to the hate. How about that?

Susan Friedmann [00:16:24]:
I share that.

Naren Aryal [00:16:26]:
Okay. Okay.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:27]:
I call it the 800 pound gorilla.

Naren Aryal [00:16:30]:
Yeah. Amazon what it affords you is a frictionless opportunity for consumers to buy your book. Now, despite what I said about some of the trouble I've got with Amazon, where did I buy my last book? It was on Amazon and I'm not proud of that. But what that means is a consumer has prime. They know that they're going to get the lowest price. They know it'll show up the next day. Those are the reasons why consumers love Amazon. Now on the flip side, authors and publishers don't love Amazon.

Naren Aryal [00:17:01]:
And the reason is they take a huge cut for the privilege of being on their platform. They don't give you any data, you don't know who's buying your book. Whereas if you can get people to your website and get them to learn more about you, the Author and the 360 degree view of your work, that's invaluable. And by the way, you'll make more on a book bought on your website than you will one bot on Amazon. Actually you got to sell three on Amazon to make as much profit as you would selling one on your website. It's that stark the difference. And to sum it up, ease of the consumer experience is why people go to Amazon. It is not in the author's and publisher's best interest most of the time.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:49]:
Yes, it's so funny because like you, I mean, I'm embarrassed. But I do buy on Amazon when it's the first place I go. When I search out book titles, it's almost like a necessary evil. However, I love the fact that you say you're not going to get anything from them. You don't know who's buying the book.

Naren Aryal [00:18:12]:
And one more thing I'll add if we go back to the top of our conversation. We talked about this new class of authors that is publishing to in addition to selling books to getting their ideas out there and helping them monetize. It's hard to monetize when you don't know who your customer is, right?

Susan Friedmann [00:18:27]:
Very much so.

Naren Aryal [00:18:28]:
If you're buying that book that targets C suite HR leaders and you sell it on Amazon, you're never going to find out who that C suite HR leader is or was that bought your book. That's a big miss.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:42]:
Yes, listen to that listeners, because that is so key. I don't know this myth that Amazon is your best friend and unfortunately it isn't.

Naren Aryal [00:18:54]:
Yep, that's right. We share that view.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:58]:
Yes, very much so. How about some creative ways that authors can use their books to open doors? Yeah, we've obviously Speaking engagements, media partnerships. Talk to us a little bit about any of those.

Naren Aryal [00:19:14]:
Yeah, we work with a lot of keynote speakers and speakers are authors, authors are speakers. I'm often asked if a speaker must have a book and the answer is no, it's not a must. But I've seen it time and time again where once their first book comes out, all of a sudden, magically, they're getting on more stages and they're able to increase their fees. I had one particular author, really successful keynote speaker, 15 year career, and for whatever reason, he just never had a book. He came out with a book last year and he sold 8,000 copies directly to organizers of events and that's massive. In addition to selling another 7,000 at retail, it made a impact on a speaking that very few other marketing initiatives could have.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:05]:
I feel that every speaker, everyone in their audience should have a copy of their book. Now, could that be part of your speaking contract? Absolutely. I mean, many authors are doing this more and more now and I think there's an expectation, especially for keynote speakers, that they have a book. It never used to be and I mean, I've been in the speaking business for over 35 years and very seldom did a speaker have a book. But now they seem to expect you to have one.

Naren Aryal [00:20:38]:
That's right. People that are booking speakers, they are risk adverse. This is another piece that shows that the person that they're hiring is an expert in whatever you're hiring them to speak on. Just think of it that way, it makes you a safer bet.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:52]:
Yes. And I mean if it's a choice between you without a book and someone else who has a book, then the chances are that the other person is going to get the gig. That's right, because they look more like an expert.

Naren Aryal [00:21:07]:
And it's all about making the buyer of the speaking look good and successful. They don't want to take any chances.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:14]:
That's an excellent segue for you to tell us how you and your company help authors be successful.

Naren Aryal [00:21:22]:
My company's Amplify Publishing Group, that's our website, amplifypublishinggroup.com we publish across many genres, from children's books, where I started, to fiction to memoir. We of course spend most of our time doing thought leadership titles, business self help and the like. And you know, as a hybrid publishing company, we stick to the IBPA's. I think it's 11 criteria to become certified as a hybrid publishing company. And I don't know them all off the top of my head, but they include things like vetting submissions, providing real distribution, helping with marketing as requested by the author. We really are true to this hybrid publishing model. I'm really proud to say that we've been one of the early companies to focus on hybrid publishing. We are thrilled about the work that our authors are doing, and not just our authors, but authors throughout the hybrid world.

Naren Aryal [00:22:21]:
And so our value proposition is that we have a turnkey approach. You know, by publishing company standards, we're not tiny anymore. We're 33 employees. We do just about everything in house except for editorial. We'll bring ghostwriters and writing coaches and editors into projects based on the genre and availability. But everything else we do in house. We have an in house design team, we have an in house distribution team, we have an in house book marketing team. For anybody that's interested in learning more, please just hop on the website.

Naren Aryal [00:22:50]:
It's AmplifyPublishingGroup.com or you can feel free to email me. It's Naren@AmplifyPublishingGroup.com. I'm happy to send you more information as appropriate or just be a resource.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:04]:
Fabulous. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your vetting process.

Naren Aryal [00:23:09]:
Yeah, as you can imagine, we see a lot of submissions and for us, the projects that we want to work on are, I guess, two primary areas that we focus on. Number one is the quality of the content and number two is the marketability of the project. And you know, some of that is about the subject matter and the author's platform. We're not talking platform like the big publishing houses talk about platform, but we just want to know that there's a market. If this is a, a family memoir with 10 people that are likely to buy it, at that point we'll talk to the potential author and say, hey, this is actually better for Amazon Publishing for us. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that family memoir that I just mentioned, but for us, we got to have good content or the ability to get to good content, meaning bringing on a ghostwriter or a writing coach or an editor. We have to land at good content number one and we have to have a market for the book number two.

Susan Friedmann [00:24:07]:
Yes, it always concerns me when authors want to write memoir. And yes, it's a legacy, but who's going to buy it if they don't have, as you say, a list of their own of people who are going to buy this book? I think it's getting harder and harder to sell that. So those are important criteria. Naren, as you know, we always have our guests leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?

Naren Aryal [00:24:38]:
Market your book before you have a book. And what I mean by that is for us the time to publication is nine months, maybe a year. And what I tell our authors is in that nine months, start introducing topics that are in your book. You are in platform growing mode in the year before your book because what happens is when the book is finally out or you're sending out the pre sell link, you've done the legwork to establish more relationships, more authentic relationships for people to be invested in in you and your area of expertise. So when you make that ultimate ask, it's more organic and you're likely to see a lot more success. So use that time wisely. The one year before pub date.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:22]:
And that's such a challenging concept because what I found with authors is they become so myopic about writing the book that the thought of marketing it as well is just terrifying. So let's stay focused on writing the book first.

Naren Aryal [00:25:43]:
That's right. That's one approach. Right? But know that this second peak is coming.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:47]:
Exactly, because publishing the book isn't the end of the line, it's just the beginning.

Naren Aryal [00:25:52]:
Indeed.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:53]:
Well, Niran, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and listeners. If your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with Naren:

Website

Email

LinkedIn - Naren
LinkedIn - Amplify Publishing
Instagram