Published: The Proven Path From Blank Page To 10,000 Copies Sold with Chandler Bolt on Episode #370

Chandler Bolt [0:00]
This is Chandler bolt with self publishing calm and you’re listening to EA interviews,

Chandler Bolt [0:05]
EA interviews, Episode 370 inspiration,

Chandler Bolt [0:08]
transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario for tuning for today’s expert authority effect interview.

Mario Fachini [0:19]
Have you ever thought about publishing a book? You’ve seen them everywhere. There’s New York Times bestsellers, there’s this bestsellers there’s, oh man, I wish I could do that. Do I have to go curl up in a cabin and sit down by the lake and just spend years and years writing all this stuff? I want to do do a memoir of fiction this that the other thing? Have you ever considered it for business? I am super excited to have none other than the CEO of self publishing school here. Chandler bolt bolt in the author of published we’re going to be answering all of this and more right after we thank our sponsor. So you’ve got your book mostly written but now what visit get my business book published calm today to learn how you can publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Chandler, Bolte Taylor, how are you feeling today?

Chandler Bolt [1:16]
I’m doing great. Mario, thank you so much for having me. Oh, it’s

Mario Fachini [1:19]
my pleasure. I’ve been seeing what you’re doing for some time in senior different conferences where we have mutual friends, it’s so great to see what you’re doing, the people you’re helping, and how you’re helping them because there’s a lot of people who do publishing out there. And there’s so many varying degrees, but you’ve done it and turned it into a seven and eight figure business in a big way. Because I know you have a big heart. And you want to help a lot of people. So what how did you get into it? And why publishing?
Chandler Bolt [1:48]
Yeah, so I mean, it kind of an unlikely path. I’m a sea level English student and a college dropout with ADHD. So for a lot of people, the last person to do everything to write a book. But I think, you know, sometimes they say the worst students are the best teachers. Because I know what it feels like to struggle, and to not understand something and to have this thing that’s intimidating, like a book. And so how I got into it is wrote and published a couple of books they did, they did decently well. And then I dropped out of school to go all in on running a business. And at the time, I was working on a business that was just failing. And meanwhile, people kept asking about the book publishing stuff and said, How have you published his books, these books? How do you do it, and I would just get on the phone for an hour for free just to teach him everything I needed just to be a nice person. And eventually, you know, kind of like I said, it’s only you only get smacked in the face so many times for you turn out of luck. And you turn around look, and there’s a whole line of people that want help with that thing. And so that ultimately became the creation of what’s now self publishing school, and self publishing calm. And we’ve, we’ve been scaling and growing since then. And so kind of the ethos of what we do, or what we do, but just why we do is, we believe that books change lives. And so books change the lives of authors, or sorry, books change the lives of readers, right. It’s like how many of us have had our lives changed by by reading a book probably want to do this, right. And so books change the lives of readers, but they also change the lives of authors. We always say it’s not about the book, it’s about who you become in the process of writing and publishing that book. And so we exist to change lives through books, we’re on a mission to help 100,000 people publish their book by 2035, and get about 6000 books published in the last six years. So we got a lot of good progress, have a lot more work to do. And so that’s what we that’s why we wake up every day, and we’re excited to help people publish books.

Mario Fachini [3:44]
Now, that is so inspiring, because I do believe they do help the author, and they help the reader. It helps everyone I mean, I was just joking. You know, no matter what happens with the technical, the social media, the marketing, any of this stuff, last I checked books have been around a couple 1000 years, and they’re not going anywhere. So for someone that’s listening, going, well, I don’t know if I can lock myself in the cabin, or I can do this. What do you say to someone who really has a passion? And they really want to get their message out there, but they just don’t know how to start, what would you say is the first step?

Chandler Bolt [4:20]
Yes. So the first step. So really, the most important thing, if you’re trying to get started is to get your rough draft done as quickly as possible. Now, you can’t get your rough draft done if you don’t first get started with your rough draft. And so, but that’s the most important thing. So don’t I don’t want you to think about your cover your title, your marketing plan, any of that. It’s how do I get my rough draft done as quickly as possible? Because once once that happens, you’re going to start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And you’re going to start to believe that this is possible. So but before that, you got to get started right. So I have this concept. I call it the more writing method. More is an acronym. And this is this is how you start So number one, M stands for Mind Map. Okay, and so what I’d encourage everyone listening, watching, however you’re consuming this, grab a blank sheet of printer paper. And you can either pause right now you can wait till the end of this episode. But so right as soon as this episodes over, grab that blank sheet of paper, put your book topic in the middle of the page. And I want you to put a timer for 15 minutes, and I was you write out everything you can think of on that topic. And so brainstorm ideas, you have stories, you have broken record conversations you’ve have, you’ve had on this topic, anything you think of onto the page, so you’re going to create a mind map, then the O stands for outline. So you turn your mind that into an outline for the book as a whole. And then the R stands for rough draft. So you’re going to get your rough draft written, I’ll come back to that in just a second. And then the E stands for editing. And so that’s the more writing method, my map outline, rough draft, editing, and zoom in on that rough draft piece, you’ll start with Chapter number one, you’ll you’ll spend 10 minutes mind mapping everything you can think of on that chapter 10 minutes turning that mind map into an outline for that chapter, then 45 minutes to an hour and a half, writing the chapter. And you’ll repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. Now some people write better than they speak. And so this is this makes this process easier is do the same thing Mind Map outline, but then speak the chapter. get it transcribed, repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. So that’s really the starting point for most people is get your mind map that’s going to show you whoa, wow, like, I’ve got so much that can talk about on this topic. And then that’s gonna help you move, move faster through the rest of the process. I love

Mario Fachini [6:44]
how you have it laid out and also have it the acronym for it because I know there’s people who go, I have no problem writing or I have a manuscript, but then they get stuck at the editing, or they never revise it. Or, you know, there’s people who are freaked out about the editing, they never start the process. You know, that first step is the most important thing. What would you say to someone who’s going? Well, I need a website, I need the ISBN should I be on Amazon Kindle or Barnes? Like they’re just all over here. And they just don’t know what to write with? Do you focus on any specific niche of books? Or do you help people with fiction, nonfiction memoirs? The whole shebang?

Chandler Bolt [7:25]
Yeah, so. So two part question, I’d say what I would say those folks is don’t worry about any of that stuff until your rough drafts done. Nothing matters until your but your rough draft until your rough draft is done. Now, as far as what type of books we help with, we kind of we’ve been predominantly nonfiction using books to grow your business. But over the last few years, we’ve we’ve developed a lot of other curriculum. So we get children’s book school, we get the fundamentals of fiction and story. We’ve got a full time fiction program for folks who want to make a full time living from their fiction writing, we’ve created a bunch of memoir specific curriculum and that sort of thing. But then also, I mean, we have tons of people. I mean, we published about two books a day. And so we have tons of people in all different genres. So I know just yesterday, one of our students published a Indian Vegan Cookbook for crock pot cooking, I think are something such a niche topic, but uh, I mean, so that it kind of runs the gamut.

Mario Fachini [8:33]
Well, that’s fantastic. Now let’s talk about that niche. Because some people they want to go wide and other pee. I mean, that’s very specific. It’s not just Indian vegan, but it’s specific cooking, and then crockpot because, I mean, there’s 1,000,001 I personally enjoy cvwd, the cvwd method. But you know, there’s books on that there’s books on crock pot, there’s cookbooks on oven and all of this what would you recommend to someone who goes, I want to speak on this, but there’s all these different avenues should I niche down? Or should I go more broad?

Chandler Bolt [9:05]
Yeah, the the riches are in the niches. I mean, so you’re, you’re going to do much better of being specific. And this is one of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is they you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. And so the right this book, it’s how to live an awesome life and pursue your passion and chase your dreams. It’s like, okay, I have no idea what that books about. And much less Why should read it. And so the more you can niche down, niche down whatever you want to call it. The more you can get specific with the topic, your book, the better book you’re going to write, the more and the better your books going to sell and the more people that you’re going to help at a deeper level.

Mario Fachini [9:48]
I want to go back for a second. You’re sharing such great information, but I want to round out a little bit more of your story. You said you wrote a couple of books and congrats. That’s no small feat in and of itself in before you had Your wildly successful company, self publishing.com and self publishing school. How did you figure out? Did you have a book writing? Coach? Did you have a trainer? Did you just follow some blog articles, YouTube videos? How did you figure out how to do your first one?

Chandler Bolt [10:16]
Yeah, good question. I, it was a, it was a bit, it was a mix of a bunch of things. I got some advice from a mentor on the writing piece, who he introduced me to the mind mapping concept. So I’m a big fan of who not how so who has done this before? Not how do I not how do I do it? I think they said Dan Sullivan concept and

Mario Fachini [10:37]
Ben Hardy actually had been on the show. Yeah,

Chandler Bolt [10:39]
yeah, great calm, so who not how and so it was from a mentor, I also use this thing called the number one book system at the time, way back in the day, um, helped me learn a lot of Amazon Marketing, and then it’s just kind of grown and evolved from there.

Mario Fachini [10:53]
So again, if someone’s trying to scour articles this and that, it sounds like you’re just going to go back to take the first step get that rough draft written.

Chandler Bolt [11:01]
Yeah. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And really, um, my book published I mean, I’m depending on when people are listening to or watching this, the second edition of that is all about like, okay, it don’t scour blog posts, articles, or any of that stuff like that is really meant to make take people from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold kind of in a step by step sequential format. So that’s it go there, just make it as far as I can think of the word right, that make it easy and affordable as possible for folks to just go through the process and say, Alright, now I’ve got an overview of the process. Either I can do this myself, or I can work with self publishing school and get a little bit of extra help.

Mario Fachini [11:43]
When Should someone jump into the editing of their book?

Chandler Bolt [11:47]
Yeah. So So there’s, you know, the more writing method, right, so you got my map, outline, rough draft editing. And so once you’ve got the rough draft done, there’s really two steps of, there’s two or three steps of editing, depending on how you look at it, what I like to do, and what I recommend, what we teach is self editing. And so that’s kind of the first, that’s the first step. And so if you zoom out a little bit, and I’ve got, I kind of walk through this in the book, but there’s eight milestones on your author journey, right? So there’s my map, outline, see if I can remember all these rough draft, then there’s self editing, and then there’s professional editing. So we’re in that so so the first piece is what I what I recommend is a verbal read through, see where you actually read your book out loud. And and to

Mario Fachini [12:33]
be clear, let me pause you right there. To be clear, you’re not saying make an audio book, you’re just saying read it out loud to check for proofreading, line and content edits, whatever the case may be, you’re doing

Chandler Bolt [12:45]
a self edit, but I call it a verbal read through. And it’s just a form of self editing. And so then, then once you do that, then you pass it off to a professional editor. And so in the publishing world, they’ll tell you, there’s anywhere between seven to 1014, or more types of editing. I really think that’s pretty confusing. And so I’ve kind of distilled it down to two, where you’ve got content editing, and you’ve got copy editing. Now you’re going to hear like line editing, sustained, substantive editing, you got like, yeah, all these different, you know,

Mario Fachini [13:18]
what you can call it whatever you want. It’s either right or wrong.

Chandler Bolt [13:21]
It’s content. And it’s copy. Right? So it’s the content, is it as kind of like a structural, like, what is in the book? And then and then the copy editing is how are you saying, right? And so the so content is, alright, am I saying the right things? Is it make sense? is a flow? Are there stories of their content gaps, like all that stuff, and then copy editing is, is my sentence structure good is not punctuation, grammar, all that stuff. So that’s where you work with a professional editor, content, Edit, then copy, edit, and then you’re moving into if we’re coming back to the, to the eight milestones, then you’re moving into creating your cover, and your sub 10 Or your title and your cover, then you’re moving into formatting, then you’re prepping for launch, then you’re ultimately launching the book.

Mario Fachini [14:10]
Interesting. I want to unpack this a little bit. Some people suggest start with the cover. And it sounds like you’re saying start with the book.

Chandler Bolt [14:17]
Yeah, I so, you know, some people like to start with a title. I don’t. Personally I like to start start with a topic. And because if I if I start with a title, a I will spend a lot of time trying to figure out the title and not spend time doing what I actually do, which is get the rough draft done. Okay. And again, anything but writing the rough draft before you get your rough draft done is a distraction. And the mind is very good at destroying. I mean, writing a book is uncomfortable. And so it’s, it’s the old joke. It’s, you know, you know, in the writers on the deadline, because that’s when they’re popping up on social media the most right because your mind wants to do anything but the uncomfortable act of writing. And so it that’s why I recommend it that way but also you Write your way to a title that may or may not be the theme of the book, right. And so I like to write to a topic and then get the title last and then create the cover last, there’s a lot of advantages to that you come to a better title. Um, you don’t box yourself in the content, you know. So get feedback, and which is the beginning of the marketing phase is getting feedback on your title and your cover, things like that. And

Mario Fachini [15:24]
so that’s when publishing is fun, because now you get to engage everyone with the marketing and getting the feedback. But yeah, you talked about it being uncomfortable process. I know when I was doing one of mine, I literally made a post on Facebook. That was like, I’m so speedy writing right now, but nothing’s working out. So what good YouTube links do you have for me? Yeah, why is it such an uncomfortable process?

Chandler Bolt [15:48]
Cuz I think it’s difficult you’re you’re crystallizing you’re crystallizing your thoughts into the written word. Which in for a lot of people in your mind, it’s a you know, especially your first book, or really any book, I’ve got to figure out what I think on this topic. And it’s not a I mean,

Mario Fachini [16:08]
you can’t talk your way out of it. It’s either right or wrong.

Chandler Bolt [16:10]
Yes, you’re thinking I am, I am crystallizing my thought into the written word, let me think about this. But then I think also just the creation process of when you’re, whenever you’re creating anything, it’s difficult. You know, it’s, it’s, you’re doing the hard work to create something. And it is not the most dopamine inducing activity, which means your mind which is hardwired for dopamine, and for serotonin, and you know, other just like hardwired for, for immediate gratification wants that. And so, you know, it does give a dopamine hit, opening up social media, or watching a YouTube video or something else. And so our mind says it, this is uncomfortable panic mode, and I need something to make me feel better. But I was, if you’re, you know, Steven Pressfield calls this resistance and of the creation process.

Chandler Bolt [17:11]
Yeah, the The War of Art, right?

Chandler Bolt [17:13]
Yeah, yeah. I had him on the self publishing school podcast that was like, that was a big get, I couldn’t believe it. But it was just so interesting, because he writes fiction, he writes nonfiction. He’s written a screenplay, just all these different types of writing. And I think the War of Art is one of the best books on, you know, the creation process as a whole. It’s just really, really good.

Mario Fachini [17:39]
So someone’s gotten through the writing part, they did the Self Editing. Should everyone use a professional editor? Or?

Chandler Bolt [17:48]
Yes, okay. Yeah,

Mario Fachini [17:51]
no, or Yes. You expand on that a little bit? That wasn’t even hesitate. Yes. Yeah.

Chandler Bolt [17:57]
I mean, and I get it some people and where do you find them? Yeah, great question. So I get it. Some people are on a budget. And and, and that’s totally understandable. And so you might be looking to save money or that sort of thing. But I would say absolutely, you need it. You need an editor. I’m certainly I’m doing a quick search here. I’m trying to so I go, I go in depth in this process on. Let’s see where it is. Here. It is chapter number nine. And in chapter number nine and talk about how to hire an editor, I talked about how to save money on editing all that good stuff. But to answer your question, there’s really two, two resources. Or there’s two two main places to hire an editor referrals or freelance marketplace or marketplaces. Right? So the best the best and best place is referrals from other authors, or from people who have worked with editors. So like, as far away the best is, especially from happy customers of editors in your genre. Second piece would be marketplaces. So you’ve got there’s, there’s there’s Upwork, there is Reed z. We have kind of like an internal Rolodex for self publishing school students where we negotiate exclusive discounts on on editors, cover designers, all that stuff. So you got you got referrals, you got marketplaces, and then most editors are going to charge either by the hour or by the job, I recommend going by the job. A lot of times they’ll charge by the word. So there’s a bunch of ways to to reduce your costs. I mean, it’s an investment. I had a mentor growing up, he said, Chandler, there’s two things you can’t spend too much money on a business, a good lawyer and a good accountant. Because if they’re good, they will make you money. Exactly. And so similarly, with a book, it’s the equivalent is a good editor and a good cover designer. And so those two things they make such a huge impact on book sales. especially with your cover, but then, you know, you know, book quality, which results in referrals and more sales with with your editing. And so it’s it’s really, really important you want to look for a hungry professional. But this is someone who, who helped make it look better.

Mario Fachini [20:19]
Now we’re talking about the budget, what would you say someone should allocate for the budget? And also, you know, don’t skimp on the editing and the cover. But, you know, what are your thoughts on someone going? Well, I don’t have a lot for this, this this this? It’s like, well, is this the right timing then? Because it’s like, if you’re not going to put in a certain threshold, you know, and I get it. Not everyone has all the money in the world. But even if you do, people don’t want to waste it. You know, when we’re getting stuff, I’m sure you’re not just throwing it out the door? I know I’m not. But at the same time, it’s like what would be a reasonable in your mind? So that way, someone’s not going? Well, they’re charging me 300. For this one, I could get it for two, when really most people are charging seven or eight. And they’re not even in the ballpark to begin with. And it’s actually a good deal.

Chandler Bolt [21:03]
Yeah, that’s a great question. So typically, it’s somewhere between one to three cents per word. So in, in common English, though, some of you were like, wait, what? And common English I mean, you’re it’s a few 100 bucks is typically what you could expect to pay. Now for all in costs for producing a quality book is anywhere from a few 100 bucks to a couple 1000 bucks on book production costs you got your three main costs are going to be editing, cover design, and formatting. Those Oh, yeah.

Mario Fachini [21:33]
Formatting. Let’s talk about that. That’s a That’s a fun one. Or can be.

Chandler Bolt [21:38]
Yeah, it’s, it’s really, that one’s not too bad. I’d say the other two are more important and more expensive. So if it’s just if it’s just common EBOOK formatting, that’s pretty simple. If you’re doing more print formatting, that can be a little bit more, that can be a few 100 bucks. But if you know, we have, yeah, that we have is this thing called a book outline template generator. On our site, you can press a couple buttons, and it’ll spit out a 25 page, pre formatted Google Doc. And so if you use something like that, then now all of a sudden, like the, the Title Headings are already formatted, though, like the Okay, a bunch of little things like that to where you really process. Yeah, you save yourself time, and you save yourself money. And so then that’s on on formatting and on the whole process.

Mario Fachini [22:27]
Yeah, and let’s expand on that for people listening, if they’re going, Okay, I want to do an e book. But yeah, I want to get the book book in your hands, you know, the actual book. What would you say to someone that goes, I just want to do an e book versus I just want to do a printed?

Chandler Bolt [22:42]
Yeah, I, my personal recommendation is if you’re going to do it, do it. And so if you’re going to do it, do at least ebook and print, a big mistake that authors make is only publishing their book in one or maybe even two formats. If you publish your book in all three formats, so ebook, print and audio book, you’re going to sell more books, you’re going to make more money. Your royalty rates will be higher on ebook and audio, obviously, because there’s no there’s no hard costs, on on, per per purchase. But publishing all three formats, you’ll sell more books, because different people in different genres just buy books differently, right. So you’re going to sell more books, if you do all three formats. Now you don’t have to launch all at once. So if you’re trying to save on costs, or even if it’s just like, Man, this is kind of overwhelming, you can stagger it. And in some cases, that’s actually better, because you focus all your effort on the e book launch, then a couple weeks to a month later, you come up with a print book, and then a couple of weeks to a month later, you come up with the audiobook. So you kind of you have three launches, which just means that you’re going to keep your book selling and you’re focusing on one format at a time. And that can be be really beneficial for driving book sales.

Mario Fachini [23:55]
What have you found more people enjoy audio books or ebooks nowadays?

Chandler Bolt [24:00]
Yeah, it’s really pretty reader specific. I think audio books are on the rise, and in a lot of ways, but it’s really reader and genre specific and you’ve got kind of your broad kind of category shifts. But I mean, everyone’s been saying that print books are gonna go out, go out of you know, people are gonna stop buying them for you. We’ve been saying that for years, maybe even a decade or more. And yeah, same

Mario Fachini [24:26]
thing with printers for computers. You know, ever since the internet we’re not going to need paper. How long has that worked?

Chandler Bolt [24:34]
But it’s I mean analog, analog and people are still purchasing books and it you see it you see it make it I mean big time comeback of the last few years especially

Mario Fachini [24:44]
now with podcasts increasing also do you think that’s played into the audiobooks more or two? Totally separate?

Chandler Bolt [24:51]
No doubt, no doubt. It’s because people are getting used to consuming content in a in an audio medium and And it’s getting this kind of stuff is getting built into cars. So exactly. So now I mean, I can really choose don’t want to listen to a podcast, I want to listen to an audio book or I want to listen to some, some other form of audio content, like, it’s pretty easy to rotate back and forth between two. And especially if you’re a podcaster. Well, then you should 100% have an audio book because you’re going to be marketing it to your audience of people who already listening to you, right? And so they’re more likely to want, they’re already telling you I consume audio content, right? And so just the segue that and say, Hey, you can grab a copy of my book and audiobook and John Lee Dumas does this really well. There’s an audible bounty. So when people go download your book, if they try audible, audible will send you there, they’re always changing the number, but it’s like 5075 bucks or something crazy like that just for getting people to try audible. And so I mean, it’s pretty amazing. So now all of a sudden, I for me, it’s a few 100 bucks a month, and audible bounties and for a lot of authors if, especially if you do any sort of promotion towards the audiobook can be a good source of source of royalties.

Mario Fachini [26:11]
So I think that’s a good point right there because it for someone that’s listening going well, I’m not sure if I should invest in the cover this that that do what the best because think about that, you know, okay, so you from, from a grand, okay, big deal. But now you’re making a couple 100 A month how you know, the ROI on that exponentially over the next decade. You know, this isn’t a social media post or LinkedIn posts where it’s a one time deal. It’s like, it’s a frickin book. So, thank you for everything you’ve shared. I got a couple more questions before we thank our sponsor and come back. But the first one is, who would you say is your biggest success story out of the I don’t even know the countless 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people you’ve helped?

Chandler Bolt [26:51]
Yeah, the[re’s a lot. I mean, there’s, there’s there’s so many. There’s, there’s, there’s a way narrowed

Mario Fachini [26:57]
down to the first 100. Let’s narrow it down to the first 100

Chandler Bolt [27:03]
Yeah, so I would I would say this I mean, I don’t know if this I’d say this like top success story of I’d say this is probably one of the more meaningful ones to me purse.

Mario Fachini [27:10]
I love that. I love when people reframe it and yeah, please.

Chandler Bolt [27:14]
So this is a so one of our students, Sean Sumner. He wrote and published, he joined self publishing school years ago, wrote and published a couple of books with us on on physical therapy, which is his he’s a full time physical therapist. And then his daughter saw it and said, Hey, Dad, I want to do that. I want to write a book that looks cool. And he said, he said, Alright, go work, write 50 words and come back to me, you know, kind of thinking she wouldn’t write. And she came back a few hours later, she had 50 words written. And so her name is Emma Sumner. She published a book called The fairies of waterfall Island, a kids book, eight years old. The book made $4,000 In the first three months, she went on to, I mean, she donated all that money to an Autism Awareness charity called Autism Speaks. She started doing local speaking gigs. She made like 1200 bucks at her first speaking gig at a local school, they paid her 250 bucks. And she sold a ton of books. She did another one made like 100. Like now she’s getting her quote unquote, allowance, which is really just her monthly royalty check. And she’s paying for school field trips. Like, her confidence is a young woman doing that at eight years old. I mean, the trajectory of her life is this is crazy. So that’s one of my feet. I mean, now she’s inspired so many other kids to write and publish books, we got kids showing up to our conferences, right and kids books like it’s just so cool.

Mario Fachini [28:36]
That’s thank you for sharing that that is meaningful. And also I will throw in and stuff just given the torque tour money like here’s how you work for someone to get a paycheck like this is royalty passive income. Shoot, I don’t know about you, did you have that I

Chandler Bolt [28:50]
ate? I did not. I didn’t

Mario Fachini [28:52]
either start my first company at 12. But I didn’t have that as like,

Chandler Bolt [28:57]
fantasy life skills. Right? It’s a project. You’re it’s a project with your kid that teaches them half a dozen a dozen life skills in the process while also creating an asset that will be with them for the rest of their life.

Mario Fachini [29:10]
For sure. I have one fun question before we think the sponsoring come back yellow or black? Yellow. All right, good. Matches Muy Thai. This is the wheel of whatever and your question is Where would you like to travel that you haven’t been yet?

Chandler Bolt [29:27]
Oh, Bali. No kidding. It’s I mean, it’s just amazed from from what I’ve seen. I haven’t been there but Bali and a lot of places in Asia. I’ve never been Asia.

Mario Fachini [29:39]
Okay. Very good. Yeah, it does look good. I haven’t been there either. But that’s a good one. We’re gonna thank our sponsor real quick and come back for the imperfect action round titles, cover designs and promotion. Oh, mind you. We’re all excited to achieve your goal, maybe even dream of becoming an author to serve more people with your business, but it’s turning out to be a lot more than you expected. Hmm, I get it. I’ve done it numerous times personally. Visit, get my business book published calm today to take the first step on making this process enjoyable. Dare I even say fun? And most definitely profitable. Your business and audience depend on it. But you know what? Don’t take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors, like Lori and I went from

Chandler Bolt [30:22]
having an idea. And the possibilities to actually getting my book published

Chandler Bolt [30:29]
for Katherine, thank you for making my mom number one. Her MaryAlice

Mary Alice [30:35]
what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch,

Chandler Bolt [30:42]
unmanageable Shaun Cody,

Chandler Bolt [30:44]
I’ve worked with Mario over the phone and online and he’s been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rosio

Rosio [30:52]
there’s no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else. Again, I’ve attempted in the past, it didn’t serve me. It’s a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Chandler Bolt [31:03]
Adele, if you’re looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Fachini

Chandler Bolt [31:09]
or Bill Benner I can’t make a higher recommendation for me then work with Mario Fachini He has been great for for me and right now. I won’t work with anybody else except for Mary Okay,

Mario Fachini [31:20]
their words not mine visit get my business book published calm today to take the first step. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com In my real quick, I mean real quick. Alright, and we’re back with the imperfect action round Chandler Are you ready to take imperfect action? Yes, sir. All right, the first question I have for you. You’re ready. Yes, sir. What is the fastest path to the cache?

Chandler Bolt [31:52]
On fast path to the cache is getting your first customer as fast as possible so use the book to use the book to get leads sales and referrals for your business.

Mario Fachini [32:01]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it? Hmm,

Chandler Bolt [32:07]
big biggest problem is not putting pen to paper followed by getting their rough draft done. fastest path to fix it is to write consistently take the 30 day rough draft challenge.

Mario Fachini [32:19]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Chandler Bolt [32:25]
So customer lifetime value, create raving fans create a touch point, one to three months prior to a built in renewal timeline with a next step and an A phase two that is compelling and interesting to the customer.

Mario Fachini [32:45]
Excellent. We’ve been talking about the books the whole time. I love getting them in business owners hands. What books in addition to the War of Art have helped you in your business in life?

Chandler Bolt [32:55]
Hmm. Extreme Ownership one of the best books on leadership I’ve ever read at 20 sales and marketing. And one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read an Influence by Robert Cialdini all great suggestions out there with a 20 sales in marketing. I think it’s probably the best marketing book of all time. Excellent.

Mario Fachini [33:13]
Where would you like people to learn more?

Chandler Bolt [33:17]
Yeah, um, so I, I’ve got a kind of a cool giveaway for listeners in the audience. So if you’d like a copy of my brand new book published the proven path from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold, then go to published book.com Ford slash Mario. So published book.com Ford slash Mario, the first 50 people that go to that link. So this is a freebie for this audience. I will pay for the book, I will print the book I will pack it well, I will not pack it. But I will have it packed and shipped to your door for free. So all you have to do is go to published book.com forward slash Mario the first 50 People just fill out the form. Tell me where to send it. And we’ll ship a book your way and it’ll help you get started making progress with your book.

Mario Fachini [34:12]
Excellent. Thank you for making that available. That’s very generous. And thank you for everything you’ve shared Chandler it’s been a pleasure.

Chandler Bolt [34:18]
Mario, thank you so much. Alright, expert authority world.

Mario Fachini [34:22]
We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless. You’re already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24/7 And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the expert authority effect publishing method it’s easier and more profitable than ever visit get my business book published calm today and take the first step to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit get my business book published calm and take the first step knowing it will be your very best you You’re leaving it all on the field oh yeah and it’s also free once again that’s get my business book published.
Chandler Bolt [0:00]
This is Chandler bolt with self publishing calm and you’re listening to EA interviews,

Chandler Bolt [0:05]
EA interviews, Episode 370 inspiration,

Chandler Bolt [0:08]
transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario for tuning for today’s expert authority effect interview.

Mario Fachini [0:19]
Have you ever thought about publishing a book? You’ve seen them everywhere. There’s New York Times bestsellers, there’s this bestsellers there’s, oh man, I wish I could do that. Do I have to go curl up in a cabin and sit down by the lake and just spend years and years writing all this stuff? I want to do do a memoir of fiction this that the other thing? Have you ever considered it for business? I am super excited to have none other than the CEO of self publishing school here. Chandler bolt bolt in the author of published we’re going to be answering all of this and more right after we thank our sponsor. So you’ve got your book mostly written but now what visit get my business book published calm today to learn how you can publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Chandler, Bolte Taylor, how are you feeling today?

Chandler Bolt [1:16]
I’m doing great. Mario, thank you so much for having me. Oh, it’s

Mario Fachini [1:19]
my pleasure. I’ve been seeing what you’re doing for some time in senior different conferences where we have mutual friends, it’s so great to see what you’re doing, the people you’re helping, and how you’re helping them because there’s a lot of people who do publishing out there. And there’s so many varying degrees, but you’ve done it and turned it into a seven and eight figure business in a big way. Because I know you have a big heart. And you want to help a lot of people. So what how did you get into it? And why publishing?
Chandler Bolt [1:48]
Yeah, so I mean, it kind of an unlikely path. I’m a sea level English student and a college dropout with ADHD. So for a lot of people, the last person to do everything to write a book. But I think, you know, sometimes they say the worst students are the best teachers. Because I know what it feels like to struggle, and to not understand something and to have this thing that’s intimidating, like a book. And so how I got into it is wrote and published a couple of books they did, they did decently well. And then I dropped out of school to go all in on running a business. And at the time, I was working on a business that was just failing. And meanwhile, people kept asking about the book publishing stuff and said, How have you published his books, these books? How do you do it, and I would just get on the phone for an hour for free just to teach him everything I needed just to be a nice person. And eventually, you know, kind of like I said, it’s only you only get smacked in the face so many times for you turn out of luck. And you turn around look, and there’s a whole line of people that want help with that thing. And so that ultimately became the creation of what’s now self publishing school, and self publishing calm. And we’ve, we’ve been scaling and growing since then. And so kind of the ethos of what we do, or what we do, but just why we do is, we believe that books change lives. And so books change the lives of authors, or sorry, books change the lives of readers, right. It’s like how many of us have had our lives changed by by reading a book probably want to do this, right. And so books change the lives of readers, but they also change the lives of authors. We always say it’s not about the book, it’s about who you become in the process of writing and publishing that book. And so we exist to change lives through books, we’re on a mission to help 100,000 people publish their book by 2035, and get about 6000 books published in the last six years. So we got a lot of good progress, have a lot more work to do. And so that’s what we that’s why we wake up every day, and we’re excited to help people publish books.

Mario Fachini [3:44]
Now, that is so inspiring, because I do believe they do help the author, and they help the reader. It helps everyone I mean, I was just joking. You know, no matter what happens with the technical, the social media, the marketing, any of this stuff, last I checked books have been around a couple 1000 years, and they’re not going anywhere. So for someone that’s listening, going, well, I don’t know if I can lock myself in the cabin, or I can do this. What do you say to someone who really has a passion? And they really want to get their message out there, but they just don’t know how to start, what would you say is the first step?

Chandler Bolt [4:20]
Yes. So the first step. So really, the most important thing, if you’re trying to get started is to get your rough draft done as quickly as possible. Now, you can’t get your rough draft done if you don’t first get started with your rough draft. And so, but that’s the most important thing. So don’t I don’t want you to think about your cover your title, your marketing plan, any of that. It’s how do I get my rough vvvdraft done as quickly as possible? Because once once that happens, you’re going to start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And you’re going to start to believe that this is possible. So but before that, you got to get started right. So I have this concept. I call it the more writing method. More is an acronym. And this is this is how you start So number one, M stands for Mind Map. Okay, and so what I’d encourage everyone listening, watching, however you’re consuming this, grab a blank sheet of printer paper. And you can either pause right now you can wait till the end of this episode. But so right as soon as this episodes over, grab that blank sheet of paper, put your book topic in the middle of the page. And I want you to put a timer for 15 minutes, and I was you write out everything you can think of on that topic. And so brainstorm ideas, you have stories, you have broken record conversations you’ve have, you’ve had on this topic, anything you think of onto the page, so you’re going to create a mind map, then the O stands for outline. So you turn your mind that into an outline for the book as a whole. And then the R stands for rough draft. So you’re going to get your rough draft written, I’ll come back to that in just a second. And then the E stands for editing. And so that’s the more writing method, my map outline, rough draft, editing, and zoom in on that rough draft piece, you’ll start with Chapter number one, you’ll you’ll spend 10 minutes mind mapping everything you can think of on that chapter 10 minutes turning that mind map into an outline for that chapter, then 45 minutes to an hour and a half, writing the chapter. And you’ll repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. Now some people write better than they speak. And so this is this makes this process easier is do the same thing Mind Map outline, but then speak the chapter. get it transcribed, repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. So that’s really the starting point for most people is get your mind map that’s going to show you whoa, wow, like, I’ve got so much that can talk about on this topic. And then that’s gonna help you move, move faster through the rest of the process. I love

Mario Fachini [6:44]
how you have it laid out and also have it the acronym for it because I know there’s people who go, I have no problem writing or I have a manuscript, but then they get stuck at the editing, or they never revise it. Or, you know, there’s people who are freaked out about the editing, they never start the process. You know, that first step is the most important thing. What would you say to someone who’s going? Well, I need a website, I need the ISBN should I be on Amazon Kindle or Barnes? Like they’re just all over here. And they just don’t know what to write with? Do you focus on any specific niche of books? Or do you help people with fiction, nonfiction memoirs? The whole shebang?

Chandler Bolt [7:25]
Yeah, so. So two part question, I’d say what I would say those folks is don’t worry about any of that stuff until your rough drafts done. Nothing matters until your but your rough draft until your rough draft is done. Now, as far as what type of books we help with, we kind of we’ve been predominantly nonfiction using books to grow your business. But over the last few years, we’ve we’ve developed a lot of other curriculum. So we get children’s book school, we get the fundamentals of fiction and story. We’ve got a full time fiction program for folks who want to make a full time living from their fiction writing, we’ve created a bunch of memoir specific curriculum and that sort of thing. But then also, I mean, we have tons of people. I mean, we published about two books a day. And so we have tons of people in all different genres. So I know just yesterday, one of our students published a Indian Vegan Cookbook for crock pot cooking, I think are something such a niche topic, but uh, I mean, so that it kind of runs the gamut.

Mario Fachini [8:33]
Well, that’s fantastic. Now let’s talk about that niche. Because some people they want to go wide and other pee. I mean, that’s very specific. It’s not just Indian vegan, but it’s specific cooking, and then crockpot because, I mean, there’s 1,000,001 I personally enjoy cvwd, the cvwd method. But you know, there’s books on that there’s books on crock pot, there’s cookbooks on oven and all of this what would you recommend to someone who goes, I want to speak on this, but there’s all these different avenues should I niche down? Or should I go more broad?

Chandler Bolt [9:05]
Yeah, the the riches are in the niches. I mean, so you’re, you’re going to do much better of being specific. And this is one of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is they you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. And so the right this book, it’s how to live an awesome life and pursue your passion and chase your dreams. It’s like, okay, I have no idea what that books about. And much less Why should read it. And so the more you can niche down, niche down whatever you want to call it. The more you can get specific with the topic, your book, the better book you’re going to write, the more and the better your books going to sell and the more people that you’re going to help at a deeper level.
vvv
Mario Fachini [9:48]
I want to go back for a second. You’re sharing such great information, but I want to round out a little bit more of your story. You said you wrote a couple of books and congrats. That’s no small feat in and of itself in before you had Your wildly successful company, self publishing.com and self publishing school. How did you figure out? Did you have a book writing? Coach? Did you have a trainer? Did you just follow some blog articles, YouTube videos? How did you figure out how to do your first one?

Chandler Bolt [10:16]
Yeah, good question. I, it was a, it was a bit, it was a mix of a bunch of things. I got some advice from a mentor on the writing piece, who he introduced me to the mind mapping concept. So I’m a big fan of who not how so who has done this before? Not how do I not how do I do it? I think they said Dan Sullivan concept and

Mario Fachini [10:37]
Ben Hardy actually had been on the show. Yeah,

Chandler Bolt [10:39]
yeah, great calm, so who not how and so it was from a mentor, I also use this thing called the number one book system at the time, way back in the day, um, helped me learn a lot of Amazon Marketing, and then it’s just kind of grown and evolved from there.

Mario Fachini [10:53]
So again, if someone’s trying to scour articles this and that, it sounds like you’re just going to go back to take the first step get that rough draft written.

Chandler Bolt [11:01]
Yeah. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And really, um, my book published I mean, I’m depending on when people are listening to or watching this, the second edition of that is all about like, okay, it don’t scour blog posts, articles, or any of that stuff like that is really meant to make take people from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold kind of in a step by step sequential format. So that’s it go there, just make it as far as I can think of the word right, that make it easy and affordable as possible for folks to just go through the process and say, Alright, now I’ve got an overview of the process. Either I can do this myself, or I can work with self publishing school and get a little bit of extra help.

Mario Fachini [11:43]
When Should someone jump into the editing of their book?

Chandler Bolt [11:47]
Yeah. So So there’s, you know, the more writing method, right, so you got my map, outline, rough draft editing. And so once you’ve got the rough draft done, there’s really two steps of, there’s two or three steps of editing, depending on how you look at it, what I like to do, and what I recommend, what we teach is self editing. And so that’s kind of the first, that’s the first step. And so if you zoom out a little bit, and I’ve got, I kind of walk through this in the book, but there’s eight milestones on your author journey, right? So there’s my map, outline, see if I can remember all these rough draft, thevvvn there’s self editing, and then there’s professional editing. So we’re in that so so the first piece is what I what I recommend is a verbal read through, see where you actually read your book out loud. And and to

Mario Fachini [12:33]
be clear, let me pause you right there. To be clear, you’re not saying make an audio book, you’re just saying read it out loud to check for proofreading, line and content edits, whatever the case may be, you’re doing

Chandler Bolt [12:45]
a self edit, but I call it a verbal read through. And it’s just a form of self editing. And so then, then once you do that, then you pass it off to a professional editor. And so in the publishing world, they’ll tell you, there’s anywhere between seven to 1014, or more types of editing. I really think that’s pretty confusing. And so I’ve kind of distilled it down to two, where you’ve got content editing, and you’ve got copy editing. Now you’re going to hear like line editing, sustained, substantive editing, you got like, yeah, all these different, you know,

Mario Fachini [13:18]
what you can call it whatever you want. It’s either right or wrong.
vvv
Chandler Bolt [13:21]
It’s content. And it’s copy. Right? So it’s the content, is it as kind of like a structural, like, what is in the book? And then and then the copy editing is how are you saying, right? And so the so content is, alright, am I saying the right things? Is it make sense? is a flow? Are there stories of their content gaps, like all that stuff, and then copy editing is, is my sentence structure good is not punctuation, grammar, all that stuff. So that’s where you work with a professional editor, content, Edit, then copy, edit, and then you’re moving into if we’re coming back to the, to the eight milestones, then you’re moving into creating your cover, and your sub 10 Or your title and your cover, then you’re moving into formatting, then you’re prepping for launch, then you’re ultimately launching the book.

Mario Fachini [14:10]
Interesting. I want to unpack this a little bit. Some people suggest start with the cover. And it sounds like you’re saying start with the book.

Chandler Bolt [14:17]
Yeah, I so, you know, some people like to start with a title. I don’t. Personally I like to start start with a topic. And because if I if I start with a title, a I will spend a lot of time trying to figure out the title and not spend time doing what I actually do, which is get the rough draft done. Okay. And again, anything but writing the rough draft before you get your rough draft done is a distraction. And the mind is very good at destroying. I mean, writing a book is uncomfortable. And so it’s, it’s the old joke. It’s, you know, you know, in the writers on the deadline, because that’s when they’re popping up on social media the most right because your mind wants to do anything but the uncomfortable act of writing. And so it that’s why I recommend it that way but also you Write your way to a title that may or may not be the theme of the book, right. And so I like to write to a topic and then get the title last and then create the cover last, there’s a lot of advantages to that you come to a better title. Um, you donvvv’t box yourself in the content, you know. So get feedback, and which is the beginning of the marketing phase is getting feedback on your title and your cover, things like that. And

Mario Fachini [15:24]
so that’s when publishing is fun, because now you get to engage everyone with the marketing and getting the feedback. But yeah, you talked about it being uncomfortable process. I know when I was doing one of mine, I literally made a post on Facebook. That was like, I’m so speedy writing right now, but nothing’s working out. So what good YouTube links do you have for me? Yeah, why is it such an uncomfortable process?

Chandler Bolt [15:48]
Cuz I think it’s difficult you’re you’re crystallizing you’re crystallizing your thoughts into the written word. Which in for a lot of people in your mind, it’s a you know, especially your first book, or really any book, I’ve got to figure out what I think on this topic. And it’s not a I mean,

Mario Fachini [16:08]
you can’t talk your way out of it. It’s either right or wrong.

Chandler Bolt [16:10]
Yes, you’re thinking I am, I am crystallizing my thought into the written word, let me think about this. But then I think also just the creation process of when you’re, whenever you’re creating anything, it’s difficult. You know, it’s, it’s, you’re doing the hard work to create something. And it is not the most dopamine inducing activity, which means your mind which is hardwired for dopamine, and for serotonin, and you know, other just like hardwired for, for immediate gratification wants that. And so, you know, it does give a dopamine hit, opening up social media, or watching a YouTube video or something else. And so our mind says it, this is uncomfortable panic mode, and I need something to make me feel better. But I was, if you’re, you know, Steven Pressfield calls this resistance and of the creation process.

Chandler Bolt [17:11]
Yeah, the The War of Art, right?

Chandler Bolt [17:13]
Yeah, yeah. I had him on the self publishing school podcast that was like, that was a big get, I couldn’t believe it. But it was just so interesting, because he writes fiction, he writes nonfiction. He’s written a screenplay, just all these different types of writing. And I think the War of Art is one of the best books on, you know, the creation process as a whole. It’s just really, really good.

Mario Fachini [17:39]
So someone’s gotten through the writing part, they did the Self Editing. Should everyone use a professional editor? Or?

Chandler Bolt [17:48]
Yes, okay. Yeah,

Mario Fachini [17:51]
no, or Yes. You expand on that a little bit? That wasn’t even hesitate. Yes. Yeah.

Chandler Bolt [17:57]
I mean, and I get it some people and where do you find them? Yeah, great question. So I get it. Some people are on a budget. And and, and that’s totally understandable. And so you might be looking to save money or that sort of thing. But I would say absolutely, you need it. You need an editor. I’m certainly I’m doing a quick search here. I’m trying to so I go, I go in depth in this process on. Let’s see where it is. Here. It is chapter number nine. And in chapter number nine and talk about how to hire an editor, I talked about how to save money on editing all that good stuff. But to answer your question, there’s really two, two resources. Or there’s two two main places to hire an editor referrals or freelance marketplace or marketplaces. Right? So the best the best and best place is referrals from other authors, or from people who have worked with editors. So like, as far away the best is, especially from happy customers of editors in your genre. Second piece would be marketplaces. So you’ve got there’s, there’s there’s Upwork, there is Reed z. We have kind of like an internal Rolodex for self publishing school students where we negotiate exclusive discounts on on editors, cover designers, all that stuff. So you got you got referrals, you got marketplaces, and then most editors are going to charge either by the hour or by the job, I recommend going by the job. A lot of times they’ll charge by the word. So there’s a bunch of ways to to reduce your costs. I mean, it’s an investment. I had a mentor growing up, he said, Chandler, there’s two things you can’t spend too much money on a business, a good lawyer and a good accountant. Because if they’re good, they will make you money. Exactly. And so similarly, with a book, it’s the equivalent is a good editor and a good cover designer. And so those two things they make such a huge impact on book sales. especially with your cover, but then, you know, you know, book quality, which results in referrals and more sales with with your editing. And so it’s it’s really, really important you want to look for a hungry professional. But this is someone who, who helped make it look better.

Mario Fachini [20:19]
Now we’re talking about the budget, what would you say someone should allocate for the budget? And also, you know, don’t skimp on the editing and the cover. But, you know, what are your thoughts on someone going? Well, I don’t have a lot for this, this this this? It’s like, well, is this the right timing then? Because it’s like, if you’re not going to put in a certain threshold, you know, and I get it. Not everyone has all the money in the world. But even if you do, people don’t want to waste it. You know, when we’re getting stuff, I’m sure you’re not just throwing it out the door? I know I’m not. But at the same time, it’s like what would be a reasonable in your mind? So that way, someone’s not going? Well, they’re charging me 300. For this one, I could get it for two, when really most people are charging seven or eight. And they’re not even in the ballpark to begin with. And it’s actually a good deal.

Chandler Bolt [21:03]
Yeah, that’s a great question. So typically, it’s somewhere between one to three cents per word. So in, in common English, though, some of you were like, wait, what? And common English I mean, you’re it’s a few 100 bucks is typically what you could expect to pay. Now for all in costs for producing a quality book is anywhere from a few 100 bucks to a couple 1000 bucks on book production costs you got your three main costs are going to be editing, cover design, and formatting. Those Oh, yeah.

Mario Fachini [21:33]
Formatting. Let’s talk about that. That’s a That’s a fun one. Or can be.

Chandler Bolt [21:38]
Yeah, it’s, it’s really, that one’s not too bad. I’d say the other two are more important and more expensive. So if it’s just if it’s just common EBOOK formatting, that’s pretty simple. If you’re doing more print formatting, that can be a little bit more, that can be a few 100 bucks. But if you know, we have, yeah, that we have is this thing called a book outline template generator. On our site, you can press a couple buttons, and it’ll spit out a 25 page, pre formatted Google Doc. And so if you use something like that, then now all of a sudden, like the, the Title Headings are already formatted, though, like the Okay, a bunch of little things like that to where you really process. Yeah, you save yourself time, and you save yourself money. And so then that’s on on formatting and on the whole process.

Mario Fachini [22:27]
Yeah, and let’s expand on that for people listening, if they’re going, Okay, I want to do an e book. But yeah, I want to get the book book in your hands, you know, the actual book. What would you say to someone that goes, I just want to do an e book versus I just want to do a printed?

Chandler Bolt [22:42]
Yeah, I, my personal recommendation is if you’re going to do it, do it. And so if you’re going to do it, do at least ebook and print, a big mistake that authors make is only publishing their book in one or maybe even two formats. If you publish your book in all three formats, so ebook, print and audio book, you’re going to sell more books, you’re going to make more money. Your royalty rates will be higher on ebook and audio, obviously, because there’s no there’s no hard costs, on on, per per purchase. But publishing all three formats, you’ll sell more books, because different people in different genres just buy books differently, right. So you’re going to sell more books, if you do all three formats. Now you don’t have to launch all at once. So if you’re trying to save on costs, or even if it’s just like, Man, this is kind of overwhelming, you can stagger it. And in some cases, that’s actually better, because you focus all your effort on the e book launch, then a couple weeks to a month later, you come up with a print book, and then a couple of weeks to a month later, you come up with the audiobook. So you kind of you have three launches, which just means that you’re going to keep your book selling and you’re focusing on one format at a time. And that can be be really beneficial for driving book sales.

Mario Fachini [23:55]
What have you found more people enjoy audio books or ebooks nowadays?

Chandler Bolt [24:00]
Yeah, it’s really pretty reader specific. I think audio books are on the rise, and in a lot of ways, but it’s really reader and genre specific and you’ve got kind of your broad kind of category shifts. But I mean, everyone’s been saying that print books are gonna go out, go out of you know, people are gonna stop buying them for you. We’ve been saying that for years, maybe even a decade or more. And yeah, same

Mario Fachini [24:26]
thing with printers for computers. You know, ever since the internet we’re not going to need paper. How long has that worked?

Chandler Bolt [24:34]
But it’s I mean analog, analog and people are still purchasing books and it you see it you see it make it I mean big time comeback of the last few years especially

Mario Fachini [24:44]
now with podcasts increasing also do you think that’s played into the audiobooks more or two? Totally separate?

Chandler Bolt [24:51]
No doubt, no doubt. It’s because people are getting used to consuming content in a in an audio medium and And it’s getting this kind of stuff is getting built into cars. So exactly. So now I mean, I can really choose don’t want to listen to a podcast, I want to listen to an audio book or I want to listen to some, some other form of audio content, like, it’s pretty easy to rotate back and forth between two. And especially if you’re a podcaster. Well, then you should 100% have an audio book because you’re going to be marketing it to your audience of people who already listening to you, right? And so they’re more likely to want, they’re already telling you I consume audio content, right? And so just the segue that and say, Hey, you can grab a copy of my book and audiobook and John Lee Dumas does this really well. There’s an audible bounty. So when people go download your book, if they try audible, audible will send you there, they’re always changing the number, but it’s like 5075 bucks or something crazy like that just for getting people to try audible. And so I mean, it’s pretty amazing. So now all of a sudden, I for me, it’s a few 100 bucks a month, and audible bounties and for a lot of authors if, especially if you do any sort of promotion towards the audiobook can be a good source of source of royalties.

Mario Fachini [26:11]
So I think that’s a good point right there because it for someone that’s listening going well, I’m not sure if I should invest in the cover this that that do what the best because think about that, you know, okay, so you from, from a grand, okay, big deal. But now you’re making a couple 100 A month how you know, the ROI on that exponentially over the next decade. You know, this isn’t a social media post or LinkedIn posts where it’s a one time deal. It’s like, it’s a frickin book. So, thank you for everything you’ve shared. I got a couple more questions before we thank our sponsor and come back. But the first one is, who would you say is your biggest success story out of the I don’t even know the countless 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people you’ve helped?

Chandler Bolt [26:51]
Yeah, the[re’s a lot. I mean, there’s, there’s there’s so many. There’s, there’s, there’s a way narrowed

Mario Fachini [26:57]
down to the first 100. Let’s narrow it down to the first 100

Chandler Bolt [27:03]
Yeah, so I would I would say this I mean, I don’t know if this I’d say this like top success story of I’d say this is probably one of the more meaningful ones to me purse.

Mario Fachini [27:10]
I love that. I love when people reframe it and yeah, please.

Chandler Bolt [27:14]
So this is a so one of our students, Sean Sumner. He wrote and published, he joined self publishing school years ago, wrote and published a couple of books with us on on physical therapy, which is his he’s a full time physical therapist. And then his daughter saw it and said, Hey, Dad, I want to do that. I want to write a book that looks cool. And he said, he said, Alright, go work, write 50 words and come back to me, you know, kind of thinking she wouldn’t write. And she came back a few hours later, she had 50 words written. And so her name is Emma Sumner. She published a book called The fairies of waterfall Island, a kids book, eight years old. The book made $4,000 In the first three months, she went on to, I mean, she donated all that money to an Autism Awareness charity called Autism Speaks. She started doing local speaking gigs. She made like 1200 bucks at her first speaking gig at a local school, they paid her 250 bucks. And she sold a ton of books. She did another one made like 100. Like now she’s getting her quote unquote, allowance, which is really just her monthly royalty check. And she’s paying for school field trips. Like, her confidence is a young woman doing that at eight years old. I mean, the trajectory of her life is this is crazy. So that’s one of my feet. I mean, now she’s inspired so many other kids to write and publish books, we got kids showing up to our conferences, right and kids books like it’s just so cool.

Mario Fachini [28:36]
That’s thank you for sharing that that is meaningful. And also I will throw in and stuff just given the torque tour money like here’s how you work for someone to get a paycheck like this is royalty passive income. Shoot, I don’t know about you, did you have that I

Chandler Bolt [28:50]
ate? I did not. I didn’t

Mario Fachini [28:52]
either start my first company at 12. But I didn’t have that as like,

Chandler Bolt [28:57]
fantasy life skills. Right? It’s a project. You’re it’s a project with your kid that teaches them half a dozen a dozen life skills in the process while also creating an asset that will be with them for the rest of their life.

Mario Fachini [29:10]
For sure. I have one fun question before we think the sponsoring come back yellow or black? Yellow. All right, good. Matches Muy Thai. This is the wheel of whatever and your question is Where would you like to travel that you haven’t been yet?

Chandler Bolt [29:27]
Oh, Bali. No kidding. It’s I mean, it’s just amazed from from what I’ve seen. I haven’t been there but Bali and a lot of places in Asia. I’ve never been Asia.

Mario Fachini [29:39]
Okay. Very good. Yeah, it does look good. I haven’t been there either. But that’s a good one. We’re gonna thank our sponsor real quick and come back for the imperfect action round titles, cover designs and promotion. Oh, mind you. We’re all excited to achieve your goal, maybe even dream of becoming an author to serve more people with your business, but it’s turning out to be a lot more than you expected. Hmm, I get it. I’ve done it numerous times personally. Visit, get my business book published calm today to take the first step on making this process enjoyable. Dare I even say fun? And most definitely profitable. Your business and audience depend on it. But you know what? Don’t take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors, like Lori and I went from

Chandler Bolt [30:22]
having an idea. And the possibilities to actually getting my book published

Chandler Bolt [30:29]
for Katherine, thank you for making my mom number one. Her MaryAlice

Mary Alice [30:35]
what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch,

Chandler Bolt [30:42]
unmanageable Shaun Cody,

Chandler Bolt [30:44]
I’ve worked with Mario over the phone and online and he’s been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rosio

Rosio [30:52]
there’s no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else. Again, I’ve attempted in the past, it didn’t serve me. It’s a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Chandler Bolt [31:03]
Adele, if you’re looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Fachini

Chandler Bolt [31:09]
or Bill Benner I can’t make a higher recommendation for me then work with Mario Fachini He has been great for for me and right now. I won’t work with anybody else except for Mary Okay,

Mario Fachini [31:20]
their words not mine visit get my business book published calm today to take the first step. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com In my real quick, I mean real quick. Alright, and we’re back with the imperfect action round Chandler Are you ready to take imperfect action? Yes, sir. All right, the first question I have for you. You’re ready. Yes, sir. What is the fastest path to the cache?

Chandler Bolt [31:52]
On fast path to the cache is getting your first customer as fast as possible so use the book to use the book to get leads sales and referrals for your business.

Mario Fachini [32:01]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it? Hmm,

Chandler Bolt [32:07]
big biggest problem is not putting pen to paper followed by getting their rough draft done. fastest path to fix it is to write consistently take the 30 day rough draft challenge.

Mario Fachini [32:19]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Chandler Bolt [32:25]
So customer lifetime value, create raving fans create a touch point, one to three months prior to a built in renewal timeline with a next step and an A phase two that is compelling and interesting to the customer.

Mario Fachini [32:45]
Excellent. We’ve been talking about the books the whole time. I love getting them in business owners hands. What books in addition to the War of Art have helped you in your business in life?

Chandler Bolt [32:55]
Hmm. Extreme Ownership one of the best books on leadership I’ve ever read at 20 sales and marketing. And one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read an Influence by Robert Cialdini all great suggestions out there with a 20 sales in marketing. I think it’s probably the best marketing book of all time. Excellent.

Mario Fachini [33:13]
Where would you like people to learn more?

Chandler Bolt [33:17]
Yeah, um, so I, I’ve got a kind of a cool giveaway for listeners in the audience. So if you’d like a copy of my brand new book published the proven path from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold, then go to published book.com Ford slash Mario. So published book.com Ford slash Mario, the first 50 people that go to that link. So this is a freebie for this audience. I will pay for the book, I will print the book I will pack it well, I will not pack it. But I will have it packed and shipped to your door for free. So all you have to do is go to published book.com forward slash Mario the first 50 People just fill out the form. Tell me where to send it. And we’ll ship a book your way and it’ll help you get started making progress with your book.

Mario Fachini [34:12]
Excellent. Thank you for making that available. That’s very generous. And thank you for everything you’ve shared Chandler it’s been a pleasure.

Chandler Bolt [34:18]
Mario, thank you so much. Alright, expert authority world.

Mario Fachini [34:22]
We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless. You’re already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24/7 And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the expert authority effect publishing method it’s easier and more profitable than ever visit get my business book published calm today and take the first step to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit get my business book published calm and take the first step knowing it will be your very best you You’re leaving it all on the field oh yeah and it’s also free once again that’s get my business book published.
Chandler Bolt [0:00]
This is Chandler bolt with self publishing calm and you’re listening to EA interviews,

Chandler Bolt [0:05]
EA interviews, Episode 370 inspiration,

Chandler Bolt [0:08]
transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario for tuning for today’s expert authority effect interview.

Mario Fachini [0:19]
Have you ever thought about publishing a book? You’ve seen them everywhere. There’s New York Times bestsellers, there’s this bestsellers there’s, oh man, I wish I could do that. Do I have to go curl up in a cabin and sit down by the lake and just spend years and years writing all this stuff? I want to do do a memoir of fiction this that the other thing? Have you ever considered it for business? I am super excited to have none other than the CEO of self publishing school here. Chandler bolt bolt in the author of published we’re going to be answering all of this and more right after we thank our sponsor. So you’ve got your book mostly written but now what visit get my business book published calm today to learn how you can publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Chandler, Bolte Taylor, how are you feeling today?

Chandler Bolt [1:16]
I’m doing great. Mario, thank you so much for having me. Oh, it’s

Mario Fachini [1:19]
my pleasure. I’ve been seeing what you’re doing for some time in senior different conferences where we have mutual friends, it’s so great to see what you’re doing, the people you’re helping, and how you’re helping them because there’s a lot of people who do publishing out there. And there’s so many varying degrees, but you’ve done it and turned it into a seven and eight figure business in a big way. Because I know you have a big heart. And you want to help a lot of people. So what how did you get into it? And why publishing?
Chandler Bolt [1:48]
Yeah, so I mean, it kind of an unlikely path. I’m a sea level English student and a college dropout with ADHD. So for a lot of people, the last person to do everything to write a book. But I think, you know, sometimes they say the worst students are the best teachers. Because I know what it feels like to struggle, and to not understand something and to have this thing that’s intimidating, like a book. And so how I got into it is wrote and published a couple of books they did, they did decently well. And then I dropped out of school to go all in on running a business. And at the time, I was working on a business that was just failing. And meanwhile, people kept asking about the book publishing stuff and said, How have you published his books, these books? How do you do it, and I would just get on the phone for an hour for free just to teach him everything I needed just to be a nice person. And eventually, you know, kind of like I said, it’s only you only get smacked in the face so many times for you turn out of luck. And you turn around look, and there’s a whole line of people that want help with that thing. And so that ultimately became the creation of what’s now self publishing school, and self publishing calm. And we’ve, we’ve been scaling and growing since then. And so kind of the ethos of what we do, or what we do, but just why we do is, we believe that books change lives. And so books change the lives of authors, or sorry, books change the lives of readers, right. It’s like how many of us have had our lives changed by by reading a book probably want to do this, right. And so books change the lives of readers, but they also change the lives of authors. We always say it’s not about the book, it’s about who you become in the process of writing and publishing that book. And so we exist to change lives through books, we’re on a mission to help 100,000 people publish their book by 2035, and get about 6000 books published in the last six years. So we got a lot of good progress, have a lot more work to do. And so that’s what we that’s why we wake up every day, and we’re excited to help people publish books.

Mario Fachini [3:44]
Now, that is so inspiring, because I do believe they do help the author, and they help the reader. It helps everyone I mean, I was just joking. You know, no matter what happens with the technical, the social media, the marketing, any of this stuff, last I checked books have been around a couple 1000 years, and they’re not going anywhere. So for someone that’s listening, going, well, I don’t know if I can lock myself in the cabin, or I can do this. What do you say to someone who really has a passion? And they really want to get their message out there, but they just don’t know how to start, what would you say is the first step?

Chandler Bolt [4:20]
Yes. So the first step. So really, the most important thing, if you’re trying to get started is to get your rough draft done as quickly as possible. Now, you can’t get your rough draft done if you don’t first get started with your rough draft. And so, but that’s the most important thing. So don’t I don’t want you to think about your cover your title, your marketing plan, any of that. It’s how do I get my rough draft done as quickly as possible? Because once once that happens, you’re going to start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And you’re going to start to believe that this is possible. So but before that, you got to get started right. So I have this concept. I call it the more writing method. More is an acronym. And this is this is how you start So number one, M stands for Mind Map. Okay, and so what I’d encourage everyone listening, watching, however you’re consuming this, grab a blank sheet of printer paper. And you can either pause right now you can wait till the end of this episode. But so right as soon as this episodes over, grab that blank sheet of paper, put your book topic in the middle of the page. And I want you to put a timer for 15 minutes, and I was you write out everything you can think of on that topic. And so brainstorm ideas, you have stories, you have broken record conversations you’ve have, you’ve had on this topic, anything you think of onto the page, so you’re going to create a mind map, then the O stands for outline. So you turn your mind that into an outline for the book as a whole. And then the R stands for rough draft. So you’re going to get your rough draft written, I’ll come back to that in just a second. And then the E stands for editing. And so that’s the more writing method, my map outline, rough draft, editing, and zoom in on that rough draft piece, you’ll start with Chapter number one, you’ll you’ll spend 10 minutes mind mapping everything you can think of on that chapter 10 minutes turning that mind map into an outline for that chapter, then 45 minutes to an hour and a half, writing the chapter. And you’ll repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. Now some people write better than they speak. And so this is this makes this process easier is do the same thing Mind Map outline, but then speak the chapter. get it transcribed, repeat that process chapter by chapter by chapter. So that’s really the starting point for most people is get your mind map that’s going to show you whoa, wow, like, I’ve got so much that can talk about on this topic. And then that’s gonna help you move, move faster through the rest of the process. I love

Mario Fachini [6:44]
how you have it laid out and also have it the acronym for it because I know there’s people who go, I have no problem writing or I have a manuscript, but then they get stuck at the editing, or they never revise it. Or, you know, there’s people who are freaked out about the editing, they never start the process. You know, that first step is the most important thing. What would you say to someone who’s going? Well, I need a website, I need the ISBN should I be on Amazon Kindle or Barnes? Like they’re just all over here. And they just don’t know what to write with? Do you focus on any specific niche of books? Or do you help people with fiction, nonfiction memoirs? The whole shebang?

Chandler Bolt [7:25]
Yeah, so. So two part question, I’d say what I would say those folks is don’t worry about any of that stuff until your rough drafts done. Nothing matters until your but your rough draft until your rough draft is done. Now, as far as what type of books we help with, we kind of we’ve been predominantly nonfiction using books to grow your business. But over the last few years, we’ve we’ve developed a lot of other curriculum. So we get children’s book school, we get the fundamentals of fiction and story. We’ve got a full time fiction program for folks who want to make a full time living from their fiction writing, we’ve created a bunch of memoir specific curriculum and that sort of thing. But then also, I mean, we have tons of people. I mean, we published about two books a day. And so we have tons of people in all different genres. So I know just yesterday, one of our students published a Indian Vegan Cookbook for crock pot cooking, I think are something such a niche topic, but uh, I mean, so that it kind of runs the gamut.

Mario Fachini [8:33]
Well, that’s fantastic. Now let’s talk about that niche. Because some people they want to go wide and other pee. I mean, that’s very specific. It’s not just Indian vegan, but it’s specific cooking, and then crockpot because, I mean, there’s 1,000,001 I personally enjoy cvwd, the cvwd method. But you know, there’s books on that there’s books on crock pot, there’s cookbooks on oven and all of this what would you recommend to someone who goes, I want to speak on this, but there’s all these different avenues should I niche down? Or should I go more broad?

Chandler Bolt [9:05]
Yeah, the the riches are in the niches. I mean, so you’re, you’re going to do much better of being specific. And this is one of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is they you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. And so the right this book, it’s how to live an awesome life and pursue your passion and chase your dreams. It’s like, okay, I have no idea what that books about. And much less Why should read it. And so the more you can niche down, niche down whatever you want to call it. The more you can get specific with the topic, your book, the better book you’re going to write, the more and the better your books going to sell and the more people that you’re going to help at a deeper level.

Mario Fachini [9:48]
I want to go back for a second. You’re sharing such great information, but I want to round out a little bit more of your story. You said you wrote a couple of books and congrats. That’s no small feat in and of itself in before you had Your wildly successful company, self publishing.com and self publishing school. How did you figure out? Did you have a book writing? Coach? Did you have a trainer? Did you just follow some blog articles, YouTube videos? How did you figure out how to do your first one?

Chandler Bolt [10:16]
Yeah, good question. I, it was a, it was a bit, it was a mix of a bunch of things. I got some advice from a mentor on the writing piece, who he introduced me to the mind mapping concept. So I’m a big fan of who not how so who has done this before? Not how do I not how do I do it? I think they said Dan Sullivan concept and

Mario Fachini [10:37]
Ben Hardy actually had been on the show. Yeah,

Chandler Bolt [10:39]
yeah, great calm, so who not how and so it was from a mentor, I also use this thing called the number one book system at the time, way back in the day, um, helped me learn a lot of Amazon Marketing, and then it’s just kind of grown and evolved from there.

Mario Fachini [10:53]
So again, if someone’s trying to scour articles this and that, it sounds like you’re just going to go back to take the first step get that rough draft written.

Chandler Bolt [11:01]
Yeah. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And really, um, my book published I mean, I’m depending on when people are listening to or watching this, the second edition of that is all about like, okay, it don’t scour blog posts, articles, or any of that stuff like that is really meant to make take people from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold kind of in a step by step sequential format. So that’s it go there, just make it as far as I can think of the word right, that make it easy and affordable as possible for folks to just go through the process and say, Alright, now I’ve got an overview of the process. Either I can do this myself, or I can work with self publishing school and get a little bit of extra help.

Mario Fachini [11:43]
When Should someone jump into the editing of their book?

Chandler Bolt [11:47]
Yeah. So So there’s, you know, the more writing method, right, so you got my map, outline, rough draft editing. And so once you’ve got the rough draft done, there’s really two steps of, there’s two or three steps of editing, depending on how you look at it, what I like to do, and what I recommend, what we teach is self editing. And so that’s kind of the first, that’s the first step. And so if you zoom out a little bit, and I’ve got, I kind of walk through this in the book, but there’s eight milestones on your author journey, right? So there’s my map, outline, see if I can remember all these rough draft, then there’s self editing, and then there’s professional editing. So we’re in that so so the first piece is what I what I recommend is a verbal read through, see where you actually read your book out loud. And and to

Mario Fachini [12:33]
be clear, let me pause you right there. To be clear, you’re not saying make an audio book, you’re just saying read it out loud to check for proofreading, line and content edits, whatever the case may be, you’re doing

Chandler Bolt [12:45]
a self edit, but I call it a verbal read through. And it’s just a form of self editing. And so then, then once you do that, then you pass it off to a professional editor. And so in the publishing world, they’ll tell you, there’s anywhere between seven to 1014, or more types of editing. I really think that’s pretty confusing. And so I’ve kind of distilled it down to two, where you’ve got content editing, and you’ve got copy editing. Now you’re going to hear like line editing, sustained, substantive editing, you got like, yeah, all these different, you know,

Mario Fachini [13:18]
what you can call it whatever you want. It’s either right or wrong.

Chandler Bolt [13:21]
It’s content. And it’s copy. Right? So it’s the content, is it as kind of like a structural, like, what is in the book? And then and then the copy editing is how are you saying, right? And so the so content is, alright, am I saying the right things? Is it make sense? is a flow? Are there stories of their content gaps, like all that stuff, and then copy editing is, is my sentence structure good is not punctuation, grammar, all that stuff. So that’s where you work with a professional editor, content, Edit, then copy, edit, and then you’re moving into if we’re coming back to the, to the eight milestones, then you’re moving into creating your cover, and your sub 10 Or your title and your cover, then you’re moving into formatting, then you’re prepping for launch, then you’re ultimately launching the book.

Mario Fachini [14:10]
Interesting. I want to unpack this a little bit. Some people suggest start with the cover. And it sounds like you’re saying start with the book.

Chandler Bolt [14:17]
Yeah, I so, you know, some people like to start with a title. I don’t. Personally I like to start start with a topic. And because if I if I start with a title, a I will spend a lot of time trying to figure out the title and not spend time doing what I actually do, which is get the rough draft done. Okay. And again, anything but writing the rough draft before you get your rough draft done is a distraction. And the mind is very good at destroying. I mean, writing a book is uncomfortable. And so it’s, it’s the old joke. It’s, you know, you know, in the writers on the deadline, because that’s when they’re popping up on social media the most right because your mind wants to do anything but the uncomfortable act of writing. And so it that’s why I recommend it that way but also you Write your way to a title that may or may not be the theme of the book, right. And so I like to write to a topic and then get the title last and then create the cover last, there’s a lot of advantages to that you come to a better title. Um, you don’t box yourself in the content, you know. So get feedback, and which is the beginning of the marketing phase is getting feedback on your title and your cover, things like that. And

Mario Fachini [15:24]
so that’s when publishing is fun, because now you get to engage everyone with the marketing and getting the feedback. But yeah, you talked about it being uncomfortable process. I know when I was doing one of mine, I literally made a post on Facebook. That was like, I’m so speedy writing right now, but nothing’s working out. So what good YouTube links do you have for me? Yeah, why is it such an uncomfortable process?

Chandler Bolt [15:48]
Cuz I think it’s difficult you’re you’re crystallizing you’re crystallizing your thoughts into the written word. Which in for a lot of people in your mind, it’s a you know, especially your first book, or really any book, I’ve got to figure out what I think on this topic. And it’s not a I mean,

Mario Fachini [16:08]
you can’t talk your way out of it. It’s either right or wrong.

Chandler Bolt [16:10]
Yes, you’re thinking I am, I am crystallizing my thought into the written word, let me think about this. But then I think also just the creation process of when you’re, whenever you’re creating anything, it’s difficult. You know, it’s, it’s, you’re doing the hard work to create something. And it is not the most dopamine inducing activity, which means your mind which is hardwired for dopamine, and for serotonin, and you know, other just like hardwired for, for immediate gratification wants that. And so, you know, it does give a dopamine hit, opening up social media, or watching a YouTube video or something else. And so our mind says it, this is uncomfortable panic mode, and I need something to make me feel better. But I was, if you’re, you know, Steven Pressfield calls this resistance and of the creation process.

Chandler Bolt [17:11]
Yeah, the The War of Art, right?

Chandler Bolt [17:13]
Yeah, yeah. I had him on the self publishing school podcast that was like, that was a big get, I couldn’t believe it. But it was just so interesting, because he writes fiction, he writes nonfiction. He’s written a screenplay, just all these different types of writing. And I think the War of Art is one of the best books on, you know, the creation process as a whole. It’s just really, really good.

Mario Fachini [17:39]
So someone’s gotten through the writing part, they did the Self Editing. Should everyone use a professional editor? Or?

Chandler Bolt [17:48]
Yes, okay. Yeah,

Mario Fachini [17:51]
no, or Yes. You expand on that a little bit? That wasn’t even hesitate. Yes. Yeah.

Chandler Bolt [17:57]
I mean, and I get it some people and where do you find them? Yeah, great question. So I get it. Some people are on a budget. And and, and that’s totally understandable. And so you might be looking to save money or that sort of thing. But I would say absolutely, you need it. You need an editor. I’m certainly I’m doing a quick search here. I’m trying to so I go, I go in depth in this process on. Let’s see where it is. Here. It is chapter number nine. And in chapter number nine and talk about how to hire an editor, I talked about how to save money on editing all that good stuff. But to answer your question, there’s really two, two resources. Or there’s two two main places to hire an editor referrals or freelance marketplace or marketplaces. Right? So the best the best and best place is referrals from other authors, or from people who have worked with editors. So like, as far away the best is, especially from happy customers of editors in your genre. Second piece would be marketplaces. So you’ve got there’s, there’s there’s Upwork, there is Reed z. We have kind of like an internal Rolodex for self publishing school students where we negotiate exclusive discounts on on editors, cover designers, all that stuff. So you got you got referrals, you got marketplaces, and then most editors are going to charge either by the hour or by the job, I recommend going by the job. A lot of times they’ll charge by the word. So there’s a bunch of ways to to reduce your costs. I mean, it’s an investment. I had a mentor growing up, he said, Chandler, there’s two things you can’t spend too much money on a business, a good lawyer and a good accountant. Because if they’re good, they will make you money. Exactly. And so similarly, with a book, it’s the equivalent is a good editor and a good cover designer. And so those two things they make such a huge impact on book sales. especially with your cover, but then, you know, you know, book quality, which results in referrals and more sales with with your editing. And so it’s it’s really, really important you want to look for a hungry professional. But this is someone who, who helped make it look better.

Mario Fachini [20:19]
Now we’re talking about the budget, what would you say someone should allocate for the budget? And also, you know, don’t skimp on the editing and the cover. But, you know, what are your thoughts on someone going? Well, I don’t have a lot for this, this this this? It’s like, well, is this the right timing then? Because it’s like, if you’re not going to put in a certain threshold, you know, and I get it. Not everyone has all the money in the world. But even if you do, people don’t want to waste it. You know, when we’re getting stuff, I’m sure you’re not just throwing it out the door? I know I’m not. But at the same time, it’s like what would be a reasonable in your mind? So that way, someone’s not going? Well, they’re charging me 300. For this one, I could get it for two, when really most people are charging seven or eight. And they’re not even in the ballpark to begin with. And it’s actually a good deal.

Chandler Bolt [21:03]
Yeah, that’s a great question. So typically, it’s somewhere between one to three cents per word. So in, in common English, though, some of you were like, wait, what? And common English I mean, you’re it’s a few 100 bucks is typically what you could expect to pay. Now for all in costs for producing a quality book is anywhere from a few 100 bucks to a couple 1000 bucks on book production costs you got your three main costs are going to be editing, cover design, and formatting. Those Oh, yeah.

Mario Fachini [21:33]
Formatting. Let’s talk about that. That’s a That’s a fun one. Or can be.

Chandler Bolt [21:38]
Yeah, it’s, it’s really, that one’s not too bad. I’d say the other two are more important and more expensive. So if it’s just if it’s just common EBOOK formatting, that’s pretty simple. If you’re doing more print formatting, that can be a little bit more, that can be a few 100 bucks. But if you know, we have, yeah, that we have is this thing called a book outline template generator. On our site, you can press a couple buttons, and it’ll spit out a 25 page, pre formatted Google Doc. And so if you use something like that, then now all of a sudden, like the, the Title Headings are already formatted, though, like the Okay, a bunch of little things like that to where you really process. Yeah, you save yourself time, and you save yourself money. And so then that’s on on formatting and on the whole process.

Mario Fachini [22:27]
Yeah, and let’s expand on that for people listening, if they’re going, Okay, I want to do an e book. But yeah, I want to get the book book in your hands, you know, the actual book. What would you say to someone that goes, I just want to do an e book versus I just want to do a printed?

Chandler Bolt [22:42]
Yeah, I, my personal recommendation is if you’re going to do it, do it. And so if you’re going to do it, do at least ebook and print, a big mistake that authors make is only publishing their book in one or maybe even two formats. If you publish your book in all three formats, so ebook, print and audio book, you’re going to sell more books, you’re going to make more money. Your royalty rates will be higher on ebook and audio, obviously, because there’s no there’s no hard costs, on on, per per purchase. But publishing all three formats, you’ll sell more books, because different people in different genres just buy books differently, right. So you’re going to sell more books, if you do all three formats. Now you don’t have to launch all at once. So if you’re trying to save on costs, or even if it’s just like, Man, this is kind of overwhelming, you can stagger it. And in some cases, that’s actually better, because you focus all your effort on the e book launch, then a couple weeks to a month later, you come up with a print book, and then a couple of weeks to a month later, you come up with the audiobook. So you kind of you have three launches, which just means that you’re going to keep your book selling and you’re focusing on one format at a time. And that can be be really beneficial for driving book sales.

Mario Fachini [23:55]
What have you found more people enjoy audio books or ebooks nowadays?

Chandler Bolt [24:00]
Yeah, it’s really pretty reader specific. I think audio books are on the rise, and in a lot of ways, but it’s really reader and genre specific and you’ve got kind of your broad kind of category shifts. But I mean, everyone’s been saying that print books are gonna go out, go out of you know, people are gonna stop buying them for you. We’ve been saying that for years, maybe even a decade or more. And yeah, same

Mario Fachini [24:26]
thing with printers for computers. You know, ever since the internet we’re not going to need paper. How long has that worked?

Chandler Bolt [24:34]
But it’s I mean analog, analog and people are still purchasing books and it you see it you see it make it I mean big time comeback of the last few years especially

Mario Fachini [24:44]
now with podcasts increasing also do you think that’s played into the audiobooks more or two? Totally separate?

Chandler Bolt [24:51]
No doubt, no doubt. It’s because people are getting used to consuming content in a in an audio medium and And it’s getting this kind of stuff is getting built into cars. So exactly. So now I mean, I can really choose don’t want to listen to a podcast, I want to listen to an audio book or I want to listen to some, some other form of audio content, like, it’s pretty easy to rotate back and forth between two. And especially if you’re a podcaster. Well, then you should 100% have an audio book because you’re going to be marketing it to your audience of people who already listening to you, right? And so they’re more likely to want, they’re already telling you I consume audio content, right? And so just the segue that and say, Hey, you can grab a copy of my book and audiobook and John Lee Dumas does this really well. There’s an audible bounty. So when people go download your book, if they try audible, audible will send you there, they’re always changing the number, but it’s like 5075 bucks or something crazy like that just for getting people to try audible. And so I mean, it’s pretty amazing. So now all of a sudden, I for me, it’s a few 100 bucks a month, and audible bounties and for a lot of authors if, especially if you do any sort of promotion towards the audiobook can be a good source of source of royalties.

Mario Fachini [26:11]
So I think that’s a good point right there because it for someone that’s listening going well, I’m not sure if I should invest in the cover this that that do what the best because think about that, you know, okay, so you from, from a grand, okay, big deal. But now you’re making a couple 100 A month how you know, the ROI on that exponentially over the next decade. You know, this isn’t a social media post or LinkedIn posts where it’s a one time deal. It’s like, it’s a frickin book. So, thank you for everything you’ve shared. I got a couple more questions before we thank our sponsor and come back. But the first one is, who would you say is your biggest success story out of the I don’t even know the countless 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people you’ve helped?

Chandler Bolt [26:51]
Yeah, the[re’s a lot. I mean, there’s, there’s there’s so many. There’s, there’s, there’s a way narrowed

Mario Fachini [26:57]
down to the first 100. Let’s narrow it down to the first 100

Chandler Bolt [27:03]
Yeah, so I would I would say this I mean, I don’t know if this I’d say this like top success story of I’d say this is probably one of the more meaningful ones to me purse.

Mario Fachini [27:10]
I love that. I love when people reframe it and yeah, please.

Chandler Bolt [27:14]
So this is a so one of our students, Sean Sumner. He wrote and published, he joined self publishing school years ago, wrote and published a couple of books with us on on physical therapy, which is his he’s a full time physical therapist. And then his daughter saw it and said, Hey, Dad, I want to do that. I want to write a book that looks cool. And he said, he said, Alright, go work, write 50 words and come back to me, you know, kind of thinking she wouldn’t write. And she came back a few hours later, she had 50 words written. And so her name is Emma Sumner. She published a book called The fairies of waterfall Island, a kids book, eight years old. The book made $4,000 In the first three months, she went on to, I mean, she donated all that money to an Autism Awareness charity called Autism Speaks. She started doing local speaking gigs. She made like 1200 bucks at her first speaking gig at a local school, they paid her 250 bucks. And she sold a ton of books. She did another one made like 100. Like now she’s getting her quote unquote, allowance, which is really just her monthly royalty check. And she’s paying for school field trips. Like, her confidence is a young woman doing that at eight years old. I mean, the trajectory of her life is this is crazy. So that’s one of my feet. I mean, now she’s inspired so many other kids to write and publish books, we got kids showing up to our conferences, right and kids books like it’s just so cool.

Mario Fachini [28:36]
That’s thank you for sharing that that is meaningful. And also I will throw in and stuff just given the torque tour money like here’s how you work for someone to get a paycheck like this is royalty passive income. Shoot, I don’t know about you, did you have that I

Chandler Bolt [28:50]
ate? I did not. I didn’t

Mario Fachini [28:52]
either start my first company at 12. But I didn’t have that as like,

Chandler Bolt [28:57]
fantasy life skills. Right? It’s a project. You’re it’s a project with your kid that teaches them half a dozen a dozen life skills in the process while also creating an asset that will be with them for the rest of their life.

Mario Fachini [29:10]
For sure. I have one fun question before we think the sponsoring come back yellow or black? Yellow. All right, good. Matches Muy Thai. This is the wheel of whatever and your question is Where would you like to travel that you haven’t been yet?

Chandler Bolt [29:27]
Oh, Bali. No kidding. It’s I mean, it’s just amazed from from what I’ve seen. I haven’t been there but Bali and a lot of places in Asia. I’ve never been Asia.

Mario Fachini [29:39]
Okay. Very good. Yeah, it does look good. I haven’t been there either. But that’s a good one. We’re gonna thank our sponsor real quick and come back for the imperfect action round titles, cover designs and promotion. Oh, mind you. We’re all excited to achieve your goal, maybe even dream of becoming an author to serve more people with your business, but it’s turning out to be a lot more than you expected. Hmm, I get it. I’ve done it numerous times personally. Visit, get my business book published calm today to take the first step on making this process enjoyable. Dare I even say fun? And most definitely profitable. Your business and audience depend on it. But you know what? Don’t take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors, like Lori and I went from

Chandler Bolt [30:22]
having an idea. And the possibilities to actually getting my book published

Chandler Bolt [30:29]
for Katherine, thank you for making my mom number one. Her MaryAlice

Mary Alice [30:35]
what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch,

Chandler Bolt [30:42]
unmanageable Shaun Cody,

Chandler Bolt [30:44]
I’ve worked with Mario over the phone and online and he’s been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rosio

Rosio [30:52]
there’s no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else. Again, I’ve attempted in the past, it didn’t serve me. It’s a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Chandler Bolt [31:03]
Adele, if you’re looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Fachini

Chandler Bolt [31:09]
or Bill Benner I can’t make a higher recommendation for me then work with Mario Fachini He has been great for for me and right now. I won’t work with anybody else except for Mary Okay,

Mario Fachini [31:20]
their words not mine visit get my business book published calm today to take the first step. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that’s get my business book published.com In my real quick, I mean real quick. Alright, and we’re back with the imperfect action round Chandler Are you ready to take imperfect action? Yes, sir. All right, the first question I have for you. You’re ready. Yes, sir. What is the fastest path to the cache?

Chandler Bolt [31:52]
On fast path to the cache is getting your first customer as fast as possible so use the book to use the book to get leads sales and referrals for your business.

Mario Fachini [32:01]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it? Hmm,

Chandler Bolt [32:07]
big biggest problem is not putting pen to paper followed by getting their rough draft done. fastest path to fix it is to write consistently take the 30 day rough draft challenge.

Mario Fachini [32:19]
Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Chandler Bolt [32:25]
So customer lifetime value, create raving fans create a touch point, one to three months prior to a built in renewal timeline with a next step and an A phase two that is compelling and interesting to the customer.

Mario Fachini [32:45]
Excellent. We’ve been talking about the books the whole time. I love getting them in business owners hands. What books in addition to the War of Art have helped you in your business in life?

Chandler Bolt [32:55]
Hmm. Extreme Ownership one of the best books on leadership I’ve ever read at 20 sales and marketing. And one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read an Influence by Robert Cialdini all great suggestions out there with a 20 sales in marketing. I think it’s probably the best marketing book of all time. Excellent.

Mario Fachini [33:13]
Where would you like people to learn more?

Chandler Bolt [33:17]
Yeah, um, so I, I’ve got a kind of a cool giveaway for listeners in the audience. So if you’d like a copy of my brand new book published the proven path from blank page to your first 10,000 copies sold, then go to published book.com Ford slash Mario. So published book.com Ford slash Mario, the first 50 people that go to that link. So this is a freebie for this audience. I will pay for the book, I will print the book I will pack it well, I will not pack it. But I will have it packed and shipped to your door for free. So all you have to do is go to published book.com forward slash Mario the first 50 People just fill out the form. Tell me where to send it. And we’ll ship a book your way and it’ll help you get started making progress with your book.

Mario Fachini [34:12]
Excellent. Thank you for making that available. That’s very generous. And thank you for everything you’ve shared Chandler it’s been a pleasure.

Chandler Bolt [34:18]
Mario, thank you so much. Alright, expert authority world.

Mario Fachini [34:22]
We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless. You’re already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24/7 And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the expert authority effect publishing method it’s easier and more profitable than ever visit get my business book published calm today and take the first step to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit get my business book published calm and take the first step knowing it will be your very best you You’re leaving it all on the field oh yeah and it’s also free once again that’s get my business book published.