SPI 876: Life After Publishing a Book (1 Week Later)

SPI 876: Life After Publishing a Book (1 Week Later)

Pat Flynn:: It is Tuesday, June 10th, and it’s been exactly seven days since the public launch of my new book Lean Learning. And first of all, I wanna thank you to those of you who have purchased it and have supported it. Many of you have left reviews, which is amazing, but I’m not here to ask for that. I’m here to essentially give you everything that’s going on in my head right now after what might be the toughest week.

I’ve had in a very long time, and I say tough in a way where in some cases, yes, tough because it was hard and negative, but also tough because it’s just a grind and loving some of it as well. I. So I just wanted to distill this and have this be a marker, if you will, for this moment in time, because it’s definitely a moment of time.

It’s a momentous one. I will say again, if I’m all over the place, excuse me, I’m sitting here with bags under my eyes. I’m sitting here at about 10% low battery. I got the yellow battery, if not red. Now, because of how much energy I’ve used, launching a book is one of the hardest things you can do unless you have.

Already a list of people who are buyers who have purchased your books. You’re gonna be fighting an uphill battle. Now, it’s interesting that I say that right, because I’ve had books written in the past. Will It Fly was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It came out in 2015, 10 years ago, feels like 20 years ago.

Superfan came out a few years later in 2019, and there are email lists that are created that were created from those books. So I have. Tens of thousands of people on a list from people who have once got access to my book. And yet books aren’t moving. And when I asked a bunch of other author friends who have written books recently, many of them here on this podcast, they all say the same thing.

Books are hard. I even had a friend recently message me and say, you know what? I can sell thousand dollar courses to thousands of people. And I can barely move a $20 book. It’s an interesting time right now. I feel like there was once a time where books were a lot easier to sell, and I think a lot of it has to do with some of the principles that I talk about in my book.

Lean Learning, the fact that there is information overload, the fact that people don’t have the time. To read books like they once used to, or their attention spans are too small or they’re just too busy. I think that’s part of it. I think other media like video is preferred and perhaps even podcast as well, which is why several of you purchased the Audible version, which I did read myself and was very, very enjoyable.

A lot of people. Loved hearing the audio version because I do go off script every once in a while, but you know, moving a 20 plus dollars book a physical hardcover is just very difficult. I’ll share with you how difficult this was in order to help sell some more books. I made deals with certain events that I was speaking with or certain organizations who agreed to purchase several hundred copies of these books Now.

When you are going for something like a New York Times listing, and I do not yet know whether I hit the New York Times or not, it hasn’t changed over yet, although I think it will change tomorrow and Wednesday. I’ll know whether I hit it or not. But again, that’s not, I have to say this every time I wanna hit it, but it’s not gonna be the end of the world if I don’t.

And there’s also a chance to hit the USA Today bestsellers list, and there is no longer a Wall Street Journal bestseller list, so that is gone. But in order for things to not count against you. If you are offering bulk, you have to collect individual names and addresses and sort of fulfill those bulk books that way rather than here is one order for 500 books.

Because then it would be very easy for a person to just say, okay, well I’m, I have a lot of money. I’m just gonna buy 20,000 copies of my own book and call it a day. I’m gonna guarantee myself New York Times. Well, New York Times looks at a lot of things. They look at the distribution of these books, the percentage across multiple different retailers.

They look at things like. The category that it’s in. And there’s a lot of other mystery involved too. Stuff that I don’t know. So there’s, you know, we have a chance, which is really cool. The fact that we have a chance is, is wonderful. Thousands of books have been sold, and that to me is so gratifying.

Because here’s the thing about this book and what I’ve studied. I want this book to do well. I want it to go far and wide, and I started researching how other books have gone far and wide. The book right now that seems to be on everybody’s coffee table and in every store that I go to is this green book by a woman named Mel Robbins.

She’s really cool and this book is called The Let Them Theory, and it is somehow just hitting astronomical numbers and has been at the top of the New York Times for several weeks. It just kind of flew out at the highest level. It’s kind of an anomaly it feels like, based on the studies that I’ve done and the people that I’ve spoken to, books like James Clear’s book, atomic Habits, however, looking at its history and researching it, it’s been very interesting and also very encouraging.

It did hit on day one, he had a big email list, and then it kind of disappeared, but then he kept going on podcast interviews. He kept pushing. He kept promoting it. And eventually it came back on the list and it hasn’t left since it’s been on the list for like hundreds of weeks. It’s unreal. 10 million copies sold books that are good might hit 10,000 copies.

And I think we’re right at the cusp already, which is really great. And again, it’s pretty competitive and there’s a lot of other factors. I don’t know what other books are coming out or who else chose these same weeks, et cetera. There’s like, again, a ton of factors. One week you might need 8,000 books to make the list.

Another week you might need 18,000 to even hit the list. So again, there’s a lot of variance here and in attempting to get these names and addresses from these companies who again, have agreed to. You know, buy 500 copies of the book. We give them a form to then insert into the, their email list or handout, or however it might be, and like, it’s like a 50% completion rate.

And this is a big learning lesson for me because my numbers were way off on predictions because of this. A big part of my strategy. Or what Rory, they didn’t from brand builders calls BS books in lieu of fee. So I decided to say yes, to speak at several events and in exchange for my time there, instead of purchasing, you know, my speaking fee.

Like normally they would buy X number of books and then offer those books to the audiences and collect those names and addresses. And at a 50% completion rate, it’s like I should have just doubled the amount of books. But even then, like it felt like pulling teeth. And that to me was so surprising. Like it almost felt like they couldn’t give the book away, but I know there’s, there’s much more than that, right?

Like they might not know who I am. They might not want more books sent or more information. Again, the ironic part of this book, lean Learning is. You gotta cut out the information, lean out the things you don’t need and lean into the things. Lean deeper. Go deeper with the things that you’ve committed to.

And you know, I understand that. But this book, I’m hoping, is going to be one of those books that will help people define that for their lives and understand how to rearrange and unlearn their learning habits and relearn new ways of doing it. And again, I’m sorry. I’m all over the place. It’s late. It has been a ride.

It is. This is just me decompressing. Being honest with you, I did get some comments from people who said, so you are teaching me how to reduce the amount of things I learn about by giving me something else new to learn about, right? And I was like, yeah, okay. I knew that was gonna happen. Probably the best thing that’s happened though.

Are the people who have read the book. I’ve gotten a lot of personal messages from people, some I don’t even know, which is a good sign. People who don’t follow my work, who are not fans of Pat Flynn or Deep Pocket Monster who have read my book and said, this is exactly what I needed, or, I didn’t expect much from this, and I was glued to every page.

I mean, I wrote it in my style, which is through personal story, through witty and dad jokes and things like that. That just, you know, punchlines and twists and surprises. I mean, the first story in the book, if you haven’t read it, is in a way a plot twist and it gets people on the edge of their seat. And these were things that I’ve spent a lot of time on to do.

And, and the fact that that is working is great and the fact that it’s working on strangers is wonderful. ’cause that means there’s so many more people out there who could read this and benefit from it, who could enjoy it. And that has been the best thing is those comments, not just the reviews, but like literal.

Personal messages from people who are just so, like, they wouldn’t normally just say these things to make me feel good about myself. They’re saying these things ’cause it actually is a good book and that to me is, is amazing. I have yet to hear somebody say, this is crap. It’s gonna come. I. Yes, I’m gonna be upset on that day, but it’s okay because I’m already getting enough positive feedback from it.

And the positive feedback I knew was gonna come. I’ve pressure tested this book with several pre-reads to gimme some feedback and they help rearrange certain things or help confirm a lot of what, what I knew was going to happen when I write books in this style about something. The concept has been really intriguing for a lot of people.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is the perfect time for a book like this, which is, again, reassuring. But again, this, this selling a book is hard and I feel like the way to sell a book today is not by just utilizing the connections you already have. I feel like some of my next moves, this is, this is where I’m gonna shift to like, okay, what am I gonna do to keep this going Because I do wanna keep it going.

It really has that. Capability of going far and wide. It is not like my other books, which are very specific, right, how to get super fans. If you don’t have a business, then why does it matter that you have super fans or not? Now, thankfully the creator economy gives people more access to building followings and that definitely helps with building super fans.

’cause that’s something you want, at least for those who wanna be famous and wealthy and well known, which is a book that my buddy Rory Vaden, who I spoke about earlier, is coming out with very soon his is launching in July. Wealthy and well known. Great title. My gosh. Shout out to Rory. By the way, he’s been very helpful in this process in helping me understand how this all works.

Definitely highly recommend Rory and his brand Builders group for any book projects and, and branding projects that you might need help with. So

what are my next moves? Number one, continue the podcast tour. I did 50 podcast episodes leading up to the. Launch date, which is a lot, but some of those were done several months in advance. And I gotta say, oh my gosh, this reminds me of, of Dustin, who recently came on the podcast to talk about podcast guesting.

He said that one benefit of podcast guesting is that by just doing the interviews, you’re gonna get better at telling your story. And oh my gosh, my improvement on telling the stories within lean learning and how to better present them and new stories that have come up since then. The just practice of getting asked questions about this every single week has helped so much with me.

Even better understanding how to share the message, it makes me almost even wanna like have another pass at writing the book because I’ve gotten so much better at verbalizing these things. I wonder if there would’ve been a case for me to start a podcast or something as I was writing this book to help me just to be a platform where a.

Of a medium for me to kind of, you know, share new ideas, to come up with new stuff to make these new and interesting connections. Even like individual phrases, like this idea of your mistakes don’t derail you. They become the guardrails that you can now work within. That was randomly said on a podcast, and then I’ve said it like every single podcast episode since like halfway through, and people understand that.

It’s like, oh, mistakes are important. They tell you. Kind of where to work within, and I love that. That wouldn’t have come out if I didn’t do that many podcast episodes, but podcast episodes do a decent job of moving books. I know that some people have. Yes. Purchased my book as a result of listening to me on how El Ross podcast or Sean Stevenson’s show, cliff Ravens Crafts podcast.

Their support has been incredible, but again, it’s not like. Loads of people. It’s a few. I kept track of the rankings every single day, but I’m gonna continue the podcast because I think a part of this is just hearing it again and again. Atomic Habits was a book that I didn’t pick up until I heard about it like 10 times from people talking about it.

Right? Because James kept putting in the work, his book skyrocketed because he did not take his gas off the pedal or pedal off the gas. Gas off the pedal, pedal off the gas. It’s late. But I’m gonna keep talking. I really also want to nail a TikTok strategy for this. I feel like there is a world where I could develop some sort of video structure format where I’m not like, Hey, I’m the author of this book.

This is what you need. I mean, those like The nice thing about short form video, as I know from Short Pocket Monster, which is approaching 2 million subscribers and a lot of my other work on short form video. And Instagram reels and shorts is that, you know, you have a lot of room to play and if you post every day, you’re gonna learn some things very quickly.

And so I imagine that there could be some format where maybe some days it is more educational. Where I’m speaking to in a more authoritative tone, the things here in this book, but I feel like there’s some stuff that could be done like on the street, like in real life, there was this idea that was thrown around in a mastermind group I had with like, okay, well what if I was.

In person, in a public place. And I just was interviewing somebody about something they wanted to learn how to do that they just never had the time to do. And then I go and learn it with them, and we learn it together and we see how quickly we progress using some of the principles that I talk about in the book.

I’m like, yes, I wanna tell that story. That would be amazing. And then my mind’s like, I, I, I literally don’t have the time for that, although I, I would wanna do that, but I’m just so busy and like, what would it take? And I start questioning myself. But that’s like within the realm that I wanna play. Is there a framework where I go up to somebody and I’m just like, what’s something you’ve always wanted to learn?

Well, I’ve always wanted to learn how to speak a new language. Boom. I throw the book in their face and I’m like, lean learning. Go read it. And then I do the next thing and they do the next thing. I don’t know, I mean, I’d wanna see the results of that, but maybe that would go viral because of, of the way a person reacts or you know, accidentally hit them in the face or something.

I don’t wanna purposefully do that. I don’t wanna hurt anybody, but you know what I’m saying? Like there is an author named Joseph Nen. Who wrote a book? Let me see. I can grab it. He’s on the New York Times. He’s been on the New York Times for weeks. I met him in person last year in August and brilliant. He was using TikTok more than anything.

The book has been on the list for 26 weeks and the book is, don’t Believe Everything You Think, and he has some very, very simple tiktoks. He’s just holding the book and there’s a quote that says, this book will change the way you think about everything. And that’s it. And it has like hundreds of thousands of views.

And then I think the strategy that’s working really well for Joseph based on my research, and again, I, I dig in, I wanna see who’s doing it well, and I wanna learn what they’re doing. A lot of people are using the TikTok shop to promote his book. And I don’t know when he started that, but I noticed a lot of other people who had audiences hold the book in their hand and like highlight something or talk about it and really talk about how it changed their life.

And then promote the TikTok shop way to purchase the book. So of course they’re incentivized ’cause they get a commission, but this is a failure marketing and the. Quickness of the way a message could be spread and how easy it is to click a button to purchase something on TikTok is fascinating to me. It has caught me purchasing things like a de weeder.

I have artificial turf yet I was still so intrigued by this de weeder. I, I remember there was like one weed in the front yard that got through our turf and I was like, I need to use this thing. It was called like grandpa’s wieder or something like that. I think some of you might even know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve bought these steel wool rags and sheets that you can use to wipe off grime off your plates, and they’ve been fantastic. That was actually probably the best purchase that I’ve had on TikTok. I hardly use the de weeder, by the way. Grandpas or uncles or you know, boomer’s, weeder, whatever it might be.

So TikTok and TikTok shop, and I feel like there is a way, and I’m in the middle of researching this right now. How do I sell my books? Through TikTok, get affiliates to promote it, have it count toward a list. I’m still figuring out that answer, but this is where my head is at right now because this is somebody who’s doing it so different than everybody else.

I feel like there is also a world where eventually one person, if I keep hitting the hammer, I wanna talk about it. Every podcast, I don’t wanna bore you to death or just have you be sick of it. But there is something to be said for just continually talking about these messages by hitting that hammer again and again until that wall breaks to a point where perhaps just one single person, one celebrity, one influential person, has this way of phrasing something that then gets everybody to get behind it.

This book, I believe, truly has the opportunity to do that, and that’s important for me to believe. Or else if I didn’t, it would never happen. So I’m gonna keep going with this. I’m gonna use the positive reinforcement from the readers and the reviewers to lean into more of this and to get it into more people’s hands and to hopefully, again, hit that tipping point where it just starts to take off.

And maybe one day people will go back and listen to this episode and go, oh my gosh. Remember like when Pat was just like kind of figuring things out? This will be an amazing timestamp. This will be very meta if people are listening to this in the future and the book has taken off. And even if it doesn’t, it’s a learning experience.

I’ve learned a lot about that. I’ll talk about this in a future episode a little bit later. I’m still. In PTSD with the entire week because man, more podcast interviews, social media videos, talking about the book, really connecting with people. And a big reason why I’m tired is I’ve been using a lot of dms, which is not scalable, but I’ve been trying to answer as many dms as possible from people who’ve picked it up.

To thank them, to ask for a review when they’re done, to learn more about what they might need help with. That is a strength that I’ve always had. It’s just hard when there’s so many people and I’m trying to get a book into as many hands as possible, but that’s where my energy wanted to go for a lot of this past week.

Plus, I have a keynote coming up at Craft and Commerce in Boise. I also have card party coming up at the end of the year. The kids are finishing up school and um, still creating videos for Deep Pocket Monster. The book has taken over all of those things. So I felt like this week I’ve also had to catch up after the launch.

But it’s been a fun learning experience. But where I was gonna say is there’s been a lot that I’ve understood now about the world of working with a traditional publisher. There have been good things, things that have been extremely helpful, things that I couldn’t have done without them. But then there’s other things that I could have definitely done without them, and a lot of that has to do with.

The marketing of the book. I felt a little underwhelmed with how much support I got on that front, but this is what I was told would happen, and the opportunity to get it into multiple stores and Barnes and Noble and those kinds of things. Again, this is so much easier working with a traditional publisher, but I don’t know.

I think it’s still too early to determine whether or not I would continue down this route. Again, I very much enjoy the people who I worked with and my specific publisher, but again, just the world of traditional publishing feels very old school. There’s a lot of things that I wish were done differently.

There was a lot of moments where I wish things were over communicated versus under communicated. And again, I’ll get into that a little bit later, but I don’t wanna speak too soon here because there’s still a lot more work to do and we are both. The, the publisher and I not taking our foot off the gas pedal there.

I think I said that one better. Will I write another book? Probably. Probably. I might redo or create a second edition of super fans. I think that’s important. I think there are other more niche and very specific kinds of books that I could write maybe specific to certain strategies within online business that.

You know, are not gonna be written to try to hit any lists or anything like that, but maybe just more capture new leads, maybe more to answer certain questions and stay relevant to the things that are happening right now in the world of all online business specifically. I can also imagine, and this has always been a big dream of mine, writing a fiction novel.

I have some ideas. I’ve pressure tested some of them with some people who really enjoy them, and a lot of my work on Deep Pocket Monster right now is in the world of storytelling. This is why our videos are doing very, very well and why we’re seeing millions of views on our stories. It’s because, not just because of Pokemon, but because of storytelling.

People who don’t even care about Pokemon are watching our videos because of the storytelling that goes within it. And I’ve said this multiple times this year already. Storytelling is gonna be the most powerful skill that you can learn. And so we’re learning about it, we’re studying it. We’re reading books and getting workshops done with professional storytellers and.

We’re learning everything we can and a lot of that is getting absorbed. From my work on the Pokemon side to a point where I now have an itch to potentially write a story that uses a lot of the same principles, but in a more cinematic universe in the world of fiction. So that’s really exciting to me.

And you know, I’m very inspired by Ray Edwards, a friend of mine, person who’s been on the show before, expert godfather of copywriting, who has written also a number of fiction books too. Stephen Azu, my book, coaches from Back in the Will Fly Days have written some. Fiction as well, and that’s really intriguing to me.

That’s really intriguing to me. So you might see me put some of my skills into that world, but that is also new. Whether I go traditional or self-published or hybrid or or, or whatever. Who knows? Who knows. Again, there’s still time to figure out whether or not this was the right decision or not, but I think no matter what, it was the right decision to try.

And it’s just gonna help all of you learn when you ask me questions and when I start talking a little bit more about the behind the scenes of what it’s been like and things to look out for or what I wish I had done differently, those kinds of things. But I feel like it’s still too early for that. But I just wanted to decompress with you.

Very happy with how the book turned out, the final product. So, so, so much believe in it, so, so, so much. Wanted to get in front of more people and will not be letting up on that for sure. Definitely wish. More books were sold based on the preliminary numbers that I’m understanding, but you know, there is a shot.

We could hit a list. We’ll see. I’m not gonna be too upset if we don’t. I’m cautiously, semi optimistic, but I’m also very tired. A lot was put into this four years since the idea came about and the proposal was made a couple years of writing, a lot of pre-marketing, a lot of relationship building, a ton of podcasts, more on the way, and hopefully one day you might see me on Diary of a CEO, the Mel Robbins podcast, Joe Rogan.

Who knows, but I’m gonna dream big and keep taking you along the ride. So thank you so much. I’m gonna get some shuteye before my trip tomorrow, and thank you again for supporting the book, and if you haven’t picked it up yet. I’m still pushing Lean Learning book.com or check it out on Amazon, get the physical hard copy or the audio book and leave a review if you haven’t already.

That’s super helpful and I’ll be sure to continue to share more about the process and what I’ve learned along the way with you. So again, thank you so much for everything and I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers.