Uncategorized - Hybrid Pub Scout https://hybridpubscout.com/category/uncategorized/ Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:41:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://hybridpubscout.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/cropped-hps_circle_logo_green-32x32.png Uncategorized - Hybrid Pub Scout https://hybridpubscout.com/category/uncategorized/ 32 32 150811860 Episode 84: Unconventional Publishing Models with David Morris https://hybridpubscout.com/episode-84-unconventional-publishing-models-with-david-morris/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=episode-84-unconventional-publishing-models-with-david-morris Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000 https://hybridpubscout.com/?p=4836 This episode’s guest is David Morris of Lake Drive Books. In today’s interview, David tells us more about Lake Drive’s mission, publishing practices, and unconventional financial model. David also offers his takes on how to determine what works for you when it comes to choosing a publishing path and gives some platform-building insights for authors. ... Read more

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This episode’s guest is David Morris of Lake Drive Books.

In today’s interview, David tells us more about Lake Drive’s mission, publishing practices, and unconventional financial model. David also offers his takes on how to determine what works for you when it comes to choosing a publishing path and gives some platform-building insights for authors.

Hybrid publishing has a bit of a nebulous definition at the moment, but as authors are becoming more disenchanted with traditional publishing and discovering how grueling self publishing can be, they’re becoming more relevant. 

Since it’s been the standard for such a long time, people are used to the traditional publishing model. They expect that:

  1. Publishers pay for everything
  2. Authors get advances and royalties
  3. Publishers take care of book promotion and marketing

But here’s a few problems (among others):

  1. The “everything” that publishers pay for has a big asterisk attached to it, even in trad
  2. Advances and royalties are more underwhelming than ever (or maybe “less whelming”?)
  3. Book promotion and marketing mostly falls on the author now (see point 1)

I’ve seen a lot of talk about hybrid publishing being predatory and no different from vanity presses, and in some cases…sure. But when you don’t have a major corporation paying all the up front costs, there are some practicalities to consider. Namely, who’s going to pay for all these professionals to do the work of making a book?

If you listened to the show before, hopefully you’ve gotten the message of how hard ghostwriters, editors, designers, marketers, and other publishing professionals work to create the best book possible. And that work needs to be compensated. But, authors, obviously, should get the best deal possible for their work, too.

So where does that leave us?

How do we bring books into the world while making sure it’s fair to everyone, especially when everyone who isn’t a CEO of a major corporation has such a tight budget? And how do you, as an author, know the money and effort you spend on the publishing side is going to get you to your goal?

The Independent Book Publisher’s Association (or IBPA) has tried to set up some standards for hybrid presses in the last several years. At last look, these are what the IBPA says a good hybrid publisher should do:

  1. Define a mission and vision for its publishing program.
  2. Vet submissions.
  3. Commit to truth and transparency in business practices.
  4. Provide a negotiable, easy-to-understand contract for each book published.
  5. Publish under its own imprint(s) and ISBNs.
  6. Publish to industry standards.
  7. Ensure editorial, design, and production quality. 
  8. Pursue and manage a range of publishing rights. 
  9. Provide distribution services.
  10. Demonstrate respectable sales.
  11.  Pay authors a higher-than-standard royalty. 

As you may have noticed, there’s considerable wiggle room in there for these definitions (for example, you as the author are responsible for deciding how to define things like “respectable sales”). And the definitions are constantly evolving. So, that’s a big part of what we’ll be looking at in this and upcoming episodes.

Guest Bio: David Morris

David Morris is the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books. David has thirty years of experience in editing, marketing, and corporate leadership with major publishing brands like HarperCollins/Zondervan, where he served as vice-president and publisher and worked on numerous bestsellers. His sole focus is working with spiritually progressive and personal growth authors, leveraging his experience to help them achieve publishing success. David is also a literary agent at Hyponymous Literary, co-host of the Publishing Disrupted podcast, an author, and holds a doctorate in psychology and religion.

Lake Drive Books

Lake Drive Books’s vision is to serve authors and readers who want to break the mold and ask honest questions about religion, spirituality, and personal growth. These books aim to help readers understand the past and move forward in a life where they can be real and feel seen.

Links of Note

Transcript Below

Click here to reveal episode transcript text.

Emily Einolander 0:21
Welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast helping you navigate the publishing landscape. I’m M Einolander, and I explore resources and services so authors can be successful and safe as they pursue publishing. Fun fact, when I first started this podcast, I quickly realized that the actual name was a little bit not what I meant. I had set out to talk to publishing professionals and writers about their experiences working with traditional and indie publishing, especially people who had done both what I quickly and too late realized was that when people hear hybrid a lot of them think of hybrid presses. Well, good news for me. Since I went on hiatus, hybrid publishing has proliferated, and there’s a lot more to explore. Seven years later, I’ve finally aligned more with the name of my business. I’m sure some would say there’s something cosmic about that, but maybe hybrid publishing has a bit of a nebulous definition at the moment, but as authors are becoming more disenchanted with traditional publishing and discovering how grueling self publishing can be, they’re becoming more relevant. Since it’s been the standard for such a long time. People are used to the traditional publishing model. They expect that one publishers pay for everything. Two authors get advances in royalties, three publishers take care of book promotion and marketing, but there’s a few problems with that. Number one, the everything that publishers pay for has a big asterisk attached to it. Two, advances in royalties are more underwhelming than ever. And three, book promotion and marketing mostly falls on the author. Now, regardless of how they’re publishing, I’ve seen a lot of talk about hybrid publishing being predatory under every circumstances, and I want to push back on that, even though in some cases they are predatory. But when you don’t have a major corporation paying all the upfront costs, there are some practicalities to consider, namely, who is going to pay for all these professionals to do the work of making a book? If you listened to the show before, hopefully you’ve gotten the message of how hard ghost writers, editors, designers, marketers and other publishing professionals work to create the best book possible, and that work needs to be compensated, and authors obviously should get the best deal possible for their work too. So where does that leave us? How do we bring books into the world while making sure it’s fair to everyone, especially when everyone who isn’t a CEO of a major corporation has such a tight budget? And how do you as an author, know the money and effort you spend on the publishing side is going to get you to your goal. The Independent book Publishers Association, or ibpa, has tried to set up some standards for hybrid presses in the last several years at last look. These are what they say a good hybrid publisher should do, and I’m just going to run through the list, rather than read every single part of it. I’ll include the link in the show notes, so you can go check out what they have there yourself. And maybe it’s changed since I looked who knows. Number one, define a mission and vision for its publishing program. Two, vet submissions. Three, commit to truth and transparency in business practices. Four, provide a negotiable, easy to understand contract for each book published. Five, publish under its own imprint and ISBNs. Six, publish to industry standards. Seven, ensure editorial design and production quality. Eight, pursue and manage a range of publishing rights. Nine, provide distribution services. 10, demonstrate respectable sales and 11, pay authors a higher than standard royalty. As you may have noticed, there’s considerable wiggle room in there for these definitions. For example, you as the author are responsible for deciding how to define things like respectable sales, and the definitions are constantly evolving. So that’s a big part of what we’ll be looking at in this and upcoming episodes. In today’s interview, I’m talking with David Morris, founder and publisher of like drive books, a conventional publishing company with an unconventional financial model, full disclosure, in case it isn’t obvious, I do work with like drive in a managing editor position, and I’m having a pretty good time, too. David has 30 years of experience in editing, marketing and corporate leadership with major publishing brands like HarperCollins, sondern. In where he served as vice president and publisher and worked on numerous best sellers. His sole focus is working with spiritually progressive and personal growth authors, leveraging his experience to help them achieve publishing success. David is also a literary agent at hyponomist literary co host of the publishing disrupted podcast an author and holds a doctorate in psychology and religion. Lake Drive books vision is to serve authors and readers who want to break the mold and ask honest questions about religion, spirituality and personal growth. These books aim to help readers understand the past and move forward in a life where they can be real and feel seen. We’ll get more details on Lake drive’s mission and model. David also offers takes on how to determine what works for you when it comes to choosing a publishing path, and gives some platform building insights for authors.

David Morris 5:54
And here we go. Hi, Emily.

Emily Einolander 5:58
Thanks for coming and talking with me. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. David and I work together at David’s press Lake, drive books. And would you tell us a little bit about that, please?

David Morris 6:13
Well, you’re a really great worker. I know, I know, I know. I knew you meant talk about, like, drive books, but you, technically, from an editor’s point of view, the logic of your paragraph there meant you were referring to our working relationship. So I wanted to comment on that.

Emily Einolander 6:34
Well, yeah, okay, yeah, I totally meant to do that. That was on purpose.

David Morris 6:38
Anybody out there is listening hire Emily without a doubt. You know when you get those, when you’re when you’re a boss, you former employees will they apply to other jobs and you, I’m maybe it says good things about me, but I get used as a reference. And they always ask you, or they will often ask you, would you rehire this person? And I would absolutely say yes, I am honored if you ever, if you ever left and needed to come back or whatever. But okay, anyway, yeah, so there’s, there are, I’m already plugging you. You don’t have to plug me.

Emily Einolander 7:11
You’re here. Nope, I just got here. Well, I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have, I mean, we met when I walked up to you and said, What do you do? And like, this looks cool.

David Morris 7:20
So, yeah, at a conference, yeah, well, okay, so answering your question, yeah, I mean, you’re, you’re the, you’re the production. I’m sorry, managing editor, managing editor. Sorry for, for Lake Drive books. We’re a small, independent publishing company. We use the hybrid model, as you know. But what I like the my my favorite definition of that is it’s conventional publishing with an unconventional financial model. Because I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much they’re used to a certain financial model in book publishing and and it’s as if that’s the only model that is reputable, and I think that’s what’s changed so much in recent years. But we’re going to get into that. I mean, Lake Drive books. I started it when I exited the corporate publishing world after being in it for many, many years, and I wanted to do my own kind of books. I’ve always been really fascinated with how we identify who we are, how culturally, spiritually, Faith wise. I’ve always been very interested in people who are struggling with figuring that out for one reason or another. And there are a lot of reasons, and there’s a lot of change going on, and people need more authors helping them write this stuff out, put words to it. So like, where are we going? What? What is it that we call spiritual in our lives to come? Not, I don’t mean that in, like, the the great beyond life to come, but no, our lives right now is what I’m talking about, and that’s the kind of spirituality we need to be talking about more so. So yeah, and it’s not strictly religious. It’s, it’s very much with a self help bent. I have a psychology background, and I, you know, at least academically, and I think that’s really the new spirituality in many ways, we just haven’t called it that, which is also a whole sort of philosophical discussion about how we name religion and spirituality and psychology. It’s a whole philosophical discussion about what, what is, what when you’re talking about those things. So we do, we do memoir. We’ve done a lot of memoir because, you know, we’re trying to tell stories that are gritty, that are on the margins, and storytelling is a great way to affect change in attitudes and mindsets. Sharing the experiences we have a few we have a few queer stories, and one of my favorite lines about them is you might know. Someone who’s gay or trans or intersex, but have you ever really heard their story from their point of view? And I think, I think that a lot of us haven’t, and I certainly have friends in most of those categories. And I had no idea once I started reading these books what I learned, just the just the difficulty, you know, just the sheer emotional difficulty that goes on. But there’s things like that. There’s also just people who are, you know, struggling with Christianity, or there’s a book about not denying our emotions like grief, which is something we’re trained to do in many religious cultures. We’re supposed to just be happy that, you know, we have our faith, and that doesn’t always help in real life, emotional circumstances. And I’m really thrilled about a book like that, because that’s, that’s, that’s up my alley, for sure. Got a book on spiritual abuse, got a book on sexual abuse and clergy sex abuse. It’s all the real light topics,

Emily Einolander 11:05
yeah, all of those things that are very easy to process, you know, digestible books here, yeah?

David Morris 11:12
But it’s been it’s been fun. It’s been some of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my entire professional career, the learning curve in the last few years for someone who’s in his probably last third of his professional life, I’ve had the hardest learning curve of my professional life and my final third and but also it’s been, without question, the most gratifying work I’ve ever done in publishing. I’m so much because it’s grassroots, and I’m doing all kinds wearing all kinds of hats. In in the business, I’m much closer to the authors. I mean, when you’re an editor, you’re closer to an author. When you’re when you’re marketer, you’re closer to the author. My last job, I was publisher, and I wasn’t as close to the authors, but now I’m all those things, and it’s, it’s just a delight. I was talking to an author the other day, and I’ve said this more than once where, like, another author was talking to me, and she said, You know, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I miss you. We used to talk so much when we were working on the book. I was like, oh, that’s, that’s very nice. Thank you. And I miss them too. I miss them too. It’s fun to become a part of someone’s life for a while and there, and for them to become part of my life for a while and but also it’s gratifying, mainly because of the kind of work we’re doing. You know, we’re publishing stories that wouldn’t otherwise get told, partly because of cultural norms being what they are, and just the the great crush of media in our in our marketplace today, not having much room for alternative voices unless, you know, just, just in terms of the mainstream and the economics of it, so that that that’s very, very gratifying to be telling some of those stories. It’s also, you know, I have, I’m a I’m a PhD in religion and psychology and society, and I and I want to affect. I want to try to be an agent of change with with what I’ve learned and what I know about how the world works, and I feel like the books I’m doing, instead of kind of living in the ivory tower, I’m actually on the street. I’m actually doing stuff that is making a difference in that way, not that I’m trying to, you know, put put off academic the value of academic contribution, scholarly contribution. But especially in religious studies, though there’s a lot of scholarly contribution that goes on, it’s not really helping, and I don’t. And those who are helping, you know who you are, but those who aren’t helping, they actually don’t know who they are.

Emily Einolander 13:52
So, oh, that’s true. Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Yeah, you’re you’re applying, you’re applying all of those learnings that you’ve had to be able to help other people tell their stories in less academic way, and

David Morris 14:04
that’s what I’m doing, too. Publishing wise, I’m taking, like, all these years of experience, and I’m trying to apply it to a different audience, at a different readership, a different author, a different author group. I mean, the irony of it is, I’m I’m having to learn things about this group, you know, I thought I knew, or just how to, how to create networks, and how to market books on this level, and what is, what is the content really like on this level? Is it’s, it’s actually different. I’ve had to, that’s part of the that’s been part of the learning curve, just because I was an executive at a major publishing company, it doesn’t mean I know all that stuff, even though I thought I did right?

Emily Einolander 14:46
Well, let’s talk a little bit about how this model differs from, you know, the unconventional model that differs from what traditional publishing does. Like, how does Lake Drive sort of divert from that? You know, it’s. Hybrid publisher, but you do things your own way. Because that’s sort of the the territory we’re in right now is, like, we’re defining what works for us and what doesn’t.

David Morris 15:10
Yep, yep, high, yeah, yeah. I would say Lake Drive is a version of hybrid publishing. And there’s, the thing is, like in publishing, there’s, there’s definitely a spectrum of businesses and publishing identities that go on in within any one sort of nomenclature, you know, or labels, yeah. I mean, like I said, it’s un it’s conventional publishing, but with an unconventional financial model, I think the thing to do is to do is to back up just a little bit and say the way publishing works is that it’s a very speculative business. On the whole. There’s exceptions, of course, but when you’re publishing to a general readership, every every publisher is looking for what we call breakaway title. And why you want that breakaway title is because it pays for the rest of the business Exactly. So. So you could have I heard, I once heard the Random House CEO. It’s a different CEO now, but I heard the Random House CEO the time when all that antitrust stuff was going on in publishing business, there was a there was court proceedings that were recorded, and a lot of us publishing people, went and looked at that transcript. I didn’t look at it firsthand, but I read about it, and he was quoted as saying that, I think I’m not going to get it right, but it was something like 4% of our books drive 65% of our business, you know. And for me, and I would feel, I would say that in publishing in general, like it’s more like maybe five to 10% of your books actually pays for the other 90 to 95% of what you do. So you’re putting a lot of books out every year as a publisher and on especially when you’re working at higher levels, you’re paying some big advances that never earn out. And sometimes they aren’t they, they do so badly you actually lose money on them because you paid a half a million dollar advance to somebody like like a musical artist. That happens. That happens. A lot publishers fall into this trap. I’m kind of going down rabbit trails, but yeah, but my the whole point is that that that publishers have to establish, like, this deep bank account so that they can go out and do all this speculating. Well, when you’re starting out a new or when you’re working on the grassroots level, and you’re not, it’s, I mean, I’m not, I’m not in a business that it makes a lot of sense to just go out and find financers, you know, because, you know, even still, my books aren’t going to perform in a huge way. It’s not going to be a big payoff for investors. So it’s sort of a more of a slow build kind of business, no matter what I do, and honestly, it can last things up when all that money gets involved. Granted, I wouldn’t mind having a nice a nice angel investor to help out with some things. It would certainly be nice if we could do it responsibly, absolutely. But But, but, because publishers have those those those big bank accounts, they can go out and do all that speculating when you’re starting out or when you’re working at the grassroots level, you’ve got to figure out a way to pay for those books up front. And I didn’t even quite understand this when I first started a few years ago. But if you’re talking about paying for freelancers, you know when it comes to developmental editing, copy editing, design of the cover, design and composition of the interior, proofreading, two passes of proofreading. You know, that’s, that’s easily, that’s easily $7,500 if not $10,000 right? Yeah, we’re talking about professionals to to, I mean, you can, you can find ways to make it work a little bit less cheaply, but, but it’s like anything in this world, you’ll find that the quality goes down when you start spending less money than five to 7500 to $10,000 I get by with five too, because we will handle the developmental edit in house, meaning, meaning me, but it’s worth it. It. I think I’m worth my my weight in developmental editing, especially at this point, but, but, yeah, that’s the thing. It’s, it’s, it’s expensive up front to pay for it. So the hybrid, what the hybrid model does, basically, is it just says you’re going to fund those upfront costs, and then you since. Since the publisher has no risk involved, they should also reward you with a higher royalty rate, right? So that’s that’s what we do as well. Our royalty rates are 50% higher than conventional publishing, and I’m committed to that because publishers rely on authors now more than ever to market books with their with their online platforms in particular. So I, you know, I think that authors should be paid better by publishers, but they still pay the same that they’ve been paying for the last 100 years, or whatever it’s been at least last 20 or 15 years,

Emily Einolander 20:36
the methods of doing it or art, yeah, yeah, so,

David Morris 20:39
but you but I say it’s conventional publishing with unconventional financial model. So I sort of explained the financial model. What’s what’s conventional about it is, and I guess I said that it’s, it’s professional editing and design, you know, strong production disciplinary practices, which you can attest for, yes,

Emily Einolander 21:00
especially like the last couple of weeks. Yeah.

David Morris 21:03
And then also, also, I mean, we punch way above our way in terms of marketing and publicity. I mean, I do something that I think all publishers should do, but they don’t, on the whole and I get into the weeds with my authors on their platforming and how they’re getting the word out about their book. How’s it going with their social media? How’s it going with their email list? Most publishers don’t ask those kinds of questions, and then they don’t have, they might have a newsletter, you know, that they send out to everybody, but I give, I give one on one, attention to that, both with with dedicated meetings about that early in the contract signing stage. But then that becomes a, you know, a part of the conversation going forward. It’s built in that we’re always going to be talking about platform. So when it comes time to actually market the book where the publisher is relying on the author’s platform, more than ever, I’m already really familiar with that platform, and I can go and I can really dig in with them and customize and say, here’s, here’s where your strengths are. Here’s where my strengths are in terms of marketing. And, you know, we do a great job with launch teams. You know, which, which is a known quantity. It’s, it’s one of the, to me, it’s one of the most powerful ways, one of the most powerful ways that authors can directly affect their upfront sales when they put their book out. It’s a known quantity, but we’re also really good with publicity. Got a good sized publicity list, one that really suits well for the kind of books we do as well, and so I feel like we’re punching, we’re punching way above our weight, our weight there. And you also have to, you also have to have a sense of perspective about publicity these days. You know, we live in such a segmented market, a digitally segmented market. So, so what you know, if you got yourself in your local newspaper. Let’s say you even live in a big city, and you got yourself a book review in the look in the big city newspaper. Well, number one, nobody reads print newspapers anymore. They’re not even delivered. You know, hard

Emily Einolander 23:14
they always have paywalls. The

David Morris 23:17
most, the online ones have paywalls. Exactly which, which, which baffles me, because, you know, if they’re also running ads at, you know, on a lot of those newspaper sites, and they have paywalls, and then a publisher like me wants to promote my author’s book in Virginia and at the local paper there, and, oh, I can’t promote it, because everybody’s going to hit a paywall to go see the article, even though they would see the ads, I never it’s just that has not caught up with the times yet in my mind, plus all those ads are just overwhelming these days, X out of like five things before you can even read the article.

Emily Einolander 23:55
Yeah, for sure, I actually in the same vein that you’re talking about with the like collaborating on marketing and publicity, I would like to ask a question that I think a lot of authors have about the value of having someone else shepherd that process versus doing it on their own, because at this point, authors are able to, like at least have the breakdown Of all of the processes and the things they might need. They can access those things on their own in a sort of rudimentary way, and if they’re paying for the editing and the design and all of that stuff, what’s, what’s the value of having a company logo on their book if they’re paying for so much of it.

David Morris 24:46
I do think that when you’re if you’re an author and you want to publish your book, whether it’s even like some of the more like lower level self publishing services, will offer marketing services, I don’t really think they do a whole lot. Uh, they maybe have an email list, and they send out an email blast, but I think it’s pretty mass emailing, which is not, which is, which is a very standard tactic. But I don’t think they’re curating it very well. I don’t, I doubt there’s much nudging and following up going on. I doubt there’s any leveraging of a personal relationship with a media outlet, which can happen from varying publishers with varying types of books. But so I think, because you can easily spend like they can add on, you know, I don’t know what they do, but you know, 10,000 $15,000 for a marketing a publicity package at a hybrid publisher or even a self publisher. And I, I would caution most of the time, you probably shouldn’t

Emily Einolander 25:51
do that. So the marketing ones are the most tenuous. You would say, like those, those types of services

David Morris 26:00
that add on? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, every I think there’s exceptions where there’s good stuff going on, depending on the kind of book it is, again, and the kind of author we’re talking about. That’s the thing about publishing. You know, it’s always like, what’s the context here? People use the same terms, but they mean different things, or they’re in different contexts. And so you kind of have to define those things, you know, because there are hybrid publishers, and you’ve you’ve mentioned this is that are working really well for affluent folks who are business people who want to have sort of a calling card, and maybe they even get their book on a bestseller list for a week or something like that, but, or maybe they’d even do better, but most the time, they don’t, most the time, it’s like 250 initial books, and then they sell copies every time they go speaking or something like that.

Emily Einolander 26:54
And there can be value if they don’t expect to make a ton of money on the actual book,

David Morris 26:59
and if it gets them what they want, they may have a big enough bank account where spending 2530, or even $50,000 is some high rep publishers charge is, you know, that’s, that’s enough, that’s okay for them, because otherwise they wouldn’t get it right. Exactly it’s, it’s supply and demand. And so, you know, if you want a reputable hybrid publisher that does a really good job with with editing and production and design, it might be worth $50,000 to you, but for the average aspiring author, no, ain’t, no way that’s a really dumb idea.

Emily Einolander 27:37
Yeah, that’s that’s too much.

David Morris 27:41
Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s some authors where it’s where they even have the money that they could spend on that. But, and they’re not the affluent business person trying to create a calling card. They actually just want to create a book that people are going to read and and they still could get enticed to some of those big, big package publishers, service oriented, hybrid publishers. And that feels exploitative to me. It does. I, you know, like spending that much money on a book hardly anybody’s going to read. Just tell the person to go, you know, write it into a Word file and send it to your best friends and leave it at that. You know?

Emily Einolander 28:23
Well, I mean, when someone does have a book that they either want to write, and like, I’m specifying, they want to do it themselves. They don’t want to hire a ghost writer if they want to do it, do their own book. They want to sell their own book and get a decent amount of sales. How do they look at it? And just like, decide which path to go to, like, either, Should I, should I spend a lot of time sending this in traditional publishers? Should I look for a hybrid publisher, or should I just try to do everything myself? Right? What criteria would you say someone should use to decide?

David Morris 28:59
I think, I think the first thing to realize is that going into being being an author, consider it a part time job, if not a full time job. And is, you know, so it means educating yourself about publishing. It means getting involved in every aspect of it. I don’t mean control in terms of things like design and, you know, editing and so on. I mean, learn about how the business works. Learn about the different options. I think that strict self publishing, total DIY, through Amazon, KDP or Ingram Spark is, is great. Actually, it’s, it’s, it’s not that difficult to use. However, there is a big learning curve, and it takes time, and it can be frustrating, and there’s a lot of unknowns, and will you get the kind of result that you want? I know of an author right now who is looking to publish it on KDP, and this author realized, oh, you can’t do. Pre orders through KDP for the print book. So I’ve got a how do I how do I deal with that? That’s a weird bugaboo about Amazon KDP. Well, you know, there’s a lot of hair pulling moments like that. I think when you start out DIYing it. I did that with my own, my own dissertation. I polished it up, and it was the guinea pig book for, like, drive books. I mean, I was said I was using it in a process to learn about, you know, setting up a small book business. But it was, you know, it’s challenging to, you know, even if you’re going to typeset it in Word, if you’re going to DIY everything, it is a long time consuming process. And again, it depends. Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? You know, what are we talking about? Are there illustrations? Are there tables? Are there endnotes? It can get really detailed fast on you, depending on what it is, or maybe you’re publishing something pretty simple. And no worries, you know,

Emily Einolander 30:57
editor that isn’t just going to put your stuff into chat, GPT, like, yeah, yeah. Like, how do you find people that you can trust to do all this stuff?

David Morris 31:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can, I mean, there’s services like reeds, which has a lot of great freelancers, and they vet them pretty carefully, but so that’s DIY in it. Then there’s self publishing, which is much more like assembly line, mass market publishing. I don’t want to name too many names, but like, author house is known as one that sort of like, is a it’s a white label brand for other self publishing services that are out there.

Emily Einolander 31:36
I think there’s Hay House has one also, but I can’t, yep,

David Morris 31:39
a lot of the major publishers actually have a brand, have a brand like that. And then there’s hybrid publishing, and that can be a whole spectrum of like, you know, mom and pop, one person setups, which is kind of what Lake Drive is, although we’re really, like a one plus plus two part time setup, plus, we use a lot of great freelancers, so we’re not doing it all here to larger operations that do a lot more titles. They have the big ticket invoices for their services. They break them down. And so, yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s those different options. What you know, you can go on to the independent book Publishers Association website, and they have criteria for hybrid publishers. A lot of times in the past, they’ve identified that criteria. As to me, one of the things that stands out is that you have what’s called distribution, full distribution of your books, which is kind of lingo, e term for you have some access to a sales team that’s pitching your book to bookstores. But that’s a bit, that’s a bit of an antiquated notion. Yeah, there’s, there’s, you know, book bookstores have just faded. They, they still aren’t what they were 25 years ago, and maybe there’s more of them out there now. Barnes and Noble has been on a comeback, doing making smaller footprint stores finally, which is really smart. Good of good for them, but it’s still under 700 stores nationwide, in the US. I mean, that’s not that many you know. Think of all the Walgreens there are out there. It’s not even close. And and, you know, they’re still carrying just sort of the top listed titles, you know, by and large, by and large, I or even think of like an independent bookstore in your local community. We’ve got one here where I live in Michigan, and we’ve got several actually, and some are new. It’s really cool, but I work in religion and spirituality titles. They’ve got 18 inches of shelf space for that, and they’re carrying CS Lewis,

Emily Einolander 33:54
yes, bunch of Enneagram stuff.

David Morris 33:58
They’re carrying all this. I mean, there’s I went this last time. Was like, Okay, I didn’t expect them to have that shelf there. That’s nice, but they still had a lot of other things taking up most of that shelf space. Nothing from an independent publisher,

Emily Einolander 34:09
20 copies of The Purpose Driven Life, exactly.

David Morris 34:15
So does that really matter? Do you need a sales team for your your especially if you’re a one person Author, Publisher, do you really need a sales team? Or even if you’re a hybrid publisher that’s putting out five to six titles a year, like like Lake derived books, do you really need a sales team? It’s a great question. You know, books are arguably marketed more by the author platform. Then, see the thing is, sales teams used to also be the functional equivalent of marketing. They pushed your book out into the marketplace. The bookstores were a marketing mechanism, but that was when, that was when the only way you could get a book was by going to a bookstore. Now books are a click away, and you’ve got it in maybe even 24 hours or less. So that just changed things. All the all the foot traffic is now online, and the way to market is online. And so with online author platforms, that’s that’s arguably more where you should be putting your money and not setting up a whole distribution feature of your hybrid publisher now, and honestly, with if you’re using some of these platforms for publishing, especially Ingram Spark or Ingram Lightning Source, they get the book everywhere in books in English language are sold. I mean, that’s global. Yeah, yeah, Amazon arguably does that too, but, but with Amazon bookstores, or I don’t know, most people are not using Amazon to to distribute exclusively throughout the world. They just use Amazon for the Amazon ecosystem, and they’re using room spark to get to the rest of the world. That’s what we do at Lake Drive. And that’s distribution. I mean, that’s, that’s worldwide distribution for a little, tiny publisher.

Emily Einolander 36:11
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I know that there’s a lot of just with my experience with booksellers, if, if they have an account with someone, that’s when they’re going to order it. So if someone doesn’t have an account with Ingram, right, then they’re just like, Nope, we’re just not going to do that. Because there’s all these, like, application processes that bookstores have to do to be able to, like, work with different distributors. So most of them just don’t bother going with something different. Also, I think the brick and with the brick and mortars, there’s a little bit of animosity in there too, which, yes, fair enough

David Morris 36:47
with Amazon. Yeah, yeah. The other thing to mention about hybrid publishers that I think stands out in terms of what makes them different from a self publisher, or, you know, like, like we were mentioning before, not the DIY level, where you’re doing it all yourself, but the self publishing service and and maybe even across the spectrum of different hybrid publishers, is the question of, how much do they actually curate the books that they do, or are they just publishing whatever comes their way because someone is paying them? And I think, I think that there are plenty of hybrid publishers where you can look at their you can look at their titles and go, I don’t really see an identity here. And why is that identity important? I think it’s important because it shows you that you work with editors who understand your content, the genre that you’re in. It means you’re working with a publisher who understands the right media outlets, the right professional and cultural networks, and especially in the area of nonfiction, spirituality, books, that stuff matters a lot. It’s not like publishing, you know, a really classic category like romance. So, yeah, I think, I think that’s something, that’s something to look out for. I don’t mean to be ungracious about publishers that the highway publishers that are not being that discerning about or they’re not. I mean, because it’s different, it’s different from different again, it’s different contexts for different situation.

Emily Einolander 38:13
There’s a lot of traditional publishers who like, if you just take a look at their catalog, and you don’t already know who they are, they might seem like they’re all over the map as well, right?

David Morris 38:22
There’s that too, right? That’s true. That’s very fair. I think that’s one of the other big criteria there. And then there’s, you know, then there’s the big question of, should I just try to get to a conventional publisher? Should I work through an agent that I get that I actually illiterate agent as well? So I’m working on the grassroots level. I’m not trying to, you know this is not, this is not toxic capitalism by any means. I’ll show you my bank account if you’re if you don’t believe me, I have people coming to me all the time who want me. They think they need me as a litter agent for them, what they’re really looking for, I’m finding out, though, what they really need is more of a publishing coach, writing coach, publishing coach. You know, they, they, especially when you’re talking about nonfiction books, the part of platform starts to really matter. I mean, it matters no matter what you do. But in nonfiction publishing, where you have, like a where you’re an expert on a topic, or you’ve got a great memoir, especially if you’ve got a great memoir, you also really need a good platform to sell it. There’s this idea that I just need to find a publisher, and then they’ll pitch the book to the world for me. Well, yeah, there is still value to that, and it for certain contexts that can make a lot of sense, and that still goes on a very high level. But for the average person you know, are you really, do you really have that interesting of a story that’s really going to, you know, break through, even if you do, you might get that big public book, big publisher, book publishing deal. But remember, again, they’re speculating. On you. You know, there you might be one of those books that they plan on losing money, that they’re they’re willing to risk losing money on. It’s not a done deal. It’s not like you’ve gotten the golden ticket at the will to the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory by any means they you. You mean, you mean as much to them as a speculating for gold at the Gold Rush. Think about that sometimes, when you want to go with a big publisher and get an agent and so on, think about that. There’s still some of those publishers are still looking for 50,000 Instagram followers or 100,000 Tiktok followers, or 10,000 member email list or substack e newsletter. They they really go gaga over those things, depending on the publisher. And I’ve seen it, they go, you know, they go that because that’s, that’s known quantity for them. And they can, they can make things happen. They can work with that. So I don’t, so a lot of times I have to tell folks, you just, you’re just not quite ready. They’re ready yet. But oftentimes I get people pitching me with a book, with a book, they’ve a manuscript, even that they’ve written, and there’s no like, there’s not much in the way of, like a professional network. They’re not out there speaking or creating content already that where they’ve become known, even on a small scale. And that’s what I say, is like, start looking at some of these other mediums, like social media and E newsletters, as just another medium to get your ideas out there, and start building an audience, and then they’re going to want the more immersive, 60,000 word book from you.

Emily Einolander 41:39
Yeah, that’s a that’s a tough truth for a lot of people to deal with, I think, is just they, they look at the sheer amount of followers that most people who are getting published right now have, and just think, well, why should I even bother like, yeah, there’s no

David Morris 41:56
hope here. And that can be discouraging. That’s true.

Emily Einolander 41:59
Yeah, exactly so as a small press like, what, what kind of platform would you look for, and what would, what would play into your decision if you decide to go for smaller versus bigger?

David Morris 42:16
Yeah, that’s a that’s a hard question to answer. Sometimes I think, I think, let’s just say 5000 followers on a platform like Instagram, Tiktok usually means you need to have more because of just the way that it’s more ephemeral. I guess is that the right word?

Emily Einolander 42:34
I think so, yeah, sure, it’ll work,

David Morris 42:39
but it’s not so much that number as it is also, are you growing? Are you still attracting new people, new followers? And then also, are people engaging with your social, with your are they? Are they? Are they liking, and are they commenting and are they sharing? I think you can come. You can like, line up 10 authors who have 5000 Instagram followers, and you’ll find or five or 10 people with 5000 Instagram followings, and you’ll find a great variety of how many people are actually commenting on their their posts. And so I look for that when I mean, so you could have maybe just 1000 but if you, if you’ve got, like, a really, you know, active following, and you’re growing at the same time, you could be worth more than somebody with 5000 at least, for the future. And publishing is a long play, so I want to set up long term relationships to authors. I don’t want to just be like a one off service. No way. That’s That’s not what I’m here for Yeah, so I’d say that, and then and then with email, it’s, it’s probably like at least 1500 would be ideal. But, you know, I’ve published authors with neither of those things, but they had incredible professional networks. And they they connected with their professional again, there’s an academic I’ve published, a professor who is really well connected in his academic community, and he’s out speaking quite often, and he’s in front of people. And I was really surprised. I thought, Oh, this is not going to sell. But then, you know, his his institution actually took the launch team recruitment email and published it in their own blog, and suddenly this author that I just I loved I loved it, I loved him, and I wanted to publish it absolutely, but I wasn’t sure, you know, I wasn’t sure how it was going to do, didn’t think, didn’t have a high expectation. And then all of a sudden, he’s generated the biggest launch team of any of my authors, and we sold a lot of books up front, and the book continues to sell nicely. I’m very happy with it, and I hope he is too.

Emily Einolander 44:46
This is a little off book, but do you have any like recommendations for marketing for introverts? Because, I mean, I know most writers probably are to a certain extent, but the need to. Reach out to people on social media and, like, have some kind of presence in the world that isn’t just their book. Like, is really daunting.

David Morris 45:06
Sometimes, I’d say number one, don’t, don’t read all of the marketing advice that’s out there, because it can be pretty shallow. And, you know, read some of it, but then that’s enough. Start. Try to go deeper, try to understand it in a deeper way. I always single out this one sub stack guy named Dan blank, spelled just like it sounds, and his his substack is called the creative shift. And what I haven’t listened or I haven’t watched read one of his posts in a while, but he is pretty consistent with helping you just get into the right mindset for what social media marketing or what talking about yourself. Basically, he says it’s about relationships. Yeah, it’s not about marketing. It’s about relationships. And he’s not just saying that to make a euphemism out of marketing. He’s not. It’s about genuine connection and authenticity. And if you get into his stuff and you read it consistently, you’ll start getting it, you’ll start understanding and you’ll start seeing some of these mediums, even as introverts, and I’m one, you’ll start seeing them as a way to create connection. Maybe you don’t want connection as an introvert, yeah. But if you want to be an author, you’ve got to be putting yourself out there. What you’ve got to do is find the right kind of guidance and advice and start coming up with your own sort of philosophy about how to use it. And because there’s, you know, there’s as many ways of using social media as there are people out there, I guess. And yeah, I think that, I think that that’s possibility. I do think that there are experts out there who can help, and Dan, Dan does that with authors. There’s a lot of people, though, who are kind of like mass marketing their services in that way. And that that’s okay, I think, to an extent, but I think it’s worthwhile doing those kinds of webinars or short term studies, but, but I think it again, it kind of gets back to context, you know, like I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen I know someone who does that stuff for people who are doing mostly business books, and if you’re writing fiction or you’re doing a memoir, it’s a different game. And when it comes to getting yourself out there and establishing an audience, you know, and I wish there was more people out there helping people do this and teaching them how to do it, I actually think publishers have some have a lot of responsibility in this, and I don’t see them doing that. I think it’s worthwhile to get help. This is not a speech you have to give most people who are under 30 to go out, to go out and find a way to promote yourself on social

Emily Einolander 47:48
media like they already know is what you’re saying.

David Morris 47:50
Yeah, yeah. The greatest thing about social media is, especially as an author, is that you can more than ever. You can have a direct connection to your readers, and you can get direct feedback right away. You can you can create online community that can lead to real community. And I think that’s actually pretty exciting, if you can kind of get into that mental space and find a way of using it that works for you, but getting help, getting help from what’s reputable people are really taking the time to sort of customize what it is you need. I think that would be really valuable. If you can find, if you can find instructions on that customize to who you are, that would be very valuable.

Emily Einolander 48:36
Big thanks to David for coming on the show and providing all of these insights about hybrid publishing and ways to improve your platform as an author. And I’ll include the link to the Lake Drive website so you can check out all of the wonderful books we’ve got there. You can find both me, M Einolander and hybrid pub scout on LinkedIn, my website, hybridpubscout.com or you can find me on blue sky at Emily, I know you can also email me emily@hybridpubscout.com and be sure to check the show notes for links referenced in the episode, as well as ones to sign up for plotter with the HPS affiliate code And to visit HPs bookshop.org shop. Thanks for listening.

The post Episode 84: Unconventional Publishing Models with David Morris first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 84: Unconventional Publishing Models with David Morris appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

]]> 4836 Episode 80: Clarify Your Message through Storytelling with Karl Becker https://hybridpubscout.com/episode-80-clarify-your-message-through-storytelling-with-karl-becker/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=episode-80-clarify-your-message-through-storytelling-with-karl-becker Tue, 20 Feb 2024 08:00:00 +0000 https://hybridpubscout.com/?p=4596 I think books have a purpose for an author, and mine is about impacting change, helping people take what they want, and hopefully making their life or their team’s lives better. Karl Becker I’ve been lucky to work with Karl Becker on his three books, Set Up to Win, Sales & Marketing Alignment, and Iceberg ... Read more

The post Episode 80: Clarify Your Message through Storytelling with Karl Becker first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 80: Clarify Your Message through Storytelling with Karl Becker appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

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I think books have a purpose for an author, and mine is about impacting change, helping people take what they want, and hopefully making their life or their team’s lives better.

Karl Becker

I’ve been lucky to work with Karl Becker on his three books, Set Up to Win, Sales & Marketing Alignment, and Iceberg Selling. After the publication of his latest book, I realized it was way past time to invite Karl to chat! In this episode, we talk about his experiences as an author and how they have transformed his business and life. We also share what it’s been like to work on these projects together and how the writing process has taught us both that surprises, sometimes pretty big ones, are inevitable when you create a book.

In this episode, we cover…

  • What Karl’s expectations were before writing a book and how his world has changed since becoming a published author.
  • How the process of writing three books has helped him understand his own work better, form deeper connections with more people, and serve his customers better.
  • The eye-opening possibilities that come from writing with a partner whose expertise differs from your own.
  • A story about ditching your head trash and getting out of your own way from Karl’s latest book, Iceberg Selling.

Guest Bio

Karl Becker has founded and run numerous companies over the last thirty years and now runs Improving Sales Performance, a consultancy that supports sales organizations to build high-performing teams and achieve their revenue goals. He is the author of Set up to Win: Three Frameworks to a High-Performing Sales Organization and Sales & Marketing Alignment. He has a BA in economics from Colorado College and an MBA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. You can learn more about him and his work at improvingsalesperformance.com.

Cover of Set Up to Win by Karl Becker. Orange print that says "Set Up to Win: Three Frameworks to a High Performing Sales Organization"

Featured above are Karl’s books, Set Up to Win, Sales & Marketing Alignment, and Iceberg Selling. You can get more info on their contents and my role in bringing them to life on my portfolio page. You can also learn more about Karl’s work at improvingsalesperformance.com.

Transcript — Episode 80: Karl Becker

Emily Einolander  00:21

Welcome to the Hybrid Pub Scout Podcast, with me, Emily Einolander, where we’re helping you navigate indie publishing. Today’s guest is Karl Becker. Karl Becker has founded and run numerous companies over the last 30 years, and now runs Improving Sales Performance, a consultancy that supports sales organizations to build high performing teams and achieve their revenue goals. He is the author of Set Up to Win: Three Frameworks to a High Performing Sales Organization, and Sales and Marketing Alignment. And now the new Iceberg Selling. He has a BA in economics from Colorado College and an MBA from the University of Colorado Boulder. You can learn more about him and his work at improvingsalesperformance.com or just ask me because we’ve been working together for three years, right?

Karl Becker  01:11

That’s right, at least three years. And it’s been amazing. It’s been a heck of a journey and a heck of a friendship. And I think we’ve done some really fun, great, hopefully inspirational and impactful work.

Emily Einolander  01:24

Yeah, and I’ve been wanting you to come on and talk for a long time. But I felt like after Iceberg Selling, Okay, well, we need to talk about this, because this is a really good book, and you’re going on other podcasts talking about it. So I can’t let you just do that without coming on mine too.

Karl Becker  01:41

Absolutely. You know, I love talking about all this stuff. I’m a huge fan of what we’ve done together, and I love talking about the books and the message. And you know, with Iceberg Selling, we have a business book, but we’ve got drawings, a walrus and polar bears, and that’s in it. So it doesn’t always have to be buttoned up. It’s super fun.

Emily Einolander  02:00

And the person who did the polar bears and walruses, the illustrations in your book, also did the branding for Hybrid Pub Scout. So that is that crossover Leigh Thomas, thank you for being awesome. So we have three books that we did together. Why did you want to do that?

Karl Becker  02:20

Well, it was like one of these life moment stories. And I think if you read Iceberg Selling, if you hear me in other podcasts, you know, I’m all about possibility. I don’t always know what’s going to happen. No surprise right there. My crystal ball isn’t perfect. But I’m always open to like, well, what is going to happen? I’m kind of open to the yeses in the world. And, so when we met, we were working together, doing kind of different things. And then we just started to get to know each other more. And I think that’s, there’s kind of a hint there, right? Like, I wouldn’t have known that you would have been such an exceptional writing partner. And I wouldn’t have you wouldn’t have known I had a book in me if we didn’t just become friends and start to talk. So I think that a big part of everything is just trying to get excited about the people you’re with and learning. 

But the story I want to tell about these books, and why I wrote them is, when we first started writing, I was convinced this book was going to be a workbook, I was convinced, oh, I’ve got all these kinds of exercises I use, and I’m going to put them all together, and it’s going to be a book. And it’s going to be very businesslike and very practical and pragmatic. And I think it was probably the first or second meeting was certainly early on as I started to share my vision. And you were like Karl, you’re all about change. This book isn’t about worksheets, this is about change, and how to help people change and navigate that. And that was such this pivotal moment of my life, because I knew I had books in me, I love to create, but you don’t always know what you don’t know. And sometimes having a guide that sees things differently is just an amazing thing. So I am so grateful that you are open to hearing what I thought I wanted to do, but also reflecting back the deeper the deeper thing that I was trying to communicate the deeper book that was in me. And I tell that to numerous people, because I’m so proud of the books we’ve created, and that first one Set Up to Win, wouldn’t have been what it was if you didn’t understand me and see deeper why I wanted to write this book and what it was really about because it wasn’t about what I thought it was gonna be about. It’s in there. But that wasn’t the main vibe, the main story.

Emily Einolander  04:39

Yeah. And I didn’t start out thinking that either. It wasn’t like I saw you and it was like, aha, he thinks all of these things about business and I’m gonna make him admit it. It was okay, we’re working on these worksheets here and that’s what I was planning for. And that’s what I was, you know, asking around about and as we were talking you were like, well Got to be able to make organizational change, you have to have this kind of person working. And this is the way you have to communicate with the leadership. And I’m like, This is not a worksheet that you’re talking about here. This is an approach. And you have all of these stories, you’re telling me because that’s how you talk. In general, like I, it’s, I try not to laugh when it happens. But I’ll be like, asking you maybe what I thought was a yes or no question. And you’ll be like, let me tell you a story.

Karl Becker  05:27

But it also be like, and the story needs to start with another story. You know, first the Earth cooled, and then the dinosaurs came? Far back. Karl, just tell me yes or no.

Emily Einolander  05:39

But also, that’s where the good stuff comes out. So you set the time aside, because it’s not going to be, go right through this form and answer every question uniformly. It’s, let’s see what happens. So that’s why it’s so hard to plan a book, exactly what it’s going to be like, from day one, unless you got this really kind of rote thing going on. It’s like, we got to leave room for the surprises, because I don’t think there’s been a time that you and I have worked on something where that hasn’t happened.

Karl Becker  06:12

You know, I would even say the most recent book, I think if we look at how it started, we were gonna write a book about sales stories. And this was our third book working together. And so you know, we play around with stories, you’re so good at pulling what you need out of my head and helping me see other things. And it’s just, it’s such a true partnership. But, you know, we had done that. And I think we were almost 50-60% through this vision of this book. And I read it one day, and I called you and I was like, “You know, I think this isn’t the book, I think we need to do a different book.” And so sometimes where you start, and where you end isn’t the same thing. But it’s the journey, and I think that’s been so good, it’s helping me truly go on a book writing journey to get, I’m gonna call it the gold. 

But for me, it’s really like getting the stories, the emotion, the message, the essence of what I’m really trying to communicate out. And I don’t know what that is, it’s like, if you just say, what’s the what’s the vibe you’re trying to get? What’s the main message? I might be like, I don’t know. But if we start to talk, it starts to kind of appear. And I think it’s so cool in that last example because of that kind of first draft of a different book, we became so incredibly efficient. With Iceberg Selling we cranked that out in a short period of time, and I think it’s the best work we’ve done yet. But I think it’s because part of writing that book was understanding what we were really doing and what I really wanted to bring forward. And I think that’s the beauty of a writing partnership. Like I knew I had books in me, I know I have stories and lessons I want to tell. But like so many things in life, just having a guide and a partner enables people to bring different strengths forward. And that one plus one equals three, when it happens.

Emily Einolander  08:07

Yeah, I find it extremely difficult to write by myself and I’m doing a blog series on that right now. Because people think that writing is this big solitary endeavor. And you know, you have those stretches of time where you’re all by yourself with your own brain. And that’s terrifying, and spelunking without a cave light. But the more that you interact with other people, especially ones who are passionate about writing or passionate about your subject, then you’re probably going to find things in there that you didn’t before. And we created an entire repository of your stories before we even started on this book, which was a lot of work. And I was like, oh, no, well, what if that was all for nothing? And then it was not for nothing, because, we just plucked those out of there when we were working on Iceberg Selling, and we made it teeny, tiny, but in a way that makes it easier and more accessible for people to read. Why don’t you tell us about that book a little bit. We’ve been referring to it this whole time. But if you want to give us kind of an overview.

Karl Becker  09:08

Karl, talk about what you love the most right now.

Emily Einolander  09:12

Yeah, talk about your favorite thing ever that you’re currently going around and talking about on other podcasts? Like maybe just tell me about it.

Karl Becker  09:18

This is not just in case you’re like, “What is an iceberg?” I am not in the business of selling icebergs. Icebergs sell themselves.

Emily Einolander  09:26

Thank you for saying that when I had coffee in my mouth.

Karl Becker  09:30

So, you know, I think this gets back to you know when we decided to write this book, I first said I want to see myself on stage. I want this book. I’m envisioning myself talking to a group of salespeople. Now, the book is also for anyone that’s not in sales. Like I’m going to tell you what it’s about. And you read it. I have been on numerous podcasts. I’ve done numerous workshops where somebody has stood up and they’ve said, these are life lessons. These are things that I can take as a parent. Whereas a leader or a manager, it’s awesome. That’s awesome. So when we talk about sales, just know if you do any communication at all, if you talk to other people at all, this actually might be fun for you to read. And so it was kind of this purpose driven book. I know, I haven’t told you what it is yet, right? Look at this guy. So it’s this purpose driven book. Like I envisioned myself talking to a bunch of salespeople. And I said to myself, what’s the one thing that if everyone left with would change their life, if it was just one thing? And the whole idea with Iceberg Selling is—I’m an iceberg. Emily, you’re an iceberg. Every problem out there is an iceberg, every client’s an iceberg. Your teenage boys are icebergs. Your older parents are icebergs. Everybody’s an iceberg. And what I mean by that is, most of the time, like an iceberg, you only see about 10% above the surface. Yet we act like we know everything about people. And, you know, if you want to get kind of funny, and it’s not that funny, but you know, the movie Titanic, right? That’s why that big boat hit that iceberg because they couldn’t see it.

Emily Einolander  11:13

Hilarious.

Karl Becker  11:15

I mean, of course, you’re king in the world? No, I’m the top of the world and then you’re not. But you know, I digress. But to get real, to get really real? Imagine that, right? People only see about 10% of who you are, and you only see about 10% of who they are, even your family members. And think about how different your life would be. If you could see the 90% underneath—what is their backstory? What’s really going on for them? In a term, I like to say, what is their world? How can I get their world? And if you’re in sales, I believe in sales, you’re a guide, I don’t believe all this stuff, Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room. That’s entertainment. People who are really great at sales, that is not who you’re going to deal with. You’re going to deal with someone that truly cares, listens, tries to understand you fully so that they can bring the solution that solves your problem. That’s why you’re in a conversation already anyway. So I just kind of put it out there in your imagination. You know, if you’re trying to solve somebody, or you’re trying to connect or trying to understand their world, meet them where they are, but you’re only seeing 10%, you’re at a great disadvantage of getting it wrong. And in the world of sales, that could mean a really good customer ends up not becoming a customer because you missed something, or you missed a lot of things. So I get back to, the whole idea with Iceberg Selling is if everyone and everything you’re only seeing 10%, how do you start to kind of give yourself the muscle memory or the skills to get better at showing up to be able to learn more about the iceberg? And then what are some best practices to actually uncover it as well. So that you can truly understand someone and meet them where they are and start to connect and bring solutions. And so that’s the high level. That’s the whole as I said the other day, that’s Iceberg Selling in a nutshell.

Emily Einolander  13:03

And that’s about as long as the book is actually. 

Karl Becker  13:07

Yeah, we wrote the book to be super fast. The Audible version of it’s about two and a half hours. So it was designed to be fun, fast, easy to either read all at once or in bite sized pieces. And I just commend you in helping me design it that way. Because I didn’t want it to mimic. If I were on stage, or I was working in a workshop and talking to people, could I take them through a very short, impactful “Aha” driven journey, where at the end, they feel equipped to do something and the book matches as if I was talking to you. And even the way it’s written is very, very conversational. It’s like I’m in your head talking to you.

Emily Einolander  13:47

I hope that’s what I mean for me. Yes. But that’s that’s because I have a very intense experience of actually writing the book. And I remember kind of using I’ve talked to Jesse Kwak before on this podcast, the book from Chaos to Creativity. So, you know, if any Microcosm Press people are listening right now, or just if you’re listening, I literally took your book out and was like, we should make it this size. And kind of like stagger the illustrations in this way. And Karl was like, that’s the one. So shout out to y’all, thank you for the influence. But also, I kind of wanted to touch on the fact that as a writer and as someone who collaborates in writing, how valuable the framework that you just gave us was, because if you’re interviewing someone, and it’s all just the top level stuff, who cares? Like that’s what everyone’s seeing all of the time. It’s not interesting, but when you’re really digging into something, that’s when all of the gold comes out, you know, otherwise, it might as well just be like a clickbait article. And I remember actually, when we first started working together on Set Up to Win, which is your first book, we were talking a lot about, you know, going through the sales process and the marketing process. And I sent you a meme. And I’m going to describe a meme like this is a Star Trek episode. It’s the one with the astronaut putting a gun to the back of the other astronaut’s head as he looks at the planet Earth. And I just put a diagram of the sales process and was like, it’s four act structure, always has been. So I found that my ability to think in terms of story, and that kind of trajectory really helps with me talking about the stuff that you like to teach. So that’s been a really eye opening experience for me, too. So if you like nerdy structural things like that, as I do. This has been great. I’ve learned a lot about writing copy and talking to people and growing my business. So it’s been a really valuable experience for me. 

Karl Becker  16:04

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I think what we’re also bringing to the surface here, much like what we’re talking about an Iceberg Selling were a part of Iceberg Selling, when you when you get to – how do you do it? And I’ll get there, I think it’ll make sense when I get here. The first one is to do the research. What do you understand about the situation already? And then the second one is helping that other person you’re working with. Like, hey, where are we going to go today in this conversation? The third is starting to kind of get into rapport. How do I really learn about you? And one of the things around that, just as a quick pro tip is, the more you share about yourself, the more that other person’s going to share, and then from there, you can start to co-create. And I think those two pieces are actually why you and I’ve worked so well together and why I think the books we’ve created are so exceptional. Because what I envision in this rapport building is you learn some big things about me, you know, my family, my past, what I believe in, and likewise, we know very deeply about each other in our lives. Which to me, is we are as a writing team, learning more and more about each other’s iceberg so that we find these commonalities, and you’re teaching me things I don’t know. And I’m teaching you things you don’t know, which then for the reader, in this Iceberg Selling kind of concept, we begin to co create, I’m taking an inspiration from you, you’re taking inspiration from me. And then it’s kind of like, like morphing together into the content. Right. And even though this is my book, and I’m the domain expert, the way you interpret it and see it and share back to me enables me to build it, or us to build it together in a way that I think is more universal. Like I’m taking your skills, your experience, and mine and it creates a better product. And so I think that’s what’s so interesting about creation, right? Like, I could go and build this on my own and get an editor and clean it up. But it wouldn’t be half the book that it is because we’re co creating along the way. And like I said a second ago, like the pieces of your life that helped me see things differently, and vice versa. Just create a better product for the reader.

Emily Einolander  18:28

Yeah, because otherwise you’re kind of in your own head, and you have no idea whether what you’re saying makes sense to someone other than you.

Karl Becker  18:38

Right. And I think there’s an interesting lesson there. Like, I’m a business guy, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve done it my entire life. And so to have a writing partner, your background isn’t the same as mine. Right? So for you to be able to understand what I’m communicating is a gift, because I think it enables the book to be written. Like if I wrote it just for business people, it wouldn’t be as universal, right? And I’m so close to being a business person, I’m so close to it, I may very well be suggesting or writing in a way that I think is super basic, and everyone understands, but it’s not. So I love the fact that you’re not a domain expert. You’re a domain expert in writing and understanding and interviewing and taking my thoughts and putting them together versus Oh, I know how to write a business book Karl, we’ll write it together. I think something would have been lost there because you’re learning and seeing it with fresh eyes and ears. And that’s enabling it to be really powerful and more accessible. And I think that’s one of the reasons team based writing works so well.

Emily Einolander  19:55

And I would also say that even if you are just writing a business book, most human beings enjoy the story aspect of it so much, because the first part of it was all that stuff you and I were talking about, where it’s about the people and it’s about, you know, your baseball story with your sons. But everybody talked about how much they loved the first five chapters or something like that before you got into the business part of it. And these were people who do the things that you were teaching them and they’re just like, I really liked this baseball story. 

Karl Becker  20:43

So I’ll tell the baseball story real quick. That your point is fascinating, right? Like it, I will tell a different story actually.

Emily Einolander  20:49

This is how our conversations go.

Karl Becker  20:52

Yes, welcome to my world, right? And your world. So I think a lot of times, Okay, I’m gonna put myself out there. So so my dad and I have the same birthday. He turned 80. And we had this birthday party, and you know, it kind of a nice restaurant. There was maybe 14 people there for my dad. And I don’t know if this is right, it’s not really fair. So if he’s listening, I kind of apologize. But that’s okay, hopefully you love me unconditionally. But I feel like, for him, that day was about the dinner, a nice dinner, literally the food. And yeah, he wanted to have his family around. But for me, it didn’t matter about the food. For me, it was the experience of being around family members that I don’t see that often and celebrating my dad’s 80th birthday. And the fact that we have the same birthday, same event, very different goals are very different outcomes that we’re playing for. Sure, my dad wanted to have a nice time, but I think for him, in his mind, it was like, Okay, we have a nice dinner, and everyone’s there, and we’re gonna have a dinner, and I’m gonna pay for it. And for me, it was like, we’re all gonna be there, and we’re gonna laugh and celebrate my dad. And we’re gonna open some fun presents. 

So I guess the reason I say that is, in this book, in all of the books we’ve written, but especially Set Up to Win, it’s not only about the content, but it’s about the journey the reader goes on. It’s about their personal experience with the stories and the lessons and seeing themselves in it, not just, Oh, these are the five things I’m supposed to do, or the meal that I just got. And so I do think even if you’re listening, and you have a book in you, and you have all this really great, pragmatic, smart thought leadership, I’d say yes, and awesome. But it’s also going to be about how it’s packaged and received. So that it’s more digestible, it’s more entertaining, and people want to be in it more. And that’s why instead of when, to tell the baseball story, we start with a story. 

We start with a story about a friend of mine giving me some baseball tickets. I live in Colorado, I’m a Colorado Rockies fan. And so at this point in time, my kids were pretty young. And my wife and I didn’t have a chance to go out that often. Because we had young kids, one of us always had to kind of watch them. And you know how hard it is to get a sitter, if you have children. Like it’s not, it’s not as easy as it looks on TV. So I was like, Oh, I’ll take these tickets. They’re great tickets. And there’s just two of them. And I’ll take my wife, and all week we tried to get a sitter, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t. So my oldest son, I think, was seven or eight at the time. And I said, Guess what, buddy? We’re going to a baseball game tonight. And it’s a night game. And I know you’re eight or nine or seven or eight, but we’re going to be out really late. And then he goes, Dad, are we going to catch a ball tonight? And for some crazy reason I go, yes. And if you’re a parent out there, if you promise anything to a kid, you know, I just made a big mistake. Yes, we are gonna catch a ball. So the rest of the day, I’m like, Oh my gosh, how are we gonna catch a ball? So we get in the car, we’re about to leave. And he’s like, stop. I slam on the brakes. He’s like, we forgot our mitts. And I’m like, Oh, he is like for real about this. He runs and gets this little eight year old kid mitt and my mitt, because we would play catch often, then we go to the game. And we’re there early. I’m trying to soak it all in as being a dad with a son at a baseball game. And he keeps pretending like he’s gonna catch it. And I start to believe this is really going to happen. I start to think, once the game starts, well, what if the ball does come to me, and I don’t want to be the dad that clocks, his kid and I drop the ball and someone else takes it. I’m on SportsCenter and I’m the blooper reel for the week, if not the year. So I’m like, I’m gonna stand up. I’m just gonna put my arm out. I’m gonna look up. I’m not going to take my eye off the ball. And I’m gonna catch it with my mitt and then I’m gonna make sure it’s there and it doesn’t bounce out, and I’m gonna grab it. Return to my son given this ball. Well, sure enough, it’s the third inning. He turns to me because we were going to catch up on it. Well, how about now? And Michael Dyer is at bat, and sure enough, this pop fly ball comes right to me exactly like I planned in my brain. I stand up, put my arm out, look at the ball, catch it, hold it there for a second look at my son and give it to him. And it was like this amazing moment. And of course, he asked me the question afterwards, Dad, when are we going to get the next one?

Emily Einolander  25:29

Because he’s got a brother.

Karl Becker  25:31

And so I start the book with that, because there’s a lot of intentionality to that story, right and faith in yourself and belief and possibility. But then fast forward. The second part of that story is, and Emily, you kind of told them, I have a second son. So I’m speaking at a conference in Dallas, and the Texas Rangers are out of Dallas. And we like to go to baseball stadiums when we travel. It’s kind of a way to kind of show my kids America and kind of what they’re like in that city. So I go, what if I wanted to catch another ball? What would I do? And I was like, Okay, I bet I could systematize this. I’m gonna sit off at third base. I’m going to dress my kids up in local team garments. So we look like Texas Ranger fans, all four of us. You’re gonna bring a kid because baseball players love kids. And if the ball you know, is a foul ball, and I don’t catch it, but it rolls on the field, I’ll probably throw it up to a kid. When I’m also just going to keep this positive. Nice, I’m gonna believe. And sure enough, it’s the ninth inning that it’s tied up. My family’s looking at me like we’re not getting the ball. I’m like, No, we are going to get one today. I believe that with all my heart. It goes into an extra inning and sure enough this pop fly from the Mariners comm hits, like the nearest pops into the field, this golden glove winner, last name, Beltray comes over, picks it up, looks up, sees me and my son, and throws it to me. And so we start the book with that story. Because one, it’s just a fun story. But the whole lesson is, Chance favors the prepared. There’s all these little steps you can take towards success and in sales. It’s not one thing, and in most of life, it’s not one thing. And so I could have told the story of like, hey, sales isn’t one thing, you got to really be clear on who you are and who you sell to and how you sell it. And what’s the process? And oh, my God, I already got bored. And this is my book. So we took the idea of, how do you catch a ball, knowing that there’s all these steps? Planning where you’re going to sit is a lot like, you know, what’s the strategy I’m going to do when I talk to a customer, right? So we tried to create these ways to bring the content into an accessible way of being received and stories are so good like that. And, Emily, I guess that’s kind of where we’re going with this right is, in these books, when you can find different ways, potentially through stories to connect with the reader, it does become a journey, and it becomes a great way to engage and get your message across.

Emily Einolander  28:10

So kind of like pivoting a little bit, but not really

Karl Becker  28:12

You want to go play. You want to go to a baseball game with me? You got it anytime.

Emily Einolander  28:16

Okay, thank you. I’ll take you up on that sometime. Um, so in the span of time that we’ve done these three books, there’s been a lot of evolving, and we’ve gotten better at working together. And we’ve gotten familiar with all of the stories that are in your arsenal. How has your experience of creating a book changed over time? And not just your experience of making the book, but of having the book as part of your professional portfolio?

Karl Becker  28:51

Well answer that one first. Because gosh, it’s like night and day, it is so different. And a friend of mine once told me that maybe three or four years ago, there’s a consultant, and then there’s a consultant with a book. And it’s totally different. As soon as you have a book, you are, you are seen so differently. And your credibility is so different. And I guess I would say it’s a yes and there too. Like, yes, it is, but one of the hidden jewels of having a book is my own personal clarity. Like when we wrote Set Up to Win. When we were done, I was so much more clear on how I wanted to be in the world, how I wanted to communicate what I do for a living, how I support people, how I build teams. And then I also had a framework that I could give people so that they could get a preview of it or digested in their own time to go. Yeah, I want to work with him. And so, having a book internally is one of the most amazing things is, at least for me, I got so much more clear, because you got to write like, you can’t just have a book that’s rambling. And no, it doesn’t work. And so being able to get clearer has been one of the biggest benefits because I’m just a more effective consultant and communicator or Keynote or running a workshop. I’m just clear. 

The second is amazing things happen, like, with Set Up to Win last February. In all my books, I have an invitation. Hey, if you want to talk, reach out, I love supporting people, I love talking about this stuff. So I always have an open invitation if and the same with the podcast, like if you want to reach out, reach out, I will gladly communicate with you. So I get this LinkedIn message from a guy named Jason at Semester at Sea. And he goes, I just read your book, and I’ve ordered it for my team. And I love it. And I’m wondering if you could speak at one of my events? Like, wow, okay, this is amazing. Like, wow, I don’t know who this person is, and they’ve reached out. So I got on a call with him shortly, took his LinkedIn invite, we became friends and spent the next couple months just kind of talking about how we could work together. And then I said, Hey, I’ve got this new book, would you be open to reading it? Because he’s like, I love your other two books. I was like, well, guess what, I’ve got one almost ready. And he read it, and he’s in the acknowledgments as a thank you because he gave me such great advice. And then he brought me in to do a workshop with his team for over around Iceberg Selling. And so how would that have happened if I didn’t have a book, right? And so now, not only do I have a friend, but I have a client. I’ve got a great story to tell. 

But I think having a book, I talk about possibilities, right? Like it just creates possibilities that I could never have imagined. Like, I’m going to run a workshop for a bunch of people at Semester at Sea, which is a college on a boat that travels all around the world, helping people become global citizens. How blanking cool is that? And so I think it’s a credibility thing. I think it’s a focus thing. I think it’s a possibility thing and it’s a legacy thing. I have two high schoolers now, two boys that are in high school, and they’ve heard the audio book, they’ve heard me talk, they’ve read it, they’ve seen it, they know they’re in it, there are stories about them. And that’s never gonna go away. And so as a father to know that I’ve got two boys that at any point in their life, they can open up this book and see themselves or see them their father and how I was showing up in the world, then. That’s, that’s worth the price of price of admission right there. That’s blanking cool, too.

Emily Einolander  33:05

Yeah, and then, have you had fun doing it?

Karl Becker  33:16

I did it three times, because I hate it each time.

Emily Einolander  33:22

Well, look, some people like to do CrossFit. Okay. We love doing things we hate to ourselves. 

Karl Becker  33:28

You know, it has been fun, because it’s my time. Like, it’s my time to get what’s out of my head when I’m passionate, when I might be processing through and share it with somebody, in this case you, that cares about me and cares about the product? And yeah, it’s work. It’d be like, Oh, wow, we’re gonna have an hour and a half to two hour session where we have a general idea. We’re going to talk, we’re going to record it, we’re going to transcribe, you’re going to ask me clarifying questions. And then you’re going to cycle on it. And go, Hey, does this generally capture this? That’s work, but it’s work that when you’re done, you can see it and feel it and touch it. And it’s real. And I like so much of what many of us probably do for a living, to quote to quote like an 80s commercial for all my 80s kids out there. Where’s the beef? Where is it? And once and once you kind of start to see another piece evolve and evolve and evolve and kind of come to life and read it. It’s it’s so fun. Oh, my God, I said that this is my book. This is really cool.

Emily Einolander  34:36

And it can be a little emotional sometimes too.

Karl Becker  34:42

Absolutely. Yeah.

Emily Einolander  34:43

When I was talking to this person named Amanda who does something similar to what I do, she was like, I try to prime people for the emotional experience of creating a book before we get started, because you always have these, even if it’s not actually exploring the story that does it to you. Like the waiting. And the revisions, where you go and look back over what you did and go, is this really what I want to say? Or like, Is this my life sitting here in front of me? 

Karl Becker  35:15

Well, the other part is, I would like to think this is about our relationship. You see, I can show up very raw. And I think it’s because you’ve built a really safe place for me to feel that I’m heard and understood. And I can explore something. And if I’m, if I’m tweaked, or I’m having a rough day, I’m sure there’s some recordings where I would probably be like, Oh, wow, I said that. But I think if you’re going to write a book, number one, and if you’re going to write a book with somebody else, as a teammate, as a writing partner, like you are to me, Emily, it’s not going to be right. Every time there’s going to be some, there’s going to be some times where you have to throw away all the work you did. Because, at least for me, I process out loud a lot. So part of the experience is being able to be vulnerable, and share and know that your writing partner, you, Emily, you have my back, you’re going to allow me to maybe unpack some things that I didn’t even know I was going to that’s really that. And I couldn’t do that by myself. Like if it was just me and a, I want to say typewriter.

Emily Einolander  36:28

I mean, people still use them. Sometimes. 

Karl Becker  36:32

But yeah, I mean, and so I think you’re right that in writing, there’s a lot of things that show up. It’s an emotional journey, because sometimes, I don’t want to do this today. But that’s where a writing partner helps, right? We’re gonna get on a call, and maybe the first 30 minutes, we’re talking and you’re a therapist for me. And then I process through whatever that was like, before we start, I want to tell you the story, you know, and, and then I’m at a place where I can get back on point and focus. And yeah, the waiting is kind of hard. And the reveals are cool, too. When the book cover comes out, when I see the illustrations, when I read a chapter that I forgot, I told a story and I’m like, Oh, my God, that was a great story. I remember that. The last part, I’ll tell you, just because I said that I was listening to the audiobook of Iceberg Selling on my way, on a trip recently. And I just turned to my family. I really liked this guy, he gets me, but that’s fun, right? Like, that’s fun to kind of see the thing you put into the world and it comes alive.

Emily Einolander  37:41

And the actual collaborative process is not a performance. So I think that there’s an expectation for some people that I’ve heard talking about collaboration, where it’s like, I show up to talk to this writer, and I have everything planned out in my head in advance, and they interview me and I answer the questions flawlessly with a totally clear mind. And I always look at people describing the process that way. And I’m like, is that really what happens? Is that how other people think, and I’m not sure. Maybe someone does, but you know, if they have an entire talk planned out in advance and it’s basically just transcribing it. But you know, for us, it’s just sort of been like, let’s wade through this, like unconscious mind stuff. That’s coming out.

Karl Becker  38:33

But I mean, I do think when I wrote the first book, and I had an outline, because people come in, and they’re like, oh, you know, you have this thing called the Revenue Equation. And, you know, there’s three stages, and each stage has five questions. There’s three chapters of your book, each one I’m like, Oh, yeah. first three chapters. Yeah, and then the fourth chapter will be the summary. Got it? Yeah. And then you and I start to talk and it’s like, wait a minute that’s dry. That’s like, we don’t need a book, we already have a worksheet. And so I think, even if you’re listening on Okay, yeah, I think I know that eight chapters or 10, or 12, and maybe you do and that’s great. I’m definitely not discounting that, but at least my experience has been those are starting points. Those are inspirations. Those are kind of directional landmarks, if you will, yeah, I think I want this in the story or, Yes, I think I want this in the book. This is the point I really need to get across. But for me, getting clear of the message was something that we worked on together and we process through. And for me and how my brain works, having a partner that helps me say it out loud and reframe it and keep asking for clarification. That’s how I was able to get clear.

Emily Einolander  39:44

Well, it’s been really fun. It has been emotional for me too. I will say to anyone who’s going to be doing this kind of work, you have to be emotionally open and prepared to hear sometimes stories that may remind you of something in your life that happened. It’s never not going to be an emotional experience. But if you are able to go through the entire process, then I think there are really big rewards to it. And I think that’s the entire metaphor for creating a book in the first place. Because there are so many steps to it. And it takes such a long time, even outside of the actual writing, that you kind of have to have a lot of emotional fortitude and determination to be able to finish it up. And we did it. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Karl Becker  40:38

This story in Iceberg selling about Tim just keeps coming up again, and again, and again for me. And so if I’m going to really honor myself, today, I’m going to tell that story, do it. But in typical fashion, where I tell you that story. 

So I’m out to lunch with a Vistage chair, who’s a friend of mine. This is a peer group for business leaders where they have a coach and there’s usually 10 or 12 people and you’re talking through things. So I just wanted to give the readers that context. So I’m with my friend, Tanya, and she runs a group. And I said, Hey, I’d love to give you a book for all your members of Iceberg Selling, I just think it impacts things so powerfully. And I would love to give it to you. And I think it would be of service to your members. Yeah, if one of them wants to call me and maybe there’s an opportunity, that’s great, too. But ultimately, I played for change. And I am really proud of this book, and the more people I want to share it with, hopefully it affects people’s lives in a positive way. She said that would be great, but I need to ask you a favor. What’s that she was? What do you want me to say when I give this book to everyone? And I go, Oh, well tell him that Karl is your friend and he’s a sales consultant. This book is really great to help build salespeople and sales teams. Karl, that’s boring. And that’s going to fall flat. I need something that gets them to understand why they should read this book. And I said, Well, there’s a great story in there about a guy named Tim.  And Tim has a bunch of stuff in his head about selling and what does selling mean? And I said, you really should listen to the story. And I’ll tell it to you right now. But tell everybody in the group. Hey, there’s this great story in there. And this is what it’s about. And Karl and I were talking that many of you in the room might have a similar baggage and head trash around this where your sales team does. So if this story resonates, read the book, and if you like it, give it to your salesman, because that’s it. That’s what I want to tell him. I’m gonna listen to the audiobook. 

So that was the story before the story. Here’s a story about Tim. 

I’m speaking at a workshop of about 30 early stage CEOs and founders in Houston, an early stage doesn’t mean they’re all 20 years old. We had young folks in there all the way to people in their 50s, they had all gotten funding from different angels or venture groups to build a company. And this was a workshop to help them understand how to sell. So I’m running this workshop. And one of the things I like to do as an icebreaker is just going to say, what’s the, what I call the name game, people share how they got their name. So this one guy, Tim jumps up, and he kind of shares his name game. And in the name game story, he tells the background about his father being a fighter pilot, and a bunch of really great stories. And so he introduces his father and that’s how I get to know him in this name game story. Clearly, his father’s really important to him. 

So later on in the day, he tells another story about trying to close a deal. And then he has this great presentation at the end, when he goes to move to a next step. He doesn’t get the next step. And he’s never heard from the people who presented to before or again after it. And he’s really frustrated about it. So we all kind of talk about that as a group. He brings up another story before the session is over. Very similar theme, like he’s in front of people. He’s doing a presentation. They love this product, but then it never goes anywhere. This is this recurring theme. It never goes anywhere after he presents, obviously super frustrating to anyone, especially an early stage CEO who’s trying to get his company off the ground. So I wrap up and he comes up to me, he goes, Hey, do you do personal coaching? Like could you help me? I really like what you said today. Could you help me through some stuff? I said, Tim, I’ve got four hours before my flight. Let’s do it right now. He said okay. 

It was a nice day in Houston. It was spring. So we go outside and we’re just sitting. And he goes, I think I have a sales problem. I hate to sell. I said well, what is sales like for you? And he’s like, Well, you know, at the end of the end of the presentation, I ask for next steps. I move forward and I saw him, and I tried to close. And I’m like, that’s not sales. That’s the stuff in the movies. We don’t need to do that. He looks a little relieved. I said you really want to work through some stuff here. And he goes, Yeah, I really do. And I said, Tim, you mentioned your father numerous times in our session today, but whenever you tell stories, you have this grin like you really admire this guy, but you also talk like he’s probably not around anymore. Like you might have lost him recently. And he kind of gets a little choked up when he’s like yeah, Yeah, my dad passed away this summer. Okay, I’m really sorry to hear that. I want to ask you a couple more questions. But they’re gonna kind of go deep. Are you sure you’re still good with this? Because if you’re going to do some consulting, you got to get permission or it ends up kind of being abuse, right? 

So I said, Tim, you’ve told a couple stories about how your dad owned a mechanic shop, and he would tell stories about the sales guys who come in there to sell tires and stuff. I’m kind of picking up that your dad kind of messed with the salespeople and might not have liked him that much. He’s like, Oh, yeah, my dad, he would mess with those salespeople all the time. He really didn’t like salesmen. He doesn’t like anyone telling them what to do, which kind of tied back to this fighter pilot story where he ended up punching his superior officer to get out of the military. That’s a whole nother story. And that’s his story, not mine. I said, Tim, this is where it can get intense. I said, when you start to sell in your presentations, do you feel like you’re letting your dad down? That your dad sees you as the salesperson that he just doesn’t like? And Tim paused. And you could tell by his eyes that I was right. 

And I said, Well, here’s the good news. Tim, that’s not sales. Sales is being a guide. You’ve been really good about developing this, this tech product for people in the DevOps space, and you used to do their job. And your whole reason of doing this is to make their lives easier. Can you stay in that place? Can you keep telling your story about why you invented this, why you developed this product? And then instead of feeling like you need to convince somebody, just invite them to try it? Can you just say, Would you be willing to demo this? Would you be willing to take a trial, it can be 30 days, 60 days, early stage company, right, he’s still improving because he needs people to start to use it. I said, if you do that, they’re going to see your authenticity, they’re going to see how much you care about helping them in their solution with his product. And he kind of wells up a little bit. It was an emotional afternoon for me and Tim, he goes, that’s all I need to do. Yeah, that’s all you need to do. I said, and sure enough, that’s what he started to do. And he’s emailed me and messaged me, and it’s working. And it changed his life, because he changed his mindset about what it was. 

And I think, at least in my books, I’m hoping people find something that I’ve experienced in my life, whether it’s personally or as consulting, and they can apply it to theirs, and go on a journey of change or improvement, whatever it is that they want. So I appreciate you sharing, you know, asking if there’s anything else I want to share, because I think books have a purpose for an author. And for mine, it is about change and impacting change, and helping people you know, take what they want, and hopefully make their life or their team’s lives better. And in that story, when I tell that story about Tim, in a keynote, the whole audience gets quiet, they all see their dad, their mom, their whoever it is from their past that might be in their head when they do a certain job when they learn to do a certain thing. And I think that’s that shared human experience. It’s so powerful in books, when you can bring things like that forward, where my experience becomes universal or Tim’s becomes universal. And therefore the message really resonates and so I love the story about Tim, I love you let me share that. But I think that’s what good books do. You know, connect? 

Emily Einolander  48:32

Yeah, and that one’s been really powerful for people based on all the conversations we’ve had. And I mean, me too. As a business owner, it can be really scary to put yourself out there and there’s all the voices in your head telling you that you’re not good enough or that you’re a big phony. And everyone’s going to discover that you don’t know what you’re talking about, actually, and seeing that in other people and then going hey, they actually do know what they’re doing. Why am I thinking these terrible things about myself? It’s very helpful.

Karl Becker  49:04

There’s that clarifying piece, there’s that piece of self exploration in whatever story you bring, because it is a big part of you that is manifesting in words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs. But yeah, thank you for letting me share that. I really appreciate that. 

Emily Einolander  49:24

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I really believe in this book, and it’s been really fun to do and the illustrations are fantastic. And the cover is fantastic. And I’ve been enjoying promoting it with you as well. Where would you like people to find you?

Karl Becker  49:41

Yeah. Well, if you’re curious about me, there’s two places you can find me pretty easily. The first is we’ve talked about the book Iceberg Selling a bunch so if you just remember Iceberg Selling and you type in Icebergselling.com Or you Google Iceberg Selling and my name you’re gonna find a web page around that book. And there’s forms there and ways you can contact me on my LinkedIn profile, stuff like that. But from a kind of bigger brand, my company is called Improving Sales Performance. Same thing, you can find pictures of me there, I’m there, you can see the LinkedIn, you’re gonna be like, Oh, that’s this guy. And then reach out if you’d like Improving Sales Performances, the company side of things, and either of those avenues would be a good way to get in touch with me if you’re curious. 

Emily Einolander  50:30

And that leads you to the books as well. They will lead you to the books. Karl, thank you so much. I’m so glad we finally did this.

Karl Becker  50:37

Yeah, thank you. It’s always fun talking to you. And I appreciate the way we can just kind of keep exploring what we’ve done together and share it. So thank you too.

Emily Einolander  50:47

You can find Hybrid Pub Scout online at hybridpubscout.com, on LinkedIn, or on Instagram at Hybridpubscoutpod. Please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. And thanks for listening.

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]]> 4596 Don’t Write in a Vacuum Part 1: Test Your Topic and Target Audience https://hybridpubscout.com/dont-write-in-vacuum-test-your-topic/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dont-write-in-vacuum-test-your-topic Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://hybridpubscout.com/?p=4507 Sure, writing can be a lonely pursuit. As someone who spends my days writing, I am alone most of the time. Sometimes I get so in my head that I accidentally run into household objects or forget what I’m talking about mid-sentence. If you spend a lot of time writing, you’ve got to get out ... Read more

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]]> Sure, writing can be a lonely pursuit. As someone who spends my days writing, I am alone most of the time. Sometimes I get so in my head that I accidentally run into household objects or forget what I’m talking about mid-sentence. If you spend a lot of time writing, you’ve got to get out of the house from time to time (and watch where you’re going).

One way to get out of your head as a writer is to acknowledge that, if you want your book to mean something to other people, you need feedback.

If you’ve been following Hybrid Pub Scout for any length of time, you won’t be surprised when I say writing and publishing a successful book is one of the most collaborative things you can do. You know that good publishing practice means bringing in competent editors, designers, and other guides.

But believe it or not, the dialogue between you, your book, and the rest of the world actually begins much sooner than the editing process. In fact, it begins before you even start writing.

In this blog (part one of four), I’m going to show you how to do research to write the book your audience needs and wants.

Find comp titles before you write your book

One of the most powerful lessons I took away from my conversation with Kelley Gardiner a couple weeks ago was the value of testing. She recommends starting your quest for feedback with a little bit (or a lotta-bit) of research on Amazon or other review sites.

Comp titles, aka., comparison titles, are books similar to the book that you want to publish. They’re beacons in a mystifying industry that help guide you to what catches readers’ attention. There’s a lot to say about the value of comp titles at every stage of your book’s development, but for now, start by doing the following on Amazon.

(Yes. Do it even if you hate Amazon and plan to sell elsewhere. Use their data to your advantage—it’s the least they can give you.)

Identify a High-Level Category

Let’s take this step by step. Start with the big picture—a high level category under which your book falls. Go to the drop-down menu at the top of the Amazon home page and type in your category.

The search will reveal the top books in that category. Copy-paste a few links for books that come up during that search into a doc so you can check them out later. If you want to get more specific, and I suggest you do, you’re not done.

Start with a top-selling book to scope out

Pick a book as a starting place. The top seller is fine, but anything in the top five or so should also be taken into account. I’m going to start by picking the third book from the left in this picture to examine, The Challenger Sale. It’s got the second highest number of reviews, and there isn’t a photo of the author on the cover—so it’s a better comp for someone who isn’t well-known on sight.

It is okay if you’ve never read any these books before. You’re just getting an idea of what’s out there. If you really want to read them later, cool. They’re now on your radar.

Scroll down to “Product Details” to find category options

Go all the way down the page—past the product description, book recommendations, and any editorial reviews. Product details will be useful in other areas of your book publishing journey, but for now, look under Best Sellers Rank to see where this book is ranking the best. It might surprise you to see where, but then, Amazon is always full of surprises, for better or worse. 😂😂😂

A screenshot of Product Details category of a book from its Amazon sales page. Includes ASIN, Publisher, Publication Date, Language, File Side, and eventually the "Best Sellers Rank" for the book

Investigate the bestsellers in those categories

When you click one of the blue links under the “Best Sellers Rank” heading, it will take you to the bestseller page for that category. You’ll see a grid with the top 100 bestselling books for it. Please note that in this picture, I’m looking at what sells best in the Kindle store. If you use a print book selection in your product search, there might be some variation in what categories and books come up. Look at both if you want, especially if you care about getting print sales.

Find comp titles and analyze their reviews

Whatever books or book descriptions appeal most to you or look the most like what you want to do, add it to the list. Once you’ve got a few, it’s time to start digging through reviews.

This time, scroll all the way down past the Product Details, past the About the Author section, and past the Sponsored Products carousels. Now start going through reviews. Five star reviews, one star reviews, all are worth checking out. Three or four stars can often be the most helpful of all. Those are the ones where people are likely to share what they felt was most helpful about the book and what they thought might be missing.

“Look at what the reviews are saying, not necessarily about the book, but what people wanted from the book… The questions that were answered, the questions that were left unanswered, what they wanted from it; what they got, what they didn’t get.”

Kelley Gardiner

Gauge audience interest—after you find out where they are

If you have a blog, podcast 😉, mailing list, or social media following, first ask yourself whether they are also the target audience for your book. Is your current audience curious about the topic you’re thinking of writing about? Try writing a blog on the topic or a post on your regular social media platforms and see what kind of response you get.

It’s like a minimum viable product, or an MVP, except the “P” here stands for…mmmm…point? Pontification? I think you get what I’m saying. Figure out whether the people already in your circles care about the topic enough to engage with it.

Use your comp titles to find your audience

Maybe you don’t have a huge following yet, or the audience you have isn’t quite the same as the one who is likely to want your book. In that case, take out that comp title list again. Get on the social media platform you use the most and start using the title and author names to find out what people are saying about those books. If you don’t see a ton of talk about it on your platform, maybe try another one. Check out who is reading those books. Think about whether they’re an audience you can connect with based on your book. Start thinking now about what you can do now to connect with these readers. Otherwise, when you publish, you’ll have a lovely, hard-won piece of work and nobody to sell it to.

Accept the gift of questions

Particularly if you’re a business owner, blogger, or another person who serves the public, you might already have a great entry point to your customer’s psyche.

“Questions are gold…for any kind of writer,” Kelley told me. “If your audience is asking you a question, then they’re giving you a huge gift. They’re telling you exactly what they want to know.”

If someone comes out to ask you about a topic within your area of expertise, write it down before you forget! If one person is curious about something, there’s a good chance other people are curious about it too. If you’re considering writing a book and you already have an audience that interacts with you, use their questions as launchpads to set a good trajectory for your project.

It’s okay if you’re not the first

Maybe something inside you wants to ignore all that advice. 

Maybe you’re afraid that if you do your research, you’ll see something you don’t like. Specifically, you might see that someone else has written a book similar to yours, and maybe that someone has sold a lot of books. And, oh no, the author is so smart and successful! What are you even doing thinking you can do what they do?!

Even if you know that’s a silly train of thought, tell that to your sympathetic nervous system. That’s right. You can’t.

However, you can soothe that grumbling in the pit of your stomach by reminding yourself it’s usually a good thing to see book ideas similar to your own. That means there are people who want to pick up the sort of thing you’re about to throw down. Nobody out there will have the exact perspective you bring. Some people might be wired to understand the way you communicate better than the way other authors do. If you put research, love, and attention to detail into your book (and marketing—never forget marketing), there will be readers who will benefit.

So don’t give up before you even get started. As long as you’re not literally plagiarizing, your story is going to be unique.

Yes, it’s noisy out there. There are more books being published right now than at any other point in history, and that level of competition can make you want to retreat to the woods forever. Don’t let all the other voices out there keep you from sharing your story.

But before you start talking, keep your ears open. Be discerning of which voices you listen to, and then let them guide you into writing the best, most helpful book you possibly can.

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]]> 4507 Don’t Go to the Woods https://hybridpubscout.com/against-writers-retreat/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=against-writers-retreat Wed, 11 Oct 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://hybridpubscout.com/?p=4483 You don’t need a writer’s retreat. You need a vacation. We’ve all thought about it. Anyone who’s ever wanted to write a book has fantasized dropping out of society and retreating into nature, or at least solitude, to write. Just imagine—the birds chirping, the fresh scent of pine trees.  (The lumpy mattress in your temporary ... Read more

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]]> You don’t need a writer’s retreat. You need a vacation.

We’ve all thought about it. Anyone who’s ever wanted to write a book has fantasized dropping out of society and retreating into nature, or at least solitude, to write.

Just imagine—the birds chirping, the fresh scent of pine trees. 

(The lumpy mattress in your temporary twin bed. That weird smell coming from the drain in your bathroom. The spooky wind whistling through a crack in the window frame while you’re trying to sleep.)

As one of my followers pointed out on a recent Instagram post, it can be tough to find the time to write. Most of our jobs take a lot out of us. There are not enough hours to take care of everything we need to do, and often we don’t have the energy to create the kind of work we’re proud of.

That is exactly why you shouldn’t flee into the woods and expect it to save you.

Years ago I went on a weekend getaway. Not to the woods—I watch too many horror movies to enjoy that—but just to spend some time on my own. Working on a thriller I’d been thinking about for a while was definitely part of my plan. I spent a few hours walking around the city, then retired to my temporary home in some nice couple’s addition to write.

Wanna know what I actually did?

I watched documentaries about cults and drank craft beer.

Judge away, but the fact was I was exhausted. It was December. My work had drained so much of my energy over the past couple years that there wasn’t a drop of creativity in my veins. Frankly, it’s a miracle I didn’t just hole up in the little loft bedroom and cry.

Yeah, I needed to be alone. That part was awesome. But write, I did not.

If you’re a burnt out participant of a high-stress economic environment, like most of us are, taking time off to go write in a beautiful place sounds like a dream come true. 

If you’ve got a couple weeks or more, then by all means, go ham on that book. 

Or maybe you’ve just got the superhuman focus to snap straight into writing mode as soon as you plop into a rustic arm chair. And in that case, you’re probably the type who can call on that focus wherever you are, you lucky duck. 😉

But for most of us, dropping out for a long enough time to both breathe and get into a good writing groove just isn’t realistic. We have neither the time nor the money to fork over for AirBnb cleaning fees (because that’s where they get you).

So if you’ve just got just a few days to relax, then relax. It’s going to do you much more good than if you spent the entire time trying to force yourself to write, or heaping guilt upon yourself for not writing. 

Go for a hike. Feed a duck some frozen peas. Read that novel you’ve put on the backburner because it feels too frivolous to bring into your daily life. Take a real break, look at the world around you, and let it teach you a thing or two. 

More than anything, that’s going to be what helps you be a better writer when you go back to the “real world.”

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]]> 4483 Episode 72: Grimoires! https://hybridpubscout.com/episode-72-grimoires/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=episode-72-grimoires https://hybridpubscout.com/episode-72-grimoires/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2022 07:00:48 +0000 https://hybrid-pub-scout.local/?p=4302 If you thought one horror-themed episode this season was enough, you thought wrong! If there’s one thing we’ll always do, it’s our annual Halloween episode.  This week, we venture into the spookier (and less witch-hunty) side of grimoires. What are they? Who used them? Do they really count if they’re published using a printing press ... Read more

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]]>

If you thought one horror-themed episode this season was enough, you thought wrong! If there’s one thing we’ll always do, it’s our annual Halloween episode. 

This week, we venture into the spookier (and less witch-hunty) side of grimoires. What are they? Who used them? Do they really count if they’re published using a printing press instead of written by hand? You’ll hear what spells we’d like if we had our own grimoires and get the details on a deadly farting curse that led to the death of a young Icelandic man and his father.

We also cover four of the most infamous grimoires in Western magical history.

The Picatrix

In the days of the Spanish Inquisition, owning a grimoire with its roots in Islamic and Hebraic tradition was much riskier than the actual practice of witchcraft. Also, the Picatrix grimoire just plain grossed people out with potion recipes that called for human and animal bodily fluids. Baboon blood, anyone?

The Lesser Key of Solomon

This grimoire is especially famous for its Ars Goetia section, which catalogs 72 different demons along with their resumés and job titles. We obviously talk about Hereditary and King Paimon, whose qualities are drawn straight from this book, but also lesser known entities like the demons of junior high slumber parties—Amy and Furfur. (Just kidding, we’re sure they’re just as scary as everyone else.) Also, we swear we didn’t mean to do this, but there are 72 different demons in the Ars Goetia, and this happens to be Episode 72. OooooOOOoo scaaaaary…

The Petite Albert

One of the most famous bits of this grimoire is its instructions to make a legendary Hand of Glory. Corinne reads the instructions aloud, and we try to troubleshoot using the hand to successfully rob a house that is packed to the gills with children.

The Grand Grimoire

Watch out for this one! It shows you how to summon the devil! Well, not the devil exactly. Just his prime minister, whose name certainly sounds like a bastardized version of Lucifer. Content warning: Corinne reads the invocation, but so far, nobody’s gotten a visit from the Prime Minister of Hell. We’re guessing he may have quit his job. 😉

Sources and Shout Outs

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]]> https://hybridpubscout.com/episode-72-grimoires/feed/ 0 4302 Hybrid Publishers versus Hybrid Pub Scout https://hybridpubscout.com/hybrid-publishers-versus-hybrid-pub-scout/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hybrid-publishers-versus-hybrid-pub-scout https://hybridpubscout.com/hybrid-publishers-versus-hybrid-pub-scout/#respond Thu, 15 Sep 2022 07:00:20 +0000 https://hybrid-pub-scout.local/?p=4267 Going beneath the surface of a subject obviously means getting a deeper understanding as you explore. Sometimes, those deep-dives reveal inconvenient facts. In my case, submerging myself in the world of publishing revealed that “hybrid” has an enormously loaded meaning in the field, one that has nothing to do with what Hybrid Pub Scout is ... Read more

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]]> Going beneath the surface of a subject obviously means getting a deeper understanding as you explore. Sometimes, those deep-dives reveal inconvenient facts. In my case, submerging myself in the world of publishing revealed that “hybrid” has an enormously loaded meaning in the field, one that has nothing to do with what Hybrid Pub Scout is or does. 

The name of the podcast and business means something unique to me. Since I’ve spent so many years with this title and branding, I don’t want to leave it behind. All the same, the similarity has felt like an elephant in the room for a while now. So, instead of completely changing everything, I’d like to clarify the difference between a hybrid publisher and Hybrid Pub Scout Media.

The Hybrid Pub Scout Podcast: Traditional and Indie Publishing and Everything In Between

Back in 2018, I was about a year out of grad school and in my second year of working at a traditional publishing company. I still had a lot of questions about the constantly changing publishing world, especially about alternatives to the traditional formats that had already been a big part of my life. With all the information in the world at my fingertips, I decided to go on a quest to understand as much about the industry as I could—this time with a bigger focus on those who were doing things a bit differently from the way I’d learned.

Some people have the internal motivation to learn about something in a vacuum, for the sheer joy of scholarly pursuit. I really wish I were like that. I really do. However, my brain requires the push of an external motivator (or at least it needs to be tricked into believing there is an external motivator). Developing a podcast that allowed me to interview people in different areas of publishing was the perfect impetus.

“Hybrid Pub Scout” means just what the tagline says—mapping the frontier between traditional and indie publishing. If for no one else, I do it for myself and the few people who I know are out there cheering for me.

Hybrid Publishing: A Debated Publishing Model

One thing I’ve learned in the past several years is that “hybrid publisher” is a term that can set off alarms for people. That’s often for good reason, too! Many publishing folks, including myself, would warn authors to go into a hybrid publishing situation with eyes wide open.

That’s not to say authors shouldn’t be wary of traditional publishing houses as well. As we recently saw with Penguin Randomhouse vs. DOJ, big traditional publishing houses aren’t the blazing beacons of good business many may have thought they were.

Hybrid publishers are responsible for the same services as traditional publishing houses including design, editing, production, sales, and distribution. The difference is in the way production is paid for and how authors are paid. While traditional publishing houses offer advances and royalties to authors, and don’t charge fees, hybrid publishers are subsidized by the authors themselves. Authors are responsible for paying a cut of the production costs, but they also should receive higher royalties than they would at a traditional publishing house.

Publishing organizations like to keep an ear to the ground and a discerning eye over what types of hybrid publishing outfits are out there. The Independent Book Publishers Association (of which I am a member), recently published an eleven-point list of criteria for reputable hybrid publishers. If you’re looking into using that model for your own book, I’d recommend taking a look at that list.

Hybrid Pub Scout Media: Assisted Self Publishing Services

Self-publishing is highly competitive, and it’s important to put your best work forward. Incredible writers might not be great at formatting and designing their books. They might be prone to spelling and grammar mistakes. (Yes, you can be a good writer and litter your drafts with typos! Gasp!) Their covers might make the book look like fantasy when it’s actually a memoir. These are just a few reasons why paying for publishing services, even when you self-publish, can be really valuable.

I’m not a hybrid publisher. I do not pretend to be. I doubt I ever will be.

The way I’m most comfortable conducting business is having clients only pay for publishing services, rather than creating deals based on shared royalties and rights. With Hybrid Pub Scout Media, books are published under the client’s “imprint” (usually the client’s company name) and using accounts owned by them—not me. Sales, marketing, distribution, and rights management are all the author’s purview. 

Once the book is published, I wave and blow kisses as it sails on to the next phase of its journey. If an author wants my help with related writing projects and promotion, those services are kept completely separate. I’m happy to give my opinions, but ultimately I’m there for the production side of things. Especially since I primarily work with entrepreneurs and sales and marketing folks, I have every confidence they know best how to get their book in front of the right people.

If you’re interested in getting help self-publishing your book, check out my services page to see the ways I can support you.

Photo by Kaffeebart on Unsplash

The post Hybrid Publishers versus Hybrid Pub Scout first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Hybrid Publishers versus Hybrid Pub Scout appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

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