If you missed our podcast in the Content That Converts Series: Publication Publishing or Book Publishing – Which is Right for you? this blog recaps the conversation, and you can access the recording by filling out the form below.
Host Lisa Lickert is the owner of EMI Network a 39-year-old content marketing firm. EMI’s roots are in custom publishing and native advertising, and they have navigated the publishing world for the entire time they’ve been in business. Fun fact, when founded, EMI was named Editorial Marketing Inc. They were content marketing before content marketing was a thing. Lisa is business builder at heart and brings over 22 years of leadership, business development, sales and marketing expertise to our client experiences.
Laura Di Franco is CEO of Brave Healer Productions where they publish world-changing wellness books. With thirty-years of practice in holistic physical therapy, a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and 20 books and counting, she offers powerful expertise and energy that’ll help you leave a legacy with your brave words. Laura shares that joy is the way she healed herself. And she invites you to ask her about it sometime.
Laura: You know, you’re making me think of first steps which is writing an awesome book. And the overwhelm comes in when they say, I don’t know that I have the time to get this written. And of course, for anyone know, who knows the GSD language, I’m a GSD, right, I just get stuff done. And I will say that you need to do an exercise a timing exercise, you need to understand the words that you can get out in an hour. And if it’s not scheduled, it’s not real. So, you have to protect the time in your calendar, if this beautiful book is something that you want to write, eventually publish and start to mark it. Get it in your calendar every single morning until it’s finished.
And the second step is, you should have started building your author platform yesterday. So don’t resist start building your email list so that all those beautiful people that you know the who become your fans, you’ll have a way to introduce your book, when it’s coming time to actually market and promote your book. There’s so much to talk about in this subject. So I’m going to leave it there for now. And we’ll see what else we want to talk about what else comes up?
Lisa: You know, you’re talking about 50,000 words, right? And so publication publishing, we’re talking about 400 to 450 words. It’s a great first step when considering publishing because of the word count alone. However, strategy is important when creating a message that is a solid, provides incredible value to the reader, is engaging, and only 450 words. Over the years, we have simplified this process for our clients, which helps reduce the overwhelm. We have professional writers & project managers that hold the hands of our clients and take on most of the work.
Laura: Well, my specialty is the nonfiction signature book for your business. So, I’m not talking fiction here today. Most of you are probably business owners. So, you’re with me here, but the nonfiction signature book for your business brands you. The kinds of books we focus on are teaching memoirs. You have personal story that helps the reader understand who you are and builds that trust factor, so that you can then switch over to your master tools or teachings in the book. So, you’ve got pieces of personal story, and you have your master tools and teachings in these kinds of books.
Lisa: Readers like the teaching memoirs, so we do something very similar when we work with our clients. We focus on an executive Q&A style. We target 4-6 common questions or interesting topics for our client’s industry. We interview our clients, create the published piece and then we can help our client create blog sets from each question that’s optimized. FAQs are great for SEO. And the Q&A strategy helps with chunking content for social media and blog activation.
Laura: There have been so many authors now. And we specialize in the collaborative book project, there are multiple authors. We have authors who are doing TEDx talks, we have authors who have landed past podcast gigs, we have authors who have increased their income with clients. It leads me to when you’re writing those pieces, and I’ll talk about that nonfiction signature book for your business again, for a minute, those have a call to action to what you do in them. And you don’t want to leave somebody just like I know, you probably teach to after the 450 words, if there’s no call to action, and then you might as not well have written it, right. So, these books are the same way they’re going to point to you getting hired to speak.
Lisa: There have been a lot of exciting outcomes from publishing. I published a piece in 2014 in Forbes that to this day opens doors for EMI. Can you say that any other referral or lead generation initiative delivered that high of an ROI? It’s very hard to do. And there are three client stories that I will share. The first one, involved a financial services firm. That credits their publishing experience for being a game changer in their business.
Another firm we worked with averaged 3 referrals a month. After being published, he shared that it grew to 8. And the third success story involved a healthcare consulting firm. The owner had tried for a significant amount of time to get a meeting with one of her top prospects without success. She bookmarked her published page and sent the magazine with a cover letter. She was able to get her meeting. Poof that publication publishing can open doors and cut through the clutter in the marketplace.
Laura: Some people are getting their drafts done in 30 days, right? Sounds crazy, but it’s doable. But most people don’t do it in a month. And the time commitment to writing is the first stage, that’s really an individual time management thing with the author, being able to schedule your writing and understanding your outline and how far you must go and how much time you need. I have a handful of people do it, where they take a three- or four-day vacation, and they write their book. So, time commitment really does vary. Of course, it’s going to vary for the length of book as well.
And I know y’all probably hate that answer that it varies, but that’s really the truth, the monetary commitment, also the finances will vary. But what’s important to spend some money on is your editor, and then your designer. And those are probably the two highest costs, small investment that you’ll make in your book that will help it to stand up next to traditionally published books. There are multiple other costs, depending on how you’re then going to launch, promote, and market your book until you die. This is your baby.
If I land three or four clients from a really well written awesome nugget of a book, I love to give my book away. You’re not thinking about royalties here you’re thinking about clients, and that math is way more fun, by the way.
Lisa: Before we talked, I had been approached by other publishing firms to do books, and their proposals were in the range of $30,000 to $60,000. I know that your projects are considerably less when there are multiple authors spreading the investment. And in the publication publishing world we can manage the costs even lower by focusing on our client’s target market versus national. We have buying power in custom publishing as well as streamlined the process to manage costs. For EMI we are also able to future reduce costs due to our low overhead. Several years ago with any media firm you would invest $10,000, where today with EMI you are half of that investment in most markets.
We focus on the Q&A format that I referenced earlier, so the interview and writing process is efficient and the content created is multi-functional. The time commitment is minimal and typically includes an interview and some time for proofing and approvals. Otherwise, we are managing to the publication’s editorial calendar and publication schedule, which could span several months.
Lisa: I think it’s fair to say that publication publishing is referral generation and door knocking, where it opens doors and cuts through the marketing clutter, specifically with the brand alignment. Do you see it that way, too?
Laura: For sure because I do both. And I have since the beginning of my business and being in bigger publications has been a game changer for my business. But I also wanted to publish books. I wanted both things because of what you just said. There are differences.
A lot of beginner writers want to go the cheapest route possible and it’s very easy to cheaply self-publish these days. They proofread it themselves, edit themselves, layout it themselves, but the problem is you get that finished product back and you get what you paid for.
Lisa: There’s a simplicity to publication publishing. You are taking advantage of a known audience engaged in a highly reputable brand. You don’t have to build your own audience and sell. It’s sold so your published piece has an existing sales channel that you can take advantage of and gain exposure to your ideal client. From a promotional standpoint, we provide best practices and guidance to maximize your investment. In addition to the promotional benefits on the marketing side, the print and digital assets become unique sales collateral.
For a limited time, we are offering a CUSTOM PUBLISHING PACKAGE at a discounted rate with bonus services.
We will work with you to select the best brand – Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Golf Digest, to name a few – and editorial fit. Once selected, a timeline will be set that fits your needs and the publisher’s production calendar. We make the entire process easy and turnkey.
